Terministic Screens

We process our world through a series of filtration systems. They are a form of motivated reasoning: the way that our emotional biases effect how we take in and perceive information. Two different people can hear the same thing and evaluate it completely differently based on their personal traumas and preconceived emotional attachments to some of the ‘tokens’ inherent to the information.

One such system was dubbed ‘terministic screens’ by theorist Kenneth Burke, who wrote:

Kenneth Burke: “A screen composed of terms through which humans perceive the world, and that direct attention away from some interpretations and toward others.” —- “Terministic Screens”. In Language as Symbolic Action, 45. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1966.

In the receptive mode, our biases color how we choose to perceive incoming information—for instance, whether we allow it to anger us because we interpret it in such a way that it accords with some trigger of victimhood.

The opposite, or ‘projective’, variation is more pernicious. It’s used by bad actors to tincture the way we perceive reality through subtle emotional manipulation. They do this by carefully setting invisible frames and boundaries within conversation to shift its character, tone, or meaning, or to make us more amenable to certain interpretations of rhetorical arguments.

Kenneth Burke called this variation the dramatistic screen:

Dramatistic screen concerns action (language as action). It directs the audience toward action based on interpretation of a term. Via terministic screens, the audience will be able to associate with the term or dissociate from it.

At the most basic level, any interaction with another person occurs in such a way where one is obliged to accept a bare minimum of base mutual interoperability of key semiotic precursors and semantic conceits.

Even if any given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature as a terminology it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent it must function also as a deflection of reality.

This can be done in a manner of subtle coercion, artful manipulation of word usage, meaning, and inflection to steer the reality-paradigm—or eidos—toward a given inclination in a style which can be termed ‘leading’. MSM news anchors have mastered this during interviews of ideological opposition figures. You can watch them artfully contort the language to press a certain narrative.

It’s integral to their mastery of NLP, and is a foundational building block used to construct larger and more complex gaslighting structures in the context of arguments, which always tend toward motives of manipulation.

Every interaction today is larded with subtle linguistic manipulation, our very realities have become saturated with politicisation of every stripe. Virtually everything is political now—even breathing, what with global warming depleting our air. That means every utterance is sieved through a filtration system meant to slowly bend and ply you to the whim of some political actor, agenda, or movement.

Speech is honeyed with layers of hyper-meaning, every word diffracted through endless schemes of artificial instructions, like data trunks of fiber optic cabling. The pressure to conform is higher than ever—to not go out of bounds, making sure your every anodyne word satisfies each volume of the gatekeeper’s precis.

The simpler example of these techniques being widely utilized in the current zeitgeist revolves around the flare-up of the Israeli-Palestine crisis. When discussing the issue, one is only allowed to start with a certain “understood” base premise. One cannot, for instance, trace the issue’s pedigree to its pith: the early outlaw foundation of the Israeli state itself under aegis of the colonialist British Empire, acting wantonly and in contravention of its original mandate. By virtue of this, the arguments revolving around the current crisis are often circular or tautological, and deliberately so—because they are curated by an establishment with a motive to keep you from understanding the conflict’s true provenance.

And when I say one is “not allowed”, it has several meanings. In the most direct and literal, it means if you were a pundit appearing on a major mainstream cable channel, you’d be immediately cut off and removed from the air were you to pose such an unmentionable. On the more suggestive or subtle side—let’s say an informal and easy-mannered online debate or back and forth between two essayists—you would likely lose ‘credibility’ or be criticized for going out of bounds, though it wouldn’t be explicitly called that. They might scoff and give you those primitively kinesic signatures of disapproval, politely—or not—signaling that they are unwilling to share your “information space,” social reality, or terministic screen framing with you.

The generally agreed upon postulate is that truth can stand on its own—it wouldn’t need to be aggressively protected against any attack that might chip away its facade like cheap plaster if it was self-evident. Anything that requires militant censorship and intricate linguistic snares to wrap it in a protective bubble of obscurantism is likely not related to the truth, but its opposite. The fact that these noetic nets are so widespread tells us just how much is being concealed by the narrative shakers.

As the situation in Gaza heats up we’re exposed to a wave of manipulations on a daily basis. Crafty language games from the reality arbitrators and cajolers of the MSM. When describing Palestinian deaths multiple outlets refer to them with the passive term “dead”, while Israeli deaths are nomenclatured with the much more direct and accusative “killed”:

Endlessly mutable words like ‘terrorist/terrorism’ are used and interchanged liberally to stoke cholers and passions. Emotive nets are cast for any quick hit of outrage or memetic reach, no matter how incongruent, contradictory, or antithetical the jumbled ideographs:

But in the wash of noospheric noise, it all begins to lose its receptive meaning.

Western political structures in general have mastered the technique of arbitrating language, ideas, and definitions by deliberately keeping them vague and ambiguous. E.g. the concept of ‘Democracy’: always referred to in the most ambiguous and obscurant way possible, never explicitly defined, and therefore serving any number of meanings when convenient to do so. “Democracy” ends up being anything that the Western order deems “good”, or rather useful, and any country not complying with Western edicts—like social engineering demands, for instance—can be subsequently condemned as ‘not democratic’.

These are carelessly strewn ideographs, empty virtue words used, by the unvirtuous, to enflame:

An ideograph or virtue word is a word frequently used in political discourse that uses an abstract concept to develop support for political positions. Such words are usually terms that do not have a clear definition but are used to give the impression of a clear meaning. An ideograph in rhetoric often exists as a building block or simply one term or short phrase that summarizes the orientation or attitude of an ideology. Such examples notably include <liberty>, <freedom>, <democracy> and <rights>. Rhetorical critics use chevrons or angle brackets (<>) to mark off ideographs.

The charade is allowed by virtue—pun intended—of the definition never being challenged—not for want of desire, but because the establishment structures its relations with the public in such a way as to circumvent direct questioning at all times; a built-in, artificial arms-length distancing. Politicians are brisked from one enclosed compound to the next by armed guards; press conferences are meticulously curated and stage-managed, with only pre-allowed questions from pre-approved and sympathetic press services acting as PR outfits.

This allows the definitions of hallowed, geopolitically or socially sacrosanct virtue effluent to remain unchallenged. The words represent symbols, their definitions shrouded in an occluding fog whose interpretability and obscurity is maintained by design.

But this is the more direct, overt usage: specific words manipulated in the same way as with medical terminology during the Covid era, where terms like ‘vaccine’ changed on the fly without anyone even given the ability to challenge the new constructs.

The more advanced and complex usage hinted at before refers to the general information cloud, or eidos, which comprises an accepted idea-set or semiotic substrate in a given society. All society is structured on a framework of terministic screens which act as goalposts, bounding our thoughts, expressions, and most importantly the narratives which are carefully conditioned into appropriate and stable realities. Theorists have deemed these “social realities”, part of the larger field of social constructionism. These realities serve as the undergirding supports to the massive steelworks of The Narrative. To speak outside of those bounds is to be looked upon as nonconforming, rejected and ostracized from ‘polite society’ and accepted circles.

One of the most prominent examples is that of the endlessly spiralling political debates. The most popular pundits—for instance on this very site, and elsewhere—are those who keep within the comfortable confines of these prescribed ‘windows’. They do this by speaking within the accepted—and by definition allowed—rubrics, signaling their part in the act as a sort of status cue, like wearing a secret watch or ring to signify your membership in some esoteric society. This defines their submission to permitted boundaries of debate and rhetoric, and includes couching discussions in the distinct language of commonly accepted tokens like: political parties, conservatism, liberalism, Republican, Democrat, Independent, Centrist, naming specific Congress members and their credentials as if any of that matters, and as if Congress members actually represent quantifiable differences on the most pressing issues. This peacock pageantry display is all a game to keep us confined within the thunderdome, the carnival’s steel-grated ‘Globe of Death’.

In order to be “taken seriously”, one must signal the right cues and ideographic lingo of the established rhetoric. By speaking within the status quo frameworks of banality—political parties, the sort of in-group nadsat of politi-speak—you signal that you not only understand the boundaries, but that you’re “one of them,” and that your co-performers can rest at ease knowing you won’t stray too far off-script, break the 4th wall and shatter the spell cast over the audience. These are the unspoken rules for submitting to political structures, which can only remain powerful and anchored to reality if we all “take part in” the shared dream—or rather, mass psychosis.

Here’s a concrete example of a Leftist propagandist trying to push his false reality paradigm onto Canadian conservative politician Pierre Poilievre, who doesn’t take the bait and brilliantly—not to mention suavely—repartees the reporter’s invasive framing mechanisms:

Notice how disingenuously and oilily the scab tries to subsume Poilievre into his terministic framing by bombarding him with highly loaded emotive virtue mush. Poilievre casually deflects the heat like a knight in a mirror suit thwarting laser fire. The worm’s parasitic semantic games have no effect on someone who’s hip to the telemetry.

In this clip, Piers Morgan tries similarly deceitful framing games and gets exposed—it seems the people are catching on:

During the Covid era, “doctors” played such aggressively coercive games with their refusenik patients, heaping bales of loaded establishment psycho-gibberish onto them to force their submission to the orthodoxy. Using suggestive wording meant to evoke subtle threat, name-dropping ‘authorities’ to add weight and utilizing framing that made you feel small and isolated for even daring to question ‘the [occult] science’.

In a broader context, by merely wading into those preset boundary waters, you surrender your one and only true freedom; that of existing in a state of reception to all ‘truth’. In reality, artificial constructs like political parties are nothing more than facades, a simulation—wool over our eyes. But to say so would be to break the delicate waxwork of this matrix, declaim heresy, and be cast out as some sort of kook—a heresiarch unwilling to play by the rules of the occult game; it’s to be kicked out of the simulation.

That may seem a good trade-off: “Good! I don’t want to be in their Matrix, anyway. I prefer to be the proud outsider looking in.” Nothing wrong with that choice. But by removing yourself from the game, you cede any semblance of influence you might have had over it. For those who may aspire to try to influence reality, the world around them, it’s arguably necessary to put a foot in, and become a ‘participant’ in the gameshow.

To some extent it means being forced to get in character and play ‘pretend’, accepting the vogues and gilded virtues of the terministic screens shared by all participants of the mass psychosis.

But the boundaries aren’t exact, and are rather subject to debate. I may reject most of the widely accepted terministic screens, refusing to fully immerse myself in the mutual hypnosis. When discussing politics, I venture to steer clear of partisanship and the ideographic signaling which forces us into a narrowing box. This will preclude my ever gaining a wider audience as the framing signals your amenability to the hypnotized masses; it’s like an opiate or an insect stridulation signaling colony acceptance.

For some people, even that’s a step too far. They may prefer a total disassociation from, or renouncement of, these imposed systems: the falsification of reality. They may prefer to pre-emptively ostracize or excommunicate themselves before the System Controllers can do so.

But to do so is to remove yourself entirely from the conversation. To squelch the reach of your voice and ideas to those who may be on the cusp, but still in thrall to the noetic constructs. Some people prefer to adhere to at least some slice of the mutual fabric in order to broaden their reach to the hopefuls, and have a chance at converting some of those stifled system votaries.

One is not a more ‘noble’ choice than the other, per se. The total, ideological rejectionist absolutists can be admired for their monastic determination. They’re like ancient Stylites, reeds in the wind of modernity.

It may come down to one’s station in life. It’s no secret that many, if not most, of the die-hard self-removers are those without a stake in the game. They may be alone with nothing to tether them to any given outcome. But those with families, particularly children, are far more likely to storm headlong into the breach—for the sake of their children’s futures.

One of the most common new phenomena is that of fed up parents forced to play the local community politics game, fighting their local schoolboards, becoming reluctant and unsung ‘political activists’ for the sake of improving their children’s prospects, or removing immediate dangers—like groomers—from their vicinity. To the lone outsider, such a person’s adoption of the de rigueur conceits, their full-throated embracement of the codes and politi-speak signals, the submission to the implied ‘rules of the game’, could be a revolting sign of servility and loss of individuality—perhaps even metaphysical agency. But one must respect such people’s differing responsibilities to their family; they can’t sit at home and fight for their children’s future in the here and now by immanentizing some gnostic mystery or philosophical deadend. That’s all to say that, we shouldn’t look down on such people who’ve wrapped themselves in the formal trappings of the Matrix, the spun-wool of the enemy’s Nadsat. If you had children being groomed by dragqueen librarians from outer space at their local Pre-K, you too would be forced into breasting the bore waves of calamity with the same soccer-mom banality now endemic to Twitter.

But for those of us unwilling to commit to an admirably adamantine stoicism, a more moderate approach is preferred. One that balances understanding of the way that emotive language, subtle kinesic manipulation, etc., can rearrange our perceptions, make us slaves to alien or hostile narratives, with a desire to still engage in a common reality-stream for the purpose of having an effect. For much of the time, it’s an act; the need to put on pretensions, and speak the language of the enemy—the argot of two parleying pirates squabbling in some foreign port dive.

One Tweeter posted this thought-provoker:

I’m currently reading Stephen RC Hicks, “Explaining Postmodernism,” and his interpretation of Nietzsche is summed up as follows, “What Nietzsche meant with his passionate exhortations to be true of oneself, is to break out of the artificial and constraining categories of reason. Reason is a tool of weaklings who are afraid to be naked in the face of a cruel and conflicted reality and who therefore build fantasy intellectual structures to hide in. What we need to bring out the best possible in us is “the perfect functioning of the regulating unconscious instincts.” The yeasayer - the man of the future - will not be tempted to play word-games but will embrace conflict. He will tap into his deepest drives, his will to power, and channel all of his instinctual energies in a vital new direction.”

I can see how this may sound like a compelling call to action, but without Reason, the a “new direction”

Stephen Hicks likewise quotes Foucault with: “Reason is the ultimate language of madness.”

This is just to emphasize the point that all constructs—like Reason can be said to be—are ways to occlude the truth. And why would Reason be a potentially unnatural construct? Well, given that it’s not universal and differs not only amongst cultures but even time periods, evolving—or perhaps devolving—from the ancient days to now, it would suggest that it cannot be central to truth, as truth—one would think—is immutable. Keyword being think, which is also reasoning—thus the dilemma.

But that’s all to highlight how artificial constructs conceal things, whether they be truths or deeper layers of reality. From the Nietzschean analysis above: “Break out of the artificial and constraining categories of reason…[which] is a tool of weaklings who are afraid to be naked in the face of a cruel and conflicted reality and who therefore build fantasy intellectual structures to hide in.”

Creating carapaces of artificial boundaries fashioned out of linguistic tricks meant to funnel us into ideological traps is how the System Controllers prevent us from changing things or overthrowing them. If we limit ourselves to the staid and structured political language, the accepted rote of ‘polite society’, we enslave ourselves into that constricted box hammered out for that very purpose.

But actualizing into what Nietzsche envisioned as this limitless, elemental man of the future requires one to push past the uncomfortable restrictions that press into our skin like concertina wire. We’ve been so conditioned toward knee-jerk flinch reactions to certain ‘uncomfortable’ suggestions or ideas, that we now regularly pitch baby and bathwater alike through the window, just on programmed instinct—because we were told to do so.

We must become intellectually bold and defiant, by breaking through the tainted strictures of modern ‘Reason’. Using a previous example, when it comes to civic order and civilizational construction, who says “Democracy” is the pinnacle system? Why should we be so instinctively repulsed by other systems that seem to come much more naturally to man? This is more a rhetorical, rather than some underhanded call to overthrow the system and implement communism, monarchism, etc.

It’s about demolishing the walls which confine us mentally and intellectually. As per the variations of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and other related theories thereof, language creates reality. This is greatly to Big Brother’s benefit, as he uses the generational, slow-drip constriction effect to tighten our linguistic thumbscrews, consequently restricting our thoughts and imaginations for a better world.

There are so many concepts considered verboten, as if they’re cemented into our very destinies, now accepted as simple staples of modern living, prosaic as they may be. Things like paying taxes, a 40-hour work week—none of them are questioned; there’s an eerie omertà surrounding such ‘off-limits’ issues. Likewise when they’re mentioned by ‘officials’ they’re veneered in the various linguistic misdirections and manipulations discussed before, which creates a shield of authority and impenetrability; all for the purpose of perpetuating the facade, the ‘screens’ we’re meant to never look behind or beyond. This is further reinforced by Hollywood and other social-programming mechanisms, which our minds internalize and reflect with automated mirror neuron responses, aping the fear of sacrosanct, institutionalized societal controls like an infant indirectly taught to cry at the sight of his parent’s revulsion to an insect.

As always, these words are not prescriptive. Do, or do not, as you would. But be wary of the hazy thread spun by the eidos-weavers; the densely layered pattern-papers of reality, their thimble and needle of symbol and language, tools used to fog the looking-glass, to keep us forever obfuscated.

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