At the risk of too many ideas all in one place…

To become as one with others, gives our ‘I’ an ‘us”, and lives of many to augment the one we were born into, to expand knowledge, thought and the human experience. This thought was part of a question about language.

Specifically, does language spur thought, or is language an outcome of thought? Can you think without putting words to the thought? Possible, if we keep it simple. You can feel things like hunger, as a child does and express it without words. I think you can even reason in a temporary way, but that doesn’t really build memories, because you need words to replay memories, otherwise it is like muscle memory, something that is repeated but not consciously applied. Your mind can recognize patterns, but how do you communicate such memory, how do you share with others?

I think that language acts as an accelerator. With language we become something more than just an I, something more than the imperative of bodily needs and feelings. We have the ability to express and more importantly to learn in the abstract. Meaning we don’t need to experience it to find a way to communicate and internalize knowledge. Written language and oral histories in poetry, song, and art capture ideas, events, and make them part of a collective, tribal, clan, nation, and humankind experience.

Art is a form of language. A picture is worth ten thousand words. We even equate art with the words it would require to communicate it, as if there is an equation of sorts that could be discovered. Math is another means to communicate, and create a memory of something learned, but to apply it properly, we need words.

We experience a vast network made possible because of language. Something that is universally human. In every corner of the world humans developed language. An evolutionary means of survival for sure, but also a means of social expansion. Knowledge, learning, wisdom ensures not just the survival of our species but the advancement to something greater as a whole.

As a contrast to our admiration of rugged individualism, I contend that our social connection to the human network through language, empathy, curiosity and search for knowledge is and should be our priority. Our network of language allows our individual intellect to become part of a community that takes us beyond ourselves. It makes us part of a social and intellectual community with a legacy. Vibrations in this network, some louder, some higher pitched, connecting with thought, and sharing, adding meaning, emphasis, amplification or dampening.

I believe there is possible an even higher-level of connection, we still give words to it, but a telepathic experience will be something of humankind’s future, born out of something even deeper in our souls, deeper in understanding and empathy. Thoughts, feeling, that transcends words that we can hear or see. Something to look forward to the evolution of the network of us. In the present, we will relish the simple joys of a conversation over dinner, or a coffee, as well as the beauty of song and poetry, and stories and writings that moves us.