Words And Behavior

The words of this title are not my own. However, I don’t think there is a better title for what I will write here. I recently discovered the writings of Aldous Huxley(1894-1963), an English novelist and critic famous for many literary works and criticisms of how technology affects humans positively and negatively. I read his book, “The Olive Tree(1937)”, a collection of essays that include the one I want to discuss called “Words and Behaviour.”

In this essay, Huxley establishes the importance of words by stating, “Words form the thread on which we string our experiences. Without them, we should live spasmodically and intermittently.” Suffice it to say, words codify our experiences. We’ve all heard different sayings about how “The pen is mightier than the sword” and “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Now, which is it damn it!? Are words powerful, or are they just sounds we make to other humans to get the toppings we want on a burger? Our attitude towards vernacular and our use of spoken or written words are ambivalent. Our choice of words and their implementation in our daily lives is sloppy at best. Our careless selection of words causes us no end to pain and frustration. Words can be used to inspire or tear down. Our day-to-day life experiences can hinge on words society chooses to have in its lexicon.

Before I lose people reading this who think I have somehow become woke and how I am about to write about pronouns and micro-aggressions, rest assured that this commentary will not be that. So I ask you to suspend your assumptions and preconceived notions for just a moment before we start slinging names and labels like woke, liberal, social justice warrior, socialist, and the list continues on ad nauseam. The fact that I need to put this in writing is a perfect example of the “Us versus Them” mentality Aldous Huxley wrote about in this essay! I have watched this evolve in my own family, and I see it where I work with epic frequency. I don’t even want to get started about how often it is portrayed on the left and the right sides of news reporting and political discussions. It’s truly disheartening that we must differentiate news based on a political viewpoint instead of the accuracy of the facts the media is supposed to uphold based on journalistic integrity.

Huxley says, “Inappropriate and badly chosen words vitiate thought and lead to wrong or foolish conduct. Most ignorances are vincible, and in the greater number of cases stupidity is what the Buddha pronounced it to be, a sin. For, consciously, or subconsciously, it is with deliberation that we do not know or fail to understand—because incomprehension allows us, with a good conscience, to evade unpleasant obligations and responsibilities, because ignorance is the best excuse for going on doing what one likes, but ought not, to do.” What does this mean? Ignorance of something can be overcome. However, we as humans tend to ignore things that we find undesirable or that make us uncomfortable by challenging our deeply held beliefs. When we remain willfully ignorant and cannot and will not change our minds despite logical or empirical evidence to the contrary, we are guilty of perpetuating this continuation of stupidity that could lead to unpleasant consequences for ourselves or others. This plays into the famous, maybe even infamous, confirmation bias. I struggle with this as much as anyone else. I don’t like to discover I’m wrong about my ideas and beliefs about how things in the world are or realize how wrong I am about how I think they are supposed to be. Our personal biases often interfere with our ability to effectively reason to an equitable and morally decent outcome. It also inhibits our ability to meet each other in the middle and compromise on a mutually beneficial outcome. Confirmation bias plays on one of humanity’s most significant weaknesses: pride. I won’t reverse or change my mind because I’m not weak-minded or a flip-flopper. See how this keeps going downhill and quickly?

As one reads Huxley, you know he was undoubtedly anti-war. He opposed it on the grounds that our ideas of war were misrepresentations of how vile the reality of war actually is. Mr. Huxley was more against using language to soften and change the context of any horrible thing man could do to his fellow human by cleverly sidestepping the facts of how devastating those things are to the individual human being. He says, “Now, language is, among other things, a device which men use for suppressing and distorting the truth. Finding the reality of war too unpleasant to contemplate, we create a verbal alternative to that reality, parallel with it, but in quality quite different from it. That which we contemplate thenceforward is not that to which we react emotionally and upon which we pass our moral judgments, is not war as it is in fact, but the fiction of war as it exists in our pleasantly falsifying verbiage. Our stupidity in using inappropriate language turns out, on analysis, to be the most refined cunning.” Let’s ponder all that for just a moment, shall we? To say that language is only used to suppress and distort the truth is not technically true. Some of humanity’s greatest truths are found in the language and literature of great people. It’s found every day in interactions with friends and family as well. However, Mr. Huxely talked about politicians/people in power in this case, and we know that most public officials struggle to tell the truth. A politician telling the whole truth is a rarity we infrequently see at best. However, Huxley’s implication that we choose words carefully to paint a picture beneficial to our needs/well-being is true for any situation and any person. For example, to say we are fighting to defend our way of life is significantly different than if we say we are fighting to force the compliance of our opponent to our national will after diplomacy broke down. That sounds less valorous and causes the canvas of war to be painted much differently, don’t you think? One is noble, a defense of home and liberty. The other sounds like a bully taking another kid’s lunch money by beating him up. Which sounds more palatable to you? See how simple it was to choose a frame(narrative) to put the same acts together? Notice the ease with which we gloss over the destruction and death and sell it as a moral obligation that should not be argued with. This is why narratives are so important and can be intentionally and unintentionally insidious. The average 18 to 24-year-old who goes to war for their country most likely would have no quarrel with an 18 to 24-year-old soldier from the opposing nation. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you set them down together in a college setting or over a drink, they likely would get along just fine. When we are forced to see the humanity in others, our labels and narratives disappear.

We’ve even seen examples of how people can overcome narratives that nations have constructed for them. During World War One, one of the bloodiest wars in human history,  The Christmas Truce of 1914 is a prime example of a narrative coming apart at its seams. Individual humans(read soldiers) took a moment to see the humanity inherent in those in the opposite trenches. Germans and Britons played soccer, sang Christmas carols in their native languages together, and shared meals with each other. This was a unique and bright moment in an excruciating and terribly destructive conflict that still shapes political landscapes over 100 years later. It also never happened again in this war because the terrible nature of trench and chemical warfare solidified the narratives of the other man being evil and deserving to die. I can not blame them for how easy it would be to hate your opponent in France’s muddy trenches. When you step over disfigured bodies, who were your living, breathing friends who died a horrible death by artillery or in a gas attack, that could make anyone deeply hate.

Narratives are not just for nation-states. They apply to us as individuals. I’ve watched them dissolve at this level too. I remember this guy from deep down in Mississippi who grew up with family in the Ku Klux Klan. I met him at Basic Combat Training in Ft. Jackson, SC. To say he had some racist ideas and notions would have been an understatement. Basic training was the first place he’d ever met a black person, much less the multitude of other people of color that we went through basic with. He was so lost and had no idea how to interact with other races of human beings because of all of his preconceived notions. His labels (read dehumanizing language) of African Americans, Hispanics, and Jews were shattered because he was forced to see them as people. Namely, he saw other humans who struggled in the same human ways that he did. We all struggled together as we navigated that tumultuous time in our life when we first started learning how to soldier. That was a universal truth about our humanity I think the military teaches well. Due to challenging and realistic training, we see that we all have emotions, stressors, and just plain bad days, the same as every other human. It builds a sense of camaraderie that informs and reforms many preconceived notions about others.

To touch on the hatred that opposing soldiers and warriors have cultivated for each other for millennia, I have felt the anger and hatred of war because of the narrative(faulty and illogical, mind you) that I made for myself. I lost several friends to the war on terror. Their loss left me with seething anger and hatred for those I fought against in Afghanistan. I labeled those we fought against as terrorists, child rapists, drug runners, suicide bombers, fanatics, and murderers. To my way of thinking, the human beings I fought against were evil incarnate and not worthy of continued life in a civilized world. That was because they were a stain on the forward progress of humanity. They were a blight on all the good people of Afghanistan we were there to protect. (I also realize this is a narrative) I thought they were backward and after two of my teammates died, all I wanted was to take their future away. I wanted to ensure they never hurt another soul again. I likened it to killing a rabid animal. It was best for the animal to be put out of its misery because it’s too far gone. Killing it would prevent other animals from being infected. I remember thinking cruel things because, to me, my enemies deserved to die for their crimes. Their families needed to feel the pain and suffering my dead friends’ families did. They needed to feel the pain I felt every time I tried to remember the last time I’d spoken to my lost buddies or when I watched them repeatedly die in my dreams. I wanted the children of the fighters we killed to grow up without fathers, and their wives to be without husbands because they were the beneficiaries of evil. They were complicit by being the beneficiaries of murderers, child rapists, bomb makers, and drug cultivators. To my chain of faulty reasoning, their family ties justified how much hate I had for them.

As I write this, my heart hurts because I held onto so much anger and wished such terrible suffering on other human beings because I had allowed myself to hate an idea of who I thought they were…. It wasn’t reflective of reality. The scary part is that this idea, this hatred, flows so easily the moment you allow yourself to forget that they, too, are human. I allowed myself to forget that they were people like me. My labels blinded me to a very self-evident truth. I was blind to others’ humanity because it was humanity that didn’t conform to my a priori conceptions of what society and humanity are like. Afghans seemed unnatural because I couldn’t fathom their humanity. After all, their way of living wasn’t identical to my human experience. However, the moment I stop to think about it, I feel guilty because I have so much more in common with them than not. We hurt, laugh, cry, experience loss, rejoice at successes, recoil at failure, and love those in our lives who make us better and those who try our patience.

I wanted to bring my feelings up because, in a way, I know others who have gone to war have also felt this way. Or at least, this Soldier hopes they felt this way for a small absolution of his misguided, self-destructive, and hateful thoughts. I have seen terrible things, and I hope no one else sees any of the things that war brings with it. I see the reports on the carnage and destruction in Ukraine. I shake my head as I watch news reports because I see death tolls reported as “x” number civilians died, “x” soldiers died, etc. I see humans who have been killed. Ukrainians, Russians, foreign fighters…..they are all human beings fighting for a particular narrative that may be true to them. However, they see each other as Nazis, invaders, Soldiers, etc. Not as human beings.

What troubles me more is how people discuss how captured Russian soldiers should be treated. Many say the Ukrainians shouldn’t take prisoners. All Russian soldiers are war criminals because they are fighting for a corrupt regime and don’t dare to refuse to fight. We forget that our human experiences are different from those of a Russian Army conscript. Terrible things happen to those who do not fight in the Russian military, not just those who wear the uniform. They must return to a country where they may be killed for cowardice or treason. I’ve listened to calls from Russian soldiers back to their families talking about how scared they are, how they don’t want to be there fighting, and how many friends they’ve lost. They are human beings caught up in a terrible narrative. Do not take this as me supporting the Russian invasion. It most certainly is not. Do Russian politicians and senior military officials need to be held accountable for this horrible injustice? Absolutely. Do Russian soldiers who commit war crimes also deserve to be punished? Without a doubt, yes. The carnage and destruction in Ukraine are atrocious. The human toll of this war is all the more tragic as it was and is so unnecessary.

My biggest concern is that I don’t want to see these same labels or narratives start to tear at the fabric of our culture and society, as we have seen happen in so many other places. We have a narrative that specific lives matter based on a person’s skin color in our country. This is because of historically unfair or unequal treatment under the system of laws we claim to love and cherish. I think this says a lot about the fact that we might be struggling to see the humanity in others who are different from us. The fact that our political identities drive us to fight or riot because we simply can’t stand by while the other side sells a narrative we disagree with is plain crazy. Perhaps liberal and conservative are just as bad as racial slurs, given the context of hatred and dehumanization that is conveyed by those who toe party lines unwaveringly(read non-critically evaluating positions of their chosen political ideology). Perhaps we focus too much on being right instead of focusing on doing right by other human beings.

This was not meant to be a lecture about how to turn the other cheek or implore you to turn the other cheek. This is simply something I wrote to remind all of us that we are all humans. We all have failings, and we all have strengths. We are all more the same than we are different. Let’s use our humanity to move forward and not forget that we would want to be considered humans worthy of life and love if we were found on the opposite side of our own narratives. Never be too inflexible to see the error in your narratives and ideas. I’ll leave you with this quote by Marcus Aurelias, “If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.” To err is human. To learn from that error is divine.