If you ever go to Solomon Island you have got to check out this fascinating tradition. The island is home to a tribe that have a peculiar way of clearing the forest for harvesting crops. The entire village, about a hundred or so members, gather around a tree they wish to chop. They then hurl profanities and vulgarities at said tree, like a drunken pirate at 3 am. After about an hour, they fell the tree. When discovered by anthropologists, the reason for this custom was posed to their chief. The village elder claimed that profanity weakened the tree.
To test this claim, anthropologists set up an experiment whereby two similar trees would be cut down by the same tribe using primitive stone axe. One tree would experience the brunt of vulgarities spewed fought by the tribe's people and the other spared. The tree exposed to vulgarity fell in under forty-five minutes. The tree spared from the verbal onslaught took an hour and 30 minutes to be cut. One wielding a sharp tongue should be careful, as it has the potential to wound.
What is to follow is part one of a two-part article based on Weaponised Words. In this article, we will delve into the psychology of vulgar and unkind words. In part two of Weaponised Words, we compare profanity to uplifting words and behold their effect on the human mind and body. We will then analyze spiritual words — Maha mantra — looking at just how they affect the psyche of the practitioner from a neurological perspective as well as on the astral and spiritual plane. Society has a horrid fascination with vulgarity, why do we like it so dam much?
To swear is to use language as a weapon, a sharp tongue triggers negative emotional responses. Some foul language relates to bodily effluvia like snort, blood, urine and or stool. These excreta are associated with disease, infection, and impurity, correlating to an emotion of disgust. Intense words express and agitate fierce emotion. Its also used to intimidate and humiliate a foe. Allow me to demonstrate. Someone takes “your” parking spot at the mall, you shout out, “ How dare you sir, this is some male bovine excrement”. And if they really piss you off one could also replace the word sir with deification hole. How dare you, you a******… It has been said that you are what comes out of your mouth we should taste our words before we spit them out, for that which has been said cannot be unsaid.
Other taboo words often relate to sexuality or genital used in copulation, when used to evoke negative emotions and malicious retribution. Sex according to religious principles based on mutual respect, trust and love are glorious. However, sex as an act of lust, exploitation, incest, rape and or spousal abuse yields strong negative emotional reverberations. Today sex has this stigma because it's associated not with love but with lust. We have tainted sex due to exploitation, raping that which was meant as an expression of intimacy. The union of man and woman has been violated by mutual exploitation for the satiation of unchaste senses. For the most part, it has become an exchange of mutual or individual exploitation based solely on bodily pleasures. As such words, the likes of female dog to refer to a woman who is perceived as promiscuous has derogatory connotations due to the degradation of the once sacred union between the opposite sex. “ If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing” — Mark Twain.
Society has a weird fascination with sex, an attraction, and repulsion. We teach children to shun sex. You too young to be talking about these things it's for adults. When a child asked how did I come into the world, oh my darling by stalk or you feel from the pawpaw tree. This taboo related to sex has created a cultural stigma that has permeated our language. Today sex has become the opposite of love, morphing into lust.
Language is the manner in which we internalize our external world and make sense of our surroundings. Modern media has abused sex as a marketing tool because sex sells. Commodities have been sexualized, lust has been wrapped in an upper to middle-class blanket giving it the veneer of respectability. Lust rapes love and this pain is felt when we hurl unwholesome lustful words at one another. Lust is used to allure people to buy everything from cars to candy. Buy this car and women will find you irresistible. Irresistible incidentally is the name by Givenchy — a french perfume & fashion house — to a range of Eau De Toilette Sprays for woman.
The utterances streaming from our mouth is a reflection of that which is harbored in the heart. Bludgeoning an adversary with unkind words is like stabbing yourself in the tongue. Yes! It may offer an unhealthy emotional release of pent up frustrated psychological energy but the repercussions result in emotional bruising and lacerations. “Better to trip with your feet than your tongue” — Zeno of Citium.
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