On Words and Worldviews

More about dabhar, really

For the past year, I’ve been thinking a lot about language. How it forms us, how our views of its rules and uses has dramatically shifted, and what this means for how we actually live. (In another dimension, I’m living out my calling as someone who devotes her life to ancient languages, even though in this one I took a different turn.)

To get right to it, my concern is this: after the Enlightenment, language has mostly become functional and utilitarian. It is a tool to get the results we want and need. We trade words like currency, though I think we afford money a far more sacred place of honor.

But the joke’s on us. Because regardless of what we decided about the rules of language, language itself has its own reality. And that reality is world-making, not penny-counting.

In the direction of the constellation Canis Major, two spiral galaxies pass by each other like majestic ships in the night. Credits NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team

If we are looking for a bad guy to blame, scientist Francis Bacon is high on the list. He felt what can only be called contempt for the ancient worldview, where all of life took on the tint of contemplative wholeness. You may not recognize it when reading a bit of the Old Testament or a Babylonian myth, but the ancient world set their gaze toward a contemplative horizon. Egypt and Africa carried forth stories that held meaning, and rituals that enacted a harmonious relationship with all things. Language constituted a sacred togetherness.

Francis Bacon, among other Enlightenment thinkers, found this to be a distraction. He instead argued for an inner turn toward the isolated self, where objectivity would rule. He called this “disengaged reason,” as if it was a good thing.

I can’t help but look around at climate destruction and hear that phrase as the earth’s executioner.

What kind of reason could possibly ensue when we pretend to divorce ourselves from everything around us?! Insanity is what it is. Insanity. And yet, many of our modern modes of being are based on this illogic, including how we use words to manipulate, persuade, and force control in order to do our will and get our way.

I believe this is one of the most pivotal issues of our time. It is our responsibility to reclaim the fullness of language and therefore the wholeness of our created and shared life. If we don’t, we will perish. Many things will perish.