On being an interloper

As part of my coursework in college as an undergrad I created a couple of ethnographies after doing participant observation in a couple of different communities in my life. I chose to focus on communities that I was already at least tangentially a part of rather than trying to integrate into a new community or two into my already somewhat busy social/personal life. This felt Ideal to me, as I could kill two birds with one stone, though in retrospect maybe this was ultimately a bad idea as I already felt somewhat alienated from these groups, trying to focus on collecting information and observing with a detached eye only exacerbated the alienation. At least, I think so? This is a rough line of questioning.

I already didn't really feel like I belonged to the individual groups in question for a bunch of other reason. I was too young, I was not well established as a New Orleanian with just a few years of presence under my belt, in a larger sense I didn't really have anything to offer folks. When later I ended up cutting ties after an abortive attempt at demanding accountability I realized too that the folks I'd been hanging out with just had largely different priorities in the world socially and politically. In short, I just really, really, didn't belong.
Which is fine as heck for participant-observation work. There's a lot of opinion written and I think a general consensus that a well-done ethnography requires the author to have at some point achieved "acceptance" within the group; the breakthrough comes when the elders put you through some rite of passage or finally share with you some sacred knowledge. To me this just sounds like a narrative convenience. The stories of your encounters with the tribe build and build to a climax of acceptance and you just coast along from there into a doctoral degree. It's easy, it's intuitive, it fits an individualist narrative. I don't think it's accurate at all. In fact I don't think there really needs to be any amount of acceptance to produce good and useful work and I think that what acceptance you do receive should be thoroughly examined as its own individual social event. Folks in the tribe may never "truly" accept you, but the whole concept itself needs to be examined in its own context. What would have acceptance meant for me within my communities? Folks start calling me to show up versus me just showing up? Folks put some amount of responsibility on me to organize gatherings? Better interviews that were more probing? I think most of my interviews went great personally.

I think part of the issue is that no matter what I did in american culture writ large I'm already an interloper. My politics are incredibly radical, even if the bubble I've built insulates me from that. I'm very gay, but not even in the right kind of acceptable gay way, more in the total disregard for social conventions kinda way. My personal background is highly unusual. Many of my personal habits are basically anti-social. I put a lot of work into passing as a reasonable human being when there's money on the line but if I'm not getting paid I honestly can't bother and I can't really jive with people who do bother. While the groups I did study were on some level or other unusual within America, they were only unusual on one or two vectors and over the course of my research I found again and again that folks involved were actually fairly conservative. Many aspired to be weirder and sought the sort of authenticity that's ascribed to folks outside the norm, but their attempts were basically superficial.

I think ultimately the largest issue is that I just couldn't relate to the folks in the groups, nor could those folks really relate to me. They didn't have the temperament or shared experience or really even the time to do so. A lot of it was probably ageism. Some of it was probably politics. Some of it is just trapped in that modern individualist alienation from others around you. From my perspective I guess this was ultimately helpful, if only in teaching me what sort of things I want to avoid in life. I keep finding out later too that folks were somewhat more invested in my presences than they appeared at first glance. Maybe I could go back, but what would that mean? I came on my own volition (well if we're being honest I showed up because that's where my love was at the time), turned my participation into an advantage for me, and quit when I found that my principles were clashing with my participation. Would I be returning because I'm desperate for human connection? Would I be returning to search for some glimmer of something that looks like emotional fulfillment? Am I returning out of academic curiosity for the growth and shaping of the group? I guess the worst thing might be confrontations with folks I feel like I individually affronted and maybe it's worth going back if only to try and achieve some personal emotional closure. Maybe the time away will have graduated myself from interloper to invested party.

What Did We Learn

My Grandma has this belief that we’re put here on this earth to live our lives the way they unfold and for our immortal spirits to learn something from the lives we lead. It could be something very big, it could be something very small, but regardless we’re here to learn and learn we will. My friend has the belief that we’re essentially the same spirits repeated again and again, and the two of us met thousands of years ago and been friends before and we’ll meet again in the future (assuming it exists, he’s a bit of an end timesy guy when he’s down). Reincarnation is a super common belief, even in Abrahamism where the incarnations of the immortal soul are off in some new fantastic world (hell or paradise or limbo) arguably because the alternative, that our lives are incredibly fleeting and go from dust to dust in the blink of an eye not only is kinda scary to contemplate, it sets wrong with our estimation of ourselves and those around us.

Are we avoiding this on purpose? One of the many facets of modern life that seems to go badly is the obsession with preserving our selves, our money, our possessions, our will beyond the end of our lives. Whether it’s complex tax schemes to keep the money within our genetic offshoots or putting our name on as many big buildings as we can afford to fund, the screaming terror of mortality tends to manifest in these putrid displays of wealth and enforced posthumous filial worship. It’s not good! Inheritance schemes are pretty similar to bad cholesterol, in that they form plaques within the greater systems of human existence and make it harder for those systems to flow smoothly. Or in other words, it makes it harder for new people to earn that wealth while preserving a handful of folks who, by dint of their father or grandfather or great-grandfather’s efforts can just sit around at home and literally earn more than half this country will ever see in their lifetime of holding two and three simultaneous jobs.

It’s not like this is new or anything, the wealthy of Egypt would arrange to inter themselves along with their money, an arguably better system than inheritance at least. The scary truth is whether or not our consciousness persists after death everything we’ve made in this world is done for. It doesn’t matter anymore. And we all know it, right? It’s another one of those things where people are aware of this factually but it doesn’t really translate into the kind of behavioral shifts you’d expect if people really believed it was true. C’est la vie, ça ira, etc.

While we’re still on this earth though, we still gotta deal with earthy stuff. Our messy relationships, our tough decisions, our mistakes. Ideally every time you make a mistake you just, boom, you’ve learned a thing and now you know it and you’re slightly more perfect. Obviously life doesn’t work this way, and in fact a lot of things aren’t even framed as mistakes when they are. Even the concept of a mistake is tied to a personal ethical system. Maybe you think it’s a mistake to cause harm directly but indirect harms are pretty much a-ok. It makes me wonder sometimes what we could possibly be learning when the basic premises of our lives are so different. Maybe that’s the point and you have to learn something that’s buried under a facet of a facet of existence, like, maybe we need to learn exactly how to hurt people specifically. Who the heck knows?

All this gets even more complicated as trauma enters our lives and molds our ability to understand and appreciate our world. Every scar makes approaching life just a little stranger and affects the way we approach situations in both conscious and unconscious ways. Is it still a mistake if it’s a result of the emotional mindset caused by a past trauma? To what degree does your ability to make decisions really come into play with mistakes?

When I’m feeling more or less ok I’m happy to share my own take that reality lacks any real dimension of personal decision, that what we do is set in stone from the start and we’re just here to ride the emotional rollercoaster. It’s a little nihilistic, at least inasmuch as we live in a society that is absolutely obsessed with not just agency, but a sort of personal individualistic agency that makes things like “by your own bootstraps” and “welfare queens” make sense and destroys even very smart folks’ ability to understand systems as systems and not as the result of individual interaction within those systems (e.g. victim-blaming). I think it’s worth it though. All of that stuff is nonsense. Individuals don’t have any agency in the systems they’re trapped in. Stuff changes, of course. It just changes as a result of collective work that’s largely outside the hands of any particular person. You create the new culture you want to live in with your like-minded humans and it butts up against the existing culture and hopefully your culture wins that conflict.

So hey, what do you learn then if your life is basically on rails? Well heck you can learn dang anything. Your “mistakes” are just happenstance. Learn from them and try to avoid them or don’t! Whatever you’re going to do is pretty much already going to happen. There’s not a lot of sense in fussing about it. Really there’s not a lot of sense in fussing about anything. We still do it, I still do it, it’s just a human thing, but it’s not really useful in any real sense.

In Respondeo

Well, given that last bit, it sounds more like it is ourselves and not society that tells us how to conform in general. Which would explain why some people are socially awkward: because they are bad at perceiving said social norms.
I might disagree on the chopsticks, though. They ARE becoming quite trendy among young folk, even if their actual use is only secondary to the usual knives and forks. Which will generally irk folks who "thought of it first."
Also, there's no utility or function in killing people, these days. Much easier to wait in line than it is to disrupt the order of things and wind up on the lamb because you wanted cigarettes, a paper, and maybe some chewing gum. Where's the utility there?
So, it's hard to take that seriously when it's really just a thinly veiled fantasy of what you wish you could do. (No offense. I wouldn't mind a post-apocalyptic wasteland, myself. Or at least I'd like it better than most.)
For that matter, I've been in too many scrapes with musclebound idiots not to want a handgun. I'll probably get one, once my life is more in order. I'd fancy a derringer or small revolver, myself. You?

Not at all. You react to society. Sure, you have some small say in what you believe "conforming" to be, but society at large is what's telling you that chopsticks are unnecessary. Even deciding not to follow society's rules is another form of conforming. By defining for yourself what is "edgy" or out of normal social bounds, you help define what is within normal social bounds. Some people are socially awkward because they never learned what society considers acceptable. So, yes, they are bad at perceiving social norms.
Yes, chopsticks are becoming a social trend, but are still reserved for young folk. Basically hipsters and weaboos. It's not a cultural standard until stodgy old grandads are complaining about the arthritis they're getting trying to pick things up around the thanksgiving dinner table. Knives and forks are still the American Way©Pepsico
There is plenty of function or utility in killing people, especially if you live in a moral vacuum and live only based on rationality. This is another concept that is displayed in popular media, especially movies or stories about robots. Since robots lack the social programming they need to develop morals, they can commit heinous acts under the guise of logic and reason. In a true anarchistic society, killing people outside of whatever bonds you formed with family or some such would be the most logical move, if the most socially oblivious. At any rate, my point is that acting with no guide but utility would lead to the complete breakdown of social order. Thus almost no action is taken without an eye to the social perceptions of said action. Some of those deemed socially awkward are simply overly sensitive to the potential social consequences of their actions and thus refuse to act.
I'm not sure how you end up ascribing my post to a fantasy of mine. I have read it a few times and cannot see the connection between the hypothetical situation and what I may or may not desire for society. At any rate, you are being socially intimidated into making a change in your personal habits. You wish to purchase a handgun as a reaction to the actions of others. I myself am not interested in initiating an arms race with anyone. But then, I haven't been beset upon by thugs since grade school, so I don't know what socially motivated decision I may make later.

Gregarious Gadgetry

Today I considered placing a "gadget," one of tens of thousands (apparently) onto my blog. It was going to be "plane lander" so that I may practice my aeronautical alightment skills while pondering the tumultuous situation in the middle east. I felt dirty afterward and washed my hands a few times. Then my ego commanded me to make this post. I feel dirty again....

An Open Secret

It's about the corporations. There is no red, there is no blue. There is only corporation.

Yay!

I learned my first song besides Mary Had a Little Lamb which I knew from piano lessons years ago. I feel so proud of myself. Positively giddy.

It turns out my blog has a readability level of:


Which happens to be exactly where I'm at. How anticlimactic. I am average. Yeah, neither of the essays I've published scored A's. Both were in the B range. I have a complete inability to follow stipulations when it comes to essay writing, something that holds me back academically, but I feel is perfectly justified from a writing standpoint.

I think I may have mentioned this before, but I'll say it again: my interests variate almost daily. I will find myself hooked on a particular philosophical quandary or physical activity for a week or so and move on to another by the weeks end. They do return eventually, after it has been long enough for the idea or activity to seem new to me once more. For example, right now I'm off both reading and writing. Neither of them interest me in the least. I'm interested in music, right now. most specifically learning to play it legitimately, but I also just downloaded a bunch of Korean rock (which turns out to be awesome). About a week ago, this day, I was intensely interested in trying to write poetry. A week before that it was rereading Stephen King's Insomnia (my favorite novel of his, I found it for a quarter). And so on.

I really am sort of odd.

I confess

I don't actually know how to play the piano. I know the basic theory behind rhythm and a few chords, but when I play, I play solely tunes that I make up spontaneously. I often miss notes or hit the wrong ones. I think I'll rectify this horrid mistake. By the end of this year, I will learn how to read sheet music. I may buy another Bass while I'm at it. My upstairs neighbors play loud electronica music well into the nine o'clock hour, so I'll find a way to drown them out.

I actually worry about this somewhat. My upstairs neighbors (let's call them MUNs for short) have a two year old and a 6ish (I forgot) month old baby. They're both pretty young and throw parties once a week or so. I worry about the kids, since really, these people are not anywhere near mature enough to have kids. I hung out at one of their parties, and witnessed this little dude run around, hit people, throw tantrums for all sorts of things, attempt to throw a pet kitten (madness!) off the balcony twice, and generally be a nuisance. I did catch him and got him to read a book with me, which he seemed to enjoy. The baby was in a little bumper thing right next to a speaker, which is what worries me most, since I myself have bilateral hearing loss possibly caused by the same sort of thing (when kids are young and not diagnosed early enough, it becomes a tossup as to the cause. In my case it could have been damage through auditory extremes, [my mom is into hardcore rock] birth defect, bacterial damage [had tons of ear infections as a toddler], or some other unexplained cause). But of course, it's their kids and their life; and if they're happy with it, who am I to disrupt?

I've been listening to That handsome devil quite a bit lately, I bought their first album for 2 bucks at an Amoeba Music in SF. Turns out they're a great band. I will do my civic duty and spread the word (and the link) here. If their only link is a myspace page, does that make them underground? To be fair, they've had it since 2005, when the whole trend of band myspaces was only barely started. Personally I hate the idea. It seems like a dumb method to "get in with the youth" by evil soulless corporations.

There, I wrote a whole long post without a bit of interesting original material by me. Now to start a cult of personality. Love me, Internet! Love me!

Veiled Appearances

Well, another essay to put up here. I can't seem to get myself together enough to write in a particularly serious manner most of the time. This is a bit of an exception. It's a shame I finally figured out my thesis in the last paragraph.

This is a comparison essay on Carmen Vazquez's "Appearances" and Maysan Haydar's "Veiled Intentions." Funny thing is, when you google them, you get hundreds of links to finished essays and the like. I'll be glad when the semester is over and I can take a more advanced english class. I would say the present one is equivalent to a tenth grade class. Unfortunately it is mandatory, and I wasn't able to get the AP scores from last year in to counseling in time to switch classes. I guess I don't mind. Much. I apologize for any formatting errors. Cut and paste isn't exactly the best method for this. I now realize I am apologizing to the threeish people who visit my blog, none of which I feel the need to show off for. So I take it back. Yes, I will subject you to my formatting errors. It is no more than you deserve! >:V

“Appearances” by Carmen Vázquez is an essay on the common misconceptions derived by perceptions of couples’ sexual orientations from their outward appearance, while “Veiled Intentions” by Maysan Haydar focuses on the same common perceptions of a Muslim woman who chose to wear a Hijab, a traditional head covering. On the surface, the similarities are clear. People have certain stereotypes and expectations of LGBT couples just as they do of Muslim women. The similarities continue into the essays as one can see how minority groups are insulted, misrepresented, and marginalized by society as a whole.
Despite the vastly different backgrounds of traditional Muslims and LGBT people, they share a commonality in their minority. The majority of the nation does not identify itself as Muslim, nor do they identify themselves as LGBT. By pure virtue of the smaller size of the group, the majority can claim the right to abuse the minority by democratic process and further by social standards. Despite the whole of the minorities in America actually being larger than the traditional white male majority, minorities continue to allow this subjugation. The majority is very much interested in staying the majority. Because of this, they put forth a great deal of effort to divide the minority and emphasize the differences through social means, such as biased news reporting and politicians referring to one or more other minority groups, for example white bankers giving loans to Korean businessmen to open up shops in predominantly Black neighborhoods. When the riots in the early nineties destroyed hundreds of Korean businesses, naturally they blamed the Black folks for rioting instead of the White folk for inciting the riots. Minorities are linked by a common enemy, the majority, and thus often share common traits, such as similar forms of persecutions and responses. Before the Gulf War, Muslims were relatively ignored. Americans had little experience with them and had yet to form strong opinions, unlike their well developed, historically precedent opinions of African Americans or Jews. The Gulf War changed this. Perceptions of Muslims as dangerous extremists began to form and admitting that one was a Muslim became as unfashionable as, say, admitting to partaking in an S&M lifestyle. It wasn’t taboo, and not particularly looked down upon, but was indeed considered distasteful, and often preceded an awkward silence. 9/11 changed everything, however; immediately post 9/11 Arabic men and women were targeted for reactionary violence in America, especially in New York City. This newfound animosity further emphasized the similarity of Islamic faith and LGBT persons.
Gay men are stereotyped thoroughly as effeminate, ineffectual “girly-men,” a stereotype that is often the only contact the average person has with homosexuals, as vicarious as it is. Similarly, the stereotype of Muslims as extremists with odd religious habits, strange deaths and phrases like “durka durka” or the traditional Muslim warrior’s trilled yell is often the only experience that the average protestant American has with Muslims. These stereotypes are advanced and extended through American popular culture and nearly all forms of media. Many of the misconceptions of Muslims were created simply due to the nightly news constantly reporting the most grisly and macabre incidences in the Middle East. It focuses on the one person who chose to express his beliefs violently instead of the hundreds of weddings, hundreds of celebrations of life, and hundreds of small kindnesses that Muslims do for each other every day in traditional Arabia. On the same evening news, reports of gay marriage shock and awe the nation, with men and (to a much lesser extent) women kissing members of their own sex and dressing in a flamboyant, outlandish manner. Both of these misrepresentations continue off of the news and into the entertainment Americans consume. From “politically incorrect” comedians like Carlos Mencia to “edgy” shows like Family Guy, to even relatively normal reality shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, the character and identity of both Homosexuals and Muslims are clearly, if erroneously, defined. This shared misconception is a commonality the separate groups can claim.
I want to switch tracks here. This year is an election year, which always makes for a fascinating change of pace and a dredging up of issues that normally remain under the radar. Recently, as an attack against Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin said “This is not a man who sees America as you and I see America…” This statement, besides its inherently silly nature, reveals a sort of homogeneity of thinking that is assumed to exist. There is indeed a “Model American,” and that model does not, apparently, include Barack Obama. This Ethnocentrism, this idealized view of America is one of absolute morality. Generally the Idea of an American is similar to the earliest settlers in America: a white, heterosexual, protestant male, one who emphasizes absolute freedom where it does not conflict with the moral codes of the bible. Neither Muslims nor Homosexuals conform to this ideal identity, and are thus Ignored or deemphasized by the mainstream. Both groups have put forth great effort to advance their ideals and gain some measure of tolerance in this nation, but this sort of advancement has created a great deal of resentment and backlash from the “typical” white communities.
The essays themselves share little thematic similarities, “Appearances” being written as a scholarly documentary of occurrences and “Veiled Intentions” being written as a personal anecdote. In both of them, however, a major component is that of clothing. Both Muslims and Homosexuals have, as a part of their stereotypes, a certain appearance they are expected to conform to. From the turban of the Middle Eastern to the skintight Lycra pants of the modern male homosexual, how an individual dresses labels who they are. In both “Appearances” and “Veiled Intentions,” the way the people dress is misunderstood to identify with a particular method of thought as discussed earlier. This confusion is the primary similarity between the two essays.

By the By

I'm not dead or anything, just very busy. I'll tell you all about it later.

Today, The Last Day Of Someone’s Life

Fascinating. I suppose it's a given, but I've found that my traffic spikes (from 1 or 2 to 7 or 10, whee!) about a day after I post a new entry. The question I have is: how is that? How do you guys know I've posted a new post? RSS feeds are my best guess, I suppose.

I feel somewhat depressed. I wrote about 600 words of a 1000 word short story I intended to post yesterday, but I accidentally deleted it. It has completely crushed my interest in writing a new short story, at least for the moment. Sigh.

Anyway, I came up with a screenplay idea. I have yet to hammer out the details, but it involves a man who throws chainsaws as weapons. Given Hollywood's current state, it should sell millions.

I copyright that concept.

Hey!

Wow, I'm really letting this $10 a year investment slide.

Hey folks! You don't have to register to make a comment! Feel free!

Pogs are cool

So I had a nice holiday weekend. I spent it with family in Alameda, an interesting offshoot of Oakland. (it’s on an island right next to Oakland) It has a strange vibe. It’s most definitely a rich town comparatively, but the streets are still full of cracks and crevices, the buildings run down and the demographic generally Oaklandish. All of the new buildings though, have a sort of yuppy feel, with a super big national grocery chain store right next to a good sized national food outlet store chain next to it. There’s a brand new books/music/movies/coffee shop store there two, that even has a fancy escalator in the middle.

There were quite a lot of teenagers there, though. Teenagers make me worried, since they’re basically adults with less inhibition. Apparently, some years ago, when Alameda first became a destination, quite a number of families moved out there. The kids grew up and are now average graffito spraying, overly privileged suburban kids. Humph.

A more interesting post on the morn, dear gents.

Phases, Places

So, I haven’t shown up in a bit. Probably a bad habit, I should update this daily, if for no one other than my 26 steady readers. Yesterday I decided to pick up some form of music editing software, so I google “garage band for windows” and I found Mixcraft 4 by Acoustica® and put together a few songs. I put the only one that I feel is ready for the public on last.fm, so you can listen to (or download) it here.

Flew off my bike for the first time in three years today. Got a nasty bump on my left shin, but otherwise I escaped unharmed. Was trying to open a bottle of sports drink while riding. It was working fine until I decided to brake.

Motivations, Immolations Pt. 2

Wow, look at that, I wrote an entire post and forgot what it was originally about.

That’s just no good.

I started this blog as a step in a plan to find alternate revenue streams as opposed to depending solely on a 9-5 job. As outlined in the previous post, I am unsure quite how I will manage this, but I’ll be giving it a shot anyhow. I’m also looking for work at this point in time, so if there are any local employers browsing; I have a year and a half’s experience as a cashier.

Motivations, Immolations.

While barely managing to keep my expectations low, I’ve been quite pleased with this blog’s success so far. At the end of its first week (first five days, really) I’ve managed to pull about 163 visits and 203 pageviews. This far surpassed my “six people and five of which I had to drag by ear” original expectation.

I feel somewhat bad, as my first couple of posts have been solely focused on a transportation issue in the town I live in. not particularly entertaining. I honestly have yet to decide a direction for this blog, as most niche’s are already filled by another twenty to thirty other blogs, many of which are much better than mine can hope to become. I considered making this a short story outlet, which still doesn’t seem to bad of an idea, assuming I can get enough visitors to actually comment on the posts. Until such time in which I decide the overall direction this blog is going, I will simply regale passerby with amusing anecdotes from my life, maybe an occasional link, or mention of something I like or whatever. But I don’t like that idea so much, as I know firsthand how boring people and their lives can really be. So perhaps I will limit the anecdotes to particularly good ones.

On the traffic thing, I am quite serious about my exceeded expectations. I have a friend of mine who runs a forum here(and has been for some time) that still only has about seventeen (:]) members (including me :|) including some guys from a website called forumpromotion.net. I kind of expected my blog to be like that for quite some time, at least until I figured out a strategy for growth. but a quick and easy $5 donation (that I would have thrown in anyway, really) to child’s play for the Mario marathon guys netted me a little surge in visits, along with the various links to this blog I left on a few forums. I suppose this is just an initial swell that will quickly dissipate once the people who wander in realize I have nothing interesting to say anyway.

So, any comments?

I have Joined the Blogosphere

and this is a cleverly designed test post. test test test