1/7. Since culture began people have argued over the meaning of words. My phil. degree involved lots of debate the meaning of words. But I notice that something fundamental has changed in recent years; many people now use word to evoke feelings rather than to convey meaning.

2/7. For example, in discussing "nationalism" people criticize others for using the word, rather than inquiring into its meaning - its meaning for the user, the connotations it has for various groups & what should be considered the correct meaning. Authorial intent is irrelevant.

3/7. Instead of being curious to find out what the user means by the word, many are eager to judge the user for using the word. Why? Because it evokes feeling in the hearer or the hearer assumes that it will evoke negative feelings in the minds of some protected minority group.

4/7. It takes a long time to dawn on you that they actually don't care what the word means. They don't care what it means to you or what you mean when you use it & they don't feel obligated to make sure they understand you before judging you. They attack you for using the word.

5/7. This signals a major shift in how we use lang. A. MacIntye in 'After Virtue' speaks about the emotivist theory of ethics. What I'm seeing is the practical outworking of an emotivist theory of lang. Words don't mean anything objectively; they just evoke emotional reactions.

6/7. Society seems to be degenerating to a pre-rational state in which language is a more advance instance of animal grunts & squeals. Instead of debating, we just snarl at each other. Breaking down the meaning of words is the logical outworking of Nominalism.

7/7. The loss of metaphysical realism leads to a loss of our humanity. Postmodernism is literally dehumanizing b/c it reduces humans to animals. The quaint, old 20th cen. idea that humans can get along w/o objective truth or universals is being exposed as wrong - & dangerous.