“4/20/2010, 11:15am EST”
(via stfubelievers)
I have a rough theory — prompted by thousands of interactions with genuinely blind people, and by tens of interactions with genuinely wise people — that language comprehension is the key to deep knowledge. Intelligent people “see the matrix” of language — that is, they understand language well enough to see its formal nature. When you see the formal nature of language — expressible via the rules of formal logic — you have the capacity to understand its amazing utility and unyielding authority. You have the capacity to reason your way, and to be guided, towards genuine, certain knowledge. (Nuance: There are knowledgeable people who may never acknowledge their deep understanding, and there are ignorant people who may talk about it all the time but do not genuinely understand it. Comprehension, whether conscious or subconscious, whether trained or organic, is what matters.)
The person in this Facebook profile is stabbing in the dark when it comes to finding truth, and not coincidentally, she is very careless with language (even leaving aside grammatical problems). She mixes up her fantastical “employment” information — “Army of God” should be her employer, while “a follower of Jesus Christ” should be her position. Meanwhile, the “description” of her “employment” borders on nonsense — never mind that “description” and “objective” are not synonyms, never mind her mixed metaphors, you still can’t run a race “with victory.” And she claims her husband was delivered by “the most awesome God and savior Jesus Christ,” even though she is surely a monotheist. Perhaps she doesn’t mean “most” in the sense that implies other gods, but mere ambiguity is still evidence of carelessness.
Since (a) her careless language is written and therefore can be edited at any time; (b) she clearly cares very much about the self-identity she expresses to the world; (c) she clearly realizes that her Facebook profile is a public-facing document; and (d) she makes all these mistakes and ambiguities while expressing simplistic thoughts comprised of less than 100 words, it’s obvious that she fails to “see the matrix” of language. When dealing with such an individual, the task of those who would change her mind is not to change her beliefs about “God” or the “Army of God” — not yet. The initial task is to convince her of where her language fails, and why. Once she begins to acknowledge this, she has only begun to even have the capacity to be genuinely enlightened.
—Dan
Never leave home without it.
