Communicating With Others

We are human beings. We are social creatures. We are structured by language. We invented language but it has also changed us. Language, has meaning. Against all that is surmised and presented by all pundits especially conservative Republican types, with their thrashing efforts in trying to take power, even illiberally, even illegally, or to retain it once achieved and against all reasonable efforts, actually has meaning.

Every word has a different meaning or connotation. Sometimes it requires etymology to divine that. In some languages, differing utterances have different meanings by the same word but in various situations and connotations.

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.

Intercultural (communication) competance

Yet, the world is far more diverse now. And so we are today misunderstanding one another on a massive scale. Some who understand this, or perhaps do not well understand it, but can see what is happening, have found ways to profit off of it. The media for one. Conservative agendas to name another. Authoritarian agendas yet others.

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.

Did I hear you correctly? Did I try?

The person trying to communicate something has to listen harder than the person they are trying to communicate to. - Alan Alda

When you listen, are you just waiting for them to stop so you can talk? Then how much are you really listening? As with two actors on stage, one does not say their lines, once the other's lines are completed. Rather, one speaks their lines in response to the content of what the other's actor's lines were.

I would actually rather say, "...the person they are trying to communicate WITH". I've said for a very long time that communication in discourse is a two way street. In considering talking with another from a foreign country where English is a second language to them, we would do well to understand that even to the person closest to us, there may be a very similar process going on.

We tend to communicate in generalizations that if examined leave much to be desired in the way of clarity and understanding. Some people, confidence types and politicians for example, abuse and make use of this known unknown.

The one imparting information in a communication has to communicate their intention (and information) as they wish it to be understood. Yet they also have to do so in such a way as to best impart that knowledge to the other (for them to assimilate it) in a way (in ways?) where that person is capable of understanding it. And understanding it as much as is possible. As long as they understand the majority of it, or enough of it, then the communication is typically considered successful. Not infrequently however, it is later found that was simply not the case.

Just as well, the one being communicated to needs to actively try to understand not just what is being imparted to them (simply listening), but they also need to try to understand what the person communicating them them is attempting to communicate. This can be done by viewing the information coming in on a variety of levels and encompassing various degrees of specificity and generalities. Some of this is done invisible without thinking. However not always and not with as good a degree of understanding as is frequently required.

The point being... in simply telling what you have to say to someone, in their simply listening what someone is saying to someone, in the one imparting what they understand in a baseline format where the information is wholly contained within the information, it disregards how another is able to decode and associate that information in such a way that they are not only getting the baselines information, but also the intent and scope of what the person is trying to share.

Sounds like an overly complicated way of expressing a very simple concept.
Yet, in observing people's communication and listening skills, and at times the result of that communication, it is in no way simple. Otherwise we wouldn't have so many misunderstandings where so much of the time even in discourse where it is "understood" that it was understood by both, it frequently is not in both reflection and examination.

So. Go communicate. :)

Playing telephone in Life with the world and one another

I wish you all a very pleasant and reflective Memorial Day holiday. It's good and well on this day to solemnly consider for a time the sacrifices made by those who stood against those powers who sought to put an end to our country and as well for the mistakes we as a country have made and therefore lost our forces to battles that perhaps we should never have been involved in. That latter is the more solemn consideration, for sure.

We all make mistakes from time to time. But on a National level, the mistakes need to be as few and far between as can be made possible. Because it affects so many and so much through time and perception. Perception of others toward the United  States. Perception of ourselves toward who we have become. And the perception of who we have become at this time in History by those who shall follow us and reflect back on our deeds and actions. And motivations. And Humanity. How we are perceived by others is far more important than we tend to give it weight. The weight of importance, of reactions, and of delayed reactions.

Perception is a difficult thing at times to deal with. It can be overwhelming at both a national, world stage level, as well as in a more intimate, interpersonal level.

Have you ever played, "Telephone" at a party? Basically, it's where you tell someone a secret and it's passed down the line, everyone trying to remain as true and accurate as possible to the original statement. Then, from the last person in line, you hear what they say they were told and compare it to what was originally said and sent down the line.

Typically in comparing the two ends, you get two very different statements.

Well, consider this. When you're in a romantic relationship, you are actually playing "telephone", with your mate. There are far less involved, it is only the two of you. But some of the communications you receive from one another are not just from words, but actions, looks, and other people's comments. Indirect actions, even. But the concept is the same. You start with your thought, and by the time it reaches your partner's conception of what you are communicating, something about it has almost always changed in the process.

Last year I was watching Kofi Annan, once head of the United Nations, on The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. He was talking about how hard it was when he was head of the UN, to try and explain between the leaders of the US and Iran how, what one Iranian leader had said to its farmers in the countryside of Iran, shouldn't be incorrectly interpreted by the American leaders in Washington DC, from considering directly what was said. Sometimes, what was said in the countryside was merely an attempt for the leader of Iran to explain to an uneducated farmer, topics such as Nuclear power.

For that explanation to then be understood by the leaders in America well, it simply doesn't translate well; or in fact, at all. Kofi Annan said that he had so much trouble in pointing out that, that what was said to an Iranian farmer shouldn't be listened to or reacted to by the leaders of the US.

It was like playing "telephone" between two world leaders. That is one side of it.

The other side is considering communication simply from one entity to another. That's talking at the country sized level. Now drop it down to individual sized level. Every person on earth has a different understanding or filter of the world, from every other individual.

Certainly, we all have a somewhat general understanding or we could never communicate at all. Still, that being said, we really don't all FULLY understand exactly what any other person is saying. On an international stage, this is very disconcerting.

Now, apply that concept into the tiny confines of a romantic relationship. Tiny confines from an outsider's perspective perhaps, but from an insider's perspective it can become an overburdened, intolerably huge affair. How do we ever truly communicate? How can we truly know the other person? Or, other nation for that matter.

Kind of scary when you think about it. Right?