identity

Democracy Is About People, Stupid.

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what the hell?

There’s little that hasn’t been written or said about the U.S. Presidential Election. When asked about it, I have been saying that there were two bad candidates and one of them had to win.

This pisses off people who are emotionally attached to one of the two. I’m ok with that. One represented individual oligarchy, one represented corporate oligarchy, and if you can’t tell which is which then maybe you’re part of the problem.

The people whose candidate won have been pretty happy. The people whose candidate lost have been trying to figure out why. It’s gotten so bad that LinkedIn has become a toxic waste dump of curated perspectives on… well, that, the Democratic party, and all the other stuff that probably shouldn’t be posted by people who want to hire someone or be hired by someone. It’s become further polarized because of it.

And that’s what helped get the result. People are viewing ‘those people’, whoever they are, as all sorts of negative things without understanding things.

Jon Stewart and Sarah Smarsh had a conversation about it… and the content probably should have been spoken about decades ago. It’s almost an hour long, but some people really need to watch this.

Identity, class… things that I hear progressive democrats talk about a lot and yet they somehow miss the boat consistently on that.

America is a big and diverse place, and it’s bigger and more diverse than most perspectives I’ve seen expressed. I have friends across the spectrum. I don’t have to agree with them, but I do have to understand their perspectives.

When looking at politics, people look at the narratives provided and if it fits their personal experience and identity better than the other narrative, they choose that one. Rationality might be discussion before voting, but voting is emotional for a lot of people.

It’s about people. Stereotyping them in a negative way ain’t gonna make things better. Understand the people who a democracy is supposed to represent, don’t depend on data analytics.

Go outside and listen. Respect people enough not to treat them like spreadsheet.

Restaurant Types

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The beauty of the restaurant metaphor for how we become who we are is that it has some built-in biases.

Every culture, every geography, comes with it’s own sort of restaurant. There’s the ubiquitous Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Thai and Indian restaurants, to name only a few. There are even American restaurants, with their various shades of American ranging from steakhouses to Vegan spots. You’re unlikely to find avocado toast in a steakhouse, but it’s possible.

Go anywhere on the planet, the food is different. Why? Well, there are different ingredients, different seasonings, and differing people.

Tourism of the palate isn’t for everyone, though. We gravitate to the restaurants we like, and we avoid those we don’t.

What it doesn’t cover – what isn’t covered – are the increasing number of people who don’t fit. Sushi tacos are (hopefully) not a thing. You’d be hard pressed to find a pork biryani in the Middle East. You’d probably be hard pressed to find a beef biryani in India. That’s just ingredients, not their balance and how they are prepared.

There are fusion restaurants – I’m not sure if they’re still trendy or not – and there are changes that happen to foods in different countries.

You might hear about the best ‘Chinese food’ in an area, but is it really Chinese? Probably not. The same holds true of every type of restaurant, and this is an important thing to consider when we reverse that metaphor back to people.

Compromised Menus.

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One of the things I always liked doing when moving to a new place or just visiting is go to a locally owned restaurant that is at least a decade old. That restaurant has survived and perhaps even thrived in that area, and the menu tells you about the people who frequent it.

That, in turn, tells you about the area.

In a way, we’re all kind of some version of restaurant.

We start off with the dreams of our owners. Maybe they want to sell oodles of their hamburgers, maybe they want to make clowns more popular, or maybe they want to make money.

Nobody ever really wants to start a crappy restaurant. Some restaurants end up being crappy, but nobody wants it to start that way. They always envision that they make something well.

We all sort of start off that way, with different advantages and disadvantages, be it financial, or actually knowing how to make a good hamburger, or having a clown suit in our closet. Whatever the advantages are, we tend to lean on them.

Over time, though, our customers – the people we interact with – cause changes to the menu. Maybe they don’t like the idea of an ‘Unhappy Meal’ and market research shows they prefer ‘Trending Meal’, so the name changes. The guys all want the burgers, but the women want salads and so to get the women there, you add salads to the menu. Some people don’t like the fries, so the fries change.

The restaraunt is a bit of a democracy in that it reflects what people want. At least that’s if it’s in a neighborhood with disposable income.

Now, if customers don’t come because the price is too high, you lower the prices once you can be profitable. You compromise in quality of the ingredients, which of course you purchase, and the quality goes down from what you originally wanted to produce.

The more disposable income your customers have, the less you have to compromise on quality. The more quality ingredients you can get, the less you have to compromise on quality.

In the end, though, what do we compromise?

It’s the same thing with identity. You start off one way, and in a few decade long blinks, you may not know yourself in the mirror because of compromises. Life sculpts us this way.

The Identity Mirror.

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I have a shower mirror, for the days when I notice the stubble on my cheeks as I run my hands across my wet face. It’s a strange thing for me. I have not really enjoyed mirrors because they have a tendency to show me as I believe others see me instead of who I am.

This particular mirror was advertised as fog free, which is true when I’m not using it. It’s got water stains on it, a battle I gave up some time ago since the water I get is stored in an unsealed concrete tank with the lime leaching into the water on the hot days in Trinidad – and lately they have all been hot days.

I used to spray the shower with a weak vinegar solution daily to combat the buildup from the hard water, and give the mirror a quick wipe, a constant battle against something I could not win against for a prize I don’t care much about – a clear view of myself.

On days when I shave, I simply rub a soapy hand across the mirror. It appears more clear because of a scientific explanation I won’t bore you with, and I can look if I choose to. Mainly I don’t even use it to shave, instead simply going by feel. Yet it is there.

There are 4 mirrors in my home. One in each bathroom out of some reflex, the one in the shower, and the dressing mirror so that should I care how I look, it’s there. Generally, the dressing mirror has a towel over it since the air conditioner blows right on it, something that did not happen by conscious design.

It wasn’t always this way. There was a time when I thought mirrors were much more important. There was a time when I worried more about how I was perceived. There was a time when the reflection was less branded by time.

I bring this up because of the last post where I touched on the tip of the iceberg.

How we see ourselves, who we see ourselves as, and even who we assume we are seen as is how we’re defined by others, not ourselves.

This is an important thing to understand for some other posts that are coming (and will link below).

And an Overdue Intermission.

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Taking a break from running with scissors. Marbles relocated; they all seem to be there... Maybe. Or maybe I...
When you finally put down the scissors you’ve been running with, make sure your marbles are all in the right place.

When I moved into the new place, I was surprised how easily I slept. If I sat down too long, or lay down, that was it – asleep.

My immediate problem was how counterproductive it was when I had so much to do. I’d scheduled a vacation, the first real one in 18 years, where I disappear for a while – but I hadn’t realized how much I needed it.

The only way I got where I am today is through hard work and discipline. If that meant working at getting a job, or working at fixing something, or working on writing something – code or otherwise – that was what I did.

I didn’t have to like it. I just had to do it. That seems a novel thing in this day and age.

Imagine the changes he has seen
We go where we must, when we must, regardless. Or we stay where we are.

 

You find the parts you like and those things keep you going even when you should have stopped. The world accelerates inexorably with technology, allowing so much more to be done and most people are so busy that they don’t wonder where all that time technology saved them went.

Over the decades, I have been the one that people came to when they needed something done, like my father before me and like his father before him. It’s what we did. It’s what they did. It’s not so much what I do anymore – the world has beaten and battered me enough. The same people who I helped chose not to help during those times, extricating themselves by absence and poor excuse. Since I looked around and never saw them there, they have found I have made it official.

I, for one, feel better.

Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?
“Aren’t you a little short for a Stormtrooper?”

The world measures us by such things and inexorably squeezes. It takes effort to push outwards and grow, or we become the measurement of our failures. To be measured by greater failures is all we can do to grow.

Growth is tiring. Failure is tiring.

I’m exhausted.

Failures are how you find successes. Fear of failure is fear of success; we focus too much on success and do not cherish our failures for the learning experiences that they should be. Success is simply the change we get from expending our effort.

Life shortchanges us at times.

I’ve pushed hard on every front for as long as I can remember. When I drove myself to a hospital some years ago, they admitted me, poked and prodded me and decided my heart needed some love. They ballooned the arteries, they stented me, and under my threat of an Against Medical Advice (AMA) form, they released me after 3 days. On the fourth day, I was at work dealing with a manager who told me I had to make up 24 hours.

Those doctors had told me that my body was suing for divorce, that I couldn’t keep going as I was going, and so on. I listened to an extent. I got better – angioplasty certainly gets you going – and eventually left that job. People who didn’t know all of this would be surprised to know how physical I have been in the years since, and how much I accomplished by brute force and force of will given that medical history. But, again:

I didn’t have to like it. I just had to do it, and I had to do it well.

New Smyrna Beach Sunrise 12-21-2014
I won’t be here. I’ve been here before.

That too, now, has run it’s course.

It struck me that over the years I have done so much for so many with so little that I am not sure exactly who I am anymore. I have done what I have had to do, but that is not the definition of me – a poor measurement where my successes have been discarded and my failures my measurement.

And so it is I close myself off until after the first week of next month, to figure things out, to disappear, to recharge… and to find other things to fail at.

See you next month.