In spending the day with a diverse group striving to form a long-range plan for a public institution, I was struck with the inadequacy of our language to describe delicate nuances of meanings. In spite of the thousands of words in our language, at the meeting we came up with many specific ideas. As we looked at them closer and in context of a vision for the future the ideas were similar but simply expressed in different ways.

Now that sounds like we have too many words, doesn't it?

No it really means that people's minds often flow along the same stream - a stream where imaginations conjure up similar ideas in solving problems. After a consensus on the course of action, we left with the mission to work on a vision that we would want to defend.

The point I want to make is that, no matter how many words are spoken or written, they are meaningless unless someone hears them, reads them, and acts on them. Well, maybe not meaningless, but certainly not necessary. Yet as humans we are the only animals that visibly direct our lives with our language. Arguments will be made that other animals communicate with apparent direction in their lives, but no other animal has been able to change their environment as we have, possibly in a race to our extinction.