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shadowfyr · 09-17-2007, 03:49 PM

**Practicality** is why until people like Richard Dawkins started to publish some real seriously, "Why the heck do you people believe this BS?", type books, in the US, 90% of the agnostics and atheists hid under desks or pandered to the religious. Appeasement doesn't work. If a social concept is wrong, its wrong, and the consequence of telling people, "Oh, well, yeah... I supposed that since, for now, society can't handle it, I will bow to your wishes.", is how we got in this mess in the first place, not the cure for it. 13 year old stupidity on the subject is just a) a symptom of how scared to death some people are (especially kids) to talk about it, and b) the usual teen angst, where everything from boobs to dirt has to be joked about, for no rational reason or purpose, if it makes them the least bit confused or uncomfortable.

But seriously, look at just the history of curse words and bad language:

1. First case said ***very clearly*** in the Hebrew that only trying to coerce their god into giving them stuff, or punishing others, was "cursing". There was no such thing as "bad language" otherwise.

2. Some fool translated that stuff into Latin and some other languages, which lost the original meaning of the terms. Lots of English words, for example, can have 3-4 different meanings, some of them bent off at a 90 degree angle (and some really odd one, 180 degrees the opposite) of the "intent" of the writer. Context isn't always sufficient to figure out which of those meanings was intended.

3. A lot of, "You can't say this, or that, etc.", followed, but most of it was acts against authority, or especially the church (which in a lot of cases was the same thing).

4. Enter the Protestant Revolution. Some good ideas, lots of really stupid ones. One of the stupidest was that their priest looked around at all the various definitions of "cursing" or "taking gods name in vein" and reached two 100% dead wrong conclusions. 1. It meant you couldn't even use his name at all, except in prayer, and especially not as an invective to express frustration or anger. 2. There was no reason why one couldn't tack on words considered "vulgar" due to their use in context of describing other people, actions or ideas, instead of merely naming body parts/functions, as they did originally.

The situation has imho been going down hill ever since, even going so far that some nuts today would like to expand the "official" list to 3-4 times its size, and then replace all of it with "nice words, so you can express your frustration without saying the bad ones!" But seriously, what the frack is the different between saying the F word, for Frack(ed/ing), Frell(ed/ing), or just making up some random nonsense like, "Fizzlebop you!"? The Protestants missed to point that banning language doesn't really alter, fundamentally, what people feel, their intent, or what they might do after screaming some made up word at you. All it does is make anger, fear, hate, or rage **sound** better.

Frankly, I would love to see the news report, if these sort of people got their way, where someone told the reporter, "He kept saying shazbot over and over in an angry sounding way, then just attacked me!" Insert any one of the "normal" bad words in there and what, suddenly its not the same thing? No, but its certainly a whole lot damn funnier when bad things happen *despite* the fact that no "bad words" where exchanged imho (even if one does otherwise sympathize with the victim).

Yeah, to some extent we do bring the baggage with us. Part of the point of muds though is to **try** to leave some of it at home. The people that can't, and need to whine about things that they don't like, in a context where they are "not" supposed to include all the stupid baggage, shouldn't be playing there.

09-17-2007, 03:49 PM	#33
shadowfyr Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 310	Re: Sex & Violence Practicality is why until people like Richard Dawkins started to publish some real seriously, "Why the heck do you people believe this BS?", type books, in the US, 90% of the agnostics and atheists hid under desks or pandered to the religious. Appeasement doesn't work. If a social concept is wrong, its wrong, and the consequence of telling people, "Oh, well, yeah... I supposed that since, for now, society can't handle it, I will bow to your wishes.", is how we got in this mess in the first place, not the cure for it. 13 year old stupidity on the subject is just a) a symptom of how scared to death some people are (especially kids) to talk about it, and b) the usual teen angst, where everything from boobs to dirt has to be joked about, for no rational reason or purpose, if it makes them the least bit confused or uncomfortable. But seriously, look at just the history of curse words and bad language: 1. First case said *very clearly* in the Hebrew that only trying to coerce their god into giving them stuff, or punishing others, was "cursing". There was no such thing as "bad language" otherwise. 2. Some fool translated that stuff into Latin and some other languages, which lost the original meaning of the terms. Lots of English words, for example, can have 3-4 different meanings, some of them bent off at a 90 degree angle (and some really odd one, 180 degrees the opposite) of the "intent" of the writer. Context isn't always sufficient to figure out which of those meanings was intended. 3. A lot of, "You can't say this, or that, etc.", followed, but most of it was acts against authority, or especially the church (which in a lot of cases was the same thing). 4. Enter the Protestant Revolution. Some good ideas, lots of really stupid ones. One of the stupidest was that their priest looked around at all the various definitions of "cursing" or "taking gods name in vein" and reached two 100% dead wrong conclusions. 1. It meant you couldn't even use his name at all, except in prayer, and especially not as an invective to express frustration or anger. 2. There was no reason why one couldn't tack on words considered "vulgar" due to their use in context of describing other people, actions or ideas, instead of merely naming body parts/functions, as they did originally. The situation has imho been going down hill ever since, even going so far that some nuts today would like to expand the "official" list to 3-4 times its size, and then replace all of it with "nice words, so you can express your frustration without saying the bad ones!" But seriously, what the frack is the different between saying the F word, for Frack(ed/ing), Frell(ed/ing), or just making up some random nonsense like, "Fizzlebop you!"? The Protestants missed to point that banning language doesn't really alter, fundamentally, what people feel, their intent, or what they might do after screaming some made up word at you. All it does is make anger, fear, hate, or rage sound better. Frankly, I would love to see the news report, if these sort of people got their way, where someone told the reporter, "He kept saying shazbot over and over in an angry sounding way, then just attacked me!" Insert any one of the "normal" bad words in there and what, suddenly its not the same thing? No, but its certainly a whole lot damn funnier when bad things happen despite the fact that no "bad words" where exchanged imho (even if one does otherwise sympathize with the victim). Yeah, to some extent we do bring the baggage with us. Part of the point of muds though is to try to leave some of it at home. The people that can't, and need to whine about things that they don't like, in a context where they are "not" supposed to include all the stupid baggage, shouldn't be playing there.