Don't Be A Dick

Words Count

There are a lot of things that I’m really bad at. Lucky for me, that’s balanced out by a few things that I’m good at. But today, let’s focus on a couple of the bad.

Spelling and Grammar.

Damn I’m bad at both those things.

I wish that I could spell, and spell well, but I can’t. I’ve never been able to do so. Thank God for a fellow named Ralph Gorin who in 1971 invented the Spell Checker as we understand it today. If not for him, this post would be filled with gobbledygook.

Photo by Ronise daluz on Unsplash

The other thing is grammar. But I don’t look at grammar the same way as I look at spelling. I know that I don’t have good grammar, but I don’t care. If those who read my words can understand my words, and find them persuasive, I’ve done what I set out to do. Grammar rules be damned. Indeed, long ago I took a course in persuasive writing, and one thing I learned in that course was to throw out grammar if one can make more impact without it.

So, those are my things.

And they make my writing less than perfect.

And sometimes people point out my boneheaded mistakes.

That doesn’t bother me. After working my entire adult life in partisan politics, I’ve got a mighty thick skin. I’ve also helped win a great many elections with my writing, helped get grants with my writing, and helped set public policy with my writing. This tells me that my writing is good at what it does, no matter what any critic says.

Tell me I suck. I don’t care.

But, most people aren’t me. Most people don’t have as thick of skin as I do. And most people haven’t spent years and years writing successfully in odd little niches.

Our great Brother and President, Teddy Roosevelt famously said:

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

—Theodore Roosevelt
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

I was reminded of that quote this morning when I noticed a Mason post a flippant disparaging remark about a typo in an essay written by another Mason. It really got to me. Especially since I know both of these Masons well, and consider them both friends.

The remark indicated that there was a typo early in the essay. (There was.) And the remarker wrote that he didn’t bother reading any further because of it.

Dick move.

I read the entire essay. In fact, I posted a couple links into it in various places. It contained nothing of substance anyone could reasonably disagree with, and it addressed a topic that has been of some concern in my Masonic Jurisdiction through the years.

But here’s the thing…

As I mentioned before, most people aren’t me.

Most people who write about Freemasonry don’t have a great deal of experience writing for general consumption. They are nervous about how their writing will be received. The whole act of putting it out there before the world is nerve wracking and scary. They lack confidence in writing, because they don’t have extensive experience writing.

And then some random Mason comes along to drive a knife into their back.

I watched this same thing happen before, to another Mason. Early this past winter.

This Mason started writing quite a lot about his experiences with the Craft, what we do well, and where we can improve. He was putting a lot of good ideas out there, participating in online Masonic discussions, the whole bit.

Then he made a post that was worded inelegantly. It didn’t quite convey what he wanted to convey, and it was easy to distort his words into saying something that they weren’t saying.

And some Mason made some hurtful remark about it.

This budding Masonic writer, with extensive Masonic experience in two quite different Jurisdictions hasn’t written a darn thing about Masonry since.

That’s a terrible loss for our Craft.

And it’s a loss that we suffered because some random Mason decided it was better to look like a know it all on the internet than practice Brotherly Love.

This kind of garbage, this hyper criticism of the efforts of our Brothers does nothing to help our Craft. Indeed it does tremendous damage.

We need to think before we post hurtful nonsense on the internet.

Who the hell cares if some poor Mason, who’s just trying to get his thoughts about Masonry out there makes a typo in his essay, if the message behind the essay is in keeping with the ideals of Freemasonry?

Is that five second dopamine hit we get from posting something mean online worth hurting our Brother?

We can do better.