In yesterday’s Metaviews salon, our motley crew dove deep into the wild and wondrous terrain of language—its power, its peril, and its paradoxes.
We summoned thinkers like George Lakoff, Noam Chomsky, and Walter Ong to help frame the discussion, but as always, the most revelatory insights emerged from the collective intelligence of the group.
We debated the boundaries of language—do animals possess it, or merely the shadows of it? Many argued convincingly that they do, challenging long-held anthropocentric assumptions. Language, after all, may not be exclusive to humans, even if its structures differ across species.
We also wrestled with the viral nature of language: its ability to spread, mutate, and infect. Language is a force that inhabits us as much as we wield it—shaping perception, encoding power, and scaffolding our understanding of reality. It is both deeply social and intensely contextual, shifting meaning depending on time, place, and speaker.
In a world of proliferating dialects and splintered platforms, we noted how common meaning feels increasingly rare. Language is flourishing in diversity, yet fragmented in cohesion. Are we losing the ability to understand each other even as we gain new ways to express ourselves?
It was, once again, a brilliant gathering—part provocation, part poetry. The Metaviews salon continues to prove that spontaneous conversation, when anchored in curiosity and care, can illuminate what formal discourse often obscures.
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I very much enjoyed listening to your conversation on this topic. I feel like it grazed the surface of something profoundly important about us all that we as a species desperately need to understand. Perhaps it is about recognizing the extent to which our identities are shaped and affected, our thinking constrained by it. Its power to sculpt us. Bringing my comment back to the current political context, it's little wonder that these new world fascists prioritize controlling the narrative. They have become adept at wielding a weaponized language to smite their enemies. Anyway, it's a fascinating topic and I hope you visit it again.