Imagine you woke up this morning and instead of the early-bird sales and requisite bleary-eyed fights over the toy of the year (remember Tickle Me Elmo?) of Black Friday, there was nothing to buy.
Or let’s say there was nothing new to buy.
What would you get your friends and family for the holidays?
The artsy among us would have it easiest, I imagine: They could paint a bunch of paintings, take a bunch of photos, write a few songs or short stories and dedicate them to multiple people from different friend groups.
The crafty could knit socks, make marmalades and scrapbook their favorite memories with such-and-such a family member or high-school buddy.
The rest of us would probably panic, until we remembered what would become the source of our salvation — that is, the Salvation Army. Consignment shops and Goodwill stores would suddenly be packed by people fighting over a Class Struggle board game, a minigrill that looks like a baseball, a mug with a recipe for onion soup printed on it. The really lucky might be able to pull an old fruitcake out of a closet or attic and re-gift it — to the really unlucky.
We’d probably search our wardrobes and basements for things we don’t need that someone else might, refashioning everything useless into “a planter.”
The effect of this kind of creating and shopping on the holidays would be that everyone would get completely unique gifts (except for the multiple dedicatees for those songs and short stories, and everyone who got a planter). Many of them would be more practical than what we’d have gotten otherwise. Some would be less, I suppose, but at least the product of panicked, last-minute closet foraging is likely to be funnier, more personal and more bizarre than what’s left at the mall on Christmas Eve.
We’d probably learn a lot. Going to Goodwill would prove to America once and for all that we have no need for the manufacture of new souvenir coffee mugs, ever. Your reluctance to give up those leg warmers and the hair crimper you haven’t used since 1988 might remind you of how fun those warmed-leg, crimped-hair times really were. In the end, we’d probably figure out that we didn’t need as much stuff as we’d thought to have a good holiday.
I can hear you more critical readers scoffing: “That’s kind of a clichéd line, Alicia. In fact, this whole idea is nothing but a slight variation on ‘The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.’
“And anyway, these aren’t the times to be thinking about shopping less, not with the economy tilting toward recession.”
Except that the point of capitalism is not to keep people gleefully spending themselves into debt; buying stuff isn’t actually patriotic. If the economy is going downhill, it’s because of our excessive and indiscriminate spending, not because we save too much. Some products, the bad ones, deserve to go unbought — even on Black Friday.
We can leave them in the stores and wait for the good ones. In the meantime, while inventors get to their inventing, we won’t mind our shelves being more sparely stocked if what we put on them is all useful or genuinely loved. We can swap and craft our way through the holidays.
In fact, we might not even feel the pinch of recession if we think about how we can use what we’ve already got instead of following fads.
Think about it: How many kids out there still play with their Tickle Me Elmos?
Couldn’t you just see him making a great planter?
Friday, November 28, 2008
Friday, November 21, 2008
11/21/08: "Take responsibility" is not an effective answer
I’m against abortion.
But then, I don’t know anyone who considers herself “for” abortion. To my knowledge, I’ve never met a woman who was happy about having one. I suspect these women are fictional, like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny — only, you know, evil.
So why do people who call themselves “pro-life” seem to believe in them? It’s never made sense to me that pro-life advocates appear to believe both that women seeking abortions are wicked and that they should be required to raise children.
The assumption from the right often seems to be that women who have ended up pregnant are so because they’ve made bad decisions.
OK, sure. That may sometimes be true. But even if it were true in every case, the prevailing attitude that these women should be made to “take responsibility” for their mistakes is foolish.
Now, I’m for taking responsibility. I consider myself a responsible person — almost boringly so — and wherever possible, I like to see other people holding up their ends, too.
The trouble is that this responsibility often falls exclusively on women, consumes entire lives and careers and requires more than a dutiful attitude to be executed properly — it requires love. And yet we expect women to buckle down, grit their teeth and do it anyway. Lovingly.
And alone.
This doesn’t seem very pro-lifelike to me. And it doesn’t seem very effective.
Neither does arguing that women who decide to have their children in less-than-ideal circumstances — into single-parent households, into families whose budgets are already strained beyond breaking, into abusive situations — will be suddenly swept up by “the joy of parenting” and able to overcome any obstacle. “When you hold the baby, you’ll feel great” is not an argument that puts food on the table. It doesn’t solve real problems.
If we want fewer abortions, we need to admit it’s a difficult question. There are no easy answers.
Then we need to look to ourselves to “take responsibility,” not to women in desperate or unfair circumstances.
I’m not saying women can abdicate responsibility. And I’m not talking politics here. I’m talking about us pro-lifers acting like the kind of people we say we want to be: actually pro-life.
Here’s a thought: We can have legalized abortion and still live in a country that performs none. Legalized abortion is not the problem. The need for it is. Let’s stop focusing on political solutions and work on relational ones.
Pro-lifers need to stop advocating for abstinence-only education. It’s obvious abstinence is the only foolproof method of pregnancy prevention; it’s also obvious that abstinence-only education doesn’t work. Teens in abstinence-only areas contract just as many sexually transmitted diseases and get pregnant just as often, and more often in many cases, than kids getting taught sex ed.
We also need to think hard about the other options we list for women considering abortion and ensure they’re real options, not just things we say to make ourselves feel better.We have to remember, for instance, that we care about these children when we fund food stamps and health coverage — more than we care about our taxes going up.
And while adoption is an option, the number of couples looking for children cannot possibly rival the number of children aborted every year. I say this seriously: If you’re really pro-life, next time you meet a woman thinking about abortion, consider offering to adopt her child yourself.
At the very least, thinking about it will help you see what she’s going through. At best, “when you hold the baby, you’ll feel great.”
But then, I don’t know anyone who considers herself “for” abortion. To my knowledge, I’ve never met a woman who was happy about having one. I suspect these women are fictional, like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny — only, you know, evil.
So why do people who call themselves “pro-life” seem to believe in them? It’s never made sense to me that pro-life advocates appear to believe both that women seeking abortions are wicked and that they should be required to raise children.
The assumption from the right often seems to be that women who have ended up pregnant are so because they’ve made bad decisions.
OK, sure. That may sometimes be true. But even if it were true in every case, the prevailing attitude that these women should be made to “take responsibility” for their mistakes is foolish.
Now, I’m for taking responsibility. I consider myself a responsible person — almost boringly so — and wherever possible, I like to see other people holding up their ends, too.
The trouble is that this responsibility often falls exclusively on women, consumes entire lives and careers and requires more than a dutiful attitude to be executed properly — it requires love. And yet we expect women to buckle down, grit their teeth and do it anyway. Lovingly.
And alone.
This doesn’t seem very pro-lifelike to me. And it doesn’t seem very effective.
Neither does arguing that women who decide to have their children in less-than-ideal circumstances — into single-parent households, into families whose budgets are already strained beyond breaking, into abusive situations — will be suddenly swept up by “the joy of parenting” and able to overcome any obstacle. “When you hold the baby, you’ll feel great” is not an argument that puts food on the table. It doesn’t solve real problems.
If we want fewer abortions, we need to admit it’s a difficult question. There are no easy answers.
Then we need to look to ourselves to “take responsibility,” not to women in desperate or unfair circumstances.
I’m not saying women can abdicate responsibility. And I’m not talking politics here. I’m talking about us pro-lifers acting like the kind of people we say we want to be: actually pro-life.
Here’s a thought: We can have legalized abortion and still live in a country that performs none. Legalized abortion is not the problem. The need for it is. Let’s stop focusing on political solutions and work on relational ones.
Pro-lifers need to stop advocating for abstinence-only education. It’s obvious abstinence is the only foolproof method of pregnancy prevention; it’s also obvious that abstinence-only education doesn’t work. Teens in abstinence-only areas contract just as many sexually transmitted diseases and get pregnant just as often, and more often in many cases, than kids getting taught sex ed.
We also need to think hard about the other options we list for women considering abortion and ensure they’re real options, not just things we say to make ourselves feel better.We have to remember, for instance, that we care about these children when we fund food stamps and health coverage — more than we care about our taxes going up.
And while adoption is an option, the number of couples looking for children cannot possibly rival the number of children aborted every year. I say this seriously: If you’re really pro-life, next time you meet a woman thinking about abortion, consider offering to adopt her child yourself.
At the very least, thinking about it will help you see what she’s going through. At best, “when you hold the baby, you’ll feel great.”
Friday, November 14, 2008
11/14/08: Nowhere to settle down in modern marketplace
I spent four years after college teaching English — first to students in China, then to GED students in Washington, D.C.
I did not have the certification that would have allowed me to teach in an American public school. It may have been this fact that caused friends and relatives to ask me, on my visits to family in Connecticut, when I would be getting "a real job."
It was more likely the fact that I was a volunteer those four years, supported in China by sponsorship from those friends and relatives and in D.C. by a voluntary service and Americorps, that prompted questions of when I would settle down.
Settling down means, in part, making money. It also means sticking to one place and buckling down when "the going gets rough." Settling down means choosing one course of action — or inaction — and committing to it. Settling down is practical.
But nothing is more practical than doing what you really, really want to do. And settling down too often becomes settling.
Settling for less than what you know you’re capable of leads to misery.
Misery is not practical — it’s stupid. It’s a waste of time and effort to work at something that makes you money but makes you miserable. It’s always been a waste, but is even more of one now, when building a career means cultivating skills and abilities that can be taken with you when you change jobs.
And you will change jobs. It’s no longer a question of whether you will ever again need an updated resume, but how often you’ll need it: every year? Every six months? Some people make careers of working for temp agencies. The old paradigm of the industrial corporation earning worker loyalty by offering security is obsolete. Gone with it are the assumed advantages of "settling down."
This isn’t necessarily bad. There were advantages to a workplace that offered job security, but there are at least as many advantages to the emerging market for creative and flexible individuals — those who can multitask, who are willing to learn and can apply a variety of past experiences to a new challenge.
There are comparatively fewer advantages in the new marketplace, of course, for those still interested primarily in settling down.
We need to change our paradigms to accommodate this change. In his book "Work: Making a Living and Making a Life," Joshua Halberstam points out that "in our economy, jobs are activities, not positions; only the temporary contract is permanent." The "temporary contract" offers payment for services rendered, encourages project-driven work rather than stable position-related functions and essentially eliminates the division between "management" and "employee." In this environment, your loyalty is to yourself and developing your potential.
There’s no reason to "put in time" in the proverbial mailroom, hoping to be promoted on the basis of your long service. Recent graduates or workers dissatisfied with their job’s responsibilities or position need to become entrepreneurs, seeking out a need for skills they have or would like to develop — especially for work in a field they would enjoy.
While many fields are increasingly specialized, there’s no reason to stick to one career path, either. Most skills are transferable. Even hobbies can become careers.
I waited, as my years in China passed, and then as my time in D.C. went by, to feel ready to "settle down." I expected the desire to commit to one place or vocation to magically descend on me.
So far, it hasn’t — but considering the range of fascinating opportunities out there, I’m glad.
I did not have the certification that would have allowed me to teach in an American public school. It may have been this fact that caused friends and relatives to ask me, on my visits to family in Connecticut, when I would be getting "a real job."
It was more likely the fact that I was a volunteer those four years, supported in China by sponsorship from those friends and relatives and in D.C. by a voluntary service and Americorps, that prompted questions of when I would settle down.
Settling down means, in part, making money. It also means sticking to one place and buckling down when "the going gets rough." Settling down means choosing one course of action — or inaction — and committing to it. Settling down is practical.
But nothing is more practical than doing what you really, really want to do. And settling down too often becomes settling.
Settling for less than what you know you’re capable of leads to misery.
Misery is not practical — it’s stupid. It’s a waste of time and effort to work at something that makes you money but makes you miserable. It’s always been a waste, but is even more of one now, when building a career means cultivating skills and abilities that can be taken with you when you change jobs.
And you will change jobs. It’s no longer a question of whether you will ever again need an updated resume, but how often you’ll need it: every year? Every six months? Some people make careers of working for temp agencies. The old paradigm of the industrial corporation earning worker loyalty by offering security is obsolete. Gone with it are the assumed advantages of "settling down."
This isn’t necessarily bad. There were advantages to a workplace that offered job security, but there are at least as many advantages to the emerging market for creative and flexible individuals — those who can multitask, who are willing to learn and can apply a variety of past experiences to a new challenge.
There are comparatively fewer advantages in the new marketplace, of course, for those still interested primarily in settling down.
We need to change our paradigms to accommodate this change. In his book "Work: Making a Living and Making a Life," Joshua Halberstam points out that "in our economy, jobs are activities, not positions; only the temporary contract is permanent." The "temporary contract" offers payment for services rendered, encourages project-driven work rather than stable position-related functions and essentially eliminates the division between "management" and "employee." In this environment, your loyalty is to yourself and developing your potential.
There’s no reason to "put in time" in the proverbial mailroom, hoping to be promoted on the basis of your long service. Recent graduates or workers dissatisfied with their job’s responsibilities or position need to become entrepreneurs, seeking out a need for skills they have or would like to develop — especially for work in a field they would enjoy.
While many fields are increasingly specialized, there’s no reason to stick to one career path, either. Most skills are transferable. Even hobbies can become careers.
I waited, as my years in China passed, and then as my time in D.C. went by, to feel ready to "settle down." I expected the desire to commit to one place or vocation to magically descend on me.
So far, it hasn’t — but considering the range of fascinating opportunities out there, I’m glad.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
11/7/08: Obama did more than win; he inspired
Dear President-elect Obama,
I’m just writing to thank you for running. I know the opposition has been tough, starting with an overloaded Democratic primary. You’ve been on the road for 20 months, and that’s just the beginning of the fight you’re in for now.
I’ve never seen people so angry as some have been over your campaign, and for such strange and diverse reasons: You’re "a Muslim," you’re secretly "a terrorist," you’re "going to raise taxes," you’re "inexperienced." You’re black.
But I’ve also never felt the sense of hope and agency your campaign has created in your supporters. I’ve never met up with a group of civic-minded people who volunteer and cheer and invest themselves in the question of government the way people in my online Town Hall group do. This is something new.
To me, the best part is the sense that government isn’t some monolithic structure created to keep us from succeeding, or put on us by politicians whose ways are so strange they’re like aliens — actual aliens, not immigrants. We make up the government, and we can change it if we want to.
I suspect we’ll need that sense of agency in the next four or eight years, because I think it will be a hard road for you. People who supported and voted for McCain will be hard to win over, especially if they believe the suggestions that you’re going to destroy us all. You’ll need the supporters you gained during this campaign to continue working on behalf of your ideals.
And it’s your ideals that we love: the focus on green energy as the way to energy independence, with the recognition that this will create jobs, even if those aren’t oil or coal jobs anymore; the support for service workers with Americorps or the Peace Corps, in helping to fund their tuition and for the community members they’ll help with their service; your concern for the well-being of soldiers, from voting for the G.I. Bill to getting them out of Iraq and into the fight against al-Qaida, where they should have been in the first place.
I love hearing you talk about education. I love it when you talk about the middle class — even though I’m not yet a member of it. I love that a record number of young voters registered to vote for you. This is what I’m talking about.
Even if you turned out to be a Scientologist, a crazy tax-raiser and a robot, the damage is done. We’ve woken up to our responsibilities as Americans, out of the stupor of seven years of being told to shop more to defeat terrorism, out of the disbelief we were struck with when we learned there were no weapons of mass destruction, that we’d been asked to bail out the institutions that seemed to have stolen our 401Ks or that plenty of children were "left behind" while teachers drowned in paperwork.
(Or the most surreal moment of the past eight years for me — being told Vice President Cheney had shot his friend in the face. Satire died that day; with reality like this, who needed sarcasm?)
You’ve made me understand that it’s as much up to me as it is you. And I’m ready. I’m not going to sit back and wait for you to get things done. I’m not going to be slinging mud, and I won’t always pay attention to what you’re doing. I’ve got my own civic work to do.
I’ll update you periodically, as I’m sure you’ll let us know how it’s going in the White House.
Best wishes, President Obama.
I’m just writing to thank you for running. I know the opposition has been tough, starting with an overloaded Democratic primary. You’ve been on the road for 20 months, and that’s just the beginning of the fight you’re in for now.
I’ve never seen people so angry as some have been over your campaign, and for such strange and diverse reasons: You’re "a Muslim," you’re secretly "a terrorist," you’re "going to raise taxes," you’re "inexperienced." You’re black.
But I’ve also never felt the sense of hope and agency your campaign has created in your supporters. I’ve never met up with a group of civic-minded people who volunteer and cheer and invest themselves in the question of government the way people in my online Town Hall group do. This is something new.
To me, the best part is the sense that government isn’t some monolithic structure created to keep us from succeeding, or put on us by politicians whose ways are so strange they’re like aliens — actual aliens, not immigrants. We make up the government, and we can change it if we want to.
I suspect we’ll need that sense of agency in the next four or eight years, because I think it will be a hard road for you. People who supported and voted for McCain will be hard to win over, especially if they believe the suggestions that you’re going to destroy us all. You’ll need the supporters you gained during this campaign to continue working on behalf of your ideals.
And it’s your ideals that we love: the focus on green energy as the way to energy independence, with the recognition that this will create jobs, even if those aren’t oil or coal jobs anymore; the support for service workers with Americorps or the Peace Corps, in helping to fund their tuition and for the community members they’ll help with their service; your concern for the well-being of soldiers, from voting for the G.I. Bill to getting them out of Iraq and into the fight against al-Qaida, where they should have been in the first place.
I love hearing you talk about education. I love it when you talk about the middle class — even though I’m not yet a member of it. I love that a record number of young voters registered to vote for you. This is what I’m talking about.
Even if you turned out to be a Scientologist, a crazy tax-raiser and a robot, the damage is done. We’ve woken up to our responsibilities as Americans, out of the stupor of seven years of being told to shop more to defeat terrorism, out of the disbelief we were struck with when we learned there were no weapons of mass destruction, that we’d been asked to bail out the institutions that seemed to have stolen our 401Ks or that plenty of children were "left behind" while teachers drowned in paperwork.
(Or the most surreal moment of the past eight years for me — being told Vice President Cheney had shot his friend in the face. Satire died that day; with reality like this, who needed sarcasm?)
You’ve made me understand that it’s as much up to me as it is you. And I’m ready. I’m not going to sit back and wait for you to get things done. I’m not going to be slinging mud, and I won’t always pay attention to what you’re doing. I’ve got my own civic work to do.
I’ll update you periodically, as I’m sure you’ll let us know how it’s going in the White House.
Best wishes, President Obama.
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