{"id":3192,"date":"2013-05-01T01:00:48","date_gmt":"2013-05-01T08:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/goodletters\/?p=3192"},"modified":"2013-04-30T22:57:40","modified_gmt":"2013-05-01T05:57:40","slug":"this-is-the-way-the-world-ends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/goodletters\/2013\/05\/this-is-the-way-the-world-ends\/","title":{"rendered":"This Is the Way the World Ends"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>Confucius thought that social unrest could stem from dissociation between language and reality. A \u201crectification of names\u201d was called for when words no longer related to their material referents. But how do you rectify emotions or conscience? How do you re-sensitize a world gone numb?<\/p>\n

Lately, I\u2019ve come across a little interjection of indifference\u2014\u201cmeh\u201d\u2014that tersely appraises the emotional lethargy of our age. There\u2019s a certain economy to the remark, a complete confluence of sound, syllable, and even appearance that expresses the languor of a soul that won\u2019t be stirred by what\u2019s posited for its consideration.<\/p>\n

If a grunt-like \u201ceh\u201d is the vocal equivalent of a shoulder shrug, the addition of the \u201cm\u201d somehow enervates the utterance further, conveying both the anemic ennui of the subject and a dismissive judgment of the object.<\/p>\n

Although pop-culture credits The Simpsons<\/em> with spreading its use, you tend to run across meh mostly in print. The depleted way in which it\u2019s uttered doesn\u2019t have the same impact as it when it\u2019s spelled out; in fact, I\u2019m not convinced it\u2019s really being heard in a distinguishing way yet. But once it\u2019s seen enough and its semantic difference acculturated, people will speak it more. Right now, it\u2019s the kind of thing that shows up in comments sections and on smug T-shirts.<\/p>\n

The impact of meh seems proportionate to how much apathy is shown towards that which was meant to elicit emotion. For example, in one of its initial outings (again, The Simpsons<\/em>) it was used to put across the younger generation\u2019s overall dispassion about things like triple bypass surgery.<\/p>\n

In comments-section jousts, someone might mention the Jewish holocaust to make a point, only to be answered: \u201cMeh. There were lots of so-called \u2018holocausts\u2019 just as deadly as that one in the twentieth century.\u201d The shock of the reply also comes with a subtext: \u201cI\u2019m being realistic and objective. You\u2019re being emotional and simplistic.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few weeks back, doing research, I was confronted by the phrase in conjunction with a press story shouldering its way onto the airwaves.<\/p>\n

The discussion was one of those \u201cmedia self-reflection\u201d moments. Print, television, radio, and internet news sources were asking whether it was true that they\u2019d ignored the criminal trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell. He\u2019s the Philadelphia abortionist charged with murdering four babies (the original count was seven) born alive in his clinic, and also of causing the death of Karnamaya Mongar, a Nepalese refugee.<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t know the story\u2014and that was the critics\u2019 charge, that the press purposefully kept you in the dark\u2014the facts from the grand jury report<\/a>\u00a0are these:<\/p>\n

Found in Gosnell\u2019s flea and rat-infested clinic\u2014with blood-soaked floors and urine-ridden air\u2014were the body parts of forty-five children (feet, primarily, but also whole legs, being preserved in milk jugs, orange juice cartons, and cat-food containers). Witnesses\u2014patients and clinic workers\u2014testified that many of the remains belonged to babies who had slipped from the womb during partial-birth abortions.<\/p>\n

Flailing there\u2014one worker said that they squealed like \u201caliens\u201d for twenty minutes\u2014the infants would then undergo a \u201cmedical procedure\u201d known as \u201csnipping\u201d: Gosnell inserted scissors into their necks and cut their spinal columns. He reportedly charged according to the child\u2019s size\u2014sometimes seven and a half month-old infants\u2014and joked about how they \u201cflopped around like chickens\u201d afterward, and that some were big enough to \u201ccarry him home.\u201d One child was born in a toilet, thrashing about in the water before she died. In fact, body parts consistently obstructed the plumbing.<\/p>\n

Further, Gosnell seems to have been something of a racist. Black himself, he performed his procedures on minorities in the abattoir downstairs, whereas white women were serviced in the cleaner spaces above. Numerous sickened and maimed patrons complained to authorities, but nothing was done. No one inspected the place. Not for two decades.<\/p>\n

So there were many angles to this story\u2014criminal, political, social; something for everyone. And the charge was that the mainstream press\u2014with notable exceptions (J.D. Mullane<\/a>, for one)\u2014remained almost completely absent during the trial. The picture above is that of the courtroom benches reserved for the media. Apparently, nobody cared to hear; it was all one big meh.<\/p>\n

The reasons proffered were that Gosnell\u2019s was only a \u201clocal crime story\u201d (the rejoinder: weren\u2019t Trayvon Martin\u2019s and Caylee Anthony\u2019s the same?); it was \u201ctoo grisly\u201d (Newtown? Sandusky?); or, quizzically, it was \u201ctoo charged with partisanship.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Victor Davis Hansen pointed out, had the victims been dogs, as in Michael Vick\u2019s story, we\u2019d have had blanket coverage and unified outrage. But here? Meh.<\/p>\n

Some counter-reaction to the critics is telling. A follower on Dave Weigel\u2019s twitter account (Slate<\/em>) dismissed the whole affair with a \u201cmeh.\u201d She said the trial was only being used for \u201cpolitical posturing.\u201d Subsequently, at a congressional committee hearing, Planned Parenthood lobbyist Alisa Snow wouldn\u2019t agree that a baby born in the \u201cGosnell circumstances\u201d\u2014breathing, moving\u2014was herself a patient, deserving of respect and attention. The child\u2019s fate was still contingent; it was a \u201chealth care\u201d decision, she said.<\/p>\n

But if there is no common ground here\u2014with a live child\u2014then I ask where? If this doesn\u2019t appall everyone, what will? When you look right at this business and won\u2019t call it what it is? Worse, won\u2019t feel that it is what it is?<\/p>\n

If that\u2019s so, then what\u2019s left to be rectified? Names are the least of it.<\/p>\n

This is the way the world ends, <\/em>said T.S. Eliot, Not with a bang but a whimper.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll go him one step further: yes, with a whimper, but with no plaintiveness in that sound, neither of remorse nor even of self-pity. A whimper unmoved by its own end, let alone that of others; the bored sigh of those who have hollowed out their capacity to bother, and whose three-lettered epitaph dies in the smothered torpor of their own contempt.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Confucius thought that social unrest could stem from dissociation between language and reality. A \u201crectification of names\u201d was called for when words no longer related to their material referents. But how do you rectify emotions or conscience? How do you re-sensitize a world gone numb? Lately, I\u2019ve come across a little interjection of indifference\u2014\u201cmeh\u201d\u2014that tersely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1049,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,1],"tags":[339,338,146],"class_list":["post-3192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-g-harmon","category-uncategorized","tag-abortion","tag-apathy","tag-society-and-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nThis Is the Way the World Ends<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Confucius thought that social unrest could stem from dissociation between language and reality. 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