Barriers To Communication Quotes

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Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1))
We cannot train ourselves to be perfect, but we can ensure we have better intuition when it comes to human behavior.
Milan Kordestani (I'm Just Saying: The Art of Civil Discourse: A Guide to Maintaining Courteous Communication in an Increasingly Divided World)
Though civil discourse may be especially challenging to facilitate during fractured times, the process itself has stood the test of time for centuries.
Milan Kordestani (I'm Just Saying: The Art of Civil Discourse: A Guide to Maintaining Courteous Communication in an Increasingly Divided World)
We habitually erect a barrier called blame that keeps us from communicating genuinely with others, and we fortify it with our concepts of who's right and who's wrong. We do that with the people who are closest to us and we do it with political systems, with all kinds of things that we don't like about our associates or our society. It is a very common, ancient, well-perfected device for trying to feel better. Blame others....Blaming is a way to protect your heart, trying to protect what is soft and open and tender in yourself. Rather than own that pain, we scramble to find some comfortable ground.
Pema Chödrön
The world is the closed door. It is a barrier. And at the same time it is the way through. Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but it is also their means of communication. … Every separation is a link.
Simone Weil (Gravity and Grace)
The greatest communication barrier known to man is the lack of the common core of experience "When’s the last time you had a Manic Episode Doctor"?
Stanley Victor Paskavich
Horses frighten me as much as chickens do,’ he said. ‘That is too bad, because lack of communication with horses has impeded human progress,’ said Abrenuncio. ‘If we ever broke down the barriers, we could produce the centaur.
Gabriel García Márquez
As we live our truths, we will communicate across all barriers, speaking for the sources of peace. Peace that is not lack of war, but fierce and positive.
Muriel Rukeyser
Despite the barriers to communication, they have developed an idiolect of their own, mostly devoted to complaining.
Adrian Tchaikovsky (Children of Ruin (Children of Time, #2))
The victims of PTSD often feel morally tainted by their experiences, unable to recover confidence in their own goodness, trapped in a sort of spiritual solitary confinement, looking back at the rest of the world from beyond the barrier of what happened. They find themselves unable to communicate their condition to those who remained at home, resenting civilians for their blind innocence. The Moral Injury, New York Times. Feb 17, 2015
David Brooks
Languages connect us and break down barriers when we unite to nurture the best in us and help each other succeed. Happy International Mother Language Day!
Widad Akreyi
At the end of the day, some authors will endure and most, including some very good ones, will not. Why do I think reading is important? It is such an effective medium between mind and mind. We think largely in words. A medium made only of words doesn't impose the barrier of any other medium. It is naked and unprotected communication. That's how you get pregnant. May you always be so.
Roger Ebert
Music is the Universal Language that allows all people to communicate with each other.
Ellen J. Barrier
Going to a country where you don't speak the language is like wading into the sea when you can't swim - it's intimidating at first, not impossible, and ultimately manageable.
Stewart Stafford
One not only wants to be understood when one writes, but also quite as certainly not to be understood. It is by no means an objection to a book when someone finds it unintelligible: perhaps this might just have been the intention of its author, perhaps he did not want to be understood by "anyone”. A distinguished intellect and taste, when it wants to communicate its thoughts, always selects its hearers; by selecting them, it at the same time closes its barriers against "the others". It is there that all the more refined laws of style have their origin: they at the same time keep off, they create distance, they prevent "access" (intelligibility, as we have said,) while they open the ears of those who are acoustically related to them.
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs)
When manipulation flutters around everywhere, neither pull nor push anyone. Just do one thing - don't trust anyone!
Ashish Patel
It was blissful, spending time with someone who would leave you alone. I loved him for it. And I was happy to repay in kind. It had never occurred to me that leaving someone alone could harden into a habit that could become a barrier.
Robin McKinley (Sunshine)
At that moment there was no need of any scientific knowledge to understand his communication of reassurance. The soft pressure of his fingers spoke to me not through my intellect but through a more primitive emotional channel: the barrier of untold centuries which has grown up during the separate evolution of man and chimpanzee was, for those few seconds, broken down. It was a reward far beyond my greatest hopes.
Jane Goodall (In the Shadow of Man)
A lack of communication with horses has impeded human progress, said Abrenuncio. If we ever broke down the barriers, we could produce the centaur
Gabriel García Márquez (Of Love and Other Demons)
To bring relevance to people, you have to be able to speak their language effectively
Sunday Adelaja
Touch is the most basic, the most nonconceptual form of communication that we have. In touch there are no language barriers; anything that can walk, fly, creep, crawl, or swim already speaks it.
Ina May Gaskin (Spiritual Midwifery)
In science fiction, telepaths often communicate across language barriers, since thoughts are considered to be universal. However, this might not be true. Emotions and feelings may well be nonverbal and universal, so that one could telepathically send them to anyone, but rational thinking is so closely tied to language that it is very unlikely that complex thoughts could be sent across language barriers. Words will still be sent telepathically in their original language.
Michio Kaku (The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind)
Wealth is a relational barrier. It keeps us from having open relationships.
Randy Alcorn (Money, Possessions, and Eternity: A Comprehensive Guide to What the Bible Says about Financial Stewardship, Generosity, Materialism, Retirement, Financial Planning, Gambling, Debt, and More)
Love is the universal language that transcends countries, borders, barriers, and differences.
Susan C. Young (The Art of Being: 8 Ways to Optimize Your Presence & Essence for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #1))
If I had not immersed myself in books, in stories and legends, in newspapers, in reports, if everything communicable had not grown up in me, I should have been a nonentity, a collection of uncomprehended events. (And that might have been a good thing, then I should have thought of something new.) That I can see, that I can hear, are things I do not deserve; but my feelings, those I truly deserve, these herons over white beaches, these wanderers by night, the hungry vagabonds that take my heart as their highroad. I wish I could call out to all those who believe in their unique brains and the hard currency of their thoughts: be of good faith! But these coins which you clink together have been withdrawn from circulation, only you don't know it yet....Admit that when you really pay, with your lives, you do so only beyond the barrier, when you have said farewell to everything that is so dear to you--to landing-places, flying-bases, and only from there do you embark on your own path and your journey from imagined stop to imagined stop, travellers who must not be concerned with arriving.
Ingeborg Bachmann (The Thirtieth Year: Stories)
Mother nature gave us words to use them as a bridge among each other and advance together, but the humans with their ridiculous stupidity and shallow intellect have used those very words to create walls, blinded by their barbarian tribalism masquerading as pompous ideologies.
Abhijit Naskar (Saint of The Sapiens)
I Don’t Even Like Him—How Can I Pray for Him? Have you ever been so mad at your husband that the last thing you wanted to do was pray for him? So have I. It’s hard to pray for someone when you’re angry or he’s hurt you. But that’s exactly what God wants us to do. If He asks us to pray for our enemies, how much more should we be praying for the person with whom we have become one and are supposed to love? But how do we get past the unforgiveness and critical attitude? The first thing to do is be completely honest with God. In order to break down the walls in our hearts and smash the barriers that stop communication, we have to be totally up-front with the Lord about our feelings. We don’t have to “pretty it up” for Him. He already knows the truth. He just wants to see if we’re willing to admit it and confess it as disobedience to His ways. If so, He
Stormie Omartian (The Power of a Praying® Wife)
So when you encounter problem people, realize that there’s a reason they’re behaving the way they do. It may be a new problem: a health scare, money problems, or job pressures. It may be a long-term problem: anxiety about not being good enough for a job, anger at not being respected, fear that you don’t find them attractive or intelligent. And, yes: It may be that they’re actually just jerks (but they’re usually not). Open your own mind and look for the reasons behind the behavior, and you’ll take the first step toward breaking down barriers and communicating with an “impossible” person.
Mark Goulston (Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone)
Kitai blinked slowly. "Why would you use the same word for these things? That is ridiculous." "We have a lot of words like that," Tavi said. "They can mean more than one thing." "That is stupid," Kitai said. "It is difficult enough to communicate without making it more complicated with words that mean more than one thing.
Jim Butcher (Academ's Fury (Codex Alera, #2))
I had the illusion of conversing with a fellow being without a barrier, without a steel door, without a black hood over my head . . . I have never, I think, impressed upon you how almost impossible I find it to communicate with anybody.
Iris Murdoch (The Sacred and Profane Love Machine)
I am, I must confess, an obsessive and superstitious letter-writer. When I am troubled I will write any long letter rather than make a telephone call. This is perhaps because I invest letters with magical power. To desiderate something in a letter is, I often irrationally feel, tantamount to bringing it about. A letter is a barrier, a reprieve, a charm against the world, an almost infallible method of acting at a distance. (And, it must be admitted, of passing the buck.) It is a way of bidding time to stop.
Iris Murdoch (The Black Prince)
The main reason to address moral issues is that they have become a barrier to even hearing the message of salvation. People are inundated with rhetoric telling them that the Bible is hateful and hurtful, narrow and negative. While it’s crucial to be clear about the biblical teaching on sin, the context must be an overall positive message: that Christianity alone gives the basis for a high view of the value and meaning of the body as a good gift from God. In our communication with people struggling with moral issues, we need to reach out with a life-giving, life-affirming message. We should work to draw people in by the beauty of the biblical vision of life.
Nancy R. Pearcey (Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality)
Have you ever been in the middle of an argument, when the other person made a good point but you couldn’t bring yourself to admit that they might be right because you were afraid of looking foolish? If so, then you’ve experienced the ego-protection barrier firsthand.
Justin Lee (Talking Across the Divide: How to Communicate with People You Disagree with and Maybe Even Change the World)
The biggest barrier in communication is that tendency of listening to reply and not to understand.
Wilson M. Mukama
Flattening the walls of your school entails eliminating the communication barriers so everyone feels like they are part of the school community.
Joe Sanfelippo (Hacking Leadership: 10 Ways Great Leaders Inspire Learning That Teachers, Students, and Parents Love (Hack Learning Series))
The ego-protection barrier can be easily summed up in a few simple sentences: Nobody wants to look foolish. Nobody wants to be wrong. Nobody wants to feel manipulated.
Justin Lee (Talking Across the Divide: How to Communicate with People You Disagree with and Maybe Even Change the World)
I don’t think it’s healthy to have an argument about communication barriers on the date you’ve been manipulated into taking.
Kristy Cunning (Gypsy Origins (All The Pretty Monsters #3))
One woman sent me on a letter written to her by her daughter, and the young girl's words are a remarkable statement about artistic creation as an infinitely versatile and subtle form of communication: '...How many words does a person know?' she asks her mother. 'How many does he use in his everyday vocabulary? One hundred, two, three? We wrap our feelings up in words, try to express in words sorrow and joy and any sort of emotion, the very things that can't in fact be expressed. Romeo uttered beautiful words to Juliet, vivid, expressive words, but they surely didn't say even half of what made his heart feel as if it was ready to jump out of his chest, and stopped him breathing, and made Juliet forget everything except her love? There's another kind of language, another form of communication: by means of feeling, and images. That is the contact that stops people being separated from each other, that brings down barriers. Will, feeling, emotion—these remove obstacles from between people who otherwise stand on opposite sides of a mirror, on opposite sides of a door.. The frames of the screen move out, and the world which used to be partitioned off comes into us, becomes something real... And this doesn't happen through little Audrey, it's Tarkovsky himself addressing the audience directly, as they sit on the other side of the screen. There's no death, there is immortality. Time is one and undivided, as it says in one of the poems. "At the table are great-grandfathers and grandchildren.." Actually Mum, I've taken the film entirely from an emotional angle, but I'm sure there could be a different way of looking at it. What about you? Do write and tell me please..
Andrei Tarkovsky (Sculpting in Time)
Many people have never discovered the power generated from a heart of service. They show up to life projecting a right of entitlement in which their needs are their first priority and they will do whatever it takes to forward their own agenda without any concern for how it impacts others. This behavior pushes people away, creates barriers to trust and communication, and leaves a bad impression.
Susan C. Young (The Art of Being: 8 Ways to Optimize Your Presence & Essence for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #1))
I believe that kindness is the universal language. When someone does something kind it is understood despite language barriers or cultural differences. We should really communicate with kindness more often.
Anonymous
Writer Tara Mohr (2014) discusses ways in which women minimize their impact with the use of qualifiers in their communications. Similar to “I’m sorry,” one of these qualifiers is the word “just.” Mohr explains that using this modifier—as in “I just want to add…” or “I just think…”—diminishes a woman’s power. “Just” quickly disempowers what might otherwise be a stunning idea by connoting something more along the lines of “barely” or “I’m saying this with apology.
Sari Solden (A Radical Guide for Women with ADHD: Embrace Neurodiversity, Live Boldly, and Break Through Barriers)
In the case of Switzerland, a whole country is concerned with the species-appropriate treatment of all things green. The constitution reads, in part, that "account [is] to be taken of the dignity of creation when handling animals, plants and other organisms." So it's probably not a good idea to decapitate flowers along the highway in Switzerland without good reason. Although this point of view has elicited a lot of head shaking in the international community, I, for one, welcome breaking down the moral barriers between animals and plants. When the capabilities of vegetative beings become known, and their emotional lives and needs are recognized, then the way we treat plants will gradually change, as well. Forests are not first and foremost lumber factories and warehouses for raw material, and only secondarily complex habitats for thousands of species, which is the way modern forestry currently treats them. Completely the opposite, in fact.
Peter Wohlleben (The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate: Discoveries from a Secret World)
It is a strange fact that sometimes the people who love you most will be among the first to stop worrying about you. An inflexible optimism stands as a barrier between you. You will be fine. Anything to the contrary seems too difficult to communicate.
Kate Bowler (No Cure for Being Human: And Other Truths I Need to Hear)
[THE DAILY BREATH] When Jesus walked the Earth, He said again and again: "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." For many years I misunderstood this message. The line: "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near" brought fear because to me it meant: "Repent or else you go to hell." But this is not what it means. Read the words again: "Repent" which means ask God for forgiveness, "because the kingdom of Heaven is at hand" which means peace is close to you. Ask for forgiveness because when you do so in all honesty, you bring Heaven in your life. When you open your heart and ask for forgiveness in all truth, you find Heaven: the healing you need, the love you deserve, the peace you want: all of these wait for you on the other side of you having a heart-to-heart, truthful relationship with Jesus. God's love for you is unconditional, but communication is possible only in truth. Turn your eyes from your pain, and look unto Jesus. Literally, focus your eyes on Him. Walk through the terror barrier that prevents you from opening your heart, and tell Him everything. Ask for forgiveness for everything you think you've done wrong, ask for help with your weaknesses - not from your mind or from your emotions, but from your spirit - and hide nothing because what you keep hidden will torment you until you bring it out to light. Carl Jung, the renowned psychiatrist said, "The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely." Do not be afraid. Tell God everything you fear to acknowledge, because He cannot heal what you conceal, and he will heal everything you reveal.
Dragos Bratasanu
...and I know what it is that's going to destroy the world. Lack of communication - reciprocal communication: cultural, political, intellectual - whatever you like. But more, it's snobbery and self-deceit, which are artificial, protective barriers that prevent communication.
Angus Stewart (Sandel)
Oh, that was easy,’ says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next pedestrian crossing. “Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo’s kidneys, but that didn’t stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book, Well That about Wraps It Up for God. “Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide, #1))
Kahlo’s paintings offer a visual vocabulary with which trauma and pain can be transmitted or communicated with dignity and compassion. Through the language of her innovative art Kahlo gives voice to silenced, unresolved traumata. She thus obliterates the barrier between the individual experiencing pain and the viewer, and evokes empathy for our shared human fragility.
Gannit Ankori (Frida Kahlo (Critical Lives))
Nothing so tempts us to approach another person as what is keeping us apart; and what barrier is so insurmountable as silence? It has been said also that silence is torture, capable of goading to madness the man who is condemned to it in a prison cell. But what an even greater torture than that of having to keep silence it is to have to endure the silence of the person one loves!
Marcel Proust (The Guermantes Way: In Search of Lost Time #3)
We come into contact with people only with our exteriors—physically and externally; yet each of us walks about with a great wealth of interior life, a private and secret self. We are, in reality, somewhat split in two, the self and the body; the one hidden, the other open. The child learns very quickly to cultivate this private self because it puts a barrier between him and the demands of the world. He learns he can keep secrets—at first an excruciating, intolerable burden: it seems that the outer world has every right to penetrate into his self and that the parents could automatically do so if they wished—they always seem to know just what he is thinking and feeling. But then he discovers that he can lie and not be found out: it is a great and liberating moment, this anxious first lie—it represents the staking out of his claim to an integral inner self, free from the prying eyes of the world. By the time we grow up we become masters at dissimulation, at cultivating a self that the world cannot probe. But we pay a price. After years of turning people away, of protecting our inner self, of cultivating it by living in a different world, of furnishing this world with our fantasies and dreams—we find that we are hopelessly separated from everyone else. We have become victims of our own art. We touch people on the outsides of their bodies, and they us, but we cannot get at their insides and cannot reveal our insides to them. This is one of the great tragedies of our interiority—it is utterly personal and unrevealable. Often we want to say something unusually intimate to a spouse, a parent, a friend, communicate something of how we are really feeling about a sunset, who we really feel we are—only to fall strangely and miserably flat. Once in a great while we succeed, sometimes more with one person, less or never with others. But the occasional breakthrough only proves the rule. You reach out with a disclosure, fail, and fall back bitterly into yourself. We emit huge globs of love to our parents and spouses, and the glob slithers away in exchanges of words that are somehow beside the point of what we are trying to say. People seem to keep bumping up against each other with their exteriors and falling away from each other. The cartoonist Jules Feiffer is the modern master of this aspect of the human tragedy. Take even the sexual act—the most intimate merger given to organisms. For most people, even for their entire lives, it is simply a joining of exteriors. The insides melt only in the moment of orgasm, but even this is brief, and a melting is not a communication. It is a physical overcoming of separateness, not a symbolic revelation and justification of one’s interior. Many people pursue sex precisely because it is a mystique of the overcoming of the separateness of the inner world; and they go from one partner to another because they can never quite achieve “it.” So the endless interrogations: “What are you thinking about right now—me? Do you feel what I feel? Do you love me?
Ernest Becker (The Birth and Death of Meaning: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Problem of Man)
I, for one, welcome breaking down the moral barriers between animals and plants. When the capabilities of vegetative beings become known, and their emotional lives and needs are recognized, then the way we treat plants will gradually change, as well. Forests are not first and foremost lumber factories and warehouses for raw material, and only secondarily complex habitats for thousands of species, which is the way modern forestry currently treats them. Completely the opposite, in fact.
Peter Wohlleben (The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate: Discoveries from a Secret World)
...and as he swigged another dose, it just kind of came clear to me that the guy was nothing but sadness, really nothing but that, the weakest link in the Great Chain of Being, and that if when raging he was pathetic then in triumph he was tragic; and it also seemed as if, at some level, the guy knew this, that he also was aware that the whole package he had put together for himself had been misconceived, and that any effort to refashion it would just reconfirm its faultiness; and that the zone he inhabited was one that he himself had built, but as a barrier, of course to prevent the world from getting too close but also to forestall any seepage of self, whose effects on other folks he could too easily foresee; and that the poor loonster had become addicted to the language of communication because he knew that each word showed just how hopeless he was-and that people would sense this, and so would stay even further away ...; the guy, in short, had built himself a quicksand situation, a real no­winner, and I just figured OK: give him what he wants and keep the fuck away; don't only ignore him, but force yourself to forget; acknowledge his desire and leave him to his internal exile...
Evan Dara (The Lost Scrapbook)
The state of New York had just one important advantage—an opening to the west through the Appalachian Mountains, the chain that runs in rough parallel to the Atlantic Ocean. It is hard to believe that those soft and rolling mountains, often little more than big hills, could ever have constituted a formidable barrier to movement, but in fact they afforded almost no usable passes along the whole of their twenty-five-hundred-mile length and were such an obstruction to trade and communications that many people believed that the pioneers living beyond the mountains would eventually, of practical necessity, form a separate nation.
Bill Bryson (At Home: A Short History of Private Life)
In a successful relationship both partners should be able to uplift, inspire and energize each other. In an Asperger marriage this energy exchange doesn’t seem to take place. Usually the ‘neurotypical’ hands out energy but receives none in return, and thus feels permanently exhausted. Due to the high stress and anxiety levels, the AS partner finds it difficult to sustain his energy and therefore has little left to share. Whatever exists he retains to satisfy any personal requirements. It’s a kind of self-preservation technique. In addition to this, communication problems aggravate the situation by creating an invisible barrier which prevents energy flow.
Katrin Bentley (Alone Together: Making an Asperger Marriage Work)
Remember, every relationship is an opportunity to either discover more of your individuality and expand as a human being or do the pretzel dance and twist yourself into a smaller version of you based on who you think your partner wants you to be. Despite what your mind tells you, your partner is attracted to the real you—the authentic you that he first met—not the twisted version you think he wants. When you commit to being yourself from the start and to communicating your truth no matter what, you’ll avoid virtually all the drama, angst, and anxiety of not knowing where things stand that many other women experience on a daily basis. Most women are afraid to be real because they mistakenly believe that they’re not enough as they are. This “I’m not enough” mind-set not only is inaccurate but also destroys your well-being and ability to have a loving and satisfying relationship. Being yourself and speaking your truth from the moment you meet is the secret to having relationships unfold naturally and authentically. It is also the key to maintaining your irresistibility. Be yourself. Communicate what works you and what doesn’t. Do it from day one and never stop. This is the most powerful step you can take at the beginning of any relationship to set it up for long-term success. Speaking of relationship success, don’t confuse relationship longevity with relationship success. Just because a relationship lasts for many years does not mean it’s a success. Many couples cling to a lifeless and miserable existence they call a relationship because they are too afraid to be alone or to face the uncertainty of the unknown. Living a life of quiet desperation devoid of true love, passion, and spiritual partnership is not my idea of success. Relationships, again, are life’s grandest opportunity for spiritual growth and evolution. They exist so that we may discover ourselves, awaken our hearts, and heal our barriers to love. Every relationship you’ve ever had, or you ever will have, is designed to bring you closer to your divinity and ability to experience and express the very best of who you are.
Marie Forleo (Make Every Man Want You: How to Be So Irresistible You'll Barely Keep from Dating Yourself!)
When we’re putting up the barriers and the sense of “me” as separate from “you” gets stronger, right there in the midst of difficulty and pain, the whole thing could turn around simply by not erecting barriers; simply by staying open to the difficulty, to the feelings that you’re going through; simply by not talking to ourselves about what’s happening. That is a revolutionary step. Becoming intimate with pain is the key to changing at the core of our being—staying open to everything we experience, letting the sharpness of difficult times pierce us to the heart, letting these times open us, humble us, and make us wiser and more brave. Let difficulty transform you. And it will. In my experience, we just need help in learning how not to run away.
Pema Chödrön (Practicing Peace in Times of War)
381 On the question of being understandable.— One does not only wish to be understood when one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood. It is not by any means necessarily an objection to a book when anyone finds it impossible to understand: perhaps that was part of the author’s intention—he did not want to be understood by just “anybody.” All the nobler spirits and tastes select their audience when they wish to communicate; and choosing that, one at the same time erects barriers against “the others.” All the more subtle laws of any style have their origin at this point: they at the same time keep away, create a distance, forbid “entrance,” understanding, as said above—while they open the ears of those whose ears are related to ours.
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes & an Appendix of Songs)
Spoiling Argument is a kind of argument that begins when one partner deliberately –and for no immediately obvious reason – attempts to spoil the good mood and high spirits of the other. On the surface it looks as if we’re simply monsters. But if we dig a little deeper a more understandable (though no less regrettable) picture may emerge. We are acting in this way because our partner’s buoyant and breezy mood can come across as a forbidding barrier to communication. We fear that their current happiness could prevent them from knowing the shame or melancholy, worry or loneliness that presently possesses us. A dark instinct in our minds experiences our partner’s upbeat mood as a warning that our uncheery parts must now be unwelcome and are, through their remorseless negativity, in a garbled and maddening way begging us for reassurance.
Alain de Botton (The School of Life: An Emotional Education)
If you are writing for an educated audience and, to take an example, you use the phrase mutatis mutandis, you are not showing off—you are communicating. You are using words to do what words are supposed to do. It reminds me of the time that someone complained to William F. Buckley about all the unusual words that he would employ. His reply was that the words were not unusual to him. Words are there for a reason, and foreign phrases can often do the trick that more homey phrases cannot. But if you are blogging about your adventures as a shopping mom, and you write about your purchase of a 48-pack of corn dogs at Costco, and you describe them as de provenance étrangère, it had better be a joke. Unusual words or phrases (foreign and domestic) are a barrier to understanding, unless the point is to communicate to the reader that you know something they don't. Then they understand what you are doing quite well.
Douglas Wilson (Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life)
Though our main emphasis is intercession, a word may not be out of place here on the use of tongues in praise and thanksgiving. ‘If you bless with the Spirit . . . you may give thanks well enough’ (verses 16, 17). Paul’s restricting of the gift here is because of the presence of ‘the other man’ Who is not helped by an utterance he does not understand. In the solitude of one’s own devotions these restrictions no longer apply. Only God is present, and ‘one Who speaks in tongues speaks not to men but to God’ (verse 2). But is it not better to do it in your mother tongue and understand What you are saying? Not necessarily, or God would never have given this gift, nor would Paul have used it so much. Have we not known times when, in adoration of the Lord, we feel the inadequacy of our own language to express all that we feel in our hearts? The very language which is usually an indispensable channel of communication seems to become a barrier to communication. It is then that this gift comes to our aid, and the human spirit is released in an utterance of praise or thanksgiving that would not have been possible in our native tongue.
Arthur Wallis (Pray in the Spirit)
Imagine the following. Three groups of ten individuals are in a park at lunchtime with a rainstorm threatening. In the first group, someone says: “Get up and follow me.” When he starts walking and only a few others join in, he yells to those still seated: “Up, I said, and now!” In the second group, someone says: “We’re going to have to move. Here’s the plan. Each of us stands up and marches in the direction of the apple tree. Please stay at least two feet away from other group members and do not run. Do not leave any personal belongings on the ground here and be sure to stop at the base of the tree. When we are all there . . .” In the third group, someone tells the others: “It’s going to rain in a few minutes. Why don’t we go over there and sit under that huge apple tree. We’ll stay dry, and we can have fresh apples for lunch.” I am sometimes amazed at how many people try to transform organizations using methods that look like the first two scenarios: authoritarian decree and micromanagement. Both approaches have been applied widely in enterprises over the last century, but mostly for maintaining existing systems, not transforming those systems into something better. When the goal is behavior change, unless the boss is extremely powerful, authoritarian decree often works poorly even in simple situations, like the apple tree case. Increasingly, in complex organizations, this approach doesn’t work at all. Without the power of kings and queens behind it, authoritarianism is unlikely to break through all the forces of resistance. People will ignore you or pretend to cooperate while doing everything possible to undermine your efforts. Micromanagement tries to get around this problem by specifying what employees should do in detail and then monitoring compliance. This tactic can break through some of the barriers to change, but in an increasingly unacceptable amount of time. Because the creation and communication of detailed plans is deadly slow, the change produced this way tends to be highly incremental. Only the approach used in the third scenario above has the potential to break through all the forces that support the status quo and to encourage the kind of dramatic shifts found in successful transformations. (See figure 5–1.) This approach is based on vision—a central component of all great leadership.
John P. Kotter (Leading Change [with a New Preface])
This matter of not being able to understand may not be as drastic as you make it out. Of course two peoples and two languages will never be able to communicate with each other so intimately as two individuals who belong to the same nation and speak the same language. But that is no reason to forgo the effort at communication. Within nations there are also barriers which stand in the way of complete communication and complete mutual understanding, barriers of culture, education, talent, individuality. It might be asserted that every human being on earth can fundamentally hold a dialogue with every other human being, and it might also be asserted that there are no two persons in the world between whom genuine, whole, intimate understanding is possible - the one statement is as true as the other. It is Yin and Yang, day and night; both are right and at times we have to be reminded of both. To be sure, I too do not believe that you and I will ever be able to communicate fully, and without some residue of misunderstanding, with each other. But though you may be an occidental and I a Chinese, though we may speak different languages, if we are men of good will we shall have a great deal to say to each other, and beyond what is precisely communicable we can guess and sense a great deal about each other. At any rate let us try.
Hermann Hesse (The Glass Bead Game)
Fear is one of the biggest single factors that deprives one of being able to achieve your full potential. We experience fear more as a result of our internal communication of mind rather than because of actual external factors.Fear is an unseen enemy that whispers negative thoughts into your mind, body and soul. It tries to convince you that you will not prosper and that you cannot achieve your full potential.Our lives can be compared to beautiful streams, which are destined to flow, grow in majesty to create wonderful features such as cascading waterfalls, and give nourishment and life to those in its path.Sometimes we let fear put up a small dam in our rivers of life and it causes us to have stunted growth. We need to be able to rise above it, rise above the fear, break the dam and let our potential flow.When we allow fear to create dams in our rivers of life, then our streams become like the Dead Sea, which is stagnant and void of life and movement. When we confront fear, we break the dams and free our potential to flow forward.We are beings of immense potential, ability and skills. In order to realize our God given talents we need to break through the fear barrier, which through its invisible walls traps us better than any physical prison can be constructed by the hands of man. Our human will and faith can break any barriers that fear can construct.
Inshan Meahjohn
There’s a slogan in the mahayana1 teachings that says, “Drive all blames into oneself.” The essence of this slogan is, “When it hurts so bad, it’s because I am hanging on so tight.” It’s not saying that we should beat ourselves up. It’s not advocating martyrdom. What it implies is that pain comes from holding so tightly to having it our own way and that one of the main exits we take when we find ourselves uncomfortable, when we find ourselves in an unwanted situation or an unwanted place, is to blame. We habitually erect a barrier called blame that keeps us from communicating genuinely with others, and we fortify it with our concepts of who’s right and who’s wrong. We do that with the people who are closest to us, and we do it with political systems, with all kinds of things that we don’t like about our associates or our society. It is a very common, ancient, well-perfected device for trying to feel better. Blame others. Blaming is a way to protect our hearts, to try to protect what is soft and open and tender in ourselves. Rather than own that pain, we scramble to find some comfortable ground. This slogan is a helpful and interesting suggestion that we could begin to shift that deep-seated, ancient, habitual tendency to hang on to having everything on our own terms. The way to start would be, first, when we feel the tendency to blame, to try to get in touch with what it feels like to be holding on to ourselves so tightly. What does it feel like to blame? How does it feel to reject? What does it feel like to hate? What does it feel like to be righteously indignant? In each of us, there’s a lot of softness, a lot of heart. Touching that soft spot has to be the starting place. This is what compassion is all about. When we stop blaming long enough to give ourselves an open space in which to feel our soft spot, it’s as if we’re reaching down to touch a large wound that lies right underneath
Pema Chödrön (When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (Shambhala Classics))
One does not only wish to be understood when one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood. It is by no means necessarily an objection to a book when anyone finds it incomprehensible. Perhaps that was part of the author's intention — he didn't want to be understood by just 'anybody'. Every nobler spirit and taste selects his audience when he wants to communicate; in selecting it, he simultaneously erects barriers against 'the others'. All subtler laws of a style originated therein: they simultaneously keep away, create a distance, forbid 'entrance', understanding, as said above — while they open the ears of those whose ears are related to ours. And let me say this amongst ourselves and about my own case: I want neither the inexperience nor the liveliness of my temperament to keep me from being understandable to you, my friends — not the liveliness, as much as it forces me to deal with a matter swiftly in order to deal with it at all. For I approach deep problems such as I do cold baths: fast in, fast out. That this is no way to get to the depths, to get deep enough, is the superstition of those who fear water, the enemies of cold water; they speak without experience. Oh, the great cold makes one fast! And incidentally: does a matter stay unrecognized, not understood, merely because it has been touched in flight; is only glanced at, seen in a flash? Does one absolutely have to sit firmly on it first? At least there are truths that are especially shy and ticklish and can't be caught except suddenly — that one must surprise or leave alone. Finally, my brevity has yet another value: given the questions that occupy me, I must say many things briefly so that they will be heard even more briefly. For, as an immoralist, one needs to avoid corrupting innocents — I mean, asses and old maids of both sexes to whom life offers nothing but their innocence; even more, my writing should inspire, elevate, and encourage them to be virtuous.
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs)
Just as the printing press led to the appearance of a new set of possibilities for democracy, beginning five hundred years ago—and just as the emergence of electronic broadcasting reshaped those possibilities, beginning in the first quarter of the twentieth century—the Internet is presenting us with new possibilities to reestablish a healthy functioning self-government, even before it rivals television for an audience. In fact, the Internet is perhaps the greatest source of hope for reestablishing an open communications environment in which the conversation of democracy can flourish. It has extremely low entry barriers for individuals. The ideas that individuals contribute are dealt with, in the main, according to the rules of a meritocracy of ideas. It is the most interactive medium in history and the one with the greatest potential for connecting individuals to one another and to a universe of knowledge. An important distinction to make is that the Internet is not just another platform for disseminating the truth. It’s a platform for pursuing the truth, and the decentralized creation and distribution of ideas, in the same way that markets are a decentralized mechanism for the creation and distribution of goods and services. It’s a platform, in other words, for reason. But just as it is important to avoid romanticizing the printing press and the information ecosystem it created, it is also necessary to keep a clear-eyed view of the Internet’s problems and abuses. It is hard to imagine any human evil that is not somehow abundantly displayed somewhere on the Internet. Parents of young children are often horrified to learn what obscene, grotesque, and savage material is all too easily available to children whose Web-surfing habits are not supervised or electronically limited. Teen suicides, bullying, depravity, and criminal behavior of all descriptions are described and—some would argue—promoted on the Internet. As with any tool put at the disposal of humankind, it can be, and is, used for evil as well as good purposes. And as always, it is up to us—particularly those of us who live in a democracy—to make intelligent choices about how and for what we use this incredibly powerful tool.
Al Gore (The Assault on Reason)
Sinclair James - English Communication Language in Asia Is English Language a Hindrance to Communication for Foreigners in Asia? One of the hesitations of westerners in coming to Asia is the language barrier. True, Asia has been a melting pot of different aspects of life that in every country, there is a distinct characteristic and a culture which would seem odd to someone who grew up in an entirely different perspective. Language is one of the most flourishing uniqueness of Asian nations. Although their boundaries are emphasized by mere walls which can be broken down easily, the brand of each individual can still be determined on the language they use or most comfortable with. Communication may be a problem as it is an issue which neighboring countries also encounter on each other. Message relays or even simple gestures, if interpreted wrongly can cause conflicts. Indeed, the complaints are valid. However, on the present day number of American and European visitors and the boost in tourism economies, language barriers seem to have been surpassed. Perhaps, the problem may not even exist at all. According to English Language Proficiency Test (ELPT) and International English Language Testing System (IELTS), Asian countries are not altogether illiterate in speaking and understanding the universal language. If so, there are countries which can even speak English as fluent as any native can. Take for example the Philippines. Once in Manila, the country’s capital, you will find thousands of individuals representing different nationalities. The center for business growth in the country, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) has proven the literacy of the people in conversing using the international language. Clients from abroad prefer Filipinos in dealing with customers concern since they can easily comprehend grasp and explain things in English. ELPT and IELTS did not even include the Philippines in the list of the top English speaking nations in Asia since they are already considered one of the best and most fluent in this field. Other neighboring Asian countries also send their citizens to the Philippines to learn English. With a mixture of British and American English being used in everyday conversations, the Philippines has to be considered to be included in the top 5 most native English speakers. You may even be surprised to meet a young child in Manila who has not gone to school or mingled with foreigners but can speak and understand English. Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and most Asian countries, if indeed all, can also easily understand and speak English. It seems that the concern for miscommunication has completely no basis and remains a groundless issue. Maybe perhaps, those who say this just want to find a dumb excuse? Read more at: SjTravels.com
James Sinclair
The most effective way of making people accept the validity of the values they are to serve is to persuade them that they are really the same as those which they, or at least the best among them, have always held, but which were not properly understood or recognized before. The people are made to transfer their allegiance from the old gods to the new under the pretense that the new gods really are what their sound instinct had always told them but what before they had only dimly seen. And the most efficient technique to this end is to use the old words but change their meaning. Few traits of totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial observer and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as the complete perversion of language, the change of meaning of the words by which the ideals of the new regimes are expressed. The worst sufferer in this respect is, of course, the word “liberty.” It is a word used as freely in totalitarian states as elsewhere. Indeed, it could almost be said—and it should serve as a warning to us to be on our guard against all the tempters who promise us New Liberties for Old 5 —that wherever liberty as we understand it has been destroyed, this has almost always been done in the name of some new freedom promised to the people. Even among us we have “planners for freedom” who promise us a “collective freedom for the group,” the nature of which may be gathered from the fact that its advocate finds it necessary to assure us that “naturally the advent of planned freedom does not mean that all [sic] earlier forms of freedom must be abolished.” Dr. Karl Mannheim, from whose work6 these sentences are taken, at least warns us that “a conception of freedom modelled on the preceding age is an obstacle to any real understanding of the problem.” But his use of the word “freedom” is as misleading as it is in the mouth of totalitarian politicians. Like their freedom, the “collective freedom” he offers us is not the freedom of the members of society but the unlimited freedom of the planner to do with society what he pleases.7 It is the confusion of freedom with power carried to the extreme. In this particular case the perversion of the meaning of the word has, of course, been well prepared by a long line of German philosophers and, not least, by many of the theoreticians of socialism. But “freedom” or “liberty” are by no means the only words whose meaning has been changed into their opposites to make them serve as instruments of totalitarian propaganda. We have already seen how the same happens to “justice” and “law,” “right” and “equality.” The list could be extended until it includes almost all moral and political terms in general use. If one has not one’s self experienced this process, it is difficult to appreciate the magnitude of this change of the meaning of words, the confusion which it causes, and the barriers to any rational discussion which it creates. It has to be seen to be understood how, if one of two brothers embraces the new faith, after a short while he appears to speak a different language which makes any real communication between them impossible. And the confusion becomes worse because this change of meaning of the words describing political ideals is not a single event but a continuous process, a technique employed consciously or unconsciously to direct the people. Gradually, as this process continues, the whole language becomes despoiled, and words become empty shells deprived of any definite meaning, as capable of denoting one thing as its opposite and used solely for the emotional associations which still adhere to them.
Friedrich A. Hayek (The Road to Serfdom)
The Babel fish,” said The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy quietly, “is small, yellow and leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish. “Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a fina and clinching proof of the nonexistence of God. “The argument goes something like this: ‘I refuse to prove that I exist,’ says God, for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.’ “‘But,’ says Man, ‘the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.’ “‘Oh dear,’ says God, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. “‘Oh, that was easy,’ says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next pedestrian crossing. “Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo’s kidneys, but that didn’t stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book, Well That about Wraps It Up for God. “Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.
Anonymous
How can you gain a full understanding of a subject when you don't understand the words used to explain it? Well, that's why words are the biggest hidden barrier to understanding that almost everyone completely overlooks. Simply put, if you have misunderstandings about the words being used to communicate specific concepts, you will not duplicate the communications exactly - you will reach your own distorted conclusions due to misinterpretation.
Michael Matthews (Bigger Leaner Stronger: The Simple Science of Building the Ultimate Male Body)
The answers are perhaps as varied as the questions one asks, but a common theme that comes through in discussions with caregivers on the front lines and those who think a great deal about patient safety, is our failure to change our culture. What we have not done, they say, is create a “culture of safety,” as has been done so impressively in other industries, such as commercial aviation, nuclear power and chemical manufacturing. These “high-reliability organizations” are intrinsically hazardous enterprises that have succeeded in becoming (amazingly!) safe. Worse, the culture of health care is not only unsafe, it is incredibly dysfunctional. Though the culture of each health care organization is unique, they all suffer many of the same disabilities that have, so far, effectively stymied progress: An authoritarian structure that devalues many workers, lack of a sense of personal accountability, autonomous functioning and major barriers to effective communication. What is a culture of safety? Pretty much the opposite! Books have been written on the subject, and every expert has his or her own specific definition. But an underlying theme, a common denominator, is teamwork, founded on an open, supportive, mutually reinforcing, dedicated relationship among all participants. Much more is required, of course: Sensitivity to hazard, sense of personal responsibility, attitudes of awareness and risk, sense of personal responsibility and more. But those attitudes, that type of teamwork and those types of relationships are rarely found in health care organizations.
John J. Nance (Why Hospitals Should Fly: The Ultimate Flight Plan to Patient Safety and Quality Care)
For many people, writing is a way to clarify their thoughts and communicate their deepest understandings. For others, writing is a barrier to communicating, a seemingly endless gauntlet of rules and restrictions, a daunting maze of grammar and structures. For some challenging students, the expectation to write across the curriculum is overwhelming, not so much an invitation to share as a minefield to cross. The expectation to write and write and write provokes shutdowns and conflicts. For these students, we offered a writing plan with two significant goals: 1) allowing the student to continue to receive direct instruction to improve written output, and 2) allowing the student to demonstrate understanding across the curriculum in ways other than writing.
Jeffrey Benson (Hanging In: Strategies for Teaching the Students Who Challenge Us Most)
Differences in personal style can impose formidable barriers to communication.
Pat MacMillan (The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork)
You see, we anti-feminists don’t dislike women in the least; we prize, cherish, and pity them. We are compassionate. Goodness, to think of the poor wretches having to waddle through life with all those absurd fatty appendages sticking out of them; to have all the useful part of their lives made miserable by the triple plague of constipation, menstruation and parturition; worst of all, to have to cope with these handicaps with only a kind of fuzzy half-brain – a pretty head randomly filled, like a tiddly-winks cup, with brightly-coloured scraps of rubbish – why, it wrings the very heart with pity. You know how your dog sometimes gazes anguishedly at you, its almost human eyes yearning to understand, longing to communicate? You remember how often you have felt that it was on the very brink of breaking through the barrier and joining you? I think that’s why you and I are so kind to women, bless ’em.
Kyril Bonfiglioli
… the next generations must grow up reading about autism at home. This is the only way to break the barriers of communication and interaction. We must let kids be kids!
Yadira V. Calderon
In the end, after advice from the Foreign Office, she decided make a three-day visit to Bosnia, still slowly recovering from civil war, in the company of the distinguished journalist Lord Deedes. He recalled not only her gentle sense of humour but her ability to listen and to communicate the uncommunicable. When she walked around Sarajevo’s largest cemetery she encountered a mother tending her son’s grave. ‘There was no language barrier,’ he wrote. ‘The two women gently embraced. Watched this scene from a distance, I sought in my mind who else could have done this. Nobody.
Andrew Morton (Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words)
All revolutions destroy defining structures of a previous era. The information revolution was no different. The limitations imposed by distance and geography were fundamental to the social, economic, and political structure of the nation-state. In 1995 Frances Cairncross, senior editor of the Economist, pointed out that information technology destroys distance, insamuch as distance serves as a barrier to communication.15 Decades earlier, scholars such as Daniel Bell accurately predicted that information technology would grind down the institutions of the modern era through deindustrialization.16 In 1997, William Julius Wilson confirmed, “Today’s close interaction between technology and international competition has eroded the basic institutions of the mass production system.”17 Just as there was a correlation between the development of industrial economies and the rise of centralized governments, there is a correlation between their disintegration. In 1937 the eminent sociologist William Ogburn correctly predicted that industrial technology would result in greater political centralization because the industrial economy required it. More recently Joseph S. Nye has suggested that while “the twentieth century saw a predominance of the centripetal forces predicted by Ogburn, the twenty-first may see a greater role of centrifugal forces.”18
Benjamin Schwartz (Right of Boom: The Aftermath of Nuclear Terrorism)
Over the years, they’d become accomplished at avoiding unpleasant topics. Their burdened demeanors spoke volumes through the silence.
Glenn B Miller (The Barrier: Parental concern never ends (Passing Book 1))
Their poking fun may be a sense of their inadequacy in communication, their underlying jealousy, their worries about exclusion from the conversation, and meeting someone different from themselves. For bilinguals meeting this situation, it is a matter of diplomacy, building bridges and breaking down barriers, keeping a good sense of humour, and trying to be tolerant. Pragmatically, rather than idealistically, it is bilinguals who often have to forge improved relationships. Bilinguals have the role of diplomats and not dividers, showing that language diversity does not mean social divisions, that speaking a different language can still mean a harmonious relationship. Ironically, those who are the victims have to become the healers.
Colin Baker (A Parents' and Teachers' Guide to Bilingualism)
The biggest barrier in communication is that tendency of listerning tentatively to reply and not for understanding purposes".
Wilson N Mukama
Thinking Alert: Monitor the “shoulds” in your teams. They are barriers to effective communication and reduce the potential power of the team.
Michael Nir (Agile scrum leadership : Influence and Lead ! Fundamentals for Personal and Professional Growth (Leadership Influence Project and Team Book 2))
Language is a tool for communicating and not a barrier to writing
Bernard Kelvin Clive
Our bodies have three types of immunity:   Infant Immunity Innate Immunity Acquired Immunity, or Humoral immunity   First of all there is infant immunity, the one you were born with. About the middle of the second trimester of your development, which would be around 20 weeks, some of your mother’s antibodies passed across the placental barrier into your blood stream. As far as modern science knows, in your mother’s womb, your developing body is completely sterile. Your blood is clean and so is your gut, free from any bacterium or virus. You will not encounter them, for the most part, until you are born. So in the second half of your fetal development these antibodies, which you received from your mother, are floating in your blood stream and will be ready to act when you take your first breath.   You received these from your mother because your body will not have the ability to make these antibodies until you are around 12 months of age - this is important to know. After six months, the mother’s antibodies you were born with begin to decrease as your own infant immunity begins to strengthen. This is why you rarely hear of infectious diseases like diphtheria, measles, and polio ever bothering an infant in the first sixth months of their life, unless this beautiful orchestra is somehow disrupted by outside influences such as antibiotics and/or other medicines, heavy metals, environmental toxins, and especially vaccines at any time during the first year of life. The thing to remember here is babies don’t have the ability to create antibodies until around the 12th month. So why are we injecting virus’ into their little bodies?   Any honest immunologist, communicable disease specialist, or public health official will tell you why babies are vaccinated prior to one year of age. It is simply to train the parents to bring their children into the doctor’s office for inoculations.
Jack Stockwell (How Vaccines Wreck Human Immunity: A Forbidden Doctor Publication (1))
I don’t think it’s healthy to have an argument about communication barriers on the date you’ve been manipulated into taking. In. A. Vampire. Bar.
Kristy Cunning (Gypsy Origins (All The Pretty Monsters #3))
We have a friend who used to commute by ferry between Staten Island and Manhattan, in New York City. The trip took nearly half an hour and could have been a frustration in a busy day. But this man, David Wilkerson, used the time on the boat for prayer in tongues. He would start off by thinking of all the things he had to be thankful for. In a reversal of Bob Morris's sequence, he would review them one by one in his mind, in English, praising God for each one. Bit by bit, inside him, he would feel a mounting sense of joy. He was conscious of being loved, being taken care of. He began to glimpse pattern and design in all that was happening to him. And suddenly, in trying to express his gratitude, he would reach a language barrier. English could no longer express what he felt. It was simply inadequate for the Being that he perceived. It was at this point that he would burst through into communication that was not limited by vocabulary. His spirit as well as his mind would start to praise God. Inevitably, by the time David reached the Manhattan pier, a transformation had taken place. He was built up in body and in spirit. He felt emboldened, ready to tackle impossible tasks, invigorated and refreshed, ready to meet whatever the day had to offer. And this was often important, for David Wilkerson is a youth worker among street gangs in the New York slums--a job that brings him into contact with teenage dope addicts, child prostitutes, young killers and some of the most discouraging and intractable problems in the world today.
John Sherrill (They Speak with Other Tongues: A Skeptic Investigates This Life-Changing Gift)
Do unto others as what others would have you do unto them—The Golden Rule restated. Kindred souls countenance no linguistic or cultural barriers to communication. My aim in life is to be shameless-but not to lose the sense of shame. Dear is Confucius. But dearer still is thought liberation. Break the rules, but not until you have mastered the grammar of life. Faith begins where, and only where, reason ends.
David Ho
The most common way to establish contact with our fellow men is through language. Yet like Strindberg, Bergman distrusts language as a means of communication in any deeper sense. We have already seen how Elisabet in Persona chooses muteness in the conviction that words equal lies. Taking Hummel’s remark in The Ghost Sonata to heart that languages are “codes” invented “to conceal the secrets of one tribe from the others,” Bergman often demonstrates how language rather than serve as a means of communication serves as a conscious or unconscious barrier. This idea is fundamental in The Silence, where the main characters are confronted with a language, construed by Bergman, which is as unintelligible to them as to us. The inability to understand the foreign language is here a metaphor for our inability to understand one another truly. While Anna in The Silencetries to communicate via the senses, her sister Ester, a professional translator, tries to do so via reason. In her attempt to understand the foreign language she is, like the Student in The Ghost Sonata, a seeker who tries to understand life intellectually. In the nightmarish exam scene of Wild Strawberries, professor emeritus Isak Borg, who has been a harsh examiner, finds himself in the position of his former students. It is now his turn to be harshly examined and to fail his exam. His failure is serious since the blackboard text Isak is unable to decipher tells what a doctor’s—read: man’s--primary duty is: to care for your fellow men. The sequence is a contamination of the Asylum scene in To Damascus I and the school scene in A Dream Play. In the former the Stranger is condemned for the wrongs he has done to his fellow men, in the latter the Officer, recently conferred doctor, finds himself returned to primary school. In Wild Strawberries we have a thematic counterpart of the school scene when young Sara tells Isak, as she holds a mirror in front of his face, that although he knows a lot, he knows in fact almost nothing—that is, about the essentials of life. When Tomas, the doubting priest in Winter Light sits down at one of the pupils’ desks in the local school, it is a discreet reminder that he, like Isak Borg and the Officer, needs to “mature” as it says in A Dream Play.
Egil Törnqvist
It’s a place where members are growing as leaders and learning to take responsibility for the success of their team. Where members are learning to accept and transcend their differences, resolve conflict rather than avoid it, disarm themselves of their personal barriers, and communicate effectively by practicing assertiveness and active listening.
James C. Hunter (The Culture: Creating Excellence With Those You Lead)
those professionally dedicated to preserving the peace. The tragedy of the diplomatic crisis that preceded the outbreak of the fighting in August 1914, which was to swell into the four-year tragedy of the Great War, is that events successively and progressively overwhelmed the capacity of statesmen and diplomats to control and contain them. Honourable and able men though they were, the servants of the chancelleries and foreign officers of the great powers in the July crisis were bound to the wheel of the written note, the encipherment routine, the telegraph schedule. The potentialities of the telephone, which might have cut across the barriers to communication, seem to have eluded their imaginative powers. The potentialities of radio, available but unused, evaded them altogether. In the event, the states of Europe proceeded, as if in a dead march and a dialogue of the deaf, to the destruction of their continent and its civilisation.
John Keegan (The First World War)
Armies, like families, are institutions that create a world. Both successfully engender the new member's respect, loyalty, love, affirmation, gratitude, and obedience. I speak of armies and families as creating social power, because the hold that each of these institutions has over its members comes to greatly exceed its moment-to-moment capacity to reward or punish and usually persists long after significant practical affiliation has ended. The following features are common to both of these world-making institutions, whether the new member experiences them as benign or malevolent: Barriers to escape Control of body and bodily functions What and when to eath When, where, and how much to sleep Body form (clothing, weight, haircut) When and where to urinate and defecate Lack of privacy regarding bodily functions Prolonged daily contact with power-holder in group Power-holder as source of small rewards, comfort, approval Inconsistent, unpredictable, capricious enforcement of rules Monopolization of communication, resources, control Secrecy regarding some activities and events Lack of alternative to seeing world through power-holder's eyes Required repetition of buzz words, songs, slogans, cliches, even if inwardly disbelieved and rejected
Jonathan Shay
only our generation that has been able to instantly communicate, unhindered by language barriers (employing internet translation abilities), with nation-to-nation and person-to-person communications capability. The Tower of Babel has been reconstructed. The biblical reality of a literal one-world communication process is here.
Thomas Horn (I Predict: What 12 Global Experts Believe You Will See Before 2025!)
Digital communications tools allow top performers to efficiently manage much larger organizations and reach much larger audiences. By breaking down the barriers to disseminating information, ICT empowers the world’s top knowledge workers and undercuts the economic role of many in the middle.
Kai-Fu Lee (AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order)
Individualism is a story line that creates, communicates, reproduces, and reinforces the concept that each of us is a unique individual and that our group memberships, such as race, class, or gender, are irrelevant to our opportunities. Individualism claims that there are no intrinsic barriers to individual success and that failure is not a consequence of social structures but comes from individual character. According to the ideology of individualism, race is irrelevant. Of course, we do occupy distinct race, gender, class, and other positions that profoundly shape our life chances in ways that are not natural, voluntary, or random; opportunity is not equally distributed across race, class, and gender. On some level, we know that Bill Gates’s son was born into a set of opportunities that will benefit him throughout his life, whether he is mediocre or exceptional. Yet even though Gates’s son has clearly been handed unearned advantage, we cling tightly to the ideology of individualism when asked to consider our own unearned advantages.
Robin DiAngelo (White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism)
Individualism is a story line that creates, communicates, reproduces, and reinforces the concept that each of us is a unique individual and that our group memberships, such as race, class, or gender, are irrelevant to our opportunities. Individualism claims that there are no intrinsic barriers to individual success and that failure is not a consequence of social structures but comes from individual character.
Robin DiAngelo (White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism)
The most common way to establish contact with our fellow men is through language. Yet like Strindberg, Bergman distrusts language as a means of communication in any deeper sense. We have already seen how Elisabet in Persona chooses muteness in the conviction that words equal lies. Taking Hummel’s remark in The Ghost Sonata to heart that languages are “codes” invented “to conceal the secrets of one tribe from the others,” Bergman often demonstrates how language rather than serve as a means of communication serves as a conscious or unconscious barrier. This idea is fundamental in The Silence, where the main characters are confronted with a language, construed by Bergman, which is as unintelligible to them as to us. The inability to understand the foreign language is here a metaphor for our inability to understand one another truly. While Anna in The Silence tries to communicate via the senses, her sister Ester, a professional translator, tries to do so via reason. In her attempt to understand the foreign language she is, like the Student in The Ghost Sonata, a seeker who tries to understand life intellectually. In the nightmarish exam scene of Wild Strawberries, professor emeritus Isak Borg, who has been a harsh examiner, finds himself in the position of his former students. It is now his turn to be harshly examined and to fail his exam. His failure is serious since the blackboard text Isak is unable to decipher tells what a doctor’s—read: man’s--primary duty is: to care for your fellow men. The sequence is a contamination of the Asylum scene in To Damascus I and the school scene in A Dream Play. In the former the Stranger is condemned for the wrongs he has done to his fellow men, in the latter the Officer, recently conferred doctor, finds himself returned to primary school. In Wild Strawberries we have a thematic counterpart of the school scene when young Sara tells Isak, as she holds a mirror in front of his face, that although he knows a lot, he knows in fact almost nothing—that is, about the essentials of life. When Tomas, the doubting priest in Winter Light sits down at one of the pupils’ desks in the local school, it is a discreet reminder that he, like Isak Borg and the Officer, needs to “mature” as it says in A Dream Play.
Egil Törnqvist
The Soviet counterpart to the Green Bank meeting, the First All-Union Conference on Extraterrestrial Civilizations and Interstellar Communication, was held in May 1964, at the Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory in Soviet Armenia. Perhaps less concerned about the “ridicule barrier” and any public threat to research funding in their more centralized scientific enterprise, the Soviet scientists were eager to publish their papers. So this is the first SETI meeting for which published proceedings exist. The
David Grinspoon (Earth in Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet's Future)
Mirroring is especially helpful when our differences may divide. Think of the times when you have made a diligent effort to speak in another person’s native language to communicate and connect with comfort. By doing this, you are extending a considerate courtesy to meet them where they are, thus removing barriers and improving engagement.
Susan C. Young (The Art of Body Language: 8 Ways to Optimize Non-Verbal Communication for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #3))
12 Ways to Improve & Project Confident Posture 1. Go people watching. Note how you interpret the different postures you observe. This will expand your awareness of how posture impacts first impressions and will help you become more aware of yours. 2. Stand in front of a mirror to see what other people are seeing. Are your shoulders level? Are your hips level? Do you appear aligned? Are you projecting confidence or timidity? 3. Take posture pictures to provide you with points of reference and a baseline over time. Look at past photos of yourself. 4. Stand with your back against a wall and align your spine. 5. Evenly balance on both feet, spaced hip-width apart. 6. Take yoga or Pilates classes to strengthen your core muscles, improve flexibility, and balance, all which support your posture. 7. Consciously pull your shoulders back, stand erect with chin held high. 8. Practice tucking in your stomach, pulling your shoulders back, raising your chin, and looking straight ahead. 9. Sit up straight without being rigid. 10. Enter a room like you belong there or own it. 11. Stand with an open stance to be welcoming and approachable. 12. Angle your body towards the person to whom you are speaking. Angling your body away may signify that you are indifferent, fearful, putting up a barrier, or trying to get away from them.
Susan C. Young (The Art of Body Language: 8 Ways to Optimize Non-Verbal Communication for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #3))
When you are sitting behind a desk with a person on the other side, there is a barrier between you that becomes a psychological and subliminal message. Some of the best leaders I know have a round table or a circle of chairs in their offices so that when people come in to speak with them, the arrangement lends itself to more engaging interaction. Using a roundtable in which there is no head fosters collaboration, cooperation, mutual respect, and equal positioning.
Susan C. Young (The Art of Body Language: 8 Ways to Optimize Non-Verbal Communication for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #3))
Look for all of the possible missteps in the following scenario. My friend Amy arrived at a consultation with her Hispanic business partner. The African American woman to whom they were delivering their presentation was a long-time friend of her partner’s. Her partner was greeted with a hug and Amy was greeted with a handshake. The meeting was a great success. As it came to a close, the two friends hugged. With enthusiastic affection, Amy went to hug the African American client. The woman took a step, turned her shoulder to block the hug, and looked at Amy with dismissive anger. It was almost a defensive move. Her partner, recognizing this, put her arm around Amy to soften the situation and make light of the inappropriate gesture. Everything turned out fine, but Amy was baffled by the barrier. She was confused by the woman’s reaction since their interaction had been cordial and positive. She wondered if she had been socially insensitive or culturally inappropriate. After much reflection, however, she realized that she had simply been too quick to assume familiarity. Thankfully, she earned and learned the lesson quickly to become more aware. Amy eventually earned the trust of her client and secured her valuable business.
Susan C. Young (The Art of Body Language: 8 Ways to Optimize Non-Verbal Communication for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #3))
Since we are all unique and individual, being cognizant of different personality styles will help you better recognize where others are coming from to minimize barriers, build trust, and catapult your newfound communication skills into meaningful connections. The savvy socializer knows this all.
Susan C. Young (The Art of Communication: 8 Ways to Confirm Clarity & Understanding for Positive Impact(The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #5))