Why a powerful descriptive language is important, as seen by the Artemis II crew.
Or, why we're isolated because we can't communicate the most important things.
There are approximately 1,010,300 words in the English Language, but I could never string enough words together to properly express how much I want to hit you with a chair.
— Not said by Alexander Hamilton to Thomas Jefferson, despite claims to the contrary, but it’s still a good quote even if it’s made up and attributed as such.
Even though the Artemis II mission has been finished and the worldwide rush of hope and momentary aspiration for heroic behavior has collapsed back into the usual existence of hatred of opponents and the horrifying normalization of trying to assassinate the President of the United States, I have not yet let it go. Instead, I’m hoarding most of my thoughts and how I experienced it because it’s a pearl and there are a lot of swine on the internet, and you know how it goes.
What I’ve mostly been thinking about is language. Again.
In the past decade, we’ve focused on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). We should have focused on STEAM, which includes the arts and creates a well-rounded individual.1
I understand the over-correction to STEM.
We tend to think of the A in STEAM as bad college degrees in feminist performative basketry and theater majors working at Starbucks the rest of their lives, but as someone who got a degree in art and art history in the late 1990s, there is more to it. The A, at least when I was in college, taught me to see and think differently and, therefore, provided a pathway to a different way of communicating.
STEM can leave us with people who lack the language to share their understanding, observations, and feelings beyond a narrow band of scientific or mathematical language of precise measurement. If precise measurement were all that was needed for life, we would not need pastors or psychiatrists, but more yardsticks and calipers.
We glorify those “on the spectrum” for the seeming removal of feelings and emotion from their calculations and communications, as if they are the pinnacle of an evolved human in the form of human computers, having vilified human feeling and emotion because its extreme form has created a sloppy language in which words mean nothing and we end up with a culture prone to manipulation and emotional reaction while wearing pink hats and screaming outside of the Capitol. But it’s a mistake to overcorrect against emotions and human feelings like that for one simple reason: we’re reducing our language.
With a reduction in language comes a reduction in communication, and the cycle continues, deprecating to zero.
What is this language we are in danger of deprecating?
We have to start with what language is.
Language does more than transmit information. It is full communication, which includes expressing ideas, feelings, emotions, and cues that help us figure out how and who belongs where, and why. Language is not just limited to written or spoken words; it is also imagery, music, gesture, and expression.
The linguist sees language as something measurable and structured, full of things like syntax and semantics, most interested in how language works, how people learn it, and the rules of speaking and writing. The philosopher sees language as a question of how we connect words to reality, and if human beings are capable of thought if they have no language. Anthropologists are mostly concerned with how language is tied to cultural understanding of identity and social norms, aware that phrases and colloquialisms might use the same words as other cultures but can carry extra meanings that function like a hook for deep meaning and association, allowing people in a shared culture to communicate entire histories or large thoughts in just a few words. The average person might not think about language much at all; it is the tool constantly at their disposal until something interrupts the flow (a physical disability, speaking with someone who speaks another language, or an inability to understand someone’s accent on the phone).
The internet strips language of the emotional inputs found in gesture, tone, and expression, feeding into knee-jerk offense and misunderstanding, weakly attempting to replace it with emoticons, acronyms, and memes as a substitute, thereby creating its own parallel language that seeps into the non-digital realm to the dismay of purists who, for example, are tired of meaningless but reactive things like six-seven, chungus, and skibidi. At most, those kinds of words have no real lasting meaning other than to alert people that you’re aware of trends, you’re cool with a younger generation, or you’re a parent always behind the curve but love your kids and are trying (the latter is excusable).2
How does language potentially constrain our understanding of the world? How do different languages and their connected cultures alter the way we are able to think or perceive time and space? And, what do we do if we are part of a splintering culture that is developing separate languages, in a sense, when it comes to communicating the bigger things?
Language, if it is to be successful for communication, draws on common foundations for that society.3 It requires the same skills that make a person a good conversationalist: a well-rounded education on the shared foundations, and continued reading and exploring outside of the narrow realms their work might only require. It also requires awareness of the kind of language you’re steeping yourself in—something I often forget—because we pick up the language of what’s around us, whether it’s hate-filled online forums, f-bomb entertainment, or the vacuous word salad of politics and TV news. (See also: George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language.”)
Full communication, then, isn’t just words, but it’s not not words, either. Words, plus context plus emotional associations give us full communication. And words are the biggest part of language to which all others feed. Humans were created by a God who used words to speak all things into existence, who gave us The Word (Jesus), and who speaks to us through his Word. We are people of words, from inception.
So now we get to Artemis II.
Scientific language is necessary for science, but consider the Artemis II astronauts.
They were trained to identify aspects of the moon, including specific craters, geologic formations, and other things highly useful to understanding the moon better, for the purpose of building a moon base and future research.
While they were circling the moon, the astronauts were overwhelmed by the experience. Reid Wiseman said as much, noting that he needed more adjectives to describe what he was seeing and, to be more accurate, I’m guessing, what he was feeling about what he was seeing. He noted (on his X account, I think) that once he was onboard the ship after splashdown, he connected with a chaplain even though he wasn’t a religious person, because of what he had experienced.
These astronauts were—according to what they posted on their social accounts after returning to Earth—apparently overwhelmed and changed by the experience. Jeremy Hansen even commented that looking at the moon model at the Johnson Space Center felt different. He talked about the features, the craters, but he capped it with how he felt. Looking at what he already knew now feels different than before. He had an experience. Head knowledge plus heart knowledge, the struggle we all have with language.
“Facts don’t care about your feelings” is a useful tool for cutting through political and cultural nonsense, but it is not the only tool. If we did not care about the human experience, which is essentially how we feel when exposed to something and how we understand those feelings, we would perfect robots and probes for better sensory output to provide pure, cold, hard data.
But we sent humans to the moon.
We sent flesh and bone and breath and spirit. We sent four souls, not computers. And they were in constant communication with humans back on Earth, even though electronic data and information were also being exchanged.
Why do this? Why add all the expense and danger? Why inject messy emotion into the cold equations? Why the constant human connection? Why the bated breath as they went around the dark side of the moon? Why, when Christina Koch talked about Michael Collins going around the moon alone on the Apollo 11 mission, did I feel an echo of terror in my heart at the thought of the disconnect in the dark and unknown?
NASA Director Jared Isaacman took a practical stab at an explanation during a public Q&A session at Sun and Fun a few days after splashdown, explaining that the goal was to get humans to the moon and then beyond. Humans, not probes, with America being unwilling to give up the moon again. This was a human endeavor.4 He also noted, when asked what the next generation of astronauts would look like, that it wouldn’t just be test pilots, that psychiatrists, people with different kinds of knowledge and skills—the more typical representations of human collaboration—would be necessary.
Though he did not say it as such, I would extrapolate that this is about STEAM, because without the A we could use robots.
The human experience matters more to humans than the plain data of robots. It always will, and it’s why the internet and AI have proven dissatisfying and even deadly to humanity. When we unhook humans from each other, we’re Collins at the dark side of the moon, alone and wondering.
We send humans to space because, as the internet has taught us, more information and data don’t necessarily change humanity for the better. Just the facts, ma’am, is a cold existence. It’s spreadsheets and databases and flow charts and algorithms, calculating the trajectory without preparing us for arrival. It doesn’t move us to hope and tears, because it is soulless.
We are beings with souls.
We know it, even in all our denials, when we are confronted with something that exceeds our known language.
Humans confronting and experiencing the edge of explored space, the vastness of forever and uncountable, the smallness of who we are, and the cyclopean nature of the created universe—those moments beget change in one, and then in many. Artemis II started a ball rolling, and those four astronauts and all who come after them need the language to keep nudging it forward. The human endeavor must be humanized.
Only humans see both with their eyes and also with their whole soul. Science can’t measure the latter, but it seems NASA had the wisdom to value it.
Is NASA equipping the next generation of astronauts with the necessary language? Are our schools? Are we self-educating with this in mind? Along with the sciences, math, and technology, are future astronauts equipped with, and encouraged to pursue, a foundation in literature, philosophy, classical music and poetry, artful fiction and science fiction, and the Bible? Can they dip into that well of our civilization’s foundations and pull up quotes and passages to help them communicate the moment so that others who are not there can better understand? Are they practiced in using similes and metaphors—which require a shared culture—so that they come to mind quickly when needed?5
Christina Koch did this well in a moment as they began to circle the moon; she was trying to describe the new impact craters on the moon’s surface. She explained that they were much brighter than the rock and soil around them. She paused, then said it looked like a lampshade with pinpricks that let the light through. Simple. Effective. We all know what a lampshade is. In that moment, I could see it in my mind, a moment of gestalt where I could understand the experience, like a great novel whose author has done the work to create a detailed movie in my head, putting me there in that place and moment.
A lampshade with pinpricks, I understand. Words like “this is amazing, it’s so awesome, wow, it’s indescribable, I’m blown away” tell me what you’re feeling, but they don’t let me join you. It’s not useful language, beyond knowing someone is having an incredible moment. It doesn’t invite partnership; it excludes, only reminding us that we weren’t there.
We need a robust language not just for others, but for ourselves, too.
What happens when we don’t have the language to communicate what we experienced, what we feel, with others?6 What happens if we have the language, but those around us do not?
We are isolated.
Whether on purpose or not, we exclude others from sharing the moment.
We have this thing to communicate, but no one can understand. Or we have this thing to communicate, but no words to accomplish it.
We are changed; we have a new understanding, and we see things differently than we used to—we have questions and deep spiritual and philosophical longings, how we understand ourselves has changed—and if we can’t tell those around us, that change sits heavy in our hearts. It can destroy instead of renew.
I have no doubt the Artemis II astronauts will be forever connected in this life because they need someone else who understands what they went through, someone they don’t have to struggle to find the words for, when the experience feels so big that it is too heavy to carry alone, when they are weary of the public constantly asking them what they felt like—a request for a comparison—in a certain moment and they’ve not yet captured the right words to explain it because maybe they don’t understand it yet themselves.
Perhaps that’s why, in a world of science, the human factor, and specifically, the poet and artist, are necessary.
The mathematician and scientist get you to the moon, but the poet and artist tell the world about it. The photographer, the writer, the musician who scores the footage—they make it real for us back home.
The moon, that glowing circle we’ve all looked at our entire lives—on good nights and bad nights, in moments of joy or moments of pain, in moments of deep philosophy or practical moments of frantically trying to find our way down a campground path after our flashlight died—is brought up close, and we all get to share it again in a new way because someone took the time to use the language to do it.
HOMEWORK: For fun, either in the comments or in your journal, try your hand at describing some of the imagery from Artemis II. Or, describe your experience of those nine days from where you were.
As you know, I tend to get a little loopy when I view something as a writing prompt, but I may give it a try. I won’t judge you for purple prose. Sometimes you gotta get purple so the red pen leaves you with something really good.
We have it easier, of course; the astronauts had so many other things going on—space capsule, danger, physical issues, fear, joy, overwhelmed, live audio feeds, mission expectations—but it might be good practice. Feel free to draw from other sources to better describe what you see, as long as it opens up understanding for others instead of trying to impress or intimidate the audience because of your arcane references.
See A. M. Juster’s Happy Warrior column “We Need To Rescue Poetry” in National Review, May 2026, in which he talks about the demise of poetry as something people were commonly exposed to in magazines, school textbooks, and newspapers, noting the simultaneous rise of Brutalism architecture and the decline of poetry, the incestuous MFA programs of today that church out ever-worsening poetry and prose, and the cultural impact all of this has had. It’s a theory that I would say, if true, adds to the demise of our language.
Point: I don’t care if a stupid word gets added to the dictionary and modern linguists explain it as acceptable. Words without real basis, longevity, or meaning are garbage words.
Counterpoint: Frindle.
For Western Civilization, this means the art, writing, history, and philosophy of the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Bible, and classic literature and art from Europe, the Mediterranean, and its environs. American history, particularly music and pop culture, also have additional influences. This is not racist. This is known history.
You can see the problem: the removal of Western Civ, classic art, literature, and Judeo-Christian faith from our education system has created division. We are no longer speaking the same base language among the generations living in the same supposedly shared culture. For example, consider President Trump’s speech during King Charles’ visit in April 2026, in which he said: “Fate drew a long arc from the meadow at Runnymede to the streets of Philadelphia that ran through the lives of people born and bred on the British code that no man should be denied either justice or right.”
Do young Americans understand the Runnymede reference? They should. But without understanding the foundation of the Magna Carta, the full power of the language is lost.
NASA spokespersons repeatedly explained to the press who questioned why we didn’t send much cheaper probes and unmanned flights, that the human eye was more sensitive, and that a variety of other factors were at play. But if you listened to the astronauts speaking to CAPCOM and the science officers in mission control as they went around the moon, it was clear NASA wanted them to describe it all, not just counting craters and noting anomalies. They were to fill their recording devices with whatever they could describe.
Consider John and the book of Revelation, or Daniel or Ezekiel, in the Bible. In some cases, they are trying to describe things beyond their understanding. All they have to work with are similes and metaphors, using the language and culture they know to relay what they are seeing.
One of the more comforting things about the Holy Spirit, as noted in Romans 8:26, is that in the moments where things are too big, too painful, too hard, too frightening—he intercedes and prays for us when it’s all too deep for words. I’ve been there, where all I can do is lie down and cry and say, “Jesus, help.” I love that my Creator knows me and what I am struggling to say better than I do.