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Androgynous Mittens

Saturday 12 February 2005

The bumping, swaying motion of the bus was, as usual, rocking me to sleep. I was returning from Nowy Targ, the nearest Polish town, fighting sleep as I usually do on busses in Poland.

Ironically, a town in Slovakia is about fifteen kilometers closer, but not as accessible by bus.

In front of me sat a mother and her child, who looked to be two years old. About halfway home, I glanced down to notice one of the child’s mittens had fallen on the floor. I reached down to pick it up, then leaned a little over the seat and was going to address the child. “You lost something, didn’t you?” And then the mild panic struck: is this a boy or a girl? Wrapped up tight for winter, the child was androgynous, with only a face visible. So I said nothing, and simply gave the mitten back to the mother. Rather, she noticed I was holding it and literally jerked it out of my hand. Odd experience.

I didn’t say anything to the child because I didn’t know the child’s gender, and that is essential if you’re speaking to someone in Polish in the past tense. Polish verbs are curious because their past tense forms are gender specific. “I took” for a man (wziałem) is different than “I took” for a woman (wziałam). Not terribly different, but different nonetheless.

If I were to say to a little boy, “You lost something, didn’t you?” the “lost” would be “straciłeÅ›,” whereas for a little girl it would be “straciłaÅ›.”

The verb endings for males are:

-łem-liśmy
-łeś-liście
-ł-l

For females, however, they are:

-łam-łyśmy
-łaś-łyście
-ła-ły

My father-in-law always does this when he asked Kinga and I where we went, if we’d disappeared for a few hours one Sunday afternoon. “GdzieÅ›cie byli?” he’d ask, taking the “Å›cie” ending from the verb and throwing it on “gdzie,” or “where.”

Update:
Vivi asked “So, when you are talking about mixed company (ie a man and a woman), does it default to masculine, like French?” Short answer: yes.

Will the madness never end?!

Returning to the androgynous mittens’ story, my wife informs me that people make such mistakes all the time, with the mother usually correcting them. So I could have just chosen a gender and let fly.

Answer 120

Friday 11 February 2005

Question 120: Would you accept $10,000 to shave your head and continue your normal activities sans hat or wig without explaining the reason for your haircut?

Admittedly, I sort of cheated with this question, because for years I’ve been all but shaving my head. The reason I give is pragmatic: it’s less work.

For a while, I was in fact shaving my head daily with a razor, which took about fifteen minutes a day, so the “pragmatic” excuse doesn’t hold. I suspect my male pattern baldness plays some subconscious role. The less hair I have, the less visible my growing circle of skin at the crown of my head.

I did have a friend once who, when I suggested he cut his hair similar to mine, reacted with such revulsion that one would think I’d suggested something more drastic and permanent – say, tongue splitting or something. In my youthful naivety, I kept contending that it was a vanity issue, but I see now that it is much more than that.

Our hairstyles speak before we open our mouths.

Along with clothes, they often construct entire personas before the individual even begins speaking. Rather, _we_ do the persona-constructing on the basis of the hair and clothes.

  • Greasy hair brings to mind poverty and a lack of hygiene. Their personality must be somehow defective.
  • A mullet leads to expectations of a Southern accent and a lack of cognitive abilities.
  • A poof – no, a bush – of hair precariously balanced above a girl’s forehead and wings of hair sprouting out above her ears screams, “This girl does not get out often.”
  • Perfectly styled, stylish hair is the mark of someone who spends a lot of time in front of the mirror in the morning.

Fight it though I may, such are the stereotypes and

clichés I unconsciously create, and I suspect it’s not just me.

But it’s not just bad assumptions we make based on hair. That’s why the fashion industry exists – to help people make the assumption about us that we want them to make.

Hair and fashion are non-verbal communication. The question is, do we want it to be intentional or unintentional? After all, that’s the primary difference between being a slob and not.

It’s the communication aspect that gives the dimension of “Let me think about it” to the question. If it didn’t include “without explaining the reason for your haircut,” it’s a simple question: most everyone would agree.

“What? The do? Oh, some idiot agreed to pay me ten grand just to shave my head.”

For those interested in continuing and posting in a week on another question: Question 4:
If you could spend one year in perfect happiness but afterwards would remember nothing of the experience, would you do so? If not, why not? (Further question: Which is more important: actual experiences, or the memories that remain when the experiences are over?) Thoughts posted 18 Feb.

Then we can counter the visual communication of our shinny head with the verbal explanation. The “without explaining” means that our bald heads alone are the explanation.

For the sake of fairness, then, I’ll change the question to make it more applicable to me: “Would I shave the fashionable, boy-band-type verticle stripes into my eyebrows for $10,000 without any sort of explanation?”

The answer: most definitely not.

As a teacher, I unfortunately have to worry to some degree about my image. A slob does not garner respect, and so I wear a tie every day. Similarly, a balding man in his early thirties trying to look fifteen years younger would bring about, I suspect, unwanted effects, to say the least.

On the other hand, I’ll be leaving this school in a matter of months, so in the long run, it’s a moot point.

The Will to Believe

Tuesday 8 February 2005

The will to believe. Choosing to believe. Avoiding error. Seeking truth.

It all seems so simple from the outside.

I once chose to believe. At a point in my life, I went through the motions, hoping unconsciously that I could cultivate a belief (like a gay friend I had who was vaguely attracted to a girl, a feeling he hoped to “cultivate” into bisexuality) and knowing that I was fooling myself (much like my gay friend eventually admitted to himself).

And I did try. I wrote in my journal about belief and faith and the wonder of God’s love. I talked to friends at university about the marvel of forgiveness and what God did for us through Jesus. I prayed.

In early 1995, I began acknowledging in my personal journal the doubts I was having.

What is this thing, Christianity? It is the worship of a Jewish carpenter who lived two millennia ago. It is a religion based on a book, allegedly written by God’s inspiration. Was Christ more than a radical social reformer? Were his miracles more than a fictional construction of the gospel writers?

No matter how much I want to believe, to feel the fervor that others experience, I cannot.

Could Christ be the creation of a codependent society? The ultimate father-figure who provides the love a fleshly father should give?

The lingering adolescence in my writing style aside, I was filled with clichés. Perhaps that was the problem.

Another few weeks passed and a faculty member of the college I was attending died from cancer. During the memorial chapel, I scribbled the following in my journal:

Death — and my thoughts are again turned to religion. God is such an abstraction that I read about him and never feel him; not even death brings any real, any substantial emotion of which God is the source. The only feeling I get is doubt. Is that from God?

Doubt from God? It doesn’t seem possible, but from a liberal theology, it makes some sense. After all, if we can have Harvey Cox in The Secular City saying that God wants us to outgrow him and the whole “Death of God” theology of the sixties, why not divine doubt? Descartes, turned on his head.

Still later, again from my journal:

I find myself thinking of the whole God issue still. I am frustrated by the whole thing. I sit now in the library and just a moment ago I looked up at Rev. [Smith] and peered at his forehead, wondering what was in his mind, what books, what learning, what lectures. But mainly what beliefs. He firmly believes in God. He would stake his life on it, I would imagine. Yet that means nothing to me. No matter how important God is to him, God is still a mere abstraction to me. He’s a blurred, hazy idea, and little more than that. I can read Barth and Schleiermacher until I’m sick of them and yet it makes God no less concrete. I don’t believe in God. Not in a personal, substantial way. I read theology, talk about Christian ethics and doctrine, yet I don’t really believe in the basis of it all. It’s not that I am an atheist. It’s not that I choose not to believe in God – I just can’t believe in God.

Many Christians would read that and respond, “You read only theology? What about reading the Bible?” Indeed – what about reading the Bible? The more I read, the less I found that I liked. &(insetL)I learned in graduate school that “Schleiermacher” means “veil maker” in German. Appropriate, most seem to think.%

Doing produces believing? Yes, and no. From my personal experience, I see that for me it was impossible. But I was “playing” (for lack of a better term) in the Protestant tradition, and there’s not much “doing” there. The “smells and bells” for the Catholic tradition bring all the senses into ritual. Indeed – who can really talk of Protestant “ritual” or “liturgy?” Perhaps that’s why charismatic churches are so attractive to some – full body contact.

Yet the ritual can be without meaning – empty repetitions. Jesus, according to the Gospels, found that in first century Judea.

It does seem to reduce down to the will. People choose to believe often by choosing not to challenge those beliefs. I’ve always found it odd that it seems more non-believers read theistic apologetic than believers read The Case for Atheism. It’s tempting to be smug about that, to say that, “Well, that just shows we non-believers are more open, more willing to challenge our worldviews.”

I’m not sure how I’d explain it, though.

Pascal, Kreeft, and the Will

Monday 7 February 2005

Most everyone knows Pascal’s Wager, drawn from a single paragraph in Pensces: belief in God is, in short, the safest bet. (“Read more on the Wager.) It’s interesting that people still apply it in earnest.

Most recently, I’ve heard Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft use it in his 1995 Texas A&M Veritas Forum lecture.

One of the objections is the supposed inability to chose one’s beliefs. Pascal foresaw such an argument:

You would like to attain faith, and do not know the way; you would like to cure yourself of unbelief, and ask the remedy for it. Learn of those who have been bound like you, and who now stake all their possessions. These are people who know the way which you would follow, and who are cured of an ill of which you would be cured. Follow the way by which they began; by acting as if they believed, taking the holy water, having masses said, etc… But to show you that this leads you there, it is this which will lessen the passions, which are your stumbling-blocks.

Action precedes faith. Praying, meditating, going to Mass, all lead to faith. Crazy as that might sound, Pascal might indeed have a point. Polish writer Czesław Miłosz made the same point in The Captive Mind:

The Catholic Church wisely recognized that faith is more a matter of collective suggestion than of individual conviction. Collective religious ceremonies induce a state of belief. Folding one’s hands in prayer, kneeling, singing hymns precede faith, for faith is a psycho-physical and not simply a psychological phenomenon.

Every Mass Catholics cite the Apostles’ Creed in one voice:

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth:

I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord; Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; He descended into hell; on the third day He arose from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit; the holy catholic church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and life everlasting. Amen.

“I believe; I hear my neighbor beside me state that he believes; I am aware that my neighbor in front of me believes – we all believe. We all support each other in these beliefs.” That’s what I hear behind the words.

In that believing environment, which must be at least similar to Pascal’s environment, willing yourself to believe seems not only possible, but almost inescapable. Even as a “staunch” non-believer, I feel sometimes that tug toward belief, that desire not simply to fit in for the sake of fitting in, but to have what the parishioners around me seem to have.

There are two kinds of views on religion, wrote William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience:

  1. Seek truth
  2. Avoid error

For those who seek truth, the choice is obvious – bet on God. I’ve always been more the type to avoid error.

Book of Questions :: An Invitation to All Visitors

Saturday 5 February 2005

One of the most popular websites — judging by the number of comments — is Michele. It doesn’t take long to figure out why: her blog is not about herself exclusively, but also asks engaging questions, like a good host.

Gregory Stock beat her to it, though. I first discovered his Book of Questions (Amazon) when I was in high school. As one Amazon reviewer’s son said, “This book doesn’t have any answers, but it sure does make you think.”

The Book of Questions is just that: a book of engaging, sometimes provocative questions. From the introduction:

This is not a book of trivia questions, so don’t bother to look here for the name of either Tonto’s horse or the shortstop for the 1923 Yankees. These are questions of a different sort — questions about you. They are about your values, your beliefs, and your life; love, money, sex, integrity, generosity, pride, and death are all here. Some of the questions are indeed “heavy,” and some of them are almost jocular, but they are all mentally stimulating.

Rediscovering it on my bookshelf a few days ago, I realized that this is a blogger’s idea book written before the advent of the Internet, let alone blogging. It includes questions that, when honestly answered, could improve any blog, especially one like MTS that is growing staler by the day.

What I propose, then, is this: simul-blogging (the term, from my perspective, started at Ocean) to answer selected questions from Stock’s book. This would be different than merely commenting, as participants would not be initially influenced by others’ thoughts. Instead, we all write about the same question at roughly the same time, with a given date for publishing it — something along the lines of Marginal and Fallible do, but on larger scale.

Any takers? To begin with, perhaps something on the lighter side, banal even:

Question 120: Would you accept $10,000 to shave your head and continue your normal activities sans hat or wig without explaining the reason for your haircut?

My own answer will be posted on Friday 11 February. If you join in, paste the question at the top of your post, then leave a comment for Monday’s entry with a link to your answer.

“Spit flyin’ everywhere,” Take Two

Friday 4 February 2005

A wise woman once wrote,

I, too, am saddened by so much of what I read in blogs, and comment threads are even worse. It’s as if writers are grabbing the mike and running to the stage without having once practiced the song they are about to force onto the audience. At first it seems funny and then it just seems sad, desperate, irresponsible.

Raging, inarticulate personal attacks in comments and posts are becoming all too common.

There are blogs that are devoted just to criticizing other blogs. And it’s not just attacks because of political views, but attacks based on, well, anything that doesn’t suit the “reviewer.”

There are also bloggers who go around biting ankles in comments.

Regrettably I’ve done both. This post is what’s left after all the spittle has been wiped away and people began talking civilly.

“It’s easy to tear down than to build up,” said my mother (though I suspect not just mine), and the truth of that is becoming more and more evident in blogs and comments. A few examples show the childish creativity we employ (and I’ve included my own comments in this list):

  • don’t feel bad because you’re dumb
  • as obviously immature as you are
  • It’s called symbolism–does that elude you? I know the topic of my post did.
  • lots of passion here and lots of anger but not much reason
  • the world may not miss you
  • These people are cowards
  • So as to be clear — we wish there to be no misundertandings — you are an in idiot. While I’m sure you have plenty of self esteem and the trophies to prove it, you remain an idiot.
  • Have fun in Poland, hope you aren’t Jewish.
  • a mean spirited, self-centered liar, spreading small-minded insults
  • I cannot believe there are people like you out there, but then again, you are from [location deleted]
  • Damn! In the above post, some idiot forgot to edit before he sent […]
  • She is articulate; you are not. She is thoughtful; you are not.
  • When you grow up and enter the real world you’ll realize that common sense and rational judgement [sic] will take you a lot farther than anger, bitterness and sarcasm

There is a full range of personal attacks and libel here. There are subtle jibes:

  • “Does that elude you? I know the topic of my post did.” naturally implies, “You’re a dolt because you didn’t understand my post.”
  • “When you grow up and enter the real world” implies, “You’re childish now.”

There are not so subtle jabs:

  • a mean spirited, self-centered liar, spreading small-minded insults
  • I cannot believe there are people like you out there, but then again, you are from [location deleted]

There are nuclear strikes:

  • don’t feel bad because you’re dumb
  • as obviously immature as you are

And at least one hinted at something much bigger than a personal attack: “Have fun in Poland, hope you aren’t Jewish.”

Some of these comments were catalysts for others in the list, so it’s easy to see how things can spin out of control.

We attack; we get attacked; we retaliate more viciously than we were attacked; one of our friends sees the tangle and jumps in to help — soon it’s a playground brawl.

The problem is that the blogosphere is messy. It’s part of the aptly called “the web,” so it’s inherently difficult to track everything down and find out who indeed did start. By jumping in, as I have foolishly done, we may end up attacking the attacked when we should have turned our backs on the whole mess and gone to hang out at the swings.

“If you can’t say anything nice…”

Another problem is that the internet is essentially anonymous, and thus emotionally free:

People have no hesitation at being ugly over the internet simply because there is no cost to them. There is no personal investment to online discourse. The lack of personal interaction allows people to be as ugly as they want to be…which is often pretty ugly (Robert Fenton)

It’s like the crank calls my friends and I used to make back in the eighties when there was no caller ID and we were simply voices on the other end of the line. We can create whole personas on the internet, complete with false pictures, names, stats – everything. And in that liberated, new “us,” some of us show the darker, more immature sides of ourselves more often than we do in person. We’re all split personalities, as role theory points out, but the online personality can have a bit uglier voice than the others.

“I always think it is a shame when people stoop to personal attacks on other people, no matter what the medium” (Renee). My crank calls were never not so vitriolic as some of the things I’ve seen in comments.

In the end, it’s obviously better to sit back and watch the cat fights than to get involved. Sound advice for myself, a bit too late.

“Spit flyin’ everywhere”

Wednesday 2 February 2005

A wise woman once wrote,

I, too, am saddened by so much of what I read in blogs, and comment threads are even worse. It’s as if writers are grabbing the mike and running to the stage without having once practiced the song they are about to force onto the audience. At first it seems funny and then it just seems sad, desperate, irresponsible.

Raging, inarticulate personal attacks in comments and posts are becoming all too common.

There are blogs that are devoted just to criticizing other blogs. And it’s not just attacks because of political views, but attacks based on, well, anything that doesn’t suit the “reviewer.”

There are also bloggers who go around biting ankles in comments.

Regrettably I’ve done both. This post is what’s left after all the spittle has been wiped away and people began talking civilly.

“It’s easy to tear down than to build up,” said my mother (though I suspect not just mine), and the truth of that is becoming more and more evident in blogs and comments. A few examples show the childish creativity we employ (and I’ve included my own comments in this list):

  • don’t feel bad because you’re dumb
  • as obviously immature as you are
  • It’s called symbolism — does that elude you? I know the topic of my post did.
  • lots of passion here and lots of anger but not much reason
  • the world may not miss you
  • These people are cowards
  • So as to be clear — we wish there to be no misundertandings — you are an in idiot. While I’m sure you have plenty of self esteem and the trophies to prove it, you remain an idiot.
  • Have fun in Poland, hope you aren’t Jewish.
  • a mean spirited, self-centered liar, spreading small-minded insults
  • I cannot believe there are people like you out there, but then again, you are from [location deleted]
  • Damn! In the above post, some idiot forgot to edit before he sent […]
  • She is articulate; you are not. She is thoughtful; you are not.
  • When you grow up and enter the real world you’ll realize that common sense and rational judgement [sic] will take you a lot farther than anger, bitterness and sarcasm

There is a full range of personal attacks and libel here. There are subtle jibes:

  • “Does that elude you? I know the topic of my post did.” — naturally implies, “You’re a dolt because you didn’t understand my post.”
  • “When you grow up and enter the real world” implies, “You’re childish now.”

There are not so subtle jabs:

  • a mean spirited, self-centered liar, spreading small-minded insults
  • I cannot believe there are people like you out there, but then again, you are from [location deleted]

There are nuclear strikes:

  • don’t feel bad because you’re dumb
  • as obviously immature as you are

And at least one hinted at something much bigger than a personal attack: “Have fun in Poland, hope you aren’t Jewish.”

Some of these comments were catalysts for others in the list, so it’s easy to see how things can spin out of control.

We attack; we get attacked; we retaliate more viciously than we were attacked; one of our friends sees the tangle and jumps in to help — soon it’s a playground brawl.

The problem is that the blogosphere is messy. It’s part of the aptly called “the web,” so it’s inherently difficult to track everything down and find out who indeed did start. By jumping in, as I have foolishly done, we may end up attacking the attacked when we should have turned our backs on the whole mess and gone to hang out at the swings.

“If you can’t say anything nice…”

Another problem is that the internet is essentially anonymous, and thus emotionally free:

People have no hesitation at being ugly over the internet simply because there is no cost to them. There is no personal investment to online discourse. The lack of personal interaction allows people to be as ugly as they want to be” which is often pretty ugly (Robert Fenton)

It’s like the crank calls my friends and I used to make back in the eighties when there was no caller ID and we were simply voices on the other end of the line. We can create whole personas on the internet, complete with false pictures, names, stats everything. And in that liberated, new “us,” some of us show the darker, more immature sides of ourselves more often than we do in person. We’re all split personalities, as role theory points out, but the online personality can have a bit uglier voice than the others.

“I always think it is a shame when people stoop to personal attacks on other people, no matter what the medium” (Renee). My crank calls were never not so vitriolic as some of the things I’ve seen in comments.

In the end, it’s obviously better to sit back and watch the cat fights than to get involved. Sound advice for myself, a bit too late.