We will look back on these times and feel terrible for the words we used because of the Euphemism Treadmill:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism

> Frequently, over time, euphemisms themselves become taboo words, through the linguistic process of semantic change known as pejoration, which University of Oregon linguist Sharon Henderson Taylor dubbed the "euphemism cycle" in 1974,[17] also frequently referred to as the "euphemism treadmill"

> Mentally disabled people were originally defined with words such as "morons" or "imbeciles", which then became commonly used insults. The medical diagnosis was changed to "mentally retarded", which morphed into a pejorative against those with mental disabilities. To avoid the negative connotations of their diagnoses, students who need accommodations because of such conditions are often labeled as "special needs" instead, although the word "special" has begun to crop up as a schoolyard insult.[

Is the implication supposed to be that we should just have stuck with the N word and the F word because whatever we replaced them with would eventually come to be used the same way as the original words?

Or is it that using the "euphemism treadmill" may help us slowly move toward a healthier world?

There are people trying to call out Montenegro for its name, and there are people that use "get help"/"you need therapy" as an insult. The treadmill never ends and it's trying to eat everything

I don't think there's an implication per se. It's just a description of fact. This has happened before, and likely will happen again. It's helpful to be aware that we're in a cycle rather than a one-time process.

The implication is that people will use whatever tools are available to be shit to one another - someone that cannot be altered by updated terminology.

> "the old men shouting at clouds" (ahem... I mean "old people shouting at clouds" xd)?

Unless there was an earlier reference, this was from The Simpsons, where Grandpa Simpson was the subject. In this case "old man" would be correct and doesn't need to be de-gendered.

To the more general point, society and culture changes and (hopefully) progresses and improves. While this is uncomfortable for those of us who learned our societal norms a generation or two ago, and need to change our habits, I think it is an inherent feature of a healthy society. Thus it will be an ongoing issue, and is perhaps made even more prominent by today's faster and wider communications channels.

Thus while on a specific issue (Dahl's books in this case), there is no absolute right or wrong, there is moral relativity where everyone's starting point is different. Society as a whole, hopefully made up of reasonable voices, will work out the answer. Which of course, can change again over time.

It's not about the actual impact of the words or anything like that. It's mostly tribal signaling - the current victors of the culture war desecrate their enemies cultural milieu. Rewording books, tearing down statues, demonizing past heroes, etc.

People will come up with other justifications (it causes harm, it's wrong, it's not inclusive) for why they're doing the above, but as all morals are ultimately relative (and thus their reasons are relative), it's just a means to an end.

It's certainly a valid option to decide that the books are no longer appropriate, and stop reprinting them. Or to print a warning and let the market decide.

The problem is when you change the book, effectively making a new one, but with the same name as the old one - which is not authentic.

I don’t think kids care about authentic. They would rather have something over just not having the books at all.

That said, I struggle to see how these edits will ever be essential. Phrases like “brothers and sisters” is hopefully never as offensive as racial slurs.

I don’t think it should be that difficult to deal with this. If you no longer find it appropriate for children, fine. Don’t give it to your kids then. But books ought to be preserved as written imo, not modified to meet todays arbitrary moral criteria.

The whole point of Roald Dahl's children's books is to be enjoyed by children, not middle aged (small c) conservatives. These aren't works of Great Western Art(tm), but works of fun and whimsy meant to entertain and delight. I want a world where as many children as possible can continue read and fall in love with and be inspired by Dahl's stories and ideas. Losing that would be far worse than any imagined loss these minor changed might bring.

I think the blowback is because the publisher hired some sort of diversity consultancy called Inclusive Minds. I’m personally not convinced that group is a better choice for children’s literature than Roald Dahl.

If you set aside which particular words, my hopeful/naive answer to the question "will people think how horrible we were for insulting each other so frequently" would be "yes."

It would be wonderful if everyone was more civil and less vicious.

Anyone here who was bullied in high school, say, and enjoyed it? I sure didn't.

I don't think it will happen, but for words that become increasingly only employed as insults, I understand the desire to push back against those insults.

  >Anyone here who was bullied in high school, say, and enjoyed it? I sure didn't...

And therein lies the rub.

People like you, who couldn't find a coping mechanism to deal with childhood bullying [all children are vicious wee thugs, until they learn otherwise] think that you can somehow control what people "feel inside" by controlling what words they can use to express themselves. Ditto the people who think you can somehow stop anyone having racist or homopobic attitudes by banning completely innocuous words [see Montenegro comment above] as people might see them as racist or hompophobic.

Kids will always bully other kids, racists will always hate other races and homophobic people will always hate gays. If you ban one word, they'll come up with another. If you ban that, they'll come up with another... rinse and repeat. As I've said before, if you follow that path to its conclusion, you end up with Newspeak [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak

The Euphemism Treadmill will keep going, and replace the words we use for undesirable traits every 2-3 decades.

Because it's the reality of calling people crazy, mad, fat, or ugly that people find offensive, not the current vocabulary.

  >...the R word... the N word... the F word...

Wow! --having a conversation like you must be like playing "I Spy".

Wow! Good luck staying employed literally anywhere in the US or western world throwing any of those around.

Sometimes it's really a wonder to imagine the world some people here seem to want to live in.

That's some bubble you live in, even in the US there's certain regions and industries where some of those words are almost encouraged (so much for "literally anywhere"), let alone the "Western world".

Whatever microcosm you may be in, it's on a very extreme end of the western world and it would be useful to realize this.

> anywhere in the US or western world

Banning words is a very US thing, not "western world". In most countries it's normal to use the words we want to talk about, the words themselves are not "cursed" like Voldemort. Honestly the "x-word" thing is really childish.

There's a difference in using the words as a way to illustrate and using them as insults or bad words. Context matters.

> Will people look back on our times with disdain

They most certainly will, but not for the reasons you cite, rather because we allowed wokism take our culture over.

> How the R word was a medical condition, how the N word was a normal thing to call somebody, how a gay man was called the F word. Nobody would bat an eye at these words back then. And yet - we look back on those times with disdain.

I think that you are conflating two different things, and somewhat mixing cause and effect. We do not look back at those times with disdain because they used those words. Rather, we look at those words with disdain because of the attitudes with which they were used in the past.

Furthermore, those three words fall into somewhat different categories. While the [acronym of ginger] and the [en_GB cigarette] words were overwhelming used from the outset to target and attack people with no moral justification (under our modern sensibilities), that is not the same as the term retard which was a legitimate medical term to describe an individual with mental retardation. The fact that we now reject the use of that word is precisely because it became a convenient pejorative to insult somebody's mental capacity, hence it being the perfect example of the euphemism treadmill—in fact, retard itself arose as a euphemism for slow.

Will the euphemism treadmill catch up on the other two examples? Will "gay" or "lesbian", or "black" or "African American" become taboo? I bet they won't, for the simple reason that as a society we have (mostly) moved past the idea that there's anything wrong with being sexually attracted to people of one's own gender, or descending from Sub-Saharan Africa.

Regarding people in the future, if they do look at us with disdain for using the words fat, ugly, mad, etc, my bet is that it will only be for the euphemism treadmill effect, as there is something inherently negative about being overweight, unattractive, or mentally unhealthy. I find it hard to believe that any future euphemism for any of these three words could ever become immune to becoming an insult.