Language is powerful; it hems us in. We can’t say or think anything that’s not a word or concept within our language. As I pointed out in a previous post, that’s the power of language; it keeps us from “thinking outside the box.” We’re in the box! The box of language. Or, we can call the stricture of language a “house;” we’re housed by language and can’t get outside. This is what Slavoj Zizek does, explaining Grant Farred’s view of the power of language: “What he [Grant Farrel] found so useful in Heidegger was the notion of language as a ‘house of being’ . . . language rooted in a particular way of life, language as the medium of an always-unique-life experience which discloses reality to us in a historically specific way.”
Boxed or housed in by language is the reality. Accept reality. Don’t boo hoo hoo ‘cause you can’t go outside. Play inside! When we accept reality, we have more fun, and we’re in the best position to advance our interests.
The quote above is from Slavoj Zizek, Freedom: A Disease Without Cure (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023), p. 2.
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