Imagine 10,000 years in the future. Two archaeologists are digging a site, and they find the remains of human bones. They take those remains to the lab, perform tests on them, and try to reconstruct the habits and lifestyle of that human. Say those bones belong to me. They are trying to find out my story, how I lived, what I ate, where I traveled, etc. Once they find all the info they need, they toss it into a museum where they store all other such ancient human remains they find. I was essentially one data point to them in trying to understand how humanity evolved over time. Or I can also call myself a “datum”, the singular form of data, literally one piece of information to solve a bigger puzzle. Honestly, I don’t need 10,000 years to become a datum. I am already a part of several datasets people use these days to study many things. So for that objective learner, I am already a datum. Now let me get to how I got the dumb part of it. I have had an interesting and eventful life so far...
I read a statement today which says, “cursing is a shortcut for expressing emotions.” It got me thinking about a random conversation I had with my roommate ten years ago, while we both were Engineering students. He told me how the word “fuck” can be used to represent so many different emotions in different contexts. He admired the versatility of that four-letter word, but I was largely indifferent to it and just shrugged it off. But I think I may have finally found my words to his statement. Why do we need an ugly four-letter word to express our wonderfully complex emotions? What’s wrong with the old school way of explaining away each emotion with detailed poems and prose? Is it reducing our ability to be vulnerable and honest with each other? By resorting to the shortcut words, have we as a society lost our ability to communicate emotions in a healthy manner, scarring each other permanently? Forget about all this, I have a more pressing question: Are we losing our ability to...