What is going on? Are we all retarded? First I would like to shut down all you politically correct idiots out their by saying “retarded” is not a bad word. The concept of Political correctness is asinine and is destroying proper communication. But that is a rant for another day. I ask this question because I feel I have sufficient evidence it’s true.
Many of you reading are bloggers, and in fact have a blog right here on WordPress.com. So the proofreading features on the site are probably no stranger to you. If you are not a blogger, WordPress has a proofreading feature that goes beyond spelling, but can look for and suggest corrections for many things, such as Passive Voice, Bias Language, clichés, Redundant Phrases, and a bunch of other things. Some can be really useful, and as I have discovered, others are just sad.
One is called Complex Expressions. I thought this to mean that if I used a sentence structure that was more complicated than it needed to be it would tell me and suggest a simplified structure, but I was wrong. It literally dumbs down your language. Complex Expression actually means a word or phrase that might be hard for the reader to understand. As if our spoken and written vocabulary wasn’t shrinking enough, we have a dumbification process. Of course it’s not WordPress’ fault, they are just providing a needed service to a culture that no longer value intellect and therefore has to communicate with as simple of words as possible. Again it’s not the feature itself that I am outraged by, it is the simple fact that it needs to exist.
Let me just clarify what I mean; If you were to read an average book from twenty years ago, or better yet take ten books from twenty years ago, and examine the vocabulary range in the vernacular of its time, you will see that in just twenty years the number of words the average person utilizes to communicate has shrunk, and if you go back one hundred years you can see it is at a fraction of what it was. Because of this, the older generation uses words that might be a little too “complex” for the modern vernacular. That is to say, there has become a communication gap between those of a time of a larger speaking vocabulary and those of the modern era that abbreviate everything so it will fit into 140 character messages, limiting not only how something is said, but what can be said. And just how stupid have we gotten?
The proofreading feature that helps to avoid so-called “Complex Expressions” suggests thing like:
What I used———What it suggested
Determine————-Decide
Individual————-Person
Observe—————-See
Utilize——————Use
Achieve—————-Do
Encounter————-Meet
WHAT THE FUCK!
If you are reading something and you get confused by the word “achieve” or the word “individual” is just too complicated for you, then you are an utter failure as a human being.
This is my evidence, the fact that WordPress implemented this tool, only shows that it is needed in the first place. There are really people out their that are not only incapable of understanding words like “determine” or “encounter” but society is not encouraging them to learn, or expand their minds, it is catering to this diminishing of the language.
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less advanced in mental, physical, or social development than is usual for one’s age.
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informaloffensivevery foolish or stupid.“in retrospect, it was a totally retarded idea”
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delay or hold back in terms of progress, development, or accomplishment.“his progress was retarded by his limp”
synonyms: delay, slow down, slow up, hold back, hold up, set back, postpone, put back, detain, decelerate; More
| antonyms: | accelerate |
Lets read that together, I want to focus on the root word, “Retard” as in to retard something or someone. 1. delay or hold back in terms of progress, development, or accomplishment. synonyms: slow down, hold back, hinder, obstruct…
This behavior, this trend, this action, whatever you want to call it, the shrinking of the vocabulary is literally RETARDING the English language and everyone who speaks it! For Gods sake if you don’t know a word, trying to use some contextual evidence and if that doesn’t work, Google it! Words have power, they are what separates us from any other animal, they allow us to articulate emotion, thought, and all the complexities of the human condition. Do not cater to the laziness of the stupid or ignorant, force them to be on par, demand pride in careful crafting of phenoms and morpheme.
I can recall another example of this perpetuation of retardation; A school teacher who taught ESL was fired for content in his personal blog. His blog was about language and was geared toward helping his students, so even though it was his personal blog, he encouraged his students to read it. The Principle of the school read a particular post that talked about Homophones.
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each of two or more words having the same pronunciation but different meanings, origins, or spelling, e.g., new and knew.
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each of a set of symbols denoting the same sound or group of sounds.
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Education Blogger Fired for Writing About Homophones and Confusing Homophobes
click head line to see article.
The principle felt that the word would lead people to associate the school with Homosexuality and thus fired the teacher. It is unclear if the principle in fact knew the definition of the word, and was simple foreseeing someone else making the misunderstanding, or if he himself misunderstood. The bottom line is, he does not condone the teaching of homophones at his school, and does not want his children learning about them. This is a horrific example of the deliberate and intentional sabotage of language, communication, articulation and overall intellect. It is an attack on these values, and the termination of this teacher is equivalent to terrorism, terrorism to progress, to knowledge and to human potential.
Are we all retarded? I don’t know, but we are well on our way.
The Man In The Hat 