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Showing results for tags 'deconstructionism'.
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George Orwell - “Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten." I am learning that most of the disagreements people have come down to definitions and word associations. Words have different meanings to different people. You will find this regularly occurring in debates on this forum. Molyneux has described peoples outlooks as being built up of words like a fairy-tale, so when we try to reason with an irrational outlook words have no impact, or our arguments may even drive them further into irrationality because the words we use are associated with evil and we confirm their biases. We've been debating 'arguing with irrationality'. Another way of putting 'irrationality' may be the sub-conscious mind. When we tip-toe around 'triggering' people, we're not talking about their rational thoughts, we're talking about emotion. We may find that in an irrational person they lack consciousness, or maybe they have a strong subconsciousness? If we're arguing with irrational people I suppose we have to make emotional arguments? What George Orwell was describing by the word 'Newspeak' is also known to us philosophers as 'deconstructionism'. Deconstructionists try to break down the meanings of words to give a new meanings and associations. This can be done though 'priming'. Priming is a psychological tool to make people associate something with something else. Pavlov's dog associates a bell with food. We associate coleacola with cord like cold and refreshing. I am noticing this happening more and more. Words like 'morality' used to mean someone's whole set of values and virtues that they live by. Now it means someones sense of right and wrong in conduct with other people. A much diminished definition. Evil used to mean not virtuous, now it means some kind of supernatural spirit. Fascist used to mean someone who supported Mussolini. Now Nazis are fascists. People associate Hitler with far-right even though his policies were socialist. Churchill fought off national socialism, and he was right wing and conservative. By today's standards Churchill is far right and therefore if he were around today he might be associated with 'fascism'. People associate immigration policy Nazism and genocide, even though before WWII every country other than the Wiemar republic had strong borders. No one can determine what the alt-right is, the mainstream media have an agenda control the word 'alt-right' to mean a neo-nazis movement, but the alt-right think they're a libertarian movement. Etc... My question is how do keep track of these changing definitions, and how do we talk to people with those porn-modern definitions and word associations? How to we combat newspeak/ deconstructionism?