The Danger Of Language

Language does indeed simplify many aspects of everyday life, such as casual communication between family members or the ability to understand signs.  Its benefits are blatant.  There is nevertheless a danger associated with how some people might perceive language.  This danger is a possibility in any civilization whose members are not all rationalists--which means that almost every recorded society has likely had at least some of its members succumb to this danger.

The danger of language is that individuals and the societies they form might not look past words to the concepts those words are supposed to convey.  There are, in fact, many examples of this already: many people use words like "rational" and "conscious" even though it is clear that they are likely not referring to the exact metaphysical or epistemological concepts behind them.  Most people use language not as a means to the end of consistently communicating philosophical concepts, but as a means to the end of fitting in with their culture of ignorance.

The incompetence of the majority does not reflect negatively on language itself, of course.  Nothing at all is illicit just because it could be misused.  There is nothing at all that cannot be misused, and language is just one of many things that is not used in a rational manner by the majority.  It is just that a misunderstanding of language has ramifications for a person's worldview and lifestyle as a whole.  Someone who fails to see past words to ideas--and analyze those ideas in light of reason rather than in light of arbitrary social norms--will inevitably have an incomplete or assumption-based grasp of concepts at most.

Language has many beneficial impacts on the group of people who use it, so language itself is not problematic; no irrational approach to language could ever erase its genuinely helpful applications.  All the same, each individual who seeks truth must not fail to look to concepts rather than words when evaluating ideas.  After all, words are nothing more than constructs that are of no immediate need when there is no one else to converse with.  The fool is the one who thinks there is no way to analyze concepts without language or no need to look beyond the arbitrary linguistic customs of their culture.