What is the most important skill any human being ever acquires? Language.
Language is the armature upon which our world and all the lives on it hangs.
That being the case, how is it that we are so sadly inadequate in our linguistic skills? How is it that being as ill-adept as we tend to be, on average, is in any way acceptable?
Language is built upon the pillar of grammar, which in turn is comprised of the components we call "syntax" and "semantics". While our sad lack of syntactical skill presents a clear and present danger to our prospects as free men, the wholesale failure in semantics presents a deeper, more immediately urgent, and more readily correctable problem.
Consider words as basic to our daily lives as "crime". I have conducted a reasonably exhaustive hunt for a sufficient definition of "crime", and have come up snake-eyes. I've consulted several Law dictionaries including Black's, Bouvier's, and a couple of others. To my utter surprise, shock, and chagrin, I have been unable to find a definition of "crime" that isn't either circular or nonsensically arbitrary, vague, and utterly dissatisfying. Far and away worse is the fact that the same deplorable truth applies to "law" itself. Seriously folks, are these people even kidding? How can anyone take the "law" seriously when the people who are supposedly the experts cannot even offer us a reasonable definition of the moniker of their profession?
In my opinion, the absence of minimally sufficient definitions of a great many centrally important words, much less those of a more rigorous nature, represents one of the greatest threats to the human condition.
The project I am contemplating is that of a dictionary of rigorous definitions of words key to the understanding of the essentials of human life. Imagine being able to pin down tyrants petty and grand, with very specific semantics such that they would be left with little to no wiggle room. The ability to assess the validity of criminal statutes might also prove useful.
Without the basics, we are lost.
What do you all think?
UPDATE:
Let us try for a definition of "crime".
CRIME, n. s.
1. Any positive act committed by an individual or group thereof acting in unison, resulting in the violation of the property rights of an individual or those common to a group thereof, such that those who committed the violation were aware that the result would be a likely outcome of the act.
2. Any failure to act by an individual or group thereof acting in unison, in the face of a standing obligation to prevent property loss to another where such an obligation can be positively demonstrated to have existed on the part of those who so failed.
Definition two is VERY tricky business. I have taken some care in the wording, yet remain uncertain that it is sufficient. It is intended to cover those circumstances where one fails to act to preserve and protect the property rights of others from the accidental loss incurred because someone failed to take measures to avoid causing the loss. A silly example: you are blasting in the quarry on your back forty, spy a wayward soul in the blast zone, but let the lit fuze continue to burn when to put it out would present no risk to yourself, yet would save the life that would certainly be lost through inaction. This is a VERY difficult thing to specify and I am not even sure that it is valid, save where there is a specific and valid contract between the parties, such as perhaps a bodyguard and his client. If you promise to take a bullet for him and fail to do so when it is clear that you had both awareness and capacity, resulting in the death or maiming of your charge, such a failure can be validly construed as felonious.
OTOH, you're walking down the esplanade in Brooklyn only to spy a man of apparent ill-breeding attempting to rape a woman and you just walk by. Is that a crime? i do not believe that it is precisely because no moral obligation to intercede on the victim's behalf can be demonstrated. But are you obliged to call 911? To shout for help? I don't think so, ugly as it may be.
Opinions?
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