Magnificent Ignorance 3 – Language 1

Animals cannot discuss their love life with a friend. They can’t discuss anything. They ain’t got no language. Magnificent ignorance believes otherwise.

Animals can communicate with a signal system, but even the most advanced of these come nowhere near a language. A signal system is limited and closed, communicating from a specific set of messages, whereas a language is unlimited and open and can express anything that can be thought. It can travel to the future, review the past, post a theory, create a fantasy or order a round of beers. Equating a signal system with a language is like equating a butterfly’s nose with an elephant’s trunk.

That’s not a very good comparison, but the image of a trunk leads to another aspect of language. It’s not merely a sounding device but a physical construction of Homo sapiens biology, a defining characteristic of the human anatomy like a hairless body, overhanging nose, break-dancing legs or a long penis. The language “organ” however cannot be seen because it sits in the brain as a complex neurological construction. This construction, like all other human attributes, has evolved and owns a membership in the DNA association. That’s why any human can learn any language as naturally as they learn to walk.

Language has evolved. It has evolved as a unique occurrence in evolution, unique to biology, to life itself. It’s power and abilities go beyond the imagination. This extraordinary creation of life barely receives recognition, its significance is neglected and it often suffers insults of being the equal of a signal system.

Language screams in the penitentiary of magnificent ignorance together with technology and other prisoners of knowledge. Their desperate cries try to tell us about the contamination and injustice in the intellectual atmosphere of humanity.

What happened, for example, when language was first combined with technology? This would be grade school simple in an intellectually health society, but, in an atmosphere of magnificent ignorance, it baffles most people as much as being asked to explain the asymptotic curve of differential geometry.
The next blog, Magnificent Ignorance 4 – Language 2, will deal with the union of language and technology,.

Until then, reflect on the storm in the intellectual atmosphere a few days ago, the 10th of December. The Nobel Prize ceremonies raged through the media in a tempest of prestigious vulgarity where royalty hung like bling-bling on the prodigious banquet. The clothing of the ladies of nobility were discussed extensively. Hour upon hour the level 4 parody of archaic overclass traditions swept across the eyeballs of millions of people, baking minds in mindless fascination and sugared envy. Barely anyone heard a whisper coming from the 66th anniversary of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. On the one hand, trumpets and drums, pomp and ceremony, signifying nothing. On the other, silence about “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” The cost of the dresses alone worn by a handful of the dignitaries at the banquet could provide a meal for the starving multitudes who enjoy neither rights, freedom or dignity.

Welcome to the slum of humanity where magnificent ignorance flourishes in magnificent decadence.

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“In the beginning was the word.
Then we got sentenced.”
Dartwill Aquila

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