I know I said today I would go into the second threat to marriage, but it didn't feel right.
My
issue is that what I want to say will be off-putting to some, but I
want readers to at least have to consider the possibility. I am
currently pondering if there is a process I can follow whereby laying
the groundwork and connecting the dots will make it more palatable.
Maybe it will be better to just be blunt.
For now, though, there was a point that I had thought about making last week, but when I was writing, it didn't come up.
If
you recall, last week was about how financial problems threaten
families, and while it is not necessarily a concentrated, intentional
attack, the damage still gets done, mainly because of greed.
That
is largely the greed of a shrinking few, as economic mobility becomes
more constricted, but it is abetted by the pride of others. Pride makes
it easy to compare and assume that the misfortunes of others are due to
their stupidity or laziness, but you are good and the bad things that
happen to you are unfair.
There are obvious downsides
to that way of thinking. I am sure some are less obvious (like an
increasingly difficult to suppress anger that burns harder as your luck
runs out despite your goodness), but there is another, terribly "duh"
thing that we frequently miss:
Jesus spoke really strongly against the wealthy.
He
told people that he provided for animals and plants who did not labor.
If you look more closely, you can see that the birds and flowers do what
they are supposed to do, but he was not promoting toil for acquisition.
The guy who was so prosperous that he wanted to build bigger barns
died, without getting to enjoy the fruits of his labor. The rich man who
did not help Lazarus languished in Hell. It is easier for a camel to
pass through the eye of a needle. Don't get caught up on whether that
was the name of a certain gate; that would be missing the point.
I
could bring up many scriptural examples. That is not just the teachings
during the mortal ministry of Jesus, but also from other prophets, on
both continents, where in multiple dispensations there have been saints
who have practiced communal living.
Over and over
again, wealth is bad. Could that be because its accumulation tends to
involve exploiting others? Could it be because having too much tends to
make people forget God? Could it be because the more people have, the
more they think it is not enough, but nor realizing why? There are
reasons.
None of that devalues hard work, but there is
no scriptural basis for allowing unbridled capitalism or laissez-faire
capitalism, or anything else where you justify people working hard for
poverty wages so that a few people can be wildly wealthy.
It
may be in the service of avoiding the obvious that the dehumanization
and vilification of others happens, where you assume they are lazy, and
not deserving of food or vacations or being able to spend weekends
enjoying the company of their children, but I promise you, there is
still no scriptural justification.
Just something to think about while I try to find a tactful way of saying...
Monday, November 19, 2018
Sunday, November 11, 2018
Attacks on the family - Money
One thing that struck me about conference was that there were two different stories told where families lost everything financially without it being their fault.
(I strongly suspected that the bishop in Elder Holland's story was exercising unrighteous dominion on the "full tithe payer" question, and it may have been a missed opportunity not to point out that was a possibility, but at least he did not rule it out.)
It felt like an acknowledgment that it is getting much harder to keep afloat financially. The stories were past, but them coming up now at a time when so many are struggling felt significant to me.
It's not that the longstanding councils about avoiding debt and spending wisely were wrong, but things are worse, and not necessarily in ways that can be fixed by individual choice. Just consider the debts that have traditionally been considered acceptable:
Finances can be a threat to the family in two ways. Concerns about being able to provide for a family are a factor in at least some decisions about marrying and children. Church leaders have encouraged us to have faith for years, but that has required less of a leap in the past.
Beyond that, financial stress can tear existing families apart. Going back to those medical bankruptcies, an illness that bankrupts the family is probably severe enough or long-lasting enough that the bankruptcy would be far from the only stress. Some adversity can bring families closer together, but that's not always how it works.
When survival feels like a struggle, you are not your best self. This often means not being a picnic to be around. Spread that around a household, and it is not great for families.
In addition, strong families require time spent together. Our church has historically encouraged having one stay-at-home parent, but they emphasize that less now, presumably because fewer people can make it work. A prominent member of the church and presidential candidate said that modern families needed to have 2-3 jobs to keep going - is that good for families?
There are two important things to note here. One is that when we think of an attack on the family, there may be something alluring about imagining a Hollywood that corrupts people because they are evil and hate families, but it is false. (Which we already covered.)
It is not completely unreasonable to think about these financial stresses as an attack on the family, but it is not helpful to understand it as a personal attack. Unbridled capitalism only cares about getting the money, not whom it's hurting, and there is no one source. There are many, many businesses that will pay as low as possible and avoid taxes as much as possible. It's not just the Walton family or John Schnatter.
Once upon a time there were better wage regulations and unions and programs that did curb the economic inequality. Some reverses should be possible.
Right now Italy's birth rate is at an all time low. There are multiple reasons for that, but I do know that young people are reluctant to marry and have children. Job insecurity plays a role, but also there are traditions where a wedding is expected to cost around 30,000 Euros, which very few people have. Doing it really cheaply would still be 15,000.
Now, it should certainly be possible to break those traditions, and encourage elopements or smaller ceremonies or some ways of economizing. However, doing that still leaves the issues with jobs and doubts about successfully supporting oneself, let alone a family.
Those aren't necessarily easy things to fix, but if you care about people - as individuals and as family units - they need to be addressed. It requires honesty, but it can be done.
There is one other big threat to family happiness, both for people deciding to marry and to stay married. It gets back to that conference talk that started this series.
We will get to that next week.
(I strongly suspected that the bishop in Elder Holland's story was exercising unrighteous dominion on the "full tithe payer" question, and it may have been a missed opportunity not to point out that was a possibility, but at least he did not rule it out.)
It felt like an acknowledgment that it is getting much harder to keep afloat financially. The stories were past, but them coming up now at a time when so many are struggling felt significant to me.
It's not that the longstanding councils about avoiding debt and spending wisely were wrong, but things are worse, and not necessarily in ways that can be fixed by individual choice. Just consider the debts that have traditionally been considered acceptable:
- Education - costs have risen in a way that wages have not, making college a far riskier proposition than it should be.
- Homes - theoretically using caution and not being greedy could have saved you from the housing bubble (for all of my problems, I have still never been underwater on the mortgage), but the market fluctuations still have an impact.
Finances can be a threat to the family in two ways. Concerns about being able to provide for a family are a factor in at least some decisions about marrying and children. Church leaders have encouraged us to have faith for years, but that has required less of a leap in the past.
Beyond that, financial stress can tear existing families apart. Going back to those medical bankruptcies, an illness that bankrupts the family is probably severe enough or long-lasting enough that the bankruptcy would be far from the only stress. Some adversity can bring families closer together, but that's not always how it works.
When survival feels like a struggle, you are not your best self. This often means not being a picnic to be around. Spread that around a household, and it is not great for families.
In addition, strong families require time spent together. Our church has historically encouraged having one stay-at-home parent, but they emphasize that less now, presumably because fewer people can make it work. A prominent member of the church and presidential candidate said that modern families needed to have 2-3 jobs to keep going - is that good for families?
There are two important things to note here. One is that when we think of an attack on the family, there may be something alluring about imagining a Hollywood that corrupts people because they are evil and hate families, but it is false. (Which we already covered.)
It is not completely unreasonable to think about these financial stresses as an attack on the family, but it is not helpful to understand it as a personal attack. Unbridled capitalism only cares about getting the money, not whom it's hurting, and there is no one source. There are many, many businesses that will pay as low as possible and avoid taxes as much as possible. It's not just the Walton family or John Schnatter.
Once upon a time there were better wage regulations and unions and programs that did curb the economic inequality. Some reverses should be possible.
Right now Italy's birth rate is at an all time low. There are multiple reasons for that, but I do know that young people are reluctant to marry and have children. Job insecurity plays a role, but also there are traditions where a wedding is expected to cost around 30,000 Euros, which very few people have. Doing it really cheaply would still be 15,000.
Now, it should certainly be possible to break those traditions, and encourage elopements or smaller ceremonies or some ways of economizing. However, doing that still leaves the issues with jobs and doubts about successfully supporting oneself, let alone a family.
Those aren't necessarily easy things to fix, but if you care about people - as individuals and as family units - they need to be addressed. It requires honesty, but it can be done.
There is one other big threat to family happiness, both for people deciding to marry and to stay married. It gets back to that conference talk that started this series.
We will get to that next week.
Sunday, November 4, 2018
Assumptions: Marriage Equality Edition
Going back to those stories from 2007 World Congress of Families, a lot of the focus was on the corruption of the world, where corruption mainly equated gay people, and the harmful effects this would have on children.
For some context, this was kind of a critical mass period for marriage equality (which they were primarily calling gay marriage or same-sex marriage at the time). Some countries and some states supported it, but other states and countries were taking specific steps to ban it. Dick Cheney had punted to states. The 2007 congress happened between South Africa legalizing same-sex marriage and California's Supreme Court overturning a ban on gay marriage.
https://gaymarriage.procon.org/view.timeline.php?timelineID=000030
Sometimes you will see a reaction against change coming. I have been advised that Armand Mauss of WSU has done some work on this and calls it retrenchment theory, though I have not had a chance to look into it. I see some things related to it now that I will refer to later. Part of my seeing a pattern now is because there was a five year period where it feels like conference talks were more about being heterosexual than anything else. The timeline makes sense. Perhaps we should call it a gay panic.
The important thing for today's post is that generally the stated logic for the condemnation of marriage equality was the harm it would wreak on children, who needed both a mother and father. That may have seemed plausible in 2007, but it has been generally well-established that children raised by same-sex couples do equally well.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2009.00678.x
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11113-014-9329-6
Let me point out that some of those studies focus on lesbian couples, I believe because at one point it was more common to find children with lesbian couples than with gay men in long-term relationships. There are some ways in which it is easier for women to get children without a husband.
That leads to a second point worth noting. I remember some research showing that children raised by same-sex couples had better outcomes. That would not have been a slam on heterosexual families, but more likely a reflection of that fact that children don't just happen for gay couples. Straight couples may have accidental pregnancies or give in to societal pressure while their own feelings about having children are ambivalent. I suppose it's possible that gay couples may start to get the same kinds of pressure to have children now, but in general, historically a gay couple that has children has really wanted them and jumped through several hoops for them, allowing for a more thorough preparation for raising children.
I also know that there will be people who mentally recoil that a family with two parents of the same sex could have children that are happier and healthier than a more "traditional" family, because that's the way it was ordained, right? That's how nature says it should be, right?
It's certainly more common; you will get no arguments from me there. Marriage between a man and a woman is no guarantee either. That is very clear.
In the absence of guarantees, we can still look at things that help and hurt, and we should. Helping families isn't a bad goal, but it also won't be served by lying to ourselves.
As it is, the primary difference between children raised by gay couples is that they are less likely to be raised homophobic than the children of straight couples. Yes, society may still give them messages that it is not okay to be gay, but they are less likely to internalize them.
Once again, I know that there are people who will not be happy about that. For gay children who become gay teenagers, I like that they will be less likely to need to run away to the danger of the streets, or waste a lot of time hating themselves (I mean, more than straight ones; adolescence is rough no matter how you cut it). I love that they are less likely to be suicidal. However, straight parents are also capable of getting those results, if they can also not be homophobic.
There have also been some concerns expressed about gay marriage devaluing straight marriage.
There may indeed be some threats to "traditional marriage" out there, and I want to get into that next week. For now, let's talk about different people wanting to get married, especially people to whom it has been denied. That seems to make marriage look valuable.
I suppose the issue goes back to the idea that if you tell people that being gay is okay they will do it, when otherwise they wouldn't. That just isn't how it works. No one should still believe that. Those kids who run away or kill themselves, they have been emphatically told that it is not okay, and somehow they are still gay.
So, if someone in a heterosexual marriage leaves it for someone of the same sex, that was there before. There may have been good things about the marriage, but it was built on a lie, and that tears at people.
In conjunction with thinking about writing this, I have been thinking about couples I know where someone gay pretended to be straight - which would have been the only way for all but the most recent of them to have gotten married. There were moments of happiness in those marriages. There are beloved children from those marriages. They still all broke up.
They often broke up with feelings of betrayal. There was broken trust. Sometimes there was cheating. In the case of one, there was abuse that was at least partially inspired by her perceived failure to cure him. He believed he could conquer being gay, and that sex with a woman would fix that and he had to get married to do that.
Does anyone think this helps?
(I am afraid that it is not a coincidence that the least horrible of the breakups was one where neither was a member of the church.)
It is common for people to want to be married to someone who is attracted to them. There are people who lost significant chunks of their lives because they believed someone who was never going to be able to be attracted to them, but wouldn't tell them.
(No, none of these examples are Josh and Lolly Weed. They were always honest with each other. The terrible thing is that I keep thinking of more couples who went through this.)
You may have complicated feelings about this; I am not going to hold it against you. I am going to suggest that you redirect your efforts. You can still help families. You can even work to help traditional families, but make it more a matter of helping families than fighting gay people.
That will require honesty about what families need and what makes good families. You may have a mental image that is wrong. Maybe it mixes up correlation and causation. It may be wrong enough to keep you from helping.
We can work on that.
For some context, this was kind of a critical mass period for marriage equality (which they were primarily calling gay marriage or same-sex marriage at the time). Some countries and some states supported it, but other states and countries were taking specific steps to ban it. Dick Cheney had punted to states. The 2007 congress happened between South Africa legalizing same-sex marriage and California's Supreme Court overturning a ban on gay marriage.
https://gaymarriage.procon.org/view.timeline.php?timelineID=000030
Sometimes you will see a reaction against change coming. I have been advised that Armand Mauss of WSU has done some work on this and calls it retrenchment theory, though I have not had a chance to look into it. I see some things related to it now that I will refer to later. Part of my seeing a pattern now is because there was a five year period where it feels like conference talks were more about being heterosexual than anything else. The timeline makes sense. Perhaps we should call it a gay panic.
The important thing for today's post is that generally the stated logic for the condemnation of marriage equality was the harm it would wreak on children, who needed both a mother and father. That may have seemed plausible in 2007, but it has been generally well-established that children raised by same-sex couples do equally well.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2009.00678.x
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11113-014-9329-6
Let me point out that some of those studies focus on lesbian couples, I believe because at one point it was more common to find children with lesbian couples than with gay men in long-term relationships. There are some ways in which it is easier for women to get children without a husband.
That leads to a second point worth noting. I remember some research showing that children raised by same-sex couples had better outcomes. That would not have been a slam on heterosexual families, but more likely a reflection of that fact that children don't just happen for gay couples. Straight couples may have accidental pregnancies or give in to societal pressure while their own feelings about having children are ambivalent. I suppose it's possible that gay couples may start to get the same kinds of pressure to have children now, but in general, historically a gay couple that has children has really wanted them and jumped through several hoops for them, allowing for a more thorough preparation for raising children.
I also know that there will be people who mentally recoil that a family with two parents of the same sex could have children that are happier and healthier than a more "traditional" family, because that's the way it was ordained, right? That's how nature says it should be, right?
It's certainly more common; you will get no arguments from me there. Marriage between a man and a woman is no guarantee either. That is very clear.
In the absence of guarantees, we can still look at things that help and hurt, and we should. Helping families isn't a bad goal, but it also won't be served by lying to ourselves.
As it is, the primary difference between children raised by gay couples is that they are less likely to be raised homophobic than the children of straight couples. Yes, society may still give them messages that it is not okay to be gay, but they are less likely to internalize them.
Once again, I know that there are people who will not be happy about that. For gay children who become gay teenagers, I like that they will be less likely to need to run away to the danger of the streets, or waste a lot of time hating themselves (I mean, more than straight ones; adolescence is rough no matter how you cut it). I love that they are less likely to be suicidal. However, straight parents are also capable of getting those results, if they can also not be homophobic.
There have also been some concerns expressed about gay marriage devaluing straight marriage.
There may indeed be some threats to "traditional marriage" out there, and I want to get into that next week. For now, let's talk about different people wanting to get married, especially people to whom it has been denied. That seems to make marriage look valuable.
I suppose the issue goes back to the idea that if you tell people that being gay is okay they will do it, when otherwise they wouldn't. That just isn't how it works. No one should still believe that. Those kids who run away or kill themselves, they have been emphatically told that it is not okay, and somehow they are still gay.
So, if someone in a heterosexual marriage leaves it for someone of the same sex, that was there before. There may have been good things about the marriage, but it was built on a lie, and that tears at people.
In conjunction with thinking about writing this, I have been thinking about couples I know where someone gay pretended to be straight - which would have been the only way for all but the most recent of them to have gotten married. There were moments of happiness in those marriages. There are beloved children from those marriages. They still all broke up.
They often broke up with feelings of betrayal. There was broken trust. Sometimes there was cheating. In the case of one, there was abuse that was at least partially inspired by her perceived failure to cure him. He believed he could conquer being gay, and that sex with a woman would fix that and he had to get married to do that.
Does anyone think this helps?
(I am afraid that it is not a coincidence that the least horrible of the breakups was one where neither was a member of the church.)
It is common for people to want to be married to someone who is attracted to them. There are people who lost significant chunks of their lives because they believed someone who was never going to be able to be attracted to them, but wouldn't tell them.
(No, none of these examples are Josh and Lolly Weed. They were always honest with each other. The terrible thing is that I keep thinking of more couples who went through this.)
You may have complicated feelings about this; I am not going to hold it against you. I am going to suggest that you redirect your efforts. You can still help families. You can even work to help traditional families, but make it more a matter of helping families than fighting gay people.
That will require honesty about what families need and what makes good families. You may have a mental image that is wrong. Maybe it mixes up correlation and causation. It may be wrong enough to keep you from helping.
We can work on that.
Sunday, October 28, 2018
Assumptions - Hollywood edition
We recently watched Back to School, a 1986 movie with Rodney Dangerfield entering college with his son. It's not a great movie, but there are worse ones.
I had seen clips from it over the years, and it reminded me a lot of a made-for-TV movie that came out the year before, The Undergrads, with Art Carney, who goes to college with his grandson.
Both films feature a conflict with one professor, a romance with another professor, and initial difficulty where many people help the mature student with cramming. It works out, though a little more dramatically in the cinema version.
The thing that really made me want to compare had to do with the professorial conflict. For Art Carney it was with the history professor who saw the New Deal as positive and helpful. Art Carney was the contrarian who argued about the harm of FDR's policies (though not the ways in which that harm was calculatedly racist to try and appease the South, even though this was not ultimately enough to keep the Dixiecrats from breaking off, a topic for another day). The evil professor gave Art Carney his only C, threatening the B average he needed to maintain his academic standing. Fortunately, the English professor whose advances he had rejected gave him an A, and got her rejection rescinded.
For Rodney Dangerfield (who also got an A from his English professor/love interest), the conflict was with a business professor. It started with an interruption in class about how you wouldn't build a factory, you would be better off renting one, and how you will need to grease union palms and things like that. While a successful businessman (Dangerfield's entry into academia is facilitated by him donating a new school of business) would know a lot about business, and the example makes sense, there are things to know about building a factory that it would be reasonable to go over in a business class. A student can disagree and still learn.
Mainly, watching the broader comedy that was made for the big screen, I remember wondering if anyone involved with the film had actually gone to college. Also, I saw that mindset of academia being impractical and elitist and liberal. So Hollywood making fun of it isn't that liberal, really.
I would have had these thoughts on the movies anyway, but they would normally come up on the weekday blog. I am blogging about this on Sunday because of a couple of articles from the October 2007 Liahona (I first read the items in my Italian study) about the fourth World Congress of Families, and an address given there by Bruce C. Hafen.
In their defense of the family, there were a lot of assumptions made about what would help families and what would hurt them. Some of them were questionable, if not obviously wrong. A lot of the conference seemed to focus on how wicked Hollywood was, and what a bad influence it was on soceity, with notable exceptions.
It has been popular for a long time to view Hollywood as both liberal and wicked. I remember Michael Medved writing think pieces about it from maybe a few years after those movies were made. His book Hollywood vs America: Popular Culture and the War on Traditional Values is from 1992.
I want to re-examine that perception.
First of all - with notable exceptions - we know Hollywood has made it very hard for women and people of color to get ahead. That is certainly not as liberal as it should be, but is less surprising as we have learned recently how many powerful people in the film industry have been serial sexual abusers. Hollywood has been very good at shoring up power.
In that way it reflects society at large, and reinforces the existing power structure. You could find evil in that, but that doesn't seem to be what is happening.
I think what we are generally seeing with movies is that they reflect society. If people use profanity regularly, it will appear in movies. Some movies will try and use it in unusually clever ways, which could spawn some imitation. I am not saying that the movies have no influence, but I don't see any signs that Hollywood is in general trying to change the course of society.
(When there is one white guy who is able to be accepted by another culture and quickly learns all their ways - maybe a chosen one kind of thing - or the rank beginner is wiser than the experienced person, there is ego there, but it is an ego that reflects society.)
It felt like the biggest corruptions feared from Hollywood were liberal values that included sex outside of marriage (which conservatives do a lot of) and granting humanity to gay people. Certainly, Hollywood could be better about that, but that felt like the main concern. Conspiracy theories about the gay agenda aside, I think that is more of people in movies accepting what society in general accepts.
If entertainment is reflecting society, and there are things that are bad about that, it seems reasonable to look at improving society. That might be a better use of time.
Beyond that, we need to be better at looking beyond the assumption.
Assuming Hollywood is evil in a liberal way gives conservatives a great target, and that's convenient for their fundraising. It does not...
I feel like I should give some practical suggestions for improving entertainment options, but if I go down that rabbit hole it will probably be on the main blog.
I had seen clips from it over the years, and it reminded me a lot of a made-for-TV movie that came out the year before, The Undergrads, with Art Carney, who goes to college with his grandson.
Both films feature a conflict with one professor, a romance with another professor, and initial difficulty where many people help the mature student with cramming. It works out, though a little more dramatically in the cinema version.
The thing that really made me want to compare had to do with the professorial conflict. For Art Carney it was with the history professor who saw the New Deal as positive and helpful. Art Carney was the contrarian who argued about the harm of FDR's policies (though not the ways in which that harm was calculatedly racist to try and appease the South, even though this was not ultimately enough to keep the Dixiecrats from breaking off, a topic for another day). The evil professor gave Art Carney his only C, threatening the B average he needed to maintain his academic standing. Fortunately, the English professor whose advances he had rejected gave him an A, and got her rejection rescinded.
For Rodney Dangerfield (who also got an A from his English professor/love interest), the conflict was with a business professor. It started with an interruption in class about how you wouldn't build a factory, you would be better off renting one, and how you will need to grease union palms and things like that. While a successful businessman (Dangerfield's entry into academia is facilitated by him donating a new school of business) would know a lot about business, and the example makes sense, there are things to know about building a factory that it would be reasonable to go over in a business class. A student can disagree and still learn.
Mainly, watching the broader comedy that was made for the big screen, I remember wondering if anyone involved with the film had actually gone to college. Also, I saw that mindset of academia being impractical and elitist and liberal. So Hollywood making fun of it isn't that liberal, really.
I would have had these thoughts on the movies anyway, but they would normally come up on the weekday blog. I am blogging about this on Sunday because of a couple of articles from the October 2007 Liahona (I first read the items in my Italian study) about the fourth World Congress of Families, and an address given there by Bruce C. Hafen.
In their defense of the family, there were a lot of assumptions made about what would help families and what would hurt them. Some of them were questionable, if not obviously wrong. A lot of the conference seemed to focus on how wicked Hollywood was, and what a bad influence it was on soceity, with notable exceptions.
It has been popular for a long time to view Hollywood as both liberal and wicked. I remember Michael Medved writing think pieces about it from maybe a few years after those movies were made. His book Hollywood vs America: Popular Culture and the War on Traditional Values is from 1992.
I want to re-examine that perception.
First of all - with notable exceptions - we know Hollywood has made it very hard for women and people of color to get ahead. That is certainly not as liberal as it should be, but is less surprising as we have learned recently how many powerful people in the film industry have been serial sexual abusers. Hollywood has been very good at shoring up power.
In that way it reflects society at large, and reinforces the existing power structure. You could find evil in that, but that doesn't seem to be what is happening.
I think what we are generally seeing with movies is that they reflect society. If people use profanity regularly, it will appear in movies. Some movies will try and use it in unusually clever ways, which could spawn some imitation. I am not saying that the movies have no influence, but I don't see any signs that Hollywood is in general trying to change the course of society.
(When there is one white guy who is able to be accepted by another culture and quickly learns all their ways - maybe a chosen one kind of thing - or the rank beginner is wiser than the experienced person, there is ego there, but it is an ego that reflects society.)
It felt like the biggest corruptions feared from Hollywood were liberal values that included sex outside of marriage (which conservatives do a lot of) and granting humanity to gay people. Certainly, Hollywood could be better about that, but that felt like the main concern. Conspiracy theories about the gay agenda aside, I think that is more of people in movies accepting what society in general accepts.
If entertainment is reflecting society, and there are things that are bad about that, it seems reasonable to look at improving society. That might be a better use of time.
Beyond that, we need to be better at looking beyond the assumption.
Assuming Hollywood is evil in a liberal way gives conservatives a great target, and that's convenient for their fundraising. It does not...
- cause Hollywood to lose money
- result in better entertainment (yes, you have pro-religious films - Fireproof came out in 2008 - but I stand by that not resulting in better entertainment)
- does not improve society
- cannot improve society because the assumption stops further consideration of what problems really exist and how they work.
I feel like I should give some practical suggestions for improving entertainment options, but if I go down that rabbit hole it will probably be on the main blog.
Sunday, October 21, 2018
Using social media
Yes, I did watch the Saturday evening session of Conference the following week.
For the people who were upset with it, I get it, and definitely in two different (though related) areas.
It also was not as bad as it could have been. I can certainly believe in a correlation between anxiety and cell phone use. Building on that, social media use can be several different problems.
Now, I think there was a specific issue that was not comprehended, and that there are reasons for that. I am going to revisit that, but for now I want to treat just the issue of a social media use.
One reason I appreciated the mention of the phones in the previous talk is that taking time off from it can be complicated. Maybe there are calls that you need to take, or texts that you need to see.
Social media can be like that too. Many women - especially in our church where they try to be able to stay within the home - rely on social media engagement. Taking time off had affected sales for some women who did participate. Sure, not all usage is business-related, but that can be a factor.
If part of the purpose of the fast is to see what you missed when you return - and what you were better off without - then part of the benefit is that you should be using social media more consciously. Taking time to consider your normal patterns is a good idea in general.
Yes, a period of abstinence may help bring more clarity, but that is not a guarantee. I know someone who takes regular breaks from Facebook because it hurts her self-image. That she keeps finding the need to repeat it may mean that her fasting isn't effective either.
I am going to go through a few common issues with social media, and some thoughts about them.
~ I find myself spending too much time on social media, and leaving other things undone.
This is a totally easy one to fall into. The easiest solutions usually involve some sort of scheduling, where you allot certain times to catching up on the internet, and then let it alone. If you do have anxiety related to social media, and part of it is the pressure to keep up and respond, this can be a big help. Yes, it can seem that by taking a few hours away you will miss more things, but then you find that you still get plenty of information, and that things don't burn down if you don't reply right away, and it works out.
~ I compare myself to others and feel worse,
This is also easy to fall into, but in my experience, jealousy issues are more about your inside than other people's outsides. If you are not happy with your own life or accomplishments, that is something that you need to examine, but doing so will make everything better.
This is more individualized, because it may be that you have been selling your own accomplishments short, and need to acknowledge your own worth. It could be that you should be accomplishing more, and then you have to figure out what you can be doing and how you would like to incorporate that. Introspection can be difficult, but it is truly important.
~ There are people who make social media an unpleasant experience.
Yes, you are responsible for your own feelings, but the answer to that is not necessarily letting other people be abusive and telling yourself it's not a big deal. It can be fine to mute people. It can be healthy to unfriend people. It can be enormously helpful to block people. And remember, family are people!
I do not like to block, and fortunately I can put up with a lot. There are times when it just doesn't make sense. There are people who enjoy using passive-aggressive putdowns and people who are always spoiling for fights. If they make you want to leave Facebook completely, but you would miss other people, block those suckers. You will feel much better.
It is also possible to block game requests instead of people, if that is the specific source of stress.
~ I am getting targeted abuse from strangers.
Solutions to this have to be very personal, because the structural issues are not being fixed. My experience has been more seeing the abuse happen to political activists, especially women, especially people of color, but Instagram appears to be succumbing to a lot more abuse, even with lifestyle pages and things you wouldn't expect to draw attention.
My best recommendation is to read Bailey Poland's Haters: Harassment, Abuse, and Violence Online as a starting place, and then you need to weigh your options. Some platforms have better options for controlling your interactions. You might decide to keep Facebook and dump Twitter. Figure out what works best for you.
~ My time online shows me so many problems in the world and it is overwhelming.
I had a coworker with PTSD whose therapist recommended a news fast, and this was years ago. I hope she has made a lot of progress (that workplace wouldn't have helped), but the news is worse now. (And this is kind of where we are getting to things that will come up later.)
I would feel completely irresponsible disengaging, though there are days when it's very tempting. However, my religious faith is one of the things that helps me to not be overcome. We can sanctify our engagement with the world.
A few years ago I was always spotting people in crisis, and trying to talk them down from cutting and suicide attempts and even a few psychotic episodes. That was stressful, but I often felt guided in it. I knew it was important, because they were important. Some of us are still in touch, and some of us aren't, but a few have told me I saved their lives. I know that, and I also know that there were crises that I didn't see.
There are things that can be overwhelming, but there are also possibilities to do good. There are chances to have fun, and be glad for other people's vacations and hobbies and pets. We can pray for their health and their promotions. It can be very good.
Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that we are not alone in this. We can pray for guidance and receive it. For all that we do not know, there is someone who does, and who will answer as we listen.
For the people who were upset with it, I get it, and definitely in two different (though related) areas.
It also was not as bad as it could have been. I can certainly believe in a correlation between anxiety and cell phone use. Building on that, social media use can be several different problems.
Now, I think there was a specific issue that was not comprehended, and that there are reasons for that. I am going to revisit that, but for now I want to treat just the issue of a social media use.
One reason I appreciated the mention of the phones in the previous talk is that taking time off from it can be complicated. Maybe there are calls that you need to take, or texts that you need to see.
Social media can be like that too. Many women - especially in our church where they try to be able to stay within the home - rely on social media engagement. Taking time off had affected sales for some women who did participate. Sure, not all usage is business-related, but that can be a factor.
If part of the purpose of the fast is to see what you missed when you return - and what you were better off without - then part of the benefit is that you should be using social media more consciously. Taking time to consider your normal patterns is a good idea in general.
Yes, a period of abstinence may help bring more clarity, but that is not a guarantee. I know someone who takes regular breaks from Facebook because it hurts her self-image. That she keeps finding the need to repeat it may mean that her fasting isn't effective either.
I am going to go through a few common issues with social media, and some thoughts about them.
~ I find myself spending too much time on social media, and leaving other things undone.
This is a totally easy one to fall into. The easiest solutions usually involve some sort of scheduling, where you allot certain times to catching up on the internet, and then let it alone. If you do have anxiety related to social media, and part of it is the pressure to keep up and respond, this can be a big help. Yes, it can seem that by taking a few hours away you will miss more things, but then you find that you still get plenty of information, and that things don't burn down if you don't reply right away, and it works out.
~ I compare myself to others and feel worse,
This is also easy to fall into, but in my experience, jealousy issues are more about your inside than other people's outsides. If you are not happy with your own life or accomplishments, that is something that you need to examine, but doing so will make everything better.
This is more individualized, because it may be that you have been selling your own accomplishments short, and need to acknowledge your own worth. It could be that you should be accomplishing more, and then you have to figure out what you can be doing and how you would like to incorporate that. Introspection can be difficult, but it is truly important.
~ There are people who make social media an unpleasant experience.
Yes, you are responsible for your own feelings, but the answer to that is not necessarily letting other people be abusive and telling yourself it's not a big deal. It can be fine to mute people. It can be healthy to unfriend people. It can be enormously helpful to block people. And remember, family are people!
I do not like to block, and fortunately I can put up with a lot. There are times when it just doesn't make sense. There are people who enjoy using passive-aggressive putdowns and people who are always spoiling for fights. If they make you want to leave Facebook completely, but you would miss other people, block those suckers. You will feel much better.
It is also possible to block game requests instead of people, if that is the specific source of stress.
~ I am getting targeted abuse from strangers.
Solutions to this have to be very personal, because the structural issues are not being fixed. My experience has been more seeing the abuse happen to political activists, especially women, especially people of color, but Instagram appears to be succumbing to a lot more abuse, even with lifestyle pages and things you wouldn't expect to draw attention.
My best recommendation is to read Bailey Poland's Haters: Harassment, Abuse, and Violence Online as a starting place, and then you need to weigh your options. Some platforms have better options for controlling your interactions. You might decide to keep Facebook and dump Twitter. Figure out what works best for you.
~ My time online shows me so many problems in the world and it is overwhelming.
I had a coworker with PTSD whose therapist recommended a news fast, and this was years ago. I hope she has made a lot of progress (that workplace wouldn't have helped), but the news is worse now. (And this is kind of where we are getting to things that will come up later.)
I would feel completely irresponsible disengaging, though there are days when it's very tempting. However, my religious faith is one of the things that helps me to not be overcome. We can sanctify our engagement with the world.
A few years ago I was always spotting people in crisis, and trying to talk them down from cutting and suicide attempts and even a few psychotic episodes. That was stressful, but I often felt guided in it. I knew it was important, because they were important. Some of us are still in touch, and some of us aren't, but a few have told me I saved their lives. I know that, and I also know that there were crises that I didn't see.
There are things that can be overwhelming, but there are also possibilities to do good. There are chances to have fun, and be glad for other people's vacations and hobbies and pets. We can pray for their health and their promotions. It can be very good.
Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that we are not alone in this. We can pray for guidance and receive it. For all that we do not know, there is someone who does, and who will answer as we listen.
Sunday, October 14, 2018
Planning for pastimes
I had a really bad week, followed by a good day yesterday.
Part of that was covered in the post here. That is not really the point, except that it deals with the issue of respite time. (That post is really more about how anticipated events can go stunningly wrong.)
Technically, I had also been out the previous Saturday night, but some text messages about concerns while I was out added stress and subtracted relief, while giving me some real concerns about backup options. When Monday was a crushing disappointment that left me in a funk. There was a minor thwarting on Wednesday and something that hurt a bit more after that. Building on each other, it became what we might call Gina's Horrible, Terrible, No Good Very Bad week.
Fortunately, I was given another shot on Saturday. Breaking down and crying on the phone Friday probably helped, but that wasn't intentional.
That gave me a free afternoon, but there was the question of what to do with it. The truth is, the longer one goes without a break, the harder it is to conceive of a successful break. I thought of different things, but I ended up doing the one thing I had written down.
I had something written down because it was an assignment for this caregiver thing I've been doing. Imagine you have a fairy godmother whose only job is to give you free time in different increments. What would you do with a free fifteen minutes, or an hour, or three hours? It works up to an entire weekend.
The problem I ran into is that I give myself a lot of assignments. Even the things that I enjoy - like walking and reading - become obligations to me. These are books I need to read because I know I need to know these things. I need to get this walking in because I want to be ready for the Turkey Trot. It makes a lot of things questionable as quality relaxation.
There is probably some failure of imagination, too. Getting together with a friend could be good, but I never expect them to be free at a time that I can make work. There is often so little notice, and they all have families. Some things take more money than I have. Even getting downtown takes bus fare.
(And now I don't think I can justify leaving at night, or if the person in charge will be that one person - except maybe I can train her better, but how many times have I addressed how specific things are not helpful, and why, but they still happen?)
Regardless, even though I did try and think of other things, the only thing that seemed plausible was the one I'd written down. I rode (with a book) down to the Waterfront, and walked the Waterfront Park/Eastbank Esplanade loop. It is 3.8 miles. The Turkey Trot is 4, and will have more uphill, but still, conditioning shouldn't be a problem. Then I ate at August Moon (which is my favorite, but it also meant I could use a real bathroom), still with my book. I read about 120 pages. On my way home I got a 7-Up and an Uno bar, because those are things I like. (So I did spend money, but not as much as hot tubbing would take.)
And then it was back to cooking and entertaining and engaging, again, but I was better at it than I had been.
I don't know that I will have a break like that for a long time, so I prayed that it would last me. I mean, all of the problems are still in place. It nonetheless did me good, and I would not have been able to do it if I had not visualized it before. It was just a bonus that it was such a beautiful day.
I understood the point of the exercise when we did it: if you can imagine these things that you will enjoy, you can use the unexpected breaks better and find ways to make them happen more. What was less clear, but still very real, is that often when the opportunity comes up your brain is fried, and you are not functioning on all cylinders. You need to have plans already in place.
It is one more way of being prepared.
Part of that was covered in the post here. That is not really the point, except that it deals with the issue of respite time. (That post is really more about how anticipated events can go stunningly wrong.)
Technically, I had also been out the previous Saturday night, but some text messages about concerns while I was out added stress and subtracted relief, while giving me some real concerns about backup options. When Monday was a crushing disappointment that left me in a funk. There was a minor thwarting on Wednesday and something that hurt a bit more after that. Building on each other, it became what we might call Gina's Horrible, Terrible, No Good Very Bad week.
Fortunately, I was given another shot on Saturday. Breaking down and crying on the phone Friday probably helped, but that wasn't intentional.
That gave me a free afternoon, but there was the question of what to do with it. The truth is, the longer one goes without a break, the harder it is to conceive of a successful break. I thought of different things, but I ended up doing the one thing I had written down.
I had something written down because it was an assignment for this caregiver thing I've been doing. Imagine you have a fairy godmother whose only job is to give you free time in different increments. What would you do with a free fifteen minutes, or an hour, or three hours? It works up to an entire weekend.
The problem I ran into is that I give myself a lot of assignments. Even the things that I enjoy - like walking and reading - become obligations to me. These are books I need to read because I know I need to know these things. I need to get this walking in because I want to be ready for the Turkey Trot. It makes a lot of things questionable as quality relaxation.
There is probably some failure of imagination, too. Getting together with a friend could be good, but I never expect them to be free at a time that I can make work. There is often so little notice, and they all have families. Some things take more money than I have. Even getting downtown takes bus fare.
(And now I don't think I can justify leaving at night, or if the person in charge will be that one person - except maybe I can train her better, but how many times have I addressed how specific things are not helpful, and why, but they still happen?)
Regardless, even though I did try and think of other things, the only thing that seemed plausible was the one I'd written down. I rode (with a book) down to the Waterfront, and walked the Waterfront Park/Eastbank Esplanade loop. It is 3.8 miles. The Turkey Trot is 4, and will have more uphill, but still, conditioning shouldn't be a problem. Then I ate at August Moon (which is my favorite, but it also meant I could use a real bathroom), still with my book. I read about 120 pages. On my way home I got a 7-Up and an Uno bar, because those are things I like. (So I did spend money, but not as much as hot tubbing would take.)
And then it was back to cooking and entertaining and engaging, again, but I was better at it than I had been.
I don't know that I will have a break like that for a long time, so I prayed that it would last me. I mean, all of the problems are still in place. It nonetheless did me good, and I would not have been able to do it if I had not visualized it before. It was just a bonus that it was such a beautiful day.
I understood the point of the exercise when we did it: if you can imagine these things that you will enjoy, you can use the unexpected breaks better and find ways to make them happen more. What was less clear, but still very real, is that often when the opportunity comes up your brain is fried, and you are not functioning on all cylinders. You need to have plans already in place.
It is one more way of being prepared.
Sunday, October 7, 2018
A little bit of conference
This is not going to be a lengthy post, because many of my regular readers my be watching 8-10 hours of church broadcasting, and you don't really need any more.
If you are wondering if I could blogging as social media, yes. I haven't actually watched that session yet. I am sure I will have some thoughts on it, and also pretty sure I won't do it, but we'll see.
My thoughts for this post are mainly inspired from early yesterday, from both the announcement on the changes to the meeting structure for next year, and also the references to the change from home and visiting teaching to ministering.
I have had this same thought in relation to other changes, like with homemaking to enrichment to relief society meetings during the week, and curriculum changes, and so on. Everything they change seems to be at attempt to get us to live more by the Spirit.
The new thought is that a big part of that is to get us to love and serve each other better. That makes sense, with charity being above all, and loving God and your neighbor being the greatest commandments (and inextricably linked).
And usually my thoughts along with that are "Good luck!", because those are attempts that face a lot of resistance. They should keep trying, and we should keep trying, because this is so vital.
Finally, I can concede that it is possible to have a lot of love for others and carry that out well without being greatly terribly sensitive to promptings. Inspiration could make you more efficient, but love produces positive energy and can get things done.
However, something is terribly wrong if you are listening to the Spirit more and not feeling an increase of love. So it stays important. We need to do this.
If you are wondering if I could blogging as social media, yes. I haven't actually watched that session yet. I am sure I will have some thoughts on it, and also pretty sure I won't do it, but we'll see.
My thoughts for this post are mainly inspired from early yesterday, from both the announcement on the changes to the meeting structure for next year, and also the references to the change from home and visiting teaching to ministering.
I have had this same thought in relation to other changes, like with homemaking to enrichment to relief society meetings during the week, and curriculum changes, and so on. Everything they change seems to be at attempt to get us to live more by the Spirit.
The new thought is that a big part of that is to get us to love and serve each other better. That makes sense, with charity being above all, and loving God and your neighbor being the greatest commandments (and inextricably linked).
And usually my thoughts along with that are "Good luck!", because those are attempts that face a lot of resistance. They should keep trying, and we should keep trying, because this is so vital.
Finally, I can concede that it is possible to have a lot of love for others and carry that out well without being greatly terribly sensitive to promptings. Inspiration could make you more efficient, but love produces positive energy and can get things done.
However, something is terribly wrong if you are listening to the Spirit more and not feeling an increase of love. So it stays important. We need to do this.
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