Some words represent more than a word is biologically capable of representing. Having an object with very few association links in the brain would not give a deep understanding of it. But even worse is to have an object associated with everything. The “existential risk prevention” system of the brain does not allow too many associations, because it would trigger so many connections to be lighted simultaneously that we risk a system overload. So our theory is that the brain artificially suppresses activity in these word-centers. Your thought process dies, is restarted and the brain autopilot finishes the thought with whatever shallow content it can. These generic words are harmful to our thought process in an invisible way. They disrupt it, leaving behind no evidence of their failure.
When humans first evolved life was simpler so one word represented one concept. Eventually we got concepts that didn’t fit into one word. Life got more complex, dynamic and interconnected and those complicated concepts got more and more interrelated. We slapped a single word on all of those. Due to their importance they became cornerstone words in our language, categories of their own: Education, Work, Career, Business, Money, Relationship, Religion. But a cornerstone can only be one if it brings clarity and simplicity, if it is understood at a level deep enough. And since mental block happens every time we encounter the “trap word“, we cannot develop an intuition about it.
Then we copy the understanding of these all important concepts from people around us and popular culture. However, other people have the exact same problem – they are just as confused and the same words make them block too. We call this confusion “The fog“ and it is invisible to those in it.
There are four types of influence that either make The fog denser or help you see through: good people who see via The Fog and want to clarify and explain; evil people who see via The Fog and want to take advantage of your delusions; Systems that emerged to take advantage of The Fog; Chance makes sure to expose you to these “eureka” moments that suddenly bring clarity.
There is only one fundamental way forward. We just need much better cornerstone words. Then we’ll be able to deconstruct all “trap words” using our new fundamental structure and actually understand the concepts behind them. Wrong and confusing relations will vanish and new ones will be born. Ones we can intuitively feel! This is what defines I Grow Younger. We use a combination of psychology, evolutionary biology, philosophy and the vast personal experience of our founders to reframe parts of language itself. We use basic concepts (building blocks) like you – chaos, structure, hunter, sheep, inertia – you all know intuitively what those mean. And they have just one clear meaning. When having to talk about a trap word like money, we have an entire article deconstructing the mess.
