SAY WHAT?

  Is there any wonder at all re the rarity or possibility of a rational conversation? When was the last time you actually partook of such, or witnessed it? Difficult, correct? That is because conversation requires a common language with understanding of the meanings of words and we proceed from there. However, what happens when that shared understanding is missing, unavailable.  Suddenly we find ourselves not talking, but shouting, hoping, mistakenly, that the louder we speak, the more and better the communication. Well, that does not work well either. 

Within moments we find ourselves in a state of hostility and frustration. What is the matter with that person?! Why does he/she not speak English (whatever the chosen language is)? Hostility ensues and it becomes even more difficult, nigh unto impossible, to converse with each other. Certainty that our fellow conversationalist is actually an enemy, with aims and goals, grows by leaps and bounds. Suddenly, rather than words we hear the clash of swords and the. boom of bombs. and new rivers of blood flood the land. Sound familiar? Sound inevitable? 

I believe this is the state of the world today. Even the word 'word' is misunderstood. It can now mean one speaks the truth or a brazen lie. Fat, spelled phat, takes on new meaning, as does sick, crispy, and myriad words, forever growing and shifting in connotations and denotations. Words have become undecipherable, meanings occluded and changing from day to day.  Hence the rarity of any conversation of sense and sensibility for how can it be? 

We might believe we are making one point and actually we are saying the complete opposite. Rather than the gradual growth and changes to language, over time, we have overnight shifts which preclude any progress re shared and meaningful, productive conversation. In rising frustration and attempts to make ourselves understood, to communicate, we give up. We then resort to threats and force, frayed tempers grow apace, and well, take a look around.

Supposed negotiations are a sad joke as the very words meant to convey terms, desires. and goals are misunderstood. Languages assumed to be common, accepted as such, are so not as they are assumed to be. Hence, negotiations are doomed to failure, a foregone result. That which was intended to be a conveyance and possibility of peace now becomes a tool of war, or a cause of war. 

A particular pet peeve of mine is the word 'woke' in any of its formations, formats or permutations. Woke used to be a verb as in 'I woke up". People were woken up, roused from bed, from daydreams, to reality. Suddenly it became a noun. Or an adjective. Whatever worked. At one point it was a positive term. It meant one became more sensitive to the errors of the past and the need to make amends, to seek out truth, even uncomfortable ones. However, as with most new movements throughout history, the positivity began to wither, opposition grew and intensified. Suddenly, the term meant otherwise.

 To be woke now became a pejorative adjective. It meant one was not forward thinking, but rather a regressive one. It was a viewpoint which did not see nor acknowledge any of the goodness, the richness, the traditions of the past, and threw it all out with the dirty bathwaters of the past. It reversed the meaning and implication of the word "progressive" as the progressiveness grew, morphed, into an ever more petrified viewpoint with an inability to accommodate differences. In fact, in truth, the 'woke' movement became regressive, perverted, as had happened to many historical new movements.

To be opposed to the woke movement was to worship all that was past, be it good or even evil. Many advancements, progress and progressive movements and achievements of the past were denigrated, downplayed and downright denied. It was a movement. of rigid construction. To vary an inch outside of those fortifications was to be deemed a traitor, a leper to the movement. In its opposition to the woke movement and all that accompanied it, it too engaged in the discarding of the old used bathwater sprinkled as it was with the truth and the richness to be found within some of the beliefs and activities of that woke movement.  

As the movements grew and intensified, the divisions between became chasms. Unable to be plumbed. Unable to be spanned. It has become a situation at present of never the twain shall meet. As a result, our nation has become almost irretrievably irreparably broken. Our conversations have become useless and even causative of further division and invective for we no longer speak the same language. We no longer hear the same words. We see different pictures in our head. We have different views of the past and conflicting views of the future.

Conversation. How? With whom? How do we find the shared language? How do we find our commonalities as people, as Americans, as human beings. It is nigh unto impossible at this point. We are harming this once great nation as we present a weak, confused personality to the world at large. We engage in the wholesale division of the nation, from friends to families, trampling on all that was once sacred. We refuse to see the good to be found within other viewpoints and instead discard all, growing ever more rigid, ever more unapproachable, all differences nonnegotiable.

  Robin Williams told us long ago what we must do."Good morning, America." Let us wake up and join a new 'woke" movement, a good, positive thinking, understanding, flexible movement hewing to our traditions of the past and the hopes and dreams for the future.

 But then again, perhaps I dream too much. Perhaps. Perhaps we all need to dream again and   awake to a better world, a better day.  

"One day, one day".... sings Matisyahu. As we all should sing. As we all wake up to new understandings, fresh conversation and renewed American traditions.