Joseph on Nostr: nprofile1q…5kvnh Sorry for writing this book. Your toots are thought-provoking. I ...

nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpq8ljjwuh8vt0lrh3fe3vsefddt40u297gtsk3d4v4ywhjnvms9zfqc5kvnh (nprofile…kvnh) Sorry for writing this book. Your toots are thought-provoking.

I was pretty incurious and unaware until midway through my college years when a friend invited me to join a CISPES (Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador) student organization on campus. I was then a practicing Catholic. The murder of Catholic priests and nuns in El Salvador by members of paramilitary groups, some trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas in Fort Benning, further awoke my interest in social justice. Many of those events were covered by news articles in Today’s Catholic, which my parents subscribed to and Christianity Today which I read in the library. After graduating from college and having a hard time finding a job, I joined the U.S. Peace Corps because it appealed to my newfound wokeness. My two years living and interacting with rural farmers in Senegal reinforced my belief that people everywhere are more alike than different. And, I think most of us wish good things to happen for those who we see as being like us. My wife helped me become more woke by introducing me to her many gay and lesbian friends after we began dating.

But, is the above cause or effect? I think much of my wokeness may possibly be related to my natural personality. My brother and I are both pretty far left, and my more than a dozen cousins on my mother’s side of the family seem to lean left. Strong family genes for empathy, perhaps? Some of my left-leaning politics are surely learned. But, my wife and I were unable to inculcate those values in one of two children we adopted as newborns with different biological parents.

My transgender daughter is woke and has been since childhood. But, I saw early traits in my 25-year-old son that suggest he may have had a genetic tendency for a conservative’s personality. We see those traits in some of his biological relatives, too. He has struggled with anxiety since childhood when he often worried about robbers breaking into our home; he still sees the world as a scary place; he is a gun owner; he is incurious and seeks simple explanations for complex issues; he is a MAGA Republican who wears a golf cross on a chain around his neck. My wife says that evangelical Christians tend to believe people are inherently bad, rather than good, and that aligns with right-wing thinking and policies.

(Now might be a good time for me to rewatch Children of Heaven or The Color of Paradise by Iranian director Majid Majidi to get a balanced perspective on the lives of Iranian people.)