In the third dossier, Ye no longer begins by asking what happened; instead, he circles the words attached to each alternative event. The material came from a retrospective meeting of a fictional project team. Member A said: "For the last two weeks I never knew whether the delivery criteria had changed." The manager B replied: "We have already unified the goals; your problem is resistance to change." A tried to cite several occasions on which he had received different requirements, but B kept folding them under the same names: anxiety, negativity, or failure to adapt.
A could still speak, yet it became increasingly difficult for his sentences to point to something that could be jointly examined. Whenever he described a time, a requirement, or a revision, the response shifted from the event to his state. If he continued to explain, he risked being seen as escalating emotionally; if he stopped, he might be recorded as having accepted the conclusion. This thought experiment does not prove that the manager deliberately practiced mind control. The project's requirements may genuinely have changed, and A may have missed information; B's use of psychological vocabulary may simply reflect a lack of more accurate expression. Judging sustained manipulation requires more material than a single retrospective. This chapter first analyzes a smaller question: language does not merely describe experience; it also changes the standing under which experience can enter shared judgment.
RC calls language an embryonic form of the convergence of possibility and notes that semantic networks support cognition while also, through abstraction, producing a loss of experience. This claim is itself two-sided. Without shared words, experience can hardly cross individual moments; yet once words acquire stable usage, they may also decide in advance which differences are worth preserving.
Experience Has Already Been Selected Before It Is Spoken
When A recalled the final two weeks, he could not bring everything that had happened back into the meeting in its entirety. He selected certain moments, organized them chronologically, and summarized them as "the criteria changed." Expression gave the experience a communicable shape, and it also discarded sounds, hesitations, and details unnoticed at the time. This loss is not evidence that A failed to express himself. Every account has a scope. Demanding that a person qualify to raise a question only after fully reproducing his experience applies an unreachable standard to the dissenter. The more reasonable course is to ask what judgment this account is meant to support, and which materials are relevant to that judgment.
If A only wanted to show that he twice received different versions of a document, he could supply the versions and the times; if he further judged that the team had deliberately made him fail, he would need other material about intent. The same stretch of experience can support conclusions of different strengths, and language should help mark the strength rather than upgrade every statement at once into a master accusation.
B was also selecting. His summarizing of A's several statements as "resistance to change" may have captured some real tendency, and it may also have erased the contradictions among the requirements. Whether a summary is useful depends on whether it can explain the relevant material and be revised when the material does not fit. The conciseneness of a summary cannot by itself prove that it is closer to the facts than the details are. Thus the first way language changes experience is to let some features appear stably while pushing others into the background. This process is unavoidable, yet it can be subjected to examination: who selected which details, to answer which question, and whether the omissions affect the conclusion — all of these can remain open to discussion.
Naming Can End Isolation, but It Can Also Produce Global Judgments
A person who repeatedly meets similar difficulties may, upon finding a name for them, know for the first time that the problem is not inexpressible. A name can connect distinct events, and it can also lead one to seek the experience of others, existing research, and sources of support. Without an apt word, those affected may only be able to describe local discomforts again and again without ever seeing the shared structure.
But a name may also close observation too quickly. Once A knew the phrase "goal drift," he classified every dissatisfaction as a change of criteria; once B knew "resistance to change," he likewise classified every objection as a problem of personal adaptation. Each gained explanatory efficiency while reducing the occasions on which concrete events could change the explanation.
A name should return to the material it attempts to connect. Whether the project's goals changed can be checked against documents and the decision process; whether A persistently refused any adjustment requires observing his responses to different types of change. If a name no longer needs that material, it has turned from a tool that aids recognition into a label that answers in place of the material.
We also need to distinguish names for events from names for personality. "This time the submission did not follow the new process" bounds a single action; "you are a person who cannot adapt to change" extends the action to a relatively stable identity. Identity judgments may sometimes have grounds, but they require broader material and should permit later behavior to change them. The shortness of a formulation cannot excuse omitting the expansion of its inferential scope.
In a short essay of June 1, 2022, The Meaning of a View Depends on Its Scope of Qualification, Zhurong pointed out that the meaning of a view depends on its scope of qualification, and that distortions of a view usually come from exceeding that scope. The reminder applies equally to naming. That a word is accurate under some conditions does not mean it can pass through every scenario to explain an entire person.
How the Interpreter Gains an Advantage in Naming
At the retrospective, B chaired the agenda, recorded the conclusions, and held the authority to evaluate members' performance. The names he proposed entered the formal minutes more easily. A's original words, even if he was allowed to speak them, might survive only as raw material for the conclusion B had already drawn.
This asymmetry does not arise because B's language is naturally false. A chair does need to organize information, and minutes cannot contain every statement verbatim. The questions are whether the organized results can be checked by the speakers, whether key objections are preserved in an appropriate form, and whether the record writes still-disputed interpretations as already-confirmed facts.
For example, the minutes could read: "A holds that the criteria changed several times within two weeks; B holds that the information was unified, and the disagreement awaits checking the version records." This does not guarantee complete symmetry between the parties, but it preserves an entry point for fact-checking. If the minutes only record "A expressed resistance to change," the object of dispute has already moved from the criteria to A himself.
Whoever can decide the official name can influence where later people begin to understand the event. A new manager who sees only "adaptation problems" may never re-check the versions; when A raises similar questions in the future, they are more easily absorbed into the established identity. A temporary summary acquires temporal persistence through the record.
The power hierarchy in RC leads us to ask how naming connects to consequences. If B's words determine resources, opportunities, or credibility, then naming is not merely the expression of a view. It becomes part of the evaluation power and must bear the corresponding burdens of grounds, scope, and error correction.
When Language Becomes a Gatekeeper of Reality
RC holds that language participates in cognition and that observation participates in the formation of certainty. From this a dark inference can be drawn: control the words and interpretive frames available to people, and one controls their reality. This inference touches a real mechanism and contains a dangerous exaggeration.
The real part is that language affects attention, comparison, and shared recognition. When A cannot get "the criteria changed" into the record, later participants genuinely have more difficulty seeing the problem; when an experience long lacks a public name, the costs of seeking help and forming connections may also rise. The right to name can change social judgment and paths of action.
The exaggerated part is equating influence over expression and recognition with control over all experience and material consequences. Even if the minutes state that the goals never changed, A may still face mutually conflicting documents, and the project may still fail because of inconsistent requirements. Suppressing a formulation cannot automatically eliminate all the relations it points to.
If the manipulator believes that language can completely manufacture reality, he may overlook the counter-effects that reality continues to produce; if the critic also believes this, he may describe the influenced as passive containers who have entirely lost the capacity to observe. Both statements exaggerate the one-way power of language.
The more accurate critique is this: controlling language can raise the cost for certain experiences to enter public judgment, change how responsibility is understood, and weaken the subject's opportunities for external verification. Whether sustained and effective control forms depends on whether the words combine with access to information, relational dependency, resource allocation, and mechanisms of punishment.
Applying Theoretical Vocabulary to Others: Who Restricts It
Once theory supplies new concepts, its users may find it easier to describe complex experience; they may also use the concepts to gain an interpretive advantage. If B were familiar with RC, he might say that A's level of observation was low, that he had failed to complete re-convergence, or that he was constrained by fixed ideas. An ordinary managerial judgment thereby acquires ontological pomp.
Such claims cannot stand merely because the terminology is correct. Even if "levels of observation" and "re-convergence" are defined within the theory, applying them to a particular person still requires material. More importantly, the user must state what experience would change his judgment; otherwise theory merely supplies the existing power with a vocabulary that is harder to rebut.
Dark usage does not always crudely forbid ordinary language. It can require that a person first accept the theoretical frame before his experience is acknowledged as worth discussing. A says the criteria changed; B demands that he first understand how he himself constructed the sense of change. The concrete question is deferred until a course of epistemic training has been completed. Theory thereby becomes a qualifying examination for entry into the discussion of facts. Those who master the terminology occupy the position of interpreting others; those who do not are assigned the position of needing to be interpreted. RC's critique of cognitive monopoly and the dissolution of the subject must, in turn, bind RC's own users.
The legitimate place of theory is to help pose checkable distinctions: reminding us, for instance, to distinguish experience, interpretation, and conditions of observation; it should not decide, in place of the concrete material, who is closer to reality. A philosophical vocabulary that cannot be corrected by ordinary experience comes into conflict with the "processual completeness" the theory itself claims.
Redefinition: How It Becomes Changing the Rules After the Fact
At the start of the project, "done" meant submitting a runnable version; at the end, B said that being done also included user documentation. The added requirement may be reasonable, but if it is used to evaluate earlier work only after A has submitted, it has changed the conditions on which the action rested.
The flexibility of language lets institutions adapt to new needs, and it also lets evaluators redefine success after outcomes appear. If A points out that the definition changed and B replies that all professionals should long since have understood the implicit requirements, an unstated standard is treated as having existed all along.
Here we must distinguish interpretation from retroactive expansion. Some words in shared practice do carry common sense that is not itemized, and one cannot demand that every detail be written out each time; but when a particular meaning directly affects responsibility and the participants genuinely disagree about it, the one who sets the definition should state the grounds rather than end the discussion merely with what seems obvious to him.
After-the-fact definition also has a self-protective function. If the project succeeds, the original goal is said to have been achieved; if it fails, the goal is restated as something the team never truly pursued. Every outcome can leave the manager correct, and language no longer records commitments but only absorbs deviations.
A correctable definition should preserve versions, times of change, and scope of application. A new standard may govern the next stage, or may adjust the current task once all parties understand it; but it cannot return into the past without trace and require that the actor be regarded as having always chosen on its basis.
How Vagueness Keeps Responsibility Moving
Vagueness is not always manipulation. Much collaboration in life cannot specify every situation in advance, and moderate openness lets participants judge flexibly. The question is whether, when vagueness produces adverse outcomes, the right of interpretation always belongs to the same side.
In the thought experiment, B said "finish as soon as possible." A asked for a specific time; B would not commit. A submitted early; B said the quality was insufficient. A kept refining; B said it was too slow. If every outcome can be negated by a different meaning, A cannot form any path of action capable of satisfying the requirement. The key to this structure is not that a single sentence is vague but that evaluation moves unilaterally after the outcome appears. B retains all the interpretive margin, and A bears all the error of prediction. The so-called flexibility is enjoyed by one position, while the cost of uncertainty is transferred to the other.
If the goal is genuinely hard to quantify, this asymmetry can be reduced through stage reviews, examples, and shared updating. Where complete explicitness is impossible, one should still acknowledge which expectations have not yet formed, rather than writing unknown requirements, after the fact, as what the other party should have known.
In Pressure Usually Flows from Those with Options to Those without, Zhurong proposed that those who have options should prevent pressure from moving downward in full. This chapter applies that normative claim to the authority of definition: those who can choose the definition after the fact hand the pressure of prediction to those who must act in advance. The remedy requires the definer to bear commitments as well, rather than requiring the executor to improve his powers of guessing.
How Repeated Retelling Manufactures "Everyone Agrees"
Once B's summary entered the minutes, it was cited by another member at the next meeting: "Last time it was already confirmed that A does not adapt to change." The new speaker may not have observed the original events; he was simply using the formal record. Repetition makes a claim more familiar without automatically adding independent evidence.
If A must explain from scratch every time, while B's claim is presumed valid because it entered the record, the costs of expression are asymmetric. Over time, A's repeated rebuttals may be seen as excessive fixation, while the repeated reappearance of the original summary is seen as the stability of consensus.
This effect need not come from a coordinated scheme. People rely on existing records to save time, and each may act in a locally reasonable way. In aggregate, mistaken or overstrong summaries still gain a path advantage. The absence of conspiracy does not mean the chain of transmission needs no correction.
When revising the record, the correction must reach the places where the original claim continues to be used. Adding a note in one secluded corner does not change the next round of evaluation. Whoever derived decision-making convenience from the original summary bears the greater responsibility for ensuring that the correction enters the relevant process.
Repetition can also build genuine knowledge. An observation that recurs under independent conditions gains support. One must distinguish a single source retold many times from different sources supplying comparable material. The number of voices, the number of sources, and the quality of evidence cannot substitute for one another.
A deeper form of linguistic control does not forbid the person from speaking; it lets him receive a response only if he accepts the established interpretation. If A says the criteria are unclear, he is ignored; if he says he is anxious, he receives help. Over time he may learn to describe the problem in B's words, even when those words cannot fully express what he lived through.
This does not mean that A is necessarily insincere when he says "anxious." A person can be anxious and also genuinely face contradictory criteria. The dark structure lies in this: the first part is allowed in, while the second is systematically excluded. The support addresses only the subject's state, not the relational conditions that produced the state.
The person's borrowing of existing language may be a way to obtain practical help within a limited environment. His formulation's agreement with authority does not establish his full identification; nor does his later change of words establish that all his earlier statements were false. The choice of language itself stands within a structure of consequences.
The critic may replicate the same practice. He demands that A call the experience "mind control," otherwise A has not yet seen reality clearly. If A is willing to say only managerial chaos, the critic reads it as control having gone deeper. A word meant to expose domination becomes another qualifying examination of the subject.
This book cannot use its own title to demand that readers accept a global verdict. To support the subject is to provide more comparable words and materials, so that he can form, revise, or refuse interpretations. If "reality hijacking" absorbs every voice that does not accept it, it structurally approaches the closed interpretation it criticizes.
What Silence Means Must Be Determined by Context
In the latter half of the meeting, A stopped speaking. B could say he had understood; an onlooker could say he was suppressed; A himself may simply have judged further explanation not worth it. Silence in itself carries no single semantics.
To judge silence, one needs to see how earlier statements were answered, what consequences further speaking would have, whether other channels of expression existed, and how A later described his own choice. Even with all this material, uncertainty may remain.
Counting silence directly as consent expands the mandate of the decision-maker; counting silence directly as evidence of victimization also completes the interpretation in the person's stead. Both uses exploit the fact that silence cannot immediately rebut.
If an institution must continue to act amid silence, it can record explicitly "no comments received" rather than "unanimous approval." If what follows involves decisions that are weighty and hard to reverse, a more probative form of confirmation should be used. The strength of confirmation should be proportionate to the consequences.
In personal relations, too, one should be allowed not to say everything at once. When emotion is intense, material insufficient, or safety lacking, pausing can preserve the capacity for later judgment. Demanding that a person give a complete account at his most difficult moment may let uncertain expressions harden permanently into verdicts.
Recovering One's Own Words Is Not Creating a Private Reality
After leaving the retrospective, A first wrote down, chronologically, what he could confirm: when he received which version, how he responded, which parts he could not remember. He temporarily declined to summarize the whole process as "control" or "resistance." This let experience come apart again out of the global labels.
Recovering one's own language does not mean believing only oneself. A still needs to check documents, ask other members, and allow those materials to change his memory. Independent judgment is not the construction of a private world into which no external material can enter.
He can keep first-person expressions: "At the time I did not know which version governed"; "After I heard that sentence, I no longer wished to speak." These statements give experience a place without automatically proving the other party's intent. First-person authority has a scope, just as formal records and professional interpretations have scopes.
If a word helps him connect experience, he may use it for a while, while writing down to which events it points. If he later finds it unfit, he can change it. Words serve understanding and need not become an object of identity loyalty. A person should not, because he once used a certain name, be required thereafter to make all his experience conform to it.
The processual completeness of RC shows up here as the revisability of language. Revision does not erase the old statement; it states why the change occurred and which materials prompted it. In this way, changing one's account can count as cognitive growth rather than being construed as having lied in the past or betraying the present.
How Shared Language Can Serve Verification Again
If the project team is to repair itself, it can begin by giving key words an operational scope. "Goal" means the result this stage must achieve; "suggestion" does not directly enter acceptance; "change" requires recording time and impact. Definitions will not resolve every conflict, but they reduce the same word's bearing contradictory consequences.
Members also need the opportunity to point out cases the definitions omit. If an urgent change cannot be recorded under the full process, provisional measures can be taken first, together with a statement of how the record will be supplemented later. Correctable language is not arbitrary language; it stays continuous through versions and responsibility.
Minutes can distinguish facts, participants' interpretations, and items awaiting verification. Such a text may be less concise than a single conclusion, yet it lets later people know where disagreements remain. Preserving disagreement does not mean every version is equally grounded; subsequent material can still strengthen or weaken a given interpretation.
Shared language should also admit ordinary expression. A member need not master an entire philosophical, managerial, or psychological terminology in order to say that one requirement differed before and after. Technical words can raise precision, and they should explain rather than create a threshold of entry. If only their masters are qualified to decide what words mean, linguistic empowerment turns into cognitive monopoly.
Who Interprets the Interpreter
B's summaries also occurred in a bounded position. He may have been under pressure from superiors about the project's delay and inclined to interpret the problem as insufficient adaptation by members; he may also genuinely have seen A refuse reasonable changes on certain occasions. Which of these holds requires material and should not be settled in advance by position of power.
Returning B to his conditions does not exempt him from responsibility. On the contrary, it lets us ask more concretely: what information did he hold, what could he change, why did he choose a certain manner of recording, and did he correct course after deviations were pointed out. Interpreting an actor and evaluating an actor can happen at once.
If the critique merely names B as manipulator and then explains all subsequent material by that identity, it repeats the problem of the global personality judgment. Sustained control should be explicitly named when the evidence is sufficient, but the naming must keep its connection to behavior, authority, and consequences. This self-restraint matters greatly. Critical language has the power to gather attention and organize action, and it may also spread further through moral certainty. The more forceful the name, the more it owes an account of its conditions of applicability, of counterevidence, and of the means of its withdrawal.
Theory cannot demand that only the analyzed accept boundaries while it itself enjoys unlimited interpretive authority. If this book is to criticize reality hijacking, it must allow material reality to hijack its own expectations and force its original frame to change.
Speakable Experience Still Requires Someone to Respond
Increasing vocabulary does not automatically change relations. A can write an accurate record, but if the meeting still permits no verification and decision and evaluation remain closed within the same position, his improved linguistic capacity may not change the outcome. A structural problem cannot be reduced to the person's needing to learn to express himself.
Conversely, opening a channel of appeal also requires linguistic work. If members can only say "I feel unwell," the organization may hardly know what to correct; forms of expression that provide events, times, and impacts can help experience enter handling. Supporting expression and changing institutional conditions need to happen together.
Sometimes an experience temporarily has no suitable name. The one who responds can acknowledge not yet having understood and help preserve the material, instead of rushing to choose a familiar label. The unknown does not prevent handling what is already clear: suspending adverse evaluations, checking versions, supplementing omitted information.
Language genuinely supports the subject not by guaranteeing that his first sentence is forever correct, but by letting that sentence be understood, compared, revised, and, where relevant, allowed to change the shared arrangements. What a person needs is not unconditional assent to every interpretation, but the assurance that his experience need not first take the shape power expects before it can enter reality.
Words Should Leave an Exit for Re-observation
After verification, the team may find that the criteria indeed changed several times without record, and may also find that A once overlooked a clear notice. A discussion that preserves the layer of fact can acknowledge both. A need not deny his own omission in order to prove the institutional problem, and B cannot use one omission by A to cancel the whole problem of process.
Such a conclusion is less dramatic, but it gives action a more accurate direction: revise the change records, clarify the channels of notice, and at the same time hold members to the reading responsibilities already made clear. Responsibility is no longer distributed all at once by a single global label; it descends in step with the concrete conditions.
This chapter has not described language as a neutral garment. Naming, classification, recording, and repetition can genuinely change the public fate of experience; combined with resources and the power of evaluation, they can participate in sustained control. Precisely for that reason, language needs boundaries and entrances that point back.
A usable word should help us discover what happened, and also tell us what it has not yet proven. A correctable record should preserve the current conclusion, and also preserve the path for correcting it. A response that supports the subject should allow the person to borrow the shared language, and also allow him to point out that the shared language still omits him.
When language does these things, it does not erase the distance between experience and expression, but it lets the distance be seen. Experience thereby need not fall silent, nor, in order to be heard, forever submit to the words of some interpreter.