The Power of Language

The words we speak are a lot like the air we breathe – we need the air, we breathe it without conscious effort, or even conscious awareness, yet our very lives depend on it.  Like the air we breathe, we build our world and our experiences and the way we relate to one another with words, quite often without conscious consideration of the power that they have, and that changing our words can change our experiences.  Words have the power to build bridges, and they can create chasms. They can bind us to one another, and they can divide us.

We will delve into an exploration of how language shapes our world, shaping our experiences, influencing cultural identities, social dynamics, the things that unite us, and the invisible boundaries that divide us. This insightful journey uncovers the profound impact of words in our daily lives and challenges us to consciously connect to the way we communicate, and connect to the power of language to shape everything about our world.

 In September 1962, John F. Kennedy gave a speech at Rice University to rally support for the US’s Apollo space program.  He said:

 “We shall send to the moon 240,000 miles away, a giant rocket, more than 300 feet tall on an untried mission to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to Earth. But why some say the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why 35 years ago fly the Atlantic? We choose to go to the moon. We chose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we’re willing to accept. One we are unwilling to postpone. And therefore, as we set sail, we ask God’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure that man has ever gone.”

At the time he gave that speech, much of the technology needed to achieve that goal was in its infancy, or didn’t exist at all.   Computers were behemoths that filled, or mostly filled, an entire room, many thousands of times larger than what could fit in a space capsule.  Memory...average apple watch has 500x the total memory in the computer on board the Apollo 11 rocket. Some of the various metal alloys and fuels needed to build and launch the rocket hadn’t yet been developed. And it had only been four short years since the first launch of a satellite into space.  

JFK literally spoke into existence putting a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth before the end of the 1960s.

 In 1987, Ronald Reagan gave a speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate at the Berlin Wall.  The most memorable line of that speech was “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” The Soviet Union had been in existence since 1922, and Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev had only recently begun a policy of glasnost (openness) in the Soviet Union.  The idea that the Berlin Wall, which had been erected by the Soviets and East Germany in 1961, could cease to exist might have seemed like an impossible dream.  Yet, with his exhortation, Reagan spoke into existence the possibility that it could come down, and by 1989, it did.

While these are grand examples of the power of language, in fact, language is how we create and evaluate every experience in our lives.  If I tell you that I am angry, what you understand about what I am feeling is not about what I am feeling at all.  Rather, it is about what you understand as anger, based on your own experience of anger.  And, by the way, I don’t necessarily know any more about my anger than you do.  But if you ask me to describe what I am feeling in my body, and where, I might tell you that my chest is tight, I feel a burning behind my eyes, and a tension across my shoulders.  You may ask me to describe those sensations, what shape they are, what color, what size.  As I use language to describe them to you (and to myself), I am creating a more tangible bodily understanding of the emotion of anger that I am feeling, and a mental image of the bodily sensations. By connecting to those physical sensations that underlie what I’m describing and working to relax my body – to be present and aware of the bodily sensations and visualize shrinking the size and intensity of them – my feeling of anger begins to subside.  Don’t get me wrong – anger is a real emotion, a subjective response to a physiological reaction. By exploring and identifying the physiological experience of my emotions, I’m able to understand and gain control over my subjective response.

Fear, Anger, and the Mythology of Difference

What follows probably won’t have much of an impact on the people I think could benefit from it most, and will probably piss off some of the people who read it.  That said, it has been banging around in my head for a long time, especially during this last year plus of political and social unrest in the United States, and the re-election of Trump. I need, for myself if not for anyone else, to get it out of my head.

In an article I wrote in October, 2024 on Medium, I talked about the power of language, the unique ability that we humans have to literally create and shape our experiences in the world with the language we give to those experiences.  This is not an aerie-faerie philosophical discussion. Think about bridges, cities, electric transmission lines, office buildings – whatever it is, it began with an idea (talking to myself in my head), given form by language. If you think I’m full of it (try thinking that without words), go ahead, stop talking.  See if you can shut off that voice in your head that’s providing running commentary on your world 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 

Language is like the air we breathe, in that we take it for granted – we speak, and it rarely occurs to us, if at all, that how we speak, the words we use to express our feelings and beliefs, shapes our experience. Breathing is an autonomic function, controlled by our nervous system, necessary to keep us alive – it changes if we’re exerting ourselves, under stress, relaxing, sleeping – and if we bring our attention to this involuntary bodily function, we can consciously control it.  This fact is at the root of most meditation modalities.  

Can we change our experience by speaking differently about it? Just as we can control our breathing by focusing our attention on it, we can control our language by making a conscious, not reflexive, choice about the words we use to create and describe our experiences.

We can speak great things into existence. In September 1962, JFK gave a speech to rally support for the US space program. He said that, before the end of the decade, we would send a man to the moon and return him safely to earth. The materials and technologies needed to make that happen either didn’t exist, or were in their infancy relative to what would be necessary to bring this vision to life. And, on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human being to set foot on the moon. JFK literally spoke into existence man on the moon!

What does this have to do with anything? For as long as we’ve had language, we have used it to create our identities, individually, and as groups of people.  And we divide ourselves into different social groupings.  White vs. non-white (a massive overgeneralization, by the way); Christians vs. non-Christians; Christians vs. Muslims; Christians vs. Jews; Jews vs. Muslims; Christians vs. “non-believers”; Republicans vs. Democrats; conservatives vs. liberals; progressives vs. conservatives; left vs. right; pro-life vs. pro-choice; “Americans” vs. anybody else...I could give a thousand more examples. We use those divisions to help ourselves feel comfortable with who we believe ourselves to be, and superior to other social groups, or to claim higher moral authority, or to denigrate those who are not included in our particular social hierarchy or political philosophy or income class or a host of other things. We are afraid of what we don’t identify with or understand, and we learn to fear and vilify “the other,” and our otherwise baseless fear motivates sometimes intense anger focused on whichever “other” we’re obsessed with at the moment. This has worked to the advantage of despots for centuries.

We make tangible and real what is nothing more (and, indeed, nothing less) than a creation wrought with words. Let that sink in for a minute. These divisions among us, to which we cling as though our very lives depend on them are just one of many possible fictions which we’ve chosen to speak into existence.

Let me give an example to illustrate what I’m talking about. America is a racist society. The divisions between black and white or brown and white or Asian and white could not be more stark. Racism has led to inequality and violence over and over again in our history, and we talk about racial purity, racial (in)equality, racism, reverse racism (an absurd concept on its face), and on and on and on. Yet, the very concept of race as a way of segregating one group of humans from another is a fiction! There is only one race, the human race, and even that concept is fallacious, because there are no other “races” that exist. 

Scientists classify organisms, whether plants, animals, insects, or indeed, us humans, on the basis of scientifically observable characteristics. Carl Linnaeus was a Swedish biologist and physician who formalized binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms. He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy." The taxonomy which Linnaeus described classifies all organisms as follows – kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species (“race” is not one of the classifications in the taxonomy!). For us humans, that looks like this:

1. Kingdom: Animalia

   • I hate to break it to you, kids, we are animals.

2. Phylum: Chordata

   • Among other things, these are creatures that are bilaterally symmetric, with a spine.

3. Class: Mammalia

   • Mammals are warm-blooded, have milk-producing mammary glands, and fur or hair, as well as a number of other distinguishing characteristics.

4. Order: Primates

   • Large brain sizes, binocular vision, color vision, vocalizations, shoulder girdles allowing a large degree of movement in the upper limbs, and opposable thumbs (in most but not all) that enable better grasping and dexterity.

5. Family: Hominidae

   • Yes, creationists, in common parlance, “the Great Apes.” I get it, you don’t like where this is heading.

6. Genus: homo

   • Pongo (the Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutan); Gorilla (the eastern and western gorilla); Pan (the chimpanzee and the bonobo); and Homo, of which only modern humans (Homo sapiens) remain.

7. Species: sapiens

   • Yep, us.

In case you missed it, let me say it again – there are no subgroupings anywhere in this taxonomy which describe and differentiate “race.” Yet we have fought wars and killed countless millions of ourselves over this fictional concept, not just in the US, but in various places around the world in our roughly 300,000 year history on the planet, though mostly in the last couple thousand years. 

There are countless more examples of what I’m describing, equally incendiary. Think about sex vs. gender, Diversity Equity and Inclusion, national identities (in case you missed it, there is an ongoing genocidal war in the Middle East between Jews and Palestinians), men vs. women...

Scientists who study the brain and PTSD, particularly Complex PTSD[1] have shown that the language we associate with traumatic incidents quite literally wires circuits in the brain in response to those traumas. Trauma recovery, therefore, is a process of giving different language to those traumatic experiences, thereby rewiring those circuits. If, as a child, I was repeatedly emotionally and psychologically abused and ignored by my parents or caregivers, and I learned through those experiences that I don’t matter, healing the resultant trauma is almost entirely about re-examining those experiences, recognizing that what I suffered was a projection of my parents’ own childhood wounds on me, and learning to love myself as I am, and that, in fact, I do matter. This then frees me to see my adult experiences through a different, emotionally mature, lens than the one triggered by (usually unconscious) childhood memories. 

As a trauma recovery coach, this is perhaps the most important skill that I teach my clients. It’s conceptually simple and straightforward, and it takes presence, awareness, and lots and lots of practice to hone this skill to the point where it almost becomes second nature – stop, breathe, recognize that you’re not in danger, that you’re reacting to an old experience, and you can choose to respond differently, as an emotionally mature adult, rather than reacting reflexively as that wounded child you once were. 

So what? The first step to solving a problem is recognizing that there is one. Do I naively believe that we can change humanity by all of us choosing to speak and think differently? Well, yes, that is the key, and no, I recognize that affecting that kind of change on a global scale would be all but impossible. As the saying goes, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!” My encouragement to you, then, is start with you, one bite at a time. Start to be aware of how you speak, to others, yes, and also to yourself! When you find yourself having an opinion about that jerk that just cut you off in traffic, and how you’re going to pass him and cut him off in return, with some choice words and gestures hurled his way, stop. Breathe, consider that you don’t know what’s going on with that other person. Are they rushing to get to the hospital because their wife is about to give birth? Are they late for work for the third time this week, and afraid of being fired? And so what if they are just a jerk? Of all of the things that are going to happen in the course of your day today, how much value is there in giving an outsized amount of your energy to that person?

The only person you can change is yourself. By your example, perhaps you will inspire others in your life to be more attentive to how they speak to themselves and others, and they may inspire still others by their example. Be the butterfly in the butterfly effect.[2]  

We can have a world in which we all realize that we want the same things, for ourselves and our children and our children’s children, and our energy is far better spent on bringing that vision into reality than on tearing ourselves and others down based on perceived differences that are really just a grand fiction we’ve created. We can create any story we want, so let’s make it a good one with a happy ending! Or, we can continue to divide and destroy one another and the world we live in.

I know what I choose…

[1] Complex PTSD is the term used to describe what can result from experiencing chronic trauma, such as prolonged child abuse or domestic violence.

[2] This term is closely associated with the work of the mathematician and meteorologist Edward Norton Lorenz. He noted that the butterfly effect is derived from the example of the details of a tornado (the exact time of formation, the exact path taken) being influenced by minor perturbations such as a distant butterfly flapping its wings several weeks earlier.

Judgment and Projection

Language powerfully shapes our interactions with others.  As humans, we all have judgments bouncing around in our minds all day long – “It’s a beautiful day,” or “The guy driving in front of me is a jerk,” or “Gee, Frank is such a sharp guy, so smart, and a real man’s man!” What we choose to do with those judgments is a whole other thing.  I can lean on my horn when the guy in front of me is going too slow, cut around him, give him the finger, or yell out my window at him. Or I can just let it go – pass him, put him in my rearview mirror, and continue on my way. 

Perhaps the most unhelpful thing I can do to myself with language is to project my feelings onto someone else.  In the example I gave above about anger, if I witness someone behaving with anger, I will absolutely have judgments about the situation, and about them.  I might tell them that they’re a bully, or they’re not being very mature, or to just shut up, or that they’re generally a flawed human being for getting angry about whatever it is that they’re angry about.  Here’s the thing – those judgments have nothing to do with that other person. They are my projections onto that other person about what kind of person they are. In the same way that I filter my observations about their anger through the prism of my own experience of anger, my judgments about another person are not about that person at all, but rather about me, myself. Whether they trigger something old in me, a memory, let’s say, about how my father used to be when he was angry, or something that is true about myself, projections are always rooted in something that is true about me, not the other person.

Projections do not just have to be negative evaluations of someone else.  I might project that Mike, my neighbor, has it all together – a beautiful house, a beautiful wife, nice cars – clearly he’s super successful, and has a perfect life. The truth is that I don’t know anything of the sort about Mike.  Behind all the amazing things I think are true about him, he may have demons he struggles with that I know nothing about.  His marriage may be on the rocks.  He may be stretched to the breaking point financially, not sure how on earth he’s going to continue to sustain what looks like a storybook life. What’s far more likely true is that my beliefs about Mike’s amazingness have a basis in my own feelings about my own life.  Maybe I believe that my house and my cars aren’t nearly as nice as his, and so I’m not as capable or successful a human being as Mike is.

The power of projections lies in what they can teach me about myself. If I can take a step back, breathe, and probe myself for what’s going on that is leading me to project those feelings onto someone else, I can uncover whatever it is that generated that reaction in me, process it, and see something I may not have seen in myself before.  And that is a big step toward understanding and healing my wounds. Whatever I think about somebody else is never about them. While I can observe someone else’s behavior (the facts of the situation, if you will), my reaction to it, and my beliefs about that other person and about the world are exactly that – my beliefs.  Having the self-awareness to realize that, and to be curious about what’s going on in me when I project is one more step in my journey of self-discovery and healing, and it is entirely shaped by the language I give to it.

Accountability and Integrity

A basic definition of accountability is when your words are aligned with your actions. “Her word is her bond,” or “when he says something, you can take it to the bank.” Accountability is about doing what you say you will do. Integrity is a closely related, but different idea. Integrity is about being who you say you are. Let me give you an example to illustrate the difference. Let’s say that I make a commitment to meet you at a particular place at 5:00 this afternoon.  5:00 comes and goes, you don’t hear from me, and I don’t show until almost an hour later. I am out of account with my agreement to meet you at 5:00. When I arrive, I tell you that the reason I didn’t make it on time, and didn’t call to let you know I was going to be late, is that I came across an accident, and I stopped to render aid to the injured people in the wreck until the police and paramedics showed up. Even though I am out of account, I am in integrity, because if the same thing happened again, I would do the same thing – stop and render aid.