Word misuse

A pet peeve of mine is how words are used.  I dislike misuse of words.  Now, there are a lot of cases where it does not matter much, such as disc for some types of computer storage devises.  But some words misused in political, misleading and uninformed ways are frustrating to me.  I do not like how left and right became political words.  I dislike how politicians use words in ways to confuse or mislead the public.  Companies and advertisers do the latter as well.  Truth, facts, reality, science are words which I believe should be more carefully used.  Belief is confused with truth.  Hearsay is confused with facts. Ideas are misrepresented as theories.  Things are called science which have little or no use of the scientific method.  This all came to me when I was searching the web about realism.  Early on, I came across an international perspective called realism.  The proponents use the word because they believe that they are basing their views on what is really happening in the world.  But they move away from realism as they make policy suggestions based purely on their perception of current conditions.  They skip over psychological and sociological factors.  I was surprised to discover the term racial realism and that scientific racism is still in use.  These terms relate to biased attempts to show how science and reality "prove" biological inferiority of specific races.  But the beginning bias of most of the proponents of these views is that they are racists to begin with.  From there, they assemble only the data which they believe supports their views.  They ignore or discount the evidence which contradicts them.  They also exclude psychological, sociological and historical factors.  Then we also have religionists who misuse words such as facts, truth and science.

Part of being a literate people is knowing when and when not to use words.  I fear that some groups of people are becoming less literate in this context.  They know a lot of words but not how to use them wisely.

Idealistic realist

Like many philosophies, there are various definitions of realism, some of which conflict.  Over the years, I have experimented with different definitions of my perspective.  I have attempted to find a term which does not have contradictory definitions.  The latter has been found to be elusive.  So I chose realism because the basic definitions fit.  It is true that there are branches of 'realism' which conflict.  But it seems the most basic starting point from which to expand.    Here are the definitions which fits my approach.

APPLICABLE DEFINITIONS
1. REALIST
A. a person who is aware of and accepts the physical universe, events, etc., as they are.
B. a person who tends to view or represent things as they really are.
2. REALISM
A. Interest in or concern for the actual or real.
B. The tendency to view or represent things as they really are.
C. The foundations for abstracts and speculations are based as much as possible on honest and factual information.

Some articles indicate opposing views between realism and idealism.  Indeed, I believe that some idealism is unrealistic, especially idealist believes which exclude or ignore the facts.  But I have the opinion, founded is realism, that having ideals, things to strive for but which do not currently exist,  can be useful to development.

So I could also define myself as a realistic idealist or maybe an idealistic realist.  The main point is to have a foundation in the real, known existence and work out from there.  My ideas are continuing to develop.

Moderate religionists

I had an interesting experience with a Muslim taxi driver.  I had a flat tire on my Catrike.  It was caused by a pinch which resulted in 2 holes close to each other. Patches were not working. I decided to accept the expense of a taxi to my apartment for a spare tire and back. The taxi came in about 15 minutes. The trike would not fit in his van so it was going to be an expensive round trip. We initially talked about exercise. I asked if he used a gym. He said that he tried a gym but found that he was too unused to the openness of our culture. He did not seem to blame our culture. Rather he was not able to handle the amount of flesh visible in the gym. He indicated that he would use the treadmill a lot to hide his hardon. So he got a home gym.  He even said that his wife made some videos to motivate his workout. I decided to not ask about the content of the videos. It was clear that he came from a culture where women were required to wear more clothes than required here. But he was not expressing anything negative about our dress here. It was more about his limitations. We talked a while about exercise, bicycles and motorcycles. He seemed fairly moderate. Yet it also became clear that he was a practicing Muslim. Although I do not recall the context, he noted a couple of times about some of the ways which he managed to do the 5 daily prayers. Yet he was clearly a more modernized Muslim. But I did not want to find out his reaction to my nonbelief. For one, I needed his help. But it would also have seemed out of context. I certainly did not want to negatively affect his progress toward modernity.

Divide

The coworker noted in my previous post is quite convinced that his beliefs are based an true unchangeable truth, although his knowledge of both what his religious texts say and of their origins is more limited than he thinks.

House Speaker Boehner  had recently said that Republicans should have no more than superficial conversations with their kids.  He is concerned about the changed views which some of his fellow Republicans took in response to perspectives of their kids.  This is part of a trend on several areas where attempts are being made to create or maintain social divides.  In this case, it has to do with old school biases being maintained by avoiding conversations with the next generation.  It's like Boehner is acknowledging the pattern of newer generations being more socially progressive than older generations.  Boehner does not want this to affect the "grand old party".

How does this relate to the coworker.  Boehner and some other people in power are like the coworker in that they have views which are considered so absolute that no evidence will change them.

This is happening on multiple fronts and I fear will lead to growing and more widespread conflicts in some areas.