Thoughts On Co-Opting Language
9/23/2022
Cannon cannon-balled my words and Jody Frank's post helped, too.
Since I instinctively apply logic to my daily life, I ask myself:
“How am I going to make that work?”
“How is that going to happen?”
If I cannot answer either of these questions, prior to the 2016 election, I did not think Donald's impossibility and illogical chances of being elected via the Electoral College while losing the popular vote would happen.
Co-opt has 43 synonyms.
Britannica defines “co-opt” more explicitly and better than Merriam Webster.
“2 : to use or take control of (something) for your own purposes
Advertisers co-opted the team's slogan.
The candidate has been accused of co-opting his opponent's message to serve his own election campaign.”
How do you respond to someone else using your language (words) which removes your ability / insights to defend yourself? (I still do not know.)
They are able to say things with force without substance.
People believe the energy associated with their words rather than your evidence.
Thinking and standing up for yourself removes your ability to act on your overwhelming energy that is ignited by feeling.
So, in 2020, 12 million more voters revealed themselves as being motivated by an overwhelming energy that is ignited by feeling.
Semantics, oh f*ck, allow a person's energy to be the issue engagement instead of them directly engaging with the issue so the energy associated with the issue no longer controls them.
People who do not understand the inequalities built into economic system are at the mercy of their anger energy. (The reason I use the internet is because I know that if I call a company to talk to customer service, they will try to direct me in a different direction or sell me a different product, which increases my frustration.)
Even though this U.K. article uses data from 2011, it is still relevant today since it explains in layman's terms the different types inequality. Here is the 2022 link for the Gini coefficient for U.S. If you are interested, here is an in-depth article, Measuring Inequality: Forget Gini, Go With the Palma Ratio Instead, that discusses the different methods of measuring inequality, which has an interactive Palma Ratio map. A NIH article explains the “Challenges for measuring gender inequality” which is a problem I was having in my research for this topic.
My version of the Dune's Fear quote is:
Fear is the mind-killer. I will let it pass through me while listening to it.
After the last 5-6 years, people who are able to stand up for themselves are incapable of confronting those who co-opt language since language co-optors “access” people who are geographically helpful to the Electoral College.
Since I failed obedience training the nano-second I was born and talked back to my parents in order to be more independent (Madonna's radio songs and Oprah's TV show helped very much), I wonder if people who co-opt words were either obedient as children and argumentative as teenagers or were they always responding to their parents' anger energy.
Thank you for reading.
These are insightful observations--and excellent questions. "People believe the energy associated with their words rather than your evidence." : I wrestle daily with how best to deal with this problem.