We often feel hatred for good reasons. Hatred comes from anger coupled with powerlessness to change or avoid what makes us angry. But hatred is also a primary ingredient in so many cases of abuse and harm.
What I want to address is whether hatred from below toward oppressors above should be applauded and encouraged: is some hate more virtuous than other hate?
The way local and world events are going at the moment, there is a growing desire to engage. To talk to one another! And this is good. In these turbulent times, we need to be talking to each other. But we won’t get far in our conversations if we lack the skills to converse well. And right now, a lot of the most visible conversations out there are pretty awful.
Leaving aside exchanges that involve threats, insults, and name-calling, do you ever overhear conversations that sound something like this?
Atheist: Religion is nonsense. It substitutes fantasy for science.
Muslim: Wait, I am religious, and I believe in science! Not all religion is equal.
Atheist: Yeah, there are different religions. But they all involve made-up stories! If you want to live in the truth, you have to get rid of religion.
Muslim: How do you know truth if you don’t know God? My religion, Islam, specifically instructs humans to use science to better understand the truth. My religion has produced some of the greatest scientists!
Atheist: Then why do Muslims and other religious people deny objective truth and believe made-up stories? And why do they do so many stupid and harmful things?
Muslim: Just because somebody calls themself a Muslim or any other label doesn’t guarantee that they are not stupid or harmful. You have to commit to seeking God if you want to know the truth more fully. Then you will live in greater peace with society and God’s laws for our existence.
You’ve heard the argument that “no one is illegal” by now, right? Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel spoke these words after fleeing a country that outlawed certain groups of people, including him. For many, these words still ring true: no human being should ever be ‘outlawed’.
However, most of the media narratives about people without an official residency status still use such language: “illegal immigrants,” “illegal aliens,” or even just “illegals.” “Unauthorized” is occasionally used, but that isn’t really any better.
The preferred term is undocumented. And when I say preferred, I’m talking about what the people in question call themselves. Nobody without residency documents in the country they reside in voluntarily calls themself “illegal.”
“Illegal” is a slur. It is a word in the same class as all the other hateful words that are used to slander people as a group. It presupposes criminality in a person solely because of documents they don’t possess – something that is not in their power to change. The use of “illegal” to refer to people is bigotry, plain and simple.
Those who say that people without official residency status are in violation of the law and thus “illegal” act as though all laws matter equally and like they’ve never broken any laws themselves. Have you never gotten a parking ticket? Driven faster than the speed limit? Went somehwere you weren’t supposed to go? Have you always followed every ordinance to the letter? I’m pretty sure the answer is no. As of May 2017, marijuana use is still a federal crime in the United States. Is every American who uses marijuana illegal?
Let’s rethink this legal supremacy logic.
Recent human history has seen laws that automatically criminalize black bodies, Jewish bodies, Roma bodies, Japanese-Americans, LGBTQ people, indigenous languages, members of minority religions, and so much more. Laws are poor guides by themselves for doing what is just and right. They are not an excuse for bigotry.
There are many varying opinions on this issue, and people need to be free to think and say what they will. But the last thing most of us want to do is use prejudicial words that uniformly slander a whole group of people – and especially, a group of people who are vulnerable, whose life stability is constantly under possible threat. This is why we must stop casually using this “illegal” slur against undocumented immigrants – immediately – and insist on respectful language in our conversations on this issue.
Have you ever been accused of being “privileged?” Of having “unearned privilege?”
Have you ever had that feeling that out of virtually nowhere, people are labeling you, boxing you into a corner, suddenly putting the screws on you to somehow repent for this “unearned privilege” that has been attributed to you?
Have you ever felt, moreover, that no matter how you respond, no matter what you say and how good your intentions are, people assume the worst? Like everything you say and do is possibly offensive?
Do you ever feel like your success in life is talked about as being due to your unearned privilege, rather than the result of your own effort and hard work?
All these things have happened to me many times. They’ve probably happened to you, too. And when you’re able to make sense of what is being said, you can listen and reach an understanding with the person saying it.
But what happens when you can’t make sense of it? What happens when people attribute privilege to you and you can’t fully get what they mean, or why they are criticizing you? When you feel hurt, or guilt, or anger, or resentment? What do you do then? Sure, you can Google a bunch of things and learn about privilege and oppression, but often this doesn’t fully answer the disorientation you feel inside yourself – does it?
Sometimes, if you attempt to talk about your feelings, you may then get told that it is belittling / bigoted / oppressive to “make it all about you” when people who don’t have these privileges face much sharper problems than just “feelings.” Shifting the conversation to your hurt feelings prioritizes those feelings over the lived experiences of those who are oppressed, it is often said.
I certainly don’t ever want to erase or cover up the feelings and lived experiences of people who suffer oppressions – but as a very privileged person myself, I recognize the need for spaces for these feelings to be heard and understood. After all, it certainly doesn’t feel like a privilege to be faced with ugly truths and realities you weren’t previously aware of.
Of course feelings don’t substitute for reality. But feelings make up part of the reality – including the feelings of the privileged. And when people with unearned privileges are challenged around those privileges, they may feel disoriented and even threatened.
I feel it is up to me, as a person of many unearned privileges, who knows intimately what this disorientation feels like, to make a space to talk about it. I’ll be writing a series of posts on this blog about this subject and linking the posts together. Stay tuned and feel free to leave comments!
It’s been a year and a half since I last wrote for this blog. Why? Partially because I had other priorities, but also because, truthfully, I haven’t felt like I’ve had a lot of additional positive stuff to share.
I don’t want to give the impression that I’ve been miserable and depressed – I haven’t. I’ve just been in a different space lately … a space of opening myself up and listening to what’s around me, rather than talking and preaching to others. 🙂
Part of what I have been doing is finding my space, my community, my home base. I’ve needed to do this before I could refocus outward. A great part of this has been finding and developing bonds with my people.
Have you found your people?
Have you ever felt attracted to someone in some ways, but not others? Sure you have. We all have. You know,
This attraction stuff isn’t set in stone, either: these attractions are fluid, and one often coexists with others. Sometimes you feel one more than others, and then you feel another more, and so on.
Sometimes it seems like it’s not enough just to be yourself – you have to make yourself seem interesting, you have to stand out, you have to give people a reason to be interested in you and to devote time to you. And that actually makes a lot of sense: time is precious, and folks would rather spend it in places and with people that give them something they didn’t have before.
One thing I think about, whether it is in a conversation or on a Facebook or other comment thread, is this: what is something the people are not thinking about, but that is relevant to what they are thinking about? It could be a different angle on the same point of view, or it could be something that leads to a complete change of subject. For example:
It should all be so simple: don’t be a jerk! So why do oppression and bigotry still happen all the time? And why does so much of it so often fly under the radar, often with little to no challenge, even from the people that are victims of it?
And, on the other side of the question, I know many people are asking: why are perfectly decent people often made out to be bigoted jerks just because they said something that didn’t sound quite right to someone?
This discussion is, by necessity, long and not pretty. But this is the “catch” to being a positive person. You must take it upon yourself to do the work necessary to understand suffering, and the ways people experience it, so that you can better understand where it comes from, what approaches to take to it, and how to be a healing, helping presence – or, as is sometimes necessary, how to simply and quietly withdraw your presence when it is not wanted.
This of course includes our own suffering; it’s hard to be positive if we can’t at least begin to understand and deal with our own suffering, and the journey will get ugly sometimes. But the more you figure out, the more you can own your own experiences, and the easier it becomes to “figure out where home is” in any situation, among any group of people – and to help others find “home” also. That’s a mighty good ability to have in this life.
So let’s talk.
One of the things that stops us from being ourselves is when we think that the world is out to get us. Or not even just the world. The people around us. Our coworkers. Our neighbors. Members of our family. Truly, if you live in a state of fear of those around you, it’s going to be pretty hard for you to spread your wings and be all that you need to be.
Now, I want to make a clear distinction here: it’s when we think the world/coworkers/neighbors/family/friends/etc. are out to get us. Now, if you believe this inherently, stop and think deeper for a moment … are they really out to get you?
Competition. The art of being the best. It’s the foundation of so much of our sports and innovation culture, how could it be bad?
Well … we live in a world that completely misses the boat in terms of human and ecological need, with development, industrialization always happening at the breakneck pace of … competition! There are profits to be made and a bottom line to beef up, because the next person/company will be in greater demand than you, and you will be out of luck if you don’t keep up. Everything from people’s rights to their livelihood to their living conditions to their sanity and ability to take care of themselves and their families is on the line.
Competition on a social scale teaches us that there are winners and losers, and that we must work against each other, even as we innately know how important community is. Who among us doesn’t want to make friends and feel community with those around them? Yet when you compete with someone, they become the enemy.
One could say that feelings are always right, especially considering how they often just “happen” despite our best efforts!
Sometimes, the context of certain feelings is messed up, yes indeed. You don’t want to burst out laughing when somebody is weeping, talking about a loss they’ve suffered. And yes, feelings can be beastly, overwhelming things that get in the way! They can be embarrassing, send the wrong message, give the wrong impression, and so on. And the actions people take because of their feelings are often misguided, inappropriate, or harmful.
But feelings themselves can never be wrong, anymore than the rising sun is “wrong.” Both the rising sun and our feelings simply exist.
“I talked to this loser today, who has no life and seems to think no one else should either. Instead of engaging with me, he stared ahead like a sulky child and refused to fully acknowledge me. The guy’s a non-starter. He doesn’t have anything interesting to talk about.”
Compare this with
“I talked to this guy today who seemed kind of deep in his own thoughts. He was often looking away during our conversation, and I wondered what was going through his head. I couldn’t connect with the things he was talking about.”
This is an example of two different ways to react to the same interaction. In the first way, a tone of judgment and assumptions takes over. In the second way, things are stated as observations, rather than judgments.
Many books have been written about using language that declares less and observes more, and uses “I observed” or “I felt” as a starting point for talking about observations. But what I want to highlight here is the power of habit: if you are in the habit of speaking judgmentally, very often, you will say things of a negative, shaming character without even realizing it.
These days, privilege often gets talked about in the negative: those privileged people, who have no idea of how life is for people unlike them. A justifiable anger, for those who do not enjoy such privileges. Very often, when somebody’s privilege is pointed out, an unwanted, undeserved aggressor-defensor dynamic develops. It is often an unpleasant discussion – and so the mere mention of the word “privilege” is an unpleasant event.
What is often left out of this is the good that can come out of being aware of one’s privilege. When, for example, an able-bodied person gives up their seat on a crowded bus, without fanfare, so that an elderly person may sit down, this creates a positive exchange of giving and receiving. It permits both a benevolent recognition of the way things are and an affirmation of how they should be, without guilt or shame to either party. Ideally, it would always be like this – but even though the reality is often far from the ideal, any individual that truly wants to positively impact the reality around them can do so simply by maintaining an active consciousness around issues of privilege. This is especially true for those that find themselves in positions of privilege. Continue reading
We all get to that point with someone sometimes when there’s this big loaded question in the air – one that involves a lot of emotion, and thus potential disappointment. Think “will you marry me?” for example. Sometimes it’s not as extreme as this, but there are many times when these moments happen, especially between people that already share some kind of relationship.
Many times, the person needing to ask the question may not know how to ask it, and the person hearing the question also may not know how to respond. The inbuilt sense of expectation can be quite unpleasant, on both ends.
It helps when we can lower this heavy sense of expectations and obligations. I often find that a good way to do this is to “leave a way out” for the other person.
We have words in English for when we become upset at someone else’s enjoyment (jealousy) and for when we delight in being better off than someone else (gloating) and even delighting in another’s misery (schadenfreude) … but what do we call it when somebody enjoys themself without you, AND you feel pleasure right along with them, even as the pleasurable experience does not include you? “Vicarious pleasure” doesn’t always cut it, does it?
Enter “compersion.”
The following is a verbatim republication of something written by a member of Reddit in response to the question “Have you ever picked up a hitch-hiker?” It won Reddit’s “Comment of the Year” award in 2010 – it’s a beautiful story! For context, this was written by somebody from the United States, about an experience that took place in the United States.
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Just about every time I see someone I stop. I kind of got out of the habit in the last couple of years, moved to a big city and all that, my girlfriend wasn’t too stoked on the practice. Then some shit happened to me that changed me and I am back to offering rides habitually. If you would indulge me, it is long story and has almost nothing to do with hitch hiking other than happening on a road.
Many people only turn on their brain when something is wrong. But when things are right, it’s good to reflect on how to keep them that way – especially in case they start to go wrong. If you know more about why things feel right when they do, it will be easier to get back to a “right” state of mind.
Folks who only make an effort when stuff is bad often find it hard to derive any good out of things that ask them to concentrate and make an effort. Then can only enjoy themselves when being passively stimulated, and are unable to actively engage with their good feelings – because their habits dictate that they only truly engage their minds when something needs fixing, instead of when something needs enjoying. 🙂
And another thing: there will be many times in life when things feel, well, good enough. Level. Settled and stable. And that’s fine – sometimes. But sometimes, we need more than that. Sometimes, “good enough” doesn’t cut it, because we know we are passively cheating ourselves out of “better.” Those are the times that we look around and say, “I have everything I could ask for. I’m safe, I’m content, I’m in a stable place. So why do I feel like shit right now?”
It’s important to encourage active, conscious appreciation of what is good in one’s life – heck, we ideally would even appreciate “what is,” point blank. That’s what many of the great thinkers say. But a great part of this involves engaging more deeply with those good things we enjoy.
The people and things that get the most attention are rarely the people and things most deserving of attention. Why are some people’s voices heard more than others? Why is some news heard more than other news that is equally or more important? And what makes one hero more deserving of attention than another?
When we think about calling attention to something, especially in societies with strong freedom-of-speech cultures, we think in the positive: this is something that needs attention; it will help improve something, solve some problem, clarify something. But attention is also very often associated with negative things – we just don’t often “pay attention” to that side of the deal.
On the dark side of things, attention is often involuntary and uncontrollable. This is a big deal – most people don’t like to lose control of their identities or their lives. Out-of-control attention can cause stuff like that to happen!
There are times, when I am discussing a topic with someone, that I run into an interesting paradox; the other person tries to use facts and postulates about what something “officially” is or has been “defined” to make their point. And very often even when I agree with all the statements they make, something is missing.
For example, recently I spoke with someone about my interpretation of what Jesus’ message was originally supposed to be – or at least the part of it that I think makes many schools of Christian thought very attractive and enlightening (I wrote about that here, if’you’d like to check it out). The person I was talking to was saying that the Bible has a lot of weird laws that Christians have to accept by definition if the Bible is the Word of God, and that Jesus in fact was not always so progressive if you look at everything he is chronicled to have said, and so on – so my interpretation of Jesus’ message simply could not be the case.
I agreed with pretty much everything he was saying on a purely factual level. But “facts” weren’t the whole story. My friend was speaking as if Christianity and Christians (and even Jesus Christ) were finite definable entities, and in that conversation, I was not seeing things this way. Reality is often much more complicated than a logical series of if-then postulates.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having access to logical reasoning and using it. Logic and definition are essential tools for learning and understanding. But we should not make the mistake, either, of thinking that they are the only tools.
“Hi, how are you?”
“Fine, thank you.”
“Good! How’s work?”
“It’s good, it’s good.”
This gets boring and meaningless after a while, doesn’t it? It’s the dreaded script! AAAAAHHH!!! You know, those times when the conversation becomes so deafeningly predictable, when people might be saying a lot, but they’re really not saying anything at all?
The worst part is that sometimes you feel like an imbecile for wanting to say something more meaningful, like “work is a bit stressful. I sacrifice my lunch break to help complete projects on time, but nobody notices; I think one of my coworkers might be stalking me, and my boss has these horrible fights with their significant other on the phone during work, so things are kind of weird. But the avocado / orange / mayo sandwich at the cafe next door is awesome! I order there every day for lunch.” And you look at the person you’re talking to, and they’re like “oh, ok” as they wear that expression that says “damn, you’re a heavy one” on their face and look for a way to discreetly slip out of spending any more time interacting with you.
Kind of depressing to think about, perhaps? Maybe … but I have a more optimistic view of these things.
A friend of mine recently told me, “I’m seeing two people. But I never refer to either of them as ‘boyfriend’ … they are always just ‘friend’, both between us and with other people. The minute you give the relationship a label – boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, whatever – you’re screwed.” I had never thought of this, but you know what? It made a whole lot of sense to me.
A member of my family recently asked me what I wanted for Christmas. It was a beautiful gesture by somebody dear to me who knows me well and knows that I generally appreciate gifts I know about more than surprise gifts. But the question still kind of caught me off guard.
As I thought about how to respond and the words came to mind, I realized a few things:
After getting over the fact that the most innocent of lives were lost yesterday in Connecticut just because somebody was angry or wanted revenge on someone else, we’re going to start asking why once again.
There is no one answer. There are multiple answers. Obviously, availability of guns is one of them. Without the guns, certainly fewer people die. But guns are not the only issue here – and focusing just on the issue of guns ignores a lot of other very important things. Gun ownership is similar in Canada to the United States, but Canada’s homicide rates are significantly lower. The state of Connecticut, where the shooting took place, is actually at the low end of the U.S. average.
More concerning to me is the cultural values and norms we grow up with. This is a central factor in why these things happen, and holds the key to solving the problem.
The world of sex and romance can get really noisy sometimes with all the drama, intended or not, that it often brings. Yes – even with low-drama people. At such times, it can become hard to think.
People who know me know that I can be quite the romance junkie. But I bet those of you who read this blog from time to time could totally tell, right? I mean, look at how I’m always writing about something deep, or about sex, or intimacy, etc.
So I’ve taken some time off from that mode of being. And it’s so much quieter inside my head … now that I’m not devoting so much time and energy to how I feel about her, how she feels about me, what do we want out of this, how much time do/should we devote to developing our connection, where is this going, what needs aren’t getting addressed, how compatible are we, etc….
I picked the word “positive” for this blog because I think that, if I am limited to one word, “positive” best represents the message I am trying to convey, and the way I want to live my life.
No one word can be a catch-all for everything meaningful. Far from it. But I like the word “positive” because I find that it covers so many different situations and approaches. Here are my ideas of the many meanings of the word “positive,” as well as a link to an article from this blog for each particular meaning:
As I write this post, the most popular post on my blog these days, by far, is the one about why human beings get jealous. I noticed that a good number of the search terms hitting that post say things like “how to make someone jealous,” which is interesting, because that post is all about how to reduce jealous feelings. So I figured I’d also address why people often wish to inspire jealousy in others.
Jealousy is about control – or wanting control when you aren’t feeling in control. It’s a flailing emotion that looks for some way to achieve stability in those moments when you get socked in the gut, often when you realize you have a need that you weren’t aware of before. It’s a particularly sharp way of being reminded that “HEY … THIS MATTERS!”
And that’s the key thing to understand about why some folks want to inspire jealousy in others: if you are an object of somebody’s jealousy, that means you matter.
A murderer is a person, too. Like you and me. A person who probably shares a lot in common with you and me, in fact.
Some folks were reading this will no doubt ask me why I think that this matters at all. To which I say: have you ever intimately known somebody who has intentionally killed another person before? If the answer is yes – whether or not you still keep in touch with such a person – you can’t tell me that this doesn’t matter.
Before I was able to love myself, I use to think about all the people that I wasn’t like. I would think about heroes, the people that we hold in high esteem as models for the best that humanity can be – and about how I wasn’t meant to be like them. From historical figures like Harriet Tubman or Gandhi to everyday local heroes in our comminuties who are known for their acts of courage, overflowing generosity, and sense of commitment to bettering the world around them – I knew I wasn’t one of them. My destiny in life was just to be the best ordinary person I could be. I thought “some people are heroes … and some aren’t.”
Then, when I first found love for myself – which was quite an amazing period in my life – I noticed something: I was already my own hero. I no longer separated myself from these “heroes” in my head. Rather than seeing what separated me from them, I began to see just how much I had in common with them. I began to think of them not just as heroes, but as allies; people that I was spiritually side-by-side with, in a sense. People that I could learn from who could also learn from me – and I realized, in pretty much every case, these people would also welcome me seeing myself as equally valuable to the betterment of the world as they.
We tend to ask for help when (a) what we need help with is not a big deal, and (b) when we desperately need help with something, often at times when we should have asked long ago. The fact that we often don’t ask for help when we find ourselves in the middle of these two extremes robs us of a lot of good opportunities to help and be helped. It creates unfortunate negative associations with help, including feelings of superiority versus inferiority, and also a thinking that a request for meaningful help is usually associated with neediness and desperation.
This shouldn’t be the case. When help is genuine – given from a place of wanting to see somebody free of troubles – it’s most often a rewarding experience for everyone involved, helper and helped. And I’d like to talk about that for a bit: the importance of helping and being helped, by itself, regardless of the nature of the help given or received.
I’m one of the most religion-friendly atheists you’ll ever know. Because I don’t believe in disparaging people’s beliefs for being different than my own. On the contrary, those around us who believe different things than we do, they hold these beliefs for some very good and interesting reasons, and this makes me curious.
This is why I am grateful, atheist that I am, to be able to relate to the message of Jesus Christ. 🙂
I probably should be clear: this does not make me a Christian in atheist clothing, or anything like that. I do not believe in “God,” and I do not believe in Jesus as God, anymore than I believe in Gandhi as God or Madonna as God. But the fact that I don’t worship Jesus as “God” doesn’t mean that what Jesus spoke of isn’t a good, powerful message to relate to, among others. And given that the story of Jesus Christ is one of the most widely known stories throughout the world, a reference point from which so many people base their value system, it’s often quite valuable to be able to say to these Christians “yes. I understand.” From there, we can communicate on a deeper, more appreciative, less patronizing level to each other.
I also find this topic important specifically because it is important to those people who do have a religious faith. These folks are out there, and I am going to be interacting with them. And when interacting with religious folks, ignoring their belief or worse, mocking and shaming it, is bigoted. When an atheist’s (or anybody else’s) beliefs are mocked and shamed, or made invisible through ignorance of them, this is bigoted too. Well, it works both ways.
Now, I’m not excusing those religious fanatic leaders who mobilize people and resources in order to deprive or cause harm to others. Those folks can go chew on some scrap-metal – they really do cause pain and distress, to many people that are supposed to share their beliefs as well as those that don’t. I often think that the biggest problems in many belief movements (non-religious as well as religious) are the leaders; the folks who are “just believers” are often quite different from these leaders, even when they may not “look like it” at first. When you can communicate compassionately across these walls on a humanity-to-humanity level, you break down myths and learn about the real person, and the experience can often be rewarding on both sides.
So … about Jesus Christ. Let’s begin.
“If you’re going to have sex, use a condom!” We hear it all the time: safer sex necessarily involves condom use, among other things. And it sounds simple and sensible enough, right? Just cover the penis when penetration occurs, and then take it off and throw it away afterwards. So simple – or at least it looks that way in public service ads and school sex-ed classes.
(PLEASE NOTE: there is some explicit discussion of the workings and mechanics of sex further on in this article. Just in case you aren’t up for reading that kind of thing right now. Otherwise, please proceed).
Envy is a natural feeling of wanting what somebody else has. Jealousy, however, is qualitatively different.
Whereas envy simply says, “I want what you have,” jealousy says, “I can’t stand that you have something I don’t,” usually followed up with “thus you should not have it!”
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” –Rumi
There is something about the way much of modern society views love outside of family ties that I find deeply disturbing.
It is often thought that the only people that you should use the word love with are people in your family, or people that possibly will become your family through you being married / settled down with them. Even when you don’t settle down and get married to somebody, the concept of using the word love only for people that will most likely be in your life forever tends to predominate. Not everybody thinks this way, but it is the dominant hidden traditional social value, especially in more modernized, atomized societies.
Positive Juice 
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