Do words define reality? Many seem to think so. Words are instead suppose to describe aspects of reality. The meanings that words represent appear to change over time. From a logical perspective, this is a problem. Why? Every measurement, judgment or conclusion is only valid (
I try to dig into etymology often. And, yeah, I like to stroll through the history of a word's use. The construction of the OED from note cards is wonderful.
How about "wyr eld" for "world", and "loaf ward" for "Lord"?
Oh, I was aware of its "junk" value. And one of our clever baggers discovered the reject slot of the Coinstar machine to be a silver mine, as well. The machine rejects all defaced and foreign coins, along with anything silver; he had scored two Roosevelts and a Washington.
Last night, after a particularly big hoard was sorted through the machine, I scooped up a sizable handful of rejects to discover a few perfectly good, normal US coins, some foreign, some defaced or dirty, and one decent 1962 silver quarter!
Had the quarter appeared in my till, I would have ransomed it for a mere $0.25, but as it had been left on store property, seven bucks in the food-charity box seemed appropriate exchange, along with the other decent coins.
You must understand that when I refer to my own process in philosophy as "lapidary", I refer to the tumbler, not painstaking inlay or Mayan heroics.
So it took a day or two to appreciate "Borg". Pretty good! It wants what I want -- food, clothing, shelter and warmth. Just like Black Rock. But its appetite is not like mine.
I often say the same thing over and over. Maybe I've shared this with you before.
Here Goes:
The YouTube clip -- the six minute version, or longest obtainable -- called "He who controls the spice controls the universe", from David Lynch's 1984 masterpiece, "Dune".
And hunt up "East Coker IV" from Eliot's "Four Quartets", if you have the time. Am I slow? When I first watched the film, I had already committed that passage of Eliot to memory. Only after thirty five years did I discover Lynch's unmistakable tribute.
Note also Menchat Fighter's soliloquy in his wire guided conveyance. "In appetency on its metaled ways" . . . I can't recall where that line appears in Eliot.
Many thanks for this extraordinary trip through the vocabulary of political debate. I have preferred the paper dictionary for accidents of alphabetic context, but I have not seen the etymology of the word "fascism" taken so far, or any other word, for that matter.
"There is a way which seems right to a man, but the end of it is death"
-- Proverbs (somewhere in the original Jerusalem Bible)
You might appreciate this recent discovery by one who used to collect coins:
I encountered a "Mercury" dime in my till at the supermarket, ransoming it for ten cents and giving it to a young coworker -- a keen observer of current events -- observing that it bore on its obverse the image of a fasces. Looking a little further after work, I discovered that the face of the coin did not, in fact, represent the pagan deity, but the head of a Liberty newly equipped with wings said, in the article referenced, to denote "free thinking".
I would argue etymology and the phoneme structure of the word is more important than a dictionary entry, because a dictionary is using that plus some applied context. What I like about etymology is the meaning of the word is usually within the word itself.
FYI a "Mercury" dime from 1916 to 1945 is 90% silver and they're worth about $3 each.
Any form of totalitarianism will have the end result of brutal tyranny. I think the same may be true for any system of government.
Have you read or written about #Technocracy Fred? I'd be interested to read what you think about this, as I believe it more accurately describes the current operating system for globalist hegemony.
I also did a bit on Policy Horizons too, who promote the "Full physical integration of biological and digital entities," which would be a tool of a technocratic rule.
Technocracy seems to be the modus operandi of a global totalitarian order and worth exploring more. These 'people' are crazy...
This is a pretty good post, but your fine work of philology is marred by shoddy epistemology.
"Do words define reality? Many seem to think so. Words are instead suppose to describe aspects of reality."
Sorry, but you won't be able to draw any crisp distinction between "define" and "describe". Words do not occur in nature. They are products of human thought, as both individual and social process.
There is no straightforward one-way causality here, but rather layers and networks of feedback. There is no solid "original meaning" to cling to: these relationships continuously arise, shift, merge or split, and eventually pass away. As for logic... well, logic will have to deal with it. Would you rather have a static cardboard-cutout version of the world that is amenable to tidy deductive arrangement? Stick to mathematics, then. If you have the strength to face the world as it really is, in all its depth and complexity, then you won't demand that it conform to your preferred system of symbolic reasoning, with its inherited circumscriptions. Language, and especially language that describes-and-defines political arrangements, is to some extent genuinely creative: it can cause new realities.
Of course, for exactly these reasons, it behooves us to understand where our languages come from, and who exerts influence over and against them, and why, and how. Language shapes thought, thought shapes behavior, and so the world is run. Those of us who seek self-determination need awareness of language, and historical awareness especially. Which is to say... keep up the good work!
Maybe the define vs describe terminology is confusing in this context.
* Define means I cannot assert what reality or truth is with a word (I'm not God).
* Describe means I can create an abstract model of reality using words / symbols. This assumes reality is behaviourally consistent, otherwise any model of it is useless.
The point I was trying to make is that while language may be used to shape political thought it appears to be maliciously misused when there is no semantic anchor. This seems to mess with people's perception of how the world works when semantics change but syntax doesn't.
I don't deny that there's a meaningful distinction between the two modes, I just think it's an inescapably murky one. Certain realities are in fact created with words: we call that culture. Not all realities are equally consistent, especially over a scale of generations. They are no less real for being mutable: think of the law, for instance.
The fasces as a symbol of Roman magisterial authority, prior to Mussolini, is said to have originated in Etruscan antiquity. Each stick is individually weak, but bound together they are unbreakable. Yet, the same bundle of sticks gives us the word "faggot". Signifiers shift, connotations are connived. The world turns on such axes, if you'll pardon my pun.
I think what's needed is a good metaphysical framework for describing these concepts.
The word created realities you're describing sound like models from modal logic / model theory.
The natural world is usually considered a consistent propositional reality that can only be mapped / approximated by verified model interpretations. That's how it's treated in formal verification at least.
Top shelf.
💯👍🏻
I try to dig into etymology often. And, yeah, I like to stroll through the history of a word's use. The construction of the OED from note cards is wonderful.
How about "wyr eld" for "world", and "loaf ward" for "Lord"?
Oh, I was aware of its "junk" value. And one of our clever baggers discovered the reject slot of the Coinstar machine to be a silver mine, as well. The machine rejects all defaced and foreign coins, along with anything silver; he had scored two Roosevelts and a Washington.
Last night, after a particularly big hoard was sorted through the machine, I scooped up a sizable handful of rejects to discover a few perfectly good, normal US coins, some foreign, some defaced or dirty, and one decent 1962 silver quarter!
Had the quarter appeared in my till, I would have ransomed it for a mere $0.25, but as it had been left on store property, seven bucks in the food-charity box seemed appropriate exchange, along with the other decent coins.
You must understand that when I refer to my own process in philosophy as "lapidary", I refer to the tumbler, not painstaking inlay or Mayan heroics.
So it took a day or two to appreciate "Borg". Pretty good! It wants what I want -- food, clothing, shelter and warmth. Just like Black Rock. But its appetite is not like mine.
I often say the same thing over and over. Maybe I've shared this with you before.
Here Goes:
The YouTube clip -- the six minute version, or longest obtainable -- called "He who controls the spice controls the universe", from David Lynch's 1984 masterpiece, "Dune".
And hunt up "East Coker IV" from Eliot's "Four Quartets", if you have the time. Am I slow? When I first watched the film, I had already committed that passage of Eliot to memory. Only after thirty five years did I discover Lynch's unmistakable tribute.
Note also Menchat Fighter's soliloquy in his wire guided conveyance. "In appetency on its metaled ways" . . . I can't recall where that line appears in Eliot.
I recall mention of an inscription in Old Slavonic at the Russian monastery in Jordanville, NY:
"Words are the weapon of this age; silence is the language of the age to come".
Many thanks for this extraordinary trip through the vocabulary of political debate. I have preferred the paper dictionary for accidents of alphabetic context, but I have not seen the etymology of the word "fascism" taken so far, or any other word, for that matter.
"There is a way which seems right to a man, but the end of it is death"
-- Proverbs (somewhere in the original Jerusalem Bible)
You might appreciate this recent discovery by one who used to collect coins:
I encountered a "Mercury" dime in my till at the supermarket, ransoming it for ten cents and giving it to a young coworker -- a keen observer of current events -- observing that it bore on its obverse the image of a fasces. Looking a little further after work, I discovered that the face of the coin did not, in fact, represent the pagan deity, but the head of a Liberty newly equipped with wings said, in the article referenced, to denote "free thinking".
I would argue etymology and the phoneme structure of the word is more important than a dictionary entry, because a dictionary is using that plus some applied context. What I like about etymology is the meaning of the word is usually within the word itself.
FYI a "Mercury" dime from 1916 to 1945 is 90% silver and they're worth about $3 each.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_dime
Any form of totalitarianism will have the end result of brutal tyranny. I think the same may be true for any system of government.
Have you read or written about #Technocracy Fred? I'd be interested to read what you think about this, as I believe it more accurately describes the current operating system for globalist hegemony.
I haven't done Technocracy in specific yet, but I did write a little bit about Utilitarianism and Malthusianism in a 15-minute city post.
(I actually found an equation for human 'value' from section 3.4.7 Valuing population in an IPCC report...)
https://theodoreatkinson.substack.com/p/15-minute-cities-and-what-you-should
I also did a bit on Policy Horizons too, who promote the "Full physical integration of biological and digital entities," which would be a tool of a technocratic rule.
Technocracy seems to be the modus operandi of a global totalitarian order and worth exploring more. These 'people' are crazy...
This is a pretty good post, but your fine work of philology is marred by shoddy epistemology.
"Do words define reality? Many seem to think so. Words are instead suppose to describe aspects of reality."
Sorry, but you won't be able to draw any crisp distinction between "define" and "describe". Words do not occur in nature. They are products of human thought, as both individual and social process.
There is no straightforward one-way causality here, but rather layers and networks of feedback. There is no solid "original meaning" to cling to: these relationships continuously arise, shift, merge or split, and eventually pass away. As for logic... well, logic will have to deal with it. Would you rather have a static cardboard-cutout version of the world that is amenable to tidy deductive arrangement? Stick to mathematics, then. If you have the strength to face the world as it really is, in all its depth and complexity, then you won't demand that it conform to your preferred system of symbolic reasoning, with its inherited circumscriptions. Language, and especially language that describes-and-defines political arrangements, is to some extent genuinely creative: it can cause new realities.
Of course, for exactly these reasons, it behooves us to understand where our languages come from, and who exerts influence over and against them, and why, and how. Language shapes thought, thought shapes behavior, and so the world is run. Those of us who seek self-determination need awareness of language, and historical awareness especially. Which is to say... keep up the good work!
Well I'm glad you like my post.
Maybe the define vs describe terminology is confusing in this context.
* Define means I cannot assert what reality or truth is with a word (I'm not God).
* Describe means I can create an abstract model of reality using words / symbols. This assumes reality is behaviourally consistent, otherwise any model of it is useless.
The point I was trying to make is that while language may be used to shape political thought it appears to be maliciously misused when there is no semantic anchor. This seems to mess with people's perception of how the world works when semantics change but syntax doesn't.
I don't deny that there's a meaningful distinction between the two modes, I just think it's an inescapably murky one. Certain realities are in fact created with words: we call that culture. Not all realities are equally consistent, especially over a scale of generations. They are no less real for being mutable: think of the law, for instance.
The fasces as a symbol of Roman magisterial authority, prior to Mussolini, is said to have originated in Etruscan antiquity. Each stick is individually weak, but bound together they are unbreakable. Yet, the same bundle of sticks gives us the word "faggot". Signifiers shift, connotations are connived. The world turns on such axes, if you'll pardon my pun.
I think what's needed is a good metaphysical framework for describing these concepts.
The word created realities you're describing sound like models from modal logic / model theory.
The natural world is usually considered a consistent propositional reality that can only be mapped / approximated by verified model interpretations. That's how it's treated in formal verification at least.
Mathematical metaphysics is above my pay grade XD
So much great work here