[News with Views] You know that scene in The Princess Bride where Vizzini keeps saying the same word, and Montoya says, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."?[Princess Bride clip here]
One of the basic strategies for restructuring society norms is to redefine words. But there’s no public statement of the "new definition"; it’s a subtle shift that eventuates into a takeover of the language and turns black to white and red to green, etc.
Being a writer, words matter. Words convey ideas, and if the word choice changes, the meaning can change. I strive to find the precise words I need to convey my ideas. I try to leave no room for ambiguity on what I’m saying. Ambiguity fosters misunderstanding and misinterpretation ‐ a whole other set of problems. It is two different things to disagree and to misunderstand.
It’s like how "racist" gets thrown around.
It becomes a catch-all phrase that strays far from its original meaning, and can now become whatever the writer (or voice) says it means. This can only lead to confusion, accusation, misunderstanding, etc.
Before long, the actual identifying definition of the word shifts to a new cultural connotation, which lends to all kinds of gray area and fuzzy interpretations. This is done both deliberately and ignorantly. Talking heads steal a narrative and coin a word but with their new slanted definition, and then ignorant listeners repeat it ad nauseam until the original meaning is obfuscated.
This is why we have two schools of thought on President Trump being a "racist". But who’s defining racist?
A cultural step to bringing order back where there is chaos, is to return to the original meaning of words. Why? Because it brings common ground back where there was confusion and division. It encourages understanding where there was misunderstanding. Remember, disagreement and misunderstanding are different things. There’s a good percentage of time that we’re misunderstanding one another, rather than disagreeing.