THE WORDS COUNT
As the clothing of Athens policemen burst into flames on our television sets and pitched street fighting grows in the European region, many in the U. S. clearly view this as if from Mars. U. S. perspectives depend on the linguistics of soothing slogans even when bewilderment is the order of the day. As people discover that the number of school days (or weeks) for their children, their community libraries, their health and safety forces, their own pay levels and pensions (if they have one) all are on the chopping block, they don't need a language of nostalgia but a language that empowers their own engagement with the powers that can lead to their own destruction.
The term "social justice," for example, is increasingly used by progressives but remains a classic linguistic problem--illegible and largely unknown in the modern lexicon. Justice more likely means you get what you deserve. Social justice is more easily associated with the prison system where others get what they deserve.
It’s not going to be easy. I audited a recent presentation to supposedly liberal clergy on growing inequality; the power points appeared to fall on unpracticed ears and appeared not comfortably relevant to their line of work. The pastors’ available framing device (linguist George Lakoff’s term} seemed tuned to familiar metaphors of hope, not engagement. It is one thing to demand that a mayor make a different decision, but quite another to demand that you begin to reshape your mission by learning a new vocabulary that can engage the fires that are now burning closer. The same struggle was visible at a presentation to community leaders about revenues and taxation where the harsh realities did not seem to move past the puzzlement stage. “Maybe we’ll deal with this only when we finally hit bottom,” said one participant. The truth is the bottom is near at hand.
The vague civic theology used by publicists, news media, high tech investors, and most churches, supposedly guards us against that bottom but is based on nostrums that invoke hope but not comprehension. This is nothing less than a neural challenge say linguists like Lakoff and Noam Chomsky who demonstrate that repeating the same alleged truth endlessly embeds it as truth in the neural operation of our brains. The capacity to understand and teach others about the fraud of inequality and possible further tragic economic decline depends on writing new stories about ourselves and new terms for their expression. Surrounded by the reinforcement of old frameworks that amount to programmed passivity, such frames are hard wired into our brains when a practical transformative strategy is needed.
New strategies require new language that services the truth; strategies such as training programs for jobs indefensibly shipped overseas, 21st century versions of a Civilian Conservation Corps that can turn disadvantaged workers into computer engineers; and a new WPA that puts enormously gifted people back to productive work. Nothing less will do.
Becoming programmatic and active in our advocacy for justice for all will help in the linguistic battle where we are alternately assaulted by the old language of Catholic Bishops opposing contraceptives used by 98 percent of their parishioners; or by the preposterous claim of an Israeli government and its U. S. supporters that they’re serious about a two state solution while building more and more city-size Israeli settlements inside the Palestinian lands.
While many faith leaders show signs of resistance to a vacuous theology of hope intended to make engagement unnecessary, the sheer illegibility of goals such as social justice is what’s burning the pants off police forces around the world. If the old words have been made into the flesh of lies, it’s our task to breathe life into new words that are both legible and true.
Heard on NPR's Marketplace today:"Imagine if the federal minimum wage dropped from $7.25 an hour to $5.50, plus the eligibility age for Social Security jumped to 70. And 450,000 government workers lost their jobs and health benefits over the next three years. That’s close to how the latest Greek cutbacks would feel in this country." That's not far from or as far as some U.S. politicians are proposing...
ReplyDeleteAs far as the words go. One wonders if the old phrase "Come with me to learn about..." isn't as useful as it has always been. -Jerry Fox
Quoting you: "It’s not going to be easy. I audited a recent presentation to supposedly liberal clergy on growing inequality; the power points appeared to fall on unpracticed ears and appeared not comfortably relevant to their line of work..."
ReplyDeleteWell, yes, Chuck, what can I say here, except guilty as charged. I am one of those liberal clergy with unpracticed ears.
But today is Ash Wednesday, an opportunity to come clean and recommit again to the path of the apostles which is so powerfully described in one of the assigned texts for today
(2 Cor 6)
…as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger;...
wait- beatings, imprisonment, riots? This is to be our way of life? Really?
Then I had better go and hang out with people who have actually experienced such things because they would be the best teachers for this way of life.
...by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech,
truthful speech – another big concept, related to what you had already mentioned elsewhere in your blog.
and the power of God;
and yes, there’s that. I wonder what would happen if we pastors ever sat down and did a power analysis which the same diligence which which we are trained to parse Greek and evaluate text variances.
with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left;
weapons, huh?
in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute.
We are treated as impostors, and yet are true;
as unknown, and yet are well known;
as dying, and see—we are alive;
as punished, and yet not killed;
as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing;
as poor, yet making many rich;
Poor, hmmm? This poverty thing is another subject where I live in such denial. Every time I have a session with the lady from the pension board I feel totally weird about all this planning, because back in my mind I hear the little voice saying, how can we move altogether forward unless some of us a prepared to become poorer in the process.
...as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.
So now, where does one go from here?
Perhaps with just starting with that place of not knowing and admitting my poverty of vision and my poverty of resolve and my total poverty of anything that would resemble a culture of solidarity.
Bea
The biblical texts of painful and sacrifical witness for the justice of God do drive us to re-evaluation don't they? But instead of self-recrimination I prefer to sress the need to connect to what's going on right now. ICE round-ups and deportations of immigrants doing legitimate work among us, for example. Tax policies that protect wealth, another example.
ReplyDelete