💾 Archived View for zaibatsu.circumlunar.space › ~shufei › phlog › 20240420-Phil-Pol-Malaprop%E2%80%… captured on 2024-05-26 at 14:47:36. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2024-05-10)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The following was originally largely posted to fediverse. As such, it was overly concise. I’ve been experimenting in long form social media. So far, I’ve yet again not found it particularly fruitful in writerly worth - beyond forcing the writer to some severity of decision which perhaps aids clarity.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Malapropism acts as helpful touchstone for the decline of the language. I’ve been noting a rise in utter errors amongst recent generations. Millennial English is nigh unrepentant about such slovenliness. This is a real “thing”.
Dictionaries didn’t exist in Shakespeare’s day. Language novelties were created by consummate wit. Dogberries were objects of ridicule. Later generations did not always live up to this standard of creativity. But they usually admired it.
Conversely, the ideology undergirding Millennial English regards the malapropism as a virtue. The term of art being “accessibility”, the millennial professional and “creative” classes condescend to identify the prole with stupidity. This tendency I take to be evidence of postmodern collective cognitive decline and anti-intellectualism as inherent to American culture.
To wit, millennials and zedders should understand that:
“Reticent” does not mean “reluctant”.
There is one die; there are three dice.
“Wary” does not mean “weary”.
The word you’re looking for is “unkempt” not “unkept”.
“Relate” does not mean “identify”.
No, there’s no legitimate argument. These really are patent errors created out of an era which valorizes wanton, willful ignorance. These aren’t witty pop neologisms or accidents, but embarrassing evidence of language and literacy decline in our time. Malapropism betrays no wit. Language change being the recourse of defense to which often appealed, we should enjoin that language change is *never neutral nor natural*. It proceeds from decisions unconscious and conscious - decisions which are informed by tradition and/or Zeitgeist.
It should likewise be understood that “demotic” does *not* needfully imply “democratic”. We live in a relentlessly demotic time because the American Empire relishes anti-intellectualism. This demotic tenor is mere style.
We ought not be impressed by the demotic style of our era as even figurative attention to the demos by rulers. Demotic style is often a propaganda toy of false meritocracy, the open door for co-opted, drained brains. QED the Anglosphere Boomer generation at the inception of neoliberalism. Now that #AI will be replacing much of the surplus professional class, we can expect the mainstream culture to become even more crass in its idolatry of bald power, wealth, and status.
Poor people are usually more honest than the bourgeois, and thus openly believe “讓一部分人先富起來」。 This encapsulates the popular idolatry of Trumpism.
In this context of hypermodern demotic flavour which services empire, *language decline is a propaganda feature of empire*. The implicit thesis being, “poor people are stupid and coarse by nature”.
The level of real democracy is notoriously low in our time, as plutocracy hardens into feudalism. Where once proles struggled to self educate in the deepest tradition, as Chomsky oft notes, now the precariat is induced to bathe in willful digital apathy.
Formal education today does not help, natch, being geared to produce cogs. Those who wish to escape the degraded Zeitgeist must doubly struggle to engage with the long conversation of both literate and oral civilization. Various impediments are placed in our way, from algorithmic obscurantism to the proliferation of semiotic noise of “post-truth” culture.
One of the most intellectually revolutionary things a person can do in our era is thus to study history with a truly critical eye, engage in philosophies which require reading texts penned more than a day ago. (I am not a skeptic per se, but am pushing *suspicion* as integral to rigor in this context.)
However, one needs a quorum rest, (true!) idle time, and will to attention in order to pursue habits of a rigorously critical mind. What is at crisis under neoliberalism is hence a famine of *contemplative leisure*. Leisure requires rest and more than rest. One must be able to sup deeply at the tables of Hypnos and Mnemosyne equally to curate a curious mind.
Contemporary empire notoriously denies rest as a planned feature of neoliberalism. The “digital hallucinations” we engage as subjects of empire further militate against a meditative culture, stripping entire generations of their birthright to intellectual ferment.
To invoke Gertrude Stein, if we wish to cultivate genius, we need to *stop doing so damned much*.
So when I say there are lost generations, I do so advised of the degraded (and degrading) anti-intellectualism of the Zeitgeist. As High Modernity hardened into Postmodernity, so too did the worst impulses to both literalism and unnuanced zealotry in populations. Web 2.0 social media further ingrains such bad habits. QED. Scholarship has curdled into either the trite solipsism of social criticism or the nude technical manuals of STEM drones. Children are raised by portable tv sets, overstimulated from birth.
We are impoverished by these turns of culture. We are *meant to be*.
The only *personal* course through this era I can see is again one of deep autonomous resolve. The deep “No”, the “no” deeper than mimetic rejection. The “No” which consciously helps us to struggle to become captains of our souls. Disengagement is merely the outside view of this “No”. The inner view resolves toward far seen shores - shores we ourselves may never reach. It’s a good place to start. “No” opens space in the thickets.
It likely matters little which tradition per se fosters this ensoulment. There are myriad to choose from. The ancestors whose lives curated these traditions call out for us to hear them. The critical process is refinement by curation of a wide and deep view in liberatory tradition, as Cornel West well invokes.
I’ve little notion of what collective organization might overcome empire. At least I shall not impose such dubious musings here.
But I’ve personally little faith in the secular revolutionary tradition exported by Europe in the high modern era. The failings too clearly glare under recent history’s light. The revolutionary ideologies and “quasi-religions” out of modern Europe are inherently tainted by Puritanism and dogmatism, always confuse mere poverty with inverse nobility. There is also no true “end game” for classical communism &c. We saw this insatiability in the 60’s and 70’s. Against a crass idolatry of wealth, games of pop Puritanism are ultimately lame. There’s simply not enough carrot.
I certainly forever hope for a turn to true commonwealth. Whatever banners can achieve a deeper “No”, I doubt they are to be found in the cynical materialism and cant of 19th century utilitarians. There’s no soul there, no meat.
Perhaps Cornel West is right in this too. (That is, his advancement of the Black American strand of the “prophetic tradition” is the likeliest vehicle for resilient community in this era. It is certainly possible, especially in NorthAm.)
-30-終-EOF-