This category includes our unique perception of the world. One that goes against conventional wisdom, in the attempt to find a closer truth in an unbiased manner. It is advocating for the point of view you were rarely taught, but have always considered.
Okay, I have a pet peeve… well, I have multiple pet peeves. Like people who sniff their snot back up into their nose, come on, just get it out. And people who don’t thank the workers of the many forms of service that exist in this country, just say thank you, their human beings, not your servants.
But as annoying as that is, there is one pet peeve that stands alone. One that simply infuriates me to my core. And in short, it is how we debate ideas.
In my pursuit of knowledge, I have found a common trend in how we develop ideas. We first take an assumption, treat it as an undeniable fact, and then build it up from there. This is the process for all knowledge because unfortunately… there are no objective facts. Therefore, every argument has its limitations.
It is this truth (ironic since I just said there are no truths) that must be acknowledged to understanding why someone thinks what they do. Most people, especially people who are willing to talk about their ideas, have spent some time considering their thoughts and developing what they think. This is why it usually takes a little bit of digging to understand where someone is coming from. But eventually, with enough questions and desire to understand, we can usually get to that root difference in our assumptions. And I feel that it is only there that beliefs and knowledge can be changed.
Now getting to my pet peeve, I HATE when people don’t have that same goal. When they can’t help but see their assumptions as truth and consider nothing else. Because obviously you will be correct then. Without considering a new assumption, and in other words a new truth, then you really won’t be considering anything but the thoughts you already have yourself.
The number of people that I have met who are either incapable or choose not to consider these other assumptions truly bugs me. Because then it almost always leads to me walking into their turf and allowing them to present their build-up assumptions. Which is fine, don’t get me wrong. It is good to let them talk about their world so that I can better understand it… but it’s a two-way road.
After the person has built their reality in front of me, it only makes sense for me to then do the same. And once both are presented we must find the core and compare them in an effort of seeing who is more likely correct.
I think we all should attempt to relax our egos (which I define as the consciousness we identify with), accept when we “lose” a debate, and acknowledge that nothing is real. Because as abstract and unnecessary as all of that appears, I feel it is only then that we consider things that our minds would not have naturally thought of given enough time.
Can you guess how many mass shootings the Gun Violence Archive recorded in the United States in 2019 alone? 418. Do you know how many of those ended with at least someone getting seriously hurt or killed? All of them.
Mass shootings aren’t the only news we have trouble swallowing. Can you guess how many people are starving to death right now? Can you imagine how many millions of tons of garbage are thrown into the ocean each year? And can you even comprehend the idea that systematic racism, and so many other forms of oppression, still exist and diminish the quality of life for minorities around the world?
If you’re a news junkie like me, you find out very quickly just how exhausting and disheartening these facts can be. Building up from just about any news channel you click on, these stories and statistics can weigh your day to day life down significantly.
A study at the University of Maryland found, from a 45,000 person study, that people who define themselves as happy, typically watched about 30% less TV than their unhappy counterparts. At first this statistic can seem expected. Who hasn’t been told that they are spending too much time on the television and need to go outside? Regardless, I find this interesting because of how little it took to make such a significant difference. Imagine being told that you had to brush your teeth for two minutes and thirty seconds to be happy in life, instead of the usual two minutes. Who wouldn’t do that? I sure would.
So what are we to do with this idea? Does this mean the only way to read the news is on paperback? Or does it mean we just need to cut the news out of our lives forever? Personally, I don’t believe that should ever be a legitimate solution.
We need the news, or at least something with the same idea. It has its biases and hardships, but a world without the general public knowing the truth would be a dystopia. Elections would continue to be skewed, people’s stories and voices would not be heard, and our society would be atomized into a force of tradition, instead of a force of change.
I challenge you to not give up on the news. It can be hard sometimes, but it can also be quite easy at other times. Occasionally, it may even be uplifting. What I didn’t mention about the hyperlinks I provided is that with every issue they address, there is also a solution. Each one of those stories and statistics is provided with a way to fix the problem at hand. And I believe the ability to empower oneself is the real reason the news is worth its hardship.
Did you know there is a non-profit search engine, called Ecosia, that plants trees throughout the world with each year’s profits? Or how about Australia on the verge of eliminating a rare form of cancer that exists today? And how about the fact that 1.2 billion people have gained electricity in the last sixteen years? Also, there are plenty of great pages to follow on Facebook for positive news like Hooplaha, Upworthy, and the Good News Network.
News doesn’t always have to be bad and full of despair. Trust me, I know it can seem that way, and that’s only natural. It probably just means that you care. But caring should rarely lead to giving up. Take breaks if you want, but I find the empowerment these stories bring to be something I couldn’t live without. And I hope you feel the same.
I thought working for a reasonably large tech company would be insightful. This would be an opportunity to make leaps and bounds in my knowledge and ability. I expected to learn some “secrets” about how successful companies manage themselves and how employees contribute to their company. I pictured a summer where I got to perform well and feel great while doing so. Unfortunately, I neither felt accomplished, or any more knowledge than before the summer began.
The Experience
I had a lot to do at the beginning of the summer. To become effective on my team I had a lot to learn. Every day consisted of many diagrams, questions, lectures, and a lot of unclear responses that took time to digest. I enjoyed this stage very much. There was always something to do and an obvious path to follow that always led to more work. However, my undying curiosity slowly wore out as I started to see some patterns. Recycling old products results in “fresh” products, revolutionary projects do not meet the “criteria” to be pursued, and priorities do not reflect the mission. The day began to go by a lot faster as less and less got done.
The lack of innovation broke my heart. Recycling ancient product lines takes priority over exploring new technology to develop truly superior products. Instead of discovering future capabilities through research, products created by other corporations are bought for the customer. Better approaches seemed so obvious at first that I began to question the thoughtfulness and standards accepted at the company. Too many deliveries to the customer do not get created internally. Outsourced products cost shocking amounts of money despite the imperfect solutions with unreliable support to fix issues. Management consistently struggles to obtain fixes for systemic problems from outside companies. Implementation of cover ups in internal products takes the place of proper solutions from contracted products.
A handful of projects were exploring the capabilities of the company to advance the industry. However, there were always excuses for why the industry did not accept the new innovations being proposed. Customers can’t move in a more innovative direction without risking safety and reliability. There is no motivation to accelerate the advancement of the industry because every single customer is satisfied with the what exists. The story is that the customer is scared of moving to a radically new product. But I believe no one is willing to go through the hard work of coming up with an improved solution that’s wildly different and provides an amazing experience because it’s so much work. Huge company’s take control of the industry preventing small start-ups to clear a niche.
Almost every day feels like a waste of time despite all of the opportunities I see for my future here. One of the first days a couple of engineers were bullshitting when they got onto the topic of their careers. I started asking some questions when one shared that in hindsight, he would do things a lot differently. This got me thinking a lot about what I really want to do in life and what my future could look like. Weeks into the summer I could not understand his essential role to this company. Seeing someone with no passion perform so well confused me even more. This man developed so much content and supported the company so well it blew my mind. But the company continues to provide just enough to meet the customers expectations.
Reflection
Price’s Law gives insight into large companies: the square root of the employees perform half of the work. For example, a 225 person company likely has 25 people performing half the work. I never fully absorbed this concept until I began to see it in person. Watching smart and talented people slave away for similar compensation as their useless peers destroys my confidence in this system. However, 10-year employees have a significant advantage over new hires. Approaching a problem requires a full understanding of the business dynamics and all the systems at play. Learning the workplace environment takes years longer than it should due to the lack of documentation and tools to properly train employees.
The idea of job security and the promise of a paycheck every two weeks sounds amazing. However, watching smart people with lives dedicated to a company has left me to question this norm. I believe a career all about something other than myself would leave me both painfully unsatisfied and overwhelmingly regretful. Imagining a future in the position of my coworkers terrifies me. Restricted to weekends and a couple hours a day for chasing what I love has led me to search for something better.
In 1619 a Dutch ship arrived on the shores of the British colony known as Jamestown, Virginia. Aboard were nineteen African slaves. Those nineteen individuals, taken against their will, were the first to suffer from a four hundred year long, and counting, human-made catastrophe. It was then that American slavery began, which quickly evolved to the societal racism we see today. Today’s post is written to show that bad luck had nothing to do with that ship arriving on the Virginian shore.
David Olusoga (2015) states, “Ideas of Africans as inferior, backwards, and barbaric can be traced back to those justifying slavery in the 18th century. And the stereotypes still cast a shadow over the continent”. Olusoga continues his point when referring to the 18th-century slave owner, Edward Long. Long is notorious for writing the book History of Jamaica, which was the most damaging published text for racial ideas to ever exist. With his lack of scientific training and extreme eurocentrism, Long wrote a very influential book on why and how Africans are inferior and possibly not even human. Regardless of lacking any scientific evidence to back his claim, his book was widely accepted and published throughout Europe.
To make matters worse, Long was not alone. Books, novels, articles, you name it, were being published all throughout the world with the commonality of spreading this awful opinion as truth. And it wasn’t just the “bad guys”. Thomas Jefferson is a shining example of one of our founding fathers with misguided intentions. In Jefferson’s analysis of people of color, he finds that they are biologically conditioned for manual labor since they lack the intelligence and beauty of white people. He follows by stating how they are also “tolerant of heat” and are simply better designed to work a physically demanding job with little thinking involved (Fields, 1990). His thoughts were then shared with the world to help create a country. A country built to favor white people and provide their “biologically deserved” jobs. When black people were left to work jobs where their “tolerance to heat” came in handy.
As already stated by
Olusoga, these forms of influence were published for one reason and one reason
only, to justify slavery and colonialism. With the turn of the 15th
century, the dominant European powers learned about the millions of people and
acres of land that could be theirs, all they had to do was grab it. Being
technologically superior, there was little to nothing Africans and Native
Americans could do to stop these European invaders. Even countries as small as Belgium were able
to colonize all the Congo and strip it of its land and people. Therefore, the
issue of colonizing land and people was not external, but instead internal.
The European leaders needed to find a way that their citizens would be on board for the slaughter and enslavement of millions of people. They needed a justification for their actions, one that was more than simple greed and the desire for power. They needed to be seen as leaders doing it both for themselves, but also for the people they were colonizing. And that is exactly what they did.
Before long, writers
like Long and Jefferson began to dominate the public consciousness. It
created the idea that non-Europeans were inferior to the human race. And it was their duty, as Europeans, to
conquer these people and teach them their ways.
This technique has
proven to work century after century. King Leopold II ruled Belgium and committed the single largest
genocide known to mankind. His army killed up to ten million Congolese and enslaved the
rest. In justifying his actions, he stated that Belgium was of a superior
race who deserved land and wealth from the inferior Congolese.
Sound familiar? Hitler gave quite a similar speech. In justifying the slaughter of nine million people, Hitler explained that Germany was a superior race, who deserved to rule to world. We can also look at Manifest Destiny. The United States deserved the land it took over and that it was their given right. As a last example, we see this with mass incarceration today, especially in the United States. These prisoners broke the law and therefore deserve to be imprisoned.
In all these examples, nobody thinks to question the people who decide what is or is not deserved. My question is why do 360,000 people right now deserve to give up time in their life for stealing things of financial value, rather than simply paying it back plus some? Another question I have is why did seven million people deserve to be arrested from 2001 to 2010 for marijuana when eleven states currently have the drug legalized? I believe that sometimes we need to question whether people really deserve the things that happen to them.
There is nothing natural about racism. It was socially constructed to justify the barbaric and inhumane actions of the European leaders during the age of colonialism. And unfortunately, the has been working since the moment those nineteen human beings began their lifetime work in Jamestown. We need to look past this thousand-year-old method and try to see the world in a new way. One that is interpreted by how you think, not how society wants you to think. The next post will touch on implicit bias in order to see just how deeply rooted this construct is within us all.
Editors, History.com. “Slavery in America.” History.com,
A&E Television Networks, 12 Nov. 2009,
www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery.
Fields, Barbara. “Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America.” New Left Review (1990): 95-118.
Jefferson, Thomas. “The Difference is Fixed in
Nature.” Notes on Virginia (1785): 95-103.
Sawyer, Wendy, and Peter Wagner. “Mass Incarceration: The
Whole Pie 2019.” Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2019 | Prison Policy
Initiative, 2019, www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2019.html.
Olusoga, David. “The Roots of European Racism
Lie in the Slave Trade, Colonialism – and Edward Long | David Olusoga.” The
Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 8 Sept. 2015,
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/08/european-racism-africa-slavery.
Racism is a system of advantage based on race. This definition of racism was first coined by Daniels Tatum. With this definition, she creates a clear distinction between prejudice and racism. Prejudice, being an individual act, is a preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience. While racism is more of a systemic structure that individuals have little to no dictation over (Tatum, 1997).
What I find interesting about this distinction is the conclusion she is able to draw from it. She states that all white people, living in the United States, are racist, while all people of color can not be racist. She is not saying that all white Americans have a prejudice towards people of color. Instead, she is explaining that all white Americans benefit from this systematic advantage, and therefore must be racist. There is literally nothing a white American can do to not reek the benefits of their skin color.
Before I continue, I would like to encourage you to read one of my posts that explains the benefits that all white Americans have over people of color. I can say from personal experience that growing up in a white space can cloud one’s judgment. Thus creating an illusion of racism as a mere side effect from the years of slavery. Which buys into the narrative that people of color are only economically disadvantaged and unfortunately snowball into creating a number of other societal problems. When instead racism and economic inequality are entirely different issues. If this is your stance on the matter, please feel free to click on the link provided.
Daniels Tatum’s statement is initially very hard to hear. At least for me, it was instantly rejected before any rational thought. I believe this is because being called a “racist” is one of the single worst words to be called in modern society. Due to “new racism”, there exists the illusion that racism is mostly a thing of the past, and anyone called it is a direct attack on being a modern, moral creature.
As a clarification, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva defines “new racism” as the form of racism that has existed since the late 1960s. He explains that this new wave creates the idea that racism is largely a thing of the past, rather than a huge current issue (Bonilla-Silva, 2015). It is the belief that racism has, in large, been defeated and that we now mostly live as an enlightened society. The graph to the right shows an example of such. I was astonished to find that segregation is as much of an issue as it was fifty years ago. Somewhere along the battle over civil rights, society decided the issue was resolved and moved on. Yet it only took a few decades for the issue to resurface once again. It has resurfaced, but this time people believe there is nothing to fight over.
Racism is still a huge problem. It is one that incarcerates hundreds of thousands of Americans, creates a huge inequality in pay, and harms millions of people every year. Racism, new racism, is very real and it is something that we are all bound to. Being a system of advantage or disadvantage, it is not enough to simply be “blind” from skin color. To truly combat racism, and to truly not be racist, we need to step up and take action.
Next week I will go into detail about how race associated with color is nothing more than a construct and how that construct has been used to divide our understanding of who gets and does what. Racism is arguably not what it once was, but I hope by the end of this session of posts you understand the issue is still significant enough to fight for.
Chang, Alvin. “The Data Proves That School Segregation Is Getting
Worse.” Vox.com, Vox Media, 5 Mar. 2018,
www.vox.com/2018/3/5/17080218/school-segregation-getting-worse-data.
Daniel Tatum (1997) Defining Racism:”Can We Talk?” Pages
100-107
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2015) The Structure of Racism in
Color-Blind, “Post Racial” Pages 1-20
Victor M. Rios (2015) Decolonizing the White Space in Urban
Ethnography City and Community Pages (258-261)
I have a confession to make: I could not read or write a full sentence until third grade. In other words, I was illiterate until nine years old… yeah, it was rough. I can still remember sitting in my living room dumbfounded by the complex letter my father was trying to explain. “W, it’s a double U. Two U’s… W”. God, I can’t imagine how torturous that must have been for him.
A personal anecdote, that is simply how my brain works. Nothing makes sense until it does, and only then do I feel that I fully understand it. When the English language clicked for me, I scored a hundred on the English exam. One hundred percent, not a single thing wrong. At the time it seemed like a glitch in the system, but in all honesty, I just figured out English. I just worked at it and eventually, it all came together.
I wouldn’t say it was a miracle, but instead an extreme amount of work that eventually paid off. In those school years, before I understood English, I was working non-stop. If I wasn’t in the classroom, I was with my reading and writing special aid. When I wasn’t in school, I was doing extra practice with my parents. Nobody gave up on me, and therefore I didn’t give up on myself. I did what once felt impossible, and then did it rather well.
Now do not get me wrong, I am not the greatest writer to ever live. I like to refer to myself as “good enough”. And honestly, I will take good enough, but I will not settle for it. I believe there is an important lesson to be taken from my childhood. One that I have had most of my life, and I wasn’t even aware of it. That is to not give up just because something does not come easy to you. Along with the other side of the lesson, which is to not devote all your interests into the things that do come easy to you.
I get it; in all honesty, I catch myself doing it too. Why waste your time doing something hard? Especially when it comes really easy to others and not yourself. In many ways that can feel embarrassing. Not many of us like to admit that we studied for thirty hours on a test, just to receive a B-. Alternatively, most of us would prefer to play football when we are twice the size of our peers, when those half-sized peers would probably prefer to play a board game. We like the things we are good at, arguably, we always have.
The problem with this is how it limits us. It narrows our skills and knowledge drastically. Limiting us from expanding outward with new interests and goals. In a way, I also believe it makes us quite arrogant. If you divot everything you know into the philosophy of hard science, then I feel it can be assumed that you are less likely to have your mind changed when someone comes in with a view outside of the hard sciences. Alternatively, I would assume that someone who takes in the philosophy of both hard and soft sciences (social science) would be more willing to hear differing views since they witness the clash of knowledge among fields on a daily basis. By limiting the things we care about and learn about, our perspective on knowledge and life is narrowed. I believe that it creates a bias that we have trouble escaping.
Another issue I see with this norm is that just because something doesn’t come right away, doesn’t mean it will never come. Lucky for me, I had parents who were not going to let their child be illiterate their whole life. After years of work, we eventually got there and I stayed steady at the English average for most of my life.
Yet that wasn’t enough for me. Eventually, I decided I wanted to be above average because I found an interest. I learned to write outside of the high school layout and began my blog. I was not good at the beginning and I would not say I am much better now, but I am doing it nonetheless. I find interest in it for what I could become if I continually do it, rather than what I am now. I feel this mindset has largely been lost because people assume that if it doesn’t come naturally, it will never come at all. Along with the assumption that if you’re not the best at it, nobody wants you to bother them with it.
Yet, there is a problem I can not ignore with the point I am trying to make. The issue is that people only want to see others do something if they are good at it. I would love to be a singer. I really would. Personally, I can not think of a better profession for myself. Except for the fact that I am tone deaf and everything within a mile radius has to cover its ears when I rock out in the shower. As much as I would love to be a singer, the rest of the world would not.
This is why not everyone can become the next John Lennon. We cannot all become gods at the things we want to be, but we can become good. I have found that the optimal amount of time to work on a skill is 20 hours. Of course the more time the better, but as the link shows, the marginal benefits peak at twenty hours. In other words, working on a skill for twenty hours is the most amount you will improve with the least amount of time.
Therefore, I encourage you to spend twenty hours on a skill or knowledge you never thought you could do. Something you avoided your whole life because you were never quite good enough at it. Personally, I started with the piano. I always wanted to learn but was never musically gifted. Nonetheless, I feel that I owe it to myself to at least learn Mary Had a Little Lamb. I understand it is natural to only do the things you strive in, but as this blog tends to point out, sometimes… it’s good to try the unnatural.
So there I was hanging out with my favorite dining hall worker, killing some time. As a Binghamton University student life can get a bit boring waiting for your food to be ready. Therefore, I typically spend time talking to an assortment of dining hall workers. They never fail to share a fun and slightly illegal story with me.
Catching up on life, my favorite worker explained that she was having continued issues with her daughter. Apparently, this six-year-old squirt already learned the words “fat bitch”. And between punching holes in the walls of the house and stabbing her brother’s eye with a fork, the kid seemed like a true monster. But rather quickly I began to wonder how this monster came to be.
Following up on the shocking story with a few questions, I began to understand the source of all this chaos. As the worker answered my questions, it became clear that the mother was not a ‘mom’ for her daughter until the child’s grandmother passed away. Before the grandmother’s death, the child was essentially raised by her grandmother, not her mother. It was not until the grandmother’s death that the dining hall worker began the full-time career of raising her daughter. This, as you can probably imagine, led to a number of issues. In many respects, the child had lost her “adopted mom” and was replaced by her biological mother.
Once that was established, I assumed the portrait was complete, but I quickly found out there was more to be painted. After asking if the worker ever disciplined her daughter, I was baffled to hear her response. She responded with, “Hell yeah I do! I beat the shit out of her! I hit her with a belt, but the belt may not be hard enough because she still doesn’t listen to me.”
It took me a second to collect my thoughts. I had always admired this dining hall worker. Yeah, she had a short temper, but you could tell she had a big heart. She cares for the students, each and every one of them. Between the special meals she would optionally make to add to our choices, and the happy face that she seemed to always wear, I found her to be a great worker. But on top of that, I found her to be a great person. She just made me happy and I enjoyed talking to her. Anyone who can do that deserves at least a little recognition.
But there I was, stuck between two worlds. Was she the hero worker who always brightened my dinners or the evil beater of her child? I concluded at that moment she was in fact both, and in better words, she was neither. She was no hero and she was no villain. She was just a confused parent. One that wanted the best for her kid, but had no idea what she was doing.
I looked at her for a little bit and offered an alternative. I don’t know if it is the best one, and I didn’t know if it would work. But what I do know is that I had to offer some alternative, some other way for her to raise her child.
I asked if she loved her child, and she looked at me, almost hurt, and said of course. Then I asked if she wanted the best for her daughter, and again, she said of course. Taking a moment before responding, I said, “Then show it, show her”. I told her to hug her daughter when she screamed. I told her to hold her child with care as she attempted to blow another hole in the wall. And most of all, I told her to never hit her child again.
Sometimes all we need to do is show a little love. It was obvious that the worker’s child was hurting inside. And it was even more obvious that the worker had no idea what to do about it. The worker later admitted that she was in fact beaten as a child, and therefore knew nothing else. It worked for her, so it only made sense to her that it would work on her daughter. But in reality, it wasn’t working, it was just hurting.
Ever since our talk, she has stopped beating her six-year-old daughter. She did what I asked, and both she and her husband decided together to try this new idea. They replaced their fists with hugs and held her just tight enough as their daughter misbehaved. They showed her that they loved her in a healthy, kind way. One that they had not experienced from their parents, but a better one nonetheless.
The last time I talked to the worker she explained that her daughter was doing great. She wasn’t lashing out like she used to. She stopped punching and hurting through her pain. The worker explained that she was just overall happier. The worker’s daughter was still hurting, but now, for the first time in her life, she had a healthy outlet. And with that outlet will hopefully come a mostly functional and restored family.
My friend, the dining hall worker, is not a bad person. Beating her child with a belt is a bad thing to do, but sometimes people do bad things with the best intentions. For the most part, there are no bad people, just misinformed people. They are just people who think they know what is best because the worst is all they were taught. Because the worst is what made them themselves, and now they act as they know-how.
There is a way to change this, but judging is not one of them. I could have judged my friend and ended the conversation. I could have walked away, or yelled at her, or maybe even try to get her fired. But I did none of that. I just showed her compassion and care. I don’t think this method works for everyone, which is what makes this a bit tricky, but just because it doesn’t work every time doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be attempted when the time feels right.
Sometimes we just need to show others the way, not in a belittling way, but in a caring way. In a way where their struggle is partially yours as well. Most of the bad people are instead hurt people, and no different than someone with a broken arm, we should help them heal.
However, I think that it is time we challenged our human-centric views on the world and tried to put ourselves in somebody else’s paws.
I think that it’s fair to say that as a people, we have a rather dominating human-centric view of the world. I mean it makes sense to me, primarily thinking about one’s own species is probably a pretty good way to practice self-preservation. However, I think that it is time we challenged our human-centric views on the world and tried to put ourselves in somebody else’s paws.
I believe a good example to talk about is dogs. What I’ve noticed is that people seem to give dogs a lot of human traits that I really don’t believe to be there. Let’s think about poop for a second. Barring any major change in your genetic code, I would venture to guess that you don’t really enjoy the smell of poop. Many people I have noticed, also assume that dogs shouldn’t either. I have seen some people say that a dog sniffs and eats his own poo because he is stupid, this is clearly not the case. To think this, is taking a very human-centric approach to observation. What is instead most likely happening, is that a dog’s powerful genetic predispositions have not gone down a path that says “poop is bad”. Animal behaviorists call this concept Anthropomorphism, or the personification of nonhuman things.
If we look deeper into a dogs experience, we realize how different the world they are seeing really is. Of course people realize some senses are heightened and others are dulled in dogs, but what many fail to remember is that the things we sense may be interpreted entirely differently by dogs. Some sounds we may find soothing causes them panic, some tastes we hate they can love (like poop). Of course this is just dogs, who are mammals. When we look further away genetically the differences become even more extreme.
Some animals don’t rely on vision to navigate at all, but instead on vibrations in the Earth. Take a moment if you will, to imagine what that existence would be like. How about some ants, who operate almost exclusively on the scents of chemicals left behind by their fellow colonists? When we take a moment to try and imagine these things it is clear to see that even when we are factually aware of the differences that we have, it is so hard to place ourselves in that experience. This just goes to show a piece of the endless puzzle that is living existence.
This is usually the part where I talk about this idea’s societal implications and what kind of good it will do. I am not sure if it would do any good, it might just end up being a fun thing to talk about. However, I hope that maybe if more people think this way then they could appreciate the complexity and true scope of life a bit more. So the next time you see your dog dashing around the yard like a maniac, or an ant carrying a crumb across the floor, just think to yourself, “What does life look and feel like to them?”. I think you may be surprised with the results.
Remember that tween phase of your life when smiling for a picture put more strain on your face than any plastic surgeon could? It was exhausting. First, you had to look around to make sure that there was not a soul to judge you. Then you had to force your face to make the most unnatural shape it could as you frantically check if someone will see you with your giggling parents.
Maybe that was just me, but what about that awkward hair phase? I remember getting a haircut and just praying it will stay that way for at least the month. Fearing the day your hair grows out of the haircut you paid for, and slowly, week by week, moves into a different one.
Yeah, I hated that. Normally in those times of desperation I would wear a hat, but looking back, that too was no escape. I spent my teen years wearing an explorer hat. I am not talking about a cowboy hat, but instead a full-blown Indiana Jones hat. To this day I will defend that hat with my life, but I can’t deny it is a bit weird.
Yet who hasn’t bought something out of guilty pleasure? Come on, your telling me you never considered buying a Robo hat or a purple tiara? What about a zippo so that you can be as cool as James Bond or Cowboy Bebop? And there’s no shame in admitting you lowkey have wanted to be the next bachelorette for the last few years.
I should probably get to the point of all this. I have one point, and it’s rather simple: it’s okay. All these things we do, buy, and enjoy are okay. It is okay because we all have that something that we were or are ashamed of. And the only reason we think it is a “bad”thing is because nobody wants to admit they thought about it as well.
Society is made up of a lot of pressures to fit the “norm”. This largely creates the one size fits all mindset, and personally I hate that. I hate how many of us, myself included, sometimes say and do things simply because they fit the norm. I mean how many people do the same dance move every time they get on the dance floor? I’ve noticed through my personal experience that people like to stick to the same four or five “cool” dance moves and then shuffle through those all night.
Being a twenty-year-old college student, I have witnessed three phases at this point. The first is when we are too young to pick up on these social cues and requirements on how to be. This is a time when kids just are kids. It is not until later in their life that they begin to notice when they are playing with the “wrong” or “right” toys. Or when they are wearing the “wrong” or “right” clothes.
The second phase generally happens through middle school. It is the moment we slowly begin to notice these societal expectations and desperately begin to fit them. We rush to find who and what we are supposed to be. How to act, who to like, what to wear and all that good stuff. This is a desperate attempt to be accepted and fit in.
The last phase is maintenance. Having fit in a group by now, many of us try to maintain that level of acceptance by sticking with the times. This process can feel a bit passive, but I would argue it is work nonetheless. Work, just as before, to fit in and maintain acceptance.
Now don’t get me wrong, this is very generalized. I, of course, see plenty of individuals and groups pull from this norm and present themselves how they would like to be. Especially recently it appears more and more people are feeling comfortable being who they want to be rather than who they should be. But nonetheless a standard exists.
A standard to be a certain person and to be a certain way. So as I said at the beginning of this post, it’s okay. There is no right or wrong way to act, there is only common or uncommon. No way is superior to the other and we need to accept that. We need to learn to be okay with others, and most of all, be okay with ourselves.
I encourage any readers out there to consider what actually makes you happy and who you actually want to be. You may already be doing that, and that’s great, but sadly not enough of us are. And the reason I know that is because these norms still exist. The day we all learn to love and accept ourselves is the day these norms are extinguished. It will be the day we try to smile for a picture and laugh at how ridiculous our buck teeth look, rather than shamefully trying again.
Paper, a simple invention. It is the representation of its writer’s power. This power can hold us back, or it can encourage us to take the next step. It can let us see with clear vision, or with no vision at all.
Yet I am not looking to write a post on the abstract power of paper. Instead, I hope to address one paper. A simple paper, single-sided, Times New Roman, double-spaced, and equipped with just the right-sized headers. Every six months I faced this paper. And every six months I faced the same issue. I was “forced,” more forced by myself than anyone else, to lie my way through the semi-annual depression screening.
The questions would always begin harmless. Have you had a poor appetite? Do you feel tired? Simple questions, but the simple answers are not what they are after. As clear as an inverse relation graph can show, with each question growing in significance, my confidence got smaller and smaller. The time between each question extended rapidly. Questions like, Have you been feeling hopeless about the future? and Have you been feeling blue? became trickier to maneuver.
This trend continued until I was stuck. I was stuck debating whether to answer with how I felt or with how I should have felt. What I actually thought or what I was told to think. I usually solved this issue by turning to my mother. She told me what I should think. She was good at that, always has been. She told me the excuses I needed to hear to feel normal. With her help I was able to maneuver and lie through the questions successfully for years.
Years went by and paper after paper I was faced with the same questions over and over again. Each time I read them, they got worse. Severity grew from 4 to 5, which later grew to 6 and then to 7. Questions that I could once confidently check off became questionable. Questions that were questionable now became impossible. Impossible until the normal was gone. Until the moment I accepted that I may just be “abnormal” after all.
On that day, that day when I accepted my “abnormality”, I looked at the paper and I answered the questions. I answered them all. It felt good to tell the truth. I didn’t really know why, but I just felt satisfied. Not an hour after leaving the office, I received a call from the nurse who gave me my semi-annual paper. I heard concern in her voice. Over the phone, she asked if I knew what I had written, how I had answered and what it meant. I said of course I do. She asked if I was getting help. And I said of course I was. She said okay, have a nice day, and hung up.
That was it. Years of fear from telling the truth… for that. For a two-minute phone call. It is amazing how extreme our imagination can inflate these situations. I mean come on, I was expecting something. No screaming or crying on the phone in protest of my answers? Not even a call to my parents informing them of my possible condition? Nothing.
Fear can be such an unnecessary emotion. Fear is the anticipation of pain and danger. Normal is also such a relative and frustrating word. Therefore, it can be concluded that fear from not being normal could quite possibly be the most pointless source of pain for anyone experiencing it.
Many people in this world live their day to day lives in fear of pointless social norms. In fear of standing out, and being vulnerable. These fears are destructive and limiting. I don’t know if they can be erased, but I believe they can be addressed.
I used to think sadness was weakness, so I lied. Now, I see it as neither good or bad, it just is. Instead, the power lies in the truth. The truth was that I was depressed, and the truth was not going to go anywhere until I addressed its power in the first place. Don’t let fear hold you from the truth because without our truths comes merely the power of our representation rather than ourselves.
