Comment by javajosh
6 years ago
The idea that words have enormous power over human minds is taken to fantasical extremes in a (sf? f?) thriller "Lexicon", by Max Barry[1].
My own view is that "truth" means something different to some people. For example, a charismatic narcissistic leader might mean "confident belief" when he says "truth". This definition define his statements to be truth! I suppose the last backstop for these kinds of structures are nature itself, and it's tendency to allow problematic structures to crumble.
I mean the entire society is organized around abstract concepts: corporation, nation, state, money, God, duty/obligation, human rights. None of these things are real (physics does not care about, say, debt), those are just programs running on the human brain. Natural language is the dispersal protocol of those programs.
It turns out, if you let people define words however they want to, they're never wrong.
who knew!
The solution is to reject those redefinitions.