The purpose of speech.

The primary purpose of action and speech is to create self-definition. The secondary purpose is validation, security, and to prove our existence to ourselves. It’s not so much if we exist as much as why we exist and in what manner we should, as well as the relation of our existence to that of other people and things around us. Speech helps define where we think we should belong and what we should do while we’re here. Nothing defines us more from other people than the fact we can act and speak differently than they do. Although within a group the actions and speech are very similar we have a slight marginality between overlap of our own uniqueness. Unlike the objects we create with our hands, action and speech come directly from us, while those things we make to represent ourselves are more similar to photocopies of our actions and speech. Someone may claim they are not insecure and don’t seek validation through their actions and speech, but I’ll make the claim that security and stability are constantly in a state of diminishing similar to the way our bodies are in a constant state of decay by a certain peak, and just as we would eat well and exercise to slow this process and maintain what we have, we also seek to constantly reassert our validation and security through action and speech. If we were forever secured and felt our existence was valid we’d never have to speak or act again. Some may argue that they don’t speak and act to get validation or security, but choose to do it because they like to and it’s fun. These to me are byproducts of the real reason that we are genetically inclined to choose action and speech for the purpose I claim they exist.

The reason we speak is to generate a physical reaction. Since life comes down to physics for me in many ways I’ll say the pressures in our external environment create pressures on our internal environment causing us to say things we think will be interactive with that environment. When we speak it’s either to hear someone speak back or to cause their bodies to move. Both of these are physical in a sense because their organs have to move to create a sound in order to react to the sound we make. We wouldn’t speak if we didn’t want a reaction, and a reaction validates that what we said was important enough to react to and there would be no reaction. If we were to continually yell at someone without them responding in some way we would become upset, because we are speaking so they do something for us to make our existence feel valid and give it purpose. If people react to what we say then it means we must matter and people who ignore us should probably be talked to less or perhaps not at all if they never respond. People can drive themselves crazy to get a response from someone who doesn’t care about them enough to respond, so this action isn’t hitting something emotionally in others that gives us a reaction we’d like on the frequency we’d like.

People who aren’t our friends may very well plays games with us and not realize it, because they may only speak to us when they want a reaction and we always give it to them, but when we want it they may not always respond as much as we’d like. It’s those who want the least in an interaction that have the most power over a situation when it comes to speech, because they always get as much as they want when they want it from someone who cares enough to give it, but the other can’t ever get enough of their own desire in the process. It’s not till we realize we’re being used more than we’d like to use that we can stop acting and speaking more than is being responded to. When two people want to use each other at the level water meets on a regular basis we call it friendship or love. People might be more likely to respond to anger when kindness doesn’t work, but love and hate are just two different versions of the same thing, which is caring and if we get apathy we should give nothing, but if we get hate back for our hate we aren’t really getting something good anyway, so this doesn’t allow us to be validated in a positive way.

The difference between friendship and strangers is when we speak to friends it’s to maintain the secure, stable, environment we already have in their presence by building on what has already existed prior. This is the positive validation that keeps us knowing we exist in a way that feels good and matters as well as confirms our beliefs about existence. These are the people we relate our experiences to and come to conclusions with about what things we can agree are reality and what things aren’t, as well as what things are right and wrong about reality that we need to change or avoid if wrong, and continue to act upon if right so we can maintain our secure and stable lives to the best of our knowledge. When we speak to strangers in a manner that isn’t business it’s to seek another kind of validation and security. We already know the bureaucracy of most business we deal with like giving money to a cashier so these are limited in emotion. It’s those we seek in leisure speech that we’re testing how much we matter by getting emotional reactions seeking care about us for speaking. Since these people aren’t our friends we’re testing the claims about reality we’ve already come to with our friends to either get them confirmed or rejected by strangers. If they are confirmed then we can maintain them easier the more people agree. The things that get rejected will either strengthen our belief in them if we can argue them well, or cause us to believe otherwise if we’re defeated in speech or action. We will always be more likely to believe our friends over strangers on matters pertaining to reality, existence, and validation, which is why we keep them close to maintain a stable and secure environment we can exist in together.

When we talk to strangers somewhere like a party it’s to see if they have the potential to care about us and what we think matters in existence too. If they don’t care about us at all they won’t react. If they don’t care about us but care enough to disagree with what we’re saying they’ll follow through with conversation, because it must be about something they feel should be defended in speech concerning claims to reality. They care about the topic emotionally. The reason we speak to strangers is to test if we or what we think matters enough to validate us personally or what we believe in, which is closely tied to our existence, because these things are motives we live by each day. The truth is we’re all insecure when it comes to people we don’t know well and choose to talk to because we potentially hope to matter enough to be talked back to in a positive manner like our friends do for us. When we talk about matters pertaining to things that involve the actions of people versus other people in lifestyle we’re most likely setting ourselves up for debate, but if we talk about things that aren’t people it’s easier to find agreement about reality and this is small talk people test the waters with before important topics might come up. Small talk can be questions about what an individual does each day with the objects around them and there may be deeper inquiry into the functions of those objects. A lot of times we start conversations with strangers by pointing out obvious objects in the environment at the time or a task we’re both involved in. When we eventually get into deeper topics and if we can find comfort about enough of them on a continuing basis we eventually call these people friends also.

The difference between a friend and an acquaintance is that a friend exists fairly regular in our lives and interactions with acquaintances are random, and sometimes friends can becomes acquaintances and acquaintances eventually might be friends. The difference between and acquaintance and stranger are we already know it’s comfortable to talk to an acquaintance in random encounters. The reason an acquaintance doesn’t become a friend is because they have limited agreements with us on what matters in reality to where we may only interact at the few places we share those rare things in common like a party. That means our actual friends are very limited in life to a small group of people. We should be as close to these people as possible. They make us the most secure and stable because speech and action are so reciprocal we don’t even think about the reactions we’ll get anymore. As for all other people we live in a world of insecurity that we have to validate our beliefs of reality and existence against compared to the group we already identify our views with. Where there isn’t fear in speech with strangers there is aggression.

Speech as some claim isn’t a market system where we measure how much speech gets how much reaction, and those who do don’t find themselves very happy. The way a person gets good at running isn’t by riding a bike, skating, and lifting weights, but simply to run. To become better at speech in ways that feel like they’re getting the reactions we’d like isn’t to measure them against the people in our lives to our own, but to do it when it feels right. If it feels wrong we should just stop speaking in places that don’t give us the validation we’d like, because eventually we’ll start feeling like we don’t matter, and if we really want to feel insignificant in the universe we can just look at the stars each night and realize our insignificance instead of testing our hearts against those who won’t give us the time of day as we’d like. Speech and action are not measurements the way a product is on the market. We can measure ipod A against ipod B, because ipod’s don’t have feelings and we can only project our own into them insofar as what we can get out of them. We aren’t supposed to rationalize the subjective value of our interactions with people against other people like an ipod, because projecting emotions into people is done to be reciprocal, and the value of speech with one person next to another isn’t something we can measure the same as an object and its output. When people tell us we could do better we don’t just drop one person and pick up another like an ipod. What some see as discontent in our interactions could very well be highly content to us when it comes to the quality of people in our lives. Speech and action are not a market system to measure our security under. Our friends should be the center of the universe and the world should be measured only against the group idea value in life and existence.