Rectification of Names

"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." - George Orwell


Confucius wrote of the Rectification of Names. This concept doesn't appear to be quite what I want to talk about, so I'll probably have to think up another term for it.

People understand concepts through language. Orwell understood this very well.

In order for people to gain a better understanding of what's really going on around them, I think they have to start by understanding the language that is used to describe the world. The words must once again match reality.

There is a reason government theft has its own term of endearment - taxation. It's to make you think there's something different between taxation and theft. There isn't.

There's a reason soldiers in a vicious war, sent to kill innocent people, are pronounced heroes. There's a reason the military always talks of the duties of a soldier to die for their nation, but never to kill for it.

There's a reason there exists the very concept of a Nation, a Land, a People, a Society.

These are all collectivistic terms that in our current language possess qualities similar to deities. When they are invoked, the critical thinking of a person is immediately subjected to assault. It must be, for by even acknowledging the existence of these constructs, you already fall into their trap.

If you step back and look at what is really going on, you begin to realise that society doesn't really exist. Insofar as it does, society is merely the sum total experience of your relationships and interactions with other people. In which case not only is society different for everybody, but you've never met the vast majority of it.

Yet you seem to have a debt, or duty to it. Society is thought to act, think, choose its leaders. Replace society with The People, or The Will of the Proletariat. It doesn't matter what the construct is called. What matters is it isn't real. It's there to confuse you, to allow illogical statements to appear reasonable.

In logic this fallacy is called reification. It is probably the most common fallacy in political discourse.

There's a reason the concept of society is then conflated with government, so that government action appears indispensable. That if government didn't provide Britain with health care, there would be no health care, or it would be unaffordable. That if government didn't sow the crops in the Soviet Union, there would be no crops. That if government didn't defend the U.S. from invaders, nobody would.

Individuals no longer exist. Only society exists. If individuals do exist, they are merely cogs in the system, unable or too foolish to choose what they do.

It is easy to then give a non-existent construct, behind which stand very real people, more rights than the individuals that are in fact the only concrete entities in this whole system.

We have been surrounded by phony language long before Orwell wrote about it. It's all around us.

The police don't kidnap people, they imprison them. The military doesn't bomb, irradiate, rape, assault, and deform civilians, it causes collateral damage. Being brainwashed in the army and then killing people doesn't make you a murderer, it makes you a hero.



George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 1946


"They speak with great caution, because they have to make sure to not actually say anything."
George Carlin on Euphemisms.