Cadence
I would like to address the importance of cadence in speech and writing.
A good way to understand cadence is to think of a song. This song might have a harmony and a melody and a rhythm.
Similarly, one's speech can be deconstructed into
Melody, the notes and rises and falls of your voice
Harmony, the body language and facial expressions that add emphasis or additional meaning, sometimes with a slant.
Rhythm, the pace of your speech. Maybe a drawl over certain words or a rapid-fire spitting of syllables.
How are each of these interpreted by the listener?
What makes the most lasting impression on the listener?
The reality is that each interpretation is entirely subject to the patterns of communication we've all essentially agreed to accept over time. We are encoded with the collective history of humanity and all life that came before us.
A loud, barked scream combined with a menacing expression is universally understood to be intended to fear the recipient of said display, while perhaps also issuing a command or threat verbally.
A soft whisper, a caress, wide eyes and relaxed lips. This expression serves to bring ones guard down, though not necessarily with any malintent. In a sense, expressions of love can only be transmitted successfully when one's guard is down or is feeling trusting and safe.
And love is hugely significant part of life. It provides meaning for me. It's almost a sixth sense. It is that gut feeling you get when you know someone understands what you are feeling, because you're feeling the same thing the same time. A true expression of love is a rare moment, indeed.
This expression is just as crucial to the perpetuation of humanity as the one that conveys intimidation. If one can drive off a foe through body language and speech, that is far preferably than risking life in combat.
So, we develop the melody, harmony, and rhythm to create bonds between us that make life worth living, and we protect those bonds.
Sometimes we sacrifice ourselves for the bonds. Other times we dissolve the bond to save ourselves. This is part of life. We commemorate individual lives with ceremony and sorrow. We should commemorate relationships better, rather than burying them in our minds memory bank or forgetting them altogether.
Not all relationships are good and easy, though not all humans live good and easy lives.
It is a shame that so many interactions between us must be considered a competition with a winner and a loser. In many of these interactions, a mutually understood hierarchy removes the need for a victor, as it were, such as in a school, business, or army.
But out in the world these expressions of power are happening constantly, when what is need is more expressions of love.
The problem with the advanced modern societies as we've come to understand them is that we identify with a nationality now, rather than a village.
In theory, this would allow states to contain their internal disputes to keep them from spilling over. But instead all the states decided to fight each other, pitting millions of men from villages far, far away from each other against one another in endless miles of muddy trenches, then sending barrages of explosives at each other for years, and equipping each man with a gun and sending him to charge at a wall of hot lead.
Millions upon millions died senselessly. Each one a terrible tragedy, a mind with consciousness snuffed out of existence.
Or was it sensible? No, of course not, it was something resembling insanity.
But are we witnessing the greatest population boom ever conceived on Earth, fueled and fed by energy from within and on the Earth?
Will we witness a great leveling out of numbers when the Earth recorrects to true carrying capacity once the petroleum and gas dry up?
Can we feed and hydrate and shelter and inoculate from disease x billion more of us? Do we really want to find the limit? Or can we please, for the love of all that is good, and peaceful, and bountiful, for the love of a life not cut short by a bullet or a lack of nutrients, can we please come to an agreement on this?
We cannot continue fucking around with this. This is not a political issue. This is THE ISSUE.
Solutions. Let's discuss.
A good way to understand cadence is to think of a song. This song might have a harmony and a melody and a rhythm.
Similarly, one's speech can be deconstructed into
Melody, the notes and rises and falls of your voice
Harmony, the body language and facial expressions that add emphasis or additional meaning, sometimes with a slant.
Rhythm, the pace of your speech. Maybe a drawl over certain words or a rapid-fire spitting of syllables.
How are each of these interpreted by the listener?
What makes the most lasting impression on the listener?
The reality is that each interpretation is entirely subject to the patterns of communication we've all essentially agreed to accept over time. We are encoded with the collective history of humanity and all life that came before us.
A loud, barked scream combined with a menacing expression is universally understood to be intended to fear the recipient of said display, while perhaps also issuing a command or threat verbally.
A soft whisper, a caress, wide eyes and relaxed lips. This expression serves to bring ones guard down, though not necessarily with any malintent. In a sense, expressions of love can only be transmitted successfully when one's guard is down or is feeling trusting and safe.
And love is hugely significant part of life. It provides meaning for me. It's almost a sixth sense. It is that gut feeling you get when you know someone understands what you are feeling, because you're feeling the same thing the same time. A true expression of love is a rare moment, indeed.
This expression is just as crucial to the perpetuation of humanity as the one that conveys intimidation. If one can drive off a foe through body language and speech, that is far preferably than risking life in combat.
So, we develop the melody, harmony, and rhythm to create bonds between us that make life worth living, and we protect those bonds.
Sometimes we sacrifice ourselves for the bonds. Other times we dissolve the bond to save ourselves. This is part of life. We commemorate individual lives with ceremony and sorrow. We should commemorate relationships better, rather than burying them in our minds memory bank or forgetting them altogether.
Not all relationships are good and easy, though not all humans live good and easy lives.
It is a shame that so many interactions between us must be considered a competition with a winner and a loser. In many of these interactions, a mutually understood hierarchy removes the need for a victor, as it were, such as in a school, business, or army.
But out in the world these expressions of power are happening constantly, when what is need is more expressions of love.
The problem with the advanced modern societies as we've come to understand them is that we identify with a nationality now, rather than a village.
In theory, this would allow states to contain their internal disputes to keep them from spilling over. But instead all the states decided to fight each other, pitting millions of men from villages far, far away from each other against one another in endless miles of muddy trenches, then sending barrages of explosives at each other for years, and equipping each man with a gun and sending him to charge at a wall of hot lead.
Millions upon millions died senselessly. Each one a terrible tragedy, a mind with consciousness snuffed out of existence.
Or was it sensible? No, of course not, it was something resembling insanity.
But are we witnessing the greatest population boom ever conceived on Earth, fueled and fed by energy from within and on the Earth?
Will we witness a great leveling out of numbers when the Earth recorrects to true carrying capacity once the petroleum and gas dry up?
Can we feed and hydrate and shelter and inoculate from disease x billion more of us? Do we really want to find the limit? Or can we please, for the love of all that is good, and peaceful, and bountiful, for the love of a life not cut short by a bullet or a lack of nutrients, can we please come to an agreement on this?
We cannot continue fucking around with this. This is not a political issue. This is THE ISSUE.
Solutions. Let's discuss.
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