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Meaning and Flux
Jun. 26th, 2010 11:13 amIt's interesting how evolution works in all facets of life. One minute, a word could have one undeniable definition, and the next, it means the opposite or something completely different. People go from believing that the pale skin of the aristocracy means wealth because they don't have to slave in the fields and bake their skin in the process to spray-tanning themselves because it makes them look like they can afford to travel rather than being stuck inside at a low-paying desk job. We go from the most moneyed people covering their wooden floors with expensive rugs to wondering if we can spend a little more on hardwood floors from exotic places rather than settling for cheap carpeting. And the word 'literally' goes from meaning, "free from exaggeration or embellishment," to, "He literally laughed himself to death."
There are all sorts of examples like this. Pink originally being a boy's color. All women in a bridal party wearing white dresses to ward off evil spirits. A person's temperament being determined by which excess fluid he had in his system. We hear about these old meanings and laugh to ourselves. Ha! How could anyone possibly have thought such a thing? We tuck these morsels of meaning in our brains to dash out at parties and win board games and answer rounds of Jeopardy! So trivia is born of real beliefs people once held and took seriously.
But looking back at these meanings, the journey which will lead to our own eventual fall from usage is clear. At any moment in time, the real meaning of the world around us is in flux. We are only able to trivialize older facts because they have already passed, their meanings crystallized in memory for us to pluck at whim and compare to the constant chatter of the modern age-- an age adding words, manipulating the world in new ways, and stacking meanings on top of all those that came before. We can say they're silly because we obviously know better, having had the benefit of time between then and now. Yet, we are also reminded that this point of society, like any other, is subject to the same process of growth, plateau, and inevitable melding into the next-- the same process which will make our discoveries and meanings obsolete and trivial when set against what we will become. Our so-called knowledge being as useful to the future set as past nomenclature is to us.
So it is with evolution-- that relentless march to a horizon we'll never quite reach, the end of the universe always just outside our grasp, and true meaning forever a step or two ahead of what we think we understand.
(Or, at least, that's how it appears to be.)
There are all sorts of examples like this. Pink originally being a boy's color. All women in a bridal party wearing white dresses to ward off evil spirits. A person's temperament being determined by which excess fluid he had in his system. We hear about these old meanings and laugh to ourselves. Ha! How could anyone possibly have thought such a thing? We tuck these morsels of meaning in our brains to dash out at parties and win board games and answer rounds of Jeopardy! So trivia is born of real beliefs people once held and took seriously.
But looking back at these meanings, the journey which will lead to our own eventual fall from usage is clear. At any moment in time, the real meaning of the world around us is in flux. We are only able to trivialize older facts because they have already passed, their meanings crystallized in memory for us to pluck at whim and compare to the constant chatter of the modern age-- an age adding words, manipulating the world in new ways, and stacking meanings on top of all those that came before. We can say they're silly because we obviously know better, having had the benefit of time between then and now. Yet, we are also reminded that this point of society, like any other, is subject to the same process of growth, plateau, and inevitable melding into the next-- the same process which will make our discoveries and meanings obsolete and trivial when set against what we will become. Our so-called knowledge being as useful to the future set as past nomenclature is to us.
So it is with evolution-- that relentless march to a horizon we'll never quite reach, the end of the universe always just outside our grasp, and true meaning forever a step or two ahead of what we think we understand.
(Or, at least, that's how it appears to be.)
