Last Wednesday I spent most of my day bouncing back and forth among a number of clients, much of the time in the car. And, as usual when I’m driving, I listened to my local NPR station, WBEZ. On their late morning Odyssey program they had a program that was pretty interesting: what do you mean when you say that something is foreign? You can listen to the program yourself here. As I say, it’s an interesting question, I thought quite a bit of what the guests had to say was complete poppycock, at one point I snapped the radio off in disgust, and I was strongly reminded of why I’m no longer a subscriber to public radio.
But this post isn’t about the subject of the program but about something that was touched on just in passing in the program.
What do you mean when you say that someone was forced to do something? I think that characterizing something as “force” should be limited to the case when an act of will and actual force or the threat of force causes you to do something to preserve your life or prevent grievous bodily harm.
There are several distinct cases. For example, you don’t say that “when I stepped off the cliff I was forced to fall”. You fell; you weren’t forced to fall. If, on the other hand, someone had overpowered you, trussed you up, and thrown you off the cliff, you could reasonably have said you were forced to fall. But, once you stepped off the cliff, willing yourself not to fall was simply beyond your capabilities. You fell. That is the nature of things. It’s the way things are.
The nature of things and the social, political, and legal constructs we’ve built are frequently conflated but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a “nature of things” that just means we should look carefully to distinguish between how things are and what we’ve done about how things are. Patents, copyrights, and our system of farm subsidies may have a substantial impact on our life and freedoms but they aren’t the nature of things.
If we don’t eat we starve. To eat we must either have the wherewithal to buy food or we must work to earn money to buy food or we must find food or grow it. We’re not forced to eat to prevent starvation (except in rather rare circumstances). It’s the way things are. Whether we work, or scavenge, or farm is a choice. That, too, is not force.
So, for example, when someone decides that the job or life opportunities are better in the United States and they come here to work and live they aren’t generally forced to come here to work. They choose to do so. Slaves chained in the hold of a ship, sold on a block, and whipped until they work were forced to come here and work. Migrant workers (legal or illegal) who come here because they can make more money or have more freedom or they just like the look of the place aren’t being forced. They’ve chosen the better alternative.
BTW I’m not saying that there aren’t people who are forced to come here and work. There are certainly such cases and I don’t honestly know of anyone who thinks that that’s anything but a crime. But I sincerely doubt that most workers who come here from elsewhere come here under those circumstances.
And, while it was certainly true that Jews in Eastern Europe were forced to live in ghettoes, people who come here from China or Pakistan or Mexico aren’t forced to live in immigrant communities. They may find it easier or cheaper or more comfortable or just plain preferable to do so. Or they may find it easier to elude the authorities that way but that’s a choice. They’re not being forced.
I don’t honestly know why people misuse language that way. I suspect that they’re trying to bootstrap a case to redress some nonexistent grievance. But when you step off that cliff you fall; when you decide one thing is better than another you make a choice; and you’re only forced when someone actually, well, forces you.
