I’ve always loved the idea of using good grammar, since my days at Junior (Middle) school. However, when a computer, which has no cultural background of its own beside what its programmers have endowed it with, attempts to shape me into its mold, claiming to have the high ground in the art and discipline of accurate grammar, I will, as I wrote recently, get my rebellious back up…and resist.
I was busily writing my most recent blog post, and this sentence:
Hello again to all you wonderful people all over our wonderful world.
On your screen the word “you” is not underlined in blue, but on mine it is. The computer software is trying to correct a colloquialism-almost a term of endearment-which I learned from childhood, and perhaps you learned the same one.
Unfortunately, while we live in a world which claims to be increasingly diverse, we are in truth living in a world where our minds are being shrunk, one little bit at a time, many times a day, and in many different ways. Our worldviews, our unique ways, our natural habits and thought-patterns are being whittled down to the lowest common denominator. But my question is, whose common denominator is it? It isn’t mine. It isn’t that of the school teachers who did their best to educate me; it isn’t that of my parents, or of the nation I grew up in. It isn’t even that of the nation I now belong to, the United States.
Decades ago people would talk about the United States, and particularly New York, as a “melting pot”. And the melting pot isn’t an all-bad concept. As different people get together in the same space, a certain degree of melting is necessary, so that we can get along. But the melting which is going all around us isn’t a grass-roots level melting: its coming from higher up now. Those in control of our media, and our government, and our education establishments, are doing the melting, and they’re doing it their way.
I for one refuse to melt. For all my faults and my weaknesses and my failures, I am me, and I intend to stay that way. That doesn’t mean I refuse to get along with other people-I want to get along with everyone, including those who have a very different worldview to mine. However, I don’t see why my morality, and my tastes, and my forms of speech-my colloquialisms-and my loves and hates, should be surrendered in place of someone else’s idea of what propriety is. And this refusal applies to the entire sphere of what we now call “wokeness”.
NO, I DO NOT AGREE that men can become women if they decide to: that’s a nonsense and an offense to our Creator. No, I’ve never, ever been prejudiced against people with darker skin (which is almost everyone) and I will NEVER accept the stupid, hateful, divisive claim that I am racist simply because I have light skin.
No, I can’t stand certain types of music, no matter how hip it may be, and I never will. NO, I don’t agree that humanity is a plague on the earth, and no I don’t agree that any perceived climate change (which I think is bogus) is because I eat too many hamburgers!
Thank you, oh Lord, that you love true diversity, as evidenced in human DNA, in character types, and in all of your creation. Thank you, oh Lord, that some things are objectively true and some objectively false, and thank you, oh Lord, for giving me the ability to sense the difference!
Thank you, oh Lord, for making me me!
Fuel for Faith 