Posts Tagged ‘higher education’


Caregiving and Social Media

I overdid it as a caregiver. Burnout isn’t a line you cross, it’s a toxicity that builds slowly, poisoning you and eventually poisoning the unfortunate souls around you. I couldn’t even see the forest for the trees at the time, I just did what I thought I had to do and utilized the resources I found along the way.
But caregiving should not be a zombie apocalypse first-person-shooter. Some of the damage done may never be repaired. I can only hope to cultivate from the whole experience a deeper, eventually academic, understanding of what caregiving burnout does to people, to relationships, to families, than has heretofore been produced.
I’ve always had this inclination to document everything I did and broadcast my experiences; it’s a big part of why I embraced “Free” as an identity. I felt that people needed to know about the possibilities — those who have privilege and freedom should explore it and then use it to help others, and those who do not should fight for it. What is experienced should be shared, so that others can find their own path. It can come off as narcissistic, and there’s probably some validity to that, but in a weird way it’s seen as devotional from within.
I can acknowledge a path as misguided and still be grateful that it got me where I am. (I hope) I’m no longer the 15-year-old who saves every band banquet program because scholars will one day need a detailed record of my impactful life. But because I learned to self-articulate and self-archive in such a manner, I do have a digital trail of the last four years, times I can’t recall well now. It means I can go back and trace the early cracks in lost connections and perhaps even enumerate my most egregious misdeeds. It means I can correlate the ups and downs of my well-being with which apps I was using at the time (when I started to experience verbal saturation, Pinterest was a gift, yall) or the medical status of my caregivee. Every note I’ve forgotten, every boost from which I benefitted, every like on Facebook is a clue into how I got through my own little zombie apocalypse.
In other words, I have data.
And it’s not a lot of data, but maybe it will provide a framework against which I can eventually study the experiences of other caregivers (or, let’s be honest, maybe it will provide a useless contrast against the useful framework that comes from people who generally live their lives very differently from me). It’s a start.
I still have trouble articulating what I want to do. I want to conduct a census of caregivers. I want to document and map out their experiences. I want to talk about our relationships, before/during/after. I want to develop resources to help caregivers feel less isolated, support one another, and accept the ways in which we will (for a time) simply be unrelatable to most people. I want to identify the resources that exist to support us and ensure they are getting rigorous oversight and improvement. I want to map out transitions, from part-time to full-, full- to part-, family cycles of responsibility, sudden endings and not-so-sudden… I want to create some sort of timeline for our emotional states relative to something other than the health of our loved ones.
Ancillary to this work, I want to study the Internet as an exercise in community/ies, identifying and articulating in ethnographic and anthropological ways those fleeting moments when one online space can define a life before it fades into sporadic notifications to an email address where you’ve forgotten the password… I want to continue to learn how to grow intersectional awareness and especially to get more white people to stop listening to me and go listen to a person of color. I’d even like to apply a philosophical examination of voting-as-harm-reduction and whether it necessitates voting pragmatically over idealistically every time (but that’s more of a hobby).
As always, I want to learn to communicate, to educate, and to learn better.
At this point, all I bring to the table is a rusty resumé, some stress-induced acute cognitive decline (hopefully acute), a 14-year-old degree in English, financial security for one year (maybe two), the braggadocio to attempt grad school full-time without really knowing how I’m going to pay for it, and a whole lot of curiosity.

On Theism and Anti-Theism, Fact and Anti-Fact


A good friend (who just happens to hold nearly polar opposite beliefs to me politically and theologically) forwarded me the following story (posted verbatim):

‘Let me explain the problem science has with religion.’

The atheist professor of philosophy pauses before his class and then asks one of his new students to stand. ‘You’re a Christian, aren’t you, son?’

‘Yes sir,’ the student says.

‘So you believe in God?’

‘Absolutely. ‘

‘Is God good?’

‘Sure! God’s good.’



‘Are you good or evil?’

‘The Bible says I’m evil.’

The professor grins knowingly. ‘Aha! The Bible! He considers for a moment. ‘Here’s one for you. Let’s say there’s a sick person over here and you can cure him. You can do it. Would you help him? Would you try?’

‘Yes sir, I would.’

‘So you’re good…!’

‘I wouldn’t say that.’


The student does not answer, so the professor continues. ‘He doesn’t, does he? My brother was a Christian who died of cancer, even though he prayed to Jesus to heal him. How is this Jesus good? Can you answer that one?’

The student remains silent. ‘No, you can’t, can you?’ the professor says. He takes a sip of water from a glass on his desk to give the student time to relax ‘Let’s start again, young fella. Is God good?’

‘Er..yes,’ the student says.

‘Is Satan good?’

The student doesn’t hesitate on this one. ‘No.’
‘Then where does Satan come from?’

The student falters. ‘From God’


‘Yes, sir..’



‘So who created evil?’ The professor continued, ‘If God created everything, then God created evil, since evil exists, and according to the principle that our works define who we are, then God is evil.’

Again, the student has no answer. ‘Is there sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things, do they exist in this world?’

The student squirms on his feet. ‘Yes.’

‘So who created them?’

The student does not answer again, so the professor repeats his question. ‘Who created them?’ There is still no answer. Suddenly the lecturer breaks away to pace in front of the classroom. The class is mesmerized. ‘Tell me,’ he continues onto another student. ‘Do you believe in Jesus Christ, son?’



‘No sir. I’ve never seen Him.’

‘Then tell us if you’ve ever heard your Jesus?’

‘No, sir, I have not..’


‘No, sir, I’m afraid I haven’t.’

‘Yet you still believe in him?’



‘Nothing,’ the student replies.. ‘I only have my faith.’

‘Yes, faith,’ the professor repeats. ‘And that is the problem science has with God. There is no evidence, only faith.’

The student stands quietly for a moment, before asking a question of His own. ‘Professor, is there such thing as heat? ‘

‘ Yes.

‘And is there such a thing as cold?’

‘Yes, son, there’s cold too.’

‘No sir, there isn’t.’

The professor turns to face the student, obviously interested. The room suddenly becomes very quiet. The student begins to explain. ‘You can have lots of heat, even more heat, super-heat, mega-heat, unlimited heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat, but we don’t have anything called ‘cold’. We can hit down to 458 degrees below zero, which is no heat, but we can’t go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold; otherwise we would be able to go colder than the lowest -458 degrees. Every body or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (-458 F) is the total absence of heat. You see, sir, cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat we can measure in thermal units because heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it.’



‘Yes,’ the professor replies without hesitation.. ‘What is night if it isn’t darkness?’


The professor begins to smile at the student in front of him. This will be a good semester. ‘So what point are you making, young man?’



‘You are working on the premise of duality,’ the student explains.. ‘You argue that there is life and then there’s death; a good God and a bad God. You are viewing the concept of God as something finite, something we can measure. Sir, science can’t even explain a thought.’ ‘It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one. To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing. Death is not the opposite of life, just the absence of it.’ ‘Now tell me, professor.. Do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?’





The class is in uproar. The student remains silent until the commotion has subsided. ‘To continue the point you were making earlier to the other student, let me give you an example of what I mean.’ The student looks around the room. ‘Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the professor’s brain?’ The class breaks out into laughter. ‘Is there anyone here who has ever heard the professor’s brain, felt the professor’s brain, touched or smelt the professor’s brain? No one appears to have done so. So, according to the established rules of empirical, stable, demonstrable protocol, science says that you have no brain, with all due respect, sir.’ ‘So if science says you have no brain, how can we trust your lectures, sir?’

Now the room is silent. The professor just stares at the student, his face unreadable. Finally, after what seems an eternity, the old man answers. ‘I Guess you’ll have to take them on faith.’

‘Now, you accept that there is faith, and, in fact, faith exists with life,’ the student continues. ‘Now, sir, is there such a thing as evil?’ Now uncertain, the professor responds, ‘Of course, there is. We see it Everyday. It is in the daily example of man’s inhumanity to man. It is in The multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil.’


The professor sat down.

If you read it all the way through and had a smile on your face when you finished, mail to your friends and family with the title ‘God vs. Science’

PS: the student was Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein wrote a book titled God vs. Science in 1921…

My response to him:

Good read. :) Sounds like one of our old discussions, eh? Of course mentioning Einstein got me even more interested. Mind if I respond to it a bit for old times’ sake?

I did a bit of research; unfortunately, it wasn’t really Einstein who said it. (according to Snopes) I’ve read a lot of his non-physics stuff, and he was a secular Jew, not a Christian. He did seem to believe in a creator, and often referred to it as God–one of his most famous speculations about quantum mechanics was “I am convinced He [God] does not throw dice.” I have scoured the Internet of evidence of a book called “God vs. Science”, but find nothing less than ten or twenty years old and nothing attached to Einstein’s name. Several compilations exist that detail his beliefs on religion, including Einstein on Cosmic Religion, but it is also recent.

I like the dialectic style of this discussion, and there’s a terrific effort to reconcile science and faith. I haven’t found a whole lot of scientists who are any more dedicated to proving or disproving the existence of a divine power than exist with the rest of the population. Those who do are rather loud about it, of course, but I don’t think they’re any closer to positing science against religion than before. I have most respect for those who will not let their devotion to one preclude respect for the other.

That said, any professor of science or philosophy who expected to start a class by disproving the existence of God would find himself out of a job faster than I can type a sentence. Any philosophy instructor worth his mettle should teach questions, not give out answers, so colleagues would rush to denounce him. And despite the reputation for colleges being godless and anti-Christian, they still have to answer to trustees and parents. :)

My thoughts on the matter:

At the peak of my friendship with this person, we were each proto-ideologues with only bike-riding, Dave Matthews Band, and a sister-like mutual friend in common. He was a vocal Jesus-freak, a butt-busting B-student, and a popular/pious jock (in that order), while I was a vocal atheist (a label I no longer embrace on technicality), a lazy-but-talented A-student, and a nerdy/lascivious artist (in no particular order). It has only been in the last couple of weeks that I have found the word to describe our connection. (That word is “fearlessness”, a rather important but tangential topic for another time.)

The debates don’t really happen any longer; I am often as hesitant to give too much detail about my explorations of humanist spirituality as my latest adventures in sexual liberation.

More often, if a tough topic comes up, it is political. And not even policy debate or platform nuances; just who are we voting for, who am I campaigning for, and a grudging good luck for us both. Honestly, my compliance in this is more of a necessity of time and energy than it is a pullback from controversy. I believe (or would like to) that if my friend and I had an afternoon with nothing to do, we could hammer out the similarities and contentions between our philosophies without raising a word.

Neither of us would change our minds, but we would learn and grow, just as we did all through high school. He kept me from becoming one of those anti-theists like the professor in the story, who must not only be right but smugly prove himself to each Christian he meets; I kept him from becoming an anti-sex racist who blames everything wrong in this country on gays and godless government.

Even as neither of us is terribly moderate, we’re more moderate than we could have been, and I for one am grateful for that perspective no one else was ever able to give me.

When I worked in DC, our award program similarly liked to talk to candidates’ surprise allies or respecting opponents. Someone who was or had once been opposed to a nominee’s work could give us as much perspective as any collaborator or employee.

How someone fights can be even more important than what they believe. If a certain amount of civility seems lacking in today’s politics, don’t just look at how fucked up the other side’s rhetoric/platform/policies have gotten. Look at how you and your allies talk about “the other side”. Look at the rhetoric that you yourself use, the unforeseen consequences of policies you have supported in the past, and who is providing your best anecdotes. Are they angry? Accusatory? Frustrated? Hyperbolic?

Ask yourself why you get worked up when something upsets you. Are there buzz-words that you yourself might have trouble defining without expletives? Are you letting an unrelated wedge issue (gay rights, abortion, gun rights, righteous indignation over Wal-Mart) color your opinion of entire swaths of people and their opinions? If so, not only are you not helping to calm the waters, but you will find yourself more vulnerable to misinformation, which does no one any good.

Aside from the unnecessary and inaccurate invocation of one of my personal heroes (’cause dude, Einstein was awesome), I actually liked the forward from my friend. It didn’t make me a person of faith, but it did juxtapose faith with science without really demeaning either. It didn’t need the tag-on about Einstein to be engaging and thought-provoking. I hope my friend and I still have many more conversations ahead.

%d bloggers like this: