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Frank Cotolo
August 22, 2013 |
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The current trend of being "pro-active" concerns me. I wonder how a person could know so much about
what might happen that he or she would act upon it before it happens. Not only that, but it has
become so popular a term that it has been determined to be sans a hyphen, and we all know that
anything sans a hyphen can be dangerous.
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The dictionary lists "proactive" as one word, with the definition: "tending to initiate change
rather than reacting to events. In my mind, that definition also works when one uses the word "act".
When we act upon something we don't react because to react is another action.
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"Be proactive" is, in a sense and in many senses, a command with no fruitful result because the
definition of proactive is a contradiction. How can anyone change something that has not happened?
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"That is not what it means," said a colleague of mine who has a degree in Stupid Ways the English
Language Changes to Corrupt Original Definitions. "To be proactive is to act upon a change without
reacting to it."
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"But if something has already happened," I noted kindly while removing dead skin from a wound on my
finger, "any way you behave about it is a reaction".
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"But", said my colleague, "it is meant to suggest that one does not act irrational to a change".
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But, as in many new terms, the meaning that is meant for it to mean is not clearly explained in the
definition. In other words, it's a dumb term.
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But dumb terms catch on and the next thing you know someone is using a dumb term on you. This I
find insulting because the person using the term on me automatically assumes that I will accept a
term that has a meaning that is meant for it to mean is not clearly explained in the definition.
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Proactive is just one term that currently finds itself into the jargon of psychology when in fact,
psychology does not have jargon at all. There once was a Professor Jayson Jargon and, in fact, he
was big on matters of reaction as psychological behavior based on deep resentment for mothers that
forced children to eat canned fruit.
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