did any one see this op ed article earlier this week in the NYtimes?

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/29/opinion/29THAR.html

here is the beginning..
Words, words, words," Hamlet famously moaned when Polonius asked him what he was reading. Such dismissiveness is often echoed by observers of the international diplomatic scene. "More empty talk," a journalist said to me the other day. "What difference will it make?"

He was referring to the meeting I was attending, a United Nations-organized seminar in Copenhagen on peace in the Middle East. But he could as well have been talking about the confabulations of the food summit in Rome earlier this year or the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg next month. I have no doubt critics are dusting off the cliches for that one, preparing to denounce one more gabfest.

But why has talking become so unpopular? Talk, we are told, is a poor substitute for action; all too often talk becomes an end in itself, masking the absence of real progress. The remedy is simple: abolish the talking-shops.

Yet talk is the necessary precursor for action. Nothing can change unless the world agrees, through talk, upon change. The series of United Nations conferences in the 1990's — on subjects ranging from population and women's issues to human rights and development — established new global norms in all these fields and defined standards now accepted by most countries. Talking got them there.

It is true that many international meetings are consumed by what T.S. Eliot called "the intolerable wrestle with words and meanings." But that process ends up producing a form of words that is full of meaning to those who did the wrestling (even when those who didn't may have trouble finding the meaning). Such talk lays down markers, articulates aspirations, identifies common approaches, reveals gaps and helps bridge them. Without talk, there would never be agreement; without agreement, there would be no action.

Even when talk does not lead to agreement — even when it degenerates into received wisdom, time-honored conventions, tired formulas and, perhaps worst of all, insider jargon — it still helps change perceptions and establish new levels of acceptability for both familiar and unfamiliar ideas. Repeated talk alters the substantive threshold in the talkers' minds: as you listen, positions you would never think of adopting become comprehensible to you; the process of reacting to what is said reveals your own assumptions to you.
i almost want to invite her to join us in this discussion.. we don't all agree.. but we are learning to use words, words, words effectively!




my other obsession