The Egg
The EggBy: Andy WeirYou were on your way home when you died.It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left be...
By: Luke Aulin on July 17, 2025
Language is incredibly fascinating. Thoughts create words. Words referentially then help create future thoughts. Every one of us today has inherited words from our ancestors. Words that were created over time from our individual and shared witness to reality. New words, called neologisms, are created every day. As we all know, words and their meaning also evolve over time. Like everything on the ego’s plane of consciousness, words are not fixed things.
As Alan Watts once said: “we seldom realize that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.”
Words enable a deeper connection with one another. In a sense, words have the power to cast spells. They help us share our otherwise seemingly isolated reality with others. To build things together that don’t yet exist. They create shared meaning and empathy. They bridge gaps of misunderstanding. In this sense, words have the power to unite us. They also have a shadow - words can, inherently, divide. It’s inherent to words as once we’re “wording” we are “defining.” Defining moves us into creating a shared, or inter-subjective, reality where something is not another thing, by definition. Those lines between things are fascinatingly thin sometimes. Where do i end and you begin, for example? What truly is in this space between? Sadly, once we define an 'this', then we also have a ‘that.’ An 'us' versus a 'them.' Some think definitions for words help with creating an objective reality. So we can agree on “truth.” Sure. But if we also agree that their meaning changes over time, objectivity is just a moving target with time, isn’t it?
Words have history we can attempt to tap into.
The word ‘identity,’ for which most today assign to mean an “individual self,” has a fascinating etymology. Identity has its roots in the late Latin word “identitas” which roots back to the earlier Latin word "idem” - both of which actually mean ‘sameness.’ Or, ‘the state of being the same.’ But hang on! That’s not how we think of identity, is it? Are we not distinct, unique and separate from others as individuals or as a societal group? It wasn’t until the 16th century - when the word then entered English - where identity came to carry meaning for “the individual self.” Somehow, some way, some one or some folks chose for the word to morph into meaning ‘separate from other.’
Then we have the word ‘individual’ - latin roots ‘dividere’ which became ‘dividus’ where ‘in,’ meaning ‘not,’ added to the prefix to make ‘individuus’ which became 'individual" - and meant along the way to be ‘indevisible’ or ‘whole.’ Once again, separate and distinct. And yet, it’s funny how ‘individual’ contains the word ‘dual’ inside of it.
“Relationship, surely, is the mirror in which you discover yourself…to be, is to be related; to be related is existence.” - Jiddu Krishnamurti
i do wonder, dear friends, if our ancestors who created these words - where identity meant “same” and individual factors in dual, or “other,” - were trying to embed codes in our language to help us on our path. Perhaps our ancestors wanted us to avoid the downsides of a solipsistic, isolated self-referential society that could be the risk of putting the individual waaaaay above the collective? Or any collective above another collective? It’s hard to say, for the ‘choosers’ of words and their meaning over time are entrusted to some and the documentation trail around how it’s decided seems nebulous. Coming to find out who holds these powers, even today, is a slightly cloak and dagger affair upon cursory research.
Who holds such power today? Who decides on our words and their meaning? And therefore our language? And therefore our thoughts?
In modern times, outside of micro/local shared parlance where anything can happen inside a group at the grass roots level, we rely on dictionary publishers as the arbiters of shared language across broader geographies. For English, that’s the folks behind the likes of Merriam Webster, Oxford Dictionary, etc.
About 1000 words per year are added to the Oxford dictionary. Today, it’s the job of lexicographers to put forward words that make the cut each year. They look for things like:
In the case of Oxford Dictionary, owned by a non-profit organization called The Oxford University Press, they have 15 academics called The Delegates of the Press - appointed by the vice chancellor - who are led by one, The Secretary to the Delegates. Their chief executive. Effectively, whoever all these folks are, they’re the ones calling the shots for our modern lexicon. In the case of Merriem Webster, it’s owned by a Swiss billionaire who owns Encyclopedia Brittanica, its parent company.
It’s a beautiful thing to think about these powerful corners of the world we humans have carved out for ourselves. And how much we benefit from, defer to and outsource such things to improve sharing this amazing life together. It's also a beautiful thing to become aware of the paradox inherent in words and to move slowly through how they show up for and impact us.
It’s also a beautiful thing that we don’t need any one of these people to go on inventing our own words. As we like. Like Beaunity! Oh come on lexicographers, let’s do this!
Anyway, for now i feel like taking it from our ancestors - those closer to the origins of these things - that we are perhaps the same as everyone else. That our identity and individuality is inseparable from others. Even those we feel culturally distant from at first glance. It just is this way. i am you and you are me. It’s written inside our very words. Perhaps another way of thinking about this is ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ And all that jazz.