Everything is emotional nowadays
“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.”
When I was a kid, this was the phrase we were all told to deal with bullying or mean people. It originated in the 1830s and was supposed to remind us that words, while unpleasant, do not actually harm us. Until recently. Now there is a growing movement in society (at least Western society) that words are just as harmful, if not more. I found this quote online "Sticks and stones may break bones, but words can shatter souls.” Wow, that’s a big change!
The natural reaction to being told this is to ask the question “What changed?” I tried for quite some time to get to the bottom of this change in philosophy and just couldn’t find a specific example or reason. The only thing that consistently comes up is we, as a society, are obsessed with our emotions (feelings) nowadays. It is not that we are having more or less emotions than our previous generations, it’s just we are now so focused on them. Everything is designed or leads to not just an emotional response but a strong emotional response. Apparently, words now shatter souls! When I was reading the original quote online, there were countless responses from people about how much they HATE that quote. Hate a quote designed to help children deal with bullying? Seems over the top. Remember when you could just disagree with something? Now you have to hate it? And this is common with all the media we consume. A light rain is StormWatch. A disagreement is one person annihilating another. Everything is dialed up to 11 and then relentlessly shoved down our throats everywhere we go. Did we not think this might make us overemotional or hypersensitive?
I want to take a swing at addressing these two things at the same time because they appear to be linked. Am I going to offend someone? Probably. Is that my intention? No, but I have gone ahead and narrowed it down to 3 things. I could probably write multiple pages of discussion for each point but instead we are going to be brief and to the point. I just want you, my reader, to slow down and think about why. Why do words need to create such an emotional response?
1. The original quote is not meant to be taken literally. Yes, words can hurt but unlike sticks and stones, how hurt you get is subjective. In other words, you can control your emotional response to words. You cannot do that with actual physical violence done to you. Thus, the idea we were being taught is to simply be prepared. And one of the best ways to do that is to be confident and comfortable with who you are. Inside. The real you, not the fake one you show everyone else. You might call it your soul. Word attacks create emotional responses because they expose your own weaknesses. And you lash out as a sort of defensive mechanism. If you are over the top emotional about something, most people back off because they just don’t want to deal with you. That is unnecessary if you exhibit actual confidence and faith in who you are. If someone can come along with words and topple that confidence, it isn’t real. You are a fake. Real confidence and faith establish that no matter what someone says, they cannot change you. They can “never hurt me…” Unless you let them. It is up to you now, not them. Being prepared allows you to take the power back from the attacker.
2. The modern approach seeks to eliminate anything hurtful. The original version accepted that people were going to say hurtful things and as stated above, one should be prepared for that inevitability. The more modern take is to try and eliminate all hurtful words or opportunities to run into disagreeable ideas (presented to you via words). They want to “educate” everyone that words hurt and by giving everyone this information that it will somehow stop everyone from using them. I find that to be pretty naïve. Ask any kid to not use certain words and the first chance he/she can where they won’t get in trouble, he/she is using them. Guaranteed. Or you think if you swear around your kids all the time that they will somehow be around their friends and not use that same language? Policing speech is no way to get people to stop getting hurt by words. Didn’t anyone pay attention when reading 1984 by George Orwell?
3. It is unreasonable to expect society to tip toe around for fear of upsetting someone. It is untenable to think society should change to accommodate the emotional whims of individuals. Emotions are subjective (no matter how much you tell yourself otherwise, they are) and there is no way people can know the inner workings of every other person they are around and police their speech. Why we are even trying is beyond me. One person’s hate speech is another person’s joke. Freedom of speech means hearing things you don’t like. Things that might cause an emotional outburst. If we bring people from all over the world to one place, not everyone is going to think and see things as you do. Which means they will disagree with you – using their words. Are they wrong? Doesn’t matter. The same expectations afforded to you are afforded to them. Right or wrong, as it turns out, is subjective as well. It is not all about you. Society is about everybody.
Do you know what the #1 thing is that separates human beings from all the other animals out there? It is the ability to reason. The ability to reason is the capacity to use logic and thought to draw valid conclusions, solve problems, and seek truth. The opposite of reason is emotion and feeling. Emotion and feeling are all animals basic operating system. They are what we draw upon when not using reason or logic. They do not require valid conclusions, solved problems, or truth. The 3 points I alluded to above are all sound logic and reasonable. Not perfect. Reasonable. And what they do is the one thing that all this emotional overreach is avoiding, they hold a person accountable for those emotions.
Rather than making a person do the work to prepare for unpleasant things or to develop a solid and confident sense of self, we have let society develop large numbers of immature people. Trying to not hurt anyone’s feelings has only empowered people to be even more emotionally immature. It’s getting worse. And society is not the better for it. Division between people is at an all-time high and there are no signs of everyone getting back on the same page. This cannot continue. We need to stop letting our emotions control everything we do. We need to get back to the very thing that separated us from the animals. A return to reason. But it is going to hurt their feelings. Sadly, everything does nowadays so I guess it really won’t be all that different.
How might you ask? It all starts with the idea I presented in #1, the actual meaning of the quote we started with. We need to spend the time to build better versions of self, one that cannot be swayed by someone’s mean words. We need to be prepared. And it starts with the demographic the quote was originally intended for. It starts with our kids. These aren’t kids without the capacity for emotion, they are strong confident kids who can control it and use reason when to apply it. One day, those kids will replace us as adults in society and hopefully restore civility to our future society. For now, though, it starts with you. Do the work. Develop real strength of character. Learn to believe in yourself. And stand tall because of it. Words don’t hurt unless you let them…
