Tag: god

Are you perverse or perverted?

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I thought I knew the difference between the words ‘perverse’ and ‘perverted’ until I consulted my 2004 Oxford English Dictionary

Brace yourself. I’m about to have a rant (before I do, as a highly trained journalist and consummate professional, rest assured that I do not rant unless I am 100% certain I have my facts right).

Is it just we writers who get upset when people get words wrong, or is it an affliction felt by regular mortals too? There are certain words that, when used in a misplaced context or misspoken, make me want to scream.

It is even more annoying when the mistakes are uttered by people who should know better. On car journeys, I entertain myself by listening to audiobooks and recently had chosen a new one about serial killers (as you do). The author, a ‘leading TV psychological expert’, narrated it herself and kept referring to the evil perpetrators as ‘perverse’, describing in unnecessary and gratuitous detail their ‘perverse’ habits.

Did she mean that they behaved in a way that was opposite to the norm for your regular serial killer? Was she going to say that instead of killing their quarry, they treated them to a fancy dinner and a family movie before setting them free? Because that would certainly be perverse for a serial killer.

Of course she didn’t. The word she should have used was ‘perverted’.

One of the reasons this particularly annoyed me was because it was being read from a published book, that literary thing with pages and sentences and such like, and which presumably has had a number of wordy professionals like editors and proofreaders look over the manuscript lots of times; the kinds of people who earn a living from the written and spoken word. And yet, she used it on so many occasions that by the end of the journey, every time she read out ‘perverse’ I was shouting ‘YOU MEAN PERVERTED!’ very loudly at my car’s audio system. Thankfully, it was a cold day and I had my windows shut, otherwise the ears of innocent pedestrians could have been harmed.

To understand the difference between the two words, this scenario might help. Imagine your Tory-sympathising granny unexpectedly decides to vote Labour. She is not offended when you accuse her of being perverse. She voted Labour, which you would never have expected her to do in a million years, and therefore her action is totally perverse.

If you then ask your granny why she voted perversely, and she replies it is because of a scandal involving a Tory MP, a nappy and some whipped cream, then her real reason for voting that way is because she thinks the Tory MP is a pervert who has done something perverted with a nappy and some whipped cream.

Perverse is when something happens that is the opposite to expectations, while perverted is something that is sexually depraved.

Isn’t it?

Approaching the end of this column, I remembered the first thing that I was taught at journalism school – to never assume anything and always check your facts. Therefore, being the aforementioned highly trained journalist and consummate professional, I decided I’d better do just that, even though I knew that I was 100% correct. I turned to my most trusted resource, my 2004 version of the Oxford English Dictionary which offered two definitions of the word ‘perverse’. The first read as follows: ‘Showing a deliberate and obstinate desire to behave unacceptably. > sexually perverted.’

Oh.

Have you lived for years with the certainly of knowing something to be 100% correct, only to be proven wrong beyond all doubt years later by a source you absolutely trust? And, because you can’t bring yourself to believe it, you try to convince yourself you are still right by consulting other trusted sources, only to be proven wrong time and again? And then do you slowly begin to understand what it must be like to be an advisor to Donald Trump?

And finally, do you realise, after writing almost a full column, that all you can do is admit that you were wrong and that your rant is completely unjustified? I suppose I owe an apology to the unnamed famous TV psychologist and to her audiobook’s editors then, although I shall not be listening to any more of it.

But here’s a thing. Does it mean I have just written a column that has ended up being totally perverse?

I’d love to hear from you about your stories, memories, opinions and ideas for columns. Use the ‘Contact’ button on the top right of this page to get in touch.

This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 25th and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 23rd Oct 2024

Big Little Lies

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I’d like to thank reader Beryl for getting in touch in response to my column about assisted dying. Judging by her long and impassioned letter, I am guessing that Beryl is a fundamental Christian, and one who is genuinely concerned for the destiny of my soul.

According to Beryl, “We were never meant to die! Eternity was to have been right here, right now. But because of Satan’s trickery and our following after him instead of following after God…We’ve shut Him out of our schools and everywhere else (even some churches don’t preach the truth as recorded in the Bible). We also allow the murder of millions of unborn babies.” Beryl believes that even if a human is suffering terribly at the end of their life, God is still by their side and (if they follow God) the good Lord will soon welcome them into Heaven.

By the same token then, if they are a Satan-following non-believer, they will have no need to pack their Big Coat for their final journey, because where they are going it is going to get very, very warm.

It baffles me that a fair number of seemingly intelligent and rational people still believe that God created the earth in a remarkably productive seven days. This is despite the fact that since the old and new testaments were written (between about 600BC and 80AD) our knowledge of science, nature and how the world works has come on a fair bit.

People like Beryl are very hard to debate with because their belief in an all-powerful Christian god is unshakable and any argument you offer against it, no matter how much is based on indisputable scientific fact, is batted away with the explanation that it is God’s work or God’s will. Any bad stuff happening in the world is because, as Beryl, says, “…Satan is, as yet, still ‘prowling the earth to seek whom he may kill and destroy’.” So Beryl’s god bears no responsibility, and all non-believers bring about all this horrible stuff because our faithlessness allows Satan to run riot. Paedophiles and murderers, cancer and fatal accidents, floods and pestilence, war and famine – all would evaporate if only we all truly believed in God. Simple!

It is what is known as blind faith – the belief in something without question. It brings to mind scary people like Donald Trump, who has been proven to lie over and again, but is one of those people who will repeat and repeat the lie with such zeal and conviction that his followers believe it, and then they repeat it, and so it goes on. Having done a bit of research into the psychology of lying (which means I am now an expert) I have discovered there are six categories of liar (thank you to the Newport Institute for the info).

Some might call Trump a pathological liar, that is someone who doesn’t even realise they are lying, and will not admit to it, even if presented with evidence to prove it. They repeat the lie so often that it becomes the truth in their own head. Pathological liars have often suffered some form of trauma in the past or have a mental health disorder and the lies are their coping mechanism.

Then there is the prolific liar, someone who lies for the heck of it and does not feel a jot of guilt about it. Don’t confuse them with the compulsive liar, who is a bit like an addict, in as much as they get an adrenaline rush each time they lie. The habitual liar does so to save their own skin because it is easier and more convenient than telling the truth, and will get them off the hook, at least for now. Then we have the occasional liar, who lies at times to make themselves look or feel good, or to get a result they want (I think we may all have been guilty of that at least once in our lives!). The best liar to be is of course the white liar, who tells a mild porkie in order to protect another one’s feelings. What a good liar the white liar is.

Good enough to get into Heaven?

I’d love to hear from you about your opinions, memories and ideas for columns. Use the ‘Contact’ button on the top right of this page to get in touch. This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 10th and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 8th May 2024.