Tag Perceptions

Getting It All Wrong

Michael Leave a comment

A friend of mine can’t call her children. They won’t answer a call but they will respond to a text message. Another friend refuses to text her children saying if they will speak to her “like they did when they were 16 and wouldn’t shut up.” My own daughter and I do both. Text for text worthy messages and announcements (I’m going to store do you want anything) and call for real conversations. My friend on the other of the country and I communicate almost exclusively by text because of the time difference being able to ask questions and answer them or recount a story and groaning and rolling eyes over it while comfortably on the right side of the meridian to preserve our respective circadian rhythms.  Four different approaches to communication, none of them right or wrong, just different.

For some reason there has been an increase in proclaiming any and all activity as either right or wrong, often both by opposite sides of the line, or as we also are seeing an increase in, by opposite poles of a spectrum. The middle ground which has anchored most of life on this planet for a few thousand years is shrinking, tolerance is only found in the dictionary, and I swear even Mr. Rogers would find it difficult to be neighborly to some folks.

Yes/No, Right/Wrong don’t have the same physical absolute as Up/Down or Left/Right. You can’t mistakenly fall up. You can mistakenly be right. Ask anybody who ever did not score 100% on a test why they intentionally answered some questions wrong. Of course they did not mean to be wrong. They believed their answer was correct and most often understood where the wrong entered their equations although there are times when even the most convincing argument can’t change the perception of right. Or wrong. One is more problematic.

Consider this. I’m not sure 18 year old are old enough to vote, I never did, certainly not when I was 18 (which by the way was when 18 was not old enough to vote). Its okay for me to think that. It’s not right in the sense that in the US, 18 year olds can vote and even though I am entitled to my opinion and can even publicly admit my thoughts (as I just did), that opinion and those thoughts will not change the fact an 18 year old can vote here. I can be wrong about being right and as long as I recognize this it is the right way to be wrong. However,  if I were to station myself outside a polling place and prevent all people younger than 21 from entering to cast their votes I would be wrong and I would be being wrong in a wrong way.

wrongLet’s consider another example. In my state, although decriminalized, marijuana is illegal except for medical purposes and then not by inhalation. I do not necessarily have anything against the logic of using cannabinoids medically or perhaps even recreationally but I do have a problem with the systems in place. One thing I believe they got right was the prohibition against smoking it when those who did the drafting drafted the regulations. My argument in logic is combusting the substance makes it available to those who do not wish to inhale it. Just as second hand to account smoke will cause heart and lung disease and cancer (not may, not can, but will), so will second hand marijuana smoke cause measurable levels of THC in nearby non-smokers (not may, not ca….you get the idea). I may not want to be randomly tested and come up positive because my downstairs neighbor enjoys sitting on his patio toking up every night, even though it is illegal I can’t go down to his place and confiscate his property. I’m right but that’s the wrong way to be right.

The point is that now it is becoming more difficult to be right. Unfortunately it’s easier to be wrong. I recently read an opinion piece that posited we have always had “the crazies” but now with instantaneous, worldwide communication at everyone’s fingertips it is easier than ever to transmit and receive that craziness. With that I would say it is equally easier than ever to transmit, receive the wrong ways to wrong or right.

Perhaps instead of concentrating so much on whether we are right or wrong, we should spend more time on how to be – whichever we are.

MisLabeled

Michael Leave a comment

Most of the time I’m a pretty positive person but this past week, so many things have come up that just make me so, so annoyed (!) that I have to rant about them. And not like the good natured rant I ranted last month (Looking Good) but a real “you’ve got to be kidding me” rant.

It started with the story about 24 candidates for a nursing degree who failed to pass a final exam thus not meeting the qualifications for graduation. Oddly enough, the school refused to graduate them. It did, however, offer them tutoring and 2 additional attempts to pass the failed test. Not good enough for poor widdle students who wanted either the passing grade lowered, or better yet, the test thrown out. Somehow they actually were able to amass over 300 signatures on a petition to allow them to just graduate. It was noted that some of the parents stated that their children have lost jobs over this. Hmmm. The parents were the ones who noted that one, eh?

A blog post on Dictionary.com increased the level of my ire. It was questioning if we are increasing the size of the gender gap rather than encouraging the equality of all with new words we keep introducing the language. Mansplain, manbun, manspread, and man purse were among the examples. The author posited the use of the “man” descriptor as superfluous, inaccurate, or insulting and is just an unnecessary label. Let me correct myself. That article didn’t raise my ire. It only made me more livid than I would have been when I saw then the headline in the local paper, “Young LGBT artists add to local art scene.” Please, is that adding more so than young nonLnonGnonBnonT artists do or maybe more than old LGBT artists, or perhaps more than any other old plain unidentified artist? Can’t we revel in the addition to its scene by any artist? More unnecessary labels!

I turned on the morning news and heard about the suburban housewife who had her car stolen with all of her son’s baseball equipment in it along with the usual assortment of car dwelling stuff. The local police department would investigate it but can’t because they are spread too thin investigating the rash of overdose deaths in the community. I have an idea. The overdoses are already dead. Tell everyone else not to take drugs and go help the mom who just had the family SUV heisted. Probably so the future overdose could buy drugs! Oh but wait. They have a special drug task force working on the drug problem. And I remember when they used to be just plain cops.

Later that day I’m reading what came in on the Facebook feed and saw a post from one of the patient based support groups that I belong to. It was a graphic representation of all the ways people die. All manners that people depart were listed from heart disease to suicide to blood disorders to combat and terrorism. The point being to put what condition we share into some perspective. Among the many causes of death was “otherwise not specified.” I went to the original post to the original article to the original comments. For once I wished I hadn’t had that kind of time. Not one, not two, but a whole boatload of people made comments like “what about overdoses – are those supposed to be the otherwise?” “Climate change appears to be missing.” “Where’s old age?” “Broken hearts?” Yes, broken hearts Apparently quite a few hundreds of people didn’t feel there were enough labels.

Add these to two other stories from last week’s news, the gunman in Florida who kills five people then shoots himself, and a local mother who shoots her two children then sets herself on fire. They called these murder suicides. Probably an accurate label but please, if you should ever get the urge to do such a thing be creative about it and do the suicide part first.

There now. Next time I’ll try to be happier. And I’ll proofread that one too. Now that I have this out of my system I really don’t want to go back and check for typos. If you want I’ll be happy to refund your money for this one.

Have a day