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society

default state of hate

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I often don’t sleep well. This morning I woke up at zero dark thirty because nightmares. They vary, and they are unimportant. Often I cannot return to slumber, as was the case this morning. I find myself surfing, or thinking through a plot twist, or trying to write. This morning it was surfing.

The electronic crumbs people leave often take me to places I would rather not go. This morning, I found myself reading a rant that began, “Shut up cuckold” and continued, “We want our country to be white.” Let’s explore that idea, as reprehensible as it is, for a moment.

What would change for this particular person in a country that was racially homogeneous? Would his personal problems go away? Of course not. The psychology of racism is pretty simple: blame all your life’s problems on a group that you aren’t part of. Racism gives small-minded, often perceptually disenfranchised people an excuse for why they aren’t doing anything great with their own existence. Some people inherit racism from their family, but a lot of them pick up the banner later in life.

It fascinates me when people blame the problems in their life on anyone but themself. The kind of weak-minded thinking that believes life would be utopia if only (insert external factors) is the kind of weak-minded thinking that makes a place worse, not better. There is no science to support racial superiority of any kind. Thankfully, we are all individuals. Special snowflakes, if you will.

Scientists tell us that diversity makes us smarter. We become better at problem-solving the more diverse we become. Being exposed to, and being open to considering, people who aren’t like you, offers many opportunities to grow and changes the way you think, often in positive ways. The most successful organizations are also the most diverse, which is why a default state of hate is a stupid way to live. It’s also why racists have increasingly been pushed to the fringes of society (where they belong).

When you encounter someone who thinks that a particular group doesn’t contribute as much as their own, remind them that:

  • All of us originated in the same place, Africa
  • The ancient Egyptians first came up with surgery and concrete, which was then refined by an Englishman and again by a Frenchman
  • The Arabs invented mathematics
  • The wheel comes from Mesopotamia
  • The compass comes from China
  • The Germans came up with the concept of the automobile
  • An Italian invented the telescope
  • Two American brothers came up with the airplane

If you know someone who lives in a default state of hate, remind them of that. Tell them they belong on the fringes unless they are willing to see the world through a wider-angle lens.

All of us are stronger than some of us. Exceptional tribalism is exceptionally stupid.

Photo by marksdk

Moral turpitude

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“Of all tyrannies a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” – Clive Staples Lewis

There are many forces in the world that attempt to regulate and control the activities of the individual human being. Nation-states, religious institutions, legal courts and municipalities are just a few examples of these forces. These various concentrations of power are an attempt to keep us from destroying each other during the course of our daily lives. Sometimes they work in this endeavor. Sometimes they just clean up the mess that’s left behind after we exert our free will. Sometimes these institutions make things worse.[su_pullquote]Moral Turpitude  A phrase used in Criminal Law to describe conduct that is considered contrary to community standards of justice, honesty, or good morals.[/su_pullquote]

Crimes involving moral turpitude have an inherent quality of baseness, vileness, or depravity with respect to a person’s duty to another or to society in general. Examples include rape, forgery, robbery, and solicitation by prostitutes.

Many jurisdictions impose penalties, such as deportation of Aliens and disbarment of attorneys, following convictions of crimes involving moral turpitude. The idea of what constitutes moral turpitude and how an individual should be punished for engaging in such behavior changes drastically depending on time and place. A gay man in Russia in 2014 may be punished with a beating or by having containers of human urine poured over his head. It’s true. I watched a documentary containing video evidence last night. A gay man in Afghanistan is likely to face little to no backlash. They reckon the year differently over there, and that man probably won’t admit he is gay, but in the time and space I’m referring to it is perfectly fine for two men to copulate as long as they don’t talk about it publicly. Today in the United States a gay man can get married to another gay man in some places. Here we are – the human race – spinning through space on a ball of rock. And somewhere in Africa a gay man is being killed for being gay.

You’d find lots of people who, if interviewed, would passionately claim that being gay or engaging in homosexuality is a crime of moral turpitude. You’d find another large swath of humanity that would argue the exact opposite. I fall into that category. I feel no physical or sexual attraction to my own sex. On the other hand I have to ask myself how something consensual can be wrong. Human beings who engage in consensual behavior that doesn’t harm anyone else are not engaging in moral turpitude.

That’s where things tend to get fuzzy. Some people think they are being harmed if you do something they disagree with. If you do something that offends them. If you engage in behavior that they themselves wouldn’t engage in. These people are wrong. Human freedom is more important than your personal moral code. Human freedom is more important than your personal agenda. Human freedom is more important than anything you believe in.

When a human individual engages in behavior that makes you uncomfortable you always have the option to disengage. The only exceptions are when an individual perpetrates force or fraud against others. These are nonconsensual activities. You have every right to defend yourself in such cases. I study the communities and power bases in the world around me on a daily basis. I watch the ways that my fellow humans attempt to exert unnecessary control over one another. I spend a lot of time thinking about moral turpitude and my own moral compass.

I’ve made a million mistakes in my life to date. Engaged in a million choices that could have been improved upon. I’m probably guilty of lots of moral turpitude according to the people who decide that sort of thing. I am fortunate enough to have been born in a society that has mostly supported my ability to learn from each action, decision and mistake I’ve made without locking me in a cage, torturing me or stoning me to death.

I’m still allowed to exercise my free will and to publish my thoughts. These freedoms are gifts I don’t want to squander. They lead me to a mental plane where I spend a lot of time reflecting on the idea that I should be contributing to the evolution of personal freedoms in every human society I am able to engage with.

Moral turpitude. It’s not worth much if you use it to censor or censure people who aren’t harming others. Which leads me back to the quote at the top of this piece of writing. I won’t force my conscience on you unless you are directly harming others. Can you say the same?

Training wheels

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I remember learning to ride a bicycle. Not the color of the thing. Not the size of the seat. Whether that first bicycle had a bell, or cards in the spokes of the wheels escapes me. What I remember most about my first weeks with a bicycle is the feeling I got when the training wheels came off.

I took my first hill in a terrifying, wobbly series of leg motions and then I was in the gravity well of that downwards curve going at breakneck speed. Back then I didn’t have the automatic routines that kept my speed carefully controlled. No brakes. The subroutines I have now that would auto position me in the softest landing spot possible should disaster have struck in the form of a blown tire or other mishap just weren’t there. I wasn’t wearing a helmet. For the first time ever, I was on my own.

I was heading out into the world without a safety net of any kind. And it was glorious.

There is a lot to be said for an experience like the one I had on that hill on that day. Without my training wheels for the first time. I felt exhilarated. Free. Out of control. More alive than ever before.

I could have fallen. I could have broken my head in half. I didn’t. I might have, and then it is possible you wouldn’t be reading this story.

The training wheels stay on too long nowadays. I don’t like all the things we’ve added to the mix. Orange safety vests. Helmets. Kneepads. Elbow protectors. I don’t need a spacesuit when I go fast. I want to feel my mortality without being terrified I’ll fall down and die. With the understanding of what it all means. I want the risk. I embrace it and own it.

The toughness and resilience I have now are byproducts of prevalent social mores in my youth. The balance between risk and safety during those years makes more sense to me than what I see happening now. Before I was a legal adult I’d seen many of the faces of mortality. Not the way kids see them on television now. As dramatic falsehoods.

We protect young minds from death and mortality. Try to insulate ourselves from real risk. Some of the mechanisms we put in place are good but others poison us. We desensitize ourselves and our children to the truth of being human. Overstimulate the parts of the brain that process loss, fear, risk. Then we medicate the ones who can’t cope with that overload. It turns into a downward spiral of self-doubt and weakness for some of us.

I can’t tell you when you should take off the training wheels and let the people you love most go down their first hill without any safety net. I can tell you that if you do, they’ll be stronger and wiser for it. If you overprotect the people you care about you are actually doing them a disservice.

You won’t always be there when they need you. That’s impossible. It’s dysfunctional to even try. Let them go fast on their own. Don’t always make them wear a helmet. They need to know what falling down feels like. One of the most important lessons I ever learned came from falling down as a teenager.

I had been successfully copying someone I saw in a movie. Cars would be going by slowly making a turn and I’d sneak up behind them on my skateboard and grab hold of the back bumper. I’d let them pull me along until they were going about 25 miles per hour and then let go. I thought I was pretty slick.

Until one day when I hitched a ride and waited too long. The car pulling me was going down a hill. I didn’t let go when I should have. By the time I did, the inevitable life lesson was unstoppable. I lost control of my skateboard and learned what eating asphalt feels like. Everyone needs a moment like that. Some of us need a few. Not all of us will survive them. That’s part of life.

The gravel that got embedded in my skin that day taught me a lesson as it worked it’s way out of my body over the next 20 years or so. Reminded me of limits every time I felt it. If I had been wearing a helmet and protective gear the experience would have been completely different. I wouldn’t have learned the same lesson.

The point is this: take off the training wheels and let go. You will fall down sooner or later. Going fast and falling down aren’t something we should be terrified to experience a few times. All of us need that context to be well rounded, thoughtful, considerate human beings. You only have so much time to live. Be brave and let your people and yourself learn that our world can hurt us sometimes.

Don’t set the limits so cautiously that the you or the people you love end up unable to cope with falling down. Because it will happen no matter how hard you try to avoid it. You might as well have some experience under your belt by the time you start pretending you’re an adult. Take off the training wheels when it’s time. Zoom down the hill. Gravity will slow you down on the upslope.