This is a post about a teeny little thing. No, I am truly
not being sarcastic, it really is a minor thing, but it was something that came
up recently, and it’s something about which I have, as it turns out, turned
over in the shadowy coils of my brain late at night, the sort of thing to which
my brain turns when trying, for instance, to avoid pondering things of greater
importance for fear that the things-of-greater-importance will send my heart
scampering off in a pounding fit of anxiety.
 |
| I do. I love it. Very diverse word. |
Now, let’s be clear, here. I fucking love expletives.
Dearly. They have an emotional oomph that normal language simply does not and
cannot have, a fact that has some scientific weight behind it. For some
explorations of the value of profanity,
follow
the links.
But those rational explanations of the value of taboo language are only part of
the reason that I relish them so much. And I’m not so much interested here in those
explanations, valuable as they are and genuinely interesting and cool as they
are; I have other additional reasons, and that’s more what I’m interesting in
exploring a bit here. Because this is my blog, and I get to do some
self-exploration here (get your mind out of the gutter, you) that often I don’t
otherwise take the time to make explicit (again, mind, gutter, you, out).
See? Very Diverse.
If I am to be perfectly honest with myself, it’s because I
thoroughly enjoy the freedom to say these delicious words without guilt; it’s
because for the majority of my life, I felt intense guilt about “taking the
Lord’s name in vain” and all other forms of blasphemy and swearing. So when it
comes right down to it, it was all about the fear of damnation. Because I said a word that had been imbued with a
taboo meaning, there was the potential that I could be damned
to hell. So, now there is a thrilling freedom in being able to utter the
utterly damnable without the damnation bit. I don’t have to be scared any more.
This, in turn, is really quite intimately connected with the much more serious
idea that, if the carrot and the stick are imaginary, then I then carry the
full weight and responsibility for the consequences of everything that I do.
There’s no getting out of things by praying for forgiveness. So, breaking out
of the guilt cycle imposed by religion[1]
also means that I cannot get the reprieve, the temporary release from the
tension of real guilt when I do actually do something remarkably stupid, which
I am wont to do from time to time.
It really is sort of an odd thing, though, if you take the
idea literally, of saying something like “Goddammit!” and not expecting any
results. Whether one is a believer or not, though, the culture that we Westerners
soak in through the societal water is without a doubt thoroughly steeped in
Judeo-Christianity and theistically-tainted psychology. The result of which is
that when I say, “Fucking Hell,” Or “Goddammit!” the biochemical reactions that
fire off in my brain are somehow hooked like Velcro to that framework and it
seems probably that no amount of work is going to completely clear my innards
of all of that. So, I will bow to that, and hijack it for my own expressive
purposes.
 |
| This becomes relevant(-ish) in a moment. For now, just let it sink in. |
And besides which, the vast majority of Christians and other believer
aren’t taking it as literally as their institutions would have them do, either.
With very few exceptions, I have yet to meet many persons of any faith who aren’t
perfectly capable of cursing up a storm of epic, Rainbow-Brite-vomit level proportions. Here's a recent personal example. Last Friday, there was a local counter-protest for the Anti-Choice and
blatantly religious bigotry motivated “Stand Up For Religious Freedom” protests
taking place in scattered spots throughout the States. I was there. After the
majority of the protestors had begun to retire, having prayed their useless
prayers, sung their useless songs and in general felt very good about
themselves, I think, a few of them inevitably wandered over to argue with us.
Which was fun, since I do love to argue. (This particular format of arguing is
still quite new to me, and I’m afraid I didn’t do it very well, but it was a
learning experience.) Of course, I spiced up the arguments with the occasional,
“fucking” this, and “fucking” that. One upper-middle-aged, clean cut gentleman
who looked as though he may have recently retired, took umbrage with my use of
the word, “fuck.” I asked him what the fuck that had to do with anything, and
he responded with something, I don’t remember precisely what, that included the
word “shit.” Me: “Wait, what? So, shit’s alright but fuck crosses the line? How
does that make any sense?”[2]
And lastly, for those that argue that cursing is simply a
sign of a poor vocabulary, a lack of intelligence, a lack of creativity, an
inability to otherwise express oneself, I will offer the wise retort of Mr. Stephen
Fry:
[1]
Which is not, like, a one-time thing that happens and then I’m magically free
of all the jagged little shards of my brain’s glass prison; a lot of those
jagged little shards stay embedded for a long time and have to be picked out
one by one as I repeat, over and over as necessary, the process of breaking the
glass.
[2]
He then devolved into some incredibly hurtful ad hominem attacks. More
importantly and what was really much worse (but less pertinent to the topic at
hand, thus the footnote), was that it worked. His attack was intensely painful
to me for reasons that he could not have been aware of, and it shamed me and
stunned me into silence for a minute.
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