Words.

Words are everything, without words we are still jabbering monkeys flinging our poo at the moon, without words there is no meaning.

Words are meaning. They hold our thoughts, they move them from one mind to another, they are vectors that transmit meanings.

Words are culture, they are humanity, they are creation because without words no thoughts can form, no meanings can develop, nothing can be built up torn down rearranged or combined to make the meanings and patterns that drive the world.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

Words define, demarcate, classify, organize. Without words creation is formless and empty.

I am picking and choosing carefully amongst all the words to produce and effect to show that words are the harbingers of all good in the universe.

The curious thing about words is that they mislead, hurt, destroy, control, befuddle. Words are everything, they hold all meaning and wonder and they mean nothing at all and are ephemeral.

Chapter 1 of the Tao Te Ching says,

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnameable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Chapter 2 of the Tao Te Ching says this,

When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.

Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.

The mystics have always known the power of the Word.

It’s the duality of words that fascinates me so. A week or so ago I was in a heated discussion of self-righteousness and futility. This is my nature and despite much battling against it I seem to be drawn to pointless battles. I love to battle the windmills. They piss me off so much!

What I found fascinating was the reawakening of how important words are to the world an how easy it is to use words to manipulate and enrage people. The Word has power!

Knowing that deep deep down in the belly, it was also obvious that the same words are just that, they’re just…well…words and depending on how you viewed them in any particular moment, the same words can mean almost anything in context.

This is more a musing on oddness of that duality than anything at all. You want to change the world you have to use words but in doing so you use words that have no inherent meaning or power. They have the power we consign to them. If you want to change yourself you still have to use the words to hold the thoughts that rearrange the meanings of your life. You can’t escape the word.

At the time of the discussion I thought actions and deeds were more powerful, said more in meaning and were not capable of being misunderstood. But that silly notion was brought low. Actions and deeds are a communication, they are, in essence, words, they have a meaning which can always be misunderstood no matter how sure and obvious the meaning is to the deed doer.

[aside: While I was bicycling today I was thinking about these notions and the memory of Herman Hesse’s book The Glass Bead Game popped into my mind. The vaguely described glass bead game in that book was making connections to seemingly unrelated things like the structure of a virus and the mathematical nature of a Bach fugue. Everything connected to everything in some way. This is related to the thought I started with but doesn’t move the discussion along so I’m just tossing this in as an aside.]

Where is this going? Nowhere really. Just musing on the seemingly pointlessness of ever really communicating and the absolute need to do so.

Communication is connection and connection is the essence of life. Not just the insert tab A into slot B kind of essence of life but the fact that all of life, from the lowliest of virii to the loftiest of coffee drinkers typing away on a computer connected to the internet, is an information processing machine with the parts connected and interacting with each other. I keep coming back to this thought but I can’t quite make much more out of it.

Oh well. Maybe I just need more 73% dark chocolate?