On Suitcase Words

"Marvin Minsky has written about "suitcase words." Using examples like "consciousness," "emotions," "memory," "thinking," and "intelligence," the MIT Media Lab professor observes that a suitcase word "means nothing by itself, but holds a bunch of things inside that you have to unpack." He saw the need to unpack and analyze each word in order for it to be understood fully. — Source

We all use Suitcase Words all the time; but I noted a surge in this rhetorical artefact with the emergence of a self-perceived "Libertarian" with links to the far-right (Revisionist when not Negationism of 70’s State-Terrorism, American Confederate flags in the crowd, overt antisemitism and so on), recently elected as a lawmaker in the city of Buenos Aires.

His devotees use the word "Libertad" (Freedom or Liberty, depending on the context; in Spanish, the English distinction is nought.) in almost every uttered sentence; but for each of them, the word is tied to personal yearnings and dissatisfactions that life in society can't, or won’t, always fulfil. "My freedom to swing my arm ends at your nose", is an apt refrain to illustrate the conundrums by which we mutually renounce some of our individual freedoms in order to live in society. How much and what, the devil is in the details and in public debate.

Absolute freedom is only achieved in the wilderness and comes with absolute risk, as proven by our ancestors since 200,000 BC.

But for those who sacralise the word Freedom or "Libertad", it becomes a suitcase word that can contain any yearning and craving, from the most reasonable to the most unspeakable. The phoneme soon decouples from dictionary entries along the lines of "the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants" or "the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved"; and it can turn into my “right” not to wear masks in a crowd during a pandemic, and cry “Dictator!” if I am asked to show a COVID Pass at the gates of next door theatre.

This imbuement of holy aura onto the spoken word is extremely effective. If you dare to make note, as I do in this post, of how the phoneme "freedom" is losing its semantic content, you can, and will, be accused of opposing Freedom altogether.