Word

I can't just write like I used to.

In the beginning there was the Word.

Not the program, that bloated Microsoft contraption (bloated like all Microsoft contraptions and forced upon a marketplace begging for more, grown fat and complacent on the bloat, completely ignorant of any alternatives--the fast food of software, if you will), but Logos, symbols, language, communication, syntax.

The world is language. Or more precisely, our world is our language. Not English (or Spanish or Japanese or whatever language we would name if asked what we spoke), nor are facial expressions and gestures and body language, though those are a part of it, but our inner language, the symbols that compose our thoughts.

We tend to think our our mental processes as some abstract pure mechanism contemplating ideal Platonic forms. But that's not the case. Our mental images are based on the flawed physical experiences Plato sought to distance himself from, and so our mental conceptions are by necessity just as flawed--or, more precisely, different, individual.

Meaning in communication is asymptotic. We can convey only an approximation of our internal feelings. This is not because interpersonal communication is flawed; this is the nature of communication. This is, in fact, what defines communication. Absolute meaning could only be conveyed between absolutely identical entities--which in fact means only between the same entity, because even identical particles are differentiated by position in space and time. So communication necessitates flaws just as it necessitates an other.

But the great secret is that we, as individuals, communicate within us, with the same problems. We are not whole, singular, individual entities. We are collections of thoughts, memories, cells, organs. We are each a thousand different people, a constantly shifting and constantly evolving assortment of viewpoints. Do our thoughts and opinions not constantly change and shift? Do we not act like different people at different times, to the mystification of others? And we conceal things from ourselves, forget, or simply do not understand. We communicate between ourselves, and meaning is lost.

Or is it? Meaning in communication is asymptotic, but is not meaning defined by communication? The world as we each individually conceive of it is defined by our inner language, our inner communication. The flaws of our inner communication are flaws in the world. The loss of meaning in our inner communication is a loss of meaning in the world. And if we can't remember that meaning, or never even consciously recognized it to forget it, can it be said that that meaning really existed, for us? The world is our thoughts, our thoughts are our language, and our language is the world.

In the beginning there was the Word.

In the end there was the Word.

Everything else is irrelevant.