The title, Words Connect Us, is a hypothesis if one asks, “Connect us to what?” I suggest two primary connections: ourselves and other people. The third way is connecting to our physical surroundings, the world, the universe, and the simple fact of our existence.
Humans use words as symbols, metaphors, and mental placeholders associated with external real things. Also, they symbolize unreal things, imaginings, plans, and intentions. Nothing here is too controversial so far.
Words in our minds connect us to our environment, more or less. Words expressed, either voiced or written, potentially connect us to other humans. We can also use them to communicate with animals, but non-humans do not have the same ability with words. These aspects of the hypothesis may also be palatable.
However, Words Connect Us also suggests something much deeper: that words connect us to the Creator, or whatever is behind this teeming Earth and apparent endless universe. And they connect us to that creation itself, giving us an astounding ability to interact with it that eludes all other creatures. We make stuff. And making stuff requires words. We observe events and discern causes and effects. Is this aspect of the hypothesis somewhat more challenging?
The last hundred years have been unusually fruitful for investigators of how humans are related to other animals and how we differ from them. We have also gained the ability to peer into deep space, send signals, and try to discern whether exoplanetary life forms exist. Many hope other planets hold not simply liquid water and algae but also complex life forms, intelligent life forms, and ones that are not too many light-years away from us.
As I wrote in a previous post, scientists in the last fifty years have tried to establish whether animals other than humans can understand words or make language. These investigators found that even the most intelligent land mammals, such as chimpanzees, cannot manipulate words, much less communicate in language. But here, we must specify that the word manipulate does not refer to the ability to speak or write, which are mechanical faculties of humans. It requires something even more difficult for non-human animals: recognizing that words are symbolic and being able to hold ideas, mull them over, and contemplate them.
The other animals communicate in many non-verbal ways. I do not mean to suggest that we humans are so superior to them. Our facility with words may sometimes prevent us from recognizing communication through facial expressions, body postures, and non-verbal vocalizations, things other animals keenly observe. Humans may have something special with words, but all life seems precious, as we surmise from our observations beyond Earth.
But being able to symbolize turns out to be truly extraordinary. Along with ruling out animal language ability, scientists have tried to determine how humans managed to gain it. Can symbolic words and language have evolved from animal species that no longer exist? Can it be due to a random genetic mutation, resulting in new brain regions that were accidentally highly beneficial?
Even before Jesus, the Greeks recognized this greater depth of meaning for human words. They considered their word logos (Greek for “word”) to have earthly and divine meanings. For use by ordinary humans logos meant rationality, human reasoning, understanding, and harmony with nature. The second meaning, more used by philosophers and priests, recognized that words must connect us to whatever ruling force governs the universe, serving as the conduit by which humans participate in the cosmos.
The Hebrew fisherman, John, seems to have learned some Greek by the time he wrote his gospel, now part of the Bible. His account begins:
In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God.
Christians understand that John used Logos to mean Jesus, the Christ. John suggested that the mysterious way that words connect humans with the entire universe is the same thing Jesus accomplished. John claimed that the God-man, Jesus, had this same dual purpose that the Greeks gave to the concept of human words, a connection to the Earth and the divine.
What the fuck?
See what words can do? We know that our words impact people. With what we speak, we sometimes help and sometimes hurt. Some people know that verbal abuse is a far more effective weapon than physical abuse. However, a timely word, spoken from the heart, can also turn a person’s world around and help them onto a healing path.
How humans think with words also makes us vulnerable to many unfortunate consequences. We mistake imaginary for real. We over-generalize. We use fallacious reasoning. These mental mistakes are challenging to avoid.
As a personal example, I admit to crazy thinking when I play poker. Poker is a card game that requires some skill but also depends on luck. Luck is blind probability—simple chance. If you roll a six-sided die, the chance of any face landing up is one in six. But if you roll the die repeatedly, you may sometimes roll it fifty times and not get a six. With poker and a deck of fifty-two cards, the odds of receiving winning hands are much less easy to see. Some people are good at calculating them. They play intelligently, basing choices on the odds they have calculated, but still may lose because there is always a chance the desired card won’t show up.
But here’s where the crazy thinking comes in. If I had an excellent hand with a high chance of winning but lost to a person whose hand had a pathetically low chance of winning, I cannot help thinking that some demon was at work to thwart me. I must have offended the gods (or something!), which made fate intentionally hurt me. The feeling is hard to resist. There must be a devil! I must have been singled out for mistreatment by invisible powers.
I think I usually operate with a very well-trained, rational mind. Yet, emotions and susceptibility to irrationality sometimes beset me. How much more difficult must it be for people who don’t even know about probability or the many ways humans tend to employ fallacious reasoning?
These types of incorrect thinking arise from the words we speak to ourselves. Yet, if we tell others about the hidden forces we believe are working maliciously against us, people who have also been thinking wrongly, the effect is magnified. The unhelpful words become a shared reality, more deeply entrenched in our minds, physically encoded in brain synapses. The mental crossed-up wiring gets more difficult to untangle.
Words connect us to our fellow humans. People who say agreeable things draw us and encourage our own thoughts. If the language of our interaction is sound, the group will benefit. However, flawed thinking expressed in language leads the group to various levels of harm. The harm may be great if speakers do not realize the errors in their thinking. The harm will be pathetic if the speakers knowingly mislead and ignorant listeners cheer them on.
These misuses of words fall into the first two aspects of the title hypothesis: what we say to ourselves and what we say to others. But if the third aspect exists, that words somehow connect us to the mystery behind all of life and the universe, then we should explore how this might be true and whether we should learn better how to take advantage of such words.
Atheists will scoff. We have looked out beyond Earth with our telescopes and found barrenness. Besides, the sound of words requires air to travel. Without an atmosphere, spoken words go silent and are worthless. How, then, can they connect us to anything out there?
We come to the ageless debate about whether any intelligence underpins the universe or whether the words we have been telling ourselves have misled us in this area.
Even if we accept that God exists, or a bunch of gods, or some Star Wars-like benevolent force, it does not follow that they want to interact with us. We may speak into a void either way.
But if the ancient Greeks and Bible writers were on to something, and words in some way connect us to the cosmos, don’t we want to know how that works?
Maybe prayer has a role. When people pray, as they do in all religions, they hope to connect to the beyond, to the Creator, to gods governing earthly events, to whatever is behind all this, if anything. Maybe this attempt to communicate is simply an enormous delusion. Maybe our uniquely human imaginations have come to believe untrue things.
I’ll give you my take on it. I don’t know whether the Creator can hear my spoken words or read my thoughts. I can imagine that if my communication does come through, it would often sound like gibberish. I would be like an ignorant child. I don’t know if prayer has an effect, but I choose to pray anyway. Why? Praying is a simple outcome of my faith. I believe in a Creator and that Jesus existed and said and did the things described in the Bible.
Jesus prayed and taught us to pray.
That’s all the reason I need. Learning what to say must be a journey. Praying better must be like learning to think better. And I am an advocate for all of us learning to think better!
One other thing I find encouraging is that people of different faiths who pray seem to benefit, and they share the wisdom gained. I think it isn’t a delusion. Religion may have caused many problems for humanity, but I don’t think prayer was the issue. Maybe prayer is like medical mysteries monitored by doctors because they seem to work (but they don’t know why). Perhaps we should keep at it with open hearts and minds.