Self-serving

Without language we’d be dumb animals, everyone knows that. We form and deform ourselves in our words. This blog is an example of it. There’s a dignity in being able to speak, to write. Something happens when words come out of people’s mouths. The simplest phrase can make things happen and all of a sudden history has a new score, as the poet said. But words can just as easily obscure everything, cover things over. We’re violent in our nature – we wouldn’t have wiped out all our humanoid rivals and come to dominate the planet otherwise – and our language, our habitual ways of speaking reflects it. So how to trust our own words when they’re by their nature self-serving?