Reply To: On Tyranny Lesson 9: Be kind to our language
I have never been a fan of generalizations, and have always hated when any one person has been painted with the same brush as “all the others.” “They’re this; they’re that.” When Hitler used his rhetoric of “the people,” he gave the impression of speaking for everyone. There’s a lot of that going on today. When one generalizes, one takes away individuality, and it makes it easier for certain people to accept or reject everything about that person, or that group. It creates a division, a us/them situation, and leaders can use that to sweep away resistance. You’re either with us, or against us. And if the whole world thinks that any one entire country or populations feels a certain way, it gives an impression of a greater amount of strength and solidarity than may really be the case.
Individual, independent thinkers can be dangerous to those who want to conquer because they’re more likely to see the right and wrong of a situation, and if they’re brave enough, question it and resist. So conformity is desired, and a way to foster that is to use things like language. It’s so much easier to grab onto a common soundbite and parrot it than it is to actually come up with your own thoughts, digesting and analyzing what’s really being said, and deciding for yourself if you really agree with it or not. But in order to gain critical thinking skills, one has to learn to challenge oneself, and that is often achieved by exposing oneself to different thoughts, ideas, and cultures, and discovering that there is often more than one way to view a situation. If you eliminate any references of difference, though, how can one do that? People like Hitler (and certain others) know this, so work hard to take away certain words, references, and content and supplant them with their own, to homogenize us, make us forget those words, those concepts, to relegate them to a forgotten past. Eliminate the written or spoken word, start fresh with your own implanted ideas, and the people are subjugated without even realizing it after a while. A new norm is established.
I do believe in reading, but I also know that in this age of technology, some people just don’t pick up a book and read it anymore. They can still become informed, though, through judicious reading or learning from other sources, be it social media, movies, podcasts, lectures, etc.. The problem is finding sources that are unbiased, and tell the truth, and I think that many people have fallen into the trap of false information, extreme skewing, and downright lies. I find comfort in some classic books because they’re often telling stories that last through the test of time, and they last because they speak to so many truths about human nature throughout the ages. Even this, however, has come under fire, as people seek to ban so many books because they’re afraid that people might learn to think differently if they dare expose them to it. Doing this extinguishes individual expression, and turns us into a society of followers instead of leaders.
