The Rectification of Terms

 

This video is a capsule example of how the left is trying to shut down civil discourse: they will not listen to opinions, arguments, or facts they do not want to hear. This is because they no longer accept the possibility of truth itself. Instead, they reserve the right to construct a “narrative,” and to use any and all means to silence anything that goes against it.

But the most insidious thing demonstrated here, is demanding that speakers use only their preferred terminology. They must say “equity,” and may not use the term “critical race theory.” This is what Orwell warned against as “Newspeak”: an attempt to control thought through restricting language.

How important is this? Confucius, asked what was the first task of government, answered “the rectification of terms.” The meaning of words must not be tempered with, or everything in society falls apart; honest communication is no longer possible. Honest interpersonal relationships of any kind are no longer possible.

In that spirit, here are some grossly dishonest terms currently in common use. I propose a parallel to “Godwin’s Law” here; or rather, to the misinterpretation of Godwin’s Law common on the internet. Godwin stated that any Internet discussion, if it went on long enough, would end in a Hitler analogy. The false version, which I refer to here, is that the first person who uses a Hitler analogy loses the debate.

My proposal is similar to this latter: If anyone uses one of these terms in debate, they ought to be declared to have lost the debate. They are not debating in good faith.

“My truth”

Use of this phrase implies that truth is different for different people. If this premise is accepted, there are no grounds on which to discuss anything. From this point on, it is just might makes right.

“My community”

Unless this means the people living in your neighbourhood, this is always a discriminatory term. You are saying anyone who does not look like you, or think like you, is no concern of yours. It is a mental redlining. Compare Jesus’s parable of the good Samaritan.

“Gender”

“Gender” is correct as a grammatical term: nouns and adjectives have gender. Any other usage confuses things terribly. The current usage to mean “having a male character or personality” or “having a female personality” was invented in 1945: “The state of being male or female as expressed by social or cultural distinctions and differences, rather than biological ones; the collective attributes or traits associated with a particular sex, or determined as a result of one's sex.” (OED) Why was such a term not needed before this time? Because it expresses a theory, that the state of femaleness or maleness is independent of sex. Nobody thought so before 1945; demonstrably, that is debatable. Casual use of the term as if the existence of what it refers to has been established is an attempt to avoid such a debate. 

“Islamophobia”

“Phobia” means fear, and irrational fear. Use of the term implies that anyone who disagrees with Islam does so out of fear, and is irrational. But Islam is itself a set of rational assertions. The attempt to suppress discussion could not be clearer.

“Homophobia”

This is almost as bad “Homophobia” makes no more sense than “pedophilophobia” for those who oppose pedophilia, or “kleptophobia” for those who oppose theft. Homosexuality is a behavior. This is an attempt to suppress discussion of whether that behavior is immoral. The case must be made, not avoided.

“Lived experience”

All experience is lived. The first thing you can say about anyone who uses this phrase, therefore, is that they are not very smart. But because nobody s privy to another’s experience, this is a refusal to discuss the matter. You are simply being asked to take their word for it. This is not reasonable; it is a con.

“Judgmental”

A blood-red flag if used as a criticism. This is an assertion of the right to do any wrong. Judgement is the moral faculty.

“Aboriginal“; “Indigenous”

Wrong when used to refer to groups of people. Reasonable in the case of vegetation. So far as we can tell, no group of people is aboriginal to the place in which they currently reside. It is almost impossible that any are. Using the term is not just scientifically and historically false. It sets up an artificial division among people, almost certainly in order to assign different rights. Our doctrine of human equality is based expressly on the Biblical concept that we are all brothers, all descendants of one original creation. “When Adam delved, and Eve span/Who then was the gentleman?” Deny that, and we lose all human rights and all human dignity.

“Race”

The concept of race is not meaningless, but it is usually worse than useless. Is it ever legitimate to discriminate among individuals on the basis of race? Perhaps when considering the odds of some genetic disease. 

But our current usage is nonsensical. Mary Simon is heralded as Canada’s first Inuit Governor-General. Yet her father was English. Barack Obama is heralded as the US’s first black or African-American president. Yet his mother was European. Kamala Harris is declared the first African-American vice-president. Yet her mother was Indian. Is Tiger Woods black, or Thai? Is Muhammed Ali black, or Irish? Most of us, in the Americas, are of mixed race; it becomes arbitrary to assign us to this or that race. And to what purpose, other than to discriminate?

“Gay”

The term is meant to enforce the view that homosexuals are or should be happy about their sexual preference. This is debatable; there are perfectly practical reasons why they might not be. It is dong no favour to homosexuals, in particular, to suppress that debate.

It also robs the language of a useful word. “Gay” can no longer be used in its original meaning without distracting double entendre.

“Exceptional”

This term is deliberately misleading when used to refer to people with mental deficiencies. And resorting to euphemisms for stupid is like a dog chasing its own tail. The new term soon accrues all the stigma of the old. The only thing that is accomplished is the wrecking of another vocabulary item.

“Mental illness”

Whatever the experiences we call “mental illness” are, they are not an “illness.” That is at best a metaphor or analogy. Declaring them so is an ad hominem attack; it serves to discount the views of anyone so labelled without consideration. A perfect way to strip anyone of their rights. Witness Britney Spears.

Readers may have their own suggestions to add. I’d be delighted to see any in the comments.

Church Service Organizers

 

CBC’s The National last evening reported that two “church service organizers” in Calgary were arrested for violating lockdown orders. Global News reports the same.

“Church service organizer”? Why the awkward phrase, instead of the standard term, “pastor”?

Perhaps because the two were not ordained by any recognized large Christian denomination?

This is not required. Merriam-Webster defines “pastor” simply as “a spiritual overseer.” The Oxford English Dictionary has “A person who has the spiritual care of a body of Christians.” “Pastor” is the correct term here. 

Pregnant Individuals

 

In last night’s news, the CBC reported on the decision to give priority to vaccinating “pregnant individuals,” who are apparently at higher risk from COVID. Throughout the story, both anchor and interviewee persisted in referring to “pregnant individuals” or “pregnant persons,” never “women” or “mothers.”

It strikes me as dehumanizing: as though the only salient fact about those mentioned here is being pregnant. As though they were no more than nondescript biological sacks. 

But I suppose more importantly, it is an open denial of objective reality. It is fantastically dangerous when an entire society becomes psychotic.

Political Narratives

 

  If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. --Confucius

One of my current pet peeves is the emergence of the term “narrative” in political and journalistic usage. While in literature the term simply means an account of events in sequence, a story, when used in politics it comes from postmodern theory. Here’s the relevant definition from the OED:

 In structuralist and post-structuralist theory: a representation of a history, biography, process, etc., in which a sequence of events has been constructed into a story in accordance with a particular ideology; esp. in   grand narrative n.  … a story or representation used to give an explanatory or justificatory account of a society, period, etc.

Use of the term in political contexts implies a right to lie for political purposes.

It ought to be a major task of newspaper and journalism style guides to expunge such politically charged partisan language; any terms that require a particular stand on some issue by their very use.

If this were ever done, as it needs to be, the list of banned terms now in common journalistic use would be long:

Homophobia, Islamophobia—imply that anyone who disagrees with a given opinion on either homosexuality or Islam is irrational. This is an illegitimate use of the term “phobia.” 

Gay—implies that anyone who is homosexual is happy to be so, refusing to allow an argument against homosexuality.

Non-standard pronouns—imply endorsement of the position that people can choose to change sex, which is an obviously debatable point. Their use therefore constitutes another attempt to stifle debate. If one wanted to refer to oneself as “zhe,” no issue would arise. However, it is always the third person pronoun that is contested, and one rarely or never refers to oneself in the third person. Accordingly, the entire point of this pronoun issue seems to be to impose one’s own views on some other person.

First Nations—implies primacy or superiority for members of a particular ethnic group. Members of other ethnic groups might want to differ. Moreover, different Indian groups are widely different culturally, making the term meaningless except to make a dubious political point. Identify by culture. “Indigenous” or “aboriginal” also involve debatable claims. “Indian,” by contrast, is politically neutral and has a defined legal meaning; it is therefore proper and necessary in some contexts.

White—as a racial term. The notion that there is such a thing as a “white race” is scientifically dubious. It is equally dubious to speak in terms of a “white” ethnicity. The Irish are very different from the English, and spent something like a millennium maintaining the distinction. Poles are not Germans or Russians; Bulgarians are not Turks. It is insulting and dismissive not to acknowledge the distinction. To use racial terminology, moreover, is to implicitly endorse racism. Identify people, if it is relevant, by nationality or ethnicity.

Asian—is equally nonsensical in scientific or ethnic terms. There is little genetic or cultural kinship between a Bengali and a Filipino. There is also a vast cultural difference between a Korean and a Japanese, for example, and lumping them together is both deeply misleading and insulting. Again, identify people by ethnicity or nationality; not by imagined “race.”

African-American—is same problem. Tunisians, Somalis, Namibians, Congolese and Boers have little in common—not even something as superficial as skin tone. “Black” is hardly better. “American black” designates a distinct cultural group with some shared history, and is therefore a useful term. But an American black is then very different from a Jamaican or a Canadian or a Cuban black.

I could go on. It would almost be worth it to launch a publication—perhaps an online publication—purely to model such proper usage. Doing so might, in itself, vastly improve our public discourse.

A Warning to Peoplekind

At the time, I noted that I thought it was silly for everyone to pile on Justin Trudeau for his “peoplekind” comment. It was obviously a joke. Everyone present laughed. The proof of this is that Trudeau said “peoplekind,” instead of the well-established alternative “humankind.” If he’d said the latter, it would not have sounded foolish enough to be funny.

But it turns out that my friend Xerxes not only though it was no joke, but endorses the idea. We should always say “peoplekind.”

“Mankind” simply means the human race, regardless of sex, and it always has. I know you hate dictionaries, but they are the authority on the language. Both Merriam-Webster and Oxford give this as the first definition. Both also list “men as distinct from women” as a second definition, but Oxford even labels this obsolete. The Etymological Dictionary notes that this sex-neutral meaning of mankind is also older that the usage that limits it to males.

So an objection to “mankind” is simply wrong. You are objecting only to the phoneme “man.” On those grounds, you also have to object to “woMAN” (shortened over time from the original “womb-man”) or huMAN, or perSON, or feMALE. And on and on. We’ll have to go back and change the national anthem again: it still says “In all of us comMANd.” We are getting close to having to recreate the language from the ground up.

At the same time, that this usage could be considered a problem needing fixing is compelling evidence that woman are not discriminated against in our society—and do not need to be patronized in this way. There is accordingly no good reason to do it. If they were oppressed, they would have neither the time, nor the energy, nor the power, to devote to such Princess-and-the-Pea incidentals. And would certainly never presume the power to demand that everyone else conform to satisfy them—especially considering how much change seems necessary by the logic of this one.

Even if women were discriminated against, however, changing words will do nothing to help. Slavery ended in the US long before anyone thought of switching from “negro” or “nigger” to “black” as a descriptive term for “African-Americans.” And please, do not use that word, “black.” It is now offensive. You can still, I think, use “African-American,” but it too is being replaced, it seems, by “people of colour.”

Which demonstrates first, that a change in language is irrelevant to changing social policy: social policy changed without any linguistic change; and second, that changing the language accomplishes nothing in terms of changing attitudes. Unless you change people’s thinking, the new term just comes to have all the same associations as the old one. “Idiot” began as a polite term. Then “retarded” replaced it as a more polite term. Now “retarded” sounds like an insult. And on it goes, forever. “Nigger” began and lived for centuries as a purely descriptive term.

Therefore, this tinkering with words demonstrably does not benefit the group supposedly being harmed by them.

So whom does it benefit?

The only benefit to anyone of proposing or using such new “politically correct” terms, and the only reason they are used, is to mark class distinctions and allow class discrimination: those who know the latest terms are those who have gone to a proper college to learn them, and/or who associate with the “right” people. Those who do not are revealed by this as social inferiors, and are to be treated accordingly—with disdain. They are the “other.”

As a secondary benefit, politically correct speech is a satisfying opportunity to bully the less powerful, showing your authority.

It is fortunate that these attempts to police language actually accomplish nothing. Because what they actually intend to accomplish is mind control. This is just what George Orwell warned of as “newspeak” in 1984; the attempt to limit what people could actually think by limiting the words they could use. “Politically correct” language is an overt attempt to control what people are permitted to think and say. We are just terribly lucky that it does not work.

It is still not harmless, however. Aside from promoting class discrimination, such arbitrary redefinitions of words and neologisms falsify the past. They make it more difficult to understand the best thoughts of the best minds who have lived: Shakespeare, say, or Locke, or Donne, or Newton. This is like loosing a wrecking ball on civilization.

For example, if Trudeau’s new definition of “mankind” were to be generally accepted, people could easily misunderstand that, when Neil Armstrong said “One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” he was excluding women. Or that when Alexander Pope wrote “The proper study of mankind is man,” he was excluding women. Which perfectly suppresses the point they were actually making.

One of Yeats’ finest poems is “Lapus Lazuli.” The last line is the kicker, summing up the whole point of existence, and it is “Their ancient glittering eyes are gay.” I read it to a colleague not long ago, and, inevitably, the line now evokes a titter. The poem has not been effectively destroyed. And the vital point it was making effectively lost.

Why would anyone want to do this? Sadly, erasing our knowledge of the past is valuable for people in power. Past authority limits present freedom of action. This was why Winston Smith’s job in the Ministry of Truth was to send inconvenient facts down “the memory hole.” Under the slogan, “He who controls the past controls the future. And he who controls the present controls the past.”

And, it might be added, he who controls the past controls the present. Break the tablets of the law, and might makes right. If you have the might, you get to do as you like.

Accordingly, groups reaching for absolute power have often, in the past, promoted some form of iconoclasm, of wiping out knowledge of the past. This was Mao’s Cultural Revolution, or what Pol Pot was trying to do in Cambodia. The original Chin Emperor, to ensure and complete his rule, tried to burn every book that had ever been written.

Confucius made plain the depth of the danger. When asked what he would do if ever given political power, his answer was, “The first task is the rectification of names.” The most important thing for good, honest, moral government is to ensure that nobody is playing around with words, that all words retain their proper meanings.

If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties and music do not flourish. When proprieties and music do not flourish, punishments will not be properly awarded. When punishments are not properly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or foot. Therefore a superior man considers it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately, and also that what he speaks may be carried out appropriately. What the superior man requires is just that in his words there may be nothing incorrect.

That is how serious the battle is, in which we are now engaged.