⁉️🙋🏻♀️❔Do you read old books like an #allegory ?
Example: This page is from a #Rogets #thesaurus arguing with itself about #intelligence #absurdity and #nonsense.
Here is one modern parable hiding inside it.
TLDR : terminology , amiright 😜
The Moral
A society doesn’t collapse when it becomes stupid.
It collapses when it becomes unable to recognize nonsense.
The most dangerous absurdities
are the ones spoken calmly,
footnoted carefully,
and defended as intelligent.
⸻
The City That Renamed the #Words
In the city, people used to argue about what things meant.
Not loudly — just enough to stay honest.
There were words for sense and words for nonsense.
Words for wisdom and words for folly.
Words for intelligence and words for imbecility.
They weren’t insults.
They were descriptions.
Then one day, the city decided clarity was uncomfortable.
So they hired committees.
The committees said:
“Absurdity is subjective.”
“Folly depends on context.”
“Intelligence is whatever produces results.”
The dictionary was revised. As all sacred books are by humanity.
⸻
#Absurdity was renamed innovation.
#Contradiction became nuance.
#Nonsense became disruption.
And #wisdom — quiet, inconvenient wisdom — was labeled resistance to progress.
People who asked questions were told they were confused.
People who pointed out contradictions were told they lacked vision.
People who noticed that nothing made sense anymore were told:
“You just don’t understand how advanced this has become.”
⸻
Soon, the city filled with very clever people saying very empty things.
They spoke fluently.
They cited each other.
They produced graphs.
And yet, every decision made life narrower.
When someone said,
“This feels wrong,”
the answer was always:
“Feelings aren’t data.”
When someone said,
“This doesn’t add up,”
the answer was:
“The model disagrees.”
⸻
Eventually, the city reached a strange place.
Everything was optimized.
Nothing was understood.
People could explain how things happened —
but not why.
They could defend decisions —
but not justify them.
They had intelligence everywhere,
and wisdom nowhere.
⸻
One day, an old book was found in a basement.
It listed words plainly:
Absurdity — nonsense that pretends to be reason.
Intelligence — the capacity to understand, not merely compute.
Wisdom — judgment guided by conscience.
The book made no claims.
It offered no solutions.
It simply named things correctly.
And that frightened the city more than any rebellion ever had.
Because when words regain their meaning,
systems lose their disguise.
⸻
