So Long!
Well, it’s that time! Thank you for taking the time to read and comment. I learned a lot in these conversations and had a blast doing it. Now the furry despot is calling. See you in the comments!
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Fuck Gratitude
(Have you noticed I start nearly every post with an anecdote? I’m disturbed to discover I don’t know how to begin explaining something without sharing my context. I’m sure its a character flaw somehow. In any event, I wrote this post about a year ago to put up at my non-blog, but decided…eh…no one reads that shit anyway. But since I have the opportunity to inflict one last philosophical post on you guys…I’m going to share it here.)
To me, the concept of gratitude is inextricably linked with the Christian sect I abandoned years ago. As part of our religious practice, I was compelled to write a list each week of the things for which I was grateful. At the time we were poor, periodically homeless in a rural stretch of the bible belt. I was young living with untreated asthma and chronic bronchitis.
I was not grateful.
But, as I was taught, God required gratitude. He was God, we were pots…commence bowing and scraping, otherwise Remember Job! It wasn’t clear to me then what more the Head Sky Cheese could take away, but in an abundance of caution, I dutifully made a list every Saturday night. I practiced gratitude to appease those with power…to ensure power was aware that I knew my place.
***
Last Saturday, I met with a client over at McDs. The details are unimportant, but I had happy news. The orgs working on her case had been able to remove an impediment that was preventing her from obtaining emergency housing for herself and her daughter. In fact, Mr Kristen had twisted some arms and gotten the property manager to come out on a weekend to sign the necessary paperwork so they could move in immediately. While I drove my client and her daughter to pick up their belongings, Mr Kristen coordinated with the orgs to have linens, groceries, and even a few toys and videos delivered. For once, the process worked exactly as we envisioned.
I bring up the success of this effort because usually by the time we’ve reached this point in the process I’m pissed off and apologizing for the continual fuck ups. But this time, I was probably beaming with happiness.
After seeing them settled in Mr Kristen and I started heading for the door. My client moved to get up and I waived her back down and said I’d lock up on the way out. And then she said “I wouldn’t want you to think we were ungrateful.”
Wham…like a stack of bricks.
She’s exhausted, stressed, near to dropping with relief. She’s left her home, her belongings. She doesn’t have a job. Beyond the tiny cash envelop in her kitchen, she had real means to care for her self or her daughter.
And yet she felt the need to be grateful. To express gratitude in case we might somehow take offense if she failed to do so.
...read moreThe Rights of Children – Yeah, I Went There
The U.N Convention on the Rights of the Child is the latest in a line of international agreements on the human rights of children and has been ratified by every member of the United Nations with the exception of Somalia and the United States. Somalia hasn’t refused to ratify the treaty, they’ve just not had the institutions in place to make treaty ratification a reality. In the US, the Convention has met staunch opposition from the right where opponents argue that it strips away parental rights, conflicts with the US Constitution and is generally bad news. So what does the heinous piece of international law say?
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An Ode to Video Games – Well, Maybe Not an *Ode*
Oh, yes. My commodore 64. Circa 1989 you would have found me hunched over my C64 coding early video games and saving them on to a cassette tape. I loved video games from the beginning and I still own a working version of every console I ever played on. And I’m not picky either. I’ve [...]
...read moreReason No. 5,234,108 to Hate KBR
They are now seeking to recover the costs of defending rape and hostile work environment claims brought by Jamie Leigh Jones. They assert that her rape claim was frivolous, unreasonable, and groundless and that she brought the claims in bad faith. Their proof? Essentially she did not act like we expect a rape victim to [...]
...read moreA New Word and a New Cause
First a new word. Kama’aina. Pronounced like this. It means, essentially child of the land referring in this instance to residents of Hawaii.
I’m attempting to add this word to the social justice lexicon, because too often the residents of Hawaii are conflated with Hawaiians. This isn’t just a pet peeve on my part (although, yes, I find it highly annoying), its also a political problem.
Hawaiians are the indigenous people of Hawaii. Their culture was almost obliterated by disease brought by Captain Cook and his expedition, then by western exploitation and religious conversion, then by theft of their land, and more recently by poverty and neglect (pdf). Its a familiar story no doubt, but one that deserves your attention.
...read moreBecause why only be Little Shits when you can be Complete Shits?
Yes, the Republicans. Did you guess from the headlines? Sometimes I wonder if they actually hate working USians. Do they have some list of To Dos in their Republican Lair that says: 1. Bankrupt working USians with high medical costs; 2. Damage working USians by sabotaging the economy; 3. Harm working USians by reenacting a [...]
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God, Dogs, and Self-Care – Balancing Social Justice and the Self
Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, what the fuck do those three things have to do with one another. It works…I promise.
A lot of my screwed up sexist programing came from the Christian Sect I was raised in for the first several years of my life. Some of it I was able to defeat with shear cussedness, some with reason, some with empathy, but some of it lingers in my psyche and worms its way out from time to time. This is particularly true of the culture of giving. It’s something I’m not sure that non-Christians or more progressive Christians are familiar with. The phrase “give till it hurts” was common. The minister often spoke eloquently of how Christ gave away all of his possessions and how everything we gave would come back to us “10-fold” (ahem…of course the minister was “receiving” these gifts).
My parents were big proponents of giving and volunteering. So often my stuff (what little I had given that we were periodically homeless) was given away to those “less fortunate” (query who *those* people were). And at least twice a week we spent the evening volunteering, at prisons, homeless shelters, food banks…yada, yada. It didn’t matter if I were ill, or had homework or wanted to hang out with my friends any more than it mattered that I really, really loved that doll. My -self-, my needs, wants and desires were unimportant in the face of the needs, wants and desires of others.
When I walked away from Christianity, I walked away in some senses from this culture of giving. I no longer give with intention of getting anything back. And I thought I no longer gave till it hurts. I mean, shit…I’m not giving you my xbox (Mr. Kristen probably will tho…he’s a total sucker for big, sad eyes) or my tempurpedic slippers.
But this culture of giving is more than just a Christian thing, in some senses its a woman thing. Many women have been socialized to believe that we are the caretakers of society. While I left one source of that programming the pressure to care for others to the exclusion of my self remained.
...read moreWest Memphis Three Free
Full story here. Some of the background here. Can you count the ways in which the kyriarchy used its power to harm and coerce innocent people during the course of a single murder investigation? So who is going to argue this time that this was just an isolated incident, the system works, move along – [...]
...read moreRelationship Advice – Marriage 101
Okay…all the single women gather ’round and I will share with you the vast bounty of my relationship knowledge. I know the key to getting married! And since obviously every female person is desirous of a state sanctioned relationship with a single dude, I am providing this information to you. I know each of you [...]
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Bringing it Back Down to Reality…Sort Of
I know what you’re thinking. Dear Magic California Roll, not another philosophical post. Please make it stop. But this one is different! I promise. I’m leaving the world of high philosophy and returning to world of getting shit done. Or at least the world of how shit gets done. By people with privilege. Okay, I lied, its another philosophical post. But I tried and that must count for something right?
Working towards social justice (however defined) can be tricky business if (like me) you’re swimming in a boatload of privilege. The problem is that oftentimes when we try to *help* someone, we end up doing what we think is best for them in the way we prefer rather than what *they* think is best for themselves in the way they prefer.
I saw this most profoundly when I was young. Each summer I was required (as part of the Christian sect I belonged to) to volunteer with various chartable organizations. One summer my parents thought it would be an “object lesson” to send to me volunteer at what was called “a home for unwed mothers” but was really where pregnant teenagers were sent to give birth. The young women there were given a room and food (often after being turned out of their own homes for becoming pregnant), but only if they “repented.” Repentance to the sect I belonged to meant humiliating “confessions” to the full congregation of everything they’d done; admitting that they were sinful, disgusting and weak; giving birth even if they preferred otherwise; and giving their child to a “good” Christian family that would prevent that child from repeating the same “mistake.” These homes may have provided basic necessities, but they in no sense *helped* the women unfortunate enough to walk through their doors.
Let me clear, the social organizations I work with today are miles apart from that hellhole.
And yet. I still see the same worrisome perspective. We’ll help, if you accept drug treatment. We’ll help, if you seek counseling. We’ll help, if you choose to leave your abusive partner. We’ll help, if you go back to stay with a blood relative. There are conditions on giving people access to the bare necessities of life and those conditions are connected to what the privileged people in charge think are *best* for those in dire need.
...read moreCertainty and Social Justice
As you may know from the numerous threads in which I’ve gone about it ad nauseum, I’m a skeptic (an Academic, existentialist skeptic to be precise). Without boring you to death, here’s the short version. I don’t think you can know things. I mean know them, know them. Not feel them, not experience them…but KNOW them. We (humans) cannot (probably) be absolutely certain of anything.
There are a lot of reasons that Certainty, or at least certainty of the world outside ourselves, doesn’t work. There are the limits of human cognition. The limits of human perception. The unbridled arrogance of dogmatism. The centrality of certitude in the oppression of many, many people. But the one I want to talk about today is Mr. Kristen’s favorite rationale in favor of skepticism: Dogma means that you stop learning, you stop listening to other people. In that sense I see certitude as antithetical to social justice.
Let me explain.
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