Culture of Miscommunication

People don’t understand each other anymore.  Language used to enable us to comprehend our world together, share concepts, come together for common purposes.  That’s not the way it usually works now.  Seems like, in the public world at least, language is a form of self-defense intended to obscure, confuse, and deflect more than to enlighten or focus thought and effort.

In fact, I believe most of the problems of the world – those rooted in institutions, at least – can be traced to lack of clear thinking or lack of communication, including intentional obfuscation.  We have created a culture of obscurity.  With our “bias for action” (a now-popular buzzphrase with an inexplicably positive connotation) we leap into action without any real idea why.  Our organizations and the people in them lack objectives, vision, or even any sense of mission.   This is true in the military world, in politics and legal circles, in academia, in business, in any form of bureaucracy.

A first step to changing this state of affairs would be for each organization, be it business entity or school or government agency, to examine honestly its reason for being.  Once each organizational entity determines its reason for existing, then methods for achieving the mission or producing the effect should be assessed.  When that is accomplished, each organization should understand, in a general sense at least, what it needs to be doing.

Of course, this will only work if the people who make up the organizations make a sincere effort to overcome their background and cultural baggage to assess the real state of things and the real mission.  It will only work if they are then honest enough to admit when they discover organizations or positions that are redundant or without a mission, enabling restructuring and refocusing of limited assets.  That is a very optimistic scenario.  

Gryphem