Week 119.
An elderly woman, apparently of no fixed address, stopped Elder Advice on the street last week. Leaning heavily on her shopping cart, she fixed me with a baleful stare - clearly not designed to fix me at all - and scolded: “Wake up! The End Times are Coming.”
Of course, people have been rattling on about the End Times for some time now. Around 150-160 CE Rome was on the decline. Political instability, a ruinous disparity in wealth among the populace and inflation were all rampant. A real plague arrived. From the East. Which killed millions. Hmmm.
Many thought the Antonine Plague heralded the End Times. At the end of 2022, according to the reputable Pew Research Center, an astonishing 40% of adult Americans also believed the end is literally nigh. No one seems to ever ask Canadians such questions, although annoying pollsters have been calling of late demanding to know whether Elder Advice thinks Canada is broken, which he supposes is much the same inquiry.
Elder Advice has many years of experience ignoring claims that “The End is Near”, and expressing a preference for “The End is Insight”. But considering what has been going on of late, he confesses the woman’s street lecture gave him pause.
The World Health Organization declared an end to the COVID epidemic this week. Which Elder Advice thought should be evidence of the end of concern over the End Times. Yet it is clear the global pandemic, which should have united everyone, instead divided most. Apart from the fact we allowed Grandma and Grandpa to die alone, and the legacy of children who cannot read, write or add, the plague has left us with a disturbingly large number of people who seem unable to leave home without a stick up their ass.
The communication jenga we must engage in, every single day, is terrifying. Elder Advice fondly recalls a time when it was enough to be “civil”. Which is how we referred to those who were honest, tolerant and decent. When honesty, tolerance and decency had a hold on the public imagination. A time when we assumed free speech was important, trusted people to be civil in the exercise of it, and understood that censorship is a tool used by the powerful to suppress the powerless. Before we permitted words to be considered the equivalent of sticks and stones, and debate to be recast as “hate” speech.
A favourite client of mine is an arms dealer. Relax. He designs and sells prosthetic limbs. He called this week to complain that he can no longer say anything without asking first for a show of hands. Elder Advice sympathizes: in these perilous verbal times no one has a free hand to speak freely. Even though, ironically, the most puritanical censors are the same people who say that the most important “truth” is “your truth”.
The client forwarded a copy of Stanford University’s latest publication from the Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative. It lists words and phrases which have been determined unacceptable. “Addicted” is one, which apparently “trivializes the experiences of people who deal with substance abuse issues” and you are encouraged to use the unobvious alternative, “devoted”. “Seminal” is another - an inoffensive word Elder Advice always thought meant “groundbreaking”, from the Latin “seminalis” meaning “good for seed”. It is now forbidden as somehow reinforcing male-dominated language. “Karen” is off limits because it is “used to ridicule or demean a certain group of people based on their behaviors” but somehow, “demanding or entitled White woman” is deemed the appropriate substitute. “Rule of thumb” is ruled out because the list’s creators claim this phrase is attributed to an old British law that allowed men to beat their wives with sticks no wider than their thumb, while at the same time confessing that no written record exists supporting any such connection. “Submit” is objectionable because “the term can imply allowing others to have power over you” which Elder Advice mistakenly thought until now was the inevitable cradle to grave experience of literally every person on earth. “Normal person” must now be replaced with the even more demeaning “common person”. And “trigger warning” cannot be used because “the phrase can cause stress about what is to follow”. Apparently, we have reached the point that warning of harm is itself harmful. Elder Advice could go on and on.
That said, the list is not entirely without merit. “Low man on the totem pole” is, of course, unacceptable. Leaving aside the reinforcement of male-dominated language it is noted that, in some First Nation communities, being low on the totem pole is actually a higher honor than being on top. Just as Elder Advice has always suspected.
One can always, of course, find some speech in dire need of limitation. This week, Elder Advice’s American friends and relatives - anxious for a reprieve from the daily messaging of partisan media and bodies politic that the other half of the country is a moral cancer - have been treated, or rather mistreated - to the video of a former President in his civil rape trial. And the complainant’s lawyer asking Trump about the infamous Access Hollywood tape in which he bragged about assaulting women: “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ‘em by the - .” In apparent defense of his remarks, Trump is seen and heard to say: “Well, historically that's true with stars. If you look over the last million years I guess that has been largely true. Not always, but largely true. Unfortunately, or fortunately.”
“ Fortunately” ?!?
And yet, outside the courthouse, as when Trump was arraigned earlier this year on fraud charges, people were still heard to shout: “Trump or Death!”
Sometimes Elder Advice yearns for freedom from speech.
Elder Advice? However important it is to the proper functioning of liberal democracies, the fact that conversation is fraught and the incidence of bitten tongues is on the rise is probably insufficient to bring about the End Times. For that, like the Romans, we need to continue our political instability, the ruinous disparity in wealth among the populace, and inflation. While we are waiting though, like the Romans, a few circuses are welcome. So, like many others, Elder Advice spent much of yesterday enjoying the coronation of Charles III. It was an all too infrequent reminder of the comfort and continuity of ancient traditions - history, mystery and music to help overcome the increasing division and isolation in our lives - and another reason to resist becoming another grim, grey and bland republic.
Of particular interest was the Oath of Abjuration that Prince William swore: I, William, do become your Liege-man of Life and Limb, and of earthly Worship, and Faith and Truth I shall bear unto you. To live and die. Against all manner of Folk. So God me help.” Delightful. I need to get my children to kneel before me and make the same pledge. Because if the End Times are coming, Elder Advice wants someone watching his back who takes the task seriously.