The limits in the way we are and behave are so profound. Such weak fragile creatures, naked, dependent oil each other to survive and thrive. We can barely see and barely hear. And the feelings we have are beautiful and complex but we have not found a way yet to truly comprehend them or to somehow transmit them to others. We have most recently reduced most of our communication to one of the languages possible. It gives us a sense of speed and immediacy. Even visual art can now we created using some commands or prompts.
But the speed that is in language is also one of its main limitations. It is a string of information funnelled at a certain speed. Created often more slowly than it is read or listened to. The very nature of language creates a before during and after. We need to keep in mind what was just said, what is being said and what might be said next. History possibly emerged this way. And the future found its path into us. But the string of language also excludes and eliminates as it goes.
If there is a good, then there must be an evil. If there is a light then there muse be darkness. If there is one then there must be another. And once we imagine that several of these things are possible in the same, are able to live and die at different speeds but at the same time none the less, then we are reaching the outskirts of language. And there they are so easy to reach.
A bit like trying to divide by zero is an impossible action to the common calculator. So is the possibility to hold more than one truth or thought or fable in the same mind at the same time in harmony as they naturally exist in the real world, the universe, whatever we might call the Everything.
Obviously these thoughts are limited the same way as everything mentioned here, as they are also written in language, not my native one, using just a few fingertips on a screen I barely understand.
It was Friday the 13th yesterday. A new moon. On October 13th 1307, also a Friday, it was a full moon. And it was the end of the Knights Templar.
Here I am on a Saturday, in Lisabon, in 2023. And the limits of language are more apparent than ever. Not just the limits of my Portuguese. The limits to describe what has happened here. The limits to describe what is happening near where the knights Templar gave themselves the name. The poor order, so poor that its symbol was two knights sharing a horse, yet also one of the most powerful international organisations that is somehow connected to the creation of the banking system, and yet also the death of innocents. The kindness of language and the violence of actions. The complexity of our species is multiplied by the layers of expression. It is capable of triggering destruction by calling some names and rallying troops and leaders and organisations.
The terror that emerges from language, from ideas spoken and written far surpasses what that language can then describe again. That tiny string of words, leading through the soup of confusion.
A dog is making sorry sounds outside. A bird is chirping away lonely. A massive plane just flew overhead, binging more people with more opinions and ideas to this place.
I am so overwhelmed by the experience of just being.
But it is important to move the wheel the machinery of thought. And there is a right path and a left path?
But perhaps the key to everything is the discovery of love and kindness? The naive thought can’t be applied to systems that are completely on fire. But perhaps it is the secret of the personal middle path?
“God is not pleased. We have enemies of the faith in the kingdom”… Got does not care. There is no kingdom and we do not have the need to invent enemies.
Calmness and creativity and love. Peace and the breath between humans and the other aliens on this planet. It all feels like a mandala more than a single string or a rope of words.
Is it possible to carve stone with a feather? It is certainly possible to find a way through stone with water.
It does need a steady drip. Every drop a generation perhaps?
But what is that rock then? And why would we want to penetrate it?
A beautiful feature of language is that it can assemble itself to the impossible and make it sound completely plausible. It’s a deadly feature too, of course. But perhaps with the playfulness of a loving species something incredible is possible.
I have no idea what I am actually talking about, I guess.
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