The word is not the thing!

The word is not the thing.

I have been thinking about the importance of language and how it may impact our thoughts.or is it the other way round?. We have thoughts and we express them using our language?.

well I have hit upon the first bottleneck in the relationship between thoughts and language even as I type this.Do we use words to express what we think or do we think in words?

The word is not the thing. Krishnaji said that. Someone said that before him.I forget who.That would be besides the point.We need to get to the crux of what it means.Essentially means we should not mistake the name of something with the thing itself. The name " tree" is different from the thing it is trying to give a name. Now why is it important to differentiate with the word and the thing?

If I see a tree and I find it beautiful with all its majestic leaves  and the sounds of birds chirping  ,the mind and its thought process wont simply be satisfied just by enjoying the beauty.it may let us watch the tree and be immersed in its beauty for few moments but slowly it will move into its process of naming and labeling things.It would think about how old the tree might be,about what kind of tree it is,does it bear  any fruits.we would want to label all of it. The sensory pleasure or simply going through an experience is not enough for us. Just wanting to label things and experiences may not be bad in itself but the tool used is flawed-language.Words are singularly inadequate to completely encompass what they are trying to describe.

I say I love K, Then I compare that statement with whenever I hear the word "love" mentioned in any context.The word "love" comes up so much in our popular culture. We seem to say it in so many ways .But are they all trying to describe the same thing?i don’t think so.There seems to be different kinds of love or different things which are all described by the word "love".

So words can stop us from going through experiences and they can also be inadequate in trying to define those experiences.

In trying to delve deeper into this subject I did some reading and landed up on a topic called "General semantics"

Wikipedia defines it as

General semantics is a discipline and/or methodology intended to improve the ways people interact with their environment and with one another, especially through training in the critical use of words and other symbols.

It can be described with three metaphors  a)the map is not the territory b) No Map can depict the entire territory  c) no map can be accurate unless it depicts itself in the map

Let look at the metaphors.

 a)The map is not the territory. As my example of  the word "love" shows, the word can mean different things to different people.it is not a true representation of the feeling it is trying to describe.

b)The map can never entirely depict the territory. At best the words we use are an approximation of what what we are trying to describe. Unless we are linguists by profession it is highly unlikely we are using the most appropriate words all the time and even then some of them are just indicators of what we are trying to describe.

c)No map can be accurate unless it contains itself within the map:There is an interaction that happens between our nervous system and the world and then we create a map( our verbal description) based on the territory(  our perceived reality). We use  old labels to describe our current  percived reality.but the labels we use should be reflecting of the changes in our perceived reality. Our perceptions change as we have more experiences and gather more knowledge.Our language at times is inadequate to describe or reflect that dynamic nature of our perception.

Stimulating thoughts..need to read up more…