When it comes to communicating with other people, we often face difficulties in regard to the effectiveness of the words we use.
For instance, when I say the word, "epistemology", what do you envision in your mind? If you are an academic person, you will probably be able to imagine its meaning in terms of academic papers you've read as well as their abstract narratives and cross-references.
The vast majority of other people, however, do not share the same level of knowledge which you may happen to have in your mind. Without a sufficient degree of background information in the context of philosophy, one simply cannot comprehend the meaning of the word "epistemology" without taking great pains investigating its origin.
The same goes with other abstract terminologies. Words such as "matrix", "vector", "derivative", or "predicate", can only be understood by those who have been acquainted with the study of mathematics. In the same vein, words such as "faith", "salvation", "sin", or "redemption", can only be accurately grasped by those who have at least studied the basic concepts in theology.
The problem is that no one knows everything, and that each person is only familiar with a tiny fraction of what the world knows as a whole. This sort of limitation renders it difficult for a musician to understand an accountant, a soldier to understand a poet, and a monk to understand a lawyer.
As a result, we are living in an inexplicably fragmented world, where everyone is speaking their own language. Cliques of like-minded experts lock themselves up in their impenetrable ivory towers, and refuse to communicate with the rest of the world.
What gave birth to this pandemic of mutual isolation? In my opinion, it all began with the sophistry of human mind and its tendency to use words that are dead rather than alive. What I mean by this will become clear in the example below.
If I say words such as "postmodernism", "teleology", or "substantialism", it will be hard for most readers to picture them in their minds. And the reason behind this is pretty straightforward. These academic terms are so abstract in nature, that they do not have tangible counterparts in our imagination. For example, we cannot imagine "postmodernism" as an object in space, with its own shape, color, sound, or smell. Since this word refers to a formless idea which is not directly associated with anything we can perceive, we are unable to sense it without taking circumventory measures (such as recalling a book in which we saw the word "postmodernism", or recalling the face of somebody who has spoken the word "postmodernism", and so on).
Therefore, abstract words such as the ones I just mentioned can be considered dead. They are "dead" in the sense that they do not have images which are vividly alive in our minds. They are lifeless because we cannot see their living bodies, hear their breath, or feel their beating hearts. They are skeletons of esoteric mental masturbation, buried deep inside the tombs of senseless intellectual pride.
On the other hand, if I say words such as "dragon", "fire", "sword", or "tree", it will be easy for anyone to instantly draw them on the surface of one's mental canvas. It is because these words are associated with living images; they are "alive" in our collective backwater of fantasy because, once we hear these words, they automatically summon their physical bodies within our field of vision.
Dead words exist for the sake of their own existence. They are ghosts of empty echoes, resonating in the voids of obscure references and endless wordplay. They came from nowhere, and are going nowhere.
Living words are different in the sense that they are fully exposed before our eyes. Once we hear them, we can instantly feel their presence without any explanation. This is the kind of personal warmth which we ought to leverage in order to touch the listener's heart.