Month: March 2021

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The Forbidden and Irresistible Word

When I was in junior high school in greater Boston rebellious souls wrote “Fuck You” on the boys’ room door (yes, we called it the boys’ room).  The principal met the challenge: he had all the boys stay after for an hour—he threatened detention every afternoon until the last day of school until the culprit confessed.  

That night at supper my folks asked me about mu school day.  I recounted the adventure of the afternoon.  I suppose I was curious to see how my parents would react since the word was so mysteriously  taboo, so I told them,  including the offensive words  To my surprise,  my father seriously warned me  that nobody should use the word,  especially in front of a woman (nod to my mother).

These days even girls at the bus stop use the word to salt their conversation.

“Shit” has become a bumper sticker,  and the N-Word, which used to be a  shared badge of identity, even affectionate, among Blacks in the 1960s,  has become terribly taboo. “Shit” and “asshole” reflect the shame humans feel that our life is based on killing and digesting other living things.   We’re  ambivalent about such aggression, glorifying military and superhero aggression while making it taboo. We depend on it every day.

Media will use the euphemistic “f-word” instead of the  forbidden word itself. “Fuck” has been one of the last taboos accepted in polite use. It’s really taboo.

My theory is that the idea of fucking stands for creating more life,  and this may be,  as  Ernest Becker says, “Whoever gets enough life?” including fucking and eating. the primary motivation of  living things. Who wants to be dead forever?

If you are specially generative, you are  heroic. The problem is that nobody is endlessly generative. In particular, ordinary people may not feel generative. This is especially true in a culture that is competitive about heroism.  Ordinary folks may wonder, “Is this all there is?” The self is haunted by depression or an awareness of failure.

In this sense use of “fucking” is like vitamins.  It can make you feel powerful: generative and heroic. But it’s an illusion.   Therefore culture tries to protect it.

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Howling

Reading the New Yorker’s account of the Capitol insurgency (Jan. 25, 2021), I was struck by how many in the mob had no idea what to do once they had penetrated to the citadel of national power. The insurgents milled around looking for official scapegoats: enemies whose punishment could whisk away frustrations and fulfill desires. Somebody smeared excrement on the wall, as in a tantrum. No wonder those who believed in Q conspiracy theories raged against pedophiles—they felt like victimized children.

Had the leader (Trump) showed up with a plan for a coup, the mob would have perhaps carried out a coup. But the leader was half- hearted. He enjoys rousing crowds, but as with his tweeted insults, he was clever enough to push for the edge of criminality, but knows how to hold back to avoid serious punishment. He claims he was just joking, or hides behind ambiguity.

American class system represses those at the bottom, as in the Republican stonewall against the Bill to raise the minimum-wage. The anger at the bottom only comes out indirectly. If you enlist in the military, you don’t shout complaints at your officers, anymore than you risk firing by telling off your boss. One reason that cops are able to kill Blacks with near-impunity is to make Blacks afraid to demand their rights. Or justice.

In the New Yorker’s account, the Proud Boys—the insurgents most serious about a coup—met at a bar in the morning to drink beer. <>

The drinkers remind you that alcohol loosens inhibitions, and may stoke a barroom brawl. American culture associates the working poor blowing off steam with alcohol. In the Capitol, on January 6th, the mob was desperate to express themselves, trying out the seats of power, grumbling about enemies. As the morning drinkers put it, ‘We are going to own this town!’ one of them howled.’>>

One reason for Trump’s magnetism is his novel use of the presidency to express anger with impunity. Instead of being depressed, he invited working-class supporters to experience the thrill of their anger. As in the first days of World War I, the experience for working folks rushing to enlist was “freedom.”