Tower of Babble

There are some that only employ words for the purpose of disguising their thoughts.
Voltaire(1694 - 1778), Dialogue, XIV, "Le Chapon et la Poularde" (1766)

In the beginning ... well, for those of you who are more materialistic, let's just say I have this fantasy story to tell ... let's say there were just beings without bodies, without a physical universe surrounding them; no myriad creations floating around which were not their own, and had nothing to do with them. Imagine in this primeval situation what communication would be like. With nothing extant but the beings themselves, one could just put one's attention on the another being and immediately perceive his thoughts and feelings, if he were experiencing any at the time, pure, essential, and unfiltered. Honesty has not been invented yet, since there is no contrary concept. Speech has not been invented yet, because ... what for? What an absurd concept, to put things on a via, instead of just perceive directly.

Now, somewhere down the line, somebody decided they didn't like this direct and open form of communication. Well, perhaps there was an in-between step. Someone invented the idea of a picture.

One picture is worth a thousand words.
Fred R. Barnard

Perhaps he wanted to show the other person what he had experienced at some other location. Or perhaps it was a whole concept of many interrelated ideas. Bam! Here is a picture ball explaining it all. But at some point someone decided they didn't want other people to see exactly what he was thinking and feeling, directly. So he put up a barrier to stop direct perception of himself. Not to be totally rude though, and so that other beings could still communicate with him, he used symbols to represent what was going on with him. You can't look at me directly, but with these symbols here I am telling you what I am thinking and feeling. Of course, I am withholding some things, but these are the things I am willing to share with you. The first the use of pictures to communicate.

There are some that only employ words for the purpose of disguising their thoughts.
Voltaire - Dialogue, XIV, "Le Chapon et la Poularde" (1766) French author, humanist & satirist (1694 - 1778)

Then much further down the road, we beings decided to use bodies as tokens on a big game board. Now this really puts a barrier between us and who we are communicating to. I have body 'Bob'. So, let's see, I can have 'Bob' communicate for me. Bob says 'Run, Sally, run'. Wee, that's fun. And with bodies, we can have new kinds of symbols. Sounds. Uggh! Bam! Hmm, this has potential. What if we got very sophisticated with sounds. Maybe, we could make very complex symbol systems to communicate. Ah, Words! Well, pictures were too easy. Words are a real challenge. Let's see if we can communicate what we are thinking and feeling with a string of sounds called, 'Words'.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
George Orwell(1903 - 1950) "Politics and the English Language", 1946

Then a bit further down the road, some enlightened being came up with the brilliant idea that if the other person communicating through a body, on this long chain of vias, can't really see what I am thinking and feeling, well, I could say I was thinking something, with words, when I wasn't really. Hmm, I wonder if he could find out. "Julius, I really like your new toga". I wonder if he can tell I really hate it, ... no, Damn! He believes it. And thus insincerity was invented. Well, then, of course, it was not long before outright lies came on the scene. And the world has never been the same since.

The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.
Philip K. Dick (1928 - 1982), How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later (1978)

But it gets worse. Not only did politicians make vast use of this new discovery, but another cultish group figured out that by using words that held significant meaning for large masses of the population they could actually manipulate how they thought and felt. It came full circle. Now with these obtuse forms of communication, words, the being on the end of this long string of vias could be controlled into thinking what you wanted them to think by a combination of the lie invention and pushing buttons through use of the right words.

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
Plato, Dialogues, Phaedo

Unfortunately, all but a few Orwellianites seemed to totally forget how communication started out, and became seemingly unaware of the existence of the invention called a lie. Being good souls, they wanted to believe that their leaders always spake the truth. They unfortunately feel forced to watch devices that program them constantly on how to think, live and feel, and only vaguely at best feel that there is something wrong with the process.

But not all is lost. Firstly, there seem to be a few that have mastered this new form of communication, and often times with elegance, sometimes with simplicity, and have penetrated the veil of lies and deception, and with subtlety let leak through the rain of words some real communication. And there are others, which realizing the current state of affairs have turned to denouncing and attacking the falseness of the verbiage wherever and whenever they see it. And there are yet others who are making plans to depart the whole scene in a ark of spirituality, if you will, and return to the original state, leaving the baggage of words behind.

Now I know this fantastical tale has no relevance to the world we live in, but I was just laying in the bathtub one night and it all came to me in a picture ball, so I thought I would tell the tale in words.