Of words and truth

Can a name of an object be true or false or does custom determine its virtue. I was surprised that in a Plato dialogue Cratylus, cited in translation to English by Anne Fremantle in her Primer of Linguistics (1974), the issue of the essence of words was discussed. Interestingly enough, words were described as an instrument just as a shuttle or an awn. In other words, any person can use these tools but only experts know how to use them correctly. A linguistic example is the use of the word basically. While it does have a specific and correct meaning, many people throw it in as a breath stop, without meaning.

Plato through Socrates in the dialogue argues that instruments should be defined by the wise, i.e. experts in their use. In regards to words, he specifies politicians but apparently they were a bit more educated in his days. Nobody would praise the precision and truth of the words that politicians use today. The closest current institutions are the various national language institutions, such as in France and Israel but not in the United States. They attempt to establish correct usage and meaning, with varying degrees of success.

The problem is that language, including the name for an essence, is almost always established by popular consensus, i.e., how people use it.  A modern example is the acceptance of blog for web blog. No academy proposed or approved it but it is the correct word. On the other hand, funnest is still incorrect (as far as I know) even if thousands of children say it.

In terms of the classic debate between Hamilton and Jefferson, the people always decide but the former would say that they don’t always do correctly while the latter would say that argue collective wisdom. In other words, can one million references in Google be wrong? Yes and no. The debate continues.

Jeffersonian language drivers

George Carlin, a man obsessed by the search for truth, had a notable routine about the common misuse of phrases. In itself, it is quite interesting.  Among the phrases he mentions are the terms sour grapes, cop out and get a monkey off your back.  He points out that these terms have specific meanings that have been misused by public speakers. For example, a person with sour grapes is not jealous but instead rationalizes a failure. Likewise, to cop out is admit some guilt, not to find an excuse. A team cannot get a monkey off its back by stopping a losing streak since the monkey in this case is an addiction that controls its life. Nobody actually seeks to lose, rendering the expression inappropriate in the circumstances.  The full video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn9elWR13Z4.

Aside from the cleverness and information in this video, it raises a much more profound issue. Specifically, is correctness determined by a small group of educated people or, to paraphrase Carlin, the mass of idiots out there? In other words, the unspoken debate, as in Ibsen’s Enemy of the People, is whether truth, linguistic in this case, is objective or subjective.

On the one hand, I would agree that poor language cannot be justified by the quantity of Google hits. As an English lecture, I insist on the non-use of but in the beginning of a sentence despite its frequent use there in journalism. Likewise, I correct effect to affect when it is used as a verb although countless native speakers don’t know the difference.  So, I support the insistence on language standards and calling a spade a spade.

Yet, when it comes to vocabulary meanings, I am not Don Quixote fighting the windmill of common use. People have always used terms as they sit fit even if the genealogy of the word did not justify such use. To take a modern example, the gay 90’s (1890’s) were happy times, supposedly, as compared to the gay 90’s (1990’s) when homosexuality became more accepted. The people of each period understood the term as they chose.  Beyond that, I even embrace the dynamics of language. Language defines each generation in terms of its thinking and technology. Cloud technology existed a half century ago but was used for creating rain as compared to today. The dynamics of language development is fascinating and legitimate even if it is driven by a bunch of “assholes” as my brother would say.

So, while I sympathize and appreciate the efforts of Carlin and others to maintain standards in a language, when it comes to lexicon, I am not in the camp of Hamilton but in that of Jefferson.  To explain, the meaning of the words is to be decided by the people, however uneducated they maybe, not by the elite, however superior they may be. Let the revolution continue, not that anybody can stop it.

Tyranny of the Majority

American school children are taught many dry facts about the making of the U.S. Constitution.  Some of them appear rather historical, i.e. no longer relevant.  Only with time can we see that those apparently outdated issues somehow have never disappeared.  One example is the fear of the tyranny of the majority, meaning the need to limit what the majority party in a democracy can impose on the minority.

The American historical context was the dispute over approval of the new constitution, which gave significantly more power to the federal government than under the previous system, which required allowed one state to veto any action.  Since all the taxes that had driven the American colony to become independent had in fact been voted for by the English parliament, the American leadership understood that legitimate processes do not always make for legitimate decisions.  Alexander Hamilton wrote the famous Federalist Papers to persuade the delegates to approve the new system. In the end, the convention had to add the first ten amendments, which are all limiting provision, to gain the required approval. Thus, the American revolutionaries had a great fear of the actions of the majority.

As I see it, they were correct. Let’s put aside the fact that Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Mussolini, the 20^th century’s leaders of the hit parade of murderers, were formally elected.  You can argue that the economic conditions and their gangster tactics tainted their election. More relevantly, too many of the today’s major world leaders have manipulated their political systems and majority voters to destroy true democracy, i.e. any limitation on action or protection of minority views. As an example, the Russian people have elected Putin many times (for both president and Prime Minister). He has destroyed the opposition parties, free press and any serious challenge to his power, even killing the opposing candidate.  His tactics must be convincing Stalin that democracy is not so bad after all. Almost in a similar manner, Erdogan has taken over Turkey, supported by the conservative population, imposing his view on more secular Turks.  Ataturk must be turning over in his grave seeing how things are turning over above his grave, not that his tactics were so much different. Israel, my country, still has a functioning democracy, but the press and opposition have been severely weakened by government policies.  Overall, it is very hard to find a healthy democracy today.

The basic causes, then and now, are twofold. It is natural for a person choosing to become a national leader to have an agenda, which by definition will have its opponents to one degree or another.  This inherent conflict creates obstacles, which any leader would like to reduce or eliminate in order to facilitate implementation of the policy. This power struggle, between majority and minority, is omnipresent and inevitable. On a more sinister note, power is the most addictive of drugs.  Few leaders willingly give up their position. It is extremely tempting for heads of state to guarantee your continuation of power by abusing the power of the majority and weakening institutions of criticism.  The best and most well intentioned have fallen in this trap.

Still, to see or, even worse, to live in a sick democracy is a sad sight. Once again, the American solution, albeit almost two hundred years later, seems the best one. No American president can serve for more than two terms, period. The best protection is one that de Tocqueville described in his book Democracy in America in 1840: educated citizens must not allow their leaders to deprive citizens of their rights, even if they disagree with the expression of these rights. Let’s hope for more tolerant people and a better world.