“Do not let him speak, he’ll put a spell on us.” — The Two Towers, Lord of the Rings
Suppose you’re an alien from out of space, you just arrived to planet earth for a short holiday, a second holiday to be exact. The first time you were here it was the 80s and the place looked a whole lot different.
A lot has changed since then, Birthday gifts have been replaced by Birthday notifications, 30 is the new 40, orange is the new black, and the Kardashians are the like Kennedys, everywhere you look there they are.
Even the news outlets appear as if they are made by bipolar people. On the left: We are on the Brink of WW3, next to it on the right: Did you see Kim K’s new short dress?
Never in my life have I imagined that butt cheeks could become so omnipresent.
Wait, I think I’ve seen this movie before.
You sit in a bar, your friends bring their friends and they start catching you up with what you’ve missed the last 30 years, the iPods, smartphones, Netflix, Uber, steemit..
You notice new words too, Let me Google it wouldn’t have made any sense 3 decades ago. Everyone starts teaching you new words: Texting, Sexting, Chillaxing, Bromance, Masurdating and Nerdjacking.
And the all of the sudden someone says the following:
Unfuckwithable.
The laughter has been replaced by silence, the smiles were wiped away, everybody is showcasing high levels of stress. Their faces are now turned all red, their chests are breathing heavy. You don’t have the slightest clue about what the hell is going on.
— Oh no, you messed up Jimmy, you’ve done it again!
Another person from the crowd: This unacceptable Jimmy, unacceptable!
— Can someone catch me up?
Everybody looks at you as if they’re about to give you the results on an STD test.
— A lot has changed since you’ve been gone. We don’t use that word anymore.
— What word?
— That of which we cannot not mention.
— What is this? Some kind of eyes wide shut type of deal?
You don’t get to finish that sentence and someone from the table shouts at you:
— Can’t you see? He just dropped an F-Bomb on us!
A what bomb now?
Concerned I ask, while I’m busy searching for blast waves and mushroom clouds.
— An F-bomb, is when someone throws away an f-word.
F-word huh? You guys are douchier that I previously thought.
One of them continues: He just threw it at me, no trigger-warning, no bomb-alert, no emergency broadcast… She struggles to catch her breath while a lone tear is falling down her cheek. The tear is now boiling with the heat of her fuming reddened face. It must be at least 180 degrees in there. Her head is about to explode.
OK, now I see the bomb!
The tears of fury, the veins are popping, the eye brows are making into all kinds of strange shapes. The outrage is uncontrollable.
So wait, all of this drama is just for a fucking word?
Here it goes again, they all give you that dirty look again.
You look at the TV and you immediately understand. You can advocate all kind of dangerous policies including the genocide of millions of innocent people, completely decimate their lives, you can bomb them into oblivion.
And it’s all cool, no big deal, no one will even break a sweat. Try to say the F-word on the other hand…
I will not sit here and accept that! No sir, I put my foot down. That’s just plain unacceptable!
Yeah, that’s the unacceptable part.
They tell you that there are seven words that you CANNOT pronounce anymore: Fuck, dick, shit, bitch, cocksucker, motherfucker, and asshole.
— So what do you guys use now?
—Oh, we have been given new words. For instance, we use S.O.B. We use freakin’ instead of fucking, we use fudge instead of fuck, Darn instead of damn...
— Like children?
They all give you that look again.
Bottoms up! You shoot some Irish whiskey and ask: So, whatever happened to sticks and stones may break my bones?
— Sticks and stones my ass! Sticks are made for selfies.
— Talking of which, say cheese!
You look around and everyone is suddenly feeling the need to fake a stupid face, just so they look adequate.
Pretty sure I’ve seen this movie before.
You don’t get to finish that thought and one of the guys accidentally drops his phone.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
— Wait, did you just drop some F-bombs on the floor?
— To be honest, I don’t feel anything, I think your theory is not working. I feel no pain, no agony, no suffering. Are you sure this whole thing isn’t just in your head?
The Truth About Unicorns
We live in a strange world, a world where using slightly inappropriate language is called dropping F-Bombs, but bombing people with nuclear warheads is called “preemptive” action, funny how that works.
The pain and horror of war is swallowed by the softness of the words, shell shock became a stress disorder, and the pain is suddenly disguised under the jargon.
There is this invisible war going on, where millions of people are dying for fifteen years straight, yet we’re still to hear the name of a single victim. Go ahead, name one. There isn’t any because quite simply, there are no deaths. When it’s ‘them’ they have been neutralized, when it’s ‘us’ they have fallen. As if they tripped.
A case can be argued that this new softening of language serves to shield ourselves from the truth. Let me give you an example, when you fire people what do you say?
You flip the script, would you not? You switch the story as if you are barely letting them go. You do that to spare yourself from the uncomfortable feelings that may or may not involve separating someone from their livelihood.
You replace that story with a new story in which you are doing them a favor by letting them go.
The truth is that this phenomenon is rampant nowadays, universities have ‘safe spaces’ now, did you know about that? And of course the same rules apply, the word SAFE has a positive connotation, so does free speech-free zone as opposed to anti-free speech zone.
Shhh, You’ll Wake Up the Thought Police
Free-speech-free, what is that? It’s like saying an untruthful truth because you’re too scared to use the word ‘lie’.
Complaining about being micro-traumatized after hearing an opinion that you disagree with, is like saying that you were attacked by an actual microbe.
Either way, if something has microscopic magnitude, maybe it should stay meaningless and you shouldn’t give it more importance than it deserves.
Giving it importance is silly, acting on it on the other hand and actually restricting free speech is against the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
There is no such thing as free-speech-free zones, the entire planet is a free speech zone.
Life holds all kinds of struggles, but also all kinds of beautiful surprises and moments that take your breath away.
Those moments are the ones that make the struggle worth it.
If you condition yourself to believe that you’re so fragile that you get traumatized by F-words, then where would you get the strength to deal with adversities?
“Some psychiatrists have actually started calling ugly people "those with severe appearance deficits". How well does that sort of language qualify from being in denial?
These allegedly well-intentioned people have strayed so far from reality that it won’t be a surprise that to hear a rape victim being referred to as an unwilling sperm recipient.” — George Carlin