What Makes Dirty Words Dirty?

Thanks to recent rulings from the FCC, those darlings of governmental hand-holding, I've recently had cause to revisit some questions about what content America wants its government to shield from its citizens. Specifically, here's a question that has wormed its way into my head more than once over the years: why is it that the only profanity that is more or less condoned in our society is religious in nature? Why is blasphemy okay, when other subjects are not?

Think about this, while I turn to the modern era's whipping post, TV. In all the years that television has been part of our lives, when a character was angry and needed to swear, they said "Hell!" or "Damn it!" or, more recently, "Jesus Christ!" Not to mention the many permutations thereof. Only relatively recently has the National Board of Tight-Sphinctered Censors loosened up enough to allow such loaded words as "bastards" or other such mild epithets (although "shit" has certainly gotten popular on basic cable now, it's still verboten on network TV except in very rare cases).

Those of you who are familiar with George Carlin's skit about the seven dirty words you can't say on the tube may think them over and realize that all of them are scatological in nature. You can't use crude terms for sex or defecation, but if you're mad, feel free to take the name of what most people consider to be their Lord's name in vain (or related topics). Hey, do it two or three times consecutively. What the hell.

You have to wonder what we invest more psychological power in, the alleged Creator of the Universe or the act of taking a dump. Granted, taking a dump is at least an act (or state of being, if you're a metaphysical, mystical kind of person) that we can all relate to, but if you even remotely consider yourself part of the Judeo-Christian theological system, you should be heeding the Third Commandment (as well as the other nine), which the last time I looked read something like "Thou shalt not take thy Lord's name in vain."

Theology is fair game for common usage, bodily functions aren't. Okay; as an atheist, I can handle that without straining my principles. Here's the thing that really makes me go hmmm: language, like anything else, gains its power or value from how often it's used. The more commonplace something is, the less we tend to value it. If this weren't true, we could all be rich with a lead-based currency system.

This tendency may not be a bad thing, if you view religion as archaic, but language not only reflects our views, it helps define them as well. We are in part shaped by how we talk about ourselves and our environment. For us as a people to be living in an undoubtedly Judeo-Christian culture while we devalue the central ideas of that belief system is not only hypocritical, it strikes me as potentially very damaging. Talk about psychological stress; that way can lie madness, on any scale you choose.

Think about what you believe. Then think about what you say. See if they match up. You might be very surprised at what you find out about yourself.

Don't discount the power of words. Laurie Anderson recorded a song back in the mid-1980s called "Language is a Virus" and truer words were never spoken. If you doubt the ability of language to infect people, ask anyone who has a string of digits tattooed in blue on their inner arm. Ask anyone who ever met Jim Jones before his binge with truly electric Kool-Aid. They know.