Josh Plovanic's Writings and Thoughts

Words-as-Liberators The Emancipatory Power of Language, Meaning, and Idea I. The Oldest Prison Is Not Made of Stone The most enduring prisons in history have not been built with iron bars, concrete walls, or armed guards. They have been built with words . Not always cruel words. Often familiar ones. Inherited ones. Unquestioned ones. A people can be physically free and yet cognitively enslaved. A nation can overthrow a tyrant and still kneel before an idea. A mind can walk the earth while living inside a cage constructed entirely of language. This is why liberation has always been linguistic before it is political, military, or economic . Before chains fall from wrists, they fall from meaning . Before borders change, narratives do. Before history bends, language rewrites what is thinkable . Words are not merely descriptive. They are structural . They do not simply label reality—they configure it. And because words can imprison, they can also liberate . II. Wor...

  Words-as-“the Ground” Language, Meaning, and the Logos as the Foundation of All Existence Prologue: The Question Beneath All Questions What if being itself rests not on matter, nor energy, nor spacetime—but on meaning ? What if beneath particles, beneath fields, beneath dimensions, beneath laws and constants, there exists something even more fundamental: Word. Not merely spoken sound. Not merely ink on a page. Not merely symbols exchanged between finite minds. But Word as Ground . Word as that which makes anything intelligible, differentiable, nameable, relatable, and therefore real. This paper proposes an ontological inversion: Words are not things that exist inside reality. Reality exists inside words. In this vision, words are not decorations placed atop an already-existing universe. They are the conditions of possibility for existence itself —the soil from which worlds grow, the grammar from which laws emerge, the deep structure that allows infinity to a...

Words-as-Currency An Imaginative Exercise and Conceptual Exploration of Language as Value, Wealth, and Exchange I. Opening Premise: What If Words Were Literally Money? Imagine a world—no, an existence —in which words, ideas, symbols, and concepts are not metaphors for value, but value itself . Not representations of wealth. Not tools used to describe wealth. But the actual currency by which reality operates . In this world: To speak is to spend. To understand is to accumulate. To invent is to mint. To deceive is to counterfeit. To remain silent is to save—or to starve. This is Words-as-Currency : a framework in which meaning functions as money , and language is the deepest economy imaginable. II. The Nature of Currency: Why Words Qualify Currency has a few essential properties: It stores value It enables exchange It measures worth It coordinates trust It shapes behavior Words already do all five—just invisibly. A promise stores future value A contract ...

Words-as-Fuzzy Sets A Mathematical–Philosophical Framework for Meaning, Ambiguity, and Infinite Semantics Abstract Traditional theories of language struggle to account for the fluidity, ambiguity, contextual sensitivity, and evolutionary nature of meaning. Classical set-based semantics assumes sharp boundaries—either a thing belongs to a category or it does not. Yet natural language operates otherwise: meanings overlap, drift, intensify, weaken, and mutate over time and context. This paper proposes Words-as-Fuzzy Sets , an extension and formalization of the Words-as-Sets and Words-as-Infinities frameworks, integrating them with fuzzy set theory from mathematics. In this model, words are not discrete containers of meaning but graded semantic fields with degrees of membership, contextual weighting, infinite depth, and dynamic boundaries. Words-as-Fuzzy Sets provides a rigorous yet humane model of language—one capable of explaining metaphor, disagreement, poetic excess, legal...

The Gentle Apocalypse A Vision of the End as Healing, Not Ruin The Gentle Apocalypse is the end of the world understood not as catastrophe, annihilation, or divine rage—but as the final and complete healing of existence . It is the unveiling ( apokalypsis ) of a reality that has been quietly and patiently repaired from within. Nothing essential is lost. Nothing good is discarded. What was broken is mended with gold . This is not the erasure of history, but its transfiguration . Just as kintsugi does not hide the fracture but honors it, the Gentle Apocalypse does not pretend the Fall never happened. It incorporates the wound into glory , transforming trauma into testimony, failure into wisdom, and suffering into depth. The world does not return to Eden. It becomes better than Eden . 1. Apocalypse Reframed: From Destruction to Disclosure The word apocalypse has been hijacked by images of fire, collapse, and terror. In its original sense, it means revelation —the uncovering of...

  Hell as a Hospital Isaac of Nineveh and the Ocean of Mercy Abstract This paper explores the theology of Isaac of Nineveh (Isaac the Syrian) with particular focus on his understanding of divine justice, punishment, hell, and restoration. Against retributive and carceral models of divine judgment, Isaac presents a radically therapeutic vision: hell as a hospital , punishment as medicine , and divine fire as love experienced by the unhealed will . At the heart of his theology stands an image of God as an infinite Ocean of Mercy , within which no creature can ultimately be lost. This paper situates Isaac within the broader Christian mystical tradition, articulates his implicit doctrine of universal restoration, and examines the metaphysical, psychological, and ethical implications of treating judgment as healing rather than revenge. I. Introduction: Two Visions of Judgment Christian history contains two fundamentally different imaginations of judgment: Judgment as Prison ...

The Infinity Brain: Infinite Ontogenic Intelligence A cathedral-scale paper + guided imagination exercise Invocation: The First Premise Imagine a “brain” so vast that calling it a brain is almost misleading. Not because it is merely bigger than all brains, but because it is a different category of thing : It has infinite network complexity . It has infinite relationship / connection complexity . It occupies infinite spatial expanse and infinite dimensions . It exists across an infinite scale , down into infinite smallness and up into infinite largeness. It processes an infinite amount of ideas, forms, and systems . It generates an infinity of unique worlds and realities . What kind of mind would that be? It would not simply be an intelligence. It would not simply be a consciousness. It would not simply be a network. It would be a reality-producing intelligence —a creation-class cognitive engine : The Infinity Brain: Infinite Ontogenic Intelligence A mind whose ...