God, and the Chain Letters of his Followers

Every so often, I'll open my email or cell phone and find a message from my mother or another family member. In it will be dancing .gifs or a prayer, and of course the requisite promise of "something good" happening to me in 7/9/111/777 minutes if I send it to a certain number of people I love.

It goes without saying I don't find these messages particularly touching. I do not feel inclined to scold my family for sending them — after all, they just want me to know they care about me — but I do wish they didn't waste space in my mailbox with them.

As an atheist, I feel some people need an etiquette lesson on the sharing of religious messages. Most non-religious individuals don't respond aggressively when someone says "God bless you" when they sneeze, but that's not to say it isn't offensive to them. Most atheists I know don't object to religious sentiments, and allow them to be expressed uninterrupted. It is pretty well accepted that Christianity is the dominant religion in our culture (not to be confused the the erroneous assertion that this is a "Christian nation"), and that we should be tolerant of minor expressions such as these. It's not as though we expect every stranger on the street to know we don't follow their religion, and that they should adjust their behavior to accomodate for our preferences. We're definitely more reasonable than that.

But when it comes to friends and family, who know of our non-belief, religious sentiments and messages directed at us always come with a certain degree of utter disrespect.

I do not mean to discount the good-hearted intentions of the people who love their atheistic family just the same. It is because of that love that most atheists keep quiet about these offenses. I for one completely understand my mother believes what she is doing is a good thing, that for her to tell me how she prays for me and wishes I would turn to God is her way of showing she cares. She really means no harm by it, and in what she is doing, there really is very little harm being done. But if it were a friend doing this, I probably wouldn't hang around with them very long.

Telling an atheist they should turn to God in their time of need is disrespectful. You are telling that person they are not in control of their lives, that they cannot help themselves, and, worst of all, that they are a very wrongly confused individual. Atheists don't mind being told that they are wrong, but to tell them they are wrong without showing any real evidence is like spitting in their face. And, let's not even have this debate, there is no real or rational evidence in the world you can present to prove the existence or potentness of God. Unless your atheist family is shoving atheism down your throat (which is something I for one would never do to family), this kind of behavior is completely uncalled for. 

If you have any respect for your loved ones, by all means go on and tell them you love them. But you don't have to invoke God to do that. Atheists love love as much as non-atheists do, and it will mean a lot more to them to know that you care about them no matter what, than that a God they don't believe in loves them no matter what.

The Lost Economics of Generosity

I don't want to be a bitter person. I like sharing my wealth, my food, my toys, my home. I do genuinely enjoy giving. When I bake a batch of cookies, I am sincerely disappointed when I don't have half a dozen friends over to share them with. At Yuletide, I'm more heartbroken when I can't give, than when I'm given nothing.

But damn it all, if bitterness isn't sometimes an appealing prospect.

If there is one thing I've learned in psychology, it's that there's no such thing as altruism. Anyone who erroneously believes in true altruism is a fool (read: Democrats). We do favors and are generous because we necessarily expect something in return. Instead of money, favors are the more malleable currency of "altruism." It is an informal trade system, and I'm starting to think the world has forgotten how it works.

Maybe it's because I grew up in the country. There, the neighbor you can count on for a couple of eggs or a cup of sugar may call on you next week to pull their truck out of the muddy road after a bad storm. Rural areas often have a culture of favor trading, because there are few other places you can turn to when in need, due to your consequent isolation. Perhaps it is because of the apparent wealth and resources of urban life that we seem to be forgetting the art of favor trading.

For instance, if a friend of my partner is having computer problems, they will sooner pay (and be horribly overcharged by) a professional than call on him to cash in a favor he owes them. The currency of the city is money, and favors are rarely cashed in. Moreover, for those of us who engage in favor trading regularly, it is sometimes difficult to cash in those chips, like presenting Deutschmarks in Spain.

Example: I call in a lot of favors from friends. A lot more than I honestly like. In the last four years, I have paid back only two favors — once transporting a mattress, and once pushing a broken-down car home. I was ecstatic to make good on these informal I.O.U.s (though I still owe both these good folks many more favors). I often think back to these moments, greatly satisfied with the knowledge that, for once, I was able to be there for them.

On the flip side: I'm not going to lie, I'm fucking starving right now. I ate nothing but buttered toast and chewable vitamins yesterday, and our attempt to get a pizza today fizzled. What I wouldn't give for a proper meal. Several months ago, however, my roommate was in a similar situation while between jobs. Having just gotten my financial aid in, and for once being comfortable enough to be a little generous, I offered to help her out with groceries so she could get through the next week or two. I didn't let her get to the point of starvation. Frankly, I will not have that happening under my roof if I can help it. Needless to say, the favor has not been adequately returned, and I am not convinced it's for lack of ability, with as much food and money as she wastes under our noses.

It is extremely frustrating when favors aren't cashed in, or if favors cannot be cashed in. When good people ask for favors, they want to pay that favor back. If not, they are merely mooches. When good people give favors, it is expected that they can get a favor (or at least sympathy) when they are in need. If their cries for help fall on deaf ears, they naturally feel fucked.

Enter: bitterness.

I have met too many people who are callous toward even the idea of "handouts" (read: Republicans). These are the people who fail to recognize this apparent altruism as just another form of trade or barter. In short, you do get something back for all your giving. I do not believe this hostility is at all healthy for our society, since favors are the original, natural currency of humanity.

Source: Charity Navigator

This hostility is bred by people who invest their "handouts"/"altruism" poorly, then never manage to get over it. It's the equivalent of a stock broker making one bad investment, then turning on his profession forever. People should invest their generosity in people they know would return the favor (regardless of how quickly they actually can). When able, people should invest their charity in organizations and programs they know (as personally as possible) produce results. There is nothing greedy about expecting returns on investments; the greed is in hoarding.

Popular, mythological perception of how karma works

But there is also an element of tragedy in seeing someone who is unwilling to — nay, terrified of — being generous. It hurts when good karma doesn't come back around to you, when all that "paying forward" results in net loss, and when that stack of uncashed I.O.U.s can't even buy you a loaf of bread in hard times. Once-generous people carry the bite marks of perceived mooches as personal battle scars, sometimes for as long as they live. Their range of willingness continues to wither over the years until they're not willing to reach out much farther than their closest friends and relatives.

They will be hard-pressed to truly know the joy that often comes with giving. In fact, their response to giving is more akin to PTSD. I was once in a car with someone very close, driving to Orlando, when we reached a toll. I convinced the driver to pay the toll of the person behind us, something I had always wanted to do. He was also in a dour mood at the time, so I thought it might make him feel better. Instead, as he drove away, I watched a bizarre cocktail of emotional reactions. First, he sped off, nervous and fearful that the other driver would be angry at what he had done. Before I really had a chance to grasp the complete absurdity of his fear, his mood switched to anger and indignation when he received no acknowledgment or gratitude from the other driver. His response struck me as deeply tragic, and I have had difficulty seeing this man as anything more than a broken human since.

It is, I believe, the natural state for random acts of kindness to be a warm experience for both the giving and receiving parties. Any other response is indicative of sociopathy, or some other psychological abnormality. While karma is as much religious mumbo-jumbo as Jesus or Buddha, the simulation of favor trading via random acts of kindness, even if in a somewhat religious fashion, is a healthy hobby to engage in (in moderation, of course).

This is not to say I refute my previous assertion that altruism is a lie. I'm simply saying that giving should feel good. When people stray from their erroneous faith in altruism and into an emotional blockade against the giving of so-called handouts, something has clearly broken in their social tapestry.

That said, one should neither give blindly, nor hoard endlessly. Giving to mooches and ineffective charities alike is like buying blood diamonds or recalled food; it's bad social investment. I resent the kind of people who give to massive charities with the goal of gaining nothing more than posterity, making such folks no better than the hoarders. They are often worse than the hoarders, wearing their charity like jewelry, accenting their vanity. Blindly donating to whatever charity is most convenient, popular, or, often, most pushy, is wasteful spending — there ARE bad charities. On a micro scale, many individuals are guilty of the buying of these modern-day plenary indulgences by feeding the panhandlers who feed on their unfounded guilt. On a larger scale, many major organization (like college sororities and fraternities) and large businesses (such as Publix) wave their charity flags like they're some cheap gimmick.

Source: Charity Navigator

 Hoarders are guilty just the same, but those who accuse them of greed are a dime a dozen, so I'll try to be brief: No matter who you are, you have a moral obligation to give. This statement would make Ayn Rand roll in her grave, but hear me out, I assure you it has a rational, objective basis. We are social animals and, as such, it is impossible to mature to adulthood without benefitting from either charity or the personal generosity of others. If you mature and become successful, you cannot be the sole cause of your own success. If you truly believe your success is entirely yours, I can't imagine you have any friends, since you can't invite anyone into your home for the size of your head. 

I do not mean to incite the unfounded guilt that provokes so many of the blind givers to atone for their wealth and success by giving pocket change to hobos and bell-ringers. Indeed, the wealthy and successful should be so proud of their status that they wish for everyone to have what they have (but, of course, not to the point where they have too much competition... no need to give away all your secrets to success). The key to fulfilling one's moral obligation to give is to choose your cause the way you choose your car or house: carefully, and with lots of research and shopping around. As I stated before, there ARE bad charities, and such money holes should be avoided. A good way to ensure that your charity or cause is good is to choose one that has positively affected you, or directly affected someone important to you. Of course such a choice is anecdotal and emotionally driven, and may deserve a little more research, but such charity is both rewarding and helps to create more success stories like your own. For example, my charity of choice is the Family Resources Runaway Shelter, and I derive great satisfaction from being able to give back to the people who gave so much to me in my most difficult years.

Well, karma is just superstition, but at least it's one of the fun superstitions
For the most hardened or blessed, finding a cause to rally behind with passion may take some soul-searching. But note that passion is not necessarily derived from suffering, and suffering does not necessarily deprive one of passions. There are always those in our lives who have had a positive, dynamic impact on us; some just have to look deeper to find them.

I Can't Write If I Can't THINK REVISED

I would like to revise some of my previous assertions that I simply can't write if I can't think due to hunger.

In fact, it seems as though I come up with my best ideas when I am most hungry and malnourished. Which is convenient, since I'm a writer.

I'm not sure how the science behind this works - I'm sure if I read some research on the psychological effects of fasting I may find my answer. Regardless, I would like to relay my observed patterns of hunger and creativity to my readership

Homemade Warhammer 40k Terrain, Pt. 1

Alright, so: who wants to learn how to make homemade terrain, on the cheap?

I was inspired to start making terrain after watching Jesse himself attempting (and horribly failing) to create ruins from cardboard boxes. From what I've done so far, I'm pretty sure I've put his mutilated cereal boxes thoroughly to shame.

If you want to start making homemade 40k terrain, you're going to have to start doing some collecting/recycling. Get a large box, garbage can, or some kind of bin and set it aside somewhere not far from your normal garbage can. This is a pretty fun part, because it gives you free reign to be a slob for a while. Start collecting EVERYTHING you think you might be able to use for terrain pieces. Soda cans, paper towel tubes, old socks, cottage cheese containers -- you name it, it goes in there. I've even gone as far as to pick up some odds and ends I find lying around on the street. I like to call the bin we have at home my "Barney Bag". The thing to remember is, you never know what you're going to need to make terrain, and you never know what kind of inspiration you might get later that will make you think "Awe shit, I really shouldn't have thrown [insert odd or end here] away!"

ONE SMALL BUT IMPORTANT NOTE: While you're tossing stuff away, be sure to take a moment to thoroughly clean out any food containers, ESPECIALLY soda cans. I tore apart some soda cans earlier and trust me, you don't have to go through the hassle of washing out that goop later on.

My "Barney Bag"

Depending on your household size, you may need to collect for a couple days, or maybe a month. Between Jesse and myself, we collected for about a month or so. Some of the items in our bin include:

• 2 Liter Soda Bottles
  
• Soda Cans
  
• Cottage Cheese Bin
  
• Cardboard Paper Towel Tube
  
• Broken Duckie Soap Dispenser
  
• Styrofoam Cups
  
• Oatmeal Box
  
• Soy Sauce Bottle
  
• Cat Food Can
  
• Assorted Tin Cans from Food Products
  
• Plastic Plant Pot
  
• Orange Juice Carton
  
• Ice Cream Carton
  
• Old Shoes
  
• Old Socks
  
• Old Jewelery
  
• Clear Shortening Container
  
• Freezer Pop Bag (red netting thing in top left)
  
• Bicycle Tire Innertube
  
• Ritz Boxes, Cereal Boxes, Ramen Boxes, etc

To be honest, I don't know exactly how much of this stuff I'm actually going to use. But that's okay; it's better to have a wide variety of junk to choose from than to find you really don't have much to work with. Besides, you can always throw away what you don't use later on.

As you can see, we mostly eat store brand stuff. That's the beauty of making terrain yourself: even impoverished souls like ourselves can afford it. It will probably be the cheapest part of your tabletop 40k experience. BUT if you don't already have an assortment of craft supplies, you may have to go on a small shopping trip.

Supplies

While you're filling your junk bin, here's an idea of the kind of craft supplies you might need. If you're missing a lot of these things, you might need to make a Wal-Mart run. I understand some of these seem like no-brainers, but not everyone has drawers and drawers of craft crap like I do, so I'm not going to take anything for granted here.

• Newspaper
  
• Paper: get colored construction paper if you can, but as long as you have paint any variety should do
  
• Assorted Brushes: DO NOT use the nice brushes you use for your models; you can buy a bag of assorted crap brushes for about $5
  
• Scissors
  
• Scotch tape
  
• Elmer's glue: you may also need to use some of your model glue
  
• Paint Palette: You can get one of these plastic, compartmentalized ones at any craft store or Wal-Mart for $0.25
  
• Ruler
  
• Acrylic Paint: DO NOT use your GW model paints, it would be a waste. DO NOT buy the glossy paint, unless you like having a glossy sheen on everything you paint. The acrylics bottles I have here were about $3-4 each. All you need is your primaries and black and white, so this shouldn't cost you more than $15-20.
  
• Stapler
  
• Box Cutter or X-Acto Knife
• Flour: if you don't cook or bake, you may not have this, so grab a 1 lb bag.
  
• Also, see that orange thing on the left? It's a mini paper-cutter. You can always use scissors, but I've found this thing is great for cutting straight strips of light cardboard. I got mine in the scrapbooking section of JoAnn's for around $15.
  
• Wooden coffee stirrers: Not a requirement, but they are very useful for decorating houses and, I'm sure many other things. Grab some if you can.

In my next post, I'll show you how to build a house, and later I'll show you a clever technique I came up with for making craters. If you have any ideas or suggestions for making terrain, or would like to see something in particular made, leave a comment on this blog and I'll incorporate it into this project.

What I Learned, Learning to Cook

Coming into the month of July, we are now about a month and a half away from a whole slew of young adults moving out of their comfort zone and into college dorms with random roommates. Most college kids will be preparing for this move by packing their belongings, ordering textbooks, going back-to-school shopping, spending lots of time with old friends, securing a new apartment, attending orientations, etc.

As a college senior who expects to be graduating this Fall, my advice to incoming freshman is this: spend some time in the kitchen with your mom before you go. This is something I often wish I had done before I ran off to college. Not only is it a great way to spend time with a parent who will desperately miss you when you leave, but also it's a great opportunity to learn some essential cooking skills. I understand many people may not be as lucky as I am as far as this learning experience goes. My mother, and my mother's father, are both cheifs, and have had experience working in the restaurant business. I have lived off home cooked meals my entire life, though I can't say I always appreciated it the way I should have. Things changed when I left for college. It wasn't long before I got disgusted by the Hot Pocket or pizza dinners every night.

If it weren't for the fact that my only mode of transportation was my bicycle, I probably would have gained a hefty freshman-20 from the kind of crap I was eating. For my roommates who had their own cars and ate the way I did, I saw the effects of that weight gain... One word: grotesque. If you're expecting to have this kind of fast food diet, don't bother yourself with having a car. But, if you'd really like to keep that fancy graduation present, start learning to cook your own meals.

There are more benefits to cooking your own meals in college than just helping you keep the pounds off.; it also helps keep your wallet fat. Consider this: $10 will get me one, maybe two meals at any given fast food joint; $10 at Wal-Mart will get me milk, margarine, eggs, and flour, and maybe some Ramen noodles. If you know how to cook, that $10 will get you a lot more than 2 measly meals. You'll need this kind of thrift once mommy and daddy cut your financial umbilical cord, so practice it before you find yourself desperately flapping your wings when you get booted from the nest.

Now, I am aware that sometimes it's very difficult to find the time to do any of your own cooking, what with all the band practice, sorority meetings, study groups, weekly clubbing, political canvassing, campus events, club tabling, and, oh yeah, classes. But keep in mind, saving money and eating healthier doesn't require fine cousine or hours slaving over a hot stovetop; it just requires a little bit of planning.

The first thing I realized when I'd finally started to settle into my first college apartment was that I didn't own a can opener. Most apartments come with a fridge and a microwave, but unless you want to live off Lean Cousine dinners for the rest of the semester, you're going to need some utensils. Wooden spoons, rubber spatulas, whisks, metal spatulas, ladels, and don't forget your can opener. There are also some pots and pans, cookie sheets, mixing bowls, casserole dishes, measuring cups, silverware, potato masher, egg slicer, egg seperator... Not to mention all the plates, cups, bowls, and tupperware you don't own. You might also need a blender, mixer, convection oven, quesedilla maker, waffle iron, George Foreman Grill... These household voids are not limited to kitchen supplies. You still need all sorts of stuff in your new bathroom. You don't even own curtains or bedsheets. Best thing to do is buy all this stuff before the move; that entire first week of school, the nearest Wal-Mart to your college will be hell, so try to avoid it if possible. In preparation for school, I saved up $1500 over the summer. The first month's rent gobbled up a huge chunk of this, and after visiting Wal-Mart and Big Lots, I only had about $100 left. Lucky for me, my mom was willing to foot the grocery bill when I cried out in despair at the realization that I didn't even have any food yet.

For all the things you need to fill your kitchen with before even thinking about cooking, it seems contrary to suggest home cooking is cheaper than fast food. However, when I needed to buy cooking supplies, I mitigated the expense by scrounging used pots and pan off my mother. Even if your parents aren't much for cooking, you can usually find a friend or relative who has a few cooking tools to throw your way.

Once I started trying to cook, I learned that fire alarms are very sensitive. If your apartment complex is even the least bit safety-conscious, your fire alarm will be connected to the fire alarm system throughout the entire building. It's pretty embarassing the first time this happens; everyone pokes their head out their door to see where the fire is, and you step outside, waving a greasy spatula: "Don't worry, everything's all right, I'm just... cooking." You don't have to have a grease fire going in order to set off the alarms; enough smoke will do. For me, I managed to get a quesedilla maker for $5 when I moved in, so I would cook strips of chicken and steak on the stove top, then store them in Ziplock bags in the freezer to use in my quesedillas later. When I could afford meat, this worked out really well. Unfortunately, I never oiled my pans well enough, so the apartment would fill with smoke and it wouldn't be long before it set the fire alarm off. Sometimes this is just unavoidable. A few ways to avoid this happening: open the windows before you start cooking, turn on the fan over the stove, AND dampen a wash cloth and drape it over the smoke alarm itself.

Eventually I realized there were only so many things I could do with Ramen noodles. At first I just ate them plain, and tried to buy a variety of flavors at the very least. It wasn't long before I didn't want to eat them at all. Then I found this book, 101 Things To Do With Ramen Noodles, at Waldenbooks. So far the only recipe I've tried is the Cheeseburger Ramen, but I intend to eventually test the Ramen Omelette recipe on my boyfriend, Jesse. I'm a rather picky eater, so there are a lot of recipes in the book that I won't even look at -- for example, the entire vegetarian section. But for someone less picky than I, it's a great resource. There's actually a whole "101 Things To Do With" cookbook series, but I've only had a chance to sample the Ramen one. The only ones I see that might be useful in college would be 101 Things To Do With Mac & Cheese and 101 Things To Do With Ground Beef. Once I got this book, my mom was quick to help fill my recipe shelf with more useful things: The Doubleday Cookbook Complete Contemporary Cooking Volume 1 (circa 1975) and Betty Crocker's Cookbook (circa 1978). She insisted on getting me the same editions she learned from.

When it comes to recipes, I learned that hand-written recipes are meant for the writer to use, an no one else It was funny, when I tried to make shepherd's pie and chipped beef on toast for the first time from my own mother's hand-written recipes, I screwed up a lot. I found myself calling her every time I started cooking, asking her to clarify something or ask how long I needed to cook this or at what temperature. (This was also part of the reason she got me the Doubleday Cookbook, so I'd stop calling her and asking so many questions. Doubleday does, in fact, have all the answers, even if you want to cook rabbit or brain.) Even using my own mother's recipes, it took several failed attempts before I really got any recipe right. It seemed like there were all sorts of tiny details that were left out; it just turned out that my mother hadn't even thought to write them down, since they were things she did almost automatically. I'm fortunate to have a boyfriend who is not much of a finicky eater, so even the lousy meals didn't go to waste. Now that I've figured out how to cook these things on my own, I've typed up the recipes and printed them on index cards for my own reference. One day I'll probably pass these cards down to my own children, and they will fuck up the recipes just as badly and as many times as I did.

White rice and ginger ale does not make Rice Krispies; sugar and yeast doesn't quite make cream soda; and the Internet is not a shortcut around kitchen catastrophes. Just because recipes you find on the Internet are more detailed than your mom's hand-written notes does not mean they are complete; indeed, Internet recipes are lacking in the aggregate wisdom mom has built up in her cooking skills over the years. No one was there to tell me how different white rice is from basmati rice; no one told me I had to use vanilla extract, not artificial vanilla flavoring, otherwise my cream soda would taste like vomit (once again, Jesse proved himself to be a brave taste-tester). The only Internet recipe I've managed to use without failing was this creamy chicken noodle soup recipe, which I also use Ramen noodles to make.

Holy shit, I forgot about the spice rack! It was actually long after I started cooking before I realized my food lacked spice. For a long time, I got by all right with just salt, pepper, and garlic. But once I got in deep enough, I found I needed thyme, ginger, cinnamon, parsley, nutmeg, lemon pepper, white pepper, cream of tartar, and all sorts of other things I'd hardly thought about until I tasted the recipes without them. Once again, my mom helped me establish my own spice rack; she donated many of her own spice bottles and set up a "starter kit" for me. If I'd had to shop for these things, I wouldn't have known what to grab. Spices can get pretty complicated; the way a great musician must be intimately familiar with the sound of each note, so too must a great cheif be familiar with the nuances of each spice. I have not quite attained this level of mastery, but I did eventually convince my mom to share with me the secret spices she puts in her banana bread (and no, I'm not telling).

One last lesson: don't cry over burnt chicken. But if you do, make sure the person you love loves you back enough to eat it. I don't know what it is, but I get very upset when I mess up a meal, though this only happens when I'm cooking for more than just myself. It means so much to me to give someone I love an enjoyable meal, I feel like I let them down when I mess it up. Jesse never did understand why I cried when the pizza didn't come out right, or when the sauce was always too watery, but he was always there for me when I needed him to eat it and enjoy it anyway. Smiling through a gooey, underbaked crust? -- now that's love.

I Can't Write If I Can't THINK

I have been wanting to write all summer, I really have. As a matter of fact, that was my goal for the summer, to revise some of my old work and take a shot and freelance work, and perhaps getting something published in a journal. But in the two months since school has let out, I have accomplished only three things: completed a $30 cross-stitch kit, finished watching over half of all the episodes of Pokemon, and achieved level 49 on FarmVille. For this, I am utterly ashamed.

But for all my lack of productivity, I don't think I'm entirely to blame. I've been looking for jobs, and even looking for places to volunteer where I can get experience I need to tack onto my resume, but naturally, with the state of the economy, no one is hiring, and apparently no one needs me to work for them for free. And perhaps it's not so much that no one is hiring, so much as my radius of job searching is limited to how far I can carry myself on my bike (and even now, that capacity is crippled, as I don't even have the funds to make repairs on either of my bikes). One hostess job was looking promising, but the opportunitiy fizzled with the realization that constant contact with a potential employer is impossible without a functioning phone.

Really, there is only so much I can do.

In the last couple weeks, I find myself unable to do anything but think about food, and where my next meal is coming from. Before that, I was worrying about paying bills, which I've all but given up on now. I've inherited some very thrifty recipes from my mother, and I can certainly stretch a dollar much farther than our government can, but once it gets to the point where My Fridge Food tells me the only thing I can make is simple sauces and tortilla bread, I find myself very grateful for the fat reserves on my thighs and boobs that will at least ensure that I won't die of starvation in the next two weeks.

It is impossible to engage in intellectual pursuits if you don't have a full fridge. This is psychology in practice. If basic needs (i.e.: food) are not met, one cannot meet one's higher needs of self actualization (i.e.: intellectual pursuits).

Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs

Basically, we have an inborn system of psychological priorities. For me, this means that while I am attending to my basic and safety needs, I find it difficult, if not impossible, to attend to my self-actualization needs.

This is a very simple way of explaining why the have-nots generally don't get to go on to higher education. It's not because they are genetically inferior, or that they are stupid. It's because they're motherfucking hungry. Or, alternately, they're too preoccupied trying to figure out how to pay the rent. And when those lower needs are not met, our psychology dictates that we invest our energies into addressing those problems. Really, how can anyone expect someone in poverty to analyze Poe or practice calculus when their mind is fully engaged in calculating where they can scrounge up next month's rent or analyzing their meal options when all they have is flour, margarine, a jar of pickles, and a can of baked beans? Sometimes just getting by is the most challenging intellectual pursuit a person can face.

I don't think it's enough to think about this as intellectuals. What I'm saying is obvious to anyone who has studied the least bit of psychology, or who is the least bit sympathetic to the plight of the poor. It is one thing to think and to teach that poverty is not deserved -- these kind of ideas are little more than platitudes. Teaching like this leads to good-hearted organizations investing energy in hopeless endeavors such as occassionally feeding the homeless (I'm looking at you, SDS). What we need is more starving intellectuals.

The intellectuals who task themselves with solving huge problems like hunger, poverty, and homelessness are all too often lightyears from understanding how entangling these problems are when they are actually your own problems. They don't realize how close they can be to these problems. They don't think that people in situations similar to them could be starving, because they themselves never went without. When charities raise money to feed the hungry, the struggling families a block away know the charity is not working for them. No organization that promised to feed the hungry ever cooked a meal and served it to me. When good-hearted people think to help feed the hungry, they look across oceans before they think to look in their own backyards.

There are a handful of projects I know of that do look to their despairing neighbors. The first that comes to my mind is the food pantry at UCF, where students can donate food for other students who aren't doing as well. As of yet, I have not had an opportunity to visit the food pantry. Every time I had occassion to, it was during the spring or fall semester when I had at least some financial aid at my disposal. I doubt it's even open now during the summer, when I really need it. The problem with this project is that it isn't big enough, or even visible enough. Grassroots effort never are. But at the very least, it's on the right track.

Well, that's the only project I can think of. Feel free to inform me of any others.

So, I am at the end of my rant, I've completely run out of steam. The only reason I was able to do this much was because I needed to do something to distract myself from my own despair. I've really run out of options as far as food goes. I was even considering finding a panhandler to barter with earlier this evening, going so far as to construct an ellaborate, albeit imaginary, system wherein beggars bring me their winnings for the day in exchange for homemade meals. I'm really getting a little crazy here.