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About This Episode
Back from the holidays, we open 2021 by welcoming Semiogogue,
who has done extensive work in the fields of branding and semiotics.
He’s blended disciplines to explore how people and cultures understand
themselves and each other through signs, signals, marks, and “languages” of all types,
beyond what we just think of as spoken/written language.
A key focus of our discussion here is how meaning and notions of boundaries
are being attacked, and how everything from animal signs to human language
indicates that we do not live in a meaningless, relativistic world,
as much modern discourse teaches —
a worldview, if it can even be called that, currently wreaking havoc.
Approximate Time Stamps:
For about the first half hour Oliver lays out his case for how social sciences
and organs of media have weaponized the common use of language
and disoriented the average person without them realizing it,
making crucial notions of meaning and boundaries taboo.
38:30
John asks about deeper motives of brand signs and social manipulations
by so-called elite families and corporations.
Seeing the masses as cattle, “branding.”
49:00
I ask if what Oliver is saying is instinctual and natural, then why have so many
people become duped and think that going beyond
any inherent boundaries and meaning is “enlightened?”
Then we mention the real power plays, while the masses
are made to argue over trifles that they think are important (i.e. transgender bathrooms).
1:04:00
John asks how we act against this.
Then we get into linguistics, communication, that this is the field,
indeed the tool, that was wielded to disorient
people and leave them open to the agenda.
1:11:30
John asks how we ground meaning into all of these assumed cultural frames
that are based on the idea that sees communication, language,
signs (among many other things) as arbitrary.
Oliver’s answer relates to orienting around asserting the survival value
of signs and communications.
This is why such things (boundaries, hierarchies)
are currently under such acute attack.
1:26:00
Oliver relates this to Jason Köhne’s “Going Free” material.
1:38:30
John asks about the animal nature in humans,
considerations of theory of evolution and tabula rasa.
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Semiogogue’s Links:
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