Another dumb study. If you’ve ever taken a classical philosophy class and have an IQ slightly above mentally retarded, you’ll find yourself going “dur” whenever some bored goat-fucking Greek “figures out” something blatantly obvious like, if we let people make their own decisions then they will be happy-good =p!

As fascinating as science is, philosophy being science’s grandpa, it still has to articulate the blatantly obvious and even go so far as to pay people to prove it. Enter the Scientific American article: Do we swear to relieve pain? I dunno, Sky-enze, do I shit to relieve my bowels?

Bad language could be good for you, a new study shows. For the first time, psychologists have found that swearing may serve an important function in relieving pain.

The study, published today in the journal NeuroReport, measured how long college students could keep their hands immersed in cold water. During the chilly exercise, they could repeat an expletive of their choice or chant a neutral word. When swearing, the 67 student volunteers reported less pain and on average endured about 40 seconds longer.

It isn’t the act of saying “fuck” that causes the relief of pain, it’s the act of venting. I’m sure if I aggressively screamed BOLOGNA AND CHEESE! it would have the same affects.

One such structure is the amygdala, an almond-shaped group of neurons that can trigger a fight-or-flight response in which our heart rate climbs and we become less sensitive to pain. Indeed, the students’ heart rates rose when they swore, a fact the researchers say suggests that the amygdala was activated.

ut cursing is more than just aggression, explains Timothy Jay, a psychologist at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts who has studied our use of profanities for the past 35 years. “It allows us to vent or express anger, joy, surprise, happiness,” he remarks. “It’s like the horn on your car, you can do a lot of things with that, it’s built into you.”

I can understand this logic, that socially we have come to accept that “curse words” are words that have this aggressive and negative weight to them. So saying them is this ultimate mental trigger, it’s like blowing an anger load. Anything and everything we do has an effect on the chemistry of our brain. Our brain registers these words as bullets because of conditioning and so when we’re distressed we pull the trigger and that is psychologically relieving, but it’s probably not actually reducing the amount of pain you’re experiencing.

But this stuff only holds true if those “bad” words carry that amount of weight for you. They don’t with me. As a writer of course I acknowledge that words have power, but they’re only worth as much as you give them. That’s why I say all words, fuck-cunts! Words should have power, but I think right now they have a bit too much, so much so that we tip-toe around certain words, building them up and up and up. You know, the way Sarah Jessica Parker doesn’t allow her kids to say “fat.” Singling out certain words as taboo or unsayable is like being afraid to look under your bed in fear of monsters. It’s all in your head.

If words had no meaning then communication would obsolete and there’d be chaos. But when we give them too much meaning, we’re not saying anything at all, either that or we’re blowing offensive loads all over. Words in and of themselves shouldn’t be bullets, they shouldn’t be Voldemorts either. The things that we say in their entirety and the way that we say and articulate them should have more credence.

I can say whatever the fuck I want cunt-dogs because 90% of it is meaningless.

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