“Your mouth is open. Sound is coming from it. This is never good.”
I never claim to be an anarchist.
I think come across as mostly harmless. I rarely swear or raise my voice. When I do speak, my opinions probably sound like the mildly off-center rambling of an over-educated pseudo-intellectual who lacks the certainty of someone who’s, I don’t know, been stabbed or whatever it is that pushes pseudo-intellectuals that last step toward becoming revolutionaries.
Part of that is ironic. Not sure which part.
I think my thoughts, when I talk about them, lack whatever sharpened edge it is makes me sound dangerous in the way that encourages people to get all tingly and tell their friends, “this guy. You have to listen to this guy.”
So I think I come across as harmless. Or, at least, mostly harmless.
I admit, I experience a certain frustration from supposing that I get off-written as harmless. I mean, I may be. I may be one of the more harmless people you will ever meet. I don’t know.
I think about it. I think about it, because I like thinking about the roots of things.
Take language. There must have been a time when the human race communicated strictly with grunting and punching. That and suggestive wind-breaking would have been the extent of what our ancestors could do in order to communicate higher ideas to each other — ideas like saving some food for tomorrow, and other rudiments of civilization.
Which means that, if you think about it, we had a one in three chance of evolving as a species whose primary form of communication is getting into a fight. A one-in-three chance of developing grammatically charged brawling, where a left hook could have a myriad of complex interpretations, and a swift kick in the fork might, depending on angle and velocity, mean anything from “let’s go for drinks” to “love your top. Where did you get it?”
It could have happened, you know. We could have been a punching-based species, where martial artists are scholars, and your brawling man down in the pub is reckoned one of the most honest local poets. MMA would move us to tears by its breadth of expression, and we would feel our hearts break every time we watched the perversion of language which was professional wrestling.
And if anyone actually made sounds with their mouths in public, we would shy away from their impropriety.
It almost happened. We missed that world by inches. And veered off into this weird splinter universe where our basic state is pretending not to be confused.
I don’t know about you, but I think verbal communication causes most misunderstandings.
I mean, if we never talked, we would never have the little daily misunderstandings that cause us so much grief. The harassed young woman at the Taco Bell would never give us the wrong food if we had never spoken our order in the first place.
I think we’ve all been there: been having a bad day, and all we really want is thirty-seven mixed variety faux Mexican entrees. And, since we have been having such a bad day, we are meditating on the pressures that molded social interaction into the daily grind of simpering dishonesty it has become.
And so, in my charity, I choose to improve the world in a small way by delivering my Taco Bell order in the most organized way I know. I order six tacos, three tostadas, four Crunchwrap Supremes, three burritos supreme, seven bean burritos, nine Nachos Bell Grande, and four gorditas, even though gorditas are intrinsically ridiculous.
Then, at the end, after I’ve ordered my confectionery disaster, just to save time and make it all convenient for everyone concerned, I say, “And leave the onions off everything.”
And, for some reason, the harassed young woman does not seem to appreciate my consideration. For some reason she gets a little testy.
It’s episodes like that where wars take root. For all we know, that harassed young woman only needed one last smarmy customer to nudge her past the edge of reason onto the brink from whence world-straddling dictators take a final plunge.
Or, you know, maybe it was me that needed to be nudged by some short-tempered young person failing to do a simple job fulfilling my little whims, no matter how obnoxious my whims are. Because the foul-mouthed, arrogant, unfeeling customer is always right, and I want my onionless nachos.
The whole point is that we don’t know. We don’t know what goes on in anyone else’s head, and we never will know because we have only one of the worst options for communication available to us: talking.
Talking, in my experience, has always been the first step to misunderstanding anyone. The moment I open my mouth and begin to allow noise to escape, I have started curtailing my ability to understand anything. Not sure if it’s a universal problem. But I do frequently see people who I have talked to, and given detailed instructions about how they can make themselves into better people — or, at least, better as far as I’m concerned — and then watched as they, quite calmly and methodically, didn’t do what I suggested. They’ll always say something about “free will” or some fool thing like that, which just sounds like trouble to me.
So clearly there’s some miscommunication going on there.
Which I think suggests only one course of action.
Everybody needs to stop talking. All the communication errors in the world have one common denominator: the fact that we try to communicate at all. If we stopped doing that — if we stopped talking over each other and stopped trying to tell each other what to do and where to get off — we would have a lot fewer missteps. I feel pretty certain of that.
So, you know, just…stop talking. Ever. Never talk again. Then we can all embrace the grab-bag of life and just, kind of, accept things.
I try to answer harmless questions, like, “You know those rare times when your mouth is closed and no noise is coming out of it — I know, sounds weird. Is your brain on when that’s happening?”
And that will never change the world, because it’s communication, and communication never works.
Yes. Mostly harmless.
Let’s have an adventure.
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