Makes sense, Jesse. Interesting thoughts. I wonder, though.
You connect jargon use with competition in business. Yes, I see that
everywhere. Further, you typed that as a function of business, jargon
"will not be weeded out until [business] becomes less competitive".
While not wishing to pick up the thread about competition, I am provoked
to think hard about your statement, Jesse. Won't human ingenuity always
provide a medium for competition? Are you thinking about a specific kind
of competition, like destructive or insidious (whatever that means) or
enslaving or what-have-you?
If I live in a happy vale with others who have shirked competition as we
"know" and love it today, won't there still be some interaction among us
residents which can fall under the shadow of competition? I develop an
idea for recycling which is accepted as the most advanced available. As a
result, someone else, later, develops a variation which increases
efficiency. Someone else (me?) goes another turn of the improvement
wheel. All very benign, all to the public and personal good.
Competition? In a sense, no?
I'm moving toward a very paradoxical definition of competing. OK, maybe
I've crossed the boundary into cooperation or cooperative endeavors fueled
by positive thinking about humanity's place in the ecosystem. That makes
me wonder if Webster's "rivalry" can be transformed, if the hard edges of
securing someone's business over the attempts of another to secure it can
be changed, mutated?
Now back to jargon. You typed the word "edge", in the sentence "we are a
part of the jargon and sense our working community with the words and
phrases that give us an edge". It's that very edge I'm talking about.
Jargon can be the "edge" we offer someone to sit upon to relax, take in
the view, or prepare to launch from. Or "edge" can be a blade that cuts
and hurts. And everything in between.
Thanks for your response.
Best,
-- Barry Mallis bmallis@markem.com