My suggestion is thus: if what I say does not make sense, ask me “wtf did you mean with the abuse of that word?” rather than asserting “you are wrong, because that word means blah-blah”. Quite possibly, I know what you think it means, and I don’t care. Or possibly I don’t know what other people mean by it — feel free to inform me, I would like to know, even if I don’t care. Either way, I’m not going to let my lack of knowledge of your “supposedly correct” definition of a word stop me from using what I feel is the best word to communicate a certain idea. I aim to get you thinking. You might have noticed that this is not the place for people that don’t like thinking. Um… duh?

Let me give you some more background on what’s going through my mind then, some background on where I’m coming from…

At a young age, some guy tested me and slapped on a label: I was diagnosed with something like “kognitiewe denke”. Say wha’? Cognitive thinking? What’s that supposed to be? Maybe the psych dudes can help out: did my mother remember the label correctly? Is this old psych-speak that we no longer use, or is this still meaningful? Whatevah. Let’s get to what they meant by it. (“They”…)

Supposedly I’m cursed or gifted with an ability to recognise patterns, similarities, parallels, that other people supposedly do not see. Or do not necessarily see until the parallels are illustrated more clearly. Here is what I need to learn from this: I should not expect other people to see things the way I do. I am sharing my view of the world with you. I am playing with parallels and similarities that are apparently not “common knowledge”. (Read “wrong” if you like. I don’t particularly care. If it provokes just one or two thoughts, if it “raises consciousness”, to borrow from Professor Dawkins, mission accomplished.)

So now comes language. Language is a communication tool. Language is a tool by which we share concepts. A tool by which we have memetic sex. (Yes, this blog is an orgy.) Words in language might typically be attached, in some modernistic sense, to some particular meaning. You might feel fundamentalistic about this meaning. Take this Ayn Rand fan for example:

Elke woord het ‘n bepaalde betekenis. Vanuit ‘n neurologiese perspektief kan dieselfde neuron/neuronbaan nie verskillende betekenisse aan dieselfde woord hanteer nie of twee verskillende woorde met dieselfde betekenis nie, Die brein is ‘n fisiese struktuur en gehoorsaam die wette van die fisika waarvan die eerste die behoud van energie/materie en aldus van identiteit. ‘n Ding kan nie twee verskillende goed wees op dieselfde tyd nie.

To translate (my translation):

Every word has a specific meaning. From a neurological perspective, a particular neuron or neural pathway cannot handle different meanings attached to the same word, or different words with the same meaning. The brain is a physical structure and obeys the laws of physics, of which the first is the conservation of energy/matter and thus identity. Something cannot be two different things at the same time.

This sounds a little like woo-woo horse baloney to me. It sounds like the woo-woo artists’ abuse of “quantum physics”. But I don’t know much about neuro-psychology. Is this “horse baloney” factually correct? Or is this Ayn Rand stuff? OK, in an attempt at more fairness, it seems he is arguing that knowing multiple languages is a waste of energy? Or a waste of our limited neurons or neural-pathways? To give the man some credit (he asked for it), this was Johann Enslin. Enough of an Ayn Rand fan that he translated some of Ayn Rand’s stuff into Afrikaans.

I wish he could have attended the Chris Chameleon “concert” my family and I attended on Saturday. That guy is a master at playing with language. Mix your Dutch and your Afrikaans, and you can prove that one is zero. Anyway… There are some specific mental-health benefits to being multi-lingual, I cannot remember the exact details. Just, don’t deny me my multi-linguality. You can tell me I’m wasting energy, but aren’t we all, with our very existence? I’m enjoying mine…

But I digress. You might feel fundamentalistic about the meaning you attach to your words. I clearly don’t. (And I can explain my choice with reason/philosophy.) So this is what I apparently do: I remix language, I abuse words, in ways you are possibly not used to. I challenge you to look at the concepts I’m trying to communicate. The context in which I use words is supposed to help you understand what I mean with those words.

If you want to prove me wrong, you will first need to strive to understand the concepts I’m trying to deal. You need to look past the words. To achieve this, it may help to first assume I’m correct, if only you could understand my concepts, rather than first assuming I’m incorrect, which is effectively argument by incredulity. This exercise might even help you in your relationships.

Read this blog! Chicks dig guys that read this blog. Oh, and guys dig chicks that read this blog, unless the guy sucks and is not worth your time.. Ditto for the chicks.