Why Aren’t We Talking To Each Other?
It is not an overreach to believe that the condition of our world is possibly based on the fact that we simply don’t talk to each other. Modern technological advances make it easier to talk at each other. But talking at someone and talking to someone are not the same thing.
Consider, as an example, the relationship of indentured servants and enslaved African people during the foundational days of the American experiment in democracy. At that time, a legal difference between the two was the duration of servitude: indentured servants had a target date for their freedom and release, while enslaved people did not. That said, both groups were treated with equal harshness. This shared experience engendered communication. They talked to each other.
The elites, recognizing the fragility of their position, soon implemented laws and social codes designed to disrupt this show of unity. They introduced and codified the concept of racial disparity. It didn’t happen overnight, but through a deliberate, decades-long process. The two lowest-class groups ceased talking to each other, lamenting their conditions, helping each other, and even revolting together. As planned, separation occurred, and the two groups began talking at each other. It wasn’t long after that a complete breakdown in communication occurred.
America is a great nation already, but just imagine how much greater it could have become. The resulting concept of racial superiority has stymied that potential greatness. How might things have turned out had the indentured servants and African slaves continued to dialogue. They could have assisted each other to overcome the barriers to freedom and wealth accumulation. What if trade unions had welcomed BIPOC’s (Black, Indigenous People of Color) into their membership from the start? Their numbers would have swelled greatly, and their bargaining power would have increased accordingly. Instead, many unions became exclusionary, and today they have devolved into being mostly nominal and ineffective, especially in light of so many states now being right-to-work states, where organized labor has been systematically weakened. Their raison d’être has often been reduced to collecting dues and throwing Christmas parties. The national minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25/per hour for so long that it now requires people to work multiple jobs just to pay rent and buy a few groceries.
This breakdown in communication is not just historical; it is also linguistic. To understand why we cannot agree on basic facts today, we must understand how words themselves lose their original meaning.
Among the many possible reasons for why we are not talking to each other is the perception that words have lost their power and purpose. But the truth is that words never really had any power of their own other than the emotions they invoke in the individual. Take, for example, the word cat. The word doesn’t tell you anything about the animal, who made it up, why, or what it really is. So, is a cat really a cat, or is just a placeholder for what comes to mind when we heard the word?
The father of modern linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure, observed that “the bond between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary.” This means that there is absolutely no natural, inherent, or logical connection between the sound cat (or the letters C-A-T) and the furry creature that meows. If there were, all languages would use the same sound, but they don’t (e.g., gato, chat, neko).
Saussure identified the four roles of a word:
1. The Signifier – the chosen word itself (the sound or text).
2. The Signified – the mental concept of the word.
3. Signification (or Semiosis) – the mysterious process that links them in your brain.
4. The Social Contract of language – why we all agree to use the same one.
We all tacitly agree—whether by Convention (the agreed-upon rule), Consensus (the collective agreement), or Codification (what happens when it is written down and standardized)—to play along with the rule that cat equals that furry creature which meows. We do this solely because we need a common reference point that enables conversation.
We don’t use cat because it’s true; we use it because it’s useful. And when a word is no longer useful, it causes a fracture in the Social Contract. This forces us to either invent a new word or confront the uncomfortable reality we were using the old one to hide from.
Consider how this linguistic fracture has played out across the very institutions that once anchored our shared reality. The Seven Mountains of cultural influence including arts/entertainment, business, education, family, government, media, religion, and the additional self-reciprocating idea of respect for others and respect for self, have all seen their foundational concepts hollowed out.
Take media. The word news once meant verified, vetted information—the fourth estate holding power to account. Now, we routinely say “fake news” not to describe falsehood, but to dismiss anything we dislike. The journalist, once a trained professional bound by ethics and verification, is now confused with anyone with a camera or a social media account. Credibility has been flattened. A blog post now carries the same weight as a Reuters dispatch in many circles.
Government has suffered a similar fate. Patriotism once meant love of country, civic duty, and service to the common good. Now it means us vs. them. It has been weaponized to mean blind loyalty to a flag or a leader, often defined by opposition to “the enemy within.” The concept has been unmoored from civic responsibility. Meanwhile, democracy itself—once a shared aspiration for rule by the people—has become a tribal accusation, with each side claiming the other is destroying it.
In education, fact has become negotiable. What was once an objective, verifiable truth is now dismissed as “my truth” or “alternative fact.” The rise of deliberate disinformation campaigns has turned the very concept of reality into a commodity. And woke, originally a term of awareness and consciousness about systemic injustice, has been co-opted and weaponized until it became a pejorative term for “politically correct” or “liberal.” A word that once invited conversation now shuts it down.
In religion, words like faith and moral authority have been drained of their spiritual weight, and now these word put you in the mind of Christian nationalism, or megachurch and its scandals. It has been repurposed as political cudgels rather than sources of guidance. In business, profit and value have been severed from community and worker well-being, reduced to quarterly earnings. In family, kinship has become a political battlefield. In arts and entertainment, culture has become spectacle rather than reflection.
The result of all this linguistic decay is not chaos by accident. It is chaos by design. When words no longer mean what we think they mean, we cannot hold anyone accountable. We cannot govern ourselves. And, into that vacuum steps kleptocracy and kakistocracy—rule by thieves and rule by the worst, the most corrupt, the most unqualified. Neither needs to defeat you in argument; they only need to make argument impossible. They do not need to win elections fairly; they only need to make the very concept of fair meaningless. It thrives on the breakdown of shared language because governance requires communication, and communication requires trust in words.
So, why aren’t we talking to each other? In part, because language naturally decays when it ceases to serve us. But that natural decay is also being aggressively exploited. The internet is filled with bots and paid influencers whose purpose is to create chaos, distrust, and pandemonium. Our society is being remodeled, and our cherished democracy is under attack. We are being guided to worship at the new altars of greed, corruption, and self-aggrandizement. This vile imagination can and will succeed if we remain disconnected. The powerful know that if they can drain our shared words of meaning, they can drain our shared reality of coherence.
We must start talking to each other. We don’t necessarily have to agree with or like what another person has to say. But it is always better to get a thing from the horse’s mouth than from hearsay. We can agree to disagree, but we must talk to each other.
Here is one last appeal to your imagination. The polar bear is attractive, but cruel. It eats its prey alive. The polar bear that´s knocking at the door is reading the posted menu. If we don’t come together and create the new menu ourselves, we’ll be on it.
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