Nuclear Words

Why semantic drifts aren't harmless, and why we shouldn't support feminism and instead support feminism.

The ideas that disproportionately change society sometimes spread through what I call Nuclear Words. These words are so influential that a slight connotation in their meaning causes lasting positive or negative societal effects. 

• Avocado isn’t a Nuclear Word. If you associate the word with a fruit, vegetable, or weapon, nothing will change. 

• Free speech is a Nuclear Word. It refers to the right to speak, write, and share opinions without facing punishment. However, nowadays, some groups are trying to change its connotation to the freedom to express an opinion within a spectrum of acceptable views. The range varies daily, depending on the side of the bed that censors of free speech sleep in. 

  A new (censored) connotation of free speech would hinder scientific progress, limit access to literature, obstruct transparency, and restrict the exploration of beliefs, among thousands of other consequences.

The majority of the world doesn’t have to accept the harmful connotation of a Nuclear Word for it to be a turning point in history.

"Society doesn't evolve [or devolve] by consensus, voting, majority, committees, verbose meetings, academic conferences, tea, and cucumber sandwiches, or polling," says statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb, "Only a few people suffice to disproportionately move the needle. All one needs is someone with soul in the game."

I present modern and centuries-old examples of Nuclear Words across different fields. Whether you read just a couple or all of them, you'll get better at spotting and questioning the use of harmful words and promoting helpful ones. Our economic, financial, political, societal, and health progress depend on this. 

In Free Speech, Nuclear Words Cost Us an Accurate Reality

As I shared above, some ideological movements promote a censored definition of free speech.

A marketing client once told me I couldn't use the word auction to promote their auction because it was once used to describe the sale of slaves. Interviewing customers as part of my research, I hypothesized no one would care about the word auction. Not using it could upset prospects because they wouldn’t know they were assisting an auction. But the client stuck to their connotation. 

I found this crazy; in the modern meaning, where I'm half-listening and half-wondering when you will mutter something coherent, and in the 1500-meaning of "disease," because that's how we should treat this need to filter any word we don't like.

I see most censorship in the U.S., the country with the most influence to promote free speech. It does encourage it, but every free speech conference ends in hair pulls between event organizers and students who want to avoid a speaker participating. 

"Free Speech Week," a 2017 four-day event at the University of California, Berkeley, was canceled. Students didn’t want Milo Yiannopoulos to speak.

Censored free speech distorts the parts of reality that we know exist. 

In 1985, a Dutch library removed one of Charles Bukowski's books for being discriminatory. On January 22, Bukowski wrote a letter to Hans van den Broek related to my (this) essay's thesis:

"If I write badly about blacks, homosexuals, and women, it is because those whom I met were that. There are many bads—bad dogs, bad censorship; there are even "bad" white males. Only when you write about "bad" white males do they not complain about it. And need I say there are "good" blacks, "good" homosexuals, and "good women." In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see. If I write of "sadism," it is because it exists. I didn't invent it, and if some terrible act occurs in my work, it is because such things happen in our lives. I am not on the side of evil if such a thing as evil abounds."

I don't like suffering or when others suffer. When I bought Ordinary Men, I didn't intend for tears to turn my Kindle's pages. Nor laughed when a German soldier said, "I have not had breakfast; I haven't yet killed any Jews.” 

But I read through. Only accepting the positive in life makes you emotionally frail and delusional. That's why I rejected censoring the 2023 war between Israel and Palestine on X. 

"I don’t think the human organism is entirely well-equipped to deal with endless near-live footage of horrors from thousands of miles away," said Alexander Technique teacher

Michael Ashcroft

.

It took me about five days of blank-staring at one of the dozens of work Sheets, Metta meditation, and journaling before I could wash off the numbness the videos of killings bathed me with. Like Michael, I questioned how much I could watch. But I never muted "Israel," or "Palestine," or "babies." Or paid $3000 to meditate on war casualties for ten days with other afflicted souls. War victims are experiencing different parts of the same reality I'm in. Ignoring their cries for help doesn't benefit them or me, but acknowledging them benefits all. 

In the same 1985  letter, Bukowski says:

"Censorship is the tool of those who need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can't feel any anger against them. I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence. They were only taught to look one way when many ways exist."

I see this ignorance of evil in Millenial friends from Pacific Heights. They clasp El Chapo is pacing back and forth in Mexico City's Terminal 1, waiting for them to arrive. I also see it in those visiting the same neighborhood that everyone advised them to avoid.

In both cases, the person ignorant of evil is a victim of someone’s whim to limit the amount of reality we can discuss. 

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In Science, Nuclear Words Cost Us Innovation 

According to the Maddison Project, global GDP per capita grew at an average rate of 0.06% per year from 1000 to 1700. The average yearly growth rate past 1700 has been 2.1%. Our economies couldn’t grow at this rate before the Enlightenment because the word innovation had a negative connotation. 

"I am disgusted with innovation," said Montaigne, "in whatever guise and with reason, for I have seen very harmful effects of it."

Theocracies made people believe God had revealed everything there was to know. Innovating meant challenging God. This belief was a hoax to prevent people from overthrowing theocracies, and it worked. Aristocrats and peasants feared innovation equally. 

Innovators like Archimedes, Avicenna, and Galilei had existed but hadn’t followed a specific disruption method. There weren’t case studies of successful investments in innovation. So, people couldn’t envision the benefits of innovation and favored what had worked: tradition.

"Innovation is the enemy of tradition," said Bossuet, "and tradition is the foundation of society."

The Enlightenment enabled a new political, moral, economic, and intellectual culture. People questioned ideas without flames licking their fit and contorting their faces.

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas (1657) by Nicolas Poussin: This painting depicts the biblical scene in which Thomas the Apostle refuses to believe that Jesus has risen from the dead until he can touch Jesus' wounds. Poussin's painting is often interpreted as a commentary on the Enlightenment's skepticism of religious dogma.

In The Beginning of Infinity, physicist David Deutsch affirms:

“[The Enlightenment] grew around the values entailed by the quest for good explanations, such as tolerance of dissent, openness to change, distrust of dogmatism and authority, and the aspiration to progress both by individuals and for the culture as a whole. And the progress made by that multifaceted culture, in turn, promoted those values."

One of the costs of innovation's negative connotation was slower economic growth. Another was a society without Kim Kardashian’s nipple bra. 

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In Feminism, Nuclear Words Cost Us Equality

At the cost of broadening the article’s thesis but at the benefit of showing a nuanced way in which my thesis applies, I label Feminism as another nuclear word.

Some feminists like myself promote the foundational idea of feminism: equal rights and opportunities for men and women. At 11 years old, Malala Yousafzai wrote a BBC blog describing her life under Taliban rule and plans to improve life for girls in Pakistan.

In her Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, she shares:

"I am Malala. I am Kainat. I am Muzoon. I am those 66 million girls deprived of education. And today, I am not raising my voice, it is the voice of those 66 million girls. One of my very good school friends, the same age as me, who had always been a bold and confident girl, dreamed of becoming a doctor. But her dream remained a dream. At the age of 12, she was forced to get married. And then soon she had a son, she had a child when she herself was still a child — only 14. I know that she could have been a very good doctor. But she couldn't because she was a girl."

Unlike Malala, other thinkers don’t want equality but a better position for women and a worse one for men.

Same word but with a different connotation.

Suzanna Danuta Walters, a professor of sociology, director of the Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies Program at Northeastern University, and editor of the gender studies journal Signs, wrote an article in the Washington Post titled "Why Can't We Hate Men?" Her first paragraph spotlights Trump, mansplaining, and men who get away with abuse. "Seen in this indisputably true context," she concludes, "it seems logical to hate men."

Walters writes mirages of supporting arguments, such as the wage differences between men and women. 

But then her concluding paragraph tells men, among other things, to give up any position of power:

"So men, if you really are #WithUs and would like us to not hate you for all the millennia of woe you have produced and benefited from, start with this: Lean out so we can actually just stand up without being beaten down. Pledge to vote for feminist women only. Don’t run for office. Don’t be in charge of anything. Step away from the power. We got this. And please know that your crocodile tears won’t be wiped away by us anymore. We have every right to hate you. You have done us wrong. #BecausePatriarchy. It is long past time to play hard for Team Feminism. And win.”

Feminism had a positive connotation. But its connotation is now closer to radical feminism, a branch associated with high-pitch exchanges.

The Woman Suffrage Procession on March 3, 1913

Reading bell hooks, I remember my disappointment when, after chapters of well-presented arguments in favor of feminism I agreed with, she unironically wrote and had an editor review how The Hulk personified sexism and racism:

"The cool, level-headed, rational white-male scientist turned into a colored beast whenever his passions were aroused. Tormented by the knowledge of this transformation, he searches for a cure, a way to disassociate himself from the beast within." "After committing violence, he changes back to his normal white-male rational self. He has no memory of his actions and therefore cannot assume responsibility for them." 

I further broke down this analysis of The Hulk in a past essay on why 4/5 people don't read feminist literature. It is crucial to highlight that semantically linking feminism to radical feminism reduces awareness and support of feminist causes.

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In Politics, Nuclear Words Cost Us Trust

Latin American' policymakers are replacing the word territorial ordering with territorial reorganization. 

Historically, territorial ordering has involved one agent deciding the best use of another's resources without consent. 

In 2013, Colombian government officials and security forces displaced the Embera Chami tribe from Cajamarca to allow the South African mining company AngloGold Ashanti to operate in La Colosa, a mine with over 18 million ounces of gold. The Embera Chami has pleaded for national and international help. But they haven't regained access to their burial grounds, healing springs, and sacred caves—their culture—for a decade.

This is one of the hundreds of displacements or misfortunes justified under territorial ordering. Like Tweeters, after reading the word Elon, native tribes clench their fists after reading territorial ordering.

Displaced members of the Embera Katío, another indigenous tribe affected by mining activity. Source.

Policymakers now name the act of using another agent's resources as territorial reorganization. Since using this term, however, they've begun complying with the agreements more often, leading to:

• Less rare positive sum games

• Adequate financial compensation

• Collaborative decisions between all parties

I am somewhat cheating because reorganization and ordering are two different words. But given that both words described the same process, albeit one only did it theoretically, the example applies to my thesis. 

The cost of territorial ordering was distrust, disrespect, and other "dis" prefixes. You remove the cost by replacing its connotation.

Friends in the public sector affirm indigenous tribes are likelier to collaborate with the government now. Their willingness depends on the government's actions to match the word's connotations, though. Time will reveal the cost of switching to a third word.

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In Spirituality, Nuclear Words Cost Us Unnecessary Suffering

Spiritual people report less stress, improved mental health, and higher well-being than non-spiritual people. However, billions of people aren't spiritual because they associate the word with woo-woo.

"Heaven is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark," said Steven Hawking.

Sam Harris, not in the soothing Sam Harris tone from Waking Up, said, "Faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.”

The cost of seeing spirituality as woo-woo is fewer people enjoying the benefits of spirituality. Raised in a rational household, I also associated spirituality with braids and chest hairs. I over-focused on how things worked instead of what they meant. This led me to an unfulfilling bachelor's career and routine. 

One of the first images that show up when you Google “spiritual guy” is one of the stereotypical hippie who doesn’t know how to broom his room

Writing and spirituality fred me from this:

I went from being an emotions-repressing rational hustler to someone who meditates with a Dutch monk, studies The Unpanishads, writes a newsletter on the limits of science, and enrolled in a Master’s in Liberal Arts."

In Where Did Scientists Go, and Why Are They Licking Their Lips? I shared how we have affected our gut health by ignoring 3,000-year-old (spiritual) Indian diets basis.

Indians created Ayurveda, a holistic healing system. The digestive system is called agni in Ayurvedic practice. Having a properly functioning agni is essential for optimal physical and mental performance. This can be achieved through a diet and eating habits appropriate for your body: Ghee, cooked fruits, spices, rice, and herbal teas. Breakfast between 7 and 9, lunch between 12 and 2, and dinner between 6 and 8. The average adult knows this: processed food, excessive sugar and dairy, artificial additives, preservatives, high-fat foods, and tuna sandwiches between Zoom calls affect your gut. But many of us know it because scientists started saying so in the last two decades. Before then, scientists doubted the relationship between what we ate and how we felt. They believed only the central nervous system regulated our emotions, cognition, and behavior.

In the essay from the excerpt above, I argued seeing spirituality as woo-woo and science as the source of truth limited the progress in knowledge. But this is part of a broader cost of associating spirituality with woo-woo: living less fulfilling lives.

Support or Stand Against Semantic Drifts

Most of us disregard semantic drifts. We didn’t think people seriously believe some humans were reptilians until Mark Zuckerberg had to lick his lips and declare he wasn’t a lizard on Facebook’s first-ever live Q&A. 

But semantic drifts are common, and Nuclear Words like free speech, feminism, or spirituality aren’t immune to them. Nor are globalism, political correctness, gender, cultural appropriation, truth, nationalism, violence, immigration, democracy, justice, human rights, love, tolerance, education, artificial intelligence, hate, media, inclusion, diversity, equity, transparency, or respect. 

We must build a more open, tolerant, and active habit of holding one another responsible for the ideas we support or dismiss, one that acknowledges the true influence of the connotations of the words we use daily. No new word or connotation should spread senselessly, even those we support. One backer today extends into enough ones to devolve society. 

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Question for you: What word do you believe fits the definition of a Nuclear Word? What is some real-life evidence of its potential influence on history?