I, Halfling

I got an email last week from Patricia Perkins, and she introduced me to her daughter's concept of a halfling. Not the J. R. R. Tolkien's hobbit, but rather someone of mixed heritage or, as most people who are not of mixed heritage tend to think, someone who is not of pure heritage. Halfling. I suppose it doesn't help that I do have hair on my toes, but it's an interesting and thoughtful term.

I got her permission to use the email in a post here, and I stewed on it for days. Patricia wrote something on halflings, which is really to the point:

...I don't think that bi-cultural people (which is what I was calling us before Natasha took up the old Dungeons and Dragons term) see things that are strictly speaking unavailable to others. Edward T. Hall, who introduced me to the concept of nonverbal and unconscious cultural codes, is for all I know a total American, from one place, from people from that one place. But I think it is undeniable that those of us who have become conscious of what makes us residents of two or more worlds see things that others don't. We often ask ourselves the question: Is what just happened a cultural experience or a universal one?...

Her entire entry set me back to thinking some more, and every day that passed had instances of me about to write an entry, then pulling back on the reins. The thoughts around this weren't ready yet; 34 years of grapes were being fermented. Some of the grapes have been grapes of wrath, some of them much more succulent, and I fear that some have been lost to raisins - to be recommended to people who are low on iron to eat so that they can donate blood. There are aspects of this which go beyond the general cultural identity and affect subcultural interactions, affect individual interactions, and so on. So this entry will be be - strangely - a narration of sorts, about what's on the inside of my head, and anecdotal. Sifting through the years, there's a lot of material. Perhaps enough for a book, but it all has to start somewhere. Sometimes one has to say 'I', not as an egotist but as someone who has a different perspective. I will be using 'I' in this manner, as some others do.

I, Halfling

So much of me and my perspectives revolves around being who I am, and who I am is heavily influenced by the fact that I do not identify with any particular group of people based on race, on culture, on religion, or economic status. I am just as comfortable around one race as another, but I am never completely comfortable. I am equally comfortable with every religion, even Buddhism, but I am not completely comfortable with them. Cultures are the same, and economic status is something that I've seen both sides of the tracks on - but thankfully not the extremes of both sides of the tracks. Maybe I view being filthy rich as the same as the debilitation of poverty; I do not know and it is unlikely that I will ever know. I count my blessings.

I expect that this particular entry will dance on a few lines and aggravate and perhaps offend a few people. 5 years ago I might have cared. 10 years ago I would have cared. 20 years ago I would have been paralyzed with caring. But now, I know I didn't create these silly lines and the people who do will usually defend them. To them, I say, 'Circle the wagons, raise the drawbridge and prepare to repel invaders'.

The Religious and Cultural Halfling

When it comes to culture, I've been exposed to quite a bit over the years - childhood alone accounted for urban Wisconsin (which I don't remember much of but can't be ruled out - see picture on right), suburban Ohio, and Trinidad and Tobago. During childhood, I suffered through Jehovah's Witness meetings on Sundays in a suit and was freed for a while in Trinidad, but then got sucked into the Hindu temple by a zealous Uncle. I remember the confusion; two separate groups of people who seemed pretty nice yet boring were telling me that everyone but them was wrong - including the other group I was attached to. There was no awaking that nightmare, and to this day I think forcing singular religious belief on children is an abuse; I think children should be exposed in an open manner to all religions. But that requires parents and families who would be willing to do so. That would require religious leaders to practice what they preach. Erego, it shall not happen.

To top off things, I ended up in a Catholic secondary school which was, thankfully, more tolerant to other belief systems and gave me some space to consider three mindsets, the fourth (Islam, through Islamic friends), and some of the different flavors of Christianity. Since I wasn't Catholic, I didn't have a 'Religious Knowledge' class and instead had an 'Ethics' class, which was a good place and time to copy homework from other people (hey, I was working at the time too!), and doing other people's homework. This was all well and good, I suppose, for unconfused kids and offered an opportunity to learn about other religions. When the classes were interesting, they were very interesting.

But at the same time, I had been growing up in the U.S. and the mixing of races for me wasn't really an issue until 4th Grade, right before I left. Maybe it was always there and I wasn't sentient - but I noticed people treated my father, who was of Indian descent, a bit differently. Sometimes they treated my mother different. It didn't seem to bother them most of the time, but there were times when we just left some places. Quickly.

When I got to Trinidad, it was then that I really noticed. The classrooms I had been in within the United States were predominantly white, and there was little in the way of overt racial tension between kids who were less than age 9. And when I got to Trinidad, the classroom was predominantly brown - and I looked more white than anything else at the time. And there I saw that kids of African and Indian descent were together to a point, and that the white kids were a little group. I didn't fit, even with my cousins. It didn't help that I spoke with an American Mid-West accent in a place where the accent was very, very different. When another fellow joined the primary school who was half white and half Indian, he wasn't accepted either - and contrary to what people might think, we didn't form our own little clique because we didn't really like each other. We were competitors at that point, and he was bouncing trying to find a group just like I was.

Secondary school was similar, though there were uniting factors in secondary school where there were almost none in primary school. A group of confused young men surviving in an arena of older and bigger kids, the class 1P made it to class 3P with some pretty strong bonds. Then they segregated us by ability into 'Practical', 'Modern Studies', and two separate Science classes - mixing kids from different class 'families' with people of 'similar interests', then applying academic pressure. I blew off the academic pressure as I had the first 3 years, and managed to survive 2 more years of trying to belong to some group while working in the printery at home. It was all rather strange, and puberty didn't help - the period where young men become attracted to the female of the species and at the same time are probably the most unattractive.

The races did become fairly segregated in secondary school; the whites stayed with the whites, the Chinese with the Chinese, the Indians with the Indians, and so on. There were groups that crossed these divides, but they were usually interest groups. Because I was working after school, interest groups like the chess group, or the football (soccer) group, didn't exist for me. My home life was dominated by the printery, and a stepmother who habitually lied about all sorts of things. What a strange little world she lived in.

Somewhere toward the end of my 15th year, I realized that being an outsider had distinct advantages and ran with it - ignoring all the segregations around me, even (and perhaps especially) the ones at home. I found my halfling wings that year, and fell from the nest a few times.

I went, to all places, Dallas, Texas for continuing my education - where I fell into traps of my own choosing, and where I found a peer group or two which never quite saw past the dominant cultures of the group. I ended up in the Navy, where we were all equal, and the bonds were mainly of similar intelligence. Still, there were groupings that I didn't fit in, and the halfling nestling got his second wind with being a halfling. Not belonging, being considered 'normal', was a sort of Holy Grail and it's somewhere around my last years in the Navy that I reached a new level in giving up on trying to 'fit in'. I followed my interests, despite what others thought or said - completely. Now I'm a Buddhist, not just because of this but because I had to mesh the creative part with the philosophy part with the engineering part...

Then Creative Engineering Halfling

Being the spawn of an engineer and poet, I had two distinct perspectives that I grew up with which also set me apart - the connections between my parents were where my seeds were planted (in more ways than one), and it's their interactions that really set the tone. There wasn't a distinct dominance; one was creative and one was a great engineer with a tendency towards creativity. Thus began the war within me between the intellect and the imagination; the rational versus the inexplicable.

The average engineer doesn't seem too interested in creativity. The average artist doesn't seem too interested in engineering. What the two mix from other perspectives is only what fits within their mind, not what stretches it. The engineer may look for beauty within engineering, the artist for the mechanics of art. Few get past that. It's been my experience that most artists don't care how things work, they just want them to work - and that most engineers don't care about what an artist has to do to create something, they just want the finished product. It's actually funny, when you consider that both groups are not too different. How hopelessly lost an artist is when a car doesn't work is about as hopelessly lost an engineer is when confronted with the need to write documentation.

When did engineering and art become distinctly different disciplines? Maybe it's when the artists didn't want to go to war; engineering always progresses under threat or during war.

Still, over the years these two poles were very confusing to me. It's part of the reason that I chose Buddhism; Buddhism doesn't have a problem with science and technology - instead focusing on how they are used, which is really the whole point. I chose a religion not based on faith, but based on the way it gave me tools to understand the other tools in my life. And in the end, I don't follow the 'religion' but what I believe to be the underlying philosophy.

I also tossed the two separate categories of art and science/engineering/technology. I don't recognize either as a dominant role, I don't think of people as artists or engineers - I think of them as people based on what they can do, not what they do. Somewhere there is an engineer in bliss over a design stumbled upon, and it's the same bliss an artist feels when things conspire to create a masterpiece. I don't need a handle for either, to use other people like coffee cups. People aren't cups. They are fluid. I've seen engineers recite poetry, I've seen artists fix cars and describe how an engine works in ways that make an engineer blush.

Computer programming is in between, which is probably why that has been my staple over the years. There is a beauty in code, and like art, there are hacks. As a programmer and a published poet, I am in fact a Code Poet - but I don't wear the t-shirt because people don't understand that a person is larger than a few aspects of themselves.

The joy in life isn't one aspect or the other, it's the joining of the aspects. To be happy, one doesn't have to choose one or the other - one can simply choose not to choose. That is what I chose to do. I'm just as much at home rebuilding a carburetor as I am reading literature or writing a poem. The feeling I got when I completed my first commercial piece of code was the same feeling I had when I published my first poem - a feeling of accomplishment. Neither feeling can be shared with those around you; it's an individual bliss. And once one tastes it, knows it, feels it... it becomes a driving force.

To waste that on one aspect of one's self, perhaps the strongest aspect of one's self, seems a waste. Why not enjoy the same joy at the weaker aspects of one's self? Why can't mopping a floor well be just as enjoyable as building a solar lighting system? It's because of the values one has from one's peer group. It's because of the values one chooses to take from one's peer group. In the end, mopping the floor well can be just as enjoyable as getting a solar lighting system working.

The world has driven itself more towards specialists, when it probably needs the generalists more because of the depth of knowledge gained by specialists. Bridges slowly build again between 'disciplines'. Yet even in secondary school, I wondered why Physics and Calculus weren't taught together... why everything wasn't balled up and made whole like life is, instead of being segregated into things just so that some people in an office can measure it and toss you towards a 'discipline'.

I'm ahead of myself here.

The Sexual Halfling

Gender, of course, is a pretty clear cut biological line - though the line has been blurred as society has become more matured. Still, I've never looked at gender as something which affects ability (except for procreation) - maybe because of the way I grew up, I wasn't pushed one way or the other. Sure, I'm heterosexual and I'm male, but women that are submissive are not something I like. I like women as equals. But in the end, I'm male, and an appreciation of female anatomy is natural. Still, when I'm in discussion, or I'm working, I don't talk to women's breasts.¹

Working in fields of technology, I've come across women that I've found attractive - but during work, they weren't women, they were co-workers. After work was a separate matter. But I did see sexism in workplaces, and at first I didn't understand it. I remember the death of that innocence, actually - it was when I was working for a large international company. There was a lovely and intelligent woman who had hired in from NASA, and who was (and hopefully is) from all accounts a good engineer. One day, she came down to the lab to do a 'dog and pony show', as we called it, for a customer - but she had no knowledge of the particular product. The whole thing was very strange to me. It ends up she was selected because she had a tendency to look good in anything she wore, and of course the customers noticed. She also was getting a lot of help from the guys in the lab, more so than a man would normally get from other guys (assuming heterosexuality). Of course, I wasn't beyond the attraction - I used to leave candy in her cube when she wasn't around, and drop by and try to talk about non-work issues. I backed off because I realized that I was just another 'one of those guys' to her, which sort of defeated the purpose of what I was trying to do. Ruined by her beauty on so many fronts, I wonder if she ever rose above the prejudices of others.

In Boot Camp for the U.S. Navy, our company commanders informed us that female recruits we might see were trees. I always laughed at that - I was 20 at the time, and I had a better knowledge than the kids right out of high school had about how confusing women are to men²... and to tell them that they are trees seems like a real brain twister. 'So wait, how do I talk to a tree'?

I don't know how it happened, but sex and work are completely separate for me. Perhaps that explains why I'm still single, but I don't see respecting my peers as a bad thing.

The Linguistic Halfling

I consciously failed Spanish and French in secondary school, these were the martyrs that fed my science and technology bent at the time because I suddenly started studying for exams and needed to choose subjects to fail so that I could do well in the ones I wanted to pursue. What an odd thing to force students to do! Students should be encouraged to work on their weaknesses more than their strengths, but time and segregated subjects of study force one to allow parts of one's self to atrophy, and perhaps even die. I have been fortunate when it comes to language, in that CARDICIS demonstrated to me that I needed to learn Spanish (which I am now intermediate at). The punctuation in that sentence involves two women, one from the Dominican Republic who is a translator (no longer a part of my life) and one in Suriname who speaks languages like I write in programming languages.

Language is a big part of the segregation of the world. Being able to communicate is necessary to avoid that segregation. When it comes to language, I am regretful that I didn't take it more seriously when I was younger. This year, when I traveled (to learn Spanish, since I cannot do it from a book), I came across Americans living in Costa Rica and Nicaragua who didn't take talking to their neighbours seriously. Quite sad. On the flip side, I thought telling the barber in Spanish how I wanted my hair cut was a great test, as was ordering a sandwich the way I wanted it from a local restaraunt.

If you can't order a sandwich in the native language you trade with, what use are you? Language, I have come to realize, is so important, and I'm a fledgling lingusitic halfling there. Languages other than English are probably my Achilles Heel - and I could let it be the death of me, or I could toss some armor on it. I choose to do the latter.

The world opens the more one understands. And language is so important; reading Jorge Borges in the original Spanish is a treat, opening a door to a genius who otherwise would not have existed - thank you Dr Vince - and so many other things. The world is so rich in experiences, in people, in things... yet because people do not wish to push past the boundaries that they accept, they miss so much.

The Wandering Halfling

I've seen a lot of the world - in fact, I've probably seen more of the world than people twice my age have seen. I'm not talking about the tourist traps either - I'm talking about the real places, where real people are, where they aren't paid to smile at you and hand you another drink with fruit hanging off of it. People around the world aren't very different beneath all these imposed segregations. There are the peculiarities of every country, but those are usually the peculiarities of the governments of the country, or the religion(s) of the country, or the hopes and fears of the people of a country.

Each individual is you under different circumstances. Underneath the veneer of things that separate are strong commonalities. If George W. Bush was an Iraqi, would he have been Saddam Hussein - and vice versa?

Wandering isn't limited to geography. Just exploring other perspectives is wandering; exploring, experiencing to a degree possible with our limited time on this planet. Still, there are people who defend ideas like they do their culture and geographical borders, and one must be careful with them. Still, we live in an era where the United States treats Osama bin Laden as if he were a sovereign state, launching 75 missiles at $1 million U.S. a piece on Afghanistan just to kill him. We live in an era where one can reach out and touch a nation - for better or worse - as an individual, and we live in a world where a nation can launch cruise missiles at an individual. Unfettered individuals are dangerous in many ways, but the answer is not to fetter everyone - and the answer is not to fetter one's self.

I visit foreign countries, and I'm never a native - though the places where I have felt most at home from people have been people of indigenous cultures, outside the 'civilized' veneer. The Samoans I got to know in Hawaii called me 'little brother', the Native Americans in New Mexico simply accepted me when I was there, and the Amerindians of Guyana and I didn't have a problem. The main thing that allowed that, I think, was that I didn't try to press who I was on them and they didn't try to press who they were on me. We did our own things, laughed at each other most of the time for silly things we did, and at times we got angry because we didn't understand each other. We live on a planet where we create lines so that we cannot understand each other, we create lines and we become angry. Geography (especially political geography), Culture, Economics, Religion, Philosophy, and the very worst - intellectual incest.

Most people look at me strangely when they think they know me and find out something else I do. Sure, I'm a computer programmer, but I know how the hardware works and can discuss the microprocessor's operation just as well as I can discuss Cavafy's poetry. I can rebuild a carburetor without a manual, discuss and ask about philosophy, religion and economics, email people about LEDs, have a beer with a telecommunications technician, discuss theology with a Hindi teacher, and finish the last 'book' of a novel (James Clavell's 'Tai Pan') in one day - and it's not that I am a genius, or special, or anything like that. It's just that I don't recognize limitation, and I'm willing to try new things that I might be good or bad at.

In the end, I'm just you under different circumstances. Don't ask me why I am different if you are unwilling to ask yourself why you're the same as your peers. I'm not part of your group; I don't need your group to exist even if it is to say that I am not in your group. And, because you are me under different circumstances, you do not need your group.

¹If that offends a woman's breasts, please correct me and I shall try to make an exception.
² I'm still confused.

Picture at top by me; you can view it here.