The abuse of human language

The photo is from a video posted in Sputnik's playful A Husky's Guide to Ending an Unwanted Conversation. 

Huskies are famously argumentative, mimicking intonations in human language and even mustering a few words when pounding home a point to their dazzled human companions.  But Huskies are not impressed by the loquaciousness of other Huskies, as we can see from the above. 

I wish it was that simple to end unwanted human conversation. Yet there is now a crying need to talk less. This is because people in modern societies are abusing language to such an extent that much discussion is not to inform but to persuade. 

So what happens to getting informed if the goal of communication is to get others to agree? I'll tell you because there's a precedent.

The late Stephen F. Cohen, a Russia expert, once said on John Batchelor's radio show that when he was living in Moscow everyone read Pravda, but by then no one believed anything from Russia's official news source. They didn't believe because they'd learned the hard way that the official source was only trying to get agreement with its position, and telling fairy tales instead of reporting in order to do it. So everyone made up their own version of whatever situation Pravda was reporting on.  

Steve recounted the story several years ago but I still remember my reaction: No wonder the Soviet Union fell apart. 

More than one factor contributed, but the situation Steve described made it inevitable that the empire would collapse on itself. 

It's not possible for a society to hold together if many of its members not only don't believe what authoritative sources are telling them, they're also making up for themselves versions of  what the sources are reporting and which can have no basis in facts. 

Yet this is exactly what is happening in the United States today when it comes to public discussion of anything even remotely political. 

It's important to put the horse before the cart when purporting to inform. You don't want to start out the discussion by trying to get everyone to agree with you because soon enough no one will believe a word you say.

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