Illegitimi Non Carborundum
I took Latin for four years of high school and I learned lots of Latin words and expressions, many of which are used in the practice of the law. I have found my Latin education to be useful in the way everyone says it will be helpful, as an aid to understanding the English language and the various roots and derivations of words that have found their way into the English language. Perhaps the most well-known Latin phrase in English is Carpe Diem, the famous Latin expression that comes from Horace and suggests that we should all seize the day. The expression that I never heard while studying Latin was Illegitimi Non Carborundum, which roughly translated means, don’t let the bastards grind you down. The expression was first used by a U.S. Army general in the early days of the Vietnam War, so it does not seem to go back centuries, even though I suspect that the sentiment has been uttered under the breath of men for millennia.
During college I became aware of the expression when I saw a placard with it emblazoned on it in script. For some reason, I liked it and bought it (probably for all of a buck). It hung on my wall for many years for reasons that I would have had a hard time identifying with any specific gripes, but rather with a general sense that it was an interesting expression. I’ll bet I particularly liked it because of my Latin foundation, but the sentiment itself has its resonance as well. Let’s start with the process of grinding down. Grinding is abrasion and abrasion is, by its nature, an irritant. There are plenty of things in life that irritate us. Generically, I put them into two buckets, those things that specifically happen to us or fail us and those things done by others upon us. Sometimes things simply break and in so doing they disappoint us, but cause little more than fleeting anger at the universe. Why me? Why now? We have all been there. But since no one is to blame, we quickly move on with some version of “shit happens” on our lips. There is little point in begrudging anything to the universe since it is the universe that gives us everything we have.
But then there are those things that are done upon us. It has obviously been an issue for some time since the very Lord’s Prayer makes reference to the fact that we all should forgive us those who have trespassed against us. In fact, that same Prayer makes it somewhat clear that this is part of the human condition since we must also seek forgiveness for our own trespasses upon others. We as humans must find a way to live together on Earth with limited space and limited resources. Those limitations were once easier to deal with because there were relatively few of us and a large earth to support our growth as a species. We had to push aside other species in the process, and then we might occasionally even push aside others of our own species that evolved somewhat differently or in areas that we now coveted. We justified those incursions with such lofty terms as Manifest Destiny or simply Cultural Supremacy. But what we also did, was certainly imbed in the consciousness of many people on the earth that the world is a harsh and unforgiving place that is made harder by virtue of others who can best be characterized as illegitimi. They may not be bastards in a technical genealogical sense, but they are bastards in their debased lack of appreciation for the unalienable rights of those against whom they have trespassed.
We are in a difficult place demographically. We have crossed the 8 billion threshold and we must first decide if that is a good thing or a bad thing. If life is as precious as we all say it is, then the more life that exists must mean the better the world is. That said, almost everyone would acknowledge that life would be considerably easier if we had fewer people. No one seems to have a good answer that they will allow to be attributed to them as to how that can come to pass. Over history, perhaps starting with the Great Flood, the world has found ways to thin the herd, so to speak. Just as with the grinding issue, sometimes population reduction comes at the hands of the universe and sometimes it comes at the hands of fellow man. Pestilence and war, pestilence and war, pestilence and war. The cycle has gone on, but it has failed to reduce population in any appreciable sense because we have either had the technological solutions to expand resources or the collective wisdom to steer clear of weaponry like nuclear bombs that could conceivably impact population in meaningful numbers. Nature and the universe seem to have helped us with that wisdom because the use of nuclear has the collateral damage of snowballing and, furthermore, more or less permanently impairing and tainting our collective resources.
I do not think it is an accident that we are a divided world at this moment. The last time we were so divided was 80 or so years ago and it is fair to say that it may have been the resource constraints that gave rise to that divide. Our technological leaps forward have likely been the reason why we have had the benefit of the 70 or so years of prosperity. In a weird way, it may have been the innovations that came out of the efforts that sprang from the WWI and WWII development initiatives that gave rise to that technology-led prosperity. Resources and population rise have crossed over, but the added pressures brought by COVID have certainly exacerbated the equation. The question we should all be asking ourselves is whether the resources available on earth are sufficient to deliver what is needed for the 8 billion. The operative word is perhaps “available” because the disparate distribution of wealth makes availability somewhat at the discretion of first world billionaires. In a world of absolute insufficiency, it is hard to imagine a collective pain sharing of insufficiency, but in a more plentiful world, where we seem to be at the moment, there is at least hope for resolution.
I am not without some personal irritation at being ground down upon, but I am at a fortunate place in life to have less of that grinding against me than others. That is less about calls on my resources (I still have kids that need things and the State of California that wants a bigger slice of me) and more about my state of mind. I have positioned myself to have enough both in reserve and in ongoing earning capacity to meet my needs to my level of sufficiency. The real abrasion for me takes place with less regard to resources being taken from me and more about resources or rights being denied to others.
I have just watched the results of the twelfth unsuccessful ballot for Speaker of the House of Representatives. This may be one of the great political examples of Illegitimi Non Carborundum we have ever seen. You can almost hear the grinding going on in Congress and I am certain that the word “Bastards” has been used with great regularity this week. And when you grind down far enough you risk weakening the fabric. It seems we may be at a breaking point and what strikes me as so very meaningful is that the very people who I would characterize as the Illegitimi in my world are grinding each other down. That might seem like a good thing, but it worries me nonetheless since the bargains being made all seem to work against the best interest of the nation and its people. I don’t know which bastards will come out on top, but I know that none of it is increasing the resource allocation to those of the 8 billion that need it the most.