The Slithy Mimsy Jabberwock
Finding Xanadu
A note of profound gratitude to my broth Larry B, and my other brother Larry R, for dropping tip bombs on us. I didn’t just buy coffee, I bought the bushes and the luwaks too.
One of the best movie lines of all time comes from Morpheus in The Matrix (1999):
“The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room.
You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television.
You can feel it when you go to work… when you go to church…when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”
Don’t know if you’ve actually read “Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There”, by Lewis Carroll. Long before the Wokians changed “mental illness” to “transitioning,” even decades before Orwell’s MiniTrue was revising history on the fly, there was Humpty Dumpty.
Humpty is a fragile character teetering precariously on a wall, spouting academic nonsense as lexical authoritarianism. At any moment, he could collapse under the weight of his own bullshit. I am a big fan of this character, and have been since I was a child. I loved the wordplay and the obvious attempts to control reality through the use of language.
Humpty is a precise and damning satire of exactly the world we live in now. Wars are actions, peace kills, men are women, and women have no clear definition at all. Arbeit macht frei writ large.
Humpty claims words have the meaning he gives them, and there is no such thing as common usage and clear definitions. He is the personification of legal “codes”; they are codes precisely because they manipulate language to hide meaning and intent, and foster a class of “interpreters,” known commonly as politicians, lawyers and attorneys.
The entire purpose of the legal class is to jumble clear language, purée logic, and obfuscate truth in order to bamboozle the masses and keep us in a perpetual state of confusion and anxiety. By controlling the clear meanings of words, the “authorities” can control how and what we think. Even when you know the “official” definition of a word is complete and utter hogwash, you are forced to use it because the rubes think they understand it.
Humpty Dumpty’s famous exchange about word meanings echoes a timeless political tactic:
control the vocabulary → control the debate
This interpretation has made Humpty Dumpty a frequent reference in discussions of propaganda and ideological language. “Illegal aliens” become “undocumented workers”. Humans can “identify” as anything they want, even when everyone knows it is plain and complete rubbish. There are no “sexes,” just endless and ever-changing lists of “genders”. As George Carlin said, “Shell shocked somehow became post-traumatic stress disorder.”
Sucking the life out of language is mind control in its highest form. If I can force you to say that black is white, then I have power over you by controlling what you say and how you say it. I am sitting dead center of your intellectual self, filtering everything you think and say.
Here’s a perfect example—and you’ll have to turn off your trained emotional response: up until the 1970s or so, the word “nigger” was not unusual on broadcast TeeVee. The famous SNL skit with Richard Pryor and Chevy Chase is a prime example, though Archie Bunker dropped it numerous times with comic effect.
At some point, a major effort was undertaken to make this a “forbidden” word. The simple mispronunciation of a river in West Africa can drop an adult American to their knees. Mind you, at the same time the old forbidden words have become commonplace.
The fear and visceral response that has been implanted around this particular word is telling. There is hardly the bat of an eyelash over any other racial or ethnic slur (limey, spick, kraut, frog, etc.), and the control mechanism only exists in the US and possibly Canada. Out here in the real world, no one gives a hoot.
In fact, Americans in China have rather entertaining responses to the Mandarin version of “uh” or “um”. It sounds like “nee gah”. I’ve heard of fights breaking out.
Humpty Dumpty’s most famous line is, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” When Alice replies, “The question is whether you can make words mean so many different things,” to which Humpty answers, “The question is which is to be master—that’s all.”
English has by far the largest lexicon of any language on the planet, with roughly one million words. When there are so many ways to express any idea in English, and with laser precision too, it is amazing that we have let a small cabal of authoritarians take control of our vocabulary. Censorship is both a physical and mental process. It is at once the banning of actual communication media, but it is also controlling the words we use and how we use them.
It is vital that we take back and protect our languages. The meanings of words have been weaponized to control our thinking and discourse. The Humpty Dumptys of the world are fragile and hollow, and they are precariously balanced. A stiff breeze can destroy their power, so we must push at every chance to help unseat them.
“Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.”
So dust off that thesaurus and reclaim your mind! Freedom is only a synonym away.
Si mundus vult dicipi, ergo dicipitatur.
There’s a perfect film for today’s topic that I bet most folks don’t know about: Pontypool (2008). It’s a Canadian film from folks most of us have never heard of, about a mind virus that is literally transferred through English words. It’s a very good film and pairs well with such classics as Fahrenheit 451 (1966). I think you’ll find it compelling.
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My mantra to my grandkids has been, say what you mean and mean what you say.
I'll offer another word, gay...used to mean happy go lucky, remember the movies of the 30s and 40s? Of course 'movies' are the epitome of propaganda, but you know what I mean.
Thanks
How about Free Market.. It’s my impression that no oil tankers have passed through the Strait of Hormuz except one destined for China. 20 million barrels a day kept from entering the global market and no plausible explanation for the price not rising to a level that would correspond to this level of detriment. This suppression of market pricing cannot last. Oil stocks will rise or it is an illusion that we are operating in a free market.