The Babylonian scholar and rabbi, Hillel, warned us about 400 BC to guard our thoughts because they become our words, and then, in turn, our words become our actions, our actions become our habits, our habits become our character and our character becomes our destiny.
I suggest that your words are an essential link in that chain of manifestation and have created the destiny that you and when it comes to chiropractic, the profession in Australia and around the world is now experiencing.
I suggest that the time has come for us to clean up our words. Kenneth Hudson from ‘The Jargon of Professions’ stated, “If one wished to kill a profession, to remove its cohesion and strength, the most effective way would be to forbid the use of its characteristic language.”
As a reminder as to how important every word we say is the advice given me by the late, great chiropractor Dr. DeJarnette comes to mind. His statement to me has stuck with me through my professional career. He said, “remember boy, words kill more people than bullets”.
Think of the millions of lives that have and are being lost because of the utterances of dictators, despots and duly elected governments throughout recent history alone. Think about the language of western medicine and look at the epidemic of death and suffering that it is creating. Think about the loss of human potential because people in chiropractic practices aren’t getting the complete meaning of what chiropractic has to offer because of the words that we utter.
Many chiropractors dismiss any discussion on the correctness of chiropractic terminology as “mere semantics”. These people favour the more acceptable “medical equivalents” to express the specifics of their profession. They suppose that language doesn’t make a difference to our existence so lets not rock the boat by using the chiropractic lexicon. They suggest that to be accepted by medicine we must drop our language and speak theirs. In fact, I believe that the reverse is true.
The ire of another duly constituted and structured profession as in medicine is justifiably indignant that another profession, chiropractic has commandeered its lexicon. Chiropractic has taken on many words that are unique to the practice of medicine in the hope that medicine will understand our separate and distinct profession better – good try, but not only is it dishonest, it doesn’t work.
Over the next few weeks I will discuss some of the words that have diluted chiropractic, the words that have helped to remove its cohesion and strength. We will explore words like Treatment, Patient, Diagnosis, Symptoms, Manipulation, Paediatrics, Geriatrics and Clinic to name a few.
One thing is for sure, the more we use the language of another profession over ours the more we will create a destiny that is not ours.
We will kill our profession.
