sayings and comment 2

"Words are the fog one has to see through."  (Zen Buddhist)



COMMENT;

Words are not mere puffs of wind shaped by the tongue, but are alive.  Although we have a developed lexicon to tract their meaning, their essential force, power, and life comes from the desire and intent of the human being who speaks them.  When someone intends to mislead, he takes words out of context and forms them in a manner that misleads the original intended content, implanting his own intention.  We see this kind of derailing of original intention on to misleading meaning happening countless times daily on T.V. ads.  The user of transplanting content currently comes under the heading of "rhetoric," (artificial eloquence; showiness and elaboration in language), but its use , more accurately, should come under. "propaganda," ( ideas, doctrines or allegations used disparagingly to connote deception or distortion. 

I wrote a poem called, "Wasted Words," that will, I believe, help dissolve "the fog of words."

Hold your tongue and listen a minute,
  to the great avalanche of words entering your ears.
Day and night, words pumped out through mouths
   in rapid-fire succession.
Where once they were used sparingly and with care,
   now derelict of truth they spew out faster then a
   machine gun with little care and little heart.
Words wasted, as if there were an eternal supply;
    mere puffs of wind, traveling the air and dying off
    as smoke.
But where do they go?
Do they reverberate through the cannons of space like
   some eternal echo?
Do they completely dissolve into emptiness?
Do they gather at some cosmic point and mark their
    selves on some universal verbal ledge?
Every word and its intent imprints upon the cosmic waters.
    There, every cures, every boast, every syllable, every atom
    of sound lives and follows its path to effect.  There is no
    escape, not under the deepest ocean, not atop the highest
    mountain.  It is your breathe that breathes them out and they
    will seek their effect directed by your will.
Thunder is the voice of lighting and responds only to the bolt-
     never more, never less.
What would the world be like if all humans spoke so succinctly?