Language, the constrain to free thinking .

When I first decided to write this post, the title I chose was, "Vocabulary, the constrain to thinking" . But as I got to thinking more about it, I found an entirely new perspective.

Lately I have been looking up English words to improve my vocabulary(for reasons I shall come to later). I came across a word , " Agnostic ", meaning " a person who claims that they cannot have true knowledge about the existence of God (but does not deny that God might exist) ". It suddenly hit me, that this was an entirely new idea to me . I had never thought about it, till then. So, our thought process is largely affected by our vocabulary isn't it? It seems almost unimaginable to have ideas with no solid words associated.

Well that is something that gave me a jolt of realization! To exaggerate it a bit one might say " You can't think of something unless you know a word for it " . I know, thats too much of an exaggeration, but, I hope you know what I mean.

As most of the readers of my blog ( if any one at all, except for my faithful friend AJ ), would know my mother tongue is Gujarati. And as far as I know there is no word available in Gujarati with a similar meaning as the word " Agnostic " . And even if there is one, there must be many other words in the English language that do not have corresponding meanings in other languages or vice versa.

It seems that in any language, the entire vocabulary of words depends on the culture of the places origin and development of the language. In a cultures where existence of god is never questioned , it is not likely that the primary language of that culture would have a word similar to the word " Agnostic ". Of course, this is just an example; there could be thousands of such cases .A language might even not have any mention of " god ".

This seems more applicable to abstract ideas, rather than physical objects or an idea directly related to a physical object.

Taking it forward, I reckon we could also say most of our ideologies, believes are based on the language we speak(more importantly, the language we think in) and of course the culture we belong to. Very few of us have the courage to think on their own. Even if one tries, the fact that most of the thought process in average men takes place verbally, is restraining.

The best solution that I can think of at the is to expand your active vocabulary. And as for my favoring the English language, there are a few reasons. One, that it is relatively easy to learn and the availability of numerous resources for learning makes it favorable. Secondly it is probably the most widespread language in the world (not the number of users, but the vast distribution of the speakers), which means more and more ideas and ideologies are constantly gaining recognition in through the language and eventually new words are being accepted as part of the language.

I hope to have my linguist friend to look into the topic in technical detail .

My Obsession : Understanding Ego

I

That is MY ego. My concept of self.

I am not talking about the ego as in an inflated feeling of pride in my superiority to others .

I am talking about the "I" as I perceive it.

I am eating. I am sleeping. What is I? Do we perceive ourselves as the body we have? Again that is not true with most. We usually say MY body. My hand. My eyes. Then
what is it? Is it the brain? I suppose not. It is usually referred to as " my brain " .

Is it the soul? The soul that we have no empirical proof of. Don't the most of us refer to it as "My Soul"?(An excellent suggestion by my good friend Anu.)

Then what is it?

What am I?

Aren't we all just objects with extremely complex mechanisms (of course complex is relative term in this case)? The perception of 'I' is in our minds.
Again isn't the identity of mind just a specific configuration of the brain (in term of the behavioral properties of the neurons or whatever it is in the brain)?

So now I am not even sure what the question is!

Existence

I was born on 25th August 1988 A.D. On 25th August 1989 I was 1 year old. You get the idea, I hope . Today I am 19 something. So?

Well, thats the whole point. So what? What the hell did I do all these years? What is the meaning behind it?

Mere existence seems absurd. Meaningless. (I am getting a feeling that I am repeating myself, a lot for that matter.)

We all take birth (seems we do not have an option!); grow up a bit; go to school, cram up up a few things here and there; go to college; have a job; get married; have kids, see to it, that our kids follow the same routine; grow old and die.

That's it! We die in the end. So why do all those things? Do they matter? What is the objective of life?

Each moment in life, most of us, are looking forward to some other moment in the future. Each action(at least most of them) is taken for the future. So why the endless running for something or the other? When we do get what we had been running after for so long, the very next moment we start running after something else, forgetting all about what you just obtained.

I too am running. But at the moment I don't know towards what. I am really tired now. I don't want to run anymore.

So when does it stop? What is it that we really need? Is it just the need to need?

Maybe we need a need to exist. Or else why the need to exist! Maybe we all need something to live for. But if that is the case then , why create needs? Why exist?

Lies

How much do we lie ? To whom do we lie ?( phrase seems grammatically incorrect ) . Why do we lie ?

I haven't figured it out , but if you have please do let me know .

What I find most astonishing about lying is that how much do we lie to ourselves ? I suppose we lie to ourselves to avoid internal conflicts . We lie so that we can completely ignore the truth ( or at least what seems to be the truth ) and the complexities that it might possibly create .

So the question is how much do we lie to ourselves ? What exactly is it that compels us to do so ? I don't have the slightest idea . So why the hell am I writing this ? I don't have a clue about that either . Funny isn't ?