Non-blog post post

I’ve had lots of good ideas for posts for The Commune this week. Some ranting. Some pointing out good things. Some talking about writing. Some not. Some going “huh”? The end result, when this happens, when I’m bombarded by ideas all at once and they all seem very good and something I should write about now, immediately, before the timeliness disappears is, you get nothing, or rather, instead of nothing, you get a recent picture of and lots of babbling about the puppy.

He’s eight months old now, weighs somewhere around 50-lbs, and will still be in the chewing stage for at least two more months.

Most days, it's hard to remember how small he was a mere six months ago, but I'm glad he joined our lives, even when he's a complete and total PITA. I hope the chewing stage ends soon.

First They Came

Some days I feel like I'm the crazy person standing on the street corner shouting about Armageddon and conspiracy theories. Some days I feel like we need more crazy people standing on street corners and shouting. It seems like every time I turn around, there’s something else that makes me stop dead in my tracks and say, “You have got to be kidding me?”

Two months ago, it was discovered that Amazon was deranking books with homosexual content. Not just books with graphic sexual content, mind you, but children’s books, like Heather Has Two Mommies. Meanwhile, things like Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds were still ranked. Understand, Amazon’s ranking system includes the tags which make books easy to find if you don’t know the exact title or author. Deranking certain books was the equivalent of keeping them under the counter where customers had to specifically request them. When I told some friends, who are readers but otherwise not part of the publishing industry, I was a bit shocked by their nonchalance. I was disappointed – no, disappointed is too light of a term; I was appalled – when one long-term friend told me she believed Amazon had been “too limited in the net they cast.” [Anonymous]

I was appalled because, although it was a right-wing Christian who uttered this comment, she is also a well-educated individual. As such, I would have hoped she understood the world is not limited to her experiences and beliefs. There are others with different experiences, different traditions, and different beliefs who hold their history and life-paths just as dear and precious as she holds her own. I had hoped she would be able to understand it is one thing to live one’s life according to one’s own belief system, but quite another to attempt to remake the world and force everyone else to live according to her worldview. To do so marginalizes and oppresses many.

I believe firmly in the message of Martin Niemöller’s poem “First they came…” If I do not speak out for others, even if they are not part of my tribe, who then will speak out for me in my hour of need?

The Bahá’í Faith teaches, “Should any king take up arms against another, all should unitedly arise and prevent him.” [Gleanings, 249] I personally believe this should be taken one step further. Whenever another individual attempts to oppress another through physical or other means, we should all unitedly arise and prevent it. In order to create a society in which everyone is free, we must be willing to champion that freedom, even for those who are unlike us.

More recently, four men from the Christian Civil Liberties Union in West Bend, Wisconsin, have filed a lawsuit because it finds a young adult novel dealing with homosexuality to be “explicitly vulgar, racial [sic], and anti-Christian.” [Flood] First, I have to ask since when is it a crime to be anti-Christian? Since when is that an offense one could reasonable expect to take to court? There is absolutely nothing in any US constitution, state or federal, which says any individual must be pro-Christian. That’s the beauty of living in the United States. I can be against anything I choose to be against and for anything I wish to support. I don’t have to be any certain religion. I don’t have to be any religion at all.

This protection is not limited to certain sects of Christianity. It encompasses all religions and non-religion, too. Your rights end where the next person’s begin; it is the next person’s right to not support Christianity if they so choose. My beliefs, my neighbor’s beliefs, your neighbor’s beliefs, do not infringe on your right to believe as you do. While Christianity may be the dominant religion in the United States, it is far from the only legitimate belief system; there is no state religion.

The Bible the members of the Christian Civil Liberties Union have read must have been far different than any of the copies I have studied. All the versions of the Bible I have had the privilege to read have one thing in common: they relay a message of compassion and acceptance as taught by the prophets of the Christian faith. The desire to remove access to other ideas and ways of being is not an act of compassion or acceptance. It is bigotry and oppression. It has as its source, not tolerance, but hate.

I’m not going to repeat the childhood adage, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” because I do believe words have power. They can slice to the quick faster than the sharpest sword. As such, they should be used wisely. I also believe words and ideas are precious, and should never be discarded out of hand. If we find them offensive, it is better to ask ourselves why, because obviously they have touched a nerve within us, than to shove them aside and pretend they do not exist. I believe in self-realization, not in persecuting others.

The thing is, this is not a fluffy bunny world. It will never be completely inoffensive. Nothing anyone does is going to make it that way. No matter what you object to, no matter what causes you offense, there will be people out there who believe exactly the opposite. There will be people out there, standing on opposite street corners from you, shouting just as loudly as you, about things that make your blood boil. And, you know what? They have as much right to shout as you do. They have as much right to exist, and believe as they believe, as you do. If you truly believe in freedom of speech, you will not try to change that.

And if you don’t truly believe in Freedom of Speech, do not attempt to use the First Amendment to further your own private, personal agendas. That’s not its purpose.

__________

Anonymous. “RE:Mail blocked due to Inappropriate Content.” E-mail to the Author. April 14, 2009.

Flood, Alison. “Christian group sues for right to burn gay teen novel.” The Guardian. June 12, 2009. .

Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh. Trans. By Shoghi Effendi. Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1952.

“Martin Niemöller.” Wikiquote. Last Updated June 21, 2009.

You're selling what?

Commercials are scaring me lately. The commercials themselves aren’t frightening but what they are saying about people and what we’re willing to do to ourselves, or sacrifice for the sake of convenience, is.

Take, for example, the commercials for Latisse, the first FDA-approved drug designed to – get this – help you grow longer, thicker lashes. Let me say that again, in case you didn’t hear it the first time: the sole purpose of this drug is to help people – the marketing is targeted to women – grow longer, thicker lashes. This means that the drug companies believe there are people out there willing to ingest drugs into their system just to get Bambi-like lashes. I have no doubt the drug companies are right. Just when we’re starting to realize there are too many artificial ingredients in our food, when we’re finding prescription medications in the drinking water, when parents are starting to demand that the potential connection between immunizations and autism be explored, when a record number of people do not have proper healthcare, there are people seeking prescriptions so their lashes will be longer. Oh, and did I mention that one of the side effects of this drug is a potential permanent change in eye color?

Yeah. I believe this drug is safe. It can’t be doing anything harmful to the body if its worse possible side effect is changing an aspect of ourselves that’s determined by our very genes. (That’s sarcasm, by the way.)

One of the other commercials that has me pounding my head against the nearest unresisting surface are those for Bing. In case you hadn’t heard, Bing is Microsoft’s latest entry into the search engine wars. It is not, the marketing tells us, a search engine, but a decision engine. According to the commercials airing for Bing, the human race is so overwhelmed by options, they are no longer able to answer simple questions or make basic decisions. Bing is the alleged solution to all of this. When you are looking for information on the internet, it can decide what you’re really seeking for you. The mere human user doesn’t have to worry about all of those pesky choices. Just let the computer do it for you.

Isn’t that the premise of multiple science fiction movies and novels? The machines come alive, start thinking for themselves, and attempt to destroy the human race. Why does this not sound like something we should be actively pursuing to me? Why does the fact that Bing removes my ability to make my own decisions not sound like a selling point? I like making my own choices, I like learning things I didn’t know before. And on those occasions when I don’t, or can’t, figure out the best option for myself, I prefer to choose who helps me out of my quandary by going to other humans that I respect and trust and who have knowledge in the area that I’m stuck in. Far better to do that than trust a mindless, soulless machine programmed by a team of computer engineers whose primary purposes are to advance their own interests and take home a paycheck, not necessarily in that order.

It’s long past time for people to start collectively questioning what advertisers are telling them and why they’re trying to sell the products that they’re selling. If you’re really so into your appearance that you’re willing to rise permanent changes to traits that are considered identifying markers, then perhaps you should look into therapy instead of new prescription medications, because really, how full your lashes are, it’s just not that important to risk your health, or risk further pollution to the planet, for.

As for making your own decisions? There’s a saying amongst writers: Own your words. It means take responsibility for what you say and how you say it. As writers, we are expected to have greater control of how we use language. The rest of the population needs to take on the same standard of conducted. Own your actions. Make your own decisions. Choose wisely. And, if in doubt, ask questions, both of yourselves and of the people trying to sell you things.

In this increasingly virtual world...

In this increasingly virtual world, it is sometimes easy to forget that the people on the other side of the screen are more than the sum of the text they choose to share with us and what we read between the lines may not be reality. Often times, what people choose to share online fails to give the complete story. There are many reasons for this. Perhaps the person doesn’t feel like sharing the full details – they are real people, after all, and entitled to their privacy. Perhaps they aren’t writers and don’t have strong non-verbal communication skills. Perhaps the medium – as in the case of Twitter – doesn’t lend itself to providing full details. There’s only so much you can, or should, say in 140-characters. Maybe the person is just tired and doesn’t feel like typing all the pertinent details out. Or, again, just maybe, it’s none of your business and the person on the other side of the screen is not obligated to share every detail of their existence with anyone with online access.

In a post I would like to see made famous, Neil Gaiman informed a group of readers who were attempting to demand George R.R. Martin do nothing but write – no days out, no watching football, no nothing except writing – that George R.R. Martin was not their bitch. He was entitled to a life apart from the characters and series they had fallen in love with. In fact, he might need a life apart from the character and series in order to be able to create it. When it came to his private life and personal decisions, Martin did not answer to them.

During my growing up years, the only ways people had to reach out and touch you over long distances were by postal mail or telephone. The only individuals with that sort of access usually already knew you. You were highly unlikely to encounter a stranger’s opinion about the letter you wrote to grandma when you answered the telephone or to find that someone you had only conversed with on the most basic level had reached a conclusion about who you were and how you needed to improve based on a comment you had made to friend during a late night phone conversation. Such things were, generally speaking, private. Not so these days.

These days, you can have deep lasting friendships with people you’ve never met anywhere except online. Many of your exchanges with these friends are in the public domain. Snippets of dialogue found in one online locale are continuations of much longer conversations from other internet dominions. Those snippets are used by passerby to form a full image of you devoid of any background or other contextual information. From these snatches of dialogue they feel free to evaluate your existence and judge how you are living your life.

My father’s parents and siblings were not the nicest of people. Sometimes, his siblings would call into the house, intoxicated and belligerent. I was taught from an early age that there was nothing that compelled me to accept a phone call from anyone. Just because someone called into the house and I answered the phone, I was under no obligation to listen to them. I was free to hang up the handset and walk away any time I chose to do so.

Increasingly prevalent technology has not changed this. It is still merely a tool and if someone uses it to cross the boundaries of acceptability, I am not obligated to allow them to continue to do so. As much as people are free to say whatever they want, I am free not to listen. It is an empowering realization and is true not only of phones, but also forums, blogs, twitter, IM, and e-mail. Nowhere, in any contract or agreement that I’ve signed, does it say I must accept communication from any individual not affiliated with the companies providing the service to me.

Life is just too short to allow people who raise your blood pressure or who only want you to feel horrible to have access to you. Life is too short to allow others to judge you and tell you how to live your life. You are the only person who can make the best decisions for you. I am the only person who can make the best decisions for me.

Make History: Write Like a Child

For many years now, I’ve been a moderator over at the Absolute Write forums. As new writers come and go from the boards, there are a handful of questions that are perennial. One such question is, basically, “What is (un)acceptable to write?” The questions take on various forms, such as, “How much violence can I include?” “Can I talk about child rape?” “Am I allowed to…” I now have an answer for every writer who ever wondered where the line is: Write like you were a child.

By this, I do not mean keep your story G-rated, with unicorns and fairies and happily ever after endings. Children are not the pure, innocent creatures we pretend they are. Babies might be pure and innocent, but by the time our offspring leaves the toddler stage to become a small child, innocence has been left far behind. Instead I mean to say (and by that I mean write) whatever comes to your head, no matter how inappropriate you might consider it to be.

The other day, I was walking Sam and I came across a little boy riding his bike in the road. Sam was on “short leash,” walking right next to me, but I still tightened my grip on the leash. Sam is well-trained, but he’s still just a puppy, even if he’s a big puppy, and the boy was only about 5 years old or so, still riding a bike with training wheels, right at Sam’s level. A bike that size was new and I could see Sam suddenly deciding it needed to be investigated. Dogs, especially puppies, are a lot like toddlers. They move quickly and not always in the way you’re anticipating.

About that time, Sam sniffed something worthy of his attention in the yard we walking past. I glanced over and saw an old pile of doggy doo. I called him to me. Told him to “leave it.” Which he did.

At this, the child spoke up. “Don’t worry. They won’t care if he goes to the bathroom. They have three dogs and a cat.”

The adult in me was thinking, “Yes, but it’s their dogs and cat in their yard. They might mind if my dog goes in their yard,” but I said, “Yeah. He was sniffing one of their dogs poop and he’s been known to roll in it.” I smiled and wrinkled my nose.

The child made a face. “Eww.”

“Yeah,” I said.

At which point the boy must have decided I was all right, in a way that only a child can quickly size an individual up. He proceeded to point out which house he lived in and talk about his dog. He explained to me that his dog was a boy and he would “hump” (the so-called innocent child’s word, not mine) other boy dogs, even if they were lying down.

Now, I know that male dogs will hump other male dogs as a sign of dominance, but I did not say this to the child. That would have been far too pedantic and though I am capable of being far too pedantic, even I have my limits. Also, I was struck by the boy’s openness and his willingness to say whatever came into his head, without worrying about causing offense. He did not stop to consider that he was talking about what many would consider homosexual behavior, that there were people who would condemn him for daring to even allude to such things, that sex discussions in any form, even when talking about animals, are often taboo subjects, and I was a stranger who might possibly be offended in multiple ways by his words. No. He just said what he wanted to say, sharing the information he wanted to share. It’s what children do.

Writers should be as open and as unconcerned about causing offense as children are. When writing, say what’s on your mind, what you want to say, without worrying about consequences or tact. Forget the social niceties about what is and is not proper that have been drummed into you since your parents first heard you talking about the dog’s bathroom habits at the formal dinner party with your father’s boss and the church minister.

If you’re always worrying about who might be offended by the words and scenes you’re creating, you’re far less likely to write anything worthwhile. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich said, “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” As writers, we need to adapt this philosophy and make it our own. Authors who are constantly concerned about what is and is not acceptable or proper are not going to publish anything that removes the blinders from people’s eyes or changes the world around them.

To every budding writer out there who has been concerned that they should not write something because someone somewhere might possibly be offended by it, I say good. Let them be offended. Let them question their values and the values of the world around them. Make readers become aware there is more to the world than their nice safe corner of it. If your words encourage someone to think beyond their own limited experiences, than that is the type of writing that will stand the test of time.

Go out there. Write like a child, free of inhibitions, and do not worry about being a well-behaved author. After all, you want to make history.