George Carlin and Nietzsche

In the words of the late comic George Carlin:

    I love words. I thank you for hearing my words. I want to tell you something about words that I uh, I think is important. I love..as I say, they're my work, they're my play, they're my passion. Words are all we have really.

    We have thoughts, but thoughts are fluid. You know, [humming]. And, then we assign a word to a thought, [clicks tongue]. And we're stuck with that word for that thought. So be careful with words. I like to think, yeah, the same words that hurt can heal. It's a matter of how you pick them.

    There are some people that aren't into all the words. There are some people who would have you not use certain words. Yeah, there are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are seven of them that you can't say on television. What a ratio that is. 399,993 to seven. They must really be bad. They'd have to be outrageous, to be separated from a group that large. All of you over here, you seven. Bad words. That's what they told us they were, remember? 'That's a bad word.' 'Awwww.' There are no bad words. Bad thoughts.  Bad Intentions.

    And words, you know the seven don't you? Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits, huh? Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that will infect your soul, curve your spine and keep the country from winning the war.

For a full transcript: http://www.erenkrantz.com/Humor/SevenDirtyWords.shtml
 

I never tire of Carlin’s “7 Words You Can’t Say on Television” – but when I was listening to it recently, it struck me as completely relevant to our class. Three things I’d like to note:

• Carlin’s reverence and adulation for words and their capabilities.
• Carlin’s sensibilities in agreement with Nietzsche in regards to truth.
• Carlin’s dissection of metaphors in “bad” words. (for more evidence of this, see transcript)

    Without words, where would we be? Frustrations aside, our ability to communicate without words is often uproariously comical. Consider the age-old game of Charades. Generations of people have gathered around and attempted to communicate words through only physical actions. The humorous result of watching Uncle Walter acting out “To Kill a Mockingbird” is in the visual imagery of an aging man flapping his fictional wings while trying to express some kind of forcible death. Laughter erupts because without words, we are reduced to goofy improvisation of symbols for objects and concepts. Our mis-communication even with words can be hilariously funny. The list of unintentional gaffes, malapropisms, and made-up words (think SNL's mockery of G.W. Bush with “strategery”) goes on and on, and it it through this medium that many comics can elicit laughter by pointing out the obvious humor in our misuse of words. Mitch Hedberg’s often quoted line that “An escalator can never break--it can only become stairs. You would never see an "Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order" sign, just "Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience. We apologize for the fact that you can still get up there."” relies on our knowledge of words and their associated meanings/metaphors. That Carlin makes a note that “thoughts are fluid” shows the permanence of words and the impact of their meaning at one particular time. Once uttered or written, either in the sand or in spray paint on the side of a building, a word has left a lasting impression in this world, one that is different to everyone who sees or hears it.

    After our online discussions about Nietzsche, I hadn’t (and still haven’t) been able to shake the notion that what one person thinks of as “the truth” is not necessarily what another person thinks of as the truth. What does this have to do with George Carlin and obscenities? Just this: that the truth of a word’s meaning is not irrefutable. Nietszche claimed that words were merely metaphors: representative of a feeling, an object, a concept, for each person. That an individual has his or her own definition for a word is true, but the truth of that particular word is not the same for any two people. In terms of obscene language, we all have different reactions to what we perceive the meanings to be. Meanings can change at different circumstances in different company. Someone referring to her boss as a serious “douche” may garner laughter, but used in a different context, say… a Gynecologist’s office, the same word takes on a new role. Consider people who learn English as a second language. Imagine how confusing many idiomatic expressions are used as obscenities are for them. Some words have dual meaning: A Frenchman would ask why you were giggling about the “shower” or why is “motherfucker” different from “dad”?

    Carlin points out many inane reasons that society (and those in charge of keeping society a happy place full of unicorns and rainbows) avoids specific words. One thing he fails to point out though is those words that, even in English speaking countries, are different on either side of the Atlantic. One of the seven deadly words, “cunt” (often pronounced See You Next Tuesday by prudish individuals) is mightily taboo in American culture and is often deemed the ultimate in insultingly crass words to use in regard to a woman. On the contrary, in England, the same word is a mere comical slight or even positive term of endearment in passing that is used for anyone, male or female. On the flip side, an American prudish-ism “fanny” is a nickname for a woman’s vagina in England. So, wait a minute, same word, same language, different meaning, different location – can this be true?

    I could go on and on, picking away at the uses and versions of “bad” language, but such writing has been exhausted by many others before me. I will just end with one final comment about the “badness” of these words. What is it about these words that is so bad? What stirs fear in those who try to suppress them? What threat do they pose? Are they, like Marijuana, the gateway drug? Will using these words plunge a person into the depths of humanity, opening doors to temptation and evil? I know plenty of saintly individuals with broad vocabularies and serious potty mouths, and I don’t think they are worried about the road to hell being paved with bad linguistic inventions.  

"Strategery"

Points of Interest (digression of course) in Michel Foucault's "Technologies of the Self"

           One of the areas I found most interesting, or rather, most relevant to today’s public discourse, was Foucault’s combination of the concept of “truth games” and democracy. When defining the technologies of the self, Foucault says that individuals “effect…operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, and immortality”(italics for emphasis). As a modern democratic society, we are encouraged to care for our neighbors and build a world in which we can all prosper and live together in harmony – or at least that’s what we’d like to believe is possible. My understanding of this is that if one focuses on knowing oneself and taking care of oneself, then one can become a better citizen, well-equipped to make decisions based on one’s own truths that will benefit the whole group.  

            Foucault goes on to mention that in Plato’s apology 29e, Socrates says “in teaching people to occupy themselves with themselves, he teaches them to occupy themselves with the city.” While this notion sounds good on paper, I think there is a very fine line between knowing and caring for oneself and being consumed with knowing and caring for oneself. There is a brief nod to this when Foucault writes that “ ‘know yourself’ has obscured ‘take care of yourself’” and might perhaps agree with me that citizens often cross over into being self-indulgent in their desire to know the minute, inner-most trivial details of knowing themselves. This fixation upon the self can lead to a society that is not, as the musketeers would have it, all for one; but all for oneself.

            This self-addiction is only compounded when individuals spend time learning about their own psyches when they utilize writing as an exercise of self-reflection and discovery. On the one hand it can be used, as Foucault says, “as exercise in taking care of the self in order to reactivate for oneself the truths one needed” but does this self-affirmation make someone too self-involved? There must be guidance in this activity, as well as other modes of self-expression (dance, art, music) so that one understands the balance between life inside one’s head and life within a society. People need to know how to balance when to express mere facts and things and when to express pure feelings and emotions.

            Americans today are prescribed more medication for various forms of depression and mental health issues than any other country, a statistic I attribute to people living too much inside of their own heads. We must remember that we are striving to become more self-aware not simply for our own selfish purposes of attaining our own versions happiness, but that we can only be happy when those around us are happy and able to create a society that contributes to overall happiness of its citizens. By doing for others and learning about others, we are relinquished from the chains of living inside the self and instead take a virtual vacation from our mental worries/contemplation/musings. This helps in attaining happiness, and in turn a prosperous nation.

            I mentioned earlier my concerns regarding the “all for oneself, not all for one” attitude, and in doing so I cannot help but reflect on the current political climate of our nation. Career politicians are concerned not with those others they serve, but with the one they serve: the self (keeping one’s job, status, money). Likewise, citizens themselves have come to distrust those in power and their ability to sustain a fair and thriving nation. Based on this betrayal of people in public office, citizens then adopt an attitude whereby they can no longer trust their even their neighbor to look our for other neighbors’ best interests and thus we are developing a world in which it is “every man for himself”- the very opposite of democracy.

As an example I offer the argument surrounding property taxes and public schools. Many argue that since they have no children, or send their children to privately funded institutions, that they should not have to pay for complete strangers to receive schooling at their expense. Here, the focus is on superficially taking care of the self. In actuality, paying for strangers to receive schooling does benefit the self: it creates better educated citizens and neighbors who are able to be in positions to contribute to society as a result of their schooling. Therefore, if the “care of the self” is applied conceptually, then such individuals could realize that by taking care of others, they are ultimately taking care of themselves.  My question then would be, how can we reverse this trend (of superficially tending to the immediate needs of the self )and allow Americans to learn and care for the self while simultaneously taking what they learn from this exercise and apply it to their public lives?

In Defense of My Twitter Essay

I thought I’d start out my blog with an explanation of what I presented with my last “essay.” For starters, we were given no guidelines, so I don’t feel like I failed to write upon a topic and follow a format that was limitless. Very rarely do we in academia get the opportunity to write something that does not follow tradition conventions. Isn’t this very concept one we have discussed in class? My essay, on several levels, challenges the definitions we have tried to develop in our class discussions.

Based on our varied readings, Exposition can be anything. Like DuPlessis, an expository work can be a combination of authors and prose styles that follows no particular structure. Taken to a further extreme, why can’t expository writing be merely a combination of others’ ideas alone? I could argue that my contributions to my essay were in the creation of a forum in which our authors could be juxtaposed to discuss the topic of our class. Simply because few of the words were my own does not mean I had no dealings in shaping these peoples’ words in relation to one another’s and fitting them into the confines of 140 character Twitter limit.

Am I employing rhetoric to persuade in my essay? No, I’d have to be trying to make a point; which I am not. But why must we assume that I have to be? We are all used to writing and reading the conventional essay formats that include an Introduction, Thesis, Body, and Conclusion. The “academic essay” has little to no place in the world outside of school, so why should I continue to write in a format that is becoming useless and archaic? My aim was not to write a prose-style academic essay but instead to show a variety of ideas and how these authors might respond to one another.

My essay is a slice of discourse. Look at what we read, particularly online. Other than books (which many people are now reading on electronic devices) Americans are reading more and more information online or on a computer. This is how we read now: articles on http://www.thedailybeast.com/ or the main yahoo homepage http://www.yahoo.com/ are short in format and commentary in nature. They are conversation starters, not complete “point makers” with tidy intros and conclusions. Do our conversations, digital and otherwise have thesis statements? No – they digress. The comments we make, whether in response to an article or a Facebook status, have no traditional format or structure. They bounce from idea to idea and can often have little reference to the initial article. This type of digital discourse is how many Americans are acquiring information. It is sometimes tangential and hectic and not orderly in reference to other comments.

We read pieces written by anonymous people within the news media that merely offer an opinionated conversation about what we think is happening in our world. There is no beginning or end to the “stories” yet we still listen and receive information through these outlets, on the radio, TV, or internet. Is their means of communication expository? Would self-professed expert on Exposition Grabe agree? Electronic writing is informative, deals in abstractions, uses a consistent type of grammar/language, so why not? This style of written communication, a snippet of an online conversation, can speak volumes. It is the new medium for reading and displaying information and those who participate are happy to leave behind those who cannot adapt or understand. We have to learn to embrace new methods, albeit in the case of my essay through exaggerated approaches. The devices we have become too comfortable utilizing will soon be outdated and we will be left in the dust. Sure my essay was hyperbolic, but often we need to see such an amplified version of things we are discussing to identify and evaluate the processes and elements that need to be debated.