Christmas in July

Christmas in July – A Skeptic is Born

 

            When I was 5 years old, the summer going into my first year of elementary school, GM or Chevy or some other American auto manufacturer held a “Christmas in July” sales event akin to the contemporary Toyotathon.  Lately it seems like every month is Toyotathon and every sales event is a once in a lifetime special offer, but such is the way with American marketing.  Make the consumer want it and need it, then tell them they can’t have it (unless they act now!)   Christmas in July TV commercials featured Santa, all decked out in his customary wardrobe, plus sunglasses and a sunscreen nose.  As is typical with Christmas-related car commercials, a fleet of sporty new vehicles had usurped the place of Dasher, Vixen and the rest of Santa’s reindeer fleet.  I have often wondered why no car companies ever made a car called a Blitzen.  I would have bought an Oldsmobile Blitzen based on the name alone.  I doubt car companies have a guy that gets paid six figures to come up with goofy names for their automobiles, but if they do, and if I was that guy, I’d come out with a new reindeer car every Christmas.  My marketing scheme would culminate with the ultimate (and most expensive) luxury automobile, named (obviously) Rudolph.  The Oldsmobile Rudolph.  That’s catchy enough for auto marketing.  It’s better than the Cutlass, which sounds more like a nickname for Jack the Ripper than an American made automobile, and that’s one of the bestselling American made cars ever.  Christianity is huge in America, Christmas is even bigger and the Rudolph would sell.  GM didn’t need a bailout; GM needed more reindeer-names.  It doesn’t even have to be a new car every year.  Instead of calling the “Supreme” version of the Comet the Comet Supreme, call it the Vixen.

            My five year old brain watched some obese geriatric actor in a Santa suit with sunglasses and sunscreen nose tell me to have a “Merry ‘Christmas in July.’”  He assured me that I’d been good this half-year and therefore should treat myself or the one I love to a brand new Chevy Constellation for only $199 a month.  That got me thinking.  Had I been good this year?  Was the real Santa watching me right now?  According to the song and the dogma, when he isn’t staring at me in bed he at least knows when I’m awake…for goodness sake.  But how?  I didn’t see him there.  Once when I was younger (it was probably the Christmas right before “Christmas in July”) I tried to convince myself that when I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye, it was trailed by a red coat.  Santa had been watching me the old fashioned way: by breaking into my house and peeking around the corner of the area between kitchen and living room.  But I knew it wasn’t really him; that was impossible because that would mean an infinite (or at least a few hundred million) Santas existed to be able to spy on every child in the world physically.  He must’ve used remote surveillance.    

            I hadn’t seen any evidence of him – no reindeer prints in the snow on the roof and no sleigh tracks up there either, and I’d definitely never seen reindeer or sleds fly, and I didn’t see how (or why) some ageless old man in a suit could know everything about me and every other child on the planet.  And how come he didn’t do anything for my parents?  They were good, weren’t they?  As far as I was concerned they were better than I was.  I never saw my dad lie about breaking a window or heard about him splashing three inches worth of water out of the bathtub all over the bathroom floor as a side effect of trying to create a wave pool.  So what gives?  Sure, they don’t want or need the new Ghostbusters ghost trap or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles play truck, but can’t Santa’s elves make grown-up stuff too?  At what age does Santa stop caring about you?

            And about those elves…I never got a wooden train set or truck for Christmas; I got real live in-the-box toys.  With the manufacturer labels, Styrofoam packaging and everything.  Were the elves that good that they could create exact replicas of NERF footballs and the packaging and the instruction booklet and convince the genuine toy companies that they weren’t infringing on copyright?  Something didn’t add up.  Someone was lying or at least withholding the truth.

            I had to know.  Mid-afternoon on a 90 degree day in July I walked right up to my mom, sat her down and said that I needed to know.  I didn’t want any hypotheticals, I didn’t want to talk about “belief,” I wanted answers. 

            “What do you think?” She asked.

            “I don’t see how there’s any way; it doesn’t make any sense.  I think there is no Santa and it’s you and dad.”

            “You’re right.  Don’t tell you sister.”  But it was too late, my sister (15 months my senior, but we might as well have been twins) had overheard part of the conversation.  She knew of my newly discovered Santa-agnosticism and she decided she wanted to know too.  I don’t remember if I told her directly or if my mom did, but I like to think I told her.

            “Don’t tell the other kids at school.  You have to let them believe.  Don’t tell Jimmy either.” Jimmy is my younger brother and he was 3 at the time.  Even at 5 I knew you’d have to be a real asshole to ruin Christmas for a three year old (or your five year old classmates), so I went on pretending.  I never said I believed in Santa or pretended to believe in Santa, I just kept my mouth shut.  Mostly.

            Eventually there comes a point where encouraging Santa belief is creepy and no longer just letting your child believe something fun.  It reaches a point where it’s lying, disingenuous and damaging.  Almost everyone had that one kid (or small handful of kids) in their class who believed in Santa for way too long.  Usually it led to teasing and ostracism every December.  I had a friend who believed in Santa until 6^th grade.  Late 6^th grade too – like mid-April 6^th grade.  There was nothing wrong with him intellectually or developmentally – he was a normal 12 year old…who also happened to still believe in Santa.  He believed because his parents kept lying to him.  They didn’t just let him believe, they told him to believe. In 5^th grade when I got really fed up with the charade, I flat out told him there is no Santa Claus and that our classmates were starting to think that he was weird for believing it.  He told his parents of my blasphemy and they told him I was wrong.  That’s always struck me as creepy.  At that age your parents are the ultimate authority.  What they say is infallibly correct.  There’s something very weird about parents who after a certain age continually lie to their children about the existence of Santa (or the Easter Bunny or any other make-believe childhood hero) and they are doing a great disservice to their children.  Interestingly, his parents were very religious.  Like, “god is the reason (the only reason) you hit that home run, so you’d better thank him or you’ll never do it again” religious.  Possibly (probably) coincidence, but once you’ve spent the first 11 years of your life believing in (and being lied to about) the existence of a supernatural being that you could actively prove did not exist (or at least prove that he did not visit your house every December 25^th), it makes it very difficult to ever stray from believing in the existence of a supernatural being that you cannot actively prove does not exist.  Especially considering that, unlike Santa, he is spiritual (rather than physical) by nature.

            My initial reaction to the truth was parental admiration.  My parent’s stock went up by an order of magnitude in my eyes on that mid-July day.  The first thing I said (my mom reminds me and the rest of the family of this story every Christmas) was, “so wait…it was you and dad who bought me all that stuff?!  Thanks!”  (She never mentions that I actually said “thanks,” but this is my story and I know I was a polite little kid, so I said it.)  My younger brother’s Santa story is funnier.  He was 6 or 7 and some kids at school had been talking about it, so he came home and he asked my mom.  When she told him there is no Santa, his reaction was melodramatic grief.  “Everything I have ever been told is a lie!” he wailed. “I’ll never believe anything again!” That’s some pretty good stuff for a second grader.  He should have gone into acting.  But those tears were real and he really was devastated.  For me, it was the opposite.  I was more relieved and satiated.  There was no Santa because the world didn’t work that way.  There is no man who flies around the world in one night in a sleigh driven by reindeer (who also fly) with an unimaginably huge bag of toys for every (well-behaved) child in the world.  That worked for me.  I didn’t think of it in quite those terms when I was five, but to me that made sense.

            My brother added a vengeful (and tearful) “where’s Kerry?! I’m telling Kerry!” during his emotional breakdown.  His first reaction was to weep at the loss of a childhood icon and at being lied to.  He was understandably upset that the world didn’t work the way he thought it did.  His second reaction was to ruin it for my younger sister, who was the only remaining member of the household who still believed in Santa.  That’s hilarious to me.  She would have been 4 or 5 at the time, and my mom stopped him from ruining her Christmas too, but it’s interesting where he was coming from.  He wanted to do it out of anger – in his mind at that moment Christmas was forever ruined for him and that was unacceptable, and he wanted to bring someone else down with him.  For me that need to inform still existed, but not out of vengeance or any type of vindictiveness, but because it seemed like the right thing to do.  I never did tell anyone that Santa Claus does not exist (barring the incident in 5^th grade, when a friend was being mocked for it) because I could appreciate the difference between a holiday legend that adults who know better tell kids for a variety of reasons (not the least of which is to get them to behave and finish their broccoli) and actively lying, believing something fantastical or simply repeating misinformation and urban legend unintentionally. 

            I don’t want to try to pretend that at the age of 5 I took realizing and then confirming the truth about Santa Claus, applied it to every area of life, and became an atheist and a skeptic, because that is far from the truth. But it is a good introduction.  It was a long road from July of 1989 until officially considering myself either (or even considering the possibility of either), but on that day the seeds of skepticism were planted and a skeptic was born.

The Face in the Blanket

            Right around the time I finally broke down and told my 5^th grade friend that there is no Santa Claus (and his parents promptly discredited me as an infidel), my Social Studies teacher decided he was sick of teaching Social Studies and it was time for us to watch some supernatural documentaries.  I don’t remember the exact circumstances of it, but I do remember vividly that the videos we watched had nothing to do with the Fertile Crescent or Mesopotamia or anything else we were learning in class.  I also don’t remember what pseudo-academic channel originally aired these “documentaries” and I haven’t been able to find them since, and I’ve looked hard, but I’m guessing it was National Geographic (they have no qualms about airing that nonsense Ancient Aliens series and presenting it as fact and/or something seriously debated and questioned among archaeologists, paleontologists and other scientists, so I don’t feel bad for blaming them for this - even if it turns out I’m wrong and it was a different station).  This was my last year in a public school setting, but I think it’s important to note that the specific story I’m about to relate wasn’t specifically the reason for my parent’s decision to enroll me in Catholic school, it serves as a prime example of public elementary school job-security-as-tenure gone wild.

            The first show we watched was on the Bermuda Triangle.  It was presented in typical sensational hyperbolic television fashion, without any rebuttal from the other side.  The hypothesis was that the Bermuda Triangle was a relatively small area in the Atlantic Ocean where an unusually large number of people have disappeared forever.  The program gave multiple explanations for the disappearances, every one of which was supernatural.  One posited that it was due to leftover technologies from the “lost city” of Atlantis buried deep below the triangle.  Aliens and UFO activity were another “scientific explanation” offered by the experts.  Your tax dollars at work.  A grown man who was paid good money (he was probably in his late 50s then, so I’m betting that adjusted for inflation, in New York State public schools, he was probably pulling down 75-80 grand in 2012 dollars…plus another 12-15 grand in benefits) was teaching young, impressionable 11 and 12 year olds that the Bermuda Triangle is supernatural in nature and possibly related to the lost city of Atlantis.  Brilliant.  And the concept terrified me.  At that age, teachers were right up there with parents in their infallibility.  Plus National Geographic was scientific, right?  And these “experts” on the program were scientists who had spent their whole lives studying this stuff.  None of them would lie to me and this was not a horror program, this was science; it wasn’t designed to scare me (and it really didn’t scare most of the other kids in the class), it just happened to scare me as a side effect.  So it had to be fact; aliens were real and were responsible for the disappearance of hundreds, if not thousands, of people.  I lived nowhere near the Bermuda Triangle, but I was sure I was next.  I did not sleep well that night.

            The next day, my Social Studies teacher was still in babysitter mode rather than paid educator and he decided it was time to introduce a little religion into our public school, masquerading as science.  I’m not talking about any type of Creationism or Intelligent Design argument, no no – this was another pseudo-scientific documentary.  This time the subject was The Shroud of Turin.  This particular program introduced our impressionable and developing brains to the thesis that Jesus Christ was real, he was magical, he was possibly (probably) the son of god, and after he died he rose from the dead and the “energy” from the resurrection had left a daguerreotype imprint of his face and body on the shroud he was buried in.  Not only that, but we somehow managed to find the cloth (over a thousand years after the fact, something the documentary neglected to mention) and could now subject it to testing.  If you’ve ever seen the Shroud of Turin you know it’s not exactly flattering to the late JC, and it definitely isn’t calming, as some Christians try to claim.  And the photographic negative images that the show kept using were horrifying.  Those black and white images of a lifeless face imprinted themselves on my brain and refused to leave.  And they terrified me.  I’m still not sure why; I was raised Catholic and in 5^th grade was still an unquestioning believer, shouldn’t the verification of the existence and resurrection of Jesus Christ be a source of great comfort and joy?  It wasn’t.  I couldn’t sleep – I saw that hauntingly expressionless black and white face everywhere.  In the dim light of my bedroom, I saw it forming in posters on my walls and in wood grain patters on my bed.  That image wasn’t benevolent and it was out to get me. 

I don’t even remember the specifics of the Shroud of Turin documentary.  I just remember the frightening image and that the overall point was that numerous scientific tests had shown that there was a very high probability that the Shroud was authentic.  I also remember that my teacher strongly agreed with the program’s conclusion.  The second night of seeing Jesus’ creepy shroud face every time I closed my eyes and not being able to sleep because of it, I realized I had to do something.  I went to my parents and told them about it.  I didn’t even remember the name of the burial cloth.  I called it “the face in the blanket.  You know – Jesus’ face from when he was buried and rose from the dead…”   Luckily they knew what I was talking about and they (two lifelong Catholics) assured me that it was nonsense.  They didn’t try to tell me that the (alleged) face of Jesus should bring me joy instead of fear or some other religious jive; they instead told me it was a hoax.  My dad told me he didn’t know what “science” show I had seen, but that he knew it wasn’t real science.  I felt better, but still pretty uneasy.  Although sleep came much easier that night, the face still wouldn’t leave my mind.

Arriving home from work the next day, my dad took a library book out of his briefcase and handed it to me.  “Read this,” he said. 

“Looking for a Miracle” I read aloud.  “What’s this?”

“This will explain why your teacher and that show are wrong about the Shroud of Turin,” he replied.

The Shroud of Turin was only one chapter in the book, which featured a full survey of alleged miracles, magical icons, weeping religious relics, reports of stigmata, and other similar fare.  I opened to the chapter on the Shroud of Turin and read it three times, each time growing more assured that this thing was a hoax and I had no reason to be afraid.  The ghostly Jesus face was still in my mind, but it lost its power to scare me because it wasn’t real.  Again, this is all a bit paradoxical for a 10 year old Catholic, but for me at the time believing in an unseen god in the sky was fine – ghosts (and ghostly images) here on Earth were not.

I remember being angry.  My entire class and I were exposed to this Shroud of Turin business in a Social Studies class.  After having read Joe Nickell’s accounts and descriptions of what real scientists, historians, archaeologists, proper testing of the shroud by proper scientists, and even religious clergy had to say in Looking for a Miracle, I realized that not only was there no way that the Shroud of Turin was supernatural, but there was also no way it was even the authentic burial shroud of Jesus Christ.  It wasn’t only bad science, it was bad history, bad archaeology, bad everything.  It was even bad religion in the sense that if it’s fake (which it is) then it’s a false icon and it’s blasphemous.  I again felt the need to explain all this to my classmates.  This wasn’t Santa Claus, this was real stuff.  We were being given inaccurate misconceptions, myths and flat out lies as truth and fact.  This time, I was going to set everything straight.

But the next day at lunch when I started telling my classmates about the truth, no one seemed to care.  It didn’t matter to them at all.  The few students who did care only cared to challenge me, one of them even saying (I really do remember this verbatim) – “Innocent until proven guilty – it’s right until you prove it’s wrong.”  I tried telling him that the opposite is true – it’s wrong until (or unless) the evidence shows it’s right (my 5^th grade version of the scientific method) – but he wasn’t having it.  Now even some of the other kids started to jump in (the ones who “didn’t care”) to agree with him.  It wasn’t about supernatural faces in a cloth or alien abductions in the North Atlantic; it was about the truth and reality.  No one was on my side.  It wasn’t a big deal and the whole thing blew over within a minute and we were back to talking about how many swear words were on the new Green Day album and whose older brother had to album so we could listen to them on repeat, but being on the minority side of debate about supernatural forces, science, truth, and reality would become a common theme for me.

That Joe Nickell book was my first introduction to formal skepticism and the idea that claims of paranormal ability, supernatural forces and pseudoscience could be subjected to real scientific scrutiny.  It taught me to question claims and to examine the evidence for what’s actually there versus what we hope is (or think it would be “cool” if it was) there.

The Majority of Americans Can’t Be Wrong, Can They?

We are a supernatural nation.  Considerably less so than many other countries, yes, but according to numerous polls, a considerable majority of Americans believe in all kinds of weird supernatural stuff.  I’m not sure exactly how these polls define “belief” (or if they even define it at all), but I define it as an active psychological state in which one holds something to be true.  “I don’t know/maybe/there could be/it’s possible” is not belief.  If you don’t know, you don’t believe.  By definition you can’t believe if you don’t know.  I’m not sure how many of the 73% of Americans who said (in the findings of a recent Gallup poll) that they believe in some type of paranormal/supernatural phenomenon (including ESP, ghosts, and telepathy, but not god – god wasn’t considered “supernatural” in this poll…) really meant “I don’t know for sure.” Based on experience, I’m guessing very few.  In fact, other polls measuring belief in various phenomena have included an “I don’t know” column and, like any good third party candidate, “I don’t know” consistently scores very low. 

Despite the insistence of members of the religious right, America was not “founded on the principles of Christianity.”  If anything, it was founded on principles of Paganism, Freemasonry, (not the paranoid conspiracy theory “New World Order” kind of Freemasonry) and liberty.  However, despite the insistence of members of atheist movements and secular groups, it is technically accurate to say that America is a Christian nation in the sense that a healthy majority (coincidentally, also 73%) of Americans identify as Christian.  We generally consider Iraq and Turkey to be Muslim nations, but officially they are actually secular.  We just call them Muslim because a huge majority (99.8% of Iraqis and 98.6% of Turks) identify themselves as Muslim.  If 73 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christian, technically we’re a Christian nation, even if we do not have an official, state-sponsored religion.  While we do not have an official national religion, we do hold to some peculiar traditions and religious tendencies on an official level.  In courtrooms, we place our hands on Bibles, swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help us god – implying that morality and god are inseparable and apparently believing that this hollow act of placing one’s hand on a book and promising not to lie will make someone tell the truth, as opposed to just saying, “if you’re caught lying during this questioning, you’ll be found guilty of contempt of court and/or perjury and could go to jail.”  The whole exercise is rather silly anyway considering the myriad gods and deities that exist in popular and historical religious mythologies.  So help me which god?  The Old Testament vengeful god of the Hebrews?  The New Testament “father of Jesus Christ” god?  Muhammad?  Thor?  Not to mention that if I don’t believe in the Bible, then “swearing” on it makes as much sense and holds as much weight as swearing on any other mundane old book. 

We hold other peculiar traditions for a nation that holds “separation of church and state” as a guiding principle (that phrase never actually appears in the Constitution, but was actually stated by Thomas Jefferson in his now famous 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists, but this is the essence of the Establishment Clause).  Since 1956, the national motto of the United States is “in god we trust.”  This motto was figuratively reaffirmed by Congress in 2011 in a whopping 396 to 9 vote.   Separation of a specific church or religion and state may exist in the United States, but separation of magical thinking and magical beliefs and state certainly does not.  We also went ahead and starting printing this non-denominational, but still highly religious motto on our paper money in 1957 (it had been on coinage since the mid-1800s), another peculiar act, if it is indeed “in [the Christian god that 73 percent of Americans identify with] we trust,” because according to scripture, that god doesn’t like money (although his churches certainly seem to.)

Perhaps most questioningly, we debate over reality and try to change and control reality democratically.  School-board debates in Cobb County, Georgia; Topeka, Kansas; and a handful of other areas across the country over the teaching of the religious based intelligent design in public science classrooms have shown our strange view of reality.  We can debate until we’re blue in the face over evolution vs. intelligent design and we can put it to a vote over who believes what, but in the end, reality doesn’t care.  If, during the next statewide election, New York State decided to add a proposition to the ballot that said, “we affirm and believe that the Earth is the center of the Universe and all celestial bodies revolve around it,” and the vast majority of New Yorkers voted in favor of it, nothing has actually changed (except maybe the nation’s view of New York State’s level of education).  The geocentric proposition “passing” by a large majority doesn’t change the actual nature of the universe.   The Earth is not the center of the universe.  That’s the reality.

This is not to say that evolution or Einstein’s general and special relativity or anything else is the ultimate and unquestioning truth.  They could absolutely be wrong as well.  The point is that even though the vast majority of modern scientists believe that evolution and Einstein and a whole score of other principles and theories are fairly accurate descriptions of the natural world, they could absolutely be wrong and if they are, the nature of reality doesn’t change.  As another example: either an individual is male or female.  Voting on the sex of an individual doesn’t change the true gender and that reality is not democratic.  In America we seem to have this strange view that reality is democratic and that if enough people believe or vote on the reality of something, it becomes the truth.  It’s a common argument against skepticism and atheism: “the vast majority of Americans believe in some kind of god, and the majority (73 percent, remember) believe in some type of additional supernatural or paranormal phenomenon.  The majority of Americans can’t be wrong, can they?”  They can.  In many cases they are, and just because a majority believe (or claim to believe) in something, that doesn’t make it true (just ask the naked Emperor.)

Born in the USA

Have you ever really listened to the lyrics in Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA”?  It’s played at patriotic rallies, baseball games and Memorial Day parades all across the country.  It probably gets played over one million times across the country at various locations every single year on the fourth of July.  If Bruce is getting royalties per play, he should really trade in his “t-shirt and jeans working guy” look for some six-figure Versace suits.  The song is supposed to (and somehow, actually does) inspire patriotic feelings of America-love and how great the country is and chants of USA! USA! USA!  But once you’ve really read the lyrics, it feels kind of strange hearing it at “patriotic” rallies and Yankees games.  The only lyric the average American knows is the chorus and the rest is just poppy filler.  The real lyrics evoke images of a war-hungry, heartless nation that’s as keen to kill the “yellow man” (direct quote from Bruce) as it is to ignore the kids that they send to actually do the killing who get royally screwed up, both physically and mentally, if they make it home.  It’s a song about killing people different than us, for reasons we either don’t or can’t understand (and probably don’t want to), and then trying to live with the consequences.  It’s all because you were born in the USA, and that’s just how we do business.  Not exactly Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” an equally goofy American “rally song” but for completely different reasons. 

Although most people probably wouldn’t admit it, I bet they have similar feelings about America as the disenfranchised speaker in Springsteen’s song.   Not necessarily about the oversimplification of war as a violent and fruitless mess (although that’s pretty spot on for Vietnam) or the criticisms leveled at the United States, but most would probably agree in the exact same, “I was born in the USA” kind of mentality.  It’s that same mentality that inspires them to sing-along with the song and wave their flags in ardent patriotism to a song generally critical of what they’re rallying for.  Politicians and pundits constantly prattle on about how America is “the greatest country on Earth,” which always reminds me of parents with a double-take inducingly ugly baby who think he’s the most beautiful creature on Earth.  Sure, to them he’s beautiful.  He’s theirs – they made him.  No parent wants to admit their kid is ugly.  Similarly, no civilized country’s citizens want to admit they might not be the best.  “America is the greatest nation on Earth.”  Greatest in terms of what, exactly?  In education we’re ranked 13th, and that’s according to the very generous “education index.”  If you look at test scores on standardized tests measuring reading, mathematics, and science, the United States ranks 33^rd, 27^th and 22^nd, respectively.  That’s not the greatest.  In terms of freedom, we’re 10^th on the index of economic freedom and 7^th in terms of civil liberties.  That’s not the greatest.  GDP per capita?  Depending on what source you look at, we’re 8^th, 6^th or 9^th.  Not the greatest.  There is one significant factor that the United States consistently ranks number one in, and that’s the size of the military in terms of spending.  We account for 41% of the world’s share of military spending.  Almost half of the money in the world that is spent on military is spent by the United States.  The next closest is China, at 8.2%.  We also spend the most money per capita.  China has about 1 billion more citizens than the United States and we spend over 500 billion dollars more than they do on military expenses (adjusted to like currencies – I’m not comparing dollars to renminbi here).  Maybe we’re the “greatest country on Earth” because we can blast to pieces anyone who disagrees with us.   

Outside of the United States, almost no one considers the United States to be the greatest country in the world.  Generally, only other Americans consider America to be the “greatest country in the world”.  It’s like the parent who thinks their kid is the greatest ballplayer on the team and wants the coach tarred, feathered, and thrown in jail for benching little Samuel.  And that’s the problem; that’s the “Born in the USA” syndrome.  And similar to the hypothetical “geocentric proposition” passed by New York State that I mentioned in an earlier section, everyone deciding that America is the best does not magically make it true.  How many of us would honestly “love” America or become American citizens if we weren’t born here?  That’s my worry about my own American identity.  I was born here so I’m “American”.  It’s really all I know.  But if I was born in Canada (because it’s geographically closest) or China (because it’s the mathematically the most likely), would I be saying that Canada/China is the “greatest nation on Earth”?  Sure, there are a number of poverty stricken and severely oppressed countries where yes, without a doubt, most people would leave the second they got the chance, but out of the large number of developed countries, what makes the United States so great?  Many would argue the ideas of freedom and liberty make the United States so great.  That was true, but how many of those ideals still truly exist in the same strident form that they did when “give me liberty or give me death” was not just a catchy hyperbole, it was a literal demand?  Now we fight bloody battles against our own citizens over what they choose to put into their own bodies (the drug war), we fight bloody wars overseas for phantom weapons of mass destruction or oil, and we haven’t had a free market probably ever but definitely since the New Deal.  We gladly hand our 4^th Amendment rights over every time we fly and in a number of other situations in the name of “safety” or “fighting terrorism” and show little to no concern for the ever increasing presence of the Nanny State.

I don’t think I’ve ever specifically identified myself as an American.  If I did, it was way down on the list and to me has always been more of a circumstance of birth than anything else.  I’m an American in the same way as I have blue eyes and am an uncle.  It’s just something that happened due to circumstance, either genetic or familial.  But that really is one of the things that make America “great”; the (still mostly free) marketplace of ideas that exists all across the country.  That really doesn’t exist in a great number of other places and in many other countries you could be jailed, beaten or put to death for speaking out against the leaders or state-religion.  But that’s just comparison and relativity though.  America is great because it doesn’t stifle free speech (mostly) and allows you to believe what you want (mostly).  That’s giving America credit for not doing something.  North Korea is worse than America because of the ways they oppress their citizens, but should America get credit for not doing the same thing?  It’s like saying that the creepy looking guy on the subway is a great person for not violently robbing you because another creepy looking guy in a different subway car does violently rob people.  The actions of the other creep don’t make this creep less creepy.  Maybe he was going to rob you at the next stop but you got off at a particularly busy station.  Or maybe he was going to rob you but something about you specifically kept him from doing it, like maybe you look similar to his sister so he didn’t rob you, but he did rob a different person who looked like someone who used to bully him in high school.  You don’t know. The point is that he should get no credit or be considered “great” (or even good) for not doing something horrible. 

On the other side of that same coin, America (or any government) should not be given credit for or be praised for things that already exist.  For example, many (myself included) are quite pleased with New York State for granting homosexuals the same right to marry as heterosexuals.  That’s fantastic.  But that’s a right that already should have existed; New York is being praised for once being homophobic, exclusionary, and discriminatory, but not doing it anymore.  That’s not something they should be praised for.  That’s like praising your assailant for no longer assaulting you.  The same thing is true for civil rights.  It’s fantastic that African Americans have the same rights as everyone else in the United States and thankfully we’ve evolved enough that I believe that very few people would argue against it.  The problem is that African Americans always had those same inalienable and undeniable rights as everyone else.  Those rights were forcibly and violently taken away from them and then slowly given back after much politicking and violence.  Repealing the racist and disgusting Jim Crow laws in the 1960s was met with great praise (rightfully so), but today a good number of Americans look upon that with a sense of national pride and cite that as a reason that America is great.  Once violently enslaving, oppressing, and ignoring the rights of an entire race of human beings and then deciding to no longer do that and to now treat them as human beings is not “great.”  I don’t believe America (or any other government) should get credit for giving back rights that they once violently stripped away.  Gay marriage and civil rights are two extreme examples of the multitude of things that already exist (like “free speech”) and are attributed with great thanks and pride to government for granting.   

So I don’t know if I’m American because I was born here or if I’m American because I really like America.  Certainly I stand behind the ideas in the Constitution and celebrate them daily.  Compared to quite a number of other countries, I would definitely say that I did hit it lucky by being born in America.  My concern is that those ideas are gradually becoming a small voice in the national consciousness and the worse off the rest of the world is, the better we think we are.  The government of North Korea committing some abhorrent act against its own citizens or enacting laws creating an even more oppressive style of government does not somehow make America freer, but a troubling number of Americans (rightfully) look upon them with pity but (oddly) look upon Uncle Sam with admiration and a sense of national pride just for not doing the same.  I fear that for too many Americans, their national identity is simply unshakable pride and unquestioning loyalty to their government, and for no real legitimate reason other than circumstance of birth.

American Identity: From the Philippines to Fredonia

American Identity:  From the Philippines to Fredonia

Mikiharu Holst

Long flights are never fun and those flights around 20 hours long are especially bad. I was living in the Philippines before I came to Fredonia and my family had been travelling around the world for a long time. My father and siblings have American citizenship like me, but my mom is a Japanese citizen and has a green card to live in the States. Since we travel a lot on government orders for my father's work, she gets a somewhat free pass with issues of refreshing it and having to deal with some problems with moving in and out of the country. If the government didn’t give some leeway to families that had to travel, that would be terrible.

            Anyway, at the immigration counter in Detroit where they check your passports and what-not, the guy who was manning that desk was telling my mother she couldn’t go on. He said her card was expired and she couldn’t go on. My mother tried to explain that because of her husband’s orders… And he cut her off. He kept saying that it didn’t matter about him and his citizenship, because she wasn’t a citizen and needed to update her card. She knows how this works, I mean she’s been doing this for years, but the jerk wouldn’t listen and was just being rude. It was incredibly frustrating to say the least. We had a flight in about an hour and a half, which is not much time in airports, and this was a hassle we really didn’t need to deal with. Eventually he sent us over to another desk, I can’t remember what it was called, but they dealt with these problems more in-depth so the rest of the people could get through. The new guy understood what the problem was and knew that she didn’t have to jump through hoops to travel in the US. So luckily we managed to go on without much hassle after that. He talked a little bit about maybe refreshing it soon, but that it cost money that would be unnecessary to spend while she didn’t need to. We made our flight and now I’m here in Fredonia attending college. This experience made me really think about what it means to be American.

            Just looking at how the two different immigration workers in the airport treated my mother gave me a sharp contrast in how Americans can act. One was incredibly rude and dismissive of someone who wasn’t American. The other helped as best he could and offered advice on how to best deal with the situation we found ourselves in. Immigration is the first thing that people see when they enter a country and as I’m effectively new to the US, this was my first glimpse at America. It wasn’t a great introduction to American society, but the help of the other worker helped to make it better. In Beyond Citizenship, Peter Spiro talks about American citizenship and the devaluing of American citizenship. This probably applied in my situation with immigration as the first man obviously feels strongly about American citizenship and how my mother didn’t want to become an American citizen. This is because Japan only lets you have one citizenship; you can have dual citizenship if you're born with both, but you have to pick Japan or whichever other country you’re tied to before you turn 22. Her parents, my grandparents, are Japanese and live in Japan so she is not going to give up her citizenship when she can just get a green card to live in the States. Spiro says the value of American citizenship has gone down, and while it may have gone down a bit, I believe that being American is still valuable.

My name is Mikiharu Holst and I’m half American and half Japanese. I’ve lived in many places around the world and have in turn experienced a lot. I was born in the States but I’ve spent more time overseas than I have in the US. In total I’ve only lived in the US for four years. My time in Japan and Israel has been more memorable than the few years I’ve had in the states. Moving around so much has made it that I don’t, or can’t, say “back home” in reference to the States. “Back home” happens to be wherever my family happens to be at the moment. The location of “home” shifts every few years and that’s normal for me. As moving to a new country is a more drastic change than moving to a new house in the neighborhood or to the next state, I’d say that my life has been different than many Americans. This has also lead me to less American interaction overall, as living in other countries has limited it to people in similar circumstances to me. Japan is the place I’ve lived the longest and could possibly be called home, but I don’t think there is any country I can really dub “home.”

While I don’t have a home, I’ve developed as a person throughout my life. I can say what kind of person that I am. I’m a nice guy, not outgoing, attempt to be funny but often fail miserably (sometimes in a way that ends up being amusing), pretty lazy, and a bunch of other descriptors that I could spout. Figuring out what kind of person I am isn’t something that just clicked one day. I’ve learned and relearned what kind of person I am throughout the years. It’s a bit harder to define what I am in regards to national identity, even after my 19 years on this planet.

Race is often used to guess roughly where someone is from. You take that, compare it to their clothes and what they have and you start forming opinions. Even if it’s not conscious, we all stereotype in one way or another and we apply that to how we look at the person. This could lead to a guess to them being from Kenya, China, or England. It’s terribly inefficient though. People from all races can be found all over the world. The US is also pretty diverse so that can throw a wrench into some guesswork. Drawing a conclusion of nationality from race doesn’t work. Matthew Frye Jacobson has a part in Whiteness of a Different Color where he quotes Smith and his students. One student was saying how anyone could tell that he was Greek just by looking at him. The student he asked said she didn’t know that the other student was Greek before he told the class he was. If you stand in front of a stranger and study them for a minute, will you be able to see what nationality they are? No. I can’t look in a mirror and see what my nationality is and I can’t look at someone else and instantly know theirs. So while we are legally born with a nationality, that doesn’t really mean anything. People aren’t born patriotic to a nation. You don’t even know what a nation is yet. Identity has to be found.

            I could just look at my race and then turn to my passports and stop there. If someone asks me what my nationality is I can just whip out my passports. “Look at these and it’ll tell you what I am. Ignore any preconceptions and doubts you may have, reader of my passport; you can now see that I am American and Japanese.” But wait, this doesn’t always work for people. It doesn’t work for me. While I do identify as American and Japanese, it’s not because my passports tell me that. There are people who don’t feel like they’re a part of the country they are officially a part of. Other people feel like they have a certain nationality even when they don’t have it officially. Having that little book is very useful if you want to travel and various other things requiring identification. I get to visit my family after this semester ends because my passport will let me fly over and visit them for winter break. People couldn’t travel around the world and see new places and experience different things without passports, but they don’t make your identity.

            Still, passports can help you figure out your identity. Typically this would happen by letting you travel and the experience would help you out. I’ve travelled all over the world because of it and I’ve dealt with many kinds of people. Europe, the Middle East, Japan, and the Philippines all act differently. Being in these places gave me experience with the rest of the world and how it acts. Many things are different overseas and many things can end up similar. Obvious things like language matter little and a lot. People are people regardless of what language they speak, but not speaking the same language can cause barriers to appear. In the Philippines they speak English but Tagalog is mixed in liberally to make a unique blend of Tagalog and English. It can vary depending on who you speak to and where you are in how much languages are mixed or used. This fusion of two languages is vastly different than in the US where speaking multiple languages is promoted, and bashed, at the same time.

Language also influenced my views on my identity, albeit indirectly. I can only speak English, even though I learned Spanish as a young child and Japanese in school while I lived in Japan. I forgot basically all the Spanish I knew within a couple weeks of leaving Mexico. Japanese went away slower, but I’d also not learned it as well as I had Spanish as a young child. I probably forgot the bulk of my Japanese knowledge more slowly than I did Spanish because we use a small amount of Japanese around the house; we occasionally talked with our grandparents on the phone(who only speak Japanese) and watched anime. I know a few words and how to count but I can’t really communicate with anyone in Japanese beyond rudimentary statements. While I still love my Japanese side, my inability to understand and speak Japanese effectively locks me out of truly identifying as Japanese. I like to say I’m half Japanese and its definitely a part of me, but my American side is more prominent because of this.

Cultures of other nations can give a stark contrast, or eerie similarity, to the one you’re used to. While I didn’t really live in America long enough to really grasp American society, I’ve lived around Americans overseas and have been in American International Schools. I think one of my most interesting experiences with culture was my trip to Qatar. Qatar was only going to take a few days as I was only there for an MUN (Model United Nations) conference. I flew in from Israel, so we had to do a somewhat roundabout flight to avoid problems with that. Right away my trip to Qatar made me think about what being an American meant. Just flying from Israel is enough to make it so the flight has to be in a somewhat roundabout way that avoids nations that aren’t really on friendly terms with Israel. While not everyone loves America, we don’t have to deal with as many people outright hating our guts. Landing then leads to customs and immigrations where having an Israeli passport lead to more scrutiny. A couple people were pulled aside for a more thorough check, being hassled for things on their passport, although overall the treatment was less severe than the year before. This is the main part where I saw what being Israeli meant to other people and I compared it to my treatment then and now. After the airport, most of my experiences and comparisons that I draw from Qatar stems from comparing the culture there to American culture. In a way it was very similar, but again very different. Many women wore traditional garb yet fashion stores could be found in malls. The mall I went to is an incredible mall that is fancy. It had a canal that ran through much of the mall, complete with gondolas. It had an ice rink, IMAX 3D, and of course McDonalds. A mall as massive and filled as this is something that many people consider “American” with consumerism and burgers, also had strong Islamic ties. It was a unique experience to me and was very interesting to say the least. The US has, relative to some countries in the Middle East, pretty strong ties to Qatar so it might not be too much of a surprise to see “American” things, but the contrast was still fascinating.

            When I think of my identity in the sense of being American, I look at my life experiences and who I am to try and determine that. I’ve only lived in the US for four years in total and this freshman year in college will be my fifth. I’ve lived in Bolivia, Mexico, Japan, Israel, and the Philippines. I’ve also visited Qatar, Rome, Vienna, Paris, and other airports around the world. Seeing the world is a rare opportunity and I grew up with it. I’ve dealt with people in other nations having to deal with me, an American, which puts some more perspective onto my life. When I compare how the people are in most of these nations to how many Americans I’ve met and know, I start to think that I am pretty American. While it’s not a universal template, many Americans are pretty nice and go out of their way to help a stranger. At least, this is an aspect of Americans that I think I have. And that is how it ended up becoming for me. Travel forces perspective onto you as you see the rest of the world. Japan is a good place for this to happen. At least for me. The American environment through the housing and schools gave me a more grounded and familiar place to live. But I’d step outside and be in a whole new world and could see the differences right away. Home wasn’t a copy of American life, but it had many aspects and the bases were pretty similar. I could just look at the movie theaters and see differences between Japan and America. Simple things like movie seats being something you just picked in the American theaters while you were assigned them in Japanese ones. I could find food that is usually only readily available in America and was “rare” in Japan. Caprisun was surprisingly popular among my friends and I’d trade with them during lunches. The, in a way, easy access to America through the bases enabled me to stay grounded and explore the country easily.

            Sum up everything that’s happened to me during my life and all the things I’ve done and experienced and you build up my identity. I view myself as an American, with Japanese parts, a nice guy, atheist, person who’s seen much of the world, a gamer, and human. My life has seen a host of experiences in my travels, mistakes, and adventures. If I had to I might be able to narrow down how I exactly define what my identity is, but I feel like my identity is malleable and can easily get modified. Some of the basics stay the same, which would be the things I listed before this, but overall my identity is not something I can really define yet. But the things I listed at the start of this paragraph are some of the most important parts of my identity. Family influenced me but they’re not my identity. Being American is an important part of me as I love my country. My Japanese side as well is something that I appreciate a lot and enjoy. Experience and having been in a good amount of the world has a lot of sway for me. I’m human with all my mistakes and achievements. My gamer part isn’t just saying that playing games is an important part of who I am but it is also how I can describe the kind of things I like among other things. But simply being a nice guy is the most important thing to me. I can be a dick sometimes and am not always cheerful or nice, but I try. Being nice is something I want to be, so I try and be it.

             America is a great country and I believe it’s the best in the world, even with all of our faults and imperfections. We try to be the best, not just in raw power, but in how we act and view the world. Some politicians and citizens might not follow that same train of thought, but the country as a whole tries. Aspiring to be what America stands for is what I believe is a core feature of what being American really is. You have to really want to be and try to be American. That doesn’t mean you have to attend rallies or do other crazy things to prove it. Simply wanting and trying to follow some of the ideals of the American dream or the principles that we stand for is enough in my book. Taking it too far still makes you an American, just a bad or stupid person. The ideals that America stands for probably differ person to person, but I think some of my thoughts on it might ring true for others. Tolerance and acceptance towards others of all kinds is something that I think America stands for. There of course is still racism and hatred towards certain groups in the US, but it is not supported. As America was built to greatness by a large assortment of people and groups, none can claim to be the real American way. The best and brightest Americans have roots from all over the world.  So with that in mind, I like to think America is the melting pot, as its been called, and that we are open to all and accepting of others.

            Beyond simply accepting others for their differences and looking at who they are as a person, I think Americans’ acting when needed is another important attribute. America acts when we think we’re needed to help out. While we have had misguided acts and aren’t always doing things for the right reasons, we still act where others don’t. If there is a problem we go out and try and fix it. This is something that should apply to smaller things than the acting of the country as a whole. I would hope that I would be able to follow my own directions if it ever came up for me to try and help stop a robber or other criminal. It’s a terrifying notion, but if people can’t even go out of their way to help someone who is literally right there in front of them, then we have no right to call ourselves a true American. Americans have pulled together in times of crisis, but there are also people who loot in those times and ignore crimes in front of them. Putting aside the examples of those who don’t follow the law or turn a blind eye to those who do, it is still an ideal that I think many people would like to follow. It’s difficult to judge how people would work with it, but it something that I could hope that more Americans would try and do.

            In addition to stepping up when it’s called for and being open and accepting to others, I think to be American you have to also try and achieve the American Dream. It’s something that has been a part of America for a long time. It comes in different phrases and can be described differently, symbolizing many American values and something we can aspire to no matter our social class. It isn’t an absolute idea and it isn’t perfect, but it extols great ideals and can encourage people to rise high above what they normally would think possible. Dreaming for greatness isn’t what is required, but getting to happiness via hard work or through your own means. Promoting that you can achieve what you want in life and the freedom of each person to do so. Pushing for individual freedoms is something that America has been doing for a while and the American Dream promotes freedom to succeed.

            Being American is important to many and it is important to me. It doesn’t rule my life, but I’d like to hold onto it if I can. When I look at the rest of my life and look it over it helps me reaffirm my American side, while I still embrace my Japanese side. I’ve gone from seeing American-like things overseas to being in America again. Returning to the States for college and reading non-fictional and fictional stories on what being an American means to people and what it means to be American, I’ve supplemented my experiences with these points of views and ideas. While I think that overall my ideas of what it means to be American hasn’t really changed too much over the course of the semester in American Identities, I’ve gotten more perspectives and could develop it some more. Being American is an important part of my identity, but to really reach that point I had to experience other things to figure out what being American means.

Identity through the Eyes of the Nation

Identity through the Eyes of the Nation

Shannon

            When it comes to the definition of an American Identity, I feel that there is a broad spectrum of aspects that one could use to define themselves through their country. Some base their identities on religion, while others use politics. Family background, ethnicity, and personal experiences also play a role in shaping one's identity. Family dinner conversations and skirmishes at high school are examples of events that have impacted my Identity.

            Being an American can mean many things. Some foreigners view Americans with negative stereotypes such as being overweight or obsessed with making money. Even though those stereotypes may be true, there is so much more to this identity. One ideal that many people base their identity off of is religion. For instance, some people may introduce themselves as a Christian American where as others may introduce themselves as Muslim American. Just because their religions are different doesn’t meant they are any less American.

            Another basis that people identify themselves through is how they view their government. People tend to gravitate towards a specific political party. Right-wing conservatives have much different ideals than that of left-wing liberals. Republicans may want less government involvement while Democrats invite more government involvement to make change happen. At the same time, conservatives might have stricter morals and like things the way they are while liberals are slightly more open-minded and stand by change. Again, I still find both of these groups to be equally American.

            My relatives are fairly conservative and religious. My parents, however, are the lenient ones. Even though they both grew up in very religious environments, they turned out to be pretty open-minded. My mom is Republican while my Dad is a Democrat. This lead to many ‘interesting’ discussions at the dinner table. There have been countless times when my parents would disagree on a subject and go on and on about how one was more correct than the other. I couldn’t be happier that I grew up with both sides of the spectrum because it gave me a chance to choose for myself, rather than be forced into a certain mind set.

            I remember one discussion in particular that got rather heated. A few years ago, our dinner conversation lead to the topic of American troops still occupying Iraq. Now my dad, being the Democrat that he is, immediately reverted to the point that we shouldn’t have gone to war in the first place. He claimed that the decision was made on a false premise; that, after we overthrew Saddam Hussein, it was useless to try and establish democracy. The conflict happening in the country between the Sunnis and the Shiites was that of a civil war; something we had no control over. Moreover, after the fall of Hussein, the troops didn’t protect any of their infrastructures. Our troops were ordered to guard the oil industry, which shows that Bush had a larger agenda in going to Iraq than what he claimed to begin with.

            My mom, on the other hand, disagreed. Even though she agreed halfheartedly that the initial decision was a mistake, she felt that keeping troops there was the right thing to do in order to protect the citizens. Her take on the whole affair was that Saddam Hussein needed to be stopped. She felt that the invasion of our troops was needed to stop the senseless murdering and oppression that Hussein brought on Iraqi people. She also felt that our troops stayed after the fact in order to protect the newly-freed citizens which, in her eyes, needed to happen.

            I feel that being exposed to both parties as a child was extremely beneficial. Listening to the different opinions of my parents on heated topics such as this gave me a chance to not only hear the opinions from both sides of a topic, but also learn outside of the classroom. I always loved seeing how far they would go with the discussion. It never turned into an aggressive quarrel; they simply enjoyed bouncing their opinions off each other and listening to what the other had to say. This also taught me to respect others' opinions, even if they don’t coincide with my own.

            Even when it comes to homosexuality and how people view it, I still feel that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Personally, I feel that it shouldn’t even be discussed whether or not they should receive the same rights or not. They are absolutely no different than anyone else; therefore, why on earth should they be denied any rights at all?  However, if there wasn’t room for others to hold different opinions, this would not be the United States of America. One of the most beautiful things about this country is that everyone has the right to believe and stand by what they wish, as long as they do not cause harm to others. 

            Americans are all connected in certain ways. We are all governed by a democratic system which allows us to choose what we believe and what to stand for. The great thing is that we can all choose what our identity is and what to define it through and still be just as much of an American as the next person.

            My personal identity as an American is greatly influenced by the people that have surrounded me throughout my life. Without my family and friends, I would be nowhere near the person I’ve become. The ideals that I have grown to live by have sprouted from the views of my parents, the observation of my relatives, and the friends that I have become close to.

            Personally, over the years, I have adopted very liberal views. Not totally in the political party sense, but also in a general way. I am very open-minded with different religions as well as sexual orientation. Watching the rest of my relatives speak about homosexuals as “okay but still sinners” made me very upset. I fully believe that homosexuals are absolutely no different than anyone else of heterosexual orientation. Hearing people try to take away the rights of others, particularly the right to marriage, absolutely infuriates me.

            Growing up in a small, predominantly white, rural town has its downsides.  The majority of the citizens of my home town are very conservative and narrow minded. Unfortunately, the stereotypical bullying of minorities, by sexual orientation or by race, happened fairly often. Throughout high school, I became very close with two gay males. They were some of my best friends, so, naturally, whenever I heard someone in the hallway speak against homosexuality, I wasn’t happy.

             One day, a couple of boys started to outwardly make fun of one of my friends. They would constantly make verbal attacks against him, leaving him upset and offended. So, a few days later, I decided to walk with him as he walked by this group of boys. Sure enough, they made a remark. Almost before they were done speaking the word, I walked up to them and asked them to say it again. When they wouldn’t, I asked them what they would do if I had said that to them. After none of them replied, we walked away and left them standing there. Later that day, one of the boys came up to me and apologized.  I told him that I wasn’t the one he should be apologizing to. This whole confrontation made me realize that I could never be that narrow-minded.

            If I had to choose one considerable factor that defined who I am as an American, I would choose my acceptance of others. After seeing the way my friends were treated and the way some of my relatives spoke about them made me take a step back and reinforce my stance as an ally in the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) community, as well as my inclination to be open minded and tolerant of all types of people.

When I think about who I am as a person, I find it very difficult to narrow it down to a few words. There are many different parts of my life that I can use to identify myself. Only when I combine my hobbies and interests with my heritage and past experiences am I really able to effectively show who I am.

            I have a semi-diverse background. Not in the racial sense, but of beliefs and ideals. My mother’s side is primarily German Lutheran. In fact, her father was even a priest. My father’s side, on the other hand, is Irish Catholic, which, as you can imagine, has caused a few problems for family reunions; and by that I mean, we’ve never had a family reunion. Luckily for me, my father isn’t huge on religion so he didn’t hesitate to be married under my Grandfather in a Lutheran church. That’s not to say his mother (my grandmother) didn’t nearly refuse to attend the wedding.

            The most family members from both sides that I’ve witnessed gathering at the same occasion was at my sister’s graduation party. There have been other choice occasions, but considering that my family is fairly spread out across the country, it’s difficult to travel the distance to attend weddings and such, so I haven’t been able to attend. It was really interesting to sit back and watch my family from both sides interact with each other. Very small conversation would be made. Topics were simple and mild to avoid any kind disagreements; for there were bound to be some. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that either side hates each other. It’s just that the difference in religion and lifestyles doesn’t make for a pleasant conversation.

Growing up in a fairly religious family, I attended church just about every Sunday. As I got older, however, I really began questioning religion. Seeing how easily it kept my family fairly separate from each other, I naturally didn’t appreciate the concept. There were other reasons I turned away from religion, as well.

I often went to my pastor with questions about homosexuality, exorcisms, and what our “regulations” were about who can go to heaven. Come to find out, Lutherans are very lenient when it comes to applying concepts from the bible to everyday life. When asked about homosexuality, he responded by saying that the bible has been re-written and translated hundreds of times. So, who are we to say that homosexuals are sinners? In Lutheranism, the bible exists more so as a set of guide lines, rather than a literal decree. In fact, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod just approved the ordination of gay pastors.  

Contrary to what one would normally think, I have actually grown up to be an extremely open person without a huge interest in any one religion. However, if there was any religion that I could have grown up with, I’m glad it was Lutheranism. To me, it seems that Lutherans are much more open to topics such as homosexuality and the respect of other religions. Even though I’ve strayed away from religion today, I feel that growing up as a Lutheran has played a huge role in molding my identity into what it is today.

            Aside from my home life, I’ve been involved with music in school ever since I can remember. I’ve been in chorus, band, jazz band, madrigal choir, marching band and musicals. Music, for me, is something that helps me escape from whatever I’m going through. It gives me something to occupy myself. Also, I simply love to play. At home, whenever I was bored, I’d pick out a couple of piano books, sit down at the piano, and sight read.  It is really relaxing for me, plus it gives me an outlet to vent any emotional issues through the notes that I play.

Throughout my years in grade school, I have met many people through the music department. Music was irrefutably the best part of my day. Not only was I able to take a break from academics, I was able to spend time with people who shared my passion and enthusiasm. Whether it was jazz band rehearsal or music theory, I always found being in a group where everybody has the same interests as you is a great environment for connecting with people. Some of my closest friends that I have today were made in the music wing of my high school.

Whenever you take part in a music ensemble or group, one of the re-occurring ideals is to be ‘open to your feelings.’ I’ll never forget a quote from my band director in 9^th grade: “Never be afraid to say what you feel because good music comes from true emotions, so you’ve got to be true to yourself.” Even though this sounds incredibly corny, this piece of advice has actually helped me come to terms with who I am. Rather than think about what I say to please other people, I learned to say what was really on my mind, which helped me find my place among my peers.

Before I entered high school, I was an extremely anxious person with a hyper active personality, which proved to be extremely annoying for others around me. Even the slightest mishap would send me on a worry rant. Something as simple as a missed question on my homework assignment would drive me to tears due to anxiety. For the longest time, I thought this was normal, until the “phase” never passed.

Eventually, after my sister left for college, my first panic attack was triggered. Soon after, I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety disorder. So, throughout junior high and the first years of high school, I went through a difficult period where therapy and counseling became a part of my weekly schedule. When trying to relax, I would often revert to playing the piano or listening to music. Without the help of therapy, counseling, and music, I would not have changed into the much more relaxed and self-reflecting person that I am now.

Naturally, during this process, my group of friends shifted, causing me to realize who I wanted in my life, as opposed to those who I wanted to please. Before, I spent all of my brainpower focused on making others think highly of me. I never stopped thinking about what others thought of me. It wasn’t until after I was able to stray away from this habit that I was able to forget everyone else and pay more attention to the smaller things in life. I focused more on activities that brought me enjoyment and satisfaction. This step in the healing process really helped me realize what mattered most to me.

Rather than simply naming off a few words and hope to get my personal identity across, I find it extremely effective to use different aspects of my life as an aid to define who I am. However, if I was for some strange reason put in a situation where I was forced to use a few choice words, I feel the words “open-minded, true, appreciative, and introspective” would do the job.

            My identity has formed over the years from many different experiences, habits, and ideals. However, I feel that my identity as an American truly comes to light through my political and social views. In order to really define one’s ‘American Identity,’ I feel it is necessary to define yourself through the eyes of our nation.

            If I had to associate myself with a certain party, I would identify as a liberal democrat. For the most part, I am middle of the road. However, when it comes to change in the government, I am for it as long as the change is based on a reputable premise. For a while, I have held a negative attitude towards our country. I’ve never really felt “proud to be an American.” I’ve read the countless stories of corrupt politicians, loop holes in the judicial system, and the rising unemployment and homeless rates of the population. I always thought that patriotism was corny and misplaced.

            It wasn’t until this past year that my negative, pessimistic attitudes towards the U.S. began to change. My economics professor in high school made an extremely prevalent point one day in class and it’s stuck with me ever since. He started the class period out by taking a small public opinion poll. We had to raise our hands if our view of the government was good, bad, or in-between. Come to find out, the majority of the class raised their hands for bad. He then asked us why that was, if we even had an explanation. The overall census was that our opinions originated from what we acquired from the media. This was exactly the answer he was looking for.

            My economics teacher’s main problem with the population today is that too many people think badly of our government and either A.)Don’t know why, or B.) Don’t do anything about it. He went on to tell us that the media plays a huge role in influencing our opinions. The media (whether it be newspapers, news channels, or the internet) tends to only portray negative stories because that is what the public wants to see. Nobody wants to hear that everything is fine and dandy because, well, it’s just not interesting. This is why my teacher strongly suggested that we use more than just one media source. If you exhaust as many sources as you have available, you will have a much better sense of what is going on in the world today.

            This piece of advice is what first prompted me to rethink my opinion towards this country. Leaving my hometown and entering college also helped me gain new perspective. When you’re stuck in a conservative, closedminded town for a long period of time, it’s easy to be bogged down by the negative attitudes of the people around you. Living on my own has helped me realize just how fortunate I am for the opportunity to grow up in a free society. Even though we have our fair share of problems, I’m now starting to appreciate what being an American can mean.

            Through the friends I’ve made, the family I’ve grown up with, the experiences I’ve shared, and the background I’ve come from, I have formed a personal identity that is definitive and unique. My ability to listen to others and express myself are a huge part of who I am. However, it isn’t until I view my identity through the country I’ve been raised in that I can successfully show who I am as an American.