The Duality of Distance in Language

“It’s easy to be brave from a distance” -proverb

It’s easy to have an opinion for something that has little gravitas or gravity to your life. If there’s little impact to your existence, there tends to be a directly proportional amount of care. low impact = low care. High impact = High care. Generally speaking.

With Distance, people are less prone to be disrespectful within punching distance. A lot of keyboard warriors receive unearned fury fighting their own internal monologues and projecting it outward into the world to fight ghosts and argue with vitriol.

Those who have toxic speech are reflecting their inner world, it says more about what they think than what others think.

Thus, people who speak crass and blunt or with disrespect feel comfortable within the distance. They feel removed from responsibility or threats that would normally occur. Some feel safe and sheltered by the harbor of anonymity, able to provide information like a whistle blower exposing corruption or attack others like a troll.

As such, there is a proximity to language, the closer we are- the more gravity. Gravity being the weight of our words as speech acts, that our actions have consequences, and that we might have to reap what we sow.

That we say what we mean, and mean what we say, and are held accountable for it.

The more likely for us to realize the consequences of our actions, the weight of our promises and honor, the less likely we’ll have loose tongues.

The more gravity, the more seriousness.

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face” – Mike Tyson

As a side note, getting punched in the face for earned arrogance is one of the most humbling and enlightening experiences anyone can receive. To be in the wrong and be self-corrected by society.

Distance applies spatially and temporally

“After the battle, everybody is a General” -Serbian proverb

As they say, hindsight is 20/20, but in truth, only some things are revealed after the dust has settled. Not everyone shares the same vision, just as how everyone argues over what they should have done or how things should have worked out. Hence why everyone becomes a general after the battle.

It’s easy to criticize and judge the further we are removed from a situation. The further that there is distance, whether by time or space.

We can have all sorts of opinions on wars in foreign lands, or even issues with our next door neighbors. The locality and how much it directly affects us will alter our degree of care and degree of empathy.

If you were to put yourself in the shoes of all parties, and to accept accountability and ownership of the maximum amount of what you can handle in each situation, then you’d be a lot more forgiving for other people’s shortcomings and the past.

As they say, the past is water under the bridge, and we can move forward living our life in alignment with new resolutions and boundaries based on how things played out.

As such, Time and Space creates a distance;

If I make a dark joke of something recent, it could be viewed as ‘too soon’ and be rude or not land well.

If I make a joke of people and direct my aim to criticize one person or a subject that is close to one persons’ life, it might ‘hit too close to home’. It might be viewed as targeted harassment or a subject that triggers some unresolved shadow work for someone’s traumas.

If someone is a comedian and they make a fat joke, people in the crowd look towards the largest person in the room for approval to laugh. There is a sort of herd mentality or hive mind in social ques. The same with making a racial joke or a disability related joke. The exceptions are if the comedian is also of the same party, therefore they’re not punching down, but rather punching themselves or self-deprecating.

So the closer you are to the subject, the more perceived authority you have. If you’re Asian, you can get away with making Asian jokes. It’s just a thing, as mentioned above/earlier.

Additionally, if the media is plastering your home country or city in a false light. Friends and family might hit you up to get a scoop of what it feels like out there, to get an alternative opinion or fact to access the truth. Because of you having a locality or proximity to an event or subject, you become (to a degree) a more reliable authority.

In the two cases mentioned above, you have more confidence in saying something, because your distance to the subject is smaller AND their distance to you or the subject is larger. Thus it’s similar to the keyboard analogy, where you become confident in saying something because the audience is far away from you, likewise in the news or jokes perspective, you are confident in saying something because the audience is farther away from you than you are to the subject.

The further in time or distance, generally speaking, the less weight of the words we feel. Strong emotions like Grief or Sorrow tend to slowly minimize themselves, either it heals over time, we resolve them internally, or we learn to better compartmentalize them to continue living life.

Through the process of living life, we learn to live “with” life.

And that can mean both, that life is a roommate attached to our hip that we live around and work around- OR- our living is a lesson and we might become more emboldened with life as we live, we get a fresh breath of air or a new lease on life as we survive and progress through life-lessons.

So distance can be measured in time and space, and thus it’s easy to be brave or confident at a distance, when we feel much more free the further we are in mind and body from the ideas or people or things that oppress us. Whether it’s a person or emotion or threat or responsibility.

Additionally, distance between ourselves and the subject give us a sense of authority. The closer we are and more entrenched in ideas or positions, or even spatial awareness of something, the more real and empowered we feel to say certain thing.

And- the distance the subject is from the audience, or the perceived distance, also gives us a sense of authority to say something. It gives us confidence. Perhaps anyone online can be an expert because anyone can type a few words and hit ‘post’ and that there is no academic barrier to say what is objectively true. -And perhaps that wind in our sails emboldens us to be more toxic in our remarks. But I digress.

As a side note, financial obligations, like pay day or rent is something people can feel emotional impact and can vary depending on the day of the month. People tend to look forward to pay day but dread rent, unless you’re a business owner giving payroll or on the receiving side of rent as a landlord.

I pose that the distance is also ideological

That some ideas affect others more and thus have more gravity or weight behind them. You can consider this as the degrees of distance from a specific identity, whether that identity is an ideology, political, philosophical, religious, a fan base, etc.

If there were laws affecting your specific gender, say for example, forced castration or forced hysterectomies, then you’d be directly within the line of sight and line of fire for these policies that are written with words.

As such, if you are directly affected, then the words hit much closer to home.

If your friends and family are affected, then the words hit close to home but not as close as you directly.

As such, there is a concentric circle based on ideas that affect you and your loved ones.

When the subject becomes the audience, the audience feels more ‘attacked’ or ‘impacted’ by the weight of the words.

So certain words spoken or written, can hit closer to home, without being a matter of some vector-math of distance or space. Whether it’s a joke or a policy, it can directly or indirectly affect you and have real world consequences.

With knowledge

With little awareness of their knowledge, people feel empowered to say what they think, their opinions and their truths based on what they know.

“An empty cart makes a lot of noise” – Proverb

They might try to say something broadly and superficial, but if it becomes more specific, it might run into something wrong based on the limitations of their knowledge. Concept errors and misunderstandings amplified. Similar to the Dunning-Kruger effect which is a cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate their abilities in a particular area.

This is plainly revealed when a layman debates an expert, and the expert can clarify the specifics with objective points in a language understood by all parties. However, if the expert or the layman can’t speak either language (The language of the layman or the language of the expert), then you get two fools arguing.

As one person gets more knowledge, they receive enlightenment or awareness for how much further they have come and realized what once was, is no longer in terms of their thinking. They realize the foolishness of them being fooled by what they once believed in.

At a certain point in knowledge acquisition to any subject or way or Dao. It might be easier to say ‘I know nothing’ even though that realization is harder for some egos’ to admit.

So when we look closely at something and speak closely from our specific knowledge and authority, we lose ourselves (or the big picture). Some times an expert is ‘too close’ to see.

At some point, it becomes much more confusing and less simple the closer we are to something. Like looking deeply at the surface of an object, a close-up, the object’s outline no longer seems distinguishable until you take a step back enough to see the big picture. -And in seeing the big picture, it’s easy to say something broad and superficial, but when you zoom into the weeds you are met with much more context and intricacies.

When we stare deeply up close into the abyss of our own reflections, does it reveal itself to be much more complex than what we superficially had generalized it to be.

Imagine a scenario; you are spending all of your time in a forest but only staring at the grass. You might only think that the Forest contains only grass if you focus only on the grass. You might know a lot about the grass but that doesn’t truly mean you know a lot about the Forest, the animals, the other plants, the fungi, the insects, the trees, etc. When we are too close in distance, we become too specific in narrow knowledge, and we lose sight of the big picture.

Generally speaking, when people have a knowledge of an idea or invention that they think is the theory for everything or the solution for everything, they become personally attached and conflate their identity with their works or knowledge. “When you’re holding a hammer, everything becomes a nail.”

I pose that the amount of knowledge is akin to the approximation to truth. That the more we know, the more we realize what we don’t know, therefore the less we know. -And that we are embolden to say what we know by what little we know, rather than what more we don’t know. As such our confidence and courage comes from overestimating ourselves, and the ‘true experts’ speak in codified languages for a niche audience mirroring esoteric practices or they speak in broad simplifications that are conjectures and generalizations.

The more we try to say what it is, the more ineffable it becomes. Like trying to describe the color of red to a blind person, the taste of a strawberry to anyone, or even describing the divine, God, or the Dao.

If we are too close, or if we are too far, it’s easy to say something simple and easier to say something wrong, or right only when contextually specific.

In this case, Distance is a sort of fun-house-mirror hourglass. When we get closer, some things become clear and some things become obscure. As we get farther, vice versa. -And at some point, we can become too far or too close where we can’t see anything clearly.

The synthesis

As mentioned, Distance plays a roll in what we say and what we think and what we feel.

Distance can mean an approximation to truth, or a degree of distance in time, space, or ideas.

The gravitas of what we say, the weight and accuracy and emotional appeal, is proportional to the relation of distance we have on a subject. This is also true with the distance a subject has to the audience.

The Conductor’s job or Director’s job is to bring a harmony into big picture.

The individual musicians or artisans are to bring their specific knowledge and skill to play their part.

Your role with language is to be able to play all parts of the one-man band, to see the director’s direction’s big picture and to harmonize the specific knowledge and skillsets of what you know close to the issue or subject.

You are burdened with the task to play with the duality of distance in your languaging. How much seriousness or gravity or accountability you put in your words, and how much you put in what you receive.

Epilogue

Another relevant idea or concept is Poe’s law and ‘death of the author’ by Roland Barthes when it comes to saying things online or in written works and how those sayings and meanings change or are reinterpreted over time.

Distance whether measured by time, space, or ideas creates a degree of care or empathy or value or gravity behind words.

That’s an important dynamic to understand, as each word you mention and each idea or joke you toss, has a different impact. The subject is the context, and the audience’s role is also contextual. Some jokes, for some folks.

Some words pierce like arrows igniting the passionate hearts of people, while others dig deep like daggers to bleed out people. Some words hit with a splash effect upsetting others, while some words feel dull and blunt causing others to take action.

As we acquire more knowledge and insight, and contemplate conflicting viewpoints, then we’ll better understand the dynamic of distance in language and really come to realize that;

Words Mean Things