Alice, Through the Looking-Glass: Using Words that Work to Heal or Conceal

Alice through the looking glass words: Language in the world today: whether with children, co-workers, customers; or, from out of the mouths of politicians and pundits — finding language that creates world — not merely words that work.

One of the most frustrating and distracting things in the United States has been this protracted warring between our President and those who just don't like his inclusionary vision for America of the 21st ct. It's been highly publicized that the Tea-Party and the Republicans both use "playbooks" or "words that work" in order to sway listeners that they are right and everyone else is wrong. My hoped-for-goal, or desired end-state, is to advance a series of questions and replies that move us on the way to more revealing conversations and use of Language. After all, it is with language that we create the world around us. I cannot solve the Debt ceiling crisis. And I admit that my stance politically has become unpopular (at least with my Republican friends - after all, I am a lifetime Republican myself): suggestions that the wealthiest step up and quit ducking their tax responsibilities, that corporate giants make jobs at home rather than bank profits by laying off workers and sending jobs off-shore).

My next piece will deal with co-creating a sustainable future, again informed by language- my own appropriation of "words that work". I think that each of us now has come to realize that our current “civil discourse” has devolved into partisan talking heads, which try to out-shout one another. WE have paralyzed our nation. Are we doing the same in our everyday lives? I rather think not. In fact, I believe that we try to use language effectively during our daily lives. As parents, teachers, workers, employers, we attempt to communicate with one another.

What about our use of language and metaphor in our daily business lives? Are we guilty of using language carelessly, with no thought to the metaphors contained when we sell? When we market a product, a service, or an offering? What about when we attempt to build a relationship with a customer?

Satire as a genre is powerful in its ability to hold up a mirror, one that emphasizes and distort, our everyday lives. Lewis Carroll’s marvelous Alice In Wonderland, and Through the Looking-Glass, while not perhaps satire, does afford us ample opportunities to explore the power of words and language. A passage from Through the Looking-Glass should serve us well as an example.

Humpty Dumpty said: "There's glory for you."

"I don't know what you mean by 'glory'," Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously.

"Of course you don't till I tell you. I meant, 'There's a nice knock-down argument for you!'

"But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument'," Alice objected.

 "When I use a word," Humpty-Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be Master - that's all."

Perhaps the example is a stretch, but each of us can remember an encounter similar I am sure. Take for example those times when, listening to one of your children, you heard someone substitute one word for another that has no relation to the denotation needed for the remark. To me, this fictitious conversation sounds a great deal lot like one in which the Tea Party, and the Republics, try to demonstrate their truth using one set of numbers while the real ones remain concealed, the truth hidden?

As a researcher, analysis and diagnostician, the results one presents as true are at times no different from looking up at a cloud formation and drawing out a conclusion: It is not what you say that matters; it is what they hear. More importantly, if they have no idea what you mean by what you say, you can rest assured that a “disconnect” will result rather than a deeper connection with your fellow human beings. Let us heed this plea as we come together to forge a rebirth of our declining nation; as we go forward to re-elect our sitting president; and as we attempt to co-create a sustainable future:

“It is proper to every gathering that the gatherers assemble to coordinate their efforts to the sheltering; only when they have gathered together with that end in view do they begin to gather.” – Heidegger, Logos

It is time for us to gather.