feeling of security
I’m thinking that people are trying to pressure others into changing their ways basically because it’s scary to differ. Even if you are a part of a larger movement (say, pop music listeners), you feel intimidated by that single rapper in your vicinity, because you don’t know what to expect from him, and, moreover, you never know whether probably rap is “cooler” than pop. If that guy listened to pop music, just as you do, you’d feel better because, if you’re wrong, you’re both wrong.
Same about language use; the bigger languages seeping into the smaller languages, the marketing folks using marketing-speak, people cursing, people not cursing even when they’re aggravated beyond imagination.
Same about people maintaining that literature should be “deep”, same about people maintaining that unless you’re writing in three act structure your story will be boring, same about people who say that fantasy is rubbish or literary sucks.
If there were more people talking like me, thinking like me, choosing the ways I choose, writing the way I do, I would feel a lot more safer, thinking that I’m probably right, and even if I’m not right, there’s a high enough chance that nobody’s right. (And, come to think of it, this is why I’m writing this. If not to convince people I’m right, then at least to muddle the waters.)
That would be a scary, scary world though. Scary, but safe, because nobody’s wrong.
I’m thinking of a time not all that long ago when smoking was common and socially acceptable. There were many brands of cigarettes. I’m sure people had many discussions and even arguments and fights over which brand was smoother, which had the easiest draw, whether menthol or non-menthol was better; filtered or non-filtered, superior. Brand loyalty may have been intense, but ultimately all smokers were simply small variations of the same thing, all riding along on the same trail lighting up alongside the Marlboro Man.
Those who didn’t smoke were non-threatening, often objects of fun or derision, the tight-asses who didn’t know how to enjoy life. It took a long time to realize that they were the truly dangerous ones, the ones who rejected the premise of smoking not only for themselves, but for those around them as well. The ones who in time were able to win incremental victories and, eventually, prevail. When you have to freeze your ass off out in the wind to enjoy a ciragrette break at work, does it really matter whether your teeth are chattering around a Lucky or a Virginia Slim?
I may be bored with rock, despise rap, laugh at hip hop, but this is all harmless. The only approach to music, as in many things that I would really fear, is an attitude that ALL music is inherently too evil to be allowed to exist. Replace music with your greatest life pleasure, and there will be some eager to suppress it. They’re the scary ones to me. And they come in all ages, sexes, races, nationalities, religions, and any other catagory of your choice.
(It’s probably time to take my medication now)
Yea, well, a world where a language use would be forbidden altogether would be a *way* scarier one than a world where people insist on using their version of “correct” language.
A setting where people have learned to communicate telepathically, and language is a curious reminder of past?