Politicians often claim to be misunderstood because their words are being taken out of context. People, unfortunately, give little concern to context. If the Bush administration had understood Iraqi in their cultural context better, they might not have made the great blunder of invading it and costing so many hundreds of thousands of lives. Had they understood the importance of having good translators, they would not have rid themselves of the gay American service people who were doing the job, leaving them with inadequate resources for undercover and translator work.
Much of the world tends to speak in euphemisms, Clearly we need to be protected from the harsh picture of reality. We have now invented a politically correct language to avoid the image that supposedly burns in our brain, if we can distinguish between genius and mental retardation by simply using 'mentally challenged'. Without doubt, our language must do some changing with civilization's advances but the intent to soften, to weaken all concepts, borders on denial and avoidance of the truth. Lots of things are tragic, people do not always deserve what is handed them in life, but pretending things don't exist doesn't make them go away.
We have become a world filled with people who want no truth when lying to themselves. However, lying seems to work well enough for lots of people and has now become a crashing habit in merchandising, politics, history books, religion, and in too many other places. Wanting something badly just does not make it so. Will our society learn this before we have totally destroyed relationships and our entire civilization?
I sincerely hoped there are enough realists, truth seekers, and even those who believe in the Golden Rule: 'Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You'. However, even that wonderful plan falls short if you aren't telling the truth, valuing integrity, or are a sociopath, righ?. That is yet another example of seeing the world differently , is it not?
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