We need a word...

In recent years I have felt increasingly uncomfortable with the restrictions of the English language. When the Norman French invaded the British Isles, they imposed their linguistic chauvinism on the Anglo-Saxon-Jutes and Kelts. Keltic languages like Cornish essentially disappeared while Anglo-Saxon became the “vulgar” language. To this day English-speakers do not use Anglo-Saxon roots to build new words. We used to use Greek and Latin roots (occassionally mixing them up in nonsensical amalgamations), but around the 1960s or so, young Americans and British decided they already knew everything and refused to learn “dead languages” (the fact that Greek is still spoken seems to have been lost on them).

So in fact it is truly the English language which is dead. It continues to change, but this does not seem to be evolution so much as decay. The kind of English used in newspapers (even and especially ostensibly respectable ones), on television, and even on big corporate websites on the internet is brutishly anti-intellectual. I don't believe that language limits thought so much as that language reflects the actual level of thought. In any case it doesn't seem to matter much whether the concept is missing for lack of a word, or we can't make up a word for lack of the concept.

The same duality that infects “Western” thought in general limits the English language. At best we have ideas that come in pairs, instead of higher multiplicities.

For example, we have the word “egocentric” to describe a viewpoint that is restricted to one's own needs and desires. We have the word “altruistic” to describe a viewpoint that is centered on the needs and desires of anybody but one's self. These words are frequently considered to have opposite meanings—as if “self” and “other” are opposites. Maybe if you put two people together they cancel each other out!

This is the kind of mental dysfunction which is destroying the Western world.

Here are some more problems with the words we do have: the word “egocentric” is too narrow in scope. It basically means “selfish”. What do you call it when a young child or immature adult (and we seem to have a lot of those anymore) who ignores the perspectives of others not through a conscious decision or intentional malice but simply out of ignorance? For example, Piaget did something like the following experiment:

1. Sit face-to-face with a small child who can talk.
2. Show the child a ball with two colors, one covering each of two hemispheres. Point out that the ball has two colors.
3. Hold the ball in front of the child's face so that only one of the colors is visible to him (her), and the other color is facing your own direction.
4. Ask the child what color you are seeing.

Result: small children will usually answer as if you are seeing the same color that they are seeing. They fail to imagine other points of view than their own. They're not being malicious; they simply haven't reached a certain level of understanding yet. Unfortunately, some never will.

WE DO NOT HAVE A WORD FOR THAT LEVEL OF UNDERSTANDING. We don't have a word for either being able to switch contexts on cue, or not being able to. I have heard the word “rational” used that way, but that's wrong: rational means something like you can follow a logical argument such as “All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefor Socrates is mortal”. We need a word that specifically refers to being able to correctly handle different perspectives with regard to time, space, person, and other common variables with regard to perspective.

We lack the word because apparently most of us lack the concept. The day before yesterday I heard political commentary on National Propaganda Radio that stabbed my very soul. The speaker was talking about how for every Iraqi insurgent killed, several more rush in to take his place, so according to his analysis “we” are not killing them fast enough. His entire argument rested on the assumption that it was a moral outrage for them to resist an unprovoked foreign occupation which had resulted in the deaths of at least tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

The fact that there are actually people who rely on National Propaganda Radio for their news suggests that a great many people are incapable of considering someone else's point of view. They are stuck in the extreme egocentric point-of-view of a small child—a particularly spoiled and arrogant one at that.

Lack of this ability to consider other points of view infests all our political discussions.

Now let's be quite clear: the Right is very egocentric. The Left is very egocentric, but postures as altruistic and expects the rest of us to actually be altruistic.

So here is our choice:

The Right: to put our own interests first without the slightest nod to anyone else's needs and desires. It is impossible to live by this code without contention and war.

The Left: to live for the needs and desires of strangers, some of them openly hostile to us, without the slightest regard for our own needs and desires. To fail utterly at this because it is impossible, and so to live a life of massive hypocracy or die of starvation and exhaustion from trying to live up to impossible goals. It is impossible for everyone, or even some fraction of us, to live by this code without contention and war.

Where is the choice that says: I will live my life for myself, but I will take into consideration the desires and needs of others and resolve conflicts-of-interest, so as to avoid conflict that will harm all of us and try to achieve an optimal win-win situation? Meaning: I will live by a code by which all of us can live without contention. WE DO NOT HAVE A WORD FOR THIS.

We almost used to: the word was “Liberal”. Unfortunately, even the concept of the Classic Liberal was deeply flawed by ideological legacies from people like John Stuart Mills who called themselves “Liberals”, but who subscribed to notions like “the greatest good for the greatest number of people”, which are incompatible with the concept I just described. I'm not looking for “the greater good” as it is often called; I am pursuing my own self-interest qualified by the needs and rights of others. Trying to equate those different concepts is an intellectual fraud.

Since about the 1910s, the word “Liberal” has been usurped (more so in the USA than elsewhere, although the American misuse is spreading) to refer to a grab-bag of Socialist and Marxist concepts. Senator Patty Murray is a Marxist-Socialist-Feminist, not a Classic Liberal, but we've lost the word “Liberal” to her kind.

What about the word “Libertarian”? Again, the problem of excess baggage, in this case political baggage. I don't want to talk about party politics, I want to talk about a characteristic of people in general regardless of political affiliation if indeed any. It doesn't help that the Libertarian Party is not particularly ideologically pure, and that ostensibly Libertarian-affiliated institutions such as Cato Institute seem to be completely incompatible with the ideals of lay Libertarians; many Libertarian institutions are not Libertarian; they are Fascist.

We are not just missing a word for some frivolous idea: we are missing a word to describe a critical threashold in mental development. If we fail to achieve that threashold—as I predict “we” collectively will—then our civilization will be destroyed, as is already starting. But I am not completely pessimistic: some of us may cross the threashold to live another day.