Why magic spells are real
Imagine that there are ten people lined up in a row. They are identical in dress. They each share a similar age, they are mixed sexes, similar heights and weights. Yet half of them are from extremely wealthy beginnings and the other half from extremely poor beginnings. The wealthy half are comprised of doctors, lawyers and businessmen while the other half are bin men, cleaners or unemployed.
What method would you use to discover who is who and what is what? Would you smell them? Would you touch them? There is only one way you would be able to differentiate between the two groups; their use of language.
By the use of words, vernacular, colloquialisms and accents we differentiate between ‘class’ and this has been going on for hundreds of years.
Words are spells. We ‘spell’ words and they make things happen. One could call it magic. The utterance of a word transforming energy and making people behave one way or the other. That’s magic. As superstitious or witchy as that sounds; it’s true. The use of our words can shift people’s emotional states, inspire and enlighten. The use of words can destroy beliefs and bring down civilisations. The correct positioning and tone of the language patterns you use can make you the President of the United States of America, a famous comedian or actor, a lawyer. They can get you in to the best positions in the world and set you apart from the uneducated and poor classes of our civilisation. Since the inception of received pronunciation, in the 17th century, our class system has been globally set by the use of words, vernacular and colloquialism. Words can quickly imprison you and they can just as easily set you free. The words others say to us and the words that we then say to ourselves determine the courses of our entire lives. Take a pair of newly born twins, place one in India and one in America and they will have their lives steered by a completely different set of cultures. Said cultures can only be symbolised and, in turn, conceptualised via the use of language. These differing language patterns were once manipulated and inserted in to society at a time when the feudal system in England had decayed and other means of retaining hierarchy were being sought out.
Received Pronunciation is just one method now used to ‘dispel’ the level of education in the poorer classes. We have much more modern methods of dividing the levels of comprehension in language.
George Orwell created the concept of ‘Newspeak’ in his famous book ‘1984’ where the totalitarian Government, known as ‘The Party’, issue a decree stating that language is to be eradicated as a means to create order. Without words we cannot question or object. Every week they would remove another group of words from the dictionary and the masses boast at this distorted marvel unaware that they are having their freedoms and ability to express themselves eroded piece by piece. Sound familiar? Text speak? Look how we marvel at our ’emoji’s’, our acronyms, abbreviations and our IM GIFs. Unaware that this will devolve language and instead replace it with a silent obedience that can not object or disagree.
The Wachowski brothers film ‘V for Vendetta’ shows the protagonist ‘V’ broadcasting a message to the people of Great Britain after he hijacks the fictional television news network the ‘BTN’. While illegally on air ‘V’ orates the following soliloquy truly exemplifying the power of words;
“V: Good evening, London. Allow me first to apologise for this interruption. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of everyday routine, the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition. I enjoy them as much as any bloke. But in the spirit of commemoration, where upon important events of the past, usually associated with someone’s death or the end of some awful bloody struggle, are celebrated with a nice holiday, I thought we could mark this November the 5th, a day that is sadly no longer remembered, by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat. There are, of course, those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well, certainly, there are those who are more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable. But again, truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War, terror, disease. They were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent. Last night, I sought to end that silence. Last night, I destroyed the Old Bailey to remind this country of what it has forgotten. More than four hundred years ago, a great citizen wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words; they are perspectives. So if you’ve seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you, then I would suggest that you allow the fifth of November to pass unmarked. But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to stand beside me, one year from tonight, outside the gates of Parliament, and together we shall give them a fifth of November that shall never, ever be forgot.”
Since the film was produced it has stirred up a huge reaction from people all over the world and has inspire the emergence of socio-political groups such as ‘hacktivist’s’ Anonymous, for example, who use the same image as ‘V’, the Guy Fawkes mask, as their logo, and have galvanised their campaign using the films ‘ideas are bulletproof’ concept.
However, most if not all of these factions have failed to see the point in both of the examples mentioned here. In both ‘1984’ and ‘V for Vendetta’ the controlling powers are using words to subdue the masses. They broadcast words to spread their totalitarian message. ‘V’, the revolutionary product of an inside job gone monstrously wrong in the film ‘V for Vendetta’, doesn’t take down the ‘NorseFire’ government’s armed forces or attack their police. He systematically attacks the people that know the words. The people that keep us ‘spell bound’ with the stories they create or truths to events they’ve manipulated.
How many people, when listening to politicians speak on television, really follow what is being said? Would you describe the way that politicians speak as ‘regular’ or ‘normal’? No. You would describe the way those people speak as being very different indeed and it’s safe to say that most people find it difficult to understand any politician’s use of language.
So, words can be used to either bamboozle us, scare us in to a certain direction but mainly they are used by politicians, news presenters and other public figures of authority, to confuse us. Words such as; legislation, reform, austerity, foreign policy. The list of expansive non-committal words used to darken our comprehension is huge.
Take the legal system for instance; words like plaintiff, bailiff, joinder, abatement, injunction, duress, jurisdiction.
None of these words are ever used in general day to day conversation and they are all so expansive in their definitions that they paint a plethora of different pictures and could potentially put you in a host of differing positions.
Was this created by chance? Or has it been orchestrated this way to create a lower working class? A class bamboozled by the use of incomprehensible language to distract you from the real truths in life.
If in fact this is the case and language is being used as a broad sword for an ancient system of control, as insane or totally acceptable as that idea may seem from your perspective, how do we counter act it?
Furthermore, how far down this rabbit hole of words and this ‘ancient system of control’ idea do we go? Could the way that words have ‘evolved’, through their abbreviations or extensions over time, have been manipulated to meet the same ends? Could the conjunction of singularly syllabic sounds, those that join to form the words of every language, have some deeper connections than first thought? Could the harmonic resonance of the words, and how they feel when spoken, have either a positive or negative effect on the listener?
JustWords 