Communication
“Hopefully, he’s gonna be one of those people who sees a problem and efficiency -wise recognizes a viable alternative that can impact on the input of the ongoing study, especially at this point in time, when funding on the interdiction front could cost-effectively alternative the now situation.”
Translation: I hope he will be one of those who see a problem and recognize a useful alternative that can improve the study, especially now, when spending money to stop this would be worth it.
What’s wrong with the first statement? It obfuscates rather than clarifies. Okay, it obscures. But I like that word, obfuscates. Summation: I hope he’ll know enough to spend money on a better solution. Remember Hemingway, saying to his editor, I believe: “I would have made it shorter, but I didn’t have enough time”? It takes time to clarify your thoughts. It takes discipline to learn how to write and speak. If you practice early in life, speaking and writing will be easier and more effective later. People wonder why they are not understood. They wonder why they are afraid of meetings or of giving reports. Maybe they know why. Maybe they know they are not equipped to do well.
On the other hand, so many people speak and write poorly that managers, bosses, teachers, and parents are bad examples. Their level of communication is low, so they don’t detect equally bad communicating, and therefore don’t correct it in their employees and children. The awkwardness is perpetuated. The standard slips lower and lower. WE now have a generation, at least, of poor communicators. News program announcers don’t know the words to emphasize in their reports. They feature connectives: The six hundred fifty thousand people AND their leaders PLUS the president; or prepositions: Residents OF the island and visitors TO the island (and verbs) ARE advised TO flee the storm. Message: RESIDENTS, VISITORS, FLEE!!!!! The only significant words of the report, the very words that are the essence of the report, these words are thrown away in favor of the least significant words.
Should I be so surprised, considering that this society is also the one which orders a hamburger but coyly and pointedly adds, but skip the bun, O.K? thinking this is a wise, health prompting decision? Keep what is useless or downright harmful and throw away the only portion that matters. Are we nuts, or what?! People defend their right to be wrong. So we continue to be wrong. WE buy self-help books by the millions, we seek advice, counsel, guidance, but only if it’s easy, quick, and painless. We say we want to know, but we don’t want to be told. And we certainly don’t want to change. I think what we mean is that we want someone to tell us we can continue to do exactly as we have been doing—even though that isn’t working—but add a twist, a tip of some small sort, make a minor adjustment, a slight shift or tilt and find that all the old dumb practices now work beautifully to make all things right. Amazing.
You see, no one has the time. As if it takes more time to put into your mouth the right food, instead of garbage. As if it’s more convenient to insist that two plus two equals four and a half, even though that screws up the books and makes serious trouble. As if life is not fair to ask of anyone that he do anything anymore, now that he’s out of school and grown up! We whine, and go on complaining that it’s just not right and that we’re entitled to better in this crummy world. It’s hard enough just making a living, coping with the job, the boss, the children, the taxes, the garbage collectors, the career, the bank, the husband, the wife, and the GOVERNMENT. WE are too wasteful, but we can’t be bothered to sort out the trash for recycling. WE can’t breathe too well, but we find it too difficult to give up cigarettes. Give up! Make the sacrifice of quitting poison. Addiction has a loud, commanding voice. It’s also self-righteous—it knows what it’s doing, by God! But it’s a Doppelganger. It possesses the speaker. It’s a voracious monster that speaks through the addict. And it will defend to the death, its right to consume its irresistible substances. It thinks, it actually believes, that it is merely making a choice. It presumes—without examining the issue too closely—but it has alternatives, but just doesn’t like them. It prefers what it’s doing. Amazing! And widespread. This madness pervades society. One sort or another rules humankind, I have no doubt anymore.