I’ve never been very good at keeping my mouth shut. Shocking, I know, especially to those of you who’ve had the pleasure of meeting me in person, but it’s the truth. No matter how hard I try there’s always a part of me that thinks my thoughts are the most important thing in the world and that I need to share them with everybody. Even if it’s a conversation relating to a topic I know very little about, I like feeling smart and witty so I try and inject what little I do know into a matter even if that just makes me look like an arrogant idiot. You’ve probably noticed a little bit of this weakness of mine in my writing, although being able to look up details on the internet instead of just relying on the trivia I jammed into my head does disguise the worst of it. It’s still an embarrassing flaw of mine and something I try to restrain when I’m talking about something really important that I’m not qualified to give concrete opinions on. Trust me when I say this conversational curse of not knowing when to shut up used to be a lot worse. Time and the consequences of my past mistakes have taught me to at least try and manage the unending flow of chatter that my mind produces, and that management can often be the difference between comedy and an insult. In this age of high-speed communication such management can sometimes be cast aside in favor of quicker responses and louder declarations of an opinion, and as a result it can be harder to just talk with somebody. Even though I’ve got plenty of problems with my own filter, I’ve decided to try and share some of the lessons I’ve learned about keeping a watch on your own words, along with a few memories related to those lessons. Even if you don’t learn anything new about the main topic, you can at least learn a bit about my stupid past.
Rule #1: Check What Your Words Mean
When I was a little boy, probably no older than six, there was a small grocery store in the village I called home. It was called Friesland Foods, and it was a general store in the old style, with well-worn wooden floorboards and a bell on the door. The store was located in a building that had probably been around since at least the early 1900s, and it had a rustic charm I was too young to appreciate. My vocabulary was still in the process of developing back in those days, and one of the main sources of new words was the pillar of educational programming that was PBS Kids in the early 2000s. Mr Rogers, George Shrinks, Reading Rainbow, and Between the Lions were all big hits with me, but one of my favorites (as well as a favorite of enough people to keep it running with new episodes until 2022) was Arthur. There seemed to be an episode of that show for every topic under the sun, and they used a lot of fun words. One word they used that my young self found fun to say was “tacky”, which I thought meant quaint and rustic. One day while shopping for groceries at Friesland Foods with my mother I wanted to try it out in the real world, and so I called the time-worn floorboards of this beautiful store tacky. I was swiftly corrected, and as such learned a lesson. Nothing makes you look more foolish than a misused word or a misunderstood concept in an otherwise rock-solid argument or explanation. Sure, a six-year-old can’t be expected to check the dictionary, but if you’re an adult with access to the internet the bare minimum you can do when you hear a new word or a new concept is introduced to you is check that you’ve got it right. This is especially true if you want to argue for or against something, or you run the risk of totally undermining everything you say. If you need an example, take a listen to this:
Rule #2: Check Your Sources
Remember how much the conservative population hated Harry Potter back in the day? What about how I wasn’t allowed to watch Dinosaur King when it first aired on FoxKids because it looked too much like Pokemon and was therefore from the devil? Going back even further, what about the so-called Satanic Panic of the 1980s? All of those points on the timeline of American and/or global history have a few things in common. Obviously they were times where the Christians of this great nation were stirred to action in order to protect the young and the vulnerable, which is a source of great pride for some older folks looking back on those days. Another thing they share in common is that for the most part they were the result of mass hysteria due to a misunderstanding perpetuated in order to make a quick buck. The Harry Potter hate was the result of a conservative journalist reading about a claimed satanic ritual that was actually a joke by a website that exists to make such jokes called The Onion, believing the joke was real, and sounding the alarm. This alarm was then amplified by other conservative sources because panic sells and they didn’t like the books anyway. A lot of Japanese animation got the same treatment because Japan and other Asian nations have a culture far more willing to make light of things like spirits and the supernatural, which a number of extremely xenophobic media outlets took to mean they were promoting demon worship. No further research was done, leading to wildly inaccurate ideas of what a children’s cartoon was actually about. Both mini-panics were just aftershocks of the big Satanic Panic of the 70s, 80s, and 90s, which had every Church from Alaska to Alabama thinking their local daycare workers wanted to eat babies. Later research found that a lot of the stories were the result of hypnotic “therapy” accidentally hitting on memories of three movies that were released around the same time, Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen, and The Exorcist. Then a Canadian lady who later married her hypnotist wrote a book about how her caretakers tortured her as a child (the book turned out to be a sham) and a guy named Mike Warnke wrote a book where he claimed he was a former Satanic priest (his book also turned out to be a sham). To top it all off immigration reform had allowed missionaries to come into the USA instead of just going out, and the various branches of the Church were less than comfortable about the buddhists, taoists, and other religions showing up on their doorstep. The majority of so-called “satanist cults” of that age turned out to be either lonely losers or myths cooked up to spook audiences. A lot of bigotry, racism, sexism, and the like have historically come down to people getting too caught up in their righteous anger to actually do their homework from more than one place. That means looking at sources that don’t agree with you, and that shouldn’t be scary. Evidence is not the enemy, even if it proves you’re wrong. At least then you’ll know better. Plus, if you’re right you’ll be able to counter someone else’s perspective instead of looking stupid for not considering it. No one wins an argument by being stupid.
Rule #3: Even If It’s True, Is It Helpful Or Kind?
When I went to parties as a kid I was often taken aside by my parents before entering to be reminded not to say certain things. I was reminded not to comment on people’s weight, their appearance, or anything of that nature. In spite of this I once told my kindergarten teacher (who had alopecia, which causes hair loss) that she should get a wig because they were “surprisingly manageable”. I don’t remember doing it now, but my mom still does and was happy to bring it up when she heard what I was going to write about today. Truth is important, and sometimes it can hurt people. We tell people of all ages to be truthful, that the truth will set you free, and things like a stable government and reliable media depend on that truth. Yes, the truth is important, but so are people. That’s why there’s a difference between telling the truth when asked a question and simply shouting out something unprompted or at a bad time. If you told the truth about a friend cheating on his fiancee to keep the bride-to-be from marrying an unfaithful man, that’s an example of a painful but necessary truth. If you bring up how long it took for your brother to be potty trained in front of his crush and/or school friends, that’s just an example of you being a jerk for literally no reason. No one was asking for that information, and now several people’s lives are different. It’s not okay just because you didn’t make up the information, you’ve still done a bad thing. Try thinking of the truth like dynamite – in the right place a little honesty can do amazing things, but in the wrong place it can destroy people.
Rule #4: Words Are Not Weapons
In every culture that’s ever existed there have been two things: ways of fighting people and ways of insulting people. From swords to slings there have always been warriors amid the populace of a human culture, no matter how well they might be known to modern students of history. There have also been countless different ways of cursing, name-calling, and verbally abusing others, a method of conflict that we usually don’t see in the movies set in the past because we just make all the characters speak English for convenience’s sake. There’s graffiti dating back to Ancient Greece that backs up just how long humans have been verbally sparring with each other, and the tradition’s alive and well even today. What I’ve learned though is that if you use words as your weapons, taking the path of insults and belittling others, you lose the ability to really win an argument. Winning an argument or sharing an opinion shouldn’t require that you hurt someone else, but should instead focus on getting them to see where you’re coming from and accept your perspective. All you can do by treating someone else like they’re stupid for disagreeing with you is make them less willing to come around to your side. They’ll dig in, refuse to budge, and generally begin to hate you or anything related to you. Even bystanders will begin to think that both of you are crazy or unwilling to let the matter rest, which gives you a reputation for being petty, shortsighted, and irrational. You can’t kill someone with words, so don’t try and go for the throat. Sometimes it’s even better to put down your fighting words and step back a bit.
Rule #5: Know When To Shut Up!
I’m still working on this one, if I’m being honest. I like the sound of my own voice and have a lot of information I’d like to share. It makes me feel smart and every once in a while I’ll actually say something people find interesting. That’s a moment that makes me feel like a million bucks, which is part of why I enjoy writing so much and keep several notebooks full of ideas. That being said, it’s still important to take that gift of gab and tackle it to the ground from time to time. After all, how can you have a conversation, an argument, a debate, or a discussion if you don’t give the other participants the time to talk. You want them to get something out of your words, so show some courtesy and allow them to share their own thoughts. Even if you don’t like someone else, listening to what they say and learning from it will give you insight into them and will make you look wiser than if you steamroll their input and act like you have no self control. It isn’t weakness to let someone with a different opinion talk, because if your stance on a matter is so shaky that a few choice phrases can cause it to collapse you’ve already lost. Even outside of a confrontation or a debate, taking the time to listen can mean you don’t miss important details when instructions are provided or news is shared. That’s context that can save lives depending on the situation you’re in! Plus, listening to others encourages them to listen to you!
I don’t know how helpful these half-remembered speech lessons, bits of advice, and stories from my past will be, but I hope you at least got a better idea of how I think. That alone is worth the price of admission (which was free, by the way) but my hope is that it will inspire some of you out there to check out your own filters. How we talk to each other is a big part of how the world works, and if we can do it better there’s a chance we’ll all avoid a lot of problems. If this ended up being a boring topic for you, hopefully next week I’ll talk about something other than talking.
The Archivist's Pen 
Good stuff, Seth. I think all of us can find some points of resonance here. I think of a time when I commented to my friend that that lady was the ugliest woman I’d ever seen. It was, of course, his mom. Somehow, we remained friends– demonstrating that one of us was truly kind, I think.
And… when I was a youngling, announcing directly to a friend of our family that, “You are fat.” She was, but…. my parents didn’t think this was a good idea. Again, our friend was very kind about it, recognizing, hopefully, that young kids DO, in fact, say stupid things and, as I’ve recently read, need to develop a filter.
Looking around, it would seem some “grown-ups” need the same thing.
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