The most powerful technology we are subject to is the one least understood by its users, and that is language. We know nearly nothing about it; its origins, dangers, and real opportunities.

We elaborate and employ it without the slightest concern for the costs or consequences, and we rarely are afforded the oportunity to gain any real depth of understanding about the nature of our relationship with it.

It’s challenging to even understand what order of existence it belongs to, since it is the source of such hierarchies. But while we have been madly developing mechanical technologies, our cognitive and relational technologies have languished to the point of being actively self-retarding.

This, it should be obvious, is a recipe for extinction — and not only our own.

Language use results in knowledge. Knowledge based in language is not the only form of knowledge, but it is a familiar and pervasive form. The structure and implications of knowledge lead human beings into behaviors, or, at least, often catalyze or motivate behavior. In a way analogous to our relationship with language, we have completely neglected the necessities of our relationships with knowledge as well.

These are the two most crucial aspects of our intellectual and relational structure and opportunity. As we allow them to lead us around like zombies obedient to the artifacts of a habit they cannot perceive, we are being remade not in the image of our possible intelligence, but of our nearly complete misapprehension of the nature, function, and danger of the basis of our representational minds.

We must attend the history, development and understanding of our relationships with language and knowledge with -more- insight and interest than we attend our technological development. These two assets must be first on the list, not last or missing, as they have too long and continue to be. Perhaps more promising, is the vast and astonishing frontier that lies before those willing to step into this process with a sense of wonder, enthusiasm, and excitement. Most of our assets have been inhibited, misdirected, destroyed, or co-opted. Returning them to our common discovery and development is one of the most heroic avenues of human development possible to us, and it has been largely, if not completely ignored for thousands of years and billions of human lifetimes.