Red Flag Words: Empower

Currently I am working on my post about the conflict between Marius and Sulla and how it brought about the civil war years that marked the end of the republic. I expect I shall have it posted sometime tomorrow after the long flight from Iceland.  But I see that it has been four days since my last post and decided so I will put out another rather small one.  This one, like holistic, is a red flag word which are words that should tell you when you are either dealing with a leftist, or someone who doesn't know what they are talking about or both.  This posts red flag word is empower:

Empower, a verb, it means to invest with power or legal authority or to equip, supply, or enable. This word is the favorite of crusaders  What I hate about this word is that when it is used it is always used in conjunction with an oppressed group, real or perceived.  It's not the word is necessarily being misused, though I believe the word is really intended for action of giving elected officials the power to enforce the laws of a nation, but how it is very different from gaining power and what that means.

Empower isn't the same as gaining power, the two are very different actions. When you gain power you acquire it for yourself  from your own effort. Empower however, means something is given. When you are empowered you haven't acquired that power for yourself, it has been granted to you. When the president assumes office, he doesn't gain power, he has been empowered. This is evident in the fact that once Obama leave his office, like all his predecessors, he loses whatever authority he has while president.  And this betrays the decidedly anti-egalitarian notions of crusaders.

Whenever you hear about helping the downtrodden economically, or politically, it isn't enough to remove the barriers the would prevent, which is something any libertarian would be for, no, power has to be given to them. Much like a feudal baron someone has to bestow whatever riches are to be gained. And who gives them the power? The very crusader we have mentioned, and in their mind, power is a zero sum game.

Naturally, given the narcissistic nature of crusaderism, they are the ones who get to be the arbiter of who gets power and how much. Naturally they are the only ones who can decide who to empower and how much. Ultimately this is what disgusts me so much, is that what they are doing is hardly any better than the injustice they are fighting, which is ostensibly class/white/jingoistic/patriarchal/hetero-normal/or what have you privileged. Ultimately, their goal to empower others isn't so much about helping the downtrodden as much as it is a chance to be the big fish coupled with the juvenile pleasure they derive from 'sticking it' to whom ever is guilty of excessive power, whether or not that power is legitimately gained matters not, at that current place and time.

Red Flag Words: Holisitc

ho·lis·tic(h-lstk)

1. Of or relating to holism.

2.

a. Emphasizing the importance of the whole and the interdependence of its parts.

b. Concerned with wholes rather than analysis or separation into parts:

 

Of all red flag words, or as I would call them, bull shit words, this is probably one of the ones that best correlates to their actual meaning when used today. You most often find this word when someone cannot spell out the actual benefits to what they are doing.  For example, holistic medicine, while there are things wrong with the pill popping symptom only treating medicine practices by Americans today. Holistic advocates mistakenly, or ignorantly, argue that it is a failure of western medicine, rather than the misapplication of western medicine by an ignorant populace and lazy medical field. 95% of holistic medicine is utter bullshit. I had to hear one holistic advocate talk about how prior to modern diets and medicine that tribal man didn't suffer from diarrhea that is so common in todays modern and sick world. Right.....

Even more dangerous is when someone is selling a product or service, say for example physical training, and they use the world holistic. While holisticness, in it's actual meaning, is very desirable for physical training, most often I have seen the word used by trainers that do not know two shits about what they are doing and have little real world experience. You can tell the trainers that not only know what they are doing, but have actually done it, and frankly, there are far too many trainers who don't know what they are doing. Certifications don't mean squat in regards to their competence.

I have a friend of mine, a swim coach, who has no certifications in lifting, or coaching for that matter, but is easily one of the best swim coaches in the state, if not the country; and is one of the most effictive weight trainers out there. I should know, we lifted together for a year, and the one year he was a trainer for our swim team (he was ineligible that year due to NCAA age restrictions) I saw the biggest increases of strength for the whole team than any other year with any other trainer. The guy has no certifications in kinesology, exercise science, or anything like that, but he easily knows enough about how the body works in the gym and in the water, that his knoweldge base is masters level.

So the next time you hear the word holistic look for any sort of concrete descriptions or illustrations on what exactly do they mean by holistic? Is there a detailed methodology supporting their statement or is it just an adjactive that is thrown around without any real thought as to how they achieve holisticness?