Man sold his soul for time, language, tools, weapons and dominance. And to make sure he didn't get out of line, these invaders kept an occupying garrison in his nondominant brain hemisphere. How else to explain anything as biologically disadvantageous as a weak hand? They gave with one hand and took back with another. Fifty-fifty. What could be fairer than that? Almost anything.
So it seems likely that the distinguishing factors, language and weak hand, are related. It seems unlikely that language was designed solely to convey information.
A rift is built into the human organism, the rift or cleft between the two hemispheres, so any attempt at synthesis must remain unrealizable in human terms. I draw a parallel between this rift separating the two sides of the human body and the rift that divided Madagascar from the mainland of Africa. One side of the rift drifted into enchanted timeless innocence. The other moved inexorably toward language, time, tool use, weapon use, war, exploitation, and slavery.
It would seem that merging the two is not viable, and one is tempted to say, as Brion Gysin did, 'Rub out the word.'
But perhaps 'rub' is the wrong word. The formula is quite simple: reverse the magnetic field so that, instead of being welded together, the two halves repel each other like opposing magnetics. This could be a road to final liberation, as it were, a final solution to the language problem, from which all human 'problems' stem.
What would a wordless world be like? As Korzybski said: ' I don't know. Let's see.'
Nothing is more expensive than to change the dies, the molds, and that is why the Boards and Syndicates and their subsidiary politicians, mafias, drug agents, police, churches, and news media don't want to know about a better human product, any more that General Motors want to know about a turbine engine. It would mean scrapping all existing dies from here to eternity.
And that is why dissent is of such concern to the Board: if diverted from its usual political expression, dissent could shatter the hallowed mold. Political dissent most often turns into whatever it opposes. America is turning into Stalinist Russia, becoming a complete control state with zero tolerance for dissent on any level.
Ghost of Chance (1991), William S. Burroughs, Pgs. 49-50.
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