What we name something is not semantics, it's a foundational component of how we view and shape the world around us. In a very real sense we are incapable of thinking of things without naming them and the name we give them informs how we think of them.
Also, we are not 'terrified' of adjectives - we are 'terrified' of a world that is unable to continue the gradual march of empathy to larger and larger groups that humanity has thus far been able to maintain and is critical for our long-term survival. If our monkeybrains were unable to evolve social constructs allowing the cooperation and common action of more than 7 people we'd still be stone age apes barely capable of using tools.
The key social "technology" that enables that is empathy with a monkey whose experience doesn't match the small tribe of individuals we're personally capable of caring about. It's an abstraction that enables everything else and it's important.
> unable to continue the gradual march of empathy to larger and larger groups that humanity has thus far been able to maintain and is critical for our long-term survival
I'm having a hard time parsing this, but I think you're arguing that the world is getting less empathetic, and therefore less cooperative? I disagree, and think the reverse is true. The more we can disregard emotions and work as cogs in a machine, the more productive we ultimately are. It's exactly this capability that allows us to cooperate in groups of many hundreds of thousands: the ability to interface with each other not as emotionally complex primates, but as executors of a function.
No, i'm not saying the world is getting less empathetic. I am saying that in order for humanity to survive as more people interact with more people it is necessary for empathy to increase at a similar rate and scale.
Natural human empathy has very, very low limits. You can only really care about 7 or 8 people at any given time. The rest is social constructs that allow a sort of abstract empathy where in-groups are gradually expanded.
Human civilization simply doesn't work without this kind of social construct. We degrade to feces-slinging apes pretty quickly.
Also, we are not 'terrified' of adjectives - we are 'terrified' of a world that is unable to continue the gradual march of empathy to larger and larger groups that humanity has thus far been able to maintain and is critical for our long-term survival. If our monkeybrains were unable to evolve social constructs allowing the cooperation and common action of more than 7 people we'd still be stone age apes barely capable of using tools.
The key social "technology" that enables that is empathy with a monkey whose experience doesn't match the small tribe of individuals we're personally capable of caring about. It's an abstraction that enables everything else and it's important.