Magic Words

“Felony” -

So lets start with something easy. Say you put a flyer in your neighbor’s mailbox. This violates the Mailbox Restriction Law, passed in 1934, and you are now a “felon”.

Lets say you decide to watch some movies for free through the use of a VPN and torrent service, you’re now a “felon”.

Okay, lets say you get in a fight with someone, and during or before the fight you say “I’m going to kill you asshole!” - this event, traditionally called “a fight with some heated words” is transmuted into “aggravated assault”, and becomes “felony”.

Another common “felony” would be taking some liberal interpretations of tax deductions. This is transmuted into “tax fraud” and is a “felony”.

Or, say a dad lets his son drink a few beers. This is transmuted into “supplying alcohol to a minor”, that’s a “felony”.

“Sin” -

“Sin” works the same way. You may find cheating on one’s wife, stealing from your neighbor, or saying nasty things about your parents bad things to do.

But adding to these acts “sin”, amplifies the act beyond how you would normally feel of it. Through the use of “sin”, these distasteful and rotten acts suddenly have god and eternity involved.

The Purpose of Magic Words -

The purpose of magic words is clearly not to accurately describe what a person did and/or is likely to do. When you call someone a “felon”, that is something so broad that the term doesn’t really tell you much. Are they a serial killer or did they stick a flyer in their neighbor’s mailbox? When someone is called a “sinner” - okay did they have lustful thoughts about another man’s wife, did they shortchange someone, or did they rape and murder a 12 year old?

One thing that’s important to recognize is that these systems of magic words don’t have to be pre-planned by anyone. A Christian might call you a “sinner” over some trivial, technical “sin”, just because he doesn’t like you. But now he has this “sin” thing he can beat you over the head with. And he has linguistically lumped you in with child rapists.

If a man who calls you “felon” or “sinner” simply wished to convey what you actually did, he’d just describe what you actually did. He may say something like “he illegally advertised through the postal system, a felony” or “he provided a restricted substance to a minor” if pressed, but even then, he’s still trying to use magic words.

The Modern Suite -

“Racism” - or any other “bad ism”. Like with “sin”, there’s a whole backstory, a whole caution that the world will fall into chaos if you don’t ruthlessly stamp out “badism”.

“I don’t much care for black people.”

Now this may be a bit more difficult for men-in-time, but certainly you must know that, for most of human existence, such a statement was never considered evil.

Of course “you know better” because of the whole “backstory”. The whole story arc of the sacred tribulation of the negro, buttressed by the impenetrable authority of the Per Ankh of your place and time, is obviously not going to be challenged in a short post like this.

You have a backstory that is compelling to the sensibilities common of your place and time. That’s fine. They had “sin”, you have “racism”.

It’s possible that this pattern of archonic authorities, gripping backstories and magic words, while common (universal?) through all humanity, does not mean that the particular religion which utilizes these things is necessarily false.

All the things you believe about the races of man (or their nonexistence), and the sacred tribulations, could all be true - and gripping onto patterns of “social truth” (authorities, narrative, magic words) is just a way of advancing a thing that is actually true (the whole narrative).

After all, if these things mechanisms of “social truth” are indeed universal, how else would something which is actually true be advanced?

Fair enough. You could still be correct - even though such mechanisms of “social truth” have never been correct before, all of the big religions (theistic and “political religions” or “ideologies”) always end up being ejected for some new “social truth”. So ultimately, only one of them can be correct, so it’s probably not yours. The same argument against theistic religions, which is that at most, only one can be correct, applies to political religion as well.

It’s as though the factors that cause something to become a “social truth” are to a large degree independent of that thing’s actual truth. But there’s a first time for anything though!

But the point here is that at least one of the simpler mechanisms of “social truth” - magic words, are, I guess, just are what they are. There’s no real refutation of this mechanism, since once explicitly recognized, they obviously constitute a fallacy.

The fact a man has the (to you) incorrect view of black people, or jews, or hispanics, or gays, (he must have a positive view of them), is not made MORE incorrect or evil via the tagged magic word “racism”.

So you ought not have some visceral react to “racism” any more than “felony” or “sin”. To the extent you do, you are suffering from temporal provincialism.