[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”