Most people have at least one thing they love a whole lot. Consider yours. How much time have you spent learning about it, keeping up to date with all the latest news? How much more do you know about it than all of your friends? Most likely, it's pretty significant.
Have you ever made a joke about that subject? I bet it fell flat. Have you ever told a story about that subject that put everybody to sleep? If so, then don't feel too bad. Nobody understood you because you're speaking a different language.
The deeper you go into a subject, the more specialized words you use and the more very specific concepts you have to deal with. Anybody who hasn't gone as far as you have literally doesn't understand what you're talking about because they have never come across those concepts or words.
When you have an esoteric subject, you have to remember to break it down. Either give the reader a crash course in the material or reword the material so that common people can understand.
Consider Karl Marx. He is a smart guy, but you definitely need a map while reading his work. If you read his thoughts on the idea of fetishism, you might be able to figure out what he's getting at, but it won't be easy. If you give somebody a crash course in thhe material, you would explain to them how in general, what you see is what you get. However, some things we grant supernatural powers over us. We believe that a rabbit's foot is lucky and that Nike shoes make us run faster, but they don't. If you wanted to break this down into something that anyone can understand, then all you have to say is, "no matter what the commercials say, there is no car that will get you laid."
The same thing is true for any esoteric subject, whether it be quantum physics or martial arts. Break it down into a form everyone can understand. That will allow you to talk about anything and the audience can learn about anything.
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Sometimes, you have to break down the stuff you broke down.
ReplyDeleteMy mom isn't a computer wiz. I remembered telling her she could use a torrent, and then having to explain what a torrent was, and then how it worked... And she still didn't understand it... Maybe I should have backup and started with how most programs are segregated into files. Hmm.
Of course... my dad and his girlfriend calls ethernet cable "internet cable", although the same is true for phone cord, as well, except you just cannot get the same speeds as phone cord as you do with ethernet, and, well, no one really uses dialup as much anyway.
And I'm sure "phone cord" has a technical term. There's also different types of ethernet cable, as well (Cat5/Cat6)
Jargon doesn't exist in esoteric terms, either. As an example, if you devle into programming, you get everyday terms like push, pop, float, double, etc, that mean very specific things. They're every day words (I popped him in the mouth, I pushed him down some stairs, etc), but they mean very specific things in a computer context, and in some cases refer to a specific data structure.
I mean, you still do get your specific terminology, such as bit and byte.