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. 

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.

Broadside: Atheism

 

INTERNET

STOP IT.

I’m talking of course to you, OBNOXIOUS ATHEISTS. Stop hating.  STOPPIT.

NOW LET’S QUALIFY THE SHIT OUT OF THIS STATEMENT.

I have no problem at all with DECENT NORMAL PEOPLE who ARE NOT OBNOXIOUS.  Let’s be perfectly honest—so long as you stay out of my face, I don’t care if you worship God, Jesus, Vishnu, Ramen, Horus, Thor, Hiddleston, Nyancat, or NOTHING AT ALL.

I REALLY DON’T GIVE A HOOT.

Who am I talking to, then, in this BROADSIDE?

I’m talking to OBNOXIOUS PEOPLE.

Specifically, the people who HATE ON RELIGION.

Now if you’re going to say that organized religion has a tendency to be CORRUPT, then I’d be fine.  ANYTHING wrought by man TENDS TO BE CORRUPTED SOONER OR LATER, except, of course, as everyone knows, IN-N-OUT BURGER.   That shit is DELICIOUS.

If you’re going to say that organized religion has a history of VIOLENT TORTURE AND DEATH, then I’m fine with that too, after all, IT HAPPENS TO BE TRUE.

HOWEVER.

DO NOT SAY in MY PRESENCE that ORGANIZED RELIGION is the CAUSATIVE AGENT for (a) ALL WAR AND DEATH, (b) MOST WAR AND DEATH, or (c) THE MAJORITY OF WAR AND DEATH.   You do NOT bring that shit in MY HOUSE.

Do you know what causes war and death?

STUPID GREEDY PEOPLE.

Do you know what causes stupid greedy people?

NOT RELIGION.

PEOPLE WHO ARE STUPID AND/OR GREEDY AND POWERFUL.

NOW THAT WE’VE ESTABLISHED THAT, LET’S MOVE ON.

You know WHAT ELSE you can’t do?

YES THAT’S RIGHT I SAID CAN’T, as in THE CONTRACTION OF CAN NOT. I’m laying down a LAW here, ****er.

WHAT YOU CANNOT DO is MOCK people for believing in RELIGION.

You can MOCK THEIR RELIGION ALL YOU WANT, go ahead, fine, they’ll just think you’re an ass.  BUT DO NOT MOCK BELIEF.

HUMAN TRUST IS AMONG THE MOST POTENT OF EMOTIONS.  If you want to mock something, mock people who trust BLINDLY and CLOSE THEIR EYES TO ALL ELSE. But those people are easy to find—they’re in the NEWS, because they get EBOLA and then they DON’T GET MEDICAL CARE and then surprisingly DIE.  And approximately NO ONE is surprised.

So when you talk about religion, when you talk about SPIRITUALITY, when you talk about A PILLAR OF HUMAN EXISTENCE, do us all a favor and don’t giggle about people’s “Imaginary Friends.”  It’s not an IMAGINARY FRIEND, it’s the ANIMATE INCARNATION OF THE NUMINOUS, and until you can use words like ANIMATE INCARNATION OF THE NUMINOUS to defend your IRRITATING JOKE you can just QUIETLY GO AWAY.

THERE ARE LOTS OF FUNDAMENTALLY DECENT HUMAN BEINGS who are atheists.  THEN THERE ARE ASSHOLES who give them ALL a bad name by doing things like say “Oh remember the famous historical atheists who killed thousands of people? Oh wait, that never happens.”

*COUGH COUGH* MAOSTALIN *COUGH COUGH*  OH SORRY I INHALED SOME BULLSHIT AND HAD AN ALLERGIC REACTION.

CLOCKING IN AT A HIGH SECOND ON THE “THINGS THAT PISS ME OFF” O-METER IS THIS GEM FROM wonderful human being and fabulous comedian Ricky Gervais, who I love dearly.  A very entertaining man and I’m sure a generally decent person.  HOWEVER he happens to have also created a tweet that ANNOYS ME, and so in the TRADITION OF THE INTERNET I am going to SHOUT ABOUT IT ON MY BLOG.

What is problematic about this statement? LET’S BE CLEAR THAT  WE’RE TALKING ABOUT THE STATEMENT and not the PERSON, because I only do ad hominem against political figures I dislike (such as when I talk about my theory that Romney is a sophisticated marionette operated by a foreign child-man who doesn’t speak fluent English…but that’s a subject I’ll save for later).

Now, we can make all sorts of noise about whether or not we have the right to judge a tweet.  After all, you pretty much have to literally ask to hear this (by following a twitter account).   But, luckily, someone took a picture of it and started spreading it around the internet, and so of course it’s now free game according to some rules that I just made up.  And using it I will explore this topic in a more calm and reasoned fashion.

HAH.  JUST KIDDING.

So what strikes me as problematic about this statement is the false dichotomy being created between religion and science.   When we talk about religion as the thing implicated in wars and intolerance, we are talking about religion as a system of belief, an ultimately rational, intellectual content propagated via cultural interaction.  This is religion as a social entity.  Which is of course the OPPOSITE of the standard definition of science (a collection of knowledge).

A belief system is a powerful thing. Belief systems drive people and families, societies and communities.  But not all belief systems are religions, and a religion is more than a belief system.

For an example provided to me by another AWESOME BLOGGER over at http://lesbicrafty.blogspot.com/, because we communicate from time to time, we’ll turn our attention to THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION in China.  This is a belief system at work.  The sweeping scope, the ideological supremacist overtones, the call for individual action–it has everything we’d want.  To say it caused millions of deaths is absolutely possible.

It was also entirely divorced from religion and spirituality.  It was grounded in the material and political, and steamrolled an entire country.

Oh, and by the way, don’t tell me, DON’T EVEN START by saying “yeah, but religious revolutions have killed way more people throughout history!”  At that point we’ve already established that religious fervor and ideological fervor are essentially identical, and your only argument then becomes “religion has had more time to murder us.”   So that’s not a path that you want to go down.  Especially not right now, because I AM TALKING.

NOT TO MENTION that “religion” is an INCREDIBLY COMPLEX IDEA.  It can be narrowly defined (by Wikipedia) as “a collection of belief systems, cultural systems, and worldviews that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values.”  However, if you narrowly defined religion this way, I would think you were WRONG, because you need to be more specific about how religion relates to spirituality and the individual.

There is a tendency, thanks to ANTHROPOLOGY (thanks a lot, anthropology. Asshole.) to think of the ‘religious’ as a wholly social object, ignoring the individual experience, and I think this is BATSHIT, because without the individual spiritual experience and impulsion toward moral agency, WHAT THE HELL IS THE PURPOSE OF RELIGION?  To translate: if you’re not talking about something that resonates in your soul and drives you to a higher standard of behavior, then you’re pretty much talking about a simple social construct, a belief system.  But when you add in that numinous aspect, that idea of the holy, if you will, then we are talking about religion.  ACCORDING TO ME, ANYWAY.  And that’s the important point, isn’t it, since it’s my blog?

LOOKING AT RELIGION as a cultural system of belief reinforced by the division of the holy, the individual spirituality, and the drive for individual moral agency, then, we have something that is really not merely a cultural belief.  We have a definition that seems to account for the strange place religion occupies.  We can also then use this to talk about how people become fanatical as regards a non-religious concept: They apply a personal, spiritual significance to a system of beliefs that defines what is holy and what is mundane, a system that impels them toward a particular course of action.   This passion, this fervor, then reinforces and expands their beliefs, provides them with moments of transcendence and a sense of purpose.

Last but not least, what if we did this? What if we redefined science as the belief in the permanence and reliability of the human sensory capacity, the belief that anything can be learned if it can be studied, the belief that all knowledge in the world is wonderful and deserving of exploration for its own sake alone? The idea that we can create a functional model of reality simply with our own observation and cognition?  The driving passion to explore?  The glorious moment of seeing something in a whole new way, looking out at the stars and feeling the immensity and grandeur of the universe stir you to your soul? ISN’T THAT THE SHIT?

Well, then, lo and behold, by this definition we’ve managed to capture “scientific atheism” as a religious belief system as well.

AND LEST YOU THINK that I am waxing banausic, LEST YOU THINK that I am reducing all the world to cogs and definitions and NEAT, PRETTY LITTLE CATEGORIES, PLEASE ALLOW ME TO POINT OUT that we have NO IDEA what it is that DRIVES this passion.  We haven’t the FAINTEST concept of WHY something calls to a person in this way, WHAT IT IS that inspires FAITH, PASSION, and BELIEF.  No idea what drives the NUMINOUS, the SPIRITUAL, those moments of REVELATION.   Go away and think about that.  I don’t care what conclusion you come up with, so long as you take a moment and CONTEMPLATE how INCREDIBLY STRANGE our universe is.

And now I’ve TALKED A LOT, SO HERE’S A PICTURE OF A SURPRISED KITTEN.

oh hai
dont b an asshole
also i am a cat

SO THE POINT OF THIS BROADSIDE IF YOU ARE AN ATHEIST IS SIMPLE, and I’LL WRITE IT OUT FOR YOU

• Don’t be an asshole.
• Respect the spiritual, emotional, and moral lives of other people and DON’T JUDGE THEIR FRICKIN’ BELIEFS.
• Don’t be SNIDE about HUMAN DEATH in order to make a point about how much BETTER your way of life is.  You can also refer to the first point for this.
• Don’t try to CONVERT other people, and don’t SEIZE ANY OPPORTUNITY TO DISS PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE IN GOD. This also falls under DON’T BE AN ASSHOLE.  
• If you think of a thing to do, ask yourself “would an asshole do this?” and if the answer is yes DO NOT DO THAT THING.

AND FINALLY.

I’m not on a ‘side’ here.   I am not an atheist, nor am I a follower of any religion but my own.  I don’t really CARE what you do so long as you don’t go around murdering people.  I flipped a coin and it came up heads, so today I’m screaming about logical fallacies in atheism.  Why? Because they’re hurtful to my religious friends, and YOU DON’T PISS WITH MY FRIENDS, and also because if you claim that you have a ‘purely logical’ view of the world, I view it as my personal duty to point out that NO, YOU DON’T, because you are (like a solid 47% of my readers) A HUMAN BEING, no matter who, where, or when you are speaking.

Coming up IN THE FUTURE, similarly without warning, is a similarly massive post blasting the “evils of religion,” etc.  Which are, of course, the evils of man.

Because those hurt people too, my friends among them, and as has been previously mentioned, I WILL END YOU. 

I don’t really think anyone will have any “OH SHIT I’d better turn MY life around” moments from reading this, but AT THE VERY LEAST, AT THE MOST, it would be NICE if you could, just for a moment, question your beliefs.  Consider your stance, in light of the opinion of some random person on the internet.

As Aristotle says, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

The Good Fight

HEY INTERNETS.

Sup.  I should warn you today’s article will not be quite as facetious as others have been in the past.  You may wish to skip down to a more palatable subject and maintain your peaceable torpor.  No, but seriously: this article could be a buzzkill. Have Spice Girls on standby.

So I read an article today.

Now, you don’t have to read the whole thing. I’ll condense it very simply for you.  It’s a gay man talking about his childhood and his darkest secrets: both being bullied in high school, and the fact that he was very certainly, certifiably suicidal for an extensive period of his teenage life.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noah-michelson/sharing-three-of-my-secrets_b_1796457.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices

Remember how I said you didn’t have to read the whole thing? Well, if you’re above the age of 15, you should.  You should see and know this.  You should be aware that people who are bullied become suicidal often.  You should be aware that because of this harsh cultural backlash, people of the “alternative sexualities” (alternative to what? ‘normalcy?’ ‘Real’ sexuality? As Morpheus says, what is real?)  are more prone to depression and, yes,suicide, because of this.

You should be aware that people who are not “normal” are more likely to be murdered.  Dead.  You should be aware that every hate crime is the culmination of a process lasting decades, an endless chain of justification and deprecation reaching its dark apotheosis in a single instant of blind action.   You should be aware that every suicide is the final point in a plunge that lasts a lifetime, a string of misfortunes, poor reactions, and insensitive responses.

Because here’s something not everyone understands.

Everything is funny, yes.  Life is wonderful, and you should live it to the utmost.

But it’s ALL life and death.

            When you look on the television and see someone rambling about a health-care bill somewhere in Vermont? Something on the other side of the country?  Yeah, people are going to live or die based on that bill.  Babble about Voter ID laws in Pennsylvania? Those laws set a precedent: How long they survive will tell their creators whether or not they can get away with openly tweaking elections to ensure that they continue to hold power.  Those laws set a precedent that will conclude with open voter suppression.

When someone is complaining about new crackdowns on phone usage while driving?  Well, you know what? You are massively more likely to kill someone if you use a phone while you drive. Yes, even if you don’t do it that often.   It takes sixty seconds (on average) for the modern brain to fully switch tasks.  That means that if you look at your phone just for a second, to read a text message or use GPS or update your Facebook status, you will no longer be paying full attention to the road for that time and for the next minute.  That will slow your reactions and make it far more probable that you will be unable to respond to an impending collision.

But surely EVERYTHING can’t be life and death, right? Some things remain pure, right? Like butterflies and chocolate?

Well, the biodiversity of butterfly species is plunging due to our destruction of various habitats, and butterflies (along with bees) perform the essential function of pollination, which is complicated but basically IS WHAT MAKES PLANTS KEEP BEING.

Oh, and if plants die basically so do we.  As a species.  And a planet.  Though I’m sure cockroaches will be fine.

But no biggie.

At least we have chocolate, right?  Even if it’s not a six-stamp organic all-natural free trade chocolate (which costs about three times as much!).

Well, about that.

Did you know something?  After the cotton industry, chocolate production (specifically, the care and harvesting of its raw materials) is the largest industry in the world that currently utilizes slave labor.

Yes, you read that right. Here, let me put it in bold in case you missed it.

SLAVE LABOR.

There were some laws that people considered making a while ago that would regulate that.  Laws that regulate chocolate? Psh.  No biggie.  That story pretty much withered on the vine (ha, ha).

Let me outline what kind of slave labor we’re talking about here.  Just to be clear.  Specifically, I’m talking about a location known as Cote d’Ivorie, or The Ivory Coast, a region of West Africa that supplies about THIRTY PERCENT of the world’s chocolate.  Let me make perfectly clear the fact that this is not the only location in the world where this occurs, although West Africa has an especial problem.

In third-world countries, children are all over the place.  We’re talking 10-15-year-olds, mostly, but they can be as young as 7.  Abandoned kids, orphans, runaways…whatever.  They lurk in the street, play around bus stops, and hop mass transit like everyone else. When they head to a bus stop, they might get picked up by a stranger, who might be kind or might be coercive.  Alternatively, they might have desperate, starving parents, who at last are reduced to such dire straits that they sell their child to a stranger.

Either way, if they go with this stranger (and they usually do, because who’s going to help them run away?), they find themselves on a bus ride, or in a car, or on a boat.  This ride takes them, eventually, to a plantation, where they are sold into debt and set to work in the cacao field.

Their clothes are not part of the budget.  They sleep in structures we would deem unsuitable to use as garden sheds.  They are given every menial task, but the job described that I particularly liked was the one that required two children per team.  One goes down the rows of trees with a basket and a machete (a three-foot long, full-sized machete).  They swing at the cacao pods (which are large) and try to cut them loose without hacking off fingers in the process.  Frequently they fail.  While they work, another child follows behind them with a supply of pesticides.

Side note.  DDT, as you may know, was a pesticide used in the 60s.  In the early 70s, it was deemed too toxic to use in the United States and was banned.  That’s right, we banned a chemical for being too toxic.  THE UNITED STATES.  The people who invented MCDONALDS.  Luckily, we’ve since invented pesticides that are FAR MORE toxic, and THEY haven’t been banned yet! Isn’t that lucky?  One example is ROUNDUP, which sticks around in the soil long after any weeds are dead.

ANYWAY, I DIGRESS.

So the second child of the group has a supply of pesticides.  Roundup is a favorite—it’s cheap, mass-produced, and readily available.  They have a mister, and they use it to spray the trees to kill any insects, fungus, or birds.  Oh, and they also spray their partner, because their partner is nearby and they’re APPROXIMATELY TWELVE YEARS OLD.

And these kids don’t run away, because if they try, they’re beaten.  Which is also what happens when they fall over.  Or complain.  Or generally do anything their overseer doesn’t approve of.  There are more scars than clothes on these kids.

They usually die young.

They die a lot.

Most of them never see their home again.

Oh, and also, most of them never taste chocolate.  If that doesn’t convince you that this practice is heinous and wrong, I DON’T KNOW WHAT WILL.

The upshot of all this information, by the way (before I move on), is this: Those six-stamp organic chocolates? The ones that say “free trade,” and other things, and have stamps of approval from various organizations and government bureaus plastered across the label?  Those are the chocolate companies that don’t murder people.  If it doesn’t have that stamp, you might want to just take a second and think about how much you need it.

Obviously, one person not buying these non-free-trade chocolates is not going to accomplish much.  All that will do is make sure that you don’t have any chocolate.  And there is hope:  Nestlé and Ferrero are among a number of chocolate companies that have made pledges and taken action to remove child labor from their products.  So although the larger issue of child slavery remains a problem, at the very least we can perhaps have chocolate chip cookies guilt-free.  And free-trade organic chocolate is better for you anyway–it tastes better (oh my god yes), it has less unhealthy fat, and it is a significantly better source of certain important chemicals that generally promote longevity and well-being.  Including chemicals that fight cancer and help (very mildly) relieve asthma symptoms.

So let’s get this clear, okay?

When you stand up for what you believe and who you are, when you support the institutions you believe in, when you speak out or offer comfort or strike out, people live and die based on that action.

So I’m not saying agree with me.  I’m not saying agree with anyone.

But know what you’re saying.  Find the facts—it’s hard in the age of free information.  Cross-check your sources.  Make your decisions rationally (not ‘logically’—any attempt to be purely ‘logical’ while remaining a human being is banausic and deluded, but being rational—that is to say, aware of your shortcomings and emotional biases, being truthful with yourself about the reasons behind your judgement—is something that’s within everyone’s reach).   When you choose a position, don’t do it because someone says it’s right.  Demand their sources, ask questions, look it up, and only then make a decision.

But most of all, believe something.  CHESTERTON QUOTE:

“Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of ideas. He is acquainted with ideas, and moves among them like a lion-tamer. Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are most dangerous is the man of no ideas.”

Take a stand for something.  Fight for something.  Believe something, and believe in your ability to make a difference, because make no mistake, planet, there is a fight to be fought, and it’s life and death.

It’s life and death every day.

And so begins my second year of college, not with a whimper but with a bang, I hope.  I’ll be trying to keep this blog up along with everything else, because this is my little strike out into the dark.  So to you, everyone, I say this: don’t be apathetic.  Don’t be passive.  Stand up for yourself, your friends, your family, if you fight for nothing else.  Join me in the ranks–if the front lines aren’t your place, there’s always room for healers and musicians and thinkers.

Me, I don’t like front lines.  If I had my way, I’d just go about my business of plinking on the piano and writing in my own little fantasy world, reading things, etc., but unfortunately the world is full of sh*tty people, and politicians keep doing irritating stuff that will hurt my family and friends.  And we can’t have that, can we?

LET’S PLAY.  http://jungwildeandfree.tumblr.com/post/29925289347/i-enjoin-on-you-to-act

But don’t take my word for it.

SOURCES.

http://www.johnrobbins.info/blog/is-there-slavery-in-your-chocolate/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_in_cocoa_production

http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/29/nestle-advances-child-labor-battle-plan/

http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/2012/04/20/ferrero-sets-date-to-end-cocoa-slavery/

Dominion

AVE, LECTOR.

One last serious post for a few days.   And this one’s a humdinger.

Today we’re going to talk about dominating behavior.

Now, before we get started, it’s important to nail down exactly what I mean by that, and to lay out the vein in which we will proceed.  I know that when I say ‘dominating behavior,’ the thoughts of some of you might move in a kinky direction, but you would be mistaken.  I am not writing a book review of 50 Shades of Grey. If that’s your deal, go to Tumblr.  You’ll find links to much higher-quality stuff.    Although admittedly not on my Tumblr.  I am still inexperienced in the ways of the Tumbling.

But enough deferral of the unpleasant. Let’s set this out.

When I refer to ‘dominating,’ I’m referring to a learned behavior pattern.  It can be acquired from a young age through interactions with an authority figure, usually one who demonstrates similar behaviors, and essentially becomes the standard peer-to-peer interaction.  Were we to make such crude value judgments, we might say it is what happens when someone learns how to relate to other people incorrectly.

But that’s not the purpose of this post.    This is not a rant.  Well, it is, but not an angry one.  There is enough anger on the internet.  What I provide is a catalogue.

Not even that, for a catalogue is supposed to be absolute.  What I provide is a field guide.  Things I have seen. Things I know.  I show them to you, internets, that you may incorporate my observations into your own, if you so wish, and perhaps that may do a little good, no matter which side of this subject you are on.

For there are not merely two sides.

These are behaviors that everyone demonstrates to a varying degree, and with a varying degree of consciousness.  Their presence is not a harbinger of evil.  My beliefs on evil in human form are rather more subtle and deserve a longer post later, but this subject hardly enters in.

This is a habit, as has been said, and changing it is as difficult as speaking another language.  Changing it can be unsettling, can be challenging, can be frightening, even.  Letting go of such long-learned patterns can be incredibly hard.  But it can be done.  You can break it.

Breaking free of these dominating personalities can be a task of years.  Sometimes it can be a task of days.  Never is it a simple thing. But again, it can be done.  You can get away.

And raising this subject is not an easy thing.   Oftentimes it is the hardest part.  But, again, that too can be done.

But enough.  Let’s get to the task at hand: A description of the problem, and four symptoms.  Keep in mind that what I provide is an impression, a reaction generated in me by the world.  It is not at all condoned, certified, or official.  If you think you can refute, clarify, or expand upon it, then by all means, comment.  Email me.   Text me.  Tie a letter to a piece of gourmet cheese and throw it through (or at) my window.

Dominating or controlling behavior is, in a sense, a relationship strategy.  Much like affection and intimacy, it is directed toward sustaining a relationship on some level, be it filial, parental, or romantic.  However, this behavior leads to an unhealthy imbalance, with one individual striving always to be dominant, to be the better of the two people relating, to hold the moral high ground.  The ultimate goal, of course, is to keep the target there, to preserve the relationship by any means possible.

This is a learned pattern, I want to emphasize, twice, and frequently an unconscious/emotional pattern.  Individuals are usually not conscious of it, even while they propagate it.  This is how it spreads—because it’s so insidious, and so very, infuriatingly effective at sustaining unhealthy relationships.  Unhealthy, I should add, to both sides.

(1)

Let’s start with humor, because it’s the easiest place to start.  More specifically, teasing.  Now, we’ve all been in this situation: someone does something silly.  Not on purpose.  They drop a glass and make a strange face, fall off a balance beam, mispronounce a word.  What’s the focus of humor in this situation?  Obviously the action, right? The silly thing, the thing that’s out of the ordinary?

Not in this case.

In this example, the humor comes at the expense of the person, a direct conflation of the person’s strange action with the strangeness of the person themselves.  In other words, the opposite of what I mentioned in my previous post on Self-Worth.  Their specific failure becomes their personal failure, letting the dominant individual in the room elevate themselves.  They have no such flaws, and would never do such a silly thing.  The value and self-esteem of the one being mocked is thus chipped away, and the instinctive reaction is defensive–at which point the battle has already been lost.  The teaser can feel superior, and will continue to unless derailed.

An alternative version is one wherein dominance itself becomes a running gag.  The physical, emotional, or financial superiority of one party (or inversely the dependence or weakness of the other) is trumpeted seemingly in jest, but always with the undercurrent of a reminder.  It’s not wholly a joke: you’re supposed to remember who’s in charge.  There is a class of athlete that engages in this frequently, utilizing it to place themselves in charge of their social situation, but it need not be simple physical strength or martial prowess that is touted.  Financial power, social superiority, even (in immature adults and teenagers mostly) something as simple as the lack or possession of a driver’s license.

In both these situations, these actions are disguised as humorous.  Hidden behind the cloak of a joke, these barbs belittle their target and continually remind them of their dependence—a dependence that is sometimes wholly imaginary, but can become wholly real with prolonged exposure.

Moving on.

(2)

Obviously, we couldn’t talk about domination without control.

Be it financially based, socially grounded, control of a means of transportation, or some fourth thing I haven’t even thought of, this particular aspect of control is one that the would-be dominant uses to their utmost advantage.  It is both carrot and stick in one, a reminder of the dominant’s higher moral ground and simultaneously their higher standing.  Selfless self-aggrandizement.  It will be randomly withheld to emphasize that it is given only on the sufferance of the one who controls it, and often its acceptance will come with invisible strings attached, and only with a laundry list of conditions that must be met.  Favors will be asked at some later date, and if they are not,  the deed itself will often become a weapon, an “I did this for you.”

In extreme situations, such as where one individual in the relationship pays the majority of rent or owns a car that both share, the threat of removal (and thus the ruin entire of the other’s independence) may in itself become a bludgeon to enforce compliance.

(3)

Next in this parade of unpleasant things is the idea of ‘doing just enough.’

When the situation comes to a head, when the ‘weaker’ of the two parties either recognizes the situation or rebels unconsciously, a final and subtle method of maintaining control is compliance.   The dominant caves in, often following a confrontation, and cedes control without relinquishing the moral high ground.  Victory is granted—but a conditional, partial victory.  A good deed may be done.  For a little while, the ‘weaker’ individual might get their way…but the old habits die hard.  Often, the ‘victory’ will fall through in bits and pieces, fragments too small to be seen as objectionable, until soon enough things have returned almost precisely to where they stood before.

(4)

Finally, we have volatility.

No one questions Cesare Borgia.  Even the slightest hint of an attack, even an imagined one, brings on a furious response, goading and jabbing until the ‘weaker’ individual ends up in a debate that slides rapidly toward the exchange of personal insults.  And never is the high ground ceded by the dominant.

Always they were the one attacked, a fact repeated so often that they might even come to believe it.   This deliberately brittle calm quells and crushes any potential objections, dissuading the contentious through fear or simple unwillingness to endure the seemingly endless, endlessly tiresome stream of rage.

Laid out here, these things seem obvious, clunky, easy to spot.  In real life they’re not so easy to pick out.  Laid out here, it seems incredulous that anyone would ever fall for such an assault.  Outside of the internet, (and even on it), people fall prey to these things all the time.  Pickup artists, in particular utilize some of these strategies, generating an unconscious desire to please and to prove self-worth.  It’s a knee-jerk reaction, to want to disprove those who doubt and belittle us.

Now that I’ve laid out this cavalcade of the distasteful for you, one might well ask where I’ve seen these things.  The answer I can give is the world.  Growing up, I had no concept of such things, and coming out into the light over the last few years has been…educational.  Seeing these behaviors perpetrated and reinforced across the social landscape has also been a source of almost unending frustration—a reaction that my father shares—and so I create things like this list, like my post on self-worth.  Rather than fume out my anger into increasingly impressionistic poetry, I create blog posts with ideas that (theoretically) can blunt or wholly turn the barbs of the would-be dominant personality.  I try to send shout-outs to the world that such things are not normal, that subtle currents underlie the surface of human interactions.  Some of them are riptides.  And like riptides, they’re easy to see if you know they exist.

Of course, the same might also be said of psychological disorders, which is why the DSM-IV should never be used as light bedtime reading.  And it’s entirely possible that I see these things only because I’m looking for them.  I don’t myself subscribe to this possibility, mostly because I’ve seen these cycles play out too perfectly.

I suppose at this point I should offer some kind of advice, suggestions on how to deal with this.  I haven’t got much.

But first and foremost: Be strong in yourself.  Your sense of worth as a human being is the first thing the would-be controller will attack, and for this reason their prey is often found amid the insecure and the uncertain. It is on this sort of behavior, too, that the ‘pick-up artist’ relies, securing subtle dominance over a situation by manipulating the feelings of emotionally unstable individuals.  Against this sort of behavior a well-adjusted emotional center is both sword and shield, for this sort of thing generates an instinctive feeling of wrongness.  Such things are unhealthy.

Second:  Cut loose.  The dominant seeks always to preserve the relationship, because tied into the relationship is their dominance and (subtly) their own sense of self-worth.  The moment they realize you cannot be controlled is the moment they lose interest, or at least lose enthusiasm.  The solution: find a way out.  Live your own life.  If it’s a romantic relationship…think twice.  And steel yourself. And then think about it again.

Third: Don’t let it get to you.  Sustain your own confidence and self-assurance through any means possible.  Find friends, retreat to family, find a strong social group to support you, but do not become dependent upon anyone. The more secure you feel in yourself, of yourself, on your own, the less their barbs will find any hold to draw you out.

And this is just general advice for dealing with annoying people: don’t rise to it.

Also, one final point which I will not end this post without.

Imagine for a moment that this is the only way you know to relate to people.  That the only way you can feel secure with someone is if they are so enmeshed and entangled in a web of your weaving that they will never leave, regardless of how they feel toward you.  Imagine for a moment that the only way you know to form a relationship is with anger and fear and control, lashing out preemptively to keep the world from striking to the heart of you, beating down anything that might force you to face yourself.

What’s the point of this point?  Simple.  There are no bad guys here.  This self-perpetrating cycle is one of uncertainty and sorrow, not one of anger or malevolence.  Understand that, if you understand nothing else.

And now I’m out of words to say.

So that’s my take on this.  Does it strike you as right or wrong? Does this post strike you as right or wrong?  I’d be interested to hear your reaction, internet.  TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK.    Am I delusional? Well, I know I am, but ON THIS SPECIFIC ISSUE?  More to the point, are my delusions incorrect?  If so, why?  Use your anonymity: What advice to you have on this topic, reader?

Also, DANNNNG these last few posts have been FAR TOO SERIOUS.  I think it’s time for something more relaxed. Which brings me to my very last piece of advice, and this is just general advice:

There’s never a wrong time to be happy.  Enjoy life.  Carpe Diem.

…if someone says #YOLO I will literally beat them down with a crateful of Ke$ha albums. We’ll run down the list.

 

Some Citations and Further Resources to Investigate On This Topic:

http://www.drirene.com/control.htm

http://www.abuseandrelationships.org/Content/Behaviors/subtle_control.html

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/healthy-connections/201007/help-my-controlling-behavior-is-ruining-relationships

http://www.menstoppingviolence.org/docs/Controlling%20Behavior%20List.pdf

http://www.positive-parenting-ally.com/controlling-behavior.html

 

Some Music and Links to Brighten Up Your Day Again After This Terribly Depressing Subject:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKdNDepvh7Y

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/06/science/space/curiosity-rover-lands-safely-on-mars.html?_r=1&hp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MejbOFk7H6c&feature=related

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/05/westboro-baptist-church-protest_n_1745260.html

http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/most-adorable-pictures-on-the-internet

http://www.colbertnation.com/full-episodes/wed-august-1-2012-john-grunsfeld

Fire and Fury

Fire:

Evil.

Lots of people have written about it.

According to some, it is a proof of the nonexistence of God, or at least of a god as we would conceive of him.

According to others, it is a manifestation of free will, an unavoidable side effect of being able to control our own destinies.

I myself have not had enough direct experience with evil to even begin to draw my own conclusions, but I can say with certainty that it exists, and debates as to its nature are at best academic.  I can only identify it by my own response.

When I see/hear/read of something evil or malevolent, there is a particular chilling sensation that sweeps through me, accompanied by an immediate desire for a physical action in response.  It may not be much of an action–a blink, a closing of the fist, a spoken response or a shift of the posture, but it is a reaction all the same.

My definition of ‘evil’ is fuzzy in this case.  It can be something truly ‘evil,’ or it can be something unjust or even just hurtful.  Whatever it is, if it sets off my hate-o-meter, I classify it as ‘not good’ in this instance and respond to it as such.

For example, this particular piece of footage sets the hate’O'meter a ‘tickin’.

http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/09/wisc-state-police-drag-protesters-out-of-assembly-for-filming/#.TnIvBSGHRkw.facebook

Now, this is a nice gut reaction, but it is not infallible.  An obvious protest/example of fallibility might be whether or not that video was edited to show the actions in their worst possible light.  The hate’O'meter also goes off for movies, novels, stories that I hear secondhand…oh, and this…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/22/republican-debate-dadt-repeal-rick-santorum_n_977105.html

…my point being:

Evil is present.  It may be quiescent, dormant, or even shrouded in seeming good, but it is a real part of the world.  People make bad choices, sometimes even good people, and when this happens there should be a response.

I am not advocating violence. 

The thought of injuring another human being who is not actively engaged in mutilating me or a family member or a  friend disgusts me.

[The thought of injuring a human being who is engaged in mutilating myself or another close individual is one I will discuss later]

In fact, I think our response to evil should (with a few exceptions I will also discuss later) be nearly the opposite.  Water quenches fire. We should respond to malevolence with its antithesis, counter inhumanity by becoming more humane still.

http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/09/22/lawrence_brewer_no_more_last_meal_for_texas_inmates_on_death_row.html

Case in point: the above link.  I believe this to be the wrong decision.  Do not mistake this for sympathy on the behalf of killers (although enough people have been executed on questionable evidence to make that a viable concern).  But I think that the last meal is not, necessarily, a gesture of sympathy.

It is a kindness.  A simple, stupid, pointless human kindness, providing one last celebration to mark the close of a life.  For however that life was lived, however poorly the paths were chosen, it was still a human life, and by granting that little kindness we, in a sense, acknowledge their humanity.

We could not do otherwise–should not do otherwise, for to do so is to reduce the vast system of our society to the same level as the killer, a machine calmly and coldly and inexorably carrying out the murder of a single human being.  By this idiotic little gesture, this last humane act, we assert that we do this not for justice, but for mankind, ending one life so that more might be spared.

Evil is not the problem.

What troubles me is that when evil surfaces, men turn readily to evil as a solution.  We call it kidnapping when one human holds another against their will, yet perform the same act upon the kidnappers who fail.  We condemn murder, the murder of many even more so, and yet calmly execute one individual after another in a long list of slow punishments for crimes long past.

I do not have a solution to this.  Perhaps no one ever will.

Or perhaps, just maybe…

Perhaps one day in the future psychology will provide us with an answer.  Perhaps psychiatry may enable us to truly reform criminals, to help them work through their anger and their actions and their guilt and give them a place among mankind.   Perhaps neuroscience will grant us the means to help a sociopath understand the meaning of happiness and melancholy and all the wonderful emotions we experience.  Perhaps wisdom will grant us the strength to look at our laws and our customs in a new light, to embrace humanity and to usher in kindness.

For, in the end, the greatest weapon in our arsenal is simple empathy.  Kindness and understanding.

Fury: 

Anger is a powerful force.  Righteous anger, whether justified or not, is still more so.

When I think of what angers me, I picture injustice, or hasty condemnation, or overzealous judgement, or the harm of another living creature, or even just the sheer, cruel randomness of fate.

At these moments I would not mind being my namesake.

To be able to move from place to place as swift as thought and place myself before the victim.

I am not my namesake, however.  And on weekdays I exist only in one place at a time.

And moreover, I am not yet familiar with my own mind.  I do not fully know its limits, nor how it would respond to the aftermath of a moment of urgency.

I know how my mind would behave in these moments, for I have had them, albeit not in a life-threatening context–and my mind works exactly the same, save that under every thought there lie two considerations:

Thinking takes too much time. 

AND

Why am I not more upset by this?

I can then say that in a ‘moment of truth’ I am reasonably confident my mind would remain clear.

I am not sure what would happen afterward, if I actually was forced to bring violence against another creature, even to defend another.

So all I can say is that I hope it doesn’t happen.

For the sake of my own mind.

For the sake of others.

And for the sake of the dry-cleaning bill which I do NOT have money for.

And:

NATURE PHOTOGRAPHY

http://immortal-sun.deviantart.com/

THAT.

IS.

ALL.

Anonymous

Anonymous is cool. I’m down with that. I dig the nifty masks, their mad haxxor skills, their terrifying left-wing anarchist ‘Big Brother Is Watching You’ vibe.

But.

They’ve got issues.

Anonymous picks its “targets” on whim and public opinion. It is, therefore, incapable of prolonged, sustained action—the attention span of the populace is too short. Unfortunately, sporadic, random events do not trigger change. Only sustained effort produces any long-term effect beyond outrage.

Anonymous needs a goal.

For that to happen, they need a leader.

Anonymous quite obviously has no leader. And while the group remains thus, impulsive and indecisive, they will remain a sporadically active pack of quasi-terrorists, good for some lulz but not much else.

Think of it, though. An Anonymous with a leader, with a purpose. They could reshape the world as we know it, laying siege to the networks of dictators, crushing attempts at internet content monitoring, exposing rigged elections.  They’d form a counterbalancing force to worldwide internet corporations, an insurance policy against cyber-repression. To put it in the most clichéd form possible: They would become a powerful force for good.

I mean, I’m all for anarchy. Woo, chaos. But pure chaos only destroys, because at our most basic humans are chemically and emotionally creatures of order.  So we need to temper Anonymous’ sociopathic glee with human empathy.

Of course, likely nothing will change.

Likely, about fifteen people will read this post, go “huh, that’s cool, he’s awesome” and go on with their lives. Likely, once I’m done writing this post, I’ll go on with my life.

Anonymous may even hax me for daring to criticize them.

But you know what?

I felt it needed to be said.

And isn’t that the best reason to say something?

I’m Back

Hello there internet!

Sorry for the break, I was distracted by video games and sparkly colors.

Since we last saw each other, a lot has happened, hasn’t it? Oh yes it has. The man who schemed up and directed an attack on America has been killed, 9 years and some-odd months later. The strike team was supposedly made up of navy SEALS, but my personal belief is those soldiers are all secretly dinosaurs. Or grizzly bears.*  And it was done without any American casualties.

HOWEVER. It should be noted that the death of a woman being used as a shield was reported.  Not negatively reported, not to detract in any way from this achievement, but acknowledged.

Do I think this is a historic event? Maybe. President Obama himself stated that he made “the killing or capture” of Osama Bin Laden the top priority of the CIA. Which means that  the full focus of one of the largest nations in the world was bent upon the destruction of one man. And sure enough, we did it, 3 years later.  Good. Well done, and cookies for all the SEALs! Now let’s move on to his lowlife friends. Even if Osama was (/nerd metaphor!) the Moriarty of terrorism, his creation has worked smoothly enough without him, and it will continue to roll onwards until we dismantle it.

And I also approve (please imagine the monkey picture again) of the stipulation in Obama’s address last night, where he stated emphatically that the “war” on terrorism is not and never should be considered synonymous with a war on the Islamic world.

*note: The word “GRISLY”, as in something gruesome or repulsive, is NOT THE SAME AS the word “GRIZZLY,” which is  a kind of large land predator from the family Ursidae.  PLEASE GET THIS RIGHT, or I WILL BEAT YOU TO DEATH with my copy of Webster’s Vest Pocket Dictionary.  For reference: 

GRIZZLY.

Above is a grizzly bear: a large, furred omnivore of the family Ursidae. Below is Cthulhu, a grisly ancient horror.

CAN YOU SEE THE DIFFERENCE?

GRISLY.

This demonstration brought to you by Google Image search and Tor’s frustration with misspellings.

Now, let us discuss something GRISLY. Not something GRIZZLY, which, as previously addressed, is a kind of bear,  nor something GRISTLY, such as an old rooster.

[I searched for "old rooster" in every possible permutation, and found a number of things which did not relate to roosters, but did relate to old people. In the end, I decided a picture was not necessary.]

We are all familiar, I trust, with the H.P. Lovecraft story Herbert West: Reanimator. 

Now, we–wait, you’re not? Go read it. http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/hwr.asp

Now that you’ve read it, you should check out the movie of the same name.

And then the musical. Yes, the musical: I just saw Reanimator: The Musical and it was awesome. Any play that begins with detached eyeballs is clearly a work of genius.  You’ve got one month. Go. Now. You can tell them you read about it here, but that won’t matter because no one there knows me, so whatever. But go see it.

AND FINALLY.

My Fair Lady is still an awesome movie, and the play that inspired it is still awesome, and [UNRELATED FACT] The Importance of Being Earnest is still brilliant.

Coming up next time–I try and summarize Jung’s psychology/worldview for a friend, who I told a long time ago I would explain what “Jungian Psychology” meant.  Expect a long interval between this post and the next as I frantically try to avoid having to answer it.

Until then, STAY AWESOME.

Generally Specific

I don’t like sweeping generalizations. At the risk of sounding like a raving hypocrite, I dislike all sweeping generalizations.

Let me explain why. It’s quite simple, really.

Nothing is constant.

Got it? No? Let’s go in depth. There are a few “constant”, “concrete” things in day-to-day life. The sun comes up. The moon comes up. The clock starts over again at midnight.  Two times two is four, if two geese lay an egg a gosling will come out.

Well.

The sun comes up at a different time and from a different location each morning. The moon rises in a different phase and position than the night before.  The only clocks on earth that are completely and totally correct are broken ones, and they are only right twice a day (once if they mark AM/PM).  Math is a human invention and, thus, prone to random and total reinvention at a moment’s notice. And thanks to evolution, some day two geese will hatch their egg and something not of their species will step out.

But while it annoys me when people generalize about things(“all fast-food places are bad for you.” “TV is not art.” “ranged combat is so gimped in this MMO.”), what really gets me going is generalizing about people.

“All people in the Middle East are Muslims,” for example. Or its cousin, “All Muslim people are terrorists.”  Um, no.

Or, the other direction. “The American right wing is made up of stupid people.” Also demonstrably not true.

Or less political thoughts!  Like “artists are crazy and obsessive.” I have a friend who is convinced that all football players are evil and stupid.  Or the “hipster” movement that has gotten so much flak on the internet, which supposedly rejects anything that is popular.

Obviously, it’s possible to take this too far. I don’t object to people all being classified as the same species. That’s science. It holds true across every demographic.  You want to say that all hydrogen atoms are the same? Great. It can be proved. But if you want to tell me that every movie that Bruce Lee was in was great, or that all “emo” people cut themselves and are borderline sociopaths, well, screenshot or it didn’t happen. Prove it or get out.

And even worse than this laziness, of choosing a position that has not been proven correct, some people then tell me that they don’t care about the subject (football players, pop music, piano’s presence [or lack thereof] in hard rock) enough to go and see if they’re right or not.

HOW CAN YOU NOT CARE? Not only have you just casually condemned an entire demographic/object/art form, you’ve done so with great apathy.  Your intellectual laziness shocks me.

IMHO*, one should keep in mind that nothing is constant. Just because an idea is ‘eco-friendly’ doesn’t mean it is good. Just because a left-wing politician suggested the amendment, doesn’t automatically mean it’s bad. Religion is not inherently evil, and atheists are not hyperrationalistic androids seeking to destroy the world.  Vegetarian diets may not keep you supernaturally healthy, and vegans are not soulless.

Listen. Observe. Make your decisions one at a time, not from some preset list of prejudices that you consult each time action is required.  To generalize a subject is to trivialize it, to reduce it to something that doesn’t require your active attention. And everything should require your attention.

*In My Humble Opinion

P.S.

Hiya again! It’s been a while since I posted. D:  I was distracted. By pretty colors.