[MUSIC PLAYING]
There's a fascinating new
book by Diana Slattery called
Xenolinguistics-- Psychedelics
and the Evolution of Language,
which builds on
McKenna's notions
that the world is
made of language.
And if you know the words
the world is made of,
you can make of it
whatever you wish,
kind of like Neo in The
Matrix when he sees the code.
And so what does this mean,
this notion that reality
is made of language?
Is it mere metaphor,
is it mere poetry?
McKenna and Diana Slattery
say that actually the metaphor
is literalized,
when you actually
look at the big picture.
Even biology is
made of language.
Biology is code.
DNA is code.
It's software that
writes its own hardware.
The words come before
the matter emerges.
Just think about that,
because it resonates
in all kinds of
transcendental ways,
this notion that mind
came before matter.
That mind didn't emerge
from matter, but rather
that mind preceded matter.
It's a wild idea,
but it does seem
to be that everything can be
described in terms of words,
whether it's music,
whether it's the atoms that
describe the laws of physics.
It's all describeable.
It's all information.
It's a wild idea.
It's worth thinking about.
