Language

Suw might like this post because it touches on the concept of property (it seems to hold an interest for her akin to that football holds for more normal people).

However, I shall get to that subject via my usual circuitous route. I am currently reading Fallacies and Pitfalls of Language: The Language Trap by S. Morris Engel (as recommended somewhere, sometime by Ian Rowland (man and fridge magnet) who has also written a recommendable book in the form of The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading). I have got as far as the chapter on hypostatization. This is similar to personification, except instead of ascribing human traits to an object (eg. the cruel sea), hypostatization, as Engel puts it, 'is to speak of abstract entities in terms that are similarly appropriate only for persons'. For example, 'love is blind', 'actions speak louder than words' or 'while the city sleeps'.

As with the other chapters in the book, Engel stresses that incautious use of language is a dangerous game. I won't go into detail here, suffice to say that the simple existence of a technique called 'neuro-linguistic programming' suggests that language is fundamental to forming our perception of the world. To illustrate this with regard to hypostatization, Engel quotes from Robert J Ringer's book Looking out for #1:

My candidate for the most intimidating government slogan ever tossed at the American public was John F. Kennedy's emotion-grabber: "And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country".

Ringer then goes on to deconstruct what this rousing call actually means. A country can't actually do anything for anybody, it's an idea, a concept, it does not actually exist. Okay, what does this concept embody? America's 250 million citizens? Is JFK really asking everyone to ask each of their 250 million fellow Americans 'what can I do for you?'.

No, he's not. It seems pretty obvious that he's actually referring to the mechanism of state, the government... those in power. Ringer concludes:

Restated in translated form, then, it becomes: "Ask not what those in power can do for you; ask what you can do for those in power." You wouldn't respond quite so eagerly if it were phrased in its true form, would you? On the contrary, you might laugh in disbelief.

An unreasonable request hidden behind sufficiently devious language might make even the most sceptical listener rush to help. Yet hypostatization can have positive uses. Christopher Stone argued in Do Trees Have Standing? that if we attributed the natural world the same rights as a person, we wouldn't be damaging the environment to the extent we are. But giving legal rights to a rock, or a tree, isn't that crazy talk? In the foreword to the book, Garrett Hardin points out that personifying or hypostatizing natural objects isn't so crazy (Stone himself notes that women, blacks and Indians were also denied basic rights not so long ago). Okay, say those who claim the right to bulldoze rainforests, take your point, but we own this land; it's our property.

But what's property? It's like a country, it doesn't exist in reality. As Hardin puts it:

[...] every good lawyer and every good economist knows that "property" is not a thing but merely a verbal announcement that certain traditional powers and privileges of some members of society will be vigorously defended against by attack by others. Operationally, the word "property" symbolises a threat of action; it is a verb-like entity, but (being a noun) the word biases our thought towards the substantive we call things.

Hardin then acknowledges that even if we recognise that the word "property" is misleading, we may well just shrug our shoulders in recognition of the need to maintain some sort of social order. The risk inherent in this course of action is accepting the status quo without challenging its continued need can lead down a blind alley. After all, Engel states that '"Property" is a fiction, a notion we have devised or invented.' As such, we also have the ability to revise or banish this notion. Hardin's argument in his foreword concludes:

But when it becomes painfully clear that the continued unthinking use of the word "property" is leading to consequences that are obviously unjust and socially counterproductive, then we must stop short and ask ourselves how we want to re-define the rights of property.

Oh, and Suw's also gone and got herself published in The Guardian.