When Language Goes Bad, We All Lose

FEATURED POSTS

March 14, 2017

I don’t mean to be an old grump, but I have made my living for many years as a salesman of words so I think language is important. Language is more than how we communicate. It’s also how we think. We think in language, and if we don’t have proper language skills, our thinking is impaired.

THE AGE OF COLLABORATION

I strongly believe this, but at the same time I know that part of my distress is merely that language keeps changing and I don’t like it.

Gay used to mean happy. There was a time that you could be gay, and still be attracted to girls. Now, not so much.

Gender used to be a grammar term. Words – especially in foreign languages – had gender. People, on the other hand, were distinguished by their sex – male or female.

Discrimination used to be a good word. A man of discriminating taste meant one who appreciated the finer things in life, one who recognized the difference between something of greater and lesser quality.

Collaboration was something cowardly and selfish people did with the enemy. They were collaborators, which meant they befriended and worked with the other side.

Today, collaboration is something we’re all encouraged to do. We sit around in endless meetings collaborating with each other and watering down any new idea that comes along until it becomes mush and is finally acceptable to everybody.

In fact the words have not really changed. It’s how people perceive the words that has changed.

I can still be gay, meaning feeling happy and carefree, and still like girls. But now the meaning of the word has become confused. I have also meet and been friends with queer people, meaning they were a little quirky, no matter what their sexual preference might have been.

Being a cranky dinosaur I will sometimes scratch out gender on written forms and substitute the word sex before putting down male. I do make a distinction – meaning I discriminate – between people I like and admire and people that I don’t. Sometimes those people are Caucasians and sometimes they are not.

I even collaborate, although I admit that I am not very good at it. Even with people I admire and like, my lack of enthusiasm sometimes comes across as a bit stand-offish and disagreeable.

I’m OK with that.

– George Lee Cunningham

News

April 17, 2024

Minor Character

Sometimes I feel like a minor character in one of those really long James Michener historic novels. I’m one of the guys they check in on a couple of times during the course of the book and one more time when he finally kicks the bucket. In truth, that suits me just fine. I don’t want to be one of the major players – those guys who lie, cheat, sleep around, make a lot of money, kill a lot of people, and then then suffer a tragic death on Christmas Eve. I just want to be me – plugging along, having some fun, loving the same woman for years, and then quietly passing away.

March 25, 2024

Cereal Killer

I have almost given up on cereal. As a younger man, I loved a sugary treat. As an old man, who has to watch his diet, I find myself checking labels on everything. Sugar is the enemy. For instance, Cap’n Crunch – a former favorite of my wife – contains: Corn Flour, Sugar, Oat Flour, Brown Sugar, Palm and/or Coconut Oil, Salt, Reduced Iron, Yellow 5, Niacinamide, Yellow 6, BHT, Thiamin, Mononitrate, Pridoxined Hydrochloride, Rioflavin, and Folic Acid. My choice: plain old Shredded Wheat. Ingredients: wheat and BHT (a harmless preservative). Not a taste treat, but at least I’ll live to tell about it

Highway Memorials

Driving across country nowadays, we notice a growing number of roadside displays – flowers, crosses, and ribbons – marking the sites where people apparently died in traffic accidents. I do understand mourning the passing of somebody you love, but I’m not sure I see the point of putting a display at the place along the road where they died. Even sadder is the fact that flowers wilt and highway trash piles up around the displays, making them just another sad reminder of life cut short.

December 5, 2023

Love Motives

I often tell my wife I love and adore her, mainly because I do and also because women like to hear the man in their life actually say the words. But during one conversation I had to confess that some times when I say it – especially when she is irked and giving me the deadly silent treatment – I am also reminding myself of that fact so I don’t start yelling and slamming doors. Is that so wrong?

Being Mortal

I am officially an old man. Sometimes I forget, then I look in the mirror and there it is. The truth is that life has its limits, and that is how it should be. There are new generations coming up, ready to step up and take our place. They are welcome to it. If you have reached old age, you have made some blunders in you life. If you think otherwise, then you are indeed a fool. You can warn the new generations about the mistakes you made, but they are oblivious. This too is as it should be. It’s their world, and it’s on them to screw it up for the generations to follow, just as we did for them.

Good Deeds

There is a saying that no good deed goes unpunished. It’s mostly – but not always – true. The problem with good deeds is that most people who do them expect to be appreciated. In actuality, good-deed recipients are more often resentful about it, rather than grateful. Nobody likes being the person who has to rely on the good will of others. So do good deeds for your own sake – because it makes you feel better, not because you want to be feel appreciated.

Recreational Bitching

Did you ever notice that some people – maybe more people than not – like to complain about everything? In the summertime, it’s too hot. In the wintertime it’s too cold. Health care is too expensive. Young people are too rude. Old people move too slowly. There ought to be a law against anything and everything that might make one unhappy. It’s recreational bitching, and we all do it to greater or lesser extent. Maybe once in a while, it might make sense to listen to how we talk and how we think. Most of us are just doing the best that we can.