One simple but profound observation I feel I finally understood from Bateson today is the following. In any kind of communication the question: who am I to you? who are you to me? is at stake.

And there is no escaping this, this is so even if the communication is ostensibly ‘just’ about the transmission of information about something else. That is, the transmission of information is always, has to be, also transmission of information about the relationship.

Otherwise (if there is no transmission of information also about the relationship), then there can no be no transmission of information, even about something else, in such a way that this information can be interpreted, can make sense at all.

At least this is so for communication between mammals. But then, for human mammals, it has to be a very dangerous game.

The dog — she pretty much only communicates with me about the variations of our relationship and very little about anything else.

Even behaviors to the effect of ‘I want to play frisbee’ or ‘I like it so much when you dry me with a towel’ — it looks like it is about (it stands for, manifests) something else (‘tastes’, forms of enjoyment) but it is fundamentally about a “you and me in the world”.

Whereas for human mammals, it becomes very hazardous precisely because they can transmit information apparently autonomous from the relationship (i.e. from the ongoing exchange), yet even that has to, and will, carry information about the relationship.

I can think of at least three variations of how it becomes gut-wrenching. One is when we think, in good faith, that we talk about something else, something autonomous from the state of the relationship, and we inadvertently destroy the relationship.

This one, the one variation I just mentioned, it’s something that can and should be worked upon (tactfulness, I guess) although it will probably happen to everybody one day.

Another one is the communication of pain between, for example, relatives. As my friend Nabil says, “to your mother, even if you’re on the verge of dying, you must say ‘I feel strong like a horse!’”.

The other one is when we feel a bit unclear about where or who we are, we think (or are told) that trying to articulate it in language will help, but it will not necessarily do that in fact since the ‘who I am’ is always, has to be, a ‘who I am to you’.

I would guess that it is so even in a psychotherapist’s office.

This is why, I guess, communication with and between nonhuman mammals can strike us as so poor and so rich, or so full, at the same time. They cannot seduce themselves into the ‘who am I’ kind of communication, and the dark labyrinths it opens, it’s always ‘who am I to you’, period.

This is probably an example of discovering the Mediterranean sea as the Spaniards say, or at least it’s what I remember reading they say.