This entry's purpose is to explain my reasons for making the Webster’s Dictionary out of so many other available sources, my preferential authority for definitions of the terms which, in my judgment, are in need of definitions. One obvious reason, of course, is why not? After all, Noah Webster’ s progeny is a highly respectable source!
Well, among the dictionaries Webster’s is a good name, indeed. But why a dictionary at all? Encyclopedias are supposed to be much better, whereas dictionaries are sort of crude, primitive…
Don’t get me wrong: I like encyclopedias too, as my next post will further clarify. But there is an advantage in dictionaries, which encyclopedias are lacking. It is their laconic element, their “simplistic” aspect. Most of the people looking for definitions will go to a dictionary they probably have at home, rather than to a multi-volume encyclopedia, a library item, anyway. This is exactly why I prefer a dictionary to an encyclopedia whenever I am specifically interested in short popular definitions, rather than in long scholarly explanations.
But now comes the odd part. Learning that I am using a 1983 edition, which has obviously been outdated by the subsequent industrial-technological revolution, many zealots of keeping current with the times will rush to condemn my mindless obstinacy, or, if they are kind, merely laugh at my bend toward obsolescence.
On this important point, I must immediately object that my retrogression is quite mindful and deliberate. As a matter of principle, I have more trust in older reference sources than in newer ones on such matters as are of an enduring character, that is, substantially unaffected in their nature by the course of most recent events.
The big reason for my retrogression, as it were, is the fact (which I have by now discovered sufficiently and incontrovertibly!) that, along with the latest technological revolution, a different kind of revolution, which may be called ideological, has quietly taken place. Some of its more explicit manifestations are best known under the soubriquet of political correctness, which I can describe as an exceptional surge of a concerted effort at mass brainwashing characterized by the rewriting of history of virtually everything, as if in order to promote a particular agenda whose success depends on the most rigorous forms of public mind control most rigorously applied.
Here is just one revealing example of what I have in mind. Let us compare two dictionary definitions of the religion of Islam, both from the same source, Webster’s Dictionary, only one from thirty years ago, and the other one from today.
Here is my 1983 Webster’s:
“Islam: 1. The monotheistic Moslem religion, of which Mohammed was the prophet.”
This is a formal neutral definition, rightly identifying Islam as one of the monotheistic religions, which include Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all characterized by the belief in One God.
Now, here is the most current definition of Islam by Merriam-Webster Online:
“Islam: 1. The religious faith of Muslims including belief in Allah as the sole deity and in Muhammad as his prophet.”
The key word monotheistic is changed here into a belief in two persons: "Allah as the sole deity (why not One God?!!)," who is not identified as the Arabic word for One God, the very same God as worshiped by the Christians and the Jews,--- and, in one breath, in Muhammad, as if putting both on the same level of belief, by conjoining them with the conjunction "and". (Please, make an effort to appreciate the semantic nuances in the way in which the sentence above has been constructed!) Only an idiot will deny the striking difference between the two definitions of the word Islam, that has been in existence for over 1400 years, or fail to see the deliberate negative bias of the more ‘up-to-date’ American definition.
…Under the circumstances, my suspicious distrust of all new century “poisoned apples” from the cultivated, consumer-friendly apple tree of tainted knowledge should come as no surprise, nor, by the same token, my preference for gardener-neglected crab trees that once used to blossom, but no more. In consequence, that old Webster’s is now serving me as one of such neglected trees, and, should anyone wonder why it has to be this one and not something else, my answer is, intrepidly, why not?
Well, among the dictionaries Webster’s is a good name, indeed. But why a dictionary at all? Encyclopedias are supposed to be much better, whereas dictionaries are sort of crude, primitive…
Don’t get me wrong: I like encyclopedias too, as my next post will further clarify. But there is an advantage in dictionaries, which encyclopedias are lacking. It is their laconic element, their “simplistic” aspect. Most of the people looking for definitions will go to a dictionary they probably have at home, rather than to a multi-volume encyclopedia, a library item, anyway. This is exactly why I prefer a dictionary to an encyclopedia whenever I am specifically interested in short popular definitions, rather than in long scholarly explanations.
But now comes the odd part. Learning that I am using a 1983 edition, which has obviously been outdated by the subsequent industrial-technological revolution, many zealots of keeping current with the times will rush to condemn my mindless obstinacy, or, if they are kind, merely laugh at my bend toward obsolescence.
On this important point, I must immediately object that my retrogression is quite mindful and deliberate. As a matter of principle, I have more trust in older reference sources than in newer ones on such matters as are of an enduring character, that is, substantially unaffected in their nature by the course of most recent events.
The big reason for my retrogression, as it were, is the fact (which I have by now discovered sufficiently and incontrovertibly!) that, along with the latest technological revolution, a different kind of revolution, which may be called ideological, has quietly taken place. Some of its more explicit manifestations are best known under the soubriquet of political correctness, which I can describe as an exceptional surge of a concerted effort at mass brainwashing characterized by the rewriting of history of virtually everything, as if in order to promote a particular agenda whose success depends on the most rigorous forms of public mind control most rigorously applied.
Here is just one revealing example of what I have in mind. Let us compare two dictionary definitions of the religion of Islam, both from the same source, Webster’s Dictionary, only one from thirty years ago, and the other one from today.
Here is my 1983 Webster’s:
“Islam: 1. The monotheistic Moslem religion, of which Mohammed was the prophet.”
This is a formal neutral definition, rightly identifying Islam as one of the monotheistic religions, which include Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all characterized by the belief in One God.
Now, here is the most current definition of Islam by Merriam-Webster Online:
“Islam: 1. The religious faith of Muslims including belief in Allah as the sole deity and in Muhammad as his prophet.”
The key word monotheistic is changed here into a belief in two persons: "Allah as the sole deity (why not One God?!!)," who is not identified as the Arabic word for One God, the very same God as worshiped by the Christians and the Jews,--- and, in one breath, in Muhammad, as if putting both on the same level of belief, by conjoining them with the conjunction "and". (Please, make an effort to appreciate the semantic nuances in the way in which the sentence above has been constructed!) Only an idiot will deny the striking difference between the two definitions of the word Islam, that has been in existence for over 1400 years, or fail to see the deliberate negative bias of the more ‘up-to-date’ American definition.
…Under the circumstances, my suspicious distrust of all new century “poisoned apples” from the cultivated, consumer-friendly apple tree of tainted knowledge should come as no surprise, nor, by the same token, my preference for gardener-neglected crab trees that once used to blossom, but no more. In consequence, that old Webster’s is now serving me as one of such neglected trees, and, should anyone wonder why it has to be this one and not something else, my answer is, intrepidly, why not?
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