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on race and translation
Aug. 2nd, 2007 11:00 pmthere's a poem in one of the books I read recently
I remembered it from a bit that said I am not your bridge
it kind of says why I feel so hesitant to ask questions about some stuff. Because it's nobody's actual job to translate experiences for me. Bouncing up to someone and asking "hey, tell me all about your life!" might work in some situations, but in others it's kind of like the bit where Neil Gaiman puts in his FAQ that he won't do people's homework for them. Only more so, because it's like the homework question isn't even one that someone can answer as their one and only individual self, because they're being asked to have many voices and translate all of them.
But the flip side is, some people have answered that stuff already. Figure the question right, figure out how to google it, and you can find people talking about what it is to be Indian in Britain or Black in Canada or White in Singapore or whatever else it is that you don't know. Because people have been coming on this big interweb thingy for years and years already, and telling us all about their life.
The trouble comes with lesson the first, ask the right questions.
What if I don't know enough to know what it is I need to know?
Ignorant of my ignorance, bouncing along committing stereotype or something.
... I don't like that idea at all.
Sometimes I think I'd like to know everything about everyone in the whole world and then maybe Understand stuff. But then I remember Files&Records or the Bard who wished to know all the stories and I think I quite like being people still instead. But by that definition people are defined by their ignorance, making them one particular individual instead of a whole hive mind kind of thing. Which seems odd, with the other ignorance is poison view.
Being individual is poison??? Weird.
I think I'd like to know a whole lot more than I do. I read and read and read, but even if I poured the whole internet into my head I still wouldn't know enough. And I'd have to do more than a lifetime of thinking to connect it all and make sense of it!
People have lots of individual points of view. We are the universe seeking to understand itself. I think maybe trying to understand *all* itself at once is not so much the place to start. Understand this bit standing here, maybe. Then the bits it touches.
Lots of things touch us that we don't even see. Life complicated that way.
Is why I write ghost stories actually. Can touch us, we can touch them. Like memories, like the past (without a TARDIS). No changing it from here. But much to learn from it before it can rest.
I remembered it from a bit that said I am not your bridge
it kind of says why I feel so hesitant to ask questions about some stuff. Because it's nobody's actual job to translate experiences for me. Bouncing up to someone and asking "hey, tell me all about your life!" might work in some situations, but in others it's kind of like the bit where Neil Gaiman puts in his FAQ that he won't do people's homework for them. Only more so, because it's like the homework question isn't even one that someone can answer as their one and only individual self, because they're being asked to have many voices and translate all of them.
But the flip side is, some people have answered that stuff already. Figure the question right, figure out how to google it, and you can find people talking about what it is to be Indian in Britain or Black in Canada or White in Singapore or whatever else it is that you don't know. Because people have been coming on this big interweb thingy for years and years already, and telling us all about their life.
The trouble comes with lesson the first, ask the right questions.
What if I don't know enough to know what it is I need to know?
Ignorant of my ignorance, bouncing along committing stereotype or something.
... I don't like that idea at all.
Sometimes I think I'd like to know everything about everyone in the whole world and then maybe Understand stuff. But then I remember Files&Records or the Bard who wished to know all the stories and I think I quite like being people still instead. But by that definition people are defined by their ignorance, making them one particular individual instead of a whole hive mind kind of thing. Which seems odd, with the other ignorance is poison view.
Being individual is poison??? Weird.
I think I'd like to know a whole lot more than I do. I read and read and read, but even if I poured the whole internet into my head I still wouldn't know enough. And I'd have to do more than a lifetime of thinking to connect it all and make sense of it!
People have lots of individual points of view. We are the universe seeking to understand itself. I think maybe trying to understand *all* itself at once is not so much the place to start. Understand this bit standing here, maybe. Then the bits it touches.
Lots of things touch us that we don't even see. Life complicated that way.
Is why I write ghost stories actually. Can touch us, we can touch them. Like memories, like the past (without a TARDIS). No changing it from here. But much to learn from it before it can rest.