My pronoun is “We”

During my student days, reading Greek and Latin literature, the heavy hitters – grammatically speaking – were the nouns and verbs; adjectives and adverbs lived the fancy life, drove fast cars, added sparkle and pizazz to any sentence.  Pronouns were back bench utility players.  

In recent years pronouns have gained a place of prominence, which intrigues me.  I first heard about the increasing awareness of pronouns when a friend, serving on the Board of the Friends School of Portland, described this new phenomenon.  My children’s teachers now list their pronouns in emails.  I am increasingly aware of this social trend.  

In my work as a carpenter no one ever asks my pronoun; this topic is never discussed on the job site.  And so I should like to announce here, that my pronoun is “We.”  I have chosen the first person plural with specific intent, to message my commitment to collaborate, co-create, communicate and cooperate in building community.

I observe people use the third person: he, she, it, they, them.  First and second person pronouns do not denote gender, while third person specifically denotes and identifies gender.  While I affirm and embrace gender equality, fluidity, and transgender my deeper concerns lie with the increasing fragmentation and divide within our culture.  Third person pronouns denote “other” which underscores separation.

The concept of “other” has been a central question of philosophy for centuries, for millenia.  Within the European tradition everyone from Hegel to Husserl from Sartre to Simone de Beauvoir has opined upon “other.”  In the main, “other” has been used to define “self” but I argue this falls within an “us versus them” mindset.  What will it take for us to come together?

We do well to look further back to Plotinus, the Greek founder of Neoplatonism.  He taught there is a supreme, totally transcendent “One,” containing no division, multiplicity, or distinction; the “One” was identified with the concept of “Good” and the principle of “Beauty.”  Among his quotes is:  “When we look outside of that on which we depend we ignore our unity; looking outward we see many faces; look inward and all is one head. If a man could but be turned about, he would see at once God and himself and the All.”  First person plural, indeed.  

Among the ironies of history is that a slave-holding patrician wrote that sterling sentence which begins “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union….”  How bold to set down those words, such pioneering thought, while Europeans were focused upon “other.”  But slavery, treating some people not only as other but as property, bought and sold, would come to define the central challenge of the United States.  

And so it was on 4 March in 1861 that an axe wielding brawny frontiersman, elected the 16th President of the young United States, stood upon the Capital steps, charged with the responsibility of holding together the Union. Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address outlined his thinking, a constitutional lawyer, on the civil discord simmering among the states.  He closed out his speech with an appeal to unity, using the first person plural:  “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

If pronouns are to continue to gain in prominence, when the collective id has been let loose, when dark anger rages like a sharp knife in a street fight, in these times now going forward may we the people pursue the blessing of unity, accepting diversity in collaboration and a renewed commitment to community.  

May “We” become the vogue, in these times, and going forward.