What are words for?

 

"When no one listens anymore."  

Words from Missing Persons, 1982.  But they aren't true for me because I listen all the time.  I am a good listener.  Most people don't listen, this is true. I can see it on their faces, they are just waiting for the second to jump in and talk about themselves and say something that came to their mind as they heard a few words from you.  From that point, they aren't listening.  

But I have to listen because my brain is wired like that.  I am able to listen to lots

of music. I have to listen, that is why I often cant listen to music when I am writing because I have to listen to the music and I cant pay attention to my writing.  I am hardwired to listen.  I guess really a lot of people's brains arent wired to listen. So they dont know how to listen to music nor do they listen to people when talking.  

What does this have to do with being a father at home?   

The problem is is that often the words are used in a derogatory fashion.  Words are used to build barriers and be divisive.  They arent used to come to an understanding and a conclusion.  They are used to deride.  I hear this.  

Take my subject of music.  When someone doesnt use your word or the accepted word for a group or a noun it usually means they are trying to take over the subject and make it theirs for what they want to do with it, which is usually to put it down.  

Emo used to be a type of music big in the first decade of the 21st century.  Short for emotional music.  That was something good.  BUT, it came to be bad.  All the bands that were emo tried to distance themselves from the style, like "my Chemical Romance" and MSA maybe.  Who knows why it became a bad term. It fell out of fashion.   

Anyway, Now more than once it has happened to me that teen agers call the rock from earlier decades, from the 80s and 90s emo. They call ALL rock emo.  It is a putdown because emo has a bad reputation so they are being derogatory toward the older generations music.  In our terms, it was rock, hardcore, punk, whatever, but not all of it was emo. Not much of it was emo.  But now they say "you listen to emo?" Since emo was made into a derogatory word, they are implying that all that music from earlier decades is also not good, it is emo.  

Its the same thing when Trump steals the agenda and puts a derogatory name on one of his challengers and then that name sticks and the trait of the name is adapted to the person.  "sleepy Joe", "send her to jail Clinton".  The teen agers just like Trump are sticking on a derogatory term to belittle the others.  

Thus words are used to create divisions.  Not as a force of understanding.  I dont like this. 

"Millennials expect life to be easy."—"OK boomer."

BOOMER is the other word. For decades there were the baby boomers.  There was nothing wrong with that term.  It was well recognized as those born between 1945 and 1964  and that big growth spurt when there were A LOT of babies being born, mostly after the war.  It grew out of the term baby boom.  Nothing wrong with that.  And baby boomers knew who they were and had no problem with being a baby boomer.    

But now, the teen agers call anyone "older" a boomer.  Basically 30 and above. I had no connection to the baby boomers and yet to my daughter I am a boomer.  

I dont like that.  Ok, boomer.

Again, it is used in a derogatory manner to put older people down and talk in terms of us and them. Kind of like Jerry Rubins', "dont trust anyone over 30".  Now anyone over 30 is old.  They are boomers.  We are us and they are boomers say the kids.  Dont trust the boomers.  Kill the boomers.  

It all becomes part of the divisions that are taking place in the US and probably all over the world.  

So here, words are used to create an us and them and not for co operation and understanding. 

I find this very bad.  I think Hitler did this with his propaganda machine. Is this what words are for? I always thought language developed from a necessity for people to understand each other better.  Now the opposite is happening.  This isn't what words are for.  

I could only listen to music when I was putting in pictures.  But I rediscovered the REPLACEMENTS.  1984 "LET IT BE"  was a fantastic album.