babeling

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ” – John 1:1

And that’s just how it was. Within the Christian narrative was all I knew the world to be, until I was raised by a broken marriage that predisposed me to anxious attachment that, in college, would devolve into full blown depression, drug addiction, and the deconstruction (and reconstruction) of my mind into what it happens to be today.

Call me selfish, but I’ve always been most fixated with the question: who am I? Well, maybe, I’m not that selfish. I’m also not that depressed or fucked up either, I just happen to be a more honest person with those thoughts and feelings we all have. Truth is, we’re all selfish for our general well being that allows us to enjoy life and proliferate our genes. I’m just selfish about everything that is me: my body and my mind. It wasn’t the original plan to study Human Evolutionary Biology and Psychology – I arrived to both through organic ebbs and flow of introspection and experience – only to realize now that both actually study why: why our bodies and why our minds… in an effort to grasp, why exist at all?

From an evolutionary and anthropological perspective, literacy, the ability to communicate with symbols, is an inexplicable miracle of creation, whether it be to evolutionary or cosmic credit. It is the first of the key differences between ourselves and other organisms we call “animals”. Symbolic communication allows one organism’s knowledge to be shared with another organism. This simple ability to share thoughts has skyrocketed our species as an alpha predator, gifting us with the capability to coordinate efforts in producing philosophy, blockchain, and rocket launchers. For the first time, an organism has broken out of the ancient spell of adaptation, forcing the environment to adapt to itself rather than adapting to its environment.

From a psychological perspective, consciousness is another outlier of the human experience, another quality that distinguishes us from beasts. Lifetimes of philosophers and their philosophies have filled libraries and tumblr pages trying to understand what consciousness is – because for some reason, we sense that the answer to this question could answer larger questions regarding the cause, effect, and intent of the human species – or whether there is a cause, effect, or intent at all. But one thing is for sure, consciousness is the fundamental form of intelligence that sets us apart from any other organism. Consciousness is what the brain does. And for the brain to “consciousness” better, it needs to be bigger and better too. Scientists say walking upright and discovering fire increased our capacity to collect, process, and digest nutrients from our food – supplementing the electric growth of our brains, and eventually, our species.

Now, I wonder if there is a reason we are both a literate and conscious species.

Consciousness, as a human-exclusive trait, is individual facing. We are only ever truly aware of our own consciousness (remember “therefore I am”). On the other hand, literacy, while also being exclusive to humans, is a social trait. In fact, it is a social trait that allows us to share our individual trait, consciousness, with others. Nothing of significance today was created by one person – thus confirming that somewhere along the way, the capacity to share our thoughts through symbols was critical to everything that we perceive as humanity and society today.

“In the image of God, He created them.” – Genesis 1:27

Maybe consciousness was not the only sliver of God’s image that we were created with, but so was literacy. If God described Himself as the word, than our literacy is the image of Himself that was reflected in His creation of us. We had learned to share and synthesize these shards of God’s image within us to recreate towers of Babel that only God was supposed to be able to make. Because, if we could be God by ourselves, we no longer needed God. But God couldn’t bear the idea of our independence from Him and shattered our unified literacy, a tool He’d given us, into a thousand nations. But it wasn’t just a linguistic cataclysm, it was a fracturing of all other sexual, cultural, and socioeconomic languages we had shared too.

I’m talking, but nobody can hear me.
Am I babbling?

This random Japanese man in the street wants to talk to me about religion – and I would – but Google translate sucks ass.

I’m talking, but this man can’t understand me.
Am I babbling?

America wants me to be American, but my appearance and my heritage want me to be Korean. In the end, being Korean American means I’m neither fully American, nor Korean which also means I’m imperfect, and incomplete to both parties. It’s like I’m Korean American, not in the sense that I am fully both, but impossibly torn in between. But what does this matter, the rest of the world thinks I’m “Asian American” anyways.

I’m thinking, but I can’t understand myself.
Am I babbling?

I’m a Christian, but I study evolutionary biology and I am in love with a Buddhist. But all three parts pull me apart more than pull me together, demanding I be fully one of the three.

I’m praying, but it doesn’t feel like God can hear me.
Am I babbling?

My upbringing traumatized me and primed me to suffer more in my mind than in my body. I want to reconcile this with my parents, but my incomplete Korean and their even more broken English means my parents are more difficult to communicate with than my own friends. I hate that the older we get, the more our own literacy paradoxically bottlenecks the consciousness we desire to share with one another. How do I fully communicate my anger? How do I fully communicate my forgiveness?

The more I grow, the less my Korean communicates me.
Am I babbling?

What a terrible, beautiful irony to write a literary expression of my inability to share myself despite literacy’s key design being a tool that shares.

The more I write, the less you understand me.
Am I babeling?