The Cult of Language

[LastThursday]

3 hours ago, Rafael Thundercat said:

Thoth as the Creator of Words: Thoth, the god of wisdom, writing, and magic, was believed to have created language to allow humans to document, create, and maintain order.

It's worth thinking about whether writing is just a system for representing spoken language or if it is a separate from of language. I'd say it was the latter, writing is a visual language like sign language. What you're reading here is a visual dialect of spoken English. Often writing and the spoken word get conflated.

[Natasha Tori Maru]

2 hours ago, oOo said:

Close, but poet DOES encode meaning. Impact emerges from state-dependent decoding. Orthogonal truths.

Still not inherent! It relies on interpretation on both ends, rules and context prior to any clear meaning being found. Inferences mostly. Compressed reality.

[oOo]

1 hour ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

Still not inherent! It relies on interpretation on both ends, rules and context prior to any clear meaning being found. Inferences mostly. Compressed reality.

Constraint IS content. Your interpretation orbits my intent.

[Yimpa]

18 hours ago, CARDOZZO said:

Is it a good talk? Spira seems a very grounded decent guy.

These kinds of gurus are useful up to a point. They helped me transition from atheist to nondualist.

[Basman]

A great example of the culture of language is how we define the relationship between working and not working. Linguistically, we define the time your not working as "leisure", which is defined by the absence of work, implying that work is the default state and that leisure is merely taking a break. 

In contrast, in Rome they used the word "odium" to define the time when you are not working and which was considered the "default". Otium when translated directly translates into leisure, but in Rome otium meant to engage in those activities that made you human in an earnest and serious way. Otium was the goal and your real "job" (to put it into a normative modern tongue). "negotium" -work, on the other hand is defined by the absence of otium. Not having to work was a reward in of itself for the Romans. It be like if we called work "unleisure". 

 

[CARDOZZO]

Words reveal inventions.

Physics, Mathematics, Chemistry, Engineering, Biology, Science, Spirituality, Religion, Law, Philosophy.

Language is a dream design technology.

[Joseph Maynor]

26 minutes ago, CARDOZZO said:

Words reveal inventions.

Physics, Mathematics, Chemistry, Engineering, Biology, Science, Spirituality, Religion, Law, Philosophy.

Language is a dream design technology.

Yes.  But one thing to consider.  Only if you let it.  We need to discuss how power works.

[CARDOZZO]

6 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

Yes.  But one thing to consider.  Only if you let it.  We need to discuss how power works.

Yeah. Authority 😎

[Joseph Maynor]

9 minutes ago, CARDOZZO said:

Yeah. Authority 😎

Sometimes authority is good though.  We want feedback.  I don't know why.  Maybe inspiration to change in a way we think suits us. 

[Natasha Tori Maru]

4 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

Sometimes authority is good though.  We want feedback.  I don't know why.  Maybe inspiration to change in a way we think suits us. 

Perhaps this is pointing towards the human minds proclivity toward certainty, arising from the survival domain.

[Joseph Maynor]

9 minutes ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

Perhaps this is pointing towards the human minds proclivity toward certainty, arising from the survival domain.

Interesting.  I would say yes and no.  There is a survival component and also a Divine component.  It's hard not to mix these up.  And it's hard to work on these both at the same time, since they have almost opposite values.  Certainty is not necessarily only human, it's also Divine.  That's the role of the Divine to provide a greater context to the human without wiping it out.  IMO only of course.  

[Natasha Tori Maru]

21 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

There is a survival component and also a Divine component.  It's hard not to mix these up.  And it's hard to work on these both at the same time, since they have almost opposite values.  Certainty is not necessarily only human, it's also Divine.  That's the role of the Divine to provide a greater context to the human without wiping it out.  IMO only of course.  

You have a unique view. If I understand what you point to - the divine is the reaching out to the sublime? Sublime according to its proper definition. In service to something greater than ourselves?

Quote

I would say yes and no. 

Maybe yes and more, is more accurate  If I understand your divine component being an addition and not detracting from survival patterns. This might harken back to that pendulum swing analogy from another thread around here. Different domains overlapping.

 

[Rafael Thundercat]

Truth is, if we had not being conformist of what each word in a sentence mean and had all sharing the same learning of this writings we would look to this scribblings and see nothing but hierogliphs. You knew no writing before coming into life, you was born like an alien in an alien world and had to be indocrinated into this thing of languague. Otherwise you would be just like a dog barking. Imagine being not able to understand any of this writing. Like, looking to english writings and would be no different than Mandarin to your eyes?

I think there is a mental condition where people forget their own language.

[Rafael Thundercat]

On 31/01/2026 at 8:47 PM, CARDOZZO said:

Humanity lives within a invention called language. They live as if language is real, existential and fundamental. 

Words cannot hurt you. You are doing it. Language, words, meaning, metaphors, description - inventions, inventions and inventions.

Contemplate: 

• Which fears are linguistic inventions? (Being dumb, strange, ugly etc.)
• Which illnesses are linguistic inventions? 

 

 

 

 

Peter Ralston sounds like drunk in the first vídeo. 

[UnbornTao]

Whenever language is thought about, what is it that comes to mind? I suspect we're still a bit dizzy about what it really is - hard to pin down.

As said elsewhere, it's likely that language is still being conflated with words or symbols.

Point to anything that is language. Where is it in your experience?

How does it show up? In what way is it experienced?

Edited 7 hours ago by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

If language is a cult, then we are all passionate devotees.

[CARDOZZO]

44 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

If language is a cult, then we are all passionate devotees.

100%

How can you experience something that is not happening around yourself?

The fact that you can infer something into reality itself is the sin.

[Joseph Maynor]

41 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

If language is a cult, then we are all passionate devotees.

Yes.  Writing more specifically here.

[UnbornTao]

54 minutes ago, CARDOZZO said:

100%

How can you experience something that is not happening around yourself?

The fact that you can infer something into reality itself is the sin.

This matter is a bitch.

Not every concept is language-based, it seems to me. And they're not the same. Hmm. But their relationship is certainly close.

For example, we say that we experience emotions, and yet they're conceptually based at the same time. But this assertion flies in the face of our shared reality. I suspect emotion was possible for humans prior to the invention of language - or feeling, at least. We also objectify emotions as something real and "fixed," whereas the more likely scenario is that people of old experienced them differently. As usual, a lot is being taken for granted by us, arrogant humans!

There are more questions to be asked.

[UnbornTao]

37 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

Yes.  Writing more specifically here.

Definitely. And here's an exercise - or meditation, if you will: What's an experience of reality prior to "language"? What was life like before the addition of this layer?

Not easy.