Lately I have been musing and sometimes
angsting about the absurdity of human history and its
corollary, the astounding propensity of human stupidity to trump human intelligence. Most of what happens you would not believe if someone made it up. "Truth is stranger than fiction," indeed. And I'm not sure what is worse--what happens by accident, or what people do on purpose fully convinced that it is a good idea. Considering our collective record and the staggering variety of what could go wrong, it's really a wonder that things 'work' as well and as often as they do. This is a large part of why I believe in Providence. Left to our own devices without benevolent nudges from the Spirit, we myopic, haphazard, and flighty humans would
really make a mess of things. Often, the main difference between full-grown people and toddlers is that we have more practice being obstinate and making up (and believing) our explanations for our behavior.
It is absurd but also interesting that 3rd- or 4
th- generation Americans still say "I'm
(insert nationality here)" when we were born in the U.S., don't speak the language in question, more often than not have never visited (much less lived in) the place(s) of our ancestry, and may not know or even know of any relatives still living there. Fewer and fewer Americans can claim a hometown or home state, but we can tell you precisely what % of our gene pool came from which nation-state 100-200 years ago. I wonder if this is partly due to the fact that what it means to be 'American'
carries such different connotations for different people, amongst ourselves Stateside but especially in relation to those who are actually
from other places and still live there.
For some, U.S. citizenship is a hard-won privilege, for some it is grounds for
unqualified entitlement, arrogance, and bigotry, for some it inspires sincere and humble if
provincial filial pride, and for others it causes considerable
conflictedness,
embarrassment, guilt, and shame. The main thing we have in common here is displacement, and that doesn't make for much of an identity. So we tend to identify with an idealised, neutral,
nostalgically tidy version of our
pre-American heritage. Unless we are recently displaced from a heritage that we would rather forget or that divides us from our neighbors against our will. Then we do everything we can to erase the native identity and assimilate to whatever flavor of American-
ness we think will serve us best.
We humans have a need to belong to something and come from somewhere. We want both something that makes us different from others and something that makes us the same. And so often we settle for the
idea of connections or distinctions rather than going to the trouble of actually establishing and maintaining them. Strange creatures.
It's St. Patrick's Day. For some reason, this is a national holiday in a country that used to cruelly discriminate against Irish immigrants and before that was colonized by and then declared itself independent from an empire whose abuses
arguably drove many of the Irish immigrants here where "all men are created equal" unless of course you happen to have been displaced due to imperial machinations (or agricultural
fiascoes or a combination of the two) more recently than your neighbors. Forgetfulness does have some advantages, I suppose, as so many of us can cheerfully assert our ancestry percentages without a thought for how we and the people with whom we choose to identify have been the causes or the victims of displacement, or both. Besides being entirely or selectively oblivious to history, most of us 21st century Americans don't pay any homage to saints or the Catholic church or have any sort of association with Ireland. An
embarrassing percentage of us couldn't even find the country on the map. But it's St. Patrick's Day. So we will wear green shirts and shamrock pins to work or school, and decorate with rainbows and
leprechauns and maybe (if we know how to cook) prepare some corned beef and cabbage for the occasion. If nothing else, who doesn't like an excuse to drink beer?
Yesterday I was subbing as an aide in a classroom for developmentally delayed 3rd-and-4
th graders. Some of the children were mostly or totally non-verbal so I could only conjecture what they were thinking and feeling as I sat and helped them glue bits of green and yellow construction paper to prefab paper shamrocks that were going to be hung around their classroom the next day. This is just the way things are. This is just what people do. I wonder a lot about that--how we come by our notions of 'the way things are' and 'what people do'. Everything we take for granted about the universe, every perception, every skill, every story, every habit, was new to us at some point.
I love to hear how kids explain what they or adults are doing, and I love it when they do or ask things that make me see the world in a way I hadn't before, or at least not in a while. Sometimes, among the little ones, I think that as a sub I am seen more as the new kid than as a teacher, maybe because I tend to be taking rather than giving instructions and I have to ask
them questions about how things are done.
Never mind that I am twice their height. The other day, a friendly child making conversation during coloring time asked me, "Do you know how to count?" "Yes," said I. Then he drew some circles, gently instructed me to count them, and when I had done so correctly he approved of the effort in a brilliant caricature of a benevolent-authority-figure voice.
So funny. I suppose that if as a child you think of yourself as a complete person (why wouldn't you, unless you had been treated otherwise?) and spend most of your days being made aware of things you didn't know before, you would suppose that this is also true for other people, regardless of how tall they are. I wasn't there when
he learned how to count. So the question was perfectly fair.
Most children are more interesting, more alive, than so-called adults whose ideas of "how things are" have ossified to the point that they no longer ask questions or entertain new experiences with wonder and surprise. It makes me sad when I meet kids who are already 'old' in this regard. Bored and suspicious and dogmatic, no curiosity, not wanting to see, or to know, or to befriend, or to try. What makes us conclude that we have nothing to learn that is worth learning, or that we are worth any more or less than anyone else? What makes us take so seriously our version of the story about our piddly fragment of space and time while regarding the glorious improbability of life and the world and other beings so carelessly?
I claim and engage my Swedish heritage almost exclusively, though I have only one 2
nd-generation Swedish grandparent on each side. But I might be Irish. I have green eyes, auburn hair, and some freckles. I sunburn quickly and tan slowly. To the best of my knowledge my ancestry is 3/4 Nordic and 1/4 British. Considering the, er, 'cultural exchange' that took place as a result of Viking exploits ca. 1,000 years ago, and what with the raids, occupations, and border wars that went on across Scandinavia and various islands to the west all the way into the 20
th century, there is a good chance that I come by Irish blood from several directions.
Potatoes came to Ireland, and to Sweden, from Peru and Chile, where they and the Inca civilization that developed them were 'discovered' in the 16
th century by Spaniards hungry for gold. U.S. residents now eat more processed potato than any other vegetable, though only a tiny fraction of the thousands of
varieties cultivated in Patagonia are produced here on a commercial scale. At 46% fried potatoes account for almost as much of our diet as all other vegetables combined. (Corn counts as a grain, not as a vegetable.) Processed tomato and iceberg lettuce are the runners-up. Read some fascinating potato-related history, legend, superstition, and literary quotations
here.
If disaster were to befall the United States tonight and freeze this moment for posterity, or an alien species invade, would outside observers conclude that we worshipped clover, rainbows, and
leprechauns based on the ubiquitous presence of shamrocks and related paraphernalia in our public school classrooms? And what will archaeologists two thousand years hence say about what they find in our cupboards, refrigerators, and grocery stores? Strange creatures.
Are you Irish?
