Words Get in the Way

According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Postmodernism is defined as "a late 20th-century movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspicion of reason; and an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political and economic power." Key components there are "skepticism", "relativism", and "suspicion of reason." Postmodernism was a reaction to modernism (you can't make this stuff up). Modernism, a standard philosophical view of the Enlightenment, argued that there was an objective natural reality, that statements can be objectively true or false, and that logic and reason are universally valid and useful to make us better people. It was this last suggestion that, following World War II, produced the postmodern assault because, after all, our logic and reason had produced more death than ever before. So postmodernism argued against objective reality, especially in language, and the value and use of logic and reason. In language in particular, postmodernism held that it was not a "mirror of nature." Language was not meaningful; words are "never fully 'present' to the speaker or hearer, but are endlessly 'deferred'." Words are whatever you want them to be.

That brings us up to today. Now we engage in discussions, debates, and disagreements ... over words. Words, you see, represent a reality outside of themselves. We use them as symbols of some reality. But postmodernism has ripped out the moorings of words so that their meanings are always in flux for both the speaker (or writer) and the hearer (or reader). This is why it was so easy to rip the meaning from "marriage" and reapply it to "gay marriage" as if there was any correlation at all to the two concepts. Marriage always meant the union of a man and a woman for purposes of procreation and mutual support. Practices varied, but if you lived in a community that practiced, say, polygamy, and you were on your first wife, you were married. Even for those communities, marriage was not defined as "two or more wives". But with postmodernism serving to undercut language, the symbol that we all understood in the term "marriage" was irretrievably altered to mean ... something else.

We're currently looking at another big word problem. Jose Iglesias, a senior seeking to eliminate school shootings, argued, "No one needs an AR-15. They are only used to kill." The news item came from the story of the Florida House refusing to take up an assault weapons ban. And everyone knows that an AR-15 is an "assault rifle" and "they are only used to kill" ... right? As it turns out, it's not at all that clear.

Look it up. "Assault weapon: any of various automatic or semiautomatic firearms" (Merriam-Webster). According to Wikipedia, "The definition varies among regulating jurisdictions." They may be automatic (pull the trigger and multiple bullets come out) or semi-automatic (one pull, one bullet), pistol, rifle, and shotgun, capable of large detachable magazine or any detachable magazine at all, or having a variety of features such as pistol grip, flash suppressor, grenade launcher (seriously ... grenade launcher?), or "intermediate-power cartridges". (Do you suppose there is a succinct definition of "intermediate-power cartridges"?) (And why "intermediate" and not "high"? Strange.) The Federal Assault Weapons ban of 1994 included two or more things like telescoping stock, pistol grip, flash suppressors, an unloaded weight of 50 oz or more (?) a barrel shroud (a safety feature that prevents burns to the operator ... because preventing burns is a feature of an assault weapon?), or "a semi-automatic version of a fully automatic firearm." In that last, then, an AR-15 would have been banned since it was the semi-automatic version of the M-16, for instance. As you can see, defining the term is not as easy as you would like to think. Even the New York Times admitted that defining assault weapons was complicated.

So now we want a ban on "assault weapons". So we all agree that they're bad and we all agree that they should be banned and we all agree it should be the law. Except for the problem of postmodernism. Word meanings, you see, are constantly deferred. Today's "assault weapon" might be a military-style gun, but if someone tomorrow decided "Baseball bats are used to assault people", what would keep them from being banned? In 2014 the FBI reported that more than 5 times as many people are killed by knives than with rifles in 2013. In fact more than twice as many people were killed with "personal weapons" (hands, fists, feet, etc.) than with rifles¹. I suppose it would be logical, given a postmodern perspective and the numbers from the FBI, to ban hands and feet. Hey, they were used for assaults!

Now, of course, this seems ludicrous and I'd like to think it is, but we've already redefined "marriage" and gender, as well as "tolerance", "hate", and so many other buzzwords hurled down to ignite flames and eliminate discussion. And people buy these words without discrimination (another word we've redefined). One person told me, "I'm in favor of gay marriage" and when I asked why, she said, "I know how bad I'd feel if I couldn't marry the person I loved." Do you suppose she thought that through? Do you suppose she considered the ramifications of "marry the person I love" as a standard for legalizing marriage? Because if that were the rule, then family members could marry family members, multiple people could marry multiple people, and it could only decline from there. ("Hey, what about my dog?" "Hey, I love the Eiffel Tower.")

My point here is not marriage or gender. My point is not assault weapons. My point is language. We think we're using words that mean the same thing and we think we're communicating common ideas, but, in fact, the most popular philosophy of the day is that the meanings of words must be in constant flux, must mean what I think they do (and if you believe that's the case, these symbols of ideas can have billions of meanings). So we sit and discuss and debate and disagree and we're not at all sure what anyone is saying, but we're sure we're right. (By the way, if you didn't think you were right, you wouldn't be debating it. It's not necessarily bad to think you're right ... especially if you are.) Where is the solution to this problem? If words have no defined definitions and people are free to assign whatever meaning they want to these things, how are we going to be able to communicate? Is this a good thing? The sad thing, of course, is that this kind of relativity is defining more of our times than objective reality is.
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¹ Please keep in mind that I'm making a point about language, not assault weapons. Yes, more people were killed by knives or feet than were killed by rifles, but more people were killed by handguns than all of those things. I'm not suggesting that assault weapons are not a problem. I'm talking about language and its seemingly endless variability.