Some Thoughts on Language

Orwell wrote an entire novel about the importance of language and meaning. Several, in fact. It was so central to 1984 that he coined a term for the subversion of meaning.

Doublespeak.

Yep. It is a boring revisit of middle school.

One of the things that Orwell’s novel, and Huxley’s Brave New World for that matter, highlighted was the ease with which meaning becomes meaningless. As long as it is accompanied by drama enough to distract — not entertain, not disgust, not drown in sorrow nor raise in hilarity — just enough to distract, then it is simple to turn an unconscious collapse into a stumble, or a subtly racist rant into mainstream political discourse.

We have been fighting these books in this country since they were published. They are both relatively short, relatively easily understood, interesting. They discuss the dangers of government run amok and in the silk breeches of the wealthy… The middle class would surely encourage this discussion?

A number of things have been happening in the decades since 1980… Actually, probably since about 1963 or ’64, when the war protesters became a real issue around these parts.

1. A consistent reduction in the actual quality of education. Accomplished through a constant reduction in inflation-adjusted funding, focusing on hiring those with an education degree rather than specialists, and rigid implementation of standards, like the bars in a jail.
2. Exporting of relatively high-paying manufacturing jobs for comparatively low-paying service jobs. Ask your waiter at Applebees next time if they have insurance through work, work full time hours, have a consistent schedule, or make enough to move forward in their lives rather than tread water…
3. Corporate consolidation of media source creators. Where there were many media sources across the country decades ago, there are now very few. And many of those are under the umbrella of distribution (e.g., owned by a cable company or etc.).

There are plenty of other large-scale societal changes that have been happening, but I think these three are enough to illustrate a point:

A dumber, poorer citizen is easier to manipulate with targeted advertising and essentially propaganda; and that citizen is easier to distract with baseless dogma, empty policy statements, and calls to their instinctual fight/flight reflexes.

Don’t get me wrong, good things have happened, too. The advancement of tending to treat people like people has generally made great strides across the country, and at least health insurance companies are required to cover pre-existing conditions… That speaks to a fourth item I might add to the list above — The increasing burdens of debt placed on everyone from the upper-middle-class to poorest citizens of this country.

It’s all deplorable. It is all engineered. Including both of these shitty options for president we’ve been offered, as if we should be glad of the choice.

As a writer, I find it deplorable.

I think it is one of the duties of writers to fight against the ease with which meaning becomes meaningless. Particularly as a poet. I mean, it is our tool of trade. Our livelihood is the meaningfulness of language. The artistic implementation of post-modernism has reached it’s peak in our current public discourse. I cannot imagine that my grandchild (at least 20 years away — hold your breath) will be able to pick up Orwell’s or Huxley’s novels and read them as interesting anymore, but as maybe a tale we should have paid more attention to before it arrived.

This current environment is Pynchon’s imagination come real. Politicians dancing like robots on the airwaves of this country, one week-old egg salad, the other salmon warmed in the office microwave.