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Let’s Play Taboo When Discussing Politics

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Reflections – Zacqary Adam Green

Reflections – Zacqary Adam Green

Let’s play a game: get a friend to guess the word “baseball” without saying “game,” “sport,” “pitcher,” “catcher,” or “batter.” That means you have to think pretty creatively about baseball, right? This is how the party game Taboo works. What if we played Taboo when discussing political issues?

For example, let’s talk about how to lower unemployment. The taboo words are:

  • Job
  • Economy
  • Company
  • Private Sector
  • Money
  • Unemployment
  • We’re also banning synonyms of these words. No cheating and saying “currency” instead of “money,” or referring to a “company” as a “corporation” or an “employer.” The point of this exercise is to get yourself thinking in a different way. In order to even have this discussion, we have to answer the question: what is employment? What’s a job? What are they for?

    Here’s another one: what powers should the government have over people? Discuss this without saying “government,” “law,” “regulations,” “rules,” or “rights.”

    How can we stop crime? You can’t say “crime.”

    The language that we use to talk about the issues that we face — as a culture, as a society, as a species — has profound effects on the way that we think about, well, everything. Perhaps by forcing ourselves to come up with a new way of describing the world in which we live, we’ll discover (or rediscover) a new perspective, a new insight, or a new philosophy that can help us make it a better place.

    What other political issues would you like to play Taboo with? Sound off in the comments.

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    About The Author: Zacqary Adam Green

    Zacqary is an activist in the New York Pirate Party, where his official title is "Cat Herder." He is a filmmaker, artist, and the Chief Executive Plankhead of Plankhead, a free culture arts organization/collective/pirate ship. He produces absurd projects, with titles like "Your Face is a Saxophone", from his home on Long Island.

By participating in the discussion and posting here, you are placing your contribution in the public domain (CC0). If you are quoting somebody else, credit them.

Contributors take own responsibility for their comments.

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  1. 1

    I think we need to understand that there are at least two problems here. Ensuring that as far as possible everyone can obtain a decent livelihood and ensuring that we can pursue our vocations. The traditional connection between them may be necessary in a time of scarcity but the west has been overfulfilling its material needs for decades now.

  2. 2
    Anon

    Try discussing copyright without using words like “copyright, “monopoly”, “pirate”, “theft” “entertainment industry” or “law”

    Or is that too obvious?

  3. 3
    Buglord

    in recent years I’ve become very good at one thing in perticular, spesifcally, connecting dots, regardless of wether or not there is any reasonable connection.
    this was mainly so I could more easily forsee possible bugs in my programming, but it has lead to interesting senarios of how flawed laws and thoughts can be. such as breathing can be called theft, saying hello could be considered rape and much more.
    watching a good bit of southpark is also a nice source of “how to”s on how to hyperbole all flaws.

    • 3.1
      BenW

      “saying hello could be considered rape”
      OK, now you’ve got me interested in a “WTF” kind of way. Care to elaborate?

      • 3.1.1
        Buglord

        tried to reply before site went down, but it didn’t get through, don’t care to rewrite everything.
        basically, it’s a play on how badly words are defined in most languages, check the definition of rape, it should include abuse, violation, plunder and such as well.
        relate such to being near-forced to interact with someone, spending your time and attention on their trivial hello when you should be doing much more important things.
        saying hello is raping others time and attention, get unlucky enough and you’ll meet those who feel it’s an invasion of personal space, maybe even considering talking an intimate act.

  4. 5
    Sakuya Izayoi

    Here’s an impossible one. Try discussing age of consent laws/child protection/etc without using “rape”, “abuse”, “molestation”, “sick fuck”, “consent”.

    Impossible modo.

    • 5.1
      Buglord

      haha, easy enough for those who don’t feel it should exist.
      sins it’s just a legal limitation on ability that varies from person to person, some have ability to make such choices clearly with taught at a very young age while others may not ever develop the ability to. this applies to many laws, situations and abilities but is here specifically meant of the age at a human may legally engage in sexual activities, regardless of maturity.

  5. 6
    Steve B.

    Unemployment: a function of effectivity of the given labour market. High costs of work, caused by for example a lack of mobility in the workforce or by artificially set minimal wages, lead to dysfunctional markets where a lot of potential supply is unnecessarily kept out.

    There. You don’t need a new point of view nor wild imagination: you merely need to be qualified to discuss the given question.

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About The Author

Zacqary is an activist in the New York Pirate Party, where his official title is "Cat Herder." He is a filmmaker, artist, and the Chief Executive Plankhead of Plankhead, a free culture arts organization/collective/pirate ship. He produces absurd projects, with titles like "Your Face is a Saxophone", from his home on Long Island.

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