Ideological subterfuging

It could be that I mentioned it somewhen before, but I love neologisms. New words, that is. I love thinking them up, and I love to watch the pained and sometimes even surprised expressions on people's faces when I use them around them for the first time. Oh, I've had downright "battles" with people over such words. They're argument is, if it's not in the dictionary, it's not a word. I say, in Shakespeare's day, they didn't have dictionaries and if they had had them, I'm not sure he would have cared. He is -- and I know I have said this before -- is my absolute hero, idol -- the Master of Masters of the English Language -- as far as I'm concerned. I don't feel even worthy to walk in his shadow, but that's not going to stop me from trying to sneak into the shade from time to time.

There has long been a lot of debate, not necessarily in public, but certainly in certain academic circles, about the relationship between language and thought. Whorf is probably the most widely known name in this regard. He postulated a direct link between language and how we access reality. I tend to think he's got a point, and whether language influences, or even determines, thinking or vice versa is not the real point for me. There is a relationship, undeniably. I am tending to believe it is symbiotic, not unidirectional, nor causal, but I still have to think a bit about that. What I am sure of, however, is that our experience of reality is most certainly influenced by the language(s) we speak.

Even this is, of course, too much for some people. They like to think they've got a complete, comprehensive, and objective grip on things. Nothing could be further from the truth. We can know a lot. We can be right about a lot of stuff. Our perceptions can conform to objectively verified, factual realities, but we never really have a sound "grasp" of things. We only know our experience of things, and that, dear reader, is the definition of subjectivity. You and I have different experience sets, hence we must, by definition, have differences in our perceptions of reality. This is not to say that we can't agree about many, many things, but there will never be a 100% match between your (perception of) reality and mine. That's OK. I can live with that. Unfortunately, there is a large (and growing?) number of people who can't.

Language is certainly one perceptual filter, but never, ever underestimate the power of ideologies (as I've talked about the last two posts) in filtering our experiences. Ideologies, once we believe in them, are personally dangerous in that they are so obvious to us that we fail to question them. We assume that their filtering is accurate. In most cases, we're not even aware that they are there and at work.

So, how does one "protect" oneself? Is there a way to at least mitigate their effects? But of course. There is no problem, no hazard, no disease or illness, no anything that Nature has not provided a cure/antidote/help for. In this case, our own human nature comes to our aid. We humans, believe it or not, are the only living species that can question.

Question everything.