The Phenomenology of Feeling Part 1
Tags: Emotional Intelligence, Philosophy, Phenomenology, Writing, Feelings

Phenomenology of Feeling (photo by mjboyce)

The idea is to tune-in. This is more than feeling. But it is feeling, too. Feeling is sensing and emotion. They are distinct experiences, yet captured by the same word. Feeling, as in sensation, is experienced through, on, by the whole body. Emotion is experienced by the mind, the heart, the stomach.

When I say “experienced” I mean located. When I say “mind” I mean me. Experience is me locating feeling. Feeling is itself and is also of something (including itself).

When “of” is removed from a description — for example, a feeling of love; a feeling of fear; a feeling of cold; a feeling of feeling; a feeling of feeling feelings (emotions) — then there is no separation between experience and the one having the experience.

Experience already, as a word, is predicated by separation. Separation is built into my (English) language. It is built into the syntax: Subject Verb Noun (I touch the flower; I feel calm). An emotion becomes a thing (noun) in (my) language: (I feel love). But emotions, to me, feel transient and dynamic like verbs. And sensations likewise. Emotions are named and thereby have (social) currency. Sensations are not named — in fact, they are positioned as ineffable (unnameable). It is important to note that what is unnameable is (still) positioned. To be positioned is to be named (still) in a more abstract way.

If I feel the sensation of my hand, my right hand as it writes this sentence using/with a pen, that has meaning. Meaning and value are not the same. Value is more specific, usually, and named, as well as positioned. Meaning is more abstract in it being more ineffable sometimes, but can be profound for all that. Meaning can be (more) meaningful.

Something can feel profoundly meaningful without being nameable. Other than to say that it is or it feels meaningful. Meaning can be meaningful. Meaning can be not meaningful. Because meaning, like value, can be a thing, a noun, an identified something.

This order of abstraction is registered through social syntax as named and meaningful. That is a paradox.

Social usage — its language and grammar — can confound and reverse the specificity of meaning — of names (nouns). It can also transform names (nouns) into actions (verbs), and verbs (actions) into nouns (names). This is magic.

What is can be positioned as, and hence turned into, what it isn’t.

The war, any war, is a contradiction — it is a saying against another saying. All war is a challenge between perceived realities. No reality exists without perception (other than one that is positioned — that is imagined — that is perceived as such). It is a paradox to say “this is an unperceived reality.”

All elections are wars fought in the interest of the sound of a voice. You want to hear someone’s voice speaking, and you got for that voice. You believe that voice will say the things you want to hear, sounding meaningful to you in the way you want it to sound. You will always be disappointed by the results, and you know this, because you always have been disappointed before. But regardless, you will still be glad to hear the voice you want to hear. If that changes, if the voice changes, and you no more want to hear it, if the speaker loses their voice (so to speak), then you will not give your vote again to that speaker.

You will not identify with them any more.

There are people. There are groups. They are not the same. There is reality. There are realities. They are not the same. There is the way it is and the way it goes. How it is and how it goes. They are not the same.