Examining a Life

The unexamined life is not worth living - Socrates, or possibly Thoreau (joke for one)

Professor G. Truck's recent two-part podcast series exploring the roots of individual musical taste got me thinking about a broader topic. I can tell you about my personal values and how that translates to my political views, but I've never really examined the genesis of those things. Until now. 

I can express my core beliefs in one of two ways. There's the instinctual, gut-first clarity of "I fucking hate bullies". And there's the more nuanced, socially acceptable version: I have a great deal of sympathy towards those who are marginalized, and have from a young age.

Back in the day, I thought that those views came to me through a sporting prism. Always loved an underdog. My first sporting passion was the Red Sox, who got sand kicked in their faces on a regular basis, and even when they had a modicum of success, got the prize yanked away in amazingly painful ways.

But as I thought more about it, I realized that just about everyone loves an underdog. So my underlying operating system must've been programmed by something else.

Being a small person has something to do with my makeup, I'm certain. I was very rarely bullied on any kind of persistent basis - I was pretty good at sports as a kid, and I had a quick wit. Those things bought me respect and got me out of most really lousy belittling. I also moved a lot, so I had to learn to make friends and fit in. But I was always conscious of the fact that if the shit hit the fan, the odds were against me if it came down to a match of physical strength, and so I did what was necessary to avoid that. You may notice that I have a lot of pretty large friends.

That underlying and oft-subconscious understanding of my physical place in the world had a lot to do with my taking up for the little guy. Pun absolutely intended. So did the way my parents moved through the world. 

My Dad was an Army officer. He was very circumspect about his personal political views. He was raised outside of Boston (a liberal stronghold) by a very politically conservative father - quite a mix, those. My Mom followed his lead when it came to talking politics at home. I honestly don't remember us ever doing it. Mom's become outspokenly liberal in recent years, especially since my Dad's passing in 2010, so I kinda think she was always that way. 

While Dad was outwardly neutral, I vividly remember two incidents that, upon reflection, give me some insight into how he was wired. When I was 10 or 11, he coached my soccer team. It was a coed team, because we lived on an Army base and there weren't enough girls to have their own team. Before a practice one evening we were fucking around shooting balls at the goal. I drilled one that hit a female teammate in the head and caused her to burst out in tears. I was mortified. Dad was apoplectic. He made me walk the mile and a half back to the house while he conducted the rest of practice. 

Five or six years later, we were watching something on television that featured a dorky Asian character. I laughed and said, "Look at that geek!" Dad yanked me off of the couch, pushed me against the wall and commenced yelling at me to never say that again. In retrospect, I think he thought I used an anti-Asian slur.

The common thread in both of those incidents, both of which are as vivid to me as any childhood memory, was my Dad's rage at his perception that I injured people outside the majority, the in group, the strong. I think we're starting to get somewhere.

I was on the dickhead end of bullying once when I lived in Norfolk as a 7th grader. My family lived on a very small military installation while my Dad attended a Joint Forces advanced school for six months. Kids from the base were bused to school in the city. I went to a middle school that was significantly majority African-American. My Mom likes to tell the story that I earned my classmates' respect because I was a pretty good basketball player. I honestly don't remember that. I do remember something I did, because I remain ashamed of it to this day.

On a bus ride home one afternoon, I got into a verbal altercation with a young Black kid. As it escalated, I mocked him for wearing the school's PE uniform outside of class, and implied that he was too poor to have nice clothes. I won't ever forget the pain in his eyes, and I knew as soon as I said it that I'd struck way too close to the truth. I think it's the cruelest thing I've ever said or done. And 40+ years later, it stings me to know I did it. 

That incident stayed with me more than any incident where I was bullied. Happened every now and again. Broke a tooth when some bigger kids dropped me in a garbage can at a baseball game. Had an asshole sophomore single me out for a while my freshman year of high school because I was one of the few kids smaller than him. That pain didn't last, but the helplessness I felt at the time did color my view of bullies for a lifetime.

I have a visceral reaction to people and institutions that punch down. One of the things that enrages me so about the modern GOP of Trump and DeSantis and Gaetz and Greene is the glee with which they seek to humiliate the meek while creating ever more advantage for the strong. The Atlantic columnist Adam Serwer published a collection of essays in 2018 entitled, "The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump's America" that illustrates the phenomenon better than I can. Whether the subject of ire du jour be trans, gay, Black, female, it is overwhelmingly people in positions of power (or those seeking to align with power) forcibly holding down those they perceive as beneath them.

So it seems that there's a bit of nature and nurture involved in the formation and evolution of my values. How much of each, who's to say. And whether I'm even on the right path with respect to this self-examination. I could be completely deluding myself, merrily tooling along in the matrix, thinking I have individual will and self-determination.

In the end, this was a pretty quick stream of consciousness tour down and around the rabbit warrens (do squirrels have warrens?) in the part of my brain that controls what I value. Gonna do some sanding and polishing and come back to this topic, because it interests me. And maybe only me. You guys can thank Professor G. Truck.