What’s more important the thing or what the thing is to represent? We as humans place value in material things, words, and even in people. What is more important the thing, the words, or the people? People buy diamonds, fancy cars, huge homes, big guns, fancy (and ragged worn out) cloths all in an effort to show that because they have this “thing” that sets them apart. This “thing” that they have makes them special and or different from everyone else. This “thing” shows the world that because they have obtained this “thing” then they are. What’s more important: the thing, the words, or the person?
Sometimes people become wordsmiths. It serves many leaders well to be masters of words. Words are nothing more than labels; complicated sounds that universally represent various emotions, objects, everything. If it were not for words most people could not communicate. They would be lost in a world that more than ever before has more words, and more people who understand those words. The people now know more words from different lands and have even mastered the slightest of dialects and inflections. Words are some what important yet so worthless. Words, those complicated sounds, if not for the meaning behind them are nothing. If I repeat a sound, say a word over and over again it does not change the meaning of the word. If I consistently say the word over and over again but it is a word that has no meaning, represents no emotion, labels no object the word is useless, the word is worthless. If I say many words yet do exactly the opposite of what the words have become to mean then the words I say mean nothing. What’s more important: the thing, the words, or the person?
People like to be individuals and at the same time be part of a collective. Most people spend most of their lives either doing one or the other and at the same time thinking and knowing beyond a shadow of consideration that people who do the opposite of what they do are completely wrong. People feel comfort in groups whether it is a group of many thousands or a group of three. The group is the foundation for civilization, the group makes families, families make neighborhoods, neighborhoods make cities, and cities make nations. The individual has said to be god’s greatest creation. The individual was the one that created art, music, literature. It was the individual that became the hero whom slew the lion, dragon, criminal. It was the individual that was outcast from their group because they were too different only later, many years after they have died, they are labeled “genius”. The individual was the one who set themselves apart so much so that they became the leader of their group. Some people say that certain groups are evil just because they are that certain group; the fact that a person belongs to that group they are inherently evil too. People do not get to choose the groups they belong to most of the time. In the times they do they choose them because they find that their group represents them. Their group is a collective of people that is like them. The individual can be cruel. The individual has masterminded some of the most horrific events in history, has come up with some of the most hated words ever spoken, and has made some of the most deadly things they have ever known.
What’s more important: the thing, the words, or the people?
©Christopher F. Brown 2009
