I'm not really fluent in Lizard or any other languages. Sometimes, on a given occasion, I have a lot of trouble with my own language. Today, if I may be so bold, I would like to offer a hypothesis on the matter of the barrier that exists in speaking between species. We like to joke (not me but others and you've probably met them or you may be one yourself) that we can talk to our animals. We've all seen the examples - "Watch Cujo, he understands me when I talk to him. Cujo, go to the car and drag that man who's screaming and bring him back here. Good dog. See. He understands me." Probably, and I'm just guessing, Cujo understood the word car in association with repetitive use. He may have understood the word "man" through more repetitive use. The dog simply put car and man together and also intelligently put "bring" into the mix as well. "Car", "man", and "bring". We learn language the same way but we are strenuously taught in a formal class setting. I imagine all language is taught this way and humans are just better at reinforcing it. Animals probably don't have any classrooms set up anywhere that help in the development of teaching their young. Heck, they probably don't have lunch time or physical education time set aside either. Animals learn what they need to know or it's been the same for so many years that genetically there is just sound association that is passed down and they may just be born with a certain knowledge such as some mammals start to stand by themselves and eat their placentas through some ancestral trait. I'm just guessing at all of this and don't hold me to any of it. I'm basically just talking in written form. But what of the biblical sense. The record shows that Eve, the first woman, spoke in language to the serpent. Now, was the snake a snake or was it all symbolic? Did the first humans have the ability to speak to animals in a perfect creation before the fall of man? Now some of you don't believe the bible. Some of you believe but find this a merely symbolic story of evil and the way humans are attracted to it. And some of you take the bible at it's word and follow the story of the Garden of Eden in total record of what happened in rigid translation. Did Eve speak directly to the serpent? Or was the use of the serpent a symbolic representation of Satan/Lucifer - the fallen angel of light? Was there a capability, in the perfect world, that allowed humans to speak fluently with all animals and all animals with each other? We weren't there so there's actually no audio recordings of the language. What if it was a telepathic communication? Was it verbally spoken words of a lost language that we've never heard but may hear in the future upon our deaths? What does your imagination allow? Will their be a future where the human species moves past the barrier that different languages have imposed upon us? Would this barrier, if broken down, allow for the human species to thrive or condemn ourselves to annihilation through the destruction enhanced by evil intent? Would our goodness break through or our greed and need to conquer? The story of the "Tower of Babel" is one that has always intrigued me. When men, in the first millennium, came together in one voice, the need to build a tower that put them on the same level as their God was only through communication and cooperation in one goal. It was only through the dissolution of communication that man's ability to accomplish such goals was diminished. At what point did the language barrier come between man and the animals? If you're an atheist then this is all just hypothetical and the species all came from some bacteria on a rock with a kick start from a lightning bolt. If you are a believer in God but just don't swallow the bible in its entirety then "whatever" could be "whatever". If you're a devout believer then a part of you must really be wondering a lot right now. So my question to you is this - if man spoke with animals in such a conversational form, and if that ability had never been taken away, what would the world be today? Just food for thought. My name is Rueuhy and I approve this blog.
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