Language as a Virus to infect humanity

[infinity]

He might take a while to get his point across, but when he starts getting his point across, he does it very clearly and well.

Is Language a Virus?
https://youtu.be/8dNsI3cp6-k

[Ilkka]

How convenient that I was thinking about this language thing earlier today. I was imagining a scenario where I had been in a coma for many years and when I woke up the nurse was speaking russian and then came back with another nurse who was speaking finnish, then I said that she must be one of the few left who speak finnish and I thought that "great our language has been exitnct".

Anyways it was just a quick thought scene that I thought of. Maybe language is a virus, especially Enlish languge, since it is so wide spread. I mean if you go to in any country in Europe there are people who speak english as their second or third language, I know because it is being taught in Finland as practically third language after Swedish, however I can't speak swedish only know few words, I dont like the way it sounds that was the main reason I didn't keep it up like I did english. Oh and all the movies and series as in entertainment comes in English language mostly. Some good ones from other countries but the stuff they mainly show us in Finland is from Northern America and England. All the games they make in our country as well are made into English language. The universal language.

In some cases it is not a good thing, on others it is a good thing. However I think that still we should keep our "fatherlands" as our own culturally and historically of course.

[daniel]

I think that guy missed his calling... he should be working for FedEx!

Cute that PBS engages in NLP... go to 57 seconds in, where they show the photo of Emile Cioran and the quote that is behind this video, "one does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland - and no other."

Now how many people heard the bells ringing in the background, to make you think, "oh, that quote rings a bell!"

I do not consider "language" to be a virus, but a living organism that can get infected by "language viruses," such as slang and chat acronyms. The virus then disrupts the ability to communicate, just like a sore throat with influenza. And these days, we seem to be at epidemic proportions.

[Ilkka]

I do not consider "language" to be a virus, but a living organism that can get infected by "language viruses," such as slang and chat acronyms. The virus then disrupts the ability to communicate, just like a sore throat with influenza. And these days, we seem to be at epidemic proportions.

YES! This is so true I kinda hate when people invent new and ever stupider slang words, even more worse is when it is used so much out there, you can hear every stupid slang word and be like "c'mon use the original words for *beep* sakes".

[deepfsh]

he should be working for FedEx!

In a Ferrari ...

Now how many people heard the bells ringing in the background, to make you think, "oh, that quote rings a bell!"

I had to put the volume quite high to hear it. It sounds like the alarm sound on the mobile phone.

Cute that PBS engages in NLP...

The first thing I noticed was the guy talking very fast and many fast-changing photos in the background, asking myself if that was really necessary - I assume the video was aimed at younger generations (who also like to play videogames).

The next thing was the topic itself which is based on a videogame (released in Sept 2015), specifically at its main villain Skull Face (wears a hat, a clear reference to mobsters) who “commands the CIA covert unit turned renegade – a paramilitary organisation called XOF – that developed a bioterrorism plot to kill everyone who speak English”.* According to the presenter, Skull Face wants to destroy the English language and bring the world into chaos, which would “ultimately return cultures and people corrupted by the global lingua franca of English to their former integrity, by also ushering in a world united by a different common tongue – nuclear weapons”.

Since we’re dealing with fiction, logic doesn’t really matter here. I think what matters is to flood our cultures/minds with certain information or concepts, e.g. bad West, rogue Intel groups fighting the “evil” US/Western government, terrorist groups, danger of nuclear attacks (the media are full of it lately) etc. It seems this videogame is one of many involved in propaganda against the US/Western hegemony.

The same type of propaganda (just reversed) was also used in the videogame Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, in which “the Russian Federation continues its invasion of the U.S., as well as Europe, including England, France and Germany”[1] – BRICS vs the West?

*You can see the “skull face” mask (worn also by Bond) with a hat and a cigar in the opening scene of James Bond's Spectre, which was released in October, and the Intel group gone rogue was the main theme of the last Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, released in July. Are these just coincidences? It seems the spooks are recycling the same stuff, flooding us with certain information so it can sink well into our subconscious by repeating it again and again.

I do not consider “language” to be a virus, but a living organism that can get infected by "language viruses,"

I would say the language can act as a “virus” perhaps in terms of mirror neurons.

But what I find interesting about the concept of language being a virus is contained in the following quote from the presenter:

It’s possible that Skull Face happens to be a fan of Beat novelist and renowned substance abuser William S. Burroughs, who in his 1970 essay Electronic Revolution famously declares language is a virus - pretty literally. He says this is not an allegorical comparison; Western languages are in point of fact actual language virus mechanisms. The language virus, he says, has infected humanity for its own survival, but there are side effects, an unconscious response to linguistic cues. Burroughs focuses on highly conspiratorial stuff, like inciting riots [...] Reality, Burroughs says, is produced by the language virus inside the host. To Skull Face, the subjective reality produced by English is a sickness, awful, and perhaps more virulent than other languages [...] Skull Face says English is sucking minds dry.

William Burroughs is supposedly “a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, and he is considered to be ‘one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th century’”[2]. Since he has been exposed (possibly) as an Intel agent by Mathis in his paper From Theosophy to the Beat Generation, I would interpret his “language is a virus” concept as a reference to (insidious) cultural propaganda, heavily promoted by the Anglo-Americans, therefore, in this context, English has been really “sucking our minds dry”.

To sum up, we have a rogue CIA group headed by Skull Face (a concept we saw recently in UK Spectre and US Mission Impossible), whose philosophy could be related to a (probable) US Intel propagandist that (possibly actually) talks about the spread of (Western) propaganda via language, thus infecting other cultures around the world.