Should

I am beginning to hate the word shall (and its derivatives) more and more. You may wonder how can anyone hate words. People just do. Like people who hate expletives like fuck, I hate the word shall. To me, shall must join the ranks of dirty words.

I refer to the sense that denotes “expressing a demand or assertion”. For example, “you shall not kill” and “you shall listen to me”. The word stinks. It clearly gives the user the power to demand something out of the intended recipient. Whoever gave the user that power then? Is it on a first-come-first-served basis?

And then there’s the sense that reeks of expectations, and public expectations at that. For example, “You should give up your seat” and “you should be nice to your classmates”. Even if I don’t want to, because should is used, I am expected to do as told. Such demands get constantly renewed and propagated by others, making the demand end up being regarded as a rule, or truth of some sort. Fundamentally, it’s public demand and expectation, nothing more than that. Why should the majority then be allowed to ennoble the role of these demands?

So I hate the word. There is no perceivable rational reason why every person must be subject to the same set of expectations. There is only that small universal set of expectations we can safely assume of everyone. A very small set. Allow me to illustrate:

P1. All humans eat.
P2. We are humans.
Q. Hence we eat.

But can we say this:

P1. All children learn the multiplication table by 6 years old.
P2. A child who does not learn the multiplication table by 6 is stupid.
P3. You did not learn the multiplication table by 6.
Q. Hence you are stupid.

All it takes is a lame blow to P1 to kill this seemingly logical yet fallacious argument. So how is it fair to use the word should in terms of what someone must know just because other people know it?

To me, shall is a dirty word. Supposing there is a set of words that are dirtier than the rest. Words like god, love and justice must then join this set of words because these three elements have singularly caused more conflict and hence death in history than any other words. So words like fuck and god share the same rank to me. And no one SHALL take this belief away from me.