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minoanmissJust a little noodling.
So I am lying here Doing Nothing Useful [not least because I had to stay at work an extra hour to get a spreadsheet done Today ugh], and I read some stupid thing Neil Degrasse Tyson said and people dunking on it, and I felt a reflexive clench of defensive annoyance on his behalf. Because [to try to keep this analysis under 500 words] when he says the universe is uncaring it's as a pushback against the common religious/spiritual idea that Everything (even the worst thing that ever happened to you, getting raped and miscarrying and your mother dying of cancer and your city getting bombed flat) Happens For A Reason. (At least for some people) It can be easier to accept that the universe is meaningless (or that we make our own meaning) than that God Intended for you to get raped because You Deserved It You Slut (and so on). But more than that, I've always admired him because 1) he has said some gracious encouraging things comparing the pushback he got as a Black kid with the pushback women in STEM get and 2) he was a Black boy in the Bronx with a telescope on a roof. Do you know how brave and dangerous that was, to own an implement most NYC flatfoots wouldn't recognize, as a person they'd shoot on sight pretty much for existing? How many of the Twitterites who snark at him would hand a telescope to a Black kid?
I mean, I have also been told the stars don't belong to me because I'm Black, so I have a little fellow feeling for him. He does opine on subjects he doesn't know about, and hopefully will rein in that tendency somewhat one of these days, but is he really the only man who ever does that? I've met worse mansplainers at every party I attended in my 20's And it does seem that one of the reasons so many people have such antipathy for him, far more than for the kajillion White dudes who say stupid stuff, is that he will never look like many people's idea of a smart person. He has reasons to be cocky, even over-cocky, as pushback against many people who think he should be smaller in every way and that someone else should have had his jobs. There's a popular filker (now dead) who wrote about how they thought Neil Degrasse Tyson was a fraud being fed answers, and reading their posts and the people agreeing with them broke my heart.
But then I started thinking about my own reaction and so on. Whenever I look at a celebrity I think, "would this person give me the time of day?" And of course I think about whether or not I can see myself in them, and what it means to see oneself in another person -- sometimes it's about demographics, sometimes about spirit, sometimes other things. I have heard too many times that it "takes the magic away" to understand the universe around us, but I've always thought it increases the wonder the more we know. I [like to] think Dr. Tyson (Ph.D and all that) would, if he had time, talk to me a little, whereas I know a lot of people assume I'm too dumb to talk to based on looking at me. And I know that because of him no one can tell a Black kid they can't be an astrophysicist, not anymore.
And then I think about how other people have these reactions about other celebrities. For instance, Marie Kondo, who has advice to give about people's relationships with our stuff which resonate with many people, and who is ... how do I put it? A leader of thought, which is not a position US society is generally eager to let a woman of color occupy, or an Asian person, or someone working from a non-Christian ethical framework, and here we have an Asian woman developing an important role and giving out advice that many people needed and wanted and which is based in her knowledge of religion and spirituality. Her method isn't for me, and I cringe a little at the term "does it spark joy" (people being what we are, it just seems too easy to me for one person to set themself up as the arbiter of joy for others under their power), but thinking about this makes some interactions I've had make a little more sense. It will never stop being bitterly funny that two people in particular, both with net worth higher than mine, came at me as Contributing Mightily To Racism because I wrote about not wanting to get rid of my books due to a message that got garbled in transmission, but if they found Ms. Kondo more easily identifiable with than me in my bibliophilia, it makes sense that they attacked me for her honor (even if it's funny because I have no influence over anyone and she has an audience of hundreds of millions and more).
After all, as I've been circling around this whole essay, we all have a collection of famous people who reflect us back to ourselves. It makes sense to be defensive of them (even if it can be really annoying to find oneself on the other end of that), and to recognize that tendency in oneself. (This is me not responding to the bit of snark that set me off in the first place.)
So I am lying here Doing Nothing Useful [not least because I had to stay at work an extra hour to get a spreadsheet done Today ugh], and I read some stupid thing Neil Degrasse Tyson said and people dunking on it, and I felt a reflexive clench of defensive annoyance on his behalf. Because [to try to keep this analysis under 500 words] when he says the universe is uncaring it's as a pushback against the common religious/spiritual idea that Everything (even the worst thing that ever happened to you, getting raped and miscarrying and your mother dying of cancer and your city getting bombed flat) Happens For A Reason. (At least for some people) It can be easier to accept that the universe is meaningless (or that we make our own meaning) than that God Intended for you to get raped because You Deserved It You Slut (and so on). But more than that, I've always admired him because 1) he has said some gracious encouraging things comparing the pushback he got as a Black kid with the pushback women in STEM get and 2) he was a Black boy in the Bronx with a telescope on a roof. Do you know how brave and dangerous that was, to own an implement most NYC flatfoots wouldn't recognize, as a person they'd shoot on sight pretty much for existing? How many of the Twitterites who snark at him would hand a telescope to a Black kid?
I mean, I have also been told the stars don't belong to me because I'm Black, so I have a little fellow feeling for him. He does opine on subjects he doesn't know about, and hopefully will rein in that tendency somewhat one of these days, but is he really the only man who ever does that? I've met worse mansplainers at every party I attended in my 20's And it does seem that one of the reasons so many people have such antipathy for him, far more than for the kajillion White dudes who say stupid stuff, is that he will never look like many people's idea of a smart person. He has reasons to be cocky, even over-cocky, as pushback against many people who think he should be smaller in every way and that someone else should have had his jobs. There's a popular filker (now dead) who wrote about how they thought Neil Degrasse Tyson was a fraud being fed answers, and reading their posts and the people agreeing with them broke my heart.
But then I started thinking about my own reaction and so on. Whenever I look at a celebrity I think, "would this person give me the time of day?" And of course I think about whether or not I can see myself in them, and what it means to see oneself in another person -- sometimes it's about demographics, sometimes about spirit, sometimes other things. I have heard too many times that it "takes the magic away" to understand the universe around us, but I've always thought it increases the wonder the more we know. I [like to] think Dr. Tyson (Ph.D and all that) would, if he had time, talk to me a little, whereas I know a lot of people assume I'm too dumb to talk to based on looking at me. And I know that because of him no one can tell a Black kid they can't be an astrophysicist, not anymore.
And then I think about how other people have these reactions about other celebrities. For instance, Marie Kondo, who has advice to give about people's relationships with our stuff which resonate with many people, and who is ... how do I put it? A leader of thought, which is not a position US society is generally eager to let a woman of color occupy, or an Asian person, or someone working from a non-Christian ethical framework, and here we have an Asian woman developing an important role and giving out advice that many people needed and wanted and which is based in her knowledge of religion and spirituality. Her method isn't for me, and I cringe a little at the term "does it spark joy" (people being what we are, it just seems too easy to me for one person to set themself up as the arbiter of joy for others under their power), but thinking about this makes some interactions I've had make a little more sense. It will never stop being bitterly funny that two people in particular, both with net worth higher than mine, came at me as Contributing Mightily To Racism because I wrote about not wanting to get rid of my books due to a message that got garbled in transmission, but if they found Ms. Kondo more easily identifiable with than me in my bibliophilia, it makes sense that they attacked me for her honor (even if it's funny because I have no influence over anyone and she has an audience of hundreds of millions and more).
After all, as I've been circling around this whole essay, we all have a collection of famous people who reflect us back to ourselves. It makes sense to be defensive of them (even if it can be really annoying to find oneself on the other end of that), and to recognize that tendency in oneself. (This is me not responding to the bit of snark that set me off in the first place.)
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Date: 2022-03-10 02:13 am (UTC)Not to ignore the rest of this essay, or perhaps to agree with some of it, I didn't think that was even a controversial position.
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Date: 2022-03-10 02:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-10 02:33 am (UTC)If you saw just Dr. NdGT's comment and J Random Person attempting to refute it, then I can absolutely see rising to his defense.
If my post set you off on its own, I'm sorry, but I didn't mean to celebrate the dunk.
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Date: 2022-03-10 02:39 am (UTC)So no worries at all. I trust you.
*hugs you*
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Date: 2022-03-10 02:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-10 04:04 pm (UTC)For me: we're going into three years of a global pandemic the right is intent on pretending never happened, on the cusp of a nuclear war we aren't in a position to stop, with midterm elections in my country not looking good for the left and bigoted legislation passing all over here, there and yonder.
I know Dr Tyson did not post that tweet last night, but tumblr was designed as a site with ADHD, and all time on tumblr is "now" and "not now"
The universe is cold and uncaring cannot be read, now, without overtones of nihilistic fatalism and it's just one more thing wearing away ever-thinning drive to be the change I want to see. It makes me want to take Dr Tyson aside and tell him to please get better at reading the damn room. Which is full of people hanging by the thread of one more neat fact about space to top us up with enough awe to get through the day, and who do not want to hear the universe is cold and uncaring from their neat space fact man.
Very little of what Dr Tyson does is mansplaining; he can school me on astrophysics until the cows come home and I would have no standing to say anything but "you mean that was ALSO a gross oversimplication in service of helping me understand a different piece of the whole science?" and it would not be mansplaining, because Dr Tyson has literally written more about astrophysics than I will ever dream of laying my eyes upon. He almost definitely has an edge on me in sociopolitics.
I'd guess we'd be even or myself slightly ahead in literary analysis (ie talkin' about blorbo from our shows). (In order for Sisko to be the best captain (he is) we must either take into account only episodes in which captain is his rank or we must first change the definition of captain (changing the definition is objectively correct in this case but not in all cases)).
I know way more about Stardew Valley than Dr Tyson does; but because he lives being a Black scientist surrounded by white folks in his field he has a better handle on Maru and Demitrius's characterization than I do even without playing the game.
And so I want very much for him to listen to the very smart PR people he is no doubt paying and maybe try to keep in the back of his mind that he is both 1) a public figure now and 2) that comes with the weight of trying to put a little more look at this beautiful gas cloud, it smells like raspberries and we know that because of it's color and a little less the universe doesn't care about you
(P.s. My friend's daughter got to meet him backstage at a speaking event and he is apparently both very nice and very good with kids. Which endears him to me and makes me forgive pretty much every verbal misstep he makes, because he's Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysicist who was nice to my friend's kid, not Dr Blorb deBo Blorbo, sociologist who is consistently mean when he doesn't have to be)
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Date: 2022-03-10 08:39 pm (UTC)Then I think this is very strongly a case of survival mileage varying. I haven't seen the wording of the original tweet, but even the universe doesn't care about you is not a nihilistic statement for me. I draw a great deal of utility—beauty, solace, strength—from a world full of things that will outlast me without knowing I was there. They are not choosing indifference, as a cruel person might; they do not have the capacity for it. It doesn't follow for me that because we live in a universe which cannot care about us, we get a free pass on choosing not to care about one another. The alternative—a universe indistinguishable from those constructions of God which create the problem of evil, which I do not disagree in the least we are currently being overwhelmed by and far too much of it at the hands of a death-cult that believes in that kind of a God—would leave me with very little encouragement to keep fighting to live except to find the universe and punch it in the face.
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Date: 2022-03-10 10:28 pm (UTC)I would like to clarify that I've explicitly and with significant trauma rejected the
Christiangod death cult you've offered as "the" (only?) alternative to the universe is vast and uncaring as a statement offering utility, beauty, solace, and strength.For me, "the universe is vast and uncaring" carries with it the weight of "therefore nothing I do matteres, no one will remember me when I'm dead and the existence of an afterlife unlikely, therefore there is no point and I might as well stop trying, send my cat back to the shelter and mail my snake back to her breeder and wallow in self neglect until I'm evicted or die or both". That's my knee jerk reaction to thr immensity of my own insignificance in the vastness of everything else; the God death culting I've spent over half my life scrubbing from my psyche has nothing to do with it.
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Date: 2022-03-10 10:54 pm (UTC)This reminds me. I love your snek, and how you love your snek. (And I love you.) I love that you and she, across species, across classes of creatures even, have forged a friendship. That's an example to me of how we can make our own meaning and how beautiful that is.
Interestingly, I intend to write her into my Story Of Ridiculousness, but there she will be part of a religious practice (of a kinder religion) and her friendship with her girl will be in that context.
But in both IRL and in the story, the friendship is ultimately between a snake and her girl. That's what I want to depict because it makes me happy.
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Date: 2022-03-10 11:09 pm (UTC)hugs you
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Date: 2022-03-11 01:55 am (UTC)I appreciate the clarification. Mine is that I'm Jewish. A universe sentient enough to reproduce the dilemma of theodicy does not need to exist within a Christian framework in order for me to want to punch it in the face. Our responses to the vastness of the universe seem to be sufficiently divergent that we're back to survival mileage and I am glad to hear that you and your cat and your snake are continuing to survive.
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Date: 2022-03-11 02:52 am (UTC)I'm also coming at it from the perspective of a survivor of fairly extensive childhood neglect. not being noticed or cared about is, as you noted, a spectrum where we're on opposite ends of the spectrum
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Date: 2022-03-11 07:21 am (UTC)It is thoughtful of you to provide additional context. I would accept that your feelings about the universe are different from mine without it. I care about not having my positions mistaken; I don't need our coping mechanisms for being alive to be the same.
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Date: 2022-03-11 01:35 am (UTC)Yeah, that's kind of where I am. I mean, half my icons are such things. I want the world's oldest olive tree to outlive me and a girl a hundred years from now to fall in love with the statuette in my icon. And stuff. Am fried or I'd say more.
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Date: 2022-03-11 02:06 am (UTC)I love that idea. It sounds like a line of Sappho.
Am fried or I'd say more.
*hugs*
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Date: 2022-03-10 02:47 am (UTC)I would probably be intimidated to meet Dr. Tyson in person because WTF do I know about anything, but something about his persona makes him seem like he'd be at least more caring than the average celebrity.
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Date: 2022-03-10 03:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-13 05:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-10 03:58 am (UTC)I've always viewed him as being larger than life, and I keep turning over the idea that marginalized people who come into celebrity have to either be that or somehow squash themselves/ourselves into a box the shape of which will disarm or placate the people who are not marginalized. After that I thought, Fine, be a bit much, go right ahead. Not that he needs my permission. But now when he says something that I might think over the top, I just grin and want to salute him. Because really.
This is not as well thought out as I want it to be, but I offer it as a fleeting view.
Also I would like to hand you all the telescopes, if I had any.
P.
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Date: 2022-03-10 05:38 am (UTC)It doesn't matter whether the universe is uncaring. It's OUR JOB as human beings to be as caring as we can manage.
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Date: 2022-03-10 07:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-10 01:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-10 02:50 pm (UTC)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggie_Aderin-Pocock
I can't believe some toerags have told you the stars don't belong to you. What wankers. The stars belong to everyone and no one...
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Date: 2022-03-10 03:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-10 04:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-10 03:26 pm (UTC)As someone who was indoctrinated as a Christian fundamentalist in my youth and spent years unpacking exactly this, I wish more people would say stuff like this. It feels very lonely to be the only atheist/agnostic in the room sometimes, people get so defensive even when I try to be polite and respectful about it and not One Of Those Atheists, so having a well-known person like Neil Degrasse Tyson saying something like this is actually very comforting to me.
Moving right along, I've always thought Dr. Tyson was cool and the sort of guy I'd love to have coffee with and pick his brain about stuff, but let's be real my brain would short-circuit and I'd be in doge mode like "such science, so physics, very space, wow" spilling coffee on myself or getting whipped cream on my nose or something.
I have also been told the stars don't belong to me because I'm Black
Grrrrrrrrrr. I'm sorry people have been like that. WHY ARE PEOPLE. WHY ARE RACISTS
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Date: 2022-03-10 03:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-10 04:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-10 04:05 pm (UTC)I am pretty sure that, all my feelings about Marie Kondo aside, the fact that her method (modified) works for me is a practical joke Hestia is playing on me personally for not keeping my oven clean.
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Date: 2022-03-10 04:09 pm (UTC)*huggles you*
*anodizes the oven*
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Date: 2022-03-10 04:27 pm (UTC)Hestia: "I am going to give you complicated feelings!"
Me: "Oh yeah, well I'M going to REPLACE my oven with a microwave and a home brew setup!"
Me:
Me: ok, fine, I ordered two cans of oven cleaner
Hestia: You don't even like wine
Me: (sobbing slightly at the state of my oven) I don't even like wine