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“Otherisms”

I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU, but I have a secret love for private emails so awful that they are copied anonymously about the Net that others may laugh and/or writhe at their innate cluelessness. It is an ancient, if not honorable, tradition and once involved flames, threats, and love notes rife with embarrassing details before people started being careful about those things.

The most recent missive to show up unbidden but cherished in my In-Box is a letter on “conflict” from a hapless and dickless dolt who has evidently been on a drip-feed of Political Correctness Kool-Aid for some decades now.

This is a letter that reveals a soul teetering on the edge of catastrophic mental collapse as the progressive bromides, solutions and blather of the last few decades of academe devolve into an ever-escalating Tourette’s episode from which there is no escape, only life in a strait-jacket and locked in a padded cells with hosts of fellow sufferers.

All of whom have mysteriously received tenure.

While there are many examples of the “The Manic Meltdown of the Liberal Mindset in the Post-Post-Modern World,” this one has it all; blatheration, obfuscation, estrogenation, and the “mind-forged manacles” of a philosophy that not only has no answer to the current era, but no chance of surviving it. It’s the kind of note that is probably read very slowly at the start of Terrorist Anonymous meetings right after “We admitted we were powerless over our desire to kill infidels” to much mirth and merriment just before coffee and cookies.

The full flavor of this letter comes out if you read it slowly and out loud to yourself. You could read it out loud to others, but I’ve tried that and found it causes them to set their hair on fire and run out of the room screaming, “I got the Fear! I got the Fear!”

Proceed at your own risk.

It is important for us to mend and move past the “otherisms” that fractionalize the center and cause pain.

“Otherisms” develop when we assign a less-than status to colleagues whose work and contributions differ from our own.

“Otherisms” abound in such words as “we” “they” “they make a big deal out of this”, “they won’t understand” etc. A powerful alternative to otherisms is the building of community and fellowships.

Bridge makers are those persons who refuse to perceive the other as less than and instead establish interrelationships and open channels of communication that engender appreciation and humility across what might otherwise be seen as unbridgeable divisions.

Empathy and respect for others is essential along with a commitment to nurturing relationships with individuals that honor the dignity of all, especially those who disagree with us. By fostering growth potential in individuals … that build upon interconnections that bolster the common cause, we achieve true effectiveness through connectedness and working together.

This welcomes a diversity of voices and resolves conflicts with humility. Each person has his or her own contribution and ways of working toward the common cause with no one less than or more than anyone else.

All of us are fallible human beings who have a large potential to grow and contribute. This bridge making serves to strengthen everyone’s contribution and pride and commitment that otherisms destroy.

When we approach others whose work, interests, and contributions differ from our own with an open, positive, and empathetic heart and mind, we see each person’s unique treasures and contributions more clearly.

A more inclusive vision promotes unity and paves the way for the richness of collegiality to be experienced by more persons than exclusivity.

Exclusivity promotes divisiveness, submission, control, manipulation, and domination.

I urge us to think about the whole and work together and examine openly and reflect how we might each be better bridgemakers and more effective in our mission to serve the center with humanity, humility, and utmost effectiveness.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and reflect upon becoming a bridge maker.

And thank you for sharing or, as my late father-in-law would say, “Putz.”

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • GoneWithTheWind April 24, 2018, 12:56 PM

    I couldn’t get past the idea that he was not talking to people who thought like he does but was talking to those “other” people who need to change and think like he does. Irony fail.

  • Scullman April 24, 2018, 1:26 PM

    C’mon. You’re making this up.

  • John Venlet April 24, 2018, 1:30 PM

    It’s a shame the writer couldn’t work in an “according to experts otherisms…” to round the whole thing out.

  • Patvann April 24, 2018, 2:00 PM

    JeeBuss…
    And here I was feeling kinda weird/nervous for E-mailing you a picture of me hugging my son home from Afghanistan several years back…

  • Rob De Witt April 24, 2018, 2:23 PM

    So…..
    This guy’s made his living since the ’90s writing mission statements, right?

  • Vanderleun April 24, 2018, 3:07 PM

    Now that is a distinct possibility.

  • Jimmy April 24, 2018, 4:11 PM

    “We agree to disagree, then?”

    “No, you’re just wrong – and I just used your own words and the facts to prove it.”

    “Well, that makes you a right-wing extremist, then.”

    “No, it just makes you wrong. This isn’t about me; it’s about you.”

    “I hate you!”

  • Monty James April 24, 2018, 4:57 PM

    I got as far as “Empathy and respect for others is essential . . .” when it occurred to me that this guy didn’t, couldn’t have, had a dad in his life growing up. At some point a boy’s focus is intense on his dad, because nothing is more important than turning from a boy into a man, and dad’s the one you’re taking your cues from. One of the main cues is that weakness isn’t manly. And this Hallmarkous-cell verbal cancer is weakness codified.

    If I said this crap to my mom when I was a teenager she would nod and say nice things. Dad would start staring at me and shut it down ’round about “Exclusivity promotes divisiveness, submission, control, manipulation, and domination.

  • OldFert April 24, 2018, 5:44 PM

    Who let this guy near a thesaurus?

    He also seems to suffer from “we don’t have a we-they attitude, *they* do.”

  • james wilson April 24, 2018, 5:46 PM

    The bridge to hell is paved with good pretensions.

  • Bill in Tennessee April 24, 2018, 5:52 PM

    When it occurred to me that I would rather rip my eyeballs out than read another word, I stopped. I read enough of that drivel when I worked in academia.

  • Joe Krill April 24, 2018, 6:28 PM

    Charles Dickens, you have just been replaced. How about, “treat people the way you want to be treated”.

  • Mike G. April 24, 2018, 6:46 PM

    Unfortunately I read the damn thing all the way to the end. Reckon I have a fascination for train wrecks.

    Where I’m from, we’d say this guy is “dumb as a rock.”

  • ghostsniper April 24, 2018, 6:53 PM

    “…when it occurred to me that this guy didn’t, couldn’t have, had a dad in his life growing up.”
    ==============

    Amazingly enough, I thought that too right at that moment.
    I thought about it too much.
    I figured the writer came from a broken family or otherwise un-intact (I just made that up) family.
    Believing the writer is an adult, how is it that he some how thinks all of this stuff is a revelation, unles he didn’t go through it with both his parents guidance when he was very young?

    This is just one of the long range results of kids that were born to parents that just don’t care.
    An unhappy accident that has been brought to fruition.
    It was shipped to day care centers, then preschools, then the ultimate indoctrination, the public schools, and eventually to a gov’t funded college. After that it got employed in a socialist organization that fosters all of the tripe he wrote about as if it’s all brand new for the very first time.

    This child trapped inside an adults body has suffered an ocean of mental abuse and will most likely never be of value to anyone and a horrible hindrance to all.

    Anyway, from this I did learn one new word, “collegiality”, which I had never heard before so I looked it up. Then promptly forgot the definition, believing I’d never actually use it (my hands aren’t soft enough). —-yawn—-

  • Leslie April 24, 2018, 7:44 PM

    Anything that has the words, “other”, “empower”, “common cause”, “inclusive” and, “diversity”, cannot be taken seriously. I immediately tune out once I see them.

  • John A. Fleming April 24, 2018, 10:54 PM

    In the manner of the instructive schoolyard taunt of adding “your mom” to a call back of everything your opponent says:

    Try substituting “Islam” for the “other”, and having the bridge maker building a bridge to Islam.

    I don’t believe the author would realize the existential threat, and if he did he would still yet embrace it in the name of unity. Sort of like all those Bolsheviks going to their deaths while to the last swearing eternal loyalty to Communism and gratitude to Comrade Stalin, even after knowing that Stalin had personally put them on the proscription lists.

  • Ned Ludd April 25, 2018, 1:51 AM

    This guy should submit his resume to the rent a minority company (see above) as the skinny jeaned, latte sipping, soy boy, pseudo intellectual. At least when the meter has run out and you pay him off, he’ll shut up and go away. That’s probably the most honest relationship he’ll ever have.

  • JoeDaddy April 25, 2018, 3:54 AM

    https://youtu.be/WCqrZrjVhI4 nuff said for the intellectually astute that “get it”. ‘The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest her or his patients in the care of the human frame, in a proper diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.” – Thomas A. Edison
    The folks who intellectually ‘get it’ are paying attention. Over the past year approx. 300 CEOs at pharmaceutical companies have and are resigning because of what’s coming about the propaganda we’ve been fed for decades. …

  • Kevin Dickson April 25, 2018, 6:57 AM

    Two words……insipid nonsense.

  • scory April 25, 2018, 8:07 AM

    The religious overtones are blatant and lend the thing an aura of truth. Problem is that God is nowhere mentioned or even hinted at. If we all approached life and one another with humility and good will we would all be better off. Problem is that the guy who is just certain that HE is the true exemplar of all virtue strides forward bearing an arrogant confidence in his own infallibility that can only result in controversy, contention and ultimately conflict when he discovers that others aren’t prepared to recognize let alone bow low before his vast superiority. When a man thinks himself the fount of all wisdom it is incumbent upon him to correct those who fail to acknowledge this with whatever means necessary.

  • itor April 25, 2018, 9:48 AM

    Sometimes it becomes necessary to state the obvious, particularly to those suffering from academentia:

    DiversityUnity
    Diversity=Division=Divisiveness

  • itor April 25, 2018, 10:17 AM

    Apparently opposing chevrons are disallowed, should read
    Diversity (does not equal) Unity
    Diversity=Division=Divisiveness

  • ghostsniper April 25, 2018, 10:38 AM

    he sed disallowed snicker

  • pbird April 25, 2018, 10:57 AM

    Human barking.

  • Howard Nelson April 25, 2018, 8:04 PM

    From this one fundamentalisticism all else can be derived, “The only problem in any relationship is the Other person (or perdaughter, perchance).”
    For example, in a trio of humans, two are people and the third is a person. That’s what makes the Other odd and wonderempty. That’s why most things are Otherwise.

  • John A. Fleming April 26, 2018, 12:37 AM

    You mean like this: “Diversity <> Unity”?
    Or this: “Diversity ≠ Unity”?