A linguistic process that particularly bothers me is the over-generalization of words. It starts with taking a word that represents a noble idea and watering it down until it is almost meaningless. “Democracy” is one them1.

In the modern US, democracy is seen as the ultimate good. “We live in a democracy” is an argument often used to explain how great our country is.2 Yet, most people do not participate in any democratic processes in their day to day life - the most that the common person will do is vote for an elected official once a year.

It’s easy to envision how a democracy could be woven into our lives: starting from the education system and expanding into the corporate world, we could give ownership of our own autonomy and outcomes to ourselves and our peers. Instead, these institutions are a combination of authoritarianism and bureacracy: the power is held by the upper ranks and crystallized through bureacratic means. Just like the royalty was upheld through divine mandates and the priesthood, our current society is upheld through a combined effort of managers and administrators. And it’s exactly these people who would fear change and democracy, as it would represent a shift in power that puts them on equal ground with the common human.

For this reason, there has been a secret war on the word democracy - attempting to turn it into a milquetoast version of itself, while villainizing those who actually want representation through democratic means.

At least, that’s what I’d like to believe, but the truth is probably more mundane: people over-use noble words and they get watered down naturally over time.3

Notes

  1. Some other notable noble words that have been destroyed over time are equality and freedom, but the list doesn’t stop there. If you find someone saying “X is good”, its likely that X is one of these fallen words.

  2. Ironically, we live in a democratic republic - not a democracy. A democracy is most likely impossible in a country of hundreds of millions of people.

  3. I do believe there is a battle against certain words, especially around “Political Correctness”, where some set of people deliberately try to co-opt words and change their meaning in a coordinated way using mainstream media