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The Ethics Class I’m Not Teaching

June 30, 2023

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), community, current events, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, general ruminations, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, nature, Oregon, politics, science, travel, Wow, YEE HAW!, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Ethics Class I’m Not Teaching

Department Of The Best One Sentence Movie Review I’ve Read In Some Time

That would be from friend CC, in a text on Tuesday, furthering the conversation we had in the movie theater parking lot on Monday, after having seen Past Lives.  Which, BTW, is the next movie *you* are going to see, (if moiself  can influence you to do so) and then talk about with friends and family.

Here’s the movie’s summary/blurb, from people who are paid to do such things:   [1]

“Nora and Hae Sung, two deeply connected childhood friends, are wrest apart after Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea. Decades later, they are reunited for one fateful week as they confront destiny, love and the choices that make a life.”

It’s the kind of movie…I want MH and my offspring to see it, although in a nod to ageism, a part of me thinks that, even at ages 30 and 27 respectively, my son and daughter aren’t old enough (as in, have not had the life experiences) to truly get it.  Also, in another nod to ageism, it’s a summer release movie without the “summerisms”: there aren’t any superheroes or explosions….

 

 

…and it is a gentler-paced movie, even as it time jumps through 24 years….  But damn, there is so much going on.

CC wondered if MH and I had talked about the movie – she and her husband had a conversation “…about love and life’s twists and turns,” when she returned that afternoon after having seen the movie.  No, we didn’t…even though I wanted to.  But I held back, giving MH only a brief description when he asked me how the movie was.  I was still ruminating on it moiself,  and wanted him to see it so I wouldn’t have to explain the unexplainable.  Such as, how you may love someone in some way, and maybe the way they love will not be enough…and will you be “the person who leaves” in someone’s life, and/or “the person who stays,” in another someone’s life…and the concepts of destiny and fate – in yun, from Korean/Buddhist influences – which can also be seen as coincidence, and all of which might have much more influence in our lives than we think…as per this bit of dialogue (from one of the Korean born protagonists to her American husband) from the movie:

“There’s a word in Korean: 인연 [in yun] ⁠— it means “providence” or “fate.”  If two strangers walk by each other in the street, and their clothes accidentally brush, that means there have been eight thousand layers of 인연 between them.”

Yet again, moiself  digresses.  CC’s one sentence review which I thought nailed the essence of the film, and its influence:

“I was pondering that all couples should see this film to give them better words to say to each other and know how normal all of this is, immigration or not, to question how a person loves and to accept how a person loves.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Ethics Teaching Of The Week

Humanists generally follow The Platinum Rule, not The Golden Rule.  There is an important distinction between the two directives, in both the statement and implications.  Class, do you think you can spot the difference?

First, we have the more familiar, “The Golden Rule.”  There are various phrasings of TGR – an ethical principle found across religions and world views – which all amount to,

Treat others the way you would want to be treated.

TGR  is phrased in either “positive” (to do something) or “negative” (to refrain from doing something) formulas.  In Christianity this principle is found in Matthew 7:12: “In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you. . . .”

The “negative” form of this principle, “Do not do to others what you would not like done to yourselves,” is found in 2nd-century documents of the early Christian church ( Didachē and the Apology of Aristides), in second century Jewish works ( Tob. 4:15), in the writings of the classic Jewish scholars, including Hillel and Philo of Alexandria  “…and in the Analects of Confucius (6th and 5th centuries BC). It also appears in one form or another in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Isocrates, and Seneca.”    [2]

 

 

Examples of TGR across world religions:

Lay not on any soul a load that you would not wish to be laid upon you, and desire
not for anyone the things you would not desire for yourself.
( Bahá’í Faith;  Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings)

Treat not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.
( Buddhism; The Buddha, Udana-Varga 5.18 )

One word which sums up the basis of all good conduct….loving-kindness. Do not
do to others what you do not want done to yourself.
( Confucianism; Confucius, Analects 15.23 )

This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you.
( Hinduism; Mahabharata 5:1517)

Not one of you truly believes until you wish for others
what you wish for yourself.
( Islam: the Prophet Muhammad, Hadith )

One should treat all creatures in the world as one would like to be treated.
( Jainism; Mahavira, Sutrakritanga 1.11.33 )

What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour. This is the whole Torah; all the
rest is commentary. Go and learn it.
( Judaism; Hillel, Talmud, Shabbath 31a )

Do not do unto others whatever is injurious to yourself.
( Zoroastrianism; Shayast-na-Shayast 13.29)

(excerpts from The Golden Rule Across the World’s religions )

The Golden Rule variations are well-intended; however and ultimately, they miss a key point of Human Reality:

* People are different. *

 

 

Okay; sure; you know that.  But do you really get what *that* means?

Not all people like or want the same things.  This reality is both simple and profound, because it means that while at first glance it sounds fine or even admirable to treat everyone like yourself, it is in fact inappropriate to do so, given people’s different backgrounds, experiences, mental and physical abilities, and expectations.

The Golden Rule lets you get away with, and even promotes, self-centric thinking (“Others think the way I do.”).  And self-centric thinking    [3]   lets you off the hook from doing the work, which can range from pesky to grueling, of trying to understand someone else’s point of view.

So, what’s an honestly-seeking-to-do-the-right-thing ® kinda person to do?  Follow the principles of Humanists, Freethinkers, Brights, Skeptics, and other supernatural-free world views.  As in, practice The Platinum Rule:

Treat others the way *they* want to be treated.

Meditate on this, for a moment.

 

“Girls and Boys, can you spot the difference?  I think you can.”

 

The subtle yet powerful difference is that The Platinum Rule calls for a more thoughtful consideration of the *others* who will be on the receiving end of your treatment of them.

As in, don’t presume that *your* likes and preferences – or dislikes and aversions – are  universal.

Here’s an example a child could understand:  There’s nothing Jilly likes better than having her feet tickled. Not only that, Jilly’s best friend, Millie, also enjoys having her feet tickled – she and Jilly agree, it’s the best fun, ever!  But for Jilly’s brother, Billy, having his feet tickled is tantamount to torture.  Should Jilly and Millie tickle Billy’s feet?

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Public Service: Things To Ponder® Moment Of The Week

Brought to you by the following excerpt from my recent letter to moiself’s offspring.  [4]

…. Yesterday morning I went walking in the Neahkahnie Beach area, and wondered if I would catch a glimpse of the coyotes that have been spotted crossing the roads there, and out on the beach.

 

 

The coyotes (at least two adults, possibly a pair raising pups nearby) are going after unleashed dogs on the beach:  one tries to lure the dogs to follow them by assuming play postures, then running into the shrubbery (where coyote #2 would spring out and attack – wildlife biologists note that this is a hunting adaptation of coyotes living near human-populated areas).  One coyote has even chased several dogs, as reported by the dogs’ owners who came to their pets’ rescue, then posted on a local FB group to warn others.

Some people responded to these reports and warnings (which have included pictures of the coyotes) with, “My dog responds to voice control,” or “The coyotes just want to play.”  Some people are morons.

And I can call them “morons,” although I can’t (even though I wouldn’t) call them “retards,” which I find mildly bemusing.

 

Y’all might want to rephrase that.

 

Get ahold of your nightsticks, y’all self-appointed word police:  I understand (and agree with) the prohibition of the term retard, as it became a shorthand pejorative for people formerly known as “mentally retarded.” But the term mentally retarded is not a pejorative in and of itself, and was once considered to be a valid descriptor for adults classified on (an outdated) psychiatric scale of severe intellectual disability.  The scale was:

* Moron  (adult with an estimated mental age between 7 and 10  and an IQ of 51–70)

* Imbecile (” ” ” ” mental age of three to seven years and an IQ of 25–50)

* Idiot ( ” ” ” ” less than three years; IQ below 25)

Now then:  I can and do sometimes use those words (moron; imbecile; idiot) to disparage someone and/or their behaviors…although, when I do so the image of an actual person with an intellectual disability *never* comes to my mind.

I can think or say that people who let their dogs go off leash on the beach – after having been warned about coyotes going after unleashed dogs – are morons, or that their behavior is idiotic and/or their reasoning imbecilic.  I’ve used the words (moron; idiot; imbecile) sporadically over the course of my life (most frequently during the #45 administration), with no corrections from a Well-Meaning Guardian Of The Hurt Feelings Of Others ®  (“It’s not nice to make fun of morons.”).  And I can’t help but wonder why that is.   [5]

 

Don’t be such an imbecile; you know why.

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [6]

 

 

Stay tuned for more Tim Minchin.    [7]

*   *   *

May you avoid self-centricism masquerading as ethical principles;
May you follow The Platinum Rule;
May you see the movie “Private Lives” and discuss it with friends and family;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] In this case the movie studio PR staff, I’d guess.

[2] Brittanica.com/goldenrule

[3] A cognitive bias known to social psychologists as “the false consensus effect.”

[4] I send daughter Belle and son K weekly letters, every Friday.  Letters as in snail, not e-, mail.

[5] Isn’t it time for another footnote?  Just wondering.

[6] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

[7] In July 14’s blog.

The History I’m Not Finding Surprising

June 23, 2023

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, freethought/humanism, health & wellness, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), politics, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The History I’m Not Finding Surprising

Happy Summer Solstice to all!  And to my fellow yogis, if this tradition is in your practice, I hope you had a memorable 108 Sun Salutations.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Hearing What Is Arguably The Understatement Of The Millenia
While Listening To A Fresh Air Podcast

“There is a very dark part of the Catholic church’s history…”

“No shit, Sherlock,” moiself  snorted, before FA host Terry Gross could finish her opening sentence.  Nevertheless, Terry persisted…with her interview of journalist and professor Rachel Swarns.

“There is a very dark part of the Catholic church’s history, that has only recently come to the attention of the public. For more than a century, the church financed its expansion and its institutions with the profits from the enslaved people the church bought and sold.  Without the enslaved, the Catholic church in the United States as we know it today would not exist…

‘…the priests prayed for the salvation of the souls of the people they owned, even as they bought and sold their bodies.’ “

( “How the Catholic Church Profited from Slavery – the ‘272’ explains how,”
Fresh Air, 6-13-23 )

 

 

For anyone shocked by the idea that religious folk and/or those under their sway would do such a thing, may I remind y’all that we’ve been warned about this for centuries:

“Those Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities Can Make You Commit Atrocities.”
(Voltaire, French Enlightenment writer and philosopher, who somehow managed to escape the guillotine despite his anti-religion pronouncements.     [1]  )

Subdepartment Of An Excerpt From The FA Podcast Which Demonstrates Why I Am Not Terry Gross Nor Am I The Host Of Any Other Interview Show:

Terry Gross:
“You’re Catholic and you’re Black. When you first found out about the church’s role in slavery…you certainly didn’t learn that in school. What was your reaction?”

Rachel Swarns:
“I was astounded…. I have a better than average familiarity with the 19th century and slavery….This history was certainly familiar to historians, but it is not well-known…. I am Black and Catholic. I had no idea. And the reason why is that…enslaved people have been largely left out of the origin story that is traditionally told about the Catholic Church….”

TG:
“Has it changed your relationship to the Catholic Church?”

RS:
“…it has, but perhaps not in the way that you might expect. I am…a practicing Catholic.”

Moiself , in my dreams, standing in for TG:
WHY  ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

RS (my emphases):
“…in a lot of ways, it has actually deepened my connection to the church…. as a Black Catholic, I didn’t always see myself in the church. I think I saw the church as it’s often portrayed, as kind of a northern church, an immigrant church. But now I see myself in the church. And these families who were so determined to hold onto their faith and to make the church true to what it said it was – a universal church, a church that welcomed and accepted everyone….”

 

 

Swarns’ phrasing, re (Black) people “determined to hold on to their faith,” both frosts my butt and breaks my heart.  The basic idea – clinging to the religion you’ve been taught – is understandable with regard to desperation and survival instincts.  But to hold on to a faith that was not theirs to begin with – a faith forced upon enslaved Africans after they’d been kidnapped, forcibly shipped across an ocean and stripped of their own faiths and spiritual traditions? This is not, IMO, something to admire, but to lament.

 

 

Again, the human instinct to survive, and the psychological phenomenon known as The Stockholm Syndrome – a coping mechanism wherein people in a captive or abusive situation develop positive feelings toward their captors or abusers over time –  make such choices understandable.  But it is this very same, naïve, survivalist, WTF ?!?!? mindset which allows myth and superstition (and the resulting abuses that accompany such beliefs) to also survive, and even flourish.  Teaching those they enslaved to lean upon Christianity –  with its scriptures authorizing, rationalizing, and even promoting slavery  [2]  and its admonitions for slaves to obey their masters   [3]  –   proved to be a most effective antidote to that which slaveholders feared most: a slave rebellion.

 

 

*   *   *

Yet Another Illustration Of The Reasons Why…

…in this “everyone is offended” literary atmosphere, moiself  considers it a wise marshalling of my mental health faculties, to no longer be submitting work for publication.  Witness what has just happened to author Elizabeth Gilbert, she of White Women Whine  Eat Pray Love renown.

” US author Elizabeth Gilbert is pulling her novel The Snow Forest from publication, in response to a backlash from Ukrainian readers unhappy about the book being set in Russia….”
( “Gilbert withdraws Russia-set novel from publication,” Books+publishing 6-14-23 )

Worse than what happened to Gilbert is her reaction to it.  She fell into the ultimate trap for a writer: she didn’t wait for publishers to censor her; she censored herself.

 

 

“The chief danger to freedom of thought and speech… is not the direct interference of any official body. Intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face.…
The sinister fact about literary censorship… is that it is largely voluntary.”
( George Orwell, author of Animal Farm and 1984 )

 

The ALA’s trendy button may soon have a companion: “I write books and ban them myself before anyone else can.”

 

Excerpt from a PEN America’s town hall-style discussion on writers and self-censorship (described on their website as “…a sprawling, impassioned but overwhelmingly civil conversation among four prominent writers about art, identity, appropriation and the state of free expression…”):

“John McWhorter, a linguist at Columbia University and author of the new book Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America, opened the discussion…on a blunt note. ‘To be a writer today, in the current climate, is to be someone who certainly probably censors themselves in some way,‘ he said.

…he recalled an academic talk he gave in the mid-1990s, about Creole languages and women, which some in the audience chose to interpret as offensive and sexist.

Listening to their criticisms, he said, ‘I thought, I don’t deserve this. And I decided I would never again say or write anything about issues having to do with women or sexism.’ “

(“Is Self-censorship a problem for writers?”  NYtimes 12-9-21 )

And another rational voice is silenced…or at least diverted.

 

 

*   *   *

Department of Is Zen Enlightenment for Real?

A Freethought Today blog post, Is Zen Enlightenment for Real?, caught my attention with its provocative title.  I’ve been reading about Buddhism for many years – not for the sake of personal practice (although I do use Buddhist-informed techniques via mindfulness meditation) but for the same reasons I read about Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Mormonism, Catholic/Orthodox/Protestant forms of Christianity, and other religions and/or spiritual traditions:  to try to comprehend how fear/ignorance superstition have ruled the world for so long my fellow human beings.

As I understand it, the answer to the oft-posed question, Is Buddhism a philosophy or a religion?  is, *yes.*  Buddhism can be – and is – practiced as both, around the world.   [4]

Many years ago, I attended an annual convention of the Freedom From Religion Foundation at the FFRF’s headquarter city, Madison WI.  I was attending solo, and struck up conversations with another “solos,” one of whom I’ll call Dan.  I can’t remember how we got on the topic, but Dan told me that his wife, Evelyn, who was from China, and that Evelyn was raised, as she put it, “both Buddhist and (nominally) Christian,” as were her family and neighbors.

Evelyn had said this when she and Dan were first dating and had begun sharing their respective family stories.  When Dan asked her how that was possible – to be both Buddhist and Christian – she told him how.  Her story caused Dan to look at missionary “conversion” statistics with a keen, if jaundiced, eye:  Evelyn and her family, and many people from their village, were “Rice Christians.”  The RC term is something I’d heard before; nevertheless, my foreknowledge of the phenomenon did not lessen the impact of what Dan told me.

Evelyn’s family, like most families in her rural Chinese village, were very poor.  In the early through mid-1900s, Christian missionaries came to her village.  The villagers, many of whom were closet skeptics as to their own culture’s spiritual traditions, were not impressed by the missionaries’ proselytizing; thus, once their curiosity re the strange Americans had been slaked, they avoided the church services the missionaries invited them to attend.  However, the villagers ended up signing the missionaries’ religious enrollment forms, because if they did so the missionaries would give them huge sacks of rice (and send pictures of the enrollment forms – proof of success in converting Chinese heathens! –  back to the American churches and individuals funding the missions).

 

How many pounds of rice?  Hell yeah – I mean, Hallelujah! – I believe!

 

Dan attended FFRF events solo because Evelyn was not interested in any organization which had even a remote connection to religion.  She was dismissive of “American religions,” and held her greatest scorn for Americans who, while not born into a Buddhist culture, claimed to be Buddhist and/or revere the Dalai Lama and other Buddhist teachers.  Dan said Evelyn cringed whenever she encountered non-Asian Buddhist Americans (“Amerboos“ she called them).  In Evelyn’s experience, such people knew nothing but “Buddhism light:” a Westernized version of Buddhism which had little relation to the superstition-laden, reality-denying religion of her homeland.  Evelyn said Amerboos had no idea that, beyond the mindfulness techniques which have been scientifically demonstrated to be useful, Buddhism is just another religion/superstition in many places around the world.  For example, in the rural China where Evelyn was from, upon the death of family members and for other major life events, villagers felt pressured into paying Buddhist priests to perform ritual house cleansings and/or blessings.

Dan and moiself  had an interesting discussion about the subject, including the idea that yes, Buddhism can be just another superstition/religion exploiting the poor and ignorant…but can’t it also be practiced in a more modern way, ala those who claim to follow Buddhist teachings as a secular philosophy?

 

“But those westernized Buddhists always want to put me on a carb-free diet.”

 

And after that long-winded introduction, on to that Freethought Now blog post, which provoked this portion of moiself’s  post.  The author wrote “please share this article,” and I shall do so in its entirety (my emphases):

“I’m intrigued by Zen meditation as a supposed path to enlightenment.

I’ve tried repeatedly — lying silent in bed, blanking out my mind, hearing nothing but the rhythm of my breath, seeing nothing but dark blurs behind my eyelids. But all it does is put me to sleep. In the end, I never get a smidgeon of enlightenment. I’m still just the same old me.

I wonder whether anyone finds enlightenment — or whether the quest is self-deceptive, a fantasy leading nowhere.

American Buddhism is a mushrooming field with many gurus. It’s followed by intellectuals such as brilliant atheist Sam Harris. Researcher John Horgan wrote some years ago: ‘The number of Buddhist centers in the United States has more than doubled to well over 1,000. As many as 4 million Americans now practice Buddhism, surpassing the total of Episcopalians. Of these Buddhists, half have post-graduate degrees.’

Horgan wrote in Slate that he plunged ardently into the exotic pursuit, but … ‘Eventually, and regretfully, I concluded that Buddhism is not much more rational than the Catholicism I lapsed from in my youth. Buddhism’s moral and metaphysical worldview cannot easily be reconciled with science — or more generally, with modern humanistic values.’

Buddhism’s insistence that suffering is an illusion theoretically could make followers less concerned when bigoted police kill unarmed Black men, or women are victimized by predators, or other outrages occur.     [5]

Horgan added that supposedly enlightened gurus can be unappetizing: ‘Chogyam Trungpa, who helped introduce Tibetan Buddhism to the United States in the 1970s, was a promiscuous drunk and bully, and he died of alcohol-related illness in 1987.’

Robert Fuller, former president of Oberlin College, made an intense study of meditation gurus and their adoring followers. Writing in Psychology Today, he summed up: ‘Getting a close look at several individuals who were advertised as enlightened led me to conclude that there’s a lot of hype and hypocrisy in the business. A good many of them, not unlike a fair number of academics I’d known, seemed to be in it primarily for the lifestyle. Many gurus are treated like deities and hold absolute power over their devotees. As ‘enlightened beings,’ they’re accountable to no one, and their foibles, appetites and excesses are given a pass.’

‘The language of enlightenment tended to be esoteric, obscurantist and elitist, and the teachings attracted more credulous dabblers than credible seekers,’ he continued. ‘In my quest, I did not come across anyone who could be said to dwell in a state of permanent enlightenment.’

I’ve never known any meditator who seemed enlightened. Have you? Have you ever seen amazing insights or remarkable creative output by an enlightenee?

( “Is Zen Enlightenment for Real?” By James A. Haught, Freethought Now blog, 6-8-23.  Longtime editor at the Charleston Gazette, Haught is a senior editor of Free Inquiry. )

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [6]

“When you’re black there’s like no religion to turn to. Christianity? I don’t think so. White people justified slavery and segregation through Christianity, so a black Christian is like a black person with no fucking memory.”
(Comedian Cris Rock )

 

 

*   *   *

May you examine those mindsets with which you may have
a Stockholm Syndrome-relationship;
May you never be described as a person “with no f****** memory;”
May you smack upside the noggin any literary lunkheads who conflate setting a book in a particular country with supporting that particular country’s politics;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] Which included sharing his opinion that priests of every sect are those who. “…rise from an incestuous bed, manufacture a hundred versions of God, then eat and drink God, then piss and shit God.”

[2] Numbers 31 tells the particularly galling story of sex slavery: how the taking of female captives is encouraged by Moses, who, after being instructed by Yahweh to take vengeance upon the Midianites, tells the Israelites to kill Midianite male children and nonvirgin females but take the young virgins for themselves.

[3]    “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear.  Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ.”  (Ephesians 6:5 NLT)

    “Christians who are slaves should give their masters full respect so that the name of God and his teaching will not be shamed.  If your master is a Christian, that is no excuse for being disrespectful.  You should work all the harder because you are helping another believer by your efforts.  Teach these truths, Timothy, and encourage everyone to obey them.”  (1 Timothy 6:1-2 NLT)

   ( Using the following parable, Jesus approves of beating slaves even if they didn’t know they were doing anything wrong):

     “The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows. But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”  (Luke 12:47-48 NIV)

[4] To relate one personal experience, years ago I attended a Buddhist “church” service in Portland (with a friend who had practiced Buddhist meditation for years and wanted to check out the church).  The structure of the service was very reminiscent to me of various Protestant services…perhaps, to match the comfort or familiarity level of (non-Asian )white attendees, who comprised ~ 50% of the attendees, I wondered?

[5] I have those same thoughts myself, and have heard them from people born into a culture that held some belief in “karma,” and/or reincarnation, such as a man from India who said that he rejected his family’s hindu beliefs when he saw saw how practicing Hindus justified their not helping fellow citizens out of poverty because their suffering wasn’t real, or was brought on by their own deeds and if they live a good life they can be reincarnated under better circumstances….

[6] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

The Food Seasoning I’m Not Afraid Of

June 16, 2023

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Food Seasoning I’m Not Afraid Of

Dateline: Monday, 5:40 AM scrolling through a newsfeed to get to one of the columnists moiself  reads every morning.  I skip past many ads, then find moiself  scrolling back to one in particular, as my brain needs conformation that…no… it didn’t just say what it said, right? Sure enough, there is a drawing of a brassiere, accompanied by the following WTF/seriously what does this have to do with anything? product descriptor:

“These bras are designed to empower those with smaller chests.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Back To The Future

“We have serious problems and we need serious people to solve them.  And whatever your particular problem I promise you ______ (right wing candidate) is not interested in solving it.  He is interested in two things and two things only:  making you afraid of it and telling you who’s to blame for it.  That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections.”

( excerpt from speech in the final scene of “The American President” )

 

 

My latest quest for sanity maintenance is to ignore the news as much as possible.  I do open my news apps on my phone in the morning, to scroll past the headlines to get to my games (Wordle; the mini crossword; Letterboxed; waffle…). While doing so I glimpse the headlines, streaming… And lately it seems to be a lot of screaming headlines, as in anti-LGBTQ parents and protesters screaming at school board meetings.

Regretfully, this sounds quite familiar to moiself.  Some readers may not be old enough to remember California’s Briggs Initiative of 1978. Those who are and do…ay yi yi.  Once again, Conservative Christian Voters ® are being manipulated.  If you are a CCV, someone is exploiting you; someone is trying to make you fearful.  Why do the Someones use such tactics?    [1]   And why do *you* continue to fall for it?   [2]

I’ve lost track of how many people I ‘ve met – from relatives to friends to acquaintances and coworkers and neighbors – who went to Catholic schools, and guess what? Not one of them went on to become nuns or priests.   [3]     Lest you think that is merely anecdotal, look up the statistics for yourself.

No public school teacher is “teaching” your kids to be gay (or trans, which is the right wing politician’s bogeyman of the moment).  If teachers had that power, whether by their words or the mere example of their existence, there wouldn’t be a shortage of nuns in the Catholic Church now, would there?

 

*   *   *

Department Of That Which Delights

That would be, “The Show of Delights,” on one of my fave podcasts, This American Life.  Starting at Act II, starting ~16 minutes into the podcast, is a delightful story (well  duh, as that is what the episode was all about).  Do yourself a favor and listen to the story of Cole, a delightful five-year-old, who is oh-so-very excited about an everyday task – commuting – that most adults merely tolerate.  Ah, but this is Cole’s first bus ride to school.

Cole’s story brought me back to when both of my offspring attended our local elementary school.  The school was a half mile/eleven-minute walk from our house; thus, they did not have the option of riding the school bus.  In my school years in So Cal, neither did I. My elementary school was a half mile walk from our house, junior high a little over a mile, and high school 1.6 miles.  School buses weren’t a thing then, I guess.   [4]

It came as a surprise to me that my kids were so eager to ride a school bus and so disappointed to learn that wasn’t an option for them.   For some reason, they’d decided that riding the school bus was an iconic, essential part of the school experience. Later, when they were in high school, there was the option (which they took until they made carpooling and other arrangements) of riding the school bus… But by then it had lost its magical appeal. I’m wondering, do they remember this?

Once again, moiself  digresses.  Cole’s delight…

 

 

Yes, I know, but it’s just so dang appropriate.

Delightfully precocious Cole shares his enthusiastic anticipations (and trepidations) about as he walks to the bus stop with his mother.  When was the last time you said, or even thought of saying, something along the lines of “I can’t wait – I’m a bus rider now!”

If your delight is not satiated by the story of Cole’s first bus ride, stick around for the story which follows, wherein an adult daughter interviews her mother, who has finally discovered the joys of doing what she wants to do in her older years.

“After the kids are gone, and your dad is gone, finally, I can live my life.”

Chapter III of the podcast centers around a Japanese-American woman who lived her life as a wife and mother of six children, and who now at age 72 has created joy and delights in the most profound and simple aspects of life, from the discoveries of world travel to the humble comfort of the “warm Japanese toto toilet” she uses first thing in the morning.

 

Whose heart – and other regions – wouldn’t be warmed by such a device?

 

Also delightful to me, about that segment, is the rarity and clarity of the mother’s description of her present state of mind vs. that when she was younger.  With regard to her family, she says to her daughter that although she was “glad you [her children] were born, and safe,” raising her family and caring for her husband never gave her joy. This is quite an admission, particularly for an older person, but also for any woman in this “your-family-is-the-be-all-and-end-all-you’ll-never-know-true-joy-or-love-until-you-have-them” world.

As this newly joyful woman tries to define her feelings, she mentions several times that she “feels light.” I thought perhaps that was the best and most succinct of the definitions I could think of, for the word, delight. That which lightens your heart, or your burdens – that which makes you feel… light?

 

Sometimes the most delight is when the light is “setting.”

 

*   *   *

Department Of Another Thing To Do For Yourself

Moiself  can’t begin to explain it; just trust me, watch The History Of The World, Part Two, the follow-up to Mel Brooks’  History Of The World Part One.  My fave is the skit, “Khancestry.com,” which features a variety of purported descendants of Kublai Khan in a satire of 23 and me, ancestry.com, and other DNA-using genealogical services…

Oh, never mind the promo – it’s got Wanda Sykes in it, as both a performer and a writer.  What else do you need to know?

 

 

*   *   *

Depart Department Of STFU And Stop Pandering
Sub Department Of This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

Dateline: last week; 8 am-ish; returning from a walk; listening to ologies, a podcast moiself  usually finds quite entertaining. This episode began that way, then turned into an exception.  The episode is  Black American Magirology (Food, Race, and Culture).  [5]    Here’s the episode’s description from the podcast website:

“What’s the difference between Southern cooking and ‘soul food?’ Is there a correct type of mac and cheese? And whose business is it what you eat? (Hint: no one’s). Culinary historian, scholar of African American life and culture critic Dr. Psyche Williams-Forson is a professor at University of Maryland College Park and department chair in the Department of American Studies. She also authored the books Eating While Black: Food Shaming and Race in America, and Building Houses out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food, and Power. We chat about everything from oral traditions to ‘soul food’ in popular culture, gendered roles in cooking, hyperlocal produce, systemic oppression and why someone would make chicken without seasoning it…”

Podcast host Alie Ward and her guest and talked about the racism which they see as implicit or subtle in criticizing the unhealthfulness of soul food (to which I’m thinking, Sorry, but *any* cuisine style laden with saturated fats and sodium are unhealthful, no matter who is doing the cooking or consuming), and the difference of the white and yellow cornmeals used in cornbread and what culinary historians say about the matter, and, as Ward put it, “how people judge each other” based on ingredient usage…. Then  there is this gem of an exchange:

Alie Ward:
You know, from an historical and anthropological perspective, so many European nations colonized other areas under the guise of looking for spices.  Why are white people so afraid to season their food?  We can’t flavor for shit – what’s up with that?  How does someone go on Oprah with an award-winning chicken recipe and no salt or pepper?  Do you remember this clip? Tell me you remember this clip?

Psyche Williams-Forson (laughing):
Yes…yes…yes..yes…..

Ward plays a clip of an Oprah show guest (a cook of some kind) who is asking of Oprah, in almost a pleading way, “Do you like it?” Oprah equivocates, finally saying, “I do like it…I like it very much…did we add salt and pepper? I think we needed salt and pepper.”  Guest: “Nope; there’s no salt and pepper in it.”

Ward and Dr. W-F go on to talk about co-opting foods, as if the usage of mere salt and pepper, those all-over-everywhere ingredients can be co-opted.

Yeah; it’s supposed to be funny.  But imagine a pronouncement like, “Why are white people so afraid to season their food?  We can’t flavor for shit,” reversed:  “Why do black people over salt their food?  They can’t control their blood pressure for shit.”

Also, speak for yourself, Ms. Ward, and not *we*, as in, all “white people.”  Moiself  has never been “afraid” (seriously?) to season my food.   [6]    Also also, I for one do not consider slathering a casserole with salt and pepper to be adequate “seasoning.”   [7]

 

So, there.

I’ll probably pout for a week, then check out next week’s ologies podcast.

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [8]

“This world would be a whole lot better if we just made an effort
to be less horrible to one another.”

–Elliot Page, nee Ellen Page, actor and LGBTQ activist

 

 

*   *   *

May you delight in feeling light;
May you never conflate empowerment with undergarments;
May you enjoy scrolling past screaming headlines;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Because it works, at least for a while.

[2] This “you“ is rhetorical, as I am not sure of that many, if any, right-wing/conservative Christians read my blog.

[3]  Or even “good” as in becoming believing in practicing Catholics, for that matter.

[4] I don’t think they were mandated by law, most of the kids had to make their way to school themselves, whether through walking or biking or carpooling with other families.

[5] Magirology is the art of cooking.

[6] I don’t even consider salt to be a spice.

[7] And I’ve read cookbooks and essays by many non-American chefs who complain that the American palate – of all Americans of all skin colors – has been ruined by the over-usage of salt as the primary (and ofttimes only) seasoning, thus rendering many Americans incapable of appreciating the subtleties of spices other than salt).

[8] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

The Word I’m Not Overusing

June 9, 2023

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), politics, radio & podcasts, school, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Word I’m Not Overusing

Department Of The Universe Is Telling Me I Should Stop Writing And
Run For The Border Take The Next Shuttle To Mars

Moiself  just found out that this is a thing: Taco Bell Quarterly.  A new “literary” journal.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Why Does This Question Need To Be Answered, Let Alone Asked?  [1]

“Is it morbid to take selfies with the deceased in their casket at a funeral?”
(from a letter to advice columnist Dear Abby, The Oregonian, 6-3-23 )

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Question Worth Answering, Or At Least Pondering.

As posed by the No Stupid Questions podcast:

Do you have a scarcity mindset or an abundance mindset?

Some parameters might be useful. As per the NSQ website:

“…a scarcity mentality refers to people who see life as a finite pie – a zero-sum game. If you have something, I can’t have it…. people with a scarcity mentality have a very difficult time sharing recognition and credit, power or profit, whereas someone with an abundance mentality has the idea that there’s plenty out there for everyone. The rising tide lifts all boats. Let’s not just give me a bigger piece of the pie; let’s make the pie bigger….”

My bet is that every person is  a combination of the two, and that some folks will definitely skew one way or the other. Scarcity and abundance not just in terms of economics, but in regard to relationships, time management and perceptions, emotional self-regulation, creative endeavors….

 

 

The No Stupid Questions podcast on the scarcity/abundance mindset took me on Lyft ride down memory lane.  In particular, this happened when NSQ  co-hosts Stephen Dubner and Angela Duckworth were discussing research addressing the origins of the scarcity mindset concept:

NSQ cohost Stephen Dubner:
“…Shankar Vedantam, (host of the Hidden Brain podcast, speaking in a piece he made for an NPR show)…says: ‘When you’re hungry, it’s hard to think of anything other than food. When you’re desperately poor, you constantly worry about making ends meet. Scarcity produces a kind of tunnel vision, and it explains why, when we’re in a hole, we often lose sight of long-term priorities and dig ourselves even deeper….’
So he’s making the argument that scarcity — real scarcity, not a scarcity mindset — can impose an even additional burden because it forces you to spend a lot of your attention and resources on just getting enough.”

NSQ cohost Angela Duckworth:
“…I’m going to read you the end of the first paragraph [of the research paper, Some Consequences of Having Too Little ]: ‘Resource scarcity creates its own mindset, changing how people look at problems and make decisions.’

The first line [of the paper] is, ‘The poor often behave in ways that reinforce poverty…. For instance, low-income individuals often play lotteries, fail to enroll in assistance programs, save too little, and borrow too much…. But we suggest a more general view. Resource scarcity creates its own mindset, changing how people look at problems and make decisions.’ “

SD:
“…there’s a lot to untangle here….low-income people often compound their low-income-ness by making choices that contribute to a furthering of that pattern…. So, there are people who say, ‘Well, there you go. Poor people are poor because they make bad decisions.’ And what this line of research is saying, if I’m understanding correctly, is that poor people are poor for any number of reasons. And then it’s easy for poverty itself, for scarcity itself, if we want to call it that, to essentially compound on itself.”

AD:
“…I think it would be easiest to actually explain some of the research…a summary of a series of laboratory experiments…to basically create a fake [game] world where [researchers] could randomly assign people to be rich or poor and experimentally figure out what the heck is going on with decision-making that is different for those who are rich and poor…”

SD:
“…the idea is to measure how good or bad a decision is when you’re under different stressors?”

AD:|
“…you want to see if you randomly assign people to be poor in these games, do they accumulate more debt than people who are randomly assigned to be rich?….what [the study did] is create a microcosm of society, except they get to choose who’s rich or poor….they can show that you can take people who have…nothing wrong with their decision-making faculties, assign them to have fewer resources in a game, and show that they’ll accumulate more debt than rich people…

…the key insight is that there seems to be a shift in attention. When you are assigned to be in the poor condition and you have fewer resources…your attention is going to these urgent problems that are right in front of you, and you’re not making decisions that are good for you in the long term. Whatever you want to call it, that focus of attention on the urgent [is] the landmark finding. And immediately, you can change the way somebody’s brain is functioning just by putting them into a situation where they have scarce resources.”

SD:
“So there’s this snowball effect, which is when you’re dealt a bad hand, there are a number of cards within that hand that will lead to further bad cards, essentially.”

AD:
“That’s the vicious cycle that would logically ensue…. you’ve got fewer resources and more stress and less time, and you’re making even worse decisions with each round of life.”

( excerpts, my emphases, from “Do You Have a Scarcity Mindset
or an Abundance Mindset?”  NSQ, 5-7-2023 )

 

 

 

When I was in college I took a class   [2]  on The Sociology of Poverty.  Decades later, when I first heard the term “scarcity mindset” (coined by academics, so hey, it’s a thing!) my mind immediately flashed back to one of the required books for the class.  The book consisted of chapters presenting studies of the roots and realities of poverty alternating with chapters telling the story of a woman and her family (her husband and four children) who lived in New York City.    [3]    The wife and husband were each born into and continued to live below what was called the poverty line.  Both adults were marginally educated; the wife raised the children and tended their home (a rental apartment); the husband was sporadically employed in a series of low skill/low wage jobs.

While I was taking that class I was cobbling together different jobs to put moiself  through college, and was well acquainted with stretching a dollar until it tore in half. Which is perhaps why moiself  found it depressing and frustrating to read the family’s story, to see how they seemed to defeat themselves on a day-by-day basis.  The woman (the main focus of the story) and her husband were functionally passive, drifting through life, like human flotsam at the mercy of the tides of fate (and the whims of their capricious deity, which the woman mentioned several times, ala, “God will provide”…except, of course, he didn’t).

 

 

She lived for the day, instead of planning not only for today but for the tomorrows which would, inevitably, become the todays.  One of many examples: instead of getting her family to walk with her further in (or out of) her immidiate neighborhood, just once a week, to a larger, discount grocery store where they could buy rice and beans and other staples in bulk to last an entire week’s worth of meals, each afternoon the woman would go to the (expensive) corner bodega, getting the ingredients for whatever she’d decided to make for dinner that night, spending two or three times the amount for items that would last one meal, at a cost that would have lasted for six meals if she’d purchased the same items at another store.  

When I finished the book I realized there was something else going on; something I didn’t have a word for until I heard the term, scarcity mindset.  When I was growing up my family, although not below the poverty line, had to be quite careful (read: things were “tight”) with money.  However, unlike the adults in the book, the parents around me (both mine and those of *most* of my peers    [4]  ) set a good example with regard to planning, budgeting, and spending.  From day to day the Book Woman ®  didn’t know for certain if her husband would bring home enough money to buy a half-pound box of rice and a can of beans and some vegetables, and she was surrounded by people living the same way – people who had developed and/or were born into the same mindset.  On a day when there was money, they ate a little better.  On a day when they had little money (and/or the rent was due), they ate a little worse.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Word To Stop Over Using

Seems like moiself  can’t spit without hitting   [5]   a news app or story wherein someone, in a letter to an advice columnist or in a first-person essay, writes about their “toxic“

* in-law
* parent
*sibling
* extended family
* friend
* next door neighbor
* spouse
* children
* coworker
* barista…

Speaking of spitting, what’s the name of that reptile which can gob its venom?  Ah, yes, that would be the aptly dubbed, spitting cobra.

 

 

“A ‘spitting’ cobra is any of several species of cobra that can intentionally, defensively shoot their venom directly from their fangs….
Most spitting cobras’ venom/toxungen is significantly cytotoxic, apart from the neurotoxic and cardiotoxic effects typical of other cobra species….”
(excerpts from Wikipedia entry on the spitting cobra )

Note the repeated usage of the word toxic, as per its original/primary definition,    [6]  referring to a substance being poisonous and capable of causing death or serious debilitation, or that which exhibits symptoms of a deadly condition caused by a toxin.

Yeah yeah yeah, I know – language evolves.  I moiself  enjoy many a repurposed or expanded usage of an old term; still, IMO, the widespread and often hyperbolic application of toxic (or any adjective) lessens its potency.

Sure, there are people who behave nastily and/or whose (intentional or incidental) malice seems to be a part of their very essence.  But you and your sister strongly disagreeing about politics and religion and memories of who did what to whom in childhood – does that mean your relationship is comparable to a paralytic venom?   [7]    The guy in the cubicle next to yours who rummages through the break room refrigerator, pilfers and consumes half of your avocado hummus sandwich, then blames your disappearing lunch on the new HR intern –  is that guy really “creating a toxic work environment,” or is he merely (and effectively) acting like an immature, entitled, inconsiderate asshat?

 

Whenever possible, I opt for the Asshat of the Week ® Award.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Veggiepalooza

Dateline: a couple of weeks ago, outside my neighborhood’s cluster unit mailboxes.  Exchanging what-have-you-been-up-to?s  with a neighbor, and when I mentioned I’d just returned from picking up my CSA share,    [8]   he said that he and his wife are trying to eat healthier (“more vegetables and all that”).  Of course, I had to put in a plug.

Even before MH and moiself  joined our first CSA (over a dozen years ago) I was already more than halfway toward a whole foods plant-based eating life.  But the introduction to foods I’d never or rarely seen in the local markets was a special benefit of CSA membership. Before that, how would I know that I would have liked, for example, shishito peppers, Chinese broccoli, celeriac, and kohlrabi so much?

 

I’m intrigued by any plant which resembles a jellyfish-Russian spy satellite hybrid.

 

Speaking of kohlrabi, I came up with this recipe many years ago, when moiself  was craving Indian-spiced food and had leftover tomatoes & kohlrabi from our CSA share.  I told my father about my creation, and he said that he looked forward to me cooking it for him the next time he and Mom came up for a visit..  Alas, I never got to make this one for him (he died a few months after that foodie conversation of ours). Here’s to you, Chet. And here’s the recipe for Kohlrabi Dal.

KohlRabi Dal (Serves 4)
The recipe name is a play on words for the root veggie, and dal (in Indian cuisine, dal are dried, split legumes),
and honors my father, whose nickname for me was Robbie Doll.

Ingredients:
– ½ t  each of whole brown mustard seeds and cumin seeds|
-1T neutral oil
– 1 medium yellow onion, diced
– 2 garlic cloves, minced
– ½ T minced ginger root
– 1 large green jalapeno, stemmed & seeded & finely chopped
– 1½  T pomegranate molasses (or tamarind paste –  you want a tart, tangy taste)
– 1 packed t dark brown or coconut sugar
– scant 1 t chili powder (New Mexico, if possible)
– ¼ t ground turmeric
– ½ c masoor dal (red lentils), picked through   [9]  and rinsed
– 2 medium tomatoes, chopped (or canned, to equal ~ 6 oz/170g)
-3-4 med-large Kohlrabi (~675 g or 1 ½ lb) – peeled & diced small
-Salt to taste
-Chopped fresh cilantro and cooked brown or white rice
-Drained unsweetened soy/other plant-based yogurt OR soft silken tofu, to equal 1 c,
blended with 1/8 t salt and 2T lime juice

Instructions:
– Heat oil in a Dutch oven or other high-sided pan. Add the seeds; sauté until the seeds pop (30 sec to 1 m).  Add the onions and sauté for 5m.
– Add garlic & jalapeno & ginger; sauté until fragrant (30 s – 1m).  Add the molasses and the remaining spices; stir for 15 sec.
– add dal to the pan.  Sauté for 1-2 m stirring, until dal is covered w/oil & spices.
– Add tomatoes and 1 ¾ c water, bring to boil; turn heat to low, cover pan & simmer 20 m.
– Meanwhile, prep kohlrabi: steam or nuke the pieces 5-6 m or until tender.
– Add steamed kohlrabi to pan, continue to simmer, uncovered ~ 10 m or until lentils are cooked through and sauce thickens.  Add more water if necessary for desired consistency.
– Add salt to taste.
-Serve: atop rice of choice, with dollops of lime/yogurt sauce and sprinkles of chopped cilantro.

 

Chet Parnell and his Robbie Doll, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [10]

 

 

 Ali Rizvi is a Pakistani-born, Canadian, atheist ex-Muslim
and secular humanist writer and scientist (oncologic pathologist)
who explores the challenges of Muslims who leave their faith.

*   *   *

Of all the selfies you may be tempted to take, may none of them be at a funeral;
May you maintain a healthy disance from actual toxins;
May you discover (if you haven’t already) the joys of kohlrabi;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] I didn’t read Abby’s advice.  Didn’t need to; the question itself was so grotesquely entertaining that I couldn’t imagine any answer which would top it.

[2] A class which eas required for my major.

[3] I cannot recall which borough, but it was one of the B’s – Brooklyn, or the Bronx.

[4] Except the wealthy ones, who just did and bought whatever the hell they wanted to.

[5] I’m not sure if I’m mixing metaphors here or just misusing or abusing one. Would that make me a toxic metaphor-ist?

[6] ( see Merriam Webster online dictionary )

[7] And I’m not casually dismissive of the label, nor do I think it has no legitimate application.  I know more than one person whose close family member(s) have poisoned their relationships with continual, malicious, soul-crushing words and deeds.

[8] Community Shared Agriculture, or CSA, is a farming model built on fairness and transparency for both the farmer and the consumer. Traditionally, a consumer buys a share of a farm up-front, which provides financial security to the farmer for that season. In return, the consumer receives a regular box of fresh produce. ( What Is Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)?, The Spruce Eats )

[9] Any dal or dried beans can sometimes include small bits of chaff or even pebbles.

[10] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

The Babies I’m Not Sleep-Training

June 2, 2023

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, extended family, family life, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, politics, school, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Babies I’m Not Sleep-Training

 

Department Of Two Words, Which Bother Me, To The Same Degree

Those would be: selfie, and panties.

Selfie.  Why is that necessary, when you have perfectly good words like narcissist?

Panties. Seriously? Grown ass females, even little girls, do not wear panties; they wear underpants or underwear.  Fetishists and pedos   [1]   want women and girls to wear panties.

*   *   *

Department Of Don’t Say You Weren’t Warned

To maintain a pretense of sanity, moiself  has been trying to stay away from the news.  But some gems still sneak on through.  Attention, all ye Book Banning Cretins, especially the ones in Florida: isn’t there some other classic Florida Man® thing you need to do, maybe throw an alligator through a fast food franchise’s window, to protest…something?

Apparently, among the books the BBCs have banned from their own narrow minds are anything involving the history of

* freethought and expression

* the exchange of information

* the kind of people who ban books and what happens to them and their society afterward.

 

 

And the bans are being defended by Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis.

I know; y’all will need the smelling salts to believe that an elected official who took an oath to defend the U.S. Constitution would support banning books.

 

 

If requested to offer sage counsel, moiself  would advise that DeSantis and his ilk should avoid pissing off us cranky, feminist authors.  The older we get, the less the phrase “life-in-prison” is a deterrent.

*   *   *

Department Of Belated Yet Timely Information

“…an anthropologist from Utah State University, David Lancy, performed (an) analysis on parenting. The conclusion was….clear-cut: When you look around the world and throughout human history, the Western style of parenting is WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic societies..). We are outliers.

In many instances, what we think is ‘necessary’ or ‘critical’ for childhood is actually not present in any other cultures around the world or throughout time.

‘The list of differences is really, really long,’ says Lancy…. ‘There may be 40 to 50 things that we do that you don’t see in indigenous cultures.’

Here in the U.S., many parents don’t have…firsthand experience before having children themselves. Instead, we often learn…through parenting books, Google searches and YouTube videos. But this information comes with two big caveats….

For starters, parenting advice can give the impression that the recommendations are based on science. But a deep look at some studies reveals that the science is more like smoke and mirrors. Sometimes the studies don’t even test what the parenting expert is purporting they do.

… Ben Bradley argues…: ‘Scientific observations about babies are more like mirrors which reflect back the preoccupations and visions of those who study them than like windows opening directly on the foundations of the mind.’…

And sometimes the data supporting the recommendation are so flimsy that another study in a few years will come along and not only overturn the first study but completely flip the advice 180 degrees…”

( Excerpts from “Secrets Of A Maya Supermom: What Parenting Books Don’t Tell You,”
Reprint of an NPR story from 5-18 )

 

 

‘Twas a wee bit past Mother’s Day is when I saw this article, and Father’s Day is just around the proverbial bend.  After attending a family wedding this past weekend, wherein with two of my nephews were new and/or about-to-be fathers, I found this article most noteworthy. [2]

Reading the article made me think about way back when,   [3]  to the baby books MH and I were given/bought, and how eventually I set them all aside (in one case, I threw one across the room, yelling, “Oh seriously, fuck this!”) in dissent and frustration).

The book that became a frisbee was one of those dreadful, “how to get your baby to sleep” screeds books (which had been either recommended by or gifted to us by a family member).  Several of the parenting books contained “advice” and “expertise” which didn’t sit well with either MH or moiself  and which seemed contrary to both logic and the reality of our babies.  I began to look up information about the authors of those books, and when moiself  did so I found that they were penned by – surprise! – stealth conservative evangelical Christians.  [4]  This explained much of which I found questionable about their advice:  *control* was the overriding and underlying issue.

William and Martha Sears, just two of the stealthers, have co-authored several books peddling their attachment-style parenting theories, and one of them was given to me by a friend.  Guess what the Sears’ also wrote:  The Complete Book of Christian Parenting and Child Care: A Medical and Moral Guide to Raising Happy Healthy Children.  The word “medical” being included in the title both cracks me up and disturbs me.    [5] 

 

 

Once again, I digress.

The sleep advice books were the worst of the parenting manuals authored by conservative evangelicals. In the Conservagels    [6]   world, there is a supposed, divinely ordained, patriarchal hierarchy:  On top of the pyramid is a (male pronoun-using) deity, followed by a father, followed by a mother, then children.  Parents *must* be “in control” of their children, from birth to young adulthood.  The takeaway was that your children, yes, even that six-week-old infant, are sneaky little buggers trying to control their parents, and will manipulate you unless you set the rules and routines *from the get-go.*

Creepy. That’s the word which comes to my mind as I recall the gist of those books: You must set a routine early on for sleep-training and other despicable concepts  practices to let the little pea brain precious gift from above know that just because he cries it doesn’t mean he’s going to get a response from you if, in your opinion (which you will form using the criteria in the book), his vocalizations are not for a legitimate need (e.g., he’s hungry, or has a wet/poopy diaper).  He needs to learn self-control; he needs to learn to self/soothe cry it out, and not have his parents (read: the female one) at his beck and call.

 

 

*From the get-go,* from the moment we escaped from the hospital,  [7]   K wanted to eat, lightly, around the clock (every three hours, for many, many months).  That was just how he was – eat a little, sleep a little.  Three years later, on the evening when his newborn sister Belle and I came home from the hospital, I had to go in to wake Belle up to nurse, after she’d slept for five straight hours and I feared she’d succumbed to SIDS or something.  [8]  *From the get-go,* Belle was a different infant.  She would nurse heartily, then sleep heartily.  After Belle was weaned, she and K seemed to switch sleeping patterns for a little over a year – she became the night owl and he in turn liked a good 8-10 hours.   [9]

 

 

After two weeks (ha!) paternity leave, when MH was home from work he did the lion’s share of our babes’ care, except for feeding them.  We figured it made no sense for *both* parents to be sleep-deprived, and since I was the one with the human milk glands, I was the one getting up to feed them.   [10]    Several months into a brutal sleep deprivation, I tried a sleep training book’s advice: after feeding K and changing his diaper and rocking him for a bit, I’d put him down in his crib, and let him cry and cry.  It did not set well with either of K’s parents, to put it mildly.   I usually went back to K’s room after an hour, fed him/changed him/rocked him again, and he’d go back to sleep.

One night, the third or fourth in a row when we were trying the sleep training advice, MH and I were in bed, attempting to read our respective books, while K was wailing away in his bedroom.  MH, frustrated with the “let him cry” advice, announced that he couldn’t take it anymore. He got up and headed to K’s room, with moiself  trailing behind.  “He’s a baby,” MH said, as he picked up and cuddled our son, who immediately stopped his wails. “He’s just trying to tell us…something…in the only way he knows how.”

I came to the conclusion that my son may have been channeling the spirit of one of the bajillion pet hamsters I had as a child (K seemed to be nocturnal)…or maybe he was just bored and/or lonely, and guess what – he doesn’t speak yet.  Other than that, no, this 3-month-old infant who doesn’t even know his top from his bottom is not trying to manipulate me, and no thank you – and by no thank you I mean, F-off –  to the rigid asshats who are trying to convince me that he is.    [11]

 

Eventually, both K and Belle learned to speak English.

 

*   *   *

Department of Employee Of The Month  

 

 

It’s that time again, to bestow that prestigious award upon moiself.  Again. The need for which I wrote about here.   [12] 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [13]

 

*   *   *

May your pictures of yourself be just that, and not selfies;
May you shun panties: go commando, or put on underwear;
May you ban book banning and read banned books;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] Hum these three words to the tune of Winnie-the Pooh’s “Heffalumps and Woozles.” You won’t regret it.

[2] The story would be interesting even if I had no kinfolk on the cusp of parenthood; the timing of my seeing the article merely coincided.

[3] Okay; thirty years ago, anticipating/after the arrival of our first born, son K.

[4] Stealth as in, they were attempting to fly under the radar by not identifying themselves as such.

[5]  Because, as we know from SCIENCE, babies born to Christian parents will have different physiologies (digestive tracts;  REM patterns…) than babies born to Humanist, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu and Jain parents.

[6] Forget selfie; here’s a neologism which begs to be coined.

[7] That’s kind of how we viewed it – a concept shared by many new parents, as we discovered later when we compared notes.  We left the hospital, where we and our baby were being cared for by professionals…and they’re going to just let us get in the car and take our baby home, when we’ve never done this before?!?!

[8] Plus, by then, *I* needed her to nurse. Nursing mothers understands the old farm idiom of why the  cows come home.

[9] Which translates as nothing resembling a regular sleep pattern for moiself.  For the first five years of motherhood, I often felt like I’d fallen out of the zombie tree and hit every branch on the way down.

[10] K and Belle were breast fed exclusively – no bottles – when it came to liquid nourishment. They went from me to a sippy cup, which had its advantages when we saw other parents deal with the fight to get their kids to give up the bottle.

[11] K later became a fine sleeper, thank you very much.

[12] Several years ago, MH received a particularly glowing performance review from his workplace. As happy as I was for him when he shared the news, it left me with a certain melancholy I couldn’t quite peg.  Until I did.

One of the many “things” about being a writer (or any occupation working freelance at/from home) is that although you avoid the petty bureaucratic policies, bungling bosses, mean girls’ and boys’ cliques, office politics and other irritations inherent in going to a workplace, you also lack the camaraderie and other social perks that come with being surrounded by your fellow homo sapiens.  No one praises me for fixing the paper jam in the copy machine, or thanks me for staying late and helping the new guy with a special project, or otherwise says, Good on you, sister. Once I realized the source of the left-out feelings, I came up with a small way to lighten them.

[13] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org