Semantic Satiation (a sociologist’s prayer)
Alyssa Sze
Author’s Notes:
Semantic satiation is the name for when something loses meaning with repeated exposure. The best-known example is: If you repeat a word enough times, it’ll begin to sound like gibberish (bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird…). It also applies to other sensory phenomena: If you look at something (a word, object, a face, or even your own reflection), it can become nonsensical. You may know what other people’s houses smell like, but will have a harder time knowing what your own house smells like…. Coming back from a long vacation is a good way to be reminded of that!
I went into undergrad thinking I wanted to major in Psychology — instead, I wound up falling in love with Sociology. Among other things, Sociology seeks to understand the social machinery and assumptions that drive human behavior, and how understanding these processes can allow us to “change society” or “save the world.” Despite how bad things look now, I am compelled and convinced to believe that they can get better. I like to think that Sociology finds “it is what it is” and “it’s always been like this” to be deeply unsatisfying answers to any question. Instead, it suggests that just because it is “the way it is” does not mean it has to be that way, and that the only path that leads to change lies first in understanding.
Shapeshifting and shapeshifters are found in the oldest human stories and histories... I recently read a comic where a shapeshifter’s “true shape” was discovered by looking at its shadow, and I thought it was really cool. More relevant to this poem is the idea of Daemons from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series. From the fan Wikipedia: “a Daemon is the physical manifestation of a human soul” and takes the shape of an animal that walks alongside their human counterpart. In childhood, they are able to change shape at will between all manner of animals but “settle” into a permanent form that represents their human’s personality sometime in adolescence. The final “form” cannot be chosen; from The Golden Compass:
“But suppose your dæmon settles in a shape you don't like?”
“Well, then, you're discontented, en't you? There's plenty of folk as'd like to have a lion as a dæmon and they end up with a poodle. And till they learn to be satisfied with what they are, they're going to be fretful about it. Waste of feeling, that is.”
The idea of this kind of finality, even fictional, was something that I always found as terrifying as it was exciting.
