Changing the World
We know that language can and does transform ignorance. Is ignorance the primary incremental transformer—the changer—of language? This entry is not a thesis, however, but a sort of exploratory campaign asking: Is verbal (and grammatical) ignorance a prime mover? If so, should ignorance be mined, maintained, guarded? Treasured—like gold? The treasure: verbal ignorance flowing like seams of molten heavy metal through vaults of elemental earth, hardening, cooling into that shining malleable material we find so ravishing to the eye, so moving to the fight-or-flight impulse?
The nucleosynthetic explosive scattering of stardust, condensing in the galaxy, in the solar system, in our molten earth. —Shining ignorance! How does ignorance coin phrases, words; change spellings and meanings? And shouldn’t these incremental (even single word) changes be solely the province of the expert, the intellectual, even the wise? “Nucleosynthetic” was not coined by an ignorant person. Shakespeare made up over 1500 words or changed their usage. We use these words today. Creatives can be smart, da Vinci certainty was, but it's not the usual thing. Smart people are close readers, looking deeply into creative works; creative people don't do this. They'd have no time to be creative if they did.
cosmic dust: “a bright jet of glowing material trailed by an intricate, orange-hued plume of gas and dust.”
Words are media for the revelation of thoughts, and motives of our minds, says Unger’s Bible Dictionary, paraphrased. Further, In his incarnate flesh, the Logos, God made Himself known to us. So it is that “logos” means reasonable word. Logos is expressed, elegant, articulate thought. And is a human being, the Son of God.
The best kind of ignorance takes a wild thing, cheerfully looks it over to see if the wild thing makes sense. Sometimes it does. So often ignorance is also stupid, as in unable to think clearly, coherently, about consequences. But, in this case, ignorance need not be stupid.
Thomas Pynchon, in the introduction to Slow Learner: Early Stories, wrote that our ignorance is no empty place on the “mental map.” It has contours, topography, intersections, and directions. He suggests we familiarize ourselves with this ignorance and its provisions for writing good stories.
Or a good entry. (So—ignorant—I have not read the Pynchon work noted in paraphrase.) Yet when ignorance is plain stupid it might just repeat itself until it thinks it’s smart. This happens in politics and all kinds of extreme fundamentalism. I’m thinking, the Klan, Nazis, Goebbels, repetition, lack of nuance; ALL CAPS, a lack of thoughtful extrapolation from fundamentals. The sound bite, tweet, harangue, ALL CAPS!!!.
Still, fundamentals cannot be thrown out. Atoms are fundamental, for instance. There is nothing ignorant about an atom with its dense nucleus and curtain of both charged and neutral particles. Without the fundamental atoms there’d be no extrapolation in compounds, molecules, cells, membranes, etc.. Included among the et cetera would be us, persons who may speak a reasonable word.
© S. Dorman 2024