“Does their culture tell them to keep broken old refrigerators and garbage in their front yards?”
This question came from a co-worker, a man, I knew, though briefly, years ago. We had both worked at a center for refugees, and had been talking about cultural differences in our clients, and I’d noted that many cultures were different even in our country, for instance, Native Americans.
This man was not evil, nor was he (generally) ignorant. He was, in fact, over the brief time I came to know him, a man who I came to consider one of the most ethical humans I’d ever known. He was a former priest, who had renounced his vows when a parishioner came to him and asked about the doctrine of transubstantiation - the turning of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. According to the Church, only the ordained can perform this ritual. The parishioner questioned Gregg, my former colleague, at length about this, and, after some discussion, asked this question: “But then, if my faith is strong enough, shouldn’t I be able to turn it into the body and blood as well?”
Gregg had no answer for him. After considerable thought, and, after failed efforts to get an answer from higher-ups in the Church, Gregg felt that his only option was to renounce his vows until
That, my friends, is ethics.
He was (and, I presume, still is) a good man.
And his question was genuine - he believed that things deemed as ‘garbage’ should not be kept, should be disposed of, and genuinely did not understand what he saw when he crossed a local reservation.
I remember drawing a long breath, and thinking carefully before I responded. This was not a person I wanted to alienate, this was a person genuinely trying to understand. “Well, I can’t speak for all Native American cultures, because there are many, but the folks I’ve known believe that you do not dispose of something if it might still have utility, that it is dishonorable to waste. I’ve seen people make smokers and dehydrators out of old refrigerators, so not only are they not wasting the refrigerator parts, but they are also working to be sure food isn’t wasted. I also once knew a sculptor - yes, he was Native American - who cut apart the parts of an old refrigerator and bent and shaped them to make a sculpture of birds in flight. It’s a belief in not wasting things, in honoring the potential utility of everything.”
Gregg initially looked startled, and then thoughtful, and, over the weeks and months that followed before both of us left employment at that center and went to work elsewhere, we had many more productive conversations about cultural differences in which we each frequently had to remind the other that there might be reasons to be more open if and when either of us felt judgmental. I grew to like and respect him a lot for that, as well as for a wickedly sharp sense of humor. I was sad, a few years later, when we lost touch.
Just a few years ago, I returned from spending four months in Northern Namibia, teaching at a school for the deaf and blind in a small town called Ongwediva, very near the border with Angola. The time I spent there was inspirational, as you might imagine, for many reasons: the dedication of
We are wasteful, and that disregard for potential usefulness, potential beauty, infects our lives and our culture to a degree we never even think about. This in part springs from and in part creates a caste snobbery that demeans those who are more careful about their use of things, who save things, who keep an out-of-fashion piece of furniture because of its remaining utility and care not that it is no longer considered “tasteful.” I knew a woman once who did not understand my devotion to shopping thrift stores and buying used items. She (literally) shuddered at the notion of wearing clothes someone else had owned, or using dishes someone else had abandoned. “You deserve new things,” she said, “and so do I,” not even thinking about the implied assumption that those who shop at such places out of necessity deserve their lot.
What does this have to do with writers? That wastefulness in attitude, in thought, in practice also infects our language. We are wasteful with words and careless (in its exact meaning) about their impact and long term effects. We use words and throw them away with little thought. As writers, we pursue what is considered the ‘market of the moment,’ writing for transitory public tastes, without regard to long term impact, or the implied assumptions in what we may write.
My advice for you as writers: be careful. Use your words with care, choose your meanings with care, select your purpose with care. Examine your assumptions, examine your motives, examine your purpose, and be careful. Be full of care - full of care for your reader, for the profession of writing, for your own spirit. Like a piece of furniture that has been used well, your thoughts are filled with history, the history of your life - be sure that history in honored in how it is reflected in your words.
The Japanese have a tradition of repairing broken items with gold, not only enhancing their
