• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Margie ClaymanMargie Clayman

Marietta, OH

  • About Me
  • Marketing
  • Librarianship
  • Random Musings
  • Contact Me

Chopping Off Your Own Head

June 10, 2012 by Margie Clayman 8 Comments

Mary, Queen of Scots with her 1st husband, King Francis of France.

Originally, Queen Elizabeth I had hoped that the religious strife in England would not be something she’d have to deal with. As she said, she did not want to create windows into mens’ souls. Although Elizabeth was herself a Protestant who had been viewed as a suspicious character by her older half-sister Queen Mary, one gets the feeling that Elizabeth hoped that she and England could skate by. Of course, just the opposite occurred. Europe itself was divided, and Catholic supporters abroad were willing to help any Englishman who wanted to see Elizabeth removed from the throne.

Things got particularly tricky when Elizabeth’s cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, was discovered to be at the core of an assassination plot against Elizabeth. Everyone in Elizabeth’s court declared that Mary should be executed, but Elizabeth had a few problems with this. First, her mother, Anne Boelyn, had been beheaded at the Tower of London. Though Elizabeth had been a little girl at the time, this clearly left a mark on her. She likely also knew that her father had several other wives summarily executed, too.

Also, Elizabeth was ruling at a time when it was believed that monarchs were gods on earth (kind of a nice position to have). To show that a monarch was flawed was fairly frowned upon. To execute another monarch, well, that would send the message that monarchs were not only mortal, they were also fallible. This would put Elizabeth herself up for more questioning.

In the end, Elizabeth was convinced that she should indeed execute Mary. There were too many transgressions, and if they went unpunished Elizabeth would look weak. Sentimentality did not have a place in 16th century London. Still. one gets the sense from Elizabeth’s biographers that she always deeply regretted this episode. One wonders if she felt a little bit like she had cut off her own head to spare her rule.

Cutting off your own head

There is a moral that can be learned from the impossible situation Elizabeth had to deal with. She had often said that she did not want to make religion an issue, but it became a big one. She said she did not want to execute another queen, but she did. One might imagine that she did not want to be viewed as the cruel, malicious person her father had been. But to many who fell at the hands of her spies and torturers, she was likely thought of just that way.

In the online world, it’s easy for us to say a lot of things, with great gusto even. We can be for or against this kind of approach. We can for or against this or that person. We can be for or against a specific platform, a specific practice, or a means of communication. But when the time comes, when those views are tested by someone else or by our own changing minds, do we also fall into the trap of chopping off our own heads? Do we end up committing the same errors that we had recently railed against? Do we end up doing things we maliciously reproached others for doing? Do we allow others to sway our opinions from those which we had so staunchly defended?

I have seen it happen. And to me, it always strikes me as a sad moment – the same kind of sadness and disappointment Elizabeth must have felt in herself when she allowed another queen to be executed.

What we do and say matters

In the online world, it seems like criticism is the easiest form of communication. It gets a lot of attention, it’s a shortcut to make us look superior, and people tend to enjoy “piling on.” There’s a trick to the online world though. Everything you do and say online – it tends to stick around. People don’t have to remember what you say. They can find it. If you are not mindful of what you say or do at any given moment, you could end up revealing your own flaws, your own weaknesses, your own, dare I say, hypocrisy.

Don’t put yourself in a position where you feel like you’re chopping off your own head, whether it’s in terms of your credibility or your reputation (or both). Be careful about what you say. Be careful about who you point the finger at, and be mindful of why you’re doing so. Life has a funny way of proving us wrong, and in the online world, there is plenty of evidence heaped up against us for whenever we change our minds about something.

Let’s all keep our heads, eh?

I’ve written a new e-book called The ABCs of Marketing Myths. You can read about it here!

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/60861613@N00/3487571112/ via Creative Commons

Filed Under: Musings

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. DWesterberg says

    June 10, 2012 at 1:16 pm

    “People don’t have to remember what you say. They can find it.”  How you ever avoided all caps with that sentence – I don’t know.  But it should be shouted from the virtual rooftops.

    Reply
    • margieclayman says

      June 12, 2012 at 2:19 pm

       @DWesterberg Thanks Dawn. Sometimes a line creeps in….glad you liked it 🙂 

      Reply
  2. dogwalkblog says

    June 10, 2012 at 1:17 pm

    People who talk, blog and comment in absolutes may make better television, have livelier comments and blog debates, but eventually, they end up getting caught up in their own ideologies as life does not live in the ends. It lives in the middle. It lives in the grays.

    Reply
    • margieclayman says

      June 12, 2012 at 2:20 pm

       @dogwalkblog True enough. The great big murky grey area. Grey matter, even? Hmm. So you’re saying people live in my brain. Yes, I can see that.
       
      But seriously – I agree with you 🙂 

      Reply
  3. Martina McGowan says

    June 11, 2012 at 2:51 pm

    Like the post and the history lesson, as always Margie.
     
    It is a fallacy that you can continually put people down and prove yourself the superior person. What makes us good people is the whole ball of wax. It becomes hard to convince people that you are easy to work with if all you ever spout is venom.
     
    And, people are fickle. Not only can they look up what you’ve said, they will feel free to use it out of context.
    We should never think ourselves above the “rules” we try to make others abide by. We should also never think we have such a hold on the “real” truth that we can never be corrected.
     
    Martina

    Reply
    • margieclayman says

      June 12, 2012 at 2:21 pm

       @Martina McGowan Very true. One might also argue that if you always have to shove people down to lift yourself up, you might not be so grand. But that’s kind of a mean thing to say, right? 😉 

      Reply
  4. geoffliving says

    June 11, 2012 at 6:43 pm

    You can’t run away from your words, they do follow you.

    Reply
    • margieclayman says

      June 12, 2012 at 2:21 pm

       @geoffliving Amen to that. 

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Previous Post: « Book Review: Return on Influence
Next Post: I’m online therefore I am »

Primary Sidebar

Recent Posts

  • Seeing Double: African American Literature
  • Book Review: Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
  • Book Review: Land of Lincoln, by Andrew Ferguson
  • The portrayal of the infertile woman in entertainment
  • Chapter 3: A Weird Thing Happened Today

Recent Comments

  • Delores Baskerville on Are you locking out blog subscribers?
  • frank c tripoli on Book Review: Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
  • Lyv on #30Thursday number 10 (we’re in the double digits?!?)
  • Fitoru on New Recipes, 2013
  • Anna Wyatt on Help me petition to deactivate driver-side airbags for Little People

Archives

  • February 2021
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • April 2017
  • October 2016
  • July 2016
  • April 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • December 2014
  • October 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • February 2014
  • December 2013
  • October 2013
  • August 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • June 2007
  • April 2007

Categories

  • Book Reviews
  • Crafts and Charity
  • Gardening for Renters
  • Marketing Talk
  • Molly Maggie McGuire
  • Musings
  • PassionPlayers
  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Footer

marjorie.clayman@gmail.com

   

Margie Clayman © 2022