Language: The Building Block of Society

I was procrastinating hanging out on Facebook the other day when I stumbled across a link to news coverage of the SlutWalks protests. In case you haven't followed this event, a brief recap:

The "slutwalks" are marches being held in reaction to a statement a Toronto police officer issued, in which he says, "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised."

Just retyping that sentence made me so angry I had to stop for a moment to compose myself. Ahem. This is the WORST kind of victim-blaming possible. It's equivalent to saying "dear gentlemen, it's your fault you were mugged and shot, because you were wearing a suit and tie. Obviously you were advertising your wealth." I could write an entire post about how completely flawed and ass-backwards and short-sighted and DESTRUCTIVE statements like that officer's are.

But! That is not the point of my post today. So I will attempt not to stray off-track.

I was perusing Facebook when I found this link, which a friend had posted to his wall. One of his friends, in turn, had left a comment. His comment was, "Never understood why people get offended by words in general. They're just stupid fucking words."

Now, I know, "sticks and stones may break my bones..." But in fact, I think words are more dangerous than sticks and stones. Another friend commented with his input:

"Words are the most powerful thing the human race has. Without them, we'd still be shivering with fear in our caves, just another prey animal. Words convey ideas, but some carry 40,000 years of baggage with them. The wrong word can start a war. In this case, it was using a word to label someone pejoratively and make them responsible for the misdeeds of another."

There weren't enough Like buttons for me to agree with this statement enough, hence this post. When you get down to basics, we're just primates. What separated us from our cousins hanging out in the forest all those millennia ago?

The evolution of language. Our ability to communicate. You could argue that we have superior brainpower or whatnot, but if we could not communicate the way we do, we could never have collaborated to build the powerful society we have.

Other animals have communication systems. Some, like dolphins, bonobos and parrots, are rather advanced. But none of them* go beyond the speech-level of a human toddler. If we were limited to our three-year-old vocabulary, syntax and speech patterns our whole lives, how on Earth would Newton have explained gravity to his fellow scientists? Even if Ben Franklin had figured out how electricity worked, how would he have convinced the great minds of his day that running around in a thunderstorm flying a kite was not, in fact, a symptom of insanity?

Language brought us where we are today.

Words are powerful.

Words are dangerous.

Choose yours carefully.

* That we have yet identified