tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52372833568641813592023-06-20T21:39:09.742-07:00I Am My KhakisLevihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04247835570586914825noreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5237283356864181359.post-25017470474953498092017-03-24T13:00:00.001-07:002017-03-24T13:00:35.394-07:00The Patriarch Of The PatriarchyThis is just me meandering through some 101-type thoughts, organizing how I think about them.<br />
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I live in a patriarchal society. Almost certainly you do, too, if you're reading this.<br />
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This means that I live in a society where the mental image, the myth, posits patriarchs as the natural leading character of human drama, politics, work, and so on. These patriarchs aren't real and specific persons; it's an archetype, like God-with-a-beard. Abraham and Moses? That area. Patriarchs are the manly men; they have natural authority, they're straight, they're cisgender, they're fully able. Where I live, they're largely imagined as white; in other places, this varies.<br />
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The myth affects judgement calls. Men can get listened to more, can get less bonus obstacles thrown in their path when seeking career advancement (their issues are normal for leaders; pregnancy is not normal, because the normal leader is the patriarch, see). Lots of stuff like that. A good part of that stuff is built into institutions, even at the physical level. There have been entire sections of universities that only had bathrooms for men and have needed to be rebuilt or reorganized, because that course of study was for men; it was assumed to be for patriarchs in training.<br />
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I say "can get" a couple of places there, because these benefits both <i>apply to</i> and are <i>desired by</i> men that fit or at least appear to fit the model that the myth provides. If you want to be a sensitive stay-at-home dad, you're outside the myth in some respects, which means some benefits don't apply or aren't desired. You've got to fit the myth in all the ways to get all the goodies.<br />
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The same myth sets up roles for most others as supporting cast. Women are around to be helpers and wives and sexy rewards for heroism on the part of the patriarchs. The same path-smoothing effect exists - for women who <i>want </i>to fit that model to whatever extent, society is ready to assist and advise them in getting there.<br />
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Equivalent processes don't result in equal roles, obviously; they don't even result in equal departures from those roles. When a man steps outside the model of the patriarch, he's typically losing benefits that can largely be stated in terms of <i>social power</i>; he's not taken as seriously, etc. When a woman steps outside the model of the supporting cast, she's typically giving up benefits that can be stated in terms of <i>personal security </i>(and I mean money, health, safety, the whole ball of wax).<br />
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Among the strangest effects of this is men who don't fit the model of the partiarch for whatever reason, or even want to deconstruct it - but feel entitled to the benefits of the myth, and especially, to the presence of women as supporting cast for them. At high strength, this the realm of the MRA, the men's rights activist. At low strength, it goes almost entirely unnoticed unless it's pointed out; that's just an argument on "What A Real Man Is".<br />
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To end this on a true joke: A lot of the dudes in that last paragraph don't believe in the existence of the partiarchy.<br /><br />Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04247835570586914825noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5237283356864181359.post-50450524350485054652016-09-17T17:46:00.002-07:002016-09-17T17:50:42.370-07:00Elvis And Cultural AppropriationFair warning: This is a white liberal guy talking about this issue; apply whatever salt you want to go with the post based on that.<br />
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So, if you want to talk about cultural appropriation, you can pick examples that have the plain look of "that's sensitive to the point of ridiculous". You can pick examples that have the plain look of "that's vicious and disrespectful".<br />
<br />
Or you can address muddled cases, which is where most of the examples actually are. I'm going to talk about one of those.<br />
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Elvis.<br />
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Sam Phillips, who did the recording for Elvis, famously said "If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars."; this because the recording industry wanted black music, but didn't want black people.<br />
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Sam Phillips also recorded B.B. King, Junior Parker, and Howlin' Wolf (all black artists, should you suffer the sad misfortune of not knowing their music). So it's not like Sam Phillips didn't want black artists, but he knew the score.<br />
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Elvis was where Sam Phillips made a goodly portion of that billion dollars, and Elvis was a white man who "had the Negro sound and the Negro feel". <br />
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Elvis, in turn, famously said "The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I’m doin' now, man, for more years than I know. They played it like that in their shanties and in their juke joints and nobody paid it no mind 'til I goosed it up. I got it from them. Down in Tupelo, Mississippi, I used to hear old Arthur Crudup bang his box the way I do now and I said if I ever got to a place I could feel all old Arthur felt, I’d be a music man like nobody ever saw."<br />
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So Elvis wasn't aiming to give anybody black music without black people; he gave credit, and showed respect to where he learned what he learned. However, he did <i>benefit</i> from the desire of the recording industry to give the world black music without black people; if that aim on the part of that industry hadn't been present, he might well have had a lot more competition for that sound. If he hadn't been around, then we might have had more popular black artists singing their own sound to wider audiences a little sooner because the recording industry wouldn't have had the <i>option </i>of Elvis.<br />
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The recording industry attempted to push the rewards for black music to go primarily to people who weren't black, and that's one of the places where appropriation lives. Elvis and Sam were marginally complicit in this, but also visibly resisting and even subverting it.<br />
<br />
Okay?<br />
<br />
Okay, now, let's jump that over to Iggy Azalea, and the general statement of "She's appropriating black music, culture, and images!". And the response to that is... Maaaaybe? I mean, do you require the potential for <i>misrepresentation, exclusion, </i>or <i>erasure </i>as part of appropriation?<br />
<br />
Hollywood portrayal of First Nations people often includes a good deal of misrepresentation. Painting a whole group of peoples as savage or 'magic' by grabbing their culture, portraying it without them in it, and getting it all kinds of wrong, is a problem, because it fucks up their relationships with other people <i>if it drowns out their own representation of their identity. </i>Doing the same thing with Grimm's Fairy Tales isn't likely to have the same effect on Germanic peoples, because it's not about to drown out their own attempts to assert who they are.<br />
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Equally, the creation of tourist-trap fake First Nations artifacts for sale via factories in China, underpricing what the actual producers could potentially sell them for, means <i>excluding</i> them from the fruits of their own culture. Which is pretty shit; it's what the recording industry would have been happy to do with Elvis.<br />
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Finally, if you've ever seen a film where all the people of some ethnicity are played by white people, that's <i>erasure</i>; the actual people of the story are being wiped out of it.<br />
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Iggy Azalea's performative style is totally based on images popularised by black artists, which may be rude and silly; however, evidence that it misrepresents, excludes, or erases... is not as thick on the ground. Some, maaaaaybe? But it's not a clear or strong case.<br />
<br />
Misrepresentation, exclusion, and erasure are all pathways to significant harm, and most of the examples of appropriation that are worth arguing over contain these things. Which isn't all the examples where people shout it, mind you; but it's sure enough that it's worth pointing at and noticing. So, when I hear the term thrown around, I look and try to imagine where those components are - the misrepresentation, exclusion, or erasure.Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04247835570586914825noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5237283356864181359.post-18627571849950572202016-05-07T08:11:00.001-07:002016-05-07T08:11:56.736-07:00"Man Cop"My fellow dudes, I'd like to talk with you about some things.<br />
<br />
Things like this:<br />
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"That's a pretty girly ______, dude"<br />
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And this:<br />
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"That's not a very manly _______."<br />
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And this:<br />
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"You need to man up."<br />
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And this:<br />
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"REAL men like/hate/always/never ______"<br />
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Those are examples of masculine gender policing, which is basically just what it sounds like - playing "manliness cop" for other men.<br />
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And doing that? It marks you out as someone concerned that other people are doing manliness "right" in some kind of platonic-ideal way. Not "right for them", because if you're saying things like the above, it's totally obvious you don't give a shit about the person you're talking to, but right for.... Tradition. Or society. Or maybe, probably, almost certainly, just right for you.<br />
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It's always been a jerk move, always, but it wasn't something people could call out *as* a jerk move a lot of the time. And that.... That's changing. It's changing enough that in a few decades, if you're still spewing those lines? <br />
<br />
Eventually - maybe a decade from now, maybe three or four depending where you live, you'll be in the kind of social position that's presently occupied by Kinda Racist Uncle Frank types. Tolerated, sure, even half-humoured because there's no point trying to correct you, but left behind with a sigh of relief and studiously avoided online.<br />
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If you're louder, and have whole rants on How To Be Manly, then the position you're likely to end up in is more like that of Really Racist Grandad; someone people are basically ashamed to know.<br />
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I leave it to you to decide if that end state is a price worth paying for whatever fun or sense of power or security or whatever it is you get out of playing "Man Cop".<br />
<br />Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04247835570586914825noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5237283356864181359.post-73417849154221152332015-07-23T11:23:00.001-07:002015-07-23T11:28:41.641-07:00Gender And Homer<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140824133739/villains/images/5/52/Lazy_Homer_Simpson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140824133739/villains/images/5/52/Lazy_Homer_Simpson.jpg" /></a></div>
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Lazy, thoughtless, irresponsible, drunk, easily pulled in by ridiculous shiny things.<br />
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Homer is a distilled archetype of a thousand jokes about men, some affectionate, some vicious, being played for laughs. He, and other characters like him, are one of the gender archetypes that we share with one another about "What men are often like".<br />
<br />
Of course, there are some men who act an awful lot like Homer and his onscreen ilk some or much of the time. That's what makes it funny. That's what makes it <i>okay</i>, right? It's fun for us to show off this kind of thing as a core male archetype, because it's true!<br />
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There is a big difference between the Homeric state (snerk) in reality and in the show:<br />
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Homer is the way he is <i>all the way through</i>; his internal voice has a place in the show, and it's just as dopey as the rest of his behaviour. In reality, men aren't like that - or at least, very few of us are.<br />
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When men engage in this kind of behaviour, it's because we've decided to relax into it, or decided to hide behind it. It's easy to disavow responsibility, bounce around between dead-end projects, and stop caring about others.<br />
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And after, when a guy doing this kind of thing gets called on it, Homer's right there. We can make a few jokes about how dumb we are, we can <i>hide behind Homer. </i>We can say "Oh, I'm dumb; but that's okay because men are dumb."<br />
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We can convince everyone around you that all those jokes about Homer are true. We can <i>participate </i>in painting our entire gender as clownish morons. Because, see, it'll get us off the hook for whatever selfish thing we just did; it'll mean that we won't need to deal with the responsibility for it that's just been pointed at us.<br />
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So, we do, sometimes. That's a big, big part of what keeps Homer alive, keeps him current; the fact that we choose to participate in the image. He's a useful lie to have around.<br />
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Homer's not the only image like this. And, guys, we're not the only ones doing it. But we sure are doing it.<br />
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Gender archetypes make liars of us all.Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04247835570586914825noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5237283356864181359.post-49152743005317479772014-07-31T10:39:00.001-07:002014-07-31T10:58:41.230-07:00Game Design: Neutrality & InclusionI make roleplaying games.<br />
<br />
I make them for my own entertainment, and hopefully yours. Most of the time, the intended <i>message </i>of these games is something to the tune of "Zombies are cool. Horrible things From Beyond are cool. Apocalypses are cool. Come play with those cool things, with me!"<br />
<br />
Which doesn't sound like much of a message, in terms of social whatsits, you know? I'm not trying to create or forward a more just world through the medium of game design, I'm just trying to invite everyone to come play with all this cool freakin' stuff.<br />
<br />
As it turns out, though, <i>inviting everyone</i> isn't as small a goal as I used to think.<br />
<br />
When I do game art, in big batches, my tendency follows right along with most media - there are more men than women. The men tend to be in more active poses. When there are colours (I work in silhouette and abstract a bunch; there aren't always), it's easy to make everyone white.<br />
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When I write examples and touch on matters of sex or gender in a game (neither of which happens much; I'm much more interested in telling you about how to roll dice - but there's some), it's easy to just say "Bob and Joe do ABC", and just carry on. Saying "Sandra and Jane do ABC" isn't what comes out if I'm just rattling away at the keyboard.<br />
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These are instances of bias on my part. I came by them entirely honestly; I'm a white guy (also straight, able, cis, and so on), and it's easy to write to people like me, and to write and make art in the tone of much of the media I've consumed over the years. I'm not doing a wrong or terrible thing when I do that, and I don't think others are either - but I'm also not achieving my goal of <i>inviting everyone</i>.<br />
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To make it that goal, I've come to find, I need to attend to two things. I'm not that good at this, yet; it's a skill in the making I'm talking about here, not a position of enlightenment I'm talking from.<br />
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The first thing is to seek neutrality instead of normativity. Which is a mouthful, but. If it's <i>normal </i>for media to do all those things (heavy on active men with fewer and more passive women, all relationships shown being straight ones, all gendering obvious and binary, everyone fully able...), but the audience of <i>everyone </i>isn't like that, then what's normative isn't what's neutral. And people notice that. There's a chunk of everyone that doesn't feel like this invitation is directed toward them, when it's given that way. So if I want it those people to feel like it is (and I do), then getting rid of the "normal bias" is important. <br />
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That doesn't mean everything I do should show a complete range of all those things. If I want to do a project about a group of five people from the same small town running through a forest, I might never touch on romance in any way. I might never show ethnicity. But the moment I start doing so, I've gotta ask myself if I've defaulted to that normativity, and just how I should elbow it out of the way - show a good and roughly representative range? Invent a different standard that suits the project?<br />
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The second thing is to aim for active inclusion. Which is all about a deeply shitty thing in the world that deserves paying attention to, and it's this:<br />
<br />
<i>There is a fairly significant chunk of "everyone" that is used to being UNinvited.</i><br />
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If the "normal" in the medium of games and the community surrounding gaming is to make (petty and mean) jokes about a given group of people, then that chunk of "everyone" has <i>every reason</i> to walk right past anything I make with the assumption that they aren't invited. Being quietly neutral may mean that those folks will be more comfortable than usual if they do stick their heads in and have a look. And that's good, but it's not the same.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
And there's at least one big trap on the way to that. That's tokenism -adding in a black character who is there <i>just to<b> be</b> black</i> isn't a real invitation, it's just a pretence at one. And it can be pretty easy to fall into! I have eight failed attempts at drawing a silhouette of a person in a wheelchair shooting a shotgun in my wastebin, and one picture of a guy in a wheelchair <i>just sitting there</i> that's actually in the files for my zombie game. I'm happy he's in there, but he should be doing something. <i>Everyone else is.</i><br />
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Summing up:<br />
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If I want to invite everyone on the playground to play soccer with me, I need to be talking to everyone. Not just the people like me.<br />
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And I need to recognize that the kid that has been excluded from most of the playground games does not believe I'm inviting them when I shout. If I want to invite everyone, I've got to walk over to that kid and say, hey. You too.<br />
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I'm working on it.Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04247835570586914825noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5237283356864181359.post-57142699951136833972011-02-11T07:45:00.000-08:002011-02-11T08:33:24.812-08:00Identity, Virtue, Economy<div>There are seven commonly-discussed virtues (sometimes noted as four Christian virtues and three Pagan ones), which have long been enshrined by western society as ideals. These are hope, faith, love, justice, courage, temperance, and prudence.</div><div><br /></div><div>To aspire to a virtue is a statement of identity. To try and be loving alters who you are - as readers of this blog know, I argue that everything you do, wear, say, and aspire to changes to who you are, because you are largely the sum of those things (and maybe a bit more). </div><div><br /></div><div>If you aspire to a virtue, you may become more virtuous. This may seem odd from me; as a modern intellectual, I can happily talk about virtues as 'things we built up' rather than as things we discovered. But so what? We also built soup kitchens, and schools. We built hospitals, and governments (both good and bad). We built tools to investigate the inner workings of the universe, and procedures by which we might approach the slippery bastard that is truth. That a thing is made does not make it unworthy. It does mean, though, that it can be lost, forgotten, cast aside.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm not about to try and call up some golden age of the past, but there are times when these virtues are actively improving specific parts of society, and times when they are not. At any given moment, really, prudence can be seen <i>somewhere</i>... But not always in, say, the housing market.</div><div><br /></div><div>So, let me talk about some of those virtues in action, in a place where they do good work - by which I mean, in the marketplace.</div><div><br /></div><div>The entrepreneur requires courage - as does anyone whose business model must change to keep pace with the times we live in. A collective failure of nerve can mean that things we could use to make our lives materially better won't exist, because nobody has the gumption to try and make them. In existing industry, the cry for deep protections against modernity is (among other things) often an act of cowardice.</div><div><br /></div><div>A "bubble" on the market is a failure of both prudence and temperance among investors, and a perversion of faith and hope in the market. Artificial booms are caused by overweening greed of a sort that has little to do with materially improving the lives of many involved. </div><div><br /></div><div>The very existence of Fiat currency is a matter of Faith and Hope. Money has value because we believe it has value; it's not backed by gold or plutonium or some other harder store.</div><div><br /></div><div>A market where those involved possess a sense of Justice is one where cheaters are noted, caught, and ousted. Where that sense of justice fails, cheaters are lauded, stocks manipulated, businesses and lives ruined.</div><div><br /></div><div>....</div><div><br /></div><div>For some, this may raise up the spectre of Gordon Gecko's famed speech in the film <i>Wall Street</i>:</div><div><br /></div><div>"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed cuts through and clarifies, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed in all of it's forms. Greed for life, for money, for love, for knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind, and Greed, mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA."</div><div><br /></div><div>...It's a magnificent lie, isn't it? The speech conflates all ambition, all aspiration, with his particular form. But the greed of Gordon Gecko, and of those who mirrored his actions, are a form of self-interest based on valuing numbers over people. Far from saving anything, the wild rush to play at the expense of others, in a market freed from all virtue, brings chaos, disharmony, and recession.</div><div><br /></div><div>Our markets, governments, and all our institutions, can handle a little greed, a little overblown rhetoric, a share of hateful pride and scorn. We can put some measure of these things into harness and derive work from them. That's a strength of our systems, and no mistake. But it's not the basis of our systems.</div><div><br /></div><div>The basis of these systems is virtue, not vice. A built thing, noble, worth preserving, but able to easily be lost and forgotten. And when we lose track of this, we invite dysfunction into our markets, our governments, our courts, and all else besides.</div>Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04247835570586914825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5237283356864181359.post-37322395817582316792011-01-20T04:25:00.000-08:002011-01-20T05:42:52.295-08:00Economically RationalHomo Economicus, the Economic Man, makes perfect decisions. He spends money only when it is in his utterly selfish interests, and always in the most prudent fashion available. He has perfect information about the marketplace at all times.<div><br /></div><div>Lies, all lies, is one wave of reaction. First, people patently don't have perfect information. Second, we aren't motivated solely by prudence. And third, people often act against their own utterly selfish interests.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, to that reaction, I'll grant the first two objections (for the moment). But not the third. Because people never act against their own selfish interests, <i>ever</i>. Rather, people constantly delude themselves about where their self begins and ends.</div><div><br /></div><div>Your self and your identities are wrapped around each other indivisibly, to the point where what is in your interest can easily take on wild colorations. If you are a liberal, then there is some extent to which liberal interests are your interests. If you are a patriot, then there is some extent to which the good of your nation is good to you - even, in some cases, good enough to risk your physical body. </div><div><br /></div><div>If you are a Pokemon Fan, then that which is good for the success of the franchise is in your interest. Before you snicker, consider your favorite franchises, companies, manufacturers, restaurants. Does their success somehow make you feel greater?</div><div><br /></div><div>And if this is true of your interests and commercial identities, how much more true is it of those you love? The good of your children, if you have children, is in your interests. But I digress a little from my intended objective.</div><div><br /></div><div>Imagine, if you will, the anti-establishment hippie, stoned off his gourd, staring up at you and telling you "When you, like, put on a suit and sell out to the man, you turn into a zombie - they own you, man, they own your <i>mind</i>". He's got a point. Of course, the point applies to him, in reverse - our stoner hippie has bought an identity, and when he occupies that identity, many of his interests are managed for him.</div><div><br /></div><div>When you settle on components of your identity, you are giving the society that defines that identity access to your goals and your wallet. This is true even if the identity chosen is supposedly counter-cultural; does your counter-culture have it's own shops? And that's rational, economically, in the sense that you've made this group part of your <i>self</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>To control your wallet, you must first control your self-image.</div>Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04247835570586914825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5237283356864181359.post-20073059621791698962011-01-11T03:56:00.000-08:002011-01-11T04:30:47.186-08:00The Value Of LegitimacyMost economics are based on scarcity and desire. We want clean drinking water pretty badly, but there's <i>so much of it</i> that we've made it effectively free in many, many places. We want diamonds some, sure - oh, and they're rare; and as a result, expensive.<div><br /></div><div>And that's pretty good, as far as it goes. But we can make artificial diamonds pretty easily now, and make them indistinguishable from the real thing. Wouldn't that destroy the rarity entirely? Turns out, not so much - we require that artificial diamonds be labelled, see. And that's a distinction of legitimacy, which is something we're going to need to get a lot better at managing in the future. This is a strong relative, in some way, of the strange quest for the authentic that moves in many circles (some of which are purely marketing-created, but some of which are... authentic).</div><div><br /></div><div>So, some equating:</div><div><br /></div><div>Our <i>desire </i>for digital merchandise, for information products like music, programs, and so on, has not decreased. If anything, it continues to grow.</div><div><br /></div><div>The <i>scarcity</i> of information products has dropped to zero, or so closer to zero as to make no nevermind. We are in a post-scarcity age for information. Living in denial of this fact, scrambling to create a scarcity in order to sell one, is one of the new games in town. I'd argue that it's a game for dumbasses, but Microsoft is playing it anyway; they must know something I don't. Or they're relying on people to be clueless. Or both.</div><div><br /></div><div>What digital companies are selling, in truth, is authenticity and legitimacy. You give them money in order to possess their permission. And <i>this is not a negligible asset</i>. As a general example, iTunes is not significantly more reliable, nor significantly faster, than torrenting sites. PDF stores online aren't easier to use than rapid upload sites. </div><div><br /></div><div>The question of an online sale is not how much you think your product is worth. The question is how much a customer group would value having a legitimate product, because the "legitimate" part is the part they're being sold. And the answer isn't as simple as one might expect - customers intending to use something one-time and then discard it? They don't need legitimacy. Customers for whom the item is a social product; something they will talk with their friends about? They have plenty of value for legitimacy <i>unless</i> their circle has already given up on legitimacy for that product as overpriced, stupid, a dolt's game.</div><div><br /></div><div>The value of legitimacy in an electronic product is an output of the use of that product, and of the dialog that surrounds it.</div><div><br /></div><div>That's the new market, as I see it. It's not quite the one most major companies seem to see, but there you have it.</div>Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04247835570586914825noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5237283356864181359.post-65663260296697722512011-01-06T21:11:00.000-08:002011-01-06T21:43:57.338-08:00Batman & The Immutable YouA lot of this blog is dedicated to the mutable self - even the name bears testament to the fact that the trappings we wear shape our identities. And this post is about that kind of thing, too.<div><br /></div><div>But let's talk about Batman for a moment. </div><div><br /></div><div>Over the years, Batman has had many artists and writers. And each of those writers tells Batman a little differently; they can't help it. The movie <i>The Dark Knight</i> is not the same as the graphic novel <i>The Dark Knight Returns</i>. Tim Burton's <i>Batman</i> is just as different from either. Wildly different artists, media, and outlooks were brought to bear in these things. </div><div><br /></div><div>Each artist tells Batman differently, because each artist is different. Batman is like this blog's eponymous pair of khakis; if you're writing a Batman story, that's part of who you are, you Batman-story-teller, you. But there is some thing that will come through as different.</div><div><br /></div><div>Joe can be a Star Trek convention geek and a pick-up basketball player. And when Joe picks up those identities, they do change how he acts and is. But he changes those things, too. Joe, Star Trek convention geek, isn't the same as Mark, Star Trek convention geek, if you're in any position to pass anything beyond cursory judgement.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have been Levi, hard-smoking, rum-swilling drunk, grinning at the screen like a fiend while twanging rock music poured over me. Today, I'm Levi, smoke-free and health-drink-crazed, staring at the screen while under the influence of hard exercise and Dido. And these things change me and change the actions I intend to take in future in fairly notable ways. I am another me, but I'm still me. </div><div><br /></div><div>Alternate universe Spock... is still Leonard Nimoy.</div><div><br /></div><div>We can be a thousand different people, and still be ourselves; our closest friends will always know us - and they'll still be our friends. Because what we, as people, learn to value about each other as we move from being acquaintances into being close friends is not the parts of a person created by their trappings, but the parts of a person that <i>shape those trappings into being <b>them</b> again and again</i>, whoever else they may also be today. </div><div><br /></div><div>Television and movies often fail in that they can't represent this basic thing; in media, all changes to a person go all the way through, because all media character are ultimately pretty shallow entities. We're more solid than that. And that's awesome, too.</div><div><br /></div><div>Whoever you are tomorrow, I'll meet you there.</div>Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04247835570586914825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5237283356864181359.post-78764063807091731262011-01-03T06:40:00.000-08:002011-01-03T07:21:18.014-08:00Body Wisdom<i>An extended quote, from a female and newly-pregnant character in Foucalt's Pendulum. Be told: A bit explicit.</i><div><br /></div><div>"Pow, archetypes don't exist; the body exists. The belly inside is beautiful, because the baby grows there, because your sweet cock, all bright and jolly, thrusts there, and good, tasty food descends there, and for this reason, the cavern, the grotto, the tunnel are beautiful and important, and the labyrinth too, which is made in the image of our wonderful intestines. When somebody wants to invent something beautiful and important, it has to come from there, because you also come from there the day you were born, because fertility always comes from inside a cavity, where first something rots and then, lo and behold, there's a little man, a date, a baobab."</div><div><br /></div><div>"And high is better than low because if you have your head down, the blood goes to your head, because feet stink and hair doesn't stink as much, because it's better to climb a tree and pick fruit than end up underground, food for worms, and because you rarely hurt yourself hitting something above - you really have to be in an attic - while you often hurt yourself falling. That's why up is angelic and down is devilish."</div><div><br /></div><div>"But what I said before, about my belly, is also true, both things are true, down and inside are beautiful, and up and outside are beautiful, and the spirit of Mercury and Manicheanism have nothing to do with it. Fire keeps you warm and cold gives you bronchial pneumonia, especially if you're a scholar four thousand years ago, and therefore fire has mysterious virtues besides it's ability to cook your chicken. But cold preserves that same chicken, and fire, if your touch it, gives you a blister this big; therefore, if you think of something preserved for millennia, like wisdom, you have to think of it on a mountain, up, high (and high is good), but also in a cavern (which is good, too) and in the eternal cold of the Tibetan snows (best of all). And if you want to know why wisdom comes from the Orient and not from the Swiss Alps, it's because the body of your ancestors in the morning, when it woke and there was still darkness, looked to the east hoping the sun would rise and there wouldn't be rain."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Yes, Mama."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Yes, indeed, my child. The sun is good because it does the body good, and it has the sense to reappear every day; therefore, what returns is good, not what passes and is done with. The easiest way to return from where you've been without retracing your steps is to walk in a circle. The animal that coils in a circle is the serpent; that's why so many cults and myths of the serpent exist, because it's hard to represent the returning of the sun with the coiling of the hippopotamus. Furthermore, if you have to make a ceremony to invoke the sun, it's best if you move in a circle, because if you go in a straight line, you move away from home, which means the ceremony will have to be kept short. The circle is the most convenient arrangement for any rite, even the fire-eaters in the marketplace know this, because in a circle everyone can see the one who's in the center, whereas if a whole tribe formed a straight line, like a squad of soldiers, the people at the ends wouldn't see. And that's why the circle and rotary motion and cyclic return are fundamental to every cult and every rite.""</div><div><br /></div><div><i>(Skipping ahead a bit, past a couple paragraphs of numbers-in-the-body)</i></div><div><br /></div><div>"Or, if you like, take the anatomy of your menhir, which your authors are always talking about. Standing up during the day, lying down at night - your thing, too. No, don't tell me what it does at night. The fact is that erect it works and prone it rests. So the vertical position is life, pointing sunward, and obelisks stand as trees stand, while the horizontal position and night are sleep, death. All cultures worship menhirs, monoliths, pyramids, columns, but nobody bows down to balconies and railings. Did you ever hear of an archaic cult of the sacred banister? You see? And another point: if you worship a vertical stone, even if there are a lot of you, you can all see it; but if you worship, instead, a horizontal stone, only those in the front row can see it, and the others start pushing, me too, me too, which is not a fitting sight for a magical ceremony..."</div><div><br /></div><div>"But rivers..."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Rivers are worshiped not because they're horizontal, but because there's water in them, and you don't need me to explain to you the relation between water and the body... Anyway, that's how we're put together, all of us, and that's why we work out the same symbols millions of kilometers apart, and naturally they all resemble each other."</div>Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04247835570586914825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5237283356864181359.post-49627170110148050072010-11-02T14:41:00.000-07:002010-11-02T14:58:55.069-07:00The Violence Inherent In The SystemThis is a post about internet forums, based largely on the time I have spent (and continue to spend) on the forums at http://forum.rpg.net. Forums grow, and become well known, based on the nature and quality of their content - and that content is shaped both by culture and by the structure of forums in general. So, a couple of quick, and hopefully obvious points, about forums:<div><br /></div><div><b>1. A forum thread grows when people have opinions on the topic, prompting them to post. It <i>keeps</i> growing if those people have opinions on each others opinions.</b></div><div><br /></div><div><b>2. People posting opinions would like those opinions to receive <i>attention </i>of some kind or another, or they wouldn't post.</b></div><div><br /></div><div>On a forum, a creative 'riff' can happen when people start making stuff in response to stuff made by others - giving us story-making forums. A debate can run along, garnering evidence and depth of argument on all sides (though it will almost never resolve, it may well be <i>explained</i>). An exploration of a topic can lead to experiences posted on all sides, with lots of people asking for more detail from one another. And, of course, a fight can steadily escalating into a match where everyone is throwing burning shit at each other. </div><div><br /></div><div>These things all happen by means of the two points above; the mechanism is identical.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, on a large forum, this process can happen fairly swiftly. In a couple hours, a thread explodes, because there are lots of opinions. Notably, though, fighting can derail any debate, exploration, or creative discussion; if it gats hot, it's likely to stay hot - cool reaction in a fight takes energy. Which means that many of the biggest threads on any large forum are, <i>by nature</i>, going to be fights eventually, and stay that way.</div><div><br /></div><div>Unless something intervenes, be it an authority, or the community at large.</div>Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04247835570586914825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5237283356864181359.post-65401203671195847732010-10-15T09:22:00.000-07:002010-10-15T10:33:39.465-07:00Our Grand Consensus<div>People create society through consensus decisions.</div><div><br /></div><div>There's a decent chance you don't like the sound of that statement at all. After all, you can easily point to power disparities among people, meaning that some people have more or less say. That's not a consensus, right?</div><div><br /></div><div>But that's the trick. Rich people have status because we want to be rich, we imitate rich people, we respect rich people. Their power spring from consensus. Equally, deviant and despised people have less power because we treat them as such. Here, look at this progression:</div><div><ul><li>Joe is a slightly better hunter than the others in the village.</li><li>Joe is known as the best hunter in the village, and is imitated and listened to.</li><li>Joe is the Chief Hunter of the village; he leads hunts and instruct the boys.</li></ul></div><div>Now, each step on that line is an obvious progression from the steps before it; you can imagine those items as a timeline, pretty easily. </div><div><br /></div><div>Notice there is no guarantee in that progression that Joe is a better hunter because of a quality that can be taught or imitated. If Joe is a better hunter <i>despite</i> bad technique because he happens to have far better eyesight, some of his status is misplaced - others should not be imitating his technique (though if being the Chief Hunter means he'll have lots of kids, that might be good for the tribe in the long run). Of course, it's very possible that Joe really does have better technique, and merit wins out after all.</div><div><br /></div><div>This progression happens in every society, at every level. We have goals, and choose those we wish to associate with, imitate, learn from - often based on their apparent success at those goals. We also choose which qualities we want to avoid - often by looking for those who appear to be failing.</div><div><br /></div><div>Which is a nice, confusing way to say that whenever get together to achieve their mutual goals, one of the first things they will agree on is <i>inequality</i>. We don't build consensus as equals. When we're operating as equals, it's usually inside some structure designed to treat us as such - the voting booth, for example. And even then, the inequalities that we have helped create and perpetuate from outside the structure leak in and affect us.</div><div><br /></div><div>When Marx said that people have a "false consciousness" about what's best for them, he was missing the trees for the forest. We often have very good ideas about what's good for us in the very immediate sphere. It's just that it doesn't <b>scale</b> well.</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't vote for a candidate because they will produce far-reaching policy that will help create economic stability. I vote for him because I want to say that I did so. And I want to say this to people that are much nearer to me than the economy. I might even just want to say it to myself, to reaffirm my identity. I make the decision based on what is best for me, right <i>here</i>, right <i>now</i>. </div><div>And that's how we get a social consensus.</div>Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04247835570586914825noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5237283356864181359.post-55126684391322829112010-09-29T10:55:00.000-07:002010-09-29T11:16:52.063-07:00Counting CardsProbabilities aren't inherently real to the human mind. Frequencies are.<div><br /></div><div>If I pulled out a die, red on four sides and green on two, a fair roller in all aspects, and offered to bet you evenly on the outcomes, the proper response is to <i>always bet on red</i>. It doesn't matter if red has come up ten times in a row, and you're thinking "It's got to change soon; maybe I should bet green" - you should always, always, <i><b>always </b></i>bet on red with that die.</div><div><br /></div><div>But after seeing red ten times, a person (you, me, anyone) will almost always <i>have</i> that thought. Because, uh, probability, right?</div><div><br /></div><div>Actually.... that's wrong. </div><div><br /></div><div>We have that impression because we want and expect to see a balanced world. We know, by the definition of the test, that in the long run, the die will roll 1 green side for each 2 red sides. And when it doesn't show up soon, we start anticipating it, twitching ahead of it's arrival, because we anticipate the results showing up with the right frequency. But there's no guarantee that this frequency will show itself without a lot of observation - for preference, many copies of the die, rolled many times.</div><div><br /></div><div>Probabilities require rational construction - you need to think the numbers through, every time.</div><div><br /></div><div>That said, as clever monkeys, we can cheat the impulse. And it's something we can get better at. Counting cards, for example, is a set of methods for combining problems of frequency and probability in a game where you will see the full set of results given enough time (assuming the whole deck is gone through).</div><div><br /></div><div>Personally, I think that we should teach card counting in High School. It'd be helpful to students to understand how this stuff works.</div>Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04247835570586914825noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5237283356864181359.post-60830921232915769472010-08-15T20:16:00.000-07:002010-08-16T14:53:44.545-07:00Zen, Science, and a Challenge.<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 20px; font-family:Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;font-size:14px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 51); font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;font-size:16px;"><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">How can we acquire an unmediated experience of the world, when the being that experiences is, in itself, mediated and constructed? </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Zen teaches that the means to this end is to reduce desire, and seek Nirvana, the "blowing out" of certain portions of the self. I've already put up a fun little broken koan about this, linked at the top of the blog (if you haven't read that, go on).</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The scientific method aims to refine terms and conceptions, self-correcting through review and comparison with basic information, to build discourses that run <i>parallel </i>to reality. Effectively, this means rebuilding your thinking to match the reality around you. It also means acquiring a huge load of language and expertise for each topic you want to "get".</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">A few times, I've mentioned the need for better 'folk science' - the need to spread basic rules of judgment that need no special language, but contain a basic, rule-of-thumb reflection of reality. I believe that it's more useful to spread good guidelines than it is to attack misperceptions.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">So here's my challenge to you...</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><b>The "One Simple Rule" Challenge</b></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Think for a minute about fields of knowledge where you've got some real grip on things. It doesn't matter what field it is. It can be shelf-stocking in stores, the nature of ecosystems, the way that cartoons are made, the hard science of genetics.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Think of one thing that everyone tends to get wrong - a basic fact that is represented dead wrong in discussions, media, and the like. Again, this can be anything. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium; ">Now, instead of only discussing what's wrong with that perception, try to come up with a<i> one simple rule</i> that expresses the real thing as well as the error.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">This can be about wrong word use: "Evolution means <i>this</i>; it doesn't mean <i>that</i>." It can be about procedure "Real soldiers do <i>this</i>; they don't do <i>that</i>". </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Post your rule somewhere. In the comments here, on your blog, journal, on facebook, wherever. Give me a link to it if it's outside the comments (again, here, or email me: levi.kornelsen@gmail.com ).</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Share your corrections in basic thinking. Show us something you know.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I bloody well <i>dare </i>you.</span></div></span></span>Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04247835570586914825noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5237283356864181359.post-90373134986788088742010-08-11T11:09:00.000-07:002010-08-11T18:04:26.136-07:00Highest Compliments<div>As people, we like to talk about our opinions, share ideas, and pass on things that we like. We share symbols, icons, discourse, words, pictures, music, philosophies. We suggest books, review films. These days, we often share media in a much more direct way.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sharing is often deeply personal. In many cases, what we share represents us - you can find a bit of media that says what you'd like to say, and says it better. You can project an identity, showing others your good taste and the kinds of things you like.</div><div><br /></div><div>Recently, the concept of <i>memes</i> has been come into being; the idea of infectious ideas that spread from person to person. It's an appealing concept. A large part of the idea is that that concepts can act like living things, using us as a platform for carrying on their existence, and subject to natural selection. Which is pretty interesting-sounding.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's also utter bullshit. We share naturally; special and virulent ideas are a fun way to talk about it, but the interesting thing is <i>us</i>. Referring to things in a anthropomorphized way? That's also very much <i>us</i>. Information doesn't want to be free; it doesn't have a tendency to spread - we have a tendency to spread it. We pick up language and concepts as tools (and how we love our tools). On a basic level, simple communication, it costs us nothing to hand them about; they can be duplicated without loss.</div><div><br /></div><div>This drive to share such stuff doesn't come without some problems, once it gets out into the world. The world includes musicians who are already trying to work with a problematic system supposedly set up to repay them for their work. Pharmaceutical companies spend millions on research to get the first pill of a type - but the pills cost pennies afterwards, and can be made by everyone. Our methods in such cases, as well as our laws, have not caught up with out basic tendencies and present technology.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sharing the thoughts of others remains our highest compliment to their work. But the structures we work in can make that compliment into an offense.</div>Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04247835570586914825noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5237283356864181359.post-56623259816446215542010-08-08T19:40:00.000-07:002010-08-08T19:45:43.654-07:00A Perfect Discourse<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surr</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Charis SIL', charis, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">ender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Charis SIL', charis, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; "><p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.</span></p><p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will be surpassed. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">For we know in part and we prophesy in part, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. </span></p><p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.</span></p><p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. </span></p><p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">But the greatest of these is love.</span></p><p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; "><i> -1st Corinthians, Chapter 13.</i></span></p></span></div>Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04247835570586914825noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5237283356864181359.post-30915034873486736022010-08-07T12:13:00.000-07:002010-08-07T15:11:55.198-07:00When all you have is a hammer...You have the freedom to make all sorts of choices in the world. However, depending on a lot of different factors, your choices might be more or less impactful on the world. If you're able to magnify the impact of your actions through appropriate devices - social networks, the spending of money, the use of physical tools, and so on - then you have more <i>agency</i>. If tools of varying kinds are unavailable or simply denied to you, then you have less agency.<div><br /></div><div><div>In economics, physical tools of this sort are capital goods. Money is often just plain called capital. In sociology, the equivalent "stuff" is often termed cultural capital or social capital. In military terms, assets serving this function are force multipliers (which is by far the more easily-understood version, I think).</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Marriage is a tool, in this sense. It allows a couple to change the way that people in general and many legal institutions view and treat them, and even the way they view themselves and each other. Denying that tool to gay people is a denial of agency, a statement that "we don't think we should have to treat you like that". It also does preserve that tool in ways that are fairly subtle, but are real - making marriage more inclusive <i>does</i> change the utility of that tool. Whether "preserving the integrity of marriage as a tool" is at the root of most of objections, or just a handy cover story for bigotry, is a whole other topic, though. Divorce law changes have altered the utility of the tool <i>far </i>more significantly.</div><div><br /></div><div>This blog is such a tool, too. It allows me to spout opinion and have it sit, neatly organised and available to readers. This extends my expressions of opinion across people and time, magnifying their effects. In theory, I could just phone all my readers up and rant at them - but the blog is much more effective.</div><div><br /></div><div>The specific tools you use to express will as agency also matter, plainly, even if they're both capable of similar things. A blog does not do the same things that a billboard does, even though they both carry messages in the form of words. Ball peen hammers aren't sledgehammers. Civil unions aren't marriages. Work visas aren't citizenships.</div><div><br /></div><div>This isn't purely a matter of forcefulness, though. Condensing this blog post into a billboard slogan would be pointless, for example; it wouldn't translate well. Different tools have differing levels of force, but each also carries a hefty bias - and that bias can be internalized. People that are well set up for joining protest marches may well feel utterly unable to get their ideas across, if the best tool is lobbying or the creation of a press outlet that the media can treat as credible; everything looks like a reason to march.</div><div><br /></div><div>Understanding the tools available to us gives us more agency, and more precision in how we apply it. Understanding where tools are denied to others, or available with differing costs, tells us something about the society we share.</div>Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04247835570586914825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5237283356864181359.post-13285870679672396942010-08-06T18:52:00.000-07:002010-08-06T23:14:32.740-07:00"Isms" and Discourse.A fast and dirty way to point out discourses is to think of "-Isms". Things like agnosticism, dynamism, legalism... <a href="http://www.ismbook.com/ismlist.html">Here's a fun list</a>. <div><br /></div><div>Not all "ism" words fit the category. A neologism, for example, is just a made-up word. No, seriously, that's what neologism <i>means</i>. And not all discourses have an "ism" label. When a discourse gets an "ism" label, and the label becomes popular enough that it doesn't sound stupid anymore, it gets easier to discuss and handle in some ways, and harder in others.</div><div><br /></div><div>An idea included in "conservativism" might get rejected by liberals because, well, it's conservative, see? That's an easy mental step for the liberal, but it's not necessarily the best way to come at it. Should each idea be judged on it's own merits? Or not?</div><div><br /></div><div>What just happened there was all about labels. It's easy for the liberal to handle and judge the idea quickly, because it's in a package they oppose. They oppose it because they've accepted a different labelled package, and chosen to identify with it and <i>as </i>it. The liberal in this instance has labelled their own person.</div><div><br /></div><div>(And yes, this works just as well if you swap the labels.)</div><div><br /></div><div>It also means that a discourse can be attacked as a total thing - sexism and racism, say. They can be ascribed to people - "You're a racist"!</div><div><br /></div><div>"Isms" make us faster. They can let us identify where someone is going from only a handful of points. They let us identify our own stances, setting boundaries for "I basically trust information from these sources, but not those". These are <i>features</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Isms" can also bias us into rejecting good stuff out of hand. They can support us in simplifying others into caricatures. These are <i>bugs</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>For the record, I'm a syncretic, engaged in syncretism. I just want to be clear, y'know.</div>Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04247835570586914825noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5237283356864181359.post-78738388460143488892010-08-06T05:24:00.000-07:002010-08-06T05:25:09.719-07:00The Fairness Principle<div><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game">The Ultimatum Game</a> is a pretty well-tested experiment. I put you and Joe in a room, and give Joe ten one-dollar bills. He is allowed to propose a split of the money with you (and that's all he's allowed to do). You are allowed to accept the split, or reject it. If you accept, that's how you split the money, and you both go home richer. If you reject it, neither of you gets anything. You only play once.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, if you're an entirely independent, totally rational economic being, you'll accept any offer that gives you money. It's free money! But that's not what happens in most cultures. Splitting at 50-50 is always accepted. Splits where the 'decider' gets less money are rejected more and more often as the split gets less favorable.</div><div><br /></div><div>In places where money is a relative oddity - among tribespeoples - this has been tried a couple of times (not enough for any kind of certainty, but still). And there, uneven splits were offered and accepted almost universally.</div><div><br /></div><div>If that's so, then this isn't an inborn feature of our thinking. It's something we've learned - an absorbed (or consistently individually created) principle that is deeply fundamental. I'm not going to try and codify this principle; plenty of attempts have been made to do so, and they almost all end up showing off the biases of the describer, rather than revealing absolutes. Instead, I'd rather look at what it might mean.</div><div><br /></div><div>It seems to indicate that people who deal in money, an abstract commodity at the best of times, have at least one gut-level learned response that benefits the social body. It's not in your rational interests to reject money outside of a 'fair' split, but it's in the interests of society for this kind of thing to be going around.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is in line with some other aspects of cognition - puzzles that ask you to "catch the cheater" are often easier to solve than abstract version of the same puzzle. It's possible that we come into the world wired or disposed for this kind of thinking, and thus pick it up very quickly. It's possible that it's built into social subtext so often that we can't help but catch it, even if it's invisible to us when we do. There are, again, plenty of theories.</div><div><br /></div><div>What matters, to my eye, is that we can build on responses like this, or tear them down. There's a fairness principle down there, and it can be expanded on and spoken to.</div>Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04247835570586914825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5237283356864181359.post-72253720995677696522010-08-05T07:55:00.000-07:002010-08-05T09:55:29.658-07:00Let's Get High, Dear.Imagine that you have two bridges. A solid foot bridge, and a dangerous-feeling suspension bridge. At the far end of each bridge is a member of your preferred sex. A beautiful lady, handsome fellow, as you like. This person flirts with you after you cross, and gives you their number.<div><br /></div><div>Which one do you call?</div><div><br /></div><div>(As it turns out, you're far more likely to call the one at the end of the suspension bridge. <a href="http://www.fpce.uc.pt/niips/novoplano/ps1/documentos/dutton&aron1974.pdf">Here's </a>the original study on it.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Arousal is arousal. Scary movie dates? Not bad. How about jumping out of a plane? Gets some high marks, yep. Romantic behavior can be largely (not entirely, but largely) summed up as: Personal attention, symbols of attraction, and activity that is arousing - physically, nervously, in whatever way. You're under the influence, high on recent experience, and that high can be <i>transferred</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is all about an error. See, the nervous symptoms of deep emotion are very similar to those of general excitement. So if you get someone excited and present them with a potential emotional source, they're likely to just latch right on, "writing it in"as the cause, possibly even rationalizing the behavior. It's not so much an error when it comes to sex, we think - that's excitement that should cause this kind of bonding. But the kind of excitement that's being served up doesn't matter as much as you'd think.</div><div><br /></div><div>So, if you take your date on the carnival rides, are you tricking them into maybe liking you more with that rush? Could be. But, then, you're also tricking <i>yoursel</i>f into liking them more. To some degree, we know this. We want to have a good date, a memorable thing with a nice glow after the fact, in memory. We want to get under the influence.</div><div><br /></div><div>If you know that falling for this one would be a mistake, go for coffee. </div><div><br /></div><div>If it'd be the best choice you ever made, do something crazy together.</div>Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04247835570586914825noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5237283356864181359.post-80574296497852261982010-08-04T21:22:00.000-07:002010-08-04T23:28:53.090-07:00It Hurts More If You Scream?There are pilot projects and studies being done, right now, on attention and pain. The results aren't all the way in yet, but being distracted <i>during</i> ongoing pain reduces the amount of pain experienced. How this works isn't well understood, but it's not just a trick; there's a physiological thing going on here.<div><br /></div><div>Now, this isn't exactly a shocker to most folks. You go see a sick relative to 'take their mind off it'; and it works.</div><div><br /></div><div>But this has a few implications in terms of people's internal narrative, as well. If you buy into the ideas of "walking it off" and "toughing it out and getting back to work", then you may also be adopting a strategy that reduces pain in the short term. It can also mean that you'll avoid going to see the doctor in the long term, meaning more damage in the long term. It's quite possible, however much it annoys, that meditation and similar practices are working distraction strategies.</div><div><br /></div><div>This doesn't <i>necessarily </i>mean that it hurts more if you scream; I haven't been able to find any real work on the relationship between pain expression and pain experience. I suspect that it depends on the expression. If you use your misery as a performance to elicit sympathy, this might <i>also </i>be an effective strategy for diverting your attention from the actual pain. Maybe you know someone that you would happily suspect of doing this; it surely does draw up the mental stereotype of the complaining great-aunt.</div><div><br /></div><div>All of this together means: Getting your own narrative geared well can help you cope with pain. Tough it out, but go to the doctor. Laid up in bed? Try to engage something <i>you can get lost in</i>, and which you can focus on long enough to stay lost for a while.</div><div><br /></div><div>Chances are, you can already spot the ways you've done these things.</div><div><br /></div><div><i><b>(New thing: ticky box reactions, below. Ticky boxes are love.)</b></i></div>Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04247835570586914825noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5237283356864181359.post-56769113058375156972010-08-04T07:48:00.000-07:002010-08-04T10:49:17.710-07:00Oddities Of RewardsIn traditional economic theory, the fastest way to motivate behavior is to provide a money reward. So, in this theory, salary bonuses are a fast way to get people to perform more admirably at work.<div><br /></div><div>And that's true. Except when it's <i>different</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>It is absolutely true that offering a cash reward works when the work is rote, systematic, and simple. However, it ceases to be true when the desired work is spontaneous, free-thinking, or creative. If you tell an artist that you'll pay them based on the number of works turned out, you'll often see a lot of work! But it often won't be very <i>good</i> work.</div><div><br /></div><div>Teachers given salary bonuses to keep student enrolled do keep students enrolled. But grades drop. Don't believe this? <a href="http://www.upjohninst.org/publications/wp/0065wp.html">Here's a study on it.</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Studies on this kind of thing are starting to become common, and they seem to point at the idea that the mental effect of seeking a reward doesn't work well with creativity. Creative behaviour requires a somewhat unfocused approach; money rewards narrow your focus.</div><div><br /></div><div>The strange thing is that money rewards <i>given to charity</i> don't seem to do the same thing. If I'll donate a dollar to a children's hospital as a reward for you, something different seems to happen; the mental focus doesn't narrow down in the same way. If I give a reward (say, bonus equipment) to the group you work with, it's somewhat different again. It also looks to my reading as if status-based rewards, such as trophies, can go either way depending on how they are framed.</div><div><br /></div><div>A chain of stores offering a cash bonus to employees for 'great ideas' will often receive suggestions, but quash creative thought - they may be offering the wrong kind of reward to get great ideas. In this case, if there's some satisfaction to be gained from offering those ideas and seeing them implemented, they likely don't want to offer a reward at all. The reward is <i>intrinsic</i>; it's built in to the activity. Giving money to people for solving puzzles doesn't help; solving a puzzle is the the reward for solving it. In fact, giving an money reward for solving puzzles slows progress on those puzzles. This is commonly called the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect">overjustification effect</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Socially, this means that when you're offered the wrong kind of reward (at work, at school, in a game), and you know the intention, you may actually need to <i>fight the effects of the reward</i> to accord with the intention. It sounds outrageous to suggest calling up your boss and saying "Hey, uh, instead of offering bonus money, could you offer us something else?", but it may actually be in your interests to do so. If you're in a position to offer rewards to others, you want to think very closely about the kind of reward you want to put out there.</div>Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04247835570586914825noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5237283356864181359.post-46597934848987217792010-07-30T18:54:00.000-07:002010-07-30T19:11:43.484-07:00The Talk We NeedHuman minds are fallible, and prone to making the same mistakes over and over. We're wonderfully adapted to a situation that <i>we don't actually occupy</i> - a situation of small groups, limited resources, short lifespans. It's fairly easy to point of the flaws in the way that we narrate the world, the imbalances in our discourses. <div><div><br /></div><div>This leads us to assume, in some sense, that our social structures are the problem, leading us into bigotry, economic and environmental shortsightedness, and all manner of other stupidity. But those structures spring naturally from the way we approach the world. We're the problem; these things are just comfort food - fatty, too salty, prone to make us die young, but eminently suited to what we want at some base level.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>So, the structures of discourse and dialog we build aren't everything, but they're not <i>nothing</i>, either. Even if we have a tendency to make poor choices, we've built a few discourse that bring us to actions that are contrary to our nature. It's not amazing that there's backbiting and politics in scientific circles; what's amazing is that the process works at all, dragging us into closer contact and comprehension of the objective reality we actually exist in.</div><div><br /></div><div>The scientific method is an artificial aid to understanding. Like glasses, or any other tool that improves on human capacity.</div><div><br /></div><div>We need heuristics for modern life that serve that function. We need a folk science that draws us an map that is "accurate enough", and which naturally self-corrects because of the basic stuff that lies at it's foundation. A system in which our hard-won knowledge filters ever outward, simplifying into common language without disconnecting.</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't know how to build that. I'm not sure anyone does. I think we should try to find out.</div>Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04247835570586914825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5237283356864181359.post-83821968728902659412010-07-30T05:42:00.000-07:002010-07-30T07:40:38.219-07:00Discourse & CredibilityFollowing on from the last few posts... An individual person has a streaming narrative, and groups create and share packages of narrative stuff. Those packages are, in many ways, things unto themselves - and there's a great social science term for them. These are <i>discourses</i>.<div><br /></div><div>So, one discourse, as a package of narrative stuff, labels guerrilla fighters as terrorists. A different discourse labels them as freedom fighters. You can absorb and use components of either or both of these discourses into your running narrative, or not.</div><div><br /></div><div>Some discourses are widely accepted, and form a hefty part of the foundations of society. For example, there are a number of discourses that describe specific labels and roles for men and women. There's a discourse for "breadwinner and housewife", and all the stuff that piles along with those labels, which has plenty of near relatives. These have been accepted long enough that even while they're being attacked and denied, the repercussions of them (wage differences, glass ceilings) live on. Getting them out of the foundations is hard; they're poured right into the bedrock of many institutions, ingrained into the conversation, assumed by the rules, and so on.</div><div><br /></div><div>That example is especially handy, because any acceptance of it (including a harsh rejection of it) changes who you'll listen to, who has and doesn't have credibility. In much of society, it means that women's ideas about work, money, and many other topics are given less credibility. In groups that are engaged in a deep rejection of it, it can mean that the ideas of men are looked on with suspicion (but only "can", not "does" - there are as almost as many forms of rejection as there are of acceptance). This means that it affects the way that further discourses are handled and absorbed, changing the rules for what can come after.</div><div><br /></div><div>Biased discourses create unequal access to the shaping and formation of further discourse. This likely isn't a shocking idea to most readers, but it absolutely needs mentioning. And it does reach further than sexism and racism; it also applies to expertise. The "Ivory tower intellectual" and the "Ignorant nobody" are both discourse-based attempts to change the landscape of credibility.</div><div><br /></div><div>Each branch (or sub-branch) of science, then, is a large and difficult discourse that has subjected itself to regulation. They're difficult because they don't narrate all that well; the easily-narrated versions of each branch are the "folk science" version. They're subject to regulation in that there's a broadly-accepted scientific method, and specific tools in each branch - all in the service of updating the discourse and attempting to make that discourse, when employed in your narrative, a better tool for simulating objective reality.</div><div><br /></div><div>And, no, this post isn't subject to those methods. Which makes it folk science. Specifically, this is folk sociology.</div>Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04247835570586914825noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5237283356864181359.post-91674223262126047412010-07-28T21:50:00.000-07:002010-07-29T11:17:26.300-07:00Sharing Narrative<div>When people get together, live together, or communicate in a tight group with one another, they build up a share stockpile of the same stuff that their personal narratives are made of. A tightly-bound group builds a bank of shared experience. They share language. They have inside jokes, references, and the like...</div><div><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_JZ8GZU-YQEo/TFEJndsDbeI/AAAAAAAAAaM/W5uwjwycsyE/s1600/camping-image.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 271px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_JZ8GZU-YQEo/TFEJndsDbeI/AAAAAAAAAaM/W5uwjwycsyE/s400/camping-image.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5499187193585036770" /></a><div style="text-align: center;">[Pic is just some random campers, snagged off a search]</div><div><br /><div>There's a reason that small-group "getaways" are used for team-building. It's tempting to say that it's even related to the origins of the Honeymoon. Time together and away from others pushes people into shared symbol-sets. We're naturally really good at small-group bonds like this.</div><div><br /></div><div>Getting an equivalent bond on the larger scale isn't as easy. There's no consistent "American Experience" from which the people of that nation could draw shared bits of their narrative. Where there is stuff that is naturally spread on the large scale in a long-lasting way, it's almost unconscious - that's the stuff that <i>makes up normality</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Often, people are impelled to try and share narrative stuff across a large group much faster. So, pieces that condense this stuff are created - whole complexes of symbols.</div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_JZ8GZU-YQEo/TFEI8p3DLmI/AAAAAAAAAaE/9acllQbVvIM/s1600/Rosie-the-Riveter-from-No-009.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_JZ8GZU-YQEo/TFEI8p3DLmI/AAAAAAAAAaE/9acllQbVvIM/s400/Rosie-the-Riveter-from-No-009.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5499186458118008418" /></a><div style="text-align: center;">[Pic is Rosie the Riveter. <i>Please </i>don't tell me you've never heard of her.] </div></div><div><br /></div><div>In addition to images, large-group efforts also include slogans, ideological systems, role labels for people, and more. More recently, these efforts have included narratives of their own - and this is narrative with another definition. Large-group, media, and political narratives are not quite personal, streaming narrative, and they're not quite story. They're the condensed stuff of personal narratives, built to be absorbed <i>into </i>personal narratives.</div><div><br /></div><div>This does mean that all attempts at creating large-group blocks of shared narrative stuff, <i>including </i>news programming, textbooks, and common-sense rules, are also attempts to change the way you think. It also means, to the potential annoyance of those sharing that stuff, that they're handing you means to say things they never wanted to say.</div><div><br /></div><div>It also means that people can submerge into those large-group quasi-narratives to some extent, making them real. Rhetorical talking points can become real thinking - this happens at both small and large scales, but at the large scale, it can lead to extreme drifts. If you have trouble believing this, you may want to watch some Glenn Beck. Or maybe not; after all, when you engage such stuff, you can easily incorporate it - that's the whole idea.</div><div><br /></div><div>Finally, this leads to an odd conception that some forms of expression are best handled at a distance, as if they were toxic waste. Don't engage Mein Kampf too closely, you might start thinking like Hitler. And that's true to a limited extent, but remember that all communication has this effect to a greater or lesser degree. </div><div><br /></div><div>We can't create a sanitary world of ideas, without the negative uses of this kind of influence. <i>Nobody would be allowed to talk</i>. It's a basic process, and has upsides and downsides at every turning.</div>Levihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04247835570586914825noreply@blogger.com0