Live data from Hacker News

George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

thoughtco.com

101–110 of 429 posts

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#101
post #4

George Carlin should be studied, translated and dubbed in every possible language.

The better stand-up comedians are hard to distinguish from philosophers. Carlin is right up there. It's a pity he's gone, we kind of need him right now.

Sort of agree. I'm a contrarian though that feels like Carlin got less funny the older and angrier he got.

His cynicism was beautiful, but he seemed to dropped using humor to deliver it toward the end.

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#102
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember early Carlin and he pushed the legal limits of radio and TV broadcast from the start. AFAIK he was also the first to cross the lines with the "7 words" one can not say on that industry. He was always providing commentary on society but what I noticed was that his views got darker and more jaded with time. He started off using his knowledge of language to be rebellious and edgy, then delving more into self…

Hmm. My point is that Carlin did not start with 7 words. That is what he is famous for, but he didn't magically show up that day to recors that line out of the blue. I am too lazy to dig it up now, but youtube has multiple interviews that go over that stage of his life.

Not disagreeing, but since society was evolving as well, it seems more like Carlin was pushing whatever the current boundary was at the time. When he pushed and society gave a bit, he pushed more.

Trying to start his career with The Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television would have clearly been a ... non-starter.

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#103
post #17

>"Americans have trouble facing the truth," Carlin said. "So they invent a kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it" It is useful and not limited to Americans, that's why people do it. Much more people would have been vegans or they would be much more indifferent to violence if every pack of meat had a QR code to a video showing the life and processing of that particular animal. It's also not just soften…

Vegan argument is so silly as if meat industry just spun up overnight and only reason people consume delicious and nutritious animal products is because they can but them in sanitized packaging. I hope you also aren’t buying consumer electronics because then you are literally putting animals ahead of humans. Or is that too inconvenient for you and you actually like the cognitive dissonance after all

I'm puzzled why people are so triggered by the vegan thing.

That's not the point. Or maybe it is, maybe the meat eaters culture war is based on the idea of the virtue of eating meat and they get very angry when someone points out that actual animals are being killed, like cut with a knife then let to bleed out then seperated into pieces and shipped to the consumers in a package that doesn't look like an animal that was minding its own business a few days ago?

I don't go a day without eating meat but I don't get angry at vegans. Can you explain why are you so aggressive towards me? Is it maybe because, as George Carlin says, you don't want to face the reality of eating meat and I annoyed you by mentioning the source of meat?

Why is it so hard to enjoy the pieces of a cow raised and killed(by sticking a knife in its throat, then hung upside down to bleed out) in industrial settings?

Maybe the reason for this is the same as the soft language Carlin criticises?

Maybe the soft language is a great human invention that lets us kill animal for meat, kill people for land and still feel good about it?

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#104
post #17

>"Americans have trouble facing the truth," Carlin said. "So they invent a kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it" It is useful and not limited to Americans, that's why people do it. Much more people would have been vegans or they would be much more indifferent to violence if every pack of meat had a QR code to a video showing the life and processing of that particular animal. It's also not just soften…

Would we put foxconn related in the QR code of all apple software etc also ?

I agree with the spirit of what you are saying but this is hardly the solution. I don't think people are against killing of animals, we have been doing this since man was born. What we are against is modern industrial animal farming.

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#105
post #71
post #17

>"Americans have trouble facing the truth," Carlin said. "So they invent a kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it" It is useful and not limited to Americans, that's why people do it. Much more people would have been vegans or they would be much more indifferent to violence if every pack of meat had a QR code to a video showing the life and processing of that particular animal. It's also not just soften…

For literally thousands of years humans personally slaughtered animals and had no problem with it. But you assume people wouldn’t do this without some fanciful words for it. Based on what? Wishful thinking?

The emotions one feels watching a video of a factory farm are very, very different from what one feels watching a family raise some livestock and then kill them. They’re obviously not the same thing.

During those thousands of years where humans personally slaughtered animals, they often built complete philosophies around their relationship to those animals. Those philosophies are way, way more complex and personally involved than the modern grocery shopping experience, obviously.

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#106
post #77
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For literally thousands of years humans personally slaughtered animals and had no problem with it. But you assume people wouldn’t do this without some fanciful words for it. Based on what? Wishful thinking?

Based on the observation that most modern people have no idea where the meat or the vegetables come from. The packaged goods did the consumers from the o Production. Activist are using videos of production lines to promote their agenda.

> most modern people have no idea where the meat or the vegetables come from

Most modern people knows that meat comes from killed animals.

> Activist are using videos of production lines to promote their agenda.

The reason we don't like to watch that is the same reason we don't want to watch people take a shit, it isn't that we feel shitting is morally wrong its just not something we want to watch because it is gross.

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#108
Wasn't a lot of this "soft language" the result of active and conscious work by people like Frank Luntz [0]

e.g.

- "energy exploration" to refer to oil drilling

- "climate change" instead of global warming

My understanding is that he used focus groups watching video of politicians. As the politician would speak, the watchers would use dials to live rate how they felt about the words being used. In essence, he would A/B test how "soft" the language was and then pass that information on to political groups to help shape narratives etc.

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

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#109
post #71
post #17

>"Americans have trouble facing the truth," Carlin said. "So they invent a kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it" It is useful and not limited to Americans, that's why people do it. Much more people would have been vegans or they would be much more indifferent to violence if every pack of meat had a QR code to a video showing the life and processing of that particular animal. It's also not just soften…

For literally thousands of years humans personally slaughtered animals and had no problem with it. But you assume people wouldn’t do this without some fanciful words for it. Based on what? Wishful thinking?

Based on documentaries like "Earthlings". Watch it and tell me everything is fine.
Post reply on HN