To Yell into a Vacuum

No one can articulate a syllable which is not filled with tenderness and fear, which is not, in one of these languages, the powerful name of a god. To speak is to fall into tautology. This wordy and useless epistle already exists in one of the thirty volumes of the five shelves of the innumerable hexagons - and its refutation as well. (An n number of possible languages use the same vocabulary; in some of them, the symbol library allows the correct defintion a ubiquitous and lasting system of hexagonal galleries, but library is bread or pyramid or anything else, and these seven words which define it have another value. You who read me, are You sure of understanding my language?)

 - The Library of Babel, by Jorge Luis Borges

 LANGUAGE, the one thing by which we speak and are understood. The words we choose to utter are symbolic of something. By learning other languages a distinction becomes clear immediately: We really aren't sure what it is we are trying to represent. The train tracks that made up the spine of our country in the 19th century lit the way for the sinister 'Iron Horse', from which a over a million buffalo were shot. These buffalo were the only way through which tribes could maintain their lifestyle. The trees that make up our country today are all new growths. The ancient woods that came before met their end by an unfortunate definition and an unfit name. What sort of name is apt for any living thing that has the ability to last for centuries - growing stronger with time, and supplying the very air we breathe?

Certainly it can't only be as Dictionary.com puts it:
"a plant having a permanently woody main stem or trunk, ordinarily growing to a considerable height, and usually developing branches at some distance from the ground."

They list this definition of a tree as a noun - person, place or thing. Yet while fitting under this classification, in terms of what this thing is we're given a very basic description. We're not told what a tree does for us, though it be the only reason we're given the rare chance to ponder its meaning. If this definition was the only thing I had to go on when establishing my relationship with trees I would see no problem with cutting one down if it caused me even the slightest inconvenience.

It is becoming increasingly important in our world to see things for what they are. How many priceless things have been destroyed before their meaning was fully apparent to us? We're all human and make mistakes, and though we're forgiven enough to learn from or even redeem most of our failures, some mistakes are final.
We should be glad to have made it this far with all of the hare-brained schemes ever conceived by man that were undoubtedly the result of misinformation. We live in a time of fast changes, in which thinking twice can mean being left out to dry indefinitely. Increasingly we are given a slim allowance for any one miscalculation. We must see things for what they are and act correctly. Before making any decision or following any pursuit we should read a book - but not just any book, the best book available on the subject. Only in books is the language we use to describe the world around us taken so seriously. In the world of a book, like the world we live in, the consequences of written language are very real.

How do we set limits and boundaries with language? What would you call what I'm writing here? A person could easily describe it as an essay on philosophy or an essay on anthropology. It could also be an essay on economics, or, basic as the definition of a tree, an essay on language. Yet I'd be most happy if you simply called it an essay. The word 'essay' and how Dictionary.com defines it happens to encapsulate my argument perfectly:

Essay:

1. a short literary composition on a particular theme or subject, usually in prose and generally analytic, speculative, or interpretative.
2. anything resembling such a composition: a picture essay.
3. an effort to perform or accomplish something; attempt.
4. Philately . a design for a proposed stamp differing in any way from the design of the stamp as issued.
5. Obsolete . a tentative effort; trial; assay.

The fifth meaning of the word essay is now obsolete. Yet, this is only a sign of our times. In today's world it's better to define something with any definition than it is to make only a tentative effort. The third meaning given by this dictionary tries to leverage this by making an essay an attempt to accomplish, implying that you can actually accomplish the description of something with inherently flawed language. Our languages serve only as a conduit for thought. To write an essay that could come close to accomplishing anything a person would have to start out with the fifth definition in mind.

I believe that the destructive nature of language comes with its ability to irrevocably symbolize our ideas and end all future discussion on any one topic. This is the opposite goal of why languages were created. With the advent of the internet more and more people have found a home for their stream of consciousness in places like Twitter or instant messaging. Though obviously not news to anyone, the quality of communication has degraded. How we word our sentences is of both supreme and negligible importance. Consider the difference between #%@ing and making love, being killed and being murdered, or an oil spill and a clean-up. How is it that one word seems to make all the difference when the reality remains the same? How often have we reacted based solely on a choice of words? We are in the throes of the ever-misleadingly titled Information Age. We are more vulnerable than ever before.

With more information we've become less informed. We've become more jaded about everything we do, say, and accomplish. We are forced to put a limit on everything without once acknowledging that, yes, there is a limit to these things, but what we can do is in fact limitless. In The Library of Babel, Borges writes:

"The certitude that everything has been written negates us, or turns us into phantoms" 

As I travel overseas to Korea, there will be lots of strange things for me to experience and encounter. There will be times when I try different cuisine and save the recipe, and times when I'll have a taste and spit it out. You can't help the way you feel. At no point in time should you ever attempt to do so; To lie to yourself is to deny the obvious and obscure your view of the world. If people start to see things for how they actually are and remain unbiased in this effort, then the degrading effects of globalization could become a new Renaissance for mankind as a whole. To search for and explore, to find your own definitions that have no words, this would be the pinnacle of the human spirit.

"I say that it is not illogical to think that the world is infinite. Those who judge it to be limited postulate that in remote places the corridors could conceivably come to an end - which is absurd. Those who imagine it to be without limit forget that the possible number of books does have such a limit. I venture to suggest this solution to the ancient problem: The Library is unlimited and cyclical" - Jorge Luis Borges