What are the questions we are asking on the road to wisdom? With what language do we ask the questions?
Krista Tippett has been interviewing wise people for years. In this book, she shares her insights about wisdom and talks about the kinds of questions that create real conversations:
"If I've learned nothing else, I've learned this: a question is a powerful thing, a mighty use of words. Questions elicit answers in their likeness. Answers mirror the questions they rise, or fall, to meet. So while a simple question may be precisely what's needed to drive the heart of the matter, it's hard to meet a simplistic question with anything but a simplistic answer. It's hard to transcend a combative question. But it's hard to resist a generous question. We all have it in us to formulate questions that invite honesty, dignity and revelation. There is something...life-giving about asking a better question."
Combative questions fill the airwaves in this 24/7 election coverage. Language of anger amps up the combative spirit of us all. The level of the language determines the level of the conversation, and lately, the level has been as low as any public discourse I've ever heard. Name-calling (liar, stupid, disgusting) doesn't allow for real conversation, only defensiveness. Heated political discourse leads to physical fist-fights and violence.
How important is precise and nuanced language? Krista Tippet says:
"Words matter....The words we use shape how we understand ourselves, how we interpret the world, how we treat others. From Genesis to the aboriginal songlines of Australia, human beings have forever perceived that naming brings things into being. The ancient rabbis understood books, texts, the very letters of certain words as living, breathing entities. Words make worlds."
In this heated political climate of 2016, I wonder what kind of world is in the making? When language is dull, flat, insulting and lacking in nuance, we have the linguistic equivalent of a stone wall.
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