In the last episode, we talked about the message, and I explained that the message comes in four arenas. One was for words and meaning, how philosophy begins with language, how words shape meaning, and how meaning shapes us. Part two was about stories, how stories are created from words and how those stories carry meaning across time. Part three was about philosophers, how individual thinkers, through their identity and worldview, bring their own stories and shape the human search for truth. And part four, us, how we today treat these three above elements and how we use them in our own thinking to deal with circumstances, challenges, and possibilities. So, this is the framework. Now, here's the plan for the next few episodes. So, episode 33 today will be about words. We will return to the foundation of language, words, and their meaning. I will be revisiting the words guna in Farsi and explain it in deep, its meaning. and how it's different from the English word zin. Episode 34 will be about stories. We'll dive into how stories carry meaning, how they are created, and why they endure. This one will be longer, maybe half an hour, just exploring stories. Episode 35 will be philosophers. I'll focus on one figure I'm debating between Kafka, Tolstoy, or Wittgenstein. Kafka, though known as a writer, could be seen as a philosopher because of Tolstoy, too, is a fascinating case, even if people may disagree with me. And Wittgenstein is always there as a strong contender. Episode 36. The last one in line will be you and me, meaning us. This will be about how we relate to words, stories, and philosophers, how we live these ideas in our daily lives, and they shape us. And that would be philosophy in practice. So, let's begin today with episode 33, or words. By the way, I almost forgot, this is Philosophy of Life podcast and my name is Reza Sanjide. Philosophy of Life Words are not the same everywhere. Even when dictionaries tell us they are equivalents, they are not. Because words do not only describe the world, they create worlds of meaning. Let's take back once again to the last example, the Persian word guna. When you open a dictionary, it often says the direct English translation is sin. But in reality, these two words belong to two very different universes of meaning. What is Gona in Persian? Gona comes from the old Pahlavi language. It's rude. Something wrong has happened. It is not only about religions. It's not about only God. It's about action that's morally, socially, or ethically wrong. And here is the important part. Guna carries with it the idea of prevention. It's not just about punishment after the fact. It is about warning before the fact. In Persian, we often say, Such phrases are simple on the surface, but they carry profound meaning. When you see a hungry dog wandering on the street looking for food and you feel compassion, you often say, In essence, that means the poor dog deserves pity and is hungry and vulnerable. Similarly, when you spot a child working instead of playing, it is common to hear people say, This phrase expresses the sentiment. It is a shame, it is wrong for life to threat this child in this way. Even with small things such as when someone drops food. And although you may say, in this context, it means don't waste it. Someone out there could be hungry. Did you notice something here? Gona is not only about you personally doing wrong. It's also about compassion. It's about noticing injustice or imbalance in the world. It teaches you responsibility. So Gona has protective role. It stands as a red flag. It says, if you cross this line, you will damage yourself, others, or the balance of life. It's about keeping harmony. It's about responsibility here and now in this world. Now compare that to the English word sin. What is sin? In English, especially through the Christian tradition, sin is not just a wrong act. It is violation against God. It's not just moral or social. It's cosmic. It carries weight of eternal consequences. If Qarnas said, don't hit the dog, it is wrong, it will harm you and the dog. Then Zin said, if you hit the dog, you offend God and you risk your eternal soul. Zin is tied up to guilt. It is follow you behind this life. It is something you confess, repent and seek forgiveness for. It is not only about preventing harm in this world, but about you standing with God in the next. This is why translation gonna as in is misleading, because they don't point to the same thing. One belongs in this world where wrongdoing is a matter of social and moral consequences. Something you can prevent, something you can stop before it has happened. The other belongs to a world where wrongdoing is a matter of divine judgment, something you carry with you as guilt until it is forgiven. So when we use these words, we are not just speaking different languages, we are living in different philosophies of life, and that's why words matter, because they don't just describe, they guide how we live, how we act, how we see ourselves. There is something more we need to say about guna. Guna is not only a word for wrongdoing. It also carries the power to shape human habits. It reminds us that desire without limits can destroy us. That when we go above and beyond what is moral, we cross into actions that break trust, break community, and break ourselves. In this sense, guna is not simply a label after the act. It is a warning before the act. It is the conscience that says, don't go there. Don't take that step. And here is where philosophy comes in. Philosophy is not just abstract theory. It is also ethics, civics, and responsibility. Guna acts as the everyday boundary that philosophy tries to articulate. It is the lived reminder of limits. So when we say something is Guna, we are not just calling it wrong. We are invoking an ethical barrier. We are saying, this is a path you should not walk. That is why Guna matters so much, because it is not only about punishment after the fact, but about prevention before the fact. It gives ordinary people a way to regulate desire, to check themselves, to stay within the standards of humanity. In this way, Guna is not just a word. It is a philosophy in practice. If guna works like a boundary, a reminder that prevents us from crossing into what is wrong, then sin works differently. In English, especially through Christianity, sin is not only about the act itself. It is about the relationship with God that is broken by the act. It is less about prevention and more about what follows—confession, repentance, forgiveness, redemption— In this tradition, desire is not simply to be controlled by civic or moral boundaries. It is measured against divine law. And when it is broken, the weight of guilt presses on the soul until it is lifted. So while guna often acts as a social or moral stop sign, telling us not to cross a line, zin often acts as a spiritual mirror, showing us that we already crossed it and now must return through repentance. One word looks forward, don't do this, it will be wrong. The other word, look backward, you did this and now it must be forgiven. Both carry weight, but they guide human life in very different directions. These differences contribute to the cultural divide between Western and Eastern societies. This is why words and their meanings are so important. They create significant contrast among people. If words create worlds, then no philosopher went deeper into that mystery than Ludwig Wittgenstein. In his early work, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein argued that language is like a mirror. Words picture reality. The world is made up of facts, and our sentences map onto those facts. If words do not map to facts, they are meaningless. That's why he ended the Tractatus with the famous line, Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. But Wittgenstein did not stay there. Years later, in his philosophical investigations, he turned everything upside down. Language, he now said, is not a mirror at all. It is a game, something we play, something we learn, something we live inside. What does this mean? Think of the word game itself. When Wittgenstein asked his students to define it, they struggled. Chess is a game. Football is a game. Children's play is a game. But what do all these have in common? There is no single feature that covers them all. Instead, there are overlapping similarities, what Wittgenstein called family resemblances. This was his insight. Words do not have one rigid essence. They gain meaning from their use in life. When you say game, you are not naming one fixed thing. You are moving within a network of practices, traditions and understandings. Now let's bring this back to Gona and Zin. If you only look at dictionary, you miss the whole points. Wittgenstein would say, look at how people use these words. When Persians say Gona Tare, they're expressing compassion, prevention, morality in action. When English speakers say sin, they are invoking theology, confession, and divine judgment. The meanings are not in the dictionary. They are in the forms of life that surround the words. Wittgenstein called this a language game. Each culture, each community plays its own game with words. The rules are not written down, but we all know them by living them. Meaning lives in use. Meaning is public, not private. And misunderstanding arises when we mistake one language game for another. escaping language. It is about looking closely at how words actually work in our lives. Now other thinkers saw this too, though in different ways. George Berkeley, long before Wittgenstein, said reality itself depends on perception. To be is to be perceived. Language, for him, was not just a tool. It was part of what makes the world real. And Gottlob Frege, working closer in time to Wittgenstein, gave us the distinction between sense and reference. Words do not only point to objects, they also carry a way of seeing them. Just like morning star and evening star both refer to Venus, Guna and sin may point to wrongdoing, but they open two different doors into human experience. Together, these philosophers remind us worlds are not only truths, they are practice, they are perceptions. Not only that, but they are bridges and sometimes walls between worlds. Words are alive, not in the way you and I are alive, but alive in the way they move, shift, and change, meaning across time, across cultures, across circumstances. Wittgenstein said the meaning of a word is its use in the language. That sounds simple, but it's revolutionary because it means there is no eternal definition hiding behind the word. The word breathes in the life of the people who speak it. Take the word reason. Sometimes it means logic, the ability to think clearly, to argue, to prove. Other times it means cause, the reason something happened. Two very different uses. SIM board. Two directions. One thing about freedom and al-zadi, both are translated the same way, freedom. But in US, freedom often means individual liberty, the right of choose, to own, to speak. In Persian, al-zadi carry a collective and historical weight. It's tied to struggle, to revolution, to liberation from oppression. The words may look the same on the paper, but the words have a difference between them. Language changes a lot over time. Think about the word silly. Today it means someone is funny or foolish, but in Old English, silly meant innocent or happy. If someone once said a child was silly, they meant the child was sweet and innocent, not foolish. These days, if someone calls a child silly, parent may not like it and could get upset. or considered the Persian word adab. Today, many use it to mean manner or politeness. But in the older sense, adab was culture itself, knowledge, refinement, wisdom. It was the whole way of being. This is what words do. They hold more than just meanings. They hold stories from the past. Words start in one place, then journey to others, and along the way they change. So when we speak, we're not just saying words, we're carrying the voices of many generations. We move from one way of talking to another, from one culture and time to the next. So we begin with the guna and zin, two words that look like transition of each other, but in actuality belong to different world of many. Then we went to philosophy of words, where Wittgenstein, Russell, Fregep, and Berkeley reminded us that words are not just labels, they are practices, rules, and ways of life. And then we looked at examples, how reason can mean logic or cause, how freedom in America is not quite the same as azadi in Farsi, how words like silly or adab change their meaning across So, what do all these have in common? They show us that words are never neutral. They shape the way we see things. They define our feeling. They give direction in life, the way we act, the way we believe. When we misunderstand a word, we don't just make a mistake in translation. We risk misunderstanding the world. And so, the responsibility is ours to listen carefully, to notice how words are used, to ask what does this word mean here, now, for these people, in this life. Because if we can do that, then philosophy is not something far away. It becomes a tool in our hands, a way to bridge worlds, to reduce conflict, to build compassion. Remember, words carry power. They can divide us or connect us. They can chain us or set us free. and it is up to us to choose how to use them. That was episode 33 of Philosophy of Life podcast. We explore words, guna and zin, Wittgenstein language games, and the living history of words across the culture and time. But our journey does not end here. In the next episode, episode 34, we move to histories. We will explore how stories carry meaning, how they shape our imagination, and why why they have survived across centuries. I truly count on your feedback. Until next time. Music