“This is triggering,” a young woman has recently been captured crying out on video. I’ll say. This past week on the University of North Carolina campus at Chapel Hill that selfsame young woman was so triggered by an image at a pro-life display that she allegedly hauled off and punched one of the young men staffing the exhibit. I must say “allegedly,” as there is a misdemeanor assault charge to that effect, and until she is proven guilty of it in America one always is careful to say “allegedly,” even when, as in this case, there is video of the event. Still, “allegedly” is the right word within the confines of the American judicial system.
What jumped off the page—or rather jumped out of the video—at me was the fact that she said, even as she was about to hit the fellow she had the presence of mind to exclaim, “this is triggering!” It seemed odd to me that bit, for I had always assumed that the way something triggering had to work would be more subliminal, i.e. something you really couldn’t identify until later, perhaps even through counseling or the like, as having been the triggering factor. But she did indeed identified it even as she, again, allegedly, launched a barrage of punches on the guy who was standing there near the display.
Wow, that’s pretty triggering! And it didn’t take long for me to ponder this and consider that if a mere image on a-frame sign could trigger someone up like that, how much more powerfully words might do so. After all, Socrates didn’t walk around carrying image-rich red-figure or black-figure vases, though both were readily available in the Athens of his day, trying to trigger people up, but he walked around merely equipped with probing words and ideas. Words and ideas meant to keep freedom safe both through instruction, for that was in part what he was about, and by a sense of devotion both to individuals and community at large. His chats were trigger-rich, at least of Plato’s accounts of them are even halfway correct representations of the original events. I imagine Plato wrote the Socratic dialogues more to catch the spirit of that great unpublished philosopher than to try to conjure from memory the exact words, or even to capture Socrates’ own recollection of them that could have been recounted to Plato privately, over a glass of wine or two.
What’s my point? My point is really a question. Is triggering all that bad, especially on a college campus? I mean, when I went to college my professors challenged me to think, to ask questions that made me uncomfortable, to consider issues from angles and vantage points that had hitherto been foreign to my way of thinking. In fact, my best professors were more trigger happy than Billy the Kid, maybe even than Al Capone. One professor, Mary Schweitzer De Grys, who taught an anthropology course I took on South American cultures (quite a large topic), forced me to ask hard questions about class structure and urban development, and in so doing provoked a level of compassion in me for South America’s urban poor (and, synecdochically, with all impoverished people) that I had not hitherto known. Dr. De Grys was, I suppose, what would now be called a triggerer. And, as this is teacher appreciation week, it is appropriate that I, all these years later, thank her for it.
My friend, the philologist whom I mention from time to time, may or may not have been a spy for the United States government, and if he were, then at one point perhaps he was more than a mere triggerer—perhaps he was a triggerman. I’m not entirely sure about that, but nowadays he seems to have all the marks of at least a triggerer, insofar as he is an educator and seems to take his role as one quite seriously. On that note, I shall close these natterings, with the hope that that same friend doesn’t get punched in the face for challenging his students. Yet, now that I think about it, if he should, chances are that he will have deserved it anyway.
It will be a great disappointment to you, I’m sure, to know that I finally went to a conference without my friend, the philologist, whom I often accompany to philological congresses. I enjoy going with him to those meetings in no small part because every time I do something exciting happens. I would write about that now, but frankly you would probably not believe me if I did write about it, as the events that follow him around are, frankly unbelievable. There has been gun fire, mad pursuits in swiftly driven automobiles, occasional fisticuffs, vel sim. And, add to that, an acute awareness of what vel sim. actually means. One can guess based on etymology; and one does guess, of course, for rarely would one hazard looking up such an abbreviation in a dictionary, as 1) there’s a decent chance it won’t show up there; and 2) even if it did, there’s a better than decent chance it will be exactly what you thought it was: “or similar” or “or the like.” But having him around obviates the need for a dictionary or even guesswork, and obviates, too, the need to look up the word “obviates.”
But that is off the topic of my particular congress, one that I went to quite on my own, one for writers; thus, to return to that topic. I am writing to respond obliquely to one of the papers that address the YA (young adult) audience. I’m not even sure now why I wandered into that session, but I did; and when I got there I got an earful about Generation “Z”. That’s the latest generation, the one that was born in the year 1995 or later. And what I learned was that they are a generation that expects service, particularly individualized service, and a generation that has a deep sense of solidarity. The speaker saw this as a strength; could it not be argued that it is as indicative of a herd mentality? Populist movement? Probably the latter is, admittedly, going too far.
“cancer.” By cancer I do not mean the astrological sign “Cancer,” nor do I mean the Latin word cancer, which actually signifies a “crab” or “crawfish,” even though a crawfish is much more like a lobster than a crab. Rather, by cancer I mean just that, cancer, the destructive and debilitating disease. And I mean it because I was in Houston this week in a large hospital complex known as M.D. Anderson. There I saw some noble souls battling cancer with courage, and doing so just now in this Christmas season. None seemed to me to be feeling sorry for himself, none seemed overly concerned with the fact that that her hair had fallen out. One and all, so it seemed, presented the face of courage, of confidence, yet another C-word—the “plus one” of our title. And that confidence and courage were not the regular kind that many of us have. Rather this was a case of courage and confidence in the face of the imminent danger of cancer.
Those folks’ confidence may have derived from them being in the midst of such a vast medical complex, imposing in its size, rife with competent research doctors, kind nurses, and a wonderfully caring staff. Or, perhaps, it came from the fact that they saw so many like themselves walking around—still walking, still living, still fighting cancer. Or it may have been generated by or at least fostered by the Christmas carols they heard being performed in the lobby, carols of hope and renewal, of God caring about mankind so much that he became a baby in a stable. Or was it something that was infused in them from a spouse, a friend, or maybe even God himself? In any case, courage and confidence went together there and seemed to me to take some of the fear out of the word cancer.
It is always a strange and wonderful privilege to go to a philological congress. That word, congress, may sound to some perhaps a bit old-fashioned. Nowadays, in the States at least, such a meeting is called just that, a meeting, usually preceded by the word annual and followed by specifics such as “
er all, true north is not precisely magnetic north, which itself differs from grid north. So, who is to say what ‘north’ really is anyway?” And thus it is that the person who has thoroughly adopted this mindset can’t intervene when someone is going the wrong way on the principle that he or she should not presume to know that his own way is the right way. He prefers his direction, but it is only a preference.
