You are actually making my point. The fact that words change over time doesn’t mean they are just willy-nilly to be changed as one chooses. And sorry, understanding etymology of words and history of ideas is what marks someone as smarter and more learned, not the opposite.
You write, “Without a common and precise vocabulary, it devolves further and precision ain't exactly popular.”
Yes, without a common and precise vocabulary it devolves further which is the point and I don’t give a fuck about having my, or any public discourse, about anything of substance based on how “popular” it is. This is the worst of pop-postmodernism (and I have no problem with GOOD postmodernism).
Aldous Huxley devotes a portion of Brave New World Revisited to precisely how authoritarians (soft or hard) utilize, and will utilize in (his) future, the destruction of word meaning to control the masses. (If I remember correctly, he also discusses Orwell’s recognition of this idiocy creating tool in this section as well. A point I make note of because I see a few headlines in my news aggregators of the sort, “You probably aren’t using the word Orwellian correctly,” which most likely means a correction of one set of dunces’ misuses with a seventh grade understanding at best and likely incorrect itself.)
It is pointless for anyone to discuss anything with this mindset. What’s the point if the Capital Building and leprechaun literally mean the exact same thing. (And yes, I know “literally” is literally in the dictionary as having the definition of “figuratively.” It is also noted as coming from a misuse).
The article about the correct use of "Orwellian" couldn't have come at a worse time. I think typically "Orwellian" describes using rhetorical devices to construct an alternate reality.
The writer seems to be making a point that Orwellian opposed totalitarianism and that people making the accusation of Orwellian recently are actually in fact advocating fascism and totalitarianism and are therefore contradicting themselves. But what we're really seeing more and more is that the agents of Orwellian rhetoric are now often on the opposite side of the political spectrum.
You are actually making my point. The fact that words change over time doesn’t mean they are just willy-nilly to be changed as one chooses. And sorry, understanding etymology of words and history of ideas is what marks someone as smarter and more learned, not the opposite.
You write, “Without a common and precise vocabulary, it devolves further and precision ain't exactly popular.”
Yes, without a common and precise vocabulary it devolves further which is the point and I don’t give a fuck about having my, or any public discourse, about anything of substance based on how “popular” it is. This is the worst of pop-postmodernism (and I have no problem with GOOD postmodernism).
Aldous Huxley devotes a portion of Brave New World Revisited to precisely how authoritarians (soft or hard) utilize, and will utilize in (his) future, the destruction of word meaning to control the masses. (If I remember correctly, he also discusses Orwell’s recognition of this idiocy creating tool in this section as well. A point I make note of because I see a few headlines in my news aggregators of the sort, “You probably aren’t using the word Orwellian correctly,” which most likely means a correction of one set of dunces’ misuses with a seventh grade understanding at best and likely incorrect itself.)
It is pointless for anyone to discuss anything with this mindset. What’s the point if the Capital Building and leprechaun literally mean the exact same thing. (And yes, I know “literally” is literally in the dictionary as having the definition of “figuratively.” It is also noted as coming from a misuse).
The article about the correct use of "Orwellian" couldn't have come at a worse time. I think typically "Orwellian" describes using rhetorical devices to construct an alternate reality.
The writer seems to be making a point that Orwellian opposed totalitarianism and that people making the accusation of Orwellian recently are actually in fact advocating fascism and totalitarianism and are therefore contradicting themselves. But what we're really seeing more and more is that the agents of Orwellian rhetoric are now often on the opposite side of the political spectrum.
That last one is literally disgusting.