Nobody understands this worldly wisdom better than politicians.
Donald Trump won the elections, lost the second time, only to bounce back a term later. Pick a slogan, run with it, but advocate for the same problems you did during your supposed ‘lackluster’ term, while focusing extra hard on the failures of the one who defeated you in the previous term. It’s a case of running for the same seat but redefining the problem not as what you can do, but what someone else failed to do. You then present yourself as the solution to these problems. Build enough hype, and the masses are sold. It’s the classic redefinition of a problem with the potential of winning new hearts and blinding more eyes.
In my third year of campus, my brother, then a finalist in medical school as well, was on my case for not applying for the nationally campaigned numerical identifier known as the Huduma number. National threats were issued. Anyone without the number would lack access to basic government services. Adequate funding ensured there were clerks at every major national institution, including our leading regional university. Individuals would get angry at the ones who had us standing in line for hours only to hear that the machine had jammed when they were a few entries from their turn.
The campaign was a success in one sense — many people were convinced that it would be essential for everyone to get the number. Skeptics questioned why a new identifier was needed when the government already had the requisite details from the time one was born. You cannot get a national identification card without a birth certificate. The former and the latter are tied to the individual. Why a third number?
The operation was a flop as much as it was a scheme. Billions of money were lost chasing a number posited to solve a problem that never existed. Redefinition at its best. Create a census problem that highlights many instances of fraudulent citizens bypassing taxation or government scrutiny, and then introduce a solution. It reeks of Ozark-like strategies to introduce clean money into people’s bank accounts. All speculative, but is it not possible?
Take another better example, a strip club. High-ranking officials and public heads would never want themselves to be associated with the very idea of frequenting such a ‘profanity’. The clever founders would then rename the joint as a Gentleman’s Club. Anyone who walks in is no longer someone who enjoys the semi-nude (or is it half-dressed? another case of redefinition?) entertainers, but a person who regards himself as a gentleman. Convenient. Redefinition at a business level.
When I was in high school, the minister of education banned holiday tuition. We celebrated. We could stay at home for at least four weeks after every term. The teachers retaliated. They redefined it from holiday tuition to remedial classes. The minister banned holiday tuition, not remedial classes. There’s a difference. Same time, different name. Redefinition. Teachers don’t get blamed, the ministry doesn’t ask questions, students head back to school. Problem solved.
Hallucination is a pebble in the shoes of AI developers. GPT-5 has significantly reduced AI hallucination, but it still exists. It’s problematic to have an autocomplete that doesn’t know a well-known president while distorting history. Efforts to solve the problem have been expensive if not insoluble. A solution exists. Dana Meadows already confirmed it — the most impactful leverage points are intangible. Change the perspective. Rather than call it a bug in AI output, call it a feature. That eliminates the problem, and people find a way to include it in their work. AI will hallucinate; it’s no longer a problem, but a caveat we need to factor in all its outputs. We have to second-check its responses. Problem solved through redefinition.
A teacher teaches. The one in elementary school is responsible for creating the foundation for the children. It looks simple. Most of the time, the children are given enough time to play. The ones in high school have to deal with a bunch of kids who think they are adults. All of them are teachers. But what of the one on campus? Because they handle adults, they get a different name. How about “lecturer”? Perfect. They give lectures. They don’t teach. It solves two problems. It justifies their demand for higher pay, because they teach people who can already teach themselves, unlike the ones who teach those who don’t know they are teachable at all at the elementary level. They then feel a sense of pride, knowing they are not teachers, even though they basically teach. Knocking two birds with one stone through redefinition.
Walk into a supermarket stall searching for the best milk that your trainer recommended. She stressed you take the low-fat milk. You take your time. On one aisle, you find one that you like. It’s cheap, 500ml, and comes in a refillable bottle. Its only downside is it’s 3% fat. Committed to finding your preferred drink, you locate another one, wrapped in biodegradable tetra-pack, recyclable paper, and it’s 97% fat-free. Perfect. Your trainer will be pleased with you. Business has just been solved through redefinition.
My all-time favourite comes from the masters of redefinition — politicians. In my country, we have clowns for leaders. Clowns have entertained crowds for centuries. No wonder we elect them. The first thing they do whenever there is a problem, one that miraculously, like the employee-of-the-month award, recurs every term, is to initiate a commission of inquiry. This team usually comprises members personally selected by the leader to dig out the “root cause” of the problem the public is disgusted with. Seems fair. Make your solution public. Show the country that you mean business. It also publicly tells them that the commission requires funding. No problem, we’ll pay the tax.
After months of investigations, they publish a heavy document that nobody is interested in scouring. The tome is the blown-up version of “terms of conditions” — nobody has the time for it. A heavy report is evidence that work was done. It can be kept for reference. Why, however, should anyone publish an encyclopedic piece when the points can be broken down into a PowerPoint slide? Well, the public needs to know where all the money went. It went to printing the papers, duh? Every major office needed a copy.
It doesn’t take long before the same problem reappears, with a different name. At one point, it will be called corruption, and in the next, a scandal. A fancy name to redefine a problem. Then the sitting officials will create a commission of inquiry, and if they feel the term has been used too much, use another, more convincing term. How about a task force? Sounds firm. It somehow rhymes with S.W.A.T. They can get things done. We’ll do just that.
Better yet, arrange a conference. Invite all the major media stations. Make sure they capture you signing the document. A multi-agency team or a task force or a commission of inquiry, or an agency alliance. Something to convince the masses you mean business. Don’t smile. Look executive. Then have the paparazzi take photos as you hold the leather-bound document. Problem solved. Onto the next one.
Such public signals bring to mind the Zoom interviews. The panel on one end, inside their offices, or with a virtual official background, and the interviewee, on the other side, dressed from the waist up, but with their underwear from the waist down. With the camera narrowly focused on the action, do we even know what the document contains besides what is announced on the news, or am I being unnecessarily speculative? Media stations may — I repeat, may — not know what is going on, but they are present. The leader of the free world publicly shows that they are indeed signing. Optics are important in politics.
Words also play a crucial role. A tactical team beats a team. A commission sounds like the kind of mission Ethan Hunt and his team are tasked with solving.
As Garrett Harding continues to remind us, words not only convey thought, they prevent it. In Filters Against Folly, he mentions three important filters — literacy, numeracy, and ecolacy. Numeracy is a given. Ecolacy entails the ecological consequences of an action. Words fall in the province of literacy.
His solution is always to ask what a word means operationally. All the names I have mentioned mean the same thing. Taskforce. Commission. Tactical Team. Multiagency team. Same operational functions. Different names. Solving problems through redefining the solution. The alternative is to redefine the problem to avoid facing it.
Let me cite another example of redefinition, which, orchestrated by the modern politicians, that is, the tech owners, may have eluded you. Content is the best way of redefining art and entertainment, lumping it into a single word. Art, in all its multiple facets, has been caged into a single word, forced on an art-loving people. I detest the word “content”. Worse than “content” is “content creator”. These adjectives are used anyhow, like passed blunt. Everybody gets a puff, and the smoke-filled room becomes hazy.
It’s worse for musicians who are suffering from the playlist craze. Spotify generates numerous playlists from artists you may never have heard of. Playlists. You can’t easily generate a human artist. It takes hard work, consistency, passion. On the other hand, it’s easy to make a buck with AI-generated music, which doesn’t need to be streamed that much. How? Create multiple accounts, generate multiple songs, and some will find their way into somebody’s playlist. And just like that, you’re a few steps away from being a millionaire. It’s absurd how this formula may attract people to do just that, worsening the state for musicians even more. Albums are being replaced with playlists. Albums don’t solve problems. Playlists do. You need a playlist to read, work out, copulate, cook, hike, run, focus, meditate, sleep. Solve the everyday problem not with albums, but well-named playlists. Albums may not have been redefined, but what comprises an album if not a list of songs by the same artist? Now, a list of songs has been redefined. Playlists — 1. Albums — 0. Halftime.
Art transcends. Entertainment is temporary. All stimulate our appetites for consuming from the creative space. But each of them is multidimensional. The intention of lumping all creative endeavours into a single word is no different from converting the amorphous clay into a dice. It becomes calculable, predictable. Value capture. Redefine creativity into a single word, and make sure the masses are as distracted as possible from identifying the magic trick you perform before their eyes. The problem of apportioning every creative feat into its respective category then falls into a single one, through redefinition. Genius!
But once you see it, you can never unsee it.
What I’m trying to say is…
Hardin helps us understand that we don’t need to cultivate that many filters to avoid being duped. We only need these three — literacy, ecolacy, and numeracy.
As for redefinition, where literacy is switched up to prevent thought, you can cut through the smokescreen by asking the question:
Operationally, what does it mean?
As Nas raps:
It’s all perspective, isn’t it?
This song inspired some of the lines used in this article. Source — YouTube