The great visionary Alan Kay once compared the dot-Com goldrush (while it was still going on) to a cargo cult. This was one of those big "a-ha" moments in this moron's life. I'd heard of cargo cults but had just thought of it as an amusing story. If you follow that Wikipedia link, you can see a sort of apologetic tone about how "an isolated society's first contact with the outside world...can be a shock".
But what the dot-Com mania showed was that there's nothing about the mentality that's exclusive to primitive societies. People figured if they bought a clever domain name, wealth would follow. Some had worked out an extra step, of course:
1. Buy Domain Name
2. Attract Investor Dollars
3. ???
4. Profit!
And, of course, some of them never thought past step 2. After all, once investors give you lots of money, you're done, right?
In short, the fundamental issue is a lack of understanding of relationship between cause and effect. Hell, forget about airplanes, a small island culture would probably have a harder time imagining the logistics—the massive industrial and social machinery—behind a military supply drop. You'd first have to get them to grasp the concept of millions of people.
While the dot-Com bubble was doubtless motivated by the same burning desire for unearned material wealth as the island chief's, the dot-Com guys had no comparable excuse. Regardless of the medium, the basics of trade don't change: You have to offer people something they want before they give you money; and if it's something they can already get, you have to offer more, like a lower price, higher quality, greater convenience or better service.
These are not mysterious things, yet if you were watching the madness ten years ago, you saw a 10-year-old company whose increasingly commoditized product was losing market share hand-over-fist buy out a media powerhouse that made its 75-year fortune on essentially unique product—and you also saw this hailed as a great move for the media powerhouse.
Once my eyes were opened to this parallel, I began seeing cargo cults everywhere. Because they are everywhere. And we're probably all guilty of cause-effect confusion to some degree, in some areas of our lives.
As a rather bizarre example, in our culture you can see cargo cult religions (of all denominations), where people mimic the practices of religion while eschewing anything not immediately gratifying, anything that requires sacrifice, or anything that would actually bind people together, as religion is supposed to do. (Then they're surprised when there's nothing there in their time of need.)
But sometimes it's harmless and even kind of cute, when done with awareness. Sports fans, for example, will be very superstitious when rooting for their teams, wearing same clothes or eating the same food or performing some ritual because that's what happened the last time the team made a big score. This is more a knowing game of pretending to have a power (in a situation where you really can't) than a genuine cargo cult mentality. Or so one hopes. (Athletes themselves will have such superstitions, but they don't forgo training for them.)
Oftentimes it's pernicious and destructive, and completely backwards. The idea, for example, of focusing on building self-esteem by giving a child the rewards associated with self-esteem. This creates a sense of entitlement combined with a very fragile ego—a less functional combination hard to imagine.
You can probably see where I'm headed with this.
We have before us this Christmas the most astounding example of a cargo cult I can recall in my lifetime: We have a government that doesn't even understand their own flawed philosophy, mimicking the destructive actions (which had observably bad ends) without even grasping the logic behind them.
For example, the current administration has reduced Keynesian theory (which Keynes himself didn't fully accept) to "throw money all over the place, especially to our friends and good things will happen."
Same with health care: "Pass some laws—any laws—and health care will be 'solved'." The very passage of the laws themselves seems to have been backwards "Let's talk about how we've won and celebrate the passing of these laws, then we'll work on getting them passed. " (Consider the number of times Harry Reid proclaimed he had reached a consensus.)
Even the compromises emerged not from the idea of giving-and-taking on substance so that ultimately everyone could vote for something that was good enough, but by cajoling the "yeas" through any means necessary, no matter how bad a bill was created.
There's no grasp of cause-and-effect.
The frosting on this Christmas cookie being the philosophies that are being aped were never very successful either. FDR's "stimulus" may have been neutral, but the regulatory atmosphere—the atmosphere of wild experimentation, was demonstrably harmful. And even as real job creators today say they're reluctant to hire in such an unpredictable environment, it's not enough to spread money around, the administration has to show that it's willing to stick its fingers everywhere.
You don't need a litany of what the tax, regulate, redistribute process has done to the American economy. The War on Poverty created a permanent underclass, and the War on Drugs created a massive criminal class. The current War on Health (as I suggest we christen it) will have similarly dubious effects. (Even if the current mess doesn't pass, would you, as a young person, be eager to go into medicine in this environment?)
At some point, one has to wonder if the actual cause-and-effect of freedom and stability leading to prosperity isn't very well understood by a lot of those working to undermine it.
At least that's what I'm wondering as I sit under my Christmas tree, singing carols, waiting for presents to appear.
Showing posts with label society. Show all posts
Showing posts with label society. Show all posts
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Friday, December 4, 2009
Rape vs. Cuckoldry
In what seems to me to be a shining example of "us vs. them" syndrome, a debate is going on about which is worse being raped, or being cuckolded (in the biological sense of raising another man's child). Via Instapundit. Arguments are being made based on financial costs, emotional damage, etc.
But the only point in having this debate is to try to score a point against the opposite sex. Just as men and women are different, they have different ways of hurting each other. Even if one is "worse" than the other by some standard, it doesn't really say anything by itself about the conflicts between men and women.
Just as I think collectivism makes for bad government, I think it also makes for a bad way to try to resolve interpersonal issues. One should worry materially less about what "men" do and what "women" do than what the particular men and women in one's life do.
The kids have been on a real "King of the Hill" kick lately. That show, if you've never seen it, features a character, Dale, whose son Joseph is clearly not his. Dale is a comical character, cowardly and stupid, and his cuckolding by his wife played for laughs in both his and others' inability to see the obvious. (Joseph is around 14 through most of the series, and Dale's wife's affair is still going on when the series starts.)
But from the start, Dale's devotion to his son (such as it is) is the bedrock of the family. And as the series progresses and his wife rededicates herself to him, it turns out to be Joseph's real father who ends up lonely and isolated, watching his son grow up to admire and emulate another man.
It's a very funny show, but I don't think I've seen the topic handled more thoroughly and sensitively anywhere else. And I think it's more interesting than trying to figure out who hurts who more, men or women. Because I think we all do a pretty good job of that—and keeping score is probably just going to make us all look bad.
But the only point in having this debate is to try to score a point against the opposite sex. Just as men and women are different, they have different ways of hurting each other. Even if one is "worse" than the other by some standard, it doesn't really say anything by itself about the conflicts between men and women.
Just as I think collectivism makes for bad government, I think it also makes for a bad way to try to resolve interpersonal issues. One should worry materially less about what "men" do and what "women" do than what the particular men and women in one's life do.
The kids have been on a real "King of the Hill" kick lately. That show, if you've never seen it, features a character, Dale, whose son Joseph is clearly not his. Dale is a comical character, cowardly and stupid, and his cuckolding by his wife played for laughs in both his and others' inability to see the obvious. (Joseph is around 14 through most of the series, and Dale's wife's affair is still going on when the series starts.)
But from the start, Dale's devotion to his son (such as it is) is the bedrock of the family. And as the series progresses and his wife rededicates herself to him, it turns out to be Joseph's real father who ends up lonely and isolated, watching his son grow up to admire and emulate another man.
It's a very funny show, but I don't think I've seen the topic handled more thoroughly and sensitively anywhere else. And I think it's more interesting than trying to figure out who hurts who more, men or women. Because I think we all do a pretty good job of that—and keeping score is probably just going to make us all look bad.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
All Weed Weed Up!
Via Instapundit and Boing Boing, the L.A. Times posted an article showing all the quasi-legal marijuana joints in L.A. with a handy interactive map.
I first noticed one of these a month or two ago. I was driving and talking on a cell phone (it's L.A., it's the law) and I said, "Hey! I think that's a medical marijuana shop!" I drove through the lot and saw the store was closed and looked abandoned. I thought maybe these places were supposed to look like dives.
But the map reveals this was a place that had its license denied or revoked. Looking at the map, the highest concentration of stores seems to coincide with the poorest areas with the highest crime.
I guess crime and poverty lead to glaucoma.
I am, of course, opposed to drug use, whether recreational, phoney-baloney medical—and in most cases, legitimate medical uses. (Drugs should be used short-term to keep someone alive; corrective measures should be applied as soon as possible to obviate the need for long-term drug use.)
But the sheer insanity of the current situation is almost comical. We have hundreds of legal stores—but some guy got arrested by the Feds because he grew it in his backyard?
It is funny, although in a blackly-comic sort of way: We "fight" drugs, which drives up the prices and makes criminals out of users, fills the prisons, creates powerful gangs and international drug cartels that contribute to the deterioration of our neighboring countries—all without affecting the actual amount of drug use.
Meanwhile, doctors prescribe psychotropic drugs of dubious value like candy, and people drink like fish while scarfing stimulants to get through their days.
Somehow that doesn't add up to me.
I first noticed one of these a month or two ago. I was driving and talking on a cell phone (it's L.A., it's the law) and I said, "Hey! I think that's a medical marijuana shop!" I drove through the lot and saw the store was closed and looked abandoned. I thought maybe these places were supposed to look like dives.
But the map reveals this was a place that had its license denied or revoked. Looking at the map, the highest concentration of stores seems to coincide with the poorest areas with the highest crime.
I guess crime and poverty lead to glaucoma.
I am, of course, opposed to drug use, whether recreational, phoney-baloney medical—and in most cases, legitimate medical uses. (Drugs should be used short-term to keep someone alive; corrective measures should be applied as soon as possible to obviate the need for long-term drug use.)
But the sheer insanity of the current situation is almost comical. We have hundreds of legal stores—but some guy got arrested by the Feds because he grew it in his backyard?
It is funny, although in a blackly-comic sort of way: We "fight" drugs, which drives up the prices and makes criminals out of users, fills the prisons, creates powerful gangs and international drug cartels that contribute to the deterioration of our neighboring countries—all without affecting the actual amount of drug use.
Meanwhile, doctors prescribe psychotropic drugs of dubious value like candy, and people drink like fish while scarfing stimulants to get through their days.
Somehow that doesn't add up to me.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Adolescence
Previously I linked to Knox's comment where she linked to the Glenn and Helen show where they interview Robert Epstein on adolescence, and a test designed to measure how adult one is. As you can see here, I just got carried away snarking on the test, which is actually pretty interesting.
More importantly, I agree with the basic topic: Adolescence is a bad idea. I'll never forget sitting down to my first college course and thinking, "WTF? We could have done this five years ago!"
Even allowing for my high level of comfort with school--I'm a chronic test taker, read for fun, quite good at sitting still for long periods, basically made for school--college is way too late for just about everyone. The Boy, while fine in school, is nowhere near as comfortable and casual about it as I was, and he's doing just fine in his class. (And he got a strict teacher, he has to turn in his notes, etc. This will work out excellently for him in terms of giving him real world experience for taking more classes.)
Anyway, I love the way the guy, Epstein, attacks the "teen brain" thing. That kind of stuff--the sort of vague assertions made by some segment of brain scientists--always smacks of phrenology to me. Teenagers used to be plenty responsible. Inexperienced, but not stupid.
In fact, the most plausible suggestion I've heard about adolescence is that it was created by trade guilds (unions) as a way to eliminate competition.
Well, let's be honest: It's hard on the ego. If we let teens work, they'd end up being better at what we do than we are. I mean, sure, we have experience, but they have energy, alertness, enthusiasm--and putting them to work early is the best way to blunt that. Wait, no, that's not what I meant to say.
Seriously, though: Teens will work hard, for little money, and they're eager to assume more responsibility. Adults should be afraid of them entering the workplace sooner--they would threaten our ability to slack!
Of course, if we were shrewd and up to the challenge, we could harness their energy in useful ways, and create a brand new, powerful, responsible demographic, and use our experience to direct them in ways ushered in a new era of wealth for everyone.
As always, the kids are all right. It's the adults that are the problem.
More importantly, I agree with the basic topic: Adolescence is a bad idea. I'll never forget sitting down to my first college course and thinking, "WTF? We could have done this five years ago!"
Even allowing for my high level of comfort with school--I'm a chronic test taker, read for fun, quite good at sitting still for long periods, basically made for school--college is way too late for just about everyone. The Boy, while fine in school, is nowhere near as comfortable and casual about it as I was, and he's doing just fine in his class. (And he got a strict teacher, he has to turn in his notes, etc. This will work out excellently for him in terms of giving him real world experience for taking more classes.)
Anyway, I love the way the guy, Epstein, attacks the "teen brain" thing. That kind of stuff--the sort of vague assertions made by some segment of brain scientists--always smacks of phrenology to me. Teenagers used to be plenty responsible. Inexperienced, but not stupid.
In fact, the most plausible suggestion I've heard about adolescence is that it was created by trade guilds (unions) as a way to eliminate competition.
Well, let's be honest: It's hard on the ego. If we let teens work, they'd end up being better at what we do than we are. I mean, sure, we have experience, but they have energy, alertness, enthusiasm--and putting them to work early is the best way to blunt that. Wait, no, that's not what I meant to say.
Seriously, though: Teens will work hard, for little money, and they're eager to assume more responsibility. Adults should be afraid of them entering the workplace sooner--they would threaten our ability to slack!
Of course, if we were shrewd and up to the challenge, we could harness their energy in useful ways, and create a brand new, powerful, responsible demographic, and use our experience to direct them in ways ushered in a new era of wealth for everyone.
As always, the kids are all right. It's the adults that are the problem.
All The Awful Things That Ever Were
In response to the previous post on The Boy's college career, Knox linked to the Glenn and Helen show where they interview Robert Epstein on adolescence, and a test designed to measure how adult one is.
I got an ""Adultness" Comepetency Score" of 90%. Double-scare quotes! The quotes around "Adultness" are theirs, mine are around the whole phrase. I'm pretty sure you have to be quite mature to use double-scare quotes.
The results page then lists your scores by subject matter. Of course, I'm an old time test-taker. I could get whatever score I wanted. I answered some of the questions "incorrectly" because I they were phrased badly.
For example, "You can earn a high school diploma by completing high school or passing an equivalency test. Do you agree?" Well, no, I don't, because it's not true. You can take the GED--though the current California system bars you from taking it pretty much until you're 18, take that! you overachievers!--but even if you take the GED, you don't have a high school diploma, and you won't be treated like you do. (This is along the same lines of The Boy getting his MBA: Getting the sheepskin is about him having options should he need to get a job, even if his current plan is to be an employer rather than an employee.)
I thought it was amusing that I scored 100% on the "managing high-risk behaviors" section. This (for me) has nothing to do with being mature. I just don't find most high-risk behaviors entertaining. I guess driving counts. But guns? Very few people are accidentally hurt by guns. Guns are meant to be deadly; power tools probably claim more casualties. Cars do by an order of magnitude.
I scored quite badly on the "physical abilities" section (56%). I see what they're getting at: An adult realizes that he has to take care of his body. But even at my peak fitness, I never regarded myself as "strong" or "flexible". Those things are relative. And I tend to look at those things--not just physical fitness, but also intelligence--in terms of where they fail (almost always sooner than where I'd like).
Kinda sucks that poor health makes you less adult than a teenage football player.
The more legit one is "Personal Care". Legit in the sense of being less a relative use of words, versus actually being accurate. My score there was 78%, but I know it's because I sacrifice elements of personal care (sleep, in particular) for my children. And I suppose most people don't really have to do that regularly, but the questions are completely context free, and any adult knows that there are plenty of circumstances where you do sacrifice optimum personal behaviors for your children.
But then, as an adult, I know better than to put much stock in an Internet quiz.
I got an ""Adultness" Comepetency Score" of 90%. Double-scare quotes! The quotes around "Adultness" are theirs, mine are around the whole phrase. I'm pretty sure you have to be quite mature to use double-scare quotes.
The results page then lists your scores by subject matter. Of course, I'm an old time test-taker. I could get whatever score I wanted. I answered some of the questions "incorrectly" because I they were phrased badly.
For example, "You can earn a high school diploma by completing high school or passing an equivalency test. Do you agree?" Well, no, I don't, because it's not true. You can take the GED--though the current California system bars you from taking it pretty much until you're 18, take that! you overachievers!--but even if you take the GED, you don't have a high school diploma, and you won't be treated like you do. (This is along the same lines of The Boy getting his MBA: Getting the sheepskin is about him having options should he need to get a job, even if his current plan is to be an employer rather than an employee.)
I thought it was amusing that I scored 100% on the "managing high-risk behaviors" section. This (for me) has nothing to do with being mature. I just don't find most high-risk behaviors entertaining. I guess driving counts. But guns? Very few people are accidentally hurt by guns. Guns are meant to be deadly; power tools probably claim more casualties. Cars do by an order of magnitude.
I scored quite badly on the "physical abilities" section (56%). I see what they're getting at: An adult realizes that he has to take care of his body. But even at my peak fitness, I never regarded myself as "strong" or "flexible". Those things are relative. And I tend to look at those things--not just physical fitness, but also intelligence--in terms of where they fail (almost always sooner than where I'd like).
Kinda sucks that poor health makes you less adult than a teenage football player.
The more legit one is "Personal Care". Legit in the sense of being less a relative use of words, versus actually being accurate. My score there was 78%, but I know it's because I sacrifice elements of personal care (sleep, in particular) for my children. And I suppose most people don't really have to do that regularly, but the questions are completely context free, and any adult knows that there are plenty of circumstances where you do sacrifice optimum personal behaviors for your children.
But then, as an adult, I know better than to put much stock in an Internet quiz.
Friday, May 8, 2009
This Guy...
...is so gettin' some:
“Apparently the guy was getting ready to rape his girlfriend. So he told the girls to get down and he started shooting. The guy jumped out of the window,” said Bailey.
Hell, the guys should be queuing up.
Seriously, though, he missed the second guy. More time at the range. The would-be rapist has been picked up, allegedly.
No word on whether College Park is a gun-free zone or if the student who saved the lives of his ten friends would be prosecuted.
“Apparently the guy was getting ready to rape his girlfriend. So he told the girls to get down and he started shooting. The guy jumped out of the window,” said Bailey.
Hell, the guys should be queuing up.
Seriously, though, he missed the second guy. More time at the range. The would-be rapist has been picked up, allegedly.
No word on whether College Park is a gun-free zone or if the student who saved the lives of his ten friends would be prosecuted.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
We Can't Have Nice Things
A new commenter came by and commented on an old post I had about the weirdness of IMDB movie ratings, which is a topic I've mentioned not too long ago. When I first logged on to IMDB, the top-rated movie was The Godfather, and it had a 7.8.
I had always thought the main distortion on IMDB was simple inflation. "Oh, Godfather is a 7.8, eh? Well, then, Glitter must be at least an 8! And Godfather should be a 1!" And this leads to a vicious cycle, where people aren't ranking movies according to their own preferences, but against others'.
And it made me think of Susan Boyle, who got a record breaking number of views on YouTube, and the article I was reading talked about how "Evolution of Dance" was suspected of being the most viewed video, but that fans of various musical groups set up tricks to increase the view count for their favorite acts.
Then I thought over Wikipedia, which has limited utility from all the bias. Then Althouse comment threads--and Althouse has among the best commenters--which people go in with the sole purpose to create noise. Twitter has a pretty good system for reducing noise, but you can still get lots of spam.
And I think to myself: This is why we can't have nice things.
Seriously, all the social web things are cool. The open-ness of them, the facilitating of mashups and unexpected uses. But the difficult balance to strike is allowing contributions and also disallowing them.
Twitter works because following is easy but not automatic. Unfollowing is only slightly harder, which is to say, not hard at all. But Twitter lacks continuity and intimacy. (That may be an artifact of Twitter versus a necessary result of the following process.) It's also a chaotic stream that is only manageable because you can limit it.
I was struck by that old meme of the mom pulling out hair because the kids knocked over her expensive vase by playing ball in the house where she laments, "We can't have nice things." The social web often reminds me of that. That and the sort of nouveaux "tragedy of the commons", which isn't about consuming resources, but controlling the ones that command attention.
I think something like Twitter could be evolved with multiple streams and nesting, possibly around little nodes, which could be links to blogs, or could be long "tweets". But these would exist in the common space, perhaps with separate streams for different responders, even. Something less monolithic than Twitter.
I don't know. I suspect we're not done with the whole social web thing. But the real trick is trying to figure out how to have nice things.
I had always thought the main distortion on IMDB was simple inflation. "Oh, Godfather is a 7.8, eh? Well, then, Glitter must be at least an 8! And Godfather should be a 1!" And this leads to a vicious cycle, where people aren't ranking movies according to their own preferences, but against others'.
And it made me think of Susan Boyle, who got a record breaking number of views on YouTube, and the article I was reading talked about how "Evolution of Dance" was suspected of being the most viewed video, but that fans of various musical groups set up tricks to increase the view count for their favorite acts.
Then I thought over Wikipedia, which has limited utility from all the bias. Then Althouse comment threads--and Althouse has among the best commenters--which people go in with the sole purpose to create noise. Twitter has a pretty good system for reducing noise, but you can still get lots of spam.
And I think to myself: This is why we can't have nice things.
Seriously, all the social web things are cool. The open-ness of them, the facilitating of mashups and unexpected uses. But the difficult balance to strike is allowing contributions and also disallowing them.
Twitter works because following is easy but not automatic. Unfollowing is only slightly harder, which is to say, not hard at all. But Twitter lacks continuity and intimacy. (That may be an artifact of Twitter versus a necessary result of the following process.) It's also a chaotic stream that is only manageable because you can limit it.
I was struck by that old meme of the mom pulling out hair because the kids knocked over her expensive vase by playing ball in the house where she laments, "We can't have nice things." The social web often reminds me of that. That and the sort of nouveaux "tragedy of the commons", which isn't about consuming resources, but controlling the ones that command attention.
I think something like Twitter could be evolved with multiple streams and nesting, possibly around little nodes, which could be links to blogs, or could be long "tweets". But these would exist in the common space, perhaps with separate streams for different responders, even. Something less monolithic than Twitter.
I don't know. I suspect we're not done with the whole social web thing. But the real trick is trying to figure out how to have nice things.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Dead Men Throw No Switches
So I started doing the nutritional program in earnest, along with The Boy, and got a bit of a scare. It's probably nothing, and may be related to the antibiotics I'm taking (for the ear infection from hell), but I'll be having a thorough medical examination as a result.
It's not really something I look forward to.
But it got me thinking about my mortality and taking care of business. Death isn't something I fear, generally. When younger, I had some brushes with mortality to which my reaction was "Well, I guess if it's my time..."
I know that we get a sense of invulnerability, immortality, that nothing bad can happen to us, but there's also the "who cares?" aspect of it. When you're young you consider yourself sovereign over your life, and if you're going to do something reckless well, what's that to anyone else? You can see young death glamorized in a way that mortality otherwise is not.
And then you have kids.
Well, crap. Now it matters if you live or die. (And if you're thinking, you realize it mattered before--back when you were SuperTeen--to your own parents. A feeling of embarrasment is normal at this point.) I mean, the finances are easy enough to handle. In fact, the traditional male role is easy to fill: I think a widow with children can probably much more easily plug in a new male into her life than a widower is likely to find a woman willing to take care of another woman's home and children. And how much more traumatic is that, that the primary caretaker be replaced by a relative stranger?
Of course, it happened a lot in the Old West (for example), with mortality in child birth being so common. And certainly it's happened that a step-father has a callous and indifferent (or worse) attitude toward another man's children.
Anyway, having a kid changes the game, if you were indifferent to your survival before. If you're cancerous and would rather just let it take you than endure the medieval treatments we have for handling it, you really don't have much of a choice. You have to fight. Congratulations: You've become more important than yourself.
It should also mean that you're not exposing yourself to a lot of unnecessary risk, like extreme sports, daredevil ballon rides, base jumping, etc. But that doesn't always happen.
Given the rather severe separation of my online life versus my real one, I've often thought about setting up a "dead man's switch" that would notify people should I not throw it. I figured the most likely result of that, though, would be a false "Blake's dead!" message. Heh. That might be funny once or twice, but sort of defeats the purpose should it happen a lot.
There's now at least one service that will do this for you, I think. It's been in the news a lot lately. But I suspect a lot of us don't give enough thought on how online folks would be affected by our sudden disappearance. (I've had it happen numerous times, and I don't know to this day whether the person just dropped out or something had happened to them.)
So, it's something worth thinking about.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Planned Irrelevance
Somebody tweeted about this today: It's called the "Congressional Effect Fund". It's a mutual fund premised on the idea that Congress destroys wealth. That's putting your money where your mouth is, eh? Or rather, where their mouths ain't.
I don't know enough about how this stuff works to know if they can actually minimize their exposure on non-Congress days, and I do sort of wonder whether, if something like this took off, it wouldn't end up creating distorting effects.
But it is interesting from the standpoint of "libertarian optimism" we were talking about before.
Also interesting are the various cities and states (AP snark warning on that state link) resisting the current power grab.
Could we build a society around the Federal government? In-between? In the unregulated and unregulate-able nooks and crannies?
To an extent, the "black market" or "underground economy" (WSJ.com) has always flourished in supressive times--and regulations are suppressive, however necessary they may be--and, in a totalitarian environment, the black market is often the only market there is.
By the way, another word for "underground economy" is "free market".
I'm not an OUTLAW like some people, but it doesn't take much to realize that people will seek to survive and to improve their conditions, and if the environment works against them they will push back against the environment, escape the environment or operate under the table (which is a form of escape after all).
Technology can play a big hand here: Even while it gets harder to start a business due to regulation, technology can make it cheaper than ever.
The real question is whether you can work in your current physical space well enough to fight the creeping, smothering embrace of government--or whether you need to move to a new, less paternalistic locale.
I don't know enough about how this stuff works to know if they can actually minimize their exposure on non-Congress days, and I do sort of wonder whether, if something like this took off, it wouldn't end up creating distorting effects.
But it is interesting from the standpoint of "libertarian optimism" we were talking about before.
Also interesting are the various cities and states (AP snark warning on that state link) resisting the current power grab.
Could we build a society around the Federal government? In-between? In the unregulated and unregulate-able nooks and crannies?
To an extent, the "black market" or "underground economy" (WSJ.com) has always flourished in supressive times--and regulations are suppressive, however necessary they may be--and, in a totalitarian environment, the black market is often the only market there is.
By the way, another word for "underground economy" is "free market".
I'm not an OUTLAW like some people, but it doesn't take much to realize that people will seek to survive and to improve their conditions, and if the environment works against them they will push back against the environment, escape the environment or operate under the table (which is a form of escape after all).
Technology can play a big hand here: Even while it gets harder to start a business due to regulation, technology can make it cheaper than ever.
The real question is whether you can work in your current physical space well enough to fight the creeping, smothering embrace of government--or whether you need to move to a new, less paternalistic locale.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Libertarian Optimism
"Expecting Washington to cut back its main instrument of power after a capitalism-bashing political campaign is like expecting Michael Moore to share his Egg McMuffin with a homeless man."
The above from a piece by Gillespie and Welch which is remarkably optimistic given the massive spending. Bankruptcy could lead to--must inevitably lead to?--greater responsibility and less spending and control? Maybe? Dunno.
John Stossel is less sanguine.
It's true that technology--far from the oppressor imagined by Orwell, Huxley and Bradbury--has mostly had a salubrious effect on liberty. Which is not to say that there aren't victims.
Gillespie and Welch's premise seems to be that, in many ways, people are becoming accustomed to tremendous freedom, especially through the 'net. (We are all anarchists now, after a fashion.) This, in turn, will lead to draining of political power.
That might could be. (Yes, "might could". Gotta problem with that?)
It's certainly a nice thought. I think I'll adopt it. See how it grows.
Darcy asked me the other day if I was optimistic, with regard to people and events. Not exactly. With people, I prefer to dwell on their better aspects. Their worst aspects are likely to be banal, but the ways in which they excel or thrive are more likely to be interesting and useful. (Unless, I suppose, one is an extortionist.)
There's an optimism one adopts when taking on a project. The idea is that it should succeed. That's why one generally bothers at all. (And I do the occasional project that I know will "fail" because its success is separate from what I'm trying to get out of it.)
But for large events--society-wide events--history is a bit of a buzzkill. Here we are, in this Golden Age--for surely it is a Golden Age, warts and all--when history demonstrates that all such ages pass, and sooner rather than later. And it's so easy to see--or at least think we see--the reasons why.
But what else can one do but try to stop that, at least until things get so bad the ship must be abandoned?
That doesn't sound very optimistic, though, does it?
The above from a piece by Gillespie and Welch which is remarkably optimistic given the massive spending. Bankruptcy could lead to--must inevitably lead to?--greater responsibility and less spending and control? Maybe? Dunno.
John Stossel is less sanguine.
It's true that technology--far from the oppressor imagined by Orwell, Huxley and Bradbury--has mostly had a salubrious effect on liberty. Which is not to say that there aren't victims.
Gillespie and Welch's premise seems to be that, in many ways, people are becoming accustomed to tremendous freedom, especially through the 'net. (We are all anarchists now, after a fashion.) This, in turn, will lead to draining of political power.
That might could be. (Yes, "might could". Gotta problem with that?)
It's certainly a nice thought. I think I'll adopt it. See how it grows.
Darcy asked me the other day if I was optimistic, with regard to people and events. Not exactly. With people, I prefer to dwell on their better aspects. Their worst aspects are likely to be banal, but the ways in which they excel or thrive are more likely to be interesting and useful. (Unless, I suppose, one is an extortionist.)
There's an optimism one adopts when taking on a project. The idea is that it should succeed. That's why one generally bothers at all. (And I do the occasional project that I know will "fail" because its success is separate from what I'm trying to get out of it.)
But for large events--society-wide events--history is a bit of a buzzkill. Here we are, in this Golden Age--for surely it is a Golden Age, warts and all--when history demonstrates that all such ages pass, and sooner rather than later. And it's so easy to see--or at least think we see--the reasons why.
But what else can one do but try to stop that, at least until things get so bad the ship must be abandoned?
That doesn't sound very optimistic, though, does it?
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
An Infinite Number of Monkeys vs. A Finite Number Of Brain Cells
The limits of materialism are evident, at least to me. For example, in the materialist view, there must be a maximum amount of memories one can have, else where are they stored? (This has been calculated at various times, with current models now approaching near infinity for practical purposes.) Then there's the issue of causality. (You can't logically have causality and responsibility if everything is the result of physical laws that dictate behavior.)
And then there's this crap. According to this, the human being can't really care about more than 150 people at a time. (This is an interesting parallel to Aristotle's famous essay on how many friends one can have, I'll grant.) The brain, it is argued, can't handle it. (O! thou organ of limitless and limited power!) He calls this limit the monkeysphere.
It's fun the play spot the assumptions:
The simple fact is it's impossible to act if you weight every person equally in your life. Not only would that not be a commendable thing, it would be downright stupid. Your attention should be on the people who most directly affect your life, like the jerk who pulls out into traffic in front of you without signally, or whose lives you can affect, like the Ethernopian kid you send money to every month.
This next bit is spectacularly off:
I adored my grade school and earlier teachers. I had to get to Junior High school before I started getting teachers I didn't like (with a big caveat for my nursery school teachers who scared the bejeezus out of me).
But Mr. Wong has a theory, and he's going to fit all kinds of experiences into that theory whether they belong or not. I can't relate, for example, to this:
This paragraph essentially refutes the entire premise of the essay. Yes, life is in competition with other life. That, much like the sports event, is the game. But the vast majority of the people outside your circle are what make your existence possible, and a great deal of what you do, provided you are not a leech, is what makes others' existences possible.
And, what the hell? Since when is "venting anger via exaggerated insults" screwing someone? How big a pussy do you have to be to believe that?
It just gets worse from there. Check out this gem:
There's no sense of right or wrong anywhere in this essay. Everyone just gets away with what they can, and they do so because of their brain. But this guy has the answer: Everything is more complicated than it seems, and we're all just primates flinging feces at each other.
There's also no good or evil. You and I are just Osama Bin Laden without the crazy-ass followers. His belief that we're oppressing him is just as valid as our belief that he killed 3,000+ of our citizens.
I tend to think that civilization depends on billions of us acting within a fairly narrow set of parameters suggests that the whole 150 limit is absurd on the face of it. If we were really and truly limited, civilization as we know it never would have emerged. Having SUVs and TVs didn't create the need for civilization, civilization created the possibility of having SUVs and TVs. But that's the typical reversal of a materialist.
I read this years ago and it disgusted me enough that I ignored it, but Ace just linked to another piece by this guy on how the Internet is going to be regulated so that there's no more anonymity, because anonymity empowers trolls and trolls hurt business.
Meh. Possibly. But so far the 'net has resisted a lot of obvious regulation, and things don't have to always get worse.
And then there's this crap. According to this, the human being can't really care about more than 150 people at a time. (This is an interesting parallel to Aristotle's famous essay on how many friends one can have, I'll grant.) The brain, it is argued, can't handle it. (O! thou organ of limitless and limited power!) He calls this limit the monkeysphere.
It's fun the play spot the assumptions:
Sure, some people don't think about service guys. But the fact that trash men aren't running around blinded tells you something as well. For example, it might tell you that people sort of figure that the trash guy knows what he's doing and takes reasonable precautions, and that they're right.People toss half-full bottles of drain cleaner right into the barrel, without a second thought of what would happen if the trash man got it splattered into his eyes. Why? Because the trash guy exists outside the Monkeysphere.
The simple fact is it's impossible to act if you weight every person equally in your life. Not only would that not be a commendable thing, it would be downright stupid. Your attention should be on the people who most directly affect your life, like the jerk who pulls out into traffic in front of you without signally, or whose lives you can affect, like the Ethernopian kid you send money to every month.
This next bit is spectacularly off:
Remember the first time, as a kid, you met one of your school teachers outside the classroom? Maybe you saw old Miss Puckerson at Taco Bell eating refried beans through a straw, or saw your principal walking out of a dildo shop. Do you remember that surreal feeling you had when you saw these people actually had lives outside the classroom?
I mean, they're not people. They're teachers.
Of course I've had that experience. But not because I didn't think of my teachers as people--and certainly not because they were outside my alleged monkeysphere. It was because teachers used to have a distance--a kind of altitude--that allowed them to maintain order and teach. It's not that they weren't people. It's that they weren't children.
I adored my grade school and earlier teachers. I had to get to Junior High school before I started getting teachers I didn't like (with a big caveat for my nursery school teachers who scared the bejeezus out of me).
But Mr. Wong has a theory, and he's going to fit all kinds of experiences into that theory whether they belong or not. I can't relate, for example, to this:
I'm not big on attending sporting events but I don't scream curses at the athletes. I root for the winning team and sometimes boo the opposing team because that's what you do. I don't have any real animosity for the opposing side at all. (Sure, some people get into it to that degree, but how many take it personally? Probably about the same percentage of crazies, or maybe slightly fewer, than make the political personal.)That's why you get that weird feeling of anonymous invincibility when you're sitting in a large crowd, screaming curses at a football player you'd never dare say to his face.
Sure, you probably don't go out of your way to be mean to strangers. You don't go out of your way to be mean to stray dogs, either.But you're the one making the equivalency, not me.
The problem is that eventually, the needs of you or those within your Monkeysphere will require screwing someone outside it (even if that need is just venting some tension and anger via exaggerated insults).This just plain isn't true: Except for a statistically insignificant portion, civilization was built by those I've never met and am only vaguely aware of at best. I will be one of those anonymous many for the future. Survival is the exact opposite of a zero-sum game.
This paragraph essentially refutes the entire premise of the essay. Yes, life is in competition with other life. That, much like the sports event, is the game. But the vast majority of the people outside your circle are what make your existence possible, and a great deal of what you do, provided you are not a leech, is what makes others' existences possible.
And, what the hell? Since when is "venting anger via exaggerated insults" screwing someone? How big a pussy do you have to be to believe that?
This is why most of us wouldn't dream of stealing money from the pocket of the old lady next door, but don't mind stealing cable, adding a shady exemption on our tax return, or quietly celebrating when they forget to charge us for something at the restaurant.Am I a Martian? I've only ever sent checks back for being in my favor. (I also used to tell my teachers when they missed marking me down in school.) And what's with the broad equivalencies?
It just gets worse from there. Check out this gem:
Talk radio's Rush Limbaugh is known to tip 50% at restaurants, but flies into a broadcast tirade if even half that dollar amount is deducted from his paycheck by "The Government." That's despite the fact that the money helps that very same single mom he had no problem tipping in her capacity as a waitress.See what happens when you reduce everything to the material? A man wanting to decide the fate of his own money is being irrational if he objects to the government taking it from him to perform approximately the same task (at a greatly reduced efficiency, and of course less actual personal freedom).
There's no sense of right or wrong anywhere in this essay. Everyone just gets away with what they can, and they do so because of their brain. But this guy has the answer: Everything is more complicated than it seems, and we're all just primates flinging feces at each other.
There's also no good or evil. You and I are just Osama Bin Laden without the crazy-ass followers. His belief that we're oppressing him is just as valid as our belief that he killed 3,000+ of our citizens.
I tend to think that civilization depends on billions of us acting within a fairly narrow set of parameters suggests that the whole 150 limit is absurd on the face of it. If we were really and truly limited, civilization as we know it never would have emerged. Having SUVs and TVs didn't create the need for civilization, civilization created the possibility of having SUVs and TVs. But that's the typical reversal of a materialist.
I read this years ago and it disgusted me enough that I ignored it, but Ace just linked to another piece by this guy on how the Internet is going to be regulated so that there's no more anonymity, because anonymity empowers trolls and trolls hurt business.
Meh. Possibly. But so far the 'net has resisted a lot of obvious regulation, and things don't have to always get worse.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
You only live twice--three ti--let me get back to you on this.
A lot of the comments in this thread of the "who cares what happens after I die?" reminded me of something.
A friend of mine, who believes in reincarnation, said this to me once:
Makes sense to me.
A friend of mine, who believes in reincarnation, said this to me once:
People get the idea of past lives wrong. They get all excited about living in the past and who they were.
The important thing about having lived before is that it likely means you're going to live again.
Reincarnation gives you a completely selfish reason to leave the world in a better place. You will literally and personally inherit the world you make.
Makes sense to me.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
A Parade Of Fools
There's a long thread over at Dr. Helen's column asking whether men can be raped by women.
In between the typical parsing of Internet arguments (the definition or rape, legally versus how real people use it), there's a (to me) fascinating array of sentiment that can be summed up as "No, and he deserved it anyway." That's on one particular case.
And by "fascinating", I mean "repulsive".
I'm willing to accept the notion that guys are indiscriminate. Or marginally discriminating. Personally, I'm not. Interestingly, at least one poster would consider that pathological.
A digression: I don't spank my children. I do physically control them as needed (somewhat at two, rarely by the time they reach five). I also don't take an authoritarian approach to education or discipline, give or take the occasional need to put the foot down about something.
I do this for the reason that I think it's primary that a child understands he is sovereign over his own body. Children are born knowing this, I think, or at least learn it as soon as they can move away from Mother. I think this is the best way to protect the child. (My children all know martial arts, to the degree they're able.) In the early years, your concern is perhaps pedophiles, bullies and assorted other creeps. In later years, it's the many tinpot dictators for whom bossing others around is the best part of their day, and assorted other creeps. (Creeps are there at every age.)
I mention this only because when I say I am sovereign over my body, I include in that whatever baser instincts my body may have. I don't kill someone just because I might get stuff from it, or even if I'd enjoy it a whole lot. I don't have sex with someone just because they're willing and I'm a guy. I don't confuse my body's reactions with my own. (And I don't see how any sane guy could, if we all go through that period of near constant arousal.)
But there's just no point in having sovereignty over something that nobody values, including yourself.
This probably makes me on the "uptight" side as far as modern mores are concerned.
Another downside is that it makes it possible to rape me, unlike a few robust fellows who apparently view their own consent to the use of their body as mere formality. Er, as long as it's a chick at the other end, I guess. I don't actually see the difference. We're not talking about procreation, after all, nor even consciousness. If you don't care who's using your body, you don't care, right?
And I can see a particular stickiness to a trauma like that, wherein the guy is wondering "Was I supposed to like that? Was that okay?" when obviously it wasn't, at least for him.
Back in the '70s, ABC ran an "edgy" (I suppose) movie about a man being raped by a woman. It was played as comedy, though, at least from the bits I saw, with the man running around in trying to cover his nudity with traffic cones or something. Can you imagine that being reversed? I mean, playing off a woman's rape as comedy like that?
Then there was "Hill Street Blues". There was an episode where a rookie killed himself. He was a socially awkward guy whose "buddies" had hazed him by tying him up and having a prostitute rape him. They thought they were doing him a favor, at some level.
Russ Meyer was no stranger to coerced sex (in his movies, I mean) but whatever happened was played for laughs, or occasionally avenged with bloody retribution.
When she gets old enough, I'm thinking I'll have The Flower watch a parade of teen sex movies, from the '80s to the current Judd Apatow stuff. Vulgar though it is, I can think of few better ways to say, "Hey, this is what guys are like. At least some guys. You might want to play it safe."
But what do I show The Boy to demonstrate the perfidy that women are capable of? Fatal Attraction?
The funny thing is, I wouldn't have even considered the topic interesting. Women have their own unique ways of abusing men that are typically less violent (though I've only ever known women to engage in domestic violence) but no less foul, and whether or not the coercion they use to get what they want constitutes "rape" would seem to be splitting hairs.
But that's what we do on this her intartube.
In between the typical parsing of Internet arguments (the definition or rape, legally versus how real people use it), there's a (to me) fascinating array of sentiment that can be summed up as "No, and he deserved it anyway." That's on one particular case.
And by "fascinating", I mean "repulsive".
I'm willing to accept the notion that guys are indiscriminate. Or marginally discriminating. Personally, I'm not. Interestingly, at least one poster would consider that pathological.
A digression: I don't spank my children. I do physically control them as needed (somewhat at two, rarely by the time they reach five). I also don't take an authoritarian approach to education or discipline, give or take the occasional need to put the foot down about something.
I do this for the reason that I think it's primary that a child understands he is sovereign over his own body. Children are born knowing this, I think, or at least learn it as soon as they can move away from Mother. I think this is the best way to protect the child. (My children all know martial arts, to the degree they're able.) In the early years, your concern is perhaps pedophiles, bullies and assorted other creeps. In later years, it's the many tinpot dictators for whom bossing others around is the best part of their day, and assorted other creeps. (Creeps are there at every age.)
I mention this only because when I say I am sovereign over my body, I include in that whatever baser instincts my body may have. I don't kill someone just because I might get stuff from it, or even if I'd enjoy it a whole lot. I don't have sex with someone just because they're willing and I'm a guy. I don't confuse my body's reactions with my own. (And I don't see how any sane guy could, if we all go through that period of near constant arousal.)
But there's just no point in having sovereignty over something that nobody values, including yourself.
This probably makes me on the "uptight" side as far as modern mores are concerned.
Another downside is that it makes it possible to rape me, unlike a few robust fellows who apparently view their own consent to the use of their body as mere formality. Er, as long as it's a chick at the other end, I guess. I don't actually see the difference. We're not talking about procreation, after all, nor even consciousness. If you don't care who's using your body, you don't care, right?
And I can see a particular stickiness to a trauma like that, wherein the guy is wondering "Was I supposed to like that? Was that okay?" when obviously it wasn't, at least for him.
Back in the '70s, ABC ran an "edgy" (I suppose) movie about a man being raped by a woman. It was played as comedy, though, at least from the bits I saw, with the man running around in trying to cover his nudity with traffic cones or something. Can you imagine that being reversed? I mean, playing off a woman's rape as comedy like that?
Then there was "Hill Street Blues". There was an episode where a rookie killed himself. He was a socially awkward guy whose "buddies" had hazed him by tying him up and having a prostitute rape him. They thought they were doing him a favor, at some level.
Russ Meyer was no stranger to coerced sex (in his movies, I mean) but whatever happened was played for laughs, or occasionally avenged with bloody retribution.
When she gets old enough, I'm thinking I'll have The Flower watch a parade of teen sex movies, from the '80s to the current Judd Apatow stuff. Vulgar though it is, I can think of few better ways to say, "Hey, this is what guys are like. At least some guys. You might want to play it safe."
But what do I show The Boy to demonstrate the perfidy that women are capable of? Fatal Attraction?
The funny thing is, I wouldn't have even considered the topic interesting. Women have their own unique ways of abusing men that are typically less violent (though I've only ever known women to engage in domestic violence) but no less foul, and whether or not the coercion they use to get what they want constitutes "rape" would seem to be splitting hairs.
But that's what we do on this her intartube.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Advice from England
But if I was giving advice to my kids and there was a bar brawl it would be to look after themselves.
But, you know, everybody's not seeing the connection between those two statements.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Marriage, A Gay Old Time
Actually, I'm on the verge of turning the Bit Maelstrom into a full-on breast blog (possibly with a dissertation about the '80s Afghan revolt against the Russian Invaders) since that's what everyone comes here to see.
So, yeah, I'm pro-breasts (pointy or otherwise). And no, Charlie Wilson's War wasn't historically accurate, though parts were true. Also, all those peak oil guys who say that the world is coming to an end but it's not just a crazy prophecy of some mad cult? They're the crazy prophets of a mad cult.
Anyway, with that aside, the issue of who can marry whom has come up again in this fine state of California. In this case, the California Supreme Court has (once again) overridden the wishes of the people to say that, in fact, same-sex marriage is not only a right, it's always been a right according to the state constitution.
Now, it seems to me that if that were the case, same-sex marriage would have been established by two people of the same sex getting married, the state refusing to acknowledge it, and then the court saying the state has no right to refuse to acknowledge it. But I certainly might have that wrong.
Let me say, first of all, that I have no personal interest in who marries whom. As I understand it, one can arrange almost any sort of domestic situation one wants (hetero, homo or poly) except a bestial or pedophilia relationship (and maybe incestuous) and set up almost any sort of legal arrangement one wants.
Also, as I understand it, domestic partners have all the same rights as married couples, and certainly since palimony it hasn't mattered so much whether a couple is actually married. (California doesn't recognize common law marriage.) These days, it would probably make sense for married couples to create a nuptial contract and revisit it every year. (This might sound horribly clinical, but it actually could be quite romantic.)
If that's true, and it's really just about the word "marriage", well, you know what I call a couple of guys in a permanent committed relationship? "Married." Really. What else you gonna call it?
My preference? Marriage either gets a strict definition by the state that benefits the state, or the state gets its nose out of the union business. The latter being preferable.
So, having established my relative lack of concern over how people bond and what they call it, I'm going to expound a little on my understanding of marriage, and why I'm not entirely unsympathetic to cultural conservatives on the issue.
Despite everything I learned from the '70s, personal happiness actually ranks very low down on the list of societal concerns. No, really! It's true: Society doesn't care if you're happy. Society cares about its own survival and as long as you do your part to continue it, you can be as happy or as miserable as you like. So, the social importance of marriage is that you stick with one person, create the next generation, and raise them in such a way that they go on to continue society.
When you think about it, the idea that billions (or thousands, if you prefer) of years of struggle and hardship is going to come to its end because, you know, some gal wants to pursue a career, or some guy just doesn't care for female company--it's the ultimate in self-centered-ness.
Society's historical answer to the question of personal fulfillment--assuming it entertained the notion at all--was to simply not allow women to do anything but create the next generation, and to force gays to marry and produce offspring.
The other part of the equation was to discourage or disallow divorce, adultery, polygamy and fornication--to say nothing of onanism and homosexual activity. Basically, society figured out the best way to secure its own survival was to get people married pretty quickly, reproducing ASAP, and bonded forever, while outlawing sexual activity that didn't produce offspring.
These are the rules of a highly fragile society, one deeply concerned about its own survival. And it may be a coincidence, but every society that moves away from these principles dies. Will Durant wrote that every society enters stoic and exits epicurean. The Western world has been in full epicurean mode for decades.
Anyway, in the historical context, the definition of marriage is very clear, and very clearly not inclusive of homosexuality. One argument I've heard as an attempt to defend homosexual marriage "What about childless couples?" Well, until recently, the pressure for couples to have children was tremendous, and an inability to have children has historically been grounds for annulment.
It was really the '70s that turned divorce into a casual event, degraded "women's work" and made childlessness into a respectable option. And, also, at that point, made marriage into a word that applies (or should apply) equally to any people seeking to find happiness and fulfillment in long-term committed sexual relationships.
I don't know if anyone will read this, and find it less likely that anyone will care, but it's something I had to learn over many years. And the funky-funny thing is that there is tremendous happiness possible the old way, while allowing people to pursue personal pleasure has probably not resulted in any net gain in happiness for people over all.
So, why would I not personally fight to preserve the definition of marriage? For one thing, because it's long gone, and it's unlikely that heteros are going to be lining up to give marriage back to its original gravity. Secondly, since that is what has to happen--groups of people have to agree to restore the society-serving definition of marriage--it's not something the government can do. It's a social and religious thing, and requires people to look beyond themselves--not something they're generally encouraged to do.
The pendulum may swing back: a lot of victims of the "Do Your Own Thing" '70s (and beyond) are now grown and may take child-rearing and marriage more seriously than their parents did.
As I've said before, a society can be judged on its kindness to outliers, and I don't think it's likely we'll ever go back to the days when assaulting gays was acceptable and women had to put up with abuse because society's prohibitions against divorce were so strong. But it is possible to elevate individual fulfillment above society's survival needs, and this usually results in a barbaric culture where outliers must hide or be destroyed.
As a footnote: Some maintain that the California supreme court just overrode the will of the people in the service of a liberal agenda. Not surprisingly, this pisses off some and pleases others. For me, it just seems like business-as-usual in the Golden State.
So, yeah, I'm pro-breasts (pointy or otherwise). And no, Charlie Wilson's War wasn't historically accurate, though parts were true. Also, all those peak oil guys who say that the world is coming to an end but it's not just a crazy prophecy of some mad cult? They're the crazy prophets of a mad cult.
Anyway, with that aside, the issue of who can marry whom has come up again in this fine state of California. In this case, the California Supreme Court has (once again) overridden the wishes of the people to say that, in fact, same-sex marriage is not only a right, it's always been a right according to the state constitution.
Now, it seems to me that if that were the case, same-sex marriage would have been established by two people of the same sex getting married, the state refusing to acknowledge it, and then the court saying the state has no right to refuse to acknowledge it. But I certainly might have that wrong.
Let me say, first of all, that I have no personal interest in who marries whom. As I understand it, one can arrange almost any sort of domestic situation one wants (hetero, homo or poly) except a bestial or pedophilia relationship (and maybe incestuous) and set up almost any sort of legal arrangement one wants.
Also, as I understand it, domestic partners have all the same rights as married couples, and certainly since palimony it hasn't mattered so much whether a couple is actually married. (California doesn't recognize common law marriage.) These days, it would probably make sense for married couples to create a nuptial contract and revisit it every year. (This might sound horribly clinical, but it actually could be quite romantic.)
If that's true, and it's really just about the word "marriage", well, you know what I call a couple of guys in a permanent committed relationship? "Married." Really. What else you gonna call it?
My preference? Marriage either gets a strict definition by the state that benefits the state, or the state gets its nose out of the union business. The latter being preferable.
So, having established my relative lack of concern over how people bond and what they call it, I'm going to expound a little on my understanding of marriage, and why I'm not entirely unsympathetic to cultural conservatives on the issue.
Despite everything I learned from the '70s, personal happiness actually ranks very low down on the list of societal concerns. No, really! It's true: Society doesn't care if you're happy. Society cares about its own survival and as long as you do your part to continue it, you can be as happy or as miserable as you like. So, the social importance of marriage is that you stick with one person, create the next generation, and raise them in such a way that they go on to continue society.
When you think about it, the idea that billions (or thousands, if you prefer) of years of struggle and hardship is going to come to its end because, you know, some gal wants to pursue a career, or some guy just doesn't care for female company--it's the ultimate in self-centered-ness.
Society's historical answer to the question of personal fulfillment--assuming it entertained the notion at all--was to simply not allow women to do anything but create the next generation, and to force gays to marry and produce offspring.
The other part of the equation was to discourage or disallow divorce, adultery, polygamy and fornication--to say nothing of onanism and homosexual activity. Basically, society figured out the best way to secure its own survival was to get people married pretty quickly, reproducing ASAP, and bonded forever, while outlawing sexual activity that didn't produce offspring.
These are the rules of a highly fragile society, one deeply concerned about its own survival. And it may be a coincidence, but every society that moves away from these principles dies. Will Durant wrote that every society enters stoic and exits epicurean. The Western world has been in full epicurean mode for decades.
Anyway, in the historical context, the definition of marriage is very clear, and very clearly not inclusive of homosexuality. One argument I've heard as an attempt to defend homosexual marriage "What about childless couples?" Well, until recently, the pressure for couples to have children was tremendous, and an inability to have children has historically been grounds for annulment.
It was really the '70s that turned divorce into a casual event, degraded "women's work" and made childlessness into a respectable option. And, also, at that point, made marriage into a word that applies (or should apply) equally to any people seeking to find happiness and fulfillment in long-term committed sexual relationships.
I don't know if anyone will read this, and find it less likely that anyone will care, but it's something I had to learn over many years. And the funky-funny thing is that there is tremendous happiness possible the old way, while allowing people to pursue personal pleasure has probably not resulted in any net gain in happiness for people over all.
So, why would I not personally fight to preserve the definition of marriage? For one thing, because it's long gone, and it's unlikely that heteros are going to be lining up to give marriage back to its original gravity. Secondly, since that is what has to happen--groups of people have to agree to restore the society-serving definition of marriage--it's not something the government can do. It's a social and religious thing, and requires people to look beyond themselves--not something they're generally encouraged to do.
The pendulum may swing back: a lot of victims of the "Do Your Own Thing" '70s (and beyond) are now grown and may take child-rearing and marriage more seriously than their parents did.
As I've said before, a society can be judged on its kindness to outliers, and I don't think it's likely we'll ever go back to the days when assaulting gays was acceptable and women had to put up with abuse because society's prohibitions against divorce were so strong. But it is possible to elevate individual fulfillment above society's survival needs, and this usually results in a barbaric culture where outliers must hide or be destroyed.
As a footnote: Some maintain that the California supreme court just overrode the will of the people in the service of a liberal agenda. Not surprisingly, this pisses off some and pleases others. For me, it just seems like business-as-usual in the Golden State.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Lies We Tell Women
Women get beat up pretty badly on Dr. Helen's site and advice column--well, for a number of reasons. And I think, in part, she's providing a counter-balance to the deafening drumnbeat of "Woman good, Man bad", so she may not be looking too hard at the fact that women hear the same drumbeat as men. And where men may hear they're not wanted, women may hear they're all precious snowflakes, irreplaceable and priceless. The latter is arguably the more damaging message.
I mention this because in the Unicorn post, the always insightful Synova points out that:
I'm probably going to get into trouble here, but what the hell. Here's a few lies:
Anyway, that's a very narrow set of what is basically a large group of lies being told for decades. And it's fair to have a degree of sympathy for women who end up hunting unicorns as a result.
Now, I tend to look at these things from an engineering perspective. (Granted, I'm a software engineer, so my results can't be trusted or duplicated, and will fail in leap years. Nonetheless.) There once was a set of male activities and female activities. When societies start, they carve these "gender roles" in stone and punish transgressors heavily. As survival becomes--or seems--more secure, the punishment begins to look cruel and arbitrary, and elements in society start to tear down those roles.
Shortly thereafter--in a civilizational time scale--the society collapses.
It would be nice, and I think entirely possible, to preserve the roles while not punishing "transgression"--nor even viewing transgression as such. I say this as someone who has seen enough baby girls gravitate toward dolls--not only without encouragement but with active discouragement going on. And seen boys turn flowers into guns and monsters.
It's just as wrong to force boys and girls to give up their traditional roles as it was to enforce them. Arguably worse.
And I've seen women shamed about being devoted mothers. (Devoted meaning that was what they did as their primary occupation.) Some women aren't cut out for it--but shouldn't that make the ones who do the job even more valuable? (They are, of course, even if they're not regarded that way generally.)
So how does this relate back to Miss Unicorn? Well, she's already squandered a lot of her prime market value (as the economics-minded put it), but one should never underestimate the value of a kind woman to a man. On Volokh, when they discussed this, there was an interesting sub-thread by a woman who absolutely refused to consider any offspring not genetically related as worthy of anything from her. (Wow, it was Daniel Plainview in drag!)
Fortunately, most people don't feel that way. So, what Miss Unicorn should do, is to assess what she brings to a relationship versus what she's expecting. This should be a humbling act. (We all need to do this from time-to-time: Look at what we expect of our significant others and be grateful for kindness received.) Fortunately, for children--and for wives and husbands--love is a valuable commodity.
It's all our kids can give us, at first, in the form of smiles, hugs, hand-crafted ashtrays, whatever. And it is, of course, the currency in which romantic relationships are built. (Sorry to slip into triteness again but it can't be helped.)
It's free. It's easy. The more you do it, the easier it gets. It's paid back with dividends.
But you can't do it if you don't feel the other person is worthy.
I mention this because in the Unicorn post, the always insightful Synova points out that:
Women my age (dare I say 43?) have been told certain things our whole lives. One of them is that it works to plan to have a child who doesn't *have* a father.And I hear similar things from other women. Indeed, like Synova, I grew up on the whole fish/bicycle/if-women-were-in-charge-there-would-be-no-wars claptrap as well. And so it occurred to me that there are a whole bunch of lies we, as a society, tell women.
I'm probably going to get into trouble here, but what the hell. Here's a few lies:
- Raising children is not the most important thing you can do.
- A father can do the same job as a mother.
- Anyone can do the same job as a father.
- A second parent is completely unnecessary.
- Single parenthood won't impact your career in any way more challenging than can be resolved by a couple of magazine articles and '80s movies. And it sure won't affect your child negatively.
- It's wrong to depend on a man.
- There's weakness in having a man around for the traditional reasons.
- Chivalry is a form of condescension.
- You can have sex with anyone you want whenever you want with no repercussions.
- That perfect guy--the one that you don't need at all, but whom you plan to bless with your companionship--isn't going to care about the previous item.
- Abortion is comparable to an appendectomy.
- If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
Anyway, that's a very narrow set of what is basically a large group of lies being told for decades. And it's fair to have a degree of sympathy for women who end up hunting unicorns as a result.
Now, I tend to look at these things from an engineering perspective. (Granted, I'm a software engineer, so my results can't be trusted or duplicated, and will fail in leap years. Nonetheless.) There once was a set of male activities and female activities. When societies start, they carve these "gender roles" in stone and punish transgressors heavily. As survival becomes--or seems--more secure, the punishment begins to look cruel and arbitrary, and elements in society start to tear down those roles.
Shortly thereafter--in a civilizational time scale--the society collapses.
It would be nice, and I think entirely possible, to preserve the roles while not punishing "transgression"--nor even viewing transgression as such. I say this as someone who has seen enough baby girls gravitate toward dolls--not only without encouragement but with active discouragement going on. And seen boys turn flowers into guns and monsters.
It's just as wrong to force boys and girls to give up their traditional roles as it was to enforce them. Arguably worse.
And I've seen women shamed about being devoted mothers. (Devoted meaning that was what they did as their primary occupation.) Some women aren't cut out for it--but shouldn't that make the ones who do the job even more valuable? (They are, of course, even if they're not regarded that way generally.)
So how does this relate back to Miss Unicorn? Well, she's already squandered a lot of her prime market value (as the economics-minded put it), but one should never underestimate the value of a kind woman to a man. On Volokh, when they discussed this, there was an interesting sub-thread by a woman who absolutely refused to consider any offspring not genetically related as worthy of anything from her. (Wow, it was Daniel Plainview in drag!)
Fortunately, most people don't feel that way. So, what Miss Unicorn should do, is to assess what she brings to a relationship versus what she's expecting. This should be a humbling act. (We all need to do this from time-to-time: Look at what we expect of our significant others and be grateful for kindness received.) Fortunately, for children--and for wives and husbands--love is a valuable commodity.
It's all our kids can give us, at first, in the form of smiles, hugs, hand-crafted ashtrays, whatever. And it is, of course, the currency in which romantic relationships are built. (Sorry to slip into triteness again but it can't be helped.)
It's free. It's easy. The more you do it, the easier it gets. It's paid back with dividends.
But you can't do it if you don't feel the other person is worthy.
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