All posts by Savvy Spoonie

I am an artist, writer, jeweler, and a Spoonie. Before becoming a Spoonie I was a very busy high achieving attorney and advocate bent on saving the world. Now I'm struggle to redefine my life to fit within my reduced energy level. Some days are better than others. I have fibromyalgia, trigeminal neuralgia, and chronic daily migraine.
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The good, the bad, and the ugly part deux…

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Measuring lives is a nasty business. How do you determine what actions are good and what are bad? Granted we all have some basic societal understanding of what those terms mean,(i.e. murder bad, charity good), but we also have disagreement throughout the world as to what is good and bad. For example, many people in our country have said you are a bad person if you voted for Bush, while others have said you are a bad person if you criticize him.

Do we measure someone’s effect on the world through the people they know or the things they do?

I think a little of both, but honestly, judging people through the eyes of those who know them is likely going to produce the best idea of whether they are good or bad overall. That is, if there is such a thing as an over all good or bad person. (Remember, Darth Vader died saving Luke in the end!)

My mom and I used to talk about throwing pre-death funerals for people. We were going through some very painful times watching our loved ones pass on and we were wondering why we all wait to tell the people we love what we think about them until they can no longer hear us.

I still think the pre-death funeral idea is a good one. I would love to be able to tell my parents all the things I would say at thier funeral, and then know they heard it all before they died.

I also wonder what would be said at my funeral, or what the people in my life think of me. I have certainly hurt and wounded people close to me, I also like to think I have helped people. I know I can be petty and small, but also try to be generous and giving.

In the end, maybe the truest answer is that people aren’t good or bad, they are both, and as long as they are trying to do good things, I think I will mark them on the side of good, regardless of whatever accidental, incidental, or simply stupid harm they may have caused.

frustration, Monkey, parenting

Timeliness…

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Why can’t I leave the house on time in the morning?

Maybe it’s because I have a bad habit of failing to set my alarm some mornings, though this can’t be entirely at fault as my Kitten Alarm climbs on my head and begins to purr anywhere from an hour to twenty minutes before I would hear my actual alarm anyway.

Okay, it could be that once I am awake, it takes an act of god to get the small person motivated enough to dress and eat. Even today, when she was very self sufficient and got herself dressed in the first five minutes of the morning, there were a series of child delays that struck the timeliness off our morning.
For example:

After clothes have been donned but before the application of shoes and socks:

Monkey : Mommy, it’s Easter!!
Me: No sweetie, easter is in March.
Monkey: But Mommy, Papa said on the phone it was easter.
Me: Well honey, Papa was wrong, easter is in March.
Monkey: Oh, that’s in three days, right?
Me: No honey, it’s in three months. Could you please finish getting dressed and ready for school?
Monkey: Okay mommy!!

Five Minutes Later…

Monkey: Mommy, when I was asleep last night, I felt a dark shadow over me!
(At this moment I was struck with the images of a thousand horror movies watched while a young adult…. in retrospect, not such a good influence on my imagination after all.)
Me: refocused on child Are your teeth brushed?
Monkey: It was the easter bunny I think!!
Me: Honey, easter isn’t for another three months, you probably felt the cat. Have you brushed your teeth?
Monkey: It wasn’t the cat Mommy!! It was a dark shadow and I think it was the easter bunny.
Me: Monkey. You need to brush your teeth, once you are completely ready for school and eating your breakfast, then you can tell me all about the dark shadow.
Monkey: Okay mommy!!

Is it me, or is there an inherent ability in children to have flights of fancy any time you are already running late? Where the heck did all this easter stuff come from anyway? Argh!!

Of course, once she was at the table fully ready for school she was too busy kicking the table leg, banging the tabletop, and talking about the dark shadow of the impending easter bunny to actually consume enough food to last her until lunch. Which means I will hear from her teacher that she complained of a tummy ache for the hour before lunch.

Do you think the teacher will believe her tummy ache was caused by easter bunny anxiety?

Activism, making a difference, Political

The good, the bad, and the ugly…

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I was having a conversation with a friend the other day about the nature of wo(&)man kind. Are people generally good? Bad? What makes a person’s life good? What makes it bad? Are we able to have an overall positive effect on the world, or are the unconcious daily decisions we make damaging enough to outweigh any concious good we do?

For example: I donate time and money to a variety of social interests I view important. I vote with my wallet, in that I research companies I purchase from (when I can) and decide whether or not to buy from them based on my research. However, I can’t research every company I intend to purchase a good or service from all the time, so am I actually living my life such that I have a net positive effect on the world, or a negative one.

Walmart is an excellent example of this. They are the first company to require a pharmacist on staff who will dispense the morning after pill at all times. They also responded really well to Katrina and are partnering with GE to place floresent lights on their shelves as they are the lowest energy lights and will save energy, money, and time. However, they still employ bad business practices that are designed to drive their mom and pop competitors out of business, they still pay men more than women on average, promote them more, etc, and they still pay their people so little they can’t shop at their own store.

So at the end of the day, is Walmart still evil? Is it still the place you never want to support? Does it’s negative outweigh it’s positives or vise versa.

If you are a foster family, and you shop at Walmart, are you in a net positive or negative? You are supporting the evils of Walmart, along with the goods, but you are also saving the lives of children by opening your homes to them.

Granted, whatever the outcome of your life is, or the aggregate total of evil or good you do, you should not use a net negative argument to stop doing good things, but it is an interesting perspective. When evaluating the human race as a whole, should we look to all the evil they do and all the good they do? Should we instead examine people as they act in groups, individually, etc?

In answering the question, Are people generally good or generally evil?, what traits and actions should be examined?