Tag Archives: privilege

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’23 A To Z Challenge – E

The Sound of silence…. Music…. Language

Each language has its own sound – its own tempo – its own delivery.  Even if you don’t know what the foreign speaker is saying, you can often tell what language it is, simply by the sound of it.  Italian and Spanish sound like the machinegun chatter of chickadees on meth.  French sounds like the speaker is trying to evade being charged with child luring.  German sounds like someone is training a dog, and Russian seems spoken by a crew of cesspool cleaners.  I often know the area where an English native is from, just by the local accent.

Most languages don’t change much, or very quickly.  Spanish-speakers can read El Cid in the original, while Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written at the same time, requires a translator.  English evolves, and its sound has changed over time.

It’s not just the new words, and the new meanings and usages of old words.  It’s that the world, and therefore the language, has grown larger, and more complex.  We have less time, to say more.  The construction is getting shorter, quicker, tighter, and wider, but not as deep.

A century ago, or two, we had the time – at least the privileged, educated,  upper crust – to converse and orate, using grandiloquent, polysyllabic words, often from Latin or Greek bases.  Those idyllic days are gone.  The grand old days of the unhurried Romance-era are long past.

I recently read a piece from another archaist like me – someone who likes to throw the occasional impressive antique usage in.  He used the word

EFTSOON

Soon after, before 950; Middle English eftsone,Old English eftsōna.See eft2, soon

While it was a sweet, caramel-sundae kind of word, we just don’t have the time for it anymore, in our fast-paced, frenetic lives.  The leisurely, imposing sound of it has been replaced by curt, businesslike words like ASAP, or stat.

The Good Old Days were only good for the cream of the social crop, but their relaxed, melodious language usage was pleasing to the ear.  Hurry back ASAP stat soon for another helping of blather.

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Fibbing Friday XI

I went to Pensitivity101’s country club, and asked if I could join.  They said, Congratulations, you’re her new caddy.  Apparently she worked the last one to death.  I did come away with a lovely matched set of golf-based prompts to erect lies around.

  1. What is an Arnold Palmer?

It’s the new name for an old drink at country club bars.  It contains rye and rum and vodka.  It used to be called Panty Stripper.  You promise her that you’ll give her a long stroke with a big club, but it’s usually just a short putt out.  😯  She said, “I’m tight.”  He said, “I’m stiff.”  And they were both liars.

2.  What is a niblick?

That’s the name of the extra snack(s) I used to have at night, before my doctor said she might have to get out the defibrillator paddles if I didn’t cut back.

3.  What is a mashie?

It’s the white, fluffy carbohydrate stuff that Scotsmen eat with their mushy peas and haggis.

4.  What’s the difference between a hook and a slice?

A hook was also known as a boarding-house reach at mealtimes, back when families were large.  You needed it to get your fair share of sliced ham or roast beef.  While you were doing that, someone else was making off with the butter and rolls.

5.  What name is given to a single hole score of three under par?

If you golf with me and my friends, it would be called a damned lie.  Yell fore – take six – put down five.  The only time I even got a birdie was when a pigeon flew across the fairway as I teed off.

6.  What’s a bogey?

He was a 1930s and ‘40s film noir actor.  If he could put up with Katherine Hepburn’s shrewish tongue in The African Queen, he wasn’t afraid of gold-stealing bandits with guns, in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.  We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!

7.  What’s the difference between a regular golf course and an executive golf course?

The $100,000 per year membership fee, and not having to wait for and talk to the riff-raff.

8.  What unique award is given to the winner of the Masters Tournament?

He gets his own, personal slave, complete with controlling No-Bark collar and leash.  The year Tiger Woods won, he got a white, Joe Dirt redneck.  Rumor is that Elin got him in the divorce settlement, and she’s very satisfied.

9.  Why do golf balls have dimples?

So that you’ll pick them up and keep them with you when you find one.  Aren’t they cute little dickens??  Their mother told them to smile, and they’d go far.  250 yards, Mom.  Just not in a straight line.

10.  What is the 19th hole?

That’s the porcelain god that you’ll wind up, lurched over and praying to in the washroom, if you spend more time at the clubhouse bar than you do out on the lynx.  Oops, that’s a Canadian golf term.  That should read ‘links.’

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People Of Privilege

Bible

Much has been made in the media recently about “White Privilege.”  On the average, white people receive and achieve things better than people of other colors, generally the darker the hue, the greater the exclusion.  This ‘Angel Aura’ thing extends from jobs, wages and promotion, to housing, education, banking/financing, and general treatment by those in power (AKA lighter skin), particularly police.

White men came to this continent, and made it in their image.  They marginalized the Indians and other natives, and imported black slaves.  There were some who did disreputable things for financial and social gain, and there were some who performed unspeakable acts to justify eliminating anyone who ‘wasn’t them.’  Mostly, they did it from the perhaps-mistaken, but honestly-held belief that they and their way of life were superior.

So too, did the Christians come here and mold society so that they would reap the benefits, and all others would be ignored and excluded.  Some questions and comments on my recent Religism post, as well as some predictable “Christmas” articles, show that many Christians just don’t get it – or believe it.

Religism is real.  It’s the hatred of a particular faith or set of beliefs.  Some ‘Good Christians’ hate Jews. Many Muslims hate Jews, and also Christians.  Catholics hate Protestants.  Ego and insecurity drives it, and the hatred is often for the wrong reason, or for no reason at all.

The blind, unquestioning faith in the pre-eminence of Christianity often has its proponents mistakenly claiming Religism, when other groups’ rituals are included in secular life.  A woman writer recently spoke of knowing about Chanukah, Ramadan, Kwanzaa, Wiccan Solstice and the like – but wondered why they would want to celebrate at the same time as Christians, and exclude Jesus.

Because of her (and many others’) assumption of the universality of Christianity, it just never occurs to her that the members of these other religions all have their own year-end celebrations, which they would still practice if Christ had never existed.  A few of them have done so for thousands of years before Christianity came along.

There are the Christian haters who are the equivalent of the bigots who gave blankets infected with smallpox to the Indians, because they regarded them as sub-human.  Most of these folks however, are just the ones who have been subjected to the constant, low-level religious conditioning.  The Catholic Church calls it responsive reading, and catechism.  The Government does the same thing and labels it ‘brainwashing.’

Protecting one’s religious rituals can be a good thing – until you try to force them on others.  Inclusion of what is important to others is not exclusion of any portion of Christianity.  Falsely claiming Religism to justify a Christian-only secular public, makes Christians guilty of the same exclusionary tactics that they accuse others of.

A usually level-headed male newspaper writer pumped out a column labeled ‘Stop Diluting Christmas Traditions.’  It might better have been titled, ‘I ain’t gonna share!  You can’t make me.  I’m gonna take my ball and go home.’  A previously Catholic hospital had gone public.  Now funded by taxes from ALL citizens, it provided care for people of ALL faiths, and none.  They decided not to put up the usual nativity display.  Well, how DARE they??!

He was lost, because he couldn’t parade his faith, and held no-one else’s valid.  “It waves away the possibility of any faith.  It empties our plate, and bids us to eat.”  Actually, it removes the “His-only, a-la-carte” plate, and sets up a smorgasbord of beliefs to sample and compare, but there’s no trying religious chili or curry for him.  He’s a dedicated meat and potatoes Christian.

He complained that, “It’s like trying to speak language in the abstract, but no specific tongue,” apparently unlike me, studying all languages, or in this case religions, and seeing how they influence my favorite.

“It’s not a generic ‘Holiday Tree’, because there’s no generic holiday.”  It’s a generic Holiday Tree because it’s everybody’s ‘holiday’, Christmas included – just not exclusively Christian, even though that’s what he, and many like him, want and expect.  There’s reverse Religism here.  They just don’t see that they’re giving, not receiving.

The history teacher of the 15-year-old atheist son of one of the Free Thinkers was ranting about people who wouldn’t accept “proven historical facts.”  When one of the other students asked for an example, she came out with ‘the proven existence of Jesus Christ.’  School policy prohibits discussion of any single religion.  She was in the wrong, no matter how well-intentioned, or deluded.

Our lad pointed out that there was no ‘historical proof’ that Christ really existed.  “Well, it’s all right there, in the Bible!”  That may be, but no other contemporary Jewish – or Roman – document mentions Jesus, his exploits, his execution or his resurrection.  The boy was sent to the Principal, who chastised him for causing a disturbance in class.  No thinking allowed.  Believe what we tell you.

A local mall has a public meeting room which various community groups can book to present their particular points of interest.  The Free Thinkers recently requested a booking, and were, at least initially told, “We’re not sure you qualify as a ‘Community Group’.”  The Ontario Civil Rights Tribunal has dealt with Sofree(Southern Ontario Free Thinkers) as a community group dozens of times, establishing a precedent.  The president even has the complaint form document bookmarked on his smart phone.  A few keystrokes will rouse the Government to set them straight.

Too often, Christianity acts as a big, unthinking, entitled bully.  While less bloody, the difference between its head-in-the-sand stance, and ISIS’ off-with-their –heads methods, is one of only a minor degree. President Obama recently compared the atrocities of ISIS with the actions of the medieval Inquisition, and the usual suspects immediately began screaming about being attacked, and how dare he compare ISIS’s actions with those of the church.  That’s not Religism, that’s reality.