Unethical Me!

[dawn_felagund]

I am doing something wholly unethical for money. And here I am, admitting it.

My boss has a friend--an ex-State trooper--who is taking a statistics class for his MBA. And struggling with it. So my boss got us hooked up--being as I know a thing or two about stats--so that I could help him along. So he came over today and brought a whole stack of work...due Tuesday.

While working on it, it evolved from Dawn tutoring into Dawn doing the problems into "Dawn, will you finish this for me and I'll pay you?"

And I said yes.

Bad 'gund! Bad bad 'gund! *hangs head in shame*

It's tax time, I admit. I could use the money. Bobby and I live a simple life with no children and lots of savings and that means that we owe money, despite the fact that my income puts me just above the poverty line (and Bobby's isn't anything stellar). This country punishes people who want to save by taxing their interest year after year...after taxing the income that put the savings there in the first place. We're saving for a home and a business--two supposed "American dreams"--and apparently that's not as acceptable as squeezing out a few kids and settling into a life of debt.

Anyway.

So the stats stuff is...well, going. It's been literally years since I did any of this stuff. My boss' eyes cross when I mention anything more than an average. (And he doesn't even know that there's more than one kind of average! I tried to explain this once, and his eyes crossed and his head spun....) Never mind the fact that I don't like the program I have to do it in, and one of the exercises apparently has a bug that prevents it from recognizing the correct null and alternate hypotheses even when I put them in correctly, meaning that it's impossible to complete the exercise. Of course, I wasted a half-hour figuring this out.

And while I'm on a roll, I might as well admit as well that I am becoming an intolerant person. My sister posted an LJ entry about the South Dakota abortion ban, and she got me thinking (as she has a tendency to do). I remember past conversations with my sister where we discussed whether we should be ashamed to be Americans and whether the current political climate is fostering intolerance (in us) for Christians. Not just the nutjobs...but all Christians.


I have Christian friends. And I want to maintain that I am not feeling a twinge of intolerance toward Christians....

But there is a deep place where bias rests where I do twinge. Despite the friends; despite the fact that I know it's wrong. But when someone introduces him/herself as a Christian, I feel my guard fly up. I go on the defensive. I expect to be confronted about my beliefs--or lack thereof.

On the other hand, when I learn that someone is an atheist or an agnostic (like me), I feel instantly more comfortable with them. "Okay, you're good peeps." Right? No!!! Of course not! Atheism/agnosticism doesn't make someone "good" anymore than Christianity makes someone pushy and intolerant, and I know this in the part of my mind where logic lives. But in the place of deep-down conditioned bias, I flinch when someone admits, "I'm Christian" or "I'm religious" or starts talking about his/her church. And an evil part of me wants to start talking about gay marriage or abortion or stem cell research, just to provoke the person and prove my own stupid, biased hypothesis.

And this makes me want to throttle the conservative nutjobs all the more because I used to deeply respect faith--even though it is not the spiritual choice that I have made in my own life--and now I find that being replaced by something bitter because of what is happening in South Dakota; because of the snafu where they wanted to protect the "rights" of pharmacists to destroy a woman's birth control prescription; because of the fact that they want their fairy tales and icons in every school, court, and park in the country; because they can't let people like me just be.

Yet I know most Christians are not that way. Most Christians are like me and recognize that their own morality and the law can be--indeed, sometimes, need to be--different. Most Christians celebrate diversity and recognize that people of different beliefs make the world a better and more interesting place.

But still: I twinge.

Comments

[juno-magic.livejournal.com]

As a historian I *know* about the roots of America - theoretically.

It's just still absolutely confusticating me how that is visible today in so many tangible every-day situations in America.

I grew up to imagine America as some kind of paradise of freedom and unlimited possibilities, and every American still has kind of a halo for me...

My parents grew up with Americans being virtually their *saviours*. They were both children of refugees after WWII. The first Christmas tree that my Dad ever saw was the tree of the Commander of the American Forces! And there's a tale about my husband's father of how the children of his village encountered their first oranges - gifts by American soldiers: only the kids did not know that those orange things were food! They thought they were toys, some kind of weird balls...

Growing up with that kind of image of America simply still leaves me astonished and overwhelmed at... certain kinds of strong convictions.

I think that a part of that astonishement is also due to the fact that most people in my country, for very good reason, are suspicious and fearful about any kind of very strong convictions, no matter about what. The way we had to learn that was very, very bitter.

I've been reading a number of political blogs written by Americans and one thing that comes up again and again is a fear of extremist forces taking over. I've to admit that this frightens me. I hope and I think that America can grow beyond its Puritan roots. I believe that the world needs such an open, free, critical and tolerant America very much.

[frenchpony.livejournal.com]

I grew up to imagine America as some kind of paradise of freedom and unlimited possibilities, and every American still has kind of a halo for me...

Yeah. That's the story. That's the story that we tell and that everyone wants to believe. We hope the world doesn't ask about witch hunts, slavery, what we did to the Native Americans, the Japanese internment camps, McCarthyism. . .

I do think the world needs an open, free, critical and tolerant nation. I would like it to be America. But I don't know that we as a country are quite ready to take on that role. I don't know if there is a country that's really ready to take on that role. The best we can do right now is to work toward it.

[juno-magic.livejournal.com]

The best we can do right now is to work toward it.

Actually, I believe that we *are* doing something much better here, right now.

In political sciences a hott! topic is if such a thing like a global (or even only European!) public is possible, and how it could be possible.

I think discussions such as this one are *proof* that this global public is already emerging. We are taking an interest in a political or social problem and discuss it in various contexts, national, international and historical.

I keep getting accused of being "idealistic", but I think the evidence is all around us. It's still a long way, and maybe we'll never get there. But I think there are a lot of people of our generation who are already on their way.

And that, I think is pretty hopeful!

[frenchpony.livejournal.com]

Uh-oh. I'm now having flashbacks to my seminar last semester, when we spent an inordinate amount of time talking about The Global in relation to the music industry.

[juno-magic.livejournal.com]

Sorry!