By Iamon M Syiem,
‘Freedom of speech’ – but are we really free? Should we be allowed to be free anyway? Does that freedom refer to our opinions and our ideas or does it include our language, the words we dress our thoughts as well? Every time I walk the street or round the corner of my workplace and felt the spit of four letter words and obscene slangs slide down my sensitivity like phlegm from an irritated soul, I ask myself, should words like that be free to hit the public domain? Now words have meaning and if they don’t, one can be free indeed to throw them anywhere. But must we endure being reminded of all the basic bodily functions that humans go through in the privacy of our bathrooms and bedrooms? Just when we leave these personal and private places to embrace that larger social space out there where minds spark each other in creative interactions …just when we engage ourselves in intellectual exercise, follow the exciting contours of a thought … just when we respond to the beauty of a leaf reflecting the sky in the drop of rain in its heart and the laughter of the wind on a child’s happy face…just when the past, the present and the future converge in one dreaming moment of hope…just when the lilt of some soul song release love, the eternal fragrance, to embrace and emancipate a suffocated humanity… that sacred place is once again invaded by the profane.
Profanity has always coloured our language and our cultures, I suppose, since humans related to each other and to the harsh natural environment they found themselves born into. Perhaps profanity saved us from knocking each other unconscious every time our toxic emotions overflow and our words can’t adequately explain that hateful feeling. So profanity is given meaning by its very usage. But never mind its original use; one can do a research on that. The point is, profanity has become a pattern of speech, replacing conversation, the dance of words between humans who are hardwired for communication beyond the functional level of articulating basic needs. Like a high powered car crawling at 20 miles an hour on dirt roads and potholes of neglected highways of communication, we do not maximize our potential to use language as a powerful tool of influence. We leave it to the poets, the writers the scientists, the lovers, to reach for words that translate their experience into meaning and thereby enrich our lives.
There was a period in the ‘civilizational’ process, perhaps in the age of Enlightenment when language blossomed like everything else. Have we then reached the ‘age of disenchantment’ or has Time rushed us to that place where we cannot couch our thoughts in laces and satin of words. Has Science so shifted our communication from humans to machines that we alienate even ourselves from our own selves? In a technological world, we are increasingly relating to the things we create, instead of to the creative beings that create them. In a socio-techno world our language has become increasingly functional and material. We can only pour out and respond according to the measure of what we have. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks…”Our capacity to give is enabled by our capacity to take in, and what we take in is what is out there. Our language has become mechanical. We get across the message but we forget the vehicle of words. We forget that words are like living seeds, creative energy with the power to penetrate the spirit of humans and extract that divine spark that takes them to that level beyond the material. There is no greater poverty than an impoverished spirit and a sadly neglected brain. The paucity of meaning is reflected in the limited use of language. Profanity becomes symptomatic of a social malady, a serious indicator of the increasing loss of communication and meaning between the self and the ‘other’. Something more is breaking down, our ability to connect meaning within ourselves and our social experience. We are left with a fragmented universe and we further reduce it with a limited vocabulary.
Maybe one could argue mankind has freed himself from the wrappings of culture to reveal his authentic self, back to primal expressions. We permit ourselves to explicitly give voice to our emotions be it anger or frustration, never mind if toxic flow damage the social body. Is it selfishness, a total disregard for others or is it a cry of help, a need to be heard in an alienated society? If we can determine it is the individual who suffer from maladjustment, we can perhaps address the challenge of integrating the individual back into society through our collective wisdom. What is more serious however is the question of a dysfunctional society, call it a moral and cultural meltdown (and profanity is one symptom of displacement). How do we start dealing with this worrying condition?
Yet I am permitted to hope. Society has always been resilient. Despite political, economic and socio-cultural upheavals worldwide, forces of integration will be at work still. There will be a redefinition of values, what we hold dear – life or peace or cooperation or in the words of this generation ‘whatever’. As long as individuals are aware of the need for each other for the purpose of survival if nothing else, they will to work on and redefine their patterns of communication, of which language is a major component. In short they will have to mind their words.
(The writer teaches Sociology in St Edmund’s College)