version

Well-known member
The same thing's happened with the language of "self-care" and therapy, lots of people using terms like "gaslight" and "trauma". Trump was "gaslighting" the American public.

I saw something a while back along the lines of loads of abusive people go into therapy now and just come out with a whole new vocabulary and toolkit they can use to that end.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Like that Super Straight thing where they have made up a sexuality to wind people up but they defend it using the language and vocabulary that people use when bigots attack homosexuals or whatever... it's really infuriating in fact.
 

version

Well-known member
I did think that story about a politician's daughter coming out as demisexual recently was kind of ridiculous. Apparently it's the term for people who are only attracted to people they have an emotional connection to, which, to me, just seems like a standard healthy relationship for anyone and not really the same as being gay or trans. She said something about how it was uncool or boring to be cis or straight in her friend group, so I can't help feeling it might be a term constructed by and for straight cis people desperate to be included.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I did think that story about a politician's daughter coming out as demisexual recently was kind of ridiculous. Apparently it's the term for people who are only attracted to people they have an emotional connection to, which, to me, just seems like a standard healthy relationship for anyone and not really the same as being gay or trans. She said something about how it was uncool or boring to be cis or straight in her friend group, so I can't help feeling it might be a term constructed by and for straight cis people desperate to be included.
Included in the set of people who feel that they're being excluded?
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
I did think that story about a politician's daughter coming out as demisexual recently was kind of ridiculous. Apparently it's the term for people who are only attracted to people they have an emotional connection to, which, to me, just seems like a standard healthy relationship for anyone and not really the same as being gay or trans. She said something about how it was uncool or boring to be cis or straight in her friend group, so I can't help feeling it might be a term constructed by and for straight cis people desperate to be included.

Daevid Allen put it this way way off in the 70’s

 

catalog

Well-known member
interesting passage on language in this machen book:

The common notion that language and linked words are important only as a means of expression he found a little ridiculous; as if electricity were to be studied solely with the view of “wiring” to people, and all its other properties left unexplored, neglected. Language, he understood, was chiefly important for the beauty of its sounds, by its possession of words resonant, glorious to the ear, by its capacity, when exquisitely arranged, of suggesting wonderful and indefinable impressions, perhaps more ravishing and farther removed from the domain of strict thought than the impressions excited by music itself. Here lay hidden the secret of the sensuous art of literature; it was the secret of suggestion, the art of causing delicious sensation by the use of words. In a way, therefore, literature was independent of thought; the mere English listener, if he had an ear attuned, could recognize the beauty of a splendid Latin phrase.

I've heard a similar thing said about films and music - someone saying that it should be possible to follow a film with just the images and music, no need to actually hear the words or know what they mean.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
I would argue that such things are only removed from the domain of strict thought, until strict thought itself matures enough to account for them. Similar points have been brought up by @luka to the effect of art being ahead of science, and science catching up, in a sort of perennial epistemic digestion, our understanding progressing from intangible and ineffable, to systematic i.e. strict thought.
 

version

Well-known member
NYT article about the benefits of getting out in nature when you can't have a proper holiday. A terrible, bland way of packaging "go for a walk and explore your local area".
 

version

Well-known member
Really dislike these naff mental health articles that get pushed out every day. They talk about COVID the way they used to talk about Trump. Always this tone of "In these trying times... ", maybe a few soundbites from an academic then some obvious suggestions dressed up in buzzwords and technical language. It's all dripping with this horrible, faux-sincerity too. Unbearable.
 
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