 |
|
In 1778 Benjamin Franklin designed the first coin minted in the United States. It carried the phrase "Mind your own business." The days when that sentiment had any official endorsement are long gone. In a forthcoming book, "A Nation of Meddlers," authors Charles Edgley (a professor of sociology at Oklahoma State) and Dennis Brissett (a professor of behavioral science at the University at Minnesota Medical school) discuss euphemisms currently used for meddling, then go on to indict certain euphemistic practices prevalent in a number of professions. Workers and bureaucrats in the helping professions, they say, are among the more visible representatives at meddling by euphemism. Social workers, for instance, never meddle, butt in or tamper with other people's lives. Instead they engage in "professional intervention strategies," do "crisis intervention," "empower" or "treat," all part of what "therapy" is all about. If the client happens to believe that the intervener is actually meddling, and has the temerity to say so, the client, of course, is charged with being in "denial." The authors define meddlers as "true believers who confuse the frequent validity of their derived views with a proprietary right to impose their generalizations full bloom on others." Meddlers, they conclude, perceive meddlees as engaged in actions the meddler regards as negative, dangerous, unhealthy, and the like. Meddlers are indomitable peddlers of anti-themes. "For instance, to oppose MADD is to somehow condone highway carnage caused by alcohol while failure to denounce smokers at every opportunity is translated into an endorsement of cancer while the threat supposedly posed by passive smoke becomes a grim symbol of our times - innocent people being done in by the seemingly innocuous habits of others." These anti-themes have come to permeate society. The world has become a war zone for meddlers armed with a special anti-interest and a totalitarian vision of a world made safe by stamping out those who differ. Ironically a language of freedom is increasingly being used by meddlers to cloak their anti-ideology. Adjectives such as SMOKE-FREE, ALCOHOL-FREE, RADON-FREE, PRAYER-FREE, and FRAGRANCE-FREE are used to create the appearance of democratic action. Such postmodern freedom for people not to do something that they were never required to do in the first place replaces the more classical freedom to do what one wishes. "In a nation in which selfhood is becoming more and more defined by what people DON'T do than by what they do, defending oneself becomes a matter of attacking and controlling what others do. The meddler's own self-denial becomes the justification for denying others the opportunity to do whatever it is that the meddler is not doing. In this sense, people meddle because their very self is threatened. Deviance, from whatever standard is asserted or presumed, challenges the life of the meddler, not by threatening to sweep him into the abyss of inequity implicit in the meddlee's dissolute behavior but by its very existence." To meddlers, they say, people are not only known by what they don't do, but also by what they don't TOLERATE: "I don't drink, smoke, use drugs, or eat the wrong foods" is not enough. Now self is preserved by adding emphatically: "and I don't tolerate those who do!" The international "no" symbol - a red-slashed circle - is the perfect icon for an age in which people are coming to be known more by what they aren't then what they are. If the meddlee seems to be happy, interesting, fun-loving, perhaps even healthy, satisfied, and fulfilled, this only increases the grim-laced challenge offered the meddler. America has become a nation of puritanical meddlers for whom "should" and "should not" are the predominant words, and they view life as a series of progressive or regressive diseases for which early intervention is the only antidote. The authors point out that vocational meddlers, those who meddle for money, "include a vast and growing array of personnel ranging from social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists to lawyers, administrators, and government bureaucrats. The latter, operating in the belief that the presence of rules and regulations produces safety, security, and assurance, attempt to extend their own sphere of influence while claiming the noble justification of protecting the innocent. Despite the loftiness of motive, however, the primary task of all vocational meddlers is staying in business. Offices must be kept running, positions must be kept filled, budgets must be increased, promotions and raises must go on apace. The first concern of the meddling trades is steady work, and meddling is perhaps the closest thing there is to a recession-proof business. The only thing that could conceivably depress the economic forecast for professional meddlers would be an outbreak of health, harmony, and happiness. Unfortunately, these virtues have been so narrowly redefined by these same professionals that they are now more utopian abstractions than achievable realities." Meddling in the name of health and safety a virtually unchallengable argument as well as a growth industry for those who would protect us. "The regulatory environment of the government bureaucracy, coupled with tort legislation, has turned injury and accidents into a national lottery in which too many citizens hope to transform their tragedies into jackpots. Accidents no longer exist, it seems, for everything is seen by the legal profession as "preventative" and tort law has thus become unparalleled in its meddlesome consequences. Edgley and Brissett quote Peter Huber in his "THE LEGAL REVOLUTlON AND ITS CONSEQUENCES: "No other country in the world administers anything like it. Tort law was set in place in the 1960's and 70's by a new generation of lawyers and judges... Some grew famous and more grew rich in selling their services to enforce the rights they themselves invented." Huber observes that claims that other people's wrong doings are responsible for life's difficulties generates is, in effect, a "tort tax" on goods and services that amount to a $300 billion levy on the American economy accounting for "30 percent of the price of a step-ladder and 95 percent of the price of childhood vaccines. All in the name of health and safety."
------------------------------------------------------------------
|
