Book excerpt – ‘Filters Against Folly’ by Garrett Hardin

Language no doubt began as straight description of the world, but it soon grew to encompass the indirect approaches to irony, sarcasm, and contractual conditionals. To understand what is meant, one often has to be able to hear two languages: language in the ordinary sense, and the unspoken language that tells you how to “hear” the spoken. The second “language” is often called “meta language.”

An important accomplishment of the literary artist is his ability to make readers “hear” unspoken meta-language. Nothing like irony is to be found in the literature of science. The loss of piquancy is compensated by a gain in precision.

Beyond communication, language has two functions: to promote thought, and to prevent it. The thought prevention function of language is most obvious in statements made by promoters bent on thwarting the law.

Example – The public relation problem of “massage parlors”. A non-euphemistic label would provoke trouble with the law, so one ingenious owner of a parlor in Manhattan Times Square, named his facility the “Fellowship for Human Happiness”, incorporating it under the New York State Religious Corporation Law. By defining it as a religious institution the owner escaped certain taxes. The verbal camouflage, had it been too successful, could have interfered with attracting the trade the owner wanted, so corrective leaflets were handed out on the street extolling the services offered by the ‘church’. The male customer was invited to “be captivated by your own personal, glamorous tranquility angel in the seclusion of our temple.” The disguise escaped legal challenge for more than two years.

The wish to escape debate disguises itself under a multitude of verbal forms: infinity, non-negotiable, never, forever, irresistible, immovable, and infinite. All these words have the effect of moving discussion out of the numerate realm, where it belongs and into a wasteland of pure literacy, where counting and measuring are repudiated. It would be reasonable for readers and auditors to demand a frank acknowledgment of the operational intent of the users of such sonorous verbiage, but the demand would surely be met only with a multiplication of more innumerable words, for the following reason.

We humans are egoistic animals, each of us wants to win arguments. Each of us want to escape opposition. But if I openly reveal my egotistical desire to you, I may evoke a similar assertion from you….stalemate! However, if I can make you think I am talking about the properties of things outside of my egoistic self – about infinite quantity of non-personal things – I may succeed in keeping you from perceiving the egoistical base on which my argument is built.

He who thinks language is only a form of communication is badly deceived. Above all else, language is action: it serves the demands of the ego whether it is used to promote, or prevent, thought.

Poetry is least dangerous when the typographical arrangement of words reveals the authors poetic intent. It is most dangerous when the argument is cast in the form of prose, in sentences heavily infected with the acknowledged poetic claims of non-negotiability.

Example – We think the world would be richer, more beautiful, and better off if we succeed in preserving most of the species.

The universe would be incomplete without man; but it would also be incomplete without the smallest trans-microscopic creature that dwells beyond our conceitful eyes and knowledge.

Man’s Place in the Universe by John Muir

Who among us regrets that the world is now more “incomplete” by the elimination of small pox virus? Extinctions caused by human activities present a snarl of ethical, aesthetic, practical, and political problems. Conflicting goals have to be balanced one against another. Whatever means we are tempted to use, we must be wary of the poetic approach. Rhetoric like Muir’s may give one a wonderful “oceanic feeling”, but this feeling is more likely to prevent than to facilitate advances in understanding. It is when ecological rhetoric is most beautiful that we must be most on our guard.