Lanschism 2: The Respect You Expect

The study of communications tells us of the concept of tailoring a message to suit the audience…and of knowing the audience before tailoring the message. If the audience is not well-defined, then the message could reasonably be changed, or not given at all. If the message is not changed, then we should expect a different margin of error for the intended response from the audience. Sometimes a message has to be crafted as informational, persuasive, entertaining, demonstrative, motivational, impromptu, oratorical, or for a special occasion. Sometimes a message has to be delivered in person, or through video chat or phone call, with or without visual aids, and/or in written form. Sometimes a message has to be crafted for adults who have only a 3rd-grade level of reading or comprehension.

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Mindfulness Immaculatus

Some people in an audience may realize that a message is not meant for them. They will divert their attention by, for example, simply turning their head, or finding something else to read, or changing the channel (or turning the damned thing off), or changing to a different class, teacher, or partner. Pain alone could be the message a baby responds to when closing its eyes to block the Sun. How do we feel when, without any prompting, our neighbor brings back the power tool they borrowed? How do we feel when an audience correctly recognizes our question or message as rhetorical? It’s nice that they didn’t tax our psyches with wondering if, and when, they were going to return the tool or get the rhetoric. If we have no basis for watching, say, an advanced calculus webinar, we will get the message to divert our attention and, thereby, avoid any notion of believing we would have license to make uneducated, presumptuous, abbreviated, impersonated, arrogant claims concerning the science of the particular discipline. How do the producers of these messages feel about such conscientious or intuitive diversions of attention?

Assuming that time flies when you’re having fun,
Adam and Eve may have actually spent a long time diverting
their attention away from the message to eat from
the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. (Genesis 2:15,20,25)

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Mindfulness Malapropnus

Some people in an audience may realize that a message is not meant for them and will continue to consume it anyway. Whether deliberate or not, they are in an eavesdrop zone. Maybe it’s the only thing on; maybe they’ve paid the price of admission, so they’ll just deal with it; maybe it’s peer pressure; or maybe it’s gossipy and it’ll give them something to talk about, something to put their spin on, something to self-interpret and to make them think they sound smart when they regurgitate it. This could be a form of gluttony. A little girl starts a movement to boycott going to school because she has come to believe that there is no more hope in this world. Did she overhear her parents’ flippant rhetorical attempt at humor — their casual, informal chatter — and take it to heart? There is more than one reason why we “slow down” near school zones “when children are present”. How does a paying audience feel about an entertainer or sports hero who continually and deliberately breaks the fourth wall? Are they entitled to do that? It’s a breach of social contract, is it not? It’s a conundrum for some of us who demand transparency, while knowing that there are just some things that no one needs or wants to know. A bystander captures video of an incident and is convinced (maybe to gain notoriety) to give it to a commercial TV news station (which has limited qualms about using sensationalism to increase viewer ratings so it can get more advertising dollars). The news station may even continue to pat itself on its back after having fanned the flames of its rioting viewers’ passions. Might it have served justice better to instead give the recording to authorities who would then treat it as evidence in their investigation? One cast of spoiled characters was so disrespectful, so intolerant, of the head honcho, believing the message that they were the sole providers of all their blessings, that they let their egos get the best of them by acting on the message, taking not only the aim, but also the shot. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater, they had a very rude awakening.<endnote 1>

Look at what happened to Ham after he not only invaded
(eavesdropped on) his father’s privacy, but also acted upon it. (Genesis 9:20-23)

On a personal note, I once listened to the message to resist law enforcement’s efforts to get me into the back of a squad car. Their immediate response was to escalate their use of force. Yes, being taken down to the ground to hog tie me not only bruised the side of my face, but also my ego — my feelings were hurt. Waa! We should defund them. Couldn’t they have called in a social worker to try to negotiate with me? Aren’t they human for God’s sake?! A crowd gets unruly and gets the message to escalate to a riot, which results in much damage. Ultimately, most everyone gets off the hook by rationalizing it as merely part of mob mentality. The intoxicated people of ancient Sodom and Gomorrah continued to believe the message that they could behave exactly as they please. They piled lies upon lies, delusions upon delusions, leniencies upon leniencies, karma upon karma, denying all of the work that needed to be done — and the value of the fruits of such labor — to the point of not being able to support the community anymore. You can bend the word, the rules — the pillars — of the laws only so much before something has to give. How do the producers of all these messages feel about the audiences’ decisions?

In the current state, there are arguments that
we must make the best of a bad situation and assess that
it’s a different kind of fun, a different kind of tax,
that began after the fall from Eden. (Genesis 3:14-19)

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Mindfulness Ex Post Facto

Some people misconsume a message through, for example, eavesdropping, rumor mill, gossip, hate speech, tabloid journalism, hearsay, libel, slander, mob mentality, uneducated self-interpretation, jealousy of being upstaged, etc.. Then they act upon it. Then, by grace, they are given a second message and decide to retract their deed or statement, paying their penance in some way. How does that come to be? How do they do that? What do you do when you put your hand on a hot stove? You take it off — you retract it — and care for the wound. Maybe you get help; maybe you don’t do it again; maybe you tell others not to do it; maybe you find another way to meet your objective. You endure the process of healing and of maybe removing or forgetting about the scar in due time. The retraction for an innocuous infraction could be as simple as a casual apology. The penitent Sun-gazing individual will suffer some damage and will tell others not to look at the Sun as she had. What did the boy who cried “Wolf!” do after receiving a second message? He apologized to the townspeople, and performed some kind of community service. Maybe he learned to value gainful employment instead of the alluring futility of crafting fake news for sensationalism. Consider how the Israelites were treated after repenting for worshipping a golden idol. Consider how a son was received after returning home and confessing that he had made mistakes. How does the producer of the second message feel about such behavior? You may get an “‘atta boy!”, or an “I told you so”, or a “Judgment for the plaintiff/defendant”. It repairs burnt bridges, calms the waters, builds respect, serves justice.

What if Joseph’s jealous and entitled brothers
hadn’t received a secondary message
that caused them to rethink
how they mistreated him years earlier? (Genesis 42:21-22)

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Conclusion

The quantity of data and information has grown exponentially since the 1990s. Before that, our channels for information are commonly considered to be the hardcopy print and radio media, and a few TV and cable networks. Just as we thirsted for knowledge with the arrival of the printing press in the mid-15th century, so too did we thirst for knowledge with the advent of personal computers and the internet. The information explosion came as a result of an exponential increase in communication channels between an exponential increase in data sources. This information superhighway created an exponential increase in our familiarity with a staggering degree of messages coming from data sources with widespread backgrounds, education levels, values, viewpoints, motivations, and specialties. As familiarity can breed contempt between individuals, so too can an exponential increase in familiarity breed an exponential increase in contempt amongst the masses of people, especially if knowledge is power and everyone is jockeying for their fifteen minutes of fame. We can’t put the genie back in that bottle…or can we?

Some, in fact most messages
(even the ones between the lines)
must go to the cerebral cutting-room floor
if we are to stay sane and
respect the message giver. (Exodus 33:20)

Whether lowering or raising the bar of expectations for ourselves, our children, our neighbors, our community, our leaders, we must change our messages accordingly.

We were taught to play with kids our own age:
to do as the Romans do when in Rome;
to give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s;
to cast pearls, but not before swine.

That is the respect they expect.

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If you’ve read this far, then you’re probably in a small minority of my limited readership pool. Thanks for sticking with me this long. Once the concept for this essay presented itself to me, I decided that the notion of this thread of logic was legitimately entitled to a certain amount of respect to develop it. It was not one that I felt I needed to divert my attention away from. I also decided that it was worth sharing. You might quiz me on who my intended audience is and what my purpose is for the message to that audience. Maybe someone, in some audience, never considered this before. Maybe you’re just my convenient captive audience, a small proportion of which I might reasonably expect a response from before I edit it more and take it to some more-defined audience. You might consider feedback regarding the flow of the piece (choppy?), the wording, grammar, punctuation, philosophy, references, idioms, analogies, tone, length, best audience for it. Does a point come across? What might be expanded upon or reduced? Perhaps I should unpost the piece, extract its essence, create a lyric, and set it to music — rock ’n’ roll! Or maybe mold it into a screenplay. Advice anyone? Contact me at StationaryMovements@gmail.com.

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Endnote 1: Here’s two recent articles on the current rash of workers quitting:

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