the random oracle

Last night I went to the Natick Mall, the scene of many prior jaunts back when I lived in Wayland.  I hadn’t been back in several years and the whole place has been completely transformed in the meantime.  The size of the mall itself has nearly doubled, but in addition the new sections are populated with high-end retailers like Ferragamo, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and the like, as well as being anchored by Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom.  The whole place is flanked by a ring of condos that link to the mall internally so that the moneyed residents don’t need to ever step foot outdoors to get any of their luxury shopping done.  The complex itself is actually quite impressive, the expansion was done quite tastefully with lots of natural sunlight coming through the glass sunroof and large open spaces inside.

My main impression however was how many teenagers were putzing around the mall.  Somehow living in Manhattan I’d forgotten that there was this awful stage of human development called adolescence… you don’t really see many teenagers hanging out in New York.  Either they don’t exist, or they’re much better at pretending to be grown-up than the suburban variety.  But here they were, in the Natick Mall, in all their hormonally confused, sexually frustrated, acne-ridden, and socially awkward glory.  There were the skanky hos, wearing neon tube-tops and short shorts as if they were going out in Ibiza (in 1985), the slackers in their hoodies, the wannabe thugs in their gold chains and baggy pants, the goths, the jocks, the lipsticks, and so on and so forth.  I’d forgotten about all these little tribes and how much they meant back in high school… not that we don’t have our own tribes now, but somehow we seem to be able to get along better ever so slightly.  Maybe we do grow up at some point… or at least we get better at pretending to get along.

Those of you who’ve heard me complaining about New York know that I lost my infatuation with the city a while back.  Don’t get me wrong there are still things about it that I love: the fact that everything’s open late, the excitement in the air, the creative and talented people you meet, the diversity in all aspects, the people it draws from all over the world, the all-night subway, and so on.

But something has been nagging me and did not feel quite right.  I had two main culprits in mind: my poverty and the difficulty of dating here.  But, like a physicist in search of a Grand Unified Theory, I thought there might be something more fundamental behind it all.  And now I have my theory: what really bothers me about New York is excessive ambition.  The most visible aspect of it is money, and the unimaginable amounts people spend on apartments, restaurants, and luxuries here is mind-boggling.  But I’ve decided that money is just a symptom, not the source, of what bothers me.

Everyone here is trying to outdo everyone else.  It’s all about who got a bigger bonus.  Who went on the most exotic vacation.  Who has the nicest apartment.  But it’s not just about money, it pervades everything else too.  Who knows the most obscure restaurants.  Who knows the password for that underground bar.  Who’s in on the latest fashion.  Who is recycles more.  Who has more angst.

Ambition and a desire to outdo others leads to excellence, but it also leads to neurosis.  What really bothers me about New York is how far on the neurotic end of ambitious it is.  New York shouldn’t stop pursuing the next great thing, or else it wouldn’t be New York.  But I think it (and people here) could stand to take a second every once in a while to stop and appreciate that, gee wow, we’ve already got it pretty good here.

One positive side-effect of this financial crisis is that fewer people will stop working in finance.  A significant fraction of my friends went into finance after college and I don’t think there has been a single one who has said to me, “I love my job, I think I’m helping people, I’m improving the world, and I feel fulfilled professionally.”  Instead what I heard was that, “Well you know the hours suck, my boss is an asshole, and I’m basically skimming money off the top of a big bubbling cauldron of mysterious financial goo, but at least my bonus last year was six figures.”

Finance has attracted so many talented, hard-working people into its fold with the lure of easy money, a fast lifestyle, and early retirement.  It offered an easy route for kids who might have come from modest family backgrounds to become multi-millionaires within years of graduating from college, easily making their parents’ lifetime incomes many times over.

And the rest of the world has suffered as these bright minds were tempted into what essentially is the task of shifting money around.  Now granted the allocation of capital is an important task; money that sits in a pile collecting dust does no one any good.  But somehow the amount of money that was made doing this investment and redistribution was always surreal, and now we’ve found out that indeed it was all a mirage.

Maybe if more of the people who went into finance had gone instead into government and figured out sensible ways of regulating the investment banks maybe this crisis would never have happened.  Maybe if more of them had gone into science and worked on renewable fuels we would be one step closer to energy independence.  Maybe if more of them had gone into the civil service we would have better diplomats and friendlier relations with the rest of the world, we would have a healthcare system that isn’t falling apart, and we would have teachers who actually know the subjects they are entrusted to teach.

And maybe after the dust settles after this crisis people will re-consider their alternatives more carefully and choose one of those jobs instead of finance.  We will always need bankers and financiers, but do we really need so many?  And does finance really deserve to employ such a large fraction of our best and brightest?  Without the lure of 6-figure bonuses (that had little correlation to actual value created), maybe we will shift back towards an economy and a society that actually produces wealth, culture, innovation, and prosperity instead of producing the illusion thereof.

The whole Madoff scandal is absolutely incredible.  How can one man steal $50 billion?  What does that even mean?  Did he spend it all?  Did he stash it in a Swiss bank?  Did he just have a big hundred-thousand-dollar-bill bonfire?

Unfortunately this scandal is emblematic of the entire go-go decade, as Paul Krugman so eloquently put it. We’ve been living in a fantasy world where unrealistic returns are viewed as normal and no questions are asked about just where all this magic money is coming from.  How exactly does the SEC, not to mention all the other regulatory authorities that Madoff evaded, miss such an incredibly ridiculously enormous fraud?

If Madoff is (almost certainly) convicted of the crimes he committed, what will be his punishment?  Should he go to a white-collar jail and live out the rest of his life in relative comfort?  How exactly does that work anyway?  What exactly is the “harshest” punishment that should be meted out in such situations?  We commonly hold the death penalty to be the harshest punishment available; does it fit in this situation?  Is it commensurate with the crime, or inappropriate because the crime wasn’t violent?

I’m still on the fence about whether the death penalty itself is humane or not.  I have my reservations about whether we as imperfect fallible people have the right to judge whether someone else lives or dies.  But I do believe that, assuming that the death penalty is acceptable, there should be no question that someone like Madoff, if proven guilty, should receive it.  He has caused almost incomprehensible harm to such a vast number of people that we will be picking up the pieces for years if not decades.  Maybe no one has died directly at his hands, but the number of lives that he’s ruined, the number of organizations that are now bankrupt because of his actions, the immeasurable wealth squandered because of his crimes has resulted in far greater harm to this country and to the world than any single act of violent crime could ever cause.  If this judicial system has any pretentions to justice, I hope that it lays down a punishment that’s comparable with the judgments it’s laid down for other crimes, and makes Madoff pay as dearly as anyone possibly can for his crimes against his investors and, more pertinently, for his crimes against humanity.

Family today means something different than it used to mean.  People don’t live next to their parents and grandparents anymore, and it may be years between when brothers and sisters see each other.  A child might be cared for by just her mother or just her father, or maybe even just her aunt or uncle. But those bonds are no less important and no less valuable than what the Mormon church or the Catholic church tells you family should be.

In fact, those bonds of family are our anchors in this age where everything moves increasingly faster, where our lives can change overnight with a layoff, a cancer diagnosis, or an order to go to Iraq, and we are helplessly swept along in the tide of vicissitudes and upheavals.  Those bonds of family are what keep us grounded, keep us sane, and provide us a bit of shelter in this cold, difficult world.

Family is all the more precious to those of who are gay because so many of us risk losing them simply because of who we are.  I dreaded my parents’ reaction when I came out to them… for a few days, a few weeks even I thought that I might have permanently damaged those bonds.  I can’t say that those bonds have fully healed, but at least the immediate danger of losing them completely is gone.  There’s nothing scarier in this world than to think your parents might abandon you simply for who you are, and it’s something that I wouldn’t wish on anyone else.

With very few exceptions, we are born with our family, we can’t choose them.  We can’t go down the street to the courthouse to get a new mom or dad, a new brother or sister.  We have to make the best of what we’re given at birth, come what may.

There is only one exception to this rule, one family member that we all have the right to choose.  Well, I should say that YOU have the right to choose since we don’t.  You have one choice, one chance in this life to share with someone the intimacy, shelter, love, and companionship of being married, of forming your own family.

That’s what marriage today is about.  Whether it’s just the two of you or you have kids, whatever your race or religion might be, whether you married your high-school sweetheart or found a new love in your golden years, however you choose to express your love and commitment to each other, your marriage is your choice to share your life with someone and to build one together.

Your husband or wife is the one family member that you get to pick.  That’s your choice, your chance.  Shouldn’t we get that chance too?

With all this hogwash about traditional marriage and other cynical interpretations of history, let’s be clear what this “traditional marriage” is.  Depending on whose traditions you’re looking at, marriage in the past could have meant ownership of the wife (i.e. most human societies up until modern times), a politically or financially motivated transaction (again, most human societies up until and including the modern age), polygamy (I’m looking at you, Utah), intra-racial marriage only (I’m looking at you, Virginia), or “until death or distance do us part” (I’m looking at you, Confederacy).

Calling marriage the most sacred and cherished of our social institutions is ok, but it needs to be qualified with all of the exceptions I mentioned above, as well as others.  Just because some aspect of marriage is traditional doesn’t make it right; certainly two men or two women marrying is not nearly as abominable as saying that one wife is worth two cows.

Whatever you think traditional marriage is, let’s say what marriage today definitely is not:

• It’s not about procreation because plenty of straight couples get married and choose not to have children, or choose to adopt children rather than give birth to children.
• It’s not about religion because we all have different gods (or none at all) and yet many people end up marrying someone of a different faith.
• It’s not about eternity because half of all marriages end in divorce.
• It’s not about tradition because many of the marriages performed today would have been illegal 50 years ago (inter-racial, inter-faith, etc.), and many of the marriages that would have happened 100 years go would not happen today (arranged marriages, etc.).
• It’s not (just) about legal rights, because civil unions are not and never will be equal to marriage.

On such a transformative day, Proposition 8 added a sad counterpoint to the resounding Obama victory.  On a day when people celebrated the smashing of racial barriers, the California electorate decided to erect a barrier based on sexuality.  Predicated on lies that same-sex marriage would lead to kindergarten kids learning about homosexuality and churches being sued for not performing same-sex marriages, California voters decided to strip fellow citizens of a fundamental human right.  With the same hand that voted for the hope Barack Obama embodies, many cast a ballot for that basest of human instincts: fear and hatred of people different from yourself.

One point that has been made already in news reports is the degree to which minorities voted for Proposition 8.  In particular, the LA Times cites that over 70% of blacks in California voted for Proposition 8, and already angry bloggers and commentators are throwing blame and “how-dare-yous” at black voters.  Of course there is a line from the civil rights movement for de-segregation and minority rights to the modern gay rights movement.  And of course they are not of the same magnitude, since the burden of slavery’s legacy is carried by blacks alone.  But clearly many black Californians did not see the connection between the two, and the question is why.

The knee-jerk (and highly self-defeating) reaction is that blacks cling too strongly to their religion and that they’ll vote for whatever their pastors say, and that to win them over is a hopeless task.  There is a kernel of truth to this; walk around Harlem a few blocks and you’ll be astounded by the number of churches dotting the neighborhood.

But that’s only a small part of the problem.  The greater part of the problem is with the gay rights movement itself.  When straights in minority communities (be it blacks, Latinos, Asians, or whatever else) think of gay rights and same-sex marriage, the image that pops into their mind is gay white men and women marrying each other.  How many of the pictures that you’ve seen of gay couples tying the knot are minorities?  The only one I can think of is George Takei and even there his husband is white.  The problem with convincing minority communities that gay rights matter is that they think it has nothing to do with them.  Gay men and women of color are invisible to them, and so gay rights becomes a white person’s problem.

This is symptomatic of gay culture in general; although things have improved in the last few years, in general gay culture is much more white-centric than mainstream culture.  At least in mainstream culture we have black and Latino media and sports icons (Asians still get the shaft here unfortunately), and thanks to Barack Obama even political icons.  In gay culture there are few if any minority icons, and the most famous ones are not even gay (think Tina Turner or Janet Jackson).

Thus it’s not surprising that the organizers of the No on 8 effort didn’t even bother to start campaigning in minority communities until the week of the election.  When they contacted ethnic newspapers, they discovered that the Yes on 8 campaign had been renting space for months already.  Then when No on 8 ran TV ads, instead of running ads showing gay couples (especially gay couples of color) they showed Ellen.  Clearly not the right tack for convincing minority demographics.

Until this attitude changes, until gay rights are viewed as everyone’s concern no matter their race, until the day when everyone cares about marriage equality, regardless of whether they’re black, white, Latino, Asian, or anything else, because it’s just as likely that their son or daughter, brother or sister will need it, until that moment there’s no way we’ll convince minority voters to vote against discrimination.  And until that day, there’s no way we’ll have the equality we as people all deserve.