Consider first "homophobia," in current usage applied to any negative view of homosexuals or homosexuality. Someone who is opposed to homosexual activity because his minister told him that the bible says it is wicked would routinely be labelled homophobic, as would someone opposed to it because of the much higher rate of diseases, most obviously AIDS, among (male) homosexuals.
Of course words change their meaning with use, but in recent times I suspect the art of Communications has been able to pervert them for politically interested purposes.
Beautiful post. Thank you. I would like to see this as part of a course lecture at the secondary or post secondary level. Would it be inappropriate for middle school students? I think 8th graders could handle this.
Homophobia, with the AIDS and Bible justifications, is the starting example I might have picked, too, if I had wanted to be particularly controversial. Feeling discomfort at and the avoidance of homosexual persons or content is not all that inappropriate for the use of the term phobia. The repressed fear of one's own homosexual leanings is but one theory for its etiology albeit a poor one, IMO. I would favor evolutionary psychological explanations. As with many other types of non-normative behavior, we have learned to be more tolerant than our instincts suggest to us. That's civilization and its discontents. - My own favorite example is "islamophobia" and Hitchens' characterization of it: a word invented by fascists and used by cowards in order to manipulate morons.
Does "Rootless Cosmopolitan" still mean Jew? I understand it mostly in the context of current political arguments about "nationalism vs globalism", where one side is characterized as rooted in a particular locale and its people's cultural traditions, and the other is characterized as being unbound by loyalty to home or nation. I believe I have even used the phrase myself intending this meaning.
Obviously, Jews being a diaspora people, they will be more represented in the latter group than the former. And also quite clearly the aforementioned "nationalists" are often anti-semitic, so I suppose it stands to reason that may use "rootless cosmopolitan" as a dog whistle. I think the disagreement these days is much larger and not necessarily or primarily about anti-semitism, but this wouldn't be the first situation in which I was unusually slow to recognize ethnic prejudice.
Either way, I thought the post was a good summary of the situation it describes.
I don't think it would have been entirely dishonest to refer to these guys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwi_Migdal as White Slavers, and they were apparently around long after the Barbary Pirates.
Some other dishonest words that come to mind: Islamophobic, transphobic, misogynistic. These terms are often used to implicitly attribute a particular motivation to someone (supposedly explaining that person's actions) although the term poses merely as a label for something. Would you count "market failure" as a weakly dishonest word or simply misleading one? I know you wrote about it.
Some time ago I analyzed how certain words provide us with "strategic ambiguity" that enable us to simultaneously convey to others what we selfishly want while leaving the impression that our wants are much more sublime than they really are: https://triangulation.substack.com/p/it-sounds-better
And then there's Islamophobia which can mean many different things to different people. At one end it is the rational desire to avoid individuals who may spontaneously detonate while searching for the Aloha Snackbar on the other it's an unrealistic fear of anyone slightly tanned who follows a particular religion
Also, the vast majority of Republicans are democrats, and the vast majority of Democrats are republicans. Funny how political parties try to monopolise certain generally accepted views by way of their names.
I have observed that when a decision has to be made - fund a company / ship a project or shut it down, the disappointed side will frequently spend their time and invective accusing the decision maker of being immoral, evil, ...; rather than addressing the factors that drove the decision. In my career I have been called a Prussian, Lord Vader, Dr. Strangelove, and Lord High Executioner, as well as many other things rather more profane. It goes with the territory. In my analysis concerning the company where I was criticized as Lord High Executioner I wrote a long report that basically said that for the company's product to succeed in the targeted market they had to do all of 14 things right. They got 13 of them on the button. The 14th disqualified them from the target market. I suggested that they look at an alternative, but probably smaller market, where the 14th item issue would be less of an issue.
It is important to very clear about the success and failure criteria. It cannot be a personal issue at all.
Dissapointed parties are all to likely to ignore the criteria and resort to moral / justice calls and personal attacks.
I agree with much of this, but I don't think I agree about "libertarian."
There are a lot of things that I value, and that I think are likely products of a libertarian society: a great increase in global wealth, the continuing advance of scientific knowledge, a lively and popularly appreciated artistic culture. And those are things that a lot of people who aren't libertarians may also want. But precisely because of that, those aren't specifically libertarian goals or values.
What is distinctively libertarian is the MEANS by which we want to pursue those goals, or whatever goals we want to pursue. Libertarians value voluntary cooperation, through the market and through other forms of free association; and as the other side of this, libertarians want to avoid things that go against voluntary cooperation, such as force, threats, and fraud. The libertarian goal is to expand the extent of voluntary cooperation; the libertarian constraint is to avoid or prevent or counteract the use of force and fraud, whether by the state, by individuals, or by voluntary associations. And the constraint may be more fundamental.
In my exchanges every land
Shall walk, and mine in every land
Mutual shall build Jerusalem,
Both heart in hear and hand in hand
— William Blake, Jerusalem (not the hymn known by that title, which is from his epic poem Milton, but a passage from the epic poem by the title Jerusalem)
I slightly oppose gay marriage, strongly oppose the SCOTUS opinion, strongly oppose the state allowing gays to adopt kids. Yet I have gay friends who don’t call me homophobic, tho many others would call me that, with the purpose of not addressing the arguments. Marriage is for raising kids, not so much about who you’re having sex with.
On kids, what is optimal? It’s a known unknown about each child’s sexual attraction, as well as being unknown how much influence are genes, pre-natal environment, infant & post birth care, childhood & puberty & college.
What are the metrics and the way to evaluate trade-offs? Adults confused, unhappy, committing suicide, sex crimes (against women, kids). Maybe some norm leads to more happiness and more suicides, like today’s gay tolerance. Maybe tolerance as a mild mental illness norm leads to less happiness and less suicides, perhaps like the 90s. Is that a better situation? Maybe all of the negatives are caused by something else, like smartphone social media addiction, so suicide counts weren’t influenced by norm changes about homosexuality.
I know we don’t know, but I’m really annoyed we can’t even talk in public about what are the results of norm changes because of more gay tolerance, since homophobia gets used to attack those who bring up possible negatives about homosexuals.
X-phobic is an attempt to censor arguments about X, which is unlikely to lead to truth and very likely to lead to more resentment by those who are shut up by the labeling.
There is a differnce between tolerating - accepting - and supporting that seems to me to be lost in modern progressive culture. It seems to me that I can ask someone who does not believe in an activity to tolerate it in others, but I do not have grounds to ask them to support an activity they do not believe in. I do not approve of either alcohol or MJ. I accept alcohol drinking as long as the drinker does not drink too much, and I tolerate MJ - as long as it is not in my face. I find tobacco smoke to be more tolerable than MJ smoke, and that is saying a great deal for me. Similarily, I do not approve of either swinging or polyamory - on public health grounds to begin with and secondarily to my observations of poly behavior and how it turned out in the 1970's. But I tolerate swinging and accept poly. It is improper to ask me to support them. It is incorrect to declare that I am ignorant, close minded, or a prude. People will make their choices and have to accept the consequences, and some of the consequences are going to harm innocent parties. I would use the derogatory term homophobe only for someone who refused to tolerate it among others. We each have our value sets, it is when we try to force them upon others that we start infringing - and I include in infringing attempts to redefine language to force selected behavior upon individuals.
I get a lot out of reading your stuff, even when I disagree with it.
I think the argument about homophobia and racism misses something. These are not just individual opinions but also social norms. They are like a constant headwind. That wind can be slight and not much felt, buit it makes some activities go quicker and some go slower. A person can think that they are being completely rational and ignoring the racism or the homophobia. But if you are ignoring it, it is making you lean, even if you do not acknowledge the fact or even see it. If everyone around you is leaning the same way, do they seem to be leaning?
Yes, someone can claim that they oppose homosexuality on the basis you explained. But it will be easy for them to see the occurrence of a disease. It goes in the direction of the wind. Do they see the psychological damage done to people by forcing them to conform to heteronormativity? We can believe ourselves to be without prejudice, but we live in a culture and we are all imbued with its norms. And that culture is, I would argue, racist and homophobic.
One can scientifically investigate something. One can avoid racist or homophobic norms while doing so. But the decisions about what is worth investigating, the choices about how research results get presented, and the judgements about the significance of the research are all doing in a social context. Doing research and ignoring these social factors is disingenuous and I will criticize the research on this basis. I will do this despite the catcalls and heckling I will get, while the researcher gets a quiet hum of approval. It needs to be done.
Spot on, as always!
Of course words change their meaning with use, but in recent times I suspect the art of Communications has been able to pervert them for politically interested purposes.
Beautiful post. Thank you. I would like to see this as part of a course lecture at the secondary or post secondary level. Would it be inappropriate for middle school students? I think 8th graders could handle this.
Today's most "dishonest words" are often examples of "Wokespeak", which "as any fule kno" makes them inverted fascism plus hypocrisy: https://jclester.substack.com/p/wokeness-is-inverted-fascism-plus
Homophobia, with the AIDS and Bible justifications, is the starting example I might have picked, too, if I had wanted to be particularly controversial. Feeling discomfort at and the avoidance of homosexual persons or content is not all that inappropriate for the use of the term phobia. The repressed fear of one's own homosexual leanings is but one theory for its etiology albeit a poor one, IMO. I would favor evolutionary psychological explanations. As with many other types of non-normative behavior, we have learned to be more tolerant than our instincts suggest to us. That's civilization and its discontents. - My own favorite example is "islamophobia" and Hitchens' characterization of it: a word invented by fascists and used by cowards in order to manipulate morons.
Does "Rootless Cosmopolitan" still mean Jew? I understand it mostly in the context of current political arguments about "nationalism vs globalism", where one side is characterized as rooted in a particular locale and its people's cultural traditions, and the other is characterized as being unbound by loyalty to home or nation. I believe I have even used the phrase myself intending this meaning.
Obviously, Jews being a diaspora people, they will be more represented in the latter group than the former. And also quite clearly the aforementioned "nationalists" are often anti-semitic, so I suppose it stands to reason that may use "rootless cosmopolitan" as a dog whistle. I think the disagreement these days is much larger and not necessarily or primarily about anti-semitism, but this wouldn't be the first situation in which I was unusually slow to recognize ethnic prejudice.
Either way, I thought the post was a good summary of the situation it describes.
I don't think it would have been entirely dishonest to refer to these guys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwi_Migdal as White Slavers, and they were apparently around long after the Barbary Pirates.
Some other dishonest words that come to mind: Islamophobic, transphobic, misogynistic. These terms are often used to implicitly attribute a particular motivation to someone (supposedly explaining that person's actions) although the term poses merely as a label for something. Would you count "market failure" as a weakly dishonest word or simply misleading one? I know you wrote about it.
Some time ago I analyzed how certain words provide us with "strategic ambiguity" that enable us to simultaneously convey to others what we selfishly want while leaving the impression that our wants are much more sublime than they really are: https://triangulation.substack.com/p/it-sounds-better
One good thing about "dishonest words" is that they should really mess up AI, which seems to need more clear definitions.
And then there's Islamophobia which can mean many different things to different people. At one end it is the rational desire to avoid individuals who may spontaneously detonate while searching for the Aloha Snackbar on the other it's an unrealistic fear of anyone slightly tanned who follows a particular religion
Also, the vast majority of Republicans are democrats, and the vast majority of Democrats are republicans. Funny how political parties try to monopolise certain generally accepted views by way of their names.
I have observed that when a decision has to be made - fund a company / ship a project or shut it down, the disappointed side will frequently spend their time and invective accusing the decision maker of being immoral, evil, ...; rather than addressing the factors that drove the decision. In my career I have been called a Prussian, Lord Vader, Dr. Strangelove, and Lord High Executioner, as well as many other things rather more profane. It goes with the territory. In my analysis concerning the company where I was criticized as Lord High Executioner I wrote a long report that basically said that for the company's product to succeed in the targeted market they had to do all of 14 things right. They got 13 of them on the button. The 14th disqualified them from the target market. I suggested that they look at an alternative, but probably smaller market, where the 14th item issue would be less of an issue.
It is important to very clear about the success and failure criteria. It cannot be a personal issue at all.
Dissapointed parties are all to likely to ignore the criteria and resort to moral / justice calls and personal attacks.
I agree with much of this, but I don't think I agree about "libertarian."
There are a lot of things that I value, and that I think are likely products of a libertarian society: a great increase in global wealth, the continuing advance of scientific knowledge, a lively and popularly appreciated artistic culture. And those are things that a lot of people who aren't libertarians may also want. But precisely because of that, those aren't specifically libertarian goals or values.
What is distinctively libertarian is the MEANS by which we want to pursue those goals, or whatever goals we want to pursue. Libertarians value voluntary cooperation, through the market and through other forms of free association; and as the other side of this, libertarians want to avoid things that go against voluntary cooperation, such as force, threats, and fraud. The libertarian goal is to expand the extent of voluntary cooperation; the libertarian constraint is to avoid or prevent or counteract the use of force and fraud, whether by the state, by individuals, or by voluntary associations. And the constraint may be more fundamental.
In my exchanges every land
Shall walk, and mine in every land
Mutual shall build Jerusalem,
Both heart in hear and hand in hand
— William Blake, Jerusalem (not the hymn known by that title, which is from his epic poem Milton, but a passage from the epic poem by the title Jerusalem)
I slightly oppose gay marriage, strongly oppose the SCOTUS opinion, strongly oppose the state allowing gays to adopt kids. Yet I have gay friends who don’t call me homophobic, tho many others would call me that, with the purpose of not addressing the arguments. Marriage is for raising kids, not so much about who you’re having sex with.
On kids, what is optimal? It’s a known unknown about each child’s sexual attraction, as well as being unknown how much influence are genes, pre-natal environment, infant & post birth care, childhood & puberty & college.
What are the metrics and the way to evaluate trade-offs? Adults confused, unhappy, committing suicide, sex crimes (against women, kids). Maybe some norm leads to more happiness and more suicides, like today’s gay tolerance. Maybe tolerance as a mild mental illness norm leads to less happiness and less suicides, perhaps like the 90s. Is that a better situation? Maybe all of the negatives are caused by something else, like smartphone social media addiction, so suicide counts weren’t influenced by norm changes about homosexuality.
I know we don’t know, but I’m really annoyed we can’t even talk in public about what are the results of norm changes because of more gay tolerance, since homophobia gets used to attack those who bring up possible negatives about homosexuals.
X-phobic is an attempt to censor arguments about X, which is unlikely to lead to truth and very likely to lead to more resentment by those who are shut up by the labeling.
formatting seems a bit fucked up at the top of the post?
There is a differnce between tolerating - accepting - and supporting that seems to me to be lost in modern progressive culture. It seems to me that I can ask someone who does not believe in an activity to tolerate it in others, but I do not have grounds to ask them to support an activity they do not believe in. I do not approve of either alcohol or MJ. I accept alcohol drinking as long as the drinker does not drink too much, and I tolerate MJ - as long as it is not in my face. I find tobacco smoke to be more tolerable than MJ smoke, and that is saying a great deal for me. Similarily, I do not approve of either swinging or polyamory - on public health grounds to begin with and secondarily to my observations of poly behavior and how it turned out in the 1970's. But I tolerate swinging and accept poly. It is improper to ask me to support them. It is incorrect to declare that I am ignorant, close minded, or a prude. People will make their choices and have to accept the consequences, and some of the consequences are going to harm innocent parties. I would use the derogatory term homophobe only for someone who refused to tolerate it among others. We each have our value sets, it is when we try to force them upon others that we start infringing - and I include in infringing attempts to redefine language to force selected behavior upon individuals.
I get a lot out of reading your stuff, even when I disagree with it.
I think the argument about homophobia and racism misses something. These are not just individual opinions but also social norms. They are like a constant headwind. That wind can be slight and not much felt, buit it makes some activities go quicker and some go slower. A person can think that they are being completely rational and ignoring the racism or the homophobia. But if you are ignoring it, it is making you lean, even if you do not acknowledge the fact or even see it. If everyone around you is leaning the same way, do they seem to be leaning?
Yes, someone can claim that they oppose homosexuality on the basis you explained. But it will be easy for them to see the occurrence of a disease. It goes in the direction of the wind. Do they see the psychological damage done to people by forcing them to conform to heteronormativity? We can believe ourselves to be without prejudice, but we live in a culture and we are all imbued with its norms. And that culture is, I would argue, racist and homophobic.
One can scientifically investigate something. One can avoid racist or homophobic norms while doing so. But the decisions about what is worth investigating, the choices about how research results get presented, and the judgements about the significance of the research are all doing in a social context. Doing research and ignoring these social factors is disingenuous and I will criticize the research on this basis. I will do this despite the catcalls and heckling I will get, while the researcher gets a quiet hum of approval. It needs to be done.