The greatest lie we’ve been told is that individuals are powerless to effect massive change in the world. That’s just not how chemistry works.
Melvyn Rustin
A primary subtheme of Reconstruction is examining how our lives were constructed the way they are, as the foundation upon which we stand is ever-modifiable and reworkable.
It is no exaggeration to say that our lives are created by our words and beliefs. From these springs the materiality of our lives, our lived experience, and all the potential there is to be unlocked.
It’s high time we examine the house your words built and your beliefs furnished. You’ve got a life to reconstruct.
In this post, I want to explore and elucidate the powerful creative nature of our words and demonstrate the potent reality-editing impact of our beliefs.
Let’s begin.
Mundane Vehicles of Creation
A word is defined as “a single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others to form a sentence.”
These “single distinct meaningful elements of speech” are then strung together and used as vehicles to convey messages, emotions, or stories and have the uncanny ability to persist well after they have been written or spoken, shaping even societies centuries after their utterance.
Words color our experience in beautiful meaningful ways, helping us access, understand, and describe our depths. It’s why we love poetry, music, rap, and debate even.
These linguistic elements not only frame our entire world but they are also the reason for the existence of the world and society as we understand and appreciate it…
Evolutionary Change and the Birth of Culture
In the Myth of Human Evolution, I described the capacities that make us distinctly human (and powerful) such as complex emotions, larger brains, and advanced nervous systems. However, the upgrade that is arguably most impactful in how we live our lives?
Language ability.
This last capability, the spoken word, has had an effect that cannot be overstated. I’ll try not to get too scientific since it’s a little complex (for me to both understand and explain), but let’s dive further.
In 1998, scientists studying the development of a speech disorder in a multi-generational British family (affecting 15 relatives and 3 generations), discovered a gene, FOXP2 (or its government name Forkhead Box Protein P2), that they have attributed to the development of complex language, general brain development, and synaptic plasticity in humans.1 2
What’s interesting is that this same gene protein, located on chromosome 7 in humans (7q31, they tell me), is also found in chimpanzees, mice, bats, and all other mammals.34 And yet, you and I are the only mammals capable of singing Hello by Adele… From the other side.
The reasons for this difference in gene function in humans are unclear and controversial, however, FOXP2, or the language gene, mutated rapidly and all at once sometime in the fossil record “around the same time that language emerged for our species.”5
This mutation and the subsequent prompt development of societies, culture, social mores, and likely even awkwardness, lend support to a hypothesis that the onset of language is the “decisive event” that made human culture possible.6
I would also suspect that the ability to communicate with the complexity we do is in some way related to the capacity to even consider What’s In An Idea.
A minuscule change in our genetic code enabling us the ability to contort our faces to say “how now brown cow,” is largely responsible for the birth of the constructed language Esperanto and the cult following of Pokémon.
Simply incredible.
Reasons like these are why I am in the crowd of folks screaming “intelligent design” or that a cosmic couturier is responsible for giving us the ability to speak and create.
This alone should give you some inkling of how powerful speech is, wouldn’t you say?
Language and the inherent creative power it contains are quintessentially human. Just a customary, regular-degular aspect of who we are that we’ve hardly utilized responsibly.
It’s not only evolutionary biology, even linguists and anthropologists highlight the compelling power of our words.
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Preceding the groundbreaking genetic discovery of FOXP2 was the work of two anthropologist-linguists, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf.
Fun fact: I first learned about their work in a communications class during my sophomore year of college, a whole 12 years ago. I’ve toted it with me ever since for reasons I hope you might also enjoy.
Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf were early 20th-century anthropologists and linguists who studied how language and culture influence each other and how linguistic differences correlate with differences in cultural worldviews.7 8
Sapir, who is widely considered one of the most important figures in the development of the discipline of linguistics in the U.S., was an early proponent of the importance of psychology to anthropology, highlighting the significance of studying individual and interpersonal relationships to understand how culture and society develops, as we’ll cover shortly.910 Our pal Ben was his student and his contribution was developing his and Sapir’s insights into the “Sapir-Whorf” hypothesis.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity posits that the particular language one speaks and the structure of that language influence the way one thinks about reality, worldview, and ultimately perception.11
Whorf maintained that language users “dissect nature along the lines laid down by [their] native languages.”12
Though not stated in the hypothesis, the theory has been considered controversial for its potentially deterministic and restrictive orientation.13 However, additional research has produced evidence that a language’s structure does influence a speaker’s perception without strictly limiting or obstructing them.14 So, we can paint with all the colors of the wind, but based on our culture we likely only choose a few.
This theorized relationship between language and thought caused earlier 19th-century thinkers, whose work this hypothesis bloomed from, to consider language as the expression of the “spirit of a nation.”
This instantly causes me to think of the romance ascribed broadly to French speakers, efficiency to speakers of German, and the connection to nature and community associated with some Spanish dialects; regardless of the correctness of the associations.
It’s also an invitation to consider the nature, or “spirit,” of a language and the structural artifacts and architecture of the country where the language is spoken (e.g., the Love Lock Bridge in Paris, Autobahns in Germany, or contemporary Mexican homes blending natural elements with modern architecture).
What does all this mean for us?
The modification of FOXP2 gave humans the ability to speak and within that ability the power to create both the social and physical structures we call society.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis suggests that our native language may influence how and what we perceive, illuminating the spirit of our place of origin (or residence).
So I think what we can take from this is that our words, yours and mine, have immense power to create and organize our experience. Further, the language we speak, and I’d add the nature, or the character, of our speech, determines what we see and see fit to build, recognize, or suppress, in our lives or others.
Let’s apply this more practically.
Construction and Reconstruction of Your House
As much as we may disagree or try to deny it, we are social creatures and are heavily informed by the world of humans around us.
Your daily life experience, your routine, your possessions, your relationships, and all the facets of your life comprise the “house” you live in, constructed both by words and the material remnants of earlier spoken words like a university or hospital.
I titled this piece “The House Your Words Built,” however your life is most certainly not the sum of only your words, as words had already created everything that existed before you arrived.
I say your words because it is your acceptance and resulting ownership of the words spoken to and about you that enables them to grow haphazardly in your otherwise carefully planned and intended life.
It is your agreement that has energized the words that have constructed the house your life is taking place in. And if you consider the structural challenges we all share, then we would consider that collective agreement; a shifting example on display on college campuses around the world.
Free Palestine, Congo, Sudan, and Haiti.
I’ll give you a novel example, what’ll happen if you turn the light on in your car at night while you’re driving? And how often do you turn that light on now as a result? I don’t even remember what exactly happens and certainly not how, but I know it’s bad (other cars wrecking I think?).
In Wells & Vessels, we covered how critical our first 5 to 7 years of development are to our building the cognitive infrastructure for our entire lives. During that time we are indiscriminately taking in and attempting to make sense of all the words we hear around us. Words we now know are constructive regardless of their polarity.
The question all of this brings us to is this:
Is the “house” you live in one in which you are comfortable and regularly replenished as you go about your life or is it a cage keeping you hunched over minutiae and chained by others’ limitations?
The elements, or words (remember our definition), that have built our lives (with our permission and agreement) have come from:
Our families, our friends, our opps! (enemies), and the barrage of words from television, radio, music, the table beside us at the coffee house, our schooling, the teacher we liked, the teacher we didn’t like who tried to use her words to cage us, the ex that tried to wound us into repeating a cycle that included them (yuck), the leader who boxed us into a “supportive” enclosure to leech off us, and many more.
The outcome of our collection of these innumerable words, frequently carelessly hurled, is a McMansion of a life-house that is not wholly ours.
As a result of this, we find ourselves regularly acting in ways we might not like living what feels like someone else’s life and chasing after someone else’s dreams. Dreams they themselves might not have chosen. So, no, you’re not crazy or a failure or ungrateful.
This phenomenon is not always bad, though, as I hope to convey next.
Who Said That??
One day my sister and I were talking, pre-return to North Carolina, about nothing in particular, when she said something that powerfully activated me.
Her words essentially reorganized my core conception of who I had been up to that point. I think it was something I had always hoped was true and even shrunk away from, but her saying it, unprovoked I might add, gave me a permission I hadn’t been able to give myself, a building block I was afraid to lay.
And I have let me be myself since.
There’s a message in there about having people around you who will call out what they see in you and you, them…
So I ask you: Which words shaped the house you currently live in?
What is the spirit of your words? Which spoken elements created the alchemical compound that is you and your view of what is possible for you (and the world at large)?
Who said you couldn’t? OR HAD TO? That being a woman meant this? That being a man required that? Which words still echo from the backlog of words you collected during developmental years when you didn’t understand the world and couldn’t distinguish between poison and promise?
Let neither yourself nor other people speak to you crazy. Words are sticky and they can be fertile or poisonous and why the scriptures stress the power of the tongue. We can no longer take our or any words for granted.
Examine your house.
What words have constructed the edifice you call your life?
Which words do you no longer want to live with?
What words do you need to be collecting and speaking to reconstruct a life you would more gladly occupy?
A new, more fitting house is more than possible. It’ll just take a little belief.
Beliefs-A-Million
A belief is defined as something one accepts as true or real; a firmly held opinion or conviction.
Let’s consider a belief a “power-pack” of words.
Words might comprise the fundamental material that has built all we see and experience, but beliefs are the concentrated word structures, the power-packs, responsible for manufacturing specific experiences in our lives.
For example, if you believe in God or any higher power, you’ll regularly create the experience of openness and reverence, both knowing and trusting that there is some oversight to this whole thing as well as divine assistance when you need it.
If you believe the world is hopeless and we’re veering toward destruction or in the end times (YIKES), you will either live recklessly or remain in a perpetual state of shock and overwhelm at all the news and points of no returns we keep passing (sorry!). As a result, you won’t see opportunity, progress, or your valuable place in it.
If you believe everyone cheats, you will craft the experience of checking phones, being suspicious, or being nonchalant. Consequently, and I can almost guarantee it, you won’t offer the level of vulnerability that will grant you access to the intimacy you crave WITH the person who doesn’t cheat.
Sidenote: It’s been a while since I’ve been in a relationship, and though I absolutely don’t believe all men cheat (not at all) or that it’s even my responsibility to ensure they don’t, I am being extra careful these days with the relationship content I consume and let come across my screen. I plan to prevent someone else’s careless words and weak ass beliefs from warping my perspective beneath my awareness. Fantasia said “I want go in deep with you” and I agreed.
Beliefs extend beyond you as well. With nearly every belief you select or empower, you can find people who share it, literature to build it out, and communities of practice to engage with it. You also may not notice it, but you have likely been surrounded by people who reinforce your current beliefs either by agreement or resistance (like proving haters or family wrong).
For example, if you decide that you would rather believe the Earth is a dodecahedron than a sphere or flat, you can find support for it.
Fun fact: I tried to conjure a random belief for this piece and did in fact come across research about the Earth as a Dodecahedron, though I admit it’s not a huge stretch.
The subtle thing about beliefs I hope I have conveyed here is that they are not inert. They are packages. Software programs, if you will. Malware, if you’re not careful.
It goes like this: You say, “I believe this” and then you support that belief both consciously and unconsciously with your actions. The belief gets reflected back to you in your life experience and then you biasedly(sic) accept this reflection as confirmation of the validity of your belief, further dictating your behavior and resulting experiences until you examine it.
The Greatest Lie Ever Told
The greatest lie we’ve been told is that individuals aren’t capable of effecting massive change. However, chemistry teaches us that if you add even one single atom to a compound, you now have a very different substance with different properties.
If you add a single oxygen atom to the compound for water, you no longer have anything potable, but you can use the resulting hydrogen peroxide for cleaning and disinfection, for example. Singular things always affect collective things and vice versa, but we’re talking about you.
In X-Men ‘97, Storm taught us that it’s rarely only the lies we’ve been told or the things that have happened to us that have “tamped down our gifts,” but our belief in them that give them their power and limit ours.
A few of these lies have been that we are powerless to slow down the destruction in the world or create a better future or live fulfilling lives. The resulting “inert” acceptance of these lies facilitates the experience of resignation and defeat while we sit on the answers to our greatest problems…
Beliefs and Definitions
Beliefs go hand in hand with definitions. You might have a definition of success that means being able to take time off and have enough money to vacation a few times a year, thus framing this recreational facet of your life.
However, your belief in your ability or the likelihood of experiencing that definition will make all the difference in how you show up to life, what you expect, and even the examples that filter into your experience.
For so long I believed power was bad and that having it would corrupt me and cause me to mishandle or hurt someone else based on the examples of power and “leadership” I had seen. As a result, I’ve shied away (read: ran away) from opportunities to lead, I’ve been silent when I had an answer that could have helped, and altogether lived a life smaller than my capabilities. And gladly!
Or so I thought.
As I have connected to myself more and clarified what I want out of life, I’ve come to realize that leading will be necessary to live out my vision. And surprisingly, recently I have had no qualms about leading or standing out.
Two things have helped me and shifted my belief in and comfort with my leading others (myself before anyone else, though).
First, and an overt continuation of the work we’ve already been doing, redefining leadership for myself. I’ve decided that my form of leadership doesn’t have to be command and control or hypermasculine as I’ve seen. My form of leadership also doesn’t need to require me to have all the answers. I can simply lead and guide others to themselves, their own answers, and the better world I see burgeoning amid all the calculated unnecessary destruction and violence.
Second, heart coherence. I TOLD YOU, ZEALOT. I won’t rehash [Action Required: Heart Coherence], but there’s an effortlessness I have now with moving forward, sharing what I believe, and working towards it. I feel regularly connected to something beyond me, so I’m nowhere near as nervous as before at the prospect either. And like I said, if power is necessary to effect the level of change needed, put me in coach.
Believe you are capable of reconstructing yourself and your life. You haven’t been here long enough for things to truly be hopeless. And honestly? You never will.
By changing beliefs that have been running beneath your awareness and curating your experience, you can change everything that you have always known or believed was permanent or inflexible.
In The Way of Reconstruction, I invited you to ask the question: Who do I need to be to fulfill the dream-plan of my life?
I’d like to add to the questions in that post: What do I need to believe to have what I want?
Alternatively, which belief says that I can’t have what I want? That causes me to shrink? To avoid speaking up?
A few beliefs I would love for you to consider adopting are:
My reason for being is knowable
I am hugely important to the unfolding of a new world, responsible solely for my joyfully expressed part
I have a right to experience some version of the things I dream of and my experience of them serves the world I occupy
Reorganizing Creation
As you consider and envision a new life and set off to reconstruct yours into it, the ideas you receive will provide stepping stones that may or may not make sense given your conceptualization of self.
With this knowledge, when the idea seems impossible or far beyond you, I invite you to work to identify which beliefs are holding you in your current state and intentionally cultivate beliefs that will support the growth of your ideas. We’ll address the resistance you’ll most certainly encounter next.
Be aggressive about this.
Although I don’t believe we have to ferret out every single limiting belief or message (they typically all center around not-enoughness, scarcity, playing small, not trying new things, and fear), I do think we need to build our confrontation muscle a bit as we face our lives head-on. Your passivity is profitable.
Reconstruct the house that your words have built and your beliefs have adorned.
This is YOUR reality. I know that might sound crazy, but perception is most everything. And since you don’t have access to the same word-bank life-house as anyone else you can’t see or perceive the world the way they do, no matter how many wordy posts of theirs you read (thanks, I really appreciate it, though).
And I hear you. Yes, there are structural restrictions and collective agreements we have to contend with, but far before you think about those structural challenges you need to claim and own all YOUR power.
Treat others’ beliefs and doubts as questions and let your life be the answer. When they say “You can’t do that,” hear them asking if you can and then show them. Not out of arrogance or proof-showing but enjoyment of your own life.
Everything has already been created.
What is meant by that is that the Earth and all its materials are already here and there is always more available to you and happening around you than you could imagine or attend to.
Your primary work is to use your vessel, your words, and every joyful action I am encouraging you to take to reorganize and reconstruct what already exists into a home where you can thrive.
Your secondary work is inviting me to the housewarming.
Melvyn 🗣️
Now, what was said about sticks, stones, and bones?? 🤨
https://www.amazon.com/Human-Design-Evolution-Chance-Transformation/dp/1401949312
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2192969.stm
Human by design and “Study Links Evolution of Single Gene to Human Capacity for Language,” Emory University, Yerkes National Primate Research Center press release (November 11, 2009). Available at: http://www.yerkes.emory.edu/about/news/neuropharmacology_neurologic_diseases/gene_language_ca
Moore, Jerry D. 2009. "Edward Sapir: Culture, Language, and the Individual" in Visions of Culture: an Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists, Walnut Creek, California: Altamira. pp. 88–104
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity#cite_note-1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Lee_Whorf
Leavitt, John Harold (2010). Linguistic relativities : language diversity and modern thought. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-511-99268-1. OCLC 699490918
Ahearn, Laura M. (2012). Living language : an introduction to linguistic anthropology. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K. p. 69. ISBN 978-1-4443-4056-3. OCLC 729731177 Boroditsky, Lera; Liberman, Mark (13–23 December 2010). "For and Against Linguistic Relativity". The Economist. The Economist Newspaper Limited. Archived from the original on 15 February 2012. Retrieved 19 September 2019.