why I am a libral..which is just a word!

I am starting this post without knowing where it's going to end up. Although, I know I want to talk about liberalism. This might be a trite thing to bring up because I somehow feel most people (not in the world...but most people who might read this blog) have had this conversation about to what it means to be a liberal. I myself have had it multiple times and I don't think I have ever reached any conclusion. Not that I think I will reach a conclusion today but I want to try and figure this out a little more and I really would like your opinions on this if you would please share them with me.

I consider myself a liberal because I think of it as being free to do whatever and making sure that others are free to do whatever as long as you don't impinge on someone else's right to do the same.
According to Wikipedia, that would make me a classical liberal or libertarian. However, I don't think I would consider myself a Libertarian. I think we do need a government to maintain order and protect those that can be easily targeted by the "powerful" and ensure that everyone has the freedom I was talking about. I think we do need to make ammends for a history of certain groups being cheated out of this basic freedom.

I certainly do not believe that people are born according to some divine plan where their placement is related to their deeds in a previous life. I don't think it is fai r that some are made to deal with the most impossible conditions by the random chance of their birth conditions. I understand that there are people who take unfair advantage of the welfare system but who's to say that if you were facing their circumstances you wouldn't have made the same choices. I am not saying that people should be absolved of all personal responsibility. I am saying that society needs to take some responsibility as well to ensure that no one continues in a cycle of oppression and that requires taxation of those who have benifited from the blatant unjust inequalities of the past and the sometimes subtle but often still blatant inqualities present today. I just want the government to make things right! and save the environment :)!

That's what it means for me to be a libral I guess. Some might argue that that's what conservatives believe as well...do they? I don't know...Do you know?

Patriotism and Patriarchy

I really really dislike it when people tell me what to do. It's not like I dislike getting instructions on what to do from my boss or my professors. But that's different. In my mind I have entered into a contract where I have already given them permission to tell me what to do. That's part of their job. Outside of such a relationship however, there is nothing I dislike so much as being told what to do and especially when to go along with that I'm told how to do it and when to do it.

This has always been my major point of contention with my parents. All through high school and middle school my parents honestly believed I was lazy. I believe that wasn't it. If they had assigned me chores and set a fair deadline(instead of...do it now!) I am of the opinion that I would have done them eventually. If my mother had let me do things my way I probably would have done them more happily. I believe I was just wanting to do things my way and on my own time. The point is that I find it difficult to take orders even from my own parents and other senior family members so imagine how ticked off I am when some other random people start giving me their opinions and advice. Very very ticked off! Now women who try to do this annoy me, it's true. But somehow, men who try to do this make me angry enough to lose control.

And this my friends is why I can never live in (move back permanently to) India. haha...seems like a drastic jump but this is where the title of the post comes in. I love the myth that is India. I really do. I love the melodramatic stuff about India being a nation where love is soaked from the land into the crops and the stomachs and hearts of the people into every single relationship (and pooped out to mix in with the land again I might add to continue a truly organic cycle (aah I wish you were reading this gwyn...no one else can appreciate my poop jokes as much as you)) Anyway, like I was saying I love the idea of India but I hate the patriarchy and I find that the patriarchy is just as ingrained into our digestive system as the love. I find that every (okay maybe not every every...but most of them!) Indian man believes that he knows best...that he knows better than his sister, his wife, his colleague, his customer, any woman he's ever met...

An anthropoly article I once read said that it all started with the farming. The author claimed that the need to control women came about when nomads settled down and claimed a piece of land to cultivate. I thought it was incredibly interesting when the author claimed that monogamy (for women) came about as a result of men's needs to control the inheritance of their land and their wealth. In other words, men were just like..."so I need some more help in planting and harvesting. let me get some kids and oh i better make sure that they are my own because I don't want to be feeding someone else's kid and I don't want to be leaving this land after I die to somebody else's genes(ok so they didn't know what genes were but that's what they really meant) hmm why don't i find a woman and control her sexuality. Let me get married oooh! and then I can be sure she is only having my kids while I go ahead and marry as many women as possible so that i have as many kids as possible." Well, shit! So much for Bush's crap about marriage being a sacred institution. Hah.

Anyway, so from the farming of foodstuffs to the cooking and serving of them patriarchy runs like and irritating irrigating stream. *Extreme scream* You know what I'm what I'm talking about...the ubiquituous Indian cooking and serving routine. Women eat last. They serve then they eat. The people eating the food don't have the decency to wait for the person who has prepared the food. It really makes me mad. And it really makes me mad that I have participated in this ritual ignorantly for so many years of my life. I am not saying that all families in the United States respect the women as much as they should. But atleast the idealized version of a family in this country has everyone eating together and serving themselves.

You know what else really bothers me that I have participated in for all of my life and I cannot get out of now? Language. In Marathi(the language I speak at home with my family), like in many other languages there are two forms of "You": formal and informal. I believe it was my mother who taught me to always address my father with the formal and herself with the informal. Similarly, I was taught to address my grandmother in the informal and grandfather in the formal...Aunt in the informal and Uncle in the formal and so on...I think this is wrong and I can't get out of it. I brought it up with my parents once and my father said he doesn't care if I address him in the informal but then he made some comment about how that applying libralism in the wrong way. And my mother said she doesn't want to me start addressing her in the formal because she thinks that would be odd and distancing. I didn't know which change to make and in the end I didn't make one because it was too hard to re-train a subconcious that automatically creates speech.

I know I didn't give big examples. My examples for few and only pertained to my family but the thing is everyone knows the big things. The big problems like female infanticide, dowry deaths and what not that does go on. You can even imagine the advantage and encouragement that is given to boys in the education system and in a male dominated work force. Patriarchy it exists. It's everywhere and in everything. Of course it exists in the United States but I feel that it manifests itself in a different and more manageable way. But in India it's too in your face for me. I do think I would be a better person to go there..fight patriarchy and change things but it would make me insane. So I'll stay here where I can handle it and change it here without overwhelming myself.

Time for prose ack!

get it? But it's just a pun. I'm not depressed. I'm in fact very content. That's why the lack of poetic ability and inspiration. I haven't written poetry in a while and I have attempted a prose blog entry before but I have always ended up deleting it soon out of a fear that I revealed too much. Or I think, "This is too boring. Who cares what is happening in life?" Plus, I have a big problem taking ownership of my words. I feel like once something is put down in unambiguous words it achieves a sort of permanance. I had this warning on my last blog and I'll repeat it in short here: Don't think that just because I write something I believe it or even if I do believe it...that I'll always believe it.

The problem is I care too much what some people who might read this will think of me. Not all people. I care very little what strangers think of me. This sometimes makes friends believe that I have achieved a state of healthy self-esteem. HAH! but those of you who have ever had to calm me down when I was waiting for a response from a professor about a recommendation or some such thing know how much I care what people in a position of authority think of me. But it's not just them.

Someone once told me I was a snob (and I know that person is going to read this blog and I am not sure how he feels about his name being mentioned so I'll leave it out but I'll call him M). In fact my sister has told me that in high school her friends thought I was a snob as well. This is kind of strange because I had no reason to shun friends in high school. I had a distinct lack of friends at GHS. I mean I had like two close friends (and two others senior year) and the rest were just acquaintances. I think I appreciated my group of friends at Pomona (as dysfunctional as we sometimes were in planning trips and such :)) a lot because I didn't have a group where I belonged back in High School. But the point is that I had no reason to be a snob in high school.

Except that maybe because I wasn't being or feeling accepted I needed to somehow make it seem like it was by choice. Like, "You don't want to be friends with me? Well, good 'cause I don't want to be friends with you either." Actually that's possible and in fact I think that's how I started out in middle school...but...I don't think that's the reason that I came off as a snob in high school....

I can't remember when I began to do this. Perhaps I have always done it but I know I for sure I did this in high school and I never thought it was strange before M said I was a snob because I thought everyone this. Don't you? I place pretty much every single person I know on a gradient of....of...worth? no...it's "Intelligence." I don't do this consciously and I don't sit around and think about where I have placed you until it comes up for some reason or the other. The thing is I feel guilty for doing this. ( I mean if I consciously think about it I don't think it's right to do this ranking because I believe intelligence is hard to define and my judgement is so not close to the "truth" and I also believe that intelligence is less important than things like open-mindedness, kindness, and happiness. ) Fortunately, I think of most people as being about as intelligent as me. Then are few who I subconsciously deem less intelligent and far far fewer still who I deem more intelligent (in fact I think usually this involves me thinking that someones is more knowledgeable and not necessarily intelligent but the boundry is blurry and I'm simplifying things here). And I only care about the opinion of those who are the same amount or more "intelligent".

Actually, you know what? I realize that when I say "opinion"...in this context I mean your opinion about my intelligence! I mean it makes sense. I want those people who I have deemed intelligent to deem me intelligent as well. And that's why on a blog (where I guess I'm trying to display my intelligence...hahhahahahahhah sounds so odd but maybe it's true) I care about those people. In another context. Say for example morality...I care what strangers and "less-intelligent" people think about me too!

So let me tell you a funny story. The other day I was looking for a round shaped clear container (jar or bottle or something anything) that could be turned into a snow globe for a BostonCares project that I'm leading. It's Arts and Crafts with kids in a transition home (basically kids who have been removed from their homes by the state for whatever reason including physical and sexual abuse by primary care-givers). Anyway I went last weekend and we made tissue paper flowers and put them in pots which we decorated with paint and glitter and stickers and such. The kids enjoyed it a lot! and I thought when I do it again in a couple weeks we could make snowglobes but I needed bottles so I looked in a couple Art Supply stores and then I was looking in a Liquidation outlet store...they sell everything there...cheap...and they have many housewares and things so I was just walking around in the store, slowly, looking at everything and determining if it could be used to make a snowglobe and I walked down every aisle and finally I found nothing and I was turning about to leave when I heard the manager say to his employee in a rushed panicked sort of voice "Keep an eye, Janet. Keep an eye!" and it took me a minute to process this but I finally figured out that he meant keep an eye on me! He thought Iiiiiiii was a shop lifter! This made me laugh but it also bothered me a lot that someone should think this about me and I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to explain how ridiculuos that thought was. That I was looking for snowglobable bottles! but I was already halfway out the store and it might have just freaked him out even more so I said nothing. But I did care what he thought of me...So yea...