IdeaJones

Tag: tolerance

  • Why I Fly My Flag (Or Wear My Pin)

    Why I Fly My Flag (Or Wear My Pin)

    As you probably know, I make Safe Harbor pins and give them away. This has been an almost entirely positive experience. I have given them to young people, old people, people of every religion and none, of every color (it seems like I should say “and none” to balance the sentence, but truthfully, there are no colorless people. We’re all some shade of brown from pale tan to burnt umber). I’ve had people hug me, get teary-eyed, get excited… so it’s not the people getting or wearing the pins that are raising dust.

    Most people I’ve met while doing this get it. It’s meaningful for them. Still there are a handful of malcontents who say that the Safe Harbor pin is “just a badge of white guilt,” and meaningless. They’re frustrated, angry and scared, so they’re lashing out, and making a big mistake.

    No symbol, on its own, solves a problem. That isn’t what symbols do. To quote the Oxford Dictionary, a symbol is “a thing that represents or stands for something else, especially a material object representing something abstract.”  Safe Harbor pins are a symbol worn by people who want to act to solve the problems, as a reminder to themselves of their commitment, and a signal to others that they are not alone in the fight. That is the value. They offer a tiny bit of hope and unity in a divided, angry world. Humans have and create symbols because we need them.

    When you are low, or feeling threatened and beaten, a kind word is far from meaningless. Seeing someone sporting a rainbow Safe Harbor pin, or any Safe Harbor pin, is a reminder that there are people, people you don’t even know, may never meet, who want you to be safe and well. I know this because I’ve been told just that by people who saw me wearing one, people who were feeling marginalized, as though their human dignity and worth was being questioned.  Of course, there must be actions behind that symbol, and there are. People calling on their elected representatives to act, to make changes. People marching, people gathering to help those in need. They are part of a movement that is just finding its feet. They wear their safety pins with pride, and I am one of them.

    No one group is feeling more undervalued or disrespected. Point a direction and you are bound to hit someone who feels isolated and scared, for being female, for being gay, or transgendered, or an immigrant, or… There is good in reminding people that we share a common humanity, common concern for ourselves, our families and friends, our country, our world. That is what the Safe Harbor pin says. “We are both human and in this together.”

    I’ve given pins to people who cried, who were at a low point when a kind word meant a lot. And I won’t stop making them. I won’t stop handing them out. I’ve seen the good it does. Symbols matter. Statements matter. They are the flag behind which a movement marches, and without movement, there is no improvement.

    I am proud to wear my Safe Harbor pin, proud to give them out, to share encouragement and hope. It is my symbol, not of guilt, but of determination.

  • Happy Thanksgiving, Whoever and Wherever You Are

    rainbow-heart-circle-neon-ideajones This is long for a post. It doesn’t start out so thankful, but it gets there. As I was telling friends, the other day I spoke with a friend who’s a therapist. She told me she’s working overtime every day because she’s getting referrals from people, LGBT, immigrants, etc., who are losing sleep, scared, worried, to the point where it’s harming their health.

    As a relative used to say, “This is some shit.” Mark and I talked about what she said, and wondered whatever happened to minding one’s own business? I mean, a lot of things make me uncomfortable. People in Spandex out in public. Dudes who wear their underwear high and their pants low and so baggy they look like toddlers toting full diapers. Daddy Long Legs spiders.  I have a list.

    But.

    So long as whatever it is involves consenting adults and nobody’s underaged, under the influence or under coercion, if I don’t have to watch or help, it’s not my business. If it’s legal but it makes me uncomfortable, I get to feel how I feel and avoid it if I can, but when I can’t, the rules of courtesy apply. I don’t get to make that person feel ridiculed, or worse yet, threatened because I’m uncomfortable. My discomfort is not the litmus test by which other human beings must live.

    I’ll be straight up here… I don’t get the transgendered thing. I don’t disapprove or approve… I just don’t get it. But I don’t have to. That person is still a person and he/she has a legal right to be who he/she is, and let me say it one more time… *it’s none of my business and I would treat that person with respect.* Because that person is a person, and so am I. My courtesy toward another human being is not dependent on my approval of how he’s living his life. You don’t have to pass a test for me to treat you decently.

    You can be okay with me even if I don’t understand how you live your life. I don’t have to. Not my job. It’s not required and I don’t have time to freeze my life until I can make sense of all the things human beings do/are. So if it’s not for me, I keep my nose out of it, wish whoever it is well, and honor that person’s basic humanity.

    Anyone who thinks that giving someone else respect and courtesy depends on approving of how that person lives his or her life doesn’t understand respect, or courtesy, or that how you treat people says a hell of a lot more about you than about them.

    So what is it I’m thankful for? I’m thankful for people like my friend, who does a difficult job that only gets more difficult during stressful times. She does it with humor, intelligence and compassion.

    I’m thankful that mom introduced the idea that I have a variety of options available when dealing with other people, and one of them is to keep my nose out of their business. As mom used to say, “Several billion people would have trouble walking through life hand in hand, so it’s okay that not everyone cottons to everyone else.” But she also told me that just because someone wasn’t for me didn’t mean he had no value at all.

    I’m thankful for a minister who, when I was young and impressionable, told us that God loves everyone, even the people we disagree with or dislike. He told us that to deny another person’s dignity was to reduce our own. You don’t have to share my faith to share that idea.

    I’m thankful that my life includes people who are intelligent, engaged in the world, passionate, and yet respectful even to people they disagree with.

    And I’m thankful for you. You’ve read this far. You’re willing to at least consider what I have to say. You are interested in the world around you and art and other people or you wouldn’t even be here. We may disagree with each other about some things, even some important things, and yet find common ground.

    As my friend Mary says, “You are awesome! Own it! Own it!” And you are.

    And so are other people, even people who do things that neither you nor I understand. Most people are decent. Confusing, confounding, but decent. And nobody has a monopoly on human decency, intelligence, kindness or worthiness. There’s enough for all of us.

    That’s a lot to be thankful for.

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  • An Open Letter To My Species

    Dear Human:

    We are the only species in history that gets to decide whether or not to evolve. For everyone else, environment forces the issue. Adapt or die. If you can’t deal with warmer temperatures, or colder, or migrate to a place that suits you better, or develop a taste for something you weren’t eating before, that’s it, you lose your place on the planet.

    Owing to our opposable thumbs, humans have been more successful at forcing the environment to adapt to us. It’s given us a deceptive feeling of invincibility.

    But every species has to pay its bill in the end, and if you can’t foot that bill, you either fade out or the challenge you’re facing eats you, burps and that’s it.

    One of the universe’s waiters who’s been standing around holding out a check is our tendency toward tribalism. It’s natural. You could argue that it’s the main thing that got us this far, after those thumbs and a willingness to eat almost anything. Knowing who is “yours” and who is other kept your ancestors safe enough to reproduce up until you. Tribalism has two main components:

    1. Identity – figuring out who is your tribe;
    2. Outsiders – figuring out what to do about anyone who isn’t.

    Identity used to be easy. Your tribe was the people who were born, lived and died where you did. You might not like all of them, nor they you, but some social structure enabled you to coexist most of the time with those people. You were all related by blood, then as the world grew and changed, you were all related by an idea – religion, nation, etc. Either way, for most of history, the members of your tribe looked generally like you. Your survival depended on knowing who your tribe was and what you could expect from them.

    Now, that’s a life’s quest. People move around. Is your tribe people who go to the same church, or people who like the same music, or just people who seem to like you and you like them? It’s harder to tell on sight who is “yours” and who is not.

    Outsiders – again, that used to be easier. There are three main responses to the Outsider:

    1. Kill it.
    2. Trade with it
    3. Ignore it.

    There are complications attached to all three, but while options 1 and 2 are well-known and discussed, option #3 doesn’t get a lot of coverage. We’ve always had that option. “Not like me” does not equal “and must die.” Those are two different thoughts.

    It’s not reasonable to push for a “Kumbaya-and-hand-holding” world. We’re not there yet. Too big of a leap from millennia of “Not like me so trade with it or kill it.” Even “Not like me so trade with it” is only middling embedded in our history. No, option #1 has been the preferred option too many times. From there to “Let’s all love one another!” is like asking a baby to walk to the moon. He’s barely mastered the basics, let alone conquering all the other challenges that would entail. Ask him to walk across the room a few times first. It’s hard enough to work with people you don’t like. Welcoming their presence is too big of a stretch for most of us.

    What we need to do, and it will be a conscious choice, is to acknowledge that there will always be The Other, the person who does not share some basic view on how the world works. The idea that there will always be many people not like you in really fundamental ways, that it’s a fact, and doesn’t require anything of you, much in the way the rotation of the Earth doesn’t require you to get out and push, needs to be spread until it’s part of our concept of the world.

    The next will be adopting the idea that if you can’t bring yourself to be open to those people, your response should be to just let them be is the next part. We need to uncouple “Not like me” from “so must die.” We need to tell our children, and ourselves, that we have options when it comes to dealing with people who are not like us and killing them isn’t the best one.

    If you happen to believe homosexuality, or being Muslim, or Christian, or a woman, or whatever it is you don’t like, is wrong, more power to you. We disagree, but you have a right to think that. And feel however you feel about it all. But unless they try to hold you down and make you join them, that’s as far as you get to go.

    Because they are human, and real, and have value, and that isn’t because you awarded it to them. They just have it. You don’t give it to them and you can’t take it away. If your whole ego depends on believing you run the universe on that scale, wow, are you in for some bad days. Your life now probably isn’t much fun, come to think of it – being responsible for the universe is a big, thankless task. Ask God.

    Option #1 is a lose-lose scenario. You kill, their tribe comes to kill you, so you kill some of them, so they… until there’s nobody left on one side, or both. Guess again if you think that mean your side is victorious. The land you depend on to live will be decimated. Many of your own, maybe you yourself, will die. It won’t change the other people. It may convince still others to side with them. You will lose all of the things they know that might have made your life better. Even if you are the ultimate victor, your wounded tribe will inherit ashes. It’s a zero-sum game.

    And if you think God is waiting to reward you for killing His creations, you need to ask who has been “interpreting” your sacred texts and what’s in it for them – because you are being played like a cheap flute by someone who is using you for his own power and ego gratification.

    We have a choice here. We can opt out of evolution, choose to remain not only tribal but violently tribal, and end up in the garbage heap of history, played by people who are using our fears and prejudices to control us for their own gain. Or we can nudge ourselves forward, determined to allow people who are not like us their human worth.

    We can try for Option #2 in the hope that this time, it’ll go okay, and make our fallback Option #3, which leaves us alive to pursue our own paths. And if you really don’t like the other tribe, feel free to feel that way. Not like them to your heart’s content. But don’t flash it in their faces, because that’s rude and if you’re really superior, you aren’t rude. And don’t kill them, because that’s stupid and how can one be both superior and stupid?

    Let’s just decide to grow up. As individuals and as a species. If we manage it, it will give us more time to do other things that are a lot more fun.