**\#️⃣ Tags:** #Wisdom #Language > **🌱 Planted:** Tue 22 April 2025 --- Language is an incredibly useful tool. Without it, and without a suitable replacement, we'd have a pretty tough time communicating with one another. However, language can be dangerous because it doesn't just describe reality, it also fragments it. We use language to translate what is going on in the world into particular things (nouns) and events (verbs). These things in turn "have" properties (adjectives and verbs), which implies separation between the thing and the property itself. All languages therefore represent the world as if it were a collection of distinct and independent parts[^1]. Through the use of language, we essentially carve "things" out from the continuous flow of existence, and by doing so, we both cause and reinforce a subject-object duality. This makes it seem like we are a separate self acting upon the external world, ultimately contributing to the feeling of separation between us as organisms and our environment. All of our classification structures, which of course use language as a basis for description, suggest the same division of the world. As soon as we classify, we also divide. To say what something *is* is also to say what it *is* not. Every label therefore draws an artificial boundary which implies an opposite—something that is outside itself, something *other*. Language also can't capture the richness of our experience, either. > [!quote] > In psychotherapy the words we use both give rise to and kill meaning. Words can name and create meaning, bringing experience to expression and understanding. However, they never capture precisely what is. We can get lost in words. They can separate us from experience, imposing alien meanings on it instead of being congruent with it. Experience is basic, even though without words we cannot articulate it. [^2] We can apply this to how we describe human experiences. When we label someone "depressed" or "anxious", we're taking one fleeting aspect of their experience and then taking it to describe their whole being. The person who feels depressed or anxious is now a depressed or anxious person, and because that classification has been made, the possibility of them also being happy or joyful is at the same time diminished. These linguistic boundaries shape more than just our concepts. The artificial separation caused by our language has affected medicine, psychology, psychotherapy and philosophy, including the fundamental way we think and orient toward the world. It affects our way of being, and ultimately how we treat ourselves, others and the world. # See Also - This is a symptom of the [[Separation Paradigm]]. - This is why [[Self-Concept|Our sense of self unfolds intersubjectively, not separately]], because we can't be someone or something in isolation of our environment. - This is also why we encounter [[Developmental Trauma#The Issue of Recognition|The Issue of Recognition]], because we're artificially dividing our mental from our physical processes while isolating and focusing on individual body parts and/or systems as the basis of diagnosis. - It is also why we should [[Never mistake the finger for the moon]]. [^1]: Inspired by [[Psychotherapy East and West by Alan Watts]], particularly chapter 2, Society and Sanity. [^2]: [[Grace Unfolding by Greg Johanson and Ron Kurtz]], p. 1.