I like talking about hijacked words. Usually the hijacking occurs due to actions of some alphabet agency of the government, or a large corporate agenda. Today is slightly different. The word I am going to focus on today is Organic. By focusing on this word I am not endorsing GMO vs Organic debate that occurs, though I was on the side lines of a very amusing debate of that type today. All of my friends bickering back and forth in our Politics, Religion, and BS channel. :) The idea of Organic as a label being misused came up. I realized "Hey, there is another great example of a hijacked word."

What do I mean by hijacking?

Before we tackle today's word I want to first explain what I mean by hijacking. This is my description of when there is a concerted effort to use a word that can illicit an emotional response in some way that is not actually accurate based upon it's definition. Past words I have discussed are [Terrorist, Piracy], [Traitor], [Anarchy, Climate Change, Occult, and Conspiracy Theory]. In those cases I explained some possible motives for the hijacking in the first word hijacking post. Those motives don't seem to apply completely in the case of the words today. If they do I may simply have not identified how yet.

Source: giphy.com

Organic

The first thing I like to do generally when going over the hijacking of words is to find a definition for the word from before it was hijacked. This is important for eventually the dictionaries do update and include new definitions for the words. This is partially due to lingual drift.

That is closest to the original definition I can find. The Meriam/Webster Dictionaries have already incorporated all the new definitions as tied to the organic vs GMO food movements. I will show those here for completeness.

I have friends that are not opposed to healthy living, but are rightly opposed to the term organic, and often to the term GMO. They do have good reasons for being opposed to it. The things they are used to back up or strengthen often would result in the statement being naive, or hypocritical. I will explain that fully here in just a moment.

Organic technically is defined as "of, relating to, or derived from living matter" as an adjective. That is pretty simple.

Short of a few minerals like salt, and water that defines pretty much EVERYTHING we ingest. It also defines viruses, parasites, symbiotes, you, and I.

In fact, if our food is not organic then we cannot subsist on it. We will die very quickly without ingesting organic materials that our body can break down. Technically, this means that all FOOD is organic.

Again in case you missed it. This blog post is not to side with anyone on the GMO vs Organic food debate. It is purely to illustrate that these are in fact hijacked words/terms.

So how is this word hijacked? We require organic sustenance. By implying something is organic and something else is not we immediately setup a state where one should not be eaten. Yet the truth of the matter is that HOW something is acquired does not change whether it is organic or not. It either is organic or it is not. If it is not then other than a few minerals and water we can't survive or ingest such things. So it has been hijacked to extend meaning and paint a picture in our minds that is in fact false in intention.

If the argument were Natural Foods vs Manufactured Foods then there might be a little bit more sincerity there and it would be closer to actual meaning. The term organic when used in these arguments is a very "loaded" word.

Source: giphy.com

GMO

This acronym stands for Genetically Modified Organism. The use of it is usually derogatory and is used to indicate something was modified by careful manipulation in a lab. It happened by chemical manipulation, injection, cell splicing, etc. Yet in reality we have been doing this throughout human history. The difference today is we've created methods where we can do this very rapidly rather than the long tedious process of the past. So when people use the term GMO they technically are using it for the fast lab created method. Oh and it is important that the word ORGANISM is a noun version of Organic. So GMOs are organic, it is part of their name.

In history we have bred animals.

We have bred plants.

These are all genetic modification with us giving evolution a push by setting up certain environmental conditions and opportunities. They still are occurring due to human intervention.

For plants it is likely we wouldn't have CORN as a crop without such activities. We also might not have any bananas left without such activities.

Popped Secret: The Mysterious Origin of Corn

The surprising history of bananas in under 2 minutes

And Man Created Dog

Source: giphy.com

Troll

I am not actually sure why we settled on the word Troll to describe people that intentionally seek to antagonize others and gain pleasure from it. In the early days of the internet we called them Flamers and the actions they were involved in flame wars. Troll and trolling replaced these terms.

We also came up with phrases such as "Don't feed the troll."

So this word was repurposed from its original meaning. It was hijacked. Yet this does not match what I normally would write about in terms of hijacking. At least yet.

When people are not intentionally antagonizing and are instead arguing and perhaps in the throes of cognitive dissonance they are NOT trolling. A troll is not someone who disagrees with you and gets passionate about the subject.

So how it is hijacked is when someone chooses to use the term Troll to describe someone who disagrees with them.

Source: giphy.com

Hijacking

No one has called me out on it yet, so I thought I would call myself out. I have hijacked the word hijacked for the emotional imagery I hope it places in people's mind. I want them to be outraged at groups seeking to emotionally manipulate you into making a larger emotional relation to an action than you would normally have.

I am a hypocrite here. I acknowledge that I am doing this intentionally. I want people to care about people altering their words for political and economic agendas. I want people to start thinking people using words to define something that they actually are not. It is essentially taking a metaphor and instead of treating it like a metaphor we now instead use it as the actual definition.

A definition for this that would not use the word hijacking would be, redefining, repurposing, or changing. Yet I do not think those have quite the FUN and emotional impact of hijacking. Hijacking is seen as something hostile and aggressive. Much like the word Piracy for copying something digital is nothing like what piracy actually meant.

I hope you got something out of this edition of the word hijacking series. At the very least maybe something to think about or enjoyment. Thank you for your time.