The Garden

Ever since the events of 9/11 transpired I have been opposed (both politically and morally) to every act of violence and aggression propagated by the United States; which, of course, includes the invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq. Since I am a relatively outspoken and opinionated person, I have, naturally, encountered a number of views that have been in opposition to my own. Among some of these opposing views (and in society in general), I have often encountered the slogan “Support Our Troops” in some form or other. When considering this slogan in the context of the enduring debate over US Military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, there is reason to take issue with the merits of the slogan—not specifically about the slogan’s overt message, but what the slogan implies covertly.

On the face of it, the slogan “Support Our Troops” simply implies that US troops, both as human beings and as US public servants, deserve to be ‘supported’ by the people they represent and work for, essentially on moral grounds. Simple enough. However, if you consider this slogan in the context of a debate over the merits of a war, such as the debates over Afghanistan and Iraq for example, the implications of this slogan become far more severe.

First of all, even though it looks like a statement, the phrase “Support Our Troops” is actually a command. If it were a statement, it would read something to the effect of “I Support Our Troops” or “Our Troops Deserve Support”. Instead, “Support Our Troops” is in fact telling its audience to engage in supportive behaviors towards US troops. When used in the context of a debate over the merits of war, such a command subverts the purpose of the debate—which is to establish the grounds for a particular behavior, not to trumpet the behavior in question.

Secondly, the slogan underhandedly accuses its audience of presently being unsupportive of US troops. Insofar as there is a motivation for using the slogan “Support Our Troops,” it is fair to assume that that motivation is to promote something that deserves wide acceptance, but, as of yet, has not achieved such acceptance. In this case, those who use the slogan “Support Our Troops” are A) implicitly saying that there are people who do not presently support our troops, and B) explicitly saying that those unsupportive people ought to begin supporting our troops. The problem I have with this is that it is rather crude to assume, or in fact assert, that someone is guilty of not generally ‘supporting’ US troops. Since the support of US troops is largely a moral issue, assuming that someone does not support the troops is analogous to making an unfavorable moral judgment about that person. More blatantly, the statement implies that a person is actually against the troops in some antagonistic way. In the context of an enduring debate over the merits of a war, it is unfair to attempt to stack the deck (morally speaking) against those who happen to oppose the war in question.

Thirdly, the slogan “Support Our Troops” can be (and often is) confused for a different, but related, slogan: “Support The War.” As an anti-war person, I am very familiar with my reasons for opposing wars in general, and the Afghanistan/Iraq wars in particular; these reasons, however, have nothing to do with my opinion over the merits of the support/non-support, of US troops. Despite the distinctions between supporting a war and supporting a war’s troops, I, and others like me, have nevertheless been accused of not supporting our troops as a consequence of not supporting the war the troops are involved in. In other words, when the slogan is used this way, opposing the war equals opposing the troops—a patently false claim.

Further, there is an ambiguity in the slogan concerning the term ‘support.’ ‘Support’ can basically refer to one of two things: A) support for the objective of the troops (i.e. their mission); or B) support for the lives of the troops (i.e. their well-being). Most people, regardless of their stance on the war, will agree with (B) because most people, hopefully, do not want harm to come to anyone. As far as (A) is concerned, however, many who disagree with a military’s mission will not then support the actions of the military’s troops. For example, since I oppose the war in Iraq, I do not support the objectives of the troops insofar as they involve doing violence to the people of Iraq. In other words, the more the US troops ‘succeed’ in their invasion of Iraq, the more my objective of “no invasion” diminishes. Unfortunately though I have seen and experienced instances where the ambiguity of the term ‘support’ has been manipulated in such a way as to accuse an anti-war individual of being insensitive to the well-being of the troops when what the anti-war person really meant was that they did not support what the troops were, and are, doing.

Finally, the slogan “Support Our Troops” subtly implies that the lives of American troops are more important because they are, well, American. I strongly object to this implication of the slogan because there is no moral basis for supposing that American lives are more important than, say, Iraqi civilian lives. In fact, much of my anti-war perspective depends on my compassion for all human life—both American and otherwise. Therefore, if I were to embrace a slogan that only expresses concern for “Our Troops,” I would also implicitly embrace the idea that ‘our’ people are somehow better or more important than ‘their’ people—something that I intensely oppose. Therefore if someone refuses to endorse the slogan “Support Our Troops,” it is not necessarily because they oppose our troops, but rather because they wish to support everyone involved in the conflict.

Most people seem to agree that television, while occasionally entertaining, is nevertheless a waste of time for those who watch it. When compared to other hobbies, interests and activities, television simply fails to show much promise in the area of improving one’s life. After all, no skills are really needed to watch a television program. Beyond knowing how to press buttons on a remote control, what else does someone need to know in order to watch television? There is no requirement that one be at a certain intellectual level, exercise a certain degree of creativity, nor exhibit some degree of physical fitness in order to be “successful” at television watching. Further, after watching television, no worthwhile skills are even developed or enhanced, at least none that are of any real use in daily life. Granted, one could watch something educational on the History Channel for example, but educational programming is not prevalent enough in the television industry to consider the viewers of these programs as “average” television watchers. Therefore, I think it is still fair to say that, on the whole, television watching is little more than a waste of time.

Beyond simply being a waste of time though, I think television watching is actually detrimental to one’s life. Primarily, my concern with television lies in its potential effects on its viewing populace’s thought processes. More precisely, I think television, whether viewed regularly or occasionally, has a very powerful influence on the way one ultimately interacts with their world.

Television is what I call an artificial enterprise. What I mean by that is simply that television deals in nothing other than fantasy—that is, it deals with nothing grounded in reality. The goal of television programming is to get its audience to mistake fantasy for reality—to trick the viewer into forgetting what reality even is in order to “sell” the viewer some kind of alternate reality, the fantasy reality. Everything about the fantasy reality, however, is completely fake. Of course, it is understandable as to why television studios would desire to supplant reality with fantasy—the fantasy is what viewers find so entertaining—so it’s not as though there is much of a mystery here. However, since the goal of television programming is largely motivated toward creating fantasies in the minds of its viewers, how careful should the viewers be in exposing themselves to these artificial realities? After all, it seems fair to say that television programmers are interested in both creating the most convincing of fantasies in the minds of their viewers, and dismantling viewers’ allegiance to reality itself.

If you accept my proposition that television is a completely artificial enterprise, then I suggest you consider the possibility that exposure to it actually competes with the natural world as the basis for one’s beliefs and values about the world. What I mean by this is that rather than using one’s personal experiences with other people, animals, objects, etc. in the real world, people who expose themselves to the artificial realities broadcast through television programs place an obstacle upon themselves that hinders their ability to sort out between what is real and what is not. What happens as a result of this is that people begin to behave in ways consistent with the fantasy world rather than the real world—something that couldn’t possibly be a catalyst for the improvement of human living.

My bottom line is that anyone or anything that seeks to manipulate the ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality deserves serious scrutiny; yet I suspect that more often than not, television is used without a shred of scrutiny. Considering the scale to which television is, and has been, involved in peoples’ lives, it is worth reevaluating our perceptions of it.

I’ve never really understood what it is that makes a swear word a swear word.  I know what they are of course, and, even though I use them regularly, I know that they’re supposed to be censored in certain places, like this newspaper for instance.  I also know that many people consider the use of these words offensive, or at least feel offended by their use.  Nevertheless, I have yet to hear a compelling reason as to why these words should be considered taboo.

In this article I will only consider three common swear words.  I’m sure you know them and probably have used them on several occasions yourself, like the last time you stubbed your toe, cut yourself shaving, or got cut off in traffic.  However, since I am writing in a publication that abides by certain rules and regulations, I cannot state those words explicitly here.  Instead, you’ll have to use your powers of inference to figure out which words I’m talking about through the various clues spread throughout the following paragraphs.  The first clue, and probably the only one you’ll need, is that the three words rhyme with ‘suck’, ‘sit’ and ‘pass-bowl’.

Now, there are two primary ways I can think of that might qualify a word for profanity status: its definition and its aesthetics (ugliness).  I hope to show you that neither of those ways provides any insight into why these words should be censored at all.  I don’t know what I want you to actually do with that information if you agree with it, but I’ll go through the trouble of telling you anyway.  Let’s start with the definitions.

If you look at the strict definition of each of these words, you might find that some of them deal with topics that are somewhat unpleasant or uncomfortable to people, but the words are not without their non-profane synonyms.  For example, ‘sex’, ‘crap’ and ‘anus’ are not swear words but they have basically the same meaning as their swear word counterparts; and there are plenty more synonyms out there in addition to these.  So if what makes a word profane is its definition, then why wouldn’t all of these other synonyms be considered profane as well?

Perhaps it is not simply the strict definition that is worrisome, but the way that the word is used in certain contexts that makes the language offensive.  Here it makes sense to think of how swear words can be wielded as insults against others.  We’re all familiar with the various ways in which the three swear words I’m referring to can be used as insults.  Of course, being the victim of profane insults is unpleasant; but is it any more unpleasant than being the victim of non-profane insults?  If I call you a piece of crap, is that somehow more polite than the alternative?  I don’t think so, but even if it is, so what?  Aren’t insults supposed to be, well, insulting?  If I call you a ‘jerk’ or a ‘moron’, I’m still trying to hurt your feelings despite the lack of profane language.  So, even by considering context, there still doesn’t seem to be any good reason to censor these words from our vocabulary.

So how about the aesthetic quality of the words?  If the definition doesn’t matter, then maybe it has something to do with the way each word sounds when spoken—maybe the words just sound ‘ugly’ or something.  Well, if that were true, then wouldn’t we find similar sounding words just as offensive?  For example, is there something about the way the words ‘ship’, ‘shift’, ‘shrift’, ‘puck’, ‘pluck’, ‘muck’, ‘bass-pole’ ‘mass-glow’ and ‘grass-hole’ sound that make them offensive?  If there is, I sure as puck don’t see it.

Since we’re talking about aesthetics here, we should not only consider how swear words sound, but also how they look.  Think about how print media tend to display swear words in their publications.  You usually see something like “f**k”, “s**t” or “a**hole” written to “disguise” the word so that you still know what it is, but don’t have to look at it in all its disgusting glory. It’s kind of like how we censor parts of the human body in public.  Just like it’s okay for a male to reveal his nipple in public but not a female (even though they look very similar), it is likewise okay for us to see the letters ‘s’, ‘h’, ‘i’, etc, used in other words but not in swear words.  Who is this supposed to fool?  It’s not as though we don’t know what’s behind those asterisks (just like it’s not as though we don’t know what’s behind a swimsuit top for that matter) so it’s not really “concealing” anything.  So what’s the point?  Just like before, if there is something offensive about the way the word looks, then why not fuss over the way the word “hits” looks?  It has all the same letters as the s**t one does, so does that mean that ‘hits’ is therefore also offensive?  Sounds pretty ridiculous to me.

I guess what you might be able to take away from this is that you shouldn’t feel guilty if you happen to swear in the “wrong” place or in front of the “wrong” person sometimes.  If someone has a problem with your language, just ask him or her to explain why your words are problematic.  I can almost guarantee you that they will have no other excuse other than the “I don’t like it” or “it’s just wrong” sort of response.  Such a response fails to answer the “Why?” question first of all, and it also places an unwarranted burden on you to somehow be omniscient enough to know what does and does not bother a person.  Wouldn’t it be much easier to just eliminate the taboo of swear words altogether and save ourselves the f***ing headache?

Technology allows for instant communication in many different ways—that, of course, is a good thing.  Unfortunately, the affordability and ease with which people can now communicate proliferates excessive amounts of useless and annoying “junk talk”—what I consider to be a very bad thing.

Take cell phones for example.  Incredibly useful devices, these cell phones are.  Whether you’re in danger, stranded or lost, cell phones provide for the priceless convenience of contacting civilization from somewhat remote locations.  You can’t really argue against that.  In daily life though, those situations don’t arise all that often (fortunately).  However, since people continue to carry these handy little things around despite the relatively rare occurrences of real emergencies, what do people decide to do with these devices in the mean time?  I’ll tell you what they do.  They inundate their friends and acquaintances with barrages of pointless and useless communications that serve virtually no other purpose than to say “Hey!  I exist…remember?  Pay attention to me!”

Many years ago when I first began my college career, I observed a plethora of instances where students would race out the door from a class, immediately place a call, then proceed to tell the poor soul on the other end of the phone that “class was so boring today”; as if the message deserved some form of urgency.  Since then, text messaging has become commonplace and, as a result, junk talk is no longer consigned to outside of class time—people use their cell phones to message each other during class time as well as outside of it.  I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you people are sending each other, but a) it’s not important at all, and b) it’s probably more annoying than anything to the person on the receiving end.

In fact, text messaging is annoying in several ways.  First of all, it is usually referred to as “texting.”  “Texting” is a stupid word.  “Text” is only a noun or an adjective, not a verb.  You should not be able to “text” me anymore than you could “audio” me, “sentence” me or “word” me.  Second, text messaging is ridiculously difficult and cumbersome.  Phones have ten numbers.  The English alphabet has 26 letters.  Putting them together does not make life any easier.  Further, since it is obviously such a pain to type the simplest of words on a phone, most messages that are sent are short and meaningless.  On the other hand, if one desires to send a lengthy text message, they have to invest at least 5 times as much effort to type the stupid thing as they would to simply call the person.  This latter point is compounded by my next complaint: Text messaging costs more money than simple phone calls.  Think about this.  Not only does it cost extra money to send a text message, it even costs money to receive the stupid thing.  If my phone plan is any indication, it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 cents per text message for both sending and receiving.  That means a text message costs about 40 cents for the entire transmission.  Forty cents to communicate what?  “Lol” or “Omg”?  Useless!  The worst is when you get a text message asking you a question.  What are you supposed to do, type a response?  What if the answer is “yes”?  Do you really want to pay almost a quarter to say “yes” to someone over a text message when you could far more easily just tell them over the phone?

At the risk of being stereotypical or sexist, I’m nevertheless going to claim that it is overwhelmingly the females amongst us that are responsible for most of this junk talk.  Thankfully, they seem to do it mostly to each other while sparing my male counterparts and I from the burdensome task of listening and responding to this stuff; but we still get roped in on occasion.  I don’t know why women find it so important to use their cell phones endlessly–my male, practical-minded nature simply doesn’t understand.