This idea has been mulling around in my noggin for a week or so. It started in a previous diary about that time I was stuck in Denver for a few days when I said:
Here's something. The entire time I was in the airport, I didn't tell a single person (besides the ticket agents) my name. I didn't ask for names. It was a little experiment I ran to see how talkative people are. It's sort of an extension of my "regular" life; I don't address people by name -- not out of habit, but out of simplicity. If I'm talking to someone, they know I'm talking to them. I don't feel the need to say, "Thank you, Phil" or "Yes, Betty, I understand you." Try it sometime.
It got me thinking. The power of a name, of a word is compelling. Our history is filled with examples.
Why are words and names so powerful? Why can simply renaming a thing change the entire way we approach it? And most importantly, should I use this newfound power for good or evil? Can I do both and still feel good about myself?1
I think what initially planted the idea in my head was that interview with Teri Gross and Frank Luntz -- the one where Teri only seemed able to pitch softball questions, and they went to break every time a "tough" question came up and she accidentally logicified Frank into a corner.
In case you're unaware, Frank is the guy behind "death tax" instead of "estate tax", "climate change" instead of "global warming" and so on. He researches which words and phrases have the most favorable (to Republicans) emotional impact on a given issue. He is one of the driving forces behind the Republicans' ability to frame a debate in favorable (to them) terms.
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But onto the topic of names. Names do have power. At the very basic level, in a two way communication, using a person's name forces them to direct attention to the speaker. How often will you respond to your own name shouted across a room, even if just to turn your head and see? Everyone knows that when mom uses your middle name, you are in deep shit.
Repeatedly using someone's name in an argument provides a dominating posture. "You're an idiot," while it does have some effect, pales in comparison to "Fred, you're an idiot." Repeated over and over, it may not be obvious to the speaker, or to Fred, but Fred is being put in a submissive posture.
Think of all those sitcoms, the ones in the cafe with the bad waiter and the cranky customer, when the customer leans over and is about to give the waiter a talking-to -- the first thing the customer does? Reads the name tag and addresses the waiter with by their name.
There is a belief, held by many people, that to use the "true" name of something is to have power over it. Adam named the animals and became dominant over them.
I'm currently reading a book titled "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea"2 -- it's fascinating, by the way -- and posits that part of the reason the Greek people never bothered with the zero was because their mathematics was based on geometry, and therefor had no concept of "zero" -- that is, why would you need to describe a square with sides of zero furlongs long? The idea simply did not exist. And by extension, there was no word, so there was no name.
Names are handy little containers for vast ideas. Some are super-loaded: "democracy" is a wham-dinger. "wham-dinger" is a wham-dinger. Others, not so obvious, are equal wham-dingers: "food", "foot", "furlong", and so forth. Each word contains within its simple bounds a huge, vast sum of information. When we master that simple thing and name an idea with a word, we become masters of that idea.
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If that's the case, then, just think of the power granted by simply naming something. Here's where I fall back onto Luntz. I may not like the man. I find what he does both amazing and despicable. He takes something, and with a simple act, turns it into something else. Transfiguration via language.
Suddenly, a tax on the wealthy snobs of this country has turned into the government raiding your farmstead while you're all at the funeral.
This idea -- this power to shape reality by simply renaming it strikes as sort of a mysticism. It may be. A magic3 that society has come to accept, perhaps.
Shakespeare was wrong. A rose by any other name wouldn't be any sort of rose at all.
1Kidding!
2A link on Amazon.
3I do not care how metphysical or hippe free love baked I get, I refuse to spell it "magick". I'm sorry, but that's just too emo. I'd have to get a hoodie and write bad poetry and read it to my webcam and post the vidoes on myspace. Which means I'd need a webcam. And a myspace page. I REFUSE.