Word Jungle

Nobody asked but …

Market.  Marketplace.  Free market.  Open market.  Corporatocracy.  Self-interest.  Greed.  Graft.  Grift.  Regulation.  Regulatory capture.  Human action.  Human nature.  Darwin.  Darwinism.  Natural selection.  Eugenics.  Survival.  Survival of the fittest.   Leadership.  Adherency.   History.  Fact.  Fiction.  Dog eat dog.  War.  Peace.  Civil.  Barbaric.

In the Bible, there is the story of Babel.  For the evil of emulating a god, for the transgression of following a misleader, we humans were struck with misleading misunderstanding of one another through misalignment of tongues.  Each of us had a new and different language.

The same problem applies today — we are permanently stricken with inability to communicate well.  Every milieu is filled to the brim with wordsmithing.  With every good intention, each of us means to communicate, but even within the bounds of a single language there is a proliferation of meanings.

We cannot agree to standard meanings of the words, phrases, and labels in the first paragraph above.  How shall we proceed to understand?

— Kilgore Forelle