The Linguistic Farce

My mind is crocheting some of the most bizarre thoughts these days, however I need to be dry enough to soak them, I need more time to grasp and make a thorough structure out of them. These thoughts, I think, are quite radical and out of my domain too in current cognition. So any attempt to handle them unripe would only yield and taste sour to me and maybe bitter to whomsoever it may serve as a meal. Therefore, I will not play with it. Instead I will bite some more out of my earlier fruit—the fruit of language; this fruit taste sweet.

A few days ago I was contemplating of results had language—a fully formed one—been a gift of God. Though a sign language would not make much difference yet I choose a language with words and human ability to spoken language as a prerequisite to attack the beliefs of Abrahamic religions. You may refer to earlier ideas in my post – ‘Language and complexity of Universe’. I find this post a continuation of my earlier one. Here we will explore the treasure-trove of the strange events which language subjects us to.

Let us step into our cave—a cave of knowledge, rather speculative knowledge. Abrahamic religions, in fact all sorts of major religions never find themselves easy to shed light on how actually language was first learned by humans. Subsequently to fill up pits in their logic they dig up the soil of God and make it even—a leveled ground for humanity to walk on. However in the event of such cover up there is always a possibility of sinking due to heavy load of knowledge. Let us explore different possibilities.

 

We, as a result of our observation, can safely conclude that language is not an inborn quality; the ability to learn language can be inborn. Language need to be learned through conscious effort. What about Adam and Eve? What about those ‘lucky in the most unlucky sense’ human souls? What language they knew? Different Abrahamic religions claim, according to their beliefs, a language of their choice. They are adamant that man was fully aware of his being when he landed on earth and not just being but much more than that—much more in the sense of Language. You see, when we assume language as a divine gift we need to simultaneously assert that man need to know some words, symbol representations, meaning of the words as a prerequisite and how to ramble those words in order to make sense out of it. Let us be generous and assume even that for the sake of doing justice to our Generosity.

What does our generous deed reap? Or seed of our generosity got spoiled? We discover that we have “a father” even before the act of one becoming a father, just because of language. We have one knowing, both Adam and Eve, about “mother” even before existence of first mother is witnessed. We have testimonials of one knowing of son, brother, sister, daughter even before the event of actually having witnessed such an event gladly. All sorts of definitions of relationships existing before the actual occurrence for the very first time! Nomenclature of undiscovered elements—absurdity of epic proportions! Even Absurdity would jump out of shock and ask—‘Am I really absurd? I haven’t been defined yet, not experienced yet!’ You see the “Linguistic Farce” does not stop just at individual relationships. It goes onto every single dimension of life. Pre-history would be ashamed of itself. Now even before the first rose is seen by Adam, he knows of it. Senses are being betrayed and the act of defining is mocked. A square is fully formed in Adam’s and Eve’s mind just to laugh at those who observed and discovered a square, rather invented it. A surface is “round”, “flat” even before it is defined to be round or flat; a “wheel” is lurking in some corner of Adam’s mind only to be ignored till the time is ripe; a “freedom” brings joy even before one has been enslaved; “good” before first good deed or first defined good deed; “sin” before first sin. But wait sin was there! Yes the sin of forbidden fruit! What am I saying! Are fairy tales told without language? “Existence” before definition of existence! “Man” before knowledge of man; “Knowledge” before knowledge; “God” before God.

With this immense gift at his disposal and the ability to put will in the form of words in some finite sequence of words, you can imagine how he defied the act of doing, experiencing, sensing to the pinnacle of idiocy. Senses stoop to Brain and ask—‘Are we any use to you, my lord?’ The act of observing and defining is now secondary to the act of knowing—you know even before you saw, even before you touched, even before you felt, even before you smelt, heard, tasted and comprehended. I am sure you understood the drama we played here. You can guess now who created whom.  

Language and Complexity of Universe

Haven’t we heard the shout of complex to give up our claims of atheism? I mean complexity of universe, living species and all that has been observed. They, in their attempts to not unburden their weights of belief which has afflicted them since the time way beyond their reach, have chosen a new pretext. A reason of complexity in universe, that you may get to hear somewhere- “Science has brought us closer to God”. And also that science has revealed the complexity of creation of God. With their jaws dropped in amazement, unable to deny, enjoying the beauty, intricate details. Now they have a new reason, a new beginning, and a belief that will get stronger in the same extent we discover. This new reason, which has separated itself from traditional theism and shaped in a division called ‘Deism’. Man, to whom all knowledge comes from senses, material exposures, has suddenly found this exposure too complex to handle. The impression of previous belief is so much deep that the mind now refuses to return to its default shape. When the earlier concepts, of eternal reward, punishments, predetermination, miracles, etc. didn’t work to man’s skeptical, ever evolving school of thoughts, he suddenly jumped to dump them and replace the earlier hypothesis with a new one. Now he sees complexity everywhere. He finds himself as a means to explore the universe, designed to be explored. The sole purpose of creating this immense, intricate universe is the study of it by humans. I must say whether the universe is amazing or not, whether it is complex, designed or such benevolent terms, language is definitely mischievous. What man may find in his own discovery i.e. language is nothing in comparison to what he finds elsewhere.

Now we move to the more specific content of our discussion, that is, the complexity of universe. When we brand a thing as complex, using the precious words which we found, does that really mean it is complex? Complexity, which we find so much awe-inspiring, is actually a function of our own discovery and workings of our mind. Our discovery! Language! For a certain thing to be labeled as complex, we are in need of three building blocks. One is language with a word “complex” defined in it, so that we say- “Yes that entity is complex”. Another major requirement is of predefined set of things to which we can associate the word complex- to all that we learned and found difficult to grasp.  And the final ingredient required is learning of new things on the base of what we have already learned and marked it to be complex with an invisible flag of our memory. In all we have discussed till now we found that complexity is not absolute but a function of our own mind and way of thinking, which is in turn a function of our social interaction, the way society responds to external environment. There is no such thing as absolute complexity. A man, never seen a car, not even others drive would certainly find it complex if it is asked of him to race. Is that complex? Again you got to refer to all the points above. Complex arises out of what you know and what you find new. Unable to assimilate your own facultative limitations, your own process of comprehending environment; one is bound to arrive at the conclusion of complex, mysterious.

In these schemes of things I find a silent sinner which is hardly a matter of concern for many. That sinner is surprisingly language.  It gives a feeling of absoluteness. A deep seated content: soothing, absolute and firm. No need to ramble in search of creator, complexity of universe. You can pursue it for the sake of pursuing, for amusement but to know if there is really a designer you need to find from where originates the language. There is no more to be done if you can remove this veil. Of every idea which we hold for granted there is a gloomy, mysterious past which has very successfully disassociated itself from the idea, leaving the idea alone to survive on its own and impressing upon our mind -“certain absoluteness”. This “Absoluteness” is a child of language. Constant usage of ideas through language makes them certain and firm. Idea is severed from its body and we conceive certainty. Not willing to know what was the past. I see some scientist, philosophers, and almost all theologians so sure of these building blocks of languages that they rarely feel the need to find on what grounds the seeds were sowed. What Sun they faced! What Water they soaked! And the most important of all- Who served those ideas as a meal for all! Definitely humans are not willing to assimilate unless they are forced.

Language is the most important builder in any line of thought. When you say something of rose, you know nothing of it but talk in terms of metaphors. You describe its colour, shape, peculiar characteristics but you know nothing of absolute rose. And all those individual components come from your senses and another set of predefined constructs which are themselves slaves of language. Even science which boasts of it as “unbiased” and “factual” is heavily dependent on language. Let us take the example of zero- an extraordinary discovery of mankind. Measurements, equations and whatever you can think of is adorned with a zero either evident or hidden. What is "zero"? Zero is only a concept to represent nothingness. Not absolute in itself. Where can you find "zero"? Nowhere! What can we say of "Zero"? Nothing! It is only a concept. It can only be defined in relativistic terms. It cannot be observed but only represents a situation and that situation is itself unknown and is only assumed for some calculation. You can differentiate one, two, three quantities of anything but can you differentiate between zero quantity of different things. Can you differentiate between a zero arrived from adding two equal and oppositely signed numbers (negative numbers are again hypothetical) and a zero obtained from absence of counting? It has no existence except on paper. Can anyone find a zero for me? I am not judgemental here but questioning absoluteness. A few days ago I was confronted with the absoluteness of Pi, of being an eternal truth. Pi is the ratio of circle’s circumference to its diameter. Perhaps one should know the meaning of eternal when one talks of it. He wouldn’t have said it had he known that a perfect circle is to be found nowhere in nature. Its existence is only for humans and will end with humans. And yes of course the measurement of circumference to diameter ratio will not be approximated by rational numbers such as 22/7, 355/113, etc. if there was no zero, which as I have pointed out earlier is a mere concept on paper. Sometimes I think that humanity chokes on its own inventions, perplexed to the extent of divinity. People should base their thinking on materialism. I hear a common slogan now a days- “Science is our savior”. No doubt it has made us a totally distinguished species but life cannot be lived on pure science. There are things about which I wouldn’t even care to know to live my life. For as long you will be fascinated by the others, you will think of yourself as inferior, unable to assert to yourself with a “Yes to life”, unable to walk and think on your own, needing a stick to walk, to tell you what is right and what is wrong. Life is spontaneous and it is best if it is lived like that.

Done with that, I now want to explore what makes me think language is human invented. Human existence dates much back to the appearance of written languages. Sign languages being discovered as the earlier form of communication, cave paintings and all. There is nothing concrete providing a hint that first human knew to read and write. And it is impossible without syntax of language to have full- fledged spoken language, possible only if you have someone before yourself speaking that language, like we have our parents. One may say that God must have spoken to us the language but then it is virtually impossible to form language syntax from merely spoken language. Even if we assume that God gave us both syntax and spoken language when he first created us, it is impossible that such an able human wouldn’t communicate his thoughts through writing. Certainly these thoughts must reflect themselves in the first appearance of written communication that is documented. But there are none. There are only fantasy stories, aiming in the dark. It is strange to observe that with such vast amount of knowledge in the form of language, knowing words of things which were not even discovered in those times Adam and Eve chose not to express their thoughts. I mean when there is thought process communicated through writing and spoken language it is reflected in the offspring. But they chose to draw cave paintings of sun, animals, etc. How come a single language speaking community starting with the fantasy of Abrahamic religions branched into so many languages? Just like I speak English today and the next day I am fluent in Arabic. Well, all that is speculation, the truth being that evolution line of homo species proves that language was not present since the time we first appeared. It is only a recent phenomenon compared to the vast scale of human existence. Without language everything is a response to stimuli and with it all seems absolute and concrete. Man was too joyful not to accept that this spectacular phenomenon was not watched by anyone divine. Although he feared unknown, nature but concrete God came with language definitions and it will always be a concept, perhaps seeming complex concept.