And the Word Is

What ancestor worship, abstract thought, and celebrity have to do literally with the price of beef

In the beginning, the word may not have been with God nor was it likely “God,” but at some point words moved out of their parents’ home and took over the human universe.

We cannot be sure when it first occurred to someone how powerful the word could be. Depictions of how human cognition advanced, such as in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, offer updated poetics from earlier fiction.

However, these updates, along with a lot of speculative science, do not correlate with what science has found in the last few years about brains, evolution, and the universe in which we humans seem to be constantly rediscovering ourselves.

Words were probably not the first technology. Judging from the fact it is now acknowledged that other species employ tools, including those they modify, early hominids may not have used a proto-language more complex than a prairie dog’s bark, but we know they did make stone tools.

I am not aware of any theory of paleolithic anatomy which stipulates spoken language likely emerged before the crudest hand axes. It is possible.

I am trying to imagine the requisite brain development, and what leads to what in infants now. There’s reportedly a connection between motoric movement such as crawling and the development of speech centers of the brain. I can’t recall the details.

Starting there, it would be a bit like saying Thor is the reason for thunder if I were to claim the same changes leading to bipedalism in humans correlated with the emergence of language, let alone one caused the other.

But obvious absurdity hardly ever stops even brilliant persons from asserting ridiculous things without any evidence other than their thinking of them, saying them, and then filling in the gaps with flowing narratives, and the ripe shrub writhed and burned in the wilderness!

Human imagination is a many splendored thing. I think we can all agree on that. But is also far from infallible. There, two for two on the consensus front. We’re making progress.

Many of us do still experience mystical epiphanies and ecstasies, either privately or in social settings, spontaneously or through hallowed rituals.

Still, I remain incredulous about all the speculation and have yet to read or hear about a solid theory of where human language departed signaling used by other animals.

Nevertheless, we all know the power of a to-do list, reading something later which we ourselves made note of, and how compelling it can be.

When we put something outside of ourselves, even when it is a product of our own mind, it gains extra force, it seems. That is just as true with spoken words.

Consider the childish exchange, “You take that back!” Even children are aware of the power of the words they utter.

Similarly, we can feel shame about things we think without saying, but it is only when the words leave us that their real power begins.

To be continued