Who do you love?
What do you love?
How do you protect them?
Toni Morrison writes that “it is vital to know what ‘the things we love’ are, in order to care for them,” and she is extending the idea that the things we love cannot be touched by that which is strange to us. In essence, our existence in community not only clarifies who we are but also what we love and wish to keep out of harm’s way.
Let us proceed with the understanding that we each have particular tribes, family units, cultures, or structural institutions where we identify and belong; however, is it also possible that we exist in divine community, such that the actualization of my humanity is mystically bound to the fulfillment of yours? Thus, to love my neighbor and myself, I must also figure out a way to keep you safe and untouched by the strangeness of fear, evil, and darkness.
The tragedy of technology is the acceleration that has overtaken us. Instant, overnight, and fast are descriptive precursors to choice. Morrison observed futile rewards in the form of “monumentalized entertainments, little pleasures, and tiny seductions,” as the distractions that erode freedom. In its place comes consumerism, which breeds “mindlessness” and dictates to buy, trade, and sell.
Whereas compassion compels mindfulness, and urges us to ask: Is this good? Will this help? Does this cause harm?
The allure of power and profit, Morrison continues, changes neighbors into consumers, such that our value is not in our generosity but what we own. So in the self-focus of acquisition, we forget about the impact of actions on others, and we fail to consider the intent of our words.
But what if we chose our words as if protecting that which we love?
When Dean Barnlund, the communication theorist and teaching scholar, posited claims toward a dynamic, interactive communication model, which valued the listener as more than a passive recipient of information and actually an active participant in the making of meaning, he asserted three types of intentions encoded in messages by the sender/speaker:
- To coerce, which ignores the values of the listener.
- To exploit, or obscure information so that only one meaning seems attractive, which subverts the values of the listener.
- To facilitate, or use words and language that remove threats and encourage independence of meaning, which respects the values of the listener.
Meanwhile, as I apply these lenses to our recent topic of school choice and the education marketplace, and the heavy reliance on marketing mechanisms rather than pedagogical innovation to appeal to families – consumers – I wonder about the actual intent of the messaging. Is it to coerce, exploit, or facilitate?
Morrison writes that marketing vocabulary fails because of the “pleasure it takes in performability,” because it sacrifices depth and moral authority, replaces contemplation with immediacy, and enables behavioral reinforcement rather than liberation.
If our work is to awaken, enlighten, and transform through self-empowerment, then should marketing do any more or any less than facilitate?
Can language be the currency of connection?
And our intent be to understand rather than be understood?
