while walking through the downtown area yesterday i had one of those moments that, for whatever reason, embeds itself in your brain. a punk-ass little preteen was goofing around with his friends when he got hurt (i guess) and exclaimed "jesus christ that hurt!" not too abnormal. besides being taken aback due to how young he was--and then remembering my old bus commute where kids even younger swore so much it made *MY* ears hurt--i began to wonder...
does the power of the words lose power if the symbolic meanings attached to them aren't there??? the area (and culture) i live in is not known for its judeo-christian background or for housing a plethora of religious institutions of the judeo-christian variety. do phrases like "jesus christ", "god damn" or even "go to hell" cease to hold as much symbolic power if the person uttering them is an atheist? a buddhist? a hindu? a pagan?
are there atheist/buddhist/hindu/pagan equivalents to judeo-christian blasphemy? do people use these terms because they learned them from television? does it mean anything to them *personally* beyond being seen as "swear words lite"?
2 comments:
What a big question.
I don't know for a fact. i don't know if anyone can know for a fact. I think though that the words still have some potency. to what end i'm not sure. maybe it continues to erode the concept morality. maybe the phenomena really has a supernatural power to erode the fabric of the kingdom of heaven. or maybe nothing happens at all. its not a question that has been lost me me personally. i think sometime in the past few years i decided that it was eroding my own personal concept of self worth and decency. not just those, but others as well. a curse word used to mean a literal curse. when we use the worse in any situation do we in fact curse something? does that mean that the use of curses call up some darkness we cannot fully see? i dunno. but i think our society/culture at large has lost touch with a certain decency.
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