Writing began with pictures; tens of thousands of years ago man communicated things through pictures drawn on the walls of caves. Pictures began glyphs that meant expressions or actions and then we had complete alphabets grow out of the glyphs. Chinese, for example progressed from pictographs to ideographs to logographs where there is a mixture of symbols expressing pictures, ideas, words or portions of words. English grew out of symbols that express sounds vice ideas but in the past decade we have begun to digress with the use of glyphs once again expressing actions and emotions. These symbols originally grew out of the limitations of technology where the number of words or characters that could be sent was insufficient for writing out a sentence that would express the action or emotion. Now, even though technology has advanced where we could use words many still choose not too. The technicians, observing this behavior have increased the number of available glyphs such that entire messages may now be a series of glyphs; not unlike the communications of Meso-American peoples of the first centuries AD or more ancient cultures like the 20th century BC Egyptians.
In other words communication skills are digressing. The use of emojis and other glyphs is decreasing the ability of the current generation to express themselves in English and that is decreasing the number of words, the meaning of which are known and used by the general population.
In the near past music had different rhythms and singers used their voices as musical instruments. Today music is mostly a mixture of loud sounds and the voice is simply shouted. Dancing which used to have steps where two partners would execute those steps in time to the music. When you went to the music store and bought sheet music it would have the name of the song printed at the top followed by the type of music like, Waltz or Foxtrot or maybe Cha-cha. Now dancing is mainly jumping up and down while your hearing is adversely affected. True there are still places where you can go to hear the voice as a musical instrument and understand the words of the singer but that is a tradition carried on by the older members of society.
Thus, today’s music and dancing approximates the old tribal tradition of people jumping up and down around a fire to the throb of beats from a series of drums made from animal skins or hollow logs.
In the U.S. we have many tribes, each with it own narrative that the tribe wants to become the overarching narrative of the nation as a whole. There’s the climate tribe, the people of color tribe, the native people tribe, the sexual orientation tribe, the law and order tribe, the socialist tribe, the capitalist tribe, the tribe of anarchy, the history revisionist tribe and so forth. There are many and each seeks prominence, seeking to determine how the rest of society will live and speak. Now make no mistake, each of these tribes seek complete domination over society. There is no middle ground and no room for compromise. It’s victory at all costs.
Each of these tribes have bought politicians who advance the tribes narrative in Washington, D.C. There used to be a saying the controversy sells newspapers. Today it’s controversy draws in viewers and it is those demographics are what bring in advertisers’ money and money, is, the root of …. It is the root of many things although if you’re thinking evil it is that too. Thus, the media seeks to create controversy through the structuring of how it reports and supports one tribe against another.
I have asked this question more than once, “Who turned off the fire under the melting pot?” The very thing that made the United States a strong national entity was the integration of different cultures under the rubric of constitutionalism. But now each tribe interprets the Constitution for its own purposes and each operates on the principle of “the ends justify the means” and the ends are for each of the tribes to achieve supremacy.
I don’t have an answer for this but there is historical precedence of nations failing from internal strife fed in no small part by others nations seeking dominance in the world. It is only through action on the part of each good person who will act in the interest of the nation and not in the interest of any one individual tribe. Where are the good people wiling to stand and shout “ENOUGH!” and then act? Are you one?