In both my personal readings, and in the world at large around me, I have frequently noticed how certain words are misused, and the power that this abuse of language has over the general public. As an example, here are a few pairs of words that have been appropriated, often politically, and assigned “new”, incorrect meanings in the public realm.
Utopia
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- Correct meaning: an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or near-perfect qualities for its residents. Utopian concepts include, among other things, equality in the areas of economics, government and justice.
- Misuse: a society in which values and mores have been enforced by a small minority of the population who are extremely wealthy, educated, and who frequently employ science and technology, generally inappropriately, to further their personal wealth, happiness, and ideals.
A utopia is a desirable, but usually unachievable, concept towards which a society might choose to strive, not a political and technological institution imposed upon an unwilling populace.
Dystopia
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- Correct meaning: an imaginary place where life is extremely bad because of deprivation or oppression or terror. A society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives, and which is typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded.
- Misuse: employed as a hyperbolic synonym for almost any undesirable or unfamiliar situation, any negative future, inconvenient technology, or unfavorable political event. Technological advancement is often falsely equated with a dystopia, even if the technology is merely irritating rather than enslaving.
A dystopia is a total and complete breakdown of society, not a resolvable societal issue. Science and technology are not synonymous with the causes of dystopia, but are only tools that can be used either for good or bad.
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Good
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- Correct meaning: a broad concept associated with life, charity, continuity, happiness, love, or justice; a positive outcome.
Evil
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- Correct meaning: a conscious and deliberate wrongdoing; discrimination designed to harm others; humiliation of people designed to diminish their dignity; destructiveness, and acts of unnecessary or indiscriminate violence; a negative outcome.
Misuse: The concepts of good and evil are often heavily freighted with specific cultural and religious values such that what is “good” for one person is “evil” to another. In the creation of specifics, we have lost the general, humanity-wide meanings of these words.
As a result of the varied connotations of “good” and “evil”, I often find myself referring instead to the balance between order (negentropy) and disorder (entropy or chaos). An action has a positive effect on a person, place, ecosystem, planet, or the entire universe itself if the resulting order exceeds any disorder that was created by that action.
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Anarchy
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- Correct meaning: a society without rulers or, more broadly, an absence of any form of political or social hierarchy; a cooperative, stateless society based on voluntary association, self-governance, and mutual aid.
- Misuse: lawlessness, confusion, disorder, or chaos resulting from a collapse of government.
Chaos
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- Correct meaning: a state of disorder; entropy is the scientific measure of disorder, randomness, or the unavailability of energy to do work within a system, often perceived as a progression toward chaos, or the degree to which a system has become chaotic.
- Misuse: as a synonym for anarchy.
There are a number of variations on anarchy. Social anarchism attempts to create a society based on voluntary associations, direct democracy, and mutual aid. It seeks to maximize both individual freedom and social responsibility. Conversely, individualist anarchism focuses on personal autonomy and egoism, creating a Mad Maxian type of society, and thus the connection between anarchy and chaos. Social anarchism, as a system of governance, is a viable alternative to democracy and communism.
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Anti-aging
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- Correct meaning: eliminating or reversing aging, or reducing the effects of aging, extending life.
- Misuse: as a synonym for immortal.
Immortal
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- Correct meaning: not subject to death.
There is a common myth that the development of anti-aging technology will lead to immortality (the “elixir of life”). This myth runs so deeply that franchises such as Star Trek write futuristic adventures in which characters still suffer age-related diseases simultaneous with a technology that includes warp speed travel, transporters, replicators, antigravity, and hull integrity fields. The fear of portraying humans in the future as being immortal, with all the connotations associated with immortality, is so strong that the treatment of aging is largely avoided, although it seems to me that in a highly technological society, remediations for aging would have been well developed.
A slowing or cessation of ageing is not immortality. People would still die of many other things—disease, injury, self-abuse, war, and even loneliness. Of course, if the average age of people increased, family planning and methods to limit human population growth would become a much greater issue than it is now, and that would be a “whole other can of worms”, as the saying goes.
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These are just a few examples of misleading words that get bandied about in our modern world. Some of them have developed deep political, social, moral, and religious connotations. I can think of many more—such as black (colored) vs. white, privileged vs. marginalized, and woke (aware) vs. based (ignorant)—which are extremely politically loaded.
In today’s world of misinformation, I think it is very important to pay attention to the words around us—those that we use to express ourselves and those that are used to describe us. What was the original meaning of the word? What are its modern connotations? Is its use accurate or misleading? Who is using the word, and why? Is the usage of the word honest and truthful, or is it an attempt to cause harm? Is there a better, more compassionate way to say what needs to be said?
Be kind with your words.
