When a friend from Gaza was staying with us, my girlfriend was cooking & my friend said to her: "Bless your hands." Many months later, as we were working for his release after he was abducted by occupation forces, my girlfriend remembered this and said she felt honored. "Bless your hands" is something normally said in Arabic when someone is cooking, or making something, or doing something that will be of common enjoyment/benefit to those gathered. Like the Spanish customs you describe, it's a profound recognition of relations between people. Yes, these things are very important...
Ammiel!!! I have been trying to tell you in various comments sections that I DID finally get your manuscript. I am now separated from it—but will be reunited with it in January. I find it very compelling and all I need is your continued patience.
As for this: "Bless your hands," I absolutely love it. It's going into the collection. Maybe book one day. I would like to travel through Arab countries and just find these things. And then other parts of the world. A treasure hunt. They want us to experience ourselves as mute garbage.
Vonnegut's pessimistic cynicism could interestingly dovetail with Rene Girard's theory of mimesis, especially as illuminated by Eugene Webb. In a nutshell, we find our identity by emulating others -- a process that can subsume one's whole life (the norm) or become the springboard to a (re)rediscovery of one's true identity.
I am often struck watching old movies how mannerly people were--especially about using first names. I miss that world. My mother was huge on manners. My two brothers and I are polite, and perhaps this is more true of my brothers even. We were never allowed to talk in front of adults unless they spoke to us, or to address adults by anything other than a Mr. and a Mrs. and a last name. This used to drive some of my friends parents crazy. I always, of course, asked for anything I might desire such as a glass of water which also perplexed my friends parents, but it was not a habit I could ever easily break. We seem as a nation to pride ourselves on our 'informality' but I must agree that 'Good Form' goes a long way towards establishing both respect and boundaries which in the long run cement good relationships.
I got a B.A. in Western History and never learned that Cervantes had been abducted by Muslims and sent to a slave camp in North Africa for about a year or two. And I never learned that when he was ransomed and returned to Spain, he spent the rest of his life writing tracts and plays with an anti-Islam theme, and even complained that his 17th century society was too soft on Muslims! I only learned these important details by accidentally stumbling upon a dusty old book while browsing in Google Books (search parameter 19th century) --
Michel de Cervantes, sa vie, son temps, son oeuvre politique et littéraire ("Miguel de Cervantes: His life, his time, his political and literary works") by an obscure French historian, Émile Chasles. This egregious lacuna in my Western education I realized was one example out of a fabric of thousands of examples of what I realized has been an "Islamnesia" -- a kind of post-traumatic disorder repressing the memory of over 1,000 years of being terrorized by invading Muslims -- which the West has cultivated for the past century or so -- reinforced by political correctness (a subset of Leftism).
A complicating wrinkle to all this is that the same Western Mainstream that has been whitewashing the problem of Muslims for decades is now demonizing Palestinians and effectively giving Israel a green light to commit war crimes. A fascinating inconsistency.
A lot of interesting details about Cervantes's experience I culled from that book and put into a couple of blog posts over 10 years ago. One was his observation that the Christian converts to Islam (the head of the slave camp was one) were more zestfully sadistic in their torture of Christian slaves than were the Arab Muslims.
Thank you for this gentle reminder. Because life is all about the journey, not what the destination will be, we must be the best traveling companions. I wish I had always been a better one.
Had to chuckle at your opening, when I lived on a tiny piece of land in TX, I almost bought a miniature donkey from the people who lived around the corner. I was going to name him Hody (my little donkey Hody). Then my husband got sick, and plans changed.
Thank you so much for calling attention to this vital subject at a time when the ultimate act of "impoliteness" seems to be murder.
As you so skillfully illustrated, there is a way to let someone know they made a mistake without humiliating, shaming or imposing one's own limitations onto them. It has been called, letting someone "save face". This is an extension of the Golden Rule because who would not want to save face as opposed to being humiliated and shamed. Humiliation and shaming are after all the tactics and strategies of bullying, aggression, violence and ultimately, war.
I like the approach of honoring the divinity within the other person, which implies looking for the good and assuming that the person is motivated by aims that make sense to them (no matter how much you disagree with the intent or outcomes of those aims). As someone who has interviewed people from all walks of life, I've found that there is always something with which we can empathize in every person.
Like you, I've also been thinking a lot about how to operate from a place of dignity and respect even in the face of evil, and I think you're right that it is about civility and graciousness. About living and being and behaving in accordance with what you wish to get back from others. Of realizing that words and attitudes and behaviors are contagious and only need one person to spread them.
So I'm thinking let us be 'viruses' for good humor and goodwill and right action and spread them as far and wide as we can. It seems like a noble cause and something to motivate and reinvigorate us in those times when life starts to seem sad and hopeless.
Last but not least, I always think about some research I read about kids who had grown up in satanic cults and other atrocious circumstances. The kids who grew up to live good adult lives had encountered an adult who treated them with dignity, concern, and respect and had clung onto that and had grown toward that little ray of light in their lives. We can have a remarkably profound effect on the life chances of kids. So maybe taking special care to avoid shame and blame with kids and treat them as if they really matter as valuable human beings, especially in a globalist world that is treating children as expendable commodities.
Thank you, Ms. Farber for your insights on this broadly overlooked topic.
I grew up in an American middle-class environment where I was taught good manners were not only polite, treating other people as one would themselves wish to be treated, but a sign of civility and an understanding that good manners lubricate social interaction.
Currently (and hopefully not too much longer) I am immersed in a lower-working class American environment where good manners are seen as a weakness to be taken advantage of. Nobody says "please" or "thank you" because to do so invites people to walk all over you. It is a Hobbsian environment of all against all.
I don't blame the American lower classes for acting this way. Their capitalist masters impose this on them persuant to the "divide and conquer" strategy.
If the American working class ever started being polite to each other and combined in solidarity to overthrow their capitalist masters that would be the end of American capitalism which enriches the few at the expense of the many.
Thus good manners among the American working class are discouraged by their capitalist masters as much as possible. And, please believe me, I've seen some atrocious behavior here. Not only would people from other, more humane societies be appalled by the lack of respect and abundance of mutual hatred among the lower class but even the American middle class would be.
One might ask these people, "How do you achieve or accomplish anything in a society of such mutual hatred"? And the answer of course is, you don't. No one does and that's exactly what the capitalist masters want.
I have not read the book. Just this brief introductory material. I have been following the curator of this website, Global Research for many years now. Dr. Michel Chossudovsky has proven, at least to me, he is a man of honesty and integrity.
Much of the Covid protocol, whether by intent or not, has contributed to dividing us from each other. The whole idea that one might catch a deadly disease simply from shaking hands or standing too close to some stranger is, to say the least, disconcerting. Again, the age old "divide and counquer " tactic to eliminate human solidarity.
Thanks Celia, Yes, I got your message of some days ago that you had been re-united with my package! No worries, I have plenty of patience! Let me know when you're back, I'd like to mail you the updated version. Yes, indeed, "They want us to experience ourselves as mute garbage." I couldn't have said it better... Enjoy your time in Granada!
Thank you for this, Celia. I really appreciate your comments on this important topic. When we sincerely perceive the divine spark in each person, even if we disagree with them or don't like what they do, it helps guide our tongue away from shaming and toward communicating in a way that can be heard.
And I love your reference to "humanizing salt". Tangentially, but related to your post, the Haitian Creole term “gouté sel”, or “tasting salt”, was popularized in Haiti during the literacy campaigns of the grassroots Lavalas movement in the 1980’s. In Haitian mythology zombies are the walking dead who've been manipulated into passive submission, but, when given a taste of salt, they awaken to the deeper stirrings of their truth and freedom-loving humanity.
Marilyn, that's fascinating. Somebody recommended a book once, and I ordered it, and its premise was the zombies in Haiti are real. That's all I remember. I lost the book...
There's a lovely book called "A Taste of Salt" about three Haitian children in the 1980's waking up and finding their voices to confront the injustice of the brutal US-backed Duvalier dictatorships. We've got lots of zombies right here in the US-- walking dead who are manipulated into passive submission to the authorities, lining up for shots, etc. etc.
Great subject! My parents, raised in the Netherlands impressed on me the value of you and YOU. 'YOU' was what I was to imply with anyone who was a few years older than myself, 'you' was for my peers. So, 'yes sir, yes ma'am' or if I knew their name, 'yes Mr or yes Mrs Smith or Jones'. Along with absolute respect for ANY authority. Iwas riding my bycicle (age 14) when I winessed a crowd who had beenwatching afight between 2 men. The policeman on scene was breaking up the crowd, telling everyone to go home and one boy (18 or 19), the son of a local doctor told the policeman that it was a free countryand he had the right to be there. It just blew me away because I had no idea that you could ever talk to a police officer like that. Today, it'smore than 60 years later and I feel like I have fallen because I address you or YOU as Celia without asking you first. Cheers!
it took me forever to realize what the purpose of the formal "you" is in many languages. it's a check and a balance. maybe that's why it does double duty as a plural: respect to everyone in the crowd.
When a friend from Gaza was staying with us, my girlfriend was cooking & my friend said to her: "Bless your hands." Many months later, as we were working for his release after he was abducted by occupation forces, my girlfriend remembered this and said she felt honored. "Bless your hands" is something normally said in Arabic when someone is cooking, or making something, or doing something that will be of common enjoyment/benefit to those gathered. Like the Spanish customs you describe, it's a profound recognition of relations between people. Yes, these things are very important...
Ammiel!!! I have been trying to tell you in various comments sections that I DID finally get your manuscript. I am now separated from it—but will be reunited with it in January. I find it very compelling and all I need is your continued patience.
As for this: "Bless your hands," I absolutely love it. It's going into the collection. Maybe book one day. I would like to travel through Arab countries and just find these things. And then other parts of the world. A treasure hunt. They want us to experience ourselves as mute garbage.
What do you mean, Brother?
We learn by pretending, and those who pretend best learn best.
They learn to BECOME what they pretend to be.
:-)
Vonnegut's pessimistic cynicism could interestingly dovetail with Rene Girard's theory of mimesis, especially as illuminated by Eugene Webb. In a nutshell, we find our identity by emulating others -- a process that can subsume one's whole life (the norm) or become the springboard to a (re)rediscovery of one's true identity.
https://anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap1101/webb/
This I why I love your stack, Celia.
We never know what we're going to get.
But it's always a treat.
I am often struck watching old movies how mannerly people were--especially about using first names. I miss that world. My mother was huge on manners. My two brothers and I are polite, and perhaps this is more true of my brothers even. We were never allowed to talk in front of adults unless they spoke to us, or to address adults by anything other than a Mr. and a Mrs. and a last name. This used to drive some of my friends parents crazy. I always, of course, asked for anything I might desire such as a glass of water which also perplexed my friends parents, but it was not a habit I could ever easily break. We seem as a nation to pride ourselves on our 'informality' but I must agree that 'Good Form' goes a long way towards establishing both respect and boundaries which in the long run cement good relationships.
I got a B.A. in Western History and never learned that Cervantes had been abducted by Muslims and sent to a slave camp in North Africa for about a year or two. And I never learned that when he was ransomed and returned to Spain, he spent the rest of his life writing tracts and plays with an anti-Islam theme, and even complained that his 17th century society was too soft on Muslims! I only learned these important details by accidentally stumbling upon a dusty old book while browsing in Google Books (search parameter 19th century) --
Michel de Cervantes, sa vie, son temps, son oeuvre politique et littéraire ("Miguel de Cervantes: His life, his time, his political and literary works") by an obscure French historian, Émile Chasles. This egregious lacuna in my Western education I realized was one example out of a fabric of thousands of examples of what I realized has been an "Islamnesia" -- a kind of post-traumatic disorder repressing the memory of over 1,000 years of being terrorized by invading Muslims -- which the West has cultivated for the past century or so -- reinforced by political correctness (a subset of Leftism).
A complicating wrinkle to all this is that the same Western Mainstream that has been whitewashing the problem of Muslims for decades is now demonizing Palestinians and effectively giving Israel a green light to commit war crimes. A fascinating inconsistency.
wow!
A lot of interesting details about Cervantes's experience I culled from that book and put into a couple of blog posts over 10 years ago. One was his observation that the Christian converts to Islam (the head of the slave camp was one) were more zestfully sadistic in their torture of Christian slaves than were the Arab Muslims.
https://hesperado.blogspot.com/2013/05/quijotismo.html
https://hesperado.blogspot.com/2013/06/cervantes-and-islam.html
I loved reading this piece and your breakdown of being shamed into correcting an error was particularly excellent.
Thank you for this gentle reminder. Because life is all about the journey, not what the destination will be, we must be the best traveling companions. I wish I had always been a better one.
Had to chuckle at your opening, when I lived on a tiny piece of land in TX, I almost bought a miniature donkey from the people who lived around the corner. I was going to name him Hody (my little donkey Hody). Then my husband got sick, and plans changed.
Thank you so much for calling attention to this vital subject at a time when the ultimate act of "impoliteness" seems to be murder.
As you so skillfully illustrated, there is a way to let someone know they made a mistake without humiliating, shaming or imposing one's own limitations onto them. It has been called, letting someone "save face". This is an extension of the Golden Rule because who would not want to save face as opposed to being humiliated and shamed. Humiliation and shaming are after all the tactics and strategies of bullying, aggression, violence and ultimately, war.
Yes, so important how we say things. I like your father's way of turning down invitations!!! I will try to remember it!! Fabulous.
I like the approach of honoring the divinity within the other person, which implies looking for the good and assuming that the person is motivated by aims that make sense to them (no matter how much you disagree with the intent or outcomes of those aims). As someone who has interviewed people from all walks of life, I've found that there is always something with which we can empathize in every person.
Like you, I've also been thinking a lot about how to operate from a place of dignity and respect even in the face of evil, and I think you're right that it is about civility and graciousness. About living and being and behaving in accordance with what you wish to get back from others. Of realizing that words and attitudes and behaviors are contagious and only need one person to spread them.
So I'm thinking let us be 'viruses' for good humor and goodwill and right action and spread them as far and wide as we can. It seems like a noble cause and something to motivate and reinvigorate us in those times when life starts to seem sad and hopeless.
Last but not least, I always think about some research I read about kids who had grown up in satanic cults and other atrocious circumstances. The kids who grew up to live good adult lives had encountered an adult who treated them with dignity, concern, and respect and had clung onto that and had grown toward that little ray of light in their lives. We can have a remarkably profound effect on the life chances of kids. So maybe taking special care to avoid shame and blame with kids and treat them as if they really matter as valuable human beings, especially in a globalist world that is treating children as expendable commodities.
Thank you, Ms. Farber for your insights on this broadly overlooked topic.
I grew up in an American middle-class environment where I was taught good manners were not only polite, treating other people as one would themselves wish to be treated, but a sign of civility and an understanding that good manners lubricate social interaction.
Currently (and hopefully not too much longer) I am immersed in a lower-working class American environment where good manners are seen as a weakness to be taken advantage of. Nobody says "please" or "thank you" because to do so invites people to walk all over you. It is a Hobbsian environment of all against all.
I don't blame the American lower classes for acting this way. Their capitalist masters impose this on them persuant to the "divide and conquer" strategy.
If the American working class ever started being polite to each other and combined in solidarity to overthrow their capitalist masters that would be the end of American capitalism which enriches the few at the expense of the many.
Thus good manners among the American working class are discouraged by their capitalist masters as much as possible. And, please believe me, I've seen some atrocious behavior here. Not only would people from other, more humane societies be appalled by the lack of respect and abundance of mutual hatred among the lower class but even the American middle class would be.
One might ask these people, "How do you achieve or accomplish anything in a society of such mutual hatred"? And the answer of course is, you don't. No one does and that's exactly what the capitalist masters want.
Thomas, I am struck by what you document here. It strikes me as very true. I experienced it a lot over the past 4 years—the diaspora years.
"It's a Hobbesian environment of all against all." Made me laugh.
I think we are all onto something here.
Hello again, Ms. Farber.
Thank you for your response. You may (or may not) find this of interest. https://www.globalresearch.ca/has-neuroscience-found-key-what-caused-zombie-nation/5842223
I have not read the book. Just this brief introductory material. I have been following the curator of this website, Global Research for many years now. Dr. Michel Chossudovsky has proven, at least to me, he is a man of honesty and integrity.
Much of the Covid protocol, whether by intent or not, has contributed to dividing us from each other. The whole idea that one might catch a deadly disease simply from shaking hands or standing too close to some stranger is, to say the least, disconcerting. Again, the age old "divide and counquer " tactic to eliminate human solidarity.
Thanks Celia, Yes, I got your message of some days ago that you had been re-united with my package! No worries, I have plenty of patience! Let me know when you're back, I'd like to mail you the updated version. Yes, indeed, "They want us to experience ourselves as mute garbage." I couldn't have said it better... Enjoy your time in Granada!
Hey, I used to be shell shocked like your friend. I thought this fight for truth needed everything in perfect working order.
We were up against the propaganda machine!
But these days, I'm seeing that even though a lot of fakes come through, even if it's BS, it opens the conversation.
Thanks for listening to those of us that were questioning it and thanks for the correction! You learn we learn! 😊
Thank you for this, Celia. I really appreciate your comments on this important topic. When we sincerely perceive the divine spark in each person, even if we disagree with them or don't like what they do, it helps guide our tongue away from shaming and toward communicating in a way that can be heard.
And I love your reference to "humanizing salt". Tangentially, but related to your post, the Haitian Creole term “gouté sel”, or “tasting salt”, was popularized in Haiti during the literacy campaigns of the grassroots Lavalas movement in the 1980’s. In Haitian mythology zombies are the walking dead who've been manipulated into passive submission, but, when given a taste of salt, they awaken to the deeper stirrings of their truth and freedom-loving humanity.
Marilyn, that's fascinating. Somebody recommended a book once, and I ordered it, and its premise was the zombies in Haiti are real. That's all I remember. I lost the book...
There's a lovely book called "A Taste of Salt" about three Haitian children in the 1980's waking up and finding their voices to confront the injustice of the brutal US-backed Duvalier dictatorships. We've got lots of zombies right here in the US-- walking dead who are manipulated into passive submission to the authorities, lining up for shots, etc. etc.
Great subject! My parents, raised in the Netherlands impressed on me the value of you and YOU. 'YOU' was what I was to imply with anyone who was a few years older than myself, 'you' was for my peers. So, 'yes sir, yes ma'am' or if I knew their name, 'yes Mr or yes Mrs Smith or Jones'. Along with absolute respect for ANY authority. Iwas riding my bycicle (age 14) when I winessed a crowd who had beenwatching afight between 2 men. The policeman on scene was breaking up the crowd, telling everyone to go home and one boy (18 or 19), the son of a local doctor told the policeman that it was a free countryand he had the right to be there. It just blew me away because I had no idea that you could ever talk to a police officer like that. Today, it'smore than 60 years later and I feel like I have fallen because I address you or YOU as Celia without asking you first. Cheers!
The gracious correction is such a beautiful dance of human consideration and respect.
;-)
it took me forever to realize what the purpose of the formal "you" is in many languages. it's a check and a balance. maybe that's why it does double duty as a plural: respect to everyone in the crowd.
it doesn't exist in english. coincidence?