THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 25, 1995 TAG: 9508250053
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E9 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Teenology
SOURCE: BY JENNIFER DZIURA, TEENOLOGY COLUMNIST
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
AS THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA Britannica would be happy to verify, Switzerland is a neutral nation. As a result of this, the Swiss can forget all about being drafted or deployed to small island nations. Instead, they can dedicate their full attention to producing prodigious quantities of chocolate and clocks.
Outside Switzerland's borders, however, we non-Swiss constantly disparage the idea of neutrality. Not that I'm posing an argument for American isolationism (this would be the wrong section of the paper); rather, I'm theorizing that we're such an adamantly opinionated people that we scorn the idea of neutrality in general.
Take, for example, the following sentence: ``I don't like -----.'' If you're standing in line at the public library waiting to check out an anthology of Sumerianose, and you turn to the person standing in front of you waiting to check out a Norwegian cookbook and say ``I don't like Norwegian cuisine,'' the exotic chef is likely to be insulted.
What you've just said, however, is not an insult. You don't dislike Norwegian food - you just don't happen to have warm feelings about it. Perhaps that is because you've never tried Norwegian cuisine, or because you tried it and didn't really care whether you ever ate any again, or perhaps because you lost your taste buds in a horrible culinary accident. Such neutral feelings about Norwegian foods may be accurately expressed by the neutral statements ``I don't like lutefisk,'' ``I don't dislike lutefisk,'' or ``I neither like nor dislike lutefisk.''
So, do you remember being, say, 5 or 6 and not wanting to eat some limp, disgusting green vegetables that were unceremoniously deposited on your plate? And did your culinarily-imperious parents say something like ``You can't say you don't like 'em if you've never tried 'em!''
If so, they were absolutely wrong. Of course you don't like lima beans if you've never eaten any. Of course, you don't dislike them either. What your parents really meant to say was ``You can't say you dislike lima beans if you've never tried them.''
These lexical examples demonstrate how we tend to discredit neutrality. However, not everyone has, or needs to have, an opinion on lima beans, the O.J. trial or the Japanese banking industry. But consider opinion polls that are too often heralded as the vox populi. Generally, some creep calls people during dinner and asks them questions like ``Do you think the President should send American troops to (insert foreign nation)?'' or ``Would you consider voting independent in the next election?''
Most of the people on the other side of the phone either don't care, don't know or would rather be sitting down to a warm plate of lutefisk. Rather than the interviewee maintaining a neutral position and the interviewer accepting this, however, the interviewee will generally mumble ``I guess not,'' or ``yeah, sure'' in order to get back to the lutefisk as soon as possible. The result is that we are constantly misled as to what anyone beyond our own MCI calling circle thinks about anything.
The implications of all this are the following: 1) we should be more accepting of neutrality; 2) opinion polls lie; and 3) in the Dr. Seuss book ``Green Eggs and Ham,'' the stubbornly neutral protagonist was correct in stating ``I do not like them, Sam I Am. I do not like green eggs and ham.'' MEMO: Jennifer Dziura's column appears bimonthly. If you'd like to comment on
her column, call INFOLINE at 640-5555 and enter category 6778 or write
to her at 4565 Virginia Beach Blvd., Virginia Beach, Va. 23462
ILLUSTRATION: Jennifer Dziura is a rising senior at Cox High School.
by CNB