So, it's been over a year since I've been told that I ought to start blogging more. I did a couple about six months ago (or gosh, nine months ago now. This year has gone by so fast), but I haven't dug into the stuff that I'm afraid to write about--what I'm learning by living in the Rainier Valley, about race, about privilege, about how to communicate with people who have experienced different levels of social power than I have.
In fact, talking about power at all is inherently distasteful to me. I am learning to do it, and recognize it, but it still just makes me ill. Why is that? I guess I want to think that we really do start from the same basic place, my friends, the people I talk to, the people who I love and want to engage with--I come in to most conversations (I think) with the basic assumption that the person sitting across from me has just as much confidence (or more) than I do, and feels that they're just as good as I am (or better).
And yet, one of the main things I've struggled to learn this last year, as I begin to talk to people about racism, and Christian faith, and how to work for justice for all people, that I don't walk into conversations as "just me". I don't enter a conversation just as Dan, who thinks the Bible is really interesting, and can't stand putting academics up on pedestals, and who thinks that the most important things I've learned spiritually have come from friends and from prayer and from journaling, and who really wants to be on the right side of the racism issue, and who doesn't have any desire to see people of color put down, and who wants to be liked by people of color and who wants my friends of color to see me as someone on their side, who they can trust and want to be with.
Nope, I don't enter into a group, a conversation, or a church, just as that person--how I see myself. I enter as a tall white guy, who has a graduate degree with four letters (M.Div, the stupidest degree name on the planet, by the way--I guess they used the word 'divinity' a little differently back then, but now it just sounds like I'm mastering God. Which is funny.) I enter conversations as someone who never had to learn a second language, unless I felt like it, for fun, who never had to experience being 'the minority' at school, and have teachers of a different skin color talk about how they should all be really nice to me now because just a couple decades ago my parents couldn't get a drink of water at the same fountain as people of the same color as all the people around me. To put all this short, I enter into a conversation as someone with power.
That ugly, ugly word again. What does it mean? When I walk into a room I can tell people of color what to do, and for some reason they have to do it? I don't feel that kind of power. Does it mean that I have all this confidence, this great sense of self that comes from having all of society's privileges open to me? I sure don't feel that. My own experience of childhood was one of intense insecurity, and often when entering into new social situations I still feel that insecurity.
What does it mean to have power that I do not feel? That I do not know how to use? That people tell me I am using when I had no conscious intention of using it--this power that I don't know I have?
Most of what I know at this point is only intellectual--I don't really feel any of it, still don't really KNOW (in the biblical sense, heh heh) what it is. And I still have no idea how to write about it.
I'm getting that it is completely intertwined with culture. And that because people of my culture and skin color have kicked out, kicked down, made laws against, moved away from, people of other cultures and skin colors for generations, that means that my culture has become 'a norm'. So ways of speaking, (for example, speaking very explicitly about a desire, something I want from someone else), ways of learning (going through a process step by step, definining each task along the way), ways of operating in groups (wanting to see a community come to a quick, specific decision, perhaps), these things that I take all for granted as 'just the way people work'--is actually just the way that certain people work. So I can be in a conversation where the other person and I are using the same words in different ways, and there is serious misunderstanding.
Here's the rub. When that misunderstading occurs, I am much more likely than a person of color to just assume that my thinking is right. Because I never had another, dominant culture living around me and over me teaching me that my way of thinking isn't right. Because I grew up in an environment where my culture was taken for granted, so my approach, when encountering thinking radically different from my own, is to retreat easily to "well, he or she just doesn't understand".
But when people do that to you, you feel invalidated. Here's a different rub, because being part of a multicultural community, I have felt that kind of invalidation a few times. This sense that I only think the way I do because I just don't get it, and if I spend some more time here, and pay attention, then I will just get how my thinking is off. So in those situations, I feel like the one without power, because I want these people of color to like me, I want to feel respected, I want to feel like my beliefs and ways of thinking are valid and valuable.
So pretzel it back (is 'pretzel' a verb? It is now)--where is all this power I supposedly have? I have it because I can go anywhere else in the broader society and receive confirmation for my views and my emotions from people who are more like me. What I am experiencing in the Rainier Valley is what people of color must experience, constantly, in the overall culture. But for them, going through that cultural stress, and going through those feelings of they're just forcing me to 'get it' like them, is necessary to get a job, buy a home, get any kind of education--it's like society-wide required culture stress, and coupled with the conscious or sub-conscious discomfort that people of the dominant culture have towards them.
Even as I write this, it seems extremely paltry. This is fairly basic stuff in the books and the classes and the everything else on cultural competency, and yet I'm needing to keep writing it out and analyzing it because it's not sinking in on some level. How does the 'system' operate? What is 'the system'? After a few years of reading and discussing, I still don't feel like I have a solid answer to that question. The main reason that learning about racism and privilege and power is so scary for me is that it makes me feel so dense. Truly, truly dumb.
And I don't like that.
But I have to keep going.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Friday, September 01, 2006
dis/engage
Recently I've been struggling with one of my recurring bouts of anxiedepressinsecurity--this time, though, I'm starting to see a little more of a pattern in how I approach life. In my social life, in bigger tasks, and even in everyday life. I engage to a point, I'm not as successful as I would like, then I burn out easily and go back to disengaging (disengaging often looks like web-surfing or browsing book stores, with no real intention to sit and read).I go through spurts where I initiate more friendships, I go through phases where I try a new ministry, a new group, etc. But it doesn't take too long before I lose steam and I just don't feel the need to work so hard. I get sick of being in charge and can't wait until I can just kick back and be by myself again.
I covered a lot of this, actually, in my previous post about my dream (which is no longer viewable, but oh well). But what I am realizing is that same 'tourist tendency' is brought into my social life as well--I am interested in being a part of a social group for my own sense of well-being, but the thought of having to put extended effort into it overwhelms me and makes me want to disengage.Is it just laziness? In some ways, yes, but there is more to it than that. Take the whole issue of social competence. Even the thought of thinking more of what I wear, how to appear confident, reading social situations, etc, just seems so daunting, because there is this underlying sense that no matter how hard I try I will never succeed in the way I would like, and, extra kicker, that I will lose myself in the process. The genuineness that I value so incredibly highly will diminish if I start down the road of thinking about the impression I give, the more superficial aspects of getting along socially. I will get sucked into something that won't let go, and I'll be giving into the same culture that cruelly excludes those who don't keep up with the polish, the success, the confidence that we all prize so highly.
I do have this nagging anxiety that any step toward conforming to what our culture values, be it style, property, success, or whatever, will quickly eat me alive and I'll lose any sense of living how Christ calls us to live, and valuing what he calls us to value. Am I over-fearing this? I also seem to hear an alternate call, a calmer voice that tells me that engaging in social and cultural norms is actually a part of valuing myself, of choosing to engage and see myself as a valuable member of society. But I just don't know. What is healthy engagement, and what is compromise?
I covered a lot of this, actually, in my previous post about my dream (which is no longer viewable, but oh well). But what I am realizing is that same 'tourist tendency' is brought into my social life as well--I am interested in being a part of a social group for my own sense of well-being, but the thought of having to put extended effort into it overwhelms me and makes me want to disengage.Is it just laziness? In some ways, yes, but there is more to it than that. Take the whole issue of social competence. Even the thought of thinking more of what I wear, how to appear confident, reading social situations, etc, just seems so daunting, because there is this underlying sense that no matter how hard I try I will never succeed in the way I would like, and, extra kicker, that I will lose myself in the process. The genuineness that I value so incredibly highly will diminish if I start down the road of thinking about the impression I give, the more superficial aspects of getting along socially. I will get sucked into something that won't let go, and I'll be giving into the same culture that cruelly excludes those who don't keep up with the polish, the success, the confidence that we all prize so highly.
I do have this nagging anxiety that any step toward conforming to what our culture values, be it style, property, success, or whatever, will quickly eat me alive and I'll lose any sense of living how Christ calls us to live, and valuing what he calls us to value. Am I over-fearing this? I also seem to hear an alternate call, a calmer voice that tells me that engaging in social and cultural norms is actually a part of valuing myself, of choosing to engage and see myself as a valuable member of society. But I just don't know. What is healthy engagement, and what is compromise?
Saturday, July 09, 2005
new title--old issues
Hey--If you've read much of this, you'll notice I changed the title to something a bit less show-offy academic. I'd like to continue with this, but with a more focused goal--to look at the fundamental ways in which we think about relationship, human worth, possessions, emotion, identity, etc. etc. If you have any suggestions, fire them my way.
One fundamental premise that I try to keep in mind is that in all issues of virtue and evil, there are individual and structural elements intertwined. So poverty is not just about how much money I give to poor people, or charitable organizations, but about how I spend my money, what companies I support, how much I am willing to support publicly funded efforts to help people, etc. So far, pretty basic--this is 'structural sin 101'. I am also interested in looking at how our fundamental values and beliefs actually perpetuate and uphold these structures, even if I oppose them at the 'structural level'. For example, I might not like certain oil companies because of how they treat the environment, or their labor in other countries, so I don't buy their particular gas. But do I still assume that I should be able to buy the cheapest gas possible? It is the notion that we should get the most product for the least amount of expenditure on my part, that creates a cost-minimizing system in the first place? Can I look at my gas dollars as something I'm willing to spend more of in order to fund better care for workers and better environmental care? Am I willing to look at fossil-fuel transportation as a privilege that should be used sparingly, rather than as an inherent 'right', that I deserve to have as cheaply as possible?
I know--critiques of capitalism are pretty old, as well. And I actually agree with those who say that 'captialism is the worst system, except for all the other ones'. The reason that econimc liberalization is able to do better, on balance, at producing relatively comfortable societies is that it harnesses our greed and our drive for convenience and uses that as the engine for production, rather than trying to keep it in check, and limit greed for the sake of others. However, since there are inevitably big winners and big losers in this game, we simply shift massive, practically authoritarian levels of power from 'big government' to 'big corporations', with very little real difference for those on the bottom in terms of their poverty and relative powerlessness.
Capitalism is absolutely dependent on self-interest as the primary engine. Jesus teaches us to lay down our lives for others. Communism tries to make people do that on a society-wide level, with problematic results because 1) it must seriously curtail freedoms in order to do so, and 2) the system still needs to be organized by people with power, who eventually enjoy their power and become extremely oppressive themselves.
This is mostly personal mental spew, so I apologize. The point is: the real problem is our greed. The real problem is our desire for power and security on our own terms--our willingness to push others down to get it, or our willingness to turn a blind eye to the suffering of others when we have it, and are used to it. the real problem is the assumption that we should get the best deal we can for ourselves, rather than asking how our resources can best be poured out in service to others. the real problem is that in this area of economics, it is structurally and paradigmatically near-impossible to emobody the ethic of honoring others above ourselves.
How to change our hearts? How to really trust God for our power and security, and accept gladly what he gives and not crave more?
To start, we have to take seriously what Jesus teaches about wealth. I'd like to start out by suggesting that Jesus really does condemn wealth--not just say that we can have as much wealth as we want as long as 'our hearts are not attached to it'. Too strong a claim? Maybe. Next time I'll try and take a look at the evidence.
One fundamental premise that I try to keep in mind is that in all issues of virtue and evil, there are individual and structural elements intertwined. So poverty is not just about how much money I give to poor people, or charitable organizations, but about how I spend my money, what companies I support, how much I am willing to support publicly funded efforts to help people, etc. So far, pretty basic--this is 'structural sin 101'. I am also interested in looking at how our fundamental values and beliefs actually perpetuate and uphold these structures, even if I oppose them at the 'structural level'. For example, I might not like certain oil companies because of how they treat the environment, or their labor in other countries, so I don't buy their particular gas. But do I still assume that I should be able to buy the cheapest gas possible? It is the notion that we should get the most product for the least amount of expenditure on my part, that creates a cost-minimizing system in the first place? Can I look at my gas dollars as something I'm willing to spend more of in order to fund better care for workers and better environmental care? Am I willing to look at fossil-fuel transportation as a privilege that should be used sparingly, rather than as an inherent 'right', that I deserve to have as cheaply as possible?
I know--critiques of capitalism are pretty old, as well. And I actually agree with those who say that 'captialism is the worst system, except for all the other ones'. The reason that econimc liberalization is able to do better, on balance, at producing relatively comfortable societies is that it harnesses our greed and our drive for convenience and uses that as the engine for production, rather than trying to keep it in check, and limit greed for the sake of others. However, since there are inevitably big winners and big losers in this game, we simply shift massive, practically authoritarian levels of power from 'big government' to 'big corporations', with very little real difference for those on the bottom in terms of their poverty and relative powerlessness.
Capitalism is absolutely dependent on self-interest as the primary engine. Jesus teaches us to lay down our lives for others. Communism tries to make people do that on a society-wide level, with problematic results because 1) it must seriously curtail freedoms in order to do so, and 2) the system still needs to be organized by people with power, who eventually enjoy their power and become extremely oppressive themselves.
This is mostly personal mental spew, so I apologize. The point is: the real problem is our greed. The real problem is our desire for power and security on our own terms--our willingness to push others down to get it, or our willingness to turn a blind eye to the suffering of others when we have it, and are used to it. the real problem is the assumption that we should get the best deal we can for ourselves, rather than asking how our resources can best be poured out in service to others. the real problem is that in this area of economics, it is structurally and paradigmatically near-impossible to emobody the ethic of honoring others above ourselves.
How to change our hearts? How to really trust God for our power and security, and accept gladly what he gives and not crave more?
To start, we have to take seriously what Jesus teaches about wealth. I'd like to start out by suggesting that Jesus really does condemn wealth--not just say that we can have as much wealth as we want as long as 'our hearts are not attached to it'. Too strong a claim? Maybe. Next time I'll try and take a look at the evidence.
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Blogging as voyeurism/exhibitionism
It's interesting doing this blog thing--one of the main internal obstacles in the past was the sense that we're all becoming too dependent on these relatively impersonal technologies in order to stay in touch and know each other. Put bluntly, when I first started reading blogs I had this unnerving sense of being a kind of emotional voyeur. Now blogs by nature are at least semi-public media, and I wasn't using any underhanded techniques to learn what people's blog addresses were. Nevertheless, even when I'm just innocently linking from one friend's blog to another friend's blog, there is this sense of trespassing, particularly if a person is putting fairly personal things on their blog.
In particular I remember reading some blogs after a few months of being at my former church. I had recently started getting to know these people, I liked them, wanted to belong to their circle, and reading blogs seemed like a perfectly harmless way to pass the time. Then it became slightly addictive, as I began looking at more and more posts, hungry for because I was getting to know these people. And by reading the comments feature, you can even eavesdrop on conversations, to a point. I found that I felt like I was experiencing these people on a level I hadn't yet experienced their friendship in real life. And therein lies the problem. Getting to know someone's heart through a public journal, when you haven't arrived at that point of intimacy through real face-to-face relating--well, that's kind of cheating, isn't it?
In all cases, the the people in question were OK with me reading their blog. And in the ensuing years, I have indeed been able to know these people as friends through actual interaction. Yet it still happens once in a while, where when I see someone I am relating to them out of a context of knowing certain aspects of their life and attitudes, not necessarily because they shared it with me but because I read it on their blog. It is a strange multi-layered form of knowing people, receiving both from what they have shared with you alone and what they have chosen to share to at least a chunk of the general public.
On the other side of the coin, what is it that compels us to make these pseudo-public statements, in some cases offering more of ourselves than we do in conversation? Obviously it is a less threatening format. As I sit here in my bedroom typing away, I can't see anyone's facial expression--see it change with slight approval or disapproval at a certain idea or word choice, I don't have to deal with your interruptions, or experience the anxiety when you start looking off to the side to see if there's anything or anyone of higher priority demanding your attention. There aren't all the variables, situationally and emotionally, that inhibit normal (un-intoxicated) relating and sharing in the interpersonal realm.This also happens with e-mail--an amazingly great example of how a certain technology does not only facilitate communication, but has actually modified the way in which we communicate with each other. E-mail has changed the subtleties of how we communicate in our culture. For making plans, setting agendas, so many things, we just type out an e-mail and send it into cyberspace. In fact, there are many occasions where I would rather call and talk to the person in order to make the plans, ask for the favor, etc., but I increasingly feel an inappropriateness to it--why 'waste' the person's time when you can just send an e-mail? Also, often we can be bolder or more assertive with e-mail, because there is no instant response. We don't need to hedge or hesitiate or pull back from part of what we wanted to say because again, there is no dynamic facial expression feedback matrix staring us in the face. And because it's so instant, there is rarely the care which was traditionally placed into letters, for example. Now, obviously there are exceptions to this--I have received some extremely sensitively crafted e-mails, and sent a few myself. Normally, though I try to stick to a policy of never dealing with sensitive issues over e-mail. But that is becoming increasingly harder to do as our culture takes this mode of communication more and more for granted. So we state our positions, press the send button, then go about our business until we see that symbol flash and that new message appear in our inbox. Then we take a deep breath, press another button, and quickly read to determine the tone, key words, anything to give us a sense where the other person is really at. Then, once that emotional response is given time to settle, we can go back and review the entire e-mail more carefully.
I've been debating with myself the extent to which e-mail has also very subtly changed our personal interactions as well, but I'm not as sure of this one. Are we getting worse at hashing out issues on an interpersonal level, because we're getting used to doing more of that on e-mail? As much as we extoll the convenience of it, I am convinced that it is more the comfort of distance from others, even our friends in certain cases, that draws us to use it so much. When we would rather send e-mails to the room or the cubicle next door to us rather than get up and walk five steps to talk to the person, something is deteriorating in our society.
OK, that was actually an e-mail interlude--what I was getting to at first was the motivation of bloggers (such as myself) for posting intellectual manifestos and personal issues on blogs. In some ways, where distance is a factor, it can be a way to communicate with a large body of people without having to repeat yourself dozens of times. But is it also, as I mused with my friend earlier today, simply a way of crying out for attention? In a way, I'm saying 'this is really who I am and what I think, and I was too scared to share all of that with you in our conversation, or the conversation took a different turn, so here's what I want to say in the way I want to say it so . . . Love Me!
I have had enough experiences where the friend I read in a blog is different enough from the friend whom I interact with in real life that it makes you wonder . . . How much do we ever know anyone? Is the 'me' you read in this blog closer to 'who I really am', or is this rather a more self-indulgent version of me, and the 'me' that has to relate and interact with people is a more accurate picture of the Dan that God created?
This gets way deep into identity issues, and no time to pursue them now. Enough already. Enjoy my exhibition, all you peeping toms :)
In particular I remember reading some blogs after a few months of being at my former church. I had recently started getting to know these people, I liked them, wanted to belong to their circle, and reading blogs seemed like a perfectly harmless way to pass the time. Then it became slightly addictive, as I began looking at more and more posts, hungry for because I was getting to know these people. And by reading the comments feature, you can even eavesdrop on conversations, to a point. I found that I felt like I was experiencing these people on a level I hadn't yet experienced their friendship in real life. And therein lies the problem. Getting to know someone's heart through a public journal, when you haven't arrived at that point of intimacy through real face-to-face relating--well, that's kind of cheating, isn't it?
In all cases, the the people in question were OK with me reading their blog. And in the ensuing years, I have indeed been able to know these people as friends through actual interaction. Yet it still happens once in a while, where when I see someone I am relating to them out of a context of knowing certain aspects of their life and attitudes, not necessarily because they shared it with me but because I read it on their blog. It is a strange multi-layered form of knowing people, receiving both from what they have shared with you alone and what they have chosen to share to at least a chunk of the general public.
On the other side of the coin, what is it that compels us to make these pseudo-public statements, in some cases offering more of ourselves than we do in conversation? Obviously it is a less threatening format. As I sit here in my bedroom typing away, I can't see anyone's facial expression--see it change with slight approval or disapproval at a certain idea or word choice, I don't have to deal with your interruptions, or experience the anxiety when you start looking off to the side to see if there's anything or anyone of higher priority demanding your attention. There aren't all the variables, situationally and emotionally, that inhibit normal (un-intoxicated) relating and sharing in the interpersonal realm.This also happens with e-mail--an amazingly great example of how a certain technology does not only facilitate communication, but has actually modified the way in which we communicate with each other. E-mail has changed the subtleties of how we communicate in our culture. For making plans, setting agendas, so many things, we just type out an e-mail and send it into cyberspace. In fact, there are many occasions where I would rather call and talk to the person in order to make the plans, ask for the favor, etc., but I increasingly feel an inappropriateness to it--why 'waste' the person's time when you can just send an e-mail? Also, often we can be bolder or more assertive with e-mail, because there is no instant response. We don't need to hedge or hesitiate or pull back from part of what we wanted to say because again, there is no dynamic facial expression feedback matrix staring us in the face. And because it's so instant, there is rarely the care which was traditionally placed into letters, for example. Now, obviously there are exceptions to this--I have received some extremely sensitively crafted e-mails, and sent a few myself. Normally, though I try to stick to a policy of never dealing with sensitive issues over e-mail. But that is becoming increasingly harder to do as our culture takes this mode of communication more and more for granted. So we state our positions, press the send button, then go about our business until we see that symbol flash and that new message appear in our inbox. Then we take a deep breath, press another button, and quickly read to determine the tone, key words, anything to give us a sense where the other person is really at. Then, once that emotional response is given time to settle, we can go back and review the entire e-mail more carefully.
I've been debating with myself the extent to which e-mail has also very subtly changed our personal interactions as well, but I'm not as sure of this one. Are we getting worse at hashing out issues on an interpersonal level, because we're getting used to doing more of that on e-mail? As much as we extoll the convenience of it, I am convinced that it is more the comfort of distance from others, even our friends in certain cases, that draws us to use it so much. When we would rather send e-mails to the room or the cubicle next door to us rather than get up and walk five steps to talk to the person, something is deteriorating in our society.
OK, that was actually an e-mail interlude--what I was getting to at first was the motivation of bloggers (such as myself) for posting intellectual manifestos and personal issues on blogs. In some ways, where distance is a factor, it can be a way to communicate with a large body of people without having to repeat yourself dozens of times. But is it also, as I mused with my friend earlier today, simply a way of crying out for attention? In a way, I'm saying 'this is really who I am and what I think, and I was too scared to share all of that with you in our conversation, or the conversation took a different turn, so here's what I want to say in the way I want to say it so . . . Love Me!
I have had enough experiences where the friend I read in a blog is different enough from the friend whom I interact with in real life that it makes you wonder . . . How much do we ever know anyone? Is the 'me' you read in this blog closer to 'who I really am', or is this rather a more self-indulgent version of me, and the 'me' that has to relate and interact with people is a more accurate picture of the Dan that God created?
This gets way deep into identity issues, and no time to pursue them now. Enough already. Enjoy my exhibition, all you peeping toms :)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)