Words of Power
Words of Power: How Language's Subtle Cues Can Reinforce, and Be Reimagined
When I recently corrected my young son's grammar—explaining that the past tense of "win" isn't "winned" but "won"—something gave me pause. I found myself adding, "It means you beat the others," and immediately felt uncomfortable with what I was teaching.
This small moment revealed something profound: our language contains a striking contradiction. The English language equates "winning" with "beating" others—a linguistic connection that reveals a deep cultural confusion. To "win" is etymologically connected to desire and pleasure (from Old English "winnan" meaning "to strive" and Proto-Germanic *wennaz for "pleasure"). But to "beat" others (from Old English "beatan" meaning "to strike repeatedly") carries the literal echoes of physical violence.
This creates a fundamental contradiction: resorting to physical violence isn't winning at all—it's failing. When we must use force, it means our higher capacities have broken down. Yet our language conflates these opposites, teaching us that domination equals success.
These aren't neutral word choices. They're artifacts of cultural evolution that reveal a confused worldview where competition naturally exists—winning and losing are part of life—but where the methods of achieving victory have become tangled with concepts of physical domination.
This isn't to suggest that competition itself is problematic or that everyone deserves recognition regardless of effort. We should have challenges that push us to excel, and we should work to achieve moments of winning—especially in sports and in life's meaningful pursuits. The issue isn't with having winners and losers; it's with equating winning with brutality or domination. Competition can be a healthy driver that helps us grow, but the final word for victory should never equate to subjugation or violence.
English itself is a mutt of a language—a fusion of Germanic, Romance, and other linguistic traditions. In its hybrid nature, it preserves connections to ancient cultures that might otherwise have been lost. Earlier trade routes now being discovered—blue beads from Egypt found in Middle Eastern and Germanic regions dating before 2000 BCE—suggest profound implications for our understanding of cultural exchange. These artifacts challenge the narrative of "recent" reintroductions that gave us modern language and traditions in America, where celebrating Christmas was illegal in the 1600’s because of its recognized pagan origins. The celebration of Christmas comes back to us many times over in this discussion.
Beyond Strength and Dominance
Humans are neither the strongest nor the smartest creatures on Earth in absolute terms. Our supposed evolutionary triumph is called into question when we observe our collective behavior—poisoning our planet and ourselves through relentless consumption and competition.
This is hardly the best culmination of society and civilization.
Right now, the way we're behaving collectively resembles a cancer on Earth. This isn't to say we are a cancer—because we can change. The best quality of anything that survives is the ability to adapt. Humans are remarkably versatile scavengers, able to eat many different foods and thrive in varied climates. We have great instincts and, at our best, the capacity to override those instincts when necessary.
We've hit an asymptote in our development—we are the first generation expected not to live longer than our parents. Our short-sighted approaches have led to systemic problems, from food systems designed for profit rather than nutrition to healthcare models focused on intervention rather than prevention. We succeeded in the World Wars by marshaling women into the workforce, doubling our efficiencies, but we also created protocols that have backfired—like food engineering originally meant to help underweight military recruits gain weight, which has contributed to obesity epidemics that now limit military recruitment.
We simplified complex science to "calories in, calories out," using the wrong unit of measurement entirely. Like confusing speed with velocity, we missed that energy has direction, not just magnitude. The quality of calories matters. Our old mentality of processed foods—canola oil, refined sugars, products designed by former tobacco scientists to be addictive rather than nutritious—may have generated profit in a capitalist society but fails to serve the deeper goal of preserving and enhancing life.
We are smart, but not as smart as we think. Many ancient practices, like natural childbirth, demonstrate successes if we choose to look. We now have data, AI, and technologies to quantify actions and outcomes—to measure what behaviors during pregnancy, what family support systems, what hospital procedures lead to the best measurable outcomes for children.
We were only ever able to "win" over the largest, scariest beasts by working together. Alone, we are weak. This fundamental truth about our species' success has been obscured by narratives that celebrate individual might and domination, when in fact our greatest strength has always been our capacity for cooperation.
Yet this moment in history offers us a unique opportunity. We have both the freedom and access to information to recognize these patterns and choose differently. We can leverage our luck of being born in this era of unprecedented knowledge and connectivity to reexamine our fundamental assumptions about what constitutes success and progress.
Ancient Wisdom in Modern Context
As we examine these linguistic fossils embedded in our everyday speech, we begin to see how deeply our thinking has been shaped by what scholar Riane Eisler calls "dominator culture"—a relatively recent development in human history that emphasizes hierarchy, competition, and power-over relationships rather than partnership and mutual empowerment.
Our success as a species hasn't come from being the largest or strongest, but from our extraordinary capacity for cooperation. Our true evolutionary advantage lies in our ability to work together, share knowledge, and coordinate across vast networks. We can transform landscapes—sometimes destructively through domination, but also constructively through cooperative stewardship.
The idea of competition isn't inherently negative. Even the concept of the devil originated as God's partner in helping people strive to be their best. Sports serve this purpose—a modern, evolved version of warfare. Our bodies crave physicality, but we don't have to associate dominator words with winning.
Even our holiday traditions reveal hidden linguistic connections to ancient wisdom. The word "Easter" preserves the name of Ishtar/Aset/Isis, while German traditions give us "Mother's Night"—the night light defeats darkness on the solstice. Jesus's birthday was placed on the winter solstice of the Julian calendar (before it shifted in the Gregorian reform of 1582). The celebration of mother and child remains central, but originally it was Isis/Aset and Ra/Horus—a connection that gives us the word "horizon" and inspired the iconography of Mary and Jesus. The name "Mary" itself comes from the Egyptian word meaning "beloved," found in many pharaohs' names.
Ra was seen as the child, the noonday sun, and could be represented as either a boy or a girl. This makes the trinity of mother, child, and father in a single word or concept much more sensible than later misinterpretations that reduced divine creation to "father, son, and ghost" (essentially two men and a spirit). The original triadic family structure acknowledged the necessary contributions of both masculine and feminine principles in creation, with the child representing their divine union and continuation.
These connections aren't merely academic curiosities—they reveal how our modern worldview has systematically diminished the feminine divine, replacing celebrations that honored women's creative power with narratives centered on male deities alone. Mother's Night represents something beautiful for every living thing: the birth of children similar to the sun bringing light to the world, but also women becoming mothers and men becoming fathers—while giving women appropriate credit for the heavier burden (and joy) in the miracle of creation.
Our own Christian narratives bear the consequences of this fundamental shift. By removing the feminine from the divine—not because of her weakness but because of her power—we transformed sexuality from something sacred into something to be demeaned and controlled. Sex became primitive and shameful rather than elevated and life-affirming. The tragic irony is that in institutions where this repression reached its height, like certain church environments, we see the worst rates of child abuse and molestation. Where men were not allowed appropriate sexual outlets, their rational need for sex pushed them to totally catastrophic outcomes. Jewish men were expected to be married, something that was mistranslated in Christianity, instead removing the woman in total, where possible. This painful reality reveals a fundamental disconnect that demands review. Bringing the mother back into our spiritual frameworks isn't merely about historical accuracy—it's about restoring a protective presence for children, even within religious institutions that claim to care for them most.
When we look at ourselves through other cultural lenses, the myth of Western exceptionalism begins to crumble. America's rise to global dominance came through complex historical circumstances—French assistance during the Revolution, European expansion following the fall of the Christian capital, Constantinople, to Muslim Turks, and the subsequent reshuffling of global power. Our narrative of inevitable triumph obscures these interconnections and dependencies.
The modern banking system, established over the last few centuries, has fundamentally reshaped global power dynamics. This system was constructed in ways that placed regions like India and Africa at severe disadvantages that persist today, entrenching economic inequalities alongside racial biases. We can relate this to a stunting of these cultures at critical growth stages of an adolescents being refused fair entry into the power structures of the emerging new world. They are forever at a disadvantage.
Even if on top, we are all born into religious traditions and legacies of generational conflict that most never learn to question or more deeply understand.
When the Twin Towers fell, how many Americans asked why the attackers were so angry? The prevailing response was simply, "You can never trust terrorists." While opposing violence is appropriate, this reflexive dismissal prevented deeper understanding. The mentality of domination isn't new—Western powers have intervened in Middle Eastern countries for oil interests while claiming moral superiority over other "dominator rivals."
What if we could all see ourselves not as competing factions but as mothers and fathers, as children who long to cooperate and share stories beneath the same stars? What would it mean for Christianity and Islam, the extremes of both major sects, to see that we stem from the same teachings? When we recognize every human as shaped by their upbringing, untangling generational trauma becomes essential to breaking cycles of violence. We can pause during moments of tension to remember our shared humanity—that each person has a family, cultural foods they cherish, and fundamental needs that unite us.
Competing religious ideologies cannot be reconciled through force. What's critical is recognizing the common thread: we all seek to understand what life means. But before theological debates, we must agree that this life—here and now—matters. This is our only certainty. We should not sacrifice children in this life for divine rewards promised in the next. Neither suicide bombers nor children used as human shields honor the sanctity of life that all authentic traditions uphold.
When people lack freedom, as many do in conflict zones, those with privilege have a responsibility to find points of connection. Power structures rarely yield willingly, so transformation may require grassroots approaches—appealing to our most fundamental shared value: our children matter. They are our universe and future. All wisdom traditions acknowledge this truth. As this recognition spreads, those who profit from conflict will gradually lose their support.
Territories are contested for resources, but conflicts are perpetuated through narratives, often with religious justifications. Yet if we trace these stories to their origins, we find the same metaphor: life emerges when feminine and masculine principles unite to create children as radiant as the sun that shines equally on everyone. Our children embody the divine spark within us, created especially through us. We are all made of stardust—the same elements that form the stars and the gods we imagine above. The divine feminine and masculine live within each of us, and we see all the beauty life offers reflected in our children.
We are merely borrowing this world from future generations—we will ultimately return it to them. The question is: in what condition?
History Through a New Lens: Our Shared Past Reimagined
Christianity’s loss created a need to find a new route for trade with “Indians”, as Columbus sailed west, Vasco de Gama sailed south, and many people, for the next five hundred years (1453 to 1906) to try to find a northwest passage through the icy North Pole (and also gave us some ideas to sprinkle into modern Christmas celebrations). This of course, caused America to be founded, which needed to break away from British control to thrive. It succeeded only with France’s success, who basically spent a huge fraction of its wealth to help this new country against their shared enemy of Britain, as reflected in the language mutt of English (epitomizing a battle between Germanic and Latin). The world wars pushed America’s into inheriting Britain AND the Christian/Catholic Roman Empire’s world domination epicenter. France was looking up to America for inspiration for its own revolution. The French would go on, another 100 years after America won its freedom, to rule Egypt for just 3 years to antagonize the British again, which caused the world to learn of the Rosetta Stone, and cause a stir in its attempt at decipherment for the next 23 years. This quiet unearthing did more than we can imagine in understanding our shared African origins, though it will not be seen for yet another 100 years, still in 2025, aside from the likes of an engineering mama who likes to dig into her past.
It is up to us to decide what to do with this legacy and position as Americans. Or as any human who has the privilege to read this. This freedom and access gives us tools to explore our own pasts that nobody in his story has ever had access to. But never underestimate the power of a spark.
Major world religions and political systems have all been vehicles for both cooperation and domination at different times. We should stop thinking any single tradition represents the pinnacle of wisdom. Christianity, for instance, isn't original but emerged downstream from Roman domination, incorporating elements from earlier traditions. We can look to Jewish families and traditions to learn more about both Christianity and Islam, those Jews who now constitute less than 1% of the world's population yet inspired Christianity a thousand years after their traditions began in Africa, and then Islam another 600 years later. Africa would be our ultimate place of study for understanding all of it more deeply.
We can see African wisdom not as primitive but as ancestrally profound—especially in its recognition of longevity, in seeing children as vessels for ancestral knowledge. When child mortality was 50%, the divine was often seen as a trio of man, woman, and child—the key to creation: love and cooperation. Nothing grows in isolation.
Our religious narratives preserve wisdom but also contain mistranslated reconstructions. We can be wiser by studying sources before translations—seeing the Egyptian and earlier African wisdom that connects through words and prayers where women were assets, not obstacles. Even in words like "Israel," we find place names preserving ancient deities: "Is" (mother goddess Isis/Aset/Ishtar, root of words like "east" and "Easter"), "Ra" (Egyptian sun god and divine child, root of words like "ring," "royalty," "reign"), and "El" (father god). These linguistic fossils suggest that modern interpretations of "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" may have originally represented a divine family, with Spirit being feminine in both Greek and Hebrew.
The challenge isn't to determine which system "beats" the others, but to extract and amplify the humanity in each—the universal values that emerge across cultures when people prioritize collective wellbeing over power.
The True Meaning of Strength
To resort to physical domination or violence is not strength—it represents a failure of our higher capacities. It means diplomacy, creativity, and communication have failed. The primitive impulses within us have overridden our uniquely human abilities to find common ground.
True cooperation requires both restraint and empathy—the ability to see situations from another's perspective. We survive better not just through "survival of the fittest" in the competitive sense, but through our capacity for altruism and mutual aid. We understand intuitively that our children are extensions of ourselves, and at our best, we recognize that the world belongs to all of us.
We are constantly evolving, even within relationships. The partnerships that endure allow for each person to change. If we stayed the same, it would be easier to be alone—but we live in a dynamic world. We crave both novelty and sameness, primed for connection but needing security too.
In the long term, stable relationships benefit us neurologically and emotionally. It's exhausting to constantly search for new partners—a drain on energy and attention. We're better off with sustainable focus on our children and established connections. All of this points to cooperation—which, while not always easy, aligns with our deepest needs.
Empathy is our savior in a world facing unprecedented challenges that no individual or nation can solve alone. Storytelling—whether through traditional narratives, modern media, or simple conversations—brings these truths to life, helping us envision and create a future where "winning" means thriving together rather than dominating others.
Children: Our Future and Our Teachers
Instead of raising children to be warriors who fight first and ask questions later, we should nurture them to be cooperators who recognize our fundamental interdependence. Children should never be used as shields or propaganda tools, as we've seen in conflicts like Gaza, where combatants hide behind children, raise them to be sacrifices, or groom them as suicide bombers with promises of peace in the next life. These are psychological manipulations and war tactics that exploit the natural reluctance of ethical opponents to harm innocents. We must prevent these scenarios at all costs, working from the grassroots up to find the humanity in everyone and question ideologies that normalize harming one's family for the sake of uncertain next-life promises.
Children are our greatest project—our opportunity to build a future where "winning" means growing to our best collective selves. They can help us strive to be the absolute best humanity has to offer. Our food systems and the delicate balances of life deserve the same attention and care, rather than brutal exploitation that prioritizes short-term gain over long-term sustainability.
Children are also our best teachers. In their unfiltered observations and natural inclinations toward fairness and cooperation, they show us truths we have forgotten. When my son intuitively formed "winned" as the past tense, he wasn't wrong—he was revealing the illogical nature of our linguistic constructs. How can we serve children better first? This question reframes our priorities in profound ways. It may be the question that truly saves us.
There is a practical selfishness in caring deeply for children—they will care for us one day. Similarly, destroying our environment is ultimately an act of collective suicide, while preserving it is an act of self-preservation. These perspectives help us see that the dichotomy between selfishness and altruism is often false. Our genuine self-interest aligns with the wellbeing of others and our shared planet when we expand our vision beyond immediate gratification to longer timescales and wider circles of concern.
Fathers are crucial in children's development—we know this from research comparing success rates with parental involvement. We also know how dopamine patterns change with the different interactions mothers and fathers typically provide. Yet our cultural narratives often glorify paternal absence: in stories like Troy, we heroize the man who leaves his family for war, knowing he may never see his child again. Such narratives emerged from military necessities—fathers were once deliberately kept from birth rooms to prevent forming attachments that might make them reluctant to leave for battle.
We've evolved to thrive with both parents present, and especially with grandparents involved. Children's success rates increase with the addition of fathers or other parent figures. Toddler success, when a younger baby arrives, improves exponentially when a grandmother is present. As the saying goes, it truly takes a village—yet we now expect this from a single partner, perhaps with part-time help if we can afford it.
We need better systems. Our modern work structures, with their rigid 9-to-5 frameworks, fail to accommodate the continuous attention that nurturing life requires. We need human commitment distributed across more caregivers. In a 24-hour day, no single person can provide all that a child needs. This reality has become even more apparent as women have entered the workforce and must balance new identities alongside traditional expectations.
Our food systems, delicate balances of life, equally deserve attention and care, rather than brutal exploitation. Both children and nature suffer from brutal priorities of short-term gains over sustainability.
A Final Note on Language and Learning
Ironically, when my son used "winned" as the past tense of "win," he was demonstrating perfect pattern recognition. His developing mind naturally applied the regular past tense rule (-ed) to a verb. It's actually our English language, with its contradictory grammar rules and countless exceptions, that fails to follow logical consistency.
This points to something profound about constructed languages like Esperanto, designed to be more logical and consistent, without the "broken rules" and exceptions that evolved from colloquial habits over centuries. These languages align with how children's minds naturally work—through pattern recognition and logical application.
Language is constantly evolving—words officially enter and exit dictionaries every day. Yet we rarely question the fundamental structures that shape our thinking. Consider our English number system: the teens follow no clear progression and take longer to pronounce than in many Asian languages where number words are shorter and more systematic. This isn't merely an academic concern—studies show these differences affect cognitive processing, including how many numbers we can hold in working memory.
These linguistic efficiencies aren't just curiosities; they're tools we could adopt to improve our collective thinking and communication. Rather than clinging to inherited systems simply because they're familiar or part of "our" culture, we could thoughtfully incorporate better approaches from around the world. This isn't about dominance or which system "beat" the others—it's about recognizing that human innovation is a collaborative project spanning cultures and generations.
We can change the rhetoric. We have to learn both to win and to lose. And most importantly, we can learn to win together.
We should strive to be our best—work on physical, mental, and spiritual growth. We need to restructure society to put children first, not treating them as little humans to be exploited earlier and earlier. We need to preserve their innocence because stress (nutritional or otherwise) prevents growth at critical moments. These stress hormones are like corrosion in the blood, and even adults need growth mode (rather than defense mode) to combat illness and regenerate cells.
We are totally new humans every seven years as every single cell turns over on its own timeline. We can use this knowledge to become our best. We will never be complete—new challenges will always emerge. We still have tailbones—visible reminders that we are still evolving. We can choose to evolve better.
As women have entered the workforce, many men feel the burden of shared family responsibilities—something that was actually the norm before the dominator cultures of the Bronze Age. Before people used new tools as weapons, these tools were invented for goddess worship, for ceremonial processions celebrating the seasons and cyclical changes of life. We can integrate the wisdom of the past with new knowledge. We can be good for the planet, collectively and individually.
We are at our worst when groupthink prevents questioning, as we see in rigid religious and political systems. We need meaningful shifts starting from younger ages—balancing the masculine and feminine in our conceptual frameworks, recognizing that nothing in nature thrives in isolation.
Jews lost their land but kept their identity, while Africans kept their land but lost much of their identity. Women have been written out of divinity and been given collective amnesia of their power. Men have been pulled away from being more involved in their children’s lives. We all must find ways to preserve wisdom while evolving forward with the puzzle pieces of ourselves we’ve been given.
Perhaps our irregular verbs, like our confused equation of winning with beating, represent another kind of linguistic fossil—remnants of historical accidents that we continue to preserve despite their lack of inherent logic. In questioning these patterns, we open ourselves to more intuitive, accessible ways of communicating that better reflect how our minds naturally organize information.
What other words might we find, hiding in plain sight, that quietly reinforce this dominator mindset? And how might our thinking—and our children's futures—change if we became more conscious of these patterns?
