George Orwell’s prophetic essay, “Politics and the English Language,” written after the conclusion of the Second World War, is quite right that the decay of language is connected to the chaotic atrocities perpetrated in the world. Sixty years later, his words are clear and fresh and more relevant than ever. Applied to the current ‘global economic crisis’ and the recent bank ‘bailouts’ going on all over the Western World, we can see that we are being disgracefully lied to by a deeply entrenched capitalist system, which depends on framing the indefensible, horrifying consequences of its existence in a way that is palatable to the people who are on the losing end; that is to say a system which uses vague, obscured language to present current events in terms that protect the international corporate agenda.

From the language used in media, literature on the subject, film and conversation, one would be hard pressed to draw the conclusion that this same economic system is utterly malfunctioning. It is quite directly contributing to a cataclysmic destruction of living systems and the quality of human life on the planet – creating the most epic challenge humanity has ever faced. Even science is challenged by its inability to communicate the problem clearly, bogged down by specialized academic habits of writing and speaking.

The current economic crisis began with a stock market crash in the United States, though a deeper investigation reveals it was debt-spending corporations masquerading their debts as somehow profitable. As governments claimed that the substantial, unprecedented bailout was necessary, it was in turn unthinkable to address the real problem. The guilty word in this case was ‘socialism’, a meaningless concept which in the U.S. must be avoided at all costs. That cost happened to be $700 billion, given to failing, mismanaged corporations and their greedy executives. In fact, the primary reason for the bailout was due to the number of mortgage-payers declaring mass bankruptcy because they could not pay their privatized medical bills and thus could neither be healthy nor keep their homes. Instead of helping real people , in a real way, the U.S. governments McCarthy-esque fear of the word ‘socialism’ kept this fact completely out of the discourse, and it remains unthinkable to the powers that be, and the media outlets, that any money should go to the members of their society that need the money to pay their medical costs. Even speaking of the problem is just as taboo as proposing a sensible solution.

Infotainment, simplistic coverage using fear-based language, biased and one-sided, has been the staple of contemporary news organizations and public relations outfits. However, these institutions are structured in a specific way that enhance their ability to obstruct the truth, to prevent open discussion of the real problems, and thusly their actual solutions. This structure has to do with the way in which language is used.

The lack of nuance in reporting fosters a culture of ignorant polarization where there is ‘good’ and ‘evil’ (various polarities can also represent this, such as the one Orwell points out which is ‘democratic’ and ‘fascist’.) We are to trust anyone whenever general statements are spoken in terms of ‘economists say’ or ‘scientists agree’ – as if all of these thinkers could always be in agreement, or even organized as a collective body!

Propaganda outlets (such as news organizations) are partisan, profit based and self-interested, putting them in the pockets of the capitalist system that is malfunctioning: they are driven to spin the facts with obfuscating language. “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind,” Orwell says. This is going on perhaps in the most extreme way that has ever been seen, with this U.S. bailout being the equivalent of Bush and his elite friends looting the Treasury at the last minute, on his way out of office!

More frighteningly, perhaps these organizations, who so long to mold our vision of the world, can no longer imagine another way to cover the ‘collapse’ of their global economic system. So deeply ingrained its unexamined assumptions are in their minds, that it may as well be etched into the chemical reality of their neurology; the very synapses in their brains might as well be hard-wired to the computers on Wall Street.

It is very important to make a critical distinction between what Orwell’s concept of concision and clarity in language and what the modern media consider concision to be, and how they use it to suppress alternate viewpoints.  Language is infantilized in a fatal conspiracy to dumb the people down, not to question. In some ways, people do not even know how to question, or what to question, anymore. All this on the assumption that people are stupid to begin with and must be talked to like children: a self-fulfilling prophecy. The consequence is a cycle of a societal forgetting, as knowledge becomes undervalued and the methods of learning true things disappear, when they are more direly needed than ever.

The world’s problems are escalating while their actual causes become as unconscious as habit – never addressed because of dead language. Freedom means buying-power, courage means going to war, compassion is lost in shallow new age pop-culture and justice is made into nonsense as glorified ‘captains of industry’ perpetrate and perpetuate every crime man has ever imagined, and likely more.

Humanity, nobility, sacrifice, honor, beauty, community, family, individuality – all so fundamental to both the vitality of civilization and wholeness of the Self – are so very rarely explored outside of fiction.  They become part of an ever-increasing graveyard of buzz words, thrown around so meaninglessly that their definitions are lost while the important concepts they represent – necessary for free thinking – are beaten into submissive uselessness.

The cure against infectious fear is knowledge, and this is especially so in the psychic battleground that is our language and our ability to communicate with one another and think powerful thoughts. We must become alchemists and transmute our confusion into clarity; language is our philosopher’s stone. Symbols and words do not merely persuade others, but free our minds from those very lies and persuasions, in turn.

Orwell suggests that the concerned individual takes up a radical call-to-arms. If we are methodically being coaxed into giving up our opportunity to think for ourselves, we must struggle at the core of our being to reverse this, lest we finally lose the ability to do so.  We must take it upon ourselves, at very least, because foolish language will lead to foolish thought, and that to foolish action.

To think clearly, Orwell basically tells us that we must know the meaning of the words that we use, and must be able to recognize deliberate or habitual obfuscation. When we are told that ‘growth’ is important to economies, we must understand what that growth is, and why we are being told it’s so crucial. The truth is, our generation did not experience the ‘Depression’. The world in those times was very different. We simply can’t make that comparison at all. It is a sensationalist comparison. We are now dealing with an entire global system based on hidden, unsound principles, many of which have never been named nor discussed.

If we speak and write clearly and honestly, ourselves, others will follow our examples. Orwell offers up the notion that “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” This also offers us a grain of hope, and that is that pure language, language that moves the hearts and minds and revitalizes the spirit, can heal the misguided thoughts of a sleep-walking civilization. That is our hope, our first and last hope. It is not the government that needs to be overthrown – it is the media, who holds our people’s language ransom, and all the channels of communication. Without our voice, our pen, our ability to read and write and see, we are lost.