Daniel DennettVerified account

NB the virtual disappearance of hebephrenic schizophrenia and the classic Kraft-Ebbing sexual disorders. And how certain classes of psychiatric medications lose their efficacy throughout populations as time passes. Treading on Jungian grounds?

Perhaps the clearest case of this is when words get banned (most notably sexual ones, or pejoratives referring to a "protected" group) and within a year there's a new word in exactly the same place. That cannot be stopped, nor even retarded.

This broke my brain I wouldn't have thought it was a complicated topic... I was wrong

You are perhaps familiar with relational frame theory?

Read and enjoyed this thought-provoking essay. When one word changes, all the rest changes to accommodate it. Just like the separate genes in an animal’s genome. Language is incredibly robust. It wants to stay alive. Think it qualifies as a living thing, a la Dawkins?

Sometimes I despair at generalised meaningless language confers about itself. Mostly, it's a weapon of enslavement and destruction. Between those red lines we have to cooperate.