No, only values detached from real references. For my post on Value-standards, pls. refer here .
It was not the “word”.
This myth has been perpetuated through the Judaic code for centuries; it has now become ‘common sense’ for the common and the senseless.
The word is a description of the action.
A reversal has been perpetrated.
Referring words to phenomena means referring them to the past.
If this reference is shallow or deep determines the quality of the reference point and the subsequent projection of the object/objective, the idea(l), into the future, as an extension, a continuance of this past/nature.
A modern begins with the shallow reference and limits himself to within the conventions, the historical narratives, he was raised on.
He does not go further back, towards more self-knowledge, but limits himself to the artificiality his meme has constructed for him.
Within nihilistic Modern memes all are included, all have value, all deserve, all are equal; the concepts of race and sex are referred to the established narrative.
From this flawed starting premises all projections of idea(l)s cannot but be flawed, or detached from reality.
From a starting error in judgment in reference, only error can come.
And because error is forgiven in a system that thrives in manipulating it, no correcting consequence can ever come of it.
The idea of utility is also shaped in this context of self-supporting reproduction of delusion, self-flattering narcissism and error in judgments.
Money and the means of acquiring it, the career, the job, the utility, becomes central - a decisive standard for evaluating quality…via quantity of abstraction.
With a restricted reference to the past/nature what extends forward is a caricature, a human contrivance of varying degree of absurdity, just because it ‘can’ when systems keep society sheltered from reality.
Man confuses his representation of the phenomenon, the noetic devices, methods, for the real, the phenomenon itself.
The malleability of the noumenon, since it is a human contrivance, makes it an easily manipulated tool of escape.
The phenomenon remains indifferent to human interpretations of it, but the noumenon is man’s care, and it expresses a living organism’s need to survive to know and understand.
The demystification of the world is part of secular humanism.
In the past the problem of an indifferent, cruel, and unknowable otherness was dealt with by projecting a more real reality outside the world, or by presuming an underlying, thing-in-itself, a thingness, an absolute unity and unity…a particle, a one, a quanta…
The idea(l) that the mysterious can be absolved by assuming its knowabiltiy, is what modernity is built upon.
Man can now create his own reality, adjusting it as he proceeds towards godliness.
Words, numbers, as representations of his abstractions (simplifications, generalizations), his tools, become universal powers which will reshape reality to his tastes.
Simply by declaring himself noble or strong, or smart, the produced-subject has already taken the first step towards self-actualization.
He is master of himself, he thinks, and so I am a world upon myself…luckily no nature/past is ever permitted to bust that delusional bubble.
He thinks he is 'free" because no external to himself standard enters his abode to disrupt his narcissistic masturbation.
The walls are built and maintained by others, with his participatory offerings, and so he begins to feel liberated within their premises.
Here, in a world where “all deserve”, he can pretend to be anything and anyone, at any time, if and only if this pretense does not disturb the other patrons from their self-gratifying personal labors. This minimal disturbance is what I call Efficacy of the magician’s Performance.
The manipulation and application of symbols, metaphors signs harkens back to idolatry, where the belief that evocation, or the ritualistic repetition of words, and the usage of symbols, could affect nature, and reality at large.
Christian faith did not differ in this, and saw in idolatry, a satanic competitor to its own ritualized words, and symbols.
Satanism is this evocation of natural powers using symbols and words.
Religious rites, in general, practice the same thing.
The power of the word is found in how it may manipulate nature, not in its entirety, or directly, by through the agency of man.
The word transplants an idea(l), a belief, in the mind of the other, turning him into an active agency of that idea(l), and thusly affecting nature with his behavior.
This is the “magic” of words and rituals.
Christian magic, or Abrahamic magic (power of its rituals and words), is antagonized by the earthbound pagan magic, later placed within its own contexts as satanic, or the Devil’s work.
Christian evoked power from the unreal, the beyond space/time, whereas paganism evoked natural powers, through self, and how the brain, affected by rituals and words, can influence the body.
The priest is the conjurer of magic, the institutionalized magi, legitimized by popular appeal, and not because of any other standard.
The more minds he can move, with his rituals and words, the more “true” his power becomes.
Popularity, through otherness, becomes the standard of measuring value.
If he can convince others that what he says is true then it does not matter if it is ridiculous and has no references to reality.
Any claim that uses others, or self, as the standard shares in the potential effectiveness of this inverted method of reasoning.
The world becomes more of a “problem” do be explained within the contexts being promoted as a mass belief.
Interest in reality is minimal and only in as much as it contradicts the implied power being proposed, and the mass hypnosis being magically transmitted through a subtle suggestion.
In a secularized world the power of symbols, ritualized behavior/thinking, and of the word is still with us.
The way we name our children, the routines we repeat daily as if they were self-evidently necessary, how we greet each other, and, most importantly, how words are used to produce, and transfer a mental state, a mass movement, conjuring up images, feelings, sensations, as if by magic, on a mass scale, unprecedented in history, due to the current development of technologies, mass distribution and data sharing, all reveal the mystifying power of words.
Their power-direction is inverted, as mentioned before, because words do not affect nature but can only affect the individuals indoctrinated within a linguistic tradition and a ritualized type of living, who can then be manipulated into affecting nature with their actions.
Here words no longer describe (inter)action, but produce it.
And it can produce it on a large scale only by integrating as many minds into its “logic” as possible.
Therefore, within that context the “word comes first” because it is the foundation upon which an alternative reality can be built – to the point where the very idea of reality can only refer back to this manmade, artificial, alternate reality.
Within this context to hate man is to hate nature, reality, and to be nihilistic is to deny the existence of manmade concepts, such as meaning, and morality.
Once the logic, the method, the ritualized (re)activity, acquires the strength of numbers, all participating in it become repeating agencies, validating its “truths”.
The words refer to constructs within the shared contexts, and so become self-referential; their effectiveness contained within their own premises and how they can move populations to act, and affect a reality that does not participate in their shared beliefs.
It’s why quantities matter, more than qualities.
The communal synergy of all this ritualized behavior, even if based on a lie, becomes a force no quality can withstand for long.
The lie’s effectiveness is found in how it can seduce as many helpless, desperate, inferior minds to act in alignment with its premises.
It need not have a reference outside its own paradigm – in fact the more absurd, unrealistic, it is, all the more comfort it offers to those who find the world unappetizing.
The unrealistic making it all the more attractive to those who are hurt, or insulted by reality.
Those who are called to follow are the weakest, the weakest, the one most desperate for relief.
The priest becomes a “healer” using rhythmic psalms, ritualized melodic words, as soothing balms.
The words need not be understood for them to have an effect.
Their power is accentuated by their exotic incantation.
That they are incomprehensible makes them all the more magical.
This priestly power is mysterious to the laymen, those not included in his holy order.
He gathers all the magical forces and focuses them for all to become mesmerized by the experience.