#45 The tragedy of the spoken word

ByLukas
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Language helps us describe the world we perceive. Yet in doing so, it closes our eyes, our ears, our touch, and our heart to the parts of the world we don’t have words for.

Every language is a lens on a felt reality within and around us – both clarifying and categorizing the world, and limiting it by the words it has available.

Learning more languages gives you new lenses – and a richer sense of reality.

But just like the structure of our ears limit the sounds we can hear, and the structure of our eyes limit colors we can see, the structure of any language somehow limits our felt experience of the world.

How do we re-access memories, emotions, hidden away in a long-forgotten language?

How do we re-learn to listen to the voices of the wordless world speaking to our animal self… the voices that once upon a time, before verbal language emerged, were all we had?

there’s an eternal song
drowned out by the confines of my mother tongue
a wordless melody that once made sense
until our brain started blurring it with a lens
narrowing it down
neglecting its nuances through verbs and nouns

with all its might language wants us to abide
but the wordless world it tries to hide
will forever be inside

Lukas Van Vyve

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    #136 Unoriginal thought

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    If the storm ChatGPT is causing shows us one thing, it’s how unoriginal most of our thoughts are.

    AI builds on a massive library of what others have learned before.

    (Individual) humans build on a much smaller library of what others have learned before.

    If we merely do what others have done before, in some fields, AI has caught up to us already.

    What happens we build on what others have learned before, and combine it with what we learn ourselves (in other words, practice and skill building)?

    Now we’re talking about innovation: we’re doing things that haven’t been done before.

    And even then, one day, AI will possibly also innovate and do things that haven’t been done before.

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    If raw intelligence and “brain processing power” isn’t what makes us truly, uniquely human, then what is?

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    #84 Long-term Side Effects of Procrastinating

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    I can choose to procrastinate on a project for weeks – then finish it all in one go, right before the deadline.

    In absolute terms, I might have been very efficient with my time – but the time I saved, I spent frustrated with myself.

    The long-term effect on my self-image: I’m a procrastinator.

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    #279 Aligning your beliefs with your innate ability

    ByLukas

    Whether you believe you can write today or not, remember: there’s no physical law, not even a mental barrier stopping you from putting pen to paper or opening your phone or laptop and writing.

    Start like this: “I am writing.”

    Do it now.

    Then keep going.

    See?

    Believe whatever you want. Change your beliefs however often you want. Your innate ability to write is steady.

    And if you know that, why wouldn’t you align your beliefs with your innate ability?

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