My respect to language knows no limits. I find it magical that all these thoughts, ideas and emotions can be communicated to another person through words; This communication between 2 humans is one of the highest forms of pleasure, and one of the reasons why people were created different.
Therefore, I am a meticulous user of language; Usually, I have a clear meaning in my head that needs to be communicated (otherwise I wouldn’t talk) and I want to communicate it to my interlocutor as clear as I can. I exert a conscious effort to choose the best words that fit the meaning and clarify it; And when people talk I listen attentively in the hope of understanding them.
All of this, of course, is based on the supposition that people have meanings in their heads they want to communicate to each other; That’s why I talk and that’s why I listen, and that’s why I get confused when people say things that are contradictory or devoid of meaning: things you could swear were never the result of a deliberate thought, but rather a replacement of it! That was until I realized that language is often used to cloud meaning as much as it is used to clarify it; That language is sometimes used as an alternative to action or as a gap filler or as a cover of emptiness.
Take, for instance, utterances like: “Refugees are the victims of human evil and greediness, that’s why I support them” and “Stop the killing in Syria and Palestine!”. who are you talking to, brother? Who would stop whom and how? if you are directing your speech to no one, are you really, talking?
But these meaningless sentences are due to the fact that lots of people are becoming fond of “perpetrator-free” crimes, where they can take the perpetrator out and denounce vague abstract meanings like “death”, “violence” and “brutality” as it relieves them from the responsibility of any action.
But words like “evil” and “greediness” are abstract words; This abstraction is essential to our intellectual growth and a basic characteristic of our linguistic and cognitive maturity; However, at some level we have to get tangible.
Refugees are not an idea; they are real human beings, just like us, who have been victimized by other real people in the real world, and if we want to help the oppressed we should take a stance against the oppressors, who oppressed them (because you can’t get oppressed by abstract notions like evil). but pointing out to the real perpetrator comes with a responsibility that not everyone is ready for.
This responsibility would include supporting the right of return and pressuring Israel to abide by the international law; It would include condemning the direct perpetrators and butchers, that might eventually lead to an action deterring them, instead of using vague flabby sentences like “stop the killing in Syria and Palestine!”
A friend of mine sums it up pretty well when he told me about the massacre of Rab’a that it is a massacre, and he is against “the idea” of killing, but still he won’t take sides!!
Indeed, no action needed, even as symbolic as denouncing the butchers, when you fight against “ideas”!
As someone who lives under an oppressive military regime, words are the only refuge I have under my disposal; In dark times, people who can’t change the grim reality tend to change their perception of it; They create an alternative imaginary “reality”. For me, this is the most dangerous thing and the absolute defeat; My powers might be limited, but conscience is the only area where one has an absolute freedom; If I can’t change the reality, I will do my best not to let it change me. I would never normalize the status quo, or change my beliefs to adapt to the gloomy reality, or so I hope.
Sometimes the struggle is reduced to an inner one where you try to save the integrity of your mind, and to keep the candle alight until further notification; The real challenge becomes calling things what they are: oppression is oppression; dictatorship is dictatorship, colonization is colonization etc. in other words, using language properly.
Charity starts at home, and resistance starts at language!