Language

[Guest guest]

 

 

Hardly anyone would argue that humans invented language, but we could also say that language invented mankind. We are the product of our intimate relationship with one another. This intimacy would be impossible without words. Language has allow us not only to share our thoughts, but also to keep the past alive, to hear the dead speak, to profit by their wisdom. Language is the mother of civilization. Words unite us, words create our world, and words divide us from the rest of creation. I’m not trying to suggest language as a pre-existing entity, which created us. Rather, as a magical tool that shaped us as much as we shaped it. Will was not required. Information, builds itself along the lines of its own successes, and so chance takes on the appearance of purpose.

 

And it goes even deeper than this; some neurologists propose that consciousness itself is the product of communication. This theory postulates that it is the complexity and redundancy of synaptic connections in the brain, the looping and re-looping of information, which creates the self- referential mechanism we call consciousness. And that theoretically at least, this process doesn’t need organic matter as its base, and could be recreated with silicon chips.

 

Now, I must agree that rubs against the grain, that information, on reaching some critical point of complexity could become self- aware, sounds bizarre. But isn’t, exactly this, what Buddhism and Advaita had been preaching for centuries? Is this theory in any way different from anatta and co-dependent origination? View in this light, the theory becomes strangely familiar. It reminds one of Krishnamurti assertion that the thinker and his though are one. It brings to mind, Ramesh insistence that there are no doers, only actions.

 

Maybe is not surprising, then that in the age of communication scientist turn to communication in their efforts to explain everything. It has happened before, influenced by the proliferation of mechanical devises, scientists of the18th. and 19th centuries envisioned the universe as a giant machine. So maybe it’s natural, that some physicists today, think that the key to the universe is information and the universe is a closed communication system, a cosmic computer, if you will.

 

There are some observations that support this, mirror image subatomic particles, particles that synchronize their spin, have been observed to change their spin simultaneously regardless of distance. This instantaneous synchronization defies the law of physics. For particle B to change in response to particle A, information of the change in A must reach particle B. Since information, is an exchange of energy, and energy can’t travel faster than the speed of light, instantaneous synchronization seems impossible. Impossible, I postulate, unless space/time as we know it doesn’t exist at the quantum level. In which case all events are coincidental at the quantum level, and it is only when observed that they seem to be spread out in space/time. Now I must admit, I know very little about physics and can’t offer any proof for this idea. It seems, nevertheless, to provide a solution for the problem of instant communication. It seems to fit with the intuitive vision of the mystics of the unity of the universal essence.

 

It’s very appealing to think of communication as the thread that weaves our universe. Words are the dance of Maya. Study the meaning of words. Beware of words. Heed the words of the prophet: “In the beginning was the word.”

 

Best wishes,

 

Pete