We often wonder how different the world would be were it shaped by the pure dreamers rather than the ambitious pragmatists. Think of all the visions of a better society that fail because they have no plausible way to be brought into being. What if society progressed with giant leaps of imagination rather than the usual realistic steps?
Sidney Bagwell is a dreamer. Inspired by research performed by a team of social scientists (“Hegemony of a Gesture of Affront,” by L. Tufts, M. Kuneeley, and B. James—first reported in The Stoneslide Corrective), Bagwell has developed what he calls a “universal obscenity.” It’s a single syllable that can be used in any language to cover all of the standard meanings of offensive expletives, including excrement, the anus, genitalia, male-female intercourse, male-male intercourse, female-female intercourse, female-female-male-female-male intercourse, hermaphrodite-hermaphrodite intercourse, solo hermaphrodite intracourse, a dog reading a Bible, a Koran, and As I Lay Dying, the drippings from an inebriated whore’s nostrils, the devil’s left eye, any ethnic group other than one’s own, the smell from between a salt miner’s toes, a dog urinating on two books of faith and Light in August, a whale’s vagina after copulation with Poseidon, and a dog defecating on two books of faith, Light in August, and Invisible Man.
Says Bagwell, “It’s just one word, you see. The easiest word in the world to say, and it can mean all these things. It will make everyone’s lives easier.” Drawing on the finding of Tufts et al. that widespread understanding of “the finger” generates $20 billion in economic savings each year, Bagwell says adoption of his universal obscenity could create huge efficiency gains for the global economy. “Say a waiter’s rude to you, you no longer have to spend minutes searching your mind for the perfect obscenity. You just say this. Things will go much faster.” He further speculates that repressive governments and Christian youth groups will find it much easier to censor new films and books, as they will only have to watch out for this one word.
But how can one man hope to grow a word to universal adoption? “I use it all the time. That’s why I’m talking to you. Tell everyone you know. Just say it to them, and they’ll probably say it right back to you! People get it right away. That’s the beauty of it. Then you’re both using it. Maybe you start screaming at your friend and your friend screams at you and others hear you. It will spread fast.” Bagwell argues that over time a more productive behavior will always supplant less effective competitors.
“I’m dreaming of the day I cut someone off in traffic—I’ve never met them before—and they say it to me. That….” He smiles as the power of his vision overcomes him. “I’ll die happy when that happens to me.”
See the original report about the research in The Stoneslide Corrective.
See the research on emblem gestures by Shulman and Capone that inspired Tufts et al.
