Righteous Dopefiend

I am usually not profoundly impacted by most of the books I read for school. Some of them have made an impact (like The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, or Mountains Beyond Mountains) in how I understand the world and how I want to interact with it. The book Righteous Dopefiend is one of those books.

It's an honest photo-ethnography of homeless heroin addicts in San Francisco. What I have taken away from it the most is the fact that I/we ignore people whose lives are truly miserable by rolling up the windows when we drive by the homeless guy on the side of the road and looking at everything except the beggar on the sidewalk. How cruel are we?

Ethics and the Righteous Lumpen

We share so much of our society with our lumpen dopefiends than we care to admit. We live in the same cities, we have the same people in powerful positions making decisions and we share many of the same norms and structures. We went to the same schools, joined the same military (or at least claimed we did), and use the same hospitals when we're ill. While homeless drug addicts are invisible and ignored by everyone but each other, we cannot ignore the fact that we are completely intertwined with them. If they had had a different situation as a child, or made different choices, they wouldn't be one of “them,” they would be us.

However, are they so similar to us? Their addiction to heroin is the most important thing in their lives. Bourgois and Schonberg claim that the righteous dopefiends have sacrificed everything in order to satisfy their heroin addiction. Getting their heroin fix is more important than keeping a job, their family, their social status and even their dignity. They have given up our morals and norms and placed themselves outside of society. They are lumpen because society does not consider them to be worth inclusion. This group of social flotsam is considered to be the lowest of the low who have given up our moral standards.

But have they? Despite their rejection from social norms and morals, they also strive to achieve the “good life.” Tina and Carter make a home together, for example. Many of them try to prove they're not as bad as the others (for example, Tina doesn't consider herself a prostitute, the black heroin addicts do not skin pop, others claim they were veterans) and they have justification for their actions. They don't want to be like this, so they create separate bedrooms in their camps and make promises about “when they're sober.” They create a “good life” through finding a running partner, someone with whom they share their belongings, who they can take care of and who can take care of them. They are not part of society, but they maintain the norms of social lives within their lumpen group. They do not have to conform to the norms and morals of America, but they make attempts to still participate.

How alike are mainstream Americans and those who are excluded from it? In our behavior, we are alike. The norms of family and sharing and racialized behavior are still prevalent in the dopefiend camps. However, when it comes down to thin morality and values, the drug addicts have replaced their morality with addiction. When there is room for other norms and values, they follow them. But even Sonny skin pops when he cannot find a vein, and Tina will sell her sex for drugs. Taboos are easily broken, and morals set aside in order to avoid being dopesick. Unlike Stephen's idea that we are morally alike in thin ways and when we put them into practice, the thick morals are different, it seems as if with the lumpen, the reverse is true. Our behavior is similar in our strive for the “good life,” but what is morally good is different. For them, good is avoiding dopesickness at any cost. For us, while we avoid human suffering, we can still drive by or walk past without being moved to help them. We have other values and morals that take precedence over helping people avoid becoming dopesick.

In fact, we do not even pity those who are dopesick. We hope that by being dopesick in their jail cell, they'll be able to kick the habit. We take hope in their suffering, because we see their suffering as a consequence of their choices. Do they deserve this forced suffering? What do they deserve from mainstream Americans, who have the power in the relationship? With our value of easing human suffering, it would seem logical that they deserve medical care to ease the side effects of addiction, such as treatment of abscesses, or even small doses of medicine while in jail. However, they do not receive it. Furthermore, their shelter is repeatedly taken from them because we have decided that people should not live under overpasses, making them exposed and without a home. As fellow humans, they deserve dignity, but we do not give it to them. They partially take it away from themselves, as a result of the dopesickness and poor cleanliness habits. However, when we pretend they don't exist or ignore them, we take away their dignity and humanity. When we treat them as things that don't even deserve to be in the hospital, we rob them of what dignity they have left.

This raises the question: if avoidance of suffering is truly part of our morals, why don't we help them? Why do we drive by? Why do we look at everything but the face of the man who is asking for money downtown? Why do the police clean up their camps, as if taking away their home will make them disappear, as well? Why do the doctors in the hospital take all day before helping the man with maggots in his leg? Perhaps because we see it as hopeless for us to try to ease their suffering. Perhaps it is because we see them as choosing to suffer. Perhaps this suffering isn't easily fixed by a donation or a race, the way a cleft palate or cancer supposedly is. We don't donate our Facebook statuses to homeless dopefiends. How do we help to alleviate their suffering? The only easy solution is to ignore the problem. If we consider these homeless drug users to be choosing their own fate, to be outside of our concern, we are allowed to ignore them.

Our treatment of homeless addicts raises the issues of choice. What role does choice play in all of this? Did they actually make the choice to use drugs in the first place? There are many other factors involved in drug use besides the individuals decision to inject heroin. The presence of drugs in their life, whether or not other people in their life use drugs, how they've been taught to cope with adversity, their class, their family life, etc all go in to someones likelihood of using drugs. If someone has so many social factors stacked up against them, it becomes less of a choice to use drugs and more of a choice to not use drugs.

Similarly, do we actively make the choice to ignore and judge them? Rarely are homeless heroin addicts portrayed in the media except as a social problem. Few people in society help or talk to the panhandlers who may or may not be drug users (but we assume they probably are). We're taught to avoid them and stop staring when we're young children, and our parents roll up the windows and lock the doors when there's a homeless person begging on the side of the highway. Is it any surprise that we ignore them?

How can we learn from Righteous Dopefiend? How do we judge them with this new awareness of the issues surrounding homelessness and drug addiction? Do we even have the right to judge them, knowing their moral standards are different from our own? Should we judge them for their choices in lifestyle, even if it's not a complete choice? Furthermore, how do we judge ourselves when we see ourselves doing nothing? This book leaves more questions than answers, not only about the dopefiends, but also about ourselves and our understanding of morality.

Inglorious Basterds and Crime and Punishment

Yay! I finished Crime and Punishment! It's took soooo long! That's right. 4 "o"s. It must be long.

: )

(that's what she said?)

All sexual innuendos aside, it's a great book. Just a little slow. I had a few trepidations about undertaking this book. I've heard a lot of good things about Dostoyevsky, but not one of them were for the ease of reading and comprehension. While I certainly did not grasp all of the intricacies in the book, it was still moving, enlightening, fascinating and entertaining. It's about Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov, a poor destitute college dropout during the 19th Century who kills an old pawnbroker and her sister. And the rest is about how he struggles with himself and others. It's very interesting. In one scene, while I was riding the bus, I started crying. I typically don't cry while reading, so this must be a good book. Highly Recommended.

Today I also watched the Quentin Tarantino movie Inglorious Basterds. It was really really good. If this film had been done by any other director, it would have been highly disturbing and unpleasant for me to watch. however, Tarantino has a way with the gore and violence that most directors cannot pull off, and couldn't even if they tried. It's a very historically incorrect WWII movie, in which Brad Pitt leads a team of Jewish American soldiers deep into occupied France to scalp Nazis and generally terrorize the German army. Ends pretty epically. Normally, I abhor historical incorrectness, but it's Quentin Tarantino and it's really damn obvious that it's incorrect (rather than the typical "let's tweak history and pass it off as fact" that a lot of movies have) so I forgive him easily. Good, entertaining movie. I don't think there were any characters I would choose to emulate in my life, but none of the characters are presented as role models, so that's okay too. They're just presented as awesome and bad-ass. They're shown as the war heroes who no one in their right mind wants to be. If you're Mom, don't see it. You wouldn't like it.

Gender Issues

I just finished a slightly-outdated book called "The Myth of Male Power" by Dr. Warren Farrel. It's a call of sorts for an answer to the feminist movement. He doesn't think a masculist movement would be the ideal situation. Instead he calls for a gender transition movement (which to me sounds like transgender, rather than gender equality, but it was the early 90s. I don't think transfolk had much visibility then). Most of the book is rejecting feminist 'myths' which he does well, but he doesn't tell the whole story either. I think he's assuming that most of his readers are feminist scholars, rather than his ideal audience of men.

I agree with him on his main premises. I think women, in their search for liberation, have in reality been shirking the responsibility that comes with liberation. He splits history into Stage I, the survival phase and Stage II, the post-industrialization phase. In Stage I, gender roles were more efficient for society, to have one gender who nurtures life while the other gender protects and supports it.

However, with industrialization, the necessity of this system faded. Women realized that they were just as capable of being the supporter of life (during peacetime) as men were, though society still upheld the role of the man as protector during wartime. This gives woman the advantages of being economically independent while still creating progeny for the next generation.

But because we're still socializing men to be killers, and socializing women to choose killers as partners, men have not been able to achieve the same independence as women. Men are stuck in Stage I, while women are in Stage II, and expect Stage II men. And because our public power systems are dominated by men, society still functions with the expectation of a Stage I society. Thus, jails, suicide rates, more dangerous work environments, and homelessness are still mostly male issues, and women are still not allowed to register for the draft, or are not usually allowed to serve on the front lines if they are enlisted.

The author encourages men to become as active as women in demanding equal rights. Right now, government programs and funding strongly favor women, and in some cases, even discriminate against men. That is not equality. By becoming socially and emotionally more independent (not from one's partner, but with), men can learn to function in a Stage II society. By becoming more vocal about perceived inequality, unfairness and injustice, men will be able to balance the gender equality movement.

Men have to move on from being the 'disposable sex' that fit society well back when food, shelter and water were a struggle and become equal partners, or whatever works best for the family unit and society, in a world where there is comfort and time aplenty for some reflection and enjoyment. Men and women no longer have to sacrifice themselves for the future of the species.

The cons to a life of ease

I have been pondering this evening about the downsides to the globalized lifestyle we live.

If we still lived in the olden days, for lack of a better term, we would spend less money on health care. People would die in accidents and childbirth, not from cancer or diabetes.

We would get fewer crazies like the guy who went on a shooting rampage into a yoga class because women didn't want to date him. I'm thinking they didn't want to date him not because he's unattractive physically, but because he's crazy. Or was. He killed himself.

People would exploit themselves and their own labor for their own benefit, instead of relying on the desperation of others. I would make my own shirts, not be responsible for the person in Bangladesh who gets paid a buck a day to make 20 shirts. Granted, it would take a couple days and some cramps and pokes to get the shirt, but I wouldn't be responsible for ruining some other economy and then exploiting the labor when people can no longer live the way they've lived for hundreds of years.

I don't mean, of course, that that's how things should be. There were just some benefits to that life, is all. This life is much better, overall. I mean, people are getting old enough and fat enough to get cancer and diabetes, not dying from a mine collapse or farm accident.

It would be nice to see people appreciate what they have by taking better care of things, though. Their bodies, their jobs, their clothes, their health, etc. Mr. AngryWhoShotUpYogaClass would have a better chance of finding a woman 2 hundred years ago, since he was fairly intelligent and hardworking and capable of holding a job, if not the most rational feller. Murdering people whose only crime is not wanting to date you is not the way to get dates. Back when love was equivalent with stability and security, not social compatibility.

This is all coming from a combonation of the book I'm reading about masculism (as opposed to feminism) and me sewing my shirt blanket, which isn't very difficult but they're all made in 3rd world countries anyway. Americans could do that work. I would be happy with that summer job.

Oh, by the way, finished another book. Dark Horse, by Ralph Reed. It's a "political thriller." It's about the 2016 campaign, with two really crappy party candidates and one Democrat-turned-independent when he loses the nomination. It's really interesting, obviously written by a man (the women are described in detail, including their clothes and aren't key players or are slightly insane, while the most description men get is their hair color) who is conservative (all the attention is paid to the Republican base, even though the liberal base has just as much sway. The guy obviously hasn't had much experience pandering to liberals). Anyway, the author is a man who is a campaign consultant for Republican candidates. It was a good political drama. Not particularly thrilling, despite all the drama and assassinations. A good read for people who are knowledgeable about political campaigns, or know the vocabulary, anyway. Not good for people with no interest in politics, or who are political elitists who would find the book trashy.

Debt, Sin and Balto

Book and Movie Reviews:

Payback by Margaret Atwood. I wish the economy really worked like this. I could understand it if it were all in literary analogies. There should be a class on every college campus called Economics for English Majors. Even though I'm not an English major, I understand A Christmas Carol more easily than The Economist. This book doesn't have much weight though. It's just a nonfiction exploration of the concept of debt by one of my favorite novelists. It's a pleasant, easily-understood read, but it didn't provide many great insights into economics for me. It spurred a lot interest in the novels she referenced, though. I just have trouble finding the economy interesting beyond how it affects populations. I don't care about the stock market too much, even though it's really important. I don't understand business other than businesses provide jobs and paychecks. All this talk about buyouts and merges just confuses me. She doesn't go into that, but just explores debt the concept. Personal debt, debt as sin, the relationship between creditor and debtor, etc. Very interesting, but not very applicable to the current financial crisis, which is what I was hoping to get by reading a non-fiction book about debt.

Balto, 1,2 and 3. [SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't seen the movies, and for some reason care about the endings, don't read on. I basically give it all away.] Aw.... Balto. I loved that movie as a kid. It's about the diptheria outbreak in Nome in 1925, and the sled dogs that brought the medicine through a storm, the route that later became the Iditerod. Balto (voiced by Kevin Bacon) is a stray half-wolf who loves Jenna, the purebred husky. His rival is a lead sled dog named Steel, who become quite crazy later on in the movie when Balto begins to encroach upon his place in the town. First Balto takes an interest in Jenna, who is the only girl Steel notices, then Balto beats him in a race to find the fastest sled dogs, and then Balto (who wasn't allowed to be on the team because he's half wolf) comes to find the lost sled dog team to help them home, taking away Steel's leadership and reputation in the town. In fact, Steel isn't even mentioned in the 2nd or 3rd movies. He just quietly goes away.

The second movie focuses on Aleu, Balto (no longer voiced by Kevin Bacon) and Jenna's daughter who looks more like a wolf than a dog, and thus is not adopted by any people. Interestingly enough, Balto doesn't get adopted by Jenna's family. He stays living in his abondoned boat with Boris the goose, while Jenna and the puppies live with her family. I suppose it isn't a Disney movie though. Dogs don't have to be subject to human social standards. Aleu moves in with Balto after she isn't adopted. Then she runs away and joins a wolf pack. David Carradine voices the leader of the wolf pack, but Aleu is chosen by Balto's mother (who isn't a real wolf, she's a spirit wolf) as the leader of the pack, and David Carradine doesn't float away on an iceberg with the rest of the pack. Balto goes back home.

Then in the third movie, Balto and Jenna's son, Kodi (short for Kodiak, voiced by Sean Astin), works as an idealistic sled dog for the USPS, bringing mail between Nome and White Mountain. Then Balto's obsession, the bush plane, comes to town, and the pilot (voiced by Keith Carradine) challenges the sled team to a race to see who can deliver the mail faster. Balto is chosen to lead the team, even though he knows they can't win. What do you know, they hit a storm and the plane crashes. The dog team wins, but Balto wants to go looking for the plane. He ends up going alone, though. Or, nearly alone. Muc and Luc and Boris' sexy jazz/beatnik girlfriend come too. Boris was on the plane, and she's worried. Muc and Luc know where it crashed. The point is, his son and the rest of the USPS sled team doesn't go with him. At which point when find out Kodi's full name when his mother yells at him. Then they all go after them and save Balto and the Pilot from certain death. The movie ends with Balto and the pilot flying around in a plane. There are also a couple of stupid, angry bull moose to provide some scary yet stupid and funny parts. Pretty much the only thing the bull moose says is: Are you talkin' to me? I think you're talkin' to me!

In short: Good kids movies. The second one was pretty bad, though, despite David Carradine (who deserved a much less humiliating death, btw. poor dude). The third was better. I like them a lot, though. They're not The Lion King, or anything, but they're not bad. The sequels were better than Disney's sequels for their cartoons (although apparently someone decided Balto 2 and 3 would be better as psuedo-musicals, even though the first one wasn't and Muc and Luc were voiced by Phil Collins, who could have made it an awesome musical, and they started to incorporate crappy CG). When I was a kid, Balto is what made me really interested in wolves and Alaska (I read Julie of the Wolves probably 50 times).

I've been going through the kids movies on Netflix this summer. I've seen many movies I haven't seen before and would probably never see if it weren't for Netflix. I watched Land Before Time XI, for example. Why are they still making those? That train left the station 15 years ago.

Chuck Norris doesn't get old...

He roundhouse kicks time in the face!

I just read "Black Belt Patriotism" by Chuck Norris.

I was pleasantly surprised! It was a really decent book. While his sources, for the most part, are not exactly dependable, and his opinions far from supported by the general population, his writing, overall, is very clear and persuasive. I was even agreeing with his extremely capitalist viewpoints. But I'm the polar opposite of an economics expert, so I have no idea what works and what doesn't. He could be right, he could be wrong.

Black Belt Patriotism is Chuck Norris' critique of today's America, particularly "what is destroying our country" as well as the solutions he believes would fix the problems. Basically, we Americans are enslaved by greed, overrun by illegal immigrants, immoral godless drones, murdering apathetic obese liberals who have lost our roots.

While I obviously didn't agree with most of what he said (I am part of the problem, in his opinion, being liberal, queer, atheist, pro-choice and of the "transgender sexuality"), I agree with a few of his main points.

While I agree that we have become too greedy and materialistic, 2/3 of Americans are fat and it's their fault and they'll suffer the consequences if they don't bother to exercise and eat right, and some illegal immigrants are bad (while others are hardworking decent folk, though he mostly focuses on the drug cartels and gangs), and we need to reconnect with our history and foundations of our country, I disagree that teaching the Bible in schools and making everyone a Christian will do the trick. I disagree that non-religious folk are immoral, and that Christian folk are automatically more moral than the rest. There are many moral non Christians, and many immoral Christians. I think that homosexuality, bisexuality and the "transgender sexuality" (which, by the way, Mr. Norris, isn't a sexual orientation. It's a gender identity) as well as non-nuclear families, are not part of the problem. There are many decent, moral people who have come from alternative families and "broken homes." And parents who choose to work can also be good, active parents. The Bible is not the answer for everyone. Kudos to you if it's your answer, but the Bible isn't the Law. I, for one, am glad the Bible isn't taught in public schools, and I think that students should be able to worship individually, but no religion should be institutionalized into school curriculum. The country isn't made up of just Christians.

Oh, and the kid who got an F on the evolution paper didn't follow the instructions. If the teacher wanted a paper on each students believes in evolution vs. creationism, she would have asked for it. She asked for a paper on evolution. The kid, who doesn't believe in evolution, wrote it on creationism instead. Great that a 10 year old kid knows what he was taught at church, but if a teacher asked for a paper on Islam, would you write about Christianity instead? You always stand to benefit from learning about something different from your own beliefs. You can learn about something and not believe it. I agree with the scientific community that evolution is the likely answer to how we came to be, and I do not think we are made in God's image. We are more than glorified apes because we have developed the power to be, not because someone made us better than apes.

Also, eat right and exercise. Chuck Norris says so. It's not that hard.

Anyway, a good read, even if you disagree with a lot of it, like I do. It's always fun to stretch your comfort zone, and it's a pretty easy read too.

If wishes were fishes, I'd be dead from mercury poisoning

I finished Dubliners by James Joyce today. Not so great, but not "wtf"-worthy. I think if I had notes or an English professor to guide me through it, I could have appreciated it. In all, it was a rather dull read which I didn't really understand. I will try again later with another book of his. Hopefully I will appreciate it more. For now though, it's on to Don Quixote, which I hear is a menace. We shall see though. I do enjoy adventures.

I enjoy adventures, but not enough to go on my own. I also enjoy comfort. I would like to walk somewhere far away though. I would like to walk to the ocean (either one), I think. Maybe in Maine, I haven't been there before. Or Seattle, maybe. Or maybe take a tour of the outline of the US, you know, go all the way around the borders/coastlines? I don't know anyone crazy enough to go with me. At least, anyone who I would want to go with who is crazy enough to go with me. I'm sure there are lots of crazy beatniks or hippies out there who would go with me, but I don't want to go with a random crazy beatnik. I don't want to go by myself. That's dangerous.

I do wish I had the effort to get out more though. I guess I just don't wish it enough. I need a buddy to make me accountable who will go do random obscure slightly insane things with me. Like walk to Gooseberry Falls. Maybe next summer. : )

Fairy Tales

Book reviews? Ok.

Faulker: The Sound and the Fury: WTF!? I hated it. It makes no sense until the very end when it makes a teensy tiny bit of sense. Or rather, I figured out 1 thing that they were talking about. I put 1 puzzle together, out of dozens of puzzles the book presented. Read it for the sake of having read it, but WTF, Faulker, W. T. F.

Lackey: The 500 Kindoms Series: I've only read 2 so far, but they're cute books! They're fairy tale parodies of sorts, but for grown ups. There are some juicy sex scenes, but they are far too short and infrequent. It's almost as if she wants to be a smut writer, but isn't quite willing to stake her good reputation on it. She brings a new dimension to fantasy writer though. The sex scenes are very woman-centric. Sex scenes aside, the books are very cute and intelligent. I call them cute because they are fairy tales and people end up happily ever after and they are far from dark, but they're very witty as well.

Dragonlance series: Good as always. (Library complaint: Get the 3rd book! That complaint pretty much applies to almost every fantasy trilogy the library owns. Or partially owns. I don't want to buy 1/3 of a trilogy, so why did you only buy 2/3? Good lord. [I am exagerating, but it's true in some cases]) Dragonlance, a young adult favorite of mine, has bitten me again. I love this series. It adds a bit of dimension to the good vs. evil battles which are typical of fantasy. Good can be just a bad as evil and evil isn't usually that bad. Oh, and most of the Bad Guys aren't ugly and the Good Guys aren't always beautiful. Which is refreshing. A lot of the fantasy genre is too simple. There has been some depth added to it, usually in the good books, but there are some pieces of crap out there which are just cliches that have been puked out by someone's imagination.

Verne: Journey to the Centre of the Earth. I liked it overall. Very different from the movie. In some ways, I liked the book better and in other ways I liked the movie better. I was about 3/4 finished with the book when I realized they weren't going to meet any people in the centre of the Earth like they did in the movie. It is a good adventure story for people who can appreciate education and knowledge. It's also a very easy read.

Currently Reading: Dubliners by James Joyce