Dating and Marriage
Men often say, “I love women” when they are about to say something disparaging about all women. The most aggressive men often say terrible things about women and worse things about men who act like women. However, at the same time, they openly make brazen displays of desiring women and those things that women have to offer. It is true that women have a lot to offer men, as do many of the skills and jobs normally associated with feminization, but why can men earnestly say “I love women” but “women are bitches” in the same sentence without recognizing the contradiction? Because men’s feelings towards women are a tool of maintaining aggressive masculinity, men have agreed that how much a man desires a particular kind of woman gives the man points in his ever constant struggle for secure and aggressive masculinity. Below are some of the rules of the game.
Men do not desire just any women, but a particular kind of woman which is constantly changing according to cultural preferences. The feature of aggressive masculinization’s preferred mate is that they must be hyper-feminized. A group of men decide how many points each woman is worth by deciding as a group how closely the woman looks like the perfect mate. Men play this game outwardly by actually rating women on a scale of 1 to 10. Men who secure a “10” are considered the most masculine. They are respected, and envied by other men. But they are also sought after by women who want to be looked on as a “10” in their own right. Those men who can only secure a “1” or show no interest in women whatsoever are subject to the same kind of taunting as in their childhood. They are called “faggot” and told that they are not properly men. When their mates are derided, some feel as though they must resort to violence in defense of the woman they love, and also in defense of themselves. They are then under threat of the same kind of physical manifestation that brought about their original insecurities about masculinity.
The fact that groups of men decide what it means to be a woman based entirely on arbitrary preferences, leads women to starve themselves, work their bodies unhealthily, and even put themselves under the knife to appease the men they love or want to love. Also, men who do not fit the paradigm of aggressive masculinity often find themselves without a girlfriend, wife, or partner of any kind. As a result, many men are now using steroids, going on damaging diets and having surgeries themselves. Some men think this is wrong because it is too feminine and proclaim that men who diet are “pussies,” but these men miss the point. Men who mutilate themselves and use dangerous drugs to appease women, men, or anyone else are subjecting themselves to the same damaging and arbitrary objectives that have so long oppressed women. The lesson to be learned is that replacing masculinity with femininity is not necessarily applause-worthy. Hyper-gender of any kind should be eliminated before any of us will truly be free.
Sasha Grey, a porn star, recently told Rolling Stone magazine that she wants women to know that “It’s okay to be a slut.” While some find this statement empowering, it is complicated by latent hostility towards Ms. Grey herself and her own gender. She was not saying that “Slut is not a bad word” but rather, in the traditional sexual sense, she was saying “It’s okay to be bad.” Behind her words, one has the feeling that she senses that when women sleep around they are being bad feminized women, but somehow good role models for women who are liberated. One reason behind this ambivalence towards the sexually active woman is that we have pulled apart the feminine role in sex without pulling apart the male role so that only greater or lesser degrees of the male roles perpetuate. There are two problems with the survival of the traditionally masculine sex role. Sex from a traditionally masculine perspective is demeaning to women, so that empowered women must somehow love having sex but hate themselves for loving it. In a society laden with religious overtones about sex, this unhealthy dichotomy is unavoidable for women and men. But also, when women adopt a traditionally masculine role in sex there is the unsaid assumption that the masculine role is not also unhealthy and damaging.
The masculine role model for sexuality, however, has always been unhealthy. Men traditionally objectified and even bought women for their sexual labor. They denied homosexual love even existed, while punishing those who engaged in homosexual “acts” to horrible punishments. One notable case in early New York City condemned a man who was caught have sex with his fellow sailor to have his arms and legs ripped form his body before he was thrown in the sea. Additionally, instead of undermining the system of objectification, some women find empowerment in objectifying men, as though it would be equal if only Native Americans were allowed to have tiny reservations full of white people on the reservations we have left them. Instead of believing that feminine empowerment means acting masculinized on sexuality, we must find some healthy third option that is healthy and empowering to both sexes. Before we can do that, we must admit that both sexes are oppressed by traditional gender roles, otherwise we risk continuing to glorify the masculine role which simply means oppressing both genders equally.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
MANifesto Part iv: The Self-Made Man
Although men’s bonds with other men are incredibly trustworthy and powerful, the masculine notion of success idealizes a man who succeeds all by himself. In a society, all people must rely on each other completely and intimately. The myth of the self-made man is false because every successful person must have employees, aids, confidants, business partners, subcontractors, customers, stockholders and numerous other people complicit in that success, including that self-made man’s domestic partner and children. However, men have much to gain from associations with masculinity in capitalist America. Our notion of masculinity includes wealth. Without wealth, we are unable to provide safety and security for those that we love most dearly. Society tells us that the people who men love are safer if men spend their days securing capital wealth and success, but at what cost?
In a capitalist society, one man’s success is often another’s failure. One man is promoted, while another is not. One man’s business succeeds, while another’s filling the same niche must fail. Because security in any society is tenuous, and more so in a capitalist society, the notion of being a self-made man is directly tied to safety. If a man feels like he is relying on anybody else, he is unsafe and less of a man. This lack of safety is not unlike the lack of safety felt in the schoolyard in our boyhoods. However, this fear is entirely false. Time and again, it has been proven that reliance on others makes us safer, not less so. The very basis of America is that all men are better equipped to rule a nation than any one individually, and after 1920, all people are better equipped than all men. Tragically, while men feel threatened by reliance on strong social groups, it is in fact self-made-ness that threatens us the most because if we attempt to provide for our families alone, then our own failure will utterly collapse our family.
Sometime in the last several centuries, people agreed upon the man’s role as the breadwinner who brings home the bacon. Men feel satisfied with the role because it is important and significant. But while one person brings home the bacon, another must cook it, and still others must enjoy it. When we put so much importance on earning money and food, we automatically undermine the traditionally feminine role of using those resources to make a healthy and stable family, and in doing so we risk the healthy and stable family by alienating the father.
Unlike the trivial and short term suffering of children in the schoolyard, the fear of a father attempting to secure the safety of his family is long term and profound. Having tied masculinity with providing for the family, such a failure becomes feminization. In such a way does femininity come to equate with joblessness, homelessness and even starvation and death. A common, and false belief, is that homeless persons just aren't willing to work hard enough. Poverty comes to equate with feminization and conversely wealth with masculinization (a myth not aided by the fact that most poverty is caused by divorce, meaning that most people thrown into poverty are women). Gangsters and mobsters can easily become the ideals of masculization because they combine physical violence with the ruthless pursuit of wealth.
Similarly, some have become so focused on the pursuit of wealth that they never seem to have enough. If these men are made masculine by making more money, working harder, and being promoted before other men, than not being promoted, making less money, and spending more time at home feminizes those who do not succeed.
The greatest success of the women’s liberation movement has been to undermine the femininized corollary to the self-made man that women are useless and only survive as the recipients of the benevolence of the man who made himself without her help. Unfortunately, some women have countered with a self-made woman myth. However, business women and women politicians are resigned to the fact that sexism pervades the self-made woman myth. That is so because the notion of being self-made cannot be separated from the worst aspects of masculinity, fear, oppression, and suffering. Sexism cannot be ended until the self-made person myth is exposed as the ridiculous fraud that it is.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Manifesto Part III: Fraternal Groups
Men in groups are remarkably trustworthy and loyal. They often act against their self-interests to aid a friend. The power of the bonds between men is a great and compelling attribute. However, these relationships often become abusive. Sometimes, fraternal groups bond through masculinization that becomes more and more extreme as members of the group feel more and more disempowered by their lives. The bonds they form are filled with boasts and bravado. Some men boast about their athletic abilities, their cars, their grade, their salaries or their property. Eventually, however, the boasts ring hollow because these limited measurements of success do not in fact prove maleness, and the groups are faced with the choice of becoming vulnerable or continuing their boasts into impossibility, desperation, and panic. Those fraternal groups that do not allow themselves to become vulnerable and admit their weaknesses express their panic with one another in ever more cowardly and abusive ways that often lead to violence, crime or abusive name calling (the word “pussy” is used a lot). Men need to relate with one another, and they should, but vulnerability is not masculine, so how can they do so?
Because conversations about feelings and priorities are often considered feminine, men often relate indirectly through some form of entertainment. These media are too often ways of reinforcing masculinity. Men talk about sports, action films, (often violent) video games, women’s bodies, and hunting among other things. In talking about these things men are reified in their masculinity at the same time that they teach masculinity to others listening. As men become more secure in their ability to present masculinity, and their bonds with one another become stronger, they will explore more feminine forms of entertainment, or even talk about emotions, feelings, and family life, but even then they regularly revert to masculine media as ice breakers. In this way our bonds to one another become bonds to the tyrannical fear mongering masculinity of our childhood.
Even with the safety mechanism of masculine entertainment casting its shadow over men’s friendships, occasionally they grow to love other men in meaningful ways. However, they are afraid to express their love for fear of being feminized by being associated with homosexuals. They cannot even tell another man that they love him without adding the word “man” to the end of the phrase in order to reassert the masculine nature of their love. Even more frightening is the possibility of touching these men in any kind of caring or loving manner. Because team sports replicate the masculinizing influence of physical violence, they are allowed to embrace each other in a scrum, hug one another in a game of tackle football, and grope each other in a half nelson. However, without the protection of simulated violence, even a hug can be uncomfortable and kissing has been made repulsive. Of course, repulsion is a kind of fear, in this case of physical contact that, if enjoyed, will be a force for feminization that will leave them under threat of violence.
Friendship brings with it great satisfaction and happiness. These relationships also bring stability, as most men know that there a some other men on whom we can trust with our lives. But these relationships are hijacked when they are allowed to become tied to masculinization.
Because conversations about feelings and priorities are often considered feminine, men often relate indirectly through some form of entertainment. These media are too often ways of reinforcing masculinity. Men talk about sports, action films, (often violent) video games, women’s bodies, and hunting among other things. In talking about these things men are reified in their masculinity at the same time that they teach masculinity to others listening. As men become more secure in their ability to present masculinity, and their bonds with one another become stronger, they will explore more feminine forms of entertainment, or even talk about emotions, feelings, and family life, but even then they regularly revert to masculine media as ice breakers. In this way our bonds to one another become bonds to the tyrannical fear mongering masculinity of our childhood.
Even with the safety mechanism of masculine entertainment casting its shadow over men’s friendships, occasionally they grow to love other men in meaningful ways. However, they are afraid to express their love for fear of being feminized by being associated with homosexuals. They cannot even tell another man that they love him without adding the word “man” to the end of the phrase in order to reassert the masculine nature of their love. Even more frightening is the possibility of touching these men in any kind of caring or loving manner. Because team sports replicate the masculinizing influence of physical violence, they are allowed to embrace each other in a scrum, hug one another in a game of tackle football, and grope each other in a half nelson. However, without the protection of simulated violence, even a hug can be uncomfortable and kissing has been made repulsive. Of course, repulsion is a kind of fear, in this case of physical contact that, if enjoyed, will be a force for feminization that will leave them under threat of violence.
Friendship brings with it great satisfaction and happiness. These relationships also bring stability, as most men know that there a some other men on whom we can trust with our lives. But these relationships are hijacked when they are allowed to become tied to masculinization.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Manifesto Against the Opression of Masculanization: Part II
Bribes and Punishments
If this manifesto is ever widely read, there will be a large number of men who will be bewilderingly infuriated by it. Whenever masculinity is threatened, dark knights of chauvinism will immediately race to its aid. They will attack with the kind of fury normally reserved for traitors, murderers, terrorists and other enemies to the nation’s safety and security. Why? Because when masculinity and manhood are attacked, men who are insecure in their masculinity get scared. They are scared because that is not the deal that they got into when they agreed to go along with the whole thing. They thought the deal was that penis equals masculinity. To say that penis does not equal masculinity, that even heterosexuality and attraction to women does not equal masculinity, that masculinity is a farce, is a terrifying proposition. They’ve given up their connection with their families, healthy relationships with the men and women in their lives, physical contact with people other than their wives, and much of the time that they have on this earth in order to prove their masculinity. If I say that they can never prove their masculinity, because the whole thing is bullshit, they have wasted everything. That’s a lot to give up for a system of oppression. Why would they do it?
Schoolyard Bullying
In schoolyards around the nation, in backyards, and in living rooms, boys are teaching masculinity to other boys through physical violence. The inspiration for these malicious beatings are myriad, but the notion that a boy who doesn’t fight back is somehow derogatorily feminized (hereafter “feminized”) is practically universal. The notion that feminization is bad cannot be better emphasized than with physical violence. The notion that those who fail to repel their attackers are not masculanized enough immediately instills terror in those who are unsure of their own masculinity. Masculinity is the oppressed man’s only means of defense. The irony is that in attacking others (and thereby feminizing these third parties) they can prove their manhood for moment. Like using an air conditioner to combat global warming, they are making themselves more safe from masculinity, while aiding masculinity generally. The schoolyard bully is created from a constant fear of being feminized ourselves and is constantly reinforcing.
Eventually we become oppressed men and the haunting ghost of the schoolyard bully hangs over us for the rest of our lives. Eventually, the words, “pussy” “fag” and “bitch” become linked in our heads with the brutal beatings and tauntings we received at the hands of those who were not comfortable with their masculinity. Meanwhile, there are those who learn their lessons too well. Some literally beat men who are too feminized. Their victims, who are not manly enough, threaten their belief that penis equals masculinity, and leads these men to unspeakable violence and even murder. Tragically, even as they prove their own masculinity and relieve their fear at being feminized, they strengthen the link between feminization and violence by victimizing those who they fear they will become if the link between penis and masculinity is ever severed.
If this manifesto is ever widely read, there will be a large number of men who will be bewilderingly infuriated by it. Whenever masculinity is threatened, dark knights of chauvinism will immediately race to its aid. They will attack with the kind of fury normally reserved for traitors, murderers, terrorists and other enemies to the nation’s safety and security. Why? Because when masculinity and manhood are attacked, men who are insecure in their masculinity get scared. They are scared because that is not the deal that they got into when they agreed to go along with the whole thing. They thought the deal was that penis equals masculinity. To say that penis does not equal masculinity, that even heterosexuality and attraction to women does not equal masculinity, that masculinity is a farce, is a terrifying proposition. They’ve given up their connection with their families, healthy relationships with the men and women in their lives, physical contact with people other than their wives, and much of the time that they have on this earth in order to prove their masculinity. If I say that they can never prove their masculinity, because the whole thing is bullshit, they have wasted everything. That’s a lot to give up for a system of oppression. Why would they do it?
Schoolyard Bullying
In schoolyards around the nation, in backyards, and in living rooms, boys are teaching masculinity to other boys through physical violence. The inspiration for these malicious beatings are myriad, but the notion that a boy who doesn’t fight back is somehow derogatorily feminized (hereafter “feminized”) is practically universal. The notion that feminization is bad cannot be better emphasized than with physical violence. The notion that those who fail to repel their attackers are not masculanized enough immediately instills terror in those who are unsure of their own masculinity. Masculinity is the oppressed man’s only means of defense. The irony is that in attacking others (and thereby feminizing these third parties) they can prove their manhood for moment. Like using an air conditioner to combat global warming, they are making themselves more safe from masculinity, while aiding masculinity generally. The schoolyard bully is created from a constant fear of being feminized ourselves and is constantly reinforcing.
Eventually we become oppressed men and the haunting ghost of the schoolyard bully hangs over us for the rest of our lives. Eventually, the words, “pussy” “fag” and “bitch” become linked in our heads with the brutal beatings and tauntings we received at the hands of those who were not comfortable with their masculinity. Meanwhile, there are those who learn their lessons too well. Some literally beat men who are too feminized. Their victims, who are not manly enough, threaten their belief that penis equals masculinity, and leads these men to unspeakable violence and even murder. Tragically, even as they prove their own masculinity and relieve their fear at being feminized, they strengthen the link between feminization and violence by victimizing those who they fear they will become if the link between penis and masculinity is ever severed.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Manifesto To Eliminate Masculinization (Part One)
Men are caged by fear, suffering and unhappiness. Suicide rates, self-destructive behavior, and neurotic violent tendencies belie this fact. This group must consciously support the quiet and radical revolution already under way. We must free men!
The women’s liberation movement cannot succeed until men too are freed from traditional gender’s tyrannical grip. Only a concerted effort to liberate men will provide significant race and national origin equality. Anti-gay bigotry, above all other kinds of prejudice, is rooted in the maniacal maintenance of traditional masculinity (hereafter “masculinity”). Therefore, the next logical step in the continually progressing civil rights movement must be the liberation of males from masculinity.
The women’s equality movement has begun to liberate men, kicking and screaming, but only with a more concentrated effort on the destruction and reconstruction of masculinity can we advance the freedom of men. Likewise, without a full frontal assault on masculinity, women’s is ended, and will not be able to progress, because women and men are intimately connected. Many women share their most intimate relationships with men, and so long as a man is suffering, so too will any person of empathy who loves that man. Suffering is the root of all fear, and fear is responsible for paralysis and retreat. When suffering does not bring about fear, it brings anger. Men should be angry that they are suffering at the whim of improbable oppression. However, all too often, that anger irrationally becomes violence against those who most desire to end their suffering. Too often, that same suffering is turned into violence that is used to make sure that other men suffer. This society can end the suffering of men. Society must direct its anger at masculinity itself and, finally, after millennia of the most insidious and malicious oppression, we must liberate ourselves.
In the next couple of weeks, this blog will publish a manifesto of freedom for men and all persons who have ever had any relationship with men. Acknowledging that if men are freed, it is due to feminist and critical race thinkers, this writing is not a work of academics, but a work of punditry and passion at best. In the next entry, the nature of the Masculization process will be shown to be a cycle of violence filled with bribes and punishments. After that, different specific functions of masculinity will be highlighted for elimination, from capitalism (an inherently masculine and violent method of societal interaction) to the male eviction from the home.
The women’s liberation movement cannot succeed until men too are freed from traditional gender’s tyrannical grip. Only a concerted effort to liberate men will provide significant race and national origin equality. Anti-gay bigotry, above all other kinds of prejudice, is rooted in the maniacal maintenance of traditional masculinity (hereafter “masculinity”). Therefore, the next logical step in the continually progressing civil rights movement must be the liberation of males from masculinity.
The women’s equality movement has begun to liberate men, kicking and screaming, but only with a more concentrated effort on the destruction and reconstruction of masculinity can we advance the freedom of men. Likewise, without a full frontal assault on masculinity, women’s is ended, and will not be able to progress, because women and men are intimately connected. Many women share their most intimate relationships with men, and so long as a man is suffering, so too will any person of empathy who loves that man. Suffering is the root of all fear, and fear is responsible for paralysis and retreat. When suffering does not bring about fear, it brings anger. Men should be angry that they are suffering at the whim of improbable oppression. However, all too often, that anger irrationally becomes violence against those who most desire to end their suffering. Too often, that same suffering is turned into violence that is used to make sure that other men suffer. This society can end the suffering of men. Society must direct its anger at masculinity itself and, finally, after millennia of the most insidious and malicious oppression, we must liberate ourselves.
In the next couple of weeks, this blog will publish a manifesto of freedom for men and all persons who have ever had any relationship with men. Acknowledging that if men are freed, it is due to feminist and critical race thinkers, this writing is not a work of academics, but a work of punditry and passion at best. In the next entry, the nature of the Masculization process will be shown to be a cycle of violence filled with bribes and punishments. After that, different specific functions of masculinity will be highlighted for elimination, from capitalism (an inherently masculine and violent method of societal interaction) to the male eviction from the home.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Today's Ridiculous Thought
When I protested the war in Afghanistan, I was accused of being anti-American by the New York Post and Lynn Cheney because I had the dastardly opinion that war with Afghanistan would not lead to Osama Bin Laden's capture, and might just contribute to islamophobia and racism already running rampant throughout the country. Now, these same accusers are disrupting democratic meetings and shouting other people out of debates merely because others disagree with them. What is anti-American? I wouldn't be able to say. Murder definately is anti-American. Beer drinking definately is American. Expressing an opinion (that turned out to be true)? Preventing others from expressing opinion by shouting them down in a meeting?
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Corporations Are Incompetent
What is being left out of this health care debate (if you can call the vitriol coming out of the right a debate) is the utter incompetence of most corporations. It is not an accident that corporations are incompetent, in fact the entire legal entity of a corporation is designed to encourage incompetence. It is tantamount to national suicide to continue to permit corporations to have anything whatsoever to do with health care, a fact which is being debated between the moderates and the left, but which the right wing ignores in their adulation for everything corporate. Yet we all know that corporations are horrible at what they do.
Corporations are Unsustainable
We see everyday that corporations are unsustainable. Just this year, the U.S. Government, and the many other governments throughout the world, have had to swoop in and bail out thousands of corporations which were failing. The U.S. Government, in substantially the same form that it stands today, has outlasted almost every corporation in the world, and has done so with such amazing success that even today there is no threat (despite what Glen Beck may desire) that the U.S. will not be a beacon of hope and freedom for huddled masses throughout the world. Meanwhile, corporations are constantly going into bankruptcy and folding into one another, or merely liquidating and disappearing. If we rely on corporations for necessities like health care, we will are relying on some of the most fragile organizations on earth. The moment that a corporation stops making enough profit (that means more than just profit, but profit mixed with greed), the corporation will raise its prices or merely leave the market. That is the job of a corporation; maximizing profit at the expense of its customers, its government, and all moral and ethical considerations.
Corporations are Unaccountable
We all know that corporations don't want to listen to their customers. Although corporations make it out to seem as though their customers are their friends, in fact corporations and customers are necessarily opposed. As competing entities entering into one contract, each party necessarily attempts to get as much out of the contract as it can. Verizon and Comcast cable seem like they are on your side when they lobby congress to implement fewer controls on internet distribution, but they have ultimately charged more in the United States for broadband internet than in any other country in the world, including island nations with limited resources. That is because the position of customer to corporation is naturally hostile. The fact that they have to woo you in order to ensure that you buy from their corporation is meaningless because advertising does the wooing and advertising is purposefully misleading.
Of course, corporations are supposed to be unaccountable. It's impossible to make any serious money unless the corporation treats the customer as though they are used, spent and discarded goods. If the corporation sells a service, then it will attempt to cultivate the customer, like a neglected house plant that you hope doesn't die. Occasionally, and for a short amount of time only, a corporation will make a good faith effort to hire enough customer service staff and offer the best product at the best possible price. The corporation gets some word of mouth, and attains incredible loyalty for merely making the least bit of good faith effort, for merely showing up at the party. But eventually, the economy must contract and the corporation has to do something to cut costs. Maybe the first two or three economic down turns the corporation rides the wave, maybe eventually it cuts services or stops taking as many risks. But at some point, the shareholders (who are lean and anxious for profits) vote in a new board of directors, who vote in a new president (often in a hostile takeover situation) and the new president is desperate to keep his (usually male) job. In order to keep his job, he must appease the board immediately, and the board must appease the shareholders, so the new president must make cuts and raise profits and pull dividends immediately. The fastest way to do that is to cut from the customer service budget. With each computerized telephone answering service, and redirection to India, and separating out of phone rooms between offices, cities, states, countries, and continents, the service gets cheaper, slower, and less responsive and OH SO PROFITABLE that Donald Trump gets turned on just thinking about it!!!!!!!
The Beginning of Corporations: The End of Competence
We all know intuitively that corporations are incompetent. We have all been on hold for hours attempting to fix a typo made by a data entry professional in India that the corporation refuses to accept was a typo. This is how profits are made. Hopefully, the customer will eventually give up and pay instead of risking having their credit ruined after months of playing three hour long phone tag with the behemoth on the other end.
The corporation is designed to be incompetent. The corporation is a legal construct that does one thing. It makes it (very nearly) impossible to hold shareholders responsible for the losses of the corporation, and if shareholders aren't responsible (and they are the only ones with any power) than no one is responsible. It means that shareholders can invest $500 and the only thing that they may lose is that same $500, while potentially earning much much more. The shareholders hire the board of directors and the board hires everyone else. In the modern world, the shareholders are usually corporations themselves who are equally unaccountable and incompetent. The shareholders are large banks that vote on behalf of their own customers. The banks have a DUTY to make as much profit as they can for their customers. In order to do that, they have an OBLIGATION to find board members that ruthlessly chase after profits. That is a legal obligation. If they don't do that, they can actually be sued. The board is REQUIRED to hire a president and staff who all are interested in only one thing... net profits.
Nobody is accountable to anything except for profits, regardless of how they make profits. The only thing that is standing in the way of all that money is the customer. Thus, a corporation that knows that asbestos or the Pinto is killing people is legally obligated to decide whether or not it should continue to kill people based solely on the cost of litigating the wrongful death suits versus the cost of changing the design of the Pinto or recalling asbestos. Thus are corporations murderers, murdering solely for profit. In America, we would execute a person that killed hundreds of people motivated solely by profits, but yet Ford continues to exist because it is a corporation and thus all the shareholders, the bosses of the bosses of the bosses, are entirely protected for their homicides.
Get Corporations Out of Health Care
The only way to make health care accountable is to keep corporations as far away from it as possible, and this makes sense. Many of our ancestors died attempting to bring democracy to decision making in the United States, yet the right now wishes to have us remove all democratic decisions from our choices in health care. The truth is that democratic methods are dangerous and scary but they are the best method we have been able to determine to make any kind of good faith society wide decisions. If we admit that health care is a society wide problem then we must admit that health care requires a society wide solution. The only way to have a society wide solution is through democracy, that premise is the one on which America is founded.
Corporations are Unsustainable
We see everyday that corporations are unsustainable. Just this year, the U.S. Government, and the many other governments throughout the world, have had to swoop in and bail out thousands of corporations which were failing. The U.S. Government, in substantially the same form that it stands today, has outlasted almost every corporation in the world, and has done so with such amazing success that even today there is no threat (despite what Glen Beck may desire) that the U.S. will not be a beacon of hope and freedom for huddled masses throughout the world. Meanwhile, corporations are constantly going into bankruptcy and folding into one another, or merely liquidating and disappearing. If we rely on corporations for necessities like health care, we will are relying on some of the most fragile organizations on earth. The moment that a corporation stops making enough profit (that means more than just profit, but profit mixed with greed), the corporation will raise its prices or merely leave the market. That is the job of a corporation; maximizing profit at the expense of its customers, its government, and all moral and ethical considerations.
Corporations are Unaccountable
We all know that corporations don't want to listen to their customers. Although corporations make it out to seem as though their customers are their friends, in fact corporations and customers are necessarily opposed. As competing entities entering into one contract, each party necessarily attempts to get as much out of the contract as it can. Verizon and Comcast cable seem like they are on your side when they lobby congress to implement fewer controls on internet distribution, but they have ultimately charged more in the United States for broadband internet than in any other country in the world, including island nations with limited resources. That is because the position of customer to corporation is naturally hostile. The fact that they have to woo you in order to ensure that you buy from their corporation is meaningless because advertising does the wooing and advertising is purposefully misleading.
Of course, corporations are supposed to be unaccountable. It's impossible to make any serious money unless the corporation treats the customer as though they are used, spent and discarded goods. If the corporation sells a service, then it will attempt to cultivate the customer, like a neglected house plant that you hope doesn't die. Occasionally, and for a short amount of time only, a corporation will make a good faith effort to hire enough customer service staff and offer the best product at the best possible price. The corporation gets some word of mouth, and attains incredible loyalty for merely making the least bit of good faith effort, for merely showing up at the party. But eventually, the economy must contract and the corporation has to do something to cut costs. Maybe the first two or three economic down turns the corporation rides the wave, maybe eventually it cuts services or stops taking as many risks. But at some point, the shareholders (who are lean and anxious for profits) vote in a new board of directors, who vote in a new president (often in a hostile takeover situation) and the new president is desperate to keep his (usually male) job. In order to keep his job, he must appease the board immediately, and the board must appease the shareholders, so the new president must make cuts and raise profits and pull dividends immediately. The fastest way to do that is to cut from the customer service budget. With each computerized telephone answering service, and redirection to India, and separating out of phone rooms between offices, cities, states, countries, and continents, the service gets cheaper, slower, and less responsive and OH SO PROFITABLE that Donald Trump gets turned on just thinking about it!!!!!!!
The Beginning of Corporations: The End of Competence
We all know intuitively that corporations are incompetent. We have all been on hold for hours attempting to fix a typo made by a data entry professional in India that the corporation refuses to accept was a typo. This is how profits are made. Hopefully, the customer will eventually give up and pay instead of risking having their credit ruined after months of playing three hour long phone tag with the behemoth on the other end.
The corporation is designed to be incompetent. The corporation is a legal construct that does one thing. It makes it (very nearly) impossible to hold shareholders responsible for the losses of the corporation, and if shareholders aren't responsible (and they are the only ones with any power) than no one is responsible. It means that shareholders can invest $500 and the only thing that they may lose is that same $500, while potentially earning much much more. The shareholders hire the board of directors and the board hires everyone else. In the modern world, the shareholders are usually corporations themselves who are equally unaccountable and incompetent. The shareholders are large banks that vote on behalf of their own customers. The banks have a DUTY to make as much profit as they can for their customers. In order to do that, they have an OBLIGATION to find board members that ruthlessly chase after profits. That is a legal obligation. If they don't do that, they can actually be sued. The board is REQUIRED to hire a president and staff who all are interested in only one thing... net profits.
Nobody is accountable to anything except for profits, regardless of how they make profits. The only thing that is standing in the way of all that money is the customer. Thus, a corporation that knows that asbestos or the Pinto is killing people is legally obligated to decide whether or not it should continue to kill people based solely on the cost of litigating the wrongful death suits versus the cost of changing the design of the Pinto or recalling asbestos. Thus are corporations murderers, murdering solely for profit. In America, we would execute a person that killed hundreds of people motivated solely by profits, but yet Ford continues to exist because it is a corporation and thus all the shareholders, the bosses of the bosses of the bosses, are entirely protected for their homicides.
Get Corporations Out of Health Care
The only way to make health care accountable is to keep corporations as far away from it as possible, and this makes sense. Many of our ancestors died attempting to bring democracy to decision making in the United States, yet the right now wishes to have us remove all democratic decisions from our choices in health care. The truth is that democratic methods are dangerous and scary but they are the best method we have been able to determine to make any kind of good faith society wide decisions. If we admit that health care is a society wide problem then we must admit that health care requires a society wide solution. The only way to have a society wide solution is through democracy, that premise is the one on which America is founded.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Science is Not Truth
On further analysis, I have decided that science fits better with hope than it does with history. History and Religion are more properly located in studies that explore what is and what was. These are explorations in big-T Truth, unlike science. Science cannot explore bit-T Truth because science is nothing more than a tool, like a crescent wrench, or a strong judicial system.
Tools- Science, Crescent wrenches, hope, and a strong judicial system are all tools that we use to get things done. They are beliefs, not truths. It is improper to say that science is true because science is necessarily founded on the premise that better science will eventually come. How can Truth be better or worse? It cannot. Truth is static and either is or is not. The kind of truth that science encompasses is not in fact Truth at all, but storytelling, a fiction of sorts, that enables human beings to do things. It's like a U.V. filter.
When we drop a scientific theory over the way that we see the world, the world is made simple enough that we can understand how it works. However, at the same time, we are necessarily filtering out a lot of what the world has to offer. When astronomy was still based on the theory that the Earth was the focal point of the universe, astronomers were able to make calculations that correctly predicted the movements of the stars, the planets, and even predict early eclipses. However, when we moved to a model of the solar system that placed the sun at the center, all of those calculations became better, more accurate, and more simple. If scientists believed that the earth was at the center of the solar system today, we would still be able to make sense of the solar system, but we would not have progressed to easily or quickly in astronomical science.
So it must be with science, that a good scientist can never believe in any kind of big-T truth, because the next fiction that comes along, perhaps that the solar system is actually centered around a point in space that is only very near the sun, could make the calculations to Mars and back more accurate. Right now, we are only able to calculate the movements of the planets to within a couple of dozen meters or so, but if we found another point to center our universe, perhaps we could start calculating to a couple of dozen centimeters, and then perhaps millimeters as our fictions and our stories change.
So too must it be with evolution. One of the problems of the scientific and secular communities who are attempting to defend evolution is that we present it as though it is some kind of big-T Truth, but this is a basic misunderstanding of science. Big-T Truth can never change. Big-T Truth can never be adjusted and is not malleable, and it either works entirely, or leads only to disaster. Evolution is, like all science, at best, a half truth, and perhaps it is only a very small amount of truth with a lot of guess work. Evolution is a means of understanding the world that makes every known living thing come into sharper focus than it ever has before. Science must necessarily only move incrementally, while big-T truth is all or nothing. Scientists who have made evolution into some kind of bit-T truth will be desperately disappointed every time we make a discovery that brings things into sharper focus (like homo floresiensis). In a misguided attempt to defend science, they will constantly alienate those who know that science will never be able to explain everything, because science is only a tool, not a paradigm.
It is improper to say that evolution is not a theory, because if it is not a theory, but some kind of scientific fact, than human beings have reached the end point of exploration for the origins of human beings, and we have ceased to progress. Science is a belief, just as is religion, but it is not truth. Science is a belief just like when we look at a soccer ball and a net and say, "I believe in kicking." We should not say that we believe that kicking exists, that somewhere on the planet, right now, even as we speak, some child is kicking a soccer ball into a net. What we mean is that the best way to get that soccer ball into that net is to kick. When we say, "I believe in evolution." we are saying that the best way to understand the way that things work and to have those things work for us, as far as we know, is through the code book written by Darwin and his progeny. It is needless, and anti-scientific, to say that we believe in the physical existence of australopithicines, homo erectus, and homo habilis. Not only does it not matter if they actually existed, worse than that, it is anti-scientific because it speaks about the thing rather than the evidence of the thing. Scientists are allowed to use shorthand for the evidence of a thing, by saying australopithicus afrensis (think Lucy) as though it exists as a fact, but they only do so in order to build on the theory behind evolution and attempt to challenge the theory until it is best able to conform with the world. It is only a bad scientist that does not understand that evolution is only a theory, a tool, which can, for example, help us to understand generational change, which is a tool for helping us understand DNA, which is a tool for saving lives.
Religion is a belief like when we say, "I believe we are in Delaware." as we drive up I-90. Believing that we are in Deleware is a belief about the existence and relation of things. When we say "I believe in God and that he created the world." we are speaking about the existence of a deity, and his relationship to the creation of the world. Because we believe that he told us how he created the world, we also believe that the world was created a certain way, and that way cannot be modified. When we believe in God as told through the Bible, we must believe in the Bible, because it is God's book. The words are literally true, as true as any words can literally be. We can take into consideration the possibility that our understanding of the Bible is flawed, and every Christian does at some point feel that her understanding of the Bibile is flawed (usually our spiritual guides help us through those moments), but we can never question the truth of the Bible. That does not mean, however, that we must turn down medication that was only available through understanding of the theory of evoltiuon. We are all still allowed to take antibiotics despite the fact that they wouldn't be possible without the theory of evolution. Our belief in the existence of things and their relationship to one another does not change when we take that pill in order to save our own lives.
So why, then, do we feel so threatened by seeing the tool in use? Because we are confused. We think that evolution is the same as the Bible in that it pruports to be big-T truth, and for many misguided scientists it does, but the fact remains that it cannot and does not. Learning about evolution and believing in it as a way to create powerful drugs, plants, and domesticated animals that we use and enjoy every day of our lives is like learning about and believing in democracy. For millenia, the leaders of nations believed that monarchy was the only Christian way to lead a country, that to believe in democracy was literally to denegrade God. That believe seems foolish that we understand the difference between a belief in democracy and a belief in God. They are two entirely seperate beliefs. In millenia, evolution or its progeny, will still be around because it is too powerful to ignore, and too successful a tool to simply disregard. The many millions who comfortably believe in evolution as a tool and in religion as big-T truth understand that science is a tool, while religion is a life. Those who do not understand the difference between belief in God and belief in science, may never be convinced, but there numbers are dwindling, and soon they will be as outdated as monarchists and fuedelists.
Tools- Science, Crescent wrenches, hope, and a strong judicial system are all tools that we use to get things done. They are beliefs, not truths. It is improper to say that science is true because science is necessarily founded on the premise that better science will eventually come. How can Truth be better or worse? It cannot. Truth is static and either is or is not. The kind of truth that science encompasses is not in fact Truth at all, but storytelling, a fiction of sorts, that enables human beings to do things. It's like a U.V. filter.
When we drop a scientific theory over the way that we see the world, the world is made simple enough that we can understand how it works. However, at the same time, we are necessarily filtering out a lot of what the world has to offer. When astronomy was still based on the theory that the Earth was the focal point of the universe, astronomers were able to make calculations that correctly predicted the movements of the stars, the planets, and even predict early eclipses. However, when we moved to a model of the solar system that placed the sun at the center, all of those calculations became better, more accurate, and more simple. If scientists believed that the earth was at the center of the solar system today, we would still be able to make sense of the solar system, but we would not have progressed to easily or quickly in astronomical science.
So it must be with science, that a good scientist can never believe in any kind of big-T truth, because the next fiction that comes along, perhaps that the solar system is actually centered around a point in space that is only very near the sun, could make the calculations to Mars and back more accurate. Right now, we are only able to calculate the movements of the planets to within a couple of dozen meters or so, but if we found another point to center our universe, perhaps we could start calculating to a couple of dozen centimeters, and then perhaps millimeters as our fictions and our stories change.
So too must it be with evolution. One of the problems of the scientific and secular communities who are attempting to defend evolution is that we present it as though it is some kind of big-T Truth, but this is a basic misunderstanding of science. Big-T Truth can never change. Big-T Truth can never be adjusted and is not malleable, and it either works entirely, or leads only to disaster. Evolution is, like all science, at best, a half truth, and perhaps it is only a very small amount of truth with a lot of guess work. Evolution is a means of understanding the world that makes every known living thing come into sharper focus than it ever has before. Science must necessarily only move incrementally, while big-T truth is all or nothing. Scientists who have made evolution into some kind of bit-T truth will be desperately disappointed every time we make a discovery that brings things into sharper focus (like homo floresiensis). In a misguided attempt to defend science, they will constantly alienate those who know that science will never be able to explain everything, because science is only a tool, not a paradigm.
It is improper to say that evolution is not a theory, because if it is not a theory, but some kind of scientific fact, than human beings have reached the end point of exploration for the origins of human beings, and we have ceased to progress. Science is a belief, just as is religion, but it is not truth. Science is a belief just like when we look at a soccer ball and a net and say, "I believe in kicking." We should not say that we believe that kicking exists, that somewhere on the planet, right now, even as we speak, some child is kicking a soccer ball into a net. What we mean is that the best way to get that soccer ball into that net is to kick. When we say, "I believe in evolution." we are saying that the best way to understand the way that things work and to have those things work for us, as far as we know, is through the code book written by Darwin and his progeny. It is needless, and anti-scientific, to say that we believe in the physical existence of australopithicines, homo erectus, and homo habilis. Not only does it not matter if they actually existed, worse than that, it is anti-scientific because it speaks about the thing rather than the evidence of the thing. Scientists are allowed to use shorthand for the evidence of a thing, by saying australopithicus afrensis (think Lucy) as though it exists as a fact, but they only do so in order to build on the theory behind evolution and attempt to challenge the theory until it is best able to conform with the world. It is only a bad scientist that does not understand that evolution is only a theory, a tool, which can, for example, help us to understand generational change, which is a tool for helping us understand DNA, which is a tool for saving lives.
Religion is a belief like when we say, "I believe we are in Delaware." as we drive up I-90. Believing that we are in Deleware is a belief about the existence and relation of things. When we say "I believe in God and that he created the world." we are speaking about the existence of a deity, and his relationship to the creation of the world. Because we believe that he told us how he created the world, we also believe that the world was created a certain way, and that way cannot be modified. When we believe in God as told through the Bible, we must believe in the Bible, because it is God's book. The words are literally true, as true as any words can literally be. We can take into consideration the possibility that our understanding of the Bible is flawed, and every Christian does at some point feel that her understanding of the Bibile is flawed (usually our spiritual guides help us through those moments), but we can never question the truth of the Bible. That does not mean, however, that we must turn down medication that was only available through understanding of the theory of evoltiuon. We are all still allowed to take antibiotics despite the fact that they wouldn't be possible without the theory of evolution. Our belief in the existence of things and their relationship to one another does not change when we take that pill in order to save our own lives.
So why, then, do we feel so threatened by seeing the tool in use? Because we are confused. We think that evolution is the same as the Bible in that it pruports to be big-T truth, and for many misguided scientists it does, but the fact remains that it cannot and does not. Learning about evolution and believing in it as a way to create powerful drugs, plants, and domesticated animals that we use and enjoy every day of our lives is like learning about and believing in democracy. For millenia, the leaders of nations believed that monarchy was the only Christian way to lead a country, that to believe in democracy was literally to denegrade God. That believe seems foolish that we understand the difference between a belief in democracy and a belief in God. They are two entirely seperate beliefs. In millenia, evolution or its progeny, will still be around because it is too powerful to ignore, and too successful a tool to simply disregard. The many millions who comfortably believe in evolution as a tool and in religion as big-T truth understand that science is a tool, while religion is a life. Those who do not understand the difference between belief in God and belief in science, may never be convinced, but there numbers are dwindling, and soon they will be as outdated as monarchists and fuedelists.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Why Intelligent Design Cannot Be Science.
Intelligent deign is based upon the premise that the universe is being directed by some kind of intelligence, be it the Judeo-Islamo-Christian God or some other intelligent universal director. Intelligent Design was originally a theory put forward by some turn of the century philosophers to explain how science and religion are compatible. The basic premise, as put forward by Alfred North Whitehead, was that science describes mechanisms, and religion describes purpose. The difference between these two descriptions is the difference of the two meanings of the word "because."
"Because" is defined as "for the reason that" in Merriam-Websters. There are two kinds of reasons for things. One is the mechanical reason. This is the physical movement behind things. An example of mechanical reason is when a woman slaps a man, the muscle in that woman's arm twitches causing her arm to twitch, which causes her arm to flail her hand, which causes the hand to slap the man's face. That chain of events is mechanical in nature. Each causation is another step in the movement towards the slap. The other kind of reason for a thing describes purpose. The woman may have struck the man because he raped her, or because he pinched her ass, or because she remembered a man from her childhood that looked like the man. Both of these reasons are necessary to the slap. That is to say that neither of these kinds of causes are sufficient. Neither of these kinds of reasons are more or less correct or accurate than the other. However, when we are trying to figure out what caused the slap, we talk about two very different things. A biologist is needed to determine how the mechanical cause worked. A moral adjudicator (a judge, a priest, a philosopher) or social scientist of some kind is needed to determine the ultimate purpose of the slap.
Biological inquiry is ultimately an attempt to answer the question "Why does that thing work the way it does?" In the example of the woman slapping the man, biology can say, "the muscle twitched, and the arm twitched, and the hand twitched." That information is valuable for finding out which part of the arm is broken if the woman suddenly finds that she can't slap the man any longer. Biology cannot hope to answer the bigger question of why the woman decided to slap the man. The most biology can say about purpose is that the muscle twitched "because the woman told it to twitch." Similarly when someone asks why does life exist the way it does, evolution can say, "because natural selection combined with mating selection tendencies, genetic mutations" etc etc. These processes can help us understand what goes on when we have genetic diseases, cancers, or in helping Watson and Crick discover DNA. However, intelligent design theorists are attempting to answer a different kind of question. To the question "why does life exist the way it does?" they can only answer "because someone or something told it to exist." It may very well be true, but it stops the question from being asked without answering anything about the mechanics of life.
Many intelligent design theorists cite the eugenics movement as a reason why evolution is wrong. However, the eugenics movement suffered from the same flaw as intelligent design itself when it mistook mechanical cause for purpose. If science stops attempting to find mechanical cause, science ceases to be science and starts to be philosophy or religion. Biology cannot simply stop and say that "an intelligent being created that," because it would be the cessation of the act of science itself. Similarly, we philosophers, clerics, and social scientists should not allow science to hijack intelligent design because the question of what purpose lies at the root of the universe is properly ours, not the material of cold, material, mechanical scientists.
"Because" is defined as "for the reason that" in Merriam-Websters. There are two kinds of reasons for things. One is the mechanical reason. This is the physical movement behind things. An example of mechanical reason is when a woman slaps a man, the muscle in that woman's arm twitches causing her arm to twitch, which causes her arm to flail her hand, which causes the hand to slap the man's face. That chain of events is mechanical in nature. Each causation is another step in the movement towards the slap. The other kind of reason for a thing describes purpose. The woman may have struck the man because he raped her, or because he pinched her ass, or because she remembered a man from her childhood that looked like the man. Both of these reasons are necessary to the slap. That is to say that neither of these kinds of causes are sufficient. Neither of these kinds of reasons are more or less correct or accurate than the other. However, when we are trying to figure out what caused the slap, we talk about two very different things. A biologist is needed to determine how the mechanical cause worked. A moral adjudicator (a judge, a priest, a philosopher) or social scientist of some kind is needed to determine the ultimate purpose of the slap.
Biological inquiry is ultimately an attempt to answer the question "Why does that thing work the way it does?" In the example of the woman slapping the man, biology can say, "the muscle twitched, and the arm twitched, and the hand twitched." That information is valuable for finding out which part of the arm is broken if the woman suddenly finds that she can't slap the man any longer. Biology cannot hope to answer the bigger question of why the woman decided to slap the man. The most biology can say about purpose is that the muscle twitched "because the woman told it to twitch." Similarly when someone asks why does life exist the way it does, evolution can say, "because natural selection combined with mating selection tendencies, genetic mutations" etc etc. These processes can help us understand what goes on when we have genetic diseases, cancers, or in helping Watson and Crick discover DNA. However, intelligent design theorists are attempting to answer a different kind of question. To the question "why does life exist the way it does?" they can only answer "because someone or something told it to exist." It may very well be true, but it stops the question from being asked without answering anything about the mechanics of life.
Many intelligent design theorists cite the eugenics movement as a reason why evolution is wrong. However, the eugenics movement suffered from the same flaw as intelligent design itself when it mistook mechanical cause for purpose. If science stops attempting to find mechanical cause, science ceases to be science and starts to be philosophy or religion. Biology cannot simply stop and say that "an intelligent being created that," because it would be the cessation of the act of science itself. Similarly, we philosophers, clerics, and social scientists should not allow science to hijack intelligent design because the question of what purpose lies at the root of the universe is properly ours, not the material of cold, material, mechanical scientists.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Is March a Bad Time for Relationships?
It used to be the case that every March I would get in some serious doldrums with my partner. This year I've been lucky, but that is the first time, I think, even though I've been with my current partner for the last two Marches also. I have an unsubstantiated theory that March is bad on relationships. Perhaps it's spring fever. Perhaps I'm crazy. Any thoughts?
Friday, February 27, 2009
Slumdog is About America, not India
Protests in India over Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire have puzzled some in America. At the same time that we are inspired to visit India, and maybe even take one of those “slum tours,” some in India, including major Bollywood actors and some politicians, have decried the film as “Poverty Porn.” We in America see the movie as optimistic, even great, and hail it with Golden Globe after SAG Award after Oscar.
This dissonance can be explained by the fact that Slumdog Millionaire is really about America. Danny Boyle creates a fantasy land, and like all fantasy lands there are great dangers that await the heroes of Slumdog. Instead of goblins and trolls, we have religious conflicts and slavers. We in America are familiar with both. However, unlike the Revolutionary War, Slumdog’s religious conflict does not involve Christians, and unlike Jamaica, the slavers are not “white” as we understand the word “white” to be used. The problem is not that this fantasy world is pornographic. All fantasy worlds are pornographic in the way that they allow us to act on our greatest and most secret desires. Danny Boyle’s own Trainspotting, Millions, and 28 Days Later all present us with worlds filled with these same kinds of gratification fantasies. The problem with Slumdog is the fact that progressives in America have given such importance to it. Our friends call us to tell us that it is “eye opening” and reviewers (writing for no less than the New York Times) call it a lesson in “cross cultural understanding.”
For an America that is suddenly in the control of the Democrats, this movie is important because it is progressive and distinctly American. In Slumdog, the entire fantasy world is endangered, not by the Great Eye of Mordor, but by the kind of poverty that progressives rail against. And the hero in the film is the Game Show. What could be more American and hopeful than a Game Show. It’s as if Ronald McDonald himself came down in his Coca-Cola shaped rocket ship and gave everybody Wal-Mart gift certificates. And it is not just the hero that is saved by this doppelganger for American culture. The entire Indian nation seems to be caught up in the moment. India's cross cultural lesson is the Great American Myth that no matter how poor you are, if you keep trying and working hard, some day you will succeed. The myth rings hollow to an India currently hurtling up the list of the worlds largest economies while leaving behind the poorest and the most needy, but we in America are much more easily convinced.
The newly progressive leaning America loves this film because it is the satisfaction of three of our most secret and powerful desires. The first is that our economy will fix itself. We don’t need to make sacrifices, like those of us who have jobs paying higher taxes, and making deep cuts into our largest and most wasteful spending (military spending and laissez faire health care). If we give our economy a nudge and a little time, we too will soon be millionaires. Every game show and lottery in history is essentially this kind of solvency porn. The second progressive desire is that we will no longer be seen throughout the world as the malevolent and violent imperial power. In Slumdog, it is Hollywood and not the Pentagon that represents America. The American influence in Slumdog is the game show, and a couple of American tourists who wise crack “This is the real America” while giving a desperately poor orphan a $100 bill. While both of these symbols spread a powerful myth, they are doing so with money and wit instead of with bullets and body armor. This is benevolent imperialism, where we can spread the myth with kindness the way that the Catholic preachers struck out with their missions into the Heart of Darkness or the Georgian Cherokee tribes. Progressive Americans see this form of imperialism as a stark contrast to the preemptive attacks of the last eight years. But our greatest and most secret desire that is satisfied with this progressive porn romp is that everything is going to be okay for all those orphan children living in extreme poverty throughout the world. Those are the children that we had drilled into our brain every time that we didn’t finish our vegetables who were “starving in China.” This movie reassures us by showing us that the child will not starve even if we do not finish our vegetables. It shows us that the children that make our coffee in slavery conditions in Ghana will eventually grow up to own the plantation. It allows us to say that the children begging for change in the markets in Cairo are better off than those who were blinded or mutilated for the same purpose. With this knowledge, we can go out and buy the blouse made in Bangladesh with Turkmen cotton, because in the end, everything is going to turn up Bollywood.
This dissonance can be explained by the fact that Slumdog Millionaire is really about America. Danny Boyle creates a fantasy land, and like all fantasy lands there are great dangers that await the heroes of Slumdog. Instead of goblins and trolls, we have religious conflicts and slavers. We in America are familiar with both. However, unlike the Revolutionary War, Slumdog’s religious conflict does not involve Christians, and unlike Jamaica, the slavers are not “white” as we understand the word “white” to be used. The problem is not that this fantasy world is pornographic. All fantasy worlds are pornographic in the way that they allow us to act on our greatest and most secret desires. Danny Boyle’s own Trainspotting, Millions, and 28 Days Later all present us with worlds filled with these same kinds of gratification fantasies. The problem with Slumdog is the fact that progressives in America have given such importance to it. Our friends call us to tell us that it is “eye opening” and reviewers (writing for no less than the New York Times) call it a lesson in “cross cultural understanding.”
For an America that is suddenly in the control of the Democrats, this movie is important because it is progressive and distinctly American. In Slumdog, the entire fantasy world is endangered, not by the Great Eye of Mordor, but by the kind of poverty that progressives rail against. And the hero in the film is the Game Show. What could be more American and hopeful than a Game Show. It’s as if Ronald McDonald himself came down in his Coca-Cola shaped rocket ship and gave everybody Wal-Mart gift certificates. And it is not just the hero that is saved by this doppelganger for American culture. The entire Indian nation seems to be caught up in the moment. India's cross cultural lesson is the Great American Myth that no matter how poor you are, if you keep trying and working hard, some day you will succeed. The myth rings hollow to an India currently hurtling up the list of the worlds largest economies while leaving behind the poorest and the most needy, but we in America are much more easily convinced.
The newly progressive leaning America loves this film because it is the satisfaction of three of our most secret and powerful desires. The first is that our economy will fix itself. We don’t need to make sacrifices, like those of us who have jobs paying higher taxes, and making deep cuts into our largest and most wasteful spending (military spending and laissez faire health care). If we give our economy a nudge and a little time, we too will soon be millionaires. Every game show and lottery in history is essentially this kind of solvency porn. The second progressive desire is that we will no longer be seen throughout the world as the malevolent and violent imperial power. In Slumdog, it is Hollywood and not the Pentagon that represents America. The American influence in Slumdog is the game show, and a couple of American tourists who wise crack “This is the real America” while giving a desperately poor orphan a $100 bill. While both of these symbols spread a powerful myth, they are doing so with money and wit instead of with bullets and body armor. This is benevolent imperialism, where we can spread the myth with kindness the way that the Catholic preachers struck out with their missions into the Heart of Darkness or the Georgian Cherokee tribes. Progressive Americans see this form of imperialism as a stark contrast to the preemptive attacks of the last eight years. But our greatest and most secret desire that is satisfied with this progressive porn romp is that everything is going to be okay for all those orphan children living in extreme poverty throughout the world. Those are the children that we had drilled into our brain every time that we didn’t finish our vegetables who were “starving in China.” This movie reassures us by showing us that the child will not starve even if we do not finish our vegetables. It shows us that the children that make our coffee in slavery conditions in Ghana will eventually grow up to own the plantation. It allows us to say that the children begging for change in the markets in Cairo are better off than those who were blinded or mutilated for the same purpose. With this knowledge, we can go out and buy the blouse made in Bangladesh with Turkmen cotton, because in the end, everything is going to turn up Bollywood.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Illegal Immigrants Are Not Criminals
It seems that there are many people out there who misunderstand the difference between illegal and criminal. The chief evidence that I have for that is the sheer number of bloggers that claim that being an "illegal immigrant" means that one is a criminal. That's like saying that driving 5mph over the speed limit is the same as being a drunk driver.
I can let you know this right now. If you have ever gone 5mph over the speed limit, your are an illegal driver. That's right. You. If you've gone 10mph over the speed limit, I'd say you're probably a very illegal driver. But speeding is not criminal. Drunk driving is criminal. When you drive drunk, you can go to jail and get probation, when you go 5mph over the speed limit, you can only be fined. It is purely an accident of history that the police arrest criminals and hand out speeding tickets. Just like a grocery store that has a pharmacy, you can get your oysters and your Viagra in the same place, but that doesn't mean that you have to have a prescription to get oysters.
Similarly, with the IRS, if Capone misunderstood which moving costs were legitimate tax credits and which moving costs were not, he would get zinged in an audit because what Capone did was illegal. However, Capone was not a criminal for misunderstanding the IRS code. If that were the case, we would all be criminals because the IRS code is about as coherent as a one legged aardvark doing the electric slide. Al Capone was a criminal because he purposefully hid income from the police. That is Tax Fraud, and that is a crime.
Many people have latched on to the word illegal in the description of people's immigration status and equated that with criminal, but they are simply wrong (or hateful, or ignorant, or stupid). They are annoyed about the fact that police can't deport people who are illegal immigrants when they are pulled over for speeding, but of course there must be restrictions on what the police can do. We can't allow police to enforce codes that are not criminal. If we did that, the next time a police officer pulled you over, he could run an audit of your taxes and demand back payment before you were allowed to leave. That same officer could hold business owners until they brought their businesses up to code. That same officer could then interrogate you on whether or not you had committed any labor violations, and then use that information to make sure that your grass is short enough in front of your house, that you don't have any cracks in any of your windows at home, and that you have cleaned up all the dog poop in your backyard. A world where illegal means criminal is called a police state. If people want to create one of those here, they are going to have to go through me first.
There are a significant amount of studies that have proved that people who are in violation of immigration laws are far less likely to commit crimes. That is probably because if you or I steal a Snickers bar, we would probably get probation, maybe serve 90 days, but if an illegal immigrant drives without his seat belt (which is a crime, not a traffic code violation in most states), he could be deported. Most of the other Nationalist Purificationist's claims are also bogus. Illegal immigrants are less likely than the general population to default on a mortgage, are more likely to be actively working, practically never collect unemployment benefits or social security, and seldom use public medical services.
Overall, as has always been the case, illegal immigrants are some of our best citizens. The hated Chinese immigrant population of San Fransisco in the 1850's (nicknamed the yellow tide) developed the powerful California economy, while the despised Japanese immigrant population of the 1940's never once committed any act of sabotage on U.S. shores and the famous Japanese battalion on the Pacific front suffered the greatest percentage of wounded and killed soldiers of any battalion in the U.S. Army. Other immigrant populations that were the objects of scorn include the English, the German, the Irish, the Italians, and the Jews. Oh and lets not forget about the Africans. They were legal immigrants by American standards. The greatest irony of our nations recent anti-immigrant fervor is their theme song "God Bless America" which was written by an immigrant Jew while our borders were still so open with Russia that there were no visas or passports. In those days, the illegal immigrants were mostly from China and Japan because the U.S. put quotas on the number of immigrants that we could accept from those countries. Those illegal immigrants were the ones who brought us such American fare as fried chicken, canned salmon (and tuna) and used irrigation techniques that managed to turn the barren California landscape into what is now a huge agricultural industry.
Perhaps it is the failure of the progressive wing of this country that instead of explaining to people what illegal actually means, we chose to PC-the-whole-thing-up with the term "undocumented worker." First of all, the term is false because they are usually documented somehow. Also, the term inherently restricts those people from getting services that may put them into the documentation status. As long as they are "undocumented" workers, we are limited in arguing that they should be able to receive the same protections as documented workers, because those protections naturally require documentation. Also, the term leaves the word "illegal" in the irresponsible hands of the Nationalist Purificationist crowd that wants to criminalize those who are not. It is time to use our privilege to reclaim the word illegal. We should all refer to ourselves as illegal drivers, illegal home owners, and illegal employees. The baffled questions that follow will form the groundwork for putting illegality and criminality into proper context, because if we tell the truth, and they continue to lie, we will always be the more believable.
I can let you know this right now. If you have ever gone 5mph over the speed limit, your are an illegal driver. That's right. You. If you've gone 10mph over the speed limit, I'd say you're probably a very illegal driver. But speeding is not criminal. Drunk driving is criminal. When you drive drunk, you can go to jail and get probation, when you go 5mph over the speed limit, you can only be fined. It is purely an accident of history that the police arrest criminals and hand out speeding tickets. Just like a grocery store that has a pharmacy, you can get your oysters and your Viagra in the same place, but that doesn't mean that you have to have a prescription to get oysters.
Similarly, with the IRS, if Capone misunderstood which moving costs were legitimate tax credits and which moving costs were not, he would get zinged in an audit because what Capone did was illegal. However, Capone was not a criminal for misunderstanding the IRS code. If that were the case, we would all be criminals because the IRS code is about as coherent as a one legged aardvark doing the electric slide. Al Capone was a criminal because he purposefully hid income from the police. That is Tax Fraud, and that is a crime.
Many people have latched on to the word illegal in the description of people's immigration status and equated that with criminal, but they are simply wrong (or hateful, or ignorant, or stupid). They are annoyed about the fact that police can't deport people who are illegal immigrants when they are pulled over for speeding, but of course there must be restrictions on what the police can do. We can't allow police to enforce codes that are not criminal. If we did that, the next time a police officer pulled you over, he could run an audit of your taxes and demand back payment before you were allowed to leave. That same officer could hold business owners until they brought their businesses up to code. That same officer could then interrogate you on whether or not you had committed any labor violations, and then use that information to make sure that your grass is short enough in front of your house, that you don't have any cracks in any of your windows at home, and that you have cleaned up all the dog poop in your backyard. A world where illegal means criminal is called a police state. If people want to create one of those here, they are going to have to go through me first.
There are a significant amount of studies that have proved that people who are in violation of immigration laws are far less likely to commit crimes. That is probably because if you or I steal a Snickers bar, we would probably get probation, maybe serve 90 days, but if an illegal immigrant drives without his seat belt (which is a crime, not a traffic code violation in most states), he could be deported. Most of the other Nationalist Purificationist's claims are also bogus. Illegal immigrants are less likely than the general population to default on a mortgage, are more likely to be actively working, practically never collect unemployment benefits or social security, and seldom use public medical services.
Overall, as has always been the case, illegal immigrants are some of our best citizens. The hated Chinese immigrant population of San Fransisco in the 1850's (nicknamed the yellow tide) developed the powerful California economy, while the despised Japanese immigrant population of the 1940's never once committed any act of sabotage on U.S. shores and the famous Japanese battalion on the Pacific front suffered the greatest percentage of wounded and killed soldiers of any battalion in the U.S. Army. Other immigrant populations that were the objects of scorn include the English, the German, the Irish, the Italians, and the Jews. Oh and lets not forget about the Africans. They were legal immigrants by American standards. The greatest irony of our nations recent anti-immigrant fervor is their theme song "God Bless America" which was written by an immigrant Jew while our borders were still so open with Russia that there were no visas or passports. In those days, the illegal immigrants were mostly from China and Japan because the U.S. put quotas on the number of immigrants that we could accept from those countries. Those illegal immigrants were the ones who brought us such American fare as fried chicken, canned salmon (and tuna) and used irrigation techniques that managed to turn the barren California landscape into what is now a huge agricultural industry.
Perhaps it is the failure of the progressive wing of this country that instead of explaining to people what illegal actually means, we chose to PC-the-whole-thing-up with the term "undocumented worker." First of all, the term is false because they are usually documented somehow. Also, the term inherently restricts those people from getting services that may put them into the documentation status. As long as they are "undocumented" workers, we are limited in arguing that they should be able to receive the same protections as documented workers, because those protections naturally require documentation. Also, the term leaves the word "illegal" in the irresponsible hands of the Nationalist Purificationist crowd that wants to criminalize those who are not. It is time to use our privilege to reclaim the word illegal. We should all refer to ourselves as illegal drivers, illegal home owners, and illegal employees. The baffled questions that follow will form the groundwork for putting illegality and criminality into proper context, because if we tell the truth, and they continue to lie, we will always be the more believable.
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