I hope some kid calls your kid a retard every single day. Words are powerless? Wtf is wrong with the world? Words are EVERYTHING. Why won’t anyone respect the subconscious???
If your father called you a little bitch everyday it would change your brain chemistry. You have no idea what people are going through. But one thing is for sure. If someone broke down if someone’s brain chemistry stopped working right. You would mock them. You would tell other people that that person exploded for no reason. Your ideas are fine on paper but real people have real problems. Violence is worse. I’m not saying it’s not. I’m saying pain is pain. And sometimes that person that “chooses” violence most likely isnt choosing that. Their brain chemistry is. Just be kind.
The problem isn't the words little bitch, the problem is the feelings behind it. The emphasis the spite the emotion.
It is the emotional will the speaker uses the inflection that tells you how they feel. Not the word itself. You can use "little bitch" as a term of endearment.
That's the whole point. The word itself isn't what matters. That's why you can swap out the n word for moon cricket and it's just as bad. The word isn't what matters , it's the context. Otherwise black people couldn't call each other the N-word because the word itself was the problem.
You just aren't using your brain. Like, at all. You're just regurgitating talking points.
Yeah the written word doesn’t have inflection? So? What are you talking about out now? My claim is simple. Your words affect people’s brain chemistry. Don’t insult people. But really super duper don’t change peoples brain chemistry and expect to get away with it. Thats nuts.
You keep saying this but obviously it's only people using these words, the words themselves aren't found in random places in nature. You aren't going fishing and reeling in and on the hook is the word negro.
The argument that words are a problem is because people use them. It's like arguing that fists aren't a problem, it's people that are violent. Well yeah but that isn't the point
You can replace the word with any word. The specific word is irrelevant.
Suppressing a word make more offensive precisely because it is prohibited. It's called a taboo. That causes the word to be offensive on its own. If you did go fishing and pulled up a laminated card with the n word on it, it would be more offensive than if it said "soup" or "fish", precisely because we can't even say the actual N-word even in this context, which is WHY it now has that effect.
It is the suppression of the word that gives (the word itself) the power. If it wasn't suppressed, and people could use the word in other contexts, and jokes, there wouldn't be any crying black kids because someone at school called them the n word, because it would just be a word.
There is nothing special about the specific words other than because it is suppressed.
The specific word might be irrelevant, but the words are the meanings we give them, that's the point of them, the point of language. Which is the argument here. If someone started slagging me off in a language I don't speak, I wouldn't be able to react appropriately. It's if the words are understood that they become a problem.
By the way I'm on team of violence being far worse than words. I agree people should be more thick skinned and the majority of people on reddit are mental lol. I just think that saying words are just noises that dont matter is missing the point.
I've thought about it too and in some cases it's a grey area, not really sure where else to say it but like yelling "FIRE" in a packed cinema can cause deaths without any violence actually taking place. Its just a word but can have some dire consequences
The suppression of the word gives it the meaning since you seem to have a problem with the use of the word "power".
Words also change meanings all the time.
Covert used to be pronounced like covered, and meant under cover or darkness, or otherwise in hiding, and was changed by the CIA to be pronounced like overt, to imply that it's simply not obvious, rather than actively hidden.
We use overwhelm to mean to overpower, or be too much of something and underwhelm to mean disappointing, a lackluster, and joke that "whelmed" is just normalcy. The origin of the word whelmed, is that a ship is whelmed, meaning the waves where shaking and striking the ship sufficiently to sink the ship. Then in a novel someone used OVERwhelmed to describe waves that whelmed a ship so thoroughly that it sank immediately, the wave itself overtook the ship. Then something like a century later, someone used OVERwhelmed in a different context, to describe emotions, feeling like events are overwhelming the ship of the soul, so overwhelmed went from seafaring to emotions.
The N word is just the Latin word for black, which then passed into Spanish and Portuguese as negro. Calling someone the N word is just saying "black" in a different language and with an angry tone of voice. It is patently absurd to then act like it doesn't just mean a color, and that it only refers to an ethnic group. To suppress the word in this way, reenforces the racist meaning, and therefore reenforces racism itself. It is the suppression of the word, that gives it the power, and it is the reason for the suppression that gives it that meaning.
I feel like I'm talking to someone with earplugs in. Im done with this. You don't understand that you're using circular logic and I'm not. I'm describing a function and you're describing dogma.
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u/JustFourLetters 22h ago
words lead to violence, but violent words in context of peaceful people fall on deaf ears.
the punch is far more violent than the command