A Word That Never Shows Up

What happens when we call something a name? Why should we call a mighty big black animal 'an elephant'? When an elephant comes to attack the village, the first man who saw it can run in panic shouting aloud: "Elephant, elephant". It is very difficult to use something like 'a mighty big black animal' in this particular situation.

So the single word 'elephant' is equivalent to the group 'mighty big black animal'. If there are other mighty big black animals other than elephants here, then we can add a few words into this group and make them equivalent again. For example, to differentiate it from rhinos, we may add 'with big ears' to the group.

This is exactly what a dictionary does. It gives you groups of words equivalent to every word in it. Each word is supported by a group of other words. Each word in a group is supported by other groups of words, that is the next level. This chain goes on. That means a word, say 'black', supports another word, say 'elephant', with the help of other words. And at the same time the word 'black' is being supported by another group of words. There is no particular direction of this support. For example, as 'black' supports 'elephant', 'elephant' can support 'black' too. This gives us the image of language being a network, with each word being a node and support being the connection between two nodes.

But is it true that beyond the particular group which supports a word, the word has no identity? That a word cannot stand in isolation, in vacuum? Imagine of a word which needs no support but can support others. If it is not being supported by any words but it supports some words, then the words it supports can be used to support it. That is the result of the fact that there is no particular direction to this support. The same fact rules out the possibility of a word which gets support from some words but does not support even a single word. That means if a word has to stand alone, it should not be supported by any other word, as well as it should not support any other word.

Can such a word exist? I don't think so. Suppose we made up such a word, say, 'xeird'. Someone will ask you: "What is xeird?" You will answer: "It is the word which stands alone." At that very moment the word xeird has lost its aura. Because you have supported xeird with the group of words:'it, is, the, word, which, stands and alone.

You can keep xeird alive at least for a longer time this way: keep silence to every query related to xeird. Problem with this method is that when you keep on silence to continued queries from a lot of people, they will themselves kill xeird this way: "Xeird is the word to which weird people keep mum."

So what about creating your own xeird and keeping it just within you? Never utter it to anybody? You create a word and you make yourself believe that it has no associations with any other word, living or dead. I'm not sure of this idea being great too. The new word may hardly qualify for a word. A word is a part of language, I believe. And language happens between, at least, two individuals. That brings us to the idea that a word has no existence inside a single individual.

Now you go to your friend and conspire to mint out the standalone word. That only prolongs the life of the special word a little more longer; till one of you dies. After it, even if the other is still alive, by the reason that you need one more individual to communicate it, the word is also dead. You both cannot preserve it for ever. You will need the support of other words to preserve it. That will only shorten the lifespan of the word.

What about creating a larger group of people? The singular word will be transferred from one generation to the next so that it lives as long as the group exists. But again the word will need the support of other words to be conveyed to the individuals who were not present at the time the word was first created. So this also is not practical.

This point should have come at the first place: what is the purpose of creating such a word? Even if all the above barriers can be overcome, who will spend time and resources for such a ridiculous thing ? Is it that ridiculous? I don't know.

Change We See

I have learned from a movie that when a particular kind of dinosaur comes to attack you, you should not run. You stay as steady as possible, even if you are close enough to get its breath on your face. Because that kind of dinosaurs can only detect things that move with respect to their surroundings. I think there are animals with that primitive kind of vision in our age too. Frogs are such a folk, I remember reading it somewhere.

The problem is that we, the latest organisms on the earth, suffer from a similar kind of handicap. But at a different level. We sense only those things that changes with respect to time. Eyes are the sense organs that can detect changes in electric and magnetic fields, within some range. Light is a combination of electromagnetic waves, I have studied. Ears can hear only the changes in the surrounding air pressure, again, within some range. I don't know the mechanisms behind smell and taste. But I strongly feel that chemical changes are involved in them. About touch, if your skin in contact with the thing you are touching has absolutely no movement about that thing, you won't feel anything. That's my belief. And that can be wrong. Sometimes, right too.

Now the question I have is, what is beyond all these changes. Can we never see anything that does not change? My questions get very complicated when I approach this unchanging thing. 

Why was I not taught about it in schools? May be it is too complicated. But it is very fundamental too. Perhaps the most fundamental.

I have seen people with these queries. Or I am reiterating their questions here. Many have died. Some answers have survived here and there.

May be we will know things better one day.

Connected through Time

Ringworm, many websites say, is a fungal disease. Fungus, I imagine, must be a miniatured form of mushrooms. But mushrooms are commonly found on inanimate things like decaying trees, not on animals. I had ringworm on my right foot. And biologically I am a member of the species, homo sapiens, which is an animal species.

I was looking for a cure for this skin disease. I found some home remedies, among which I liked this one: apply the paste of Neem (Azadirachta indica, scientific name) or Babul to the affected area. There are a lot of Neem trees in our street. Neem, I guess from its scientific name, must have originated in India. And it must have originated a long time ago, tens of thousands of years, may be, I don't know exactly.

I got out to get some Neem leaves. There was a tree just in front of the house, but its branches were chopped a week before in the fear that in rain it would fall on another house nearby. I moved a few steps towards the temple where there were three or four more trees. I plucked a few leaves and came back. I was thinking, who planted those trees? May be someone knew that it can cure diseases like mine and planted them. May be.

How this Neem paste is going to cure my disease? The paste must have, among other things, some chemical compounds in it which may be lethal to the disease-causing fungus. And why should the Neem tree store these chemical compounds in its leaves? Because it also wants to defend itself against fungi; similar to the fungus on my skin or other. We two face similar threats.

But this simple tree has the means to fight a dangerous microbe, and a member of the most advanced species on the earth, I, do not. Why is it so? May be because I can go to that tree and pluck some leaves, whenever I want, without asking permission or even a "thank you".

Allopathic medicines for the disease may be containing these or other chemical compounds to kill the fungus. Such medicines are prepared after a lot of research and testing, I have heard.

When did the tree do research and testing? This happened over tens of thousands of years before this tree was born. This tree received the results of that process when it was still attached to its mother/father, when it was a seed. Now this tree whispers to the trees of its kind yet to be born, attached to it, among many other things, that: "this particular chemical compound is effective against this particular fungus".

And a human like me will come again to the next tree seeking relief, and pluck its leaves. That is a continuity.

May be. I don't know.