Junk and Memorial Day

Having moved to Madison a year ago, we were forced to look at more than the things we carried; we were confronted with the things we had accumulated over thirty years in the same previous place. For months we sifted, boxed, threw away, or gave away books we would never reference, old rollerblades, gloves, hats, jean jackets (yes, you CAN have too many jean jackets), and boom boxes that won’t connect with an iPod. Even now in a new house, we continue to find surprises in boxes stacked in our basement, (oh, THAT’s where the corn popper went).

It has been interesting to see the shift that things make from “stuff” to “junk.” I know it’s a global problem, not only because of the zillion acre toilet bowl out in the Pacific that swirls and swirls but can never flush the bottles, bags, vials, and plastic canisters too large for the birds to eat, but also because stuff is everywhere and we don’t even realize it is junk. Is junk food really food? Is spam on your computer really information? We live amid pink slime, junk mail, paper piles, and clothes we never wear. I am not innocent in this problem. My “green” footprint is a pair of EEE clown shoes. I can work on that. I know where the Salvation Army dropoff box is. I’ve promised to go through one box a day in our basement to store, use, or give away most of what we’ve accumulated.

The problem is bigger than plastic, junk food, or unsolicited credit cards. We have too much junk everywhere in our lives. Let’s start with email. I am amazed at how many emails I receive in a spirit of shock intended to create anger in me about some politician, government program, or scandal that turns out to be merely junk. If it fits one’s view or political philosophy, it gets passed on to dozens of others, unchecked. Sometimes I feel like the only person in the Midwest who uses Snopes, Factcheck, or Politifact. It’s an even greater sign of the disease that I’ve started getting emails attacking Snopes and Politifact in ways that are untrue. Even when I find something partly true, the missive is riddled with cherry-picking one or two facts, the fallacy of argumentum ad hominem, and unsupported generalizations. I thought we learned to avoid most of those in sophomore speech class. This stuff is worse than clutter; it’s junk.

So what do we do? There are plenty of books about sorting through the clutter in our lives based on how much we actually use things, so I’m not going to write about that. Their greatest weakess is that they have no idea how important old fishing equipment is. I’m more concerned with the junk in our minds. We shouldn’t let it in. That starts with a commitment to truth, not just an automatic, “Yeah, that guy ought to be in jail.” We know that some sources are better than others, but even so, I trust only what I read in multiple sources. If something is intended to make me angry, I immediately discount it, not because it is automatically false, but because the intent of the writer is not to inform me, but to make me angry, and if there’s one thing we don’t need these days, it’s more negative emotion instead of cooler heads. Besides, anger is even more self-destructive than it is destructive of others. So the first screen for me is information reported from multiple trusted sources in a way that doesn’t intend an angry response. Even the report of the worst thing possible, a murder for example, should not prompt a response in me that says, “Let’s get a posse together and go kill that guy.” It might seem just, but it’s terribly destructive for what it does to me.

The second screen for me is a reflection of the colors of reality. We do not live in a black and white world. No one is all bad, nor all good. No action is all bad, or all good. My response to life ought to be, “Yes, and…” or “Yes, but…” This is especially true politically. I find it impossible to argue that any one party has served our country well over a single election cycle, much less an entire generation. To me, even the labels, Democrat, Republican, conservative, liberal, independent, have become meaningless. References to Hitler are automatically dismissed as hyperbole.

My third screen is the taste test. What were the fruits of any action, policy, or law? Did it mostly help people? Did it help many people, not just a select few? Was it worth the cost? This test alone makes most wars a waste of precious resources, and if you don’t believe that, look at the latest data on maimed soldiers, and the fact that nearly half of all who survived their tour(s) have applied for disability.

On this Memorial Day, we ought to do more than attend a parade and remember someone we lost. Those are not enough. We ought to pledge to be better citizens, to worry less about how any one thing concerns me and worry more about what is true from reliable, multiple sources reported sensibly, what are the complexities and colors in every person and event, and what are the fruits of our actions? We owe the dead that much, but we also owe it to the living, our fellow citizens, our children and now for me, a grandchild. Let’s clear out the divisive, angry, self-serving, inaccurate, wasteful junk in our minds.