It has become increasingly difficult to talk to people in recent years. This is partly due to subject, such as politics, and partly due to several other matters. Because basic communication is the start of things, the beginning, I figured it might be good to address some of those matters. Granted, most potential readers will not read this for the same reason that essential communications have broken down, but it is at least a foundation—a beginning.
The first matter is the language. I speak a form of America English which, because of the spread of popular culture, is fairly compatible with most other English speakers, and I generally obey the rules of grammar and spelling presented in the primary dictionaries available to the student of the language. I have been known to abuse those rules, but this is generally the case.
Though it seems simplistic, this single matter is also the start of a great deal of mischief.
If, for instance, in a court of law, your jury, or even one member of that jury, speaks Spanish, and you speak English, you are screwed. That goes doubly for judges. An interpreter is not adequate for translating what you have to say. Language is contextual. Your demeanor is a part of your testimony. Interpreters function, but they interpret. That is part of the definition. Ipso facto. And this is why the founders of English common law demanded a jury of your peers. Equals. A yeoman was to be tried by other yeoman. etc.
This one fact then also became a key breakdown of the class society. Getting a bunch of equals together was a chore if finding twelve equals was hampered by class distinctions. It also prompted some other ideas of modern democracy, and voting rights, and a great deal more. It’s all very complicated, especially by a legal profession dependent for its livelihood on complicating matters, but it is all connected in subtle ways as well as the obvious. The point is, a common language is key. And as English common law spread so widely under the aegis of British Empire, the ideas inherent in that were exposed to various peoples throughout the world and the concept of equality under the law and all the ramifications of that spread with it.
If you are young and inexperienced and sitting in a classroom with all this dry fact in front of you, or is being postulated by a professor who has said the words one time too many to countless classrooms before you, it might seem fairly worthless, but when you are arrested for a legal transgression, or must sit on a jury in judgement of some other poor bloke, it might all make sense. Language is very important. Multilingual societies are always riven by it.
The introduction of other languages into the American social system is a burden that stretches beyond a few moments lost in a quickie-mart trying to figure out the cost of a pack of gum with a clerk behind the register who speaks too fast to interpret. Besides the obvious problem, there is a social one. We are a society driven to the use of credit cards not just for the convenience of payment, but to avoid interaction with other human beings who do not speak our language. This cost is real. It is difficult to garner enough empathy to be civil when the register breaks down. As they do. And when you read that the clerk has been robbed, and shot, it is more difficult to conjure the sympathy for another human being necessary to feel the outrage that might make you reconsider your position on one political issue or another. It is all connected. It is all very complicated.
In the beginning, there was language. And the language of love made more people you had to understand.
In the second place, why would you want to understand them? What can they do for you, anyway? Fix your sink, perhaps, or your computer, or your marriage. You cannot even go out to the woods these days without bumping into someone. Communication helps. Good communication helps a lot.
My postulate here is that it has become increasingly difficult to speak with other people. Another reason for this is that subtle but obvious one: why bother. If society proscribes your role, then all you need to do is follow the directions. Right? Well, obviously, that is not working as well as it used to, back when everyone was trying to match their lives to the ads in Life magazine. Most people alive in American today never read a copy of Life magazine—not when it was a weekly display of American life and not a monthly directive to what should be done.
Now, I am a libertarian by nature and believe that form of government governs best that governs least, but perhaps you are a marxist and adhere to a hair shirt philosophy that regulates human action to a rigid set of dos and don’ts. The Pilgrims were very much of that mind. And the Shakers. That’s part of the American deal too. But the American society has survived for more than two hundred and fifty years on an open system that has worked its kinks out by communication.
For example: a “prohibition on the quartering of militia in private homes in either war or peacetime without consent of the homes’ owners.” Not a restriction on government that most people have ever thought about. It is assumed. But when communication stopped before, we killed each other. That appears to have been the only solution to disagreements such as slavery. Now, most marxists seem to have issues with communication. I have heard them express the reductio ad absurdum: why bother?
Because most of our individual rights are assumed, most of us are used to it by now. And even if that number were reduced to, say, thirty percent, such as it was at the time of the Revolution, it would still be understood. And a government that attempted to significantly reduce those rights would be in for a bloody bother. This is not an objective. It must be avoided at almost all cost. But it is a fact. And effective communication is the only solution for that bother.
In is important to realize that the Constitution that governs us is a list of prohibitions on government. It is not a set of directions for the citizen, other than to keep him aware of the lines that government should not cross. And there is the communication issue again. The schooling of the average American citizen is so poor that they cannot clearly state more than a few of those prohibitions. Most usually, that understanding is reduced to one: freedom of speech. And now that one has been encroached upon by government to place limits on the citizen in the guise of ‘hate speech,’ the definition of which is in the hands of government.
Now, it is fairly said that freedom of speech is the most important of all the amendments. The particular amendment in danger includes freedom of the press, and of religion, freedom to assemble and freedom to petition the government. That is why it is the first of the amendments. All the other provisions for governance that are contained in the constitution were, in the eyes of the founders, insufficient to make that one principle clear. They wanted that to be plain.
My worry that it has become increasingly difficult to speak with other people is based on everyday experience. It is not an estimate, or a guess. A key factor in our national social profile is that we are not speaking to one another openly any longer. And this is a danger to our wellbeing.
I am not concerned with the morons who are instigated to riot by various marxists organizations. In most cases, their ignorance is their own punishment via the small lives they live. The others will be dealt with by the law that is on the books. I am very much concerned with the general public that is afraid to communicate over the Thanksgiving table for fear of being uncomfortable, and makes fun of the uncle or grandparent that does. I am very much concerned about the school system teaching woke ideology and parents remaining silent to avoid confrontation in front of the children—who are actually learning a lesson about their parents. I am very much concerned about soldiers who do not know what they may be fighting and dying for. I am very much concerned about a loss of civility that comes from a lack of individual communication.
Let’s talk.