There are very few beautiful words being created on the internet today. In fact, technology has resulted in very little prose or poetry of worth from a literary standpoint. Words are created in the mind’s eye, those haunting phrases that whirl around in your mind may make their appearance on paper, coming from the tip of your pen, but they seldom come from two thumbs on a phone. When you pick up an electronic device, something short-circuits and all that comes out is garbage…tweets, posts that somehow end up being more vulgar than you think of yourself as being, or sarcastic comments that you would hesitate to make in person.It’s too easy to snap at someone electronically. When you try to put your anger or frustration with pen and paper, it becomes much more civilized. One may pen critical words, but they always seem to have some humor, some humanity behind them. The accusation becomes something for consideration, not argument.
The beauty of a good argument has been lost along with any civilized dialog. I gave up watching any of the news channels long ago. FOX, MSNBC, CNN may differ in their political leanings, but they all have something in common. They are inundated with pundits who, rather than being able to articulate a rational thought, reduce their arguments to name calling and shouting at the top of their lungs. You could wait through an entire hour-long session for someone to allow the other side to finish their statement. All you see is a yelling match where everyone is trying to make their voice and point heard above the din of competing arguments. Nothing is gained, nothing is learned except for the knowledge that we have become a bunch of rude loudmouths with no ability to articulate our position in a manner that would challenge our opponents to consider our rationale.
How did we get to the point where we are so impatient that we cannot take the time to listen to the other side? Or are we just so closed minded that we refuse to learn anything new?
I attribute some of this to our inability to use the English language as it was intended to be used. English has a tremendous history of being used to form incredibly beautiful sentences and phrases. Shakespeare and the King James Bible are two cases in point although, until most recently, even the most common man had the ability to turn a phrase that could capture the imagination.
The decline in language has been hardly perceptible, but somewhere, between the sonnets of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Byron or Keats, the fading popularity of Hallmark cards, and the adoption of the belief that we can express all of our thoughts and change the world with one sarcastic tweet, we have lost the ability to communicate our thoughts in an articulate fashion. Our best thoughts have now been reduced to emoji or four letter words.
Lord Byron knew, as did his compatriots, the worth of a well turned phrase as he penned in his satirical poem Don Juan, “But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.” –Canto III, stanza 88
Now it seems we are lost in a morass of words. Words, words, words…but few of them are things of beauty. They may have the power to frustrate us, to anger us, to drive our great nation to distinction, but do they have the power to make us think?
Only well chosen, beautifully written words have the power to do so. Whoever finds those words will be able to change the course of the world.