All I know is, I am right

If the title hooked you, obviously I don't defend anything so outrageous. And I swear I wouldn’t believe people have actually said this kind of thing to me if it weren't still ringing in my ears.

I have given up fitting in because of being a heretic to the beliefs of any group, but one indelicate situation is what to do when someone raises a question that I don't know how to answer without awkwardly taking a stand. At a party I was asked "Mormon's don't actually X, do they?" I thought, hm, if I don't answer he will think what he has heard is true but if I do, I know these people will go home thinking that I talked about my religion inappropriately at a party.

In these situations I often just wait for the inevitable declaration of confident belief that inevitable follows the claim to honestly raise an issue of intellectual inquiry. An atheist will eventually tell me, letting me off the hook that all he knows is that he couldn’t possibly believe in such superstitious nonsense as I do, other times religious people who think I don’t quite pass the believer’s litmus test, ends the discussion by declaring they are right by the fact that they have a personal knowledge given to them by God.

Well good heavens. If God was telling you the answers, why do you bother going to other sources afterward? Why would anyone then stoop to talk to lowly ‘ol me?

One night though I felt cornered. It was probably for the first time that I put my toe into the waters of responding to 'the issues' so to speak. At my prof’s office at Stanford, (he had become my close friend and still is), the two of us were alone and he earnestly brought up an issue about what at the time he thought I probably believed. Confidently dismissive, at the beginning of the year he had found out I was from Utah (supposedly) and was a Mormon (correctly) and therefore was politically conservative (wrongly). I actually thought I was liberal then, but I was guilty by association.

He started the ball rolling on how I could possibly believe what I did, etc., and that he was so incredulous to conservatism that he told me he was guilty about his purchase of a teak coffee table. I learned that night that teak is a rain forest wood and not on the list of ethical purchases. I also learned that there is such a list.

Oh dear, I thought. I had no particular views on the rain forest at the time—I swear. I was only 21 years old and was barely holding my head above water in a MA program I was ill prepared for. I hadn’t even ever VOTED before, missing the previous election my freshman year at BYU because I was only 17.

But I thought I would dive in if I could because I was concerned for his guilt, and decided I would do what I could to assuage him. How could I help him perhaps not feel so guilty, I was wondering? So I innocently shared a study that I had just heard. Paleontologists investigating land in South America, convinced that a particular rain forest was the first thing that had ever grown there, thought it would be interesting to look at what was underneath. The reasoning--something that was thought to have always been around would reveal what was before any life forms or some such.

What they found under this primeval forest: corn and charcoal. Basically under the fragile rain forest was evidence of slash and burn agriculture. This particular forest had sprung up rather quickly in human terms after aggressively destructive activity.

My teacher progressed through the various emotional responses to me that I have gotten quite frequently since, but it stuck out that night as a notable first attempt to offer a political opinion.

What baffles me is that I can’t exactly find out why after someone has 1, engaged a young and naive woman on ideas that she swears she is indifferent to, and 2, getting that reluctant and apologetic opinion, 3, that person hostilely rejects the opinion and makes a personal slight. I swear he brought the rain forest up with me pointedly because he heard I felt differently--probably he felt I would be an easy convert.

The irony is that I probably would have been, and but for reactions like that I have not exactly allied with liberalism over the years. For the first time I realized how fragile political views are to being attacked on both sides. I could have easily before that night concluded (like I so often was prone to thinking at BYU) that conservatives were the ones with one-sided opinions or closed minds. That night I learned that on both sides are feelings that hover very low above a person’s personal opinion of their worth as an ethical being—and that it is best to not, even if that person swears what they want is a debate on the issues—to take any of the bait.

I don’t need to leave it at this vague characterization, however, because I actually remember clearly what he said. The sound of it, the sudden emotional outburst, and the look on his face are in my memory forever. All of a sudden, without the kind of warning that would have made me at least TRY to pull back, he asked,“You WANT it to be true that people didn’t destroy the environment, don’t you?”

I was stung, but after a minute, answered with confidence, coming into my stride as a newly-registered voter with the opinions to match: ‘ABSOLUTELY—why would I WANT anything else?’

But the specific argument is beside the point. I am still weak on this issue, and don’t have what I would say is a strong opinion. I have some opinions that are strong, like believing fervently that democracies should respect freedoms and civil rights, but in terms of the environment (or the declared issues about the environment, anyway), I haven’t obsessed on the facts of this or that investigation. If I were to pick what I WANTED to believe and what I DIDN’T, however, it would be easy for me to tell anyone that I intend to pick opinions helped them avoid the guilty burden they carry around on their shoulders.

My teach said that he felt guilty about what he had bought; I was trying to help. Honestly I was offering what at the time as a politically naive girl, I thought that he wanted and that would make him feel better. I certainly didn’t want to say something that would make him shout at me and bring me nearly to tears.

So like Nietzsche observed, once I see something, it is everywhere. I get lulled into thinking that someone wants to have a discussion with me, and without knowing it I cross a boundary into inviting a personally hostile comment about myself and my intentions. I asked him why on earth he had started to yell. He didn’t know. It served as an instructive incident, however, because I am usually very willing to stay on the said subject as long as someone wants without becoming personal. Disagreement is a touchy subject however, even for Stanford prof’s that don’t appear to possibly be threatened by 21 year olds ‘from Utah.’ I didn’t realize that I had without knowing it disturbed his ethical system. He had laughed and toyed with mine—but his was sacred.