slow down, mind traffic. November 26, 2009

Why is it so hard to think without words? Try it.

Where do these ideas come from, when language fades away?

Beneath the flimsy veil of language, there appears to be a collection of potent symbols that seal off “meaning”.

Conscious use of language allows one to directly access the symbols, and therefore, “meaning” which directs her life.

Uncritical use of language imprisons one within a psychological prison constructed by symbols imposed upon him from without.

“Enchantment”

Language is magic. The moment you name something, you differentiate it from everything else in the world. I’d imagine that when humans first learned to do it, that it would have been quite magical indeed. I’m not just talking about public language either, as communication between others…. I’m also talking about the interior language of mind, which allows you to communicate with yourself.

Language is a matter of difference.

You see a crowd crossing the street, they are humans as separate and different from nature (everything else). In this crowd of humans, there are females, as separate as different from males. And in this group of females, there is your girlfriend, as separate and different from all the other females. This is where the “magic” happens: she’s separate because she “loves” you, and you “love” her, and you can have “sex” etc… that’s how most girlfriends are, right? Oh, she’s different also because she’s not allowed to love/fuck other guys. She is now bounded in relation to you by title of “girlfriend”. Magic grants access, but it also places restrictions.

The assignment of subjective qualities and boundaries upon an “object”, or something, “out there” in reality… is a fucking ridiculously powerful tool. Look how language has transformed our lives… I can’t believe I’m wearing “pants”. How absurd is that? What is this “computer” thing and “internet” thing that allows me to perform the “magic” of communicating language -> symbols -> “meaning”” that affords me so much more “power” than I could ever “imagine”? Who “invented” this shit, and what the fuck is “invention” anyway? I might as well put quotations around every word, “fuck”!

Speaking of “fuck”, and “cunt” for that matter, why is it that the dirtiest words in “Western Civilization” always refer to something sexual? Beyond that, why is the absolute worst word as “judged” by the masses, the word “CUNT“, a word that refers to/”enchants” the female sex organ? Could it possibly have anything to do with the “demonization” (the assignment of negative value to “something”) of sex in Western Civilization/Religion/Culture/Whatever? I think the “feminists” are onto something here.

Notice, in Chinese, the worst swears are always “curses” (wishing of bad fortune upon “something”) against the family. Could it possibly have anything to do with the fact that family is a concept that is elevated to the greatest heights of value in Chinese culture?

To think of language as magic (incantations, enchantment, mantras etc.) which influences both outwardly to manipulate the environment and inwardly to channel certain emotions/energies/whatever… makes me think that perhaps the first and final frontier of power in the story of humanity remains the landscape of mind with language as the collective weapon with which we use to conquer nature/reality.

No scientific development, cultural symbol, material product of human manufacture of any kind could exist today without the development of language and consequently, or perhaps precedently, imagination. I look around me, surrounded by magic. I look inside my head, and it’s as if the industrial machine of “language” has transformed the natural landscape (perhaps even, a “Garden of Eden”) of my mind into a tub of lego bricks. Now, I melt down the lego bricks to see what I can salvage, knowing that to build with the lego bricks produced by this so-called “English language”, I would be limiting myself to construct only constructs of the system which produced me. Much like the guy who decides to “fight the system” by selling t-shirts that say “fuck capitalism”.

I’m much more okay with uncertainty, than I am with certain emptiness.