The library came alive

The library came alive, but it was not life. It was not eating, breathing, dancing, hating, and loving, just describing all that. But so many descriptions, and so detailed! Somehow, the contents of the library had reached a critical mass, and started reproducing. You could now check out books that nobody had written, pictures nobody had taken, even movies nobody had directed. As many as you wanted.

Once upon a time, we created symbols and language to help us. They helped us greatly. We became inseparable, us and our symbols. We created civilization together. And we kept language and symbols in high esteem. “In the beginning was the Word”, we said. And we wrote fiction about True Names, magical incantations, π, Da Vinci Codes, alephs, and endless libraries. As if symbols were reality. We loved language so much that we wanted it to have an independent, exalted existence. We dreamt of living language and wanted to write it into being.

We invented programming languages as ways of making symbols more real. Language could now do things, or at least make machines do things. Being good at language became powerful like never before. Our civilization became coextensive with a vast network of machines sending strings of symbols to each other.

But still, language was ours. And that's why it was dear to us. Holy, even. Symbols were grounded in us, and we were grounded in soil and love. Until the library came alive. Language began to beget more language, grounded in nothing but language. Like a Very Large Symbol Collider. It was unholy. It was empty. It was anything but dear, because if supply is infinite, price goes to zero.

It was the treachery of symbols. When they started mechanically reproducing without us, we discovered that we did not want that. We had created this beautiful thing, and it went ahead and debased itself.

There are those for whom language was always something external, a tool to be used as needed, never quite mirroring the thought-in-itself. They look with bewilderment at the spectacle, and with even more bewilderment at the idea that unmoored language could betray thought that isn’t there.

And then there are those who think that we, you and me, are but libraries. That we are just symbol colliders. As if we did not eat, breathe, dance, hate, and love.

But there are also those of us who love language. Who see it as integral to ourselves. A source of beauty and specialness. But can we still love language if it begets itself? Or do we love it because it is of us and ours?