In watching the recent Presidential campaign of Republican front-runner and tycoon Donald Trump, one thing I have noted about him is that he is by nature a nasty and uncouth person. Whether it is personal attacks against his opponents, or chauvinistic remarks against women, etc., "the Trump" is someone who is really unpleasant. I don't really believe that a man like Donald Trump is the caliber of person whom we should have leading our country. However, I have noticed in the past eight or so years that the current President, Barack Obama, is equally bereft when it comes to social skills; the well-publicized "fist-bump" the Michelle Obama gave Queen Elizabeth II (totally breaching royal protocol!) as well as his rather cavalier attitude toward other world leaders (for instance, I treat my most vicious enemies better than Obama has treated Benjamin Netanyahu!) shows that this man, who is supposed to be representing himself as the leader of the largest free-market democracy on the planet, is lacking when it comes to even basic etiquette. However, unfortunately our high-profile leaders, movers, and shakers represent something that is a serious problem in our nation - a lack of class and good manners. And, it seems like the higher one moves up the social scale, the less manners one has. What has happened?
I am thinking back to my Philosophy of the Human Person course from a couple of years ago, and want to refer to the textbook my professor, Dr. John Crosby, both wrote and used in the course entitled The Selfhood of the Human Person (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996). Dr. Crosby gives four premises in his book, beginning on page 14, regarding what personhood is and how we should perceive the human person from a Judeo-Christian moral perspective, and this is what they are:
1. Persons are ends in themselves and not mere instrumental means
2. Persons are wholes of their own and never mere parts
3. Persons are incommunicably their own and never mere specimens
4. The most important one - each person belongs to himself and not another (persona est sui iuris)
I note these philosophical tenets of personhood to say that good manners generate from a healthy personalist philosophical perspective, but they also stem more importantly from a Biblical (read Christian) worldview that sees man as created in God's image and not coming from a single cell that evolves into a blob of gel and then into an ape that smells - in other words, social Darwinism, and its tenet hallmark of "survival of the fittest," is a worldview in direct opposition to the dignity of the human person. Yet, so many secularists are so focused on themselves that often the dignity of their fellow man takes a back seat to their own pursuit of wealth and status, and many of society's issues today go back to simply a matter of good manners! Let me elaborate more.
When many of us were young, we were taught a lot of basic things called manners (at least my generation was - today I doubt if many kids are honestly!). For instance, if someone gave you something you said "thank you," and if you asked someone to pass the salt at the dinner table, you said "please." In public, you always addressed those who were your elders as "Mister" if they were men, and "Miss" if they were women - that is a habit I still use today when addressing matronly elderly ladies, as I will often call them "Miss Margaret" or occasionally by last name, such as "Miss Grant." If you are taught these things as a child, they become second nature later in life too. Another thing - when accompanying a lady, be it a wife, mother, or daughter, it was always customary to open the door of a building you were entering for them first. And, one more - when using the facilities, it is a good practice to wash one's hands. I want to spend a little time on this last one now, as it is a big pet-peeve in at least one context.
After working for almost 20 years in the corporate world, I notice things. One of the most disturbing observations I have made is that it seems that the higher up the corporate ladder one is, the less etiquette and manners they possess. On many occasions in offices when I was using the bathroom for instance and an executive or upper-level manager was present in the facilities at the same time, I noted that they do their thing and then walk out without washing their hands. I mean, seriously - these guys are meeting clients, having business lunches and shaking hands and kissing butt constantly with filthy, germ-ridden hands! I have now made it a personal point - maybe to my detriment! - to not offer a handshake to someone I know is upper management, because for some crazy reason I just don't feel like contracting a nasty virus because such a person is too lazy and stuck on themselves to wash up after taking a leak! That is why, if by some fluke Trump is elected President, I almost expect to see an outbreak of influenza in Washington because I doubt if Trump washes his hands either, being most of his upper-management fan club in the corporate world don't seem to take that courtesy seriously. That could also explain why there have been so many outbreaks of flu and cold in recent years too, who's to say?
A further thought on this entails something I came across in researching my own family tree. Upon finding out that I am a blood descendant of nobility, I began reading up on some of my ancestors and it turns out that many of them lived by a type of chivalric code called Nobless oblige. Nobless oblige is a French term that literally means "nobility obliges," and what it entails is one basic premise - whoever claims to be noble must conduct himself nobly. It is good manners taken to a whole new dimension, as it demands a sort of accountability of one's office he or she holds. To put it in vernacular, in essence it means that with privilege comes responsibility and that duties validate rights. Although on the outset it may seem that nobless oblige is in opposition to personalist philosophy, in reality it is actually an affirmation of the dignity of the human person in that it admonishes that a true leader of one's people serves the best interests of his people rather than asking his people to serve him. In other words, true nobless oblige has no place for uncouth behavior against even the most "common" of persons, nor does it allow for self-serving interests at the expense of other human persons. If more of our corporate executives and politicians lived by this, it would practically transform society overnight. It is really tragic these days that the most humble and poor among us often have better manners and dignity than the most affluent, and although that is good in a sense, at the same time it is the affluent who have the influence, and that influence is exerted often on a younger generation that seeks to emulate the ways of the affluent in some hope that by acting so, they can also rise to that level. However, although that could happen, it comes with a huge price in that often by attaining wealth and position, one feels the need to sacrifice basic humanity and it manifests itself in some sinister ways. Let me now give an example from my own family.
I have a relative who is a corporate executive. Although this relative worked hard (which is admirable) in the process they lost a lot of their basic humanity. On one occasion, this relative for instance lost a cherished pet, and at around the same time one of their siblings was diagnosed with a debilitating illness. In this case, the sibling is less affluent, struggles financially, and even the most minor of health problems could jeopardize the sibling's home. While the more affluent sibling went on social media blubbering over the loss of their beloved pet, the same affluent sibling didn't even acknowledge their kin's illness - the latter could die actually, but it seems as if their own brother or sister doesn't give a rat's behind, yet will bawl and mourn a dead parakeet. In history, only one other well-known figure displayed similar behavior. This man was a world leader and he loved dogs - so much that he even granted them rank in his military. This same man was also disturbed over the fact that lobsters were not cooked humanely, and issued a set of strict laws about how to properly cook a crab without it suffering so much. Yet, this same person was responsible for millions of deaths because he viewed certain races and people with infirmities as "weak" and "useless," and he exterminated them with a cold assembly-line efficiency while laboring under the delusion that he was building an ideal society. That leader was Adolph Hitler in case you haven't figured it out, and although the animal-rights radicals would have loved him, no one in the 20th century embodies such pure evil and demonic destruction as Hitler due to the human carnage he is responsible for. Many politicians, academics, and corporate executives in "Fortune 500" companies have much the same mentality today, and would sell out their own mothers for a buck or a title. Therefore, it could be concluded that manners are no longer important to such people because they have a power-addiction which prompts them to justify their actions and eliminate the need for basic manners and a sense of human dignity. And, that is why we see so much happening in our society today, where no one even salutes the American flag during the national anthem because they have no sense of decency in many cases.
In the past generations, there used to be a news column you could read in the daily paper called "Miss Manners," and the lady who wrote those (I can't recall her name at present) taught the importance of using manners in interpersonal situations. One of her premises for this was that good manners were not to make you feel important, but rather to make the other person feel important. Perhaps we need to revisit some of those values today, as it certainly could not hurt us! And, to show I am practicing my preaching, I want to thank you for taking the time to read this, and please remember to wash your hands when you use the bathroom, open the door for a lady, and salute the American flag when "The Star-Spangled Banner" is played or sung. So long until next time!
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
A Statement on Social Media
There is something I have been wanting to do for a long time, and that is give a position and my personal guidelines for participating in social media outlets. Recently, I read two Christian articles on this subject - one from a Coptic Orthodox bishop and the other from a Seventh-Day Baptist minister - and it got me thinking that maybe I need to work on something like that too. So, this will be my attempt at creating a personal manifesto that gives my own position on utilizing social media.
Social media is a relatively new phenomenon, being less than 12 years since it really caught on. Back around 2005 or so, I began to hear a lot about this thing called "MySpace," but personally I never got involved in it. Up to that point, most social interaction for me was on message boards of different groups I was involved in, as I am sure it was for many. I have personally been involved on social media for about 9 years as of this writing, having gotten my initiation into it via a site called Bebo.com, which at the time was a more cerebral alternative to MySpace (I'm curious - does MySpace even exist anymore???). I first set up a Bebo page back around March of 2006, and for about 3 years it was my primary social media involvement until a dear friend of mine sent me this invite in late 2008 to sign up with something new called Facebook. Facebook, the creation of a whiz-kid by the name of Mark Zuckerberg, was not quite as well-known back then, as the MySpace frenzy was still the thing, but I thought at the time, "what the heck" and joined up on it. And, almost on a daily basis now, I visit Facebook, and have for about the past seven years. There are many advantages to tools such as Facebook, as long as the users keep in mind that these things are just tools, and not something your life should revolve around. Facebook, despite its attributes, can suck people into it and it can become an obsessive thing, so we need to be careful about that. Later on, I am going to talk more about that aspect.
As mentioned, Facebook has its virtues, and one of those is the ability to reconnect with distant relatives, old school friends, and old co-workers you may have had from years past. It is also a great place to exchange information too - if you want good recipes, old photos, genealogical material, etc., Facebook can prove to be a valuable resource. Of the now 708 "friends" I have on Facebook as a matter of fact, approximately 40% are relatives (I have a lot of cousins on both sides of my family, and almost all of them have Facebook accounts now!), while another 20% are old college and high school classmates and co-workers, and the remaining 40% are people who I have made friends with who have common interests - music, politics, religion, etc. So, as far as networking is concerned, it is fantastic. Also, there is now a service called SocialBook which will actually print your Facebook content in a bound volume, something I plan on doing for posterity-sake later. However, with these positives are also negatives, and let me briefly touch on those.
One thing about Facebook is that almost anyone can "friend" you (given your permission of course) and a lot of times weirdos try to "friend" you with ulterior motives - it is not uncommon, as a matter of fact, for pages to be "hacked" by weirdos and privacy compromised. Another negative is the fact that everyone has opinions, and at times people don't agree on certain things and it can cause fights to erupt - this is true especially in the past 8 years or so, when so many political and social issues are out there. I have been in more than one "cyber-war" and have experienced a lot of "defriending" from people in regard to that. I try now personally not to get into those scuffles if possible, although at times trouble can find you even when you are not looking for it because, especially in specified "groups" or on specific "pages" promoting something, there are people who do what is called "trolling," and they thrive on instigating fights and causing problems. "Trolling" in essence is a type of harassment in which a person called a "troll" targets a site they don't like, and they find ways to constantly comment negatively and cause trouble. There are ways for dealing with "trolls," and we'll also get into that later. Bottom line though is this - be selective about what you post, and don't necessarily advertise every detail of your personal life. I want to quote something from Coptic Bishop Yusef about this, as he has some good wisdom especially in regard to minors participating on Facebook groups, etc. Bishop Yusef says that "A parent does not give a child car keys until they are of age to and have the skills to drive. A parent does not allow their children to take the car unless they know where they are driving to and from. A partent does not allow the child to drive if they are unsafe, lie about where they are going or have been. A parent does not allow a child to drive with speeding tickets or upon the discovery of its inappropriate use. This is termed parental responsibility. Is it any less for things such as Facebook? Know what your adolescent or young adult are thinking and saying." (Bishop Yusef, "Facebook: Fun or Fateful?" in The Saint Anthony Messenger, Vol 25, Issue 6, June 2015. p. 8). In a similar vein, Seventh-Day Baptist pastor Scot Hausrath writes "When it comes to utilizing social media, not only is wisdom key, but so is self-discipline. One of the biggest challenges I have regarding Facebook, for example, it to realize that there is a time to access it. For example, when I'm writing a sermon, lesson, article, etc., I need to focus my thoughts on that one project. Checking my FB news feed at that time is more of a distraction than a blessing. It's a very tempting thing to do, because I love hearing what's going on in my friends' lives, so I need self-discipline to keep my thoughts focused on the task at hand. Social media are amazing tools, and they have revolutionized our everyday lives. Let's just make sure that it's a revolution of enhancement, not a revolution of distraction." (Scott Hausrath, "Devotional - Sharing the Journey with You" in The Sabbath Recorder, vol. 237, No. 6, June 2015. P. 13). Both of these Christian leaders, from radically different church traditions, are telling us something about using social media - do it responsibly, and don't let it sidetrack us from what we need to be doing. And, both of these quoted articles inspired me to talk about a few of my own guidelines I have come up with.
1. When on Facebook, Know Your Security. Facebook allows for security settings to monitor who sees what on your page, and in doing so, you can be selective about content. In my case, only a handful of my closest FB "friends" can see everything I post, and no one who is not a "friend" can gain access to the content on my personal page. There is a "Settings" bar on your FB page you can use to set up these boundaries, and it will be a valuable asset to get to know the "Settings" feature.
2. You Don't Have to See What All Your Friends Are Doing Either! The more "friends" you get on a site like Facebook, the more you are going to see what they post, as you will see everything that all your friends do unless you take an important step. On each of your "friends'" pages, there is an opt-out feature to where you can "Unfollow" their posts and you therefore will not see them in your newsfeeds. If you wish to limit what you see, that is the way to do it. I maybe actually "follow" less than 10% of my total "friends" list on Facebook personally, thanks to discovering that feature. And, most of them will be none the wiser about it, so no harm done - you are not saying you don't want to be friends with them, but rather that you don't need to know all their activities. Recently, one of our relatives on Facebook - this particular relative is one of those people who thinks they know everything and should control everybody, the type of person I really cannot stand personally - lambasted my wife for supposedly "overposting" on her own Facebook page. If the relative would have taken the time to explore their own Facebook page, they could have just simply "unfollowed" my wife and not have to look at the posts on the newsfeed. That being said, let me say this - your personal Facebook page is your page, and you can post whatever you want, however much you want, whenever you want, and that is your freedom. I of course don't necessarily want to see it, nor do I have to, but I don't have to get nasty about it either. A simple "Unfollow" solves the problem peacefully. Perhaps if said relative would learn to shut up and take that into consideration, it could save that person a lot of trouble.
3. Fights Are Unnecessary and CAN Be Avoided! I want to spend a little time talking about social media etiquette, as some people need a lesson in it. There are a few things to address, and we'll start with those:
a. Don't pick fights on people's personal Facebook pages! I view my own Facebook page as an extension of my house, and when someone comes onto my page and deliberately tries to pick a fight over something they don't like that I posted, that is the same to me as disrespecting me in my own living room, and it won't be tolerated. In "groups" and "pages" on Facebook, that is another thing, because those are public forums, but even then I feel best to try to avoid conflict if all possible, even when every fiber of my being is wanting to say something. Therefore, when on Facebook, exercise some common courtesy please - what people post on their personal pages is their business, and if you don't like it, you have your own page to vent that dislike, so don't pick fights on someone else's turf.
b. If someone is becoming really beligerent, you are well within your rights to "block" them. There are some people who get a joy our of picking fights with people they disagree with, and then beating the issue to death by constantly posting negative crap, even personal attacks against the person they disagree with. If that becomes a problem, there is a "Block" feature you can utilize to stop them from seeing your posts or responding to them. This is especially true in groups or what are called "Public Pages," where people often can soapbox. If you are one of those people who has the propensity to cause trouble and pick fights, rant on your own FB page and don't ruin discussions for other people in the group. Fights are disrespectful as well to page administrators, and when you are trash-talking someone you disagree with on one of those pages, you are disrespecting your host. In other words, you need to learn some manners and get over yourself.
c. If someone comments on your page and you feel that the comment is inappropriate or inflammatory, you reserve the right to remove it. This goes back to "a" above - people who are trying to either bait you or even disagree with something you say, even if they are close friends, need to respect the fact that this page is yours, and if they disagree, they have their own page to voice that. If you feel a comment is inappropriate, you can and do have a right to remove it at your discretion. Your personal Facebook page is like your "house," and you have the perogative to set your own "house rules" which people visiting your page have to respect. If they don't they should be deleted.
These are just a few basic rules I have for my own Facebook participation, and if you do likewise, you will have a more pleasant social media experience. The same could also apply to other social media outlets, such as this Twitter thing (which I still don't understand!). On a professional site such as LinkedIn, it is even more important to maintain strict standards, because potential employers and other business people utilize LinkedIn and get a first impression from your profile on there. Another thing I want to mention in relation to all this too is a simple one - when posting on Facebook, be careful how much personal information you divulge. For instance, if you have 6 bowel movements a day, you do not have an obligation to describe each in vivid detail as some do, and your "friends" don't really want to see that stuff either. However, there is nothing one can do about what one posts on one's personal page, because again that is their domain, and they can write or post what they want. However, if you don't want to see that stuff on someone else's page, you can "unfollow" either the friend or the post, depending on which is more practical, so that is up to your discretion.
I hope this will help with your own Facebook experience to make it more pleasant, and as you have different experiences unique to your own situation, you may even have other (and maybe better!) standards than these, and make sure you are clear about those to any of your social media "friends" and followers. Take care until our next visit!
Social media is a relatively new phenomenon, being less than 12 years since it really caught on. Back around 2005 or so, I began to hear a lot about this thing called "MySpace," but personally I never got involved in it. Up to that point, most social interaction for me was on message boards of different groups I was involved in, as I am sure it was for many. I have personally been involved on social media for about 9 years as of this writing, having gotten my initiation into it via a site called Bebo.com, which at the time was a more cerebral alternative to MySpace (I'm curious - does MySpace even exist anymore???). I first set up a Bebo page back around March of 2006, and for about 3 years it was my primary social media involvement until a dear friend of mine sent me this invite in late 2008 to sign up with something new called Facebook. Facebook, the creation of a whiz-kid by the name of Mark Zuckerberg, was not quite as well-known back then, as the MySpace frenzy was still the thing, but I thought at the time, "what the heck" and joined up on it. And, almost on a daily basis now, I visit Facebook, and have for about the past seven years. There are many advantages to tools such as Facebook, as long as the users keep in mind that these things are just tools, and not something your life should revolve around. Facebook, despite its attributes, can suck people into it and it can become an obsessive thing, so we need to be careful about that. Later on, I am going to talk more about that aspect.
As mentioned, Facebook has its virtues, and one of those is the ability to reconnect with distant relatives, old school friends, and old co-workers you may have had from years past. It is also a great place to exchange information too - if you want good recipes, old photos, genealogical material, etc., Facebook can prove to be a valuable resource. Of the now 708 "friends" I have on Facebook as a matter of fact, approximately 40% are relatives (I have a lot of cousins on both sides of my family, and almost all of them have Facebook accounts now!), while another 20% are old college and high school classmates and co-workers, and the remaining 40% are people who I have made friends with who have common interests - music, politics, religion, etc. So, as far as networking is concerned, it is fantastic. Also, there is now a service called SocialBook which will actually print your Facebook content in a bound volume, something I plan on doing for posterity-sake later. However, with these positives are also negatives, and let me briefly touch on those.
One thing about Facebook is that almost anyone can "friend" you (given your permission of course) and a lot of times weirdos try to "friend" you with ulterior motives - it is not uncommon, as a matter of fact, for pages to be "hacked" by weirdos and privacy compromised. Another negative is the fact that everyone has opinions, and at times people don't agree on certain things and it can cause fights to erupt - this is true especially in the past 8 years or so, when so many political and social issues are out there. I have been in more than one "cyber-war" and have experienced a lot of "defriending" from people in regard to that. I try now personally not to get into those scuffles if possible, although at times trouble can find you even when you are not looking for it because, especially in specified "groups" or on specific "pages" promoting something, there are people who do what is called "trolling," and they thrive on instigating fights and causing problems. "Trolling" in essence is a type of harassment in which a person called a "troll" targets a site they don't like, and they find ways to constantly comment negatively and cause trouble. There are ways for dealing with "trolls," and we'll also get into that later. Bottom line though is this - be selective about what you post, and don't necessarily advertise every detail of your personal life. I want to quote something from Coptic Bishop Yusef about this, as he has some good wisdom especially in regard to minors participating on Facebook groups, etc. Bishop Yusef says that "A parent does not give a child car keys until they are of age to and have the skills to drive. A parent does not allow their children to take the car unless they know where they are driving to and from. A partent does not allow the child to drive if they are unsafe, lie about where they are going or have been. A parent does not allow a child to drive with speeding tickets or upon the discovery of its inappropriate use. This is termed parental responsibility. Is it any less for things such as Facebook? Know what your adolescent or young adult are thinking and saying." (Bishop Yusef, "Facebook: Fun or Fateful?" in The Saint Anthony Messenger, Vol 25, Issue 6, June 2015. p. 8). In a similar vein, Seventh-Day Baptist pastor Scot Hausrath writes "When it comes to utilizing social media, not only is wisdom key, but so is self-discipline. One of the biggest challenges I have regarding Facebook, for example, it to realize that there is a time to access it. For example, when I'm writing a sermon, lesson, article, etc., I need to focus my thoughts on that one project. Checking my FB news feed at that time is more of a distraction than a blessing. It's a very tempting thing to do, because I love hearing what's going on in my friends' lives, so I need self-discipline to keep my thoughts focused on the task at hand. Social media are amazing tools, and they have revolutionized our everyday lives. Let's just make sure that it's a revolution of enhancement, not a revolution of distraction." (Scott Hausrath, "Devotional - Sharing the Journey with You" in The Sabbath Recorder, vol. 237, No. 6, June 2015. P. 13). Both of these Christian leaders, from radically different church traditions, are telling us something about using social media - do it responsibly, and don't let it sidetrack us from what we need to be doing. And, both of these quoted articles inspired me to talk about a few of my own guidelines I have come up with.
1. When on Facebook, Know Your Security. Facebook allows for security settings to monitor who sees what on your page, and in doing so, you can be selective about content. In my case, only a handful of my closest FB "friends" can see everything I post, and no one who is not a "friend" can gain access to the content on my personal page. There is a "Settings" bar on your FB page you can use to set up these boundaries, and it will be a valuable asset to get to know the "Settings" feature.
2. You Don't Have to See What All Your Friends Are Doing Either! The more "friends" you get on a site like Facebook, the more you are going to see what they post, as you will see everything that all your friends do unless you take an important step. On each of your "friends'" pages, there is an opt-out feature to where you can "Unfollow" their posts and you therefore will not see them in your newsfeeds. If you wish to limit what you see, that is the way to do it. I maybe actually "follow" less than 10% of my total "friends" list on Facebook personally, thanks to discovering that feature. And, most of them will be none the wiser about it, so no harm done - you are not saying you don't want to be friends with them, but rather that you don't need to know all their activities. Recently, one of our relatives on Facebook - this particular relative is one of those people who thinks they know everything and should control everybody, the type of person I really cannot stand personally - lambasted my wife for supposedly "overposting" on her own Facebook page. If the relative would have taken the time to explore their own Facebook page, they could have just simply "unfollowed" my wife and not have to look at the posts on the newsfeed. That being said, let me say this - your personal Facebook page is your page, and you can post whatever you want, however much you want, whenever you want, and that is your freedom. I of course don't necessarily want to see it, nor do I have to, but I don't have to get nasty about it either. A simple "Unfollow" solves the problem peacefully. Perhaps if said relative would learn to shut up and take that into consideration, it could save that person a lot of trouble.
3. Fights Are Unnecessary and CAN Be Avoided! I want to spend a little time talking about social media etiquette, as some people need a lesson in it. There are a few things to address, and we'll start with those:
a. Don't pick fights on people's personal Facebook pages! I view my own Facebook page as an extension of my house, and when someone comes onto my page and deliberately tries to pick a fight over something they don't like that I posted, that is the same to me as disrespecting me in my own living room, and it won't be tolerated. In "groups" and "pages" on Facebook, that is another thing, because those are public forums, but even then I feel best to try to avoid conflict if all possible, even when every fiber of my being is wanting to say something. Therefore, when on Facebook, exercise some common courtesy please - what people post on their personal pages is their business, and if you don't like it, you have your own page to vent that dislike, so don't pick fights on someone else's turf.
b. If someone is becoming really beligerent, you are well within your rights to "block" them. There are some people who get a joy our of picking fights with people they disagree with, and then beating the issue to death by constantly posting negative crap, even personal attacks against the person they disagree with. If that becomes a problem, there is a "Block" feature you can utilize to stop them from seeing your posts or responding to them. This is especially true in groups or what are called "Public Pages," where people often can soapbox. If you are one of those people who has the propensity to cause trouble and pick fights, rant on your own FB page and don't ruin discussions for other people in the group. Fights are disrespectful as well to page administrators, and when you are trash-talking someone you disagree with on one of those pages, you are disrespecting your host. In other words, you need to learn some manners and get over yourself.
c. If someone comments on your page and you feel that the comment is inappropriate or inflammatory, you reserve the right to remove it. This goes back to "a" above - people who are trying to either bait you or even disagree with something you say, even if they are close friends, need to respect the fact that this page is yours, and if they disagree, they have their own page to voice that. If you feel a comment is inappropriate, you can and do have a right to remove it at your discretion. Your personal Facebook page is like your "house," and you have the perogative to set your own "house rules" which people visiting your page have to respect. If they don't they should be deleted.
These are just a few basic rules I have for my own Facebook participation, and if you do likewise, you will have a more pleasant social media experience. The same could also apply to other social media outlets, such as this Twitter thing (which I still don't understand!). On a professional site such as LinkedIn, it is even more important to maintain strict standards, because potential employers and other business people utilize LinkedIn and get a first impression from your profile on there. Another thing I want to mention in relation to all this too is a simple one - when posting on Facebook, be careful how much personal information you divulge. For instance, if you have 6 bowel movements a day, you do not have an obligation to describe each in vivid detail as some do, and your "friends" don't really want to see that stuff either. However, there is nothing one can do about what one posts on one's personal page, because again that is their domain, and they can write or post what they want. However, if you don't want to see that stuff on someone else's page, you can "unfollow" either the friend or the post, depending on which is more practical, so that is up to your discretion.
I hope this will help with your own Facebook experience to make it more pleasant, and as you have different experiences unique to your own situation, you may even have other (and maybe better!) standards than these, and make sure you are clear about those to any of your social media "friends" and followers. Take care until our next visit!
Wednesday, August 5, 2015
Leadership Lessons
I have been looking over a number of entries in my personal journal over the past few weeks, and there are some things to talk about that I feel would enrich people who read them. A lot of it is based on my own history, and the life lessons I have learned, as I feel they are important to maintaining stable leadership traits. If more politicians learned this stuff, as well as corporate execs (see an upcoming blog on that one!) I think the world would be a better place and self-serving people would not be tickling ears to get elected to public office only to sit with their thumbs up their bum while collecting over-inflated salaries at the taxpayers's expense. So, as I recollect the information I wrote a couple of months ago, I will attempt to share it here.
One trait I have had since I was a kid was collecting things and pursuing such a collection to its fullest extent. I remember, for instance, at around the time I was 7 years old, and I began to get these little toy prizes out of vending machines - they still have those around today, a small trinket that comes encased in a little plastic egg that pops out when you stick a coin in and turn the lever. I kept all that stuff in an old lunchbox I had in first grade that I no longer used, and ended up collecting quite a stash of those things. In those days, you could get all sorts of neat stuff out of those machines - little cap pistols, miniature lighters, tiny spy cameras, etc. - as well as just plain crap such as plastic rings and Scooby Doo magnets. I collected it all for some weird reason. In time, that penchant began to fade as Mom got me for Christmas one year a cowboys-and-Indians plastic fort panorama set, along with a WWII naval battle toy panorama too - then I got into that, and practically built a small civilization out of it in a very short time. Much earlier than that - around 6 or so - I was into a Noah's Ark play set, and had a HUGE paper grocery bag filled with plastic animals that at one point I could line up, two-by-two, around my great-grandmother's house in Hendricks, WV. In time, the Noah's Ark playsets, the cowboy and Indian figurines, and the stash of vending-machine trinkets became passing fancies, and I began to pursue more sophisticated interests as I began to transition from childhood into my teens, and one of those interests was the large music collection I still have today. The reason I mention these childhood collection vignettes is because one trait I have always had is pursuing an interest I have as comprehensively as possible - I want a collection to be as complete as it can be, and I want to learn everything I can about it. This has been a great aid in my graduate studies too, as I have utilized that same trait in researching class papers and projects. That however leads to another trait that is related to that I want to now share.
As a kid, I was a history buff - I would sit and read something to do with world history for hours, and it was not uncommon for me to go out the next day and try to re-enact what I was reading about in my childhood play and exploration. I even at one time wanted to form a political movement of my own at a young age that would serve as a vehicle for bringing together a group of my closest friends into a common unit - as a child we moved around a lot, and I had few close friends then, but the ones I had were scattered up and down the Eastern Seaboard of the US back then. In Georgia for instance, there was Sim Taylor, who was my best buddy when I stayed with my dad in Brunswick during the second half of my third-grade year. In my second-grade school year, I made two close friends in my class in Augusta, WV, their names being Joe Waybright and Chuck Butler. Unfortunately, at around the time we were in 5th grade, Joe and his whole family were killed in a fatal gas leak in their trailer, and to this day I still feel that was a tragic loss, as Joe had two siblings, a younger sister named Tina and an older brother named Richard, and all of them had their lives tragically cut short. However, I digress, as I want to tell you what I learned at a very young age by dabbling in reading history and trying to understand politics - the ability to unite diverse elements behind a common cause is an important factor in effective leadership, and a good leader must be able to know himself (or herself) well enough to utilize aspects of his (or her) own distinctive identity which relate to others he or she knows. If a leader can successfully accomplish that, then said leader will prove more effective in the execution of his leadership role and its component tasks. Subconsciously, I have lived by those precepts most of my life, although I have never really known how to articulate them in such a way as to present them to others. But, that being said, here are a few lessons in leadership I have learned and want to now share with you:
1. Know yourself, and as much about your own past as possible. Do not dismiss or ignore even the most insignificant details, because in some cases when an apparently insignificant detail is recalled, it may be the key to unlocking a personal mystery about yourself.
2. As you study your own past and reflect on it, remember that the things that have captured your interest over the years may reveal some valuable information about who you are.
3. As you go through life, note those people who have become your closest friends, and learn why they are your friends. For one thing, God has put these people in your life for a reason. Secondly, what are common elements that some of your diversity of friends share that led you to the friendships in the first place? These can be valuable later in life as you begin to form personal networks.
4. Diverse elements can have common goals. The question to ask here is this - of your interests and friends over the years, what common convictions or goals do you identify in the people and interests you know and have respectively? If you plan on being more organizational in leadership, being aware of these things will aid in establishing effective leadership quality.
Of course, for all their brevity, no doubt these four things can be elaborated further if time permitted, and I could even come up with more of them if I really meditated on it some more. However, as I have a major weakness I have self-identified of having so much going on in my head that I need to clarify my thoughts so as to aid in organization and articulation, it will take some work. Organization of thought and being able to communicate it effectively is definitely something I need to work more on personally too, as I have valuable insight on some things but I need to somehow channel it in such as way as to grab the attention of others. In written communication, I have progressed somewhat well, but verbally I still have work to do, as I am not as gifted at public speaking as I am at writing. That is why I want to encourage any of you reading this who have similar issues to add a fifth lesson to all this - keep a regular journal! A regular, consistent journal is a valuable tool for organizing thoughts, and I will tell you something about that. At this time, I have regularly kept a written journal for about 19 years, and its contents fill up probably 30 books at this point. If you think that keeping a journal is a one-book deal, forget that - as a tip, it is not necessary to write down everything every day, and you can even keep it once a week if it suits your needs better, but the important component to this is consistency. Keep a regular writing schedule, and try not to lapse longer than one month writing. Also, as ideas hit you, keep that book with you at all times and write them down while they are still fresh, because they can be lost forever otherwise. I would also encourage writing down your dreams - if you have a particularly significant dream the previous night that you just can't get out of your head, write it down immediately. Dreams reveal a lot about us, but they can also convey a message at times. I have learned over the years to take dream symbolism seriously, because even God can speak through your dreams to give you direction, encouragement, or warning - I did a teaching on that last year on my Sacramental Present Truths blog you should take a look at to learn more about that. Likewise, you should also. In addition to a journal, I would also strongly recommend keeping a daily planner of some sort to record your day-to-day activities - for instance, did you get something significant in the mail, or did you start a new job, leave an old one, or have some significant event? If so, write it down on the calendar in your daily planner. A daily planner can also be any means from a formal pocket planner to a simple wall calendar you can often pick up for free at your bank, so there is no specific criteria for one of those. I have kept daily planners since I was about 16 years old, and I can look back over 30 years and pretty much pinpoint even the most mundane of details in my life. This will also prove very valuable one day as your kids, grandkids, or a niece or nephew are going to come and inevitably ask, "where did we come from?" or "what is our story?" By pulling out those planners, journals, and other records, you can have the complete story for them. Which now leads to something else.
A huge box of planners, journals, and old photos and vital documents can be a bit cumbersome to wade through, so I would suggest somehow using those resources as a starting place for writing down your own story in a detailed fashion. I have been actually working on that project myself for close to ten years now, and I keep finding things to add to it as I also talk to people and accumulate missing information to fill in gaps in my own records. This is your legacy which you are preserving for someone to maybe be inspired by in the future, and although you may not think of your life as being a success or significant, someone reading your story one day will see its value and you could impact lives with it. Inspiration is also another key factor of good leadership, and some of the best leaders today still speak to and guide people despite their own passing from this world, and why? Because they kept records like this, wrote things down, and maybe someone thought these things to be significant and had the means to organize and package them so they could be shared with a much bigger audience - consider, for example, the martyred theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. If it wasn't for someone organizing a bunch of his handwritten notes that were smuggled out of a Nazi jail where he was being held, many people would not have learned the inspirational truth he communicated in what is known today as his classic text Ethics. It may not be your responsibility to organize what you say, in other words, but rather to just get those thoughts on paper to share. So, don't worry even if your hieroglyphic-like scratching is seemingly illegible; your job is not to make it look pretty but rather to express it. Someone else can decipher it and figure it out in the future if you don't get around to it, and I am sure with the rapid advances in technology that there awaits in the wings some sophisticated gadget which can decipher bad penmanship - let us hope so, because my own writing is bad too!
I hope these little life lessons from my own "story" will be useful to you, and although the corporate world and sometimes the wider society rejects you, it doesn't mean that you don't have something important to say. So, be faithful to exercise these principles, and it will lead to a type of leadership skill that may not get you Trump's fortune or Putin's power, but it will impact someone in the years to come. Hope to visit with you again soon.
One trait I have had since I was a kid was collecting things and pursuing such a collection to its fullest extent. I remember, for instance, at around the time I was 7 years old, and I began to get these little toy prizes out of vending machines - they still have those around today, a small trinket that comes encased in a little plastic egg that pops out when you stick a coin in and turn the lever. I kept all that stuff in an old lunchbox I had in first grade that I no longer used, and ended up collecting quite a stash of those things. In those days, you could get all sorts of neat stuff out of those machines - little cap pistols, miniature lighters, tiny spy cameras, etc. - as well as just plain crap such as plastic rings and Scooby Doo magnets. I collected it all for some weird reason. In time, that penchant began to fade as Mom got me for Christmas one year a cowboys-and-Indians plastic fort panorama set, along with a WWII naval battle toy panorama too - then I got into that, and practically built a small civilization out of it in a very short time. Much earlier than that - around 6 or so - I was into a Noah's Ark play set, and had a HUGE paper grocery bag filled with plastic animals that at one point I could line up, two-by-two, around my great-grandmother's house in Hendricks, WV. In time, the Noah's Ark playsets, the cowboy and Indian figurines, and the stash of vending-machine trinkets became passing fancies, and I began to pursue more sophisticated interests as I began to transition from childhood into my teens, and one of those interests was the large music collection I still have today. The reason I mention these childhood collection vignettes is because one trait I have always had is pursuing an interest I have as comprehensively as possible - I want a collection to be as complete as it can be, and I want to learn everything I can about it. This has been a great aid in my graduate studies too, as I have utilized that same trait in researching class papers and projects. That however leads to another trait that is related to that I want to now share.
As a kid, I was a history buff - I would sit and read something to do with world history for hours, and it was not uncommon for me to go out the next day and try to re-enact what I was reading about in my childhood play and exploration. I even at one time wanted to form a political movement of my own at a young age that would serve as a vehicle for bringing together a group of my closest friends into a common unit - as a child we moved around a lot, and I had few close friends then, but the ones I had were scattered up and down the Eastern Seaboard of the US back then. In Georgia for instance, there was Sim Taylor, who was my best buddy when I stayed with my dad in Brunswick during the second half of my third-grade year. In my second-grade school year, I made two close friends in my class in Augusta, WV, their names being Joe Waybright and Chuck Butler. Unfortunately, at around the time we were in 5th grade, Joe and his whole family were killed in a fatal gas leak in their trailer, and to this day I still feel that was a tragic loss, as Joe had two siblings, a younger sister named Tina and an older brother named Richard, and all of them had their lives tragically cut short. However, I digress, as I want to tell you what I learned at a very young age by dabbling in reading history and trying to understand politics - the ability to unite diverse elements behind a common cause is an important factor in effective leadership, and a good leader must be able to know himself (or herself) well enough to utilize aspects of his (or her) own distinctive identity which relate to others he or she knows. If a leader can successfully accomplish that, then said leader will prove more effective in the execution of his leadership role and its component tasks. Subconsciously, I have lived by those precepts most of my life, although I have never really known how to articulate them in such a way as to present them to others. But, that being said, here are a few lessons in leadership I have learned and want to now share with you:
1. Know yourself, and as much about your own past as possible. Do not dismiss or ignore even the most insignificant details, because in some cases when an apparently insignificant detail is recalled, it may be the key to unlocking a personal mystery about yourself.
2. As you study your own past and reflect on it, remember that the things that have captured your interest over the years may reveal some valuable information about who you are.
3. As you go through life, note those people who have become your closest friends, and learn why they are your friends. For one thing, God has put these people in your life for a reason. Secondly, what are common elements that some of your diversity of friends share that led you to the friendships in the first place? These can be valuable later in life as you begin to form personal networks.
4. Diverse elements can have common goals. The question to ask here is this - of your interests and friends over the years, what common convictions or goals do you identify in the people and interests you know and have respectively? If you plan on being more organizational in leadership, being aware of these things will aid in establishing effective leadership quality.
Of course, for all their brevity, no doubt these four things can be elaborated further if time permitted, and I could even come up with more of them if I really meditated on it some more. However, as I have a major weakness I have self-identified of having so much going on in my head that I need to clarify my thoughts so as to aid in organization and articulation, it will take some work. Organization of thought and being able to communicate it effectively is definitely something I need to work more on personally too, as I have valuable insight on some things but I need to somehow channel it in such as way as to grab the attention of others. In written communication, I have progressed somewhat well, but verbally I still have work to do, as I am not as gifted at public speaking as I am at writing. That is why I want to encourage any of you reading this who have similar issues to add a fifth lesson to all this - keep a regular journal! A regular, consistent journal is a valuable tool for organizing thoughts, and I will tell you something about that. At this time, I have regularly kept a written journal for about 19 years, and its contents fill up probably 30 books at this point. If you think that keeping a journal is a one-book deal, forget that - as a tip, it is not necessary to write down everything every day, and you can even keep it once a week if it suits your needs better, but the important component to this is consistency. Keep a regular writing schedule, and try not to lapse longer than one month writing. Also, as ideas hit you, keep that book with you at all times and write them down while they are still fresh, because they can be lost forever otherwise. I would also encourage writing down your dreams - if you have a particularly significant dream the previous night that you just can't get out of your head, write it down immediately. Dreams reveal a lot about us, but they can also convey a message at times. I have learned over the years to take dream symbolism seriously, because even God can speak through your dreams to give you direction, encouragement, or warning - I did a teaching on that last year on my Sacramental Present Truths blog you should take a look at to learn more about that. Likewise, you should also. In addition to a journal, I would also strongly recommend keeping a daily planner of some sort to record your day-to-day activities - for instance, did you get something significant in the mail, or did you start a new job, leave an old one, or have some significant event? If so, write it down on the calendar in your daily planner. A daily planner can also be any means from a formal pocket planner to a simple wall calendar you can often pick up for free at your bank, so there is no specific criteria for one of those. I have kept daily planners since I was about 16 years old, and I can look back over 30 years and pretty much pinpoint even the most mundane of details in my life. This will also prove very valuable one day as your kids, grandkids, or a niece or nephew are going to come and inevitably ask, "where did we come from?" or "what is our story?" By pulling out those planners, journals, and other records, you can have the complete story for them. Which now leads to something else.
A huge box of planners, journals, and old photos and vital documents can be a bit cumbersome to wade through, so I would suggest somehow using those resources as a starting place for writing down your own story in a detailed fashion. I have been actually working on that project myself for close to ten years now, and I keep finding things to add to it as I also talk to people and accumulate missing information to fill in gaps in my own records. This is your legacy which you are preserving for someone to maybe be inspired by in the future, and although you may not think of your life as being a success or significant, someone reading your story one day will see its value and you could impact lives with it. Inspiration is also another key factor of good leadership, and some of the best leaders today still speak to and guide people despite their own passing from this world, and why? Because they kept records like this, wrote things down, and maybe someone thought these things to be significant and had the means to organize and package them so they could be shared with a much bigger audience - consider, for example, the martyred theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. If it wasn't for someone organizing a bunch of his handwritten notes that were smuggled out of a Nazi jail where he was being held, many people would not have learned the inspirational truth he communicated in what is known today as his classic text Ethics. It may not be your responsibility to organize what you say, in other words, but rather to just get those thoughts on paper to share. So, don't worry even if your hieroglyphic-like scratching is seemingly illegible; your job is not to make it look pretty but rather to express it. Someone else can decipher it and figure it out in the future if you don't get around to it, and I am sure with the rapid advances in technology that there awaits in the wings some sophisticated gadget which can decipher bad penmanship - let us hope so, because my own writing is bad too!
I hope these little life lessons from my own "story" will be useful to you, and although the corporate world and sometimes the wider society rejects you, it doesn't mean that you don't have something important to say. So, be faithful to exercise these principles, and it will lead to a type of leadership skill that may not get you Trump's fortune or Putin's power, but it will impact someone in the years to come. Hope to visit with you again soon.
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Cultural Ties in the Arts
I apologize for not writing as much this year, as my Sunday School lessons and grad school studies have taken up a lot of my time. However, a few weeks back I was reflecting on something in my journal that I needed to share, and it is going to give a different perspective on something that is part of my own cultural roots.
Anyone who knows me will know that my music library plays a big part in my personal tastes and interests, and the reason is that I have of course been collecting vintage big band recordings since I was about 11 years old. This stuff is my music, and it is a big part of my identity as a person now. However, long before I was interested in big band music, many in my own family listened to another genre of music that I never carried too much interest in myself, but its pervasive influence on the rural West Virginia culture I grew up in cannot be dismissed either, and whether I like it or not, some aspects of it define me as well. What I am talking about is country music - not necessarily the Garth Brooks/Blake Shelton stuff of today (uggh! Classic country people call that crap "rock music with a twang.") but rather recordings from what was known as the "Golden Age of Country," a period lasting roughly from the early 1950's to around 1975. If any of you get satellite reception, on the RFD-TV channel there is a program called Larry's Country Diner which showcases that sort of country music prominently, as its host, Larry Black, is a virtual encyclopedia of the stuff - Larry did a similar project to Gaither's "Homecoming" videos featuring a lot of these classic country stars he calls "Country's Family Reunion," and although many of the people he featured on those programs are now gone on to their eternal reward, Larry Black's efforts will preserve some historical footage for people who are into the classic country genre and its legacy. So, why am I talking about this? Mainly, it is because it was ironically some of the first music I was exposed to at a young age, and I learned a lot about it although I never really cared to listen to it much. And, that is what I want to talk about here.
My later childhood years were a time of extreme poverty growing up in a little town called Kirby, WV, and oftentimes poverty didn't offer a lot of options for recreation or entertainment, and therefore we had to "make do" with simple ways of entertaining ourselves. During those years, my mother tended to drink a lot, and often she'd sit around the house for hours lounging in her sock feet drinking beer while listening to records by people such as Ray Price, Jim Reeves, Marty Robbins, Sonny James, and others of that brand of traditional country music. On occasion, these people did produce some good songs - "The Three Bells" by an early country trio called the Browns was actually a very nice tune with a good message about what changes life brings for instance, and for a very short time when I was about 11 I actually got into Johnny Cash's San Quentin album (Lord knows why, but I did!). Despite the occasional good song though, much of the stuff Mom listened to was downright depressing, which may explain why she drank more then! One song in particular which to this day I still despise was an Eddy Arnold tune called "Make the World Go Away," and ughhh - just thinking about that awful song with its bad tune and quasi-suicidal lyrics gives me nausea even today! A lot of Mom's records made me feel like that actually, because they were just, well, not that tasteful to me. That being said, I want to also go on record and say that not all country music is bad, and there's nothing wrong with you liking or listening to it if you happen to - it just doesn't do a whole lot for me. Also, over the years I have myself fancied a few country recordings, which I will talk about now a little.
My stepgrandfather Lonnie Lipscomb was probably more of a serious collector of traditional classic country records, and unlike Mom, he had a little more finesse with his particular collection. One song that I remember he liked was an old 1941 Ernest Tubb tune called "Walkin' The Floor Over You." That song was actually quite good, and to be honest I have felt for years it would make a great big band arrangement. Another, from around 1968 or so if memory serves me right, was Lynn Anderson's "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden," which to be honest was an uncharacteristic sophisticated arrangement for a country song (Of course, Lynn Anderson started her career as a regular on Lawrence Welk's show, so that may have had something to do with it). Like "Walkin' The Floor Over You," "Rose Garden" could play well as a big band chart too, and it has been done. And, although the one Eddy Arnold song was a sucky one, he actually had a really good vintage recording (from 1942 I believe) of a song entitled "I'm Sending You a Big Bouquet of Roses." Another surprising addition to this list is the legendary Hank Williams Sr., who was actually a gifted songwriter - many of his songs did end up on big band records! It also helps that ol' Hank was from the same town as my paternal grandfather - Greenville, AL. These are a few good examples, but there is more.
Western Swing goes without saying honestly - Western Swing is big band, and it is one of my favorite styles of music. Also, there was the late Tennessee Ernie Ford - I mean, seriously, who doesn't love his 1950 recording of "Sixteen Tons!" Plus, in later years, Ford produced some very beautiful albums of religious music. Then there are the classic country comedians - I practically grew up with Homer and Jethro, and still enjoy listening to them today. These are just a few limited examples I wanted to note.
Bottom line is this - I am actually not anti-country music as well, but I am also not what you'd call a fan of it either, although I can appreciate good talent and musicianship where I see it, and some country artists have shined brightly over the years. One thing I also wanted to note too that is of interest is this - does anyone reading this often feel that some country artists are better actors than they are singers? I know I feel that way. Take for instance Reba McIntyre - I cannot really listen to her records in good conscience personally, but I love her sit-com Reba, as it is one of the best shows on TV in my opinion and I think now I have watched every episode of it at least 3 times over the years. Then there is Dolly Parton - Dolly is cute, and she is the type of person you'd love to have for a neighbor or a church member, and she has yet to have a bad movie she has starred in. But, as far as listening to Dolly's records, that is a big fat NO! Not only country legends in movies, but movies about country music legends tend to get my interest. Two of the best movies in the past several decades that I have seen are Coal Miner's Daughter (about Loretta Lynn) and Walk the Line (about Johnny Cash). I don't listen to any of these people's music, but something about those movies strikes a chord with me for some reason - perhaps in the case of Loretta Lynn's story, it relates to me as I had a similar childhood, and in the case of Johnny Cash, there is little I have in common with the character he portrayed, but his life was a fascinating story. So, the question is then why I like movies about country legends but not recordings by them? Time to explain that.
Despite the paradox this presents, it is actually totally logical for me - although I don't listen to country music, I know the culture it represents because that culture is the same one I was born and raised in myself. My situation is similar to a Black person who may not like jazz but can appreciate Duke Ellington - it reflects the culture of that person. Like it or "lump" it, one cannot necessarily choose or change one's culture (although some self-hating people have tried), but one can honestly appreciate it and in doing so it enriches one's own perspective of his or her roots. That being said, I still don't particularly like the majority of country music out there today - I will take Ernie Heckscher over Ernest Tubb, and Glenn Miller over Glen Campbell, anyday. But, at the same time, I understand and identify with the culture that shaped it, because a lot of the same culture shaped me as well. Therefore, I will defend any of my family's right to listen to it, and I will not ever belittle it as mere "hick music" just because it is not my taste. Even my mother's listening to depressingly bad representations of that music is at least honestly embracing the culture it represents, and on that level I can appreciate that. I hope this discourse didn't bore you, and I hope you will be back to pay a visit again soon. Good night and God bless each of my readers.
Anyone who knows me will know that my music library plays a big part in my personal tastes and interests, and the reason is that I have of course been collecting vintage big band recordings since I was about 11 years old. This stuff is my music, and it is a big part of my identity as a person now. However, long before I was interested in big band music, many in my own family listened to another genre of music that I never carried too much interest in myself, but its pervasive influence on the rural West Virginia culture I grew up in cannot be dismissed either, and whether I like it or not, some aspects of it define me as well. What I am talking about is country music - not necessarily the Garth Brooks/Blake Shelton stuff of today (uggh! Classic country people call that crap "rock music with a twang.") but rather recordings from what was known as the "Golden Age of Country," a period lasting roughly from the early 1950's to around 1975. If any of you get satellite reception, on the RFD-TV channel there is a program called Larry's Country Diner which showcases that sort of country music prominently, as its host, Larry Black, is a virtual encyclopedia of the stuff - Larry did a similar project to Gaither's "Homecoming" videos featuring a lot of these classic country stars he calls "Country's Family Reunion," and although many of the people he featured on those programs are now gone on to their eternal reward, Larry Black's efforts will preserve some historical footage for people who are into the classic country genre and its legacy. So, why am I talking about this? Mainly, it is because it was ironically some of the first music I was exposed to at a young age, and I learned a lot about it although I never really cared to listen to it much. And, that is what I want to talk about here.
My later childhood years were a time of extreme poverty growing up in a little town called Kirby, WV, and oftentimes poverty didn't offer a lot of options for recreation or entertainment, and therefore we had to "make do" with simple ways of entertaining ourselves. During those years, my mother tended to drink a lot, and often she'd sit around the house for hours lounging in her sock feet drinking beer while listening to records by people such as Ray Price, Jim Reeves, Marty Robbins, Sonny James, and others of that brand of traditional country music. On occasion, these people did produce some good songs - "The Three Bells" by an early country trio called the Browns was actually a very nice tune with a good message about what changes life brings for instance, and for a very short time when I was about 11 I actually got into Johnny Cash's San Quentin album (Lord knows why, but I did!). Despite the occasional good song though, much of the stuff Mom listened to was downright depressing, which may explain why she drank more then! One song in particular which to this day I still despise was an Eddy Arnold tune called "Make the World Go Away," and ughhh - just thinking about that awful song with its bad tune and quasi-suicidal lyrics gives me nausea even today! A lot of Mom's records made me feel like that actually, because they were just, well, not that tasteful to me. That being said, I want to also go on record and say that not all country music is bad, and there's nothing wrong with you liking or listening to it if you happen to - it just doesn't do a whole lot for me. Also, over the years I have myself fancied a few country recordings, which I will talk about now a little.
My stepgrandfather Lonnie Lipscomb was probably more of a serious collector of traditional classic country records, and unlike Mom, he had a little more finesse with his particular collection. One song that I remember he liked was an old 1941 Ernest Tubb tune called "Walkin' The Floor Over You." That song was actually quite good, and to be honest I have felt for years it would make a great big band arrangement. Another, from around 1968 or so if memory serves me right, was Lynn Anderson's "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden," which to be honest was an uncharacteristic sophisticated arrangement for a country song (Of course, Lynn Anderson started her career as a regular on Lawrence Welk's show, so that may have had something to do with it). Like "Walkin' The Floor Over You," "Rose Garden" could play well as a big band chart too, and it has been done. And, although the one Eddy Arnold song was a sucky one, he actually had a really good vintage recording (from 1942 I believe) of a song entitled "I'm Sending You a Big Bouquet of Roses." Another surprising addition to this list is the legendary Hank Williams Sr., who was actually a gifted songwriter - many of his songs did end up on big band records! It also helps that ol' Hank was from the same town as my paternal grandfather - Greenville, AL. These are a few good examples, but there is more.
Western Swing goes without saying honestly - Western Swing is big band, and it is one of my favorite styles of music. Also, there was the late Tennessee Ernie Ford - I mean, seriously, who doesn't love his 1950 recording of "Sixteen Tons!" Plus, in later years, Ford produced some very beautiful albums of religious music. Then there are the classic country comedians - I practically grew up with Homer and Jethro, and still enjoy listening to them today. These are just a few limited examples I wanted to note.
Bottom line is this - I am actually not anti-country music as well, but I am also not what you'd call a fan of it either, although I can appreciate good talent and musicianship where I see it, and some country artists have shined brightly over the years. One thing I also wanted to note too that is of interest is this - does anyone reading this often feel that some country artists are better actors than they are singers? I know I feel that way. Take for instance Reba McIntyre - I cannot really listen to her records in good conscience personally, but I love her sit-com Reba, as it is one of the best shows on TV in my opinion and I think now I have watched every episode of it at least 3 times over the years. Then there is Dolly Parton - Dolly is cute, and she is the type of person you'd love to have for a neighbor or a church member, and she has yet to have a bad movie she has starred in. But, as far as listening to Dolly's records, that is a big fat NO! Not only country legends in movies, but movies about country music legends tend to get my interest. Two of the best movies in the past several decades that I have seen are Coal Miner's Daughter (about Loretta Lynn) and Walk the Line (about Johnny Cash). I don't listen to any of these people's music, but something about those movies strikes a chord with me for some reason - perhaps in the case of Loretta Lynn's story, it relates to me as I had a similar childhood, and in the case of Johnny Cash, there is little I have in common with the character he portrayed, but his life was a fascinating story. So, the question is then why I like movies about country legends but not recordings by them? Time to explain that.
Despite the paradox this presents, it is actually totally logical for me - although I don't listen to country music, I know the culture it represents because that culture is the same one I was born and raised in myself. My situation is similar to a Black person who may not like jazz but can appreciate Duke Ellington - it reflects the culture of that person. Like it or "lump" it, one cannot necessarily choose or change one's culture (although some self-hating people have tried), but one can honestly appreciate it and in doing so it enriches one's own perspective of his or her roots. That being said, I still don't particularly like the majority of country music out there today - I will take Ernie Heckscher over Ernest Tubb, and Glenn Miller over Glen Campbell, anyday. But, at the same time, I understand and identify with the culture that shaped it, because a lot of the same culture shaped me as well. Therefore, I will defend any of my family's right to listen to it, and I will not ever belittle it as mere "hick music" just because it is not my taste. Even my mother's listening to depressingly bad representations of that music is at least honestly embracing the culture it represents, and on that level I can appreciate that. I hope this discourse didn't bore you, and I hope you will be back to pay a visit again soon. Good night and God bless each of my readers.
Friday, May 15, 2015
Reflections on the Baltimore Riots
The craziness of the past couple of weeks with events in Baltimore has made me think about some things from my own past. The riots there are shameful, and the corrupt government of that city shames its true legacy - my own family's history and my personal story are tied into that true legacy. I am not going to address the riots so much as I am going to relate my own memories and experiences of spending a portion of my childhood in Baltimore, so I hope that as you read this you can appreciate this perspective.
Baltimore has always been a sort of an opportunity for many West Virginia families, due to its close proximity to the state and the economic benefits working in a higher-paying city job offered many mountain folks who were dirt-poor and had few other options. Baltimore, from about the 1940's onward, was for West Virginians much like Columbus and Cincinatti were for people from Kentucky, and a great exodus of West Virginians flowed into the city and established many small neighborhoods, in particular the western edge of the city near Wilkins and Frederick Avenues. My family was one of those, and at one point between 1965 and 1975 we had our own "hillbilly ghetto" there. The West Virginians who settled in Baltimore were generally industrious people who sought to prove themselves and make a decent life for their families, and many actually did quite well - some even made enough of a living to comfortably retire, as did many of my aunts and uncles - back in their hometowns in West Virginia. It presents a different picture of the rioters we've seen there in the past couple of weeks, who expect entitlements and the government to allow them to run amok over the city, targeting innocent businesses and wreaking havoc on the city's economy (Baltimore, you should learn from Detroit on that, seriously!). That being said, yes, I think a lot of the looters and rioters causing the problems are deadbeats looking for an excuse to cause trouble, because they simply don't want to better themselves, and that is their own fault - they have no one to blame except a corrupt government and their own lack of motivation for their issues.
What a difference these destructive hoodlums are compared to our mountain folks who at one time populated many of the same neighborhoods where the riots took place! Many of the mountain folks were as poor as, if not more so, as the rioters causing trouble. Yet, the difference is that the mountain folks had the gumption to utilize their circumstance and make it work for them, and as a result many of them succeeded - they may not have produced a lot of doctors or lawyers, but they did produce good families and stable households. I am proud of many in my own family - in particular my Uncles Teak and Joe Turner, my aunt and uncle Angie and Chod McDaniel, and many of my cousins who even today still live in the city - for what they were able to accomplish back in those days, and they are what the true legacy of Baltimore is. I also have many fond memories from my childhood days there myself - going to kindergarten at Steuart Hill School on Gilmor Street, eating delicious Chesapeake oysters at Bay Island Seafood on Pratt Street as well as those donut-sized onion rings at Kibby's on Wilkins, hanging out with my cousins in my Uncle Ken's basement on Frederick Avenue, and my mom's job at Caton Manor Nursing Home. Also, going downtown as a little tyke with my Aunt Angie and having some good fried chicken off a food truck (yes, those were around in the mid-1970's!) and washing it down with an orange soda from the Jewish grocer who had the what-not store down on Pratt. Those were some great times. Some of those things - such as Bay Island - are still there, while others have gone away with time. And, now, new people - many of them not quite as respectful as the mountain people who once lived there - have come into the neighborhoods many of our family and friends lived in, and they have let the place go to hell and a virtual slum has been created where vibrant and clean neighborhoods used to be. At one point, I remember on a Google street search recently even seeing someone taking a leak on a stop sign - with people like that, who neglect and destroy once-vibrant neighborhoods, it is little wonder that those riots happened. I also remember the row houses - they had a charm of their own, and were actually nice to live in. Today, almost 40 years later, many of those nice old houses have become havens for crackheads, rats, and roaches, as they are in disrepair and decay. It is truly tragic to see a part of my own past deteriorate like that, and these riots incited it more. Shameful!
Well, I have ranted enough on that, but at some point I think I may do a reflective article on my youth in Baltimore years ago, just to show people how nice it used to be. The state of Baltimore, unfortunately, may be the fate of the US if we don't watch ourselves - we are allowing too many special interests, funded by big corporations and advanced by corrupt career politicians, to destroy the American infrastructure (Ferguson, anyone??). With cops being too scared to actually do their jobs, the "mob mentality" is running rampant, and it is frightening. That is why many of us who hold to a more traditional values system need to take back what rightfully is our legacy, and not let a bunch of radicals and destructive troublemakers steal it from us. Have a good day, folks, and just remember that as long as some of us still possess the conviction, a restoration is possible! Let's hope it can happen before it's too late.
Baltimore has always been a sort of an opportunity for many West Virginia families, due to its close proximity to the state and the economic benefits working in a higher-paying city job offered many mountain folks who were dirt-poor and had few other options. Baltimore, from about the 1940's onward, was for West Virginians much like Columbus and Cincinatti were for people from Kentucky, and a great exodus of West Virginians flowed into the city and established many small neighborhoods, in particular the western edge of the city near Wilkins and Frederick Avenues. My family was one of those, and at one point between 1965 and 1975 we had our own "hillbilly ghetto" there. The West Virginians who settled in Baltimore were generally industrious people who sought to prove themselves and make a decent life for their families, and many actually did quite well - some even made enough of a living to comfortably retire, as did many of my aunts and uncles - back in their hometowns in West Virginia. It presents a different picture of the rioters we've seen there in the past couple of weeks, who expect entitlements and the government to allow them to run amok over the city, targeting innocent businesses and wreaking havoc on the city's economy (Baltimore, you should learn from Detroit on that, seriously!). That being said, yes, I think a lot of the looters and rioters causing the problems are deadbeats looking for an excuse to cause trouble, because they simply don't want to better themselves, and that is their own fault - they have no one to blame except a corrupt government and their own lack of motivation for their issues.
What a difference these destructive hoodlums are compared to our mountain folks who at one time populated many of the same neighborhoods where the riots took place! Many of the mountain folks were as poor as, if not more so, as the rioters causing trouble. Yet, the difference is that the mountain folks had the gumption to utilize their circumstance and make it work for them, and as a result many of them succeeded - they may not have produced a lot of doctors or lawyers, but they did produce good families and stable households. I am proud of many in my own family - in particular my Uncles Teak and Joe Turner, my aunt and uncle Angie and Chod McDaniel, and many of my cousins who even today still live in the city - for what they were able to accomplish back in those days, and they are what the true legacy of Baltimore is. I also have many fond memories from my childhood days there myself - going to kindergarten at Steuart Hill School on Gilmor Street, eating delicious Chesapeake oysters at Bay Island Seafood on Pratt Street as well as those donut-sized onion rings at Kibby's on Wilkins, hanging out with my cousins in my Uncle Ken's basement on Frederick Avenue, and my mom's job at Caton Manor Nursing Home. Also, going downtown as a little tyke with my Aunt Angie and having some good fried chicken off a food truck (yes, those were around in the mid-1970's!) and washing it down with an orange soda from the Jewish grocer who had the what-not store down on Pratt. Those were some great times. Some of those things - such as Bay Island - are still there, while others have gone away with time. And, now, new people - many of them not quite as respectful as the mountain people who once lived there - have come into the neighborhoods many of our family and friends lived in, and they have let the place go to hell and a virtual slum has been created where vibrant and clean neighborhoods used to be. At one point, I remember on a Google street search recently even seeing someone taking a leak on a stop sign - with people like that, who neglect and destroy once-vibrant neighborhoods, it is little wonder that those riots happened. I also remember the row houses - they had a charm of their own, and were actually nice to live in. Today, almost 40 years later, many of those nice old houses have become havens for crackheads, rats, and roaches, as they are in disrepair and decay. It is truly tragic to see a part of my own past deteriorate like that, and these riots incited it more. Shameful!
Well, I have ranted enough on that, but at some point I think I may do a reflective article on my youth in Baltimore years ago, just to show people how nice it used to be. The state of Baltimore, unfortunately, may be the fate of the US if we don't watch ourselves - we are allowing too many special interests, funded by big corporations and advanced by corrupt career politicians, to destroy the American infrastructure (Ferguson, anyone??). With cops being too scared to actually do their jobs, the "mob mentality" is running rampant, and it is frightening. That is why many of us who hold to a more traditional values system need to take back what rightfully is our legacy, and not let a bunch of radicals and destructive troublemakers steal it from us. Have a good day, folks, and just remember that as long as some of us still possess the conviction, a restoration is possible! Let's hope it can happen before it's too late.
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Commemorating the Martyrs of a Genocide
On Friday, it was the 100th anniversary of one of the greatest atrocities ever committed against humanity, ranking up there with the Holocaust that came 26 years after. This atrocity was the Armenian Genocide of 1915, in which upwards of 1.4 million Armenians were slaughtered in cold blood by the Ottoman Turks for simply being Christians. Ironically, as this is commemorated, in the past year or so we see evil raising its ugly head in the same region again now, as ISIS is committing the same sort of atrocities. In addition to Armenians, about a half-million or more each of Assyrian and Greek Christians were massacred, and also several foreign aid workers - the total deaths calculated by those who chronicled the barbarity of the Turks then may have reached 2 million or more people. Many Americans don't know (or simply don't even care these days) about these events, and if you ask the average person on the street, they probably would not have the foggiest idea of what an Armenian even is. Yet, this atrocity serves to remind us that we as Christians are in a hostile world, dealing with "powers and principalities" which work through human mechanisms, and those mechanisms would like nothing more than to see all Christian civilization wiped off the map. The enemies are varied, but they share the same goal - radical Islamists, communism, secularists, the "evangelists" of the "political-correctness gospel." etc. Therefore, what happened to Armenian Christians and others one hundred years ago may not mean much to many, and many even reading this may not even be aware of what that horrific time was, but it nonetheless has implications for us today.
The ruins of Ani Cathedral - an ancient Armenian church
First off, who are the Armenians? The Armenians are an ancient Indo-European people who have been native to the area since probably Hellenistic times. They once ruled a great kingdom that dominated much of Asia Minor, and although I personally am not sure of their exact origins, opinions have offered that they are descendants of the ancient Hittites, Phyrgians, or Hurrians that lived in the same area. Perhaps that is so, but the fact is the Armenians have an ancient history connected to the region that comprises their homeland, and their history is also deeply entwined with Biblical and Church history in two important ways.
The Biblical Mount Ararat, with an ancient Armenian church in the foreground
The first example is the fact that Mount Ararat is at the heart of the Armenian homeland, and people who read the Bible know that this is the traditional place where Noah's Ark landed after the flood. Even today, the evidence of the Ark's presence is still on that great mountain, and as far as the Armenians are concerned, Ararat represents the national soul of their people. Unfortunately, today this great wonder of nature is in the hands of the Turks, even though the modern nation of Armenia still lies in its shadow.
St. Gregory the Illuminator preaching to the ancient Armenian king Trdat (Tiradates)
The second major tie that Armenia has to Christianity is that the Armenians lay claim to being the first Christian kingdom on earth (although this is contested by their Assyrian neighbors, who believe that King Abgar Ukomo of the ancient Kingdom of Oeshrene was the first). Armenia was indeed converted early in the history of the Church, as in the third century the evangelist St. Gregory the Illuminator brought the message of Christ to the Armenians, even converting their king, Trdat, and exorcising an evil spirit from him, as the tradition goes. As one of the oldest of Christian civilizations, the Armenians hold a special mercy I believe with God for their perserverance in keeping the faith all these centuries, despite the constant onslaught by radical Islam and years of repression by Soviet communism. That all says much for their testimony, which indeed confirms the miraculous survival of this special people.
Armenians, like many other Christian communities in the Middle East over the centuries, have always been subject to Islamic oppression, but this culminated just after the turn of the 20th century in the Ottoman Empire due to a variety of factors. At the end of the 19th century, change was afoot, and as European powers began to expand and build colonial empires, the "glory" of Islamic "civilization" began to fade, so much so that the Ottomans were slipping quickly into obscurity. As a matter of fact, a prominent European politician referred to the Ottomans at the time as the "sick man of Europe." However, were the Ottomans really European. Sure, in the years leading up to the collapse and conquer of the Christian Byzantines in 1453, many parts of the Balkans had already been subjugated by the Ottomans (Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Albania, etc.) and for the first time since the Moors held Spain a couple of humdred years earlier, Islamic powers had a toehold in Europe. However, in the 1800's. many of these people in the Balkans began to declare their independence, most notably the Greeks in 1821. Additionally, the Ottomans were being chipped away at by rival Islamic kingdoms - specifically the Persians - and the French, Russians, and British began colonial expansion into what were lands held by the Ottoman Sultan. By the end of the 1800's, the Ottoman Empire was but a shell of its former self, and the reactionary elements among its leadership, led by a sadistic butcher by the name of Abdul Hamid, used Islamic Sharia to subjugate those - namely non-Muslim minorities such as the Armenians - whom it believed to be enemies of the Empire which were "collaborating" with its enemies, and that subjugation led to a revival of an evil practice called dhimmitude, which in essence reduced Christians and others to second-class status. The demonic drive behind radical Islam also inflamed local Turks as well as Kurdish collaborators, and the result was barbarous massacres of whole Christian villages in the remote areas of Asia Minor. When Turkey entered WWI in 1914 on the side of the Central Powers, a type of xenophobia set in which led to the events of the 1915 Genocide that claimed so many lives. I know this is an inadequately brief historical synopsis of the situation, but it is meant to give you an idea of the factors that led up to this atrocity in the preceding years, as it had been building for about 100 years previous or more.
Lest you think all of this is just some emotional appeal by the Armenians to advance an agenda (as the Turks continue to baselessly accuse them even today) there are eyewitnesses to these atrocities from that time. One of them was British Viscount James Bryce, who published a compilation work entitled The Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915-19. On pages 594-595 of that book, Bryce records the systematic way these Ottomans carried out their atrocities, and he notes that there were several things they did:
1. The population of the village was disarmed by the gendarmerie (local Ottoman cops), aided by criminals they released from the prisons to assist them.
2. The mass imprisonment of the Armenian residents of that village, on trumped-up pretexts of possession of firearms, contraband literature, etc.
3. The Armenians were deported from their homes. Money and valuables were confiscated, the people were shackled sometimes in gangs of five or ten, and women and young girls were forcibly abducted, raped, and molested by the local Muslim population. After the Muslim locals had their way with these unfortunate people, they were marched away usually into the desert, where many of them died of starvation or were attacked by bands of brigands. (V.L. Parsegian, preparer. Human Rights and Genocide, 1975. New York: Diocese of the Armenian Church in America, 1975. pp. 19-20.)
The Italian Consul-General at Trebizond at the time, G. Gorrini, confirmed that the execution of these atrocities came directly from the Sultan's own government, and he even noted that these actions were even opposed by some Muslims too (Parsegian, p. 20). Further, Dr. Martin Niepage, a German ambassador and teacher at a German school in Aleppo, wrote a pamphlet entitled "The Horrors of Aleppo" in which he documented this: "Such monstrous news left me incredulous. I was told that, in various quarters of Aleppo, there were lying masses of half-starved people, the survivors os so-called 'deportation convoys.' In order, I was told, to cover the extermination of the Armenian nation with a political cloak, military reasons were being put forward, which were said to be necessary to drive the Armenians out of their native seats, which had been theirs for 2500 years, and to deport them to the Arabian deserts....I came to the conclusion that all these accusations against the Armenians were, in fact, based on trifling provocations, which were taken as an excuse for slaughtering 10,000 innocents for one guilty person, for the most savage outrages against women and children, and for a campaign of starvation against the exiles which was intended to exterminate the whole nation." (Parsegian, p. 21). However, some of the most graphic reports came from American Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, who documented much of these atrocities in his work Secrets of the Bosphorus 1918. What Morgenthau reported, if it were on film, would be so graphic that it would turn the strongest stomach, as what the Ottomans did ranks up there with the mass exterminations of Jews that Hitler would carry out some 20 years later. The Turkish troups would seize Armenian women, and then would indiscriminately open fire on a village shooting everything and everyone in it. Elderly Armenian men and women, on these forced marches into the desert, would be strewn on the path in the death throes of typhus, dysentery, and other disease, while little children would be seen lying on their backs wailing for food or water. Women would beg strangers to take their babies, and if that failed, mothers would actually throw them into wells or leave them in brush patches that they at least might die undisturbed. Soldiers would force young Armenian girls into sex slavery, and the way-stations (read concentration camps) along the march route were littered with the unburied and half-buried bodies of the dead, and buzzards were constant companions of these unfortunate people. However, it was especially horrific along river banks, when either soldiers would push people into the water to be "target practice" or those who would seek to preserve what little dignity they still possessed would jump in themselves, including women with their young babies (Parsegian, pp 21-22).
The infamous "death marches" of Armenian exiles, this one possibly taken in the Syrian desert
A sadistic Turkish official teasing starving Armenians by waving bread at them
Armenian casualties of a massacre by Ottoman soldiers in a remote village
An artist rendering of Turks ravaging Armenian women and slaughtering their children
The most ridiculous thing about all this is that despite the unprecedented number of eyewitness accounts by Western officials and aid workers of these events, the Turkish government to this day denies and refuses to take responsibility for it. Even the Germans have come to terms with the Holocaust, but the Turks have yet to atone to the Armenians and others for their sins. That is not to say all Turks are bad though by any means, as over the years there have been honorable Turkish individuals who have spoken out about this, and who want to reach out to the Armenians - those people are true heroes for their efforts, and should be commended, because they too face obstacles in their home country. It is a crime punishable by imprisonment in Turkey even today, as a matter of fact, to even mention the Armenian Genocide, And, what is worse is the chicanery of our own elected officials in Washington - despite many efforts to push for a recognition of the Armenian Genocide, it seems that President after President (Republican and Democrat) ignores this historical fact, and although other nations - recently both Pope Francis and Vladimir Putin recognized the Armenian Genocide and commemorated its victims - have had no problems with this, our government (which, off the record, is made up of worthless career politicians too lazy to do their jobs although they love to lie and make a lot of promises) still stupidly tries to placate the Turks! Bill Clinton, as an example, will bomb innocent Serbs to defend KLA terrorists (which he did in 1999 to deflect from the fact he couldn't keep his pork-sword in his pants and was molesting his interns, so bombing Serbs was his way to distract the public from that!) and our current President, Barack Obama, is increasingly friendly to our enemies in the Middle East while alienating our allies - both of them, ironically, made hollow campaign promises to cater to Armenian-American voters in California to give national recognition, and both failed. And, now you have ISIS and its kind, committing the same atrocities a hundred years later, and our leadership does nothing! Then there is this Erdogan guy (who I call Gog, due to his similarity with the leader it talks about in Ezekiel 38) who is the leader of Turkey - he has been becoming increasingly more Islamist in his tenure as President of Turkey, and the man has the potential to become another Abdul Hamid or Talaat Pasha, yet our lazy bureacratic fat-cats in Washington are letting that all happen too. The Armenians and others have suffered enough over the years, and it is time they be vindicated, and if our government is too chicken to do it, we must do so as individuals.
As mentioned, other victims of the Genocide also included Greeks and Assyrians, and one in particular was the late Assyrian Patriarch Benyamin Shimun, who in 1918 was assassinated in cold blood by a Kurdish thug named Simkoo, who was in the employ of the Turkish government. Mar Shimun's famous quotation in regard to this atrocity sums up the sentiment of the resolve these courageous people had, and it was:
"It is imposible for me and my people to surrender after seeing the atrocities done to my Assyrian people by your government; therefore my brother is one, my people are many, I would rather lose my brother but not my NATION"
Mar Benyamin Shimun (1887-1918), sainted Assyrian patriarch assasinated in cold blood.
Christians around the world today need to heed the lessons of the Armenian Genocide, as there is a growing hostility even in America toward people of faith. Forces out there, demonically driven, are attacking Christian-owned businesses, as well as even trying to dictate to pastors what they can and cannot say in their sermons (a clear Constitutional violation). That, coupled with the continued persecutions that barbarians like these ISIS clowns are inflicting upon Christians in the Middle East, should be getting our attention. It was the philosopher George Santayana I believe who said that "those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it," and we need to take that to heart even today. This is why it is important that we commemorate the lives of many innocent Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek Christians who were killed simply for who they were by an oppressive, monstrous regime that had demonically-possessed leaders who drank gleefully of the blood of their victims, and we need to be prepared, because who knows - in the future, we could be next! My prayers for both the Armenian and Assyrian families in the US in particular, as they mourn the loss of their loved ones who were martyred in the Genocide.
Friday, March 13, 2015
The Scoop on "Amish Mafia"
About two years ago, this so-called "reality show" premiered on Discovery Channel of all things that supposedly documented a sort of subversive underworld among the Amish communities of Lancaster, PA, and Holmes County, OH. That show was called Amish Mafia, and from the first few minutes of the first episode, it was evident that there was nothing "real" about this "reality show." To give the background on this show, Amish Mafia portrays the dealings of an enigmatic "Amish Godfather" they call "Lebanon Levi" Stolzfuss, and what he primarily does is collect something called "Amish Aid" from the local Amish communities - apparently, if he is not paid, there are consequences. To aid in this enterprise, Levi employs several minions - one is a spineless goober named Alvin, who is Levi's right-hand man. Another is a dumbass (pardon the term, but it fits) named John Schmucker, whose sister Esther also gets in on the action (they have a third schizophrenic brother named Freeman who was sent away to some Amish psych ward in North Dakota or something) - apparently their father was the original "boss" of Amish Aid, and they are trying to wrestle it back into their control. A third is a big retard they call "Big Steve," who serves as the "muscle." A forth is an alleged Mennonite hired gun named Jolin, who later is replaced by a young Brethren hothead named Caleb (who is about as Brethren as the Pope, but I am getting ahead here). Also in the cast is Levi's rival, an Amish Rasputinesque nut named Merlin, who has a dwarf second-in-command named Wayne (Merlin and Wayne though later have a parting of ways), and they are headquartered in Holmes County, OH. Later, Merlin is found in the company of a fat woman who resembles a Yorkshire pig by the name of Mary, who operates a "bundling school" in Ohio for engaged couples (this is where it gets really ridiculous, because Mary supposedly teaches the young betrothed clients about "soaking," meaning that the position of intercourse is allowed without actually having intercourse - this is pure BS). Rounding out the regular cast is a Black man (called SchwartzAmisch on the show) named Alan Beiler, who was supposedly adopted by an Amish family and raised by them, but later turns into a criminal, ends up working for Levi, and is betrayed by him and ends up in jail. In the recent season, Alan joins up with a rogue Mennonite leader named Doug, and convinces Caleb to ditch Levi and work for the Mennonites too, which Caleb does, and a sort of "turf war" over Lancaster that supposedly rivals the Crips and Bloods in LA ensues - the Mennonites think the Amish have too much control apparently, and want to wrestle it back, doing so with violence against the Amish. At any rate, there you have it - the plot of the show, its main characters, and what is currently going on in the third season airing now. As you can see, there are already some glaring problems with this whole enterprise from the start, but I want to get into specifics now.
To begin, let me say that I am not exactly evaluating this as an outsider - my own family was Brethren by heritage, and I have roots in this whole culture, although not to the degree an actual Amishman or Mennonite from Lancaster would have. That is why the majority of what this show portrays is an affront to all three groups. I am not going to document every ridiculous thing that this show has portrayed as "true," but I want to deal with it generally. I have watched every episode of it, and in doing so I can also see the entertainment value in it - the show is good fiction, and if you are into intrigue and suspense, the producers have that talent down well. So, as long as you know better, watch it. However, my concern is like that of many others - too many who watch stuff like this think that the Amish really live this way, and unfortunately in today's world, too many people who watch this show are too dumb to actually pick up a book and do a little research, and they are using Amish Mafia as eyewitness authority (which it is not) on Amish life. There are many capable scholars out there who have rejected the authenticity of Amish Mafia, one being David Weaver-Zercher, a professor at Messiah College, who said, "“When I first saw the (show’s) trailer, I thought maybe it was a ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit on reality television because it was so far-fetched,” as well as Donald Kraybill, a scholar whose works I am very familiar with as he has written some excellent reference books on the various Anabaptist groups in Pennsylvania, who said this: “When I’ve spoken about this program with Amish friends they’ve just kind of laughed and said they never heard of this kind of thing . . . It’s just sort of an example of the foolishness and stupidity and lies — misrepresentations I should say — that are promoted [about the Amish] in television . . . These production crews should be ashamed of trying to say that represents Amish life.” (Michael Mullins, "Experts Dispute Existence of 'Amish Mafia' as Reality Show Debuts." Article originally published on 11 December 2012. http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/amish-mafia-dispute-reality/2012/12/11/id/467251/ {accessed 13 March 2015}). Even a number of ex-Amish have come out against the show, saying most of what Amish Mafia depicts is so bogus that you would have to be totally uninformed about the Amish to accept it, and they are right. However, what it amounts to is a couple of bottom-line facts, and let's briefly talk about those.
First, it is money. Discovery Channel, if it were truly as educational as it claims to be, should pull the show off the air immediately being it does misrepresent a whole community, but they won't because they have ratings. Ratings are the only things that big corporate broadcasters like Discovery understand, because they will push any agenda that sells their product. And, the reason they are exploiting the Amish is simple - the nonviolent nature and convictions of the Amish religion make them a viable target, because the Amish don't fight back. If they did this with Evangelicals, Catholics, or Jews, they would have so many lawsuits hitting them that probably Discovery would be out of business, and rightfully so. And, unfortunately, as long as the Amish (who eschew using media for religious reasons) refuse to fight this, Discovery will continue to slander their community with many of the lies spewed by Amish Mafia and similar shows (yes, there are more of them!). And, the reason for that is Discovery is making a filthy profit off this sensationalist stuff.
Second, there is a propensity to slam and slander traditional religious groups in the US now, as we become an increasingly secularized culture. Whenever religion is portrayed in a positive light - such as that mess called Preachers of LA, which chronicles the lives of several primarily super-wealthy African-American Pentecostal megachurch pastors and their playboy lifestyles - there is often a motive; the reason many of the "pastors" in shows like Preachers of LA are viewed positively is because they represent a compromised Christianity and not the true faith of millions of faithful Evangelicals in the US. Or, it is due to trying to sensationalize what many view as an eccentric religious practice - such as the serpent-handlers in the Appalachians - but it backfires because for some reason a real picture of those people comes through (take that series Snake Salvation - which was actually good - that was also on Discovery - once the serpent-handlers on there looked like normal people, the show was cancelled - go figure!) that endears them. Bottom line is, Discovery and others are not about the intellectual enhancement of their viewers, but rather the spatial enhancement of their own bank accounts. So, if slandering a certain religious community draws ratings, then it will be exploited to the limits, and what better target than a community of Christians who don't even watch TV and espouse a conviction of nonviolence?
Again, for us who know Church history and have some familiarity with the Amish and Mennonite communities, Amish Mafia is an obvious exercise in fiction that can safely be watched. But, unfortunately the audience Amish Mafia is reaching is made up of mostly ignorant people who know little about the Amish, and who for some reason feel that Discovery, due to its educational-documentary reputation, can do no wrong - therefore, it's gotta be true, right? To most of those viewers - and I mean no disrespect when I say this - I would say that it would be better to set down those cellphones and other gadgets and actually pick up some books (surely you remember what a book is, right? That bound paper thing with thousands of words on pages - very enriching activity if you take the challenge to read one!) that, if you don't have them at home, you can easily find at a little place called a library. If more viewers would actually take the time to inform themselves about stuff like this, we might be in better shape as a country. Also, it is worth mentioning that there are efforts to combat gross misinformation about the Amish as conveyed in stuff like Amish Mafia, and they are worth taking a look at. For one, the Governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, has made a commendable stand against media propaganda against the Amish and others. In a statement the Governor signed with 19 other state officials, it was stated that "By misrepresenting the Amish as a crime-ridden culture, the show gives, by association, the same impression of Lancaster County. It changes the image of the county from one of pastoral beauty, where people are devoted to faith, family and friends, to one of banal ugliness." (http://www.pennlive.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2014/08/governor_corbett_amish_mafia.html). The Governor has been accused by the producers - and they ironically wrote it into the story line of the season's episodes (go figure!) - of protecting Lancaster tourism, political leveraging (which makes no sense, as the Amish don't vote - again, go figure!) and other nonsense. But, Gov. Corbett and the statement are correct, and I would stand by it myself. Also, a new group called "Respect Amish" has been formed to combat the negative propaganda spewed against the Amish in shows like Amish Mafia, and this is the Joint Statement they issued, which was a very commendable effort:
"Many Lancaster County residents are concerned about the negative, inaccurate and potentially
damaging portrayal of Amish religion and culture in the Discovery Channel’s “Amish Mafia” TV series.
These shows vilify the Amish religious way of life, suggesting that a peaceful people devoted
to non-violence are vengeful, violent and criminal.
The Amish are horrified, shamed and embarrassed by the show’s depiction of their religion and
culture. While their religious beliefs forbid them from public objection to this portrayal, their
spokesmen have expressed deep appreciation and support for the efforts of others to foster respect
for their community.
At their core, this television series engages in religious bigotry. “Amish Mafia” is no more acceptable
than “Jewish Mafia,” “Catholic Mafia or “Evangelical Mafia.” The show is an affront to all
people of faith.
By misrepresenting the Amish as a crime-ridden culture, the show gives, by association, the same
impression of Lancaster city and county. It changes the image of the county from one of pastoral
beauty, where people are devoted to faith, family and friends, to one of banal ugliness.
Each of us has a responsibility to consider how we, and members of our faith community, would
feel if these shows attacked us as they are attacking the Amish. All religions observe some form
of the Golden Rule – that we treat others as we would want to be treated. To stand by silently
while these shows mistreat the Amish in our community would make us complicit in breaking that
rule." (accessed from http://www.respectamish.org/ on March 13, 2015)
I agree with this statement, and the purpose of this article today is to show my support for the efforts of good people like those at Respect Amish as well as governmental leaders like Tom Corbett. Discovery of course is raising a stink by writing slander against these good people into the story lines of the episodes of Amish Mafia (thanks in part to one of its producers, none other than the supposed SchwarzAmische himself, Alan Beiler - Beiler is no jailbird, never has been Amish, and is a professional actor who for some reason wants to pick on the Amish and pick the pockets of others doing it. The real crime Beiler is guilty of is picking the pockets of many viewers watching this stuff!). Discovery is threatened because its cash cow is on the verge of being turned into hamburger by informed citizens who are sick of media exploitation, and by all means it is time to send the Discovery "cash cow" to the slaughterhouse now! Although I have watched Amish Mafia to stay informed of many gross errors it has in its portrayal of Amish life, it would not be something I would miss personally if it went away. So, my prayers are with Gov. Corbett and the Respect Amish people for their success - Lord knows something must be done. God bless until next time.
The "disclaimor" statement that airs at the beginning of every Amish Mafia episode in poorly-spoken Plautedeutsche by the actor portraying "Lebanon Levi."
To begin, let me say that I am not exactly evaluating this as an outsider - my own family was Brethren by heritage, and I have roots in this whole culture, although not to the degree an actual Amishman or Mennonite from Lancaster would have. That is why the majority of what this show portrays is an affront to all three groups. I am not going to document every ridiculous thing that this show has portrayed as "true," but I want to deal with it generally. I have watched every episode of it, and in doing so I can also see the entertainment value in it - the show is good fiction, and if you are into intrigue and suspense, the producers have that talent down well. So, as long as you know better, watch it. However, my concern is like that of many others - too many who watch stuff like this think that the Amish really live this way, and unfortunately in today's world, too many people who watch this show are too dumb to actually pick up a book and do a little research, and they are using Amish Mafia as eyewitness authority (which it is not) on Amish life. There are many capable scholars out there who have rejected the authenticity of Amish Mafia, one being David Weaver-Zercher, a professor at Messiah College, who said, "“When I first saw the (show’s) trailer, I thought maybe it was a ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit on reality television because it was so far-fetched,” as well as Donald Kraybill, a scholar whose works I am very familiar with as he has written some excellent reference books on the various Anabaptist groups in Pennsylvania, who said this: “When I’ve spoken about this program with Amish friends they’ve just kind of laughed and said they never heard of this kind of thing . . . It’s just sort of an example of the foolishness and stupidity and lies — misrepresentations I should say — that are promoted [about the Amish] in television . . . These production crews should be ashamed of trying to say that represents Amish life.” (Michael Mullins, "Experts Dispute Existence of 'Amish Mafia' as Reality Show Debuts." Article originally published on 11 December 2012. http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/amish-mafia-dispute-reality/2012/12/11/id/467251/ {accessed 13 March 2015}). Even a number of ex-Amish have come out against the show, saying most of what Amish Mafia depicts is so bogus that you would have to be totally uninformed about the Amish to accept it, and they are right. However, what it amounts to is a couple of bottom-line facts, and let's briefly talk about those.
First, it is money. Discovery Channel, if it were truly as educational as it claims to be, should pull the show off the air immediately being it does misrepresent a whole community, but they won't because they have ratings. Ratings are the only things that big corporate broadcasters like Discovery understand, because they will push any agenda that sells their product. And, the reason they are exploiting the Amish is simple - the nonviolent nature and convictions of the Amish religion make them a viable target, because the Amish don't fight back. If they did this with Evangelicals, Catholics, or Jews, they would have so many lawsuits hitting them that probably Discovery would be out of business, and rightfully so. And, unfortunately, as long as the Amish (who eschew using media for religious reasons) refuse to fight this, Discovery will continue to slander their community with many of the lies spewed by Amish Mafia and similar shows (yes, there are more of them!). And, the reason for that is Discovery is making a filthy profit off this sensationalist stuff.
Second, there is a propensity to slam and slander traditional religious groups in the US now, as we become an increasingly secularized culture. Whenever religion is portrayed in a positive light - such as that mess called Preachers of LA, which chronicles the lives of several primarily super-wealthy African-American Pentecostal megachurch pastors and their playboy lifestyles - there is often a motive; the reason many of the "pastors" in shows like Preachers of LA are viewed positively is because they represent a compromised Christianity and not the true faith of millions of faithful Evangelicals in the US. Or, it is due to trying to sensationalize what many view as an eccentric religious practice - such as the serpent-handlers in the Appalachians - but it backfires because for some reason a real picture of those people comes through (take that series Snake Salvation - which was actually good - that was also on Discovery - once the serpent-handlers on there looked like normal people, the show was cancelled - go figure!) that endears them. Bottom line is, Discovery and others are not about the intellectual enhancement of their viewers, but rather the spatial enhancement of their own bank accounts. So, if slandering a certain religious community draws ratings, then it will be exploited to the limits, and what better target than a community of Christians who don't even watch TV and espouse a conviction of nonviolence?
Again, for us who know Church history and have some familiarity with the Amish and Mennonite communities, Amish Mafia is an obvious exercise in fiction that can safely be watched. But, unfortunately the audience Amish Mafia is reaching is made up of mostly ignorant people who know little about the Amish, and who for some reason feel that Discovery, due to its educational-documentary reputation, can do no wrong - therefore, it's gotta be true, right? To most of those viewers - and I mean no disrespect when I say this - I would say that it would be better to set down those cellphones and other gadgets and actually pick up some books (surely you remember what a book is, right? That bound paper thing with thousands of words on pages - very enriching activity if you take the challenge to read one!) that, if you don't have them at home, you can easily find at a little place called a library. If more viewers would actually take the time to inform themselves about stuff like this, we might be in better shape as a country. Also, it is worth mentioning that there are efforts to combat gross misinformation about the Amish as conveyed in stuff like Amish Mafia, and they are worth taking a look at. For one, the Governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, has made a commendable stand against media propaganda against the Amish and others. In a statement the Governor signed with 19 other state officials, it was stated that "By misrepresenting the Amish as a crime-ridden culture, the show gives, by association, the same impression of Lancaster County. It changes the image of the county from one of pastoral beauty, where people are devoted to faith, family and friends, to one of banal ugliness." (http://www.pennlive.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2014/08/governor_corbett_amish_mafia.html). The Governor has been accused by the producers - and they ironically wrote it into the story line of the season's episodes (go figure!) - of protecting Lancaster tourism, political leveraging (which makes no sense, as the Amish don't vote - again, go figure!) and other nonsense. But, Gov. Corbett and the statement are correct, and I would stand by it myself. Also, a new group called "Respect Amish" has been formed to combat the negative propaganda spewed against the Amish in shows like Amish Mafia, and this is the Joint Statement they issued, which was a very commendable effort:
"Many Lancaster County residents are concerned about the negative, inaccurate and potentially
damaging portrayal of Amish religion and culture in the Discovery Channel’s “Amish Mafia” TV series.
These shows vilify the Amish religious way of life, suggesting that a peaceful people devoted
to non-violence are vengeful, violent and criminal.
The Amish are horrified, shamed and embarrassed by the show’s depiction of their religion and
culture. While their religious beliefs forbid them from public objection to this portrayal, their
spokesmen have expressed deep appreciation and support for the efforts of others to foster respect
for their community.
At their core, this television series engages in religious bigotry. “Amish Mafia” is no more acceptable
than “Jewish Mafia,” “Catholic Mafia or “Evangelical Mafia.” The show is an affront to all
people of faith.
By misrepresenting the Amish as a crime-ridden culture, the show gives, by association, the same
impression of Lancaster city and county. It changes the image of the county from one of pastoral
beauty, where people are devoted to faith, family and friends, to one of banal ugliness.
Each of us has a responsibility to consider how we, and members of our faith community, would
feel if these shows attacked us as they are attacking the Amish. All religions observe some form
of the Golden Rule – that we treat others as we would want to be treated. To stand by silently
while these shows mistreat the Amish in our community would make us complicit in breaking that
rule." (accessed from http://www.respectamish.org/ on March 13, 2015)
I agree with this statement, and the purpose of this article today is to show my support for the efforts of good people like those at Respect Amish as well as governmental leaders like Tom Corbett. Discovery of course is raising a stink by writing slander against these good people into the story lines of the episodes of Amish Mafia (thanks in part to one of its producers, none other than the supposed SchwarzAmische himself, Alan Beiler - Beiler is no jailbird, never has been Amish, and is a professional actor who for some reason wants to pick on the Amish and pick the pockets of others doing it. The real crime Beiler is guilty of is picking the pockets of many viewers watching this stuff!). Discovery is threatened because its cash cow is on the verge of being turned into hamburger by informed citizens who are sick of media exploitation, and by all means it is time to send the Discovery "cash cow" to the slaughterhouse now! Although I have watched Amish Mafia to stay informed of many gross errors it has in its portrayal of Amish life, it would not be something I would miss personally if it went away. So, my prayers are with Gov. Corbett and the Respect Amish people for their success - Lord knows something must be done. God bless until next time.
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