Something has been bugging me for a while about a phrase that I keep hearing. People keep using the phrase,
Lived experience
I don’t understand that at all.”
How is lived experience any different that experience?
It makes me think of George Orwell’s 1984, and the book’s discussion of a language modification that he called Newspeak.
The concept of Newspeak was to modify the language officially and make dissent impossible.
Actually, the more I think about it, the more this seems like a perfect example of Newspeak in reality. See, saying lived experience doubly reinforces the idea of a personal connection to your experience. In 1984, he mentions in chapter 5 the example of how Newspeak treats the word “good.” Very good is “plusgood,” while the best is “doubleplusgood.” Bad is “ungood.” It serves the purpose of both making people less educated (as they know less vocabulary), and it makes a concept like “bad” only a function of good.
My point is that a similar thing exists with lived experience.
When a person says that, they are shifting the focus even further to the personal, which renders any dissent to what amounts to a personal attack. If you question someone’s lived experience, you are calling into question their life, or at least that will be their response. They will say that you are attacking their identity. This means that you can’t question their point without questioning their whole identity, even if that point is completely whack-a-doodle.
I’m not surprised that certain types of people will try to mold language into their own uses. This happens on both sides of the political aisle to some extent, although it does seem to be a major tool of one side.
What is striking to me, is that this one has been just accepted by even those who normally would object. I don’t want to be a curmudgeon about this. However, it is purposeful and logistical in its use. The word experience exists for a reason and all experience is actually lived experience.
So, Please stop using that phrase. It means nothing, and it is only to shut down any dissent.