Strip Club Shenanigans: Introduction

Yeah, not an original title...let's move on.

For the past few years, I have been trying to convince a friend of mine to blog under a pseudonym about her sex work. (She is working on it.) Then I realized how hypocritical it is of me to give her the push while I "have" experience of my own - "have" as in I did not partake in the sexual stimulations, but worked as a waitress in a strip club in Texas. I posted on Facebook, asking who would be interested in reading my stories and observations from when I did that, and I received an overwhelming positive response. So here we go.

I am going to make this into a series on this blog, but I am not sure about how many posts I will end up making, or if the series will ever truly end. For the safety of the joint, customers, and workers, I am not going to publicly disclose the name of the place I worked. Remember that while I do have a unique experience, I am only one person in a sea full of people in the industry, and experiences will definitely vary by location as well as by individual. However, I do think with my BA in anthropology, my insights are worth looking at.

In 2011, a former friend convinced me to start working as a stripper before I went off to college. I knew that my family would not be accepting of this, so I decided to look into being a waitress. Depending on the days, waitresses can sometimes make more than the strippers, which is a positive. However, I liked the freedom that the strippers had of being independent contractors, a system that would work better for my situation anyhow, since I wanted to do this near the end of summer, nearing the time I had to fly into Washington for my first quarter. Luckily, I was able to work out a deal with the establishment where I could work as an independent contractor but as a waitress.

Just because I didn't work as a stripper doesn't mean I didn't play around on the poles with other waitresses when things were slow.

I do not remember how I ended up choosing that - maybe because it was the closest to where I lived? Despite only going to be working as a waitress, my parents were the opposite of thrilled. After a lot of arguing and crying, they begrudgingly "let" me work there. I was 19 at the time. Since I did not have a car of my own and had no license, I had to pay them $10 for gas money each day I worked.

We agreed that my first day of work would be on a Sunday. Little did we know that Sundays are actually (one of) the busiest days of the week there. I did not want to work night shifts for several reasons, so I would only do day shifts. Day shifts were from 11 am to 7 pm, and evening shifts from 7 pm to 2 am. I ended up working almost solely on Sundays, until I came back the next summer (and some other times) to work on Sundays and Fridays.

Overall, I enjoyed working at a strip club. I would recommend it for those interested working in any aspect of it, with a few caveats. I would consider working there again if I needed a lot of money (according to my standards) in short notice.

Let me know in the comments if you have any questions about my experience, or if you would like me to address a certain topic in a later post.

Whether as a writer or a waitress, I like it when people tip!

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"Avatar: The Last Airbender" - "The Promise" analysis

Hopefully it goes without saying that there will be spoilers.

For about a year, I have been waiting to make enough money to buy the A:TLA comic books. Unfortunately whenever I did have enough money, I always forgot about them. One week, I got lucky enough to have about $30 to spend on whatever I wanted, so naturally, I decided it was time to buy some of the comic books. I bought one which was the collection of all the comics kind of just lying around, from Nickelodeon Magazine and such.

 

That was good fun, but I know I also had to get The Promise, and especially The Search - I mean who does not want to find out what happened to Zuko's mother?? The problem was...I only had enough money for either or. Because I am weird like this, I decided to buy The Promise because it came out before The Search. Yes, that is how my mind works. Sure, I will die a happy woman once I find out what happened to her, but chronological order is more important.


Maybe by buying The Promise first, I actually spared myself a few more months to live.

I had no idea I would enjoy it as much as I did - hence why I am writing this.

In order for you to know what I am even talking about, I will provide a synopsis for you - as a refresher if you have already read it, or do not ever care to read it (or you want to read it, but do not care about spoilers). After the war, Firelord Zuko and Earth King Kuei agree that is best that the former Fire Nation colonies are restored to how they once were, and Avatar Aang is recruited (or more like he volunteers) to make sure the transition is peaceful. It will be called "The Harmony Restoration Movement."

With a name like that, how could anything possibly go wrong??

Later, Zuko makes Aang promise him that if he ever sees him turning into his father, to "end" him. Reluctantly, Aang promises (hence, why this book is called what it is). A year later, a woman tries to assassinate Zuko, and he finds out that she did so because of her anger at The Harmony Restoration Movement, which is affecting her home - one of the colonies. The woman's father makes a point that generations of Fire Nation citizens have lived there, so they consider it home. After visiting with his father (which he does quite a bit), he decides to retract his support from THRM, which infuriates Aang, who seeks Avatar Roku's help. (In this case, Roku was as useful as he was when Aang tried to decide how to defeat Ozai without compromising Air Nomad morals.)

The Gaang goes to Yu Dao (that colony) where they encounter people, including the Freedom Fighters, protesting Zuko's decision. Speaking with Zuko, they discover that Yu Dao is the oldest Fire Nation Colony, where the first colonials settled over a hundred years ago. Because of the Earth Kingdom's influence, the citizens were able to develop some of the finest metalwork, making it one of the richest cities in the world, making it better for everybody who lived there. Not only did this help the economy and well-being of Yu Dao, the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation people started marrying. The woman who tried to kill Zuko is the child of such a mix. Zuko's explanation does not phase Aang because he believes that in order to be peace and harmony throughout the world, the four nations need to be completely separate from each other.

Let me tell you - once you read the first few pages of this book, you will never watch the A:TLA finale the same way again.

There is a sidestory about Toph and her school called "The Beifong Metalbending Academy" where she tries to teach a cast of misfits. However, due to THRM, a firebending school takes over the building, "reclaiming" it. They agree on having a match to see who is the better school...and Sokka seeing how much better the firebending students are, agrees to help train Toph's students. In the meantime, Aang and Katara land in Ba Sing Se and bump into the city's  chapter of the "Official Avatar Aang Fan Club." Katara gets jealous, but the Club provides them with a place to stay for the night.

Zuko, seeking advice on "pressures of the throne," visits his father, who tells him a story of an incident that happened during one of their family vacations to Ember Island. Young Zuko, no more than three-years-old, tried to rescue a turtle-crab from a hawk at the beach - he had an "odd affinity for the weak." Ozai says, "The hawk looked at you with hungry eyes, and you realized you were condemning it to starve." Before Zuko could make a decision on whether to side with the hawk or turtle-crab, a giant wave carried him out into the ocean and Ozai had to save him. After Zuko brings his father some tea, he figures he should have sided with the hawk - "It was strong and noble, much like the Fire Nation. It had earned its meal." Ozai does not accept his assessment, saying he is only partially correct, and tells him, "What I'm saying is this - there is no right or wrong apart from what you decide. Who you choose to defend deserves to be defended simply because you chose them." While Zuko is have an inner-battle between what is right and wrong, Ozai points out that the Earth King will send out his army to "crush" the Fire National colonials, "in an attempt to restore his own dignity." Ozai also believes that the Avatar is "an irrelevant relic of a bygone age" because he/she does not allow the stronger to triumph over the weak. Zuko defends Aang as his friend, but Ozai asks if he trusts Aang more than himself, and Zuko is unable to answer.

Kori, the woman who tried to kill Zuko, is training with her cousins when her boyfriend, Sneers, a member of the Freedom Fighters shows up. After learning that Sneers was a part of the protestors, she gets mad and they argue. He tells her she either has to choose the Earth Kingdom or Fire Nation. She replies, "Choose, choose, choose! All my life, people have been asking me to choose! I am an earthbender and a Fire Nation citizen, and I live in Yu Dao! That's what I choose!"

After Katara and Aang break the news to the Earth King about Zuko's refusal to continue with THRM, Earth King Kuei thinks it over and decides he is "tired of being weak" - he is going to send his army to Yu Dao, and the colonials have the options of  leaving peacefully or facing "the most dire of consequences," much to Katara's and Aang's horror.

When the Gaang goes to Yu Dao to warn the Fire Nation to leave because of the Earth King's army, they find out, just like Zuko did, that the situation is more complicated than they originally thought. The president of the Yu Dao chapter of the Avatar Aang Fan Club, Xing Ying, enters and introduces herself to Aang, who is impressed by her and her club members' attire ("Your clothes look just like the uniforms the Western Air Temple students used to wear!...And the arrows you've painted on your foreheads look almost exactly like real airbender tattoos!") However, to his frustration, he finds out that the tattoos are real, which ends up in this exchange:

"What?! But air nomad tattoos have to be earned though years and years of airbending practice! They're not-"

"Oh, we know, Avatar Aang! For a fan club member to receive her tattoos, she must master of airbender-like forms!"

""Airbender like"?! Those tattoos are sacred to my people! They describe who we are and how see the world! You have no right to tattoo yourselves like that!"

"I assure you that our members go through the most rigorous of study programs! By the end, they-"

"But how could you study air nomad philosophy at all and still do something like this?!

Despite Katara trying to reassure Aang that it was an honest mistake, he continues with, "For you to treat our tattoos like a part of some...some costume...! My costume isn't a game!"

After Aang flies off, Katara finds him in a miserable state, and he relays to her his thoughts, "I think I figured out why the nations have to be separate for harmony. Whenever two nations come together, the stronger one can't help but hurt the weaker one. They'll conquer or burn or, at the very least, make a joke of the weaker nation."

Katara replies with, "You once told me that separation is an illusion. Guru Pathik taught you that. The Four Nations are really one and the same."

Aang is caught up with preserving the world as he knows it, and feels that he has to see THRM through the end, even if that means fulfilling his promise to Zuko and going against his air nomad philosophy.
 
It would have probably been great if this song existed in the Avatar world.
Katara reveals to Aang that the first time Zuko showed them around Yu Dao, she "saw Kori and her family standing in the street, staring at us like we held their whole lives in our hands," leading her to change her mind about THRM. Their session is interrupted by Smellerbee's protestors, and after quelling some of the action, Katara goes on to say that what she wants is to find a peaceful way for Yu Dao to go on the way it has for the past century.  Aang wants to end things peacefully too, but with the Fire Nation leaving Yu Dao peacefully too. She knows that it is not an option anymore when both the Zuko's and the Earth King's armies arrive.
After getting out of the way of most of the action, Katara tells Aang that when she saw Kori's family, she also saw their future. "If the nations have to be separate, what will that mean for us?" Aang decides to go find a quite place to help himself make the right decisions.
Sokka sums up the situation perfectly: "Let me see if I got this, the protesters and the Earth Kingdom army want the colonials to go, the Fire Nation army wants the colonials to stay, and the Yu Dao resistance just want their city to be left alone?"
Katara makes her way into the Earth King's hot air balloon, where he is cowering, and he remarks with, "Who knew Yu Dao would be like this?!"
"You've never visited Yu Dao?" Katara responds.
"Up until a year ago, I'd never even visited my own city's outer ring."
She extends a hand to him to show him the people "who have had to live with [his] decisions." After the Earth King gets to see how Yu Dao actually is, all ends well...although Roku warns Aang in meditation that if he continuing to make indecisive action, he continues to put the world at risk. (Is this from Roku's own regret on not killing Sozin, and/or have we seen repercussions in Korra?)
Even the Yu Dao Avatar Aang Fan Club earns Aang's respect, as he tells them:
"I have to admit, I'm a little nervous about this. I love my people's culture and I don't want to see it corrupted. At the same time, it can't just belong to history. Air Nomad culture has to belong to the future, too. According to my friends, many of you led the way to peace on the battlefield, putting your lives at risk for the sake of others. I 'm deeply impressed. You already have the hearts of Air Nomads, so I've decided to teach you the ways of the air nomads. But you can't just be a fan club anymore. From now on, you'll be known as the Air Acolytes!"
They seriously need to make these comic books into TV movies.
Anywho, now that I am done with providing you all with practically the gist of the entire book, let us touch upon the themes...
While The Harmony Restoration Movement sounds good on paper, as we can see, it did not play out well in real-life. Little did anyone expect two nations living in one area not only cooperating with each other, but starting families. The idea of the four nations has been around for so long that they cannot see through the illusion of the separate nations. I would be willing to bet all of my money (which is not saying much, since I am literally broke while writing this) that this series of events with THRM and Yu Dao were a precursor to the establishment of Republic City. Not only were the"Fire Nation" and "Earth Kingdom" citizens cozying up with each other, but their economy is pretty damn good. Is this a precursor to global capitalism in the Avatar world, and that it makes people's lives better?
By reading this, I felt we got to know Ozai a bit better , and not necessarily in a bad way (adds a bit of dimension). Ozai's story about Zuko connects with the theme of Roku's disapproval of Aang being "indecisive." When Ozai says that the Avatar is the "irrelevant relic of a bygone age," it reminds me of the Red Lotus' beliefs on keeping nations separate. We get to see that a ruler can set out their armies on a whim, also keeping in tune with the Red Lotus' ideas that leaders and governments cannot be trusted. It also foreshadows the topic of the relevance of the Avatar that Korra is struggling with in her series.
Through learning that story of Zuko and the discussion he has with his father afterwards, I can see a theme that makes its way into Book 3 of Korra - the absolute power of the leader, whether or not the people of the kingdom or elsewhere agree with it. According to Ozai, if Zuko has to make a choice, by making that choice, he makes it the correct one. Bumi points out in Book 3 of Korra that the Earth Queen had the right to treat her citizens in the dastardly way she did. I kept procrastinating while writing this, but we see the same thing (it's actually a major theme) in Book 4 of Korra.
It is only when the Earth King actually sees the people of Yu Dao, he and Zuko decide not to go through with THRM. Because of Katara wanting to one day form a family with Aang, she knows that THRM will do no good for anyone. Too often in the world (yes, including ours) we separate ourselves from other groups of people and label them as "others," an unfortunate side effect of human's natural tendency to collectivism, which is not a bad thing. Nevertheless, in a changing world, behaviors that have served us well in the past can turn their backs on us. With wars being waged around the war, it can be too easy to isolate ourselves from other groups. By letting individuals on all sides connect with each other, we can see that not all members of that certain group are bad.
The last social topic I ever thought that A:TLA would touch upon is that of cultural appropriation. Despite the Yu Dao Avatar Aang Fan Club's sincere attempt at reviving the Air Nomad culture, Aang is infuriated at their (unknowing) lack of respect. I find discussions on cultural appropriation to be quite sticky and headache-inducing at times because of many individual agents trying to define the term - where is the line crossed from cultural appreciation to appropriation? When in time does wearing a costume become appropriation to historical reference, and does it depend on the group? (For example, is a samurai costume a historical costume or a stereotypical reflection of Japanese culture?) Very basically, I think it can be defined as people wearing costumes that superficially display a certain culture, especially sacred garments, in a way that contributes to the objectification of the attire and that culture.
People try to tack on other aspects to the definition, but this is what we will stick with right now because this is a topic that deserves its own post. Not only does Aang have to deal with children appropriating the sacredness of his culture, but he has to, again, face the reality that his people are gone. While his feelings were probably justified, the way he went about scolding them was not. All too often in real life, I see people shaming others who engage in cultural appropriation (think Halloween). Realistically, the people who wear "geisha" costumes or dress as an "Indian chief" do not realize the impact of dressing as these characters. It is important to try to patiently educate them on why what they are doing is potentially harmful. Of course, Katara is able to sympathize with the Avatar Aang Fan Club. The formation of the Air Acolytes is a good compromise in this situation, but I doubt it could be employed in the real world for several reasons. What were some of your thoughts about this story? Which themes have you noticed in this that are also seen in A:TLA and Korra?

"Long Live the Queen" - Red Lotus and anarchism

To think that I thought that shit went down last week. (I mean, it did, but it does not quite compare with this week's episode - Book 3, Episode 10 "Long Live the Earth Queen.")

Do I even need to tell you that there will be spoilers?

After the Red Lotus gives the Earth Queen Mako and Bolin in exchange for Korra when she arrives, they hear that the ship carrying Korra crashed in a desert, and they know that there is no way that Korra would be able to be caught again. They go into the throne room and the Earth Queen threatens to imprison them. Then Zaheer says another badass anarchist quote:

"I don't believe in queens. You think freedom is something that you can give or take on a whim, but to your people, freedom is just as essential as...air, and without it, there is no life. There is only...darkness."

(For some reason, I feel like I need to clear up that the way I punctuated this is actually different than from how it is punctuated with captions. I wanted Zaheer's speaking style to show.)

I also changed punctuation for this to make it more visually-appealing.

Answer the timeless question: is freedom essential to the human condition?

After the Earth Queen's assassination, Zaheer announces to Ba Sing Se that they are now free, and lets out the Queen's prisoners. Ghazan tears down the walls that separate the levels of the city, and we see civilians eagerly rushing towards areas they had never seen before. Next thing we know, looters and rioters are wreaking havoc on the city.

Seriously, hopefully I am not the only one who found parallels.

I guess that would make Mako the Dark Knight.

I have always wanted to write about the walls of Ba Sing Se that separate the levels from each other, and use it to illustrate real-life examples, such as gated communities and Brasil. While I am critical of the divisions, which most likely contribute to the socioeconomic inequality, I realized I had not given thought to the idea of immediately bringing them down before.

Do you believe that lawlessness like that would exist in real life if walls separating different classes of people (that these people grew up with) were brought down? Remember that they are also being encouraged by Bane...er, I mean Zaheer and the Red Lotus. Or would it be as realistic as The Purge?

This speculation got me wondering about Murray Rothbard's "button to end the state" - the gist being if there was a button that ended all the states everywhere, would you push it? You do not necessarily have to believe in anarchism, just in the idea that governments as we know them are over-inflated and that there is no way to bring their power down to a reasonable level with the political processes already in existence.

Personally, I would not push the button. You?

A friend of mine wrote this - it was commentary on a speaker we were listening to, but I forgot what exactly the speaker was talking about:

"To be clear hesitation to press Rothbard's Button can arise from more than just fear of a new, more tyrannical state. It can also come from the desire to see gradualist policies to help make a more peaceful transition to a "stateless" society while also helping to establish a social and economic order that would be conducive to a horizontal, equitable, and free society."

I guess my point is that what the Red Lotus has done to Ba Sing Se is evidence that pushing the button is a bad idea.

EDIT: Michelangelo Landgrave wrote a response to this.

Do you believe what the Red Lotus did to Ba Sing Se was bad? (I do.)

Should Zaheer have killed the Earth Queen? (I do not think so. Then again, I make a terrible violent revolutionary. I feel like it is going to end up like one of those kid shows or movies when we see the character a little bit later, just injured.)

I think we can all agree that the Earth Queen was out-of-line. Are any libertarians still non-interventionist after watching Book 3?

What could have been some better alternatives to liberate Ba Sing Se?

The importance of cultural relativism

One of the first things you will learn in a class are definitions. How can you study psychology without knowing what is is?

In anthropology, some of the first words we will learn are "ethnography" and "archaeology." Another important term is "cultural relativism."

Cultural relativism is understanding a culture from within that culture.

For example, we can view the hijras of India as weird, gay men who dress like chicks. However, using cultural relativism, we can understand that hijras are a third gender, born male, that follow their spiritual path and take on more feminine characteristics, such as their means of dress.

Let's make this more relatable to us Americans. We like going to Europe. Ya know, study abroad trips, cruises, skiing, sightseeing, etc.

One of the countries we like to go to is Italy. When my older sister went to Italy, she said Italian guys would come up to her and her female friends and pushingly ask, "Number? Number?" Because 'Murican girls ain't easy at all. American tourists also have a bad reputation in a number of countries for their wild behavior.

Is this thanks to only a few Americans *coughJerseyShorecough* ? Or do we all like to party and sleep around when on vacation?

Let's say that Italy is trying to come up with a reason why all Americans are slutty and messy. They agree with this: Americans act that way because they think they can trample over every other country because they have the biggest and most wide-spread military.

What do the Italians do? They make it illegal for American tourists to come visit their country until the US cuts their military by one-third.

I'm not sure if this even makes sense - too sleepy. I have been  so busy with school lately, and that's why I haven't posted anything for a while. Anywho...

You see what I'm trying to say here? (If you don't, then just bear with me!) They're basing their assumptions on what they witness in their country. They didn't send sociologists to America to study the Americans. With the incorrect information - interpretation - of what causes an action or behavior, your "solution" may not do anything positive, or may even make things worse.

A few weeks ago, I came across this article.

While it is horrible for ten-year-old girls to be married off to older men, or at all, and while I don't agree with marriages that happen with children this young...the reactions to this are just plain stupid and ignorant.

Take this comment (while ignoring the spelling and grammatical errors):

"What kind of man has sex with a child??? There is no room for argument here; neither religious or otherwise. Everyone knows a child, and a 10 year old girl plays with dolls. And a 16 years girl is still a girl. A woman is developed with age and education and is mature. These men are pedephiles."

STUPID ALERT!

First off, the whole "10 year old girl plays with dolls" is very culturally-subjective. In some places, children as young as six have to take on adult roles. That's not really related to this though.

I saw people compare arranged marriage to slavery. That is almost never the case. Arranged marriages have been happening way before people started marrying for love. If this is slavery, then who are the slavemasters? The parents (who were probably arranged themselves)? The husband (especially if he is older)? I'm taking this a little personally because my mom's parents' marriage was arranged.

One person said that a dowry is a bribe. Just no.

Keep in mind, I am not speaking as if this were to all of a sudden be implemented in America.

In one of my anthropology classes, we watched a movie from India where this young girl is married off to a boy who is  a few years older. She befriends her husband's brother's wife, who is a bit older too. Spoiler alert...the stepsister dies from childbirth - she was too young.

That is the real concern here. The point of that movie was to get people in certain regions of India to realize that marrying off their daughters at a young age is dangerous.

However, angry reactions to this article talk about how marriage is slavery. Slavery is immoral. We have to do all that we can to stop it. Why isn't it that the fact the young girls die from marrying too young the real concern? Jeez people, think for once.

Now let's answer the most important question here - why is it that an older man is marrying a younger girl? One reason could be is that his wife died and there are no other females closer to his age. The more logical reason is that he has the means to take care of the girl. Yes, you have just read that. Read it again.

The girls' families care about their daughters. Not in the way they care about their sons, but it's still a strong bond. An older man is more likely to have the money needed to look after her and raise a family.

Hopefully you have now understood this from an emic perspective.

What do we do about this problem?

Do we send in Team America to save the day? and then piss off the countries' residents by trying to enforce our laws on them?

How about this: we educate the populace of those regions that partake in young marriages about the dangers of it and help make it easier for women to get an education.

Saying, "We are Americans. This thing you do is wrong. Let us stand in your way." without any real explanation is not the solution.

EDIT

I found this video that explores young marriage a little bit more. However, I don't really like how it completely vilifies the fathers because like I mentioned before; they also marry off the daughters so that the daughters themselves can be taken care of. I also don't like the solution the videos poses by amending the constitution. First, they need to help lift those people out of poverty somehow because even if the family can't marry off their daughters for dowry, they're still poor and can barely provide for their families. Yes, this video contains ignorant comments such as "these guys are PEDOPHILES" - you've been warned. Use your new understanding of cultural relativism to get a better sense of what is going on in this situation.

 

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The problem with the libertarian's emphasis on individualism

This post is inspired by this video, although I would have eventually written about it:

As an anthropology major thinking of minoring in psychology (and having an interest in all things human), I can't help but notice that humans are social creatures. Of course pretty much everyone reading this knows that already, but I don't think to the extent they should.

Watch this video:

And that video, for some reason, reminds me of the first episode of "The Twilight Zone."

From that (and I mean the video, not my associating it with "The Twilight Zone"), we gather that humans are highly social immediately from birth and that social connection impacts every aspect of how we live our lives.

Humans in the past were a part of tribes containing 150 to 300 people. Thanks to technology, population increase, and high population densities, we have doubled, tripled, or even more than quadrupled the number of people we associate with. I don't believe that it is necessarily a bad thing, it is especially a good thing to know when it comes to networking (which I will discuss on a later date).

I have been called a "collectivist" by some libertarians, as if it was a derogatory word. I will admit: I am a collectivist.

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So many times have I seen libertarians bashing collectivism and embracing individualism - identifying with being a part of a group is "bad" (hmmm, how about libertarianism?). Why is that? How is being a part of a group a bad thing? And why do libertarians place an emphasis on the individual?

First off, libertarians tend to have an infatuation (that is pretty sensible, in my opinion) with the Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence. There go dat word.

Both of these documents reiterate the importance of individualism, based on the teachings of John Locke and other philosophers.

I have found that the more well-off a society becomes, the more they will rely less on each other (and become vegetarians). This may or may not have a negative impact.

Some societies are very grounded in a collectivist and familial way of life, such as China and Japan. Both countries have been negatively affected by the western world because their traditional background differs very much from how most modern people there are starting to live their lives. I read about a study (not sure how long it will take, but I will find where I read this and put it here) where they found that Japanese exchange students have a more profound sense of individualism after living in America for some months.

Humans are naturally collectivists. Without being so, we would not be living today. However, some of us are evolving (a teensy bit) out of it.

If it's natural...then why is it a bad thing?

Tobacco is also natural.

For the most part, I think collectivism is a good thing. However, as anyone will learn in their psychology 101 class, being in groups can negatively affect your thoughts and behavior.

While collectivism has made the human species even exist, it also has its consequences:

1) Groupthink

2) Racism

These are 2 among many other problems. This stuff is bad today, but back then, this way of thinking saved our butts. We haven't evolved from it.

What problem, then, do I have with libertarians flaunting individualism? It's excessive. It is not how we evolved as a species. Don't get me going on whether or not I think it's something we should try to evolve out of. People today suffer from depression and loneliness because of our obsession with standing out. Not to mention each family in America only usually consists of the parents and their children in their little box tucked away from society, and in our ideal world, each family member (maybe except for the parents) would want even more exclusion with a room that belongs all to his or herself - hence, that will make the person secluded from the family, the family secluded from the neighborhood, the neighborhood secluded from the other neighborhoods, etc.

While on this sour note, here is what I think is probably the loneliest-sounding songs from all time:

By talking about humans naturally being collectivists, I am not saying we should all be talkative, social butterflies. I am an introvert. I also am a bit (and by "a bit," I mean very much so) anti-social. Nevertheless, some people are surprised because they find me to be very extroverted (I mean, others also find me the "most quiet person they have ever met"). One friend called me a "social introvert" - meaning that I realize the importance of being social. Trust me, that took years for me to do. I'm still working on it. Was this nurture or nature? My parents tell me that this part of my personality reminds me of my mom's father, a retired US Navy electrician from the Philippines. My parents and older sister are very outgoing. My little sister and I tend to be more quiet, although she definitely makes friends more easily than I do. Either way, I like being by myself most of the time, but that doesn't mean I forget to work on my relationships with other people.

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Am I for totally blocking out the idea of individualism? Of course not. In my mind, collectivism is necessary because it is how we survive as human beings, and how we will continue to survive for the next thousands of years...of course that is if we even survive. I always have this lingering feeling of the destruction of the human race from a meteor or something hitting the Earth...or the sun dying...or something else that happens in space.

What do I like about individualism? When not viewed in a self-centered way, it's what makes us who we are as people. As individuals, we contribute our own unique talents to how we function as a society. That is why I, a libertarian, consider myself to be a collectivist.

Wowee, this was supposed to be a short note.

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