Brown lady at the counter: you are so pretty! you look like a picture.
White lady nearby: you are. I'm thinking national geographic.
I have a vendetta against the idea of"national geographic" aka "exotic" prettiness. Well meaning people, don't make me make you feel awkward by attempting to compliment me with this idea. That the mere paradigm shift of finding beauty in someone without apparently nordic ancestry can be considered worldly, adventurous, cool, rebellious taste makes the rest of white people seem unfairly stuffy. Not to mention that I resent my image being used as a marker of taste, cool or otherwise. That my image can only be beautiful in a way that serves the viewer either objectifies me or suggests a wishful master-slave mindset, which can be synonymous. And since I am neither an object nor a slave probably means the viewer resents me for being who I am where I am. In other words, people who think I'm exotic think I don't belong.
Unless they think that the state of not being in one's native place, being unusually juxtaposed with one's background, is beautiful. In which case, I'm still offended because a brown person among white people is out of place but a white person among brown people is usually construed as worldly, adventurous, cool, rebellious and all you've done is ghettoize me.
I don't really agree with the brown lady's beauty standards either but at least her compliment was really a compliment and not backhanded white supremacy. She proved that by following her compliment up with defending me.
So, what beauty standards do I endorse? That would be inner beauty. What's inner beauty? I'm gonna go with my mom and with Dumbledore and say that inner beauty, which I'm going to say is also eternal beauty, is a well-organized mind. Given my tendency to talk about religion, anti-rationalism, and social justice, maybe you expected this to be focused on the heart. Anyone who gets a Dumbledore citation, though, might guess that your heart should help you organize your mind. I think my heart is where my inner child lives and though I will never shut her out, she is reactionary, fickle and all ego and as an adult, it would be blind or lazy of me to not have learned better about some things.
As I tried to say from the beginning, though I'm not sure I said it the same way, this blog has been mostly about figuring out my organizing principles. I think I like this way of saying it better.
Showing posts with label rules. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rules. Show all posts
Monday, June 25, 2012
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Curation and Cultivation
Since finishing college, maybe even since I began living away from my family, I have begun to realize that the way most people define themselves is in relation to a given set of rules. Some people follow rules provided to them and identify themselves as followers of those rules. Some people defy rules that are provided to them and consider themselves to be rebels, often also identifying themselves with the reasons that they need not follow those rules. A lot of times, people hop between different sets of rules, looking for a set they like. Even more often, people take their given set of rules and modify them to suite their lifestyle.
However, because people use rules as a basis for their identities, they tend to take it personally when others defy, reject, modify, or even follow the same rules as they do. To take a lesson from Huck Finn, rules also have an intimate relationship with morality and justice. On top of which righteousness often involves choosing between following rules that can mean saving yourself and sacrificing others or saving others and sacrificing yourself where "self" is interchangeable with rules and identity and mired in the realm of choice.
Even the way we learn and know can be boiled down to understanding, accepting, and following rules.
Since I was a kid, I have always had a problem with rules. They are what I consider to be a narrow minded way of being. As a daughter of immigrant parents, it often seemed to me that neither my school nor my parents, the two institutions under which I had to operate quite knew what rules really made sense to enforce upon me. My mother thought this was because my grandfather had spoiled me as a child and lead me to believe I was too good for rules, which is probably partially true.
From a young age, I have been choosing when I wanted to follow whatever rules suited my interests. I kept my enemy close when it came to school, by getting such spectacular grades that the teachers just assumed I was a stickler for the rules and neglected to enforce them for me, eventually deeming me an exception-- which I was. Unfortunately, my mother saw me for what I was and defying her over-protective rules required covert operations.
For me, defying rules has never been action based in carelessness or recklessness. In a true mastery of defiance, getting caught should be an act of defiance itself. Or is it an act of identity, identifying the perpetrator simply as a rebel? But I am not happy with being someone who is just "against" some other thing. I crave to learn, not destroy.
As someone who has never followed rules indiscriminately, I struggled in college-- navigating disciplines and bureaucracies. And even more so, I struggled with the freedom to choose and make my own life, freedom I have only gained from leaving my parents' home and from finishing school with zero job prospects. However, I refused to follow any beaten trail guaranteeing success.
Obviously, I have no choice but to make my own rules-- rules I will myself to follow in a lifelong test of my own capacity for learning, adapting, and perhaps teaching others to do the same. I seek not only to know but understand knowing and to pass on that understanding and pass on my refusal to tailor myself to any principles but my own. This is what I do best. Having nothing else to base my principles on, I will have to base them on the curation and cultivation of my interests. Having no platform for the performance of my self-discipline, I begin this blog as a promise to myself and will continue it until my private performance is either satisfactory or preferred.
However, because people use rules as a basis for their identities, they tend to take it personally when others defy, reject, modify, or even follow the same rules as they do. To take a lesson from Huck Finn, rules also have an intimate relationship with morality and justice. On top of which righteousness often involves choosing between following rules that can mean saving yourself and sacrificing others or saving others and sacrificing yourself where "self" is interchangeable with rules and identity and mired in the realm of choice.
Even the way we learn and know can be boiled down to understanding, accepting, and following rules.
Since I was a kid, I have always had a problem with rules. They are what I consider to be a narrow minded way of being. As a daughter of immigrant parents, it often seemed to me that neither my school nor my parents, the two institutions under which I had to operate quite knew what rules really made sense to enforce upon me. My mother thought this was because my grandfather had spoiled me as a child and lead me to believe I was too good for rules, which is probably partially true.
From a young age, I have been choosing when I wanted to follow whatever rules suited my interests. I kept my enemy close when it came to school, by getting such spectacular grades that the teachers just assumed I was a stickler for the rules and neglected to enforce them for me, eventually deeming me an exception-- which I was. Unfortunately, my mother saw me for what I was and defying her over-protective rules required covert operations.
For me, defying rules has never been action based in carelessness or recklessness. In a true mastery of defiance, getting caught should be an act of defiance itself. Or is it an act of identity, identifying the perpetrator simply as a rebel? But I am not happy with being someone who is just "against" some other thing. I crave to learn, not destroy.
As someone who has never followed rules indiscriminately, I struggled in college-- navigating disciplines and bureaucracies. And even more so, I struggled with the freedom to choose and make my own life, freedom I have only gained from leaving my parents' home and from finishing school with zero job prospects. However, I refused to follow any beaten trail guaranteeing success.
Obviously, I have no choice but to make my own rules-- rules I will myself to follow in a lifelong test of my own capacity for learning, adapting, and perhaps teaching others to do the same. I seek not only to know but understand knowing and to pass on that understanding and pass on my refusal to tailor myself to any principles but my own. This is what I do best. Having nothing else to base my principles on, I will have to base them on the curation and cultivation of my interests. Having no platform for the performance of my self-discipline, I begin this blog as a promise to myself and will continue it until my private performance is either satisfactory or preferred.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)