Onomatopoeia

Am I way out there on this?

We live in a culture that we considered rather advanced. I mean, look at our communication capabilities and things. Wow. As far as knowledge of things and general intelligence go, it seems that we are really pretty far along.

And so there is something that confuses me. Putting aside the LDS theology of the origins of precious things (you'll see what I mean), let's go back to "Primitive Man." (Again, this is solely for illustration purposes.) Here we have one of our ancient predecessors who is developing senses a little beyond his counterparts, and this relative of ours, while digging in the dirt one day, discovers something shiny. He is thrilled by the discovery, so much so that he digs this shiny thing out of the dirt and takes it back to his mate who is equally thrilled with it. Let's consider that this is the beginning of civilization (not the invention of a writing system as the historians would have us accept). What do I mean? I mean that this is when "man" excels past the other animals because he finds interest in something that won't give him shelter, assist in the preparation of food, or otherwise aid in his survival.

Is this a little cynical? I hope it will get better.

But wait, this shiny thing eventually does assist man in his survival, because he develops a system whereby he assigns values to this shiny stuff. The more you have of it, the more you can get of food and shelter from others. Ah, there is civilization! The assignation of value to things that really don't have value, except in the systems of man. [By the way, what makes it valuable? Not only is the stuff shiny, but its rare! Yes! Now I understand.] And what do we do with this stuff? We wear it of course!

Or at least that is what people did in the more primitive times. They adorned themselves with this stuff. Heck, just read Isaiah 3 (cf. 2 Nephi 13) to find out how much the ancients loved this stuff and to stick it on themselves--and sometimes in themselves. They would actually puncture holes in their skin and then hang this stuff in those holes!

Well, isn't it nice to live in the twenty-first century when we have come so far from these primitive times? Oh wait, hang on, I'm just now hearing something on the radio. It was something about the value of gold in the "Market." Oh, now another commercial, this one is for a jeweler who claims to have the best stuff on the market, and they just used a newly minted word to describe their iventory:

Are you ready for this? We've come so far in our day that we have assigned shiny stuff an onomatopoeia:

BLING BLING!!!

At least, this is the only explanation I can think of for this most annoying of words. This must be describing the sound shiny things make when they sparkle. But tell me, has anyone actually ever heard a shiny thing go "bling"? Somehow I think this is a sound jewelry dealers have created in their commercials to entice our most sophisticated natures to hearken to that most critical of areas of the origins of civilized life.

By the way, check out my watch.