I’m trying something new today. I’m writing as I listen and watch Amy Speace stream a concert. Two songs in a row from Killer in Me including the title track. This is not going well. I spend all my time watching and not writing. So many of my friends are watching too. We are isolating ourselves together.
I’m getting exercise. I walked two miles to go shopping again. This time I remembered my vinyl gloves so didn’t have to touch anything in the store. The parking lot was littered with used gloves. I threw mine out. I hate that people can be so little civic minded. I saw too many older kids and teens in the playgrounds. The little kids were gone except for two at one playground. As I saw them putting their hands on the equipment I wanted to shout, “Don’t touch the fomites!” I didn’t. Look up fomites. I’ll be using the word often and you should too. If you look it up you’ll remember it better.
I had therapy by phone, that was a first. It works even though it means missing some of the ways we communicate. Those who know me in the meat zone might have noticed that I think with my hands. When I’m moving my hands in certain ways, like making circles around my head, it means I’m trying to think of something. When I do that on the phone she doesn’t see it and gets worried that we were disconnected. I love that my therapist picks up on these things. I know it’s her job to but that doesn’t mean she has the ability to. Mine does. I’m going to share something she said about me. “You’re both an introvert and an extrovert.” Too many people don’t get that. I’m getting a lot of online attention because of Social Distancing Streaming Concerts which both horrifies and delights me. That’s how emotions work, they are like the taste of food, seasoned with many different elements. We are rarely just happy or sad. There are always other shades of emotion involved. One of my favorite pieces of writing is from The Lord of the Rings. It’s Sam’s response to seeing an Oliphant in the chapter, Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit in The Two Towers; “To his astonishment and terror, and lasting delight, Sam saw a vast shape crash out of the trees and come careering down the slope.” That’s how real emotions work. I’m astonished, delighted and terrified that you are reading this.
Last night’s streaming concert was by Carla Ulbrich. She’s not just playing old songs. She’s writing new songs about life in the time of COVID-19. She’s asking the audience for input on the songs. She inserts suggestions right into the song she is about to sing. Her shows are highly interactive. You can check on her page when the next one is. You’ll love it. I also love and get terrified when I see people I know watching the shows I recommend. It’s like imposter syndrome except I don’t think I don’t deserve it. I just think I shouldn’t get pleasure from people giving me props. Except for saying I’m cute. I will always love getting compliments on how I look from cute women. I’m not the only one and it’s why many men, not me, don’t understand why women object to be objectified. I do get it. I know it’s not the same. But I understand not getting it.
Now on to the Dunning-Kruger-Bunker effect. The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people wrongly overestimate their knowledge or ability in a specific area. Part of the cause is that the same skills that are required to be knowledgeable and skilled are required to judge knowledge and skills. If you tone deaf you can’t hear that you are singing off-key. I’ve written about it before but not in the context of prejudice. We have all seen it, people that are racists, misogynists, or anti-Semites, that are unaware that they are. I see it most glaringly in misogynists that think they are feminists. See how that links in with the previous paragraph? It’s how you can have people that are otherwise good people being racists and the rest. They honestly can’t see why what they are saying is offensive. They think that others are being oversensitive and politically correct. It’s made more difficult as people often are oversensitive and look for things to be offended by. Think of it as the progressive version of being offended by people saying, “Happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” To make it even more complex, the people who insist strongly on political correctness in one area can fall prey to missing their own prejudices. My rule of thumb is that once it becomes generally accepted that something is offensive, saying it is offensive, as you should know it will offend people and don’t care. It isn’t always logical, language and rules of social behavior are often not logical, but it’s elementary politeness. When, as a friend really did, complained that calling somebody colored is considered offensive as it didn’t used to be, he was being offensive. He is incapable of seeing that it’s wrong. He can’t put himself in the place of a person of color. I put it that way deliberately as that similar phrasing is not offensive. Why? I don’t know, I don’t need to know to know which is acceptable and which isn’t.
This is one of the many things where we each should be doubting ourselves. How do we know that we aren’t being Archie Bunker without being aware of it? We really don’t. So, stay on the safe side. It’s hard to even trust your friends on this. I have a clearly racist friend, the kind that starts sentences, “I’m not a racist but … ” and he has friends that tell him that he’s not racist. Racist is an ugly world and it’s difficult to call someone an ugly word. All it does is create backlash. I am trying to not use it when talking to others. Once you say, “you’re a racist,” you’ve lost them. It’s better to put it more gently. I was impressed with a friend recently. He said something critical of Boomers. I asked him how he’d feel if someone said that with Boomer replaced with blacks, women, gays or Millennials. To his credit he didn’t get defensive, he said, “Good point.” In my mind that makes up for his miscue, he recognized it was a miscue. We’re all going to screw up sometimes. Even me. There are things I remember saying 50 years ago that make me cringe. I can’t unsay them, but I can do my best to not do it again. I will, but less often than if I didn’t police myself.
Wise Madness 