The Noble Lie

“If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
-George Orwell

“Ideas are more dangerous than guns. We don’t allow our enemies to have guns. Why should we allow them to have ideas?”
- Joseph Stalin, or “Uncle Joe” as Roosevelt called him

I am learning that one of the keys to understanding the psychology behind any discipline is to learn their lingo. In this age of specialization, each field has its own language for talking about issues in their field. That is what was drilled into their heads in school and trade publications. This is true of salesmen, lawyers, law enforcement, doctors, mental health practitioners, and politicians. They use a lot of the common words that we all use, but they don’t necessarily mean the same thing. Sometimes they thrive on the confusion of overloading terms such as they do. Learn their language. Not only will you get a window into their group mind, but you will understand what they are saying when they have a conversation in front of you, maybe about you.Language is filled with patterns, symbols and coding. These codes play on your subconscious mind even if you don’t consciously recognize them. They create pathways of recognition and association in the brain, which can then be hijacked for other purposes by those who know. This is a topic I am very interested in and will spend a lot of time pointing it out.

We are shaped by our language. The words and expressions we have to choose from, the words we are given, frame the realm of communication and conceivable thought for many people. This is why the first thing conquerers and slavers do is forbid and outlaw the language, traditions, and music of the defeated. These are also how a people’s history is passed down, so it severs that connection to their ancestors and forces them to get their official written history (and concepts, and therefore world-view) from their conquerors.

JRR Tolkien, who said he was writing the mythology for today’s age in his Lord of the Rings trilogy, was an Oxford linguist. Great orators and authors know how to use language to program people in a method not so different from how computer geeks program computers (using programming languages). Psychiatrists use some of the same techniques to ‘rehabilitate’ people. This art of programming is as old as the human mind.