From here on out you're going to see a change in my blogging style. Where before my posts usually centered on one thing that I would construct an argumentative rant on, now my posts will be shorter, less reliant on pictures and a little more abstract. A lot of these will be taken from my journal for Advanced Writing class, because many of my entries are just too good to not show people. This is what I came up with for today, thought it would be a good start to my resumption of blogging, hope you enjoy!
Something occurred to me today. Something profound and insane. What if there was no language? What if there were no words? I’m sure many have considered this, but I contemplated it one step further.
How would we think? When we think we do so in terms of words. Like if we step outside and the sun is bearing down and the air is scorching hot we think “Man, it’s hot today.” Well, what if there were no words to think? How would we think? Would we think? Is thought what separates man from beast? Do animals think or do they just react?
Now think about this. What if words are strangling us? Our ability to think is confined to our set vocabulary, but what if we experience something brand new, something there are no existing words for? Are we bound by our words, by our language, is it holding us back? Is there something more advanced than language and the only reason we don’t know about it is because of the flaws and limitations of our words?
What if there is a system of communication out there that does not suffer from the weaknesses of language. Think about it, language is imperfect. It only exists of words assigned as verbal representations of a real life object or occurrence. Like something that is “red” isn’t red because it’s intrinsically red, it’s red because our English language word for it is red. Language is arbitrary; it only holds meaning because humanity has agreed it needs to. Language is limited because sometimes we cannot order words in such a way to sufficiently explain what we want to. Try explaining color to a blind person. What if there’s something out there that overcomes these deficiencies? What if there is a system of communication so precise that there is never misunderstanding, never misinterpretation, and never an inability to explain? What if the only reason we haven’t uncovered it is because human language has no way to explain it?
I don’t have the answers and I don’t pretend to. But I have questions, and I have ideas, and wow do I have a lot of them.
