Language: not so subtle pervisions
One of the last classes I took to satisfy the number of courses needed for my undergraduate major in English was Linguistics. Taught by the head of the English department in the small college, it was, by far, one of the tougher courses for me. Not because the material was difficult, rather because the course emphasized the cultural influences on language. A fact I had trouble with. Why then work so hard to write the bon mot when it may well be misunderstood?
She was wise, Sister Marie Bernard, this nun who had owned a bookstore prior to becoming a Dominican nun and obtaining her doctorate in English literature from Notre Dame.
So many years later, I remember gratefully the time I spent with her. Lessons taught by a woman who belied the stiff, starched black and white encasement in her Dominican habit. Instead, she took real delight in understanding the nuances of language adopted by people living in a particular time and place. She understood that language is alive, constantly changing. And yet, insisted on precise, careful writing from her students.
We may all speak the ‘same language.’But the meanings of the same word can differ in ways that can prove embarrassing. Even dangerous for those outside the culture.
Sister. Marie Bernard was fascinated by the power of the vernacular upon those who lived and spoke it. And her admonitions to her students were simple and practical. While the meaning of a word may be clear and precise to you as a writer or a speaker, always understand that, there are those in the listening or reading audience to whom the meaning of that word may be something else entirely. I was growing up and just beginning to learn that the art of communication was just that: Art.
The meaning of words, phrases,
And even the books is far from universal. We write, we speak, we study and learn to understand and then to be understood. As a writer, I’m convinced that real understanding supersedes words; the understanding is achieved almost despite the words.
My doctoral advisor and chair of my dissertation committee, Dr. Steve Linder, surprised me during one of our meetings. He handed me a book that was totally unrelated to my dissertation and suggested I read it: Postmodernism and the Social Sciences. Puzzled because Steve knew of my twelve-hour workdays and the stack of books that awaited me during my “free time” to write the dissertation. But he had never done that before and it wasn’t a tough read. A week later, I handed it back to Steve wide-eyed and deeply disturbed.
“Just like that, words are divested of all meaning? Concepts are devoid of objective truth?”
My horror was absolute; words were…well, sacred to me. “Deconstructionism” asserts that meaning and knowledge are relative; all things must be analyzed subjectively. There are no absolutes: Post-modernism refuted truth. Looking back, I wonder if Steve understood that my reverence for words was destined to bring me back to the Word.
Accepting the book back, he merely said, “Dr. Rousseau (author of the book) is now a professor on the faculty.” Almost three decades later, postmodernism has morphed into disunity, destruction, and dystopia.
Bishop Barron’s homily for last Sunday, Will the Good of the Other, introduced three books he had recently read. The first two of which I read this past week. Social Scientist Gad Saad’s powerhouse of a title phrase, Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind, prompted my purchase and reading. I also grabbed a copy of America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything from the library.
The wokeness permeating all institutions: academic, corporate and governmental emanates from misguided empathy, Saad declares. In the absence of morality, natural law and faith, empathy fills in the void. But it is a suicidal empathy resulting in the death of persons and civilizations.
Imagine for a moment that the West’s intelligentsia, including its elitist progressive political class, is infected by a mind parasite that causes its empathy module to misfire in every conceivable manner. Many of the policy decisions that have wreaked havoc in the West stem from this poor calibration of empathy, resulting in a society that is galloping rapidly toward the abyss of infinite lunacy. Whether when dealing with immigration, the justice system, the homelessness crisis, or transgender rights in women’s sports, outlandish policies are instituted precisely because of suicidal empathy…
In his classic 1995 book The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy, Thomas Sowell explained how the intelligentsia espouse policies that make them feel virtuous in their unlimited compassion while being fully decoupled from the negative consequences of said policies, which in many instances are borne by those whom they are supposed to help (e.g., marginalized communities). What Sowell identified more than thirty years ago has been expanded to include the associated concepts of moral licensing, luxury beliefs, and performative allyship. For example, the political class and the intellectual elites empathetically push for open borders…while protected behind their safe and gated wealthy neighborhoods. This luxury belief grants them the moral license to be suicidally empathetic toward their society. By paying their due indulgences, the Anointed Ones can commit civilizational suicide assured that their moral preening will protect them.
The second book,
Christopher Rofo’s America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything leads us (if you’re old enough) back to the infamous sixties and rhetorically asks and answers,
Where did all the sxties radicals go?
with
Into the classrooms.
Journalist Rufo reviews the effects of Herbert Marcuse’s and his protoge Angela Davis’ metamorphosis of critical theory into the long string of anti-American “isms” dominating American college campuses and schools. It is a long list led by racism, critical race theory, colonialism, transgenderism, white privilege, and systemic racism. Rufo makes clear that this is no ideological narrative but a methodical and practical way to take down America. The radically murderous theories of Eldredge Cleaver, the Black Panthers and the Black Liberation Party of the early seventies have been sanitized such that every institution from American Medicine, Disney, American Express, and Walmart endorses D.E.I. Courses in the inherent racism of whites and the need for reparations are mandatory at many of these companies.
This is all extremely unpleasant.
Yes.
Then why write and read about it?
Because the 1930’s African-American’s word, “woke,”(Wake up and see what’s around you), applies to you and me. We cannot keep our heads down, remain silent and hope this will go away. Or that it can be solved by the president, even, maybe especially, this one. It’s too deeply ingrained.
What can we do?
Speak the truth boldly and clearly, confident that we do so out of love for one another.
Years ago, my now-husband John and I were just getting to know one another, dating but cautiously. When something in our conversation galvanized me to announce the fact that I had had an abortion, John was not empathic.
Quietly, he declared, “I believe that abortion is a mortal sin.” John knew the best way to disempower evil: look at it.
My reaction?
Relief!
I know this, knew when I made the decision that it was murder.
When faced with obvious immorality, evil, we must call it what is is. There is no other option.
“Creating Chemical Eunuchs: Corrupting America’s Children: Introduction”
Learning firsthand about the pernicious ideological attack by radicals on our children has changed my life. So absolute has been the change that my husband and I will be Catholic Christians in a few months. We’re doing this because we understand our world is at war.
But the battle is not with people. As St. Paul explains, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day.” To us, the armor of God is made tangible in the sacraments of the Catholic Church.
Fictional character investigative journalist, Kate Townsend, writing to her readers in my novel, Plausible Liars
