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Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Changes: Xenophobia

Changes: Xenophobia: Fear of the different. Fear of change. Fear of the Other. One of the earliest stages of human development is coming to terms with the reali...

Xenophobia

Fear of the different. Fear of change. Fear of the Other.
One of the earliest stages of human development is coming to terms with the reality that we are not the world. As part of the process  of building a better self, we accept the fact that there are things we cannot control, things we are not responsible for. Despite our earliest experience, the world does not rotate  around us. There are others in this world, and (Schopenhauer aside) we do not control this world, no matter how we might try.
The difficulty arises after we realize this in whatever subjective or objective fashion. In a  nutshell; how do we react to this new reality, with people, places and things that are Not Us. If we are secure enough in ourselves, we tolerate them, accept them, even celebrate them. (As the French would say in another context,  Vive la differance!) But if we have no such feeling of self-worth, we will view others as frightening, threatening, simply because they are not us. We may even fear them because we fear there is something of them in us, as there might be something of us in them.
Hence we have those who react to the Other not just with wariness (as if dealing with a strange and possibly vicious animal) but with anger and even hatred. Their solution: get rid of the different, remove anything which is not Us. For anything which we do not control is scary, threatening. And if the Other has any alluring aspects, the reaction is all the more so.
So if the skin is a different color, or the national origin is different, or the sexual orientation is not the same, we react as people of ages past reacted to those with certain illnesses: Outcast! Unclean! And even within such groupings, there have been some instances of reaction. Even people of color distinguish, even ethnic groups maintain pride in coming from their own separate ethnicity, even those of any given political or religious  belief may view diversity in their particular ran ks with mistrust or dismay.
When we were children, our parents went through the  common ordeal of getting us to eat something other than what we wanted. Granted, it didn't always work; for every instance of having to stop the child from devouring everything, there are too many instances  of adults that just won't eat peas! But we hold  back from any such attempts to learn from  the different, to know a world that is not Us.
Because only when we truly know the Other can we know ourselves.
"And this shall be the end of our exploring: We shall not cease from exploring, until we return to the place where we began, and know it for the first time." -T.S. Eliott

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Swish

The worst hours of my life were supposed to be the most carefree, fun times. My father would come home from work, dig out the baseball and gloves and call to me, "C'mon! Let's toss a few!" And for an endless period of time, my father and I tried over and over to throw the ball and  catch the ball. Unsuccessfully on my part, need I add.
It did not help that my eyesight was rapidly deteriorating. At one awful stage, my parents were resigning themselves to my eventual complete loss of vision (an event that did not happen.) It also did not help that I was shy and bookish and prone to numerous illnesses.
The net result was a long aversion to sports. I was relieved when I was the last to be chosen for whatever team. I would stand in the outfield (why the outfield? I dunno.) daydreaming or dreading that someone might hit a ball my way. I would go to school sporting events convinced my school would  lose (and they usually did so!)
At various irregular intervals, I got involved in some esoteric sport such as karate or fencing. I was deeply committed at one point to hiking, if you take a broad definition of "sport."
But it was only when the physical became less possible for me due to increasing disability that I fell into my current fascination with sport, specifically baseball/ (Go Red Sox!) At the same time, I recognized how dysfunctional most sports can be.
This is not just about the inevitable physical wear and tear that is part of any sport. Not just boxing and football, but the damage that happens to any athlete, and that results in retirement from most sports by age 40 or so. This is also idealizing conflict as a form of entertainment and therefore acceptable as a way of dealing with differences even in most social settings. And we even go into the complicated ways in which sport is used as a pretext for making money (the big sports organizations as non-profits? really?)
But most of all, it has taken to recent years to address the homophobia implicit in many sports organizations. Not that there were no gay players! But as in society at large, we preferred not to see or acknowledge that these men and women  might be other than the Frank Merriwether stereotype of the wholesome straight-no, no, chaste! role models we sought.
So what does society do when it is faced with the eroding of the gay stereotype, with the image of manly/womanly members of the LBGTQ community? What do parents do when they have a son who has no interest in the traditional macho things? What do they do when a daughter shows no so-called "feminine" tendencies?
Some advice: don't take them out to the back yard to play a game of catch. Doesn't work.