You Heard Me

I have a problem with this assessment of the reasons behind conservatism/liberalism.

The author here asserts that there are hard-wired, genetic reasons that cause “threat-averse” people to be more conservative-minded, and an “exploratory” nature can be cited for liberal ideologies.

The author here claims that this is an evolutionary mechanism… and I can imagine that the evolutionary payoff for both ideologies would probably be about one-to-one for those who are less likely to make changes and face risks (thereby lessening the chances of being poisoned by new foods, killed by a different clan, or injured/made less desirable by mates by a backfired invention or innovation) and those who are more likely to try new things, and therefore reap rewards in the wild (i.e., biodiversity among tribes, better nutrition through a diverse diet, lives made easier by inventions of their own design).

But here’s my problem. If we are, as the writer here says, genetically more likely to adopt one idea over another, there is no way we can make progress away from conservatism, unless it is simply a matter of those who evolved one way conquering those who evolved the other. To my mind, this simply promotes the notion that liberals and conservatives are opposite football teams, unable to cross over and unable to change their minds. And I really don’t like that idea. I’ll lay out a few reasons here why I think the author may be right, and a few reasons why I think he’s wrong:

I do agree that may of the toughest, most dyed-in-the-wool conservatives I’ve met do, indeed, seem to be almost physically unable to think the way I do. It does seem to bear out that in many cases, liberal parents have liberal children, and conservative families have conservative children (though there are many reasons for this). And many people who are conservative politically vote directly against their own best interests, seemingly out of a fear of change and a risk-averse worldview, wherein political change is seen as very, very frightening. The language of the right does seem to be most effective when fear is used to characterize changes or people on the other side. Was Rove using a biologically-based technique when he constructed the rhetoric around The War on Terror? Perhaps.

But… I’ve also seen many people change their minds. Think Ariana Huffington, the founder of the site the original blog appears on. It is pretty typical for young idealists to become more conservative as they grow up or for progressives to become more conservative as they become wealthier. I have become a hundred times more liberal than I was when I lived in Boulder and was so aggravated by the blind faith everyone there took in liberal ideals and oversimplified progressive concepts. Everyone knows someone whose political mindset has done a 180. And I’ve frequently encountered the 50/50 rule when it comes to children of hard-line ideologues. About half of the children of any politically-aligned family will rebel, and go completely away from the ideologies of their parents.

The 50/50 Rule: It even happens to Mormons.

When I was in a class as an undergrad (a long, long time ago) we discussed the whole “gender as a social construct” thing in the context of feral children. These are, for those unaware, children who had been left to fend for themselves in wild settings for any number of reasons (abuse and neglect, usually), and who developed without society, culture or artificial constraints on behavior. Feral children are a rare glimpse into what it is like when someone lives entirely outside the social constructs we impose on our daily realities. Among the observations made about feral children is that without society’s dictates of gender, the children do not express any kind of sexual identity. Despite the vast body of research that says we are genetically and biologically different as men and women (and all manner of expressions in between), the removal of culture seems to result in an inactivation of these differences. I would argue that although there may be genetic reasons behind risk-averse behaviors and risk-accepting behaviors, just like there are biological differences in the genders, the outward or ideological manifestations of these markers is likely a cultural construction, not a biological mandate. I would tend to believe that if you tested a random sample of persons in a culture like, say, The Netherlands, you would still find risk-averse and risk-accepting invididuals who express themselves politically in much different ways than Americans with the same genetic coding.

Further… I know I’ve experienced the feelings of “disgust” that the writer used as examples of a conservative reaction to “threatening” images of people like Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush. They make me angry and inspire feelings of disgust and contempt, even now. I don’t think of myself as a particularly “exploratory” person, political or otherwise. If anything, I would characterize my liberalism more as a fear of or disgust with threats like unchecked Capitalism, government control of my sexual health, the eventual consequences of corporate destruction of the world we live in. I don’t know if my fear of a post-Peak-Oil world is the exact same fear that someone else might have for a world in which gays can marry at will, women are in complete control of their sexual and medical choices, and cultural pluralism is the rule instead of the exception. But I think it might be close.

My husband’s father had been battling some kind of illness or another since I’d first met him. He’d lived a rough life, a tradesman’s life, surrounded by chemicals and characterized by long hours and tough conditions in body and paint shops in Denver. But it wasn’t until 2009 that his illness was given a name: lymphoma. And they gave him less than a year to live.

Lymphoma is a tough bitch. Known treatments more or less fall into a hole when lymphoma is the diagnosis. The doctors said they could treat his symptoms, but that the cancer would not be stopped. He was up for any kind of treatment: chemo, stem cells, transplants, clinical trials. He was going to fight it by any means necessary, and he did. But among the ugly truths about cancer, the one put so eloquently in one of Christopher Hitchen’s last columns for Vanity Fair is that what doesn’t kill you doesn’t always make you stronger. In fact, in the case of cancer treatments, what doesn’t kill you can bring you right up close to death, and what eventually saves you can make you want to die.

Yet, nothing was out of the question for Roy. He wanted to live, at least long enough to do important things like be an important part of his granddaughter’s life, and to learn a little bit more about me, the woman his son married. He wanted to learn more about the man his son had become, with whom he had only recently begun to truly reconcile after a tough childhood and tougher young adulthood. This Tuesday morning, three and a half years after he was given just a half-year to live, he slipped away in his sleep. Quietly and without the complications of breathing machines, ugly decisions, painful and expensive measures to keep him alive. We saw him together for the last time on Saturday evening (Dale had seen him Monday evening, only hours before he passed) and while it was clear he was pleased to see us, he looked depleted in a way I’d never seen before. He was just so tired, so delicate-looking, so small. I didn’t think it was the last time I’d see him alive… but I thought it was going to be one of the last.

Dale and I have been together for about five years, and I think that most of the strength that forms the foundation of our marriage has to do with the fact that for most of our years together, we have held each other up in the face of this awful diagnosis: the trips to the hospital, the treatments, the insane levels of financial and emotional stress it injected into an already-dramatic family dynamic. I truly believe a weaker connection would have been broken by the events of the last three and a half years, but for us, it has brought us closer in ways I don’t think either of us ever anticipated. I wouldn’t wish this kind of situation on my worst enemy’s crab lice, but the truth is, life happens. And when you face life with a partner, both the good parts and the unimaginably bad parts, it is often the bad parts that truly make or break the bonds you share.

I never knew I could be this strong for someone, and the part of Dale I’ve seen in the face of these tragedies is the part of him that I have come to most admire. While it’s ground us both down plenty of times, and while we haven’t gotten here without the occasional aide of a strong cocktail, when the worst times bring out the best in someone, you can’t help but love them even more.

 I already miss Roy. He and I related on a number of things: cars, vintage films (and vintage starlets), food, history. I am sad that I never really got to know him as well as I would have liked. I could have sat in that dusty, tchotchke-filled den and talked about Volkswagens and Stuart Andersons steaks for hours. While Dale and I grew up in vastly different homes and in vastly different ways, Roy and I could always find something to chat about. He spent the last years of his life doing everything he could to raise his granddaughter in an incredibly difficult circumstance, and doing everything he could to make up for the struggles he faced when raising his own family. He wanted to make things right with his son, and I think, in his way, he did.

The way Roy would talk about food was the way I talk about food, and toward the end, he didn’t enjoy eating like he always had. I know that for me, that would be torturous. He was so glad we were there for Christmas, but you could tell he couldn’t enjoy it as much as he wanted to. He was just so tired. His body wasn’t letting him do the things he loved, even on a basic level. I know that if this was the way I had to live, I would only hold on for the really important stuff. I think that he did just that. Thank you for the time we were able to share, Roy. You will be missed.

I was home yesterday and there was a peculiar little marathon of films on some channel from the 80s regarding women in the workplace. I caught the end: 9 to 5  and Diane Keaton looking flustered for 2 hours in Baby Boom.

The crazy thing? Both of these films are actually so feminist I don’t think they’d get greenlit today. The idea of Lily Tomlin’s lament of a “Pink Collar Ghetto” or Diane Keaton’s CEO turned small business owner would bounce right off the shiny faux-tanned foreheads of just about any Hollywood exec today. I actually can’t imagine anything as progressive as either of these films getting onto a screen today. First: middle-aged women and funny women are about as common on the Silver Screen today as wheat pennies, and women who express any power unaccompanied with sexual power simply don’t exist in American film. Even if they remade Baby Boom today, the main character would be an impossibly sexy mid-career starlet, not a dowdy chick in tweed and shoulder pads.

It has taken me a long time to realize this, especially given the environment I grew up in, but the truth is, we are not becoming more progressive as a nation, especially in regards to our portrayals of women.

Let me back that up. We are not becoming more progressive in the ways I always thought we would. There are some ways in which progress, as I see it (as a child raised on NPR, PBS and Sunday mornings watching James Carville carve his wife up like a Christmas ham) have occurred. Gay marriage is in the dialogue, the gay community is becoming a more accepted part of American life (at least in most communities, and, I think even if someone is a bigot in the abstract, they often make exceptions in the concrete, day-to-day social maneuvers they perform). Racial discrimination is a social taboo, and all but the most backwards among us accept the idea that outward manifestations of racial prejudice are unacceptable (although the internal beliefs held by many are still very much alive and a much trickier, stubborn facet of racism to remove from a society. Racism may be thought of as backwards and ignorant, but we disagree a lot over what exactly comprises a racist). We accept women in very powerful positions in this country, to a degree and not without a heapin’ helpin’ of sexist comments and degradation. Yes, some progress has been made and  I do think that the social climate that is expressed in those 1980s flicks where women tried to “have it all” is part of that progress. But I don’t think my liberal parents thought that we would still be debating the scientific merit of evolutionary biology in 2011. I don’t think my parents thought that their daughters would still be fighting to be taken seriously in the workplace in 2011, and I am sure they would have been as dismayed as I was while watching a member of the next generation of girls open pink package after heteronormative pink package on Christmas day.

It was actually after watching our niece on Christmas that I had a pretty awful breakdown with my husband. What hope is there? I asked him. I begged him to give me a reason to believe that this world would be a world worth living in during the lifetime of any child born today. As if the big stuff isn’t enough: Christian dominionism, global warming, peak oil, garbage gyre, the diminishing importance of science and technology in the most developed nation in the world… There is the little stuff. Our niece didn’t get a single book for Christmas. Just a slew of plastic crap meant to help her fulfill her more important role as a pretty thing, a pink-clad, oversexualized object. She’s eight. She’s smart. But she’s cute, and she is being hammered with the idea that this is what is most important. And yes, I know that if we had a girl in our lives, we’d do what we could to counteract these kinds of social pressures. And if we had a boy, we’d do what we could to teach him that girls have more to offer in life than to be tiny Barbies or, even worse, passive, faceless Bellas (from Twilight). But nevertheless, there are always going to be kids all around them that feed off of this social narrative, and those will be their peers.

The things we teach girls are not just a feminist issue, or a women’s issue. We all are either women or people who interact daily with women. Women are half of our society. If we continue to go backwards with what we teach our girls, the rest of society will go backwards as well.

It is really easy for me to get morose about this kind of thing, and when I was discussing it with my sister yesterday. She was talking about having children, I was talking about all of these reasons why I wouldn’t want to force someone to have to live through this shitshow of fundamentalism, short-sightedness, greed, oppression, war and self-destruction. She made me feel somewhat better in that she’s much smarter than I am regarding things like human nature and public policy. She said she thinks that things can only get so much worse before something amazing happens, and that while negative changes may be occurring on some levels, in other ways, fantastic advances and changes are happening that have immensely positive implications down the road. Focusing on just one part of the changes and developments in this world is a myopic view. And that maybe this experiment called America will eventually fail, something else will necessarily take its place. Things go on. We don’t know how this story will go. I still don’t think I’ll ever feel confident enough about what happens next to make the conscious decision to try and have a child. But for all of the things that go worse, there are ways in which things can possibly get better.

I find it rather disheartening that in 2011, a man with the talent, wit and philosophical depth of Christopher Hitchens passed away and the facet of his live that so many have chosen to focus on is his outspoken atheism. Yes, he was loud and proud about his non-belief. But that atheism is so remarkable in this day and age that it eclipses his skill as a writer and thinker is dismaying to me.

As I’ve mentioned here before, I was not raised in a religious household. My parents were happy to provide us with the basic ideas of Christianity, but we did not go to church. Perhaps this is why I simply cannot understand the impulse of belief. I remember other children describing their Sunday School lessons to me and just not understanding why anyone would believe it. I find moral guidance in empathy with other people. I find fellowship in family, friends, even coworkers. I find purpose in myself, the support of those I love, my talents and inspirations. I find solace in the beauty and complexity of the world as we know it, and fascination with the discovery of new theories for things we don’t know. I have never in my adult life truly felt a compulsion to believe in anything supernatural. I’ve never come face-to-face with a problem so great I’ve felt a need to consult a higher power for aid. I’ve never had a question in my life where I’ve needed a God to help me find an answer.

And now that I’ve seen Christopher Hitchens face cancer, decay and an agonizing battle against the inevitable without once succumbing to the path of least resistance and greatest catharsis, I feel relatively sure there is no dilemma so great that will ever turn me to faith.

I understand why religion exists. We are social animals but also scheming ones, a dangerous combination in some cases. There was a time when, in order to be safe from predators and warring tribes, moral codes needed something more than the enforcement of a tribal leader to be taken seriously. In a superstitious time, the threat of a vengeful God kept people from doing things that were understood to keep a community in control. This control kept the community producing the things that kept a society prosperous in the face of enemies and uncontrollable elements.

To keep a society safe, it needed numbers and structure. It needed women to have and raise babies and men to preside over strong family units. It needed to have trust among its members to not steal or kill. It needed a social contract that provided incentive against doing things that people would do, if acting on pure self-interested instinct. Enter God. And eventually, heaven and hell. Burgeoning cultures needed an entity that enforced the codes that kept civilizations prosperous, profitable and safe. Perhaps this is why we’ve had such a difficult time keeping the church and state separate. In its previous incarnations, the church WAS the state. It was the law.

But much as our progression up the hierarchy of needs allowed us to invent God to keep ourselves in line, our summit to the very top has allowed us to question God’s relevance.  Our world is so different now. Women, freed from perpetual childbirth, childrearing and pregnancy now not only contribute to society’s success but lead, manage and strategize it. Same-sex relationships no longer threaten the society’s growth and “safety in numbers.” Marriage is no longer necessary for building a society’s stability and population. Religion tells us these progressions are transgressions and we must return to the order we once knew. But I see it differently. We built societies based on these moral codes and their success enabled us to come to the point we are at now. But I seriously think that the concept of God has taken us as far as it can. And that clinging to it now only keeps us from reaching the next level of our magnificent, unique evolution.

Crowded again this morning. Always when it’s cold, so many people just need a shelter for a moment, even if it moves, even if they kick you off when it gets to the end of the line. A man with no teeth sits in the front teeth, jawing, asks sloppily for the time. A well-dressed girl with pretty fingers and a thick book shakes back her sleeve and obliges him.

A girl is planted in the middle of the bus despite the crush of people boarding at Downing. The man behind me asks politely but loudly to move back. We all proceed to the back.

There are spots in the back, untaken. I sit across from the roadblock girl and notice she is carrying creamy coffee in a spaghetti sauce jar. I do this often and I smile and I want to tell her how I always feel less crazy when I see someone else do it. But I’ve learned from experience that talking about “crazy,” even in a somewhat colloqial sense, is not usually a good way to start a conversation on the bus.

It is then that I notice her eyes, and from then on I can’t stop stealing glances at them. The lightest lightest gray, as close to white as you could get without looking monstrous. The color of smoke. The color of river stones. Like the sky when you can’t see clouds because the whole sky is a cloud.

I can’t help myself, but each time I see her startling eyes, I think of some writerly way to describe them. Grey like what green looks like in a black and white movie. Grey like a baby goose. Grey like sunbleached cement.

I find myself wondering if it runs in her family. I imagine the same white-grey eyes staring out onto Salisbury Plain or up at castle spires in some Teutonic mountain valley. I imagine a family portrait at the turn of the century, two generations of the eyes staring out.

I try to make a point of not staring at her, but staring out into nothing. Staring on the bus is not acceptable, this is how you differentiate between people who are just trying to get to work and those who don’t have anywhere else to go.

The bus stumbles down Colfax, slowly. I’m late for work. It’s icy out, I respect the committment to safety, but I’m frustrated nonetheless. I notice that right as I finally get to my stop, as I stand up to leave, the grey eyes briefly meet mine. I blink and turn away, shuffling through legs, arms, coats and bags to exit. Everything on the bus is momentary. Touch, sight, people, space. Blink and it’s over.