The lack of communication is by far one of the very worst things in the world. It has always been a problem. Even though through all this time we gave names and signs to pretty much everything, to those things that we can see and touch and to those that we can’t, we still have problems exchanging information and understanding each other.
One of the biggest problems is the language barrier, and by that I don’t mean just the barrier of two people that speak different languages to understand each other, but also of people with different levels of education and familiarity with the subject they are discussing about. People who are more educated and informed on a subject often tend to use abbreviations and scientific terms that most people aren’t familiar with and that makes it impossible for the others to understand the message that is being conveyed to them. Body language, facial expressions and all other things in non verbal communication are a problem too. Not because of their existence, but because of their complexity and relative meaning. Most of them differ from place to place, so when people communicate, they often have problems understanding those mixed signs, especially when the one speaking is totally contradicting himself with his non verbal communication. Sometimes people perceive that as lying, or at least are suspicious about the truthfulness of that that they are being told. This is one of the reasons people lose trust really, and I believe we all know how hard it is to start trusting people that have already lost our trust of, even though in this case it would be rather easy if we were aware of the non verbal communication differences and would explain them. This brings me to another point. When people lose trust they often also get mad and stop talking to the person that they believe lied to them. This is a problem because in these situations people close themselves and refuse to listen to the explanations and therefore cannot be conveyed the truth but also keeping in mind that, as George Carlin said “language is a tool for concealing the truth”. A simple misunderstanding. This is how relationships are ruined (just to be clear, I mean all kinds of relationships, not just the one you thought of when reading the word). The lack of explanations is a very serious problem actually, and not just when people refuse to get them. In most cases, people just don’t give them assuming the person they are talking to is familiar enough with the subject at hand so they don’t see a reason to do so, and this is not where this problem ends. People instead of asking for an explanation they just stand there without understanding what they are hearing and like people often do when they don’t hear something, they just nod and smile. I often see people around me struggling to complete something, or wonder about the meaning of a certain thing that they heard from someone just because they didn’t ask for an explanation. Some people just don’t bother, and others are just afraid that they might look stupid if they do so.
Overthinking is also a very big problem for many people. These people may be conveyed a very simple and concise message but they end up analyzing it so much that they get completely confused and then just jump to a certain conclusion. This gets us to Interpretation, which in my opinion is one of the biggest, if not the biggest communication problem that people face. People tend to listen to what they like, to interpret things the way they like, or the way it suits them. This pretty much always results with people having misunderstandings, arguments and even fights.
It’s a pity how the lack of proper communication causes so many problems in the world really, and not just simple things that I mentioned earlier but even real hatred between whole nations and even war. We should really stop talking about each other, and start talking to each other in a proper way, and seek to truly understand each other, and give and ask explanations for everything that might be misinterpreted. The world would be a much better place if everyone did this.
Nothing works without Communication. Imagine that.
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