Worlds of Words

Words Words Words

Intro

Long ago in the far off’s of mythical whenever’s on an unknown day of an obscure year before years and days were counted the first words were starting to rattle off the tongues of our prehistoric parents. For the sake of convenience (the convenience of not chasing “the first word” ever spoken), lets say these primordial glossalalia-like jabberings bounced through the air during the Symbolic Revolution 50,000 years ago.
    

The jabberings flesh out into a body of rules that impose structure on any “thing” it tries to describe. This structure is artificially created. Count Korzybski sums it up in six words, “the map is not the territory”. 

Welcome to the Trap. Like Ol’ Ouroboros eternally chomping its tail and eternally wanting more, we language using people use language to try and understand what language is... "how the....huh....what the...." and other stilted, half-spoken expressions usually follow. Peel back a few assumptions and soon the strange conundrums operating the monkey mind pop into awareness.

The next logical step is to greet the trap --- "hey trap, how are you?" --- and then question its life. Language grows from simple grunts connected with direct and tangible objects to complex grunts connected with indirect and intangible hypothetical entities. These entities take on a life of their own, becoming systems of interconnected concepts expressing worldviews. 

Although weightless, the momentum of thought is heavy. Worldviews are the ultimate conservatives. They lag along with their connotative baggage and outmoded concepts for centuries at a time, injecting programmed fluff to clog the vital flow of meaningful speech and impede the whole project of human understanding!

A small detour into the mind of Bucky Fuller reveals a human well aware of this. Following the cue of a slew of dead Greek philosophers and modern quantum physicists, Fuller conditioned himself to say "universe" rather than "the universe" because "the" implies a static entity --- something universe clearly is not!

Sending

We are language. Quite literally it's given birth through our brain-mouth-lung system. Air flow is manipulated and sound vibrations are sent across space to spiral down the ears of a listener. 

This process seems to be a reaction to the continual cacophony of chaotic signals that universe bathes us in unstoppable portions at all times. A paltry itsy-bitsy ("so paltry bro") of this becomes ordered. These verbal acrobatics are done so that messages, or ordered signals, can be sent to other humans to decode and extract meaning from. 

Receiving

Even astronomical distances don't stop people from sending messages to supposed receivers. Here on earth, in everyday interpersonal settings, compressed puffs of air spiral down receiving ears and transform into neuro-chemical oscillations that can (to be stressed more than italics could know!) be understood as meaningful.  

Speaking too much about listening can make one deaf, so I'll keep it brief. The essential difference is in the internal narrator --- shallow listening is when this character doesn't shut up and deep listening is when this character shuts up. The quality of this listening will determine the spectrum of meanings extracted from the sent message. 

Conclusions

Meaning is context-dependent. It arises through denotation and connotation, the former being its descriptive similarity to some object and the latter being its common use among a community of speakers. When words becomes solely dependent upon connotation for their meaning and this connotation is highly prejudicial/fear-based, then it can be viewed as a battle tactic in the arena of linguistic warfare. The genocide of potential ideas are the high stakes at hand.

As Phillip K Dick said, “those who control the words control those who must use the words”. Expanding this a bit leads to, “those who control the meaning of words, control those who must use the meanings”! 

If words are a major vessel of potential meaning and we assume that a meaningful life is based upon, well, creating meaning, then this is terrifying. The whole process of coordinating brain-lung-mouth physiology to express spurts of distinct air rests upon this attraction --- the attraction to create meaning. 

The dwindling of meaning, once understood, can be overcome. Re-branding the prejudicial connotations of some words and spreading it among a community of speakers can help further the evolution of vital concepts. As all verbal therapies in psychology can attest, the simple act of speaking honestly about one's experience can help purge toxins from our psychological digestive system. 

Now for the magickal words of Alan Moore: