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Reclaiming Civility
A child’s brain is like a sponge, absorbing everything with which it comes in contact. As the brain gets older it learns to process, to analyze, to interpret. And eventually it begins to slow, begins to forget, begins to lose function.
Few prospects are as forbidding as mental decline, the specter of which haunts us as we advance toward old age. And so the experts tell us to keep our minds active, that using the brain is the surest way to stave off mental deterioration.
- Crossword puzzles
- Sudoku
- Word games
- Logic problems
These are common recipes from the diet books for the mind. But don’t stop there; the more creative and more challenging, the better for your brain.
- Go traveling
- Take up knitting or gardening
- Learn Italian
- Drive a different way to work
- Get an advanced degree
Anything and everything that piques cognitive activity belongs in our catalogue of mental health activities.
“That’s all good,” says Barbara Strauch, author of The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind and New York Times health and medical science editor. But the most intriguing advice Ms. Strauch has heard is this:
The 7 worst things you can say
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
This would appear to be a powerful statement of personal empowerment and forward-thinking vision. In fact, it is precisely the opposite.
The truth is this: if we don’t master our language, we can’t be masters of ourselves. Because we think in words, sloppy speaking will inevitably produce sloppy thinking. And if we aren’t thinking clearly, then we don’t know who we are, what we believe in, or what we stand for.
What are some of the worst offenders?
- Clichés
- Sound-bites
- Redundancies
- Political correctness
These are all our enemies. The reflexive recitation of words bereft of authentic meaning constitutes much of talk radio, and it may offer a convenient refuge from having to defend our opinions with hard facts and sound reasoning. But we don’t open up lines of communication and cooperation by hiding from clarity and logic.
Verbal interchanges have become so glib, so vapid, and so superficial, that anything short of a complete overhaul of our language will not do. But some popular expressions are worse than others, and here is my short list of the worst offenders, phrases that should be punishable by law.
“I’m just saying.” No you’re not. You’re just blathering. What is this even supposed to mean? I know you don’t want to hear this but I’m saying it anyway? I know you don’t care about my opinion but I have the right to express myself? If something is not worth saying, don’t say it. If your advice or opinion won’t be heeded, don’t bother. But if something needs to be said, don’t deflate your message by giving the listener permission to disregard it.
“That makes no sense.” Well, how would you know, since you obviously haven’t invested enough time thinking about it to evaluate its potential for veracity? The universe is full of weird and wonderful phenomena that, superficially, appear to make no sense. The computer screen you’re looking at right now is composed of molecules, which are composed of atoms, which are composed of tiny particles orbiting other tiny particles at near-light speed, but which are composed mostly of empty space. Does that make sense? The ideas we dismiss because they challenge our preconceptions may turn out to make plenty of sense once we make the effort to understand them.
“It’s a thing.” I don’t know when this insipid verbal blob crept into common usage. It has become so pervasive that I can’t even remember what we used to say. Probably “it’s a guy thing” or “it’s a work thing.” Now even that modicum of clarity is too much trouble. But almost any linguistic alternative would be preferable to this meaningless arrangement of syllables. In his prophetic novel 1984, George Orwell described how a totalitarian government controlled the minds of the populace by eliminating all insurgent vocabulary. The goal was to reduce the language of Newspeak to a mere 200 words, rendering people incapable of formulating complex thoughts that could lead to organized rebellion. What Orwell never imagined is that people would willingly lobotomize themselves the same way.
“I’m entitled to my opinion.” Of course, you are. But remember what the late New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said: You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts. In this brave new world of virtual reality, opinions and feelings carry more weight than data and logic; similarly, pseudo-information is indistinguishable from real information because we don’t invest the time to determine what’s true and what is not. After all, it’s somebody’s opinion, so it must be valid… right?
“I had no choice.” Of course, you did. Unless you had a gun to your head or were under hypnotic control, a choice is precisely what you made. That you managed to convince yourself that the options were so out of proportion as to be equivalent to a choice between life and death is likely a function of your own unwillingness to face up to responsibility. In a world that increasingly indulges the notion that free will is an illusion, that each of us is nothing more than a conglomeration of our genetics and our environment, it keeps getting easier for us to deny all guilt and claim that we are not accountable for anything we do.
“I can do what I want.” Of course, you can. So can lemmings. But your ability to do what you want has no relevance to whether it’s a good idea, or to the effect it may have on others or on yourself. Just as there are physical laws that make it impossible for us to flap our arms and fly, just as there are societal laws that prohibit us from causing physical harm to others, so too are there moral axioms that allow society to function in a way that makes all our lives better. Valuing only what I can do reduces all human society to an irrelevant footnote and widens the gap between ourselves and others.
“Future consequences.” In contrast to what? Past consequences? This is only one example of how people tack on adjectives in an effort to sound smart and only succeed in making themselves sound stupid. Some of the more egregious offenders are: end results, advance warning, very unique, past history, and unintended mistake. Adjectives are the junk food of writing; they are also the hobgoblins of speech, clouding our thinking and obfuscating communication.
Now please don’t misunderstand. These misdirected phrases are not the source of our problems; they are symptoms of a culture that has grown more careless in its conduct, more slovenly in its thinking, and more indifferent to the standards that once defined and informed the behavior of responsible citizens. In short, we have grown lazy, no matter how hard we seem to be working.
Discipline is the key to success. Whether in school, in our careers, in the gym, or in our relationships, if we want to succeed in our communication we can’t afford not to be disciplined in our speech as well. Success in almost every other area is sure to follow.
And if we do make the effort, we will quickly notice that our professional relationships become more rewarding and that our personal relationships become more satisfying. What’s more, with the ripples we send out into our communities, we can all do our part to creating a culture of greater warmth, stronger cooperation, and deeper respect among all those who share our world.
Strangers on a Train
There is an art to travelling with small children by public transportation.
We had managed to balance our seven bags in and atop our two baby strollers. Needless to say, this left them unavailable for babies. My wife, Sara, shifted one-year-old Jake into long-distance-hip-riding mode while our new friend Blythe did the same with her own one-year-old, Joshie. Zeke and I, the husbands and designated sherpas, prepared to push the makeshift luggage carts.
The problem was, we had no idea where we were going.
Sara and I had arrived in Budapest less than a week earlier, and our feelings of apprehension had been deepening by the hour. Through the mercy of divine intervention, the principal of our new school was on our flight from Israel. Otherwise, we might have taken up residence in Ferihegy International Airport like Tom Hanks in The Terminal.
A haze of disorientation enveloped us almost immediately, progressively growing thicker and darker. Principal Haraszti – whose name I soon began to slur into Horrorstory – deposited us in our apartment with a loaf of bread, a bag of apples, and a box of milk. There was no crib for Jake and no bed for three-year-old Abby. Horrorstory promised to call the next morning, which he did – an hour late. Relief, if not gratitude, came naturally. We had no money, had yet to find anyone who spoke English, and didn’t know our own address or phone number.
Why had no preparations been made? we asked. After all, the administration had had all summer to prepare for our arrival.
We received the answer we were to hear again and again: the matter will be resolved.
We proceeded to deal with one ineptitude after another. Of course, that made it easy to forge a bond of friendship and alliance with Blythe and Zeke, the other American couple who had parachuted in from across the globe to find themselves similarly neglected.
Generally speaking, the end of the week allows us to shrug off our troubles and anxieties with the arrival of the Sabbath, and we had been assured that all our needs were taken care of. The school had arranged an orientation camp for the students an hour outside the city, and we were expected to participate. Horrorstory told us which train to take and where to get off. The camp, he said, was “right across the street from the train station.”
Most of his information was accurate. All of it, actually, except the last part. Across the street from the train station stood a lovely expanse of woodland, with no sign of life other than birds and rodents. There was no attendant behind the station window, either. He probably wouldn’t have spoken English anyway.
As we pondered our options, I found myself already thinking in Hungarian: the matter will be resolved.
So we loaded up the strollers and headed off in the opposite direction, only to find ourselves wandering through an industrial area almost as deserted as the woods. It would be the sundown in a few hours, and the specter of welcoming the arrival of the Sabbath in the middle of nowhere loomed ominously before us.
We asked the few passersby if they knew of the camp, but no one had any idea what we were talking about. Eventually, we flagged down a young German tourist on a bicycle. He knew no more than we did; but he took pity on us, turned back the way he had come, and set off as if in search of the Holy Grail. A few minutes later he returned. The camp was indeed across the street from the station. Just a half-mile down the road and hidden entirely from view.
So we survived our first week in Budapest, our first Sabbath in Hungary, and our first encounter with students who looked at us as if we had just emerged from the ghettos of their grandparents’ tortured memories.
***
The return trip to Budapest was somewhat more relaxed. It hadn’t started off that way, however. We had just finished loading up the strollers for our hike to the train station when the rain began to fall. A quarter hour searching for a taxi turned up nothing and left us nowhere.
Then the camp director took pity on us. Miraculously, he succeeded in cramming four adults, four children, and all our baggage into his matchbox sedan, and off we went.
Whatever their idiosyncrasies, Hungarians do have a certain passion for coming to the rescue of others. The camp director raced us to the station, somehow gathered up most of our belongings and carried them single-handed through the pedestrian underpass and into the first-class cabin of the train, which pulled up as if on cue for us to board. We hadn’t planned on traveling first class, but once there we had no interest in packing up to relocate. Aside from that, the price of $3.50 U.S. – albeit triple the second-class fare – seemed eminently reasonable; at least for rich Americans like us.
We had the entire train car to ourselves.
The money gap would follow us everywhere. On Sundays, Sara and I crossed the street from our apartment to let Jake and Abby frolic in Városliget, Budapest’s central park. Often we would buy the children giant balloons, shaped like rabbits or roosters, almost as big as they were. The locals, never shy about staring at strangers, glared with a mixture of resentment and awe at the wealthy Westerners who could afford two balloons. They cost a dollar apiece.
Our Hungarian salary was about $200 a month, which covered food and basic living expenses. That was what most Hungarians lived on. We received a separate American salary which, back in the States, would have kept us at subsistence level. But in Hungary we were able to save most of it (which had a lot to do with why we were there in the first place).
There was something unsettling, however, about being seen as rich. It was one more thing that set us apart in a country where we stood out noticeably already. And even if it wasn’t objectively true, it was relatively true; and that taught us an uncomfortable lesson about the reality of perception.
In a way, we are what other people think we are, no matter what we think we are, and no matter what we really are.
That sense of displacement tarnished the pleasure of our train ride back to Budapest. If not for us, the first-class car would have been empty. Ergo, it should have been empty. We didn’t belong there. No one did.
The train pulled into the station and we descended from our private car. Porters raced each other for the privilege, and expected gratuity, of carrying our luggage. But these were no ordinary porters. They were like the cast of surreal characters from a Federico Fellini movie. The withered septuagenarian who got to us first beat out two comrades, one hobbling on a crutch and the other with his arm in a sling.
We let him take one of the lighter bags, with which he struggled, uncomplaining, as he hauled it to the taxi stand. The cabbie demanded the extortionate price of 300 forint – about three dollars – to drive us back to our apartment, where Blythe and Zeke joined us. The work crew that was supposed to have completed repairs on their apartment was running behind schedule.
It wouldn’t take much longer, they were told. The matter would be resolved.
Published in this month’s issue of The Wagon Magazine.
A Short History of Hazing
“I expect to lose half of you before I’m finished. I will use every means necessary — fair and unfair — to trip you up, to expose your weaknesses.”
This line sets the tone for Louis Gossett, Jr.’s, Academy Award winning role as Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley in An Officer and a Gentlemen. It’s also a fairly accurate depiction of the drill sergeants address military recruits — especially those training for elite corps.
The philosophy is simple. An army is a team. Every soldier’s life depends on his ability and the ability of his comrades to carry out orders. There is no room for hesitation in battle, no latitude for second-guessing orders, no accommodation for individual objectives or priorities.
In other words, there is no allowance for ego.
Yonason Goldson 