Articulation and understanding

Haven’t we often come across men and women, among our friends, acquaintances, relatives who do not find it comfortable talking about most matters of public interest and importance? Or if they are forced to do so under some circumstances (over which they have little control) like suddenly becoming a part of a media campaign, involving queries or a questionaire, opinion polls on the street or at the work place, they do it in an awkward, uninspired manner.

This becomes even more glaring as in most groups one finds quite a few voluble people who like to dominate any discussion – be it soccer or cricket, gossip about stars or starlets, apparently miraculous occurrences, latest cultural trends, politics or deeper social problems. These latter set seem to have an opinion – sometimes very clear cut and at other times nebulous – on practically every issue that may or may not concern them personally or professionally but may have some bearing on the community, society or the nation in a general way and the world in the case of the international issues.

The common tendency of self-projection discernible in the behaviour such as above in many among this latter category, is rather natural and in conformity with the general social nature of engagement of most people. There may be inaccuracy in the facts and inconsistency in the logical arguments they marshal. Sometimes there could be discordant notes or even violent disagreements among those entertaining quite different perceptions formed from the same set of real life observations. But by and large they reflect the dominant paradigm (including prejudices) of the community or the cultural milieu they belong to. In this environment of preponderant urge for self-expression, it is not easy, given the brevity of expression or relative inarticulateness in many people (actually they are, probably, in the majority), to interpret the implication of what they choose to say as much as what is left unsaid.

It is possible that some among this category of people may choose to be economic with their words as their understanding is genuinely not good enough, they lack clarity in thinking and are confused, or do not have the right words to describe what they have in mind. However, can lack of articulation or ambiguity in that, by itself and in general, be taken to be an indicator of lack of understanding ? 

As it happens, the opinion of such people, if any, often go unrepresented if not ignored, simply because they do not or can not express their point of view with sufficient force, flair and urgency which some of their fellow participants in a discussion muster with relative ease. A quiet leader, who speaks occasionally and only briefly at that and not forcefully enough might find it hard to carry friends, associates and followers along unless people get to see his mind in action, in terms of planning and execution of concrete deeds leading to positive results. In the realm of the current Indian politics, names of two politicians exemplifying the two contrasting categories - a super-articulate politician, almost a hustler and a bully to boot on the one hand and an erudite but reticent, almost a reluctant counterpart - obviously come to one’s mind.

The acrimonious debate on the economic development of our country vis-à-vis the care and the protection of the endangered environment is well known. Ideologically inspired people angrily and decisively arguing on either side of this divide may win the debate on the television or at a ‘social impact’ awards function. But the complexity of the ground reality that eludes them may be understood much better by many illiterate villagers, grassroots activists and even some local administration officials with hands-on knowledge. However, the opinion of most of them are routinely ignored or overruled by their superior officers in the capital and metro cities while presenting status reports and offering false diagnoses in national and international conferences.   

There are a number of known examples from the field of literature of an apparent disconnect between the deep understanding by an author, expressed through a body of creative work, say, plays, novels and stories, and his publicly articulated social and political opinions, moral and philosophical views. The well-known Marxist literary critic, Georg Lukacs, had extensively discussed and illustrated this dichotomy in several of his books, notably, in ‘Studies in European Realism’. For instance, Honore de Balzac in his cycle of novels ‘La Comedie Humaine’, writing on the French society during the first half of the nineteenth century, meticulously documented the real ups and downs of the various social classes – the royalists and the feudal landowners, the bourgeois or the new business and entrepreneurial classes, the cultural elites – and unfailingly indicated the decline of the erstwhile upper classes despite Balzac’s known royalist sympathies. He never flinched from a realistic depiction of growing dominance of money in the contemporary society, unscrupulousness and moral turpitude irrespective of his yearning for and espousing virtues of Christianity, especially, the catholic religion in his other writings.

Almost a similar detached noveist’s and a social historian’s judgment was delivered by Tolstoy in his novels and stories with regard to the failure of the Tsarist Russian aristocracy and the landowning noble classes (of whom he himself was very much a part) to be the vanguard of the emancipation of the Russian peasantry from their age-old misery and bondage and therefore these classes being eventually overtaken by the new and revolutionary social forces (at the time the anarchists) brewing in the mid-late nineteenth century Russia. Even his early fictional writings show that he was acutely aware of the growing chasm between the landowners and the serfs as a reality as much as the brutal role of the Tsarist state in maintaining the status quo. However, the expressed political views of the author were often critical of some of these new social movements (especially their proclaimed violent methods). On the contrary, during the later part of his life, Tolstoy propounded his Christian-anarchist and anarcho-pacifist version of a religio-social conception of morality and love (Tolstoyanism) that neither quite explained the diagnosis of the social and political changes in Russia nor its potential directions one finds glimpses of in his creative writing. 

In many areas of life and human endeavour, particularly those involving decisions regarding environment, social transformation and accretion of culture through creative work, all thinking is not necessarily and immediately actionable or possible to validate in terms of results visible in the short term. It is in such situations that the test of understanding and the long-term correctness of a judgment do not always lie in just a clear enunciation of certain inflexible premises and decisive actions based on the same. Sometimes certain ambiguities in the stated positions should not disqualify them for further serious consideration.