|
Excersus CXXXIII: Word World Word
First of all, my profuse apologies for missing last week's update. There were more last-minute things to nail down
before ECCC this year than in those past, all of which will eventually work towards the good, but the upshot of which
was that there was quite literally no time left to draw up the script for 133 until after I returned from Seattle. Now,
as to today's comic, words... you see this sort of thing happening with kids all the time. Where they build something
out of Play Doh or some such thing and then start telling a story about a different origin which gives the object
powers to neutralize boogeymen or grant invisibility or ward off pesky little sisters. It's a beautiful thing to see,
but writ large on the stage of man, it's wrought some pretty unfortunate things. One of the most promising developments
of the last couple decades is the increasing momentum of the neuro-biological origin of language. Religion stands on
nothing so solidly as the mystification of language. Remove that, make words words again, and theology doesn't have
much going for it besides transparent and all-too-easy wish fulfillment - the sort of thing that can fly when you
think of words as mystical portals to divinity, and which must crash to ground when words are just Things Human
Brains Make.
- Count Dolby von Luckner
Hate mail and notes of luscious thanks may be sent to The Count at CountDolby@gmail.com.
|