Communication

I recently found myself frustrated during a conversation with a friend. He was dejected for a variety of reasons, one of which I suspected was a side-effict of his self-inflicted exile from others. I brought up the topic of human sociability. I spoke to a desire people had towards being accepted. "It's good to be accepted--assuming it is with the right sort of crowd, of course," I observed. My friend, skeptic that he is, asked me to explain what it was to be accepted. Off the cuff I replied, “People treat you well regardless of what you do. They want you to be around. The group you are being accepted into is considerate of your needs, sometimes moreso than you are.” My friend sat and looked at me, uninspired. He insisted sociability was beneficial for some and not for others. I had failed. I could not help but think he had the easier side of the debate. This was another data point along a disturbing trend I had noted before: it is difficult to discuss uplifting things.

Did I misspeak? No. The description was accurate, if a bit truncated. Can I claim I communicated the truth of the experience? No, I did not. How poorly words shine in comparison to acceptance lived! To enliven it, one could bring it into relief. One would need to portray the depraved state of rejection in order to bring the vitality of acceptance into full view. Why the need for all of this explanation? If I wanted to discuss rejection instead, all I would need to say was something like, "They didn't think I listened to the right sort of music. You know the type." Immediately, my friend would have made all necessary connections and filled in all the gaps. We would have been on the same page quickly.

The power of words suffers a diminution the greater their proximity to goodness. Is there something in the nature of goodness that eludes our language? The question is all the more puzzling when we consider the effectiveness of words in the description of evil. A person who lies about lying still says something about it, whereas a person who lies about the truth only goes to make his error more egregious. To what should we attribute this change?

I must clarify that I am not here equating goodness with happiness and evil with sadness, still less with pleasure and pain. Goodness and evil pertain to existence apart from humans. Happiness and sadness are human sentiments. The excitement of sentiments depends upon the constitution of a person. Constitutions of people are never perfectly attuned to truth, even if they are committed to virtue. It follows that the presence of a good may make a person sad and the presence of an evil may make a person happy and, conversely, the absence of a good may make a person happy and the absence of an evil may make a person sad. With that said, back to the discussion at hand.

Note how the awesome welcomes and the awful repels. What better way to invest ourselves than to act rather than merely contemplate? The invitation of goodness requests our companionship. We want to be with the good, we want to incorporate it--make it a part of ourselves. I imagine a couple embracing in silence, filled with contentment. Either party could say to the other, “Let’s not muck up this moment by talking. Let’s simply be still and quiet. Let’s think in half sentences that flit about one after another, always circling around what we know now and enjoying our company.” It suffices to be present in the midst of something good.

When we are mired in evil, however, we want to take our leave. Suffering is too repulsive. By discussing evil, we distance ourselves from it. It is taken out of immediacy and placed into the safer plane of contemplation. We benefit from this as a wound benefits from the completion of the injury. Only after the laceration is over can the body successfully mend. For the whole person, witness the healing power of counseling, discussion, and confession. We bring pain out of the recesses of our minds into the light of day and it begins to evaporate.

But there is a lure in the pleasure that follows convalescence. We can indulge in the pity of being victimized, the self-righteousness of judging an evil and implicitly not being evil ourselves, and the indignation in protesting against the evil fact For the sake of these benefits, we communally belly-ache and bemoan trifles. In this way, we court evil by contemplating it incessantly. It takes root in our minds and, though we disavow it as cruel, unjust and wanton, it succeeds in preoccupying us. Evil thus proliferates. The contemplation of evil brings us closer to the living of evil as we become calloused, prideful, and rebellious. So we find ourselves resting where peace is not.

Look where our discussion has brought us. These last considerations suggest the inadequacy of language lies more in the speaker than in what is spoken. How closely related the two are and how the one affects the other! Thought makes language; language makes thought. Thought makes the person; the person makes the thought.

Could it be that darkness is more readily accessible than light and that even the most amateurish attempt will find something keen to say in regards to a depressing fact?

If evil becomes a preoccupation, then we develop an expertise for expounding upon it. People speak to evil more because to do so requires less effort. Note how easily criticism flows and how genuine appreciation trickles. Observe the number of songs communicating sadness and frustration against those communicating elation. How many sob stories are there for every truly happy ending?

To illuminate with a flashlight in broad daylight—is that not the task of the person desiring to speak about goodness? Life is a great good in itself; it is a condition of goodness. It is basic, a presupposition. It surrounds us without being noticed. Most who attempt to capture the lofty only impotently light up the sidewalk. The skilled orators know to lure their audience into the shadows and to strike a match there. In order to be credible, the speaker needs to infuse his speech with enough pain, suffering, and depravity to bring the listener to take it a livable possibility. Caution is necessary, however, lest too much evil becomes a distraction.

Now I have disoriented myself still further as the possibilities continue to multiply. What if the linguistic discrepancy was neither what was spoken nor the skill of the speaker, but is found simply the disposition of the speaker? Upon further consideration, the quantity of words spoken about good seems to be more disproportionate to the number regarding evil than the respective qualitative inequality.

What is it about us, then? How are we pressed upon by those sights we witness and events we live through? The trail of evil is memorialized by scars. When one is touched by goodness, what mark is left? There is nothing to point to. The memory is more apt for learning lessons in order not to make the same mistake again than recalling moments of joy. Focus is required to keep joy in our minds, whereas misery always seems to find us.

Our tendencies toward self-preservation and self-righteousness blur our vision to the point of blinding us. There are more pessimists because pessimism keeps you alive while optimism only promises to keep you living well.

Then could it be that the efficacy of language speaking to goodness is accounted for by our depravity? Why do so many good things strike us as vapid? We would take as incredulous the man who found contentment in the picturesque vitality of an open field. What a dreamer! What an idiot! He must be fooling himself. Few of us could relate to such a juxtaposition of loftiness and simplicity. Men of that sort are vulnerable. The world will eat them up and we can not allow for that to happen to us. Better to live of this world than die to it, right?

Whatever the origin, for my part, I would rather keep quiet than attempt to describe goodness. The limitations of words offend a person with an intuition of goodness. They appear paltry relative to the experience. What is worse, more harm than good is done to the good cause by sappy, sentimental, or cliché accounts of a poignant event, a radiant truth, or a beautiful object. It is better not to besmirch good’s good name by a poorly phrased remark. A listener may rightly scoff and thereafter think more of the means of the communication than the end. The attempt at communication fails. Rather than being edifying and inspirational, it is distracting. What is remembered is that the people who love goodness are glassy-eyed dopes, Pollyannas, or Panglosses. I would rather not taint that which I love.

Still, I am impelled to push on. One can only rest for so long before becoming restless. So I raise questions and try to turn heads towards something better than I could ever make.