Inescapable Language

“Language is not an instinct of the constituted human creature, nor is it an invention of our subjectivity…It forms part of the human condition.”
--Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness

The depths to which we can begin to understand the power of language is best categorized with things of the nature of: “Why are we here?” or “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” or “What will happen?” or anything whose variables are so many and various that it is almost in fatuity that we approach them.
And yet it is what we are. Without language, there is arguably no humanity. There is something to the fact that in language we have found the best possible vehicle for attempting to convey meaning, and yet, at the same time, language is the most inappropriate vehicle for conveying meaning, because meaning always slips from its grasp. This can be attributed, largely, to subjectivity, and the fact that as soon as the object of language is used, it becomes precisely that: an object-to-be-used by me. I derived my own meaning from it, and this is both its blessing and its curse. It shares the same structure as consciousness, where it is constantly in the mode of being what it isn’t (where meaning is fluid), and not being what it is (a solid structure on which meaning is built).
Underneath the necessity of language is the structure of the language itself. Grammar is important, if not in practice then in theory, because it helps us understand the subject—in all senses of the word. Who is the subject of this sentence? What is the subject of this sentence? It immediately re-orients to a world outside of ourselves, and perhaps this is why reading is such a crucial element to transcendence. It forces us to realize ourselves as being in the midst of a world when we see that he or she or it is the subject of this sentence. It jars us back into a world wherein in we are being a being-in-the-midst-of-the-world, and because of this we actually re-apprehend our own subjectivity: we make of ourselves an object in the world. Through language, we see ourselves. Full stop. Whether it is something I have written or something I have read, there is point where consciousness steps outside of itself and realizes that it is a person sitting on that chair in the middle of the room, holding a book, learning about various things, and then it is our own consciousness that is fully subject—even while we’re being objectified.

“Thus the word is sacred when I employ it and magic when the other hears it.” –Sartre

Difficulty doesn’t even begin to describe the nature of our relationship with language because it is impossible to conceive of a human world without language, and yet there is sometimes disrespect for the language that we actively employ because we are scared. We ARE language, and when we use it for things like lying or misdirection or unethical behavior, we become the lie, the misdirection, and the unethical behavior. We are the language. Obviously, the question will forever remain, “What is unethical behavior? Aren’t you seeming a little bit too dogmatic here?” And if that is the case, then know that it is not intentional, it is simply meant to illustrate that language should be used, if not cautiously, then with the conscious understanding that we are what we use the language for, and this is actually transported almost immediately back to the “actions reveal desires” mantra that has so far revealed itself to me to be truth. We act for what we want, and one of the best illustrations of this is the language that we use as an action because language is a human action.

My co-worker said the other day, “The director has made a good liar out of me.” And I couldn’t help but think that the Director of our school didn’t make a good liar out of you, this was a conscious decision that you made because you want to be cloaked in a layer of concealment. That’s why those little white lies are so important. It has nothing to do with religion or god or anything like that. It is precisely because we are the little white lies we tell.

Here we are left with a slight conundrum, because the world is populated by other people and presupposes the need for a language to connect them, language is always for other people as much as it is for me. Language is how I see myself in the world and how I am seen in the world. The people I talk to daily, the letters I write, the emails written, the words I use daily reveal me to myself, and yet they are always for other people. Even if we were to say, “I’m writing this just for me and nobody else. I don’t care what other people think about it.” The reality here is that you are still writing it for the other, even if it’s to realize their dislike of it. Or, better yet, even when we are keeping a diary or a journal that is not meant to be read by anybody but me, as soon I start writing, I understand that at some point the reason I wrote all this down will come full circle and I will re-visit it later on, when I am other than I am now. It will be to see how far I have become by making of myself the other. In this case you are writing for the you will be other to the you in the present. There is no language without the other. It is always for “them” as much as it is for “me.”

So language performs the dual task of connecting us with other human subjects while alienating us and objectifying us to ourselves. This seemingly paradoxical relationship is beginning to seem pervasive in the human character: we always seem to be performing diametrically opposed actions consistently. I have consciousness, and yet consciousness is not. It has no form. I use language, and yet language is not for me. It is for others. What is this is existence that we are? What is this thing I am? What does it mean that this (existence) is the best possible vehicle for conveying and understanding meaning? Is it the best possible vehicle? If it is it must be maintained. Language requires work, much like our lives. Should the maintenance of language ever falter, our lives stagnate, and then, on a cold day in the middle of January, precisely when we need the thing to start, it fails. What becomes of us when we are no longer studying language? What becomes of us when we are no longer studying what we are?