The Pitfalls of (Over)articulation
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Sadhika Pant
 June 30 2023
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    The word, both written and spoken, is the means by which we give shape to formless potential, a way to breathe spirit into the lifeless; indeed, a means to de-obscurize (to coin a terrible term) the world. 

    Historians have chronicled our journey in words. 

    Political leaders and rulers have used the power of words and rhetoric to mobilise entire nations. 

    Both trade and peace have been negotiated by diplomats through words.

    Lawmakers have contained in their wordy laws the proper way to live in a society.

    Priests have done their preaching, in large part, using words.

    And of course, most obviously, great authors have brought about revolutions, elevated mindsets, all by means of the humble(?) word.

    On a more individual level, each human being thinks in words, reflects upon one’s experiences and understands them better when he puts them into words.

    To put something into words is to specify, to give a name to things. Without this christening of the problem (as I like to call it), how do we conceptualise a solution for it?

    However, are there perhaps some instances where we use it precisely to the opposite end? Namely, to obfuscate the world further?

    There is no end to articulation, it sometimes seems to me. You sit down to speculate and explain to yourself exactly why or how something happened, and my experience has been that you will find an answer if you grapple with the question long enough. If you are habitual at this, you may even find more than one answer to the question. But is it enough? Are there not endless interpretations? Would it do to contemplate one’s life away and forget to act and live? And since articulation is evidently a self-preserving habit, how would one draw the line at which it becomes counter-productive? 

    I do not have satisfactory answers to these questions yet. But something does gnaw at me on rare occasions when I have been contemplating. It is a sudden impulse to stop. Such occasions are few and far between, but they want their due.

    We must not forget, we are children of the Information Age. We have at our fingertips as much information on any topic we want. We are more aware, more informed (at least as far as facts go) than any generation that ever lived. We almost revel in this superiority from time to time. 

    Google can pretty much answer every question that pops up in our mind, ranging from reasonably important - How to calculate my credit score? - to ridiculously irrelevant - Why does Mickey Mouse wear gloves?. Go through your Google search history, if you don’t believe me. Our generation is the first to live with this privilege. Not long before, one would have to pore through volumes of books to get one’s answers, or humble oneself to ask an expert, should one be lucky enough to find one.

    But are we equipped to live with unanswered questions? With a certain good-natured ignorance? Or even with uncertainty? Can we ever snap out of the Q&A mode even for a day or so? 

    We question everything and everyone incessantly, and when anyone questions us, we are superb lawyers in our defence. For every solution, we come up with new problems. For every problem, we have our arguments lined up. In the end, it is not so much about truth versus untruth, fact versus fiction, information versus ignorance. Instead, it is a battle of narratives. 

    When I was growing up, if your mother scolded you for keeping your room messy, you didn’t think much. Perhaps you sulked internally, but you cleaned it. You didn’t come up with reasons to legitimise the problem. That is not to say that reasons (even justified ones) do not exist, but simply that the reasons did not absolve one of the responsibility of solving the problem.

    If your annoying relatives mocked you for being unemployed at the age of 25, you didn’t come up with reasons why you are justified or why you were unlucky in life, or on the receiving end of a layoff or some such tragedy. You felt uncomfortable with their judgement, and you didn’t defeat it with your superior intellect. You solved the problem.

    Why? Because you can either devise a narrative that absolves you of the responsibility using wit and words, a narrative that justifies any and everything, a narrative that has the strongest arguments for whatever it is that you are doing OR you can simply try to not stave off the temporary discomfort that comes with being called out or judged or scolded for a mistake and solve the damn problem. 

    The cost? A little less contemplation, a little less narrative building/ articulation, and a little more bias for action.

    The reward? You end up with a cleaner room, and a job at 25. 

    “Oh, gentlemen, perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I've never been able to start or finish anything. Granted, granted I'm a babbler, a harmless, irksome babbler, as we all are. But what's to be done if the sole and express purpose of every intelligent man is babble--that is, a deliberate pouring from empty into void.”

    - Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground.


    existentialism articulation words language narratives individuality responsibility action goal philosophy
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