This is just going to be one of those nit-picking blogs about what I consider lazy word choice. A response to one of my statuses from a new acquaintance has stuck with me, and I want to stop thinking about it. You should be bored already, this is one of those “extra for me” kind of digressions.
Certain phrases come up that seem to immediately betray what's been said. In this instance, it's the tag “just saying.” It usually comes after someone thinks they've made a kind of colloquial truth point or mom-esc “told ya so” notion. It's really a very weird thing to employ because it seems to try and do so much contradictory work at once.
Consider, aren't we all, always, just saying? I'm just writing. But, of course I'm not. I'm scratching an obsessive compulsive mind's itch. I'm disagreeing. I'm “arguing” and picking apart. I'm reflecting. I'm hoping to convey a message that I'll understand now and into the future, and hey, maybe someone will gain an ounce of utility from. “Just saying” seems to desire to be let off the hook for all of that.
Surely one should respect what they say, no? Often there's an intention? I'm not saying the average cliché adopter and pleasant appeaser are mindless without their throwaway safe sentiments, but would they deny they had a goal in mind when they employed them? “Oh, you know, life's not fair!” Depending on the tone either trying to make light and or silence someone from carrying on. “Can't we all just get along?” Everyone's smart enough to know the question wasn't really asked, but the desire for a quelling of hostilities is there. How dumb would it sound to put “just saying” after something like a common cliché or aphorism? “You can't judge a book by its cover, just saying.” “A bird in hand is worth two in the bush, just saying.”
Just saying is meant to downplay. It's kind of attempting to avoid a perhaps biting tone you actually feel. Just saying protects you from your angrier-than-you'd-let-on self. You've no need to skirt past something in the examples above, they exist to do a certain amount of work for you already. “Just saying” becomes misplaced and inane redundancy.
Yet, I think it goes deeper.
If you take a particularly “deep” or philosophical approach to the nature and power of words, you get an added layer of drama. You said something! That's something of a miracle. You put your voice into the mix and tried to build something or tear down something else. You entered the war of words and ideas. Was what you said “just?” The very nature of speech at this level is divine, so what's left to be said about it is whether it was divine fuckery or divinity worthy of worship and emulation. Of course, not a single person in a regular reasonable discourse is engaging this way, but again, this is for me.
My answer is almost always and certainly “no.” When you use “just saying,” I think you betray yourself. I think what you wanted to say, and what came out, don't match, so you don't give the person you were “just saying” to the respect to “just hear” what it is you actually wanted to say. In the example that was used towards me, I immediately thought of a dozen ways to “fight” the particular point raised that was just being said, but the human in me wisely figured out it wasn't worth it, and lazy or ill-conceived retorts can be dealt with, well, later (now) without necessarily implicating or breeding bad blood. (He said pretending no one's ever told him “NO ONE WANTS TO BE A BLOG!”)
It occurred to me that I have practiced, so hard, being sensitive to words and ideas coming from me that are ridiculously suspect and bullshit, that my normalized radar is set to reflexively and viciously attack any degree of bullshit I catch a whiff of. I write things as a series of individual sentences I could more or less defend, maybe not so much drunk, but way more often than not. I speak from that quasi-indignant gutterally honest place, particularly when I'm not primed to be pseudo-professional about something. As a result, insincerity, lazy catch-alls or throwaways, or general placations of a moment I've no real patience for. If you disagree with me, strongly disagree with me, and then be willing to get lost in the woods. If you don't, which usually it's a measure of either not really disagreeing and speaking too quickly, or it's not really caring and pretending you did, then I look significantly less like a pedantic dick, and more like someone who has a problem in which you've contended with his method of best coping.
But, after all, I'm only just saying these things. Who's to say if I believe them, or if they reflect a degree of emotion or lack thereof. Why did I bother? My mind was just saying some formulation of these words to me endlessly for the last day or two. Can't we just dismiss this all since it was just said and had no other impact or reason to respect there was a mind suggesting intentionality? We can all offer one or dozen things we may or may not believe in and walk away nonchalantly because where does it all go anyway and words are just weird.
Really, I'm just saying.
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