Dishonesty Corrupts Vocabulary
I wonder if I'm the only one who's noticed this but there's been a trend to consider oneself "depressed" if one has been sad for a little while. While I do not claim to know what exactly draws the line between the two, I've heard they are not the same. But done by enough people for a long enough time, what happens is that the meaning of the word itself changes. And those who might actually be depressed won't have a word to say so anymore.
"Hitler" has been a popular term to denote tyranny of the ultimate kind. But I see a few people in the political landscape use it to refer to those they don't like. Same with the word 'fascist' and various '-phobes'.
Words have a voltage. While it is easier to rationalize if something is hot, warm, tepid or really cold, it becomes less and less objective the more cultural we get.
I think it's partly because of eroding trust that people have surrendered trying to be truthful. It is also where "clickbait" comes from. The same way news channels may imply something "very big", a "breaking news", is happening. And over time the audience discovers that every news is a breaking news, and therefore none is. And now they've got no word left when they actually have a breaking news.
This very much goes into the story of the boy who cried wolf. While that story paints a black and white scenario—either there is a wolf or there isn't—I think it's worth acknowledging the grey part playing out in our culture right now. Maybe there isn't a wolf but there's something. A coyote. A stray dog. Best to say what we see instead of what we wish there was. Over time, this creates more coherence across the entire culture. Language, which was the "first industrial tool" as per Buckminster Fuller, is best used responsibly so it can accomplish its job smoothly. The job of connecting us all together. And I think all of that begins with being honest with our word.