IS ENGLISH "A LANGUAGE OF SHOPKEEPERS AND PIRATES?"

TOWARDS AN ANARCHIST LINGUISTICS!

Hey Folks!

As you know, Nevermore Media is committing to saving the world, and part of our plan is to invent an entirely new fusion of anarchist and spiritual philosophy, something that we call “anarcho-perennialism” or “Neo-Traditionalism”.

This effort began over ten years away, when the great Paul Cudenec (may he live forever) published a book called The Anarchist Revelation, which argues that we must work “towards an anarchist metaphysics”.

In an essay called Towards an Anarchist Metaphysics, he writes:

I suspect there will be someone out there who has taken a glance at the title of this article and has not even reached as far as this opening paragraph, convinced that the phrase is meaningless and that there can never be any such thing as an anarchist metaphysics.

This may be because they are attached to a very practical (and limited) vision of anarchism as nothing more than the programme of a specific political movement, created out of thin air in the 19th century.

It may be also because they see “metaphysics” through the filter of a secondary use of the word, as laid out by the dictionary in front of me, in which it is applied “loosely and vaguely” to anything abstruse, abstract, transcendental, occult, supernatural or magical.

But the primary dictionary definition of metaphysics is “the branch of philosophy which investigates the first principles of nature and thought”.

This is obviously not something that could be incompatible with any political philosophy. Indeed, I would say it is indispensable! Without understanding, through metaphysics, the first principles of nature and thought, how could we go on to develop the secondary principles of a political philosophy?

I will be arguing here that metaphysics has to be the foundation stone of any coherent anarchist world-view. An anarchism which lacks that foundation also lacks all philosophical solidity and (as is tragically the case today) risks being swept back and forth by the shifting tides of fashionable (non-anarchist) opinion.

He then goes on to argue that anarchist must return to first principles, which is a cause that I have taken up with gusto. I have written extensively about how the mythos of modern man is invisible to him, and that a big part of the cause of human liberation in freeing ourselves from our cultural assumptions about “the way of the world.”

Along the way, I have become aware that one cannot really speak about first principles without thinking about consciousness and language. After all, any statement that we can make about reality depends upon language. But speakers of different languages will perceive reality differently, because the language we speak trains our brains to organize information differently.

Iroquoian languages do not make the same distinction between the words for “sibling” and “cousin”, for instance, which possibly lead Haudenosaunee people to perceive members of their own tribe as more closely related than we would. Could this partly explain the ethno-nationalism that is characteristic of the Haudenosaunee to this day? Perhaps they are quick to defend their common interests because they see themselves as part of one big family?

Could the cultural anarchism of the Iroquois have something to do with this? I think so. And that’s why I think there’s a need for anarchist linguistics.

I recently wrote something that compared how European languages treat family relationships differently than Iroquoian ones do.

WHAT PART OF “ALL MY RELATIONS” DO WHITE PEOPLE NOT UNDERSTAND?

I suggested that a general feeling of solidarity with one’s tribes might be caused by their language not differentiating between siblings and cousins in the same way that English does.

When indigenous people say “All Our Relations”, they are referring to a general sense of well-wishing towards all beings. After all, who doesn’t wish well for their relatives? This would obviously be a useful concept to refer back to if one happened to wish to live in peace with one’s neighbours.

I think that many Euro-Canadians are cynical when they hear references to all people being brothers and sisters, not only because it sounds like silly hippie idealism, but because it doesn’t quite seem true in English, semantically.

“Yeah, yeah, we’re ALL brothers and sisters, sure, whatever”, I think people are thinking, “But really, I’ve got one sister. Her name’s Cindy, she’s married to a guy named Jim, and she lives in Timmins, Ontario.”

My question is this: does the English predispose people to see things in certain way?

Put in that way, the answer is a clear yes. For example, the language we speak literally causes us to break the colour spectrum in different ways. You would literally see the world differently if you didn’t speak English, because you would literally see colour differently.

LANGUAGE IS AN ORGAN OF PERCEPTION

Language is not merely a means of communication. It is an organ of perception. Learning the words red, blue, and green cause your brain to interpret reality in a certain way. That means that the language that we use shape our experience. So what are the political ramifications of this?

Jean Weir, the Italian anarchist who translated Alfredo Bonnano’s works into English, wrote of the struggle of capturing the spirit of Bonnano’s passionate writing in English, which she called “a language of shopkeepers and pirates”.

Now, I will absolutely defend the English literary tradition, which I think ranks among the world’s greatest, but I think that Jean Weir was onto something.

After, the history of England involves a lot of killing and raping involving different ethno-linguistic groups. The original people of England were likely matriarchal Goddess-worshipping pagan, but they were invaded by hostile foreigners in wave after wave. The Aryans, the Celts, the Angles, the Saxons, the Vikings, the French, and the list goes on.

So, think about what that means. That means English is the result of a mishmash hashed out between different linguistic groups who were hostile to each other - a pidgin.

Take some time to think about what that would have meant in practice.

For one thing, there’s a lot of elegance lost when one seeks the lowest common denominator between speakers different languages. If a Filipino and a Frenchman both speak English as a second language, they will be able to communicate, but does anyone think that the quality of their communication will be as good as that of two native English speakers? Of course not! Even if they are both extremely fluent in their second language, they will be capable of less artful communication in it, because they will still be thinking in their native language. They will be using their primary language as their “organ of perception” and their second as a means of communication.

Furthermore, there’s the fact that speakers of different languages often had different class interests and religious affiliations, meaning that it is quite likely they often hated each other.

I think everyone speaks more harshly towards people they don’t like, don’t they? Is a certain harshness and hostility built into the English language?

“What harshness and hostility?” you might be thinking, “The real problem with English these days is that people are too polite - they won’t call a spade a spade.”

Well, I hate to break it to you, but English-style politeness probably isn’t a sign of civilization so much as a sign of domestication. In a society where there is one ethno-linguistic group which rules over another ethno-linguistic group, which happened numerous times in the history of England, the subjugated class might well learn that it’s unwise to be impolite, mightn’t they?

One illuminating fact is that English-speakers, unlike speakers of French or Spanish, do not have a familiar form of addressing someone. It’s all formal.

Let me explain: In French and Spanish, different verb tenses are used when addressing people formally and informally. The important thing to note here is that people used the informal conjugation with their family members and friends, meaning that informality connotes a degree of intimacy.

Most people don’t know this, but English does have a way to address people informally, but it’s fallen from use. The English words “thou” and “thy” are equivalent to “tu” in French and Spanish, but they are now rarely used outside of a literary context.

“O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?” versus “O Romeo, Romeo, where are you, Romeo?:

When Juliet asks: “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?”, she was using the familiar tense, which is surely more appropriate for romance than the formal you. Indeed, even to our modern ears, the phrase “Oh, Romeo, Romeo, where are you, Romeo?” just doesn’t seem nearly as romantic.

So, it seems that somewhere over the course of the centuries, the informal mode of addressing people disappeared from the English language, and everyone began referring to their loved ones in the same time they would address a soldier or their feudal lords.

How sad is that?

In fact, now when people think of the words “thou” and “thy”, their first associations are likely with the ten commandments of God, the Supreme Patriarch.

But when the Bible says “Thou Shalt Not Kill”, God is addressing us as a parent would address their children, not as a king would address a subject. Most people don’t know that, but it’s semantically significant.

Of course, in this example we’re talking about the English translation from ancient Hebrew, and I don’t now how ancient Hebrew treats familiarity. Nevertheless, I think all this stuff does matter, because it influences how we perceive reality. If you wanted to create the polar opposite of “All Our Relations”, wouldn’t that be a language in which no one is addressed as family?

That language exists, and it’s called English.

“VOULEZ-VOUS COUCHER AVEC MOI?” VERSUS “VEUX-TU COUCHER AVEC MOI?”

In French, there are two ways to address someone - as tu or as vous. Because verbs are conjugated differently if they describe the action that one person is doing versus describing something that multiple people are doing, the choice of tu versus vous is significant because it changes the meaning of the sentence.

Technically, tu is singular and vous is plural, and whene the two words are used this way they are semantically useful. After all, the point of pronouns is to save time. If you don’t have to specify whether you’re speaking to one person specifically or multiple people at the same time, that’s a win.

Let’s imagine a situation in which two students show up late for class, and the teacher says:

A: “Tu n’arrives jamais a l’heure.”

B: “Vous n’arrivez jamais a l’heure.”

Both would be translated into English as “You never arrive on time”, but the two French phrases mean two different thing things. In example A, the teacher is making a comment about only one of the students, where in example B he is referring to both of them. If one of the two students really is habitually tardy and the other isn’t, the context of the situation will make it clear who is being singled out.

This might seem like a small thing, but it’s actually quite important. After all, pronouns are all about context. They stand in for nouns when context makes it obvious which person, place or thing is being referred to. They make communication easier, and different languages treat them differently. Grasping these differences is key to learning a different language.

This is a subject that I’ve covered before, actually.

WHAT IS “THE FORMAL SINGULAR”?

Yet there is another use of vous in French - the “Formal Singular”. In French, the pronoun vous, with which verb conjugations must agree, is also used to address in the singular. This is known as “the Formal Singular”.

If your boss complimented you, for instance, you might say "Vous êtes très gentil" rather than “Tu es tres gentil.”

Note that the verb conjugations are different. Technically, “the Formal Singular” is simply an incorrect usage of the second-person plural. It is semantically meaningful, however, because it encodes information about the relationship between the speaker and the person they are addressing.

In different parts of the French-speaking world, tu and vous are used differently. In some places, younger people might address all people of their parent’s and grandparents’ generation with vous, and it would be considered rude to address them as tu. In other places, such as Quebec, the formal address is now used mostly for teachers and employers. The default is tu.

I’ve give you a few examples. If you wanted to tell your spouse that you loved him or her, you would always say “Je t’aime” and never “Je vous aime”. But when the working girls of La Rue Pigale would proposition prospective customers, they would ask “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?” (Would you like to sleep with me tonight?) If they would have been using the informal or familiar form of address, they would have said “Veux-tu coucher avec moi ce soir?”

Do you see my point? The informal tense is used with people one knows well, whereas the formal is used with people with whom one is less intimate.

It’s not hard to imagine how this convention developed. After all, we’re talking about languages that developed under feudalism, and the basic idea is that there’s one way to speak to superiors and another way to speak with one’s equals.

This is further suggested by the fact that tu is singular and vous is plural. After all, when addressing a soldier, you aren’t really addressing him. You’re addressing him and whoever gives him his orders.

Think about. Imagine you’re a medieval peasant and you’re talking to your spouse. You might say: “I’m going up the hill and over the stream to collect firewood. See you an hour or so!”

Now imagine that whilst talking up the hill, you’re accosted by the local Sheriff and troop of his goons, who suspiciously demand to know where you’re going. This Sheriff sort of speaks your language and you sort of speak his, but you belong to different ethno-linguistic groups.

You’re going to address the latter very differently than your spouse, aren’t you? In the first example, you would use tu verbs and the second you would use vous. Furthermore, you might find that in addressing him, the plural version of you would often be interchangeable with the singular.

For example:

“I didn’t know you (i.e. you + your goons) were in the area.”

“I don’t mean to disrespect you (i.e. you + your goons).”

“When did you (i.e. you + the institution you represent) announce the new rules?”

“Would you (i.e. you + your goons) please let me go? I’ve got kids!”

It’s very unlikely that your French teacher told you this, but vous verb conjugations, when used in the singular, come from feudal social conventions in which people were expected to address their superiors in specific ways in order to acknowledge their higher social status.

The feudal origins of this verb tense are more evident in Spanish, in which the equivalent of vous is usted, which is derived from “vuestra merced”, which means “your mercy”.

Yep, mercy. When addressing someone as usted, you are obliquely asking for their mercy. Does the idea of anarchist linguistics make more sense now?”

Chat GPT explains:

The Spanish pronoun "usted" is used as a formal way of addressing someone, akin to "you" in English when used in a respectful or polite context. The term "usted" is derived from the contraction of "vuestra merced," which means "your grace" or "your mercy." This form of address was historically used to show respect and deference, particularly in the Spanish-speaking world.

Over time, "vuestra merced" was shortened to "usted" and became widely adopted as the standard formal pronoun in Spanish for addressing individuals in a respectful or formal manner, distinguishing it from the informal "tú."

I’M NOT AGAINST “VOUS” BUT I AM AGAINST “USTED”

It is worth nothing that the French vous serves a dual purpose.

Consider the difference between the following two phrases being uttered by a foreman on a job site:

“Can you stop what you’re doing for a minute and listen up?”

“Can y’all stop what you’re doing for a minute and listen up?

If your ear is trained to pick up on the difference between you and y’all, the meaning of these two sentences would be different. Depending on the situation, a given worker might either stop working or not, based on whether context clues made them think the foreman was addressing them specifically or not.

In the case of Spanish, the second person plural is ustedes, not usted. Unlike vous, usted serves no purpose other than to acknowledge that the status of the person you are addressing as your superior.

If there were such a thing as anarchist linguistics, it would probably retain vous and put usted on the chopping block. I can’t really think of any example where using the word usted rather than tu would serve a useful purpose in an anarchist society.

But this isn’t really a critique of the Spanish language. It’s more a critique of the English language. I love a ton of English literature, but I have to say, I think that there’s a reason why an Italian would call English “a language of shopkeepers and pirates”.

I think that English as it exists today is the result of commerce more than anything else. And because commerce has a lot with two with prices, which are agreements between buyers and sellers about the relative value of different items, English assigns value in a way which depends upon the logic of the marketplace.

My specific critique of English is that it is overly-literal, and encourages us to think in terms of “right” (i.e. what I believe), and “wrong” (everything else).

There’s a certain “that’s that”-ness to English which is its Achilles’ hell. It’s kind of hard to describe exactly what I mean, but if you speak French or Spanish, you’ll probably get what I’m saying. English often projects certainty where no certainty exists, and treats opinions about abstractions as objective truths.

The logic it encodes is pure Aristotelianism:

Now, there’s nothing wrong with this way of thinking. It’s very practical, and I suspect the unsentimental practicality of the English language is a big part of the reason why English-speakers ruled the world for so long.

However, I believe that English-speakers often conflate words with what those words represent. This is an argument I have previously made in a critique of anarcho-primitivist philosopher John Zerzan.

THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY

Words are semantic labels which refer to some aspect of a pre-existing reality. They help package information about reality and allow us to share our perceptions with others. But words are not neutral, because languages do contain cultural biases.

This is something that I’ve written about extensively, because I believe that trans ideology is a phenomenon which exposes the fact that many people completely misunderstand the relationship between language and reality.

This is something that I think is more evident to people who are multilingual, because if you speak more than one language you already understand how different words can be used to say the same thing.

For instance, the following three sentences contain the exact same information:

English: “Snow is white.”

Spanish: "La nieve es blanca."

French: "La neige est blanche."

Although the words are different, these three sentences are semantically identical. They are simply three different ways of saying the exact same thing.

And although there is a degree of arbitrariness involved, this arbitrariness is far from limitless. Languages do have rules. It would not be semantically correct to say “snow is black”, because that would be disregarded the social conventions (i.e. rules) which make language intelligible.

This is why I call anti-essentialism “an assault on linguistic intelligibility”.

THE LOGICAL CONCLUSION OF ANTI-ESSENTIALISM IS SOLIPSISM

The belief that a man can become a woman by claiming to be one suggests a belief in the power of words that words do not actually possess.

There is an infinite number of ways to use words to describe reality, but at the end of the day, one is not changing reality through one’s choice of words. The underlying reality that language describes is the energetic matrix within which we all exist. Alan Watts called this “the Ultimate Ground of Being”.

Although it is true that we can only ever speak from our own perspective, it does not follow that everyone’s perspective is equally valid. To suggest that everyone’s perspective is equally valid is to say that there is such thing as objective truth. Now, that would be very convenient for the liars, politicians, and lawyers of the world, but it’s simply not true.

The logical conclusion of postmodernist anti-essentialism is solipsism, in which truth becomes nothing more than a matter of opinion, because the only thing that’s really real is the ego. And there are obvious political implications to solipsism, because one can’t very well create a social movement if one doesn’t even believe that other people are real.

In philosophy, it is exceedingly rare to find anyone who will call themselves a solipsist, because it is so obviously false. To believe that all exists is the self is to believe that one is the cause one’s own existence, which is non-sensical unless you believe that you are God.

If you were God, you would be omnipotent and omniscient, and it’s pretty evident that human beings are neither. It’s a very special type of insanity to believe that you’re all-powerful, and thankfully it’s quite rare.

It’s also easily cured by a swift kick to the head.

Solipsism is mostly used by philosophers to refer to the pseudo-philosophy of people who are delusional. There’s a good reason solipsism is often associated with narcissism - both are highly correlated with mental illness.

At the end of the day, solipsism is an untenable philosophical position, as are the “moral relativism” and “anti-essentialism” of woke postmodernism.

If everyone’s “version of the truth” is equally valid, then “the truth” ceases to be a useful concept.

If everything is true, then nothing is true.

Stay tuned for more instalments of TOWARDS AN ANARCHIST LINGUISTICS!

for the wild,

Crow Qu’appelle