Newspeak and magical thinking

Legitimisation through repetition

I just watched a video about the myth of the medieval prohibition of the tritone by Adam Neely (highly recommendable, though quite advanced) The tritone is a musical interval that spans three whole tones, or in other words represents a diminished fifth (e.g. G + C sharp or F and B, etc.). The interval is not easy to sing and in the Middle Ages it was probably called diabolus in musica (devil in music) for this reason. In the 19th century, this designation was transformed into an alleged prohibition imposed by the Church on the "ars nova" of the 14th century.

Examples from the Middle Ages show that the tritone by no means disappeared or was banned. As Adam Neely speculates on YouTube, there are some explanations why this "dark, evil" dyad in heavy metal music (starting with Black Sabbath) became something forbidden that people now dared to express. This historical adulteration allowed rock groups to develop their profile as artists of the dark and devilish.

This is relevant to current political debate because this mechanism of myth-making also applies to the debate around gender issues: legitimisation through repetition.

The church's droning sermon against the devil in music and the repetition of the ban conjured up from it in modern times is like a magical incantation that stubbornly conjures up invented realities, notwithstanding the reason of the Enlightenment and the evidence-based argumentation that has developed with it. One feels reminded of tribal dances enacted as prayer for rain.

It is the same with the claim that our language shapes our reality: left-green magic is supposed to make a utopia come true with magic formulas, which becomes all the more petty totalitarian in its defiant assertion of injustice the more often we hear that the over-bearing majority of our thinking (German) population does not want to have this genderised language dictated to them.

The regression to the magical thinking of children or of pre-modern times inevitably leads to a loss of reality and ideological delusion of the worst kind - a thinking that demands unconditional submission to this belief, even if it pretends to be liberal. This oh-so-solidaric attitude can hardly be surpassed in perfidy when "recommendations" (of government bodies and authorities) become de facto bans because the consequence of disregarding these "suggestions" means loss of reputation and/or job.