There's something important about names. Names take something out of the realm of unknowns and places them somewhere that the mind can grasp. Something nameless is limitless in what it can do, where it can be, how it can exist. Give it a name, and you give it form, identity, and boundaries.
At least, those are my thoughts. Anyone else have their own theory on the meaning/importance of names?
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3 comments:
Oh yeah, names. They're nice and useful for conceptual manipulations. After all, they're just symbols for what they name. Names are used because the mind needs them, and feels much safer dealing with a something that's been labeled. But as you say, they give boundaries... therein lies the danger. It's way too easy to say "This is a tree" and forget that in fact it's just called a tree. The object itself is so much more than the word, so complex, so vast as to be unfathomable by the intellect... and so we reduce it to a name. Useful, but it doesn't tell much. If you've never tasted honey, can you know what it is by being told, or reading about it? And what does "love" or "joy" mean anyways? Ultimately, words fail.
And they may fail in catastrophic ways when, pre-charged with emotions and judgments, they are applied in a ways that cloud our sight... when we no longer see a human but a "nigger", a "fag" or a "commie". Beware the power of words for the simplifications they provide often obscure reality.
I love your comic, Rone, and this page in particular gave me shivers. It's just... so nice to see Brand happy for once.
Names are important. They take away mystery and they define and they clarify, but they also have connotations that can warp the perception of the thing they describe.
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