It's all in the language "Look magazine, January 13, 1970"
"On a personal level, there'll be no need to cling to formal grammar to convey meaning. Speech doesn't have to be linear; it can come out as a compressed overlay of facts and sensations and moods and ideas and images. Words can serve as signals, and others will understand. They way a man feels can be unashamedly expressed in sheer sound, such as a low, glottal hum, like the purring of a cat to indicate contentment.... Feelings have a meaning. Sounds have a meaning . Open language can be a joy, a language we can growl with. Words can cramp your style."
Suppose that you are on trial for a crime you did not commit; you need the clearest focus, the fullest concentration on facts, the strictest justice in the minds of those you face, in order to prove your innocence; but what "comes out" of the judge and jury is a "compressed overlay of facts and sensations and moods and ideas and images."
Suppose that the government issues a decree which expropriates everything you own, sends your children to a concentration camp, your wife to a firing squad, yourself to forced labor, and your country into a nuclear war; you struggle frantically to understand why; but what "comes out" of your country's leadership is "a compressed overlay of facts and sensations and moods and ideas and images."
These examples are not exaggerations; they are precisely what the two articles quoted mean, and the only things they can mean in that factual, existential reality where your sole tool of protection is concepts, i.e. language.
"Kant Versus Sullivan" Ayn Rand - 1970 |
