Does this blog exist? Of course it exists, as data made out of 1s and 0s, and I see it and I read it, and if I show it to people, they can confirm that they see it and read it. No, it's not tangible, you leapfrog ahead, because by now you know where I'm going with this (and if it's just me reading this, then that really is redundant). So let's just leave it there, because we're like dogs chasing our tails here and surely there is something more important to talk about.
I'll give you that one. My mind is doing somersaults lately and I'm starting to feel a bit queasy.
I've been listening to a podcast about language and non-existence (oh and here she goes again), which also features dogs chasing their tail - it was all very interesting, but really it doesn't change the fact that we talk about non-existent things every day (and there is the option that nothing we talk about exists - just an option) and never question the truth of these statements, because that's how language works.
Words are reassuring because they are arbitrary. A table could be called a gloop and it would still be a table (given that there is a table there, of course). Words are used to talk about non-existent things and to lie and to be sarcastic - and we usually understand what the other person means (depending on our shared cultural capital, but the point still holds).
Despite what people think, words have no necessary relationship with truth. (And this is where I deviate from all these philosophers who chase each other's tails over this.) My perspective is predictable, I know, but hear me out.
Words are used at our whim. If you are honest, your words will be honest, but there's really no guarantee even of this. The layers below consciousness are tricksy things, bent on protecting us from ourselves, which often means determining what we perceive and how, and then allowing our consciousness to cobble together a view of the world. Which we express in words that these layers have smoothed out for us.
Ah, the shifting landscape of paranoia. Twice shy and all that. No one's fooling me a second time. Which really only means the shadowy 'they' have won, but really they win either way, which is kind of my point.
Literature banks on the arbitrary nature of words. It creates fictional worlds melted together with autobiography and real settings and even real people and events, to illuminate some aspect of the human condition. But it never pretends to harness truth to its cowboy belt - and if you think it does, that's all on you. Every sentence is mediated with "I think" and "Maybe" and "Have you considered whether...", and of course "If we do this, what will happen?" At most, it asks you to think about yourself and understand how those layers and layers think they're protecting us and whether they are.
The fickleness of words is the only grip I have in this world, precisely because they never lie to me. I never have to consider whether they are real or true or false, because it's on me and my relationship with shared meaning. My truth is how I perceive the world, but that doesn't make it authoritative; really, pretending it is would be like coming in last in a race and getting a conciliatory medal.
Having ranted to an audience that may or may not exist, I plan to curl up next a fire with my book, which is really all the security I need in this shifting world of meaning.
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