Linguists face two occupational hazards: 1) arrogant authoritarianism, and 2) the intensive cultivation of theory in the inexhaustible soil of theoretical fictions and myth. The two often go together, as we find in the rhetoric of ‘Science tells us’ about the language organ of ‘The Standard Theory’. When we face the real world, such as in a university library, we find language and communication defeated by dreams of control (‘all the world’s information’ etc.) and turned into their opposites, nonsense and lies. When we face the real world of herd animals, we find communication based on trust: horses never lie.