Though I worked as a linguist for many years, I was always more attracted to knowing languages than to knowing about them. I ended up studying about a dozen languages. But one life-changing experience made me aware of a nature of language that never seems to be talked about in linguistics. Eventually, it made me lose interest in linguistics completely and decide to leave academia.
This is the nature of language as the gatekeeper of our mind-made prison. Language is supposed to be a tool that serves us, but I suddenly saw with such clarity that I had been subjugated by language. One form of this subjugation is our incessant unconscious labeling. If still "asleep", homo sapiens is also homo categoricus.
It's often said that a true prisoner is someone who is unaware that he is imprisoned and that the prison doesn't seem like a prison to him. I still don't understand how I could suddenly become aware that I had been in my own mind-made prison, with language as its gatekeeper, for so many years. But once I became aware of this, I realized that I had lost my common language with most of my former colleagues in linguistics.
"Language" here means more than just a combination of grammar and lexicon. It's even more than pragmatics. It refers to the state of consciousness, which, for the sake of this writing, can be defined as how much we are identified with our own thoughts. I don't know whether this is a curse or a blessing, but I've simply found myself unable to communicate with those who are controlled by language through unconscious labeling and are also unaware of this.
Of course, I'm not blaming them, as I was in such a prison myself. And I don't even try to explain conceptually this newly discovered nature of language that isn't taught in linguistics. Rather recently, I read a book about the nature of language written by two prominent linguists for the general public. It was actually about the nature of linguistics, which doesn't - or can't - see the above-mentioned aspect of language. ;-)
As you see, this has become too conceptual. ;-) So let me share with you an anecdote, which I myself find funny, but the linguists involved in it may not have found funny. You can see for yourself whether we had a common language or not. ;-)
Before I left Israel at the end of September 2023, I didn't tell any of my former colleagues in linguistics where I would be leaving for, simply because I already knew that if I told them, I would have to spend a lot of time answering a series of follow-up questions such as "Why that country?!" etc.
So when some of them contacted me after I left Israel and asked me where I was now, I said to them, "I'm always here and now." As you can easily imagine by now, they persisted with the same question. I, in turn, persisted with the same answer. ;-)
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