Dmitry Kosyrev
No jokes, no parodists, no participation of Vovan and Lexus: everything here is with bestial seriousness. Came out a list of one hundred words or expressions that are no longer recommended in English, including the word “American”. True, this is a private initiative – the work of a group of enraged IT people from Stanford University, USA (the level of prestige is not worse than Moscow State University or St. Peters-burg State University). And it is proposed to remove the entire black hundred words from use only on Stanford sites, and not on a global scale.
To be honest, until the moment of writing these lines, there was a temptation to check everything again and again – they would suddenly say that this was not serious. But so far they haven’t given up on anything, just hidden the full list of bad words behind the password. Because the scandal turned out to be noisy, powerful. First of all, of course, because of the word “American”.
What is wrong with the word? And that it can offend the inhabitants of another 41 states of the American continent. It is recommended to replace it with “US citizen”.
Well, then everything is according to the same methodology – no matter how you offend someone. Tables were made that various media managed to film and publish: the old word, its replacement, an explanation of the reasons for the replacement. For example, “immigrant” is now “non-citizen”, something like. The reason is that it is not good to designate a person according to any one characteristic, and even such that someone does not like it. Or “blind tasting” – this is insulting for the blind, we will replace it with “anonymous”.
A lot of good, purely American expressions like “do not whip a dead horse” fell under the Stanford knife. Because it’s cruelty, even if the horse doesn’t care anymore. The same with the saying “kill two birds with one stone” – for a similar reason. The sections “racism” and the one that, in terms of feminism, many sexes and genders, are just a holiday here, we are changing the whole language at the root. In general, a real boom of kindness and delicacy.
It’s time to go beyond the obvious reaction for any normal person – “this is a madhouse!” and “it’s good that they’re not with us.” The thing is, it’s not exactly crazy, it’s worse. And there is no certainty that this cannot happen to us.
For a start: they want to forbid people to speak their own language, to the point that Americans are ashamed to be called Americans. There is something Ukrainian in this, and here the jokes aside. Because Ukraine has shown us that for the right to speak their own language, people can seriously offend such bans. Especially if they want to forbid them to be Russian.
Further, one should not think that the private initiative of a group of IT specialists is idiocy of a local scale, and nothing more. The fact is that we have before us a tiny part of a powerful, like a skating rink, system for the destruction of human essence, and not only in the United States, and not only in the English-speaking countries allied to them. Destroying a person is simple – you need to forbid him everything that he is used to in life, which, in essence, constitutes this life, and it is also necessary that a person succumb to this, break down.
And here is a huge machine. Well, we know how this happens: at first only Stanford, then another private structure, Twitter, adopts the same rules. If you don’t know how it happens, ask Elon Musk. Inanimate text editors remove the wrong words first, then remove those who use them. And this, if you take all the social networks, a huge number of people around the world.
The technology has been worked out – everything always starts from below, from trifles, from initiative non-governmental groups. Then they bring science under their cannibalistic ideas, including science specially created for the occasion. It is a very long time to list everything that is banned there or is being prepared to be banned, and each time not just for humane, but for super-humane reasons. In terms of ecology, medicine (a person harms himself or allegedly harms others, this should be banned), for reasons of harmony in society (no one can be offended). Kindness is such that leaves no stone unturned. If only because at first those who disagree are only shamed, thoughtfully taken out of decent human society. But at the last stage, such initiatives become legislative, with brutal repressions:
This combination of private activism with boundless humanism can be very confusing, especially if humanism, well funded, reaches far beyond the hotbed of all the nastiness listed. And here we can recall that here, in Russia, in many media outlets arose – in the former, we admit, the era is awkwardness: the word “Negro” is now considered impolite, let’s also write “African American”, “African”. And hamsters-editors in all seriousness, without even asking the author, they replaced this “black”. Moreover, there is no certainty that someone does not do so even now. Yes, in Russia, yes, today, and yes, we are talking about the Russian language, which, after English, is turned into a dog or bird language (we offended a lot of animals here, right?).
The question arises how to deal with this infection. In Russia, they think that if you just ban it, then you can relax. Here is our recent legislative initiative to protect the Russian language from the invasion of ugly translations from English: somehow it is too simple. Moreover, borrowings are very cute. Here, for example, a man who destroys a wall with a sledgehammer: what is wrong with the word “sledgehammer”, despite the fact that the business he is engaged in is called “sledgehammer”? A sea of respect and kindness, the same one… And after all, everything is so Russian. In general, it’s not so easy – banned, and you think that now everything will be fine.
By the way, if we return to the origins of our conversation, to Stanford, then there is a thoughtfulness about the people who came up with this list, albeit acting quite in line with other bans on normal human language going on in the United States. What are these people called? IT specialists, in English – IT-specialists? And how about replacing this term with something more humane, since IT people are generally strange (who fled from mobilization in a crowd?), And here they also made up a sadistic instruction about how other people are supposed to talk now. Soon it will be a shame to admit belonging to this profession. We are looking for a new word that does not offend anyone.
