Language is like fuel...

I think of things like the Bible. I remember first reading it, thinking to myself, what is this?? God can't speak. God can't talk. If he could, it would mean he had lips and a tongue to shape the words. But then he would have to have a throat and a larynx to distinguish sounds. At that notion, that people of the Bible believed in this God, this man of the sky, I deemed myself as an atheist.

Suffice to say, I came back to the Bible years later after thinking up a "God of my own" and I understood the Bible much better than I had earlier in life. What other words could they use to talk about God? Some ideas just have no words to describe them yet. It's like... reaching for the stars. You can't get to the star without crossing an infinite amount of planes to get there. Perhaps that's what God is. God is that infinite process of evolution. The more things we can describe as living, the more God encompasses. I like this current move towards technology, it signifies a higher capacity for abstraction.... for some people. And then again there are still people who believe God is a man in the sky. But then again, perhaps God IS a man in the sky for those people.

Language is so important to learn. I don't mean it in the sense of other languages, of course. Let me restate that notion: Words are so important to learn. If we don't have a word to express an idea, how can we connect it to other ideas? There is no process of obtaining a higher consciousness without language!

I think of it like a highway. You fuel up your car in Concord, New Hampshire and you're headed southbound. You've got a full tank. By the time you get to Connecticut, you're tank is on empty and if you don't refuel, you're staying put. To me, each word is like a gas station. It's what makes our mind travel to new places. So if we don't learn new words, we stagnate.

This string of a tangent came to me after listening to the latest Radiolab podcast titled "What Does Technology Want?" Robert Krulwich has a problem with this word usage... "want". The guy makes a good point, what other word shall I use?? So yeah. Give it a listen to, guys. Good stuff!

What Does Technology Want?