Torn

I consider awarding myself a new badge.
Which one is for Existential Dread?

A mom with two toddlers in tow (riiiight, like they aren't bouncing off the walls) brings a woman to the library to help her with a résumé. 

My mind starts running like this:
Gosh, those kids are bouncing off the walls. Is the Children's Room the right place for this? This is a loud adult conversation - will this intimidate the children whose space this is? They're doing this right at the coloring table. Oh, never mind. That other little girl is going to color there anyway.

Then it moves on:
You know, we all sit around wishing we could help someone and thinking we have no time for it, but this mother, who has her hands full of toddlers, is making the time and is actually doing something. I should be doing something. She is actively helping someone get a job. I should be teaching someone English in my free time.

And then I get all angry:
Why? Why does this mother have to do this? She's making a  résumé for this woman and doing a practice job interview (that the woman is floundering around in). Surely some of my taxes are going to pay some people to do this. In fact, the Jobs place is barely two blocks away from here. I've been there myself when I was looking for work. 

I have actually asked my co-workers about this. Why do the people come here instead of going to the Job Connection? Someone there sat down with me and went over my résumé and gave me advice and showed me how to look for jobs on what passed for a search computer in 1990. A co-worker's response was: We're nicer. 

Really? We are?! OMG, how horribly must those people be treating the job searchers over there?! I know we get really cross with patrons gaming the system and we are not supposed to help them too much (we can get them started, but we cannot sit with them and walk them through using computers and getting an email address - we have classes for that), but despite all our sighing and frowning and glowering and such, we're nicer than the people at the Jobs place?!

I don't believe this.

In the end, the mom watched her kids' puppet show and made them pick up the amazing messes they made before they left. But I am still "so utterly fussed and rattled and torn." I don't want to deny the nice mom her good feelings of helping someone - a specific someone - in distress (no job, nowhere to live). I like being helpful, too. It feels nice. It feels much better than glowering at someone for perceived transgressions. And most of that comes from dealing with the public day in and day out. 

So, perhaps this is what has happened over at the Jobs place. Day after day they deal with people who have no computer skills (and most jobs have to be applied for online these days) and less and less desire to actually get work. 

I remember how frustrating it was for me. You just want to give up. I was out of work for four years. Eventually I took poorly paying positions, one after another, until I was able to get this library job. But being unemployed is disheartening, even when you are in a comfortable situation - I was living with my parents and had plenty of money saved. Sure, living with my parents put me back in the Child Role again, and I was pretty unhappy about that, but I had no utility bills and didn't have to wonder where my next meal was coming from. There's a big difference there, and I was still dispirited. 

In the end, the experience of both the unemployed and the people tasked (and paid) to help them wears them down and breeds a dull hostility. At least I get to help a little kid find a book and I get to watch the excitement when it's something he really, really wants. The Jobs people don't get that. I guess. So it's up to us at the library to take up the slack. 

But should it be?

I don't know.

We Can't Have It Both Ways, Can We?

The opinion on Christmas from B.S., former speech-writer for President N., [I'll just let both of those hang and make of it what you will] is making the rounds of the e-mail in-boxes again, although it's several years old. It seems to work in nicely with a previous post of mine, so I'll complain about it here. Mr. S., although Jewish to the bone, doesn't mind being wished a Merry Christmas because it makes him feel all warm and cozy about his fellow Judeo-Christian [Where's the Islam there? Shouldn't it be Judeo-Christ-Islamist?] believers and that's what I was talking about earlier. That's very broad-minded of him to accept the greeting as kindly meant and good taste of him to enjoy those over-decorated trees.
Where he crosses the line, though, is to expect everyone to feel that way, especially atheists. He describes how Christians probably feel pushed around about showing their religion and equates it to how he doesn't like being pushed around for being Jewish. It seems, though, that he is completely unaware that non-religionists have been pushed around. Atheists are supposed to take it. Sitting in his "beach house" (to separate that from some other house he might have) he feels sorry for Christians, a vast majority, and not for the little people who are starting to push back. I don't like being pushed around for being an atheist, and so for years I just didn't mention it. Even as a child brought up Christian I had trouble with public displays of my religion because I was only too aware that there were people who didn't subscribe and I could see myself in their shoes. Mr. S. seems to think looking at it from his shoes alone is good enough.
I'll grant you that some of our number could stand to shut up, even some intelligent high-profile ones. And Christians are free to complain about political correctivity swinging the wrong way on them, but they've had their day in the sun and their chance to run things better. And there were still hurricanes, floods, famines, and pogroms.
We worry about current events precisely because they are current and we base past experience on our childhood memories of being totally clueless. The 1950s were not the halcyon days of nuclear families and religious devotion. They were years of Cold War and witch hunts, peoples' lives ruined by rumor mongering. Do I remember any of that? Of course not, I was sent to bed before Huntley and Brinkley came on! The 1960s were years of political upheaval over the Vietnam War and Civil Rights. I do remember that, because I was sickened by images of war during the dinner hour. Fortunately, our area of Kentucky was not torn apart by riots ... like those of the white Bostonians rejecting school integration. This means, however, that I put out of my mind what wasn't happening in my happy little galaxy. I remember my home and family.
What is happening, contrary to what Mr. S. believes, is that there is a whole lotta demagoguery going on. People are being whipped up on both sides by individuals who enjoy power. These people scaremonger, but not with anything so blatantly ridiculous as the destruction of Christianity, because only the mentally ill would believe that could possibly happen (and on the other side, only the mentally ill atheists could believe Christianity in particular or religion in general can be toppled), but they start with little things, like the alleged War on that Holiday celebrating the birth of You Know Who. Everybody can get behind Christmas! Christmas is harmless! Why, even that Jewish guy with the beach house likes Christmas! If you can get people to believe the little lies, then the big ones becomes that much easier to swallow. If you believe the atheists are out to ban That Holiday, you can be easily led to believe that all religious holidays are up for the chop. And then you can believe these people are un-American. Then you think your elected officials should take a stand on the issue, and their seasonal greetings should say a certain phrase. And then you start scrutinizing what these officials do about their greeting cards, totally missing what they're up to on matters that do fall within their purview, like fixing the economy, or at least making sure that greed will not be given free rein to create "exotic financial speculations" again.
So what are atheists up to? Hell's bells, even if we were organized it would be impossible to say. There are as many kinds of atheists as there are religions. They all become atheists different ways: some are born into atheist families, some wake up one day and ask themselves whether they really believe all that, some wrestle with their beliefs ... and win, and some have had bad experiences. Some drop their faith suddenly, sometimes faith fades slowly away. Mostly I think these people want the right not to be marginalized. We're all hopping on that civil rights bandwagon that seems to be so handy. You wouldn't fault black people for having been marginalized all those centuries, would you? You wouldn't say, "Look, there are just more white people, so just go with the flow and keep your mouth shut. We're tired of hearing about all we've done wrong or are doing wrong and we aren't going to change anything just to make you happy. 'Majority,' ever hear of it? So stop making us feel bad."
Okay, maybe some of you would say that.

Oops, forgot to post this ages ago!

My Penance for Warm Winters

This is just a little present I found attached to my dad's mailbox. I certainly will "keep this flyer for future reference." Now I know exactly whom to not contact if I need pressure washing or cosmetics. I wonder if Avon allows the inclusion of religious tracts in their reps' advertising.
This whole thing has sooo much wrong with it I don't even know where to start. Okay, here's a good place. This tract is equating AIDS with sin. Sure, it says we are all sinners because we are all born that way, but who really reads these things carefully?

And is advertising for your business really the best way to proselytize? It's one thing to put the "Smile God Loves You" on your flyer, but including a tract?

I suppose the "Smile God Loves You" is meant to brighten your day. The believers can look at it and be reminded (if they feel that way) to be happy in their lives because even though their marriage is breaking up, their kids are in trouble, they've lost their job, and their mother has some painful, terminal illness, at least God loves them. Even if no one else does. Even if He sends them these trials while the neighbors don't go to church and seem to be enjoying prosperity and laughing a lot.

The unbelievers can feel a stab in the eyeball and have a nervous tic the rest of the day ... or perhaps they scan the document, redact any personal info, and post it on a blog thinking they are making it look ridiculous. That would only work, I suppose, if anyone actually read the blog.

It seems long ago and far away that things religious did not annoy me. I laughed at alleged "Buddhists" in Massachusetts who hailed me on the street and tried to tell me that if I chanted "Ohmanipadmahummm" over and over that I would get what I desired. The thought of using religion to get material goods was repugnant to me, but one nut on the street did not make me want to not say "Happy Dhamma Day!" and spin a wheel for Buddhist friends (okay, friend singular). I put up a Christmas tree, wished people "Happy Christmas!" (Where appropriate), and got all teary over the story of the Passion. It's a good story.

Then I moved back to the south and things changed. My elderly mother was harassed by other old ladies who told her she would burn in hell. Everywhere I go, gatherings are begun with Christian prayers. For years I bowed politely out of respect, but now it's starting to get on my nerves. I've started asking for the "Eid" stamps at the post office to put on my greeting cards. I put Hanukkah stamps on the "Season's Greetings" cards I send to Jewish friends and still get "Why are you sending me a Christmas card when you know perfectly well I'm Jewish?" messages back. I'm beginning to understand that. (Not totally, Alex - since there was no reference to Christmas, Christ, or even Santa on that card!) I feel like a minority here and each reminder of it raises my hackles.

I think everyone should live for a while as a minority. We should send southerners to California, maybe, and make them listen to that New Age piffle for a year or so and then debrief them. "So, Mrs. Knotwattle, how did that make you feel? Are you any more inclined to use crystals and prayer wheels in your life?"
Extreme beliefs beget opposite extreme beliefs.

And I haven't even gotten started on that tract. It never ceases to amaze me how Christians can side-step what Jesus actually said and go back to the Old Testament and pull verses out of context. Love the Lord with all your heart ... and give away all your riches, that's the baseline. Don't go mining another religion's ancient texts for juicy bits and making up arcane rigmarole to keep the sheep in line or scare up more converts.

This tract is intentionally inflammatory. Comparing sin to AIDS is not clever. It obliquely demonizes homosexuals (the group most often associated with AIDS). It endorses intolerance and breeds hatred. A stupid person reads this and thinks, It's okay to hate queers (black people, muslims, insert long-suffering minority of your choice), sin is in their blood. And don't try to tell me that people are not that stupid. No one (not even yours truly) reads something to change their minds. They pick out only the parts they want to see and use them to bolster their (my) own cherished opinions.

Sin is everything that is wrong ... with someone else. Even though this tract directs you to look inside yourself, people so rarely do this. Vast herds of Stupid People are convinced that AIDS is God's punishment visited on sinners. This is, by the way, the same God who loves you so much that you should be smiling! Never mind those hemophiliacs that became HIV positive through transfusions before they were able to screen the blood and the donors for that. They, no doubt, were just being "tested." There's no need to look to God for punishment when we so effectively bring it upon ourselves. We start wars. By "we" I mean people, not just the United States, although we seem to start more than our fair share. We pollute our environment and poison our own bodies. There is plenty that is not our fault as well, but as it rains, my father says, "on the yust and the un-yust yust the same," let's not blame God for any of it. Bad things happen to all kinds of people for no particular reason as well as happen through their own doing. It's not our job to assign blame, we need to deal with the aftermath.

I'd like to see tracts that say "Love thy neighbor" or "Whatsoever you do to the least of these my brothers, you do to me." Go do some good things for someone else, regardless of who they are. Visit them if they are ill. Feed them if they are hungry. Find jobs for them if they are willing to work. Show others a good way to live instead of shaking your fingers at them. In sooth, though, 'twill never happen. Religion seems to be about us versus them. We're right and you're wrong, so you: are going to hell/don't deserve help/need a whole new government.
How did we get it so wrong?

"I realize there are people out there who don't love their fellow man," Tom Lehrer said, "and I hate people like that."