A step forward and a step back

For most of the day today, I was in a celebratory mood… How quickly that disappeared when I read this article that my dad sent to me.

It is deeply disappointing that, just as we symbolically overturn racial prejudices that have existed since the beginning of our country and make great strides towards a government that emphasizes social freedom, our largest state goes out of its way to diminish personal rights and reinforce bigotry in some other way. California’s passing of Proposition 8 represents a huge loss for thousands of people who just wanted to be able to marry their loved one, not to mention the damage done to the great “American” ideals of liberty and equality.

When a state like California that is populous enough to wield a great influence goes out of its way to change its constitution in order to deny people their happiness - happiness that is not in any way harmful to anyone else - this reflects a major downfall for the entire nation. Not only that, but it is so disillusioning to think that the minority group that finally had their voice heard and finally beat prejudices in a huge way today played a key role in depriving another marginalized group of their rights.

So to the racial minorities that were involved in this insult to humanity: consider, for a moment, how you’d feel if it was still considered constitutional and socially acceptable to pass laws depriving you of your individual liberties.

And for all those conservative Christians who voted yes to Prop. 8, just ask yourselves: are you loving your gay neighbors as you love yourself? Are you really doing as Jesus would do?

California, I am disgusted with you. Haven’t you ever heard of “live and let live?”

Did I say California? I actually meant 48/50 states, since "Tuesday's vote drops the number of states that allow gay marriage to one, though it will soon rise again to two." As I recently mentioned, it seems like we are never able to progress without in some way regressing to compensate.

Happy Halloween!

For a minute or two, I considered putting a warning at the beginning of this post to let you know that you may find the content to be depressing. Then I realized that, by doing that, I'd be implying that this post was different than any other, that my blog entries are mostly going to be uplifting and full of hope. And, frankly, I can't make that guarantee. Besides, as the recent post in "Expressed Interest" points out, it would probably be healthier for everyone to stop assuming the best.

I have this recurring thought process floating around in my mind about the relationship between age and passion. Weirdly enough, I actually remember how and when this train of thought happened. It was at some point in high school, when I realized that Ani DiFranco's music from her late teens was much more emotionally heated than her recent stuff. And then I realized that many people seem to mellow out as they get older.

Now, I know this logic is flawed in several ways. I mean, I haven't even listened to that much of Ani DiFranco's most recent music... Um, and, more pertinently, there is the problem that some people are incredibly active and emotionally involved for all of their lives, while some 20 year olds are incredibly apathetic. Not to mention that me making these sorts of gross generalizations is just asking for someone to come along and point out that there are a zillion gaping holes in my theories and I'd do better to keep my opinions to myself.

So I'll try to fine-tune this a bit so there are fewer reasons to discredit me. First of all, there are usually a few statistical outliers, even in purely scientific cases. It's possible that intensely passionate 70 year olds and uninvolved, opinionless 20 year olds fall into this category. And while I haven't done any experiments or surveys on this topic, I take this outlook from personal experience. I don't think it is too unreasonable to suggest that, on the whole, people who are a decade or so older than me have a different outlook on life and are on a somewhat different "emotional wavelength" than my peers.*

So what happens emotionally to people as we get older? And, as a "twenty something," where does this put me?

I have no idea. On the one hand, my passions have matured. I can say pretty confidently that the things I care about now are not as petty as the things I cared about when I was 15. My outlook has also become more pessimistic, though. As my awareness of what is going on has increased, my sense of empowerment has not grown with it.

For one thing, the world has many, many more problems than I once thought it did. For much of my childhood and adolescence I wasn’t thinking about problems on that scale. I didn’t even conceive that there could be this many. It also took me some time to grasp the complexity of issues. I’ve been a proponent of the "shades of gray" perspective for a long time, but things become even less clear-cut as I get older. This means that nation- or world-wide victories are few and far between, and never concise.

Deep down in my subconcious, I used to believe that, with the passing of time, the world was becoming a better place. An article I read for a class this semester pointed out that this is a fallacy. The truth is that there were good things and bad things about the world in the past, and some of the good and bad remains today. Some things that were bad have now improved, and some things that were good have gone downhill. The same goes for the future. Things will not necessarily be fixed up as time goes on, and, if they are, other new issues will arise that need fixing.

Despite all the negative impacts this knowledge may have on my, let's say, emotional involvement and investment in the world, in some ways it is still positive and encouraging. At the very least, I have a more flexible outlook on life and a more forgiving attitude towards myself and others. And I won't waste my time trying to fix the whole world or do the concretely "right" thing. Instead, I can channel my energy into specific, smaller goals that have some positive effects.

I know that I still have time to discover what to do, how I should think and act. Yet, I can't help thinking that I should be taking advantage of the emotional drive that I have right now to do something productive with my life. Ani DiFranco had already started her own record company, made big contributions to the feminist movement, and created thoughtful, beautiful music by the time she was 22ish. Right now, one of my peers is planning, directing, and actively participating in an after-school program for a West Philadelphia school, and another is interning with an important online hub for NPOs, doing research on volunteer opportunities and organizations here in Argentina, so shouldn't I be using my own passion to do something meaningful?
...

Since I started out talking about Ani DiFranco's work, I have to put in a few good words for passion in music. Sometimes my love for a song is simply based on the level of emotion put into it. This is true for “Scars” by Papa Roach, a song that is probably considered extremely mediocre by much of the world. Not only are the lyrics just really dramatic, but every time the lead singer sings "I tear my heart open," I really believe that he was in lots of emotional pain while writing the song and probably relives that a little bit every time he performs it. In this case, passion did not inspire well-written lyrics or a fantastic show of musical talent, but that works out okay for me because the song is honest. I also very much appreciate the other side, where passion makes you write better lyrics than most of the world, like Ani DiFranco in her early years. If you want proof of this, check out the lyrics to "Fire Door" or "Work Your Way Out."

Songs that are passionate but not believably so turn me off. In my mind, it's far better to make an absolute fool of yourself and write bad lyrics that completely embody your pain than to write something that sounds nice but means nothing. Don't get me wrong, I still put on the Britney occasionally, but you'd be hard pressed to find any value in that kind of music other than purely superficial entertainment.

Alright, that's all for now! Have a good Halloween!

*And if you are following the presidential polls at all right now, you can save your anti-generalization speech for someone else, you hypocrite!

Hiatus

I know I said I wouldn't set deadlines for myself...
I still feel guilty.
I have some ideas that I put on the backburner a couple of weeks ago. I'll try to post them before October is over, so this blog doesn't look so lonely.

Why I love piercings

This weekend I was chatting with a friend of mine about music. Okay… To be honest, it was less of a conversation about music and more of a confession that I still listen to all of the pop-punk bands I loved in middle school (and even bleeding into the beginning of high school). Bands like Yellowcard, Sugarcult, Green Day, and – dare I mention – Good Charlotte that started out unsuccessfully with a more “punk” sound and eventually morphed into poppy versions of their previous selves in order to sell an album or two.

As I was talking to my friend, it occurred to me these bands could turn into a blog entry, what with my adolescent drama being plentiful and the music being age appropriate for all 7th graders and many college students. However, I’m tangent-prone enough that what started out as a reflection of my music taste as a teeny-bopper then turned to reminiscing about the Utah “punk” scene at the time... Which finally became into a contemplation of countercultures. I guess “Minority” by Green Day does kind of scream rebellion.

The thing that gets to me is that people from within mainstream society tend to label countercultures as ridiculous and creepy. Even people who consider themselves quite liberal and open-minded often write off punks, bohemians, goths, [fill in the blank] as weird and misguided. To be fair, I recognize that it’s difficult to understand a way of life that appears so different from one’s own (and, in this case, may even approach complete opposition). And misunderstandings frequently produce an attitude of discomfort and hostility.

So these hostile attitudes are commonplace, and that is distressing to me. People who dismiss countercultures are missing out on a chance to meet some valuable (and entertaining) individuals. And, much more importantly, they are missing the acute societal critique that is built into counterculture because not everyone wants to be or can be part of the norm.

Innovation is (unfortunately) not natural or spontaneous. On a societal level, rates of change can be excruciatingly slow. I mean, many religious traditions that live on today were started thousands of years ago! Taking this all into consideration, it’s not too shocking that societal customs and standards don’t evolve quickly enough to keep up with contemporary issues.

Change is not effortless, and many people are simply not willing to fight for it. I sincerely doubt that anyone is completely comfortable with how society dictates their life. This means that personal beliefs, small and large, are being sacrificed all the time in order to avoid direct confrontation with a majority that apparently disagrees.

Members of a counterculture live for change, literally. They wear distinct clothing, tout unique opinions, and make different life choices. They would rather be ostracized than give up their convictions.* It takes courage to question the system; it takes wisdom and patience to change it. This is what countercultures do.

The noticeable opposition that a counterculture poses to convention is proof that alternatives to dominant culture do exist. This is something that everyone can take comfort in: the take-home message is that feeling out of place is normal. Growing up in a particularly homogeneous society, counterculture helped me to realize that I don’t have to match my own life standards to societal demands. Rather, I can think for myself, decide what’s right for me.

Since I didn't end up blogging about pop-punk after all, I thought I'd end by giving you a little taste of it. The genre appeals to me, maybe partially because the message is good. Here are the lyrics to one of my faves. (And, if you want to find the song and listen to it, that'd probably be even better.)

Stuck in America
by Sugarcult

Today,
I changed
Too late,
'Cause everyone stayed the same
I'm gone
So long
Break out 'cause I'm better off on my own

Today
I changed
Too late
'Cause town stayed the same
I'm different
And you're distant
Add it up and it makes no difference

Everybody's talkin' bout blowing up the neighborhood
Everybody's gonna watch it burn today
Everybody's talkin' bout waking up the neighborhood
Runnin' just to get away

Stuck in America
Stuck in America
I'm lost in America
Stuck in America

Today
I changed
New town with the same old face
One way
To shake
This place that I can't escape

Everybody's talkin' bout blowing up the neighborhood
Everybody's gonna watch it burn today
Everybody's talkin' bout waking up the neighborhood
I'm still tryin' to escape

*Of course, "bandwagoners" exist in countercultures, too. Just as in the mainstream, some people will hide or deny beliefs that go against counter-cultural norms so they can fit in with the group.

As promised...

My dad sends me emails almost every day with news articles or some piece of writing based on current events. To be honest, I don't usually "get around" to reading them (yeah, I'm too lazy), but the email that he sent me about Sarah Palin piqued my interest. I had only read maybe one or two articles about her and was already feeling a little, well, taken aback by her persona. (People who want to destroy the Alaskan wilderness in order to drill for oil rarely make a good impression on me... Go figure.)

The email contained a link to a letter from Anne Kilkenny, an Alaskan who claims to knows Palin personally.

As I mention below, I don't think that this letter is a terribly valuable source of information about our new GOP candidate. I searched a bit for some kind of confirmation that some of it was true and came up with nothing but a vague description of the librarian incident (see below) and a few elusive mentions of Kilkenny in some Times articles.

Despite the dubious validity of the letter, I guess I was feeling uncharacteristically gung-ho about the whole Palin issue... Maybe it had something to do with my gut feeling that this woman was not the type that gets better as you get to know her. So before I knew it, I was searching for somewhat valid dirt on Palin at nytimes.com. And I found this article.

And wrote up a response to my Dad:

I am inclined to disregard Anne Kilkenny's letter about Sarah Palin because she does not provide any sources, admits that she can't remember how she calculated her numbers, and obviously has an axe to grind. The tone of the letter is angry; it is not about providing voters with objective information but rather about taking Palin down after she has caused some personal offense to Kilkenny surrounding the librarian incident.

That being said, Sarah Palin is proving to be an absolutely abysmal candidate for vice-president. I am offended at the implication that women (especially Hillary Clinton's supporters) would be inclined to vote for the McCain/Palin team simply because of Palin's gender. A woman who would base her vote on this fact must be single-minded to the point of blindness. Palin has negligible experience (a disaster waiting to happen paired with McCain's age), and she is socially conservative to an extreme. Not only that, but Palin's past contains hints that she opposes freedom of speech, a thoroughly frightening concept. For instance (from the NY Times article) "[during her time as Wasilla's mayor,] Ms. Palin also upended the town's traditional ways with a surprise edict: No employee was to talk to the news media without her permission." The librarian incident appears to be a somewhat indirect jab at the first amendment, but it still does indicate that Palin is pro-censorship. After spending several weeks in school discussing the effects of political and social oppression in past Argentine dictatorships and Nazi Germany, I cannot think of anything less appealing than having someone in office who will not tolerate ideas that do not completely line up with her personal agenda!
...
Woot! Instant blog entry.