Just One–of Many–of the Dangers of Democracy
[N.B. I’ve seen ironically elitist criticism of José Ortega y Gasset for being an elitist. Most folks who criticize him for noting some of the serious problems that must necessarily ensue from allowing democratic memes too much cultural influence are pseudo-intellectual snobs who don’t even bother–or are unable–to read and grasp some of the core ideas in his most scathing rebuke of “Mass Man” in “The Revolt of the Masses”. Here, I am not going to make direct reference to Ortega, but just note that his articulations of issues do inform what I want to try to convey here, in some very small part. The deficiencies in this blogpost shouldn’t be attributed to his influence though. No, those deficiencies are all mine.]
Democracy as a political system has its own problems. One, of course, is that time worn warning that once some of the People discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public purse, corruption inevitably ensues, and the road to the failure of democracy as a political system is not long following. But societal effects can be harmful, too. When popular culture is ever more democratized, the process of dumbing down society to the lowest common denominator becomes a process of self-perpetuating debasement.
Let me illustrate this debasement using a very, very limited example which the reader may use to draw his own examples. Lexicographers eventually bow to even the basest misuses of words and finally legitimize the misuse by denoting it in a dictionary entry. Here is one such example: “healthy”. “Healthy” was once a word–and still is among literate persons–with a primary denotation of an organism that enjoyed good (vigorous, robust) health. Its misuse for years has now brought it to the point where is is used to refer to both live and dead materials that may promote (often only in the minds of the promoters) good health. Whereas once, in referring to the health of an organism, it referred primarily to the state of being or condition of something that was alive, now it may refer to some inanimate material to be consumed or even inanimate object designed to act upon or be used by some animate being to promote that being’s health. Once, the word used to denote that latter meaning was “healthful” and so the two words provided useful information in distinction to each other when used. Not so nowadays.
Losing useful distinctions means losing useful meanings, and language is first and foremost about conveying meaning (here I usually insert my rant about those utter idiots who blather about semantics as though distinctions in meanings were… meaningless, useless twaddle, but I am to tired to the bone to deal with useless idiots right now), and anything that broadens distinctions to the point of removing useful distinctions dumbs down the exchange of meaning.
Every time someone is allowed to misuse a word without being corrected, allowed to spread its misuse, society becomes stupider. And that, dear reader, is especially dangerous in a society governed via any elements of democracy. People who do not even have the words to express themselves with clear and full meaning will not be able to rule themselves wisely… or chose wisely when selecting/electing those they represent.
Oh, this thing with dumbed down language as a result of validation of misused is just the tip of the iceberg, as it were, that wrecks overly-democratic societies. Largely, it’s not so much the misuse of words that destroys communication but the very democratic tendency to accept that just because many people do such and so then that makes such and so acceptable. (Didn’t your mother ever warn you about jumping off a cliff just because “ALL” your friends were doing so? Hmmm?)
This dumb-down spiral applies all across the board: clothing fads that make slovenly (or slutty or stupid… or slutty and stupid and slovenly *sigh*) attire normative, popular entertainment–whether it be the mindless circuses of spectator sports, the pernicious drivel of TV and movies or the musicless grunts and moans and banging around of most contemporary fake music–the acceptance of stupid expressions of stupid people as (graphic) “art”: all this and more works to debase society in a society that values the opinions of stupid and subliterate people as highly–and in many cases nowadays more highly–as someone who can actually tell the difference between a well-written book and what Holly Lisle calls “Suckitudinous” writing–or even just badly-written schlock; someone who can actually hear the difference between music and… top 40 crap, someone who has actually read The Founders and can tell when such as Nancy Pelosi is blowing smoke up folks’ skirts defending unconstitutional legislation as a legitimate exercise of governmental authority, etc.
Yes, it does make a difference that fewer and fewer people in our society can discriminate between classes of objects, events, statements… or even know that there can be good things about discrimination.
I could have used more politically charged examples than the less than life-threatening “healthy” word misuse, but discussing the misuse (and even misunderstanding by subliterate morons) of “racist”–for example–probably would have resulted in some SPAM comments accusing me of racism. Oops. *heh*
DGARA. Accuse away. 😉
Continue reading “Just One–of Many–of the Dangers of Democracy”
It Used to Be a Good Thing to Have Goals in Life…
Which Side Are You On?
The Zero–0dumbo, The Great Obamassiah, he who has accomplished nothing but the personal destruction of his rivals on the way to being handed unearned plum after unearned plum, has finally, openly and relentlessly admitted his rabid antipathy to those who work hard and smart, who risk what they have to gain more and make real contributions to their community–jobs, an expanded tax base, goods and services people actually want–and his desire to rob the Makers to give to the Takers (leeches, mooches, layabouts and thieves).
Now, I’m not much of a Maker, but I do try to offer a positive worth to my community. My actual creative/inventive contributions have been small*, but I don’t leech off my neighbors and others who work hard to further their own legitimate interests, and I try diligently to fully pay my taxes, even though most of it is spent on things that have NO constitutional justification whatsoever (no matter how many threadbare lies politicians use as fig leaves). Given the aggressive, unchecked–actively encouraged by the “feddle gummint”!–growth of dubious “disability” claims and food stamp use over the past couple of years, I’m sure I could also get my own illegitimate piece of someone else’s pie, but I don’t hate myself, my family and my neighbors enough to do something like that.
Heck, I don’t even hate rich Dhimmicraps enough to sponge off their dime.
How about you?
Seen at Unexamined Premises:
Indeed.
Ya Think?
Another Constitutional Amendment, Please?
How about an amendment excluding lawyers from holding positions as Supreme Court Justices or being elected to federal office? And while we’re at it, how about including term limits for EVERY federal office, elected and appointed? Oh, and throw in language carving out an exception to the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment” for any elected or appointed “feddle gummint” official or bureaucrap. Since tarring and feathering have faded from contemporary use and become “unusual” and since the practice may be considered (fairly, I suppose) to be “cruel” we need that exception in order to properly chastise those who desire (and work and scheme and lie, cheat and steal) to be our masters.
Once such an amendment were passed (notice the subjunctive mood? *sigh*), perhaps a few “feddle gummint” goons could be tarred, feathered and given lighted torches to play with on their way out of town… pour encourager les autres, as it were. (Oh, that I would live to see the day!)
WARNING! NSF… Anywhere!
WARNING! If you click to see what’s after the fold, you can never bleach what you see from your memory. WARNING!
Just sayin’. You’ll want to poke your own eyes out.
Music and Sensibilities (re-run)
[This is a repost from nearly three years ago, very slightly redacted]
One of the serious issues facing our society today is a direct result of what Ortega identified as but one of the undue effects of “mass man” on society: a coarsening of art in the public arena. Given my background and inclinations, I perceive the coarsening most often in the performance arts, particularly music.
Now, let me back up a bit and articulate a bit of what this lil rant was spurred by. I received a glurge-filled email today that went on about the life of John Henry Newton, author of the song most widely known as “Amazing Grace.” So, naturally, besides beginning an automatic critique of the glurge in the email text, my mind’s ear began replaying various performances–including choral, congregational and solo–of “Amazing Grace” and found, as always, that (almost) ALL of them fell short of the power and beauty of the lyrics, because the tune most commonly sung to the words is a lousy match for the words’ meaning and is not really very singable, to boot.
*sigh* And then there’s the fact that everyone and his untalented dog seems to think that they can improve the tune (and thus the song) by screwing around with it and mangling it badly. While it may well be proper to abuse poor tunes in such a way, sadly the abuse never seems to be performed by anyone with any real musical ability.
Well, that’s where this rant originated, at least. Now, what’s its point? Simply this: most folks’ ears are too deadened by crap sold as music nowadays that even attempting to point out the differences between good and bad prosody, between music/lyric marriages made in heaven and those made BY hell is almost impossible. Sure, if one is able to catch a child young enough, and feed the child a daily dose of well-wrought music, perhaps the child will attain adulthood with ears that can actually–at least–reproduce pitch and hopefully even desire music that feeds rather than craps on his higher nature.
But should that occur, then that adult will be an alien in our debased society.
And this alienation from “better things” in favor of scarfing up feces misrepresenting itself as art is symptomatic of the coarsening of every aspect of our society. The deaf ears that cannot even hear the difference between the musical feces that passes as most “music” today (and I include most contemporary soi disant “serious, academic or classical” crap as well) and real music cannot tell the differences between any of the other lies that the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind spews and truth, either.
*sigh*
And it’s all our fault for elevating the sensibilities of the common man to iconic stature, for whatever genuine virtues the common man possesses (and there are more than a few), lowering social sensibilities, and thus social virtues, to the lowest common denominator is a sure recipe for the demise of a society.
Teach your children well. The government schools and the Hivemind certainly will not.
Now, Here’s a People With the Right Idea
(Go ahead and read. I’ll still be here when you get back… )
Of course, participatory government depends upon a literate and well-informed populace, something Iceland has and the U.S. no longer does.
But were such a thing to take place here–a literate and well-informed electorate to effect a peaceful, constitutional revolution, I’d like to see one thing especially come from it.
I’d like to see a change to the eighth amendment excluding both elected federal officials and “feddle gummint bureaucraps” from protections against “cruel and unusual punishment” so those convicted of abusing their offices/positions could be tarred, feathered and used as “parade torches” on July 4th every year.
Of course, it would take following the amendment process fully, so that such proper and due punishments could be effected legally… 🙂
Borrowed Wisdom
I ran across the following quote at Jerry Pournelle’s place. It pretty well sums up a fairly serious problem with the “multi-culti” society so sought after by subliterate morons on the Left.
“Not a few of the students who apply to me for admission to the present form of Erskine’s [Great Books] reading course give me as a reason that they want “the background” and will have no other chance to “get it”, because they are about to study medicine or engineering. Their idea is we “give it” and they “get it.” But what is it that changes hands in this way? Background is the wrong word altogether. What is acquired is a common set of symbols, almost a separate language. I open today’s paper and I see over a story of naval action: ‘David-Goliath Fight by Foe at Sea Fails.” Immediately, I infer that some small enemy flotilla fought a larger force of ours. The image was instantaneous, and would have suggested more—namely the foe’s victory—had not the writer added that it failed.
“A common body of stories, phrases, and beliefs accompanies every high civilization that we know of. The Christian stories of apostles and saints nurtured medieval Europe, and after the breakup of Christendom the Protestant Bible served the same ends for English-speaking peoples. Bunyan and Lincoln show what power was stored in that collection of literary and historical works known as the Scripture, when it was really a common possession. We have lost something in neglecting it, just as we lost something in rejecting the ancient classics. We lost immediacy of understanding, a common sympathy with truth and fact. Perhaps nothing could better illustrate the subtlety and strength of the bond we lost than the story Hazlitt tells of his addressing a fashionable audience about Dr. Johnson. He was speaking of Johnson’s great heart and charity to the unfortunate; and he recounted how, finding a drunken prostitute lying in Fleet Street late at night, Johnson carried her on his broad back to the address she managed to give him. The audience, unable to face the image of a famous lexicographer doing such a thing, broke out into titters and expostulations. Whereupon Hazlitt simply said: ‘I remind you, ladies and gentlemen, of the parable of the Good Samaritan.’“It is clear that no account of explaining, arguing, or demonstrating would have produced the abashed silence which that allusion commanded. It was direct communication; the note that Hazlitt struck sounded in every mind in the same way and it instantly crystallized and put into order every irrelevant emotion. That, if I may so put it, is what ‘background’ does for you. Even today, without Bible or classics, everyone possesses some kind of tradition which he uses without knowing it. The man who should look blank at mention of George Washington and the cherry tree, or who had never heard of Babe Ruth, or who thought that Shakespeare was an admiral, would get along badly even in very lowbrow circles. He might be excused as a foreigner but he would be expected to catch on as soon as he could. This does not mean that culture is for keeping up with the Joneses; it is talking to your fellow man—talking more quickly and fully than is possible through plodding description.
“In college and after, it so happens that the fund of ideas which it is needful to possess originated in great minds—those who devised our laws, invented our science, taught us how to think, showed us how to behave. They spoke in highly individual voices, yet rely on the force of a common group of symbols and myths—the culture of the West.”