The “self” boils down to a network of neuronal connections. Neuronal connections that strengthen and multiply merely by being used. The more they are used the more they are used, and the more I affiliate their outcome with my self.

That’s how you can know something for a long time but not actually behave or feel in a way that reflects that knowledge. The pathways surrounding that knowledge haven’t been used often enough to be your default pathway. You have to will yourself into new behaviors, as your brain has been wired for years to do something else. And the more you will yourself, the more you’re strengthening your neurons so that eventually you won’t have to try so hard.

It takes a lot of work to be yourself.

"Haters, they gonna hate. And playas, they gonna play."

3LW. Just as true now as it was in 2001.

After 16 months of blogging, I got my first hate comments. Scroll down here for a comment from “Jeffry” and the double-whammy from “Phelonious.” Full name: “Phelonious Drixon.” 

Ok, it’s ironic. Here I was writing about how I shouldn’t care what other people think and then they wrote these really mean comments AND I CARED.

Since all of us have both confidence and insecurities, how was I to know if I had crossed into that danger zone of simultaneous over-confidence and pathetic insecurity that I was being accused of?

I started to worry that my boys Jeffry and Phelonious Drixon were onto something and I was just too delusional, too much like Narcissus staring into his own reflection, to see it.

But Jeffry – who, by the way, I’m pretty sure I went out on two dates with back in August – and Phelo said enough things that simply missed the mark. I wasn’t trying to impress anybody, and certainly, NO WHERE did I make any racist or class-based evaluations of individuals. These guys clearly don’t really know me or my sense of humor and haven’t read much of my blog. If they had read this post, this post, this post, or particularly this post, they wouldn’t have made false accusations about me. 

I guess I stumbled upon a taboo topic on this one that really set these two guys off: treating people differently based on their qualities (!) . But I won’t apologize for evaluating people based on the same standard of moral character to which I hold myself.  

I don’t think I’m perfect; many people are more empathetic than me, are more natural caregivers or more generous with their time. I think I can learn from watching them – and that’s why these are the people that I want to surround myself with. Frankly, calling such people “extraordinary”–and in so doing, labeling their strong moral character as rare–is the only way I can psychologically cope with the fact that there are so many wishy washy people out there. I must accept things as they are instead of how I want them to be.

This was the first time I experienced the downside of being so completely open and vulnerable on the internet. However, I’m grateful for this experience because, after letting their comments get to me, the whole experience has only pushed me further toward my goal of trusting myself and knowing when to be influenced. 

Jeffry, if you are the guy that I went out on two dates with, I thought you were a really good person. I shuffled you real quick into the extraordinary box.

And Phelonious, you’re right – I’m not just bad at sports. I’m also really bad at cooking, but that’s about it.

I’m frequently disappointed, bored, or hurt by people simply because I expect them to be like me, and they’re not. And since, empirically, people like me are rare, that makes us by definition extraordinary, while everyone else is ordinary. The bar of extraordinariness is not set high. (For the record, my friends are extraordinary, too).

Coming to this realization will help me accept differences in opinion or clashing worldviews. I like to justify or rationalize my opinions by arguing them with someone who doesn’t share them. Every time I do that, though, I walk away with more self-doubt than I did at the beginning because the other person’s mere disagreement cracks holes in the foundations of my beliefs. It’s worth it with a fellow extraordinary person, because those cracks are legitimate and should be examined. However, it’s not worth destabilizing your world view for an ordinary person because he/she simply lacks the maturity/brains/worldliness you have. You’re not on an even playing field.** Now that I realize this basic law of nature, I’ll be able to relieve myself of reckless self-questioning.

It’s good to not be too self-assured, but that doesn’t mean I have to subject myself to constant destabilization in the pursuit of truth. A part of growing up is getting better at not doubting yourself. I’ve wasted so much energy over the years worrying about if what I’m inclined to do or feel is “right.” While there may not be an absolute right or wrong, I’m trusting my instincts more wholly, recognizing that they are reflective of what’s “right” for me.

*In addition, I recognize I am behind the pack in some categories, namely athletics.

**Granted, it’s conceivable that you could learn a thing or two from an ordinary person.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, except for Jews and every other non-Christian religious practicer. 

As a kid, I thought the whole thing was bullshit.

Santa Claus? You’ve gotta be kidding me.

A human god-baby? Get real.

Christmas “spirit”? Why weren’t you charitable and materialistic in November?

The yule log: another strange Christmas-ism

Yep, from my perspective, I thought it was phony and I was incredulous that people believed far-fetched tales of the North Pole and the Middle East.

On top of it, I resented the Christian domination of my supposedly religion-less country. Nauseating Xmas music, strangers asking me if Santa came this year, and unassuming “Merry Christmas!” greetings directed at me in public all added to a growing disgust towards the holiday. Where was my liberty to not be assumed Christian?*

My first exposure to the notion that Christmas could be completely unrelated to Christ or Mass was when my atheist high school Spanish teacher recounted her love for the winter holiday. Once I was in college – the first non-Jewish school I had ever attended – I realized her feelings were shared by millions of fellow Americans.

My non-religious college roommate, Jessica, loved Christmas music. And she took gift-giving seriously. She felt that it was her duty to give a present to everyone in her family. I started to think to myself, “Maybe the Christmas spirit IS real.” People genuinely try to be better people during this time of year.

You’ve gotta understand. Jews have a real aversion to Christmas. Most of them think it’s a nice holiday, just not “our” holiday. You know, since it has to do with Jesus, the ultimate black sheep in the family.

But at some point around the 50s Jews and their children started to get a little jealous of the goys down the street who got presents and lights while all they got were candles and shiny chocolate money. What a rip-off! So they turned Hanuka into a gift-giving holiday as well. It wasn’t too much of a stretch – it was traditional to give small monetary gifts to children.

But that’s where I think they went wrong. We should have started celebrating Christmas, not turned Hanuka into the Jewish Christmas. Hanuka is supposed to be about the defeat of assimilation, not its epitome!

I stand alone on this but…I’ll give my kids a Christmas tree!** And they can have whatever feeling it is kids supposedly get Christmas morning when they wake up to open presents.*** And on Hanuka there will be no presents. Only gelt and dreidels and a menorah. (And Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins).

Don’t get me wrong. I still think Santa is the biggest ponzi scheme ever. Kids are so stupid! But it’s good to spend time with the family, and gingerbread houses are fun, and so are Christmas trees, and hell, so is the music.  

I have no idea how this song became a Xmas song, but here’s one of my favorites: 

*Once when I was at least 11 years old, a hostess at a restaurant asked me if Santa brought me lots of presents that year. I was so incensed that she mistook me for a 6-YEAR-OLD and was so insensitive in assuming I celebrated Xmas that I filled out a comment card detailing my scathing complaint.

**If you’re not Jewish, you don’t know just how taboo that is.

***However there are a few ground rules: they will not be spoiled with too many gifts and THERE WILL BE NO SANTA IN MY HOUSE.

****Other Christmas notions that confused me:

1. The Christmas card. Why are you sending me a card with a picture of your family? We don’t even know you that well!
2. Why is being alone on Xmas the ultimate low-point in life?
3. Why do you feel bad for me because I didn’t grow up with Christmas, let alone a snowy Christmas?!

Problems in the Middle East? Educate the women!

Economic Crisis? Wouldn’t have happened if more women worked on Wall Street!

There’s no proof that women wouldn’t make a difference, but I have a hard time believing that equal gender representation will ever be achieved across the entire work force…or that even approximating it would be much of an improvement.

Certainly not the Messiah

First of all, different jobs attract different kinds of people. If being aggressive, taking risks, and liking money is how you get a job on Wall Street, the women on Wall Street would be highly likely to have those qualities.

Second of all, one of the reasons there are more men on Wall Street is because men are more likely than women to be aggressive, take risks, and like money. So since there is a greater number of men fit for the job than there are women, there will always be more men in that workforce. (This same logic is applicable to MANY jobs: teaching, plumbing, non-profit work, etc.) Furthermore, women are more likely to prioritize finding a job that enables them to have families.

With regards to the Middle East, from what I’ve read, a lot of the extremism comes from people living in repressive societies.* It’s possible that if enough women are educated, they will start to demand more rights. And once women eventually get them (slowly), just the fact that those societies must internally respect every individual could go a long way towards respecting non-Muslim individuals in the rest of the world. Maybe. But that could take 100 years. And frankly, it’s not my place to solve the problems of the Middle East. (Why do we keep trying when it only gets us in more trouble?)

Basically, on the home front, I think we need to be asking for something different than numbers. Instead (perhaps), our society needs to assume different values. You could even call them “female” values. But even women will have a hard time with this.

Instead of defining our country’s health by the GDP, we could also consider other things, such as the mental and physical health of its citizens, the quality of life, quality of education, etc. Why does it all come down to money? You can’t say that being so focused on money hasn’t had it’s consequences…so really we should be taking the “obesity crisis” or the “clinical depression crisis” or the “education crisis” just as seriously as the economic crisis.

In a sense, just like Middle Eastern countries have repressed their citizens, we in the West, and particularly America, have repressed ourselves by valuing work and income over our families, job creation and profits over environmental stewardship and responsibility, and material consumption over fulfillment.

The Messiah will not come with women. The Messiah will come when we value the well-being of the individual and of the Earth just as much as economic growth. 

*But it also comes from a feeling of having been denied sovereignty over their own lands. The solution to that = pull out U.S. troops! You solve half the problem right there.

1. People are committed to irrational behavior
2. People have a basic need to identify as something specific, and in many ways, as something different from the way other people identify (us vs. other).

Why doesn't she have one of these?

Ok. We’ll come back to this in just a sec.

Let’s talk about the need to identify oneself in a specific way (#2). There are a multitude of ethnic, religious, and national  identities and they’re never going to go away. They’ll change, some will disappear, but at the end of the day, people like to feel different from other people. (They also like to feel the same. Are you starting to see how #1 and #2 intersect?)

So really what should happen is EVERYONE should just accept that people will always identify in all these different ways (since it is inevitable), but that would be too rational.

I’m sure you can think of plenty of scenarios where identities clash, but seeing as I’m in an ongoing Jewish identity crisis, I’m going to address identity struggles within Judaism. 

When I was in an Orthodox elementary school, I thought Judaism was defined first and foremost by a belief in one God and the belief that that God wrote the Torah. Even though many Jews do not believe that, I think this “traditional” outlook still pervades the Jewish consciousness. It’s the reason “nonobservant” Jews joke that they’re bad Jews and the reason people show up for services once a year for the High Holy Days.** 

This brings up two related points. The first is that nonobservant Jews still identify as Jewish even though most of them don’t fit a definition of Judaism they recognize(#s 1 and 2). The second point is that it’s futile to define Judaism for anyone but yourself if there are always people out there who insist they’re Jewish regardless of its definition.

So while Jewish institutions can determine for themselves which kind of Jews fit into their particular institutions, it’s most peaceful to accept that those who don’t fit in are still Jewish.

I’d like to see a world where Jews feel comfortable and confident in their Jewish expression; that they don’t feel inadequate for not being Jewish in a specific way. Because if you’ve decided that yes, you identify Jewishly, you are the only one whose business it is to determine what that identity means. I imagine many Jews, especially New Yorkers, approximate this, and I want to see more Jews liberated by that confidence.

 *My purpose in writing that was to show that I was irrational for caring about the stupid lock, but in reading it again, I realized that both of us are pretty irrational. 

**Because if they didn’t think good Jews were supposed to go to synagogue, they certainly wouldn’t go to the most boring service of the year. How about considering doing something on Rosh Hashana that is effectively introspective?

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

I recognize that pressure to conform to a Jewish box when everyone at the JCC asks, “Where are all the young people?” Clearly the younguns must not be Jewish if they don’t go to Jewish programs. And studies show that intermarriage is through the roof! What will come of the Jewish people?

My response to all this is:

1. The #2 rule will always hold true
2. It’s inaccurate to look at intermarriage rates and absences at Jewish programs and decide that those people aren’t Jewish. 

With that said, it’s none of my business if an individual determines that Judaism is not an important component of his/her identity. I accept that that person has made the choice with most meaning to him/herself, and I don’t value someone maintaining Jewish practices that ring false. 

And it’s for that exact same reason that I advocate eliminating the Jewish box: people shouldn’t feel compelled to be Jewish meaninglessly.

And people wonder why there’s a lack of spirituality in Judaism…

A few days ago there was a modest-sized facebook fad of posting a photo of Harry Potter actress Emma Watson along with the quote: “I find the whole concept of being ‘sexy’ embarrassing and confusing. If I do an interview with photographs, people desperately want to change me – dye my hair blonder, pluck my eyebrows, give me a fringe. Then there’s the choice of clothes. I know everyone wants a picture of me in a mini-skirt. But that’s not me. I feel uncomfortable. I’d never go out in a mini-skirt. It’s nothing to do with protecting the Hermione image. I wouldn’t do that. Personally, I don’t actually think it’s even that sexy. What’s sexy about saying, ‘I’m here with my boobs out and a short skirt, have a look at everything I’ve got?’ My idea of sexy is that less is more. The less you reveal the more people can wonder.”

In reading this, my thoughts were that Emma Watson can wear whatever clothes she wants and she can define sexy however she wants, but that doesn’t mean I agree with her. I assume there’s some limitation on “less is more–” that Watson isn’t suggesting a burkha is the sexiest of all (I think a lot of Muslims would find themselves in a pickle if that were true).

While I basically disagree with her, I do think that showing too much isn’t sexy, either. So where does the sexy begin and end in the spectrum of skin coverage?

Appropriate sexiness is culturally contingent, so there’s no way I could justify what it is or that it should even exist. But overall, I think most people in our country agree with me that there’s such a thing as showing too much and there’s such a thing as showing too little: a person should not reduce his entire self-worth to the sexual, and at the same time a person should not strip himself completely of sexual worth.

In response to Emma Watson, why isn’t it sexy to wear a short skirt (as long as it isn’t too short)? Maybe she’s only speaking for herself – that she doesn’t feel sexy in revealing clothes. But let’s widen her assertion to apply it to what I think so many Facebook users responded to – that there’s something wrong with women being sexy or for using their sexiness to get ahead.

A few months ago I watched a video of Beyonce performing Run the World (Girls) at the Billboard Music Awards.

It’s an amazing, female-empowerment anthem, and the presentation utilizes incredible computer graphics technology. I couldn’t help but assume that most of the CGI was developed by men, and that Beyonce was dressed to expose everything but the bare essentials. You could always make a case that Beyonce, a woman, is exploiting men’s hard work (the CGI) in order to further a sexist agenda, and you could also argue that Beyonce is dependent on men in order to be successful, so that whole issue seems like a toss-up. So instead, I’m just going to talk about the fact that Beyonce wasn’t wearing too many clothes.

All of the most successful female artists right now – Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Shakira – they all walk around half-naked when they perform. I’ve felt somewhat compromised by this: do women need to sexualize themselves in order to be successful?

But here’s where it gets tricky. I was watching Glee the other day, and they actually did a rendition of Run the World (Girls). And there was Brittany S. Pierce* in some type of leotard, taking the school by storm with a crew of 50 backup dancers in her bid to become student body president. She looked damn powerful. Could it be that her sexuality added to her power? And that’s when it hit me: what’s wrong with expressing a sexual identity?

Why are women supposed to suppress that part of themselves? Even though her dance moves and clothes were sexy, I saw more to her than just “sexual object.” It’s true, I’m a heterosexual, so my immediate thought was not to have sex with Brittany, but I think most men watching that wouldn’t say: “I’ll only vote for her cause she’s sexy,” or “I’ll sleep with her, but that is her only significance to me, and therefore I certainly wouldn’t vote for her.” Maybe a few decades ago, that would have been the male response, but I don’t think that’s true today. I think today most American people think women are just as competent as men.

Therefore, why can’t your sexuality be one of many confident qualities that you project?

Now, what about people who, like Emma Watson, don’t feel sexy by wearing skimpy clothing? What about people who either aren’t very sexual, or they are but they are unattractive and no one wants to see them in skimpy clothing? Granted, maybe it’s unfair to fat girls that our society’s definition of “sexy” inhibits them from dressing skimpy. My best advice is that they’ll have to express their sexuality in a way that doesn’t involve revealing clothing, just like the Emma Watsons of the world: less is more.

Ultimately, I think hard work and talent pays off more than attractiveness. Take Adele. She has a pretty face but she’s chubby. And she’d still be famous if she wasn’t pretty because she has a beautiful, powerful voice, and sings good songs.

People respond to honesty. If you’re Emma Watson, Adele, or Bjork, or Cee Lo Green, as long as you’re doing what feels the most like yourself and you’re good at it, people will buy it.

So why all the resentment? Why all the feelings of anti-sexuality and anger at Hollywood? Well, in the past few decades we’re trying to undo millennia of sexist ideology without being impractical about the rules of attraction. That’s a pretty high task, and often conflicts with itself.

Ideals of beauty are never going to go away, so instead of getting angry at them, we should do a few things: 1. look at all the examples of successful people who don’t fit the beauty bill; 2. encourage people to be confident in all aspects of themselves and express that confidence in a genuine way.

Beyonce didn’t send me the message that I can only be her if I look like her, she sent me the message that she is confident in herself, including her sexuality.

If Emma Watson feels sexier in a turtleneck, have L.L. Bean send her a catalogue.

Post-Script: In reading over this, I realized that I should have made special mention that dressing sexy is relative to the situation. The interpretation of the sexuality of your clothing is dependent on the atmosphere. My work is not a sexy place (unlike Beyonce’s job), and therefore to dress skimpy at work would be to sexualize the environment unnecessarily. I don’t perceive not being able to dress skimpy at work as sexual suppression since the job isn’t sexy. However, a bar is a sexual environment, and dressing skimpy doesn’t sexualize the space any more than it already was when I walked in. Even though it’s a sexual environment, it’s not merely that, and that’s exactly analogous to my clothes: they’ve made me sexual but not merely sexual. I think the only time my clothes would make me merely sexual is when I wear too few. The converse is also true: if you walk into a sexual space and you’re relatively covered up, you’re desexualizing the space and sending the message that you are absolutely not to be thought of sexually. In other words, I could wear something to work that aligns with the atmosphere, but when I wear it to a bar, it’s too inhibitory for the atmosphere.  More on the complications of being too sexy or not sexy enough, including criticisms of Hilary Clinton during her presidential campaign, when I have more time…

*Actress Heather Morris who plays Brittany S. Pierce was actually a backup dancer for Beyonce: 

In my blog I’ve always avoided speaking too specifically about my romantic life. However, today I could not refuse the semi-consciousness transcendent moment in which the opening words of this entry came to me. This is often how my inspiration to write begins.

I decided to at least write it down, and if I don’t want to publish it, I don’t have to. I think I will, however, since we all go about life pretending that we are strong when we are in fact quite weak. One of the purposes of my blog is to spark a dialogue and in some cases make people feel less alone in their “human experience.”

Sometimes I feel very strong. This is usually when I’m busy worrying about something else. I’m able to think about his loss in general terms, and I’m not focusing on a moment we shared together or his beautiful way of accepting people. But then something happens, something quite simple, and I’m filled with despair.

The hardest thing for me has been wrestling with what I’m actually feeling. Even though I rationally know that the “failure” was not my fault, I blame myself. I blame some inadequacy in me. I ask myself why I don’t blame him, when, if it’s anyone’s fault, it would be his.* I think maybe it’s hard for me to accept that what happened was out of my control. If it was my fault, that implies that I had some control, and therefore I can understand what went wrong, take responsibility for it, and move on. Accepting that I never had any control makes me feel like an idiot for allowing myself to surrender control. It also makes me feel powerless moving forward (if I got swindled once, what’s to stop me from getting swindled again?). And it also leaves everything open-ended, because I don’t fully understand why things went wrong. All in all, it’s much easier, though equally solution-less, to blame myself. Ultimately, I need to hear from him why he cut me out of his life the day after I last saw him, when on that very day I asked him to tell me if and when he didn’t want me in his life anymore, and he was amused by the suggestion that such a thing would ever happen. Wouldn’t you, too, blame yourself if you were me?

On the one hand, I believe that life will get better, that I will meet someone else perhaps even better, that I have to move on because it’s really a drag to cry so often. On the other hand, only hope can get me through the first two beliefs, and hope is quite fragile. As for the third belief, it’s one thing to believe it and another thing to do it.

After I graduated from college and started reading the news, and the economy is still shit, and there’s a new natural disaster every other day, the world has looked very bleak to me. People are overwhelmingly disappointing and rarely beautiful (these days). Part of it is the slow realization that there is no upward trajectory…there will always be good and bad; sometimes more good and sometimes more bad. When I was out with some friends the other night, I found myself saying that I just wanted someone to love me so that at least something would be truly good in my life and I could feel better about the world. I suddenly realized how pathetic that sounded but I couldn’t help but find it true. Wouldn’t I have that much more hope in my life if I woke up to love every day?

The practical side of me kicks in to tell me that I really can’t control who I meet and I’m only 23. Even if I never found someone, I prefer that over being with the wrong someone. I have to say, though, that 23 doesn’t feel so young to me. It’s young in the sense that I theoretically have a lot of life ahead of me. But I don’t feel as young as the number sounds. I don’t think Ariela at 23 is as young as some people at 23.

It’s hard for me to trust in life. If you were to read my entries from last year when I was in Spain, you would probably find this theme popping up everywhere. I have come to trust in my career trajectory, but I haven’t found the same trust in my personal life. The explanation for this is simple. I got a great job. I’ve never had a great relationship. But there’s nothing I can do about that except garner the trust in life and find the beauty in people that came so easily to the guy who, although he fought it for as long as he could, broke my heart.

*Not because he’s a jerk but because there are a lot of extenuating circumstances in his life that are not conducive to a relationship.

So far it’s going worse than I expected.

I burned two fingers today, it took me 30 minutes at the grocery store before I figured out that “fresh coriander” in my British cookbook is what we call “cilantro,” and who could have anticipated all the dishes I’d have to wash?

This whole endeavor is because I have eaten the exact same foods since I moved into my own apartment in January of 2008: 1. turkey sandwiches; 2. Morningstar Veggie Sausage Patties; 3. carrots and apples; 4. tuna sandwiches.*

That’s right, looking into 2012, it will be four years of turkey sandwiches, Morningstar Veggie Sausage Patties, carrots and apples, and tuna sandwiches.

On occasion, my palate has bored of such monotony but my skill-lessness always persevered. This time my shame finally caught up to me and I could no longer peer into my daily (pink) lunchbox with pride. Just in time for Rosh Hashana, I am turning a new page in the cookbook of life.

What I had forgotten until today was that past attempts at cooking were never so optimal. I’ve never burned the house down, but I can’t recall anything I’ve cooked ever tasting good.

Today I devoted most of my cooking hours to eggplant and zucchini “pots” which are little ceramic bowls filled with eggplant, zucchini, sour cream and ricotta cheese, all baked in the oven. I’ve re-checked the directions and can’t find the place where I deviated from the plan, but my pots certainly don’t look like the pots in picture. They also don’t look like like anything I would want to taste. (I haven’t made any tastebudular contact as of this publication.)

I will say that my baking turns out about right. I baked a pumpkin loaf today that, although slightly dry, tastes as it should (as far as I can tell).

Hopefully by October things will be looking up, and one day I will be featured in Home & Garden or some other magazine you can find at the doctor’s office. DON’T WORRY: I promise that this won’t become a food blog. I really don’t understand the popularity of reading about what other people do in the kitchen. But maybe I’m just jealous.

*It’s important to note that tuna sandwiches require some preparation time.

My friend Daniel gave me a book called Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, written by Harvard Philosophy professor Michael J. Sandel. The book describes several different philosophical schools of thought regarding justice, and now I know why people say that philosophers see the world differently. With my new brief philosophical education, I now hear Rawls and libertarianism, virtue, duty, and morality underlying every discussion.

I was thinking I was very much a Rawlsianist*, and that within a few centuries everyone would join me in the light of true justice, but then I read the last 2 chapters. Sandel introduces the idea that you can’t separate morality from the law. “Why does that contradict being a Rawlsianist?” you ask.

In political liberalism, under which libertarianism and Rawls are classified, the theorists want to make sure one person’s beliefs don’t outweigh another’s…who’s to say that one person’s moral framework is more correct, valuable, or just than another’s?  

Yet our actions and beliefs do reflect a moral system that is in turn reflected in the law, most obviously regarding abortion, definition of marriage, church & state, etc. 

A pro-choice argument is often that the government can’t tell a woman what to do with her body (in fact, the Supreme Court cited the 14th Amendment in its Roe v. Wade decision). This argument has never appealed to me…regarding murder I think the government does have a right to tell a woman what to do. Abortion is about whether you think the fetus is a living, human being and if you do think it’s a live human, if you think it’s ok under certain conditions to kill it.

Similarly, all the hooplah regarding gay marriage comes down to some people believing marriage means man + woman and some people believing it means committed relationship. That’s a moral belief. At the end of the day I believe it’s RIGHT for anybody to enter into a marriage (including polygamous marriages). My belief isn’t based on the fact that the government can’t tell me who I can’t marry, it’s based on the fact that I define marriage as a committed relationship between humans, and I morally believe in human rights that extend to homosexuals and polygamous individuals. I believe it’s WRONG not to do so. Even if government had no involvement whatsoever in the institution of marriage, I would still believe in this right.**

But why is my belief more legitimate than someone else’s? I think that’s why liberalism takes the “individual freedom” argument: you don’t have to deal with who’s right and who’s wrong.

However, the reality is that one moral framework rules out another, and what’s seen as most legitimate is what most people believe at a certain point in time. 

If you look at the course of human history, morals have changed and people have never fully agreed on them. That doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t an underlying, moral truth, it just means that we obviously can’t agree on what it is.

Now that Sandel pointed out to me that the law can’t be free from morality, I really don’t know how it’s supposed to incorporate morality in a fair way. If the U.S. is split 51/49 over abortion, would it be fair for the opinion of the majority to win? And how do we account for fluctuating moral beliefs? You can see in this recent Gallup poll how quickly opinions have changed regarding gay marriage over the last 15 years. For the moment I’m stumped and my only response is to insist that the law represent my moral beliefs. Wouldn’t it be immoral not to insist such a thing?

A very good outcome from reading this book has been achieving a better understanding of where I and other people are coming from. Instead of getting angry over what I perceive as bigotry or selfishness, it helps me to understand that others simply approach the world from a different philosophical and moral perspective than I do. I can now fit isolated ideas and statements into a larger framework of thought guiding the individual.

I’m still right, of course.

*Meaning, since we have no control over the circumstances of our birth (intellect, class, era, etc.), we should create a system that evens people out without depriving them of incentives for hard work. Also, the idea that since our success is somewhat arbitrary, we can’t accept full credit for it, and it therefore belongs to the community as a whole. (That’s my interpretation…for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rawls#Justice_as_Fairness)

**I actually don’t care if we disestablish marriage and leave it to the private realm. The whole “institution” of marriage is so weird anyway. We haven’t quite figured out it’s role in modern society. The only problem is, the law awards rights to people in marriages…would recognizing polygamous or homosexual marriages be equivalent to a moral acceptance of them? Argue with me if you can use logic better than I can, but it seems like if you’re going to fully carry out the libertarian argument, you’d have to argue that the government does not have the right to sanction marriage nor award benefits to its participants. Even so, for those who morally define marriage as a man and a woman, it would still be wrong to allow non-monogamous and non-heterosexual marriages to take place, even if the government weren’t involved. Such people may not have a legal case, but they would still feel like it was wrong.