Or like buying a plane ticket to Africa with 12 days of lead time: Four days from now I’ll be in Kenya (!). Happy Thanksgiving, all!

A friend of mine sent me an article yesterday alleging that a prominent (and enormous) U.S. company has treated a young, innocent entrepreneur/victim somewhat less than admirably. Sigh. Once again my faith in humanity has been annihilated. After all, if we can't trust the monolithic, faceless, gargantuan, impersonal, ruthless companies of corporate America, who can we trust?

On the plus side, I was serenaded last night by the Academic Male Chorus of Helsinki (Akademiska Sångföreningen) (it was FREAKING COOL). So my faith in humanity--or at least the part of humanity that is young, attractive, male, musically inclined, and (especially) European--has been restored.

Until the next news release about a large corporation behaving unethically, at least. Good thing those incidents are so rare.

Have been thinking about other things—specifically, permanence and its paradoxical manifestations in American culture—but as thoughts on the subject remain rather inchoate, I'm instead copy-catting Miss Hass, who made a list of her least favorite words a couple of days ago. I could make a similar list—mine would even contain some of the same entries!—but since all those words make me feel, well, creepy, I’d rather just list some of my favorites. I like these because of the sounds they make, the fun facial/vocal contortions they require, or the images/feelings they engender; I don’t even know what some of the foreign ones mean:

Assuage

Capricious

Dissolute

Vitriolic

Somnambulist

Smashing (in the British sense)

Resilient

Scathing

Disconsolate

Vexing

Scamper

Just about anything in French

Liquificador (Portuguese for “blender”)

Schlüssel (German for “key”)

Könnte (German for “could”)

Desafortunadamente (Spanish for “unfortunately”)

Luojan (Finnish for “creator” [?])

Blagodatnaya (Russian)

Radjla (Russian)

Nazlî (a female Turkish name)

And, finally, a quote:

I like the word “indolence.” It makes my laziness seem classy.  ~Bern Williams

So there’s been a bit of commotion today on the Boston Mormons for Equality and Social Justice (MESJ) alias about an e-mail from a couple of friends of mine. The original e-mail was a plea for support to place a traditional marriage amendment on the Massachusetts ballot. I don’t feel strongly about the issue, and I’m not very politically active in any case, so I just moved the e-mail to my Deleted Items folder. End of story, right?

Except that someone who received the e-mail was furious and forwarded it to the MESJ alias, and some MESJ members then responded, haranguing not just the original e-mail but also the men who sent it. After about five or six such messages, I felt compelled to respond:  

All, though it seems to be the project of the day to villify <names>, and I also don't agree with their politics, I do want to point out that they didn't send this out over the ward listserve(s). Even if they had, it wouldn't have been approved (I'm a moderator). This factoid seems to have been introduced by someone who first received the message and then, outraged, forwarded it to the MESJ alias--most of whose members I would assume didn't receive the original message and whose only exposure to it has been via this alias (ironic, that). I don't know what <names> were using as a database, but presumably they were sending their message to friends and "friends of friends," both in and out of the Church (as frequently happens with e-mails like this). Indiscriminate, yes. Evil, no. I also find the personal attacks being leveled at them (everyone thinks they're a gay couple; they're cowards) disturbing coming from an alias whose members strive to be open-minded and tolerant (and usually succeed admirably). Are we only supposed to tolerate (and not personally attack) those whose views are identical to ours?

Best,

S.

Again, end of story, right?

Again, not quite. I haven’t received any flame mails about this message (yet), but I’m still not entirely satisfied with it. Apart from the mechanics of the message (“vilify” is misspelled and there are way too many distracting parenthetical remarks), in the face of personal attacks on two friends of mine, why did I only respond after five or six messages? And why did I dilute my response with phrases like “I also don’t agree with their politics” and the parenthetical “and usually succeed admirably” when I actually don’t care about the issue and I don’t necessarily think that some members of that alias are really all that dedicated to open-mindedness and tolerance? And why didn’t I point out that, rather than cowardice, the senders of the message showed courage in sending it to a large group of people, some of whom were bound to (and did) send scathing responses both to the senders and to the MESJ alias?

Well, because sometimes I back down. Sometimes I’m overly conciliatory. Sometimes I care too much what other people will think—no matter who those people are—and I let things happen that I don’t agree with. My roommate pointed out that this is merely human, so I suppose I’m in fairly good company; to quote C.S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters, “Pilate was merciful till it became risky.”

But I’d rather be in the camp that actually stands up for what it believes in, no matter what. I want to have the courage to say “No, I think you’re wrong” even if everyone else in the room thinks I’m stupid—or, worse, naïve. I want to have that kind of strength. Do I, based on today’s response?

Apparently, no, I don’t.

Not yet, anyway.

Something to work on.