Tag Righting Wrongs

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.

Figuring It Out

Michael 2 Comments

You haven’t read anything from me since early last week. It’s not because I got sick and ended up I the hospital or anything dramatic like that. I just haven’t been feeling me lately. I’ve not had a bad week but I’ve not had a great one. Sometimes that happens. To look at me you’d probably not notice much, if any difference. Most of the time I look neither disabled nor chronically ill, yet both of those I am.

Neither of those necessarily has anything to do with the other of those. I, you, or anyone else can be one, the other, both, or neither, and it would all be perfectly normal. Except for those who are not perfectly normal.

If I had to pick which to be I’d go with the neither option. Being chronically ill is a little easier in society. There are lots of support groups for almost any chronic illness you can name, from “basic” high blood pressure to the more exotic diseases and conditions of which two have taken residence in me. Most chronic illnesses do not result in a disability but the ones that do quite make up for that vast silent majority of those that don’t. Even those leave most people looking like there is little, if any wrong goings on under an otherwise fairly healthy looking skin.

Being disabled is also no picnic. I’m lucky that I still have most of my abilities available. I might be able to imagine a world where I am dependent on others for daily functions that you take for granted like washing behind your ears or making a cup of tea. But I can’t imagine what it’s like to be dependent on people’s foresight and planning to permit me to do those other things you take for granted like opening a door or stepping up onto a curb.

Whether overtly disabled, like a paraplegic in a wheelchair, or with a hidden disability that doesn’t affect mobility until you’ve taking the first 30 steps then can go no farther, there isn’t a whole lot of acceptance and accommodation going on out there. Wearing ribbons and outlining parking spaces in blue just don’t add that much to my quality of life. Sorry.

If you don’t read “Help Codi Heal” you should. Codi is a young wife and mother of three who was living her life when she was injured in a fall two years ago and now is living her life in a wheelchair. Because she is seen differently now, in a recent post she wondered how she would teach her children to accept life’s differences. Her dilemma came as she wondered how you teach acceptance of differences without pointing out the differences. Her not quite 4 year old taught her children don’t have to be taught acceptance. They are naturally accepting. So then, the new dilemma is how do you get them to stay that way?

NoHPaccessI think the answer is, you don’t. Leave it alone and let the children grow into being accepting adults organically. They won’t turn out to be ogres. I’m certain the amount of non-acceptance is directly proportional to a society’s extent of sensitivity training. The more we try to “teach” acceptance, diversity, inclusion, and affirmation, the more we turn away, divide, exclude, and deny.

Our attempts at equal rights for anything have never really succeeded. We manage to call so much attention to the inequalities and attempting to right past wrongs we never get around to actually addressing the actions that made the thing wrong.

Let me tell you a true story. In 1972, I applied for a summer job at the local steel mill. That was when many companies were feeling pressure from regulators to comply with what was then called affirmative action, ten years after the regulations went into effect. I went through all the necessary applications and tests and was in an interview with the personnel manager who told me that he’d love to hire me but he really needed “a black or female student to even things up” for that summer. No discussion of my ability or inability to do the job, just what he needed to do to “even things up.” That phrase stayed with me and at every job I ever applied for in the next 40 years I heard it in my head. I always wondered if I’d be competing against any minorities and would I be unfairly dismissed because I wasn’t one. Real or no, that was a perception that stayed with me for a lifetime.

Forty years later when I was the hiring manager, I was required to give each applicant a form to voluntarily complete after the interview. It asked the applicant’s sex (male, female, other), race (optional), ethnic background (of a select handful), and veteran status. This was sealed and sent to a third party to tabulate to determine if we were interviewing from a pool of applicants representative of our local population. No question of the job we were interviewing for, education or experiential requirements for the job, or if the applicants who responded were representative of the population. Real or no, pressure was felt every time I had to make a decision among applicants of diverse backgrounds, even if their professional backgrounds were also quite diverse.

How do we address the elephant in the room? If you ask a roomful of 3 year olds they would probably say, “Look, an elephant! Let’s play.” How do we get the three year old grow up to be 23 with that same innocence and acceptance? Just leave them alone.

They’ll figure it out.