I’d like to begin my series of rants by dissecting and discussing the very language with which the majority of the industrialized western world thinks, speaks and writes; English. Of particular interest at this point is the concept of swearing, an issue I personally find to be complete bullshit. Why, I repeat why do we even have words we consider to be offensive? This just doesn’t make sense to me. They are merely words. Words that are usually far more versatile and descriptive than their more acceptable kin. Particularly the word ‘fuck’. No other word in the entire English language has as much power, versatility and history.
Of all words in the English language beginning with ‘f’, fuck is the only one referred to as the ‘f-word’. It can be used to describe pain, pleasure, hate and love. This highly useful ‘swear’ word is actually one of the oldest words in spoken language. Like most other words in the English language, fuck has its roots in a variety of other languages; German (ficken, meaning ‘to strike’), Dutch (fokken, meaning ‘to thrust’ or ‘to copulate’), Norwegian (fukka meaning ‘to copulate’) and Swedish (focka, meaning ‘to strike’ or ‘to copulate’). In early times, fuck, and its variant ancestors, was a legitimate word used to describe sex and, as it seems, force or aggression, just as it does today. Yet somewhere along the way some stuck-up religious (no doubt) prude decided he didn’t like the sound or meaning of the word, and so banished it to the realm of crudeness and sin. What a narrow-minded, egotistical cock-sucker! The word itself, as with all other ‘rude’, ‘crude’ and just plain ‘bad’ words holds no negative values in or of themselves. They are perfectly harmless. It is only in the intention of the person speaking these words, and the context in which they are spoken, that any negativity can be found.
The two most hated and feared words in the English language, as far as I can tell, are fuck and cunt. Note that both these words mainly deal with the concept of sex. What does that tell you about our view of this sacred, beautiful, and let’s face it, down-right fun activity? It seems the guilt and ‘sin’ surrounding this act still lives in our psyche even in this day and age. And who associated sex with sin? For this I shall point my accusing finger squarely at organized religion. (I will discuss this outdated and manipulative belief system a little later on in my rants, but for now we need to remember that most of what we believe and much of the governing systems in our culture stem from religion… Catholic, Christian and Jewish religions most predominantly… and is therefore in the firing line of many of my inquiries on life).
The absurdity of this issue stretches to ridiculous extremes. Often in newspapers, magazines and the like you will see an expletive written in forms such as ‘F**K’ etc. Now everybody is clearly intended to know what is being said, there is no mistake about it. So why bother censoring out the letters? If knowing what the word says can’t harm you then what’s the difference to anybody if they actually see the letters printed in full? It’s like saying that the letters themselves are so possessed by the devil that placing them together in that particular order would unleash the fires of hell, torture our souls and cause widespread terrorism. What the fuck!? Ok, so what if we were to rearrange the letters as in the brand name ‘FCUK’? Again, everybody knows what the word is making reference to, yet by simply switching the ‘C’ and the ‘U’ we have avoided long term prison terms and hefty fines. There is just no consistency in this argument I tells ya! The same could be argued for saying the word. Thinking it is apparently ok but saying the word out loud would make the long dead baby Jesus weep, but all that saying the word really does is open a passage for anyone in earshot to also think of that word… and thinking it is harmless, right? So the only time the words carry any danger is as they float through the air between my mouth and your ear. So by this rationale if we could cut out the necessity to speak and simply transmit the words telepathically then no harm would be done.
Thankfully, many of the other ‘swear’ words have been marginally downgraded to the realm of mildly offensive. These being; shit, piss, bugger, damn, hell and the like. Again, what categories do these words tend to fall into? If it does not have a religious connotation to it (hell, damn etc) then it is related to other private and ‘disgusting’ acts of human nature, namely sex and hygiene. Aren’t we a well-adjusted and open-minded species? Humans in the developed western world are apparently so disgusted with themselves that they choose to ignore the most fundamental elements of their survival. Basically, for some reason, we are so ashamed of things like pro-creation and bowel motion that we simply choose to ignore them and in fact assign guilt and shame to these perfectly natural and critically unavoidable functions. Hence, ‘swear words’. What a crock. I can understand that in centuries past, humans were more primitive in their thinking and strongly governed by religious belief and feared (or were taught to fear) anything they didn’t understand. But we have come a long way since those early days, and it’s about time we put such ancient and outdated modes of thought to rest.
The concept of a swear word is just that, a perception. It’s not real. They are just words. There is nothing to fear. So rest easy and have fun with language. At this point in our evolution, language is our most powerful tool, so use it freely and openly and for fuck sake grow up!!
No comments:
Post a Comment