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Comment by astine | Hacker News Reader

Does it count as a 'lie' if it is believed by the parent?

The reason that parents don't want kids to swear is because they genuinely believe that it is wrong for some reason. The don't know the reason themselves, and so break the rule and become hypocrites, but they still believe that it is wrong and want their children to do better than they did.

With regard to group identity (and religion,) most parents actually adhere to that identity themselves. They share the beliefs and assumptions of that group and so would be hypocrites not to instruct their children in them.

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I don't know that I've ever read a really good account of the hows and whys of swearing. It seems to me the idea that we're mistaken that swear words are taboo completely misses the fact that we defined these words as taboo to start with. I think restricting children from swearing is in part to give more power to swear words, because as adults we find it useful to have these powerful words. Teaching children that swear words aren't taboo seems to be teaching them a definition at odds with rest of society and would deprive them of a useful set of words if it succeeded, which I doubt it would. In fact teaching kids that swear words are just words is exactly the kind of lie this essay is talking about.

This is basically right. The words are taboo because it's useful to have taboo words, so the culture deliberately makes them so.

Taboo words are useful because they transcend politeness. If a normally civil person comes into your dinner party and tells you that the fucking ceiling is about to fall down, you get moving. You don't waste time looking around for the ironic smile. You don't reproach the person for speaking out of turn.

But it goes beyond simple cultural coding. The neurologists say that there's a physiological basis for swearing: the brain is wired to do so under certain conditions. Under extreme or sudden distress, swearing helps us cope, and the reverse is probably also true: swearing helps to work you into a rage or a panic. That's one very good reason why we tell kids not to swear and correct them when they do: It's a way of calming them down, and of teaching them to be calm, and of encouraging them to reserve their moments of adrenaline-surging fury for appropriate times.

My parents always told me not to swear, because if I did, I wouldn't have anything to say when I got hurt.

So whenever I cut my finger or anything like that, I would make sure to swear as much as could. :)

Genius.

Interesting. So I wonder if exceptions are the programming language analogue of swearing?

NullFuckingPointerException.

They are certainly highly correlated.

Obligatory xkcd comic: http://xkcd.com/290/

Second obligatory xbcd:

http://xkcd.com/292/

VelociRaptorException

Now that is insightful. I think you're saying that, when a program gets into an unstable state of stress and confusion, it throws exceptions... and vice versa.

I could buy that.

Python swears a lot.

The spectrum of motivations for the pressure we put on kids to not "swear" includes "being polite" and "being polite" is related to communication skill. There is a quote attributed to Mark Twain which equates politeness with something which prevents people at the dinner table from killing each other.

Well said.

check out Steven Pinker's "Why We Curse", http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=246c0071-a9cd-46e2...

That was a great article.

It also touched on a commonly-told lie which pg's essay didn't mention: Eternal true love and monogamy in marriage.

I wouldn't quite say unequivocally that those are lies, or at least that true love is a lie.

The poem True Love by Nobel Prize Winner Wislawa Szymborska replies better than I can:

True love. Is it normal / is it serious, is it practical? / What does the world get from two people / who exist in a world of their own?

Placed on the same pedestal for no good reason, / drawn randomly from millions but convinced / it had to happen this way - in reward for what? / For nothing. / The light descends from nowhere. / Why on these two and not on others? / Doesn't this outrage justice? Yes it does. / Doesn't it disrupt our painstakingly erected principles, / and cast the moral from the peak? Yes on both accounts.

Look at the happy couple. / Couldn't they at least try to hide it, / fake a little depression for their friends' sake? / Listen to them laughing - its an insult. / The language they use - deceptively clear. / And their little celebrations, rituals, / the elaborate mutual routines - / it's obviously a plot behind the human race's back!

It's hard even to guess how far things might go / if people start to follow their example. / What could religion and poetry count on? / What would be remembered? What renounced? / Who'd want to stay within bounds?

True love. Is it really necessary? / Tact and common sense tell us to pass over it in silence, / like a scandal in Life's highest circles. / Perfectly good children are born without its help. / It couldn't populate the planet in a million years, / it comes along so rarely.

Let the people who never find true love / keep saying that there's no such thing.

Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.

Edit: I can't figure out how to get CRLFs in the right places, so here's the link for the properly formatted version: http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/694.html

I prefer "Working at love" to "Falling in love" - it addresses both of those "lies"

I prefer "Working at love" to "Falling in love" - it addresses both of those "lies"

But that takes out quite a bit of the romanticism out of it, doesn't it?

Not if it works.

Not as much as a messy divorce or breakup between people who don't work at love :)

When I call them lies, I didn't mean to say they don't exist, or that two people can't be happy, in love and monogamous forever.

But we certainly misrepresent to children the prevalence of this sort of thing.

Look at fairy tales and movies. To a child, _all_ people grow up, meet their perfect true love, marry them and stay together forever. As for the damaging part of the lie, of course there's no need to work at a relationship because the match is just so perfect.

That's why I started out saying "working at love" - make sure to tell kids that things don't magically turn out happily ever after. Tell them that lots of marriages end because of things like money, selfishness, infidelity, and boredom.

There are a lot of things about my marriage that are worse than when I was single, but there are a lot of things that are a whole lot better. On balance I'm way ahead, but we both work at it every day. It's worth working at because of how great it is. And that's a truth worth telling.

Aside from good analysis, the beginning is full of humorous gems. I'm not sure if the humor is accidental, or if the author picked humorous examples deliberately.

I'm sure it's intentional. Pinker's written many excellent books for laypeople which are full of great, fun examples. And the books themselves are great. He has a knack for explaining new, interesting ideas in an engaging way.

Thanks!

Swear words seem to be such a necessary part of language that I'm pretty sure new ones would arise if we ever completely legitimised the old ones. When you wake up at 2 am and discover that your balcony is on fire(^), it's nice to know that your language has a word set aside specifically for situations like that.

In the last few decades, it seems that the C-word has become more taboo even as the F-word has become less so, thanks to the efforts of feminists who like to bitch about it. (Come to think of it, "bitch" seems to have got slightly more taboo during my lifetime as well, for similar reasons.) And then there's a whole new class of newly-taboo words like the N-word -- admittedly nobody shouts that word when they hit their finger with a hammer just yet, but perhaps they will in the future.

(^) That happened to me the other week. I can't remember exactly what I said, but it was neither intelligent nor graceful.

Steven Pinker does a pretty admirable job of running down some ideas on swearing:

http://www.tnr.com/currentissue/story.html?id=246c0071-a9cd-...

I teach my child not to swear because OTHER adults think there's something wrong with it. I truly don't give a fuck, but I don't want my son to be banned from his best friend's house because his mom heard him say "fuck."

My 12 year old's school allows swearing, and while it is curiously disturbing to hear a six year old swearing like a sailor while playing a video game, it is interesting to see what happens to the older kids as the novelty wears off. I allow my child to swear, but he respects which words I would rather not hear around the house, and I've never heard him swear when it was inappropriate. So, I teach my son how not to be banned.

Where is this school? I want in (for my kids)!

As someone who's considered this tactic (I'm some years away from having children, but planning seems like a good idea), I'm interested in how that's working out. Have you ruined cursing for your kid as some people imply this tactic would?

Well, he's 4 and, although he knows every bad word except "cunt," he knows better than to say them, at least in front of grown-ups. But cursing is not ruined for him - he still thinks cursing is hilarious and he frequently asks me to say a bad word.

I would say it's working out. He doesn't offend the tribal elders and I don't have to lie by simulating outrage - I've told him the real reason why he can't curse.

Why not cunt?

That's about the only word we've never slipped up and said around him. It's hard to stop 30 years of potty-mouth cold turkey.

Yeah. No kidding. Honestly? Fuck that. ;)

Oops, I downvoted this prior to reading the parent. I'd change my vote if the interface allowed...

lol. That would look pretty rude if you hadn't read the parent.

Swearing would lose its force if we weren't all told it was wrong throughout childhood. Parents who stop their children swearing are doing the hard work to Keep Cursing Special, and should be thanked for their services to the foul-mouthed.

Does it count as a 'lie' if it is believed by the parent?

There are senses of the word that include that, but I meant mostly things parents say knowing they're false, or at least that they'd admit were false if questioned.

In that case, I wonder if religion counts as a lie. Lots of religious people either truly believe, or have done a great job of tricking themselves into thinking they believe.

Much religious belief has a special protected status, though -- you aren't supposed to ask bare questions about the truth value of religious statements, or tell the truth when talking to someone else's kids;

  Little jimmy: "doing that makes the baby jesus cry"

  Adult: "Don't worry, Jimmy. Jesus is dead."

Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lemaître http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Jaki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Lonergan and you might understand more about "lies"

I read them. What did you want me to see?

And the alternative: those who've tricked themselves into "not believing," but're still in the same reality tunnel, with the wall furnishings taken down but the same core dogma.

Thanks for the clarification.

It seems to me then, that some of the situations that you describe are more often not lies but situations where parent actually believes it himself.

But there's certainly also the possibility that the parent thinks he believes it, although all of his actions and other beliefs reveal that he doesn't believe it.

Daniel Dennett has addressed this well. No one debates the existence of Mt. Everest, and nobody has to assert that they believe in it. To identify yourself as someone who believes in something, there must be some question as to whether or not you would. People who say they believe in something which is at the core of their group identity, and for which there is no strong evidence, are rather obviously choosing not to question those beliefs the way they would question any other belief -- including the very similar beliefs of other people's religions.

So the fact that the parent "believes" in holy reincarnation or holy levitation or holy mindreading doesn't necessarily mean that he is being honest when he tries to raise his kid to believe in such things. Do they really believe those things to be real the same way they believe Mt. Everest to be real? If not -- if there is any hiccup to his belief -- then he is lying to his kid as well as himself.

Which?

I don't think this is true. I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone under the age of 40 (that is, approximately of breeding age) who is genuinely offended by most words that are designated taboo. Any offence that is publicly displayed is most likely a put-on to illustrate they are more cultured that the offender.

What's worse is that it's entirely subjective what words a culture counts as taboo. I've seen US TV shows aimed at teenagers for 5-6PM time slots that repeatedly use the word 'bollocks' when portraying a stereotypically British person. In the US, 'bollocks' is just a funny word, but in Britain it is considered a swear word albeit a fairly mild one that I'm not averse to muttering when I walk out of the supermarket having forgotten to buy something.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with saying these words, it's simply taboo because someone hearing them might take offence. but we've lost the people who might be offended and still kept the taboo. It's brain dead.

I there are plenty of taboo words, but they have changed over time. 50 years ago people had no problem saying extremely racist or sexist things in the open but now it's a new taboo. IMO taboo words relate to taboo thoughts.

The odd things is the FCC is not what's keeping really taboo words off the air but they still keep the old guard of psudo taboo words off of prime time.

I doubt taboo words are (always, or necessarily) related to taboo thoughts. It's not taboo to think about fucking, but in many contexts it's taboo to use the word instead of its "milder" alternatives.

I think it represents a more taboo set of thoughts / actions than it's milder alternatives. Fill in the blank: Illicit lovers ____ where married people have ____ and young lovers make ____.

PS: It's not accurate but many people still think the world started with: "Found/ Under Carnal Knowledge" or "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge" which comes back to the idea that the word means more than just the act of procreation.

Ah, I know the answers!

disport

headaches

mistakes

-----------

Alternatively:

pork

mommy & daddy alone time

the beast with two backs

-----------

The possibilities are overwhelming!

Interestingly, I find that some of the more creative "euphemisms" for sex (pork is a middling example) have more shock value when they show up in conversation... the old standards are simply overused, in spite of our best efforts in child rearing, and don't work anymore in conjuring up sufficiently taboo images. Terse, vivid imagery is much more of a live wire.

I personally know quite a few people who are offended by foul language.

What constitutes foul language may be cultural but that's beside the issue. Imagine, a child from 1950s American suburbs was raised in that belief that certain words were wrong to use. The child was consistently reinforced in this belief throughout his childhood by all adults he met but never had it explained to him. Later, as an adult, he finds many friends who swear freely, and, not knowing the reason it is supposedly wrong, adopts the practice himself. Yet, in the back of his mind he still remembers his entire childhood telling him it was wrong and he know that those people genuinely believed that it was wrong. Clearly there was a reason for this taboo to begin, but without knowledge of the reason, how is he supposed to know whether it is still relevant? It doesn't matter whether there is any intrinsic property of the words that is wrong, what matters is thet there is a taboo and whose to say that the taboo isn't still relevant?

Teaching kids not to swear as a rule is especially important when one remembers that there are still places in society where the taboo holds strong and for the children to succeed in those places, they must not accidentally say anything that will offend someone.

Keeping a taboo when the underlying reason for it has gone away tends to be detrimental for society. I saw a wonderful documentary recently called "Born rich" (I highly recommend it, amongst other things from it I finally learned why there are a number of US personalities whose educational background seems so at odds with their outward demeanour. It's that the privileged simply can't get chucked out of a University, no matter how poorly they perform.) in which one of the interviewees was worrying about whether it was OK to have taken a group of her Jewish friends to lunch at her club, and speculating that it certainly would have been frowned upon had they been black.

I've no idea whether this taboo she transgressed is real or not. I'd certainly suggest it shouldn't be, it's the kind of prejudice you giggle at when you read it in the popular literature of the 30s and 40s. However, if it isn't real, the mere concern over it in the mind of the members keeps them from expanding their cultural horizons. It has become a permanently inhibiting fear, without any real referent.

In short, if you suspect a taboo is no longer culturally relevant you should probably consider yourself to have a duty to break it to get it out of the way as quickly as possible.

"In short, if you suspect a taboo is no longer culturally relevant you should probably consider yourself to have a duty to break it to get it out of the way as quickly as possible."

If your goal is change society, maybe. But, if your goal is to succeed within a society, then maybe not. Some taboos begin for good reason and just because you suspect that they're not relevant doesn't mean that they're not.

I would suggest that if you suspect that a taboo is no longer relevant, you have a duty find out for sure and learn why it ever was in the first place.

Hmmm; agreed. Some of the obscenity taboos aren't quite so brain-dead, either, at second glance. Sure, "cunt" and "vagina" aren't at all the same word, but I wouldn't say that if my web developers co-workers used the word "vagina" constantly that would be just fine.

As we're living in a reality where, you know, rape and suchlike happens fairly frequently, if I were a woman in a mostly male workplace and the word vagina was constantly bandied about, is it wrong that I'd feel uncomfortable?

Or say I was a middle-school math teacher who wrote all of his word problems in the form "so, one vagina is moving at 12 miles per hour due east, and...".

Talk is a step towards action, and it does matter what people say, as we are led to imagine them carrying out related actions, and we often assume (rightly or wrongly) some level of intent behind speech.

Maybe that's part of the reason behind some of the taboo words? Not to discount, of course, the unreasonably deep cultural discomfort with sex... but just, you know, tread lightly if you want to accelerate taboo expiration.

And it doesn't so much explain "shit", but that's possibly related -- I don't really want a discussion of poo-poo during lunch, for example, and there are very logical reasons that it might spoil my appetite (I'd rather focus my imagination on this delicious steaming burrito, thank you very much).

It gets pretty complicated when you think about idealism. We might be subtly lying to our kids by acting that the world is a great place where you can be happy. On the other hand, whether or not this is true is largely dependent on whether or not you believe it. So I think that passing such ideals to our kids might be a good thing. It's like that one quote from Second Hand Lions:

"Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love... true love never dies. You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn't matter if it's true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in."

I am having a hard time deciding if that counts. I think whether or not a lie might be believed by a parent is what makes it universally recognized as something all adults answer with "ask your parents".

I honestly never feel that I was lied to about swearing.

When I was a very young kid, 3rd or 4th grade, my Father told me that there was nothing wrong with swearing...but that I shouldn't do it in front of my my Mother.

My grade school teacher caught me swearing and she told me the same thing.

It is a respect thing, a culture thing. You don't swear in front of your mother for the same reason you don't take your dick out in public: It's considered impolite.

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