There is a direct, mental link between what we think, what we say and what we do. Language plays a dual role. Part of it is representational. When we say the word “tree” we associate it, in our mind, with an entire list of attributes that constitute a tree and its potential. At the same time we categorize it into different types of tree, some of which have different attributes to all the other types of tree and some of which are better suited at creating a forest, than others.
Just before his now legendary fight with George Foreman in 1974, in Kinshasa, Zaire, Muhammad Ali famously quipped “His hands can't hit what his eyes can't see.” He was grandstanding, as he always did before a fight but in his inimitable way he was also hitting the nail on the head.
Nothing can exist if we cannot imagine it. More people know the full life history of Harry Potter, the “boy who lived” than that of Alexander Graham Bell. Yet one is fictional while the other is the inventor of the telephone. What makes the former as ‘real’ as the latter is the fact that we can all agree on the knowledge we have of him, the attributes that make him into a person and the things he accomplished.
We’ve now had enough data on social media engagement and its effects to know A. that it is desirable to the degree that it has become the Holy Grail of social media activity and B. That it is maturing as an activity which means that despite what technology is or is not allowing us to do what ultimately drives it are the same basic principles that drive human behavior.
When it comes to thinking about impossible conditions nothing even comes close to war. Armed combat has a way of presenting everything at once.
The world is chaotic. There is a fluidity to it that comes from the modular elements that make up all its moving parts. They rub up against each other and change how they all fit together on the fly. To the naked eye and the untrained mind it appears unstructured. Crazy.