Language and our capacity to communicate

So many articles of late lament the nature of public discourse. The dog whistles, the sound bites, the 'spin', the cliches. Kate Holden yesterday and Barry Jones today. The discussion of ideas, the debates on merit are lost to shrill positions which play to prejudices.

The death of Robert Hughes yesterday sent me back to his tomes-magnificent books on art The Shock of the New, my inscribed copy of American Visions, his ode to fishing A Jerk on the End and his magnificent piece on Australian history, The Fatal Shore. Hughes in The Fatal Shore describes the delineation of language by land, landscape, rivers, ridges and other natural barriers. Tribes around Sydney Harbour spoke different languages, and they had no need to learn each others' tongues as their self sufficient lifestyle made them content where they were, in a land replete with food and the harbour filled with fish.

We observe the world and make sense of it-interpret and reflect on the experience which is ours. Hughes says his fishing taught him much about art-the observation, the attention to tiny changes, the effects of light through water, the movement of ripples and what they meant.

We assume our take on the world as natural-to us it is. But with the rise of online comment, has our language, and with it, our ideas, begun to degenerate? I wonder if the immediacy of comment, the rush to make note first has made our reflections intemperate. This seems fairly obvious. Even the tools of emoticons and buttons to 'tweet' and 'like' and 'favourite' and 'retweet' and 'share' speak to a language of reduction. These forums are not the place for reflection.

The trolls are out and about in the world of online opinion. Today I read that Age/SMH blogger John Birmingham has had to increase monitoring and blocking due to the vile exchanges which fill his comments streams. Sullied waters. These rivers of mud blur true meaning too-hate-filled idealogues spew ill thought spears at each other.

My father might be losing his tongue...

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Notes of Substance

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