Atheist Meditations

I heard today that if you say 'fuck' on the radio, the FCC can impose fines of up to 12 million dollars, or may sentence you to death.

Got me thinking about vulgarity and how interesting it is in our hyper-puritanical society.

Some words offend some people. Why? I don't honestly know. If they didn't, I suppose they would not be as fun to use.

My co-worker believes that the ability to insert 'frigg'n' over the alternative, demostrates a level of self-control, but I think that is part of the evagelikal culture's obsession with fabricating a value out of self-denial.

So we find ourselves in this world with a moral delimma? The choice of who to offend and who to pander to their sensibilities. After all, a sizable percentage of the human beings we meet do not seem to care a whit about what might offend us. Are there situations and environments where one should be more concerned about offending others? Or should we remain true to the childish adage, 'I don't care what other people think' ?

I can't help but ponder the credo of the liberal journalist - 'To comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.'

I think some people deserve to be offended.

In the mythology of japanese buddhism, a monk might shout out a word at those who were slipping into folly, momentarily stunning them - and allowing them to wake up to a more enlightened understanding. Could vulgarity be used by a well-meaning seeker to agitate the cold clay of our poor opponnent's minds? To prime that one lone neural pathway into firing - 'fuck you I won't do what you tell me!' Like a sputtering car, a firing, a pause, a firing again. 'Fuck you I won't do what you tell me!' Each time the neural pathway fires, more chemicals accumulate along the path, increasing the odds that it fires again. 'Fuck you I won't do what you tell me!' Soon that path has been linked to many more. The head begins to bang, 'Fuck you I won't do what you tell me! Fuck you I won't do what you tell me!'

A radicalized revolutionary has been born!

Our human history is fucking full of 'comfortable' individuals who needed and deserved to be afflicted. Slave owners and the white 'service workers' who engaged with them economically had a fine, comfortable lifestyle, until some abolitionists from the North started getting down there are offending them. I don't care if you are comfortable, your system is bullshit. Uncountable generations of limp dick males had taken the easy way - supporting the patriarchal system that both kept them in bondage and made them feel superior to somebody - rather than accept the challenges to sacred ego that treating your woman as an equal might include; until some woman's sufferage advocates got in the streets and started offending them. Whistledicks in the KKK found the Freedom Riders 'offensive.'

Sometimes the people who are so easily offended are the fucks with the most invested in a shitty system.

All of this, it seems to me, is disharmonious with the Liberal Ideal of understanding others to a degree that allows one to be able to avoid offending someone by an ignorant misunderstanding. Like the great quote: ' a gentleman is someone who never offends anyone accidentally.' Like, I don't know any muslim's personally, but I know enough not to walk up to one and try to shake left hands. I believe in showing respect to others until they dis-respect me, then it's time for confrontation.

How about this? If a guy can't handle someone dropping the F-bomb, how can he handle a realistic description of war? How could he handle reading an analysis of children getting their hands chopped off by thug armies fighting over the mines that provided your wedding diamond? How could he handle the real politik of a country that will assassinate a leader of a South American country to benefit United Fruit?

Oh, please don't offend the little bitches. If someone can be offended by just a single word, think how indomidable their little minds are 'gainst Ideas that take over twenty words to convey. Don't even pretend you could introduce an Idea that takes several pages, or several books.