Video Source: Shots of Awe
Jason Silva brilliantly describes how words shape your reality, and how Terrance McKenna was right when he said “the world is made of words.”
TRANSCRIPT:
I am a lover of language. I use language to tile reality, to clothe reality in description and prose. I language therefore I become. I believe the world is made of words and if you know the words the world is made of you can make of it whatever you wish, said McKenna.
One of the coolest notions I’ve ever come across about the transformative and transporting power of language is the notion that words are not just descriptive – that words in fact are generative! Hold that in mind for a moment my friend – that the use of language, the words you use to describe reality can in fact engender reality, can disclose reality. Words are generative!
So people often ask me how do you memorize? Why do you memorize so many quotes, because I do man – they are the wallpaper of my mind – it’s full of prose. And, I don’t know by what act I actually put them into memory, but I can tell you that the reason that I love to recite quotes is because I believe that the quotes that resonate, the ones that give me goosebumps, the ones that make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, are incantations.
They are spells, right? There’s a dream weaving and a sorcery that is employed, that is deployed through language. To speak is to enact an indentation, right? So, my favorite quotes are these magical incantations and as I recite therefore I become. I recite therefore I become – that makes perfect sense, right?
This ecstatic articulation and empowered vocalization makes us what Walter Benjamin calls enraptured prose beings raised to the highest order. We create and perceive our world through language. We think reality into existence through linguistic construction in real time. We are made of language.
And this concept is instantiated even in our biology. DNA is code. We are alphabetic all the way down. Our genes are software programs. Even the material world is made but of atoms programmed into certain instantiation.
McKenna was right. The world is made of words and if you know the words the world is made of you can make of it whatever you wish. So take responsibility for this metaphysical tool employ language with discernment and intention and agency and become an author of reality!
