Southern Jaunt:Second Pot/ Attentats

The way to do is to be. -Lao Tzu 

I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions. - Dorothy Day

Lately in the morning, I've taken to watching the political press on television. The is due primarily to the fact that Dave and Julie, who have kindly put me up thus far during my stay in Mount Carroll, watch either MSNBC or Current TV. Dave has drifted from the network's morning programming, though, because "It's too much like the Today Show."

"What?" I asked, over settling in on the corner of the couch with my first cup of coffee. Apparently, my timing is such that I usually wake up around the time that Dave (who, in spite of being retired will wake up before Gawd, the sun, and most non-nocturnal animals) and Julie (who is wakes up about the same time) finish the first pot of coffee / start the second pot. Unless I'm up late later than usual or hungover, I've been getting out of bed around 7 in the morning

 -- which, in farm country, is mid-day.

"What's the matter? I went on. "Don't you care about this Fall's important fashion?"

He made a face, and took a sip of his coffee. My soon-to-be-ex used to tell me that was my way of punctuating a sentence. Usually with an exclamation mark.

The ritual, as I noticed when they were kind enough to let me stay with them for a bit in March when I came back to remove my books and clothes miscellaneous shit from the house on Pumpkin Hill, is to watch the morning political programs and yell at the television. I love that not only do have friends who are political junkies, but they are junkies who, except for one or two issues, I agree with. And even when I don't agree -- and sometimes, I'll act like maybe I don't just to push the discussion on a bit... it's a hold over from my days as a teacher, my take on the Socratic Method -- while Dave in particular has no problem telling me why I'm wrong, in the end it's a lively discussion. And like I said, it's nice to talk to people who care about the process and don't simply keep their noses to the proverbial grindstone.

That being said, I find that watching the political press first thing in the morning only serves to remind me 

just how fucked the entire process is. While I find that I tend to agree with folks like Bill Press and Stephanie Miller in their critiques of the GOP, Mitt Romney, and this election's Dan Quayle/Sarah Palin incarnation, Paul Ryan, I do wish they would offer up the same gaze of the current administration. But all lines being arbitrary... especially in an election year... I suppose that the political press has to keep the self-masticating jaws of American Politics chewing.

I could, I know, probably watch Fox News for simple-minded jabs at Obama.

But I suspect that watching Fox News has the same effect on the brain as a stroke. Some memories and basic motor skills would be lost.

Attentants 

One day last week or the week before I was watching CSPAN and they were showing a speech at the Center for American Progress by Matt James of The Center for The Next Generation. There's nothing quite like when one think tank invites another think tank to come and talk about all the thinking that's going on behind closed doors. Now, anyone who knows me knows that not only am I often lost in thought, I often forget that I am thinking when I start talking and that this OFTEN GETS ME INTO TROUBLE. I've found, you see, that while people do like some witty repartee, they are not, overall, interested in thoughtful conversation. As such, I am trying to learn how to talk in way that masks the amount I think so's not to make people too too uncomfortable.

After all, can't go blue without giving people warning.... right?

What stuck out in my mind, though was when James, from The Center for the Next Generation --

Does anyone else notice that whenever someone official talks for the next generation, it's usually some suit from 3 generations ago? Seeking out the Elders is one thing. Relying on bean counters to save the world is something else entirely.

--referred to children as "our most valuable assets."

The phrase gave me reason to pause.

Being something of a word hound and rhetorik* junkie, I was struck immediately by the implication.What kinds of things are considered assets?

Cars

Houses

Swimming Pools

Stocks

Money Market Accounts

Get it? With a word like "asset" being applied to people in general and children -- current and future -- the implication is one of ownership. And when you think about the connotation of a phrase like "Human Resources" -- and when you pause and think about other things our culture thinks of as resources:

Coal

Trees

Water

Natural Gas

Oil

a pattern does begin to emerge... does it not?

I've talked before about the reductive nature of language; that's inevitable on some level. But by reducing ourselves and others, and by allowing ourselves to be reduced to something owned -- and because in English the utterance is usually built around the speaker, always owned by someone else -- we are engaging directly in our own subjugation. Words matter. We ought to use them, and the ideas they represent, more wisely.

And we ought to be careful about letting thinkless tanks do all our thunking for us.

_______

*rhetorik: Not to be confused with Rhetoric, the study of language and the way it works. Rhetorik, rather, is a localized study of lingual DIS-function, and of the idjits whose abuse of the language is so profound as to be closer to the sound a baboon makes when it's scratching it's genitals.

From the Publishers of The Parsons Dictionary of Often Used Words and Phrases

success, n: 1. A culturally constructed product that is marketed and sold at an enormous mark-up to the young, the feeble-minded, and the hopelessly inept which blames the poor for being poor and gives rich people credit for things they haven't really done; this myth insists upon itself as gospel truth and blames people who do all  the right things but still get screwed for not bringing their own lubricant.

alternate definition:

A culturally constructed myth used to teach children that the best way to be happy is screw over everyone else.

The Decay of The Art of Argument

The problem with argument in this Post-American Century America is that no one likes a good argument anymore. We like to fight with words – admittedly, fewer and smaller words than we used to – but it is still considered the intellectual's preference to rocks, sticks, knives, or guns. We stake out our territory and strike out, like our tribal ancestors undoubtedly did, with the sole purpose of mental evisceration. I think of it like the Catholic Church's Crusades of centuries ago – convert or die. This is the approach that most of us take. But these two things are not the same.

Running parallel with that massive chunk of cultural sewage is another crucial piece of infrastructure that keeps the whole mess moving downhill – the dire and politically correct desire to be “polite.” These two things aren't nearly as contrary as people tend to think. Fighting with words accomplishes nothing and no one ever really wins... although everyone tends to walk away feeling like they have.

There are times in the often violent exchange of ideas when being polite is a nice break. A palette cleanser, if you will. Graciousness will take you pretty far in the world... if that happens to be your goal.

But even in a well-reasoned argument, there is often reason NOT to be polite. Conceit, snobbery, bigotry, sexism, and xenophobia can all be thinly disguised with a polite tone and a long knife smile. We talk a lot about compromise in this country... mostly about the lack of it... but the truth is no one really wants to compromise. They want to win while still being able to take umbrage at the fact that the other party didn't simply agree and capitulate.

This is the problem. We've lost the ability to argue in any way that useful, or even entertaining. We like to sit around with people who think like us, who talk like us. We join groups on Facebook so we can dish in publicly private setting. Now we have “circles” on Google + so we can control what we say and show to whom... even though it's possible to do that on Facebook if you spend five minutes looking over your account settings. And really, there's nothing wrong with getting together with other people – either in real time or online – to share similar views. (So that's NOT what I'm saying here, you ninnies who want to throw a Constitutional argument at me. I know all about the First Amendment. It's my bread and butter.) And because we've been taught to actually believe that the hallmark of civilization is our ability to be polite and that America is near the pinnacle of perfect civilizations, we think that the sometimes heated arguments over ideas are unamerican.

First of all, if history, current and past, has, is and should teach us anything, it's that there's very little about civilization that's very civilized. A smile and a polite tone does not make for an intelligent and enlightened individual. In my experience, the biggest, ugliest, stupidest bullies are the ones that smile. We have a history of exclusion and of fighting over who we ought to include: Non-Christians, Blacks, Women, the Irish, The Chinese, The Germans, The Japanese, The Gays, The Arabs, The Mexicans. I'm leaving some out, I know, but the list really is long. We've blacklisted artists, actors, directors, writers, comedians. (And I say WE because anything that's done in our name with our consent is something we bear the responsibility for.) We are nearly as cruel to other humans as we are to the other critters that scramble over the Earth... and the argument could be made that we're even more cruel to our own because we're more apt to take pity on a starving dog or a pitiful looking cat than we are to give a panhandler a buck. (And before you say “Yeah, the panhandler should get a job,” keep in mind that cats are natural scavengers and most dogs are intelligent pack animals. Making assumptions about why someone's homeless, or not working is simply the way we justify our lack of humanity. It's rooted in the idea stated thusly to me during a conversation once at a bar: “If I have to work everyday and hate my job, so does everyone else.” Yep. The If-It's-Good-Enough-For-Me fallacy. Mostly I think people resent the homeless and the unemployed because they know they're a paycheck away from being the same way. Similarity, in addition to making Facebook have a point, also breeds contempt.)

The other thing that history should teach us that for all of our accomplishments, Sweden is more stable democracy.

The overall result? We fight with words instead of argue. We've let the dumb bastards who are in charge – and who are always in charge regardless of what political party has the majority – convince us that arguing is rude and unamerican. Our alternative is that we fight with words... which is petty, pointless, and juvenile. The only real bonus is that it can be mildly entertaining for the first two minutes, or right before the commercial break.

I suspect that down deep, beyond the social programming and the institutionalized cultural miasma that is modern education, the real reason people don't like to argue anymore is because to really and truly argue requires not only the ability to think critically, but a moral and ethical integrity. It's important not to confuse argument with debate. We should never be a society of lawyers. Debate, sometimes referred to as Forensics, – like they sometimes still teach in public schools instead of real history or science – encourages people to learn all about something but be prepared to argue any position. There's no moral or ethical inquiry involved. The Greeks called this Sophistry and it was the Sophists who had Socrates killed. People like this mistake debate for the Art of Argument. The difference is Argument, if it is to be an art, must have some ethical and moral integrity. Art of any kind... painting, sculpture, writing, motorcycle maintenance … must have those same components. It's part – though not all – of what makes Art.

As a result of this curricular and cultural confusion, we've mistaken cleverness for wit, eloquence for intellectual and spiritual depth. We would rather let everyone feel like a winner than consider the possibility that some of our ideas are wrong. The truly critically minded folks out there often reconsider their positions on things. I know I do. And I do change my mind... though not because I'm ever really compelled by word fights that contradict my own experience. I change my mind because it's important to be open-minded.

But that's not the same thing as polite, either... though many do mistake them. Often.