One Word at a Time

As I watched the president's speech from the oval office last week I was impressed by the White House speech writers’ grasp of the power of language. The president told us on this fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks that we are "safer but not yet safe" leaving us suspended in flux at some undefined level of secure.

He said "since the horror of 9/11, we've learned a great deal about the enemy" lumping all people and groups who have used terror tactics into a single entity thatis easy to hate and hard to understand.

He called freedom "the strongest weapon in our arsenal," morphing one of our most cherished ideals into a tool of war instead of a beacon of hope.

As the president’s message flowed over the air waves, I could see a vision of the world take shape before my eyes, a vision of the world that does not match my own. In fewer than 3000 words the White House took a day of memorial and turned it into a rallying cry for war and a political jockeying point. The power of words realized.

As the spheres of our individual lives have expanded, connected by the Internet, email, international news, a global community that has become more interdependent and intertwined, the impact of the language we use has expanded as well, shifting our reality from an experiential one to the reality painted by the words we read or hear.

In an editorial last week, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson said,

“Words are all we have to give shape to reality, and because we had no words for what happened five years ago -- by definition, language falls short of the unimaginable -- a new lexicon had to be developed. I am convinced that much of this new language, by accident or design, has the effect of clouding our view of our enemies and ourselves. We need to begin choosing our words more carefully, and we need to discard the ones that do not serve us well.”

We have yet to make those choices. Words like "terrorist," "radical," and “fundamentalist" haunt our vernacular allowing us to escape the question of who people are and what conditions in our global community have given such momentum to dangerous fanatical movements. Such easy labels also avoid the difficult task of finding the language to describe the conflicts and tensions, and hoped-for solutions that our society faces today.

George Soros made a similar reference to the way the language we use has affected our narrative in a Wall Street Journal editorial last month. He said,

"The war on terror is a false metaphor that has led to counter productive and self-defeating policies. Five years after 9/11 a misleading figure of speech applied literally has unleashed a real war fought on several fronts . . . a war that has killed thousands of innocent civilians and enraged millions around the world."

Mr. Soros goes on to point out that people in America unquestioningly accepted that this figure of speech was the obvious response to the attacks of September 11, 2001 and that the only front was a battlefield. Now we are faced with three words "war on terror," (glibly shortened into an acronym (WOT) for easy and efficient use), that encapsulate a failed U.S. foreign policy.

Our words tempered our world view long before September 11 though. Think about the way that policy makers have described some of the social challenges we face; the “war on poverty” can be traced back to LBJ, the “war on drugs” originated during Nixon’s administration. Imagine the world today if the resources poured into the war on terror over the past five years had instead been applied to the "war on poverty" or the "war on drugs." Of course in reality you can’t fight poverty or drugs with guns and bombs and soldiers in body armor. Maybe it was this misnomer that predetermined our miserable losses in those battles. If we had used a different metaphor to describe the challenge that terrorism poses to our society would the effect have been different today?

We have our own mini campaign here at FCNL to change the way people talk, looking for peaceful alternatives to the militaristic phrases and words that are ingrained in our colloquial language. This goes beyond just demilitarizing our speech to an intentionality about the way we talk that recognizes that word choices depict our selves, the people around us, and the world we live in.

We are forever in a quest to reframe the debate, but in changing the way that we talk about the world around us and the challenges society is faced with, can we do more than just reframed the debate? Can we change the picture?

Stillness, Discernment and Torture

Quakers have been at the forefront of many of historical movements for social justice in this country and around the world. From prison and penal reform, to the abolition of slavery and women’s suffrage, Quakers have been deeply involved in the moral progress of Anglo-Americans. It is in the context of this history that Friends from around the United States (with guests from Canada, Great Britain and Rwanda) gathered at Guilford College to consider the U.S. government’s use of torture. The Quaker Initiative to End Torture (QUIT) was born from the concern of Friend John Calvi of Putney, VT over a year ago. A small group of Friends formed a steering committee to plan the QUIT Conference which occurred June 2nd through 4th. I traveled to Greensboro with Ruth Flower to represent FCNL at this conference.

Organizers of the conference divided our time between learning from torture experts, survivors and anti-torture advocates and planning for the Quaker Initiative to End Torture. The organizers envisioned the Quaker Initiative to be “a large historic work” and that the planning would be for “long-term work, perhaps of more than one generation.” The educational portion of the weekend was phenomenal, especially Jennifer Harbury and Hector Aristizabal. I was also so glad to see a good group of young people at the conference. We had a good time talking together, and had a great dinner chat about Quakerism and activism over dinner on Saturday night, and enjoyed a great spiritual dialog with our non-Quaker friends also attending.

Now, I'm a relative neophyte when it comes to Quakerism. I've only been exploring the Quaker 'world' for about 5 years, and the more I am involved with Quakers, the more I am amazed. I'm amazed in two ways: amazed that there is such a depth of spirit, centeredness, morality and action, and also amazed that there is such a lack of those things, especially the last three. The QUIT conference threw these things into relief for me, and laid them out plain. The depth of spirit and openness durring Hector's dramatic presentation, and the deeply human connections created in the room between all of the participants was stunning.

What stunned me more was the lack of spiritual discernment engaged in durring our action sessions. And I wasn't the only one that noticed this. Saturday evening there was a period of break-out sessions. I attended the legislative break-out session. I arrived late, and did my best to focus down, and begin to listen. As we went around the table discussing possible legislative actions, I felt my place was to listen and to offer pointers for action on Capitol Hill. There emerged, however, very little strategy in that area. So, I'm writing this post with some distance from the event now, having been writen in July and now the beginning of September, so I don't remember the details of what was discussed. I'm sure there are notes somewhere.

After the break-out sessions, the whole group reconviened to compile and season what had come out of those groups. This, I think, was the most frustrating experience of the whole conference. What was compiled on the over-head projector was nothing more than a list of the standard secular activist activities: writing letters, calling congress, going back to our Meetings to share what we've learned from the conference.

But wasn't this supposed to be a Quaker response to torture? What was Quaker about this list? In light of the activities suggested, why have a Quaker Response to Torture instead of starting some new chapters of Amnesty International? A colleague of mine also confided that in her view, the grandiose rhetoric which was being used in regards to the task ahead (of eliminating torture) was unrealisitic, and instead of being a multi-generational endeavour, could probably be accomplished in five years with a good plan.

But the good plan never emerged. And I don't think it should have from this conference. The plan should have been simple: lets educate ourselves, and reconvene next year to formulate a plan. If this is infact, as the convenors suggested, going to be a multi-generational effort, then there's no need to come up with a hurried plan of action today. Let's wait for a leading of the spirit, and see what comes.

Well, that was my experience from the QUIT Conference this past spring. It was an interesting and enlightening time. I was made fully aware of how deep the problems in Quakerism are running these days. Look around, there are plenty of other Friends who are feeling the same way. I spent many hours talking with a Friend from St. Louis, Missouri about this and her feelings were much the same coming both out of the conference and of her experience traveling among Friends. And a guy form Connecticut who was in my doorm suite expressed much the same frustration.

In Sunday's Meeting for Worship, some of these concerns rose up through vocal ministry, and some were immediately responded to and shot down by older Friends. The irony was not lost on many. Those of us at the conference who felt something was wrong, it turns out, are not alone. There is a renewal of spirit happening around the Quaker world, and I would encourage you to explore it. There are plenty of blogs on the topic.

Yours in Peace, Jay