"We do not lack communication.On the contrary, we have too much of it."
“The best one can say about discussions is that they take things no farther, since the participants never talk about the same thing. Of what concern is it...that someone has such a view, and thinks this or that, if the problems at stake are not stated?...Communication always comes too early or too late, and when it comes to creating, conversation is always superfluous. Sometimes philosophy is turned into the idea of a perpetual discussion, as "communicative rationality," or as "universal democratic conversation." Nothing is less exact...it never takes place on the same plane...All these debaters and communications are inspired by ressentiment. They speak only of themselves...Debate is unbearable...in Socrates was philosophy not a free discussion among friends? Is it not...In fact, Socrates constantly made all discussion impossible, both in the short form of the contest of questions and answers and in the long form of a rivalry between discourses."
- D and G What is Philosophy?, pg 108 and 28-29
“We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate... We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad flapping American ear will be that Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.”
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden... pg.41
I'm a group and individual 'talk' therapist in both an inpatient and outpatient setting. I'm also about to tell you that we need to talk less.
Put your pessimism pants on.
If you watch TV, read magazines, go on twitter, etc., the idea you're bombarded with is that if we 'just talked' to each other we'd get along. Conflict would vanish or in the very least make things make sense and be OK for the majority of people.
'Let's open a dialogue'
This is the democratic dream and its accompanying pragmatism.
The dream is that rational debate or discussion will allow us to make group decisions that meet most if not all of our needs, and any conflict aroused in this democratic process can be smoothed over by either explaining to a mistaken position, or a better alternative (the education industry and its related cognitive therapy machine - don't function at school, get some CBT. to get back into school...). Oh, and if someone can't be convinced to see that their wrong, or change their mind, they're just 'bad' - (crazy, stupid, ideologically blinded, this, or that, etc. etc.).
As a talk therapist - a misleading label really as we mostly listen - I think people need to shut up.
Ok, that was a bit harsh. I was feeling angry. I'm not really a polemicist and I don't want to hurt peoples' feelings or silence their voices.
Here's what I really mean: There's more than enough discussion on how to solve this or that problem. How to help this or that. In fact, instead of trying some of the suggestions, we seem to just endlessly suggest counter suggestions or reinforcements to other suggestions. And this is without mentioning that talk just gets us bogged down in arguing over different meanings we're not even sure we're on the same page about to begin with.
And this is not to say 'talk is cheap' or we simply need 'action.' Talk is not cheap, there are multi-billion dollar communication networks - and I'm just talking social media, think educational systems, universities and their think tanks, the media and its drones, the pay to play model of publishing papers based on prestige, etc., - that can have a meaningful effect on the material lives of people, and action is just a way to escalate or obfuscate things without addressing the underlying issues.
In other words, too much communication is making us unable to determine how we feel, why we feel that way, and what to effectively do or not do with the feeling (too much noise, not enough signal). So we talk and talk to hide our own inability to process, and rope others into the dysfunction as well (as Lacan and Freud show us, patients often talk to obscure the analyst from knowing something, not to help us understand them...). In fact, this overcommunication and its effect on feelings has even slipped into the way we talk about feelings.
Look at this absolute fucking abomination.
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| Would you just look at it. Holy shit. |
These are commonly found in the milieus of group homes, inpatient units, mental hospitals, etc. The chart is meant to help a patient who is numb or too overwhelmed to identify what they are actually feeling as to help them process the feeling, or use a skill or support system to make a safe or health decision, etc. A chart like this might be used all the same for someone who has Borderline Personality Disorder, or mild Autism.
For some god damn reason some therapist thought that bombarding the patient, who is already having difficulty determining their internal states, with over 60 feelings signs - a few of which are not incredibly distinct from one another - would help with reducing overwhelming or numbing internal stimuli. Common sense dictates that more choices do not mean more ease of identifying a feeling, probably less. In fact, when I run any group that utilizes this kind of sheet I test this hypothesis, and more often than not my patients prefer a simpler chart over a more complex chart precisely because, when they are overwhelmed (and remember, being numb is actually a reaction to being overwhelmed, not a lack of internal feeling), one wants to be grounded by a reductive process (from overwhelm - alot - to only a few choices, as opposed to from overwhelmed to multiple choices which will increase overwhelmed feeling, etc.) not an expansive process. This is why I trim it down to 4 choices - Mad, Sad, Glad and Afraid (if you want to argue with me on why there should be more, tweet @ me, otherwise I am not planning on expanding why this is the correct move...).
Rather than continue to talk myself, here is what I mean via a re-purposing of the above quotes:
"We do not lack manifestos. On the contrary, we have too many of them."
“We are in great haste to construct a dialectical relationship between workers and intellectuals; but workers and intellectuals, it may be, have nothing important to communicate... We are eager to share papers on how to topple capitalism and bring the theoretical s nearer to the real; but perchance the first praxis that will leak through into the broad flapping American ear will be something we already know, or something we cannot change.”Manifesto overload.
