It is said that water is one with ice, and that the fish forget the sea.
What we call our generation – the span of our lives on this planet – has already taken a shape that is both new and incomprehensible from our perspective. The names we use are no longer able to capture and to control reality, no longer able to impose order upon the fluid and turbulent events of this century.
The rectification of names is a central doctrine of Chinese Confucianism, an ancient framework through which society can regulate ethics, politics, power relations and legal affairs. Harmony, in this sense, flows directly from the proper definition of the world and everything in it. In its absence, chaos prevails.
Our current epistemological breakdown coincides with the regular flare-up of absurd violence: in cities, between nations, among communities. We’ll be speaking in different tongues, separated by a growing distance between symbol and meaning – until we rectify the names.