ME TALK GOOD
by Daren Foster

ALSO ON SITE

ME TALK GOOD
By Daren Foster

A recent John McCain presidential ad made the claim that, “Beautiful words cannot make our lives better”. Mostly a jab at the oratorical skills of his opponent, Barak Obama, the statement also speaks volumes about the Republican nominee and the mindset of the voters he’s trying to sway. If he truly believes that sentiment and is correct in the assumption that it will resonate with the electorate, it is a sad testament on the state of politics today.

So, let us not be blind to our differences -- but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply.

Elected officials used to speak to us like this. But, almost 8 years of tortured logic and syntax from the current resident of the White House who uses his words to obfuscate and conceal rather than communicate, have significantly lowered our expectations. We now presume lies instead of inspiration. In fact, as the McCain ad suggests, we should no longer trust words, certainly not beautiful ones, and the butchered variety have brought us no great comfort either.

Admittedly, ours in now a more visual society than it was 45 years ago when JFK made his plea for world peace. What we see, we believe, regardless how implausible and far-fetched the sight may be. To say, I don’t believe my eyes, is, in fact, an admission that you do believe what you’re seeing no matter how outlandish. Grainy desert photos and a once trusted man holding up a vial of white powder convinced enough Americans including print journalists to give their government the go-ahead to pre-emptively attack another country.

Filmmaker Errol Morris has suggested that visuals are used to stop people from thinking, which is funny coming from someone who relies on the visual image to make his living. The point is no less valid for that. A photograph is instinctively viewed as proof-positive, a graphic representation of the truth at a particular moment in time. Pictures don’t lie and are worth a thousand words.

Why bother talking at all in that case? If someone who has no appreciable skill with language can become president of the United States, who needs it? Let’s by-pass the cerebral cortex entirely and head straight through the parietal lobe on our way to the cerebellum before overwhelming the brain stem with a steady assault of visual cues. Stimulus, react. Stimulus, react. Stimulus, react. You know, just like the rest of the denizens living in the plant and animal kingdoms.

Language, words are all that really separate us from the other sentient beings on the planet. It’s obviously not an easy trait to develop, judging from the lack of discourse going on within wider species sects. Yes, yes. Lots of non-humans communicate with one another, chirping, singing, grunting, howling, barking, squeaking and whatever noise it is whales and dolphins make. Our particular aptitude for communication (either owing in part to our bigger brains or one of the causes for us having the bigger brains) has broadened the range of topics that can be put up for discussion, moving beyond the basic scope of I’m hungry, I want to mate, I will kick your ass although, arguably, not nearly as far afield from all that as we might like to think.

We give up our flair for language at our peril. Comprehension and understanding can only be truly achieved through words. Gut instincts and visceral responses, while useful at times, even necessary, stem from an earlier age in our development. Fight or flight, like or dislike, pain or joy, these are all easily accessed; sometimes frighteningly so. It’s the more nuanced aspects of our lives that a heightened aptitude for language opens up to us. Faith, hope, belief, compassion, empathy. All are hard to proscribe to if you can’t describe, explain or explore them with words.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, so says John 1, Chapter 1. I think millions and millions of people out there who are daily bible readers might disagree with the McCain ad claim that beautiful words cannot make our lives better. Even a non-believer can be moved by the simple power of such passages as, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Words, especially beautiful words can obviously make a difference.