Are We Losing The Idea Of Thinking On A Grand Scale

It would be nice if language didn’t evolve quite so much.

Everybody knows words have meaning, but unfortunately those meanings tend to change over the years for some words, while other words tend to hold on to theirs over the course of time.

Just look at the word “fence.” Fence showed up in the English language in the early 1500s and it was a shortening of the word defense, meaning to screen and protect.

Today, a fence still means to screen and protect; it hasn’t changed all that much over the past 500 years.

On the other hands, some words have gone through such a metamorphosis they are no longer recognizable.

Let’s look at the word “epic.” Those who have taken literature classes know “epic” means a long narrative poem featuring a hero facing supernatural obstacles. Dipping into the depths of etymology, or the science of word origins we learn “epic” comes from the Greek word “epikos,” meaning word, story, poem. The word can trace its English roots to the mid-1500s.

Just 200 years later the word’s use got extended to grand and heroic. The word still had some significant meaning, but fast forward 250 years later and modern society has drained it of its original depth.

Now young people will utter the cringe inducing words “epic fail,” for somebody misspelling a word, making a bad movie or even for falling off a bicycle.

The watering down of the grand and majestic is becoming more prevalent in this modern age.

Society and the engine of advancement is progressing now faster than it ever has, but people don’t see the giant leaps they did from the late 1800s through the 1960s, culminating with Neal Armstrong walking on the moon.

Much of the advancements are in the microform, such as mapping the human genome and the myriad nano-sciences out there.

Technology has gotten so advanced that it continually seeks to upgrade itself. What the modern world is achieving is stupendous, but it doesn’t seem big and flashy. None of it quite seems on the scale of the first automobile, quickly followed by the first flight of the Wright brothers, followed by radio which led to the advent of computers; then there was rocket propulsion and then supersonic flight which led to space travel and then to the moon.

Most of that happened within a span of 70 years and they were major generation markers, things where people can say, “Where were you when we landed on the moon?”

These were grand events worthy of the word “epic.” Today’s society has been short on many of these big happenings so young people lose the meaning of a word like epic, just like they lose the idea of thinking on a grand scale.

Instead of playing with a model rocket in the back yard, many of our young people are too worried about being like the latest fill-in-the-blank icon. If people really want to redefine something, then they should think beyond the narrow world of self and once again reach for the cosmic stars — not the Hollywood burnouts.