Yes, but are you? It’s funny how oftentimes we find ourselves doing exactly what we ought not be doing or saying. Immediately, of a sudden, we are instantiated into the rôle of the hypocrite.
As a ‘socialist’, I am anathema to nationalism. After all, the nation-state is a concept originating in the 19th century, that’s right kiddies! But its novelty has quickly taxed our brains and we assumed its veracity and therefore eternity, to be sacrosact. We are addicted, intoxicated with the idea that there exist Forms and Ideas; if these exist, then my necessity the intellect must exist for they require the intellect in order to be understood and conceptualized. And precisely because of the need to believe in eternal and trascending things, we are paralyzed and outraged by the suggestion: “Panta rei”.
[We] the masses are nothing but a mush of potential, waiting, expecting and desiring. And then upon us come the chosen ones, the so called ‘élite’ and mold us, give us shape. They render the useless useful. They are the Demiurge, into the substance injecting essence, a raison d’être.
But not too long ago while a group of ‘people’ galvanized around the idea that if we had a single univeral language, we would be better off, I opposed such an idea as naïf and counterintuitive. The more languages the better I say… er… with plenty of exceptions!
Eartnestly, if there did exist a time when we all spoke the same language – a pre-Tower of Babel period – why would we desire to return to it. This craving for this purported Golden Age, is rather fanciful. Language is a brilliant tool of communication, but it has transcended this mundaness, this necessity and become art. A single word, that unity of syllables that we suppose to contain meaning, is able to express a multiplicity of ideas. Barf is not just a synonym for vomit, it also means snow (at least in Farsi)!
Because of the peculiarity of language, most languages can express similar ideas, but similarity does not mean likeness. To reduce ourselves to a single language is perhaps efficient and cost-effective in the long term, but we close our minds to infinite possibilities that only arise because of language.
And what is art? The master science of course! That thing which transmits truth as nothing else can. Well I am not willing to go this far, for I suspect rather than transmitting truth, art produces new truths out of the materia prima. Art creates a new world, a world all-unto-its-own, it is a causa generativa.