The Garden

For those of you who may have been following my opinions for the last couple of semesters, you probably got the impression that I’m a rather pompous, condescending and arrogant ass.

For those who thought exactly that, you’re right.

Well, today I’m here to add on to that “assness” by taking a few shots at some of my scholastic peers and workmates.

My complaint: People—even college-educated people—do not know how to write!

What started as a pet peeve of mine while I was in college, slowly morphed into an annoyance when I began working for The Ranger News, and now is just a full-blown outrage since I’ve been in the workforce. The Ranger News itself has received considerable criticism for the quality of its published articles—which have been well-deserved in my opinion—but that doesn’t even scratch the surface of some of the articles that have crossed editors’ desks that never even made it into print. While I was an editor for the paper, I would literally spend hours trying to rework articles just to make the sentences coherent, let alone say anything substantive. It was beyond ridiculous that what I saw was from college students. I can only imagine what some of the professors on campus have to deal with.

Now that I am employed in the community, I again have been confronted with instances of poor writing. I have seen important documents printed on agency letterhead contain numerous spelling and grammatical mistakes. Again, the sources of these mistakes are college-educated people.

I can’t believe so many people are bad at putting words and sentences together.

Writing is an extension of language; and language is the formalization of communication. Society, as a social apparatus, depends on the ability of its members to communicate clearly and effectively in order for the society to function optimally. Without the ability to communicate effectively, how are we to understand each other? Ask any relationship guru and they are most likely going to tell you that the key to any healthy relationship is communication. Society as a whole is one big relationship, so communication skills are just as crucial en masse.

Unfortunately though, my observations have suggested to me that many of my peers and coworkers are sorely lacking in writing skills. Maybe this factor relates to why society suffers from so many ills.

More than that though, the ability to articulate one’s self clearly and concisely is an exercise in intelligence. Many theories of intelligence postulate that verbal skills are an indicator of one’s overall level of intelligence. Therefore, the more command individuals have over language, the higher their level of intelligence is likely to become.

Yet, I observe that plenty of college students and college grads can barely write a paragraph without a spelling, punctuation or grammatical error. And this is with the advent of word processors equipped with spell-check and grammar-check software, mind you.

We’re talking college-age people and older lacking a command of their native language here. We’re talking adults. Presumably, these adults have graduated from high school, middle school and grade school—each of which ought to have taught writing skills. Somewhere, something has failed miserably.

I could launch into theories about why people don’t know how to write; I could rail against technologies like television, cell phones and text/instant messaging (as I’ve done in previous opinions); I could assert that people don’t read enough anymore or engage each other in meaningful conversations; but instead I’m just here to complain. I don’t really care why it so happens that few people seem to grasp the fundamentals of language; I’m just pissed that they don’t. And, since I’m a pompous ass, I’m going to stand here and preach how much others don’t know how to write while asserting that I do. Anyone who doesn’t like it can bitch to me in writing via my email above.

In a well-known paper entitled On Being Sane in Insane Places, psychologist David Rosenhan argued that the use of labels such as “mentally ill” to describe individuals can have unintentional negative side-effects. Rosenhan’s paper discussed a study he conducted in the early 1970s testing the legitimacy of psychiatric diagnoses made by health care professionals. Rosenhan arranged for eight “normal” individuals to fake symptoms of schizophrenia to gain admission into one of 12 regular hospitals’ psychiatric wards. If successfully admitted, each “pseudopatient” was to immediately cease the faking of any schizophrenic symptoms and attempt to convince the psychiatric staff that they in fact were not “mentally ill.” Rosenhan reported that while it was relatively easy for the pseudopatients to acquire the label “schizophrenic,” it was extremely difficult for them to shed that label once it was assigned. Rosenhan stated that the average length of hospitalization for his pseudopatients was 19 days, and that each pseudopatient was discharged with a diagnosis of schizophrenia “in remission” rather than having the label completely removed.

Now consider the implications of Rosenhan’s study on the label “terrorist” as often used by U.S. officials and the mainstream media. Ever since George W. Bush dubbed his military campaign in the Middle East the “War on Terror,” we have been hearing incessantly about how vital it is that we defeat those “terrorists” who “hate our freedoms.”

I think it is fair to say that the diagnosis “terrorist” is mostly a claim about one’s psychological make-up, similar to the way the diagnosis “schizophrenic” is psychological. When one labels someone a terrorist, one is saying something about a person’s thoughts, beliefs, desires, etc. (e.g. “they hate our freedoms”).

Similar to the Rosenhan study, it appears that the label “terrorist” is assigned somewhat easily and liberally: there are apparently a lot of them and we are to believe that there will continue to be a lot of them for a long time.

It is not clear who is diagnosing this large population of people as “terrorists,” or what criteria they might be using to do so (I don’t think Bush or Obama are credentialed psychologists); but, unlike the Rosenhan study, they must be doing their diagnosing outside of a highly controlled inpatient unit since all those terrorists are scattered in hiding places throughout the Mid-East. If it was relatively easy for Rosenhan’s pseudopatients to receive a false diagnosis in a controlled environment, how likely is it that our government officials (or military soldiers and pilots for that matter) have accurately diagnosed the condition of “terrorist” from afar? I can’t say I like those odds.

Despite the difficulties inherent in the labeling of terrorists, there is the companion problem of figuring out how and when the “disease” of terrorism might be “cured.” President Obama’s official webpage (whitehouse.gov) boldly asserts that it is his policy to “Defeat Terrorism Worldwide.” This implies that there is a “cure” for the psychological mind-set of “terrorism.” If we apply Rosenhan’s study here, we are likely to believe that once a person is labeled a “terrorist,” there is probably little chance for that person to shed that label. Beyond the realm of mental illnesses like schizophrenia, we tend to see this “permanent labeled-ness” when it comes to the label “criminal” (e.g. the ramifications of being a “registered sex offender,” etc.).

So, it seems fair to say that since there is a population of people now known as “terrorists,” there is no realistic chance for these psychologically-afflicted “terrorists” to be “cured,” and there is no real chance that these afflicted individuals will be given a clean bill of health and “discharged” back to their normal lives. Once a terrorist, always a terrorist, I suppose.

Knowing the implications of such a label kind of makes me wish there was a more rigorous process of diagnosing “terrorism.”

President Obama appears to understand the ramifications of labeling terrorists as well; however his approach is a little different from mine. Rather than be more careful in the labeling of humans as terrorists to prevent unnecessary hardships for non-afflicted individuals, Obama would rather just eliminate everyone who happens to have been labeled a terrorist. Obama states on his webpage that he intends to “ensure that our military becomes more stealthy, agile, and lethal in its ability to capture or kill terrorists.”

See, there is no “cure” listed there. Just “capture or kill.” This is how we deal with the psychological state of “terrorism.” Since the disease cannot be killed, the host cannot shed the label; therefore, we simply must kill or quarantine the host. That is how we “defeat terrorism.”

It is interesting to note that Rosenham’s paper went on to discuss ways in which the label “mentally ill” could lead to the dehumanization of the person carrying that label as well…I wonder if there’s a parallel with the label “terrorist” on that front as well?

Last month Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi, well-known for throwing his shoes at former President George W. Bush last December during a press conference, was sentenced to three years in prison for his “crime.” Mr. Zeidi was charged with aggression against a visiting head of state, and there was reportedly heavy protest from the Iraqi public after the verdict was read. According to a New York Times article, there were supporters chanting “hero” outside the Iraqi court house, and a statue of a large shoe was erected north of Baghdad to honor Mr. Zaidi; however the Iraqi Parliament ordered the statue dismantled.

I think this case of presidential “shoeing” is a great example of how upside-down some conceptions of “justice” can be; and, given that our President was both the impetus and the target of those volatile projectiles, it tells us something about our country’s values as well.

On the one hand, you have the President of a nation that had waged, and had continued to wage, an immensely violent war of aggression on another country’s land appearing, in person, within that country’s borders (albeit in a “green zone” heavily guarded by the president’s own soldiers) to speak as if all the resultant death and destruction was ultimately “good” for those living in the war zone. This is a man whose moral code permitted him to authorize the use of military force (including a massive bombing campaign meant to elicit psychological “shock” and “awe”) against a sovereign population of people without that population’s consent (nor much of the world’s consent for that matter). This man, the one who has untold thousands of bodies lying in his wake, is considered, to the present day, to have been acting justly throughout his military campaign and thus has remained free of formal punishment.

Yet, on the other hand, you have a man who has lived the reality of a war-torn nation first-hand; who has no army or bodyguards to do his bidding; who has felt the weight of a foreign President’s policies on he and his family’s psyches; who has utilized his shoes as his means of “shock” and “awe”— it is this man that the Iraqi justice system (which, one might say, is strongly influenced by the U.S.’s “restructuring” efforts) deemed fit for punishment. It is the man whose actions resulted in no death or injury; the man whose actions were motivated by compassion for those harmed by the brutal violence; the man whose actions earned the sanction of the citizens of Iraq, who spoke on their behalf—it is this man who is deemed morally inferior, and thus sentenced to prison by the prevailing moral code.

The man who used bombs and guns to negotiate his terms is, in the eyes of this perverse moral system, the moral superior and thus remains free of prison (and worthy of a President’s “retirement” package nonetheless). This is the morality of not only the Iraqi “justice” system, but, it is sad to say, also the morality of the government who had recognized George W. Bush as their President—the government who sanctioned his policies. Under this kind of moral system, bombs and guns are benign, whereas rubber and leather are lethal.

But, perhaps, it is not a matter of what one actually does that defines the moral correctness of their actions, but rather who one is while doing it—a sort of moral elitism. Since Mr. Zeidi was a civilian, a reporter, a “nobody,” his actions, no matter what they happened to be, were simply predisposed to moral wrongness, and thus were easy to punish. Mr. Bush, however, as a President, as a Commander in Chief, as an elite; well, he’s simply immune from moral wrongness due to his elevated social status. So long as morality is defined by status, then those of elite social status will always be morally superior to those of negligible social status. This is supposedly “justice.” This is also why it is utter bullshit.