From: KPJ (kpj@sics.se)
Date: Wed May 15 2002 - 07:52:27 MDT
KPJ <kpj@sics.se> quoted Philip K. Dick:
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of
words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the
people who must use the words."
-Philip K. Dick (1928-1982)
It appears as if YP Fun <ypprotection@yahoo.com> wrote:
|
|How very right you are. Until you have statistical
|proof or measurable properties, words and ideas
|are nothing more than propaganda.
Yes, the scientific method works best of the methods created so far.
But don't take my word for it. Check it out for yourself.
Otherwise, the scientists run the risk of becoming a caste of priests
controlling the holy scientific scriptures. Already, a number of people
_believe_ in science without ever having checking anything stated by
scientists. Remember, scientists are humans, and humans err. Often.
So "Scientist A said `FOO!', so it must be true!" is a dangerous proposition.
|But then again faith in an idea can change the
|world...
|eg communism, democracy... etc...
Demagogues have known for ages that humans have a special flaw, namely
the flaw that they believe that words EQUAL what they represent. By calling
something awful something nice, the awful thing is supposed to become nicer,
for example.
E.g. "communism": the idea that no humans should have power over others by
owning resources. This translates into a system where "nobody" or "everybody"
owns everything, but that is still just words. It really translates into a
system where a group (``the government'', ``the people'', ...) actually owns
everything, and who only allows those who they like to use the property. Thus,
the "communistic states" meant 'states where the <bosses> owns everything'.
E.g. "democracy": the idea that `the people' should be in power. Unfortunately,
the words `the people' are just words. So it translates into the system where
some part of the population votes in others into power for some specific time
after which the process is repeated. So "democracy" becomes "parlamentarism",
meaning `the people' is allowed to vote somebody into power to govern them.
In human history, any nice sounding idea has been misused into a power trip
by the group who becomes the government. And words have a very nice use as
propaganda to hide that fact. It's about POWER - who governs whom.
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