There was a time – a long time ago – when I studied Language as a theme in philosophy.
“Putting a name on things” is critically important in our collective life. It is indispensable to understanding the world, to building our intelligence, to communicating and solving problems … and therefore more generally to surviving.
What if a group of few individuals had the ability to un-name a concept or a thing? Would that reality disappear? … Not really. If the name in question were attributed to a real thing, say a coconut, the coconut would not stop existing. An alternative name would likely be found, maybe someone from another country would bring “noix de coco.” 1
What if it were a concept, something intangible? Well, that certainly would make things more complicated, but again, clear-minded people would figure out a new way to express that concept and find another name…
What if that same group of people would impose a strict NewSpeak worldwide, a novel name, a unique standard that means a radically different thing? Well, then the concept would literally disappear from the records of society, drowned into a conceptual potpourri. And the concept would become fuzzier requiring extensive resources and time to resurface. Most don’t have time to dedicate to phantomatic treasure hunts, especially to unearth a painful concept…
Persecution Live 