"A bad word whispered will echo a hundred miles." Chinese proverb

"Can't we all just get along?" -- Rodney King

Where I come from, "PC" ranks high on the list of important character traits. It's viewed as a sign of a good upbringing. It indicates a balanced, collected, well-adjusted and self-assured personality type.

"Treat people the way you would want to be treated," is something that my parents drilled into me and my six siblings from the moment the "brat" in each of us began to emerge.

Of course, they were right. And it was a lesson that many of us had hoped the world's societies would have long ago absorbed. Whether it's a high-stepping, self-centered, trust-fund blue-blood, or a disabled homeless vet on a street corner begging for change, everybody wants to be treated with dignity and respect. That's a point I've heard made by practically everyone I know virtually every time they feel that they've been denied such treatment in one way or another.

Perhaps that's why to me, the initials "PC" have always stood for "Polite" and "Courteous."

But -- as events that have occurred not only in San Bernardino, California and Paris, France, but throughout the world have luridly illustrated -- the "polite society" that some of us have dreamed about perhaps since the dawn of the proverbial Age of Aquarius, has lost much of the ground upon which it should by now be flourishing. Today "PC" has a different meaning. Being labeled "Politically Correct" is a harsh put-down; a derisive sobriquet; an indictment; a pejorative portrayal indicative of the presence of debilitating flaws within one's personal make-up which would render it difficult, if not impossible for such persons to succeed in a harsh world that will always be unfair.

Currently, many of President Obama's critics are offended by the president's refusal to offend all Muslims through use of the term radical "Islamic" terrorists to describe a comparatively tiny cult of Middle Eastern killers who offer convoluted misinterpretations of Islam as the basis for committing gruesome atrocities. Perhaps Obama's critics believe that abandoning any pretense of "political correctness" would bring the current turmoil in the Middle East to a screeching halt.

As it is, political correctness -- based on how it tends to be applied -- sits on the same, fluid, wholly expedient platform upon which both the legal profession and the media also rest. The fact is, among its harshest critics, political correctness tends to be an exercise in selective disdain. Everyone loathes lawyers until they need one; and most of us hate the media until we have a story that needs to be told.

It's the same with the anti-PC crowd. Their antipathy for PC seems based more on exonerating their own interior prejudices than on principled disdain. A "PC mentality" effectively denies legitimacy to the appropriateness of calling a "spade a spade" -- if you get my drift. Yet many of those most disdainful of PC don't seem to understand that it's a two-way street. Typically, an element of expediency is revealed when the target of harsh words is an individual or institution that critics of PC speech cherish. If the child molesting Catholic priest operating from the church they attend were to be correctly described as a pedophile, the dimensions of the outrage that would follow would be overwhelming.

An example perhaps more relevant to today's headlines might be the willingness by many who accuse Obama of political correctness on Islamic extremism to themselves engage in politically correct soft-peddling when it comes to politically-motivated acts of terror carried out by right-wing extremists. Instead of correctly calling them right-wing domestic terrorists, they obscure the ideological bent of self-proclaimed racists like Dylann Roof by bestowing the label of "mentally disturbed" upon them.

Offended by efforts not to offend

I recall having joined my local Boys Club before so-called "political correctness" necessitated its name be updated in order to accurately reflect the inclusiveness that resulted once girls were permitted to join. I was about 13 at the time yet I still vividly recall the tremendous impact that a message displayed in the Club on a sign hanging above a water fountain had on my way of thinking:

"Cursing is an ignorant mind trying to forcibly express itself."

What's the difference here?

If you are stridently anti-PC, you might ask what's wrong with cursing like a drunken sailor around a bunch of 10, 11, or 12 year olds, and then demanding that anyone who is offended by your refusal to engage in political correctness to "close their fuckin' ears?"

Going further, how many of us today deliberately cultivate a demeanor that's so irrationally unfiltered that it's become relatively easy to look straight into the eyes of a mother holding her newborn and say, "Damn that's a fuckin' ugly kid?" and expect to be congratulated for "keeping it real?"

Perhaps more than one might imagine (looking at you, Donald Trump).

Let's go even further.

Why should you worry that those of Middle-Eastern descent despise the term "camel jockey" or that Native Americans loathe the term "Redskins?" After all, if you don't see these descriptions of your fellow human beings as offensive why should they? What's wrong with a person of "normal" intelligence deriding the mentally disabled as "retards?" What's the problem with the dehumanizing of undocumented immigrants, describing them as illegal "aliens" as if they're from another planet? If you are Irish, are you cool with the term paddy wagon? If you're an Italian, how does the term "wop" work for you?

For others, how about:

Wetback?

Cripple?

Chink?

Honky?

Bulldagger?

n-word?

f*ggot?

Sand n-word?

Towel Head?

It's truly remarkable that in this day and age some people are actually offended by the efforts of others not to offend. Yet, for many folks, being urged to avoid the use of the epithets described above is a shocking example of "PC run amok" and an intrusive affront to their right of "free speech." This sentiment falls in line with one of the most bizarre absurdities of current anti-PC sentiment I've heard of late -- the assertion that people afraid to use the N-word are actually more racist than those who actually say that word.

That, in a nutshell seems to me to be at the core of the disdain some feel about political correctness. It deprives them of the option to freely call people names; to deride them and make fun of them in either an overt or round-about fashion. For some reason they seem to feel better when instead of saying "Good morning; have a nice day" on what might be a particularly bad morning for them, they are free to push civility aside and say "Get the f*ck out of my way."

Is this the direction in which humanity is headed as we push aside common decency to slog down a brazen path leading to a place of legitimized hate speech and demonized civility? Rather than evolving in a direction of greater enlightenment, the human species seems to be de-evolving into tribes of angry, inconsiderate, emotionally-controlled savages, desperate to show each other just how tactlessly hard-core we can be.

Harsh Words Matter

British poetess Pearl Strachan Hurd once observed that "words have more power than atom bombs." And indeed, any number of studies has indicated that from a meta-physical standpoint, harsh words -- described as "verbal abuse" -- do in fact matter. According to research by Martin Teicher, a neuro-pharmacist and Director of Developmental Biopsychiatry at McLean Hospital in Waltham, Massachusetts, verbal abuse, particularly during childhood, can have a viscerally negative effect, impacting both the structure and function of the brain. Teicher asserts that parental verbal abuse, for example, can result in outcomes similar to "those associated (with) persons who witness domestic violence or non-familial sexual abuse."

Unfortunately, the positive message conveyed in the familiar schoolyard chant: "sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me" seems completely undermined by Friedrich Nietzsche's supposition that "only that which never ceases to hurt stays in the memory." Indeed, "that which never ceases to hurt" is not something that can be limited to physical pain.

Today, the seemingly endless series of ghastly terror-related events around the world seem to confirm that human society is terrifyingly close to having reached its nadir, the depths of which appear increasingly dystopian. Dreams of living in a Zen Garden have succumbed to the bleak reality of life in a glass slaughterhouse which is being steadily chipped away by verbal as well as physical sticks and stones.

Surely it would be naive to think that the day-to-day practice of basic civility by a few individuals can singularly eradicate mankind's penchant for inflicting scornful behavior upon itself. But this application of the "think globally; act locally" mindset can be the basis for a start, becoming -- as the saying goes --the "small step for man" that can collectively form the "giant leap" which mankind sorely needs right now if we are ever to develop societies in which everyone "treats each other the way we all want to be treated."

But such prospects seem unlikely. Our future is a vast uncertainty which resonates behind us because of our prior deeds. The only certainty is the absurdity of what's to come. Paris and San Bernardino, for all their incomprehensible horror, represent the culmination of the kind of events which are manifested within and across cultures that choose to marginalize civility. Prior to Paris, that nation's previous "culmination" was the self-inflicted "danse macabre" which is easily identified by just two words: "Charlie Hebdo."

Of course, there have been many more. Other both highly-reported and under-documented "culminations" have occurred in Colorado Springs; Bamako, Mali; Charleston, South Carolina; Yola, Nigeria; New York, New York; Tel Aviv, Israel; Baltimore, Maryland; Ferguson, Missouri; Torez, Ukraine; Damascus, Syria; and on the West Bank -- places everywhere.

How, when, and where the next "culmination" will materialize is anyone's guess.