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| The Seven Deadly Sins, Hieronymus Bosch |
I’ve read about the seven deadly sins. Remember these? Maybe you heard about them, as a kid in Sunday school. This is what I recall from my childhood: Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Greed, Lust, Sloth, and Wrath.
I’ve also read Pope Gregory’s values
that oppose those sins, that counterbalance them. These include: Faith, Hope, Charity, Fortitude, Prudence, Justice and Temperance.
So I'm bothered by the catch phrase, "virtue signaling," I'm hearing parroted by those who oppose mask wearing to protect others from possible infection of COVID-19. I'm bewildered by those who use the term to show their disdain about those who claim solidarity with peaceful protests of racial injustice.
Oh, it's only rhetoric, I hear. Oh, it's just political posturing. Oh, it's just huffing and puffing, with no real meaning.
I don't think so. To me words count. I don't just toss them on a page when I write. I mull them over. I ask myself it they're accurate, if they're nuanced, if they're precise.
So I cringe at today's catch phrases, such as the supposedly compassionate, but actually dismissive, term "All Lives Matter." Of course they do, but the current racial injustice protests aren't about all lives, they're specifically about black lives endangered across the globe.
I don't like the phrase, "OK, Boomer," which express disgust with an older generation...and I'm not even a Boomer. I'm from the so-called Silent Generation, or as Tom Brokaw wrote, "the Greatest Generation."
I don't like the bromide, "The cure is worse than the disease," alluding to the quarantines and lock-downs designed to keep the COVID-19 virus spreading to the extent that it would overwhelm our hospitals and medical workers. No, the cure is NOT worse than the disease.
I had the infamous 1980-1981 influenza that killed over 32,000 in the US. I was only 40 and in otherwise good health. But I never have been more acutely ill in my life. I came close to being hospitalized, but suffered from pleurisy for weeks afterwards, as I continued to go to work, feeling as if I'd been kicked in the ribs by a mule. Yes, I know that's a trite phrase...but it describes exactly what I felt.
I love words. I also value virtue over vice, though I know full well, I suffer from many.
This is a good time to reread Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter and ponder the meaning of the central symbol of that book. Some scholars argue that while the "A" initially symbolizes "adultery," as the Puritan community changes its views of the central character, Hester, it can take on other meanings. Maybe"Angel" or "Able," or "Aristocratic" or "Authoritarian." I could make an argument that it stands for "America."
Words count. Virtue counts. And so does kindness in horrific times.
"But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think."
—George Gordon, Lord Byron
Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think."
—George Gordon, Lord Byron
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Posts
Wonderful true words! Have you submitted it to your local news, or the New Yorker or...? This needs to have a wide audience.
ReplyDeleteBeautifully written, Terri. About words ... "A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day." (Emily Dickinson, I think.)
ReplyDeleteRuth A.
Thank you. Words do matter, they do have power. But our society at this time uses them in ways they were never meant to be use. Their power is used to denigrate and dismiss and although they are phrased to sound pretttier, they do all the same things words we consider too nasty to say now did in their time. I agree, this article needs a much wider audience. Blessedbe.
ReplyDelete