The Two Forbidden Words

The two words one should excise from one's vocabulary

Communication is an art, not a science. But we can nevertheless apply certain scientific principles to the practice of that art, which is to say that we can observe existing patterns, formulate hypotheses about the way those patterns reliably play out, and then test those hypotheses.

Being more a student of social interaction than a participant by nature and nurture alike, I have done this and I have determined that a considerable amount of social conflict is caused by the use of just two words.

The first conflict-inspiring word is “why”. While there is a school of thought that teaches a) there are no stupid questions, b) all curiosity is merited and must be assuaged, and c) all questions are innocent and posed in good faith, this is an objectively stupid school and all three of its assumptions are observably incorrect.

First, many, if not most, questions are stupid. I find them particularly intolerable when the nature of the question reveals that the questioner doesn’t understand the basic issue underlying the specifics concerning which he is asking the question. Second, not all curiosity is merited, and third, many, if not most, questions are not asked in good faith.

The reason that “why” is conflict-inspiring is because in many contexts, it elevates the asker to the position of a supervising authority. Perhaps the worst form of it is posed in a rhetorical form: “why did you do X the way you did?” That is always annoying to everyone, because it is both an interrogatory demand for justification as well as an implied criticism; what it really means in most circumstances is “why didn’t you do X the way I would have done it?”

The rhetorical Why is particularly popular with women.

I generally just ignore these rhetorical “why” questions, because they aren’t actually questions and the asker seldom has any genuine interest in the explanation. In the event an explanation is offered, it’s usually a prelude to an argument about how another option preferred by the asker would have been superior, which is exactly the sort of pointless and stupid discussion that I prefer to avoid. Fortunately, ignoring the question usually suffices to stop the entire process before it starts.

But, of course, simply not asking “why” would have done so in the first place. Which brings us to the second conflict-inspiring word.