How do we create our world by our words?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.
Question, can you explain how we create the world through the words we use? Answer, creation is used not in the literal sense of bringing into existence something, but here in the non-literal sense of bringing into our perception and attention something. Language is a remarkable tool that we all use so often that we fail to realize how remarkable it is. We use language not just to speak to others, but even to speak to ourselves.
In fact, we spend far more time speaking to ourselves than speaking to others. And it is said that we are our own most enchanted listeners. Constantly we are speaking something to ourselves and that speech has different consequences at different times.
Sometimes our own speech may make us introspective and give us insight. Sometimes our own speech may make us self-flagellate, beating ourselves up and leave us depressed. But when we speak to ourselves, more often than not, we give ourselves deep attention.
So, even when we perceive something, it is what we speak about it, internally at least, that shapes our vision of it, that affects how we see it. So, say, if somebody is very interested in money and they see somebody who looks wealthy, they become interested in that person. Now, you may say this is just because of their desire and their mind.
Yes, it's true, but the mind speaks. So, if we consider further how we access the world, if we consider there is a world of words and the world of non-words, but the world of non-words is accessible to us only through the world of words. So, for example, we have objects, we objectify them.
There is a table in front of me right now. So, the object exists, but the object becomes capable of being comprehended and communicated when there is a word to describe it. There is not one word, you may say there is an object with four supporting bars below with a flat board on top of it where a laptop is kept and we again using words make things comprehensible and communicable.
Now, we use words not only to describe objects, but also to describe concepts. If a lightning is a word, but then so is time. Now, we often think of time as a straight line that flows from yesterday to today to tomorrow.
But if we consider deeply, where exactly is yesterday? Now, where did yesterday come from? If we focus here on where as a literal geographical question and also where will tomorrow take us? Again, if you focus on a literal question of physical location, then you understand it does not apply. Then you start getting a sense of how much concepts are shaped by words. So, some linguists even say that actually it is our ability to verbalize, to speak that makes us human, that language is a profound gift from God.
One of the greatest gifts because we humans learn about the world, not just by observing the world, but by processing the world, not just by seeing and believing, but by seeing and analyzing what we believe. So, the world deals with specifics, whereas we learn about the world through universals. Yes, we can learn something from specifics also.
But say we meet somebody from Japan and they bow down. Now, you might just find it as a queer way that the person is behaving. Or if we can from that specific behavior, place that behavior in a broad category.
Or this person is from Japan and the Japanese people while greeting bow themselves, bow. Then that becomes a useful fact, useful knowledge that can help us in interaction with others. So, this capacity for abstract thinking, for inferring universal principles from specifics, this requires an examination of our experiences.
And in such examination, language plays a vital role. It is language that is not just a vehicle of thought, but also a driver of thought. We do not just use language to speak our thoughts, but use language also to stimulate our thoughts.
If we cannot put in words what we experienced, that experience itself does not stay as concrete within our memory and that experience cannot be communicated to others. We may say sometimes this was such an experience that I cannot feel it. You have to experience it.
That may be true, but you have to get others to experience it. You have to give them some understanding of what it is. And that some understanding may well come through reading about it, through reading about it to find the right words to use to express.
So, therefore, it is important that each one of us put ourselves in a situation where we learn the best that we can do through employing words for driving our thoughts and for also taking our thoughts to a particular destination. To the extent we can put what we perceive or experience in words, to the extent it becomes accessible for us in future and becomes communicable for others. Therefore, the world as it exists outside is experienced by us when we give words for describing that world.
So, that is how we create the world through the words. It is words that enable us to communicate with ourselves in our inner talk. It is words that enable us to process what we experience, what we perceive and draw universal principles from specific incidents.
And it is words that enable us to communicate such abstract concepts to others in both actually concrete objects as well as abstract concepts. We are able to communicate to others because we use words. So, ultimately, we could say that it is our spirituality, our capacity for spirituality, capacity for dharma that differentiates us humans from animals.
That is true. But at the same time, what gives us this capacity or integral part of this capacity is our capacity for abstract thinking by which you can infer whether there is anything beyond this world that underlies this world and gives this world its ultimate purpose. And that ultimate world we perceive and we pursue by our capacity for abstract thinking which centers on which needs words as a powerful tool.
So, that is what differentiates or what characterizes humans with their capacity for metaphysical inquiry has the capacity for linguistic expression, the capacity for words as an integral and vital foundation. Thank you.