On January 11th, 2016, I started a daily practice of writing a joke meditation of the day called Cracked Pot Meditations. I was still recovering from the treatment of cancer, and I was having very challenging cognitive issues, so I chose just to put something simple and easy to write every day. Posting it to the blog allowed me to have some accountability. Some of those meditations were poorly written and unedited. I have gone back and begun editing these and adding an illustration, starting with the April 27th meditation. I hope you enjoy.
Meditation for June 13th
Words Are Viruses
“Virus.Noun. A piece of code that is capable of copying itself and typically has a detrimental effect, such as corrupting the system or destroying data.”
Virus also derives from the word venom, which suggests that it can also mean something that poisons the heart or the soul.
Words and language are a virus. Look at how words have become weaponized and even used as an antidote for the poison swallowed by another’s words.
William S. Burroughs warned us in the 1960s about how dangerous words would become. Now, with the internet readily available to almost everyone, a worldwide viral disease is spreading. People with low reading comprehension think they have the same access to knowledge and wisdom as everyone else.
A person can hide behind words like a castle wall. They built the wall, and now the rest of the world can see it, but the person doesn’t have to stand by that wall at all. The virus doesn’t express anything but what the writer tries to intend, but the virus is where the reader interprets the writer’s work, and in some ways, the reader misinterprets the writer’s intent.
If a person says the same words to the same reader, but out loud and to each other, the argument can be stood up for the arguer, and the arguer can clarify the point being made and possibly interpret the arguer’s intent correctly. You can’t do that with the written word. If a person says their argument in front of an audience, that person can defend their statement.
A word can have as much meaning as we let it. People used the word gypped to mean getting ripped off for a long time. It was short for Gypsy. It means that Gypsies rip people off, so you are dishonest like a Gypsy. No one felt bad about using that word until people started giving it power in the sense that Gypsies are not all thieves and grifters and that saying gyped is a stereotype that hints at hate.
Gay is another word. For a long time during the 70s, through the 80s and 90s, gay was used as something lame. “Star Trek TNG is gay.” The power of that word became sickeningly strong when it is pointed out that saying something is gay is saying that someone who identifies as gay is less than someone who identifies as straight. Gay, the word, is used as poison, whether it’s talking about something being lame or someone’s sexual preference.
The Internet is an instant engine for information, and now, with our mobile phones carrying this power in our pockets, we get instant news at the speed of light. Now, we see things happen in real time and need an explanation of why things are happening at the speed at which the news is coming. The businesses that supply us with that information try to satisfy us with think pieces and opinions that may or may not be accurate or relevant.
We have people who want to defend their lifestyles and who they are by writing open letters and blogs and commenting on other people’s blogs and open letters. Others just share these blogs and open letters to show how we feel about something with someone else’s voice. We react if we disagree with our own blogs, open letters, and forwarded blogs. The words mean nothing but the meaning we give them.
Words aren’t action. Words are chickens clucking loudly in the chicken coop, driving their dog mad. Words are inaction. “I declare this!” Or “Our hearts and prayers…” But it does nothing. Changing things requires little to no words, just action.
Prayer
Socrates,
Without the written word, we would never know you
And the questioning of things to death.
You argued that the written word would lead to the atrophy of knowledge.
That without dialogue and face to face interaction,
We would create the illusion of wisdom,
And we would think we were gaining knowledge without really understanding.
You said the lack of dialogue would take away our ability to engage in the debate.
Little did you know that we would be carrying small rectangles full of resources,
and we would pull that out to remember a movie that Steve Martin was in during the 90s where he played a con man whose first line was, “I’ll buy that camera from you for a thousand dollars”, and since we have the little rectange, we never need actually to remember anything, so we rely on just looking it up when we need the info, leaving our brains open to anxiety and depressive thought.
These written words are shoved into our brains, where that brain decides how to interpret the information, and the interpretation might not be anywhere close to the author’s intent.
Craft
Instead of starting an argument online, do it to that person’s face. Stand up for what you believe in and argue your point. This will not only challenge the other person to defend their platform, but you will have to rely on your ability to speak in front of the person instead of hiding behind a keyboard in your dark, miserable room with nothing but the angry glow of your computer lighting up your ugly, lonely, purposeless face.
Goal
The best thing to do is to turn off the computer and love someone or create something. Words have poisoned you. Go outside.