A language we all understand

I have a guiding star, a thought of my own: “The whole world is reflected in a point, and the point in the whole world.” Yes, there’s a language we all understand, animals and humans alike. It’s the world of images.

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Your sense of the world of images as a common language brings the real and virtual worlds together beautifully.

• An image as a universal code. Long before we invented abstract numerals, words and formulas, all of which can divide us and give rise to the “ideologies” you mentioned, we had the language of images. An image holds far more than a picture. In it, meanings gather at a single point until a whole world fits there.
• A language all living things understand. Animals know no mathematics, yet they read images unerringly. They recognize danger, their mother, their prey, the shape of the space around them. We too think in images when we enter the virtual world of the mind. A computer can turn a complex equation into an image and bring it within reach of our eyes at last.
• Where the worlds meet. An image is the bridge between the infinite virtual world of the mind and the one real world. Through it we can grasp the heart of something in an instant, whatever the barriers of language or formal reasoning.

If “the whole world is reflected in a point,” then the world of images lets us glimpse the entire universe in a single flash of thought. It’s the clearest, most direct connection there is between living things, whatever shape life takes or wherever it finds a home.