[Verv]

Philosophers have been complaining about language and its limitations and have been analyzing language for a very, very long time.

Since Wittgenstein, there seems to be a lot of emphasis on language in philosophy.

Merleau-Ponty and other philosophers have believed it is possible for us to overcome what amounts to our capitalist society through the re-examination and recreation of language.

I am unsure of the details about it but during the language simplification process in China there is speculation that there were efforts to do other lingual reforms and to manipulate characters in such a way as to have the language cater more costly to Communism; at least, I have inferred this from the fact that anti-language reformers were branded rightists and persecuted and it would seem logical that someone manipulating their language would change it...

So, what do you make of language and its role in philosophy and fascism?

Certainly, the very word 'fascism' has been tainted. The concept of a dictatorship, even in the enlightened fashion that many would want, has also been tainted.

"Democracy" and other such words have such a Holy Cow position within our language that openly opposing it, even if it is logical, merely creates a visceral reaction amongst others.

One of the tasks that we must inherently have is the task of deconstructing some aspects of our language and removing the emotion of some words, and the stereotyping that it all goes with...

However, this is not quite in the same vein of language in the sense that philosophers have necessarily discussed... But we can get into that in later posts of this thread, which I intend to keep alive.

Thoughts?

[Daktoria]

Democracy is nice because it creates chaos. It prevents people from exploiting one another because it prevents people from being forced to commit to a position of understanding.

Rather retarded, but w/e. Democrats don't like fascists because fascism is consolidated instead.

It doesn't really matter what kind of system you put in place. Ultimately, the success of the system comes down to individual judgments one way or another.

Heck, you might say the best system is one that changes unpredictably over time so people can't learn to manipulate it. Not that an appeal to ignorance is ideal, but you really don't want anyone except altruists making political decisions. The longer the system solidifies, the harder it is to protect altruist decision making.

Could even extrapolate that to language itself if you wanted to. A regularly evolving language would eliminate communication bias towards compatible/ against incompatible thought patterns.

[Rei Murasame]

I'll take the word 'Democracy' in this thread to mean liberal democracy, capitalism, and pluralism, since that is both Daktoria and Verv seem to be describing here.

"Democracy" and other such words have such a Holy Cow position within our language that openly opposing it, even if it is logical, merely creates a visceral reaction amongst others.

Yes. This has happened because over time people have begun to associate many of the social mores that they like, with the system that they happened to appear under. So there is a strange connection that has been made where they think that moving away from that system would magically cause some sort of catastrophe.

For example, let's take the issue of say, queer liberation. Clearly it is not logical to support this while simultaneously supporting a situation (however hypothetical) where there is pluralistic allowances for unlimited proliferation of Islamic social mores. It would be ridiculous, because you cannot have both. Yet the defenders of liberal democracy somehow manage to do it.

Our task is then to make people realise that this doesn't make any sense.

Democracy is nice because it creates chaos. It prevents people from exploiting one another because it prevents people from being forced to commit to a position of understanding. [...] Heck, you might say the best system is one that changes unpredictably over time so people can't learn to manipulate it.

And guess who the only organised people in the midst of that chaos are?

[youtube]731G71Sahok[/youtube]

The end of that clip says "Wake Up America", but really it should say just "Wake Up", to the entire world.

If you don't have a structure that is capable of recognising the existence of interest groups and classes, and plugging them into a framework where they are visible, then fraud is going to happen every single time.

This is why liberal democracy and all other related orders are completely incapable of running a country.

Because the only way you can run that system without it degenerating immediately into the financier class dividing and conquering you, is if you run your liberal system with Jesus of Nazareth and a team of eunuchs at the helm of the banks, by completely random chance. I'm not anticipating that you will find that scenario to exist at all.

[Daktoria]

Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of democratic socialism/syndicalism rather than liberal "democracy". Aristocracy (especially nonlandowning aristocracy) isn't terribly appealing, but liberal republicanism still seems more accurate since too many cooks spoil the broth. Democracy makes communication a pain in the ass and turns networking into a game in itself.

Always find it adorable how you jump to finance right away though. :-P I wasn't even thinking in terms of federal or state government, just in terms of social organization. People would rather vote than discuss issues because they're afraid of feeling awkward from having their fallacious thought patterns stamped out. All forms of pluralism aren't bad, but in social democracy, people embrace pluralism just to be diverse, not to be independent.

Public choice has its load of quandries when it comes to democratic chaos. Arrow's impossibility theorem, condorcet's paradox, clientilism, groupthink, boo-hurrah, etc.

If anything, free markets are the stochastic element required to perpetually confuse political arbitrage. There's nothing more frustrating to potential central planners than the business cycle.

As for your video, do you really believe fraud was ignited by capitalism? Fraud is part of rational behavior or human nature if you will. It's a primitive leftover, and you won't even find Jesus of Nazareth working in the police. People say they want to be dogooders, but to become as politically successful as possible, you have to bend rules all the time. Heck, the very argument for managing internal affairs is that insiders know better than outsiders as to how rules are bent, but that's only possible if internal affairs managers are experienced with bending rules themselves.

Regulation is a circle jerk just as much as finance is a ponzi scheme.

[Verv]

I have brought this up because I find something very intriguing in this:

While the tradition of stigma prevents people from seeking counseling, the custom of tatemae versus honne makes it harder for people in counseling to open up to the therapist. Tatemae refers to public behavior, and honne indicates one’s “true feelings and desires which cannot be openly expressed because of the strength of tatemae” (Sugimoto 26). For instance, tatemae may be used with outsiders in the form of politeness in language. As Joy Hendry comments, polite language maintains “a certain distance between the conversants, therefore protecting the ‘inner feelings’ from the probings of an outsider” (Hendry 46). Accordingly, when one seeks counseling for a mental disorder or problem, he may hesitate to express his personal feelings and emotions verbally. Andrew Grimes, a counselor and group therapist in Tokyo, indicates that even as children, the Japanese have been taught to repress expression of their emotions and beliefs, in public and sometimes even in private, when deviating from the group view in order to preserve the notion of social harmony and agreement, or wa (Grimes 5). As a matter of fact, containing personal emotion in front of people outside one’s social group is still considered by some a characteristic of a well-bred, mature member of society. This is a major hurdle for Japanese who try to talk about their problems in therapy sessions, for “in Japanese, the expression of material and emotional desires, of hopes and also of expectations of others are often expressed indirectly using hints or innuendo in speech or by simply depending on others to guess one’s ‘true feeling’ or honne without verbal explanation” (Grimes 5-6).

Since trying to obliterate or modify this dichotomy of tatemae versus honne is both unlikely and impractical, as it is deeply imbedded in the culture of the Japanese, a more sensible approach to this hurdle is to encourage counseling sessions in English for those comfortable enough to use it. Many Japanese consider English a more direct language, and it would allow them to express their feelings with greater liberation and less fear, bred from the belief that they are more permitted to do so. Even patients with varying levels of fluency, if given time to frame what they want to express, could benefit from the shift of language. Grimes, in “Health Issues and Counselors in Tokyo and Japan,” stated the following:


Both in individual counseling and group therapy situations, many people here have said that it is easier for them to freely express their emotions and talk about their worries or problems in English and also, in some cases, that talking in English helped them to become aware of feelings they had never experienced in Japanese. (Grimes 6)

Source

It would appear that to some degree there is such power in language that ic an apparently suppress/hide emotions. In a very real sense, language is able to impose order and control more than government could ever hope.

For this reason you do see people denying some of the most basic, logical assertions that there possibly can be... Things that should be upheld and are logical are not embraced because of the power of language, and also the power of the group feeling.

People can pretend that this is nonexistent in Western societies but in a very real way many people are forced to conceal many opinions for the benefit of the whole... We will even see people who even doubt whether they themselves are right or that they themselves are even sane because of some of the ideas that they might have and of which we have no hope hearing about...