Have you stopped to consider what kinds of things happen with words?
The longer you have been alive the more likely you are to have noticed this if you have a memory for words, phrases, and meanings.
You may have noticed how the meaning of words is changed.
I personally refer to this as:
The Hijacking of Words
Words are important to us. In fact, they may be one of the singular most important things to us. Without them we cannot communicate very effectively, and we certainly cannot quickly convey complex concepts. It is very likely you think in words. This would indicate that the better your grasp of words is that it is likely you can compose and arrange more complex thoughts within your mind.
That seems to indicate that words are potentially one of the most powerful things around us.
What does that indicate if we permit words definition to suddenly be repurposed, redefined, retargeted?
Why would anyone want to do this?
PSYCHOLOGY, SOCIOLOGY, and MACHIAVELI:
We have many studies in the fields above. They mostly focus on why people behave the way they do, and how certain actions illicit certain behaviors and thoughts.
We know that things such as subliminal messages arose from these studies. Such messages were made illegal due to the influence they had on people. At least for awhile.
The Nazi Party in Germany before and during World War 2 were very familiar with psychology, subliminal messages, and the power of what would become the term PROPAGANDA.
A majority of the first heavily publicized documentation on the usage of such techniques came from this era:
Joseph Goebbels used it with immense success. Even so far as recruiting people from their own countries to fight their native country.
Hitler was also well versed in the concept:
HIJACKING WORDS - These are some of the words I've seen hijacked
Terrorist
Before September 11th, 2001 this was basically the following:
and Terrorism was generally referred to as things like the following with some form of ultimatum or blame
After 9/11 it still meant those things but it also was hijacked to mean these things:
Now as you are thinking about that consider this. We declared War on Terror. We chose an emotion, a concept to declare war on. It can literally be anywhere, or anything, and really since it is an emotion it can never truly be defeated without destroying emotions. If we truly were at War with Terror then our media and government would not be employing it and using it on us at every turn. It is a war without end, and the godsend for corporations who get paid to make weapons, and those that get paid to cleanup after the devastation caused by weapons. They are often the same corporation.
Piracy
Do any of you remember when a pirate was someone who blasted the side of your ship, killed people, rammed into the side of the ship and boarded it? They then proceeded to take your valuables, perhaps your life, perhaps enslave you, rape you, etc. One thing is certain you didn't have access to those valuables anymore. They very possibly would sink your ship or steal it as well. They didn't stick just to ships they would also invade border settlements. Furthermore, they were often government sanctioned by letters of marque. Which essentially amounted to government sanctioned piracy against other enemy nations. Spanish ships were fair game, English ships were fair game, etc.
In any event... Pirates and Piracy looked like THIS:
In the past couple of decades the Government, and powerful corporations have done a great job in making you think that those people above, and people that do the following are the same thing...
The point is not to argue whether copying intellectual property is morally or ethically correct it is simply to illustrate a hijacked word that can clearly be seen to have been chosen for emotional impact.
They followed this up with the great propaganda to further play on your emotions...
YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A CAR... SO WHY WOULD YOU STEAL THIS?
The appeal to your emotion and guilt centers of the mind make you agree with that.
Yet, if I come to your house and steal your car from your driveway. You come out in the morning and there is no car. You have no car!!!
If I hack into your computer and copy a file. The file is there still for you. I am using the hacking into your computer as that is a more extreme form than what is happening.
In the 1970s - 1990s when people still used Cassette tapes...
There was a lucrative market on blank cassettes, and every store in existence sold cassette players and Jam boxes, ghetto blasters, etc that had dual cassettes designed specifically for copying tapes.
Doing exactly what is being called Piracy today was common and accepted then.
This carried over into VHS tapes as well.
When it went digital. That is when it became a problem.
Rather than adapting to the changing paradigm the megolithic corporate entities decided they wanted to fight the change.
The change was going to happen...
Yet some other things had changed starting in the 1980s onwards.
The private prison system was thriving and lobbying your representatives in the states, and in Congress. They were leveraging their massively growing and subsidized populations of inmates (largest in the world by far) for productivity. No longer were they simply making signs, and pounding rocks. They were leveraging them to make furniture, clothing, food products, YOU NAME it they were working on it. They could pay these people less than $1 per hour and also receive subsidies.
So during a time when people were yelling about the out sourcing of jobs to foreign countries they were blind to what I refer to as in sourcing (inmate sourcing) that was happening in our nations. States are mandated to purchase a large amount of their products from these sources.
So if you want another reason why victimless crimes are so heavily prosecuted in the War on Drugs it is a due to it being the major source of their slave labor.
They now can also use domestic terrorism, piracy, etc as a way to get more slaves
I was unaware of these things until 1994-1996 when I worked for Correction Products & Services, Inc (CPSI) which shipped furniture kits in various stages to prisons all over the country. We did multiple full trailer truck loads per week. Eventually they went out of business as the prisons worked on even making all of those parts in house within the prison.
If you are curious about how extensive the products are here are just a few examples:
Colorado Correctional Industry - Products
That is two examples. Every state has similar programs, some even more extensive, and most including the two states above have more than one such program.
You were side tracked, what does that have to do with hijacked words?
Actually I wasn't. I was giving you another MOTIVE for hijacking words other than just controlling the population through emotional response. Hijacked words give them justification to imprison people for supposed crimes that leave no victims, such that they can increase their slave labor and make lobbyists for the prison industry happy.
What to do about it?
Learn what an APPEAL TO AUTHORITY is and stop letting people use it against you.
No one has authority to tell you how to think unless you grant them such authority.
Use your own mind and think with it. Don't let others do your thinking for you.
Machievelli - Infamous/Famous for writing "The Prince" and other books designed to tell rulers how to rule, manipulate, and control.