[383] Tricky Language

I have a complicated relationship with language.

There is a significant part of me that throws caution to the wind and frequently chooses to say what's on my mind, however I want to say it, and regardless of what you feel about it. It's the part of me that is desperate for the point to come through more than the specific words. It's the part of me that pokes at and tests your disposition. It's where I have to be when I'm exploring something new or going on a long drunk diatribe saying fuck every other word and inhaling a pack of cigarettes. That place is where anger or confusion tends to trump simple inquiry.

I think one of the reasons that place exists is because I want answers and discussion, but people are not keen on offering them. It must be understood how many hours I've spent attempting polite and reasoned discourse. Often, the situation feels dishonest and encumbered. I'm going after what people fear or what they structure their lives around. It frustrates me to think that a discussion or topic is not beyond their capacity, but instead beyond their honesty.

I need to draw the line between “personal honesty” or “personal truth” and actual honesty and truth.

My conception of honesty is that thing we can't ignore. Or, better said, we know when we're actively trying to ignore it. For every amazing and moral thing you think you can claim in and of your beliefs, it's undeniable that when you believe “anything” for “any” reason, you unleash a whole host of consequences that inevitably fall back on a shoulder shrug and “well that's what I believe!” Any topic and any idea where you can't be shaken, I find that a problem. I find the power and pride in your inability to discuss or defend horrible. Just flat out wrong and dangerous.

Incidentally, it's not just with religious ideas where this battle plays out, but it's easiest to paint my relationship towards them.

The religious people I tend to get along with most are either the ones who say “Yeah, I know I'm basically making this stuff up, but it makes me feel good and there's some good lessons here and there.” They lead with the truth. They're at least advocating for something, albeit a kind of odd faking it. They acknowledge discrepancies and contradictions. It's something of a masquerade. They almost wear their faith as a cape, but you aren't going to see them jumping off of buildings thinking they can fly. It's still bad to me, but at least they feel like mostly their own worst enemy more than mine.

I can also manage to get along when I lie. When I pretend that I respect a shit idea, mostly by remaining silent, we're besties! Because that's the idea that gets lofted to me most often. Just respect other peoples' ideas because people are different and apparently, when you disagree, you're simply going out of your way to demean those differences or make them out to be something terrible when “it's just who they are." This to me shows an extreme disregard for both parties and the capacity for people to change.

It's as if “respect” is used to equate bad ideas and something like race or sex. You're born black or gay; that doesn't automatically make you think a freshly inseminated egg has a soul.

The religious people I tend to very much not get along with are the ones who make factual claims about magical things we can never know. These are people where, if it doesn't somehow reduce to a god or something metaphysical, it doesn't register on their moral sense. It's where any and every thing is possible, because the points don't matter and we're all just here to sing and throw our arms around until judgment day.

So, sometimes, I elect more explicit and potentially demeaning language to draw deeper contrast. Dawkin's opens with “The God Delusion” for the same reason I imagine. It's not “The Comforting Idea That Some People Don't Abuse To Do All Of The Batshit Things I Think Are Dangerous.”

It gets more complicated when I think about the interplay of language and culture. They intertwine and reinforce each other. So, one would think it would behoove you to speak very deliberately any chance you got, no? But therein lies the problem. What's deliberate to you is “left up to interpretation” by someone who's walled off their thought process. I've told religious people I'm not necessarily angry, searching for anything, or have ever had a magic voice pop into my head to help me manifest my destiny. Ten seconds later they're praying for me hoping I can be happy, find what I'm after, and will hopefully hear the same voices.

So then the words I use need to elicit feeling. I can't politely explain to them my reality or frustration over their ignoring me. I don't do good with being provoked with wording, so when I digress “flatly” or “ignorantly,” in a way, I kind of got somewhere if you're a little pissed off. That, or at the very least if you're confused and asking me to clarify.

I try to relate the sheer terror of bad ideas “calmly and rationally” and people don't engage or talk, or if they do, they're very quick to paint those ideas in very rosy language backed not by history or example, but their beliefs. If I get pissed off and call your god a magic sky daddy, it's because I think you're advocating for magic, and most traditions depict that father figure living in the sky. It's as literal as I can be. And then, people still don't really engage or talk, they explain to me how I'm misrepresenting my own anger and purpose with indiscriminate language. I'm also now a representative for every person who's used the same terms or raised the same concerns. I am, in an extremely weak sense, but less so when I ask over and over for us to get deeper and specific.

It's part of the unending irony that I should feel better about or more respectful to the dominating powers. Non-believers still aren't terribly popular in most places, if you hadn't heard. And, at least for me, I don't want to get into pissing matches about whether or not “sky daddy” is appropriate, I want to know if you're capable of engaging with the details, or following the reasons. Can you empathize with “just dealing with life” without the bells and whistles? And if you can't, at least concede that the fear you're experiencing is the same one I can't run away from and feel morally obligated to talk about.