REPLACE THE M WITH A T

Words matter. We often misuse them. So we misunderstand each other, therefore ourselves. I know that accurate communication depends on correct use of words, and an agreement regarding definition, yet no matter the attention I pay, I sometimes can’t communicate what I mean. 

When we say what we mean, and more importantly, when others hear what we mean, we might begin to understand ourselves and our behavior through those words. Misusing them though can unconsciously reinforce behavior we don’t even recognize as negative. Unfortunately, in this era of information overload, of too much input and the sense that all of it demands and merits a response, we rush, we get careless, and readily miscommunicate. 

I have been trying to understand human nature for a long time, my own included. There was point last year when, due to COVID-19 restrictions on exposure, many jobs were declared non-essential and those who did them furloughed into the virtual Unemployment line. At first, when people believed THEY were being declared non-essential, likely due to them confusing identity with the job they worked, the outcry was loud. Some days I fantasized about real resistance forming because the words being used sounded like a call to arms, like a collective spine was being straightened, but my hope fizzled with the arrival of the first unemployment checks. When people realized their weekly pay for sitting idle and indoors was higher than what they earned when they attended their jobs they got real quiet. The Feds know more about human nature than I ever will: they bought acquiescence, silence and votes at no cost greater than the paper and ink used to print the bribes. 

And here I was believing that people actually wanted to work, and to think for themselves. And here I was believing that people actually wanted to have some influence on their journey through life, maybe some autonomy, but that meant they had to make the teat they nourished themselves with instead of sucking the one provided by their rulers. Subjects to the last — cashing checks and repeating words that will forever change their behavior — and they can’t even see what’s happening. 

I’ll use a single example to illustrate my point about words. I was reading news recently to try to understand why small businesses are closing and larger ones struggling despite restrictions against public gathering, etc., having been lifted. They simply cannot compete against the “wages” being paid by the Feds, and those benefits (on top of State unemployment coverage) have been extended until September 2021 albeit at half the scale available in 2020. 

Wage \ ˈwāj \

1 a : a payment usually of money for labor or services usually according to contract and on an hourly, daily, or piecework basis —often used in plural

The definition of “wages” is pertinent, it matters in this context because, when a potential worker applies for a job, and learns that s/he would be paid less money for working than for sitting idle, they declare, “I’m making more on Unemployment so I’ll keep doing that until it runs out.”

Let’s be clear, you’re not “making” more on Unemployment, you’re “taking” more. And, being a closet-optimist, I hope you actually are “doing” something, using the free time and free ride to create rather than consume. 

In the past, I have commented acidly about governmental waste, fraud, abuse, and abuse of power, often generalizing and grouping the most corrupt in with those trying to change the process or their own local conditions for the better. I stand by my words, especially in this context. No government makes money, all governments take money. Of course, an ideal government sets up conditions whereby its citizens can make things, and money, and create work for others, then it takes a percentage of the earnings to fund governing operations, perhaps improving the overall well-being of the people. A less-than-ideal government may also establish (or inherit) those conditions but takes whatever percentage deemed necessary to underwrite its gluttony, expansion and control. Government might make people do things but it never makes anything itself.

Understanding the meaning of our words helps us understand our own behavior. Because I am such an optimist*, I’ll end this on a less critical note. When I acquired my first camera the common language described its use as, “taking a photograph”, which implies removing something from the situation being observed. I spoke that language for decades until a fellow photographer taught me to describe my work as, “making a photograph”. He told me that, because something existed that did not exist before, I was making not taking, and that changed my perception of art and my behavior forever. 

Words matter.

* #sarcasm