I made a comment on some site recently and Disqus threw back a couple of replies. These once again serve to highlight a different understanding of human experience, based on culture and personality.
The third reply, which I'm guessing was a response to my statement that I only help those in dire need, suggested that I must come from a really awful place.
I'm certain "really awful" is in the eye of the beholder. That is my naive response.
My more educated perception is that anyone who responds from a perspective that does not bow to American moralism must, of necessity, be deemed to come from a "really awful" place.
The comment that, I assume, attracted this response was my statement that I would help someone in a life and death situation, but that I don't go in for nurturing.
Now let us pause again -- for a very long time if necessary -- to consider what I said.
I said that supposing someone was really in a life and death situation, I would go in to bat for them.
In other words, my actions and behaviors are highly discriminating. I operate ONLY on the margins. I don't work within the mainstream.
But the margins are huge -- they really are. There are children dying from genital mutilation procedures in outback villages, there are animals going extinct. There are noble spirits who nonetheless are pressured almost out of existence by dire poverty.
This is my world -- the "really awful" place in which I live.
I haven't always responded to people who ask for my help, but often I have done more than would be considered natural or necessary.
The third reply, which I'm guessing was a response to my statement that I only help those in dire need, suggested that I must come from a really awful place.
I'm certain "really awful" is in the eye of the beholder. That is my naive response.
My more educated perception is that anyone who responds from a perspective that does not bow to American moralism must, of necessity, be deemed to come from a "really awful" place.
The comment that, I assume, attracted this response was my statement that I would help someone in a life and death situation, but that I don't go in for nurturing.
Now let us pause again -- for a very long time if necessary -- to consider what I said.
I said that supposing someone was really in a life and death situation, I would go in to bat for them.
In other words, my actions and behaviors are highly discriminating. I operate ONLY on the margins. I don't work within the mainstream.
But the margins are huge -- they really are. There are children dying from genital mutilation procedures in outback villages, there are animals going extinct. There are noble spirits who nonetheless are pressured almost out of existence by dire poverty.
This is my world -- the "really awful" place in which I live.
I haven't always responded to people who ask for my help, but often I have done more than would be considered natural or necessary.
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