The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
\nMoves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit,
\nShall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
\nNor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u201dOmar Khayyam<\/p>\n
Of all the words I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve read during my 76 years on Earth, I find it difficult to imagine a bit of verse more profound. And as a writer, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m obviously aware of how difficult it is \u00e2\u20ac\u201d as the rhyme by the Persian poet indicates \u00e2\u20ac\u201d to unsay it.<\/p>\n
A handful of emails I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve received \u00e2\u20ac\u201d I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure many others in my Facebook circle also received them \u00e2\u20ac\u201d have made me almost antagonistic toward the ease with which people can say things they later regret, or even worse, say and write things because of the cloak of anonymity.<\/p>\n
Let me explain:<\/p>\n
A long-time acquaintance has sent me (and presumably many others) emails urging some kind of immediate action. Does she want us to pray? Declare war? Send money? Most commonly, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re being asked to jump on the bandwagon, denounce someone or some group and, of course, forward the email to 100 others.<\/p>\n
In the past, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve written about the once-expensive habit of forwarding chain letters. Back in the day, before modern electronics, correspondents whom we seldom heard from, except for requests that we forward their letters, would ask us to send off some 25 copies of the letter we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d just received, after adding our name to the list and hoping it would rise.<\/p>\n
Remember that? Even though postage, photo-copying and stationery are expensive, at least the process gave us a glimmer of hope that we would win zillions of dollars. Things have changed. Today it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easy to forward an email message to everyone on our correspondents\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 list, virtually free of charge.<\/p>\n
But that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only part of the issue. Wait, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more.<\/p>\n
The 11th century poet, Khayyam, explains that no amount of tears can wash away messages. One of the things I dislike about the Internet is the ease with which users can protect their anonymity. If I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m reading a hateful comment from someone in New York City, or even Amarillo, the chances of knowing who said what are nil. At the same time, I believe, people are prone to believe whatever is written down, regardless of its speciousness.<\/p>\n
For example, the former friend, who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s moved far away, once sent many of us an email deploring plans, headed up by Barack Obama, to set up many service stations, starting in Detroit and radiating outward, to provide free gas to the impoverished.<\/p>\n
The logic was that the poor, in major cities, often lacked the money to fuel their cars to get to doctors.<\/p>\n
Had our erstwhile friend checked, she would have noted that the origin of the free-gas plan was The Daily Currant. Had she dug a little deeper she would have discovered that The Currant draws its fame through satire. The Daily Currant, like The Onion, is an American satirical news blog that focuses on politics, technology and entertainment. A number of its satirical stories have been taken for true news reports by press.<\/p>\n
Apparently, the correspondent never got that far. Instead, she wrote a sentence with 25 exclamation points (to indicate that she really meant it), leaving us to wonder, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What part of satire don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you understand?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
The writer reminds me of many who sought to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153put that atheist in her place\u00e2\u20ac\u009d after swallowing the bait about Madeline Murray O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Hare, the notorious atheist whose persistence led to the elimination of requirements that students in public schools take part in religious instruction.<\/p>\n
For decades, anything even hinting of secularism was attributed to O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Hare, including efforts to remove religious programming from the networks. Interesting how many times people have associated church-and-state matters to O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Hare\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s machinations. What some people forget is thatO\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Hare and her son were murdered in 1995 when she was almost 80.<\/p>\n
But yet, some people continue to accuse her of pushing her atheist agenda.<\/p>\n
She must have a very persistent ghost.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
The final (so far) installment from my transplanted emailing acquaintance arrived this week. The request is to help \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Christians bond together, voice their concerns and vote.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not sure what we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re supposed to vote on, or for whom.<\/p>\n
Her email attacks Obama, who, according to her, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153prays with the Muslims!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153is encouraging schools to teach the Quran for extra credit, while at the same time, they cannot even talk about the Bible, God, pray, or salute the American Flag.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easy to stack facts, combine them with rumor and hearsay, and justify our position by assuming that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153everybody believes it, so it must be true.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
As a Christian, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an Election Central in Heaven canvassing votes. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t buy the notion that anyone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s keeping score up there or that the sheer number of forwarded emails will be part of any celestial swaying or arm-twisting.<\/p>\n
Innovations like the Internet and Facebook have made it oh-so-easy to spout feelings and attitudes (remember the cloak of anonymity) without grounding the words in facts, good judgment, knowledge or research.<\/p>\n
My long-ago friend peppers her emails with capital letters, apparently to make her points seem stronger. For her sake, I hope she heeds the poet Omar Khayyam\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s words. \u00e2\u20ac\u2122Tis a pity that neither piety nor wit nor tears can undo the distortions in that email.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
I would appreciate emails or phone calls from others who received the same email I got this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit, Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it. \u00e2\u20ac\u201dOmar Khayyam Of all the words I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve read during my 76 years on Earth, I find it difficult to imagine a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1363"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1364,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363\/revisions\/1364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}