War of the Worlds

I submit for your consideration that not every disagreement is a war.

But let's indulge a little parable:  One of the most adorable couples in my little burg we'll call Hank and Betsy.  They're autistic and met while working in a hospital cafeteria.  They've been married for roughly 20 years now and on their anniversary Betsy wears a taffeta prom dress for the day.  Every morning at 4 a.m. they go to a popular local diner for breakfast.

Ten years ago, they'd come in every morning and order coffee, then Hank would order a full breakfast.  He'd eat in silence while Betsy lustfully watched every forkful go from the plate to his mouth.  

One day the owner of the diner asked, "How come Betsy doesn't get breakfast? Aren't you hungry, Betsy?"

Hank looked up.  "We can only afford one." 

"So why do you always get to eat but Betsy doesn't?" asked the owner.

"Because I'm the man," answered Hank, and continued munching away.  It was clear that in his mind, this was a perfectly reasonable, logical answer.

"That's not very fair, Hank," said the owner. "Both of you work to get the money but only one of you gets breakfast.  Next time, how about I make two plates and split the food so you both get to eat?"

This was an arrangement that hadn't occurred to Hank before.  In his literal world, informed by the traditional culture he was raised in, the breakfast inequity issue was simply a non-starter.  He wasn't crazy about the proposed arrangement, even though he rarely finished the whole meal.  When quizzed, he liked the idea of being nice to Betsy, but the prospect of changing the established dynamic was unsettling just on the face of it.

The million dollar question, then: Did the diner owner's proposal constitute a war on Hank's worldview?

For those of you on the fence, the answer is no. Come on, now.

Likewise, there is no war on faith in this country despite indignant cries to the contrary.  This bears repeating: There is no war on faith in this country.

People of faith are largely unaware of the extent to which their worldview dominates the discourse. God casually saturates everything: our money, our oaths, our sneezes.  On the national "war on faith" stage (with "faith," by the way being code for "Judeo-Christian faith, preferably less Judeo but at least that Old Testament was a page turner") they like to point this out as though the rest of us haven't noticed, as though not complaining abut the little stuff somehow means that speaking up about the big issues is hypocritical.  We have, and it isn't.

I am generally a laissez faire atheist. I don't believe in god and I find it difficult to understand how and why other people do.  But they do, so okay. My grandparents were exceptionally devout and it brought them a measure of comfort, something I don't begrudge anyone.  Where things start to get problematic for 

me is when religious dogma creeps into public policy. Thing is, it's been creeping (and occasionally crashing around like a bull in a china shop) for years and is currently manifesting in a particularly unsavory way.  Protesting this is very different than executing an unprovoked assault.  In fact, unlike, say, evangelical Christians, the opposition voices aren't arguing that people abandon their beliefs, they're asking them not to use their beliefs as a bludgeoning tool in the service of ulterior motives.

Let's think of it in fun, retro-marketing terms: God-drunk politicians are all, "Hey, stop trying to get your peanut butter in my chocolate!" but everyone who doesn't share their faith is like, "Dude, your chocolate's been all up in my peanut butter for years now and I've tried to be accommodating, but dang!"

Yes, for a lot of people their faith informs their ethics, but when you start applying your ethical guidelines to public policy, you best make sure you have a better reason for espousing them than, "Because a bunch of long-dead or possibly never-living guys wrote a book that told me so."

As I watch the slow-motion trainwreck that is the Republican nominating process, it strikes me that the figureheads crying "War on Faith!" are purportedly acting on faith-based ethics, yet their positions are pretty wildly out of step with the ethics of many of the self-described faithful among the electorate.  The question of whether that portion of the electorate is apostate is for that community to decide, but it's more likely that they   find it reasonable to understand their faith in a contemporary context instead of blindly applying standards dictated thousands of years and half a world away.

So what to do when you're a politician who's such a wackadoo that you're alienating even your usually conservative and agreeable base?  Find a scapegoat and try to convince everybody to circle the wagons.  Doctor up a false choice.  Equate examined and thoughtful moral stances with godlessness.  Make sure they have to choose between their identity as a believer and their dirty, dirty modern ideas.  If possible, try to get people less polarizing than you to promote this idea so it has a patina of credibility and the debate winds up such a muck of hate and accusation that everyone's too tired to suss out who the real enemy is.

I Don't Want To Hurt You, But It's An Election Year

This one's gonna be quick and dirty, folks.

Even before I got political and drifted so far left I fell off the map, I hated election years.  I hate them. They are hateful. The are horrible and hateful and over long and I hate them. HATE THEM.  But as I think of it, it actually has very little to do with the candidates themselves, who I just generally assume are disingenuous at best and dangerous at worst.  No, I hate election years because of the plague of outrageous stupidity the sweeps the nation, infecting even people I generally respect.

If you would prefer that I don't lose my shit on you (at least not from a talking-about-the-election standpoint), keep these things in mind:

1. Party loyalty is for the weak (minded).  This is one of those things that I say from the bottom of my heart, and while I want badly to pull punches where dear friends who are party activists are concerned, I just can't.

If you want to be an enrolled voter because you find yourself mostly aligned with their viewpoints, fine.  But you  have a responsibility to speak up when you disagree, and if you find yourself torturing logic to excuse the sketchy shenanigans of some slimy douchebag just because he's "on your team," you suck.

By the same token, there are some parties that have more unpalatable platforms and attract a disproportionate number of bottom feeders, but they are not always evil, and they're not always wrong.

Elections result in people literally controlling our lives. We're not picking the homecoming queen.  Think a little harder than that, 'kay?

2. There's tons of egregious shit to criticize. Don't be petty. You know how when people argue on the internet and one of them has a typo, the opponent inevitably responds, "Oh, you 'knoe' it's true?  Guess you don't 'knoe' how to spell, though, huh?"  This is not meaningful debate, this is elementary school. If you must bicker, even knowing that political debate NEVER results in people changing their minds, own your opponent on logical fallacies, factual errors and dishonesty. Otherwise you look weak and cheap and too poorly informed to win the debate on substance.  Also, you make people who share your views look like morons, so stop. Please.

3. Single-issue voters can suck it.  Single issue voters love Ron Paul. I'm against U.S. military involvement overseas. Bam, Ron Paul.  I'm a hardcore pro-lifer. Bam, Ron Paul.  I don't think about issues beyond things that affect me in my dorm room and I'm a wicked stoner who wants to legalize. Bam, Ron Paul. I'm racist, sexist, and homophobic and want to see any protections for minorities thrown out the window. Bam, Ron motherfucking Paul.  Ron Paul could get elected by single-issue voters, but I'm guessing that the hippies that wanted to end war and legalize pot are probably not really into the whole pro-life anti-already existing humans agenda.  Dear Otherwise Sane People: Stop saying things like, "I like that Ron Paul is anti-war, but I don't agree with a lot of his other ideas," as though you're still weighing out whether he might be an okay choice. Thanks, The World.

4. Consistency is not necessarily a virtue.  Okay.  Pandering is a bad thing.  This is when someone says that they believe whatever will get them the most support in a given situation.  This means they might be inconsistent in what they say about their position on a topic from campaign stop to campaign stop.  Pandering is a bad thing. This person probably has a consistent opinion, but "flip-flops" out of political expedience.

Open-mindedness is a good thing.  That's when you espouse a belief in something, but you listen to other people talk about that thing and, when presented with compelling evidence, change your mind.  Suppose you believe that car engines are powered by magical sprites on exercise bicycles, but then someone shows you the interior of an internal combustion engine and you now declare that you firmly believe the scientific community's position on what makes cars go.  Your new opinion is inconsistent with your previous position, but the change represents new wisdom and growth as opposed to deceit.

Suppose a candidate also believes in car engine sprites, and after being shown the same information you were, proclaims that the tenuous internal combustion "theory" is just some mumbo jumbo that scientists like to throw around and that he still believes in the sprites and furthermore thinks we need to spend more money on researching engine sprites.  He's consistent, but he's fucking crazy.

Alright, I'll stop now, but please.  Don't let the internets and televisions whip you into the kind of berserker state that makes these behaviors and beliefs happen.  Be sane. Be rational. Be skeptical.  Of all of them.  Groucho Marx famously wouldn't join any club that would have him as a member.  To be honest, I don't really want to give the job of president, or congressman, or senator to anyone who would want it.  Question motives and don't be an asshole.

xo,
Meghan

My New Year Comes Late

I'm not much for celebrating the change of calendar years, but I do like to take a quick inventory of the past year when I've successfully lived another 365 days.  In other words, it's my birthday and amid the fun times with my awesome friends and family, I like to sprinkle in some thinkin'.

Yesterday evening I had a lengthy and fairly intense conversation with one of my favorite people about depression, empathy, and general philosophy.  Specifically, we talked about what it means to be smart and depressed, what it feels like to be "over" empathic in a culture that doesn't, despite its best intentions and platitudes, value empathy (and how it's often perceived as kind of creepy), the relative insignificance/importance of a single human being on macro- and microcosmic scales, and how we understand our personal context and the larger human historical context in the world within an atheist framework.   And contrary to how that probably sounds, it was one of the most engaging, funny, uplifting conversations I've had in a while.

I will mark this year as the year I got happy and the beginning of my radicalization (it's short way to radical in these gross political times, by the way). Strange conceptual bedfellows, a bit, but definitely symbiotic .  Being happy means I have the luxury of engaging with the world outside in way that is vigorous and positive.  Even when I'm seething with indignation about this or that injustice or ranting about letters to the editor, I know it's because I like life and it matters to me that this world is good.  For the record, I recognize the nearly unbearable earnestness of statements like that and even that feels like a triumph, even if it makes you, dear reader, barf just a little.  Take that, increasingly-marginalized cynical Meg!

What cropped up over and over again in the conversation last night was the idea that being responsible for your own happiness is maybe the defining responsibility of a person's life.  Complaining that things are terrible and vaguely hoping they spontaneously get better is a miserably inefficient solution, and one that has ripple effects through other people's lives. Prayer is complaining and really hoping things will spontaneously get better.  Next week or next month or next year are not more magical than right now.  Your future is happening by seconds, now, now, now, now, now, again now. Be kind now.  Appreciate the good things now.  I'd cite the Serenity Prayer, but I don't want anyone to wait for a god to give them serenity or courage or wisdom: Accept the things you can't change, change the things you can, take yourself off autopilot and figure out which are which.  It sounds incredibly simple, to the point of being meaningless, but in practice those three tasks are very, very difficult.  A lot of terrible things happen.  A lot of frustrating things happen.  Sometimes those things will happen continuously for kind of a long time and there's nothing you can do about it.  I've let that stuff own me plenty and all it got me was a double dose of misery.  Sometimes the bright spots to focus on belong to a friend or a stranger in a news story, but being happy for those bright spots beats wallowing, defeated, in a dungeon of suffering.  It's easy to let yourself off the hook. Sometimes I have to remind myself out loud.

Here's a useful object lesson:  I started writing this post this morning before I met friends for lunch.  I was supposed to go visit my father afterwards.  I thought he was being impatient and calling me at 1 and again a half-hour later, but as it turns out it was his neighbor calling to tell me that Medcu was taking my dad to the hospital.  I got to the building as they were leaving, gave them his basic info and told them I'd meet them at the hospital.  The facts aren't in yet, but he probably had another in a series of seizures following a stroke more than 8 years ago.  It's not serious in the sense that it's unlikely to be fatal, but it will quite possibly mean the end of his independence, something he's fought tooth and nail for over the years. We think this every time, though, and every time he manages a miraculous recovery, just slightly more impaired than before the latest event.

What I've learned from doing this over and over and over again is that I can start fretting now about how this might all turn out, or I can take the simple steps necessary to ensure his care, check in with the hospital, maybe revisit some of the information from last time.  I can go hold his hand and let him try to communicate using one or two words, which is usually what he's left with after these events.  I can laugh at the very funny two-way text exchange I'm having with friends, take care of a couple of tasks for the part-time job I recently took on, be grateful for the flurry of birthday wishes on facebook, go to dinner with my boyfriend and consider what a really rich, loving, mutually respectful life we lead together and how excited I am about the plans we've put in action.

I can't make my dad not sick, the best I can do is...well, the best I can do and falling down a rabbit hole of negative speculation won't do anything good for anybody.

It's not quite where I thought I was going with this when I started, but I guess it's actually pretty close.

This new year's off to a rousing start!

Giant Marshmallow Pillow -- Yeah!

When I started this blog I was like, "Hey, everything's so awesome! I can't wait to see what awesome stuff's obviously just about to happen every second from now until forever!  I'm going to document all that awesome here in this space, just watch! Yay!"

Well, yeah.  I meant to, and I really do, actually, experience the majority of my life as a series of awesome events.  The things is that I'm also a little bit hermit-y and if I were to write about the things that make me the happiest and most excited on any kind of regular basis, what we'd have here would be a collection of adorable cat pictures and stories and a series of groaningly punny dialogues between me and my boyfriend and/or one or both of us talking to the cat.

Also, for all the fist shaking and righteous indignation on the page, having the energy to invest in larger social issues is a luxury that depressed-me couldn't afford (or was too miserly to budget for).  Despite appearances, it's a sign of mental health.  But, depending on your taste, maybe less fun than the rainbows and unicorns I seemed to be promising in the beginning.

And I like it.  I like my over-long and thinky entries.  I like my old smart friends who leave comments and the new friends I've acquired because they're smart and leave comments. I like that even though there aren't a ton of readers, at least some portion of my stats are actual human beings and not click-back bots.

Now you say, "Get to the point, Ramblin' Rose!"

And I say, "Right. Anyway, I'm leaving this business just the way it is, but for those of you with a taste for fly-by-night animation and the disassociative short fiction of dreams, I made a fun blog."


Go now, my pretties.

Seriously, though, how awesome is he?

I'm In Love With the USPS And I Don't Care Who Knows It

One of several boxes of cherished letters.

My father was a carrier with the U.S. Postal Service for nearly 30 years before an early stroke forced him into retirement.  It was a good job, and by contemporary standards maybe a dream job. Under a collective bargaining agreement negotiated by one of the largest public employee unions in the country, he took home a comfortable pay check, enjoyed substantial health benefits for himself and for me, and accrued a pension, something that's become something of a mythical beast of benefits.  In exchange he reported for work before dawn in an atmosphere that was toxic (in part thanks to an extremely adversarial union/management relationship) and made his appointed rounds through rain and snow and heat and gloom of night.

When my grandfather (himself a USPS veteran) suggested I take the civil service exam and go into the family business, my father told me he's never let me "work on the floor with those animals."  I was willing to take his word on that.  When a man who is himself crass, sexist and somewhat racist tells you it's a rough crowd, well, that's good enough for me.

Ironically, one of the hats I wear in my current job is USPS contract employee, picking up and delivering island mail from the processing and distribution center in Scarborough.  I love it there.  The plant itself has a Rube Goldberg quality that I enjoy, and I've developed a jovial, affectionate relationship with most of the people who work there.  At this point, starting pay as a carrier would be a significant pay cut and the grousing of my buddies there confirms that I'm better off where I am in a workplace where the culture is more like a family than a business, but there's a part of me that wishes I'd taken my grandfather's advice way back when.

Of course these days the postal service is considered a sinking ship.  Facing an enormous budget shortfall, there's talk of cutting Saturday service and smaller branches exist under perpetual threat of closure.  I can't even count the number of times I've heard the phrase, "No wonder the postal office is going under..." recently.  This bothers me.  A lot.

I Enjoy Being a Girl

Facial hair=competent, right?

 You know how sometimes you bump into someone and apologize and back up and knock something over and apologize and lean over to pick it up and hip check someone and pretty soon you're in this sort semi-comic nightmare vortex of apology?  I think that might happen in a second.  Bear with me.

Some people will read this and think I'm an insult to feminism and its hard-won gains.  Some people will think I'm being simultaneously a boring scold and a whiny, selfish baby and, on the whole, too sensitive feministy altogether.  Some people will probably just think I'm a frivolous nincompoop who spends an awful lot of time pontificating on things that really don't deserve it. Oh, and let's not forget that I'll be using broad strokes and will undoubtedly be accused of stereotyping. As far as what I actually am, well, probably most of it's at least partially true.  Except for the stereotype thing, where I hope you'll accept that I'm not speaking for all women, about all men in all circumstances. Call me out if I really hit a nerve, but I can almost guarantee it'll be something I'm shorthanding for the purpose of the discussion.  So then: sorry for not being a credit to my gender, sorry for being so tetchy, sorry I'm a nitwit, sorry for extrapolating generalized scenarios from shallow experience pools.  Sorry for apologizing in advance. I hate when people do that.  Welcome to the nightmare vortex.

Does This Urban Outfit Make Me Look Fatuous?

Urban Outfitters is putting on a crazy push to finish their store in downtown Portland, Maine.

As I walked by tonight, it occurred to me that although having a national chain plunked down in the midst of the Old Port, our charming little enclave of locally-owned boutiques, feels a little yicky, it's actually a weird testament to the strength and success of our small businesses.  Urban Outfitters isn't interested in atmosphere, it's interested in cash, and the fact that it made sense to them to take up real estate downtown instead of somewhere in the strip mall wasteland that is South Portland is kind of like a high five to the business owners who've grown the area over the past few decades.  You know, the kind of high five you get from your mortal enemy who's super passive aggressive but who it's way easier to just make nice with than face their mean-girl vengeance if you snub them.

If I were the kind of person who paid for clothes instead of scavenging cast offs from friends and making my own from bed linens, I'd think, "Ooh. Urban Outfitters' clearance rack is totally like retail junk food and junk food is so fun.  But I'ma make a concerted effort to get my metaphorical fashion groceries at local stores too, because they're the reason there's even anything in this area besides rats and dive bars.  And I'm never, ever going to buy anything from UO with writing in a foreign language I don't speak, because of that one time when Tricia used her Japanese lessons and realized that they had a T-shirt that said, 'I'm a stupid white person' and she splurged and bought it because it was so hilarious that people who couldn't read it were wearing it because oriental-fetishism was at its peak in the late-90's and it totally scandalized our friend Yuko and Tricia's Japanese hair dresser, both of whom assumed she'd misunderstood."

That, friends, is exactly what I would think.