Armistice - at arm's length

Have you ever wondered why weapons are called arms? Have you wondered how that sounds to the innocent?

It's confusing, don't you know?

I imagine whoever came up with the idea was someone who had to fight for survival way before weapons existed. Someone who used their arms to protect, defend, and kill.

I imagine Neanderthals with huge muscular arms. Did their arms feel pain when they reached out to do whatever was needed to survive? Did they wrestle with the pain and did that pain push them by necessity to use stick, or branch, or club?

But, Neanderthals didn't survive.

The etymology of arms1 and arms2 is not akin, did you know that? Arms1 is derived from different cultures and the connection to shoulder - to shouldering, to carrying and holding -  is hidden there. Arms2 derives it's meaning from the latin for armor.

Homo sapiens - latin for wise man - tend to think of Neanderthals as brutish half-humans. But what if they felt pain more acutely, more keenly than our own species? Maybe using the crude weapons at their disposal kept pain at arm's length so that their innocence suffered. And maybe they knew it. And maybe they refused to pay that price for survival. They didn't have the justifications afforded by language.

I don't want to call weapons 'arms'  anymore. I don't want to confuse the innocent by using one word to mean arms that hold, carry, and caress with arms made of hardened metal meant to kill. If there's any wisdom left in homo sapiens, I ask that we decide together to leave arms out of the race for domination, even if you think it's justified.

Let's call weapons, weapons. Let's call war, war, and not a call to arms.

It's always an issue of embodiment. The language we embody is the language we enact. Don't you know?

Let's take up our arms and approach the fertile ground of our minds with potatoes and carrots, rutabagas and brussels sprouts. And make soup.