Got My Mind Set on Mindsets (original) (raw)

I saw a billboard this past weekend saying something like, “Paying too much for health care? Vote Republican!” Aren’t the Republicans the ones who are constantly pushing to make health care more expensive, constantly trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act and all that?

I suspect it has something to do with taxes. And this was in central Pennsylvania, where people famously cling to their guns and religion. There was apparently some uproar when Obama said that, but I assume it wasn’t so much about the guns and religion as about the clinging.

I don’t know if it’s fair or not, but I tend to associate conservatives, at least in this country, with tough-guy posturing and the myth of rugged individualism. Trump certainly did a lot of that, although somehow it was combined with constant whining that he was a victim.

That’s not to say that Republicans aren’t afraid of things; it’s kind of the main crux of their platform. It seems, however, like they don’t frame it as fear, but instead as oppression, generally by everyone who isn’t a straight white man, and probably some of them as well. These are the people who think taking basic precautions against the spread of a serious disease is “living in fear,” while believing the reason they can’t get good jobs is because of some non-existent caravan of migrants (which honestly sounds kind of romantic to me, in an Arabian Nights sort of way) crossing the border.

It was in this same area that I saw a sign implying that Foghorn Leghorn attends a nearby church, but it was in New Jersey that I saw a “Stay poor, vote Democrat” sign. Really, you’re probably going to stay at about the same income level regardless of how you vote, but the Republicans are going to make it much harder to get any assistance you might need. I hear of so many people who just assume they’re going to get rich someday, which I can’t even fathom. It’s okay to have a pipe dream, but not to get stuck too far in that pipe.

Anyway, I was thinking about this sort of thing, and how a lot of it has to do with upbringing, whether it’s family, friends, education, media, or whatever. Even if you end up disagreeing with the people around you, it still affects your general mindset. I think it was on Tumblr that I saw something referring to many atheists as “culturally Christian,” which is probably true to some extent. I grew up in what I think is kind of a weird situation, where my parents seemed to be generally agnostic, but we still went to church when I was a kid. And I still celebrate Christmas and Easter, although that probably has a lot to do with pop culture instead of church. At least when I was growing up, the schools and what was on TV tended to be centered around ostensibly Christian holidays, even if most of the blatantly religious aspects were downplayed. That’s probably different in places with more cultural and religious diversity, like where I live now. But I’ve noticed a lot of criticism of religion tends to center on Christian belief, when of course there are many other religions. I’ve found it interesting learning how, even though Christianity grew out of Judaism, a lot of it doesn’t make sense from a Jewish perspective. It seems to have been common in the Middle Ages for Christians to defend antisemitism by saying Jews were aware that Jesus came back to life but still denied he was the Messiah. But, as far as I know, Judaism says nothing about the Messiah being someone who rose from the dead. I don’t think Jesus freeing people from the law makes any sense in that tradition either, because the law is something to aspire to rather than avoid. So many Christian arguments that I see just kind of assume that the people they’re preaching to already accept a Christian view of how the world works, even if they don’t believe in the specifics. I’m sure this is true for other religions as well.

One way in which I think my upbringing affected me is that I’m fervently anti-smoking. No one in my immediate family smoked, and I didn’t really hang around with other people who did, so that makes sense. But for me, it wasn’t just that I thought smoking was bad for you, as people who smoke also know that, and I have plenty of unhealthy habits myself. It’s more that I grew up thinking smoking was a weird thing to do, something entirely foreign to my worldview, even if I knew from observation it was really quite normal. I was raised to be a grammar snob, and while I’m still somewhat proud of how much I remember about language and wince inwardly (hopefully not outwardly, although I don’t really know) when someone says “could have went,” I’ve come to realize that there’s a certain amount of classism in being a stickler, and it ultimately doesn’t matter that much as long as communication remains effective.

Getting back to smoking, I’ve never seen the film Supersize Me, so I don’t know for sure if this is true, but I remember someone saying that Morgan Spurlock made a comment like, “We shame people for smoking, but not for eating unhealthy food.” This argument doesn’t make a lot of sense because the people around an unhealthy eater don’t usually have to inhale second-hand Big Mac. But the bigger point is that shaming people is rude and ineffective anyway. When it comes to food, there seems to be a significant contingent arguing that eating should only be for sustenance, which might lead to better health, but also strikes me as making something that should naturally be enjoyable (I’ve heard my cats purr while eating) into a chore. Of course, I’m a pickier eater than most. I understand that having issues with food textures, especially, is common in autistic people, and there are a lot of things I just never developed a taste for. A lot of it is just what I find comfortable. As someone who doesn’t like to cook, I’ve come to like frozen and takeout food. While I would probably admit that some home-cooked meals are objectively tastier than a frozen pizza, I don’t get the same cravings for them. If I have a point here, I guess it’s that it’s easy to become set in your ways, even in ways that you can acknowledge don’t make a lot of sense.