Back away from

Back away from

Today’s expression is “back away from.” I want you to pretend that you and I are on a hike in the woods. It’s beautiful scenery, very remote. We’re seeing lots of great wildlife. And then we see a bear. We don’t want to get any closer to the bear. I’ve still got bear spray leftover from my trip out west , so we’re protected. But we’re not getting any closer to that bear.

Let me ask you a question. Should we turn around and run away as fast as we can? No, we should not. I hope you said no to that! We don’t want to make any sudden movements. We don’t want to invite the bear to chase us. We don’t want to scare him. But we want to move away from him, nonetheless. So, we back away from him.

We take some steps backward, small steps so that everything is under control. No sudden movements, nothing to provoke his fury. We back away from him.

I used it as a metaphor during this lesson, but I’m going to give you a few other literal examples. If you’re at a museum and you get a little too close to a famous painting, a museum security guard may ask you to back away from the painting. The guard is not telling you to leave the room and you won’t be kicked out or anything. You can still look at the painting. Just back away from it a little bit. Take a few small steps back and you’ll be okay.

Pretend you’re out camping with your family and you have young kids with you. You have a big campfire going. You see your kids getting a little too close to the fire. You might tell the kids to back away from the fire a little. They can still enjoy it, but from a little farther back so they don’t run the risk of getting hurt. Back away from the fire.

So, this is the physical world: back away from the painting; back away from the fire; back away from the bear. But we can use this as a metaphor, too, when a person wants to distance himself from a commitment or an issue. And that’s what happened with Toyota and the Tokyo Olympics . Toyota was a huge sponsor, they paid big money to associate their brand with the Olympic logo. But they backed away from their sponsorship within these Olympics.

What does it mean, then, for Toyota to back away from its sponsorship? Well, they didn’t run in the opposite direction and they didn’t make a big show of their viewpoint. They didn’t issue a statement saying the Olympics should be canceled. They didn’t demand their money back. That would have been the equivalent of running from the bear; it would have been a big, sudden movement that would have invited disaster.

Instead, what did they do? They simply decided not to run television ads within Japan. They still ran ads outside Japan, where public sentiment had not turned quite as negative against the Olympics. They just stopped their ads within Japan. And in that way, they just moved a little bit away from their previous commitment. They softened their stance a little. They backed away from their full sponsorship.

Facebook is killing people by allowing vaccine misinformation to proliferate on its platform. So said American President Joe Biden recently. He made the statement in a moment of frustration because he feels that vaccine skepticism is circulating online. But it’s quite a statement to say “Facebook is killing people” by not stamping out all instances of vaccine skepticism. Facebook is working to downplay or eliminate false information and to promote vaccination, just maybe not as quickly as some would like.

So, Joe Biden backed away from that initial statement. He didn’t directly apologize. He didn’t take his statement back. But he backed away from the statement, acknowledging that Facebook does make a valuable contribution to the vaccine drive even if it’s not as fast as he would prefer. He continues to pressure Facebook to do more, but he’s no longer saying Facebook is killing people. He’s backing away from that exaggerated statement.

Quote of the Week

Here’s a funny quote of the week. It’s from the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson. This is really funny; I heard it a long time ago. Here it is, “The louder he mentioned his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”

A little background here, this is a reference to silverware. Long ago, the spoons in your dining room would have been made of real silver and, thus, would have had substantial value. So, the quote says, if someone loudly, proudly proclaims his honor meaning if someone loudly and proudly says how honest they are, then that’s the precise moment for you to be guarding your valuable possessions because they might not be so honest after all.

Here’s that quote again from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “The louder he mentioned his honor, the faster we counted our spoons” to make sure they were all there.

See you next time!

And that’s all for Plain English for today, August 23, 2021. Remember, the full lesson is available at PlainEnglish.com/392. We’ll be back again on Thursday for more. See you then!