The proverbial rhyme sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me, was penned in an age when physical violence was rife – though you may rightly ask, when has that not been the case? The rhyme was meant to encourage the bullied child not to take words to heart. Words are just words; they can’t harm you – not physically, at least, which perhaps was the only acknowledged metric of harm at the time. Thus, we have stories of overcomers, people to whom this advice held great value. They shook off insults and taunts like water off the proverbial duck’s back, propelled by the knowledge that if they didn’t “let” the words get to them, then they would safely disarm their power. However, there are also stories of children who weren’t able to shake off the taunts, for whom the harm of words was very real. To these children, the sentiment that ‘words will never hurt me’ did not offer encouragement. It felt like a denial of their pain. The saying suggested that words could not hurt them physically and that no other hurt counted. It implied that they should be tougher. It implied that the hurtful words weren’t the problem, but that they were the problem for feeling hurt- this advice, then, has always been questionable. Now, with hate speech and violence, it is especially wrong. 

Hobbes, the 17th-century materialistic philosopher, had an interesting theory of language. Although an atheist, he stated that in their use of language, human beings were like God, for in the Bible, God spoke creation into existence. The New Leviathan (2023) quotes Hobbes: The first author of speech…God… instructed Adam how to name such creatures as presented to his sight. Hobbes also attributes other power to words. Ideas emerge that make words more real than things. He described seven ways in which the said ideas, formed from words, made human beings fall into absurdity. It specifically means using language or reason incorrectly to arrive at statements that are completely meaningless, self-contradictory, or logically impossible. George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 had three famous slogans: War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength, which illustrate absurdity perfectly. As a brilliant political philosopher and novelist, Orwell had an exceptional recognition of the importance of words. In 1984, the distortion of words by the totalitarian Party was the key tool of control. The Party in 1984 created Newspeak. Newspeak is a controlled language created by the totalitarian regime as a tool to limit ‌freedom of thought and other concepts that posed a threat to it, such as freedom, individuality, peace, etc. In fact, any form of thought alternative to the Party’s constructs was considered ‘thoughtcrime.’ Doublethink, another concept in 1984 is the mental capacity to simultaneously hold two contradictory beliefs and sincerely accept both as true. 

These observations of previous prophetic voices are peculiar to past eras. For ours, we must come up with our own. There are definitely plenty of opportunities to critique the power of words in our day. In a phrase, words are unreliable. With words, influencers create realities in online echo-chambers, and politicians can usually be relied on to twist them. Warmongers declare the realities they desire instead of the actual ones. It shouldn’t therefore surprise us that AI-based information, derived from billions of words scraped from the internet into a Frankenstein of ideas, has become known for hallucinations, i.e. utterly unreliable.

James, Jesus’ brother, wrote a letter to his community in the first century, in which he describes words as fueled by hellfire. Words used by religious people to praise God and curse their fellow man, made in God’s image, are a blatant contradiction. Lies, cruel putdowns, and hypocrisy were not the intended purpose of the gift of language.

I’ve often wondered about how to keep my written contributions positive and grounded in reality, to build up rather than tear down. For writers, this is more important now than ever. In pursuing this ‘craft’, it’s important not to be subsumed by the spirit of lies, misinformation and unreality that has overtaken our world.