Society and Politics in Wars

When phrases get used over and over, they may begin to feel trite and otherwise empty

As the Israel-Hamas war rages, another war is playing out as the world watches, digests, and discusses the fighting in real-time — the war of words that inspire feelings and responses, even if they’re not intended.

Interpreting words is a never-ending task for any person in modern society. As a result of modern means of communication, we now have hundreds of thousands of words hurled at us daily. We are regularly being talked at by teachers, preachers, and public officials. The transition of news from print, television, and radio to digital spaces has brought immediacy to news with little understanding of history and its consequences.

We often talk about “choosing the right words to state our thoughts,” but the question remains: do the words we utter arise from our thoughts, or are the thoughts determined by social media misinformation?

We tend to repeat and multiply the words hurled at us in the media because the modeling theory has been in action since the beginning of human history. They can cause emotions to run high and deep. Naming them is a challenge since there is a thin line between the different types of feelings and emotions.

We face several unfathomable issues—society and politics in wars. We must remember that these problems are formulated in words and may prove insoluble when viewed through a more precise knowledge of the workings of language.

Indeed, most of the time, when we listen to the noises individuals make that stand for such clatters, we draw upon the experiences of the nervous systems of others to make up for what our nervous systems have missed. This reminds me of the unique phenomenon created by the savvy Barnum in transforming some American teenagers into screaming, fainting Beatlemaniacs.

But, with words being flung about as heedlessly of social consequences as they now are, it is evident that if we approach them with primitive habits of evaluation or even with a tendency to revert occasionally to primitive habits of assessment, we cannot do otherwise then run into error, confusion, and tragedy.

Because, depending on our unconscious attitudes towards the words we hear and utter, we may use them either as weapons to start arguments and verbal free-for-alls or as instruments to increase our wisdom, our sense of fellowship with other human beings, and our enjoyment of life.

You may say, surely educated people don’t think like savages! I am here to tell you that, unfortunately, they do. The educated are frequently quite as naive about language as the uneducated. However, how they exhibit their naivete may be less easily discernible because while the uneducated realize their limitations, the educated refuse to uncover their ignorance and hide their limitations from themselves through their skill at word juggling. After all, education, as it is still understood in many circles, is predominantly a matter of learning how to manipulate words.

I am here to tell you that language wars are chaotic. Language is a powerful weapon in the Israel-Palestine conflict reporting. NPR’s use of the phrase “Israeli Palestinian violence” hints not only that Israel’s military reactions to terrorism are the same as the terrorism itself but also that the Israelis, if not themselves the protagonists, are equally blameworthy. Imagine if NPR used the phrase “American-Iraqi violence.”

In all modern conflicts, the community is in danger of the propagandists’ art and should be trained to defend itself against self-harm. However, humans use highly complicated systems of sputtering, hissing, gurgling, clucking, and cooing noises called language, with which we express and report what goes on in our nervous systems.

Take the troublesome expression “from the river and to the sea,” which has been increasingly used by pro-Palestinian activists. The term refers to Israel’s stretch of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

When phrases are repeated repeatedly, they may begin to feel trite and empty, especially if they are what we learn we should say in a given instance. These phrases may be part of accepted social scripts and comfort those who say them to appear they are acting appropriately in a given situation.

For many of the young generation infected by dogma, it’s an aspirational call for freedom. To many others, the phrase is anti-semitic, a genocidal call to violence to destroy the state of Israel. Add to that mix a generally liberal political bias and an ignorance of broad historical perspectives, and the outcome is often a worldview slanted against Israel.

Primarily burdened with liberal predispositions, journalists find that the palpable deprivation in the streets of Gaza may make for a more gripping story than detailing the fears and aspirations of Israelis seeking peace. But in so doing, they often Ignore the blatant incitement that takes place daily in Palestinian mosques, not to mention the poisonous indoctrination of Palestinian schoolchildren given textbooks infused with expressions of hatred toward Jews.

Would a change in attitude make us a more understanding observer than before? Would it help increase the fruitfulness of whatever conversation and discussion we enter? Or will our inherited dogmas, superstitions, and pet intellectual cliches—all serve to nullify, distort, or caricature beyond recognition the lessons we receive and the events we experience?

Courtesy Wikimedia