Boring, every conversation is boring. We have been robbed of our ability to communicate in meaningful ways. Most people are physically incapable of producing new, engaging, and truthful speech. Every word from an individual has the feeling of belonging to a script we have all heard a million times. Even the most off-the-wall horrendous and insensitive language can be perceived as coming from a script. The string of profanities and slurs used by vulgar people has all been said before with varying degrees of force. Even the words uttered by the sensitive activist usually belong to someone else, or worse, picked out of a Facebook meme. It seems that we are no longer capable of uttering a new and true word.
I posit that we have steadily lost our ability to produce true, novel, and compelling speech due to our interactions with technology. From how we communicate to the topics we choose to discuss, our language has been carefully curated and forced to fit within the confines of a predetermined structure. A structure that has had all its teeth, claws, and spines removed. A facile and inoffensive structure tailored for all, and as a result, it reaches no one.
Though a world in which our language was unstructured is equally unpreferable and impossible. Language, by the nature of its existence, requires structure. So to speak, one must adhere to some form of syntax and grammar and use words from a previously agreed upon lexicon. However, aside from the requisite regularities, there is room for the artist’s touch, though that room is presently shrinking. Now, that space has been taken by autocorrect, word processors, social media trends, and societal pressures.
Public and Private
There is a thinning delineation between public and private life. It is no longer the case that one can live a perfectly private life while engaging with the various technologies available to us. Once, Italian Aristotelian Cesare Cremonini, in an effort to maintain his piety in the public eye, adopted the maxim “Within, as you please; out of doors, as custom dictates.” In our time, it is now, at all times, as if we were talking in public, requiring us to speak as the customs dictate. To say something new requires the privacy of an inner life, a luxury we no longer have. Even the writer who has sealed themselves in a closet to produce their magnum opus cannot escape the anonymous pressure from outside influences. There in the closet with them is the computer they use to write; with it, the entirety of the world has snuck into their cubby. One could leave the technology behind and take only their pen and paper into the room, but still, that person brings with them a lifetime of conditioning and sensitivities to the pressures that wait just beyond the thin door that once promised them privacy.
Academic Language
Another frontier of language that could be considered is that which is used in academic journals and studies. Surly, they are conveying novel, truthful, and authentic ideas. I agree, in a way, they do, though the truth of their statements is contingent on the data they are using. As such, the truth they speak is quite sterile. It does not ring forth with the power and vitality one aesthetically longs for when listening to something true. For example, listening to an influential civil rights speech, a sermon from a legendary holy man, or a lecture from a well-read philosopher can often cause a physiological, emotional, and/or psychological response in the listener. I am aware that the response one has does not indicate that truth is being uttered. Although, there is something important that there is a response at all.
The words spoken in these powerful settings may be a manipulation tactic or deliberately untrue, but regardless of their truth value, they speak to something deeper within the listener. They tap some previously untapped part of the individual’s personal experience and awaken them to some new level of awareness which, initially may develop under false pretenses; nevertheless, the new awareness can assent, in the long run, to a more truthful position. The lives of our elders can attest to such a phenomenon. They speak of countless mistakes, lies, and failures that lead them to adopt a more truthful, successful, and healthy mode of being.
Disconnecting Autonomy
My point is that we have almost nowhere to go where we can have this transcendent experience of being connected to another through language because our world has been starved of authenticity. In allowing the convenience of technology to slip into every domain of life, we have given up our privacy and the freedom it once gave us. Look, I enjoy all the technology that is available for use. I use it in every step of life, and I am not saying that we did not implicitly dig ourselves into this inauthentic hole through our daily habits and choices. We all undoubtedly played a role in creating the society we live in today. Many of us want convenience and accountability, both of which the communication technologies afford us, but it is clear that we are sliding too far in one direction.
As each day passes, technology increasingly forms us in its image. At the very least, we are beginning to speak and write like robots. I do not want to experience the next stage in our technological transformation. The problem I have laid out is widespread and endemic to modern societies, but we can take minor steps to help slow our transfiguration. For example, do not allow any case where technology overrides your choice. Apart from fixing some syntactical error or spelling mistake in your writing, giving up your autonomy to an algorithm is unacceptable. Keeping a hold on your autonomy, whatever little you may have, will aid you in being an authentic person.
A Lonely Conclusion
I have written quite seriously here, and I understand that the issues I outline are not dangerous or life-threatening. However, I can’t help but think that the rise of despair, at least in America, is a result of our inability to be authentic. Our internal conscious experiences, our ‘selves,’ are inaccessible to those around us as if we were sitting in a windowless black box. The only way to bridge the gap between ourselves is the employment of language. If that bridge is inauthentic, we do not engage with the actual subject stored within the black box. Instead, we are engaging with a false image.
Any communication aimed at a false self falls flat, leaving the listener feeling isolated, lonely, and misunderstood. It is because so many of our interactions are inauthentic that we value those moments of being heard and seen. We want to escape and free ourselves from the solitude of being alone in our little black boxes. So long as we are misled through the use of technology in our escape plans, I can only speculate that our situation will grow worse. As technology continues to shape our means of communication and the societal pressures to conform increase, we will steadily lose our ability to build authentic bridges between our internal experiences to those of another, leaving us feeling increasingly alone.
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