7/24/2007
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO WORDS?
NUMBER 186
Words
Whatever happened to words?
Take ETHICS for example. Ethics used to be the discipline that dealt with what is good and what is bad, with moral duty and obligation, with the practical implications of Kant’s categorical imperative--the oughtness that God has hardwired into all mankind.
Some time ago I observed, with a roomful of medical students, a panel discussion on “The Ethics of Abortion.” The organizer wanted a nice friendly discussion in which no one would get excited, upset, or have his or her feelings hurt. Dead babies, traumatized mothers, irresponsible fathers, informed consent, personal responsibility, and moral absolutes were ruled out of order by definition before the discussion started.
The two hour session succeeded—no heat was generated, and no light either—bad luck for the medical students wondering how they would deal with all of these things in real life in the days ahead of them.
Or take the word VALUES, as in FAMILY VALUES. Once upon a time, values were fixed principles to learn and live by. They were taught to children at home and in school and in church. They were not subject to daily modification at the whim of the individual. Today, values are approached quite differently.
The syndicated columnist Deborah Mathis urged her readers, “Let’s debate the family values issue fairly this time around.” Deborah wanted a discussion based on yearning, tolerance, sympathy, income redistribution, understanding, mercy, pleasantness, conscience and reflection.
By definition, Deborah would rule out moral absolutes, personal accountability, sacrifice, commitment, and any other idea that might possibly cause anyone to suffer irretrievable diminution of self-esteem. Her debate might be interesting, but it could never, without the things she leaves out, begin to repair the damage that has been done to the family in recent years.
Or take the word MODESTY. Modesty is “propriety in dress, speech or conduct.” Modesty is the reason for separate rest rooms for men and women in public places. Once modesty was considered a virtue. Today it is a liability or even a phobia. You don’t have to follow the antics of Brittany Spears or Paris Hilton far to discover that today, immodesty has become a hot product that sells everything, everywhere, all the time.
Back when it was covering the ongoing saga of gays in the military, NPR observed that the thing that was keeping everyone from a speedy and happy resolution of the problem was the attitude of the troops in the trenches. This attitude was exemplified by a sailor who said that he just “didn’t feel comfortable, living in a communal barracks and sharing communal showers with homosexual men.” The reporter called his “feeling” a “fear.” So a feeling of modesty becomes a fear, which is just one small step away from “homophobia.”
The source of all this slippage in words is not hard to find. In the culture war raging across America, the high ground is semantic. “Right and wrong” are still used, but their content has shifted to “right for you” or “wrong for you” and maybe “wrong for me” and “right for you,” at the same time.
Words have always been used to tell lies. But today, more often than not, they have become lies. “A woman’s right to choose” is a sentence that is never completed with “to have her baby murdered in the womb for convenience sake.” To complete this sentence out loud would be to violate what is probably the only absolute left standing—absolute tolerance.
We have seen Orwell’s vision come into full flower—the clock strikes thirteen and we hardly notice. With a perfectly straight face the lady doctor moderating the discussion with the medical students could say, “I am against abortion, but I believe in the woman’s right to choose.” In plain terms, what she is saying is this; I am against doctors murdering babies for profit, but it is OK with me if a woman wants to hire a doctor to murder her baby, and by the way, it would be nice of the government would pay the bill.”
She and most of our politicians have mastered Orwell’s “Doublethink,” the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. Orwell explained that the process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence, of guilt. And guilt is just not something our progressive society can tolerate anymore.
Generally, liberal humanism has owned this semantic high ground through its dominance of the media and the academy at all levels. But conservatives are not humiliating the word. There was a missile—the LGM-118A-- a four-stage intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying up to ten independently-targetable reentry vehicles with greater accuracy than any other ballistic missile. President Reagan called it “The Peacekeeper.”
Today, the simple truth should be at the top of the endangered species list. More often than not, what is perceived as truth is any lie that has been told often enough and loudly enough by someone with the means to spread it widely. Focus groups are the preferred method of deciding which version of the latest big lie will fool the most people. What the polls often measure is the effectiveness of this process—they tell us what a people with an attention span of 30 seconds feel about the carefully crafted lies they have been bombarded with.
There is a downside for the peddlers of lies. Those who seem to win by changing the rules semantically during the game end up with hollow victories. This makes them cross and grumpy and not very much fun to be with. We may be getting outcome-based education in our public schools, but it will be a long time before we have outcome-based basketball. The rule book, the lines on the floor and the clock on the wall may make us angry at times, but without them, basketball would not be basketball.
Popular thinking to the contrary, feelings are not knowledge--opinions are not truth--and all sincerely held opinions are not equal. If the followers of Jesus Christ are to be salt and light in the world, we need to be alert to the way words are humiliated, twisted and abused in the pursuit of political power and commercial success—and stand up for the simple truth wherever we are able.
More than that, we need to remember the connection between words, and The Word. Ultimately words have meaning because God is there and He speaks. His Word is “living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword.” He says of His Word, “It shall not return to me empty.”
We are well into the most unusual presidential election in memory--the air is already filled with wildly spinning highly seasoned baloney, all focus-group tested and in furious competition for the votes of a largely mindless electorate that, like the politicians, is more concerned with “what’s in it for me” than for what is in the best interests of the nation as a whole.
May we keep the sword of truth gleaming from use in the service of truth in the months ahead.
+++++++
“You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”
John 8.32
“I am the way--the truth and the life.”
John 14.6
“Let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.”
Matthew 5.37
Words
Whatever happened to words?
Take ETHICS for example. Ethics used to be the discipline that dealt with what is good and what is bad, with moral duty and obligation, with the practical implications of Kant’s categorical imperative--the oughtness that God has hardwired into all mankind.
Some time ago I observed, with a roomful of medical students, a panel discussion on “The Ethics of Abortion.” The organizer wanted a nice friendly discussion in which no one would get excited, upset, or have his or her feelings hurt. Dead babies, traumatized mothers, irresponsible fathers, informed consent, personal responsibility, and moral absolutes were ruled out of order by definition before the discussion started.
The two hour session succeeded—no heat was generated, and no light either—bad luck for the medical students wondering how they would deal with all of these things in real life in the days ahead of them.
Or take the word VALUES, as in FAMILY VALUES. Once upon a time, values were fixed principles to learn and live by. They were taught to children at home and in school and in church. They were not subject to daily modification at the whim of the individual. Today, values are approached quite differently.
The syndicated columnist Deborah Mathis urged her readers, “Let’s debate the family values issue fairly this time around.” Deborah wanted a discussion based on yearning, tolerance, sympathy, income redistribution, understanding, mercy, pleasantness, conscience and reflection.
By definition, Deborah would rule out moral absolutes, personal accountability, sacrifice, commitment, and any other idea that might possibly cause anyone to suffer irretrievable diminution of self-esteem. Her debate might be interesting, but it could never, without the things she leaves out, begin to repair the damage that has been done to the family in recent years.
Or take the word MODESTY. Modesty is “propriety in dress, speech or conduct.” Modesty is the reason for separate rest rooms for men and women in public places. Once modesty was considered a virtue. Today it is a liability or even a phobia. You don’t have to follow the antics of Brittany Spears or Paris Hilton far to discover that today, immodesty has become a hot product that sells everything, everywhere, all the time.
Back when it was covering the ongoing saga of gays in the military, NPR observed that the thing that was keeping everyone from a speedy and happy resolution of the problem was the attitude of the troops in the trenches. This attitude was exemplified by a sailor who said that he just “didn’t feel comfortable, living in a communal barracks and sharing communal showers with homosexual men.” The reporter called his “feeling” a “fear.” So a feeling of modesty becomes a fear, which is just one small step away from “homophobia.”
The source of all this slippage in words is not hard to find. In the culture war raging across America, the high ground is semantic. “Right and wrong” are still used, but their content has shifted to “right for you” or “wrong for you” and maybe “wrong for me” and “right for you,” at the same time.
Words have always been used to tell lies. But today, more often than not, they have become lies. “A woman’s right to choose” is a sentence that is never completed with “to have her baby murdered in the womb for convenience sake.” To complete this sentence out loud would be to violate what is probably the only absolute left standing—absolute tolerance.
We have seen Orwell’s vision come into full flower—the clock strikes thirteen and we hardly notice. With a perfectly straight face the lady doctor moderating the discussion with the medical students could say, “I am against abortion, but I believe in the woman’s right to choose.” In plain terms, what she is saying is this; I am against doctors murdering babies for profit, but it is OK with me if a woman wants to hire a doctor to murder her baby, and by the way, it would be nice of the government would pay the bill.”
She and most of our politicians have mastered Orwell’s “Doublethink,” the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. Orwell explained that the process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence, of guilt. And guilt is just not something our progressive society can tolerate anymore.
Generally, liberal humanism has owned this semantic high ground through its dominance of the media and the academy at all levels. But conservatives are not humiliating the word. There was a missile—the LGM-118A-- a four-stage intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying up to ten independently-targetable reentry vehicles with greater accuracy than any other ballistic missile. President Reagan called it “The Peacekeeper.”
Today, the simple truth should be at the top of the endangered species list. More often than not, what is perceived as truth is any lie that has been told often enough and loudly enough by someone with the means to spread it widely. Focus groups are the preferred method of deciding which version of the latest big lie will fool the most people. What the polls often measure is the effectiveness of this process—they tell us what a people with an attention span of 30 seconds feel about the carefully crafted lies they have been bombarded with.
There is a downside for the peddlers of lies. Those who seem to win by changing the rules semantically during the game end up with hollow victories. This makes them cross and grumpy and not very much fun to be with. We may be getting outcome-based education in our public schools, but it will be a long time before we have outcome-based basketball. The rule book, the lines on the floor and the clock on the wall may make us angry at times, but without them, basketball would not be basketball.
Popular thinking to the contrary, feelings are not knowledge--opinions are not truth--and all sincerely held opinions are not equal. If the followers of Jesus Christ are to be salt and light in the world, we need to be alert to the way words are humiliated, twisted and abused in the pursuit of political power and commercial success—and stand up for the simple truth wherever we are able.
More than that, we need to remember the connection between words, and The Word. Ultimately words have meaning because God is there and He speaks. His Word is “living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword.” He says of His Word, “It shall not return to me empty.”
We are well into the most unusual presidential election in memory--the air is already filled with wildly spinning highly seasoned baloney, all focus-group tested and in furious competition for the votes of a largely mindless electorate that, like the politicians, is more concerned with “what’s in it for me” than for what is in the best interests of the nation as a whole.
May we keep the sword of truth gleaming from use in the service of truth in the months ahead.
+++++++
“You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”
John 8.32
“I am the way--the truth and the life.”
John 14.6
“Let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.”
Matthew 5.37
