Post by fastwalker on Feb 28, 2006 10:48:37 GMT -5
........ “The appearances of things are deceptive.”
For those who feel my postings are too long and I can’t imagine why they feel that way, since I only use the amount of words necessary to cover all that I am attempting to explain…lol, this will be my last such posting…hooray!
At first I felt they served a purpose, a vehicle to “open” the eyes of others to a given situation, or at least to a perceived condition that might be viewed from an alternative perceptive. But I see that I have only deluded myself in my attempts to help my fellow CMKXers. I feel that I have given my best effort and therefore am not under any further “noblesse oblige” to continue explaining things are not as they always seem, or any further attempts to awaken in others a desire for cutting through the BS and getting at the crux of a matter in a given instance.
Having said that, I still feel compelled to make on last posting, to express my opinions on the perception “fallaces sunt rerum species” … The appearances of things are deceptive.
As our society grows more and more complex, the need for us as people, to also grow, while maintaining some semblance of simplicity also grows exponentially, or at least it should, in all that we say and do as we interact with each other.
Our message boards are a prime example of many things, both positive and negative. Some which we are not able to control and therefore must live with, while other aspects we have in fact created ourselves and failed to recognize that we have done so until faced with reality, when we are forced to face the facts. This is the time when most of us become overly exercised and assume a defensive posture which is aggressively defended..
Human language in whatever form it is being used around the World, is the most effective means we have for communicating between people. A more effective means would be telepathy, but our brains aren’t yet that sophisticated or have achieved that level of intellectually capacity. But just as good as verbal communication it at expressing our basic wants and needs, it is also just as, or even more powerful at allowing us the ability to deliberately constructed an environment of deception, by accident or design to disguise or distort our actual intent on a given subject.
These"communication bypass", these environments of deception, at least in the past, were thought to only exist, as many alluded to in jokes and real discourse, within governmental, military, and corporate institutions.But, through the rapidity of mass media, we see that everyone utilizes an environment of deception for a variety of reasons. Most do so, with an attitude that it is good both for them and those it is being perpetrated upon. Almost all utilizing these aspects fail to understand and or account for the “ripple effect” their actions actually have.
The ability to speak using nothing but bald faced euphemisms ("downsizing" for "firing of many employees") or deliberately ambiguous phrases ("wet work" for "assassination"), is a prime example of a society that has loss all sense of worth, for themselves and most discouragingly, for others.
We see such usage as intended to impose a desirable result, by modifying the mental attitude of the people we want influenced for our agenda. Often though, as individuals we are not capable of affecting significant change in others, such as a government or a corporation can and often will attempt. Why? Many times in order to simply cover up something unpleasant. This mindset will quickly evolve into the necessity by those agencies, to “cover up” by manipulation of the facts, everything, because they fear the unraveling of even the simplest fact.
Governments or corporations will always need to discuss negative aspect of their operations with the public at large. It’s often when they do, they also feel a need to talk lessen the impact and the true negative connotations, to avoid backlash and a loss of public confidence / trust in their ability to perform their jobs. So often times they simply replace a real term, with a term that most people will not recognize as meaning exactly the same thing, leading to a “WTF” situation and worse, people speculating over exactly what the author of the term(s) actually means?
We have and still see such euphemism being used by society as a whole and especially by the current administration in their standard “avoidance” tactics, where they could use such terms as "area denial munitions" which simply means "land mines", "physical persuasion" means of course "torture", and "operational exhaustion" means "shell shock". In the past, as a Vet of two wars, I was always amazed, first that I managed to survive both and then, at the way things were explained to the American public regarding Viet Nam and all recent military excursions up to now. I really didn’t understand why the public never learned from those obvious fabrications and misrepresentations of the truth on a given matter, which are still being visited on us today with more frequency through the usage of similar “gobble gook” terminology.
An example that I think clearly illuminates the disconnect between us the public at large and those who would rule us, is this…”a stray 2,000-pound bomb wrecked havoc and killed or maimed people including children,” but it is described simply as an event that caused "a significant emotional event for anyone within a square mile."
I find that incredible that such euphemisms are routinely used and no one simply stands up and says that language being used is BS and serves only to remove and or minimize the real human tragedy involved with the military’s error and any culpability for the action.
Where am I headed here? Well in the past I have often, as did many others, called for unsuccessfully of course, a full transparency and real explanations as to what was going on regarding the companies we are involved with as a shareholders, to include CMKX.
What we received for our efforts was often silence and or a PR issued to "pacify" us with euphemistically worded phrases designed to subdue our concerns. All too often when illegal activity is routine, it often acquires its own specific jargon. For example, the term "black-bag operations" was used by the FBI to describe illegal break-ins in the 1970's.
Mostly, such terms are an informal code, and indigenous to a specific area (industry) in which those in the know, be they thieves or simply executives , or operatives of a agency / company, intend that their language be used, but only understood by fellow-conspirators, operatives within their specific industry.
I have trouble seeing where such terminology serves any viable function other than, to simply effect a type of “communal reinforcement process” in those (the public at large) who are not privy to insider related activities, by enhancing a position, a claim to become a strong, undeniable belief, even if it is incorrect, through the repeated assertion by those members (insiders or those motivated to such actions) within a specific community.
The process used by those who wish to manipulate others for their specific gains, their agenda, is often thought to be an independent process in which others (us the public) is allowed to believed the claim is not only plausible, but that it has in fact been properly researched and or is supported by empirical data significant enough to warrant belief by reasonable people.
Many who read my often long posts, are familiar with my usage of and attempts to highlight for others, a simply but effective position known as the “reasonable person standards.” A standard which I would add, that many seem not to be familiar with, or they simply fail to understand how it is to be applied in a given situation.
Often, we attempt to lay the blame for our problems at the doorstep of the mass media. Yeah, there is no doubt they contribute significantly to the process of misinformation by uncritically supporting the claims or assertions being made. More often, however, the mass media provide tacit support for untested and unsupported claims by saying nothing skeptical about even the most outlandish of claims.
If we take the time to just stand in an emotionless state, outside a given issue and just look at all the trappings associated with the issue, we can often see how just how effective communal reinforcement is, and how it as lead us as a people, not only as CMKXers but as a society as a whole, to a place in a state of constant flux which we are forced to accept.
We can see how many times entire nations can pass on ineffable gibberish from generation to generation. We can see how such gobble gook is used to also explain how generated unreal testimonials are used to reinforced the issue and generate plausible sounding testimonials within the community being affected. Kind of like the Stockholm syndrome.
maybe more later...?
FW
For those who feel my postings are too long and I can’t imagine why they feel that way, since I only use the amount of words necessary to cover all that I am attempting to explain…lol, this will be my last such posting…hooray!
At first I felt they served a purpose, a vehicle to “open” the eyes of others to a given situation, or at least to a perceived condition that might be viewed from an alternative perceptive. But I see that I have only deluded myself in my attempts to help my fellow CMKXers. I feel that I have given my best effort and therefore am not under any further “noblesse oblige” to continue explaining things are not as they always seem, or any further attempts to awaken in others a desire for cutting through the BS and getting at the crux of a matter in a given instance.
Having said that, I still feel compelled to make on last posting, to express my opinions on the perception “fallaces sunt rerum species” … The appearances of things are deceptive.
As our society grows more and more complex, the need for us as people, to also grow, while maintaining some semblance of simplicity also grows exponentially, or at least it should, in all that we say and do as we interact with each other.
Our message boards are a prime example of many things, both positive and negative. Some which we are not able to control and therefore must live with, while other aspects we have in fact created ourselves and failed to recognize that we have done so until faced with reality, when we are forced to face the facts. This is the time when most of us become overly exercised and assume a defensive posture which is aggressively defended..
Human language in whatever form it is being used around the World, is the most effective means we have for communicating between people. A more effective means would be telepathy, but our brains aren’t yet that sophisticated or have achieved that level of intellectually capacity. But just as good as verbal communication it at expressing our basic wants and needs, it is also just as, or even more powerful at allowing us the ability to deliberately constructed an environment of deception, by accident or design to disguise or distort our actual intent on a given subject.
These"communication bypass", these environments of deception, at least in the past, were thought to only exist, as many alluded to in jokes and real discourse, within governmental, military, and corporate institutions.But, through the rapidity of mass media, we see that everyone utilizes an environment of deception for a variety of reasons. Most do so, with an attitude that it is good both for them and those it is being perpetrated upon. Almost all utilizing these aspects fail to understand and or account for the “ripple effect” their actions actually have.
The ability to speak using nothing but bald faced euphemisms ("downsizing" for "firing of many employees") or deliberately ambiguous phrases ("wet work" for "assassination"), is a prime example of a society that has loss all sense of worth, for themselves and most discouragingly, for others.
We see such usage as intended to impose a desirable result, by modifying the mental attitude of the people we want influenced for our agenda. Often though, as individuals we are not capable of affecting significant change in others, such as a government or a corporation can and often will attempt. Why? Many times in order to simply cover up something unpleasant. This mindset will quickly evolve into the necessity by those agencies, to “cover up” by manipulation of the facts, everything, because they fear the unraveling of even the simplest fact.
Governments or corporations will always need to discuss negative aspect of their operations with the public at large. It’s often when they do, they also feel a need to talk lessen the impact and the true negative connotations, to avoid backlash and a loss of public confidence / trust in their ability to perform their jobs. So often times they simply replace a real term, with a term that most people will not recognize as meaning exactly the same thing, leading to a “WTF” situation and worse, people speculating over exactly what the author of the term(s) actually means?
We have and still see such euphemism being used by society as a whole and especially by the current administration in their standard “avoidance” tactics, where they could use such terms as "area denial munitions" which simply means "land mines", "physical persuasion" means of course "torture", and "operational exhaustion" means "shell shock". In the past, as a Vet of two wars, I was always amazed, first that I managed to survive both and then, at the way things were explained to the American public regarding Viet Nam and all recent military excursions up to now. I really didn’t understand why the public never learned from those obvious fabrications and misrepresentations of the truth on a given matter, which are still being visited on us today with more frequency through the usage of similar “gobble gook” terminology.
An example that I think clearly illuminates the disconnect between us the public at large and those who would rule us, is this…”a stray 2,000-pound bomb wrecked havoc and killed or maimed people including children,” but it is described simply as an event that caused "a significant emotional event for anyone within a square mile."
I find that incredible that such euphemisms are routinely used and no one simply stands up and says that language being used is BS and serves only to remove and or minimize the real human tragedy involved with the military’s error and any culpability for the action.
Where am I headed here? Well in the past I have often, as did many others, called for unsuccessfully of course, a full transparency and real explanations as to what was going on regarding the companies we are involved with as a shareholders, to include CMKX.
What we received for our efforts was often silence and or a PR issued to "pacify" us with euphemistically worded phrases designed to subdue our concerns. All too often when illegal activity is routine, it often acquires its own specific jargon. For example, the term "black-bag operations" was used by the FBI to describe illegal break-ins in the 1970's.
Mostly, such terms are an informal code, and indigenous to a specific area (industry) in which those in the know, be they thieves or simply executives , or operatives of a agency / company, intend that their language be used, but only understood by fellow-conspirators, operatives within their specific industry.
I have trouble seeing where such terminology serves any viable function other than, to simply effect a type of “communal reinforcement process” in those (the public at large) who are not privy to insider related activities, by enhancing a position, a claim to become a strong, undeniable belief, even if it is incorrect, through the repeated assertion by those members (insiders or those motivated to such actions) within a specific community.
The process used by those who wish to manipulate others for their specific gains, their agenda, is often thought to be an independent process in which others (us the public) is allowed to believed the claim is not only plausible, but that it has in fact been properly researched and or is supported by empirical data significant enough to warrant belief by reasonable people.
Many who read my often long posts, are familiar with my usage of and attempts to highlight for others, a simply but effective position known as the “reasonable person standards.” A standard which I would add, that many seem not to be familiar with, or they simply fail to understand how it is to be applied in a given situation.
Often, we attempt to lay the blame for our problems at the doorstep of the mass media. Yeah, there is no doubt they contribute significantly to the process of misinformation by uncritically supporting the claims or assertions being made. More often, however, the mass media provide tacit support for untested and unsupported claims by saying nothing skeptical about even the most outlandish of claims.
If we take the time to just stand in an emotionless state, outside a given issue and just look at all the trappings associated with the issue, we can often see how just how effective communal reinforcement is, and how it as lead us as a people, not only as CMKXers but as a society as a whole, to a place in a state of constant flux which we are forced to accept.
We can see how many times entire nations can pass on ineffable gibberish from generation to generation. We can see how such gobble gook is used to also explain how generated unreal testimonials are used to reinforced the issue and generate plausible sounding testimonials within the community being affected. Kind of like the Stockholm syndrome.
maybe more later...?
FW
