Lots of thoughts

* Something occurred to me this morning. I was reading an article on MetaFilter (I know, I know, but...) where people were complaining how the "skeptic" (I presume: "Agnostic and atheist") movement had been taken over by the "mansplainer" type - the person who seems to know it all, who (stereotypically) responds to something someone says with "Well, actually....*"

(*one of the funnier jokes I remember from Twitter: "Where does a mansplainer get his water? From a well, actually....")

And they were kind of bemoaning the whole thing. And I realized something: this is something that happens in a LOT of communities. Fandoms. Discussion groups. Other places. And I realized it boils down to a couple of things:

1. Humility. This is, I think, the biggest thing. If you're not willing to allow the possibility that you might be wrong, you tend to fossilize in your opinions and then want to make everyone else AT LEAST aware of them, but also try to convince others of them. If you have humility, you're willing to go "Okay, maybe I'm wrong" or "Maybe my experience isn't universal" and I think that opens the door for being more willing to listen to other people.

I know some of the most annoying (to me at least) people I've had to deal with in recent years were ones who would not allow the possibility that either they were mistaken (sometimes even when the proof was staring them in the face) or that their experience wasn't universal. (Also known as the This Diet Worked For Me So It Will Work For You mindset)

Another thing, and I've not talked about this annoyance but it is one: the whole "Science: it works, b*tches" mindset irks me. I am (at least nominally) a scientist. I do research. I crunch numbers. One of the things I've had handed to me again and again is that it's entirely possible to be WRONG about stuff. And also, an ongoing theme in ecology at least - what is the case in one system may not be in another system.

The people who talk about how much they "love" science....well, in a lot of cases, it seems to me that "science" as an amorphous concept is a replacement for whatever religious structure the person has rejected. Science is....in my mind, it's more of a tool. It's a way of relating to the natural world. The problem is, a lot of the "I ****ing Love Science" crowd seem also bent on sucking any of the mystery and wonder out of things, or at least that's how some of them talk about it. And that makes me sad. Yes, I kind of understand what is known about monarch butterfly migration but STILL I look at them and am AMAZED that something that looks so fragile and is so tiny flies thousands of miles to a place in Mexico that they've never seen, to hang out over winter....and that they are phenologically different from the other generations of butterflies in that they hold off reproducing for MONTHS until they come back into the US in the spring....and it does amaze me and make me wonder at it.

Maybe I'm different from some folks in that I kind of have a "foot in both camps" - I do science for a living but Sunday mornings I'm in church, so I can still kind of look at stuff in nature and, while I'm not a creationist, it's like....I don't know, the phrase "fingerprints of God" would not be too far away from it.

And again, as I said, science is a tool, really. Or at least that's how I see it. (And I admit: just as some days the dude who makes shoes for a living probably really hates his last and awl, there are days I just get tired of science. Where I'd rather go do something else)

2. The whole gatekeeping thing, the "you must be this enthusiastic (or cool, or knowledgeable, or whatever) to join." This seems more common in fandoms, but on some level it exists everywhere.

(I STILL remember someone on my Master's committee commenting how my research - something I spent two and a half years of my life on - was a "nice little project" and yeah, someone later told me, "Don't mind what he said, he's just a butt" but still...it stung, and it still stings when someone dismisses something I put a lot of effort into).

I mean, yeah, I get it: the way some people feel big is by making others feel small, but it's not nice. And I doubt the "big feeling" lasts very long.

Also, as I've said before, especially about craft gatekeeping, where you're unwilling to let people make mistakes at first, or unwilling to pass on tips and hints - that's how a craft dies; we need new people getting interested in stuff to sustain it.

3. Nitpicking every darn little thing. Again, this is a bigger deal with fandom, and perhaps in some areas (like writing manuscripts) you HAVE to nitpick your work. But the whole, "Oh, they used an OFF color palette for Lyra Heartstrings in S2E6 she was THIS PARTICULAR SHADE OF GREEN (giving the HTML color code) instead of THIS SHADE (giving the different code) and that's evidence of how sloppy the animators were at first" (or worse, going into some big fanmade conspiracy about how the ORIGINAL Lyra is dead and the one we have now is a replacement....)

And again, it's part of gatekeeping - and part of not being humble; it's wanting to show everyone how involved (or how smart) you are by going into EXHAUSTIVE detail about stuff. And I admit, while I love geeking out on some things (I once waved my hands and said "it's parasitoids inside parasitoids" in class when I was talking about how some gall wasps take over the galls that other gall wasps use), the nitpicky type of geeking out seems designed to build walls and set the person up as an authority, rather than (what I hope I am conveying) the feeling of "Look, this thing is really cool, look what I learned about it!"

And yeah, there is kind of the micturational combat of "I'm a bigger fan than you are!" that seems to be inherent in these things. I saw something on tumblr (I am heavily paraphrasing here) that a pony collector wrote:

"Me, to a guy I'm chatting up on a date: "So I have this toy left over from childhood, her name is Sparklewishes and she's a pony with hair you can comb. Oh, and she has a star on her butt" 
Him: "This is nuts but tell me more about it"


Me, to a guy I met in 2013: "So I have this toy named Sparklewishes and she's a pony...."
Him: "Yes, I know VERY WELL what she is, but do you have the ORIGINAL pose or the remake that was issued six months later? And do you still have her original ribbon? And anyway, I have turned her into an OC and she is now featured in my eighteen fanfictions where I describe in detail her various fetishes...." "

And yeah, that's extreme, but.....the whole "Let me cut you off and tell you how I'm better than you" thing doesn't exactly....predispose me to want to be your friend (or, anything MORE than "friend" for that matter)

I dunno. Being human is difficult and I don't like it when people make it MORE difficult.

*I said "I know, I know" about MetaFilter and one thing I'm learning about reading that place is: wow, there are a lot of people who like to talk about how THEIR way is the BEST way. There was one thread recently about....I forget what, cord-cutting maybe? Where of course the "TV rots your brain and I haven't had once since 1978" crowd had to weigh in.

And a more recent one was about something called FIRE (Financial Independence; Retire Early). And yeah, for some people, that's an admirable goal, and if you want to try for that, God be with you. But. Apparently some of the gurus of this think people who choose to live otherwise are "foolish" and it's almost like the bad old line "Nothing tastes better than thin feels" (which is a dirty lie: when you've been working out in the mud and heat for five hours, and you come home and fix yourself, say, a roast-beef sandwich, there is NOTHING that could feel better than that refueling.) The idea is you deny yourself a lot of the little treats of life in order to pile up that money so you can leave your job early....

And yeah, no. Okay, I get being frugal. I am frugal in some ways. I carry my lunch to work (though that is as much out of a "Ugh, there are no restaurants nearby, and anyway, restaurant food has too much salt and the portions are generally bigger than what I can eat" as anything). I'm not a gadgeteer. But I like comfort. I like having nice tea and good soap and keeping my house at a comfortable temperature (That's another thing: the people who hold out FOREVER before putting the heat or air conditioning on depending on season. I'm sorry: if I'm shivering in  my house (like I was yesterday at lunch - it was down to 67 F) I'm putting the heat on, even if just for a bit, even if I just heat it up 2 or 3 degrees....) I feel like, I work hard, I should have some little enjoyments NOW, especially since I know how to budget and I am not breaking the bank. But apparently some of these gurus would tell me to use the cheapest possible brand of soap* from the wal-mart or that tea is too expensive and I should drink water instead....there's almost an aggressiveness about some of the programs, like if you aren't following the most extreme model, you're weak and a worm and all of that, and....life is hard enough already.

(*Or make my own. That's another big thing in the frugality movement. And it's great, I suppose, if you enjoy it and have time.....but I do not have time to make laundry soap out of lye and fat, and it wouldn't "spark joy" for me....and a lot of the frugality people seem to elide the fact that being super frugal often means doing the equivalent of another full-time job, and you know what? I'm so tired these days when I get home that having to go out and, I don't know, grind grain for flour, would make me want to weep. If we have to put up with some of the awfulnesses of the 21st century, I feel, we should also take advantage of some of the good things)

And part of it is, "What am I living for, then" - yes, I know, "deferred gratification" but there's a point where you need SOME gratification. Being able to sit down with a nice cup of tea or buy new sheets just because is a pleasure.

And the other thing is this: life is uncertain. I know too many people who were struck down younger than they wanted to be from cancer, or a heart attack, or a car wreck. And, for all we know, we could wind up "all going together" at some point. (What is the Doomsday Clock at now? Two minutes to midnight?) And I don't know, I feel like saving every single darned penny for some future that may never actually happen, to the point where you are kind of low-grade miserable now, seems not a good strategy.

(One thing we were discussing in Policy and Law is how "people are bad at moderation." And I think that's true: I often fall victim to all-or-nothing thinking, and I am more self-aware of that tendency than some. And I think some of the more extreme frugality programs are almost the reverse of the hoarder psychology - instead of buying and keeping everything, you are buying and owning nothing, and neither one of those strategies works to fill whatever hole one might have in their soul. I'd rather budget and maybe forego some things (lots of restaurant meals) but be able to buy a nice book now and then, or have slightly better-grade groceries, or go antiquing once in a while with the plan of "if I see something I really like, I can buy it")

* My allergies are v. bad this morning. I guess ragweed pollen is high. We need rain, badly. (We might get some this weekend. I sincerely hope we do - would also save me having to water the field plots this weekend.

I'm also sore. My knees and hips hurt and I don't know why. I wonder if allergies can make you hurt like that. (I had what was maybe a cramp in one of my shins earlier, but it's gone away - I was afraid, based on the pain, that I had "tweaked" my knee and damaged it - because of the way the female pelvis is, apparently, it's easier for us to "blow" a knee by turning badly, and I know I turned sharply in my office yesterday and felt a tiny "pop" in my knee (like cracking a knuckle) but it didn't hurt....but the pain has gone down now (it was bad enough it made concentrating on piano practice hard) so I don't know. It could be I overtaxed a muscle slightly in the workout this morning.

* I'm making some progress on the owl sweater; I have started the first band of "big" owls. I guess I'm not TOO terribly far off of the "divide for armholes (which, thank goodness, will be steeks: I would hate doing colorwork where I had to do PURL rows and think about it "backwards")

I also worked a bit more on the new socks last night. I may need to intersperse some simpler projects with the owl thing.