Sunday, May 13, 2012
Switching it up!
Hey folks! I'm making a move over to WordPress, mostly because their mobile blogging app for Android is way more functional that Google's own mobile Blogger app. (I know, it doesn't make sense to me, either.) You can find me in the future at bhmbrooks.wordpress.com.
Monday, October 17, 2011
So, I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want
For most of my life, I'd have sworn the answer to that question was marriage and family. For some portion of my life that was probably true; but it's been decades since that time, and I only just realized it today.
My life plan in all its incarnations has centered around being married with a family. As a young girl, I dreamed of ten or twelve children, and picked out their names; as an early teenager I moderated my family size somewhat, but I still thought my greatest gift to the world would be my amazing, Christian children. I knew that as a young woman I had made many choices contrary to pursuit of this goal, but I assumed that I was being tempted away from what I truly wanted.
It's dangerous to take life lessons from the movies, but a line in "The Wedding Date" has always stuck with me: "Every woman has the love life she really wants." The point of the sentiment (and the movie) is that you choose the kind of relationships you have and the way you want to react to them; if you choose to hang onto destructive ones, it is because you've decided that is the kind of life you are most comfortable with. So I figured my series of terrible relationship decisions was about some underlying belief that I was unlovable, or a deep-seated fear that no one would love me forever and so I'd rather pick relationships I knew were going to end, or some other such thing. The real answer requires far less psychobabble.
I do want marriage and kids, and to a degree my insistence that I treasured these things was genuine. But what I failed to acknowledge is that the more important goal for me, going back some 20 years, is this: I want to prove that I am irresistably desirable to every man I meet, regardless of his race, age, business relationship, partner status or other obstacles. If all men don't want we and don't at some point yield to that desire in ways small or large (preferably large), my true life goal remains naggingly unfulfilled.
Of course, the trouble with that goal is that it's fairly incompatible with my marriage (not to mention those of most other people around me); I can't exactly focus on being a suitable life partner while pursuing the attentions of every man I come into contact with. And so I prioritize: if I have to pick an objective, go with the one that I hold most dear.
The end result is that I do have exactly the love life I've chosen. I have a magic number so high that I've lost count and forgotten some of the associated individuals. I have married men pining for me. But because my goal is unachievable - I mean, let's face it, I'm no supermodel - I am constantly unsatisfied. Not, as I thought, because I don't have my dream family; nor, as I also thought, because my lust is insatiable. My disappointment is simple, basic: I'm not able to do what I set out to do.
Which leaves me with a few questions: now that I've acknowledged my goal and the impossibility of getting there, can I give it up? Knowing is certainly half the battle, but what exactly is that other half? And if I were able to apply my zeal to the kind of relationships I say I want, could I still be successful?
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Hear no evil, see no evil
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
When we hear this quote, we think of the "great" historical evils; the quintessential example for those of us who grew up in the 20th century is the Holocaust. It's a way of wagging a finger at the moral failures of the ordinary people in those situations, the ones who knew better and should have spoken up but didn't. In our heads, we wonder how they could have allowed such things to pass when they were so obviously wrong. In our hearts, we congratulate ourselves because we are good people who would have done the right thing, if we'd had the chance.
But this quote is not applicable to the "little" evils of our day, things so minor that they don't really justify being called evils. They are "unfortunate" events, when poor and disenfranchised people suffer around the world or in the next neighborhood over. If someone in Ethiopia loses access to their land or water so that a richer country can take advantage of those resources, or if someone in North Minneapolis is struggling to find shelter or food or a safe place where their children can play, this is not a manifestation of evil. It's sad, of course, and it would be great if something could be done, but poverty is intractable and the causes are too complex for us to fix, and all we can do is shake our heads while we sip our latte and realize that we can't really change those things. Quite frankly, those things are distant "third-world" problems; and while we may self-deprecatingly laugh at our "first-world" problems, those are the ones that we have and they are the only ones we can really deal with.
Some might say that the real first-world problem is that we are reliant on the existence of the third world to support our standard of living. Without it, our goods would not be so cheap and plentiful, our lives not nearly so convenient, our growth not so rapid, and our favored status not so clear. That is why third-world problems both cannot be evil and must not have solutions; otherwise, any investigation into their roots might point a finger too near our direction. But even if this were true, it is not our fault. We did not make these systems, and we certainly can't change them. This is just how it is, and we have to get along as best we can.
Martin Luther King said that "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," but these things are not a threat to us, and they are not truly injustice; that would imply that there is a right and a wrong to these situations. And that can't be true, because if if were, then we would know it, and we would be doing the right thing. We are good good people, not like those other good people, and if there were a true moral question we would be on the right side of it.
Comfort is not the reason good people do nothing. What is wrong with comfort? Comfort is a reward, a sign that we have done well, worked hard, followed the rules, and earned your rest. If other people don't or can't achieve what we have, it is not good for them, but has nothing to do with us. It is certainly not our responsibility to change anyone else's life, or to make sure they are secure. Because our comfort and their discomfort are separate things, and we owe those people no debt. The fact that we worry at all is a sign of our sensitivity, our generosity; we don't have to think about those things at all, but since we do, that shows that we are good people, people who will definitely fix injustice if we see it.
And we know what justice is about; it is about rights, about documents, about equality before the law, about voting. It is about equal opportunity, anti-discrimination, a level playing field, and merit. It is about individual aspirations and the belief that everyone can succeed if they try, and those who deserve it will be rewarded. Sometimes it is about keeping people from being killed, but that is only under some circumstances; there are many reasons why people are killed. But if someone is killed and it really is unjust, justice will allow you to get everything you are entitled to under law. Justice happens in law; and if we have any duty, it is to be honest jurors and vote for good legislators.
But justice is not about what we buy. It is not about where we live, or where someone else lives. It is not about who goes to what school and the kind of education they get. It is not about who owns what. It is not about who is hungry or who is healthy. Those things result from a tangled web of individual, corporate, and government decisions, and you can't even assign responsibility to anyone. Supposing you could - you still would be hard pressed to find anyone doing evil. We are just trying to earn a good living and have decent lives and make good decisions for our kids, and we aren't hurting anyone else. We certainly aren't responsible for what happens to unfortunate people in the world around us. But we are good people, and when we have the chance to fight evil and injustice, we definitely will.
When we hear this quote, we think of the "great" historical evils; the quintessential example for those of us who grew up in the 20th century is the Holocaust. It's a way of wagging a finger at the moral failures of the ordinary people in those situations, the ones who knew better and should have spoken up but didn't. In our heads, we wonder how they could have allowed such things to pass when they were so obviously wrong. In our hearts, we congratulate ourselves because we are good people who would have done the right thing, if we'd had the chance.
But this quote is not applicable to the "little" evils of our day, things so minor that they don't really justify being called evils. They are "unfortunate" events, when poor and disenfranchised people suffer around the world or in the next neighborhood over. If someone in Ethiopia loses access to their land or water so that a richer country can take advantage of those resources, or if someone in North Minneapolis is struggling to find shelter or food or a safe place where their children can play, this is not a manifestation of evil. It's sad, of course, and it would be great if something could be done, but poverty is intractable and the causes are too complex for us to fix, and all we can do is shake our heads while we sip our latte and realize that we can't really change those things. Quite frankly, those things are distant "third-world" problems; and while we may self-deprecatingly laugh at our "first-world" problems, those are the ones that we have and they are the only ones we can really deal with.
Some might say that the real first-world problem is that we are reliant on the existence of the third world to support our standard of living. Without it, our goods would not be so cheap and plentiful, our lives not nearly so convenient, our growth not so rapid, and our favored status not so clear. That is why third-world problems both cannot be evil and must not have solutions; otherwise, any investigation into their roots might point a finger too near our direction. But even if this were true, it is not our fault. We did not make these systems, and we certainly can't change them. This is just how it is, and we have to get along as best we can.
Martin Luther King said that "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," but these things are not a threat to us, and they are not truly injustice; that would imply that there is a right and a wrong to these situations. And that can't be true, because if if were, then we would know it, and we would be doing the right thing. We are good good people, not like those other good people, and if there were a true moral question we would be on the right side of it.
Comfort is not the reason good people do nothing. What is wrong with comfort? Comfort is a reward, a sign that we have done well, worked hard, followed the rules, and earned your rest. If other people don't or can't achieve what we have, it is not good for them, but has nothing to do with us. It is certainly not our responsibility to change anyone else's life, or to make sure they are secure. Because our comfort and their discomfort are separate things, and we owe those people no debt. The fact that we worry at all is a sign of our sensitivity, our generosity; we don't have to think about those things at all, but since we do, that shows that we are good people, people who will definitely fix injustice if we see it.
And we know what justice is about; it is about rights, about documents, about equality before the law, about voting. It is about equal opportunity, anti-discrimination, a level playing field, and merit. It is about individual aspirations and the belief that everyone can succeed if they try, and those who deserve it will be rewarded. Sometimes it is about keeping people from being killed, but that is only under some circumstances; there are many reasons why people are killed. But if someone is killed and it really is unjust, justice will allow you to get everything you are entitled to under law. Justice happens in law; and if we have any duty, it is to be honest jurors and vote for good legislators.
But justice is not about what we buy. It is not about where we live, or where someone else lives. It is not about who goes to what school and the kind of education they get. It is not about who owns what. It is not about who is hungry or who is healthy. Those things result from a tangled web of individual, corporate, and government decisions, and you can't even assign responsibility to anyone. Supposing you could - you still would be hard pressed to find anyone doing evil. We are just trying to earn a good living and have decent lives and make good decisions for our kids, and we aren't hurting anyone else. We certainly aren't responsible for what happens to unfortunate people in the world around us. But we are good people, and when we have the chance to fight evil and injustice, we definitely will.
Monday, September 19, 2011
The Poetry of Last Resort
I am not a poet;
But as the blood pounds in my ears
And the sighs rise in my chest,
I want to write about
Decades wasted --
When I thought so little of myself
And others thought less.
What is the point
Of balling my fists
Or raising my voice
Against my own foolishness?
I have filled years that will not return
With bitter remembrances of a prophecy
That I did hoped for but did believe.
And so it did not come to pass.
Instead, I write bad poerty that flows
From the constant spring of tears.
I grow tired of the deep well
That means I am always crying.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Oh, right. That's why I don't like people.
OK, fine; I actually do like people. Mostly. Sometimes. On their good days. And mine.
But I've been having a set of experiences this week that remind me why I don't like opening up to people and why I spend a lot of my time in protection/game face mode. I realized that I've been in a "friendship" for several years that was mostly me trying to make the other person feel admired and cared for while I spent most of my time feeling like I had to beg for this person's attention. Not unsurprisingly, that person really felt like we were good, close friends, while I felt kind of like the contents of poopy diaper. And I can't decide what pisses me off more about that situation: the fact that despite much progress over the past few years, there are obviously still situations in which I have the self-esteem of a gnat; or the fact that I even had to tell someone that yes, friends are actually supposed to initiate words and deeds of caring and concern for the other person from time to time.
I'm getting better at understanding who makes a good close personal friend for me; but I still have some hangovers from the time when I wasn't as willing to prioritize my emotional needs. It makes me so angry to feel like I have to fight with someone to explain that being my friend isn't a burden, and that I have more positive than negative characteristics to make spending time with me worthwhile. What a stupid, stupid conversation to try and have with anyone; why in heaven's name would I spend any amount of time trying to convince someone of that if they don't already see it and respond to it? I fell into an idiotic thing where I found someone I really admired and wanted them to like me so much that I decided I didn't need to be valued or respected in return. But I don't need to be liked that much.
It's part of my continued wrestling with what it means to have "friends" in my life. That word means a great deal to me, but gets tossed around in our society so casually; and then I end up feeling bad for not wanting to call people friends who I don't think I can trust and rely on and who honestly don't know me all that well and don't have any interest in doing so. It's not that I think being a friend is some sort of ball-and-chain obligation to be attending to someone else all the time; I certainly don't think of my friends that way. I feel like having to explain the actions and activities that make up a friendship makes it sound like a list of to-dos without any of the joy or magic: call and text every so often, ask someone how they're doing, ask them out for a meal, invite them to an event you know they'd like, let them call you at weird hours because they need to talk, spend time thinking about who they are and what they need and what interests them and what you like about them. A friendship is more than the sum of all those parts, more than a checklist of things you've done that day or week or month.
But I guess that's the point: if you have to explain to someone what it would mean to be your friend, that's not a trip either one of you should take together. Because the other person will only resent the list of tasks they've been given, and you'll resent being with someone who'd rather be doing something else.
But I've been having a set of experiences this week that remind me why I don't like opening up to people and why I spend a lot of my time in protection/game face mode. I realized that I've been in a "friendship" for several years that was mostly me trying to make the other person feel admired and cared for while I spent most of my time feeling like I had to beg for this person's attention. Not unsurprisingly, that person really felt like we were good, close friends, while I felt kind of like the contents of poopy diaper. And I can't decide what pisses me off more about that situation: the fact that despite much progress over the past few years, there are obviously still situations in which I have the self-esteem of a gnat; or the fact that I even had to tell someone that yes, friends are actually supposed to initiate words and deeds of caring and concern for the other person from time to time.
I'm getting better at understanding who makes a good close personal friend for me; but I still have some hangovers from the time when I wasn't as willing to prioritize my emotional needs. It makes me so angry to feel like I have to fight with someone to explain that being my friend isn't a burden, and that I have more positive than negative characteristics to make spending time with me worthwhile. What a stupid, stupid conversation to try and have with anyone; why in heaven's name would I spend any amount of time trying to convince someone of that if they don't already see it and respond to it? I fell into an idiotic thing where I found someone I really admired and wanted them to like me so much that I decided I didn't need to be valued or respected in return. But I don't need to be liked that much.
It's part of my continued wrestling with what it means to have "friends" in my life. That word means a great deal to me, but gets tossed around in our society so casually; and then I end up feeling bad for not wanting to call people friends who I don't think I can trust and rely on and who honestly don't know me all that well and don't have any interest in doing so. It's not that I think being a friend is some sort of ball-and-chain obligation to be attending to someone else all the time; I certainly don't think of my friends that way. I feel like having to explain the actions and activities that make up a friendship makes it sound like a list of to-dos without any of the joy or magic: call and text every so often, ask someone how they're doing, ask them out for a meal, invite them to an event you know they'd like, let them call you at weird hours because they need to talk, spend time thinking about who they are and what they need and what interests them and what you like about them. A friendship is more than the sum of all those parts, more than a checklist of things you've done that day or week or month.
But I guess that's the point: if you have to explain to someone what it would mean to be your friend, that's not a trip either one of you should take together. Because the other person will only resent the list of tasks they've been given, and you'll resent being with someone who'd rather be doing something else.
Monday, May 02, 2011
Watching history?
So, unless you're asleep or under a rock right now, you've heard the news about Osama bin Laden. Someone on MSNBC just said that "this marks the end of something, marks the end of ... an important period for the nation." My first reaction is clearly heresy at this moment but: the end of what? Do we know why we're cheering? What do we think was accomplished tonight? And did we learn anything at all from these last 9-1/2 years?
We won't know for a while yet what effect bin Laden's death will have on terrorism around the world. It would truly be a gift if his absence caused the al Qaeda networks' acts of senseless killing to stop. But I am afraid that we remain as unreflective as ever about the context within which those acts are taking place, and the changes we've allowed in ourselves since September 11th.
Will we actually seek to understand the social, economic or environmental drivers that caused bin Laden's message to be so attractive to so many, and will we do anything about those issues? Will we stop using "security" as an excuse to destroy our own civil liberties and civic life, to say nothing of how we treat those who are not American citizens? Will we examine our prejudices toward Muslims, the Middle East, and non-white immigrants that we allowed to persist and intensify throughout this period? Will we confront our own nation's role as an agent of violence and injustice around the world?
As I listen to flashmobs cheering outside the White House, my heart has become incredibly heavy, because we are so busy rallying that we cannot ask ourselves what this should mean to us. Much like the national mood after September 11th, I fear that we'll be whipped into a false sense of unity that cuts off any opportunity to think about who we want to be following this event. We will cheer our military might and congratulate ourselves for the path that got us here, without ever wondering about the assumptions that underlie how we act on our own soil and abroad.
We are overflowing with a frenzy of gleeful hate because we killed the scapegoat on whom we'd placed all the blame for our decade of deep fearfulness. Yes, Osama bin Laden bore significant responsibility for the September 11th attacks; but the story of what happened to us that day - and certainly the story of what has gone on since - is much more complicated than that. It's hard for me to cheer, because I'm struggling to understand: did this moment really make us safer, or better?
We won't know for a while yet what effect bin Laden's death will have on terrorism around the world. It would truly be a gift if his absence caused the al Qaeda networks' acts of senseless killing to stop. But I am afraid that we remain as unreflective as ever about the context within which those acts are taking place, and the changes we've allowed in ourselves since September 11th.
Will we actually seek to understand the social, economic or environmental drivers that caused bin Laden's message to be so attractive to so many, and will we do anything about those issues? Will we stop using "security" as an excuse to destroy our own civil liberties and civic life, to say nothing of how we treat those who are not American citizens? Will we examine our prejudices toward Muslims, the Middle East, and non-white immigrants that we allowed to persist and intensify throughout this period? Will we confront our own nation's role as an agent of violence and injustice around the world?
As I listen to flashmobs cheering outside the White House, my heart has become incredibly heavy, because we are so busy rallying that we cannot ask ourselves what this should mean to us. Much like the national mood after September 11th, I fear that we'll be whipped into a false sense of unity that cuts off any opportunity to think about who we want to be following this event. We will cheer our military might and congratulate ourselves for the path that got us here, without ever wondering about the assumptions that underlie how we act on our own soil and abroad.
We are overflowing with a frenzy of gleeful hate because we killed the scapegoat on whom we'd placed all the blame for our decade of deep fearfulness. Yes, Osama bin Laden bore significant responsibility for the September 11th attacks; but the story of what happened to us that day - and certainly the story of what has gone on since - is much more complicated than that. It's hard for me to cheer, because I'm struggling to understand: did this moment really make us safer, or better?
Monday, April 18, 2011
Finally! Higher education is not the end-all-be-all
Even though I'm just weeks away from getting my Master's degree, I think this article totally hits the spot:
This similar article by the same author who posted the above interview with Peter Thiel also discusses why higher education is not the safe route to success that we all keep telling ourselves it is. Here, he quotes Paul Krugman:
Education is a bubble in a classic sense. To call something a bubble, it must be overpriced and there must be an intense belief in it. Housing was a classic bubble, as were tech stocks in the ’90s, because they were both very overvalued, but there was an incredibly widespread belief that almost could not be questioned — you had to own a house in 2005, and you had to be in an equity-market index fund in 1999.We're convincing too many of our children that higher education is the path they have to take to be successful at anything, we're burdening them with tremendous debt loads to buy into the system, and we've decided that going to college is the solution for all that ails us in terms of poverty and inequity for disadvantaged communities. I think higher education has a purpose and can be very valuable - but I also know that I got the most value out of it when I went back to school at 25, at which point I had worked and supported myself for several years and had a much better sense of who I was and what I wanted out of college. We need to recognize and support that there are a much wider range of alternatives for a fulfilling life, and that many of them don't require going to college at 18 - if ever.
Probably the only candidate left for a bubble — at least in the developed world (maybe emerging markets are a bubble) — is education. It’s basically extremely overpriced. People are not getting their money’s worth, objectively, when you do the math. And at the same time it is something that is incredibly intensively believed; there’s this sort of psycho-social component to people taking on these enormous debts when they go to college simply because that’s what everybody’s doing.
This similar article by the same author who posted the above interview with Peter Thiel also discusses why higher education is not the safe route to success that we all keep telling ourselves it is. Here, he quotes Paul Krugman:
Finally, I feel validated, as I've been arguing for years that pushing kids into college just because everyone says that's the thing to do isn't a particularly good idea. If The Economist says so, I must be right! I'd also like to note that I was arguing something similar about the push to an "ownership society" in housing well before 2008. Maybe I should become a predictor of bubbles?The belief that education is becoming ever more important rests on the plausible-sounding notion that advances in technology increase job opportunities for those who work with information — loosely speaking, that computers help those who work with their minds, while hurting those who work with their hands.
Some years ago, however, the economists David Autor, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane argued that this was the wrong way to think about it. Computers, they pointed out, excel at routine tasks, “cognitive and manual tasks that can be accomplished by following explicit rules.” Therefore, any routine task — a category that includes many white-collar, non-manual jobs — is in the firing line. Conversely, jobs that can’t be carried out by following explicit rules — a category that includes many kinds of manual labor, from truck drivers to janitors — will tend to grow even in the face of technological progress.
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