Arhive oznaka: art

DANGER OF AN EXPRESSIONLESS WORLD

Have you ever thought of how the world would be if you simply could not express yourself properly? I am not talking only about having a lack of tools to express yourself, e.g., through art, like music, dance, painting or through other methods, like speech, for instance. The true problem that I will present in this text lies in being totally deficient in the expression of your own thoughts, emotions, and desires. Can you imagine yourself being unable to say anything or to make a gesture for what your heart wants to express? Even to the level that expression becomes extinct because there is nothing left to express?
In George Orwell´s (in)famous novel “1984” occurs a problem with people becoming expressionless through lack of words which I will present here. I will also present an example that I noticed not long ago and is related to this problem.
I want to point this problem out because heavy metal is a genre where artists use a vast number of diverse words to express themselves. Without expression there is no art or heavy metal whatsoever. This is also a general problem, not only for heavy metal and art.

Syme

In Orwell´s “1984”, there is a character called Syme. He is a minor character who works in the Ministry of Truth who is working on the new edition of the Newspeak Dictionary. The Ministry of Truth is the ministry of propaganda in the state of Oceania. For instance, if they say that 2+2=5, then that is the truth. If they say that the planet they live on is a cube, then it is a cube. The Ministry of Truth serves the Party, better known as Ingsoc (English Socialism) in Newspeak, by making up the truth and distributing it to the people all over the cities (in this case, London). Newspeak is the language of Oceania which was created by Ingsoc and its general purpose is to limit freedom of thought, the identity of man and expression. As you can see, Oceania is the ultimate totalitarian state.
In one part of the book, Syme and the main character called Winston Smith, talk about the new edition of Newspeak in which Syme has been working on. He said to Winston that the key “ingredient” for making the new edition of Newspeak is to reduce words as much as he can. In both senses, to reduce the number of words to a minimum count and to reduce the staggering of words. For instance, you would not have good, better and great, but rather good, plusgood and plusplusgood. This is my example, it could be a part of Newspeak. For instance, maybe in Newspeak, you would not have names for the spectrum of colors like we do. Gray, green, red, yellow, purple and so on. You might have colorone, colortwo, colorthree and so on.
This edition of Newspeak in which Syme has been working on has a sole purpose to make people emotionless, expressionless and thoughtless for the benefit of the Party. IT IS FORBIDDEN TO QUESTION THE PARTY AND TO THINK THAT THE PARTY IS DOING SOMETHING WRONGLY. IT IS WRONGTHINK!  A perfect recipe for making people fully inhuman robots. I will now present an example of Newspeak:

English version: “Rectify big brother´s speech in times issue March 17, 1984, which misreported Africa.
Newspeak version: “times 17.3.84 bb speech malreported africa rectify”

Can you see the drastic difference between the two? The main goal of the Party is to get rid of thought crime and thought in general. The thing I will explain further, in context of heavy metal is, becoming expressionless and emotionless.

Real-life examples
I will now present two cases from our contemporary world that are similar to reducing words from “1984”:

1.) THE INTERNET LANGUAGE
This is the first one I have noticed years ago. In this case, I am talking about abbreviations that are used when commenting or texting on social media like LOL, ROFL, LMAO, xD, brb and so on. The more wicked thing I have noticed about it is when people text love messages or if they comment something online furiously, their faces are still. They do not smile or have an angry face. They just do it mechanically without any emotion whatsoever which could be a potential threat to expression.

2.) FROM MOTHER AND FATHER TO PARENT 1 AND PARENT 2
This is another case I have noticed that has taken place recently. So, when a baby is born, he/she will not have who is his/her mother and father written on his birth paper, but rather parent 1 and parent 2.
This case has more problems than just the potential danger for expression, but that is a subject for another time. This is a potential elimination of two meanings: Mother, as a biological female parent, and father, as a biological male parent. Hence, we will maybe, in the near future, just have the word “parent”. The words (and their meanings) mother and father might be forgotten in the near future. I especially see this as a threat to pagan metal bands that use phrases like “Father Thunderer” or “Mother Earth”.

Summary
Heavy metal is a genre where expression of thought and emotions is very important. When you see the lyrics which heavy metal bands use, you will notice how many diverse words there are. They have a vast vocabulary of words for expression. Words are very important for expression! Just like the example I gave for pagan metal bands, what would happen if the crucial words for expression just cease to exist?It would be a disaster for heavy metal or music in general to have words erased from our memory and history. Can you actually imagine a world where you cannot express yourself as you wish to? Or even worse, can you imagine a world where there is nothing left to express? I hope the future is not Orwellian.