I knew the last post wasn’t finished when I posted it, but I tried to meet this arbitrary deadline that I set for myself, thinking it would make me a better writer. NEVER AGAIN. I understand now that the quality of what it is produced is more important to me than flooding the streets with product. And you have to live your life like that sometimes.
Communication is the most important thing of our generation (besides all the obvious man-made existential threats) that we are constantly failing at, badly. Being able to express yourself in a way that others will understand has become difficult, especially in this growing culture of individuality and the belief that, “no one understands you.” I’m not saying that this isn’t true – a lot of us are out here misunderstood, struggling to make sense of ourselves, let alone being able to successfully communicate that to other people. I just think that communication is something that is cultivated. No one is going to understand you immediately and there is no concrete timeline on when that goal will be accomplished. The key to communication is to keep at it. That’s not always easy, and of course, it is a choice that you are making. But for society to function in a way that we all can enjoy, every day we all agree to the intangible social contract that dictates we continue to communicate with one another for the sake of our own individual survival. Communication is important for any sort of organization or strategy to be accomplished. It’s even more important in relationships. If people aren’t on the same page, anything can happen, and usually, it’s nothing good. Communication is something that is practiced and can come in many different forms. Merriam-Webster defines communication as, “ a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior.” Yes, communication broadly within societies has a common ground that can be understood, called language, but how we communicate on a person-to-person level is much more complicated and nuanced.
The way we communicate can be a product of so many things – where we grew up, how we grew up, what type of entertainment we were exposed to, the places and cultures that we experienced, how we choose to show or receive love, etc. – but language helps us make sense of all the noise in order to get the really important (sometimes) ideas across. Nowadays, however, language doesn’t seem to be enough. Over a billion people in the world speak English, yet we can’t agree on issues that seem trivial with obvious solutions, like the baseline level of human rights people should have across the world, or whether or not unsustainable practices in farming and agriculture should continue. These are larger problems that feed into the whole man-made existential threat idea I brought up earlier, but even the more micro problems, like social justice issues within powerful nations such as the US, all begin with a misalignment in communication. Poor communication leads to misinformation, feelings of marginalization, and aggressive ideas permeating because there is no one to moderate or provide “guardrails” for the conversation, such that the conversation doesn’t become tangential from the original issue-at-hand. There’s no translator to help all parties involved communicate the main point of either side’s rant or speech, so it often gets lost among the frustration and typos that might come with it.
The issue with communicating today is, it’s not the rational and smart ideas or voices that get amplified, it’s the jokes, memes, artificial moments, and quite frankly just really dumb, bad, poorly thought-out takes and perspectives on what actually is going on in the world. I know it sounds like I’m talking about social media, but I use communication because I feel all media has fed into this notion to some extent. I listen to business and tech podcasts hosted by very savvy and intelligent entrepreneurs, journalists, professors, etc., but even they can’t help but be petty. It’s astonishing actually, listening to millionaires be petty. People only want to talk about certain parts of the picture, or what components of the work meet their needs, but never the entire piece of art. A lot of the sources for information we receive today seem to have some sort of ulterior motive or duplicitous reason for making us privy to certain things. We can’t help but be skeptical of the information we receive, and it doesn’t make it easier when even the most trusted sources begin to act like all media is reality television.
If our main sources of news and information are having a hard time parsing the nonsense from what should actually be considered relevant and imperative news, I’m not at all surprised that social media is a **** show. Credible news sources are “credible” because they have guardrails and mechanisms in place to filter out the noise and provide the most substantive version of information that they possibly can. I think there is an argument to be made that current media powers suck at this. So, in regards to social media, where there are no guardrails, and the laws in place currently protect the creators of these platforms from any scrutiny or litigation brought on by content posted on their site, of course, you’re going to have the caveman meets Mad Max Fury Road version of an information ecosystem. Not everyone engaging on these platforms is knowledgeable enough to use them in an appropriate and healthy way, and then you also have those who want to set tires on fire, start revolts, and spew hate and extreme separatist jargon just for the sake of watching the world burn. Neither cohort is good for the current information ecosystem, and I am convinced they make up 70% of that entire population.
What’s really important to me though, is communication between people, because that’s where it all starts. How we connect on a person-to-person level is heavily dependent on how we communicate, and that also includes body language, inconsistent behavioral patterns, transparency, and emotional vulnerability. All of the things I just mentioned play a part in how we communicate and what we share with who. I’ll admit that my generation struggles with this, myself included. We struggle with relationships because we struggle with communicating. It is insanely hard to be vulnerable with someone, and then trust that the vulnerability will be met with affection and reciprocated. But again, in this age of everything feels selfish or backhanded, we are constantly questioning everything, including who around us is really sincere. However, I know it is possible to build sustainable and healthy relationships with people because I’ve done it. Again, it’s really hard, but if both individuals or parties involved can come to the table with humility, it is possible to communicate in a way where everything that is said can be met with a perspective that is not egocentric. That is our issue today, the ego. We all have one, but lately that **** has gotten out of hand. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to hear the other side, or come to a mutually beneficial resolution, if we can’t put our egos aside.
OA
OA 