Asatru Folk Assembly - November 01, 2023


Speaking with Intent (from VNS Episode 13)

Hosted by
Steve McNallen
Mentioned
Alan Shakespeare Eil Skalagrimson Finn Wraith Macbeth
Taking an Oath is the Most Sacred Thing You Could Do (from VNS Episode 13) 11⧸1⧸23 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 69 - ᛜᛞᛟ

Episode Stats


Length

17 minutes

Words per minute

147.24

Word count

2,593

Sentence count

54

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we discuss the need to speak with a higher standard of discourse, and the benefits of swearing in public, and how we can improve our own language. All of us fall short of a certain standard of speech, and it s important that we learn to be better at it.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 fair enough uh trent asks law speaker allen could you please explain the importance of
00:00:16.800 elevating our discourse why do our spoken words matter so much
00:00:20.640 okay to continue my one man campaign against uh low speech you know if you
00:00:30.960 uh if you get the uh when you get this month's room stone you'll see my challenge
00:00:35.280 um for everybody to raise their discourse um it's called low speech for a reason higher discourse
00:00:42.560 is this is the noble speech it's the it's the idea that uh there and of course there are several
00:00:48.880 spiritual reasons for it as well uh if you believe as i do that galder changes the world what you
00:00:56.160 what you know is that your written that your spoken word enter it that's where your will
00:01:02.640 manifests into the world so when you speak with vulgarity when you speak profanely you are
00:01:10.400 profaning your world you are vulgarizing your environment so it's important for you to speak
00:01:17.680 with the with the highest level it's only been a few decades when 0.76
00:01:26.320 white people were known to curse as freely as we do now in public 0.63
00:01:34.560 and you know i remember years ago when it was said of various comedians that they couldn't work the 0.80
00:01:40.400 big rooms because they back then it was called working blue you know if you used sexual innuendo
00:01:46.800 and certainly foul language you know that you that you weren't even allowed in the big
00:01:51.840 in the in the big venues because it was seen as um to uh to be beneath polite society um and
00:02:02.960 and i don't think that we as also true although we certainly a lot of us come from that background
00:02:10.720 myself to some degree included where you know we've had to we we had to sort of portion ourselves
00:02:15.760 up through the school of hard knock certainly there's you know i'm not approved about these
00:02:21.920 sorts of things but the but the idea of it is to to always present your highest self knowing that
00:02:30.000 you know your grandmother is with you over your shoulder your your gods watch you not as closely
00:02:36.560 but they certainly know whether you are you know whether you are presenting the highest possible
00:02:45.280 like to those around you. So part of it certainly is just the personal, that you should always be
00:02:51.660 your highest and best self. And part of it is that you are, for most of us, for the rest of
00:02:59.540 the world out there, we are the only author, we have the only odeness that they know. And so if
00:03:05.080 they think of us as a bunch of foul-mouthed brigands, then they're not going to want to be
00:03:09.720 associated with that in any degree. But if they think of us as polite, well-spoken, helpful,
00:03:16.360 all the things that we really are and really should be, then we'll begin to attract
00:03:24.120 more and more as we have over the last few years.
00:03:27.800 So it's both the sales pitch and a personal means of displaying integrity.
00:03:33.800 and i think that's very important um linguistically i think i fall short with foul language sometimes
00:03:43.640 and alan is alan is sure to correct me on that uh frequently and it's much appreciated i agree 100
00:03:49.960 i uh i got loose with it when i was in the bar industry bouncing and in that environment it was
00:03:55.160 just so so commonplace and i did i worked in the bar as well so you know again i just i just got
00:04:02.680 in the habit well i so one time i ended up taking my mother to a doctor's appointment on a
00:04:09.640 like a saturday morning and i had been working the bar friday night and didn't get much sleep and i
00:04:16.440 just i was still in that mode when i was at the doctor's office and i was with my mother at the
00:04:22.840 doctor's office just dropping f-bombs here and there left and right like it was nothing and all
00:04:27.320 of a sudden i heard myself and i was so embarrassed and i had to apologize to the doctor and it really
00:04:33.800 made me look at myself critically for because for a second there i you know heard the words
00:04:38.520 coming out of my mouth and it was so out of place and for a lot of us it's just you can have that
00:04:43.320 one moment of realization and you know you can snap at least absolutely begin the course begin
00:04:49.880 begin the course correction well one of the things is when you try to hold yourself to a higher
00:04:56.360 standard whatever that may be if it means fixing your language or holding your head up and looking
00:05:01.960 people in the eye when you talk to them or speaking with a higher level of discourse using
00:05:06.760 you know using high value words instead of uh commonalities using you know proper language
00:05:15.400 instead of i mean you can still be scathing and insulting if you need to with in a in a more clean
00:05:20.680 and certainly more creative manner um but those kind of things when you act a certain way when
00:05:27.000 you dress a certain way and you try to project something it fundamentally changes how you how
00:05:32.440 you do things you carry yourself different you have a different not only do other people respect
00:05:37.400 you differently and more but you respect yourself differently and more and uh i've seen that a lot
00:05:44.360 in the afa as we've tried to tighten up on some of those things
00:05:51.640 Finn Wraith asks, is there anything in the myths that said we shouldn't curse?
00:05:57.880 I think the idea that we shouldn't curse because it makes our believers look bad is only if the
00:06:04.640 person we're talking to sees swearing as bad. A couple of thoughts on that, and I'm sure Alan's
00:06:10.580 got thoughts on that as well. His first point that Alan made that I think stands with this,
00:06:16.920 when we the root of magical act is incantation it's speaking things into existence the act of
00:06:29.280 speaking is what takes thoughts and ideas from the privacy of your head and manifest them into
00:06:37.680 the world into our shared space i think you certainly want more good things than negative
00:06:43.260 things when you're doing that yeah you know speech you're right in a sense that speech
00:06:49.660 only has context based upon um meanings that we uh that we ascribe to words sorry my daughter is
00:06:59.020 has broken in my office here and is causing some chaos um no but you know our words only
00:07:06.460 have meanings based on the meanings we've assigned to them but we can navel gaze about
00:07:11.020 that all day at the end of the day our words do have meanings and there is a there is a
00:07:19.260 perception that happens and so much of our speech isn't just about um the one person we're conversing
00:07:27.660 with there's almost always there's people looking on there's an audience whether we know they're
00:07:33.740 there or not and they make judgments about us they make judgments about how we look about how
00:07:38.220 we speak about how we present ourselves in general and i think it's also true that you know
00:07:45.820 a couple things like the lore we don't think of as a comprehensive source anyway you know there's
00:07:51.500 not a list of thou shalt nots because it's just an example for the way that we live and there's
00:07:56.300 There's certainly not any place in the lore where Egil Scalagrimson, you know, curses at people, except with the intent of casting a curse on them.
00:08:10.200 And that's really what the, you know, that's the thing of it, you know, is if, you know, and I don't even like to use examples, but, you know, to like the, like the GD remote controls lost.
00:08:23.980 Okay. I don't want the all father to curse my remote control because it happens to be missing right now. You know, that's just idle speech. The, and the other thing that while I was formulating these ideas, lo, these many years ago, I spoke with a guy who's one of the leading scholars on the Anglo-Saxon tribal era.
00:08:47.580 And he confirmed that the Anglo-Saxons would, during that pre-Christian era, would not have cursed an object because they think their words have intent.
00:09:00.780 They wouldn't waste like this manifesting power of the web of weird and use it to, you know, because their tire went flat or, you know, because the wheel came off.
00:09:12.880 That's just not, you know, that's not worthy of that sort of that level of discourse.
00:09:18.960 So it's so it has both the practical and the spiritual aspect.
00:09:23.180 You know, and certainly if you're alone with your buddy and, you know, and he's, you know, but he's going to he's also going to notice that you're speaking in the higher tone, which doesn't mean that you have to be a prude about it.
00:09:34.600 I mean, you can you know, you can speak to your audience.
00:09:37.160 Absolutely.
00:09:38.680 Well, and so it's a goal.
00:09:41.760 Well, I think what you're saying, though, about intent is very important.
00:09:44.400 And I think that comes into polite speech as well.
00:09:47.660 I think when you wish someone luck that that has a meaning.
00:09:53.180 and it's gotten to where it's just a figure of speech now but we should hold ourselves to intent
00:09:59.580 and if you wish someone luck you genuinely should be willing to break off a chunk of your luck and
00:10:05.740 grant it to them um you know when you say you're welcome after somebody says thank you are they
00:10:11.820 welcome or do they grossly inconvenience you and you don't want them to do it again don't say
00:10:16.780 you're welcome unless you mean it um i think all of that is is very important the other thing is
00:10:24.620 despite whatever you know philosophizing we want to do cursing's bad and you look crass
00:10:35.500 and low class when you do it you look much better when you speak elegantly and with
00:10:42.060 more respectful verbiage. And it's just over the last 30 or 40, 50 years that crass low culture
00:10:49.680 has become predominant. And it used to be that the whole goal of civilization was to
00:10:56.000 try to elevate people out of crass low culture, you know, whereas now it's been celebrated,
00:11:02.220 you know. So much of the meaning of Arianism is being noble. And not just being noble,
00:11:10.360 but shining with nobility and that means how you present and you project that nobility holding
00:11:15.480 yourself to a higher standard is always better than holding yourself to a lower standard and
00:11:20.920 i'm sure we can come up with intellectualized arguments to try to make make it okay in certain
00:11:26.600 contexts but we're always better served holding ourselves to something higher and something better
00:11:31.720 libre algies von gel uh are you sure about what you describe as higher language being able to
00:11:43.460 properly use the f word in haiti and kennings requires a keen intelligence yeah um really
00:11:51.220 crass gangster rap is often very impressive in its rhyme scheme and its intelligence but
00:11:59.920 it's not what we aim for and it's not our target. There's ways to be very artful in
00:12:08.880 rhyming things with curse words, but we're better than that. We know we're better than that.
00:12:16.080 We could hit those same insults without, you know, scraping the bottom of the vocabulary.
00:12:23.700 There are a lot of adjectives out there. You know, it's something, and I don't want to assume
00:12:28.700 anymore because in 2022 i can't assume this but you know i'm tempted to say you wouldn't say that
00:12:35.740 stuff around your parents or your grandparents why not and if you wouldn't say it around your
00:12:40.940 parents and your grandparents why are you saying it in front of our gods and folk and i think it
00:12:47.980 bears consideration and if you would say those things around your parents and your grandparents
00:12:53.340 shame on you
00:12:58.700 Sierra asks, why should we not use weird and strange, peculiar instead?
00:13:11.700 Was this already asked?
00:13:12.700 It was not already asked.
00:13:13.700 Alan, pontificate.
00:13:14.700 Okay.
00:13:15.700 This is part two of my verbalization manifestation.
00:13:22.700 The word weird, the English, the current usage of it originates from Shakespeare, the weird sisters in Macbeth.
00:13:33.640 But when Shakespeare used that in the play Macbeth, the three weird sisters stirring the pot, the people in that era of the 1600s would have known they were still living in the era when weird to them meant the same thing, much the same thing as the karma.
00:13:54.200 You know, it's the oar logs, so they would know that the, because they were so, living
00:14:01.280 so much still in the folkway, the weird sisters were the sisters who made weird in the, in 0.83
00:14:08.120 the pots. 0.72
00:14:09.120 You know, we think of them as weavers, but the, but, but certainly the, you know, stirring
00:14:14.500 the pot, stirring the well of weird, you know, was very much the same thing.
00:14:24.200 but that word then just over the eons of usage came to mean anything that was strange odd unusual 0.81
00:14:39.360 you know look at those weird people you know look at those weird women up there on the stage
00:14:44.200 stirring those pots yeah they are the weird women they're the weird sisters so oh then this other
00:14:48.900 stuff is weird because it's strange odd unusual but weird is a holy word weird our weird is the
00:14:55.480 manifestation of the uh of our luck it's very much akin with karma it's sort of like karma mixed more
00:15:05.000 with intent you know we make our own weird by the way that we work in the world so i you know i try
00:15:13.880 to steer folks off using that word weird in the profane or vulgar sense. Both because it is a holy
00:15:21.980 word and because by steering off that word, you can think of all the other 72 synonyms that mean
00:15:32.520 strange, unusual, coincidental. Now, at the same time, that's not to say that there aren't things
00:15:39.580 that are strange or coincidental that aren't weird.
00:15:43.620 I mean, some of those things are weird.
00:15:46.220 You know, I was coming back from Panama City one day and, you know,
00:15:50.900 ran into one of my good friends out there who was with his club.
00:15:57.200 And, you know, so that was weird.
00:15:58.760 That was a weird coincidence.
00:16:02.540 But weird things that happen are very few and far between.
00:16:06.660 you know not every dog standing on his front paws is weird that's just good training you know so
00:16:15.440 it's just part of speaking mindfully you know weird is not everything weird is a whole weird
00:16:22.940 is a holy place it's also really good balance if a dog can stand on his front feet that's pretty
00:16:28.980 impressive it is got a good owner you know or it's just it may just be inherently a very
00:16:36.540 special dog with good balance it may also not have back legs um that said no i think that's
00:16:52.540 really important and it's about the intent in speech not only is it wrong to use holy words
00:16:59.020 casually but it also trains us to recognize when something truly is weird
00:17:07.100 and that's important okay now you've added to my lexicon there there you go number 14 why you
00:17:13.820 shouldn't say weird so yes if we put our best foot forward in everything we do we're always better
00:17:28.540 off anything else is just an excuse to not try that hard and i i don't mean that rudely that's
00:17:35.180 It's just very much what it is.