:: worlds in words ::

There’s a great Op-Ed in the New York Times by David Brooks, In Search of Dignity.  In it, he discusses George Washington, and how when he, in youth, “copied out a list of 110 Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation.” Washington reportedly took them to heart and tried to practice them in all situations.  Brooks writes,

In so doing, he turned himself into a new kind of hero. He wasn’t primarily a military hero or a political hero. As the historian Gordon Wood has written, “Washington became a great man and was acclaimed as a classical hero because of the way he conducted himself during times of temptation. It was his moral character that set him off from other men.”

Not a lot of people like that around these days.

I grew up with a set of rules like this.  I never copied them out by hand, nor were there an actual formalized set of rules, but they were there; and the consequences for breaking them were severe.  This was the result of growing up in Korea, where tradition and respect were key in all aspects of life.

For example, in Korean culture, there is a whole separate way to speak to your elders and superiors, which is distinct from the way you would address equals or those beneath you.  I had myriad rules beaten into me – somewhat literally.  No elbows resting on the table during a meal.  Don’t scrape the spoon with your tongue.  Never leave food on your plate.  Never smoke or drink in front of a superior (Koreans turn away and shield themselves with one hand from their superiors when, for example, drinking at a work dinner).  All the way down to never stepping over any part of someone’s body.

Fundamental rules, these were to me.  Imagine the culture shock when I came to Canada.  People wearing shoes into homes!  Wearing hats in class – worse, talking to one another while the teacher was addressing the class, leaning back in their seats!  Chewing gum, no less!

It didn’t take long for me to assimilate into Canadian culture.  Soon enough, it was me who showed disrespect not just by talking in class but by skipping entirely, heading off with friends to go play pool, drive and smoke, play guitar in a spare room.  Not to say that this was the crux of Western civilization; far be it from the truth.  What I mean to say is that I not only broke out of the rigid strictures of my upbringing, but far surpassed boundaries.

In truth, I consider myself in my heart to be Canadian.  I have given up my Korean citizenship and passport long ago to become a naturalized Canadian citizen, and there is no country in the world I would rather live, no place I would be as proud of, no military in which I’d rather serve.  I have not given up my heritage.  I am fiercely proud of my Korean lineage and history; however, I identify myself as Canadian.

But there are things lacking in this new world.  Order, discipline, self-respect.  It appears to me as though my generation and the ones proceeding it have mistaken loud assertiveness and a commitment to reckless abandon as self-respect.  What I mean by this is that there is a mentality wherein you can do and say whatever you want, and you’re supposed to be respected for this.  It means you’re a free mind, strong, and self-confident even if – especially if – you’re going against the grain.

We’ve become miniature Hollywood wannabes.  We’ve seen what’s glorified in movies and TV shows – a wise-cracking smartass rogue who never admits defeat, always has a comeback, often resorts to violence leading to cool explosive scenes, drives fast cars, dates hot women, drinks liberally, and has some kind of grudge to bear.

We don’t got no grudge to bear.  We’ve grown up in probably what has been the most comfortable generation in the history of mankind.  Sure, some of us have had to trek through the snowstorm to get to school (uphill both ways).  But once we got there, it was nice and toasty inside.  Sure, I’ve taken my pennies and nickels down to the grocery store to get the cheapest scraps of food I could manage just to keep myself fed at least one measly meal a day.  But everything was right across the street at the 24-hour super-hyper-megamarket that sold everything from produce to clothes.

Don’t get me wrong.  We’ve faced our hardships, and some of us more than others.  And I might have suffered for a few years, but for the majority of my life, I’ve had it good and easy.  But that’s my curse, see, because I never had to suffer truly.  I’ve sweated, I’ve bled, I’ve starved.  Not for very long, but I have.  If I’d had to power through more hardships in life, I’d be a better person than who I am today.

That’s a very Protestant thing to say, I think.  It’s not suffering particularly that strengthens a man, but the length of experience one conquers throughout his life.  And I think that it’s a huge difference between Washington and ourselves.    There’s a different mentality, a different kind of self-reliance and steeled nerves.

Does it necessarily make us better people?  No, I don’t think so.  I don’t think that it in itself instills within us a dignity code, as Brooks calls it.  But I think it goes a long way to helping.  I think that people have forgotten the meaning of dignity, honor, that way of carrying oneself with a strength that cannot be easily crushed.  It’s something that is grown, it’s not innate.  It’s a culmination of physical precision and poise, a verbal marriage of prose and poetry, and above all a perspicuity of speculation and introspection that can be emulated, but not falsified.

Dignity.  Is such a thing possible anymore?  When gossip consists of following the lives of celebrities – or their deaths, even, in the recent case of Michael Jackson, when we know that the mass market consumes these ridiculous “goods”?  How do we preserve personal dignity in the face of the stark realization that humanity has lost its collective dignity?

And honor?  When those holding high office constantly perpetuate scandals, vomit lies into our waiting mouths, and lambaste their opponents with smear tactics that shames me on their behalf to see, what honor is left for the citizens to uphold?  In this market where the point is to get you to buy and buy again instead of trying to get you to make the right choice, the good choice, how do you hold on to your honor?

These have become byproducts of an age long dead.  These are concepts glorified in novels and stories of old which we daydream about – alongside chivalry and heroism.  We have been alienated from our own humanity; we have become byproducts of capitalism and bystanders of a world ravaged by – dare I say it – philosophical terrorism.

Once, we aspired to greatness.  We lived in the shadow of gods, blinded in their ineffable glory.  But then we lit ourselves a path and forged a new greatness, one unbound by mysticism – one founded obsessively and exclusively in the observable, the knowable.  Thenceforth we worshiped at the altar of science – which, like gods, was all-powerful and all-knowing.  But the difference was that while the will of gods lay forever without the bounds of our comprehension, science was a thing that though we might not understand it now, there would eventually be a way to understand even the most inexplicable wonders.

But once again the human spirit was shifted away into the periphery of things.  Are we defined by nature or nurture?  Are we creatures predestined by our genes from the moment of conception, or can our upbringing and social indoctrination give us the strength to overcome our basic genetic programming?  Are we machines of flesh and blood as bound to the limitations of our bodies and minds as are robots to their manufactured parts and given programming?

We watched the shadows on the wall for so long.  And we only emerged blinking from the lip of the cave so few hundreds of years ago.  We’re still shielding our eyes from the blinding sun.  But it’s now, the time has come.  It’s time to stop trying to block out what is painful but ultimately rewarding.  It’s time to rise to the occasion instead of thinking about it, planning it, theorizing about it, hesitant in the guise of caution.

This is our age.  It’s an age of interconnectivity, where the difference between Toronto and Beijing isn’t the time it takes to board a ship and cross the ocean.  It’s not even the speed of a piece of paper being delivered by post.  It is, theoretically, the speed of light.  The speed of information.  The speed of knowing.  This is it, we’re all one.  One people, one world, one humanity.

So let’s take back our dignity.  Let’s reclaim our honor.  Let’s not live in the shadow of gods or be dazzled by science – both are fickle masters, in the end.  And neither of them will help us or give us any insight into truth unless we dare to see with our own eyes, ask true questions from our own lips, and with these hands we were given take control of our own lives.