Ubuntucat

I take the bus almost every single day, and I don’t usually smile on the bus. The bus, on a good day, is a time when I can be alone and have some quiet time with a good morning radio show or with the latest Keane album. Unless my wife is with me, I don’t want to be making chit-chat or interacting with people. In fact, random strangers trying to chat me up on the bus really annoys me.

But I saw something yesterday that made me smile.

A woman came on the bus. She looked tired (this was at about 5:30 PM). Her face was drawn down. She had a bit of a shuffle more than a walk. As she was shuffling down the length of the bus heading toward its rear, a seated passenger reached out and grabbed her by the waist without saying anything. For a split second, she looked extremely distressed. I imagined, based on that quick glimpse of her facial expression, that she was thinking, “Oh, my God. I’m being accosted by some crazy person. I just want to be left alone.” But then she turned to look at the person grabbing her, and clearly it was someone she knew. She quickly turned her horrified face into a widened smile and sat next to this guy and began talking to him.

I couldn’t hear anything they were saying. Nevertheless, they were so happy to see each other that I couldn’t help a wide smile myself. I knew nothing about these people. They didn’t appear to be dating. They clearly liked each other and either are or had been emotionally close at one point. Maybe they hadn’t seen each other in a long time. Maybe this guy was visiting the area from far away. Imagine that they happened to be on the same bus at the same time by accident. I loved that moment. I still have no idea who these people are, and they somehow managed to brighten my day at the end of my evening commute.

I confess—I love watching the E! True Hollywood Story. I love seeing the stories behind the stars and watching their rises to fame and fortune.

I am baffled by one thing, though. Why do they (either the stars themselves or their friends, family members, managers and agents) keep trying to make it sound as if the stars got to where they are today through hard work and talent alone? Yes, I understand they had to work hard. Yes, I understand a certain degree of talent is necessary to succeed. Still, do you really want to tell me good looks or connections had nothing to do with the road to success? Being the child of another famous actor didn’t open any doors, really? Having perfect bone structure and facial symmetry didn’t do anything for their careers?

Now, again, I’m not saying that you can just coast on your good looks and family connections or money. You have to do something. The acting won’t come by itself. The gigs won’t fall into your lap. But how many good-looking children of famous people are there who tried to break into Hollywood and couldn’t get an audition? I can’t imagine there are that many. There are, however, tens of thousands of ugly people who have no connections but who have talent and probably cannot get an audition.

I’m not going to lie. I’m a child of privilege. My parents both have advanced degrees. I grew up in a rich suburb with a more-than-adequate education system. I know that I’ve been offered a lot of advantages most other people don’t have. Have I had to work? Certainly. I did all my school work and earned the grades I got. And at all the jobs I’ve had I’ve worked as hard as I could. Still, I know that if I had come from a family of poor uneducated parents who didn’t speak English and who brought me up in a neighborhood with a failing school system, I’d have had a lot more obstacles to overcome.

So, folks—don’t lie about the roles of privilege, connections, and good looks in your career paths, especially you Hollywood folks. Yes, I know you’ve probably had to work hard, probably had to work damn hard. But so do many people. Some people work hard all their lives to make minimum wage with no health benefits. Those folks also have talents. Not to discount your hard work…

What is art? What is obscenity? When is someone a child? When does someone reach the age of consent? At what stage during pregnancy does human life begin? Is it music or noise? Or both?

Much of debate in public life is about drawing arbitrary lines between labels. Some people think if you allow gays to marry, that’s only one step away from allowing people to marry more than one person legally or marry their pets legally. Others think it’s the logical next step after getting rid of miscegenation laws. Some people think human life begins at conception (when the sperm and egg meet). Others think it happens some time in the middle of the pregnancy. In many places, the age of consent is 18 years of age. So a 17-year-old in a sexually explicit film is legally the victim of child pornography but an 18-year-old in the same film is a consenting adult in a legitimate industry.

We all know that lines can get blurry and, in fact, much of life isn’t about lines but appreciating spectra and variation. One person may reach adulthood at age 13. Another may reach it at age 23. Still another may not reach it ever. One group of people may consider a certain film art, and another group of people may consider the same film obscenity.

The real problem we face is a discomfort with blurriness, spectra, and variation when it comes to law. We already have many “it depends” situations in law, and we don’t want to have an “it depends” that can’t be spelled out in advance, for some reason. If one 12-year-old is old enough to drive, how can you make the case that another 12-year-old is not old enough to drive? Why does your opinion about each kid’s maturity and skill matter in deciding? Instead, the state decides arbitrarily that 15 or 16 or 18 is the cut-off point where someone under that age doesn’t have the physical and mental maturity to handle a motor vehicle, and someone above that age supposedly does.

I don’t have an easy answer. I do think a 7-year-old, no matter how “mature,” is too young to have sex. And I do think that almost all 50-year-olds, no matter how “immature,” are likely to know what they’re getting into if they engage in sex. I know if we draw a line in between that it’ll be arbitrary and if we don’t draw a line, we’ll basically be condoning pedophilia. Same deal with abortion. If I kill an egg and sperm that have just started dividing into two cells and four cells, I don’t really think I’ve murdered a human being (yes, some fringe conservatives on the extreme right might disagree with me, and I would concede in a British accent that “every sperm is sacred, every sperm is good”). But I also don’t think there’s a definite line you can draw in the middle of a pregnancy that is when human life “begins.” There isn’t a moment. Nor was there a moment when I changed from child to adult. I know when I was 6 I was a child. I know now after 30 I’m an adult. But it’s not as if there was one day or even one year that I can say was the threshold I crossed that changed me from child to adult.

As I said before, there are no easy answers. Nevertheless, people should also stop looking for them. There often is no line in life, even if we must draw a line in the law.

You may have noticed that I haven’t been blogging about the US presidential election much. It’s mainly because I think most of what could be said about the election has been said already. And most of it is mudslinging at the other party’s candidate, anyway.

I do want to say one thing before the polls close tomorrow, and that’s this: no matter who wins is going to be in a tough position. And if the winner isn’t able to get the country out of all of these “wars on terror” and the global economic crisis unscathed, it doesn’t mean the other guy would have been able to.

I’m not a big fan of George W. Bush. I haven’t approved of most of his policies or approaches to things. I think he’s made some terrible mistakes as president. Yet I don’t imagine that that automatically means Al Gore or John Kerry would necessarily have done a better job.

I’m a Dennis Kucinich man, and I liked Hillary Clinton while she was still a main contender in the race. But, make no mistake about it, only one of two men will win this election by tomorrow night—John McCain or Barack Obama, and given those choices I definitely prefer Obama.

If McCain wins, though, and we stay in this economic downturn, and the war in Iraq continues for 8 years and even longer, I won’t think, “Well, clearly if Barack Obama had won, all of these problems would have been solved.” Nor should McCain fans, should Obama win, think “Well, clearly if John McCain had won, all of these problems would have been solved.”

The country isn’t doing well, and this is a terrible time for anyone to step into the presidency of the United States of America. I don’t agree with either candidate on everything, and I don’t agree with John McCain on most of the hot-button issues. But I do think both men would try their best to make this country better, and both men would have a hell of a time just keeping us afloat. So godspeed to whomever wins tomorrow.

My two other posts on the election:
Successful politicians will be political
Obama v. McCain – I have to say this before November

I grew up going to a Christian church, and for the past 3+ years I have been a Linux user, so you can bet I have heard and participated in a lot of debates about whether it is right and/or effective to evangelize to gain more “converts” or not.

The evangelism (for religion, operating system, or anything else) usually comes from good intentions. Although sometimes it can feel to the person being evangelized to that the intention is more “I’m right, and you’re wrong, and you’d better see things my way”; the intention is usually more, “I didn’t realize what I was missing until I saw this, so I want you to see it too.”

I was an extremely argumentative child and adolescent, and even though I thought I had some pretty good arguments, logic, and examples, there were few arguments I ever won or lost. Pretty soon I realized that arguments for the purposes of convincing someone to adopt a new outlook or change her mind are a waste of time. Arguments as intellectual exercises or fun pastimes are fine. And you can sometimes bully someone into giving up fighting you, but you haven’t really changed her mind. You’ve just intimidated her. To see how this is done, watch Bill O’Reilly on Fox News. It basically consists of a lot of interrupting and yelling.

So if you’re someone who truly thinks “I didn’t realize what I was missing until I had this” instead of “Ha ha! I’m right and you’re wrong”; think about the last time you changed your mind on an issue or decided to try something new. What was the impetus for that change? Was it someone arguing with you? How did you start seeing things in a different way or open yourself up to trying a new product or lifestyle?

For me (I won’t even try to speak for anyone else)—whether it was my outlooks on race and gender, my choice of operating system, or my mode of transportation—any time I opened myself up to something new or changed my mind, it had nothing to do with getting into arguments with people. In fact, when folks argued with me, I tended to cling more strongly to the familiar than to open myself up to something new.

I change my mind or embrace something new when I come to it instead of it coming to me. I need the resources to come to, of course, but I need to come to those resources. I don’t want someone knocking on my door trying to sell me something. I don’t want a friend pestering me to switch to something or to change my mind about something. I do want, however, many books and websites available on the topic. I want the pros and cons clearly laid out in as unbiased a fashion as is humanly possible.

Thus, in the spirit of the golden rule, I’m going to do unto others as I would have them do unto me. I will write my opinions and leave them here as a resource. If you disagree with me, I don’t want to get into a futile argument with you. You can lay out your own opinions, and I will read them when I am ready to read them. You can also read my opinions when you’re ready to read them.