Ruminations

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Ishmael, Part II

I appreciate the comments on the first installment of my blog on Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. The second installment on this book is the more interesting, in my opinion. Why? Because it explains part of the mythology of our culture by retelling two important stories we all know. Both are stories from the Book of Genesis.

Although I may draw the ire of Bible literalists when I say this, I think the explanations Quinn gives of the Fall of Man (Adam’s banishment from Eden) and of the story of Cain and Abel make supreme allegorical sense. The explanations opened doors in my mind.

All of us are familiar with the story of the Fall. God tells Adam that he can eat from any tree in Eden except the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam eats from it so God banishes him from the Garden. (I am deliberately leaving out Eve and her role because the word “Adam” means “mankind, ” and mankind is what Ishmael is concerned with.) Most of us are taught that this act of disobedience was something God could not tolerate. When Adam ate the fruit of the tree he realized he was naked and was ashamed. Hello, instantaneous cultural mores!

Ishmael explains the story from a slightly different perspective: that of the gods. The fruit of the tree gave knowledge of good and evil, but it did not impart the wisdom of how to use that knowledge in the long term. Knowing that something is good in the moment does not mean that that same thing will be good in the future. Also, what is good for one may be evil for another. Mankind is too selfish to make that distinction: if something is good for Man now, then that is Man’s choice. If it results in later harm, well, Man will choose to deal with the consequences later. Just like someone commented on yesterday’s blog, humans want instant gratification.

The example Ishmael gives is of predator and prey. If the lion kills the gazelle, it is good for the lion and the lion lives to hunt another day but it is bad for the gazelle, which dies. If the lion misses the kill, it is bad for the lion because the lion starves to death, but it is good for the gazelle which lives for another day. By controlling his ecology and his world, Man has assumed the mantle of choosing which lives and which dies in this scenario. Although man has the gods’ knowledge of good and evil, Man does not have the gods’ wisdom to choose correctly every time. Man’s poor choices result in an ecological imbalance.

The knowledge of good and evil is therefore something entirely situational for Man. Man only chooses what is good for him at the time. Man does not choose what is good for the world at all times. He cannot. Man’s arrogance and his mistaken belief that he has both the power and the wisdom of the gods is his own undoing. It will cause his own destruction.

The second Genesis tale Ishmael relates is what we know as the First Murder. The sons of Adam, Cain, a farmer, and Abel, a herder, both make sacrifices to their god. Cain is jealous because the god prefers Abel’s sacrifice, and kills him. Cain is banished from society as a result and carries a mark that identifies him as evil.

Ishmael tells the man that although the Hebrews preserved the story of the brothers, it was a Semite story to begin with. The Semites were a culture that predated the Hebrews and the Arabs. The Semites lived on the Arabian peninsula and in the fertile crescent of the Tigris-Euphrates valley. As Leavers, they took only what they needed and left the rest alone. The were hunter-gatherers and later nomadic herders. In years of plenty, humans and other animal and plant species flourished. In years of famine, the numbers of all species diminished. They would flourish again when food became plentiful.

Agriculture is believed to have begun in the Fertile Crescent. When Man began farming, animals were no longer allowed to graze on farmland. The farmers produced much more food than they needed, and times of famine became less frequent. The species that had lived where the farmers were cultivating land moved elsewhere. As more land was put under cultivation, the farmers, now a Taker society reshaping the world to suit themselves, pushed the nomadic Leavers from their lands. The story of Cain murdering Abel is the story of the northern Taker Semitic tribes murdering the southern nomadic Semitic Leaver tribes to make room for more agriculture. It is a story of war.

The gods prefer Abel’s way of life, which allows all living things to flourish in good times and which means all living things suffer equally during lean times. Cain is banished from living in the hands of the gods because he has assumed the mantle of the gods by reforming the world to his own purposes. The mark that identifies him as evil is his arrogance and continuing destruction of the very planet he needs to maintain in order to survive.

Basically, Ishmael explains, Takers believe that the world belongs to Man, whereas Leavers believe that Man belongs to the world. Takers see themselves as running the world. Leavers allow the gods to run the world. The gods, of course, prefer Leavers, and Leavers are sustainable. Takers are not, and will eventually destroy themselves along with their world in contradiction to the gods’ intentions.

In his final lesson with Ishmael, the man asks for a program to save the world. Ishmael tells him,

“The story of Genesis must be undone. First, Cain must stop murdering Abel. This is essential if you’re to survive. The Leavers are the endangered species most critical to the world- not because they’re humans but because they alone can show the destroyers of the world that there is no one right way to live. And then, of course, you must spit out the fruit of the forbidden tree. You must absolutely and forever relinquish the idea that you know who should live and who should die on this planet.”

“Yes, I see all that, but that’s a program for mankind to follow, that’s not a program for me. What do I do?”

“What you do is to teach a hundred what I’ve taught you, and inspire each of them to teach a hundred. That’s how it’s always done.”

“Yes, but . . . is it enough?”

Ishmael frowned. “Of course it’s not enough. But if you begin anywhere else, there’s no hope at all. You can’t say, ‘We’re going to change the way people behave toward the world, but we’re not going to change the way they think about the world or the way they think about divine intentions in the world or the was they think about the destiny of man.’ As long as the people of your culture are convinced that the world belongs to them and that their divinely-appointed destiny is to conquer and rule it, then they are of course going to go on acting the way they’ve been acting for the past ten thousand years. They’re going to go on treating the world as if it were a piece of human property and they’re going to go on conquering it as if it were an adversary. You can’t change these things with laws. You must change people’s minds. And you can’t just root out a harmful complex of ideas and leave a void behind; you have to give people something that is as meaningful as what they’ve lost – something that makes better sense than the old horror of Man Supreme, wiping out everything on this planet that doesn’t serve his needs directly or indirectly.”

I shook my head. “What you’re saying is that someone has to stand up and become to the world today what Saint Paul was to the Roman Empire.”

“Yes, basically. Is that so daunting?”

I laughed. “Daunting isn’t nearly strong enough. To call it daunting is like calling the Atlantic damp.”

“Is it really so impossible in an age when a stand-up comic on television reaches more people than Paul did in his entire lifetime?”
The above quotation is taken from Daniel Quinn: Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit (Bantam, NY (1992)), pp 248-249.

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Ishmael – Part I

Yesterday’s Earth Day post drew some interesting comments and left a burning question in my mind. If “going green” isn’t enough to slow the global climate change and stave off the apocalypse, what can we do?

I want to tell you about a novel I read recently. Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, explains why human beings are such poor stewards of our planet. We have destroyed our world because we believe ourselves to be gods. We change our surroundings to suit us and we kill anything that gets in our way.

Quinn is a radical Neo-Tribalist, and he lays out the philosophy and the reasons for Neo-Tribalism in a Socratic dialogue between a telepathic gorilla and a man. Neo-Tribalism is a theory based on the writings of philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (the “Noble Savage” guy) and anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (the god of structural anthropology), among others. The idea is that modern culture will result in the annihilation of the human race. Overpopulation and abuse of resources, coupled with the idea that mankind has a right to use up the planet as it sees fit is what modern man does, and is it not sustainable. We will survive only if as a species we return to a hunter-gatherer existence, living in harmony with the planet and the other species on it.

Quinn’s novel Ishmael contains more than ecological philosophy, though. It is a dialogue between man and ape. It is social philosophy. It is religion. It is profound. It shifts paradigms. It moves the cheese. This book has changed lives.

The human protagonist in Ishmael responds to a newspaper ad: “Teacher Seeks Pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in Person.” When he applies for the pupil position, the man must grapple with the surreal discovery that the teacher is a telepathic silver-back gorilla who calls himself Ishmael.

Finally, in answer to Ishmael’s question of why he seeks a teacher, the man admits that he wants to understand “how things came to be this way.” The man feels that something is wrong with the world, that there is a Great Lie being told, but he can neither identify what is wrong nor identify the lie.

Ishmael begins teaching the man about his own species and his own cultural biases. First, the man must understand that many of the things he believes to be true are part of a mythology. The most important myth to recognize is the myth that the world was made for Man to do with as he pleases.

Ishmael divides mankind generally into two groups: Takers and Leavers. Takers are those who take from the world and from the other creatures around them. Takers take all they want, which is more than what they need. They believe the myth that the world exists for their kind, and they brook no argument otherwise. We are Takers.

Leavers are the people we call primitive. They do not farm, they do not take more from the world than they need to survive. They are hunters and gatherers. Very few Leavers continue to exist, because the Takers plant the Myth wherever they go and convert the Leavers to Takers.

Once the man understands that the notion that humans are the pinnacle of creation is a myth, he is better equipped to understand “how things came to be this way.”The great lie is that man can do as he pleases to change the earth. The lie is based on the myth.

Ishmael’s student comes to understand that Man, in his guise of Taker, is the only creature on the planet to believe the myth and the lie. Other species compete within the ecosystem; man changes the ecosystem to suit himself without regard to the consequences for other creatures or even, ultimately, for himself. Leavers and the rest of the species on the planet compete for survival, but they do not “wage war” against the planet or other species to do so. Takers wage constant war against the earth and against the species Takers perceive to be competition. The competition may be the way a river flows, the existence of an insect, or plants Takers consider to be weeds in their gardens.

To live sustainably, Quinn argues, “you may not hunt down competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food.” By killing our competition (the pests that invade our crops, the wolves that hunt our sheep, the swamps where we want to build our cities, the Leavers whose way of life is alien to ours) we Takers wage war against the world.

Think about this. Tomorrow I’ll tell you more about this amazing book and its philosophy.

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Earth Day 2007

Since April 22 falls on Sunday this year, and all good Bible Belters are in church even if they subsist on wheat germ and granola, they had the big First Annual Earth Day Extravaganza down at the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library a day early this year.

Bill wasn’t going to be there so I saw no need to attend. It wasn’t a command performance for us former interns. Anyway, Hillary seems to be wearing the pants in the family these days. Oh, who am I kidding? She always did. Bill couldn’t keep his up.

There. The requisite Bill-and-Hill-bashing is done and out of the way. Whose thunder did I steal?

Let me just say that the festivities at the Inconvenient-Truth-Al-Gore-Was-My-Veep Presidential Library were remarkable. In fact, they were so remarkable I’m about to embark upon remarking on them right here in my very own blog, for all the world to behold. According to the Clinton Foundation, it was a “carbon-neutral event,” whatever that means. I guess they ate their hot dogs raw, since cooking them over an open flame meant releasing CO2 into the air, and even microwaving them would use energy derived from some polluting source.

About noon yesterday I was getting my pearl necklace (from the jewelry store – get your sick minds out of the gutter – I’m a Virgin, dammit) when another customer mentioned that she was heading downtown for the event. Not because she believed in global warming or anything, she assured us. “I just like to watch those hippies dance around. They just look so funny.” She giggled in that cute, helium-brained way certain women of melanin-challenged hair have.

I stood there in my socially conscious and politically correct hand-batiked cotton sun dress made by some woman in an unpronounceable third world village and sold to the rich (all things are relative) American for about ten times her annual income. Wait a minute, I thought. I used to be one of those hippies!

After my freshman year in college I lived in a co-op called Peace House. We operated a soup kitchen once a week for all two of the homeless people in Hamilton, New York. (They were students who were crashing in someone else’s dorm room for the semester.) We knew people in the Peace Corps and people who played sitars; we wore organic skirts and were interested in other organic things that I won’t discuss in detail in a public forum, even if the statute of limitations has run.

We had no knowledge of AIDS or global warming back then, but we wanted the CIA out of Nicaragua and we were utterly appalled that an actor was in the White House. I finally managed to get a bit jaded on the whole shtick when the student who led the soup kitchen’s weekly bread-baking marathon said, in my hearing, “I love minorities. They’re such colorful people.” She was dead serious. And she was a brunette. GAH!

Social and political issues were important to me when I was 19. They still are. And there few things more important, socially or politically, than our continued social and political existence.

Yes, that statement has to do with Earth Day.

Before anyone reminds me that earth’s climate has changed in the past and will change in the future, let me go ahead and say it myself: the average temperature on our planet has been both much colder and much warmer than it is now.

But something different is happening. Something the scientific community is screaming about. While there are those in the scientific community who disagree, the overwhelming majority are in accord: Global warming is real, and it is caused in considerable part by us, and it is happening at a rate faster than climate change has ever occurred in the history of our planet.

The cataclysms thought to have caused the mass extinctions in the past – at the end of the Devonian Period, when most species on the planet disappeared, and the end of the Cretaceous (the K-T extinction), when the non-avian dinosaurs died – caused massive climate change. Yes, climate change caused by an event of apocalyptic proportions is believed to have been instrumental in those mass extinctions.

In 1998 the American Museum of Natural History issued a press release regarding the results of a survey of biologists pertaining to global climate change and the continuation of life as we know it. It stated in part:

The survey reveals that seven out of ten biologists believe that we are in the midst of a mass extinction of living things, and that this loss of species will pose a major threat to human existence in the next century.

According to these scientists’ estimates, this mass extinction is the fastest in Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history. Unlike prior extinctions, this so-called ‘sixth extinction’ is mainly the result of human activity and not natural phenomena.

The American Museum of Natural History is not prone to histrionics. When 70% of the people who study life say that it is disappearing at such a phenomenally rapid rate, and that human abuse of the planet is the main reason, it seems to me to be a wake-up call.

Climate change and extinctions go hand in hand.

What is causing the climate change? It’s not just fossil fuels. It’s deforestation, both of temperate and of rain forest. It’s water pollution. It’s surface mining. It’s planting crops and digging them up and wiping the dirt clear of brush and planting a crop again. It’s the way we abuse our planet.

Two weeks ago the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report that was unequivocal: human activity is a significant contributor to global climate change, and it may well kill us all. Hundreds of scientists from all over the world participated in the studies on which the IPCC report was based. I strongly encourage anyone who cares about this issue one way or another to read the report.

The IPCC report wasn’t released when it was supposed to be. There was political maneuvering as to how to word the report. Who was doing this political games playing? Not the scientists who composed the report. The scientists were outraged that some of the the governments involved were “watering down their warnings.” Specifically, diplomats from China and Saudi Arabia demanded that the authors reduce the confidence level they said they had in the report’s conclusions. In other words, these two countries did not want the warnings to be as dire as the scientists believed they should be.

What a travesty for politicians to dictate scientific conclusions.

The report says that if things continue at their current levels, by 2020 global temperatures will rise one degree Celsius or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit. That doesn’t seem like much until we understand that one-sixth of the world’s population will be affected by widespread famine and lack of water.That’s a billion or more people. By 2050, fully a third of the population of the planet will be in these famine conditions, and fresh water will be even scarcer. Twenty to thirty percent of the species on the planet will become extinct. According to the report, the estimates of one degree Celsius over the incremental periods of time are conservative estimates. The third world human populations will be hit hardest by the temperature increase. Equatorial countries will see their fresh water supplies dry up even as more temperate countries reap the benefits of longer growing seasons.

We can’t stop global warming. It is a crisis, and we as a species will have to adapt. It won’t be pretty.

The Bush administration has steadfastly maintained its ostrich-like response to this crisis, as it has to other scientific matters. Perhaps when ostriches and bushes of all varieties become extinct, whomever among us is left will pull our heads from the sand to see a vast desert not unlike Mars. At least at the equator. The populations of coastal cities in temperate zones, which will be flooded much like New Orleans was after Katrina, will have to cope, too.

I just hope when that coastal flooding happens, FEMA doesn’t commandeer back the trailers we’re using for dorm rooms at the Virgin Training School. Now that would be a catastrophe.

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One of My Old Cases

 

A few people have asked me to tell “war stories” from my law practice. Obviously I can’t violate any client confidentialities, but I can talk about my cases.

I have worked in the juvenile justice system for over 18 years now. I’ve worked as a lawyer for abused and neglected children, I’ve represented the parents who wanted to get custody of those children back from the state’s foster care system, I’ve represented the young juvenile delinquents who have charges ranging from rape to truancy, I’ve represented parents who were at their wit’s end and needed to institutionalize their children so that the children’s behavior could be addressed in a therapeutic setting. I’ve worked with the worst of the worst when it comes to child rearing.

I’ll tell you about the one that was the beginning of the end for me. I was already pretty burned out on child abuse cases by the time this client came along, but this case was the tipping point for me not wanting to take any other clients like this one on. It’s not a current case. It’s one I had several years ago. It is over, at least as far as I’m concerned. I got disgusted with my client and I asked the judge to let me out of the case. Fortunately, the judge saw things my way.

My client’s name was Diane. She was a single mother of three. Her son Joey was 13 when he raped his 9 year old sister, Karen. It was believed that he molested his 4 year old sister, Jenna, but Jenna couldn’t describe what had happened well enough for authorities to determine what if anything had actually happened to her. The medical evidence was inconclusive.

No criminal charges were filed for several reasons. First was Joey’s age. At 13 he was on the young side of even juvenile culpability for criminal conduct. His emotional and mental immaturity made him even younger. When the facts surrounding his own sexual abuse came to light, the decision not to charge him was easy. Joey needed treatment for his own victimization as much as he needed treatment for perpetrating against his sisters.

Joey was taken out of the home and put in a special psychiatric facility for boys who are sexual offenders. Joey completed the program. He worked through his own issues of abuse and became able to articulate the situation which led him to act out with Karen and Jenna. All that remained was for him to have series of reconciliation sessions with his sisters, and start home visits to prepare the family for his transition back into the home. It was at this point, fourteen months after Joey went into residential treatment, that things fell apart.

Joey’s therapist asked for contact information for the girls’ therapist so that joint sessions could be held. Diane had no name to give him. More than a year had passed since the abuse, but Diane had never put her sexually abused daughters in counseling. In the interest of trying to help Joey go home, the residential treatment facility offered to work with the girls in a limited number of sessions.

At the first session, Karen refused to enter the room if Joey was there. When Joey was brought into the room where Karen was, she became hysterical. The therapist separated the children and interviewed Karen separately. The therapist learned from Karen that neither of the girls was going to school. Karen, who was now 11, was skipping classes to have sex with boys for money. Jenna, who was now 6, refused to go to school at all and had to be physically carried into the building kicking and screaming. When she would be put down she would run from the building, still screaming. Diane was exhausted from dealing with her daughters’ behaviors. She had given up requiring them to go to school. Some days the girls stayed home alone. Other days they would go to work with their mother at the fried chicken place in the mall. There was no place for the children to sit while their mother worked. Karen might read a book or draw, but 6-year-old Jenna was more outgoing. She would skip off “to look around” and on more than one occasion was returned to her mother by mall security because she was begging money from shoppers.

Before the second session, Joey’s treatment team concluded that there was no way he could go back home. There were just too many unresolved issues relating to the sexual misconduct and Diane seemed unable to handle basic parenting and discipline. No friends were willing to take Joey into their home, and there were no relatives. The only option was for Joey to go into foster care.

The facility reported the situation to the state child protective services agency. A case was opened in juvenile court. Because Diane faced losing custody of one of her children to the state, Arkansas law said she was entitled to the services of a lawyer. Just like in criminal cases, if she couldn’t afford a lawyer one would be appointed for her. The judge called and asked me to take the case.

I’m used to tough child sexual abuse cases. I can’t count the number of them I’ve had. Every single one was heartbreaking. In every single one there are children whose lives have become hell. In most of them at least one parent has to make a choice between victim and perpetrator. Often the mother is abused even more than the children are. But as similar as this case was to all the others, it was also radically different.

The socioeconomic status of the typical family I’m appointed to represent usually means that the mother had her first child before reaching the age of 18, was raised in poverty by a single parent, has no friends or family in a supportive network to help her, is chronically unemployed and may be surviving on social security or welfare payments, knows very little about basic personal hygiene or housecleaning, and probably drifts from man to abusive man to make ends meet, having a child or two with each.

Diane had a college degree. Her first child was born when she was in her mid-20’s. Her parents, who were deceased, had been comfortably middle class. Her father had been a Methodist minister. She had one brother who was much older and from whom she was estranged. He was an accountant in another state. Diane was a manager at a fast food restaurant. She and the children were always clean and neat. She did not have a boyfriend. She had been divorced for about three years. Her ex-husband was the father of all three children. The social services workers had no complaints about the condition of her home.

How had such a woman come to this? Abuse knows no social or economic constraints, but people with Diane’s socioeconomic history generally take advantage of resources and social networks. Diane had not.

More of the story was revealed in Joey and Karen’s testimony and in the therapy sessions that followed. The children’s father had been arrested for molesting a niece and nephew about the time Diane had became pregnant with Jenna. She had never worked, so Diane had no idea how to support herself and two children, especially with a third on the way. When her husband pled guilty and went to jail, another man came to her rescue. He moved into her home. Diane had apparently installed him as a substitute for her absent husband. Diane was bedridden in the final stage of her pregnancy with Jenna. Her boyfriend found sexual gratification with her children, occasionally in the same bed where Diane was. Diane said she didn’t remember that actually happening, but if the children said it happened then it was probably true. I was astounded. If someone had molested my kid in the same bed I was in, I think I’d damn sure remember it. Coincidentally, the boyfriend vaporized when Joey’s sexual misconduct came to the attention of the authorities.

After I came on board, the case went from bad to worse.

Both girls were admitted into acute care residential treatment facilities – read: psychiatric hospitals – and both were eventually returned there for long term care lasting several months. Diane never understood that the children needed to be told no. If one of her children wanted to do something, the answer was always yes. She had no respect from them and no control over them. She also had no empathy with them or even a basic understanding of why they behaved the way they did.

The kicker came when Diane found herself another man. A man from Mexico was hired at the fast food restaurant. Although he did not speak English and Diane did not speak Spanish, they evidently found a way to communicate in the international language of love. Once again, Diane allowed a man to move into her home.

The judge ordered Diane to move the man out. No men were to be around the girls at all when they were home, and this included Diane’s boyfriend. Diane protested with the same outraged mantra all women use in such situations: “You’re telling me I can’t have a life of my own?” Certainly she could. But not if she wanted her children to be at home with her.

Diane complained bitterly about the fact that her boyfriend couldn’t be around her daughters. At this point the girls were coming home only for weekend passes from their residential treatment, but the hospital believed the girls had reached maximum therapeutic benefit (in other words, Medicaid was refusing to pay for a longer stay) and they needed to be released.

“You have to choose,” I told her. “Which is more important, your children or some man whom you can’t even talk with?” While she struggled with that decision, she told me that the weekend before Jenna had thrown a fit because she wanted to keep riding her bicycle after dark one night. She said she just couldn’t do anything about that sort of misbehavior, and she expected Jenna would do the same thing the next time.

I was incredulous. “Who’s the adult?” I asked. The words were out of my mouth before I even thought about them.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, take the bike away from her. Ground her from it if she doesn’t mind when you tell her to come inside.”

“But she’ll get mad at me!”

“So? You’ll be setting a limit on her behavior. You’ll be giving her consequences. Diane, this is elementary parenting. Surely you can do this.”

“But when she gets upset she gets so angry.”

“Send her to her room and make her stay there until she calms down, then.”

“What if she won’t stay there?”

“Turn her around and walk her back, sit her on the bed, walk out, and close the door. Take control. This is what the therapists and the judge have been telling you to do. It’s what parents have to do.”

“Maybe I can get Pedro to do that.”

“No, Diane, not only is he unable to communicate with the children effectively, you can’t have him there. And even once he is allowed there you have to do the parenting, not him. You have to start parenting your kids yourself.”

“Are saying I’m not a good parent?” She was seriously shocked. I heard it in her voice.

“Yes,” I answered. That’s exactly what I’m saying. It’s also what child protective services, the court, and the therapists have been telling you.”

“I don’t believe you just said that to me,” she said, stunned. Sadly, she wasn’t kidding.

The next day she called to let me know that Pedro was staying so the girls would need to go live in a foster home. She had made her choice.

I was burned out on clients like Diane. I’d had all I could take. I just didn’t care anymore about trying to put their families back together. I had other parents who cared just as little for their children’s welfare, but rarely had one displayed that indifference more bluntly. I stopped taking abuse cases.

I wound up my last child abuse case about the time I started blogging here on Yahoo 360. I don’t want to take any more. I’ve turned down judges who have called asking me to take cases. I have no heart for it any more.

I don’t know why Diane and her kids were on my mind today. Sometimes, though, I think of some of the things that happened in those child abuse cases and I am still amazed that such things actually happened. It amazes me how a parent can bring a life into the world and then be so completely uninterested in its development.

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Human Subspecies Identified: The Drive-By Critic

What prompts people to be ruder to one another online than they would ever be in person?

I pondered this question this week when, having suffered without a computer for most of the week, I noticed a bizarre pair of quick comments buried on my page. The first comment branded someone a “liar.” Since I haven’t had that particular experience with the person in question, that comment was easy enough to ignore, especially since it was left by someone I had never before encountered whose profile has now been deleted.

The second comment by that same person was a bit odd, even as far as odd comments go. It said: “Why dont you tell everyone how you said everyone on your list are loosers, unemployed bums and you are just having fun with them to see that they have no life and believe your bullshit stories, lies and how they are just a number. (Dont whisper ever a word to anyone Tom please I am just having fun with them but I dont care if they live or die as long as they keep me entertained).” Sic, sic, sic, all the sics.

Since most of what I write isn’t personal and has nothing to do with real people, this was a strange statement to be directed at me. The person has no idea who I am or what my blog is all about. Even more obviously, it has never read my page. (I’ll settle on the pronoun “it” for this commenter, since assigning a “he” or “she” would humanize it beyond what it deserves.) I doubt that if it bothered to read my blog it would even understand it. (Do I dehumanize them by doing this?)

First of all, if there is drama on my page, it will be an outrageous fictional drama of my own making. Witness the recent Giant Cock/Baby Chick Paternity Scandal. Secondly, anyone suffering through a personal crisis will have my sympathy and support, never, ever my derision or insults.

Obviously, the commenter was lost and thought they had found the page of someone who would get stirred up by these weird allegations. What’s so strange is that I cannot imagine anyone I don’t know coming up to me out of the blue and calling someone a liar. Nor can I imagine anyone spreading gratuitous untruths just for kicks in real life.  Why does this happen here? [Edit: 5 years after this post, I finally know someone in real life who does this. They are a twisted, narcissistic, malicious person who thrives on upsetting others, perhaps for the attention.]

So I am led back to my original question, prompted by this commenter’s bizarre antisocial behavior: What prompts people to be ruder to one another online than they would ever be in person?

I read a column in the April issue of Discover, one of the very few publications I’ll actually pay money for. The columnist, Jaron Lanier, suggested that online nastiness is the product of easy, “drive-by” anonymity. When the commenter can create a quick and disposable ID, more hostile comments are left. Where more information must be given, and the ID creation process is a little more cumbersome, fewer hostile comments seem to be the rule.

For instance, on sites like Slashdot, where a new ID can be created for each comment without providing much information to the host site, people get indescribably nasty with one another. The same holds true for some of the edit wars hosted by Wikipedia. On the other hand, I’m told that players on World of Warcraft rarely encounter such boorish behavior. One reason for the politeness of the WOW site might be that the penalties for such conduct result in the person being banned from the game.

Lanier proposed several different considerations as to why online behavior can be either good or bad. Demographics of the users and the times of day that the users in question tend to visit the site to leave their comments were two considerations he named. I would add something else to his list: topic. If the blog or article contains a personal topic, then personal comments are made and sometimes those comments are personally insulting.

You can see it everywhere on social media, probably among your own contacts. People who have the “diary” blogs and overshare on Facebook, the ones who talk about their personal lives and their trials and tribulations, often seem to be the ones whose blogs attract insults and “drama” from perfect strangers. There are people who allow people they don’t know to view their posts even when highly personal matters are addressed. Mental illness, chronic physical illness, substance abuse, and the crises that necessarily go along with such things are fodder for judgmental people. And so many judgmental people love to cast those stones at the ones they see making decisions they wouldn’t make given their arm-chair quarterbacking of someone else’s life.

How can we truly claim that someone who has a mentally ill family member, and coping the best they can, is making bad decisions? Even if we read their posts every day we don’t have the whole story. We don’t have the nuances of interpersonal interactions, or even a vivid description of what the caretaker is dealing with on a day-to-day basis. What about the person who is writing about her fibromyalgia? Who among us can really say to her, “Quit complaining. It can’t be that bad,” when we really don’t know what it feels like to be her? And what about the mother who is dealing with the drug-addicted son who is stealing from her, beating her, and otherwise abusing her? Can we really tell her she is stupid not to call the police when we don’t know all the dynamics of the situation?

I am aware of people who write about extramarital affairs they have, or who write about overtly sexual matters. They provide gossip to others about themselves and even about other people. Their soap opera of life is right here for anyone to read and comment upon. Some of them claim to eschew “drama,” but they invite that drama in the same breath. Do we blame anyone for jumping into the fray? I don’t think too much of the people who lay overly personal things on the table for the world to see, but those who attack them are just as bad.

Then there are the social media accounts that are not who they seem to be. For instance, one person might have multiple IDs and different pages where they post different things to each, even to the point of having the accounts interact with one another. Others pretend to be someone they aren’t. Both of these types of people are masquerading. When they are unmasked, some among us feel righteous and triumphant. Others feel betrayed. Occasionally the “victims” of this duplicity feel a need to strike back. I have seen multiple accounts suddenly disappear because their owners felt persecuted.

The bottom line is that no one deserves rudeness. No one, even if they seem to invite criticism, should be judged by anyone else. The evil pettiness in our human natures that tempts us to throw stones at someone else’s glass tower is our undoing. No one, ever, deserves our enmity. If we don’t like what someone says in his or her blog, the best way to handle it is not to clash with it head-on, but to pointedly ignore it. It’s none of our business, anyway.

There are exceptions to the “ignore it if you disagree” rule. Debating issues is one of them. I like it when people disagree with me and explain why. The keyword here is “debate” – labeling someone as “stupid” or lumping in them with an ill-defined “you all” isn’t debate. It’s an insult. There should be no place for it here. Articulating an opposing point of view is not offensive. Assuming someone is “liberal” or “Republican” or “fundamentalist” because of their views is. Name-calling is not a debate. If a commenter says they disagree with me because they “feel sorry for my shortsightedness” then they can go their merry way to hell, and please never darken my door again. They have given me no reason to listen to them at all.

We should all feel free to create and recreate ourselves as we see fit., on the Internet. We can be anything we want to be. We might decide to be a pirate, a lion-tamer, a virgin, a debutante, a musician, a model, a Wench of Aramink. We can be anything we want to be. Where else is such a flight of fancy possible? Where else can we live out a dream and not hurt anyone?

By the way, in case anyone’s not sure, I probably don’t really qualify to be a wench. I’m too old. Whoever heard of a wench with gray hair at her temples? And my name isn’t Aramink. Aramink is a place. Gasp. Don’t hate me because I’m such a bald-faced liar. Embrace me, and admit that occasionally you decide not to post unflattering pics of yourself in your blog, too. I promise not to be critical as long as you’re polite. And I promise lively debate where it’s appropriate.

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Tacky Architecture for $200, Please, Alex

As many of you already know, I spent part of my formative years as a  intern for Bill Clinton. No, I never got up close and personal with his cigar. I don’t have a blue dress from The Gap, either.

There are lots of tacky things about our buddy Bill. Now, I won’t for a minute pretend that I think he was a bad president. I didn’t think too much of his philandering, but honestly, his peccadilloes were well known at the time of the New Hampshire Primary in 1992, when my secretary (yes, dammit, MY SECRETARY) at the state agency where I worked as an administrative law judge, Gennifer Flowers, said she was “tired of all the lies” and told all to The Star, that fine newspaper that is the bulwark of political reporting in the US grocery store lines. This moonlighting nightclub singer had been engaged in an extramarital affair with then-Governor Bill.

Two terms and some fundraising dinners later, the inevitable William J. Clinton Presidential Library was built on land purchased with taxpayer dollars by the city where I live. When the design for the building was unveiled, a collective gasp of horror went up among those of us with a modicum of taste in things architectural.
Clinton Presidential Library trailer

It looks like a trailer.

A very big, oversized, can’t-deny-the-resemblance-to-a-rectangular-house-on-wheels trailer.

Dear god.

We are so proud that Arkansas can be represented by this larger-than-life replica of substandard architecture. The architects said that the building “symbolically realizes a central theme President Clinton defined during his administration– Building a Bridge to the 21st Century. It is also in harmony with its natural surroundings”.

Are they kidding?

Its natural surroundings are a riverbank in one of the poorest states in the nation. This state also happens to be part of Tornado Alley, where house trailers act as magnets for the world’s most destructive winds.

We can only hope.

Hope. Wasn’t that the town where Clinton was born?

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London (Mis)Adventures

It’s Monday, and here we are in London.

Whose bright idea was it to take an overnight flight, anyway? What idiot thought we could sleep on the plane? In COACH no less? By the way, in case anyone is curious, those seats in coach in even the largest of airplanes are meant for people who are smaller than I am. A five-year-old might be able to sleep in them. When Jack was 10 we flew to Ireland in the back of a plane. I suppose five years is enough to make the memory fade. I do recall that after that trip I swore I’d never again fly across any body of water wider than the Mississippi River in steerage class. Like labor pains though, the memory must have faded. When business class seats weren’t available, I didn’t postpone the trip until summer. No, I bravely (read: foolishly) decided that the agony of sleeping sitting up wasn’t all that bad and we could fly in the main cabin of the plane.

On the trip to and from Ireland in 2002, my ten-year-old son slept in my lap for the most part. He sprawled across his seat and my own. No, I did not get a wink of sleep heading either direction. But at 15 Jack was unlikely to want to cuddle with Mommy on a long flight, so I figured the comfort level would be better. For someone with an IQ as high as the experts claim mine is, sometimes I can be downright DUMB.

Jack folded his long, skinny 15-year-old body in half and put his head down on the tray table, and slept for about four hours. Jealously, covetously, I glared at him the entire time. What evil gods have played such a trick on me that I am not only wider but rounder than I used to be? I’m not that big, really. I’m downright short, when it comes to that. But the circumference thing (not to mention the fact that I’m old and I just don’t bend that way anymore) made it impossible for me to mimic the origami of my son’s body. I leaned my seat back as far as it would go. I dozed. I awoke within 15 minutes, my head lolling steeply to one side and the muscles in my neck screaming for relief. In the interest of keeping with the laws of physics, I allowed my head to loll steeply to the other side. Equal and opposite reactions should have nullified the screaming muscles, right? Wrong. It meant that the muscles on the other side of my neck kicked up a major ruckus within the next 15 minutes.

This went on for a couple of hours as my resentment escalated toward my peacefully sleeping offspring in the next seat. Then I gave up and watched Walk the Line. I listened to my iPod. I tracked the plane’s progress across the Atlantic. I watched Dreamgirls. I finished my book. I wrote in my journal. I listened to the man seated next to me snored. I wished someone tall, dark, handsome, and accommodating was sitting next to me so I could put my head on his shoulder and sleep. Yes, I was fantasizing.

We arrived Saturday morning and fell gratefully into our beds in our hotel room by noon. I slept a couple of hours then started trying to wake Jack. I thought we could go to Piccadilly and wander around. Jack loves Times Square in NYC, so I thought he’d feel comfortable there for his first night in port.

I couldn’t wake him. This child of mine, who selfishly slept most of the way across The Pond, refused to rouse himself no matter how I begged, pleaded, threatened, or bribed him. “Can’t we just get room service, Mom?” I’m so glad we traveled 4500 miles to eat in bed.

So Sunday dawned early. The UK went on Summer Time (The equivalent of Daylight Savings) while we slept, so we were an hour late getting started. We made our way to Victoria Station where we met our bus tour and climbed aboard the double-decker. Two stops later was the Hard Rock Cafe, so we were forced to disembark.

I guess I should explain that compulsion. You see, Jack has an uncle who lives in Southeast Asia. Ever since Jack was a very little guy, his uncle Matt has made sure Jack has Hard Rock Cafe t-shirts from every place Matt’s been. Jakarta, Taipei, Beijing, Tokyo, Singapore, Manila, Bangkok… the list goes on. It also means that now Jack has to hit the Hard Rock whenever we travel. It’s a requirement. We might as well set it early in the itinerary because if we don’t Jack will agitate about it until we get there. Even if we go to Memphis, which is just two hours away from home, we can’t leave without stopping by the Hard Rock on Beale Street. London was the site of the original Hard Rock Cafe, so we make sure to see the guitars Eric Clapton and Roger Daltry donated to start the collection. It feels like a pilgrimage every time we go to one of these restaurants, but this one, the original one, felt like arriving in Mecca itself.

So we ate and bought a couple of t-shirts and a pin then climbed back aboard the tour bus to see the rest of the main sights without debarking. “We’ll come back and see the real sights tomorrow,” we agreed. Upon arriving back at the hotel after the day on the bus, we both took a nap. A couple of hours later I was once again trying to rouse my son and failing miserably. Finally, I gave up. At midnight Jack woke up and was ready to go. I laughed at him. “Go to sleep,” I said. He did. Can any creature sleep more than a teenage boy?

Now Day Three of our trip has unfolded as the day in which Murphy’s Law has reared its ugly Irish mug and interfered with us. I woke with a migraine and had to take a shot of Imitrex to banish it. I also had to nap a bit after taking the shot to make sure it worked. I wasn’t able to go anywhere until I did. What did Jack do while I was recovering?

Guess.

Uh-huh.

He slept.

At noon I roused him and we headed to the Tower of London. It’s the one place Jack knows he wants to see other than the British Museum. While we waited for the bus, we went into a Starbucks near St. Paul’s Cathedral to get nourishment. Outside again at the bus stop, Jack looked at me strangely. “Mom, I don’t feel so good,” he said.

He sat on the sidewalk against a wall. His face was ghastly white and dark circles appeared under his eyes.

“I’m going to get sick,” he said.

Hoping his nausea would pass with a little nourishment, I encouraged him to eat the cinnamon roll and drink the white mocha he got at Starbucks. We boarded the bus headed for the Tower and had a wonderful conversation with a gentleman Londoner about politics, imperialist world dominion (both British and American), terrorism, and tourism, then received an admonishment not to miss the Crown Jewels at the Tower. I love talking with natives!

Once off the bus, Jack’s nausea had not dissipated. He threw away what remained of his coffee. We found a bottle of water and a quiet corner where we sat for about an hour hoping his nausea would pass. He finally asked if we could please get a cab back to the hotel. I felt terrible for him. As often as I get migraines, I know what it’s like to have wonderfully exciting plans interrupted by headaches and nausea. What was touchingly sweet was how he kept apologizing for feeling bad. I do the same thing whenever my migraines interfere with plans I have with someone, so I know where he got the notion that he had to. He didn’t have to apologize to me, though. If anyone can empathize with how powerless he felt over his traitorous body his mother can.

Thankfully we found a cab very quickly and are at this moment back in our hotel room where Jack is (guess what) sleeping peacefully. If he feels better later we’ll try for Piccadilly Circus again. For now, I’ll just watch him sleep. I won’t try to rouse him. Not yet, anyway.

There’s a Virgin Megastore at Piccadilly. Evidently, I’m not the only one in the world who sells Virgins. I can’t wait to see the selection! I hope it’s better than the one I went to in Orlando a couple of years ago. Despite the name, all that Virgin Megastore had to offer were books and music. What a disappointing bait and switch operation!

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Panty Raid!

They just won’t leave Wench’s Virgin Training School alone, will they? If it’s not the likes of every Mohammed, Achmed, Hakim, and Hadji, then it’s the Dirk Diglers and other Giant Cocks of the world.

That’s right. Dirk Digler. I said it.

Dirk was hanging out at the Virgin Training School last Tuesday night with Judge Hanna M. High, who was showing him what she had learned in her revirginification classes, when suddenly Guy, High Priest of Meatloaf, wheeled up in his Whale accompanied by a crew of revelers in RVs, a motorcycle with a sidecar, and various other vehicles.

Now, we all know that Guy is the Spiritual Advisor to the Virgin Training School. Naturally the Virgins welcome him with open … ahem… arms when he comes. So when the guys tumbled out of all of those vehicles intent on a raid, why, we Virgins hardly knew what to do.

It was not just any raid, my friends. It was a panty raid the likes of which have not been seen since most of us were in college, if even then.

I have it on good authority that Ted scored no less than a dozen thongs in different styles and colors. Doug, being somewhat less discriminating, absconded with everything from bikinis to one very large pair of white cotton granny panties. Guy himself had two hands full of silky underthings when he burst into the room where the Judge was demonstrating her moves to FBI Agent Dirk Digler, a former Navy SEAL who had been recruited to help with special training.

When he saw Dirk and the judge working on certain techniques from the Pop-Up Kama Sutra, well, Guy went a little crazy. He grunted and screamed wordlessly and headed for Dirk, who in self defense placed a feather pillow between himself and the monster that Guy had become. Guy attacked and feathers flew everywhere.

Agent Digler was so disconcerted he felt he had to do something. Fearing bad press, he pretended to arrest Judge High. It was the only thing that calmed Guy down. Guy finally quit yelling wordlessly, and Steve and Ralph led him away after speaking to him in strong words of one syllable or less. Apparently, Guy was in no shape to listen to reason although he took commands from the fellows quite well.

Somehow the whole debacle was reported in the news as being a scandal. The article claimed that Judge High was arrested in a bribery scandal and that there was a great deal of money in the room with her.

Folks, the money that was found in the room was part of the props for the lap dance the judge had been demonstrating for Dirk. When she tried to explain that to the High Priest of Meatloaf he would have none of it. He threw money of his own at the judge and yelled wordlessly, “Nnnnnuhhhh! Uuuunnnnnhhhh!”

Poor Judge High has been forced to resign from office. Because I represent Sherry’s daughter Katie in the Giant Cock Baby Chick controversy, the Giant Cock’s lawyer, Ze Baron, demanded that Judge High be removed from the case and the proceedings be put on hold. It’s not as though the Virgins and the Baby Chicks are related interests, even. Humpf.

Thankfully, though, a new judge has finally been appointed. Judge Bugeyes Billy, known affectionately among many of us as OhBilly, has graciously agreed to preside over the case. He has assured Ze Baron that he will remove himself at the last impropriety, so the case is in good judicial hands indeed.

Judge Bugeyes Billy has ordered all of the parties to Dr. Emma’s page on Wednesday, March 14, for DNA testing. Dr. Emma told Ze Baron it would take several days for the results to be known, so we will sit with bated breath awaiting the outcome of the paternity testing. Those poor, fatherless baby chicks are being tended by their foster grandfather, Len, while Sherry and Katie are in New York on urgent business.

We fervently hope that this tawdry paternity matter can be adequately addressed in the very near future. Those chicks are becoming expensive for my client to maintain. Sadly, there is talk that some of the chicks will have to be sent elsewhere to live because they are becoming too large for their pen.

It’s those Giant Cock genes.

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Pluto Reinstated! Bravo, New Mexico!

Memorial text for HJM054

Y’all aren’t gonna believe this.

New Mexico is in the process of passing a resolution that makes Pluto a planet again as long as it is viewable from an observatory in New Mexico. That’s right. If it can be seen with a really powerful telescope in New Mexico’s skies, and it does take a REALLY powerful telescope, Pluto can be a planet again, at least as long as it lingers over New Mexico.

Oh, and if that’s not enough, Tuesday will be “Pluto Planet Day” at the New Mexico State Legislature.

It seems that the person who discovered Pluto 75 years ago, Clyde Tombaugh, was a resident of New Mexico. Well, it took the high-powered telescopes and clear skies over the state to see something that small, so naturally, in order to discover the planet/planetoid/asteroid he would come to name Pluto, Tombaugh pretty much had to hang out in New Mexico. That obviously meant setting up housekeeping there. It’s important to maintain the integrity of the feats of our native sons.

So “as Pluto passes overhead through New Mexico’s excellent night skies, it [shall] be declared a planet” for the duration of its pass.

I’m glad the New Mexico legislature has time to address this thorny issue of the demotion of Pluto’s planetary status and to rectify it.

Bravo, New Mexico!

Better to deal with Pluto than the immigration disaster overflowing your borders. In the great scheme of things, bucking the scientific community to declare Pluto a planet again is a terribly important thing to do.

I’m just glad Arkansas isn’t jumping on this bandwagon.

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