Sorry, this is rather unwieldy and probably merely exposes my fundamental ignorance of all things economic...
I hate corporations. I really can't think of any company I would unreservedly support on all aspects of their product line and business model. Google comes closest, I suppose, but I can't even think of a first runner up...and while I like Google, they're certainly not perfect either. Obviously corporations are necessary since we can't all grow our own food and make our own cars and TVs and clothes and such these days since all of our very specialized knowledge and skills leave us unable to do much of anything else and because there's almost certainly someone out there better at inventing/making an X than we are. In theory, I will admit capitalism sounds like a good idea. Division of labor, competition, efficiency of markets—all this sounds great. Unfortunately, the real world doesn't seem to reflect the theory at all.
The general thought, or so I am told, is that in an open market, consumers purchase what best fits their needs, so the company that provides the best products makes the most money, and everyone (well, that company and the consumer pool as a whole) wins. Eventually one would assume other companies get the idea and make similar/better things, introducing competition (including price competition) and making the consumer even more likely to get exactly what he or she desires. I'm sure this is actually the way it worked in the very beginnings of capitalism, but it certainly doesn't anymore.
First of all, no matter how a market should behave, it never quite does because it's full of people who don't exactly act rationally in their own self-interest (shocker). People buy one brand over another because they like the packaging better, because they like the ads better, because it's the brand their parents used or that they have always used (particularly with personal care products like shaving cream and feminine hygiene items, lifetime brand loyalty is ridiculously high and surprisingly affected by parental use), because it's the only brand that works with their other related device (iTunes; video games and gaming systems; printer cartridges; razor blades), because it is carried in more stores, because it has an image that they like, because it's the only thing available (utilities companies that are the only companies available in certain areas), etc. A brand of soap could easily be better than the one someone has used for ten years, but people don't regularly have blind soap-testings to see if maybe their wallets should be voting for a better soap. Maybe Rock Band is superior to Guitar Hero, but if everyone has Wiis, everyone's going to be playing Guitar Hero instead. How is this the exercise of freedom of choice and rational weighing of the options? (Even if someone does regularly switch toilet paper brands to see which is the best, if everyone else is just using one brand because that's what they grew up using, it will be to no avail. Heaven help the poor lone rational actor.) I thought economists had recently 'discovered' this irrational phenomenon (judging by the recent spate of books, at least), but that hasn't seemed to significantly undermine faith in markets.
Even if you were entirely rational and made the best decisions for yourself in alignment with your principles, how exactly does one go about voting with one's wallet? If there is an infinite array of every possible choice, then it's obvious that simply selecting and purchasing the one that best fits one's needs will work quite nicely, registering one's preferences and encouraging companies to do more of what that company/product did and less of whatever is entirely undesirable.
In real life, though, there aren't infinite choices. If you want a computer, your infinite options are suddenly very limited in scope. You get two options (assuming average computer literacy): Windows or a Mac. Find Microsoft and Apple equally repugnant? Too bad. Want something more intuitive than Windows but less expensive/interconnecting/trying-to-run-your-entire-life than Apple? Again, good luck. In many situations, perhaps even most, the option you actually prefer isn't even available.
Now, I assume the pro-capitalism response to this would be that if nobody makes what you want, you can always start a company yourself to fill the gap. Obviously a nice sentiment, but come on; you obviously can't create a phone, a car, a TV, all the clothes you ever need, a health insurance system, and a food supply system that will best serve you all in one lifetime. There's way too much expertise you don't have and don't have time to learn. Plus, isn't that whole point of having companies exist—the division of labor? I would guess the more reasonable pro-corporation response would be that if there's really an unmet need, a gap in the market, someone will rise to fill it. Yes, well, unless it's less likely to make them money for some reason, or if the demand isn't high enough, or, or, or...any one of a number of reasons.
Doesn't constant competition in a market actually make it less likely that the best product will ever be created? Even if everyone is vaguely dissatisfied with the current offerings, they will likely still select what they consider to be the best available option, and there will likely not be a raucous demand for a better widget since this one is good enough. Never mind that much better widgets could easily be made; it's not worth someone's while to make them and then worry about how they're going to brand them, advertise, and get enough market share to make it worth their while.
Speaking of advertising and marketing, they warp the competition even further. It quickly becomes less about which brand of thingummy-bob is actually better and more about who has the best ad ideas or the most effectively designed marketing campaign. (Obviously advertising doesn't move people who are passionate fans of Brand X to consume Brand Y instead because it has funnier ads, but for people who have no strong feelings or who aren't fully informed, brand preferences can be easily influenced by the quality or ubiquity of advertising.) Brand recognition is also a problem for anyone trying to improve the market in any area where there are already entrenched competitors. Nobody wants to switch to the unknown because nobody else is using the unknown. Better to keep using an iPod because everyone else has one than to take a chance on some no-name MP3 player, right?
Then there's the problem that consumers often don't even have access to the information they would require to make rational decisions. Say someone only wanted to buy meat that had been raised humanely. Until very recently, they would be entirely unable to do this as nothing was labeled as cage free or free range or organic until enough people made enough noise. Say someone wanted to select which cell phone to buy based not on price or available service providers or features but on some other less popular criterion. Good luck trying to figure out which cell phone currently on the market has the smallest carbon footprint or is made by workers who are exploited the least.
...Which leads to my primary concern with the market system. Given that one's wallet can vote based on various aspects of the product in question itself (price, color, size, function, features, durability) or on any given aspect of the company as a whole (business ethic, country of origin, environmental effect, labor practices, humaneness, ingenuity, charisma of the guy in charge, or simply the fact that it's the best-known and therefore is assumed to be the best, period), how is the market supposed to effectively transmit all these choices to the companies' decision-makers? What happens when a company thinks people are buying all their stuff because their ads are awesome but people are really buying their stuff because of their decent labor practices? They'll spend more money on awesome ads, which would be kind of unnecessary. Or what if a company interpreted their high sales as consumers saying their features were better than their competitors' features but in actuality, their competitors have shoddy environmental practices and nobody wants to buy their stuff to send them a message? They won't try to improve their product's features because they think people love them, even if they're not even as good as those of the competitor.
Obviously it would never be the case that consumers as a whole would have the same response to any given aspect and that the company would entirely misjudge a giant movement, but I think that even makes my point stronger. With so many competing groups making purchasing decisions based on so many completely different aspects, how is anyone supposed to figure out what's actually working and what the consumer wants? I guess the idea is that it doesn't really matter, and if slightly more people favor one thing, it will have an advantage over others, regardless of whether it was preferred because it came in cute colors or came from an environmentally conscious company, and then the company and its attitude toward design and production and labor and environmental practices, etc., will hold more sway in some greater uber-market. Nice thought, but most of us want our better computers, toothpaste, or jeans now, not when the market finally subtly shifts in three decades to reflect the choices consumers are making now.
To me it really seems like consumers, rather than simply voting in a clear-cut manner on whether Product A or Product B is the best, are involved in complex behavioral shaping attempts. Oh, good, you quit exploiting Asian workers for pennies a day! I guess that means I can buy your products now since everyone else is still doing that. Oh, look, a slight design change. Yeah, I don't care so much about that; no reward for you. Urg, your CEO is kind of a jerk; maybe I'll show my disapproval of his comments by boycotting your products. Hey, your new source for raw materials is deforesting the earth at an even more-rapid pace than the last one—I'll stop buying your stuff even harder! (Great, I'm sure that last message came through loud and clear, considering there's no way for them to even note that change in your opinions.) Shaping works all right to train pigeons to perform tasks like pecking buttons to get food, but I'm not all that convinced it would work very well to convince unwieldy corporations to behave in accordance with your system of ethics all while producing stuff you actually like and that will improve your life.
(Obviously corporations don't actually care what you think, and I don't guess the free market really cares if you feel fulfilled and happy either, but still, doesn't it seem inefficient to anyone else to have no clearer way to communicate than through a simple up-or-down buy-or-not vote?)
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Real Women Have Better Things to Worry About
Ostensibly what the media tells women about their bodies is that they contain too much fat, are the wrong shape, are too wrinkly or saggy or discolored, and that one's life is not worth living unless one somehow changes this and becomes like everyone else, by which is meant everyone else who is depicted in said media.
Hogwash.
The real message I get from media about my body? That representations in the media (by which of course they must mean all those other media, the ones that lie to you and hold up impossible standards before you) are unrealistic and that nobody looks like people in the media look (what about those very same people?), that you're better off being a size twelve and being a real person (skinny people aren't real, apparently), that the only way to be a size two is to starve yourself (which may or may not be true depending on your body type and presumably comes off as dismissive and mean to those who are actually a size two without eating disorders), that skinny people don't have curves and "real" women do ("curves" often just meaning big hips and bust, never mind that the waist is the same size as the hips and bust and thus there is not actually any curvature). The media is (or "are," but I prefer treating "media" as a collective noun rather than an actual plural) so busy telling me to disregard the media's messages that the messages they allege I am bombarded with aren't even coming through.
Methinks they do protest too much. This public-service-like message smacks to me of them telling people the politically correct message they feel pressured into disseminating but don't actually believe or don't really think anyone else will actually believe. (It's reminiscent of the "Now, children, black people are just as good as white people" message that public schools and other responsible adults are particularly fond of. In my opinion, that just makes kids who probably don't think that one race is inherently better or worse than another stop and go, "Why wouldn't they be?" which leads to "Wait, obviously somebody thinks they aren't or they wouldn't be telling us that..." and get a little suspicious. Backfire ahoy.) Now, ladies, big and slightly lumpy bodies are just as good (or better!) than thin, svelte ones. Vive la lovely lady lumps! Pardon me for not believing the sincerity of that message.
To be clear, I'm certainly not saying that we all should weigh 100 pounds or look like runway models or anything (though nothing's wrong with that), I'm just wondering who actually thinks we should in large enough numbers or fervently enough that suddenly the entire world is united in the "celebrate your curvy plus-sized (or normal-sized that you've come to feel is plus-sized) body!" message to save. I have personally never felt TV or movies telling me I'm not a real person because I am a size eight to twelve or have a jiggly stomach or visible pores. Perhaps that message comes through slightly more in magazines (though even then, the message I get is "Real women have pores; get over it...but here's what you can do to minimize them so you too can look like a model" or "Real women have fat deposits...but here are twenty-one love handle—zapping moves").
I mean, who actually thinks runway models are the goal? I don't think the fashion industry is telling humanity in general (or even the female half) that they should all be six feet tall and 115 pounds; they're just telling their models that that's what their bodies have to be like. (Which is also a problem, but not the same kind.) Runway models aren't supposed to look like real people; they're supposed to look like vaguely human-shaped hangers to display the designer's clothes. The model is so not the point; it's all about the clothes. (Hm, someone should make runway robots. I bet the designers would be fans of that—none of that inconvenient messing around with bodies that aren't quite the dimensions your design happens to be shaped like...) I mean, it seems to me most women have come to terms with the idea that runway fashions were never intended for people like them (read: people who actually go to a normal job or school or take care of children or go to the post office and the grocery store and even sometimes a party) to wear; why is it such a stretch that the same people have independently determined that runway bodies are also not for people like them (read: people whose jobs are something other than spending all their time maintaining their body or who don't have those genes, etc., etc.)?
So maybe I'm just a freak and am the only woman on Earth who is capable of thinking for herself (unlikely), but I don't particularly see a crisis of women who are trying to live up to unrealistic images of themselves that come from the media. (Is this the same poor "The Media" getting maligned from all sides politically as well? The mainstream media with its left-wing agenda wants you to know you're too fat!) Of course, plenty of women do have unrealistic expectations about their appearances, but I'd imagine most of them come from themselves or their interactions with their family or significant others or the general world population. I do suppose some of those pressures (real or perceived) are somehow influenced by who is represented in the media and how, but I don't think it's as strong an edict as the (other) media would have you believe.)
There is a Facebook group/event called "Tell Her She's Beautiful." Some guy sees that all the women he knows are depressed every day because the media tells them they should be something they're not and wants to fix it all by telling them how beautiful they are:
It has come to my attention that as I grow older, girls get more and more self conscious of themselves. [The obvious solution to this problem is for you to stop getting older.] This hurts me, because every girl is beautiful in their own way. They all want to live up to standards that the media has set for them, like being paper thin or double Z breasts. It really breaks my heart to see all of the girls to wallow around and hate who they are and think they aren’t worth something.
I’m making this event so everyone can tell anyone that they think is beautiful, that they are beautiful. Just tell them. They don’t hear it enough, and they want to hear it. Tell anyone; tell your friend, your mother, your sister, your cousin, your dog for all I care. Let’s show girls that we don’t care about the standards that they set for themselves and that we like them the way they are.
Let’s show every girl that they really are beautiful. So tell them, it’ll make their day.
Girls, you ARE beautiful.
Yes, I'm slightly offended by someone who has the best of intentions. But I kind of doubt that he can tell that it's the media that is making his friends self-conscious. Even if he can and it is, that's still an awfully large leap to generalize to "all of the girls." Honestly, it makes me feel more marginalized to have people think that I spend that much of my time and energy wallowing around being sad I'm not "paper thin" with "double Z breasts" than it does to have TV shows only cast women under 120 pounds as leads. The latter? If I notice it, it doesn't really affect me terribly. The former? Yes, it's offensive to imply that I have nothing more significant or real going on in my life than concerns about my body shape and that I don't think I'm "worth something" because I'm too dumb to tell the difference between real life and digitally altered photos in a magazine. Thank you, I'm perfectly capable of assessing my appearance for myself and, if I feel the need, comparing it to my coworkers' or classmates' or friends' or women on the streets' bodies to see where I stand, if I'm concerned about where I stand in comparison to others. Why would I compare my body to the perfume ad girl's in Cosmopolitan? She and I don't frequent the same circles, so if nobody else is comparing my body to hers, why should I? (Not that I necessarily should even if someone else were, but since they're not, I definitely shouldn't.)
Also, I imagine this is just unfortunate phrasing, but it angers me as well: "Let’s show girls that we don’t care about the standards that they set for themselves." Excuse me, but you sure as hell had better care about the standards I set for myself, as those are the only standards that matter. Are you suggesting instead that I should be concerned about the standards you set for me, even if they're low ones because "every girl really [is] beautiful"? My body is mine; the only opinion about it that matters is mine and then perhaps the opinions of those (doctors, significant others) who have a legitimate stake, but that stake is still granted by me and can be revoked by me. You, random sir, can have an opinion about my body or my beauty if you like, but it really doesn't concern me and I'd be much happier if you didn't share it with me. If you're not my significant other, it's really just kind of awkward to hear you judging my appearance anyway, even if it's with this non-judgmental all-inclusive mood-boosting 'real beauty' spreading.
It comes across as terribly patronizing for men to think they (as, presumably, the judges of all things feminine and attractive, the approval of whom every woman is desperately and single-mindedly seeking) have the ability to magically blast away years of (presumed) media bombardment and repair we fragile ladies' self-esteem and body image.
Anyway, blanket statements like "everyone is beautiful" are pointless and seem insincere. Pronouncing someone beautiful is supposed to be a judgment actually based on their appearance (or, if we're talking "inner beauty," on some evaluation of their inner state). Making a pronouncement that everyone is beautiful is tantamount to saying "beautiful" is a meaningless term. It's not even true. Everyone is not beautiful. Everyone has inherent worth as a human being, but that's not at all the same thing. If you're using the word "beautiful" to get across that fundamental idea, well, use your vocabulary better; "beautiful" already has a meaning, and that's not it.
Hogwash.
The real message I get from media about my body? That representations in the media (by which of course they must mean all those other media, the ones that lie to you and hold up impossible standards before you) are unrealistic and that nobody looks like people in the media look (what about those very same people?), that you're better off being a size twelve and being a real person (skinny people aren't real, apparently), that the only way to be a size two is to starve yourself (which may or may not be true depending on your body type and presumably comes off as dismissive and mean to those who are actually a size two without eating disorders), that skinny people don't have curves and "real" women do ("curves" often just meaning big hips and bust, never mind that the waist is the same size as the hips and bust and thus there is not actually any curvature). The media is (or "are," but I prefer treating "media" as a collective noun rather than an actual plural) so busy telling me to disregard the media's messages that the messages they allege I am bombarded with aren't even coming through.
Methinks they do protest too much. This public-service-like message smacks to me of them telling people the politically correct message they feel pressured into disseminating but don't actually believe or don't really think anyone else will actually believe. (It's reminiscent of the "Now, children, black people are just as good as white people" message that public schools and other responsible adults are particularly fond of. In my opinion, that just makes kids who probably don't think that one race is inherently better or worse than another stop and go, "Why wouldn't they be?" which leads to "Wait, obviously somebody thinks they aren't or they wouldn't be telling us that..." and get a little suspicious. Backfire ahoy.) Now, ladies, big and slightly lumpy bodies are just as good (or better!) than thin, svelte ones. Vive la lovely lady lumps! Pardon me for not believing the sincerity of that message.
To be clear, I'm certainly not saying that we all should weigh 100 pounds or look like runway models or anything (though nothing's wrong with that), I'm just wondering who actually thinks we should in large enough numbers or fervently enough that suddenly the entire world is united in the "celebrate your curvy plus-sized (or normal-sized that you've come to feel is plus-sized) body!" message to save. I have personally never felt TV or movies telling me I'm not a real person because I am a size eight to twelve or have a jiggly stomach or visible pores. Perhaps that message comes through slightly more in magazines (though even then, the message I get is "Real women have pores; get over it...but here's what you can do to minimize them so you too can look like a model" or "Real women have fat deposits...but here are twenty-one love handle—zapping moves").
I mean, who actually thinks runway models are the goal? I don't think the fashion industry is telling humanity in general (or even the female half) that they should all be six feet tall and 115 pounds; they're just telling their models that that's what their bodies have to be like. (Which is also a problem, but not the same kind.) Runway models aren't supposed to look like real people; they're supposed to look like vaguely human-shaped hangers to display the designer's clothes. The model is so not the point; it's all about the clothes. (Hm, someone should make runway robots. I bet the designers would be fans of that—none of that inconvenient messing around with bodies that aren't quite the dimensions your design happens to be shaped like...) I mean, it seems to me most women have come to terms with the idea that runway fashions were never intended for people like them (read: people who actually go to a normal job or school or take care of children or go to the post office and the grocery store and even sometimes a party) to wear; why is it such a stretch that the same people have independently determined that runway bodies are also not for people like them (read: people whose jobs are something other than spending all their time maintaining their body or who don't have those genes, etc., etc.)?
So maybe I'm just a freak and am the only woman on Earth who is capable of thinking for herself (unlikely), but I don't particularly see a crisis of women who are trying to live up to unrealistic images of themselves that come from the media. (Is this the same poor "The Media" getting maligned from all sides politically as well? The mainstream media with its left-wing agenda wants you to know you're too fat!) Of course, plenty of women do have unrealistic expectations about their appearances, but I'd imagine most of them come from themselves or their interactions with their family or significant others or the general world population. I do suppose some of those pressures (real or perceived) are somehow influenced by who is represented in the media and how, but I don't think it's as strong an edict as the (other) media would have you believe.)
There is a Facebook group/event called "Tell Her She's Beautiful." Some guy sees that all the women he knows are depressed every day because the media tells them they should be something they're not and wants to fix it all by telling them how beautiful they are:
It has come to my attention that as I grow older, girls get more and more self conscious of themselves. [The obvious solution to this problem is for you to stop getting older.] This hurts me, because every girl is beautiful in their own way. They all want to live up to standards that the media has set for them, like being paper thin or double Z breasts. It really breaks my heart to see all of the girls to wallow around and hate who they are and think they aren’t worth something.
I’m making this event so everyone can tell anyone that they think is beautiful, that they are beautiful. Just tell them. They don’t hear it enough, and they want to hear it. Tell anyone; tell your friend, your mother, your sister, your cousin, your dog for all I care. Let’s show girls that we don’t care about the standards that they set for themselves and that we like them the way they are.
Let’s show every girl that they really are beautiful. So tell them, it’ll make their day.
Girls, you ARE beautiful.
Yes, I'm slightly offended by someone who has the best of intentions. But I kind of doubt that he can tell that it's the media that is making his friends self-conscious. Even if he can and it is, that's still an awfully large leap to generalize to "all of the girls." Honestly, it makes me feel more marginalized to have people think that I spend that much of my time and energy wallowing around being sad I'm not "paper thin" with "double Z breasts" than it does to have TV shows only cast women under 120 pounds as leads. The latter? If I notice it, it doesn't really affect me terribly. The former? Yes, it's offensive to imply that I have nothing more significant or real going on in my life than concerns about my body shape and that I don't think I'm "worth something" because I'm too dumb to tell the difference between real life and digitally altered photos in a magazine. Thank you, I'm perfectly capable of assessing my appearance for myself and, if I feel the need, comparing it to my coworkers' or classmates' or friends' or women on the streets' bodies to see where I stand, if I'm concerned about where I stand in comparison to others. Why would I compare my body to the perfume ad girl's in Cosmopolitan? She and I don't frequent the same circles, so if nobody else is comparing my body to hers, why should I? (Not that I necessarily should even if someone else were, but since they're not, I definitely shouldn't.)
Also, I imagine this is just unfortunate phrasing, but it angers me as well: "Let’s show girls that we don’t care about the standards that they set for themselves." Excuse me, but you sure as hell had better care about the standards I set for myself, as those are the only standards that matter. Are you suggesting instead that I should be concerned about the standards you set for me, even if they're low ones because "every girl really [is] beautiful"? My body is mine; the only opinion about it that matters is mine and then perhaps the opinions of those (doctors, significant others) who have a legitimate stake, but that stake is still granted by me and can be revoked by me. You, random sir, can have an opinion about my body or my beauty if you like, but it really doesn't concern me and I'd be much happier if you didn't share it with me. If you're not my significant other, it's really just kind of awkward to hear you judging my appearance anyway, even if it's with this non-judgmental all-inclusive mood-boosting 'real beauty' spreading.
It comes across as terribly patronizing for men to think they (as, presumably, the judges of all things feminine and attractive, the approval of whom every woman is desperately and single-mindedly seeking) have the ability to magically blast away years of (presumed) media bombardment and repair we fragile ladies' self-esteem and body image.
Anyway, blanket statements like "everyone is beautiful" are pointless and seem insincere. Pronouncing someone beautiful is supposed to be a judgment actually based on their appearance (or, if we're talking "inner beauty," on some evaluation of their inner state). Making a pronouncement that everyone is beautiful is tantamount to saying "beautiful" is a meaningless term. It's not even true. Everyone is not beautiful. Everyone has inherent worth as a human being, but that's not at all the same thing. If you're using the word "beautiful" to get across that fundamental idea, well, use your vocabulary better; "beautiful" already has a meaning, and that's not it.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Killing Beethoven
You've probably gotten the e-mail before or seen the scenarios used in arguments about abortion:
A teenage girl is pregnant. She is not married. Her fiance is not the father of the baby, and he is very upset. Would you recommend an abortion?
If you did, you just killed Jesus!
Gah! First, there's the fact that the scenarios are often total distortions of the truth or outright lies (particularly the Beethoven one), then there is of course the immediate comeback of "Well, wouldn't we be better off if Hitler's mom had gotten an abortion?" (which I think is terribly oversimplistic, but whatever, it works as a retort since the entire thing is a bit oversimplistic).
I understand that the point of these scenarios is to point out that you should think about what your unborn child might turn out like in the future, his or her personality or gifts, and take more into account than just your bad situation, since plenty of awesome people have come out of bad situations. However, these little "gotcha!" scenarios seem to take as implicit that what the world gains or loses is more important than the individual personal lives concerned.
Does the world really have the right to demand a Jesus or Einstein or Beethoven from a pregnant woman who doesn't think she can handle it? It's not like we as the entire world do or should be permitted to vote about who is able to or required to enter the world and join the human race. Is a Beethoven (or a Tim Tebow...) owed to us? Of course not. If people really thought this way, they'd be mixing and matching eggs and sperm all over the place, trying every combination so that the world could have as many great artists, leaders, and scientists as physically possible. (Who are we missing out on? Somewhere out there there is a combination that will beget the person who will cure cancer—hurry up and find it!) Obviously this is madness. (I suspect their actual thought process is that God has a plan, and if you abort someone, you could be stymieing his great design for us all. If so, then God's plan isn't very thorough.) It just seems terribly selfish for the world at large to say, "But hey, I like [that guy]! You don't have the right to keep [that guy] from existing and enriching my life." Shut up, world. What did you do to help [that guy] out on his path to awesomeness, and what did you do to deserve [that guy's] contributions to society?
I guess it all eventually leads to perhaps my biggest pet peeve of all: thinking genes are destiny. I mean, obviously had Beethoven never been born, the Ninth Symphony would never have been written (and then what would we hum when something dramatic and foreboding was happening??), but who is to say that Beethoven's particular package of genes is necessarily the package of genes best suited for taking the musical world by storm? Other great musicians would have still come along; music would still have developed, though perhaps in different ways; other great music would perhaps have come to the fore, being less obscured by Beethoven; we would have developed different cultural tropes with different works of music.
More importantly, I'm pretty sure the world already contains plenty of children with the capacity to become great humanitarians, political leaders, writers, medical breakthrough-ers, philosophers, artists, and so forth; maybe we should concentrate on giving them the opportunities to develop those talents rather than sit around hoping that some genius will fall into our laps fully formed (which isn't even what happened in probably any of those cases anyway). If the kids who could cure cancer or make the next mind-twisting scientific discoveries are stuck in really bad schools full of science teachers who don't really understand what they're teaching and don't do a very good job at it, they're probably not going to go on to study science in college because they'll think they're not sciency people. Let's take care of the genius that's already in the world before we worry inordinately about that which could possibly come into the world if people made other decisions.
The value of a human life is supposedly sacred regardless of who that person turns out to be or what they end up doing. These scenarios (though perhaps deliberately so as they are aimed to make the heathen reading them think again) seem to be almost utilitarian: the world is better off with these people in it, therefore they must be born. You'd think those who are pro-life would balk at seeming to make such ends-based calculations; isn't it inherent in the sanctity of life that you respect people as people and don't use them as the means to some other end? Whatever happened to valuing all life as life?
For some other date (perhaps): the world had Jesus never been born.
A teenage girl is pregnant. She is not married. Her fiance is not the father of the baby, and he is very upset. Would you recommend an abortion?
If you did, you just killed Jesus!
Gah! First, there's the fact that the scenarios are often total distortions of the truth or outright lies (particularly the Beethoven one), then there is of course the immediate comeback of "Well, wouldn't we be better off if Hitler's mom had gotten an abortion?" (which I think is terribly oversimplistic, but whatever, it works as a retort since the entire thing is a bit oversimplistic).
I understand that the point of these scenarios is to point out that you should think about what your unborn child might turn out like in the future, his or her personality or gifts, and take more into account than just your bad situation, since plenty of awesome people have come out of bad situations. However, these little "gotcha!" scenarios seem to take as implicit that what the world gains or loses is more important than the individual personal lives concerned.
Does the world really have the right to demand a Jesus or Einstein or Beethoven from a pregnant woman who doesn't think she can handle it? It's not like we as the entire world do or should be permitted to vote about who is able to or required to enter the world and join the human race. Is a Beethoven (or a Tim Tebow...) owed to us? Of course not. If people really thought this way, they'd be mixing and matching eggs and sperm all over the place, trying every combination so that the world could have as many great artists, leaders, and scientists as physically possible. (Who are we missing out on? Somewhere out there there is a combination that will beget the person who will cure cancer—hurry up and find it!) Obviously this is madness. (I suspect their actual thought process is that God has a plan, and if you abort someone, you could be stymieing his great design for us all. If so, then God's plan isn't very thorough.) It just seems terribly selfish for the world at large to say, "But hey, I like [that guy]! You don't have the right to keep [that guy] from existing and enriching my life." Shut up, world. What did you do to help [that guy] out on his path to awesomeness, and what did you do to deserve [that guy's] contributions to society?
I guess it all eventually leads to perhaps my biggest pet peeve of all: thinking genes are destiny. I mean, obviously had Beethoven never been born, the Ninth Symphony would never have been written (and then what would we hum when something dramatic and foreboding was happening??), but who is to say that Beethoven's particular package of genes is necessarily the package of genes best suited for taking the musical world by storm? Other great musicians would have still come along; music would still have developed, though perhaps in different ways; other great music would perhaps have come to the fore, being less obscured by Beethoven; we would have developed different cultural tropes with different works of music.
More importantly, I'm pretty sure the world already contains plenty of children with the capacity to become great humanitarians, political leaders, writers, medical breakthrough-ers, philosophers, artists, and so forth; maybe we should concentrate on giving them the opportunities to develop those talents rather than sit around hoping that some genius will fall into our laps fully formed (which isn't even what happened in probably any of those cases anyway). If the kids who could cure cancer or make the next mind-twisting scientific discoveries are stuck in really bad schools full of science teachers who don't really understand what they're teaching and don't do a very good job at it, they're probably not going to go on to study science in college because they'll think they're not sciency people. Let's take care of the genius that's already in the world before we worry inordinately about that which could possibly come into the world if people made other decisions.
The value of a human life is supposedly sacred regardless of who that person turns out to be or what they end up doing. These scenarios (though perhaps deliberately so as they are aimed to make the heathen reading them think again) seem to be almost utilitarian: the world is better off with these people in it, therefore they must be born. You'd think those who are pro-life would balk at seeming to make such ends-based calculations; isn't it inherent in the sanctity of life that you respect people as people and don't use them as the means to some other end? Whatever happened to valuing all life as life?
For some other date (perhaps): the world had Jesus never been born.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Eli Eli Lama sabachthani?
Having now been out of Christendom for five or six years, I periodically realize that my entire way of thinking about God, Jesus, the Bible, and any number of related issues has either worn away or entirely changed without my conscious attention. I feel like it's that my old (largely taught and pretty thoroughly ingrained) ways of thinking about things have finally eroded and I'm seeing the whole Christianity thing with fresher eyes, more as someone encountering the whole story and mindset for the first time as an adult than as someone who grew up seeped in it all. I just suddenly think of something and realize that a mere six or ten (or really even two or three, after the big deconversion but before all the erosion) years ago I would have been looking at that from an entirely different perspective and wouldn't have thought to ask any of the questions I am at that point.
So the big thing (for today) that I don't get: why does everyone make such a big deal about what a great sacrifice (in the sense of personal sacrifice, not atoning sacrifice) it was for Jesus to come to Earth as a human and to die an agonizing death for our sins? It seems to me that as an eternal and all-powerful being, if he had chosen not to spend thirty-three of his infinite years saving humanity from itself when he knew it was within his power, it would be pretty selfish and immoral of him.
Seriously. Presumably he knew at the very least that this would be a temporary gig, limited to the span of one normal human life or less, and that when it was over, he would resume his limitless, incorporeal existence of sitting at the right hand of God and ruling over the angels or whatever it is he did before. Of course there was a lot of pain involved, what with being beaten and crucified and such, but I don't really buy the idea that the Son of God is such a wuss that he couldn't handle it. Lots of people were crucified. I'm sure most of them didn't sign up for it voluntarily, true, but most of them were also pretty sure their existence ended when the crucifixion ended (and actually, martyrs have always kind of signed up for that sort of thing). I mean, if I had the opportunity to put my normal, expected life on hold for some number of years; live some chunk of time in crappy, uncomfortable conditions being mocked and reviled and fighting uphill battles trying to enlighten everyone to my (the right) way of thought; die a tortuous death; and then resume my normal, everyday existence none the worse for the wear, even I would do that if I thought it would significantly benefit the world.
So options for the Christian Jesus:
One, it's only a sacrifice from our perspective and was unpleasant but no biggie from his.
Two, since his god-existence is obviously so far beyond our comprehension, it was a huge ordeal for reasons we can't imagine to limit himself to human capabilities. We are so horribly slow and limited that it drove him crazy to live among us and talk to us and perhaps even limit his own mind to the constraints of ours. (I mean, I'd still turn into a barnacle for thirty-three years if I thought I could still get across my agenda...but I guess first I'd have to learn how to communicate in greatly limited barnacle-speech that doesn't actually hold my ideas very well or something, right?)
Three, he still had all his god-thoughts and god-capabilities and had to actively keep himself in check every second for thirty-three years. I can see how that could be a pain, if you were an intelligent being in a tree's body and had to actively restrain yourself from just picking up and walking around or crying out in desperation, "Guys, this is what I was trying to say with all that leaf-rubbing and branch-tapping! Just do this!"
Four, dying is the most awful thing every in the entire universe, even if you get to un-die later and then live forever; something about the experience itself is just unspeakably horrible. (Those resuscitated patients who talk about lights in tunnels and floating and peace obviously would disagree...of course, maybe they didn't really die in the same way.)
Five, it wasn't really informed consent: God the Father didn't tell him the whole story about what he would do and that it would all be back to normal (but better, because he just gave billions of as-yet-unborn people the ability to skip out on the lake of eternal fire thing) when he was done, so he thought he was signing up for something worse than he actually was, and he should be celebrated for the sacrifice he was prepared to make.
Six, his experience of turning into a human and living for so long in the human world (or the death part, or the shouldering the sins of the world part) contaminated him and he did not in fact go back to his regularly scheduled life afterward.
Seven, nobody ever said it was a big sacrifice and people who do say that are misinterpreting the message due to their own human conceptions.
Anything else? Any biblical support for any of these or any other interpretations?
So the big thing (for today) that I don't get: why does everyone make such a big deal about what a great sacrifice (in the sense of personal sacrifice, not atoning sacrifice) it was for Jesus to come to Earth as a human and to die an agonizing death for our sins? It seems to me that as an eternal and all-powerful being, if he had chosen not to spend thirty-three of his infinite years saving humanity from itself when he knew it was within his power, it would be pretty selfish and immoral of him.
Seriously. Presumably he knew at the very least that this would be a temporary gig, limited to the span of one normal human life or less, and that when it was over, he would resume his limitless, incorporeal existence of sitting at the right hand of God and ruling over the angels or whatever it is he did before. Of course there was a lot of pain involved, what with being beaten and crucified and such, but I don't really buy the idea that the Son of God is such a wuss that he couldn't handle it. Lots of people were crucified. I'm sure most of them didn't sign up for it voluntarily, true, but most of them were also pretty sure their existence ended when the crucifixion ended (and actually, martyrs have always kind of signed up for that sort of thing). I mean, if I had the opportunity to put my normal, expected life on hold for some number of years; live some chunk of time in crappy, uncomfortable conditions being mocked and reviled and fighting uphill battles trying to enlighten everyone to my (the right) way of thought; die a tortuous death; and then resume my normal, everyday existence none the worse for the wear, even I would do that if I thought it would significantly benefit the world.
So options for the Christian Jesus:
One, it's only a sacrifice from our perspective and was unpleasant but no biggie from his.
Two, since his god-existence is obviously so far beyond our comprehension, it was a huge ordeal for reasons we can't imagine to limit himself to human capabilities. We are so horribly slow and limited that it drove him crazy to live among us and talk to us and perhaps even limit his own mind to the constraints of ours. (I mean, I'd still turn into a barnacle for thirty-three years if I thought I could still get across my agenda...but I guess first I'd have to learn how to communicate in greatly limited barnacle-speech that doesn't actually hold my ideas very well or something, right?)
Three, he still had all his god-thoughts and god-capabilities and had to actively keep himself in check every second for thirty-three years. I can see how that could be a pain, if you were an intelligent being in a tree's body and had to actively restrain yourself from just picking up and walking around or crying out in desperation, "Guys, this is what I was trying to say with all that leaf-rubbing and branch-tapping! Just do this!"
Four, dying is the most awful thing every in the entire universe, even if you get to un-die later and then live forever; something about the experience itself is just unspeakably horrible. (Those resuscitated patients who talk about lights in tunnels and floating and peace obviously would disagree...of course, maybe they didn't really die in the same way.)
Five, it wasn't really informed consent: God the Father didn't tell him the whole story about what he would do and that it would all be back to normal (but better, because he just gave billions of as-yet-unborn people the ability to skip out on the lake of eternal fire thing) when he was done, so he thought he was signing up for something worse than he actually was, and he should be celebrated for the sacrifice he was prepared to make.
Six, his experience of turning into a human and living for so long in the human world (or the death part, or the shouldering the sins of the world part) contaminated him and he did not in fact go back to his regularly scheduled life afterward.
Seven, nobody ever said it was a big sacrifice and people who do say that are misinterpreting the message due to their own human conceptions.
Anything else? Any biblical support for any of these or any other interpretations?
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Are We Really Terrified about the Right Things?
After having spent somewhere between three and nine years lamenting the (excessive, to my mind) levels of concern the American populace seems to have about terrorism, I've come to an uncomfortable realization: terrorism is oddly comforting to panic about.
Think about it. Terrorists are usually members of an outside group who are motivated by factors that are easily summarized into nice, neat packages of rationale. You may never actually understand their reasons, but that's kind of the point: as long as you can't understand them, they remain safely the Other. Facing threats from outside forces tends to cause disparate members of a group to band more tightly together, feeling the security in numbers and like attitude concerning at least this one situation.
For some reason, after an attempted or successful terrorist attack, those who generally espouse a limited, hands-off government suddenly start lamenting the failure of the government to know everything that everyone is doing. His dad was worried, but he still had a visa and didn't check luggage and paid in cash—how dare the system not have picked him out of the millions of people flying that day and immediately halted everything to protect us? (This is not to say our cross-checking and red-flagging system couldn't use some work; it seems obvious it was not actually designed as a coherent unit.)
These same people, however, are the ones who decry any attempt at gun control, protective vehicle legislation, or anything that gives the government more knowledge of their whereabouts or behavior. How ironic. What would be the most terror-inducing thing of all? A genuine realization of how little keeps those surrounding us from killing us all.
Think about it. What is actually keeping your coworker, roommate, teacher, doctor, food producer, or random person on the subway/road/sidewalk from killing you or your loved ones? Not a whole lot. I'm sure a considerable portion of the populace has at one point or another had the realization while hurtling down a highway that the only thing keeping them from sudden death or dismemberment is an absurdly insubstantial line of paint on the pavement. You get a queasy feeling, perhaps from the sudden related realization that you could actually kill yourself and others just with a sudden flick of your wrists, and there's absolutely nothing keeping you from doing this...not that you want to or plan to, but if you did, what would stop you? And if nothing's stopping you but your general presumably healthy state of mind and attachment to life and your fellow beings, what's stopping the guy in the next lane?
It's kind of amazing how much faith we're putting in social norms. I suppose some would argue it would take a severe mental illness to cause someone to swerve into another car or pedestrians for absolutely no reason or to jump in front of a train, possibly derailing it and definitely traumatizing everyone around, to deliberately infect our food supply with a contaminant, or certainly to take a gun and open fire on whoever's nearby. I'm not really sure that's the case, though. Especially in the car case, I'm pretty sure it doesn't take a substantial mental illness, just a sudden awareness of how absurd it actually is to drive a two-ton hunk of metal at 60+ miles an hour mere feet from dozens of others doing the same and then a slight twist in whatever brain chemicals are involved in impulse control. Thinking "If I just turned the wheel suddenly, I would go hurtling over there into those cars and we would all die" isn't really all that far removed from doing it, I don't think. Thinking about specific muscle movements like that primes the muscles to do the action being considered, even if it's only being considered in the abstract.
Even with shooting rampages, I think we'd be surprised how little the changes in mental states that are required to do something like that actually are. I'm sure we've all been in blind rages before, our natural senses of what's fair and right and proper temporarily suspended as we indulge in pure anger or hate. If you have a gun in your car when you get unfairly fired, you're much more likely to go back into your office and shoot your jerk of a boss than if you don't, obviously. (I have no real stats to back this up, but I did read something a while back that did have statistics supporting a similar case that those considering suicide actually followed through at much higher rates when they had a gun or a supply of sedatives or a bridge they had to cross on their way home than those who would have had to go out and buy a gun or get a prescription or go seek out a bridge. The combination of a fairly common state of mind that would turn out to be no biggie if the means weren't there with the means actually being there causes people to do things they wouldn't do if they required slightly more thought or effort.)
Anyway, my point is that mental illness or no—and it doesn't really matter, as there are plenty of people running around with mental illnesses, too, and as far as I'm aware, the government doesn't keep terribly close tabs on them either—you probably encounter scores of people every day who have the means to kill you; you're just banking on their not being in the mood to. And what does the government do to keep you safe from your neighbors? Not a whole lot in the grand scheme of things. Yes, we keep felons from (legally) purchasing guns, convicted sex offenders from living too close to potential victims, and those whose mental illnesses make them demonstrably a threat to society from roaming free, but the vast majority of these protections share exactly the problem of the government's approach to terrorism: they're all retroactive. Only after someone uses liquids to try to blow up a plane are liquids banned from carry-ons; only after someone kills someone do we keep them from buying another gun.
Obviously there's no way for the government to actually be big enough, strong enough, and involved enough to actually protect us from a twitch in someone's brain chemistry suddenly causing them to swerve into another car—nor do even the biggest proponents of big government desire such a thing. So why do we expect the government to protect us from religious extremists who want to blow up planes with their shoes but not from teachers who have finally had it up to here potentially killing their idiotic students or the like?
Really, the events of the past few years are slowly making me realize is that it's really quite difficult to figure out in advance what sort of people might be dangerous. The Virginia Tech shooting, the Fort Hood shooting, the underwear bomber—yes, there were "warning signs" visible to anyone paying attention, but really, how happy would we be if the authorities took every single warning sign of the same significance seriously? Does anyone really want to suddenly be an object of scrutiny any time he or she says, "Gah, I'm so mad at X I could kill him/her" or "Ugh, I wish people who believe/do Y would suddenly drop dead"? We've all said it. There are loads of mentally unhealthy people who are romantically spurned, and the vast majority of them don't shoot up classrooms of students—how do you discriminate between the ones who are likely to do so and those who are likely to sit around and write crappy poems and mope about for a year or two, or who might commit suicide but are no danger to others? As far as I'm aware, we don't understand mental processes well enough to do so. If anyone you know committed suicide tomorrow, you would probably suddenly remember something they said or did or that had happened to them in the past month or so that clearly indicated how depressed they were. Does the fact that the other however-many people you know have said or done similar things recently necessarily mean they're going to kill themselves? Obviously not. Let's not forget that the lines between mental health and mental illness are pretty blurry (until something happens), as are the lines between an abnormal but harmless passion for a cause and overzealous devotion to it. There is probably a series of situations that could turn anyone into a killer, so let's not all feel so distinct from and superior to the sorts of people who do.
I suppose my original point was that it's much more comfortable to panic over extremist Muslim terrorists (Them) who are attacking Us due to a difficult-to-grok-yet-easily-stated reason than it is to think about all the other shades of danger we face from those we think are pretty much like us. It's much more difficult to understand why some disaffected teenage guy would go on a shooting rampage (without suddenly declaring that he must have been mentally ill, thus shoving him nicely back into the camp of Other) than why people from some group that's pretty foreign to us would hate us and want to wipe us out. Us vs. Them, good vs. evil, our god vs. theirs, our worldview vs. theirs—these are all easily understood and surprisingly comforting ways to think about a threat or struggle. Us vs. Us, human nature vs. human nature, very similar worldviews vs. each other—not so much.
I very strongly recommend reading The Banality of Evil to everyone. (This post was not inspired by that, but it's quite relevant.)
Think about it. Terrorists are usually members of an outside group who are motivated by factors that are easily summarized into nice, neat packages of rationale. You may never actually understand their reasons, but that's kind of the point: as long as you can't understand them, they remain safely the Other. Facing threats from outside forces tends to cause disparate members of a group to band more tightly together, feeling the security in numbers and like attitude concerning at least this one situation.
For some reason, after an attempted or successful terrorist attack, those who generally espouse a limited, hands-off government suddenly start lamenting the failure of the government to know everything that everyone is doing. His dad was worried, but he still had a visa and didn't check luggage and paid in cash—how dare the system not have picked him out of the millions of people flying that day and immediately halted everything to protect us? (This is not to say our cross-checking and red-flagging system couldn't use some work; it seems obvious it was not actually designed as a coherent unit.)
These same people, however, are the ones who decry any attempt at gun control, protective vehicle legislation, or anything that gives the government more knowledge of their whereabouts or behavior. How ironic. What would be the most terror-inducing thing of all? A genuine realization of how little keeps those surrounding us from killing us all.
Think about it. What is actually keeping your coworker, roommate, teacher, doctor, food producer, or random person on the subway/road/sidewalk from killing you or your loved ones? Not a whole lot. I'm sure a considerable portion of the populace has at one point or another had the realization while hurtling down a highway that the only thing keeping them from sudden death or dismemberment is an absurdly insubstantial line of paint on the pavement. You get a queasy feeling, perhaps from the sudden related realization that you could actually kill yourself and others just with a sudden flick of your wrists, and there's absolutely nothing keeping you from doing this...not that you want to or plan to, but if you did, what would stop you? And if nothing's stopping you but your general presumably healthy state of mind and attachment to life and your fellow beings, what's stopping the guy in the next lane?
It's kind of amazing how much faith we're putting in social norms. I suppose some would argue it would take a severe mental illness to cause someone to swerve into another car or pedestrians for absolutely no reason or to jump in front of a train, possibly derailing it and definitely traumatizing everyone around, to deliberately infect our food supply with a contaminant, or certainly to take a gun and open fire on whoever's nearby. I'm not really sure that's the case, though. Especially in the car case, I'm pretty sure it doesn't take a substantial mental illness, just a sudden awareness of how absurd it actually is to drive a two-ton hunk of metal at 60+ miles an hour mere feet from dozens of others doing the same and then a slight twist in whatever brain chemicals are involved in impulse control. Thinking "If I just turned the wheel suddenly, I would go hurtling over there into those cars and we would all die" isn't really all that far removed from doing it, I don't think. Thinking about specific muscle movements like that primes the muscles to do the action being considered, even if it's only being considered in the abstract.
Even with shooting rampages, I think we'd be surprised how little the changes in mental states that are required to do something like that actually are. I'm sure we've all been in blind rages before, our natural senses of what's fair and right and proper temporarily suspended as we indulge in pure anger or hate. If you have a gun in your car when you get unfairly fired, you're much more likely to go back into your office and shoot your jerk of a boss than if you don't, obviously. (I have no real stats to back this up, but I did read something a while back that did have statistics supporting a similar case that those considering suicide actually followed through at much higher rates when they had a gun or a supply of sedatives or a bridge they had to cross on their way home than those who would have had to go out and buy a gun or get a prescription or go seek out a bridge. The combination of a fairly common state of mind that would turn out to be no biggie if the means weren't there with the means actually being there causes people to do things they wouldn't do if they required slightly more thought or effort.)
Anyway, my point is that mental illness or no—and it doesn't really matter, as there are plenty of people running around with mental illnesses, too, and as far as I'm aware, the government doesn't keep terribly close tabs on them either—you probably encounter scores of people every day who have the means to kill you; you're just banking on their not being in the mood to. And what does the government do to keep you safe from your neighbors? Not a whole lot in the grand scheme of things. Yes, we keep felons from (legally) purchasing guns, convicted sex offenders from living too close to potential victims, and those whose mental illnesses make them demonstrably a threat to society from roaming free, but the vast majority of these protections share exactly the problem of the government's approach to terrorism: they're all retroactive. Only after someone uses liquids to try to blow up a plane are liquids banned from carry-ons; only after someone kills someone do we keep them from buying another gun.
Obviously there's no way for the government to actually be big enough, strong enough, and involved enough to actually protect us from a twitch in someone's brain chemistry suddenly causing them to swerve into another car—nor do even the biggest proponents of big government desire such a thing. So why do we expect the government to protect us from religious extremists who want to blow up planes with their shoes but not from teachers who have finally had it up to here potentially killing their idiotic students or the like?
Really, the events of the past few years are slowly making me realize is that it's really quite difficult to figure out in advance what sort of people might be dangerous. The Virginia Tech shooting, the Fort Hood shooting, the underwear bomber—yes, there were "warning signs" visible to anyone paying attention, but really, how happy would we be if the authorities took every single warning sign of the same significance seriously? Does anyone really want to suddenly be an object of scrutiny any time he or she says, "Gah, I'm so mad at X I could kill him/her" or "Ugh, I wish people who believe/do Y would suddenly drop dead"? We've all said it. There are loads of mentally unhealthy people who are romantically spurned, and the vast majority of them don't shoot up classrooms of students—how do you discriminate between the ones who are likely to do so and those who are likely to sit around and write crappy poems and mope about for a year or two, or who might commit suicide but are no danger to others? As far as I'm aware, we don't understand mental processes well enough to do so. If anyone you know committed suicide tomorrow, you would probably suddenly remember something they said or did or that had happened to them in the past month or so that clearly indicated how depressed they were. Does the fact that the other however-many people you know have said or done similar things recently necessarily mean they're going to kill themselves? Obviously not. Let's not forget that the lines between mental health and mental illness are pretty blurry (until something happens), as are the lines between an abnormal but harmless passion for a cause and overzealous devotion to it. There is probably a series of situations that could turn anyone into a killer, so let's not all feel so distinct from and superior to the sorts of people who do.
I suppose my original point was that it's much more comfortable to panic over extremist Muslim terrorists (Them) who are attacking Us due to a difficult-to-grok-yet-easily-stated reason than it is to think about all the other shades of danger we face from those we think are pretty much like us. It's much more difficult to understand why some disaffected teenage guy would go on a shooting rampage (without suddenly declaring that he must have been mentally ill, thus shoving him nicely back into the camp of Other) than why people from some group that's pretty foreign to us would hate us and want to wipe us out. Us vs. Them, good vs. evil, our god vs. theirs, our worldview vs. theirs—these are all easily understood and surprisingly comforting ways to think about a threat or struggle. Us vs. Us, human nature vs. human nature, very similar worldviews vs. each other—not so much.
I very strongly recommend reading The Banality of Evil to everyone. (This post was not inspired by that, but it's quite relevant.)
Thursday, December 24, 2009
But Baby, It's Creepy Inside
Thanks to my few weeks working retail again during the holiday season, I've had occasion to think long and hard about what Christmas songs are really saying to us. For example, I had always assumed the moral of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" was that you should be nice to those who are weird or different. But really, if you think about it, the song is basically telling you you shouldn't make fun of weird people (or animals) because they might turn out to be useful someday, and won't you feel stupid then? What about weird people who never turn out to be useful to you—is it still fine to make fun of them?
The song that has caused the most mental turmoil, however, is "Baby, It's Cold Outside" (complete lyrics at end of post). Whether the classic Louis Armstrong / Velma Mittleton or Louis Jordan / Ella Fitzgerald versions, the simpering Jessica Simpson / Nick Lachey version, or the Elf soundtrack Zooey Deschanel / Leon Redbone version, it plays about once an hour in the beloved local bookstore where I've been a captive audience to its increasingly problematic lyrics.
The first time it caught my attention as more than a cheerful winter love song was when I caught the line "Say, what's in this drink?" over ambient noise that had until then kept me from noticing more than the tune. Upon closer listening when it played later, I also noted the line "The answer is no." When taken together, these two almost sound like a real roofie-fueled date rape is going on. Now, obviously I don't actually think that's what's supposed to be happening (if nothing else, Rohypnol didn't exist until 1972...though it seems GHB has been around since 1874), but lyrics that were intended to seem sweet or perhaps slightly risque (at the very least, clever and amusing) in 1944 have quite a different impact on the modern listener, particularly if she's a young woman raised in the modern "no means no" culture. The very occurrence of an explicit "The answer is no" followed by a wheedling "But baby, it's cold outside" can hardly help but activate one's creepometer these days.
Even then, I just thought there were a few unfortunate lines that had aged poorly and didn't really see the whole song as problematic. By now, though, I've heard it forty or fifty times this season and am thoroughly creeped out by the entire thing. Now, I don't know if this is supposed to be the case, but to me it seems like the guy (who apparently is identified as "The Wolf" to the girl's "The Mouse"—talk about creepy!) is older, while the girl seems younger, an ingenue overpowered by his suavity. (It seems he has his own place, while the girl lives with her family: "My mother will start to worry / my father will be pacing the floor / ... / My sister will be suspicious / my brother will be there at the door / my maiden aunt's mind is vicious...", so I envision him as an older, established man and her as some fresh-out-of-high-school stenographer or something.)
Nowadays I wouldn't be too concerned by an exchange like this because I would assume the two parties actually had equal power in the situation and the woman was just proffering excuses to seem like a nice girl while fully expecting to let herself be convinced and not actually caring what her parents or neighbors thought (not that this isn't a problematic exchange in itself), but since the song was written over six decades ago, it's hard to read it any way other than with all the power in the man's hands. The woman (The Mouse!) is scrambling for excuses, almost panicking in some versions, as she's overcome by the Wolf's wheedling ways. It's as if she's watching herself succumb while being unable to keep it from happening: "I wish I knew how / to break the spell..." Then either her will breaks or she rationalizes to herself: "I ought to say no, no, no sir / at least I'm gonna say that I tried..."
Even if you don't buy the power imbalance and prefer to think of the two on more equal footing, it's just plain aggravating. If I had decided not to stay over and was presenting my reasons, to have each one completely ignored as the guy attempted to flatter me ("Your hair looks swell"; "Gosh, your lips are delicious") or countered with a never-ending and irrelevant refrain of "It's cold outside" that completely disregarded everything I was saying, I would get more annoyed and considerably less likely to stay because I wouldn't feel like he was listening to anything I was saying and obviously didn't respect me as a person. At that point it becomes less about whether or not she actually wants to stay over (or just stay later; that's not really explicitly stated) and more about teaching this jerk a lesson for thinking her decisions are irrelevant and he can just unmake them. Nobody wants to be badgered into a romantic evening; that kind of kills the mood.
One of the last lines he sings, "Get over that hold-out," demonstrates just how little he's paying attention to what she's saying. Now, maybe she is being stupid for caring what everyone will think, but instead of answering that concern in a reasonable manner, trying to convince her she's old enough to make her own decisions and shouldn't care what people think about them, but as the lines "What's the sense of hurting my pride?" and the lamenting "Why would you do this thing to me?" make oh-so-clear, he doesn't really care about the reasons she's giving—what anyone thinks of her, any problems she'll have with her family the next day, or anything else; he thinks her holding out is just to torment him and ruin his evening. Get over yourself, forties creep! Seriously, "What's the sense of hurting my pride?"? That's like admitting he had already planned to crow over his conquest to his friends the next day and is upset she's taking that from him. Heaven forbid a woman take her own thoughts and feelings into account when she makes a decision instead of worrying what the guy is supposed to tell his friends in the morning. I guess they're both picturing the next morning and the people they have to confront, and she doesn't like that picture if she stays and he doesn't like it if she doesn't.
I really can't stay (But baby, it's cold outside)
I've got to go 'way (Baby, it's cold outside)
The evening has been (I've been hoping that you'd drop in)
So very nice (I'll hold your hands, they're just like ice)
My mother will start to worry (Hey beautiful, what's your hurry?)
And father will be pacing the floor (Listen to that fireplace roar)
So really, I'd better scurry (Beautiful, please don't hurry)
Well, maybe just a half a drink more (Put a record on while I pour)
The neighbors might think (Baby, it's bad out there)
Say, what's in this drink (No cabs to be had out there)
I wish I knew how (Your eyes are like starlight now)
To break this spell (I'll take your hat, your hair looks swell)
I ought to say no, no, no sir (You mind if I move in closer?)
At least I'm gonna say that I tried (And what's the sense in hurting my pride?)
I really can't stay (Oh baby, don't hold out)
Oh, but it's cold outside
I simply must go (It's cold outside)
The answer is no (Baby, it's cold outside)
The welcome has been (So lucky that you dropped in)
So nice and warm (Look out the window at that storm)
My sister will be suspicious (Your lips look delicious)
My brother will be there at the door (Waves upon a tropical shore)
My maiden aunt's mind is vicious (Gosh, your lips are delicious)
Well maybe just a cigarette more (Never such a blizzard before)
I've got to get home (Baby, you'll freeze out there)
Say, lend me a coat (It's up to your knees out there)
You've really been grand (I thrill when you touch my hand)
Oh, but don't you see (How can you do this thing to me?)
There's bound to be talk tomorrow (Well, think of my lifelong sorrow)
At least there will be plenty implied (If you caught pneumonia and died)
I really can't stay (Get over that hold-out)
Ah, but it's cold outside.
And then some versions end with the super-creepy:
Brr, its cold...
It's cold out there.
Cant you stay a while longer, baby?
Well... I really shouldn't... all right.
Make it worth your while baby
Ahh, do that again...
The song that has caused the most mental turmoil, however, is "Baby, It's Cold Outside" (complete lyrics at end of post). Whether the classic Louis Armstrong / Velma Mittleton or Louis Jordan / Ella Fitzgerald versions, the simpering Jessica Simpson / Nick Lachey version, or the Elf soundtrack Zooey Deschanel / Leon Redbone version, it plays about once an hour in the beloved local bookstore where I've been a captive audience to its increasingly problematic lyrics.
The first time it caught my attention as more than a cheerful winter love song was when I caught the line "Say, what's in this drink?" over ambient noise that had until then kept me from noticing more than the tune. Upon closer listening when it played later, I also noted the line "The answer is no." When taken together, these two almost sound like a real roofie-fueled date rape is going on. Now, obviously I don't actually think that's what's supposed to be happening (if nothing else, Rohypnol didn't exist until 1972...though it seems GHB has been around since 1874), but lyrics that were intended to seem sweet or perhaps slightly risque (at the very least, clever and amusing) in 1944 have quite a different impact on the modern listener, particularly if she's a young woman raised in the modern "no means no" culture. The very occurrence of an explicit "The answer is no" followed by a wheedling "But baby, it's cold outside" can hardly help but activate one's creepometer these days.
Even then, I just thought there were a few unfortunate lines that had aged poorly and didn't really see the whole song as problematic. By now, though, I've heard it forty or fifty times this season and am thoroughly creeped out by the entire thing. Now, I don't know if this is supposed to be the case, but to me it seems like the guy (who apparently is identified as "The Wolf" to the girl's "The Mouse"—talk about creepy!) is older, while the girl seems younger, an ingenue overpowered by his suavity. (It seems he has his own place, while the girl lives with her family: "My mother will start to worry / my father will be pacing the floor / ... / My sister will be suspicious / my brother will be there at the door / my maiden aunt's mind is vicious...", so I envision him as an older, established man and her as some fresh-out-of-high-school stenographer or something.)
Nowadays I wouldn't be too concerned by an exchange like this because I would assume the two parties actually had equal power in the situation and the woman was just proffering excuses to seem like a nice girl while fully expecting to let herself be convinced and not actually caring what her parents or neighbors thought (not that this isn't a problematic exchange in itself), but since the song was written over six decades ago, it's hard to read it any way other than with all the power in the man's hands. The woman (The Mouse!) is scrambling for excuses, almost panicking in some versions, as she's overcome by the Wolf's wheedling ways. It's as if she's watching herself succumb while being unable to keep it from happening: "I wish I knew how / to break the spell..." Then either her will breaks or she rationalizes to herself: "I ought to say no, no, no sir / at least I'm gonna say that I tried..."
Even if you don't buy the power imbalance and prefer to think of the two on more equal footing, it's just plain aggravating. If I had decided not to stay over and was presenting my reasons, to have each one completely ignored as the guy attempted to flatter me ("Your hair looks swell"; "Gosh, your lips are delicious") or countered with a never-ending and irrelevant refrain of "It's cold outside" that completely disregarded everything I was saying, I would get more annoyed and considerably less likely to stay because I wouldn't feel like he was listening to anything I was saying and obviously didn't respect me as a person. At that point it becomes less about whether or not she actually wants to stay over (or just stay later; that's not really explicitly stated) and more about teaching this jerk a lesson for thinking her decisions are irrelevant and he can just unmake them. Nobody wants to be badgered into a romantic evening; that kind of kills the mood.
One of the last lines he sings, "Get over that hold-out," demonstrates just how little he's paying attention to what she's saying. Now, maybe she is being stupid for caring what everyone will think, but instead of answering that concern in a reasonable manner, trying to convince her she's old enough to make her own decisions and shouldn't care what people think about them, but as the lines "What's the sense of hurting my pride?" and the lamenting "Why would you do this thing to me?" make oh-so-clear, he doesn't really care about the reasons she's giving—what anyone thinks of her, any problems she'll have with her family the next day, or anything else; he thinks her holding out is just to torment him and ruin his evening. Get over yourself, forties creep! Seriously, "What's the sense of hurting my pride?"? That's like admitting he had already planned to crow over his conquest to his friends the next day and is upset she's taking that from him. Heaven forbid a woman take her own thoughts and feelings into account when she makes a decision instead of worrying what the guy is supposed to tell his friends in the morning. I guess they're both picturing the next morning and the people they have to confront, and she doesn't like that picture if she stays and he doesn't like it if she doesn't.
I really can't stay (But baby, it's cold outside)
I've got to go 'way (Baby, it's cold outside)
The evening has been (I've been hoping that you'd drop in)
So very nice (I'll hold your hands, they're just like ice)
My mother will start to worry (Hey beautiful, what's your hurry?)
And father will be pacing the floor (Listen to that fireplace roar)
So really, I'd better scurry (Beautiful, please don't hurry)
Well, maybe just a half a drink more (Put a record on while I pour)
The neighbors might think (Baby, it's bad out there)
Say, what's in this drink (No cabs to be had out there)
I wish I knew how (Your eyes are like starlight now)
To break this spell (I'll take your hat, your hair looks swell)
I ought to say no, no, no sir (You mind if I move in closer?)
At least I'm gonna say that I tried (And what's the sense in hurting my pride?)
I really can't stay (Oh baby, don't hold out)
Oh, but it's cold outside
I simply must go (It's cold outside)
The answer is no (Baby, it's cold outside)
The welcome has been (So lucky that you dropped in)
So nice and warm (Look out the window at that storm)
My sister will be suspicious (Your lips look delicious)
My brother will be there at the door (Waves upon a tropical shore)
My maiden aunt's mind is vicious (Gosh, your lips are delicious)
Well maybe just a cigarette more (Never such a blizzard before)
I've got to get home (Baby, you'll freeze out there)
Say, lend me a coat (It's up to your knees out there)
You've really been grand (I thrill when you touch my hand)
Oh, but don't you see (How can you do this thing to me?)
There's bound to be talk tomorrow (Well, think of my lifelong sorrow)
At least there will be plenty implied (If you caught pneumonia and died)
I really can't stay (Get over that hold-out)
Ah, but it's cold outside.
And then some versions end with the super-creepy:
Brr, its cold...
It's cold out there.
Cant you stay a while longer, baby?
Well... I really shouldn't... all right.
Make it worth your while baby
Ahh, do that again...
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Gladsgiving
It's that time of year when everyone starts declaring things they feel thankful for. They're thankful for their loving spouses, their beautiful children, their good health, their still-extant job, and a million small 'blessings' throughout the year. They're thankful that certain friends came into their lives, that they were given the opportunity to move somewhere great, etc.
What am I thankful for? Nothing.
That's right.
Not that I'm necessarily a Grinch, to mix holiday references, (though perhaps that is also the case). I do think it's a good thing to take stock every so often of the good things that have happened to you and the things in life that make you happy. But as I tried to think of things I was thankful for, I ran into trouble. Nothing quite seemed to fit.
My issue is primarily a semantic one. As someone who doesn't believe in a God who has a plan for our lives and acts in the world to bring us these people, those jobs, those opportunities, that good health, I can't in good conscience say I'm "thankful" for any of these things. Giving thanks requires an object; you thank someone for something. Both those parts are necessary. Feeling thankful implies a Giver who gave that for which you are thankful. Since I don't think God (or even Providence or Luck in any sort of deliberate way) has anything to do with what happens in my life, is it even possible for me to be thankful?
Probably not. And yet I do feel thankful, or at least I feel happy about things similar to the kind of things that other people feel thankful about. Is my feeling actually different from theirs? (There's obviously no way to know that.)
So instead, I say I'm "glad." This alleviates the problem of thanking divine Providence for things that just happened or for things that I myself am actually responsible for. I'm glad I live in a nice, liberal state. Obviously it wasn't an accident that I ended up here; I purposely moved here for that very reason. It seems silly to feel "thankful" for something that I did. "Self, I'm so thankful that you were smart enough to make such a good decision"? Ridiculous. I'm glad it hasn't snowed yet this year, not thankful that God has restrained the snow because he know it makes me depressed. I'm glad I don't have melanoma in my eye (yes, I've been rather terrified of this ever since I learned such a thing existed...and actually, I guess I don't actually know whether I do or not, but at any rate, I have no reason to think I do), but I'm not thankful that God kept my melanocytes in check. (How would that even work? Maybe I'll reconsider if I'm still melanoma free when I'm 60.) I'm glad we've had such a pretty fall, but not thankful that God has carefully timed the release of plant chemicals to create such nicely timed vibrant leaf colors to make me mildly happy each morning as I shuffle through varicolored leaves.
"Thankfulness" seems rather self-centered, actually. It seems to assume that everything pleasing that's happened in your life was orchestrated just for you by some superior power who cares about your life.
But then there's an even darker side to thankfulness. People say they're thankful they were born into a rich, developed nation to educated parents with enough money to provide for them, with the opportunities for higher education and fulfilling careers, where they have the freedom to choose their own life paths and mates. Now, it's probably better to feel thankful for these things than to take them for granted, of course...but it almost seems that thanking God for these 'blessings' is taking them for granted (at least in the literal sense: God granted them to you). If God 'blessed' you by giving you all these things, doesn't it necessarily follow that he's cursing everyone else with lives of poverty and lack of rights and choice? Presumably he had some sort of systematic way of deciding who deserved to be born into happy middle-class American families and who deserved to be born into the middle of civil wars in Africa, right? I don't think anyone really thinks that (and if you do, you're basically saying you deserve it, and why bother being thankful for your just deserts?), and if not, then it had to have been entirely arbitrary and having nothing to do with the actual people concerned...in which case, again, what is there to be thanking him about? He didn't do it for you; he just did it.
I think all too often, people who say they're thankful that God did X in their lives or gave them Y either simply mean that they're glad it happened, just like me, and are dressing it up in God language because that's how they look at the world or haven't really thought through the implications of what they're saying. Being thankful that you have it better than someone else seems terribly insulting. Not only are you judging their lives as too horrifying to contemplate, but you're putting yourself above them. It all seems rather fastidious and smug: Oh, I'm so delicate I couldn't possibly withstand such horrible circumstances. I'm so glad God knew that and saved me from such a fate. It almost seems that people who profess their thanks (or relief?) for their current station in life are half afraid God will take it away if they aren't properly appreciative. That hardly counts as true thankfulness.
I just got it: what it really sounds like to me is the subliminal socialization tapes used in Brave New World. "I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta[...W]e are so much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid[....]And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides, they wear black, which is such a beastly colour. I'm so glad I'm a Beta."
Thanking God for one's blessings all too often comes off like smug self-congratulation. I'd rather just smugly congratulate myself in full knowledge that that's what I'm doing. I'll be "glad" for things, whether things that just happened to work out the way they did or things I had a hand in, but I won't be "thankful" for anything that wasn't done for me by a particular flesh-and-blood person.
Happy Gladsgiving.
What am I thankful for? Nothing.
That's right.
Not that I'm necessarily a Grinch, to mix holiday references, (though perhaps that is also the case). I do think it's a good thing to take stock every so often of the good things that have happened to you and the things in life that make you happy. But as I tried to think of things I was thankful for, I ran into trouble. Nothing quite seemed to fit.
My issue is primarily a semantic one. As someone who doesn't believe in a God who has a plan for our lives and acts in the world to bring us these people, those jobs, those opportunities, that good health, I can't in good conscience say I'm "thankful" for any of these things. Giving thanks requires an object; you thank someone for something. Both those parts are necessary. Feeling thankful implies a Giver who gave that for which you are thankful. Since I don't think God (or even Providence or Luck in any sort of deliberate way) has anything to do with what happens in my life, is it even possible for me to be thankful?
Probably not. And yet I do feel thankful, or at least I feel happy about things similar to the kind of things that other people feel thankful about. Is my feeling actually different from theirs? (There's obviously no way to know that.)
So instead, I say I'm "glad." This alleviates the problem of thanking divine Providence for things that just happened or for things that I myself am actually responsible for. I'm glad I live in a nice, liberal state. Obviously it wasn't an accident that I ended up here; I purposely moved here for that very reason. It seems silly to feel "thankful" for something that I did. "Self, I'm so thankful that you were smart enough to make such a good decision"? Ridiculous. I'm glad it hasn't snowed yet this year, not thankful that God has restrained the snow because he know it makes me depressed. I'm glad I don't have melanoma in my eye (yes, I've been rather terrified of this ever since I learned such a thing existed...and actually, I guess I don't actually know whether I do or not, but at any rate, I have no reason to think I do), but I'm not thankful that God kept my melanocytes in check. (How would that even work? Maybe I'll reconsider if I'm still melanoma free when I'm 60.) I'm glad we've had such a pretty fall, but not thankful that God has carefully timed the release of plant chemicals to create such nicely timed vibrant leaf colors to make me mildly happy each morning as I shuffle through varicolored leaves.
"Thankfulness" seems rather self-centered, actually. It seems to assume that everything pleasing that's happened in your life was orchestrated just for you by some superior power who cares about your life.
But then there's an even darker side to thankfulness. People say they're thankful they were born into a rich, developed nation to educated parents with enough money to provide for them, with the opportunities for higher education and fulfilling careers, where they have the freedom to choose their own life paths and mates. Now, it's probably better to feel thankful for these things than to take them for granted, of course...but it almost seems that thanking God for these 'blessings' is taking them for granted (at least in the literal sense: God granted them to you). If God 'blessed' you by giving you all these things, doesn't it necessarily follow that he's cursing everyone else with lives of poverty and lack of rights and choice? Presumably he had some sort of systematic way of deciding who deserved to be born into happy middle-class American families and who deserved to be born into the middle of civil wars in Africa, right? I don't think anyone really thinks that (and if you do, you're basically saying you deserve it, and why bother being thankful for your just deserts?), and if not, then it had to have been entirely arbitrary and having nothing to do with the actual people concerned...in which case, again, what is there to be thanking him about? He didn't do it for you; he just did it.
I think all too often, people who say they're thankful that God did X in their lives or gave them Y either simply mean that they're glad it happened, just like me, and are dressing it up in God language because that's how they look at the world or haven't really thought through the implications of what they're saying. Being thankful that you have it better than someone else seems terribly insulting. Not only are you judging their lives as too horrifying to contemplate, but you're putting yourself above them. It all seems rather fastidious and smug: Oh, I'm so delicate I couldn't possibly withstand such horrible circumstances. I'm so glad God knew that and saved me from such a fate. It almost seems that people who profess their thanks (or relief?) for their current station in life are half afraid God will take it away if they aren't properly appreciative. That hardly counts as true thankfulness.
I just got it: what it really sounds like to me is the subliminal socialization tapes used in Brave New World. "I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta[...W]e are so much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid[....]And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides, they wear black, which is such a beastly colour. I'm so glad I'm a Beta."
Thanking God for one's blessings all too often comes off like smug self-congratulation. I'd rather just smugly congratulate myself in full knowledge that that's what I'm doing. I'll be "glad" for things, whether things that just happened to work out the way they did or things I had a hand in, but I won't be "thankful" for anything that wasn't done for me by a particular flesh-and-blood person.
Happy Gladsgiving.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
"Life's Not Fair"
Maybe I'm just still six years old at heart (unlikely), but I really don't understand the attitude adults, particularly parents, take toward fairness. Fairness is obviously a fundamental part of human nature. From a very early age, kids understand the concept of fairness and will point out at any give opportunity, "That's not fair!" They're usually right. So why, then, do their parents inevitably respond, "Life's not fair," as though that's reason enough to quit expecting fairness in any situation? Parents invoke fairness when teaching their children to equitably divide dessert or toys or take turns, but the second their kid notices that someone else gets to stay up later or go on better vacations or get more Christmas presents or go to PG-13 movies and invoke the fairness principle, parents parrot, "Life's not fair" like it's an extremely clever and discussion-ending retort (hint: it's not) taught in parenting guides (if it is, it shouldn't be).
It's true, life isn't fair. Some people have more stuff than others, some people get better breaks than others, some people are taller or smarter or skinnier or better looking or more athletic or more musical than others, some people are born into families with more money and connections than others. But isn't it one of the main principles of progressive society that people are all inherently worth the same and thus the more the playing field can be leveled, the better? Don't we all want life to be as fair as we can make it? Isn't fairness the goal? Of course life isn't fair, but it should be. We should do everything we can to make it be. Simply citing life's unfairness as an unchangeable fact and going from there is so depressing. It's really frustrating for children: "It's not fair." "Life's not fair." "I know, that's what I'm complaining about!"
Maybe parents are just trying to teach their children not to expect life always to treat them fairly. If so, though, they're not doing a very good job of articulating their lesson. There's a big difference between, "Oh, sweetie, I'm sorry you didn't [do/get whatever]. Sometimes life just isn't fair and you don't get things even if you deserve them. That sucks, and I'm sorry it happened to you" and, "Life's not fair!" said in a tone that's half "So shut up already" and half "Whyever would you expect it to be, dummy?" It doesn't help that "Life's not fair" is generally used when a child is complaining about something unfair the parent him/herself is doing. It's an implied, Oh, life's not fair, so it doesn't matter that I let your younger sister stay up just as late as you, or, Life's not fair, so I don't have to make sure all siblings have the same level of awesomeness at their birthday parties, or, Life's not fair, so it doesn't matter that everyone else your age gets to do X and you don't. Simply citing the unfairness of the rest of life shouldn't get parents off the hook for not being as fair as possible. The rest of life isn't under their control, but bedtimes, presents, privileges, chores, and most of the other things children whine about the unfairness of are.
Or maybe I'm missing some important principle about justice and I'm stuck with an immature idea of justice as fairness...but I kind of doubt it. Is this one of those things that gets squeezed out of you as you age along with liberalism and thinking you can change the world? Doesn't it seem horribly like giving up everything good and right in the world to jadedly tell your small, pure, idealistic children the harsh truth of the unfairness of life, the universe, and everything and expect them to accept it? What's so wrong with fairness?
It's true, life isn't fair. Some people have more stuff than others, some people get better breaks than others, some people are taller or smarter or skinnier or better looking or more athletic or more musical than others, some people are born into families with more money and connections than others. But isn't it one of the main principles of progressive society that people are all inherently worth the same and thus the more the playing field can be leveled, the better? Don't we all want life to be as fair as we can make it? Isn't fairness the goal? Of course life isn't fair, but it should be. We should do everything we can to make it be. Simply citing life's unfairness as an unchangeable fact and going from there is so depressing. It's really frustrating for children: "It's not fair." "Life's not fair." "I know, that's what I'm complaining about!"
Maybe parents are just trying to teach their children not to expect life always to treat them fairly. If so, though, they're not doing a very good job of articulating their lesson. There's a big difference between, "Oh, sweetie, I'm sorry you didn't [do/get whatever]. Sometimes life just isn't fair and you don't get things even if you deserve them. That sucks, and I'm sorry it happened to you" and, "Life's not fair!" said in a tone that's half "So shut up already" and half "Whyever would you expect it to be, dummy?" It doesn't help that "Life's not fair" is generally used when a child is complaining about something unfair the parent him/herself is doing. It's an implied, Oh, life's not fair, so it doesn't matter that I let your younger sister stay up just as late as you, or, Life's not fair, so I don't have to make sure all siblings have the same level of awesomeness at their birthday parties, or, Life's not fair, so it doesn't matter that everyone else your age gets to do X and you don't. Simply citing the unfairness of the rest of life shouldn't get parents off the hook for not being as fair as possible. The rest of life isn't under their control, but bedtimes, presents, privileges, chores, and most of the other things children whine about the unfairness of are.
Or maybe I'm missing some important principle about justice and I'm stuck with an immature idea of justice as fairness...but I kind of doubt it. Is this one of those things that gets squeezed out of you as you age along with liberalism and thinking you can change the world? Doesn't it seem horribly like giving up everything good and right in the world to jadedly tell your small, pure, idealistic children the harsh truth of the unfairness of life, the universe, and everything and expect them to accept it? What's so wrong with fairness?
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
This is Your Planet...This is Your Planet on Trash
Recently I visualized the problem with the environment (landfills particularly) in an entirely different way that kind of traumatizes me. I've been feeling a push lately to simplify my life and get rid of tons of junk that's just cluttering my space, but I feel guilty throwing things away because I know they'll sit in landfills for millennia. But then I realized that if they'll survive for millennia, they'll survive for millennia whether they're actually in a landfill or not. As far as the earth is concerned, our houses might as well be mini-landfills. Once stuff enters the world, it's there, and it doesn't really matter what you do with it afterward (unless it's recycled, but even that isn't entirely a pollutant-free process), it's trash. It's not like something magically happens to your junk when it enters your trash can that converts it into this mysterious "garbage" thing; it is what it is, and that thing is likely polluting the earth, or at least taking up space on it.
Once you remove the human angle of looking at things and ascribing worth to them and just try to look at it all from a purely physical point of view, it's pretty depressing. Our factories work day and night to pump stuff into our landfills with brief pauses in our houses. My mental image is of a planet (like when they show Earth on kids' TV shows with obviously too-big houses and proportionally giant people and such as a dramatization) devoid of people but with big buildings sticking up off of it filled with stuff, stuff, stuff. So really, the point isn't even what to do with all our stuff when it comes time to dispose of it, as if that's when it enters the waste stream, but whether to bring it into existence in the first place, since once it's here, it's part of the waste stream. (This is why "reduce" comes first in the "reduce, reuse, recycle" mantra, something that people too often forget.)
Once you remove the human angle of looking at things and ascribing worth to them and just try to look at it all from a purely physical point of view, it's pretty depressing. Our factories work day and night to pump stuff into our landfills with brief pauses in our houses. My mental image is of a planet (like when they show Earth on kids' TV shows with obviously too-big houses and proportionally giant people and such as a dramatization) devoid of people but with big buildings sticking up off of it filled with stuff, stuff, stuff. So really, the point isn't even what to do with all our stuff when it comes time to dispose of it, as if that's when it enters the waste stream, but whether to bring it into existence in the first place, since once it's here, it's part of the waste stream. (This is why "reduce" comes first in the "reduce, reuse, recycle" mantra, something that people too often forget.)
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Statistical Ephiphanies: My Favorite
I've been thinking about statistics lately, and I'm having one of those probably-obvious epiphanies. So in statistics, you generally measure whatever you're interested in on what you hope is a representative sample, then you generalize to the population as a whole. The more representative your sample is, the more accurate your statistics are for the population as a whole. Assuming you are truly randomly selecting your sample, the best way to increase the ability of your statistic to generalize to the population is to increase your sample size. The bigger the sample, the more people there are to neutralize any weird flukes, the less noise there is, and the more accurate your statistic is.
What happens if you keep expanding your sample size? Eventually the sample you are polling/measuring/whatever is your entire population. If you're measuring the entire population, your statistic is entirely accurate. There isn't a margin of error. You have attained absolute truth. (Congrats.)
But wait. How much does measuring whatever quality of everyone on the planet actually tell you about humanity in any true sense? Can't the entire population be seen sort of as a sample of all possible human beings? (I would hazard a guess that it's not a very random one at all, but that's beside my point.)
Let's take my favorite example, gender differences in math. Now, I assume we have not tested the mathematical skills of every single human on the planet, but let's pretend we had and that the numbers were similar to those I've seen for various samples in the U.S. The median math score for males is about five percentage points higher than the median math score for females.
(The distributions are pretty wide and overlap almost entirely; only the very, very, very tip (a fraction of one percent) in either direction is occupied solely by males or females. This basically just means that yeah, maybe the top however-many math people are male and the bottom however-many are female, but since every single person I know is almost assuredly in the overlapping spots, there's not really much that can be said for any given man or woman about their relative abilities. For example, I am a girl; supposedly I am worse at math than boys. No randomly chosen guy should assume that means he is better at math than me, a (not-so-randomly-selected) girl. Assuming elementary-school scores on the ITBS and the percentiles they provide are accurate (probably not, but just for the sake of illustration), the fact that eight-year-old me was in the 99th percentile on math obviously means that eight-year-old me was better at math than a lot of eight-year-old boys. Even if the entire top 1% was boys (doubtful), that would still put eight-year-old me above 98% of eight-year-old boys taking the ITBS. (I feel like the math I just did was questionable, particularly since there's no guarantee that eight-year-old ITBS-takers were half boys and half girls, but, hey, there's a reason I'm not using more recent math scores...))
Anyway... So say we'd tested everyone on the planet and gotten a similar distribution. Hey, we all say, look, boys are indeed better at math! But what does that actually mean about masculinity making one good at math? Not necessarily anything. For one thing, correlation does not equal causation. Correlation on a planetary scale still does not imply causation. It would be rather impossible, not to mention highly unethical, to randomly assign people to a gender to see how that affected their math scores later in life.
And here's where my epiphany comes in. By sheer virtue of there being two groups, one of them basically has to be better and one worse on any given thing, be it math, communication, parking ability, cooking, singing, tennis, Tetris...whatever. Since there is a lot of variability in mathematical ability, like everything else, it is necessarily unevenly distributed regardless of how you divide the groups. It would actually be weirder if every division of humanity we could think of, whether by gender, race, religion, height, eye color, alphabetical order by middle initial, etc., scored exactly the same on every measure. It's like if you flipped a coin 100 times and got exactly 50 heads and 50 tails, and then did it again and got 50 and 50 again, just in a different order, then again, then again. Maybe if everyone on the earth vanished suddenly and God replaced them with six billion other random people, this time, girls would end up by a few percentage points just by virtue of which actual people were part of our group and this hypothetical group.
Of course, that's not to say that mathematical abilities don't actually have their basis in anything vaguely gender related. Obviously there are all sorts of things that influence mathematical ability, like what kind of society you're born into, what kinds of things your parents find important, how good your school was, whether anyone told you as a child that your group wasn't supposed to be as good at math as the other one, your specific math teachers, how good your parents were at math, what language you speak (yes, that's one reason Chinese kids are better at math than Americans, is because the words for numbers in Chinese make it easier to think about them and do things with them), whether your friends think math is cool, what else you're interested in, etc., etc., etc. Sure, gender might be one of them. Maybe testosterone is a math booster. (This might be slightly less unethical to test...) But I think it's important to realize that just because a majority of humanity is better at something than another group doesn't necessarily mean it's related to whatever the dividing characteristic is. Numbers are like that. There's variation. And most importantly, it's pretty obvious that all members of group X aren't better than all members of group Y at anything that I'm aware of, whether it's races and sports or genders and school subjects or species and some cognitive task.
What happens if you keep expanding your sample size? Eventually the sample you are polling/measuring/whatever is your entire population. If you're measuring the entire population, your statistic is entirely accurate. There isn't a margin of error. You have attained absolute truth. (Congrats.)
But wait. How much does measuring whatever quality of everyone on the planet actually tell you about humanity in any true sense? Can't the entire population be seen sort of as a sample of all possible human beings? (I would hazard a guess that it's not a very random one at all, but that's beside my point.)
Let's take my favorite example, gender differences in math. Now, I assume we have not tested the mathematical skills of every single human on the planet, but let's pretend we had and that the numbers were similar to those I've seen for various samples in the U.S. The median math score for males is about five percentage points higher than the median math score for females.
(The distributions are pretty wide and overlap almost entirely; only the very, very, very tip (a fraction of one percent) in either direction is occupied solely by males or females. This basically just means that yeah, maybe the top however-many math people are male and the bottom however-many are female, but since every single person I know is almost assuredly in the overlapping spots, there's not really much that can be said for any given man or woman about their relative abilities. For example, I am a girl; supposedly I am worse at math than boys. No randomly chosen guy should assume that means he is better at math than me, a (not-so-randomly-selected) girl. Assuming elementary-school scores on the ITBS and the percentiles they provide are accurate (probably not, but just for the sake of illustration), the fact that eight-year-old me was in the 99th percentile on math obviously means that eight-year-old me was better at math than a lot of eight-year-old boys. Even if the entire top 1% was boys (doubtful), that would still put eight-year-old me above 98% of eight-year-old boys taking the ITBS. (I feel like the math I just did was questionable, particularly since there's no guarantee that eight-year-old ITBS-takers were half boys and half girls, but, hey, there's a reason I'm not using more recent math scores...))
Anyway... So say we'd tested everyone on the planet and gotten a similar distribution. Hey, we all say, look, boys are indeed better at math! But what does that actually mean about masculinity making one good at math? Not necessarily anything. For one thing, correlation does not equal causation. Correlation on a planetary scale still does not imply causation. It would be rather impossible, not to mention highly unethical, to randomly assign people to a gender to see how that affected their math scores later in life.
And here's where my epiphany comes in. By sheer virtue of there being two groups, one of them basically has to be better and one worse on any given thing, be it math, communication, parking ability, cooking, singing, tennis, Tetris...whatever. Since there is a lot of variability in mathematical ability, like everything else, it is necessarily unevenly distributed regardless of how you divide the groups. It would actually be weirder if every division of humanity we could think of, whether by gender, race, religion, height, eye color, alphabetical order by middle initial, etc., scored exactly the same on every measure. It's like if you flipped a coin 100 times and got exactly 50 heads and 50 tails, and then did it again and got 50 and 50 again, just in a different order, then again, then again. Maybe if everyone on the earth vanished suddenly and God replaced them with six billion other random people, this time, girls would end up by a few percentage points just by virtue of which actual people were part of our group and this hypothetical group.
Of course, that's not to say that mathematical abilities don't actually have their basis in anything vaguely gender related. Obviously there are all sorts of things that influence mathematical ability, like what kind of society you're born into, what kinds of things your parents find important, how good your school was, whether anyone told you as a child that your group wasn't supposed to be as good at math as the other one, your specific math teachers, how good your parents were at math, what language you speak (yes, that's one reason Chinese kids are better at math than Americans, is because the words for numbers in Chinese make it easier to think about them and do things with them), whether your friends think math is cool, what else you're interested in, etc., etc., etc. Sure, gender might be one of them. Maybe testosterone is a math booster. (This might be slightly less unethical to test...) But I think it's important to realize that just because a majority of humanity is better at something than another group doesn't necessarily mean it's related to whatever the dividing characteristic is. Numbers are like that. There's variation. And most importantly, it's pretty obvious that all members of group X aren't better than all members of group Y at anything that I'm aware of, whether it's races and sports or genders and school subjects or species and some cognitive task.
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