Love’s Such An Old Fashioned Word

Posted on January 7, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

It’s possible I have simply spent too much time in New England, but it seems, perhaps, there is only a certain amount of care one ought to express for others – that anything more would be unseemly.

This statement, of course, is at once complicated by the vast array of different types of relationships one has with others.

A simplified model considers these relationships as a series of concentric circles with descending levels of intimacy: you at the center, your closest family next, good friends, followed by acquaintances and circumscribed by a band of strangers. There may be other levels in there or the whole thing could be considered as a spectrum, but the basic idea is the same: there are a few people we are very close to, a whole mess of people we have no closeness to, and a lot of people at various levels in between.

There’s a lot of value in this model. It can be used, for example, to help develop healthy relationships with a mutually-agreed upon level of intimacy. If you’re wondering whether you should make an inappropriate joke to someone, for example, it’s probably wise to stick to those inner circles.

But this model is often assumed to double as a guide for compassion – with a person showing more concern for their inner circles and decreasing concern moving outward.

And in some ways that approach makes sense. After all, it seems antithetical to human nature – and arguably somewhat abhorrent – to love a stranger as much as you love your child.

But concentric circles of concern quickly break down as moral guide: Should you be more moved by the tragedy of “someone like you” than by the tragedy of someone completely foreign? Feeling that way is arguably natural, but it’s repugnant to think that a white person should indeed care more for a European than an African.

And while this, of course, raises important and critical points regarding international aid and human dignity, I find myself particularly interested in another level of this mystery.

Perhaps it’s a less pressing moral question, but I find it more relevant to every day life – what amount of care, I wonder, ought a person to show to all the random people who come in and out of their life?

I imagine there’s a certain baseline of compassion or concern most people would agree they ought to express – perhaps most simply that they shouldn’t do violence to others.

But that’s different from having and showing real care and compassion for those you meet. At some level, this sounds like an obvious thing every good person ought to do, but in practice…it’s not that easy and mostly it feels awkward.

I’ve written before about debating whether an action is “crazy or thoughtful” – too often doing something “nice” feels dangerously close to doing something “crazy.” As if one ought not too care too much about anyone beyond their most inner circle.

And while I’ve been using words like care, concern, and compassion – I’m not sure those words are quite what I mean. Love is, perhaps, too strong in English, but it may be somewhat closer. I imagine the Greeks had the perfect word for it – a sort of permeating love for humanity.

However it is, I sometimes think Queen put it best –

‘Cause love’s such an old-fashioned word
And love dares you to care for
The people on the edge of the night
And love dares you to change our way of
Caring about ourselves
This is our last dance
This is our last dance
This is ourselves
….Under pressure.

On Being an Ally or, I CAN Breathe

Posted on December 10, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be an ally.

Allies, of course, can be found in all kinds of movements; there are white allies and straight allies, male allies and upper class allies. And allies serve an important role – even if you don’t face a certain type of oppression directly, you have, I believe, an obligation to recognize and work against that oppression.

But being an ally is also complicated.

Complicated, but not that complicated. It’s complicated the way every day life is complicated. The way it’s complicated when someone asks how they look in an outfit, or its complicated when you move from “dating” to “exclusive.”

It’s complicated because social interactions are complicated.

I wonder how complicated being an ally would seem if we were all more used to talking about issues of discrimination and oppression. It would still be complicated, I imagine, but perhaps not paralyzingly complicated.

I heard a white man on TV the other day frustratedly complain that he wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to use the term “African American” or if it was okay to call somebody “black.” I just don’t know what you people want me to say! he exclaimed.

I think it was at “you people” where he really went wrong.

Being an ally is full of tension. It’s full of competing concerns and changing expectations. And that’s okay -

Life is full of tension.

As an ally, you should defer to the leadership of those most directly affected. You should be mindful of your power and privilege and do everything possible not to exert that power over others. You should listen, you should learn, and you should engage in the ways you are asked to.

But as an ally, you can’t let the work of speaking out always fall to those most directly affected. You should be the one raising questions of equity. You should be the one pointing to areas that need to change. You should be the one pushing the envelope and speaking out.

On the surface, it sounds like those things can’t co-exist – how can you simultaneously defer leadership and lead the charge?

It’s possible, I believe. And it’s complicated, but not that complicated.

Listen and learn, speak up and fight. Do the best you can, but always know you will make mistakes. Do your best to encourage those around you to point out those mistakes. Do your best to learn from those mistakes and do your best to help others learn from those mistakes as well.

It’s a journey for all of us.

In the wake of the recent grand jury decisions, I’ve been faced with some specific questions about what it means to be an ally.

Should a white person participate in a die-in about police killings of African Americans? Should a white person gesture “don’t shoot”? Should a white person yell, “I CAN’T BREATHE!”?

I’m not sure there’s a universal answer to these question, but doing the above doesn’t feel quite right to me.

I CAN breathe. Police are unlikely to shoot me without repercussions. I am white. That comes with privileges, and claiming too much understanding of things I don’t experience is inappropriate.

I am not Trayvon Martin.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t fight. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t fight. It just means my role in the fight is different, just as my experience in the world is different.

I don’t know if the word “ally” is too passive, I don’t know if a more active word would abuse too much power.

But I do know I have a responsibility to speak up and to speak out. I know I have a responsibility to do so in a way that is respectful of all people. I know there’s not a secret activist etiquette handbook, and I know I will make mistakes along the way.

I know I will do my best to apologize for those mistakes, and I know I will resolve to do better next time.

Solutions

Posted on December 3, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

I’ve been making a lot of complaints the last few days. Complaints about the deep injustices of our systems, complaints about how we as a society watch racially-charged tragedies happen again and again and again.

How many more black people need to die before we find solutions?

The Onion had an article a little while back, “Ebola Vaccine At Least 50 White People Away,” as if efforts to cure disease can best be measured by the threat to white people. As if.

How many more black people need to die?

I’ve wanted to write a post about solutions for days, but I’ve found it deeply challenging. There are some great solution-oriented posts out there, like Janee Woods’ 12 things white people can do now because of Ferguson.

If you haven’t read that piece yet, you should do that right now.

But I’ve challenged myself to find my own solutions, to identify the actions and inspirations which speak most to me.

It has been challenging.

As I’ve written before, I have no deep expertise in this matter. I know about physics and communication, not about policing and law. What could I possibly know? What could I possibility offer?

Yet this is the challenge that falls to every citizen. We each have expertise in some areas, and a lack of professional knowledge in others. But the work of societal solutions is our collective task and we each must be involved.

If we always defer to the professional experts, we lose the essence of our democracy and miss out on the best solutions. Seriously.

Having no expertise, should I just throw my hands in the air and leave the problem for others to solve? Certainly others have more developed and nuanced views on specific tactics that may be implemented – such as having officers wear body cameras. But that doesn’t mean I have no role in the solution.

That doesn’t mean I can just stand by.

So, here’s a – doubtless incomplete – list of things I’ve come up with that I can do. Me, personally. I no doubt will fail at times, but I will endeavor to do the best I can do. In no particular order:

Smile at strangers
No really. Most people aren’t creepy or dangerous. I’ve had my fair share of creepers follow me down the street, and those folks are gonna creep no matter what you do. Don’t let that be a reason not to be neighborly. (Also, in my experience of creepers, white Harvard boys are the worst.)
Ask permission to be in spaces
Don’t assume that your presence or participation is welcome in all spaces all of the time. This is particularly challenging for me, as I traditionally don’t feel welcome in spaces and am more at risk of feeling silenced than one might think. But there are times when you should push boundaries, speaking up even when it feels uncomfortable, and times when you should let those who feel even more silenced than you set the rules.

If a space isn’t for you, don’t take it personally and don’t take offense. Just recognize that the conversation would be different if you were there, and that’s not the conversation participants need to have right now.
Educate yourself
Ask good questions and seek guidance from others, but don’t let it be the job of people of color to explain everything to you. Read everything you can.
Educate and engage others
Ask people of all backgrounds, races, and ethnicities about their experiences and views on racial injustice in this country. As someone who is white, I think it is particularly important to engage in these conversations with other white people. Share your story with others.
Speak up and speak out
Raise questions of equity. Don’t let it be a person of color’s job to raise these issues.
Question your assumptions
A lot of assumptions and implicit biases are hardwired into our systems. Know what yours are and question yourself when you make assumptions. You will make inaccurate and inappropriate assumptions about people, don’t let that dictate the way you act and think. Check yourself before you wreck yourself.
Leverage your power to have an impact where you can
Perhaps you will never have an impact on “race relations in America,” but you can have an impact within your communities – such as your neighborhood, your school, and your work. What power do you have in those communities and how can you affect change?
Listen genuinely
Care about what other people are saying and try to understand what has shaped the way they think.
Always look for solutions
There will always be more work to be done.
Challenge yourself to be your best
You will make mistakes. Forgive yourself, but do better next time.

The Gift of Not Giving

Posted on November 14, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

One thing most people don’t need is more stuff.

While there are, of course, many members of our society in desperate need of basic items, but those of us fortunate to have a middle class lifestyle generally have more than we need already.

I’ll save a diatribe on luxury goods for another day – stuff, you see, is a category all of its own.

It’s not a new pair of shoes or the latest gadget. It’s those miscellaneous items you don’t know what to do with but which you can’t bring yourself to throw out because they’re still in good condition or you hope they might be useful someday.

I have a whole box of miscellaneous wires.

I have a plastic lizard I’ve had since I was 10.

I have old protest signs, tchotchkes from miscellaneous events and many, many things that I’m not quite sure where they even came from.

There might be things I need, but I don’t need more stuff.

And yet…

I’ll be out and about town and I’ll see something that makes me think of someone. Wouldn’t they enjoy that? I think. Wouldn’t that be a nice gift? And then I get distracted. In a bout of temporary insanity, I mysteriously transform into the consumer capitalism wants me to be, and all I can think about is how I should really spend money on this random, ultimately worthless item that isn’t worth the tree needed for its packaging.

So I try to have an intervention with myself. Is it really something the person needs? Perhaps they would be glad to receive a gift, but in a year, would they find it in a dusty corner and find themselves straining to remember where it came from?

Nobody needs that.

But rather than just walk away, my new strategy is this: I tell people what I don’t get them.

I’ll see something amazing that my niece would love – a person-sized dinosaur, perhaps – and I’ll text my sister. I didn’t just buy this for you!

Sometimes I’ll take a picture.

And ultimately, this accomplishes everything it needs to – the person knows you were thinking about them, you mutually enjoyed the item’s existence, and then you moved on. No space or money wasted. It’s very environmental.

I like giving practical gifts, sure, but stuff?

Who needs it.

Overthinking Letter Closings

Posted on November 12, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

I have a very distinct memory of being taught in grade school that one ought to properly close a letter with the claim, “sincerely.”

I went with the term for awhile but ultimate dropped it because every time I finished a letter I thought to myself, “Really? Did I really mean everything sincerely?”

For sixth grade that felt like a high bar.

Of course, checking your sincerity is ultimately for the best – if you are not sincere about the contents of your letter, that ought to call in to question your whole purpose in writing it.

But, having something of a penchant for hyperbole, I also found myself overly concerned with little details. If I sincerely wrote “I will always remember…” then decades later suffered from dementia, would that negate the whole sincerity of the letter I had innocently penned as a child?

I found this very concerning.

So perhaps you can understand why I stopped using the term. My intentions were sincere, but, I suppose, I didn’t feel comfortable holding myself to that sincerity indefinitely.

Years later, I noticed I had slipped into a seemingly casual replacement: thanks.

Particularly in the workplace this expression seemed apt. I was often asking people to do things and I was, generally speaking, sincerely thankful for their attention to the matter. And I am, have no doubt, all in favor of thanking people.

But this closing, too, came to wear on me.

I started signing off with “thanks” on most correspondence. Not only when I had something to be thankful for, but when those I was writing to probably ought to be thanking me, or when thanks, frankly, had nothing to do with it.

Not only did this make the “thanks,” seem shallow, the habit began to strike me as one of those things that would today make some click-bait list of things women ought to stop doing in the work place.

That is to say, I said thanks as a way of diminishing myself.

While women, of course, can do whatever they damn well please in the workplace and beyond, I did find myself drifting from thanks as my go-to sign-off. Thanks should be reserved, I decided, for times when I am particularly thankful for something.

For the last many years, I have settled on “best,” as my general sign-off. I like that it is positive, yet appropriately vague.

When I am feeling particularly meaningful, I upgrade this to, “all the best.”

I’m not really sure what it means to wish someone all the best, but I imagine sending someone all the best things in existence. Rainbows and puppy dogs, perhaps. Whatever you’re into.

I can’t commit to my sincerity, and I’m skeptical of my thankfulness, but I feel confident that whoever you are I wish you the best – however you define that for yourself.

Archetypes, Foils, and Gender Norms

Posted on November 10, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

Through much of Western history “Man” has been an archetype with woman his convenient foil.

These two tired tropes have served us well in some regards – a simple way to summarize all that is strong and stern, or all that is weak and emotional. A tool for understanding not only ourselves, but our broader social context.

There are, of course, problems with this approach.

Consider, for example, the quote, “The perfect woman is a higher type of human than the perfect man, and also something much more rare.”

At first blush that may sound good. Perhaps I should be flattered. But of course Friedrich Nietzsche, who wrote the above in Human, All Too Human, isn’t exactly known for his raging feminist philosophy.

Perhaps because he also liked to write things like, “From the beginning, nothing has been more alien, repugnant, and hostile to woman than truth—her great art is the lie, her highest concern is mere appearance and beauty.”

But I’m not sure I find the second quote particularly more problematic than the first. They both take women as a foil – Man is the object of interest, and Woman a mere tool for understanding this more important truth.

One solution seeks to right this historic wrong by flipping the paradigm, making Woman a central concern in her own right. Perhaps it is Woman who should be the archetype with man demoted to foil – little more than a shadow which serves to illustrate its master.

But I find that approach unsatisfactory.

No sentence which begins “Woman is…” will end well for me. Women are not a monolith. Men are not a monolith. And gender is not a two item list.

We’re all individual people. With shared traits and divergent traits. Neither an archetype nor a foil.

We’ve put generations of effort into defining our gender norms. Women are this. Men are that. But which ever way you prioritize that list, a bifurcated system does little to express who we actually are.

I am glad to see efforts to promote strong women, to show real images of women, and to treat women as more than a shadow for the other half of society.

But these efforts are not enough. They still feel too narrow, too defining. Perhaps we need to think more radically – not about what it means to be Woman or what it means to be Man, but about what it means to be a Person.

All the Truth is Out

Posted on November 7, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

I attended a great talk last night with Matt Bai, author of All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid. The national political columnist for Yahoo News, Bai previously was the chief political correspondent for the New York Times Magazine where he covered three presidential campaigns.

His latest book covers the 1987 Gary Hart scandal, when the political career of this leading Democratic candidate “came crashing down in a blaze of flashbulbs, the birth of 24-hour news cycles, tabloid speculation, and late-night farce” as tails of his “womanizing” swept tabloids and mainstream press alike.

Bai argues that the Hart affair “marked a crucial turning point in the ethos of political media,” a point when candidates’ ‘character’ began to draw more fixation than their political experience.”

As the scandal grew in intensity, advisors told Hart to apologize, to be contrite in the face of overwhelming public opinion.

He did not.

As the Chicago Tribune reported in May 1987, “A defiant Gary Hart dropped out of the race for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination on Friday, delivering an angry speech that blamed news media attention on his personal life for making his candidacy ‘intolerable.’”

The article continues, quoting Hart’s speech:

I say to my children and other frustrated, angry young people: I’m angry, too. I’ve made some mistakes. I said I would, because I’m human. And I did–maybe big mistakes, but not bad mistakes.

I refuse to submit my friends, my family and innocent people and myself to further rumors and gossip. It`s simply an intolerable situation,

I believe I would have been a successful candidate. I know that I would have been a very good president, particularly for these times. But apparently now we`ll never know.

We all better do something to make this system work or we’re all going to be soon rephrasing Jefferson to say, ‘I tremble for my country when I think we may in fact get the kind of leaders we deserve.’”

A journalist by training, Bai says his work is to tell an interesting story – not necessarily to present a specific argument. But the story of Gary Hart and the clash of political coverage and celebrity culture raises some interesting questions.

As Bai commented last night, ‘character’ has always been a consideration for political candidates, and it should be to some degree. The question is what should that character look like? How should it be judged?

That is to say, in the face of such intense media scrutiny, would you rather have a candidate who would drop out of the race – or choose to not enter politics – putting his family and friends before his political ambitions?

Or would you rather have the candidate who will say anything, do anything, be anything, to get elected?

Because in the political celebrity media environment, that’s the candidate we’re going to get. And perhaps we should tremble, for that is the candidate we deserve.

Election Spin and the Voice of The People

Posted on November 6, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

There’s nothing quite like the post-election spin and hype machine, a 24-hour media scramble to interpret the Voice of the People.

CNN reports that “a Republican tide ripped the Senate away from Democrats.” And everyone seems to be jockeying to promote their preferred answer to the question of whether the election was a referendum on the President, the Democrats, or the political system in general.

The people have spoken and our political pundits are here to tell us what they’re saying.

It is times like this when I most appreciate the words of Walter Lippmann, “In this deadly conflict between [the Founding Father's] ideals and their science, the only way out was to assume without much discussion that the voice of the people was the voice of god.”

We are taught that the essence of a democracy is to revere the voice of the people as, indeed, the voice of God. As the highest form of Truth. And when every election rolls around, we look hopefully to the polls, desperate to understand what The People are trying to tell us.

But, alas, it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

That is not to say that people, as individuals, are idiots. Lippmann’s view was far more nuanced than that. His disdain for the The People or The Masses should not be confused with a disdain for people.

The challenge, you see, is that, “We have been taught to think of society as a body, with a mind, a soul and a purpose, not as a collection of men, women and children whose minds, souls and purposes are variously related.”

The voice of The People is nonsense, not because the people are nonsensical, but because The People is not a coherent whole.

Individual people do individual things for individual reasons. Perhaps there is some meaning we can gather from their collective data, but…a referendum on a person, a party, or an institution?

No. Individual people can declare opposition to those things. The People cannot.

Is There an Obligation to Vote?

Posted on November 4, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

Voting is often referred to as a civic duty, yet there is no shortage of Americans who choose not to vote.

People give all sorts of reasons for not voting. The most common reasons are being too busy/having conflicting work or that they were not interested/felt my vote would not count. Illness or disability is also not an uncommon reason for not voting.

Frankly, I don’t put much stock in people’s self-reported reasons for doing or not doing anything. As marketer Clotaire Rapaille – who developed the marketing vision for Hummer – will tell you, people commonly make an instinctual decision then come up with rationalizations to explain it.

But irregardless, many people don’t vote and have stated reasons for not voting. Perhaps some of those people – such as those with illness or disability – literally don’t have the logistic support to vote. But certainly, the majority of non-voters could vote if they tried.

Yet none of this answers the question – is there an obligation to vote?

In many ways voting is irrational. From what I know, I have never been the deciding vote in an election. Given my ideological similarity with those in my ward, city, and state, I am unlikely to ever cast the deciding vote in an election. So, really, in many accurate ways, my vote does not matter.

Of course, if nobody voted that would be a problem. And if no one of my demographic profile – my supposed “voter blocker” – voted that would be a problem, too.

But none of that changes that my own, individual decision to vote is, essentially, irrational. Just as I dismissed people’s reasons for not voting, one could easily dismiss people’s reasons for voting. We have a behavior and we rationalize it afterwards. Perhaps we just invoke terms like civic duty and obligation to make us feel better about this random little deed.

And, still, none of this answers the question – is there an obligation to vote?

I’d like to push this question even further, asking, is there an obligation to be an informed voter? Having an obligation to show up in a cramped room and mindlessly check a few boxes doesn’t seem particularly compelling.

But asking for informed voting is an even greater burden for the individual involved. If I was too busy to vote before, I’m certainly not going to have time to become informed. This demand also raises important questions about what it means to be informed – is the word of a trusted friend enough? What about inferring from party affiliation? What about learning from candidate ads or from the ads of PACs with agendas?

Are you informed if your information is biased?

The answers are entirely unclear.

But does one have an obligation to vote?

Perhaps the question is too narrow. An obligation to show up on designated days and draw some lines? That is uninspiring.

But the doesn’t mean we have no obligation. Anyone who is part of a community benefits from their membership in that community, and anyone who benefits from a community has an obligation to participate in that community.

For me, voting is an essential part of that participation. Even when I’m uninspired by candidates or feel that the system is stuck in a broken status quo. I keep irrationally voting because it is one of many things I do to participate.

I can imagine a society of corruption and rigged elections where refusing to vote could be a more powerful statement than lending legitimacy to the system. But, complain as I might, we don’t seem to be that far gone.

Refusing to vote is not a powerful statement. It is a silent assent. A willingness to be ignored. It is a triumph for those in power, with even less impact than my paltry ballot.

Is there an obligation to vote? Maybe not. But there is an obligation to participate. From inside the system and from outside it. You can do both, and you can do both simultaneously.

And right here, right now, a vote may be a tiny tick in the universe but it is a piece of the larger puzzle, and a piece a good citizen ought to participate in.