Tcepsa's Thoughts

I've never been able to address it because the entire tangled mess of trying to deconstruct their prejudice, societal stereotypes, and my own ignorance would tangle in my throat and render me mute.
--dolphin__girl, A moment of contemplation

I've been reading the entry and it has been good and raised several important points for me to think about this, but that's the first thing that has made me go "whoa, I need to stop and write this down." And I'm a little bit unsettled that it's about communication in general rather than the specific topics of racism and privilege and stereotyping and privilege that she is talking about. At the same time, though, I think a huge number of the challenges that we face in these areas are deeply rooted in communication and difficulties therewith.

Also, it's something that I often find myself stymied by--admittedly not in the areas that she is talking about, but in general. Very frequently, when I'm trying to talk about something that is important to me, I get a sense that there is a very vast context needed to make that thing's importance apparent, and I have no idea how to convey even a part of that context. And then I start to wonder how anybody manages to talk about anything! Do most people have a greater shared context with each other than I seem to have with them, thus negating the need to transmit such a large chunk of it when they want to talk about something? Or do they just not care? Do they even realize it (and to the cynics out there, I urge you to think hard about this one before choosing to believe they do not)? Have they come up with some other strategy for dealing with it that I haven't hit upon (or at least realized)? Is this why it seems like so many people's conversations are about the most banal of things--they realize they can't talk about anything significant, but they still want to pretend like they're communicating? Or am I in a minority thinking that those things are banal, and they really are communicating?

If you were here in my head, what I am about to say would make perfect sense to you. But you're not in my head. I know this, and I despair.