Excerpt from A Language Older Than Words

Language of Bodies and Dream (p. 1)

From chapter "Silencing"

“Our behavior is a function of our experience. We act according to the way we see things.  If our experience is destroyed, our behavior will be destructive. If our experience is destroyed, we have lost our own selves.”
―R.D. Lang

There is a language older by far and deeper than words. It is the language of bodies, of body on body, wind on snow, rain on trees, wave on stone.  It is the language of dream, gesture, symbol, memory.  We have forgotten this language. We do not even remember that it exists.

* * *

In order for us to maintain our way of living, we must, in a broad sense, tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves. It is not necessary that the lies be particularly believable. The lies act as barriers to truth.  These barriers to truth are necessary because without them many deplorable acts would become impossibilities. Truth must at all costs be avoided.  When we do allow self-evident truths to percolate past our defenses and into our consciousness, they are treated like so many hand grenades rolling across the dance floor of an improbably macabre party. We try to stay out of harm’s way, afraid they will go off, shatter our delusions, and leave us exposed to what we have done to the world and to ourselves, exposed as the hollow people we have become.  And so we avoid these truths, these self-evident truths, and continue the dance of world destruction. 

* * *

As is true for most children, when I was young I heard the world speak. Stars sang. Stones had preferences. Trees had bad days.  Toads held lively discussions, crowed over a good day’s catch.  Like static on a radio, schooling and other forms of socialization began to interfere with my perception of the animate world, and for a number of years I almost believed that only humans spoke.  The gap between what I experienced and what I almost believed confused me deeply. It wasn’t until later that I began to understand the personal, political, social, ecological, and economic implications of living in a silenced world.  

The silencing is central to the workings of our culture. The staunch refusal to hear the voices of those we exploit is crucial to our domination of them.  Religion, science, philosophy, politics, education, psychology, medicine, literature, linguistics, and art have all been pressed into service as tools to rationalize the silencing and degradation of women, children, other races, other cultures, the natural world and its members, our emotions, our consciences, our experiences, and our cultural and personal histories.