Insanity or Science?

A Political Excursion Into the Reality of Words

In 1933, Alfred Korzybski wrote Science and Sanity. It is a tome. We would not call Korzybski’s book a summer read. However, you could reduce what he says down to a rather simple concept. The word is not the thing. This seems to be obviously true and mundane information. But consider it for a moment in terms of political catchphrases and talking points.

Let’s take this CRT idea. It isn’t an actual word but it serves as a word. Those letters stand for Critical Race Theory. CRT is at this moment in history a buzzword. All that means is that the word form, CRT, is used to convey a meaning. But the meaning is not what the word even stands for. The letters stand for a theory that examines how any society leans toward suspicion whenever the society is faced with a different culture cohabitating in an area that has been established. CRT denotes that the politician speaking the phonation believes that any race other than his own is not to be trusted and therefore should not be here as in go back to where you came from. Even if where they came from is down the street.

When it comes to a more meaningful phrase, the Second Amendment is about as misleading as it gets. The thing that the Second Amendment refers to is not actually a thing but rather a political belief about something that is not very safe. People who use that phrase in their speech usually mean to refer to the Amendments of the Constitution. But in current political speech, the phrase means that a rather large number of people are afraid of any different culture and therefore must protect themselves due to the possibility of threat from the unknown culture.

However, Korzybski talked about our actual words not being the things they represent. We sometimes forget that. For instance, when we hear the word liberal we do not think of an individual who is concerned with human well-being as a basis for their political biases. We generally hear something more aligned with a thought of lax or non-existent rules for societal behavior. But with that definition then Matt and Marge would be liberals. So would the Marlagorian Prince. So the word liberal doesn’t even carry the meaning most of us define it as having. It’s pretty easy to see how words can be loaded with popular emotions to carry meaning at a particular juncture of history. During the 50’s, the word communist was used to label people in the society that thought differently than certain politicians deemed proper. The man most destructive at that time was named Joe McCarthy. If Joe could attach the word communist to you then you would suffer from losing your job, your method of employment and anything else Joe could figure out how to take from you. The Prince would do the same if he thought he could and thought he could get by with it.

It has only been in recent weeks that politicians on the right have begun to say what they mean. You’ve heard some of those folks talk about taking away the right of gay people to be married. The reason is that the word marriage for them means something between a man and a woman. They have not considered marriage as a legal instrument. It is unlikely, however, that someone talking about marriage being between a man and a woman would consider it to be scary. That same person may not respect marriage vows as being binding but under the law, he or she must abide by the legal dictates concerning marriage even if that he or she is gay or straight or perhaps other.

The question which we seem to overlook is not if gay marriage is right or wrong but is it legal? Marriage is not right if it’s between men and women nearly as much as if it is legal between two people. If we determine the marriage definition as legal then there is no issue with gay marriage. If we define marriage as spiritual there is still no issue. It is only when we define marriage as “my concept of right and wrong” do we find an issue with who can be married. We tend to define politicians as people concerned with the law, not people who are concerned with morality. The two are not the same. Not even if we were to define them as being the same. Again, the word is not the thing. Morality is just fine but not something that can ever be defined as legal. If it is defined as a legal issue it is no longer a moral issue.

I think we may forget that we give words definitions as we learn to talk. For most of us that learning to talk event took place a long time ago. We don’t really remember what we defined a word as to the meaning it carries. Because we were very young and without experience we may very well have placed limits on what any given word should mean. We were also likely to miss the idea that the word is just that. The word. It is not the thing it is pointing at. It is certainly not the emotional load we often place on words and ideas.

It is one thing to realize that the words we speak are not the things we speak about. It is quite another thing to say words which have no correlation in reality. We are all familiar with such words and phrases as big lie, school shooting, active shooter, don’t say gay, Roe vs. Wade, majority, Black Lives Matter, border security, deep state, world order, replacement, and a host of other emotionally loaded words and phrases. These kinds of words and phrases are used not to convey information but rather to elicit a knee-jerk kind of response. There are other words and phrases which are not based in reality but elicit a strong kind of response. Such words and phrases as child pornography or cabal, or even voter fraud. These things may exist but they are not things that are so overpowering that we must all drive ourselves to some poor pizza parlor in Washington to save the children. These things might actually be real but it is much, much more likely that these words represent disembodied fears which we can not find in our memories to resolve.

But there are other kinds of words which are much more dangerous than any other I’ve mentioned. Words like fascist theology. These words may refer to anything which currently exists in our experience but they do represent something that could transpire very easily if we were to allow the likes of the Prince of Marlagovia to return to the throne. It is for this reason that I implore the folks who represent the liberal side of our politics to find and groom someone who can have the charisma to guide the country back toward some semblance of sanity. The midterm elections are the Democrats to lose. No rational person would endorse the likes of the Prince ever again. But it isn’t the rational people who scare me in this regard. It is the people who do not know that the word is not the thing. They may not be capable of knowing what the thing or the words actually are. They may want to use words which do not have any correlation in reality. We’ve been there and done that. It didn’t work.