Can language capture the complexity and enormity of experience?

I have not been able to come up with one, definitive answer for this question.  At first, as I reflected on all the books, articles and poems I have read, I thought the answer was surely a yes.  I felt this, and part of me still sees it this way, because there have been many authors –and speakers – who have crafted their language and tone in such a way that I have been driven to shed tears, turn on the lights, laugh out loud, or sigh wistfully while reading or listening to them.  The author’s best shot at connecting with his audience is to choose his words with care and thoughtfulness.  The right words have the power to move the audience, to make them feel like they themselves are immersed in the story, in the characters, and ultimately, in the experiences of what they are reading/hearing.  I always know it’s a great book when I finish it feeling like I know the characters -- as if I could be friends with them in my real life – because I’ve “felt” their pain, laughed at their jokes, “watched” them grow.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that relating to people and emphasizing with their stories, no matter how much emotion it inspires in you, cannot hold a candle to the actual experience.

                Although my eyes may well up with tears every time I read a news article about the death of a soldier and the horrors of war, I will never understand what those soldiers and those communities have gone, and are going, through.  I can gasp in horror and say “how awful” when I see pictures of the victims of war, but I’ll never feel their terror, I’ll never know how petrifying it is to walk through or live in war-torn towns, wondering if myself and my loved ones will live through the day.  There are simply no words that can capture the reality of such a situation.  Similarly, every time I turn on the news there are countless stories of murder, rape, destruction and all sorts of unimaginable events that have occurred since the previous day.  No matter how profoundly language is used, words just cannot capture the suffering and emptiness a parent feels when they have lost a child, whether to accident or a horrific tragedy.  Language can be beautiful and it can speak to the soul, but we can pick ourselves up from words, we can move on from them, leave them behind.  We cannot do that with our memories.  Words may inspire us to feel sympathy and compassion for those parents and soldiers, but at the end of the day, they are just words.  It is not our experience and therefore, not our memories or our pain.

                This, of course, is not strictly limited to experiences of immense sadness.  Someone else’s happiness can never be our own.  If you are anything at all like me, you read travel magazines, look at pictures of beautiful, faraway places and/or enjoy shows like Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern on the Travel Channel.  Reading about, listening to, and even watching someone else’s travel experiences will never be the same as being there and doing those things yourself.  It doesn’t matter how many times someone tells me how majestic the pyramids are, how searing the Sahari may be, or how serene the Indian Ocean looks from the beaches of Phuket.  These stories only make me long for my own experiences at these places, they are not able to capture it well enough to make me feel as if I no longer want or need to travel there.  That’s why I believe that despite languages power to speak to the soul, and sway emotions, words will never be able to capture moments the way first-hand experience will.

Pathos in Public Discourse

                It can’t be argued that the world, as we and recent generations before us have known it, is changing, at a pace so rapid that most of us cannot keep up or comprehend it.  The information that we have at our disposal now was inconceivable even 50 years ago.  Not only are we bombarded with more news, media and information than we can grasp, but we are receiving it so fast that we hardly have time to understand what’s going on before we are barraged with something else to keep up with.  This is probably just one of the many reasons that journalists, reporters, advertisers and politicians employ highly pathetic techniques to obtain, and keep, our attention.  We see pathetic statements made on the front of every magazine cover, most especially tabloids, as headliners in newspapers and on websites and also when watching TV.  They are everywhere, and for all different reasons, not just political.

                But the political realm is where I believe public discourse is as pathetic as it gets.  I won’t even argue that it’s not occasionally necessary to use pathetic fallacies and emotionally moving language in the political realm – it is.  Yet, today I feel that the relationship between pathos, ethos and logos is ignored many more times than not.  Much of the political rhetoric used, on BOTH sides (strong emphasis on both) of the spectrum, in no way is in accordance with the three principles of rhetoric – it is not fair, accurate or principled.  And it is definitely not balanced.  Does the situation we are in today call for this sort of “news” and political discussion?  Is it appropriate, is it the “kairos” for pathetic arguments?  I believe the answer is no.  Yes, we are in the most troubled times that any of us have ever seen.  Yes, many people are suffering from the financial crisis and we are facing a shifting of global influence, as well as many other scary prospective situations in our future.  But, just because things are changing does not give the media, and the elected members of our government, the right to manipulate the public in the way that they have become so fond of doing.

There is too much focus on assigning blame and tearing others– individuals, parties, groups, etc -- down to build one’s own point up.  We, the public, are not given the honest facts or figures, we are overwhelmed with biased news and political figures too focused on pointing fingers to focus on fixing things.  It’s absolutely imperative, especially in a democratic nation, that the public be provided with unbiased and untainted information so that we can make the most educated decisions possible, in regards to our public actions, our political affiliations, our voting choices and the activities we wish to engage in or support.  As I said before, we are so bombarded with information that most of us do not have time to take a claim made by some news reporter, or some politician, and further research it for its validity.  We should be able to trust that the people we elect, and the people working to provide the American public with information, are doing their jobs with the country’s best interests in mind and with complete transparency.

Obviously, it is necessary to make the public aware of the dire situations taking place and to not hide from us how bad things are, and so in those situations pathos, and its various fallacies, are perfectly acceptable tools to utilize.  Pulling at heart strings, trying to use anger and dismay to bring about public action, are not in themselves bad.  And in certain situations, at certain times, they are crucial tools to use in order to get people to see all sides of a situation, not just the logical (cold) one.  But, I for one, have a really hard time taking a lot of the stuff in our news today seriously because I am so sick of all the bickering and the blaming and the lack of positive, effective action that is taking place in the “United” States of America. 

I believe that we as a culture use pathos more than we should. I do believe that pathos should have an important part in our society but I believe that too much of it can interfere with many aspects of our society. The best example of this is politics. It happens all too often that emotions decide our political debates rather than truth. The over use of pathos clouds the truth and hides facts. I am not saying there is anything fundamentally wrong. I am saying that put into the wrong hands, pathos can be abused and used as a tactic to avoid the truth. The problem with the current two party political system is that every issue is divided into two emotional fundamentals with no middle ground. Simple issues constantly get bogged down with an overload of pathos. Much of our country gets caught in a blind rage over political issues. The pathos in our society gives a majority of people an excuse to not actually educate themselves on the issue. Pathos have a place in our society but I think pathos can be detrimental if left unchecked, especially in politics.

Pathos in Today's Society

Today in society, I believe that the amount of pathos incorporated into the media and other public discourse is appropriate for today's events. With all of the dramatic events in the news circling us everyday, emotions are bound to rise up, and I think that it is because people really do care about society and its future. For example, with today's economy lives are significantly effected, so I think it is only appropriate for emotions to come out in public discourse because it encourages and initiates a change that could improve our conditions. I think we live in some tough times and to claim that we are being to emotional about it is being insensitive to the people who are suffering from the hardships of today's society. Without news coverage of these stories, the truth about these incidences would go overlooked and people would go unheard. However, I do not think that the pathos in today's public discourse should be increased or amplified because then the news coverage could be based off of strictly emotions and opinions which may obstruct the truth. Overall the amount of pathos in public discourse is appropriate and has a natural tone as to how people react to the events in today's society.

Pet Peeves in Language

Everyone has his or her own pet peeves. These pet peeves range from physical annoyances to spoken language. For example I have a specific pet peeve with a common habit in our spoken language. I find it irritating when people I do not know very well give me generic nicknames. Common examples include sport and buddy. I feel like using one of these nicknames sounds degrading. It makes the speaker sound overconfident and as if they think they are above their audience. My least favorite nickname is “buddy.” I do not want to sounds mean but if I’m not friends with someone I do not like it when they refer to me as their “buddy.” I really do not mind when my friends or family give me nicknames, in fact I have nicknames for almost all of my friends. Personally I think that a nickname is a sign of friendship, which takes time to earn. Calling people by generic nicknames is a sign of disrespect. I would never use the term “sport” to refer to anyone I respected or wanted to make a good impression on, and I assume most people think the same. It almost seems like calling someone by his or her first name is becoming formal.

Cognitive Fluency

                While I agree with much of the article “Easy = True”, there are several ideas mentioned that strike me as false, or at least much too narrow.  It makes logical sense that people prefer things that are easy to process as opposed to those that are challenging – in some aspects of life.  When Bennett talks about how people perceive things as truth when they are repeatedly presented to them, well, that makes sense to me, too.  Not because someone sat in front of you and repeated the same few words consecutively, but because, generally, if we hear an idea once, and then happen to hear it again from somewhere or someone else, it seems more true because other people being aware of it somehow means it is more valid.  As we discussed aphorisms a few weeks ago, many of the most popular and most famous of them involve some sort of rhyming.  I think its true that when something rhymes we are more likely to remember it, and therefore, unconsciously more likely to except the idea as true in place of something that may say the same thing, just with different words.

                What I disagree with about this article is Bennett’s idea of what it means to us when something is familiar.  He uses familiarity as a synonym of simple.  And although I think it is obvious that familiarity with a person, place, image or idea makes it much easier to decipher, in other words, makes it so we can more fluently assimilate to whatever situation we are in, I do not believe (and science may prove me wrong but I still feel this way) that human beings, as a whole, prefer the familiar, or even the easy.  Everyone knows the saying “the challenege is half the fun”, and that holds true for so many aspects of our lives, whether it be in regards to relationships, academics, athletics, art, writing, reading, traveling – and the list goes on.  While I can thoroughly enjoy sitting down with some mindless romance novel, I also thoroughly enjoy sitting down with a book like Anna Karenina or anything by Maugham and having to read each page carefully just to make sure I don’t miss all the themes that are presented on them.  While I mostly enjoy professors that use language I can understand, my favorite classes are the ones where the professors have an abundance of knowledge that I am not yet familiar with and they present it in such a way that inspires you to want to learn more, know more, discover more.  While great professors may not provide their students with dry, boring texts, they also don’t stimulate their students by giving them easily deciphered, seen before material.  We don’t travel because we crave familiarity, we have an urge to travel because we crave newness and adventure.  When I buy something, many times its because it is unlike anything I already own or have ever seen.

                I especially find this notion of preferring the familiar, or the average, to be false when it comes to what we find as beautiful.  When I find a particular piece of clothing, or jewelry, that strikes be as beautiful it is because it stands out from the crowd, it looks different from all the other pieces surrounding it.  Many consumers are moved to buy things from newness – in packaging, production, appearance, etc—not from our level of comfort with a particular product.  I feel that many people find what is to them exotic, not prototypical, to be the most beautiful things of all, whether it be people, places, animals.  Of course, maybe I am wrong and this is only my particular opinion on this topic.  Yes, I think cognitive fluency is powerfully at play in many areas of our lives, but I truly hope that people look beyond names and fonts– of stocks, of candidates, or ideas – and at the content of what is being presented to them before they accept or reject anything as believable or true.

Response to Cognitive Fluency

The article about cognitive fluency brings up a lot of good points that can be interpreted in many day to day tasks that nobody ever really thinks about. For example, it states that stocks tend to do better when they have a simpler, fluent, more common name because it is recognizable and easy to process mentally. Personally, I think this is a good tactic when thinking of business names or product names because you make what you’re selling more relatable to the consumer, and will probably end up doing better. In today’s society, everything is in fast-forward, people running around looking for the fastest easiest way to get things done. It was only a matter of time before we figured out our brains did the same thing with the littlest things, like advertisements. We are always looking for shortcuts, and maybe it’s just because our brains are programmed to look for the shortest, fastest ways possible to get around, as seen with examples from this article.
Also, the point the article had that we base beauty or attractiveness based off of common ideas of beauty or attractiveness is interesting, and it makes one stop and think about how true that really is. With TV shows these days emphasizing lifestyles of celebrities and society-interpreted standards of acceptance and beauty, viewers are exposed to the ideal. This becomes imprinted in our brains, and from then on we only see beauty in what is familiar to the ideal. Faces become regular prototypes for the mind’s basis of familiarity. For example, from some of my observations there is a weird coincidence with people being in relationships with a person that looks oddly similar to one of their siblings. This creepy coincidence probably has something to do with this idea of cognitive fluency. As we grow up, we see more of our family than anyone else in our life, and it may just be nature to become familiar with these faces and look for someone else to spend such comparable time with that has a relatable face, proving your life may stay consistent and fluent if you’re surrounded by similar, familiar faces continually. Though this is just a strange theory, I think it is easily applicable to this idea of cognitive fluency.