What good are words?
(Listening to the Philosophize This podcast by Stephen West, the episode titled “Derrida and Words”)
Does this describe a social media conversation you’ve recently had?
You speak carefully, so that you are not misunderstood. Your arguments are logical, and you use only the best words. You make sure that everything makes perfect, logical sense. You revise it before hitting ‘send’. Nevertheless, you fail. Those you mean to shame, do not appear shamed. Those you try to convince, remain unconvinced.
Perhaps you even hear back from them. And it makes no sense at all! Could you have actually drifted further away? What they say is hypocritical, and what they suggest is disgusting. They have taken your words and twisted them into something else.
And you feel a sense of defeat. You are defeated, not by the other person, but by the futility of your own efforts. What a waste of time. What a waste of energy. Once again you make the old promise to never engage again.
The problem, according to French thinker Jacques Derrida, is that we have a naive and outdated way of thinking about words.
An over-smart uncle addressing Pushpesh Pant & Bibek Debroy, at Jaipur Lit Fest 2019 (Jaipur, India)
Misunderstandings happen because words mean different things to different people.
Consider this. Any conversation you have with someone is actually being conducted between four people. First there are the two of you. The third person is who they think you are. The fourth person is who you think they are.
Therefore, Person 1 speaks to Person 4. And Person 2 hears it from Person 3. Do you see the mix-up?
Now consider that this is the way we discuss all the important subjects of our lives. What does it mean if these conversations are littered with complex words which have many layers of meaning?
Liberal.
Socialist.
Fascism.
Democracy.
Freedom.
Rights.
Racism…
Why can we not be on the same page?
In linguistics, synchrony and diachrony are two complementary viewpoints about the meanings of words. The synchronic meaning of a word is its most recent meaning, in current place and time. The diachronic meaning is the long trail of different meanings attached to that word throughout history, as understood by different people in different places.
For example, what is Justice?
Depending on one’s views on subjects like “an eye for an eye”, capital punishment, and the modern prison-rehabilitation system, people could have different ideas about what constitutes justice. Your own definition of justice would be completely different if you were born the same person you are now, but only 500 years ago.
Our misunderstandings are because we are using different words - they look and sound the same, but have different meanings depending on who’s listening. So when it comes to explaining really important things, words don’t do a very good job.
This is what Derrida means when he says -
“Every statement is a lie”
To Derrida, language becomes a game in which we try to repress all other diachronic meanings of a word, in order to express ourselves. We try to use words that have stable, authentic meanings which will be instantly understood by the audience. Since that is usually impossible, our words always mean something other than what we mean to say. Every statement is a lie.
“… when you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you” - Neitzche.
“There is nothing outside the text.”
Words are generative, i.e. the meaning of one word is always other words.
How we express ourselves, how we describe an event, or how we tell a story, all of it is mediated and affected by language. Our entire experience as human beings, says Derrida, is bound to our words and language, because that is the only way we have to explain it, even to ourselves.
Here’s a metaphor Stephen West uses in this episode. Imagine yourself as the only living being in the universe. How would you describe a tree? Without the mediation of language, there is no necessary reason for you to separate tree from earth, or earth from sky, or even you from the tree. If you are the only thing that lives, the very idea of describing something ceases to exist. There is no need for either language or words.
Our experience of our world is controlled to the metaphors, words and language that we know. There is nothing outside the text.
So… what then? If every statement is a lie and there is nothing outside the text, what is the point of anything?
Can it be that art is the answer? Do sound and light and color say things that silly words in silly languages cannot?
I am reminded of these lines by the character Bokonon in Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. It is the preface to the gospel of Bokononism.
“Everything you are about to read is a lie. Anyone who can’t understand how a useful religion can be founded on utter falsehoods, probably won’t like this book either.”
And here is a core principle of Systems Engineering that I learned during my post-graduate education at the TU Delft (Netherlands)
“All models are wrong. But some models are useful.”
I hope to learn more in coming days, both from this podcast and other reading. If you know some things too, please share!
I subscribe to the wonderful podcast, Philosophize This by Stephen West. As a child of the internet, I learn most things online. My interest in philosophy comes from chasing curiosity in various ways. I like to get at the root of things, and philosophy is perhaps the root of everything. But I cannot read through books of philosophy. Because a lot of them are quite unreadable for the layman. This is where podcasts play a benevolent role in my life. Philosophy is a great way to tap into the minds of smart people down the road of recorded history. With every episode of this podcast, I find something I can relate in my life.