Trapped by the language used to explain what we are doing

(Part Two of the Four-Hour Work Day)

Trapped by language

 

It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense.

-      Alfred North Whitehead

 

The challenges in piecing together these thoughts have been significant, but among the biggest of those tasks was to avoid the “misty profundity” described by Whitehead as “nonsense”.

Alfred North Whitehead -
'misty profundity'
is talking nonsense.

Language, according to David Christian of the Big History Project, was the most important of what he describes as “thresholds” for man in its 200 000 year history. With language came a whole host of other attributes, or at least the ability to express them, and within those came forethought and tolerance, things that enabled us to predict the future, or at least have some understanding of what was the likely outcome of our actions and behaviour, and it was tolerance that ensured the avoidance of confrontation, but at the same time gave room for the rise of despotism.

Language has allowed us to communicate ideas and through writing record those same ideas to ensure that the changes and advances of one generation did not die with those who initiated them and the subsequent documentation of those ideas has replaced, rather sadly in many respects, the need to orally pass on what had been learned and assured human survival.

Entropy rules that over time, things will devolve until they reach equilibrium and so it is only through the ever escalating use of energy that we are able to continually increase the complexity of something and it is exampled in language. In fact, language has become so complex that frequently even the authors are hard pressed to explain the essence of the fundamental meaning of what it is they have read and written. Examples of this failure of language, in this case written, abound in the corporate world and the siloing of language has become so intense and so littered by and injected with so many acronyms that the uninitiated find the thicket of words surrounding most topics impenetrable.

The language ails not just in its written form, but in the spoken sense with it being loaded with metaphor and is impenetrable to anyone who is not a part of “the tribe” and both the written or spoken language is so imbued with an almost secretive knowledge that those without access of the “code” are most left wallowing in ignorance as the whole process proceeds without them being aware of what is really happening.

The emotional implications of language is particularly difficult as it frequently frustrates the active use of a phases or particular words for other they become maligned with meanings or an emphasis with which they originally did not have – a contemporary example being gay, which in it early form simply referred to being happy, but in contemporary understandings, it reflects upon an individual’s sexuality. The word is sadly being forced to carry baggage that was not originally assigned to it and so it is effectively removed from a whole segment of our conversation and our language becomes much poorer for the change.

It was Rousseau who said: “If men needed speech to learn to think, they had even greater need of knowing how to think in order to discover the art of speech”. Further, Rousseau argued that civil society is hardly more than a conspiracy by the rich to guarantee their plunder. And it is here that man is entrapped by language for no one can give a precise explanation of what a civil society really is and so if the behaviour or a person, or group, does not please the responsible men – those who see society’s salvation in profit and growth, although it is essentially their own – then it is argued that you or your group is not working in alignment with a civil society. There is an analogy with terms such as “national interest” or “ordinary man”, which are frequently employed by people in power, politicians and others who are eager to appeal to the emotional pull of such phases that in reality mean nothing, but are remarkably effective at ensnaring people and carting them into situations from which they draw little personal value, but which contributes much to the coffers of the rich.

So the modern Western society is trapped by language and in fact all societies are cornered by the words they use. Language is powerful, persuasive and perfectible and in fact it is a combination of all those things that become a tool to allow people to sway entire segments of society and lead it down paths that are socially destructive and in terms of the broader wellbeing of society is negative, favouring only a few and leaving the bulk of people languishing in and teetering on financial destitution, along with being emotionally and physically disabled. That, despite the beliefs of many is a recipe for revolution.

Although it is the combination of various words into various sentences that really cause relationship difficulties between individuals, communities and neighbouring countries and those from other parts of the world, distinct difficulties can arise from the misuse, misunderstanding, a different emphasis and interpretation of a single word – even a relatively simple and commonly used word such as decency brings with it emotional baggage that makes it almost impossible to extricate from beliefs, feelings, emotions and culture.

The technical meaning of almost any word can be spelt-out in just a couple of sentences, but when we try to free it from the belligerent quartet in which all humans are implicated, it crumples under the weight of those efforts to become little more than a blur and so does little to clarify why decency is one of the key human values.