In a world increasingly characterized by communications technology it might seem counter intuitive to question the centrality of language to dialogue. They seem synonymous.
But language is not necessarily the main factor or even a central factor in meaningful conversation. Whilst we are listening to the words we are paying even more attention to gesture, expression, tone, disposition.
When a gap opens up between what people say and how they behave its uncomfortable because the words no longer feel real, which means you in turn are not quite real. What we think of as ‘respect’ largely has to do with this consistency between word and deed.
If not, then what’s lost is way more than integrity or trust. Everyone touched by it has to split themselves to accommodate the unreality.
When I was a kid I once saw my father place his hand on my mother’s shoulder during an apparently innocuous conversation. Her involuntary response was a shudder of disgust, a gesture more impactful than a beating. What I thought was real was not. What shall one do, other than silently embark on a career of unreality?.
Years later I was stood in the queue at the library wanting a copy of the Writers and Artists’ Yearbook. The Librarian was a very attractive woman I was doing my best not to notice, especially on account of a gaggle of old ladies nearby that seemed to evoke my punitive mother complex, preserved from growing a full set of horns by the single strand of virtue that I was at least a clean boy.
So I got to the desk and blurted, ‘ah yes, can I have a copy of the Writers and Arse tits yearbook?….
It’s even more embarrassing and unreal when the split between persona and shadow happens at a collective level. Yesterday, two hours before the American government was shut down by a White House tantrum, a Senate Committee was called to an emergency meeting..
To avert the crisis..?
To take remedial measures?
No, to pass into law ‘The Curd Act’, which will tell you, or actually, stop telling you what is and is not in cheese. I curd you not.
”I’ve seen some surreal things around Capitol Hill, but this is really something. Vital parts of our government are about to shut down and the Republicans have called an emergency meeting on cheese.. Has anyone considered how ridiculous this is?’, Sen Jim McGovern (D)
Merry Cheesemess.
In part of the discussion that then followed, chair Pete Sessions (R) reassured the anxious committee that he was not talking about a wall of cheese. This was an important matter.. He read it in a newspaper.
‘I have the awesome responsibility to pass this important legislation… I’m not talking about a wall of cheese. It’s important. This committee handles important things.’ Sen Pete Sessions.
And yes, its laughable.. if it were not so tragic. The problem is that it doesn’t stop at being mad. It is maddening. You can’t witness such shit without going a bit crazy yourself. It’s contagious.
The fallout from Narcissism’s failure to tie up words and deeds goes beyond private embarrassment or collective absurdity. Everyone in the mix gets depersonalized.
This is why keeping your word is synonymous with honour. The congruence of word and deed, doing what you say, is about more than reliability.. It gives the other a sense of their own substance.
Your congruence places ground beneath the feet of others.
When society places a premium on image and takes its PR efforts for reality, rewarding Narcissism, success at any price, is going to have ramifications for the mental health of the next generation.
Normally we think of child abuse as being about concrete stuff that happens in real time, traumatic happenings you can at least still point to. What of Life’s non events, the trauma of things that fail to occur? What of the silent schism that opens up in a child when she is not allowed to inform herself of what she already knows, that Mother is depressed but pretends otherwise and so she has to join her, so as not to know what she knows..
As Narcissism succeeds in its project to make real that which is not, it has the effect of denying the autonomous reality of everyone in the frame which is so witholding it can rob you of the will to live.
US mental health experts determine that one in five children suffer from a diagnosable mental, emotional or behavioural disorder. Only one in five of those will be helped. Suicide rates among teens are at a forty year high and for the first time greater than homicide stats. Rural areas worst affected have the highest populations of Indigenous people among whom teen suicides have exploded.
You might cite economic hardship but the principle factor is shame, shame at being marginalized but also the shame of being repeatedly deceived, of word and deed not adding up and the liquifaction of the ground beneath your feet this then creates… We white folks broke every single treaty we ever made with the Indigenous world and in so doing broke trust with the natural world wherein childhood also lives. Such speaking with forked tongue does more than steal the land, it also steals the soul and contaminates legacy.
Maybe it seems like it’s not such a big deal when words no longer matter, when the rules arbitrarily apply, when sincerity is optional. The end justifies the means and anyway I’m doing all this for you, baby..
But what we do to Others we do to ourselves and to our Own.
If the world you want to create costs you your integrity how shall your children live there?