“I think, therefore I am”. For four hundred years we have accepted this as both clever and fact. But in truth, is not the reverse much more true and apt? “I am, therefore I think”. Introspection is the hallmark of humanity. Our needs are not merely the tangible. Ours is an eternal search for the infinite, billions of minds reaching out into the bitter darkness of thought.
I want you to do something for me. Wherever you are right now, at office or home, look at something whose function is not completely clear to you, a clock if there is one, a computer monitor if not. Now I want you to silently turn inside yourself and contemplate /how/ you think this object works, step by step, concept by concept. Go ahead. Please try. With one caveat – do NOT use any words as you think.
Are you trying?
Surprise. If you are like most of us, you cannot reason intelligently without thinking in words, using a language which you have acquired over your lifetime. Does this surprise you? It should. You see, when we were children, and I remember my infancy better than I remember yesterday, we did /not/ think in words. Try and remember back if you can. To a time devoid of nouns and verbs, where exploration through thought was entirely by label-less concept. I have tried, and I remember. And that surprised me.
Language is the substance reason is made of. Without it, there is no logic. Without logic, there are no conclusions. Without conclusions, there is no knowledge. And without knowledge, the desperate yearning and emptiness inside of us remains.
But there is a problem with this phenomena. You see, how many of us are truly masters of our language? Pick up a thick, comprehensive dictionary and see how many words you know – or rather don’t know. Are you beginning to see? All of the thousands of words you never learned, they keep you from thinking thoughts that might truly help you reason. And as any student of language knows, English is a very poor language for thought, as it lacks so many infinitely important terms.
We feel so very confident of where we are. How incredibly advanced we have become. Yet the mechanism of thought, language, is ever ignored over the eons. A truly brilliant race would have a truly brilliant language, just as the very best computer must have the very best instruction set. Tools and materials make the creation. Reason and vocabulary. A scary finite limit we have imposed on ourselves to keep us from reaching our goal of omniscience.
Someday we will have Windows Explorers so far beyond what we have today as to be unimaginable. We made a great step to create the hierarchy, but that is nowhere near how the greatest computer, our mind, thinks. My dreams imagine an Explorer with a central spine, and branching from that spine in /both/ directions are folders, with infinite links between them, just as our minds form trillions of associations over the course of our lives, each affectionately intertwined like an endless trist between entire continents of lovers.
We cannot comprehend what is outside our experience. But the true wonder of our mind is that we can try. Try and imagine for me, just what it is that causes me to write, week after week, year after year, for the love of a show so deep in the pelagic depths of my memory. How many legions of codons of tenderness, stand vigil toward a day that may never come.
Be ever reminded by my words. A dream is a thought as well.
Affectionately and respectfully,
Muffit
Inaccurate Conception
