Consolation

I was once talking to a rather mischievous friend of mine, who had just received some bad news about a graduate program he had applied for. I texted him something like "it's their loss." And "I have so much faith in your abilities." This was followed by a pause. His eventual reply came simply in the form of a url. It took me to an opinion piece from a major newspaper. It said that clichés are the wrong thing to say when someone is going through a hard time. Well, serves me for trying.

If clichés are the wrong thing to say in such moments, however, what can be the right thing? It would seem the pitfalls of tactlessness are multiple, and exist on all sides. Some people, when clichés fail them, resort to advice-giving. We learned on day one of divinity school, however, that this is the cardinal no-no.

Data

There is a scene in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian in which "the judge" -- a psychopathic killer as well as a savant in every known field, and surely one of literature's most unsettling characters -- is glimpsed scribbling in a notebook. He is obsessively documenting specimens of various sorts that he has observed, catalogued, and killed. Some are birds, which he has shot and stuffed. Some are leaves, which he has pressed between the pages of a book. All are dead, by the time the judge is through with them. They have ceased their independent existence and been filed away to his satisfaction as data.

One of the other characters asks the judge why he does this. His answer is simple. "Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge," he says, "exists without my consent."

Words Like Freedom

A small NGO recently found itself having to look for a new name. The director approached me because they were workshopping some of the proposals. One involved the word "Freedom," and I lunged at it. I thought it was plainly the best one. When I said so, however, she told me that unfortunately some of their board members had nixed the idea. They thought "freedom" sounded a bit passé. It was American exceptionalist. It was triumphalist. It had been appropriated by neo-cons. Etc.

I gathered this opinion came from some older white folks on the board who had been leftists for a  long time. When I heard their grounds for rejecting the "freedom" proposal, long-dormant irritations arose within me, related to things I hadn't been forced to think about for several years. I sensed in some vague way that these board members were giving voice to a Bush-era view of the matter. They hadn't got the memo that times had changed.

Percentages

A representative of the RAND corporation recently stood up before Congress to present the think tank's findings related to terrorism prevention. I didn't stick around to the end of the podcast to hear the whole talk, but where it began was troublingly familiar ground enough.

There is a sort of inverted pyramid of extremism, we are told. At the widest point are the many people exposed to extremist leaders and following radical, violence-endorsing ideologies. As the pyramid narrows, a subset of people will choose to act on those beliefs. And as we approach the pyramid's tip, we find the small but dangerous number of people who carry these extreme ideologies to the point of committing terrorist violence and hate crimes -- such as recently occurred in the massacres in Christchurch and El Paso.

Interrupting People

From my own perspective at least, I never interrupt people. It is always they who won't let me get a word in edgeways. Haven't you noticed? In a room full of adults my senior, I will observe the word-swarm of the conversation gather like a cloud of flies around a given topic. I will sit in my perch, waiting for an opening, sharpening the barb of my witty and profound contribution. My arm pulls back. I see a slight part in the cloud. I am ready for the throw.

But just as I am about to release, the cloud moves on. I missed my chance! We are now discussing a wholly different topic. I have only a few options left to me. I can give up in defeat and alienation, sinking back into my chair. I can drag the rest of the swarm back to the festering corpse of the topic they just abandoned, and compel them to regard it again (which they are never pleased to do).