Words strung together are known as phrases and phrases strung together are known as sentences.
Sentences make paragraphs. Paragraphs make speeches, stories and articles, and books. These are all placeholders or symbols for the things and actions they refer to.
To re-summarize. words have meaning.
We all need to be responsible to and for our language, the language we use or abuse. We need to understand what we say to others. Their meanings to us and to them.
Now, bear with me a moment as I take a massive tangent... for some.
Communication is a two-way street.
Using language, is what? Words having different meanings, uttered in certain ways in certain situations, having various connotations. When you speak to someone, it is indeed their responsibility to at least TRY to understand you, your meanings, your references and the bigger (and smaller) "pictures" or references.
But, it is also our responsibility to speak clearly, succinctly, and to gauge our conversant's ability and orientation in order for our words to convey to them the meanings one is trying to convey.
As a society, we have lost track of this. Pretty much, all of it. Social media has not helped in this. Or one could say, it has helped far too much and inthe wrong directions.
Stop it.
Start it back up again. This is WHY traditionally, people had all through history a common set of educational agendas and goals. So we could all understand one another through a commonality of understanding of the world, and the universe.
Diversity is great.
Yet I'm concerned that in our seeking diversity (which is in some extent about human boredom, thrill-seeking, and a lack of a well understood and practiced skills to maintain and track concepts and related information and associated details)...we have lost our ability to properly communicate. Social and international media have really punctuated this issue even further.
What proof is there to this? Look around. See? This is in part my point. Not literally looking around you. But figuratively. Using your mind to consider the issues presented here. See (or "see") how this is true.
The problem I'm relating here is not just about words having meaning, but that we need to be able to understand when they are used in various ways outside of their meaning and in context. Symbols (letters, numbers, etc.), words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, etc. Taken as a whole, we have human behavior deeply involved in the communication of these things. In conflating our individual intelligence and knowledge some have become verbally and logically sloppy in order to look more than they are. It has even become standard with many. Too many.
Think, paragraphs. AND paragraphics. The use of mental diagrams in calculation and design, in consideration of these symbols, these words and their phrases and so on.
So that now when someone communicates to you, hopefully with you, there is less misunderstanding between you. When someone says something to you, are you seeing the explicit meaning and intent? Are you also seeing its abstract references? Its associated elements, historical, sociological, psychological, eschatological, and so on?
Considerations that should take only a brief instant. Typically? No. In daily life, we do not tend to see these things and we have become more and more superficial with our ever-shortening attention spans. And desire to seem more informed and succinct than we may be.
That is why we used to have in our "classical education", similarities in all we learned. But at some point, it bored us and we turned against that concept. Both a good and a bad thing.
Vastly different education, education across cultures and so on, are great. As long as we still have an understanding of what is a similar orientation to go from. To allow us to accurately communicate.
We are and have been dumbing down our education in a 19th century way as if we merely wished to educate only factory workers whose only need is to understand orders on the factory line.
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| Intercultural (communication) competance |
Politicians have always known of this at least somewhat, functionally speaking.
This may all be a lot to take on. It's a lot to consider, to... alleviate. But awareness of it is a start.
For years in the first part of my life, I found it was hard to understand people around me. I was extremely well read and they, for the most part, were not. I found at times when they spoke, it was like listening to someone speak a foreign language. Their speech left so much open-ended that it was hard to tell what they were talking about. In asking questions to try to narrow down their meaning and intent, I got a lot of...
"Are you stupid?"
Was I? I grew up thinking I was. Was I stupid because they didn't understand all the reference they were invoking in their open-ended speech because they were ignorant of them? It was a case of the more you know, the less you understand. It was to say the least, awkward. And dysfunctional.
What I said tended to be very clear. I would sometimes respond to them mirroing what they said and they would simply agree. So I would try explaining what they had said, as I saw it, and pointing out how what they had said was open-ended. They would start to go glassy-eyed, fading on me. Some in realizing what I was saying would get irritated and try to move on from the topic. I found with time it was useless. It was simply up to me to try to understand them, from and in (their) context.
Their context and not just the meaning of the words they used and how they ordered them. Because at times they were saying the opposite of what they meant, yet the context could make that clear. To take them in the context they were seeing from in their limited and relational experiences and to try to experience that in the same way and try to share that with them in return, to convey it back productively to them.
It was a nightmare at first. One that seemed to me, only I could see.
I realized it was in part a frustration and an irritation, to me, how they were so sloppy in their word use and in their understanding of language. But also so very many topics. Was that their fault? Only their problem? Well, yes and no. But that doesn't help things much, does it? After all, blame doesn't get us communicating. Pointing out their defectiveness doesn't set one up for productive communication, sad as that may be. Being a word or "grammar Nazi" usually doesn't help much.
My point in this is simply this...try to be aware of all this. All of this. Work with it. Not just against it. Where you can educate without irritating, give it a try. Try to be helpful and not just enjoy the catharsis you can acquire from it. Because that is petty and immature, and just not productive.
Try to be clear. Try to be compassionate in your speech, in your communication. Understand the responsibility in communication is on both sides. What is expected on one side, is also expected on the other side. Obviously today we have another issue for another time. That of those doing all this for political purposes, in twisting reality and facts. In claiming truth and facts are fake. On that channel, best of luck to you. And to us all. Because once you try to make lies truth and truth lies, you have already lost the game for everyone. Even if you win your current battle.
Still, by considering all these things and trying to be functionally productive in communication, then we will all begin to understand one another in much greater detail. TO eliminate so much of the friction we've been seeing today in this heavily polarized world.
As for those abusing all this for their own means and gains? They may likely always be around. But in the rest of us learning to understand one another better, to actually communicate, we can decrease the effect those types have on our society and on all of us individually.
And maybe, it will one day, soon hopefully, decrease the numbers of those who abuse so very many of us as often as they have been doing today. From the Office of the President of the United States, on down.
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