August 1, 2012 - 01:49
Mood: A little Tired, but still feeling Strong. Keeping the negatives at bay!!
Music: A Thousand Beautiful Things ~ Annie Lennox
Thought of the Day: Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness ~ Chinese Proverb
I have just hard about a movement to remove the word 'retard' from our vocabularies. I feel that this is ridiculous, and frankly, stupid. Neither the word, nor it's definition is negative in any way. It's the slang that certain people are finding offensive ... not the word.
It is my belief that is it not the word that needs to be lost, but the negative way in which it is sometimes used. (And there are even times when the slang is using it CORRECTLY!) I feel that these people are fighting a battle they cannot win ... You can never un-learn something. The only thing you can change is what you do with that knowledge, and how you pass it on to those you are teaching. We're already battling a shrinking vocabulary in our younger generations, and they want to REMOVE more words?
It seems to me that the "I don't like it, so we must abolish it" frame of tough was the same one that got the Lord's Prayer, and the Oath to the Flag removed from our schools. Now I freely admit that I am not a Christian, but I had no issues with the Lord's prayer in school. I don't understand why the Oath was stopped as well though. Nothing wrong with that either. Why is the answer always destruction? Why do we always seem to feel the answer is the removal of something? Why can't it be growth? Or diversity? Why do we not simply provide the prayers of every culture and allow our children a "moment of contemplation" so that they may practise the prayer of their culture? Or better still, in my mind, the prayer of their choice? Those that choose not to pray can remain respectfully quiet. Is this not a better way to teach our children tolerance, acceptance, and allow them to find their own truths? I once read the phrase, "Do not force your version of 'happy' on others." It is something that has stuck with me over the years. I don't even remember where I read it, but I've tried to practise it. It seems to me that denying others the ability to learn and choose for themselves is somebody else's version of happy ... I don't plan to follow it. I have my own path.
Obstacles should be experiences, not guides. Break free of the maze. Get out of the rat race.
Sweet Dreams!
It goes something along the line of thinking like what I once described as the "Eleventh Commandment"-- Thou Shall Not be Inconvenienced. It's much easier (and human beings always seem to take the easy route, in my perceptions) to ban, prohibit, eliminate, cease, shame (e.g., smokers), censor, and whine, bitch, and moan than to educate. Like when I was being bullied in school, it was easier to "treat" me by offering me stupid coping strategies instead of instructing the students who were harassing me to stop. Or, when I didn't like the overwhelming presence of American music being played in public spaces I tried to inflict my pro-Canadian music views-- The ol' "How do you know until you try it?" argument. One problem with trying to affect social change on the scale that's being discussed here is that not everybody is going to go along with the changes. And some of the changes are stupid, silly, wrong-headed, in other people's minds.
ReplyDeleteFor example, I read an article in a magazine years ago about how a few people couldn't spell certain words in English, so instead of applying themselves to learn how to spell the "correct" way, they were pushing for a 'simpler' spelling system for the entire English language. Turn the tables, now it's everybody else's problem. And the consequences they didn't care to look out for and address because those consequences didn't affect them-- having to reprint books-- what a waste of paper-- having to replace millions upon millions of documents-- having to re-educate millions and millions of English speakers/spellers/writers-- inflicting on the many to save the few. Sometimes, human nature just sucks.
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