The Tower of Babel... or is that Babble... the demise of the collective dialog

"In an insane society, the sane man must appear insane."

-- Commander Spock, from Star Trek


It has been coming on for quite some time now. By 'it' I mean the fracturing of our collective dialog.

What's a "collective dialog", you may ask? The collective dialog is a hyper-conversation, if you will, that provides meta-data context to our physical dialog. Physical dialog is like the conversation you had with someone the other day, or when you watch the news. One of the primary purposes of the collective dialog is to act as a benchmark in the exchange. An example of this is that two people look at a chair, and they can both agree that what they perceive has the Quality of being Chair-like. Aristotle called this the meson or middle term. That is, there are two extremes in any conversation (called: akron), with this meson, this "shared-term" (a chair is a chair) mediating the exchange.

Since the permutation of the news establishment from Information providers into Infotainment vaudevillians, I've watched in horror as the collective dialog was tainted and maligned by what is commonly known as "spin".

Spin has effectively eliminated the common ground from our conversation, and, in my opinion, is the core of our current dilemma. How can there be rational dialog if there is no "middle-term" to persist parity in the conversation? Simple answer: there can be no rational dialog in this case.

Why?

Well, we need look no further than the average press release from the administration, need look no further than *'s last speech, need look no further than FOX "news".

For example:

"We're at 'war' with 'terrorists'"

Now, for this sentence to have real meaning in a conversation, the two parties must both agree on what a 'war' is and what a 'terrorist' is in order for there to be an accurate exchange of information, in order to move the debate forward in a rational manner. If the two parties cannot agree on what constitutes a 'war', if one party introduces an alternative definition into the collective dialog it obscures the debate (the debate becomes the definition of the word) and worse, it can take centuries to work it's way out.

Centuries, if at all.

What has happened is that a group of people in positions of power have managed to fracture the meson. There is no longer consensus on what constitutes a 'war', nor what constitutes 'terrorists'. Further, core concepts like 'freedom', 'liberty', 'security', 'compassion' and on and on have been corrupted in a similar manner by this process. There exists now, for all intents and purposes, two or more mesons.

The Tower of Babel has been shattered, once again.

It is the plurality of these middle-terms that make conducting an intelligent conversation virtually impossible these days, and has led to the definition of a sub-group quaintly labeled "the reality-based community".

As opposed to the fantasy-based, of course.

The redefinition of these middle-terms has become known as 'Framing the Debate', and it is a dangerous and silly game, yet like chronic gamblers, we remain at the table and continue to play. The longer we play, the worse the situation becomes. That is, the more constructs that are re-defined or questioned by this group, the longer it will take to repair, if we're able to repair it at all.

We need to stop the childish indulgence of framing constructs to match the argument. It is causing irreparable harm to our collective dialog, and serves only to move our species closer to extinction.

Admittedly, accomplishing this will be next to impossible thanks to folks at Big Media, Inc, who continue to foul the waters to this day.

We have to try, though, so allow me to start: There is no such thing as a 'war' on a concept like 'terror' or 'drugs'. Dismissing that popular colloquialism as an illogical fallacy would be a grand first step towards rebuilding the Tower of Babel now lying in ruins at our feet.