Words are a liquid currency which can be tuned with your mind
Posted on: May 15, 2008Many people get stuck on the meaning of words like old trains that've already passed by and delivered their cargo. This leads to unpleasant semantic arguments and backwards-thinking which is neither relevant nor applicable to moving forward. Philip K. Dick recognized this when he said:
The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.
Words are worthless if you do not know what they mean. If someone swears at you at a foreign language to your face, of course you know they're angry (or something like it). But if they send you the same words in an email, sans ALLCAPS, sans emoticons, you may never know how to interpret it. Filtering it through Babelfish may result in something laughable, and quite off-base.
The best wordal communication can be done through a small subset of key players who are dynamic, adaptive, and possess shared core strengths but different specialties. They may be generalists, but must be able to improvise, to product a stream-of-soniconsciousness. I use the not-too-far analogy of a jazz quartet, each of which has their own instrument, but together, they create. They can have solo albums. They can work on side projects. But still, their unique voices shine through collaborations.
Metaphysical, but, somewhat-Heisenbergian: trying to define a word moves what it means. Not necessarily to a remote observer, but almost invariably to yourself. And if you keep repeating the word out loud while thinking different things, you'll see: it's already changing.
The first time I realized this was gazing at the word "the" and wondering why I even understood it in the first place. Aren't we full of miracles?
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May 16th, 2008 at 4:07 AM PDT
Really interesting thoughts, love the Philip K. Dick quote. If definition moves meaning then the rule of people believing what they want to believe, projecting their own definitions onto words as they read or hear them, has to apply too. Once that mindset is fixed, it can be difficult to shift, which is where the real battleground for meaning is found.
Reminds me of the excellent "Toxic sludge is good for you" book. Controlling the meaning of words.
May 16th, 2008 at 9:54 AM PDT
This brings back some interesting childhood memories. My brother and I came up with some words to represent foul language. It was funny for a day when we tried to use the replacements and our sisters were not in on the joke. Now a days, it is an inside joke that we bring up every few years to reminisce the good old days.
Of course, when you are in the heat of the moment, you simply don't "think" of how to encode what you want to say and just go by what you already know.
May 18th, 2008 at 7:35 AM PDT
@Fubarskine: Yes! And like artificial, human-created money, words are not useful if they don't mean something to both (or more) parties involved in an exchange. We agree about meanings and value to imbue them with worth.
@Dedric: It continues to stupify me how certain combinations of letters are so offensive, whereas misspelling them slightly doesn't count as foul language — I can relate, because my bro and I did things like that too!
September 4th, 2008 at 5:16 AM PDT
"It continues to stupify me how certain combinations of letters are so offensive, whereas misspelling them slightly doesn't count as foul language — I can relate, because my bro and I did things like that too!"
HA HA HA This is so strange that I should run across this post. I just watched the movie 'Dickie Roberts;Child Star' There was an offencive phrase in that movie that I could not understand why it appears funnny.
You make it quite clear what happens.
Such a small event to show me you have much to teach me.