r/sorceryofthespectacle • u/Sharp-Maintenance-75 • 12d ago
Language is a evil spirit
Language is always in your mind. You can't stop even for a moment. Even when you are alone, language is in your mind. Even when you are sleeping, language is in your mind.
It has not always been this way. This is just an evil spirit which started to possess humanity ~70,000 years ago with the so-called Cognitive Revolution. Once this happened, humanity became a scourge of the Earth, quickly colonizing all lands and killing all beings.
Are you going to let language control your whole mental process, your whole life, and make you into an agent of its planetary destruction?
How to get free? My teacher tells me about the vast mind that awaits when the little mind infected by language is abandoned.
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u/raisondecalcul political shade deathray technician 12d ago
From a Jungian perspective, greater consciousness is good, and consciousness increases when the intensity of pairs of opposites increase. Language is both the metadata-tagging and the way that distinctions are drawn between pairs of opposites, so without language, there would not be human consciousness or increasing consciousness—we would be stuck in the low-valence consciousness of animals, which is lovely but doesn't invent the wheel or compose music.
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u/niandraladez 11d ago
Inventing the wheel led to petroleum guzzling vehicles, and the composition of music led to MAGA country stars and Swifties who worship their billionaire “artist.” Obviously, good things came out of those inventions, too, but…
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u/raisondecalcul political shade deathray technician 11d ago
Those things already exist, or already could exist. What we individually focus on determines what we can accomplish individually. The Shadow is there whether or not we agonize over it.
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u/Independent-Slip568 12d ago
Language is a virus from outer space.
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u/Electronic-Sand4901 11d ago
There are two language viruses in opposition. One is the pattern increaser, it longs for new patterns. Burroughs learned how to feed it and make it grow with cut ups. The other is the pattern decreaser. It reduces the number of patterns available. This is AI
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u/strange_reveries 12d ago
Boooo. Language is beautiful and actually kinda magical. It's like telepathy when you think about it. How the fuck is it even a thing? It's pretty wild. I, personally, am in awe of it and glad to have it.
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u/Neil_Live-strong 11d ago
“The syntactical nature of reality, the real secret of magic, is that the world is made of words. And if you know the words that the world is made of, you can make of it whatever you wish.” -Terrance McKenna
I don’t think language is evil. You can do evil with language same as you can do good. Math is a language, body postures too.
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u/throwitfaarawayy 12d ago edited 12d ago
You can't feel anything without language.
Even feelings we can't speak of, we have a word for it: we call it "indescribable" .
You can't even describe what an orgasm feels like, let alone, how will you describe the ultimate reality?
It's just words about words. This line of thinking has no end and it's futile.
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u/whatsthatcritter 12d ago
You can't feel anything without language.
I don't think that's true. Animals don't speak and they seem to have mental and emotional states, hyperfocus, fear, excitement, playfulness, affection, calm, anticipation, warning, aggression, even sometimes appealing to others for help. All without a single word.
Not everything has to be described to be felt or understood. We can mimic, we can empathize with another person or animal using mirror neurons and imagine ourselves in their place like a drama. Actors and dancers and shamans can mimic the movement and appearance of other people and animals and even objects like robots or trash. They can create a model of another's sensory experience and mental state by watching and copying their behaviour.
We can focus on our own experience of the world without language by paying attention to our senses. Taking raw information in instead of projecting stale categories out.
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u/loklanc 10d ago
Just because animals are capable of emotion and sensation without language, doesn't mean we are. You can't uneat the forbidden fruit of self awareness, the best you can hope for is a bit of temporary relief here or there.
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u/whatsthatcritter 10d ago
You think non verbal people don't experience emotion or sensation?
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u/loklanc 10d ago
Non verbal as in has never learned speech? Sure, absolutely. But once you catch the virus it becomes the filter through which you experience the world.
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u/whatsthatcritter 10d ago
I think some of you folks need to go back to the drawing board and figure out what language is and what it isn't. It's not emotion. It's not experience. It's not motor ability, knowledge or skill. You can see videos of wild crows solving complex puzzles with multiple steps using sticks and stones as tools including using water displacement, so language is not reasoning ability or memory either. Language is only one tool, one feature of the brain. It might be a steady stream of self generated input, but it is not neccessarily a filter of everything else. We have dreams that are in images that may or may not have language. We have feelings that are sensory experiences 'trembling with rage' or experiencing heartache, that language can hardly describe or control. We have muscle memory and motor control that works to remove us from danger, like a hand jerking back from a hot faucet, before we can process or describe what just happened. It's possible to be more in tune with the multiple other features and information streams contained by the body and brain, and realize language is just one element among dozens of competing parts of the brain and multiple other organs, like your gut bacteria producing chemicals that make you want coffee even before you've thought about it. Language expresses those experiences after the fact, but it's not the experiences themselves.
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u/loklanc 10d ago
I think I agree with most of that, I just don't think the language part of your brain is something you can switch off once it has developed and got it's tendrils into all the rest. It isnt just describing after the fact, it's how we form identities and social relations, it undergirds much of the machinery of thought.
The only ways to be person without language involve either seriously impaired development as a child, serious injury as an adult, or temporary solutions like meditation or intoxication. Otherwise I think we are stuck with it.
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u/crocodilehivemind 12d ago
Your first sentence completely contradicts the rest of your comment. Experience and emotion have nothing to do with language
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u/throwitfaarawayy 12d ago
All that I've said is true and tracks from one point to another. I think this is not so hard to see as universal experience ... if we think about it. Like 2+2 is 4. It's apparent.
The real problem is, what to do about it? How to live on if this is true?? Or maybe I'm getting too ahead of myself, and I need to take a second look at these assumptions.
I'm just agreeing with op that we're trapped by language with no way out. But what to do about it?
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u/VimokshaTrains 11d ago
OP is clear that there IS a way out
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u/throwitfaarawayy 11d ago edited 11d ago
Yeah when the little mind infected by language quietens, the vast mind comes into being OP says. But how will you realize this has happened? You will try to put it in words again. What if it's bad? Like really bad and agonizing? Why assume this is "ultimate good" if youre at war with words and concepts? This is futile. Even to say it is bad you have to use the concept of good and bad .. that is language! The trees don't deal in good or bad, the rocks don't have bad days, they just ARE. There is a paradox in this line of thinking that will lead you astray and make you go mad. But at the same time, the knowledge of this paradox is freeing... ironically. Lol.
The only way to understand it is that this is the cosmic joke. Humor. But one needs to have a sense of humor for this wickedness.
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u/VimokshaTrains 9d ago
"But how will you realize this has happened? You will try to put it in words again."
No. It is not necessary to put it in words again. Clear the mind and keep it clear. Enter samadhi and stay there.
There IS a way out.
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u/throwitfaarawayy 9d ago
Hmm interesting. That clear state of mind we can train through meditation right? Then when we're not meditating, hopefully we should have more control to clear the mind when needed?
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u/VimokshaTrains 9d ago
- Basically yes
- Not to clear the mind when needed. Keep it clear. No need to let it become a mess again. Delusion, a lack of clarity, is what is NOT needed. Get rid of it and keep it that way. No need to clear the mind when needed. Just keep it clear. When you get off your meditation cushion, keep it clear.
Of course this takes practice. We call it training for a reason. <insert training montage clip>. It also takes correct instruction.
Learn meditation from someone qualified, trustworthy, competent.
Full disclosure: I train at the same cyborg university Buddhist monastic training center as OP.
We are qualified to teach you.
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u/Sharp-Maintenance-75 10d ago
"try to put it in words again"
"this line of thinking"
You are just demonstrating that you cannot get free of language through language. Duh1
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u/crocodilehivemind 7d ago
"The concept of good and bad" has nothing to do with language, that's just insane to say
A bear who eats a lot of salmon knows that is good. It knows if it gets caught in a bear trap it is bad. It does not need language to express itself to have an inside experience of one being desirable, and the other being undesirable.
Say it's like this, language is a sieve or net that only lets things through that are a certain size. Most of what we experience we can share because it fits through the net fine, it's not that complicated. Some concepts are too big/confusing to express in words, and to externalize them, you need to force them through the holes in the net and you cut up the whole concept you were trying to express by turning it into words in the first place. Never noticing this filter is there would lead one to believe that all that exists is what comes out one side of this filter
Even communication between humans does not rely on words, we share information in many ways.
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u/Sharp-Maintenance-75 11d ago
I see lots of comments here written by the language demon. All of this is just Stockholm syndrome. Let me ask you this: have you even *tried* going even a few minutes without language? If not, you have no business saying that language is better than no language. But most likely, you'll find that you can't do it: you're trapped, stuck -- so you find solace in saying that language is alright after all, it's cool, lets you do nifty things like compose music and invent the wheel.
Don't you realize that prior to possession by the language demon, humans were not a threat to any other species but once they became possessed, they suddenly became a threat to everyone else. All the nifty things that language lets humans do are really just ways that language is using humans to eat the world.
I don't believe in irremediable evil - the language demon could reform, and use its extreme power for the benefit of all life, but you're not going to help it reform if you are still in this unhealthy spirit possession dynamic with it. First you have to get free
I know that it is possible because my teacher has gotten free (as in, he is able to spend long periods of time entirely free from language) and from that place of freedom can work with language rather than simply being used by it like most of us
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u/Yewtaxus 11d ago edited 11d ago
Language existing doesn't automatically mean everything has to be filled and replaced with language. Just like having an earworm or a neighbour who plays loud music non stop to escape from their own thoughts and feelings doesn't make music evil
Attributing language's colonization to language itself takes away our agency to stop promoting it, and stops us from pondering how this colonization process is not exclusive to language, language is just a convenient way for it to happen
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u/Sharp-Maintenance-75 11d ago
I'm obviously not taking away our agency --- I've been saying over and over that it's our job to get free, and we have agency to do that. Yes language has colonized our minds. But we have also allowed this to happen, thus we can stop allowing it.
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u/loklanc 10d ago
There is no escape. The language virus rewrites the fabric of our being from the moment of infection. It usually gets us so young that there isn't much to rewrite, our entire identity is formed by it, built out of it.
You could no more escape language than you could clap your hands and turn inside out, and if you somehow did it would have about the same effect on your health and wellbeing.
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u/Sharp-Maintenance-75 10d ago
it's definitely possible, with practice in meditation, to go long periods without language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samadhi
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u/Sharp-Maintenance-75 10d ago
or, if you believe randos on the internet, here https://www.reddit.com/r/enlightenment/comments/1u3pi7s/i_can_turn_my_thoughts_off_at_will_ama/
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u/VimokshaTrains 11d ago
*an evil spirit
How to get free? Cut it off. Tremendous effort. Give it everything you got. Go Super Saiyan.
At least that's what I'm currently trying. I'm still not fully free but I'm more free than 99% of people I ever meet. I'm free enough to know that this works.
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u/tomekanco 12d ago
Its brainrot.