The Platitude Trap

I just have to get this off my chest. Congratulations to my daughter, Melissa, who graduated from college recently. I went to her, commencement ceremony, which was at Salisbury University and the head coach of the Washington Commanders was the speaker. I have only negative things to say about it, insofar as I paid attention at all.

I’ve only not been to one graduation that I should have gone to, and it was my own. The reason that I didn’t go to my graduation was it was the only one I legitimately could skip. It’s not just that the speeches range from tedious to very tedious, it’s the self-aggrandizement, everyone patting the graduates on the head and telling them how hard they worked.

The Commanders guy was typical, explaining how believing in himself, hard work dedica … fuck I’m boring myself.

It’s like they took notes on every bumper sticker in the parking lot on their way into the give the speech, found all the ones touting hope and self-empowerment, read them, and collected their check. Don’t get me wrong. I would take that check, and I would write that speech, but watching it was tough.

The central problem is there’s no chance of connecting with the audience. At least the Commanders guy had the advantage of being famous, adding gawkibility to the whole where legitimate interest could have been. The problem is, no one goes to graduation to hear the speeches. They endure the speeches for the sake of their diploma, or their loved one, or their jobs. It is a hostage situation, and it’s the rare speaker who can overcome that.

He was followed by (or preceded by, I’m fuzzy here), the student speaker. I forget how this one is selected, but it’s not, like, the valedictorian. It could have been the class president. The only redeeming part of any student speech is if they get all teary at the end and tap into the electricity buzzing around the emotional finality of it all: graduation, wedding, funeral.

This speech didn’t go there. As with the other speaker, her’s was a story of hidden inevitability and the irresistible force of self-belief.

I want to be clear that I don’t begrudge her a word. I am not her. She is a first-generation American and I’m sure has overcome much more than I’ve been faced with finding a place in this culture.

My concern is with slippery descriptions. I know the language is alive and that meanings and references can slip.

The theme of her speech (and of the internet and of regular life in general) is overcoming her social anxiety.

We are awash in people proclaiming their victory over social anxiety. There are people who have debilitating social anxiety. Who fight to leave the house, who are medicated, and need to sleep it off after too much interaction. I’ll own my old age (and terror of change culture) when suggest that maybe, rather than being afflicted with social anxiety, some people are just shy.

Social anxiety is an easy target, but we have to wonder at the speed with which dispositions become diseases. If there’s a name for it, it’s not your fault. If it’s not your fault, you don’t have to overcome it. If you choose to overcome it, it’s evidence that you’re in possession of a superior will. No one loses.

We have decided that if it makes you feel bad, it needs a disease name. There are two implications, here. The first is that there is blame. The second is that it can (and should) be placed.

The labels don’t bother me, the seeming reliance on them does.

My own conceit is a belief that trying harder is a great second (or third, or fourth, etc.) approach to any failure. But if just trying harder works, you have overcome an obstacle, not cured disease or managed a condition.

I tried thinking of it in terms of addiction. Maybe social anxiety is like nicotine addiction, some people reach a point where they “can’t” have social anxiety anymore and that allows them to stop. Others struggle with it their entire lives.

I buy that.

Still, if social anxiety is nicotine addiction, it is not heroin addiction. That means it’s perfectly fine to encourage people to just exert a little more will. If that’s the case, hell, launch all the platitudes you want at it.

I don’t think that’s the case, though. I don’t even think trying harder and believing in yourself is a solution (let alone the solution) to any significant problem. It’s telling that self-belief evangelists don’t recognize that. Of course, saying you accomplished something because you’re just better than other people doesn’t attract much of a crowd.

At the end of the day, that’s probably what gets to me the most about commencement speeches, they’re uninspired exhortations about unlimited potential.

Keep the Faith,

Tony

PostScript

I’ve been tinkering with this platitudes/assigning blame idea for a while, and will probably revisit it. I’d love some feedback (either direct or in the comments) on whether you think it’s natural or diabolical. Like, have we given up on any sense of meaning or is it being squeezed out of us?

I don’t wanna get paranoid, but sometimes I feel like I’m drowning in Newspeak.

There’s still some uncooked stuff in my brain about the rising predilection among adults to have children refer to one another as friends. For instance, my grandson doesn’t have classmates, he has “friends.” Some of his friends are good friends and some of his friends are bad friends. It’s probably just another top-down infantile attempt to influence kids unduly, but it smacks an awful lot of “comrad.”

I’m still knocking that around.

I hosted a couple of webinars this week for the ASBPE. The topics were a little inside baseball, but it was nice to be able to help direct a conversation between bright people struggling with single problem idea.

I have a knack for it, I think, and will likely get a chance to do more in the future. They seemed pretty happy with my volunteer effort. Plus, it is so rare to be able to listen to a discussion where people are solving problems together (or failing to) rather than just dunking on one another or bullshitting.

Gonna be a nutty couple months for me. I don’t really do much social media anymore, but if you’re at all interested, I’m going to do a Travel Journal in the chat. I’ll be (essentially) on the road from June 13 - July 14, traveling for business and for pleasure.