Checked out Blamblog (I know I don’t keep up very much with anyone anymore … I’m possibly antisocial. He linked to some dude’s video on YouTube.

Whoever that atheist was, whatever point he was trying to make—something about “Atheists are people, too”—was lost on me. I was just appalled by his abuse of the word “believe”. It’s not atypical, unfortunately. Nor is it isolated in its clear ignorance of language and how to use it to communicate.

Have you never noticed that one of the first things that surfaces in any kind of debate is the underlying disagreement on the meanings of words? How many arguments descend quickly into a need to ensure coherent and compatible definitions? Only those had between intelligent people whose goal is to communicate ideas. What you find, however, is that most people trying to argue something are simply not interested in ideas, be they facts, interpretations, analyses or even their worthless opinions. They just want attention. The need for attention is the driver in so many cases.

I like some attention. But not too much. What I like is a good argument, whereby “good” I mean well thought out: clear, concise, well supported with factual information, and including honest admission of bias and subjective opinion where it exists and isn’t already obvious. And ultimately, with a point. All communication really ought to have a point.

The point of this communication is that I’m tired of people trying to get attention without earning it through hard work. Mr. Atheist is using a common device: be provocative (versus original) and incite-ful (versus insightful). To even begin to say anything truly meaningful, you have to start with a shared body of concepts. Those concepts are built, by and large, out of language. You cannot communicate if you do not speak the same language. The irony is that I’m not using “language” very clearly, since there seems not to be a good word for what I’m attempting to elucidate. Perhaps a better word is “dialect”. Then again, it’s not even about having a compatible meaning for the same words. It’s about one person using the same word consistently to mean the same thing, instead of numerous different, even contradictory things.

It’s a fact that most people are lazy, especially intellectually. They would rather say that they’re just not that smart, but most supposedly smart people distinguish themselves not by being gifted (though they may be), but by being disciplined and thorough. Intelligence is significant, but intelligence, like belief, means many different things, many of them, if not strictly contradictory, are what mathematicians would call “orthogonal”. They have nothing to do with one another (conceptually—it may be that the biological root of intelligence is shared amongst various different types of intelligence or intellectual ability). You can be exceptionally good at memorizing things and still extremely poor at logical argument, for example. Intelligence is generally much less important in most areas of thinking than honesty and conscientiousness.

But as to the word “belief”: what do people mean when they use it, or particularly the form “I believe in”? There are two major forms. One is the belief in something’s existence, despite lack of evidence or perhaps evidence to the contrary—”I believe in God,” or, “I believe in flying saucers.” At other times, they mean, “I think something has merit”—”I believe in capital punishment.”

They might also use “belief” when they mean “like”. “I believe in tolerance.” There’s a hint of the second form above (merit), but it’s usually subsumed by a general warm fuzziness. The subtle difference is that one thing might require some kind of argument, by social convention, usually because there’s wide disagreement. But the fuzzy stuff no one (aside from shit disturbers like me) will be likely to question. So it just kind of festers as a general indication of sympathy with some person, group, or attitude.

And that brings me to “I believe in love.” This is one of the most empty, pointless sentences a person can utter. Partly because the word “love” suffers from the same kind of abuse as “believe” and “intelligence”. “I believe in love” is one of countless such vacuous statements that one encounters every day if one is paying any kind of attention, but it is by far the most egregiously cloying and meaningless. Second, and closely related, might be “I love love”. That one reveals for all to see the abuse of the word “love” twice: “love” meaning once to “really, really like” something, and second, nothing much at all, except maybe “love other people have for me” where the recursive definition there might be “show that they like me”, usually by generosity or sympathy or something. Which means they are probably just stating the obvious, which is, “I like me, and, by association, people who like me.” And I’m a self-hating misanthropist. I believe it was lovely to meet you.

Overall, I’m pointing out a general tendency in English usage to deviate from specific meanings towards very general, even vague, meanings for words. Perhaps this is not a new thing, but I’m specifically hearing it from people who consider themselves generally “intelligent” and probably well educated. (Another example of this tendency is the technique of saying something twice in an effort to be more specific. The classic case is to say “car car” to differentiate from a truck, but it happens constantly, and in more and more cases, it does not, in fact, reduce the ambiguity of what is being said.)

All this notwithstanding, I am not simply making an argument for people to use a greater variety of words. Expanding your vocabulary is the worst thing you can do if you can’t even master the words that you already know. Compulsive vocabulary enhancers sound desperate as well as lazy. It just exaggerates the impression of ignorance by attempting to cover it up.

No, my only point here is: say what you mean, by which I mean, be specific in what you say, and if you can’t, then don’t speak, because it’s likely that you aren’t saying what you think you’re saying, and you may not be saying much of anything at all.

Actually, I do have a secondary point, which I will make explicit. If all you want is attention, find a more appropriate way to attract it. Tell a joke. Sing a song. Draw a picture. Dance. Don’t speak nonsense. It’s harmful to everyone because it increases the amount of noise, from which it becomes that much harder to find anything worth listening to. If you really have little or nothing to say (and expressing your opinions, let alone your completely uninteresting emotions and feelings, does not count), then do everyone a favour and shut up.