Hello Again

Hello again! 

Hi. It’s been a while. 

I know, right? But I haven’t forgotten you, I promise. 

Life happens, and before you know it, seven years have passed. I never imagined I would end up now, almost exactly where I was geographically and professionally 23 years ago. I couldn’t be happier. 

Well, I could be -- I think we all can be -- but I have returned to my passion. I let my vanity drag me through ten years of jobs that gorged my ego and starved my soul. The work I did during that time is some of the greatest work I’ve done in my life and I will be proud of it until I die. Nevertheless, it drove me to depths of depression that required every ounce of my energy to conceal - more unsuccessfully than I thought. 

I didn’t know it until I recovered. 

I have written before about joy. I didn’t realize at the time that I was in the middle of a miserable period of my life. Looking back, what I wrote then remains true - or even more true today. The unceasing deluge of “information” overwhelms our capacity to regulate feeling. It seems we have lost the capacity for anger. Instead we vault from calm to rage. 

Last week, Time magazine published a story about the breakdown of civility, “Why Everyone Is So Rude Right Now.” They named all the usual suspects - stress, change, and fear. All of society rarely encounters those three emotional challengers at the same time.

It is all of society. 

Two similar times have occurred in American history - the 1890’s and the Great Depression. As today, much of the stress, change, and fear originated in the vast gaps in wealth that had developed in the Gilded Age and Roaring Twenties but proved unsustainable by the Panic of 1893 and the Wall Street collapse in October 1929. The COVID-19 pandemic proved economic warnings about the growing wealth disparity true. The 1890’s gave rise to labor unions and the 1930’s marked the origination of a social safety network that eased such great swings until both fell out of fashion in a generally prosperous society of the 1980’s. Forgetting the lessons of history, we celebrated the accumulation of wealth while ignoring the economically precarious. 

This year has seen a different kind of labor action: the great resignation and widespread staffing shortages in low-pay jobs. Rather than organized action, the strikes are being staged by one employee at a time as they find opportunities with better pay and/or working conditions. The lack of civility directed at individuals, people deemed “essential workers” at the onset of the pandemic, hastened the movement. Others cannot return to the workforce due to responsibility for young children or elderly family members for whom there is no longer another source of care. 

The Time article cites another factor absent in history - the language dominating the national discussion. Words matter. Our leadership - at every level and on both sides failed their vocabulary test. The attack on any opposing idea as anti-American and the “othering” of anyone in disagreement makes rational discussion nearly impossible. Reason has been removed and replaced with emotion. Facts don’t matter, perception does. 

The vitriol spread in media and social media makes finding joy a challenge. Even I, Mr. Joy, question whether it is present in my life. 

Thankfully it is. 

Joy is playing with my niece.

Joy is cooking something new. 

Joy is watching my chickens being chickens. 

Joy is grading a paper on which one of my struggling students is successful. 

Joy is reading a book that has nothing to do with anything. 

Joy is writing again.

The Death and Birth of English

photo from Grammarly

A friend of mine recently posted the photo from Grammarly featuring the quote from Conan O’Brien. The most surprising thing about it is that it is almost a year old and still making the rounds. I have previously mentioned various words of the year as named by various groups. Each so-named word-of-the-year generates the usual pitiful wails from the language purists who remain convinced that Shakespeare, or Dickens, or (insert favorite English author) had the language in its perfect form and we are fools for changing it.

To those purists who have nothing better to do than grouse about the perversion of our language based on societal change I say, “Get over it! English ain't Latin." (Like it or not even spell check knows ain’t is a word.)

Some argue the words selected are too silly or represent a fad. Often they do. Not!* The truthiness** of the Occupy*** movement was challenged by some, but not if they had a subprime**** mortgage. The rise of words expressing the dynamic of society generate the energy that keeps English alive. Rather than killing the language, these words represent the continual birth found in any living language.

Truthfully, those decrying the various words of the year are not attacking the word so much as they disagree with the circumstances that promoted the word to prominence. That is not a question for the linguists who study trends in language but for the society that allowed “selfie” to become a thing. Why are people so preoccupied with taking photos of themselves? I would argue that in a world where everything is social, it’s a cry for attention, “Hey, look at me,” and when the world does not, the selfie offers the illusion of attention, “I’m looking at me.”

Maybe selfie is not so silly.

People, look beyond yourself.

No. Really. Pay attention to the background! No one wants to see your dirty underwear or any of the other embarrassing things captured in that moment of self-affirmation.

In November the various organizations that compile the lists of influential words will again offer their collections. At this point in the year I am at a loss to predict what words will be selected, but I know there will again be the usual uproar predicting the death of our diseased dialects. If it is the typical year, my voice will rise with the others - with the understanding that those cries do not draw us to the funeral parlor, but to the nursery, where we view the continuing birth of English.

*1992, **2005, ***2011, ****2007 words of the year. We may not use them as much, but we still know what they mean.

Shaped by an Era

(Since the original articles came out and I began writing my response to them, I have read much more about things that Deen said/did in recent times that crossed the line of acceptable behavior. She cannot use the excuse that it was “ok when I did it.” It extended into current times and to actions that are far beyond the use of language we now consider unacceptable. While she is now a less than perfect example for illustrating the point, the point that we need to use caution when judging historical behavior based on today’s standards stands.)

The recent scandal involving Paula Deen and her use of racist language has been challenging for me. The reports that she had used the “N” word came as a major “duh!” for me. She is a generation ahead of me from the south - of course she used the “N” word in her lifetime. It was a regular part of southern culture through the eighties (at least). It did not stop with the Civil Rights Act in the sixties: racist language did not cease because the laws changed. Unfortunately, it was a normal part of southern culture.

That it was a normal part of southern culture does not make racism ok; it simply recognizes that it was a real, regular part of life in that region at that time – and it was acceptable to the bulk of people living in that region at that time. We look back upon it with disdain, but history records its prevalence in that region at that time.

I do not excuse anything Deen said or did, but as a proponent of social justice, I believe we must be cautious about casting judgment, not just when someone is accused of racism, but of violating any contemporary social standard. I am a product of my generation and can guarantee that something I have said or done will be considered offensive by future generations. While I believe, somewhat, in psychic phenomenon, I do not profess to possess the ability to predict how society will change by the end of my lifetime or how things considered acceptable in my earlier life will be the object of scorn by the end of it. I do not expect past generations to possess any greater power. As a result, I feel an obligation to give due consideration to the generations that preceded me. Just as I do not want to be judged by the standards of future generations for living according to acceptable standards in my time, I must be cautious about judging previous generations for living according to the standard of their time by the standards of today.

The dynamic nature of society comes from our ever increasing understanding based on new knowledge. I have a hard time condemning any past group of people for operating based on their knowledge at the time. I have a problem, though, if we do not learn from their mistakes based on the knowledge we have now. Failure to recognize how changes have taken place over time stem directly from a lack of historical perspective (just ask a social studies teacher!). We live so much in the now, it is easy to jump on the bandwagon of outrage anytime we become aware of something that does not match contemporary sensibilities. We rarely contextualize the situation and nuance is often lost without the experience of proximity to the event.

In the age of Twitter, CNN, TMZ, and other round-the-clock media, would even Jesus have appeared perfect? By contemporary standards his encounter with the Syrophoenician woman (Matthew 15:21-28 & Mark 7:24-30), for example, would have required a good PR specialist. Even though he did what she requested, the racist and misogynistic language he used in the passage would have been the headline despite it being used as an opportunity to educate. The whole story is never as memorable as the sound-bite. Even when the complete story, miracle and all, has been told, the sound-bite has stuck.

The current political climate has all sides responding in increasingly hostile ways to situations that historically would have merited little to no notice. The raw emotion created by the rapid change within society has put even people who should know better on edge and changed the norms under which most of our leadership learned to function. The rules and core beliefs of generations are being rejected. We know those rules and core beliefs were based on incorrect information, but that does not make the change any easier for the people involved. If anything, it makes it even harder for them to accept because the “facts” that shaped their world were not really facts. What then can they believe? When their entire mindset has to be altered, it is simply easier to reject the change outright.

We are all products of our generation. As much as we would like to believe we have worked it out and operate under enlightened rules, history tends to judge differently. As easy as it is to judge others for their shortcomings, let it be said about us that we extended some of the grace we hope to be shown when the foolishness of our ways is exposed.

Justice, Vengeance, or Something Else

Because of the energy-savings program at work in the summer months, we work four ten-hour days each week instead of five eight-hour days. As a result, I was home for the deluge of media – both social and mainstream – coverage of the theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado. Everyone had an opinion about what happened, what could have prevented it, or what mental illness the shooter must have had. By the evening news, much of the originally reported information had been revised or corrected. Nevertheless many of the tweets, posts, and even online news articles remained accessible with the faulty information.

Common in all the media were calls for justice. Depending on the bent of the media, the level of rancor around the call for justice ranged from “string him up” to “life in a mental institution (because only a crazy person would do such a thing).” The more I listened to the discourse, the more it became clear that no one talked about justice: everyone imagined some form of vengeance.

venge•ance [ven-juhns]  noun

1. infliction of injury, harm, humiliation, or the like, on a person by another who has been harmed by that person; violent revenge

2. an act or opportunity of inflicting such trouble.

3. the desire for revenge.

         From Dictionary.com

Vengeance comes naturally when we have been harmed by a known entity. The nature of the attack in Aurora threatened us all because it occurred in a situation common to almost everyone. People doing something people do every day suddenly found themselves caught in a situation beyond what a normal imagination could invent. We all felt the threat and found ourselves imagining that we could have been in that theater and wondering how we would have reacted.

We want to hurt the person who destroyed our sense of safety in a mundane activity.

We falsely latch onto the idea that vengeance guarantees that such an event will never happen again. History shows us that similar events happen repeatedly with new twists inspired by technology available in the time. Our entire penal system works on the principle of vengeance; if vengeance truly worked, far fewer people would be incarcerated.

jus•tice [juhs-tis]  noun

1. the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness.

2. rightfulness or lawfulness, as of a claim or title; justness of ground or reason.

3. the moral principle determining just conduct.

4. conformity to this principle, as manifested in conduct; just conduct, dealing, or treatment.

5. the administering of deserved punishment or reward.

         From Dictionary.com

So many of the commentators felt they used the fifth definition of justice when they proposed penalties for the gunman. They failed to meet the definition by speculating without full knowledge of the story. They reacted to the events as the initial presentations captured the emotion of the events as recounted by survivors or assumed by commentators in watching the cell phone videos some took as the event unfolded.

We do not know if the shooter is mentally ill. We do not know the motivation. We do not know volumes related to the case. In the coming weeks and months, because the police captured the (alleged) shooter alive, we will likely be able to develop a more complete understanding of the story. Even so, a clear explanation of why or how the event came to be may never emerge.

Human nature desires concrete answers to events that shatter routine. When they do not emerge, we seek solutions that make us feel better. Vengeance serves that purpose. Justice, when viewed in its fullness, rarely alleviates our pain, so we turn to more drastic measures found in vengeance. I do not blame any of the commentators for their jump on the vengeance bandwagon. We feel better when we imagine the worst possible thing that can happen to a person who does such a heinous act. I simply think we need to be honest in our vocabulary. Justice does not always make us feel good. Vengeance often does.

When I believe I have been wronged, I never imagine justice; I only imagine vengeance. When I talk about it, I call it justice, but it is not. Justice, as a central principle of the United States, is the political word to say. Vengeance, though, orders my thoughts and wishes. It is not as ugly as we imagine; how often do we actually enact vengeance on those who have done us harm? When all plays out, I usually settle for justice. My mind, of course, still considers vengeance, and I let the situation drift into history with all the might-have-beens.

Justice in the Aurora shootings will be hard to define and even harder to enact. Too much pain and suffering extends beyond the walls of that cinema. All of us who go to a movie will, for a period (we have short memories), look at the arrangement and those sitting around us differently. The lives ended and the injuries incurred cannot be redeemed through one maleficent person – regardless of the punishment we inflict upon him.

We can, for a time, relish our darkest thoughts. Eventually we return to the world in which we live. In it we understand the shortcomings of friends and coworkers and we love them for their quirkiness and we compensate for it in planning our daily work. Vengeance has its place, but let us be cautious that it does not become a defining characteristic. Let us embrace justice, even when it fails to satisfy our base needs, and let it define who we are as a people.