Themeattics

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.

Rudyard Kipling

This is another post that’s been due for quite a while. I’ve brushed up against the topic or outright used it as part of the discourse a lot, but haven’t made something specifically focused on it yet for reasons I can’t quite pin down.

Words have to mean something, guys. I know, I know, language is a fluid thing. Words can and do have multiple definitions and those definitions shift over time, but I can’t help but feel that we’ve entered a new arena of late. So much discourse, whether it be political or cultural, centers around definitions that don’t seem to be shared between parties. We make up labels or terms that manage to have some cohesive narrative around them for a bout a week, then they get sucked into their respective wheelhouses online and come back out bastardized to whichever way best suits the using party. The end result is that we either just talk past one another or, far worse, we dull the effect of important distinctions.

Let’s take a couple of real-world examples over the past few years, yes? Some things we’ve seen permeating discourse both online and in the “real” world, as if those things aren’t now irrevocably intertwined. In escalating order, let’s go with woke, socialist, and racist. Nothing too spicy, no?

I don’t really feel like any of these need the baseline definitions explained, but for the sake of it I feel like I should. That way there’s no confusion. Woke gained traction as a way for people to identify their ideology as being aware of social ills. It meant that they weren’t asleep anymore, they saw what was going on. Pretty benign, and got to the point effectively. But, like all good things, the internet got a hold of it and opposing parties adopted it as a means of degradation. It then morphed into a way to attack something as being purely ideologically driven. Media that was made to explicitly drive a message over being for entertainment bore the brunt of this label and, over time, that became the more used version. Now, we’ve gone past that to the point where it seems like if anything has any left-leaning thought at all, it’s given the label and ignored by large swathes of the right. A gay person exists? Woke trash, don’t watch it. It used to be a decent way to understand a criticism. No more. With such a washed out definition it now effectively means nothing.

Socialism, now. As a political / economic philosophy, Socialism has a pretty specific definition, geared toward social means of ownership and distribution. It’s been a well-covered topic for generations, but let’s not think the speed of internet discourse can’t ruin that as well. Sit down some of the less informed people on the right end of the political spectrum and you’ll find them labeling everything as socialist. Any government aid plan, any government… well, anything, practically. For these people, socialist has become a word that more or less means “the government is involved and I don’t like it.” Which is, obviously, useless. There’s no attempt to explain why, or what, or how the thing they’re labeling as such deserves the label. One side just starts booing and the other side rolls their eyes and dismisses it.

This is, sadly, much the same for racist. I can’t tell you how many things I’ve seen labeled racist. Team names, brand icons, immigration policy, diseases, industries, governments, religions… you name it, it’s been called racist. Things against specific countries are called racist – a country isn’t even a race! This has become the left’s version of “I don’t like it,” along with the other hit singles, -ists, -isms, -phobes. They’re all the same thing – this thing/person is bad and should be seen as such. These labels, if taken in their original definitions, are damning. That’s why they’re used. No one wants to be seen as one of those things, it’s a serious indictment of character. So, in a lot of cases, the tag worked. It got action, changed people’s opinions of people or things. But, that label morphed into what it is now and it’s lost its power. People don’t believe it any more. Not the original definition, at least. They just know whomever is using it doesn’t like what they’re using it against. Nothing more. It’s why we’ve seen the transition to new and even more, ah, exciting accusations like white nationalist. Same accusation, just a new skin.

In every case, these dilutions serve only to make our discourse worse. The true definitions had meaning to them. They had weight, they had purpose, they had a collective understanding that we could talk to one another about. Now, we don’t know what we’re hearing. They’re so diluted, in fact, a lot of people just disregard the point entirely. We’ve entered a Boy Who Cried Wolf era. It’s miserable here, I hate it. I don’t know how we’re supposed to have any pertinent conversations with those on other ideological ends if we can’t even share the same language, and it only seems to be getting worse as we isolate ourselves in our ever-smaller online worlds.

We aren’t meant to be islands, and we certainly aren’t meant to exist in opaque ideological bubbles. It’s damaging to the path of human race as a whole. We are geared to treat those who we don’t understand and who oppose our ideals as adversaries, and God knows what we’re capable of doing to adversaries.

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Yeah, alright, this isn’t a “LEGO,” per se, but it’ll do. I’ll allow it. I am, truth be told, starting to wonder if this whole little goal / experiment is too taxing, though. Right now I have 13 plans strewn out across the floor, all of them held up in some way shape or form by being unable to find the right piece. It’s annoyingly frustrating and probably (definitely) not the best use of my time. But… I’m not wanting to let it go. Not yet. I started it for a reason, after all. Need to see it through.