Quotation of the Day

Entries in You keep using that word (2)

Misusing "Zen," or, "Inigo Montoya rides again!"

Scott Berkun usually blogs and writes books about project management and innovation (and he does it well, too). But he’s also passionate about good communication, and apparently about Zen.

George Orwell wrote about what happens when we misuse words. A core theme in the novel 1984 is how abuse of language enables other evils. Well the time has come: I’m stepping up to defend the word Zen.

Zen is in a sorry state of abuse in 2008. Much like innovation, the word Zen is now a placeholder for thought, used for its connotation of something positive rather than any specific meaning. People often use the word in complete ignorance. Here’s what the word means:

To practice Zen is to use meditation and other techniques to develop an understanding of oneself, and seek spiritual enlightenment

He goes on to list some things—blogs, websites, MP3 players—that use Zen in their names, but really don’t have anything to do with the philosophy and spiritual practice of Zen itself.

Words like Zen, correctly understood and properly used, are powerful things. But if we misuse them, misapply them, we sap them of their power.

Fascist and fascism are great examples of what happens to words when they are misapplied. Fascist has become an all-purpose epithet among certain groups, applied to anyone they don’t like. The substance of the views held by the person being attacked are irrelevant; I’ve seen instances of limited-government, free-market advocates being tarred by their opponents as fascists, indicating that the attackers either don’t know what the word really means, or they don’t care, and they’re engaging in ad-hominem attacks.

Words—like Zen, fascist, and my recent hobby-horse, crisis—mean things. Be sure you understand their meanings before you toss them around like candy from a homecoming parade float.

Posted on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 at 06:33AM by Registered CommenterRoy Jacobsen in , , | CommentsPost a Comment | References1 Reference

That's not a crisis

It’s another Inigo Montoya moment, and again, it’s about the use and misuse of the word crisis. From the BBC:

The public health threat posed by obesity in the UK is a “potential crisis on the scale of climate change”, the health secretary has warned.

Maybe I should cut  the health secretary a bit of slack, because he did say obesity was a “potential crisis,” and not an out-and-out crisis. But it’s still a misuse of the word, in my opinion. To quote myself:

Crisis is not a synonym for bad situation.

Here are a couple of good definitions of crisis: 

A crucial or decisive point or situation; a turning point.

An unstable condition, as in political, social, or economic affairs, involving an impending abrupt or decisive change.

You’d have to work pretty hard to convince me that obesity is even potentially at “a crucial or decisive point,” or that it is potentially “an unstable condition,…involving an impending abrupt or decisive change.” It seems to me that if the current situation with obesity goes on the way it is, it will go on the way it is.

Posted on Monday, October 15, 2007 at 02:07PM by Registered CommenterRoy Jacobsen in , | Comments4 Comments