Treating people appropriately (a different frame)
I’ve been thinking more about the previous item. I find value in its closing hint that it might be helpful to treat people like people rather than labels.
Unfortunately I don’t know many people who use the word “coddling” to mean “cooking”. I suspect it may be difficult to coax people to think of coddling as a good idea. Our culture seems to frown upon coddling anyone or anything. It doesn’t help when the dictionary throws in an extra scoop of “excessive” to define the word.
I think we can get behind the idea of treating people like people. Bypassing the disparaging labels that distract us from that task seems helpful. Is trying to redefine “coddling” as a good thing more work than it’s worth, though?
Some words can be salvaged easily, redefined and reframed. Some words are so heavily loaded, however, that the effort to reclaim them may divert us from other worthy efforts.
Suppose we reframe our situation something like this: How do we make violent conflict unnecessary?
The world will become a better place if people who try to resort to violence are restrained. They should be stopped before they do harm. And they should be prevented from doing future harm. Whether they pack their own clothing with dynamite or dispatch armies to do their dubious bidding, the world will be better when they stop doing those things.
Fortunately most of us average people go through our lives without resorting to dynamite or military dispatch. If we can live and let live, if we can respect each others’ views just a little, if we can live decently without robbing others of their opportunity to live decently, then I suspect we can also support occasional restraint of people who refuse to live and let live.
In both cases we can talk about treating people appropriately.
