What Language Can't Fix

Trump fired Noem as DHS Secretary today. Good riddance, of course. My inner desire for justice immediately went to the same two places it always goes. First, what should happen to her? I don’t believe she falls into the clinical or legal category of insane or psychotic. She portrays herself as someone doing things for a just cause that a whole lot of U.S. citizens agree with. She seems more like an opportunist in a brutal, patriarchal society, who tried to work her way up the ladder inside of a system now run by some of the worst scumbags on the planet. I did the shortest dive into her background, but I couldn’t stomach it for long. I’m far more concerned with the question my mind asked next: why are humans so insane?

Outside of a few other species that occasionally kill and eat their own kind, and the less frequent revenge-killings other primates participate in, humans seem to be the only species on the planet that desire to annihilate one another, either individually or collectively. It’s tempting to say that while many of us are stupid enough to believe killing members of our own species will either relieve suffering or increase prosperity for some, on the whole, most of us are kind, good, decent people. Maybe so, but if we support the systems that allow, support, and promote the destruction of our species, aren’t we just as mad or insane in our complicity/complacency? I can’t help shake this feeling that’s been growing in me daily... maybe we are the least evolved species on the planet. Maybe we are just infants. And maybe we are so dense that we will just ensure our species goes extinct.

Language makes this even more problematic. Humans seem to be the only species on the planet with an extensive, complex vocabulary. As much as we've learned about fungi and their network of communication (electrical spikes, chemical molecules, resource flows), we still don't really know how this all works or what it means. Dogs can bark. Kittens can meow. We don't know if they are intentionally making different sounds at different pitches to communicate different things. Most people assume animals have no ability or capacity for self-reflection, but that’s just an anthropocentric, hubristic, and unfounded bias. What does seem to be unique to humans is that we’ve created an intricate form of sounds and pitches to express most of our intentions, whether known or unknown to the one expressing them. While words can be used to express something helpful, such as, "I am hungry", they can also be used to deceive. I would argue that the majority of human verbal and written communication is deceptive to either the one communicating, the one receiving the communication, or both. Even in art, we express things that we don't understand. That's often why we express ourselves. Perhaps it’s still some early stage of our species trying to evolve into something greater.

What I’m getting at is this: I perceive language as a human technology that’s allowed us to work together to survive and construct societies. What if it’s taken us as far as it can? Even if we all smile, shake hands, and say “ I love you” to one another, there is something more primal going on inside each of us. A deep distrust abides that does not change no matter how hard we try to wish, pray, or think it away. The truth is, I often distrust the intentions of those I love the most. I’ve learned, through a lot of hard work, to calm my own thoughts when it comes to what I imagine others’ intentions are. Most of this has come by releasing ego-driven tendencies (mostly due to sheer exhaustion) that anyone is even remotely thinking about me at any given moment. Parents, especially of little ones, can operate at high levels of self-sacrifice for extended periods of time. In my experience, this goes even double or triple with mothers. But I assume most people are consumed with their own well-being, most of the time, just as I am. No one is an angel. No one.

Language itself is structurally deceptive. The act of translating whatever is happening inside a person into words necessarily distorts it, and this distortion doesn’t seem to be a bug but almost its primary function. We use language to manage how we’re perceived, to construct selves we want others to see, to hide what we don’t want to face. I think this goes all the way down to something deep inside us that demonstrates even sincere, artistic expression is at least partly an attempt to externalize something we can’t actually access directly. We express because we don’t understand, not because we do. That’s a terrifying and hilarious thought, isn’t it? 8.2 billion people expressing, with varying degrees of delusional certainty, what they do not know.

Others have stated this in various ways. Derrida spent a career arguing that language never arrives at the thing it's pointing toward, that there's always slippage, always deferral. Lacan built an entire psychoanalytic framework around the idea that the self we construct through language is fundamentally a misrecognition. And before either of them, Nietzsche argued that language imposes false unities on experience, that when we say "I" we're already lying, because there is no stable "I" behind the word. I’m more interested in the distrust part of it all. This is not academic for me. I’m one of the most non-academic people I’ve ever met! This is personal, experiential, and existential for me. No matter how much goodwill is performed, there’s something deep within us that doesn’t trust that goodwill. I’m also tempted to chalk it all up to personal experience and ancestral memory, whether passed down orally or genetically. We have all experienced, to lesser and greater degrees, betrayal from our fellow humans. As someone who is both white and male, I don’t even know the half of it. But I’ve experienced the lies and deceptions of many a person and I have lied to many people, especially myself, throughout my life. I don’t think more language, more talking is going to help us trust each other more. Trying to fix this with words is like trying to put out a fire with more fire. Thus, the absurdity of using language to describe the failure of language. This could easily be turned into a Monty Python sketch. Perhaps you already have with my words.

The thing that feels slightly encouraging to me in this whole contemplation is that right now I am aware I’m seeking to be as honest with myself and express that as precisely as I possibly can at this stage of my journey in/through/of life. Perhaps my honest intention here is but one clue to next steps for our survival as a species. Practicing honesty with one’s self has got to be the basic principle if we’re going to make it. The kind of honesty I’m speaking of is extremely daunting because it must begin with profound suffering and while it may be liberating, it hurts nonetheless. To admit that I really don’t understand life, you, or myself at all is painful because I’ve spent a lifetime learning and mastering the art of self-deception. Practicing any form of self-honesty is not child’s play. Through some combination of luck and will, my worldview has been shattered over and over and the last time it happened it nearly destroyed me. I’m still suffering the consequences of it. I’m also not going to paint a rosy picture and say it’s so much better on the other side but attempting self-honesty does simplify things. It breaks things down. It doesn’t necessarily provide hope. At least this is the case for me because I was mired chest-deep in paralyzing deity-hope for most of my life. But maybe hope is not what we need right now. Maybe honesty is. What I know today is that most forms of hope I had in my life have been obliterated in one way or another. Practicing self-honesty and general compassion for other humans is what is keeping me grounded these days, which seems to be enough for the moment. Well, that and a bit of alcohol, dancing, walking, and this song…