Pensive Perspective: Part I - Childhood Fears and Reality

This is the first of two posts looking into what drives my research and me as a person. It delves into my personal and imperfect life-philosophy, and borders on self-righteous rant.

So here goes:

As I mentioned in my last post, many people asked me at the NOAH albinism conference if I was there because I had a child with albinism. I deduced that this was because I was not with an older family member or spouse and the only other possibility might be that I had a child who was in daycare throughout the program. The insinuation of the question was that there must be some personal reason that fuels my interest in the livelihoods of people who have the condition of albinism.

Most who asked me seem surprised when I told them that I have no relatives, nor anyone close to me, with albinism. It reminds me of another question I have gotten on occasion: why I am interested in race when I, and all of my family, is white? Several times I have reflected on these questions. Why is it such a shock that I should care so much about these issues? Is the fact that I share this world with people who have albinism and people who are of a different “race” not close enough of a reason to have interest in their lives? The injustice served upon another person is an injustice for us all. From my perspective, these injustices continue because there is something within enough people that blocks their capacity for sympathy.

Killer Bees

When I was younger, my three biggest fears were being locked in a bathroom (warranted by the Victorian-era locks in my home), killer bees (which were slowly making their way up South America and would surely kill us all), and global warming. What these fears have in common is my own helplessness to change the situation.

True, I could do my best to limit my impact on the environment – and I did (hence why I never wanted the balloons when my family went out to eat. I knew that balloon would slip out of my grasp and take off toward our precious atmosphere, be eaten by a bird, who would then promptly die, and then the helium would be released to increase the already broadening hole in the ozone layer). I learned later that most bathrooms have escape windows or at least doors that, if need be, can be taken down by an axe.

The killer bees I guess never really made it to Kentucky, so that left me with the fear of climate change. The thing about this fear, is that no amount of common sense or knowledge ever made it go away.

Air Pollution

I am not going to even justify the maddeningly ignorant belief that somehow we have not destroyed our planet through the incredulous amounts poisons we have created and permanent environmental change we have done. I cannot fathom the degree of sheer willpower it must take to ignore the recent increase in catastrophic natural disasters, and not think we must have played a role.

Deforestation

This change in our climate is horrific to me because there is nothing I, as an individual, can do to stop it. Not only is there nothing I can do to stop it, but there is nothing I can do to prevent my participation in its destruction. I can limit my participation but never remove myself. I admittingly chose to live in a world that requires electricity, fossil fuels and the death of trillions of beings all for the continuance of my one being. To create any positive change in how we treat our environment, It will take the work of either billions of us all working with and trusting one another, or the work of a small amount of people with real power in this world - unfortunately, those people who have the most to lose from such change. The possibility of either occurring is slim to none.

So I am horrified not just because I am affected by that which I cannot change, but because I am a participant in that system of destruction.

Water Pollution

But this does not make me want to stop trying. I recycle what I can. I will walk miles with a piece of trash in my hand rather than throwing it to the side of the road. I will make my showers as brief as possible.

And I will judge those who say “what does it matter?” I will judge those who don’t take the minimal effort to put their cardboard box in the recycling bin rather than the trash bin, which is millimeters apart. I will judge those who leave the water running for 10 minutes until their shower gets hot. I will love these people, yes, but I will judge them for their selfishness in a world where less than 0.5% of our water is potable. And I will judge myself for driving my car when I could walk. I will judge myself for going to the grocery store without bringing my own reusable bags. I judge others and myself because we are destroying what does not belong to us, and we are doing it not out of necessity, but out of want.

No I cannot stop the exponential decline of our planet. But I will sleep better at night knowing that I have done less harm than I could have.

As I have grown older I have come to develop other passions. To see and understand other injustices that make my stomach turn to think of. Pollution is not the only system of destruction that I play a part in; and in the next post I will show how this connects to my interest in albinism and race.