Zhann opened this issue on Jun 05, 2005 ยท 65 posts
Quest posted Fri, 10 June 2005 at 12:50 AM
But as a modern society we most certainly need to adhere to present-day definitions and modern connotations and not the definitions of yesteryear. An idea must be expressed as concisely as possible for it to have the desired ramifications. Mixing modern concepts with antiquated connotations is a recipe for misconceptions and misunderstanding. One cannot go beyond the dictionary definition, simply because there is only but an accepted meaning for a word in the present day. To do so would be making up words as we went along rendering words totally useless. As the etymology of words evolve, we must take stock in their most modern meaning and not allow ourselves to be lead astray by archaic semantics. The true definition of a word is temporally relative to the time of its usage. We cannot expect to be fully understood if we speak in the present using old definitions. It would be like using Shakespearian English, as lovely as it was, in the year 2005 and expect to be understood. The ideology of anarchy must then be interpreted in light of its modern day definition. Although we may not live in the purest of democracies, it nevertheless infers rule by formal government and systemic organization. If by todays standards we think we live in a chaotic world, imagine the chaos if we lived in a world with no government. The modern day tragedy in Rwanda is analogous and comes to mind when thinking about anarchy, as does the reign of terror in France during the French Revolution. Further, anarchists dont agree with each other, as there are different schools of thought on the ideology of anarchism.