Posted on 12/10/2006 2:01:49 PM PST by wagglebee
Still, there must be simple clear terms that are understood to describe those conditions. Otherwise the bad behaviour and the consdition needing some special treatment are ignored, which will bring about the real harms associated with such ignorance. The condition and the action will still happen, and will happen more often for not being safeguarded by simple clear understandings in society.
What are you asking, that there be no discussion of the condition or of the action among the non-intellectual, among those people not capable of using complex euphemisms and cicumlocutions? What an elite attitude!
Look, since the terms "bastard" and "bastardy" were thrown out and replaced or just dropped, we have had a radical rise in just such a condition, with all the harm there can be to the poor bastards who are innocently birthed into that condition by those who should know better than to engage in bastardy.
But without any term at all for that action now, that action once known as "bastardy", the most effective social block against such bad action is removed.
In rush to sound and look pretty and kind, we hide the dread consequences before the act. The dread consequences still take place! And the actions increase for lack of a social block. The child born "out of wedlock" still lives a lifetime of being in that degraded condition of a child -- without a father. With no inhertitance except the psychic pit made by that absense.
And the mother -- for most of them the consequncces after never stay hidden, no matter how many layers of euphemism are had before hand. Such social prettiness had by euphemism ends up being ticket to poverty and struggle, despair.
All for lack of the honest simple terms: bastard and bastardy.
Whether the child is innocent or not name-calling or using derogatory terms against the child is a highly unsucessful activity.
Notice I said "against the child". When the term is used against the child. The term can also be used FOR the child. And that pro-child usage of the term "bastard" needs be used more in our society, where we to be wise.
Words have their proper place and are a tool for understanding and remembrance, and a aid to motivation and planning in order to get things done. Abseent a simple clear term upom which to associate acquired knowledge and understanding the handicap on, a young child is left to confusion and uncertainity as to what that handicap is, and then unable to focus and concentrate to deal with that handicap and ameliorate it.
It is the manner used that the term becomes hurtful. And that is so of any term!
I tried to make that case to you with the word "gay", a truly joyful word, stolen by a vile group and now almost solely associated with that group's very own mal-behaviour.
Let's review a few points. One -- it is not the word or term that is derogatory and hurtful, it is the manner in which the word is used.
Two -- Any novel word or euphemism employed to mask a bad or perverted behaviour will in time become so associated with that vileness that the word itself will be considered to be as rude as the old term which it once replaced. That is the usual case. The case of "gay".
Three -- Sometimes for a while, years, but not forever, the pretty euphemism will obscure the badness or harmfulness or of the behaviour, or the curse of the handicap. This obscurity causes a harmful social amnesia, for the society forgets for a while the real long-term harms that accrue from the behaviour, or the particular special needs of those so cursed as an outcome of that behaviour.
In a simple and more short-term example it is like missing that the stovetop may be hot to the touch the new ceramic stovetops do not get red, or have flames. Until one relearns how to identify a hot stove, fingers get burnt.
That social amnesia was brought on by use of an obscuring euphemism. One glaring case of it is that dicessed here. Of bastards and bastardy.
Four -- It is of great importance to individual health and well-being, in addition to that of society, to have simple clear terms to describe these conditions.
Especially for the ones most harmed -- the bastards. They have to know their situation in order for them to deal with it, and to counter its curse.
Give them a fighting chance, damn it!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.