Let's set aside the obnoxious old saw that it takes more muscles to frown than smile and admit that, in situations that are frustrating or unpleasant, the path of least resistance is to be awful. It's a hard thing to admit and most of us have the blinders on when it comes to our own tendency to be ungracious, but it's true and human and something that requires vigilance instead of denial.
The past few weeks at work have been particularly hellacious, an impossible numbers game wherein hundreds of people descend on our five-person operation with everything they own and, owing to a poor understanding of geometry, physics, and the notion that the world doesn't revolve around them, become enraged to find that we can't fit the astonishing pile of consumer goods they've deemed necessary for a weekend getaway on a boat immediately.
Look, I'm no angel where this is concerned. No one ever thinks they're the one being unreasonable, and I'd like to imagine that I can claim the high road. Realistically, though, it takes an extraordinary amount of energy not to trade snark for snark, raised voice for raised voice, veiled insult for veiled insult. I try. Really hard. But while I'm mostly successful in not shooting first, I struggle not to fire back in kind and when I dig in for a fight, I am not fun.
That said, being on the receiving end of these shenanigans and being responsible for young seasonal employees who are still learning the operation but who are smart, courteous, and hard-working, and watching bitter hags having a bad day just eviscerate these kids makes me realize what a lot of assholes there are in this world. And now that I'm more conscious of it, I see it everywhere that customer service happens: in stores, at the movies, in restaurants...Ev. Ery. Where. Customers are awful, entitled know-it-alls. Sure, sure, there are times when things are legitimately bad and someone needs to do a better job, but just look around and see how often someone in a line near you goes from 0 to subhuman because a grocery clerk needs a price check or won't accept their Canadian currency or asks them to wait a moment while they put out the fire that's just erupted in the trash can.
So the thing is, it takes a little bit of decorum, a little bit of restraint to overcome the junkfood-style satisfaction of being awful in the moment but it's well worth it because in the long run it's kind of soul-crushing. Or it should be, if you're even kind of a good person.
Am I a broken record? Maybe. But if the easiest way to be is awful, it's worth reminding myself and others to be diligent about NOT being so as often as possible.
It's 4 a.m. and I'm about to go to work. Today I will behave as though every customer is an alien new to earth and in need of guidance. Today I will muster an appreciative laugh for lame jokes just to honor the spirit of positivity. Today I'm bringing cupcakes to work just because.
Ready? Go!
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Kickstart(er) My Heart
The other day on facebook I saw that a friend of mine loaned money to an El Salvadorean woman to help her buy spare parts for her bicycle repair shop. The woman and her husband started the shop when they were unable to find jobs. Their loan request, for $1200, constitutes approximately a quarter of their yearly income. They requested a similar loan last year and successfully paid it off.
The loan was made through Kiva, an online micro-lender that connects entrepreneurs from around the world with the capital they need to advance their businesses. Each owner creates a profile describing their operation, the improvements the loan will fund, and the target loan amount. Individual investors contribute some portion of the loan until the requested amount is matched. Repayment is generally due over the course of two years, with interest and fees in place.
Within the hour, the same person who made that loan noted that they'd contributed to a Kickstarter campaign for a friend's documentary and encouraged others to support the project.
For people who've been living under a rock or maybe just don't know a lot of hipsters, Kickstarter (and the very similar Indiegogo) is a platform wherein people create accounts describing a project -- movies, albums, and restaurants are pervasive, but ideas run the gamut -- what they need money to accomplish vis a vis the project, and an amount they hope to raise by a target date. Individual investors contribute some portion of the money until that end date. If they succeed in getting the full amount pledged, the project gets the money. If not, they get nothing. Incentives are offered at various levels of support, a la PBS. The rewards generally run from a warm thank you to a t-shirt to a copy of the product, official backer status, etc. These are not loans; the money is not repaid.
What's that you say? These things sound very similar? That's exactly what I was thinking! I'm a little embarrassed that I've been aware of both programs for some time now and never really realized this.
Here's what gets me in the juxtaposition of these two platforms:
One of them procures money primarily for people in poverty-stricken regions, where it's unlikely that any of the contributions come from friends or neighbors, because, well, the friends and neighbors are likewise in some dire financial straits. These entrepreneurs are being offered old-fashioned loans through the banking establishment and are subject to the terms and conditions of old-fashioned loans.
The other procures money primarily from the entrepreneur's friends and neighbors and their extended networks (there are, certainly, donations from strangers, but those are fewer and farther between than the others, celebrity Kickstarters notwithstanding). These are paid back in handshakes and tchochke.
The bottom line is that people for whom this money has very serious financial consequences are taking out business loans through Kiva and paying them back. The people whose friends and larger networks have disposable income to help them make, say, a $3500 monster costume or acquire $850 for the world's largest jock strap are gifted the money in exchange for a high five and a chuckle.
Anyone currently on Kiva would be better served setting up a Kickstarter, and obviously they could. But I'm guessing that very few of the rural entrepreneurs using Kiva have the internet access and savvy to compare their options and lack the social networks that make it a breeze for a millenial Stanford grad to raise $20,000 to fulfill his lifelong culinary-punk dream of owning a food truck called "Blintz-krieg Bop." So the former follows a traditional business model and builds their business the hard way and the latter has the assistance handed to them on a silver platter, no strings attached.
Don't get me wrong, Kiva is a really wonderful and important idea, one that ought to have a huge base of support and really, I'm okay with people helping each other out to accomplish their dream projects on a donation basis. And I think that people who give to either or both have their hearts in the right place, but it's really unfortunate that in tandem they reinforce the bright line in culture and class politics that separates how we as middle and upper-middle class westerners approach giving as patronage, as charity, or as business, to artists, to western businesses, to third world businesses, to NGOs.
It's not difficult to imagine that this formula puts a strain on the available resources. People with a limited amount of disposable income are more likely to fund projects by people they know over a third-world business start up despite the arguably more substantial social and economic return on the latter. Instant gratification is instantly gratifying. Playing that band's CD is a far more tangible outcome than the slightly ephemeral knowledge that somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa a farmer is able to meet the demand for amaranth in his village and provide security for his family.
This is all just a lot of spitballing, but as I've been thinking about it, I've thought of a pretty awesome Kickstarter campaign: A request for money to travel and film Kickstarter videos for people seeking loans on Kiva, effectively giving them both means and access to the more forgiving platform. I think they'd do well in the short-term while the glow of the initial filmmaker's Kickstarter allowed them accesss to his or her extended network, but would likely peter out once awareness fatigue set in. I'd give, as long as I got a high five.
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Here's the Beef: Where's the Beef?
Know what's delicious? Bacon. Know what's a tasty addition to almost everything? Goat cheese. Guess what I ate a lot of in 2010. Give up? Pizza. And quesadillas.
When I went vegetarian and eventually vegan, I didn't suddenly decide that these things don't taste good. I made a decision that my desire for certain flavors really didn't justify the death and suffering that comes with them.
Within the realm of foods that I have no ethical objection to, I eat the ones that taste good when I can, the ones that taste okay when necessary, and avoid the ones that taste bad. Them's some pretty simple criteria. Using this program, I don't reject good tasting food because the ingredients aren't what I expected. I've never, for instance, thought, "Wow, this is the best blueberry pie I've ever eaten, but they thickened it with corn starch instead of flour, so I'll buy that blander one down the street where they use flour."
Which is why, a few short weeks into baking for profit as well as fun, I'm feeling a little frustrated.
I knew going into it that getting vegan food to the general public would be an uphill battle. "Vegan" is a word with a lot of baggage, conjuring images of asceticism and denial, visiting judgment on omni eaters, and linked to its extremist cousin raw foods with all the peculiar culinary acrobatics that go into crafting familiar-food analogs from walnuts and agave syrup. Going in, my plan was to make awesome stuff, send up the vegan Bat-signal to let them know it exists, but not market it specifically as vegan. I'm a child of the 80's and I've internalized the core lesson of the Pepsi challenge: what people like and what they think they like aren't always the same, and that gap is largely a function of ephemeral concerns like image and marketing.
But as it happens, my first customer is a conventional bakery, and the fact that they carry my wares is specifically a function of the fact that I bake without eggs and dairy, an alternative option labeled accordingly. It wasn't necessarily in the original plan, but I'm grateful to have a steady outlet where my stuff sells well. And in the first batch, two sold to my friends, one to a girl whose vegan friend needed cheering up, and one to someone who made no mention of it being vegan. It's a small sample, but it leaves room to hope that I might still appeal to a wider audience even with the scarlet V on the label.
Then I took some samples to a coffee shop. The owner knew before I arrived that the samples were vegan and after asking some questions about ingredients and process she asked, "But you only do vegan, right?"
When I said yes, she got a far-away, disappointed look.
"Okay...it's just that we're looking for someone who can do other things too."
"Well, try the samples and see what you think. If you can taste the difference, more power to you, but I think you'll find they're not any different than conventional," I said.
In the course of our fifteen minute conversation she mentioned that they wanted someone who could do "other things that aren't vegan" at least three times, always wearing a little frown and using that let-you-down-gently tone that says, "It's not you, it's me...no, actually, it's definitely you."
And fine. It's her business, it's her decision, but it's dumb. Not just because I think I make a really great product (which I do), but because it was a decision that very clearly had nothing to do with the actual product and everything to do with her gut reaction to the idea of vegan.
I have a tasting coming up with a large corporate concern to make a bid for snacks at their meetings, etc. I have not mentioned that I'm a "specialty" baker, nor do I plan to. More than one person has asked if I've told them, and to a person they've responded with surprise when I say no, as though I'm planning to scam the elderly out of their pensions.
But I'm not tricking anyone into eating something they object to -- the ingredients are the same as most conventional items, and I'm fairly sure no one's looking to get their protein or calcium from the egg in a cupcake or the scant amount of milk in frosting, so I'm not depriving them of any expected benefit. I'm offering tasty treats. If they reject them because they don't like them, or don't like the price, or because I can't do the volume they need, I can accept that because those are reasonable, reality-based issues. But I won't put myself in a position to lose business based on vague ideas about what a recipe should be like instead of what the product actually is.
Someday I'll have a brick and mortar establishment, a little cafe with pastries and cakes and soups and sandwiches like any other cafe with pastries and soups and sandwiches, except there won't be any meat or animal products. I won't point it out, and most people won't notice. I'm not looking to proselytize, I just want to make awesome food consistent with my ethics and stand or fall on the strength of my skill.
And as my semi-estranged father told me the other day in a moment of casually shocking intimacy, "That's what I've always admired about you...when you want something, you go to the mat to get it."
Thanks, Dad, I guess I do. And I will, I just want a fair fight.
When I went vegetarian and eventually vegan, I didn't suddenly decide that these things don't taste good. I made a decision that my desire for certain flavors really didn't justify the death and suffering that comes with them.
Within the realm of foods that I have no ethical objection to, I eat the ones that taste good when I can, the ones that taste okay when necessary, and avoid the ones that taste bad. Them's some pretty simple criteria. Using this program, I don't reject good tasting food because the ingredients aren't what I expected. I've never, for instance, thought, "Wow, this is the best blueberry pie I've ever eaten, but they thickened it with corn starch instead of flour, so I'll buy that blander one down the street where they use flour."
Which is why, a few short weeks into baking for profit as well as fun, I'm feeling a little frustrated.
I knew going into it that getting vegan food to the general public would be an uphill battle. "Vegan" is a word with a lot of baggage, conjuring images of asceticism and denial, visiting judgment on omni eaters, and linked to its extremist cousin raw foods with all the peculiar culinary acrobatics that go into crafting familiar-food analogs from walnuts and agave syrup. Going in, my plan was to make awesome stuff, send up the vegan Bat-signal to let them know it exists, but not market it specifically as vegan. I'm a child of the 80's and I've internalized the core lesson of the Pepsi challenge: what people like and what they think they like aren't always the same, and that gap is largely a function of ephemeral concerns like image and marketing.
But as it happens, my first customer is a conventional bakery, and the fact that they carry my wares is specifically a function of the fact that I bake without eggs and dairy, an alternative option labeled accordingly. It wasn't necessarily in the original plan, but I'm grateful to have a steady outlet where my stuff sells well. And in the first batch, two sold to my friends, one to a girl whose vegan friend needed cheering up, and one to someone who made no mention of it being vegan. It's a small sample, but it leaves room to hope that I might still appeal to a wider audience even with the scarlet V on the label.
Then I took some samples to a coffee shop. The owner knew before I arrived that the samples were vegan and after asking some questions about ingredients and process she asked, "But you only do vegan, right?"
When I said yes, she got a far-away, disappointed look.
"Okay...it's just that we're looking for someone who can do other things too."
"Well, try the samples and see what you think. If you can taste the difference, more power to you, but I think you'll find they're not any different than conventional," I said.
In the course of our fifteen minute conversation she mentioned that they wanted someone who could do "other things that aren't vegan" at least three times, always wearing a little frown and using that let-you-down-gently tone that says, "It's not you, it's me...no, actually, it's definitely you."
And fine. It's her business, it's her decision, but it's dumb. Not just because I think I make a really great product (which I do), but because it was a decision that very clearly had nothing to do with the actual product and everything to do with her gut reaction to the idea of vegan.
I have a tasting coming up with a large corporate concern to make a bid for snacks at their meetings, etc. I have not mentioned that I'm a "specialty" baker, nor do I plan to. More than one person has asked if I've told them, and to a person they've responded with surprise when I say no, as though I'm planning to scam the elderly out of their pensions.
But I'm not tricking anyone into eating something they object to -- the ingredients are the same as most conventional items, and I'm fairly sure no one's looking to get their protein or calcium from the egg in a cupcake or the scant amount of milk in frosting, so I'm not depriving them of any expected benefit. I'm offering tasty treats. If they reject them because they don't like them, or don't like the price, or because I can't do the volume they need, I can accept that because those are reasonable, reality-based issues. But I won't put myself in a position to lose business based on vague ideas about what a recipe should be like instead of what the product actually is.
Someday I'll have a brick and mortar establishment, a little cafe with pastries and cakes and soups and sandwiches like any other cafe with pastries and soups and sandwiches, except there won't be any meat or animal products. I won't point it out, and most people won't notice. I'm not looking to proselytize, I just want to make awesome food consistent with my ethics and stand or fall on the strength of my skill.
And as my semi-estranged father told me the other day in a moment of casually shocking intimacy, "That's what I've always admired about you...when you want something, you go to the mat to get it."
Thanks, Dad, I guess I do. And I will, I just want a fair fight.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Rutabaga!
 |
| This happy l'il guy's gonna be the face of Rutabaga Baking. |
Good news, guys. The moment has arrived for me to stop being wistful and get busy.
After lo these many months of mooning about, talking a big, vague game about Finally Doing It, allow me to talk a big, only slightly more specific game.
I'm currently procrastinating on putting together a price list for Rutabaga Baking, for a customer who will receive delivery next week. Until the order's actually in I'll refrain from naming the venue, but that'll follow soon. I'm just too excited to keep it entirely under my hat!
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Daydream Believer
If wishes were horses than beggars would ride, and if I were
half as responsible to myself as I am to other people, I would be self-employed
doing awesome things all day.
I like to think that I’m a free spirit, but I’ve been made
to face the fact (over and over and over again, in fact) that my particular
spirit is rather like a small child:
It craves boundaries, direction, structure in which to exercise its
gifts in a safe and loving environment.
I will take on an extra project at work, but fail to shop
for groceries until my third day of eating nothing but unadorned grits and
Bisquick pancakes with ground pepper (for real), help a friend move or paint an
apartment but leave my laundry until I’m channeling Pigpen from Charlie Brown.
Ask me to do something and give me a deadline. I’ll do it in style, with gusto. I’ll dot
all the I’s with little hearts, wrap up the results in fancy paper and bows, and
deliver it to your door with a curtsy and a flourish.
I’m a diligent ditz, a spazzy robot. I’m a freight train making all its
stops, leaving the mangled corpses of a million grand schemes at every
crossing.
Because there are plenty of things that I do just for myself: I play
my ukulele, make songs, I sing, I sew, I write stories and essays, I walk, I
cook elaborate and not-elaborate meals, I bake and decorate and bake more, I
draw, I build simple electronics and modify the complex, I replicate (with
varying degrees of success) everything that
strikes my fancy from shoes to food to furniture. I MacGuyver the shit out of things. Our VHS library currently resides in a six-shelf condominium fashioned from packing tape and vintage Casio boxes. I build tiny
people in tiny dioramas because tiny things are just so, so satisfying.
But there’s the rub.
There are so many things I want to do just because I want to that if you
put all of the tools for all of those activities in a room, I would end up
running from station to station, flailing my arms like the robot from Lost in Space and finally collapse like a birthday girl when the cake wears off.
I'm heavily motivated by guilt, and I swallow my own excuses easily enough that I don't feel guilty when I let myself down. A friend pointed out today that my goal shouldn't be to make myself feel guilty for breaking promises to myself, but to recognize that my personal projects deserve attention as much as outside jobs do. It's two sides of the same coin, and she's right that the latter would be preferable, but I'm hoping for either at this point.
More than hoping, I'm baby-stepping in that direction. In the past I've looked at this glaring flaw in my operations as something huge and wild and untame-able, something to be acknowledged with a sigh and shrug, but as I cruise into my "grown up" life still holding tight to teenaged optimism, I'm increasingly aware that that's both really counterproductive and ultimately soul-crushing.
I like my job a lot as far as working for someone else goes, but as my ten year anniversary approaches, I shudder at the thought of another decade, or even another five years.
When I started this blog I hinted at a big project in the works, and I'm happy to say that I'm actually working on it. This is in no small part thanks to the community of wonderful people around me, friends and family and co-workers, who nudge me when I'm flagging keep my alternately inflated and flattened ego in reality. In the end, it would be great if I could be accountable to myself, but I consider it a good start to be accountable to the people who care about and believe in me.
In the very short term, I'm working on a web project, aggregating all of my projects into one space. It's a relatively passive endeavor, but it's useful for taking stock. In the next month or two my art, this blog, Giant Marshmallow Pillow (it's not dead, it's sleeping), and my first stab at a commercial baking endeavor will find a new home together. Like most things I do, it's happening in fits and starts because the ol' squirrel in my noggin keeps running off to check out other stuff, plus I decided to go all out and learn a little bit of WordPress coding just to make things interesting.
So thanks to everyone who humors me and challenges me and keeps me on track. I'll be sure to give you all presents tied up in fancy paper with a curtsy and a flourish.
I'm heavily motivated by guilt, and I swallow my own excuses easily enough that I don't feel guilty when I let myself down. A friend pointed out today that my goal shouldn't be to make myself feel guilty for breaking promises to myself, but to recognize that my personal projects deserve attention as much as outside jobs do. It's two sides of the same coin, and she's right that the latter would be preferable, but I'm hoping for either at this point.
More than hoping, I'm baby-stepping in that direction. In the past I've looked at this glaring flaw in my operations as something huge and wild and untame-able, something to be acknowledged with a sigh and shrug, but as I cruise into my "grown up" life still holding tight to teenaged optimism, I'm increasingly aware that that's both really counterproductive and ultimately soul-crushing.
I like my job a lot as far as working for someone else goes, but as my ten year anniversary approaches, I shudder at the thought of another decade, or even another five years.
When I started this blog I hinted at a big project in the works, and I'm happy to say that I'm actually working on it. This is in no small part thanks to the community of wonderful people around me, friends and family and co-workers, who nudge me when I'm flagging keep my alternately inflated and flattened ego in reality. In the end, it would be great if I could be accountable to myself, but I consider it a good start to be accountable to the people who care about and believe in me.
In the very short term, I'm working on a web project, aggregating all of my projects into one space. It's a relatively passive endeavor, but it's useful for taking stock. In the next month or two my art, this blog, Giant Marshmallow Pillow (it's not dead, it's sleeping), and my first stab at a commercial baking endeavor will find a new home together. Like most things I do, it's happening in fits and starts because the ol' squirrel in my noggin keeps running off to check out other stuff, plus I decided to go all out and learn a little bit of WordPress coding just to make things interesting.
So thanks to everyone who humors me and challenges me and keeps me on track. I'll be sure to give you all presents tied up in fancy paper with a curtsy and a flourish.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Queen Bee
[I started writing this post on International Women's Day, but a) I'm slow and b) I'm note a huge fan of selecting a calendar date on which to "celebrate" a huge swath of the population. Anyway. Shout out to all my ladies.]
It's easy to lose track of the idea that the people who've always been your seniors were once young, or, even if you know the basic facts, to really imagine who they were. The pictures are so abstract compared to the complexity of a real person. Family stories fill in some blanks, but those too, get fairly static after a few listens and stop feeling connected to their subject.My grandmother is a great example.
In family photos, she's child number 8 in a Von-Trapp-style line up. She's grinning and maybe a little mischievous. You can pair it with the stories of cramming her feet into her sisters' hand me down shoes or listening to her mother playing little tunes that she taught herself on the piano to cobble together the picture of a wholesome childhood light on material wealth but rich in resourcefulness and small pleasures.
We've got pictures of her on the basketball court later, refereeing women's basketball games, a young woman in charge. We can put it next to the story of winning the Bausch and Lomb Science Award, an important moment for her, and here's a picture of a girl with talent and ambition.
I know these pictures and stories, and plenty of others like a favorite book I've read a million times, but what I love best are the strange asides that come out from time to time: that her older twin sisters gave her her name, Rosalie, and that she didn't really like it. Some game they used to play with their dolls. The little stories that go nowhere: the way she and her friends used to horse around walking home from school, the hilarious nicknames that everyone in that generation apparently had. Hers was Diddy. A family favorite is Flubby (or Fluvvy...we're never sure) Cowan. I think I'm not making my point very clear, but it's essentially this: the illustrated book we use to describe our lives often only hints at our real experience, and not a day goes by that I don't find myself trying to imagine what happens on the pages of I can't see.
In my grandmother's case, there's one photo, a senior high school portrait inscribed to her future husband, that says volumes more that any anecdote. The inscription reads, "Too bad you're an English teacher. Diddy"
Nana, you sassy thing! How bold and flirtatious! What a clever, demure and simultaneously forward way to go after what you wanted! This is the girl I want to know, whose brain I want to get inside.
Of course to a certain extent, I do. That girl married the English teacher and when he passed away young, raised five children to be kind, funny, loving people. She raised them to be like her: resourceful, gracious, ambitious but easygoing, curious, open-minded, and tough-as-nails as the situation required. And while I think she'd balk at being called a feminist for dubious semantic reasons, I can't think of a better role model.
And I know my grandmother as a young woman because of all the children her five kids had, six of us are girls. Some of us excelled at sports and some of us are musical and most of us inherited a quick, dry wit. Some are mothers to little girls and early indicators suggest that we're right on track for another generation of awesome women. All in all, it's a pretty amazing group of hilarious, bold, pretty, talented gals. And we may not represent exactly who my grandmother was when she was young, but we are a testament to our matriarchal roots where the "Queen Bee" runs the show.
So I'll keep listening to Nana, hoping to catch additional glimpses of what makes her tick, but ultimately the evidence is all around me in a family that forms like a feminine Voltron. I love you ladies!
Saturday, February 25, 2012
We, The Living
Hey, here's something to make the majority of readers break out in hives and gnash their teeth:
I like Ayn Rand.
Okay, now here's something to make Ayn Rand roll over in her grave while breaking out in hives and gnashing her teeth:
I don't think you have to accept all of her ideas to find value in some of them.
I read Anthem in 7th grade, which would have made me, say, 12. By the end of 8th grade, I'd plowed through the twin giants The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and by high school I was making my way through the non-fiction like it was my job. No, seriously, it was like a part-time job. It was a laborious slog through a forest of "epistemological" this and "metaphysical" that, and required some crash-coursing in works by Kant and Nietschze, plus economic theory, soviet history, etc. Looking back I can say with some certainty that I wasn't fully equipped to absorb Thus Spake Zarathustra at 14 but man, did I try. It was weird times.
But anyway, like many a teenager before me, I got my knickers all in a twist about Ayn Rand. I won a couple of scholarship essay contests through the Ayn Rand Institute, then promptly used the money to pay for housing while I attended a tuition-free school whose founder promoted the very un-Objectivist notion that "education should be as free as air and water." Oh irony, you devil.
In my experience, a lot of people loved Ayn Rand in their youth, and why not? She's just the thing for your teenagedly rebellious nerd. The conviction, the autonomy, the suave condescension, and oh man, the selfishness. You know, all the things you explore as a teenager, but tidy and controlled and attractively intellectual for kids who don't get off on piercings and Mad Dog 20/20.
Usually it ends one of two ways: You get metaphorically punched in the face by real life, realize that the world is a nuanced and amazing and sometimes grossly unfair place, swing way to the left politically, and only admit to your Rand obsession as a sort of embarrassing folly of youth, or you're blessed with smooth sailing in life, vote for people who want to create a flat tax and keep a picture of yourself shaking hands with Alan Greenspan over your desk like some kind of Libertarian-leaning Bat Signal. (For the record, I enrolled as a Libertarian when I first registered to vote at 18. I did not, however, vote for Harry Brown that year).
For my part, I still make a point of reading Atlas Shrugged every year, and it functions for me now in a lot of the same ways it did then as delicious, delicious brain porn. In the world of Dagny and Hank, and yes, John Galt, there is nothing sexier than being smart, talented, proficient. Well, actually, several passages suggest that a little light S&M might be sexier to them, but that's neither here nor there.
In all seriousness, here are a couple of lessons that stuck with me, albeit somewhat altered or expanded, from those days:
1. There is a value in selfishness. It's a particularly Rand-ish idea, but I think she had a fairly myopic view of what that means, or at the very least described it in such a cartoonishly flattened way that a lot of people did it wrong. We need to think critically about what that means. I'm talking real selfishness, the kind where you take the time to understand who you are, what you value, and what you need, both in the immediate sense and the bigger picture. We think of selfishness as inherently anti-other-people, but that's a pretty terrible piece of logic unless you're capable of compartmentalizing so severely that you barely have a concept of cause and effect. Here's an example: During the first snowstorm of the season, the city didn't call a parking ban because it was supposed to be a minor storm. It ended up being pretty significant. I depend on street parking, and live in an area where it's very limited. When snow doesn't get cleared, there's less parking. So while it's inconvenient to find a place to park off-street and conventional selfishness means not inconveniencing myself, in the big picture, doing right by everyone and moving my car benefits me the most. Here's a broader example: I'm not a sociopath, so I dislike seeing or making other people suffer. I have a selfish interest in living in a just world where people are well treated. Women who vote Republican, people on Medicare who vote for politicians who promise cuts to entitlement programs, people who claim they love their children who deny climate change: these are people who could stand to be a little more selfish.
Which would require...
2. Valuing thinking. No joke, the false dichotomy of being a critical thinker/educated/smart or being a "regular person" needs to be killed with fire. In the past year, the number of letters to the editor in which someone has bragged that they don't have some stupid education has exploded, and it's a real crazy-maker. You don't have to be a super-genius to be a thinker, but remember this gem from the NYT Magazine quoting Karl Rove?:
[Rove] said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN REGULAR PEOPLE ABDICATE THE RESPONSIBILITY TO THINK. Evil geniuses decide they can literally hijack reality. I think that's grossly optimistic, but it's been proven a bazillion times that they can hijack the popular perception of reality which is dangerously close. And if you think for even a second that someone who thinks like this is remotely interested in what happens to your life, you're not a "regular joe" you're a numbskull.
I'm going to create a feedback loop here and suggest that you read this, a blog entry by a friend and delightful thinker. It links back to here, but I promise it's not quid pro quo -- I just don't feel like doubling up the good work he's already done.
I'm a traitor by real Objectivist standards. It is, after all, an ideology that insists you take it whole or leave it, but I still credit Ayn Rand with sparking a lot of the big picture thinking that informs who I am now and giving me permission to have enough ego to survive my early teens with my self-esteem in tact.
I like Ayn Rand.
Okay, now here's something to make Ayn Rand roll over in her grave while breaking out in hives and gnashing her teeth:
I don't think you have to accept all of her ideas to find value in some of them.
I read Anthem in 7th grade, which would have made me, say, 12. By the end of 8th grade, I'd plowed through the twin giants The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and by high school I was making my way through the non-fiction like it was my job. No, seriously, it was like a part-time job. It was a laborious slog through a forest of "epistemological" this and "metaphysical" that, and required some crash-coursing in works by Kant and Nietschze, plus economic theory, soviet history, etc. Looking back I can say with some certainty that I wasn't fully equipped to absorb Thus Spake Zarathustra at 14 but man, did I try. It was weird times.
But anyway, like many a teenager before me, I got my knickers all in a twist about Ayn Rand. I won a couple of scholarship essay contests through the Ayn Rand Institute, then promptly used the money to pay for housing while I attended a tuition-free school whose founder promoted the very un-Objectivist notion that "education should be as free as air and water." Oh irony, you devil.
In my experience, a lot of people loved Ayn Rand in their youth, and why not? She's just the thing for your teenagedly rebellious nerd. The conviction, the autonomy, the suave condescension, and oh man, the selfishness. You know, all the things you explore as a teenager, but tidy and controlled and attractively intellectual for kids who don't get off on piercings and Mad Dog 20/20.
Usually it ends one of two ways: You get metaphorically punched in the face by real life, realize that the world is a nuanced and amazing and sometimes grossly unfair place, swing way to the left politically, and only admit to your Rand obsession as a sort of embarrassing folly of youth, or you're blessed with smooth sailing in life, vote for people who want to create a flat tax and keep a picture of yourself shaking hands with Alan Greenspan over your desk like some kind of Libertarian-leaning Bat Signal. (For the record, I enrolled as a Libertarian when I first registered to vote at 18. I did not, however, vote for Harry Brown that year).
For my part, I still make a point of reading Atlas Shrugged every year, and it functions for me now in a lot of the same ways it did then as delicious, delicious brain porn. In the world of Dagny and Hank, and yes, John Galt, there is nothing sexier than being smart, talented, proficient. Well, actually, several passages suggest that a little light S&M might be sexier to them, but that's neither here nor there.
In all seriousness, here are a couple of lessons that stuck with me, albeit somewhat altered or expanded, from those days:
1. There is a value in selfishness. It's a particularly Rand-ish idea, but I think she had a fairly myopic view of what that means, or at the very least described it in such a cartoonishly flattened way that a lot of people did it wrong. We need to think critically about what that means. I'm talking real selfishness, the kind where you take the time to understand who you are, what you value, and what you need, both in the immediate sense and the bigger picture. We think of selfishness as inherently anti-other-people, but that's a pretty terrible piece of logic unless you're capable of compartmentalizing so severely that you barely have a concept of cause and effect. Here's an example: During the first snowstorm of the season, the city didn't call a parking ban because it was supposed to be a minor storm. It ended up being pretty significant. I depend on street parking, and live in an area where it's very limited. When snow doesn't get cleared, there's less parking. So while it's inconvenient to find a place to park off-street and conventional selfishness means not inconveniencing myself, in the big picture, doing right by everyone and moving my car benefits me the most. Here's a broader example: I'm not a sociopath, so I dislike seeing or making other people suffer. I have a selfish interest in living in a just world where people are well treated. Women who vote Republican, people on Medicare who vote for politicians who promise cuts to entitlement programs, people who claim they love their children who deny climate change: these are people who could stand to be a little more selfish.
Which would require...
2. Valuing thinking. No joke, the false dichotomy of being a critical thinker/educated/smart or being a "regular person" needs to be killed with fire. In the past year, the number of letters to the editor in which someone has bragged that they don't have some stupid education has exploded, and it's a real crazy-maker. You don't have to be a super-genius to be a thinker, but remember this gem from the NYT Magazine quoting Karl Rove?:
[Rove] said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN REGULAR PEOPLE ABDICATE THE RESPONSIBILITY TO THINK. Evil geniuses decide they can literally hijack reality. I think that's grossly optimistic, but it's been proven a bazillion times that they can hijack the popular perception of reality which is dangerously close. And if you think for even a second that someone who thinks like this is remotely interested in what happens to your life, you're not a "regular joe" you're a numbskull.
I'm going to create a feedback loop here and suggest that you read this, a blog entry by a friend and delightful thinker. It links back to here, but I promise it's not quid pro quo -- I just don't feel like doubling up the good work he's already done.
I'm a traitor by real Objectivist standards. It is, after all, an ideology that insists you take it whole or leave it, but I still credit Ayn Rand with sparking a lot of the big picture thinking that informs who I am now and giving me permission to have enough ego to survive my early teens with my self-esteem in tact.
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