Guilty as Charged: Not Counting–to-Ten

A reconceptualization of a sermon by Rabbi Gerald Skolnick

We all say bad things; rashly, thoughtlessly and destructively in the heat of the moment,. We often fail to stop and think about what we are saying. Heated discussions and arguments are rarely the time to say, “wait a minute, let me consider my next statement.” As a result unfortunate and regrettable things are said.

The likelihood of such things happening in real time certainly increases. However, it is astounding that such things happen in emails or forums, on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram where online activity naturally lends itself to a pause before hitting send or post. How is so much horribleness sent? Is it all intentional? Are people really that awful? Not mostly.

The problem is that not everyone realizes that words matter. Whether spoken in person, in public, on the radio, television or printed in books, pamphlets, newspapers or on a website – words have power. Words have duration and weight. They are cumulative and compound. They build narratives. They are a force that can build or destroy. This is the   real power behind the intent of freedom of speech.

What do your words do?

As long as we honor the concept and practice of free speech there will be trolls and other people of malicious intent saying, printing and posting awfulness. That is burden we have to live with.

But then there are the people who are not evil or malicious, the ones who simply don’t take the opportunity to count to 10, but should. Counting to 10 – before speaking or hitting send should be the cornerstone of a new civil- religiosity, it is a true blessing.

Attack of the Eatists

I am a middle aged, white, urban, omnivore.  Maybe that tells you everything you need to know about me, which would be too bad. 

In discussing the new multi-colored LGBT teen support Doritos, it was commented how they should be vegan and gluten-free because the LGBT community is very food aware. That seems somehow offensive. Micro-labeling LGBT teens as predisposed to veganism or gluten free diets seems to diminish the real point of their bravery, strength and challenges. 

George Takei rightly noted that Fashion Week model Ashley Graham should simply be called a model and not cast as a plus size model.  

We have become addicted to over labeling. In the process we diminish the truth and often get the labels wrong. Labels like normal, average and traditional have become meaningless. The longer, more specific the label the less effort we make to learn the truth about people, because we think we already know them.  

I’m looking forward to buying the rainbow Doritos. I want to know them better.

The Lower Moral High Ground

We do not have an immigrant and refugee problem. We have immigrants and refugees with problems. The immigrants and the refugees are not the problem. The issues confronting them are the problem.

These are people in extreme conditions. People don’t just pick up and leave their friends, families and homelands at the drop of a hat. They face certain hardship. Why would someone do that? Because they they have to - not to starve, not to be killed or not be persecuted. Rarely do they move like that just for the hell of it.  It is not a decision taken lightly. It never has been. 

To call it an immigrant or refugee problem is to make the displaced people the problem.  Making it seem as if removing the immigrants and refugees removes the problem.  It doesn’t. Wars, dictatorships, ethnic cleansing, death squads and geo-politics are the biggest culprits. But this is nothing new to us. We have been here before many times. Many refugee crises have there been? How many waves of immigrants - Pilgrims, Irish, German,  Jews, Protestants, Catholics, Russians, North Africans, South Americans and Asians, just to name a few? 

You would think we would have this down to a science, and we would if we used more common sense and kept politics out of it.

How should we improve on the challenges to immigrant and refugee communities? We should start by thinking about the words - insisting that our politicians stop sounding like David Duke or Geert Wilders and start sounding like John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin. Then we might begin to look like the country we think we are or the country we are meant to be.

The Marshmallow of Time

Scientists maintain that time is linear. I get that. Events are cyclical. I get that too. But clearly there is something of a conflict here.

September has always been a significant marker on the calendar - always summer ending and  school starting. A sort of renewal. 

In New York it is also is also the time of 9/11. I know this is not specific to New York, but the gravity of it is felt here in a way that few other places can relate to.  

Instead of time helping to heal, the perspective here does not change much. We hit September 11 like a wall. Going forward, yet going around again, and a little stuck.

New York is a friendly home for ghosts. Anyone living here long enough sees them all the time. Shadows cast from buildings long gone. Smells from closed restaurants. Rallies and marches from years ago that still echo in the streets. I still see Kurt Vonnegut carrying his dry cleaning up Second avenue and Katherine Hepbrun waiting online at a deli.  

There will  always be room in New York City for these more-than-memories, as it should be. This is a big place. When trying  to catch my bearings coming out of the subways I still look for "The Towers" and they are still there, in a way, and always will be.  Together we are stuck in the marshmallow of time. 

Unfriending Technology

I have been a friend to technology, introduced it to my friends  and said nice things about it - even when it didn't deserve it. In return technology has not been particularly nice to me.

My webcam makes me look like a splotchy Elmer Fudd. Fumbling with  my new phone makes me appear a techno moron. Setting up Windows 10 made me feel like a fool. I keep touching the non-touch screen on my laptop. Forget about the things auto-correct does to me - there are people who never want to hear from me again because of it!

So I react the way you are supposed to when someone does things you don't like, you unfriend them. I don't just cut people off and I certainly can't cut off technology.

I will scorn technology more, not invite it to dinner or bring it up to my friends. I will shop in real spaces and have conversations in person.Technology will now be an acquaintance, not a friend- for now.

X-Ray Back-up Parking Assist

Tech is my life. But tech, for the sake of tech can get silly and strange. I rented a Chrysler 200 (2015 model as it turned out) for long road trip. It took almost 200 miles to figure out what everything was, and I like buttons and screens.

The car was like a game console on wheels.  For all the necessary (questionable)  functions - constant updates on fuel efficiency, media choices displayed in two different places and stored messages on the drivers console  display (shopping list? directions? poetry?) it did not do some very important things.

I was extremely disappointed that the car could not tell me my height and weight. It did not tell me my altitude, the barometric pressure, when the sun would set or my shoe size. It did not warn me when my daughter was about to play some annoying video from the back seat at full blast on her phone . Most importantly it did not measure the attitude of my passengers.

In an age where a car can warn you when you are about to nod-off while driving, how hard can it be to warn the driver when the passengers are getting fidgety or someones' blood pressure is going up?

A car is a tool, technology is a tool. A Swiss army knife is an example of well integrated tools. A screwrenchammerdriver - not so much.