Understanding

Over the weekend I got to have a great discussion with one of the other authors for this board. You can read more about it in his own post about what the goals for this website were. To which I became infatuated with the ideas he put forward. Generally, it really got me thinking about the world and the people who live in it.

Within my own field of study I often come across language. English, after all, is only one facet of a tremendously large mountain of how people communicate. The central point of everything we do is to communicate to others. To this point, one of my favorite stories that pivots around communication is the Tower of Babylon. The summarized version of this story details how all of man spoke one language and threatened God therefore, God divided the people and gave them new languages to speak so they could never again reach up into the heavens.

This story is likely one of my favorites from the Bible. Although I myself am not extremely religious, the tale gives some comfort as to the big question, why do we all speak different languages? Although no one knows the answer, this is one of the many things that makes us all different. We can even tell when someone is from another area in the country because the vocabulary and speech patterns are different from our own; we can even gauge how old someone is based on how they speak.

The biggest reason I bring all of this up is because I do not think this is a curse. Many view God’s act here as a punishment, or think one standard language should be prescribed upon the world. I would disagree with both. Language directly affects our outlook on the world, it gives us the means to describe the things around us. Differences in language provide new outlooks on the world around us.

One of my favorite examples of this is looking at the words tree and forest. In English you just saw what those two words look like. Tree and Forest. What did you picture with tree? What did you picture with forest? The words describe a similar idea. Now let’s look at some Japanese. Here is that same word, tree, 木. Here is that other word, forest, 森. It might be difficult to tell but when you look closely, tree is represented with 木 symbol. Forest is this same symbol but multiples of it 森. Therefore, a tree is one, but a forest is many. In terms of description the word does a phenomenal job at achieving something our letter based alphabet lacks. It is a different way of thinking about the same world around us.

A difference in languages is then a difference in thinking about our world. At this point I am reminded of my elegant chat with our other author. We were volunteering together, working to achieve a similar goal, and had friendly ties. I do not know his political views, religious views, or other hot topic opinions. Of which I must then ask, if I did know any of these views, would I think more negatively of this person especially without our shared background? I sure hope not. He reminded me that we are more alike than we are different. Not only this, but our differences are not something to be afraid of, to dislike someone over. They are something to engage with, learn more about, and bring about understanding. It is likely that someone who is different then you will actually have more in common with you then you think.

Communication is a powerful tool. It takes effort, it takes time, but it does work. One of the painful parts about being human is that you will not understand everything. Sometimes you will simply not like something someone said. It is more important than ever to keep in mind that other people are simply human just like you. They have a family, friends, and an entire life you would be lucky to glimpse into. Perspective shapes the unique view on the world that requires communication to bridge the gap between two people.