Dangerous Humans, Dangerous Language
How we communicate is how we live — dangerously
Teódulo López Meléndez is a Venezuelan author. Based in Caracas, he has written numerous books and countless articles exploring universal themes of identity, communication, and possibility. I’m pleased to translate and share another sample…
When quantum theory dismantled the framework of objective truths, we circled back to an old notion — understood here in its everyday sense — that Truth is nothing more than consensus, a provisional certainty, as Nietzsche had already teased.
A similar shift is taking place in language: we now affirm the multiplicity of meanings and the lack of consensus. Another idea that seems to spring from quantum theory — since it rejects objectivity — is the claim that this plurality of meanings is not, and cannot be, tied to any presumed objectivity of the external world. Consequently, we can legitimately ask: what meaning does the world inherently possess, if it has no objective reality at all?
The obvious conclusion is that any experience illustrates, at best, an idea, not an objective reality. Derrida offers a formidable interpretation when he speaks of the “materialism of the idea,” which is nothing more than a staging that depicts nothing — except nothingness itself. Schopenhauer had already described the world as representation.
In this context, the opposition between truth and falsehood collapses. Richard, in what is called critical psychologism, goes so far as to define “precision of expression” as a state in which needs are satisfied spontaneously, even if in a close system, one by another.
Derrida also notes that “multiplicity of lateral relations creates the essence of meaning.” Yet the concept of dissemination seems key. While polysemy refers to the plurality of meanings in a word, dissemination speaks of “the generation of meaning always already divided.” Dissemination holds an “almost” meaning: the impossible return to a unity once achieved, once reassembled. Freud observed that fiction could give rise to new forms of feeling absent in real life.
Quantum physics, for its part, greatly expanded the concept of “black holes.” In this way, today’s philosophy of language has found its own “black hole,” where intimacy becomes so absolute it vanishes, leaving no separation between self and image.
As Richard writes: “A book neither begins nor ends: at most it pretends to.” Polysemy could be defined as the accumulation of meanings, whereas dissemination calls us toward balance within multiplicity. What we experience is not meaning — it is equilibrium.
Still, caution is warranted: the reactive turn against the ontological can lead us into a dead end. Philosophy and language have converged, and Plato, in this sense, has been handed his dismissal. But if we equate humanism with metaphysics, the attack on the latter inevitably reaches the former — even though atheist humanisms have existed.
The deconstruction of language can bring us to speak of the end of man. I am by no means an apocalyptic critic of technology, but it is worth recalling the metaphor of technology — or technique — as metaphor. Nor do we forget the attempts to neutralize any metaphysical thesis of the concept of man, though the unity of man has never been seriously challenged.
The danger looming over humanity is the same as the danger looming over language.
Visit his blog for a compendium of his writing…
Browse more of his posts translated here…
