Episode 30: Respect

Welcome to wisdom from the aerial view, a podcast dedicated to helping us relieve stress in our lives. Good morning, Mark Klein. How are you today?

Good morning and important. I'm great. How are you today?

I'm very good and damn we have a good show today. damn, I just said the word damn. Why did I say the word damn? Because we're going to have a conversation today about coarsening of our language. So I wanted to start by reading something. This is from a guy written by Stan, I hope I pronounced his last name correctly, Littrell. He's a novelist, a blogger, a lawyer, a former newspaper man, a retired circuit court judge, and the author of a book. called Perjury. He wrote an article and the title was, Old Foggy Sounds Off on Coursing a Language, Dress, Music and Manners. Let me read what he says. He says, Has American culture become gross, coarse, vulgar? If I say yes, I no doubt will be dismissed as an old foggy. Well, I do say yes. So there. And if you disagree, I say you're blind, deaf, zoned out, or just plain stupid. Now take that. When I speak, he goes on to say, about the coarsening of America, I'm not primarily focusing on manners. I'm talking about the virtual abandonment of what were accepted standards of decency and courtesy in entertainment, language, and dress. It's hard to know where to begin. Stand in line at a department store and listen to teenagers bandy about the F word as the all purpose adjective. Take the time to find out what's in the lyrics to the latest iTunes song your children love, or listen if you dare to hate women lyrics of rap. may shudder. Or now, when I think about it, may chuckle and laugh about it, the way kids nowadays are part of the problem. In fact, they are the problem. Now, having said that, there's another article I want to point to written by a man named John McQuarter. And I think you and I know him. yes. He's an associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University. And he wrote an article called The Softening of American Conversation.

I knew that was coming.

And he starts it this way. It's easy to suppose that the way we talk to one another is steadily coarsening in our modern America. The grand old four letter words seem to be used as punctuation. To many younger people, speech sounds messy and unconsidered, a kind of linguistic equivalent of bedhead. Twitter is full of perfectly normal people being recreationally nasty. Yet in truth, when I listen to America talking in our times, I hear an encroaching sweetness, a flowering of deference. A possible objection here is to four-letter words, and they're flying all over the place. I certainly use them more than my parents did, and most would consider me a reserved sort. And yet in this, I am not unusual for people of my age. How much sweetness and light can we really see in an American English that allows into public society people who use a F-word a dozen times a day? But we need to change the lens here. It's less that people use profanity more than that profanity is no longer as profane as it used to be. Now you and I, Mark, totally disagree on this one. I curse a lot. To me, it's just a word, doesn't mean that much, and I don't find it a horrible thing to do. You do. So I thought, let's have that conversation today. Why do you feel that using those words, Corsons America?

First of let me just start. I don't know the first gentleman, Mr. Littrell, although he and I probably would get along just fine. And I do know John McWarden, not personally, but I've read his books. I've listened to him on podcasts. I've watched him on Bill Maher. I've seen him a lot. And he's a very intelligent guy. There's no doubt about it. And you know me, I spend a lot of time in the aerial view, right? And so...

Nor do I, yeah. Right.

I have heard the arguments on both sides and there is merit to the argument on both sides.

wow, look at that, okay.

But you shouldn't be surprised to hear that I say that about just about everything. So, oh, this one's, yes, just because I see both sides and understand both sides and admit that both sides have merit, it doesn't mean I find them equal. That's the thing about the aerial view. You can look at a lot of, can take in all these different points of view very easily and recognize the merit, but it's perfectly okay to, you know, when you land in the street for you to pick one side or the other.

But not about this you don't.

So I would say I don't want to be too dogmatic about this, but this is one of those things that's a more feel than thought. So let's just start. Let's go back a step. Let's forget the F word in the language for a minute. And let's just ask a simple question. Is does it appear to you that our culture has coarsened? that it's roughened, that we've lost some sense of communal respect for each other and for us and for our institutions.

You definitely, particularly with the notion of bullying. And I guess what is troublesome to me, I mean, not the words themselves, but who's using them? Who's saying things about people? We have presidents of the United States, not just this one. If you recall several years ago, I remember Barack Obama was standing on stage and Joe Biden thought the mic, he was the vice president at the time, thought the microphone was off and dropped the F-bomb. And I thought to myself, hmm, look at that. I'm not alone. But then I also thought, should these folks be doing that? Should we be doing that? I mean, you don't, if this is not about to slam Donald Trump, but he uses nasty words, if you will, in just regular, I mean, he'll be on the stump and be screaming BS and all of that. So, you know, yeah.

Okay, so I would say to you, let's go back to the question. First of all, you know how I feel about talking about politics, but I would say to you that I've watched the slew of Democrats over the last five years hurl the F-bomb like I couldn't believe in news conferences and public speaking and everywhere. So it's not unique to one party or the other. No, no, no, I'm just saying.

Well, I didn't say that. In fact, I brought up the notion that it was Joe Biden. Okay.

I'm just saying that, right. It has nothing to do with politics. But let's go back to the question I asked you. And you agreed that culture seems to be coarsening in many different ways. So that's the problem. So we have a coarsen culture. So we go back 100 years. Let's see, is, will that do it? Maybe 125 years or something like that. Not that much more. But if you met somebody on the street, who is a neighbor or somebody you knew from your church or somewhere in your community or a shopkeeper, you would walk in and say, hello, Ms. Jones. Hello, Mr. Smith. How are you today? And unless you were, you know, best buddies, you were calling people by Mr. or Miss or Mrs. Probably Miss didn't exist. Probably Mr. maybe it did. Miss exists, not Miss, but Miss exists. You would call them, you would have a, a, a pronoun in front. That's probably not a pronoun. John McWhorter is going to kill me. Whatever Mr. and Mrs. Right? Article? It's not an article either. I don't know what it is. It's something. A salutation perhaps, but it is something. And you would, you would start your conversation. Well, You know, I'd say, hello, Miss Borden, how are you today? And, you know, how is fine weather we're having today, or actually pretty hot weather we're having today, whatever. That's how we started. People, and I think I recounted this story in my book. It's amazing the things we remember from our childhood. I must have been, I'm going to guess somewhere between 10 and 12. And my dad invited me to breakfast with a friend of his who happened to be the father. of somebody we went to high school with. I'll fill you in after the show about who that was, because you know this person. Anyway, we had breakfast. And I don't know why, I mean, I never had breakfast with my father. We went to a luncheonette near the train station, as it turns out. And I didn't know what to, you know, I was quiet and my father and this gentleman were talking and then I wanted to say something.

And the only name I knew was his first name. I mean, I shouldn't say that. I did know his last name, but my father had been calling him by his first name. So I was probably max 10 now that I think of it, maybe younger. And I called him by his first name. Well, he whipped around to me and said,

Mm-hmm.

that you should never call, not to call me by my first name and just rip my head off. Or it seemed to me that he ripped my head off. Perhaps if I had a video tape of it I might say, well, he wasn't so bad, but maybe he was gently correcting me. To me, it felt like he took my head off. I'm sure I turned bright red. I'm sure I was incredibly embarrassed, but I had not shown him the formality that he deserved. And he was correct, because I didn't know any better. Really, it wasn't, I was trying to be a wise guy. I just didn't know any better. But I remember it, right? So we've come in a hundred something years to calling everybody, know, even people we just saw randomly on the street by Mr. or Ms. or Mrs. And then we still continue to call adults by Mr. or Ms. or Mrs. until fairly recently, I think. In fact,

Yeah.

I don't think it started in our generation, but the following generation, I've had many parents when I introduced my children, they'd say, just call me by my first name. And I would look at them and go, no, they're not calling you by your first name, because that's the kind of parent I was, right? But that's obviously changed quite a bit. So my point in all in this little divergence is to say our culture has evolved and Geomic Water is right, right? So that's part of the evolution of language. But something gets lost.

Yeah.

our respect gets lost, respect for each other, respect for our society, respect for the hierarchy of our society. And I don't mean to say race or gender. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about mostly young people respecting older people, for instance, which has been around for eons. That's kind of gone away. So to me, the language is just an example of that. is a representative...

No, I agree. A thousand percent. A thousand percent.

of the demise or the decline of the civilized nature of our society. We've lost that level of respect. John McWhorter can say, well, it's just an evolution of language. If it were just an evolution of language, I would have no problem and I would agree with him wholeheartedly. And I'm always loathe to disagree with John McWhorter because he is a super smart guy. But in this case, I will disagree and say, yes, I understand your point about language, but This loss of respect for our individuals, for others, for elders, for our institutions, for the hierarchy of our society is unhealthy. It's unhealthy. It's not good for us. I'll tell you another story related and I'll probably get creamed for this one. But a good friend of mine just came back the other day from Greece. And one of the things he said to me, one of the first things he said to me was every building in Athens was covered with graffiti. Okay, so people say, well, graffiti is street art, blah, blah, No, it's desecration of buildings. You wanna have street art? Put up a canvas, do a mural on a wall. But when you do it randomly on people's property, that's not art, that's desecration, that's property destruction. That's a loss of respect. That person never thought, somebody owns this building. And it's as if I went into their house and threw my food on the floor. It's same idea. You're not respecting people's privacy, their property, their sense of who they are. You're encroaching on that. And that is a loss of respect. And so the graffiti and the language are part of the same problem. It's this degradation of our society and the loss of respect. The key word here is respect.

agree. I think we're talking about a couple of different things. And I agree with you a thousand percent. When I was growing up, we were growing up at the same time. I grew up before you did. Well, I'm a little older. You're right. My mother and my father's friends were Mr. and Mrs. It was never by their first name. I'll tell you a funnier story. My mother passed away several years ago, but one of her closest friends remained alive. And she and I...

You

still spoke all the time and one day she said to me, you ever going to stop calling me Mrs Horowitz? And I said no, I'm not. And she said, Enid, we've known each other now for 60 some odd years. You can probably call me Judy. And I never would. Till the day she died, I would never call her Judy because I respected her. I respected the fact that she was indeed older than I am. Now,

Well, I thought you didn't call her Judy because her name was Barbara. I thought that's what you're to say. Yes, I thought that was what you were going with here. I thought you were setting up the joke, right?

No, I didn't call her Judy because her name was Sam, but I, know, actually now that I mention it, since I am older than you, I think maybe Ms. Borden would be appropriate, but anyhow, so there's that and I agree with you and that is lost. So there's that piece of the coarsening of society. But I guess my issue, I wanted to kind of delve a little bit further into this notion of dirty words. know, George Carlin did the seven dirty words, know, I had to on television and all that.

Hahaha

Why does it bother you so when we do use dirty? I mean, I'm not saying you get crazy, but you know, I've never heard you curse. You've never heard me curse. And the reason you haven't heard me is because I respect the fact that you don't want me to curse. So I don't. So I don't have to curse around you. But I love to curse. It's one of my favorite things to do. And am I ashamed of it? I used to be. No, I'm not ashamed. Because in your book, you have a chapter on sticks and stones. won't break my bones, but words, names will never harm me. So to me, the F word or the BS word, it's just a word. It's just a word.

It's not just a word. That's what I was trying to get at. Because when you... It's not a conjunction. It's not green. It's not tall. Everybody knows that there's a certain connotation. It's like...

Okay, tell me why you think it's not just a word. Yeah.

It's like somewhere in the middle of sentence, you're just going to flip somebody the finger just to kind of round it out. It's that it's what I'm talking about. It's a very subtle thing. But that's why I prefaced my question to you. My discussion about this with you is do you feel that a society has lost something, that we've lost some love respect and you agreed? And I think you'd have to be living under a stone not to agree that that we have lost that. Right. And and so this is part of it. It's just another you know, I'll give you an example in medicine.

Yes we have.

Let's say you unfortunately get a disease and there is a slew of symptoms that are often associated with them, right? So the symptom by itself is not the problem. It's the underlying disease that is causing that symptom that's the problem. And that's how I look at language. It's a symptom. It's not the problem by itself, it's a symptom of the problem. It's this loss of respect we have for each other, for our society, for our institutions. It's why you see people saying F the United States or F ICE or F the police or burning the American flag. We had protests when we were in college. I I got... nearly arrested. I didn't get into medical school for a little while because I was known as a trouble making anti-war, anti-Vietnam War protester. This is true, right? I would never have thought about saying F you to the police. I respect the police. I, you know, I wouldn't get into a fight with a policeman. They're doing a hard job. I respect them. I get that not every policeman is a good person. Fine. But most of them are. And thank God we have them, right? Especially when you need them. So we're marching and the police are around us and I was given the, I never gave the finger to the police or yelled at them or called them a name. No, I was just protesting a war that I thought was incorrect. And I would never in a bill

Sure, sure.

million years have thought of burning an American flag. I love the country. I was just saying, I think my country is making a mistake here. We're killing our young people. We're killing Vietnamese. I just don't think this is a good idea. So I protested and I really looking back, I go, yeah, that was probably the right thing to do. But had I destroyed properly, you remember the weather underground, right? They popped up during that period and they were blowing up buildings and doing bad things. And I thought, even though I was very vehemently against the war. was on TV, I was giving little speeches, as ridiculous as that was. But I looked at those weather guys and I went, no, no, no, no, you're doing this wrong. Do not hurt people, do not blow up people. You have a right, we can make our case, but we should not be threatening police, hurting people, blowing up buildings. destroying property. No, I'm in the Martin Luther King camp on this one. And the reason is it's not just because it's quote wrong, it's because you end up with a disease and the disease is a loss of respect in our society. And the symptoms are one of the symptoms is our coarsening of our language. So I disagree with John McWhorter. It's a symptom of a disease. It's not by itself, you know, headache. You get a headache. Okay, most people get headaches. It either goes away by itself for a while, go lie down, or you take some ibuprofen or some acetaminophen and, you know, generally most of it goes away. So we don't make a big deal out of it. It's a symptom. In this case, it's a standalone symptom, it's not related to anything. But if you have a brain tumor, you might have the exact same headache. Okay, then it's a problem. Then that symptom, that headache, is a symptom of an underlying problem. So if you just say the F word, just sitting in a room by yourself, who cares? I curse sometimes. I mean, I'm not telling you I don't curse. But I don't curse in front of...

I try not to curse in front of other people other than my friends or something who know me, but if I'm in a public group, you're not gonna hear me say the F word, right? Or if I'm speaking publicly, you're not gonna hear me say the F word. I can say it in a room by myself when I fell and dislocated my finger. I might have actually, I don't know if I said the F word, but I could have, I certainly could have.

okay. All right.

I think you did, one of your neighbors told me you did, they heard you screaming that word and yeah, yeah. I see, okay, sure.

Maybe, maybe I wasn't screaming but I could have said it but I would never say it in a group. So there's the difference. So saying it by myself in a room or falling off, know, falling down and dislocating my finger after doing something stupid, right? I can say it. That's like saying it in room by myself, right? That is the headache without the brain tumor, right? But saying it in a group and using it publicly, that's the symptom of the underlying disease. That's the headache in the case of a brain tumor. It's a symptom of the disease. You see the difference?

Yeah, I do. No, I actually appreciate that. I actually do. So, but let me ask you, let's talk about bullying then, because that's also a disease. In my mind, it might even be worse than this one, because we're bullying children to the point now that some children are taking their own lives because of all the bullying that they've had to endure. That too, would you not say is a disease?

You know, I think you know a lot more about bullying than I do. I mean, I got bullied as a kid because I was a small, as you well know, I was the smallest kid and you know, I actually, I got bullied. I got picked on by bigger kids and I didn't like it. You know, maybe it wasn't, it didn't stick with me my, it didn't affect my life, let's put it that way, whereas I get things you're talking about are much more serious. So I know bullying is a big deal to you. We've not talked about why, I don't know if it's a disease. think it's his. I mean, I think it's you think about kids bullying other kids.

don't torment anybody. I adults bully each other as well, and that's just as horrible. But yes, okay.

Well, let's stick with kids. Let's start with kids. So kids, you know, I have four kids and six grandchildren. So bullying is a reflection of really bad parenting, really bad adults who haven't taught the kids what, you know, you don't treat people like that. Remember what you're here for, right? Remember our mission. You can start, you asked me once what I teach my grandchildren and certainly I would teach them. Let me tell you why you don't bully other people. A, you wouldn't like it to happen to you. That's a pretty easy thing for kids to understand. Right? You bully somebody. I could bully you. I'm bigger than you. And there's people that are bigger than me. They could bully me. So you don't want to do it because you wouldn't want to be done to you. And that's a pretty good rule of thumb. If you don't like something being done to you, you probably shouldn't do it to somebody else. That's a pretty simple one for a kid to understand. So I think it's just bad parenting. I think I told you the story once. was walking out of a, it turns out I was working out of a pool, a swimming pool area outdoors during a summer. For some reason I was alone. think maybe my family was ahead of me. I don't remember. And there was a family, another family right in front of me. And the mother, I overheard the parents, there were two kids and two parents. And the mother was saying to one of the boy children, said, listen, you you did the right thing. You never let, don't let anybody take advantage of you. And it was all I could do, not to jump around the front and go, wait, wait, wait, wait, can I help? That's not right.

you

What you want to teach your kids is not to never let anybody take advantage of you, but to tell them that nobody can take advantage of them because they're in charge of how they feel. It's the Viktor Frankl rule. You get to decide how you feel about everything. So if somebody treats you badly, the answer is not punch them in the face. The answer is understand that they can't hurt you unless you let them. If you really want to empower your kid, teach him or her that, that nobody can hurt them with words because they're in complete control of how they react to it. have to give that power away. Why would you ever give the power to determine how you feel to someone else? I think I'm gonna probably repeat this story but it's you know it's a good one I think but I think I've told you the story I think I've written about it where a graduate student is in a class and one of the other students says something is a woman as it turns out she says something derogatory about women or whatever. And she goes to the professor and said, you I'm very offended by this. You need to do something. And the professor looks at her and thinks about it. And the right answer, what the professor should then say is, look, you're an adult. He's an adult. As long as he didn't threaten you physically, you know, don't let his words affect you. Would you give him the password to your bank account? Would you give him the key to your house? No, you wouldn't give him either of those. So why are you going to give him the ability to determine how you feel? Why you let him get inside your head? Why are you giving him that power? Don't give him that power. It's yours. If you don't like it, you have two choices. Ignore it or go talk to him. it's not up for me to intervene. You're an adult, right? Adults have to, you know, so the thing he was trying to teach his graduate student was, hey, guess what? You have a superpower. You can't, don't let this guy bother you. Who the heck is he, right? Ignore him, talk to him if you want. You don't have to, but don't let him get you upset for certain, because you have control of that. kids don't, you know, I think I just told you recently about trying to teach one of my grandchildren this exact same thing, that he's in control of how he feels.

This is what we should be teaching our kids. So in terms of bullying and younger kids, there are two sides. One parent should teach your kids not to bully and why, because they wouldn't like it. And it's obviously the wrong thing to do. But you can empower the person who's being bullied as the bullier and the I don't know what you call a person who's being bullied. The bully-er and bully-er and the bully-er. Anyway, the person is being bullied. There should be a word for that. You can teach them that, hey, they can't unless they're physically assaulting you or in some way harming you.

It should be.

Ignore them, you know, don't give them that power. Don't give away your superpower to determine how you feel now adults bullying Honestly, unless it's physical. It's the exact same thing. You know you and I had an interesting conversation offline about Somebody who said something that you thought was offensive to me and you being my good buddy stood up for me, right and I didn't

That's right. That's right.

You know, it was very kind of you. I would never, as you know it, and you said to me, why didn't that bother you? And I said, why would I let that bother me? Why would I let that guy get under my skin? It's, you know. Why would I give them that power? I'm not going to give them that power. I'm not going to give anybody that power. I'm just going to, you know, I'm mostly going to laugh about it. So that's the point, right? So a, teach people not to bully. But if you're going to get bullied, don't give the bully or the power. That's ridiculous. Like handing them a $20 bill. Why would you do that? It's like giving them the code to your bank account. You're pinned for your ATM card. Don't do it. Don't give them the key to your house. Don't give anybody the power to do that to you. You have complete control. of how you feel. Enid (25:49.4) You know, you've been talking about that now since we began this podcast and I keep thinking I've got to get to that point. because as you so aptly said, I did let that person know that I was not happy with that, with the way I thought you were being treated. I guess had I been you instead of me, I would have just kept my mouth shut and let it happen and just say, well, he did it and I don't appreciate it. But I couldn't do that because it said something to me that I would allow somebody else to, in fact, bully, maybe bully, it's not the word, whatever the word is, you. And it bothered me. Okay, insult.

Insult. Yeah, you know what? I would have done the same. Honestly, if the tables were turned, I would have done the same thing and I would have defended you because that's fine. That's okay. That's a good thing. That's because we're friends and we care about each other and we love each other. So we're looking out for each other. That's perfectly fine. know, the point is that if you're on the receiving end of something like that, you don't have to go crazy. This is, here's a great example. Road rage, right? And we've talked about this.

Okay, well there you go. Yeah, yeah.

You when you think about it, so somebody cuts you off, and then, you wouldn't do this because you're way too mature, you're a woman, but a stupid immature man at any age would likely react and often react and go chasing after the person who cut him off and do something stupid. I've been guilty of that, right? It's completely idiotic on every level. But until what? Because we're way stupider than women. Women are way smarter than men.

Why do you think only men could do that and not women? Excuse me.

Look, obviously there's crossover, it's a Venn diagram, but I would say most women are way more mature than men. Sorry, I just, not to hurt my, right? So anyway, but anyway, the point is that if somebody cuts you off, it's their problem. It's not your problem.

Yeah. Well, I agree with that, but I...

Right, they're the ones that angry and upset and pissed off about something in their lives. Why are you making it your problem? Let them cut you off and go on and smile, you know? You see the point? It's just, don't give people, we do this right, but think about it. If we all, from the time we were children, were taught by our parents not to stand up for yourself and don't let anybody take advantage of you, but...

Yeah, I wish I could live that way, but everything bothers me.

Hey, guess what? Nobody can take advantage of you. You're in complete control of how you feel. What a marvelous life most of us would have had, or would have, right? How peaceful, how tranquil. And that's the truth. This is obvious. This is another thing that's obvious from the aerial view. You go, you look at, once you understand how the world works, you look at these things like this and it becomes so obvious. It's like, why doesn't everybody know this? Well, I mean, it took me a million years to learn this. not, I wasn't the leader of the pack. I'm like, I've said this many times. I'm late to the game. I've told you about my friend, the lawyer who saved me from getting beaten up on the tennis court. I've told you about my wife. I so there are a lot of people who are just light years ahead of me. But, you know, once you figure it out and the light goes on, then I think you're obligated to try and share it with as many people as you can and try and make people like, what are we doing in this podcast? You started off by saying we want to create a world with less stress.

Right, on the tennis court.

That's right.

Well, if you want less stress, remember the Viktor Frankl rule. You're in control of how you feel. Don't give that power away. Whether you're six or 16 or 60, don't give it away.

And I think I just looking at the clock and I see that our time has just about run out. I think that's a great way to end it though. I mean, you're right. Repeat that again. Let's talk again about if we want to relieve stress in our lives and bullying or insulting somebody is very, very stressful. You say step back, rethink and do what?

Remember that you're in control of how you feel. Nobody can control how you feel unless you let them, unless you give them that power. Never give that power away. It's yours and yours alone.

Thank you. Those are wise words to end on and that is where we will end today. We thank you again for listening. We thank you for sending us your insults and your plaudits. We appreciate it all we do. We love hearing from you. We thank you. Final word, Dr. Klein, before we end this and one more thing, me plug the book. It's Wisdom from the Era of the View, the Superpower that Can Change Your Life and This World by Dr. Mark.

Hahaha!

want one more question before we get end. We're talking about what people call you. Did any of your patients ever call you Mark or do they always call you Dr. Klein?

So this is interesting, my patients pretty much mostly called me Dr. Klein, but. I didn't really care about that. I always used to joke if you walk, I shouldn't say this, I'm gonna get in trouble. But I didn't care what people would call me. If they call me doctor, I don't really care. The other part is I can't get my former employees, who I've worked with for like 35 years, to call me by my first name, just like you said, with Judy Horowitz. They won't do it, they won't do it. And I said, that's fine, whatever they want. I mean, it's fine. It's very sweet in a way that they feel that way. It would be fine.

You can't you can't. Right, right. Yeah.

It's respect. It's respect.

It is, but I respect them. We have an equal respect for each other, so I don't really need that, but whatever.

Sure, sure. Okay. So now I must tell our listeners here that you finally let me, you told me I could call you Mark. So I'm very happy, very nice. Pretty soon you can start calling me Enid. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning in. We appreciate it. We'll speak to you next Monday. Love you too. You too. Peace.

you Very nice.

Yeah, love you, Miss Borden. Have a great day. Bye bye.