I came across the following article on the Freakonomics Blog today, and the title alone was obviously enough to intrigue me: “We Pretend We Are Christians.”
Here is an excerpt from a reader who admitted to "faking" a pretty significant aspect of her life:
We are agnostics living deep in the heart of Texas and our family fakes Christianity for social reasons. It’s not so much for the sake of my husband or myself but for our young children. We found by experience that if we were truthful about not being regular church attenders, the play dates suddenly ended. Thus started the faking of the religious funk.
It seemed silly but it’s all very serious business down here. We don’t go to church or teach or children one belief is “right” over another. We expose them to every kind of belief and trust that they will one day settle in to their very own spirituality. However, for the sake of friends and neighbors, we pretend we are Christians. We try not to lie but rather not to disclose unnecessary information. As the children are getting older, this isn’t so easy for them and an outing is probably eminent.
We are not the only ones. We have found a few other fakers out there. I would love it if you ever explored this subject in a future book. I should mention that the friend who recommended Freakonomics to me is the head of the bible study at her church. Interesting.
I am interested in hearing similar stories from readers. I would not be surprised if political ideology is another vibe that gets faked once in a while.
This makes me wonder about myself: how much of my own idealogies might I "fake" to a certain extent, or at least (pardon the expression) bullshit? Despite priding myself on my open-minded liberal humanitarian values and (my consciously ironic) moral relativism, I sometimes cringe at my own reactionary and even--dare I say it?--ahem, conservative judgments and assumptions. When you have to sometimes remind yourself of your values, how much are they natural and how much are they contrived?
Sometimes I also "fake" not liking children. In fact, I have, even recently, told people that I hate children. Hate. I don't hate children--far from it. I am in love with my nieces and nephew, my little cousins, and my friend-since-grade-five Amy's daughter Hailey. But I can't stand, as a relatively newly married, healthy young heterosexual woman who is financially, emotionally, and romantically stable, that everyone assumes that my partner and I want to have--or worse, should have--children. And so I have perhaps exaggerated my opinion of children in order to deter would-be child-pushers from commenting on my choice not to automatically spawn.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Art - Lapham’s Quarterly
I found this image in Lapham's Quarterly and it reminded me of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own. Woolf asserts that essentially women--as writers, artists and other producers of culture--were limited not only by sexism or their roles as wives and mothers per se, but specifically based upon their lack of two essential elements: independent finances and her own private space in which to write.
Carol Shields also visits this notion in her novel Happenstance. The female narrator and protagonist must have her own space in which to design and make her quilts. Often feeling as if she exists only in her husband's shadow (he is an academic and an historian), she is empowered in her own space, creating her own works of art--so empowered that she decides to attend a crafts convention and ends up having an affair.
I wonder how many of us--male or female--truly have our own space in which to write. Despite being an adult and having moved out of my parents' creatively oppressive home years ago, I still struggle with finding the right space in which to write. I have a bedroom, but I share it with someone else and can't stay up writing into the wee hours of the night. I have an office, but it is full of school supplies, binders, and pedagogical books. I have a living room, but it faces onto the street and we don't have sufficient window coverings to offer an privacy. Then there is the family room, which is typically where Lars and the dog hang out watching sports and scratching themselves (respectively, of course).
My summer project--after three wedding showers, two bachelorette parties (one to the Caribbean), three friends' weddings, a friend's surprise 30th birthday, a two-week trip to Germany for Lars' Oma's 90th birthday, and planning for next year's IB course--is to create a suitable room of my own.
Art - Lapham’s Quarterly
Carol Shields also visits this notion in her novel Happenstance. The female narrator and protagonist must have her own space in which to design and make her quilts. Often feeling as if she exists only in her husband's shadow (he is an academic and an historian), she is empowered in her own space, creating her own works of art--so empowered that she decides to attend a crafts convention and ends up having an affair.
I wonder how many of us--male or female--truly have our own space in which to write. Despite being an adult and having moved out of my parents' creatively oppressive home years ago, I still struggle with finding the right space in which to write. I have a bedroom, but I share it with someone else and can't stay up writing into the wee hours of the night. I have an office, but it is full of school supplies, binders, and pedagogical books. I have a living room, but it faces onto the street and we don't have sufficient window coverings to offer an privacy. Then there is the family room, which is typically where Lars and the dog hang out watching sports and scratching themselves (respectively, of course).
My summer project--after three wedding showers, two bachelorette parties (one to the Caribbean), three friends' weddings, a friend's surprise 30th birthday, a two-week trip to Germany for Lars' Oma's 90th birthday, and planning for next year's IB course--is to create a suitable room of my own.
Art - Lapham’s Quarterly
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Students
Oh, students. I'm not sure if any of you read this, and if you do diligently read your teacher's blog, then these comments likely do not concern you to begin with.
I'm sure many student archetypes remain unchanged since I was in high school just a decade ago. There are the cliched try-hards, the uber-athletes, the misunderstood "mean girls", etc. But you're all so much more interesting and complex than that. However, I have noticed that many of your generation have embraced this Seth Roganesque persona of the intellectual slacker--but not like I knew this stereotype, as the dopey, grungy, rock'n'roller with unwashed hair who was born two decades too late--a new brand of the proverbial lost soul, a precocious cynic trapped in the body (and branded American Eagle jeans) of a North American teenager who has all of the cerebral tools, charisma, and hygiene to render such antiestablishment attitudes redundant.
We teachers keep lamenting the loss of due dates; we worry that none of you will be prepared for post-secondary--whether that means receiving a zero on that late paper in university bio, getting fired from your retail job for three consecutive lates, or even failing to catch your flight from Paris to Berlin on time as you trek across Europe. You've heard this countless times, no doubt, but it is a cause for concern when returning students tell us that we failed them. And I feel ashamed when I realize how many students I am failing right now--both in terms of poor grades, and in terms of poor fundamental life skills.
Keep writing on your blogs and I will keep reading them. Keep submitting work. Or start. Either way, try to compromise your anti-establishment side with the inevitable conformist that, to a certain extent, we all become. Actually submitting your writing to me doesn't make you any less talented. I promise.
I'm sure many student archetypes remain unchanged since I was in high school just a decade ago. There are the cliched try-hards, the uber-athletes, the misunderstood "mean girls", etc. But you're all so much more interesting and complex than that. However, I have noticed that many of your generation have embraced this Seth Roganesque persona of the intellectual slacker--but not like I knew this stereotype, as the dopey, grungy, rock'n'roller with unwashed hair who was born two decades too late--a new brand of the proverbial lost soul, a precocious cynic trapped in the body (and branded American Eagle jeans) of a North American teenager who has all of the cerebral tools, charisma, and hygiene to render such antiestablishment attitudes redundant.
We teachers keep lamenting the loss of due dates; we worry that none of you will be prepared for post-secondary--whether that means receiving a zero on that late paper in university bio, getting fired from your retail job for three consecutive lates, or even failing to catch your flight from Paris to Berlin on time as you trek across Europe. You've heard this countless times, no doubt, but it is a cause for concern when returning students tell us that we failed them. And I feel ashamed when I realize how many students I am failing right now--both in terms of poor grades, and in terms of poor fundamental life skills.
Keep writing on your blogs and I will keep reading them. Keep submitting work. Or start. Either way, try to compromise your anti-establishment side with the inevitable conformist that, to a certain extent, we all become. Actually submitting your writing to me doesn't make you any less talented. I promise.
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