Without common definitions, there's only miscommunication.
Common example is Islam and Muslim. In the West, we see Islam as
a religion to be put alongside all the rest. In Islam, Muslim is
completely accurate synonym for Human or Human Being. All are
Muslim or Islamic and are taught "not quite right" ways of
thinking by their parents/culture/society when they are not
following the proper path. [becoming Christian, atheist,
pantheist, etc]
This key difference between the same words can cause great
misunderstandings.
Without it, debate will fall into the rabbit holes of usage,
context, etymology, etc. Mind you, I like linguistic-type stuff,
so I enjoy that type of communication I like the rabbit holes.
But it gets in the way of communication as having common
definitions is critical for mutual understanding.
I like Heidegger. Yes, I don't think he was flippant at all. He
was extremely pedantic and a headache for many. Jung
accomplished similar things in Psychology and people are *still*
getting headaches over Jung. But like Heidegger, Jung also
wanted very much to not be misunderstood and attempted precision
and clarity and avoidance of contradiction.
In both cases, many people simply say "hogwash!" to Heidegger
and other say it about Jung. That's their perrogative and I'm ok
with it - I just happen to like some of their stuff.
