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Church going types scare me the most. Especially if it is a Mosque. Sorry, but that's how I feel.
Doesn't scare me but when I think of church I think condescending or at best "Oh God is only giving you what you can handle. He loves you". Yeah I'm really feeling the love when I am treated like a sponge. *rolls eyes*
Obviously not all religious people are like that (I'm an admirer of a musician who has been a devout Christian) but I've seen enough esp in Christianity.
Glad I don't live in that place. Ha I curse like a sailor. It's alright if there are words you don't like I suppose..I don't like some offensive slang but making it illegal? Our world is censored enough as it is. I mean I'm not even sure why they censor TV or the radio. Do you think people haven't heard those words before?
It's all about intention. It's just like the word stupid. Stupid is normally meant to be an insult but in the ghetto it apparently means cool.
Yeah sure sometimes if I'm cursing I'm probably really mad but if I call a guy a fruitcake then that's way worse. It's then you know if I call you that you won't ever be someone I want to associate with.
People also need to learn the origin of swear words. Once you read up on certain ones, you might gain a whole different perspective.
Quote:
Originally Posted by madison999
You swear because deep, deep down inside it brings you some amount of joy, for whatever reason.
You say you don't have the self control to not swear? BS. If you were in court in front of a judge, maybe as a witness or in trouble, I bet 10 bucks you would not "accidentally' throw any profanity around. You have control, you just choose not to use it.
If I was really fired up, I would not have self control. Say I took money back from my scammer and I was in court for supposedly "stealing" . I don't know if it would be curse words but I can bet I'd say things they wouldn't like if they actually made me open my mouth. I would say whatever I'm thinking at that time. If I don't then I'm not going to talk at all. I'm only two ways: introverted or 100 percent authentic. I can't be anything else.
But then again I'm said to have NLD when first analyzed so maybe that helps.
I don't like cussing or swear words, either, but they ARE just words, plus I think it would be too difficult (as many people have said) to draw the line. For example, the word a$$ is perfectly acceptable when referring to a donkey or mule, but if someone refers to someone being an a$$, are they saying he is behaving like a donkey or a butt? (Actually, that is pretty silly, come to think of it.)
What I do object to, though, is elementary school literature that contains words that many people find objectionable. Have you ever tried to explain to an eight-year-old why words like "damn" or "hell", for example, are acceptable for an adult to use in some cases, but that many people who hear either of those words from a child after she or he has stubbed a toe might very possibly think that the child is not very "nice".
I also got it from some store owners when I was down there a few months ago. They could have also gotten it from the website as well. Dont know. Could all be wrong. Fact of the matter is that it is still a law on the books.
True- we also have a law here that has to do with walking around with ice cream in your pocket on a monday, I'm sure the cops would not be thinking about a ticket if they saw some Louisvillian with an ice cream cone in their pocket.
I refrain from swearing in public or at work for the most part, and I almost never swear at a person, but a well-placed curse word can make a statement or a joke.
The only comedian I know of who never swears and lectures others on it is.... Bill Cosby. Scary.
Good point.
I despise excessive swearing, but I often find that people who are the most opposed to cursing of any kind have other vices and character flaws far more serious than dropping an occasional "f-bomb."
The very concept of branding certain arbitrary words as "vulgar," "profane," or "forbidden" is just plain stupid. Yeah, that's what I said: Stupid.
Why, might you ask? Well, I realize that most of us from early childhood have been scolded and sometimes punished for saying certain words. We quickly came to understand which words were forbidden, which phrases were taboo. As we matured into adulthood, we carried those taboos with us and I can almost guarantee that most of you never once really questioned why.
I know I'm not going to start a pro-cussing revolution here on City-Data, but I do think people need to really see how dumb it all is.
Let's take the word "sht" for instance. Hopefully everyone knows what "swear word" I'm referring to with those three letters. It's just a word -- a combination of letters to make a sound. It does not carry any magical powers; it is not the word to an incantation that somehow affects your brain or causes real mental or physical consequences. It is only a "bad" word because someone somewhere in the distant past said it was "bad."
Is it a "bad" word because of how it sounds? Well, there are loads of words that rhyme with it (including "it"). The sound should have nothing to do with it.
Is it because of the image it conjures? Again, there are plenty of innocuous words that conjure the same thing. Words like poop, crap, poo, skat, turd, and excrement. In fact, THOSE words conjure up the actual human waste product more acutely than the so-called "bad" word of "sht."
So why that particular word? Why ban it while allowing plenty of other words that sound just like it and mean the same thing? The word "crap" can even be substituted perfectly in all the popular phrases that involve the word "sht." Yet if I say I had a "really crappy day" no one gets all bent out of shape -- even the City-Data auto-censor allows it. But I can't say that I had a "really shtty day" because, for some inexplicable reason, our society just HAD to have a few words we're not supposed to say.
The two phrases mean precisely the same thing and both would be considered somewhat uncouth -- but saying "shtty" is somehow leaps and bounds worse. If said on television, the bleepers start bleeping, the person's lips are blurred so you can't even accidentally lip-read the offending word coming out of the mouth, and the FCC can even fine a channel for allowing it. If the word is said in the real world, parents quickly cover the ears of their children, people wrinkle their noses, some might sigh or make some other noise indicating their disgust, some might even scold the person saying it. "Can't you say 'crap' instead?"
As for either word being uncouth, it's only considered uncouth because, again, someone somewhere in the distant past said it was. So what? Why should we listen to ... whoever it was, anyway? What authority did this person have in surgically selecting just a handful of words and say, "Thou shalt never say them because they are bad!"
Personally, I'm of the mind that if I have to worry about following societal and social rules, those rules need to have some kind of pragmatic, practical reason for their existence. The rules concerning "vulgarity" have no reason AT ALL to exist, much less a pragmatic or practical reason.
And this doesn't just apply to one specific "vulgar" word -- you can run any and all "vulgar" words through my series of questions and see just how arbitrary it is.
Now, I'm not saying everyone should just go ahead and start spouting off cuss words. Unfortunately, the aversion to those words is too strongly ingrained into our culture now; it would take literally generations to erase the stigma those words have.
But I do think people should really stop and think about their behavior -- why do we do the things we do? You'll find, quite to your amazement, that a large percentage of our customs, taboos, and ways of dealing with each other have absolutely no reason to exist. Perhaps if we dispensed with some of these arbitrary rules, we would actually get along better with each other as there would be far fewer social faux pas and people wouldn't offend each other nearly so often.
Ergo, it is bad enough, in truth, to have this bizarre and arbitrary aversion to a few specific words; it's bad enough that those rules can't be justified. But to actually make saying them a criminal offense is criminal in and of itself. If we cannot justify the reasons why this word but not that one is a "cuss" word, then how can anyone possibly justify making "cuss" words flagrantly illegal to say?
I see it as more of a public disturbance issue than a free speech issue. A law prohibiting expletives in public applies equally to all. As long as identical comments can be expressed publicly with language known to most and commonly used, it doesn't prohibit anyone from expressing their opinions or ideas.
The danger, of course, is defining what constitutes an expletive. It would have to be well defined. If a law exists which prohibits "foul language" as an abstract, someone will be crafty enough to claim that a word that most people don't consider offensive, is. Or vice versa.
The benefit is that there are a lot of people out there with loud, slop bucket mouths, and their public expletives don't do anything for society.
I've said it many times, if you've seen Demolition Man- that is the reality we are headed to.
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