416- Words Have Meaning Even as Language & Culture Fall: L0L, 0MG… (Free)

What this episode covers

Up to the modern era language has always been an open window for knowing things. As we head into the new era, language, like most things, is in freefall. Consider the meaningless online abbreviations and digital slang or, social platforms that limit ideas to a couple sentences. Yes, this is by design and your uploads are now censored and limited. What is not so obvious is the full-frontal push to limit the number of words commonly used in society. I have seen claims that place the intended reduction of word usage to well below 2,000 words. This remains to be seen but the process can be observed in modern media by their carefully limited (and often negative) vocabulary. The onset of the digital era has not been kind to language and this can be observed by using an old printed dictionary (pre-WWII) to compare definitions against online search returns. Complexity is, in fact, the enemy of control and this correlates directly with what is happening to language in media, school, and culture. We will come to rue the day when books, libraries and the printed word become hard to find – which is already happening. The blueprints for our predicament are prescribed reading in school: Brave New World, 1984, Animal Farm, Anthem, Lord of the Flies, Fahrenheit 451, etc. How is it that neither our teachers, nor their pupils, recognized the pre-introduced agendas we now face? Be prepared for the world-wide “Pop Goes the Weasel”. I am guessing few of us recall this nursery rhyme or what it means. And good luck searching for meaning as the homogenized wiki return will be of little help. I’ll give you a hint – asset stripping is already underway internationally and soon it is likely very few of us will be able to spell the word “poverty”. Truth be told, our current woes began 100 years before 1984 with the 140-year milestone a couple years away. Consider Van Halen and George Orwell (among others), who both put the infamous date and title to predictive use. The signs of our time are behind us and reality is quickly setting in. And to be clear, the audience has been drastically reduced, so there will be fewer of us around to hear the non-existent boom.