This is an essay about how we don't talk to each other. About how we talk around things. How we fail to say the obvious things. About how we get mired in the swamp.

the nature of the feast: 'Mr comment Miss response Mr contribution'

stating the obvious A:

Sometimes we are all talking about talking about things. Saying we won't say things. Inferring things. Summoning ghosts of arguments. and using inference and snide innuendo. This is not a criticism, this is simply the way that humans communicate.

We all knit together a hundred thousand facts, in broad tapestries of our own making, before breakfast, every day. We impose order utilising any one of a thousand unconscious templates, and then reinterpret our take of the data, a hundred times, every day. Before breakfast.

We are engaged in the social discourse. Continually. Everything is connected to everything else. Sometimes in very subtle ways. (She picks up the breakfast menu, looks you in the eye, and tells you she is going to buy the red dress. )

Everyone is reordering and juggling little bits of much the same hundred thousand elements of this social discourse, every morning,, while they have breakfast. Knitting together their take on the day.

stating the obvious B:

A hundred thousand years later the internet was invented.

stating the obvious C

for the most part we are all happy to be wilfully ignorant We have to be. We can't be gnawing off our own limbs in desperation if we are to provide for the kiddies.

and

Existential angst is not a big hit. It plays well in some lesser markets, in the burbs, but strictly as an ensemble piece.

There is so much information available in the modern world that even in a tight little on-line community, we are happily drowning in miscommunication and misunderstanding. We have to be. This is the nature of the modern on-line environment. We filter the result of the filters, and wilful disregard does the rest. (Pass the sugar please.)



'back to what I was saying before I just said what I said.'

The three comments that prompted this essay came in a series at the end of a thread
As a group they screamed to me. It was not the content that was fascinating. It was the dance.

This was miscommunication, obfuscation, wilful blindness, and misdirection, of the highest order. This essay is the result.


mentioning something not at all obvious D:

The art in anthropology lies in the thick description. In the dense textual drama. It sets out the nature of the quest. Where they went and what they saw.

In the best anthropological essays I have been transported, entirely and completely.

These texts are a synthesis of impression and observation vomited out in a dense tangle of meaning. You wade through a syrup of description and impression following a lifeline of logic, a thin scatter of breadcrumbs cast on a technicolour sidewalk. Through hickets of meaning. Beautiful words and images, wonderful ideas and insights,

You pick up nuggets of rhetoric that live with you forever. Every time you take them out and admire them you find new insight.

I love the thick description of the anthropologist.

(a thousand cultural anthropologists unknowingly knit together on the internet, every morning. Whilst sipping coffee, listening to the radio, and juggling a hundred thousand stray facts, and stacking them into pretty patterns)



back to what I was saying before I just said what I said. part two

lets look again

Lets look again to consider how we don't talk about things.
There are politically and socially distasteful subjects and debates.
What are the areas we all tacitly agree to avoid?

Where are the blind spots in our social dialogue, where a concurrence of distaste, and/or fear, seems to occlude clear appraisal and comment?

We must consider the dark undercurrents in and of our social discourse - our mutually out of bounds areas. They exist as a general consensus. ('Pssst...; don't mention the elephant.')
(Think about: Racial terms -; racial labels - child abuse - paedophilia - interpersonal violence - verbal abuse.)

These are nasty topics. We can't go addressing any without first summoning forth a great deal of personal strength and clarity. These topics abound with endless possibilities for misunderstanding, conflation, exaggeration, misinformation, false simile, cute metaphor, dark religious metonym.

Theses topics require confidence and a confidant. A friend in confidence. They open you up. These are the broad grassy verges of the swamp.

our tacit agreements - the feast itself: rude logic conflating topics (child molestation, paedophilia, marital bashing, et al,) into the one huge mushy and distasteful social swamp.

Let's look again and see what is not said.
We are enjoying ourselves - but are we communicating?

here are the three comments:

Mr Comment
I think it's telling that and
James both place "bad people" in
quotes. I suspect that neither believe
that there is such a thing. Further,
I suspect that both are projecting their
own conflicts with society in expressing
their own skepticism with the
characterization. Let me begin by
saying that good equals no police
record. Bad equals a police record.
, can you honestly look at
our society and wonder that we have
a higher percentage of criminals than
the rest of the G8? It surprises you that
we have more people locked up and that
many are minorities? My dear girl, I am
surprised that more are not behind bars.
James, you defend young men who
follow the gang as "having no other
option"? Are you saying these men
take on the gang persona as a ruse
to survive the prison experience?
I'm without words for you, James.
You talk about the Crown, James.
Are you British? I have to tell you,
James, the USA is not the Crown.
I don't know what your experience is,
James, but we in the USA are not really that
concerned about the cost of keeping
criminals in prison. We can afford the
cost. If you want to take that position that
we in the USA are expressing our racial
prejudice by locking up black men,
I recommend an American vacation. Book
a suite for a couple of weeks in Washington
DC. Look for something on Florida

Miss response
Bad does not equal a police record,
. Bad equals actually having a personal record of doing evil things. The two are not the same. Many, many people throughout history have been falsely accused, falsely imprisoned, and even all-too-finally executed without having committed a crime. Many others have done something minor once that gave them a police record, but was either not an evil deed (such as participating in a peaceful protest) or would only be defined as evil by someone with an incredibly judgmental and harsh view of the world.

I will leave your personal insults about me and James alone since they are obviously childish and ridiculous. I suggest you grow up and start using adult reasoning skills



Mr. Contribution
How about this for some Aussie justice?? Rapes a child and get

SIDNEY, Neb. May 25, 2006 (AP); A judge said a 5-foot-1 man convicted of sexually assaulting a child was too small to survive in prison, and gave him 10 years of probation instead.
His crimes deserved a long sentence, District Judge Kristine Cecava said, but she worried that Richard W. Thompson, 50, would be especially imperiled by prison dangers.
"You are a sex offender, and you did it to a child," she said.
But, she said, "That doesn't make you a hunter. You do not fit in that category."
Thompson will be electronically monitored the first four months of his probation, and he was told to never be alone with someone under age 18 or date or live with a woman whose children were under 18. Cecava also ordered Thompson to get rid of his pornography.
He faces 30 days of jail each year of his probation unless he follows its conditions closely.
"I want control of you until I know you have integrated change into your life," the judge told Thompson. "I truly hope that my bet on you being OK out in society is not misplaced."





from my personal notes:

" I don't know what your experience is, [ conflates issues and misunderstands references. Then after setting up the flag in the background, continues]
James, but we in the USA are not really that
concerned about the cost of keeping
criminals in prison. We can afford the [conflates economic issues via metonymic inference]
cost. If you want to take that position that
we in the USA are expressing our racial
prejudice by locking up black men, I
recommend an American vacation. Book
a suite for a couple of weeks in Washington
DC. Look for something on Florida Avenue.


The final equation, left hanging, is an interesting and compelling rhetorical device.

Bad equals havaing a criminal history.

This false premise, shot in at the beginning, as a foundation, a 'just so' equation, allows a springboard

ie More blacks, proportionately, have a criminal history,
ergo
blacks, {read Hispanics, aboriginals, Indians et al) are more 'bad'.

the same equation
assumed at the commencement, is righteously trumpeted at the end proving all of the contentions that are drawn from the same initial false supposition.

but beyond the first false supposition all is coached in a perfectly valid logical format

morally distasteful and indefensible. but syllogistically correct

So the comments can and do describe a slow motion dance around serious issues,

but never adequately frame or address them.

(end snippet and back to essay)



Miss comment in the social swamp.

We all have a social fear. Nobody wants to be labelled a racist or use potentially racist contentions. And that's a damn good thing too. We all agree not to use the word 'nigger' or 'yid' because they are offensive. They are not permitted. We all observe social boundaries. But as we knit together our morning, over the papers, we do orient ourselves in the flow. We grope to impose order in so many dimensions. We are all ideologues. All the time.

Sometimes we address an issue. Sometimes we just wrestle in the swamp.



from my notes again (and to nearly the end of the essay)

logical habits work in one field and must be shunned in others.

does not mean that they are bad or good methodologies for considering data,

it means you must be careful when drawing inferences.

If the foundation contentions are incorrect, the argument is false, however grand or compelling the rational construct.
We allow 'dog whistle' arguments, allusions, and illusions to pass - tendered as coin!
an argument waged in connotation and veiled inference
in the margins
So, in the end, after the shouting?
we all allude to the hard questions.
But don't ask them?

more blacks in cells? why? then

should we let politicians or judges decide?

(help I'm in the swamp)

(you probably have a criminal history you know-nothing stuck up liberal pussy.)

Miss response is a genuine hero! - goes straight for the jugular but is mired in the swamp instantly.

poor dead hero
the dog-whistle statements being addressed summon and infer rather than address topics.
They conflate so many topics!
they are syllogistically pretty, and dense, and compelling,
but trying to unpick them is like shadowboxing a ghost
a real social swamp!!

Miss comment is my hero. Pity she got drowned

Mr contributor? Goose! Cunning goose? firstline Google - news - shows piece is drawn from the US press and misidentified


It's a bait being waved.

'Come out into the social mire.'

Oh no! I must warn them! They will sink. More lost in the desperate quicksand! These are not the parts of the social landscape you want to travel in timid little leftie! You teeter right upon the edge of the vast fetid swamps of despair. The dog whistle has been blown.

The genuine geographic confusion suffered by Mr contributor will instantly draw the poor timid liberals out!!! out into the open!!!!!

Tutt-tutting about in a little herd. Out on the grassy verges of the swamp.

The 'I am in favour of child raping' swamp!!!!

So the timid lefties will be lured into the middle of the glade. Only to find out, too late, they are trapped - it is a reductionist tar-pit.

AAaaaaggghhhhh!

So many souls lost!!! I cannot comment. it would do more damage.

The mouse is defeated.

(end semiotic analysis)



Conclusion:

Sometimes, despite all of the huff and the puff

the central arguments are skirted.

we do nothing more than raise dust or wrestle in the mud

the dog whistle statements win.

issues are conflated, confused, obfuscated, befuddled, and sidestepped

and only silence wins.

(end of essay)



Peace: 5/27/2006 10:06:34 AM AusEST