TIL: Today I Learned

[Lexicus]

TIL that if you want people to do things that are in conflict with their morals and ethics, you better introduce a whole set of new words in their vocabulary that are being used for those things.

That language and culture are strongly related is ofc an open door.
That it helps to give new generation groups a group culture/identity also.
Nothing new as such.
But the ease at which it can minimise existing morals and ethics is much bigger than I thought.

And in military language this ofc also already happens. Neutralising etc.
The basic principle is that words in your native frequently used language are stronger connected to the morals and ethics you developed as a person. New words and languages are in general less embedded, less connectred in context and root convictions.

The danger I see is the fast development of new words all the time to discuss opinions and decisions.
If you do not succeed to connect and ground them in your being, talking with those words makes you vulnerable for "a kind of subliminal" influences.
Those subliminal influences can be desired, if for example you convert yourself to a religion or ideology or follow some rehab.
But those subliminal influences can also be undesired as with advertisements or political messaging.

Designing a set of words and phrases to get hold of populist potentials, repeating to learn them the new language, harvesting when launching decisions and actions that would cause moral and ethical conflicts in traditinal choice of words.

The flooding of new words, new meaning to words, the confusion, also an effective way to break down existing morals and ethics.

From: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/being-bilingual-can-help-you-make-better-decisions

Well, this is exactly what the Republican Party and the whole right-wing civil society apparatus has been doing for decades in the United States: using words in the opposite of their real meaning, inventing phrases like "death tax", basically perverting language at every possible opportunity to get people to defend that which is indefensible.

And it's working. President Trump is just the start of the real consequences of this endeavor.

 

[Takhisis]

TIL that if you want people to do things that are in conflict with their morals and ethics, you better introduce a whole set of new words in their vocabulary that are being used for those things.

That language and culture are strongly related is ofc an open door.
That it helps to give new generation groups a group culture/identity also.
Nothing new as such.
But the ease at which it can minimise existing morals and ethics is much bigger than I thought.

And in military language this ofc also already happens. Neutralising etc.
The basic principle is that words in your native frequently used language are stronger connected to the morals and ethics you developed as a person. New words and languages are in general less embedded, less connectred in context and root convictions.

The danger I see is the fast development of new words all the time to discuss opinions and decisions.
If you do not succeed to connect and ground them in your being, talking with those words makes you vulnerable for "a kind of subliminal" influences.
Those subliminal influences can be desired, if for example you convert yourself to a religion or ideology or follow some rehab.
But those subliminal influences can also be undesired as with advertisements or political messaging.

Designing a set of words and phrases to get hold of populist potentials, repeating to learn them the new language, harvesting when launching decisions and actions that would cause moral and ethical conflicts in traditinal choice of words.

The flooding of new words, new meaning to words, the confusion, also an effective way to break down existing morals and ethics.

From: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/being-bilingual-can-help-you-make-better-decisions

Ye-es… for a non-political example, there's various examples of how Son Goku tells would-be destroyers of the world that he'll ‘eliminate’ them in the dubs. It's an eight-year-old forced to fight for his life and kill people to save his friends, dangit!

Your freedom fighters are their terrorists. Your social protections are their restrictions. Your taxes are the state's depredations. The European Council and the Democrat Party of the US are ‘left-wing’. Dictators are ‘strongmen’. Torture is just an interrogation technique, a slightly coarse way of asking questions. As a linguist of sorts, I can tell you it's done all across the globe.

But look at technology. This or that unnecessary new gadget ‘is coming’, ‘is the coming thing’, or ‘will revolutionise’. No. No, sir. Somebody out there has already ordered an anti-ecological, slave-driven factory in China or the Philippines to manufacture two million units of something you very probably don't need and also very probably cannot afford (think of a credit-driven economy such as that of the US). And on and on and on. It sells, so: who's buying?

And Lexicus is right. I've been saying it before. In late 2015/early 2016 I said Donald Trump stood a good chance of becoming President of the United States. Why? Because he was the product, and not the origin, of the fall in 'Murican political standards. And sadly, I was right.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

It's funny because the first thing I thought of when I read it is how terms like "racism" and even "violence" are being redefined to mean completely different things, how names for certain groups of people get changed all the time as the old ones are declared offensive, how new buzzwords are being created all the time, and it's sure as hell not the right wingers doing those things.

 

[Traitorfish]

It's funny because the first thing I thought of when I read it is how terms like "racism" and even "violence" are being redefined to mean completely different things, how names for certain groups of people get changed all the time as the old ones are declared offensive, how new buzzwords are being created all the time, and it's sure as hell not the right wingers doing those things.

"Make America Great Again".

 

[Zkribbler]

In late 2015/early 2016 I said Donald Trump stood a good chance of becoming President of the United States. Why? Because he was the product, and not the origin, of the fall in 'Murican political standards. And sadly, I was right.

So it's your fault! In the future please refrain from being right. We can't take much more of this.

 

[Dachs]

It's funny because the first thing I thought of when I read it is how terms like "racism" and even "violence" are being redefined to mean completely different things, how names for certain groups of people get changed all the time as the old ones are declared offensive, how new buzzwords are being created all the time, and it's sure as hell not the right wingers doing those things.

S T A T E S
R I G H T S

 

[Broken_Erika]

SMALL GOVERNMENT!

 

[Lexicus]

It's funny because the first thing I thought of when I read it is how terms like "racism" and even "violence" are being redefined to mean completely different things, how names for certain groups of people get changed all the time as the old ones are declared offensive, how new buzzwords are being created all the time, and it's sure as hell not the right wingers doing those things.

New buzzwords like
"death tax"
"chain migration"
"anti-white racism"
"white genocide"
"punishing success"/"rewarding failure"
"entitlements" (this is my favorite one as throughout history it has refered to the literally entitled hereditary nobility but 20th century American conservatives began using it to refer to the beneficiaries of public spending programs with enormous success)
"deep state"
"liberal media"
"fake news"
"law and order"
"tough on crime"
"right to work"
"pro life"

 

[Dachs]

"deep state"

Didn't they actually steal this one from Turkey, the only country in the world where all the conspiracy theories are true?

 

[Takhisis]

So it's your fault! In the future please refrain from being right. We can't take much more of this.

I also say that the world is not doomed yet, so let's hope I'm right on this, too.

 

[Cutlass]

Didn't they actually steal this one from Turkey, the only country in the world where all the conspiracy theories are true?

That would require them to have had some concept of anything which was actually going on outside the US.

 

[Ryika]

That would require them to have had some concept of anything which was actually going on outside the US.

A bit rich coming from you, isn't it?

 

[Cutlass]

A bit rich coming from you, isn't it?

I know more about what's going on outside the US than you do about what is going on inside it. And yet you can't stop pretending that you do know, can you?

 

[Ryika]

I doubt that.

 

[Cutlass]

I doubt that.

I doubt that you can stop pretending that you know what you are talking about as well.

 

[Ryika]

But even then, that's not a defense. Even if I was worse than you when it comes to that, it is still true that the things you say about the world outside of the US are entirely based on a US-centric analysis of the world, which is why you seldom make sense when you talk about these things.

So you are doing exactly what you accuse them of, there's no way around it.

 

[Cutlass]

But even then, that's not a defense. Even if I was worse than you when it comes to that, it is still true that the things you say about the world outside of the US are entirely based on a US-centric analysis of the world, which is why you seldom make sense when you talk about these things.

So you are doing exactly what you accuse them of, there's no way around it.

Not really. You just assume your local prejudices are somehow valid. They aren't. Bigotry is bigotry, no matter what you pretend is your justification for it.

 

[Ryika]

Has nothing to do with local prejudices, you argued on multiple occasions about European countries as if they were the USA even though European Countries are very different in terms of how these countries are run from the USA in regards of the things that you were talking about.

Of course we could go on for ages about that without arriving at an agreement or some deeper knowledge, so let's not.

 

[Traitorfish]

The thing about "Europe is different" as an argument is, half the time, people are talking about institutions, about parliamentarianism versus presidentialism, and so on, but the other half of their time they're talking about Blud und Boden. You can see why Cutlass might be sceptical.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

The thing about "Europe is different" as an argument is, half the time, people are talking about institutions, about parliamentarianism versus presidentialism, and so on, but the other half of their time they're talking about Blud und Boden. You can see why Cutlass might be sceptical.

I'd say at least 30% of the time it's about prejudices, and half the time those prejudices are right.
Just once, I'd like one of my Yugo relatives to be punctual. That is, if they even give a proper time and not just "the afternoon" or "the weekend". They're also far too fond of surprise visits.