We live in a globalized world, most of us — particularly those with the wherewithal and interest to be reading this blog. It’s easy to forget that not everyone is like us.
In the wake of John Scalzi’s Lowest Difficulty Setting blog post, I was thinking about my guy and how he’s a straight white male (SWM) who has, like many, faced adversity. He’s had an African American female boss, he’s a generation older than me, and his father was a teacher. But he also has beaten cancer, lost his career in the Navy due to leg injury, and is, quite frankly, an alcoholic. He works in a pink collar industry and due to his dylexia barely managed to graduate with a high school diploma.
But what I’m getting at here isn’t the notion that Mr. Scalzi is somehow wrong. I’m quite confident that he’s completely correct. What I want to get at here is the notion that not everyone gets it. I have a law degree and studied feminist philosophy pretty extensively in college. I blog, I tweet, I facebook, hell I’m developing a computer game. I’m not the single most internet-savvy person in the world, but I certainly get by. My guy doesn’t. He can barely type, doesn’t have a facebook, doesn’t have an e-mail, doesn’t know how to fill out online applications and to be perfectly honest, he doesn’t have a phone. He doesn’t drive, even.
Now, we don’t live in the boondocks. I am a ten minute drive from one of the most populated cities my country has to offer, and we have internet. But until he met me, he didn’t know what hulu was, didn’t know what netflix was, and didn’t own an ipod much less a ps3. I introduced him to audiobooks, I’ve educated him about politics, and I’ve broadened his horizons every bit as much as he’s broadened mine about things like sports and cooking and social interaction.
Quaff Nepenthe 