Perspective

I think that I've come to dislike the hash tag "#FirstWorldProblems." It seems to have spread beyond poking fun at our tendency to over-dramatize life's little annoyances and become little more than a convenient excuse for deciding that other people are being whiners. And even though I'm completely at peace with labeling people as "whiners," it is one of those things that I think that we should own, rather than using the world's less fortunate as a sort of human shield against charges of indifference. In other words, if I'm going to be unsympathetic to someone else's distress because I find their problem to be trivial in the grand scheme of things, then I should be openly unsympathetic, rather than claiming to reserve that sympathy for someone who, five minutes prior, I didn't give a rip about. (And likely still don't.) And to a degree, this has become symptomatic of many attempts to "put things in perspective" in general. We wind up saying, whether we quite intended to or not, "Shut up, because somewhere in Africa, there's a starving refugee who would love to have that 'problem'."

Everything, it must be remembered, has a price. And part of the price of living in an advanced, technologically-driven society is that we tend to leave everything to that technology. And there's a certain amount of sense in doing things that way. While one looks like an idiot when blindly following a GPS unit's instructions leads to driving into a lagoon, trusting the GPS to get you from point A to point B is faster and more efficient, in a lot of cases, than trying to memorize a series of directions or work with a map while behind the wheel. The issue arises when we allow ourselves to let our problem-solving skills lapse, because we're completely unused to needing them, and then we're humiliated when confronted with that fact.

In much of the First (and Second, for that matter) worlds, people are highly educated, having gone through years, if not a couple of decades, of formalized instruction in a wide range of topics. In the United States, a lot of that seems to go to waste, as we don't often use it once final exams are out of the way. Perhaps it's time to change that. Rather than confronting people over the idea that they should be accepting of certain things that come their way, in exchange for not being desperately poor, we should work with people to put their accumulated skills and knowledge to work in creating solutions.

Candid Camera

You know you're a camera geek when you go to read an article about the DOJ standing up for photographers who photograph or video the police, and when you notice the picture that goes with the article is of a full-frame DSLR with a "protective" UV filter mounted on it, your first thought is: "Amateur. Just use the lens hood."

Photo-geekery aside, I'm impressed that this story hasn't gotten more play than it has. It's become an irregular refrain from certain law-enforcement officials that members of the public who have nothing to hide should have no reason to be concerned about police surveillance. (And by extension, those people who feel they have reason to be concerned...) Given that, there should be a greater push by law-enforcement for transparency. Not to avoid hypocrisy, but simply the slippery slope of only giving a rip about one's own interests.

Not being an idiot, I understand that when the police become twitchy about being photographed, it's not because we're on the way to officers water-boarding people or having "black jails" which become roach motels for critics of the police. (At least, not anytime in the foreseeable future. That kind of police state lies at the end of a fairly long road, and I have a hard time taking seriously people who say that we're barreling down it at top speed.) Instead, it's because they understand that they rely on a certain level of public trust in order to do their jobs effectively, and as such, they've come to the understanding that they're entitled to that trust to a certain degree. And so it follows that they're sensitive to anything that might lead to an erosion of that trust. And while a picture may be worth a thousand words, and a video clip a million, the words that come to mind may not always be an accurate reflection of what was happening at the moment the shutter was pressed, and they almost always miss what transpired half an hour (or half a minute) to either side.

Still, the antidote to bad information is not ignorance, it's more information. I understand that I don't know anything that I wasn't a witness to, and if someone tells me what happened, what I then know is what their personal perspective on it was. The blind man who describes the elephant as being rather much like a tree isn't lying, or even truly mistaken - he's simply incompletely informed and not fully aware of that fact. "Citizen journalism" (aside: Aren't ALL journalists citizens?) is nothing more than adding more blind men to the panel. The more perspectives that are available, the more accurate a picture can emerge, even if some, or even all, of them are deliberately skewed.

Just Another Random American

This article in the New York Times by Ta-Nehisi Coates reminds me of the few trips that I've taken abroad, and why I, the closer it comes to the date of my return home, why I would become more and more attached to my destination.

When I'm in the United States, I'm a Scary Black Man®. People stop me on the street and ask me if I'd like to take part in a job training program, and don't like to take "no" (because it's been a long day at work) for an answer. People cross the street, clutching their keys as impromptu weapons, when I walk towards them on my way to the grocery store. I never have run-ins with the police - almost all of the police officers that I've ever met have been really nice people. It's the everyday people, even here in the Seattle area, who shout "Nigger!" at me as they drive past in their cars. An acquaintance of mine once said that out here (as opposed to more urbanized places, like Chicago) people behaved in this way because they weren't afraid that I would start shooting at them.

"So." I replied. "You're saying that White people are only civil when they think their lives depend on it?"

Which was unfair. After all, I'm old enough to know the difference between a racist and a jackass, and where the two can shade into each other. And there are far too many White people for none of them to be jackasses.

It's tiring and demotivating to constantly feel that all the people around you want to know about you, they gleaned from your skin tone. And they are quick to remind you that they are good and decent people. This is true. But, like Coates, I'm tired of good people. Good Americans.

When I was in Japan, I was someone different. When I went out in the morning, during rush hour, I was treated as just another random gaikokujin, on their way to work. Noone batted an eyelash. When I played my actual role, that of tourist, I was often a novelty, starring in countless snapshots of smiling Nihonjin with their fingers held up in "V" signs.

When I went to England, I was just another face in the crowd, able to wander around a mingle with people going about their days without anyone paying me a moment's thought, until I opened my mouth, which would be greeted by a surprised "Oh! You're an American."

I haven't left the United States because, well, I like it here. I speak the language (well enough, anyway) and I know what side of the street to drive on (and which way to look when crossing the street), and I can figure out how to get from one place to the next without needing technological assistance. And besides, the people here aren't that bad.

But sometimes, just sometimes, I've had all of them that I want to take.

I Can't Get No

Late last week, a sinkhole opened up beneath Jeffrey Bush's bedroom in Seffner, Florida. Bush fell into it. He is presumed dead and his body was never recovered. Authorities are now demolishing the house.

There's nothing remarkable about sinkholes, homes, or people being in their bedrooms. It's fairly easy to take the facts of the story and construct a simple narrative of what happened and can look at the history and geology of the area and understand why it happened. But, as this story on NPR points out, this doesn't answer why Jeffrey Bush specifically was "swallowed" by a sinkhole. And, as the story goes on to relate, for many people, that lack of a deeper explanation of the Earth's seemingly human-like behavior (after all, inanimate objects do not "swallow" in the same way that you or I might) leaves and unsatisfying gap in the narrative.

"Can we ever provide a satisfying explanation for human tragedy?" asks the author.

But the question that I find myself more interested in is why are the facts of the case considered so "deeply unsatisfying" as an explanation of what happened. I have to admit that I don't "get" it. For me, the world is "random" like that - it behaves in ways that we can't predict in real time. And I'm totally okay with that - sometimes, you're the windshield and sometimes, you're the bug. The explanations of what happened are, as the article points out, perfectly reasonable, and so I marvel at the small powers of the natural world, then shrug my shoulders and move on.

So, from where does a need for a deeper, more "satisfying" narrative come from? Is it a social thing, learned from people around us? Is there an evolutionary advantage in this wanting something more? Does it ebb and flow or is it a constant?

Liftoff