I have a fear about the worth of our words. Now before I go down this path it should be clear I have no diploma or specialized education in this area. If there is any reason for my appreciation of words I would guess that my mother being an English teacher would be the genesis of this respect. This does extend to grammar and all its written and vocal requirements but though I do appreciate phrasing and such things what I really enjoy is just words.
Now as in all things of admiration that one is not directly involved in, you do at the minimum a cursory job of learning the gist of it and as in most things that people try to do for the first time with an audience, I am bound to screw it up a little. But I say all this not as a cop-out, but as a petition for your patience to understand my point.
Back to the subject of words, this philosophy has led me to a simple concept that everyone assumes but no one seems to encourage. Words mean things for a reason. Seems obvious I know, but let me give you an example. The comedian Doug Stanhope in one of his more recent specials said a brilliant joke about the differently abled. Something along the lines of nomenclature had changed several times and each time it was to adjust a negative perception that people had associated with it.
First, retarded was a professional name for this challenge. Then mentally disabled, then mentally challenged, and now differently abled. His point was we should stick with one because no matter which nomenclature we used humanity would still make the implicit connotation that it meant an individual with specific difficulties and would use this in jest to their buddies that they were differently abled and this for some reason would lower the person's status or dignity or whatever. I think this is a brilliant example of the power of words. One can take a word and use its meaning as a weapon to drag others into a mentality that can help or harm another. That's some intense stuff right there.
But I fear too many are toying around with this power in a dangerous way. They are using it to make complex points blaze because of instant gratification. This is a concept that is difficult to convey but i will try. I remember for years during the Bush presidency I heard people refer to him and/or Cheney as Nazis or devils. I thought those were pretty fucking harsh criticism for a job you and I could never understand, but I also saw the appeal for the use. A quick tool to convey all of your shock and foreboding that does not require a long explanation for the nuances of opinion that fuel your anger. When that was not enough, we use our last ditch strategy at dragging social situations in our favor, lying.
If we just pause for a second we might notice that the danger is when we get real Nazi situations (like a political leader who can galvanize crowds into a negative violent frenzy with his words. Who calls the nation's press that disagrees with him fake and holds his nation on an exaggerated standard of supremacy. A nation that is powerful enough to challenge the world) and we can no longer use it to demonstrate the danger because we diluted its meaning by including either a lesser perceived villain for a quick social advantage of some sort.
Now we are in a predicament. Since people usually comprehend things in their bias, you now have at least a group of people you are challenging who see only the attack and not the reasoning and this is why it benefits us to have succinct points using the right words. Now as living things we already have our guard up just for basic survival on the day to day no matter how minimal the danger. But complexities like intentional misinformation and inaccurate explanation just makes things worse. So a lot of people will react hostile with a stranger rather than cordial, just as a preemptive strike to deter or even take advantage before the other does. This is before you add people in the mix that do all this for an intentional benefit.
Now imagine we do the opposite. We promote a message of kindness and tolerance even when our gut tells us otherwise. A message that says: "We will give you the benefit of the doubt up to a clear point but even at that point we will not kill you. You knowing this can attempt to use that fact against me, and if I lose you automatically lose your life".
Yeah, as I said not an expert. It's not graceful, catchy, clever and there's that tricky I give my life as far as I can while defending myself to stop you but don't plan on taking yours. The statement itself can even be taken as an open challenge to show you that your philosophy will fail the first time your life is threatened, but I actually think failure is perfectly acceptable. In fact, we absolutely get why failure seems so obvious. We don't want to die. All we ask is that you try it to the best of your ability. We will work to make sure we are as healthy physically and mentally as we can be so if you try to take advantage of us we are as prepared to take you down without killing you (that's our motivation to stay healthy in mind and body). We understand that to feed the mind some might need belief so they can keep their drive. Some might need routine. Some might even just want to be left to consume and we will work at it as a whole, even if you do not want to. We will even reduce our level of living for your sloth and benefit if need be. We will take it as an added challenge to our intellect and will push through because improvement of our offspring is a challenge we should proudly accept.
That sounds like a crazy statement until you pause and wonder if we actually know the percentage of humanity that is lazy. Just looking objectively it wouldn't be far fetched to say most of the planet is gainfully engage or/and employed in one way or another. So why are we so confident if we bet on humanity we will end up in a Wall-e type of future? Some of the most common things you hear from top athletes and celebrities in football, basketball, soccer, politics, entertainment adult and otherwise are that they are just happy to do the thing they love. I can't count the number of times I've heard a UFC fighter say "I couldn't imagine doing anything else for a living" in a victory after months of intense training, dieting, and concentration. Everybody knows one of the hardest things a human can do is diet and exercise and that is why we prize the physical characteristics so much. We will buy pills and equipment or hire individuals to help us do something we could just do with repetitious bodyweight exercises we can get online for free. Do we just assume given the opportunity those guys would just stay at home? They could have worked at McDonald's or even worse, much higher paying and more respectable options but that appealed to them so little they chose to get hit in the face. That is a person that loves that life.
So I actually think if we bet the opposite way we actually have a real chance at saving humanity. Because we are already betting the other way and have been for a while. We see that it will always end in massive conflict and loss of life because it is designed to defend by attacking. There is always bound to be a misread threat or an itchy trigger finger and any veteran has seen at least one or two of those. So let's give defending by defending a try. I think with a little curiosity you might notice it has more of a chance than it looks like on the surface (or at the very least that humanity just based on what we have already achieved is something worth betting on). I guess this was a really long way to say that as crazy as it sounds i think the hippies had it right. All we do need is love.
