Dangerous Words

Words create culture. We create words, speaking them again and again until they become culture.

The culture we have is the culture we agreed to. 

This truth is both depressing and liberating. 

Depressing because if we want to change the culture we need to take responsibility for the one we have and our collective collusion in its creation. And liberating for exactly the same reason.

I have written many times about Little Atrocities – micro transgressions that we step over time and again until they become normalised. 

Dangerous words are little atrocities.

We do not slide into fascism, or indeed neoliberalism, in one big step. We agree to one thousand smaller steps that make the final step innocuous.

Dangerous words are not spoken once. They are spoken and repeated, by those in power, until we are numb to them. 

Photo taken December 11th 2022