The Fuzzies

[Placid Dingo]

The Fuzzies
Fuzzy language is the enemy of clear thought. Orwell knew this and discussed it in detail in his extraordinary essay Politics and the English Language. He describes how political terms lose all meaning through being misused in political debate; the terms democratic and fascist may refer to very specific political institutions but we are more likely to use them as euphemisms for good and bad. If you consider yourself a left winger then left means good and right means bad. If you consider yourself a right winger then the opposite is mostly true. The actual specific political subtleties of these terms is replaced by a fuzzy kind of collection of vague ideas that we are implying our position towards.

We hear people discuss 'Communist China'. What, are we afraid people will get confused between this country and the lesser known 'not-communist China'? Communist has no informative role here; it is a codeword telling us we should be feeling generally negative towards China. Although, we are told, China is growing more Capitalist/Democratic/Western. The word is irrelevant; the important thing is we're using a codeword for good instead of the code for bad.

The role of fuzzy language is even more concerning when we look at the role it plays in developing rules. In Orwell's 1984, the world is not overrun with rules, but instead has no rules at all. Perhaps it would have been more realistic to express a series of fuzzy rules.

If you have ever been subject to a code of conduct you have seen fuzzy rules, usually as something along the lines of 'you agree not to indulge in conduct that is damaging to the good repute of organization X.' The beauty of these rules is they cover all manner of sins without naming any of them. The ambiguity of the rules makes it very hard to argue against them; before we can even try to defend ourselves of the charge we have to try to define the terms of the rule we have apparently broken. This also leaves us in a situation where the treatment of employees may be easily inconsistent. The upper levels are empowered to ignore or pursue possible breaches at will. Unlike a specific and measurable rule, we find ourselves to be a room of Shrodinger's cats, in a state of simultaneous guilt and innocence until an observer comes along.

Fuzzy language hides uncertainty, or a lack of evidence. Anyone who has spent time with the more obscure types of natural medicine promoters will have heard much use of term 'energy'. Certain foods will change our body's energy. We need to try to maintain positive energy, avoid negative energy etc. Of course 'energy' is meaningless. It just means something good; we are speaking in vague terms to try to express ideas we don't understand, or even recognize that we don't understand. Terms like social responsibility or ethics can be similarly used in political speech to try to promote other concepts that we don't quite understand. We may be told of our ethical obligations towards Africa, only to be confronted by conspicuous silence when we try to understand what this actually looks like in terms of policy.

Fuzzy language is the friend of advertisers. The spiel on a bottle of juice describes the product as a feeling, a sense, a loose concept, and promises that if you get it you get it. Coke are Gods at this approach. Beyond the colors or flavor, Coke is defined by its ineffable essence to the point where, despite blind tests suggesting Pepsi and the short lived New Coke tasted better, Coke remains inestimably more popular that either. This approach takes advantage of a general feeling of positivity towards the product, and redefines it as an articulation of some indescribable higher value. It has the advantage of silencing dissent from those who don't like it; since positive vibes mean you are tapped in to the inarticulate ideology of the product, disliking it is no difference of opinion, but evidence that the person in question simply doesn't 'get it'. After all product X is a more than a juice. It's the feeling you get when you wake up after a short nap, excited to see what the world offers. It's the smell of your girlfriend's hair after she gets out of the shower. It's the feeling you get when you catch mad air.