Sunday, April 28, 2013

Irrational Hyperbole - A new and Deadly Form (Essay by Bob Racine)



My first days in college in 1952 were not the most pleasant period in my life.  My parents arranged for me to stay on campus in one of the dormitories.  Looking back now, and being as inclined toward privacy as I am, I would have preferred a private home somewhere in the town, but being young and green I didn’t know any better at the time.  In that dormitory were a number of students, mostly in their sophomore, junior or senior years.  I was one of only three or four freshmen living among them.  This was well past the age of what used to be called hazing.  If I had been a beginning freshman about forty or fifty years earlier, there is no telling what I might have had to endure.  Perhaps having my clothes ransacked, or my head shaven, or my bed short-sheeted or any number of other disruptive initiations!  But by this point the rites of passage for freshmen had reduced themselves to simple ribbing and teasing. 

One freshman in particular hated to share a bathroom when he had to use the commode, something you inevitably had to do when living in a dormitory.  He did not like to be seen sitting on it.  One day when he was so inclined by the laws of nature to do just that, he was suddenly swamped by a huge flock of students, who came and crowded into the room, packed themselves into that little space, and surrounded the commode seat, as if they were paying a friendly and celebratory visit.  That staged prank was his initiation.

In my case it took the form of being made aware of my uptightness over studies and problems of one kind or another.  I was so super serious in those days!  I would verbalize to the older guys, the supposed veterans, seeking their help, and they would give me that tweak-y smile, that teasing look that seemed to say, “Why are you so gloomy and worried, Racine, when everybody else is having so much fun?”  It was somewhat annoying.  But much of that was more helpful to me than I was old enough to appreciate at the time.  They would not take the sense of freshman pathos on my part seriously.

Have you ever had your buttons so pressed and reached such a point of aggravation that you were rendered a screamer or something quite close to one?  And then you noticed that everybody around you was calm.  You were the only one in sight who had a bee in the bonnet, the only one angry or outraged.  Few of us can say they have never been in such a situation.  Would it not have been fitting at that moment to be taken by the hand and shown the heavens?  If it happened at night, you could survey the stars, and someone standing by might have urged you to shake your fist at them, bellow at them, make yours a cosmic gripe.  And then after spending your fury, you might hear them asking you to look again.  Look again, and see how many of those stars or planets have stopped in their tracks to take notice of the fact that you are in a rage.  How many of them have altered course or burned brighter or lowered the lamp in respect for your furious petition?  The universe has a way of seeming quite indifferent to our emotional extremes. 

There is nothing new about moaning and complaining.  The Psalms, written anywhere from three to four thousand years ago, are thought of as lovely ballads that extol divine love and power, the work of poets and musicians.  But read them through sometime, the whole one hundred and fifty!  No body of Scripture has given us more examples of irrational hyperbole.  Aside from the likes of Psalm 23, some ridiculously paranoid claims are set ablaze on the sacred page.  Let us consider a few.

Psalm 11:7-8:  “The wicked are everywhere, and everyone praises what is evil.”

Psalm 22:6:  “I am no longer a man; I am a worm, despised and scorned by everyone!”

Psalm 31:12-13:  “Everyone has forgotten me, as though I were dead; I am like something thrown away.”

Psalm 102:3-10:  “My life is disappearing like smoke; my body is burning like fire.  I am beaten down like dry grass. . .I am nothing but skin and bones.  I am like a wild bird in the desert, an owl abandoned in ruins. . .All day long my enemies insult me; those who mock me use my name in cursing.  Because of your anger and fury [spoken to God], ashes are my food, and my tears are mixed with my drink.  You picked me up and threw me away.” 

Do such outbursts invalidate the Psalms as sacred writing?  Certainly not!  The tormented heart is made vivid, and that has teaching value, if not inspirational value.

What are some of the modern hyperboles motivated by irrationality and paranoia?

“This country is going to hell in a hand basket.”

“Nobody in business is honest anymore.”

“All product quality is gone out the window; they just don’t make those thumbtacks like they used to.”

“They don’t put up buildings like they used to.”

“Every Caucasian below the Mason-Dixon Line is a racist.”

“Muslims and Hispanics are taking over the country.”

“The Mafia controls everything.”

“Teachers don’t know how to teach today’s kids.  They’re not teaching.”

“Professional sports are no longer about fair play.”

“All movie makers care about anymore is the exploitation of sex and violence.”

“All Pro-Choice activists are murderers.”

“All Pro-Life activists are sexists and bigots.”

“All Israelis are warmongers.”

“All Arabs are terrorists at heart.”

“The FBI is totally incompetent.”

“All policemen are on the take.”

The list goes on!

Hyperbole can be very effective in certain forms of writing and speaking.  It can add color and emphasis and dimension.  “A thousand ages in thy sight are but an evening gone, sure as the watch that ends the night before the rising sun.”  Classic words of hymnody!  But irrational hyperboles are just reckless sweeping remarks that stem either from panic and paranoia, or they can be indicative of a copout attitude, a wish to dismiss someone or something, pronounce it hopeless so that you do not have to assume any responsibility for it or cope with it.  And we have all been in such a paranoid, panicked, despairing place and have spoken in such crazy absolutes.  The enlightened among us know that the words are only a symptom of a mood we are passing through, not the onset of a dire affliction of mind and heart. 

Of course, we are not always sloganeering with our irrational hyperboles.  Sometimes they are subtly situated between the lines we speak.  We carry these stereotypes around in our heads and let out a low, perhaps tacit moan whenever we think we see evidence to support that stereotype.  A soft spoken “Aha! ! ! I thought so!”

Which brings me to the subject of recent events! 

Acts of terrorism are themselves acts and expressions of irrational hyperbole run amok, whatever else we can say about them.  All Americans are fair game, because all Americans are heathen, degenerate, despoilers of other countries, contaminated with capitalistic corruption.  Nothing good can come forth from them.  In “Argo” an incensed man on the Tehran streets cries out in full throttle vehemence, “An American bullet killed my son,” therefore all Americans killed him, or maybe even anyone who looks like an American, as the escaping diplomats do.  The Americans are not pesky neighbors.  They are the enemy, and the enemy is not a face; the enemy is a godless putrescence, a blight to be smitten as callously and savagely as one would attack a bevy of ants corroding a kitchen sink.  The enemy’s only birthright is to be crushed and exterminated.

Fanaticism is irrational hyperbole at its deadliest, because it has extended far beyond any point of spontaneous thought or careless speech.  The exaggeration, perhaps once a fleeting outcry of prejudicial sentiment, has been allowed over years and maybe decades to attach itself to the base of many minds and harden into an intractable widespread doctrine.  Unbridled passion becomes the corporate will; the terrorist is but the instrument of that will. 

For me the most disturbing thing about the Boston Marathon bombers is the cool dispatch in which they went about their deadly deed.  They were not riled up protesters; they were quiet, cool, matter-of-fact killing machines.  In a way it was fortunate for all of us that they were, else the detectives scanning the video footage might not have picked up their trail.  How ironic that what was supposed to make them unnoticeable had just the opposite effect.  It betrayed them.

Of course, unlike the planets and stars that are impervious to our personal moments of irrational outburst and uptightness, civilization cannot afford to be indifferent about those for whom outburst has long been exceeded by entrenched murderous madness.  For fanatics there is no such thing as bridge building or creative dialogue.  You and I as U.S. citizens are being hunted like cockroaches and termites.  We shudder to think that we are so regarded.  But maybe now in this twenty-first century we are beginning to know something of what the Jews of Europe felt under their Nazi rulers, even though we already enjoy the relative safety of our own republic that protects us.  The Jews had nothing like that when they were being hunted. They finally had to create post-Holocaust a republic of their own.          

But a caveat is called for.  In the 1950s a pestilence broke out in our country.  We could call it Communist mania.  Harmless people were being hassled and often jailed for alleged Communist affiliation or for past Socialist sentiment.  Under the instigation of Senator Joseph McCarthy a witch hunt of insane proportions was conducted, and its relentless, mindless assault impacted upon anyone but real Communist conspirators.  Thankfully the nation came slowly to its senses and silenced the furor.  Now it would be a pity if the lesson of that time were forgotten out of paranoia equal to that of those who have branded us the enemy.  Nothing would be gained, if we began imagining that we see terrorists under every rock and roof or behind every act of violence perpetrated by common criminals.  Heaven forbid that anyone begin thinking that the backfire of any passing car or the crashing of thunder from the sky or the outbreak of any spectacular fire in a ghetto apartment building or the collapse of any bridge or overpass is just possibly the terrorist empire at work.  Let us not return to the desperation and fear that the 1950s wrought.  Let us not give ourselves reason to wake up somewhere down the road and discover that we are the enemy – our own worst. 


To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com

I welcome feedback.  Direct it to bobracine@verizon.net

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