Language & Creating Distance

This is a very serious subject and one that takes time to discuss.

However, we are currently being hit with a number of influences/explanations that seem to approach such a critical discussion with a limited and perhaps, purposeful set of visions.

Closed or private languages can be both exclusionary by design and liberating by experience.

Just as we hear an argument right now in the "Infotainment" world about Hip Hop language vs. the style of Talk Show hosts, and what represents freedom of speech vs. abusive behavior, it seems to me, that a fundamental point is being missed.

The pointing of one supposed offense vs. another is camouflage.

Language, like living communities can morph into "Gated Communities". Places where ideas, behaviors and exclusionary activities separate people. In these places, the antithesis of freedom of speech exists because freedom of thought is reduced by the power of exclusionary beliefs and consequential activities.

Sometimes, these beliefs are seemingly justified because of a need to survive by demonstrating the realities and pain of long time exclusion.

Sometimes, beliefs can be built by fear alone that is unfounded. When there is no true balance for vision (and here, I mean the word vision as the ability to see what is in front of us), danger is indeed, possible. We have all lived with that danger and understand much of it. Discussing it however, seems difficult for us.

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said that "pain is a private language". Artists give us a glimpse into that privacy, which is an extraordinary experience and a very human one. That is one reason that censorship is not even a debate. If it were, we could never have allowed Shakespeare to have written the volumes of work he accomplished with his irreverent and volatile language.

Language can create distance. And, we can drive agendas to cover our own accountability in the work place by describing what others say.

One of the most revealing words we tend to hear is the simple, but dangerous word -- "they". Nothing is more declarative in these so called debates then when I here: "they say" or, "why can they say etc. etc."


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Sal