Not Binary

Evolution never comes easy.

We started out as salt water fish. We washed ashore, waves, surges of water, big storms. 390 million years ago, we washed ashore. Fossils tell the story. We were tetrapods, funny looking fish. Fish that learned to walk. Salamanders hiding under rocks.

If I’m not mistaken, I recall seeing some of these creatures; distant relatives, during a particularly bad storm. Walking fish on the street near our house when we lived in Florida. Tetrapods or something like that. Maybe it was all a Wizard of Oz dream. Too many drinks? But honestly, I’m pretty sure, some big storm in Florida. I saw them once. Distant relatives. Fish with feet on the street.

And then 7 million years ago, our ancestors learned to walk on two legs. So wow, we were crawling baby fish for our first 383 million years. And then, one day we stand up. Toddlers. 383 million years before we stand tall. (Talk about slow learners. Good God.)

Another 4.5 million years go by, and we make our first tool. A sharp stone. A weapon of course. A sharp stone in hand = a basic knife. Put it on a stick = spear. Invent a bow and the spear = arrow. Our lethal range grows exponentially. (Kings of the jungle. Welcome to the jungle - baby. Oh boy, we’re really moving forward now.)

Another 3 million years and we finally got a grasp on controlled burn. AKA, we learned to start a campfire. Roasted meat. Yum. Weenies on a stick. Graham crackers, chocolate and toasted marshmallows and all of that. Good things Martha. (Look at us go! What will we do next?)

Blink of an eye, 995,000 years later, we learn to write. Cuneiforms and hieroglyphics, early writing protocols and record keeping. Talk about elites… Look at me Mom and Dad, look at me. I was here. Kilroy. Don’t you ever forget my name. (Stories to tell. Clever animals.)

And then, 994,945 years forward, on July 20, 1969 mankind (all he pronouns, no shes), we land on a moon. We left our home planet and we landed on an orbiting rock. (Crazy shit, right? Look at what we can do.)

Progress. Wow!

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So, look at who we are. Check us out.

Who we come from. Where we’ve been and what we CAN do.

What we’ve done.

Things we can do with our hands and our feet and our big brains when we work them hard and try, apply.

Crazy stuff.

But still now, today, as far as we’ve come… the limitations that we hold on to, stuff in our heads. All the things (we think) we cannot do. Or are there things we don’t want to do?

What is possible versus what is.

Head games?

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The limitations in our heads are not binary things. Binary is a big brain word for On or Off. Black or White. All or Nothing.

The limitations that are wired into our walking fish heads, these programs in our heads evolve slower than the things we do (the things we have done) with our hands and our feets (feats). (Word play. Fun with words.)

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There are many, so many limitations that are wired into our brains. Nature, nurture, things that (most of us) deny, but in truth that we clutch.

Favorite programs. We watch them over and over again. Reruns - in our heads. We don’t like it when favorite shows are canceled. And would you please stop with the automatic updates to the programs that run on my phone, and my laptop; Steve Apple, Bill Gates - or whoever is in charge today. Quit it. No more updates. Keep it the way it is. STOP.

I want everything to work the way it used to work. Stop moving the goalposts. Stop crashing my systems. Crowdstikes (it’s a company). System update crashed the world for a few days.

STOP

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Xenophobia - big word, simple concept. Fear of what is foreign. Sadly, it is a real thing.

It’s not binary, On or Off, you got it or you don’t. Scale of 1 = very little, to 100 = full blown fear. I got some. You got some. Xenopho. That sounds exotic.

Nurture, for me, honestly there weren’t many new foreign people moving into the place where I grew up, when I grew up. Central New York State (a little city called Syracuse, New York), USA was what it was, it’s growing days were over by the time I was born there and growing up in the 1960s and 1970s.

Oh sure, we like pizza and my Mom made killer (tomatoes from garden, homemade sauce) spaghetti and meatballs. But honestly, going out to eat Italian food was kind of exotic for us, for me and my family. Going out for Italian food. Honestly… and there were lots of Gobba Goos, Italians in Syracuse. Irish and Italians. And even more exotic - Greeks. We had our Greeks, a bunch.

Us, my family, we were establishment. Old school, long time there. German and a touch of English. Wow… Big shots.

Honestly, we really did not think about foreign people. No one stole anyone's job. We like all of our Syracuse “foreigners”, our melted pot, our stew. Irish were fun drunks. Italians gave us good food. (My Mom always order lasagna every time we went out for Italian.) Greek food was the most exotic and the people had the best tans, lovely skin.

No threat. I was always drawn (made friends with) foreign exchange students who came to our high school. All girls (even better). Two British girls, Caroline and Tree (short for Teresa), another girl from (I think) Norway and another from Netherlands. Loved them. Wanted to know all I could learn about the countries they came from, their (exotic - to me) lives.

Me as a kid. My Xenophobia, scale 1 (low) to 100. IDK, maybe I’d give my kid self a 10. (Chinese cooking and restaurants, we never went, kind of freaked me out (as a kid).

I was and remain, drawn to foreign people and foreign places. No foreign person ever was a threat to any job that I had or wanted. As long as it’s safe (halfway safe), I am drawn (hope I always am) to all that is foreign.

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Misogyny - another big word. Not really so much a fear thing. It’s an issue thing. A Mommy thing? Misogyny = mistrust, prejudice, or contempt for and against Adam’s Rib, women.

Why would I have a problem with my own rib? (OK, that rib, it belongs to Adam. I am a Scott. So there’s that.)

Women, know your place. The kitchen, right? Barefoot and pregnant. (Good girl. Don’t be a Catlady, except in the boudoir. Meow…)

Again, not an On / Off thing. A binary. An All or a Nothing. All of us, even women (believe it or not) have some degree of 1 - 100 misogyny. Mommy issues? We do.

Dirty laundry, I’m not going to hang much of it. It’s mine. It sucks. But my Mom and Dad are gone now. Most of their examples were great. I was lucky. Born lucky.

But one thing, for sure a Mom issue, sometimes my Mom would call my Dad on the carpet (when she was mad at him), she would take up some issue she had with him - in public, among friends and extended family. It was ugly. As a young man, it made me squirm in my chair. It made me angry.

But for the most part, I was lucky to grow up in a place and a time when we were taught that a woman could do anything a man could do. Women are every bit as good, as capable, they have all the potential that men have.

I have a younger sister. I believed it. Still do. (My sister can do anything I can do. My sister was more outgoing than I was. She helped me. I learned good stuff from my little sister. She supported me. Helped me.)

So yeah, some family dirty laundry. Did I, do I have some degree of Mommy issue misogyny wired into my programs?

Sure, a little bit. Scale 1 - 100, I don’t know. I had a female boss for a very short time once. I didn’t care for her. I felt like she tried to take credit for my work. Was that misogyny? I don’t like criticism. Who does. But after reacting, I do reflect. I am capable of saying, “I was wrong. I am sorry.”

IDK, give me a 20 the Mommy issue scale. Not high, but still too high. I don’t like it. Work to be done.

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The ugliest for last.

Racism - not a very big word. Nothing hard to understand here. It’s not really about where people come from like Xenophobia.

It’s both more surface (color of skin, melanin) and more endemic, deeply rooted (in the soil, in the bones). A not a small number of Our Founders, they owned slaves. People owning people. Talk about original sin.

The program that is the American experiment, our laws and our constitution, the way we vote and elect leaders, it was all set up by quite a number of slave owners, Founders. (Some Fathers - some of them that we shouldn’t be too proud of. Daddy issues.)

What to say? Cut to chase.

Not many Latinos, not many Asians when and where I grew up. If they were there, there weren't many Latinos and Asians in my community, in my little town, when and where I grew up.

There were black people. Syracuse had (has) a good sized black community.

Syracuse was, still is mostly I think, a segregated city. There were two, maybe three black people in my high school graduating class of something like 600 (that sounds high, but it’s the number that comes to mind) students. Three black people, one Jewish guy.

And why do I mention the one Jewish guy. Well, because racism is not all skin color. It is that, but it’s more. Deeper, insidious… bad stuff.

I knew (not close, but he moved in a lot of circle), Kenny, the one black guy. Kenny was cool, artsy, funny. Kenny leaned into his black skin. Lemonade. I did not know, it didn’t seem that anyone knew, the one (or was it two) black girls in our school. (Misogyny + Racism? A bridge too far. Too much to overcome? IDK, IDK)

The little pink houses street and community that I grew up in was all whitey, white, white. Most of my little friends were Irish. I’ve always loved the Irish. Some old school Germans and Brits like my family. Toss in some Polacks. (Oh dear. Politically incorrect. You know I love you Poland and Polish friends. Good sausage.)

My Mom and Dad suffered from vanilla (low level) racism. Black people were not only foreign, but a little bit scary.

And why? Because, we did not know them. We never met them. The news programming told us scary stories about them. Be afraid of the other, the one that lives “over there”. Don’t go “over there”.

Not an uncommon story, in the place where I grew up, when I grew up - and sadly still - today, not much has changed.

No “Ebony and Ivory” songs being sung much today. Maybe it’s become worse. Racism.

Scale of 1 - 100, me as a kid, IDK, 40, 50. I liked Kenny. I knew him.

Fear. Fear of the men and women I did not know.

Admit It to Quit It.

All of these things. To do better, to get to better, we must first acknowledge these things, limitations, nature and nurture programming. They’re real. Bugs to be worked out, but first we have to admit - they are real, they’re there.

Work to do. Work to be done.

Work it.

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PHOTO:

Left hand side of picture, the woman who married us (C&S). I wish I had a picture of her smiling face next to ours. JoAnn.

We met JoAnn where we met, in Key West. She worked at a favorite Inn. A joy to be around. One of “those people”. Where do they come from? People born on the right side of the bed, always smiling, shining, ready to go. One of those people.

She was a Justice of the Peace, in Florida, an official who could sign off on marriage documents. (I think each State has different rules.)

We were in KW, talking about our plans, and along came JoAnn. She said she could do it. We said, “great, it’s a GO”.

Someone was looking at our wedding pictures and made a comment, pointing to JoAnn in our photos. The person making the comment said, “Wow, she’s got quite a tan”.

Really (the bubble over my head read). Quite a tan, really? (more bubble)

I replied, “She’s black.”

Racism. One of those “I’m not a racist but” people… She’s black. Quite a tan my ass.