although i have suspected this myself Robert Greene confirmed it for me
in modern society words aren’t used to convey meaning but to obscure and distort meaning
truth is self-evident in complete silence
words are weapons used to attack it
i will add examples in the future …
on a completely unrelated note … ( no pun intended )
the example that reminded me of this issue is “circumcision” versus “ritual genital mutilation” … which refer to the same thing but “circumcision” is positive and “ritual genital mutilation” is negative …
but i want to make a separate post about this particular issue elsewhere …
words are basically a tool that allow us to instruct others how to feel about something while obscuring / discarding the meaning of whatever the words refer to …
A quote from Orwell, Politics and English Language
When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as “keeping out of politics.” All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.
Orwell is on point there as usual.
but the problem is bigger than just politics.
when something is true we show it.
when something is a lie we talk about it.