[HN Gopher] George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)
___________________________________________________________________
George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)
Author : tempodox
Score : 226 points
Date : 2023-10-21 05:25 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thoughtco.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thoughtco.com)
| squarefoot wrote:
| George Carlin should be studied, translated and dubbed in every
| possible language.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The better stand-up comedians are hard to distinguish from
| philosophers. Carlin is right up there. It's a pity he's gone,
| we kind of need him right now.
| lapcat wrote:
| > The better stand-up comedians are hard to distinguish from
| philosophers.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoZ3bu23BMA
| hfuyf65 wrote:
| He would have had a field day if he was alive. It is a loss
| for all of us that he is gone.
|
| Still, we now have Chapelle, who is building similiar legacy
| and potentially Bill Burr one day.
|
| Absolute agreement on the philosopher/jester vibes.
| jdub wrote:
| They're not even in the same sport, let alone the same
| league.
| hfuyf65 wrote:
| Not yet, but if you watch early Carlin it is the same
| pattern:
|
| 1. initially safe,sanitized corporate friendly jokes 2.
| some commercial success 3. ? 4. jokes increasingly become
| a social commentary and are less and less 'friendly'
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I remember early Carlin and he pushed the legal limits of
| radio and TV broadcast from the start. AFAIK he was also
| the first to cross the lines with the "7 words" one can
| not say on that industry. He was always providing
| commentary on society but what I noticed was that his
| views got darker and more jaded with time. He started off
| using his knowledge of language to be rebellious and
| edgy, then delving more into self analysis tearing
| himself apart for self deprecating routines then
| eventually teasing and tearing society apart.
| hfuyf65 wrote:
| Hmm. My point is that Carlin did not start with 7 words.
| That is what he is famous for, but he didn't magically
| show up that day to recors that line out of the blue.
|
| I am too lazy to dig it up now, but youtube has multiple
| interviews that go over that stage of his life.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Yeah I am not saying he started with the 7 words either,
| rather he was always one of the first to push the limits
| as the limits evolved. There were other taboos crossed
| prior to him.
|
| "I Love Lucy" was the first TV show to say "Pregnant".
| "Bewitched" filmed Samantha wearing almost see through
| evening wear but television was such grainy low
| resolution analog broadcast that the audience was
| unaware. The remastered DVD's make that more obvious now.
| There are many other lines that in hind sight seem odd
| now. Benny Hill crossed a few lines and managed to get
| nudity allowed on TV when it was otherwise forbidden.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Not disagreeing, but since society was evolving as well,
| it seems more like Carlin was pushing whatever the
| current boundary was at the time. When he pushed and
| society gave a bit, he pushed more.
|
| Trying to start his career with The Seven Words You Can
| Never Say on Television would have clearly been a ...
| non-starter.
| js2 wrote:
| No one ever seems to remember Lenny Bruce. Lenny Bruce
| was in the same league as Carlin. Carlin's seven dirty
| words was straight from one of Bruce's routines.
| PierreProstata wrote:
| 3. shit piss fuck cunt cocksucker motherfucker tits
| ghostpepper wrote:
| For anyone wondering, these are the seven words you can't
| say on TV (or couldn't in 1970?) and the actual monologue
| about them is insightful and eloquent.
|
| This is just the punchline without the setup.
| PierreProstata wrote:
| I figured in a thread about George Carlin most people
| would at least get the hint, and also it marked a pretty
| important point in his career between family friendly
| comedian and counter-culture icon
| lebuffon wrote:
| " ...and tits doesn't even sound like a swear word. It
| sounds like something you should eat.
|
| Try new cheese-tits! Bet you can't eat just one"
|
| R.I.P. George
| jdub wrote:
| That's mostly the timeframe of his career. It doesn't put
| jerks at his level.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Carlin and safe, sanitized corporate friendly jokes never
| happened. If anything he became _less_ intentionally rude
| over time.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| Isn't that how he started, before the hippy dippy
| weatherman?
| Kye wrote:
| Dave Chappelle walked away from money out of principle when
| it came to making jokes about people like him for white
| audiences, but happily cracks jokes about trans people.
| He's a has-been and a hypocrite and Carlin would end his
| career.
| hfuyf65 wrote:
| Disagree, but can you substantiate hypocrite claim? Also
| cancellation chance seems to depend on how 'big' you are.
| Chapelle wasn't cancelled despite attempts. I suspect
| Carlin would get in trouble, but since he had a strong
| following, it is hardly a given.
| Kye wrote:
| Refused to make jokes at the expense of one marginalized
| and vulnerable group he's part of, makes jokes at the
| expense of another he isn't. That's hypocrisy. The
| motivation to walk away was self-interested, not
| principled.
| pauldenton wrote:
| What's wrong with making jokes about trans people?
| Christians never seem to get bothered when people make
| jokes about them. Not like Jews or Muslims, especially
| since October 7th Maybe Jews and Muslims and Trans people
| should be more like Christians. When someone is making a
| joke at your expense, turn the other cheek
| silenced_trope wrote:
| Right?
|
| What is this thing about some groups being "off limits"
| while others are fetishized and babied?
|
| There's no longer anything "brave" in making a joke about
| a "safe group" to joke about.
|
| In today's day and age since trans is the new sacred cow
| amongst certain crowds in the Western world, it seems
| natural that that would be the subject of jokes.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Dave Chappelle is the most overrated standup comedian in
| the world right now. He was funny before he left. He
| shouldn't have come back. He is now a cheap reactionary. He
| is not even in the same league as George Carlin.
| pauldenton wrote:
| Carlin was always a cheap reactionary. we are just a
| generation past what he was reacting to
| cassepipe wrote:
| Bill Burr is talented, he definitely has wit, but has gone
| in such a crusade against feminism that he is almost not
| funny anymore, just a angry man.
|
| I personally love Louie C.K, he is really at showing our
| social boundaries, pushing us to the limits, the weirdness
| of them, without trying to push a narrative on how other
| people are just stupid.
| cyber_kinetist wrote:
| Note that the opposite can also be true: some philosophers
| can also be good comedians (in spite of the general
| stereotype that all philosophers are excruciatingly boring
| and dry, which can partially be attributed to the
| proliferation of analytic philosophy.)
|
| For example Slavoj Zizek has a whole book dedicated to
| cataloguing his (often "politically incorrect") jokes. Link
| here: https://meydanehonar.com/Panel/Uploads/6/3/7/8d1a8c61-4
| 7d2-4...
| hfuyf65 wrote:
| Thank you. This is why I keep coming back here. I would not
| have stumbled on it on my own. It hits quite hard for me.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| Fun fact: In German the words for knowledge ('Wissen') and
| wit/joke ('Witz') share the same root.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It's fun, and they share the two first letters but it's
| not a fact:
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wissen#German
|
| From Middle High German and Old High German wizzan, from
| Proto-West Germanic _witan, from Proto-Germanic_ witana,
| from Proto-Indo-European _woyde ("to see, to know").
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Witz#Etymology
|
| From Middle High German witz, from Old High German wizzi,
| from Proto-West Germanic _witi, from Proto-Germanic
| _witja from Proto-Indo-European_ weyd- ("see, know").
|
| Cognate to English wit, archaic Dutch wit, akin to Old
| Saxon giwit.
|
| So they share the same concepts ('to see, to know') but
| not the same roots! Very closely related though.
| poorlyknit wrote:
| Then you click on woyde and see that it's the
|
| > Root stative of the root *weyd-.
|
| :)
| greazy wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this! Zizek is extremely engaging but I
| wish he would be more perscriptive than just descriptive.
| Eumenes wrote:
| Carlin has only ever been a "philosopher" to juveniles. He
| was right on corporate America and the American war machine,
| but he was a self-loathing misanthrope and nihilist
| newswasboring wrote:
| Nihilism and misanthropy are valid philosophical positions
| though.
| Eumenes wrote:
| No doubt but he's a comedian, not a philosopher. Carlin's
| crusty curmudgeon personality never did much for me. I'm
| an atheist but his whole anti religion shtick really
| turned me off.
| nedrylandJP wrote:
| I recommend consulting his early/middle material...
| 1967-1990 maybe. You're only really referring to his last
| 10-15 years or so.
| morganf wrote:
| I've long argued that Nietzsche is actually a comedian. Agree
| or not with his ideas, he is hysterically funny, in this
| smart and subtle way, a lot like George Carlin.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Sort of agree. I'm a contrarian though that feels like Carlin
| got less funny the older and angrier he got.
|
| His cynicism was beautiful, but he seemed to dropped using
| humor to deliver it toward the end.
| EGG_CREAM wrote:
| Unpopular opinion: much of what he said was just total bs. Even
| in an example from this article, he goes on a tangent about
| phrases that were not used then and still are not used.
| "They're not used cars, they're 'previously owned
| automobiles.'" What? Nobody calls them that, even today, 30
| some odd years later.
|
| In my opinion, George Carlin sometimes had some kernel of good
| observation at the heart of his bits, that he made worse and
| less correct the more he pontificated on it. And a lot of his
| observations are the kind of "common sense" folk wisdom that
| falls apart on closer inspection.
| inhumantsar wrote:
| What? Pre-owned is widely used by dealers and manufacturers
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| "Previously owned automobiles" just got shortened to "pre-
| owned" and that's all over the place today, and I daresay
| it's seeped into things other than cars.
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| Upcycled is the latest, including upcycled food
| https://www.upcycledfood.org/
| catherd wrote:
| If you are advocating for "used food" as the correct
| term, there's another state that food enters after it's
| been used that you might want to be careful about
| disambiguating :).
| gainda wrote:
| And "pre-loved" for things like used clothing ...
| hfuyf65 wrote:
| It is not that unpopular. I suppose I appreciate his
| contributions a lot, but I agree about the kernel of truth
| approach rather than holy gospel.
|
| I just happen to think he forced a lot of people to think.
| This one of those things some of his contemporaries tried and
| failed to do ( not for the lack of trying, it is hard to care
| after certain point ).
| gosub100 wrote:
| he gave simple-minded people comfort for an increasingly
| complicated world. But notably absent from his calculated
| monlogue was "grandma _went to heaven_ / (in a better
| place)", vs "she DIED". even crusty old George knew how far
| he could push it.
| nedrylandJP wrote:
| He did say he would never die, just "pass away."
| dekhn wrote:
| I think his best work was his earliest, such as "Seven Words
| You Can't Say on Television". But ultimately I think his best
| routine is "Football vs. Baseball" (American football)
|
| """Baseball is different from any other sport, very
| different. For instance, in most sports you score points or
| goals; in baseball you score runs. In most sports the ball,
| or object, is put in play by the offensive team; in baseball
| the defensive team puts the ball in play, and only the
| defense is allowed to touch the ball. In fact, in baseball if
| an offensive player touches the ball intentionally, he's out;
| sometimes unintentionally, he's out. ...
|
| In football the object is for the quarterback, also known as
| the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault,
| riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly
| accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use
| shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches
| his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial
| assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in
| the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.
|
| In baseball the object is to go home! And to be safe! - I
| hope I'll be safe at home!"""
| harryvederci wrote:
| My favourite one in Dutch: People with a disability used to be
| called "handicapped".
|
| At some point, that was no longer acceptable. The correct term to
| use became "invalid".
|
| So it was better to say "that person is invalid" than "that
| person is handicapped".
| 0xbadc0de5 wrote:
| Another example Carlin provides is "cripple". It can be used as
| both an adjective and as a verb and concisely describes the
| situation. It's entirely neutral and free of euphemism.
|
| He also makes a similar argument for "retarded".
| Tao3300 wrote:
| I think the problem with "retarded" was that it became a
| pejorative. It's also just a harsh sounding word.
| poszlem wrote:
| The term turned negative because it represented something
| that no one wanted to be associated with. Even if you were
| to use the phrase "unicorn-blessed" in the same context,
| over time, it could also develop a negative connotation.
| It's not the terminology that's a problem, but the
| situation it describes.
|
| "Idiot", "moron", and "imbecile" used to be medical terms.
| itronitron wrote:
| >> if you were to use the phrase "unicorn-blessed"
|
| yeah, that exact thing happened with the word "special"
| apricot wrote:
| Today, one often hears "He is special needs" said by
| people who think they are being politically correct. But
| that's awfully wrong. He might _have_ special needs, but
| he is not needs. He is a person. To me, that 's a lot
| more dehumanizing than saying "retarded".
|
| Then they'll say "but you know what I mean". That's the
| point, exactly.
| 0xbadc0de5 wrote:
| The ultimate culmination being certain subreddits where
| the banned "retarded" has been replaced by the homonym
| "regarded", such that referring to someone as "highly
| regarded" is understood to mean the former, not the
| latter.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| At some point we may collectively realize that
| controlling language in such a way is impossible. People
| will just find alternative ways to express exactly the
| same sentiment.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| That's pretty ducking clever
| JasserInicide wrote:
| Apparently you can't say "suicide" anymore in YouTube
| videos because it's automatic demonetization so people
| are now saying "unalive"
| rpmisms wrote:
| Retarded means "slowed down". It's a very good word, and
| even better as an insult.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It'll also get you banned pretty fast in the majority of
| subreddits, despite the fact that very few people today
| (and even fewer who use reddit) were ever legitimately
| referred to as retarded back in the day.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Reddit is a bit of an odd environment. It's moderated by
| people with zero life.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| I was called it in both senses of the word and I think
| that was extremely common for people of a certain
| generation. I saw the full time special ed getting called
| that more than occasionally. There were all sorts of
| popular memes like "arguing on the internet is like
| winning the special olympics..."
|
| What do you know? The biggest thing I noticed after
| "retard" fell out of favour is more specific insults like
| "autist" became more prevalent and I'd say this rotation
| of the euphemism treadmill has only made stigma worse for
| certain groups because "retard" was used as such a catch-
| all that the stigma of it didn't really seem to stick to
| people much.
|
| As for banning slurs from Reddit, irrespective of slurs
| should be banned for the good of those being slurred,
| they cause derails and are magnets for reports.
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| That's funny we went the opposite way in France, "invalid" in
| the past, now "handicapped".
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| I have heard the term "differently abled" kicked around,
| which completely buries the actual issue. As a "differently
| abled" person, I will say I don't need to go hiding my
| handicap, I'd much rather someone figure out to help me adapt
| better or just fix it, rather than hiding it. I know I have a
| problem, I have it all day every day. Why are people who
| don't have my problems so concerned about just saying it out
| loud?
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| I find it reprehensible. Lots of hot air to accomplish
| nothing at all except making a few activists feel good
| about themselves.
|
| The online disabled community has been completely poisoned
| by it sadly.
| addcommitpush wrote:
| You're late. It's en situation de handicap now, not invalide
| or handicape.
|
| See for instance https://www.service-
| public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F31029
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| That's not even the end of it, because there's also
| "mindervalide", "less-valid", or "iemand met een beperking",
| "someone with a limitation".
| filmor wrote:
| Invalid is derived from Latin with validus meaning "strong" or
| "in order". The German and Dutch uses of the word are derived
| directly from invalidus meaning ~"weak" (maybe via French),
| while the English word (as its mostly used) is an English(!)
| negation of "valid", which leans on the "in order" part to get
| to "inappropriate" or "not correct".
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| 'Invalid' (a weak person) is also pronounced with an '@' (in-
| vuh-lid) in English, whereas 'Invalid' (a improper thing) is
| pronounced with an 'a' (in-va-lid).
| Rolpa wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Lan...
| latexr wrote:
| Link to the bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o25I2fzFGoY
| oceanplexian wrote:
| The idea comes straight out of modern Academia.
|
| It's also called linguistic relativity, and critical theory,
| literary theory, and postmodernism all have roots in it. The idea
| is that if you believe hard enough, for example a duck can
| actually be a goose depending on what "lens" you see it though
|
| Obviously, this is ridiculous. But this has invaded our culture
| like a cancer and is responsible for the proliferation of PC
| language in the last few years.
| bazoom42 wrote:
| Euphemisms are not particular to academia. Euphemisms for sex
| and death are as old as language.
| pauldenton wrote:
| Sure but it's especially bad in academia recently. "You
| cannot be racist against white people. If it's against white
| people it's not racist" kind of language. Or you know. Whites
| not need apply. This program is for every race except
| Caucasian
| constantly wrote:
| What's the effect here? I don't think I like soft language, but
| can't really pinpoint why I don't like it. Is it bad that some
| company came up with toilet paper and now it's bathroom tissue?
| Shell shock is now PTSD?
|
| Who cares?
| HPsquared wrote:
| I guess the new words come with an agenda, they're not just
| words. It's a subtle method of manipulation.
| constantly wrote:
| Softening them, like "crippled" to "disabled," makes it seem
| like the manipulation or agenda is to make affected people
| feel more included by making them feel less bad. Maybe that's
| an agenda, but my sense is the complainants are of the "kids
| these days" variety.
| MatekCopatek wrote:
| It affects your perception, optimizing production costs is
| easier to do and less morally problematic than firing people.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| > morally problematic
|
| ...which is a soft way to say "wrong" or "evil"
| dralley wrote:
| A common theme with a lot of Carlin rants - they resonate well,
| but they're completely wrong.
|
| I don't think we want to describe sexual assault victims as
| having "shell shock". Even a soldier could get "shell shock"
| without encountering any shells. The language got softer not
| because we're all a bunch of softies but because we noticed a
| general pattern and generalized the name to match.
| hfuyf65 wrote:
| If they resonate well, it either means the population as
| whole thinks it is accurate or that the population as a wholr
| is wrong.
|
| Either is possible, but I think you are wrong about Carlin
| being wrong. Language defines the quality of our
| conversations. If we can't be honest with it, some nuance
| will be lost.
| constantly wrote:
| There are many things in the middle of the false dichotomy
| you've presented. Such as "people don't really think about
| it deeply and it sounds superficially good so they like it"
| or "people laugh because he's a comedian but don't take it
| seriously because of same."
| hfuyf65 wrote:
| Sure. We are not threading new ground here; this has been
| covered better by people much smarter than me. I am
| simplifying for the sake of brevity.
|
| It may help to think of it as a range.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Completely wrong?
| Tao3300 wrote:
| Don't lose sight of the fact that a comedian is telling
| jokes and speaking in character.
| watwut wrote:
| His comedy gets to be quoted in arguments and is used as
| argument. His claims are treated as factual by people who
| like him. So, no, you can not just dismiss
| counterarguments like that.
|
| It is sort of schrodinger stragety - you make claims and
| if someone strongly argues back, it was joke. If there is
| no strong pushback, we pretend it was serious.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| _Partly cloudy_ and _partly sunny_ are different too. Are we
| sure he didn 't revert back into the Hippy Dippy Weatherman
| when he said that?
| zug_zug wrote:
| I think you picked an example where he's wrong, but not
| completely wrong.
|
| I agree "shell shock" wouldn't suffice but you could just
| change his word to "past-shock" or something, and notice how
| different that feels than an 8-syllable medical phrase.
|
| I do think putting big fancy words on things implies a fake
| level of understanding, takes the word away from everyday
| users, and has other real effects.
| xphos wrote:
| I think it sacrifices something from trying to be an
| inclusive term. It's nice that we have a general term but it
| lacks understanding that some soldiers just think it's a soft
| name for soft people. Not because it is but because the
| audience it's extremely relevant are strong hard assed people
| and the term makes it harder to retain the warrior identity
| that develop while being a soldier. Than you just a broken
| soldier, not a harden one who faces shell shock.
|
| There are certainly times when shell shock makes no sense but
| I find PTSD dehumanizing especially since no one actually
| says post traumatic stress disorder.
| softg wrote:
| I didn't read all of the article but I've watched that bit
| multiple times, IIRC his point was all of these euphemisms
| sanitize the language and hide the meaning and emotions behind
| words. PTSD is a clinical word with less emotional
| connotations, it sounds more manageable and it's easier to
| forget.
|
| Maybe if we didn't change what it was, it would've been a bit
| more difficult to send people to wars where they can get
| 'shellshocked' instead of 'experiencing PTSD'.
| eesmith wrote:
| You (and Carlin) have a post-Vietnam interpretation of "shell
| shock", made possible only because of the success of PTSD for
| classifying and treating emotional injuries.
|
| We can look to the post-WWI era 'Report of the War Office
| Committee of Enquiry into "Shell-shock"' to see how in 1922
| they viewed "shell shock" as a congenital or upbringing
| failing. From https://archive.org/details/b3217777x/page/96/m
| ode/2up?q=con...
|
| > Authorities are agreed that, in the majority of cases of
| war neurosis, there already existed a congenital or acquired
| predisposition to pathological reaction in the individual
| concerned, and that this constitutional characteristic was of
| vast importance.
|
| We can see how many viewed it as simple lack of morale:
|
| > Major Adie tritely expressed himself in stating that there
| was only one word worth mentioning, and that was " Morale.''
| If you keep up the morale there will be no " shell-shock.''
| The medical officer should know his. men, and can prevent the
| vast majority of nervous cases--mild " shell-shock ''--from
| becoming ''shell-shocks'' by retaining them at the front, or
| by giving them a little rest at the front. As long as they
| were living with soldiers, and in the atmosphere of the front
| line, the tendency was to recover. They were to be looked on
| merely as physically exhausted. - https://archive.org/details
| /b3217777x/page/158/mode/2up?q=mo...
|
| > He agreed with the regimental opinion that a large number
| of ''shell shock'' cases in a battalion may be taken as a
| sign of poor morale. - https://archive.org/details/b3217777x/
| page/16/mode/2up?q=mor...
|
| Then there's the difficulty of figuring out if someone is
| suffering from shell shock or is a coward - the latter being
| punishable by death:
|
| > Asked whether he had any experience of cases of men charged
| with certain military offences, such as desertion, in which
| the plea of "shell shock" was put forward, the doctor said he
| saw many such cases. As Neurologist of the 4th Army, all
| cases which put in a plea of "shell shock" as an excuse for
| desertion were sent to him for medical examination and
| report, and he was always asked to give evidence in courts-
| martial on these cases. He confessed it was an extremely
| difficult and distasteful task, and he very soon came to the
| conclusion that it was almost impossible for the Medical
| Officer to make a decisive statement ... - https://archive.or
| g/details/b3217777x/page/42/mode/2up?q=exc...
|
| Or if someone is shirking duties by claiming shell shock:
|
| > "Shell-shock" became recognized as a handy excuse, and,
| indeed, a suggestion also to the many who were ready to avail
| themselves of any subterfuge to escape from the terrors of
| the front. - https://archive.org/details/b3217777x/page/140/m
| ode/2up?q=ex...
|
| As a result, the British government decided "that quasi-
| medical words like 'shell-shock' should never be used, that
| the whole question of psychoneuroses should be both
| recognized and played down, and that no pensions should be
| paid." (quoting https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/
| 0957154x9901004... ).
|
| The term "shell shock" was not used in WWII. From the last
| source, "'Not Yet Diagnosed (Nervous)' (NYDN) or 'Exhaustion'
| being the commonest. The troops had a variety of terms,
| notably 'Bomb Happy' or 'Windy'."
|
| So no, it wouldn't have been more difficult. It was viewed as
| a moral or congenital failure of the solider to carry out his
| service.
| watwut wrote:
| Yeah, but he is not historical in it. He did not studied
| history of the word, wars nor social studies. He just makes
| historically sounding claims.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Deflection, (self)censorship, there's a number of reasons.
|
| Toilet paper became bathroom tissue because some people think
| toilets are gross.
|
| Shellshock became battle fatigue so that people aren't
| discouraged from going to war; "they're just tired". It became
| post-traumatic stress disorder to make it both clinical, and to
| put it on the person having it - YOU have a disorder after a
| traumatic event.
|
| Modern day example, people self-censor to avoid getting
| downranked, censoring words like "sex" into "s*x", "kill" into
| "unalive", "suicide" to "sewer slide", etc.
|
| The book 1984 takes it to its extremes, where the language has
| changed to control the discourse and masses.
| constantly wrote:
| I understand the reasons (i.e. toilets probably evoke more
| subtle grossness than bathrooms or washrooms do), and I
| haven't heard some of those you mention, but still unclear
| why it's a bad thing vis a vis an observation of changing
| language.
| TheDong wrote:
| Back in the old day, when men were men, saying "toilet
| paper" wouldn't cause a room full of people to faint in
| shock at the dirty word. People were hard then.
|
| All these people trying to make their language more soft
| and welcoming are ignoring the fact that the world is
| supposed to suck, kindness is a modern invention, and
| frankly we can all see that it was a mistake.
|
| I recommend you curse at everyone around constantly to make
| them harder and stronger, they'll certainly thank you for
| your service eventually, once they too are strong like you.
| eesmith wrote:
| > Back in the old day, when men were men, saying "toilet
| paper" wouldn't cause a room full of people to faint in
| shock at the dirty word. People were hard then.
|
| Pardon? When was this era?
|
| "Toilet paper" was embarrassing in the late 1800s when it
| became available in the US. Quoting
| https://www.heatandplumb.com/blog/history-of-toilet-paper
| :
|
| "The next significant American innovation came in 1890,
| when brothers Clarence and E. Irvin Scott marketed the
| first toilet paper roll. They found more success than
| Gayetty thanks to negotiating trade deals with several
| hotels and local shops, Despite the steady income they
| generated, the brothers struggled to sell their toilet
| paper to the wider population; many Americans were too
| embarrassed to purchase it in public."
|
| Or from
| https://community.oerproject.com/b/blog/posts/a-splinter-
| fre... :
|
| "But many people in the late nineteenth and early
| twentieth century were reluctant to talk openly about
| poop. They were often too embarrassed to walk out of a
| store carrying an armful of toilet paper. People would
| instead order something like "wrapping paper" with a wink
| and a nod to the shopkeeper. But marketers eventually
| found a way to fix this problem. Have you ever wondered
| why so many TP brands have pictures of baby animals or
| baby humans on them? They used to have images of
| beautiful women on the packages. Advertisers wanted to
| emphasize softness and to avoid talking about the fact
| that these were rolls of paper designed to remove
| excrement from the human body."
|
| You can see one way marketers worked to calm this
| embarrassment in a 1922 advertisement:
| easy to ask for - easy to get Ask for Northern
| Tissue. You don't even have to say toilet paper.
| You will get the most thoroughly safe, pure,
| salutary product, fine and soft, yet firm, 650
| sheets to the roll, and surprisingly low in price.
| AND YOU CAN GET IT WITH- OUT EMBARRASSMENT.
| SIMPLY Ask for Northern Tissue
| at any of these stores
|
| (Fifth page of the PDF at
| https://archive.org/details/lincoln-evening-state-
| journal-an... .)
|
| Here's a quote from a 1947 short story at https://digital
| repository.unm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl... :
| Jolan's wife came from the house and to the gate, a child
| in her arms. "Here, Lora" she called in a loud
| voice. "You'll need this. It's going to be all
| day." She handed Lora a small roll of toilet paper, a
| precious article here. She spoke without modesty, for in
| a house with- out windows if one blushed at such
| things one would bleed away into blushes.
|
| Yes, someone more well-off would be expected to blush
| about using toilet paper in public like that.
|
| The idea that "toilet paper" was something improper
| existed until at least the 1950s. Here's a 1958 use from
| https://archive.org/details/ucladailybruin36losa/page/n12
| 7/m... : One of the entries -- the
| winning one has not yet been chosen -- is written
| entirely on Seppi paper (it's so crude to say
| toilet paper) cutely bound with a feminine pink
| ribbon.
|
| Indeed, my own grandmother would say "TP" instead of
| "toilet paper".
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| >Toilet paper became bathroom tissue because some people
| think toilets are gross.
|
| When and why did ass-wiping paper become toilet paper?
| prakhar897 wrote:
| Because saying
|
| 'the economically disadvantaged' occupy 'substandard housing'
| in the 'inner cities.'
|
| compared to
|
| "Poor people live in slums"
|
| works better for politicians. They haven't improved the
| situation, just swept it under the rug that is Oxford
| Dictionary.
| constantly wrote:
| That seems like a whole different problem than the language
| used. Would it have been acceptable to keep using the
| original language and still not do anything about it?
| Probably not.
| verisimi wrote:
| How you talk about things or how things are expressed to you,
| frame your perception of reality.
|
| Terrorist or freedom fighter?
|
| Uncomfortable truth or hate speech?
|
| etc.
|
| One does not re-translate what is said to one, into some
| universal, neutral idea.
|
| So, you then have to wonder, are your thoughts actually your
| own? Are they based on what you yourself have perceived or on
| what has been provided to you? And who is it that is doing the
| provisioning? Have they got your best interests at heart? Do
| you have other people's best interests at heart when you say
| things to them? Do you only speak truth, or do you echo
| provided opinions? Etc.
|
| Quite surprising the read:
|
| > Who cares?
|
| Surely everyone cares about having a valid understanding of
| reality?
| newswasboring wrote:
| I have a similar struggle. One thing I did come up with is many
| times corporations use newly created jargon to confuse people.
| It add a mental burden on the listener to decipher and takes
| away from the time to analyze the statement.
| tomkarho wrote:
| Soft language is a slippery slope that eventually allows people
| to do reprehensible things to each other while masking it in
| the warm blanket of either indifference or virtue because the
| vocabulary doesn't reflect the horror involved anymore and in
| some cases, promotes the very opposite.
|
| Here's another example from George: calling a "rape victim"
| "involuntary sperm recipient". He said it in jest then but I'd
| believe that some committee might design such change into
| language of documents like police reports in order not to
| "offend" and spare the case worker from uncomfortable truths or
| some bs like that while completely neutralizing the pain and
| suffering of the victim.
|
| Soft language is a long game. It's not something which effects
| are apparent in a year or two or even ten but decades down the
| line and things like that always begin in innocuous and
| innocent sounding targets. Like bathroom tissue.
|
| Language is the water. We are the frog.
| bsza wrote:
| I think Carlin summarizes the effect pretty well, though this
| quote is not included in the article:
|
| "These poor people have been bullshitted by the system into
| believing that if you change the name of the condition, somehow
| you'll change the condition"
| mrtksn wrote:
| >"Americans have trouble facing the truth," Carlin said. "So they
| invent a kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it"
|
| It is useful and not limited to Americans, that's why people do
| it. Much more people would have been vegans or they would be much
| more indifferent to violence if every pack of meat had a QR code
| to a video showing the life and processing of that particular
| animal.
|
| It's also not just softening that's practiced but hardening too.
| We dehumanise people all the time if we want to suppress them or
| kill them institutionally.
|
| We humans like to live in an idealised reality, a fiction where
| we are just and don't practice cruelty, our parent's don't have
| sex, people have roles(social roles, gender roles, political
| roles etc) and they always act in a way to honour that.
|
| The reality is much more different of course, we kill animals at
| scale we call terrorist or another dirty word those who we have
| institutional violent conflicts with and exterminate them, our
| parents have sex just like anyone else,
| mothers/fathers/leaders/police/ceo's are human too and they have
| human desires and human faults.
|
| Then there's cultural movements trying to bring these things
| closer to reality or push them into a new virtual reality. The
| sex revolution in the west that the eastern world never had for
| example creates huge divide between lifestyle and family
| structures between westerners and easterners(it's not that
| easterner are backward, it's simply another path they took). The
| more devout muslims practice ceremonial animal sacrifice which
| often happens on the streets with kids around, so they tend to
| have different relationship with the animal killing(no, they are
| cruelty or anything like that, it's just different).
|
| IMHO, it's nothing special to Americans but Americans tend to
| have control over the pop culture because the USA is the dominant
| culture of the last century. Also, Americans are masters of
| marketing and they choose their words very intentionally(like the
| discussion over abortions are framed like "pro choice" and "pro
| life", which can be very confusing for non-americans).
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| > Much more people would have been vegans or they would be much
| more indifferent to violence if every pack of meat had a QR
| code to a video showing the life and processing of that
| particular animal.
|
| I think more people would be pushing for animal welfare and
| proper slaughtering/raising conditions if this was done, even
| if they still ate meat.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Indeed. Over here in France, companies try to advertise that
| animals are well taken care off, raised outside, etc. I
| suppose they think it is relevant for enough people to spend
| money advertising it.
|
| And GP's example shows that seeing the animals being killed
| doesn't mean people will stop eating meat.
|
| _" the more devout muslims practice ceremonial animal
| sacrifice which often happens on the streets with kids
| around, so they tend to have different relationship with the
| animal killing(no, they are cruelty or anything like that,
| it's just different)"_
|
| In the same vein, my grandparents' village was still very
| rural when I spent my holidays there as a kid, and the other
| local children would grow up surrounded by cows, sheep,
| chickens, and other farm animals. They'd see them be
| slaughtered and cooked. I can't remember a single one of them
| turning vegetarian. And it should be noted that the adults
| wouldn't tolerate any kind of cruelty or abuse towards the
| animals. Hell, you could even get into trouble for being too
| loud at night next to a barn where cattle were sleeping.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I agree, mostly. However the vegetarianism aspect is more
| nuanced IMHO. In my experience, seeing animal being killed
| is not enough, it needs to be combined with some kind of
| affection to the animal by giving it a personality. For
| example I feel uneasy since I watched cows showing
| curiosity towards objects and be playful like dogs. Also a
| friend of mine who used to live in a farm says that the
| cows can tell that they are going to be slaughtered and
| start acting differently.
|
| I'm not a vegan or vegetarian but I'm looking forward for
| lab produced meet where no cows are involved.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I'm not convinced the personality thing is sufficient, or
| maybe I don't quite understand what you mean by that.
| Cows used to have names, like horses or dogs did. In
| contrast, house cats usually didn't.
|
| Plus, the children used to play with the goats and sheep
| while they were still small. I'm not very familiar with
| the cows (my grandparents didn't have any), but I know
| that goats also tend to be fairly smart, curious and
| quite playful. As a kid it's fairly easy to develop some
| attachment to them, especially since there isn't that big
| of a size difference (a cow can be intimidating to a
| child because of its size).
| mrtksn wrote:
| You are probably right, it's not that simple. Probably
| many things need to come together for a specific output
| but I still think that it affects how you think about it
| and maybe in some cases can make you a nihilist for
| example. Humans are complex.
| rpmisms wrote:
| There's also different breed of cow, goat, and sheep used
| for meat vs wool. The meat breeds are much stupider and
| less personable. I could never kill one of my milk goats
| for meat, but my meat rabbits are a rather easy task.
| plutokras wrote:
| > I think more people would be pushing for animal welfare and
| proper slaughtering/raising conditions if this was done, even
| if they still ate meat.
|
| Why does animal welfare matter if at the end they will end up
| as food anyway? Not trolling, I legitimately want to
| understand.
|
| From my point of view, livestock is just food, that happens
| to be in a temporary living state, before being ultimately
| eaten. As an end consumer, I don't see how this would change
| anything - besides potentially pushing up the price. I just
| want to pick up the meat at the store for the best possible
| price.
| yibg wrote:
| Just because I'm set to be executed doesn't mean I don't
| care about being tortured before hand.
| raincole wrote:
| Why does human welfare matter if at the end we all
| eventually die?
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| It doesn't. Who said so? Your gut feelings? Human
| intuition?
|
| Nothing temporary ever matters. Human life can only
| matter if there's something permanent about it. If there
| isn't, nothing ever matters. None. Nil.
|
| Yes, I'm talking about religion. That pesky thing which
| folks on HN tend to look down in disgust. The idea of
| accountability with permanent, eternal consequences. Acts
| carrying on to another life which won't ever end.
|
| (Not talking about the dumb Christian idea "You are
| already forgiven no matter what because someone is killed
| 2 millenia ago!" here.)
| hatefulmoron wrote:
| > Nothing temporary ever matters. Human life can only
| matter if there's something permanent about it. If there
| isn't, nothing ever matters. None. Nil.
|
| Who said so? Your gut feelings?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > (Not talking about the dumb Christian idea "You are
| already forgiven no matter what because someone is killed
| 2 millenia ago!" here.)
|
| Even though I'm an atheist, this is quite an ignorant
| take on Christian beliefs. In Christianity, Jesus' death
| only cleansed people of Original Sin. That is, people who
| died before Jesus were already doomed, regardless of how
| they lived their life, because they were all tainted by
| their forefather Adam's sin.
|
| Jesus is supposed to have forgiven humanity for this sin,
| and allowed each person to be judged for their own
| actions in life, not be condemned a priori because of the
| actions of their ancestor.
|
| Separately from this singular event, God forgives anyone
| who commits even the most heinous acts as long as they
| later come to truly regret those acts and spend the rest
| of their lives atoning for them. This is obviously a
| necessary component to any moral system as, without such
| a belief, the rational thing to do after committing a sin
| that condemns you to hell would be to continue sinning
| even more, since nothing worse can happen to you.
|
| Of course, none of these religious inventions are
| necessary for leading and believing in a moral life. Most
| people are moral simply because that is the right thing
| to do, not because they fear some big bad punishing them
| if they are not.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > Why does animal welfare matter if at the end they will
| end up as food anyway?
|
| Heavily stressing animal's makes the meat taste worse ends
| up all gamey.
| imgabe wrote:
| For literally thousands of years humans personally slaughtered
| animals and had no problem with it. But you assume people
| wouldn't do this without some fanciful words for it. Based on
| what? Wishful thinking?
| mrtksn wrote:
| Based on the observation that most modern people have no idea
| where the meat or the vegetables come from. The packaged
| goods did the consumers from the o Production. Activist are
| using videos of production lines to promote their agenda.
| imgabe wrote:
| The fact that activists are doing something does not mean
| that it's effective or anyone cares.
|
| People need food. If they don't happen to know where it
| comes from they would figure it out with a quickness if it
| ever became necessary for them to learn.
| bezier-curve wrote:
| People need food but they don't have to eat factory
| produced meat that requires huge amounts of CO2 footprint
| and antibiotics that make our own human populations less
| resistant to bacteria.
|
| Biologically we are carnivores but factory farming is
| leaving evidence for modern society to determine whether
| or not it's okay and it definitely gives me pause. People
| care. I think maybe you're just not caring.
| mrtksn wrote:
| >People need food but they don't have to eat factory
| produced meat that requires huge amounts of CO2 footprint
| and antibiotics that make our own human populations less
| resistant to bacteria. Biologically we are carnivores but
| factory farming is leaving evidence for modern society to
| determine whether or not it's okay and it definitely
| gives me pause. People care. I think maybe you're just
| not caring.
|
| Why do you write this? I don't control the food policy of
| the world and I wasn't arguing that people should be
| vegans.
|
| Why people provide unsolicited arguments for eating meat?
| Why just don't you order a burger instead so we can stay
| on topic? I don't care who eats what.
| Jensson wrote:
| > most modern people have no idea where the meat or the
| vegetables come from
|
| Most modern people knows that meat comes from killed
| animals.
|
| > Activist are using videos of production lines to promote
| their agenda.
|
| The reason we don't like to watch that is the same reason
| we don't want to watch people take a shit, it isn't that we
| feel shitting is morally wrong its just not something we
| want to watch because it is gross.
| ethanbond wrote:
| The emotions one feels watching a video of a factory farm are
| very, very different from what one feels watching a family
| raise some livestock and then kill them. They're obviously
| not the same thing.
|
| During those thousands of years where humans personally
| slaughtered animals, they often built complete philosophies
| around their relationship to those animals. Those
| philosophies are way, way more complex and _personally
| involved_ than the modern grocery shopping experience,
| obviously.
| Jensson wrote:
| > The emotions one feels watching a video of a factory farm
| are very, very different from what one feels watching a
| family raise some livestock and then kill them
|
| Is this really true? People who kill animals for a living
| doesn't have any emotions about it, watching them do it is
| like watching them cut a tomato.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| You're talking about relatively few people -- I too would
| bet that most people (those of us not working in
| slaughterhouses) would find videos from factory farms
| disturbing.
|
| There's a reason big-ag farmers are afraid people will
| see videos showing their operations. So afraid that they
| pay off politicians to ban such video recording.
| Jensson wrote:
| > I too would bet that most people (those of us not
| working in slaughterhouses) would find videos from
| factory farms disturbing.
|
| But why would they be more disturbing than watching a
| person slaughtering and cutting up an animal? You didn't
| answer the question, you just said that one was
| disturbing, not why one was more disturbing than the
| other.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Why is it relevant whether one can put a finger on the
| difference? The claim was that people use their economic
| distance from meat production to protect themselves from
| the negative feelings that would be created if they had
| to do it themselves, _especially_ in the manner of
| factory farming.
|
| Anyway my theory for the distinction is 1) the scale of
| suffering is obviously far far greater than family-scale
| slaughter and 2) the way in which we do factory farming
| reflects poorly on _us_ as a species.
|
| If people had to see their livestock suffer, they would
| make a different calculation of how much meat to eat and
| how to handle that animal while it's alive. As someone
| else mentioned, this isn't some crazy avant garde
| hypothesis: this is exactly why mass meat producers don't
| want people filming their operations.
|
| The prior argument that "people always killed animals!"
| is irrelevant. They certainly did not kill animals the
| way we do today and again, this is evidenced in the
| belief systems that emerged during times where people
| couldn't afford to be hundreds of miles removed from the
| production of their food.
| Jensson wrote:
| > Why is it relevant whether one can put a finger on the
| difference?
|
| You brought this up, not me.
|
| > 1) the scale of suffering is obviously far far greater
| than family-scale slaughter
|
| Not if every family has to slaughter their own meat, the
| scale is the same just distributed so you don't see it.
|
| > 2) the way in which we do factory farming reflects
| poorly on us as a species
|
| This isn't inherent to factory farming though, just the
| ways it is done in some places. And this goes for family
| farming as well, some families would put animals in small
| cages and not take care of them to save money and because
| they are lazy. If you filmed them and their animals I
| don't think people would feel any different.
| ethanbond wrote:
| No, I pointed out _the difference_ , which is obviously
| real. The reason _for_ the difference is irrelevant.
|
| Uhhh no, the scale certainly wouldn't be the same. An
| average American eats more than a hundred animals per
| year. You can't seriously think people would be consuming
| at that rate, or could even afford to consume at that
| rate, without factory farming.
|
| > some families [abuse their animals]... people wouldn't
| feel any different
|
| We literally put people in jail for abusing their
| animals, so yes, they actually _do_ feel differently
| about it.
| Jensson wrote:
| > An average American eats more than a hundred animals
| per year
|
| Most of that are chickens. Have you seen a family farm
| where people eat their chickens? They just take one and
| behead it, killing it takes no effort and is just a part
| of preparing the food no different than peeling the
| vegetables. Killing a chicken a day per family is very
| little work.
|
| > We literally put people in jail for abusing their
| animals, so yes, they actually do feel differently about
| it.
|
| Those laws also applies to factory farms, unless you do
| worse than them you are fine.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Yes it is actually hard to kill a chicken per day, which
| is why societies that have to grow and kill their own
| food don't eat a chicken per day.
|
| Only the hyper-industrialized meat producers get even
| close to that.
| Exoristos wrote:
| Where do you guys come up with this stuff? When I was a
| teen in Appalachia, I butchered dozens of chickens a day,
| by hand, during canning season.
| ethanbond wrote:
| I think you lost the thread. The claim was factory
| farming doesn't change the volume of meat consumption and
| production, only the geographic location of it.
|
| It is _economically_ not viable for every American family
| to produce and kill their own 2lb of (currently, on
| average) consumed meat per day. That is _why_ we have
| factory farming and why it dominates our food supply:
| economies of scale. The lack of these economies is why
| you objectively and in actual fact do not see the same
| scale of meat consumption in less industrialized food
| systems.
|
| It has nothing to do with whether it's physically or
| psychologically possible to kill x chickens per day.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| I think you've lost track of the difference between other
| people and yourself. The words you're using seem to talk
| about how other people feel, but you're actually talking
| about how _you_ feel and assuming that any difference
| between the two is rooted in ignorance.
|
| > _" your kids' reaction"_
|
| Maybe this should be "my reaction as a kid", since you
| don't know that person's kids.
|
| > _" The emotions one feels"_
|
| Should be "the emotions I feel"
|
| > _" If people had to see their livestock suffer, they
| would make a different calculation"_
|
| Should probably be "seeing it changed how I feel".
|
| People are more than the sum of our experiences, two
| people raised in the same environment with the same kind
| of experiences can have completely divergent values.
| Therefore it's wrong to assume that people would share
| your values if they had your experiences. In the case of
| meat eating particularly this should be obvious; the
| reality is that most people exposed to the industry,
| either for the first time as adults or as kids, don't
| turn vegetarian.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Go run the experiments!
|
| I'm putting my bet on what those experiments would show,
| which is people's consumption patterns would be adversely
| impacted by more in-depth knowledge of the food supply
| chain.
|
| This is also where meat producers place _their_ bets and
| why they fight tooth and nail against transparency within
| their industry.
| Exoristos wrote:
| I'm sorry -- how expensive do you think chickens are? In
| fact, if everyone had them, they'd most likely be freely
| shared. You seem very out of touch with your own species.
| frank_nitti wrote:
| Almost certainly, we're talking about videos where
| batches of animals are kept suffering in tiny cages and
| the slaughter is done by machines. Watching a bunch of
| live hatchlings get sucked into some grinder is not the
| same as watching a Halal killing or some tribal hunting
| ritual.
|
| Those videos turned my stomach, and almost everyone I
| know who has watched them admits the same. My friends and
| I all still eat meat, but no question that might change
| if we had to watch those videos on how our mass produced
| cheap meat products are made.
| Jensson wrote:
| > Watching a bunch of live hatchlings get sucked into
| some grinder is not the same as watching a Halal killing
| or some tribal hunting ritual.
|
| You aren't comparing like for like, most people who kill
| animals doesn't perform a ritual, they just kill it.
|
| Also you can't compare a video trying to show something
| in a positive light "ritual killing" vs a video trying to
| show something in a negative light. If they showed you a
| video about a slaughter that went wrong, the animal is
| crying as the slaughterer ends it, blood everywhere, then
| people would feel very bad as well. Or if they showed you
| a slaughterer joking about as he was slaughtering
| animals, you probably would feel more as well. Those
| things are the reality of traditional killing, I don't
| see how it is any better than a machine doing it. The end
| result is the same.
|
| The main difference is that we no longer need to train a
| lot of people to be killing machines like we did before.
| ethanbond wrote:
| The main difference is the scale of suffering that we are
| choosing to create because we simply prefer the flavor of
| meat over other sources of nutrients.
| johnnyworker wrote:
| Based on documentaries like "Earthlings". Watch it and tell
| me everything is fine.
| manxman wrote:
| Have you considered the possibility that "Earthlings" is
| one data point among a very complex web of superficially
| opposing ideas/arguments that are actually all part of a
| coordinated agenda to try to fundamentally change your
| behaviour and psychology by messing with your emotions?
|
| Go look up B.F. Skinner and Operant Conditioning (His book
| Walden 2 is a semi-fictional work that provides a pretty
| good approximation to the game that's afoot). I'm sure I'll
| get shot down for presenting a conspiracy, but once you
| open your eyes to Operant Conditioning, considering the
| possibility that power hungry groups haven't been using it
| is kind of like trying to imagine a world where people
| chose not to use the internet. The only difference is that
| applied behavioural psychology is more dangerous and
| powerful than the internet.
|
| This game is happening quite pervasively and a lot of smart
| people have been coercively brainwashed into being passive
| if not active players in this process. There are of course
| a litany of justifications used by those that do the
| brainwashing.
|
| It will seem farfetched until it's not.
| johnnyworker wrote:
| > a coordinated agenda
|
| ... of making me have empathy with sentient beings
| suffering? Joke's on them, I already had that.
| pauldenton wrote:
| Or selling you products Impossible burgers Tofu. It's
| like a coordinated agenda to stigmatize the internal
| combustion engine and promote renewable energy sources
| like solar and wind. You might just be in the prime
| demographics for both but a majority of the population
| isn't.
| jabradoodle wrote:
| Nobody has stigmatized engines, people are trying to
| reduce emissions because the greatest body of knowledge
| we have access to (science) suggests we should.
| pauldenton wrote:
| https://www.gov.ca.gov/2020/09/23/governor-newsom-
| announces-... and outside of just gas powered engines
| https://apnews.com/article/berkeley-california-natural-
| gas-b...
| lefstathiou wrote:
| Anecdotal "proof": In the heart of Manhattan's ultra trendy
| Chelsea neighborhood is the Chelsea market which is now this
| super trendy food hall. In the basement is a delicious
| butcher named Dicksons where literally hundreds of New
| Yorkers and tourists eat and drink craft beers while they
| literally saw entire pigs and baby calfs in half and dangle
| their carcasses in clear eye sight of where you sit and eat.
| I take my family there all the time because of how tasty and
| fresh the meats are and my children love it.
|
| Showing people where their meat comes isn't going to reduce
| the demand in my opinion. I personally believe people should
| know where their food comes from as it reduces waste and
| garners introspection about our role in the planet and
| ecosystem.
|
| I'm Greek American and lamb on the spit is a cultural
| tradition on Easter. As a kid, it was very weird for my
| American friends to pick food directly off of a carcass but
| so many told me over the years it was an unforgettable
| experience. My uncle once took me to the farm in Georgia
| where he got the lamb, handed me a large knife and asked me
| to slit its throat, I was 13 at the time. I couldn't do it, I
| cried and watched him do it. I will never forget that. To
| this day I have a profound love and appreciation of animals,
| especially lambs. I still eat them. The two ideas for me are
| not conflicted to me. The only thing I abhor when it comes to
| meat is wastefulness.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Go show your kid a real factory farm instead of a high-end
| butcher in a trendy food hall and report back! Easy
| experiment to run and your kids' reaction could settle this
| debate.
| lefstathiou wrote:
| Of course seeing something you haven't seen is shocking.
| To make someone give up meat is a stretch. My kids have
| been up close and personal to butchers in wet markets
| chopping up fish, pigs and chickens in Taiwan. This is
| the daily way of life for billions of people. I believe
| people over estimate the reaction this would garner from
| most of the world's population, which indicates to me
| that a similar reaction would happen here if we saw it
| regularly.
| ethanbond wrote:
| So the shock of a factory farm is just the shock of
| "seeing something new," akin to going to Disneyland for
| the first time?
|
| OP said "more people would be vegan" which I think is
| strictly true. Everyone? No. Would a lot of people reduce
| their meat consumption from the currently obscene 150+
| animals per year (average American)? Probably.
| michaelgburton wrote:
| 150+ animals per person per year? Citation needed.
| ironSkillet wrote:
| There's just no way it's true. A single cow can feed
| someone who eats beef often for an entire year.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Count chickens it's a plausible number. If you count
| things like small fish and shrimp then it's probably a
| severe underestimate. I guess he isn't counting those,
| self-described vegans often don't for some reason.
|
| I probably eat a thousand anchovies a year alone.
| ethanbond wrote:
| FWIW I'm actually not a vegan, or even a vegetarian. I
| eat and thoroughly enjoy meat.
|
| But anyway yes, most of the specific individuals animals
| killed are chickens and water creatures of various types.
| ethanbond wrote:
| How long can a single shrimp or chicken feed someone?
| ethanbond wrote:
| https://countinganimals.com/how-many-animals-does-a-
| vegetari...
|
| Here's a pretty good analysis based on USDA data.
| Prediction: "Seafood don't count! for handwavehandwave
| reasons!"
| dopidopHN wrote:
| Again; butchers are fine. The animal is dead already.
|
| What you are missing is the industrial process we put
| together in the last 70 years to produce more meat;
| cheaper and faster.
|
| Those are weird, and inhuman.
|
| Those technics make most people uncomfortable. If not,
| the amount of antibiotics we have to pump into the animal
| to keep them healthy will hirk another slice of the
| public.
|
| A data point here is the % of depression in slaughter
| house worker. Those are the one that are exposed for
| real.
|
| Not a wet meat market worker, not a fancy butcher.
| djbusby wrote:
| Ugh, or large scale dairy-farm. Milk production is gross!
| But, manually getting milk from one happy cow is... much
| less gross...almost fun even.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| When I was in elementary school it seemed like we took a
| field trip to a dairy farm two or three times a year
| every year. Not some traditional dairy farm for tourists,
| but a big factory-style dairy farm owned by a big company
| that had farms and distribution covering the entire
| state. They showed us the calves in veal crates.
|
| I don't think it turned many people off milk and cheese.
| Actually the grossest field trip we ever went on was to a
| potato chip factory, the stink of rotten potatoes was
| overwhelming. They never took us to a pig or chicken farm
| though, I've been to a few at other times and those would
| have beat the chip factory easily. A lot of people who
| grow up around cows say they appreciate the small (I do,
| to an extent) but I've never heard anybody say that about
| pigs or chickens.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Factory farms are pure nightmare fuel.
|
| But showing people factory farms, I think, is less likely
| to make people become vegans than it is to make people
| agitate for more humane forms of slaughter.
| ethanbond wrote:
| I think it'd do both, and either/both is an improvement.
| Which is, of course, why factory farms try so hard to
| disallow their operations from being shown.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Oh, I agree that would be an improvement. I'm just saying
| most people will get more emotionally distressed by
| animal torture than about killing animals for food.
|
| But I should admit my bias here: I am not a vegetarian
| (although I don't eat a great deal of meat either) and so
| I'm not upset that animals are killed for food. But I get
| _very_ worked up about animals being tortured whether
| they 're ending up as food or not, so I'm ascribing to
| "most people" what I feel myself, which is always a bit
| questionable.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| you must realize that a high end butcher has nothing to do
| with a meat factory where the bulk of our meat is coming
| from?
|
| Bring your family to the one where they crush the male
| chick on a conveyor belt next time. ( chick culling, you
| can find video online and watch it before the omelet dinner
| )
|
| Or just a good ol' bunch of pigs understanding very well
| what's gonna happen and try to escape. It's kinda cute.
|
| Or you could discuss why a cow produce milk. That it needs
| to had deliver a calf recently. And how impregnate the cow
| ( it's a "rape rack" device ) and then finish by the cow
| following the calves in despair over cookie and milk.
|
| -- A butcher is not a industrial meat factory.
|
| The latter are the issue.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| I think you are correct. People will be fine with the general
| idea of killing animals.
|
| But.
|
| In those thousand of years, was the meat produced the same
| way?
|
| What type of antibiotics alternative were our elders using to
| prevent sickness in large groups of animals? Did they raised
| them squeezed next to each other without moving for their all
| life?
|
| Where our forefathers feeding a puree of the dead one to the
| next generation to boost their immune system?
|
| Did they had to pasteurize the milk, not for enhanced shelf
| life but mostly because sanitary condition are so poor that
| other wise you found particles of shit in it?
|
| I could go on. But I think the comment you responding to as a
| fair point. Real; 2023 technic of meat/eggs/milk production
| are horrifying. we don't know how the sausage is made.
|
| I'm not vegetarian. I've kill and skinned large mammals (
| goats .. not that fancy but well ) but I avoid industrial
| meat as much as possible.
|
| Those are meat factory with advance industrial processes. I
| do thing folks would be concern for their own health and
| kinda disgusted if it was displayed more transparently.
| imgabe wrote:
| They would have used any and every type of antibiotic or
| other technique that resulted in being able to make more
| food, because they probably had personal memories of loved
| ones starving to death when there wasn't enough food. I
| know for a fact they would do this because it is in fact
| what they did.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| Or; they would have space out the animals. Allowing them
| to shit not on themselves and the one next to their anus.
|
| And tadam. You don't need antibiotics.
|
| It's the filthy condition we produce our meat into that
| require that.
|
| And those technics are not mandatory to produce that much
| meat. This is needed to producing at a certain price, on
| a schedule.
|
| it's not really about starving to death anymore. But
| rather cranking the profit margin a bit higher.
| imgabe wrote:
| Producing food at the right price and on the right
| schedule is important. It is no good to produce food
| people can't afford or that bankrupts the producer. It is
| no good to produce food only after people are starving
| and riots have broken out. What kind of profit margins do
| you imagine food producers are making? This is not Google
| where they sell little ads at a 30% margin. It's a
| commodity business with a lot of competition.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| Absolutely, price and timing are important.
|
| I have a simple question: Do you think industrial meat
| factory are needed to feed us comfortably and affordably.
|
| And by us I mean humanity. Not the US, not the west. All
| of us on this rock.
| imgabe wrote:
| I don't know. But I do know that the food supply chain is
| not something you mess around with lightly because if you
| screw it up literally tens of millions of people could
| die in a famine.
|
| So, before anyone decides we need to implement some
| "small change" the burden is on them to prove that it
| won't kill everyone. The burden is not on me to prove
| that the thing that's currently feeding us all is the
| only conceivable way to do it.
|
| If you think you have a more humane technique that will
| produce meat just as efficiently, by all means, open a
| farm and use it. If it really is better and more
| profitable I'm sure the industry will be happy to adopt
| it.
| ur-whale wrote:
| > It is useful
|
| Says you, and without a hint of rationale to justify a highly
| questionable claim.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| Vegan argument is so silly as if meat industry just spun up
| overnight and only reason people consume delicious and
| nutritious animal products is because they can but them in
| sanitized packaging.
|
| I hope you also aren't buying consumer electronics because then
| you are literally putting animals ahead of humans.
|
| Or is that too inconvenient for you and you actually like the
| cognitive dissonance after all
| mrtksn wrote:
| I'm puzzled why people are so triggered by the vegan thing.
|
| That's not the point. Or maybe it is, maybe the meat eaters
| culture war is based on the idea of the virtue of eating meat
| and they get very angry when someone points out that actual
| animals are being killed, like cut with a knife then let to
| bleed out then seperated into pieces and shipped to the
| consumers in a package that doesn't look like an animal that
| was minding its own business a few days ago?
|
| I don't go a day without eating meat but I don't get angry at
| vegans. Can you explain why are you so aggressive towards me?
| Is it maybe because, as George Carlin says, you don't want to
| face the reality of eating meat and I annoyed you by
| mentioning the source of meat?
|
| Why is it so hard to enjoy the pieces of a cow raised and
| killed(by sticking a knife in its throat, then hung upside
| down to bleed out) in industrial settings?
|
| Maybe the reason for this is the same as the soft language
| Carlin criticises?
|
| Maybe the soft language is a great human invention that lets
| us kill animal for meat, kill people for land and still feel
| good about it?
| salawat wrote:
| You know, I apologize a bit, because I'm not even sure this
| answers any of your questions... But you should read
| Erewhon by Samuel Butler.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erewhon
|
| It was written way back when, but there is even a short
| section that deals with, ironically, animal rights, that
| then progresses to plant rights, and does some
| extrapolating on outcomes when these tendencies are scaled
| to the extreme, while being set in an environment that, for
| the time, takes some really scathing shots at the mores of
| the day which I can't honestly say _haven 't resurged back
| into relevance in my lifetime_.
|
| I don't generally like just telling people to go read
| things, (nowadays it can feel like giving someone a "free
| puppy"). But something tells me it may speak to you, if
| you're willing to embark on the journey.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Thanks for the book suggestion, sounds like an
| interesting read.
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| > when someone points out that actual animals are being
| killed, like cut with a knife then let to bleed out then
| seperated into pieces and shipped to the consumers in a
| package that doesn't look like an animal that was minding
| its own business a few days ago?
|
| The argument is entirely emotional. Another person can say
| "I like killing animals for their meat because eating
| animal meat makes me feel good" and it will be equally
| valid, because neither are any valid, both arguments are
| entirely subjective. In fact all the people in all of
| history were pretty much enjoying killing other living
| beings with sharp tools, then let them to bleed out, then
| dice, slice, heat and eat them. Someone can even go on to
| say "I like the industrial cruel killing methods
| technological society employs because they allow me to eat
| meat for cheaper." It is equally valid as saying "Oh poor
| animals don't kill them!"
|
| I personally believe in Islam and thus believe animals are
| specifically created for humankind to benefit, thus it's
| both moral and fulfilling a purpose to kill and eat them.
| My faith also says that an animal must be killed in the
| traditional least-cruel way by a human, for it to be halal
| (permissible) to be eaten.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| Because you usually lead with your best argument and when
| your first argument is complete non-sense what hope does
| rest of your argument have?
|
| Also there is no "meat eaters culture war", but vegas sure
| try to spark a war. Vegas used to try sell the health
| benefits of vegan life style, but that has been disproven
| so many times that now they (or you?) only have the moral
| angle to work with.
|
| You can try to twist this as much as you like, but the fact
| remains that (so far) no vegan product has been able to
| compete with meat in taste or texture. I simply do not care
| where the food comes from. Even if factory farming was
| outlawed today it would just mean I would pay more for my
| meat or if I had to slaughter it myself I would need to
| learn that skill, I am not going to give up on delicious
| meat products just because you can't sleep at night.
|
| There are so many other greater injustices in the world
| that caring about factory farming makes you kind of an
| asshole. But if you can show me a meat substitute that
| tastes and feels like meat in my mouth then I will switch
| to vegan in a heartbeat, because then your moral argument
| actually makes sense.
| mrtksn wrote:
| You really need to do something for your anger issues.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| OK, so you didn't have an argument after all. Thanks for
| playing.
| nullcipher wrote:
| Would we put foxconn related in the QR code of all apple
| software etc also ?
|
| I agree with the spirit of what you are saying but this is
| hardly the solution. I don't think people are against killing
| of animals, we have been doing this since man was born. What we
| are against is modern industrial animal farming.
| mbb70 wrote:
| One I recently heard was "conducting a rif" == "conducting a
| reduction in force" == "firing people".
|
| Soft language is alway to the benefit of the speaker, to assuage
| guilt or obfuscate intent.
|
| It's always to the detriment of the listener.
| ur-whale wrote:
| > It's always to the detriment of the listener.
|
| Not always.
|
| If the listener has a functioning brain, he can quickly infer
| the kind of weasel the speaker is simply for stooping down to
| using that type of language.
| hinkley wrote:
| Anchoring is still a thing isn't it?
| rhuru wrote:
| Reduction is a negative word. Could trigger the snowflakes at
| your office.
|
| I think the correct term is "reassessment of human resources"
| or "restructuring", it is a bit like guy who steals your car at
| gunpoint in SF but is kind enough to ask you your preferred
| pronoun.
| jpcfl wrote:
| > steals
|
| I believe the correct term for this is "reallocation."
| mikrotikker wrote:
| Or "reparations"
| rhuru wrote:
| You have clearly mastered the art.
| rhuru wrote:
| restridistribution of mobility advantage.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| Perhaps taking your metaphor a bit too literally, but
| interesting nonetheless: I don't live in a country where guns
| are either legal or common, but from my understanding of de-
| escalation advice, polite and careful interactions with
| criminals are recommended. Engaging in calm dialogue
| supposedly reduces the chance that the criminal will get
| scared and pull the trigger, because most people would rather
| be in the dock for theft than murder, as well as murder
| having greater moral implications.
| rhuru wrote:
| I am no entirely use if that moral implications of their
| actions or the legal distinction of different crimes is
| easily conveyed when the disadvantaged person has fentanyl
| pumping through their blood stream.
| raz32dust wrote:
| How is "firing people" more clear in intent than "Reduction in
| force"? Reduction in force/cutting costs is usually the intent.
| People getting fired is a side effect. "Firing people" is a
| more vivid picture, which is exactly why it is not the right
| term - it's too personal a term for something that usually is
| not personal. Performance-based layoffs = Firing.
| Cost/business-outlook-based layoffs = RIFs.
| paulddraper wrote:
| "Lay off" is both succinct and accurate
| drewcoo wrote:
| And why are they a "force" when they're being fired, but
| they're "resources" when they're not.
|
| I'd like to be considered a "force" while I'm still working
| there. Capes as swag would be cool, too.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| A hiring platform where you would apply for jobs changed the
| applicatin status from Rejected to Denied to Disqualified.
| Doesn't matter that you didn't get the job at least you weren't
| rejected!
| nickdothutton wrote:
| I developed a love of history in later life, not at school, and
| quite independently a detestation of these watered-down modern
| phrases. Consequently I occasionally drag up a Monty Burnseque
| term. If you are not aware of it already, I highly recommend
| "Politics and the English Language" by Orwell. It's an easy read.
| teddyh wrote:
| Also known as the "euphemism treadmill":
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Euphemism&oldid=1...>
| eesmith wrote:
| I don't think Carlin's observation holds much support.
|
| Take the classic "shell shock" bit. Carlin defines it at "a
| condition in combat that occurs when a soldier is completely
| stressed out and is on the verge of a nervous collapse." However,
| that is not the WWI definition. Quoting
| https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp.2... :
|
| "The term "shell shock" evolved in an attempt to describe cases
| that arose in the context of exploding ordnance but where
| enduring symptoms could not be linked to the presence of an
| obvious organic lesion."
|
| The problem was, from the same link, "many shell-shocked soldiers
| had been nowhere near an explosion but had identical symptoms to
| those who had. ... when it had become clear that many cases of
| shell shock were not directly related to a head injury, military
| medical authorities attempted to restrict use of the diagnosis.
| Servicemen invalided from the front were given a preliminary
| label of "not yet diagnosed, nervous," and those who failed to
| recover but had no visible cerebral injury were then classified
| as "neurasthenic." Disputes over the etiology and management of
| shell shock served to inhibit further the design of an effective
| protocol."
|
| This should be very familiar to those who remember the PTSD
| debate in the post-Vietnam era.
|
| So when Carlin say "I'll bet if they had still been calling it
| 'shell shock,' some of those Vietnam veterans might have received
| the attention they needed.", I don't really think that's true.
|
| We can even read of some of the attention received by WWI victims
| of shell shock, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_shock :
|
| "Some men with shell shock were put on trial, and even executed,
| for military crimes including desertion and cowardice.[16] While
| it was recognised that the stresses of war could cause men to
| break down, a lasting episode was likely to be seen as
| symptomatic of an underlying lack of character ... The continued
| pressure to avoid medical recognition of shell shock meant that
| it was not, in itself, considered an admissible defence. Although
| some doctors or medics did take procedure to try to cure
| soldiers' shell shock, it was first done in a brutal way. ... a
| patient who had, over the course of 9 months, been subjected
| unsuccessfully to numerous treatments for his mutism; these
| included strong application of electricity to his throat, lit
| cigarette ends applied to the tip of his tongue, and "hot plates"
| placed in the back of his mouth"
|
| PTSD is a larger category which would include shell shock, but
| also includes (as the VA point out at
| https://www.research.va.gov/topics/ptsd.cfm) military sexual
| trauma, which wouldn't be classified as "shell shock" but has
| similar symptoms and treatments.
| pohuing wrote:
| I'm sorry did they see a completely terrified person and
| decides torture and mutilation would get them back on track?!?
| eesmith wrote:
| Yes.
| pauldenton wrote:
| Sounds like you could use a refresher on the history of
| Electroshock Therapy
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroconvulsive_therapy It's
| more "torture" than "mutilation", but I'm not going to bring
| up the history of circumcision
| kaycebasques wrote:
| > So when Carlin say "I'll bet if they had still been calling
| it 'shell shock,' some of those Vietnam veterans might have
| received the attention they needed.", I don't really think
| that's true.
|
| I came here to say the same thing. The historical record does
| not support Carlin's claim that straightforward language would
| have resulted in better social support for traumatized
| veterans. WWI veterans were treated terribly. I guess the real
| test is to re-introduce "shell shock" into our vocabulary and
| see if there's a correlation in improved veteran support.
| itronitron wrote:
| On my daily commute in the DC Metro area (pre 9/11) I would
| occasionally listen to an Arabic or otherwise ME radio station.
| On one trip home there was a call-in talk show on the station,
| and that particular day was memorable because while the host and
| caller were both speaking Arabic (I assume), the caller would
| occasionally pause and switch to English when they felt they
| needed to express their viewpoint using exceptionally vague and
| ambiguous, non-committal language. It sounded exactly like White
| House messaging.
| imchillyb wrote:
| George Carlin's: "American Dream" is still relevant today, and
| probably will be relevant for centuries to come.
|
| "...you have to be asleep to believe it..."
| motohagiography wrote:
| Control the language and you control everything made from it. I
| can be civil and choose words, but it's why I won't have my
| language policed either. A lot of euphemisms aren't meaningful
| about the subject, but more about demonstrating alignment to
| others who are operating on the subject. It's the banality of
| people who think in cliches.
| swayvil wrote:
| If your reality is largely compromised of language, soft language
| is the natural evolution of language. Of course we who live
| wrapped in language are going to modify our terms for comfort.
| When you're wrapped like this, comfort trumps accuracy.
|
| We might ask, "what's up with this apparent language-wrapped
| majority?"
| dmd wrote:
| > Sneakers became running shoes
|
| I'm not sure I buy this one.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I thought they were _deck shoes_ once.
| donatj wrote:
| I saw a conversation on Twitter a while ago back when it still
| was Twitter. The OP with many followers was laying out words and
| classes of words with negative connotations that shouldn't be
| used.
|
| Someone replied in good faith to OP and asked how we should
| express negative thoughts. OPs answer was basically that we
| shouldn't.
|
| I find that kind of thought very off putting and minorly
| disturbing. An important part of the human experience is being
| able to express when someone else has screwed you over; to do so
| using flowery over the top hyperbole is the catharsis we need to
| live good lives.
| dijit wrote:
| Such language policing is double-plus-ungood.
|
| (For those that haven't read the classic Nineteen-eighty-four
| book by Eric Arthur Blair (pen name: George Orwell) one of the
| core themes of the story is how the ruling party controlled
| language, calling it "newspeak", in order to remove the ability
| to express certain thoughts or opinions, most notably those
| that could be used to incite revolution or allow you to express
| discontent.)
| swayvil wrote:
| We have a local mind-control cult where I live.
|
| When asked they'll retort "why yes, we are a mind control
| cult. We teach you how to control your mind."
|
| ...but that isn't what I meant.
|
| Controlling the language. It's a big thing.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Controlling the language. It's a big thing.
|
| And that's underselling how big it is. Language is the API
| to our brains.
|
| That's at least half the point Orwell's _1984_ makes.
| pstuart wrote:
| Chomsky has entered the chat:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
| swayvil wrote:
| I get what you mean.
|
| But we also have this thing called Science. Where a
| firsthand encounter with nonlinguistic reality is
| considered key. And Science has proven its power over and
| over.
|
| And you'd think that would impress people. Even if you
| lay the forms and products of our modern scientific
| culture aside. Just that philosophy. The supremacy of
| observation. You'd think it would lead to a momentary
| pause in the babble.
|
| But no.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I don't think that what you're saying and what I'm saying
| are mutually exclusive at all. Science is how we tease
| out truths about reality. Language is about how we
| communicate and is closely linked with cognition.
| swayvil wrote:
| I didn't mean to suggest that they are mutually
| exclusive. Just that this sphere of language definitely
| has a limit. (Which leads to various important stuff)
| everdrive wrote:
| It's interesting that you have a local cult. What's it
| called?
| swayvil wrote:
| School of the Prophets (or something like that). A flavor
| of Sufis.
| pstuart wrote:
| A dear friend was, if not a follower, at least quite
| friendly to sufism.
|
| I found her points about it intriguing and worthy of
| contemplation. If I was going to join a cult then that
| might be the one to join ;-).
|
| Of course there's a significant difference between a
| belief system and a group that practices that belief
| under a charismatic and dogmatic leader....
| paulluuk wrote:
| I find that conservatives most often quote "Nineteen-eighty-
| four" as a comment on "politically correct" language. But
| when asked about "family values", "obamacare", "right to
| work" and other conservative double-speak, they often don't
| feel like those apply.
|
| My point is not that conservatives use more double-
| speak/newspeak then progressives, rather my point is that
| this is used and applied across the political spectrum, and
| even in the military ("enhanced interrogation", "collateral
| damage") and corporations ("restructuring", "cost
| engineering").
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| How is 'collateral damage' newspeak? It's a useful concept
| even if you want to avoid it at all costs, but beyond that
| euphemisms have existed forever and are not the same as
| newspeak (which wanted to make something literally
| unthinkable, not merely euphemistic).
| lc9er wrote:
| It's soft language for 'civilian casualties', even though
| it can include other things like property destruction.
| SenAnder wrote:
| Which term would you use to distinguish between
| deliberate and accidental civilian casualties?
| Swizec wrote:
| Does the father whose daughter didn't come home from
| school care if the "civilian casualty" was deliberate or
| accidental?
|
| "Stop killing kids" sounds much more impactful than
| "establish rules of engagement to minimize collateral
| damage". Language matters.
|
| Similarly: Does the worker without a job care whether
| they were fired, laid off, or affected by a reduction in
| force? Probably not. But "affected by a reduction in
| force" sure makes it easier for leadership to press the
| button.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| The difference between deliberate and accidental civilian
| casualties is not clear cut. For instance, what do you
| call it when you _intend_ to attack the enemies soldiers
| with a bunch of bombs but you know a certain percentage
| will fall on civilians and you accept that inevitability
| and proceed anyway? Is that deliberate? Not quite,
| because it wasn 't your intention. Was it an accident?
| Not really, because you knew it was going to happen and
| did it anyway.
|
| Or what do you call it when you _are_ deliberately
| targeting some civilians (factory workers perhaps) but
| you know they share their homes with children? Do all of
| the civilians killed count as deliberate, or only some
| portion of them?
|
| Also, how do you determine intent? Suppose the official
| paperwork says _" we're going to target this residential
| neighborhood because they have military-relevant cottage
| industry blended in with the population"_, but the men
| actually carrying out these orders are saying and
| thinking _" burn them all, this is payback."_ Do you go
| by the intents stated on official records, or do the
| intents and feelings not committed to official records
| change the matter? It's the kind of thing that ends up
| getting debated by historians for decades.
| SenAnder wrote:
| You're right, incidental and primary are better words to
| use than accidental and deliberate. But every term has
| grey areas, and people trying to spin truth to make
| themselves look good. That doesn't make the term
| meaningless or "soft".
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Response to memefrog's [dead] comment:
|
| > _It 's not deliberate, which is the question that
| matters._
|
| I don't agree that deliberate or not deliberate is all
| that matters or the end of the discussion. In criminal
| law if you do something that could reasonably be expected
| to kill somebody without really desiring that outcome,
| you might still be guilty or murder or at least
| manslaughter. For instance if you drive your motorcycle
| at 200 MPH and crash into a family killing them, the fact
| that you lacked a specific desire to kill those people
| counts for something but it's not the end of the
| discussion.
|
| > _" [targeting the civilian workforce] isn't a thing."_
|
| You've obviously read my comment as commentary on the
| Israel/Palestine situation. Actually the incident I had
| in mind when I was writing that comment was the
| firebombing of Tokyo. If you go through official US
| documents about that, you'll find the justification that
| Tokyo had extensive cottage/light industry mixed in with
| their residential neighborhoods. Destroying that industry
| and workforce was in fact one of the official intents for
| firebombing Tokyo. However many of the bomber crews _(who
| were all men, but I 'm generally not one for gender-
| inclusive terminology anyway so you're not catching me in
| some hypocrisy here, lmao)_ were likely motivated by
| revenge for Pearl Harbor / etc and celebrated the
| civilian death toll. Not all of them I'm sure, but
| certainly some of them.
|
| Anyway, I'm not here to pass judgement on whether the
| firebombing of Tokyo was or wasn't a war-crime, or
| whether or not the US was deliberately trying to kill
| Japanese kids. It has been debated for decades and that's
| precisely my point. It's not cut and dry, it's a matter
| that looks differently to different people who are
| looking back at it from different perspectives. It defies
| neat objective categorization, which is why counting
| 'civilian casualties' in one big lump, not
| differentiating by intent, is a useful thing to do.
| SenAnder wrote:
| > In criminal law if you do something that could
| reasonably be expected to kill somebody without really
| desiring that outcome, you might still be guilty or
| murder or at least manslaughter.
|
| I think criminally negligent manslaughter would be
| analogous to collateral victims in war, and murder would
| be the intended victims. As your analogy correctly
| implies, neither option absolves the perpetrator of
| responsibility, which is what I think motivates many of
| the objections to 'collateral damage' in this thread - an
| erroneous belief that the term implies no guilt.
| jyounker wrote:
| Because it's a euphemism for "killing innocent people".
| dijit wrote:
| I think the more heinous "conservative" (as you put it)
| changes are related to physical conditions and the
| euphemism treadmill.
|
| George Carlins "soft language" specifically spells out an
| example; shell-shock, battle fatigue -> Post-Traumatic
| Stress Disorder.
|
| I think making a term so long that it becomes an acronym is
| definitely part of this.
|
| The most up-to-the-minute example I can think of is "CSAM"
| which removes all pain of the victims. For those not in the
| know "kiddie porn" as it was once known was rebranded to
| "child rape images", then "child abuse images" now finally
| "child sexual abuse images" which is now so long that it is
| oft abbreviated CSAM.
|
| You are right though, there's a lot of newspeak, my (least)
| favourite example is "pro-life" which is a glorious bit of
| double-think.
| derefr wrote:
| > George Carlins "soft language" specifically spells out
| an example; shell-shock, battle fatigue -> Post-Traumatic
| Stress Disorder.
|
| I've always thought that this was a bad example of the
| euphemism treadmill, because each step is clearly an
| attempt to be more _general_ than the last. The name
| makes it clear that this isn't just a disorder you'll
| find in soldiers at constant fear of being shelled at any
| moment (shell shock); nor even of soldiers who've seen
| the horrors of battle generally (battle fatigue); but
| rather that anyone who has been through any kind of
| chronic, fearful stress under the constant expectation
| that some traumatizing event might happen at any moment,
| is liable to end up experiencing these symptoms.
|
| Or, to put it more viscerally: doctors would be wary of
| diagnosing a victim of domestic abuse with "shell shock."
| But "PTSD" -- not just as a symptom profile, but also as
| a name for that symptom profile, and a set of social
| connotations around that name -- clearly fits.
|
| > CSAM
|
| This is actually an example of a completely different
| effect: it's a cultural shibboleth. Police want to use
| automatic word filters to discover and surface
| conversations between pedophiles, while not triggering
| those filters with their own conversations about the
| pedophiles' activities. So they have invented a word that
| is equivalent to the generic term in meaning, but part of
| "policing language." (And, as a special trick, it's a
| term with no potential for a treadmill effect, as
| pedophiles would be loath to use a term that frames them
| as perpetrators of abuse.)
| kbenson wrote:
| > Or, to put it more viscerally: doctors would be wary of
| diagnosing a victim of domestic abuse with "shell shock."
| But "PTSD" -- not just as a symptom profile, but also as
| a name for that symptom profile, and a set of social
| connotations around that name -- clearly fits.
|
| In some ways it's a natural consequence of broadening the
| scope of something. Is the loss of impact because of the
| language, or because it now applies to a lot more
| situations which we imagine is expressed in different
| ways (whether that's largely true or not)?
|
| Shell shock likely didn't conjure the idea of a person
| going through a harrowing experience as much as a
| _soldier_ going through _constant shelling for weeks_.
| The first encompasses the other, but the second one is
| much more explicit and conjures specific thoughts that we
| can latch on to when we try to imagine the experience.
|
| Battle fatigue also paints a somewhat specific picture,
| even if more broad than shell shock. We can imagine what
| types of things caused this, even if our imagination
| probably only covered a subset of the actual causes.
| Those things it does conjure are bad though, so the idea
| is very impactful.
|
| PTSD, which more _accurately_ encompasses a lot more
| situations, not all of them (or maybe even the majority
| of them) related to war, also leaves us without as much
| information to use to form an emotional response to as we
| imagine what it was they went through. Was it the horrors
| of war? Was it assault by a stranger as a civilian? Was
| it physical abuse by someone you know? Was it long term
| mental abuse? We know it was bad, to affect the sufferer,
| but it 's harder to form a real emotional response, I
| think, when the cause is ambiguous.
|
| So, is the problem the language, or is the language just
| a side-effect of the increased scope of the term, and the
| problem is actually the increased scope?
| roenxi wrote:
| CSAM I'd put in a different category - just based on the
| flow of the conversation I'd guess some people have deep
| seated emotions that trigger when children get hurt.
| There is a reason that authoritarians use children for
| cover when pushing their agenda - the topic hinders
| people's ability to argue rationally and engage the part
| of their brain that that can spot obviously bad ideas
| (war is similar - having an enemy seems to do similar
| things).
|
| "CSAM" is useful because it is so drained of any colour.
| It makes it much less likely that emotions get triggered
| because it gets discussed as an abstract thing instead of
| something related to children.
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| > The most up-to-the-minute example I can think of is
| "CSAM" which removes all pain of the victims. For those
| not in the know "kiddie porn" as it was once known was
| rebranded to "child rape images", then "child abuse
| images" now finally "child sexual abuse images" which is
| now so long that it is oft abbreviated CSAM.
|
| There are several good reasons for this, one of which is
| that poorly-thought-out child pornography laws have beem
| used to charge and convict children for taking photos of
| _their own bodies._ Explicitly defining the prohibited
| material as "child sexual abuse images" puts a stop to
| that when it's obvious that no abuse or exploitation
| occurred.
|
| And of course we use PTSD instead of "battle fatigue"
| because it affects many millions of people who have never
| been near a battle.
|
| These are not good examples.
| Angostura wrote:
| "Child Sex Abuse" actually puts the pain and damage to
| the victim front and centre in a way that 'kiddie porn'
| singularly fails to do.
| paulddraper wrote:
| If time travel exists, 1984 is exhibit A.
| lightedman wrote:
| "Such language policing is double-plus-ungood."
|
| And yet such behavior happens right here on this very site.
| Why do you tolerate it?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Something I was rather ignorant to for the longest time was how
| fascism can exist at both ends of the spectrum.
|
| My last day on Mastodon was the day a few people ganged up on
| me quite aggressively for not putting Alt text in an image.
|
| Tolerance isn't acceptance. It's letting things you don't like
| exist without making a big fuss over it. You can dislike
| certain speech patterns without having to go on a crusade
| against them.
| zoogeny wrote:
| I recently saw several mentions of image alt text including a
| poll about alt text on social media. The question was
| something like "Would you ever post an image without alt
| text" and something like 99% of responses were "never".
|
| I mean, I've literally never even thought about it so it
| surprised me that such a high number of respondents would
| have chosen that. Which I guess is kind of the point. There
| is an idea that ignorance is bad, but once you have been
| informed then non-compliance is treated as intentionally
| malicious. That is, if you know why you ought to add an alt-
| text and yet you refuse to do so then you are deemed to be
| complicit in the oppression of those who require alt text to
| enjoy the Internet.
|
| It is a subtle reframing from "being polite and courteous is
| good" to "non-compliance is evil".
|
| It also reminds me of a lot of behavior I see in tech spaces.
| One that comes to mind is the notorious dog-piling on the
| maintainer of Actix-web framework by well-meaning Rust
| evangelists who were upset by his use of unsafe language
| features. Another I recall is when a company had a mix of
| open source libraries (MIT license) and some other kind of
| business license in the same repo. They were being harassed
| for mentioning the product was open source in their
| marketing.
|
| What is interesting to me is that some people will see some
| of these examples as justifiable harassment while they will
| see others as crossing a line. It is just a sad fact that the
| mechanism to get people to adhere to social norms is often
| through bullying and shame.
| lukeschlather wrote:
| Style guides exist for good reason. Also a simple
| suggestion that people adhere to the style guide is often
| heard as harassment even when it's simply asking people to
| adhere to the style guide.
|
| Also, if 99% say "never" and that sounds too high, what
| about "Would you ever send an image without alt text to a
| blind person?" Does it make sense to post a message when
| you know a significant number of people are physically
| incapable of interpreting it?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| It reminds me of religious zealots. The law (or server
| rules) doesn't reflect what they want it to be, so
| they'll take matters into their own hands.
|
| Of course there is a bit of every variety. There's
| certainly polite people asking nicely and sensitive
| people seeing it as harassment. And there's certainly
| people who see something they don't agree with and just
| move along.
| tekla wrote:
| I think about it as much as I think about the image not
| being intelligible to people who dont read English, not
| at all.
|
| Why dont you post everything in the top 10 most used
| languages if you want to be nice?
| beebeepka wrote:
| > Something I was rather ignorant to for the longest time was
| how fascism can exist at both ends of the spectrum.
|
| Both extremes are the same. It's like love and hate. You
| shall not have freedoms is the point.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I think fascism is a bad term to use here, totalitarianism or
| thought-policing is more what you mean.
|
| Fascism refers to specific political beliefs including
| totalitarianism plus some form of cultural supremacy
| (typically racism, but it can also be religious or
| nationalistic), rigid hierarchy, and might-makes-right
| morals. Not all totalitarian regimes are fascist, and the
| behavior you're describing is neither hierarchical nor
| racist, so I don't think it's fascist in any way.
|
| And I'm not saying this to simply be pedantic. Fascism is
| scary and powerful because of the specific combination of
| those ideas, especially the militaristic efficiency of
| fascist organizations. PC/woke mobs are not scary in the same
| ways, and need different precautions.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Thanks for the comment. I think you're right and that it's
| important enough to try to change my habit of word use.
| mikrotikker wrote:
| Not to take away from anything you said, but the woke/PC
| mob are kind of scary right.
|
| They have the cultural supremacy part, like a non theistic
| religion where adherence to the tenets are required or
| you'll be excused. Those weird and creepy struggle
| sessions. Not to mention it is one side of the ongoing
| culture war.
|
| They have the rigid hierarchy known as the progressive
| stack that ranks people on their immutable characteristics
| rather than their individual merits.
|
| The might makes right comes from the antifa groups who "by
| any means necessary" violently attack those who do not
| adhere to the tenets of the strange religion. As well as
| the control from the institutions such as universities
| where in faculty or students that don't adhere to the
| tenets are abused until they leave or are fired outright.
|
| So it's pretty close right? I'm sure there are a few other
| tenets of fascism that you left out for brevity which would
| preclude the woke/PC mob from the facist label but it's
| interesting and scary how close they come.
|
| I'm just glad they're not good with weapons, except for the
| Jon Brown Gun Club, for whom the addition of weapons seem
| to have a slightly deradicalizing effect
| tsimionescu wrote:
| When I say cultural supremacy, I mean the belief that
| your cultural group is superior to all others, and so its
| needs are rightfully to be prioritized even over the
| basic rights of other groups. Even the worse woke mobs
| I've heard about aren't advocating that, say, it is
| rightful for a hundred Republicans to go hungry to feed a
| trans person better or something, so I don't think they
| check this box.
|
| When I say rigid hierarchy, I mean an actual hierarchical
| organization where there are leaders giving orders and
| those below them executing and giving orders of their own
| down the hierarchy. There is nothing of the kind in woke
| spaces, they are in fact infamously sectarian and often
| spontaneously turn on yesterday's leaders for group
| think. So this box is also not checked.
|
| Might makes right refers to the explicit belief that as
| long as I can physically force some result, it was
| rightful and beyond reproach for me to have done so ("I
| conquered this land so I have proved I am stronger than
| you so I deserve it more than you"). Antifa may believe
| that punching nazis is justified, but they believe it is
| justified because of the evils of nazism, not because
| violence is self-justifying. Similarly, wielding
| organizational power against an individual accused of
| wrongthink is not an example of might makes right, at
| least not as long as the wrongthink isn't entirely
| arbitrarily invented for each individual. An example from
| actual fascist organizations sometimes is culling "weak"
| members by hazing rituals, where emotional or physical
| violence is intentionally inflicted simply to see if the
| subject can withstand it (this also helps in building the
| rigid hierarchies I mentioned above, as it tends to
| eliminate people who can't accept arbitrary orders).
| Again, this box remains un ticked.
|
| So no, I don't think any woke mobs I've heard about
| resemble fascist organizations. Which, again, is not to
| say they are good. Just because you're not a fascist
| doesn't mean you're a force for good in the world, it's
| entirely possible to be malevolent and dangerous without
| being fascistic.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| A glance at Mastodon top posts will show that the term
| "fascism" no longer refers to a set of political beliefs
| that arose in early 20th century Europe, and the associated
| violent regimes. It is used now for anything whatsoever
| that the person does not like. For example, since trans
| advocacy is such a big part of the Mastodon community, I
| have seen a poster claim that anything less than
| considering a person their claimed gender is "fascism".
| That would make even non-Western cultures with an ancient
| tradition of acceptance of transpeople, but ascribing them
| to a third gender, comparable to Hitler, Mussolini, and
| Franco. People are just using the term as a slur without
| even thinking it through.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Comparing people who don't use someone's preferred
| pronouns/gender association to Hitler is obviously
| ridiculous and I don't think there's too much to be
| gained from discussing with someone who believes such a
| thing.
|
| However, I'm not sure why this contradicts my point.
| Those people are simply wrong in their use of the word.
| Unless you believe that Mastodon woke lefties are
| representative of the broader American English zeitgeist,
| I doubt you could say that the language has changed such
| the term fascist just means evil.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| > Unless you believe that Mastodon woke lefties are
| representative of the broader American English zeitgeist
|
| A year ago I would have thought those people some weird
| online-only fringe. But not after travels around the USA
| for a couple of months last year, followed by time spent
| in Baja and interacting with Americans who came down
| there. So many young Americans are very concerned with
| pronouns and their proper usage, and the attitudes of
| early-millennium activist movements like Antifa seem to
| have made inroads into the wider culture. Of course,
| American society is polarized and there is a whole other
| camp.
|
| I suspect that "fascism" is increasingly a popular slur
| even for Americans who aren't so terminally online, and
| because a word's meaning is popularly determined by its
| usage, that means that it's pointless to complain that
| they are "using it wrong".
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > I suspect that "fascism" is increasingly a popular slur
| even for Americans who aren't so terminally online, and
| because a word's meaning is popularly determined by its
| usage, that means that it's pointless to complain that
| they are "using it wrong".
|
| If you're right that it's becoming such, than I would
| agree it's simply changing its meaning, I'm not a
| presciptivist.
|
| However, from my experience, which is limited to online
| content, I've only seen accusations of fascism being used
| by left-wing speakers against right-wing (or perceived
| right-wing) adversaries.
|
| So, my theory is that the term actually retains most of
| its original meaning even by those throwing it around
| willy-nilly. It is then not a wrong use of the term nor a
| novel use, but in fact a sign of increasingly extreme
| language. That is, people who call you fascist for not
| caring whether you add alt text to an image aren't using
| fascist to mean generic bad person, they actually intend
| to compare your actions to Hitler.
|
| It's similar to how "socialist" is used by right-wing
| pundits. When they call a boss who raises employee wages
| "socialist", they are not using that as a generic insult,
| they explicitly mean to compare that boss with Stalin or
| Chavez or other such boogeymen.
|
| I think it's all a sign of increasingly more extreme
| discourse. I would actually be much happier to find out
| that you are in fact right and fascist is just a more
| generic insult now.
| volloe wrote:
| > That would make even non-Western cultures with an
| ancient tradition of acceptance of transpeople, but
| ascribing them to a third gender, comparable to Hitler,
| Mussolini, and Franco.
|
| It's not comparable to any of those of course, but it
| wasn't exactly acceptance either. These 'third genders'
| were a method of othering those who didn't conform to
| strict gender roles, typically effeminate men. It would
| be like if we had just three gender categories today of
| 'man', 'woman' and 'faggot'. Not really a societal
| situation to aspire to in my view, we'd be better off
| ridding ourselves of constrictive gender roles and be
| more accepting of e.g. men who enjoy wearing dresses and
| makeup while still understanding that they are of course
| men.
| theodric wrote:
| It turns out you can put whatever text you want in the alt
| text field and it won't get clocked by the scolds because
| they don't actually care enough to check. It's enough that it
| appears compliant in a surface-level audit.
|
| However, there is an issue suggesting adding an automated
| scold in the Mastodon client (and Megalodon already has such
| a scold, plus a (!) of shame on images without alt text)
| https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/13894
|
| I have yet to find an actual vision-impaired person
| complaining about missing alt text. I'm sure there is one
| somewhere, but it mostly seems to be a phenomenon on Mastodon
| for a few people to use as a cudgel to feel superior.
| Angostura wrote:
| > I have yet to find an actual vision-impaired person
| complaining about missing alt text.
|
| What was your sample size?
| theodric wrote:
| Spending 27 years on the Internet
| jabradoodle wrote:
| That very issue you linked appears to have a request from a
| screen reader user asking to be able to skip content with
| no alt text
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I saw the comment you're talking about, but I'm not sure
| I understand what it meant. What does a screen reader do
| other than skipping an image without alt text?
|
| Either way, that person was also explicitly saying that
| they don't want mandatory alt-text, that they believe an
| option users can toggle on their own account to be
| reminded about alt-text is better, so I don't think they
| would qualify as "complaining about missing alt-text".
| jabradoodle wrote:
| It seems they don't want it to be mandatory because
| people will likely fill it with nonsense, as your already
| suggesting, which is worse for them than it not being
| there.
|
| I don't know what the screen reader does, presumably
| tells them there is an image there. I assume they want
| the option to remove the post all together.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| I don't have impaired vision, but I use alt-text to save
| bandwidth on metered internet connections. For instance, if
| there's alt-text that says "stock image of happy
| traveller", well, I can probably do without that until I
| get a better internet connection, whereas if it's "bus
| timetable for this stop", it might be worth me turning on
| images to see that despite the cost.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| > I have yet to find an actual vision-impaired person
| complaining about missing alt text.
|
| One of Mastodon's top daily posts a couple of days ago was
| a blind user expressing his gratitude for the culture of
| forced alt text.
| theodric wrote:
| > I'm sure there is one somewhere
|
| And there he is
| Angostura wrote:
| > My last day on Mastodon was the day a few people ganged up
| on me quite aggressively for not putting Alt text in an
| image.
|
| Why was it important for you not to include it?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| It wasn't important for them not to include it, it wasn't
| important for them to include it. There is a world of
| difference. And being aggressively ganged up on for
| something you don't believe is an important detail is an
| excellent reason to leave a group. It makes it abundantly
| clear that you have a fundamental difference of values with
| much of that group.
| JasserInicide wrote:
| A great recent example is everyone changing whitelist/blacklist
| to allowlist/blocklist because Americans are so fucking
| obsessed with race politics that they see it absolutely
| everywhere
| mock-possum wrote:
| That, or they refuse to see it at all.
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| Allowlist/blocklist is more clear and accurate tho?
|
| The software community loves to complain about this stuff
| like the change from master to main branch but I always get
| the sense that people just liked to complain rather than any
| meaningful objection.
| Always_Anon wrote:
| >Allowlist/blocklist is more clear and accurate tho?
|
| No it's not, not at all. Is "blocklist" a list of file
| system blocks? Bitcoin or other crypro blocks?
|
| As someone who speaks English as a second language, the
| first time I read "whitelist/blacklist", I simply looked
| them up in a translation dictionary and immediately
| understood what they mean. Those are actual words with
| definitions spanning centuries.
|
| >The software community loves to complain about this stuff
| like the change from master to main branch but I always get
| the sense that people just liked to complain rather than
| any meaningful objection.
|
| Yes we love to complain, but there were many meaningful
| objections that were ignored. There was a reddit outage
| that occurred due to the madness around "inclusive
| language" and removing the word "master": https://www.reddi
| t.com/r/RedditEng/comments/11xx5o0/you_brok...
| lfowles wrote:
| Is a blacklist a list of black pixels on the screen?
| Always_Anon wrote:
| According to practically any and every translation
| dictionary made in the last century, no, it is not.
| pstuart wrote:
| Race politics is pervasive though.
|
| Those changes (as wells as master->main) did trigger an
| initial "get off my lawn" reaction for me, but it's not
| entirely unreasonable and is no big deal to actually act on.
| rcoveson wrote:
| It's not a big deal, but it's not a trivially small deal
| either. It's sufficiently annoying that there had better be
| a good reason. In the case of "slave", there's at least a
| good argument. "Master" is ridiculous. You cannot speak
| this language (or Spanish, or Italian, or any other latin-
| related language that I know of) without that word. We've
| got master's degrees, master copies, Let It Be (Remastered
| 2009), and mastery. It has no reason to die, and it will
| not die in our lifetime. The master->main pain is just
| performative pain for its own sake.
| sneak wrote:
| It's that Americans are more concerned with cultural
| brawling. Race politics, like all identity politics, are
| simply a proxy for it.
|
| The pastime is finding people who don't agree with your
| orthodoxy and ganging up on them. It can be race, ability,
| political affiliation, whatever.
|
| America is a country that demands conformance.
|
| pg touches on this in his famous What You Can't Say essay.
|
| http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
| dijit wrote:
| Genuinely speaking this is part of the ruling classes
| "divide and conquer" strategy.
|
| Ensuring that people think that some "other" body of people
| are against them (right, left, woke, trumpists etc) is a
| strong tactic to keep people putting there energy into
| fighting each other and not making a big deal about the
| people in control of things like the media or government-
| which we're all too tired to fight and sort of quietly
| accept.
|
| It sounds like a conspiracy theory, except it's basically
| well known and nobody really cares it seems, we're too
| easily baited. (including myself here).
|
| I saw it really obviously recently when the overtone window
| shifted in the UK and the majority of people became pretty
| poor pretty quickly; and how the media started going crazy
| trying to stoke a culture war where people were simply too
| poor and too tired to put blame anywhere else than the
| ruling political party.
|
| Which lead to the ruling political party trying to stoke
| the culture war and a milquetoast response from the
| audience. Here's the reaction:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQsGRwNzs-o
| mvdtnz wrote:
| > It sounds like a conspiracy theory, except it's
| basically well known and nobody really cares it seems,
| we're too easily baited. (including myself here).
|
| No, it sounds like a conspiracy theory because it is. It
| has nothing to do with some shady cabal of elites ("the
| ruling class"). It's just American culture.
| paulmd wrote:
| I mean, you are posting this in a hugbox forum where overtly
| suggesting that certain opinions don't have merit or rigor is
| forbidden because it hurts peoples fee-fees. You, too,
| participate in society.
|
| Some say taping aquarium rocks to your cables improves the
| sound, some say it's rubbish, let's have a discussion and if
| you are really so sure about your ideas I'm sure you can refute
| the idea right? Let's have a debate!
|
| (And now just continue refuting it every day for the rest of
| your life...)
|
| https://www.machinadynamica.com/machina31.htm
|
| https://www.machinadynamica.com/machina17.htm
|
| https://i.imgur.com/296fTdq.jpg
|
| Effectively that's outlawing the opinion of "no that's dumb,
| you're dumb for suggesting that", which is unfortunately rather
| a necessary one, science doesn't work if everyone has to treat
| the idea that the moon is cheese with equal weight. At some
| point you can believe whatever you want but the scientific
| discourse doesn't have to include you, and people don't grow if
| they're not told their opinions are wrong and objectively
| incorrect from time to time. The moon is not made of cheese and
| unless you got a real good reason then you're dumb for
| suggesting it, and you're worsening the discourse for all of us
| too by even entertaining it. Discourse does not benefit from
| entertaining facially outlandish ideas without some evidentiary
| backing etc just "for the sake of discussion".
|
| At some level, enforced politeness and forced equality-of-merit
| for all opinions is a thought-terminating cliche and becomes
| destructive to discourse. It's a little bizarre how people love
| having legislated "truth in the middle" outcomes to discourse.
| The truth often is objectively not in the middle and it worsens
| the discourse to pretend it is.
|
| (Same for the way this forum treats hanlon's razor tbh. 99% of
| the time when people invoke it, it's a handwave to excuse some
| pretty conveniently malice or self-interest. That's effectively
| using it as a thought-terminating cliche. Any time profit or PR
| spokespeople are involved you should never invoke it, because
| malice is indistinguishable from profit-seeking in most
| circumstances etc.)
|
| The same is true of certain openly callous and cruel
| perspectives etc. It's not just factual perspectives that can
| be destructive and noxious if tolerated as though they held
| rigor and merit, and extreme indifference etc is just as toxic
| as wishing harm directly etc. Just because you don't care about
| litter, or masking during a pandemic, or climate change,
| doesn't mean the rest of society isn't going to set
| expectations etc, and "I guess you'll have to die then" is not
| exactly sympathetic, but it's uncouth to point out the
| callousness here. And that is, itself, an editorial lean
| towards the legitimacy and integrity of such positions. You're
| treating "I don't want to die" with the same weight as "I guess
| you'll have to die for me", and tutting when people get upset
| about it.
| TheAndruu wrote:
| It's like a breath of fresh air to hear someone make
| straightforward statements without fear.
| alexpotato wrote:
| Wasn't a lot of this "soft language" the result of active and
| conscious work by people like Frank Luntz [0]
|
| e.g.
|
| - "energy exploration" to refer to oil drilling
|
| - "climate change" instead of global warming
|
| My understanding is that he used focus groups watching video of
| politicians. As the politician would speak, the watchers would
| use dials to live rate how they felt about the words being used.
| In essence, he would A/B test how "soft" the language was and
| then pass that information on to political groups to help shape
| narratives etc.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| The wiki page on climate change [1] explains that climate
| change was already a growing to be preferred term earlier than
| Frank Luntz memo. Which I think is correct because it is much
| more accurate. There is a lot more to climate change than
| global warming.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change#Terminology
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| "Rapid climate change" is what I would say is the most
| specific term, because climates change naturally over time,
| but usually do so slowly enough that there is no risk to
| individuals. The kind of climate change due to human
| interactions is so rapid that individuals are at risk, for
| instance those who live in low-lying coastal areas. Species
| evolve when there is slow climate change, but rapid changes
| make whole clades of species extinct before they have enough
| generations to evolve.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Well, the term used for 'climate change due to human
| interactions' is anthropogenic climate change. Which plays
| exactly into George Carlin said.
|
| Why use 'anthropogenic climate change' which a regular
| person won't know the meaning of instead of 'human-caused
| climate change' or something.
| Supermancho wrote:
| The only change that's of global concern is the spiking
| energy accumulation. It's global warming, as most people
| would understand it from reading the link. Climate change
| is soft language to lump in secondary effects, to make it
| acceptable for deniers and special interests.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| I don't agree. The effects of humans dumping CO2 and
| other gases in the atmosphere is not just the increase in
| the average temperature.
|
| It is increased variability in temperatures. It is
| extreme droughts and extreme floods (which occurred in
| Pakistan last year). It is extreme tropical storms. It is
| historical levels of forest fires (such as what we saw in
| Canada this year). Etc etc. All of these things are cause
| for concern.
|
| Climate change is a much more accurate term than global
| warming, even if climate deniers use it to their ends.
| The opposite effect also occurs. People in Canada will
| joke, "oh global warming is great, maybe it will warm up
| here a bit." But talk about forest fires and it is much
| harder for them to disregard the concerns.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Short on time or I'd say more.
|
| Worth a read:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| Reading the Wikipedia article you link, I'm wondering whether
| Luntz's work covers the whole story. For instance:
|
| > Frank Luntz, whose polling revealed that 'death tax' sparked
| voter resentment in a way that 'inheritance tax' and 'estate
| tax' couldn't match. After all, who wouldn't be opposed to a
| 'tax on death'? - Joshua Green, The American Prospect
|
| In Britain, the term has been 'death duty' colloquially for
| decades, with 'inheritance tax' and 'capital transfer tax' both
| having been formal names. Yet, I haven't seen a particularly
| preference for the term being associated with an political
| ideology. Generally, the British public and their
| representatives just use whatever term is 'in'. Does this make
| British politicians less shrewd, make them more respectable, or
| simply make Luntz's research an American edge case?
| FpUser wrote:
| George Carlin is my ever favorite. He is the best
| streakfix wrote:
| A lot of the points he made are wrong. Shell shock is physical
| damage to the grey matter of the brain, caused by an explosion.
| PTSD is mostly psychological and can be caused by shell shock.
| phaedrus441 wrote:
| I think you are mistaken:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_shock
|
| "Shell shock is a word that originated during World War I to
| describe the type of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that
| many soldiers experienced during the war, before PTSD was
| officially recognized."
| kerbs wrote:
| A cursory Google search on Shell Shock doesn't resonate with
| this statement.
| gniv wrote:
| In French class I learned about a notorious euphemism that the
| French govt once used: <<referentiel bondissant>> for ball (in
| sports). The expression literally means "bouncy frame of
| reference".
| tptacek wrote:
| Just for fun, from the first example:
|
| * Toilet paper -> bathroom tissue --- sure, a softening of the
| language.
|
| * Sneakers -> running shoes --- not a softening; sneakers aren't
| the same as running shoes, and "sneaker" was a regionalism (it's
| "gym shoe" where I grew up).
|
| * False teeth -> dental appliance --- a softening, though a
| welcome one in this case.
|
| * Medicine -> medication --- a softening (a nominalization of a
| denominalization, at that!). Down with medication!
|
| * Information -> directory assistance --- arguably, this is a
| hardening, since directory assistance carries more meaning and
| carries it more precisely.
|
| * The dump -> landfill --- a dump is not a landfill. The word
| changed because we stopped building open-air unchecked dumps and
| started building regulated landfills with groundwater protection
| and load checking.
|
| * Car crash -> automobile accident --- a softening, though he's
| getting some mileage out of switching "car" to "automobile" (I
| can hear his voice very clearly in my head dancing over the
| syllables in "auto-mo-beeel") and the real language is "car
| accident".
|
| * Partly cloudy -> partly sunny --- I think he made this up.
|
| * Motels -> motor lodges --- This is a softening, but it didn't
| take; look up "Econo Lodge", and it's a motel, not a motor lodge
| (Choice Hotels will call it a "hotel" though).
|
| * House trailer -> mobile home --- A softening; by the end of his
| life, he'd have been able to use "manufactured home" here instead
| to drive the point further home.
|
| * Used car -> previously owned transportation --- A softening, a
| good example of one, but again notice that he's smuggled the word
| "transportation" in to make it more zippy. "Certified pre-owned"
| is a much funnier term (imagine the shape his eyeballs would take
| while noting the "certified" here). I miss Carlin!
|
| * Room service -> guest room dining --- A softening, and also:
| why?
|
| * Constipation -> occasional irregularity --- A softening, if you
| will, and again he's made it artificially softer with the
| "occasional".
| JoshGG wrote:
| Thanks this is pretty interesting!
|
| Re: "car crash", crash is the correct "real language". The use
| of "accident" implies a lack of responsibility and that car
| crashes cannot be prevented or reduced. That isn't true. Many
| studies show that crashes can be reduced via better
| engineering, road design, etc.
|
| Calling it an accident definitely seems like softening the
| language.
|
| https://dmv.vermont.gov/enforcement-and-safety/laws/crashes/...
| tptacek wrote:
| I agree! It's a softening of the language. I just think it's
| interesting to note that in his bit, he often artificially
| _further_ softens the term.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| They're called some variant of "accident" in many languages.
| It's the English speakers that use "crash" that are the
| unusual ones.
| verve_rat wrote:
| English speakers? Or American English speakers?
|
| Here in NZ car accident is much more natural to say than
| car crash.
|
| Although even that has subtleties.
|
| "I got in to a car accident" would be the normal turn of
| phrase, but if remove the "car" and the "I" then crash
| becomes more likely: "There was a crash on State Highway
| 1".
| dontlaugh wrote:
| That's what I mean, the subset of English speakers that
| are unusual are the US ones, it seems.
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| This point is repeated frequently in context of vehicle
| crashes, but are not _all_ "accidents" similarly avoidable?
| BurningFrog wrote:
| That's overly conspiratorial.
|
| In normal use, "accident" just means it's unintentional.
|
| People talk about preventing accidents all the time.
| lamontcg wrote:
| > * Car crash -> automobile accident --- a softening, though
| he's getting some mileage out of switching "car" to
| "automobile" (I can hear his voice very clearly in my head
| dancing over the syllables in "auto-mo-beeel") and the real
| language is "car accident".
|
| They're very rarely if ever "accidents"
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Webster's:
|
| 1a: an unforeseen and unplanned event or circumstance Their
| meeting was an accident.
|
| 1b: lack of intention or necessity : chance They met by
| accident rather than by design.
|
| 2a: an unfortunate event resulting especially from
| carelessness or ignorance
|
| Car accidents match one or all of these definitions.
| _dain_ wrote:
| With proper road design, traffic fatalities can be reduced
| to a negligible rate. Oslo famously achieved zero per year.
| Since roads can be designed with this degree of safety, it
| follows that high rates of fatalities are a result of poor
| road design, and hence not unforeseeable accidents.
|
| "Accident" is actually softening language -- it diminishes
| the agency of the driver, and the designer of the road.
| "Traffic collision" describes what happened, and does not
| presume that nobody is to blame.
|
| The "car" part of "car accident" is also softening: nobody
| is "hit by a car", they are hit by a motorist.
| trgn wrote:
| Yep, "hit by a car" is the perfect example of
| fetishization, the attribution of agency to inanimate
| objects.
|
| Note to that it will be the cyclist that will hit the old
| lady, never the bicycle. The bicycle, even though as old
| as the car, has resisted this fetishization. It's really
| curious, which objects cast the spell, and which don't.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I've definitely heard people talk about getting hit by
| bikes.
|
| I think the distinction, to the extent it exists, might
| have a lot to do with what constitutes the majority of
| mass. If you get hit by an 18 pound bike with a 160 pound
| rider, you really got hit more by the rider than the
| bike. But if you get hit by a 3000 pound car with a 160
| pound driver, you definitely got hit more by the car than
| the driver.
|
| However, depending on ideological viewpoint, it might be
| tempting to read more into the language.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| I didn't say it wasn't softening at all, I'm pushing back
| against the ridiculous assertion that they aren't
| accidents.
| lamontcg wrote:
| The first two are precisely what most car "accidents" are
| not. They're usually the result of negligence, which is
| captured in 2a, but the definitions which carry a lack of
| any agency usually overshadow the meaning in 2a.
|
| This is why it is a great "soft" word because of the
| inherently fuzzy meaning.
|
| Almost always in a "car accident" one or both parties,
| often along with the DOT, fucked up and need to do better.
| You shouldn't use language that allows it to be viewed as
| totally unforeseeable.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| You can argue whether it's negligence, but negligence
| doesn't make it not an accident.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Accident is a deeply misleading work to assign to
| negligence.
|
| And I'd argue that there's circular logic at play since
| the dictionary definition is based on the problematic
| usage.
| eesmith wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision#Criticism_o
| f...
|
| > In 1997, George L. Reagle, the Associate Administrator
| for Motor Carriers of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety
| Administration wrote a letter stating that "A crash is not
| an accident", emphasizing that the Department's Research
| and Special Programs Administration, the Federal Highway
| Administration, and the National Highway Traffic Safety
| Administration had all declared that "accident" should be
| avoided in their published writings and media
| communications.[15] In 2016, the Associated Press updated
| its style guide to recommend that journalists use "crash,
| collision, or other terms" rather than "accident" unless
| culpability is proven. The AP also recommends avoiding
| "accident" when negligence is proven or claimed because the
| term "can be read as exonerating the person
| responsible."[16] In 2021, the American Automobile
| Association (AAA) passed a resolution to replace "car
| accident" with "car crash" in their vocabulary.[17] In
| 2022, the traffic management company INRIX announced that
| "accident" would be removed from their lexicon.[18]
|
| > The Maryland Department of Transportation's Highway
| Safety Office emphasizes that "crashes are no accident",
| saying that "Using the word accident suggests that an
| incident was unavoidable, but many roadway crashes can be
| attributed to human error."[19] The Michigan Department of
| Transportation states that "accident" should be dropped in
| favor of "crash", saying that "Traffic crashes are fixable
| problems, caused by inattentive drivers and driver
| behavior. They are NOT accidents."[16] In line with their
| Vision Zero commitments, the Portland Bureau of
| Transportation recommends using "crash" rather than
| "accident".[20]
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Yes, propaganda happens. Doesn't make them not accidents.
| eesmith wrote:
| Ah, you agree with the car industry propaganda push to
| use the term "accident" instead of, say, motor killing.
| https://www.vox.com/2015/7/20/8995151/crash-not-accident
|
| "Crash" is a wider term.
|
| If someone deliberately drives into a building, that is
| not an accident. It is still a crash.
|
| Do you also say plane accident instead of plane crash?
| foldr wrote:
| >* Medicine -> medication --- a softening (a nominalization of
| a denominalization, at that!). Down with medication!
|
| I think the extra layer adds a shade of meaning here.
| Medication is something you take because a health professional
| wants to medicate you with it. Medicine is just anything that
| might make you better. That's why we still talk about "natural
| medicine" or "alternative medicine" rather than "alternative
| medication".
|
| So in semantic terms this is actually an instance of
| _strengthening_. All medication is medicine but not necessarily
| vice versa. It probably just reflects the overall uptick in
| people taking pills prescribed by their doctors rather than
| Daffy 's Elixir.
| eep_social wrote:
| Agree. Another, similar example is that studying medicine is
| not the same as studying medication.
| silenced_trope wrote:
| * Pacifying -> bomb the crap out of
| eesmith wrote:
| For more fun, "bathroom tissue" as an alternative term for
| "toilet paper" predates Carlin's birth by years.
|
| Here's a 1928 advertisement on colored bathroom tissue, which
| you can see is toilet paper -
| https://archive.org/details/sim_house-garden_1928-05_53_5/pa...
| paulddraper wrote:
| > by the end of his life, he'd have been able to use
| "manufactured home"
|
| And then "tiny home"
| DavidWoof wrote:
| > Car crash -> automobile accident --- a softening
|
| It's not. Accident is actually the older term. Cars have had
| accidents since their inception. Using the "crash" sound to
| refer to the accident itself didn't catch on until the 1940s
| (might be a war thing, I'm not sure).
| jimbobimbo wrote:
| Certified pre-owned is really a brand new car for a lower price
| for all intents and purposes. This is a term of art if you
| will, not softening of the term "used car".
|
| Manufactured home can also be a far cry from what the house
| trailer is.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Certified pre-owned is really a brand new car for a lower
| price for all intents and purposes.
|
| CPO is really a used car with a higher price for all intents
| and purposes. It got inspected, that is all. Not refurbished.
| wolrah wrote:
| > Certified pre-owned is really a brand new car for a lower
| price for all intents and purposes.
|
| Not even close. CPOs are usually lease turn-ins or another
| trade-in with relatively low mileage for its age, but we're
| still usually talking about 2-3 years old with 30k or so
| miles. It's basically "used with an extended factory
| warranty".
| strunz wrote:
| You're confusing technical terms for common usage. Obviously
| the words still exist and may mean different things, George's
| point is about how the softer language is used in common life,
| sometimes nefariously. Keep reading the article and get to the
| section on "shell shock" for a better example.
| jancsika wrote:
| Activist became Social Justice Warrior. (Finally seems to be
| going away, though.)
|
| Nosy neighbor became A Karen.
|
| Being a trans ally/educator became groomer in some conservative
| circles.
|
| Liberal became libtard.
|
| In the past weeks, most modifiers used to discuss
| Israel/Palestine have intensified, not softened. (Wasn't there
| some Israeli official who used the term "subhuman" on Twitter?)
|
| Mask became chin diaper!
|
| Military/militia wannabes became Meal Team Six / Gravy Seal
|
| Interpersonal conflicts, political debates, and misunderstandings
| have become accusations of gaslighting-- i.e., two people
| accusing each other of attempting to brainwash the other
|
| I'd even argue that useful idiot becoming NPC is a change to
| something more extreme. (The idiot is implied to be
| unwitting/naive while the NPC is implied to lack agency.)
|
| And finally, _stochastic terrorism_. There 's no precedent for
| this term AFAICT. And thanks to the vague definition and
| pretentious borrowing of a term from statistics it is virtually
| guaranteed to be overused and misunderstood in political
| discussions, fueling disrespect, anger, outrage, and preventing
| sober, productive reflection.
|
| There must be thousands of these, fueled mostly by social media.
|
| As for soft language-- since anxiety/depression levels have gone
| through the roof over the past two decades, there's been a trend
| of soft language becoming reified and relegated to ASMR videos.
| As a strong and vocal supported of narrowing the dynamic range of
| mainstream audio, I whole-heartedly support and endorse this
| trend.
| pauldenton wrote:
| Don't forget being a Trump supporter became "domestic
| terrorist" since January 6. https://www.fox5dc.com/news/pro-
| palestinian-protest-underway... Funny none of the people
| storming the capitol or disrupting government since this Israel
| war started have been arrested as anti-Semites or Anti-muslim
| terrorists. I guess it's not treason to want to expel Jews or
| Muslims from the river to the sea.
| xyzelement wrote:
| One of the many places I see soft language hurt is in feedback.
| "Our project is late" and "xyzelement failed to prioritize well"
| might refer to the same event but one is more likely to "sting"
| me in a way that causes change.
|
| In my value system change and improvement are worth the sting in
| the short term, but often that is prevented by soft language.
|
| Eg I've seen developers/ managers / teams come out on the other
| side of a "blameless" postmortem without realizing they fucked
| something up.
| lastofus wrote:
| There's some arguments behind why you might want to not lay
| blame plainly (and especially publicly) on an individual,
| within a business team setting.
|
| - Laying direct blame on someone may lead them to trying to
| hide problems to avoid the pain/shame in the future.
|
| - Related - everyone makes honest mistakes. Creating and
| environment where people feel ok admitting to these is a lot
| more ideal than the alternative.
|
| - Teams should be encouraged to take collective ownership, such
| that if someone who works with xyzelement sees them failing to
| prioritize, they need to do something about it, even if it's
| just raising a concern early in the project with those who need
| to hear said concern.
|
| That all said, sometimes people do need direct feedback (in
| private), especially when they are struggling in general with
| their job.
| klyrs wrote:
| > I'll bet if they had still been calling it 'shell shock,' some
| of those Vietnam veterans might have received the attention they
| needed.
|
| History lesson: no, WWI veterans didn't get the attention they
| needed. This is wistful conservatism wrapped in a shroud of
| comedy. Don't mistake it for truth or wisdom. The treatment of
| Vietnam veterans was not a departure from the standard practice
| of wars predating it. The depth of their trauma _was_ a
| departure, and that was the eye-opener that primed us to take
| PTSD seriously in the aftermath of the wars of the 21st century.
|
| Now, PTSD (a four-syllable, jargon-free, hyphen-free term, if
| we're counting) has received greater attention than it did in the
| previous century of wars. It's recognized to effect more than
| just soldiers (which "shell shock" doesn't really cover), and
| progress is being made on a variety of treatments. George Carlin
| is _funny_ , but that doesn't make him right.
| msla wrote:
| For example, in reference to the WWI experience in specific:
|
| > Some men with shell shock were put on trial, and even
| executed, for military crimes including desertion and
| cowardice.[16] While it was recognised that the stresses of war
| could cause men to break down, a lasting episode was likely to
| be seen as symptomatic of an underlying lack of character.[17]
| For instance, in his testimony to the post-war Royal Commission
| examining shell shock, Lord Gort said that shell shock was a
| weakness and was not found in "good" units.[17] The continued
| pressure to avoid medical recognition of shell shock meant that
| it was not, in itself, considered an admissible defence.
| Although some doctors or medics did take procedure to try to
| cure soldiers' shell shock, it was first done in a brutal way.
| Doctors would provide electric shock to soldiers in hopes that
| it would shock them back to their normal, heroic, pre-war self.
| While illustrating cases of mutism in his book Hysterical
| Disorders of Warfare, therapist Lewis Yealland describes a
| patient who had, over the course of 9 months, been subjected
| unsuccessfully to numerous treatments for his mutism; these
| included strong application of electricity to his throat, lit
| cigarette ends applied to the tip of his tongue, and "hot
| plates" placed in the back of his mouth.[18]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_shock
| Aloha wrote:
| My belief that part of the depth of Trauma compared to WWII and
| Korea was the rotation system as used, vs demob as a unit.
|
| To expand on this, in Vietnam, individual soldiers were rotated
| in and out based on time in country, in WWII, units rotated as
| a unit, with replacements added during the rotation.
|
| The fact that it took weeks or months to repatriate people back
| to CONUS after WWII, gave time for people to process their
| experiences with their brother in arms.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| This makes perfect sense. Taking a ship back from Europe for
| a couple weeks is like a built in therapy detox group
| session.
|
| The way my grandfather talked about WWII was different than
| other folks I've heard talk about wars after. My grandfather
| was at peace about it within himself in a way I haven't seen
| since. The things he saw and had to do were no doubt just as
| horrific.
| Aloha wrote:
| I've done some reading on the topic - and what surprises me
| is that none of the professional literature (that I've
| found), touches on this.
|
| But for me as a reader of history, it's blindly obvious -
| in particular with the strategy used to treat PTSD, which
| is functionally group therapy with over vets with similar
| experiences.
| golwengaud wrote:
| FWIW, Jonathan Shay's /Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma
| and the Undoing of Character/ [1] touches on this. It's a
| good book.
|
| IDK if Shay's book qualifies as "professional
| literature", but he was certainly a professional (VA
| psychiatrist), and I have the impression it was fairly
| influential.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Achilles-Vietnam-Combat-
| Undoing-Chara...
| klyrs wrote:
| Indeed, my single-paragraph "history lesson" doesn't do the
| topic any justice. To add to what you've said, mental health
| care went through a deinstitutionalization movement between
| the World Wars and the Vietnam War-- leaving a total void of
| "care" in place of torture/imprisonment. Upon reflection, I'd
| revise my statement to say that the impact of the trauma on
| veterans was much more visible than prior wars; in part
| because they ended up on the streets doing crack and heroin.
| dandellion wrote:
| _Was_ funny.
| klyrs wrote:
| I think it's a well-constructed comedic narrative. I disagree
| with the facts as he presents them and the conclusions he
| reaches, but I have respect for his art. In my opinion, this
| is _way_ better than, for example, Seinfeld lashing out
| because audiences don 't find his work funny.
|
| edit: Oh, lol. Perhaps you meant "because he's dead." Whoosh!
| mvdtnz wrote:
| > I think it's a well-constructed comedic narrative
|
| Why do you write like this? What's wrong with just saying
| "I think it's funny"?
| croes wrote:
| >History lesson: no, WWI veterans didn't get the attention they
| needed.
|
| Where does Carlin say that WWI veterans did the proper
| attention? He said with the name shell shock maybe Vietnam
| veterans would have, because 50 years the same name for the
| same problem without proper treatment could have get the
| publics attention
|
| >This is wistful conservatism wrapped in a shroud of comedy.
|
| That is your interpretation and not necessarily the truth,
| especially since Carlin can hardly be called a conservative
| klyrs wrote:
| > especially since Carlin can hardly be called a conservative
|
| What an interesting response. I did not call him _a
| conservative_ , did I? I said that he was performing a
| _conservative bit_.
| rhuru wrote:
| Each generation complains about the new generation's usage of
| new terms. My younger siblings use the phrases like NPC so
| often, that irritates many older people in the family.
|
| From my understanding the top down terms enforced by language
| police at universities, public schools and corporations
| invariably end up becoming joke over time. The bottom up terms
| which were created by bullies, incels, sluts, car mechanics,
| bartenders continue to stick around and improve the language
| for the better.
|
| Initially it is hard to determine which one is which. LGBTQ for
| example appears to be a bottoms up term that gained popularity
| and will be around for a long time. LGBTQIA2S++-- is likely
| going to end up as a joke. "Preferred Pronounce" another
| nonsense promoted by the bloat at corporate HRs (diversity
| departments) too in my opinion would end up as material for
| stand up comics down the line. There are more modern bottoms up
| terms like Incel, NPC etc. will stick around for a long time
| just like YOLO, FOMO etc have become pretty mainstream.
|
| The better care our soldiers get is a result of medical field
| advancement, better economy and has very little to do with the
| terminology.
| rhuru wrote:
| Term "snowflake" is also something that is will stick around
| forever now which can be used to describe people who downvote
| my comment. So is "Cancel Culture". Bottoms up worlds will
| live on.
| klyrs wrote:
| If the words have any meaning, Budweiser offended
| snowflakes, and met Cancel Culture head-on.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| > _The depth of their trauma was a departure,_
|
| I get the impression that combat vets of WWI were no less
| traumatized, but society didn't talk about it and preferred to
| talk about heroism, duty, honor, etc. Traumatized soldiers were
| counter to the prevailing narrative, seen as an embarrassment
| that people didn't want to think about.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Thank you. And what about accuracy? All the simpletons who love
| the word "shell shock" are simply wrong much of the time if the
| soldier's (psychological) injury wasn't caused by a shell. Some
| may call that pedantry, but to me it's not. It correctly
| classifies (what we believe to be) the same illness: someone
| who witnessed people being shot in a war, to witness of city
| violence, to domestic abuse. Psychologists are finding out that
| their symptoms all line up, hence the disease needs a more
| precise name. Baffles me to see so much support for "shell
| shock" here, the mother-ship of pedantry.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| You certainly did an excellent job of refuting a claim Carlin
| never made.
| hinkley wrote:
| I can't hear the term "ethnic cleansing" now without hearing
| Carlin's voice in my head. "Quantitative easing" is getting
| there.
|
| Which I figure is something he would be proud of.
|
| He will be sorely missed in the coming decades. Not by people who
| knew his work, but by the empty space he leaves.
| njharman wrote:
| Related, in language being taken over and replaced. Having not
| paid attention to sports for 30years, but recently going to hocky
| matches. I have the perspective of avoiding the gradual "frog in
| boiling water effect". It was really in my face and shocking. My
| first thought was man, this is close to Idiocracy level.
|
| Every prominent surface is plastered with advertising, even the
| zamboni. Everything is sponsored, "Holloway motors Power Play!",
| "TEP half time puck toss".
| dizzydes wrote:
| I think in the long run it makes little difference because people
| become sensitized/de-sensitized to the new water level
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Here's one from software, it's not "shit", it's "legacy" :)
|
| TBH what I notice more of these days is geopolitical terms that
| mean the exact same thing, but one has a negative and one has a
| positive connotation:
|
| Regime VS Government
|
| Separatist VS Independent
|
| Irredentist VS Unifying
|
| Coup VS Ousting
|
| Terrorist VS Armed Wing
|
| Political VS Democratic
|
| Rioter VS Protester
| deanCommie wrote:
| In an abstract sense, I'm not a fan of people rolling out quotes
| from nuanced creative societal thinkers like George Carlin to use
| in a modern context.
|
| The reason is because people use it for whatever agenda fits.
| It's a Rorschach.
|
| Cons see these quotes and think it's applicable to "PC culture"
| and think George Carlin would tell kids to toughen up.
|
| Libs see these quotes and think it's applicable to "truthiness"
| and the post-truth world the alt-right spins.
|
| Truth is, George Carlin died in 2008. He missed the entire Obama
| years and the Trump era. We have no idea what he would've said or
| thought about the evolution of culture, of cancel culture, of
| Trump, of trans rights, on Ukraine.
|
| Learn from the man what you want, but don't try to find quotes
| from 2001 and go "Hey wow look, it almost looks like he's talking
| about <blank>" here.
| jonathanlb wrote:
| I'd argue that the very reason Carlin's observations are so
| widely cited is that they tap into enduring aspects of human
| behavior and societal norms, which makes them applicable across
| time and political spectrums.
|
| The fact that people from various political backgrounds find
| resonance in Carlin's words isn't a point against their current
| applicability. Rather, it underscores the universality of the
| issues he tackled- whether "PC culture" or "post-truth"
| narratives, we're still talking about the manipulation and
| policing of language and thought.
|
| Moreover, the idea that we can't know what Carlin would have
| said about today's issues is beside the point. The value in
| revisiting his observations isn't in speculating about what
| Carlin would have said about XYZ today, but in applying his
| insights as a lens through which to examine our own time.
| arichard123 wrote:
| I'm in the UK and have recently started hearing the euphemism
| "passed" instead of "died". I find it confusing, at least for a
| moment, as I track back in the conversation to identify a thing
| the person could have passed by. Then I realise, and start
| pondering how there is an implication added by the euphemism ,
| that there is an afterlife someone has passed into.
| lumb63 wrote:
| Re-reading Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" [1] a few
| months ago showed me how often I speak imprecisely or use too
| many words. Often I use more words than are necessary, only to
| say nothing. The purpose of words is to express ideas, but I
| often catch myself using words to obscure my thoughts and
| intentions rather than to share them. Worse than too many words
| are imprecise words. Words like "stuff", "things", "generally",
| and many others, simplify ideas to vague caricatures of
| themselves. Worse still, is that imprecision corrupts thinking.
| If someone cannot precisely express their ideas, perhaps they
| have none to express.
|
| For instance, I have heard statements like "things aren't the
| same as they used to be". If I ask _what_ isn 't the same as it
| used to be, I receive vague responses that repeat what was
| previously said, rather than give clarity. Now, when I catch
| myself using similar phrases, I pause and ask myself, "what am I
| really trying to say?" Sometimes I find myself not actually
| intending to say anything - just something. This practice
| challenges me to think, rather than to parrot mindless responses
| that tell others nothing about what I am thinking at all. [1]:
| https://guidetogrammar.org/grammar/composition/orwell.htm
| rglover wrote:
| Just went on a rant about "impostor syndrome" the other day and
| how it's just cope-language for people who know deep down that
| they don't actually provide any value (and aren't terribly
| interested in learning how to do that).
|
| Another one is "adulting" which is literally just taking
| responsibility for one's own life/actions post-adolescence.
| jzb wrote:
| I've always heard (and used) "adulting" as "doing the boring,
| unrewarding, never-ending tasks that come with adulthood."
|
| Yes, we have a responsibility to do those things. But there's
| no harm IMO in acknowledging that they feel like drudgery and
| bullshit a lot of the time.
| nightfly wrote:
| I think this is the first comment on here I've wanted to just
| say "fuck you" to. There are lots of reasons for people to feel
| insecure, and this type of attitude doesn't help
| rglover wrote:
| You've proven Carlin's point.
| nightfly wrote:
| No. How do you think your students would feel if they knew
| this is how you think of them? I know lots of insecure
| people, some who are new but still learning, some very
| skilled in some areas with holes in others but their skills
| areas way more then make up for their deficiencies, some
| who just have anxiety issues who don't have any skill
| issues at all. And a few who really might be in over their
| heads. The last category is the smallest.
| rglover wrote:
| I'm very direct and honest with them about things just
| like this. I don't hold punches. I teach them to work the
| problem [1] instead of whining or wasting time on
| spinning their mental tires.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0h2Wk6-C_I
| csours wrote:
| > Partly cloudy became partly sunny.
|
| Here it Texas, it's still Partly Cloudy, probably because we get
| more than enough sun.
| Vaslo wrote:
| I used to wonder about this too but there is a semi-scientific
| difference between the two. There are more clouds with partly
| cloudy than with partly sunny.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I got to say the actual words "You're fired!" to my estate
| lawyer. Details too involved to provide here.
|
| So fun.
| bl_valance wrote:
| Many people here missing Carlin's point about "soft language".
| Think more on the examples of forcing oneself, either by choice
| or by social factors.
|
| suicide -> "unalive" homeless -> "unhoused"
|
| I absolutely hate these terms.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-10-23 09:01 UTC)