Category: Life

The other day, a friend posted a link to an interesting article about privilege, or more correctly a chronological list of the racial crud that this author has dealt with over the years. In the ensuing conversation, one person pushed back hard against the concept of “privilege” and this was my response.

Privilege is an odd concept because everyone has certain advantages and disadvantages in life due to family circumstances, luck, health, etc. Further confounding the discussion, people who talk about privilege often focus on their single variable and don’t acknowledge the holistic circumstance that surrounds each individual’s upbringing. 

However, it is still true that being white affords someone more advantages than disadvantages. A single racial advantage will not counterbalance all the other disadvantages one race is granted at birth or the winds of fate, but to say that race is not a factor in society is being willfully blind.

Even apart from outright racial discrimination, there is a lot of mental drag that one deals solely because that person is a minority. I’m not saying some other white guy’s life was automatically easier, but on this particular issue they didn’t have to deal with the constant feeling of “otherness” and “not belonging” solely because of their skin color. This is white privilege.

To be clear, I think we call it “white” privilege because people of European descent are the dominant race in our country. I suspect other nations of have similar dynamics with different skin colors or using other criteria altogether. This is a societal issue, and each of us needs to do our part as individual actors to push this society forward, and acknowledging the problem is the first step.

I went into the weekend with moderate plans. Tidy up the bedrooms, the kids’ play area, and my own desk.

For once I made it.

There was plenty more to be done, but I did play a lot with the kids.

Once in a while, I will guess “enough” correctly.

I’ve decided to reassess the daily blog every solar event this year and this solstice I realized that if I had to pick one item every morning, I really need to pick exercise over blogging.

So who knows if this gets more sporadic going forward, but I thought I’d put it out there.

Daily blogging has been a good route for self expression over the past nine months – I’ve noticed a lot of ideas getting stuck in the noggin over the past week where I stopped sitting down and typing first thing in the morning.

Returning to the theme of tradeoffs, the only way I can do both blogging and exercise in the morning is to go to sleep early, and that makes for a pretty dull nightlife, if not outright going to sleep before the kids. And that really isn’t a great scenario either.

So we’ll see where this goes, but seriously, I need to do a minimal amount of exercise, this bag ‘o’ meat ain’t getting younger!

You take technology for granted until it doesn’t work.  Or in this case, when Hostgator is suddenly not loading up and you’re wondering if your blog post will upload.

Then you’re get frustrated.  After which, you take a deep breath and remind yourself that this is the first time its glitched like this.

Unfortunately for them, that means the next time this happens, it isn’t the “first time”.  But if their second chance is a long time from now, well that’s technology.

We’d like it to be perfect all the time – as it should be – but the real world is a little messier than that.

I wrote this in conversation on facebook. I’m not an expert on the subject of economic ideologies, but I thought this critique of “taking things to a logical conclusion” was worth re-posting.

I think it is ultimately useless to take the terms “socialism” or “capitalism” to their extreme, ideologically “pure” conclusions. To say socialism is absolute authoritarianism is to thus imply capitalism is total anarchy.

Neither is a particularly good way to live.

In this starkly dualistic world, we are all fettered under the yoke of authoritarianism once you add a little government regulation to rein in the anarchy. Societal models shouldn’t be managed like food safety, where a gallon of milk is spoiled by a drop of cyanide.

Conservatives tend to conflate socialism with communism and its worst excesses. They enjoy drawing a straight line between government run medicine to re-education gulags, while balking at any such of similar absurdist response on the other side.

There’s no room for pick up basketball in a public park, sponsored by the theft of pure capitalist earnings.

Personally, I am not comfortable with the recent adoption of the term “socialism” by the left, even if it is is a loud and proud reappropriation of an overused slur by the right after the pendulum has swung so far towards unfettered markets. But many folks have pointed out that American liberals would be considered free market conservatives pretty much anywhere else on this planet so I’m not to scared of the bogeyman of socialism in US politics.

Like many other things in life, government is a exercise in balance, not purity. Logic exercises can only take you so far.

I had a canker sore on my tongue for the last few days and I was struck by how one well placed ulcer can be so debilitating.

This sore was on the side and thus perfectly place to be irritated when eating and talking. It was bad enough to the point I ended up just taking naps all weekend to avoid the pain.

Like my recent bout with pneumonia was a reminder that health is darn near close to everything, this one is a reminder that the details matter.

Even the smallest ailments can make life quite miserable!

I dreamt of meeting an old acquaintance and chatting about work as the snow fell outside the cafe windows.

It was a nice dream.

But instead of sleep-processing a meeting every six years, there has to be a better way to keep in touch.

However, time is tight. I don’t have time to chat with everyone I’ve previously known.

Social media makes it easier to stalk people, and it may be a medium for contact like email, but it is not actual connection.

Maybe the dream world isn’t an awful filter to figure out who is worth keeping in contact.