> The net effect of this language system was not to keep these people ignorant of what they were doing, but to prevent them from equating it with their old, "no

> The net effect of this language system was not to keep these people ignorant of what they were doing, but to prevent them from equating it with their old, "normal" knowledge of murder and lies. Eichmann's great susceptibility to catch words and stock phrases, combined with his incapacity for ordinary speech, made him, of course, an ideal subject for "language rules." -- Hannah Arendt, "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil" > When confronted with situations for which such routine procedures did not exist, he [Eichmann] was helpless, and his cliché-ridden language produced on the stand, as it had evidently done in his official life, a kind of macabre comedy. Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality, that is, against the claim on our thinking attention that all events and facts make by virtue of their existence. -- Hannah Arendt, "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil" Keep this in the back of your head when you hear some SV gurus speak, and see what you can notice.