"Words are potent weapons for all causes, good or bad."
- Manly Hall
I found the above quote while preparing this writing. Personally, I would say that the 'are' in the quote would be more correctly stated as 'can be'. Words are the only weapon that relies on the target for validation. Somehow, that concept has been driven out of the mainstream.
Some time ago, I heard an interesting commentary about the words intended as weapons during a lecture that seemed very profound. It was said that there are two conditions that must be present before any words targeted at a person can have a detrimental effect on them. Those conditions are:
Think about that for a moment.
Remember the old adage, "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me"? Somewhere along the line, a people, in general, were taught to accept words as intended by the speaker and to give up their own right to free interpretation. I find this to be a very distressing trend.
Fortunately, every once in a while, situations pop up where people reclaim the right to control their own personal narrative and reject what might be projected on to them. Back in the 1960's and 1970's. It was popular on college campuses to use term 'pig' as a negative reference to the police. In many cases, the police responded to that by wearing t-shirts that read, "Pride, Integrity and Guts". In the present day, there is another similar example. In the run-up to the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton coined the term "deplorables" in reference to the supporters of Donald Trump. Many of those people are now using screen names that include 'deplorable' in part.
No one is required to accept any negative value to any word. Words spoken with negative intentions really only define the speaker, not the recipient of the words.
