The Packbats' Weblog

If you spend any substantial amount of time listening to an English major or film major or literature major or whoever, you've probably come across the idea that all art is collaborative. Us, writing these words, can do nothing without your assistance, because they're just pixels on a screen until you come along and make meaning out of them. We say, as members of a society which has adopted the work-concept of creation, that Packcat wrote this and you 'just' read it, but there is no 'just'. None of this matters unless an audience comes along to do something with it.

But also language itself - the words we use to write - can do nothing without both of our assistance! We create and recreate language by using language. If a language is no longer spoken, it is dead ... but if a language is spoken, it changes, because we all change and we are who the language lives through.

This goes especially for a constructed language, a conlang, a language that was created by someone, and even more so for a philosophical conlang. And Toki Pona is a philosophical conlang - Sonja Lang set forth to seek a kind of simplicity, and that intent pervades the language.

And folks get gatekeepy about it - we've gotten gatekeepy about it (sorry!) - because they know that it will change when being spoken, and they want to keep it the way they like it, and the only way to stop change is to stop speakers from...

...well, having different artistic goals than they do. Or different pragmatic needs than they do. Or even just different taste.

No coherent conclusion, just thoughts.