In light of the “me too” movement I feel the need to weigh in. Not because I have been directly abused but because I have been affected by the downward decline of our collective morals. I too am troubled by the recent allegations of sexual abuse and am grateful there is a united cry to weed our society of its debasing harm. I do believe that all societal problems this big have a smaller, root problem that needs to be addressed. So if we really want to do a global cleanse, it needs to start with the smaller, less obvious trend—the degrading words we use.
I make my claim based on an interesting study by Maseru Emoto of the affects of words on water crystals, and on the Broken Windows Theory by James Wilson and George Kelling.
Because there wasn’t tangible evidence that words had an affect on people, Maseru Emoto did some experiments with water. He wrote various positive words like “love”, “thank you”, and negative words such “fool”, “kill” on bottles with distilled water. He left those bottles with the attached words undisturbed for the whole night and on the next day froze the water. Then Maseru Emoto observed the crystals of the water under a microscope. The results were amazing and revealing. The crystals from the positive words were beautifully clear, symmetrical shapes whereas the crystals from the negative words were shaped chaotically and an ugly grey.
With this finding of the positive or negative affect of words on water in a bottle, think about the negative affect that words can have on our bodies when they are made up of 70% of water. So it is possible that everything we say and hear has a strong influence on ourselves, on people around us, and on the whole environment.
I believe the Broken Windows Theory also has relevance to the words we use. This theory proposed by Wilson and Kelling in 1982 used the broken windows as a metaphor for disorder within neighborhoods in that it linked disorder and incivility within a community to subsequent occurrences of serious crime. The most notable application of the theory was in New York City where they started to crack down on panhandling, disorderly behaviors, public drinking, etc. and discovered that the serious crimes diminished.
Could it be that if we were to start a crack down on eradicating negative words, especially negative words with sexual connotation, we could put a dent in the amount of more serious sexual violations. Could it be that if we eliminated the kind of words that adversely affect the water in our bodies, and replace those words with positive, uplifting words that we could create a more uplifting environment that would displace the negative affect on the water that is pulsing through our bodies.
We can no longer ignore the negative words we use that have a negative sexual message. It is time we take a stand and make a change. The word that has become so prevalent in our society has to be eradicated if we want to even hope to change sexual abuse. Join me in taking a stand against abuse in words and in deeds.
