Heidi Wu's essay 'How Lack of Recognition Censors Your Emotions'

How Lack of Recognition Censors Your Emotions

Heidi Wu[1]

Translated by Masoud Azadi[2]

Edited by Yaser Mirdamadi

"Hypocognition"[3] is a kind of censorship tool that can stifle your emotions. To understand this, look at the image below. Can you find the symbol that is different from the others?

How long did it take you to find the different symbol?

Now let's do another test. In this image, find the symbol that is different from the others:

This is exactly the same picture you saw before, only rotated 90 degrees to the right. This time, however, identifying the different symbol is easier. The reason we are more adept at spotting the 2 among the 5s [in the second image] is precisely this: we have learned the numerical concepts of 2 and 5 from an early age; these are mental representations imbued with meaning. If we sever this conceptual access, we see nothing but a bunch of squiggly lines; just as we were a bit confused in the first picture: the symbols initially seemed strange, unrecognizable, and barely distinguishable from their even stranger counterparts.

This is a strange feeling, an experience on the tip of our tongue, where we wish we had a word to describe it and a precise language to do it justice. When we lack this linguistic tool, we are in a state of hypocognition. This means that we do not have the linguistic or cognitive expression available to explain ideas or interpret experiences.

Hypocognition is a term that Robert Levy[4] (an American anthropologist) introduced to behavioral science. In 1973, he recorded a peculiar observation: Tahitian[5] people do not grieve when they lose a loved one. They would fall ill and have strange feelings, yet they were still unable to grieve because the concept of grief essentially did not exist among them. In their reckoning with union and separation, and in their struggle with death and darkness, the Tahitians did not suffer from the loss of their loved ones, but rather suffered from hypocognition regarding the concept of grief.

In fact, no one is immune to hypocognition. In my joint research with psychology researcher David Dunning[6] at the University of Michigan, I asked American participants: Have you ever heard of the concept of benevolent sexism[7]?

اگر در مورد آن تا به حال نشنیده‌اید، بگذارید به شما بگویم که چی‌ست. این تعبیری است برای توصیف رفتاری موقرانه از سمت آقایان نسبت به خانم‌ها که در نگاه اول تحسین‌آمیز به نظر می‌رسد اما در واقع نقش‌های جنسیتی سنّتی را تقویت و کلیشه‌های جنسیتی را تثبیت می‌کند. وقتی استاد دانشگاهی می‌گوید «زن‌ها موجودات نازک‌دل و ظریفی هستند،» یا وقتی آقای همسایه لطیفه می‌پراند که «گفتم خانم‌ام خودش قضیه‌ی رنگ‌کردن دیوارها را حل کنه ـــ می‌دونید که خانم‌ها تو این جور کارها خوبن،» در چنین موقعیت‌هایی شما ناخوشایندی سنگین فضا را حس می‌کنید.

این گونه نظرات، جنسیت‌زدگیِ خیرخواهانه را نمایان می‌کنند چون در نگاه اول تعریف به نظر می‌آیند اما پیش‌فرض‌هایی در خود دارند که خانم‌ها را این طور تعریف می‌کند: دوشیزه‌های شکننده‌ای که همیشه به حمایت نیاز دارند یا موجوداتی که بر اساس قراردادی نانوشته خدمتکارانی هستند که کارشان خانه‌داری است.

آن‌گاه ما از شرکت‌کنندگان پرسیدیم: طی دو هفته‌ی گذشته چند بار متوجه نظرات یا رفتارهایی حاویِ جنسیت‌زدگیِ خیرخواهانه شده‌اید؟ نتایج حیرت‌انگیز بود. کسانی که نسبت به جنسیت‌زدگیِ خیرخواهانه فقدان شناخت داشتند [یعنی م‌ودستگاه واژگان آن‌ها فاقد این مفهوم بود] موارد کمتری از این دست را متوجه شده بودند در قیاس با کسانی که به این مفهوم آگاهی داشتند. آگاهی به مفهوم جنسیت‌زدگیِ خیرخواهانه بروز و نمود آن را نمایان می‌کند.

از طرف دیگر، اگر شما تا به حال هرگز راجع به حرارتِ نشیمن‌گاه  [8] نشنیده‌اید خود را خوش‌اقبال به حساب آورید. کسانی که به این مفهوم آگاه هستند (حرارت نشیمن‌گاه: احساس عجیب و ناخوشایند نشستن بر روی صندلی‌ای که کسی از روی آن تازه بلند شده و شما حرارت ناشی از نشیمن‌گاه فردِ قبل را حس می‌کنید.) بیشتر از کسانی که نسبت به آن کم‌شناسی دارند آزار می‌‌بینند.

فقدان شناخت را نمی‌توان با یادگیری کلمه‌‌ای جدید درمان سرپایی کرد، درست همان‌طور که «کلمه‌های سال» [یا کلمه‌های ابداع‌شده توسط «فرهنگستان زبان و ادب فارسی»] هم چندان توفیقی در نفوذ به پیکره‌ی زبان نداشته‌اند. هرچند گسترش واژگان تازه می‌تواند مهر تأییدی بر لحظات بیان‌ناشده‌ی اضطراب [ناشی از فقدان شناخت] باشد و مهر تأییدی بر اَبر بی‌قراری بر فراز دنیای مدرن.

قبل از اینکه با مفهوم کم‌محلی تلفنی [9] (کم‌محلی به بهانه‌ی مشغول بودن با گوشی تلفن) آگاه بشوم، جرأت‌اش را نداشتم ـــ و یا کلمه‌ا‌ی نداشتم ـــ که به دوستم بابت این کار وسط مکالمه‌های‌مان تذکر بدهم. اما الان هنوز هم جرات‌اش را ندارم چون خودم هم به ندرت توان دارم که با هوسِ ور رفتن با گوشی همراه‌ام مقابله کنم. افسوس؛ اگرچه در حالِ حاضر حتی فکرکردن به رهایی از اثراتِ منفی ِ رو به افزایشِ اعتیادِ مجازی مشکل است اما حداقل اکنون به پیامدهایِ ناشی از اعتیادم شناخت دارم نه فقدان شناخت. همان طور که روانشناسیِ شناختی تایید می‌کند، داشتن برچسبی کلامی حتی کلمه‌ای بی‌معنا و یا واژه‌ای من‌در‌‌آوردی  [10] نیز می‌تواند پدیده‌ای گنگ را به تجربه‌ای ملموس و ذهن‌رَس تبدیل کند.

If we accept that the precondition for solving a problem is recognizing it, what happens to the tools of recognition in a state of hypocognition? Andrew Solomon, [11] the American writer, in explaining his family’s unconventional arrangement, points to a linguistic poverty in reflecting the complexities of modern families. In the absence of a broad vocabulary, we are forced to submit to words trapped within the traditional descriptors of the nuclear family [a family consisting of father, mother, and child]. “People often ask my husband and me whether the woman whose rented womb we used to grow our son George is like his aunt?” Solomon wrote in The Guardian in 2017: “They ask which of us is his ‘real mother.’ Single parents are routinely asked whether it’s hard to be ‘both father and mother.’”

But the darkest form of hypocognition is the one that occurs with intent and purpose. A part of Levy’s research on Tahitians, which is usually overlooked, is why Tahitians suffer from hypocognition regarding grief. It turned out that Tahitians have a personal, vague understanding of grief. But Tahitian society has deliberately kept the public understanding of this feeling low in order to suppress grief. Hypocognition was used as a method of social control, a skillful strategy for eliminating undesirable concepts by rendering them inexpressible. Essentially, how can you feel something that doesn’t even exist?

Deliberate hypocognition can be a powerful tool in information control. In 2010, Han Han, [12] the Chinese dissident writer, told CNN that any of his books containing the word “government” or “communist” are censored by China’s internet police. One of the ironies of the times is that the censorship of opponents also diluted the praises of the government’s blogging defenders, because propaganda sentences like “Long live the government” were also censored merely for containing the word “government.”

A closer look at the phenomenon of hypocognition reveals its hidden functions. Instead of condemning destructive and negative opinions and encouraging allegiance, the state simply blocks access to entire discussions altogether, thereby undermining the conceptual understanding of any sensitive political information before the public conscience. Han Han says: “They don’t want people to talk about what’s happening. They simply pretend nothing happened at all… That is their goal.” “Managing the words that are spoken is far more difficult than imposing a stifling silence. The danger of silence is not the suffocation of ideas but the creation of a blissful indifference, a state in which no idea is formed at all.

Nevertheless, I like to think that the attempt to spread ignorance about a concept can provoke an urgent, pressing need to express that concept. The emergence of a unifying language around the hashtag #MeToo [13] gave voice to those who had been forced into silence. [14] The creation of a new gender lexicon validated the existence of those whose gender transcended the rigid male-female binary.

Ideas and categories yet to be conceptualized in the future lay before us ambitious possibilities for progress. Every now and then, a new word appears, a new concept arrives to give meaning to the previously unexplored intricacies of life, to breathe the spirit of life into our nascent motivations, to tell the stories that need telling.

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[1] Kaidi Wu . PhD student in social psychology, University of Michigan

[2] Hypocognition is a censorship tool that mutes what we can feel

[3] Hypocognition

[4] Robert Levy

[5] Tahitians

[6] David Dunning

[7] Benevolent sexism

[8] shoeburyness

[9] phubbing

[10] portmanteau

[11] Andrew Solomon

[12] Han Han

[13] #MeToo

[14] This hashtag was used to protest the prevalence of rape and sexual harassment, especially in the workplace.

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