The Man Who Never Swore and the Bastard Who Saved Your Life

The Carpenter and the Hammer

I have no idea whether Jesus ever swore.

Neither do you.

Neither does your pastor.

Neither does the guy on YouTube with the twelve-part documentary and the aggressively trimmed beard.

Historically speaking, we simply don’t know.

Part of the problem is that profanity is culturally relative. What’s scandalous in one era becomes ordinary in another. What’s offensive in one language may barely register in the next. Ancient Aramaic does not translate neatly into modern English, and there is no surviving gospel account of a disciple writing, “Then Jesus struck His thumb with a hammer and uttered a phrase unfit for synagogue use.”

Still, I admit I find the image funny.

A young carpenter misses a nail, crushes a thumb, and lets fly with something colorful. Joseph looks over from the other side of the shop and says, “Language.”

Jesus responds, “Dad, have you ever tried building a table with Roman nails?”

Mary immediately volunteers for permanent duty at the soapmaking station.

The image is absurd.

It is also useful.

Because the fact that so many people find it uncomfortable reveals something interesting about how we think about morality.

Many of us unconsciously imagine holy people as sanitized people. We imagine them speaking in carefully edited Hallmark cards, floating through life with infinite patience and perfect emotional control. Yet the stories themselves often paint a more complicated picture. The Jesus of the New Testament was compassionate, forgiving, and deeply committed to mercy. He was also known for flipping tables, publicly embarrassing powerful hypocrites, and comparing respected religious leaders to whitewashed tombs.

Whatever else one believes about him, “inoffensively bland” does not seem to have been part of the package.

That observation matters because it points toward a larger question.

Why are we so concerned with the possibility that a good person might occasionally use a bad word, yet often remarkably comfortable with bad people who know all the right words?

The Moral Shortcut

Human beings love shortcuts.

We use them constantly because reality is complicated and evaluating character takes time. Determining whether someone is honest, trustworthy, generous, courageous, compassionate, or wise requires observation. It requires context. It requires paying attention to what people actually do rather than what they claim to believe.

Words are much easier. They can be measured, categorized, approved, disapproved, and ultimately treated as though they reveal far more about a person’s character than they actually do. In doing so, they create the comforting illusion that morality is simpler than it really is.

Unfortunately, character refuses to cooperate.

The most dishonest person you have ever met may possess impeccable manners. The most exploitative executive in a company may never utter a profanity. The most manipulative politician in a room may speak with flawless decorum. History contains no shortage of scoundrels who understood exactly how to sound virtuous while behaving terribly.

At the same time, most of us have known people who could make a sailor blush and yet would show up at two in the morning when everything fell apart.

The distinction is important.

Words matter.

they’re not nothing.

Language shapes culture, communicates values, and influences behavior. But words are also one of the easiest aspects of human conduct to fake. Character is considerably harder.

This may explain why societies repeatedly drift toward policing symbols rather than cultivating virtue. Symbols are visible. Character often isn’t.

A person can learn the approved vocabulary in an afternoon.

Becoming a decent human being usually takes considerably longer.

Whitewashed Tombs

One of the reasons I find this subject so interesting is that it is hardly new.

Human beings have been confusing appearances with virtue for a very long time.

In fact, one of the more striking aspects of the New Testament is how frequently Jesus seemed irritated by exactly this tendency. Whatever else one believes about Christianity, it is difficult to read the Gospels without noticing that some of Jesus’ harshest criticism was directed not at thieves, drunkards, laborers, fishermen, or ordinary people struggling through imperfect lives. More often, his sharpest words were reserved for people who appeared righteous while quietly missing the point.

The phrase “whitewashed tombs” has survived for two thousand years for a reason.

It is vivid.

A tomb can be beautifully maintained on the outside. It can be polished, decorated, admired, and presented as an example of propriety. Yet beneath the surface it remains exactly what it always was. The appearance and the reality are two different things.

That observation extends far beyond religion.

Every generation develops its own version of moral cosmetics. Sometimes it takes the form of etiquette. Sometimes it takes the form of political language. Sometimes it appears as public displays of virtue, carefully curated identities, or social rituals that signal membership within the correct tribe. The specifics change, but the temptation remains remarkably consistent. People learn to display goodness long before they learn to become good.

This is not entirely their fault. Display is easier.

Character is difficult to measure. Integrity often reveals itself only when circumstances become inconvenient. Courage usually appears when there is a price attached. Compassion tends to matter most when helping someone is uncomfortable, expensive, or unpopular. Virtue becomes visible through action, and action requires time.

Symbols are faster.

A person can learn the approved language in an afternoon. They can memorize acceptable opinions, adopt fashionable causes, and acquire the social signals associated with whatever their community currently defines as goodness. None of these things are necessarily bad. The problem arises when they become substitutes for character rather than reflections of it.

At that point, morality begins drifting toward performance.

The shift can be subtle. A society that starts by encouraging good behavior may gradually become preoccupied with appearances. Questions about honesty, courage, generosity, loyalty, and responsibility slowly give way to questions about presentation. Did the person use the correct words? Did they violate a social expectation? Did they commit a breach of etiquette?

Sometimes those questions matter.

Often they do.

But they’re not the same questions.

A person can be impeccably mannered and profoundly destructive. History offers no shortage of examples. Entire careers have been built upon sounding angelic while behaving badly. The polished executive who exploits employees, the charming politician who lies with practiced ease, the religious leader who preaches humility while pursuing power, and the public figure who speaks endlessly about compassion while treating actual human beings as disposable obstacles all belong to a very old tradition.

Their language is rarely the problem.

Their character is.

That distinction feels increasingly important because modern institutions often struggle to evaluate character. Character is messy. It resists metrics. It refuses to fit neatly into forms, compliance standards, or policy manuals. Symbols, on the other hand, are easy to identify and easy to enforce.

As a result, many organizations become extraordinarily skilled at regulating appearances while remaining surprisingly ineffective at cultivating virtue.

The irony is difficult to miss. We frequently devote enormous energy to policing what people say while paying far less attention to what they actually do. The result is a culture in which surface violations attract immediate scrutiny while deeper failures often pass unnoticed.

Which brings us to a pair of people most of us have encountered at one point or another.

The first never utters profanities.

The second might make you think, “Settle down. There are mechanics in the room.”

Seriously though, if life has taught me anything, it is that those facts alone tell us almost nothing worth knowing about either one of them.

The Man Who Never Swore

Most people have met him.

Perhaps not literally, but certainly in spirit.

He is the man who always knows the correct thing to say. His language is beyond reproach. His manners are polished. His public image has been carefully maintained for so long that even he may no longer know where the performance ends and the person begins.

He would never use an offensive word in mixed company.

He would never violate a social norm in a way that might draw attention.

He understands which opinions are safe, which phrases are acceptable, and which signals communicate virtue to the people around him.

In many environments, he thrives.

People trust him.

They promote him.

They admire him.

Sometimes they even follow him.

The problem is that none of those qualities tell us very much about his character.

He may be honest or dishonest, generous or selfish, genuinely decent or merely skilled at appearing so. The language alone tells us very little.

The language tells us very little.

Yet human beings repeatedly treat surface indicators as though they reveal something deeper. We assume that a person who sounds moral is moral. We assume that a person who follows social conventions must possess strong character. We assume that polished presentation reflects inner virtue.

History repeatedly demonstrates otherwise.

Some of the most destructive individuals ever to occupy positions of authority were remarkably articulate & Puritanical in speech. They understood etiquette. They dressed appropriately. They spoke carefully. They knew how to reassure audiences, calm concerns, and project confidence.

Many never uttered a obscenity worth mentioning.

The damage they caused had nothing to do with vocabulary.

This is one reason I become skeptical whenever discussions about morality focus too heavily on language. Language matters, but language is also one of the easiest aspects of human behavior to control. A person can learn approved terminology almost immediately. Character does not develop nearly so quickly.

Character reveals itself when there is something to lose.

When honesty is expensive.

When courage is unpopular.

When loyalty is inconvenient.

When kindness costs time, money, or effort.

That is where virtue earns its keep.

And that is precisely why words alone make such poor substitutes for it.

Interestingly, modern research has complicated some of our assumptions about profanity as well. Several studies have found correlations between frequent swearing and traits such as verbal fluency, authenticity, and even certain forms of intelligence. The findings do not suggest that profanity makes someone smarter, nor do they imply that every foul-mouthed mechanic is secretly Aristotle with a socket wrench. They simply challenge the old assumption that colorful language automatically indicates a limited vocabulary or a lack of sophistication.

Reality, as usual, proves more complicated.

People swear for many reasons. Sometimes they’re angry. Sometimes they’re frightened. Sometimes they’re emphasizing a point. Sometimes they’re bonding socially. Sometimes they’re responding to pain. Occasionally they’re simply being creative.

Language serves many functions beyond politeness.

Which is why profanity has persisted in every culture, every era, and every social class despite centuries of attempts to eradicate it. Human beings appear to have a natural tendency to invent verbal pressure-release valves, and no amount of finger-wagging has managed to eliminate them.

That observation does not make profanity virtuous.

It simply makes it human.

And humanity, as it turns out, is often messier than the rulebooks would prefer.

The more important question is whether we are paying attention to the right things.

Because while society is busy debating vocabulary, life has a habit of presenting a different kind of person entirely.

Not polished.

Not refined.

Not always pleasant.

But often far more valuable.

The kind of person who may never pass a corporate sensitivity seminar and yet somehow becomes indispensable the moment everything goes wrong.

The kind of person who arrives carrying tools instead of talking points.

The kind of person who, despite a colorful relationship with the English language, would give you the shirt off his back without a second thought.

In other words, the bastard who saved your life.

The Bastard Who Saved Your Life

Most of us know this person.

He may be a mechanic.

She may be a nurse.

He may be a logger, a fisherman, a welder, a lineman, a bartender, a rancher, a soldier, a carpenter, or the neighbor who somehow owns three generators and enough extension cords to power a small republic.

His vocabulary would probably horrify a church committee.

Her social media posts would almost certainly trigger an HR review.

Neither one is likely to be invited to deliver a keynote address on civility.

Yet when life decides to come apart at the seams, these are often the people everyone hopes will answer the phone.

They are the people who show up.

Not because they’re saints.

Not because they’re perfect.

Because they understand responsibility.

A funny thing happens when real trouble arrives. The standards by which we judge people tend to change very quickly. The executive who carefully curated every sentence suddenly becomes less interesting than the electrician who can restore power. The person who always says the right thing becomes less valuable than the person willing to do the difficult thing. Entire categories of social performance evaporate the moment reality starts demanding competence.

A flood does not care about your preferred terminology.

A wildfire does not pause to evaluate your etiquette.

A broken axle in the middle of nowhere remains stubbornly indifferent to your mastery of approved language.

Reality has a habit of sorting priorities with ruthless efficiency.

The people who earn our deepest gratitude are rarely the people who merely sounded good. More often they are the people who carried something heavy, fixed something broken, stood watch when others slept, or remained present when everyone else found an excuse to leave.

Many of them swear.

Quite a lot, actually.

Somewhere along the way, polite society developed a curious habit of assuming that rough edges indicate poor character. Experience has repeatedly suggested otherwise. Some of the kindest people I have ever met possessed vocabularies that would make a sailor blush. Some of the most generous people I have ever known could string together profanity with a level of creativity that bordered on poetry.

That does not make profanity virtuous.

It does, however, suggest that human beings are more complicated than our stereotypes.

In recent years, researchers have explored that complexity and arrived at some interesting conclusions. Studies have found that people who swear frequently often score higher on measures of verbal fluency and linguistic flexibility than conventional wisdom might predict. In other words, profanity does not necessarily emerge from a lack of vocabulary. In many cases, it emerges because people possess a larger toolbox and know exactly which tool they wish to use.

That finding should not be overstated. Swearing is not evidence of genius any more than wearing glasses is evidence of wisdom. Still, it serves as a useful reminder that reality frequently refuses to cooperate with our assumptions. The person dropping an f-bomb may be less ignorant than we imagined, while the person speaking with perfect decorum may be far less thoughtful than appearances suggest.

Language is a tool.

Like any tool, it can be used well or poorly.

It can express anger, humor, frustration, emphasis, camaraderie, pain, affection, disbelief, or joy. It can wound. It can heal. It can unite. It can divide. Profanity is not unique in this regard. It merely happens to occupy a category that makes people unusually emotional.

Perhaps because it provides an easy target.

Character is difficult to evaluate.

Integrity is difficult to evaluate.

Motives are difficult to evaluate.

A four-letter word is easy.

You can circle it.

You can censor it.

You can ban it.

You can congratulate yourself for doing something about it.

Meanwhile, the truly consequential forms of human failure continue quietly in the background.

Betrayal.

Dishonesty.

Cruelty.

Exploitation.

Greed.

Cowardice.

The things that actually ruin lives.

And that may be the heart of the problem.

The more attention a society devotes to symbolic offenses, the less attention remains available for the substantive ones. Not always. Not inevitably. But often enough that the pattern becomes difficult to ignore.

Which raises an uncomfortable possibility.

Perhaps some of our moral energy has been spent guarding the wrong gates.

Perhaps we have occasionally become so focused on whether someone sounded virtuous that we forgot to ask whether they were.

And perhaps that is why the mechanic with the colorful vocabulary and the inconvenient honesty sometimes feels more trustworthy than the polished professional who never says anything remotely offensive.

One of them may occasionally offend your ears.

The other might eventually break your heart.

Why Systems Prefer Compliance

If the story ended with individual hypocrisy, it would be disappointing but unsurprising. Human beings have always been capable of saying one thing and doing another. The more interesting question is why entire institutions seem to fall into the same trap.

Part of the answer may be that systems naturally gravitate toward what can be measured.

Character is notoriously difficult to quantify. Integrity does not fit neatly into a spreadsheet. Wisdom resists standardization. Courage has a habit of appearing only under specific circumstances, which makes it inconvenient to evaluate during quarterly reviews or annual performance assessments. Even kindness becomes surprisingly elusive when organizations attempt to reduce it to metrics.

Language, on the other hand, is easy.

Rules are easy.

Compliance is easy.

Not necessarily to achieve, but to identify.

A policy can define approved language. A handbook can establish acceptable behavior. A human resources department can document violations. A social media platform can build filters. A religious institution can establish codes of conduct. A government agency can create regulations. Every one of these mechanisms serves a legitimate purpose under the right circumstances.

The difficulty arises when measurable things gradually begin displacing meaningful things.

Organizations rarely set out intending to cultivate superficiality. Most begin with sincere goals. They want civility, professionalism, fairness, safety, respect, and accountability. These are worthy aspirations. The trouble begins when the symbols associated with those values become easier to manage than the values themselves.

Institutions are remarkably good at shaping behavior and remarkably bad at manufacturing virtue. A company can encourage professionalism without creating respect. A church can discourage profanity without producing compassion. A school can enforce standards without teaching kindness. Governments can pass laws until the shelves sag under their weight and still discover that wisdom refuses to arrive on command. The deeper qualities of character have always been more stubborn than that.

At some point, every institution encounters the same uncomfortable reality: the things that matter most are often the things least susceptible to control.

This may explain why societies periodically drift toward moral theater. The appearance of virtue is easier to scale than virtue itself. Appearances can be standardized. They can be codified, measured, audited, and enforced. Character develops more slowly and often in ways that resist observation altogether.

The result is a peculiar inversion. People begin receiving social rewards for looking good rather than becoming good. Entire professional classes emerge whose primary function is managing appearances. Political movements become increasingly focused on language. Religious communities become increasingly focused on ritual. Corporations become increasingly focused on messaging. Everyone learns how to signal virtue. Fewer people seem interested in the harder work of cultivating it.

To be fair, this tendency is not confined to any particular ideology. The political left does it. The political right does it. Religious people do it. Secular people do it. Corporations do it. Governments do it. Activists do it. Critics of activists do it.

Human beings appear to possess a nearly limitless capacity for substituting symbols for substance.

The modern age may simply have given us better tools with which to perform the substitution.

Social media has accelerated the process dramatically. Platforms built around visibility naturally reward visible behavior. Outrage spreads more quickly than integrity because outrage can be observed instantly. Character often requires years to evaluate properly. A careless remark can circle the globe in minutes. Quiet acts of decency frequently go unnoticed altogether.

As a result, many people now possess a far clearer understanding of what language might get them in trouble than of what conduct actually makes them admirable.

That strikes me as backwards.

A civilization should be far more concerned with the latter than the former.

The irony is that most ordinary people already understand this instinctively. Ask someone whom they trust during a crisis and they rarely begin describing vocabulary choices. They talk about reliability. Honesty. Competence. Loyalty. Generosity. They describe people who showed up when it mattered.

When life becomes real, performance tends to lose its appeal.

Reality is a ruthless editor.

It strips away branding, messaging, posturing, and carefully managed appearances. Eventually every person is measured by what they actually do, particularly when doing the right thing becomes costly.

Which may be why the older I get, the less interested I become in polished declarations of virtue and the more interested I become in evidence of character.

One can be rehearsed.

The other has to be lived.

Freedom and the Possibility of Failure

The more I think about this subject, the less convinced I become that it is really about language at all.

Language simply provides an accessible example of a much larger question that has occupied philosophers, theologians, lawmakers, parents, and ordinary people for thousands of years.

How do you create a good society?

The instinctive answer is often control.

Create rules.

Enforce standards.

Reward desirable behavior.

Punish undesirable behavior.

The formula seems straightforward enough.

And to a certain extent, it works. Every civilization relies upon expectations and boundaries. Every family develops rules. Every community establishes norms. Every institution creates standards of conduct. Without them, social life would become nearly impossible.

Yet there is a limit to what rules can accomplish.

Rules can prohibit behavior.

They cannot create virtue.

Rules can discourage harm.

They cannot manufacture wisdom.

Rules can enforce compliance.

They cannot generate character.

That distinction may be one of the most important—and least appreciated—realities in human affairs.

A person who refrains from theft because a police officer is watching has behaved differently than a person who refrains from theft because he believes stealing is wrong. The external outcome may appear identical. Internally, however, the two situations are worlds apart.

One is compliance.

The other is character.

The difference matters because character only emerges when alternatives remain available. Honesty means very little if deception is impossible. Courage means very little if fear is absent. Generosity means very little if sharing is mandatory. Every virtue derives part of its meaning from the fact that a different choice could have been made.

This is one reason discussions about free will have occupied humanity for so long. Whether one approaches the subject through religion, philosophy, psychology, or simple observation, the same tension eventually appears. A world in which nobody can make a bad decision might be orderly, but it would not necessarily be moral. Morality requires choice. Choice creates risk.

The two arrive together.

That reality can be deeply frustrating.

It would certainly make life easier if virtue could be engineered through policy, procedure, education, technology, or sufficiently aggressive finger-wagging. Entire industries have been built upon the promise that human behavior can be optimized if only the correct system is implemented.

History suggests otherwise.

Human beings remain stubbornly human.

Give them freedom and some will misuse it.

Give them authority and some will abuse it.

Give them wealth and some will become selfish.

Give them influence and some will become arrogant.

These observations are neither surprising nor particularly controversial.

What is surprising is how often we respond to this reality by becoming suspicious of freedom itself rather than suspicious of the human tendency to misuse it.

The temptation is understandable. Freedom creates uncertainty. Uncertainty creates anxiety. Anxiety creates demand for control. Control promises predictability.

At least in theory.

In practice, however, the pursuit of perfect control often produces its own pathologies. Systems become rigid. Creativity diminishes. Responsibility migrates upward into institutions. Citizens become increasingly accustomed to being managed rather than trusted.

At some point, a society may discover that it has become very good at producing compliance while becoming less effective at cultivating maturity.

That possibility concerns me because maturity is ultimately what free societies require. Self-government is built upon the assumption that ordinary people can be trusted with meaningful responsibility. Not perfectly. Not universally. Not without mistakes. But sufficiently often that freedom remains preferable to control.

The alternative is not merely more rules.

The alternative is a different understanding of human nature altogether.

One that gradually replaces trust with supervision.

Choice with management.

Citizenship with administration.

And while that process often begins with good intentions, it rarely ends where people imagine it will.

Which brings us back, oddly enough, to profanity.

Because profanity occupies a curious place in this discussion. It is a visible violation. It can be heard immediately. It can be identified instantly. It can be corrected, punished, censored, filtered, flagged, suspended, demonetized, or scolded before the sentence has even finished leaving someone’s mouth.

Character does not work that way.

A liar can speak politely.

A fraud can sound sincere.

A hypocrite can memorize every approved phrase in the language.

The truly consequential moral failures are often the least visible in real time.

Which may explain why societies sometimes become fascinated with the wrong things. We focus on what is easiest to observe rather than what is most important to understand. We become preoccupied with the words leaving a person’s mouth while paying far less attention to the motives driving their actions.

That is not a new problem.

If anything, it may be one of humanity’s oldest habits.

And it leads directly to the question that has been hiding beneath this entire essay.

What kind of goodness are we actually trying to build?

What Kind of Goodness Are We Trying to Build?

At the risk of disappointing both professional scolds and enthusiastic libertines, I should probably clarify something.

This essay is not an argument that words do not matter.

They do.

Language can be used carelessly. It can be used cruelly. It can be used to humiliate, intimidate, manipulate, and degrade. Anyone who has spent more than a few minutes among human beings understands that words possess power. They can wound. They can inspire. They can unite. They can divide.

The question has never been whether words matter.

The question is whether we have allowed our concern with words to eclipse our concern with character.

Those are not the same thing.

In fact, they occasionally point in opposite directions.

A person can possess flawless manners and terrible motives. Another can have rough edges, a colorful vocabulary, and a deeply reliable moral compass. Most adults eventually discover this through experience. The realization often arrives in moments of hardship, when life strips away appearances and reveals what people are actually made of.

The friend who sits with you in the emergency room matters more than the acquaintance who always says the right thing.

The coworker who tells you an uncomfortable truth matters more than the supervisor who delivers polished nonsense.

The neighbor who shows up with tools, food, or a spare generator during a crisis matters more than the person who merely posts the correct sentiments online.

When life becomes difficult, character suddenly becomes much easier to identify.

That observation may explain why so many people feel exhausted by modern public discourse. We live in an age that often treats symbolic violations as moral emergencies while treating genuine failures of character as secondary concerns. Entire controversies can erupt over a poorly chosen phrase while dishonesty, exploitation, cowardice, greed, and abuse continue quietly in the background.

This does not happen because people are stupid. It happens because symbols are easier. Symbols are visible, measurable, and increasingly subject to technological monitoring. Character is none of those things. Character requires judgment, context, patience, and discernment—all qualities that modern systems struggle to scale.

The temptation, therefore, is to focus on what can be measured.

The result is a culture that sometimes becomes extraordinarily skilled at policing appearances while remaining surprisingly uncertain about how to cultivate virtue.

That uncertainty becomes particularly obvious whenever profanity enters the conversation. Swearing has become one of society’s favorite moral decoys. It attracts attention because it is easy to identify and easy to condemn. Meanwhile, the much harder questions remain unanswered.

Is the person honest?

Are they trustworthy?

Do they keep their word?

Do they treat people fairly when nobody is watching?

Do they accept responsibility for their mistakes?

Do they show courage when courage costs something?

Those questions require patience.

They require observation.

They require wisdom.

A four-letter word requires only a reaction.

Perhaps that is why the distinction between profanity and harm matters so much.

Profanity and harm occupy very different moral categories. One may offend, irritate, or occasionally wound. The other destroys trust, fractures families, corrodes institutions, and leaves lasting damage in its wake. Treating them as equivalent serves neither morality nor common sense.

Conflating the two serves neither morality nor common sense.

It merely allows us to feel morally engaged while avoiding more difficult work.

And there is difficult work to be done.

Every generation inherits the same challenge. We must somehow teach people not merely how to follow rules but how to become trustworthy when no rule applies. We must encourage responsibility without drifting into authoritarianism. We must preserve freedom while recognizing that freedom inevitably includes the possibility of misuse.

That balancing act is neither simple nor comfortable.

It never has been.

The temptation will always exist to reduce morality to a checklist because checklists are easier than wisdom. Etiquette is easier than character. Compliance is easier than conscience.

Yet every meaningful virtue ultimately exists beyond the reach of enforcement. Rules can influence behavior, sometimes dramatically, but they cannot create the inner qualities that make moral behavior meaningful in the first place. A government can prohibit certain actions. An institution can establish expectations. A community can encourage particular norms. What none of them can do is manufacture integrity, compassion, courage, or kindness. Those qualities only become real when they’re chosen freely rather than performed under compulsion.

Which brings me back to Jesus.

Or more accurately, back to the absurd image of a young carpenter smashing his thumb with a hammer while Joseph raises an eyebrow from across the workshop.

Did it happen?

Probably not.

Maybe.

Who knows?

The historical evidence is disappointingly thin.

What matters is the question the image raises.

If given a choice between a man who never swore and a bastard who would sacrifice his comfort, his time, his money, and perhaps even his life to help another person, which one are we actually trying to produce?

Because that answer reveals far more about our understanding of morality than any debate about profanity ever could.

The truth is that colorful language can be funny. It can be expressive. It can communicate emotion with astonishing efficiency. Under the right circumstances, it can even be weirdly beautiful. Human beings have spent thousands of years inventing creative ways to tell one another exactly how they feel, and profanity appears to be one of the few cultural constants capable of surviving every attempt at eradication.

That does not mean we should be obnoxious.

We still share the world with other people.

Courtesy matters.

Context matters.

Consideration matters.

There is a meaningful difference between speaking honestly and going out of one’s way to be offensive. Mature adults should be capable of recognizing that distinction without requiring either Puritanism or tyranny to enforce it.

The goal is not to become less civil.

The goal is to become more honest about what civility can and cannot accomplish.

Because morality and etiquette make an interesting Venn diagram precisely because they’re not the same thing.

One teaches us how to behave in polite company.

The other determines who we become when polite company leaves the room.

Confusing the two may be one of the oldest mistakes human beings make.

And one of the most expensive.