The article is about how Caucuasians and Asians see faces differently.
The very statement reveals several analytically pathetic assumptions:
One. Caucasians have a common way of viewing the face.
Two. Caucasians are a race or group with common features.
Three. Asians have a common way of viewing the face.
Four. Asians are a race or group with common features.
Five. Asians are a group different from Caucasians.
Six. The designation of Asian and Caucasian need not be differentiated as to culture and ethnicity. That is, you don't have to specify someone whose ancestry is Asian as opposed to somebody whose culture is Asian.
This study would seem to imply that all the land from Indonesia, Korea, and from India to the Phillipines is inhabited by a single group.
What does it actually mean to say Caucasians and Asians? Most likely, yellow people and white people.
The clever bit about this piece is that it fits the simplistic ideas of cultural homogeneity and exclusivity, where different cultures inhabit different realities, and it also fits the evolutionary psychology oversimplifications, wherein, Caucasians and Asians have a separate phylogeny and therefore the needs of face recognition evolved differently.
I can't help but feel that such all-inclusive talk of Asians is never far from the Confucian Culture nonsense, and, perhaps, to some explanation of how they're all conformists because of their collective emphasis in facial recognition.
Good god. Take Chinese people for example. Try to get them to collectivize in the name of Confucian values. Or just talk to one about their experience working for or with other Chinese people, and compare what you find with The Analects.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Saturday, January 23, 2010
NON-FICTION: Sciene: The information vs. The metaphors
The hard part of science is the information. Getting the information, retaining it, and and evaluating it.
I was tutoring a woman who had applied to Yale as some sort of post graduate something or rather. Her specialty was Microbiology-Biochemistry. She was studying all the different kinds of things that make proteins. She knew the differences between them and she explained to me the research she had doing to name identify the different protein stuff. I cannot remember it, I keep trying, even as I'm writing this, but it's gone.
What would have been easier to remember was something like: The amino acids are like letters, and the words they spell are proteins.
But I wouldn't want to know this, not before I had grasped the actual amino acids and the actual proteins.
The metaphors can help us understand the information, but they are also highly likely to warp our understanding of the information, as the metaphors excludes certain content of the targeted information and relates it more to that which it is being compared to.
How many science lectures have I heard that started with a suggestion to "Think of X as a computer". Think of the universe as giant machine. Think of the brain as a giant information system. Think of ants as soldiers.
What inevitably happens is that the analogies dominate the information. We end up arguing over mechanism and vitalism, nature and nurture, dynamism and reductionalism, nominalism and realism.
In fact, direct reference to the book of nature, that is, empirical understanding, are what allows us to transcend imposing metaphors.
The more we know about the brain, the more we can see that it, in fact is like a big chemical soup, is like a computer, is like an organ, is like a hormone factory, is like a big machine, is like a soul, etc.
The more we know about the brain, the more we can stop thinking of is like and deal just with the actual neurons, actual structures, actual astrocytes, glial cells, dendritic branches, and all that.
I recently watched a discussion between Richard Dawkins and Steven Rose wherein the issues of disagreement were not so much clear to either party, but there was a hint that Rose felt Dawkins and the socio-biology type scientists over simplified DNA and genes, isolating the gene as the point of everything, and excluding the emphasis on the whole biochemical environment. Dawkins response was something like "Yes it's all very complicated, but..."
Dawkins insists that the code is the one thing that goes on and that's the key to natural selection.
But, I think naked contemplation of the processes is still more valuable than such metaphors of keys.
The metaphors we develop or that occur to us, are just ways to grasp the phenomena in different schemes of organization or causaality. But, in the end, unless we are constantly referring to the phenomena without metaphors and analogies, than we run the risk of subordinating the information to the analogy.
It is at this point that we diverge from science. Each scientific paradigm grows overreaches itself, denies information and is replaced by another paradigm.
What is left is information about processes. The animalcules identified by Van Looewnhoek were real, the problems faced by early French evolutionists were real, though much of their conclusions were wrong. The practical uses of electricity were understood faster than the actual phenomena underlying it.
What piles up over the decades and centuries is information, information regarding processes. Whatever metaphor we find useful to give this information a certain structure in a given age should never be taken as more significant than the information. Metaphors, such as the selfish gene, the brain-computer, the god center in the brain, and a gay gene should understood as a way of getting fresh perspective on vast processes, not as some final conclusions that subsume those processes.
I was tutoring a woman who had applied to Yale as some sort of post graduate something or rather. Her specialty was Microbiology-Biochemistry. She was studying all the different kinds of things that make proteins. She knew the differences between them and she explained to me the research she had doing to name identify the different protein stuff. I cannot remember it, I keep trying, even as I'm writing this, but it's gone.
What would have been easier to remember was something like: The amino acids are like letters, and the words they spell are proteins.
But I wouldn't want to know this, not before I had grasped the actual amino acids and the actual proteins.
The metaphors can help us understand the information, but they are also highly likely to warp our understanding of the information, as the metaphors excludes certain content of the targeted information and relates it more to that which it is being compared to.
How many science lectures have I heard that started with a suggestion to "Think of X as a computer". Think of the universe as giant machine. Think of the brain as a giant information system. Think of ants as soldiers.
What inevitably happens is that the analogies dominate the information. We end up arguing over mechanism and vitalism, nature and nurture, dynamism and reductionalism, nominalism and realism.
In fact, direct reference to the book of nature, that is, empirical understanding, are what allows us to transcend imposing metaphors.
The more we know about the brain, the more we can see that it, in fact is like a big chemical soup, is like a computer, is like an organ, is like a hormone factory, is like a big machine, is like a soul, etc.
The more we know about the brain, the more we can stop thinking of is like and deal just with the actual neurons, actual structures, actual astrocytes, glial cells, dendritic branches, and all that.
I recently watched a discussion between Richard Dawkins and Steven Rose wherein the issues of disagreement were not so much clear to either party, but there was a hint that Rose felt Dawkins and the socio-biology type scientists over simplified DNA and genes, isolating the gene as the point of everything, and excluding the emphasis on the whole biochemical environment. Dawkins response was something like "Yes it's all very complicated, but..."
Dawkins insists that the code is the one thing that goes on and that's the key to natural selection.
But, I think naked contemplation of the processes is still more valuable than such metaphors of keys.
The metaphors we develop or that occur to us, are just ways to grasp the phenomena in different schemes of organization or causaality. But, in the end, unless we are constantly referring to the phenomena without metaphors and analogies, than we run the risk of subordinating the information to the analogy.
It is at this point that we diverge from science. Each scientific paradigm grows overreaches itself, denies information and is replaced by another paradigm.
What is left is information about processes. The animalcules identified by Van Looewnhoek were real, the problems faced by early French evolutionists were real, though much of their conclusions were wrong. The practical uses of electricity were understood faster than the actual phenomena underlying it.
What piles up over the decades and centuries is information, information regarding processes. Whatever metaphor we find useful to give this information a certain structure in a given age should never be taken as more significant than the information. Metaphors, such as the selfish gene, the brain-computer, the god center in the brain, and a gay gene should understood as a way of getting fresh perspective on vast processes, not as some final conclusions that subsume those processes.
PURE SCIENCE: A Genocide Gene?
For years and years we have been assaulted with dogmatic assertions that genocide is purely a cultural phenomena, that is to be blamed on super-structural features of a society, like, patriarchy, racism, slavery. Some have claimed that it is a misfiring of our natural tendency towards in-group/out-group patterns of orientation.
But the thrilling new discoveries of scientific methaphorology and statistical correlation have already shed light on how alot of stuff is really all about natural selection. Just as the rape gene is soon to be discovered, likely adjacent to the allele that causes sodomy, so too will the day come when we can realize that the critics of society who demand radical restructurings and think the world is open wide for whatever wild blueprints they devise have, all this time, really just been criticizing the genes.
First, for those of you who are not scientifically initiated, let me lay out the basics of human behavior, so that you might get a glimpse at what's really going on.
Genes evolved a long time ago. And all a gene wants to do is make more copies of itself. This is what you are for. Your genes just want to make a copy of themselves through reproduction. This also explains why so many people are interested in cloning, as your genes also want to make a perfect copy of themselves, rather than gambling for dominance with the genes of the person you have sex with.
So the genes will use any means they can to reproduce. The genes also compete against each other, so that one gene in your body wants to get rid of the other genes, so it can just reproduce itself and leave the other genes in your body behind. But this topic is too much for our present essay.
Getting back to the point, wiping out a whole gene pool, whether it be an actual gene pool or a perceived pool, is a great way for your genes to wittle down the competition.
Now, it is quite possible that our ancestor Homo Habilis was motivated by this same impulse to genocide the Neanderthals.
From the gene's point of view, getting rid of other groups of genes makes sense, since that leaves more resources for themselves. Also, they'd much rather deal with genes similar to themselves, since there is a shared interest among similar genes in assisting each other in achieving reproduction. This is called the Kinship Rule.
Now, it is quite likely that there are many more genocide genes than actual genocides. But usually, these genes are kept in check by social norms (AKA social norm genes.) In rare instances, you might get a predominance, or a certain critical mass of these genocide genes, and that's when genocidal plans start getting carried out.
So, we see that genes want to do all sorts of things that the Social Norm Gene don't want to happen. Thus we realize that human nature is everywhere bound by the Social Norms Gene, but never permanently bound.
The view that elimination of genocide is merely a matter of reorganizing societal norms or dealing with socio-economic factors, is thus found to be unnatural.
Much closer to the truth are the notions of SIN and ID. Sin is the nature that we are tempted to do things against our sense of good/god, but evil factors. This, really was early man's first intimation of the struggle of genes against other genes. More recently, Freud understood this genetic conflict in his division of the psyche into Id, Ego, Superego. The id genes want sex with out mothers, but the Social Norm Gene AKA Superego, holds back the mother-sex genes.
I have faith that some day we might isolate this genocide gene, perhaps by genetic screening among relevant populations (some in Africa, some in South Asia.)
Also, in the meantime, I think it is important that we avoid undue provocation of these genocide genes, such as ethnic solidarity or stimulation of anxiety through promoting the rights of minorities. Many groups of Americans, at present are precipitously beset by feelings that their group is threatened, by gay marriage, Hispanic immigrants, and other problem groups. If these threatened groups have a higher than average percentage of genocide genes, then it is simply irresponsible to needlessly provoke the genes in people that they didn't choose to be born with, and which we haven't developed the sufficient technology (allelle extraction) to deal with.
But the thrilling new discoveries of scientific methaphorology and statistical correlation have already shed light on how alot of stuff is really all about natural selection. Just as the rape gene is soon to be discovered, likely adjacent to the allele that causes sodomy, so too will the day come when we can realize that the critics of society who demand radical restructurings and think the world is open wide for whatever wild blueprints they devise have, all this time, really just been criticizing the genes.
First, for those of you who are not scientifically initiated, let me lay out the basics of human behavior, so that you might get a glimpse at what's really going on.
Genes evolved a long time ago. And all a gene wants to do is make more copies of itself. This is what you are for. Your genes just want to make a copy of themselves through reproduction. This also explains why so many people are interested in cloning, as your genes also want to make a perfect copy of themselves, rather than gambling for dominance with the genes of the person you have sex with.
So the genes will use any means they can to reproduce. The genes also compete against each other, so that one gene in your body wants to get rid of the other genes, so it can just reproduce itself and leave the other genes in your body behind. But this topic is too much for our present essay.
Getting back to the point, wiping out a whole gene pool, whether it be an actual gene pool or a perceived pool, is a great way for your genes to wittle down the competition.
Now, it is quite possible that our ancestor Homo Habilis was motivated by this same impulse to genocide the Neanderthals.
From the gene's point of view, getting rid of other groups of genes makes sense, since that leaves more resources for themselves. Also, they'd much rather deal with genes similar to themselves, since there is a shared interest among similar genes in assisting each other in achieving reproduction. This is called the Kinship Rule.
Now, it is quite likely that there are many more genocide genes than actual genocides. But usually, these genes are kept in check by social norms (AKA social norm genes.) In rare instances, you might get a predominance, or a certain critical mass of these genocide genes, and that's when genocidal plans start getting carried out.
So, we see that genes want to do all sorts of things that the Social Norm Gene don't want to happen. Thus we realize that human nature is everywhere bound by the Social Norms Gene, but never permanently bound.
The view that elimination of genocide is merely a matter of reorganizing societal norms or dealing with socio-economic factors, is thus found to be unnatural.
Much closer to the truth are the notions of SIN and ID. Sin is the nature that we are tempted to do things against our sense of good/god, but evil factors. This, really was early man's first intimation of the struggle of genes against other genes. More recently, Freud understood this genetic conflict in his division of the psyche into Id, Ego, Superego. The id genes want sex with out mothers, but the Social Norm Gene AKA Superego, holds back the mother-sex genes.
I have faith that some day we might isolate this genocide gene, perhaps by genetic screening among relevant populations (some in Africa, some in South Asia.)
Also, in the meantime, I think it is important that we avoid undue provocation of these genocide genes, such as ethnic solidarity or stimulation of anxiety through promoting the rights of minorities. Many groups of Americans, at present are precipitously beset by feelings that their group is threatened, by gay marriage, Hispanic immigrants, and other problem groups. If these threatened groups have a higher than average percentage of genocide genes, then it is simply irresponsible to needlessly provoke the genes in people that they didn't choose to be born with, and which we haven't developed the sufficient technology (allelle extraction) to deal with.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
MOVIE REVIEW: Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Lovely Bones.
I have often thought that Robert Downey Jr. was a bit too cool, a bit of a dick, who, though ever charming and witty, lacked a certain maturity or social awareness. But, I loved him in Sherlock Holmes. I gave in to his charm in the first five minutes of the film.
I didn't really want to see this film, since I thought it would be just the usual period piece fetishism, and because they had marred Jude Law's beauty with a mustache.
But, as soon as the movie started, I realized this was about debunking mystical bullshit. Sherlock Holmes has to deal with an entire society taken in by mystical, religious, nonsense, and him and Holmes have to kick ass and show how it's all based on the bastardization of science and technology.
I was shocked. This is exactly the movie that we need at this point, when we are distracted from our real living conditions by the false debate over healthcare reform, (which has, unsurprisingly, turned out to be a pay out to the rich,) distracted the false debate over gay marriage, which is theologically and culturally irrrelevant, and all the other fictional dramas presented to us as crucial to the fate of our nation.
What we need to be doing is getting past the popular illusions and seeing the real mechanisms and interests behind them.
This is what Holmes does. As London and greater England are beset by the prospect of an evil, magical villain rising from the dead and taking over the country's most powerful secret society, and then the country itself, Sherlock Holmes and Watson figure out how each miracle was faked, and how the real danger was of a power hungry murderer taking advantage of the credulity of both the masses and the nations ruling class.
In these times, the message of Holmes, aside from drug use (at least in the books), is: Get to the bottom of it. Find out the real causes and through them address the danger.
This is why Holmes should have been hanging out in The Lovely Bones. This piece of crap film has a different message for a country in the midst of all kinds of fear and danger: Fuck it, we're all going to heaven.
Got no money? Don't sit around working out what you're going to do about it. Fuck it, you're going to paradise when you die.
Did your beautiful blue eyed daughter get murdered and cut up by your neighbor? Open your eyes to the bigger picture!!! Enjoy your remaining family time. Getting trapped, murdered, and butchered like a pig was merely a minor issue in your daughter's life, after which she spends eternity in a beautiful, wheat field Heaven! Hallelujah, amen!
Suppose on the other hand, if you're an unenlightened, sad little skeptic deluding yourself into thinking that this life is all we got. Then you might start seeing the murder of fourteen year old girls, by a serial killer, as the main problem presented in this film.
If you're so thick headed as to imagine that these seventy years or so are all you're going to get, so you better cherish it, and cherish the lives of your friends and pets, suck every last bit of experience you can out of life, because that's all we got-if you're this negative about things, you might start thinking that serial killers are a real big deal, and we should be spending time figuring out how to neutralize these monsters, instead of reconciling ourselves to our impotence in this world.
But that's the sweet beauty of The Lovely Bones: even the butchered bones of a fourteen year old girl are something you just have to let go of, and cherish the remaining connections you have. And if another of them gets killed, you still have a couple more left, so give them a hug. And if some other innocent is dragged from her car, strangled, raped and slashed across the face with a razor, than don't sweat it, because there's karma to take care of everything.
And by Karma I mean the westernized idea marketed to and parroted among the lower classes and dissociated types, that imagines there's some special justice that gives good shit to good people and bad shit to bad people.
In The Lovely Bones, this comes at the end of the movie. After the serial killer gets away, probably killing again, and after we are left with no answers about what to do about serial killers, only then does Jesus-Karma mete out cosmic justice by having the aged serial killer slip off a hill and die.
Sherlock Holmes would have figured out who the killer was. And, since he doesn't exist, and serial killers often go unpunished, dying with all their cherished memories of slaughter intact, than perhaps I might offer the following responses to serial murder.
Off the top of my head: Psychological Profiling and Analysis. Sociological Factors found to be relevant in cases of serial murder. Biological Factors. Ways to teach your children to avoid and/or fight dangerous adults. Ways to organize your neighborhood to avoid the anonymity and secrecy that serial killers avoid.
God forbid I should ever have a child who is murdered, and, in the midst of my unending agony, give in to some kind of religious bullshit. I could then just stay in my fantasy and pray to someone and ask them to say hello to my child, all while more murders are planned and carried out. And when I ran into parents whose children had been murdered by the same person that killed my child, I could wisely shake my head, dismissing evidence, prevention, and joint action, and say: Golly, jeez, the good Lord sure does work in mysterious ways, butchering kids and stuff. But, you know, think about, it, now that they're up in Heaven, they're happier and smarter than us, so, really it all worked out, and it was really a good opportunity for those kids to get all cut up and buried in a corn field.
I didn't really want to see this film, since I thought it would be just the usual period piece fetishism, and because they had marred Jude Law's beauty with a mustache.
But, as soon as the movie started, I realized this was about debunking mystical bullshit. Sherlock Holmes has to deal with an entire society taken in by mystical, religious, nonsense, and him and Holmes have to kick ass and show how it's all based on the bastardization of science and technology.
I was shocked. This is exactly the movie that we need at this point, when we are distracted from our real living conditions by the false debate over healthcare reform, (which has, unsurprisingly, turned out to be a pay out to the rich,) distracted the false debate over gay marriage, which is theologically and culturally irrrelevant, and all the other fictional dramas presented to us as crucial to the fate of our nation.
What we need to be doing is getting past the popular illusions and seeing the real mechanisms and interests behind them.
This is what Holmes does. As London and greater England are beset by the prospect of an evil, magical villain rising from the dead and taking over the country's most powerful secret society, and then the country itself, Sherlock Holmes and Watson figure out how each miracle was faked, and how the real danger was of a power hungry murderer taking advantage of the credulity of both the masses and the nations ruling class.
In these times, the message of Holmes, aside from drug use (at least in the books), is: Get to the bottom of it. Find out the real causes and through them address the danger.
This is why Holmes should have been hanging out in The Lovely Bones. This piece of crap film has a different message for a country in the midst of all kinds of fear and danger: Fuck it, we're all going to heaven.
Got no money? Don't sit around working out what you're going to do about it. Fuck it, you're going to paradise when you die.
Did your beautiful blue eyed daughter get murdered and cut up by your neighbor? Open your eyes to the bigger picture!!! Enjoy your remaining family time. Getting trapped, murdered, and butchered like a pig was merely a minor issue in your daughter's life, after which she spends eternity in a beautiful, wheat field Heaven! Hallelujah, amen!
Suppose on the other hand, if you're an unenlightened, sad little skeptic deluding yourself into thinking that this life is all we got. Then you might start seeing the murder of fourteen year old girls, by a serial killer, as the main problem presented in this film.
If you're so thick headed as to imagine that these seventy years or so are all you're going to get, so you better cherish it, and cherish the lives of your friends and pets, suck every last bit of experience you can out of life, because that's all we got-if you're this negative about things, you might start thinking that serial killers are a real big deal, and we should be spending time figuring out how to neutralize these monsters, instead of reconciling ourselves to our impotence in this world.
But that's the sweet beauty of The Lovely Bones: even the butchered bones of a fourteen year old girl are something you just have to let go of, and cherish the remaining connections you have. And if another of them gets killed, you still have a couple more left, so give them a hug. And if some other innocent is dragged from her car, strangled, raped and slashed across the face with a razor, than don't sweat it, because there's karma to take care of everything.
And by Karma I mean the westernized idea marketed to and parroted among the lower classes and dissociated types, that imagines there's some special justice that gives good shit to good people and bad shit to bad people.
In The Lovely Bones, this comes at the end of the movie. After the serial killer gets away, probably killing again, and after we are left with no answers about what to do about serial killers, only then does Jesus-Karma mete out cosmic justice by having the aged serial killer slip off a hill and die.
Sherlock Holmes would have figured out who the killer was. And, since he doesn't exist, and serial killers often go unpunished, dying with all their cherished memories of slaughter intact, than perhaps I might offer the following responses to serial murder.
Off the top of my head: Psychological Profiling and Analysis. Sociological Factors found to be relevant in cases of serial murder. Biological Factors. Ways to teach your children to avoid and/or fight dangerous adults. Ways to organize your neighborhood to avoid the anonymity and secrecy that serial killers avoid.
God forbid I should ever have a child who is murdered, and, in the midst of my unending agony, give in to some kind of religious bullshit. I could then just stay in my fantasy and pray to someone and ask them to say hello to my child, all while more murders are planned and carried out. And when I ran into parents whose children had been murdered by the same person that killed my child, I could wisely shake my head, dismissing evidence, prevention, and joint action, and say: Golly, jeez, the good Lord sure does work in mysterious ways, butchering kids and stuff. But, you know, think about, it, now that they're up in Heaven, they're happier and smarter than us, so, really it all worked out, and it was really a good opportunity for those kids to get all cut up and buried in a corn field.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
NON-FICTION: Excavating the mind from Depression: Hard Core inhibition as a lifestyle
That old metaphor, which I heard a couple years ago, buzzed, on a bus around xujiahui, and the huangpu river, maybe going down to the meiluo cheng, about the one part of the brain, the cortex, inhibiting the thalamus, or a simlar brain area, as the cause of, our neurological correlate to depression stays with me. Before that, I recall some similar notion, native to my own speculations, about the roots of our depression. I mean me and my brother's depression. And maybe I can say me and my uncle and my brother. And maybe this applies to the satelite of people I know who were abused, violently, and in anger.
The thing is, however, I'm depressed. The self-pityying, unaccountable, vague connotations of that term are such as I wish to avoid. So I'm immobile, in such a way that I think this would be described as low grade chronic depression.
I don't know where to start or which way to go in telling you this. But let me start where I'm at where I am now. I'm sitting in front of the kitchen window, sitting straight up and typing. I have earplugs in and a sleeping mask on. the door is open and the cats are wandering in and out, after being in all day due to the rain.
The reason I need to blind myself and deafen myself is because this is the only way I can feel comfortable to type most of the time. The only way I can block out....
Whatever I'm blocking out. The immanent distractions, the will inside of me that is constatly veering off in any which direction, that cannot put itself into any one thing that I deem productive or necessary.
To do anything, generally speaking, I need a gimmick. This gimmick is unsusually some audio lectures, books, music, or caffeine, anger, or lateness..
The blindfold and earplugs started last year 2009 or so in Shanghai. In the apartment off of zhanghyang lu, with the tiny dining room. I would blindfold myself and try to cover my ears enough, since i didn't have earplugs. Towards the end of our stay in Shanghai, I would do this while Emma's parents were milling around the house, and often I had takien some of the little balls of hash from the small plastic gum containers that I used to store my hash in.
Bakuin and susan, my cats were with me then as now. I often had one of my glass jars that i like to use as cups. I would have a big glasss jar of tea or coffee, or chocolate made by melting eighty percent choclate with some water and creamer.
The blindfold and the earplugs leave me alone, allow me to be in here, free from the outrside. It's the outside that I can't hanle, that leaves me dead. The outside me leaves without any identity, without any being. It leaves me at the mercy whims, the urge to gratification, pleasure , and the urge to consume.
In the middle of that sentence, i reacted to the wine i heard through my earplugs and pulled one out. It was nothing in my immediate zone of interest, something form outside, a neighbor using some machine to cut or weld maybe. But I decided it was an acceptable time to get up and try being in the world. I checked the mail. No mail.
My attention is waning now, got stuck on gimmicks, the idea of gimmicks.
I have alot of gimmicks. The idea of god is a gimmick, sometimes i've felt a presece in my mind that I associate with god, what other people know as god. This was a different prescence than the conversations I'm always having. I have those too. A typical example is the one I had last ight with my therapist. It was in the midst of another conversation I was having in my head. I realized I was doing it, and thought of telling my therapist. Then I was having a conversation with him about it. Then I was telling him that even thinking about telling him would make me have a conversation with him about it.
About the conversations.
Than I thought about how this extraordinary bent in me ought, in some conventional biography of a great man, lead to the production of some skill, some advantage. This would work if I was some trial lawyer, or a politician, or an interviewre on tv. Or if I was a writer, hahaha. [While editing this I notice that what I was thinking at this time, last night, was also that I couldn't utilize the conversations as a skill, and this was a difference between me and the great men in the imagined biographies.]
So is that it now? Am I clear?
What do I want to do? Work on the Beast book. That's the one I want to to work on, but I don't feel it.
I guess now writing this post has become a gimmick
The other gimmicks I can think of right now are other people helping me, and schedules. The schedules are what I have the most trust in now, as escaping the bad parts of other gimmicks. As for other people helping me, sometimes I have sort of a daydream about a motherly figure helping me to write, setting out the implements, like notepaper and a laptop, a special laptop just for writing that I think of getting, and sitting these down on the table just so. And it's on a special writing table, and taking my hadn and guiding me to the table. That's embarrasing, but I think it's a clear reflection of the lack of a motherly figure in my life.
It's embarrasing but even so it's so strong, a motherly figure,a white lady would be nice, and so would a black lady, in her late thirties to fifties, maybe a little plump, and neat in appearance. It's embarrasing, but every time I think of it, the desire is real.
Oh yes, a life of gimmicks. Is that what I've been trying to get around? Whith all the Brcue Lee, Daoist, Buddhist fascination I used to have? Is that what all the self help and psychology is about? No, it's primarliy about understanding, about extravating myself from the unseen influences that abound in my mind. It's about making sese of the lives we lead, of the spectum of minds that make up my social world.
Where do i go from here? I wnat to stop writing now, as if this blog served a purpose and I'm ready to move on.
Where do I go? Stand up. If I stand up, this may be dissapoiting in that it leads nowehre? I don't like the idea of finishing this blog, since I need to edit it, which requires taking off the sleeping mask and letting the light and the objects aroud me in. I dont want anymore auditory visual stimulus going on.
I don't want to hear Phil Hendrie or Christopher Hitchens or any of that stuff I liten to all day and night. The only thing I can think to do is bring the blaket from the couch and put it over my head and the computer, so I can limit the range of intrusion and edit this blog, publish it and.... I don't know what comes next.
I can't really say I want any of those gimmicks, or that the absence of gimmicks is the solution. For any solution is in itself a gimmick, I sense.
I have to go the bathroom.
I will get up, and them i will come back witht he blanket and edit this blog ad publish it. I want somethig to listen to while I'm up and about. I will lisen to soemthing. I will take off my sleeping mask and use the other cpomputer to listen to something. I'm using Emmas computer, and my computer is at the other end of the aprrtment, buy the door, on a chair.
I'm back, but I'm not using the blanket. Maybe I'll go get it in a minute or so. I'm eating strawberries. This is a gimmick, as it gives me a sense of doing something healthy. Eating potatoes is a gimmick, as food impulse keep me going. I'm going to cut up a potato and fry up the pieces. I wish I had ketchup or eggs to go with it. This is my second potato of the day.
The thing is, however, I'm depressed. The self-pityying, unaccountable, vague connotations of that term are such as I wish to avoid. So I'm immobile, in such a way that I think this would be described as low grade chronic depression.
I don't know where to start or which way to go in telling you this. But let me start where I'm at where I am now. I'm sitting in front of the kitchen window, sitting straight up and typing. I have earplugs in and a sleeping mask on. the door is open and the cats are wandering in and out, after being in all day due to the rain.
The reason I need to blind myself and deafen myself is because this is the only way I can feel comfortable to type most of the time. The only way I can block out....
Whatever I'm blocking out. The immanent distractions, the will inside of me that is constatly veering off in any which direction, that cannot put itself into any one thing that I deem productive or necessary.
To do anything, generally speaking, I need a gimmick. This gimmick is unsusually some audio lectures, books, music, or caffeine, anger, or lateness..
The blindfold and earplugs started last year 2009 or so in Shanghai. In the apartment off of zhanghyang lu, with the tiny dining room. I would blindfold myself and try to cover my ears enough, since i didn't have earplugs. Towards the end of our stay in Shanghai, I would do this while Emma's parents were milling around the house, and often I had takien some of the little balls of hash from the small plastic gum containers that I used to store my hash in.
Bakuin and susan, my cats were with me then as now. I often had one of my glass jars that i like to use as cups. I would have a big glasss jar of tea or coffee, or chocolate made by melting eighty percent choclate with some water and creamer.
The blindfold and the earplugs leave me alone, allow me to be in here, free from the outrside. It's the outside that I can't hanle, that leaves me dead. The outside me leaves without any identity, without any being. It leaves me at the mercy whims, the urge to gratification, pleasure , and the urge to consume.
In the middle of that sentence, i reacted to the wine i heard through my earplugs and pulled one out. It was nothing in my immediate zone of interest, something form outside, a neighbor using some machine to cut or weld maybe. But I decided it was an acceptable time to get up and try being in the world. I checked the mail. No mail.
My attention is waning now, got stuck on gimmicks, the idea of gimmicks.
I have alot of gimmicks. The idea of god is a gimmick, sometimes i've felt a presece in my mind that I associate with god, what other people know as god. This was a different prescence than the conversations I'm always having. I have those too. A typical example is the one I had last ight with my therapist. It was in the midst of another conversation I was having in my head. I realized I was doing it, and thought of telling my therapist. Then I was having a conversation with him about it. Then I was telling him that even thinking about telling him would make me have a conversation with him about it.
About the conversations.
Than I thought about how this extraordinary bent in me ought, in some conventional biography of a great man, lead to the production of some skill, some advantage. This would work if I was some trial lawyer, or a politician, or an interviewre on tv. Or if I was a writer, hahaha. [While editing this I notice that what I was thinking at this time, last night, was also that I couldn't utilize the conversations as a skill, and this was a difference between me and the great men in the imagined biographies.]
So is that it now? Am I clear?
What do I want to do? Work on the Beast book. That's the one I want to to work on, but I don't feel it.
I guess now writing this post has become a gimmick
The other gimmicks I can think of right now are other people helping me, and schedules. The schedules are what I have the most trust in now, as escaping the bad parts of other gimmicks. As for other people helping me, sometimes I have sort of a daydream about a motherly figure helping me to write, setting out the implements, like notepaper and a laptop, a special laptop just for writing that I think of getting, and sitting these down on the table just so. And it's on a special writing table, and taking my hadn and guiding me to the table. That's embarrasing, but I think it's a clear reflection of the lack of a motherly figure in my life.
It's embarrasing but even so it's so strong, a motherly figure,a white lady would be nice, and so would a black lady, in her late thirties to fifties, maybe a little plump, and neat in appearance. It's embarrasing, but every time I think of it, the desire is real.
Oh yes, a life of gimmicks. Is that what I've been trying to get around? Whith all the Brcue Lee, Daoist, Buddhist fascination I used to have? Is that what all the self help and psychology is about? No, it's primarliy about understanding, about extravating myself from the unseen influences that abound in my mind. It's about making sese of the lives we lead, of the spectum of minds that make up my social world.
Where do i go from here? I wnat to stop writing now, as if this blog served a purpose and I'm ready to move on.
Where do I go? Stand up. If I stand up, this may be dissapoiting in that it leads nowehre? I don't like the idea of finishing this blog, since I need to edit it, which requires taking off the sleeping mask and letting the light and the objects aroud me in. I dont want anymore auditory visual stimulus going on.
I don't want to hear Phil Hendrie or Christopher Hitchens or any of that stuff I liten to all day and night. The only thing I can think to do is bring the blaket from the couch and put it over my head and the computer, so I can limit the range of intrusion and edit this blog, publish it and.... I don't know what comes next.
I can't really say I want any of those gimmicks, or that the absence of gimmicks is the solution. For any solution is in itself a gimmick, I sense.
I have to go the bathroom.
I will get up, and them i will come back witht he blanket and edit this blog ad publish it. I want somethig to listen to while I'm up and about. I will lisen to soemthing. I will take off my sleeping mask and use the other cpomputer to listen to something. I'm using Emmas computer, and my computer is at the other end of the aprrtment, buy the door, on a chair.
I'm back, but I'm not using the blanket. Maybe I'll go get it in a minute or so. I'm eating strawberries. This is a gimmick, as it gives me a sense of doing something healthy. Eating potatoes is a gimmick, as food impulse keep me going. I'm going to cut up a potato and fry up the pieces. I wish I had ketchup or eggs to go with it. This is my second potato of the day.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
NON-FICTION: SCIENCE, OTHER KNOWLEDGE, FAMILY THEORY OF IDEOLOGY AND PERSONALITY TYPES
1. I just heard Ricard Dawkins on the "Late Late Show" in Ireland. A priest mentioned that Science is not the only way to know things. The tacit implication is that this makes believing in god without proof okay.
It makes sense that people would want to regard Science as a monolith in order to regard it as isolated and incomplete, and thus allowing for baseless belief in god.
It also makes sense to say that since all the bible or all the main doctrines of someone's Christianity have to be right in order of Christianity to be true, all claims of science have to be right or science is wrong.
What is interesting is that this discussion between Atheist Scientists and theists implies an odd spectrum of epistemology. From Religion to science?
This has nothing to do with actual existence as we experience it, nothing to do with our lives. The scientific method is a set of procedures for empirical discovery and verification.
Religion's special knowledge acquisition is done through faith, which is a feeling most often backed up by the threat of force, often directly.
But why have I not heard anyone mentioning the fact there are entire works dedicated to epistemology? Why is the question of how we know limited to Science versus faith? Am I the only one who is disgusted by the implications?
The reason that we have this incomplete, false dichotomy is because of the ignorance or inexperience of scientists and the petty stratagems of theists.
Experience and logical processes are what we all use to decide most questions. The scientific method is no more universal or fundamental to human experience than a recipe for hummus.
The main reason why we have questions like "Does science answer everything?" or "Is science the only way to know the universe?" is because religious types fear the implications of plain old logic. It is better to have something outside of their everyday experience and those of potential converts. It is better to argue against a presumed monolith than the everyday logic that causes to trust somethings and not others.
Our own experience might eventually lead us to a germ theory of disease, but never to the resurrection. It might tell us that people seem to be gone after death, but not that the people have souls inside them that fly out of them at death.
I want to write something more extensive on this subject, perhaps a review of epistemic theories and experiential perspectives of knowledge for atheists.
2. George Lakoff believes that political affiliation has more to do with our sense of familial affiliation than doctrinal procession. That is, when you see people who believe in gun control our also much more likely to be pro-choice, this is not because one belief suggests the other, or because both arise from a common principle, but because experience a sense of community and identify with a community of believers (this is my own interpretation of Lakoff.)
I have noticed for a long time that much communication among more orthodox believers, be they anarchists, anarcho-capitalists, liberals, or Limbaugh-types, has to do with in-group morality.
There is much less rational assessment of goals and consequences in general. Anarchists, despite their inspirational emphasis on consensus decision making, which entails a focus on mutually determined goals whether than enforcement of dogman, still can be seen denouncing others as not being real anarchists, being statists, being leftists, etc.
So it makes sense that once we come to identify with a certain perceived community of belief, we then project the doctrines, premises, and tendencies of that community onto the rest of our world.
Fear of losing authentic group identity can be seen, usually, in some sort of slippery slope arguments, such as, if you accept such and such premise, you are on your way to become a leftist. It is also seen in absurd definitional arguments, such as what constitutes a real anarchist, or real conservative. It is all too common to hear someone say. All those guys calling themselves X are not really X.
Whereas, ideologies (including the mythological embrace AKA Religion) generally have efficacious aims, such as the betterment of society, liberation, the end to capitalist oppression, it is hard not to stray to tribal business. Thus, we have factions, splits, heretics, and dogma.
Solutions to problems. Putting forth a common goal that transcends doctrinal differences is liberating. It frees us from the problem of loyalty to a community of ideas and puts back in the control seat. It also breaks down walls that keep us apart from other people.
As to personality. Given that our ideologies have much, perhaps mostly, to do with our sense of family, our neurological structures that correspond to our social reality, it is further likely that some people are more inclined to have stronger or weaker tendencies to adhere strictly to a particular community of belief.
This is what is called the True Believer phenomena.
It seems that some people are definitely more focused on the psychology of other people and some are less focused. This function may or may not intersect with a greater tendency to ideology. When it does, it then may coincide with a loyalty to ones immediate social ties, a rejection of those ties in favor of the ideology, or a rejection of the ideology in favor of ones social ties.
It makes sense that people would want to regard Science as a monolith in order to regard it as isolated and incomplete, and thus allowing for baseless belief in god.
It also makes sense to say that since all the bible or all the main doctrines of someone's Christianity have to be right in order of Christianity to be true, all claims of science have to be right or science is wrong.
What is interesting is that this discussion between Atheist Scientists and theists implies an odd spectrum of epistemology. From Religion to science?
This has nothing to do with actual existence as we experience it, nothing to do with our lives. The scientific method is a set of procedures for empirical discovery and verification.
Religion's special knowledge acquisition is done through faith, which is a feeling most often backed up by the threat of force, often directly.
But why have I not heard anyone mentioning the fact there are entire works dedicated to epistemology? Why is the question of how we know limited to Science versus faith? Am I the only one who is disgusted by the implications?
The reason that we have this incomplete, false dichotomy is because of the ignorance or inexperience of scientists and the petty stratagems of theists.
Experience and logical processes are what we all use to decide most questions. The scientific method is no more universal or fundamental to human experience than a recipe for hummus.
The main reason why we have questions like "Does science answer everything?" or "Is science the only way to know the universe?" is because religious types fear the implications of plain old logic. It is better to have something outside of their everyday experience and those of potential converts. It is better to argue against a presumed monolith than the everyday logic that causes to trust somethings and not others.
Our own experience might eventually lead us to a germ theory of disease, but never to the resurrection. It might tell us that people seem to be gone after death, but not that the people have souls inside them that fly out of them at death.
I want to write something more extensive on this subject, perhaps a review of epistemic theories and experiential perspectives of knowledge for atheists.
2. George Lakoff believes that political affiliation has more to do with our sense of familial affiliation than doctrinal procession. That is, when you see people who believe in gun control our also much more likely to be pro-choice, this is not because one belief suggests the other, or because both arise from a common principle, but because experience a sense of community and identify with a community of believers (this is my own interpretation of Lakoff.)
I have noticed for a long time that much communication among more orthodox believers, be they anarchists, anarcho-capitalists, liberals, or Limbaugh-types, has to do with in-group morality.
There is much less rational assessment of goals and consequences in general. Anarchists, despite their inspirational emphasis on consensus decision making, which entails a focus on mutually determined goals whether than enforcement of dogman, still can be seen denouncing others as not being real anarchists, being statists, being leftists, etc.
So it makes sense that once we come to identify with a certain perceived community of belief, we then project the doctrines, premises, and tendencies of that community onto the rest of our world.
Fear of losing authentic group identity can be seen, usually, in some sort of slippery slope arguments, such as, if you accept such and such premise, you are on your way to become a leftist. It is also seen in absurd definitional arguments, such as what constitutes a real anarchist, or real conservative. It is all too common to hear someone say. All those guys calling themselves X are not really X.
Whereas, ideologies (including the mythological embrace AKA Religion) generally have efficacious aims, such as the betterment of society, liberation, the end to capitalist oppression, it is hard not to stray to tribal business. Thus, we have factions, splits, heretics, and dogma.
Solutions to problems. Putting forth a common goal that transcends doctrinal differences is liberating. It frees us from the problem of loyalty to a community of ideas and puts back in the control seat. It also breaks down walls that keep us apart from other people.
As to personality. Given that our ideologies have much, perhaps mostly, to do with our sense of family, our neurological structures that correspond to our social reality, it is further likely that some people are more inclined to have stronger or weaker tendencies to adhere strictly to a particular community of belief.
This is what is called the True Believer phenomena.
It seems that some people are definitely more focused on the psychology of other people and some are less focused. This function may or may not intersect with a greater tendency to ideology. When it does, it then may coincide with a loyalty to ones immediate social ties, a rejection of those ties in favor of the ideology, or a rejection of the ideology in favor of ones social ties.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
BOOK CLUB: Book Club Spits Out Four Books
Book Club: I got a question: Why they Hatin' on me?
Book Club: The collective has consumed three novels since it's inception earlier this year. You may have missed it.
You may have lingered, over there, in your fear of Book Club. In your incomprehension at the intangible but binding web of lust that is Book Club.
But Book Club loves and wants you to understand what Book Club has done. You do not know of Nethereland, by Joseph O'neill. You have not tasted of Bandits, by Elmore Leonard. You have not yet sullied yourself with the pretense of Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. You have dreamed of but never read the words of The Road by Cormac Mccarthy
But you want Book Club. This, Book Club knows, before you even think it, before the thought makes its way up from the bottom depths of your psyche.
So, Book Club will give you these Books as they have become inside of Book Club.
Book Club helps. Book Club Reveals Below a story for those of you outside of Book Club.
Read it, and Read on. Book Club Presents: The Underground Society of Darker Types Who Do the Crime in a Postmodern Nightmare, by Book Club.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Jack Skillet laughed at the empty concrete streets in front of the corporation. The streets were manufactured by technology, but they were desolate of life.
The boy said "Those streets?"
"Yeah, I reckon."
He took the dusty old Iphone out from his frayed pocket to check the google maps app. It made him think of Juanita, who had showed him the wild side of life, with wondrous fragrances of mate, pisco sour, and Ma Po Doufu. Juanita, who took away the point of his existence, and replaced it with another.
The door to the corporation's office was about several yards in the distance. The clouds overhead had nothing to say to them, in this dark world.
The boy shuffled his feet nervously. "They gonna rape us up somethin' awful, I 'spect."
"They ain't gon' do nothin'"
"They ain't?"
"They ain't."
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay."
He went on up the path. The tangles of vines along the walls of the corporation's office twisted all over the place, unable to work out a choerent message,in a world devoid of meaning.
Next to him, he moved the bicycle along the path. His strong hands gripped the handlebars as his long, model-like body moved sinuously towards the door.
Juanita had left him and the boy, left them to keep going down the path. It had been on a cold night, when the camp fire sent smoke up into the godless sky, that answered no prayers.
She had come to him, in a womanly way, with her mocha brown skin fraying his nordic restraint. And after, as they lay in a barren land, listening to the drinking songs of cannibals, as they drank the blood of their children, she had whispered to him.
"Me voy."
"Why?"
"Jewelry heist."
"Who?"
"The guy at the computer company."
"Which one?"
"The one that symolizes the dislocation of modernity."
"How?"
"Loose cannon help. Web of contravening plots."
"Motivation?"
"For who?"
"For you, loose cannon,me."
"Hard to tell."
And that was the way it was. Things were hard to tell, when you got down to it. Things were just hard to tell nowadays.
They proceded along the path. He could make out more detail of the corporation's office now.
There was a click behind him and he froze.
The boy froze too. "That a gun?"
"Uh hunh."
"Somebody hurt me?"
"Nobody hurt you."
The man with the gun asked them to to turn around. Jack Skillet could tell by the sound of the man with the gun's voice that he was crazy and unstable.
As he turned, he thought of his life before the fall, he thought of the big city, all the crazy characters. He was just a futures analyst back them, prioritizing amortization tables for international financiers who dabbled in the funds derivatives assets.
He had been just another tall, stiff, blond, European type. With eyes of blue that expressed no emotion or unpleasant social truth.
Then he had met Juanita. At the top of the empire state building, she had been so excited at her arrival in the land of dreams, as all immigrants were, that she had danced a native, festive dance. He had seen her as she swirled her dress, hoop earrings dangling wildly, with spicy passion.
And she had shown him the other side of the city. A world of hustlers and cheats, dreamers and womanizers. Free of the chains of morality and decency that trapped Jack.
He finished turning and faced the wild eyed man with the gun. There was a look of desperation in his eyes. He was drunk, and his clothes were brown with dirt, and hung in tatters over his skinny shoulders.
"Ain't gon' do it." He told them.
"Ain't gon' what?"
"Ain't gon' steal jewelries first, 'fore Juanita does it."
"Why?"
"'Cause i 'gon' get it."
"How?"
"Point gun, not let you go."
"Who are you?"
"Erasmus Deleterius, part of secret society."
"What it do, sercret society?"
"Can't tell. Read book: Plays of Aeschylus. Go civc center, see performance."
"You gonna shoot me, mister?"
"No."
He motioned for them to move behind him. They did. As they moved behind him, Jack could see the grass clippings on the side of the lawn. Juanita had been a gardener. The clippings lay dead on the dead concrete, cut off from their life, killed for encroaching on the man-made world.
Erasmus Deleterius ran to the door and went inside.
The boy too thought of Juanita. "She my momma?"
"Mm."
"Momma come home?"
"Mm nnh."
Jack knew he had to get to the door and open it up. he would do anything to keep the boy safe, and get back the mother the boy had lost.
He went on up the path and arrived at the door.
From inside there were loud yells and gunshots. He shoved the boy to the side, yanked open the door, and rushed in.
Erasmus Deleterius lay dead. Juanita was on the desk, shot, jibbering in her native tongue, praying to pagan gods.
He looked around the office, a bunch of desks laid out, where people spent most of their lives.
He saw the man with the jewelry. He saw the pirate who had tried to get the jewelry, dead and hung on the wall with his own hooked hand. He felt nothing. He looked atJuanita.
"Get the nekclace."
"No. Help you."
Then the man with the jewelry shot him. The boy came in. The man with the jewelry said "I take care of you?"
The boy said to Jack "You die now?"
"Unh."
"I go with other man?"
"Unh."
Jack skillet a man made by secular philosophy, technology and Sartre, looked up at the ceiling as the dark red pool of blood spread over his chest. The boy had a new dad, but would he do a better job? Was there any progress? Or was it all just decadence.
"Hope good." he said.
"Yeah." Juanita said.
They both died. The man with the jewelry put the necklace over the boy's head and they headed back outside, back down the path.
Book Club: The collective has consumed three novels since it's inception earlier this year. You may have missed it.
You may have lingered, over there, in your fear of Book Club. In your incomprehension at the intangible but binding web of lust that is Book Club.
But Book Club loves and wants you to understand what Book Club has done. You do not know of Nethereland, by Joseph O'neill. You have not tasted of Bandits, by Elmore Leonard. You have not yet sullied yourself with the pretense of Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. You have dreamed of but never read the words of The Road by Cormac Mccarthy
But you want Book Club. This, Book Club knows, before you even think it, before the thought makes its way up from the bottom depths of your psyche.
So, Book Club will give you these Books as they have become inside of Book Club.
Book Club helps. Book Club Reveals Below a story for those of you outside of Book Club.
Read it, and Read on. Book Club Presents: The Underground Society of Darker Types Who Do the Crime in a Postmodern Nightmare, by Book Club.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Jack Skillet laughed at the empty concrete streets in front of the corporation. The streets were manufactured by technology, but they were desolate of life.
The boy said "Those streets?"
"Yeah, I reckon."
He took the dusty old Iphone out from his frayed pocket to check the google maps app. It made him think of Juanita, who had showed him the wild side of life, with wondrous fragrances of mate, pisco sour, and Ma Po Doufu. Juanita, who took away the point of his existence, and replaced it with another.
The door to the corporation's office was about several yards in the distance. The clouds overhead had nothing to say to them, in this dark world.
The boy shuffled his feet nervously. "They gonna rape us up somethin' awful, I 'spect."
"They ain't gon' do nothin'"
"They ain't?"
"They ain't."
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay."
He went on up the path. The tangles of vines along the walls of the corporation's office twisted all over the place, unable to work out a choerent message,in a world devoid of meaning.
Next to him, he moved the bicycle along the path. His strong hands gripped the handlebars as his long, model-like body moved sinuously towards the door.
Juanita had left him and the boy, left them to keep going down the path. It had been on a cold night, when the camp fire sent smoke up into the godless sky, that answered no prayers.
She had come to him, in a womanly way, with her mocha brown skin fraying his nordic restraint. And after, as they lay in a barren land, listening to the drinking songs of cannibals, as they drank the blood of their children, she had whispered to him.
"Me voy."
"Why?"
"Jewelry heist."
"Who?"
"The guy at the computer company."
"Which one?"
"The one that symolizes the dislocation of modernity."
"How?"
"Loose cannon help. Web of contravening plots."
"Motivation?"
"For who?"
"For you, loose cannon,me."
"Hard to tell."
And that was the way it was. Things were hard to tell, when you got down to it. Things were just hard to tell nowadays.
They proceded along the path. He could make out more detail of the corporation's office now.
There was a click behind him and he froze.
The boy froze too. "That a gun?"
"Uh hunh."
"Somebody hurt me?"
"Nobody hurt you."
The man with the gun asked them to to turn around. Jack Skillet could tell by the sound of the man with the gun's voice that he was crazy and unstable.
As he turned, he thought of his life before the fall, he thought of the big city, all the crazy characters. He was just a futures analyst back them, prioritizing amortization tables for international financiers who dabbled in the funds derivatives assets.
He had been just another tall, stiff, blond, European type. With eyes of blue that expressed no emotion or unpleasant social truth.
Then he had met Juanita. At the top of the empire state building, she had been so excited at her arrival in the land of dreams, as all immigrants were, that she had danced a native, festive dance. He had seen her as she swirled her dress, hoop earrings dangling wildly, with spicy passion.
And she had shown him the other side of the city. A world of hustlers and cheats, dreamers and womanizers. Free of the chains of morality and decency that trapped Jack.
He finished turning and faced the wild eyed man with the gun. There was a look of desperation in his eyes. He was drunk, and his clothes were brown with dirt, and hung in tatters over his skinny shoulders.
"Ain't gon' do it." He told them.
"Ain't gon' what?"
"Ain't gon' steal jewelries first, 'fore Juanita does it."
"Why?"
"'Cause i 'gon' get it."
"How?"
"Point gun, not let you go."
"Who are you?"
"Erasmus Deleterius, part of secret society."
"What it do, sercret society?"
"Can't tell. Read book: Plays of Aeschylus. Go civc center, see performance."
"You gonna shoot me, mister?"
"No."
He motioned for them to move behind him. They did. As they moved behind him, Jack could see the grass clippings on the side of the lawn. Juanita had been a gardener. The clippings lay dead on the dead concrete, cut off from their life, killed for encroaching on the man-made world.
Erasmus Deleterius ran to the door and went inside.
The boy too thought of Juanita. "She my momma?"
"Mm."
"Momma come home?"
"Mm nnh."
Jack knew he had to get to the door and open it up. he would do anything to keep the boy safe, and get back the mother the boy had lost.
He went on up the path and arrived at the door.
From inside there were loud yells and gunshots. He shoved the boy to the side, yanked open the door, and rushed in.
Erasmus Deleterius lay dead. Juanita was on the desk, shot, jibbering in her native tongue, praying to pagan gods.
He looked around the office, a bunch of desks laid out, where people spent most of their lives.
He saw the man with the jewelry. He saw the pirate who had tried to get the jewelry, dead and hung on the wall with his own hooked hand. He felt nothing. He looked atJuanita.
"Get the nekclace."
"No. Help you."
Then the man with the jewelry shot him. The boy came in. The man with the jewelry said "I take care of you?"
The boy said to Jack "You die now?"
"Unh."
"I go with other man?"
"Unh."
Jack skillet a man made by secular philosophy, technology and Sartre, looked up at the ceiling as the dark red pool of blood spread over his chest. The boy had a new dad, but would he do a better job? Was there any progress? Or was it all just decadence.
"Hope good." he said.
"Yeah." Juanita said.
They both died. The man with the jewelry put the necklace over the boy's head and they headed back outside, back down the path.
NON-FICTION: Steven Pinker and the Over Reach of the SocioBio Paradigm
I'm listening to Steven Pinker lay out his arguments from The Blank Slate on a TVO podcast, Big Ideas.
I've been thinking for awhile about the annoying but inevitable overreach of this genetics-makes-society paradigm that started with E.O. Wilson, and Chomsky, and the rest.
I think Pinker is an example of a preacher for this paradigm. I read The Blank Slate when it first came out eight or so years ago. I was interested due to it's rejection of the anti-human nature character that I understood to be a phenomena of the outdated academic left, as well as a flaw of socialism, and a key to the evil of twentieth century dictators.
Of course, the idea now is that since before the social sciences got to the point where many said that culture makes everything, we are now getting back to the point where human nature, now genetics, makes everything.
Pinker ties an argument by Steven Jay Gould and Lowentin that claimed that attribution of behavior/culture to genetics was used to maintain existing, and that Social Biology was a continuation of this, with the doctrine of the Blank Slate.
A little later on, he ties in racial prejudice and pogroms against successful racial minorities, whose cultures led them to greater success, with the doctrine of the Blank Slate. The idea that everybody is the same is the idea that allowed this persecution, since it indicates that, among equally Blank Slates, those who get more are greedy.
This is odd. Persecution against Hindu minorities, Chinese minorities, and the Igbo had to do with religion and in-group morality, not social science trends.
As to in-group morality, Pinker paraphrases Singer, who says that this is the default switch of human nature. Pinker goes on to explain that we have had centuries of culture to teach against this. This is odd as well, as we can more simply say that children are taught to regard other people as either acceptable or unacceptable. There is much ambiguity in the way that children, and the adults they become, view their groupings. There is also a whole lot of subtlety. As with modern Chinese, who like us, have distinct, intersecting rings of social networks, including family, in-laws, region-group, coworkers, bosses, classmates (very big for them), and friends.
Little children in these primitive tribes may or may not hate reflexively dehumanize other tribes. And here, we get a taste of the commonality that the new Genotypic Social Sciences have with the previous excesses of culture and system: The avoidance of psychology and avoidance of the complexity of personal experience.
But when we look at those savages, regarded as our recent cultural ancestors, perhaps the way 'we' were before the Holocene, we are supposed to see a simpler version of ourselves, which reflects our true human nature (universal genetic tendency.)
I just had a Physical Anthropology professor who's thesis showed that men's pickiness in female selection evolved because it promoted status and greater access to sexual resources.
It might also be that we just feel attracted to the most sexually viable woman in the set available to our perception, or the woman who has exaggerated examples of features that connote fertility among woman. But this answer is not suitable to the trend now, and so seems facile, and unfruitful.
For Pinker, growing up around all that culture makes everything excess, like rape is all about cultural patriarchy, or crime comes from racism and poverty, it is natural that his swing to the other side would be excessive.
For my Phys Anth professor, though, the situation is different. Now that this perspective dominates, it is heading into it's phase of over application. And, for a young academic, there is need to produce work that understands the truth of human nature as the leading minds understand it. Respecting your professors, wanting to get their approval, wanting to succeed in that academic endeavor that you are unlikely to contemplate at a structural level, and wanting to smash the false idols of the receding generation all lead to reproducing the latest big idea that the mainstream of academia is grasped by.
Into the big idea, the universe must be crammed. The renaissance saw a lot of new machines and tecnhology, and gave us the start of Mechanism, around the time of the disovery of electricity and modern chemistry, we got vitalism. Then, Hegel, Marx, and Bentham started thinking about how the big thing determines the small thing, and that led, eventually, to the Blank Slate.
Now we are back to human nature again, and this time the argument is leaning towards a positive view of human nature.
I don't think we will see everyone adopting the obvious implication of evolution by natural selection: what we call good is just what was once adaptive. The choice is only to inhibit or encourage tendencies brought about by our evolution. There is no final morality, no safety in human nature. Sometimes dolphins might rescue humans, but it is more common for us humans to slaughter dolphins. That is our nature. Charity is also human nature. We can choose life affirming values, but we are nowhere compelled to do so.
Biological and genetic data is useful. Constructing our evolutionary heritage is a noble endeavor, and the results fill me with awe. But, Pinker and the rest will not get away with merely fighting for a respect of the actual evolved tendencies of humans. They will not escape the expanding canvas of the big idea.
Our evolved society and social intelligence will not allow this. The tendency in human nature to go too far with an idea, never realizing that it is just one way that we grasp existence, and the tendency to get caught by metaphors, rather than spreading out the data before us, and letting their implications branch out from them in all directions, is a bit hard for us. Especially when we cannot distinguish between research, revelation of causal processes, and the paradigm we imagine to be inherent in them.
Just as the early phrenologists left behind good neurological insights, so too will the present academic fashion queens continue to produce mountains of brilliant explanations and data.
Let's hope they can get to a point where the prevalence of metaphor, it's evolution, and it's non-binding, limited character can be found in the workings of Social Biological brains. Let us get to the point where we can grab the big idea by the root and pin it down in our neurological processes, rather then just letting it morph and carry us away elsewhere.
Further, I hope we can get to the day when we replace Sociobiology with Biological Socialism.
Sociobiology will inevitably lead to prescriptive forces, both among academics and the intermediary levels of society, ending in popular culture. It has already done so. But I hope that they are able to grasp the ultimately structurally prescriptive character of their endeavor.
Likely, they will just continue to teach the naturalistic fallacy and miss it's application to their metaphor hijacked minds.
But back to my recent Physical Anthropology class, we learned of a theory that says rape is among us because it allowed some people to impregnate woman. This coincides with the idea that behaviors are adaptations, and thus must have contributed to our survival, since we exhibit them.
It cannot be only me that automatically senses the proximity to tautology that this line of reasoning indicates.
Can you see the flaws in this?
Well, lets break down it a little:
Behaviors that are persistent among humans have persisted, therefore they must have helped in our evolution. If they hadn't helped us reproduce, those humans that had them would have failed to pass on their genes and would have died out. Every behavior? What does each behavior correspond to? A set of genetic expressions of proteins that comprise muscle, neural, glandular tissue?
Well, since we haven't quite worked all that out, we must instead rely on statistical correlation. And statistical correlation in regards to human behavior, and it's underlying psychological manifestation, is hard to be anything other than over simplification. There are so many factors to correlate with so many other factors, that you are better off delving into the messy, hard to access human mind.
Rape, of course, might be caused by any number of factors, but when you spend all your time discussing behavior in terms of natural selection, neglecting to account for any behavior through natural selection is likely to make you uncomfortable.
It is perfectly reasonable to assume that some behaviors were not adaptive and just results of other adaptations, or what Richard Dawkins calls 'misfires', where one tendency results in another tendency that is not adaptive.
According to the rape as adaptive idea, we want to rape people because our ancestors evolved this trait, which then made them more successive at reproducing.
But what I noticed about the authors of the rape book, and my professor, is that they seemed utterly ignorant and unaware of the issue of psycology in regards to rapists. If you are dealing with a rapist and want to know why he did it, you have to imagine what it's like to be him. And that's an imperfect endeavor, and it's accuracy is hard to guage.
But we can at least see that to violate someone's will in such a blatant manner requires a lack of empathy and, likely, a process of dehumanization of the victim.
When you are hurting someone, particularly when they are physically and verbally imploring you to stop, you have to justify continuing. Moreover, in rape, you see patterns of going after victims who are perceived as weak. The rapist, who is said in that book to be genetically predisposed as part of his drive to procreate, is likely to be full of rationalizations.
I doubt you will find anyone familiar with rapists, and rape cases who has come to the conclusion that "These men are basically normal guys with just this one abnormal disposition."
Rape coincides with some pretty messed up psychology. And when you have guys come along, who are experts in genetics, evolution, and biology, who just happen to have come to the conclusion that there own pigeon hole is where the real answer lies, you have to wonder if they've ever really imagined what it would be like to be a rapist, or looked at profiles and case studies that show the minds of rapists.
And, this is somewhat tangential to the rape-is-in-the-genes guys. They are primarily reacting against the rape-is-in-the-society guys. I remember hearing the 'rape is not about sex' line when I was a teenager. For me, it was obvious that this was some sort of rhetorical device, and that what it must really mean is that rape is mostly about violence.
It is disconcerting to find that these old people, full of knowledge and infused with the will to dominate through research, are so flat in their thinking.
Between genes and behavior there is a wide space called the mind, which is full of layers upon layers of meaning.
Between culture and behavior there is a wide space called subjective experience, which is likewise full of myriad messages, signals, leanings, and decisions.
I cannot help but suspect that these Genes/Society determinists have been divided from their own mind's by the needs of public debate, the demands of scientific-type evidence, and academic authority.
Rather than enjoying the indefinite contemplation of their galaxies of internal being, they identify to closely with the exactness of scientific method, and imagine themselves to be simple and determined by evidence.
Nonetheless, I look forward to the future revelations of the current paradigm. I like Pinker's The Language Instinct. I am less satisfied with The Blank Slate and what I have heard from Dennet about Breaking the Spell, but it's important to understand and process his arguments. I love everything by Dawkins. I really want to read The Art Instinct by Denis Dutton.
Hopefully, as neurology advances, we may eventually get to psychology.
I've been thinking for awhile about the annoying but inevitable overreach of this genetics-makes-society paradigm that started with E.O. Wilson, and Chomsky, and the rest.
I think Pinker is an example of a preacher for this paradigm. I read The Blank Slate when it first came out eight or so years ago. I was interested due to it's rejection of the anti-human nature character that I understood to be a phenomena of the outdated academic left, as well as a flaw of socialism, and a key to the evil of twentieth century dictators.
Of course, the idea now is that since before the social sciences got to the point where many said that culture makes everything, we are now getting back to the point where human nature, now genetics, makes everything.
Pinker ties an argument by Steven Jay Gould and Lowentin that claimed that attribution of behavior/culture to genetics was used to maintain existing, and that Social Biology was a continuation of this, with the doctrine of the Blank Slate.
A little later on, he ties in racial prejudice and pogroms against successful racial minorities, whose cultures led them to greater success, with the doctrine of the Blank Slate. The idea that everybody is the same is the idea that allowed this persecution, since it indicates that, among equally Blank Slates, those who get more are greedy.
This is odd. Persecution against Hindu minorities, Chinese minorities, and the Igbo had to do with religion and in-group morality, not social science trends.
As to in-group morality, Pinker paraphrases Singer, who says that this is the default switch of human nature. Pinker goes on to explain that we have had centuries of culture to teach against this. This is odd as well, as we can more simply say that children are taught to regard other people as either acceptable or unacceptable. There is much ambiguity in the way that children, and the adults they become, view their groupings. There is also a whole lot of subtlety. As with modern Chinese, who like us, have distinct, intersecting rings of social networks, including family, in-laws, region-group, coworkers, bosses, classmates (very big for them), and friends.
Little children in these primitive tribes may or may not hate reflexively dehumanize other tribes. And here, we get a taste of the commonality that the new Genotypic Social Sciences have with the previous excesses of culture and system: The avoidance of psychology and avoidance of the complexity of personal experience.
But when we look at those savages, regarded as our recent cultural ancestors, perhaps the way 'we' were before the Holocene, we are supposed to see a simpler version of ourselves, which reflects our true human nature (universal genetic tendency.)
I just had a Physical Anthropology professor who's thesis showed that men's pickiness in female selection evolved because it promoted status and greater access to sexual resources.
It might also be that we just feel attracted to the most sexually viable woman in the set available to our perception, or the woman who has exaggerated examples of features that connote fertility among woman. But this answer is not suitable to the trend now, and so seems facile, and unfruitful.
For Pinker, growing up around all that culture makes everything excess, like rape is all about cultural patriarchy, or crime comes from racism and poverty, it is natural that his swing to the other side would be excessive.
For my Phys Anth professor, though, the situation is different. Now that this perspective dominates, it is heading into it's phase of over application. And, for a young academic, there is need to produce work that understands the truth of human nature as the leading minds understand it. Respecting your professors, wanting to get their approval, wanting to succeed in that academic endeavor that you are unlikely to contemplate at a structural level, and wanting to smash the false idols of the receding generation all lead to reproducing the latest big idea that the mainstream of academia is grasped by.
Into the big idea, the universe must be crammed. The renaissance saw a lot of new machines and tecnhology, and gave us the start of Mechanism, around the time of the disovery of electricity and modern chemistry, we got vitalism. Then, Hegel, Marx, and Bentham started thinking about how the big thing determines the small thing, and that led, eventually, to the Blank Slate.
Now we are back to human nature again, and this time the argument is leaning towards a positive view of human nature.
I don't think we will see everyone adopting the obvious implication of evolution by natural selection: what we call good is just what was once adaptive. The choice is only to inhibit or encourage tendencies brought about by our evolution. There is no final morality, no safety in human nature. Sometimes dolphins might rescue humans, but it is more common for us humans to slaughter dolphins. That is our nature. Charity is also human nature. We can choose life affirming values, but we are nowhere compelled to do so.
Biological and genetic data is useful. Constructing our evolutionary heritage is a noble endeavor, and the results fill me with awe. But, Pinker and the rest will not get away with merely fighting for a respect of the actual evolved tendencies of humans. They will not escape the expanding canvas of the big idea.
Our evolved society and social intelligence will not allow this. The tendency in human nature to go too far with an idea, never realizing that it is just one way that we grasp existence, and the tendency to get caught by metaphors, rather than spreading out the data before us, and letting their implications branch out from them in all directions, is a bit hard for us. Especially when we cannot distinguish between research, revelation of causal processes, and the paradigm we imagine to be inherent in them.
Just as the early phrenologists left behind good neurological insights, so too will the present academic fashion queens continue to produce mountains of brilliant explanations and data.
Let's hope they can get to a point where the prevalence of metaphor, it's evolution, and it's non-binding, limited character can be found in the workings of Social Biological brains. Let us get to the point where we can grab the big idea by the root and pin it down in our neurological processes, rather then just letting it morph and carry us away elsewhere.
Further, I hope we can get to the day when we replace Sociobiology with Biological Socialism.
Sociobiology will inevitably lead to prescriptive forces, both among academics and the intermediary levels of society, ending in popular culture. It has already done so. But I hope that they are able to grasp the ultimately structurally prescriptive character of their endeavor.
Likely, they will just continue to teach the naturalistic fallacy and miss it's application to their metaphor hijacked minds.
But back to my recent Physical Anthropology class, we learned of a theory that says rape is among us because it allowed some people to impregnate woman. This coincides with the idea that behaviors are adaptations, and thus must have contributed to our survival, since we exhibit them.
It cannot be only me that automatically senses the proximity to tautology that this line of reasoning indicates.
Can you see the flaws in this?
Well, lets break down it a little:
Behaviors that are persistent among humans have persisted, therefore they must have helped in our evolution. If they hadn't helped us reproduce, those humans that had them would have failed to pass on their genes and would have died out. Every behavior? What does each behavior correspond to? A set of genetic expressions of proteins that comprise muscle, neural, glandular tissue?
Well, since we haven't quite worked all that out, we must instead rely on statistical correlation. And statistical correlation in regards to human behavior, and it's underlying psychological manifestation, is hard to be anything other than over simplification. There are so many factors to correlate with so many other factors, that you are better off delving into the messy, hard to access human mind.
Rape, of course, might be caused by any number of factors, but when you spend all your time discussing behavior in terms of natural selection, neglecting to account for any behavior through natural selection is likely to make you uncomfortable.
It is perfectly reasonable to assume that some behaviors were not adaptive and just results of other adaptations, or what Richard Dawkins calls 'misfires', where one tendency results in another tendency that is not adaptive.
According to the rape as adaptive idea, we want to rape people because our ancestors evolved this trait, which then made them more successive at reproducing.
But what I noticed about the authors of the rape book, and my professor, is that they seemed utterly ignorant and unaware of the issue of psycology in regards to rapists. If you are dealing with a rapist and want to know why he did it, you have to imagine what it's like to be him. And that's an imperfect endeavor, and it's accuracy is hard to guage.
But we can at least see that to violate someone's will in such a blatant manner requires a lack of empathy and, likely, a process of dehumanization of the victim.
When you are hurting someone, particularly when they are physically and verbally imploring you to stop, you have to justify continuing. Moreover, in rape, you see patterns of going after victims who are perceived as weak. The rapist, who is said in that book to be genetically predisposed as part of his drive to procreate, is likely to be full of rationalizations.
I doubt you will find anyone familiar with rapists, and rape cases who has come to the conclusion that "These men are basically normal guys with just this one abnormal disposition."
Rape coincides with some pretty messed up psychology. And when you have guys come along, who are experts in genetics, evolution, and biology, who just happen to have come to the conclusion that there own pigeon hole is where the real answer lies, you have to wonder if they've ever really imagined what it would be like to be a rapist, or looked at profiles and case studies that show the minds of rapists.
And, this is somewhat tangential to the rape-is-in-the-genes guys. They are primarily reacting against the rape-is-in-the-society guys. I remember hearing the 'rape is not about sex' line when I was a teenager. For me, it was obvious that this was some sort of rhetorical device, and that what it must really mean is that rape is mostly about violence.
It is disconcerting to find that these old people, full of knowledge and infused with the will to dominate through research, are so flat in their thinking.
Between genes and behavior there is a wide space called the mind, which is full of layers upon layers of meaning.
Between culture and behavior there is a wide space called subjective experience, which is likewise full of myriad messages, signals, leanings, and decisions.
I cannot help but suspect that these Genes/Society determinists have been divided from their own mind's by the needs of public debate, the demands of scientific-type evidence, and academic authority.
Rather than enjoying the indefinite contemplation of their galaxies of internal being, they identify to closely with the exactness of scientific method, and imagine themselves to be simple and determined by evidence.
Nonetheless, I look forward to the future revelations of the current paradigm. I like Pinker's The Language Instinct. I am less satisfied with The Blank Slate and what I have heard from Dennet about Breaking the Spell, but it's important to understand and process his arguments. I love everything by Dawkins. I really want to read The Art Instinct by Denis Dutton.
Hopefully, as neurology advances, we may eventually get to psychology.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
NON-FICTION: The Hindrance of Categorization: Capitalism and Socialism
I have just read through five pages/articles, 1 2 3 4 5 , on whether or not Sweden is Socialist.
And, anyone who reads this is likely already inclined to an answer, and ready to choose a category.
The funny thing is that so much analysis of Sweden, that I've seen, appears to use the facts of Sweden's legal and economic systems to argue for its exclusion from or inclusion into ill defined categories: Capitalism and Socialism.
The principle that puts observation and comprehension before assessment of value is one that humans generally have a hard time keeping to. Thus, we often tend to merely jump to categories, and away from the actual complexity of the phenomena we are referring to.
Moreover, these categories are daily employed in a manner that unconsciously obfuscates their prescriptive and descriptive variants, their doctrinal variants, and their taxonomic variants.
When a Trotskyist argues for socialism, she likely has a clear definition of what she means by that. She is likely arguing that it is a good thing for a party of people to acquire power over the economy and government in the name of the proletariat/workers. But when she talks of capitalism, she is more likely to regard the proposals for economic systems put forth by Carl Menger, by Adam Smith, by Mitlon Friedman, by Wilfredo Pareto , by Friedrich Hayek, by Ayn Rand,or the actual policies enacted by administrators of the various capitalist systems as all more or less the same thing, and unworthy of separate consideration.
Conversely, proponents of capitalism, particularly the anti-analytical, shaken up sheep that one sees all over the t.v. denouncing Obama as a socialist are generally ignorant of both the classification and particulars of the policies they oppose as well as the conceptual delineations and history of the ideas they propose.
What in the world does it mean to describe countries as socialist or capitalist and on this basis argue for the superiority of either supposed system?
I have, for the last few years increasingly felt that, at the base of our crumbling ideological fortresses are merely actual policies and facts of our existence, which would be much more intelligible without the convoluted artifices that we construct around them.
I have also noticed that a fundamental flaw in the debates over political ideology carried out in our culture on the small level as well as in the popular media is that it aims at little efficacious consequence, and is almost entirely carried out for the purpose of rhetorical victory.
The ideologues and faction lovers that comprise much of the discussion of what to do on the national level are often entirely lacking in the drive towards achieving mutually agreeable outcomes.
Such agreement is also considered disloyal to the ideologies. It is perhaps a legacy of the our great Christian tradition that we consider allegiance to wide conceptual schemes, constructed to guide our behavior, more important than the success of that behavior.
It is not enough for the ideologue and enlightened person to find mutually desirable outcomes. It is not enough to agree on mutually desired goals, as anarchists and therapists recommend.
For many of us, the important thing is allegiance to ideas. This is why a discussion of how to provide poor people with medical care becomes a grand debate between competing visions of the universe. (The opponents said, "We all want everyone to have healthcare, but...." A teenage student of mine once told me "In Chinese, when you say 'something, something, but...' That means everything you said before but is nonsense." ) What most people are incapable of is saying. I want health care, you want health care, let's start from there, and be open to revision at each step of the way. If this inability to deal rationally with each other at the national level is obvious, you should then wonder why you still cannot fix it.
The vast array of politicians, the vast array of powerless commentators, and the vast array of financial interests could not simply agree on a common goal. Rather, the public was given the choice between Government Takeover and Health care For All. We were asked to choose between these alternative perspectives.
The actual problem of providing health care to poor people was inaccessible in the popular dialogue.
But something was accomplished. In all the fighting and confusion, there was a group who united together in natural solidarity. That group was the health care lobby. Many of the aides who helped shaped the health care legislation were registered health care lobbyists, and the the health care industry gave generously to most everyone involved in the debate.
And, in the end, it seems that the healt hcare industry was most successful. People who own stock in HMO's are also getting something from this, as HMO stocks have been doing quite well.
There is no irony in this. Our economic system, as well as our society creates a framework in which manipulation of the government for financial gain is utterly reasonable. It was so with Hamilton's crew, and Jefferson's crew, and all who came after them.
I know of many proponents of Capitalism that oppose this, and all opponents of Capitalism also oppose this. Nonetheless, it is a constant feature of our country, and most countries, that has been with us throughout our short history.
Rich people have disproportionate power over the government. And, generally, bosses have more power than employees.
Now, this is something that people would benefit from talking about. Should rich people have more influence over the government? Many, perhaps most of those among the first generation of our Nation believed that they should.
Likewise, there are still many people that believe it is fair for the employer to have more decision making power in the company than the employees. There are also many who support unions.
And, as for the desired political ideology, we ought to take a break, for at least twenty years, and instead focus on profitable questions.
There is no Real Capitalism in existence today. If you doubt this, go to misses.org. Proponents of capitalism argue for systems that don't exist, and have never existed. The same goes for proponents of socialism.
There are some people who thought the Soviet Union was the best system imaginable, or who thought the British system was the best, or the Dutch, or the French, or, of course, the American.
But, generally, the people who grasp the system for what it is and work with it are regarded as unprincipled, wishy-washy, and unscrupulous. Many of them are. There are also those, who really do want to effect positive changes in the lives of their fellow citizens. There are people who want to make others healthier, happier, more comfortable, and more educated.
These people are much more valuable than socialists denouncing false-trotskyists, marxists villifying corporations, O'Reilly denouncing Oberman, etc.
At the very least, we ought to preach to each the other the doctrine of first delineating the varieties of the beliefs we oppose, even, god forbid, when that extends to theology.
And, anyone who reads this is likely already inclined to an answer, and ready to choose a category.
The funny thing is that so much analysis of Sweden, that I've seen, appears to use the facts of Sweden's legal and economic systems to argue for its exclusion from or inclusion into ill defined categories: Capitalism and Socialism.
The principle that puts observation and comprehension before assessment of value is one that humans generally have a hard time keeping to. Thus, we often tend to merely jump to categories, and away from the actual complexity of the phenomena we are referring to.
Moreover, these categories are daily employed in a manner that unconsciously obfuscates their prescriptive and descriptive variants, their doctrinal variants, and their taxonomic variants.
When a Trotskyist argues for socialism, she likely has a clear definition of what she means by that. She is likely arguing that it is a good thing for a party of people to acquire power over the economy and government in the name of the proletariat/workers. But when she talks of capitalism, she is more likely to regard the proposals for economic systems put forth by Carl Menger, by Adam Smith, by Mitlon Friedman, by Wilfredo Pareto , by Friedrich Hayek, by Ayn Rand,or the actual policies enacted by administrators of the various capitalist systems as all more or less the same thing, and unworthy of separate consideration.
Conversely, proponents of capitalism, particularly the anti-analytical, shaken up sheep that one sees all over the t.v. denouncing Obama as a socialist are generally ignorant of both the classification and particulars of the policies they oppose as well as the conceptual delineations and history of the ideas they propose.
What in the world does it mean to describe countries as socialist or capitalist and on this basis argue for the superiority of either supposed system?
I have, for the last few years increasingly felt that, at the base of our crumbling ideological fortresses are merely actual policies and facts of our existence, which would be much more intelligible without the convoluted artifices that we construct around them.
I have also noticed that a fundamental flaw in the debates over political ideology carried out in our culture on the small level as well as in the popular media is that it aims at little efficacious consequence, and is almost entirely carried out for the purpose of rhetorical victory.
The ideologues and faction lovers that comprise much of the discussion of what to do on the national level are often entirely lacking in the drive towards achieving mutually agreeable outcomes.
Such agreement is also considered disloyal to the ideologies. It is perhaps a legacy of the our great Christian tradition that we consider allegiance to wide conceptual schemes, constructed to guide our behavior, more important than the success of that behavior.
It is not enough for the ideologue and enlightened person to find mutually desirable outcomes. It is not enough to agree on mutually desired goals, as anarchists and therapists recommend.
For many of us, the important thing is allegiance to ideas. This is why a discussion of how to provide poor people with medical care becomes a grand debate between competing visions of the universe. (The opponents said, "We all want everyone to have healthcare, but...." A teenage student of mine once told me "In Chinese, when you say 'something, something, but...' That means everything you said before but is nonsense." ) What most people are incapable of is saying. I want health care, you want health care, let's start from there, and be open to revision at each step of the way. If this inability to deal rationally with each other at the national level is obvious, you should then wonder why you still cannot fix it.
The vast array of politicians, the vast array of powerless commentators, and the vast array of financial interests could not simply agree on a common goal. Rather, the public was given the choice between Government Takeover and Health care For All. We were asked to choose between these alternative perspectives.
The actual problem of providing health care to poor people was inaccessible in the popular dialogue.
But something was accomplished. In all the fighting and confusion, there was a group who united together in natural solidarity. That group was the health care lobby. Many of the aides who helped shaped the health care legislation were registered health care lobbyists, and the the health care industry gave generously to most everyone involved in the debate.
And, in the end, it seems that the healt hcare industry was most successful. People who own stock in HMO's are also getting something from this, as HMO stocks have been doing quite well.
There is no irony in this. Our economic system, as well as our society creates a framework in which manipulation of the government for financial gain is utterly reasonable. It was so with Hamilton's crew, and Jefferson's crew, and all who came after them.
I know of many proponents of Capitalism that oppose this, and all opponents of Capitalism also oppose this. Nonetheless, it is a constant feature of our country, and most countries, that has been with us throughout our short history.
Rich people have disproportionate power over the government. And, generally, bosses have more power than employees.
Now, this is something that people would benefit from talking about. Should rich people have more influence over the government? Many, perhaps most of those among the first generation of our Nation believed that they should.
Likewise, there are still many people that believe it is fair for the employer to have more decision making power in the company than the employees. There are also many who support unions.
And, as for the desired political ideology, we ought to take a break, for at least twenty years, and instead focus on profitable questions.
There is no Real Capitalism in existence today. If you doubt this, go to misses.org. Proponents of capitalism argue for systems that don't exist, and have never existed. The same goes for proponents of socialism.
There are some people who thought the Soviet Union was the best system imaginable, or who thought the British system was the best, or the Dutch, or the French, or, of course, the American.
But, generally, the people who grasp the system for what it is and work with it are regarded as unprincipled, wishy-washy, and unscrupulous. Many of them are. There are also those, who really do want to effect positive changes in the lives of their fellow citizens. There are people who want to make others healthier, happier, more comfortable, and more educated.
These people are much more valuable than socialists denouncing false-trotskyists, marxists villifying corporations, O'Reilly denouncing Oberman, etc.
At the very least, we ought to preach to each the other the doctrine of first delineating the varieties of the beliefs we oppose, even, god forbid, when that extends to theology.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
NON-FICTION: Zizek on Trotsky, and The Qualitative Shift from Capitalism
The main point I've gotten from Slavoj Zizek Presents Trotsky: Terrorism and Commumism is that there is an important problem to be solved regarding the transition from a capitalist to a socialist/communist/Marxist society.
The classic presentation of this problem can be stated in terms of the recent health care debate.
The most intelligent, reasonable president, obligated to the rich and powerful that funded and backed his campaign, was elected after the last one was perceived as a total fuck up.
And what was Obama met with, after winning out over Mccain? A sense of renewal, of hope, and covering up of the public's complicity in the previous regime's crimes. And on the other side, we had a mobilization of politically ignorant, marginalized bastards of John Birch, who were manipulated into viewing this utter gentleman and steward of capitalism, who was willing to reform it so that it might last longer and hurt less it's participants, as a socialist, antichrist, muslim, savage, atheist, and non-citizen.
Some on the left called Bush a fascist, but that wasn't quite the party line of the democrats. And Bush did take steps, along with Cheney and others they hired into their administration, to violate the rights of people they decided were bad, and the rights of Americans in general. They advocated torture. None of this is necessarily Fascistic. The appeal to the nation as something which must be defended at the cost of individual rights is rather Fascistic, but, again, this wasn't the main designation of the mainstream left for GW.
Attributing to Obama every sort of evil feared by their white, upper to lower class Americans that the Republicans want to keep with them, is, however, the tactic of the right.
Again, we are talking about an upper class capitalist, well integrated into the ruling class and beholden to numerous capitalist lobbies. He professes Christianity and the importance of our vast military. He believes in wage slavery and the preeminence of America.
But among the opposition, the merging of corporate backed Republicans, with vaguely ideological conservatives, and half-libertarians has resulted in a muddled ideology of anti-government sentiment that faithfully supports the governments wars and abuse of people it calls bad, believes the solution is to return to a past whose inventors they've never heard of, and thinks that a free economy, separated from the government, has something to with American history or the constitution.
But see what this moderate advocate of the modern Welfare State has become.
For proposing national healthcare, which other first world capitalist countries have, he is called a socialist, for not sharing the Left-Behind, Born-Again, Stay in the Closet, Defend Defintions, theology of that sect of Baptist Christianity which has, of late, enjoyed the patronage of the highest levels of government, for all this he is declared to be a fake Christian, an antichrist, and a Muslim.
The hammer and sickle are now, for much of the right, symbolic of Obama. He is compared to Pol Pot, Mao Ze Dong, Stalin, and Hitler.
This is how much of the wealthiest factions of capitalism responds to minor reforms.
They organize the mob, work them up to the point where they utterly believe that they are fighting for there very lives, and set them loose.
A lot of them are ready to see Obama dead. If he did die, a lot of people would shrug and say something like "Well, what did you expect? People can't be expected to just take this laying down."
When the Kennedy brothers were killed, a whole lot of people were happy. Right wingers knew that the Kennedys weren't real Americans. They knew that they were pope worshippers, commie-sypmathizers, nigger lovers, and all the rest.
And now you see these freaks with guns, and the tree of liberty crap, that was written in defense of poor people unable to pay taxes (who were under attack by the rich.)
This is where Trotsky comes in. Trotsky had a debate with Kautsky on representational government.
Trotsky's answer to the allegation that the Bolsheviks had invalidated themselves by throwing away parliamentary democracy was to say that parliamentary democracy was a vehicle by which the capitalists retained power and prevented any sort of proletarian empowerment.
And that's pretty much what's happened. The poor and disadvantaged get more alms, while most of the money still goes to domination of other countries, and campaign contributions and the like to dominate this country.
Unions are scattered, disregarded, and seen as a hindrance to progress in the mainstream.
But Trotsky was accused of terrorism, and he acknowledged that terrorism was exactly what he was engaged in.
The major powers of the world united against the Bolsheviks early on, and the White Guard inside Russia was ready to do whatever they could to kill and wipe out the workers uprising.
So Trotsky said terrorism was needed against the the capitalists, and royalists and the rest.
And he was partially right. They got rid of the enemies, and they also got rid of the power of the soviets.
They spoke for the proletariat, then seized power in the name of the workers, and then maintained power in the name of the soviets, and then killed all kinds of people and set up their party as the sole power.
And in all this, the power of the soviets was kicked aside in the name of the power of the bolsheviks, and the party hierarchy. Then Stalin got control of this,closed off the revolution for good, and dedicated Soviet Intelligence to killing it abroad.
Meanwhile, leftists, socialists, and even anarchists tried their best to believe in this image of Socailism, the closest thing they had yet seen to a victory of the proletariat over the domination and oppression of the capitalists.
And what they got for it was the association of party dictatorship and savage cruelty with their ideals.
And when the Spanish Civil War came around, Stalin was their to organize the worlds socialists (by which I mean those that signed up for communism, as well as anarchists) against any part of that uprising that would compete with the Soviet Union for revolutionary status.
And the capitalist enemies of liberation were completely satisfied with Lenin's right wing deviation, and agreed that he and Stalin were in fact, the truest Marxists one could ever imagine.
So, on the one hand, Trotsky's defense of state terrorism is valid in the context of revolution, but when that party has no mechanism of accountability to those it claims to represent,you end up with just the party speaking to itself and accountable only to whoever can seize power.
And the Bolsheviks domination of the socialist movement took away the power of the people and, simultaneously, gave the defenders of capitalist oppression an effortless method of hunting down and completely discrediting socialists: linking them with Russia. Many socialists were in fact linked up with the comintern or Russia.
And down to the present day, the idea that having an impoverished class is caused by the economic/power structure we live in is immediately and conveniently dismissed as Communism, Socialism, and Marxism, all of which were ideas seized by the Soviet Union and ruined for those who seek liberation for the poor.
But, the problem of liberation is that among the rich, as seen with the moderate attempts of Obama, there will always be those who must wipe out anything that grants power to that class which they rely on for their profits.
Terrorism and seizure of the state is not the solution. Terrorism encourages more of the same, as well as bitter enemies who never forgive the regime for its crimes. Seizing state power has lead to preservation of the state at the cost of revolution.
But reform through popular politics is also ineffectual. Millions of dollars went into making Obama president, and millions of dollars went into fighting healthcare reform, and billions of dollars went into keeping up moribund companies who stifle the economy, and billions of dollars are going to Afghanistan, and Iraq, and the thousands of soldiers in military bases our government maintains throughout the world.
To reform the state through it's mechanisms leads both to the villification of a moderate like Obama and too the state tyranny of the Soviet Union.
All this bad mouthing, I hope, serves to illustrate my lack of practical solutions. The most beneficial solutions that I can see in our society, are the consensus model among anarchists, unions, consensus as promoted by therapists in familial relations, and the promotion of atheism against the few sects trying to seize power in this country.
That's enough for this morning.
The classic presentation of this problem can be stated in terms of the recent health care debate.
The most intelligent, reasonable president, obligated to the rich and powerful that funded and backed his campaign, was elected after the last one was perceived as a total fuck up.
And what was Obama met with, after winning out over Mccain? A sense of renewal, of hope, and covering up of the public's complicity in the previous regime's crimes. And on the other side, we had a mobilization of politically ignorant, marginalized bastards of John Birch, who were manipulated into viewing this utter gentleman and steward of capitalism, who was willing to reform it so that it might last longer and hurt less it's participants, as a socialist, antichrist, muslim, savage, atheist, and non-citizen.
Some on the left called Bush a fascist, but that wasn't quite the party line of the democrats. And Bush did take steps, along with Cheney and others they hired into their administration, to violate the rights of people they decided were bad, and the rights of Americans in general. They advocated torture. None of this is necessarily Fascistic. The appeal to the nation as something which must be defended at the cost of individual rights is rather Fascistic, but, again, this wasn't the main designation of the mainstream left for GW.
Attributing to Obama every sort of evil feared by their white, upper to lower class Americans that the Republicans want to keep with them, is, however, the tactic of the right.
Again, we are talking about an upper class capitalist, well integrated into the ruling class and beholden to numerous capitalist lobbies. He professes Christianity and the importance of our vast military. He believes in wage slavery and the preeminence of America.
But among the opposition, the merging of corporate backed Republicans, with vaguely ideological conservatives, and half-libertarians has resulted in a muddled ideology of anti-government sentiment that faithfully supports the governments wars and abuse of people it calls bad, believes the solution is to return to a past whose inventors they've never heard of, and thinks that a free economy, separated from the government, has something to with American history or the constitution.
But see what this moderate advocate of the modern Welfare State has become.
For proposing national healthcare, which other first world capitalist countries have, he is called a socialist, for not sharing the Left-Behind, Born-Again, Stay in the Closet, Defend Defintions, theology of that sect of Baptist Christianity which has, of late, enjoyed the patronage of the highest levels of government, for all this he is declared to be a fake Christian, an antichrist, and a Muslim.
The hammer and sickle are now, for much of the right, symbolic of Obama. He is compared to Pol Pot, Mao Ze Dong, Stalin, and Hitler.
This is how much of the wealthiest factions of capitalism responds to minor reforms.
They organize the mob, work them up to the point where they utterly believe that they are fighting for there very lives, and set them loose.
A lot of them are ready to see Obama dead. If he did die, a lot of people would shrug and say something like "Well, what did you expect? People can't be expected to just take this laying down."
When the Kennedy brothers were killed, a whole lot of people were happy. Right wingers knew that the Kennedys weren't real Americans. They knew that they were pope worshippers, commie-sypmathizers, nigger lovers, and all the rest.
And now you see these freaks with guns, and the tree of liberty crap, that was written in defense of poor people unable to pay taxes (who were under attack by the rich.)
This is where Trotsky comes in. Trotsky had a debate with Kautsky on representational government.
Trotsky's answer to the allegation that the Bolsheviks had invalidated themselves by throwing away parliamentary democracy was to say that parliamentary democracy was a vehicle by which the capitalists retained power and prevented any sort of proletarian empowerment.
And that's pretty much what's happened. The poor and disadvantaged get more alms, while most of the money still goes to domination of other countries, and campaign contributions and the like to dominate this country.
Unions are scattered, disregarded, and seen as a hindrance to progress in the mainstream.
But Trotsky was accused of terrorism, and he acknowledged that terrorism was exactly what he was engaged in.
The major powers of the world united against the Bolsheviks early on, and the White Guard inside Russia was ready to do whatever they could to kill and wipe out the workers uprising.
So Trotsky said terrorism was needed against the the capitalists, and royalists and the rest.
And he was partially right. They got rid of the enemies, and they also got rid of the power of the soviets.
They spoke for the proletariat, then seized power in the name of the workers, and then maintained power in the name of the soviets, and then killed all kinds of people and set up their party as the sole power.
And in all this, the power of the soviets was kicked aside in the name of the power of the bolsheviks, and the party hierarchy. Then Stalin got control of this,closed off the revolution for good, and dedicated Soviet Intelligence to killing it abroad.
Meanwhile, leftists, socialists, and even anarchists tried their best to believe in this image of Socailism, the closest thing they had yet seen to a victory of the proletariat over the domination and oppression of the capitalists.
And what they got for it was the association of party dictatorship and savage cruelty with their ideals.
And when the Spanish Civil War came around, Stalin was their to organize the worlds socialists (by which I mean those that signed up for communism, as well as anarchists) against any part of that uprising that would compete with the Soviet Union for revolutionary status.
And the capitalist enemies of liberation were completely satisfied with Lenin's right wing deviation, and agreed that he and Stalin were in fact, the truest Marxists one could ever imagine.
So, on the one hand, Trotsky's defense of state terrorism is valid in the context of revolution, but when that party has no mechanism of accountability to those it claims to represent,you end up with just the party speaking to itself and accountable only to whoever can seize power.
And the Bolsheviks domination of the socialist movement took away the power of the people and, simultaneously, gave the defenders of capitalist oppression an effortless method of hunting down and completely discrediting socialists: linking them with Russia. Many socialists were in fact linked up with the comintern or Russia.
And down to the present day, the idea that having an impoverished class is caused by the economic/power structure we live in is immediately and conveniently dismissed as Communism, Socialism, and Marxism, all of which were ideas seized by the Soviet Union and ruined for those who seek liberation for the poor.
But, the problem of liberation is that among the rich, as seen with the moderate attempts of Obama, there will always be those who must wipe out anything that grants power to that class which they rely on for their profits.
Terrorism and seizure of the state is not the solution. Terrorism encourages more of the same, as well as bitter enemies who never forgive the regime for its crimes. Seizing state power has lead to preservation of the state at the cost of revolution.
But reform through popular politics is also ineffectual. Millions of dollars went into making Obama president, and millions of dollars went into fighting healthcare reform, and billions of dollars went into keeping up moribund companies who stifle the economy, and billions of dollars are going to Afghanistan, and Iraq, and the thousands of soldiers in military bases our government maintains throughout the world.
To reform the state through it's mechanisms leads both to the villification of a moderate like Obama and too the state tyranny of the Soviet Union.
All this bad mouthing, I hope, serves to illustrate my lack of practical solutions. The most beneficial solutions that I can see in our society, are the consensus model among anarchists, unions, consensus as promoted by therapists in familial relations, and the promotion of atheism against the few sects trying to seize power in this country.
That's enough for this morning.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
NON-Fiction: HIgh Notes. January Fourth
-What is the full range of somatic effects of THC?
-A good way to resolve and expand on "The Marked" plotline in The 4400 would have been to attribute the success of The Marked to someone's or some peoples' 4400 ability. It would turn out that the faction supporting the The Marked were marginal in influence, but bolstered, intentionally or unintentionally strengthening them. Then, this could turn into a hunt for the person/people whose powers are doing this, and various dilemma's, like should they kill to stop the persons powers, or should they restrict promycin lest it encourage more powers like these.
-Becoming aware of a thought develops or inhibits it's progression.
-Areas of the brain inhibited/excited/aggravated by THC as expressed in their exhibition perception and experience, such as:
-Light, Long Term Memory, Short Term Memory, Imagination, Language, Humor
-Differing linguistic tendencies might in some proportion, correspond to genotypic differentiation.
Some people might be better in communication based on their genotype. Some people are better at converstaion and, when this extends to conversations with the self, I wonder what sort of advantages/disadvantagtes in regards to figuiring out things, or controlling oneself there are. Are there people wiht markedly less ability to converse with themselves, and what do they do isntead?
Is this a lot of what prayers are about. What exactly is involved in the statements like "So, I said to myself...." How much talking to oneself is actually going on, and what does talking to oneself indicate about Wernicke's/Broca's area?
-A good way to resolve and expand on "The Marked" plotline in The 4400 would have been to attribute the success of The Marked to someone's or some peoples' 4400 ability. It would turn out that the faction supporting the The Marked were marginal in influence, but bolstered, intentionally or unintentionally strengthening them. Then, this could turn into a hunt for the person/people whose powers are doing this, and various dilemma's, like should they kill to stop the persons powers, or should they restrict promycin lest it encourage more powers like these.
-Becoming aware of a thought develops or inhibits it's progression.
-Areas of the brain inhibited/excited/aggravated by THC as expressed in their exhibition perception and experience, such as:
-Light, Long Term Memory, Short Term Memory, Imagination, Language, Humor
-Differing linguistic tendencies might in some proportion, correspond to genotypic differentiation.
Some people might be better in communication based on their genotype. Some people are better at converstaion and, when this extends to conversations with the self, I wonder what sort of advantages/disadvantagtes in regards to figuiring out things, or controlling oneself there are. Are there people wiht markedly less ability to converse with themselves, and what do they do isntead?
Is this a lot of what prayers are about. What exactly is involved in the statements like "So, I said to myself...." How much talking to oneself is actually going on, and what does talking to oneself indicate about Wernicke's/Broca's area?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)