![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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.
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.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-27 05:13 pm (UTC)I've had some long debates with Christian friends on the subject. I agree with you; I do think that Christians, especially white Christians, are a very comfortable majority in this country. But some of my Christian friends would not agree. They would argue that real Christians are a minority. To say this, they define "Christians" not as "the default religious option in America" but as "people who are truly committed to their faith and living a religious lifestyle."
If you go by their definition, there are probably far fewer Christians in the country that one might assume. But that's still a sizeable minority that includes both the nutjobs and the more rational people of faith.
The thing is that there are nutjobs in the more conservative branches of all three monotheistic faiths. There are nutjob Christians, nutjob Jews, and nutjob Muslims. The nutjob Jews mostly bother liberal Jews, so you don't hear much about them, and they're not massively aggressive even then. The nutjob Muslims tend not to be the ones living in America. But America is the world stronghold for nutjob Christianity. It's also a religion that encourages proseletyzing, so that it's pretty easy for the committed ones to get aggressive. Therefore, you notice them more.
But that's not all Christians. It's just the nutjobs, and they happen to be the loudest.
Were you brought up Christian? I know you're not Christian now, but was that part of your childhood?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-27 05:33 pm (UTC)I know this. Which is why I know that the "bias" I feel lately is wrong.
Were you brought up Christian? I know you're not Christian now, but was that part of your childhood?
I remember being elementary-aged and my grandmother asking me, "Dawn, do you know what religion you are?" I remember stammering (because I did not, but her tone implied that I should) and being embarrassed to answer no...but that's what I did because I had no idea what "religion" I was supposed to be.
My grandmother, I recall, then got upset with my parents, thus verifying my reluctance/shame in giving my answer.
My family is Catholic in the sense that my dad went to Catholic school and I was even baptized Catholic. However, we never once went to church in my childhood except for other people's occasions--weddings, Communions, etc--and I didn't even know what "Catholic" was until I got to high school. Then, I learned mostly because I had a non-Christian friend being forced through Catholic education by her parents, and she explained a lot to me without thinking it odd that I even needed to ask.
I went to Christian day camp one summer when I was 10 because it was the only local day camp. I don't remember it being very religious, though. We had to learn a daily Bible passage in sign language; it was mostly just cool to learn sign language. And we swam twice a day, played capture the flag, and got to canoe on the lake. I remember that more than anything "Christian" about the place...although apparently my sister can still recite one of those Bible passages!
I had a Bible and gold cross earrings, but the meaning of those things was lost on me. The Bible was a good reference for literature and the earrings are on my earring ladder with the others that I now cannot wear, as my blood/injury phobia has gotten worse. I think I wore them once, on Easter, the day I was given them by my grandmother. (She was pleased; I was ambivalent.)
I've always had the impression that my grandmother wanted me to be brought up more religiously than I was. Even my mom, I sensed, felt that I should be going through Sunday school and Communion because it's what all the parents in our community did, and I--and so she--was set apart because I didn't. Not that I noticed until high school, where all of my friends were being confirmed and I was not. Religion just wasn't discussed among my peers. By high school, though, I'd settled on agnosticism, so I felt more pity for them than any sort of envy.
Recently, I was a bridesmaid in the wedding of a guy who was a mutual friend of Bobby and me. He was marrying a Polish woman, and I was the only bridesmaid who not only didn't speak Polish but wasn't Catholic. At their (overlong, very boring) wedding ceremony, the time came for Communion, and being seated on the aisle, I was expected to go up first. I stood to the side to let the next girl pass me. She pushed me and said, "You go first." I replied, "I can't; I'm not Catholic," and the look she gave me was one of not being good enough to wipe her shoes on.
So whether all of these things amount to being brought up in any sort of religion...I'll let you decide that!