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wingedbeastHave you ever said "Christianity is not a religion, but a relationship with Jesus Christ" or words to that effect? Have you ever specified some specific self-identified Christian as "not a true Christian" based upon the extremity of immoral acts?
Yeah, you're going to have to stop doing that.
In George Orwell's 1984 one of the ways The Party had to control the populace was through language control. By tightly controlling the words that could be used and their potential definitions, it attempted to eliminate concepts from thought and strictly limit the thoughts that could be expressed.
We can tell when you do that.
As an aside, this is will not be the only tip to reference 1984.
This is usually an effort in managing emotional associations. "Religion", for instance, has something of a moral black eye, as far as PR is concerned. Considering both distant and recent history, I would argue that to be a deserved black eye. It's only natural that a member of a religion would want their own religion not to share in that black eye.
Like I said, we can tell.
On the flipside of this tip are words that mean something different, in common use, than you're using them to mean.
"Secular" refers to something that is independent of religion or neutral on the topic of religion. By definition, one cannot have a "religion of secularism", no matter how much that accusation comes up in a number of different contexts.
The effort, again, is the same. It's an attempt to limit the concepts that can be expressed. Again, we can tell.
In order to guard your credibility, you have to keep an eye to both common use and contextual definitions. And, where you are going to use non-standard definitions, both be clear that you are doing so and be careful to make sure those definitions are useful in expanding clarity of communication... not restricting the concepts that can be communicated.
Yeah, you're going to have to stop doing that.
In George Orwell's 1984 one of the ways The Party had to control the populace was through language control. By tightly controlling the words that could be used and their potential definitions, it attempted to eliminate concepts from thought and strictly limit the thoughts that could be expressed.
We can tell when you do that.
As an aside, this is will not be the only tip to reference 1984.
This is usually an effort in managing emotional associations. "Religion", for instance, has something of a moral black eye, as far as PR is concerned. Considering both distant and recent history, I would argue that to be a deserved black eye. It's only natural that a member of a religion would want their own religion not to share in that black eye.
Like I said, we can tell.
On the flipside of this tip are words that mean something different, in common use, than you're using them to mean.
"Secular" refers to something that is independent of religion or neutral on the topic of religion. By definition, one cannot have a "religion of secularism", no matter how much that accusation comes up in a number of different contexts.
The effort, again, is the same. It's an attempt to limit the concepts that can be expressed. Again, we can tell.
In order to guard your credibility, you have to keep an eye to both common use and contextual definitions. And, where you are going to use non-standard definitions, both be clear that you are doing so and be careful to make sure those definitions are useful in expanding clarity of communication... not restricting the concepts that can be communicated.
