GrandpaJ label; The potential of art =)

If someone hears me discuss in multiple, philosophical conversations, most likely that individual will hear me say something along the lines of disliking 'labels'. I really feel as if the human mind / our thoughts, can only attempt to describe physical objects, and while obviously we need labels & meanings for things to form a language and to communicate with our own species... I still believe labels have a huge flaw that negatively affects humans, on a very major scale.

A personal experience I have went through earlier today inspired me enough to write this as an example and give me enough information to hopefully explain this perception I hold of 'names' or 'labels'.

The quick background info on the event starts with the creation of an object that does not hold a common label throughout most of society today. This does not mean no one has a name for this, but there are a few factors which halt the naming of this thing to the masses. The object I speak of is, in simple description, a half smoked joint. I rolled a slightly too large pile of marijuana into rolling papers, and after I had initiated lighting the joint, I came to the belief of attempting to save some of my weed by not smoking the whole thing.

Perhaps I am just at loss of words, and many groups use a specific label for a half-J, but when I think about it, I wasn't really able to find an easy explanation for this other than 'half-j' which I wanted to say something different when I asked a friend if he wanted to smoke it with me later. The name does not have much reasoning behind it to be honest. Actually a friend on skype used the term to describe a fatter joint in general, but after smoking about half, I trimmed another paper just a little bit, and rolled it over the roach of my half smoked joint and for some reason when my buddy said 'grandpa-j' earlier on skype, it just stuck with me.

The whole joint story, and the name "grandpaJ" does not hold too much specific importance, but is simply the background information of how I came to the conclusion of the concept and ideas / thoughts I am attempting to explain in this writing. I may or may not use the word continously from this point, maybe never again, but the simple label did inspire me to think of how & why our language is formed / used.

I see a gigantic potential in human thoughts, the ability we have to create labels is pretty amazing when I think about it. The reason I say I have a problem with labels is due to the fact language should be an increasing creative art, understanding more words in our own or other common langauges, but a large number of the population stays content with a rather small dictionary and seems to only learn new words (or create their own slang) when relatively necessary to adapt with business or friendship groups.

For some this may appear as not a huge issue we have in our culture, but I seem to think the exact opposite, I feel its part of the biggest flaw in human evolution, personal growth, and the well-being of basically everything in life. I know it will be a be common belief I am merely exaggerating, but its very important to never under-estimate the mass psychology of how societys are united.

By 'mass psychology' I am referring to concept of what many see as the simple word, culture. Psychology is viewed as the science dealing with mental processes & behavior, so the correlation of 'mass psychology' and 'culture' is easily describable as the understanding of mainly why / how humans form societys and cultural behaviors / words / ideas, etc.

Studying large groups of people, I believe we must trace back the [Why / How] questions as much back to the origins as possible. A simple explanation I can give is using the word 'following'. People adapt to cultural behaviors because others around them are doing some action and the idea of "normal" has an effect on how we all live. This pertains to people who purposely attempt to act as others to acheive some sense of acceptance, sometimes power or control, and sometimes unkowningly adapting to the behaviors of those around them.

If you think about our major languages, English, Chinese, French, Spanish, etc... The difference is just repetitive use of labels with different sounds of our voice to describe objects, yet also forming sentences and allowing an explanation of our ideas / thoughts. A region of a habited area may form their own language if no outside influence leads them to one of our more common languages used today.

Commonly known as slang, people are always using their creativity to form slight variations of language, as labels / words change meaning in how we talk or describe the idea attempting to be expressed. A quick google search led me to an estimate of about 4000 words being added to the English dictionary yearly. Language always seems to be expanding.

Even further into simple labels or words in our dictionary comes the complex method of how we form our sentence structure, grammar, or how we use the words we understand. A simple question for example, can have variations from "How old are you?", "What is your age" , to "How long have you been alive for?". The same concept for finding the information we seek to understand, but stated differently depending on the person & situation.

With the lengthy detail I have gone through about language, I can go back to 'GrandpaJ' and explain how much potential goes un-used for most individuals on a daily basis. It does not seem like a big deal for simple words like my 'half-j' but when we create our own language I really do believe it allows us to understand other's created words / structures better, we are more accurately able to comprehend some other individuals expression of ideas.

Now I can relate our constructed slang / language with one of the most inspiring, creative arts used today throughout the entire human species. Music, more specifically the written aspect of lyrics and the meaning behind them; it is used by artists to express personal experiences & feelings, or to present a message or concept, usually of positivity, peace, love, hope or faith.

The biggest beauty I see in musical lyrics is that artists are not binded or limited as much towards the normalization of "correct" grammar or sentence structure. A more talented musician will use more sophisticated, complex metaphors or stories to explain a simple message of positive thinking or similar inspirational notion. A drawback of such large creativity is that others who may not be as creative will have a misunderstanding or skewed translation of the message being expressed.

Over the past few recent years of my life I have listened to the same songs with different understandings of the lyrics changing and adapting to my higher sense of understanding certain principals / ideas from the song. I am sure most people can relate to this, even if we don't view the message in its entirety, but simple words & sentences as we begin to memorize and sing along with our favorite tunes.

The large potential that goes vastly unnoticed is that when we are able to create our own art, whether it be written essays, books, lyrics, the message / concept attempting to be explained, or even nonverbal artwork such as drawing, painting, acting, etc, we are able to grow. Creativity allows us to understand others artwork more clearly and not only help achieve a more peaceful global humanity, but also a happier & healthier personal individual mindset and body.

I am starting to have the biggest priority in my life changed to constructing and improving creative artwork. Also, I have begun to question why so many people do not see such a large importance of the major effects art has on personal / universal growth.
11/1/11