I remember a college guy telling me that grammar and language structure didn’t matter anymore because images ruled the way we think. I suppose I could have argued with him by saying, “I love that flavor too. Hey, when sue melon get fetchit?” But that would require on-the-spot thinking or even living in my element at the split moment he spoke. I’m rarely in my element, and he was a college guy, which means he was susceptible to bad, even stupid, ideas, some of which he wrote with his own mental words.

Does anyone doubt that we live by words? That’s because words are the stuff of ideas. The image of a bombed out building tells us little about reality if we have not words to put to it. Was it empty and dilapidated, more harmful to the city than helpful? Was a target in a war? If so, was it a fair target? Do we know anything about the building, the explosion, or the context of both that words have not given us?

In the same vein, what makes us human? What words describe the meaning of person hood, not being an animal or a cell block? That’s a cultural argument we have had for years now, leading to crimes like this one in Hialeah, Florida. The Deputy Police Chief says, “They can slaughter anyone they want according to the statutes before birth, but not after.” They can slaughter anyone . . . only because many people want to believe that babies are not people until they are declared to be so. Every child is to be a wanted child, so if the child is not wanted, then he is not a child.

He’s an image. A nothing. If we don’t name him, he won’t exist.

Tags: words, children, images, personhood, life