Doing & Somethingness

Posted By samara on November 4, 2010

When I danced socially more often, I had this special trick that I would use when I was tired and didn’t want to have to refuse an invitation for a dance.  I called it my Don’t Talk To Me Face.  It’s a way of looking generally in someone’s direction, deliberately avoiding eye contact, and then turning away.  It’s a very clear social signal to another person that you do not want to be approached.  It also works if you look a person directly in the eye, smile politely, and then look away before they have a chance to say hello.

With complete strangers, the Don’t Talk To Me Face seemed like a good way to indicate that I am not going to become anyone’s new friend at this point in time.  But with people that I knew, even a little bit, I thought the Don’t Talk To Me Face seemed a bit rude.  If I had talked to someone or danced with someone before, even just once, I would look them in the eye and say hello.  Yes, I had to turn down dances when I was tired.  I have turned down lots of dances.  But I would smile and make friendly conversation while turning down the dance.  I see no need to be an asshole just because I can’t give someone what they want.

I bring this up because it seems to me that my current educational environment is completely full of people who have totally mastered the Don’t Talk To Me Face.  In fact, I think it is a permanent fixture on the faces of many of my fellow students.  And these people don’t seem to draw the line at stranger vs not-so-stranger like I do.  When I encounter fellow students at a coffee shop, for example, it’s shocking to me how many don’t come over to say hello, or worse, don’t even look in my general direction.  Some even look at me funny if I try to say hello.

Now, it’s entirely possible that I am a complete leper.  Maybe I smell funny or people just don’t like me.  But this is not something I encounter in too many other settings.  In most settings, I can generally assume that if I know someone’s name or even their home town and educational background, we will have a brief polite conversation.  Maybe the conversation will be a simple “hello, how are you?,” 3-line conversation.  I can assume this will take place even with those people that I can guarantee do not want to become my new BFF anytime soon.

While I’m sure I have had way too many 3-line “hello,” “how are you?,” “oh, just fine” conversations in my life, these conversations have a social importance.  They grease the wheels of business.  They make our fellow human beings tolerable to be around.  They make the world an ever-so-slightly less lonely place.  When you give the Don’t Talk To Me Face to people that you see every day, you dehumanize them and you make them hate you.  You make it easier to dismiss them and to become completely selfish.

I say all this knowing full well that law school is not the right environment for making friends.  People are so overwhelmed with all the shit they say you are supposed to do that no one has time to really be reliable.  If you want to do well, you have to be a little selfish.  You have to say, “I’m sorry, best friend from kindergarten, but I don’t have time to talk to you for an hour after your boyfriend just broke up with you.”  To some extent, you have to be able to tune out the people around you, or you will never be able to absorb all the legal doctrines you are supposed to absorb.

But I just hope these people practice better social habits when the fog clears as they step into the real world.  If it doesn’t, then it’s no wonder that people think lawyers are socially awkward assholes.

The lesson here?  Eye contact, people!  Seriously.  And try saying hello once in a while.  It won’t kill you.

Category: Culture, People Watching | No Comments »
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Posted By samara on October 5, 2010

When I was a little girl roughly 5 yrs old, not too long before the Fed stopped amending environmental statutes, I saw this trailer attached to the back of a pick-up truck.  The trailer was constructed as a mesh container, maybe 10 feet high, and it was full of crunched aluminum soda cans.  I asked my mom what it was and she said that it was a load of aluminum cans collected for recycling.  This was well before the days of curbside recycling.  Most people I knew put their soda cans in the trashcan.  And they also put LOTS of other things in the trashcan.  I didn’t have a very good sense of scale back then, but when I looked at this trailer full of soda cans, I knew 1.) that this was a LOT of soda cans - far more than I have ever seen in my life, and 2.) that this was only a small portion of the total amount of cans in my small, 4,000-occupant town and an even smaller portion of the total trash in my town.

Imaginative child that I was, I started to envision massive amounts of trash heaped up in the middle of the street.  I was born in Houston, which I knew was much bigger than my little town, and I was just sure that Houston produced so much trash that it would take over everything.  I had this horrible sense of dread.  What could we possibly do with all this trash?

And then, eureka!  I came up with this brilliant plan to fix the problem.  We would pick a state that no one cares about (I also didn’t have much of a sense of geography then, but in my mind it would be somewhere near Nebraska), build a big wall around the entire state, and use it as the nation’s trash repository.  I pictured these big dump trucks (yes, I know those actually carry dirt, but all trucks were the same to me back then) driving past the walls and into the middle of the state to drop their load on the growing pile.  I thought that if we could dedicate an entire state as a national trashcan, then the rest of the country would not be completely overtaken with trash.  No one else ever understood my plan, but somehow having a solution made me feel better.

As I got older and learned more about the world we live in, my environmental concerns grew to include other issues.  (I never really got over the trash issue - when I was 14, I started making pillows and I thought it was a good idea to stuff them with trash because at least I was putting the trash to good use.  My sisters still tell me that the pillows I made make funny noises.)  Now I worry about things like fertilizer runoff polluting the drinking water, sewage overflow during heavy rains, nuclear waste that still has no permanent safe storage location, and greenhouse gas emissions that will warm the planet enough to change weather patterns and erode coastlines.  And again, I have this sense of dread.  I picture suburbs that grow and grow like a clan of viruses (do viruses come in clans?) for no reason other than our own selfish vanity.  I picture the destruction of all ocean life and entire ecosystems that can’t survive because people have introduced too many foreign chemicals. The problem is so big and there seems to be so little ability to fix it.

I have this environmental law professor whom I respect a great deal.  He is the most brilliant, realistic, and hardest working teacher I have ever met.  He is so honest about the economic and political influences on environmental issues that I just know he feels sick inside (but also fascinated, which is another reason I like him).  He told me that he thinks there will be no political will to do anything about climate change until some huge disaster happens - reactionary politics, as usual.  I sometimes wonder how he keeps doing it.  How does he not lose hope and feel like it’s pointless?  Because I think about everything I know and it makes me feel like maybe it would just be better if humans weren’t here, or at least weren’t here in such huge numbers.  And yet my professor has a child; procreating is a remarkably hopeful act.  One doesn’t do it if they think the world is coming to an end.  So how does he keep going?

I think my professor is like that 5 yr old with a sense of dread.  He works so hard, you would think someone was chasing him.  It’s as if he is desperately trying to find the solution to make him feel like the trash isn’t going to take over the streets.  As for me, I’m still waiting for the brilliant idea that will make me feel better.

Category: Pontificating, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Tags: environment

Posted By samara on September 8, 2010

I have been asked many times why I didn’t change my name when I got married, so I’m going to lay out my reasons here.  Also, I just like telling people what I think about stuff.

First, a Few Things

1. I do not judge any woman who decides to change her name.  If a you consider your options and come to a rational decision that is different from mine, I can respect that.  I might judge you a little if you also take your husband’s first name.  “Mrs. John Smith” - really?  You don’t even get to have a first name?

2. This is not about convenience.  If I thought that changing my name was important, I would do it.  Likewise, if having a last name different from my husband is inconvenient,  it just isn’t a good enough reason to change it.

3. This has nothing to do with the length of time I intend to be married.  I am just as much (or maybe more) in love with my husband as I was six and a half years ago when we got married.  I intend to be the Ms. to his Mr. until one or both of us kills over dead.

My Reasons

The reason I did not change my name is because I think doing so would send the wrong message about the status of each party in my marriage.  Think about it.  We’re talking about my name here - my identity.  This is the name that my teachers mis-pronounced when I was a kid.  It’s the name that reminds me who my family is.  When someone lovingly says “the Spences,” they mean me and my siblings.  “SMS” is the set of initials that I have been writing my whole life.  Why on earth would it be acceptable for me to give up something so personal while my husband gives up nothing of the sort?  It would be like an immediate announcement that I do all the sacrificing, all the changing, while my husband gets to keep being exactly who he was before.  It would set a bad precedent for all future conflict.  I would much rather start a marriage as a couple, as partners.  (On occasion, we are arguably more like rivals, but at least rivals are on equal footing.)  I’m not a subordinate and neither is he.  Neither of us would want it that way and we would both be resentful and uncomfortable if either of sent such a strong submissive signal.

I’m not really opposed to changing something like my name if my husband were to change his as well.   We actually liked the idea of combining our last names into a shared last name because it would be taking our two separate identities and forming something new that only we shared.  The problem was that he liked “Kence,” I liked “Spasper,” and there was no way we were ever going to agree.

In addition to the messages we send to each other, there’s the issue of how I, as a married person, wish to relate to the world and to the public.  Again, I have been known by my name all my life.  It is the name that professional contacts know me by.  It is the name on my degree.  I don’t think that my relationship to my school and my professional contacts should change because I am married.  Or more importantly, I don’t think it’s ok for my relationship with my professional contacts to change just because I am a married woman when a man would not experience the same change upon getting married.  A woman should be under no more obligation than a man to announce her marriage by changing her business cards, by telling her clients that it’s now “Mrs. X” instead of “Ms. Y.”  She should not have to prove to all her clients that the “Ms. Y” they’ve heard so many good things about is actually “Mrs. X.”  And this leads to a pet peeve of mine - why is it that a man is “Mr.” regardless of his marital status while a woman’s title changes?  I disapprove of the distinction and I use “Ms.” because I believe it is the appropriate title for all grown women.  I do not ask a woman that I meet professionally if she is married before addressing a letter to her and I would be offended if anyone asked me that question.

These crazy distinctions and name changing rituals go back many, many years in anglo-saxon culture and it has been a part of a ridiculous system where a woman was considered to be a sub-person upon marriage.  I discovered this lovely gem last year in property class that I thought I would share with you.  This is a quote from Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England in (1765) (for those of you who don’t know, Blackstone compiled all the English common law of the time into this massive book.  Much of this work was later acquired into the U.S common law.):

“By marriage, husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband; under whose wing, protection, and cover, she performs everything, under the protection and influence of her husband, and her condition during marriage is called her coverture.”

It’s so ridiculous that it’s almost cute.  We don’t live in that world anymore.  A woman’s being is not suspended during marriage.  She doesn’t perform everything under her husband’s influence.  And I see no reason to make my name conform to a world that I do not live in.

Objections

I have told my feelings to lots of women who none-the-less want to change their names.  The most often objection that I hear to my position is “what about this kids?”  Well, my usual instinct is to just respond that we don’t want kids.  But a lot of couples do want kids, so let’s assume for the sake of argument that we do.  If I wanted kids, I see no reason why the kids couldn’t hyphenate.  I had a Brazilian sister-in-law whose middle name was her mother’s last name.

The follow-up objection is usually “how inconvenient it would be to have a different last name as my child.”  In modern times, where re-married parents, step-parents, foster parents, grandparents raise children, I just don’t see why this is an issue.  I have had a last name different from my mother since she re-married when I was 12.  My husband has had a last name different from his mother since she re-married when he was 5.  This concern didn’t stop our parents, so why should it stop us?  Neither schools nor pediatricians expect children to always have the same last name as their guardian.

Finally, in regard to the hypothetical children, is it really wise to start sacrificing my identity for my children years before they are even a twinkle in my or my husband’s eyes?  This seems like another poor precedent.  Even mothers who would give up everything for their children should maintain something of what is important to them about themselves.  For me, that is my name and I would not give it up for them.

In Conclusion

Occasionally, someone calls me by my husband’s last name or my husband is addressed as “Mr. Spence.”  We usually chuckle over it and then immediately forget about it.  This inconvenience is certainly not enough to make me regret the decision.

Category: Beliefs | No Comments »
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Posted By samara on May 18, 2009

Have you ever thought about what makes you feel close to another person?  What situations lead to that warm, fuzzy, I-really-care-about-this-person feeling?  For me, it is usually conversation.  Not just any conversation, but the kind of conversation where you sit down (one-on-one, preferably) and discuss and analyze something in grave detail.  (In that way, I am actually currently forming a bond with either myself or no-one, depending on how you think of the internets.)  The highest compliment I can pay to someone is to sit down and analyze in great detail their feelings, circumstances, impending decisions, even their hobbies, finances, or choice of hairstyles.  If I care about someone, I have a an exceptional amount of patience to listen to them and to go over and over the same stories about their dead-end relationships or how on earth they are going to find a job that they actually like.  There are other ways, too, but this is the most common for me.

I used to generally operate under the assumption that other people form human bonds in the same way that I do.  Buried somewhere under that unarticulated assumption was the idea that people who did not do the things that I did to form bonds were simply not forming close bonds.  Those people must not feel close to people and their relationships must completely superficial.

Lately, however, I began to suspect this might not be true.  My husband does not spend time analyzing the excruciating nuances of his best friend’s professional life.  Even with me, he has a limited amount of patience for discussing the details.  When it comes to a conversation about how a black hole works or the history of Captain Kirk, he will go into grave detail, but when it comes to relationships or life decisions, he will skip right to the most relevant information and call it a day.  But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t form bonds or feel close to people.

So, I took a poll and started asking people how they form bonds and what makes them feel close to people.  I also made my own assessment based on what I have witnessed people doing.  (Hey, I never said it was scientific!)  The results were interesting and, not surprisingly, gender seems to be a factor, though not the only factor, in how people form bonds.  Here is a quick list of some of what was reported by others or deduced by me:

- Several people (all women) reported that long conversations lead them to feel close to someone, but there were a lot of nuances within this.  For example, one person said that she feels close to someone when they reveal personal things that they don’t tell most people, especially when tears are involved.  Another said that in conversational bonding, she goes through a checklist of topics.  Agreement and productive conversation on those topics leads her to feel close to people, with each successive item on the list indicating a closer bond.  (The list, by the way, is religion, politics, sex, childhood, animals/environment in that order.)

- Some people (both women and men) bond though getting drunk and silly together.  This makes sense because alcohol reduces inhibition and one is more likely to “feel close” when learned reservation isn’t in the way.  Additionally, there is scientific evidence that laughter is a bonding tool and alcohol often leads to laughter.

- Other people report that they feel close to people who have had shared experiences - someone they grew up with, someone who went through a difficult school program with them, or someone who had the same crappy job as them.  This method makes me think of the military buddy.  Who could possibly understand what you have been through but someone who went through that experience with you?

- Some people bond through touching.  They hug, put their arm around one another, stroke the other’s hair, kiss etc.  This method is much more extensive than what is limited to romantic touching.  This is one of the most important ways that parents bond with their children and it releases endorphins that allow children to grow.  In fact, as many documented cases of “hospitalism” show, lack of touching (say in a children’s hospital ward or an orphanage) leads to infant death far more often than one could imagine.

- Play seems to be an important aspect to the bonding of some people.  Video games, board games, sports, even general nondescript silly time all help some people to feel closer.

- I have noticed a lot of people in my life (mostly men, but I do this sometimes as well) like to give me their version of “here’s what I have been working on”.  This can mean either “look at what a good job I did; aren’t you proud of me?” or it can mean “I want you to talk this through with me to help me improve it.”  For these people, simply asking about what they are working on can sometimes make them feel loved.

While this is by no means an exhaustive list of the ways that people bond, it is important to understand that an invitation to do something you don’t necessarily consider important may be very emotionally important to the person who asked.

Category: Beliefs | No Comments »
Tags: Human Behavior

Posted By samara on April 30, 2009

I have been reading this book by Robert Sapolsky called MonkeyLuv.  Robert Sapolsky is my absolute favorite science writer of all time.  He has a way of explaining complex scientific topics in a simple way that is easy to understand, extremely relevant to our lives, and entertaining as well.  He is also the author of another book I love called A Primate’s Memoir, which begins “I joined the baboon troop during my twenty-first year.  I had never planned to become a savanna baboon when I grew up; instead I had always assumed I would become a mountain gorilla.”

Anyway, MonkeyLuv is about genetics, or more specifically genetics as it is relevant to your life.  I stopped reading it after the first section, of which there are three, because there was so much fascinating information in the first section that I wanted to blog about it before I moved on and became enamored with something else.  Here are some interesting things I learned and my thoughts about it.

1.  Genes aren’t always active
There are many genes that give instructions to your body and many other genes that do not.  The other genes are the instruction manual for how and when to activate those first genes.  For example, suppose there us a drought and a primate is forced to search for food for days.  The “instruction manual” genes activate a gene that sends out stress hormones called glucocorticoids that divert energy from fat to muscles.  Or, for a more familiar example, take a gene that has something to do with sexual behavior.  Right before that gene in the DNA sequence is a gene that regulates the other gene.  The regulatory gene is sensitive to temperature and once the weather gets warm, the regulatory gene stops inhibiting sexual behavior.  This is explains the spring-time mating of many species.

Things work on a similar way for people with certain gene mutations, such as depression or anxiety.  A person with the genetic coding for depression is more likely to become depressed in a certain environment, but that person is not guaranteed to get it.  A series of stressors in quick succession, for example, could set it off.  So, if you have some terrible genes, don’t think that it’s a crime to pass them on.  Without the stressors, those terrible genes may never get activated.

2. Monogamy is a better genetic choice
We have all heard the saying that monogamy is not natural for humans.  Well, in fact, monogamous people might have evolved to have more successful reproduction.  Take, for example, this study on fruit flies.  Many, many species of animals have a built-in, genetic battle-of-the-sexes, including fruit flies.  Because many males mate with the same female, the male’s sperm has a toxin in it that kills the sperm of other males, but it also harms the female’s health.  The females evolve to detoxify the sperm.  It’s a vicious cycle.  But, when a group of scientists forced a whole bunch of fruit flies to be monogamous and only bred the offspring with offspring of other monogamous flies, it only took 40 generations for the males to stop producing the toxin and the females to stop producing the antidote.  And, most importantly, the monogamous flies outbred the usual competitive variety.

So, next time you hear some guy with roaming eyes telling you that he’s not “meant” to be monogamous, I recommend calling shenaningans.

3.  Environment can correct for bad genes
Let’s go back to how genes are affected by the environment.  Apparently, if you take a run-of-the-mill (no pun intended) baby lab mouse and place it in a rich environment with running wheels, tunnels, and cool mouse toys, the mouse will grow up to be more intelligent.  If a grown mouse raised in boring sterile cages is put into this rich environment in adulthood, the mouse can actually gain some of the intelligence it did not gain as a baby mouse.  And, here’s what is most fascinating. In studies with mice, it is pretty easy to breed mice for intelligence or stupidity.  But if you take a mouse bred for stupidity - I’m talking about a mouse with a massive genetic intelligence defect - and put it in the rich environment, the mice will actually correct for some of the genetic defect.

The lesson here?  If you had a crappy childhood, there is no reason why you can’t become engaged and more intelligent as an adult.  And children, even the ones that aren’t genetically gifted, will do better in an interesting environment.

That’s it for today’s biology lesson.  I hope to bring you much more in the future.

Category: Book Review | No Comments »
Tags: science

Posted By samara on March 5, 2009

When I started this blog, I certainly never intended to talk about anything too personal, but there are some points in my life where the intellectual interacts with the personal in such a way that it is hardly possible to discuss the one without touching on the other.  This is one such topic.

I watched Slumdog Millionaire last night (which by the way is a fantastic movie).  Aside from the expected disgust and listless heartwarming sensations the movie gave me, I also had another reaction that I am sure others had - pure awe at the shear amount of life and vitality as shown in Mumbai, both in the slums and out.  It is the same feeling I got when I visited Sao Paulo and Mexico, and to a certain degree, Costa Rica.

There is something about the way that people live in certain parts of the world that I find exciting and interesting in a way that American life could never be.  It’s amazing to me that people can live without the planning and deliberation that we have here, that lives can be rigged up to meet an immediate need, resulting in an infinite mess of life.  It seems so natural.  Lives are messy.  Our minds are messy.

I’m not suggesting that our lives don’t have benefits over theirs.  Surely they do.  We certainly have more stability and safety than people living in the slums of Mumbai.  We have created huge systems to solve all of society’s ills.  But a big solution is simply not capable of solving the infinitely unique problems of every little person.  We still have problems, but we have removed ourselves as the agent to fix those problems.  Someone else, someone bigger will fix them for us.

I guess part of it has to do with control.  Some people have a culture of re-arranging the world around them as needed and taking advantage of what the world offers them.  If something breaks, go fix it.  If you need something, make it, or make something else that will do the job.  If you need money, find a way to make some.  We don’t do that in the same way here.  If we lose our jobs, we use credit cards or apply for unemployment until we can find the exact same job when the economy turns around.  If something breaks, we throw it away and buy a new one.  If the entire fabric of our huge systems begin to crumble, we have no idea how to fix it or take care of ourselves.

And here’s where the personal part comes in.  I want to go to those places.  I want to go to India, to Thailand, to Peru, to Kenya.  I want to use my forthcoming new education to work on 3rd world, or even 2nd world problems so that I can spend more time in those places.  And yet I have this leash, this terrible leash called healthcare that keeps me always within 3 weeks of a reliable source.  And it keeps me always on edge about clean water and secure funding.  I will never be able to head out into the world with nothing but a backpack and a plane ticket.

So what’s the next step?  I don’t know.  I guess I have to find a way to do it anyway.  Or at least find a way to try to bring some of the independent ingenuity that amazes me into my own life.

Category: Culture | No Comments »
Tags: movies

Posted By samara on January 29, 2009

The current economic recession has had a lot of bad press, but here’s an area where I am more of an optimist than some.  You see, I think that recessions are not only inevitable, but useful.  A recession is part of the pendulum swing in the cycle of consumption.

Sure, there are down sides.  People lose thier jobs, their houses, businesses fail.  But, those things happen in the best of times.  The difference is in the number of people that are affected during a recession.  Which, again, is not necessarily a bad thing.  In a good economy, if someone gets laid off or loses their house, no one notices.  That person gets swallowed by the system.  But, in a bad economy, so many people get laid off that someone HAS to notice.  And someone steps in to help.  The government extends unemployment and sends money into certain sectors to invent new jobs.  All of a sudden, poverty is everybody’s issue because everybody feels so much closer to it.  The poor are no longer marginalized.

Another good thing about the recession is that it gives people the opportunity to re-think their lives.  If you get laid off or your industry is suffering, maybe it’s time to think about changing careers ot going back to school.  In good times, that may seem silly.  Why would you sacrifice economic security to make a risky life change even if that change might make you happier?  But when times are tough, you have less to lose.  If your company is going to lay someone off, maybe you should quit so that someone who actually WANTS their job can keep it.  Or maybe you can find an industry that is more likely to be secure while others fail.  Change is a good thing and bad economic times can serve as a personal reset button.  I’m a big fan of the reset button and I will probably talk about them more in future posts.

Finally, recessions make us re-think our habits.  When the money flows freely, it’s easy to ignore the wisdom of saving and conserving.  We all know we should use less stuff and save more money for a rainy day.  But it’s just so hard to care when you think that you will continue to make more and more money.  Spend, spend spend, consume as much as you can, get all the newest and best stuff.  When reality hits us, we begin to actually follow the advise of that little voice in the back of our heads.  A friend gets laid off, so you start saving more money “just in case”.  The media predicts tough times, so you try to get in the habit of making due with less stuff.  Suddenly, thrift stores and re-purposing your garbage is cool again.  You choose to not take an expensive trip when you can have fun somewhere close.  And this happens on a massive scale.  Consumption and resource draining becomes significantly less prolific.

I could think of many  more benefits of a recession.  Companies get rid of problem employees.  Those employees find more appropriate lines of work.  Businesses that probably should fail finally do fail.  You get my point.  It’s the natural balancing of the economy.  A time of change and shifts.  You can’t guarantee that the world will be a better place after we hit the reset button, but at least you know there’s a chance that it can be.

Category: Current Events | No Comments »
Tags: economics

Posted By samara on January 25, 2009

One of the reasons I started this blog was to write down some of my beliefs.  All people have beliefs.  People acquire their beliefs from religion, from their families, from tradition.  Most of my beliefs come from my experiences and from research.  They may not be codified in religion, but they are important to me.  And, like many people with beliefs, I want to evangelize everyone I meet.

Today’s belief for discussion is procreation.  Or, more specifically, a lack thereof.  I don’t understand why reproduction seems like such an important goal in one’s life.  Biologically I understand it, I guess.  The human race could not continue without it.  But at this point in the population j-curve, it seems like humanity would begin to react to save itself.  We simply cannot continue reproducing at the rate we have in the past.  Not if we want to maintain our current lifestyles. Maybe the population problem has somehow led to the proliferation of gay people.

When I was younger, I pictured myself with babies and thought it would be nice to have them one day.  At one point, I was even slightly obssessed with the idea of pregnancy and thought that I could try being a surrogate mother even if I didn’t want one of my own.  But, as I get older, I want them less and less.  Contrary to the warnings of my slightly older friends, my biological clock does not seem to be ticking.  In fact, the batteries on that clock seem to be running out of juice.

It’s not a hatred of babies - I like babies.  I like to make faces at them and I like listening to the little baby noises they make.  I would love to baby-sit one of my friend’s babies.  I do not, however, want to live my friend’s life styles.  I’ve worked so hard to have a good career and a good marriage.  Why would I threaten that by having kids?  I don’t want the constant guilt of not being at home with the kids and I don’t want the sense of failure of not being able to do my job well enough because I have to run home to the family.

And I have no interest in the kind of weight that rests on your shoulders when you have complete responsibility for another person’s life.  I’ve done that before and it’s a lot harder than it sounds.  Every tiny little issue becomes your responsibility - what they eat, what time they go to bed, what they learn.  EVERYTHING.  And when their life goes poorly, it’s your fault.  You should have done something differently.  It’s not that I have a fear of this.  It’s just that I don’t want to do it.

So, here’s my belief:  I believe the biological clock everyone talks about is a fib.  It’s a cultural story that we are told.  “If you don’t do this now, one day you will regret it!”  So, sometimes we make these choices out of a fear of regret and not because it’s what we truly want out of life.  If it were a biological fact, why is it that women in some cultures feel the “need” to have 10 kids while women in other cultures only feel the “need” for 1? It’s a choice that everyone makes, not a need.

I’m making a conscious choice that kids are not what I want.  I am a naturally caring person.  I look after my siblings, my parents, and my friends.  I want the energy and the time to care about those people.  I don’t need to create new ones to care for.  Maybe one day, if my family and friends don’t need my support anymore I will begin to look for new people to care for.  But I do not need to make my own and I am comfortable with that decision.

Category: Beliefs | 2 Comments »
Tags: reproduction

Posted By samara on January 19, 2009

At first glance, The World Without Us by Alan Weisman is a terrible book.  It is full of poorly written sentences that make you stop and wonder what the heck the author is talking about.  Weisman rambles and talks in circles.  And it is blatantly sexist.  Back in writing school, someone must have told him to always write the story about a person even if the subject matter is something non-human.  I admit that humans can make a 350 page book about inanimate objects more tolerable, but almost every single person Weisman mentions is a man.  I find this strange considering he lists many women as sources in his acknowledgments.

And yet, the annoying writing style and sexism quickly disappear behind the subject matter.  Weisman tells the truth and I couldn’t put it down.  Kurt Vonnegut said that if you write the truth, your talent is less important and this is certainly the case with this book.  It is possibly one of the most important books ever written.  It begins with the basic question:  what would happen to the planet if humans were to suddenly disappear?  He cannot answer the question in one story and the question is far less significant than the stories he tells.  He tells many, many stories of different parts of the planet and how humans have changed it.  He writes more about things that have been than about what has not yet come to pass.  And some of it is simply terrifying.

He writes of tiny bits of plastics pooling together in the low points of the ocean and becoming fish food.  (He has convinced me that our time will become known as the Plastic Age.)  He writes of buried radioactive waste, just waiting for some future archaeologist to dig it up and poison themselves.  He writes of a trail of megafauna extinction that followed human migration across the globe. He tells of ground pollution and wildlife refuges that eventually trap the creatures they are meant to protect.

However, the book does not leave you feeling depressed, but relieved.  I was left with the impression that the world is a constantly changing place and that these changes, though brutal, are not the end of the world (literally).  There were extinctions and mass migrations long before humans ever came along.  Life goes on, albeit in a very different way, no matter what we do.  Even Chernobyl has life.  And one day, this planet will cease to exist, making this entire experiment irrelevant.

This book has left me with a dichotomy of reactions.  On the one hand, I have new opinions and some new ideas for the right way to live my life.  I think our plastic consumption is ridiculous and I intend to reduce my own as much as I can.  I don’t need plastic bags when I purchase something.  I will never use any exfoliant products with plastic beads that will wind up in the fish food supply.  And I will never, ever flush a q-tip down a toilet again.

I have also made up my mind about nuclear power.  Politicians always talk about nuclear power as a “clean” and reliable option, but I think the risks are far too dangerous.  There is so much nuclear waste in this country that the government has to try to figure out how to warn people 10,000 years in the future from approaching entire mountains that hide it.  Power simply isn’t worth it.

But the most distinct of my reactions to this book is simply a sense of humility at the brevity of what we have done.  In the grand scheme of things, humans have not been around very long.  More importantly, we have not been living the kind of lifestyles we currently enjoy for longer than a blink of the planet’s eye.  We may be able to swarm the planet and re-arrange continents.  We may be able to dominate every living creature and even change the climate.  But nature will out-last us.  She is far more persistent.

Ultimately, I do not feel angry or guilty.  I simply want humans to find a way to take better care of the planet, to slow the process of decay.  One way or another, our numbers and our consumption will eventually decrease.  The only question is how many people will have to suffer as that change takes place.  Can we find a way to preserve the most valuable parts of civilization and relinquish the rest?  Or will withering resources and over-population make those decisions for us?

Category: Book Review | 2 Comments »
Tags: environment