(Nemo's note: Artanis, are you ever going to update this??) There are a few pieces of irrationality that are accepted by nearly everyone, and the less importance it has in one’s life, the more widely it is accepted, and the less widely it is questioned. And it is because of this that one phenomenon, which really has no impact explicitly on one’s life, has become so matter-of-fact that virtually no one questions the rationality of it. This phenomenon is cursing.
What is cursing? It is never defined, but always explained via the method of substituting an example for any definition. What do they say differentiate these words from any other? They are rude. That’s it, they are not nice...they hurt someone’s feelings. I would think that with an essential characteristic like that, a rational being would need no further comment. But yet, many rational men that I know still try to avoid them in some religious manner.
Talking to someone about cursing can be quite illuminating. Here’s the way a typical conversation will go:
“Damn it.”
“You shouldn’t talk like that.”
“Why is that?”
“What do you mean ‘why?’ That kind of language is rude.”
“So you wouldn’t mind if I said ‘curse it’?”
“Well, of course not.”
“You do know that ‘damn’ is synonymous with ‘curse’, don’t you?”
“Oh, that’s just convention...God (or Society) doesn’t approve of cursing though.”
“Then how do you define cursing?”
“There’s no definitions necessary.”
“Then how do you know what it is?”
“From (insert social figure)”
Instead of a definition, he might give you a list of common curses. But note one thing, they are for the most not picked arbitrarily by the concept they refer to, just the particular audio-visual symbol. This shows that they are trying to eliminate the concept by asking people to stop using it - in one perceptual form - in their day-to-day lives. Since the mind works on a conceptual level, subconsciously the mind will start shunning other symbols that refer to the same percepts. Take “damn” as an example; it refers to the same concept as “curse”...those percepts are acts of condemning someone’s actions. Note that to condemn one’s actions, one would have to judge those particular actions, and that is something that all the anti-reason attitudes out there are against. Judging is the fundamental process of reason. This general process, with a few exceptions, carries throughout the entire list of curses.
The implicit purpose of the entire subject is to remove certain “unpopular” concepts from people’s conceptual vocabulary, not outrightly..which the Establishment tries daily, but undercover; i.e. in the form of “politeness.” These include judgment, sex, and punishment. These go on to degrade such concepts as logic, valuing, and justice. These are all aspects of reality that altruism seeks to destroy, but can’t except by the consent of those that are to form the concepts of such aspects. Therefore, the only way to double enforce that people will not use logic, will not value anything too much, and will not seek justice is to make a little set of rules that has little to no explicit effect on anyone. Most men are not quick to see that such a silly little game as cursing can potentially hurt their conceptual equipment so much. It takes philosophic information to combat such a piece of irrationality, and that is exactly what most men today lack.
Another interesting thing to note is the people that rebel against the status quo and curse in every other sentence. These people, like most of today’s modern rebels, rebel without reasoning - they rebel for rebellion’s sake. They accept the fact that the words are corrupt and evil, but “they don’t care” and go on to condemn themselves. They actually are guilty of a greater evasion than the Babbitts who faint when they hear a curse. At least the Babbitts wish to live by their moral code, the rebels wish to blow morality out of the discussion.
Now that I have covered the irrational aspects of cursing in today’s society, let me explicate the proper, rational standards in cursing.
What “cursing” does not deserve is some sort of extra (higher or lower) metaphysical status as any other portion of language. Since words are conceptual symbols and not arbitrary sounds bound to some loose meaning by social convention, they are proper to use in the correct context, such context being determined by the concept reffered to by the word. “Damn” has no serious differentiation in meaning from “curse,” so they are synonymous, being interchangeable in an given utterance except for poetic or emotional effect. But note that it is not at all appropriate, objectively, to say “That fing loser, I mean he’s a total sh*t eater.” What is fing idiot.”(You can just call him a loose-mouthed bastard if you must :-)