Politics and the English Language (1946)

(this is where a closed forum, like a mailing list, has an easier time: one can aim for "what is generally acceptable among the known readership". To Kill A Mockingbird has a wonderful illustration of code switching, but was recently unacceptable to quote on a forum dealing with under- and over-class biases, both explicit and implicit, exactly because it literally used the n-word, and not only did it use it, but needed to do so, demonstrating the lines between in- and out-group usage. When it came to forum policy, the distinction between use and mention was lost.)

cf https://www.tatler.com/article/nancy-mitford-u-and-non-u-lan...

Now try implementing that policy on a rap forum. One person's "common sense" is another person's nonsense.

But that said, "muddying the waters" is a particular view of it but yes I am pointing out that they are qualitatively the same. What is or isn't common sense is a value judgement you make based off of experiences and your estimation of who shares them and to what degree. It's not inherently neutral.

The two examples you mention are excellent demonstrations! 80 years ago that sort of language would have been expected, 50 it would have been tolerated, now it isn't. Because of changing political reality, which moderation polices are a part of.

Probably the most intelligent political comedy of all time, used to be a must-watch, and still highly regarded for the intelligentsia in multiple countries.

AFAICT that does happen to be scientifically inaccurate.

There have been experiments that show other primates exhibit a clear sense of fairness, for example. If one of the test subjects received food that was less desirable than what was given to the other test subject, the test subject with the less desirable food would get angry and eventually start throwing its food back at the researcher. I can't remember kind of primate this was. But they didn't possess a language, therefore this was an expression of a "pure idea existing without language."

I haven't read much more about this. But the idea that we acquired language while somehow dropping the ability to hold such pure ideas-- esp. in the domain of fairness-- seems unlikely.

This is a mind quieting exercise that I read about in a book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.

Many people will get stuck when drawing, only making the crude symbols of the thing they are thinking about because they are thinking with the linguistic part of their brain. Much of the spacial processing tends to take place in the opposite hemisphere of the brain.

Repeating that same word over and over and over will exhaust the language processing part of your brain, allowing the non-verbal parts to do do their thing more effectively.

Relevant book: https://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Right-Side-Brain-Definitive/d...

Bonus bit: The concern you have with the intrinsic link between language and thinking is exactly why Orwell was completely justified to my thinking to be concerned about manipulation of language as a mechanism to control thought.

The escape hatch, as it were, is that language as a concept transcends any of it's concrete implementations, and is intrinsically bound to the act of being. We are immersed in the business of being, and one can imagine a mute, illiterate thinking being nevertheless existing and thinking, without spoken, written, or heard language. Their language would just be to point at what it is they are trying to describe, or recalling the memory of it. Our words as spoken or written, are just a shorthand that allows us to communicate with one another and evoke a shared experience of being.

Everything is language. A language can constrain your thinking within the context and grammar of that language, but another language lacking the same constraints need not necessarily constrain thinking in the same way.

Wittgenstein thusly posits that the very act of Philosophy is constantly engaging in language games, in which we experiment with changing up the rules by which we communicate in the attempt to forge shared understanding.

In short: Communication is really hard, and once you start thinking about, you'll really start having to wonder whether anyone really does deep and meaningful "we're saying the same thing about the same thing" level communication a lot less than we think we do.