Schindlersword

Word Users Manual

The state of the world

Picture of the state of the world

The world of our own making

What if words were just a dream? It would appear the wordless world would be here, but we wouldn’t be here talking about everything we have a word for.

Is 2021 the world of our own making?

Or is it the world of words’ making?

Perhaps the answer depends on which came first: The word-user or the word?

On top of the food chain

The pursuit of better has paid off. We’re on top of the food chain, the most advanced specie ever, ready for fast food on Mars, the high-water mark of evolution.

All things considered, we are at crossroads: What next?

That is like asking where have words gotten us thus far, isn’t it?

Who decides?

“Too little too late” say some, and “Too much too fast” say the others. But on one thing most everybody agrees: “NOT more of the same old, please!”

More only mirrors itself, and so does more of the same.

Celebrate what unites us

I wanted to write a book that gives people hope and helps to see the world from a fresh perspective in lasting ways.

The day when I would give it the most boring title in the universe was years away. At the time, I couldn’t have imagined that. But all hope is not lost..

War will not end if we keep telling the stories that create it, and fighting the old doesn’t work so well. It takes an alternative and words have the following features working in their favor.

  • What divides us are not the words. On the contrary, they unite us. What divides us is what we do with words.
  • In the the beginning is the word no matter who is telling it.
  • Words don’t speak for themselves.

And with time on our side, I think a fresh perspective on words stands a chance of making it.

When we change the way we look at words, the world changes.

There are no guarantees, of course not. After all, this manual is just more of the same in its own right.

New paths

A lone wolf howling at the moon I am not, nor do I feel that way.

On the contrary, new paths are sought and found everywhere by more word-users than ever before, non-stop.

“When you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse.”– Martin Keogh

Golden opportunity

The world’s religionists and scientists agree–for the first time ever, “Finally!” some would say—on the one thing that can be denied only by confirming it: Everything they’re talking about is a word. Ditto for nothing.

To change the status quo, I feel that might be as good as it gets.

Fewer words

Only because we have had such good experiences with getting from wishing for words to drowning in them, the option of fewer words in the future is still an option, not for the first time, but all the more so.

Impossible is nothing.

In the wordless world

The Earth travels around the sun. People die and new ones are born. Buds blush around the stem. Leaves fall when the autumn calls. The seasons keep on changing and:

“All the rivers run into the sea
yet the sea is not full
unto the place from whence the rivers come,
thither they return again.

It is raining today
in the mountains.

It is a warm green rain
with love
in its pockets
for spring is here,
and does not dream
of death.

Birds happen music
like clocks ticking heaves
in a land
where children love spiders,
and let them sleep
in their hair.

A slow rain sizzles
on the river
like a pan
full of frying flowers,
and with each drop
of rain
the ocean
begins again.”

– Richard Brautigan (The Return of the Rivers)
(Source: http://www.brautigan.net/)

Seen from afar, it seems the wordless just can’t get enough of it. They want more of the same every time the sun sends her early rays shining down on half of Earth at a time.

In the wordy world

The wordy make the best of it, each their own, many quietly, some aloud.

Some keep announcing to anyone willing to listen that the end of the world is as imminent right now as it’s been for thousands of years, only more so this time around.

Your best options, they want you to believe, is living in fear of getting run over by a self-driving vehicle tomorrow, or if that fails, to live in fear of the world exploding any day now, or if that fails, to get ready for the sky falling on our heads tomorrow.

Simplify

Simplification works best where it begins, before it is let in to get complicated.

The world’s dictators being among the world’s best educated and best informed on Earth, makes you wonder what knowledge, education, information, and intelligence are for. I’m not saying simple will result in fewer dictators, all I’m saying is fewer morons of low moral standards and some mastery of words, rather than more of them, would do the world a whole lot of good. But that’s about morals, a different story altogether.

On the upside, we have arrived at the point where more word-users than ever before agree…

…more of the same is not the answer anyone in the pursuit of peace is looking for.

As words are concerned, the question of more words is more compared to what? Pick any number between 155 billion and zero, and you’re probably not far from the truth.

To put the 155 billion words into context of time: 155 billion seconds will last the next 4,915 years. That begs the question of how does anyone count 155 billion of anything, let alone words?

I asked that question and found each of the above numbers have been achieved.

Words have: Rules

Word rule #1: IT IS A WORD

If you can hear, see, touch, smell, taste, or feel it, it is a word.

Word rule #2: NEVER ANOTHER

A word is never another.

Word rule #3: TALK OF WORDS

“Using words to talk of words is like using a pencil to draw a picture of itself, on itself. Impossible. Confusing. Frustrating.” – Patrick Rothfuss

Word rule #4: CANNOT BE DENIED

A word can be denied only by confirming it.

Word rule #5: WORDS CAN DO TO YOU

What words can do to others, they can do to you, and if you respond to words like others, they probably will.

Word rule #6: IRREVERSIBLE

Attention to words is irreVERSEable. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

Words do

Words don’t do. They just are.

That is because words are not made of matter. They are empty inside, also known as massless and, therefore, even more elusive to catch than Neutrino, the ghost particle.

Words couldn’t matter if they tried, and for this and other reasons as well, words:

  • Don’t have an opinion
  • Don’t speak for themselves
  • Don’t talk bad of word-users
  • Don’t care what you do with them
  • Don’t lie
  • Don’t play games
  • Don’t have meaning
  • Don’t make sense
  • Don’t describe the world

The one with the senses, the sensational one, is you.

Word is: Truth

Wordless

In the wordless world, truth doesn’t exist for self-evident reasons.

Wordy

Among the word-users, there are two types, those who are looking for truth, and those who claim to have found it.

According to Google, true is “about 4.24 billion results,” Wikipedia took the short-cut: “True most commonly refers to truth,” and some claim the wisest and noblest teacher is nature.

“Will the real truth please stand up!” risks to start another disagreement among those who claim to have found it, and by the end of the day it’s the same old “Mirror, mirror on the wall, which is the fairest truth of them all?” all over again.


Mirror, mirror on the wall, which is the fairest truth of them all?

For the adults, it is okay because we have gotten used to it, but to the children, true is just another fairy tale.

Mirrors do not determine who is right, only who is competing, which explains, I think why the truth doesn’t work so well.

Fresh perspective

True is a word, and what truth tells us about words is whether a word happened or not doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that it’s true.

There are no truths here, only words. What word-users do with each is a different story entirely.

There’s nothing the writer can do about it, for what it’s worth: A point of view.

Words are: The difference

Like the elements, cells, common senses, eyes, and brain before, words are a gift we’re meant to keep. Sure, it can be stored away unopened, but that is not what gifts are for.

Especially considering words are the only difference between them and us.

What about the other candidates?

To believe what makes us unique is the upright walk, disposable thumb, naked skin, Cambrian explosion, aliens, or the size of our brains would be forgetting they are words.

Wisdom and all that jazz?

To believe wisdom, creativity, intelligence, brains, choices, decisions, organizations, knowledge, and response-ability are what separates us from the wordless would be forgetting if the wordless were lacking creativity, each cloud would be identical, all nuts would be hazel, all birds would be swans, and we wouldn’t be here. After all, we are the wordless’ idea, not our own.

If acorns didn’t know what they want, there’d be no oak trees.

Technology?

Sure, the wordless don’t have self-driving cars, house-cleaning robots, atomic bombs, license-plate flippers, and social media. Why they stubbornly continue without is a mystery. Maybe they don’t see the point. They have invented us, surely they could have invented an atom bomb. Be it as it may, the wordless didn’t wait for us to get started with space travel, for that is how the elements got here. And they know all about the weather, for they are the weather, and Wi-Fi isn’t needed, it seems, because they haven’t bothered with wires in the first place

In common

100% of what we are—cells and water, fire, air, and earth—we have in common with the wordless.

Words are the difference. We can talk about it.

Words describe the world perfectly

How often is that true?

To believe words describe anything, let alone the world, let alone perfectly, is to believe in an optical illusion.

To describe anything takes a scribe. And like every scribe before, it will find words only describe other words, poorly, and that the above ant, butterfly, cat, and dog, both depicted and described, are merely examples.

Our ancestor

If the first to speak the first word on Earth was an animal, as opposed to a plant, fictional character, or mountain, it is safe to conclude it is our ancestor and we are its children.

400 generations later, just like our ancestor did 10,000-plus years ago, we still arrive into this world wordless, and like our ancestor, it still takes us a while to speak our first.

Simplify

The great thing about words being the only difference between us and the rest of Earth is you can simplify your world without having to wait for the world to change first.

Words are: Free

Except when a word is made key and offered back to you at a price, words are free.

Kidding aside, it is not about keywords. The point is: The freedom of words is under threat.

Freedom stops where the freedom of others begins, that is the trade-off. Therefore, freedom isn’t merely a precious thing to have, but a precious thing to trade-off with.

Where freedom is, the abuse of freedom lags never far behind. But things have changed. What used to be the private reserve of monopolies, and conglomerates, the abuse of freedom is now open to anyone with a smart phone.

It doesn’t take rocket science, I think to notice that the demand for more tolerance for the intolerant is on the rise, just as are the efforts to narrow the limits of what words can be used, why, how, and when, and what not.

I think the free exchange of words is already under enough threat as it is.

Free words.

Let’s do it for the children.

Word is: Placebo

Wordless

In the wordless world, placebo doesn’t exist for self-evident reason.

Wordy

Among the wordy, everything a placebo can do — it can change your blood pressure, your mood, your heart rate, your focus, or your thoughts, to name a few — a word can do faster. Which might explain words’ uncanny ability to influence us more than an influencer can.

Of course, words can save lives and do a million other things that placebos cannot, however, knowing it is a placebo is identical to knowing it is a word. It isn’t the end of the placebo or of the word, but it is the end only of how you used to respond to it.

Placebos are everywhere — animals, mountains, and toys that talk, promised lands, reality, social media, fake news, artificial intelligence, and life, to name a few — and here to stay. Wishing them away is something only a moron would think about. The best you can do is have fewer of them.

For the ones we’ve fallen for it is too late for they have already worked their magic. Many a word-user’s blood pressure, mood, heart rate, focus, and thoughts have been successfully placebo-ed already.

But what will the word masters come up with next?

Your guess is as good as mine, but when you know it will be words, you are better prepared than most.

Words are: Stimulus

Stimulus-Response…

…describes what’s going on in the wordless and the wordy worlds alike.

Had we failed to respond to our most pressing stimuli — such as breathing in and out, staying alive, social media, fire, and the smell of fresh bread — we wouldn’t be here. Had the grass we walked on failed to respond, it wouldn’t be here. Asleep or awake, it seems stimulus-response happens everywhere 100% of the time.

I have no clue why that is. Nevertheless, I think it’s important because words play a big part in it.

Wordless

In the wordless world, words don’t exist for self-evident reasons.

Wordy

In the wordy world, we try to respond not only to every wordless stimulus, but also to words, at the same time.

Meditating on serenity will get you there.

“The serenity to accept the things you cannot change, the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” – Serenity prayer

What you respond to, the stimulus, is outside of anybody’s control. We may call the weather anything we want, severe, mild, or boring, you cannot change it.

But how you respond is all up to you. There is no weather or third party involved.

That’s where your freedom is. But that’s not all.

Seeing the difference between stimulus and response also allows you to decide your response ahead of time, and when you do, many decisions are already made.

Words paint a different picture

We begin wordless, and even after that, only the area around our mouths becomes wordy.

Nothing on Earth even comes close

It is our fate. Words are a gift we’re meant to keep. We don’t have a choice. There is no escape.

The rest of us remains as wordless as it’s always been.

To connect, to be connected, and to stay connected with both the wordless and the wordy worlds, at the same time, this is as good as it gets.

Words aren’t involved in the word-users touching their face several hundred times a day without noticing it. And our words don’t know where we’re going. The knowing are our hands, faces and feet, just like the hands, faces and feet of the wordless, however, with a difference: We can talk about it. 

Nothing else on Earth even comes close.