(3/19/2025) Through their language, the Japanese conceive differently of what we English speakers consider to be thunder and lightning. In Japanese, a single word (*kaminari*) encompasses both, treating them as one undivided phenomenon. The same was true in Proto-Indo-European. This is just one example of the arbitrary way language "carves up" reality. Language is not the origin of differentiation but its prison guard. Even newborns, long before acquiring language, are capable of pre-linguistic differentiation—after all, to breastfeed, they must distinguish their mother from the rest of their visual field. Naming these pre-linguistic distinctions reinforces their apparent existence. The seemingly arbitrary nature of differentiation is explained in part by the fact that as *Dasein* we are already thrown into a world of differentiations, and we learn the particular ways to differentiate through our thrownness (*Geworfenheit*) and the inherent social nature of *Dasein*. ![[wind_and_thunder_gods.png]] *Wind God and Thunder God*, an Edo Period painting by Ogata Kōrin. This piece is a replica of an earlier work of the same name by Tawaraya Sōtatsu. Peace.