I'm not quite sure why I'm posting right now...but hey, why not?
I guess I will go ahead and give ye olde college try at the post I've been thinking about posting. Post haste? Posty post.
The comments I received about Octo-mom were what I expected, to say the least. I believe it was
(e:jason) who told me that my gut was telling me that I agreed with the comments, and the truth, he is right. And that is the subject that I want to deal with...
I believe that our "guts"..intuition, instinct, whathaveyou, are culturally and socially shaped and manipulated and that often enough, those values that inform our guts are products not of our own making, but reflect and in turn shape the culture that we live in. This is, on a side note, one of my issues with liberalism and individualism that this country was supposedly founded on. I could go off here on about identity politics and the like, but I will refrain.
Yes, my gut tells me that octo-mom is irresponsible. My gut also tells me that I should be afraid of poor neighborhoods were mostly people of color live because they have been labeled "ghettos," places of violence and poverty. My gut tells me to cringe when homeless people come up to me and ask if I cans or bottles or change. My gut tells me that the cranky woman behind the counter at wilson's farms is a rude bitch who needs to effin relax. My gut tells me that my girlfriend never notices that I scoop the kitty litter every day. My gut tells me to tell one of my client's mom that she is fat and lazy and needs to get up off the couch and clean her damn house. When I was young my gut told me that abortion was terrible, until I thought I was pregnant at 15.
So you see, my point is, that if we followed our guts and refused to step back from the situation, we wouldn't get anywhere.
Felly and I were driving home from...somewhere and decided to follow the map via the straightest route, which ended up taking us through a poor part of the city. I felt scared but then began to ask myself, why do I feel this way? What must it be like to live here, to grow up here? How does my skin color, the place where I grew up and now live shape my feelings about this place?
I once had a man come up to me carrying empty bottles who was obviously drunk. I was totally grossed out and wanted to get away from him, but then he said, in reference to Ralphie, " I always wanted a dog." How nice I thought, sarcastically, and then he continued, "I always wanted a dog and mother." Who knows what this guy went through to get there in front of my house carrying empty forty bottles. How lucky am I?
My example could go on, but I don't think they are necessary.
My point is that we have been conditioned to believe that what we "feel" in our guts is our own, is instinctual, natural, objective. But what we fail to remember is that we all come from somewhere. I grew up in a middle class home where my parents were and still are married. That home was in a 99% white, middle class farming community in "upstate" NY. New York is located on the eastern coast of the United States and all of these and more have brainwashed me in some way or another. The amount of possibilities of ways of looking at and living in this world are almost infinite and to think that something is absolute because our guts tell us that something is wrong will get us nowhere.
I guess here is the point where I should be prepared for backlash. I know I am often on here spouting what I think is right and wrong, what my values and morals are. I don't want to put out there that one shouldn't have values, because obviously I do, we all do in some way or another. I guess what I'm calling for is a more rounded, more obtuse approach to passing judgment and making claims of morality. I think that if we could all open up just a little bit more, to see the possibilities of why things are, how they came to be, what they may or may not mean, we might be able to move forward a bit.
Nice Pictures glad everyone had a good time.