"What we have here is a failure to communicate."

So, I was reflecting on some of my classes today and I remembered a snippet from an article we read. In it, the author said something to the effect of "To the typical teenager of today, with the rise in popularity of Facebook and especially Twitter, if something cannot be said in 140 characters or less, it's not really worth saying." This is where my brief time as an English major made me reflect on how quickly our languages is shrinking, too. Not only are we losing words, but were losing the ability to use them in any sort of complex way.

This strikes me as terribly sad, and a little frightening. Not to get TOO paranoid, but this systematic reduction of language seems almost Orwellian. As we lose words, we lose the ability to express complex parts of our humanity. Now, I don't want to make too many enemies here, but the example that popped into my head was the difference in song lyrics over time, in this case Christian worship music. Here are the songs that came to mind, the older song first, and then the new:

"Could we with ink the oceans fill,
And were the skies of parchment made;
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade.
To Write the love of God above
Would drain the oceans dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole
Though stretched from sky to sky."
     ~"The Love of God" by Frederick Martin Lehman

"God in my sleeping
God in my resting
There in my working
God in my thinking
God in my speaking

Be my everything
Be my everything
Be my everything
Be my everything
     (repeat)
     ~"Be my Everything" by Tim Hughes

Now don't get me wrong, the second song is completely true. God is God no matter what my state of being is, but it just strikes me as too simple. The honesty of the song is there, but is there really and truly no better way to express the unchanging nature of the Almighty God then in a sang where the lyrical rhyme scheme is AAAAAAAAA?

Now if you look at secular music, the effect is still visible. We have moved from songs like "Some Kind of Wonderful" and "My Girl" to songs called "Stupid Hoe" and "Sexy B***h". Firstly, what does that say about the effect of... well, feminism to be sure, but our culture in general. Secondly, there are plenty more examples like that. Now I know some of you will point out that the current musical trend is shifting away from lyrics to a mere emphasis on the music itself, and that argument holds some weight, but honestly I don't think that accounts for all of it.

I think that author I mentioned earlier might be right. As a culture, we are slowly shifting our definition of what is worth saying, how we say it, and even to an extent what we are capable of saying. We have moved from the bestselling books being things like Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" to Jasper Fforde's "50 shades of Grey". No longer do we desire to peer into the heart and soul of our fellow man, or to challenge our minds to follow twists and turns of complex plots. We settle for base and lustful writing that promotes only self gratification and promiscuity. The mind is no longer a fertile field for intellectual exercise; it is a landfill to fill with whatever happens to be passing by.