MY TURN: Waking up to a gaslit world
In the preface in C.S. Lewis’ book "Mere Christianity," a gentleman is described as being a man owning property and having a crest. It was not a word of praise but only fact. He could be a good gentleman or a bad one, which didn’t change the truth of his owning land and having a crest.
Over time “gentleman” came to represent a person of character; in other words, a responsible, moral, trusted man. Lewis was challenged by that idea as there were other words that could reflect a person’s character and the co-opted word "gentleman" lost its meaning of the facts regarding who the man was in the larger scheme of things.
Over recent years, other words’ meanings have been co-opted. One that is particularly irksome to me is “woke.” Woke is a perfectly good word just as it is. As I learned in school, woke is the past tense of wake, as in I woke up.
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