Why swearing is good for you
1–10 of 101 posts
Re: Why swearing is good for you
#2Meh. I swear. In front of my son (now 15). A lot. I was hoping for better arguments for feeling good about my swearing.
Re: Why swearing is good for you
#3Ah, fuck this bullshit. :D
Re: Why swearing is good for you
#4Swearing is like putting a spice on your sentence. Overdo it and you'll come across too bold and brash. Use is carelessly for anything and it loses its significance. But use it just on things that deserve emphasis, and it shines in a pretty good way.
Re: Why swearing is good for you
#5no. it's not good for you. just because someone swears does not mean you should do it too no matter if you see God's grace on that person
Re: Why swearing is good for you
#6I don’t swear anymore, I read somewhere in the bible, that you should not swear, so I stopped, although I am not a Christian.
Re: Why swearing is good for you
#7>While sometimes viewed as lazy or boorish, swearing actually requires substantial verbal facility and skill. When used correctly, in other words, profanity is expressively complicated
I'm glad they pointed this out -- as I always say, swearing is the inevitable linguistic crutch of the inarticulate motherfucker. However, this article missed out on one of the more important beneficial aspects of swearing, namely pain relief [1] (I could have linked a study or two, but they can be found in the wiki article for once, and this is more concise). Of course, as interested parties will learn, its analgesic effect is most prominent in those who rarely swear, so, not that personally useful.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypoalgesic_effect_of_swearing
Re: Why swearing is good for you
#8Meh. I swear. In front of my son (now 15). A lot. I was hoping for better arguments for feeling good about my swearing.
This comment, necessarily, has coarse language.
When i first started programming i worked with a guy who retired about a year later, Jon. He swore constantly, and was extremely colorful in his mastery of that particular skill.
One day I asked Jon about it, he told me a story from when he was much younger. He was leaving the house for work, with the suit and briefcase and everything, his son was 5 or 6 and had slept in. Jon is at the car door, his son comes running out to say goodbye to his daddy. So it's this perfect late 60's early 70's scene, practically a rockwell painting. Dad in a suit, mom in an apron, son in pajamas. Jon's off to continue the space age, with computers.
Jon's son stands on the porch and hollers "Goodbye cocksucker!"
I know i don't do justice to that story, i was practically in tears when he told me. Anyway, he spoke a bit about humor in the face of stress, how it can bring joy in the darkest situations.
He absolutely would not be tolerated these days, but i liked the guy. He was genuinely funny. His swearing was so shocking it cut through your defenses, and more or less forced a laugh. Anyway, i'd encourage you to flavor your swears with ridiculous overly specific additions. That guy's not a shit, he's a steaming hairy flaming pile of whale shit. I don't have Jon's gift. But you get the idea. Chevy Chase in christmas vacation is a great example.
Re: Why swearing is good for you
#9Indeed, swearing may literally be good for your health -- as an outlet for stress. In Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, Robert Sapolsky writes:
We humans also deal better with stressors when we have outlets for frustration--punch a wall, take a run, find solace in a hobby...
A variant of Weiss's experiment uncovers a special feature of the outlet-for-frustration reaction. This time, when the rat gets the identical series of electric shocks and is upset, it can run across the cage, sit next to another rat and... bite the hell out of it. Stress-induced displacement of aggression: the practice works wonders at minimizing the stressfulness of a stressor. It's a real primate specialty as well. A male baboon loses a fight. Frustrated, he spins around and attacks a subordinate male who was minding his own business. An extremely high percentage of primate aggression represent frustration displaced onto innocent bystanders.
In that light, swearing might be seen as a more civilized form of displacing stress-induced aggression.
Edit: Also, what (the aptly monikered) @justratsinacoat said: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12229408
Re: Why swearing is good for you
#10Earlier today I realised that I had forgotten a train ticket (along with other documents) in a restaurant, so I ended up missing my train because I had to go back and collect my documents.
As soon as I realised this was the case, I knew it was too late for me. In the spur of the moment, I shouted "fuck!" and people were looking at me. It felt so right at the time, as if I deserved to swear. My mind had been assailed by my senses.
Many of the situations in which we want to swear can be counteracted by mindfulness of the phenomena surrounding you. When you remember not to get caught up in your internal world of judgements, and remember to guard your senses (including the mind as one of our senses) then swearing becomes a lot less necessary to deal with a situation.
Ideally we'd like to not have to deal with situations, because the whole mental component of the situation is missing. Mindfulness gets us there, whereas swearing does not.