Carnival Tickets

I'm not sure how or if I'm going to participate in this yet, but I thought some of you might like to know that Angry Black Woman is holding a Carnival of Allies in the second or third week of May, in which people who benefit from some kind of discrimination or prejudice take a few minutes out of their busy blogging schedule to explain to other people like themselves how that benefit works.

Or in her own words:

Is it easier to understand oppression, to move past guilt and on to useful dialogue, etc., if the person explaining these things to you in-depth is a person like yourself? White or male or straight or Christian or whatever? I don’t know. But as this is the Internet, it should be easy to figure out.

I call a Carnival. The Carnival of Allies. Where self-identified allies write to other people like themselves about why this or that oppression and prejudice is wrong. Why they are allies. Why the usual excuses are not good enough. I figure allies probably know full well all the many and various arguments people throw up to make prejudice and oppression okay. Things that someone on the other side of the fence may not hear. Address those things and more besides.

And when I say allies, I’m talking about any and every type. PoC can be (and should be) allies to other PoC, or to LGBTQ people if they are straight, or any number of other combinations. If you feel like you’re an ally and have something to say about that, you should submit to this carnival.

I know a lot of you care about social justice issues and would like to read the submissions even if you can't participate, or at least I think you would.

Posted by Andrea at 7:35 AM | Comments (2)

Down With Love. Sort of.

Not all of us are happily coupled on Valentine's Day, you know?

There are those of us who are happily uncoupled, unhappily coupled, or unhappily uncoupled.

All this balloon hearts and chocolate boxes and roses stuff--the last time I really got excited about Valentine's Day I was in highschool. More power to those of you whose hearts are fluttering as I type with wondering about what your sweetheart has planned for you today, and my sympathies to the ones who only wish their sweetheart was planning anything but you already know that despite store windows filled with pink-and-red signs for the last four weeks that you're not getting anything because s/he's somehow managed to forget.

For the rest of us, a potpourri of smug news about romance:

1. Hey, you know that old trope about how men want beautiful women and women want rich men? You know that it's hogwash? That people will say that it's true but when their behaviour is measured both men and women value attractiveness over money? Yeah, take that Bill Gates.

2. Did you know that kissing transmits information about health, intentions, willingness to commit to raising children, and genetic compatibility? According to Scientific American Mind (and really, why would they lie to us?) it might have evolved from the primate feeding tactic of chewing food for children before passing it directly to their mouths. So romantic. (Still, read the article.)

3. Of course, Frances's school is going all out. There is a Danceathon! Everyone is to wear pink or red! There will be a special snack at kindergarten! There will be the annual exchange of tacky, punny, branded cardlets! It is all too exciting for words! Valentine's Day, hurrah!

I much prefer this version.

A few nights ago we were curled up on the sofa and she started talking about getting married, for some reason. Knowing Frances it came right out of the blue, as her topics of converstation frequently do.

"Do you want to get married someday?" I asked her.

"Yeah."

"Do you know who you want to marry?"

"I want to marry my Daddy," she said. "But he told me that I can't."

"That's true," I said, lips twitching, trying not to giggle. "There are rules that say daughters can't marry their daddies. But there might be someone else one day."

She had no reply but a heartfelt sigh.

With two divorces under my belt my belief in marriage and monogamy might have been ground to a fine powder, but love is still beautiful. Even if it doesn't stay.

Posted by Andrea at 10:16 AM | Comments (13)

Apocalypse for One

Out of the nineteen photos of Frances on my desk at work, three show her around eight to ten months of age.

In one of them, from October that year, she is sitting facing Lake Ontario in a park, wearing orange corduroy pants and a white onesie with flowers embroidered around the neck. Her blond hair is shining in the Indian-summer sun and the grass is as green as green gets, the lake a calmer and darker version of the summer-blue sky. She is holding her arms out to either side for balance; in the moment after the picture was taken, she had fallen over backwards and bumped her head on the ground, and started to cry.

In the second, she is in one of those bucket-style baby swings at a parkette, very clearly much too small for it (with the top digging into her armpits) except for the grin on her face, chubby little legs stuck straight out, hands clasped together. I remember, as she rode that day, her legs kicking, so unable was she to contain her excitement.

In the third, also from October when we visited relatives in Montreal for Thanksgiving, she is being held by her Auntie. Her hair pokes out from underneath the hood of a burgundy velour jacket with "cutie" spelled out in buttons on the front. This is one of my favourite pictures of her, ever, her eyes crinkled and her cheeks round with the huge grin on her face. There never has been a smilier smile. That gleeful face still makes me happy.

This face should look the same.

I can't even tell you who she is, because nobody knows. Well, someone must know, but they're not telling.

I look at Frances in my photo, face all stretched out with smiling, and wonder what would have had to happen to her to put that despair in her eyes. It doesn't bear thinking of, but I can't help thinking of it. I look at that nameless, joyless little face, and imagine her wearing the same grin, secure in the midst of a tribe of adults who adore her. So secure she never considers it; it's her birthright, as constant and consistent as air. I imagine her kicking her feet for joy in a baby bucket swing, precariously balancing on the soft grass in the sun of an Indian summer day. I imagine Frances lying face-down and bleeding in a cold stairwell for two hours, knowing that no one is coming back, and so filled with despair that she doesn't even cry.

I hate to think that my little girl is fortunate simply for being loved and cared for, coddled and cosseted, with parents who celebrate her triumphs and are there with a cuddle and kiss when she needs to be unwedged from the toilet seat or has bonked her head on the ground. I hate to think she is lucky for the white onesie with the flowers embroidered on the neck, the red velour hoodie, the bucket swing. It ought to be a birthright. These blank eyes should never exist in a baby's face.

But there they are. And if we can't even get this right, what good are we?

Posted by Andrea at 10:49 AM | Comments (20)

A Colourful Mystery

Every day, I see the same woman in our cafeteria. Every day, she is wearing the same clothing--layered red and orange short-sleeved shirts, too-tight navy athletic pants with stars on the side. Every day, she is holding a christmas teddy bear, with a tree in its paws. Every day.

Every day, I see her later on the public telephone, yelling at someone.

Every day.

What doesn't fit the conclusion I (and likely you) came to is her hair: military short, always neatly trimmed. She is not unkempt. But every day, there she is, for hours, hanging out in the cafeteria and shouting over the phone.

There's a broken heart in there somewhere for somebody.

Posted by Andrea at 11:13 AM | Comments (2)

Enough, Again

There's what the world owes us, and what we owe the world; and which one you spend more of your time thinking about, I think, determines a lot about your character. In both cases, the question of what constitutes "enough" is important; but the answers are very different.

I've written often about how to define "enough" in the context of "what the world owes us"--and you know that I believe that we are all already far, far beyond it. The floor we can all agree on: enough food, enough water, enough shelter, enough education, enough clothing, enough love and security, to maintain physical and psychological health. This is not much, though, considering that happiness in North America has not risen since the 1950s when a family of five grew up in a 950 square foot house. We tell ourselves that we need more space because we need more stuff, and it's all bollocks. We don't; we want it.

There's nothing wrong with wanting, and there's nothing wrong with having more than you strictly need to keep body and soul knit together. But I do think we should be honest about our wants, identify them as such, and make sure that our wants are actually feeding us. That the things we want and have actually do make us happier, add to our lives in a measurable and significant way.

But since I've said so much about this before (and couldn't help but say it again, you'll have noticed), I wanted to tackle this from the other side: how do you know when you've given the world enough? Where do you draw that line?

The territory is wide and hotly contested. There's "enough to Save the World, all by yourself," which is impossible. There's "what, I gave twenty dollars to the Salvation Army last week, how much do you want from me?" which appears to be common and, I'll admit it, it's a point of view as foreign to me as the idea that women aren't actually people and the moon landing was a hoax. Somewhere in between those two extremes is a balance that lets us give something back to the world that is meaningful and effective (if invisible and immeasurable), and which doesn't deplete us to the point of exhaustion. It's not going to be in the same place for everyone--we differ in our resources and energy levels, if nothing else. So I can't tell you how to find that magic place. I can only tell you how I try to find it, because it's an ongoing search and that balance is constantly shifting.

I add something, and then I ask myself how I'm doing.

I suppose it ought to be more complicated, and I should be sitting down and writing out goals and lists and priorities and time budgets, but no. I add something, and then I ask myself how I'm doing with it. Is it enough? Can I do more? How much do I have to spare? Is it too much? How do I scale back? It's the only way to be sure, I think. Try it and see.

I also ask myself what it is that I'm trying to accomplish with this.

It's not Saving the World, because I can't. But there are things I want to accomplish with activism and volunteerism beyond doing my share. I want to connect the ideals that I so often write about with the real world--with real people and real places, not just theoretical ones. I want to get outside of my house and see if my ideas match reality. I want to express those ideas and that caring in a way that materially benefits someone. I want Frances to grow up assuming that this is something that people do, taking it for granted, instead of seeing it as some rare and exotic extra. I want her to learn how lucky we are, to train her to look down the pyramid more often than she looks up. I want to learn something new and become a better person than I am.

And when I look at that list and ask myself if I am doing enough--the answer is no. I'm not. I could be doing more. Not much more, because I am stretched fairly thin these days, and it benefits no one to commit to more than I can do and then renege. But more? Yes. I can do more. I can't read more, or write more (right now), or guilt people more, or donate more (though I will work on that six per cent); but if I am thoughtful and careful than I can find a way to do more that meets the goals I identified above. When I do, I'll ask myself again how I'm doing, if I can do more.

In the same way as asking myself, "Do I really need this? Do I want this? Will it really add to my life or am I looking for a quick fix? Can I do without this?" will, I hope, eventually get me to a sane and reasonable definition of "enough" on the what-I-get axis, I hope that asking "Can I do more? Am I doing too much?" of myself will do the same on the what-I-give axis. And then I'll end up at Enough.

Not Perfect, not Save the World, not Ideal. Just Enough.

~~~~~

In the meantime, I have volunteer applications on my desk to fill out and send in. And we'll see how it goes.

And, as promised, a list of non-bloggy folks who have donated some hours:

Karla--a green home renovation, egads. That's ambitious.

Morrigan--is researching volunteer opportunities

Laura C--is writing at least 3 letters to the editor this year

And Cinnamon Gurl, who has a blog but left her donation in a comment as well, is promising to do something for 2 hours a month.

All together so far I'd say that's about 75 hours here (including mine), maybe a bit more. Not bad.

Posted by Andrea at 9:09 AM | Comments (8)

Deserving

Andrea: I have a bone to pick with you.

World: Excuse me?

Andrea: I said, I have a bone to pick with you?

World: Just a second. (rifles through stacks of files) Ah! OK, here you are. You do? Are you sure?

Andrea: Yes. You've probably noticed that Christmas is coming soon to some parts of the world, and it's a pretty big deal to preschoolers. And you might have in your file that I've recently separated...

World: Yep.

Andrea: So. I just thought you should know that I really, really wanted there to be a pile of presents from Santa under the tree this year.

World: And?

Andrea: And? And don't you think Frances deserves it?

Luke 12:15 Then He said to them, “Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed; for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions.” 16 And He told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man was very productive. 17 “And he began reasoning to himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no place to store my crops?’ 18 “Then he said, ‘This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 ‘And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry.”’ 20 “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?’"

World: (snorts)

Andrea: What?

World: Let me show you your ledger.

Andrea: (in a small voice) Oh. Never mind.

World: Look at the partial list that just covers all the things you have that you can currently see, without turning your head: desktop garbage can, box of kleenex, monitor, telephone, keyboard, hand lotion, two mugs--TWO MUGS! You never drink coffee!, a can of diet coke, box of paperclips, stacks of paper, TWO hardbacked notebooks, fifteen pictures of your daughter...

Andrea: I see your point.

World: Fifteen! How many versions of her face do you need to reflect on, exactly, in the course of a nine-hour workday? OK, she's cute, but...

Andrea: She is very cute.

World: And do you see the stacks of impossibly thin, one-sheet files over there? The millions and millions of them? Care to guess how many of them are for kids who won't be eating this Christmas?

Andrea: All right. I get it.

World: Deserves! What's wrong with you westerners? How could any of you possibly look around and think that you don't already have much more than you could ever deserve? With the exception of a few of you who truly don't have enough, but the whole North American concept of enough is another problem....

Andrea: I said all right! Never mind. We can drop the whole business. Frances will get the yellow duckie under the tree that she asked Santa for, and maybe one or two other things because I really really really want to give her things.

World: Want. Yes. That's the crux of it. But not so fast, I'm afraid. There is still the matter of your outstanding account.

Andrea: My what? Excuse me?

World: Right here. See?

Andrea: Oh. Oh my.

Luke 12:42 And the Lord said, “Who then is the faithful and sensible steward, whom his master will put in charge of his servants, to give them their rations at the proper time? 43 “Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes. 44 “Truly I say to you that he will put him in charge of all his possessions. 45 “But if that slave says in his heart, ‘My master will be a long time in coming,’ and begins to beat the slaves, both men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk; 46 the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know, and will cut him in pieces, and assign him a place with the unbelievers. 47 “And that slave who knew his master’s will and did not get ready or act in accord with his will, will receive many lashes, 48 but the one who did not know it, and committed deeds worthy of a flogging, will receive but few. From everyone who has been given much, much will be required; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more.

World: Yes. And what are you going to do about it?

Andrea: There's no way I can possibly pay all that back.

World: Tough nuts, I'm afraid. We have certain expectations for those of you who are truly blessed, and there are no opt-out clauses. Fortunately we have a few generous payment plans.

Andrea: But I already work full-time as an environmentalist...

World: Yes. And you'll see that's already been applied towards your debt.

Andrea: ...and I already donate five per cent of my income to different groups...

World: Five per cent. How much does it impress you when someone like Bill Gates gives five per cent of their income to some grand cause?

Andrea: (small voice) Not a whole lot.

World: You are a lot closer to the Bill Gates's of the world than the refugees and sweatshop workers. See that kid over there? He's asked for a soccer ball for Christmas, every year for the past five years.

Andrea: Maybe I could do six.

World: I don't understand. So many people just come up and pick my pocket--can you believe it?--thinking I owe them more, they deserve more, and they've got one of these fat files, like you have. Why isn't anyone ever satisfied?

Andrea: I'm sorry.

World. Yeah, well don't you worry. They get theirs. When they die we sic the extra-nasty worms on their corpses.

Andrea: (pause) That doesn't sound all that bad, actually, after a lifetime of privilege and wealth. They can't even feel it.

World: I know, we're working on it. Look, if you want to make serious progress on your debt, you know what you can do? You can work on that kid of yours. All she wants is a little yellow duckie, so just give her that little yellow duckie. Make Christmas about all the other stuff--the baking and cooking and songs. The parts all you crazy people get all sentimental about. Do you remember what you got for Christmas when you were growing up?

Andrea: Noooooo.

World: But you remember the daisybraid and the gingerbread trees, don't you? And the year your dog ate all the christmas cookie ornaments off the bottom of the tree? Singing alternative lyrics to Jingle Bells at the school pageants? The handmade felt stocking with your name on it in glitter? All the paper chain ornaments hanging on the family tree? Give Frances the stuff she'll remember.

Andrea: Good point.

World: And teach her how lucky she is, you know? Teach her how much closer she is to the top than the bottom. Maybe she won't rack up her debt quite so fast that way. Help her start paying it back now. She's got a good heart, I think it'll stick. And she's already got a pretty fat file. Besides, where would you even put new toys?

Andrea: (sighs)

World: In the meantime, I'm sure you could be doing more.

Andrea: I could. You're right. I will.

World: Make sure that you do. That might knock a portion of a per cent off of your accumulated total. And if you really, really wanted to impress me....

Andrea: Don't say it. I know what you're going to say, and just don't.

World: ...then cut down on the book purchases. You already have enough to get you through the next six months...

Andrea: I knew it. I knew that's what you were going to say.

World: ...and there is a library across the street...

Andrea: Yeah, I know.

World: ...do you know how lucky you are to even have a library, period?

Andrea: OK. Fine. Shut up.

World: So?

Andrea: I'll think about it.

~~~~~

Normally, when someone asks a girl when she's going to have a baby, the questioner is risking a broken nose, a missing tooth, or at least a clenched-jaw grin with a nominally-polite "fuck you" disguised as a "not yet." The response one normally does not get is, "What a great idea! I'm going to go home and get started right away!"

So you can imagine my surprise. What you probably can't imagine is how happy I was.

Unlike a real-life labour, this time, the more hours the better. But it's not a contest. If all you can see for you next year is an afternoon free to stuff envelopes, then put your three hours into the ring and be happy that it's three hours more than you otherwise would have done. Not everybody needs to bring a stroller to the baby shower--booties and rattles and bottles are valuable and needed, too.

Meanwhile, not all of you have blogs of your own, I know. So for those of you who don't, I'll put the comments and emails into a separate post, so they're all collected somewhere. Look for it early in the new year.

Posted by Andrea at 10:32 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

A Baby for Mad and Jen

Do you know what, I am inordinately proud of myself about my New Year's Resolutions this year.

In the midst of getting a divorce, I managed to keep four out of five. (I dropped the shopping limit one when it became obvious that I would be setting up a new household--but up until the move I did pretty well.)

I wrote a book (first draft, but I'm finishing this thing whether I ever publish it or not).

I read way more than two science books.

I began exercising again and kept it up, five or six days a week, all through the move--and even when the elliptical machine broke and it took me three months to get a replacement.

I even broke the back of the Diet Coke thing. I think. Knock on wood. I'm down to less than one can a day.

Given everything that's happened this year, and there's a whole hell of a lot I haven't shared because it is not bloggable, you know something? That is pretty good. There is only one resolution I didn't manage to keep: more activism.

Oh yeah. Ouch.

My intentions were good, back in January. There was the magazine and the Just Posts and all the rest of it--then the separation came along, and my eyes focused on the world just past the end of my nose, and it wasn't that I didn't care about anything that happened to the rest of the world--I just didn't care enough, in the context of what I was dealing with, to make myself do something. Oh sure, plenty of lifestyle changes on the environmental side, and a fair smattering of posts on my favourite issues, and a lot of reading. But not the kind of concrete action that makes me feel like I am putting my money where my mouth is.

So when Mad said that she often feels disheartened about the impact of the Just Post Roundtable series, I know exactly what she means. All of these words bouncing around in the ether--what are they good for? Have they put food in anyone's belly? Needed medicines in one hand? A roof over one head? Maybe, but gods only know, really. It can feel futile. Futile and trivial and wasteful. How dare I sit here in my comfortable chair in a nice warm house pounding keys with my fingers when there are people starving out there!

But here is what Mad and Jen's social justice wedding has meant to me, over the past year; and since I was the maid of honour I think I'm allowed to get a little maudlin.

It gives me hope.

Not hope that all the world's problems will be solved by Wednesday next as a result of this blogging project; not even hope that the direct impacts of it will be significant or even measurable. But hope that when life got to be too much and I had to put my light down for a while, someone else picked it up and carried on for me, until I could take it back again. Hope that no matter what it feels like every day, when the (mostly corporate) messages we are surrounded with every day are almost entirely about products or gizmos or fashion styles or celebrities or the salacious use of someone else's tragedy or a bunch of old rich white guys pretending to care for the cameras--and there is almost nothing out there about other people who care or all the small individual things they are doing to make the world a better place, no matter how much it feels like I am the only one, that I am not the only one. There are millions of you, and you are all out there doing your small things too, and no one is paying any attention but it doesn't matter, it all adds up; I feel better every day just knowing you're out there.

Hope is good all on its own; but it leads to more, too, I think. Hope plus conviction can equal courage; and courage leads to action. Small actions, maybe. Saying something in a conversation where you might not have said something before. A letter or email where you might not have written something before. (Speaking of which, isn't the first anniversary traditionally marked with a paper gift? Maybe this is an opportunity to write a letter, if you haven't before.) A donation that is slightly bigger than it used to be. A smile for someone who used to make you uncomfortable. Small things.

But small things can lead to big things. They don't, necessarily, but they can. Certainly without the small things, the big things won't happen either. We all have to start somewhere. But Mad, I share your frustration and desire to see something real come out of this--something that is not just words on a screen.

So I'm going to do that obnoxious thing that wedding guests start to do about a year after the wedding:

Where's the baby?

It's been a whole year; what are you waiting for? Are you going to give us a baby, or not?

OK, maybe the two of you have done enough work on this whole thing. Maybe the rest of us can give you a baby. What do you say, fellow guests? Is there some volunteer or activist gig you can commit to over the next year, to show Mad and Jen that this is not just bits and bytes, but that all the hard work they have put into this is making an impact somewhere?

It's fashionable to do fundraising gigs on the blogosphere--and I'm not knocking them, they're good and necessary and I've run one of my own. But let's do something different. Let's do an hoursraising gig. Let's each of us think about the next year and how many hours, over that year, we realistically think we can divert from TV and blogging and housework to something in the real world, something that is neither writing a cheque nor writing a post (but might be writing a letter). What do you think? Can we do it?

I'll take a risk and start.

Mad and Jen, to celebrate your wedding and all the work you've put into it, I'll commit to spending a few hours a month in an active volunteer role in my community. I'm thinking maybe at a women's shelter, but I'll have to poke around over the holidays and see what I can come up with. Let's say 2 hours a month minimum over twelve months--twenty-four hours. That's my gift back to you. Anyone who wants to participate, leave a comment, trackback in a post, or send an email to andrea at andreamcdowell dot com.

Happy Anniversary.

Posted by Andrea at 12:51 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Collaborative Narratives

"Unlike the constructions generated by logical and scientific procedures that can be weeded out by falsification, narrative constructions can only achieve 'verisimilitude.' Narratives, then, are a version of reality whose acceptability is governed by convention and 'narrative necessity,' rather than by empirical verification and logical requiredness, although ironically we have no compunction about calling stories true or false."

The above is a quote from Jerome Bruner's The Narrative Construction of Reality, an article published in Critical Inquiry several years ago (and which I found via This Woman's Work a few weeks ago). The article is, on the whole, needlessly obtuse in the way academic articles often are, so just in case this quote reads as so much jabberwocky, let me translate: science and math and other 'hard' disciplines can be proven true or false because they deal in facts, but narratives--stories--can't, because they don't. They can only be true by seeming true, even though everyone who reads or hears one knows that it is false.

Further, "narratives" include not only those fictional forms you are probably already thinking of (novels, stories, TV shows, movies, etc.), but also memoirs, family histories, institutional traditions, mythology, and, uh, blogs. The last being an addition of my own.

This article lists out the ten features of narrative as defined by Bruner, and I'm going to inflict them on you. Partly because I think this stuff is fascinating, though I know most of you won't care; mostly because the ten features of narrative (as defined by Bruner) can easily, though not seamlessly, be transported over to blogging. And it's the non-seamlessness I think is interesting.

So:

1. Diachronicity. (What is with the ten-dollar words, Bruner? Translated: narratives contain events that occur over time. Stuff happens. Then more stuff happens. Eventually enough stuff has happened that you can stick "the end" on it and declare the story complete.)

This is obvious, yes? Blogs, with their dated entries and archives, are diachronistic even more than other forms of narrative, in which the telling occurs at a single point in time, no matter the duration of the events being told.

2. Particularity. (Narratives deal with a particular set of events, not a general set of events. That is, a narrative might be about John and Susan getting married, but it's not about marriages in general. Or it might be about the War of 1812, but it's not about War. Even if the particular instance is used to illustrate some general principle, a narrative or story is about a particular instance.)

Personal blogs, at least, achieve this in spades. My blog is my thoughts about my life. Even when I'm writing about the world, it's written from my perspective, making it particular by definition.

3. Intentional State Entailment. (!!! Meaning that the characters in the story have to have goals that they are working to accomplish. It's not enough that stuff happens to John and Susan; they have to want to get married and be actively trying to achieve it (or be trying very hard not to get married and somehow end up married anyway--but they need to have a goal that relates to the point of the story.))

This, I think, is perhaps one of the things that separates the superstars with thousands of readers from the rest of us: the superstars have A Point. The blogger has a goal (overcoming infertility, dealing with a diagnosis, etc.) which naturally coalesces into a narrative over time. The rest of us are in danger of producing "first I woke up, then I had toast for breakfast and brushed my teeth, and then I decided to wear the green shirt though at first I thought maybe the teal...." Eventually, if you have A Point, the blog will have a beginning, a middle, and an end, though it might be messy.

4. Hermeneutic composability. (This mouthful means that stories are not simply the product of the author or teller, but a joint product by the author/teller and the audience--that the meaning of the story is determined by the meaning given to it by the creator and by the receiver. It also means that stories consist of parts (words, sentences, paragraphs, scenes, etc.) which have individual meanings themselves and which also contribute to the meaning of the whole, and that the creator must build a story out of these little parts with an eye to the meaning they will give to the piece.)

This is where we stop being seamless:

One of the most interesting things about blogs is how the blogger's life can be so variously interpreted. I can tell you all about Frances and our life together and the prenatal misdiagnoses and my thoughts about that etc. ad nauseum, and it is still possible for someone to come along and read it and decide that I am advocating terminations (or trying to stop other people from having terminations, as the case may be). What I've come to realize over the last few years is that I don't have a monopoly on the truthful interpretation of my own blog. I know what I mean to say, but other people bring their own experiences and viewpoints to what I write, which makes their interpretations valid in most cases as well. This is one reason I've not been trying to drill myself down to One Interpretation in my posts so much lately; ambiguity is fine. I'll put out what I think is what I mean and if it gets interpreted another way, then I think that gap is interesting. I can learn something from what I sent and what you received.

However, Bruner also argues that creators of narratives intentionally structure all the different pieces to contribute to the meaning of the whole, and it goes without saying that personal blogs don't and can't achieve this, because we as the creators are only discovering what it is we mean to say as we go. I wrote blog posts during Frances's first year that are diametrically opposed to my current stance on some parenting issues; I let them stand because change is a part of human nature, and the evidence of change is good. But I can't say that all the pieces of this blog add up into anything, unless it's Change is a Part of Human Nature.

5. Canonicity and breach. (There needs to be a set of rules--a canon--that is then breached. If John and Susan meet and get married and there are no barriers to be overcome, it's not a story. There has to be some barrier to their success.)

OK, so here's an example, because I think this one might be tricky: Mommybloggers often fuel their blogs on the canon of either The Good Mother or What Mothering is Supposed to be Like. The Good Mother as posited by any particular mom blogger might be, say, a stay-at-home Attachment Parent who spends her free time pureeing homemade organic meals into perfect babyfood for child #5. What Mothering is Supposed to be Like might be all about the Hallmark Halos, the cuddles and snuggles and notable lack of shit and vomit. Then the blog is about the breach, or all the ways that the mom blogger in question does not meet that canon--that she gives her baby formula, lets her baby cry, and intends to stop at 1/2 because OH MY GOD I CAN'T TAKE TEN MORE YEARS OF THIS (though I love my children very much, thank you); or what the hell, and where did all this shit and vomit come from? What makes the blog interesting in that case, what drives it, is how the blogger breaches the canon, or defies expectations.

6. Referentiality. (The story needs to refer to real life somehow.)

One can only hope that any self-proclaimed personal blogger is writing entries that are related at least tangentially to his or her own actual life.

7. Genericness. (It needs to have a genre, even if only to flout it, to tell us how to interpret or make sense of the story.)

Blogs are a genre. A genre-in-progress, to be sure, but a genre, with plenty of genre conventions.

8. Normativeness. (The norms of a culture, group or family will be in some way highlighted by the story.)

Personal bloggers, in writing about who they actually are, will without thinking about it, make clear who it is they think they are supposed to be. As in the above example, a mom blogger who writes about her own life and all the ways she is not the Good Mother or how her experience doesn't match up, even if she never names or describes those stereotypes, in the process of writing about her own perspectives or experiences those stereotypes will be detailed. "I use formula, and I don't feel guilty about it!" makes it pretty clear that someone out there thinks she ought to--and there is the Norm.

9. Context sensitivity and negotiability. (We assume what the author's background knowledge might have been, the society they lived in, and what their intentions likely were; we assume what the audience's knowledge is likely to be; and then the author/teller and the audience meet somewhere in the middle in some spirit of charity.)

When that mom blogger says "I use formula, and I don't feel guilty about it!" we know she's not talking about math, but about commercial infant food. She assumes a contemporary audience who will be familiar with her vocabulary; we as her readers assume a contemporary blogger who is writing from this context. If this blogger had been writing in 1273, we might have stopped to wonder--formula for what?

For a literary example, think of Shakespeare: he was anti-semetic and sexist to the core, but it doesn't detract from what most people think of his genius because we assume that the context he wrote in shaped his views. Someone writing The Merchant of Venice today would not have such a sympathetic reception.

10. Narrative accrual. (Over time, stories add together into something called a tradition, a history, or a culture.)

This is also an example of non-seamlessness, because in oral storytelling, the narrative accrual is more a case of narrative replacement: earlier versions of the story are forgotten as the story develops. In literary narrative, the narrative accrual is a process of reference and allusion, as when Zadie Smith wrote On Beauty based on Howard's End. There are plenty of clues in On Beauty that she based the whole thing on a particular classic, but there's nothing direct in the text. You have to have read Howard's End to get it, or have someone tell you.

But when it comes to personal blogs, narrative accrual is visible and fixed, much like the fossil record fixes and makes visible the evolution of some particular organism in sedimentary layers of rock. The creator and the audience visibly negotiate the meaning of the text together, and part of this negotiation is in visibly adding to the narrative, in comments and links and blog posts and social networking sites. And this all adds up, just as Bruner said, to a tradition, a history, and a culture.

Not all of the examples Bruner provided were high-minded. For instance, a company's annual spring softball game is a tradition that probably built up around A Story: once upon a time they had a softball game, and hey! It was lots of fun! Let's do that again--so now they do it every year. The End. Or a family tradition: One year at Thanksgiving Mom burned the turkey and Dad went to get take-out, and we liked it better because it was easier, so now every year we have chinese food instead. So a narrative accrual that results in a tradition or a culture doesn't have to be cerebral or even important.

I think my favourite evolving example of this in the blogosphere might be Jen and Mad's Social Justice Roundtable series. It has a founding myth (the group wedding); and it has creators and audiences who jointly create the meaning together; and it has all of the other ten features of narrative--occuring over time, being particular, having goals, canonicity and breach, referring to real life, norms, context sensitivity and negotiation, and narrative accrual. Especially the last, as the series consists largely of narrative glue designed to hold dozens or hundreds of other narratives together (and I'll bet lots of you thought it was just a big list of links and a short op-ed). Together it's all adding up into at least a new tradition, and possibly a culture.

Bruner's point was that while we discover the physical world through trial and error, experimentation, observation, and other methods of gathering objective knowledge, we learn about people and societies and our place in the world through narrative--stories. We tell stories about ourselves and our families and our homes and our people, we tell stories about parenting and marriages and friendships and teams and castes and classes, we tell stories about men and women and children, we tell stories about work and play and faith and meaning and loss and growth and hope and achievement and despair and failure and all the rest of the panoply of human experience, because by doing so we both create the social reality we inhabit and learn how to navigate it.

The problem comes when we realize we cannot fit ourselves into the narratives, and as a result, can't fit into the culture either.

As you can tell, I find this pretty interesting. I will probably write about it again. Maybe a few more times. You've been warned. Feel free to use the comments section to complain.

Posted by Andrea at 6:00 AM | Comments (11)

What's this?

*knocking skull*

Why--I think it's a brain. I think there's a brain in there. Huh. Dammit, I guess vacation really is over.

I have this ambivalent relationship with diabetes treatment in the 21st century.

On the one hand, I am likely to lose fifteen years of actual life and more of quality life due to disability and complications, and in the meantime need to manage a very complicated daily regimen of carbohydrate grams and dosages and blood sugar test results, and it all involves a lot of math. (So there you go, Dear Readers; if a young person in your life struggling with arithmetic ever asks you what earthly good all of this will ever do them, you can honestly reply that if they are ever diagnosed with diabetes, every bit of math they ever took will be immensely useful.)

On the other hand, I should be dead.

Type 1 diabetes is (or was) a fatal illness that inevitably resulted in death by starvation until partway through the twentieth century, and for decades after that it was literally a shot in the dark, best guess scenario, where quality of life (and quantity of life) were seriously compromised. I should be dead. I should have died at seventeen. Everything I've had since then has been a gift.

It has been--I should add--an unnatural gift. Tools and technology have enabled me to stay alive. Better tools and technology allow me to sleep in on weekends, go out for lunch without planning the day beforehand, eat the occasional slice of chocolate cake, have a baby without serious medical consequences, and keep my eyesight for fifteen years post diagnosis (not so common not very long ago).

It is something of an ideological conundrum for an eco-freak organic-type Nature Girl who goes gaga for trilliums every May. Or you might think it should be, but it's not.

(I should say upfront for honesty's sake that even if it were an ideological conundrum, screw it, I'm taking the tools and technology for all they're worth, because I like living. I am no martyr. Even on the days when diabetes is kicking my ass and life, in general, sucks, I have taken my shots and tested my blood sugar and made some rudimentary stab at guessing carbohydrate grams.)

See, natural. What the hell does that mean? Generally it's posited as part of a dualism: natural vs. artificial (or unnatural), each at opposite ends of a spectrum, and whatever is under consideration is either one or the other or perhaps somewhere in between but certainly not both, and everything can be categorized. Bollocks, I say. There is no such thing as artificial.

That was an intentionally provocative statement. Let me refine it: "Artificial" is wholly a subset of "natural." Everything artificial is also natural. Everything came from nature and to nature it will eventually return. Conceptualizing the artificial as something distinct form and outside of 'nature' is just plain silly. Furthermore, "natural" in most contexts is used as shorthand for "what I like and think is the way things ought to be." So you have conservatives decrying homosexuality because it's not "natural" and others decrying group marriages because they're not "natural" and health-food folks decrying cheesies because they're not "natural" and misogynist idiots with brians the size of shrivelled peas decrying working women and single-mother families because they're not "natural."

Nature is everything. You cannot get away from it. There is no "away" to go to. Yes, we have cities, but they exist in nature too. The air and the water and even the concrete and glass and steel and plastic are all part of nature; the wind moves through cities as well as plains, water erodes plastic as well as stone, the suburbs are affected by weather as much as the forests are. Where you are sitting, right now, this very second, is nature. If you don't see it that way, that's a division in your brain. It's not reality. YOU are nature. You, in your manufactured clothes, wearing glasses or contacts, and a watch, and high-tech shoes, with the iPod in your pocket, you are nature. All of those gizmos and gadgets appended to you are nature, too.

You do not exist outside of or apart from nature, not at any point of your life. You are inextricably connected to it every moment of every day from conception through disintegration. You are part of it, in it, always. So are the tools.

Generally speaking "natural" in this context is used to mean "unmodified," or what would exist if humans had not applied tools to the situation. But how far back in human evolution would you have to go to find humans who did not use tools to modify their situation? Before chimpanzees; they would be primates, but not in any way human. Artifice is, for human beings, wholly natural. Tools are natural. Technology is natural.

(I'm not saying it isn't often destructive, but that's a separate point. Nature is often destructive. Sometimes destruction is necessary and good, and sometimes it isn't.)

Humans are animals who use tools (that's not everything that makes us human, but it's part of it). Tools and technology (which are really just more complicated tools) are an expression of our nature. Our skyscrapers, our paved roads, our electric toaster ovens, our pretty printed tulip skirts, our cherry-red lipsticks, our laptops, our lawnmowers, our oil-based economy, our ivy-league universities, our paper and plastic money, all of it, is nature. Artifice is a natural expression of human nature. It always has been.

The whole idea that artifice exists apart from nature presupposes that there is anywhere or anything apart from nature and, apart from its logical fallacy, the attitude that anything exists outside of nature is a huge part of the ecological mess we're in. You cannot ever, you have not ever, gotten away from nature.

So there you are: no ideological conundrum after all. My external plastic-and-metal cyborg pancreas and all the sterilized manufactured crap that makes it run, batteries included, is just as natural as the flesh-and-blood pancreas you have nestled in against your stomach. And I'll use it to extend and improve my life without a moment's conflict.

~~~~~

*While this post was triggered by a recent post at Mad's that touched on nature and medicine, it should not be construed as a response, since we are talking about different things.

Posted by Andrea at 6:32 AM | Comments (6)

Building Common Ground

New fiction writers are counseled never to attempt to write something "universal," but to write in the most detailed particulars, because in the alchemy of the fictional process, it is in the accumulation and seamless weaving of thousands of intimate and detailed individual particulars that we grasp the universal. A novel about Everyman doing Everything with Everyone located Everywhere will resonate with No One. Whereas a novel about Betul, born in Turkey, immigrant to a Toronto suburb in the 1990s, daughter of a divorced mother, going to the grotty Baskin Robins on the next street over on summer evenings with her big sister and buying her favourite chocolate mint ice cream in the waffle cone, talking about her dreams of becoming a famous singer one day--somehow, in these unique particulars, we are able to connect with her and discover an ineffable and incommunicable universality.

Something about the recent discussion at Bub and Pie's about particulars vs. universals didn't sit quite right. And that's why. Universals are discovered only in our particulars.

~~~~~

Grief

On the weekend, before Frances was here, I wandered through the shopping centre across the street from my new apartment. I was looking for a butter dish, and also for a refresher on the physics of Star Trek's transporter, so I stopped in at the Chapters. I checked out the magazines--no new Bitch yet--found a book by Brian Greene in the science section with what I was looking for, and browsed the apartment shelves in the interior decorating section. I picked up, and put down again, a book called The Other Woman (though I suspect I'll be picking it up again, at some point). On my way out my attention was caught by a table full of goofy gift titles. 38 Uses for a Husband, said one.

~~~~~

We'd like for there to be Universals. Universal Values. Universal Desires. Some Universal Bedrock of Human Thought, something we all believe or want. I don't believe it exists. I believe that the Human Universal is simply this: we all believe, we all want. The particulars of what and when and why are infinite. Even the most seemingly obvious has exceptions which make its use as a general rule dangerous, and potentially harmful.

I knew a woman online, once, who was a slave. Or she called herself one, at any rate. She identified as a "radical submissive" and believed she could only be happy if she were owned by someone who told her what to do. She did not want independence or freedom.

Whatever you think might have led to that, and whatever you (or I) may think of someone calling themselves in all seriousness a slave as a lifestyle choice (something most slaves, obviously, do not share), one could not know her or know of her work in writing about this experience and her community-building among other self-identified radical submissives, and believe that the desire for freedom is a human universal. There are humans who do not want to be free. There are humans who will break the law to avoid it.

~~~~~

Joy

Frances and I spent a few hours in the lake while at Ann's cottage. I had my camera, of course, and took almost two hundred pictures of her throwing stones in the water, picking "bulrushes" (they weren't bulrushes, but that's what she called them and I don't know what they are), and looking at fishes. I'd sit on the dock, then walk over the alternately sandy and mushy bottom to a set of two old wooden boxes piled haphazardly, one on the other, and sit on that. It was barely too high for Frances to reach. "I want to sit with you, Mummy," she'd say, and I'd lift her and place her beside me, and wrap an arm around her, lean in to kiss her sun-warmed hair, once neatly braided but quickly unraveling.

"Are you having fun?" I'd ask.

"Yeah."

"Good. I'm so glad we came. I'm having a really good time, too."

She smelled like insect repellant and sunscreen, sand and muck, sunshine and water; her slight frame leaned in to me and I wished that we'd never have to move again.

~~~~~

Every proposed human universal will eventually break down in the face of human variability. We do not all see beauty in the same places. We do not all put the same value on human life. We do not all agree, even, on what human life is. We do not all love and cherish our families, wish to have children and see them grow old in safety and prosperity, and want an end to war and slaughter. We do not all want to form an intimate bond with a romantic partner that will last throughout life.

In fact, I'll offer my own take on the human universal just so someone can come along and poke a hole in it: Humans make meaning. What humans do that no other animal does is look for patterns and, where none can be found, invent them. We create and impose structures on our experiences from the smallest to the largest in order to derive and invent meanings that give significance and satisfaction to our lives. All of our arts can be defined this way, only the structures themselves differ: music imposes sounds and repetitions, literature imposes narrative arcs and plots, photography imposes framing and subject choice, painting imposes framing and technique, poetry imposes rhythm and sound and image. What they each have in common is the creation of a structure, a form, a box; and the placement of this structure on top of a human experience that allows us to derive meaning from that experience. Even religion can be placed in the same category: a much larger structure, a much larger box, placed on the whole of our lives and the entire world that allows us to create a meaning for everything that happens, to carry us from birth to death in one more-or-less-whole psychic piece.

Human beings look for meaning and, where it does not exist, we invent it. We tell stories about our days and lives to each other precisely to allow us to reorganize our memories of those experiences in a way that makes sense, that allows us to find or create meaning in it. The conclusions we come to, the meanings we find or make, are radically different; but we all do this.

"Aha," you ask; "But what about the nihilists?"

Good point. Is the denial of meaning just another structure, another box, or is it a true non-structure? I don't know.

~~~~~

Pain

"So you think it's a ... I'm sorry, I don't know how to pronounce it."

"Craniosynostosis. Yes." The geneticist shifted slightly in her seat. "I'm fairly certain. It would explain her unusual features and small size. Though I'm not sure what to make of the wide-open fontanelle."

"Doesn't that mean skull surgery?"

"Yes. Generally. You would get the blood test to confirm the diagnosis and then we would discuss surgery. It is just cosmetic, only for aesthetics. It would not be required for health reasons at all."

"All right." I made my goodbyes, strapped Frances back into her navy blue infant carrier and lugged it through the hospital hallways, out into the obscenely bright sunshine, into the parking garage, and snapped it into the back seat. I kissed her forehead and stared at her unusual features, the ones that seemed to me only to be the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. "OK, baby girl, we're going home."

I sat in the driver's seat, did up my seatbelt, put my head on the steering wheel, and sobbed.

A few weeks later I would assist a nurse in pinning her to a gurney while another nurse used an adult-sized syringe to draw a full vial of blood from her celery-stalk arm while she screamed. She was ten pounds by then, and about four months old. I kissed her cheek and told her it would be all right, I was there, right there, even though it was my hands holding her down.

~~~~~

Or I could tell you that the day I got the first postnatal misdiagnosis was the worst day of my life.

Which convinces you more of our sameness? Which better reflects our common experiences as mothers (for those of you who are mothers)?

There is nothing I can assume that you and I share; no experience, no value, no desire, no ideology, no belief, no passion, no need, no love, no hate, no fear. All I know that binds you and I is the experience of being human; what we share is value, desire, ideology, belief, passion, need, love, hate and fear themselves. What led to them, what we do with them, how we react with them, how we resolve them, will be different, nearly always.

How do we find that common ground? By sharing our particulars. If I can communicate my experience clearly enough, with enough detail, with enough particularity, then I can make you understand the love, hate, anger, fear, joy, grief, pleasure, desire, anticipation, or disappointment that resulted. Then we can know that no matter how different we are as individuals, no matter how different our particulars, our individual experiences, there is something underneath that is the same. This is the insight and the psychology that all of literature is built on. Minute detail upon minute detail is built up into a tapestry that is individual and universal at the same time.

~~~~~

Love

M was driving me home past my curfew. The winding upwards street was dark and quiet, and his small blue car struggled as it always did. A few houses from my guest-family's he pulled into a small parking area. We talked for a few minutes, I can't remember about what, then he said, "Ich liebe dich" (I love you). His face was tense and anxious.

"I love you too," I said, and his face opened up, he smiled--grinned. "Das kann Ich nicht glauben" (I can't believe it), he said, over and over, and kissed me. Over and over. It was considerably later before I unlocked the front door and walked quietly upstairs to bed.

~~~~~

My name is Andrea; I am a thirty-two year old, white, straight, formerly married mother of one gorgeous little dwarf girl who lives in Southern Ontario, Canada. I work in the environmental field for the federal civil service. I have been a type 1 diabetic for fifteen years, and have had asthma for ten. I'm a feminist, a witch, and an armchair anarchist. I'm tall and on the slim side of average. While my parents were born strictly blue-collar I myself had an upper-middle class upbringing. I like to know how to do things, so pick up hobbies from crocheting lace to boxing, cookie-baking to carpentry, scrapbooking to novel-writing. Reading and writing are my first loves. I'm a former fundamentalist.

Listed in this way, the particulars inspire no feeling of common ground (unless you share them). But this is not because they are too particular, or that there are too many particulars; it's because they are not particular enough. Not detailed and individual enough.

Where you and I can meet despite our differences is by sharing our differences. Where we can find what unites us is by describing what divides us. It's amazing, frankly, and fully befitting such a contradictory species: it is by sharing our particulars that we discover the universal.

Posted by Andrea at 6:18 AM | Comments (13)

I guess it all depends on how you define "rainbow"

It has been my experience that just about the most sexist person you will ever meet is a liberal man who believes with all of his blessed heart that sexism is both wrong and that he has totally expunged it from his own brain.

The outright blatant misogynist is a puppy in comparison. You know them, you can see them coming from a mile away and avoid them or, if you so choose, confront them. There is nothing to be done with the liberal male who is convinced he is not a sexist, however; the wall of determined ignorance is impenetrable. They would never say or do anything remotely sexist; they love women!

Before I delve into this week's Hmm subject, let me come clean: I am the whitest person you will ever meet. A facial tissue is a healthy tan in comparison to my skin. There are native Canadians on both sides of my family, but you would never, in a million years, guess it from looking at me, the girl who burns bright red and goes straight back to deathly goth-like pallor without the barest tremor of a stop in brown. I once had a sunburn for two years. Thus, I freely admit that I have no personal experience with this subject, and most of what I have to offer is extrapolated from sexism and learned from conversations with incredibly patient people who do know more about it than I do. I am open to being corrected.

However, it seems to me that the worst thing that ever happened to the civil rights and anti-racism movements was when mainstream society wholeheartedly adopted both the belief that racism is evil, and that it is a personal evil, not a societal one. This has made it all but impossible to have a reasonable and open discussion on the subject. People respond to any suggestion that they may have made a racist remark with vitriol and defensiveness because, instead of hearing "you might want to rethink that sentiment," they hear "you personally are an evil human being who wants to burn brown people to death at the stake."

So I'm going to stand out here on the edge of a limb--it's a slight limb, more of a twig really, and swaying something mighty in this breeze--and say that the most racist person you will ever meet is probably a liberal white person who believes with all of his or her blessed heart that racism is both wrong and that he or she has totally expunged it from his or her own brain.

If that is you, allow me to suggest that this is impossible.

You grew up here too. You grew up in a world where the public representations of visible minorities are dominated by crooks and servants, where the Other is exoticized, where young african-american males are incarcerated at a shocking rate, where a hit sitcom set in New York City can have both no people of colour in the cast and also none in the background among the extras. You grew up here too, where literature is what is written by white people, and music is what is sung by white people, and fashion is what is designed by white people, and art is what is painted or photographed by white people; in short, where white is the default, and where whatever is composed or created by anyone else is considered to be a special subset of culture, and not culture itself. You grew up here too, where a major piece of speculative fiction literature (Ursula le Guin's Earthsea series, populated mostly by brown people) was, when it was translated to film, entirely whitewashed, and every character made white, because the producers and casting agents did not believe white people would go to see a movie with an all-brown cast. (That was, incidentally, only a year or two ago.) You grew up here too. It is simply not possible to grow up here and not absorb, on some level, the attitudes and values that inform this culture.

Try to be someone who can hear "that is racist" in connection with yourself without reacting with anger and defensiveness. That, more than any well-meaning on-going discussions about the state of the blogosphere, and its representativeness or lack thereof, and whether or not the diversity of specific portions of the blogosphere accurately reflects that of society as a whole, will do much more to achieve equality. Try to understand that the question "where are the black/asian/etc. bloggers?" is just as telling as "where are the women bloggers?" Try to understand that when people of colour blog invisibly, on purpose, hiding the colour of their skin, that is because they know that racism is real and present on the parentosphere, even if you don't, and they don't want to have to deal with it.

Is the internet the rainbow connection?

Don't make me laugh.

Hey: Did you know that it's International Blog Against Racism Week?

No? Why not?

~~~~~

(Why yes, I am in a bad mood today, Dear Readers. But, just to bolster my claims a little, allow me to direct you to some fabulous posts by people who have a lot more credibility on this subject than I do:

Angry Black Woman: How Prejudice and Bias Works

Anti-Racist Parent: For anything, but start here: Response to a Transracially Adopting Mother

Rice Daddies: What's Race Got to Do With It)

Posted by Andrea at 8:40 AM | Comments (15)

Beyond Earth Day

I won't lie to you: The past ten years have been tough for the professional tree-huggers of the world. It's gone something like this:

"Have you considered carpooling?" says the Professional Tree-Hugger (PTH).

"Nah. Gas is cheap, and who needs the hassle?"

"Well you know, global climate change is a bit of a problem. We need to do something about that."

"Let the government handle it. As long as it doesn't raise my taxes."

"Hmm. I see. It might just raise taxes, but it will be cheaper than the long-term consequences of...."

"Hey, look! Levi's, half-price!"

So if we've looked a little haggard and down at heels, now you know why.

If I wanted to I could be bitter that a failed presidential candidate puts together a powerpoint presentation, has it filmed, and overnight the conversation changes:

Average Consumer: WE HAVE AN ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS!

Professional Tree-Hugger: Umm, yes. That's true.

AC: WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME?

PTH: Well, actually....

AC: OH MY GOD! WE HAVE TO CHANGE EVERYTHING! RIGHT NOW! THANK GOD FOR AL GORE!

PTH: Sigh....

AC: As long as it doesn't raise my taxes. I have a 2,000 square-foot vacation home in the Kawarthas that's not going to heat itself, you know.

PTH: *collapses*

So, yes, easy to be bitter. But mostly I'm not. Mostly I'm just overjoyed that at long last, people outside the profession are actually paying attention! And contemplating real changes! It's so exciting! Why, I bought two separate fitness magazines in the month of April and both of them--both!--had substantial environmentally-friendly fitness sections. Do you know I don't think I've ever seen that before. In fact, this April, I don't think I've seen a single magazine cover that doesn't make some sort of token nod to environmental issues.

Yay!

But.

Oh, there's always a but. I'm a kill-joy. Isn't that why you love me?

The magazines are still ultimately in the business of encouraging you to want things. That's how they attract advertisers, which is how they stay in business. And as I've said before--a lot--environmental sustainability will not be achieved by buying things. It will be achieved by not buying things. Not buying.

So if you're in the habit of celebrating earth day by purchasing a green gizmo that is nearly identical to the green gizmo you bought last earth day, this is a good time to reconsider that practice.

When I saw this article on WorldChanging, I did a little happy dance in my seat. My colleagues looked at me funny, but see, they're also Professional Tree-Huggers, so if I explained it they'd probably do a little chair-dancing too.

"The biggest problem with Earth Day is that it has become a ritual of sympathy for the idea of environmental sanity. Small steps, we're told, ignoring the fact that most of the steps most frequently promoted (returning your bottles, bringing your own bag, turning off the water while you brush your teeth) are of such minor impact (compared to our ecological footprints) that they are essentially meaningless without larger, systemic action as well. The strategy of recycling as a gateway drug -- get them hooked on it and we can move them on to harder stuff -- has failed miserably."

Look at that! Oh my god! Isn't that what I've been saying for, well, years?

"If the politics of gesture weren't bad enough, Earth Day is rapidly becoming a firestorm of gestural shopping. Marketers today will shamelessly slap the "green" label on nearly anything, including things that are demonstrably stupid and ecologically steps backwards -- Hello? A solar-powered bikini? WTF? -- encouraging us to mistake shopping therapy for strategic consumption. We've said it before, and we'll say it here again: you can't shop your way to sustainability."

Amen!

"Of course, perhaps we're less concerned than we ought to be about widespread collapse because the catastrophe has so far overtaken not wealthy white people but poor people of color in poverty-striken regions like New Orleans, Haiti, Rwanda and the Sahel. Here, too, the message of Earth Day is disheartening: while we mark the day in part to help our kids feel a sense of environmental responsibility, on a planet where climate change alone already (by conservative projections) kills 150,000 people a year (think, roughly, of a 9/11 every week) and the forecast through much of Africa, South Asia and the Middle East calls for nothing but climate misery, the other 364 days of our year look like a smokestack-sized raised middle finger."

Whew. I'm feeling a little faint.

"That measure -- one planet, three decades -- should be the gold standard against which we judge all activism and politics, commerce and innovation. And though we can't say precisely how profoundly we must change or exactly how quickly, we can't let ourselves or others off the hook in that regard: the numbers are close enough to be terrifying. One planet, three decades."

Oh, just read the whole damned thing. No, you won't be chair-dancing. But it's so worth it, and so true, and today on Earth Day what I'd like for my readers is to take a step back and think about what exactly it is we're trying to accomplish. Yes, Litter Days in the local park are swell, and I'm not saying we abandon this; but a few candy bar wrappers by the children's swingset is not going to be the difference between the existence or the destruction of the human species. Yes, making small steps in your own personal lifestyle is important, and does make a difference; but if you are making the same small steps over and over again because anything else looks too hard, that is no longer helping.

We need to change everything.

I know most people don't like change as much as I do, so that might seem scary; but if you can't figure out what to do or how to do it, can I ask you nicely at the very least to stay out of the way of the people who are trying to save the planet for your children? OK? It might mean raising taxes. It might mean that a lot of things you are used to paying pennies for might cost dollars, because that's how much they ought to cost. It might mean some things are less convenient. You might not be able to drive as much as you are used to. You might not be able to afford that 3,000 square foot house anymore. You might not be able to afford all the stuff you'd need to fill it anyway. You might not take so many plane trips.

And if what you have to do is close your eyes and sob, then go ahead and close your eyes and sob. But that world is going away anyway, now or later, either because everything collapses and we don't have a choice or because we as a society grow up and let it go.

We must be past the spring solstice; I'm interested in the world again.

I'll try to be less preachy about it in the future than I am today.

We in Canada will be facing an election this year, probably. Maybe you can't downsize into a small energy-efficient green home and sell your car, at least not yet; and maybe the thought of giving up a weekly shoe or purse purchase is still too scary. I'm not going to tell you how you should live your life. But I will ask this of you:

When that election comes (and it will) the environment will be a big issue. Some of the candidates will promise you the moon. They will blow fairy dust up your ass and try to convince you that they can lower taxes, improve the resource-based economy and prevent global warming without making any significant changes to how we get around, build our houses, or the price of bread or t-shirts. This is a complete and utter fabrication. They are lying to you. There will be other candidates who will say that they want to make difficult changes, and it might cost some money, and it might mean change.

That's the one you should vote for.

Posted by Andrea at 9:57 AM | Comments (16)

But what do we do?

Our generation in North America is the product of a social and educational system that worked hard to segregate people with visible differences. Children with Down Syndrome were institutionalized; schools were not built to accomodate children without full mobility, eyesight or hearing, so children who couldn't walk up or down stairs, or visually impaired children or deaf children, rarely crossed paths with children who could. Consequently, we learned two things:

1. Difference is so repulsive that, wherever possible, it ought to be segregated.

2. We also had few opportunities to learn how to think about or behave in the presence of difference in a sensitive and respectful way.

I believe this will be different for our children; "mainstreaming" children who are different or disabled within regular classrooms in schools is becoming more common. This will be good for all our kids. Those who are different will not be as isolated as they were, and those who are not won't grow up with this significant mental handicap.

("What mental handicap?")

When our kids point out someone who is different and wants to know why, there's no value judgement. They're curious. We're all curious; humans are a curious species. If we weren't, we wouldn't have people on the moon, machines on Mars, or Google. Curiosity is never wrong.

Frances is fascinated with my insulin pump. She likes to hold it, hold the tubing, poke at the spot where it enters my skin. She is also fascinated with blood sugar testing, and likes to pretend to test her own sugar. There is no value judgement with her curiosity. She just wants to know about this thing that makes Mummy a little different. And I have no problem telling her, or talking about it as much as she likes. When someone asks me about my unusual "pager" or wants to know how long I've had the pump or have been diabetic, it's fine. Diabetes is a big part of my life. As long as it's not all they can see, curiosity is never offensive.

And Frances is not offended by her daycare friends calling her "Little Frances." Not yet, anyhow. She is little, and they mean no insult by it; it's an observation, not a judgement.

Now: When I tell someone about my insulin pump, and they reply, "Boy, that must mean your diabetes is pretty bad!" And when I tell them that actually no, it's just another form of treatment and a better one than shots that makes my life easier, and they reply again, "But if your diabetes was ok, you wouldn't need the pump, right? Wow! I'm so sorry!" I get irritated. Because that is a value judgement, and even when I try to educate them, they stick to their ignorant guns and keep plastering me with Noble Suffering platitudes. Or: when someone wants to know if we're going to have another child because they could end up "like Frances," as if her short stature overwhelms all consideration of the amazing and wonderful person she is, I get irritated. Because any parent would be blessed to have a child like Frances.

When our child asks that loud, awkward question and we feel panicky or shamed or confused, it is our own discomfort with difference speaking; it is not a concern, primarily, with the feelings and responses of the person in question. For all of our rank individualism and our belief in the supremacy of persons, we are an incredibly conformist society. Even our rebels and iconaclasts wear uniforms. We've been taught from birth that difference should be hidden away. It's taboo.

And see? I'm doing it too. "Us." "Them." "Our." "We." Why would I assume that my audience contains no one with visible differences or disabilities? Especially when I know it's not true.

So: being confronted with someone who is visibly different is like coming upon someone masturbating in the bread aisle in the supermarket. Not because being different is like masturbating inappropriately but because we've (there I go again) been taught that both of those are things you do "in private." It is uncomfortable to see them in public. We don't know what to say or do or where to look. And when our kids ask us those awkward questions, we can't pretend we didn't notice.

("What is that man doing, Judy? Umm...he's...umm...peeing. Say, we forgot the jam! Let's go.")

Obviously masturbating in public is something that deserves the discomfort we feel for a host of valid reasons. But being different in public does not. And it's our issue. It's our own feelings and attitudes about difference surfacing. It's not our kids, it's not the person who's different, it's us. First, we have to acknowledge that.

When you see someone who is different and quickly look away, that is your own learned, unconscious response that difference is supposed to be private, segregated.

When your child loudly asks, "What happened to that man's arm, Mommy?" and you shush and whisper "it's not polite to stare or point," that is your own learned, unconscious response that difference is suppposed to be private, segregated.

That difference is shameful.

This is not a sin. It's not a mark of personal failing or evil. It's something we were taught, powerfully and subtly. But to unlearn it, we have to acknowledge it. We have to bring it up to the light of our conscious mind and become comfortable turning it over, thoughtfully, from different angles.

Only after we can do that can we start to unlearn it and get over it, and model ways of appreciating and celebrating the tremendous variety of the human form.

Posted by Andrea at 6:34 AM | Comments (17)

Aren't I Paying for This?

You know you live in a competitive neighbourhood when mothers are lining up in a freezing rain/ice pellet storm with their three- or four-year-old children at 5:30 in the morning to get them a spot in a public kindergarten class.

Since registration didn't open until 9 (they started handing out numbers at 8:30, but threatened to make people wait outside) and I got there at 8:50, I figured I'd be ok. Even the existence of multiple lines, including an hour-long wait to get your place-number and a chair, didn't dampen my foolish optimism.

Three hours later, when I was chipping the ice off my car and had just been told that we won't even know if Frances got into that school until late March, and whether she got into full-days or half-days until May or June, I found myself wondering ... Did I really just register her for kindergarten, or did I apply to get her into grad school without realizing it? And if so, does she need to write the GRE, or will they take references from her daycare teachers?

Posted by Andrea at 6:50 AM | Comments (13)

Unshopping

The Other Andrea had a recent post on unshopping (and MadHatter/One Plus Two Jen, I hope you're reading this because I think it would fit well in your Just Post for a Just World series) that I thought was not only a great idea, but also illustrated with a nifty graphic.

The other Andrea is good at nifty graphics.

Anyway.

I also know what would happen if I decided to commit to a month-long shopping fast.

Week One: Hey, no sweat! I could do this all the time.

Week Two: Goddammit I want that magazine. Ooooooh I want that magazine. And that book! I want that book! And look at the pretty new scrapping paper which is going to be sold out by next month. Waaaaah.

Week Three: Less than two weeks to go. I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. I DO NOT need a new lipstick. I don't even wear lipstick. Why do I want to buy lipstick, for crying out loud?

Week Four: *whimpering*

Week Four Plus One Day: Thank god, it's over. I have my list all handy. Let's shop! Oh, wow ... how did I spend that much money in seventy-two minutes?

One of the many ways in which my brain does not work properly is in its reactions to any perceived restriction: as soon as I get into "I can't/I shouldn't/I won't" thinking--I do. It doesn't matter what the area is. I have to convince my brain that it wants to make whatever change I'm contemplating, that it's going to be fun and enjoyable and better for me and lead to an improved quality of life, that I'd do it anyway even if it weren't the right thing to do. I learned this ten years ago when recovering from a binge eating disorder, which followed a similar pattern:

Day One: I am disgusting. That's it! Only 1200 calories tomorrow. And for the rest of the week.

Day Two: I have never been so hungry in my entire life.

Day Three: If I don't eat something containing chocolate and something else containing grease and salt right now, I will die.

Day Four: I am dying. I am dead.

Day Five: *eats and consumes an entire batch of chocolate chip cookies, half of it in dough form, then goes out to buy a bag of potato chips and eats that, too.*

Day Six: I am disgusting.

How did I get over this? I never, ever diet or attempt to restrict my calories or food choices in any way. As long as I know I can have a chocolate chip cookie whenever I feel like it, I don't crave them, and I don't binge on them. I also don't eat or bake them often anymore. When I want to make a dietary change, it has to be something I want to do, something I genuinely believe is adding to my life instead of taking away from it. (Which, come to think of it, might be one reason the Diet Coke thing has been such a tough nut to crack.)

So I know a month-long unshopping fast would be a bad idea for me (though I want to point out that I think it's a fabulous idea for anyone whose brain doesn't work in these frustrating binaries) because at the end of the month, I'd end up buying everything I'd wanted in my "month off," plus. But the idea fits in so neatly with my anticonsumerist bias and my belief that our overconsumption here in the West is pretty well destroying life on earth as we know it that I want to figure out how I can participate. Fruitfully.

Not that this is new. I've been committed to reducing my consumption patterns for a while now. Fiving is part of that (what I give away, I can't use to buy things for myself). So is not buying consumer magazines or watching a lot of television. People like to get all pissy about the idea that advertising might work and, you know, make you believe that you need things like a different shape of water bottle for each kind of workout. If it didn't work, of course, there wouldn't be an advertising industry. The existence of the industry and the tremendous amount of money poured into it is proof of its efficacy. But if you don't believe me, eliminate ads from your life for a month. Don't buy consumer magazines and don't watch television (that will eliminate most of them, though there are a lot outside of your control, like bus shelters and billboards). When I don't pay people to tell me what I should want, I don't want as much.

I still find myself buying more than I want to, though. Which sounds odd, because if I don't want it, then why do I buy it? It always seems like a good idea at the time. It's only when I bring it home that I realize--goddammit, snookered again.

I think what I'll do instead is this: I'll sit down and make a list of consumer purchases that make me feel good (like books--have you seen the new WorldChanging book?--or music online) and consumer purchases that make me feel like shit. I'll set up a savings goal that can't be achieved if I don't curtail and a target date, and I'll see how that works. I'll see if I can shortcircuit the part of my head that screams "starvation imminent! hoard! hoard!" whenever I try to take something away from myself by convincing it that I am actually adding to my life.

Once I've figured out the mechanics of it, I'll post again.

Posted by Andrea at 11:21 PM | Comments (10)

A Long History of Nearly Everything: or, Andrea's Big Theory

In environmental science, there is a concept of predator-prey relationships called the Trophic Pyramid which shows graphically the size relationships between plant communities, herbivore communities, omnivore communities, and carnivore communities.

Pretty, huh? And not even complicated, though "trophic pyramid" might have thrown you off a bit. Basically, you need ten times as many plants as herbivores, and ten times as many herbivores as carnivores (by weight) in order to sustain each population or trophic level. It's because of the inefficiency of energy transfer involved in eating (not that you care): Most of the energy content of whatever is eaten passes through undigested, and so to sustain a population of carnivores you need a lot of herbivores, and a LOT of plants. That's why there are herds of gazelles for every pride of lions. (It's also why it's so easy to drive high-order carnivores into extinction.)

I've been uncomfortably aware since my teens that North America and much of industrialized western society sits perched atop a global trophic economic pyramid in which we are the large carnivores, and most of the world's six-and-a-half billion human beings are herds of tasty herbivores. That global economy chews through their health, their lives, their social structures, their native natural resources, their children, their potential, and turns it in the most inefficient process possible into the energy necessary to sustain our consumerist 'democratic' paradise. We eat them.

Then we claim that our wealth and our accomplishments are the result of our human rights, our wonderful democratic political systems. Which is certainly a contributing factor to the internal redistribution of wealth within the borders of our own countries, but come on. Who actually believes that without massive global transfers of wealth from poor countries to rich ones that we could put on these smug superior airs and prance around in extensive wardrobes drinking expensive coffees and driving expensive cars?

Did you know that poor countries pay more to rich countries every year in interest payments alone than they receive in transfers and loans combined?

Where would our Hallowe'en rituals be without the child slave trade that underpins cheap chocolate production?

Where would our walk-in closets be if teenaged girls in poor countries weren't working 80 hour weeks at sewing machines (overtime unpaid), wearing diapers because they're not allowed to take bathroom breaks, and fired if they get married or pregnant, to make cheap clothes for our shopping malls?

Where would Christmas be if Disney didn't hire international child labour under much the same conditions to make its toys?

The environment--the biophysical environment--needs carnivores, though it's a point of view I doubt many herbivores would appreciate. Flesh-eaters perform important ecological functions. I can't say the same for the economic carnivores, for you and I. And if we're bound and determined to be a pride of lions, as it seems many government and business leaders believe, the least we can do is not berate the gazelles for lacking claws and fangs. The least we can do is admit that we chase them down, sever their jugular veins, and devour them raw.

This is not something that makes me feel good about myself (nor should it). It would not be an exaggeration to state that most of my work-related and extracurricular decisions are based on my desire to undo the damage that just living in Canada does. I can't, and that's the kicker. No matter what I do, what choices I make, just going about my everyday overfed, overhoused, overclothed, overwarmed life will cost the earth more than I can repay. In Canada, each of us uses approximately four times the resources that we should.

That is to say that the biophysical environment and social justice principles could equitably allow us each to use the resources of almost two hectares, and we Canadians use eight. Four times our fair share of the world's natural resources, and the human labour (often forced, almost always underpaid) required to mine and harvest and process and package and ship it. Using some fancy online calculators I found that the only way I could reduce my use of global resources to almost-two hectares would be to live in a 300 square-foot house without running water, give up meat, never fly and walk to work.

Here's the tool I used. Try and see for yourself what changes you would have to make to use only your fair share.

All of which is a preamble (see? I told you this would be long) to what I actually do, social-justice-wise, and why it never ever ever feels like enough:

I work full time as a professional treehugger, saving itty bitty patches of land from overly destructive development. And just think of a few more caveats to pack in there yourself. It's important work but most of the time it's frustratingly ineffective.

I edit a webzine.

I recycle and compost (the last refuge of environmental scoundrels).

I read a lot of nonfiction about these issues.

I buy the minimum of clothing and shoes.

I get as many groceries as I can from a local farm, including meat (grass-fed) and eggs (free-range). When in the grocery store, I try to buy local and avoid strawberries shipped from Chile in February. When there's no local product, I choose the organic one. All of this is pretty well ineffective as well for various complicated reasons, but I feel better doing it. I also raise a bit of food on the back deck (organically), almost equivalent to one whole snack!

I research companies so I can avoid buying slave-produced or sweatshop-produced items wherever possible; and regardless, I write letters to the companies expressing my earnest desire that I'm not complicit in any egregious human rights violations. Though I probably am, I want them to know that their consumers care. I buy gas from Sunoco whenever possible because their gasoline has the lowest level of polluting compounds (at least, in Ontario), and avoid Esso and PetroCan for their high sulfur levels and Shell for their atrocious human rights record in Nigeria.

I conserve water and electricity whenever possible, including using compact flourescent lights, LED lights and a rain barrel for garden and lawn watering.

I don't shop at Wal-Mart (not practical for everyone).

I purchase Ethical Funds for my retirement savings. I am not sure how different these are from regular mutual funds, but again, it's a salve to the conscience. At least I can pretend that my investing is not diametrically opposed to my political and social values.

I try to raise Frances to be aware and respectful of the non-built environment and, as she gets older and such conversations become more appropriate, I want her to be aware too of the vast global inequalities that make our comfortable lifestyles possible, and the -isms that are used to justify it.

I donate five per cent of my after-tax income to the following groups: Unicef Canada, Evergreen, Sierra Club, National Anti-Poverty Organization, AboutFace, Yellow Brick House, the United Way, the Ferret Aid Society (it's a long story), Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and of course, Annika. I also fundraise for Annika.

I vote. I write letters to politicians. Speaking as a civil servant, they have more impact than the form replies might indicate.

I avoid derogatory language because it's kind of terrible to use a group of persons as one's yardstick of awfulness to which all the things one hates can be compared. My achilles heel is "sucks," which I use all the time even though I'm fully aware of its homophobic etymology. I'm working on that one.

And, you know, I blog too. At some point, when my child-rearing responsibilities allow, I'm going to return to commuting to work by bus and volunteer my time with local groups.

I can be a downer at parties.

Anyway, while I like to think that this tidy little list might give me the right to criticize Gloria Steinem whenever I damned well feel like it, it terms of global social justice principles, it reduces my eight hectares down to maybe six. One of the hardest things for me to accept since graduating from university is that I will never, ever, ever get it down to one. That, within the context of Canadian society, getting down to one requires a massive overhaul of our urban design principles, electricity generating systems, preferred fuels, agricultural industry and global trade agreements.

(Don't you feel better now? No?)

This won't be easy. It will represent a collective abandonment of the idea that happiness is achieved by acquiring goods and accumulating them in oversized houses, that a healthy economy always grows, and that it is natural and desirable for each generation to have more money and more stuff than its predecessors.

(Surely now you feel better? No?)

I'll let you judge how likely that is.

This is why I'm an armchair anarchist: I fail to see how any sociopolitical system which invests certain members with the ability to use force against other members without penalty can possibly ever be just. As soon as you give the political power and legitimacy to one class of persons to direct and control the police or army it is inevitable, I think, that either fast or slow they will have society and its laws ordered to their own intrinsic benefit. Mind you, I'm not agitating for a revolution; mostly because it would be utterly futile, the State being so well-established already that any project to exterminate it would likely take much of human civilization along for the ride. And I realize that a society of a certain size requires legitimizing of the use of force by one class. This seems well-established, anthropologically; however, I still believe that a just and sustainable society would have to be, if not anarchic, at least radically democratic, which would require cultures and societies much, much smaller than those we have at present. A large society means that there are many people we depend on who we never see, and it's too easy to brutalize people you never see.

(Now you really want to go slit your wrists. Sorry. The depressing part is over.)

But just because abolishing the economic trophic pyramid is impossible doesn't mean we can't flatten it considerably. Is there any particular reason why a CEO has to earn three billion dollars a year while half of the world's population scrounges to buy a piece of bread? I didn't think so. Wouldn't any reasonable person be able to live at anyone's reasonable definition of luxury on one million dollars per year? And can't we take the difference and use it to ease some human suffering more profound than "my handbag is last year's model"?

Exactly.

Lions and Lionnesses of the audience, I propose that we relearn that excellent concept, "enough." "Enough" is, I suspect, truly so far behind what we are culturally conditioned to perceive as "enough" that if we ever discover it it will shock us. But let's try. Let's become comfortable with the idea that we might not get everything we want all the time. Instead of just saying that money doesn't buy happiness and the holidays aren't about gifts, let's live that way. Let's actually act as if more money, more shoes, more DVDs, more collectible knick-knacks won't make us any happier. For the good of the planet our children will inherit one day and for the good of other families and their tiny children, let's see if we can't figure out where "enough" lies and, once we have it, stop.

~~~~~

(Does it sound like I've figured this out? Sorry. It remains a work in progress--but I'm determined to get there someday.

And I could go on and on and on about how I think the worst thing that happened to the 'isms' was when we collectively decided that they were evidence of individual pathology and not societal ills, so that it became nearly impossible to have a productive conversation about them because people now react so defensively, as if they have been personally attacked, when in reality how do you live in a racist or sexist or ableist culture without internalizing those attitudes and unintentionally expressing them on occasion? I could go on about how even within our own 'enlightened' cultures you are more likely to live with chronic pollution if you are poor or not white, including how it is so much easier to site landfills and toxic waste facilities near such neighbourhoods. And a thousand other things. But I'll spare you. Suffice it to say that the problems of capitalist/consumerist western economies, the consumption of global resources and the ever-growing divides between rich and poor both domestically and internationally are deeply interlinked, and if we don't bust those links wide open, we are in deep shit.

But don't hide under a cover. Pick one small thing that you can't fail at and will help even just a little bit, and do that. Then pick another. No one becomes an olympic athlete overnight, and this is much harder than running a marathon. Jen at One plus Two and Mad Hatter are hosting a big social justice love-in/wedding to which everyone is invited, so if you're looking for something small to do that grabs you, start there and click through all the links they'll post on the weekend.)

Posted by Andrea at 8:28 AM | Comments (19)

Happiness, Part I: To Be or Not to Be

First off, I warned you. Six months of introspection, baby. Are you excited? I am.

For some reason, today I'm thinking about happiness. What it is, and how you get it, and what kind of it I want for Frances.

I've already written about how inadequate the philosophy of "happiness is a choice" and "if you decide to be happy you will be" is to me. Look a starving woman with a starving child in the face and tell her that happiness is a choice. I dare you.

But if happiness is happenstance, then what sense does it make to set happiness as a goal? Is it equivalent to wishing one were taller? There doesn't seem to me to be much point in setting goals that one has no influence or control over.

On the completely superficial level with which I am familiar with western philosophical traditions, I hold a loosely aristotlean notion of happiness--happiness is what happens when you live an ethical life that is consistent with one's values. Or, as he would have put it, happiness results from the consistent pursuit of virtue.

Whew, that's obnoxious. Isn't it? Virtue! Didn't that go out of style in 1965? Aren't we all about moral relativisim these days?

I'm not sure it's entirely incompatible; well, I'll just get this out of the way first: some things are right, and some things are wrong. Slaughtering a village because of their religious or ethnic characteristics, for instance, ought to be a pretty clear-cut example of "wrong" no matter what your personal beliefs, and it's the kind of thing that large groups of people can generally be mobilized to stand behind. There's a lot of grey, and I don't think that's a problem. Perhaps it's aristotlean to argue that as long as you consistently pursue what you believe is virtuous, and as long as what you believe is virtuous isn't entirely incompatible with reality, that's good enough? There ought to be enough maneuvering room within such a definition for all but the most hard-core moral relativist.

But leaving aside moral relativism and assuming that most people who read this blog will have some common moral basis even if the variation is wide, I think this definition of happiness has several distinct advantages:

1. It's something you have some control over. You might not be able to control whether or not you get Job A or House B or Partner X, but you can, in most instances, exert some control over your own choices.

2. It's compatible with a continuing, decent, sustainable civilization. A definition of happiness based on aquisition, material possessions, or status is not; because there is simply not enough of any of those things to be equitably distributed amongst six billion people, let alone the eight or ten billion being predicted as the peak around 2050. The beautiful thing about this definition of happiness is that it makes contentment something you can have even while you are giving things away and learning to share.

3. If happiness is achieved through the pursuit of virtue, then when we try to be happy, the world gets better, not worse.

I'm not sure if I'm expressing myself well; if not, that's what the comments section is for. Suffice it to say that I think this nicely balances happiness of the individual with happiness of the group.

So I suppose when I say that I want Frances to be happy, what I mean is, I want her to have a consistent ethical code that she strives to live by. I want her to have money and friends and a good job and a loving partner and to achieve all of her dreams, too; but none of those things are in her control, or mine. It's best, I think, to continue to work for them, realize that whether or not one achieves them is at best part effort and part luck, and decide not to place one's satisfaction or self-worth in that basket.

Then she can be happy, as long as her basic material needs are met. It won't take the sting away from any sexism or bigotry she might experience in her life, but maybe it will be lessened.

And the thought of it still makes me sad. One day she will no longer say "I'm little" with pride, she'll realize most people consider it a liability or worse. But less sad than I would be if I thought her happiness was dependent on the best job, the biggest house, the nicest car, all of the material things that prejudice is so good at taking from people.

(Yes, this is going to be one of my patented multi-part entries. I'll come back to this later.)

Posted by Andrea at 7:50 AM | Comments (4)

BAB: Mongrel

The links to other BAB posts are at the bottom of this one--fifteen specific entries so far.

~~~~~

My family has (in my completely unbiased opinion) a fascinating history. On my father's side, we can trace our Norwegian ancestry back to Erik the Red and his son, Leif Erikson, who was the first European to find North America. We also have scottish pirates who were kicked out of the Old Country for treason and United Empire Loyalists. On a more personal level, there are people who were divorced while they were in a coma, scandalous remarriages, rumours of illegitimate children, unwed teenage mothers, deathbed reconciliations, and heroes from both world wars. I like to blame my mongrel heritage for my ornery nature--you don't descend from Vikings and pirates and soldiers and iconoclasts and end up milquetoast.

My great-grandmother has one of those stories that could be turned into a novel: her father (the one who could trace his ancestry back to Leif) went back to Norway and never returned. Everyone is pretty certain he died. She was just a child at the time, and I think an only child; they lived on the Canadian western frontier. We're talking turn of the twentieth century here, the Wild West, and in the middle of nowhere, by european standards.

My great-great grandmother was left alone, on the Canadian frontier, to raise a daughter. What follows next is heartbreaking: they were trappers, fur-traders. My great-grandmother, from the age of about seven, was left on her own to trap and skin animals while her mother made the long trek to trading posts and back again. (And today we worry about letting our seven-year-olds walk to school by themselves.)

What happens after that is a complete mystery.

My great-grandmother marries and has children. I don't know who my great-grandfather was; I never met him (one of the scandalous stories referred to above is when my grandmother defied her family's wishes and married a divorced man who'd recently woken up from a coma and they fled east to Ontario). All I can say for certain is that the family spent an unknown period of time on a First Nations Reserve.

You cannot live on a First Nations reserve without First Nations ancestry; yet for the rest of her life, and for the rest of my grandmother's life, this was vehemently denied. Indians! No indian in their blood. Indians were dirty, and drunk. The very idea that they could have any indian blood in their veins!

My great-grandfather on my mother's side was half-indian, probably Cree, and we knew it. We knew it because, while he'd gone to college as a young man and graduated with high grades, no one would hire a dirty, drunken halfbreed and he worked for his entire life as a milkman.

All of the children on both sides 'passed'; that is, you would never guess from looking at any of us that there is anything but European blood in our veins. I am paler in July with my darkest tan than most white people are in January. A classmate of mine in highschool once told me I was the whitest girl he'd ever met; and my father asked me all throughout adolescence and well into adulthood, "Are you feeling well? You look so pale." I am pale enough that I have completely given up as hopeless the quest for a foundation or concealer that matches. All of them, the palest shades of every cosmetics line I've ever tried, are noticeably darker than my actual skin tone. You can see me in the dark.

Which is to say that the only effect my native ancestry has had on my life is to provide me with fodder for interesting stories--the denial of relatives on the one side and on the other outright bigotry and prejudice. But I myself have never had to experience any of this. I don't know what it's like. Certainly I've had every benefit that being white provides in a racist culture.

Every form of racism is dangerous and wrong, of course; but what I've noticed here in Canada is a level of undeserved complacency because our history of racism regarding African slaves is ever-so-marginally better than that south of the border. We emancipated first! The underground railroad led here! All well and good. But Canada's racism towards native peoples is ongoing and brutal, and it is the one thing I am most ashamed about my country.

To some extent what happened was unavoidable--no matter how benign the first explorers might have been, europeans carried germs with them that would have wiped out 95% of the people living here regardless. However, they weren't benign, and the european settlers set about wiping out the five per cent remaining with great vigour. Children were forcibly removed from their families and sent to residential schools were they were beaten if they spoke their own languages and violently converted to Christianity. Many of those children were also sexually abused. Those schools continued until well into the 20th century. All of the fertile and productive areas of the country were claimed by white folks, leaving only marginal lands for the remaining first nations, mostly in northern Canada, where agriculture and industry were almost doomed to failure. Laws were passed that stated that native Canadians were the mental equivalents of children, and so were not entitled to keep their earnings; the earnings were doled out to them as an allowance by government ministries. Those who left the reserves found it almost impossible to find employment.

Another friend of mine who also has native ancestry, and who also looks as white as a sheet of 20-lb bond paper, told me once of her shock when she took a train from her remote northern town south once, and walked through the 'indian car' to the 'white car.' The indian car was full of drunken people, and smelled of vomit and urine. But she didn't have to stay there because she looked white. This woman is my age; she was a teenager when this train trip happened; there was segregation of native and non-native Canadians in public transportation in the 1990s.

Are you shocked? I was.

And today?

Today, the UN writes report after report condemning Canada's treatment of its native peoples, especially in the north, comparing their living conditions to the third world. With no insulation in the houses, no running water, no plumbing, it's a fair comparison. We're talking north Canada here, people, where winter lasts seven months a year, and there is no insulation in the houses. The animal base for hunting has been destroyed. Unemployment on reserves hovers over 40%. Rates of ubstance abuse, suicide, domestic violence, violent crimes, are sky-high. And in the well-off cities in the south, folks complain in letters to the editor that those lazy indians don't even have to pay taxes.

Pay taxes on what?

What happens to those UN reports? A story or two in the papers, then nothing. It would destroy our Canadian self-concept as a peaceful, tolerant and diverse society to acknowledge the deep roots of racism against native peoples in our political and cultural lives. So we wring our hands for a few days, yell at our politicians for not doing anything, and nothing changes. Meanwhile we send troops to countries engaged in genocide all over the world as 'peacekeepers,' ignoring the genocide in our own country, at our own feet, still going on every day, today, right now.

And what am I doing about it?

Nothing.

My ignorance is so profound that I cannot think of one single thing I can do.

~~~~~

Edited to add links, which will be updated to permalinks as they come in:

Six Until Me
Dawn is Breaking
Never Here Again
Under the Ponderosa
Expectant Waiting
This Is Me
Macarena
On Second Thought
Inner Dorothy
Following Frodo--and part two!
Questing Parson
The Reluctant Prophet
AboutMiche
Bub and Pie
Abbey
Zazen in the Moonlight
ChatNoire

Posted by Andrea at 10:57 AM | Comments (23)

How to Know if You Are Too Busy

You fall asleep at 7:30, sleep until 6:00 am, and wake up still tired.

Hmm....

Needless to say, the last gift package is not going out in the mail today. But I think I can get it ready for tomorrow. (Sorry, Rachel! But it's worth it.)

In more serious news, I'd like to pass along a link I saw at Emma Sage to an online pledge to remember that words matter, and that words used improperly can hurt. She is asking visitors to pledge that they won't use the word "retard" or "retarded" to mean "stupid" or "bad." The author's name analogy is one I've often thought of myself; another one is the colour of your hair. What would it be like if you woke up tomorrow and suddenly everyone around you used your hair colour to describe what they hated? (If you're blond, you've already experienced this to some degree; but imagine if they used it not to describe something silly or ditzy, but bad.)

Posted by Andrea at 8:24 AM | Comments (5)

Eugenics and Family Planning Part 3: The Post I Didn’t Want to Write

Or: The Post in Which I Alienate, Well, Everyone

Or: I Wrote It, And Then I Thought for Five Hours About Whether or Not to Post It

Eugenics: The study of hereditary improvement of the human race by controlled selective breeding.

Western culture is obsessed with eugenics.

People like to forget that in North America, there were laws passed allowing the state to sterilize those who they felt ought not reproduce. As much as we would like to pretend that this was the sole province of evil Nazis in Germany in World War II, this was also the function of kindly doctors in our very own countries not so long ago. This included not only the usual cases of genetic defects which were presumed (in many cases, incorrectly) to be hereditable, but also laws against procreation between people of different races. People (I should say women) have been jailed—in the US and in Canada—for having sex with and bearing a child to someone of another race.

Eugenics examples such as these are fairly cut and dried today; no one would much argue that there is social value to these practices, especially given the human rights violations (alt