Pointing Toward Dialogue

I suspect most people realize that a column on a given topic, such as this one, is (a) a column; and (b) on a given topic. The former implies that there is more to it than just a single point or statement, such as: tobacco is bad for us; crime doesn’t pay; obesity is mostly preventable; lifestyle is medicine. Those are all true, but they are simply points without argument or context. A column makes an argument, and provides context. It tells a story.

And, a column is on a given topic- or it’s no longer a column, it’s a novel. A column on a given topic is not about other topics, or every topic. A column, for instance, about people who are afraid to take prescription drugs just isn’t about the cost of prescription drugs, or the cost of nutritious foods. You get the idea.

But a lot of people apparently don’t, at least if their comments may be taken at face value. And I think that may matter more than meets the eye. One of our culture’s great liabilities is the inability to engage in constructive dialogue, which involves listening as well as talking- and even the capacity to agree to disagree. Dialogue involves a willingness to respect the position with which, and person with whom, we disagree.

The signs that we are losing such capacity are all around. Our national government is polarized to the point of near total inefficacy. Our national discourse on every important topic, from immigration, to climate change, to abortion is in much the same shape.

Dialectic ineptitude increasingly encumbers not only our daily routines but also our hopes for the future we might bequeath our children. More worrisome still is the prospect that our children may compound the problem. One ominous theory suggests that empathy is on the decline, among our children in particular, partly because human interaction is increasingly dehumanized, with technological interfaces replacing face-to-face dialogue. In the absence of one another’s faces, we are left to read the “tone” of text messages, to which we are all far less literate than we like to think. The result, apparently, is that we are losing the ability to gauge- and perhaps care about- the emotional subtleties of our conversations.

I have another theory of my own, only slightly less ominous. Perhaps we are capable of refined thought independent of language, but my challenge to you then is this: go ahead and try it. Try to think of some complex idea in all of its particulars, entirely dissociated from words. Language is the scaffolding of our ideas. Without language, there is no theory of relativity, or calculus, or engineering- because there is no way to share them. If you think otherwise, I invite you to send me your thoughts- just don’t say anything. The opportunity reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut’s offer: “all those who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand.” Good luck.

To the extent that links between language and thought are ineluctable, the refinements of the former govern the sophistication and precision of the latter. As we grow ever sloppier in our use of language, and ever more dismissive of the great breadth of the lexicon at our disposal, we are ever less capable of saying just what we mean.

Fewer words, less carefully chosen, means ever less fidelity of expression- and thus, less understanding. Lack of understanding is a friend to none of us. Communication is a difficult proposition under the best of circumstances, and the more we denigrate language, the less propitious our circumstances become. A prevailing disregard for both grammar and vocabulary is compounded by multitasking, inattention, and those same technological interfaces that invite linguistic neglect, if not abuse.

With ever more discourse but ever less dialogue, we seem to be reaping just what we are sowing: discord and gridlock. If we overlook the best means of understanding one another, we can expect a lot of misunderstandings. If what we most faithfully seek in one another’s arguments is a reason to pick a fight, we are sure to find one.

My immediate provocation for these sentiments is the bounty of commentaries my own writing engenders. There is a lot of commentary, because I’ve done a lot of writing- including nearly 1,000 newspaper columns over a 17-year span; and a whole lot of blogs here, there, and elsewhere. Many comments are supportive, some even embarrassingly effusive. Some are confrontational, but on topic, and I welcome these. It’s the ad hominen attacks and pejorative non sequiturs that bother me.

But “bother me” makes this sound more personal than it really is. This could be about my hurt feelings as a writer whose efforts have been criticized. But, honestly, it isn’t. I’m a big boy, and my skin has grown quite thick over years of abrading against public opinion. My wife and kids love me, so my ego is well tended and needs no stroking. This isn’t about my feelings.

It’s about the feeling that something much more fundamental is in jeopardy when we indulge in the anonymity of cyberspatial concourse to cast aspersions, denigrate, and distort. It’s about the dangers of declining empathy, lack of clearly articulated thoughts, and a willingness to indulge non sequiturs as assassins of constructive argument.

It’s about the pointlessness of soliloquies to which no one really listens; the peril of that pointlessness; and the costs of diverting our exchanges with one another into sequential, disconnected monologues.

It’s about the potential for us to give one another’s points an audience before we dismiss them, so they might point us toward genuine dialogue, if not agreement. And it’s about that dialogue in the service of understanding one another. If we did, we might connect more dots, and see bigger pictures. Dialogue might point toward common ground on which we could productively and proudly, if to our surprise, stand a bit more often in common cause.

-fin

Dr. David L. Katz; https://www.davidkatzmd.com/

www.turnthetidefoundation.org

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