Momastery: On Profanity
Favorite bit:
Or maybe He’s talking about language intended to exclude people. Religious talk does that sometimes. Religious words can be used to make people feel in and other people feel out and if they’re used that way, to suggest that some people are “God people” and others aren’t, then I think religious words become profane.
I try to keep my language clean, I honestly do. But I refuse to feel as guilty as some think I should when it proves difficult or impossible to maintain the facade. Like many/most(/all?) men, I am a bottler of emotions. There's a microbrewery in my heart that serves up a creamy ale in frosty shatterproof bottles of the finest sublimation. Occasionally the bottles get shaken up and the tops pop off and then there's a giant mess to clean up.
To prevent this, I've been practicing at expressing myself instead, especially when it comes to anger or frustration, and sometimes that just has to include the naughty words because no other words will do. Some have suggested this is evidence of a weak mind or vocabulary, but I think it has more to do with the fact that some emotions are violent and require violent language, otherwise you're not really expressing them.
I find it interesting when combat veterans apologize to me for using profanity in the privacy of my psychiatry office at the VA. I think they look at me like I'm some sort of authority figure or officer in the military. But I know when they get over the social inhibition of worrying about whether they are offending me, and use the language they would use with their best friend over a poker game, that's when I get to hear what they really think and feel. It's like, really, you were in the Battle of Hue during the Tet Offensive and you have to apologize to your shrink for dropping the S word?
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