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Words are powerful things.
There is delight in finding a word for the previously unnamed: like “thixotropic,” for the pseudo-liquid, pseudo-solid state of ketchup or mustard, or “Schadenfreude,” for that strange sensation of joy when your friends experience a bit of misfortune.
A similar twinge of joy struck me when I discovered the less positive phenomenon of the thought-terminating cliché.
In his book “Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism,” author Robert Jay Lifton describes this phenomenon as follows: “The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.”
In other words, a cliché is a simple phrase that kills a question in the mind of whoever asked it. In totalitarian states like North Korea, these words would include “capitalist.” On the brighter side — that is, on the side of inspiring action — the Soviets had “the revolution,” “progress” and “workers of the world, unite!”
Lifton calls it “the power of non-thought,” and you could imagine the script in Pyongyang:
“But why should we have so many people waiting in food lines when so many people can bake bread?”
“Ha! Spoken like a true capitalist!”
(End of discussion.)
But a revolution isn’t required for the language of non-thought. Indeed, everyday life is riddled with it. Wikipedia even has a list, from which I draw the following examples:
“Who cares?” This signals the end of the conversation. The speaker does not care, and so it is implied that no one would care. Therefore, further investigation of your question is unnecessary.
“No one said life is fair.” Indeed, because “no one” has said this, we shouldn’t bother to ensure that life becomes more equitable. In this category I would include, “Wait till you get to the real world,” as if one has not truly lived until one has lived in a world of traumatic hopelessness.
America loves its bumper stickers because they’re great at eradicating middle ground. “Hope and change” gets into one line, “How’s that hopey, changey stuff workin’ for ya?” gets into another. Then they shout.
Politicians also love these sound bites. Modern politics has become a race to say the most confusing, thought-terminating nonsense possible, and the media has become a vehicle for elaborating on idiotic bumper stickers. If you ever got the sense that someone you were talking to was simply repeating what he or she heard on Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olberman or The Daily Show, you’ve seen this technique create a walking thought-zombie. Keep at it: With patience, you may get to an original idea.
I have been a sucker for many of these, none more so than the old adage: “This, too, shall pass.” I encountered it in a book of Sufi wisdom as “the only permanently true thing.” Indeed, the slogan changed how I lived, rendering me a passive player to anything that happened. Bad grades? They’ll pass. Dead-end job? It will pass. The best times of my life? Don’t get excited, it’s gonna end. A great way to ensure that I stayed in line amongst the walking dead, never asking if anything else was possible.
That is the trick of these slogans, after all: To keep us from envisioning a world of deeper possibility, to prevent us from seeing the blank slate of our own lives when we feel most burdened by darkness. This is why oppressive platitudes are so useful to the totalitarian governments that seek submissive citizens: Because questions lead to ideas, and ideas lead to hope.
Hope is not welcomed by oppressive regimes, dumb politicians or abusive parents.
But hope, questions and ideas are at the core of the most inspiring people I’ve met. For them, conversation is an open door to action. And between the open-door world and the closed-door world, I’ll take an open door every time.
Eryk Salvaggio is a senior journalism and new media student.
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