Friday 15 August 2014

Apples

If a farmer grows an apple tree and then someone comes along, picks one of the apples, throws it at someone else, hitting them in the head and leaving a painful bruise is it fair for the victim to blame the farmer for growing the apple tree?
If perhaps someone picks another apple from the tree, poisons it and feeds it to their enemy causing them to die a painful death is it fair for the victim's family to blame the farmer for growing the apple tree?
After all, without the farmer growing the apple tree there are no apples with which to cause harm to others.
But what of all the other apples that weren't used to cause harm? The ones that were used to nourish a starving family? The ones that were used to earn enough money at market for the farmer to keep his own family from starvation? Do they not weigh in the farmer's favour against the ones used to cause harm?
The truth of the matter is not in the growing of the tree or the apple but in what use the tree and the apple is put to.
It is the same with words - where the apple is the word, the tree is the language it arose from.
Just as an apple can be used for good and bad so can words.
Whether you use a word in a negative or positive way, take responsibility for your action.
Whether you interpret a word in a negative or positive way, take responsibility for your action.
Furthermore, except in the most literal sense, if you use a word in a negative way but someone else uses that same word in a positive way, do not seek to stop it's positive use for that is unjust.
And, again except in the most literal sense, if you interpret a word in a negative way but someone else interprets that same word in a positive way, do not seek to stop it's positive interpretation for that is also unjust.
Above all, take responsibility for your actions - even if they are involuntary.