code of ethics

 

After I wrote about woke, I felt I'd write about how it relates to writing books. Naturally, I can't go into it for all authors, just myself. I began thinking about the whole subject of ethics, which is to what I think this comes, which is why we decide a certain code of behavior is correct for us. 

That's when I came up with a different question. How do ethics influence my life and from where do my personal ethics come? That's no easier to write about than how it influences creative work. From where do any of us get our own code of ethics? Is it family, tribe, peer group, schools, culture, books, entertainment, or is some sort of code born in us? 

Today, I am relatively sure schools are having a huge role in teaching ethics, and some of that relates to both parents needing to work or single parent families. Both parents are gone more than I think was true in the past. 

Most likely, for today's kids, another big influence is social media, which didn't exist back in bygone eras. Game playing may be doing more of it than those of us who don't play games understand.

When I went to school, subjects were like English, literature, math, science, foreign languages, along with shop for boys and home economics for girls. No classes that I remember were about ethics. That was taught by our teachers' deportment, how well they taught, and the order that was expected in the classroom. They didn't tell us how we should vote, and I have no idea, even years later, to what political party any of them belonged-- if any.

So, I began to think from where did my own code of ethics come. Certainly my family, not just my parents but grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. As for a tribe, my parents mostly socialized with family-- both sides. We didn't go to church; so that wasn't much of an influence for things like Sunday school classes. I did though get my first Bible at a pretty early age. I didn't read it all the way through, until years later. I understood the basics--  you know, the words in red 

As for my tribe, it was likely mostly family, Growing up at the end of a gravel road in the country, there were no immediate neighbors. As a child, I was outside a lot; so nature was an influence and our animals, which involved pets but also cows at one time and then sheep. When you grow up around animals, taking care of them is a big part of how you learn what's okay to do. 

Guns were in my life always with rifles on the wall in the utility room. I got my first rifle when I asked for it as a Christmas gift. I was twelve. I was taught how to care for it and use it responsibly-- definitely an ethical value as responsibility has been a big deal all of my life. I wanted that rifle to protect our sheep from our nearest neighbor's dogs, who tore them apart too many times. I learned about death early, that way also, as farm life tends to do.

Books were another major influence in how I saw what was right to do. From the time I could read, I was in a library at my parents' encouragement. My parents both read also. I graduated from the little kid room, to the teen's room and then the adult room where I read all kinds of books from John Steinbeck, Janice Holt Giles, Zane Grey, Pearl Buck, Ernest Hemingway, and more. Probably books were the influence that today the internet can be. 

There were some romances too, but this was before sex entered into such books. They were more about how you treat a loved one-- presented generally in a positive sense. I don't know if books like Lolita would have been in my small town library. It was pretty controversial when it came out in 1955, but I preferred historical books anyway. I read a lot of those like Frank G. Slaughter's, and they did have ethical standards. If a major protagonist went against the right kind of behavior, they had to change by book's end, or punishment was their lot.

I doubt that peer group was much influence on me given my limitations in getting to town, until I drove. School buses might have been more so with strict bus drivers running the show. I was on them for a significant time, considering our stop was the first and then end of the line.

However it totally came together, I ended up with a code of ethics, which has been with me all of my life. This involved a sense of responsibility as well as consequences of actions. If ethics don't have an action component, they aren't really ethics. What I believe about that has influenced what I write and how I make my choices for themes. A bit more on that next Saturday when I also write about how the woke culture may change a lot-- or not.

 

new words and times

 

This week, it occurred to me that a topic I wanted to write about was the word 'woke.' Immediately, I next thought, are you nuts! I mean, this is a hot button topic, very incendiary. I have tried to avoid such... but then regarding some of my other recent topics, maybe I haven't avoided it. Well, either way, I am about to tackle what being woke means-- to one group or another. Also, how i feel about the word.

I started by looking for definitions online... not easy since it has various supposed meanings depending on who is putting them out. There is a racial context evidently originally to be woke, which meant "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination".

Then, there is the current usage of it by the intellectuals or those who consider themselves such-- ''well-informed' or 'aware', especially in a political or cultural sense.' And I assume by those who created the definition in terms of what you are aware of.

Where it comes to how I see the word woke, it basically comes down to those who have used it and what I think about what they've done or said. In general, I dislike the word, though what it should mean is positive as being socially aware and seeing where prejudice (a biased view as to what is true) might be still influencing too much of our culture.

Recently, we've seen where a dean at a university law school attacked a judge, who had been invited to speak, by spending his time tearing him apart as she saw it. The students who were in the audience also blocked listening to him. Very woke since he was the bad guy in their eyes.

Which led me to think of a word (which I also had to look up its meaning when I first began reading it), which I think has shaped at least some of how woke changed. Intersectionality, the theory regarding the overlap of social identities-- race, gender, sexuality, class, and how it contributes to a systemic oppression and discrimination as it's experienced by individuals. Mostly that's what woke and intersectionality seem to be today-- looking for oppression and ways to right wrongs that they see as past but also still ongoing.  

What it seems to me happens when people claim to be woke is they see there is one way to see what is fair-- to not be woke is to be wrong. Woke has often gotten to a point of not only being unwilling to listen to other viewpoints but to block others from hearing them also.

How can you be culturally aware if you only know one side of a cultural issue? To those claiming to be woke, it appears, there is only one side and the other side is bigoted, misogynistic, white supremacist (even if they are of another color), destructive. etc. No wonder they won't listen to the other side, to them it's evil. 

Where it comes to racial wrongs, it is in history and still seen today-- the question being how do you fix it? I thought that affirmative action was intended to address past unfairness, as well as other laws, where it comes to race, but it isn't even discussed today. I think it's still out there, but is it? Now it's about reparations-- first for blacks but maybe soon for many other areas where people there have been mistreated, like to the LGBTQIA (initials keep being added to that one) community. As it is used today, woke goes beyond race to gender identity where some don't like the words woman or man and want to refer to all as they/them/etc.

What I thought made this subject interesting for me, as a writer, is how this wokeism, which seems to be wide across the land, applies to the books we write, which often, when historical, were based in a very different time than our own. How do you stay historically accurate and still satisfy the desire to not offend? 

When I got interested in defining how I see my own writing-- ethically speaking-- and how today's cultural climate might influence me or other writers, I saw it as a separate blog, way too complicated to add onto more length here. Hence, it'll be next Saturday.

In the meantime, if you have definitions for how you see woke, I'd appreciate it being put into comments here-- pro or con.

 

 

 

 

 

losing weight or not

 barrel cactus are not blooming at this time of the year. This is from 2022 and something positive to think about.

Like most ,who are tempted by diet tricks to lose weight whether it's surgical, a pill, a shot, or a new way of eating, I understand the appeal of such schemes. 

While I grew up pretty slender, I saw the family had weight issues. I worried about that for myself. When I got married, I put on some weight with a new way of snacking. I went yuck and used one of the canned drinks to take that weight off. You take that for two meals and one real meal. I lost most of the weight.

Then, along came baby-making years, and although I watched my weight when pregnant, I had gained weight. In my early thirties, I found a diet plan, very like the later Keto, where you minimize carbs for protein and fats. I again lost the weight and felt satisfied with the results. In the following years, I did a few other techniques, which led to weight loss but also gaining it back.They weren't ways of eating I could stick with.

That lasted until my 70s, when I really gained--way more than I'd ever imagined-- and more or less accepted it's old age. I lost again but more for a dietary change than a desire to follow a diet as such. Then I got into this thing about loving jelly bellies, which led to my own jelly belly (sugar is sugar, baby). And it's where I am today, interested in reading about supposedly miracle ways to lose weight but suspicious that if you don't change your way of eating in a healthy way, it won't matter.

I thought about Keto when so many lost weight that way, like what I'd done in my 30s, but felt I'd never stick with it. YoYo dieting is bad for our health. 

Most recently, I came across a friend on what is called the carnivore diet. It basically is protein and fat, which means, eggs, meats, fish, butter, and cheese. While I love eggs, I am not a big meat eater. Plus, it's working for that person but they are the age of my kids. When someone is in the old-old category, I think different rules have to apply for living well. 

My other concern with the carnivore diet, is without vegetables, fruit, beans, nuts, etc., how do you get the vitamins your body needs. Weight loss is nice but scurvy not so much, and generally speaking supplements are not as beneficial as the actual food.

Ozempic is the instant weight loss for the movie stars-- or so I hear, and even one multi billionaire. But now it comes out that it has some potential side effects down the road that could be catastrophic-- like enlarged small intestine.  One of the ones I know uses it, is very happy with the results, but also younger and claimed it would prevent a heart attack. The thing is that person wasn't obese, but just wanted to be slender as she'd been when young. Don't we all lol 

In the past the instant cures for overweight have all proven to have big drawbacks. I will settle for trying to eat healthier-- and keep my blood sugar at a healthy level (I tend to get low blood sugar if not careful with eating often enough). 

That reminds me, among the supposed miracle answers was fasting so many hours a day. Eat at say 9am and then at 3pm; then your body will burn the fat you want gone. I don't know about you but that seems like a good way to end up with low blood sugar (I'd done that but not to diet but because I didn't desire three meals. I don't recall losing weight that way but did definitely end up with blood sugar issues (I take mine every so often at home as one of my ideas for living healthy without having to run to the doctor all the time).

I suppose there are those who will claim all the things I have no faith in have worked for them. Good. Hope it does long term as that's where the problems lie with easy answers. At my age, I am going to try to stick to healthy eating... pretty much. *s*

It was snowing

Living in the desert, there is one certainty-- nothing is certain. Are we in a drought? Is the weather changing or is this how it's always been-- shifting sands, so to speak. 

My experience with desert life began in 1965 and then off and on since then, where we vacationed there with our young children; and finally, in 1999, bought a small home centered on a little over an acre of desert. We didn't live there year round given we still had the livestock and property in Oregon to manage, a life to live up there, but also a place in our hearts in the Southwest. 

We still divide our time between Arizona and Oregon with no clear idea of what will end up for us in our old age... Uh wait, we are in old age, both of us turn 80 later this year. It's not that we don't recognize we are old, it's just we love two places equally but can't keep going between them forever... but we can for now.

That brief history was to establish how often we have been in the desert and seen snow falling. It's not a common thing, but it happens probably more than some imagine. Never as much though, for us, as we saw this week when the snow fell enough to turn our world here white. It's kind of thrilling to get snow when it's rare-- and when we know it won't last long. 

We had heard the predictions. Wednesday night, around 10pm, we saw it was lightly covering the ground. When we got up at 4am, it was coating shrubs and ground. Ranch Boss went out and got a few photos as we weren't sure how much more would come.

When it got light, we saw more than there had been. 3" to be approximate, and it coated everything with a glistening coat of fluffy snow. The branches on trees were bent over. As far as we could see, our world was white. More photos were taken, and now I am going to try to share some to show the details and the landscape. 

Not easy deciding which as to see the cacti with snowy caps is definitely unique. For a while, the world was light and dark. Then the sun returned to turn the sky blue as the clouds began to depart. By around 1pm on Thursday, most of the snow was gone on our property and the plants had regained their shape-- snow was only to be remembered and in photos.