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067: Dream Languages

What happened at Babel? Did the architects and workers have the same nightmare one feverish night and all awoke with their tongues scrambled? If you subscribe to the Biblical view of the universe, the events at Babel are the explanation for the sheer diversity of tongues which can be found across the globe. If you're in the Darwinian camp, the explanation for linguistic diversity is a bit tougher of a sell; you can't just write it all off as several thousand years of "regionalisms." Even if the human animal, as he graduated to more upright status, developed in isolated pockets and language was strictly a result of his reactions to his region, the functional spaces in his brain wherein language developed were the same from man to man.

For a moment, though, we'll consider the nexus point of Babel as simply the point where language began because, when you get right down to it, "language" didn't really exist prior to that moment. In fact, it may very well be that we all communicated by telepathy or some other direct brain-to-brain interface because what happens the moment you introduce "language" into the equation, you introduce "interpretation" and, well, the Fall of Babel takes place.

Our dream states are language-less. They exist as self-contained creative environments. They aren't any less real if you speak French or German or Japanese or some Urdu dialect. You don't dream less or less vividly if English is your primary or secondary language; your brain continues to fabricate reality regardless of how you form concepts and sentences. What kills your dreams is the act of communicating them -- putting them to words -- to others.

But how different are your dreams from mine? If I could jack into your dream state, would I be able to understand it simply because I, too, am human? Would I unconsciously know what is happening or what I am seeing? Is there a universal symbolic system by which we all know and comprehend the universe that exists a priori to any spoken or written language?

Posted by Teppo at February 4, 2004 12:42 AM

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