A Matter of Perspective

I just had a slightly uncomfortable exchange with a very old friend on the preeminent social network which, once again, sent the ghosts of my childhood back to haunt me. It is none of your business, who or what we were talking about, but, suffice it to say that we had diametrically opposed views on a certain political figure. I thought he was joking, because I forgot where I grew up, and he took serious offense at my merciless characterization of said political figure. I hope that we agreed to disagree, although I was such a jerk in my little off-the-cuff diatribe, that I would not blame him if he “unfriended” me. I should know better than to bring up politics or religion…ever. Even when people agree with me, it just upsets them. I must be some kind of masochist.

But the exchange and the unsettling rerun of my life as a minority in Pleasantville really got me to thinking about the notion of perspective and the serious question as to whether or to what extent, a perspective, once ingrained, can ever be altered.

If someone grew up using the words the n-word and the s-word in a normal sentence and still slept nights, has this person’s perspective on racial equality now changed, or does he just parse his words in public? As you might already know from a previous post of mine, I grew up in a town where it was perfectly acceptable if not required to make liberal use of those particular expletives, even though we did not have any actual minorities (me excepted) living amongst us.

As a child, I tested the waters…once…and called one of my (white) friends an n-word. I will never live down uttering that word and it is still one of the most mortifying, self-created, experiences I can recall. I wanted to curl up in a ball and die. I almost puked. The strange part was that my friend was not fazed in the least, as that term was part of his common vocabulary. I held that shame in secret for years. I don’t think I ever had the guts to tell my Mom or Dad. They would have been so ashamed of me. That was because of their perspective, which they never lost, despite the cowboy hats and turquoise string- ties and living out their adult lives among the pasty-white, sub-urban, tomfoolery. I will never know why a couple of ultra-liberal, highly educated, dagos from New York City would knowingly settle down and raise a family in that environment.

And it wasn’t just the racial thing. Every time you would tell someone you were from New York, they would recoil slightly and pinch their noses, like there was suddenly a bad smell right next to you in the room. And the first question would invariably be, “how could you live with all that cement and buildings and crime?” That was their perspective and I had no answer for them, because I came to Colorado at four years of age and really didn’t remember the cement much. It was not until later in life, when I visited Little Italy with my Jewish wife, that I felt totally at home; anonymous, in fact. And I think that this must have been the way my neighbors felt in the town where I grew up as a stranger. That was their perspective and mine.

Did any of my friends and former neighbors eventually visit New York City and the expanse of mountains and farms and forests of New York State? Did one or more end up marrying an Italian…or even a person of color? If one or more did any or all of the above, did their perspective change? I have to think that it did in some cases, but that is only my perspective. I have friends who got out into the world and grew and changed enormously, I believe. But what about those who just hung out with the same folks they grew up with? How do they view the fact that the world has changed all around them? Do they begrudge it? Are they in denial? Did their perspective change, or did they just become muted and repressed? I am not being glib here. I really want to know.

If a person comes from a poor background and works her way up to the upper-class, does she still carry a place in her heart for the poor working folks she left behind, or does she dismiss them as indolent, unworthy creatures, to be despised and avoided? Gated communities are full of the nouveau riche that move there with the express purpose of achieving such segregation. Did she grow up with a perspective that she was living among, but superior to her neighbors on her block, or did she just adopt that attitude later? Does it all depend upon the perspective she acquired as a child, or her experiences later in life, or both? These are also serious questions.

And how about the old riche, like 3/4ths of our politicians in Washington? Were they raised with a noblesse oblige perspective like the Kennedys or did Mater and Pater inject the perspective of survival of the fittest into their veins? And did any of the experiences that they had later in life, change that perspective, or were all their experiences carefully scripted to reinforce the original? Again, serious questions, especially given the fact that those in the upper crust have so much control over the few crumbs that get scattered for the rest of us. Will they, can they ever change?

One of my daughters, the Sociologist, forced me to read a really long article from the New York Times. She implied that the article might be too sociologically complicated for a mere attorney to comprehend, but what I did manage to glean from it was that most people believe that they have the ability to fulfill the American dream of wealth/happiness/etc. and keep on believing it, long after it is patently evident that they are never going to get there. It is their perspective that they are on the road to success, or have succeeded already, despite undeniable empirical evidence that the upper 2% is becoming richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class is being squished into a life of indentured servitude. That tells me that some perspectives don’t change, even after a kick in the crotch.

And what about religious perspectives, the other subject that I am not allowed to talk about? Isn’t that all perspective? If you were raised Jewish, you may have fooled around with the goyishe boys at Brandeis University, but you still usually ended up marrying a nice Jewish boy, right? And some of you don’t have to imagine the look of abject I might as well just kill myself now disappointment in your mother’s eyes if you did differently. Is that really more than just perspective? Do you really believe that God told you personally to repopulate the world with only those directly descended from the original tribes of Israel? And, if you do believe that, where does that belief come from?

I have been to Dachau and I will never forget…ever. But it really scares me that some ultra-orthodox  Jews practice an eerily familiar superiority of the races kind of thing. Why am I so afraid? Partly, because it is my perspective that organized religion, and especially any organized religion at the fringes, no matter how old or widespread or allegedly legitimized by even the most strident of efforts at maintaining ethnic purity, is the single most dangerous evil that we have in this world today. I also take offense at the hubris, which goes hand in hand with making any club exclusive.

It has always been my perspective that evangelists keep bugging you to join their club, but you have to obey all of their rules, (which they assure you came straight from God) or you are condemned to burn in Hell or Los Angeles, or the dentist’s office, or somewhere else where you really, really don’t want to be. We history buffs know that Christians in general, have committed more genocide and heinous acts in general than Osama and all the Muslims put together. But nowadays, certain Evangelicals for Islam who recently learned from the CIA and the IRA how to blow up stuff, are mondo-motivated to catch up with the Gentiles on the atrocity stats.

And have you ever tried changing the perspective of a radical religious…anybody? Talk about perspective! I’m thinking full-body tattoo, more like. We got radical Christians, like The Reverend Terry Jones, burning the Koran, just to piss off the radical Muslims in Afghanistan, who don’t really need another excuse to blow up other human beings, and these particular nut-jobs are sublimating their real desire to blow up the radical Zionists in Israel, who actually invented modern terrorism and have perfected it into an art form. How does one sit down at a table and deal with the perspectives of these paranoid psychotics and get them to just stop killing innocents, much less to come to any kind of understanding? I will accept all serious ideas, however improbable.

And then you have my own totally biased perspective on just about everything. I have no clue if I am right or righteous, or totally full of cacada (my mother’s bastardized Italian). And come to think of it, my perspectives on the above issues have not changed much since I was a child. I have more letters next to my name, use bigger words to rationalize my perspective and get stats to support my perspective from The Google, but I have not become any less pigheadedly opinionated. If anything, I have become more so, now that I can vent my perspective on this blog.

I will leave you with this final thought: “Some say, to be truly free, you must first free yourself from all perspective…others say that losing all perspective just makes you truly dead.”  Depends upon your perspective, I guess.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo