MANNERS, MORALS, LANGUAGE…………..
But ah! What once has been shall be no more!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Belize, Belize, Belize….you have lost your manners,
Your language has become corrupted
Both broken….
And we my Belizeans,
We feel the sad significance!
Too late, oh so late!
Manners have sunk to a state of corruption unheard of since the invention of writing, to such a state that we face the collapse of civilization in our fair nation. Look about you and what do you see? Need I point out the obvious! EVERYWHERE honesty has fled, from the government, from the stores, from the public servant, and from each of us in turn.
It seems reasonable and even obvious, that behaving properly means thinking properly, and that thinking properly is a matter of understanding and, even more, respecting the language we think in – in which we can only think and, therefore, MUST think.
There is, first, the empirically verifiable fact that carelessness in any single aspect of human address leads to, if it does not originally reflect, carelessness in others as well. Carelessness in language as in manners, unlike deliberate sloppiness – a form of behavior whose price is eternal perverse vigilance on behalf of its slovenly credo – is an habitual thing, and habit cannot be compartmentalized in anyone’s mind. But there are more specific connections as well between the destruction of manners and the destruction of morals than the general civilizational connection or that of simple habit, links that have to do with the particular nature of language, on the one hand, and manners, on the other. And these connections, once made, explain the existence of another element in the dual relationship that we see now as a triangular one: that of morals and morality.
If correct behavior depends on right thinking, and right thinking on the use of language, then we may say that, in terms of active influence, the sequence actually proceeds the other way: Language > thought > behavior. (Though action may, in some instances, influence thought – more likely, rethought – it seems a stretch to try to imagine behavior leading to a rethinking of language itself.)
Before we know how properly to act – that is, what sort of action suits us as human beings – we have to know what we truly are, what our human nature is. The only way to gain such knowledge lies in thought and reflection, activities made possible only by the medium of those designative symbols we call words, amounting collectively as language. But language, as the instrument of human thought, is an effective instrument only when it is an instrument honestly employed. And honest usage, in language, means using words as they were intended to be used – that is, as they are commonly understood to be used – and using them in no other way. Further, it means arranging words in patterns that conform to a commonly accepted logic, and not logic in some eccentric or private form. In all matters of language, as in those involving money, we need to recognize that “honestly” implies “carefully,” even if carelessness in speech and writing does not carry with it penalties incurred where dollars and cents are concerned (though, rightfully, it would entail sanctions more draconian still).
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” That proposition is a foundational one for our civilization, yet it is our own civilization that, after hugging the divine Truth to its bosom for 18 centuries, has devoted the last three to trying to get round Truth by whatever means at hand or devisable, however false. The reason is not that it lost the ability to see Truth, but rather that it no longer wished to apprehend Truth, had no use for Truth, and hoped Truth could be made to go away by denying or simply ignoring It. The historic Will to believe was replaced by the Will Not To. And so the attempt was, and remains, a dishonest thing: the dishonest use of words to deny the one Word that has always refused to be used dishonestly. No other civilization has ever dreamt of attempting such a thing, including that of the ancient Jews who disobeyed or, at worst, defied their God, without ever denying Him (though, when He came at last, they did refuse to recognize Him). After the Fall, the worst violence done himself by man is to deny the Truth of the Word – and, by implication and descent, all words and their inherently divine relationship with one another.
This is because man cannot, through his abuse of words, distort the concept of the divine Nature without distorting his understanding of human nature along with it, as Orwell and other critics of the enemies of language have understood. “And God said; Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…” According to the Word, man is a kind of copy, however faint and imperfect, of God. But if the Word does not exist, then God does not exist, and what then, is man a copy of, in God’s absence? The problem is all language is constructed according to a logic that assumes the existence of God and a divine relationship with man: God, in other words, is structured into human language, because He is encoded in the human mind and in human thought. To refuse to know Who God is, is to refuse to accept what we are and how we are meant to act in the world, how we are intended to comport ourselves, how we are expected to behave, in respect of ourselves as well as of others. In the degree that men deny the reality and integrity of language, they reject the idea of Model-Modeler and Modeled, and with it the possibility for the coherent and respectful human activity and behavior they once called decency and manners.
Think about it Belize!
