Diluting activists

I've noticed two trends among activists, besides their fondness for shrill clamor. The first is a strange demand to be absolutely inclusive. The sort of thing where a comment has to include every perceived social issue if its to be taken seriously. A failure to mention some ism seems to indicate that the commenter is a closet bigot, and must be seriously taken to task for the failure to include whatever it is they didn't include. All of this dilution necessarily removes from the original point, if there was one.

The other is the lack of thought. Maybe it's symptomatic of being old enough that cops seem to be just out of High School, but I've noticed that the English language gets short thrift among today's activists. Heck, I didn't so much notice it as wonder how come it looked so bludgeoned! Ordinarily, I wouldn't care - if someone is careless with language, it always indicates that they are careless with thought, too. And their mutterings can be safely discarded.

Carelessness with language is nothing new, of course. Philosophers recently debated, mostly online it seems, whether they had to be clear in their written arguments! I think the conclusion was "not necessarily if, and or in, the context and the argument are within such scope and" it's enough to give you a headache. Of course you have to be clear! Some philosophical essays are enough to make a Bable Fish pack up and check into the nearest sanitarium. (Those seem to be ones that develop endless followers; it reminds me of the Bible and Qu'ran and other scripture. To be honest.) What was surprising was that this discussion was held with a century or two of really badly written philosophy as a backdrop.

In that last sentence, I had to carefully avoid saying "against a century or two..." because some idiot would think "Against? In opposition to. Aha! ... I wonder what he means? I don't know... He must be a bigot!"

It is simply a given that if you're not concerned about the language you use, you're not concerned about expressing yourself, and if you're not concerned about that, why be concerned about your thinking? Which seems to be a decent cover when you're either not actually saying anything, or your thinking is so muddy even you can't understand it. What is alarming is the number of people who read such whinges and cheerfully, even eagerly, agree with them. It's always alarming, although it shouldn't be.

One problem with this lack of interest in language is how it distorts thinking. The whole "cis" thing demonstrated that, more than adequately. The basic thought was to avoid "othering" someone, or some group. The concept of "the other" has been around for a little while; it's a stupid concept. It's a false political idea; instead of simply asserting that all people are equal, someone decided that those who were not being treated equally were being "othered". Or something like that. Careless thinking, indeed.

Witless language does include such laziness as mixing up its and it's; there, their, and they're and the invention of words and prefixes. It also includes the immediate justification of elevating a prefix to a word, while decrying the same when it's inconvenient. It definitely includes the attempted banning of a colloquialism simply because some use it in a derogatory fashion. (If we banned words on that principle, I fear we would run out of them!) Witless language does go hand in hand with witless thinking. (Although, to be fair, the occasional its instead of it's can be forgiven; a consistent failure to appreciate the difference, however?)

Witless thinking has, at its core, an inability to extrapolate. Sometimes it comes along because the person doing it is incapable of either critical thinking, or of interpreting a phrase, either in context or because they can't be bothered learning the language they are using. It is different to not understanding something; I can fail to understand your point but not be witless. (No matter what my detractors allege.) Witless thinking can also include the failure to recognize a useful, but generally meaningless, turn of phrase and perceive it as an important statement.

It seems the demand to be all-inclusive might be a different problem to that of careless language and witless thinking. But I can't help think it's a symptom. Sort of like a nasty rash being a major clue to which disease you have. The shrillness of the voice also helps mask the fact that you're not actually saying anything. The Internet has fostered an atmosphere where the shrill voice is the one most people will pay attention to. I point to Fox News as proof of this. They are consistently shrill, and consistently pointless. Like many activists.

When you put these two problems together with a shrill voice, you do seem to get award-winning activist blogs.

Carolyn Ann