It seems that people, at least us “Westerners,” use language not only as a way of expressing, but as a way of “identifying,” and then base their subsequent ideologies on these identifications.
We pluck something out of existence and label it. It’s like a zoo: you can pluck a tiger out of its natural environment and set up a pseudo-natural environment for it, and you can study it and poke and prod it, but it will not be reality. It is a distorted view of a tiger, for you have taken it out of reality, and set it up in your own contextual framework.
By plucking concepts and labeling them we may get an understanding of them, and we may even be able to get as whole of an understanding of them as possible, but in the end, what we are getting an understanding of is the concept, the label, and not that which the label represents and stands for.
The more we pluck and label the harder it becomes to understand, let alone live, these concepts as they really are. To “identify” something is to essentially ultimately guarantee our misunderstanding of it as it really is.
I think part of the human’s problem is that we, as thinkers, are analyzing life to death. Life is doing, not thinking about doing, and not thinking alone; though at this point, we may need to use thinking as a way of deconstructing the conditioning illusions that thinking have built. To borrow phrasing from Descartes: “I do, therefore I am,” is probably closer to reality, or even “I am, therefore I do.” Perhaps these are the same.
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From my personal notes, 8/19/99.
