Words Fail Us

If you've been reading these essays, by now you know that I'm a hermit. I hate people and I hate small talk. Mostly people try to inflate themselves with their comments, and I'm not impressed because I'm so much better than they. (For the record, I'm condescending and arrogant. I'm opinionated. I'm a curmudgeon. Contrary to those in Paul's audience, I don't suffer fools gladly. I hate (small) people and small talk. The people are a waste of time and their views border on idiocy.

As for my bad points, I occasionally doubt myself, which doesn't make much sense because I'm never wrong. But we all have our weaknesses, and my most foolish is that I give others the benefit of the doubt when they don't deserve it. If they doubt me they warrant no benefit.)

I prefer solitude and silence. Well, music is OK. But, apart from news, I'm not much interested in what is said on the radio. And even the news broadcasts seem to be designed more to entertain rather than inform. I'm word weary. There doesn't seem to be any refuge from Man's inanity. As I said, I prefer silence. But, according to Jean Arp (1887-1948),

Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation. Tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego.

What's worse, is that the situation is deteriorating day by day. Arp wrote in the first half of the last century, and since then the technology has gotten more sophisticated and the language more corrupted. I won't waste my time discussing the infernal electronic gadgets with which we communicate, but I'll limit my remarks to the content – the “corrupted” language. I'm not suggesting that languages don't change with time. They all do. It's to be expected. A few years from now English will be different. And in the past it was different. The English of Chaucer is completely foreign as far as I'm concerned, and Shakespeare is difficult for me when I don't have any commentary to help me. But they're not the problem.

What concerns me more is the way we now use our native tongue. Like, I mean, whatever. Even fillers like “like” have always been an acceptable part of the language, and these, too, are of no great concern (aside from sounding stupid to me). Similarly, words borrowed from other languages – whether they represent specific items like “chutney,” or concepts like “Schadenfreude” – have been adopted and have strengthened English.

More horrifying for me – and what makes me glad that I talk to so few people – is the decision to make our language more and more a political tool. It's not something new. We have long recognized not only that the pen is mightier than the sword, but that the basis of this idea is that words are powerful. Too many among us feel we need protection from some of them.

But modern society has gone too far. We've decided that our first responsibility is to spare the feelings of others. On the assumption that whatever we find indelicate will spark the same feeling in others, we have substituted euphemisms for all “unpleasant” words and ideas. For example, a cretin (in the correct medical sense of the term) is “special,” “challenged:” a dwarf (also a useful medical concept) has “stature issues.” A person we used to call “queer” is now “gay” (although the LGBT population has no problem with the term as is illustrated by such groups as, for example, The Queer Film Society and The Association for Queer Anthropology), and if a movie like “The Gay Divorcee” were remade, the Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire roles would have to be changed significantly. Meanwhile the English language has lost a useful word and concept.

And Ginger Rogers would no longer be an actress. We consider it demeaning to have a feminine term for “actor,” although may languages are gender based. (By the way, “gender” is a linguistic term substituted for “sex” in our culture for a variety of reasons that I won't discuss here.) But nowadays we've tailored our language to egalitarian concepts. She doesn't exist anymore. (That's “she,” not she. We haven't eliminated women – just the pronoun.) And our new gender-free language sacrifices itself on the altar of egalitarian ideas. The singular pronoun for man is “they.” The singular pronoun for woman is “they.” We rebel at the idea of sexually classifying anyone. Male chauvinism must be expunged.

Indeed, we don't risk offending someone else in any way (such as saying “I see” in the presence of one who is blind visually impaired). If something is offensive to any individual we view it as an attack, whether sexual, racial, ethnic, or “whatever.” And that makes it hate speech, which is not politically correct (PC). It's considered by the PC police as offending or causing some disadvantage, or even discomfort, to someone or some group. It doesn't matter if the charge is true. If made, it takes precedence over the Constitution and any right of free speech. And even the accusation of such an offense is enough to tar the accused.

Another imagined crime is “microaggression” which is the interpretation of something that is said, by anyone, as an attack. Such a charge may not be justified by the words themselves or the interpretations of others, but if an individual believes he they is (awkward – in fact wrong – but I don't want to offend anyone) being attacked, everyone must accept that judgment. Paranoia can govern reality.

And there is the demand in too many places for “trigger warnings.” That's the equivalent in other circumstances of movie ratings (like G, PG, R, X, and others) but it's transferred to schools, libraries, and similar settings. Part of the first paragraph of an article in a recent issue of The Atlantic is illuminating:

(see http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356)

Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking her fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape law—or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress.

There is a belief among many that people should be warned against books or lectures or anything else that may cause them distress. They should be able to protect themselves from any unpleasant ideas, or concepts with which they disagree. That college students, who presumably are there to be exposed to new, and possibly uncomfortable, ideas should be protected from them, is idiotic, but that's the view of some.

What we're left with is an unrecognizable, emasculated (my word processor had no gender- neutral word for this) language, which restricts our thinking rather than expands it. We are losing the free speech of which we boast. And all in the name of sensitivity.

It doesn't make sense. I'm glad I'm a hermit.

Next episode: “Heresy” – Sticks without stones won't break very much.