language

i am surrounded by books. there must be over a million words in the room where i am. i have read most of them at least once, many of them twice or more. i am not extremely well read but i consider myself to have done more reading than many people my age. that really isn't of any consequence, measuring myself against my peers, it's more of a qualification. language fails us, and if we really want to personify it, we fail language.

i am currently reading a text on epistemology. i say i am reading because that is the best word i know of, but what if there is a better word for what i am doing? maybe that is what thinkers mean when they talk of the democratization of letters. there tends to be an agreed meaning about the definition of commonly used words. this being necessary to maintaining open lines of thought and communication. or so we think. often times what we perceive as meaning is really partial meaning and we are left slack tongued at our personal incompetince in matters of the heart and matters of the words. think of some of the times in history where the majority has taken a morally abject point of view? doesn't this show the failure of democracy? and if democracy can fail in matters of justice and civics then isn't it possible the majority can be wrong when it comes to the understood meanings of words?

can a word have a meaning other than that which it is perceived to have? can a duck be a bicycle? and if your first inclination is no it can't i would like to remind that a hog can be a motor bike and a ram can be a truck. and do these names lend themselves to actuality? i suppose the crux of the issue is this: can there be something i would call a "true" name. can there be a name for something that identifies it as what it is and doesn't just take its place in nomenclature as a signifier of what it is. let's try a test shall we? look at the words "stop sign" - obviously the words on the creen are not a stop sign, they are but symbols that conjour up a mental image of your stop sign. for many people it will be a red octagon with "STOP" in large capital letters. for others it will be slightly different. now imagine if you will if i put up a picture of such a stop sign as i have described. once again it wouldn't be an actual stop sign. it would be but a pictoral representation of what the actual thing is. so we have words, we have mental images, we have pictoral images, and of course we have actual stop signs in the world as we perceive them through our sight. let me toss in two other short pieces of the puzzle: 1. say the words out loud, now we have an auditory stop sign. and 2. what does a stop sign look like to someone who has been blind from birth?

i don't ask that question to be an asshole. i ask it because it is integral to our experience of language. for many americans a stop sign is a red octagon of equal sides with large, white, capital letters. but for a blind person, someone who has never seen color they must really on the conceptual notions of what a stop sign is. they have no labeling experience for the words red or white. they rely on basic mathematic concepts to understand a unilateral octagon, and maybe they could perceive the general shape of the letters that comprise the word "Stop" but there isn't a visual of the "real". there is only a mental image - and yet - a stop sign is just as real and just as vital to a blind person as it is to an able seeing person. in fact some could argue that a stop sign is of much more vital importance to a blind person. so here we have the interaction and failure of language in our world. we are grasping at straws still trying to pass aling easy concepts such as "Stop Sign" not too mention the hashing out of concepts that have a complex nature: justice, love, faith, God.

and another turn: if anyone has read this far you have used language and being that you don't think you are an idiot you have probablly had at least one or two thoughts on your own about what you think about the subject of language and/or what point you think i am driving at. and here it is as plain as i can make it: all too often we believe with surety that we understand ourselves, our friends, our famalies, our lives but we use words to do this. we use an imperfect medium (allbeit a necessary medium) to translate our ideas into the real world of actuality. and if we are using an imperfect medium (and maybe if the medium itself is used void of art and skill and is thus abused) what then do we truly believe and know? this is not my attempt at septicism, i can make a much better proof in that regard. this is my indictment of language, and of our use of language.

i do not doubt there is meaning, though i know not what it is. i do not doubt the absence of meaning either as it is so difficult to wrestle it from the dimension of words. if anything what i want is a general regonition that we may misunderstand eachother some, if not most, of the time.