One of the things I enjoy doing most is think about the terms we’re using. Not sure if that’s because how my brain makes sense of the world around me or something that comes with my philosopher side but thinking and writing about the words, ideas and systems feels like a game to me.
That’s why, time to time, I wrote about the terms that seemed worth writing it down in the blog. But the more I went deeper thinking about the world we’re in and what’s going on, some words or concepts started to appear more and stronger. So I’ve decided to collect my ideas about these, collecting the words in the meantime.
I’ve started this blogchain with 0, because I wanted to talk about the term “passwords” first. The term I’m stealing from Baudrillard. He defines it like this:
Passwords – the expression seems to me to describe quite well a quasi-initiatory way of getting inside things, without, however, drawing up a list. For words are bearers and generators of ideas – perhaps even more than the reverse. As weavers of spells and magic, not only do they transmit those ideas and things, but they themselves metaphorize and metabolize into one another by a kind of spiral evolution. It is in this way that they are ‘passers’ or vehicles of ideas.
Passwords – Jean Baudrillard, p. IX
What I do —or want to do— with the words and concepts in this series (or experiment?) is quite similar to what Baudrillard does in the book Passwords.
We think we advance by way of ideas – that is doubtless the fantasy of every theorist, every philosopher – but it is also words themselves which generate or regenerate ideas, which act as ‘shifters’.
Passwords – Jean Baudrillard, p. X
Like he says, words we use to think and generate ideas shapes those ideas and change how it can evolve. This is why we’re seeing more and more examples of discussions based on definitions or how should we define what we’re going through. Because the words we use to define our ideas and experiences plays an important role, most of the time without us noticing it.
The words we’re using, how we’re using and who defines what it can or should mean is an important power. Letting the words defined for us to shape our ideas also means giving up our imagination.
This is especially important today. No one can deny that we’re going through some paradigm shift globally. Whether it’s the jackpot or something more positive, there’s a radical change going on. This change requires new words and concepts to think about it and discuss the meaning of the old ones.
Because words pass, then; because they pass away, metamorphose, become ‘passers’ or vehicles of ideas along unforeseen channels not calculated in advance, the expression ‘passwords’ seems to me to enable us to reapprehend things, both by crystallizing them and by situating them in an open, panoramic perspective.
Passwords – Jean Baudrillard, p. X
That’s why I feel the need for passwords. Passwords for the weird and deadly interesting times.