The Urgency and Inadequacy of Language
The Urgency and Inadequacy of Language
ben sayler
May 17 2021
The Flag of Palestine
In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, educational philosopher Paulo Freire describes “naming the world” as a radical act. He says that when we can name things as they truly are, we are reclaiming the truth from the oppressors and engaging in a foundational act of liberation. Since reading that book, and for much of my adult life, I’ve aspired to do this. To talk about the climate crisis in a way that would cut through the barriers of propaganda, confusion, ignorance, or misunderstanding that lead people to despair or false optimism. To speak about injustices and liberation in a way that would resonate and carry with it the clarity I felt in my heart. To address the world as it is so as to act upon honestly and with integrity of purpose.
The genocide being enacted by the state of Israel, and supported by nations throughout the world including primarily the United States, against the Palestinian people…in my bones I want to speak about it with language so exacting, so precise and irrefutable, so emotionally true and morally confident that it stirs people out of the same complacency and distorted thinking I once held. I want to use language to help connect for others the synaptic dots necessary to bring about in them the solidarity I now feel and try to enact, but which was grievously lacking in me only years ago when I still bought into the notion that the issue of colonizing genocide was any more complicated than an imperial power terrorizing a native people.
I can look back at myself in my early 20s and see my own distorted thinking - my own belief that what Israel was doing was wrong but that surely Israel must have a right to exist - and see now the ways propaganda and cultural norms had led me to such broken ways of thinking. In being able to reflect and see these flaws in myself, in my mind, so clearly, I feel I ought to be able to free others of those same shackles of distorted thinking, to liberate them the way others liberated me. If only I could find the right words, the right tone, the right expression to do so.
I look back at pivotal moments - conversations, videos, articles, even being disparaged or “attacked” for my views - and how those were breakthroughs of sorts, moments where my understanding and perspective jumped forward, like a rubber band snapping, liberating me from old and dysfunctional ways of thinking or seeing the world. I’ve wanted to provide for others as they’ve provided for me: the language and perspective to start to address the world as it is, not as I’d been taught it is by the oppressive and stagnant forces of power that dominant our educational and social spheres. I’m not particularly special or intelligent - if the veil can fall from my eyes, it can fall from anyone’s, and on a certain level, there’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to find ways of naming that world that are as liberating for others as the words of others have been for me.
Sometimes this process can feel like searching for a code, for the key to open up the pathways necessary for the world to make sense. There’s a well-documented thoroughly-covered and extremely public genocide taking place - what’s the secret phrase that will let otherwise empathetic thoughtful people see it for what it is? What’s the right approach to trigger the same breakthrough moments that were triggered in me? What can I say that will make things click for people in my life the way I know they can?
But that concept of a sudden revelation or click triggered by the right thing said at the right moment is, in fact, a dishonest naming of the world and its ways. The illusion and the lie is that these epiphanies happen in distinct interactions or experiences - what felt for me like singular breakthrough moments were really steadily building pressures that had reached key thresholds where the only option left was revelatory. It wasn’t that someone found the perfect phrase to kickstart my brain, even though that’s how I remember it being at the time. The reality was that other people heard the same things I did and didn’t change their views at all. The reality is that things had been said to me before that did nothing to change my mind but that had radically altered the perspective of my peers. The reality is the growth and maturity and understanding is not a science or linear process, it does not happen according to a formula or set of definable rules.
The reality is that the process of learning to see and name the world is a gradual one, it takes time to unlearn propaganda, to accept difficult truths, and ultimately, to see ourselves and our communities as they really are. The reality is that there are no predictable, reliable shortcuts to knowing and naming the world, and that to delay action because one has not found such a shortcut is to avoid facing the difficult but fundamental truth that life happens at the speed it happens, no faster and no slower. Liberation and education are not tasks to be optimized or a kits to be built more efficiently, they are lifelong processes that each person will experience at different speeds and with different moments of revelation and understanding - it is not our task to sit back and refine our methods to perfection, it is our task to learn from others as they learn from us as we do our best to live the values and principles we wish to see define our world.
The people that helped me understand were skilled and thoughtful and had real understanding, but that wasn’t sufficient for imbuing or awakening understanding in me or anyone else. If it was, we wouldn’t be here right now, for there’s no shortage of thoughtful, skilled, and knowledgeable people in the world. The reality is that, those moments were breakthroughs for me because there had been many small moments before gradually paving the way for me to have those seemingly singular epiphanies. Progress was not happening in leaps and bounds separated by periods of stagnation, it was happening constantly marked by the occasional rubber-band-breaking sea change moment, all buoyed by the previous stream of little breakthroughs and minor revelations.
My path to better understanding took time and repetition, it was not the single phrase or article or conversation that seems at times so crucial to progress and growth. I watch alongside everyone the horrors of the genocide taking place in the occupied land of Palestine. We all see the self-serving narratives obscuring the truth of what’s happening, the military industrial complex and power lust of politicians working hand-in-hand with ideologues and media machines to make genocide seem like something it isn’t. War crimes are committed before our eyes and then we turn and see someone we know and love who has shown deep compassion in the past and who has been courageous in the face of injustice as they stand back and hesitate, doubt themselves and their perceptions and question if it’s really so simple as a tyrannical ethnostate committing crimes against humanity in service of ethnic and religious supremacy. It feels like there’s no time to waste because there isn’t - each hour this goes on, the people of Palestine suffer more and the harm done becomes increasingly irrevocable.
The want, the urge, is to scream from the rooftops about how horrific and intolerable this is, to throw oneself fully into solidarity and stand against this injustice with the entirety of ones being alongside those who cannot walk away or step back from the terror being inflicted upon them. But lacking the ability to fly to Palestine - the ability to be of any real use even if we could - what we’re so often left with is the limited and incomplete tool of language, remote and immaterial, to connect over our shared humanity and values. No matter how carefully phrased or honed or researched or reflected, no combination of words can ever capture the existential atrocity of genocide, nor can they capture the profound love and connection of genuine solidarity, or the value of standing together with people you’ve never met in service of a greater good or in opposition to a monumental wrong.
Try as we might, connection and understanding does not - cannot - come from words alone. The desire to reach people, to build solidarity in the face of urgent crises and moral catastrophes, won’t be sated through the discovery of a verbal or literary concoction to make material a shared set of underlying values. Such a concoction does not exist and were anything to give such an appearance, it would surely be a fata morgana destined to vanish when forced to bear the weight of its image.
And yet, every day that goes by I learn more about how the injustices wrought by Israel, the liberation sought be Palestinians, and the history of imperialism and power are interconnected with liberations sought, and wrongs wrought, the world over, present and historical. And I learn this through language, through the communications of others, as incomplete and imperfect as all human communication is.
My understanding will never be complete as history will not be complete - there is no “complete” understanding to be achieved, only greater connection, empathy, and awareness matched to greater action and clarity of purpose. Through the efforts of others to connect and educate and built and grow solidarity, my understanding and capacity for solidarity and strength and radical action grows. It does not happen perfectly or as fast as it should, but it happens regardless. On the other hand, if others were to wait for the perfect moment, for the perfect expression, for the perfect connection before sharing their thoughts, experiences, perspectives, or refutations, it may never happen.
It is easy to see in retrospect how far how far we’ve come from where we were, and what changes in thinking were necessary to reach the point we’re at now. It is equally easy for that awareness to imbue us with a sense that there must be a way to reach others in similar places and help them disentangle from the same web of colonizing propaganda that held us, to unlearn the same lessons we had to unlearn, to imagine that we can help them skip ahead of the arduous process of growth and humility and reflection that we went through. It feels like there should be a way to use whatever wisdom or understanding we’ve gained to help others leapfrog to where we are now.
And perhaps there is.
But if there is, it won’t come from the perfect expression of thought or understanding. It won’t come from honing a speech or text to the point of unassailability or to tailor our language so acutely to an individual that we are speaking to them as if they were speaking to themselves. It won’t come from becoming the Model Activist or Writer or Community Member, so well-informed and self-aware that no one can resist our impeccable oration.
If our advocacy has value, if our speaking out has worth, it is as part of something larger than ourselves. It is using our individual skills and hearts and perspectives to work in service of our collective values and principles and to trust that that has value, even if it’s not as overtly impactful as we might hope. It is through this repetition of countless individuals coming together around a shared goal, advocating and speaking out as best they can, that we create change and breakthrough the oppressive narratives that bind us to a sense that reality is inevitably unjust or that revolutionary change isn’t possible. We liberate ourselves and each other not through perfect action or thought, but through our own imperfect commitments to continue to show up and do our best and learn and speak out in the ways we know how.
The same way others taught me to think better, the same way that others confronted me with my poisonous thinking, the same way others showed me moral truths that seemed too plain, too obvious, too clear to be right in the face of something I was told was too complicated for such clear and easy thought - we can offer that liberation and accountability and strength and education in return. We won’t always know the impact we’re having, and it won’t always reveal itself in a timely manner. Sometimes we won’t even know if, or how much, we’re helping our cause and beliefs. Perhaps in writing this I’m doing more harm than good. Perhaps the impact of my solidarity is the opposite of what I intend or perhaps it’s doing nothing at all. Puzzling over these things, however, does not produce better solidarity or better connection or better love or better community. Instead, it merely leaves us inactive, absent from the fights we supposedly wish to aid in, absent from the love and solidarity and communion that sustains us all. It pulls us into ourselves when we should be opening up to others.
So we speak out. We name the world as honestly and fearlessly as we can. And we accept that we will fall short of our ideals, of our goals, of our aspirations from time to time. Maybe even frequently. But to let ourselves become detached or removed or let cowardice or a desire for perfection draw us into silence as we await a time where we feel equipped to act without failure or flaw is to let ourselves abandon solidarity in service of self-protection. It’s to ask of ourselves, and by extension to expect of others, to be something other than human.
None of us have grown or learned to see the world more clearly because we’ve been exposed to perfect flawless people who have reached down to show us the way. Rather, we’ve been able to learn and grow and become more fully express human beings because we have listened to and built bonds with other imperfect people doing their best alongside us, trying to do what’s right, willing to walk the path with us despite it often being unclear or uncertain where it leads.
Language alone cannot liberate us, but nor can we achieve liberation in silence. We must find ways to communicate with others, to communicate to the world, even and especially with all our imperfections, if we’re to build the solidarity and strength needed to liberate ourselves and our communities and those we choose to live in solidarity with. We must do so knowing all the while it will not happen with the speed or certainty that the people we love and stand with deserve, or that our conscience demands, and that we cannot let that deter us from living our values and trying our best.
In the face of Palestinian genocide, in the face of daily bombings and assassinations and dispossession by the Israeli government, where nothing we can do feels urgent enough, where it feels impossible to communicate the wrongness of what’s happening or to convey the import of speaking out and standing up, we cannot let ourselves become inert for fear that we don’t know what to say or do. We cannot give in to the resignation of despair or surrender to the slowness of circumstance - our actions and speech matters, whatever speed its effects are felt.
So we take the time to reflect on what we would want others to do we were in the same position that our Palestinian friends, strangers, brothers, sisters, siblings, family, and community are in. We listen to what the people of Palestine are asking from those of us on the outside, what they tell us solidarity means for them. And we do our best to speak what we see to be true about the world, about what’s happening, and about the liberation and justice we stand in solidarity in pursuit of. If we see that we say and do breaks through and connects and changes the minds we seek to change, then we continue to show up and fight and build off of that connection and understanding. And if we cannot see any impact, if we cannot tell if we’re helping to change minds or hearts, then we continue to show up, anyway, and do our best and reflect and fight with the same as urgency as if we felt we would win tomorrow.
The pursuit of liberation and of justice is not one manifested through decisive blows or moments, through singular events or breakthroughs. True liberation comes through resilience and determination, through enduring community and connection, through the slow and unrelenting naming of what’s true and right in the world in the face of the systems and people that tell us everything but.