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"maestro" (in many languages) just as "master" come from Latin magister, see https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/magister https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/magister Th

"maestro" (in many languages) just as "master" come from Latin magister, see https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/magister https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/magister This is not to say it’s fine to make ad hominem attacks to anyone on its vocabulary. But telling people they should silently accept to use words rooted in a notion of social dominance, doesn’t seem any better. There is a difference on pointing every occurrence of social practices that favor the spread of a domination system, and blaming personally the people who instantiate these practices.

6P58r3MXJSLi 2y ago
> But telling people they should silently accept to use words rooted in a notion of social dominance, doesn’t seem any better could be, but... most words are rooted in a notion of social dominance and only carry a a notion of social dominance when used in the context of expressing social dominance (to oppress or abuse of other people). words like reign or empire or dictator are absolutely rooted in a notion of social dominance, but we accept that it's completely fine if we use them as a metaphor or as an hyperbole. If someone gets offended, it's their fault. Some example: - 2013 was the year in which the reign of Federer at the top of the men's game had supposedly come to an end - Amazon empire: the rise and reign of Jeff Bezos - Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, has been called a benevolent dictator for life
- psychoslave 2y ago
  >most words are rooted in a notion of social dominance Most, I don’t know really, that would need a lot of statistics, but we can certainly agree that a significant portion of the vocabulary pertaining to social matter do. >words like reign or empire or dictator are absolutely rooted in a notion of social dominance, but we accept that it's completely fine if we use them as a metaphor or as an hyperbole. Yes, sure, when the context is appropriate, we totally agree. We might lake enough proper bandwidth with flat text alone to discuss that properly though. :D I’m confident it would be far easier to have a conversation on that topic topic around some drinks and laughs for example. That said, in all example given here, the connection to the toxic social attitudes are obvious. Every competition-focused sport is rooted in the parable of imposing one dominance on an other, carrying a supremacist perspective with it. That’s why for example yoga competitions will be controversial, while it tennis is not. As for the two latter celebrities, they don’t really have a reputation of being paragons of empathy that we can point to and say "if everyone would act like this in its interpersonal relationships, humanity would live in gentle bliss and harmony." To be more precise, I don’t know them personally, this remark is really not about these individuals, but more on pointing that in these specific cases, the matching reputation doesn’t serve well the point of uses in metaphoric or hyperbolic ways.
  - 6P58r3MXJSLi 2y ago
    > Most, I don’t know really, that would need a lot of statistics Believe me. You wanna know something funny? The word used in Latin for betrayal (tradunt from which derives tradimento in Italian) at its origins meant "to give, transfer, deliver" When the Christians came to be, they changed its meaning to something bad because Judas "gave Jesus away". A simple innocent word has become the quintessence of being an awful person because of a stupid religious myth that also started one of the many persecutions of the Jews. So beware of changing the meaning of words or advocating for their removal from the public discourse, you'll never know who's gonna be hurt by it. > the connection to the toxic social attitudes are obvious the only thing that is obvious is that they are only hyperboles, Amazon is not an Empire, Linus Torvalds is not a dictator and Federer did not actually reign over anything. I would also argue that Linus has been seen as "benevolent" and I really wanna know from you where the connection to the toxic social attitudes lies when we talk about Federer's reign. It's obvious to me that the sentence was referring to "the king of mens' tennis" (as a metaphor, do you know what they are?) to celebrate him and not to some literal evil ruler who should be dethroned, with the use of the force if necessary.
robertlagrant 2y ago
> But telling people they should silently accept to use words rooted in a notion of social dominance The paradox I've observed people disagreeing with is you either believe in words having magic powers that, such that even if no one knew these connotations they would still have them, or you believe in keeping old connotations alive precisely so you can tell people to stop using them because of the old connotations.
- psychoslave 2y ago
  Telling people what their vocabulary can imply is one thing. Telling to others which word they might consider instead is a separate step, that can certainly be fine, don’t we agree? Unilaterally telling others what words they must use is a domination mechanism, whoever engage in such a practice, don’t we agree? If we don’t listen to what our words inspire to others, how can we know if it matches our intended meaning? If we don’t continuously hone our habits, including our language habits but definitely not only that, how can we progress as human individuals, collectives and societies? >believe in words having magic powers that, such that even if no one knew these connotations they would still have them The trick is simple to explain, isn’t it? We can perfectly be healthy carrier, and yet people will die from this virus we contributed to spread. Just because something is untroublesome in our own specific case doesn’t mean it won’t contribute in the diffusion of something awful at societal level. That is, the only scale level at which we can measure how much benign or hurtful this thing is for humanity.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    > The trick is simple to explain, isn’t it? We can perfectly be healthy carrier, and yet people will die from this virus we contributed to spread. Except words aren't pathogens. They aren't complex molecular nanomachines that actively avoid our bodies' defenses while incidentally doing damage to it. The only effect they have is in what connotations they trigger in people. In this case, even if the word has troublesome origin, if approximately no one knows about it, then the person bringing up that connotation is the pathogen causing harm to people by convincing them to get worked up over a word, where they wouldn't before.
stephen_g 2y ago
Your comment seems so extreme and ridiculous to the point of Poe's law (can't tell if it's satirical or sincere). We would have to make every language very dull indeed if that was the kind of critera for acceptability of words... And how far back in the etymology would somebody have to go to determine whether it's sufficiently non-domineering??
- psychoslave 2y ago
  I fail to see what is extreme in it, in all sincerity. It’s not like it’s a call to act in any extreme way. Actually, the comment doesn’t even mention anything that one should do. We can listen to other feelings and interpretations of our words even with zero etymological consideration at stake. But if we try to deny their feeling that some word is derogative and back our perspective on lexical neutrality, maybe we might double check we are not missing some well documented semantics of the word and its history. That said, given the number of downvotes, it looks like I miss some contextual clues about what it might make it feels as some call to extremist POV.

6P58r3MXJSLi 2y ago

> But telling people they should silently accept to use words rooted in a notion of social dominance, doesn’t seem any better could be, but... most words are rooted in a notion of social dominance and only carry a a notion of social dominance when used in the context of expressing social dominance (to oppress or abuse of other people). words like reign or empire or dictator are absolutely rooted in a notion of social dominance, but we accept that it's completely fine if we use them as a metaphor or as an hyperbole. If someone gets offended, it's their fault. Some example: - 2013 was the year in which the reign of Federer at the top of the men's game had supposedly come to an end - Amazon empire: the rise and reign of Jeff Bezos - Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, has been called a benevolent dictator for life

psychoslave 2y ago
>most words are rooted in a notion of social dominance Most, I don’t know really, that would need a lot of statistics, but we can certainly agree that a significant portion of the vocabulary pertaining to social matter do. >words like reign or empire or dictator are absolutely rooted in a notion of social dominance, but we accept that it's completely fine if we use them as a metaphor or as an hyperbole. Yes, sure, when the context is appropriate, we totally agree. We might lake enough proper bandwidth with flat text alone to discuss that properly though. :D I’m confident it would be far easier to have a conversation on that topic topic around some drinks and laughs for example. That said, in all example given here, the connection to the toxic social attitudes are obvious. Every competition-focused sport is rooted in the parable of imposing one dominance on an other, carrying a supremacist perspective with it. That’s why for example yoga competitions will be controversial, while it tennis is not. As for the two latter celebrities, they don’t really have a reputation of being paragons of empathy that we can point to and say "if everyone would act like this in its interpersonal relationships, humanity would live in gentle bliss and harmony." To be more precise, I don’t know them personally, this remark is really not about these individuals, but more on pointing that in these specific cases, the matching reputation doesn’t serve well the point of uses in metaphoric or hyperbolic ways.
- 6P58r3MXJSLi 2y ago
  > Most, I don’t know really, that would need a lot of statistics Believe me. You wanna know something funny? The word used in Latin for betrayal (tradunt from which derives tradimento in Italian) at its origins meant "to give, transfer, deliver" When the Christians came to be, they changed its meaning to something bad because Judas "gave Jesus away". A simple innocent word has become the quintessence of being an awful person because of a stupid religious myth that also started one of the many persecutions of the Jews. So beware of changing the meaning of words or advocating for their removal from the public discourse, you'll never know who's gonna be hurt by it. > the connection to the toxic social attitudes are obvious the only thing that is obvious is that they are only hyperboles, Amazon is not an Empire, Linus Torvalds is not a dictator and Federer did not actually reign over anything. I would also argue that Linus has been seen as "benevolent" and I really wanna know from you where the connection to the toxic social attitudes lies when we talk about Federer's reign. It's obvious to me that the sentence was referring to "the king of mens' tennis" (as a metaphor, do you know what they are?) to celebrate him and not to some literal evil ruler who should be dethroned, with the use of the force if necessary.

robertlagrant 2y ago

> But telling people they should silently accept to use words rooted in a notion of social dominance The paradox I've observed people disagreeing with is you either believe in words having magic powers that, such that even if no one knew these connotations they would still have them, or you believe in keeping old connotations alive precisely so you can tell people to stop using them because of the old connotations.

psychoslave 2y ago
Telling people what their vocabulary can imply is one thing. Telling to others which word they might consider instead is a separate step, that can certainly be fine, don’t we agree? Unilaterally telling others what words they must use is a domination mechanism, whoever engage in such a practice, don’t we agree? If we don’t listen to what our words inspire to others, how can we know if it matches our intended meaning? If we don’t continuously hone our habits, including our language habits but definitely not only that, how can we progress as human individuals, collectives and societies? >believe in words having magic powers that, such that even if no one knew these connotations they would still have them The trick is simple to explain, isn’t it? We can perfectly be healthy carrier, and yet people will die from this virus we contributed to spread. Just because something is untroublesome in our own specific case doesn’t mean it won’t contribute in the diffusion of something awful at societal level. That is, the only scale level at which we can measure how much benign or hurtful this thing is for humanity.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  > The trick is simple to explain, isn’t it? We can perfectly be healthy carrier, and yet people will die from this virus we contributed to spread. Except words aren't pathogens. They aren't complex molecular nanomachines that actively avoid our bodies' defenses while incidentally doing damage to it. The only effect they have is in what connotations they trigger in people. In this case, even if the word has troublesome origin, if approximately no one knows about it, then the person bringing up that connotation is the pathogen causing harm to people by convincing them to get worked up over a word, where they wouldn't before.

stephen_g 2y ago

Your comment seems so extreme and ridiculous to the point of Poe's law (can't tell if it's satirical or sincere). We would have to make every language very dull indeed if that was the kind of critera for acceptability of words... And how far back in the etymology would somebody have to go to determine whether it's sufficiently non-domineering??

psychoslave 2y ago
I fail to see what is extreme in it, in all sincerity. It’s not like it’s a call to act in any extreme way. Actually, the comment doesn’t even mention anything that one should do. We can listen to other feelings and interpretations of our words even with zero etymological consideration at stake. But if we try to deny their feeling that some word is derogative and back our perspective on lexical neutrality, maybe we might double check we are not missing some well documented semantics of the word and its history. That said, given the number of downvotes, it looks like I miss some contextual clues about what it might make it feels as some call to extremist POV.