Self as Language

Hi Beautiful Humans,

For this week's exploration, I dug into language - it's origin and limits - and how the development of language massively changed the way we understand ourselves.

Using language to write about the limits of language, can feel like a dog trying to catch it's own tail. To get past this, I ended by gesturing towards who we are without language.

And as always, you can find our artifact of the week below.

Gesturing Towards Language

"I cannot doubt that language owes its origin to the imitation and modification, aided by signs and gestures, of various natural sounds, the voices of other animals, and man's own instinctive cries." — Charles Darwin, 1871. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

Way back in the day, perhaps before homo sapiens came to be, our far ancestors roamed the land. Clever and social, our ability to organize allowed us to enjoy the benefits of highly collaborative activities, like hunting. We didn't yet have words, yet we had language; through gestures and cries we communicated effectively enough to collaborate. Fingers, faces and limbs pointed to where attention was needed – towards this direction, that animal, this person.

Sounds That Became Words

And yet somehow, magic happened.

A primordial moment. The dawn of humanity. The instant "we" arrived.

By using our mouths and throats in new ways, and with our brains developing new capacities, either gradually or suddenly, we uttered sounds that pointed to the same meaning time and time again. These sonic symbol gave rise to a new dimension of experience. We could go beyond merely gesturing at what's here and now and use symbols to describe ideas. We found our way into the land of concepts, which changed the way we made sense of the world and ourselves.

Then a special word emerged, encapsulating our sense of self.. one that separated me from my family, my community, animals, the entire world. All of a sudden the embodied sense of myself had a symbol.

"One day we found ourselves and said 'I' for the first time." - attributed to Carl Jung

While I don't know the original name for "I", this word created a new world, as it reified me. A word for my person. A word for my ownership. A word for my uniqueness. A word of my separateness. A word to turn myself into a thing.

On Language

While language, be it through gestures or words, are a huge evolutionary achievement and accelerated our ascent to the apex predators we are, words also cover up something more fundamental.

"Name is the mother of 10,000 things." - Tao Te Ching

Before we gave names for things - be it a word, grunt or gesture - there were no concepts, no mental categories. There were no things. There was only pure experience, full of impulses and sensations pushing us towards this, pulling us away from that.

Because we now live in a nearly continuous stream of words, images and thoughts, touching back into this state of no things, this primordial position of namelessness, seems all but lost to us. Language gave us the gift of description yet, as the adage goes, the map is not the territory. While we became excellent conceptual cartographers, like a bird yearning to return to the wild, by forgetting our nameless nature, we trapped ourselves in the golden cage of language.

Yet, we can open the cage and remember this aspect of our being.

"What is your original face before your parents were born?" - Zen Koan

Artifact of the Week

This week's artifact is the first chapter from the Tao Te Ching, where the above quote comes from. This opening prose of perhaps the world's pithiest philosophical pieces speaks to the limits of language.

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. Name is the mother of ten thousand things. Ever desireless, one can see the mystery. Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations. These two spring from the same source but differ in name; This appears as darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gate to all mystery. - Tao Te Ching

Have a mysterious week, beautiful humans!

David Zangwill, human @ Museum of Self