News & Articles

George Frost Kennan

I’m often struck by human willingness to lazily drift along with whatever current is current. Many among us lambast horrible rebels. We ban their flag because we are right and they are wrong. Because we won, they lost. Victory! 

A teeny-tiny of pause, however, might suggest sanctuary (one-time religious) was rebellious opposition to the previous victory. Justification of a cause doesn’t mean justice. Means something else, many things, not necessarily just according to a standard or rules. 

Perfectly fine and justifiable to toss rules that get in the way of progress. But not on roads, airports, hospital procedures, professional standards and so on. 

Do I really explain the above? No. Hell no. Who can? 

We inhabit space where contradiction and conflict are constant companions (cackle about consonance-caused confusion). You likely know folks who adamantly deny the validity of the notion of supreme godly authority until they need one, most often politically. Then, oh yes indeed then, they see the light of one unflinching way. I try to avoid those people. 

In an imperfect world I’d be inclined to shoot them, for their own good, of course, removing them from their misery, so t’ speech. Would take a lot of ammunition. And time. 

Then there’s the bodies to deal with, respectfully or recycleably. I’m prone to go green on that one, or at least harvest hair as NAZIs did at Auschwitz. Dark humor rises from hard history.

Rule-free means topless, commando easy, let-us-sway in the breeze happiness unbound by constraint. Removing rules means free and happy. Does it? 

Consider definition as one form of rule. It is, you know. Now ponder if you could modify cannibal to undefined. What, f’r example, would be a free or moderate cannibal? Glossed by saying the improved cannibal only consumes dead humans is not an improvement, especially if you are a mortician. 

Cannibalism is bad for the business of cremation and burial, too. And it is still cannibalism if we have others do the killing of procuring for us. Pickled breast or smoked penis are cannibal fare no matter. No amount of renaming or sauce disguise changes the content. 

Cannibalism, we’ll likely agree, is an extreme example, one, however, more often practiced by our fellow persons than we or their descendants wish to recall. But, as defining we go, it might not be the worst practice to spade call as a method of bringing to focus an elemental point. 

One who steals is a thief. Saying they are not thieves unless caught or until convicted is, seems to me, a fish wriggling on the line. If clearly, a willful and actual taking of property real or conceptual took place then that theft would point to a thief or thieves. 

There’s an old saw for guidance. “If it paddles in a pond and squawks duck-like it’s probably not a moose or dog or my Aunt Anna who always played canary.” 

Likewise, if you’ve received a gash you’re unlikely to help matters with more gashing. Surgeons will see this differently and for good cause. But you get the idea. A rule or definition are useful tools or guides. 

As a frequent breaker and messer-upper of grammatical propriety (chew kin aye ski mini hoe ave bean any oiled buy may) I suggest a tactic of remembering to define, but not necessarily taking the hook-line-sinker we might be expected to swallow unquestioningly. Like this. 

What’s the difference between slave and hostage? Both lack freedom of movement, but one has to labor while the other does not. Wrong, I’d say, because the hostage has the full-time job of being a pawn. So, functionally, the two have lots in common.

Whether you accept a slave-hostage comparison, I suspect most would agree that news media has leaned into an attention-grabbing survival game. As consumers, citizens, members of society or voters our task becomes more difficult as we’re surrounded by noise and distraction. Put this way, is multitasking real or, instead, a disguise for shifting from one thing to another? 

Another of my suspicions says the majority of us can manage one thing at a time. When more is thrown at us we cope best we can. You have experienced the result of too much with too little time and thought. 

(An aside, it griped me when fellow teachers lobbied – gratuitously in my view – for more breaks. Every break a disruption resulting in less work.) 

Regardless, a fair amount of concentration, attention to detail, is needed for accomplishment. Forget that and you’re a silly ass like too many I worked with or for. When sight is lost of your goal and role you’re wasting your self, two words in this case. 

But all ye and we can do is give things a think and do our individual best. Quite often a person finds they are alone in a position. Awkward and scary. You can handle it. Humanity has lived through much-much worse. Not at all liking or approving of war, I go to a lesson from George F. Kennan. (On how many does the name drop thudding?) Summarized, Kennan’s stance was “If you have to be at war then go at it with all you’ve got to win and then establish workable peace.”

Winning in the shortest time limits suffering and deaths as much as might be expected in a war. Wouldn’t you think? I do anyway.

Set politic, ethnic or belief bias aside and wonder how you’d respond had I burrowed into your space, did damage (maybe some prisoners-aka hostages and some deaths) in order to reclaim disputed land-lumber-bricks. You’d feel aggressed because I was aggressing by selecting that way to force (not make or prove) my claim. But why quibble and appease as one would with weak positioning? Think as of a feud where one family wishes to obliterate another. The more conciliation the longer it goes on. “Nother words, might be a mistake to deal with a blood feud as a property dispute. You can bet why some in the dispute wish for exactly that mistake.