When Newspeak becomes Liarspeak. When we will have reclaimed our language so that a label matches the word that is being used for that label.
Currently liberals are not. Progressives are not. Democrats are not. A Constitutionally Limited Republic is not. Gay is not.
Each of these misnomers have become accepted jargon for things they are not mostly because establishment media uses them that way. If you attempt to use liberal in its original sense, you stand a good chance of being misunderstood and then punched in the nose by a real liberal.
It is a fact that these words now carry a meaning that a large number of people think of negatively. The ability to use the word in its original sense is destroyed because your listener, especially a stranger, will most likely think you are using it with its current meaning. In some instances, such as in a joyously carefree experience, the moment is apt to be spoiled when you think of the word that was once widely used to describe the experience: gay.
In fact, when you read the appendix of George Orwell's 1984 you will find that is the whole intention of Newspeak. To make it impossible for human beings to think of anything the state chooses. The language, far from its ages old use of enabling communication between individuals, has moved beyond propaganda to become a tool to enslave mankind. And don't discount that there is an unmistakable bonus it provides its masters. It delivers a burst of fleeting joy to those who exercise power in this manner; employing power because they can. ["Oh c'mon. How does Pascal know this is true?" Ask me.]
Right now "old" media only looks derelict. Kind of like the second Death Star in Star Wars. Still capable of delivering to American Statists a host of once illegal new voters who can't understand English enough to comprehend how sophistic are these bastards.
When writers on the Internet can once again use the word liberal and have it mean "pertaining to the liberty of individuals" rather than "a label under which power seekers can suppress liberty in order to enforce their concept of equality," then old media will have truly become old.
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New things always begin by looking like the things they replace. Then they develop their own identity. Rubber and plastic began by being made to look like leather. Cars looked like buggies. Computers looked like typewriters. Automatic lathes looked like manual lathes. The new media is going to hit it's stride- but not for a while.
ReplyDeleteI'm not deriding the potential of new media by any means Og. What I have done for the Internet is to provide it a goal that will inform us we have surely succeeded.
ReplyDeleteThink about this Og. You certainly know of the history of the ancient Sophists. The widespread promotion of attractive but self-serving arguments has been the demagogue's strength and democracy's weakness ever since Athens.
Certainly the deliberate destruction of language is the simplest of sophistries. Get enough people to declare that black is white and rational people won't be able to have meaningful discourse unless they succeed in shutting down the means by which the lie is spread.
When the Internet succeeds in reusing the old words such that the new pejoratives have become but a memory, then you will know it has succeeded. And we will have been liberated anew.
Where can we get a widespread agreement to post a list of important words and then agree to use them on the Internet only with their pre-Newspeak meanings?