We continue with the previous post about the meaning of names. Juliet asked the question, “What’s in a name?” Her point was that it is not the name that is the reality, the person behind the name is the reality. That point has never been more apropos than here in the second half of 2020. Names are changing and the meanings of names are changing almost hourly.
I am not joking. Here is the latest example from the Federalist website dated October 14, 2020, “The online version of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary changed the definition of ‘sexual preference’ on the same day that senators scolded Judge Amy Coney Barrett for her use of the word during day two of her confirmation hearings.” What prompted the change? Democratic Senators Mazie Hirono and Cory Booker reprimanded Barrett for using the term ‘sexual preference’ claiming that it was outdated and offensive. Sure enough, the M-W online dictionary now reads, “The term sexual preferences used to refer to sexual orientation is widely considered offensive in its implied suggestion that a person can choose who they are sexually or romantically attracted to.” The previous online version and all printed versions list “sexual preference” under preference-sexual and define it as orientation. Senator Hirono made it clear that sexual orientation was not a choice. One more choice the socialists want to take away.
The senators and M-W ignored the fact that Joe Biden and many of their fellow Democrats had used the term sexual preference very recently in the public arena. Such hypocrisy!
Forgive me. It is not the personalities or the politics that concern me; it is the rapidity that society is willing to change names and definitions not realizing that nothing really has changed. The deception is very sad for an old realist like me.
Back to the theme of this post: What’s in a name? If you haven’t read Orwell’s novel, 1984, now would be a good time to do it. In it, he uses the term “newspeak” which was a language of the totalitarian state designed to “diminish the range of thought by the elimination or alteration of certain words…the creation of words for political purposes.” BBC Culture had a post that had some newspeak. It is titled, “Fourteen words that define the present.” Here are just a few:
CATFISHING – When I was growing up that meant fishing for catfish. Not anymore. Today it “refers to people who construct false identities online…and build false relationships with them.” Many people think this is a good thing because it gives people the opportunity to be who they really want to be. Deception! Deception! Reality has not changed.
AUTOFICTION – This is writing that merges autobiography and fiction. Again, giving the author the chance to be who they want to be rather than the reality of who they are.
GASLIGHTING – In the old days it meant the lighting of gas-fueled lamps or street lights. Today it is a form of psychological manipulation in which “people are manipulated into doubting their own memory, judgment, and perception of reality, often evoking in them cognitive dissonance.” The aim is to make truth and facts irrelevant. Advertisers, politicians, and who knows who else are trying to gaslight us.
POST-HUMAN – This refers to the utopian dream of a world without gender. It might be utopian for some people but it could only last one generation.
MASCULINITY – Back when I was becoming a man this meant the qualities or appearance traditionally associated with men. These included strength, courage, assertiveness, leadership, independence, self-sufficiency. Now, of course, women claim to have all those qualities and where does that leave masculinity? Some think of it as “the crisis of masculinity.” Masculinity is seen to have toxic side effects that have been poisoning men on the inside. In other words, masculinity is now a disease. Were it so, it is a disease I am glad I have.
There is one more I want to deal with that has cropped up recently.
CANCEL CULTURE – This refers to the practice of withdrawing support for public figures and even corporations that have said or done something considered objectionable or offensive. This usually takes place in the form of online shaming using social media to publicly humiliate on the internet. It is a way for the powerless to exercise power. Remember when TV executives had the power to cancel your favorite TV program? The internet has given individuals the power to cancel giant corporations and popular personalities by the click of a mouse.
Of concern for me as an author is the cancel culture’s power over book publishers. Here is a recent example. Bruce Gilley, an Oxford-educated professor of political science at Portland State University had a contract with prominent publisher Rowman & Littlefield to publish his book on Sir Alan Burns that presented Burns’ positive views on British colonialization. Two weeks before it was to be released, the book was canceled. Joshua Moufawad-Paul, a Maoist philosopher at York University in Toronto, Canada, got up an online petition against the publication of Gilley’s book alleging that the author endorsed “a white nationalist perspective.” It had around 800 signatures but was taken at face value and the book was canceled. Hello, censorship, good-bye freedom of speech.
What do all these changing of names and meanings signify to me? It signifies the deception that has come over the dumbed-down minds of people feasting on social media, movies, and television. What has really changed is the minds of people (gaslighting), not the reality itself. Change of mind has to do with change of perception. Things that used to be perceived as bad are now perceived as good. That is what they want. All anchors have been removed, education has become indoctrination, the masses are willing to be told what to think. Ignorance is the new intelligence. Senseless is the new sensible. Stupid is the new way to act.
If it were not for one name that does not change, I would despair. That name is Jesus. The gaslighters have tried to make Him a homosexual. They have tried to make Him a fornicator with Mary. They have tried to make Him into their own image. But He never changes. He saved people that believed in Him when He walked the earth. He still saves people that believe in Him today.
His name…
Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11)
Listen to this Aged Sage—believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved from this world gone amuck that is drowning in its own deception.
“There is none so blind as those who will not see.”
—John Heywood, 1546