Naming

The naming of things has been central to making the human being what it is. Naming separates matter of things from the life, the motion, and the change which is their non-material essence. It turns subjects into objects, and objects into possessions (which, it turns out, own us). It takes us out of the present moment and leaves us ever-aiming toward some nebulous future ideal (escapism or freedom – you choose!). If we could just pause and reflect we might have an epiphany: ideals only exist – we had to conjure them up – because the human landscape has fallen, ahem, from the “garden of Eden. In other words, we have tuned ourselves out of harmony with ecosystems.