Why

My mom is very conservative and very Christian and I'm very... not. We don't agree on anything. Although we have lots of conversations during which I explain my points of view, she still has trouble understanding where I'm coming from. She asked me to write out why I believe what I believe. I have been thinking about it for a while, stewing it over. There's so much to say and I don't think I could ever find the perfect words. This fear of inadequate articulation held me back for a while, but I finally just sat down to write it. I don't think she expected this fucking dissertation, but here it is. Here is my attempt to explain myself. (Note: it contains lengthy descriptions of global warming and some basic tenets of social justice because my mom never educated herself about these things. They may seem unnecessary, but I felt that they were important for her to read.)

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Mom, I know that reading the following essay will be hard for you. We have such drastically different opinions and beliefs. I ask that you please read this essay in its entirety. Please try to manage any resistance you feel. I am sure you will feel it quite often. You may want to immediately refute an idea I bring up. You can surely do that, but please, just read through it at least once without coming up with your counterattack yet. The purpose of my writing this was to attempt to explain myself. I have done that to the best of my ability, but I don't want your critiques yet. What you're about to read is a direct contradiction of the media you consume, the politics you espouse, and the foundational beliefs of your religion. It will no doubt be painful to read, and for that I am sorry. My purpose is not to cause you pain, but to give you a glimpse of my reasoning. So, please, try to read on with an open mind. And when you feel the waves of resistance coming up, please try to quell them at least until you have read this through in its entirety. I love you.

Mom, you think I was brainwashed in college, but I can trace the origins of my divergent thinking back to the sixth grade. A friend (Sophie, I think) sent me some video clips from An Inconvenient Truth. After watching them, I was shaken. I couldn't believe that humans were destroying our one precious, fragile, living planet. It seemed so... counterproductive. Did Al Gore brainwash me, then? I'm sure you'll find some way of framing it like that, but in my view, Gore presented me with scientific facts I had previously known nothing about. I know you think global warming is a hoax, but here's the scientific reasoning behind it. I've tried explaining before, but it might sink in more once you read it.

Earth's atmosphere has what is called a greenhouse effect. I found a good description of the greenhouse effect from the Australian Dept. of Agriculture, Water & the Environment: "The greenhouse effect is a natural process that warms the Earth’s surface. When the Sun’s energy reaches the Earth’s atmosphere, some of it is reflected back to space and the rest is absorbed and re-radiated by greenhouse gases." Look at the website I linked; it has a great diagram of this process. The greenhouse effect allows life to exist on earth; it keeps some warmth here whereas otherwise, it would just bounce off back into space. Earth would be frigid and lifeless without it. The problem is that humans are releasing tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere— way more than is natural and way more than is safe. Greenhouse gases are gases that absorb and emit radiant energy. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and some artificial chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons. Cars, planes, power plants, and other human activities produce an inordinate amount of these greenhouse gases. These gases trap heat in the atmosphere. A little bit or even a moderate amount would be fine. But the overload of heat-trapping gases is causing heat from the sun to be, well, trapped. With nowhere to go. So, the more heat-trapping gasses in the atmosphere, the more heat. Hence global warming. Yet, the term "global warming" can be misleading, as you've pointed out. "Climate change" is more accurate to describe everything that is happening. Yes, the climate has changed throughout history. We've had ice ages and whatnot. But humans are contributing an overwhelming amount to pumping the atmosphere full of heat-trapping gases. Along with hotter weather, we can also expect more erratic weather. As the planet warms, icebergs and icecaps will melt, and ocean levels will rise. Coastal cities will flood. There will be more wildfires and droughts.

So, there was your science lesson. I hope you absorbed this information with minimal resistance. The sources I linked to are reliable and they speak the truth I learned in my science classes growing up. It doesn't have to be political, Mom. This is serious. This is our only home.

This is an essay of why, but I can't really explain to you why I've always cared deeply about the environment. I just always have. It wasn't ever a question. I never viewed Earth as something only good for how much money people could make from selling its land or cutting down its trees. No, I've always felt a deep connection to it. Alan Watts said, “You didn't come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here.” This planet is my home; it grows food for me to eat and offers shade for me and provides my lungs with oxygen to breathe. I feel like this planet is an extension of myself. My body is composed of the same components as everything else on Earth.

So I feel an urgent need to protect it and treat it the way it deserves. That means recycling. That means limiting plastic use. That means being a vegetarian (because animal agriculture is the second-largest contributor to human-made greenhouse gases). It means voting for people in power who care about the environment and want to protect it. I am, quite frankly, disgusted by the disregard many Republicans show toward Earth. Even if climate change is a "hoax" (which it absolutely isn't), what's wrong with treating the planet better just for the hell of it? What's wrong with investing in clean energy so that humans aren't relying on fossil fuels anymore, since fossil fuels are finite substances? What's wrong with regulating emissions from cars and factories, so that the air that people breathe isn't overloaded with harmful, cancer-causing substances? I don't understand how anyone could be against treating our only home with care. Since many conservatives don't believe in treating the planet with respect and care, I cannot, in good conscience, side with them. They reject science simply because it is not profitable for them. Since democrats generally advocate for, and pass, legislation that protects and conserves the environment, I vote for democrats with good concrete plans in this domain. I'm a huge fan of the Green New Deal and I believe that it's pretty much our only ticket out of environmental disaster.

Moving on from science to social justice...

In my view, one of the main differences between conservatives and liberals (and this is a generalization) is that conservatives think that there are innately bad people in the world who deserve to be punished while liberals think that "bad" people are not necessarily innately bad, but their life circumstances led them to do what they had to do. In my opinion, conservatives get caught up in objective good and bad (as if such a thing existed) without considering the complexity of human experience— without considering subjectivity. For example, is entering into a country without being allowed inside bad? Objectively, this is considered illegal. However, it can be justified, in most cases, subjectively. For example, consider a family fleeing a war-torn country. They need to take refuge somewhere and they have distant family in America who have welcomed them. Having nowhere else to go, they make their way to America... but they don't have the proper documentation and are turned away. Where else are they to go? Is it truly so bad if they find a way inside anyway? Their intention is to live a safe life with their family. They want to protect their children. They can't go home. There are no malicious ideas or intents. Labeling them "illegal" is immoral. They are human. Humans should never be considered illegal.

I can't speak for all liberals, so I won't. I'll just speak for myself: I don't think any single person is innately evil. People do shitty, awful, terrible things all the time, and I'm not defending them. There are some people I dislike so much I can't even stomach them because of the things they have done and the words they have said. However– something happened to them to make them that way. They weren't born that way. Life was cold or cruel to them. They adapted. The way they are is a coping mechanism. Therefore, I don't believe that harsh punishment is the way to go. I favor rehabilitation over punishment, because people always have the potential to change for the better. America's prison system is cruel and harsh and punitive. Its aim is to punish, so that's what it does. What a waste! Instead, it could be rehabilitative— prison could be a time for reform. It could be a time to be provided with job skills training so the "criminal" could find a job when he got out of jail instead of having to resort to the stealing that landed him in prison. It could be a time of therapy, where social workers talked to inmates and helped them come up with solutions to address the problems in their personal, financial, social, spiritual, and economic lives. (Side note, the reason why I love social work so much is because social workers look at every aspect in a person's life as an agent of change. Therapy with social workers is so much more than "talking about feelings." It's finding constructive ways of creating positive change in the problem aspects of people's lives). Currently, 75 percent of released prisoners are re-incarcerated within five years because their time in jail did nothing to fix the root problems that brought them there.

It's not just prisoners that have the potential to change for the better. The entire criminal justice system needs to change!! Did you know that 450,000 people are incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses on any given day?! FOUR HUNDRED FIFTY THOUSAND PEOPLE! Do people really deserve to go to jail for drug possession? I could have easily been one of those people back in the day when I smoked weed. One time I was in a park at night with some friends and a huge bong. A police car materialized and I had just managed to hide the bong when he walked over to us. He asked us what we were doing, and we made up some bullshit excuse. All of our eyes were red and we reeked of weed. He knew what we were doing. But he didn't probe, didn't search. He just told us to leave, but to have a good night. When I think of white privilege, this experience comes to mind. I know you don't "believe" in white privilege, but hear me out. My peaceful experience with the cops is shared among many white people. If we had been black, there is a higher chance that the same situation could have ended in arrest or even violence. There is a stereotype about black men that is perpetuated by the police: that black men are dangerous. They are up to no good. They are thugs or criminals. It's not just the police who perpetuate this stereotype, but the police have power and the police use their power.

Bryan Stevenson, a black lawyer who founded the Equal Justice Initiative, wrote a whole book on his experiences defending black people in court for crimes they either didn't commit or petty crimes white people would have easily gotten away with. He did a lot of research on this topic, and one of the things he found was "Bureau of Justice statistics reporting that black men were eight times more likely to be killed by the police than whites. By the end of the twentieth century the rate of police shootings would improve so that men of color were 'only' four times more likely to be killed by law enforcement, but the problem would get worse as some states passed 'Stand Your Ground' laws empowering citizens to use lethal force as well" (Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson, page 43).

I don't have to worry about the cops much, personally, because of my white privilege. I'm going to take some time talking about privilege here because I don't think you quite understand the term. (And that's okay — everyone has to learn somewhere!). The best definition of privilege I've heard is: "Privilege isn't about what you've gone through, it's about what you haven't had to go through." - Janaya Khan. Another definition is: "Privilege exists when one group has something of value that is denied to others simply because of the groups they belong to, rather than anything they've done or failed to do." - Peggy McIntosh. Allan Johnson gives the following examples in his book Privilege, Power, and Difference: "If people take me [a white male] more seriously when I give a speech than they would someone of color saying the same things in the same way, then I'm benefitting from white privilege. That a heterosexual black woman can feel free to talk about her life in ways that reveal the fact that she's married to a man is a form of heterosexual privilege because lesbians and gay men cannot casually reveal their sexual orientation without putting themselves at risk" (Johnson, page 21). I'm going to quote more from this book because I think it's important and I think he does a good job describing privilege: "Notice that in all these examples, it's relatively easy for people to be unaware of how privilege affects them. When people come up to me after I give a presentation, for example, it doesn't occur to me that they'd probably be more critical and less positive if I were Latino or female or gay. I don't feel privileged in that moment. I just feel that I did a good job, and I enjoy the rewards that are supposed to go with it. The existence of privilege doesn't mean I didn't do a good job or that I don't deserve credit for it. What it does mean it that I'm also getting something that other people are denied, people who are like me in every respect except for the social categories they belong to. In this sense, my access to privilege doesn't determine my outcomes, but it is definitely an asset that makes it more likely that whatever talent, ability, and aspirations I have will result in something good for me. In the same way, being female or of color doesn't determine people's outcomes, but these characteristics are turned into liabilities that make it less likely that people's talent, ability, and aspirations will be recognized and rewarded. This is also true of people with disabilities. Nondisabled people often assume that people with disabilities lack intelligence and are little more than needy, helpless victims who can't take care of themselves and whose achievements and situation in life depend solely on their physical or mental condition and not on how they are treated or the physical or attitudinal obstacles that are placed in their way. The ease of not being aware of privilege is an aspect of privilege itself, what some call the 'luxury of obliviousness' (or, in philosophy, 'epistemic privilege.' Awareness requires effort and commitment. Being able to command the attention of lower-status individuals without having to give it in return is a key aspect of privilege. African Americans, for example, have to pay close attention to whites and white culture and get to know them well enough to avoid displeasing them, since whites control jobs, schools, government, the police, and most other resources and sources of power. White privilege gives whites little reason to pay attention to African Americans or to how white privilege effects them. In other words, as James Baldwin put it, 'To be white in America means not having to think about it.'" (Johnson, pages 21-22).

I know this is technically my essay and not Allan Johnson's essay, but I'm going to continue quoting from his book Privilege, Power, and Difference for a little while longer because he gives good examples of white privilege:

• "Whites are less likely than blacks to be arrested; once arrested, they are less likely to be convicted and, once convicted, less likely to go to prison, regardless of the crime or circumstances. Whites, for example, constitute 85 percent of those who use illegal drugs, but less than half of those in prison on drug-use charges are white." (page 25)

• "Whites can choose whether to be conscious of their racial identity or to ignore it and regard themselves as simply human beings without a race." (page 26)

• "Whites can generally assume that when they go out into public, they won't be challenged and asked to explain what they're doing, nor will they be attacked by hate groups simply because of their race." (page 26)

• "White representation in government and the ruling circles of corporations, universities, and other organizations is disproportionately high." (page 26)

• "Whites are more likely to be given early opportunities to show what they can do at work, to be identified as potential candidates for promotion, to be mentored, to be given a second chance when they fail, and to be allowed to treat failure as a learning experience rather than as an indication of who they are and the shortcomings of their race." (page 27)

• "Whites can succeed without other people being surprised." (page 27)

• "Whites can reasonably expect that if they work hard and 'play by the rules,' they'll get what they deserve, and they feel justified in complaining if they don't. It is something other racial groups cannot realistically expect." (page 27)

"To have privilege is to be allowed to move through your life without being marked in ways that identify you as an outsider, as exceptional or 'other' to be excluded, or to be included but always with conditions" - Allan Johnson.

A disturbing trend I've seen many times since George Floyd was murdered is white people denying the existence of racism. They'll say that we had a black president, that black people can vote now, and that black people are just being dramatic when they claim that racism still exists. I will never understand this blatant denial. First of all, I will never deny another person's experience. Unless I have logical reasons to distrust what someone is telling me, I will never refute their experiences. Who would I be if I stood before a black person, listened to their experiences with racism, and then said "Nope, sorry but you're wrong" ??! Second of all, yes, America has come a long way, but we still have so much further to go. The racist roots of our country run deep. I know you disagree, but consider this: Slavery existed in this country from its founding in 1776 until the passage of the 13th amendment in 1865, but its legacy continued on with the Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation until one hundred years later - 1965, the year you were born! And slavery's legacy continues on today, because racist attitudes did not dissolve with Jim Crow. Consider the words of my favorite artist, Brother Ali, a tireless advocate for equity and social justice:

"We're only two generations away

From the world's most despicable slavery trade

Pioneered so many ways to degrade a human being

That it can't be changed to this day

Legacy so ingrained in the way that we think

We no longer need chains to be slaves

Lord it's a shameful display

The overseers even got raped along the way

'Cause the children can't escape from the pain

And they're born with the poisonous hatred in their veins." -Uncle Sam Goddamn, Brother Ali

Earlier in the song, Ali notes that we "Imported and tortured a work force / And never healed the wounds or shook the curse off." All of this to say: just because slavery and Jim crow are physically over doesn't mean they're mentally over. Racism isn't a blatant institution anymore, but it lives on. I've already talked about mass incarceration and police brutality. Other examples of racism in modern society are:

• Black people being followed around by suspicious store owners while shopping in a store when they've given no reason for the store owner to suspect them of stealing

• People with "black-sounding" names not being given job interviews when identical resumes with "white-sounding" names are granted interviews

• White people being surprised that a black person is "articulate" or "educated"

• People considering white people as the norm

Tiffany Jewell said that "being racist against white people isn't a thing. Racism is personal prejudice AND the systemic misuse and abuse of power by institutions. So, I can have a prejudice against white people, but there is no system that has been put in place for centuries to keep white people oppressed. In our society, reverse racism is not real." So when white people say that racism isn't real because they haven't experienced it: of course they haven't experienced it. They're white!!!!

And so, I acknowledge my privilege. I acknowledge that I am white, middle class, and non-disabled. I also acknowledge the ways in which I don't hold privilege: I am female, I am bisexual, and I am not a member of the dominant religion (Christianity). I know it hurts you to see those two last things spelled out so clearly, but it's the truth. Systems of power and privilege really do exist in our society. They create so much pain and suffering for people who are not privileged in one aspect or another. The suffering has nothing to do with merit.

Acknowledging my privilege, I have to also acknowledge that I could have so easily been born as someone else. We are all simply born into this world into circumstances we didn't ask for. I was born into a wealthy white family. Of course I have gone through struggles in my life; I have felt pain and heartbreak and suffering, but none of that pain and heartbreak and suffering had anything to do with my social status, i.e., the circumstances I didn't ask for. Because of the family I was born into, I was able to live a comfortable childhood and adolescence with enough food to eat, toys to play with, and friends to laugh with. I was always in a safe neighborhood. If I got hurt, my medical expenses would be easily paid for. I didn't fear much of anything. Because I was so safe and comfortable, I had the luxury to daydream, expand on my hobbies, and indulge my curiosities. Tara Westover said "Curiosity is a luxury reserved for the financially secure." I was able to go to college and have it paid for. I'm so grateful for all of this.

Yet, I could have easily been born to parents experiencing homelessness, or to parents needing to cross the border illegally into America. I didn't ask for my life circumstances and neither did anyone else. I don't believe myself superior for having had the privilege to go to college and graduate. I didn't have to work hard for a great number of the things I have accomplished. I am so disheartened by people with similar life circumstances to me who truly believe they did it all themselves. When wealthy white people brag about going to college, I have to think of course they did– they weren't fighting hunger or working three jobs to stay afloat. Their lives weren't hard in the sense that so many millions of American's lives are hard. I'm not saying they don't deserve it. What I'm saying is that everyone deserves it. Everyone deserves an easy, comfortable, safe life, regardless of whatever circumstances they were born into.

Some people get defensive when they're confronted with their privilege. "I can't help that I'm white," they'll say. Of course they can't. But instead of getting defensive, a constructive way to acknowledge their privilege is just that– to acknowledge it. They could say something like "I can't help that I'm white just like black people cannot help that they're black. There is nothing inherently wrong with being white or black, and there is nothing inherently good about being white or black. But this country assigns privileges to white people that it does not assign to black people. Those privileges are not my fault, but I benefit from them, so I must acknowledge them. I also must acknowledge that it is not fair that black people do not receive those privileges. So I should speak out about this."

You may be wondering where I learned about all of this stuff and formed such opinions. Actually, I know you're not wondering— as I mentioned earlier, you think I was brainwashed in college. I am here to tell you (again) that this is not what happened. I already felt the way I feel now long before college. But college gave me the vocabulary to articulate how I felt. College presented me with the opportunity to meet people from all different walks of life, all different backgrounds and life experiences. I got to talk to them and gain empathy for their situations. I got to read books and essays from diverse authors I never would have heard of otherwise. I got to join a research team that discussed feminism in depth and that made me realize that the ways women are still oppressed in society are not okay. I never once had a professor tell their class to vote liberal or to reject conservative ideas. Never. That's not the way college is set up. Universities do tend to be more liberal and progressive, but that's because they tend to be more diverse and forward-thinking than other institutions.

Going back to a topic I started many paragraphs ago: I find that conservatives tend to treat some people as if they were innately evil. Someone committing a crime should be thrown in jail for 30 years because only bad people commit crimes (meanwhile, rich white people smoke weed as often as they please even if it is illegal in their states). Illegal immigrants should never be allowed to cross the border (but conservatives would do it themselves if their lives and the lives of their kids depended on it). I don't think anyone is innately bad. I rarely think anyone deserves to be punished. Since liberals tend to be more empathic toward people, and since liberals work to fix the systems that cause suffering to people, I vote liberal. I care about social justice.

And now, for the last chunk of my very long essay, I want to move on from social justice to philosophy. A huge reason that I vote liberal is because it aligns most closely with my philosophy. I'll attempt to describe my philosophy here, but it's impossible to describe in words. I've already mentioned how I believe that I could have easily been born as someone else, someone with less privilege than me, and how that gives me more empathy for others. I mean that more than you probably think I mean it. I've talked with you about my spiritual views before, but I've held back a little out of fear that you'd reject them (and then, by default, reject me). So here's what I really believe: everything in the universe is composed physically of the same elements. We are the result of the Big Bang— everything originated from that. Everything. So on a molecular (or perhaps even smaller) level, there is no real difference between me and anything else.

One of my favorite authors is a guy named Brad Warner. He's a hilarious, down-to-earth dude who plays in a punk band and has an obsession with Japanese monster movies. He's also an ordained Buddhist monk. He writes a lot of easily digestible, funny books on Buddhism. In his first book, he explains a life-changing experience he had, a shift in perception that he had while he was simply walking home from work. Here is what happened: "The universe was me and I was it. I looked up at the sky and that experience was exactly like looking at a mirror. I don't mean that metaphorically either. You know that feeling of recognition you get when you look in a mirror? 'That's me,' you think to yourself, 'My hair needs to be combed and, hey, there's a pimple on my nose!' Well I got that same feeling no matter where I looked. I looked at the asphalt road and it was my face. I looked at the bridge and the bridge was me staring back at myself. It was a physical sensation, as if the sky had my eyes and could see me staring up at it. There was no doubt that this state was 'true.' It was far more true than the state I had considered to be normal up until then. I had no need to confirm it with anyone. It's all me. Even if I want to put this realization down I can't. Sometimes it's excruciating. You know those morons that rammed those planes into the World Trade Center? That was me. The people who died in the collapse. Me again. Every single person who ever paid money for a Pet Rock? Me. I don't mean I identify with them or sympathize with them. I mean I am them. It's impossible to explain any more clearly than that, but this isn't a figure of speech or bad poetry. I mean it absolutely literally." -Brad Warner, Hardcore Zen, pages 96-97.

I haven't had a kind of all-encompassing experience like Brad has, but I know it to be true. It just makes sense to me. It is my truth. I know it's not yours. I know that you believe that good people go to heaven and that bad people go to hell, and that is your truth, and that is okay. But I believe that life is the universe experiencing itself. We are each little blip of the same consciousness and we experience our own particular lives, but we're really all the same thing. (Please click here for a picture representation of this). And when our brief lives are over, we become another blip of consciousness and experience a different life. Alan Watts said, "Your physical organism is one continuous process with everything else that is going on. Just as the waves are continuous with the ocean. Your body is continuous with the total energy system of the cosmos and its all you. Only you’re playing the game that you’re only this bit of it. But as I’ve tried to explain there are in physical reality no such things as separate events."

Sometimes people think that my spiritual beliefs must leave me feeling lonely. If it's all me, then aren't I lonely? I couldn't disagree more. Neil deGrasse Tyson said that "Accepting our kinship with all life on Earth is not only solid science. In my view, it’s also a soaring spiritual experience." I think it's so beautiful that I am interwoven completely with everything and everyone else in the universe. It is such a mystical experience to really sit and think about it and feel it fully. It makes me want to protect the planet and love every single person and fight for the other me's who don't have it as good as this version of me does. And (as you can guess from making it this far), since liberals do that more often than conservatives do, I vote liberal.

We are one. That's what I believe. And so I can see where you are coming from in your beliefs and in your thoughts. And I respect you and I love you. But I want to leave you with one last quote, one that I love so much I want to get tattooed on me:

"All of us are only human, and we have wrong perceptions every day. Our spouse or partner is also subject to wrong perceptions, so we must help each other to see more clearly and more deeply. We should not trust our perceptions too much— that is something the Buddha taught. 'Are you sure of your perceptions?' he asked us. I urge you to write this phrase down on a card and put it up on the wall of your room: 'Are you sure of your perceptions?' There is a river of perceptions in you. You should sit down on the bank of this river and contemplate your perceptions. Most of our perceptions, the Buddha said, are false. Are you sure of your perceptions? This question is addressed to you. It is a bell of mindfulness." - Thich Nhat Hanh

Although I fervently believe everything I wrote in this essay, believe it with my whole heart, I will never arrogantly believe that I am 100% right about everything. I am a human with shortcomings and imperfections. I will never believe that my beliefs are beyond doubt. I am open to discussion always. However, you (or anyone else) cannot convince me to not love and care for our planet and our fellow human beings. They mean the world to me. They are me. They are you.