By Edwin Cooney
I was riding home from bowling last Wednesday night with a good friend of mine, David. We were discussing newly existing circumstances and their significance within our bowling league. The changes have been both significant and severe. In the last year we've lost three of our sighted assistants, one to death, and the other two to resignation. Additionally, three bowlers who were active through the 2017-2018 season have passed away. We now have a new president, vice president (me), and that's it. Our president also serves as our treasurer owning, as she does, a business. There exists among us seven bowlers a very limited idea of the value that functional structure brings to a group such as ours. Suddenly, David said to me, "I don't worry about titles and offices and such things as that. To you, everything is political!" "Not so much political," I said, "administrative or organizational perhaps, but not necessarily political.”
When I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s, there was a very high degree of emphasis on titles and positions of all sorts. These titles came from the expectations of parents, preachers, and teachers. We learned the significance of generals, captains, sergeants, and privates. Every police department had its chief. The town or city had its mayor, the state had its governor, and the President of the United States was at the head of America the Beautiful.
All of these titles and expectations of responsibility and accountability are inevitably interrelated in order that they ensure the maximum efficiency and effectiveness of our society or what we later learned to call in college "the body politic."
Still, with all of this historic practice of emotional, spiritual, intellectual, economic and socio/political organizational structure at the close of the second decade of the 21st Century, there seems to be less of a grasp of, or respect for, vitally essential positions within society and even in life itself!
Not all of this is necessarily bad, either. After all, there are a lot of meaningless titles that have little to do with how well an organization functions. Life is always a bit of a weeding and pruning operation.
However, some stations in life are priceless. I'm thrilled every time one of my boys calls me “dad.” Yet I know of children who lovingly call their parents by their first names. The three I'm thinking about love their parents as much as my wife and best friend who wouldn't dream of addressing their parents so informally and familiarly. Within your family, you are inevitably a brother, sister, uncle, aunt or cousin. You're honored when you become a husband or wife, father or mother. Ultimately, there's that thrill of thrills when you become a grandma or grandpa!
However, having asserted this, there are those among us who resist the possibility of being subject to a certain title. One of these types of people happens to be me. A very minor reason I didn't go after a doctorate in education is that I couldn’t imagine being addressed as Dr. Cooney. Perhaps that's because way back in my childhood I wanted to be a medical doctor and was rather severely chided for my lack of realism. (The truth is that emotionally, for whatever reason, I still think that the title “Doctor” ought to be strictly applicable to a medical professional.)
Then, there's the historic reality that although there have been many heroic kings, queens, presidents, medical and other "doctors," no one achieves genuine human greatness through their title, whether inherited or earned.
As of this date, I happen to be president of two worthy organizations. One is merely a chapter of a very wide service club. I am the president of the Syracuse Host Lions Club in Syracuse, New York. My colleagues actually call me "King Lion.” (I'm much, much more comfortable being considered “president” than “King Lion.” The idea of any personal link with royalty is just simply beyond my imagination!) I’m also President of the New York State School for the Blind Alumni Association headquartered in Batavia, New York. This is largely a political position because in order to achieve it, I had to lose to formidable opponents three times. I've held this position since Tuesday, July 1st, 2014. In this position, I'm hardly either a dictator or ruler. I'm subtly deferred to because of my respected responsible accountability to the organization as a whole. I possess no grandeur nor should I. Still, I revere the office because of what it means to the membership which reflects the highest and most memorable achievements and principles of our residential school.
The idea that the lack of respect for titles seems to be growing is disturbing to me for several reasons. First, with titles come expectations of coordinated responsibilities and accountabilities. Second, without these titles of respect and accountability, there is likely to be an era of chaos. Chaos is anarchy and anarchy invites and even encourages everyone for himself and himself alone. It would recall the period of time which existed between the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of our modern era in the mid-seventeenth century which recognized royalty, the church and little else as legitimate. That was the Medieval System throughout European history, one of my eras of study in college.
Try this observation on for size. You and I may be tired and disdainful of titles and privileges, but they are precisely what those who would mold democracy to their own profit cherish the most.
The significance of who we are through what we've achieved and the responsibilities and accountabilities to which we are committed constitute the bulwark of our liberty. It's as simple as that.
Whatever niche of responsibility and accountability you attain in any group in which you are a member, without taking yourself too seriously, do perform it to the hilt for, in the long run, your place and your mission is a vitally important thread in the fiber of your liberty and that of your children.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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