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Esther Cook's avatar

I learned something unusual about Columbus one day, chatting with a young man whose mother was Basque. "Why," he asked me, "did Columbus' Basque navigators lead him so far South?"

What? They did?

The young man said those navigators did not want him to discover the Basque Cod fisheries. Oh my, those weren't discovered for well over 100 years. He also told me that the reason Portugal did not finance Columbus was because they did not want him finding out about their secret colony in Brazil!

We did NOT learn this stuff in school!

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cgg's avatar
Sep 21Edited

Your point about how humans will eventually establish some means of communication reminds me of the Star Trek TNG episode of Darmok. (There are echoes of the Epic of Gilgamesh in this episode as well. Interesting.)

There is a book that was written by Richard Dooling called Blue Streak - the book addressed swearing and free speech. There is a whole chapter on the word 'fuck' (which it is quite colorful and extremely amusing) but what I remember well was that because it was such a taboo word for something like five centuries, it is difficult to trace the etymology. The author points out that has changed over the last few decades, but the previously unspoken word has been replaced with other words that shall not be spoken out loud lest you risk scorn and being driven out of the tribe. Sound familiar?

I pulled out the book again and was flipping through it. Came across this paragraph:

" But, as we have discussed, let the newest rash of Pecksniffery and speech regulations be an incentive for the liberal use of vulgarities. Holding forth with a few contemptibly loud fucks every now and again reminds people that, for the time being, we may indulge in free speech whenever we like. We are not yet put outside with the cigarette smokers during our fifteen-minute breaks (Man, flash back to the 90s there). But the day is fast approaching when all speech will be regulated in the interest of civil rights and the prosecution of hate criminals, who commit gender crimes through the hostile and abusive use of illegal words.

The fuck you don't say today will be the one you won't be allowed to say tomorrow."

To re-read that today was a little jarring. Because he wrote that in 1996.

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