Where have all the good words gone?

I used to have conversations with people, read texts, and frequently encountered words I couldn’t define, couldn’t explain, couldn’t place in the correct context. It was intriguing, because it was the beginning of a fervent discovery: looking it up, writing it down, trying to use it and not forget it. Not forget it. Interesting. Does dis-use make it any less real? If a thing is not used for a use, it is useless, is it not? In literary terms, I believe the word is obsolete.

Am I surrounded by stupid people?
Are my social movements any less academic than they used to be? Possibly. Have my chosen media of engagement changed? Perhaps. My departure from the academic realm, however, was based on a desire to enter the ‘professional’ world.

How do we define ‘professional’?
It’s concerning, frankly. Synonyms and definitions bespeak competence, qualification, skill. Perhaps somewhat more concerning is the connection with habit, with routine, with continuing a cycle that is, not as professional as it purports to be.

Speaking of cycles
If we are to believe that words shape meaning (and in Victoria’s Empire, we do), and we lose all the good words, and the depth of meaning, description and emotion they evoke and, by extension, the shaping of our own realities within that meaning, because they fall out of use and because we have transferred them out of reality, and into a virtual space, where are we in a few decades’ time?

Modern Talking: Illiteracy in the Age of Information (a fairy tale for adults)

“The purpose of a fishtrap is to catch fish, and when the fish are caught, the trap is forgotten. The purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch rabbits. When the rabbits are caught, the snare is forgotten. The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to.” Chuang-Tsu

In the beginning was the word and, once upon a time, in all human-populated areas of the world people adhered to a system of grammar and punctuation, so that the meaning of the word could be preserved.

There were good words and bad words, formal words and colloquial words, polite words and swear words. There were people who couldn’t spell, and there were people who couldn’t punctuate, but there were also people who upheld a system of consistency and, by extension, the integrity and overall intellect of the people who read the words because words shaped thoughts, and thoughts shaped actions; and words, the meaning that they inferred and expressed, contributed to an abstract called culture.

Then one day, along came something virtual. Unfortunately a large portion of how this virtual thing operated was based on words, and the codes of letters and words. Because this virtual thing was so limitless, so infinite and so huge, humans, already ‘dumbed down’ by a large degree, felt obliged to fill this void with meaningless words, misspelt words, badly connected words. And they did it on a scale referred to as the ‘global village’ so that these ‘wrong’ words could be read by global village idiots everywhere.

The global idiocy spread by something ‘viral’; it spread its sticky web through single countries, and then across continents; its ease and sociability making sure that everyone picked up on it.
It happened at a time when people already struggled to communicate- they got divorced, got retrenched, overspent, overindulged. And then, they stopped talking to one another directly altogether. And what of culture? If a culture of self is anything to go by, a self-reflexive, self-centred kind of culture, then that’s what happened. And they all lived alone, unhappily ever after.