Buddhist Marketer

Liberated: An Assault On Kindness

I’ve finally posted a new piece for Thinking:Marketing; those on the email list should have received the password by now (holler if not).

This, of course, liberates the previous piece, “(Situational) condescension is a moral obligation“.  A snip:

The bubble might not have gotten so big in the first place if corporate cultures didn’t discourage the public denouncement of bad ideas

I don’t place a premium on blowing sunshine up people’s hindparts.

At my high school, a math/science magnet, you came strong or not at all, an intellectual style that suits me, but generally pisses most people off. Even some circles at Yale felt the dismissive, condescending tone that my skewering of poorly-considered arguments generally took was inappropriate for the cashmere-sweater and pearl-necklace set. Whatevs. I was trained in a school of thought that assumes we’re all intelligent people, and none of us are going to cry to our mommies if someone rips our moronic ideas a new orifice. Au contraire: we’ll become stronger people for having endured the thrashing. (Cue Nietzsche.)

Click here to read the post in full. (It comes with a flow chart!)

When does thoughtful consideration become coddling?

My older sister posted an article entitled “Disability couldn’t stop Michigan woman’s quest for romance” to Facebook the other day. With it, she included the following comment:

One interesting aspect of the article, the idea that ramps and accommodations are “coddling.” Insight into the dominant cultures perspective.

Naturally I had to read:

Shannon Wiltse … was born without several standard parts …

“You need to know,” Shannon told Allen, [a man who she met online with whom she had been chatting for six weeks and was preparing to meet in person] “that I’m missing everything from the knees down, on both legs, and on my left arm from the elbow down, and on my right hand I have one digit, just one finger.”

The article continued, under the subhead of “No coddling allowed”, as follows:

But the Wiltses never … pitied or pampered her. Their home had no ramps, no easy door handles, not even a stool to help her into bed.

Uh, Beavis?

coddle: to treat with extreme or excessive care or kindness

I don’t think that a modicum of effort to meet the unique needs of your own child is coddling, pitying, or pampering. In fact, I feel that making your kid conform to norms to which she is physically unable is plainly unkind.

Geez, if I had to, like, do a pull-up before getting dinner each night? Or, if my parents had door handles that were too high for me to reach?

Being considerate isn’t pampering or babying.  Rather, Shannon Wiltse’s dad comes off as sounding kind of like a bully in the article.  Yuckers.

But maybe I’m reading too much into it. ?