First draft 30 May 2022

Its an ancient question: “What’s in a word?” . Men (human beings) have long been general agreement that there is a lot in a word i.e. a word is a very potent thing.
This conspiracy or consensus about the power of words has probably existed from time immemorial because, just as with bird calls, mankind’s first use of words would have been vital to survival – communicating alarms, warnings, discovery of food and other essential family connection. Few of these fundamentals have changed.

It is probable men, not all men, of all cultures agree that our use of words is critical to the survival of individuals and their societies – we should use a word with the same care we use a stick or a stone.

Maybe you are like me and are born of the Hebrew tradition. (I was born into Roman Catholicism and educated in NZ’s Anglican state schools). If so, you too will be familiar with the creation legend of the ancient Hebrew Bible:

“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.(1) Then God said, “Let there be light;” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good..”

This account may strike some people as a little weird. God, The Creator, must have first created words in order to create sunlight and thus beget life on planet Earth, including man. A child of six can sense something funny about this, which may be why Christ’s apostle, John, amended the Creation story in the Christian bible to read thus:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

This incantation* resounded from the priests in church pulpit and the nuns in our Convent School catechism class. It was the ear-worm of my juvenile years. There was something so circular and complete about it. Expressed with the right cadence, it conveyed might and majestic meaning to my young ears and I dreamed of growing up to become an adult so I could understand it more fully.
* Note: Incantation arises from the Proto-Indo-European” root “kan” meaning “to sing.”

Word…Word… Word…Nearly 7 decades have passed and only now has it occurred to me to ask what exactly is in a word and to query what was funny about these biblical incantations.

It has quickly become clear to me it is beyond my capacity to unpack the full potential of a word in this essay. One reason is the probability soon arises that a word, any word, each word contains a universe.

Take John’s use of “Word”. Why did he not speak of “Logos” and “Gnostics” instead? I didn’t even know these words existed till just now when I discovered this article:

The Meaning and Origin of ‘In the Beginning Was the Word’

“In his endlessly informative Asimov’s Guide to the Bible: The New Testament: 002, the author and all-round polymath Isaac Asimov links John’s ‘In the beginning was the Word’ to the Greek philosophy of Thales of Miletus, who lived in the seventh century BC. Thales argued that, contrary to the idea that the world was largely erratic and unpredictable in its operations, it was actually subject to rigid laws of nature, and that these laws could be discovered using reason and observation. This is the beginnings of both rationalism and empiricism, if you will.”

https://interestingliterature.com/2021/06/john-in-the-beginning-was-the-word-with-god-analysis-meaning/

Isaac Asimov’s reflection on John’s biblical account of creation offers us a glimpse of how and why so many people find so much in a word, including the word “Word”. And every man (human being, person) hears a word in a unique way and senses different meaning in it.

Indeed, as my body matures and my own lifestyle changes, many words now speak radically different meaning to me than they did a decade ago or even a year ago. In fact, these days I am learning and adopting a profoundly different dialect of the English language, as I explain in my introductory essay to this series (see Tongue-tied by the English Language: On untying the bonds of the mother-tongue).

I also explain in that essay why I have not read a book since the onset of my diplopia early this century. My new practice is to scan and evaluate the words of a text for meaning according to the principles of physics. I complement and inform this practice by exploring the history of a word’s meaning using https://www.etymonline.com/

In this instance, the words, “Thales…idea…the world… actually subject to rigid laws of nature”, shone like bright beacons amidst the blur of the script to me. This is because they resonated with my formative experience of physics while playing for endless hours in Waiorongomai Creek as a child. The flowing waters of that beautiful stream suffuse the wisdom of the Conservation of Energy Principle through my being to this day.

Also these days I am recovering a little from being a life-long English White Supremacist. I am now humbled in the knowledge that there are people of many cultures, including ancient Chinese, Indian, African, Australian and Polynesian cultures, who have understood long before Thales that all things are subject to the principles of physics.

So, how many words do we really know?

This question gives rise to a plethora, a veritable wealth of questions. For instance:
How many words do I know the meaning of?
Do I really know how, why and where a word’s meaning comes from?
How often do you and I ever pause to inquire why we accord a particular meaning to a word?
Always?
Often?
Rarely?
Never?

If you are like me, then your answer too is “Rarely, if ever”. This is true of most of us. Ancient wisdom, now affirmed by modern forms of cognitive research, has long advised us that the vast bulk of our decisions, including our use of words, are determined at a subliminal level. In other words, we are barely self-aware of what we are saying.

The word “know” is another word I have not reflected on either, despite the fact my speech is peppered with “You know” all day and every day since I was a boy. I have never thought to ask what do I know about “know” till now when it repeatedly popped up in the above questions.

A quick scan of the etymology of “know” reveals it has a rich, complex history, which generates a multitude of profound questions far beyond the scope of this short essay:

know (v.) Origin and meaning of know

….Old English cnawan (class VII strong verb; past tense cneow, past participle cnawen), “perceive a thing to be identical with another,” also “be able to distinguish” generally (tocnawan); “perceive or understand as a fact or truth” (opposed to believe); “know how (to do something),” from Proto-Germanic *knew- (source also of Old High German bi-chnaan, ir-chnaan “to know”), from PIE root *gno- “to know.”….

https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=know

Etymonline provides a summary of the ancient legend of “know” and, if “gno” seems curiously familiar, then it probably is because it swirls around us in our conversations, as when we speak of ignorant, ignoble, agnostic, incognito, cognition, prognosis, diagnosis, ignore, gnome and gnostic.

In brief, the story of our use of the word “know” speaks volumes about the human condition, particularly the limits of our self-awareness and the roles of the human ego and compassion in enabling us to exist in our universe of paradox.

Perhaps by now a certain, familiar know-all voice in you is insisting, “It is time to hit the EXIT button. This is pedantic nonsense, just stuff for highfalutin, highhat, oldhat, boring nerds who need to get a life!”
And maybe a more compassionate voice in you is inquiring, ”Wait, how is it possible that the survival of Mankind could rest in a word? And which word might that be?”

This is another wise and wonderful question.
We can know the average native English-speaker knows about 30,000 – 40,000 words by age 20, the more erudite speaker might know upwards of 70,000 words while the average non-native speaker living in English-speaking countries typically knows 10,000 – 20,000 words.

So the question arises, “Which English word could annihilate Mankind?”

This cartoon involves an extreme example in which we imagine global Nuclear War to be a relatively instantaneous event. The potency of these few words is more readily apparent in this dire situation. However this fleeting moment of crisis almost invariably arose from the profound, insidious transformation of the language accompanying cultural shifts over a period of decades, even over generations of people.

What is it about the human condition and our use of words that enables such dangerous situations?

The answer is as simple as it is complex: nothing and everything are simple while anything, that is any thing at all, tends to be complex.

Now you may struggle to make good sense of this answer. Again the reason is maddeningly simple – our thought-word process cannot transcend paradox.
Think about the most simple thing you know, any thing, and it soon becomes complex.

How can nothing be the same as everything? How come everything can be simple when anything is complex?
And, anyway, is this not just meaningless wordplay without end or consequence?

Actually it is meaningful because we are experiencing the limitations of the thought-word process and it matters because all existence involves paradox. Paradox of information are fundamental to the human condition. They are central to our experience of the psychology~physics of the universe. Our sanity and survival depend on our ability to transcend all manner of paradox.

Fortunately our ability to communicate is not limited to words and we can draw, dance, make music.

Our ego-driven Anglosphere culture puts great import on words and little import on drawings. Our schools put more import on writing alphabet letters in a straight line than drawing lines that reflect the truth of an object. Originally many of the letters were drawings representing vital things such as God, the human body, oxen, waves and shelter. Nowadays those meanings have gone, replaced by technology-driven design.

More compassionate cultures are the converse for they are founded in the understanding that words are actually a type of drawing, albeit a very limited type of drawing.

The adage “A picture is worth a thousand words” understates the relative power of pictures. As the following cartoon shows, a picture can communicate infinity in ways words never can.

The above cartoon reveals the severe limitations of our thought-word process and how it is unable to transcend paradox. It also illustrates how the use of words simultaneously reflects and generates the state of being of the user and how any form informs all even as it is informed by all.

This humbling psychology~physics, this ancient wisdom has helpful implications for it advises us that we can learn much about the state of a culture from its common language. Moreover, it advises us how and why our compassionate use of words can act to create a more sustainable society.

This wisdom is rich with questions. Is there any word we utter that the ego in each of us has not somehow demeaned to serve its deceits, desires and delusions? How would we know? How could we ever know?
With this psychology~physics of the human condition in mind, let us assume all words in the English language are potent and we mis-use any word at our peril.

On Balancing the Forces of The Ego and Compassion

Perhaps all that can be said with any certainty is that the ego (the exclusive force in our psyche) thrives in division and delusion. It can easily corrupt our finest words and subvert our best intentions if we lack sufficient compassion (the inclusive force in our psyche).

One reason the ego is so capable of such action is that it the master of subterfuge and, without compassion, it can use the banal, trite and commonplace to rule our lives and societies. Unchecked, the ego can have us misuse and abuse the most common words in our language so they become weapons of mass extinction of both mankind and the life forms that sustain us.

Here is a list of a few of the incredible, ingenious ways the ego can have us tweak the meaning of words with such colossal consequences for our species:

• the conflation of nouns e.g. “man” with “God”, “energy” with “power”; “biomass” with “fuel”, “money” with “wealth”, “potato” with “food”;
• the confusion of common conjunctions e.g. “and” with “but”;
• the confusion of conjunctions with verbs e.g. “and” with “are”;
• the failure to use simple propositions and adverbs e.g. up, down, near, far, fast, slow, hot, cool;
• the exclusive use of pronouns e.g. “them” versus “us”;
  -the exclusive use of determiners e.g. “the” versus “a”;
• The list of goes on…

In other words, our decision to say“and” instead of “are” can beget entirely different universes.
Our decision to omit rather than employ the word “up” can generate a world of misery rather than a world of comfort.
Our decision to employ “the” rather than “a” can preclude countless sustaining questions.
Our decision to omit the little word “use” when discussing our behaviour denies our role as stewards of Earth’s resources.

This all may seem obvious in this moment yet most of us remain obtuse to the constant machinations of the ego in our daily speech because it is has an incredible capacity for subterfuge and self-deceit .

Its not just the meaning we give a word that matters.
Its not just the number of words we use that matter either and we know about 20,000 are commonly used.
We also have to account for how and why we connect words together. These associations have the potential to generate countless meanings, myriad different universes.

These possible permutations may seem astronomical, overwhelming. Fear not. This is where this exploration of the power of words gets much more interesting and exciting. It is estimated there are probably well over a million known words in the English language and with compassion we can join the dots in most sustaining ways.

Of course, some language experts in our more exclusive English culture argue that many of these million plus words should not be counted as part of the English language. They deem at least half of them to be irrelevant to modern man because the words are “old fashioned”, “out of date” and “no longer commonly used”.

People in other more inclusive, holistic cultures have a different ethos. They believe we are the entirety of our language. The implications if this belief are profound. For instance, it advises us we cannot know who we are if we do not know from whence we came. All words in the language of these cultures are deemed sacred, to be conserved as a precious repository of wisdom to provide guides for the future.

The existence of a million, even half a million English words, might seem to have mind-boggling implications for our attempt to scientifically select a word to test our thesis about the great potential of any word. The task seems overwhelming and many questions arise:
Is this number correct?
Who can really know?
Does the number of words really matter?
Can the life of a man who knows 1000 words of English speak greater truth than a man who knows a 100,000 words? If so, how can this be? What are wise uses of words?

“So, what is the most useful way to explore the power of any and all words?”

Academics in our Anglosphere universities argue the “scientific” approach is to select a random sample of words from the million words and evaluate their potential to generate change. Chances are these linguist researchers would exclude ancient, rarely-used words, even if they were once considered very wise words. This exclusion might halve the size of the English word-world. However the exclusion also decimates its gene pool in the same ways the modern Anglosphere corporations decimates both indigenous knowledge and plant diversity.

Also these researchers of lingua tend to evaluate the sustaining potential of a word by asking a random sample of people what meaning they give particular words and what actions they associate those word with. The more rigorous researchers go to great lengths to search for correlations between researchee’s expressed concerns/ stated intentions and their behavioural change.

The trouble is this “scientific” approach allows myriad opportunities for the ego in both the researcher and the researched to weave a vast screen of self-deceit and rationale over the inconvenient truth of their lifestyles. Without great care, the framing of the questions reinforces the unsustainable status quo because the underlying rational is not founded in the principles of physics.

In brief, the English academic approach fails us all because it lacks sufficient compassion to transcend the paradox of communication.

A Scientific Approach Born of Compassion

The general hypothesis of this essay is this: any and all words are material and have the potential to both sustain and destroy mankind. The essay is founded in the premise that no word is born in a vacuum of meaning. Every word matters because it is matter i.e. it is physical and thus subject to the principles of energy. The fact a word is unused does not mean it is useless, not useful. Indeed its ancient meaning may have sustained multitudes of men for millennia whereas its modern meaning may now perhaps be generating a lethal Anthropocene (Anglopocene?)

The following may seem to be a radical new English language to you. However let us bear in mind our modern use of English and its associated English Combustion Revolution is actually an extremely radical phenomenon in known history. Its arguable no culture has ever been in such complete denial of the principles of physics and imperiled all mankind on such a scale. The evidence for this is embedded in the ancient ice, soils and oceans of Earth. So perhaps it is helpful to rehearse this psychology~physics again.

There is an other “scientific” approach to developing a “science” of cognitive linguistics. This approach involves founding the word “science” on the premise that words are material and subject to the principles of physics. The etymology of the word is researched to identify historic uses of the word that are most in accord with the principles of energy.

In this instance, the most profound harmony occurs with the ancient meaning of the word “science” when it was associated with “to cut, divide”, from the ancient Proto-Indo-European root *skei- “to cut, split”.
This meaning formed an inherent, humbling reminder of our fallibility: in any moment of self-knowledge we are rendered asunder from our universal knowledge. In any moment of self-awareness, we simultaneously experience both the divisive force of the ego and the connective force of compassion.

We hear a lot of talk about the ego, perhaps less about compassion. If ever there was differing universes in two words, it is in these two words. The former generates a universe characterized by divisiveness, acquisitiveness, arrogance and self-deceit whereas compassion enables a universe with greater sharing, inquiry, humility and honesty. Each force arises from the other.

In our ego-driven English society it is rare to hear insightful discussion of their vital, interconnected nature. Indeed the word “compassion” does not exist in any of the national and state frameworks of Anglosphere education systems. And when it is used in our modern English world, it is often associated with personal weakness, “woolly-ness ” and “being out of touch with the real world” rather than with strength, resilience, courage and honesty.

The inconvenient truth for the ego is this: without our experience of compassion, this universe we exist in ceases to exist. Without compassion, a man’s psyche ceases to be. Why? The physics of the universal forces are such that any form exists as a unique balance of forces. Anything only exists while all the forces on it are in balance with each other.

Everything is a balance of forces, including the human psyche. We exist because of a relative balance of the exclusive force of the ego and the inclusive force of compassion.

This is in accord with the principles of physics, the Conservation of Energy Principle in particular, which reminds us that universal change is a constant and all forms are continuously subject transformation. This physics translates into simple English:
We human beings are moral, mortal beings.
We are born, experience spasmodic self-awareness and we die.

This physics is an anathema to the ego, which arises with compassion in any moment of a man’s self-consciousness i.e. in any moment that our consciousness is split asunder in self-awareness.

This view of existence, of our psychology~physics, better enables us to better appreciate how and why the ego would have us believe “science” is merely an amoral way of thinking, an exclusive body of knowledge, the domain of an elite called “scientists”.
Countering this force is the force of compassion, which reminds us “science” is a profound moral way of being involving the experience of the honest, open, humble, sharing and inquiring sharing of knowledge. We are all scientists and non-scientists to some degree.

This appreciation of the vital role of compassion is more holistic and enables us to enjoy a “scientific” approach to life that embraces our mortality and fallibility. It reminds us in humility, sparks our curiosity and opens us to the greater truths of the principles of physics, which are manifest in all things around us.
For example, this more compassionate approach enables us to evaluate both the meaning we accord a word and the sanity of our behaviour by measuring how in accord our words and lifestyles are with the principles of physics. Their inherent wisdom liberates us from the whims, deductions and deceits of the ego.

Recall we are pondering the question, “What is the best way of choosing one word from a million words in order to illustrate the power of any word”.

It so happens Resilience.org miraculously dropped the following article in my inbox while I was stuck wondering how this “scientific” approach can best be illustrated:

“Excerpt from a mycelial conversation with the poet and ecological storyteller, Sophie Strand for the spring issue of Dark Mountain 21, shaped around the theme of confluence.” https://dark-mountain.net/my-body-the-ancestor/

Ancient mycelia structures can provide us with profound sustaining lessons.
No doubt you are familiar with the old saying, “(We) can’t see the wood for the trees” and you know it means we are unable to understand a situation clearly because we are too involved in it.
“Mycelium” is a relatively new word to me and, well, the truth is for most of my life I have been unable to see the vast intelligent networks of the mycelia for the forest and the wood.

It occurs to me that mycelia and humans have much in common. We can learn considerable wisdom from both a mycelium and its colony.
One insight involves the growth patterns of mycelia and our notions of “science” and a scientific approach to life.

Our English ego-derived notion of “Science” this past few centuries is bereft of compassion, being defined as an amoral, deductive way of thinking. Thus it is, to quote the article on mycelia, “often very superficial, a mile wide but an inch thick, so the connections are not resilient.”
The more compassionate man (human being) understands “science” is a profoundly moral way of being. Thus it is, to quote again,“the inch-wide, mile deep movement where, the connectivity is so intense and intimate it actually helps people and other beings survive.”

It also seems the pattern formed by an evolving mycelium is similar to the pattern formed by the evolving meaning of a word. And maybe mycelia interact with each other in the same ways that words interact with each other?

Some fossil records indicate mycelia have existed over 2 billion years and their continuing existence is evidence to me that they are imbued with the enduring wisdom of the principles of physics.
The “the inch-wide, mile deep” approach resonates with me, reminding me that my greatest insights have occurred while immersed playing in Waiorongomai Creek as a kid, while plodding the local streets as a reader of electricity-meters and while cleaning the toilets at the local school as a cleaner-caretaker.

Coincidentally these memories also reminded me that much of my life this past 50 years has been given to unlearning all the grand, global deceits and delusions that our Anglosphere “Science” education systems have inculcated in me.

Consequently the lifestyles of mycelia have governed my word-selection process rather the process prescribed in our English “Science” text books. In other words, the words are selected on the basis of the principle of “the inch-wide, mile deep movement”. They are words that define our Anglosphere culture and have overtly shaped my life in intimate ways. In so doing, they have provided me unique, potent insights into the ways of the universe and the human condition. They have deep roots in my being.

Perhaps the most profound pivotal moment in my experience occurred one day when I was 53 years old when for some reason the universe conspired to have me finally ask “What is energy?”
My next essay will take you on a journey exploring the amazing universe(s) in this word. Be assured. It is not the bland universe of your “Science” and “Physics” teachers, full of boring equations and pushing ball-bearings up slopes. Rather it is a story of great drama and intrigue, vanity and humility, greed and generosity, tragedy and comedy with the very survival of humankind at stake.
Meanwhile here are a few questions to ponder upon in case you think you know the plot already:
How come and why do we have Ministers/Secretaries of Energy, Ministers of Energy and Resources and Energy Authorities/Experts?
Are they for real?
If not, who can we trust?
Who is for real?

End part two in this series of essays exploring how we can liberate ourselves from the bonds of the English language.

Essays in this series:

Medium part 1 Tongue-tied by the English Language
(On untying the bonds of the mother tongue)

Medium part 2 What’s in a Word?

Medium part 3 What is Energy?

Medium part 4 What is Power?

Medium part 5 What is Economy?

Medium part 6 What is Warming- Up?

Medium part 7 What is a Fossil Fuel?

Medium part 8 What is a Resource?

Medium part 9 What’s with The Ego~Compassion?