A Response to Life’s Bullshit

I’ve dealt with bullshit in my life.  Mine and other peoples’.  People’s? Whatever.  Brief and overarching examples of such bullshit include trauma, abuse, terror, panic, lies, anger, cruelty, judgment, scorn, intolerance, narcissism, pettiness, and poorly-cooked pizza.

When your bullshit intake is pretty steady on a daily level (read; when you are an adult and/or college student), you become introspective. You tend to walk around a lot listening to ‘Dust In The Wind’ and staring off into space.  You experiment with dangerous things to deal with the bullshit—dangerous things like anger, hate, and condemnation.  Possibly also alcohol and chocolate.  If you’re an artist, you art even more than usual—perhaps you start a novel, or compose music, or both.  You apply yourself vigorously to your work, because work usually doesn’t contain any bullshit.

You feel old.  Older. Ancient, old as the hills, as if you’ve walked the same streets forever.

And, if you’re me, this introspection takes a reflective turn.  You turn to books, to film, to famous figures, for inspiration, comfort, and guidance.  You talk to parents and professors and listen to words from men and women long dead.  You read Aristotle’s friendly books of advice for young men entering adulthood.  You listen to Jung’s discussion of mortality and the human life, watch the keen intelligence in the eyes of Bertrand Russell as he discusses forgiveness and mankind’s future on Earth.  You learn the unpredictability of life not only from your own travails but from the calming voice of Alan Watts, who assures you that all is not as bad as it seems—that the universe has a harmony of its own.

You drop-forge your own spirituality in fire and cold water, in anger and sorrow and hour after hour of worry.

And slowly, it works.

You stop staring at the ceiling for hours every night.  Your dreams cease to be saddening and become bittersweet.

Your music stops being angry.  Stops being sad.  It sounds more right than before, deeper, with anger and sorrow in their rightful places—not dominating, and not absent.  Your characters take on a depth and power that you haven’t known before, and (after hours of exposure to the drama that unfolds in human lives) story developments come easily.  You get better at managing your temper, at making measured judgments, at managing stress, at not falling apart under the weight of your own rumination.

Suddenly, though you haven’t gotten any busier, you have plenty of time.  You start humming happier songs.  You have more patience for everything from schoolwork to nonfunctioning computers to people.

And then, on a quiet afternoon in a nearly-empty study space, you run a search on Martin Luther King Jr., and you read his words.  You get a glimpse of the man behind the rhetoric, and you see the power in them.  It falls into place all at once; Taoism, Nietzsche, psychology black swans, action with intention, cultural relativism, even the Wizard’s oath…and the result is a profound calm, and a renewed vehemence.

I refuse to believe in the worst parts of humanity.   People can be better, though there might not be any one person or thing that changes them.  It might not be me that causes a person’s life to turn around—but I cannot turn my back on the possibility that it might be.  Two quotes by MLK inspired me today.  One of them was this:

“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”

People will be petty, and afraid, and angry—and that includes me, because I can be petty, and nervous, and angry too, just as well as anyone else.  But you can’t meet human failing with more human failing.  You can’t beat intolerance with intolerance.  You can meet cruelty with anger, in the moment.  You can fight abuse fist-to-fist if you have to.  But when it’s done, when the moment ends, then you have to rebuild, and you can’t rebuild with anger.

“Now there is a final reason I think that Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” It is this: that love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. Just keep being friendly to that person. Just keep loving them, and they can’t stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning. They react with guilt feelings, and sometimes they’ll hate you a little more at that transition period, but just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That’s love, you see. It is redemptive, and this is why Jesus says love. There’s something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. So love your enemies. ”

Powerful words.

As a society, and as individuals, we can’t be lost in the moment of anger.  Yes, people do awful things.  There should and will be consequences for that.  But we have to step back, and think.  Yes, the murderer is a monster.  But we have to step back, and think, and wonder who made her that way.  Yes, rape is evil, and disgusting, and should never be tolerated among our number.  But we have to step back, and think, and realize that we have a chance to help a victim before he is a victim.  That we have a chance to save the innocent, before they become the guilty.  And that while we can fight day by day, in the end, it will be not the many battles but the one, the only, that changes the course of humanity—and that is the battle of our culture, of our time, of our universe, and our lives.  And in the end, it is the fight of inclusion over intolerance.  It is the fight of self-knowledge over self-denial.  It is the fight of integration over repression. It is the yes of life against the no of time and entropy.  And in the end, it is the fight of love over hate.

So I refuse to believe that people cannot change.  People can be better than this.  The world can be better than this.  Life can be better than this.  And I will fight every day, through spoken and written words, through actions and thoughts, to make it so.  Because that is the only fight worth fighting.

Because in the end, that’s the only fight.  There is no good and evil beyond what we make, beyond what we choose, beyond what we do.

We are Nietzsche’s supermen.  The world is what we make of it, and I, for one, want to make it something better than this.  Because we can be better than this.

The world is full of bad things. But we can make it a little better.  We can always be a little better. Because deontology is not starry-eyed idealism.  A perfect end is not impractical.  Am I an angel? No, not by any means, what I am is something darker. Does that mean I can’t hold myself to that standard? Not in the slightest.  Will we ever achieve a perfect world? A world without murder, fear, rape, hatred? Maybe not.  Does that mean I can’t fight for it?

Hell no.

And besides, I’ve a fondness for impossible causes.

So if I seem unexpectedly nice…I’m just doing my job.  If I call you on hateful rhetoric, I’m just doing my job. And trying to help you do yours.

Because, after all, the basic idea of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics can be condensed into this:

Be the best human being you can be.

That’s my response to your bullshit, life.

Your move, motherf*****.

• Read the original MLK “Love Your Enemies” sermon here.
• Listen to awesome music here.
• Go read the goddamn Nicomachean Ethics.

BROADSIDE: [hate speech]

ALL-PURPOSE* BROADSIDE: Or, HOW ALL HATE SPEECH IS THE SAME.

Dear [person #1].

You are hereby being served notice of the unconstructive nature of your discourse.  What that means in English is that YOU’RE NOT HELPING.  The vitriolic enthusiasm with which you attack [entity] is NOT going to help in fixing [problem].

You are a [self-identification].  You are not alone; there are many who share your belief, who also are [ideological group].  You have a view of the way the world should be, and it is seemingly incomprehensible to you to suggest that another rational being would ever think differently.

But here’s the thing.

If you have a complete, ironclad view of the way the world should work, that dictates what each person needs to have a flourishing and happy life, YOU’RE WRONG.

Because there are BILLIONS of people on [planet].   You are only one of many, the crossroads of unique individual and unique circumstance.

To presume to condemn [ideological group] as a whole based upon your own individual thoughts and desires is WRONG.  Induction: You are failing at it.

There are [quantity greater than zero #1] of individuals who are also [title of member of ideological group].  They live perfectly happy lives, because they function in a way entirely different from you, because there is a very definite degree to which, thanks to culture and individuality, we are not all ‘basically the same.’  Different things are fulfilling to different people, and if you fail to respect that, you are being just as intolerant as the [ideological group] you claim to condemn.

Yes, [ideological group] has its flaws, and like any human organization other than In-N-Out Burger, they are many.  They can be fixed.  And, more fundamentally, [ideological group] is made up of PEOPLE.   People can change, and we tend to believe that people have certain RIGHTS, such as the right to a certain degree of SELF-DETERMINATION.

[ideological group] DOES NOT EXIST FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE OF DESTROYING ALL THAT IS GOOD ON THIS EARTH.  And to suggest that all those who participate in [ideological group] are ignorant, hateful, brainwashed, or better off dead is abhorrent.

Finally, and in closing, CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING.

DON’T MAKE GENERALIZATIONS WHEN YOU SPEAK OF HATE.  Do you know what that leads to? That leads to GENOCIDE AND ANGUISH.  I am not exaggerating.  When you hate blindly, you are blinded.

You are BETTER THAN THIS.  I know this for certain, because you are A HUMAN BEING, and human beings are ALWAYS capable of allowing one another to live peacefully.

You live your life, that’s fine. But don’t assume that the only way to live is YOUR way.   It is HARD to be tolerant—I know.  It’s HARD to let people self-determine, hard to take the SLOW way.  But to fight hate with hate, to condemn all who support [ideological group] alike, to make enemies of people who are PERFECTLY DECENT HUMAN BEINGS, and indeed, some of whom are probably BETTER human beings than you and I—this path is misguided, and beneath you, and I know you can do better; I know you can learn how, and I wish you the best of luck.

If you want to spread the poison of intolerance, and write off any person as a loss based SOLELY on their membership in a group that also contains poor examples, then I’VE GOT BAD NEWS FOR YOU, CUPCAKE, because if that’s how you roll, you’re a HUMAN BEING, and GUESS WHO’S COMMITTED EVERY MAJOR HISTORICAL ATROCITY IN ALL OF HISTORY?

That’s right, you’ve got a bigger category of hatred to work on—because each of us are connected to thousands of others by thousands of similarities, and blind hatred for any one human is blind hatred for HUMANITY.  So rein it in, [equestrian celebrity reference], you’re riding too hard.

But if you want to work with us, with all of us, all the good people on [planet] who want their ideological groups to be better, who hold ourselves and others to a higher standard, who are willing to fight—and to forgive—for the sake of harmony and a flourishing life, then join me, and we’ll learn tolerance together.

Choose well.  Choose as I know you can.   And I, in turn, will forgive your rashness, for I understand where you’re coming from, because I have my own blindness as well. And you, like all the rest of us, are only human.

And you, like all the rest of us, must struggle with that.

*This will serve as a response to anyone condemning a particular group, religion, or behavioral practice, subject to the following constraints:

• [quantity greater than zero #1] is greater than zero. (example, 1, and not 0)
• By ‘condemning’ I mean aggressively.  Hell, or even passively.  The casual jokes of annoying atheists.  The bombastic rhetoric of annoying religious figures. The outdated ideas of annoying, sexist political figures.  A #misandry-tagged post that isn’t obviously sarcastic or made by a misguided MRA.
• [ideological group] is not an organization created and maintained for the sole purpose of oppressing, disenfranchising, repressing, injuring, or otherwise harming anyone. (example, the Grand Old Party, and not the KKK or a similar hate group) Aside from this constraint, [ideological group] can be anything; a political organization, a country, an ethnicity, a gender, a faction in WoW…
• [person #1] is a person with thoughts and feelings.

             PEACE, NERDS. 

A brief meditation on individuality.

Here’s a thought.

Think about yourself.  The way you move, the way you talk.  If you’re like most people on the planet, you have a host of specific motor behaviors—gestures, in other words.  Some of these gestures are universal.  Smiles, laughs, etc.  Some are cultural—bows, curtseys, handshakes, salutes.

But some of them are very special, and here’s why.

Each time you spend time with someone, they imprint on you, just a little bit.  It might be a phrase, a way of sitting, or a gesture, a facial expression—or even something in the way they hold their head.  But regardless of what it is, we mimic people we interact with, and we tend to interact more with people who mimic us in turn.

These little mimicked gimmicks carry over past the conversation.  The more time you spend with someone, the more you pick up their little habits—and they more they pick up yours.  The more you build an emotional rapport with a person, the more you build a mutual language of shared gestures.

The same is true of ideas, to a limited extent.  We all know things our friends have taught us. We all wield the words of our mentors from time to time.

So next time you’re feeling a little lonely, or a little bored, just pay a little more attention to the way you talk, the way you move or fidget.  See if you can figure out what gestures in your arsenal were picked up from somewhere else.  It can be a telling way to compile a list of people who had an impact on your life—though it’s usually a list you already know by heart.

You’re never quite alone, not quite an individual.  You are accompanied by your culture, by the accumulated words and gestures of every person you’ve ever spoken to, slept with, learned from, or fought against.  The ideals of your favorite thinkers inform your inspiration to original thought.  And all of this—a host of words, ideas, verbal and physical habits, and the cultural and ancestral knowledge of an entire species—is placed at your fingertips, surrounding and insulating your individuality like a coat of armor.

So yeah.

Explaining The Wingman

The other day I was engaged in conversation with some female friends of mine.

This is in itself not remarkable; as most of my friends can attest, I do tend to engage in conversation.

But, as we were talking, we suddenly ended up on the subject of ‘the wingman.’  And I was hit by an unexpected request—to explain exactly what it is that ‘the wingman’ does.

Well.

The concept of a ‘wingman’ might not seem to be the most politically correct one.  It gives to the dating scene a bizarre, military overtone that indicates that all steps taken lead up to a single, obvious objective.  There are also ways in which it overlaps with pickup culture, a place I don’t want to spend more time in than I have to.

But, there was the question.  What does a wingman do? What is the difference between a good and a bad wingman?

So setting aside connotations and complications, and looking at the term right now, let’s give this question an answer IN THE FORM OF A BRIEF GUIDE.

SO YOU WANT TO BE A WINGMAN.

[also the title of a lesser-known book series by Diane Duane]

Let’s start with basics.

What is a wingman?
Despite the overtly patriarchal terminology, a wingman can actually be a gender-neutral term.  It is not often utilized as such (and so an argument can be made over actual usage vs. actual meaning, etc.).   A wingman is any reasonably intelligent entity who will accompany you through the process of getting to know another person, whether romantically or platonically.

So.

What is the purpose of the wingman?

To put it in the broadest possible sense, the purpose of the wingman is to manufacture synchronicity.   Or, in English, to make convenient things happen.

Breaking Circles:

Human beings are social creatures.  We form social or conversation circles by habit—you can observe this at any party, at any gathering.  Breaking into these circles is a simple thing—nowhere near as hard as you think—but the wingman’s purpose, in part, is to facilitate that.

The wingman does the heavy lifting of initiating social contact and then quietly bows out, letting their comrade swoop into the opening, whether subtly or obviously.  You may have had this moment in one context or another—asking a friend to “go talk to that person for me so I can come talk to them too.”   This is traditionally one of the purposes of the wingman because, to just about any person on the planet, there is nothing more terrifying than the person you are crushing on.

In other words…

Manufacturing Coincidences:

The wingman’s job is also to make things happen.  If there is an obstacle, the wingman will help overcome it, in a way that is highly contrived but ends up seeming completely accidental.  [#sprezzatura]

This is where the line between wingman and good friend can get blurry; the differentiating element is the shared objective: facilitating some social goal.  For example, if you happen to be really good at playing the harpsichord, good wingmen might take it upon themselves to find a location wherein your harpsichord skills can really shine.

The wingman’s purpose can be likened to stage lighting; to make you look good from whatever angle, at whatever time.  To make sure the audience knows when you’ve entered, and that you’re the star.

Except that the wingman has a final, crucial role that is far more active than a spotlight.

Get Your Lazy A** Out There:

Did you spot that perfect 10? The drop-dead gorgeous human being that makes your knees knock? The most fascinating person you’ve ever seen?

Feel that temptation to flee under the nearest carpet? The jelly in your spinal chord?

The wingman’s job now is to CRUSH THAT and get you back in the game.  To provide the push to go talk to the cute person in the corner.  To remind you that you are actually a sexy beast with a wingman close behind to save you from any awkward situations.

And that, [I hope] is a brief, but accurate explanation of the ‘wingman’ concept.

This isn’t intended to be a guide in a prescriptive sense.  This isn’t what you should do…this is probably just what you already do.

I hope this answers your questions…and if you have further questions, well, there’s a comments section for a reason!

 

Ethics and Intolerance

Today’s SPAZZY subject,

RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE

What is religion?

I’ve asked this question before, and the answer depends on who you ask.  As usual.

However, because it makes my arguments easier, we’re going to talk about religion as a moral and spiritual force.

What is the purpose of religion? In this definition, the purpose of religion is to provide man with a way to communicate with the spiritual, and to establish a system of ethics by which man interacts with the world.

What does this mean?  This means that religion provides us with a way to understand our spirituality, and grants a certain responsibility and purpose to our being-in-the-world.  In this context, everyone has a religion, and this fact is something I will maintain fiercely against all comers.

Something I say in conversation as a joke, but mean perfectly seriously: “I have my own religion, of which I am the only member.”  But for the purposes of this blog post, we’ll focus on the latter, so that we can begin to talk about religious intolerance.

So what is religious intolerance?

Religious intolerance is what happens when religion’s dictates clash with reality.  Any ethical objection to an action based wholly or in part on religious teaching is religious intolerance, if we want to be irritatingly technical about it, but we tend to think of it as less problematic if it doesn’t clash with our own personal norms.  For example, you don’t see murderers gathering in large numbers to protest the religious intolerance they face every day, because even they share sufficient cultural context with us to agree that murder, by and large, is generally a bad thing that people do.  

Also, just like Aristotle, I’m preaching to a choir…so if you’re not of the impression that murder is by and large a bad thing that people do, you should maybe stop reading and go back to 4chan.

SO RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE, THEN, is when people don’t feel that they can tolerate an action due to the dictates of their religion.  This is more or less caused by what we refer to as COGNITIVE DISSONANCE, which is that feeling in your brain when you really want to date two guys at the same time or when you try to think of a round square object that is both white and orange at the same time.

[For extra fun with cognitive dissonance, try this: imagine a four-dimensional object.  It’s just like a three-dimensional object, except in addition to height, width, and depth, it has a fourth dimension that is just as perpendicular to all of those as they are to each other. It’s a weird, uncomfortable mental sensation, isn’t it?]

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE is what happens when two beliefs clash.  In the simplest of cases these beliefs are polar opposites, like this:

“Thou shalt not kill.”

“I believe I just saw Jeff shoot Tim in the face. That is killing.”

The two belief systems (Killing is wrong; someone just killed) clash, and in the clash they produce cognitive dissonance and then a resolution that is usually semi-logical (Ergo; Jeff just did something wrong).

The logic point is something I want to emphasize, because when we’re yelling at people we want to make this clear.

EVERYONE MAKES SENSE INSIDE THEIR OWN HEAD.  Even crazy people follow their own zany logic; what makes them crazy, by and large, is that they’re a minority.   I follow my own zany logic; at times this makes people look at me oddly and ask if I was just talking to an inanimate object.  And I was, and his name is Phil.

So, shifting gears here and talking about intolerance in general.  What is intolerance?

The best way to define it, in my humble opinion, is as an inability to allow behaviors to proceed unopposed.

So loony religious types will not allow nontraditional marriages to occur in their country, assuming that it will pollute everyone with its terrible, terrible horribleness.

Rabid atheist types will not let even the faintest hint of religion escape their ravenous rationalism, lest everyone suddenly burst into gospel music and flee to the hills before the oncoming flood.

Why do we think this is problematic?

Because here in AMERICA, we tend to think that people’s actions should be unrestricted.

And, you know, also in other countries, where other stuff happens.

But these are systems of morality.  By definition they are meant to stand for what is right and what is wrong.

So how can systems of morality be wrong?

Well, because they are inflexible.  By and large, the moral systems that drive more problematic forms of intolerance tend to be eager to give us a hard-and-fast ruling.  In philosophical terms (HOLD ON TO YOUR HATS) they are DEONTOLOGICAL.

HOLY SH*T.

THAT’S A HUGE WORD.

SLOW DOWN.

Quick definition, for those lucky few of you who haven’t come across this term.

Something deontological is rule-based. Actions are judged on whether or not they conform to a system of rules, and based on that they are assigned a value.  An example of a deontological system is a legal code, where, for example it doesn’t matter why you do something—as long as you don’t break any laws, it’s not wrong for you to do it.

 

But though most legal and religious systems are DEONTOLOGICAL, we don’t actually tend to function that way.  Life is rarely convenient enough to fit into a system of hard and fast rules. Lying is a great example.  We obviously think there is a spectrum of lies—that telling someone you killed their parents is a different sort of lie from saying you’ve got homework to do and won’t be going to the party (when the actual reason is you don’t like the people that are throwing the party).

What separates the two? Well, motive, for one.  In one example, you’re telling someone you killed their parents because…well, I actually can’t imagine why.  You’re a sick bastard, whoever you are.  But your motive is probably to cause them pain, because it’s difficult to imagine a situation where that would turn out well (though I’ll explore that in a second).

In the other situation, you’re trying to spare someone’s feelings by not telling them you hate their friends and want to stab them in the eyes.  It’s a delicate balance to strike.

But what if you were telling someone that you killed their parents to help them? If, for example, their parents had actually been killed by a giant death monster that was hiding in the other room and you were trying to get them to chase you so that you could lead them out of the house and into safety?  Well then, we might say that the ends justify the means—which, our legal systems notwithstanding, tends to be more often the way we look at the world.

A system of ethics that looks at the intended end of an action rather than the means is called a TELEOLOGICAL system.  Telos is Greek, or some sh*t like that, and it is basically the end or good—essentially, it’s whatever you’re trying to accomplish with your actions.

SUDDENLY, ARISTOTLE.

Sup.

ARISTOTLE’S ETHICAL SYSTEM IS TELEOLOGICAL.   It’s more guidelines than actual rules, and in fact he recognizes that “it is a hard task to be good,” because “in every case it is a task to find the median.” [1109a24, if you want to whip out your Nicomachean Ethics and follow along].

So where moral decisions are involved, then, we don’t actually often follow hard and fast rules, because doing so tends to drive us pretty reliably right back into the stone ages and seems to make us act in a way that is creepy and robotic.  Ethical systems should have flexibility, right?  We are only human, and we err.

SPEAKING OF MAKING HORRIBLE MISTAKES,

RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE IS A THING.

And I’ll be addressing it in a later post, now that I’ve laid some groundwork, but I think that’s enough information to spew for now.

And for now, if you are a person who would condemn others for their creed, their body, or their love, I’ll just suggest that you look at the ends of your actions.

Is your condemnation done for their sake?

Do you think of them and their feelings?

If not…maybe you should.

Because all people are people too.

And on a more high-level blog post summary:  Think about your own personal system of ethics.  Do you have hard and fast rules? Or do you just make sh*t up as you go along?  Reflection is the key to making sure you’re at least coherent in your ethical protestations.

FIRST POST OF 2013

WHAT’S UP NERDS

WELCOME TO THE NEW GODDAMN YEAR

Here’s what’s new:

I’m writing a novel.

My school year is about to start.

AND HERE ARE SOME THINGS TO CONSIDER.

MY BLOG, which you know RIGHT HERE, since you’re reading it, is going to be updating on a weekly basis, every FRIDAY.  Or on an eight-day basis if I spazz out on Friday for whatever reason.  This will be happening, and readers, if it doesn’t, you have my permission to give me crap about it.  I’ll be writing about WHATEVER. Usually it will have a topic vaguely related to my favorite learning experience of the week.  That will be fun and cool and I encourage you to stick around, because I’ll be condensing a college-level concept into SMALL WORDS by wrestling with it for an hour and a half and beating it into submission with my keyboard.  Basically you’ll get to learn things for free, and also it will probably be funny, is what I’m saying, so stay tuned for more PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, ANTHROPOLOGY, here are JUNGWILDEANDFREE.

IN ADDITION, here are some other blogs to check out for the new year!

Are you a social-justice minded person? Is Christianity a hot topic for you? Are you confused by LGBT issues and by religion? WELL LOOK NO FURTHER; for clarification on ANY OF THESE SUBJECTS, check out the fantastic, spunky, and so frequently touching http://lesbicrafty.blogspot.com/.  Like my own blog, it is updated sporadically, but she’s been much more regular about it than I have!

NEXT UP IS the phenomenal and indescribable http://bluegirlblueworld.wordpress.com/.  This blog is run by a poet with a remarkable eye for the artistic and rather a gift for blending poesy and prose.  Her topic, similar to Montaigne, is her own life—and although not every post seems to have a point, there’s food for thought in every one. Check it out!

THIS BLOG was just started recently by a friend of mine, but even the first post crackles right along and is done before you know it.  Like the person behind it, this blog is not easily ignored, and I am waiting on the next post with baited breath.  Head over to http://recordedmusings.wordpress.com/ and give it a look!

LAST BUT NOT LEAST, this blog has ALSO just started, but it looks promising.  It’s got an interesting concept and only a few posts.  We’ll see how the execution goes over at http://jwfunspoken.wordpress.com/, but I’m keeping my eye on this one.  Decidedly NOT for kids, though.

MERRY NEW YEAR.  :D  I might not get y’all a post this week because of packing, but I’ll be back for sure NEXT FRIDAY!  So stick around, and check out these other blogs too! You won’t regret it.

Communication…WITH STYLE.

The phrase ‘communicative style’ gets thrown at me a lot.   It’s a psychological term, and a linguistic term, and it is a perfectly legitimate phrase, but it also occasionally gets used in a way reminiscent of a conversational flashbang grenade, startling and distracting while confusion is slipped in.

So what is a communicative style?

It’s talked about a lot in “RELATIONSHIP ADVICE” areas.  Somewhere between psychology and life counseling is the dark heart of relationship counseling, and in there people talk about this a lot, saying a lot of rubbish about making sure to “know your communicative style.”

BASICALLY

COMMUNICATIVE STYLE is the way in which a person shares information through language.  Each individual has their own communicative style.  In a sense, it overlaps with the linguistic term IDIOLECT, which is a person’s unique dialect—because we all have our own unique way of talking, blah blah blah.

OBVIOUSLY, though, we don’t all have completely mutually exclusive unique dialects, because OTHERWISE WE WOULDN’T BE ABLE TO COMMUNICATE, and you would just be reading gibberish.  Which raises the question of WHY ARE YOU READING GIBBERISH? YOU HAVE BETTER THINGS TO DO WITH YOUR TIME.

NOT THAT MY BLOG ISN’T GIBBERISH ON THE BEST OF DAYS

BUT ANWYAY I DIGRESS

 

The idea is that you should know the way you talk, and know what you mean when you say things.  In other words, in an ideal world everyone would possess a certain degree of metalinguistic awareness, which in English means that you know the way you talk.  Think about the myriad subtleties of meaning that can be attached to just a word, like ‘best friend.’ [Ted, say I’m your best friend!]   Or ‘relationship.’

Because, as was once pointed out to me in a vain attempt to change the subject, any sustained interpersonal contact is a relationship.  A relationship is, esentially, the interaction between any two things that relate to each other.  So you have a relationship with your friends, with your best friends [TED], with your parents, your barista…etc.  But obviously when you’re talking about a RELATIONSHIP, you’re probably not talking about your barista (all that caffeine fries the frontal lobe and short-term memory anyway).

ANYWAY.

IN A RELATIONSHIP between you and ANYONE, an understanding of communicative style is IMPORTANT—knowing how you talk.

FOR EXAMPLE.

In the U.S., we crazy American-speaking people tend to ask permission in a way that is rather assumptive.  “I’m gonna do X, want to come with?” In contrast, in Japan, the method of asking permission is much more subtle and negative, something that has been described more as “do you want to not do X?”

ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF COMMUNICATIVE STYLE might be how you talk about DISLIKING things.  Do you use passive voice? Do you soften it with hedge words? “This isn’t my favorite thing.” “This does not please me,” etc? Or do you just say straight out, “I don’t like this?” Do you make a strong claim? “This sucks!”  Understanding how you talk about things—especially your feelings—is key to understanding your own communicative style.  Which is key.

You see, the thing about a communicative style is that if you can’t communicate, it’s not an effective communicative style.  So if you’re talking to someone and trying to communicate, and they’re not getting the message, that’s a failure of communication, and if you want to get the word across, it’s on you to phase shift and try another tack.  I’m sure we’ve all had moments like this—it happens quite often.

There is a tendency to talk about “failures of communication” as if they were third-party things.  Something due to a “failure of communication” is an unavoidable accident in these viewpoints—an event we can try to avoid, but in vain.

Is this my viewpoint? Well…yes and no.

Remember that language cannot take place in a vacuum.  There is no communication unless there is interaction.  And if I’m talking to someone and trying to advance a point, it’s on me to make sure that point gets across.  As an agent in a conversation, it is my role to communicate clearly.

So what is communicative style?

Communicative style is how you convey information.  It is a continuum, separated by degrees of subtlety.  It is a mechanism that should be ever-changing, sliding back and forth from direct to indirect as needed to get your point across.  It should be in constant flux, because language is in a constant flux.  In communicative style we find many useful tools—from subtle social cues to blisteringly obvious come-ons—and also many harmful habits—like passive-aggressiveness and mixed signals.

“So what’s the point of this blog post?”  You might ask.  And good thing you did, because I almost forgot to include one.

How much were you thinking about this before the post? How often do you think about the way you communicate with others?  This is a two-page post that can’t even begin to capture the infinite subtleties of interpersonal relations.  But in the days and weeks to come, we’ll explore this subject further, simultaneously investigating the wonders of psychology and anthropology and also letting me subtly vent about my deepest interests.  So think about your communicative style. It’s unique.  No one else expresses their feelings in the same way you do.  Think about that.

Think about the people you talk to.  Your friends, and your enemies.  The people you kinda like, but wish they would go away.  The people you really like; like, like like.  The people who write sentences like that last one.  What are you saying to them when you’re communicating with them?  What are they hearing? The two are not necessarily the same thing.  And that’s something to chew on.  That’s metalinguistic awareness.

Aristotle’s Toolbox

So today we started talking about the idea of the elusive “liberal arts education,” and exactly what that meant.  And people started talking about things like “building skills” and “learning a work ethic,” and I got slightly agitated, because—well, let me back up.

This was in class—actually the last day of class—in a philosophy course.   Over the course of one semester we had read Plato and Socrates (or…you know, Plato), brushed over some secondary literature, and spent a good deal of time reading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics.  Now, with these in mind (especially his Ethics), we were thinking about how this class (or, more specifically, how Aristotle) affects our lives after the course is over.  Which is now.

The customary apologetic defense of philosophy was offered: that philosophy doesn’t actually help your life directly, but that reading philosophy builds skills and shit, and makes you a better logical thinker, and all of that rubbish.  Which is all completely true, but that’s pretty much like saying “I go to lifeguard training so that I can learn how to swim.”

YOU CAN LEARN TO SWIM VERY EASILY. IT’S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE.

SIMILARLY, ANALYTICAL THINKING IS NOT VERY DIFFICULT.  It’s a skill, and you can train a skill by doing other things beside philosophy.

So what does this mean, then? Does it mean that philosophy is not useful?  WHAT THE HELL IS MY POINT?

Well, what exactly is “useful?” We are discussing no small matter, but how we ought to live.  The great philosophers—especially the ancients, the ones who hover outside of the analytical tradition—don’t just talk about one sphere of life.  They talk about all of life.  When they talk about one thing, they do it by talking about everything, because they have a concise view of everything that can be easily used to explain just one thing.  I believe Chesterton wrote some words on this subject, but since he already said them, there’s not much point in me waxing eloquent here.

THE POINT I’M TRYING TO MAKE IS: you can apply Aristotle directly to your life, straight away.  You must apply Aristotle directly, consciously or unconsciously, if you live a productive life, because Aristotle’s theory encompasses what happens when you live a productive life, and thus if you live a productive life you can explain that in terms of Aristotle’s theory.

Apply directly to the forehead!

LET ME BACK UP HERE AND EXPLAIN.  Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is possibly one of the more famous and influential works ever written by anyone ever.  It can be quite literally said to be the foundation of Western conceptions of morality and a pillar of philosophy in general.

What is the Ethics about? It is about ethics.  About making the choices of your life.  It is a book written for the education of young adults, with the intention of teaching them not to be so goddamn stupid all the damn time and showing them how to not fail at life.  And if you read it that way—if you listen to what Aristotle says and think about how you can apply that to your own life—then you get a whole hell of a lot more out of the book than just learning to “think critically,” FFS.

There is this banausic trend in the west to ask “what good is this?” as if every bit of knowledge learned had to be a new cog in a mechanical man.   A paragon of this trend is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original Sherlock Holmes, who you may remember was retroactively inspired by the BBC miniseries of the same name.

We might not remember, and by ‘we’ I mean ‘you’ because I read the book, thanks very much, but Sherlock Holmes was the penultimate scientist and a terrifyingly mechanical thinker.

“I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic,” Sherlock says, in A Study In Scarlet (our introduction to Sherlock Holmes) “And you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.”

“Now pass me a credit card, Watson, it’s time for me to do my morning line.”

In contrast to the average man, Sherlock proudly says that his attic is in the very best of order, that he takes into his mind only those facts and theories which can help him in his daily life.  When we first are introduced to him, he has not even been bothered to learn that the earth revolves around the sun (oh, for the days when you could avoid learning that!), and when he is told this fact he promises to forget it as promptly as possible.

Sherlock Holmes is problematic.

This man operates only on what he can know for certainty, and knows nothing outside of his field.  He is mechanical, scientific in the extreme, highly specialized.  He can provide a citation and a justification for everything.

So why am I talking about Aristotle and Sherlock Holmes in the same post?  Because there is an upsetting push toward the ideal of Sherlock Holmes—toward the ideal of the consummate scientist, in every field.  Everything is being reduced to a science, to a formula, to a specialization.  For psychology it is already looking grim—for anthropology some hope remains.  Anthropology gets it—because anthropology can never be an objective science again.  The question has already been asked “what is objectivity?” and with that we plunge off the precipice, never to look back, because NOTHING IS OBJECTIVE.  Anthropology gets it in a way that few other sciences really do.  Try bringing up “nothing is objective” with a biochem major.

Even philosophy has become scientific.

Analytical philosophy has risen in the west like a Barad-Dur of tinker toys—intimidating, needlessly complex, and unassailable.  It is the process of jumping through hoops with logic for the purpose of reaching a conclusion on a specific subject—for example, the ethics of war, or of abortion, or of assisted suicide.  These conclusions are supported by citations, links to things which have already been proven, and they are mostly applicable—although a number of these conclusions in turn have points at which they break down.

Why do we seek these conclusions?  Why answer such specific questions? So that when we have a solution we can declare a question answered and move on? Are we then building a comprehensive theory of the world even in philosophy?  Why do these conclusions break down?

Like Chesterton, I stress the importance of a worldview.  But a worldview cannot be specific, because every specific theory breaks down at a certain level of detail. The world is not our theory, and our theory is not the world.  Sometimes we forget that fact—that modern science and the entire intellectual basis of Western knowledge is a massive construct built to model reality.  Theory is not reality itself, and thus, as Hume also points out, we can’t actually ever be sure that our experiment will go as predicted, because they universe doesn’t run on zeros and ones.

Aristotle gives us detail, and a lot of his details are wrong, yes, but we can forgive him that, because through and around that detail run sweeping generalizations as broad as rivers.  His warning in the beginning of the Ethics should be written in stone.

“Our discussion will be adequate if it achieves clarity within the limits of the subject matter.  For precision cannot be expected in the treatment of all subjects alike, any more than it can be expected in all manufactured articles.  Problems of what is noble and just, which politics examines, present so much variety and irregularity that some people believe that they exist only by convention and not by nature.  The problem of the good, too, presents a similar kind of irregularity, because in many cases good things bring harmful results.  There are instances of men ruined by wealth, and others by courage.  Therefore, in a discussion of such subjects, which has to start from a basis of this kind, we must be satisfied to indicate the truth with a rough and general sketch: when the subject and the basis of a discussion consist of matters that hold good only as a general rule, but not always, the conclusions reached must be of the same order.  The various points that are made must be received in the same spirit.  For a well-schooled man is one who searches for that degree of precision in each kind of study which the nature of the subject at hand admits: it is obviously just as foolish to accept arguments of probability from a mathematician as to demand strict demonstrations from an orator.”

“Now calm yourselves the hell down and let me finish my goddamn lecture.”

My philosophy teacher used to complain because people would ask her stupid questions when they learned she was getting a Ph.D.  Apparently at least one person asked her “What’s your philosophy?”

Which is hilarious because let’s be honest, that’s a REALLY DUMB QUESTION.

But in a way…it’s also not, because in my not-so-humble opinion philosophy is not just about logic.  It’s not just about thinking analytically and understanding when someone is making a stupid-ass argument based on logical fallacies.

Reading philosophy is about having a philosophy.  It’s about reading Sartre and hating him and then UNDERSTANDING WHY.  It’s about reading Aristotle and loving his ethics and hating his weird treatment of slaves and understanding WHY.  It’s about taking that understanding of WHY things agree with you and internalizing it, of developing the practical ability to recognize what fits into your worldview and what doesn’t, cultivating that phronēsis to the point where you have a coherent, functional view of the world.

So what do I take away from a philosophy class? Yeah, I take away analytical skills and all that bullshit, but that’s sure as hell not why I took the class.  I take philosophy to understand my way of being-in-the-world.  And what I take away from Aristotle’s Ethics isn’t “an understanding of the framework of modern ethics in the western world,” it’s a knowledge of the fact that I agree with Aristotle in many points—including his definition of virtue:

Action.

With.

Intention.

And THAT is something I can (and will) use, every day of my life.

 

“Word.”

Confusion and Psychological Disorder

Have you ever had one of those conversations?

…I feel like I should qualify that statement.

First off, have you ever had one of those situations where you used a word, and then someone else used a word, and you get the sense that you’re using the word in completely different ways?  This happens to me a lot, and it is probably somehow related to the fact that I really don’t understand people sometimes.

Like for example the phrase ‘in a sec.’ What do you mean when you say ‘in a sec?’

In a literal sense, the phrase ‘in a sec’ is not very helpful.  It means “in a second,” and very few things that we do in our interactions can be literally spoken of that way—especially with a phrase that takes two seconds to say.

Now, when I say ‘in a sec,’ it means a frame of time less than two minutes.  Because if it’s going to be two minutes, I say ‘two minutes.’  I’m really painfully punctual that way.

But not everyone is.  Everyone has a different idea of what constitutes ‘a sec,’ and it varies from day to day.  So when I say ‘in a sec,’ and then do something ‘in a sec,’ the other person might be surprised at how quickly it was done.  Or at how slowly it was done.

This is a relatively simple concept, the idea of ‘in a sec.’   So imagine how difficult things can be when we talk about a more complex idea such as friendship, virtue, or justice.

In part, this is an issue that plagues philosophy.  It is sometimes very easy to equivocate and shift the meaning of a word accidentally by virtue of your own ideas on the subject, possibly by virtue of your own prejudices on the issue.

So I had one of those situations slowly unfold, where I didn’t know whose definition was what.  So I guessed, which I do often, and I assumed that the more common (and technically literal) definition of the word was at play.  But then confusing things started to happen.  Eventually, the confusion built to a head and I asked for a straightforward definition, and it turned out that it pretty much was my definition, and not necessarily a more widespread one.  So that was awkward.  Hilarity ensued.

I like people.  A lot.  But sometimes they confuse me.  I never really understand what’s going on—if I seem to at any point in time, it’s just because I’m very confident in my ability to continue not understanding with relative success at the act of not dying.  Mostly it’s because I’m still very much figuring out how to reconcile everyone’s definitions.  The best I’ve figured out so far is that it gets better the more you know the person—rather like learning a tiny language.

It’s very interesting to learn people’s languages.  Idiolects, they’re called in linguistic anthropology.  It tells you a lot about people, learning how they use language.   Or at least I think it does.

To be more precise, it tells me a lot, but I don’t know what all that lot means.  It’s rather like being shouted at in Latin by a very angry Arnold Schwarzenegger: You can usually pick out something intelligible here and there, but you’re too overwhelmed to make much use of it.

I have noticed that I tend to be more spare with universal emotional state descriptors—although that has started to loosen of late.  For example, there was a long stage where I didn’t use “love” outside of a romantic context, because any other use simply didn’t mesh with my views.  Now, the idiolects of other people and my own experiences have morphed my definitions, and the word ‘love’ comes into play a great deal more in everyday speech—and a good deal less in the context of a relationship.

I rather suspect everyone finds it a scary word, and perhaps that’s why it’s so comforting to use it so widely—because to use it for things like pizza and dogs dampens it, spreads it out, dilutes the swift, bright sting of it.  Movies like Scott Pilgrim Vs The World give us surrogate code phrases we can use (“I’m in lesbians with you!”), to avoid having to hurl love out into the air.  It’s a heavy word, laden with history.

And on an unrelated note, emotions confuse the hell out of me.  The constant fluctuation between mood states, the random-ass things that set them off—I don’t even know sometimes.  You can carry something for weeks, haul it along with the intention of laying it out at the perfect time, and it feels heavy and granite-solid and enduring, and then you lay it down in all its gravity and the Sisyphean burden you’ve carried completely dissolves, leaving you completely free and wondering why it weighed so heavily on you in the first place.   It’s a fickle bastard.

Coming off of a tangentially related note to the last, hi.  If this is the first time you’re reading my blog, welcome.  This is my blog.  On it I write things, things which are usually related to anthropology, or to philosophy, or to psychology.  Because I love all those things.   Sometimes, if you are an important part of my life, you will recognize in my writing things which have happened to me.

Just kidding—you’re all important parts of my life.

Well, except you.

I’M JOKING.  Moving on.

SPEAKING OF PYSCHOLOGY, I love using psychological disorders to define characters.  Diagnosis with a personality disorder or a psychological disorder has many negative social and personal effects, which I have discussed previously.  These labels are incredibly weighty and, like every other label, they clamp down hard on a person’s sense of self, changing their identity for good or for ill (usually ill).

But when I’m making a character, I harness that.  Because interesting people are, more often than not, somehow unhinged.  And so when I want a character that interests me, such as one of the three that appear occasionally in all of my stories, I build their personality, choose their history—and slam a disorder down on top of that to define what makes them unique.  It’s not a particularly elegant or even necessarily a politically correct way to build a character, but it works for me.

Personality disorders in particular are sticky things for me.  I wish people would call them personality types, because they’re not really disorders until they become dysfunctional.  But when they do become dysfunctional, hoo boy.  Damn are they dysfunctional.

I built a character a few months ago for a story I still haven’t written yet.

Well, technically I already had built the character.  He’s an old character of mine.  We’ll call him Tor for the purpose of this blog, but he’d probably hate that.  His first appearance was when he was in his old age—I was building him here for a story about his teenage years. So I already knew him well, but I wanted a way to describe him—because Tor is never very involved.  He has his friends and he has his goals, but he has few of both, and we rarely see an emotive side to him.  And I wanted a phrase to stand in for his behavior, for that rich, intricate inner life that drives him and the cold, inexplicable air that he gives off.    Because I’m lazy and I don’t want to type all of that each time.

So I gave him a schizoid personality type.

Since he wasn’t entirely dysfunctional, it isn’t technically a disorder, but it did provide a conflict that helped develop the character and drive his actions—namely, the balance that he has to strike between his own enjoyment of solitude and the social pressure to spend time with people.  It’s a story that you might be tempted characterize as sad, because in the end Tor is profoundly, completely alone.

But it’s not sad.  He still has his connection to the world, in the end, still walks through it, though he doesn’t interact with it.  It doesn’t trouble him, because although I write his dialogue, Tor and I are not the same person.  We’re built differently, geared to different things.  He doesn’t get lonely as quickly as you or I might, and when he does, it takes very little to comfort him—a spider, a bird, a quick word to a friend.

It makes me wonder sometimes, about characters, and about personality.  It makes me marvel at the differences between people, because schizoid personality disorder is a real thing.  And possibly something that you could diagnose Sherlock with.  Perhaps I’ll make a post about it later. =

To clarify; I’m not saying that you can define a person through a single label.

But what I am saying is that when I try to define a character,when I am literally building a person, it often helps immensely if I can put words down to describe their personality.  And psychology, anthropology, and philosophy give me the tools to do so.

So hey, internet.  I’m back.

I’ve come out of a rough patch recently.

And by recently I mean “this afternoon, at 2:57 PM, while standing in a cluttered dorm room and staring out a window.”   It was pretty bad while it lasted—lots of brooding and yearning and writing bad poetry and listening to Linkin Park, but I kept my chin up, used the positive explanatory style, fought the urge to attribute everyone’s actions to malice and neglect, surrounded myself with wonderful people and gave myself up to my work and my community.  I tried to walk the line between being honest with feelings and not whining about everything.  I failed a few times, in both directions.  But now a lot of the things that have held me down have just…evaporated.

I’m free.

Free to move in any direction, unfettered.  And I don’t yet know where that will take me, but I have some ideas.  And of course I have some hopes and dreams, because I always have hopes and dreams.  So as this semester winds to an end, I can promise only three things:

One: I’ll keep blogging.  You’ll see things pop up here, at least twice a month (every other Friday), hopefully more often than that.

Two: More funny things will come.  I haven’t written a purely ridiculous post in a while, and that needs to change.

And three: I’m still following my dreams, fighting my fight, standing for what I believe.  I lose sometimes, I get lost sometimes, I am confused always, but I am always moving forward.  And I can promise you that that won’t stop, internet.

So join me again, if you will.  Let’s move forward and see what the future has in store for us.

Ave, lector.

How Much Do We Know

What does it mean to know somebody?

How well can you know somebody?

No, seriously, think about it.  How well do you know everyone in your life?  Think of the person you consider your best friend.  Or people, if you’re one of those wierdos who has more than one best friend.

What’s their favorite color?  What was their fondest childhood memory? What were their first words?  What do they think about the fact that blue is a more soothing color than red?  Do they care about golf? Does anyone? How many instruments can they play?  Would they save a bug if they saw it drowning in a puddle?  What do they think about when they’re putting on their socks?

The point isn’t really whether or not you can answer any of the above questions or even all of them.  The point isn’t raw informative content—that’s something we get far too much of as it is in our society.

The point is, no matter whether or not you can answer the above questions, there are always more informational questions that can be asked.  Even if you spend every day with a person who continually talks about themselves, to really, completely ‘know’ somebody in an empirical sense, you would have to rehash every minute of their existence with them—which would be impossible, because only about five people in the world can remember every minute of their existence.

So we can’t really know anyone, not on a purely informational level.  Does that stop us from assuming we do? Not in the slightest.  Think about the people in your social circle.  If you’re like me, your social circle trades stories and jokes about one another, tell stories of highly complex behaviors that usually surprise no one.  If we can’t know people, speaking from the point of view of raw information, then how can we talk about them with such confidence?

One answer is in face or persona.  We all present a certain fragment of our self to the world, intentionally or not.  We give certain impressions, say things that might not perfectly mesh up with our beliefs.  We create a rapid sketch of ourselves in any social interaction, a rough web of details—what we look like, how we feel today, how we talk and the way we respond to people.  But these sketches don’t exist in a vacuum.

From the very first instant of your interaction with a person, you create your own sketch based on your impressions of them.  What they’re wearing.  What they look like.  How they talk.  How they carry themselves.  How easily they express emotional states, and how quickly they pick up on yours.  All of these details that you don’t even consciously process go into your first impression.  A few are rejected and some are confirmed in the second impression.  And though you may not interact much with the person after that, when you think about them or talk about them you are making judgments based (in part) upon the impression of them that you have both constructed.

Does this mean that we are eternally alone, wandering a cold empty void speaking to figments of our imagination, shadows of strangers that we can never know?

Fortunately not.

Because regardless of how well you know a person, unless you are a sociopath or otherwise devoid of empathy you are capable of forging an emotional connection with someone.

What does that mean?  ‘Emotional connection’ is a phrase lots of people throw around.  But what does it really signify? Can I even create a description of an emotional connection?

Well, I’m gonna try.

To make an emotional connection with a person means, among other things, that you give them your undivided attention.  Now, this is certainly not the only thing you have to do, but it is a key point.  Put down the cell phone, stop swordfighting, close the browser, whatever, and make sure they know that they are the center of your focus.  There will be a notable shift in the tone of the conversation when you engage with someone in this way—when you lean forward and listen intently without distraction.  Don’t stare glassy-eyed at them—that becomes creepy after a while.  And don’t just look at them and zone out—people can usually tell when that happens, even if it’s only on an unconscious level.

Pretend they’re a very interesting television show, and you’re trying to watch it on a small laptop, so you have to lean in to hear the sound.

All right, now that you’re only paying attention to them, observe them.  Not in a creepy way.  Stop it.  What is their facial expression?  How are they holding themselves?  How energetic do they seem to be?  Don’t bother trying to make judgments or interpretations of these things at first.  Just observe them.  The ability to interpret them will come with practice.  Or that’s what I hear, anyway.  I’m still waiting, myself.

Listen to what they’re saying.  What’s the informative content of the sentence? How are they expressing that information? Are there any oddities in their discourse?  Again, don’t try to judge, just listen, and I mean really listen.

And most importantly, don’t think about any of this.  These are guidelines to get you into an emotional connection, a process that should take about as long as it takes you to look up.  Once that conversation starts, throw all of this shit out the window and just be there.  Listen to them.  Ask them how they’re feeling.  Presumably you have an interest in them as a person, so learn about them as a person.

Get to know everyone all over again every day, because no matter how well you know them, there’s always something more.