Before there was language there were grunts.  One grunt meant “hunger,” two meant “thirsty,” three meant ”tired,” four meant “anger,” and five meant “sex.”  Those are all guesses about how early humanoids communicated their basic needs to each other.  Any need that was more complex was likely accompanied by hand signals.  As our need to transmit more details grew, language expanded.  Indeed, the history of language is surely one of expansion, of reaching new heights in verbal fluency on an ascendancy plane to loftier orations, more elegant prose, and to poetry and songs that lift the human soul. 

 

Oh, for those glorious days of yesteryear…

 

Dumbing down language is the reversal of the same process. We are in it now.  This is the age of the 30-second sound byte, where time is money.  At the forefront of this blunting process are novice questioners who carry microphones, who pretend to knowledge, while using lifeless little snippets in which all experiences are reduced into a handy reference set of labels.  He or she need only mention the label, and you must acknowledge it or be rejected as a trouble maker—which is another label. 

 

My 8^th grade English teacher would be appalled.  God bless her!

 

Labeling has sinister origins.  The devil is no longer in the details; he’s jumped up and landed in the label.  (But the devil is still a “he”).  It’s all a part of the lexicon of compact speech that I will label “jibber jabber,” a genre of the conversation of denial that cannot deal with the subtleties of language and cares not one whit for those who are fluent in it.  It has no respect for carefulness of thought or of expression.  Indeed, it crunches life and all that is subsumed within that concept, and crams it into a convenient set of perhaps 100 boxes, which are further flattened into two-dimensional geometric forms.  Each label is intended to convey whatever the user of that device intends for it to convey.  If you fall victim to being labeled, you are forever vilified as fodder to this simplified notion of language suitable only for neo-knuckle-dragging grunt demons.

 

The label attempts to make politicians electable who are incorrigibly incoherent.  For example:

 

“Are you a LIBERAL or a CONSERVATIVE?” he asked.  “Actually, I am a little of both, plus many other descriptors that touch on at least a thousand other points along that continuum.  But mainly I am a free-thinker who shuns labels.”

 

“Wrong answer! you bleeding heart son-of-a-bitch.  Get over there on the LEFT with those other SOCIALISTS.”

 

“Excuse me, unkind sir, but I am also a skilled practitioner of the fine art of reducing disgruntled knuckle-draggers to puddles of putrid waste via pugilistic pounding.” 

 

“What?” 

 

Enter the translator.  “I believe he means he can kick your ass six ways to Sunday, sir.”

 

“Oh.  I mean OMG!  Don’t hit me, please.” 

 

“Well, alright, you wimpy widdle weasel.  I mean you limpy little lizard.  I am basically a fiendishly ferocious fighter with a tendency to mutilate miniscule muppets into multidimensional mounds of mud.  In a micro second.”

 

“OK.  I promise to never say ‘Obama is evil and wrong about everything.’  Ever again.”

 

“I will hold you to that promise, you effeminate freak.  Now step aside, and let a real man with a righteous repertoire of ruminations appropriate your box of libelous labels before I am compelled by conspicuous compunctions to disembowel you and your disingenuous diatribe into disambiguation. “

 

To the interpreter:  “Am I in trouble?” 

 

“Big time, you non bucolic boob.