In Other Words

Chapter Five of The Thousand Mile Hole (A Home Built of Words) is about how to escape the limitations of specific language and use words in new ways. In other words, it is about choosing more carefully what we use to understand and communicate.

Here is a short passage from the book:

If desired, you can purposefully change your words to represent the map of the territory in a new way. For example, the term "gross national product" describes the amount of value created in a country, in monetary terms. An underlying assumption is that this measure has something to do with human progress. In 1972 the king of Bhutan coined the term "gross national happiness," which provides a very different way of thinking about and measuring the progress and well-being of people. It would be interesting to overlay a map showing income with one showing levels of happiness. How closely would they resemble each other?

In addition to combining words into new terms, we can also invent entirely new words. In his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land Robert A. Heinlein invented the word "grok," which supposedly came from the Martian word meaning "to drink" or "to take in." Thanks to the popularity of the book and this word is currently found in some English dictionaries, defined as: "to understand something so well that it is fully absorbed into oneself."

Perhaps there is a need for a word like this. For example, If I see a spear flying at me, I understand the danger in a way that causes me to immediately duck down. On the other hand, though I "know" the danger of eating too much sugar, I don't apply this knowledge so easily and immediately, so this is obviously another kind of understanding, one that perhaps I haven't yet "fully absorbed into myself." In other words, I don't quite grok it.

This process of inventing words for concepts that are not yet expressed in a language suggests many possibilities. For example, are there feelings for which we don't yet have names? Almost certainly. Are there political systems (already existing or to be created) which are different enough from existing ones to need a new name? I could invent one by tomorrow. Language grows because it needs to. There are always going to be new concepts that will be misunderstood if we only use old words to name them.

In other words, why not expand beyond the words you already use and even invent new ones to suit your purpose. It is one of the many routes to deeper thinking.

Note: At the moment the book is available only as a Kindle version: The Thousand Mile Hole