Be Precise In Your Speech
So, in Genesis one of the things God has Adam do first
So, God makes the world by speaking
Okay so that's the first thing to think about
You're supposed to think in a sophisticated way about this
The ideas that some integral relationship between communication and the structure of theater
It's part of the role that consciousness plays in the world whatever that role is
Language takes the chaos it makes it into things
And so, God has Adam name all the animals
They're not even really real until they have names
Let's say that you're having a rough patch in your relationship
And you don't know why it's unnamable
Is it real?
Well yeah, it's manifesting itself and that's physiological discomfort
Then you talk about it you and name it
It goes from this blurry thing that's kind of potential and goes snap
And then it's this thing
That's a horrible thing it's like a little poisonous thing
But it's not a whole foggy, cloud potential poison
It's like this little sharp poison thing
And then you think okay it's real
It's a little monster
Its little at least and now probably we can do something about it if we can admit to it
So, it's this precision because the unnamable is far more terrifying than the nameable
No matter how terrible the actuality is it's rarely as terrible as your imagination because your imagination
I gets an old thing it’s seen a lot of terrible things in the history of life
It can put monsters everywhere
And so, it's almost always better
It might be better without exception to name the thing no matter how terrible it is
And if you can't name it what that means is
You're telling yourself that you're so terrified that you can't bring your attention to bear on it
You're a loser instantly
If it's so terrifying that you cannot face it it's won
The worst way of demonizing people is to not be able to say anything about them
Because then god only knows what their unspeakable
Bring everything out of the realm of the unspeakable
Freedom of speech that's the worship of the logos in many ways
That's a very deep idea in our culture
The deepest idea of our culture is the logos is creative
And what makes is good
That's God at the beginning of time
That's the idea
Is that to bring things out of the murk is a good thing
You don't mess with that man not unless you want murk
You don’t mess with that
It's the most sacred principle of Western civilization