holy crap!
Feb. 13th, 2004 12:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fearlesstempI've been thinking a lot lately about those ideas that change the way you see the world, those moments when someone says, or refers to, something so simple and profound that you know you've known it all along on some level, but never fully realized it. And how when you do, it colors the way you see the world.
In other words: I went through four years of college and emerged with few marketable skills, but I did have a few moments that changed the way I see the world which I will, for the purposes of this entry, dub "Holy crap!" moments. I've been thinking about them tonight, for whatever reason, and I'd be interested to hear what other people's experiences have been, if anyone's inclined to share.
Anyway, in my case, the three that initially came to mind were:
*Human beings are the only creatures who know they are going to die.
Somehow this had never occurred to me until I was in college, probably because I'd been pretty fortunate and the reality of death hadn't been made known to me. Then I took Intro to Psych and the professor said this on one of the first days and I think I spent the rest of the class with my mouth open.
And I know – it's so obvious! I remember staring at the cats and thinking: They have no idea. They're so happy, eating their Cat Chow, chasing imaginary bugs – they have no idea that they're going to die. That someday they won't exist here. Will they go to kitty heaven? Who knows? They're not thinking about it!
And then there was the long period where I wished I was a cat, but part of me just thinks that was because I hated having to get up early for class and envied them for their considerable amounts of sleep time. I still feel like that sometimes.
*Men aren't afraid when they walk through a dark parking lot.
I read an article my freshman year entitled "Rape: The All-American Crime" which blew my mind, the author of which I would totally give credit to here if I had the article on me – I lent it to a friend last week. All I can find online is an unattributed quote that I just know was the beginning of the article:
I have never been free of the fear of rape. From a very early age I, like most women, have thought of rape as part of my natural environment--something to be feared and prayed against like fire or lightning. I never asked why men raped; I simply thought it one of the many mysteries of human nature.
Like, the author says, I had always assumed that this fear was a natural part of the human condition. When I thought about it more and realized that no, boys generally don't have to check under their cars for lurking kidnappers, or look over their shoulders on city streets, or obsess about never, ever going anywhere alone – well, that friggin' blew my mind. And to this day it annoys me when people talk about rape and always, ALWAYS, it's the women they talk to. Always watch your drink! Never walk alone! Take self-defense! Rarely addressing the fact that guys shouldn't be putting stuff into girls' drinks in the first place, and that there's something wrong about a world where women are always meant to feel like they're playing a high-stakes game against dangerous odds, with their personal safety as the prize. And maybe I'm just more afraid than most women – I am a pretty big scaredy cat – but I do know that sweet relief of getting into your car and locking your doors after a long walk on a cold night, or how scary a big empty house can be on a dark night, or how terrifying it can be when a guy thinks he's goofing around and grabs you and you realize that you can't move. But to put it more simply: Reading this article was the first time that I understood that it truly is a different world for women.
*Most of the people who do the most horrible things are ordinary people.
Picked this up in two places; first my course on The Holocaust specifically, and a later one on the Sociology of Human Rights. In both we read about the roots and causes of things like the Holocaust, and also the mechanics of their horrors. To learn about how the daily matters of killing systems were carried out, and realizing that the people who were doing the carrying out were not, as I'd on some level assumed, evil or crazy, but just people, freaked me out. Not crazy psycho madmen, or sociopaths, or Republicans, but ordinary people did these things. The guys filling the killing fields, the people herding Jews into the chambers – they were just people. How did they get to the point that what they were doing made sense? How can I be sure I'd never be the same way? I'll never get over the fact that most of us have it in us to do such things, were we placed in the proper conditions with a limited set of choices. This was a moment that really colored my moral worldview, the realization that torturers and Nazis are people too, whether we like it or not.
Just so I'm clear -- I'm not condoning those choices, or excusing the behavior of these ordinary people. I do believe in right and wrong, and while I do think there are circumstances where it's significantly more difficult to do the right thing, I'm not sure that's a sufficient excuse for doing the wrong thing. Nor do I think I'm some huge moral giant, or particularly wise -- these are all just thoughts. Ideas! Which I will probably think better of tomorrow.
Anyway, those are my things. Why I thought about this tonight, and spent a sad amount of time writing this up instead of doing fun things, like watching my tape of The OC, or necessary things, like emptying the dishwasher, is unclear to me. But I felt the need to write it and so I'm going to post it, even if I do fear I come off sounding dumb, self-important, or both, because I spent so much time writing it. Also, my life is so boring that I have no real-life incidents to discuss here. And so you get my random core dump!
In other words: I went through four years of college and emerged with few marketable skills, but I did have a few moments that changed the way I see the world which I will, for the purposes of this entry, dub "Holy crap!" moments. I've been thinking about them tonight, for whatever reason, and I'd be interested to hear what other people's experiences have been, if anyone's inclined to share.
Anyway, in my case, the three that initially came to mind were:
*Human beings are the only creatures who know they are going to die.
Somehow this had never occurred to me until I was in college, probably because I'd been pretty fortunate and the reality of death hadn't been made known to me. Then I took Intro to Psych and the professor said this on one of the first days and I think I spent the rest of the class with my mouth open.
And I know – it's so obvious! I remember staring at the cats and thinking: They have no idea. They're so happy, eating their Cat Chow, chasing imaginary bugs – they have no idea that they're going to die. That someday they won't exist here. Will they go to kitty heaven? Who knows? They're not thinking about it!
And then there was the long period where I wished I was a cat, but part of me just thinks that was because I hated having to get up early for class and envied them for their considerable amounts of sleep time. I still feel like that sometimes.
*Men aren't afraid when they walk through a dark parking lot.
I read an article my freshman year entitled "Rape: The All-American Crime" which blew my mind, the author of which I would totally give credit to here if I had the article on me – I lent it to a friend last week. All I can find online is an unattributed quote that I just know was the beginning of the article:
Like, the author says, I had always assumed that this fear was a natural part of the human condition. When I thought about it more and realized that no, boys generally don't have to check under their cars for lurking kidnappers, or look over their shoulders on city streets, or obsess about never, ever going anywhere alone – well, that friggin' blew my mind. And to this day it annoys me when people talk about rape and always, ALWAYS, it's the women they talk to. Always watch your drink! Never walk alone! Take self-defense! Rarely addressing the fact that guys shouldn't be putting stuff into girls' drinks in the first place, and that there's something wrong about a world where women are always meant to feel like they're playing a high-stakes game against dangerous odds, with their personal safety as the prize. And maybe I'm just more afraid than most women – I am a pretty big scaredy cat – but I do know that sweet relief of getting into your car and locking your doors after a long walk on a cold night, or how scary a big empty house can be on a dark night, or how terrifying it can be when a guy thinks he's goofing around and grabs you and you realize that you can't move. But to put it more simply: Reading this article was the first time that I understood that it truly is a different world for women.
*Most of the people who do the most horrible things are ordinary people.
Picked this up in two places; first my course on The Holocaust specifically, and a later one on the Sociology of Human Rights. In both we read about the roots and causes of things like the Holocaust, and also the mechanics of their horrors. To learn about how the daily matters of killing systems were carried out, and realizing that the people who were doing the carrying out were not, as I'd on some level assumed, evil or crazy, but just people, freaked me out. Not crazy psycho madmen, or sociopaths, or Republicans, but ordinary people did these things. The guys filling the killing fields, the people herding Jews into the chambers – they were just people. How did they get to the point that what they were doing made sense? How can I be sure I'd never be the same way? I'll never get over the fact that most of us have it in us to do such things, were we placed in the proper conditions with a limited set of choices. This was a moment that really colored my moral worldview, the realization that torturers and Nazis are people too, whether we like it or not.
Just so I'm clear -- I'm not condoning those choices, or excusing the behavior of these ordinary people. I do believe in right and wrong, and while I do think there are circumstances where it's significantly more difficult to do the right thing, I'm not sure that's a sufficient excuse for doing the wrong thing. Nor do I think I'm some huge moral giant, or particularly wise -- these are all just thoughts. Ideas! Which I will probably think better of tomorrow.
Anyway, those are my things. Why I thought about this tonight, and spent a sad amount of time writing this up instead of doing fun things, like watching my tape of The OC, or necessary things, like emptying the dishwasher, is unclear to me. But I felt the need to write it and so I'm going to post it, even if I do fear I come off sounding dumb, self-important, or both, because I spent so much time writing it. Also, my life is so boring that I have no real-life incidents to discuss here. And so you get my random core dump!
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Re:
Date: 2004-02-13 08:38 am (UTC)This is such an interesting point, and I wonder if it's a recent thing, because the article I referred to in my entry was written years ago -- I'm thinking the 60s or 70s and GDit, but I'm annoyed that I don't have it to refer to -- and in it the author argued that men who don't rape actually gain something from the fact that other men do. She said that because women are afraid, they look to men to protect them, and men who are able to fill that protector role get a charge out of being the good guy. I'm not arguing that that's true now or even that it was then (mostly I'm just thinking out loud), but part of me does wonder if it may be something in our culture that's changed over time.