I am 42 years old. The other day I heard a commercial on the radio about the opioid crisis where they threw out the line "words are powerful" and it got me thinking that perhaps a paradigm shift has occurred somewhere between my generation and the current one. If I had to say when I thought it started I would say somewhere in the 90's with the rise of political correctness. In my day our mantra was "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me". Nowadays the wrong words can end a career even if taken out of context from a post made years earlier.
To say words couldn't hurt you back in my day would be wrong, but the idea was we shouldn't let them. Today it seems as if more and more people are looking for words to be offended by. The preceding is just my perception and mostly limited to my own country.
Here are the questions: Have you noticed the same shift I have if you are old enough? Is this a shift that has happened in most of the world? Is this shift for the eventual betterment of our species? Do you think the shift has lead to any of the below?
Disclaimer I have not thoroughly vetted these sources.
The suicide rate increased 33 percent from 1999 through 2017, from 10.5 to 14 suicides per 100,000 people (NCHS Data Brief No. 330, November 2018).
The gun death rate in the U.S. is much higher than in most other nations, particularly developed nations. But it is still far below the rates in several Latin American nations, according to a study of 195 countries and territories by researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
Perhaps none of the above have anything to do with the paradigm shift, perhaps they do. Your thoughts ....
