295. The use of the words "offended" and "frightened."

The trouble with my title words is that, like every bid for sympathy, people want to know your circumstances before they honor your bid.  Peggy Noonan finds out you said you were "frightened" in a Columbia classroom listening to a discussion of Ovid's "Metamorphoses" and she'll knock you over with ridicule (WSJ, 5-23/24).  Jessica Valenti finds out you said it at a certain fraternity's party and she'll smother you with hugs (theguardian.com, 9-14-14).

The Columbia student newspaper wants hugs for its classroom listener, and defends her word.  Ovid "contains triggering and offensive material that marginalizes student identities."  This lets Noonan broaden her target to include the whole grievance-and-change faction that makes such bids.

The more we repeat and analyze these words the deeper we sink into the sands of subjectivity.  Here the subjectivity is double, a subjective report of a subjective state.  And then a judgment of the report (subjective) and of the state, and whether the judgment is shared.  So maybe triple.  But then there's that corrective report of the circumstances, it's sort of subjective too, isn't it?  So maybe quadruple.  Oi.

The more subjectivity there is the more grievances you're going to get.  I have a grievance against the language those students use.  Like "marginalizing identities." I, a dinosaur in the English Department, tell you I am "sickened" by those words.  They're jargon-words from the Women's and Afro-American Studies and Sociology departments.  Can I ask you to credit my nausea?  Not until I show you the evidence in classrooms and journals.  And even then there'll be a question of how many hugs I'm going to get.

After that there's the question of our varying acquaintance with the world and our sense of proportion.  Live awhile and you learn that every sound grievance-and-change movement has its silly side, as does every sound conservative resistance. All, being silly, are perfect targets for Noonan-type wit.  So you don't get too worked up about the silly-siders.  You see that going Noonan all the way wastes energy.  But you still have to keep your feel for the serious issues underneath, and the need for a sound stand.

The most serious issue I feel here is the changing of cultures.  (Can cultures be changed?  Of course.  Anglo-Saxon culture was changed from Semitic-unwelcoming to Semitic-welcoming in a very short time.)  And hurt feelings, which is what all our sympathy bids are about, can be a big obstacle to such change.  Avoid a statement of fact because the fact hurts feelings and you avoid the discussion and analysis necessary to make a change.

Suppose you want to say, "Black culture at this time fails to encourage black education."  Your support for that statement comes from scientific studies, work done by people who have stripped themselves, as far as any human being can strip himself or herself, of subjectivity.  But that statement of fact hurts feelings.  Do you keep your mouth shut? 

I suppose that if you want a hug badly enough you do.  But if you want to explore change, if you believe that a change here will benefit this minority culture (giving  those immersed in it better chances for a good job, say) and benefit every culture in the mix America is trying to manage, then you blow away the hug and speak the fact.  And any other fact relevant to the problem. 

Not that you're going to avoid giving offense, even with this understood.  Too many people have spoken neutral words with offensive intent, as aggressive anti-gay extremists spoke the word "homosexual," ruining it for neutral use.  Michigan State's guide to language expresses the common sense of it: "Speak of all members of the University community in relationship to the issues at hand...If you specify race or ethnic origin, be certain it is relevant."  Extend this to listeners: "If it's relevant to the issues at hand forget your ethnic sensitivities."

Oh how hard that is to do in a time of war, culture war.  Demonstrations of allegiance, reviews of grievances, visions and revisions of history, attacks on silliness, inculpations, exculpations, all those are so hard to resist when you're in combat.  And they're all so irrelevant. 

What brings us out of that?  For me it's a question, heard in the voice of a parent or an old prof: Do you want justification or do you want to solve a problem?  Which is more important to you, getting a hug, giving a knock, or finding a solution?

If it's the solution you go for then (if you'll excuse me one more time) English Composition becomes your guide.  From here on you try to avoid "Relevance?" in your margin.  Show how depressing (or inspiring) your history is, demonstrate your victimization (or your victoriousness), display your grief (or your confidence) and there it will appear, in red.

Relevance: the principle that representatives of Western culture, looking at Socrates, adhere to more thoroughly than anybody.  See it in Western science, see it in Western law.  Then forget it.   Westerners, Easterners, Northerners, and Southerners.  Look only at the model.  It's your guide through every argumentative essay and every public discussion.

Now you're looking at me, maybe as proud as Thomas Babington Macaulay of that model.  Maybe as humble as Uriah Heep.  Forget me.   Just follow the model.  Use the apparatus (Post 292) my predecessors have developed.  That is, if you want to avoid your old English teacher's marks in your margin.