Values

Sorry there haven’t been more posts lately. Having a kid tends to take up one’s time.

Now that I’m a “family man” I suppose I’m expected to have some new values, or at least different priorities. My mother-in-law asked me the other day if some of my values had changed over the last year or so. I didn’t have a clear answer at that time, but yes, they have.

Actually, those values that have “changed” have not so much changed as solidified into the trajectory they’ve followed for a few years now. Even though I spent way too many years in college aimlessly studying for this and that “professional” occupation, I’ve said for years that if I ever had a family I’d like to make as much of a living at home as possible. I considered home-based businesses or other work which would allow me to spend significant quantities of time at home. I liked the idea of being a teacher partly because I would have summers and holidays off. Back when I was living in North Carolinian suburbia I even hoped for a career-driven woman for a wife who wouldn’t mind me being a stay-at-home dad.

Of course, those preferences came as a reaction to my own upbringing. My dad grew up on his family’s farm, and when my grandfather had a massive heart attack at a rather young age, he gave up farming and opened a little country store. It was a great place, a social center for the rural community, but my dad had no interest in tending a store and, as far as I know, had no desire to try his hand at farming, either. Since there was still something approaching a manufacturing sector in North Carolina in those days (early 1970s), factory work looked like a pretty good alternative to the distasteful jobs at home, and it paid pretty well, too. So off he went to work for the Turbine Components Plant of the Westinghouse Corporation.

My dad enjoyed his work, and was content at it. He earned no extravagant amount from his hourly wage, but made what any NC farmboy of that time would have considered a decent living. He and my mom were married in ’76, and I came along in ’77. Whether it was financially necessary or was simply because he felt like he ought to make money when he could, my dad worked overtime and asked to switch off the day shift when he had a chance. He worked hard, he provided us with what we needed, and he made enough extra so that I could attend a private school K-12 and so that he and my mom, who were devout churchgoers, could always give their monthly gift to the church, which usually was quite generously above the customary 10% tithe.

But I didn’t get to spend all that much time with my dad when I was young, and, because of a pretty serious back injury he had when I was 3, his time at home right after work was often spent in pain and our time together didn’t really center around the stereotypical father-son tossing the pigskin/playing catch sort of thing. Not to say that we didn’t do that stuff—he often insisted on playing a little ball with me (after I had nagged at him for days on end) even when he didn’t feel good and knew that those minutes would cost him days of soreness. He did what he could, developing ways of doing things I liked that didn’t hurt him so bad (he threw a football underhanded, and could throw for a distance, with an accuracy, and in a tight spiral that would make any rugby player jealous, not to mention a few college quarterbacks), but I guess I just never thought it was enough. By the time that I was in my teens and “quality time” could have sufficed, I didn’t care to spend my time with him, as I was already well on my way to becoming the onerous jerk I was in my late teens through mid-twenties (by the way, thanks to Jason, Trent, and Magill for repeatedly pointing out that quality of character to me—I finally listened, sort of). So, as a teenager I decided that if I ever had kids I would spend more time with them.

After my disappointing time in church ministry, and after two more years of Bible college failed to help me make any more sense of the experience, I returned to university with no clue of what I was there for. Having botched several desperate attempts at romance over that same course of time, I decided that marriage and family for me were unlikely prospects in the near future and loosely directed my generally aimless educational endeavors toward what I considered at that time as positions of stature (hoping to make money and attract a girl, if I should be honest).

At this same time I became increasingly disenchanted with the culture I saw around me. The cheapening of community, the loss of a sense of belonging, the unfettered mobility of our day had all shown themselves to me through my experience of coming to Canada for college and moving on a whim to Wyoming for work. Back in NC, the emptiness of suburban sameness, the lack of individual purpose, the futility of workaday life, the growing corporatism and branding of everyday experience, the anonymity and objectification of service-sector work, the cultural desolation wreaked by a tourism-based economy showed me how much my area had changed since my youth. It was depressing. No wonder so many Southerners are depressed, obese, and disgruntled.

In my studies, I wanted as broad a humanities/social studies curriculum as possible, so I declared a double major of anthropology and political science with a minor in economics. I figured these areas of study would be a fine preparation for teaching social studies in middle and high school if I should settle down, but I dreamed of status and considered jobs with the US government.

When I wasn’t dreaming of “being somebody” I began thinking of some practical applications of what I was learning. Some of my anthropological case studies led me to ideas for effective social advocacy, petitioning governments to recognize the benefits certain marginalized minority cultures could bring to their societies if given ear and protection. I was also required to take a technology course and an ecology/environment elective; I thought a Society and Technology course which centered on culturally-appropriate technology and a Forest Ecology and Management course which studied silviculture and governmental policy would both interest me and be good selections for my program. From these courses (and from related articles in National Geographic which appeared, rather uncannily, over the same stretch of time) I learned of the troublesome politics and ethical questions surrounding “biofuel” production, the aquifer depletion of dryland irrigation farming, the inefficiencies of large-scale renewable energy production, the disincentives for paper product recycling. I began to realize that small-scale, low-tech solutions held significant advantages in nearly every circumstance over the industrial big-fixes and politically-expedient mantras I saw and heard tossed about in our culture. I decided that if I was going to help my hypothetical anthropology subjects live better lives with less financial and political clout, that it was appropriate for me to begin to incorporate these very principles into my life as well.

I made some changes to my thinking. I became skeptical of the blanket approach of all governmental and industrial “solutions”. I began reconsidering my economic identity of being a consumer. I gradually lost my desire for status. I came to desire to be productive. I grew my first garden, during my second summer at university in an array of pots on the back deck of my rented townhouse.

A lot more things have changed since then, constant gradations toward becoming more the person I am. Meeting Joelle, getting married, and considering the prospect of being a dad have further focused my thought toward its current state.

Yes, my values changed some time ago, and I have lately committed myself more fully to those more responsible values.

Now I must act.