Postmodern Disconnection

While the virtue of language may lie in its ambiguity, the virtue of thought lies in clarity and precision. But what has happened to the common language? We have none – each of us excels in speaking only our own language, with the too-personal meanings that we put into our words. In what may be called a “postmodern disconnection”, distinct cultures gradually dissolve into one another as we move toward a global community.

But as this happens, we lose more and more faith in our basic ability to connect to social unities like nations and cultures, and so we increasingly retreat into our selves, abandoning all hope of connecting to or communicating with any social whole whatsoever.

As time passes, we lower and lower our expectations – at first not caring to communicate with the world, then losing interest in speaking with a common cultural tongue, next forgetting our national identity, eventually losing even the hope of having a genuine connection with those closest to our hearts.

There is a profound disconnection in the world around us, from the smallest, most intimate level to the grandest, most universal level – no matter where we are, everyone we meet seems to be unaware of a vital something – the scientists don't understand intuition, while the religious cannot grasp reason; the old become rigid and unyielding in their ways, while the young are too youthful to simply sit still and listen. Whatever the case, everywhere there are impossible barricades separating mind from mind and heart from heart. And this is what we call a global community?

Everywhere, people “just don't get it” - whatever “it” happens to be. And so we search – desperately. If we can find just one person to share a common tongue and understanding with, someone whom we may fully trust to understand the meaning of our words – then we are happy, and happily say: “Let all the world be destroyed, so long as I have my other.”

But isn't this consolation the saddest thing of all?

“Us against the world!” - but aren't you still part of that world, and doesn't it still pain you to witness the disconnections that persist? This connection that you were so lucky to find – does nothing to change the fact that we all have lost a much more primal connection – and does nothing to assuage the duty of each human being to fight to reclaim this lost humanity.