When Speech Goes Wrong

It seems that half of the country is delighted by what terrifies the other half. To be precise, this poll indicates that only 1% of Republicans are frightened by what scares half the left, and that 95% of us are excited or optimistic about what has the left wetting the bed:

Here again, as I mentioned a few posts back, the recent election was, among other things, a referendum on humor, in that we are chuckling at what makes them frightened and depressed; we derive pleasure from the very things that cause them unendurable pain:

Rob Reiner Checks Into Mental Health Facility To Deal With Pain of Election Result

I suppose it's one of the perils of social media addiction:

[U]ntil recently, no one dreamed that billions of human beings would amuse themselves by raging at unseen enemies through a medium that profits from cranking up the crazy.

Hmm. What if I were Reiner's therapist in that facility? Gosh. If only I were a playwright, I'll bet I could come up with a two-hander that is equally funny and true. 

The two characters in question often display differences in social standing or experiences, differences that are explored and possibly overcome as the story unfolds.

Of course, one cannot confront a paranoid delusion head-on. Rather, one must be simultaneously sympathetic and non-committal. More of a Socratic approach: 

You yourself were once a clinical Democrat.

Indeed. I remember once discussing my distress at Ronald Reagan -- or maybe it was Bush -- when I was in therapy in the latter part of the '80s. Rather than interpreting it as a symbolic expression of some unconscious conflict -- daddy issues, or whatever -- I remember him saying something that made my concerns seem reasonable, so I suspect he too was a man of the left. 

After all, there is therapy for climate distress, and it isn't premised on helping the patient overcome this persecutory delusion, rather, legitimizing and reinforcing it. 

Is global warming in the room with us right now? Is the patriarchy? White supremacism? Transphobia? Toxic masculinity?

That was timely: an email just arrived in my inbox from James Carville:

Robert -- I'm scratching my head trying to figure out if there's ANY WAY I can convince you to ACT! What if I told you that Donald Trump's already hammering his MAGA majority in line to pass his wacko agenda?

Why, I would be giggling with excitement and optimism.

I used to write much more about this sort of thing in the early days of the blog, even though the ideological pathology is only more florid today. Most political posts have a short shelf life, but I always tried to dig beneath the surface -- to put the world on the couch, so to speak:

Who are you to presume to psychoanalyze the world? 

You've got me there: "Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Who marked off its dimensions? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone?," and all that.

This implies that while I am not qualified to be the world's therapist, someone must be:

The conservative is a simple pathologist. He defines sickness and health, but God is the only therapist.

Nor am I so sure about being a qualified pathologist, the human heart being the most deceitful of deceivers. Auto-pullwoolery is so easy! 

At any rate, I think we can all agree that there's no human cure for the human condition. 

But you were a psychotherapist.

Yes, and always a reluctant one. A healer of souls? Reminds me of another aphorism:

A dentistry degree is respectable, but a philosophy degree is grotesque.

This is not to say that every soul-healer is a quack. It's just that they're more born than credentialed. You just feel better in their presence via some kind of energy or vibe. 

My cardiologist has this vibe. I always tell him he should have been a psychiatrist. He says he is, because half his patients just have anxiety, not a heart condition. Me being one of them. At any rate, after I see him, the anxiety goes away. Until the next visit.

But the older you get, the closer you are to that visit -- the one where you find out it isn't anxiety, rather, time for a triple bypass or pacemaker or whatever. By definition, every day is One Day Closer.

An uncle by marriage had a congenial philosophy: he said he woke up every morning thinking he'll live forever -- dismemento mori, so to speak. So, one time he'll be wrong. Big deal. 

He's no longer with us, having been wrong on that last day. But he was remarkably cheerful to the end. Same with my anti-theistic father in law, but I think in his case he just wanted to spite God. Or fate, rather. 

At the other extreme are those monks who meditate every day over their open graves. I wonder if this would help Rob Reiner put things in perspective? At his age, death may come before Trump even has the chance to put him in a concentration camp. 

Says Wiki, "Rob identified himself as having no religious affiliation and as atheistic on the January 13, 2012, episode of Real Time with Bill Maher." But one man's politics is another man's religion. And as they say, leftism is a religion with no God but countless devils. Probably what he really needs is an exorcism.

What does this have to do with being the world's only Language Animal? I suppose it highlights the parasitic potential of dysfunctional language, which can hijack the mind in the same way a virus does the cellular host. But in order to facilitate this, it helps if the organism is in a weakened state, which is to say, if its immune system fails.

Is there a linguistic immune system? Some kind of innate... bullshit detector?

Yes, and it must have to do with the telos of the intellect which is, of course, truth. 

The truth is the happiness of the intelligence.

Problem is, the scientific revolution has devolved to a crude metaphysical scientism that has jettisoned teleology from its framework, and here we are.

Even worse than scientism is the postmodern view of language, in which words are just about other words, not about reality. This explicitly blocks the teleological function of speech, which is always dynamically engaged with the truth that transcends it. I have neither the time nor inclination to study such nonsense, so help us out here, Gemini:

Postmodern theorists often argue that language is primarily a self-referential system, in which words point to other words. They challenge the idea of a fixed, objective meaning, and focus on how language is used to construct and maintain power structures. They examine how language can be used to marginalize certain groups or to impose dominant ideologies.

Conversely, in the traditional view, "language is viewed as a tool for seeking truth and meaning" and "as a way to connect with reality and to communicate our thoughts" about it.

Note that the postmodernist doesn't actually eliminate teleology, rather, just substitutes his own teleology, in which the purpose of language is to legitimize power structures designed to marginalize the marginalized and disempower the powerless. Except for the postmodernist, whose own speech reveals the real truth about language. 

Which is not even worthy of a shrug, much less a counter argument, since it is self-refuting on its own. Truly truly, if language were a closed system, then we could never know it. 

And that's all we're going to say about that. We're moving on to the next book, Metaphysics for Everyone: Interviews with Bruno Bérard. I'd never heard of Bérard, but he is definitely Raccoon material, engaging and exploring the same nonlocal attractor we do. But we've already surpassed 1,000 words, so rest up and come back tomorrow for more transcendental adventures in speech.