Ex Abundancia Cordis

Sexism - of a sort

Sat, 02 May 2009 21:23:54 GMT

I'm easily annoyed as anyone who's spent more than five minutes with me can attest. I don't usually make it through an entire day without hearing or reading something that I consider an assault on reason and good sense. On the whole however, at least in public forums, I usually find that someone smarter and more articulate than myself is already having a level-headed version of my reaction and I let it go -- possibly after a brief tirade for any unfortunate souls who happen to be with me at the time. Yesterday was no different, except that on this particular subject there seem to be only a handful of dissenting voices. So, I'll dissent quietly where no one will hear to make myself feel better.

I heard a clip on the radio about the appointment of the new Poet Laureate of Britain: Carol Ann Duffy. Evidently the first woman ever to hold the post. I was mildly positive on that, as it seemed somewhat incredible that no women had been appointed in the 341 years Britain's been naming them.

Now, I don't know anything about Ms. Duffy seeing as how I'm an American who doesn't read poetry. So I had to take what the guest being interviewed, one Elaine Showalter -- professor of English emeritus at Princeton, said about her at face value. Showalter made a point of her popularity (bestselling poet in the UK) as well the fact that she was bisexual. I'm not sure what that last bit has to do with anything. I certainly look forward to the day when people can be appointed to things without anyone caring enough about their sexuality to point it out. But I suppose the fact that she got appointed despite the fact that people felt the need to point it out is better than nothing.

After admitting that she didn't know exactly how appointees were chosen, Showalter went on to state that "poet and woman, until now, were seen as two contending categories." I was a little confused that a Princeton professor, presumably informed ahead of time that she'd be questioned about this story, hadn't bothered to figure out how appointments to the post in question were chosen. But government can be ineffable at times, so I shrugged it off. I do have a hard time believing that Britain in the 90's (the most recent time a women was considered but not appointed) didn't think women could be poets. They had a women commanding HM Naval Base Clyde, for example, home of the UK's nuclear-armed sub fleet. Seriously, it was ok in the public eye for one to command a huge pile of WMDs but no-one felt they could write verse?

Showalter continued by pointing out that women had been passed over for the appointment in the distant past too. Indicating that Elizabeth Barrot Browning had lost out to Tennyson. To my mind, this was obviously a sexist choice since Tennyson was a complete hack who certainly didn't win out on his own merits. Incidentally, I have to wonder if the fact that a woman's name was bandied about for the post in the 1800s doesn't go some distance towards refuting the claim that, until now, Britons didn't respect women as poets?

So I'm a little confused by the whole segment now... Showalter went on, describing Duffy as being best known for her feminist poems. In particular a late 90s work called The World's Wife -- "a selection of poems written from the point of view of the wives, and sometimes the mothers and the sisters of famous men." The good professor continued: "It's wonderful, it's her most anti-male book in a kind of humorous way, but often in a darker way -- some of the poems suggest that it was the women who really came up with the ideas, others are somewhat more complex."

At this point I'm a bit perturbed. Now it bears repeating that I don't know anything about Ms. Duffys work. The example they read was a quip about Darwin's wife commenting during a visit to the zoo that "something about that chimpanzee reminds me of you." Humorous enough, and perhaps that's the angle Ms Duffy generally takes. I don't know... but Prof. Showalter certainly elevates the idea that The World's Wife goes about attacking men and crediting women.

This vexes me. If a public figure could say about a man that he was best know for his "most anti-woman" book in which he, humorously or otherwise, asserts that the achievements of women in history were actually traceable to their husbands; he'd likely be on his way out of office in disgrace certainly not enjoying his most recent national honor.

Sexism is bullshit, there are rank upon rank of women who are smarter than me, faster than me, stronger, nobler, better. And there are ranks and ranks of men who are too. You don't cure slavery by encouraging former slaves to enslave someone else -- or any other nonsensical form of reversal. Why is it ok to think we can rectify sexism by letting, even encouraging women insulting men?

Insomniac Musing

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 08:54:35 GMT

I couldn't sleep tonight. Work is piling up around me even as I slowly begin to accept that said work simply isn't going to continue earning me meaningful money in the current and foreseeable economy. Such thoughts breed laziness of the worst kind -- passivity when action is most needed. And passivity leads to navel gazing. Tonight that means musing about my past and the emotional journey that has ended here. Fortunately I am mostly at peace with my past and musing about it eventually lead to enough interesting thoughts to compel me out of bed to write them down. Something of a personal re-interpretation of the old cliche that forgiveness is the first step towards healing. So here's what I've bought with the two hours of sleep I'll be sorely missing tomorrow:

"Time heals all wounds. I believe this because I have felt it in my own life; because I see the truth of it played out over and over again in countless stories fictional and real. The human mind adapts, gives itself hope, sees the bright side. It must do this because it is its purpose. Evolution has shaped it to go on, to endure, to forge ahead. But we obstruct this process by dwelling on our own pasts, by holding on to our sacred wounds. We hate and we tell ourselves that we do this because we revile injustice. But I have come to believe that this is a lie. Hate is like a drug. An emotional morphine that we take to ease the pain of our hurts. It is very effective, perhaps even necessary, but we pay a price for it to work its numbing magic upon us. Hate has a dark side that should not be ignored, I think now that hate itself wounds us. It pulls us into orbit around the object of our hate, locks our mind into a cycle -- forever replaying the moment that we were wronged. And in so doing it daily reopens the wound from which it sprang. Eventually we must let go of our hate, not because God wills it, nor because it is good for humanity, but for the very selfish reason that we ourselves can never heal while we hate."

Still Cheap Version II

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 20:53:29 GMT

Alright so the trip has gotten all turned around and complicated. I'm actually going to be sending one of the other guys to handle the business part and I'm going to try and do some sales work in the area instead while visiting with my father on their rescheduled trip to KC a week later. So... those of you who were willing to put me up for a few nights how does July 16-18 work? Lemme know. Also, it is possible I might be able to drive down Sunday and hang out for awhile (perhaps catch Gaia even?). Other than that I'll be pretty booked but it seems silly to go to KC and NOT see some folk. Lemme know what the situation looks like.

Core Memory Dump

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 05:26:33 GMT

This isn't for public consumption because it is full of holes, makes no sense whatsoever, tries to combine two unrelated subjects, and is generally inane in its current form. Just twenty minutes of me trying to get something on paper that hit me while I was driving home listening to NPR. It also isn't locked. If someone wants to give input, please do. Going up on LJ so I can edit it while camping (only access is on another person's comp, ie no storage.).

Notes:
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This is a huge oversimplification that ignores a hundred important corollary arguments, for instance where exactly is the experiment that proves that saving the lives of others IS in ones general self-interest and ”didn't all you rational self-interest people really just accept that truth on gut instinct.” Not to mention that I've made a huge leap from 'objective measure is necessary because subjective choices are weak" and "rational self-interest is good." In fact, I'm not sure where that jump came from. Much refinement needed.

The point might be that flexible morality isn't really what I'm advocating. But instead morality that can be calculated against an objective standard and is therefore more consistent in application than morality based on dogmatic choices which may be consistent with themselves but achieve varying results in reality depending upon the situation to which they are applied (examples?). Also, vocabulary needs to be sorted because the 'morale' part of this wouldn't be the measuring... but the basis of the standard (ie the fact that saving more lives IS better is the 'morale' piece).

This is smacks of Hempel's Paradox... I have a pet theory that 'rational self-interest' is more useful than x and I'm looking for data that corroborates it instead of actually testing it predictively. Need to reevaluate if the information has anything at all to say about my subject. If so, need to come at it from at least one other angle. "... cannot be proven by the data that suggested it"
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I often find myself trying to make the case that I am, in fact, a morale person. This is not because I can often be found doing questionable things (my life is pretty boring morally speaking). But rather because I have a habit of saying things like: 'Morality needs to be calibrated for specific events,' and 'dogmatic morality is meaningless,' etc. People, perhaps rightly, assume that if your morale standards can change they must be weak and therefore permissive. I'm not sure I agree with that appraisal, but I am beginning to think that it may be wrong discussion entirely.

Paul Slovik of Decision Research has been writing a lot lately regarding some recent studies that found that people respond more strongly to individual plight than statistically more significant events. His running example is the three climbers that were recently stranded in Oregon vs the 2 million+ Fur, Zaghawa, and Massaleit in Darfur. Because the media was able to give said climbers names, show their families worrying about them, and generally provide individual details the outpouring of effort in their rescue was assured. Likewise a related study found that: "donations to aid a starving 7-year-old child in Africa declined sharply when her image was accompanied by a statistical summary of the millions of needy children like her in other African countries." Skin color, general ethnicity, etc. were not found to have a significant effect, but numbers certainly did.

"Two Israeli psychologists asked people to contribute to a costly life-saving treatment. They could offer that contribution to a group of eight sick children, or to an individual child selected from the group. The target amount needed to save the child (or children) was the same in both cases. Contributions to individual group members far outweighed the contributions to the entire group. A follow-up study by Daniel Västfjäll, Ellen Peters, and me found that feelings of compassion and donations of aid were smaller for a pair of victims than for either individual alone. The higher the number of people involved in a crisis, other research indicates, the less likely we are to “feel” for each additional death."

None of this is news really. Just basic biology... we didn't evolve with an ingrained need to protect large groups of people. We evolved to protect the individuals close to us. But along with another finding it got me thinking.

"We built a scenario around a refugee camp and asked people: suppose you're a minister in a nearby country trying to decide whether to give money to provide clean water for this camp where people are dying of disease. Suppose your funds could save 4500 people in the camp. Would you do this?

Then we varied in the scenario whether the camp was small, 11,000 people, or whether it was large, 200,000 people. We found that people were much more willing to send aid to the small camp rather than the large. Because they were responding to the proportion of people that they would save, rather than the number. In further experiments the idea that the number really doesn't carry any significance was born out."

This is interesting to me because most of the people who accost me about my morality offer one of two alternatives. Either things simply ARE right or wrong and one simply knows this (or doesn't in the case of the mentally ill). Or morality based on dogma or formula: God said / culture says / the law says / honor dictates / or whatever. In the above experiments, it seems, people from the 'humans come equipped with a morale compass' camp would have saved far fewer lives than was actually possible with a given amount of effort. Morality based on basic human nature is, evidently, highly fallible. Combined with my oft repeated argument that religious/dogmatic or formulaic morality (code of honor) is inconsistent in application (does not scale well, means different things to different people, cannot be measured against with consistency) and far too easily hijacked (relying on a external source for your morality means changes in that source can radically alter your morality -- Islamist extremists are easily convinced of the justification to kill, despite fairly strong textual prohibitions against such in Islamic scripture). The evidence seems strong of the need for an objective, quantitative morality. Rational self-interest has this built in. The morale choice must be calculated for each situation based upon an objective standard. It is therefore, repeatable, unchanging and thus -- useful. Assuming the practitioner of rational self-interests has come to the conclusion that saving lives contributes to one's personal happiness. They have an objective, quantitative standard to measure morale choices against. And would (assuming competency in basic arithmetic) always choose to save the most people possible. Freed from dealing with emotional (biological) constraints one is free to make choices that best accomplish one's goals IN REALITY. However unusual it might sound, basing morale choices on a subjective desire to do good would often yield less overall 'aid' than morale choices made strictly with logic.

Submission to the VURD: Kanzeon

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 05:09:47 GMT

I must call upon the VURD! I am trying desperately to find a nice necklace for a friend of mine. I would like to get a pendant of Kanzeon (Kannon, 観世音). Something nice in silver, gold, or platinum. Unfortunately I can't find anything to which I'd be willing to apply the word 'quality.' I've spent hours calling local jewelry stores, I've spent an additional hour googling. The former ended in a giant list of scratched out names, the latter returned a million $30 castings. I'll settle for a Kuan Yin that doesn't have any overtly Chinese imagery in it. Here's hoping this isn't an impossible quest (I don't Want to buy another Shane co. chunk of abstract pendantry)!

Err.

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 03:15:35 GMT

I am under the impression that some number of the folks that read my journal are Democrats. I might be wrong in this assumption since left-of-center and D are not the same thing (hell, I'm LOC in many respects). If there are some Donkeys out there though, perhaps you can help me understand the "Employee Free Choice Act." Now I read this as job security I don't want. Because if it passes there are going to be a lot more people in the states in imminent danger of a beating. Now I'd just as soon keep fighting suicidal extremists and not union thugs, but a fist in the gut is a fist in the gut. So, what part of this am I missing that significant portions of the House think this is a good idea? Is it possible that all these Democrats are in union pockets?

I'm serious here, I'm not trying to pick a fight... I'm truly baffled. So will someone smarter than me please explain what I'm missing...cause Bush being the only politician to have an intelligent reaction to this might summon hell on Earth or otherwise break the universe.

Objectivist BS

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 02:49:34 GMT

I've got a friend who's a fan of Fantasy Fiction. His major exposure has been The Sword of Truth series. He goes on, at great length, about all the things he likes in the series (it touches serious topics, it has insight, Richard is great, etc). So... I've been trying to expand his horizons with reading suggestions.

The problem is, being blind, his access is limited to things that can be had as audio books. As such I've been only moderately successful in getting him into other authors. This has led to many drawn out conversations wherein, inevitably he wonder's why I haven't read the Sword of Truth past the first two installments. So this week I decided to stop side-stepping the issue and try to come up with a cohesive explanation of why Goodkind is
a.) "not half as smart as you think" | a erudite vocabulary does not a great thinker make
b.) possibly a complete lunatic (and not in any of the many good ways)
c.) an unrepentant intellectual plagiarist if not an outright legal plagiarist
d.) perpetuates a serious crime against the genre with his attitude
To this end, I started collecting snippets of text from interviews and online chats in which Goodkind comes across as his usual, unimaginably arrogant self (those who know me will appreciate the absurdity of what it must take for ME to call someone else arrogant). But after about 30-minutes of this I lost heart in the project. Which brings us to today, when I had occasion to visit Guy Gavriel Kay's website. I poked about looking at cover art and whatnot, then eventually settled into the meat of the site. Kay has links to reviews (good and bad), academic papers written about the themes in his books or the books themselves in some cases, bibliographies containing the inspirational and historical sources for each work, snippets of speeches he has delivered at various universities and events, and a handful of short essays about random topics that Kay feels like posting from time to time.

Now, I don't want to sound like I'm going nuts over Kay, I'm not. He's a good writer with a gift for prose and a scrupulous approach to his art. But he isn't yet on my list of Great Authors. He might get there, but that isn't the point. It just got me to thinking about the differences between this man and Goodkind. Kay has an introduction to the website in which he thanks his web developer, and then talks briefly about how he hopes the site will serve as a place where people can not only find information but also discuss things and perhaps broaden his horizons.
"I wanted elements here that would make it worthwhile for someone to surf to this url; they could learn something, be amused, be challenged, be moved to do work of their own. In particular, I wanted to showcase the thoughts and talents of other people, insofar as their thinking and creativity had been triggered by my own writing. Seeing that happen is one of the great joys of writing, for me." he says.

This in contrast to the forums at TerryGoodkind.com where criticisms of the book are promptly deleted by moderators (mine included). Kay has an essay (adapted from a speech) in which he discusses some of what he sees as the "morale issues" inherent in historical fiction, which as a matter of course sees one making things up about real people. He explains how he feels the Fantasy genre offers an alternative to this. In a separate piece, Kay talks about the "universalizing" qualities of Fantasy, how it can be used to illustrate principles in a way that is More accessible than an equivalent strictly fictional or historical account might be. In short, he concerns himself with the relevance of the genre. Goodkind says,

"I would like to clarify an important point that is often the source of confusion: I am a novelist; I am not, in the essential sense, a fantasy author. It is the defining characteristic, upon which other characteristics depend, that properly distinguishes a thing's identity. This is called the rule of fundamentality.
To define me as a fantasy writer is to misunderstand the context of my books by misidentifying their fundamentals...My books are novels that deal in important human themes involving the faculty of reason. I tell these stories through heroic characters."

Dispense with the Objectivist jargon; and Terry can't be bothered to suffer the company of fantasy writers, "[The] abstract concepts I write about are absent from fantasy, as such. I have no desire to tell simplistic stories of good and evil driven by mysticism and magic. My novels instead, involve the nature of and projection of values." Gag me... no, please. The whole thing makes me sick, he makes me sick.

All this, to say nothing of the fact the the books aren't that good. He rips whole chapters from Atlas Shrugged, and if such a thing was possible, makes them more self-serving than Rand did. His protagonist is infallible, always proved right in the end, kills his enemies by the hundreds, learns the skills of a lifetime (languages, crafts) in the span of a single paragraph AND is made to pontificate at GREAT LENGTH at times when any sane person would be much more concerned about Imminent Doom....

Anyway, at this point the most coherent presentation I think I can give to my friend is me jumping up and down on his coffee table screaming obscenities. So, anyone got something more substantial I might at least start out with? Cause, you know, the coffee table thing fits better as a closer.

long-winded and totally pointless, really.

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 00:38:55 GMT

The current state of my Saturdays is a strange one. I've been working now for nearly a year at a job where Saturday is my busiest work day. I have classes to teach at 9, 10:30, 12, 1, 3:30, 5, and 7. I very often run the gym all day. And yet, I'm still in the habit of thinking of Saturdays as a good time to pursue things I wouldn't waste time on during the week. And thus we have Today's Post. Which provides the not-so-necessary run-up for Tonight's Post which has gnawed at me enough over the past week to seem worth actually typing now that it is Saturday.

I just finished Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana. I liked it, I like GGK, but it isn't a great book. It feels clumsy in places. Well, perhaps clumsy isn't the right word. Production values (is that a movie only term?) are obviously very high...it is all very carefully crafted. It is just that at certain, carefully arrived at high points I found myself appreciating the emotional strings being pulled instead of Feeling them. This is essentially the same reaction I had to The Lions of Al-Rassan, though Tigana certainly felt more complete than that title. I'm still in the middle of The Last Light of the Sun, a much more recent offering from Kay. And he seems to have dialed in his "punch" in this respect. Which is good, because he is brilliant in many ways. He takes time to step out of his narrative (quite skillfully) to say things like the following:

“And so a difficult truth about human courage was played out among the trees. A truth we resist for what it suggests about our lives. That sometimes the most gallant actions, those requiring a summoning of all our will, access to bravery beyond easy understanding or description… have no consequence that matters. They leave no ripples upon the surface of succeeding events, cause nothing, achieve nothing. Are trivial, marginal."

Which tickles me. Tigana has excellent underpinnings. The mythology is rich (not original, but deftly utilized, and hell what mythology is?) and you can see how the cultural/religious background shapes the actions of characters in the world through their psyche. His villains are, well villains. Not ultimate evil but the subjects of the kind of complex, circumstantial opposition that makes people enemies in the real world. It attacks interesting themes of human nature including: how people rebel when they can't rebel | ambiguities, evils done by good men | and lastly, the meaning of memory and names. Which puts me in mind of modern China, Russia where government propaganda is a dominating cultural force. Kay talks in an "Afterword" included in this particular reissue of the book; of seeing a set of photos circa 1968 from Czechoslovakia. The first shows, he says:

"... a number of Communist Party functionaries in a room, wearing nondescript suits, looking properly sombre. The second is the same photo. Almost. There is one functionary missing now, and something I recall to be a large plant inserted where he was. The missing figure - part of the crushed 'Prague Spring' uprising - is not only dead, he has been erased from the record. A trivial technical accomplishment today... but back then the two photographs registered powerfully for me, and lingered for twenty years: not only killed, but made to never have been."

He also mentions the changing of Gaelic names to English ones in Ireland. This kind of, at least vaguely thoughtful content makes me happy. And seeing it explored in a fantasy book gives me warm-fuzzies about the future of a genre whose future as a meaningful form is very much in question.

So, there's good and bad here. But the point, where I'm going with this anyway, is that the book was worth thinking about for a few moments after it was put down for the last time. Since it was a Saturday after all, I took the time to look up Kay's website. Which brings me to the rant in my next post.