Nexus State Theory

By “communication is hard” I mean that it can be challenging to implement, and can require skill.

By “communication is unquantifiable” I mean that it is nontrivial to discern whether a given person is or isn’t communicating appropriately.

Communication is also not the only thing that matters. For example, freedom is also very important, and was especially responsible for building American voluntary associations in the early phase (1760-1960). However, freedom is not enough in the era of the strong state. As with the Brexit difficulties, it turns out that we are often bound together, and must communicate in order to solve our problems.

Communication is hard for many reasons:

1. We try to achieve difficult things with it – complex shared projects. As our ambitions rise, so too do the perceived difficulties.
2. Misunderstandings are common (and it’s not even clear that we always have a “true message” that we “actually mean.”)
3. We may want to help others, but don’t know what they want or need in order to help them.
4. From childhood, we are accustomed to hierarchical relationships, which require less communication than egalitarian ones. But social capital is often more egalitarian.

Communication requires skills around listening and responding, mutual respect, and trying to understand what others want or need.

In a hierarchical relationships, the boss, teacher, or parent simply says the way it will be, and everyone else has to do it. Little negotiation is needed. Although our society values equality, in some ways our relationships have become less equal over time:

Parents and children:

• Helicopter parents
• More supervised time for children
• Less freedom for children to walk to school alone
• Parents managing children’s schedules – sometimes even after they go to college

At the workplace:

• More surveillance and micromanagement at work
• Weaker unions and easier firing

In school:

• More standardized testing
• Less unstructured time (reduced recess)

In an equal spousal relationship, extraordinary amounts of communication may be necessary – about emotions, parenting, money, family rules, and other topics. Communication is required to prevent an anarchic situation where the spouses fail to coordinate their actions – an eventuality that is entirely possible given that neither is really in charge.

Note that for some people, communication can require some degree of conflict! If one declines, to an unreasonable degree, to “stoop” to conflict, one can come across as patronizing or cold (“I’m too good to argue with you; you cannot affect me.”) It takes skill, then, to know when and how (and with whom) to engage in consensual conflict without harming others.

From Rita Felski’s book Uses of Literature, I will name four purposes of communication. They are meant to apply to literature, but I think they have some value regardless.

1. Recognition. We communicate in order to understand who we are, and who others are. This means understanding our emotions, values, history, identity, and so forth.
2. Knowledge. We communicate in order to gain knowledge – in a variety of senses. We may want to know factual knowledge, generalized wisdom, etc.
3. Enchantment. We communicate in order to feel emotions, experience stories, and be transported to other modes of existence.
4. Shock. We communicate in order to bring to light things that we are having a hard time processing – because they are shameful, frightening, forbidden, etc.

Beyond that, we communicate in order to connect with other individual humans – which we do by sharing aesthetic values as well as recognition, knowledge, enchantment, and shock.

My recommendation is to remind children that communication is hard, and that they should try again when they fail. Moreover, when people say the wrong thing, it is often due to misunderstandings, mistakes, or inexperiences, rather than being due to malice.