Counter-anti-dis - the prefix strategy in politics

When I was growing up, my family would compete to find the longest word. (There was no internet then, and no Wikipedia with a page entitled Longest word in English).

My brother trounced with floccinaucinihilipilification with 29 letters. We liked the meaning: a series of Latin words that each mean 'nothing' - floccus ('a wisp') +‎ naucum ('a trifle') +‎ nihilum ('nothing') +‎ pilus ('a hair') + -fication used together to mean "the act of estimating something as worthless" 

So, family members: admit defeat! You can buy
this shirt by GolemAura at Redbubble

My favourite word was antidisestablishmentarianism (at 28 letters) for its inherent ‘anti-anti-’ness. I loved how English allowed the construction of seemingly endless suffixes and prefixes: establish with -ment, then -arian, then -ism, then dis-, then anti-.

I didn't know then that antidisestablishmentarianism was an archaic word that meant a position that advocates that a state Church (the 'established church') should continue to receive government patronage, rather than be disestablished (or I would have liked it way less). I liked it because I could beat my brother by adding another prefix: counter- to make a word with 35 letters.¹

 
Counter-anti-dis-. Anti-anti-anti-. It was a good joke if you were into words.

It was difficult to fit on a t-shirt though.  

Lately, however, I’ve noticed what I am going to call a 'counter-anti-dis-establishmentarian strategy' in politics.

And it's no joke at all.

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Post truth (part 8) - persuasion or propaganda

In the last post, I explored the motivations of those involved in the social agreement for truth, with a focus on how marketing and lobbying work to influence that agreement for their own aims. 

While this influence can be sinister, my main point was that we are rather cavalier about overt manipulation of truth, even as it infiltrates our minds and shapes our actions. The strategies of marketing and lobbying reveal so much about the social construction of truth. 

And yet, still we prefer to think about truth as objective and absolute, and advertising as inconsequential or irrelevant to truth. Many disagree, including the insightful Daniel Boorstin. 

This series began in November 2020 with my puzzlement about the word post-truth and what it means about the word truth. I had no idea then how hard it would be to explore these concepts.

In parts 1 and 2, I pointed out that the false journey metaphor for truth has allowed the emergence of post-truth to be laughed off as a problem of some 'stupid', misinformed or misguided individuals, or decried as the lies of narcissistic or sociopathic political figures to stay in power. 'Objective truth still exists', we say to ourselves: 'They are just wrong'. 

I don't feel so disdainful. I speculated in that post that post-truth is a symptom of a well-orchestrated propaganda campaign to control truth. But I didn't really understand how anyone could succeed in controlling truth. 

To explore this idea, I created a new metaphor, the house construction metaphor for truth. 

In this post I use the house metaphor to think about propaganda, the final word to explore before I can come back to where I started and ponder what we mean by truth and post-truth.

Yantbom - claiming the right not to think

Last week, I was standing at the lights waiting for the Walk signal. A guy drove past, going way too fast for the built-up area. I could see the automatic 'SLOW DOWN' signal flash at him. He revved loudly and increased his speed.

I felt disconcerted by this reaction, one I notice more and more often. 

When I see people objecting to instructions to slow down, wear masks to combat Covid 19, use seatbelts or bike helmets, or ideas like restricting human access to some natural areas, changing the date of Australia day, allowing gay people to marry, ad infinitum, I am puzzled not so much by their opposition, but their intensity and anger. 

Rarely do they offer any specific reasoning for their objection.

Instead, resistance is often fiercely proclaimed as the vital defence of individual freedom. They might call themselves freedom fighters, freedom lovers, upholders of personal liberty, or sometimes libertarians.

But I don't think it's about freedom or liberty at all. 

I think what I'm seeing is just an adult tantrum in response to being asked to think and to self-reflect. And tantrums always look rather disconcerting in adults. 

This type of reaction needs a better name; a name that reflects what's really going on. 

Post truth (part 7) - revealing our relationship to truth

In the previous six posts in this series, I have described humanity's relationship to truth through the house construction metaphor. (The series starts here.)

Now, we can begin to explore the various contests of truth. These arise partly from our poor understanding of the human construction and relationship to truth, and our prevailing but misleading journey metaphor for truth.

In this post, I am exploring the motivations of those involved in the social agreement for truth, including those who would like to influence that agreement for their own benefit. 

Average - typical, conforming and invisible

It seems a lot of us suffer from FOBA: the fear of being average. This being Wordly Explorations, I wondered if the word average itself was part of the problem.

In part 1 of Average, I explored how people use and misuse the concept of average from statistics. I started with the statistics meanings of average - a single number (score) to represent a group, and normal - a particular pattern of the spread of different numbers/scores of a population. Two useful concepts for specific uses.

However, while the word average retains the 'authority of maths' in everyday use, it slides to mean normal (as in not abnormal), mediocre, and moral. It is mis-used to mean normal as in 'how we should all be'. This can cause considerable grief. 

That explains some of the sloppy word use that sits behind FOBA.  

In this post, I am exploring how the word average, used to mean normal, ends up meaning boring… and there's more grief as well.

Post-truth (part 6) - the building code for truth

Unlike the dictionary definition provided in part 1, this series has shown that the human relationship to truth involves much more than simply finding information that accords with fact or reality.  

Despite this, we are extremely reluctant to accept that truth is a social agreement using explanatory stories shaped by our cognitive biases and our deep need to believe that makes us feel safe. 

Everything in our being wishes that truth were absolute and objective. Otherwise, it raises a very uncomfortable question. 

If truth is not objective and absolute, is it completely arbitrary, disconnected from facts, even delusional?  

Does accepting that truth is socially constructed also mean accepting that 'facts' don't matter? How can we possibly agree that truth may not accurately reflect reality, when we have deep psychological needs for certainty and understanding how the world works? If we let go of our absolutes and our certainty, what will we hold onto for safety? 

Distress at the idea of truth as a social agreement is the result of a false dichotomy. We wrongly assume that the opposite of an absolute and objective 'real truth' is an arbitrary and delusional 'unreal truth'. But it's much more complicated than this misleading dichotomy. 

A more useful question to ask is what (usually) stops an individual from making up their own arbitrary explanatory story and calling that truth? 

The answer is that the social agreement on truth is tightly controlled and very real.