In Warren's Words

The Blog Fog

There is no escape. We are drowning in words. The blogs are fogging up the world. They are everywhere, in text, sound and video, a whirling dervish of yak yak, an endless buffet of opinions, hawking concepts, beliefs, convictions, perceptions, speculations. Nothing goes unsaid or unwritten. Silence has been defeated by technology. Reflection has given way to immediacy. Say or write everything on your mind. Edit nothing. We have become a world of monologists.

Remember that movie in which a talk show host commands everyone to open their windows and shout, "I'm not going to take this any more"? In today's environment, such antics do not apply. The obvious flaw is that the windows should be slammed shut. And the bitter irony is that it is the talker who rebels against the talk.

On the street, in elevators, trains, buses, stores, bathrooms, waiting rooms, and everywhere sound waves penetrate, the foaming crest of babble rises like a giant tsunami. What are all these people talking about? It is impossible to flee from the drivel. Inescapable listening makes you want to wretch at the puerile bleats of infinite small talk, very small. Cell phone companies advertise "endless chit chat," as if such beneficence was dispensing virtue.

What are all these people talking about?

Trust me. I am not trying to be satirical. Worse, I cringe at my own hypocrisy, since I have been in the word business all my life dishing out alleged wisdom, insight, opinions, essays, short stories, novels, and plays. Nor do I wish to be superior to other people's offerings, however sincere and heartfelt. My complaint is that we are drowning in the smog. Note that my definition of "blog" is expansive, meaning limitless palaver by any means.

The buffet of words being offered, the endless flogging of the fogging blogs is clearly overkill. The repetition is staggering. There is no place to hide from the avalanche of words. Deafness and blindness offer no immunity. The digital assault covers every outlet.

I am moved to wonder if the Founding Fathers contemplated the unintended consequences of the First Amendment. Could they have envisioned a world gone mad with unfettered talk in a wireless universe? Who can be against free speech, but then "free" also means "taking undue liberties." The hurricane of sound, text, and video has endangered our right to privacy and encouraged new afflictions like wireless addiction, a morbid compulsion to check one's BlackBerry at ever decreasing intervals, a condition sure to be cited someday soon in the New England Journal of Medicine.

I have often seen people of both sexes with this affliction surreptitiously consulting their BlackBerrys on their laps under the table, as if they were contemplating the condition of their genitalia.

Most monologists haven't the insight to recognize when a hapless listener shuts off the sound spigot and interpret a periodic nod as rapt attention.

Note, too, that words are morphing into new meanings with adjectives and modifiers changing intent, e.g. terrorists being dubbed merely militants or insurgents and immigrants expressed without any crucial defining description like illegal or undocumented. Initials designate cruel words: the "N" word, the "F" word, the "L" word. Even poor little "is" has been libeled. Remember those immortal words, "It depends on what is is"?

Soon the abbreviated techno language of the Internet without spelling or grammar norms will dominate the language. Even slang is becoming unslung.

Will Rogers (remember him?) once said that the way to heat America was to attach a giant pipe to Congress to transmit the hot air coming from that quarter. It was not a bad idea at the time and is even better when we contemplate the present Congress. The protracted political campaign has become a marathon of balderdash and claptrap, challenging any intelligent citizen to vote none of the above. The pandering is so effusive and transparent that even a hardened pimp has to blush. I will vote for anyone who offers a sane plan to stop the noise.

Our first and, hands down, our greatest president, George Washington truly understood the value of words and used them sparingly. Indeed, when presiding over the Constitutional Convention, which laid the groundwork for our democratic principles, he said little, offering his wise comments only when he deemed them necessary. Above all, he knew the true worth of silence.

I've often wrestled with how to respond to people who talk endlessly, as if their words have the weight of divine inspiration, without hurting their feelings. My strategy has always been to hold my tongue and turn up my inner thoughts and ignore the endless monologue. Most monologists haven't the insight to recognize when a hapless listener shuts off the sound spigot and interpret a periodic nod as rapt attention.

Perhaps the doomsayers are right when they say we have reached the tipping point of narcissism where only the self is worthy of being served. Will we self-correct? To what and when?

And here I am offering this rant against the very acts of which I am ranting against.

Go figure.

> Make a Comment

See complete E-Sheet 74