The short explanation is such: my life has gotten too busy for me to easily keep up with friends and family, much less write a weekly blog. Therefore, I am putting this on hiatus until things calm down and I can once again concentrate on writing.
The long explanation isn’t worth getting into.
The new iPhone (the second generation one, which can handle third generation cellular networks) launched a week ago. As someone who keeps up with tech (and therefore Apple) news, I paid attention to things going on that day. I just have a few thoughts on the whole thing:
I recently had dinner with a group of friends and while there, talked with an elderly gentleman. He was the sort of person who said what was on his mind, and never pulled punches about his true thoughts on matters. It’s one of the stock characters: the old grandfather who has an opinion on everything (usually outdated) and is willing to express it (loudly).
As things are wont to do these days, talk turned to politics and especially the presidential election. He loudly proclaimed himself as a Democrat with some decent reasoning, and loudly complained about McCain. Curious fellow that I am, I then asked about Barack Obama, since I figured he would be an ardent supporter.
On the contrary, he said he didn’t like Obama, either. A bit confused (since Obama seemed to encapsulate what he liked about Democrats over Republicans), I pressed him on the issue, wondering where he disagreed with Obama. Eventually, the response I got back was simply “I’m just not comfortable with him.”
I thought about this a while, somewhat confused. This was not the sort of person who normally said such things, so I had to divine what his true meaning was. I’m also not the sort of person who likes to look at everything through the lens of race (as some people do, even when completely unwarranted). Yet as I thought about it and interacted with him on other things, I came to a tentative conclusion that bothered me.
I think what he meant was “I don’t want to vote for a black person”. I can’t verify this, and I hate coming to race-based conclusions, but I couldn’t think of a better explanation, especially in context of the rest of the evening. I think if we had a closer relationship or we weren’t in public, he might have been willing to admit it. But there was this spectre of not being able to admit something racist in public.
Racism is still a disease plaguing this county. But like file-sharing, the attempts of the government to shut it down and stop it has only driven it farther and farther underground. We dare not talk of it in public, for we know the consequences, but that has not actually changed people’s minds on the issue.
I have no grand solution for solving the epidemic of racism. I know of no way to just change people’s minds when they’re so set in their ways. But what I see is a racism that we now cannot talk about openly and cannot discuss, and instead gets relegated to the back rooms, where it becomes far more violent and far more dangerous than when it is seen openly.
I have no real conclusion. It is but an anecdote of life, and of how far we still have to go.
Any statement that inspires anger in those who hear it is worth investigating. If the statement were actually True, then the cold weight of facts should be sufficient to demonstrate its verity.
I imagine that statement is autological.
I recently stumbled upon this YouTube video, which is of Steve Jobs first presentation at MacWorld after having been hired back into Apple. It’s been eleven years since then, and it’s interesting to watch it purely in terms of history.
Just a few thoughts:
Whenever I’ve experienced “training” in the past on how to respect differences in culture, it’s always Europe-descended American culture that must make allowances to the other culture. In literature, it’s always the white American who learns to appreciate black/Asian/Indian/whatever culture, and never the other way around.
Shouldn’t the other culture have to make allowances back, if we’re going to truly respect differences in culture? Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about that?
My pastor recently said something in a sermon that resonated with me. He said:
You are still a parent even if you do not have any children.
It took me a while to understand the wisdom of this statement. While the actual etymology of the word “parent” comes from the Latin word meaning “to give birth”, when I studied Latin, I found myself intrigued that it could also be interpreted to mean “they obey”. Perhaps a better choice would be “they mimic”.
As adults, we are the role models that children look up to. They mimic us in thought and deed, and their experience with us shapes their lives. Every interaction with a child slowly builds their character, and from their character all things flow.
The next time you interact with a child, consider that you—even if for only a brief moment—are their model for adulthood. You are their parent.
I once promised a friend that I would write a story someday that featured an accountant superhero. They would fight crime by poring over spreadsheets and tracking and itemizing accounting-related things. This friend has graduated with a degree in accounting, and she felt that accountants were under-represented in the media (which they are). Someday I will write this story to attempt to rectify that. The accountant would, however, need a team, since superheroes always work on a team.
I think a psychiatrist would be useful: they can psychoanalyze the patient then determine what drugs to prescribe to attempt to fix (but not really) that person’s problems. The third member would be a musician to always be late but provide wonderful accompaniment at all the major battles. Of course, the fourth member, a physicist, would build all their weapons and contraptions by which they kick ass in physical battles.
The band would then be rounded out nicely with a fifth member who happened to be somewhere in English academia. They could spend hours in front of a typewriter (because real English majors don’t use computers) in order to produce a manuscript. Their primary role would be to provide biting social commentary. That is, after all, such a powerful weapon, it could crush entire armies with its might.
This team would likely be incredibly effective, if boring. But the stories don’t need to be entertaining: after all, we have the scathing social commentary. That should be all we ever need, right?
A few weeks ago, I was chatting with one of the cashiers at the cafeteria where I work, and a random personal choice I made came up, and we had the following exchange:
Her: “What does your wife think about it?”
Me: “I don’t have a wife.”
Her: “Well, what does your girlfriend think about it?”
Me: “I don’t have a girlfriend.”
And the conversation flowed on from there. I was struck by the expectations she had—which I would consider reasonable ones—that didn’t entirely come into play.
Namely, she first assumed that I had a wife, despite the definite lack of a wedding ring around my finger. But she might not actually look at it, and realistically, most of the people who work at the company are probably married.
Upon learning that such was false, she then had the expectation that I had a girlfriend. After all, I’m such a great guy, I’m clearly not married because of time or something. Again, many of the people who aren’t married who work at the company probably are in a relationship. As I understand the statistics, a majority of adults are either married or dating.
Now these are both fine and good, but here’s the thing that really got me: she didn’t ask what my boyfriend thought. There was an expectation on her part that I am a heterosexual male. In this case, she was right, but it’s not a guarantee (although—and I fully admit to possibly being wrong on this point—I think that there are fewer expressed homosexuals among older people than among younger). I find myself vaguely curious what her reaction had been if I had mentioned a (non-existent) boyfriend.
Mind, I don’t mean to condemn her. I’m not offended, and I would like to think if I were homosexual, I still wouldn’t be. I’m disenchanted enough with political correctness to really care, and it was a short conversation anyways. Trying to account for every possibility is kind of ludicrous (at what point do we consider polygamy?).
What I do mean to do is to point out her expectations, which were very reasonable given the circumstances. We all have these reasonable expectations, although it is interesting to sometimes go and reflect upon them and why we have them—and whether we need to have them. I find myself wondering just how many of these expectations would stand up to scrutiny.
I will continue to believe that neither science nor mathematics are inherently patriarchal or oppressive until someone can show me a digital computer created with matriarchal science.
I would then use that computer to calculate out the digits of pi, just to see at what point they diverged.