Great Works at 10.20am Spring 2015

The language being used by Laozi has a complex message deeply rooted inside of it. It explores the complex abstract nature of language, without directly touching the matter. The writings are full of paradoxical  messages, such as from lines 7 to 10 when he says “Hence always rid yourself of desires in order to observe it’s secrets; But always allow yourself to have desires in order to  observe its manifestations. These two are the same, But diverge in name as they issue forth”. Language, although getting us as far as it has, is one of the greatest limitations of man. With this in mind, we can explore the language being used by him to get a better understanding.

Laozi first touches on the purest most fundamental use for language by saying “the way that can be spoken of, is not the constant way. The name that can be named, is not the constant name”. The first sentence, implies that if a way can be spoken of, it isn’t always the way, and the second implies if something can be named, it isn’t the constant name. What does this really mean? We are only animals, and we only have 5 senses. Our eyes can only see a tiny portion of the light spectrum, and yet we have words such as beautiful, or smart. In reality, what is beautiful to us, is only beautiful to us, and isn’t the constant beautiful. Being smart helps us, but isn’t the constant name for what smart actually means to us. Laozi continues to say “The nameless was the beginning of heaven and earth, The named was the mother of the myriad creatures”. The Universe is estimated, by as far as our senses have been able to tell us, to be 13.7 billion years old, with the earth  forming 9 billion years later, and humans sprouting only 500 thousand years ago. We’ve only been here for a tiny fraction of existence, yet we claim to a divine connection. Names were meaningless, and still are meaningless. Only our continuous existence gives them relevance. Myriad creatures refers to any physical being, with more emphasis on modern humans relative to this argument. Modern humans will insist that there are other explanations for existence, with stories of humans having a divine connection to the unknown, but those points of views are falsified just by there being existence.

Laozi then says “Hence always rid yourself of desires in order to observe its secrets; But always allow yourself to have desires in order to observe its manifestations. These two are the same, but diverge in name as they issue forth”. Laozi is now explaining the way to understand the more important picture to the story. Our desires are meaningless to the overall existence of nature, because they will only ever be relevant to our existence. We have to be able to let go of our human desires, to observe the true nature of somethings existence, while still having human desires to observe somethings actual physical self.  By saying that the two are the same, but diverge in name as they issue forth, Laozi is explaining that ultimately, these are the same thing. The nature of the atoms within a physical manifestation, can be understood by first noticing it from conscious interaction, through existence. This helps us to understand why language is a block to our mental capacities, and further explores this in the next section.

Laozi says “The whole world recognizes the beautiful as beautiful, yet this is only the ugly; The whole world recognizes the good as the good, yet this is only the bad”. This foreshadows the importance of language to our existence. To have a word such as good, destroys so much valuable information from nature. You can say almost anything is good, which takes away any actual valuable information that should be attached to the word. We’ve made good meaningless, and this is what is bad. There is also no such thing as beautiful, as explored before, and yet we assign this word to things in our every day lives, destroying valuable information, and this is the ugly. Laozi then tells of many opposites, such as something and nothing producing each other, the difficult and easy complementing each other, the long and short incline towards each other, note and sound harmonize with each other, and before and after follow each other.  This is where it gets tricky to follow. These oxymoron, when approached from an unbiased unconscious lens, can be interpreted to mean much more than at first glance. Existence can be used to explain all of these. To have existence, is impossible, from our understanding of the world. Cause and effect is interesting, because, when looking at multiple events, you realize that the first effect was the cause for the second effect, which means they are the same in nature, but diverge in name as they issue forth. Cause is effect, and effect is cause. this is an impossible loop, for nothing could have created something. Nothing cannot cause something, and something can’t come from nothing, yet here we are. The infinite cannot be explained by the finite, and this is why language is important and complex.

Clearly, this message is complex, and that is what makes the writings of Laozi so interesting and insightful. There is a reason these writings are still here today for us to read. It is extremely relevant to where we are now, in the information age. After billions of years of evolution, information is getting more complex, data is increasing, and communication is losing value. In order to continue to evolve, and to increase the reliability and value of language, we need to understand our place in existence and add to the collective conscious of nature, not just a mindless interaction with a physical properties.