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Rant -- what's this overculture coming to?
Wednesday, December 29th, 2010 09:24 pmI'm finding myself surprisingly curmudgeonly about the state of my country and its assorted incarnations of mass culture.
Everywhere these days I hear far more judgmentalness than seems appropriate or useful. Reminds me of a long-dead elderly relative who would ask to be taken for a "nice Sunday drive" and spend the whole time praising or blaming everything that met the eye.
"What a pretentious two-story portico? It just looks foolish; some people have no taste. Why ..." and on and on, non-stop, until we rounded the next corner. "That's a marvelous tree, look at those spreading branches. You don't see many of those now-a-days, ..."
But in those days, that was the only person I knew who took that approach to the world. The press seemed more neutral. Now every news story seems to be taking a position. The reporter (or the publication) is for something, or against something, or if they're not, they're either making fun of something or pitying something. Feh!
Which brings me to this rant.
I've been reading several of the bloggers on stroller-derby and babble, and I'm just about to have to stop. It seems that every post asks for my opinion, even on matters where I have no opinion, or where I have no preference, and often on matters that are none of my business. Most posts seem to end with: "What do you think? Should [insert public figure's name here] have done what they did? or are they just being insensitive?" Others ask, "What do you think? Was the judge right to impose such a [adjective] sentence? or should the convicted malefactor have received a [opposite-of-adjective] sentence instead?"
I prefer the minority of babble's writers who ask, instead, "What would you do in this situation?" which has the virtue of at least being a question about my preferences or opinions about what I should do in my own life -- not a request for a referendum on someone else's life.
For a long time I thought this "What do you think: Should We Let Them Do That or Should We Punish Them?" kind of ending was just a trademark way of trying to start a conversation in the comments section, but then I began to feel overloaded with incitements to judgmentalness regarding the actions of other people. The people I was being invited to judge probably had complex reasons for doing what they did, as well as entire lives of history contributing to their choices -- none of which was covered in the six or ten paragraph story. What should they have done? How in the world would I presume to know?
"Should parents allow their kid to do such and such?" Why is this my business? Don't we want both parents and children to have a certain amount of autonomy? self-responsibility? even, variety of upbringing?
I'm on the point of voting with my feet, deleting a dozen bloggers from my reading list. But I wonder if there isn't a way to start a conversation on babble about this. I'm fine, really, with being told a story about something that is happening in the writer's real life, and then being invited to say how that issue might show up in my own real life. But don't ask me whether the governor of some state should have handled the unmarried pregnancy of a teenage relative the way they did or not. I don't want to be asked to judge the girl or her family; I don't want to be asked to judge the politician for the amount of savoir faire they might or might not have in the face of family scandal.
Beyond my personal "yucch! factor," there is a larger question here. Do I really want to be living in a culture that presumes it's fine for each of us to judge all the others, 24/7, for whatever we can find out about how they live in their personal lives?
Maybe the question I want to read, at the end of a blog entry is, "How would this play out if it happened in your family?" or "Has this ever happened to you? What did you do? How did that work out for you?"
So, Dear Readers, what do you think? Is there a conversation to be had here? What might I or we do to make space for a little freedom and a little less judgment? Or is that none of my business?
Everywhere these days I hear far more judgmentalness than seems appropriate or useful. Reminds me of a long-dead elderly relative who would ask to be taken for a "nice Sunday drive" and spend the whole time praising or blaming everything that met the eye.
"What a pretentious two-story portico? It just looks foolish; some people have no taste. Why ..." and on and on, non-stop, until we rounded the next corner. "That's a marvelous tree, look at those spreading branches. You don't see many of those now-a-days, ..."
But in those days, that was the only person I knew who took that approach to the world. The press seemed more neutral. Now every news story seems to be taking a position. The reporter (or the publication) is for something, or against something, or if they're not, they're either making fun of something or pitying something. Feh!
Which brings me to this rant.
I've been reading several of the bloggers on stroller-derby and babble, and I'm just about to have to stop. It seems that every post asks for my opinion, even on matters where I have no opinion, or where I have no preference, and often on matters that are none of my business. Most posts seem to end with: "What do you think? Should [insert public figure's name here] have done what they did? or are they just being insensitive?" Others ask, "What do you think? Was the judge right to impose such a [adjective] sentence? or should the convicted malefactor have received a [opposite-of-adjective] sentence instead?"
I prefer the minority of babble's writers who ask, instead, "What would you do in this situation?" which has the virtue of at least being a question about my preferences or opinions about what I should do in my own life -- not a request for a referendum on someone else's life.
For a long time I thought this "What do you think: Should We Let Them Do That or Should We Punish Them?" kind of ending was just a trademark way of trying to start a conversation in the comments section, but then I began to feel overloaded with incitements to judgmentalness regarding the actions of other people. The people I was being invited to judge probably had complex reasons for doing what they did, as well as entire lives of history contributing to their choices -- none of which was covered in the six or ten paragraph story. What should they have done? How in the world would I presume to know?
"Should parents allow their kid to do such and such?" Why is this my business? Don't we want both parents and children to have a certain amount of autonomy? self-responsibility? even, variety of upbringing?
I'm on the point of voting with my feet, deleting a dozen bloggers from my reading list. But I wonder if there isn't a way to start a conversation on babble about this. I'm fine, really, with being told a story about something that is happening in the writer's real life, and then being invited to say how that issue might show up in my own real life. But don't ask me whether the governor of some state should have handled the unmarried pregnancy of a teenage relative the way they did or not. I don't want to be asked to judge the girl or her family; I don't want to be asked to judge the politician for the amount of savoir faire they might or might not have in the face of family scandal.
Beyond my personal "yucch! factor," there is a larger question here. Do I really want to be living in a culture that presumes it's fine for each of us to judge all the others, 24/7, for whatever we can find out about how they live in their personal lives?
Maybe the question I want to read, at the end of a blog entry is, "How would this play out if it happened in your family?" or "Has this ever happened to you? What did you do? How did that work out for you?"
So, Dear Readers, what do you think? Is there a conversation to be had here? What might I or we do to make space for a little freedom and a little less judgment? Or is that none of my business?