This post is an edited excerpt from an e-mail interchange with an old friend discussing our different stances on so-called 'gay marriage.' This describes my attempt to cut through the ragecandy rhetoric and explore the conceptual roots of the larger cultural conflict in which that disagreement takes place.
What do you say, boys? Did I succeed?
This is a surprisingly difficult question to answer even though I've given it a lot of thought over the years. Let me see what I can do. And please keep in mind that this is my own thought on the matter. Informed by several sources, yes, but not copied.
To address this I will take several steps back to survey the ground where I believe the problem lies. Once that is established the details should be more manageable.
Consider some of the differences between the German & the English languages. I remember how German has multiple words that translate to the English "on." A picture hanging on a wall is a different "on" than one lying on a cabinet.
Languages aren't one-to-one analogues between sets of mouth-sounds. German isn't English with different noises. Different languages contain different vantage points on the world in which we live, these differences both derive from & create different ways of thinking and different beliefs. Living as we do in the same physical universe and working with the same physical laws there are constraints on how divergent those perspectives will be for physical topics. Different languages have more, less, or different primary colors. If I recall correctly the color "orange" was once "yellow-red" and only took on its modern name after the fruit was discovered not so long ago by historical standards.
Beyond the physical is the conceptual. Languages with different conceptual bases treat the same things differently. As I understand Spanish has terms and phrases in the passive while English would discuss those topics using the active, so the English language formation suggests human actors & responsibility while the Spanish is more fatalistic.
Ideas do not exist in isolation. They derive from a larger conceptual mass. This mass is sometimes explicitly defined but more often follows implicitly or emerges from its parts working together. This is not to say that it is random or meaningless but just that people don't need an explicit holistic awareness of their ideas in order to execute them. Rats likely do not know what it means to navigate a maze but they do so anyway because their rules and concepts permit them to -- but the maze is not random or meaningless.
Ideas are colored by this larger structure & by the other ideas in it.
They are also colored by the experiences of life. The phrase "cup of coffee" does not simply bring to mind the idea of a vessel of beverage; it suggests a mug, heat, smells, times of day, perhaps leisure or urgency, perhaps visits with friends. The explicit materialistic information content of the phrase is paired with experiential & social information that, by expanding degrees of separation, encompasses the history of earth and all that is in it.
Contrast that with "appendage-appropriate object designed to hold & aid consumption of fluids in the context of a near-uniform gravitational field, currently containing a liquid stimulant at a temperature that may be significantly higher or lower than the internal body temperature of the species that customarily imbibes it." Other than being weird it is isolated from any context that would convey all that additional information.
So, ideas have relationships with other ideas. This is true in the abstract as well as in the human mind.
As social creatures we communicate ideas via language. A word encompasses at least three aspects; the mouth-sound or written token used to represent it, the explicit idea or ideas that the token signifies, and the social capital associated with the word. This social capital includes the emotional associations, legal significance, and other relationships the word has earned in its passage through history as well as its relationship to other ideas in the larger conceptual structure.
The long and the short of everything I've written so far is that language is ideology, language is identity.
Language by its nature contains a structure of ideas & associations. Beliefs are embedded in that structure. This is why translating from one language to another can be such a dicey thing; the languages have different paradigms, some parts of which are analogues and other parts of which are not.
When one people-group conquers another it is common for the conqueror to suppress the language of the conquered. Because language contains so much experience and identity this suppression is a method for the conqueror to undercut the conquered's identity and cohesion. One example is the Plains Indians being educated exclusively in English.
But they know. They remember. It is not surprising that subjugated groups often reinstate their ancestral languages when they reassert their independence.
It is difficult to erase a language this way. The conquered know the difference between their words and not-their words.
But what if the conquering language has the same word tokens as the conquered language?
They look the same. The sound the same. Most of the time they are used in the same way.
The associations however are different. The ideology embedded in the structure is different. The words however are the same. How is someone supposed to speak the old language when everyone who hears it assumes it to be the new language? The old language then is truly erased, not because no-one speaks it but because no-one hears it.
The new ideas wear the same skins as the old. Because we usually think in tokens (spoken or written) and the tokens are unchanged we give the new idea the associations earned by the old.
In the case of "marriage" the token was pivoted from one idea to another. What those two ideas are isn't relevant right now, what's relevant is that the set of instances of the new idea included the set of instances from the old idea but also opened up new possible instances. Mathematically the set of Reals includes the set of Primes but is not an extension of Primes; its elements are a superset but its concepts are an altogether different beast.
This change had effects on associated ideas. As ideas provide context for related ideas it is not surprising that other large changes resulted.
If in marriage the function of man & woman is just a skin-swap of personal preference, then why not so for the individual? Thus gay 'marriage,' which implied the sexes are the same, led to 'transism,' which stated it openly.
As gay 'marriage' erased the existing meaning of marriage so 'transism' erases the existing meaning of 'man' or 'woman.' Sure we are free to call ourselves as such but they are removing the ability of the English language to convey original meaning. It is no longer a recognition of biological fact but simply an expression of momentary preference. It is a fundamentally different idea that murders its predecessor and dresses itself in stolen significance.
With the modern idea of what it means to be American following suit (here's a piece of paper that says you're the same) it's a well-rounded coup. I can't describe my relationship with my wife, with myself, or with society in my own native language. In a very real sense I no longer have a native language.
Looking around I see that this has been done to any number of words. "Tolerance" used to mean putting up with other people & ideas, now it means holding the correct attitude towards the correct belief system (as defined by itself). "Hate" used to be an emotion or actions that proceed from that emotion but now it is disagreement, insufficiently-enthusiastic agreement, or anything that may be usefully & convincingly portrayed as insufficiently enthusiastic. I won't hazard a guess what "racism" means this week but I'd probably save a lot of trouble if I just killed myself now.
As an aside I want to say that Christians have done a flatly terrible job of arguing for traditional/heritage/actual marriage. We said & allowed ourselves to be framed as saying that the Bible says such-and-such about marriage and that gay marriage violates that. Once that frame is taken then nonChristians can reasonably say "stuff your beliefs." Here's the way it actually is though; one-man-one-woman has been the fundamental foundation of all successful societies. It is part of our human structure. The Bible explains & justifies it but is not the source of it. It's how God made us; the Bible is just the documentation.
At this point in history Christians are the only ones left defending marriage in the West so it appears to be a Christian conceit.
So what about the two systems coexisting?
I suppose it could be possible that it can only happen if both sides choose to do so. That is certainly not the case. The Revisionists (I'll call them that for lack of a better term) willfully chose to use the word 'marriage.' This isn't an example of two systems developed in isolation that collided & need to work things out. They came out of us. They could have chosen anything and they chose that intentionally.
Actually there was a term -- domestic partnership. It was only a thing for a few years but the Revisionists attacked it as "separate but equal" and therefore equivalent to !RACISM!. Completely unvoiced was the fact that their solution, enforcing their new idea on everyone, was therefore equivalent to genocide.
The adoption of Revisionist beliefs wasn't organic. Media has spent decades grooming society for feminism -> homosexuality -> gay 'marriage' -> transism -> ?. Remember that California defined marriage as between a man and a woman by public vote that was only overturned by judges and that gay 'marriage' was forced on the entire nation by a Supreme Court decision. We didn't choose this, it was chosen for us by the ruling class.
Any hope for two-system coexistence died with the BAKE THE F*CKING CAKE movement when bakers and flowershops and venues were forced to submit to the one true ideology (because being able to say 'no' is forcing your beliefs on others and therefore so immoral).
More and more everyone is required to affirm this week's Sacred & Immutable doctrine (brought to you ungrateful shmucks by Those Who Know Better Than You) OR ELSE. Refusing to parrot a special minority's preferred pronouns is 'transphobia.' The fact that doing so forces the speaker to adopt & legitimize an identity paradigm that he does not hold is absolutely no problem at all. The world isn't divided into 'special minorities' & 'normal people,' it is divided into '(this week's) special minorities' & 'furniture.'
The minorities that are treated as so precious today will next month be cast away & next year reframed as evil oppressors that absolutely must be destroyed. Look at what's happening to J.K.Rowling.
Remember back in the 90s when the atheist crowd said that Christianity was a scam that controlled people by creating guilt via invented sin and then offered relief via compliance? Most of those same people are today doing that exact process with -isms & -obias. At least Christianity has a rulebook that can be appealed to. This Revisionist business has no rulebook, no higher authority, and no concern for consistency. The slowest runner gets eaten so everyone had better run as fast as possible by being the most outraged & offended.
The Revisionists claim to defend minorities but that is just marketing. They define what a minority is such that defending it advances their larger schemes. They claim to defend blacks but what do they do to blacks who don't stay inside the lines? They claim to defend sexual minorities but what do they do to those who don't stay within the lines? What would they do to a gay man who says that marriage is between a man and a woman? What did they do to Milo Yianoppolis (sp?) when he didn't toe the line proscribed for his identity group?
Whey they say they defend group 'x' what they actually do is first dictate what group 'x' is (including that it is even a group in the first place) such that the group's self-policing identity & interests further Revisionist goals, THEN "defend" it.
As such homosexuals are required to be part of the war in the roles laid out for them. There is no room for noncombatants. A homosexual who is willing to coexist with the enemy is defective & will not be tolerated.
This isn't about actually caring about people. This is about training everyone to be reflexively submissive to a specific power structure. This is about creating a society where things are true because that power structure says they're true or false because it says they're false (white privilege can't be measured so you better hate yourself as much as possible just to be safe). Marriage isn't a word we use to describe a natural human arrangement, it's just an arbitrary category to be expanded & rearranged (and probably eventually retired) by Those Who Know What's Best. Male & female are arbitrary and shall be rendered ridiculous by pronouns and who-knows-what comes next. When this is done there will be no boundaries or ideas that do not come directly from the power structure.
There is no power like arbitrary power.
Growing up I believed that pluralism worked. Now I don't know. Maybe it was all an illusion sustained by the fact that the vast majority of Americans adhered to similar-enough beliefs that it didn't matter what they claimed they were doing or thought they were doing. Now that we are so fundamentally divided I don't think it can work. What the Revisionists call freedom I call bitter repression. What I call normal life is to them entirely unacceptable. A system of government capable of forcing the two sides to coexist must necessarily be incompatible with American traditions of governance.
What possible point of equilibrium can come from all this? Maybe there is one, I hope so, but in my limited perspective & historical knowledge that sounds like a stretch. I think terrible things are going to happen in the next few decades. All predictions are always wrong so perhaps I will be pleasantly surprised. That would be nice.
So there you have it. Did that provide useful answers? It's weird how even though we have similar backgrounds this is practically an attempt at cross-cultural communication.
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