Unbeknownst to most people, we are
constantly throwing around words that at one time referred to things of a
sexual nature. Few realize that saying something is “quaint” would have shocked
those of Chaucer’s day since the word originally referred to certain, generally
unmentionable, parts of the female anatomy that Andrew Marvell may or may not
have been aware of when he explained that “worms shall try / that long
preserv’d virginity, / And your quaint honour turn to dust” (lines 27-29). Like
the ignorant and unaware first-time homeowners describing their quaint dream
homes, the Occupy protesters are probably blissfully unaware of the older, more
tawdry meaning of their movement’s moniker.
The movement, and I’ll generally be
referring to the Occupy Wall Street version of the “organization,” originally
got its name from the intent to “live in and use (a place) as its tenant or
regular inhabitant; to inhabit; to stay or lodge in” (5.b.). In this sense, the
movement simply gathers awareness to their cause(s) by gathering at a specific
location and drawing attention to it. There’s actually a very specific
definition of “occupy” that relates both to being in a place and protesting:
“to gain access to and remain in (a building, etc.) or on (a piece of land),
without authority, as a form of protest”; most protests, though, have legally
arranged to protest with permits issued by cities (6.d.). These two definitions
are barely sexual.
Some of the more nuanced implications of the word “occupy”
may also talk back to the intentions of the movement: “to hold possession of;
to have in one’s possession or power” (5.a.). This modern usage is based on
where the word came from originally, the Latin occupare, which meant “to seize by force.” This meaning would imply
a somewhat more militant intent on the part of the occupiers. Ultimately, this particular
definition is probably what the movement means by their title and is hoping
for. They would like “the 99%” to take possession of or have power over “Wall
Street,” the symbol of all things corporate and greedy. Of course, we voted in
the people who manufactured, sewed, and packed the golden parachutes for the C.E.O.s
of tanking banks and corporations, and we could, theoretically at least, vote
in people who would change things in the future, which would allow us common
dwellers a chance to have power over “Wall Street” again. Unfortunately, only
37.8% of those eligible to vote actually stopped watching re-runs of Family Guy and playing Call of Duty to go and cast a vote in
2010, but these are tangential concerns (McDonald).
Things start to get interesting when
we read a little further down in the list of definitions to an older meaning of
the word that is out of use now but has been around for a relatively long time.
The Oxford English Dictionary includes
an interesting note about the word worth quoting in its entirety because of the
statistical data it presents:
Throughout
the 17th and most of the 18th cent., there seems to have
been a general tendency to avoid this word… Against 194 quots. for 16th
c., we have for 17th only 8, outside the Bible of 1611 (where it
occurs 10 times), and for the 18th c. only 10, all of its last 33
years. The verb occurs only twice (equivocally) in Shakes., is entirely absent
from the Concordances of Milton and Pope, is not used by Gray; all Johnson’s
quots., except 2, are from the Bible of 1611. (“Occupy”)
To
break this down, of the 194 quotes gathered by the compilers of the Oxford English Dictionary, only eight of them are from the years
between the end of the 16th and the end of the 18th
centuries, a 200-year span. Even Shakespeare noticed the word’s unusual problem
in II Henry IV: “God’s light these villains will make the word as odious
as the word occupy, which was an excellent good word before it was ill sorted”
(II.iv.142). The presumed reason for this shunning is a very lewd sense the
word had acquired: “to have sexual intercourse or relations with” (8.a.). As
seen before, the Bible, of all things, didn’t seem to become abashed at the
word, and neither did Ranulf Higden, a Benedictine monk and historian. In the Polychronicon, Higden explains that “Men
of Lacedemonia… wery thro the compleyntes of theire wifes beenge at home, made
a decre… that thei scholde occupye mony men” (III.47). Well, he was certainly
right about the rampant homosexuality and pedophilia of the Greeks, an
oft-forgotten fact when people extol that noble civilization that brought
democracy (and possibly baklava) into the world, and it’s interesting to see
that he chose to use the word “occupy” as his verb.
What strikes me about this, well,
oversight on the part of those naming a movement is how it fits in so nicely
with all the criticisms about the hypocrisy of those participating. Listening
to NPR and reading a bit about it here and there in the news, it seems like
critics repeatedly point out that the protesters walk around carrying smart
phones and iPads, wear designer jeans, use McDonald’s bathrooms, and drink
Starbucks coffee. Some of them even work full-time for huge corporations. They
are, to put it poignantly, in bed with the enemy. They lambast corporate greed,
but they still buy the newest (read: unnecessarily overpriced) cell phones and
tablets. They say franchises destroy local competitors, but they have no
problem utilizing Burger King’s restrooms. And something even more interesting
is also happening: these institutions don’t kick them out or refuse them
service.
This phenomenon can be explained through
two major problems with the whole Occupy situation. First, a lot of blame gets
misattributed. People are generally upset about and can agree that C.E.O.s of
failing companies should not get paid hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars
as a “retirement package” for running a company into the ground. People can
probably also agree that the majority of employees in any “big business” are
working stiffs that almost certainly fall into “the 99%.” That’s the fundamental
irony of the Occupy movement. They’re protesting the very entities that fulfill
the goals for which they are protesting. They want jobs, and “big business”
employs people. They want cheap gas, and, somewhat counter-intuitively, the
worse the economy does, especially overseas, the cheaper gas will be (at least
until we run out of it forever in twenty years).
Secondly, things are much more complicated than most people
can imagine. In ancient Greece, a terrible time for a homophobes but an
excellent time for simplicity, when something was manufactured, you could speak
to the person who was in charge of almost the entire process. At the very
least, they were responsible for the most recent part of the manufacturing
process, i.e., they created the object you were buying. Today when you go to
the Apple store, Radio Shack, or even when you purchase a snack at Starbucks,
you do not interact with anyone who had any involvement in the manufacturing of
the product you are buying. It’s entirely possible that in your day-to-day
life, you don’t interact with anyone who has any knowledge of the actual manufacturing
of any of the products they sell. There is very little communication between
the creators of things and the users of things, and any time there is a delay
in or lack of communication, things generally degenerate quickly, e.g., it’s
possible that the American Revolution never would have taken place if it hadn’t
taken three months for communications to get from North America to England.
Of course, complexity doesn’t just
exist in manufacturing processes. Basically everything about everything is
infinitely more complicated than anyone can actually grasp. We like to
oversimplify things so we can understand them. The sun goes up and the sun goes
down? That’s not actually true because it’s much more complicated than that.
Greedy corporations tanked the economy? That’s not actually true because it’s
much more complicated than that. Placing blame on corporations for the economic
problems of an entire nation is a convenient but highly flawed way to
anti-intellectualize and ignore the almost infinitely complex reality of a
situation that involves coroporations, politics, consumer behavior, accepted societal
norms, etc.
Keeping this complexity in mind, anyone who claims to have
something “all figured out” or has a “simple solution” to any problem not
related to your coffee mug being empty is almost certainly the kind of person
you should try to avoid. If you can occupy any place, a country, an office, a
new employee, a prostitute, and/or yourself in a number of ways, anything more
complicated than six (arguably only five) letters should probably be given some
serious thought and consideration rather than hasty generalization and
oversimplification. Oh, and if you see some Occupiers, tell them to get an
occupation and go occupy themselves.
Works
Cited
Higden, Ranulf. Polychronicon
Ranulphi Higden Monachi Cestrensis: Together with the English Translations of
John Trevisa and of an Unknown Writer of the Fifteenth Century. London:
Longman, 1865. Print.
Marvell, Andrew. “To His Coy Mistress.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed.
Volume B: Sixteenth Century & Early Seventeenth Century. Ed. Stephen
Greenblatt. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005. 1703. Print.
McDonald, Michael. “2010 General Election Turnout Rates.” United States Elections Project. George
Mason University, 28 January 2011. Web. 1 December 2011. <http://elections.gmu.edu/Turnout_2010G.html>.
"Occupy, v." OED Online.
Oxford University Press, September 2011. Web. 1 December 2011
<http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/130189?redirectedFrom=occupy>.
Shakespeare, William. The Second Part of Henry the Fourth. The Norton Shakespeare Based on the Oxford
Edition. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997.
1304-1379. Print.
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