Four Idols of Culture
Bacon warned that we must be cautious about our use of language, as it can be corrupted by the four common idols of culture, portraying an inaccurate representation of our knowledge. He believed that "rhetoric should persuade us that the idols are corrupting influences that must be banished from the mind, in order to protect proper human understanding."
- Idol of the tribe: comprised of predjudices, desires, and pride that blinds its members to reality, for example the "tribe" believes it's better to be married than to be single. Bacon claimed that "these survival predjudices are bred into our passions and intellect", meaning basically we can't help but want to fit in, and in doing so we essentially conform to the thoughts and ideals of others versus our own individual stances. The tribe can be alluded to the majority of society, and "speakers often tap into these prejudices to advance their agendas"
- Idol of the den: "derived from living with a limited view of the experiential world, perhaps inside the family." The idol of the den is similar to the idol of the tribe, just on a bit of smaller scale. The den is representative of your own individual experiences and your own specific clan. For example, you may or may not have been raised in a religious household, which might cause limited views of the world and thus limited language. Similar to Plato's allegory of the cave, those within the den are blinded to anything other than what they've known, as they have little to nothing else to compare it with.
- Idol of the marketplace: "cause people to use language in a popular way rather than in a precise manner." Basically, Bacon is not a fan of slang terms, as they conflict with communication process. Terms such as "YOLO, Bootylicious, #Swag, are not concrete universal terms, and they all corrupt our uses of language, "leading mankind into vain and innumerable controversies and fallacies." Bacon very much so wanted to purify the King's English.
- Idol of the theatre: "Have been inculcated by theology, dogmatism, and logical fallacies, fool us into thinking that fiction is true." Basically this idol sums up the idea that we're heavily influenced by what we're exposed to, such as the correlation between television/video game violence and then violence reciprocated by the young boys who play them, and the people who want to recreate or even live their lives like the characters they watch on TV shows. The same could be said for readers of self-help books, as they find that "happiness isn't as easy to achieve as the gurus might make it seem."
