Dimensionally Barrett

Following on growing more protective of language is part one. Part two is keeping in front of us why it’s important.Words and the concepts that they represent show how we interpret the world, and in to that degree, are themselves the world. But if  you go around saying that “up is down”, “black is white”, and “solids don’t exist”, you are operating on levels of semantic confusion and while metaphysically interesting, these are not factual statements. They are not, in this world, true. I am not interested here in assertions that words are merely labels and are not the things themselves. I am not interested in being told that solids do not, ultimately exist. I am very invested, as we all should be, in stating the case that the world exists as a shared reality, a constellation of relationships between people navigating a very real, experienced container of objects and events that we call “world.” Following from that are natural iaws discovered by science via replicable experiment. Thi...

This chapter, it seems to me, is less about “being kind” to language than recognizing language’s power, not just to communicate outwardly with others, but as the means by which we frame and order out thoughts and take in the messages from without. Snyder here is asking us to be aware of the epistemic nature of thought and words and how we as individuals can shore up and reinforce thinking independently and critically while offering tools on how to do so. Snyder introduces us to Victor Klemperer, a phonologist and scholar of Jewish origin who used his training to combat Nazi propaganda. He noticed how.the a term like “the people” was exclusionary; it meant some but not all people. This may seem tangential, but I don’t think it is: the term of “people” in German is   Volk , and had been used, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries as equivalent to “national spirit”. This was part of a larger philosophical movement that sought to identify the uniqueness of the German people withi...

The current regime has move quickly in its attempts to establish hegemony over the country. Reading the news is increasingly an exercise in doom-scrolling and despair, but we’re not in the final moments yet. To be sure, reading about the number of lawsuits brought against the administration and its various branches, one harbors a hope, however small, that the courts will side with the those who are filing. There is not a segment of the population that is not, in some way, represented by these cases. However, that said, there are bound to be people who still support the president and the regime in seeing them as somehow divinely guided or just plain smarter than everyone else.  The courts remain the most problematic link in the chain of addressing the current moment. Many are stacked with loyalists to the regime and if not, then at least, members of the judiciary sympathetic to it. Representative James Raskin (MD-D) discussed the possible impeachment of the sitting president recentl...