It's frightening. Reality and basic facts are open to debate.
Theodore Dalrymple wrote that communist slogans and unreality were designed to humiliate people by forcing them to vocalize outright absurdities. We are under attack again, worldwide this time.
I used to think that Huxley was more prescient than Orwell, but now it's clear that our oligarchy is calling plays from 1984 (memory hole, gaslighting, abuse of language, 2+2=5...) Once they destroy resistance, I imagine that's when 'ol Klaus will break out the soma, so maybe it's a tie.
I'd argue that Zamyatin's "We" (1920) or Ira Levin's "This Perfect Day" (1970) are strong contenders. And as a swede I of course must strike a blow for Karin Boye's "Kallocain" from 1940.
I like that you point out the emotions that can be triggered with labels. Many people dread being outcasted by their own community, and labels are a quick way to know whether you are in or out. It kicks up deep feelings of loss of connection, unworthiness and survival issues. That's why propaganda is so dang powerful.
Not to be a dick but, Feynman is wrong. Take for example the Scissortail Flycatcher (Muscivora forfic). You know right away something of both its conformation and diet. This is hardly an exception either. It is also, imho, of great interest to know that the mighty Oak or the graceful Beech you drove your car into are in the same family. Binomial taxonomy helps to understand organism's relationships to one another. You may initially be more concerned with filing an insurance claim but here again, the label "wanker" and its invariable correctness when applied to insurance agents, is extremely useful.
To compress it even further, we have memetics. (Or ideograms or semiotics or ... one of the necessities for a career in the humanities is to invent your own jargon and get people to use it as if it referred to something new and previously unknown.)
Personally, I tend towards the evolutionary side of communication, seeing as we seem to get more stupid compared to fifty years ago. Let me just pick some Prunus cerasus as examples:
There are two and only two basic personality types:
The one that throws itself down or aside when it hears: "Duck!" and the one that goes "What?", and starts to look around. I would argue that historically, the first kind tended to outbreed the other. If this seems a tad extreme, consider the difference between the photographer and the normal human upon seeing an onrushing rhionceros: "Oh my what a magnificent beast, I must get a argle bargle crunchy sounds" while the normal human goes "Aieee!" and jumps 12 feet up into a tree.
Even when the tree is 20 feet to the side.
However, the further from the sharp end of things a person is, and the less personal experience a person has of "stupidity hurts", the more stupid it can be without reality telling it it is being stupid.
Enter the person inheriting a fortune, the person born into a business and/or politics clan and the person coddled by its multigendered Karen-incubators from hatchling throwing tantrums about its full diapers to perpetually tantrum-throwing post-grad still behaving as if it was wearing filled diapers.
Whatever stupidity they have ever gotten into, they have been provided with a framework reinforcing a belief that any adverse events or effects are never their faults and that they are entitled by the universe itself to happiness and success.
In older societies, this clique was too small to have much of an impact except in specific limited areas, and the surrounding Duck-type personalities could still get on with business.
So what to do, if anything actually can be done? Simple: don't be stupid, and don't reward stupidity. That's all.
As my advisor in (physics) grad school liked to say, "every rope on the boat has a name, so we can talk about them".
Excellent! But then, of course, excellence is another concept of white supremacy.
Also interesting to learn that Spanish does not seem to be a European language...
It gets worse: Spain is full of *gasp* "white" people. They arrogantly call themselves "the Spanish."
It's frightening. Reality and basic facts are open to debate.
Theodore Dalrymple wrote that communist slogans and unreality were designed to humiliate people by forcing them to vocalize outright absurdities. We are under attack again, worldwide this time.
I used to think that Huxley was more prescient than Orwell, but now it's clear that our oligarchy is calling plays from 1984 (memory hole, gaslighting, abuse of language, 2+2=5...) Once they destroy resistance, I imagine that's when 'ol Klaus will break out the soma, so maybe it's a tie.
I'd argue that Zamyatin's "We" (1920) or Ira Levin's "This Perfect Day" (1970) are strong contenders. And as a swede I of course must strike a blow for Karin Boye's "Kallocain" from 1940.
I like that you point out the emotions that can be triggered with labels. Many people dread being outcasted by their own community, and labels are a quick way to know whether you are in or out. It kicks up deep feelings of loss of connection, unworthiness and survival issues. That's why propaganda is so dang powerful.
Not to be a dick but, Feynman is wrong. Take for example the Scissortail Flycatcher (Muscivora forfic). You know right away something of both its conformation and diet. This is hardly an exception either. It is also, imho, of great interest to know that the mighty Oak or the graceful Beech you drove your car into are in the same family. Binomial taxonomy helps to understand organism's relationships to one another. You may initially be more concerned with filing an insurance claim but here again, the label "wanker" and its invariable correctness when applied to insurance agents, is extremely useful.
Your words inspired a ramble:
To compress it even further, we have memetics. (Or ideograms or semiotics or ... one of the necessities for a career in the humanities is to invent your own jargon and get people to use it as if it referred to something new and previously unknown.)
Personally, I tend towards the evolutionary side of communication, seeing as we seem to get more stupid compared to fifty years ago. Let me just pick some Prunus cerasus as examples:
There are two and only two basic personality types:
The one that throws itself down or aside when it hears: "Duck!" and the one that goes "What?", and starts to look around. I would argue that historically, the first kind tended to outbreed the other. If this seems a tad extreme, consider the difference between the photographer and the normal human upon seeing an onrushing rhionceros: "Oh my what a magnificent beast, I must get a argle bargle crunchy sounds" while the normal human goes "Aieee!" and jumps 12 feet up into a tree.
Even when the tree is 20 feet to the side.
However, the further from the sharp end of things a person is, and the less personal experience a person has of "stupidity hurts", the more stupid it can be without reality telling it it is being stupid.
Enter the person inheriting a fortune, the person born into a business and/or politics clan and the person coddled by its multigendered Karen-incubators from hatchling throwing tantrums about its full diapers to perpetually tantrum-throwing post-grad still behaving as if it was wearing filled diapers.
Whatever stupidity they have ever gotten into, they have been provided with a framework reinforcing a belief that any adverse events or effects are never their faults and that they are entitled by the universe itself to happiness and success.
In older societies, this clique was too small to have much of an impact except in specific limited areas, and the surrounding Duck-type personalities could still get on with business.
So what to do, if anything actually can be done? Simple: don't be stupid, and don't reward stupidity. That's all.
You're finding your form, Mr. Rigger. Well done!