Words are extremely powerful.
They have the ability to render a seemingly balanced person into a raging calamity or
reduce the toughest among us into an emotionally
compromised mess.
Language is something we misuse a lot.
Like, you can look up any word and find a
standardized definition but that doesn’t always reflect the popular use of the word.
The reason for that, I think, is that there
are many words that have suffered bad associations
because of the way they’ve been used for
political or advertising messaging which has
replaced their actual meaning.
So here are a few examples of what I’m talking
about in the hopes that we can understand
that the negative associations we usually
project on to them are not always fair.
Number 1: Discrimination
This is probably one of the best examples
of what I’m talking about so it’s a good
place to start.
This one gets abused a lot.
If you can describe something as discriminatory,
then everyone knows that it’s wrong.
So instead of having logical conversations,
some will resort to angling the topic towards
words like discrimination and then they know
they’ve won whether they’re right or not.
Discrimination simply means making a distinction
between things or people based on certain
criteria and this is, in fact, a very good
and necessary thing to do sometimes.
There are certain privileges in society that
require us to make distinctions between people
who qualify for those privileges and people
who do not.
This is discrimination, but when it’s used
properly, it is actually a good thing.
For example, where I live, you have to be
16 years old to get a driver’s license.
This offers a privilege which discriminates
against everyone who is 15 or younger… and
thank God it does.
Some other forms of discrimination I’m grateful
for: only people with certain kinds of certification
are allowed to operate medical practices,
design high rises, or operate dangerous machinery.
Only certain people are allowed to use disability
parking.
Only certain people are allowed to know what
the Colonel’s secret spices are.
You get the idea.
Number 2: Humility
A lot of people seem to think that being humble
means being down on yourself all the time.
Like if someone was slandering you, you’d
just be like, “He’s right, I am the worst.”
In fact, humility just means a healthy amount
of self forgetfulness.
It means that you spend an appropriate amount
of time thinking about yourself and an appropriate
amount of time thinking about others.
By default, we think about ourselves too much
– that is, we’re selfish.
Humility is the virtue of balancing that attention
so that the needs and lives of others occupy
your fascination as well.
Self obsession is the reverse, which is what
pride was traditionally defined as.
It treats everyone as an adversary or a rival
rather than a neighbor.
When we operate out of pride, we are less
considerate, less kind, less understanding,
and less compassionate towards others.
Humility is the antidote.
Number 3: Religion
Religion is a word that carries countless
bad associations.
When we think of it, we think of patriarchy,
superstition, conflict, oppression, and intolerance.
There’s no doubt that many bad things have
been done in the name of religion, but it
is not fair to assume that apples are bad
because you’ve learned that there is such
a thing as a rotten apple.
Religion is a word that describes an incredibly
broad range of ideas, cultural values, and
practices.
To broadly paint all that it represents with
a negative connotation is to indulge the kind
of thinking that is common to all expressions
of bigotry.
Number 4: Suffering
The negative allusions of this word are pretty
obvious so I don’t think I need to go into
any depth to describe them, but if we can
drop the cynical self pity a little bit, we
should be able to realize that suffering almost
always has the potential to teach us something
and lead us into maturity.
For example, If I’m experiencing pain because
of some external factor that I willfully expose
myself to, then that pain is doing me a good
service – specifically, it’s telling me
to remove that influence from my life.
It’s when we think that our suffering doesn’t
serve any meaningful purpose in our life that
we start to resent it but that kind of thinking
is a trap because it assumes that you can
understand all the various factors that contribute
to that purpose in our life… but we can’t.
Our lives are incredibly complex and sometimes
we can find ourselves experiencing pain because
of something we’ve done but we can’t connect
it to our current state of suffering.
Like, Sometimes the consequences of our choices
are delayed and it becomes difficult for us
to associate those consequences with the specific
choice.
So we become confused about the reason for
our suffering but this is actually a really
good opportunity for self reflection - to
learn and grow.
This is also true for the suffering we experience
in death.
If you're somebody who believes in the afterlife,
which most people do, then it’s not much
of a stretch to assume that since suffering
has taught us so much in life, the suffering
we experience in death will also teach us
something about the afterlife.
So those are some examples that I can think
of.
I’ve got a few more but I might save them
for a future video and if you’ve got got
some or some feedback, do you agree do you
disagree, I'd love to hear about it
in the comments.
