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June 25, 2005

Shell-shocked, idiots, aspirin and Nazis

George Carlin has a marvelous routine in which he discusses the evolution of the term "shell-shocked" - once used to describe the condition of a soldier who's been seriously affected by all the violence he's witnessed during a war - into "Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome". Carlin's point is that often, by renaming things and giving them more technical names, we tend to hide the true nature of the thing about which we are speaking. But the reasons why things get renamed brings a slightly different issue to mind.

In many cases, the reason why a new, more technical, name will be devised for something, is that the old name has slipped into general English usage and no longer necessarily referrs to the thing which it originally described. A good example is "idiot". Many years ago, people who had limited mental capacity were medically diagnosed as "idiots". At that point, it was just a word that described a specific mental condition, but before long it seeped into general usage and became a garden-variety insult for anyone who did something stupid. Unfortuantely, it's new, expanded meaning made it rather insulting to apply to someone who had no control over their condition, so a new term had to be developed. "Moron" was once used the same way, and more recently "Retarded" was the diagnosis of choice. As with "idiot", however, both "moron" and "retard" are now more commonly used as a put-down and the current diagnostic term is "developmentally disabled". I think maybe they've found one with enough syllables that people won't be so quick to adopt it.

Another example is how brand names often lose their identify power over time. At one point, there was an Aspirin brand pain reliever. It was so popular, though, that everyone referred to all similar pain relievers as "aspirin", and now that's the generic name for the drug. "Xerox" and "Kleenex" on on their way there. I mean, how often do you ask someone to "xerox" something for you, even if your company has a Cannon copier, or grab a "kleenex" from a box of Puffs?

The point here is that when words start being applied to situations that are, perhaps, similar in superficial ways to the thing a term specifically describes, that word begins to lose its power - it's definition. No one today things of being "shell-shocked" as really anything all that bad - it sounds mild compared to having "PTSD" - yet they're the same thing. And how often do you call someone a "moron" or "idiot" without meaning to say that they are medically developmentally disabled?

So it bothers me when I hear people referring to anyone who is the least bit strict as a "Nazi" or comparing them to Hitler. The Nazis - including Hitler - were among the most heinous, evil and deplorable groups ever seen on the face of this earth. What they did is so vile that we can NEVER allow ourselves to forget it. Yet it seems these days that we toss the terms "Nazi" and "Hitler" around as a nasty insult, and dilute its impact with every missaplication. NOTHING truly compares to what Hitler and the Nazis did - and we can only pray that nothing else ever will.

Yes, I will agree that there are many remarkable similarities between what has been happening in the US over the last few years and what happened in Germany when the Nazis took over - and those similarities need to be made clear so that we can try to stop things from going anywhere near that far again. But when we start making jokes about "soup Nazis" like the folks on Seinfeld did, or call an anal-retentive asshole-of-a-boss a "Hitler", we're accomplishing NOTHING except weakening the meaning of the terms, and bring Hitler and the Nazis down to the level of a corporate butthead and an angry soup server. We can't afford to allow that to happen if we have any hope of remember the lessons of the Holocaust and preventing anything like it from happening again in the future.

Posted by thorswitch at June 25, 2005 07:58 AM

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