Monday, July 06, 2015

Who Am I? Who Are You?

The term motorist has been used over and over again to describe Rodney King. 
"Rodney King, the black motorist . . ."

"charged with using excessive force in arresting black motorist Rodney King  . . ."
 I don't think I've ever actually said the word 'motorist' in a sentence, but somehow King will be forever known as 'motorist Rodney King.'

I mention this because we are all victims of labels - labels others use about us and labels we use about others.  I suspect that categorizing things we see is part of our DNA.  It is an important survival tool to quickly determine whether something approaching us is dangerous or not.  But once we've labeled another person, we no longer have to figure them out.   The label(s) we connect them to allows us to stop thinking about who they are.  She's a doctor.  He's homeless.  A convict.  Each of those labels carries a huge amount of extraneous baggage that may or may not fit any particular individual we've so labeled.  Our understanding of other people is trapped in the labels we use as much as those others are trapped by others' labels of them. 

When I started this blog, I didn't want readers to look at my profile and get a convenient label that would allow them to judge what I wrote based on who they thought I was, derived from a few labels in the profile.   Instead I wanted people to evaluate what I had to say based on what I wrote.  And I figured if someone read enough posts, they'd start 'knowing' me in a far more meaningful way.

I know.  It's really frustrating.  You want to know if I'm young or old or in-between.  What work I do.  You want labels to capture who I am, to help you figure out what my writing means.   My name (Steve) reveals my sex.  And I do disclose where I live.  Since I started blogging, other bloggers and websites have identified my full name and profession.  And my posts, on occasion, reveal other tidbits about who I am.  I do acknowledge that the labels can be helpful.  And that my leaving them out makes you work harder to understand who I am, and more importantly, what I'm writing.  But I don't think hard work is a bad thing and that it gives us more authentic knowledge of people and ideas.   

Think about the labels you use to tell others who you are.  They give people a short cut to knowing who you are.  But does 'nurse' or 'pilot' or 'fast food cook' really convey who you are?  Do you ever hide labels or choose a more favorable version?  I suspect mostly labels tell us where in the societal pecking order you are.  They tell me how much deference I should or shouldn't give you.  They don't really tell me who you are.

I'm particularly fond of, and influenced by, anthropologist Clifford Geertz' concept of 'thick description.'  Here's a take on it from historian Dr. Christopher Knowles' blog How It Really Was*:

‘Thick Description’ is a term used by the distinguished anthropologist Clifford Geertz. In an essay on: ‘Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture’, he explained that his understanding of the culture of a people was not their "total way of life" or "a storehouse of learning", let alone their art, music or literature, but ‘webs of significance’, writing that:
"Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun. I take culture to be those webs and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning."
Geertz described how he had taken the term ‘Thick Description’ from the philosopher Gilbert Ryle, who distinguished between a ‘thin description’ of, for example, a physical action, and a ‘thick description’ which includes the context: when and where the action took place, who performed it and their intentions in doing so. For example, the same physical act of someone "rapidly raising and lowering their right eyelid" could be a nervous twitch, a deliberate wink to attract attention or communicate with someone, or an imitation or mockery of someone else with a nervous twitch or winking. It all depends on the context, the aims of the person performing the action, and how these were understood by others.
 I want you to dig a little deeper than simple labels.  Look at the webs I weave.  Who I am is really not all that important.  This, some might say, perverse, exercise I'm asking of you is also related to the underlying theme of this blog:  how do you know what you know?  I'm asking you to resist the easy path to a conclusion and to reexamine how you know things, know people, know yourself.  To turn over your assumptions and see what's lurking underneath.   

*Dr. Knowles, in his blog profile, also offers some advice that would contradict what I'm writing here:
"Before you study the history study the historian' as E H Carr said in his classic work 'What is History.' (Macmillan 1961). 'When we take up a work of history, our first concern should be not with the facts which it contains, but with the historian who wrote it.'"
And this advice is good too.  But I'm asking you  to find the blogger, if you must, by studying the blog.  

[This post is part of an attempt on my part, as this blog approaches its ninth anniversary, to update some of my descriptions of what this blog is about and who the blogger is.]

4 comments:

  1. And your personal content makes this distinct content with presumably a consistent pattern. I wonder how much success one gets from this choice in a world of clickbait browsing. Doubtless, it does much better than mine where I act as an intermediary for content in similar fashion to a librarian - a link farm in fact. Rather I find the most success in stimulating conversation in combining quipping with the use of Disqus.

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  2. I assume you're a journalist cuz you have an AP Stylebook!

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    1. Reasonable assumption, but that's not my background. Because the blog has led me into the world journalists also occupy, I did join the Alaska Press Club to see what I might learn that would help the blog. At one of their annual conferences, at a session given by the AP, they gave away some Stylebooks.

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  3. The next time I take the Ballard bus and it goes past Steve's Apartments, now I will laugh and remember your blog. Steve is next door to Greg's Apartments, which already makes me laugh, thinking of my thesis committee chair, and though I haven't done it yet, I keep meaning to snap a photo and email him asking, Greg! You never told me you own an apartment building, and who's your brother Steve?

    If your occupation is looking under rocks, that usually turns up rattlesnakes, so it sounds like you and I might share some occupational hazards. Be careful. Take care. Do some studying on snake charming, if you haven't already.

    I landed on your 2008 post about wild hair vs. wild hare, and was intrigued enough to do some thicker reading here. It seems the internet still has not fully come to agreement on the meaning or the source of the idiom, all these years later! Your link to the "Anarchy In The AK" site is either gone or blocked by my very generous access administrator wanting to perhaps protect (?) me from certain keywords, and I'm not satisfied with the Daily Writing Tips version as it cites no sources beyond Garrison Keillor, and then not even the same expression. The quarter version sounds more like anal-retentive anger rather than impulsive, from out of nowhere, maybe a little flaky behavior, which better fits your Alaska blogger's description of "Paul is not just your casual dip-shit that gets a wild hare up his ass and decides to go surf the bore tide."

    So I am sorry to miss reading more about Paul, but I did luck out and find an amusing story that may or may not be the origin, and you may not have stumbled upon it back in 2008, as it was posted more recently, but you might enjoy:

    https://hollylisle.com/origin-of-the-phrase-wild-hair-up-his-ass-a-true-story/

    Changing the emotion entirely but returning to the theme of this post, when I think of Rodney King, I think not of "motorist" preceding, but "riots" after his name, and I remember crossing Las Vegas that night via the freeway, where some of the exits were shut down, as preemptive or preventive measures against sympathetic rioting against injustice everywhere.

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