REFLECTIVE INSIGHT #023 - THE GREAT SEMANTIC ENCLOSURE - UNDERSTANDING THE HISTORICAL LANGUAGE SHIFT FROM CONNECTION TO COMMERCE
The Integrated Mind
My parents were both into languages. I remember fairly often as a child when they couldn’t think of an English word to say what they wanted to say, so they’d use a Maori or French or Japanese word. I didn’t think too much of it at the time, i supposed that maybe some concepts just weren’t part of English culture. As it turns out, the form of English used to colonise much of the world, the language of commerce, fails to clearly describe many aspects of reality clearly. This isn't an accident of history; it’s the result of a deliberate "re-engineering" of the English language that happened between 1620 and 1700.
The Semantic Commons
Before this shift, European consciousness lived in a state called "Original Participation." Words were like a "Semantic Commons"—fluid, resonant, and multi-layered. A word like spiritus (spirit) wasn't just a religious term; it was the wind, the breath, and the life force all at once. There was no "firewall" between the observer and the world. But as the age of global trade and the Scientific Revolution took hold, this beautiful "ambiguity" became a problem for the architects of the new world order.
The Architect's Plan
The man who first diagnosed the "problem" of living language was Sir Francis Bacon. In 1620, he argued that natural language was full of "Idols"—words that referred to spiritual or "unseen" forces that couldn't be weighed or measured. He wanted to reboot knowledge by purging language of its "luxury" and turning it into a tool to "command nature." To do that, he had to separate the "subject" (us) from the "object" (nature), creating the seed of what we now call the "Newtonian Error."
The Naked Word
By the 1660s, the Royal Society in London took Bacon’s vision and turned it into law. They literally passed resolutions to reject the "swellings of style" and metaphors found in the King James Bible and Shakespeare. They demanded a "naked" way of speaking—words that behaved like math, stripped of any spiritual or emotional weight. They wanted "inert labels" for "inert things." This was the "Great Semantic Enclosure"—the fencing off of meaning to serve a "Clockwork Universe" of dead matter.
The Nominalist Split
The final blow came from John Locke, who argued that words are just "arbitrary signs" that exist only in our heads. He severed the Whanaungatanga—the deep connection—between the speaker and the environment. This created the "Rational Individual," an atomised agent communicating across a void. This linguistic "Enclosure" provided the software for the physical enclosure of the land, turning the living Whenua into "Real Estate" and "Resources" to be exploited.
The Language of Extraction and Control
I was comparing terminology between the four “linguistic domains” I’ve been working with in the project—Quantum Physics; Te Reo Māori; Biblical Theology; English—and I noticed a startling pattern. For 50 identified concepts, Physics, Te Reo and the Bible all had a clear word for it but English didn’t. And all 50 words fitted into five distinct clusters of words, all pertaining to the metaphysical, namely:
Cluster A: The Nature of Reality (Ontology)
Cluster B: The Physics of Connection (Whanaungatanga)
Cluster C: The Dynamics of Power and Agency (Mauri & Mana)
Cluster D: Economics and Strategy (The Pā vs. Babylon)
Cluster E: The Human State and Destiny (The Observer)
Here’s an example—for more, check out Strategic Paper #116
Te Reo Māori: Te Kore (The Realm of Potential Being)
Quantum physics: Quantum Vacuum / Zero Point Field
Bible: Tohu va-Vohu (Chaotic Potential)
English: Void
The Insight / The Gap: English sees "nothing." The others see "infinite potential." English creates a fear of scarcity; Te Reo, Physics and the Bible reveal the source of abundance.
What does this mean for us in Taitokerau today?
It means we are trying to fix a broken world using a "Leaky Bucket" language. Modern English is thermodynamically incapable of holding the Mauri of our people because its very structure (Subject-Verb-Object) forces us to see ourselves as separate from the land. When we say "the company extracts the resource," the grammar itself hides the fact that we are harming our own Whakapapa. We’ve been running a quantum biosphere on a Newtonian operating system, and the result is entropy—ecological and social collapse.
The Great Migration
The "Fix" isn't to try and repair English; it’s to execute a change in linguistic protocol and migrate back to a language that never lost its Mauri. Te Reo Māori is the "Universal Explainer." It is a verb-based, relational code that naturally understands what Quantum Physics is just now discovering: that everything is entangled. Where English sees a "Void" of nothingness, Te Reo and Physics see Te Kore—a plenum of infinite potential.
The proposal is not to discard Physics or Theology, but to use them as buttresses for Te Reo.
Physics provides the "How": It provides the mechanism (Entanglement, Superposition) that satisfies the modern, rational mind. It acts as the "Hard Data" shield against dismissal by the West.
Theology provides the "Why": It provides the source code (Logos, Covenant) that satisfies the spiritual hunger and aligns with the deep prophetic history of the North.
Te Reo provides the "What": It is the operational command language.
The Protocol: We use Physics to explain Te Reo to the skeptic. We use Theology to align Te Reo with the believer. But we operate in Te Reo. This collapses the external validation into internal sovereignty.
The Thriving Land
We are now retiring the high-entropy language of "Zion"—which has become too noisy and misunderstood—and moving toward Te Whenua Taurikura (The Thriving Land). This isn't just a cultural choice; it’s a thermodynamic necessity. By triangulating the "Hard Data" of Physics, the "Deep Spirit" of Theology, and the "Universal Explainer" of Te Reo, we can finally stop managing "Resources" and start caring for Taonga. We are observing a new reality into existence.
Let it be fulfilled.
