Semantics, Belief, and the Threads That Bind Us

Semantics, Belief, and the Threads That Bind Us
It fascinates me how much of human conflict comes down to words — the very tools we use to describe mystery, meaning, and morality. Words are pointers toward experience, yet over time they harden into fortresses. “God,” “Allah,” “Creator,” “alien intelligence” — all these terms attempt to describe what is ultimately unknowable. Yet humans argue, fight, and even kill over them.
At their core, most belief systems share the same thread: be a good person. Care for others. Don’t harm. And yet, history is littered with wars and violence conducted in the name of words that were meant to guide kindness. Why? Because when meaning is compressed into slogans and sound bites, nuance dies, and identity becomes bound to language itself. Attack the word, and you attack the self.
In a way, this is a bit like wool. Raw fleece begins as a tangle of individual fibres, each unique in colour, texture, and length. On its own, it’s chaotic — difficult to manage, impossible to wear. Yet when carefully cleaned, carded, and spun, these fibres twist together into yarn: strong, flexible, and capable of creating something warm and enduring.
Semantics is like those fibres. Each word is a strand, a thread reaching toward understanding. If we cling to a single fibre — a single word — as if it is the whole truth, the yarn breaks. But if we can hold multiple threads together, acknowledging their differences while spinning them into a coherent whole, we can create connection instead of conflict.
Perhaps what humans truly fear is the unspun, messy wool of ambiguity. Embracing it requires patience, care, and a willingness to let threads twist together in unexpected ways. Only then can we craft meaning that is resilient, beautiful, and shared — something warmer than dogma, something more human.