Writing in Consortium News, Chris Hedges comments on what Israel has done, and is doing, and what he believes Israel will continue to do in Gaza and the West Bank. Hedges tells us that what is happening is "genocide," and that genocide is the "new normal." The image above, which headed up Hedges' column, makes clear how truly horrible are the activities he describes. Here is Hedges' two line introduction to his article:
This will be a Hobbesian world where nations that have the most advanced industrial weapons make the rules. Those who are poor and vulnerable will kneel in subjugation.
The title of my blog posting today ("Beyond Description"), has a dual purpose. First, and most obviously, the title was prompted by the most common understanding of the phrase. As the Cambridge Dictionary puts it, the phrase "beyond description" means "something that you cannot describe accurately because of its great size, quality, or level." In the case of the actions and activities being discussed by Hedges, the horror of what he describes is what merits the use of this phrase. What is being discussed is "beyond description" in that the past, present, and postulated future activities Hedges is writing about (activities in which the United States is deeply involved) are too horrible to contemplate.
The main reason that I have titled my blog posting, "Beyond Description," however, is different. It is my purpose, in my comment, here, to point out that "description" is Hedges' main work in his column, and that what he says in the column, by way of his "description" of the future. is a betrayal of the reader.
What Hedges is doing is to "describe" an existing reality (obviously, as he sees it), but more importantly - and erroneously - Hedges is "describing" not only what exists now, but what he states "will be." Hedges is saying that the continuing and future actions of Israel and its supporters (with the United States in the forefront) "will" create a "Hobbesian" world of horror, and that the poor and vulnerable "will" be subjugated.
If you take writing seriously, it is important to be aware of - and to avoid - the "is fallacy." It is simply not true that what "is," in the present, is the same thing that "will be" in the future. Maybe that will be true. Or maybe not. Still, many do as Hedges does, and extrapolate the description of a current reality as if what exists now - what "is," now - is what must and will inevitably continue to exist in the future. The use of language in this way is actually important, because when one says what "will be," whether something "good" or something "horrible" is being described, a reader is implicitly being told that there is nothing, really, that the reader can do about it, or needs to do about it. Our human freedom and "agency" is denigrated and despised when the future (always unknown and susceptible to change) is "described," as if that description of the future were the description of reality itself.
Unless you are fine with conceding your own powerlessness, you - and all of us - need to get "beyond description" as we look forward into the future. The future can never properly be described as though it actually "exists." It doesn't. Not yet!
The future depends on what we do now.
Let's not forget that!
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