Warning stickers for the use of the word “them”

"Language is the source of misunderstandings."

Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900 - 1944)

As I read the news these days, I am struck by the great power that is exercised by categorizing groups of people into “us” and “them.” The use of the word “them” so often seems like such an innocent and natural thing to do, but look what happens when we divide people into “us” and “them.” We give the benefit of the doubt to those in the “us” group. We take better care of the “us” people. We tend to trust the “us” people, even when we don’t really know who they are. We are rude to those in the “them” group. We tend to not trust those outsiders. We instinctively twist their words to mean something other than what they say, often the opposite of what they meant. We exclude “them. Many of “us” feel hostility toward the “them” people, ranging from annoyance to things much more terrible. Many of “us” feel justified treating “them” people as though they were farm animals, or worse. Maybe this tendency comes from ancient biological roots. Regardless, we need to learn to see around our own corner--we could do so much better than we tend to do these days. And perhaps some might argue that it is not the choice of a word that divides us, but that the word choice merely recognizes pre-linguistic instincts. To the extent that this is true, it is my belief that the choice of the word "them" locks in such pre-linguistic tendencies, making them seem more stark, more real. This subtle early linguistic move of categorizing people into the “them” category has great power to harm, power of which we are usually not aware when we make that quick initial decision to place people into the outgroup category. The dangers sticking someone into the “outgroup” is well known to psychologists. On the streets, though, we make “us” versus “them” categorizations without much thought, and then down the road, sometimes way down the road, many of us pay a big price for our thoughtless choices to use such a powerful word. The choice of the word “them” is often careless and even thoughtless, but great evil can result. That’s the thing about the greatest evils of the world: the greatest evils don’t usually result from conscious intent or malice. Rather, they usually result from lack of thought, lack of conscious attention. I’ve written about these concerns before—for example, I once suggested that all humans should refer to themselves as “Africans,” an scientifically-justified categorization that might avoid much of the conflict we now see between non-existent “races” of people. And see here. I suspect that much of our social distress, “racial” and cultural, is a result of failing to use the word “them” with the care it deserves. Here’s what I interpret to be another recent example. Perhaps the word “them” should always come with some sort of warning sticker (I haven’t figured out the logistics, of course). The warning would go something like this:

Careless use of the word "them" often divides humanity into ingroups and outgroups, setting the stage for highly polarized conflict, which often escalates into violence. “Them” is a powerful work that should always be used with great care.

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We need to create a new word.

I'm looking for a word, but I don't think any existing word has the meaning I'm looking to express. Hence, I believe that we need to create a new word. There isn’t any rule that we can’t create new words, of course. It's done all the time (Shakespeare did far more than his share). The way to create a neologism is simply to announce it and then hope it goes viral. The concept I would like to express is not simple—it is a compound somewhat-conflicting concept. Of course, individual words can richly express compound ideas. Take, for instance, the Chinese word for “crisis,” which is often thought to consist of two characters that stand for danger and opportunity (though I’ve recently learned that this delightful story seems to be a myth). Or consider the German word “schadenfreude,” which in pop culture means “'shameful joy', or taking pleasure in the suffering of others. But I digress. We need a new word for the following concept:

Short-sighted dangerous action motivated by instinctual kindness.

I saw this situation in action two days ago, while I was driving the green car northbound on a four-lane road (see the image below). The pink truck had come to a stop ahead of me and to my right, in front of a hotel. As I found out (suddenly) the truck had stopped to allow the yellow car make a left turn out of the hotel driveway to go southbound. well-meaning-and-dangerous The yellow car popped right out in front of me and I had to slam on my brakes (no collision resulted). This is a stunt that you see every so often—a tall stopped vehicle waving the shorter vehicle to blindly drive out into traffic on road having more than two lanes. I have worked as an attorney on a couple traffic cases like this. In one case of those cases, a well-intentioned driver slowed down on a road with two lanes in each direction (failed to take the right of way) in order to wave a child across the street in front of him. He did it out of kindness. The child was killed by a car that didn't see child until the child stepped out into the second lane of traffic. Regarding my traffic incident two days ago, the truck should have taken its right-of-way thereby allowing the yellow car to fend for itself. Doing this would have seemed less considerate, of course, but it would certainly have been a better option than the short-sighted dangerous action that the truck driver took. Therefore, if you are reading this, let me know whether you have any ideas for a new word to capture all of these ideas: Short-sighted dangerous action motivated by instinctual kindness. Or let me know if there is an existing word that has this meaning. Once we lock onto a word with this meaning, I’ll use it every day, I assure you. It would have applications in situations too numerous to fathom, most of them having nothing to do with traffic. It might become my second-favorite word of all time (the first is “paltering”).

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Reminder that “struggle for existence” is a conceptual metaphor.

In the November, 2009 edition of Nature (available only to subscribers online) Daniel Todes has written an article entitled "Global Darwin: Contempt for Competition." Todes points out that although Darwin's idea of a "struggle for existence" made sense to his English peers, other biologists from other countries rejected this metaphor. Todes focuses on the alternative viewpoint embraced by many Russian biologists. In On the Origin of Species (1859), Darwin noted that "there must in every case be a struggle for existence, either one individual with another of the same species, or with the individuals of distinct species, or with the physical conditions of life. It is the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms." Through this quote, Darwin recognized that he was using "struggle for existence" in a metaphorical sense. Darwin had been urged to adopt this metaphor by Russel Wallace, who feared that natural selection "seemed to personify a perceptive and forward thinking selector, or god." Todes holds that Darwin's metaphor was common sense to those "who were living on a crowded island with a capitalist economy and highly individualist culture." Russian biologists lived in a very different place, however, which led them to "reject Darwin's Malthusian metaphor." Russians did not tend to explore densely populated tropical environments. Rather, they tended to investigate "a vast underpopulated continental plain . . . it was largely empty Siberian expanse in which overpopulation was rare and only the struggle of organisms against a harsh environment was dramatic." Todes points out the Russian political system also contrasted sharply with that of Darwin's England. In Russia, capitalism was only weakly developed, and the social classes stressed cooperation rather than individual struggle, one against the other. In fact, many Russian political commentators "reviled Malthus as an apologist for predatory capitalism and the soulless individualism." This context for the Russian research led to (many successful) studies in which the focus was "mutual aid" more than "struggle for existence." [more . . . ]

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Mean Phoneme Meme

During a bout of insomnia, I pondered an underrepresented phoneme. I first learned about these essential quanta of spoken words while I was earning my degree in psychology back in the early 1980's, and researching computer speech synthesis for fun. What popped into my head these wee hours was the word, "vacuum". Say it aloud with me, "Vacuum". Listen to yourself say it. Vacuum. Break it down. It starts with the vee, a vocalized eff. Then "a" as in "can". And a full-stop kay. No surprises, so far. Did you just utter "Ee"? As in "Keep"? We will get back to that. Next it depends on your dialect. Maybe you said "oo" as in "broom", or maybe oo-uh as in "you-uns". And end with a nice vocalized "mm". This is the only case that I can think of where a double-U really is. But, what was that in the middle? Ee? Vakeeoom? Part of the institutional mis-education in our country is that even teachers are unaware of a double standard in teaching the relationship between spoken and written English. We have "silent-E" drilled into us... (Digression for mathematician Tom Lehrer's version on The Electric Company) ... but what about all those hidden, non-silent "E"s? They are everywhere in our spoken words, but not in the written ones. Even many words with silent E have unwritten spoken long-E's embedded. Take "lake", for example. Listen to yourself say it. There is no hint of the written E on the end. But in the middle? L-eh-ee-k. Long "A" is really short-E-long-E. Always. (Ah-l-oo-eh-ee-z) Take a cue from "cue". K-ee-oo. Do you, like, like "like"? L-ah-ee-k? So my obscure title simply means that I mean to bring attention to the essential idea of a troublesome yet common (mean, mean) spoken sound. I'm usually easy to amuse, but sleep deprivation stunts my self-censorship.

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Court reporters and multitasking

If you are one of those people who finds it difficult to multitask (I am one of those), you might appreciate this story involving court reporters. I work as a lawyer during the day, and quite often I need to take depositions, which are reported in real time by court reporters who use a special keyboard to take down every word of the deposition. The best court reporters are truly incredible to watch. To be a court reporter, you need to take down at least 200 words per minute without mistakes. You would think that trying to take down every word spoken by everyone in a room would completely occupy your working memory, but good court reporters can do their work proficiently with mental processing capacity to spare. Last week I spent an entire day taking depositions. After the depositions were finished, I asked the court reporter what she was daydreaming about. She smiled, because she knows that experienced court reporters are perfectly capable of daydreaming about such things as grocery shopping or going to the beach at the same time that they are taking down every syllable of every word spoken in the room. I asked this particular court reporter how often she has to go back and look at her transcript to see what was being said, because she was thinking about something else at the time she was taking down the testimony. She told me that she was once working for a judge who was going to sentence a man convicted of murder. The big question that day was whether the man would be put to death or whether he would get a life sentence. This court reporter was assigned to preserve all of the court proceedings regarding this momentous sentencing. After she was done taking down the testimony, and after she left the courtroom, someone asked her whether the judge sentenced the accused to death. This woman hesitated before replying that she did not know, even though she was a court reporter. To find out, she went back to her tape (the strip of paper on which the court reporter's keyboard prints out the testimony), and looked for the critical part. She found out that the judge had actually sentenced the man to death, but she had no memory of this. I asked her whether she is ever asked to read back testimony during a court proceeding or deposition at a time where she became nervous that she might not have been accurately taking down the testimony. She stated that this never happens, and that she is always confident that she's taking down the testimony accurately. If something starts going wrong, her full consciousness kicks in and she deals with the unusual situation fully aware. She has never been caught not taking down the testimony accurately. I find it pretty amazing that someone could have their working memory so thoroughly occupied in the linguistic sense, and yet be able to think about other things. It's even more amazing that when the court reporters daydream or think, they are often doubly-employing their linguistic abilities. It just seems like this would be impossible, but it's commonplace. Most of the court reporters today use a special stenographic keyboard, but there are a few who speak into something that looks like a muzzle. They hear the testimony in the courtroom with their own ears and simultaneously speak those words into this muzzle-device which is recorded by a tape recorder. In short, they "shadow" the testimony with their own voice. Later, someone types out that the court reporter's words into a transcript. I've spoken to some of these muzzle-device court reporters over the years, and they to tell me that they are able to think about other things were daydream while they are taking down the testimony. If you are wondering why we even have court reporters, that would be a good question. The main advantage is that when you have a court reporter, you have a person who is in a position to swear to the accuracy of the transcript, indicating who said exactly what. A tape recorder would simply record the sounds, and might not accurately pick up the exact words that were being spoken (for instance, because someone is mumbling or gesturing). When these sorts of things happen at a deposition, human court reporters ask the witness to speak up or to state their testimony in words rather than gesturing. This makes for a more accurate and more readable transcript. That said, some courtrooms are now employing tape recorders in lieu of court reporters.

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