phil@bajsicki:~$


Some words in a moment of peace

he world which annoy me.

Yet time and time again, I have these moments of clarity where the world makes sense and everything is good. It’s hopeful.

For a long tim

nted to share what’s in my head with the world. Some of it is good, some of it is bad. The bad I can ignore for the most part. Habits that we repeat tend to grow and become autonomous.

But the good things?

I’ve never been good at writing, really. Even when I wrote professionally, there was always an anxiety in me, whispering “these words don’t mean what you want them to.”

So I found myself relying on dictionaries. I speak three languages, to I thought it would be wise to rely largely on the collected wisdom regarding language.

Yet that didn’t work out the way I expected. Time and time again I was faced with people (usually native speakers), who used the words differently. Often ignorant of what they actually mean.

We see this every day. I’m not going to nitpick, but there are so many words which mean specific things, yet are said as if they don’t.

Here’s the thing about words: they’re ‘pointers at’ particular categories of natural phenomena that we get to observe.

If you say ‘apple’, you’re referring to a category of natural phenomena that meets certain specific criteria in your sensory system.

An apple might have a certain color, weight, take up a certain volume of space, its skin can have a number of different textures, it can taste a number of ways…

Yet all those too are words that describe categories of things we see out in the world.

If we focus on the words, on the categories, on the descriptors, then we’re missing a critical part of being. We’re missing the object itself.

Words are abstract. They’re basically groups of sounds (and eventually symbols) that are associated with particular meanings.

These meanings in turn are derived (abstracted) from out experiences, which in turn stem from our interactions with the natural phenomena (things) in our environment.

So words are at least 3-4 levels off from reality.

This isn’t a useful observation by itself, yet we can then derive (ha!) a few useful observations.

Well, that’s a bunch of thoughts.

I suppose the bottom line for me when evaluating who I can trust, and who I should avoid is integrity.

If someone is acting inconsistently with what they say (i.e. they make promises or commitments and then don’t fulfill them), that’s a huge red flag.

If someone is speaking inconsistently across time (i.e. they say one thing today, and a contradictory thing tomorrow), that’s a huge red flag.

Consistency and predictability is what allows us to trust each other. The only way for this to be true is when the things we say align with how the world is.

Words mean things. Please help others understand what you mean by using them carefully.

Thank you. ���������������������������