Two Ways to Poison Your Voice
Think about this sentence for a pixel’s moment; Religion is a good thing. Is it? Really? Is it A Good Thing? Depends does it not, which means religion cannot exist solely as A Good Thing. If that were True, with a capital T, then we would all nod in agreement, no more bickering, no more martyrs, and could go about our days humming a tune of agreement, on this particular matter.
Living in a world where we communicate in absolutes and volley certainties back and forth will result in ruin…
Johnny is being an asshole, Democrats are whinny pussies, Elvis is alive, I am a failure, You are an idiot, Abortion is evil, these sentences all contain absolute statements. I also wrote some in a passive voice. These two methods, writing with absolutes, and writing with a passive voice can poison your voice, and dilute your message. Doesn’t much matter if you use written text, a spoken language, or follow your mind’s incessant chatter, absolutes and passivity usually shrink the world you’re living in. They build boxes and grow thorny boundaries between you and a contextual universe.
As it pertains to writing, the author wants to express herself as clearly and implicitly as possible. You want to sing with precision and clarity. Your feelings, your thoughts, even your poetry, all the words of your life blessed with a purity of intent. Poetry often comes across as a nimble and porous. A language filled with spaces and time galloping in all directions. Wrangling the poetic language can be a sysiphisian task. However, I’m of the opinion that the best poetry illicits a singular spirit. It needles deep into our being with its persistence. So even poetry, the most elusive and malleable of language, benefits from the absence of a passive voice rumbling with an engine of absolutes.
I cannot speak for everyone, but I know I struggle with active writing. Writing with vigor and persistence. I lapse into a passive voice often, and without knowing it. I believe this practice harms my writing, and writing constitutes one of the primary means by which I interact with the world. In many ways, when I write with fog and cloud I inadvertently obscure my view. I muddle my awareness. I render my perspective a hazy, lazy lens in need of a good washing.
As luck would have it, I recently came upon the linguistics of E-Prime. E-Prime refers to language that attempts to eliminate usage of the verb “to be” in all forms. Occurrences of “am”, “is”, “was”, “are”, “were”, and “be” are stricken from the writing. E-Prime adherents, (sounds like a cult no?), strive to banish a static world of absolutes and certainties by the words they choose to use. They attempt to convert the world into a flexible place full of possibility.
I’ve read a bunch about E-Prime recently and while I’m starting to understand it I can’t say I grok it fully. Nor do I feel the need to. While I’d encourage all writers to read about E-Prime and make attempts to weave its philosophy, if not its properties, into their writing, the point for me will always remain the end game, or what’s the goal here?
And as I see it, the world could use more attention. Your attention. My attention. Sliding into habit, expressing ourselves as little Deities does a disservice to the complexity and richness of Life. Living in a world where we communicate in absolutes and volley certainties back and forth will result in ruin. In this way, E-Prime serves as a philosophy, and can be used in much the same way as Don Miguel Ruiz’s First Agreement: Be Impeccable with Your Word.
Strive to be clear with yourself and others, be precise, speak with integrity, and write towards the truth, not the unyielding truth of a distant God, but one born of a tender moment, nourished with a brave willingness, and grown to bold acceptance, acceptance that the absolutes are often what we make of them.
PostScript
For the hell of it I attempted writing this post in a style convergent with E-Prime. Regardless of my success, or lack of it, the damn thing took me three times longer to write than a normal post of this size. I now sport an aching mind, taxed by the sweat and toil it took to think of alternative ways to word habitual patterns. The process made me think using E-Prime might be a very good way of problem solving. Look at a problem, and then write down all its qualities using E-Prime. It would probably help round out the issue and help herd the solution. Anyway, hard work shedding one perspective for another. I need a nap.
If E-Prime catches your interest then here are a couple resources to jump start a journey:
- Working with E-Prime: Some Practical Notes
- from Answers.com
- The Four Agreements
- as always a good place to begin is with the Great and Powerful Wiki
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I have used e-prime for years and find it thrilling to run across you post containing the reference to it.
In almost every endeavor, the injection of the two problematic forms of “to be” raise trouble. I find that in the business world, the definitional form with its wide and deep use actually hobbles meaningful, honest and progressive discussions.
Once, I wrote two business letters, one in e-prime and the other in “traditional” biz speak. I set the letters into a survey as to which the readers thought superior. Hands down the e-prime letter won. Interestingly no one could identify why they felt so.
On the topic of the 4 Agreements:
I ran a large manufacturing site in NW Ontario Canada. When I first arrived, communications seemed very dysfunctional and people lived in fear of speaking. Having read and abide by the 4 Agreements for some time, I had a large poster of the 4 made and hung on the wall of our conference room. Each day I made sure to reference at least one of the 4. And you know, even after 5 years now the people their still refer to them and the difference they made.
Why do I tell you this? We seem of the same view and just wanted to let you know.
Oh and by the way: Check out the Institute of General Semantics.
Your post caused me to dig out my copy of “Science and Sanity” by Korzybski and E-Prime 3.
Thanks!
I’ll wander over to that Institute at some point Matt. Thanks for the tip…I like that story about your manufacturing site. My experience has been most people want to communicate effectively. They don’t always know how, or no one really shares the tools with us. The Four Agreements are nice because they’re simple, easy to grasp. You did a good thing for everyone by hanging that poster. Small acts often have big consequences.
I’m glad you commented too. Kinda reassuring hearing from some who’s used E-Prime. It’s new to me so nice to see you speak highly of it. At the very least, E-Prime’s helped me think a little more about the words I choose to use, and the intentions behind them. Helped me think of the context and mood my words weave. Kinda fun really. It’s easy to succumb to a flow and lose track of what you’re really saying. I tend to like this style, but E-Prime helps clarify the words, make them bolder, more vigorous. It’s definitely a good tool to help rethink your writing. One of the better one’s I’ve come across in recent memory.