I’ve experienced a few fascinating experiences recently, one of them reminding me of the song “Thin Ice” (by Pink Floyd, from the album “The Wall”). As a teenager, I was very much “into” Pink Floyd — for example, I might have said something like “I am inspired by Floydian ideas”. I decided to watch the movie again, and I still find it more insightful than simply mesmerizing (though it certainly is hardly sparing with elements of fascination that go pretty far beyond the pale). A while ago I got a hold of “Live at Pompeii” (the “Director’s Cut” version), and I have to say while it is no less mesmerizing, at the same time it is also very clear and revealing of what Pink Floyd is / was all about (in my humble opinion). Although this is quite tangetial to what I want to write about today, there is one point in the earlier movie in which David Gilmour speaks to the camera and says very directly: “you can trust us”.
The words I am using in this post are almost all listed in common dictionaries — and that is perhaps one reason why I can say here that you can trust them. In saying something like that, I may very well make Ludwig Wittgenstein turn over in his grave (at least metaphorically speaking 😉 ). Generally, most linguists are quite likely to agree with Wittgenstein that language is a natural phenomenon to be observed rather than being ruled by mathematical logic. We can live unrestrained by the so-called real world around us and simply invent words whenever we feel like it. That said, whether we can employ such inventions as “Floydian” or “distrustworthy” as effective instruments of communication is not only up to ourselves as individuals, but also up to ourselves as members of linguistic communities (of which other members may very well start searching in a dictionary for terms they are unfamiliar with). Which dictionary (or dictionaries) we might reach for is, however, up to ourselves as self-determined individuals.
Personally, I find myself increasingly trusting the entire Internet (as my reference source). I realize that many if not even most people are far more loyal to particular brand names. Let me remind my readers that brands are all about the past, and besides that: they are also irrational media. [1] As such, I find them more untrustworthy than trustworthy. To be downright distrustworthy requires a clear and obvious display of bad intent — such as a business model of misleading naive people (i.e., through propaganda, manipulation, etc.) for hire (which is central to many companies from Silicon Valley — first and foremost: Google).
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