Words are weapons, but they can also be a bulwark. Joseph Campbell, extending perhaps the line of thought from Max Weber on the linguistic origins of religion, argued that the poetic instinct in man has often been corrupted and the literalists among us have wrested the language until it has been broken of its original metaphoric meaning. Like any weapon, though, words can turn against their wielder and the seductive beauty of a well-wrought phrase can obscure any underlying incoherence. A graceful rhyme or alluring alliteration can bend us from rational discourse and lead us with their poetic sophistry down to error.
I went tonight to a gathering of young professionals who all share an interest in foreign relations and languages, particularly those of strategic importance to US foreign relations such as Arabic Chinese, Urdu, and so on. A co-worker, knowing my familiarity with Arabic, invited me. Though not without some small trepidation, I went. It was held at the Goethe Institut, a thoroughly Teutonic building of glass and steel and rectilinear forms where a pretty, blonde Fraulein ushered us up the stairs into a very modern lounge. The walls were covered with the most modern of art, an upside cross of florescent light and chrome where a man, presumably crucified on the cross of modernity, writhed in agony. Another was a photo of face so tightly zoomed in that only a wisp of hair and the suggestion of an eye could be seen.
But the attendees paid little attention to the decor. They were there to sell, see, and be seen. Each person wore a tag that listed name, area of interest and current occupation or studies. It was like speed dating for a leg up or a foot in. I met Pervez Sheikh of Pakistan, Maha Al-Sheikh of Sudan, Hsiang-Chiang of Taiwan, James from Maryland. Each had a story and 30 second sound bite well-prepared and breathlessly spoken. It generally ran something like this:
"Good evening, [fill in blank], how are you tonight? So, where are you working now? [Await response] That's fascinating, I was just listening to NPR the other day and they were mentioning [regale them with story marginally related to their field, await return question]. Me? I study [fill in blank]/work at [fill in blank]. I've study [insert language here] [x number] of years. I did my graduate work at [fill in blank] studying the relationship of the factors that contribute to the build-up of tensions following the end of the cold war and the rise of the unipolar world under the US and how that affects policy-making in an increasingly interconnected world characterized by the democratization of information access coupled with the increase of non-state actors on the international scene."
That works for just about everyone. I was stunned to silence by the vacuity of it all. And yet, it works, for those that know the system. I am not among them, for sadly my eloquence rarely extends to the spoken realm particularly in large crowds of predators. I mingled unobtrusively and eavesdropped on the selling of souls half envious and half disdainful of the golden-tongued in this arena. The sweat and acrid smell of the cheap wine and emptiness of the words left be swooning, so after forty-five minutes I left pondering what I had just seen.
I then walked down to the Chinatown Metro and got on the train bound for Fort Totten, remembering only after the train was pulling away from the station that I had driven that morning and so needed to take the Green line. However, I could still transfer and so at the next transfer station, I exited and went down to the Green line platform just in time to watch the train pull out leaving me with ten minutes and no free seats.
A man carrying a placard walked up, by the look on his face, a look that spoke of being lost, I knew he was an out-of-towner. He asked if this was the train to Glenmont, I replied that it was. Then turning back to my paper, I made the error of ever so slightly glancing toward the posters that were now resting angled against his leg. They were, based on their slogans, for a pro-life rally. He noticed my noticing and immediately began telling me about the rally set for Friday at the Supreme Court. I mentioned that over the years I had seen the rallies before, typically hundreds of Catholic school students and the most ardent of the pro-life protesters. Seeing my government ID badge, he told that every year, 54,000 potential taxpayers, potential Americans were murdered in the name of convenience.
I gave him little to work with and so he began to work the crowd. To the African-American gentlemen behind me, he began to speak about the history of pro-abortion movement and its early ties with eugenicists. Margaret Sanger, the near sainted founder of Planned Parenthood had, he told the crowd, wanted to use abortions and forced sterilizations to wipe out the Negro race. It was a silent genocide against Blacks, killing more young blacks every year than heart disease, AIDS, or guns.
"Bullshit," yelled a man from behind me. We all turned toward the diminutive, bearded curser. "I'm for a women's right to choose and I can't stand here listening to this shit."
"There are ladies present," replied the first.
"They're adults," the second man said, "And I say a thing like it is and this is bullshit. You stand there spreading this crap around trying to manipulate these people. I'm for a women's right to choose."
"Come over here and let me show some of the evidence I have: letters in Margaret Sanger's own handwriting where she states she wants to cleanse the slums of ill-bread Negroes and other minorities. Let me play for you a recording of the planned parenthood donation service that lets you donate money according to the race of the child to be killed. It is genocide against blacks."
"That has got nothing to do with anything. I could say Hitler was for abortion, but even if he was, it wouldn't matter, cause I'm for women's rights and a women has a right to choose. I don't need evidence to tell me how I feel about that!"
The conversation died down and a tense silence filled the void. I sat back and could only listen. It was a marvel to me. Two people, both so very right in their own minds. I have spoken before at length about logic and reason. I am an acolyte of logic and an adherent of reason, but I know that these are poor deities. They are merely shells for organizing information and relating it. I could believe that I were the Banana King of Elbonia and still be a logical person. So it seems a marvel to me that people ever communicate with one another -- taking it on faith that they do.
As I watched these combative interlocutors, I wondered about what was in their minds. I thought about the words they were using: murder, children, genocide, right, choice, freedom. They are all words filled with powerful and emotive meanings and all, in this case, used for the same real world referent. Would a rose, Juliet asked, still smell as sweet were it called by any other name? A rose is a rose unless it isn't. Were I all-powerful and could make rose mean cesspool and cesspool rose, what then would change? Would the rose still smell as sweet?
Humans so easily attach emotions to words. The scant dictionary definitions do little justice to the life of a word and the emotional link it has in the minds of its speakers. This link is so deep that it becomes difficult to change later in life. No matter what I learn about certain words that are offensive in German or Arabic, they have no impact for me, not like a good English curse word. So in my little drama, I was watching a battle of wills, seeing who could more successfully connect a word with an deed and thus effect the end they are after: to rally people to their cause. I realized, too, why it seems easier for the anti-crowd -- regardless of what they are against, Abortion, war, discrimination, etc. -- to label the deed. Negative emotions are powerful motivators, perhaps even more so than positive ones. I might not be willing to extend great effort to do something that will make me happy, but I'm much better at avoiding things that make me depressed, though this sometimes results in an existential paralysis but that should be saved for another blog.
Our train finally came and I rode to my end station with the other occupants of car 3. All in tense, but laden silence. I disembarked and drove home in the drizzle of rain and sleet and snow which splattered and clung to my car. What a perfect storm for such a moment. An in-between storm that cannot decide what precipitation it wants and so dumps it all. Man is a liminal creature, always between, rarely just being. Alexander Pope opined that we are rude creatures trapped in a middle state, more than the lowly beast, but lowlier than the Gods and so we are left to doubt and to fear and to hope ever at war with the beast and the angel that define our betweenness. We are eternally inchoate, always becoming. This contains, however, the seed of our hope for we can become tomorrow something better than we are today.
What an odd creature is man! Always after more, yet never satisfied by the owning, only by the acquiring; always searching but so rarely satisfied by an answer. A brute now and an angel here again. We make war, we build churches, we murder, we lie, we love, we sacrifice. We so want to connect with others and yet we so often become so wrapped up in what we are saying that we don't listen to what others are saying. We hear, but we don't listen -- though we are quick to note when others don't listen to us! All my experiences of this evening have reinforced this this impression in me. The ladder-climbing yuppies and the verbal combatants at the train station all heard one another, but I'm not sure they listened. They were so busy knowing that they could not understand.
1 comment:
This was beautifully written. I felt like I was there with you on the train. Unfortunately, I found myself getting angry with the "ProLife" gentlemen. Even in just reading this, I had a hard time listening. In general, I tend to be too self absorbed to be at all observant and sadly miss out on small events that lead to profound epiphanies.
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