Why The Sea is Boiling Hot
Reality, as we perceive it, is not what is but what we make it to be.
Image via Wikipedia
It is part of human nature to resolve patterns and to try to make sense of things. This is indisputably a critical factor in the evolution of our societies and our technology, but while continually assisting us, it also continually trips us up – we can’t easily stop doing it. There’s a face on the moon; there’s another face on Mars, with pyramids; our history and geography are littered with signs, portents and clues to conspiracies hatched millennia ago; we are being visited from other planets and from other dimensions; the ancient ones had powerful secrets which are now hidden from us.
Our minds work overtime trying to make sense of the world around us. Some people are very successful at doing this and can make their fortunes in the process. Interestingly, they don’t necessarily have to get it right and sometimes an original interpretation might be of more value than a more mundane, more realistic, view – writers and artists do this kind of thing all the time. Some people start religious cults.
Language is the key, not necessarily the spoken or written language, although this article is mainly concerned with those. Visual language, too, provides us with many examples; always looking for faces, patterns and pictures in almost random dots; think of the constellations of stars with their imaginative names and associated mythological significance and history. Once we find patterns, we can look for movement and develop a language system which can make interpretations of what we see happen. Astrology is an example of this, but so is Astronomy. It would be a mistake to think that the universe speaks only one language – it will speak as many as we choose to devise for it.
The point is, with language, that once we create it, it can take on a life of its own, because it is a both a tool and a lens for our imagination. We create language so that we can express and communicate. We do not, however, create language so that it can be truthful. Truth is not really what language is about. Language is about embellishment; language is about creation; language is about making paths that just don’t exist, at least not yet.
Liked it
