In Defense of Standards

Not All Words Are Created Equal

 Words have the power to lift us up, give comfort and hope, and encourage us on this journey called life. They also have the power to drag us down and destroy us. The type of words you use are important. They also show the world who you are, inside.

 Censored

 Why is it that artists, writers and musicians abhor that word? Perhaps it is because we feel that censorship is being held to another person’s standards that we may or may not agree with. Just who decides on what our standards should be? And WHO decides who decides? 

A plumb line is an old workman’s tool that was used to determine straight vertical lines. It was the standard. Without that plumb line to guide him, the buildings that were built would not have been exactly vertical and would eventually fall down.

In all other areas of our culture, we applaud standards. We need standards – in law, medicine, agriculture, and construction. And if we’re good parents, we want to know what’s in the movies, video games, and tv programming before we allow our children to watch them. So why is it that we reject them here?

As adults, we will also be held responsible for what we digest in the form of entertainment, music, and what we read. Words matter no matter what form they are in.

 What Happens When There are No Standards?

When there are no standards, no absolutes, there is no consistency in anything.

When there are no standards for which to judge anything, we end up relying on our feelings - the most volatile, subjective, ego-centric, and temperamental of all the human traits. Left up to the individual, no one would be able to agree with each other on anything of importance.

Isn't the point of writing to communicate to the widest audience possible? A writer cannot do that if his writing cannot be read and understood clearly due to slang words, bad grammar, poor spelling, and using offensive language - such as unnecessary profanity. Most people would read the first line or two and stop if they had to wade through such nonsense and garbage.

 The Problem with Profanity

The English language has an enormous amount of words encompassing various shades of meanings. For a writer's character to be angry, the writer has many choices for his words in which to show a varied range of that emotion from being mildly upset to an unadulterated rage, but it is the actions of the character that pulls the reader in. What is happening? Using swear words turns the focus off the character and his actions and puts it all on a profanity-driven scene meant to shock the reader. Those unnecessary and unimaginative words then become the focus and a distraction from the story.

When there are no standards, there is nothing held up as the ideal, something to strive for, and as a result, all pieces of writing become extremely subjective.

 So Now What?

So how does a writer then stand out from his peers in a highly subjective world? By shocking his readers, of course. In the quest for attention, one writer after the other attempts to outdo everyone with shock value, and this soon becomes a race to the bottom of the dung heap.