101 Days

There are 101 days left to this vacation and already I'm bored silly. Go figure, I know. They, who ever they are, say that vacation is a time for rest and relaxation, but I'm more relaxed when I have something to keep me entertained. Work doesn't really bother me that much, not compared to having nothing to do whatsoever. It gets you moving, keeps you on the ball if you will. Nothing, it keeps you tired and bored and stupid. So tomorrow I'll go find something to do to keep me occupied at least for a little while. Only when there is motivation is there progress, and only with progress do we find greater motivation.

Vacation is nice when it's about a week or so. It's just enough time to lie around and do nothing, thinking about the stuff you've finished since the last time you've sat around thinking about the stuff you've finished since the time before. There's no time for other activities, if there was I'd bet that vacation wouldn't be that fun. A week is all that I need.

Last summer my only goal was to get in touch with who I was, to answer for myself those pesky little questions that everyone has but rarely has the time to think about in detail. Well, I did it. All summer I thought and thought about myself. What it means to be me. What it means to feel. What it means to exist. What purpose I could have. Etc. Etc. All those absurdly rhetorical questions that bug the hell out of every bored person.

To make a long story short: I answered most of those questions, but in the end came up with more questions that I couldn't yet understand or solve. So, I was back to square one. Just great. Just what I needed. So, was it worth it? Sure, analyze away. It's good for people to come to a greater understanding of who they are and what their purpose is. (Etc. Etc.) But don't think that the questions will ever stop. They don't. But that which you gain along the way should be the prize not the destination.

I've got a long while again this year, and while I'm not particularly planning on spending it all thinking about the great new questions that I have, I'm sure a part of the summer will tend towards that. And, at least this time I won't be annoyed when I leave with more pressing questions than I came in with.

It's Not Possible

Why Am I Mad?

If for any length of time you get to know me -- the real me that is -- then you'll surely realize that I am more than slightly mad. Oh, don't get me wrong, it's the good kind of mad, the fun kind. But mad nonetheless. There are few things I enjoy more than expression. I enjoy expressing myself, in anger, in rage, in laughter, in a great deal of things. The key is to realize that I am in fact genuinely that expression. I am angry. Or rageful. Or humored. Or whatever else pops up that day. But it doesn't mean that I take it too seriously. I'm not going to dwell on bad things any more than the good. And, I'm not going follow through with many of my well-timed, and sometimes not well-timed, remarks. Well, at least for the most part. Sometimes I can't help myself.

And so long as you know that I am not kidding you should probably know why. Why do I take certain things very seriously and others humorously and still others rather lazily. It's because everything isn't the way it should be. We have hunger and war, famine and disease. We have injustice and bigotry. We have fear and shame. These, and countless others, are the defects of mankind.

I do not accept George Bush as president. I do not accept American politicking as set in stone. I don't accept hunger and ill-health. I don't accept bigotry and intolerance of other's views and beliefs. I don't accept that these things exist in a world where we could, if we wanted to, full well help each and every person who is trampled on by mankind. It is our fault. And I'm going to remind you of it. I'm going to scream at my TV and shout at my radio. I'm going to do it, not because I want to, but because I have to. I will not accept an imperfect world. I will not accept a flawed existence. And I will not rest so long as stupidity and greed run amok and astride the hopes and fears of the masses. We have to start somewhere and we have to start some time. Why not here and now? What could be more important?

And guess what. I'll be damned mad until I succeed.

I'll leave you with a link which seems to adequately describe the inner workings of my mind, just kidding... enjoy...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8mAaJuefOw

Post #200: Transracial Adoption

There are two main schools of thought on the idea of transracial adoption, one reliving that it is good and the other believing that it is bad. Some believe that adoption is adoption and that any steady and good home is profitable for the child over no home at all. These people, like Elizabeth Bartholet, believe that the well being of children is more important than outside factors like their culture or heritage, that life is more important if healthy and well than the specifics of what it means to be “well”.

Others, like Dorothy Roberts, believe that transracial adoption can be a “tool of oppression” for racial minorities by which the child is stripped of their natural heritage and supplemented with that heritage of the, likely, majority, thus assimilating the minority further into the majority identity. She believes that this forced assimilation robs children of their identity and culture and should be abandoned at all costs. She seems to say that in the grand scheme of things, it is better for society if children grew up in their own culture and not be placed in stable homes rather than risk losing their cultural heritage.

When I look at transracial adoption, I tend to see the trees for the forest and not the forest for the trees. I believe that we should forsake no child of well being or health simply to preserve the idea of culture. As George Bernard Shaw once said, “Nationalism is the idea that one's country is better than all others simply because you were born in it.” In that way, I argue against people like Dorothy Roberts who is simply looking out for her own needs masked as her culture's needs – because in reality the need for culture is personal and not general – and not the needs of others.

What Roberts claims she does so to preserve her own belief that the world is a fair and perfect place. If the world had been ideal, then these children would still have parents. The fact is that they do not. And, that they do need parents. And, that there are plenty of good parents out there. And, that the well being of the child should be paramount. I would rather see one lose heritage, something that is inherited not inherent in exchange for a good education and good health or a family who loves and cares for them. The idea that they can wait around for another parent to show up of their own race is by definition – preferring one race over another – racism.

Whoever Roberts and others claim to be, is beyond me. They are certainly not looking out for the child. If a child is placed in a home where they “lose” their heritage as they see it but gain a loving family that will help them and guide them in life, so be it. The future of the child is more important than the events and histories of the people who came before them. Do not get me wrong, they should learn about where they came from, but their lack of parents is the cruel price paid by them after their birth, unfair as it is but nevertheless true, and the result of that injustice is a loss of where they came from. Likewise, it does not have to be a loss of where they are going. Just because they lost parents does not require them to mortgage their future to follow some idealistic view of what family should be. In this regard, those who argue against transracial adoption are no better than those who argue against same-sex adoption or interracial marriage or same-sex marriage or any other method that creates a so-called “different” family structure than the one the western world seems so bent on keeping intact.