Does it ever happen to you that important things you need to say are hopelessly misunderstood?
Did you feel that the words available confuse your thinking instead of helping you to understand and to express your truth?
Did you ever feel abused with words misinterpreted by hypocrites?
Did you suffer the irritating bad faith and bullying of politically correct language or langue de bois?
Did you get censored and ridiculed when you wanted to explain that some important word does not only mean an officially defined thing but more or different truth?
If you experienced this, you have an interest to ask who has the right to decide what words mean. It is time to become owner of the words you use.
*
The freedom of words reflects the freedom of thinking and in good part also makes it. Minds are as free as their words.
Our right to free speech and to freedom of thought became common place, at least in our part of the world; but this right, even granted by law, isn't worth much without mental means rich enough to think well with our own head and to express what we think. Those means are mostly words; better said, what we mean behind those words, in our mind.
The richness of one’s vocabulary measures one’s freedom deeper that the right to speak. Still, knowing words is not enough.
Our thinking is free and our speech unhindered only when we made the words we know ours, by understanding what they mean and by making them represent reliably our point of view. Else, our thought and speech is sterile milling of received phrases.
*
I became convinced that all the good logic we learn cannot make us think with intelligence or wisely if the words - while they follow each other in proper reason - are poor in shades, not true to the nuances of the world and not true to our point of view.
If the words are "garbage-in," our logic, be it perfect, is worth as much.
*
It seems to me, that some words available to us are frozen fingers. They got carefully tweaked in their history, eroded, maimed, mis-defined goodthinked and instituted in a way that prevents not only voicing differing view but even naming or understanding important realities and opinions so that we could use our own judgment. This is not new:
"1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.
3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.
4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth."[1]
Probably the Babel-deception - corrupting the words to make free thought hard and its communication impossible - is a tacit, time-tested rule of ruling, not organised conspiracy; nevertheless it is real. If you want to own your mind, better be aware of this.
Welcome then to Logomachy - the Battle of the Words. This is warfare too big for one person alone or for one lifetime, but we can still do something about it, even individually, as I will try to illustrate with my own modest sketchy notes.
Read The Rectification of Meaning if you care to follow my thought.
_____________
[1] Genesis 11 KJV
Did you feel that the words available confuse your thinking instead of helping you to understand and to express your truth?
Did you ever feel abused with words misinterpreted by hypocrites?
Did you suffer the irritating bad faith and bullying of politically correct language or langue de bois?
Did you get censored and ridiculed when you wanted to explain that some important word does not only mean an officially defined thing but more or different truth?
If you experienced this, you have an interest to ask who has the right to decide what words mean. It is time to become owner of the words you use.
*
The freedom of words reflects the freedom of thinking and in good part also makes it. Minds are as free as their words.
Our right to free speech and to freedom of thought became common place, at least in our part of the world; but this right, even granted by law, isn't worth much without mental means rich enough to think well with our own head and to express what we think. Those means are mostly words; better said, what we mean behind those words, in our mind.
The richness of one’s vocabulary measures one’s freedom deeper that the right to speak. Still, knowing words is not enough.
Our thinking is free and our speech unhindered only when we made the words we know ours, by understanding what they mean and by making them represent reliably our point of view. Else, our thought and speech is sterile milling of received phrases.
*
I became convinced that all the good logic we learn cannot make us think with intelligence or wisely if the words - while they follow each other in proper reason - are poor in shades, not true to the nuances of the world and not true to our point of view.
If the words are "garbage-in," our logic, be it perfect, is worth as much.
*
It seems to me, that some words available to us are frozen fingers. They got carefully tweaked in their history, eroded, maimed, mis-defined goodthinked and instituted in a way that prevents not only voicing differing view but even naming or understanding important realities and opinions so that we could use our own judgment. This is not new:
"1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.
3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.
4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth."[1]
Probably the Babel-deception - corrupting the words to make free thought hard and its communication impossible - is a tacit, time-tested rule of ruling, not organised conspiracy; nevertheless it is real. If you want to own your mind, better be aware of this.
Welcome then to Logomachy - the Battle of the Words. This is warfare too big for one person alone or for one lifetime, but we can still do something about it, even individually, as I will try to illustrate with my own modest sketchy notes.
Read The Rectification of Meaning if you care to follow my thought.
_____________
[1] Genesis 11 KJV
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