Language Barrier

During my freshman year, Richard Dawkins came to Swarthmore to lecture about his work on evolutionary psychology and his views on the apparent conflicts between science and religion. After his talk, I went up to him and, eager to use vocabulary and ideas I was picking up from my philosophy class, asked him if his ideas didn't represent a positivist and reductionist worldview. "I'm not a philosopher," he replied to my naive and inappropriately confrontational inquiry. Hearing such a curt reply, my facial muscles probably twitched awkwardly, and I probably looked down at the wrinkles in my t-shirt self-consciously before squriming my way out of the crowd that was growing around him.

In retrospect, this brief interaction represented my first encounter with the insularity that characterizes the academic world. If you are an established discipline, then you necessarily boast an esoteric vocabulary and specialized journals to boot. Unfortunately, these things set up walls between disciplines and inhibit communication. They essentially allow Richard Dawkins to rebuff inquiries such as mine by pleading ignorance. In Economics, there is the presitigious Journal of Economic Perspectives, but sometimes I wonder if a Journal of Perspectives on Economics and the Economy might not be more fruitful as an intellectually curious publication. It appears to me that a discipline often receives more fanfare for its methodology than the questions that it professes to answer. This is obviously a very short and perhaps a simplistically naive assessment of academia, but I think it merits consideration.

The problem of communication doesn't just exist in the academic world. I see evidence of a genuine language barrier in issues all around me. Let us take the issue of environmentalism as an example. There are those environmentalists that profess an eco-centric as opposed to an anthropocentric worldview. Such environmentalists condemn all environmentally hurtful activities and generally resist capitalism as an environmentally exploitative, earth-destroying, growth-bent, parasitic, soul-sucking system. Naturally, such environmentalists clash with traditional economists. In the context of Swarthmore, Crum-dwelling granola crunchers don't often fraternize on the halls of Kohlberg 2nd. Meanwhile, the concerns raised by such environmentalists fall deaf on the ears of the more pragmatically-minded economists and businessmen of the world. What happens? The 1999 WTO anti-globalization protests happen.

Thomas Friedman's new book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, forges a path forward. He sums up the problem burdening the environmental movement, which I think has its roots in communication: "Too many environmentalists oppose any growth, a position that locks the poor into poverty. Too many critics of environmentalism characterize any conservation as some flaky anticapitalist ideological dalliance" (194). But, if I could assign TF an epitaph, it would be, "Speaker of many languages." He "pals around" with venture capitalists, environmental activists, politicians, academics, and manages to speak to all these different groups of people. In his book, he gives one example of successful communication between groups that I find particularly inspiring. Friedman describes the success of a conservation project in Indonesia and quotes the project's leader, Dr. Jatna Supriatna:

When you talk with the head of the government, your language is economic; when you talk to the communities, the language is welfare; when you talk to business, you talk about their future profits; when you talk to other NGOs, the language is environment. (311)

The answer seems rather simple. Just communicate across disciplines, across interest groups. But the forces of insularity are strong. Language barriers difficult to surmount. I think that it is a point, while simple, that we tend to overlook and fail to appreciate. In my view, a language barrier serves as the greatest source of frustration for young idealists intent upon effecting substantive change in the world. Friedman pokes fun a bit at the youthful naivette:

ExxonMobil, Peabody Energy, and General Motors know the difference between a Facebook group and a blocking coalition in Congress. They are not in Facebook, but they are in the faces of those lawmakers who stand in their way. (400)

Most of us, i.e. young and eager twenty-somethings, don't speak even a single language that resonates with groups that are in a position to effect change. I think this is the harsh reality that youthful idealism confronts. We may possess the soft tools, the critical thinking and the drive, but we lack the credibility, experience and language skills to communicate effectively. There doesn't seem to be an easy way around the language barrier, and I guess that is why Friedman ultimately counsels diligence, discipline and sacrifice.