Happy cold and snowy!
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11:43:32 AM,
Monday 21 December 2009
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Pema Chödrön & bell hooks talk over life and all its problems. Great article, makes me interested in reading both authors.
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(4)
08:21:16 PM,
Wednesday 2 December 2009
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Unusual names with normal nicknames:
Lizard (Liz)
Mallard (Mal)
Salamander (Sal)
Margarine (Marge)
I think there were more good ones but Tim started having low standards after a while.
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(6)
12:48:18 PM,
Sunday 29 November 2009
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I am thinking about quitting my job.
It's not something to do lightly, and it's not out of desperation. This is one of the better jobs I've had, and I think I could keep it going for some time if I had to.
The illness does relate, but not in the way one might think. It's not that work stress causes episodes. It's that I need to make some changes in my life in the general direction of better health and adjustment, and the ever-presence of the workweek consistently throws a monkeywrench into my attempts to make them. I think my employer would be quite happy for me to better manage body mind and spirit-- off the clock. But the clock is always there, always the need to do eight good billable hours every weekday, and that becomes just a whirlpool that I can't keep up with, so I go into survival mode, I'm out of balance, I don't make any progress on anything, and that hurts my work performance too.
It's not like I'm an automaton that just takes specifications and produces code, either. It's not like I'm some engine that if you keep it at the correct level of stress does good work a certain number of hours a week. I do good work when I'm motivated to do good work, and I'm motivated to do good work when I understand what the project is for and see that it is valuable and see that it is being done well and see that I can contribute my particular skills to it, and when I have the energy for it. I suppose management understands this at some level, but so much is geared around just getting the contracts and fulfilling them. The disconnect between that and anything I can personally recognize as valuable is not something that I think can be bridged in the rare frank conversation with higher-ups. And this is one of the better jobs I've had in this regard.
Is it fair not to work? Well, it depends. I mean, right now I guess as society sees it (or as my mortgage company sees it) I am doing the responsible thing. I am using my skills to do stuff people want done and getting paid for it in currency everyone recognizes. But as I see it, I'm spending the best hours of my day churning out projects of questionable value for people with no more expansive vision than the ability to secure government contracts.
I have the luxury of choosing whether to work, because right now my salary and then some is going into savings. True, the money is something, mostly for security. I think the idea that I need to work for money in solidarity with others who must work for money is worth considering, but not reason enough. I'm pretty sure I can be more supportive of Tim and less in need of support if I'm not working. If I quit my job and just screwed around and didn't do anything useful or take care of myself, yeah, that would be bad.
I can see that I could be doing better work than this. I don't think it's arrogant or idealistic to seek meaningful work. What people do with their time and talents is what gets done. More meaning is good. I don't think I have the same idea of meaning as other people do. It's not about the work being big or intellectual or saving the world or something. I'll have to come back to what I mean by meaning, it could take some time to explain. I want time to explain a lot of stuff, to get it straight in my head. That's another reason to quit, there's all this stuff I want time for. By work I don't necessarily mean paid work, or well-paid work.
I want to take off this "be sensible and fit in to corporate America" hat that I've been wearing a long time. It's never been comfortable. But there are reasons why I'm wearing it: wanting to do something that is understood and acceptable and doesn't need defense, wanting to prove I am mentally stable, solidarity with others, financial need, wanting to have some structure and social validation in my day-to-day life. The last one especially I will need to find ways to address still. I need reasons to get out of the house and interact with people.
You know, just about everyone is being sensible and fitting into corporate America, even though most people understand on some level that it's not working in a lot of ways. And that's actually really harmful. And it's mostly not knowing what else to do, and just wanting to get by. I want to start answering the question: what else is there to do? I know we can't all jump ship at once. But I need to start living my life. I need to take responsibility. All the shouting voices say that taking responsibility means getting a job. In this case, it's the opposite. I'm not thinking of it as a permanent shift away from any sort of employment, but a significant time away from the 40-hour grind. Maybe I'll frame it as a year. A year to get on my feet as a human being, and then we'll see what beckons.
Now I have to figure out how to bill this to bosses, co-workers, neighbors, and relatives without burning any bridges or sounding like I've really gone and completely lost my head. Unless I swing the other way, back into the inertial orbit. We'll see.
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(9)
09:57:06 PM,
Wednesday 25 November 2009
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awesome elephant picture. from here.
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(1)
12:06:27 PM,
Tuesday 24 November 2009
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If you ever get a chance to go to the MIT museum, it's worth it just to see Arthur Ganson's mechanical art. Margot's Other Cat is especially good. Machine with Fabric wasn't at the exhibition, but was my favorite on video.
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(3)
08:51:34 PM,
Monday 23 November 2009
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The problem with all the scientific manipulators is that somehow they don't take life seriously enough; in this sense, all science is "bourgeouis," an affair of bureaucrats. I think that taking life seriously means something such as this: that whatever man does on this planet has to be done in the lived truth of the terror of creation, of the grotesque, of the rumble of panic underneath everything. Otherwise it is false.Ernest Becker, from "The Denial of Death", 1973 (out of an excerpt that was a reading for a book group I didn't go to). _
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10:02:23 PM, Sunday 22 November 2009
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"It would be confusing if the stock market was suddenly afflicted by poodles. They would run around and yip."
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08:48:48 AM,
Wednesday 18 November 2009
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Been continuing to like thesixtyone, which Moss linked to a little while back. Odd thing, I actively prefer the junk bin setting of songs that other people haven't liked ("The Rack"-- their user interface is seriously confusing, and half of it is locked at first, be warned). I'm not sure what's up with that. Maybe just that I'm looking for stuff I really haven't heard before (like ok, Sigur Ros is great, but you know, they're on my ipod already). And maybe I'd prefer unstudied and scratchy or cheesy to polished and not-quite-there. Whatever it is, people seem to actually vote up bland radio songs (who'd've thunk it?). I'm imaginaryelephant on there, if you decide to check it out.
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(1)
11:02:12 AM,
Monday 16 November 2009
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Brother Blue died recently.
I had the honor of meeting Brother Blue a couple of years ago, at one of Krysta's parties. So here I was, awkward, bored, not knowing what to do with myself in a house full of strangers. And this strange old black dude shows up, says he's a storyteller. He goes around the room, weaving everyone into this story, he looks me in the eye, and says something just based on the look of me, kind of offensive but also getting it just right, my awkwardness, what I'm doing there, my out of place-ness-- so I'm gripped, I have to hear what he has to say. He gathers a circle round and does some variation on a Shakespeare play, and it's like he's channelling something, out of this world. Then that story ends, and people start shifting round, and he can't help but be the center of attention, but now it's uncomfortable, and he starts drifting into his life story, poignant moments, complaints, and I feel bad that we can't be audience enough for him. Truly one of the great people I have ever met. May he rest in peace, or become one with the Bard beyond time, or whatever it is that would be fitting.
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09:41:00 PM,
Sunday 15 November 2009
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To put a few words on the last couple of weeks:
I don't remember it all. I don't want to. What I knew, or thought I knew, genuinely, I don't want to know, not right now. And all the swirls up and down through delusion, those aren't interesting either, and whatever insight was insight is not really separable from the delusion anyway.
One thing that I don't think is well enough understood about mental illness: there's a there there. The experience is an experience, a possible experience, a human experience. My experience. But the attempts to communicate it fail and fail, and there are reasons for that. I do not want to fully understand it myself. The past two weeks for me have not been time in the ordinary sense, time has not marched forward for me, but rather I have struggled through it, I have followed a thin line through incomprehensible space, twisting and turning in the labyrinths of my own mind, and only returned to shared reality through desperate struggle.
When I followed that thin line, every choice I made was right, in my own estimation. I dropped a rock into a fish tank and thought: this action will stand, if it is my only action, ever. Either that or terrifyingly wrong: this action destroys worlds. Either way, important, desperately important, in the calculus of my mind's profit and loss equation.
In shared reality, the rain simply rains and all the drops come at different moments and not only when I pay attention, and that is excellent. In shared reality, what I always thought was meaningless is still meaningless, and the meaningful is still meaningful, and time and space are plentiful and effortless, and people understand me when I speak. In shared reality, things are hard and annoying and I am not very powerful and mess up a lot, and that's fine.
I can say with confidence though that there was some quite real perceptual distortion. A bit of plastic meant to protect against door knobs fell off the door to the basement, and I saw it fly across the room, saw the arc, it was really odd. When I dropped something, I would see each bounce before it settled. I'm still having some heightened visual perception, like I watch movies and actually see the backgrounds and the characters at the same time, like having an extra eye, hard to describe how weird it is. Some of this I think is totally normal for other people, and it's just interesting to see vividly what it would be like to be in someone else's shoes perceptually, though I expect it will fade.
Mania is not so much about mood as is advertised. It is a disorder of sleep, metabolism, sense perception, time perception, motion perception, symbolism. Also, every episode is different, even if it's the same person.
I'm sorry for being difficult to deal with. If you had a sense that I wasn't aware of you or of where you were you or saying things that made no sense at all you were probably completely correct. I was holding onto reality by the thinnest thread, if at all. I was trying hard, but failing. In general, the best you can do for me is to stay grounded yourself. You can't bring me out of it, you can't make things much worse, and if I totally misunderstand it's not that you weren't expressing yourself clearly, and if I say something is really really important! it's probably not, except to me, and I might not remember an hour later, and if I say it's really about you! and I have a message, for you alone! don't take that too seriously either. I am really grateful for all the support I received this time around from many quarters, you have no idea how surprised I was by that. And I feel pretty stupid about all the stupid crazy shit I said and did.
I don't refuse medication out of stupidity or lack of awareness that this is a problem. It's more that I don't trust it as a solution, and have plenty of good reasons not to. When I'm having an episode I get really sensitive about trust and respect, and I don't always know who I am or who other people are, and it's true that those aren't always valid reasons to do something or not do it. But I am not grateful to be dashed back to earth. I would rather be allowed to find my own way, with such medical help as I actually require for my own reasons. There is work I have to do in order to be myself in this world and have a life worth living, you don't have to believe that, but you have to respect that I believe it.
It's a little like this: a farmer is having problems with wolves attacking his household. Someone says, here's the solution, let's put you in a cage in the sheep pen where the wolves can only sniff you and howl, not harm you, and drug you into a fog so you won't be too worried. The farmer is like, what the hell, listen, I know about wolves, I know what I'm doing, it's dangerous, and I need to be awake for it, you obviously have no idea what this is, leave me the hell alone, I have sheep to protect, that is my life, this is my farm. And then the committee of concerned villagers says, this farmer doesn't believe in wolves! And the farmer is just like, whatever, and strives to do everything within regulation so they have no excuse to force him.
This is just a start. I need to understand and explain all this much better, on a rational level, with connection to reality, not for my sake alone. I just want to say, you know, I'm back, at least for the moment, and the flame for me tends to burn out pretty thoroughly. If you want to know if I'm crazy at any point, just keep me talking, it should become pretty clear. Right now I'm coming down with a cold, and I'm tired, and I hope I can do some work tomorrow.
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(7)
11:15:31 AM,
Sunday 15 November 2009
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the cat has taken to jumping on the screen door to ask to come in.
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02:21:27 PM, Saturday 14 November 2009
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Erika's brain is gradually returning to normal. Thank you for your patience.
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05:05:02 PM,
Thursday 12 November 2009
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02:36:54 PM, Tuesday 10 November 2009
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.
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(5)
02:36:35 PM,
Tuesday 10 November 2009
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Scratch that, what I meant was: ping.
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(1)
08:16:20 PM,
Monday 9 November 2009
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...
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07:32:29 PM,
Monday 9 November 2009
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i spit on kim jong il's grave. (here's to hoping)
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03:57:13 PM,
Saturday 7 November 2009
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an enemy anenome amenity a manatee amity.
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03:09:58 AM,
Saturday 7 November 2009
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01:50:26 PM, Friday 30 October 2009
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Ok, I think I have to do something about this. Having no visual design skills whatsoever is turning out to be more of a handicap than I thought it would be as a programmer. Recent effects of this:
- Spending a lot of time back and forth with someone over a font problem, which was exacerbated by the fact that I didn't see it when it finally loaded the right one
- I don't notice when things aren't centered or lined up, which leads to last minute requests.
- The project leader asked to add an overly colorful and busy graphic to a screen. I didn't have the confidence to question it, but as soon as others saw it they said there was no way it would fly with the client.
- Someone wanted a really simple little graphic, just some text and a red box, but the colors and fonts had to be right, and I didn't know any graphics tool well enough to do it efficiently, so I brought in a designer.
So my question is, is it possible to develop an "eye"? I think it's probably partly that I'm just not used to looking at the visual world critically. I usually know what people are talking about when they say that something isn't centered or lined up once they say something, but I don't always see it myself. It doesn't bother me or jump out at me the way it does for others. I used to say half-jokingly at interviews that my major weakness as a programmer was that I wasn't going to see if something was one pixel off, but maybe there's something I can do about that? I don't know. There's probably only so much I can do. But anyone had any experience in developing this kind of skill from the basics as an adult, or any advice from some of you who are more visually oriented?
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(2)
07:30:09 PM,
Thursday 22 October 2009
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An inspiring story about the power of books and ingenuity. Every geek secretly wants to be that awesome, but few of us are.
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(1)
07:34:40 PM,
Tuesday 6 October 2009
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I've been looking for a way to get back into ice skating. I did a bunch of web searches for local rinks kind of hoping to find some sort of adult fitness skate or casual hockey or something. Nothing, which is actually a little surprising. You'd think there'd be a market, what with all the grown-up skating kids around, and what with people looking for exercise programs. But no, there's really nothing for adult non-beginners. And oh my god skating culture is horrible, I'd almost forgotten. The 3 minute programs with cheesy backing music! The tools to draw perfect circles, the lists of required jumps and spins! The badges, the try-outs, the competitions! The attitude that skating is for talented little girls who might grow up to do the Olympics-- and by the time most of them know they won't (and also wake up to the fact that it's horribly cheesy and not actually cool, at 13 or so) they drop out.
General skating periods are not much fun for someone who knows how to skate pretty well, 'cause they tend to have rules like "no skating backwards, no skating fast, no jumps, no spins," that is, no fun at all. And iced-over ponds are fun, but very limited in terms of when they can be used, and there's no Zamboni so they're often rough, and I admit I'm a little scared of them. The thing is skating is really fun, being on the ice, skating fast, and yes jumping and spinning, it's fun to do even if you're not a gorgeous graceful ice princess. I just wanted an indoor sport to keep me going in the winter, when I know I have a hard time motivating myself to take walks outside. But alas there does not seem to be room on the ice for grown-ups who just want to get some exercise. Ah well.
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(7)
11:15:40 AM,
Tuesday 6 October 2009
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Ooh, there's an Open College Textbook Act up for consideration. Awesome. The government should start requiring that all non-classified government funded research be released under an open license. This is a good start.
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03:15:01 PM,
Thursday 1 October 2009
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One of Virginia Woolf's slightly lesser-known but still highly esteemed books is Orlando, which I first read only a year or so ago. It's a book in a sort of fantastical or comedic vein, exploring the history of English literature through a character who is kind of a time traveller and changes genders halfway through the book. In synopses much is generally made of the gender bending, but nothing prepared me for the first paragraph:
He--for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it--was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters. It was the colour of an old football, and more or less the shape of one, save for the sunken cheeks and a strand or two of coarse, dry hair, like the hair on a coconut. Orlando's father, or perhaps his grandfather, had struck it from the shoulders of a vast Pagan who had started up under the moon in the barbarian fields of Africa; and now it swung, gently, perpetually, in the breeze which never ceased blowing through the attic rooms of the gigantic house of the lord who had slain him.Looking at it again, I'm again like, whoa, seriously, WTF is up with this? This is a seriously disturbing image. Obviously it's supposed to be disturbing, but nothing later on in the book really explains it or processes the overt racism of "slashing at a dead nigger's head", which is how it is referred to when it is recalled later in the book:
For though these are not matters on which a biographer can profitably enlarge it is plain enough to those who have done a reader's part in making up from bare hints dropped here and there the whole boundary and circumference of a living person; can hear in what we only whisper a living voice; can see, often when we say nothing about it, exactly what he looked like; know without a word to guide them precisely what he thought--and it is for readers such as these that we write--it is plain then to such a reader that Orlando was strangely compounded of many humours--of melancholy, of indolence, of passion, of love of solitude, to say nothing of all those contortions and subtleties of temper which were indicated on the first page, when he slashed at a dead nigger's head; cut it down; hung it chivalrously out of his reach again and then betook himself to the windowseat with a book.Ok, very good, he turned away from his inner barbarity and his culture of violence and sat down with a book. Good character wants a character biscuit? To Woolf it seems like this image is symbolic of the dark forces within the character and maybe within European culture, and I suppose his rejection of it is significant, but to use an image like that without acknowledging the humanity and historic non-symbolic oppression of dark-skinned people takes, I guess, a hefty dose of privilege. An almost-character introduced later pretty much reinforces the black people as silent symbols of the Other stance:
and so he would go on, and she would listen to every word; interpreting them rightly, so as to see, that is to say, without his having to tell her, the phosphorescence on the waves; the icicles clanking in the shrouds; how he went to the top of the mast in a gale; there reflected on the destiny of man; came down again; had a whisky and soda; went on shore; was trapped by a black woman; repented; reasoned it out; read Pascal; determined to write philosophy; bought a monkey; debated the true end of life; decided in favour of Cape Horn, and so on. All this and a thousand other things she understood him to say, and so when she replied, Yes, negresses are seductive, aren't they? he having told her that the supply of biscuits now gave out, he was surprised and delighted to find how well she had taken his meaning.Now, I'm not calling out this racism in a much-beloved author because I think it might theoretically offend someone else. I'm calling it out because it bothers me. This is not a case of merely accidental racism, since the racist images are given a highlighted place, and are not counteracted by anything. "Slicing at the head of a Moor" and "kissing a negress in the dark" are important parts of the character development, and we're told we should know, implicitly, what they mean. I don't claim to be a literary critic, and I'm not sure what Woolf meant to mean with these images, and of course someone in 1928 Britain is going to have different perspectives than someone in 2009 America. It feels like my perspective is shining light in places which were meant to be hidden. I can't help but have that perspective, even if it's distracting from the intent of the book. I guess her primordial forces symbolized by blackness become to me reduced to the somewhat more prosaic unconscious underbelly of white race privilege and the need for an Other. And maybe the emphasis was somehow connected to the gender bending, that if gender didn't signify Otherness something else had to. I don't know. Like I said, I am not a literary critic, and I don't go around looking for this stuff. I'm sure I don't always see it. But "slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters"? Whoa, where the hell did that come from? (Is it a reference to something, and if so could that possibly help?) _
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10:59:59 PM, Thursday 24 September 2009
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Tanya talks in the comments on the previous post about the benefits of organized minority support groups in schools. I actually don't have a strong opinion against this, I don't mean to say that there are no situations where such groups are appropriate and in school especially whatever will help kids is best. What bothers me is not that there should ever be groups based on a race or a gender or whatever, what bothers me is that this should be (at least seemingly) the end goal, and to say otherwise or to express a desire not to strongly identify with one's gender or race or whatever is not just a disagreement, but is actually in itself sexist or racist. Then again maybe I just have to deal with people I agree with getting called sexist and racist if I'm going to be involved in this kind of discussion, people aren't going to agree and people are going to throw these terms around.
Maybe I should write up what I was thinking but didn't have time to write during blog against racism week. I feel self-conscious trying to talk about race. What the hell do I know. Less than I should, probably. I'm white. I hate even saying I'm white. Hate being defined that way. The first thing I think of is this one time in high school when I crossed too close in front of a car leaving the school as a pedestrian, and a girl who I didn't know rolled down her window and called me a stupid white bitch, or something to that effect.
I'm not saying that that's the most important effect in my life of being white, obviously it's not. I'm not trying to play the victim, it's just that that is the kind of incident where my status as white has been called to my attention, and it is memorable, arresting. I'm not saying that it's anything like what people of color experience, there have been only a handful of incidents like that in my life, and I don't blame her, she probably got a lot worse shit. In one of the racism awareness videos Julia linked to someone mentioned a black woman telling her that she woke up every morning and thought, "I'm black". Being white is not something I think about much, and that is in itself a privilege. When I think about being white or having white privilege, it's not something I'm proud of. When it's pointed out, it's like realizing my supposedly hardy self-reliant character has had a +2 Shield of Whiteness all along, which has improved my odds in many encounters, but which is aligned with evil forces, occasionally blinds me to the obvious, and is cursed so I can't put it down (source note: I think I picked up the shield metaphor from some other blog, but I can't find the link). Not thinking about it and not talking about it is the easiest thing, especially since my low general Charisma combined with the Shield of Whiteness oblivion factor makes putting my foot in it at some point pretty likely. But since I actually do have an interest against the evil forces, maybe I should give thinking about it and talking about it a try. What follows (in separate posts above) (or rather, what may follow, if I get around to it) is a bunch of unrelated incidents where I have noticed racism, been affected indirectly by (non-reverse) racism, or been racist. If I say something stupid please let me know.
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(2)
10:37:14 PM,
Thursday 24 September 2009
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Have I mentioned that WinDirStat is great? Nothing like some visualization when trying to figure out why your network drive is full (again). Almost worth it just to watch the pacman icons chomp through your directories as it searches.
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03:11:09 PM,
Thursday 24 September 2009
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Unpacking Derailing for Dummies
or
Why I am not a (good) feminist
Derailing for Dummies, for those of you who might not be familiar with it, is a site that gets linked to fairly frequently in the feminist and social justice activist blogosphere, at least those parts of it I occasionally click through. It's meant as a satire piece against people who derail conversations.
The reason Derailing for Dummies fascinates me is that it writes down a set of unwritten rules that I have seen used, over and over, and which I have found frustrating and confusing. And it lays them out without reference to any particular marginalized group, so I can actually grapple with the rules themselves, without any risk that I might be seen as having a problem with some particular group. Perfect.
It is given in the form of a list of ways to derail a conversation. It's sarcastic and obnoxious, intentionally so. I'm going to look past that as much as possible to see if I can infer positive rules one would need to follow not to derail a conversation. Are these rules good? Are they fair? Are they necessary? Who do they benefit? Do they improve discourse? My bias is that on the whole they do not improve discourse where I have encountered them, but I'm sure there are some positive points in there that are worth keeping in mind.
So I'll take some of the what not to do advice, and turn it around and see what is going on:
Derailment: If you won't educate me, how can I learn?/If you cared about these matters, you'd be willing to educate me.
Ok, this is a difficult one to start with. What should the derailer have done differently? The derailee is obviously offended, or things wouldn't have reached this point. I imagine in the best case the conversation could have gone somewhat like:
Derailee: Hey, that was offensive! You should know better!
Derailer: What? Huh? How was I supposed to know that that was offensive?
Derailee: Educate yourself!
Which leads straight into the derailment. So, what's really encoded here is:
Rule: Be educated. If you find that you don't know much about the topic under discussion, take the time to find out before continuing the discussion. Don't make people spoonfeed you things you could easily learn elsewhere.
How good is this rule, in general? I think overall it makes a lot of sense. If everyone would take the time to find out facts and learn details before mouthing off discourse could only improve. I could do better about following it myself.
Whether it always makes sense in the case of marginalized groups, I'm not so sure. There certainly are facts to be learned about specific marginalized groups and their history and current problems. But the attitude of "go educate yourself" seems to imply that the problems and thoughts and attitudes related to a group have already been thought out and solved. As if the individual Marginalized Person has nothing to add to Marginalized Group 101, so you might as well just read that. This seems highly problematic to me. I would rather have people listen to what I think on matters of marginalized groups I belong to than to assume that everything they read by someone claiming to speak for them is speaking for me, because chances are they're not. If I want someone to hear something specific I'll reference it. If someone wants to know what I think, they have to listen directly to me. That's the kind of respect I want.
Derailments: You're being hostile/You're being overemotional/You're just oversensitive
Rule: respond to content or back off; don't bring your interlocutor's emotional state into it.
This is a pretty good rule. Chances are by the time this comes up, both sides have their hackles up. The derailment attempts to focus attention on the emotional state of the derailee. The conversation can turn into a silly cooler-headed-than-thou fight. The person claiming to be cool-headed usually isn't. The only thing I would point out is that being cool-headed is actually a decent goal, but one should be measuring one's own temperature, not others'.
Derailment: You just enjoy being offended
Rule: take other people's feelings into account, don't dismiss them.
Ok, that derailment is a pretty dumb thing to say in a conversation, and unlikely to be helpful when someone is offended with you. Whether or not the sense of offense is just, it exists and has to be dealt with, patiently. This rule is pretty good.
However enjoying being offended is by no means impossible. I will admit to sometimes seeking out articles that I know will piss me off (reading Arts and Letters Daily is a sure sign of this for me) and reading them with more interest than things that are more positive and informative. Outrage can be invigorating. I wouldn't be doing this exercise if I did not to some degree enjoy being offended. There's a balance to be made between expressing offense too readily and letting too many things go. Maybe I let too many things go, I don't know. In any case, I certainly think it is possible to get too into chasing after things that offend, and the culture generally may be too geared towards providing offense and counter-offense, but again one should look to oneself first, and certainly the derailment is an unhelpful thing to say to someone in the immediate situation of being offended.
Derailment:You're not being intellectual enough/you're being overly intellectual
Rule: engage with content, not style. Don't bring education into it.
If only more would abide by this rule, and not wave educational credentials around in every argument. The use of language can be very tricky insofar as it reveals educational or cultural status. For instance using a word someone doesn't know, or not knowing a word someone uses, can both be quite embarrassing, and can reinforce a sense of inability to communicate. There needs to be trust in order for a conversation to work, so that when there are gaps in knowledge they can be filled in without alienation.
Derailment: You're interrogating from the wrong perspective
And here is where my education and vocabulary fail me. Who is interrogating what now? Ok, an example in the explanation is someone saying "you're just reading it wrong" to a critique of race in a fantasy world. That makes sense to me as something that could happen. Rule: be willing to look at alternate perspectives.
This one deals with the actual heart of debate. Which perspectives are legitimate? What makes sense as an interpretation of an artwork or event? This is actually very important. The only thing I would emphasize is that it needs to go for all participants in a conversation, regardless of privilege.
Derailing for Dummies in general does not emphasize that its rules are for both sides, in fact I get the sense they are not meant to be at all, that the Marginalized Person is supposed to be treated differently in a conversation than the Privileged Person. The Privileged Person is supposed to be very aware and sensitive of the Marginalized Person's situation and feelings, but the Marginalized Person does not have a reciprocal duty. That is actually the heart of my concern about this whole scheme of things. I have no interest in being treated differently in a debate as a Marginalized Person when I am one, I feel I can hold my own. I understand that people could do better in terms of sensitivity but I don't want fake respect based on my class status, whether due to direct privilege or due to this kind of self-conscious status reversal. I want respect, but I want the respect of friends, equals, not a surface respect that lets me get along with people who I can't trust but keeps them at a distance. I guess I understand how it could come about that people would rather be greeted with distant respect than risk being hurt by getting close, but I would rather treat that on a case-by-case basis, and not have it insisted upon that all Marginalized People of any stripe prefer that treatment. Sometimes real friendship and deep understanding are actually possible between people of different privileges (indeed, who doesn't have different privileges?), and sometimes sensitive issues can be talked about freely between them, and some letting down of defense is necessary for that.
So if someone said to me personally, "listen, I just don't think you're going to get it on this issue, and I'm tired of dealing with misunderstandings", that's fine. But if someone says, attempting to represent a whole class of people before another class of people, "listen, we don't think your kind can understand our kind, please don't even try to engage with us on these issues", I'm going to call bullshit. Dangerous bullshit. The sort of bullshit that drives me to despair. I don't know how we're supposed to have a more just society if we're not supposed to talk with one another as individuals and share our experiences. This kind of talk benefits leaders of movements, and no one else, and I'm not willing to join any movement that emphasizes this kind of talk, no matter what the rhetoric about it being for my group interests or the betterment of the world. It's not for my interests, it's actually against my interests and as far as I can tell is against the betterment of anything I care about.
I'm a bad feminist. I'm a bad liberal. I'm a bad atheist, and I'm certainly not a good Christian. I'd join the movement, if there was one I could believe in. I'd break bread and wine if there was a church I could receive in. Funny how truth and justice usually stop meaning anything the minute they get put on banners and waved around. Well. I suppose it is bad of me not to be willing to submerge my thoughts and interests into group thoughts and interests. At least, group leaders tend to say it is bad, and they get to decide, right? But when I look at what prevents me from doing so, it feels like conscience: groups always seem to demand that I let go of some aspect of truth or justice. I don't want this to be the case, and I don't think it's necessary, but it's very often the case. I suppose it wouldn't make any sense to wave around an anti-ideology flag either.
There are a lot more derailments and I've written some more about them but I think I'll wait to publish them, in the interests of not overwhelming my readers. On the plus side a lot of the rules that Derailing for Dummies seems to imply are more helpful than I thought, despite my objection to their one-sided presentation. I've probably broken a bunch of them just now. Maybe I've derailed my own essay. Well, feel free to let me know how I am wrong, but be kind, and I'll try to do the same.
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10:40:48 PM,
Saturday 19 September 2009
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According to Winston's website there were strict rules in place to ensure he had no unfair advantage.this day in pigeons BBC News, September 10, 2009. (thanks Libby). _They included "no cats allowed" and "birdseed must not have any performance-enhancing seeds within".
The firm said Winston took one hour and eight minutes to fly between the offices, and the data took another hour to upload on to their system.
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08:29:57 PM, Friday 11 September 2009
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This month's Atlantic has an excellent but long article on the health care system. Well worth a read, here are a couple of quotes (italics original):
Here's a wonderful example of price opacity. Advocates for the uninsured complain that hospitals charge uninsured patients, on average, 2.5 times the amount charged to insured patients. Hospitals defend themselves by contending that they earn from uninsured patients only 25 percent of the amount they do from insured ones. Both statements appear to be true!...
Only in the bizarre parallel universe of health care could limiting supply be seen as a sensible approach to keeping prices down._
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10:33:34 PM, Friday 4 September 2009
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I have given myself the assignment of going outside and noticing something nice every day. I have been keeping track in a spreadsheet, but today I decided to start a twitter account, thedailynice. Because, um, it's not confusing enough having two twitter accounts... Well, it's prettier than a spreadsheet, and happier than my usual contributions to the internet. Feel free to follow, or not (if other people's happiness-enhancing projects are not your thing, I totally understand).
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08:30:01 PM,
Thursday 3 September 2009
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double post. nothing to look at here.
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08:25:46 PM,
Thursday 3 September 2009
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One thing I find kind of frustrating and disappointing about the internet is that, for all the bytes flying back and forth around the world, and for all the potential direct connectivity between people, there seems to be very little truth to be found, and very little increase in understanding between people. Somehow giving anyone who wants it a voice on a blog or on twitter doesn't translate to many voices being heard and synthesized. Personally, I usually hear only my own friends, and then turn again to the mass media, the professionals. Indeed, even if I were to limit myself to friends I would get a lot of links to professional journalists and professional artists, which is fine. Those are the ones who have the time and skill to do it properly-- but they have their biases, just like the rest of us, and I'm intersted in other biases, and not what other people think offhand having just read a half dozen contradictory half-baked but well-written opinions, but what they would think if they really thought about it and knew the facts and their own interests.
There are very important questions I want answered, and they don't get answered by issue-of-the-week chatter. I want to know what is going on in the world. As a consumer, I want to know if there are better choices I can make for the environment, for animals, for other people, and for myself. I want to get behind the curtain that separates me from the origins of products and from the running of the great machines of energy production, waste removal, etc. The thing is, I need a systematic way of doing this. Haphazard change won't do much good, and could do harm. Individual change is limited, too. I see a lot of sort of haphazard green-ness and personal eco-purity, for instance. The sort of logic that says Al Gore is a traitor to the environmental movement because he uses airplanes and didn't join in a lights-out evening. I don't want to get into that. The thing is, I need to know these things in very specific detail. I need to know that brand X doesn't promote women, and brand Y uses a more-toxic-than-necessary chemical, but brand Z has generous work rules, and I need to know these things for real and not by hearsay or by anonymous messages which might be from their competitors, but I don't need to know them to the extent of being able to prosecute them in a court of law. I suppose part of the reason this sort of thing doesn't exist is that companies don't want it to exist. Which brings us back to square one: too much power in too few hands. I don't know why we put up with it. I don't think we have to (but then again we do and have throughout history, so who am I to say?)
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10:31:01 PM,
Tuesday 1 September 2009
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If you don't have anything coherent to say, don't say anything at all.
Not being one to take my own advice on this kind of matter, I present the following samplings from my journal in recent weeks:
As to what my values really are, that is actually an interesting question. I'm somewhat in conflict about a lot of the standard values i was brought up with. I'm starting to think that human society is a lot weirder and creepier than I was brought up to think, to feel very uncomfortable with my privilege, as well as uncomfortable about the demands on me, and worried even about the things I'm comfortable with. I'm uncomfortable having these ideas, they seem subversive, I guess they probably really are. Of course there are people out there who think similar things, but the ideas of what to replace the current power relations with seem dangerous and unsatisfying. I don't like communists any better than fascists, and no I don't like libertarians either. I don't know if I'm really worried about changing the system as a whole (this may be selfish since I benefit from it more than many) but I want to not be naive about it. I just want to do my own little thing really, I just want to be happy.A sampling of radical beliefs: Poverty isn't necessary, money isn't real (especially when counted in the billions), Econ 101 is sheer propaganda, the U.S. is in practice an oligarchy (in the sense of rule of a bad elite), government is bad, corporations are bad, neither of them are in practice usually held accountable to justice or any sort of common interest or even common sense, common sense is often profoundly cynical, common interest doesn't often stretch very far, torture is always wrong, and dammit there's nothing wrong with sparklers or old children's books.
One bit of false logic is thinking somehow I should be like most people or that what's good for most people is good for me or there is some ideal life I could live or could have lived or there could be some country where everyone is happy or even that the point of life or even part of the point or even a tiny smidgen of part of the point of life is to improve the world or live in some ideal way or accomplish some ideal thing. I think that's a really false way of looking at things. Life is one moment after another, each moment is unique, each particular moment in this particular life. To compare it to some ideal is not just wrong but doesn't make sense. Human life itself, as a phenomenon, is historically limited. There is only so much of it and only will be so much of it. And it's not a problem with a solution. It's not a problem at all. It's just being. My idea of a normal life is something very small within the universe. To be free I should think more in terms of the universe scale, and maybe even more in terms of the limited scale of my life, but not try to universalize my life, or American life, etc. There is way more mundane life than I have any idea what to do with, but on the other hand it is finite, and when it's lost, I will miss it. The idea of say peeking at the world as it is in 10,000 years is terrifying. Everything I know will be gone._
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10:01:36 PM, Monday 31 August 2009
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Pondering who I owe my comfortable lifestyle to, I looked around me to find out where my belongings were made (as I do from time to time). A very non-comprehensive list of things in my bedroom:
plastic water bottle: China
mug: "hand made in Poland"
Xun: I think this is from a craftsman in Oregon
clock: China
kleenex: Canada
geodes: ?
books: most printed in the U.S., one in Canada.
slinky: ?
table: we assembled it, the parts came from Lowes I think... probably made in America.
tambourine: made in America, I think.
blanket purchased at airport: China
sheet: "Made in U.S.A. of fabric made in Pakistan"
sheet, pillowcase: Turkey
pillowcase: U.S.A.
blanket: U.S.A.
pillowcase: India
(yes, we have three pillows on the bed, and none of them have matching pillowcases).
air conditioner: Thailand
stuffed elephant: Lexington (by a woman I met-- the only thing made by someone I've met)
phone: Hong Kong
radio: China
netbook computer: China
T-shirt: Honduras (of U.S. fabric)
jacket: China
work pants: Sri Lanka
jeans: Bangladesh
My first thought is, I should care a lot more about China. And the rest of the world too.
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11:27:37 PM,
Friday 28 August 2009
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Just flaked out at a Bruce Springsteen concert. Sorry, Tim. I know closing one's eyes and acting as much like a rock as possible is not the correct response to a rock concert. I don't know, I got a little worried when they were testing the lights that the light show would get to me, and then when the music started blasting I wasn't doing very well even sitting down with my eyes shut. I know how it's supposed to be, the sound and light and crowd are a little overwhelming but in a good way, but somehow I just couldn't get into that place, it was overwhelming in a bad way, and I just shut down, and couldn't connect to the music at all, and eventually had to leave. I don't know, I know I used to enjoy concerts. And maybe it was just a bad day, and we were just too close to the stage. But damn, it felt like there was something good there, that people were enjoying, but I just wasn't there somehow, while also being uncomfortably there.
I am not the biggest Bruce Springsteen fan. I'm not sure if I get Bruce Springsteen,he exists in this sort of weird place for me culturally, like I just don't know who he is, what he's all about, what his natural audience is. It seems like he's for everyone and no one, but maybe that's just because I get him mostly from the radio. Apparently there were a lot of big fans there. At one point he turned the mike to the audience and 90% of the crowd was word-perfect on one of his songs, he didn't have to sing a verse. But even if I'm not the biggest fan, he does write some really good songs. Tim wondered aloud the other day what would happen if Bruce Springsteen anonymously released a song on one of these talent-search type sites. I wouldn't say this at all for most songwriters, but I think even if it were released anonymously with someone else singing and mediocre production a Springsteen song would immediately shine. I have no idea what makes his songs work, and they're not entirely comfortable for me to listen to, too shiny and too scruffy at the same time, but they definitely do something. Too bad I couldn't get into the concert. Maybe next time we can sit on the lawn.
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10:38:42 PM,
Saturday 22 August 2009
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