All Your Life Is Channel 13

There's been a lot of talk about how Sesame Street is introducing a muppet character with autism. That fits the strategy they often use, of demonstrating something from the real world using their characters.

I was thinking that's a pretty good idea; its a concept that kids won't know very well, and this will help them to understand it and learn how to deal with people with autism.  Of course, then I realized, that's actually a lesson most of us in society need to learn.  This isn't a case of teaching kids how to cross the street, which the rest of us learned a long time ago.  In this case, it's something everyone should have learned, but we grew up before they invented empathy.

So perhaps we need a sort of Sesame Street for adults. Okay, that sentence probably took you to a very strange place that I did not intend, and I apologize. What I mean is, we need a show that explains the modern world to us in the same simple way. There could be a trans muppet, a millennial muppet, senior muppet, poor muppet, Trump-voter muppet. We'd learn about everyone in society, and the proper way a mature adult behaves towards them.

Yes, I guess our actual TV shows occasionally do this very thing, usually during A Very Special Episode.  But we need something faster and more direct.  And perhaps teach people other basic things, from balancing a bank account to downloading apps. Hmm, what else to people need help with...learning that the Earth is round?  Okay, maybe we all need to go back to watching the actual Sesame Street instead.

Lock Around The Clock

They're refurbishing some of the apartments in my building right now, and today someone arrived to deliver supplies to one of those rooms.  Unfortunately, the delivery guy got the number wrong, and tried putting them in my apartment instead.  Of course, he figured out something was wrong when he tried to open my door and found that it was locked.  But it was an unsettling surprise to me to suddenly hear someone try opening the door without knocking first.

It's a good thing I remembered to lock the door, or it would have been more embarrassing.  Usually I do lock it, but sometimes glance at the door and notice that it's unlocked.  That makes me wonder, just how often does it really make a difference to lock it?  No, I'm not bragging about living in a nice neighbourhood where you don't have to lock the door.  I'm just marvelling at how society works.

Say I go away for a week: how likely is it that someone will actually try my door to see if it is locked?  Based on how many people have actually tried it while I'm here, I'd say it's likely that I could leave the door unlocked for that whole vacation, and no one would come in.  Again, it's not because everyone in the world is honest; it's because we expect doors to be locked.  So we don't actually have to lock our doors, but that's only because we always lock our doors.

Jesus Built My Hotrod

There are a lot of situations where different people have very different attitudes and actions. Take speeding. Lots of people go over the speed limit. On highways, here in Canada, it's the vast majority. But even there, there's a lot of variations. Some just go a little over the limit. Some act as though there is no limit. Most, I think, are like me: pick the maximum speed that won't get you a ticket, and treat that as the limit. And actually feel guilty when you realize you've gone over this pseudo-limit even though it's actually well beyond the posted limit.

But the important point is that even though we all have such different attitudes to speeding, we all know that we have all these different attitudes. That's for the simple reason that we drive in public, so we can all see the general approaches we take. I may not like people who drive as fast as they can, and I may feel morally superior for staying at an arbitrary but still-illegal speed. But I'm not surprised that some people drive like that. My world view includes people who think the laws don't apply to them, both the laws of the road and the laws of physics.

Other aspects of life are not like this. Alcohol is a good one. Other than a drink with dinner in a restaurant, we mostly drink in private. Yes, there are bars, but the only people seeing you drink in bars are other people drinking in bars. The point is that people with vastly different attitudes to alcohol won't see you, and thus, may not know just how much alcohol gets drunk there. Some people drink little or nothing, some drink every day, some binge drink. But if you've only spent your life in one of those types of households, you may not know that the other types exist. Or at least, you may not know how many there are.

Of course, you may not have this problem, depending on what type of person you are. Do you talk to other people? Even people with different backgrounds? Do you listen to them? Okay, do you at least read? Or watch meaningful movies and TV? If so, you may break out of this problem. For instance, I've always lived in low-alcohol environments, but, well, I've noticed that not everyone is like that. So I'm not shocked by people at any extreme of the alcohol spectrum. But I still run into people who are shocked to find that the alcohol experiences of them and their families is not the rule.

And then there's religion. Like alcohol, it's something we do in private, or surrounded by people with the same experience. But there's also the taboo against even talking about it in public, and we tend to live around people with similar religions. So even more so than alcohol, we often have no idea that other people in our society may have very different beliefs. And that's made worse by the fact that no matter your beliefs (or lack thereof) there's people in your religious circles who are misrepresenting others.

I'm constantly amazed at what people don't know about other religious beliefs. People greatly over- or underestimate how much different religions have in common. I see theists think atheists are anything from immoral to depressed. And there are atheists think that all religious people believe the same things. In these cases, we not only suffer from not seeing how each other live, we also have people within our own communities spreading falshoods about other groups. And without the opportunity to see for ourselves, we come to believe those things. The only way out is to start getting to know others with an open mind. Only then can we make religion more like speeding and less like drinking.

With Friends Like These...

What's up with good guys fighting each other? First Batman Vs. Superman, now Captain America: Civil War, which seems to actually be Captain America Vs. Iron Man: Plus Avengers that Won't Get Their Own Movies. Yes, I know, I already complained about pitting arbitrarily-powered superheroes against each other. But know I'm wondering why we suddenly feel the need to have good guys fight each other. It does go against the usual rule of action movies, which dictates that you need a great bad guy.

Of course, the obvious explanation is that it parallels modern American society, where everyone seems more interested in fighting each other than in fighting the nation's enemies. That seems like a good explanation, though it would be better if the battling heroes seemed more representative of America's cultural poles. I mean, Superman and Batman don't really have differing views of the world. Okay, maybe Clark Kent wrote an article supporting the Capital Gains Tax, and Bruce Wayne took it personally, but that's a stretch. I mean it would be nice if the heroes at war in a movie actually represented the two sides of the American culture war. You could film it like Godzilla Vs. King Kong, where (Spoiler Alert) there were two endings so that Japanese and American audiences each got to see the home-town-favourite monster win. In this case, they'd just distribute different endings to red and blue states.

Or maybe in today's confused world, the line between good and bad is sort of arbitrary. Afterall, the next big event in the DC Cinematic Universe is Suicide Squad, in which a collection of bad guys are the protagonists. So the good guys fight each other, the bad guys are doing good, Jesse Eisenberg is Lex Luthor; nothing makes sense anymore. And we have already had a few enemies/anti-heroes fighting each other in movies: there was the aforementioned Godzilla Vs. King Kong, plus Alien Vs. Predator and Freddy Vs. Jason.

Pray For Peace, Or Don't, Whatever

I've heard it said that when religions begin, they go through a period of extreme proselytizing where the adherents truly believe they are going to change the world and win everyone over. But after a while, they cool it; they haven't given up their beliefs, or even their goal of convincing the whole world to join them, but they start to realize that it's going to take a while. Any spiritual revolution will take centuries, and the current faithful will not be around to see it. It becomes clear that in the meantime, they're going to have to deal with living on a planet where most people disagree with them.

And that's how so many people around the world get along with one another. Yes, there are plenty of examples of people not accepting each other's religious beliefs, but even the most cynical has to concede that the majority of people get along the majority of the time. They may have profoundly different views of the nature of the universe, but they realize that at some point you just have to get on with your life.

Which brings us to atheism. Or specifically, "New Atheism," the more assertive brand being championed by folks like Richard Dawkins. Atheists tend to dislike being classed as a religion, so they may not like where this is going. I'm not saying it's a religion, but for the purpose of this discussion, it has sufficient similarity: it's an idea about the nature of reality, and an idea that some people agree with, and others disagree with. Even if those ideas come about in a different way than religious belief, people with that belief still have the same challenge as any religion: how to deal with people who disagree, and are unlikely to be convinced.

I think that's the source of many of New Atheism's missteps. Although atheism has been around since the dawn of time (however you see it) it's only been a cooperative, political force in the twenty-first century. And thus, it's still at the stage of seriously believing that it can win over everyone.

This came out recently with the news that Dawkins suffered a minor stroke. (Fortunately, it appears he's going to be alright.) When news of his illness came out, the Church of England put out a tweet urging prayers for Dawkins.

Prayers for Prof Dawkins and his family https://t.co/KxBBkBrECk

— Church of England (@c_of_e) February 12, 2016

A lot of people were upset by that, accusing the church of either trolling or being passive-aggressive. But really, this is a good example of the need to get along with others. Part of getting along is allowing others to do the little harmless things they feel is important but you don't believe in. It may seem nonsensical to thank someone for doing something that you are sure is not helping, but it's better for our shared society if you do.

Societal Transformation

Lots of people are celebrating the U.S. Supreme Court's granting of gay marriage rights. Yeah, I remember supporting gay rights; this was back before most people had even heard of it. It was cool then, but then it went mainstream, the big companies got involved, and it just wasn't the same. Hey, you know what is hot right now? Trans rights. You should look into it; it's gonna be real big soon.

But seriously, there seems to be an assumption that the trans movement is just going to follow along and repeat the progress that homosexuals have made. The gay rights movement went at incredible speed: I’m sure it didn't seem that way to people struggling to win rights for themselves, but compared to the progress of blacks or women, it's pretty amazing.

So can transgender people expect a similarly quick breakthrough? It could be that there is an accelerating effect in social justice. That is, each movement we go through gives a push to the next one to come along. During the gay rights push, there's been a lot of talk about being "on the right side of history" as people seem to be automatically looking at the issue in the long term and considering the comparison to other previous struggles. I've also been impressed at how other groups are drawing lines between the Indiana protests and their own struggles for acceptance. That empathy makes me hope that we are developing a more universal attitude to equality.

But there's also reason to believe that we'll be slower to accept the T than we were to accept the L, G and B. One problem - that trans activists themselves seem to have missed - is a lack of knowledge.

The fact is, society doesn't know much about the concept. I mean, homosexuality wasn't widely accepted when I was young, but we were still taught about it in health class. Pretty much everyone knew what it was, and that was a big part of its quick acceptance: it didn't seem mysterious or scary.

But for most of us, transgender people are a mystery. Most of what the mainstream knows about the concept has centred around reassignment surgery, and that's only been reported on as a novelty. That was an easy sitcom joke in the 80’s with some vague relationship to Sweden, but people didn’t learn anything about the actual transgender experience.

And this is where I believe the trans community has done itself a disservice by assuming that the wave of acceptance will be quick and easy. There's been a frosty reception given to people who ask questions of transgender people.

Of course, some of that is completely understandable. There have been a few embarrassing interviews where transgender celebrities have been asked about the state of their genitals. I think we can all relate to that; no one wants to talk about their genitals on national TV (hopefully.)

But I've also seen condemnation of people being unaware of the difference between transgender people and, say, drag queens. While I'm sure that's aggravating to people living in the trans community, I have to admit that only a few years ago, I wouldn't have known the difference. I consider myself fairly open-minded, but that ignorance would have been due not to prejudice or lack of concern, but just from not having the opportunity to learn.

But there's another roadblock to trans acceptance: the sheer amount of rearranging of concepts we're all going to have to do. As the last century has shown us, it takes a while to change our view of gender. Feminism has been a coherent political force for over half a century and we're still working on how we see women. Now we have to change the very idea of gender, that's not going to be easy.

This reminds me of the criticism often levelled at the campaign for gay marriage: that they are "redefining" marriage. That argument has never been convincing to me because 1. Who cares? Let's make a new definition if the old one is no longer adequate. And 2. Gay marriage really wasn't redefining marriage, since marriage - even among heterosexuals - had come to mean a commitment between people in love, not a basis for procreation. I think that's a big reason why the acceptance of gay marriage spread so fast: it fit into most people's idea of what marriage is.

The acceptance of transfolk really is a redefinition of the popular concept of gender though. The fact is a lot of people really do think of gender as defined by our genitalia. We've had enough trouble trying to grasp the idea that gender roles can't be universally enforced while still acknowledging that there may be differing tendencies between the genders. Now we have to see the genders as highly fluid and changeable, but without throwing out the idea of gender altogether.

One of the more interesting (and disturbing) aspects of the trans rights movement that I've seen is that there is a subset of feminists who are highly opposed to them. That may come as a surprise if you think - as I do - that feminism and other struggles for rights are based on the philosophy that people should be free to be the person they want to be, without having to conform to what society expects of them. But if you’ve dedicated yourself to allowing everyone freedom from the restrictions of gender roles, then changing your gender seems unnecessary, and indeed seems like undoing your work against prejudice.

Don’t shoot the messenger here, I’m just trying to explain others’ point of view. Personally, I don’t buy it, since transgender people don’t really seem like exaggerations of their adopted gender. They usually are no more feminine/masculine than cisfolk. My point is that people from all over the political spectrum are going to have their views on gender challenged by the acceptance of trans rights, so this is going to be an uncomfortable struggle for all of society.