The Parable of the Only Person Alive
One Deconstruction to Rule Them All
What if you were the only person alive? In some inconceivable twist of fate, you were the sole Homo sapiens who survived the process of evolution. Far fetched, I know. But for the purpose of this article, I want you to imagine that scenario.
This Substack publication is named, “Deconstructionology”. Yes, it’s a term I invented. The root word is NOT destruction, which would be to annihilate something. Rather, the root is deconstruction, which means to disassemble something into its separate parts in order to understand it more deeply and meaningfully. The lived human experience is filled with all kinds of tensions, contradictions, nuances, lessons and complexities, which may not be apparent on the surface or through the lens through which we most familiarly see the world.
In this article I am beginning a discussion about the deconstruction of something that is critical and inseparable from every aspect of our lives. Our religious or philosophical beliefs, all our relationships, our health and well-being, and virtually every need and desire represented in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, ranging from basic survival to the actualization of our fullest potentialities and possibilities, are all dependent upon this thing I want to examine. Next to breathing, this may be the second most significant aspect of being human.
I admit, I can be a bit dramatic in my article sub-titles. “One Deconstruction to Rule Them All” is obviously a reference to the Lord of the Rings line, “One ring to rule them all”, symbolizing the Ring’s power to control all the other Rings of Power. Likewise, by truly grasping the pathway of deconstruction I am identifying in this series, all the other aspects of deconstruction will naturally follow. But without it, one’s deconstruction of anything will be difficult in ways it doesn’t need to be.
So, what is it? What is this “one deconstruction that rules them all”?
Language.
It doesn’t often occur to people that deconstructing language could be useful. Aren’t there all kinds of more important and interesting topics we should be talking about? What about discussing world poverty or the upcoming presidential election? Or how about the latest controversy in the Bridgerton series, or whether the Detroit Lions will ever make it to the Super Bowl again.
But language??? That time when someone asked you at a dinner party if you’d ever sat down and contemplated the hidden mysteries of language - NEVER!
We learned how to speak and write when we were kids, what else is there to know? Sure, you can always expand your vocabulary, become a better speaker or take a writing course, but we more or less have language down. And what exactly is there to question? You use the word “dog” to refer to that four-legged animal that digs massive holes in your backyard, and everyone knows what you’re talking about. Right? Dog. Not cat, dog. How complicated it is?
I get it.
But as you may know, there is actually an entire branch of study called “linguistics”. Linguistics is the scientific study of language. There is also the Philosophy of Linguistics, which investigates the nature of language and the relations between language, language users, and the world.
In this series of articles I want to discuss how language, the most genius invention of our species, is also our biggest downfall. Understanding this could be the most transformational discovery of your life. At least it was for me.
I want to kick things off with, The Parable of the Only Person Alive.
The current world population at the time this sentence was written was 8,118,395,581. It’s considerably higher by now as you read this. But I’m asking that you imagine for a few moments that you’re the only human being in existence. Not 8+ billion people, but only 1 - you.
So as the only human being in existence, one day you find yourself in the field pictured in the above photo, and off in the distance you see this thing sticking up against the backdrop of the sky. It’s an odd-looking object. It’s like this thick pillar-thing coming out of the ground with little sticks all over the top, covered with these tiny green satiny things.
Keep in mind I’m using these words right now to describe this scene, but in this thought experiment with you as the sole human being in existence, these words would not mean anything to you because you don’t have language. Right? Human language is the social technology Homo sapiens created in order to communicate and collaborate with each other for the purpose of survival.
But if you were the only human being in existence, there would be no one else around to talk to. Right? Words like “tree” or “leaves” would be useless to you. What “tree”? What “leaves”? As far as you’re concerned, there’s just this strange thing sticking out of the ground. Whatever that thing is, amounts to your immediate experience of it through your direct sensory perception.
You certainly wouldn’t call it a “tree”. That would be meaningless. What would scratching out a bunch of random squiggly lines into letters and a word do for you, or grunting out some random vocalization from your larynx? Nothing. No one would see or hear these words. You’re the only living person. You could call the thing “car” or “pizza” - who cares, it’s only you.
So the situation is this. You’re in a field, and there’s this thing sticking out of the ground that you encounter through your five senses. You see it, smell it, touch it. End of story.
But let’s say one day rainy weather settles in, and you find shelter in a cave. You get bored sitting around by yourself. So for the fun of it, remembering that thing you encountered, you decide to invent a way to explain it. You think to yourself:
Just in case there might actually be one other human being in existence, I’ll come up with some method to explain this cool thing I saw.
So in that cave, while it’s pouring rain, you invent a random but quite elaborate system of words to communicate your experience, and you’re proud of what you managed to come up with.
You randomly create the word “tree” to call the thing that was sticking out of the ground. At first you were going to call it “erte” but it just seemed that “tree” rolled off the tongue easier. It didn’t really matter what you called it, you were making all these words up anyway.
Then you create all these other random words to describe it further. You invent the word “color” to indicate what the tree looked like. One of these “colors” you name “brown” and another “green” to distinguish a difference in how they appeared. The words you gave them was unimportant, there really wasn’t any “tree”, “color”, “brown” or “green”; these were just your arbitrary word-creations to explain your experience to someone else if they existed. By the time it stopped raining, you had invented an entire network of random words like "shape”, “round”, “square”, “tall”, “short”, “smooth”, “coarse” and so on, to describe this thing you were now calling a “tree”.
After the rain stops, you leave the cave and continue exploring. A few days later you make an astonishing discovery. It turns out that there actually is one other human being in existence. On your trek, you encounter another Homo sapiens in a desolate area far removed from that thing sticking out of the ground you experienced previously, which you randomly decided to name, “tree”.
The encounter was friendly enough. But rather than just standing around staring at each other, you decide you are going to try out your newly-invented system of random words on this person to explain your “tree” experience. Fortunate for you, this person had already invented a few of his own words in case he ever found himself in a situation where he needed to communicate with another existing human being.
So here’s how the conversation goes, with you starting this attempt at communicating by using your newly-invented word:
“Tree.”
“What is tree?”
“Brown.”
“What is brown.”
“Not green.”
“What is green”?
“Color.”
“What is color?”
This doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere, so you try a different tact:
“Tree.”
“What is tree?”
“Rectangle.”
“What is rectangle?”
“Not round.”
“What is round?”
“Shape.”
“What is shape?”
Oh boy, this is a disaster. You make one last attempt:
“Tree.”
“What is tree?”
“Tall.”
“What is tall?”
“Not short.”
“What is short?”
“Size.”
“What is size?”
Grrrr! Your attempts at trying to communicate are an epic fail.
With both of you exasperated, you decide to part ways. You think to yourself:
Life was easier on my own and who needs the trouble of explaining something to some meathead hominid who can’t understand anything. Obviously they should take a Language 101 class or something!
So you go your way, and they go theirs.
So this other human being wanders off through the desert and travels a great distance into an unknown mountainous region. Shockingly, they discover a tiny village with a small clan of other human beings.
At the time, this clan was embroiled in trying to understand why everything that governed their lives happened above their heads in the sky. For starters, there was this massive blazing ball that routinely appeared up above. Ominous roars would sometimes rumble in the sky. Tiny wet pellets were hurtled down from the heavens, and streaks of fire would flash above their heads. Every day the blazing ball disappeared and the sky ominously turned pitch black. Who or what was causing this??? In the absence of language, they would just point to the sky, grunt in fear and confusion, and shrug their shoulders in confusion.
So while you’re off somewhere re-thinking how you could better explain a tree if you ever got the chance again, this other human being discovers this clan. And this little group of people are elated, thinking perhaps this person had the answer, and could relieve their confusion and angst about what was controlling their lives from above. To the clan, it felt like a miracle of synchronicity that this person suddenly appeared in their time of need.
The clan gathers around this person and eagerly awaits for something, anything to happen. It’s an awkward moment. Obviously, the clan thinks this visitor can save them from their turmoil. The pressure is mounting, and beads of sweat form on the brow of this human being, whom the group is intently staring at. This person thinks to themselves:
Oh boy! Not good. What do I know??? My one and only previous human interaction was a train wreck! What could I possibly say to these people? I’ve got nothing.
The clan awaits with anticipation for the answer they’ve been searching for. Meanwhile, the guest of honor feels like a dear in the headlights with nothing to say, not to mention being the first human being to face the horrifying fear of public speaking.
Standing there, with each passing awkward moment feeling like an eternity, an idea suddenly occurs to this person. They think to themselves:
Sure, the whole previous interaction with that other Homo sapiens was a monumental disaster. But maybe this “tree”-thing they were all worked up about and trying to explain to me, is actually something important. Maybe huge! Like, maybe it’s the answer these people have been searching for. What if this so-called “tree” is actually the theory of everything?!
So with all eyes on this person, who just had their grand epiphany about their past interaction with you, clears their voice, looks at this expectant clan of fellow Homo sapiens, and with a ring of authority, vocalizes the word:
Tree.
That’s it. That’s all this person says. One word, “tree”.
After saying this, the eyes of these clan members grow large with amazement. They look at each other in elation and repeat the word “tree” to each other. They lift their arms and point to the sky, which erupts into a chant of jubilation - “Tree! Tree! Tree! Tree!” They finally have their answer! That stuff in the sky - that blazing ball, those thunderous rumblings and streaks of fire, that blanket of darkness in the sky - all of that is… well… “tree”!
Observing this scene, the newly-crowned hero thinks in their head:
Wow! That went pretty well. I’m going to get out of here now before they figure out that I have no idea what the hell I just said or what it means.
Off this person went, and in the years to come as that little clan grew, everyone learned that the mysteries of their existence and the ultimate realities in the sky that governed their lives was… “tree”.
Language and Parable Reflections
There are a few insights we can take from this parable to better understand the nature of language.
1. Language is something we made up
We as human beings are logocentric, which means that we have a basic trust in language. We assume that the meaning of a word has its origin in the structure of reality, as if a word directly corresponds to a concrete, objective and factually verifiable thing.
But consider that there really is no such thing as a “tree”. Rather, “tree” is the word we invented to refer to that thing sticking out of the ground in the photo above. Further still, our word “tree” only makes sense as something in reference to all the other things that exist. Right? We also have words like “grass”, “river”, “flower”, “rock”, etc. In essence a tree is what it is, largely because of what it is not - it’s not the grass, a rock or the river; it’s a tree.
The components that make a tree a tree (roots, trunk, branches, leaves, protons, electrons, neutrons, quarks) would all still be there, even if we had decided to name it, “erte”. According to quantum theory of matter, that thing called a “tree” isn’t even really a thing, as in, a fixed, unchanging, constant object. Rather, it’s a dense configuration of particles and waves in constant motion and dynamic interaction, which appears in our sensory experience as something we refer to as a “tree”.
The first point here is that the entire system of language is something we invented. The Oxford English Dictionary estimates that there are around 170,000 words currently being used in the English language. It’s not like these words were handed down from God on stone tablets. We made them all up.
In fact, we also eradicate some of our invented words. According to the Oxford English Dictionary there are also currently 47,000 obsolete words that we threw out. For example, one of them is “crapulous”, which meant “to feel ill as a result of excessive drinking and eating.” Makes sense, right? You chug a case of beers or scarf down an entire box of donuts, and you feel like crap… or “crapulous”. Apparently, the folks at the Intergalactic Federation of Word Legitimacy (IFWL) deemed this word as too juvenile to keep.
Another obsolete word is “curglaff”, which meant “the shock one feels when they first plunge into cold water.” I’m guessing when the new hire at the IFWL submitted his new word, the Regional Manager was like, “Seriously, Walter? You think we need a word for that?!”
Let me drop one more idea into this discussion, which we will unpack later in this series. Historians and other thinkers will sometimes give eras of history a conceptual framework and name. You’re familiar with distinctions such as the “Bronze Age”, “Middle Ages”, “The Renaissance”, and so on. Two additional terms like this are “Modernism” and “Postmodernism”. The era of Postmodernism is largely considered to have begin in the 1960 to present-ish. Here’s a simple diagram:
I covered that first theorist on the above list, Michel Foucault, in my previous Substack philosophy series, while the fourth person, Jacques Derrida, particularly relates to our subject of the deconstruction of language. The central feature of “Postmodernism” is skepticism toward ideas such as absolute truth and unquestioned grand narratives about the way the world is and the nature of reality.
With respect to language, Derrida once said, “Every statement is a lie.” Sounds fairly bleak, I know. Derrida’s point is that because of the limitations and subjectivity of language, which I’m going to point out further in the next section, we have to be careful about assuming that anything we say is a complete and objective representation of whatever we are talking about. In other words, we have the false assumption that a word has a stable meaning, which corresponds directly with the objective thing it claims to be referring to.
It is often stated this way: every word is a “signifier”, which is pointing to the “signified”. For example, the word “car” is the signifier, and that mode of transportation with four wheels and a steering wheel, is the “signified”. It’s not perfect, right? The “signified” in my mind when I say “car” is likely different than the “signified” in your mind. Maybe you just bought the brand new car of your dreams, and that comes to mind. Or maybe your car is in the shop for the third time in a month because it’s a money pit, and that comes to mind. You get the point.
When we are talking about cars, this doesn’t seem like such a big deal. But what if we were talking about, say, “God”, or “love”, or “truth” or “happiness”, or “injustice”.
Another important statement of language by Derrida was, “There is nothing outside the text.” This idea is much more radical. Derrida is saying that there is nothing about your experience at all - your experience of reality, the world, universe, life, whatever you want to call it - there’s nothing about your experience that isn’t mediated, governed, affected by, or, in some cases, entirely controlled by language.
For example, if a person describes an experience of “God”, they are not really conveying a direct and immediate experience with an objective transcendental reality named “God”. Why? Because what they are referring to as an “experience of God” is actually a byproduct of all the concepts at their disposal to understand this experience based upon a litany of words, and the subjective meanings they ascribe to them.
2. Language is Conditional
Speaking of the Oxford Dictionary, when you look up a word, what do you find? More words, right?
Let’s take a word. We’ll just use “tree”. The dictionary defines tree as:
“a woody perennial plant, typically having a single stem or trunk growing to a considerable height and bearing lateral branches at some distance from the ground.”
The word “tree” has 26 other words to define it. With the above definition of a “tree”, to truly get it you’d have to understand what “perennial” means in reference to plants. In this case, the definition of “perennial” is:
“any plant that persists for several years, usually with new herbaceous growth from a part that survives from growing season to growing season.”
So the word “perennial” is defined by 23 more words - words like “herbaceous”, which takes 13 words to define, one of them being “vascular”, which takes 17 words to explain, one of them being “tracheophytes”. I think you bet my point. Words lead to words that lead to more words that leads to more words, and it never ends. It’s like one of those Russian nesting dolls with never-ending dolls but in this case, words.
This was the whole problem in “The Parable of the Only Person Alive”. Every time you used an invented word to explain a tree, it only lead to more words that needed defining.
To complicate matters further, words derive their meaning from arbitrary conceptual systems. For example, there’s the binary system. Take the word “good”. The meaning of “good” is often derived from its binary opposite, “bad”. In this case, language presents a false choice - either someone or something is either “good” or “bad”. Take yourself. Are you “good” or “bad”? I’m guessing you would say you are a little of both. Right? Sometimes you think or do things that could be characterized as “good”, and other times characterized as “bad”. And the whole thing is based upon however you would define “good” and “bad”.
We underestimate just how subjective the meanings of words are. If I say “police”, for example. If your brother was a police officer, and he’s the most honest, good-hearted, genuine, caring and courageous person you know, the meaning you ascribe to the word “police” will be different from someone who was routinely the victim of racial profiling of crooked cops. Right?
The point is that the meaning each of us projects into a word includes all the traces or baggage we drag into the word based upon our subjective experiences. Maybe you spent a week in “Italy” and it was the best vacation ever. Maybe it was the biggest nightmare of your life. Either way, this experience is factored in to how you think of or view “Italy”.
Another conceptual system language is based upon comparison and contrast. Jacques Derrida coined the term differance to describe this. The basic idea is that words, symbols, metaphors, etc. do not have inherent meanings but meanings that are based upon their relationships to other words. For example, the word “house” has no inherent meaning. It’s the equivalent of the word “tree” you randomly created in the parable to refer to the thing sticking out of the ground.
Likewise, the word “house” doesn’t mean anything inherently. It’s meaning derives from its difference from, say, the word “hotel”. A “hotel” a commercial establishment offering lodging to travelers. In contrast (or differance) a “house” is understood as a single dwelling that an individual, couple or family might live in. The point is that the meaning we ascribe to a word is based upon that word’s relationship to countless other words.
These are but just a few conceptual systems that language is based upon. There are many more we don’t have time to cover now.
Language is conditional. No word truly contains an inherent meaning. No word directly corresponds to some objective reality. It’s all subjective and provisional. Think of it this way, a pen is really a syringe. When you write something, you think you are using a word with intrinsic meaning that is consonant with an objective existing thing. But really what you’re doing is scratching out an arrangement of squiggly lines infused with a subjective and conditional meaning that you injected into it.
If you’ve never thought about this, it might be unnerving. It might be a little concerning that the entire system upon which we have based our understanding of everything… is just something we made up and doesn’t really mean anything at all beyond whatever subjective meaning we give it.
But rather than being disturbing and frightening, what if this fact about language is actually one of the most liberating truths we ever discover?
Stay tuned for Part Two.
In Summary
The world population changed from the beginning of this article; it’s now 8,118,562,760… and counting.
That moment you realize that the entire meaning-making system we base our understanding of everything upon… is something we made up.
I’ve never watched the Bridgerton series, but it’s listed as one of the top Netflix series.
The word “Homo sapiens” is weird because it’s technically singular but that ‘s’ at the end seems plural.
Don’t go into a dark place over the problems of language, read next week’s Part Two.
“Silence is the language of god,
all else is poor translation.”
- Rumi