“It isn’t healthy to get so sensitive over words.” Actually: opposite, Hatem Ade, because language is what has brought us (from secret group to global society in perhaps concentric circles) to this pass. There are so many directions to go as regards “words have a power”, but let me suggest this distillation: language is a natural human behavior; it is a cultural invention that abets survival within the bounds of each language society; and the cultural invention becomes a cultural suspension.

We literally live in language.

Every autocrat — malignant narcissist, political cabal — understands the primacy that language has in their ascent to power and their remaining in power, and not one of the type fails to overlook the information atmosphere in which their people — their subjects or subjugated people (eventually, it’s up to the people to decide which they are) — exist.

The above premise is never far from thought in every piece on this blog.

It’s there in the mention that the Islamic Small Wars are chiefly about integrity (and it is not okay to lie either to Muslims through patronizing speech or non-Muslims in deceitful speech).

It’s there in the idea that political reports from despotic regime (and their state-controlled media) must be greeted with deep skepticism because the political purposes of powerful controllers and influencing agents naturally corrupt the gathering and expression of observation sensitive to such interests.

It’s there in the notion that the generational transmission of language includes a “social grammar”, i.e., quietly discerned and internalized social rules about speech and what works in relation to needs and what might be met with cuffing.

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