Over the years I've had the opportunity of getting know a number of African Americans, poorly educated but ambitious, who managed to acquire the vocabulary of their bureaucratic and academic peers, without understanding the meaning of the terminology they were repeating.
Of course, this lack of understanding was not immediately apparent. Everyone with whom they talked assumed that they knew what they were talking about. Bureacrats and academics heard nothing in their speech to disabuse them and their home community just concluded that, if they couldn't be understood, it was probably because they had learned to speak like the experts. It wasn't until the words led to action that it became obvious that there was a serious disconnect between the expectations that had been created and what was actually happening.
Not surprisingly, people in the community concluded that they had been deceived--that the people they trusted had turned on them. But, that's not what the problem was. The problem was that the meaning of the terminology had not been understood.
Many of us have become aware that politicians, bureaucrats and promoters of all kinds, are often inclined to describe things in terms that are more favorable or optimistic than the things being described warrant. But, that's not what I'm talking about here. A failure to understand isn't necessarily the result of deception of any kind.
Take, for example, the phrase "community redevelopment." What that suggests to a person who has no experience of such a process is that community of which she is a part is intended to be done over--"improved." What that phrase means to the bureaucrat is that a group of people, living in close proximity to each other, which may or may not share a sense of community, is going to be removed and relocated, in order to facilitate the razing of worn-out structures (and infra-structure) and make it easy for a "developer" to start all over again.
The justification for this disruptive process, whose particulars the African American participants tended to miss, was, in addition to the obvious benefit of getting rid of blighted conditions which everyone recognized, the assumption that the new and modern development would result in a new and vibrant community taking shape all on its own.
Which, of course, is the logic at the base of the assault on Iraq--just on a grander scale. If we take out the old regime by force, a new and better one will spring up on its own. All that will be needed is a little redevelopment expertise and money.
Of course, we already know from our experience here at home, that's not how it works.
But, does the commander-in-chief of this enterprise know that? I doubt it. While the bureaucrats who have hatched this project are simply doing what they've always done--promoted the interests of the development community--George W. Bush strikes me as a poorly educated person who has learned to speak in set phrases without understanding their true meaning.
From his actions it seems increasingly obvious that he has no idea what "freedom," "democracy" or even "privacy" mean. But what's perhaps more telling is his affection for the phrase "personal savings account." He likes the words "personal," "saving" and "account"--the latter no doubt because that's what some of his courses at Harvard were about--but I would be willing to bet that he's never had a "savings account" in a bank and he certainly has no experience being accountable for himself. Whether he has any sense of himself as a person is doubtful.
But, you are right to object, George W. Bush is certainly not lacking in the quality of his education. Indeed, he has been provided with the best. Which leads to the conclusion that there's something else which must account for his obvious lack of understanding--some disconnect in his brain which keeps him from relating the words he speaks to experience.
Some people might argue that the acquisition of language, of the words to describe things, comes before or leads to understanding. I disagree. I think our senses perceive the world in and around us and then we formulate words to describe those sensations and share them with others. But, the repetition of sounds we recognize as words is not necessarily evidence of comprehension. A parrot can do it. Dogs, on the other hand, can comprehend the meaning of words (as evidenced by their ability to follow instructions) even though they can't formulate sounds recognizable by humans as speech. Humans can learn to speak and be quite fluent without connecting with the real world. Indeed, that seems to be increasingly apparent in people whom we now perceive to be suffering from a brain disease, unless, like Ronald Reagan, their pronouncements are directed and monitored by a large support system--a system which actually benefits from not having to be accountable for its actions.
Posted by Hannah at October 23, 2004 09:33 AM