“I am.” is the shortest sentence in the English language, and with a romantic imagination, maybe the first. The second was probably the first subversion: “I’m not.” Having been developed at a primitive level some two million years ago, language was created for inter-species relations, and became the key abstract means for identifying, cataloging and passing on knowledge.
The origin of our language begins in the common vocal range of a man. A variety of individual sounds that can be made without strain were refined to comprise our alphabet, and form approximately 158,000 different sound combinations. They allow a concise, phonically-clear conveyance to be spoken and understood. Our system allows no meaning to the concept of “A,” beyond its visual representation of the sound made. A fundamental advantage exists in this type of language, as its components maintain no fixed correlation to ideas. In contrast, the Chinese language has only 1,600 sound combinations, severely limiting the number of spoken words. Their alphabet is comprised of about three-thousand commonly used character-words (out of sixty-thousand) which define preset ideas,yet the combinations of our twenty-six are nearly limitless, as are our comparative advancements. Why? To hamper expression is to limit individual progress, which is to limit social progress; and this in part, is the reason the language spoken by the greatest number of people on Earth is rarely used outside Asian borders. Their symbols denote prior meaning, and therefore tax the creation of new meaning, skipping an essential cognitive step. Ours provides no ideas from which a consciousness must begin, allowing it an empty slate—full freedom to use the tool without the interference of non-self-derived, non-cognitive elements.
The definition of our every word denotes a specific, exact concept. Concept-formation is a sub-concept itself, of identification. The cognitive progression goes: existence, consciousness, perception, identification, concept-formation. It is obvious how the first step of perception precedes this second step of identification. To identify and integrate efficiently, one must see as clearly as possible to grasp and define the greatest number of attributes of any given entity. The simplest concepts are of perception—the words formed to represent physical objects, such as the concept pencil.All entities observed on the planet are given names, as are all attributes of entities. The observation of their attributes forms these sub-concepts, such as arms and legs—of a man, a dog and a frog, excluding the arm of a chair, as the subset biologicalbecomes implicit in the trend. Such associations are created and can branch and be cross-referenced infinitely, given their relevance to human application. Entities spawn all abstract concepts as well, in attributes such as dimension, mass, energy, speed and trajectory—in the size of an atom, the energy of the sun and the speed of light. The definition of a concept indicates where it came from, pinpointing its location and differentiating itself from all other concepts on Man’s tree of knowledge, and spawns derivative concepts of its own.
Practical use and clear conveyance of these concepts is a result of clear understanding, achieved by a focused mind. The discipline to understand them exactly, determines the quality of our actions and the ultimate quality of our lives. Words are like building blocks. They are what they are, they mean what they mean, and you can build what you want with them. When you discover or create something new, you combine words or signify a new word to describe it. Some understand the medium and built skyscrapers. Some corrupt good concepts to knock them down. There is a clear link to why the world’s most popular language shares that stature alongside the world’s standard of monetary value: the American dollar. One respects free will, while the other is stabilized by the exercise of free will. The existence of such concepts as passion, justice, rationality, precision, tenacity, effectiveness, intransigence and independence, presuppose great men of the past who didbuild and reached great heights.