One of the things I retain from my years as an intellectual is Martin Heidegger’s concept of the Unsaid. Tweaking it to my present, it means that I try to listen for what people do not say and do not speak about, what they avoid or what they seem oblivious to. I am especially intrigued if something that I am inclined to say or speak about is largely absent from discourse around me.
San Francisco is a rich laboratory for such musings.
Here’s something that’s Unsaid, in this city of compulsive babblers, where everyone pretends to have a unique and special point of view…
Contempt, paranoia and rage are poured out as a matter of course against American Republicans, “the religious right” (aka Christianity), and George Bush. Yet I never hear any critical, angry and challenging words about the Muslim jihadis who are warring against us.
The silence of this Unsaid is deafening to me.
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