You might be the most peace-loving human on the planet, but just consider what you might learn from war. No this isn’t another The-Art-of-War takeoff. Instead it’s a Civil War one. In 1862, General Braxton Bragg lost a battle with major General Don Carlos Buell in Kentucky because, according to Kevin J. Dougherty, he “failed to adhere to the principles of war of unity of effort, objective, and security.”*
 
Words to live by? Bragg and his cohort Major General Edmund Kirby Smith just didn’t coordinate well, failing to marshal their troops toward a single objective and exposing Bragg to defeat. On the other side of the line were the troops of Buell, a leader who said, “My studies have taught me that battles are only to be fought for some important object…that if the result is reasonably uncertain, battle is only to be sought when very serious disadvantage must result from a failure to fight or when the advantages of a possible victory far outweigh the consequences of probable defeat. These rules suppose that war has a higher object than that of mere bloodshed.”**
 
Have you noticed that in today’s many social media wars, the primary motive is to draw blood? But in “drawing blood” as a purpose, the attackers forego their own security and leave themselves open to devastating counter attacks. And in the loose alliances found in cyberspace, there are many supposedly on the “same side” that strike off in their own directions, ultimately dismantling the unity that they originally shared.
 
Observe the next battle in social media with an eye on those principles of war: unity of effort, objective, and security. When weapons are insults shot from behind some distant rampart and when those insults are fired randomly just “to draw blood,” there’s little chance that a larger objective is reachable, particularly if that larger objective is to conquer the thoughts of the opposition.
 
If you choose to be a general (or even a soldier) in some war, consider Buell’s take on battles. But Buell had his own weakness. Having won the battle at Perryville, he failed—as McClellan had failed in the East—to pursue the defeated Bragg as he withdrew, losing the opportunity to fully decimate his opponent by pursuing the retreating army. Although he won Kentucky, Buell lost his job as Lincoln replaced him with Major General William Rosecrans. Apparently, Buell failed to remember his lessons because he sought to keep his forces secure after Bragg’s defeat.
 
When we join any group with an agenda, we face the issues of unity of effort, objective, and security. And that’s why we usually adhere to the guidance of some kind of leader, such as a manager—or a general. But in the absence of a clearly defined authority to whom an unquestioning army responds in unison, the war effort falls apart as individual soldiers wander off to ravage the countryside just for the sake of bloodshed.
 
*Dougherty, Kevin J. Great Commanders of the Civil War. London. Amber Books LTD, 2017, p 116.
**p. 115.

Let’s begin with an insignificant anecdote: I went to buy a car. The salesman asked me where I worked. I told him at a university. He looked at me, and then he asked, “Are you a coach?”
 
Here’s a second insignificant anecdote, one that took place ten years after the first: I went to buy a car. The salesman asked me where I worked. I told him at a university. He looked at me, and then he asked, “In maintenance?”
 
After both instances I looked at my wife and asked, “Am I the antithesis of a college professor in appearance?” In a slight blow to my ego, she said, “Yes.”
 
Looking like a professor isn’t in the cards for me. Apparently, I could put on all the herring-bone jackets I want and drape myself with the most exotic of scarves, but “professor-like” just isn’t going to pop out of my first impression. But, as I mentioned above, I don’t believe either anecdote is a significant tale, though both might be telling-tales.
 
I’ve had many non-professor jobs, so my attitude about work is that any job has dignity. I’ve been a garbage man, janitor, road construction worker, painter, jack hammer operator, carpenter, stone mason, consultant, researcher, and textbook collaborator. I’ve proofed articles, theses, books, and dissertations far too numerous to remember. I had fun doing all those jobs. I was where I was when I was.
 
And that’s a secret about dignity in work. Be where you are when you are where you are. We make our own dignity by the way we approach what we do.
 
As a professor, I had the opportunity to teach many different courses in two different academic departments. That, the specialists might say, made me a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none. But such “jacks” can have great fun and do some good in the process. Is it true that a certified electrician might wire a house better than a carpenter? Yes. But that doesn’t mean a carpenter can’t wire a house. And a professor can also be a coach or a builder.
 
One doesn’t have to look like Indiana Jones to be an archaeologist. And one doesn’t have to take offense if a stranger makes a mistake from a first impression. All of us probably do a little first-impression judging. It’s probably built into our survival system: In strange dogs, bared teeth seem to indicate an angry dog; a wagging tail suggests a friendly one.
 
And that brings me to another anecdote. In 2002 Prince Philip visited Cairns, where he asked indigenous Australian performers, “Do you still throw spears at each other?” Of course, the media has made a big to-do about the comment, suggesting that the Duke of Edinburgh is a royal racist. He’s white, isn’t he? And that seems to be the topic du jour, all this white privilege stuff. And who could be more privileged than a prince?
 
But Warren Clements, one of the people who was throwing boomerangs and spears when Philip saw him, explained that the group wanted to attract the prince’s attention because they had been caught up by some “royal fever.” Clements said, “They waved and we were showing off. I think Prince Philip took that in and that’s why he said it. He’s been taken out of context.” The meeting became personal because Philip went over to shake hands with the group, impressing the Australians with aboriginal roots. And then Clements made the statement that applies here: "From that moment I had a deep respect for him. People should not judge someone unless they have met them and, most importantly, do research before they start creating media sensationalism."
 
Of course, this will do nothing to prevent the next “car salesman” from looking at me and seeing someone who probably works in a blue-collar job. Neither perspicacity nor knowledge exudes from a pair of jeans and T-shirt to indicate the nature of my work. And the royal pomp and circumstance that inexorably follows a prince does nothing to quash the negativity of media eager to cast aspersions on anyone with a modicum of fame and the appearance of wealth. It’s the nature of people of all times, really, that is, to judge and conclude without knowledge. But that nature has been driven to a magnitude beyond anything that occurred in the past because of those who have only the knowledge of agenda plus the backing of an anonymous platform and a supportive coterie.
 
And then there’s Warren Clements, someone of aboriginal heredity, being taken as an “aboriginal” only by a media eager to label. In labeling the prince, the media indirectly labeled Clements. And that’s one of the problems with any judgment based on first impressions. The judgment reveals more about the nature of the one judging than it does about the nature of the one being judged and labeled. And when loosely labeling someone a “racist,” the labeler also loosely labels the race and reveals a hidden racism.  
 
There’s dignity in work of all kinds and dignity in people of any makeup, from being a garbage man to being an Australian indigenous performer, to being a car salesman and to being a prince—and yes, even to being a professor with eclectic interests.  
 
 
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/03/prince-philip-not-racist-spears-remark-says-indigenous-australian/

The standard advice is that we should not live our lives by comparison. What could result? Feelings of inadequacy? Envy? But sometimes, it might be good to live by contrast. It just depends on what we contrast.
 
Now, pronouns. “Gender-neutral” pronouns. Here’s the story. In 2015 Todd Starnes reported that Rickey Hall, Vice Chancellor for Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, released a list of gender-neutral pronouns for the university community to use in place of English personal pronouns, and the story reemerged in 2018.* You’ve probably heard of the movement to remove gender-specific pronouns. Obviously, I don’t know where you stand on the issue, but consider this in contrast.
 
In parts of the world atrocities against large groups of people are common. Think the Syrian civil war. Think ISIS. People suffer and die. Innocent people. But in the contrasting relatively safe confines of today’s Knoxville, TN, someone—maybe a whole group—is concerned about not recognizing a person’s biological nature. Such a confusing time in Knoxville! But if you go to Knoxville, you might take a little tour to learn that pronouns were not on the minds of its residents in 1863. Bombs and bullets were.
 
Gay Street, the site of the 1796 State Constitutional Convention, was, in a sense, an inclusive area. During the Civil War it became alternately the headquarters of both Union and Confederate generals. Fort Loudon/Sanders stood nearby. It was the site where 813 Confederate and 8 Union soldiers died in about 20 minutes of fighting. No one was thinking “Pronouns might hurt someone.”
 
Of course, it is difficult to make an argument to the “diversity and inclusion” crowd that changing pronouns to gender-neutral syllables accomplishes more exclusion than inclusion. And we can’t take Rickey Hall back to the Civil War. Hall could, however, take a trip abroad to visit lands where atrocities are common, and there propose the university’s important agenda on pronouns to the people wounded by suicide bombers, gas attacks, and sadistic murderers
 
And should the USA and some foreign power like Russia, North Korea, or China go to nuclear war, what would be the importance of using gender-neutral pronouns in a destroyed Knoxville? Maybe living under threat and in actual conditions of death and injury might make the replacement pronouns “ze,” “hir,” “zir,” “xe,” “xem,” and “xyr” seem, by contrast, a bit silly.
 
Maybe, also, each of us should look at what we consider to be “really important issues” as those issues contrast with what others might believe to be important. In large cities and medium-size cities violence is a problem even without a civil or nuclear war. Currently, one in 111 Knoxville citizens has a chance of becoming a victim of a violent crime. I might be wrong—and I might even offend the people in the Office of Diversity and Inclusion—but I have difficulty believing a 911 dispatcher in Knoxville will ever hear “’Ze’ has a gun” and “‘Xe’ has been shot.” And the president of the university system and the chancellor seem to think similarly as a report in 2015 suggests: “There is no mandate or official policy to use the language. Neither the university nor the Office for Diversity and Inclusion has the power or authority to mandate use of gender-inclusive pronouns.”**
 
Have you noticed that the direction of attention for “living by comparison” is always in the supposed “upward” direction. Keeping up with the Joneses is a material pursuit that aims to raise someone to the status of another. It makes the one trying to “keep up” envy or covet. But almost everyone in an affluent Knoxville has something someone else elsewhere doesn’t have—like relative safety or health or a flat-screen TV. Except for the completely destitute—possible, but relatively rare in Knoxville—almost everyone, if not everyone, at the U. of Tennessee has sufficient clothes and shelter and freedom from incoming bombs and bullets. Those for whom just surviving is an issue might look in comparison at those for whom pronouns are important; those for whom pronouns are important might consider looking at those suffering in Syria and elsewhere by contrast.    
 
*Starnes, Todd, Cal me ‘ze,’ not ‘he’: University wants everyone to use ‘gender inclusive’ pronouns. Todd’s American Dispatch, August 28, 2015 online at http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/08/28/call-me-ze-not-university-wants-everyone-to-use-gender-inclusive-pronouns.html
**Jaschik, Scott, Fear of new pronouns. Inside Higher Ed. September 8, 2015. Online at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/09/08/u-tennessee-withdraws-guide-pronouns-preferred-some-transgender-people

A collection of thirteenth-century songs made famous by Carl Orff in 1937 is Carmina Burana. Almost everyone has heard Orff’s opening song “O Fortuna” because the music occurs in numerous movies—too many movies according to some. That aside, the inspiration for Orff’s Carmina Burana was a collection of poems found in a Bavarian monastery.* A theme that runs through the poems is a lover’s problematic assurance to his beloved that his love is constant. Think trust. Or, as Ringo Star sings about it, “It Don’t Come Easy.”
 
Is it possible that humans have always had a problem trusting one another? Think of that old Adam and Eve joke:
 
Eve: “Do you love me?”
Adam” “Who else?”
 
You could argue that a very long time ago trust came more easily. Think tribal life in hunter-gatherer times. Eve and Adam knew each other—and no other. In small bands of people everyone knows everyone. Not so today. Stroll the sidewalk of Broadway in New York City about noon. See anyone you know? Live in a large apartment complex. Know much about anyone you see? Evolutionary psychologists argue that social contracts require both inferences and trust.** You might argue that your brain is well equipped to handle social agreements among people from diverse tribes. You know whom to trust. You can detect the untrustworthy.
 
Today we find ourselves in social contracts with people we never meet personally. People online. Imagine transporting one of our ancient hunter-gatherer tribesman into a world that houses such cyberpeople. But you say, “Maybe the ancient ones would have difficulty and maybe even some isolated Amazonian tribesman would have the same difficulty when removed from the locals and placed in a cosmopolitan or cyber setting, but look at what dating services have been able to accomplish among people of our time. Couples meet in those numerous online dating services, and many of them go on to get married. Certainly, their success indicates we have the wherewithal to recognize the trustworthiness of someone else. Certainly, they demonstrate that even online, people can determine whether constancy is in the cards. We’ve evolved.”
 
I ask, “Given the biology of a bisexual species that traditionally assigns a stronger mother-child bond than father-child bond, isn’t trust an issue of different degree for females than males? Once males serve a biological purpose, aren’t they a bit freer to wander out of the social contract? Can we see how a modern Eve, rather than a modern Adam, might ask that question about love and constancy?”
 
“Not really,” you say. “Don’t ignore that women can also be inconstant, especially in an age and in places where people pride themselves on their individual freedom. Women can be inconstant lovers even if they are mothers. I’ve read the stories in The Enquirer and seen the movies on Lifetime Movie Network.”
 
Eight centuries ago the authors—some of them monks?—of Carmina Burana knew that inconstancy is a problem for lovers. Maybe for all people in relationships of all kinds. Everyone has to make a “probability judgment” in a social contract, and a key component of any contract is that both sides will be trustworthy and constant. However, as Robyn Dawes writes, “On the basis of what is observed, we are asked to make some inference about what is unobserved, and that inference is uncertain.”*** Think online dating. What can be observed? What must be left to inference until one has an actual face-to-face experience with another? All online daters make probability judgments on uncertain inferences about the “unobserved.”
 
In judging trustworthiness and constancy, all of us believe we are experts. Yet, to some degree, all of us have the potential to be duped as much by our false inferences as by inconstant acquaintances and even untrustworthy charlatans out to take advantage of us. That’s what makes us wary. Social contracts in some form are inevitable and have been so for the life of the species. Maybe the structure of our brains has evolved to accommodate a planet with seven billion individuals and maybe we all acquire a certain amount of training in writing and carrying out social contracts. Yes, such contracts might have been simpler in simpler times, but we’re long past that now—unless we choose to strike out as new Adams and Eves to make reliable inferences in some isolated place.
 
I suppose one takeaway is that we should ask ourselves about inferences we all make about the “unobserved.” You make those inferences when you are on jury duty, and your sense in such a circumstance probably derives from a heightened awareness. After all, the destiny of another lies in what you conclude on the basis of inferences about the “unobserved.” But in matters of love and daily social contracts of any kind, are any of us as aware of those underlying inferences? You might say, “Definitely, and especially when anyone considers marriage or long-term commitments, such as co-habitation. The destiny of another and our own destiny depend on the reliability of those inferences.”
 
Ah! True love and constancy. And ah! Inferences about the unobserved. No wonder that for many, “It don’t come easy.”        
 
*One might wonder why poems centered on a theme of love’s constancy might have been found in a monastery, but maybe the monks were among the few literate people in thirteenth-century Bavaria capable of reading anything.
 
**A book worth a look: Dawes, Robyn M., Everyday Irrationality: How Pseudo-Scientists, Lunatics, and the Rest of Us Systematically Fail to Think Rationally. Boulder, CO, Westview Press. 2001, p. 72. An online article worth a look: Cosmides, Leda and John Tooby, “Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer,” Center for Evolutionary Psychology. Section entitled “Reasoning Instincts: An Example.” http://www.cep.ucsb.edu/primer.html
***Dawes, p. 72.