A few thousand years from now, sociocultural anthropologists will understand something immensely profound about us here at the beginning of the 21st century, something that we are so immersed in that few of us recognize, let alone understand.
More than climate change, pandemics, wars, trade wars, or corrosive politics, the world is suffering from Dialogue Deficiency. Later, I will offer my reasoning to justify the argument that Dialogue Deficiency is more serious than the others. For now, though, let’s look at what dialogue is and where the word comes from.
What is dialogue?
Merriam-Webster defines dialogue as (among other things) a conversation between two or more persons; an exchange of ideas and opinions; a discussion between representatives of parties to a conflict that is aimed at resolution.
The etymology of the word is interesting and pertinent to this essay and its intentions. Stemming from the Greek dialogos (‘conversation’), its roots are dia (‘through’) and logos (‘speech, reason’). We trace the term to Plato, in whose works it is closely associated with the art of dialectic, the dialogue between people holding different points of view but with the goal of arriving at the truth through reasoned argument. (That last phrase should indicate where this is going.)
As long as there have been alphabets – Egyptian hieroglyphs approximately 5,500 years ago, and then springing up in Phoenicia, Mesopotamia, Sumer, Anatolia, Greece, and so on – we’ve had the ability to record history and current events using language rather than drawings like the ones we see in the caves at Lascaux, France.
The problem – and it is an innate one – is that along with the ability to record history comes the ability – and opportunity – to misrepresent it. In the larger sense, along with truth comes a distortion of it, sometimes innocently and inadvertently but, more often than not, by design and for ulterior purposes. Unchecked by dialogue, this results in exactly the opposite: the lack of dialogue.
A modern-day case study
While the absence of dialogue is usually the result of authoritarian suppression or skilled exorcism, it can also be achieved strategically with the long view always kept up ahead. Such is the case with the political and social climate currently dominating the United States as well as other places around the world. Since I can speak with some familiarity with the U.S.’s state of affairs, I shall.
The beginnings of the dissolution of dialogue
Until 1990, American politics and government was always a raucous and contentious how-do-you-do, but ultimately a cooperative venture to one degree or another. Famous for that was the cordial and convivial nature of the relationship between Republican President Ronald Reagan and Democrat Speaker of the House Thomas P. ‘Tip’ O’Neill. As front men for the two parties, they certainly led from the front in many a bloody battle, but at the end of the day, there was accord…usually, anyway.
O’Neill stepped down in January 1987 and Raegan left office in January 1989, their larger-than-life departures leaving a huge void. At the same time, Representative Newt Gingrich from Georgia was already in ascent, assuming the position of House Minority Whip in March 1989. While he went on to the powerful Speaker position In January 1995, it was in 1990 that he first had a powerful impact.
Gingrich issued his now famous (infamous, perhaps) “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,” a pamphlet which was sent to Republican candidates running in the 1990 mid-term elections. Therein, making the non-negotiable point that carefully chosen language can win a point while saying nothing about it advancing the truth, he listed two categories of words which candidates were to learn, memorize, internalize, and use whenever needed.
The first category was ‘Optimistic Positive Governing Words’ – 30 words like common sense, courage, family, fair, freedom, liberty, moral, peace, prosperity, truth, and vision.
And in his first example of using language advantageously, Gingrich entitled the second category ‘Contrasting Words’ – not ‘negative’ words, as one would expect. Gingrich was one step ahead of the rest of us.
These 36 words included anti-flag, betray, crisis, disgrace, failure, incompetent, liberal, radical, shallow, taxes, traitors, and welfare.
It’s clear these lists weren’t intended to promote dialogue, and we’re living in the world resulting from it. The Republicans didn’t gain control of the House that year or in the presidential election of 1992 (Clinton swept in), but they did in 1994, and Gingrich assumed the Speakership and, with it, all the influence of the third most powerful position in the U.S. government.
There was nothing that even hinted at striving for dialogue, and it’s been missing ever since.
Why is Dialogue Deficiency prepotent?
I deem Dialogue Deficiency more serious than all other global, societal conditions because the others exist ubiquitously. Therefore, we can see them, measure them, and decide on the methods of their dissolution, if we are so committed. On the other hand, dialogue is, for all intents and purposes, extinct and must be recreated before we can attempt to initiate and ultimately institutionalize it. The paradox here is that there will be more disagreement than agreement, arising from superficially sound but intellectually dishonest arguments in support of a foregone conclusion of what dialogue is – precisely the reason we have lost dialogue to begin with. In other words, its own detritus will likely serve as the barrier to its own resurrection, making it so insidious.
That will require us – all of humanity – to call on all the great thinking that got us out of the dark ages, into the Renaissance, through the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, and into the modern age. Dialogue Deficiency will take many generations to cure, but there is no choice. Imagine the world 75 years from now – 2100 – if we let the disease go unchecked and run its course.