Interpretation
Most human interaction has an element of interpretation to it. What we means to express, and what other people make of it, are often very different. As a fiction author it’s something I can exploit. Slightly ambiguous writing gives people room to bring their own stories and ideas to mine, and that can make for a richer reading experience. It’s not all good fun though.
History is full of interpretations, as we ascribe meanings and lines of causality to the past. The culture and assumptions of the interpreter will colour what they see. Across Pagan traditions we are still dealing with the legacy of Frazer, who considered traditional people around the world a viable model for the ‘primitive’ European. His prejudice, assumption and colonial attitude narrowed down Paganism to an idea about fertility and very little more. We also have the legacy of Gimbutas, whose feminist ideas encouraged her to see an organised, matriarchal, Goddess worshipping society, and again to miss the complexities and reduce the history down to something restricted and misleading.
When it comes to religion, all we can do is interpret the past. We are never going to dig up a belief. We can find writing about what people said they believed, but you only have to look at modern newspapers to know that what people proclaim in public is not always what they practice in private. We can’t dig up feelings in the graves of our ancestors, at least, not in any way we can substantiate and agree upon.
Interpretation is not just an academic issue though. We might want to consider how we interpret the causalities in our own history. Where do we apportion blame, or credit? We can read in lines of connection that have nothing to do with what was happening. Coincidence can be highly misleading, and the desire to find ourselves innocent of all offence can incline us to skew the evidence in our favour.
Our lives are full of interpreted data, often thrown at us by politicians. The media is often full of ‘facts’ that turn out, on closer inspection, to be highly suspect. The current education minister here in the UK seems to think that all children should be able to get above average results, for example. A brief foray into the meaning of ‘average’ should ring some alarm bells here. We’re killing badgers based on research that suggests it could make a 16% difference to TB in cattle. Turn that on its head and what you see is more like 84% worth of no difference at all. It’s all in the interpretation and the presentation. 50% of all children are doomed to be below average, no matter how well we teach them. That’s what a mean average is all about.
In our own lives and interactions, how much interpretation do we bring into play? If someone makes an absolute statement ‘never do this’ for example, do we quietly shuffle that round to imagine it means ‘sometimes’ and carry on as we please? Do we hear ‘no’ as ‘maybe’? That’s one of the quick routes to raping a person. Do we say ‘never’ when we mean ‘maybe later’ encouraging the people around us not to hear ‘no’ as an absolute? Do we interpret other people’s words and then hold them accountable, based only on what we think they said? Do we keep doing that even when they try to explain what they meant was something else entirely? All too often, the answer is ‘yes’. It makes for exhausting, impossible attempts at communication, largely doomed to failure and frustration. If we neither speak clearly nor listen clearly, but keep reading in our own agenda, the one thing we cannot have, is truth. Neither our own, nor anyone else’s. Language is an imprecise tool and mistakes are inevitable, but it helps if we’re more interested in communicating than in trying to score points.
I’ve developed a personal preference for people who try to communicate well, who are willing to listen, and are not so caught up in their own story that they cannot consider an alternative. I’ve seen too much of the other thing. I have come to the conclusion that faced with people who are determined to interpret my words to fit their agenda, such that firm statements are bent out of recognition, and vaguer ones pinned down with meanings they didn’t even imply, I shall quit. I’m not on a personal mission to try and save everyone from the consequences of their own actions. I have a finite amount of time and am not going to squander it arguing with people who are always right, no matter what.
And who are no doubt quite capable of hearing that as “of course in your special case I can be persuaded” because that is the nature of the beast.
