Think About It! – Page 8

Supernatural Before It’s Natural

December 6, 2011

If you were to travel back 500 years and tell people then that we can light up a room by flipping a switch on a wall, what would they think? They’d probably think it’s magic. They’d probably try to burn you for being a witch. Or they’d probably think you’re lying, that it’s impossible. They’d probably think lighting a room by a simple switch on a wall rather than lighting a candle or lantern is just some supernatural, science fiction idea.

But now, we have long since harnessed electricity and made it light our rooms as well as do a zillion other things. It’s not some crazy supernatural idea anymore. It’s not something only perhaps some divine power can do. It’s something that through many discoveries we’ve found how to do ourselves, that such a power already exists in the natural world.

Then there’s the electromagnetic spectrum. We can only see visible light, but of course the spectrum is a hell of a lot bigger than that, with all the microwaves and infrared, and on the other side ultraviolet and ionizing radiation. But we have little to no way of knowing these invisible wavelengths are there without special technology. Before such a thing was known, if the idea of undetectable waves flying around were suggested, you’d seem crazy, like you’re believing in things you can’t prove. Although, as we now know, more accurately that statement would be “things you can’t prove YET”. Up until that point, the idea of such invisible energy was perhaps… a supernatural concept.

All that said, I do tire of religious people using “there’s so much in the universe we can’t explain” to essentially mean “so there must be a God!” Um, no shit there’s so much we can’t explain. Earth is the only part of the universe we know all that well and can live on (as of right now anyway), and even here on our own planet there’s so much undiscovered. Even as far as we’ve come, we’ve barely even left tiny scratches in the surface of all there is. But that doesn’t translate to “God did it”. It translates to “we just haven’t discovered it yet”.
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Unconsciously Prejudiced

November 10, 2011

I hereby decree…

Yes, you ARE racist/sexist/ageist/homophobic/etc.

You just don’t know it.

Wait, what? What am I saying? If you were bigoted or prejudiced, wouldn’t you be aware of it? Wouldn’t it be obvious?

No. Doesn’t work that way. Most prejudices (except for ageism I guess, since that one is still socially acceptable) today are unknown to those who hold them. It’s unconscious.

The idea of white being the standard or male being the standard is so ingrained in our society, so laced in culture and attitudes and language, that it’d be a miracle not to adopt even the slightest unconscious belief that non-white and/or female is somehow “other”.

So don’t take offense to this. In fact, it’s through challenging these assumptions that we can seek out these harder to extinguish bugs of bigotry. Take it as a suggestion, not an insult. True, it is sometimes used as an insult, and that’s not right, nor is someone who points out a possible prejudice in you always necessarily right. In the long run, you do yourself a favor examining yourself for personal unseen prejudices, before it settles in too much.

Let’s take sexism for example. Let’s say you’re part of a group of people, mostly male, let’s say six guys for every one girl. And you generally like most of these people, but some of these people you find really goddamn annoying. You find them hostile or rude or demanding or ignorant. Oh, and the majority of these annoying people just happen to be girls. In a group where girls are outnumbered by guys six to one.
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Matilda’s Rights

October 30, 2011

So the movie “Matilda” has been playing on TV a bit lately. Based on the Roald Dahl book, it came out in 1996. I remember seeing it in theaters. I was 13 at the time.

Matilda is a little telekinetic genius who is stuck with a family that decidedly hates her. Seriously, day she was born, her parents were for some reason pissed and didn’t want her. From then on she’s pretty much neglected entirely. It’s okay because she’s a genius (whether because her neglect meant she had to take care of herself or because of some hardwired gift, it’s unclear, maybe both) and made herself some pancakes instead of the canned soup her mom left for her.

Anyway, she teaches herself to read, gets herself to the library by herself at age four, and the librarian, instead of calling the cops because a little four-year-old is out walking around by herself, helps her find some books. Then she tells her dad she’s supposed to be in school, because she wants to learn more and actually interact with other kids. Her dad refuses until tyrannical headmistress Trunchbull shows up and mentions she has a school, and the dad figures the school seems abusive enough for the daughter he hates.
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Common Decency

September 24, 2011

Imagine someone is sitting on a couch, drinking a cup of juice, watching TV, just chilling, when suddenly she despite all care accidentally spills some juice on the cushion. Someone else sees this and screams at her for doing this. Doesn’t matter the spiller felt bad enough already for having done so. No, this other person felt the need to scream at her.

Goodness, I can see the second person not wanting her couch cushions stained but lighten up!

Oh, have I mentioned the first person is the young daughter of the second person?

Yet somehow that makes a difference here.

And there’s excuses for such different treatment. Had the spiller been the close in age sister or friend of the screamer, we’d have little trouble seeing her behavior as problematic, going nuts on someone for a small accident. Yet when the spiller is a child and the screamer her mother? Suddenly it’s all about “teaching her what she did was wrong”. And if there were a third person seeing or hearing about this scenario and dared to speak up saying “goodness, it was just an accident, not the end of the world” then would come the well-worn “don’t interfere with how I deal with my child!”

It’s considered virtuous perhaps to intervene or speak up, even if a total stranger, when you happen upon someone treating another in a harsh or abusive way. When it’s an adult treating a child in a harsh or abusive way, however, then the “correct” thing to do is ignore it and stay out of it.
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Issue of Trivial Issues

August 8, 2011

Can there really be any “trivial” issues if they are the result of the same oppressive system that breeds the non-trivial ones?

Been talking to new fellow NYRA Board Members Kathleen O’Neal and Samantha Godwin about this. Is it useless, perhaps even harmful, to work on “less serious” youth rights issues when there are more serious ones?

For example, a few times in NYRA we’ve discussed campaign finance laws, that limit the financial contributions minors can make to political candidates. From a fairness standpoint, obviously, this is wrong because your contributions should not be limited just because of your age. From another standpoint, well, if this rule were changed, would it really make that much of a difference to youth as a whole? Wouldn’t the only youth helped at all be those already economically privileged enough to be giving huge amounts to political campaigns?
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I Have a Confession to Make

April 29, 2011

I watched it.

Yup. Woke up just before 6am this morning and turned on the TV to BBC America, just in time for the service. I watched the royal wedding. I watched Prince William and Catherine Middleton get married, just like the whole rest of the world.

At Westminster Abbey, which I visited when I was in London a year and a half ago, so that was kind of cool on its own! 😀

In spite of the annoying obsessions over it, positive and negative, I still watched it.

Then again, why not? It was cute. It was neat. The people on the ground there watching the event and decked out in union jack-themed costumes were hilariously cheesy. It was seeing the continuance of old tradition. It made lots of people happy.
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Fandom Is Not Blind

December 19, 2010

At least not when it has any degree of intelligence.

For example, every time Obama does something most of his supporters don’t like (which is all the time, but more on that in a sec), you get the conservatives and libertarians acting all like “see, see, and you all thought he was so great!” Or, a few years ago, liberals showing the conservatives the atrocities of the Iraq War and other shit George W. Bush did, saying they cannot possibly support him now.

Yeah, it doesn’t quite work that way. Being a fan, whether of a politician, a musician, sports team, or whatever else, does NOT mean blind agreement with each and every single thing they do, say, or believe. It does not mean finding out they said or did something you strongly disagree with means disavowing any and all support (though it might, depending on severity).

Yes, Obama has done things I do not agree with. And I knew this when I voted for him, when I was glad he won, when I watched his inauguration hopefully. Despite the campaigns making him seem like a second Jesus, nobody (well, again, who has any degree of intelligence [in b4 “LOL that rules out all his supporters!”]) actually thought this about him. He’s still a damn politician, and therefore still going to break promises. Anyone who actually expects to only vote for a politician who is line with their own views and values 200% will then never vote for anyone and is an idiot.
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Just Add Alcohol

December 14, 2010

You know what’s annoying about the drinking age? Aside from the fact that it exists? It’s like a go-to excuse for all sorts of other ageism against young people.

There are many hotels out there that will not let you check in if you are under 21. Hell, Holiday Inn Express’s website will even tell you point blank on their hotels’ pages the minimum check-in age. What’s often the little excuse for having this ridiculous rule? “Oh, we don’t want there to be underage drinking parties!”

Well, the logic there crumbles easily. Most parties with alcohol have at least a few people 21 or older around, mostly since they’re the ones who supply the alcohol to begin with. And if they have the 21+ people for that, chances are those people would be the ones checking in. As long as you allow anyone under 21 to stay at your hotel at all, even families, you run the risk of having underage drinking on your premises. Please. These rules don’t attack underage drinking. They attack youth independence.
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Old Songs Are Old

December 10, 2010

You know what’s cool about some Christmas carols? Like the super old ones, like Silent Night and Hark the Herald Angels Sing? They’ve been around a long ass time.

I was watching the 1938 version of A Christmas Carol this evening, and when Scrooge is with Christmas Present he’s watching his nephew and the Cratchits in church. Where everyone was singing O Come All Ye Faithful. And then I just got this feeling, that this movie from 1938, about a story written and taking place in like 1850 or so, features a church service where they are singing O Come All Ye Faithful. The very same O Come All Ye Faithful I’ll be singing at a church service on Christmas Eve here in 2010.

Times like this I understand more why people cling to their religions and/or traditions. Not so much necessarily any ideological reasons, but that belonging to some long-running chain of events, that makes one feel part of that something bigger, yet in a sense that each one of us is significant in it. Something like that.

When I went to London last year, I visited Saint Paul’s Cathedral, which has been there for like over a millennium. Or, more accurately, since it was rebuilt after that big ass London fire in like 1666 or something, but in any case, that site has been used for religious purposes for that millennium or so. While I was there, they did a quick afternoon service and some choir was singing. And I thought while sitting there that here I was, witnessing yet another service in the countless number of them that had been going on there since so very many centuries ago. Neat.

Christmas songs are perhaps my favorite thing about the season, what with embodying all the traditions have been swept into the veritable Katamari that Christmas is, as well as the general joy. And music is fun anyway!

And I wonder that a century from now, two centuries from now, they’ll still be singing Silent Night and Angels We Have Heard on High, as well as the newer but just as fun and meaningful songs, and the even more Christmas songs that have yet to be composed. Now that’s what I call seeing Christmas Past, Present, and Future!

The One About Jesus

December 9, 2010

Did I ever tell you the story about Santa Claus? He’s the guy who lives at the North Pole for some reason and has a magic sleigh and reindeer with which he zips around the world Christmas Eve night and delivers presents to everyone!

Did I ever tell you the one about Santa’s ninth reindeer, Rudolph? He was born with a glowing red nose, and the other reindeer bullied him over it, until one foggy Christmas Eve, when Santa couldn’t fly anywhere because magic sleighs and flying reindeer are no match for ordinary fog that apparently covers the entire world, they realized Rudolph’s red nose makes a fine fog light, so they were able to go out after all.
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