You ever notice how language tends to shape our perceptions. The things that are codified by our understanding of language and the underlying symbolism that language promotes are vast. I want to take this ten to focus on the dialectic of left and right, black and white. Now I know I cannot get through all of it in ten so I will try to be fast as possible on this. Free flowing thought commences now…
Why is left always associated with evil and wrongness? We cannot escape the linguistic bias inherent in the term. Left-handed people are lesser or more infrequent or just plain different from the masses. In a faux-populist civilization that means that left is inherently wrong. The wicked are placed on Gods left hand. The word ‘sinister’ is in fact a latin word that means left. In contrast, the word ‘dexter’ means right which means dexterity, commonly associated with grace and agility, is aligned with the right. Heck, the word ‘right’ is a stand in for correctness. So, when we speak to left and right in the political sphere, there is already a poisoning of that well, a genetic flaw in the base argument of whatever comes from the left as opposed to the right. Modern pundits only exacerbate that difference, especially when we tend to see the so-called right as a fundamentally religious (Christian?) base. So right is right and left is…. wrong? Well, fascism is a far-right political ideology that emphasizes authoritarian, dictatorial power. Yet it’s connection to the ‘right’ way of thinking has always lent it both credence as an ideology and some fair bit of freedom of operation as it can be connected to Kings and the ever present love of royalty we cannot seem to escape.
In short, we are being snookered by our own language and linguistic bias into looking at anything associated with the left as less than or perhaps bad. This is only getting worse as our media reach expands. Left = bad. Bernie Sanders (the most gentle man on the planet) is evil. White is right. Black is… Well, I guess I don’t have time to get into that one just yet, but let’s say the left and black are synonymous in the way that white and right are. Unfortunately, we as a people don’t want to think. We lean into cognitive ease and just let the talking heads think for us. That is why this is going to continue and continue to get worse.