Orwellian Destruction - Take the word Greed

When I was at Berkeley I had a professor who maintained the it was the misuse of language that destroyed civilizations. I disagreed and maintained the the migration of words has nothing to do with the fall of civilization and that it was right and good that the meanings of words change with the time. Language is alive and breathing and growing.

I am no longer so sure, in fact, I think that I agree with him now to a great extent. He had not thought it through enough to illustrate the logic to an inquisitive graduate student. Or else, he did not think it worth it to explain but we did spend a reasonable amount of time talking about it. I don't like the third possibility but for completeness I need to present it. There is the tiniest, most minuscule and insignificant chance that he did give me the logic and I was too self absorbed or stupid to notice or understand. I have since developed the logic or perhaps recreated his? It does not matter. Here is goes.

Take the Word Greed

In past usage, when I was a kid, greed was bad; it was then and still is one of the seven deadly sins. Greed was a word restricted to a persons desire to possess things to the point where it was destructive to the family, the neighbors and to the community at large. People afflicted with greed took it all and left none for the others. It was considered a psychological aberration, an important one that affected a significant number of people and that did indeed destroy communities and financial markets and families. This concept had been developed over thousands of years and multiple civilizations. It is an important concept. It is something to identify and nip in the bud at the earliest opportunity.

The word greed has morphed; It is no longer a negative impulse in much modern usage; it is no longer one of the most powerful destructive forces to afflict man; it is the root of all that is good. It is the reason that we modernize and feed the poor and build TVs and send people to the moon. Was it the film "Wall Street" that placed this distortion in our psyches?  I understand the migration. People were indeed starting to get rich and hoard. Wall Street was the perfect example. Take too much and the people around start to suffer. But the people that are causing the suffering don't notice; they are doing fine; they are important people, they are getting rich as far as they are concerned, they are doing God's work. The people around them do notice and start to talk. Pretty soon, there were accusations of 'greed' floating around.

Being accused of greed hurts; greed is a bad thing; it means that they are bad people. But the financial people do not think that they are evil, they are good, they make the economy run; they feed little children. What they are doing is for the good of mankind. Therefore, the accusations are nonsense. The word greed cannot be bad, they are not bad; this thing called greed is actually the motivation that creates all good in the world, it is not evil or destructive, at all. Hey, what is wrong with stomping out disease and feeding children? This thing they are being accused of? Nonsense. They have the motivation to save small children, that is what greed has given them, "greed is the motivating force". They developed the logic and sold it to the masses; it worked. "Gee, you're correct. You are good people. Greed is indeed good, how could we have gotten that wrong? Hey, we learn as we go. Of course, the motivating force. That makes sense."

Well, there has always been a motivating force to improve oneself, that is natural and it is a part of the human spirit but that is not what the word greed was designed to describe. It was designed to help identify an illness that affects people and hurts society. It was something that people discussed and watched out for. It can indeed bring down civilizations. Did I mention that it was considered one of the seven mortal sins, for a reason? George Orwell got it right. This is how the bad becomes the good. Bad people can be very slick and convince others and more importantly, themselves,  that they are not bad; they are doing God's work. So where is the downside?

The downside? OK, fine, the word has changed. Now, What word are we to use when describing this deadly sin, this psychological illness, this destroyer of civilizations? How shall we address that issue? We can't. We must invent a new word and teach people about the concept from scratch. The whole entire concept has been erased for the cultural consciousness and we have lost 1000 yr  of knowledge. Greed, in the old sense, no longer exists. The trait still permeates humanity and it is still a fundamentally destructive force on grand scale, but the knowledge of this important characteristic of the human spirit is gone, lost. We are less knowledgeable, the awareness of this human condition is gone. With this intentional morphing of the word by greedy people, we have jettisoned not just a word but we have discarded an important concept about a fundamental weakness in the economic and social structure. It is as if we had gone back to thinking that the world is flat. No, I am not exaggerating. 

The problem with the destruction of a word is that it is also the destruction of the concept that the word was designed to describe. No, greed is not the motivating force; it is not good. It is evil. People no longer understand this. They have been conned, tricked and cheated. People are now dumber than they were before. We hurt the civilization. We took a step backwards. Words were invented to describe concepts. Destroying the word effectively destroys the concept. The concept behind the word 'terrorism' is in the process of being destroyed right now. We are harming our civilization by jettisoning basic concepts that have been developed over thousands of years. We are loosing knowledge.