I know some of my long time readers are rather puzzled at my frequent digressions, especially my forays into spelling and grammar. I know they probably think they are simply one more example of my off topic posts, along with pictures of my son or rants about the declining quality of science fiction in modern culture, but they actually have a point. (For that matter, the science fiction post did too, but I'll get to that later.) The reason I see spelling and grammar as significant is that the way those topics are being treated, the arguments being used and attitude displayed, is symptomatic of many of the political and cultural problems we experience in other areas.

I suppose I should start by summing up what I have written before on this topic in general. As I see it, there are two related trends in our modern culture. First, a tendency toward "non-judgmental" attitudes, which means, in practice, a refusal to demand, or even expect, a standard of behavior on the part of anyone¹.  This leads to many problems, which I shall describe shortly, most prominently, the erosion of predictability² and all the ills that brings with it. The second trend is the veneration of the young, that is the tendency to revel in all things juvenile³. In some ways one feeds into the other. In the past, there was an expectation at a certain age one would put aside childish things,. Oh, perhaps an adult would retain a quirky affection for some childish game or interest, but for the most part it was expected one would "sow his wild oats" as a teen and young adult, then, as he matured, would adopt the attitudes of his parents. But the irresponsibility of youth is enjoyable, so, freed of any standards or expectations, it is inevitable that many would find themselves remaining perpetual youths. As a consequence, when their children felt the need to rebel, they rebelled not against the stodgy parental standards that had existed for generations, but against the prolonged youth of their parents, making each generation have to go farther and farther to "push the envelope", with the results we see around us.

But I will return to that in a moment. First, let me get back to my original point. Spelling and grammar.

Spelling and grammar are simple to comprehend, provided you don't weight them down with all the emotional politically correct baggage many academics do⁴. Both are sets of rules developed over time to make communication easier and more clear. For example, we standardize spelling so that it is generally clear precisely which word is intended. In some cases the fact that two words share a spelling can lead to confusion, but, in general, contextual clues make that unlikely⁵. Similarly, as English lacks the elaborate cases that make Latin and Greek much more clear⁶, our rules of grammar, especially positional rules, are all the more important. For instance, you cannot end a sentence with a preposition⁷ because a preposition must have an object, which, of necessity must follow it.

But, many will ask, why must we bother with these rules? If you can understand what I say or write, who cares if I follow some stodgy old rules?

And that brings me back to standards in general, and predictability in particular. We have rules, stodgy or otherwise, precisely so that people know what to expect, so that behavior, communication and all interactions are understandable. Let us turn for a moment from spelling and to human interaction. It is a general rule in our society that we do not assault one another without provocation. We rely upon this every day, going about our business without having to expect that any given stranger will assault us. However, if one individual decides to break with this rule, he can create complete chaos, as the anticipations are dashed and those who encounter him and his random, unprovoked attacks, will probably be unable to revert to their previous behavior, and end up spending much of their time int he future defending against potential attacks.

Now, granted, rules of grammar and spelling are not quite so dramatic, but they still are standards which allow for regularity in interactions and communication. And the lack of respect which they receive is symptomatic of the lack of respect we have for all standards. Many blame the social revolution of the 1960's for this, but I think that is rather superficial. Many of the changes of the 60's have roots going back much farther. At the very least, we have the 50's beat generation, the socialist trends of the 30's and the earlier one of the teens, and the even earlier Romantic era, as well as precursors such as Rousseau and others⁸.

When it started really doesn't matter. What does matter is the outcome. Standards and expectations exist for a reason. A common culture exists for a reason. And, on a more mundane level, spelling and grammar rules exist for a reason. When they know what to expect, people can function without fear and with a reasonable expectation of what will come next. They can plan ahead, the more reliable the farther ahead, and the ability to plan ahead is the prerequisite for great wealth. In addition, being freed of worries resulting from not knowing what to expect, they can stop wasting resources on preparing for unlikely eventualities. If society is largely safe and harmonious, for example, you don't need to fortify your home, arm yourself tot he teeth, and live each moment prepared to defend yourself. Consistency and regularity frees resources for other uses, and also allows us to plan, making the best use of those resources.

And all of that is what we have sacrificed on the altar of "understanding".

Make no mistake, by pushing an agenda of "non-judgmental" and "multicultural" understanding, the left is slowly but surely undermining the regularity of life. They claim otherwise, argue that by "respecting" every culture and refusing to judge we will be more "inclusive" and thus more stable and peaceful. But the truth has been otherwise. By forcing each group to retain some degree of insularity⁹, we have done nothing but increase balkanization, to lose the benefits of the common culture, and in general to make life less predictable, less consistent, and much less reliable.  And the saddest part is, in so doing, they have destroyed any chance of creating a truly polyglot culture.

The greatest lie of multiculturalism is that the past melting pot somehow forced western culture on everyone. In truth the melting pot first brought other European cultures to the largely British settlers, and then brought the cultures of the rest of the world to that polyglot European culture. While the melting pot did expect everyone to ascribe to some basic common culture, it also was more than willing to absorb the elements of other cultures. Let us not forget, on a mundane level, the "xenophobic" melting pot gave us take out pizza, Chinese and Mexican.

But instead the multiculturalists create of each group a hostile, insular community, and that stands int he way of true understanding. And worse, by providing no common means of communication, no common culture, it also makes more difficult communication between those groups. In other words, in pushing "understanding" they have destroyed all real possibilities of communication.

Ironically, the old, maligned common culture of the melting pot did more to promote understanding and acceptance than all the high sounding multicultural ideas.

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1. See "The Problem With Cultural Relativism", "Non-Judgmental Ethics?", "Pluralism Versus Multiculturalism", "More Harm From Multiculturalism", "Children's Programming Versus Self-Improvement", "Mainstreaming hate", "The Costs of Understanding", "Eurocentrism? Racism? Liberal Traits All" and "Tolerance? Really?".

2. I will discuss this in detail later in the post, but for those interested in my earlier arguments see "In Praise of Slow Changes", "Predictability", "The Problem With Cultural Relativism", "The Shortcomings of Pragmatism", "The High Cost Of Protection", "The Problem With Evolving Standards", "England Becoming a Third World Nation", "Why Judicial Activism Hurts", "Interpretation and Activism", "Pragmatism Revisited", "Shaky Reasoning", "Expectations", "Conservatism, Incremental Change and Federalism","Inflation and Uncertainty", "Empathy" Threatens not "Justice" but Predictability", "Sotomayor and Empathy"and "Humor and Nightmare".

3. I discuss this at some length in "Frightened for our Future", "The Adoration of Youth", "I Blame the Romantics", "Revisiting an Old Topic", "The Sky Is Falling! Again! Really! We Mean It This Time!", "Tired and Annoying Theme", "IMDB Makes My Case", "A Thought On the Watchmen", "Graphic Novels, Comic Books and Cultural Barometers" and "An Interesting Article". Many of the topics covered in those posts will be revisited here, so it may be worthwhile to wait and read those after finishing this post. Then again, it isn't as if it will "ruin the surprise", so if you want to follow the links, feel free to do so. I'll still be here when you return.

4. I am speaking of those who see "patriarchal hegemony" or "cultural imperialism" in "forcing the ruling paradigm upon subjugated groups" and other such nonsense. The arguments offered up in favor of accepting "nonstandard English". Of course there are other arguments foisted on poor unsuspecting college students as well. For example, the "gender neutral language" I discussed in "A Question About Language" and "Oh No, Not Again". There are others, but I think the best remedy is to read "Deceiving Themselves?", "A Western Evil?" and "Why People Don't Take Academics Seriously", as those two posts should make clear how much weight to give many academics, especially in the humanities. (And this comes form someone who aspired to teach history at one time, whose father in law taught university history for nearly five decades. I respect true academics, have great reverence for thoughtful work in the humanities, but our modern universities are the birthplace of a lot more nonsense than scholarship.)

5. There are exceptions. For instance, in the children's book "Hop on Pop", one sentence reads "My brothers read little words..." The interesting thing about this sentence is, when reading to my son, I read "read" in the present tense, while my wife reads it in the past. As the following page in clearly present tense ("My father can read...") I believe I am right, but reading only that single sentence, even with the illustrations, it is possible to argue for both readings. So clearly context is not always sufficient to make meanings completely clear.

6. Though, again, even with several cases, Latin and Greek can be quite unclear in some cases, especially in sentences with many clauses, or ones which use too many rhetorical tricks, as anyone who had to suffer through some of the more flowery Latin rhetorical pieces can attest.

7. I heard an interesting argument offered that some of our sentence ending prepositions are importations of the German detachable particle, possibly retained by German speaking immigrants. For example "to go out" being ausgehen, in a sentence becomes "Ich gehe aus". It is an interesting argument, and I suppose in informal contexts "go out" is such a common usage it could be seen as acceptable, but as I argued in "Beyond Grammar and Spelling", accepting "you know what I mean" as a valid argument is the first step along the path to abolishing all standards. And logically how much difference is there between "I'm going out" and the the stupid "getting your drink on" or even the abhorrent "where you at?" Accept one and you inevitably accept them all.

8. I wrote a bit about Rousseau and related nonsense in "Rousseau's Foolish Legacy", "Happiness", "Opinion Masquerading as Fact" and "A Western Evil?".

9. I dealt with this in greater detail in  "The Important Lesson of Racism" and in parts of  "The Carrot and the Stick - Or How to Create a Fat, Lazy, Surly Donkey".

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POSTSCRIPT

I realize I cover rather a broad range of topics here and make some pretty dramatic leaps. Hopefully the footnotes and the linked articles help fill in some of the larger lacunae. Still, I have a feeling I will need to elaborate upon this in more detail at some future date. I would like to blame the omissions on having written this in fits and starts while working, but I am afraid that even had it been written all at once I would have failed to properly connect all the dots. Still, as I said, I trust my readers can fill in the blanks, or, if not, will at least let me know where I failed to explain my conclusions so I can fill in the details in a future post.

POSTSCRIPT II

As I was completing the footnotes it occurred to me that another of my favorite topics ties directly to this one. Wikipedia, about which I have written many times (see "The Failure of Wikipedia", "Life is Strange" and "The Power of Myth on the Internet" among others), is essentially an attempt to write an encyclopedia without standards. Basically it is an effort to say "you don't need experts, anyone can write an encyclopedia.: Fortunately for my thesis it also provides a perfect example of the many ills that come from trying to do away with standards. (Or to replace standards that have stood the test of time with impromptu standards devised by "clever" people trying to improve on centuries of experience.) I wish people would learn a hint of humility, at least enough to realize that rules which have stood the test of time have almost always done so for a reason, our ancestors were no less clever than we are, and before we toss out everything they and their ancestors learned, we ought to consider that perhaps it existed for a reason.

Actually, that means this post also ties together very well with all my complaints about arrogance and the political ad cultural harm it causes as well. (See  "The Citizen Dichotomy", "Man's Nature and Government" ,"In A Nutshell", "Cognitive Dissonance Part 2", "Utopianism and Disaster", "The Road to Violence" and "Regulated Speech".)