Swearing Is Stupid, Selfish, and Pointless

Why It's Time to Clean Up Our Language (Motivation Monday #9)

I became a foul-mouthed punk in the summer after third grade.

I retained my prolific profanity through high school.

My brother was a sailor, so as a young adult, I was surrounded by people who thought they wielded curse words like a poet with a quill.

They were wrong. I was wrong.

Gum ain’t gonna do the job.

Like all kids who discover the empowering feeling of a forbidden word, I hid it from parents and other adults at my youngest stage to avoid trouble. But around close friends in private company I let it flow like butter and salt on movie theater popcorn. Even after I became a Christian as a teen, it jumped out of my mouth with barely a thought in certain company.

Now, after years of effort to slay this particular piece of my flesh, it fights back powerfully in moments of frustration or anger. Especially if I’m doing anything mechanical.

Growing up in the 80s, everyone held back in mixed company. If a group of teens was spitting out curses at a restaurant with families, you could expect one of the men there to walk over and ask them to knock it off. Old movies showed the hero taking the villain, or just the town drunk to task for speaking crassly around women or children. Real men stood up for public decency and the innocence of kids and women.

Not anymore. Now you’ll hear cussing from high-level politicians, CEOs, and even religious podcasters.

It’s not doing us any good.

Swearing is Stupid

Cuss words used to have a certain shock value. Used sparingly to get attention or communicate an extreme emotion, they might have had mild value. Even the Bible has a few instances of strong and vivid, sometimes grotesque imagery to make a point.

But after years of common profanity, it’s become so mundane that it’s lost all shock value. You’re not being edgy by dropping F-bombs or using salacious inuendo. In fact, it makes a lot of people ignore you—just like nobody moves when a car alarm starts blaring.

Because it’s become so frequent, people who swear often in their writing, but especially in their speech, have turned formerly appalling words into space fillers. Words that mean nothing. Words akin to “like” or “uh.”

The most common curse words have been turned into flexible but empty letter packages. They can mean whatever the user wants them to mean—and context doesn’t always give you clues to what the speaker intends. At this stage, they add no meaning to the sentences they’re used in. Which means they’re stupid words. They no longer perform the purpose of words: to communicate.

This is why you see the occasional post declaring that people who swear are unintelligent or lack education. If you’re filling sentences with meaningless curses, you are likely not communicating something worthwhile. You’ve given them no evidence of your intelligence or education.

By using nothing better than filler words, you’re reducing your own ability to express yourself. Your communication will be less specific and clear, it will not have any nuance.

And you can forget about it being beautiful. Attention getting maybe, but not superbly beautiful.

Swearing is Selfish

As mentioned above, I find that I’m most tempted to loose my tongue when I’m upset and angry.

We all know that high emotion reduces rational thought. When you overuse words primarily aimed at emotional responses, like shock or offense, you sound like a person of uncontrolled emotions. You know who’s most associated with uncontrolled emotions? Children. Heavy swearing makes you sound emotionally immature, which adds to the impression of lower intelligence or education.

More importantly here, you’re venting. Again, when using curses in anger, you’re not even accurately telling how you feel. It’s just clear that you’re angry.

You’re not clearly explaining the problem. You’re not identifying your feelings so you can deal with them.

The profanity veils all of that and focuses on the emotion. Your emotion.

Sure, there’s a slight benefit to a cathartic release, but you can get that by simply shouting or bashing around a punching bag or sometimes letting out a few tears. No words needed.

If there are others around during your tirade of slurs against the object of your wrath, then you are being discourteous to them. Even if they aren’t offended by the words, you just subjected them to a toddler-like outburst over something that was likely no big deal.

When swearing is part of a regular conversation, the lack of self-control is still selfish. It’s surprising to me that the people most concerned about trigger warnings and the offense of others are so little concerned about this. There are still plenty of people who dislike unrestrained cursing, or sometimes any cursing.

And it’s not just old ladies and uptight Christians. Is it not worth considering their opinions because they’re unsophisticated or old-fashioned or stuffy?

I thought we were supposed to practice empathy, compassion, and kindness…

By injecting profanity into everyday speech, you are forcing your ideas about what is good and acceptable on everyone who hears you—not even just those to whom you’re speaking.

What’s another name for “your ideas about what’s good and acceptable”? Your Morality.

You might say that I’m trying to force my morality against swearing by writing this. On the contrary, I’m pointing out the hypocrisy of swearing up a storm while also proclaiming empathy and kindness as virtues. I’m also trying to give logical and helpful reasons to return to courtesy and propriety, rather than just whining about it being yucky and wrong.

Public profanity gives no care to the sensibilities of others, so it is inherently self-centered expression.

Swearing is Pointless

Since cuss words have lost much of their meaning because of their flexible usage, they have almost no communication value.

Since they’ve become so universal, they’ve lost almost all their emotional and attention-grabbing power. They’ve lost the one thing they were good at.

If they’ve lost their value and their power, they’re pointless.

In most cases, they serve no purpose in speech or writing.

Why are we still surrounded by it?

I think profanity is still so common because of habits and culture.

We’ve been in an era of easy everything, and the relaxation of old standards was just a part of that trend. The culture told us it was no big deal, and enough people felt like that was a relief—they could finally speak freely even if it degraded their speech.

What I discovered in my youth, and what many others have found is that cursing has something in common with pornography. Once you’re hooked, it’s a downward spiral.

At a deep level, you sense that every use of a vulgar word dilutes its strength. This means that in order to get the same effect, you need either more potent words or a higher volume.

Yes, I’m suggesting that cursing is an addictive behavior. It has the same pattern of diminishing effect leading to more extreme behavior. That pattern creates deep habit grooves for those that get very far down that road—so much that I admittedly struggle to control my tongue over twenty years after trying to “swear off swearing”.

As a culture, we took the bait of how great it would be if we were all carefree and could say whatever we liked in public.

Now, we’re in the habit of looking the other way and ignoring it when people are out of line. Many of us would rather sit and endure the rudeness or quietly remove ourselves than get involved. We got lazy about propriety. Manners and common courtesy have been on the outs for so long that we can’t even see their purpose anymore.

A more polite society fosters better communication through clear and precise wording. It fosters more social cohesion through self-control and consideration for others. It protects children and helps them grow into mature adults, able to express themselves. It prevents you from blowing everything out of proportion by constantly indulging in emotionally charged language.

Can we ever get back to a culture that isn’t swimming in a sea of profanity?

I don’t know for sure. But with so many things changing, this feels like the moment to try.

You can only start with yourself.

Decide to give it up. Whether to improve your communication or to protect your kids, you have to choose to tackle this in your own heart.

It helps if you know the times you’re most prone to vulgarity, so you’re ready to fight the temptation. I’m tempted when I’m angry, so if I’m tempted, it’s an alert that my anger might be a little over the top. In those moments of temptation, speak slowly and choose a better word on purpose. If you don’t know one, look one up.

You could also just practice holding your tongue until you have something good to say—just like grandma told you.

Get some accountability with a trusted friend, your spouse, or both. If needed, set up a penalty if you slip up, or a reward for a good streak.

Practice speaking without profanity. Find a way to improve your communication skills. Writing is a powerful way. You can then turn that into speaking by reading what you wrote to someone else. Read books aloud or poetry or news articles or manuals. Anything that you can read fluently will improve your ability to speak thoughtfully without cussing.

You might need to avoid media that you enjoy for a while if it’s full of obscenities. Give your mind a detox before you try any proactive changes. Giving your mind a break may change your perspective on the habit before trying to change it. The break will certainly make it easier by making it stand out again.

Have the courage to call it out. If you’ve gained a level of self-control in public with your speech, be brave enough to ask others to tone it down, especially in the presence of kids. You can be polite about it and likely get a positive result—because most people aren’t proud of their foul mouth. Just remember that you’re trying to protect the next generation and improve our culture. We used to look at men who did this as virtuous minor heroes. They’ve been absent too long, but if a few of us start, we’ll see it again.

You’re free to ignore all this. If you want to keep spewing obscenities into the conversation, that’s your choice. But now you know what it’s doing to us all.

Just remember that you’re getting as much reaction as the sound of a car alarm. Nobody’s surprised by it anymore; they’re thinking about it just long enough to make sure they didn’t accidentally press the wrong button on their key fob before they tune it out.

Feel free to throw your own take in the comments, but please keep it clean.

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In addition to Imago Dad, Brandon Wilborn writes speculative fiction with spiritual themes. Find his previously released books at BrandonWilborn.com