Reification - Ideas Are Not Things
(reposted from an old blog 2/2015
Reification is the name for problems that arise when we imagine that a form corresponds to something in the real world in a useful way. All forms are approximations but some are more approximate than others. There is a strong tendency for a form to have a name, which furthers the impression that is somehow real.
Words ending in "-ity" "-ist", "-ain" or "-ism" are generally great examples of references to forms that have no useful correspondence to anything in the real world. Such references can usually be corrected by changing the statement that contains the "-ism" term to refer to the actual group that (purportedly) holds some specific "-ism" belief. If such a group can't be identified, the word is a smoke screen for ignorance or an attempt to drum up support for a program that can't be rationally justified.
Let's take "terrorism". Presumably, this is the program advocated by "terrorists". When we first started hearing the word, it was associated with Al Qaida, whose program wasn't exactly based on "terror" - but rather seemed to be retaliation on the "West" for support of Israel and invasion of the holy land of Saudi Arabia by US Military in the build-up prior to the Gulf War. The word "terrorist" somehow painted Al Qaida as not "fighting fair" -- trying to scare "our side" into somehow giving up our "way of life". The "Terrorist" became the villain in a new mythology.
If Al Qaida had fought with drones, land mines and cluster bombs (like the US), its tactics would have been ordinary slaughter of innocents. The presumed fact that Al Qaida tactics were "terrifying" placed them outside of the normal "rules of War". Nonetheless, America went to war against "terrorism", which makes as much sense as going to war against frustration and anger. However rooted in mythology, the war is real. Actual people are being killed daily.
Very soon, the word "terrorist" was being used to describe any opponent of government who used "unlawful" means. For example, in recently-proposed "anti terror" legislation in Canada, anyone who uses any unlawful means of protest or anyone who supports such action in any way will be subject to the new police powers and corresponding loss of very significant civil rights associated with the fight against terror (for example, being denied the right to board an aircraft). This would presumably include Aboriginals blocking roads to protest Government foot-dragging over treaty rights, student sit-ins protesting fee hikes, wild cat strikes etc. plus anyone who openly sympathizes with such actions.
The point is that these groups have no common ideology. There is no such thing as "terrorism", just the word used to justify reaction of the powerful to any resistance to power. People who use this word are ramping up support trashing civil rights at home and for foreign wars -- the slaughter of innocents who happen to be members of groups resisting power in some way -- innocents who would never self-identify as "terrorists".
"God" is another good example. Oceans of ink have been spilled to describe the attributes of this imaginary entity which must exist because we have a word for it. Again, the situation can be clarified by asking for the group that uses the term -- the group that speaks the term to each other and understands something by it. Of course, there are literally millions of such groups and what they mean by the term (if anything) has little in common from group to group. I will have more to say about this when I discuss "Religion", which is another term that refers to nothing in the real world except some group who self-identifies as holding the opinion that a certain package of myths is very important or perhaps "true".
Similarly, there is no such thing as "Christianity", only groups who self-identify as Christians. Attacks on "Christianity" or any religion always conjure up something that actually exists in some form (most often, the Bible is pictured as what Christians "believe"). However, there is no common doctrinal agreement among "Christians" -- in fact most "Christians" define their "faith" in terms of what they are not. For example, "Bible-believing-Christian" is a code word for a group that does not include Christians that do not base their faith on the rants of American TV Evangelists. "Catholics" are a group of "Christians" with a two thousand year history of defining (sometimes by violent death) those who do not claim to believe whatever the official dogma of the Church happens to be at the time. The point is: The Catholic Church is real and we can speak of this as a collection of real people. It is pointless to discuss their "beliefs" outside of their own mythical world view.
The same applies to Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism. It's always best to narrow the discussion down to an identifiable group that use a common language for their mythology, then talk about the group, not the mythology. This avoids the trap of exchanging views across the 10 mile high wall. On one side of the wall, the mythology is "true". On the other side, it's bullshit. People who hop over the wall from one side to the other simply start speaking the language that people on that side of the wall use.
Ta-Nehisi_Coates writes eloquently on the subject of race, a "thing" that exists entirely in the mind of the beholder but is not something that can be found in Nature. We use words like the "white race", "negro" and "Hispanic" as if such things are real, when, as Coates so eloquently points out, they are words that are used to isolate, then oppress a certain segment of the population. Oppression comes first: race is offered as a way to identify the sub-humans who don't deserve the rights that others enjoy. This kind of talk is so ubiquitous that we need a few examples to jerk us out of seeing race as real. Hitler regarded Jews as a "race" - one that could be compared to a "race" of vermin. The genocide of the Irish by the English (Elisabeth I) was justified by the idea that the Irish were a primitive "race".
Reification is the name for problems that arise when we imagine that a form corresponds to something in the real world in a useful way. All forms are approximations but some are more approximate than others. There is a strong tendency for a form to have a name, which furthers the impression that is somehow real.
Words ending in "-ity" "-ist", "-ain" or "-ism" are generally great examples of references to forms that have no useful correspondence to anything in the real world. Such references can usually be corrected by changing the statement that contains the "-ism" term to refer to the actual group that (purportedly) holds some specific "-ism" belief. If such a group can't be identified, the word is a smoke screen for ignorance or an attempt to drum up support for a program that can't be rationally justified.
Let's take "terrorism". Presumably, this is the program advocated by "terrorists". When we first started hearing the word, it was associated with Al Qaida, whose program wasn't exactly based on "terror" - but rather seemed to be retaliation on the "West" for support of Israel and invasion of the holy land of Saudi Arabia by US Military in the build-up prior to the Gulf War. The word "terrorist" somehow painted Al Qaida as not "fighting fair" -- trying to scare "our side" into somehow giving up our "way of life". The "Terrorist" became the villain in a new mythology.
If Al Qaida had fought with drones, land mines and cluster bombs (like the US), its tactics would have been ordinary slaughter of innocents. The presumed fact that Al Qaida tactics were "terrifying" placed them outside of the normal "rules of War". Nonetheless, America went to war against "terrorism", which makes as much sense as going to war against frustration and anger. However rooted in mythology, the war is real. Actual people are being killed daily.
Very soon, the word "terrorist" was being used to describe any opponent of government who used "unlawful" means. For example, in recently-proposed "anti terror" legislation in Canada, anyone who uses any unlawful means of protest or anyone who supports such action in any way will be subject to the new police powers and corresponding loss of very significant civil rights associated with the fight against terror (for example, being denied the right to board an aircraft). This would presumably include Aboriginals blocking roads to protest Government foot-dragging over treaty rights, student sit-ins protesting fee hikes, wild cat strikes etc. plus anyone who openly sympathizes with such actions.
The point is that these groups have no common ideology. There is no such thing as "terrorism", just the word used to justify reaction of the powerful to any resistance to power. People who use this word are ramping up support trashing civil rights at home and for foreign wars -- the slaughter of innocents who happen to be members of groups resisting power in some way -- innocents who would never self-identify as "terrorists".
"God" is another good example. Oceans of ink have been spilled to describe the attributes of this imaginary entity which must exist because we have a word for it. Again, the situation can be clarified by asking for the group that uses the term -- the group that speaks the term to each other and understands something by it. Of course, there are literally millions of such groups and what they mean by the term (if anything) has little in common from group to group. I will have more to say about this when I discuss "Religion", which is another term that refers to nothing in the real world except some group who self-identifies as holding the opinion that a certain package of myths is very important or perhaps "true".
Similarly, there is no such thing as "Christianity", only groups who self-identify as Christians. Attacks on "Christianity" or any religion always conjure up something that actually exists in some form (most often, the Bible is pictured as what Christians "believe"). However, there is no common doctrinal agreement among "Christians" -- in fact most "Christians" define their "faith" in terms of what they are not. For example, "Bible-believing-Christian" is a code word for a group that does not include Christians that do not base their faith on the rants of American TV Evangelists. "Catholics" are a group of "Christians" with a two thousand year history of defining (sometimes by violent death) those who do not claim to believe whatever the official dogma of the Church happens to be at the time. The point is: The Catholic Church is real and we can speak of this as a collection of real people. It is pointless to discuss their "beliefs" outside of their own mythical world view.
The same applies to Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism. It's always best to narrow the discussion down to an identifiable group that use a common language for their mythology, then talk about the group, not the mythology. This avoids the trap of exchanging views across the 10 mile high wall. On one side of the wall, the mythology is "true". On the other side, it's bullshit. People who hop over the wall from one side to the other simply start speaking the language that people on that side of the wall use.
Ta-Nehisi_Coates writes eloquently on the subject of race, a "thing" that exists entirely in the mind of the beholder but is not something that can be found in Nature. We use words like the "white race", "negro" and "Hispanic" as if such things are real, when, as Coates so eloquently points out, they are words that are used to isolate, then oppress a certain segment of the population. Oppression comes first: race is offered as a way to identify the sub-humans who don't deserve the rights that others enjoy. This kind of talk is so ubiquitous that we need a few examples to jerk us out of seeing race as real. Hitler regarded Jews as a "race" - one that could be compared to a "race" of vermin. The genocide of the Irish by the English (Elisabeth I) was justified by the idea that the Irish were a primitive "race".
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