WARNING!! Don't hand the hucksters your brain!
There's an old adage that says one picture is worth a thousand words. Adages, usually considered generalities, always contain a grain of common truth. The commonality in this one is that the brain tends to 'see' stored memories as full color pictures, and those mental images were first painted with recognized words before ever being enhanced by smell or feel. First...There is always a word.
We rarely think about the practicality of our basic learning, storage and retrieval system as we step past our first curiosity about the names of things, and advance to school exercises in spelling, vocabulary and grammar. Unconsciously, we relegate words to that hazy no-man's land of usage without thought as we listen to broadcast news, watch a movie, or do a crossword or jumble puzzle in our off time. Instinctively, we know the importance of the words we use to talk with each other, but we're usually blase and imprecise, convinced common ground will translate for us if we err. Another adage exhorts our listeners to hear what we mean, not what we say.
Somewhere in today's shadows, strange and unexpected changes have happen to words. When that occurs, even stranger things happen to previously known and recorded history. Repetition of such secretly changed words and events also corrupts our understanding, and thus, the pictures we see in our mind's eye are also corrupted. What may at first glance seem to be a phenomenon is actually a simple yet underhanded technique. It is the creation of a false picture in the mind through the purposeful mutation of words in order to negatively or positively alter our understanding. Inherently subversive and dangerous, this practice in corruption is called propaganda. Sadly for us all, too often we don't recognized that a forger has switched images or splashed filthy paint on our mind's pictures until it's much too late.
During the last decade many healthy and exact words have been corrupted to become 'labels.' The first mutant spawn on such a list of words is 'liberal.' Originally, liberal meant generous, wide ranging and unprejudiced, usually referring to the broadening of a mind, such as with a liberal education. More recently, however, the word's corruption has made it a political cudgel, an ugly label and profanity thrown around carelessly to discredit the basic humanity of a large number of people. It's opposite word, 'conservative,' has also been disease stricken, losing its common meaning; wishing to conserve things around us that positively impact the quality of our lives. The first conservatives were conservationists, eager to understand, explore and protect their immediate environment. Now, corrupted, conservative means rigid, greedy and lacking in compassion and caring.
Two other words generally used to designate special qualities of individuals or groups who impacted our shared history in positive ways are now also badly corrupted. The first one is 'elite.' Besides being a designation for a particular type font, elite used to mean a choice part or the best of something, rather like the old agricultural term the 'cream of the crop.' Now, it's another word used to degrade people. Its users conveniently forget, for example, that it was the elite during the Dark Ages, the clergy and the landholders who supported them and the monasteries, that ultimately saved centuries of previously gained knowledge for the generations to come. Since today's fundamental religionists are involved in this word turn around today, it is particularly ironic that Martin Luther, father of the Reformation, was also an elitist within the original definition.
The same sneaky and ridiculous about face in meaning has occurred to the word 'intellectual,' those changing its meaning ignoring that it was those of intelligence that advanced ideas, practicalities, inventions, and human health. Instead, we're to disdain any people who think, and even worse, who think for themselves, as though the only individuals worthy of trust or emulation are those who have little intelligence, limited creativity, and no more desire than to sit still or move backwards in lock step.
The list of words could go on and on, but that is not the problem. The real issue is that a group or groups of determined but unscrupulous mischief makers with a secret agenda have victimized all of us with their conceited and concerted efforts to muddle our thinking and corrupt the pictures within our minds. Using our own mass media, loud volume and constant repetition of slyly corrupted words as handy labels for the ills of the world and the various people who inhabit the world, these propagandists have implanted false ideas, fears, hatred, and bigotry in our basic level of communicating - our common understanding and free usage of the words we see as brush strokes to paint visual pictures in the privacy of our own minds.
It is essential to the integrity and ownership of your own brain and voice that you stay ever vigilant.
There's an old adage that says one picture is worth a thousand words. Adages, usually considered generalities, always contain a grain of common truth. The commonality in this one is that the brain tends to 'see' stored memories as full color pictures, and those mental images were first painted with recognized words before ever being enhanced by smell or feel. First...There is always a word.
We rarely think about the practicality of our basic learning, storage and retrieval system as we step past our first curiosity about the names of things, and advance to school exercises in spelling, vocabulary and grammar. Unconsciously, we relegate words to that hazy no-man's land of usage without thought as we listen to broadcast news, watch a movie, or do a crossword or jumble puzzle in our off time. Instinctively, we know the importance of the words we use to talk with each other, but we're usually blase and imprecise, convinced common ground will translate for us if we err. Another adage exhorts our listeners to hear what we mean, not what we say.
Somewhere in today's shadows, strange and unexpected changes have happen to words. When that occurs, even stranger things happen to previously known and recorded history. Repetition of such secretly changed words and events also corrupts our understanding, and thus, the pictures we see in our mind's eye are also corrupted. What may at first glance seem to be a phenomenon is actually a simple yet underhanded technique. It is the creation of a false picture in the mind through the purposeful mutation of words in order to negatively or positively alter our understanding. Inherently subversive and dangerous, this practice in corruption is called propaganda. Sadly for us all, too often we don't recognized that a forger has switched images or splashed filthy paint on our mind's pictures until it's much too late.
During the last decade many healthy and exact words have been corrupted to become 'labels.' The first mutant spawn on such a list of words is 'liberal.' Originally, liberal meant generous, wide ranging and unprejudiced, usually referring to the broadening of a mind, such as with a liberal education. More recently, however, the word's corruption has made it a political cudgel, an ugly label and profanity thrown around carelessly to discredit the basic humanity of a large number of people. It's opposite word, 'conservative,' has also been disease stricken, losing its common meaning; wishing to conserve things around us that positively impact the quality of our lives. The first conservatives were conservationists, eager to understand, explore and protect their immediate environment. Now, corrupted, conservative means rigid, greedy and lacking in compassion and caring.
Two other words generally used to designate special qualities of individuals or groups who impacted our shared history in positive ways are now also badly corrupted. The first one is 'elite.' Besides being a designation for a particular type font, elite used to mean a choice part or the best of something, rather like the old agricultural term the 'cream of the crop.' Now, it's another word used to degrade people. Its users conveniently forget, for example, that it was the elite during the Dark Ages, the clergy and the landholders who supported them and the monasteries, that ultimately saved centuries of previously gained knowledge for the generations to come. Since today's fundamental religionists are involved in this word turn around today, it is particularly ironic that Martin Luther, father of the Reformation, was also an elitist within the original definition.
The same sneaky and ridiculous about face in meaning has occurred to the word 'intellectual,' those changing its meaning ignoring that it was those of intelligence that advanced ideas, practicalities, inventions, and human health. Instead, we're to disdain any people who think, and even worse, who think for themselves, as though the only individuals worthy of trust or emulation are those who have little intelligence, limited creativity, and no more desire than to sit still or move backwards in lock step.
The list of words could go on and on, but that is not the problem. The real issue is that a group or groups of determined but unscrupulous mischief makers with a secret agenda have victimized all of us with their conceited and concerted efforts to muddle our thinking and corrupt the pictures within our minds. Using our own mass media, loud volume and constant repetition of slyly corrupted words as handy labels for the ills of the world and the various people who inhabit the world, these propagandists have implanted false ideas, fears, hatred, and bigotry in our basic level of communicating - our common understanding and free usage of the words we see as brush strokes to paint visual pictures in the privacy of our own minds.
It is essential to the integrity and ownership of your own brain and voice that you stay ever vigilant.
posted by kaz at 6:07 PM
1 Comments:
There are a number of other words I could list that have changed significantly over a number of years - one of those being feminist. Lately, I've seen some pretty derogatory comments leveled on that one. Hmm...I'll have to think of more and write again.
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