part0022

We have pointed out that nobody would try to drink the ink-stains that form the word "water" on this page, yet most people have semantic delusions and hallucinations entirely similar to that. The reader has perhaps begun to appreciate that this hardly qualifies as a hyperbole or exaggeration.

To paraphrase Professor S. I. Hayakawa, when you go into a restaurant you expect the menu to say "Choice Cut of Top Sirloin Steak" and would be taken aback if it said "A hunk of meat chopped off a dead castrated bull." Yet the two verbal formulae refer to the same non-verbal event in the space-time continuum, as vegetarians would quickly tell us.

Words do not equal in space-time the things or events they denote, yet people react to a choice between words as if making a choice between "real" things or events in the existential world.

This "hypnosis by words" or "living in a cocoon of words" can even lead to murder. Literally. I recall three typical examples:

1. Several years ago in San Francisco, a man ordered an extra portion of steak in a restaurant, saying he wanted to take some home for his dog. The waiter commented that he personally fed his own dog on Red Heart dog food. The customer replied that his dog would not eat dog food and demanded steak. The waiter said, "You've got one fussy mutt there, mister." The man, badly hurt by these insensitive words, went home and brooded.

His beloved dog, a prince of canines, had been called "a fussy mutt." He brooded more. Imagine how you would feel if your mother were called "a drunken old whore." To this man, having his precious hound called "a fussy mutt" apparently seemed equally insufferable. He went back to the restaurant and shot the waiter dead.

2. Salman Rushdie recently composed the kind of orchestration of words and meanings we generally call a "novel," as distinguished from a "poem." an "insurance policy" or a "political speech." The late Rev. Ayatollah Khomeini found this artistic arrangement of words as unbearable as the Federal Communications Commission finds the Seven Unspeakable Words on their Taboo List. As you have no doubt read, the Rev. Ayatollah offered a reward of $5,000,000 to whoever would go to England and shoot Mr. Rushdie in the head with bullets.

(Mr. Rushdie had not referred to Mohammed as "a fussy mutt," but what he did write, even if intended as art, impacted upon the Rev. Ayatollah as just as hurtful as "fussy mutt" to the man in San Francisco.)

3. When the English conquered Ireland, they changed the name of the old town of Derry to Londonderry. This has proven unacceptable to many Irish patriots and utterly insufferable to the Irish Republican Army. The Protestants in the town, on the other hand, prefer "Londonderry" to "Derry." As of 1990, if you say "Derry" in one part of that town you may well get shot by the Ulster Freedom Fighters, and if you say "Londonderry" on the other side of town you may get shot by the I.R.A.

The U.F.F. believe their fight "is" for the rights of the Protestant majority in Northern Ireland; the I.R.A. believe their fight "is" for the rights of the Catholic minority. Whose civil rights seem realistically infringed when one says "Derry" instead of "Londonderry" or "Londonderry" instead of "Derry"?

If I write that what actually exists in sensory-sensual space-time "is not" "Derry" or "Londonderry" but a collection of people, houses, parks, bridges, pubs, streets etc., I may seem to escape Ideology and move closer to existential "reality" or common human experience. Right?

Wrong. On closer examination, this proves not quite the case. " A collection of people, houses, streets etc.," consists of words and what you will find in that place in space-time remains something not words but non-verbal "things" and events.

"Non-verbal things and events," however, remains still words . . . in English . . . and we seem to have landed in another kind of Strange Loop.

Perhaps Zen Buddhism can enlighten us. After all, Zen has promised Enlightenment for several hundred years now.

A Zen koan of long standing goes as follows: The roshi (Zen teacher) holds up a staff and says, "If you call this a staff, you affirm. If you say it is not a staff, you deny. Beyond affirmation or denial, what is it?"

I suggest that readers reflect on what has been said so far, about the Seven Forbidden Words and the "fussy mutt" and the killings in Northern Ireland. Reflect on "the map is not the territory" and "the menu is not the meal." Close the book, close your eyes, sit quietly, and think about this Zen riddle. Wait a minute and see if a light slowly dawns on you.