An observant manager at a social event commented recently about my husband and me: “You both use language very precisely.” The man was bright alright, but he was not necessarily flattering us, since my spouse (PhD, dubbed “guru” in his field) is constantly pelted with admonitions: Be vaguer when zeroing in on a problem—solve it to the group’s advantage, but don’t dare speak openly of incompetence. However obvious, credit the collective, submerge your achievements, ditch the “I” pronoun in favor of the “we.” (And how, pray tell, does one solve problems without removing the obstacles to their resolution? Easy: the able do double shifts to cover for the deadwood.)
The private sector is silhouetted by the state–and infected with the same collectivist philosophy, which aims to maintain the status quo, abolish the deference to ability (since we are all the same, given the right nurture, right? WRONG), and never admit that some are brighter than the rest. Or if this cannot be denied, rope the better man in the service of the mediocre majority that thrives in a culture of collectivism.
To be clear, this impetus is reflexive, rather than a matter of collusion and conspiracy. With few exceptions, most people believe they benefit from state- and corporate enforced collectivism—they believe this is the right way to be, the thing to strive for. (The Bell Curve—normal distribution—will give a hint as to why this is so.)
The co-optation of language plays a large role in subverting reality. The state and its lick-spittle toadies—educrats, mediacrats, and “intellectual”—have co-opted semantics over the years; stolen our words so that the new words better serve the parallel reality they’ve manufactured.
This is serious stuff since language mediates thoughts, actions, and hence public debate and policy.
The mutation in the accepted “meaning” of the word inflation serves as a good example of the process I’ve touched upon.
“Samuel Johnson’s famous A Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755, had just one definition for inflation,” writes the Wall Street Journal’s Justin Lahart, in “Inflation Definitions: Through the Ages”:
The state of being swelled with wind; flatulence.
Naturally, the WSJ does not anchor its historical survey of “the evolution of the dictionary definition of inflation from ‘flatulence’ to ‘rising prices'” in any philosophical framework; it certainly omits any reference to the natural laws of economics. Nevertheless, do read “Using a Dictionary to Define Inflation Can Spell Trouble”
You ought to conclude that the culture en masse is fleeing from truth.
UPDATED: Compassionate Fascist, sadly, proves my point: The official line, which he repeats, has it that inflation is a rise in prices. False! Inflation is an increase in the money supply. The general rise in prices is but a consequence of an increase in the money supply.