The Devaluation of Words

Hi All.

Think about the last time you used a swear word. Then think about how you felt when you said it.

If you use swear words a lot, it would be like any other word in your vocabulary. Something that you just throw around at any given time, in any given situation.

However, if you hardly swear, then the word holds a lot more meaning to it. You might only swear if you are really angry or passionate about something.

Obviously, these are two sides of the extreme, and most likely people will fall somewhere in the swearing spectrum. Keep this in mind as you read the rest of what I have to say.

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In today's society, it is common for people to throw around words that once had a lot of meaning to people, but with time and incorrect usage, they lose whatever meaning that they initially had.

For anyone who is even mildly involved in the political sphere, you would know that in politics, people like to throw words at each other in an attempt to shut down the other sides argument. It's a common occurrence that I see pretty often, and I'm not even a super political person anymore.

Maybe you are in a twitter argument about a particular issue, and the word "racist", "sexist", "homophobic", etc is thrown at you for simply discussing your opinion. An opinion that may be logical, or maybe an opinion that desperately needs changing (wrote a post on that). Maybe you are having a well reasoned discussion and someone decides to butt in with one of those words, which I will be calling 'buzzwords' for the remainder of this piece.

It's pretty annoying, but it's unfortunately something that we will have to get used to in the age of social media, where anyone who has a device and an internet connection can enter into a discussion and give their opinion. This means that people who are intelligent and others who are less intelligent can comment on the same domain, on the same issue, at any given time.

But don't be confused. I am not saying that proudly shouting slurs at a group of people is a good idea. In fact, please don't do that. What I am discussing is the population of people who will throw around words to condemn another person's opinion for the express purpose of shutting down the argument, even though the argument was not even an issue in the first place.

Now that I've explained that point, we can move on.

Here's the thing, I love giving my opinion. That's why I like to write my opinions in posts like these, and that's why people build their careers off giving their opinions on things like politics or almost anything you can think of. Opinions are a way of identifying ourselves, and it would be foolish of me to suggest that people shouldn't be able to give their opinions on things.

All I'm saying is that it's productive to have reasonable discussions on relevant issues in our society without getting mad by the opinions of the other side. Using your time cursing at people, and throwing buzzwords at others that doesn't represent their ideas is the absolute worst way to advance society, and those words that you use become less and less meaningful the more times that they are incorrectly applied. At some point in the near or far future, calling out bad people with the words like the ones I've listed through the piece won't work as well as it used to, because the words will no longer hold the same impact as they originally had.