122 Degrees West

Towards the Dark Horizon or "Silence is Golden"

2006-07-08T00:29:00.000-07:00

...

Politics, religion, and abortion

2006-06-18T17:18:00.000-07:00

I probably agree with this author's political program for abortion. I want to keep government out of it, period, and I guess she does too. But I find her reasoning horrifying: half of it amounts to "Criminalizing abortion is bad because it requires women to accept responsibility for their lives and for the consequences of their decisions."

Should men not have to pay child support because it may "limit their economic future"?

I'm a leftie for right-wing reasons, to put it in the humorously shallow American vernacular.

Just a Buckeye-bound misfit, I

2006-05-30T21:03:00.000-07:00

Q: I read a couple of words of Rawls today and decided I was putting him off for another year because he's just too much of a tool. Back to Neal Stephenson and Neil Postman.

Ben: Rawls is a tool.

Ben: But there are very few political philosophers, with the exception of the Founders and Aristotle (and perhaps Machiavelli, although he was a hack) that I don't think are tools.

Hear, hear!

Q: If we agree on this point, without clarification, it must be true.

Ben: Yes, I think so.

Ben: I think, even with clarification, we might still agree, and it would still be true.

Q: And as Oscar said, even things that are true can be proved.

Up and down I sow them for lads like me to find

2006-05-28T20:32:00.000-07:00

When I have a week in which I hate humanity a little too much, I reach for one of the therapeutic old standbys on the bookshelf. This weekend I dug back into a few chapters of Send In the Waco Killers and came across this charmer, which easily nails something righties and lefties often mistake for a quandary:

The apparent contradictions do take a little patience. Consider these three statements:

1) The vast majority of American reporters are honestly convinced that they and all of their cohorts are objective and politically neutral.

2) People from the political right, and especially Libertarians and constitutionalists, are convinced that 98 percent of the American media are handmaidens to the oppressive, collectivist state, puking forth little but undigested, unquestioned, manipulative, pro-government propaganda.

3) Both of the above statements are true.

The problem involves definitions and paradigms....

Reporters think "bias" is when you're accepting cash in plain brown envelopes to keep a corporate chemical spill out of the paper, or writing only nice things about a political candidiate because you're shacking up with him/her in the guest cabin on the weekends. If they're not involved in such stuff -- if they cover their press conferences and rewrite the government press releases the way they've been taught -- they take great offense at any accusation of "bias...."

An Asterisk of One's Own

2006-05-22T06:56:00.000-07:00

I wonder if I wasn't clear enough in my last, emdash-riddled line: I think determinism shouldn't (and, in any case, usually doesn't) have a practical effect on how we deal with others. We live in a world that seems very much as if it's run by free will, cause and effect, etc. They may be persistent illusions, but they're still the illusions by which we're bound to run our lives, which is exactly what I take Ben's final paragraph to mean.

I do want to challenge this a bit:

For practices such as giving and accepting reasons, coming to conclusions, making distinctions between good and bad arguments, etc. to be sensible, a prima facie assumption of agency must exist; and this assumption does much to work against the argument of the determinist, who is at pains not to find some sort of notion of agency Trojan Horsed into his position....

That may be, but the fault, dear Brutus, lies in our determinists, not in ourselves. It's consistent to say the world is (or is likely) a determined one, which one is bound to discuss through the lens and in the vocabulary of perceived free will. Is it so absurd to believe a consciousness could believe itself to be "choosing" among alternatives -- selecting among them through some mystical process, in other words, by appeal to deity, explicit or not -- when in fact he is carrying out a program? The belief in choice remains the one that requires an odd sort of faith. Belief in the "human program" running on wetware requires none.

All of this fails even to address the modern physical evidence that the universe is way more complex than determism or free will can even begin to cover; they border on absurd oversimplifications, of course.

Speaking Past Anon or "A Footnote of My Own"

2006-05-21T22:02:00.000-07:00

Regrettably, I believe I articulated only poorly my position on determinism during the conversation with Q that he references in his last post. My point about determinism wasn't that it shouldn't have a practical effect on our treatment of human beings as "sentient, responsible individuals with moral agency", it was rather that determinism (regardless of its truth value) simply doesn't have any practical effect on our treatment of human beings as moral agents.

I want to say that whether or not the universe is deterministic is a moot point of academic interest at most, and I want to say this because the assumption of agency undergirds virtually all human social practices - even, especially, that of rational discourse.

That is to say that the determinist, when he argues for a deterministic universe, does so within a framework undergirded by the idea that human beings have some sort of substantial agency. For practices such as giving and accepting reasons, coming to conclusions, making distinctions between good and bad arguments, etc. to be sensible, a prima facie assumption of agency must exist; and this assumption does much to work against the argument of the determinist, who is at pains not to find some sort of notion of agency Trojan Horsed into his position (it is the rare determinist, after all, who hasn't contemplated the implications of how we ought to behave towards one another, if, indeed, our reality is a deterministic one; a concern, which, when examined, is obviously senseless.)

This, of course, doesn't mean that the universe isn't deterministic. It just means that the notion of a deterministic universe, when taken seriously, is largely incoherent from our current, human, perspective.

In megatexels, report cards, in spoke wheels...

2006-05-19T22:48:00.000-07:00

I put Ben's mind at ease the other day, assuring him that I don't think everyone is precisely an untrustworthy bastard; that is, to say so was an error of tone, not of content. But then I casually mentioned or implied that free will was a silly concept, and that didn't go over so well either. Oh yes: I said I am a determinist, but with footnotes.*

It's understandable that people, even some philosophers -- especially philosophers -- want to believe in free will. I don't take a dogmatic position on the metaphysics of the thing, but I think it is plainly a mere word game, a symbol pointing to a concept that is ineffable and therefore useless. "God" is another example of this. However, unlike "God," which means nothing because it means pretty much everything (spirit, nature, Zeus, God the Father who called forth Abraham, Dionysus, chi), "free will" does mean something. It is, I believe, a synonym for a chaotic process: a process which appears random, unordered, and indescribable and unknowable by science. Which is to say, a mystical process. But it isn't; it's just complex.

This is a sticky problem for nontheisitic, nondeterministic philosophers. If you don't believe the human nervous system is a complex software system running on wetware -- a super-duper version of your desktop computer, in other words -- then you believe there is something beyond the physical. This is not unreasonable, and not irrational, but it is mystical. It is properly called faith, not science, because the chaotic explanation is simpler, is sufficient, is complete -- it is the rational explanation, even though it may not ultimately prove correct. When we found out Newton's equations were wrong, it was a bit of a blow to the perceived perfection of Old Ike's Frame of the System of the World, but you were still better off believing in Newton all along than believing exclusively in some primitive shamanistic conception of causal mechanics.

I'm rambling. I'm going to try to scurry back to the reservation and take this wherever it was going. And I will do it by way of an apt analogy.

Even someone trained in computer science and engineering has trouble conceiving of the possible states of a computer. Most people never try; perhaps you never have. Consider it now. Your computer has exactly one state† that represents "playing World of Warcraft, hooked up to server X, swinging my sword at player Y (whose handle is EaterOfZebras) and player Z (who is an elf with so many hits points, and widgets A and B in his inventory, and whose handle is NilesCrane)...." There is one state -- this and that bit set in memory, this and that bit flipped on your hard drive, this and that register holding such and such a value in your CPU -- that corresponds to that one freeze-frame moment in that one game.

To the non-technical user, it is simply magic. To the technical or relflective user, it is simply complex: hard to get one's head around, but uncontroversially deterministic.

Now, we built the computers that run computer games and web broswers and stuff. What would it be like to deal with a computer way more complex than a human being has ever built, or will be able to build for at least several decades?

It'd look a lot like the human central nervous system. There is no reason to suppose that consciousness isn't simply an emergent property of a sufficiently complex network with enough nodes and enough interconnections; indeed this seems fairly likely. The process by which such a software system selects a "choice" among alternatives would appear random and unpredictable to us -- or in any case entirely opaque. That doesn't mean there's a mystical property called "free will" saving it from determinism. It just means the system is nonlinear, and the computer is really complex.

As Ben pointed out, and thank goddess this is plain as day to him, since most philosophy majors somehow can't get it through their Chomsky-addled skulls because they're too busy suggesting gravity can be defeated by jumping off the Sears Tower, not that I am bitter, this needn't (and shouldn't) have any practical effect on one's treatment of individuals as sentient, responsible individuals with moral agency.

Man, I need a cold beer.

* Saying things like this is a great way to make philosophers apoplectic. The torture may be supplemented with irony via a strategically placed footnote; see?

† Actually a family of closely related states, but that doesn't affect the example, so I'm keeping it simple.

Perchance to Posit

2006-05-17T20:08:00.000-07:00

I have written that most disagreement is misconstrued agreement, and of course I'm right, which is why Ben and I are both right.

Truth is simple. Whether one paints it with optimism, cynicism, mysticism, or anything else is what makes the fake philosophical quandaries that give people something to argue about.

I say this in part because it's true, and partially just to bait Ben again.

In Absentia or "Responses and the Like"

2006-05-17T18:19:00.000-07:00

I must say, despite the fact that Q and I tend to think along similar lines, I disagree with his last post, on the whole.

I think it's important that we generally consider the situation that Jon describes as tragic rather than as the normal course that human relationships take. Betrayal and/or abandonment tends to be the exception rather than the rule.

Granted, people can be "untrustworthy bastards", but not everyone is so, and the potential for everyone to be so is not something which requires the assumption that everyone is so. (Reputation, after all, still stands for something.)

It's important, I think, to make neither angels nor devils of people. We all have our ethical failings, but we all have our ethical successes as well; and the world is nothing if not nuanced.

My Hearty Friend

2006-04-30T10:23:00.000-07:00

Everyone is an untrustworthy bastard. The most important emotional skill I grokked from being with my ex is living under the assumptions that:

1) Everybody will eventually fuck you over. People like him are cynical, but "cynical" in this instance only means more attuned to the truth. And,

2) A primary determinant of a person's character is how he responds to this reality.

Do it right, and you can be a suprisingly (if not profoundly) happy and optimistic person. The key is not to become too attached to any person or any set of assumptions about the trustworthiness of people collectively. When your baseline assumption is that people are going to treat you like crap, the world frequently is a much better place than you "expect," and you're not as suseptible to the onset of suicidal fits of rage and despair when the world is falling apart all around you. It's just that nobody happens to be putting on the show of niceness at that moment. It's only the base case showing through, nothing to be alarmed about.

A demystified view of the human being as automaton — or, more optimistically, as well engineered hardware-software system &mdash makes it much less disappointing when people behave as if only responding to sufficiently strong stimuli: that is precisely what they're doing. Enough horniness, enough anger, enough fear, enough lust will make anyone do anything. I wouldn't be too out of sorts if my computer crashed when I gave it twice as much work to do as its hardware can handle. Likewise, I've come to expect that other human beings, even and especially the ones of whom I have expectations, will substantially and, on the whole, frequently disappoint me; I chalk it up to the way the machine works.

Yes, lad, I lie easy,
I lie as lads would choose;
I cheer a dead man's sweetheart,
Never ask me whose.

Knowledge and communication

2006-04-29T21:06:00.000-07:00

This is a bit off of what I usually think of as apropos for this blog, but what the hell:

Today my extended family celebrated my grand-uncle's 90th birthday. After the party, I learned that one of my cousins had been abandoned by her husband. Of course, "abandoned" doesn't entirely cover it, since he cleaned out all their bank accounts and other finances, and just up and disappeared one day. No one knows where he is, even now.

The thing that gets me is, they were married for as long as I can remember, certainly almost as long as I've been alive, seeing as they have an 18-year-old son... who's barely gonna be able to graduate from high school now, in shock as he is, and I can't say I much blame him.

The whole sorry business just makes me wonder whether or not we can truly ever trust other people. I mean, not that I was a fly on the wall for their entire marriage or anything, but... two decades plus, and it ends with that kind of betrayal? I can't wrap my mind around that at all. Recently, I was watching an episode of Six Feet Under in which one character said to another: "Nobody ever really knows anybody else. If you think they do, you're living in a fucking dreamworld."

Before today, I would have dismissed that sentiment out of hand. I still would, in a way, if only for its absolutist denial of alternatives, but I understand it better now.

King of Love

2006-04-01T09:50:00.000-08:00

Nooo! Google should totally do this! I didn't figure it out until I was halfway down the "tour" page, and even then I wanted to believe.

The front page of Google Romance today begins:

When you think about it, love is just another search problem. And we’ve thought about it. A lot. Google Romance™ is our solution.

That time of year thou mayst in me be hard

2006-03-19T11:40:00.000-08:00

I strongly identify with the tendency Jon perceives in himself. It operates most fundamentally in my understanding of sexuality: my experience has never included the desire to mate intimately with a female, sexually or otherwise. Over time, this led to an implicit tendency to think of women as asexual creatures. I am a male, and my experience of sexuality is that males -- and only males, with very few exceptions -- are sexually exciting. I honestly don't think it was until I came out to myself as gay around age 14, that it occurred to me that girls and women could be capable of sexual attraction. There had never been any need to think of them as sexual beings in my male-attracted-to-males worldview. To this day, it remains an intellectual understanding, not a visceral one.

Gender identity and sexuality are of course different, but they're not unrelated. I wonder to what extent the close connection for Jon and me (and other gay men?) between sexual energy and socialization among the genders is related, causally or otherwise, to gay identity.

In honor of the rite of spring...

2006-03-01T21:51:00.000-08:00

... Which comes on the 21st, technically, but what the hell.

I've remarked on this before, but I don't think that I've ever actually written about it, this strange dichotomy in my character: on the one hand, I very much consider myself a feminist, i.e., I firmly believe in the equality of the sexes in all areas, political, social, athletic, etc. On the other hand, I notice in myself a definite tendency to discount women, on some level, as unimportant.

This, of course, does not operate with any of the women I consider close friends or family, but rather with women as a "species," if you will. My theory is that I tend to ignore women in my head because I'm not sexually attracted to any of them.

To me, sex is such a basic component of what it means to be human that it runs through every interpersonal interaction I have, if only as potential energy that need not necessarily be converted into action. I enjoy interactions with men so much precisely because of that potential, because whether it's acknowledged or not, we're connecting on what's perhaps the most basic level available to two human beings. With women, the discourse is purely mental-- words and deeds that, while they technically involve the body no less, are nevertheless missing that spark I find so essential.

I find myself wondering if this same impulse isn't at the root of most misogyny, in the end-- cisgendered men feel that spark when interacting with women, but, not seeing them as equals for whatever reason, give themselves entirely over to the sexual impulse without considering the higher forces at work in the object of their desire. Really, such a process is just the reverse of the process I notice in myself-- a process I'm trying to alter, since when I'm under its influence, I'm really no better than if I were viewing women purely as sex objects.

(This somewhat incoherent post brought to you by Bark/Bite, who made me think. Read his stuff, it's quite good.)

For That I Came

2006-02-08T10:58:00.000-08:00

Newest wall quote:

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

The handiwork of a Jezzie, of course. I didn't understand it when I learned it in school. But now...

The Hounds of Winter

2006-01-26T14:23:00.000-08:00

January's always bitter
But Lord this one beats all

Wolves, the hounds of winter, are only an inch and a half away from fawxes.

A Further Note on Paederasty

2006-01-16T14:05:00.000-08:00

About a month and a half ago, Jon wrote a post on paederasty's fall from grace.

Jonathan Rowe, from Positive Liberty recently wrote a piece in a similar vein here that, like the entire blog, is also worth a look.

My Take on the Alito Hearings

2006-01-11T10:28:00.000-08:00

I have been very sick. And this post is fairly crude. So, you know, you might not want to read it.

But without further ado...

Senator Kennedy (D - Massachusetts): ... and one more thing, you cocksucking son of a whore, if I have anything to say about it, you'll be castrated before these hearings are through. And with that, it looks like my time is up. Senator?

Senator Hatch (R - Utah): ::Laughs:: Pay no attention to Senator Kennedy, Mr. Alito. As you well know, realistically, the Democrats don't have anything to say about whether or not you get affirmed. Now, let me just say for the record, that you are such a paragon of judicial virtue, that I am going to spend the next thirty minutes cleaning out your asshole with my tongue. And this isn't going to be a half-assed rimjob, either. No, I'm going to get it in there real deep, make you feel real nice. Now, have you ever had your asshole cleaned out by the tongue of a U.S. Senator, judge?

Judge Alito: No Senator, I can't say that I have.

Senator Hatch: Well, Judge, let me just say that by the time I'm done, that mudring of yours is going to glisten so brilliantly that they'll be able to see it on the west coast. How does that sound?

Judge Alito: That sounds absolutely fabulous, Senator. Absolutely fabulous.

Nervously

2005-12-28T22:16:00.000-08:00

Every year when I see Josh (the EST one), it is the same, in a more or less vague sort of way. To quote the Pet Shop Boys (and what else would one do?):

We don't talk of love
We're much too shy
But nervously we wonder when and why ...

Your flashing eyes and sudden smiles
Are never quite at ease, and neither am I

Oh, we'll talk about it all some night
But nervously we never get it
Right

It takes a long time to get some things right. Being able to think, "Okay, maybe this'll make sense next year, if I live that long": this is a sign that one is an adult, or even a grown-up. It's a benign flipside to the truth of what comma said growing up is: learning that sometimes you will cry and there will be no solace.

Nervously we wonder ...

358 days 'til Solstice

2005-12-28T11:59:00.000-08:00

It's become common knowledge among those not in denial about the origins of Christmas that the whole thing is a hoax.

Sending Christmas cards is annoying, but something I vaguely wish each year that I had done.

I wish the logical relationship between these facts had occurred to me a month ago. For the holidays in 2006, I think I shall send cards to everybody and his brother and his cat. But not Christmas cards; no, cards bearing greetings more in keeping with the real spirit of the season. Not this wishy-washy "seasons greetings" and "happy holiday" shit either. Something like, "May Mithra the Son of God bring you peace and happiness." Or maybe, "May the Goddess bless your Solstice." Or even, "May the airing of grievances bring a satisfactory rejuvenation of your friendships in this blessed season of Festivus" -- but that one still needs a pre-Christian Christ worked in.

This would be most fun if lots of people did it and it created a stir, squicking the Christians and giving the establishment something to chew on for a media cycle or two.

All the Young Dudes

2005-12-24T01:36:00.000-08:00

Billy rapped all night 'bout his suicide
How he'd kick it in the head when he was 25
Don't wanna stay alive when you're 25

Wendy's stealing clothes from unlocked cars
Freddy's got spots from ripping off stars from his face
Funky little boat race
The television man is crazy
Saying we're juvenile delinquent wrecks
Man I need a TV when I've got T. Rex
Hey brother you guessed
I'm a dude

CHORUS (twice)
All the young dudes
Carry the news
Boogaloo dudes
Carry the news

Now Jimmy looking sweet though he dresses like a queen
He can kick like a mule
It's a real mean team
We can love
Oh we can love
And my brother's back at home
With his Beatles and his Stones
We never got if off on that revolution stuff
What a drag
Too many snags
Well I drunk a lot of wine
And I'm feeling fine
Gonna race some cat to bed
Is this concrete all around
Or is it in my head
Oh brother you guessed
I'm a dude

Slick and Me

2005-12-15T18:18:00.000-08:00

My political enemies (the ones who want dirt to use against me in my next run for office, as if they didn't have enough already) ought to monitor my email. I received an email today from a legitimate organization with a good reputation, one of the few charitable causes I donate to several times a year.

The first line of the email is: "Come out and mingle with Playboy Playmates at the Marijuana Policy Project's party at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles on March 30, 2006."

Can you count the keywords in that line? It's a thing of beauty.

Livin' It Right

2005-12-06T02:25:00.000-08:00

Two quickies. If this is stilted, bear in mind it's going on 2:30am and I don't have Ben's insomnia to help me.

When geeks chat:

Q: "Growing up is a process of consolidation" was our mantra at the end of college ...

Ben: It's pretty much the truth, I would say.

Q: Yeah, it's remained a Thing, a haunting Thing. ...

Ben: It's strange, the stuff that haunts, sometimes, I think.

Q: Did you mean to write that in iambic pentameter?

And on loyalty. (This has nothing to do explicitly with anything going on in my life.) Loyalty is not inherently virtuous. Some of the worst human beings in history were also some of the most loyal; it was their loyalty that set them above the rest. Yet loyalty in itself is extolled as a virtue, and this is taken as a given that I never hear debunked.

On the other hand, something does seem good and right about loyalty to a worthy cause or person. Loyalty, in my thinking, implies something beyond normal service. Of course you'll do your job; loyalty comes in when you are called on to cover for someone, to stretch the bounds of ethics, or at least to act in an unusually selfless way. Other than soldiers who have each other's backs in combat, I can't bring to mind many instances in which one might do that, and it would be commendable.

But! It does makes sense in light of my attempt at a negative definition of morality: "Acting immorally consists in making a decision other than the one that one believes one will regret least. The more one expects to regret a choice, the less moral the choice is."

Regret is a function, finally, of the id. You can't stem regret by following the prescriptions of ethologists. You can only do it by doing what your conscience tells you is right, which won't always be the same as what is morally right. You have the chance to save the life of your soulmate, or a group of a million people. Which does an objective observer choose? Which will cause more regret? And which is right? Yeah.

Rightey Flighty, Lefty Loosey

2005-12-03T17:26:00.000-08:00

I read most things a couple of decades late, and P.J. O'Rourke's Parliament of Whores is no exception.

I haven't read enough Orwell to understand his brand of socialism, but I suspect it is close to my own. He abhorred socialism and advocated it -- presumably referring to two very different socialisms -- and his concern for social justice seems tempered by a practical, not elitist, distaste for John and Jane Q. Masses. Not all leftism is the same.

A couple of lines from O'Rourke sum up why, while I'm in no wise a conservative and in fact regard myself as a radical, I do not call myself, in Western terms, a social liberal. Writing on the 1988 presidential election: "The conservatives among us refused to believe that the homeless were homeless because they didn't have homes. And liberals refused to believe that rent control, bad mores and civil rights for nutties were what turned the homeless out-of-doors."

So, want to throw away some money? Good, me too!

2005-11-30T21:27:00.000-08:00

This is classic.

I think my favorite part is the (apparently serious) claim that velocirapors "today terrorize the goat herders of Puerto Rico".

(Snagged from softside.)

A challenge to my convictions

2005-11-29T21:36:00.000-08:00

While taking a break from my drafting today, I stumbled across yet another article, this time on Salon. The whole thing was quite exciting, but the main quote which, perhaps all-too-predictably, jumped out at me follows:

'And then [Rabbi Eric Yoffie] launched into the most controversial part of his sermon -- an impassioned denunciation of right-wing homophobia that invoked the historical parallel of Nazism. "We understand those who believe that the Bible opposes gay marriage, even though we read that text in a very different way," he said. "But we cannot understand why any two people who make a lifelong commitment to each other should be denied legal guarantees that protect them and their children and benefit the broader society. We cannot forget that when Hitler came to power in 1933, one of the first things that he did was ban gay organizations. And today, we cannot feel anything but rage when we hear about gay men and women, some on the front lines, being hounded out of our armed services. Yes, we can disagree about gay marriage. But there is no excuse for hateful rhetoric that fuels the hellfires of anti-gay bigotry."'

That is quite possibly the best and most succinct summation of the intelligent position on gay marriage and, more broadly, gay rights that I've ever read-- and it came from a religious leader.

Those who know me know that I have what might charitably be described as a seething hatred for religion in just about all its forms. Still, reading something like this makes me wonder if maybe, just possibly, there might yet be some good to be done by priests of every stripe, now that the texts have been preserved and the wealth has been built.

Still, I have to think that, heartening as it is to find a religious leader possessed of such strong moral fiber as Rabbi Yoffie obviously is, he is the marked exception, rather than the rule. My main problem with religion is not the belief in God(s); rather, it is the belief in the word of the men who purport to speak for said deities. The fundamental flaw in the system is this: humans are fallible. God(s), at least theoretically, are not. The state of omnipotence, etc., is so far beyond our experience as flawed mortals that we can never hope to comprehend it. Thus, anyone who claims to know the mind of God(s) well enough to tell other people what that God or Gods wants is guilty of the most awesome arrogance which, it seems to me, must lead inevitably to the abuse of power, due to that same damned fallibility.

It's people like Rabbi Yoffie who make me hope that I might be wrong.

A Bit of Mustard

2005-11-29T09:54:00.000-08:00

Last night I dreamt that, during an Environmental Studies course, I wrote an entire paper about a world populated by sentient pigs (a bit of symbolism, that) who were so technologically advanced that they routinely cloned unconscious pig-bodies for themselves so that they could tranfer their consciousnesses into them when their current bodies entered advanced age. Through this method, they had achieved a sort of immortality.

The intent of the paper was to demonstrate the effect that individual mortality has on environmental policy - the point being, of course, that as long as people feel like they will die prior to major environmental degradation directly and substantially impacting their lives, they're generally perfectly content to pass the buck to the next generation, as it were.

I discarded the paper, however, when I realized that I couldn't reasonably claim that the ethical lives of sentient pigs would mirror human concerns.

And that is when I woke up, devastated.

Also, site pimpage: Reader2

On paiderastia and its fall from grace:

2005-11-25T23:15:00.000-08:00

So, finally I post, after weeks of silence (and intermittent nagging from my fellow writers). At last, I give you a polemic, in honor of an article found in the Washington Blade Online. I won't rehash the entire thing, but the gist of it is this: a group of people are posing as teenagers in order to entrap those who solicit sex from underage persons online.

Now, I have no doubt that these people have nothing but the best of intentions in doing this; sexual abuse in any form is one of the worst crimes that can be committed, and I respect anyone who tries to effect change for the better. In this case, however, I think that the end does not, perhaps, justify the means. My question is this: what qualifies the members of Perverted Justice to judge the morality of sex between teenagers and adults? The answer, of course, is "the law", which mandates an age of consent for engaging in sexual activity.

That answer, however, leads us to an even thornier issue, which is the justice (or lack thereof) of the age-of-consent laws. Those laws vary widely across the United States, ranging from sixteen to eighteen from state to state, and, until recently, the ages were even different based on whether or not one's partner was of the same sex. Across the world, of course, the variance becomes ever more pronounced; in some of the more liberal countries around the globe, some of the men caught in Perverted Justice's sting operations would not even be committing a crime.

Now, personally, I don't think I could ever have sex with anyone who wasn't at least a very mature seventeen or eighteen, if only because I think about myself as a teenager, and the lack of experience and emotional insecurity with which I approached sex, and I shudder at having to deal with that kind of drama at this point in my life, without any other support.

Which brings me nicely to my next point: the Greeks.

It may be far too tired to bring up the classical vices when discussing queer theory these days, but I am a classicist and I think they're still relevant, so nyah. Anyway, as you no doubt know, intergenerational relationships were a vital part of life for the ancient Greeks, whose arts, sciences, and philosophies as the foundation of much of our modern thought and discipline. They accomplished all they did in spite of what the modern American establishment would call their "pedophilic" practices.

Alas, I don't really think that this long-gone history really gets us anywhere, because our society and those of the Greeks of ages past have very little in common; I very much doubt that the hysteria surrounding sexuality-- particularly as it applies to those perceived as "children"-- will be purged from our collective Puritan consciousness any time soon.

And that, I think, is really at the root of the problem: since no "right-thinking" adult could even entertain the possibility of a healthy, consensual relationship between a teenager and an adult, the resulting stigma and external pressure forces those involved in such relationships to sneak, hide and lie about what they feel, which will distort even the best of feelings. Again, I'm sure that there are indeed a lot of sleazy, predatory men out there who cause severe harm to their young prey, but they aren't the whole story, and I think it's a mistake to act as if they are. If these "teenagers" on the web are past puberty and healthy, is it really so impossible that they might be able to make up their own minds as to whether they want to have sex or not?

To me, such an attitude is woefully diagnostic of the disrespectfully paternalistic attitude taken by the adult establishment toward the youth in this country. I also think it's a great shame that rites of passage are nearly wholly absent from our culture, depriving us of signposts to help us along the path of pubescence. I, at least, would have liked nothing better than to have been taken under the wing of a mature, responsible adult who would've educated me in what it meant to be a man and what all the hormones surging through my body actually meant, as opposed to the half-hearted and blushing health classes and the secretive fumblings with boys my own age. Sadly, the former option belongs to another age, and I don't think it could ever be translated across the fear and shame that plagues our current one. So, we're left to figure things out for ourselves, and live with the consequences of both our own mistakes, and those of our parents'.

Literature and Text Messages Mate; Mutant Offsping Runs Rampant

2005-11-17T21:57:00.000-08:00

This little gem, I think, irritates quite a few people, who, like me, love literature.

I can understand why it does, but I don't share the reaction. I think that, in the end, it's more useful to let people, and students in particular, fall off of the literary wagon when they choose to.

You either appreciate something for what it is, whether it's sports, or philosophy or literature, or you don't.

If someone doesn't, you can't make them, no matter how much you might want to.

And nothing kills the pleasure of reading good literature more than being forced to read it when you have absolutely no desire whatsoever to do so.

So, bring on the text messages. They'll find the people they're meant to find.

And that can't be an entirely bad thing.

The Engagement Question

2005-11-17T07:06:00.000-08:00

Ben writes:

I wonder how capable normal citizens are of being informed. I wonder if the problem isn't structural rather than personal, and, if it is structural, if the best, most virtuous option isn't simply dropping out of the political theater altogether.

In 40 words, he articulates something I've grasped at, embraced, but been unable to express just right. My most recent attempt was here. I quote it again to amplify it. I hold mightily to this belief, even if Ben in part rejects it; it has been central to my human-humanistic turn of philosophy.

Speaking of things central to turns of philosophy, Ben mentions Wood's Creation of the American Republic. The latter's Radicalism of the American Revolution changed my life as a pup politico; I've been meaning to read it again. Like many things one reads, it wowed me perhaps more because of when I read it than what I read: it's not what it says about the Revolution, but its discussion, shocking to someone brought up on the bland civics of "democracy," of the sources of American values and institutions, with much more personal implications.

The Political Animal or "I wasn't expecting this to be a drunken post, but ..."

2005-11-17T00:13:00.000-08:00

I'll be the first to admit it. I've had maybe a little too much wine.

But that's okay. We're allowed that on occasion. It's a human thing.

I've been reading a lot lately. I've been on an American Revolution kick. The Federalist Papers, The Anti-Federalist Papers, Democracy in America ... Most of the basics. I've missed out on Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws and Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, but I still have Wood's The Creation of the American Republic to go.

I'm trying to find myself. Lately, I don't even know if that idea even makes any sense. But it's very American. I'm trying to put myself in context.

But, I don't know if I'm that interested in engaging what has become the political culture of the United States anymore. Part of my reason for starting on this course of reading was so that I'd be able to do that more competently. Maybe I'm more interested in being non-partisan than I am in actually disengaging, but I don't know if it's even possible for that to be meaningful in our culture any more.

Aristotle holds that man, by his nature, is political. For him, there is no question of engagement.

But for me, there is, and maybe that speaks to the nature of the democracy we're living in. I wonder how capable normal citizens are of being informed. I wonder if the problem isn't structural rather than personal, and, if it is structural, if the best, most virtuous option isn't simply dropping out of the political theater altogether.

But then I wonder if doing so is simply a misguided effort to avoid grappling with difficult issues. I know that I do believe that the insistence and emphasis on excessive partisanship tends to get in the way of both a comprehensive understanding of the human aspect of political issues as well as the public good in general.

Q writes:

"I count myself as a member of the middle. It isn't the center: it doesn't exist between extremes, and it isn't a pastiche scrounged from bits of ideologies. Like centrism, it is based upon principle, but is realistic. To be in the middle, though, is to step beyond accepting packaged bits of left and right. No one's narrative is large enough to encompass the middle, nor small enough to fit in it. One in the middle believes there are principles that ought not to be compromised, but that no principle can understand humanity like a human can."

This is a sentiment that I am very sympathetic to, but I wonder about the use of principles that are inarticulable. And I wonder if articulable principles are worth a damn to begin with. I am very wary of theory. It tends to flatten all the rough spots of the human condition. It tends to simplify things that shouldn't be simple.

I wonder if the best politics isn't one of direct human engagement, one that rejects the institutionalization of human contact. One that insists on the intimate and close connection of people, unmediated by an inhuman, governing body.

But I don't know if there's room for that within politics today. I don't know if there has ever been room for that in politics anywhere. And I don't know if that's a good enough reason to abandon what it means to be engaged.

We might be aiming at perfection, but I don't think we should expect it. Even if expecting it is a very human sort of thing.

Little Bugs in Amber

2005-11-14T22:21:00.000-08:00

I was driving home playing loudly and singing loudly Tori's "Winter." At the very Seattle five-way intersection at the end of the Denny exit off 5 South, I stopped for the traffic light and my voice caught in my throat as I looked up at the overpass, and saw flashing yellow lights and "AMBER ALERT" on the sign over the highway. Beneath it was a description of a vehicle and an Oregon plate to watch for. I thought, "That's happening now."

It's not as if I haven't seen the benign indifference of the world shining through before. For some reason it nailed me.

More anon on benign indifference.

Begging Off

2005-11-14T16:51:00.000-08:00

I'm thoroughly behind on reading, which is why I missed my scheduled Sunday post.

I'll have a reply to Q's post below on Wednesday.

Hope you're all doing well.

On Bigotry; or, Politics

2005-11-12T15:36:00.000-08:00

In politics as in life (and let us never confuse the two), there's a middle and a center.

The "sides" of the political "spectrum" take different forms across times and states. They may be consistently distinguished from rational sects in that they advocate state violence to advance some set of internally inconsistent social goals. They differ over the question of who is the proper object of the state's indecent attentions.

Those who are more fearful of authority figures per se tend to side with the left, willing to excuse its intolerance and imtemperance. Those more fearful of the concept of authority, rather than its embodiment in individuals, more commonly side with the right.

The left may be socialist, anarchist, communist, communitarian, or otherwise. The right may be nationalist, nationalist-socialist, anarchocapitalist, corporatist, or otherwise. But almost always they are there: the red team and the blue team.

Those who see the problems of the left-right narrative, but still accept its legitimacy, see themselves as a noble and impartial center. Centrists pick their policies -- usually based on a pragmatic morality, which arguably is no morality at all -- from the confining menus offered by right and left. They justify each policy on the basis the right or left uses to justify it. The policy and its justification are a package.

I count myself as a member of the middle. It isn't the center: it doesn't exist between extremes, and it isn't a pastiche scrounged from bits of ideologies. Like centrism, it is based upon principle, but is realistic. To be in the middle, though, is to step beyond accepting packaged bits of left and right. No one's narrative is large enough to encompass the middle, nor small enough to fit in it. One in the middle believes there are principles that ought not be compromised, but that no principle can understand humanity like a human can.

Leftists and partisans of the right mostly believe, whether they realize it or not, that truth can be profitably reduced to a handful of truths within a consistent and easily understood system. Centrists believe that is not so, and they construct reactive, provisional, and often unstable and dangerous, systems. All these systems, of left and right and center, because they are not self-sustaining, require the invention of bigotries to explain behaviors and propositions put forth by the opposition that are rational but incomptatible with one's own narrative. All righties are at last called corporatists, even if they are not. All leftists are billed as totalitarians, even if they are not. All centrists are made out to be linguini-spined moderates, even if they are not.

To be in the middle is to identify one's own bigotry, rather than identifying with it.

'Tizzy the Season

2005-11-12T12:07:00.000-08:00

The neighbors are probably pissed that I'm already playing Christmas music. Loudly.

Too bad. They're lucky I didn't start in July as I usually do.

On Tocqueville and Democracy in America

2005-11-09T18:34:00.000-08:00

I have, lately, been reading a wide variety of literature relating to the founding of the United States.

Right now, I'm in the middle of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. Tocqueville's prescience and insight have been roundly and correctly lauded, but there are some things that even Tocqueville gets wrong.

Late in the first volume of his work, Tocqueville states:

"The Union guarantees the independence and greatness of the nation, things which do not impinge immediately on private individuals. The state preserves the freedom, regulates rights, safeguards property, protects the life and entire future of each citizen.

The federal government stands at a great distance from its subjects; the regional government is within the reach of all. All you need to do for it to hear you is to raise your voice. Central governemnt has on its side the passions of a few outstanding men who are ambitious to direct it; regional government is supported by the self-interest of men of lower rank who hope to achieve power only in their own state. These are the men who, being close to the people, exercise the most power over them.

American have, therefore, much more to expect and fear from the state than from the Union and, according to the natural emotions of the human mind, they are bound to feel a closer attachement ot the former than to the latter."

Later, Tocqueville continues, predicting the decline of the federal government and the ascendency of state governments:

"If the sovereignty of the union were to come into confliect with that of the states, one can readily foresee that it would be defeated; I doubt whether the fight would ever be undertaken in serious fashion. Whenever determined resistance is offered to the federal government, it will be found to yield. Experience has shown so far that whenever a state has been stubbornly determined on anything and was resolute in its demands, it never failed to obtain it and when it has flatly refused to act it was left to do what it wanted ...

Besides, however strong a governemnt, it cannot escape the consequences of a principle once it has been established as the foundeation of its public constitution. The confederation was formed by the free will of the states which, by uniting together, did not forfeit their nationality nor become fused into one and the same nation. If, today, one of these same states wished to withraw its name from the contract, it would be difficult to prove that it could not do so. The federal governent would not be able in any obvious way to rely upon either forc or law to overcome it."

Such broad statements of fact are common in the literature of the time, and it is clear that Tocqueville is confused about a number of things and disregarding quite a few others.

A general ascendency of federal government has taken place in the 150 years since Tocqueville's work has been published, and history has shown that United States citizens have a variety of things to fear from both the state and federal governmnents that unite them. Minorities within any given state, for example, generally have more to fear from their state rather than their federal government (both state-sanctioned Jim Crow laws and anti-gay state constitutional amendments serve as useful examples of this trend), though, of course this is not always the case (think federally-mandated Japanese Internment during WWII). Additionally, citizens of individual states, overall, tend to have more to fear from the federal than their state governments, for two important reasons.

In the first case, as the Anti-Federalists point out, the federal government is large, prohibitively complex and sits a long distance away from the people it governs. All of these things contribute to a federal tendency of abuse, neglect and corruption by making it difficult for the citizens to successfully police it. Corruption on the state level is more easily detected, in general, simply because by virtue of its nature state government is far smaller than its federal counterpart, generally less complex and therefor less opaque, and the citizens, living in daily contact with their state government, are more familiar with it and the people who run it.

Agents of the federal government, by comparison, do not govern from the heart of their constituencies and their distance from them weakens the natural bonds of affection they feel for their individual states, inclining them further towards abuse of their positions.

Secondly, individual federal legislators, in their federal capacity, purportedly govern in the interest of the full body of U.S. citizens, but are accountable only to the citizens of a given state or district. This, sometimes, and perhaps often, inclines them to partiality in the governance of the nation as a whole. The recent conflict of interest in the budget between bridges in the State of Alaska and hurricane relief in Louisiana serves as a good example of this tendency. The weakness of these states, politically, and their position as victims in the current debacle, serves further to illustrate the partiality of various factions in the federal government.

Tocqueville's last claim, above, relating directly to state secession is simply mistaken. One of the primary Anti-Federalists arguments against the Federal Constitution was the fact that it wasn't a compact between sovereign states, but rather a compact between the people of the states and a national government. The implications of this, the Anti-federalists claimed, was a reduction in state sovereignty, including the capacity to secede.

To Be a Stoic or "Philosophy and My Good Life, Part 1"

2005-11-06T16:05:00.000-08:00

When I was much younger, I was infatuated with the ancient Stoics.

Best known for their dispassionate natures, as a dead school, their primary contribution to the culture these days is the word "stoic" and all its derivatives.

But my infatuation with their thought had very little do do with their philosophical position on human emotions. It was their cosmology that attracted me more than anything else, and, for the brief period that I seriously saw the world through a stoic lense, I was intensely happy.

Stoic thought seemed (and at times still seems) intuitively plausible to me on a variety of levels. The stoics observed that the universe is governed by rational laws and concluded from this that everything in the universee is governed by the rational principle. Since rationality always aims at some good end, it follows that the universe is a teleological universe, itself aiming at some good end, and that every event which occurs in the universe helps to bring the universe closer to this final goal. The stoic universe, in this sense, is a deterministic universe and there is very little that human beings have control over.

It is important, however, that people are distinguished from all other things in the universe by their share in the rational principle. That is, human beings, unlike all other things in the universe, are rational beings - a status that grants them certain and absolute control over a very limited number of things, namely, their internal states.

Both of these things - universal teleology and exceptionally limited human control - have a variety of different implications. Two of the most important are the folding of ethics into rationality and the reduction of human agency to an externally impotent and internally omnipotent duality. The stoics reduce free will to an internal question of radical assent or radical dissent and maintain that this is a substantial notion of what it means to be free. All human misery is caused by the choice to dissent from the rationally ordained teleological nature of the universe. Unfortunately for those who dissent, while such dissent is meaningful, it is also useless.

What is interesting about this is that, from a stoic perspective, human happiness becomes a matter of how the human character is constituted, since our character is the only thing we have any control over. For the stoics, to be happy is to be rational; to be rational is to be ethical, and to be ethical is to be happy.

Eventually, of course, my love affair with the stoics ended, primarily because in stoic cosmology, all actions aim towards the good despite themselves. Feeding a starving six year-old aims at the good just as much as punching him in the face and kicking him in the nuts does.

I think, however, that my rejection of stoicism on this point may have been too radical because the overall good end of the universal teleology, according to stoicism, doesn't fall within the proper circle of man's concern - though he may take some comfort from the fact that all human evils eventually work toward some good end. The only thing that falls within the proper circle of man's concern is the constitution of his own character.

There are other problems with stoicism of course - it radically impoverishes our notion of the human good, for example, by making our actions within the external world provisional rather than substantial.

I do think, however, that at least a provisional return to my stoic leanings might be in the wings, simply because of its emphasis on personal responsibility to oneself, if nothing else.

Nightswimming

2005-11-05T19:01:00.000-08:00

I walked to the library this afternoon. It has been raining in Seattle for two days with the same measured intensity. The ground is yellow and orange with fallen, wet leaves.

I'm a naturalized Northwesterner: I don't do umbrellas, so my hair and my satchel were soaked by the time I got to the library. From there, on my way to the warmth and incandescent glow of a coffee place, I walked past dark Capitol Hill corners and alleys and porches made beautiful by the early-evening muted glow of a grey-blue sky, an occasional porchlight, the white noise of rain, and the perfect play of shadows.

I kicked at some puddles and leaves and remembered what J said years ago: "Someone has to understand, statistics in a way." She was refomulating something I had said, and it sounded better coming from someone else who was as sure of it was I was.

That's what is most beautiful about the complexity of this weather and this time of year, that makes it superior to a bright spring day. It is in this weather, not in any clearer, that one can derive happiness from longing and certainty from the law of large numbers -- a fallacy with no certainty to offer.

"A rich darkness they love and hate," indeed.

Be As

2005-11-02T21:24:00.000-08:00

Ben writes on what it means to leave things behind.

It is said in Hedwig that, to be free, one must give up a little piece of oneself.

A wise friend wrote to me once: "Being alive, and free to do as I please, makes me happy. I have thrown away those things that held me back. If I am doing wrong, then I trust that God will pardon me, on that great day of which prophets speak but in which they do not truly believe."

A haunting Judybats lyric says that what we lose, we become.

So it is that some things are, and ought to be, left behind.

Pro Patria

2005-11-02T18:45:00.000-08:00

I have on my MP3 player, because I'm weird this way, original recordings of a number of famous historical speeches. Yesterday I listened to FDR's "Arsenal of Democracy."

I'm not an FDR worshipper the way Zinn and the intelligentsia, through their exertions in every history textbook in the land, would have me be. Leave aside the politics, the morality of the New Deal and of the man himself. What I heard was a president who was presidential. He had a firm voice, a command and a sense of the script he read, the palpable gravitas talking heads profess to seek today, that now seems comical only because it is so improbably characteristic of a real politician. His speechwriters didn't mince words or deny reality, and this is key -- they acknowledged explicitly the reality of war:

"American industrial genius, unmatched throughout the world in the solution of production problems, has been called upon to bring its resources and talents into action. Manufacturers of watches, of farm implements, linotypes, cash registers, automobiles, sewing machines, lawn mowers, and locomotives are now making fuses, bomb-packing crates, telescope mounts, shells, pistols, and tanks.

"But all our present efforts are not enough. We must have more ships, more guns, more planes -- more of everything."

No speechwriter, no president, would come within a million miles of that today. We don't have planes, guns, bombs. We have terror, victory, dedication, faith, and a glut of "resolve." I wonder if each generation since my grandparents' is bound to become less acutely aware that war is hell, that death exists.

I also received yesterday an issue of my (high school) alma mater's glossy, blancmange, suck-up-and-ask-for-money alumni magazine. It tells of two grads who were Marines killed in Iraq. Their faces look familiar. I probably passed these boys in the hall.

The magazine quotes the Cincinnati Enquirer: "Marines were killed Wednesday when a huge bomb destroyed their lightly armored vehicle, hurling it into the air in a giant fireball." I'm no expert, but I'd guess that their bodies were blown into several different pieces, most of which were immediately incincerated into a fine red spray, and that's what's left of them.

When I was a sophomore, one was a junior and the other was a senior. I probably ate lunch at a table near one of them, or shared an elective with one of them, or stood near one of them at a pep rally, or worked a canned food drive with them. There probably aren't many complete pieces of them left. They should be like 25 and 26 and they were blown into a red mist that evaporated in the hot Iraqi sun.

One of the things that most scares me about Generation Y is how anesthetized they are to this, how much it is for them an abstraction. Ours are all-volunteer armed forces (for now), and a smaller than ever portion of the population makes up the armed forces. It has been decades since we had a president who could talk about the realities of war the way FDR or Eisenhower did. It may be that we no longer have a populace that has enough sense to understand and be scared that their boys could be shipped off to war and converted to red particulate spray by a roadside bomb or a few dozen rounds of .50 auto at close range.

Dulce et decorum est, one might say, were he more cynical than I.

On '122 Degrees West' or "What it Means to Leave Things Behind"

2005-10-31T00:40:00.000-08:00

It's been a month and a day since I arrived in Hayward.

It seems much longer than that.

I was looking for some sort of seismic change, coming here, and I would like to say that I had found it. But I haven't. If anything, my lethargy and isolation have only become more intense.

I don't go out. I don't know anyone. And I don't sleep much at all. Insomnia's been plaguing me recently, familiar with the coming of autumn. Like an old and hated, if comfortable, companion that decided to follow me leisurely south. It's sort of scary how accustomed I've become to it.

It feels very empty here. And I like that. There is a lot of space to grow. But I do not know who or what I want to grow into. It is strange being 26 and feeling so misplaced and uncertain and incompetent. But I think that is something that is probably very common among undergraduate liberal arts majors. Our society doesn't really seem to know what to do with us, and we certainly don't seem to know what to do with our society.

I feel very much like a failure lately, but not in the usual sense. My failure isn't a failure of engagement - it's a failure of articulation.

As a college-educated, gay white male in his mid-20's from an affluent family who's in a stable, loving relationship and living on the west coast of the United States, I'm situated very well to make something of myself in this culture.

But I don't want to, simply as an issue of character, and the cost to character success here often brings.

If I was exceptionately passionate about anything, or less inclined to comprehensive criticism, perhaps this wouldn't be the issue in my life that it is. But, like Q, my passions are far more broad than they are deep, and my inclination towards criticism only works to aggravate that tendency in my character.

Both of those things combine to make me exceptionally reluctant to put my foot down anywhere firmly. But, despite my reservations, I need to start. Issues of character are largely issues of place, and if I'm ever going to begin to understand who I am, I need to also understand where I am and what I'm doing here.

Right now, I'm 122 degrees west, with someone I love, staring at the distant borders of my future, trying to discover a shape they might conform to.

It is a very empty place in my life.

Though, that, perhaps, is something I should not worry so much about.

It may be, I think, that I am becoming more comfortable with blind horizons. I have ceased attempting to bring light to them. In some ways, it is a disservice. There are places that you can only explore once you've arrived.

And that is a good thing. You need some space if you're going to grow, and unexplored space is best.

I have plenty of that here.

Details

2005-10-31T00:26:00.000-08:00

Alright, I'm just letting you guys know that I'm planning regular, substantial posts every Sunday and Wednesday, starting this Wednesday.

Also, Jon, feel free to invite Nik to join. I don't have his e-mail, but we should have invited him when we first started this thing.

Anyway, hope everyone is well.

Bzzzzz...

2005-10-30T03:57:00.000-08:00

My boyfriend's brain buzzes in the dark. He usually forgets to shut it off.

Ouch.

2005-10-27T21:16:00.000-07:00

I just want to point out that the person my boyfriend chopped off in the photo on his profile page was me.

Blog Post-Journal

2005-10-24T03:54:00.000-07:00

I'm so cool, too bad I'm a loser
I'm so smart, too bad I can't get anything figured out
I'm so brave, too bad I'm a baby
I'm so fly, that's probably why it
Feels just like I'm posting for the first time