Words Worth.

Etymology is a fascinating study. I liken it to both religious studies and social studies, and I'll explain why.

When you go back to when language first became "language", and we started to make account of things we saw or knew many of the words we first used had religious focus. Mankind explained their world in terms of "well we didn't do this, or make this, so someone else must have", and as many of the inexplicable things were magnificent, it had to be something or someone more powerful than you or I. Enter the idea of a god figure. From then on we used language to tell stories about great heroes, prophets, gods, battles between Heaven and Hell, etc. all with the aim of sharing information, be it fiction or otherwise.

It wasn't long until people the world over started to have different ideas of what things that were inexplicable, meant. Gods and their powers were altered and varied to suit the people that were telling the tales, and you began to have differences that ranged from concepts of monotheism to polytheism, destinations of afterlives, the names of the gods/angels/powers and as is human nature, people started to fight over these differences.

The concept of killing people who didn't agree with your religious beliefs is hardly a new concern. For as long as there's been different cultures with different gods, they've been killing each other over that fact. Even within individual cultures there grew to be religious unrest, as people wanted to believe only certain parts of these stories (often the parts that most suited their needs). New denominations sprung up and started to fight with people who didn't believe them. Any of the Christian origin religions can tell you that while they all believe in a being called "God" and that there was this guy named "Jesus", they start to become fuzzy on any other similarities after that.

Now, religion is the matrix in which society establishes its laws. While we might find it hard in North America to imagine a world where women are given a specific set of laws different than mens, the Sharia (or Islamic Law) is an extreme example of this case. Women's positions in society have long since been determined by their role in religious stories. From a Christian standpoint, it was clear that women were foolish and easy to manipulate based on the story of Eve, the "first" woman. If you're Jewish, and believe in the Lilith story, than that's a whole different spin right there. She refused to be subservient to Adam, and was cast out of Eden for her insubordination. To this day some Jews will comment that a stubborn woman is a "daughter of Lilith".

The idea here being that people rely upon religious origins to shape their definition of the world today. Acts like marriage are a phenomenally huge expenditure of money simply to adhere to an idea that it's good to let God in on the fact that you and your spouse are getting hitched, he may not have found out otherwise. The way we bury our dead also still carries with it a lot of religious origin. Rather than tie the body up in a bag and chuck it over a bridge, we follow a ceremony to send them on their way.

I've strayed from my original point somewhat, but the base idea is that the words we use today, and the way we use them require a bit more appreciation from the masses (no pun intended). They are powerful tools that carry with them a history that belies some of their menial use. I implore those reading to take the time and consideration to spell your words out properly, and to stop using "Textglish". I think you all know where I stand on texting in general.

"Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know men." - Confucius