ecosophia | Revive The Order of Anti-Poke-Noses!

I've been reflecting of late on the number of people out there who seem to think that their opinions about other people's thoughts, words, and deeds are so precious that they just have to be shared with everybody. The inspiration, if that's the right word, for this train of thought was a comment by my wife, who noted with disgust that there's a splutterfest under way on some social medium or other about whether women should take their husband's last name when they marry, or not. A personal decision, relevant only to the two people who settle it between themselves? Yeah, that's what I thought, too, but apparently such common sense gets little air time on line these days, where so many people want to poke their noses into other people's business.

Pick a subject, any subject, however intimate or irrelevant or utterly dependent on personal wants and needs, and dollars will get you doughnuts that a long line of officious busybodies is waiting to tell you what to do concerning it, no matter how calmly you explain to them that you have your own opinion, thank you, or how loudly you inform them that it's none of their godforsaken business and they can just butt out. Poking noses into other people's business is just about the only growth industry we've still got in America today. dog nose

In the ringing voice of an irate Druid, I proclaim: ENOUGH!

(Cue gathering clouds, a sudden wind shaking the branches of the oak trees, and a mutter of distant thunder...)

It's time to revive The Order of Anti-Poke-Noses.

The Order of Anti-Poke-Noses? Yes, indeed. It was founded in Arkansas in 1923 by people who were sick and tired of the revived Ku Klux Klan's insistence on poking its long and sheet-draped nose into everybody's business. There were actually a whole series of anti-Klan secret societies, who figured that the best way to beat the Klan (itself a standard-issue secret society) was to play the secret society game against it. (It worked; look it up.) One of the most colorful (which also deserves a revival if I can ever find a copy of the ritual) was the Knights of the Flaming Circle; where the Klan only admitted white Protestant men born in the US, the Knights of the Flaming Circle admitted everyone else -- women, people of color, immigrants, members of other religions -- and wore black robes; their emblem was a circle of flame around the Statue of Liberty, and they stood for constitutional liberty and the rule of law.

dog nose

But it's the Order of Anti-Poke-Noses, it seems to me, that deserves revival here and now, in an age full of pompous blowhards who want to tell you and everyone else how to live their lives. Here's my proposed membership application:

Name______________________________

Do you agree that, within the due limits of civil and criminal law, people have the right to live their own lives however they want, without being pestered by you or anybody else? ( )Yes ( )No

Do you agree that nobody needs to know what you think about what they think and what they do, unless they specifically ask you for your opinion? ( )Yes ( )No

Do you agree that you don't get the right to interfere in other people's choices just because you feel butthurt that they didn't make those choices the way you would? ( )Yes ( )No

Do you agree that your freedom to live the way you want stops at the point when you use that freedom to tell other people they can't live the way they want? ( )Yes ( )No

If you answered all four questions "Yes":

Congratulations! You're a member of the New Independent Order of Anti-Poke-Noses! Your annual dues consist of upholding the values you've just affirmed, and telling officious busybodies of all persuasions to take a long walk off a short dock. Our Honorary Grand Musician, Hank Williams, will now play the initiation ode: [Click Here]

Thank you, and welcome to the Order. Spread the word.

Current Mood: irritated
Current Location: The virtual lodge hall of the NIOAPN

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From: (Anonymous)

I truly enjoy seeing the look on busybodies' faces when they are trying to get me whipped up over something someone, somewhere, is thinking or doing or thinking about doing, and I just shrug and wonder aloud why I should care? My mother's frequent response to squabbling and tattle-taling among her five children was, "MYOB!" Most unsatisfactory to whichever child was trying to stir things up, because of course it's way more fun and less work to complain about someone else than to actually do whatever it is you're supposed to be doing. I suspect much of today's nose-poking is similarly a distraction from having to attend to one's own messes. But like my mother, I'm mostly too busy to be interested. The lack of basic manners involved is astonishing, though, or rather I wish it were more surprising and less commonplace. Wouldn't it be lovely if more of us actually minded our own business, both in the active sense of engaging in the useful activities available to us, and in the passive sense of refraining from trying to boss others around?
--Heather in CA

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Revive The Order of Anti-Poke-Noses!

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