What is a misunderstanding? It is a failure to communicate. Communication is the simple tool that allows us to live together. Communication is also infinitely complex: verbal, non-verbal, visual, digital, handwritten, media-generated. Communication is the intersection between language, truth, and trust; the cornerstone of community; and a keystone of civilization.
And with the internet, it is now instantaneous. Facebook. Twitter. Snapchat. Instagram. How has digital communication affected inter- and intra-personal relations? How does the latest net neutrality affect the corporate internet and how will it alter our ability to communicate?
Communication is both helped and hindered by the media. How are we supposed to relate to, or operate within, a government managed by leaders “untethered to the truth”? Immanual Kant says that all humans have a moral responsibility to speak the truth. Without the truth, we threaten the ability to understand each other, threatening civilization itself. Lying depends on a mutual understanding of what is true and what is false.
Are there objective truths? How is the truth determined? Personal belief, scientific process, societal agreement? Is politically correct speech a clarifying tool or a deliberately obscurantist one ?
What does it do to communication to live inside an echo chamber? If all the news you hear is from politically-inspired Fox News or (alternately) community-supported National Public Radio, what is the value of that “news” without the balancing viewpoint? Is that news or propaganda?
How do the sub-genres of predetermined language that rely on precedent—legal, medical, engineering—affect the open nature of American English? As a corollary, why is accent, posture, or presentation indicative of social status?
In this issue, authors explored philosophy from the Roman Empire that shaped modern ideology, confirmation bias, the controversy of the Fairness Doctrine, the physicality of language, the language of natural world, gender in the military, and the failure of American institutions for the 99%. We also looked at the nature of consciousness and happiness. Conceive, believe, achieve.
AMENDMENT I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.