UNDERCCOVER
Every child grows up with well-meaning advice. Yes, lots of it proves contradictory. The bigger your circle of relatives the more contradiction you'll get. Now this is true for everyone, but even more so for a minority. From the earliest age, I heard endless stories of disaster when so-and-so married a white guy. And yes, there were lotsa anecdotes on the disasters marrying a fellow Afghan; proponents of this theory telling me to marry a white. In all this, I never really heard anything about marriages which worked out, on either side.
The predictable happened. I grew up 100% determined not to marry, ever, end of story.
At least advice on education proved more reliable. Get lots of it. Aim for practical and not artsy. My passion and ability was science and history. Master's in Physics. Minor in History during my Bachelor. For whatever reason, I am totally fascinated by the crazies of circa 2000, you know the really ancient stuff no one else is interested in.
Their colossal and mindless consumerism draws me as a moth to a candle. Utter destruction of resources and environment, not a thought for the children or grandchildren, as they park three and even four polluters on that driveway.
Reading the history of the times, it all started as a result of World War Two, 1939 to 1945. Prior to that, every major war led to a sharp recession or even a depression as the economy retooled to peacetime pursuits. However, the western governments of 1945 decided to simply bypass this by consciously stimulating consumerism. At first, it was a hard sell. If you lived through the Depression of the 1930's, you vividly understood the value of savings and the evil of debt. Consumerism did not achieve true liftoff until the postwar baby boom generation got it.
Nice, but doesn't butter many parsnips. Since everyone is overeducated, I started out working in the public library.
However, I was one of the one in a thousand applications accepted for Time Corps.
When the course was over, I was the logical choice for the long jump. Only one conversant with that epoch in history.
So, that very ordinary-looking Afhan girl on the bus, well that's me. Mind what you say, I do report back. Say something spectacular, I give it space in my PhD thesis.
The predictable happened. I grew up 100% determined not to marry, ever, end of story.
At least advice on education proved more reliable. Get lots of it. Aim for practical and not artsy. My passion and ability was science and history. Master's in Physics. Minor in History during my Bachelor. For whatever reason, I am totally fascinated by the crazies of circa 2000, you know the really ancient stuff no one else is interested in.
Their colossal and mindless consumerism draws me as a moth to a candle. Utter destruction of resources and environment, not a thought for the children or grandchildren, as they park three and even four polluters on that driveway.
Reading the history of the times, it all started as a result of World War Two, 1939 to 1945. Prior to that, every major war led to a sharp recession or even a depression as the economy retooled to peacetime pursuits. However, the western governments of 1945 decided to simply bypass this by consciously stimulating consumerism. At first, it was a hard sell. If you lived through the Depression of the 1930's, you vividly understood the value of savings and the evil of debt. Consumerism did not achieve true liftoff until the postwar baby boom generation got it.
Nice, but doesn't butter many parsnips. Since everyone is overeducated, I started out working in the public library.
However, I was one of the one in a thousand applications accepted for Time Corps.
When the course was over, I was the logical choice for the long jump. Only one conversant with that epoch in history.
So, that very ordinary-looking Afhan girl on the bus, well that's me. Mind what you say, I do report back. Say something spectacular, I give it space in my PhD thesis.
posted by afghangirlscifi @ 8:35 AM
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