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Principles of the American Cargo Cult (2003)

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Re: Principles of the American Cargo Cult (2003)

#51

Post by rashkov »

philwelch wrote: post #44
kick wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Largely, the American people have been targeted with campaigns to make every possible combination of events into sport. This isn't a conspiracy, the people responsible have said as much. From a New York Times article that quotes the president of CNN , Jeff Zucker: Zucker is a big sports fan and from the early days of the campaign had spoken at editorial meetings about wanting to incorporate elements of ESPN’s program…

It's one step deeper than that. It's not that everything is sports. If you watch sports coverage, the coverage is less and less about the actual sports and more and more about the underlying drama. Not even sports is sports anymore. Instead, both sports and politics are being transformed into a combination of sports and melodrama. Which American institution lies squarely at the intersection of sports and melodrama? P…

Pretty good article making this same observation: https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11783

Re: Principles of the American Cargo Cult (2003)

#52

Post by jakelazaroff »

catalogia wrote: post #48
jakelazaroff wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I doubt many if any modern Europeans or Americans would find fault with the statement, "It's a tragedy when women die during child birth." Where the implication of a personal flaw present in that statement, it would be a deeply offensive statement. This strikes me as a perfect illustration of the article's point. The US spends more on healthcare than any other country in the world, yet our maternal mortality rate i…

Please do not twist my words. I hope it should have been clear that when I said insinuating blame would be offensive, I meant that insinuating the woman died as a consequence of some moral failing on her part would be deeply offensive. I chose that as my example because I thought it universally agreeable, because I hoped to avoid political responses. Obviously in retrospect, my example was poorly chosen. See also, my…

Sorry, didn’t mean to twist your words; I misinterpreted what you meant by that example.

Re: Principles of the American Cargo Cult (2003)

#54

Post by shantly »

Gravityloss wrote: post #50
kick wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting: I had a friend explain this to me when I was fairly young, and it's definitely influenced my theory of society heavily.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_race_journalism

Even NPR spends most of their time armchair quarterbacking presidential campaigns. News happens. How will the campaigns respond? One candidate makes some claim about another's positions. How will that affect the campaign? Did their poll numbers drop? What does the fucking Twitterverse think about it? Instead of, you know, reporting the news and examining policy positions. Was the claim true? What might we expect various candidates policies on things like the news item, if they implement those policies? Who cares. How're those poll numbers looking? Who's the underdog? What tea leaves can we read today? That's what matters.

It's so frustrating. And now that presidential campaigns are damn near two years long that means a huge amount of their total news coverage ends up being political horse race bullshit.

Re: Principles of the American Cargo Cult (2003)

#55

Post by shantly »

catalogia wrote: post #23
sowbug wrote: post #21

Tragedy is a synonym for calamity It took me a little while to figure this one out, since I've always treated the two words as synonyms (non-ironically, I hope). In case anyone else also paused at this one, a tragedy is something horrible happening because of a weakness in someone's character, whereas a calamity is just something horrible happening. The point of the principle is that victims* of the American cargo cu…

That seems like an anachronistic meaning of the word tragedy. In the context of dramatic productions, a tragedy does indeed imply a flaw or weakness in character leading to some unpleasant outcome. But I don't think that implication is generally present when using the word in other contexts. I doubt many if any modern Europeans or Americans would find fault with the statement, "It's a tragedy when women die during ch…

English seems to be losing nuance quickly, as we smash words into synonymity through ignorance or, relatedly, allowing figurative, sarcastic, or hyperbolic uses to overtake and replace original meanings. I know languages and word meanings change, but my sense is that this is happening very fast, and largely in the direction of creating redundant perfect synonyms than adding new meanings or nuance to replace what's been lost. I don't really see new vitality of this sort coming into English to replace what's leaving.

If this effect is real and not something I'm imagining, my best guess is that it's a result of much wider exposure to language (consider: how many fewer words, spoken and written, did the average person in 1850 hear or read in an average day, than you do?) with the bulk of it coming from writers and speakers far less well-educated, on average, than the people who had access to, say, publishing in the 19th century or perhaps early radio, and so more likely to mis-use words or phrases. Mistakes have always become common usage if they live long enough, but if the rate of mistakes become very high and the ability of those mistakes to gain a wide audience grow, that must surely have some effect on language, and any notion that it must necessarily be neutral or even beneficial strikes me as wishful thinking—I believe it's at least possible that changes of this sort would harm the practical expressive potential of language (as when we here judge that this useful word's distinct meaning is dead, to no purpose, and without ready replacement).

Re: Principles of the American Cargo Cult (2003)

#56

Post by asveikau »

shantly wrote: post #55
catalogia wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like an anachronistic meaning of the word tragedy. In the context of dramatic productions, a tragedy does indeed imply a flaw or weakness in character leading to some unpleasant outcome. But I don't think that implication is generally present when using the word in other contexts. I doubt many if any modern Europeans or Americans would find fault with the statement, "It's a tragedy when women die during ch…

English seems to be losing nuance quickly, as we smash words into synonymity through ignorance or, relatedly, allowing figurative, sarcastic, or hyperbolic uses to overtake and replace original meanings. I know languages and word meanings change, but my sense is that this is happening very fast, and largely in the direction of creating redundant perfect synonyms than adding new meanings or nuance to replace what's be…

> English seems to be losing nuance quickly, as we smash words into synonymity through ignorance

Languages lose complexity all the time. Ask Italy, Spain, Portugal, France why they don't have a full Latin case system with various suffices to distinguish them. It's not because their ancestors suddenly became stupid. It's just that languages change and a very common outcome is that complexities get lost in time. I can tell you with certainty that this has been happening in Indo-European languages for thousands of years and yet civilization has thrived in the same period.

You're overthinking it in a very judgemental way.

Re: Principles of the American Cargo Cult (2003)

#57

Post by [deleted] »

catalogia wrote: post #35
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tragedy is avoidable, while calamity isn't. There's a difference between saying someone is responsible and the victim is responsible. The Cargo Cult decries the principle of legitimate responsibility, and consistently attempts to deny the guilt of the true architects of tragedy in numerous ways - victim-blaming being a very popular one. In this example, a significant number of Americans would rather an adult woman di…

To be clear, I wasn't trying to make a political point about womens' healthcare. I think most people would say such a death was a 'tragedy' even if state of the art medical care had been provided. Somebody dying young is generally considered tragic in the modern casual sense of the term, particularly if it was through no fault of the victim. In retrospect I should have chosen a less sensitive example, so I'll do that…

[deleted]

Re: Principles of the American Cargo Cult (2003)

#58

Post by shantly »

asveikau wrote: post #56
shantly wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English seems to be losing nuance quickly, as we smash words into synonymity through ignorance or, relatedly, allowing figurative, sarcastic, or hyperbolic uses to overtake and replace original meanings. I know languages and word meanings change, but my sense is that this is happening very fast, and largely in the direction of creating redundant perfect synonyms than adding new meanings or nuance to replace what's be…

> English seems to be losing nuance quickly, as we smash words into synonymity through ignorance Languages lose complexity all the time. Ask Italy, Spain, Portugal, France why they don't have a full Latin case system with various suffices to distinguish them. It's not because their ancestors suddenly became stupid. It's just that languages change and a very common outcome is that complexities get lost in time. I can…

I think I’m allowed to judge loss of expressiveness with no apparent benefit as bad. It’s fine to judge things.

Re: Principles of the American Cargo Cult (2003)

#59

Post by asveikau »

shantly wrote: post #58
asveikau wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> English seems to be losing nuance quickly, as we smash words into synonymity through ignorance Languages lose complexity all the time. Ask Italy, Spain, Portugal, France why they don't have a full Latin case system with various suffices to distinguish them. It's not because their ancestors suddenly became stupid. It's just that languages change and a very common outcome is that complexities get lost in time. I can…

I think I’m allowed to judge loss of expressiveness with no apparent benefit as bad. It’s fine to judge things.

You are perfectly welcome to get stressed out over completely natural processes that happen repeatably in the course of human history, but I would just like you to be aware of this aspect before thinking it improper. Happy new year.

Re: Principles of the American Cargo Cult (2003)

#60

Post by shantly »

asveikau wrote: post #59
shantly wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I’m allowed to judge loss of expressiveness with no apparent benefit as bad. It’s fine to judge things.

You are perfectly welcome to get stressed out over completely natural processes that happen repeatably in the course of human history, but I would just like you to be aware of this aspect before thinking it improper. Happy new year.

I just don’t think that such things are bound to always be fine, is all. I’m aware of the evolution of language and not upset that folks don’t like it when I put a circumflex in “rôle” these days. I would like to know where new expressive vocabulary is coming in to replace what we’re losing—I don’t see it. Yes slang and such, as always, but those are mostly more close or exact synonyms for existing words and aren’t entering Standard Written English at the same rate we’re losing words, as far as I can tell.
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