On the (im)possibility of communication
There are times when I despair at the possibility of human communication. In the last few weeks, this despair has often been triggered by opening up my computer each morning and discovering a fresh stream of vitriol and righteous indignation associated with a piece I recently wrote about Christian discourse around the Syrian refugee crisis that generated a fair amount of heat (and considerably less light, I fear). So many angry people who seem so resourcefully determined to interpret my words in such bewildering ways. The picture of me forlornly sitting, chin in hands with a furrowed brow peering confusedly at my computer screen is probably the enduring image that my family will remember from the past few weeks.
But there are other sources of my pessimism as well. Here in Canada, we’re in the middle of an election campaign, which means that every day we are treated to the spectacle of adult human beings shouting above one another, and regularly characterizing their opponents and their views as the very embodiment of all that is stupid, harmful, and evil in the world. The same is undoubtedly true south of the border, if on a different scale (everything takes place on a different scale when Donald Trump is [incredibly] involved). Political discourse seems often to be taking on the shape of so much human discourse—it is becoming cruder, more sensationalistic, and more obviously tailored to the imagined needs of a public whose views are increasingly pieced together from scraps and fragments of information assembled from the self-reinforcing social media silos that we create and maintain for ourselves.
But even on the level of interpersonal communication, I have been struck recently by how difficult it is to communicate well, how easily words are misconstrued or misunderstood or misspoken or misdirected. So often, I have found myself scratching my head, thinking, Well I didn’t mean that. Or, How could you possibly interpret this sentence in that way? Or, But I didn’t even say that! Or, Did you even read what I wrote? Or, I think you missed the most important point of the sermon! Or, But I texted you and told you where I was going to be! The gap between “what I said” and “what someone else heard” often seems like a gaping chasm that is virtually impossible to cross.
