permaculture

[jedd <jedd@progsoc.org>]

On Mon, 28 May 2007, Marimike6@cs.com wrote:
> That's the current kiss of death among political buzzwords, Jedd. 

 It's tricky keeping up with the latest set of prejudices from the USA.

 Quite a few years ago, Bert Newton (a local celeb in these parts)
 was hosting one of those ridiculously self-indulgent awards shows
 on the local boxthatneverstops.  With him on stage was Muhammad
 Ali.  Apparently the banter was surprisingly witty (you may choose
 to believe that people found it surprising because of someone's skin
 colour* - consider for a moment that most sports 'personalities' have
 difficultly constructing a grammatically sound sentence, let alone one
 that's interesting - and this phenomenon seems particularly rare
 amongst people whose professional life involves having other people
 thump them in the head a lot) and at one point Bert used a phrase like
 "I really like this boy".  Bert, and pretty much everyone watching,
 took that as a vaguely paternal but totally sincere compliment.

 Muhammad, and everyone on the other side of the pond, didn't.

 Who's at fault here, and why, and what lengths should people go
 to to fully discover everyone else's beliefs and then cater for them
 at the expense of their own vernacular (or culture).  As far as I
 can tell, the end result of that exchange was a great deal of angst
 and 15 million people [obliged to] learn of yet another loaded phrase
 (from that hotbed of peace and goodwill (the USA)) that was
 previously thought to be at best friendly, at worst harmless.  To
 spell it out, there were two ways that could have panned out - a
 degree of understanding that Bert didn't share the prejudices or
 crypto-nomenclature of Muhammad's countrymen with a subsequent
 graceful acceptance of the local (and patently harmless) customs,
 or .. the way it did pan out.

 For my own part, I'm unconvinced that I should be obliged to maintain
 a working knowledge of the bigotry (coded or otherwise) from every
 other country on the planet.**

 It sounds like an awful lot of work at my end, and I can't see how
 it actually helps solve the problem at the other end.  Surely at
 some point it would be impossible to communicate with anyone, lest
 you accidentally (or just for want of any viable alternatives without
 recourse to the Roget's) let slip a phrase that they think is code for
 "you have very small shoes" (or something similarly absurd).

> Face it, we have a legacy to live down.

 This is a bizarre belief.  I can not comprehend how you can adopt
 it, let alone try to encourage others to perpetuate your misplaced
 guilt.  Nor, as above, can I work out how thinking or behaving in
 this way moves us all towards anything like an optimal state.

 At what point do you cease to possess that legacy, and how will you
 know when you've arrived?  What do you say to people who want to get
 there a few years earlier than you?  What benefits do you perceive
 from protracting the [anti-]legacy period?  Is it a kind of inverted
 revenge by proxy?

> Too many centuries of discrimination have gone by for us to be
> able to just wave a magic wand and say "okay, now it's all over".

 Yeah .. imagine if *that* happened.  It'd be horrific to just go and
 start again, eh wot?  I think it's important that we carry around
 the collective guilts of several generations of dead white guys,
 and immortalise their regrettable beliefs and activities by treating
 certain key words or phrases from their era as sacrosanct - thereby
 bequeathing those symbols with eternal and unassailable power.

 </sarcasm>

 Nothing says we're moving on quite like not moving on.  Meh.

 Jedd.


 * But that may be reflective of your prejudices rather than theirs.
 ** International law sensibly favours a very similar approach.