Reality vs Words

Reality vs Words

Whether the words have more power to change the reality than reality has to influence the way we call things that we come in contact with depends greatly on what we understand by the term of reality because this term can have both a physical and an abstract meaning. I strongly belive that there are three different types of reality. First, we have the physical reality that is common to all the people in the world even if it can differ from one culture to another. Second we have a personal reality specific to each and every person. This reality contains a man’s personal belives, hopes, dreams, aspirations, fears, social status and much more. The third reality cannot be reached by everybody because this is a reality that we create within ourselves. It is a reality that can be seen and analysed clearly in fiction book writers, especially in those who write fantasy or science fiction but not only that. The power of the words over that of the reality differs from one type to another.

First, in the case of the physical reality, I think that words have no power to change or manipulate it in any way. That is because to change the shape or properties of different objects or materials we need to use mechanical, chemical and other types of processes, mere words being totally useless. In other words, for this type of reality words have only the purpose of denominating different objects or phenomenons in order for us to be able to refer to them. Changing the term for an object doesn’t have any physical effect on it. A car doesn’t become less of a car if someone prefers to call it a horse or the other way around.

Even if we go into the field of philosophy there is still no possibility for words to be more powerful than reality because a certain notion of an object or an idea always comes before the term that denominate them. People have looked around them in prehistorical times discovering and begining to manipulate the reality around them even if they weren’t able to name the objects they found by a word. People have used rocks for example as weapons and tools even before the word “rock” was created.

Second, when we talk about a man’s personal reality we can say that words do have the power to make changes and that is because we are getting into a far less physical realm and a more into an abstract one. We are getting into the field where certain terms define a person’s status in the society and we must understand that when these terms change so does the life of a person, for the worse or for the better, depending on how the change is perceived. When we talk about small kids it doesn’t really matter since they don’t even understand the terms themselves, however they do matter for the people around them and it changes the way society behaves towards them. But then people grow and come of age and their whole reality change at the same time with the word they are refered with. An “underaged” has a totally different reality with very little responsability in it from that of a “major”. Then people can be “unmarried” and they don’t feel bound to any particular person until they marry and become “married” and their whole reality changes. This are terms that we usually find in documents and define our social status.

There are also words that can change not only a man’s social status but also his mentality and the way they look at themselves and interact with other people. For example when a judge finds an accused guilty of a certain crime and sentences him or her to three years in jail, that person’s reality is changed by the term “guilty”. Not only that he/she loses his/her freedom but he also starts to see himself/herself as a criminal and begins to behave according to the new status. The same thing happens when a doctor comes with a diagnosis and tells the patient that he/she has a fatal disease or an STD. In such situations people become loners or fall into depression and start to avoid people.

Last but not the least we must talk about the realm of the words, the realm where words don’t have the power to change reality but to actually create it. As aforementioned we are talking here about the people who use words to create and manipulate, according to their own will, whole realities. By writing, a writer doesn’t just put some words on paper for an audience but he creates whole new worlds, characters and events and leads them wherever he wants them to go. When creating a character for example, an author doesn’t simply give him/her a name but uses words to bring them to life. It gives the character both physical, psychologic traits and a personality. A good writer doesn’t just create a world by describing various environmental elements but uses words to cut the reader both from the physical and personal reality.

Having said this we can conclude that it is very hard to approve or disapprove with a statement such as “People select and use their words to shape and control reality, but in fact it is reality that ultimately changes words far more than words can ever change reality”.