While I not only know that there is no chance of my wishes coming true, but also that I'm not really going to do anything more than talk about it, here is what I think should be done in the USA.
My first point is what I consider to be the most important one. The largest amount of debate and political energy is put into external matters. That is things like economic and political power, or social issues such as religious freedoms and civil liberties, or activities organized around safety/fear (war, crime, environment). While these clearly matter I have a belief that these are less important than what happens internally 1. My belief in what should be done is based on maximizing the happiness of people, and I think that while external factors such as poverty really matter, they don't matter as much as your basic mental state.
What follows from my belief that the internal workings of the mind is more important than the external environment is the implementation of a policy that uses the best available knowledge to provide the best available response at the lowest cost. As far as I can tell meditation has a proven record of reducing stress, increasing happiness, and increasing social connectivity (a better positive view of strangers.) Even relatively small amounts of meditation (say 5% of the time we spend watching tv) results in a happier, less stressful, more compassionate, more connected society. Therefore, policy point #1 is mandatory secular meditation lessons in schools. Children should be taught the skill of meditation and then adults can decide whether they wish to use this skill or not.
My second point is that policies based on a fear of others are rarely effective. A military policy of pre-emptive strikes against perceived threats can temporarily degrade the ability of those threats, but over the long term tend to increase the actual threat. Did the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq make the USA (and the world) safer? The evidence seems to suggest that those wars increased the number of terrorists and the situation in the area is worse than before those invasions. When was the last war that clearly made the USA safer? I would suggest that would be World War II.
Policy point #2 is to alter the US military's basic strategy to pure defense from direct attack, and a humanitarian projection of power. What this means is that the US military only fights wars when the physical territory of the USA is being attacked or as part of a UN force (not a "coalition of the willing.) This is actually a basic part of multiple international treaties which the USA has signed (although not necessarily ratified.) The foreign policy element should be humanitarian assistance on a massive scale. The projection of US power around the world should primarily consist of schools, roads, hospitals, vaccinations, food, shelter. The basic view of the world with regards to the USA should be that it helps people. I believe that the cultivation of this attitude would make US more safe than any number of wars.
Policy point #3 is a move to a criminal justice system based on community policing and rehabilitation. The basic attitude of the US police is a violent conflict between criminals and the police, in which both sides are afraid of the other. As a result US police kill hundreds of people a year, a number wildly out of proportion to similar countries. US police genuinely believe they are under constant threat from civilians, but approximately 0.04% of police are killed in non-traffic related incidents each year. Community policing is based on building trust and removing root causes of crime. The biggest help to all of this would be the removal of guns from the population. The presence of guns always increases the danger, and therefore increases the fear, which increases the danger.
At the moment the US criminal justice system is based on punishment, revenge rather than making us safer. The US incarcerates about seven times the amounts of people per capita as Europe. This incarceration rate hasn't made Americans safer than Europeans. The very point of incarceration is to make people miserable. The point is to reduce happiness, and therefore evil. There is necessary evil in the world and jail does work to deter crime, but as it is evil it should be used to the minimum necessary extent. Let's just not incarcerate people who haven't substantially hurt anyone else. Why should anyone go to jail for possession of a drug that they would just use themselves? It isn't safety, we let people do dangerous stuff all the time.
Thursday, September 7, 2017
Times to Regret and Cherish
When I think of the times that I regret I was usually being "productive."
When I think of the times I cherish I was not.
When I think of the times I cherish I was not.
Social Justice Warriors
For Mary-Alice
The term "social justice warriors" first came about as a descriptor of people working for greater social justice. People trying to equalize the power and experiences between different groups. Things like working towards equal pay for equal work for women and men, or equalizing the rate at which black people and white people are stopped by the police. People committed to the cause of equality and fairness.
More recently this term has become a pejorative term for people who attempt to police speech, tell everyone that they should do and think certain things or they are wicked people. The idea is that such people are actively looking to find things to be outraged by, and then start an aggressive campaign against it. An example of this would be being outraged by men holding doors open for women as it is an open sign of the belittling of women's competence that is pervasive throughout society. It has further elements of this outrage being fake, that its' primary purpose is to show what a virtuous person you are (e.g."segregation is a social justice problem that must be solved!" from someone who never enters black neighborhoods because they aren't safe.) This is a powerful description of this point of view. As a progressive it seems to get more insane the longer you read it, but if you look at the examples given of the activities of social justice warriors you wouldn't be nuts to think those are nuts too.
So, which is right? I don't think there would be much debate between the two groups as to who is a social justice warrior. One side is proud to be one, and the other side thinks those people are awful. The difference is in the description of the same activities. I'm going to go back to my progressive college education, with its moral relativism and all, and say that both sides are right. Social Justice Warriors are people who see themselves as committed to the cause of justice and fairness in a society that is patently unfair. As such they search out injustice, make people aware of it, support those suffering, and stamp out the actions of those who are the cause of this injustice. During this process they attempt to police speech, call certain beliefs abhorrent, and there's a hell of a lot more posting on the internet than quietly volunteering in slums.
I'm a progressive who strongly supports programs to rectify unfairness. I think more funds should be spent raising up the most disadvantaged than supporting the more privileged. A poor, black neighborhood should have more money spent on their schools than a rich, white neighborhood. Women should get equal pay for equal work. Men should get the same amount of time off for their children as women. I also think Social Justice Warriors are appallingly annoying people and this has serious consequences.
In getting something done you need to know what it is you want to get done. However, there's also the necessity of doing the things that achieve that result. It's one thing to want more fairness in the world, it's another to make that happen. Social justice warriors have no problem with knowing what they want, but their method has, in my opinion, has limited positive effect and serious negative effect.
A little history. The march of social justice has gone at a remarkable rate over the last fifty years. If you were going through your formative years in the 1960's the idea that there would be a black president, gay marriage was a right, and working mothers being the norm you would have been surprised. In the 1980's you could be explicitly racist and elected senator. Unfairness abounds but the movement is strongly in the direction of equality. A consequence of such rapid change is that there are many people who grew up somewhere where everyone agreed that something was right, that are now told by society in general is not only wrong, but very wrong. A good Christian in the 80's would likely think that homosexuality is a sin as described clearly in the Bible, and so would most of the people they knew. Now society says that if they believe that they are vile bigot.
In order to advance fairness you have to get people with power to agree with you. If there is one group with power then by definition you can't make them behave differently. Furthermore, it seems to me that power is a zero sum game, any increase in power for one group means a reduction for another group. To increase social justice you must convince those with power and privilege to give it up with no inherent reward. This is where the goals are no longer enough, a practical method of achieving them is necessary.
The politics of social justice warriors as far as I can tell is identity politics. There are different groups based on race, gender, culture, religion and anything else you can think of. These then are essentially scored on the amount of privilege or oppression they face. So if you are a black person you rank lowest on the privilege score (or native-americans?) on race, and if you are white you score at the top. With the concept of intersectionality you can be in multiple groups simultaneously, so a rich, white, christian man is the pinnacle of privilege and power, while a mentally ill, black, gay, homeless muslim woman is somewhere near the bottom.
As a point of ideology the different groups are inherently equal, there are no biological roots for the circumstances in which people find themselves. For example, the smaller proportion of women who are engineers cannot be because women have biological differences in their brains that make them in general less interested in engineering. It must be because of the influence of culture, and through the prism of identity politics that culture is determined by those with the most power and privilege, white men. This results in the belief that inequality and the problems that arise because of them are predominantly because of white people, particularly men.
So we find ourselves in a situation where the people who are fighting for justice blame those in power for injustice, yet need those in power to change their behavior to their own detriment. The sensible thing to do at that point is to try to find the most efficacious manner to get that to happen. I maintain that yelling at people about how horrible they are, how ignorant they are, and how much better they have it than anyone else is not an effective way to do this. When I agree with the basic principles of your campaign but you tell me that if I'm not part of the solution (i.e. do what they want me to do) I'm part of the problem (i.e. a bigoted member of a racist patriarchy) you piss me off. If you are pissing people off on your side then your chances of changing the minds of people of people not initially supportive has got to be very low.
There are consequences to this, the most glaring being the election of Donald Trump. Trump during his campaign was sexist, racist, bigoted on religion, offensive etc.. He won because of these things, not in spite of them. Clinton said that half of Trump's supporters were "deplorables" because of their bigotry. This is just an example of an unending stream of abuse towards those who hold beliefs that would have been considered standard a few decades ago. Those who elected Trump say that America is being destroyed, taken away by the extreme activist left. They are right. The activist left is campaigning to destroy vital parts of a culture. Religion, identity, morality, relationships, family are all being changed by people outside this group. Just with any culture that is being destroyed it is painful to those undergoing those changes. Tens of millions of people had just had enough and fought back.
What bothers me most is the hatred and intolerance within the progressive movement. If you disagree you cannot just be a person with a different upbringing and different opinions, you are evil. In order to alter the domination of white male voices the method is usually to ignore, dismiss, or exclude those voices. There is indeed a domination of white, male voices but those are the people you want to give up their voices, and they don't have to. It really just comes down to not being horrible to the people whose help you need.
I agree with the views of social justice warriors but hate the way they operate. They are insufferably annoying.
The term "social justice warriors" first came about as a descriptor of people working for greater social justice. People trying to equalize the power and experiences between different groups. Things like working towards equal pay for equal work for women and men, or equalizing the rate at which black people and white people are stopped by the police. People committed to the cause of equality and fairness.
More recently this term has become a pejorative term for people who attempt to police speech, tell everyone that they should do and think certain things or they are wicked people. The idea is that such people are actively looking to find things to be outraged by, and then start an aggressive campaign against it. An example of this would be being outraged by men holding doors open for women as it is an open sign of the belittling of women's competence that is pervasive throughout society. It has further elements of this outrage being fake, that its' primary purpose is to show what a virtuous person you are (e.g."segregation is a social justice problem that must be solved!" from someone who never enters black neighborhoods because they aren't safe.) This is a powerful description of this point of view. As a progressive it seems to get more insane the longer you read it, but if you look at the examples given of the activities of social justice warriors you wouldn't be nuts to think those are nuts too.
So, which is right? I don't think there would be much debate between the two groups as to who is a social justice warrior. One side is proud to be one, and the other side thinks those people are awful. The difference is in the description of the same activities. I'm going to go back to my progressive college education, with its moral relativism and all, and say that both sides are right. Social Justice Warriors are people who see themselves as committed to the cause of justice and fairness in a society that is patently unfair. As such they search out injustice, make people aware of it, support those suffering, and stamp out the actions of those who are the cause of this injustice. During this process they attempt to police speech, call certain beliefs abhorrent, and there's a hell of a lot more posting on the internet than quietly volunteering in slums.
I'm a progressive who strongly supports programs to rectify unfairness. I think more funds should be spent raising up the most disadvantaged than supporting the more privileged. A poor, black neighborhood should have more money spent on their schools than a rich, white neighborhood. Women should get equal pay for equal work. Men should get the same amount of time off for their children as women. I also think Social Justice Warriors are appallingly annoying people and this has serious consequences.
In getting something done you need to know what it is you want to get done. However, there's also the necessity of doing the things that achieve that result. It's one thing to want more fairness in the world, it's another to make that happen. Social justice warriors have no problem with knowing what they want, but their method has, in my opinion, has limited positive effect and serious negative effect.
A little history. The march of social justice has gone at a remarkable rate over the last fifty years. If you were going through your formative years in the 1960's the idea that there would be a black president, gay marriage was a right, and working mothers being the norm you would have been surprised. In the 1980's you could be explicitly racist and elected senator. Unfairness abounds but the movement is strongly in the direction of equality. A consequence of such rapid change is that there are many people who grew up somewhere where everyone agreed that something was right, that are now told by society in general is not only wrong, but very wrong. A good Christian in the 80's would likely think that homosexuality is a sin as described clearly in the Bible, and so would most of the people they knew. Now society says that if they believe that they are vile bigot.
In order to advance fairness you have to get people with power to agree with you. If there is one group with power then by definition you can't make them behave differently. Furthermore, it seems to me that power is a zero sum game, any increase in power for one group means a reduction for another group. To increase social justice you must convince those with power and privilege to give it up with no inherent reward. This is where the goals are no longer enough, a practical method of achieving them is necessary.
The politics of social justice warriors as far as I can tell is identity politics. There are different groups based on race, gender, culture, religion and anything else you can think of. These then are essentially scored on the amount of privilege or oppression they face. So if you are a black person you rank lowest on the privilege score (or native-americans?) on race, and if you are white you score at the top. With the concept of intersectionality you can be in multiple groups simultaneously, so a rich, white, christian man is the pinnacle of privilege and power, while a mentally ill, black, gay, homeless muslim woman is somewhere near the bottom.
As a point of ideology the different groups are inherently equal, there are no biological roots for the circumstances in which people find themselves. For example, the smaller proportion of women who are engineers cannot be because women have biological differences in their brains that make them in general less interested in engineering. It must be because of the influence of culture, and through the prism of identity politics that culture is determined by those with the most power and privilege, white men. This results in the belief that inequality and the problems that arise because of them are predominantly because of white people, particularly men.
So we find ourselves in a situation where the people who are fighting for justice blame those in power for injustice, yet need those in power to change their behavior to their own detriment. The sensible thing to do at that point is to try to find the most efficacious manner to get that to happen. I maintain that yelling at people about how horrible they are, how ignorant they are, and how much better they have it than anyone else is not an effective way to do this. When I agree with the basic principles of your campaign but you tell me that if I'm not part of the solution (i.e. do what they want me to do) I'm part of the problem (i.e. a bigoted member of a racist patriarchy) you piss me off. If you are pissing people off on your side then your chances of changing the minds of people of people not initially supportive has got to be very low.
There are consequences to this, the most glaring being the election of Donald Trump. Trump during his campaign was sexist, racist, bigoted on religion, offensive etc.. He won because of these things, not in spite of them. Clinton said that half of Trump's supporters were "deplorables" because of their bigotry. This is just an example of an unending stream of abuse towards those who hold beliefs that would have been considered standard a few decades ago. Those who elected Trump say that America is being destroyed, taken away by the extreme activist left. They are right. The activist left is campaigning to destroy vital parts of a culture. Religion, identity, morality, relationships, family are all being changed by people outside this group. Just with any culture that is being destroyed it is painful to those undergoing those changes. Tens of millions of people had just had enough and fought back.
What bothers me most is the hatred and intolerance within the progressive movement. If you disagree you cannot just be a person with a different upbringing and different opinions, you are evil. In order to alter the domination of white male voices the method is usually to ignore, dismiss, or exclude those voices. There is indeed a domination of white, male voices but those are the people you want to give up their voices, and they don't have to. It really just comes down to not being horrible to the people whose help you need.
I agree with the views of social justice warriors but hate the way they operate. They are insufferably annoying.
Monday, December 15, 2014
A Calendar of Change
I have now lived in Charlotte for four months. Here is why I like it better than Houston.
A typical week in Houston.
Mon - hang out at home
Tue - hang out at home
Wed - hang out at home
Thu - go to local bar and hang out with 1-3 senior citizens
Fri - hang out at home
Sat - hang out athome
Sun - lunch and beer at a bar
Total number of people other than my wife or I am paying for something, on average, two
A typical week in Charlotte
Mon - hang out at home
Tue - band practice
Wed - hang out at home
Thu - dinner out
Fri - invited out to watch a band
Sat - meet a huge array of people, some of them I know
Sun - take TFOE to The Dog Bar, he and I meet people, some of them people I know.
Total number of people other than my wife or I am paying for something, on average, twenty?
All of this within a ten minute walk from my house. I haven't driven to an event in at least three weeks.
A typical week in Houston.
Mon - hang out at home
Tue - hang out at home
Wed - hang out at home
Thu - go to local bar and hang out with 1-3 senior citizens
Fri - hang out at home
Sat - hang out athome
Sun - lunch and beer at a bar
Total number of people other than my wife or I am paying for something, on average, two
A typical week in Charlotte
Mon - hang out at home
Tue - band practice
Wed - hang out at home
Thu - dinner out
Fri - invited out to watch a band
Sat - meet a huge array of people, some of them I know
Sun - take TFOE to The Dog Bar, he and I meet people, some of them people I know.
Total number of people other than my wife or I am paying for something, on average, twenty?
All of this within a ten minute walk from my house. I haven't driven to an event in at least three weeks.
Saturday, December 13, 2014
Half Of Us Are Morally Repugnant.
I have been told to start writing these again, so here we go.
In the last couple of weeks there have been a couple of unpleasant things in the news, death and torture.
There has been the story of two black men killed by the police with the judicial system not even bringing them to a trial to determine if they had done anything wrong. With a video of one of the men being killed while pleading for his life this is outrageous, or it should be.
The other story is the release of a report on the torture of "detainees" by parts of the USA military/industrial complex. I say military/industrial because some of the "interrogators" were actually private contractors. The findings of the report were that the USA tortured people in sites around the world with an array of techniques from rape to mock executions to simply inflicting pain.
There will be no official, legal consequences of these abhorrent actions. Why? Because the government is responsible and these actions have been taken by organizations that are supposed to be for our safety. The idea is that for our own safety sometimes extreme actions are required, and nasty things happen.
While these actions are deplorable my interest is more in the reaction of the general public. While there are certainly many, many people who are appalled by these events not even remotely close to everyone is. I find this shocking. I'm not shocked that government institutions will do evil things, the record is too extensive and clear. I am shocked that on the most basic of moral questions, whether it is OK or not to kill and torture prisoners, huge quantities of Americans fail to get the right answer.
This disgusting truth is made even worse by the numbers. A quarter of Americans are satisfied or pleased that not one of the policeman who strangled an unarmed man to death has been charged with a crime. Only one quarter of Americans believe torture is never justified.
Talk to a few people who hold these beliefs and the reasons become sadly too easy to understand. The police and the military are respected organizations with authority. These organizations are there to keep us safe. There is widespread fear of a group of people, and importantly these people are "not us" and this fear justifies, as far as I can tell, anything.
A policeman said that his job was to "go home at night," that he had to treat "everyone as a threat" and that if you "don't comply you take your chances." Because the police are scared if you don't do whatever they say when they say it then anything they do, up to and including killing you, is justified. Of course this fear is directed towards the "other", and this "other" is black men, those aged between 15-19 are 21 times more likely to be shot dead by the police than white men of the same age.
At least judicially this default position, and justification, is accepted. Police killed 2,718 people between 2004-2011 and only 41 policemen were even charged, 1.5%. As a point of reference UK police killed nine people during the same period. In the USA if the police kill you it was your fault. In the UK they don't kill you.
The "other" with torture are called terrorists. It doesn't matter that they have not been charged, or convicted, or sentenced in a court to determine whether they are actually terrorists It doesn't matter that if they did the same to us we would be horrified. The US authority has picked them up and they are foreign and Muslim, so anything is acceptable because those people are scary.
I learned this week that half of the people around me are morally repugnant because they are cowards.
In the last couple of weeks there have been a couple of unpleasant things in the news, death and torture.
There has been the story of two black men killed by the police with the judicial system not even bringing them to a trial to determine if they had done anything wrong. With a video of one of the men being killed while pleading for his life this is outrageous, or it should be.
The other story is the release of a report on the torture of "detainees" by parts of the USA military/industrial complex. I say military/industrial because some of the "interrogators" were actually private contractors. The findings of the report were that the USA tortured people in sites around the world with an array of techniques from rape to mock executions to simply inflicting pain.
There will be no official, legal consequences of these abhorrent actions. Why? Because the government is responsible and these actions have been taken by organizations that are supposed to be for our safety. The idea is that for our own safety sometimes extreme actions are required, and nasty things happen.
While these actions are deplorable my interest is more in the reaction of the general public. While there are certainly many, many people who are appalled by these events not even remotely close to everyone is. I find this shocking. I'm not shocked that government institutions will do evil things, the record is too extensive and clear. I am shocked that on the most basic of moral questions, whether it is OK or not to kill and torture prisoners, huge quantities of Americans fail to get the right answer.
This disgusting truth is made even worse by the numbers. A quarter of Americans are satisfied or pleased that not one of the policeman who strangled an unarmed man to death has been charged with a crime. Only one quarter of Americans believe torture is never justified.
Talk to a few people who hold these beliefs and the reasons become sadly too easy to understand. The police and the military are respected organizations with authority. These organizations are there to keep us safe. There is widespread fear of a group of people, and importantly these people are "not us" and this fear justifies, as far as I can tell, anything.
A policeman said that his job was to "go home at night," that he had to treat "everyone as a threat" and that if you "don't comply you take your chances." Because the police are scared if you don't do whatever they say when they say it then anything they do, up to and including killing you, is justified. Of course this fear is directed towards the "other", and this "other" is black men, those aged between 15-19 are 21 times more likely to be shot dead by the police than white men of the same age.
At least judicially this default position, and justification, is accepted. Police killed 2,718 people between 2004-2011 and only 41 policemen were even charged, 1.5%. As a point of reference UK police killed nine people during the same period. In the USA if the police kill you it was your fault. In the UK they don't kill you.
The "other" with torture are called terrorists. It doesn't matter that they have not been charged, or convicted, or sentenced in a court to determine whether they are actually terrorists It doesn't matter that if they did the same to us we would be horrified. The US authority has picked them up and they are foreign and Muslim, so anything is acceptable because those people are scary.
I learned this week that half of the people around me are morally repugnant because they are cowards.
Friday, September 12, 2014
Feeling Unreal
This week has been characterized by a pervasive feeling of unreality, a feeling such that the idea that there is an I experiencing a world is false. This is to such an extent that my writing, "I" is weird, that a more accurate description would be "something." That "something" has essentially all the characteristics of the "I" but without the identification. There is something that is having these ideas and writing them down, and there is an awareness, a consciousness, of these ideas and the act of writing them down, but there is nothing much more than those actions and awareness.
This isn't a complete state, I have a pretty clear intellectual concept of "I" and an emotional state that is best described as, "pleasantly dreamy." I have a concept of an entity continuing on into the future, and am capable of imagining that future, and even am making plans for that imagined future.
In trying to describe a state of mind there is always the difficulty of trying to translate from mind-to-different mind. Each of us experiences the world through a different filter, using different tools to evaluate and arrange our experiences. The best we can do is try to connect common experiences that fit our state as closely as possible and hope that there is a commonality in sensation felt in such an experience.
I felt very much like this a lot of the time as a teenager, particularly at school. A little tired, a little bored, an empty mind in a relaxed body without real needs. Imagine sitting in a conference room in a hotel during the third hour of an all-day training on a subject with which you are pretty familiar. You aren't really required to do much apart from be there. Lassitude ensues. For me, things start to look brighter, as if filled with light. Time somehow disappears.
East and West have different viewpoints on this phenomenon. I am reminded very much of a bit by Alan Watts in which in the West if someone says, "I have realized that I am God" that they lock you up for being insane, while in the East they say, "Congratulations!"
In the West this sensation of unreality is called derealization, and in my case more depersonalization, "It consists of a feeling of watching oneself act, while having no control over a situation.[1] Subjects feel they have changed, and the world has become vague, dreamlike, less real, or lacking in significance" It is described as psychotic, related to stress/trauma, and is part or parcel of a number of psychiatric disorders.
In the East it is described as a realization of the illusion of the ego, and is one of the great goals of spiritual development. In Buddhism it is called Anatta, the perception of "not-self" and is vital to true understanding. The perception that true reality is there is an I for which we must work, and toil, and protect, and desire, and need is in this view the root of suffering. The realization that this perception is a creation of the mind rather than a fundamental reality is something that practitioners of Eastern spiritual disciplines actively try to acquire.
Psychosis/spiritual realization.
Something is feeling quite pleasant in a way that would disturb lots of people.
This isn't a complete state, I have a pretty clear intellectual concept of "I" and an emotional state that is best described as, "pleasantly dreamy." I have a concept of an entity continuing on into the future, and am capable of imagining that future, and even am making plans for that imagined future.
In trying to describe a state of mind there is always the difficulty of trying to translate from mind-to-different mind. Each of us experiences the world through a different filter, using different tools to evaluate and arrange our experiences. The best we can do is try to connect common experiences that fit our state as closely as possible and hope that there is a commonality in sensation felt in such an experience.
I felt very much like this a lot of the time as a teenager, particularly at school. A little tired, a little bored, an empty mind in a relaxed body without real needs. Imagine sitting in a conference room in a hotel during the third hour of an all-day training on a subject with which you are pretty familiar. You aren't really required to do much apart from be there. Lassitude ensues. For me, things start to look brighter, as if filled with light. Time somehow disappears.
East and West have different viewpoints on this phenomenon. I am reminded very much of a bit by Alan Watts in which in the West if someone says, "I have realized that I am God" that they lock you up for being insane, while in the East they say, "Congratulations!"
In the West this sensation of unreality is called derealization, and in my case more depersonalization, "It consists of a feeling of watching oneself act, while having no control over a situation.[1] Subjects feel they have changed, and the world has become vague, dreamlike, less real, or lacking in significance" It is described as psychotic, related to stress/trauma, and is part or parcel of a number of psychiatric disorders.
In the East it is described as a realization of the illusion of the ego, and is one of the great goals of spiritual development. In Buddhism it is called Anatta, the perception of "not-self" and is vital to true understanding. The perception that true reality is there is an I for which we must work, and toil, and protect, and desire, and need is in this view the root of suffering. The realization that this perception is a creation of the mind rather than a fundamental reality is something that practitioners of Eastern spiritual disciplines actively try to acquire.
Psychosis/spiritual realization.
Something is feeling quite pleasant in a way that would disturb lots of people.
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Hey Look At Me!
It's impolite to impress ones needed mental state on others. Therefore this post.
I don't feel that bad, really. I'm more concerned about my wife than I am about myself.
However, I have lost interest in eating food.
I don't really want to do anything.
It took me three minutes to write this line.
I am finding that drinking and smoking pot are mostly what makes me enjoy my situation, and so I do that regularly.
My "sister" (hah! Hugs 'n shit) called me up because she was worried, like an angel, and I was fascinating and helpful.
These are not good signs. That's a list of classic symptoms. But I really don't feel that bad.
a mystery.
The conclusion?
Practice.
One hour later I'm eating a delicious burrito. So ignore all of that.
I don't feel that bad, really. I'm more concerned about my wife than I am about myself.
However, I have lost interest in eating food.
I don't really want to do anything.
It took me three minutes to write this line.
I am finding that drinking and smoking pot are mostly what makes me enjoy my situation, and so I do that regularly.
My "sister" (hah! Hugs 'n shit) called me up because she was worried, like an angel, and I was fascinating and helpful.
These are not good signs. That's a list of classic symptoms. But I really don't feel that bad.
a mystery.
The conclusion?
Practice.
One hour later I'm eating a delicious burrito. So ignore all of that.
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Kicking Chihuahuas
I would like to start off this post with the important fact that even while I have had the opportunity and motive to kick a chihuahua, I have not done so. I do not intend to kick a chihuahua in the future.
Today I imagined kicking a chihuahua. I don't mean that I just had a thought of kicking a chihuahua, I really imagined it. I felt the curve of my foot, keeping the arch stiff, so that your laces drive through the chihuahua, rather than having the energy dissipated through a dampened foot.
I imagined making sure I kept my head down, and over the chihuahua, with a good extension and hip rotation balanced by my left arm's extension and rotation.
I imagined the crunching, flopping failure of the structural integrity of the chihuahua.
The chihuahua is a sort of fawn colour, nice and shiny.
Chihuahuas have no good quality.
They are evil doers.
Today I imagined kicking a chihuahua. I don't mean that I just had a thought of kicking a chihuahua, I really imagined it. I felt the curve of my foot, keeping the arch stiff, so that your laces drive through the chihuahua, rather than having the energy dissipated through a dampened foot.
I imagined making sure I kept my head down, and over the chihuahua, with a good extension and hip rotation balanced by my left arm's extension and rotation.
I imagined the crunching, flopping failure of the structural integrity of the chihuahua.
The chihuahua is a sort of fawn colour, nice and shiny.
Chihuahuas have no good quality.
They are evil doers.
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
mY OFFICIAL pOSITION oN rAPE.
rAPE IS WRONG.
dON'T DO IT
iF YOU SEE PEOPLE DOING IT STOP THEM
iF PEOPLE SAY IT IS ok TELL THEM THEY ARE WRONG
bE CLEAR WHEN YOU DON'T WANT SOMETHING
bELIEVE THEM
cARE FOR THEM
dO BAD THINGS TO THOSE BASTARDS
rEMEMBER THAT THE ONLY WAY TO STOP RAPE IS TO CONVINCE PEOPLE NOT TO DO IT
dON'T PISS OFF YOUR ALLIES
dON'T DO IT
iF YOU SEE PEOPLE DOING IT STOP THEM
iF PEOPLE SAY IT IS ok TELL THEM THEY ARE WRONG
bE CLEAR WHEN YOU DON'T WANT SOMETHING
bELIEVE THEM
cARE FOR THEM
dO BAD THINGS TO THOSE BASTARDS
rEMEMBER THAT THE ONLY WAY TO STOP RAPE IS TO CONVINCE PEOPLE NOT TO DO IT
dON'T PISS OFF YOUR ALLIES
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Morality, Israel and Gaza
This post is prompted by three things, the present news of the war in the Gaza Strip, my wife's passionate interest in the area, and a podcast on the subject by Sam Harris. While horrific in reality the situation also has a macabre fascination in terms of morality. Questions of right and wrong, who is more right or wrong, intention versus effects, the present versus the future, the basic nature of man.
I want to start off by saying pretty much everyone involved is insane. A plan to systematically kill groups of other people is insanity. If one person does it it they are a psychotic serial killer. I don't think getting more people involved should stop that being true.
The best justification you can have for such events is self-defense, that if someone is trying to kill you you can kill them first. However, the problem here is in at what point does self-defense become feasible? In some southern US states that can happen if you feel threatened. The US government pre-emptively assassinates people with robots who associate with people who are parts of organizations who have killed people. This is justified legally as an "imminent threat to the USA." Something over 200 people are murdered in the city in which I live, Houston, each year. That's 0.01 percent of the population, one in every 10,000. That's ten times higher than the proportion of Americans killed in the 9/11/2001 attacks, would it then be legitimate self-defense for me to defend myself by killing as many of the Houstonians I feel might threaten me?
Self-defense as a moral argument only works when there is certainty. Someone must be attacking you before you can legitimately defend yourself. This is because if it simply requires you believing that they have the capacity to attack you, then clearly you have the capacity of attacking them, and therefore they can legitimately attack you. There are a lot of people who don't get that, and a lot of the world's wars have been fought by two sides acting in "self-defense." If having the capability and willingness under certain circumstances to fight and kill your people is a legitimate reason for attacking them in "self-defense" then every country in the world has a legitimate reason for attacking any other country with a military, as in almost every country.
Here's what I think about self-defense, and it's not weird because it's a common legal concept. I believe in minimum necessary force. If you can run away, you should. If you can disarm the person you should. If you can incapacitate someone you should. You should only kill someone if they are killing you, or something equally horrendous. This is a more aggressive moral stance than that of the founders of two of the larger religions in the world, Christianity and Buddhism.
So, the only way that the people in Israel and Palestine are not criminally insane in my book is if they are killing people who are in the act of trying to kill them, in the very act. At the moment Hamas is trying to kill any Israelis they can hit with rockets. The Israelis claim to be trying to stop this, acting in self-defense, by trying to kill those shooting the rockets.
Sam Harris' position in his podcast is that the side with the moral high ground is the one whose intention is the less evil. He says that Hamas has a political document that proposes the genocidal killing of all Jews on the planet. This is as evil as you can get. He says that Israel would live in peace with its neighbors if they would do the same. He says that you can tell that Israel's intentions are less evil because they basically have the ability to commit genocide with regard to the Palestinians but have not done so. Therefore, in terms of moral intentions, the Israeli's are more moral. Should you accept these proposals as true (and as enormously broad generalizations I do) then I agree with his point. Yay! Israel more moral!
But wait. Israel, in its actions of self defense has killed somewhere between 25 and 70 times as many Palestinians as Palestinians have killed Israelis depending at what point in the war you are counting. If you care about the separation between combatants and civilians (I waffle on this one) then (at last count) 5% of Israeli deaths were civilians, and at least 25% of those in Gaza.
So, the moral high ground of Israel was based on their intentions to stop their people being killed by selectively killing those attacking them, while Hamas was indiscriminately trying to kill any Israeli they could. The facts of reality are that Israelis are killing more people, and more indiscriminately, than Hamas. The results of the Israeli morality are worse than the results of the Hamas morality. I think what happens is more important than what people want to happen. I think not wanting to hurt anybody but spraying machine gun fire around for fun is worse than deliberately punching someone in the face.
I go back to the idea of minimum necessary force. Since the start of the Hamas rocket fire barrage six weeks ago two Israeli civilians have been killed. If you kept that rate up constantly, year by year, you would have less than twenty deaths a year. This is slightly less than the average number of accidental gun deaths a year over the last decade. Israelis kill themselves accidentally with weapons at the same rate as Hamas was managing to kill them with their rockets. If you go by terms of population, my chances of being murdered in Houston is 40 times higher than the chance of an Israeli civilian being killed by Hamas rockets, if they get to fire year round. Essentially Hamas rocket fire is a statistically irrelevant factor in the safety of Israel. The minimum necessary force against such attacks should be proportionately less than for ladders.
If you look at the history of the conflict in Israel after the British left (what a monumental cock-up that was) there was no "they started it." Both sides started trying to kill each from the get-go. Essentially the Jews were just better at it than the Muslims, and have been ever since. I believe that having greater capability means that you have greater responsibility. It matters whether you have a tennis ball or a hand grenade when throwing things at each other. The danger of your actions, the misery it causes, how much damage you do matters. Israelis have the capacity to decide on a moral basis how many Palestinians they wish to kill as a response to something less dangerous than me walking around my city, ranging from zero to all of them.
At a minimum it seems to me that if you kill more people than are killed on your side then you value the lives of your people more than you value the lives of people on the other side. This is completely, utterly standard for humanity. It is also basically a definition of bigotry. If you look at the facts of the situation it seems as though Israel values an Israeli at about 50 people from Gaza. How appalling. What might be worse is that Hamas are still fighting, and apparently value the lives of their own people at a lower rate.
It seems undeniable to me that the group with the greatest control over how much harm is done are the ones doing the most indiscriminate harm. The other side has worse intentions, which ain't easy, but don't have the capability to do as much harm, and strangely value their own citizens' lives less than anyone else. Then there are the ones who don't want sides, and they are getting killed anyway.
So, in the great moral question of the Israel and Gaza situation the answer is that both sides are bigoted, violent, insane bastards.
I want to start off by saying pretty much everyone involved is insane. A plan to systematically kill groups of other people is insanity. If one person does it it they are a psychotic serial killer. I don't think getting more people involved should stop that being true.
The best justification you can have for such events is self-defense, that if someone is trying to kill you you can kill them first. However, the problem here is in at what point does self-defense become feasible? In some southern US states that can happen if you feel threatened. The US government pre-emptively assassinates people with robots who associate with people who are parts of organizations who have killed people. This is justified legally as an "imminent threat to the USA." Something over 200 people are murdered in the city in which I live, Houston, each year. That's 0.01 percent of the population, one in every 10,000. That's ten times higher than the proportion of Americans killed in the 9/11/2001 attacks, would it then be legitimate self-defense for me to defend myself by killing as many of the Houstonians I feel might threaten me?
Self-defense as a moral argument only works when there is certainty. Someone must be attacking you before you can legitimately defend yourself. This is because if it simply requires you believing that they have the capacity to attack you, then clearly you have the capacity of attacking them, and therefore they can legitimately attack you. There are a lot of people who don't get that, and a lot of the world's wars have been fought by two sides acting in "self-defense." If having the capability and willingness under certain circumstances to fight and kill your people is a legitimate reason for attacking them in "self-defense" then every country in the world has a legitimate reason for attacking any other country with a military, as in almost every country.
Here's what I think about self-defense, and it's not weird because it's a common legal concept. I believe in minimum necessary force. If you can run away, you should. If you can disarm the person you should. If you can incapacitate someone you should. You should only kill someone if they are killing you, or something equally horrendous. This is a more aggressive moral stance than that of the founders of two of the larger religions in the world, Christianity and Buddhism.
So, the only way that the people in Israel and Palestine are not criminally insane in my book is if they are killing people who are in the act of trying to kill them, in the very act. At the moment Hamas is trying to kill any Israelis they can hit with rockets. The Israelis claim to be trying to stop this, acting in self-defense, by trying to kill those shooting the rockets.
Sam Harris' position in his podcast is that the side with the moral high ground is the one whose intention is the less evil. He says that Hamas has a political document that proposes the genocidal killing of all Jews on the planet. This is as evil as you can get. He says that Israel would live in peace with its neighbors if they would do the same. He says that you can tell that Israel's intentions are less evil because they basically have the ability to commit genocide with regard to the Palestinians but have not done so. Therefore, in terms of moral intentions, the Israeli's are more moral. Should you accept these proposals as true (and as enormously broad generalizations I do) then I agree with his point. Yay! Israel more moral!
But wait. Israel, in its actions of self defense has killed somewhere between 25 and 70 times as many Palestinians as Palestinians have killed Israelis depending at what point in the war you are counting. If you care about the separation between combatants and civilians (I waffle on this one) then (at last count) 5% of Israeli deaths were civilians, and at least 25% of those in Gaza.
So, the moral high ground of Israel was based on their intentions to stop their people being killed by selectively killing those attacking them, while Hamas was indiscriminately trying to kill any Israeli they could. The facts of reality are that Israelis are killing more people, and more indiscriminately, than Hamas. The results of the Israeli morality are worse than the results of the Hamas morality. I think what happens is more important than what people want to happen. I think not wanting to hurt anybody but spraying machine gun fire around for fun is worse than deliberately punching someone in the face.
I go back to the idea of minimum necessary force. Since the start of the Hamas rocket fire barrage six weeks ago two Israeli civilians have been killed. If you kept that rate up constantly, year by year, you would have less than twenty deaths a year. This is slightly less than the average number of accidental gun deaths a year over the last decade. Israelis kill themselves accidentally with weapons at the same rate as Hamas was managing to kill them with their rockets. If you go by terms of population, my chances of being murdered in Houston is 40 times higher than the chance of an Israeli civilian being killed by Hamas rockets, if they get to fire year round. Essentially Hamas rocket fire is a statistically irrelevant factor in the safety of Israel. The minimum necessary force against such attacks should be proportionately less than for ladders.
If you look at the history of the conflict in Israel after the British left (what a monumental cock-up that was) there was no "they started it." Both sides started trying to kill each from the get-go. Essentially the Jews were just better at it than the Muslims, and have been ever since. I believe that having greater capability means that you have greater responsibility. It matters whether you have a tennis ball or a hand grenade when throwing things at each other. The danger of your actions, the misery it causes, how much damage you do matters. Israelis have the capacity to decide on a moral basis how many Palestinians they wish to kill as a response to something less dangerous than me walking around my city, ranging from zero to all of them.
At a minimum it seems to me that if you kill more people than are killed on your side then you value the lives of your people more than you value the lives of people on the other side. This is completely, utterly standard for humanity. It is also basically a definition of bigotry. If you look at the facts of the situation it seems as though Israel values an Israeli at about 50 people from Gaza. How appalling. What might be worse is that Hamas are still fighting, and apparently value the lives of their own people at a lower rate.
It seems undeniable to me that the group with the greatest control over how much harm is done are the ones doing the most indiscriminate harm. The other side has worse intentions, which ain't easy, but don't have the capability to do as much harm, and strangely value their own citizens' lives less than anyone else. Then there are the ones who don't want sides, and they are getting killed anyway.
So, in the great moral question of the Israel and Gaza situation the answer is that both sides are bigoted, violent, insane bastards.
Monday, June 23, 2014
Chapter 15
Scene one. A hallway. Willis, an unremarkable young man, enters from stage left, peering anxiously over his shoulder. He hears women's voices from off stage left. With a look of panic he scampers to exit stage right.
Enter five women, Jo, Leslie, Emily, Abigail, and Kathy, drunk, passing a bottle half full of a virulently pink liquid.
Kathy "Where's he got to then?"
Leslie "I don't know, do I? I just saw some lad sneak off through that door we just come through."
Kathy "Well, he ain't here, is he?"
Kathy and Leslie look around, Abigail dry heaves, Jo and Emily wrestle over the bottle.
Leslie "Nope, he ain't."
Abigail "Wooooo!!! Yeah!! Come and get it boys!"
Emily "Come on Jozzers, give me some of that you tight slag."
Jo "Piss off and get your own. Yer always splongin'"
Emily "Splongin! Yers wasted."
Jo "Bugger you all, I'm off to the pub." Jo exits stage right
Abigail "Pub! Yeah! Wooooooo!"
Leslie "Right, the pub. He's bound to be in the pub."
Kathy "Why's that then Lezzers?"
Leslie "'Cos he's a man right, stands to reason."
Kathy "Oh, right. Where's the bloody pub then?"
Emily "Wasn't there one around here? The Wangled Podger or something."
Abigail "Wooo! Addled Prophet!"
Kathy "So where is it?"
Emily "Jozzers went that way, she's a bloody bloodhound for pubs."
Kathy "Right. OK. Let's find Jozzers, that blokes not getting away, he had the hots for me and I ain't waiting another week. I'm dry as a desert.
Abigail falls. Exeunt all stage right, Abigail crawling.
Scene two. The Addled Prophet. Painted white with garlands of flowers hanging from the walls. A small dais center stage. HFWOBC is seated on a cushion on the dais. Around him are Ughrit, Landlord, and various bandits/patrons sitting on the floor.
HFWOBC "...so it seems to me that it would be easier if we just shared a bit more of our stuff with people who need it. I have found that people are very helpful if you....."
Enter Jo.
Jo "Oy! Is this the pub? Oy! I said, 'is this the pub?'"
Landlord "Yes madam, this is the Addled Prophet. If you will just take a seat I will be with you directly."
Jo "Gis us a pint of something, with an elephant. No, an unbrella. Umbrella."
Landlord "Yes madam, in just a moment. I just need to hear a bit more and then I will be right with you.
HFWOBC "Ah yes, where was I? Oh right. In my experience people are quite willing to help out when you just ask nicely."
Ughrit "The thing is Master, that most people are utter bastards around the rest of us, it's just different around you. I was what you might call a professional bastard, a right evil bugger, but then I.."
Jo "Are you sure this is a pub? Looks like a temple or something."
HFWOBC "You keep saying that Ughrit but there's nothing special about.."
Jo "Oy! I asked you a question. And where's my drink? You lot are bleedin' chovvernisticalls."
Landlord "Sorry chaps, I'll be right back. What will it be madam?"
Jo "Toldja, pint of umbrella."
Landlord "Certainly madam. Coming right up."
HFWOBC "What were you saying again Ughrit?
Ughrit "I was saying? Oh, yes. I was saying that it's different around you, people just are nicer."
HFWOBC "Well, Ughrit, I don't see how there's anything about me that's special, perhaps if we are all just a bit nicer than everyone will be..."
Enter Emily, Kathy, Leslie, and Abigail, loudly.
Emily "Here it is. Wait, is this a pub?"
Jo "Yeah, is Apple Moffit."
Landlord "Welcome to The Addled Prophet ladies. Can I help you?"
Abigail "Oooooooo. He's a big one."
Leslie "Jozzers, what are you drinking?"
Jo "Elephant. Pint."
Leslie "Good on ya. We'll have six then guvnor."
HFWOBC "So what we need to do is just trust each other a little more and then it seems to me that.."
Kathy "Who's the foreign fella?"
Landlord 'Well, he's.."
Kathy "Is he a mime? I love mimes. I think. Hey Lezzers, do I like mimes?"
Leslie "No, you bleedin' hate them."
Kathy "That's a shame then. He seems a bit cuddly to me. Like a pony."
Abigail "Wooooo! Foreign meat!"
Jo "Spicy."
Emily "So what's going on with the decor then?"
Landlord "Well, you know how it is. We just kind of felt that it needed a change, something a little more serene, a bit more uplifting than a pub."
Emily "Our Kaff's lookin' for something a bit more uplifting too."
Jo "Yeah, like them skirts. Although it don't take much."
Kathy "You cow! Anyway, that reminds me, is he in here?"
Kathy, Leslie, and Jo look around the pub. Abigail falls down and crawls towards the dais.
Emily "Uplifting eh? Seems a bit religious to me. Like this elephant is a bit naughty. I never did like the temple, I always needed a wee."
Jo "Kaffs, there he is, in the corner."
Kathy "Lovely one Jozzers. Ooh look at him in the corner pretending not to see me. I like the shy ones."
Leslie "And the loud ones."
Emily "And the tall ones."
Abigail "Foreign meat!"
Kathy "Cooey, I see you there loverboy. No need to act all shy."
Willis "Madam, I have told you before, I am engaged to be married."
Kathy "That don't bother me my darling. It'll be like I'm breaking you in for her. If you think about it she should be thanking me. All the rest of her life with someone who can't find the bucket in the dark. That's a tragedy, that is.
Willis "Madam, please!"
Kathy "Well, since you asked so nicely I'm willing to play along. A madam eh? I don't think I've done that one yet."
Kathy lurches over towards Willis, leering and cupping her hand as though squeezing a bunch of grapes. Abigail crawls on to the dais and puts her head in HFWOBC's lap.
Abigail "I like you. You have a nice head."
HFWOBC "I like you too."
Emily "What's in these elephants then?"
Curtain.
Enter five women, Jo, Leslie, Emily, Abigail, and Kathy, drunk, passing a bottle half full of a virulently pink liquid.
Kathy "Where's he got to then?"
Leslie "I don't know, do I? I just saw some lad sneak off through that door we just come through."
Kathy "Well, he ain't here, is he?"
Kathy and Leslie look around, Abigail dry heaves, Jo and Emily wrestle over the bottle.
Leslie "Nope, he ain't."
Abigail "Wooooo!!! Yeah!! Come and get it boys!"
Emily "Come on Jozzers, give me some of that you tight slag."
Jo "Piss off and get your own. Yer always splongin'"
Emily "Splongin! Yers wasted."
Jo "Bugger you all, I'm off to the pub." Jo exits stage right
Abigail "Pub! Yeah! Wooooooo!"
Leslie "Right, the pub. He's bound to be in the pub."
Kathy "Why's that then Lezzers?"
Leslie "'Cos he's a man right, stands to reason."
Kathy "Oh, right. Where's the bloody pub then?"
Emily "Wasn't there one around here? The Wangled Podger or something."
Abigail "Wooo! Addled Prophet!"
Kathy "So where is it?"
Emily "Jozzers went that way, she's a bloody bloodhound for pubs."
Kathy "Right. OK. Let's find Jozzers, that blokes not getting away, he had the hots for me and I ain't waiting another week. I'm dry as a desert.
Abigail falls. Exeunt all stage right, Abigail crawling.
Scene two. The Addled Prophet. Painted white with garlands of flowers hanging from the walls. A small dais center stage. HFWOBC is seated on a cushion on the dais. Around him are Ughrit, Landlord, and various bandits/patrons sitting on the floor.
HFWOBC "...so it seems to me that it would be easier if we just shared a bit more of our stuff with people who need it. I have found that people are very helpful if you....."
Enter Jo.
Jo "Oy! Is this the pub? Oy! I said, 'is this the pub?'"
Landlord "Yes madam, this is the Addled Prophet. If you will just take a seat I will be with you directly."
Jo "Gis us a pint of something, with an elephant. No, an unbrella. Umbrella."
Landlord "Yes madam, in just a moment. I just need to hear a bit more and then I will be right with you.
HFWOBC "Ah yes, where was I? Oh right. In my experience people are quite willing to help out when you just ask nicely."
Ughrit "The thing is Master, that most people are utter bastards around the rest of us, it's just different around you. I was what you might call a professional bastard, a right evil bugger, but then I.."
Jo "Are you sure this is a pub? Looks like a temple or something."
HFWOBC "You keep saying that Ughrit but there's nothing special about.."
Jo "Oy! I asked you a question. And where's my drink? You lot are bleedin' chovvernisticalls."
Landlord "Sorry chaps, I'll be right back. What will it be madam?"
Jo "Toldja, pint of umbrella."
Landlord "Certainly madam. Coming right up."
HFWOBC "What were you saying again Ughrit?
Ughrit "I was saying? Oh, yes. I was saying that it's different around you, people just are nicer."
HFWOBC "Well, Ughrit, I don't see how there's anything about me that's special, perhaps if we are all just a bit nicer than everyone will be..."
Enter Emily, Kathy, Leslie, and Abigail, loudly.
Emily "Here it is. Wait, is this a pub?"
Jo "Yeah, is Apple Moffit."
Landlord "Welcome to The Addled Prophet ladies. Can I help you?"
Abigail "Oooooooo. He's a big one."
Leslie "Jozzers, what are you drinking?"
Jo "Elephant. Pint."
Leslie "Good on ya. We'll have six then guvnor."
HFWOBC "So what we need to do is just trust each other a little more and then it seems to me that.."
Kathy "Who's the foreign fella?"
Landlord 'Well, he's.."
Kathy "Is he a mime? I love mimes. I think. Hey Lezzers, do I like mimes?"
Leslie "No, you bleedin' hate them."
Kathy "That's a shame then. He seems a bit cuddly to me. Like a pony."
Abigail "Wooooo! Foreign meat!"
Jo "Spicy."
Emily "So what's going on with the decor then?"
Landlord "Well, you know how it is. We just kind of felt that it needed a change, something a little more serene, a bit more uplifting than a pub."
Emily "Our Kaff's lookin' for something a bit more uplifting too."
Jo "Yeah, like them skirts. Although it don't take much."
Kathy "You cow! Anyway, that reminds me, is he in here?"
Kathy, Leslie, and Jo look around the pub. Abigail falls down and crawls towards the dais.
Emily "Uplifting eh? Seems a bit religious to me. Like this elephant is a bit naughty. I never did like the temple, I always needed a wee."
Jo "Kaffs, there he is, in the corner."
Kathy "Lovely one Jozzers. Ooh look at him in the corner pretending not to see me. I like the shy ones."
Leslie "And the loud ones."
Emily "And the tall ones."
Abigail "Foreign meat!"
Kathy "Cooey, I see you there loverboy. No need to act all shy."
Willis "Madam, I have told you before, I am engaged to be married."
Kathy "That don't bother me my darling. It'll be like I'm breaking you in for her. If you think about it she should be thanking me. All the rest of her life with someone who can't find the bucket in the dark. That's a tragedy, that is.
Willis "Madam, please!"
Kathy "Well, since you asked so nicely I'm willing to play along. A madam eh? I don't think I've done that one yet."
Kathy lurches over towards Willis, leering and cupping her hand as though squeezing a bunch of grapes. Abigail crawls on to the dais and puts her head in HFWOBC's lap.
Abigail "I like you. You have a nice head."
HFWOBC "I like you too."
Emily "What's in these elephants then?"
Curtain.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
The Move
To the great delight of everyone who knows us my darling wife got a new job a little over a year ago. This meant escape from the fetid hellhole that is Ibedrola Renewables. She giggled for weeks. The new job was about thirty miles away, and thirty miles on Houston freeways at rush hour(s) takes a long, arduous time. Since we are not fans of the nice suburban neighborhood in which we have our house it all made sense to move.
So, we have rented a house while we prepare our house for sale. This means that at present we are both renting a house, paying a mortgage, and also paying to fix the house we own, but don't live in. Money is gushing down the gutters. This means that when the house is ready we need it to sell pretty quickly. In order to facilitate this I got a house inspection done so that we could fix up the problems that might be found in an inspection for a sale.
I was lucky enough to find an excellent inspector who proceeded to find quite a few more problems than expected. Damp and rot, electrical problems, flashing, structural issues, heating/air conditioning. Basically something like $10,000 worth of work. This is pretty astonishing as we had already put in something like $15,000 into fixing problems. Anyway, work starts today to get that fixed up and we should be able to put the house up for sale in April. My darling wife informs me that the average time for a house in the area to be on the market is less than a month. We may be free by my birthday in May.
My darling wife goes to work, and I am very appreciative of that. I do the other stuff, and at times like this she is very appreciative of that. My task was to find a house for rent, that took a giant dog, that was close to her work, that we could afford while also paying a mortgage, in a neighborhood where we wouldn't be killed and eaten (that neighborhood is about ten miles due east). The internet is wonderful for such things and I found this house, in which I am sitting now. I called in the first few hours of it being listed, the broker looked at a married, white couple who owned a house and the rental house was off the list. That's what privilege means.
The next step was to get my darling wife into the new place with the leas disturbance possible, that is essentially my job. She has done very well in telling me that it was great to leave one house in the morning and go home to a new house in the evening with all the necessary stuff already there and set up. I still do a couple of trips a week up to the old house to get even more of the junk we own. I still plan on giving away or trashing about a third of the things we own. A great deal of stuff is still in the boxes used to transport them from Portland.
The new house is a bit strange in some ways. The neighborhood must have been an aspirational middle-class place since it surrounds a golf course, but that was forty years ago. The house is shabby, stained, aged, incompetently maintained. We live right on the edge of the residential portion, right up against a pretty big road. Over the fence I can see a Whataburger, a thrift store, a pharmacy and a halal Mediterranean (sorry, I had to stop and drool for a moment) place. I can walk to things! Although I do have to cross four lanes of city traffic.
The yard is huge and fenced and also shaded by huge trees. Once the constant traffic slips away from the forefront of your mind it is really very pleasant, and the pets already love it. There is a sense of a retreat within the middle of everything. There is intense busyness just a few steps away, but I can read a book in the sunshine by myself.
We have found two perfectly adequate English pubs, one of which we can reach on bikes and possibly survive the trip. We have watched rugby in a packed pub full of genuine British and Irish people. We apparently live right by Chinatown and so I am starting the arduous task of working my way through all of the restaurants. There is an enormous amount of things to do close by. There's even a bus stop right by our house.
What is important? What you feel. The two of us have had a difficult time recently. I think the worry over the move, money, cocking everything up had a knock-on effect with my bipolar and I had a more extreme case of what I call "the wobbles" with short, sharp shocks of depression with the accompanying feelings of being useless. For my lovely, darling, super-wonderful wife it is February. Before February came November, December and January, and while being this far south is helpful that is still a bad situation for her.
This post was originally started in early February and I would say that the only things that have happened in the meantime is an increased cheerfulness as a result of things getting done on the house we own and the passing of the seasons, and still no real friends down here. There's a lot of me that is putting off things until our house is sold, which isn't really sensible other than me rationing the amount of emotional energy I am putting into everything.
It's the most beautiful time of the year here in Texas, the blossoms are out, the temperatures are getting to the perfect setting as we are starting to get sunny days at 75 degrees. I have a certain amount of monkish calm about the situation, things are moving in the right direction. Sometime this summer we will be renting a house in an exciting neighborhood (the gunshots in the middle of the night seem to be recreational (seriously)) with enough money for us to feel easy, a strong marriage (how I love her) and the ability to leave Texas should we wish to.
I mayeven start posting on this blog again.
So, we have rented a house while we prepare our house for sale. This means that at present we are both renting a house, paying a mortgage, and also paying to fix the house we own, but don't live in. Money is gushing down the gutters. This means that when the house is ready we need it to sell pretty quickly. In order to facilitate this I got a house inspection done so that we could fix up the problems that might be found in an inspection for a sale.
I was lucky enough to find an excellent inspector who proceeded to find quite a few more problems than expected. Damp and rot, electrical problems, flashing, structural issues, heating/air conditioning. Basically something like $10,000 worth of work. This is pretty astonishing as we had already put in something like $15,000 into fixing problems. Anyway, work starts today to get that fixed up and we should be able to put the house up for sale in April. My darling wife informs me that the average time for a house in the area to be on the market is less than a month. We may be free by my birthday in May.
My darling wife goes to work, and I am very appreciative of that. I do the other stuff, and at times like this she is very appreciative of that. My task was to find a house for rent, that took a giant dog, that was close to her work, that we could afford while also paying a mortgage, in a neighborhood where we wouldn't be killed and eaten (that neighborhood is about ten miles due east). The internet is wonderful for such things and I found this house, in which I am sitting now. I called in the first few hours of it being listed, the broker looked at a married, white couple who owned a house and the rental house was off the list. That's what privilege means.
The next step was to get my darling wife into the new place with the leas disturbance possible, that is essentially my job. She has done very well in telling me that it was great to leave one house in the morning and go home to a new house in the evening with all the necessary stuff already there and set up. I still do a couple of trips a week up to the old house to get even more of the junk we own. I still plan on giving away or trashing about a third of the things we own. A great deal of stuff is still in the boxes used to transport them from Portland.
The new house is a bit strange in some ways. The neighborhood must have been an aspirational middle-class place since it surrounds a golf course, but that was forty years ago. The house is shabby, stained, aged, incompetently maintained. We live right on the edge of the residential portion, right up against a pretty big road. Over the fence I can see a Whataburger, a thrift store, a pharmacy and a halal Mediterranean (sorry, I had to stop and drool for a moment) place. I can walk to things! Although I do have to cross four lanes of city traffic.
The yard is huge and fenced and also shaded by huge trees. Once the constant traffic slips away from the forefront of your mind it is really very pleasant, and the pets already love it. There is a sense of a retreat within the middle of everything. There is intense busyness just a few steps away, but I can read a book in the sunshine by myself.
We have found two perfectly adequate English pubs, one of which we can reach on bikes and possibly survive the trip. We have watched rugby in a packed pub full of genuine British and Irish people. We apparently live right by Chinatown and so I am starting the arduous task of working my way through all of the restaurants. There is an enormous amount of things to do close by. There's even a bus stop right by our house.
What is important? What you feel. The two of us have had a difficult time recently. I think the worry over the move, money, cocking everything up had a knock-on effect with my bipolar and I had a more extreme case of what I call "the wobbles" with short, sharp shocks of depression with the accompanying feelings of being useless. For my lovely, darling, super-wonderful wife it is February. Before February came November, December and January, and while being this far south is helpful that is still a bad situation for her.
This post was originally started in early February and I would say that the only things that have happened in the meantime is an increased cheerfulness as a result of things getting done on the house we own and the passing of the seasons, and still no real friends down here. There's a lot of me that is putting off things until our house is sold, which isn't really sensible other than me rationing the amount of emotional energy I am putting into everything.
It's the most beautiful time of the year here in Texas, the blossoms are out, the temperatures are getting to the perfect setting as we are starting to get sunny days at 75 degrees. I have a certain amount of monkish calm about the situation, things are moving in the right direction. Sometime this summer we will be renting a house in an exciting neighborhood (the gunshots in the middle of the night seem to be recreational (seriously)) with enough money for us to feel easy, a strong marriage (how I love her) and the ability to leave Texas should we wish to.
I mayeven start posting on this blog again.
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Religious Trends in the USA
A new Harris Poll on religious belief in the USA has just been published. It asks a good number of general questions about belief and some specifics, particularly with regard to Christianity. It's an interesting, easy-to-read article about perhaps the most important cultural aspect in the USA.
I wrote a little post on religious trends, essentially saying that religion is moving from hierarchical systems to individual belief, that it has been doing so for some time, and that the fastest growing section was what I called "Spiritual but not religious" which I consider very useful nonsense.
This Harris poll is the most up-to-date, concrete evidence of what is happening with religious belief in the USA and it has the added advantage of showing the change in percentages over a ten year period so that we can extrapolate trends.
The summary of the report can be that basically people are getting less religious. There are more Atheists, more people uncertain about the existence of God, less certainty over what God wants, a reduction in those who believe God acts on Earth. The USA is becoming less religious.
That the USA is becoming less religious isn't a surprise to me the surprise to me is the rate of change, and what seems to be an increasing rate. In eight years the percentage of respondents who reported that they believed in God dropped by eight percentage points. The number of Atheists (certain there is no God) more than doubled in ten years, from four to nine percent of the population. These are huge demographic changes. Interestingly the only group that expressed a belief in God that grew was the ones who said they were "somewhat certain there is a God", which would be the people I would peg in the spiritual but not religious area.
The reason that I think there will be an increase in the rate of the increase in disbelief is largely based on demographics, younger people believe at a substantially lower rate than older people. The drops in rates of belief get larger between each age group, so the difference in rates of belief between 25 year olds and 40 year olds is greater than the difference between 40 year olds and 55 year olds.
Don't get me wrong, the USA is still a very religious country in comparison to other industrialized nations with two thirds of young people still believing in God (in some manner). There is still one third of the population who think the Bible is entirely the Word of God. About two thirds still believe in some form of magic (miracles, the soul, witchcraft etc..)
There are two ideas that I really want to get across. The first is that if the change in belief happens over the next decade at the same rate as the last decade then the numbers of people in the USA who think there isn't, or probably isn't, a god will be about fifty percent, the same number as think that there is a god. The second is that according to this poll less than one third of Americans think God controls what happens on the Earth.
I wrote a little post on religious trends, essentially saying that religion is moving from hierarchical systems to individual belief, that it has been doing so for some time, and that the fastest growing section was what I called "Spiritual but not religious" which I consider very useful nonsense.
This Harris poll is the most up-to-date, concrete evidence of what is happening with religious belief in the USA and it has the added advantage of showing the change in percentages over a ten year period so that we can extrapolate trends.
The summary of the report can be that basically people are getting less religious. There are more Atheists, more people uncertain about the existence of God, less certainty over what God wants, a reduction in those who believe God acts on Earth. The USA is becoming less religious.
That the USA is becoming less religious isn't a surprise to me the surprise to me is the rate of change, and what seems to be an increasing rate. In eight years the percentage of respondents who reported that they believed in God dropped by eight percentage points. The number of Atheists (certain there is no God) more than doubled in ten years, from four to nine percent of the population. These are huge demographic changes. Interestingly the only group that expressed a belief in God that grew was the ones who said they were "somewhat certain there is a God", which would be the people I would peg in the spiritual but not religious area.
The reason that I think there will be an increase in the rate of the increase in disbelief is largely based on demographics, younger people believe at a substantially lower rate than older people. The drops in rates of belief get larger between each age group, so the difference in rates of belief between 25 year olds and 40 year olds is greater than the difference between 40 year olds and 55 year olds.
Don't get me wrong, the USA is still a very religious country in comparison to other industrialized nations with two thirds of young people still believing in God (in some manner). There is still one third of the population who think the Bible is entirely the Word of God. About two thirds still believe in some form of magic (miracles, the soul, witchcraft etc..)
There are two ideas that I really want to get across. The first is that if the change in belief happens over the next decade at the same rate as the last decade then the numbers of people in the USA who think there isn't, or probably isn't, a god will be about fifty percent, the same number as think that there is a god. The second is that according to this poll less than one third of Americans think God controls what happens on the Earth.
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Curmudgeon Progress
In my long term quest to become a curmudgeon worth talking to there are certain milestones hat signal progress. I have just realized that I have already passed one of these milestones.
The milestone in question is the classic, "things didn't cost as much in my day!"
It is impossible for anyone who wishes to enjoy life to constantly update the full repertoire of our knowledge of pricing, and so we tend to develop a rough guide. Most of us know that a gallon of milk is closer to $5 than $15, but few of us know how much it is to the dime. It is extremely hard to change one's understanding of the price of goods in the gaps between actually purchasing the goods. As I have said before, the environment in which humans largely evolved was, in comparison with today, extremely static The value of a tool was simply the value of that tool for someone's entire (probably short) life. The increase in the price of items is not something that is naturally understood by most people.
Prices go up, and they go up almost constantly, and actually quite consistently since about 1970. This doesn't mean that everyone keeps getting poorer (actually, over the forty year period I mentioned above it's slightly the other way) because income increases as well. What it all comes down to is the terrifying subtlety of compound interest. You barely notice a 3% change in prices year-to-year, but you multiply that 3% over a while and the change is huge. Prices double about every twenty years. For me, twenty years ago was 1993, and that's when I really started working properly and taking care of myself entirely. That is the point where my basic understanding of prices started.
I have just noticed that I find almost everything shockingly expensive. $7 for a Big Mac Meal? I remember when it passed the $3 mark (when I actually ate them). $50 jeans? I remember when Gap jeans were cool AND cost $30. I go grocery shopping, and while I understand that I am shopping for two, and I buy nicer things than when I worked on a direct care workers wage, I still spend more than four times as much each visit. While I have thought of myself as rich, after all our income is such a bigger number than we have had before, it still seems that we should be getting further than we are.
What I am now trying to do is recalibrate all of my price and wage intuitions with updated information, simply based on a rough 20 year/double amount basis. I am not sure that will make me feel substantially less rich, but it will remove a fair amount of my frustration at what things cost.
My first full time job paid me $16,400 a year. Now that would be about $30,000. I was not well off but I could afford a used car, an apartment, food, and um cheap beer for entertainment. At the time $30,000 would have been easy-street. So, I have to understand that $20,000 a year is poor (for the USA), and $100,000 is not obscenely wealthy but rather upper-middle class. The most money I ever made was $30,000, roughly ten years ago. That would have been the equivalent of $23,000 in 1993 and $40,000 today. That was a really good wage for social work, about twice the official poverty line.
The upshot of all of this is that either everything costs twice as much as it should, or my wife makes half as much as I thought.
The milestone in question is the classic, "things didn't cost as much in my day!"
It is impossible for anyone who wishes to enjoy life to constantly update the full repertoire of our knowledge of pricing, and so we tend to develop a rough guide. Most of us know that a gallon of milk is closer to $5 than $15, but few of us know how much it is to the dime. It is extremely hard to change one's understanding of the price of goods in the gaps between actually purchasing the goods. As I have said before, the environment in which humans largely evolved was, in comparison with today, extremely static The value of a tool was simply the value of that tool for someone's entire (probably short) life. The increase in the price of items is not something that is naturally understood by most people.
Prices go up, and they go up almost constantly, and actually quite consistently since about 1970. This doesn't mean that everyone keeps getting poorer (actually, over the forty year period I mentioned above it's slightly the other way) because income increases as well. What it all comes down to is the terrifying subtlety of compound interest. You barely notice a 3% change in prices year-to-year, but you multiply that 3% over a while and the change is huge. Prices double about every twenty years. For me, twenty years ago was 1993, and that's when I really started working properly and taking care of myself entirely. That is the point where my basic understanding of prices started.
I have just noticed that I find almost everything shockingly expensive. $7 for a Big Mac Meal? I remember when it passed the $3 mark (when I actually ate them). $50 jeans? I remember when Gap jeans were cool AND cost $30. I go grocery shopping, and while I understand that I am shopping for two, and I buy nicer things than when I worked on a direct care workers wage, I still spend more than four times as much each visit. While I have thought of myself as rich, after all our income is such a bigger number than we have had before, it still seems that we should be getting further than we are.
What I am now trying to do is recalibrate all of my price and wage intuitions with updated information, simply based on a rough 20 year/double amount basis. I am not sure that will make me feel substantially less rich, but it will remove a fair amount of my frustration at what things cost.
My first full time job paid me $16,400 a year. Now that would be about $30,000. I was not well off but I could afford a used car, an apartment, food, and um cheap beer for entertainment. At the time $30,000 would have been easy-street. So, I have to understand that $20,000 a year is poor (for the USA), and $100,000 is not obscenely wealthy but rather upper-middle class. The most money I ever made was $30,000, roughly ten years ago. That would have been the equivalent of $23,000 in 1993 and $40,000 today. That was a really good wage for social work, about twice the official poverty line.
The upshot of all of this is that either everything costs twice as much as it should, or my wife makes half as much as I thought.
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Comparisons
I am not someone who knee-jerks a requirement for two sides to every story. Sometimes there is a story and some people who are idiotically yelling in the face of facts. To a large extent this is what cable news shows are. Sometimes things are very complicated and you can only tell parts of the story in any given setting, like history, or psychology. However, there are times when adding the other part of the story is useful.
It has seemingly come to the attention of many people that there are some very, very rich people. These people are so rich that they can't even spend all their money. A person with the relatively tiny income of $1;000,000 a year has to spend more than $2,500 a day just to not break even. Given a life expectancy of 100 years someone with one tenth of a billion dollars would have to find ways to spend that $2,500 every day for their entire life or get even richer. At last count, there are 442 people at least ten times richer than that in the USA. There are people so rich that it is almost impossible for them not to get more rich.
Furthermore, these very rich people have power based on this money and can use that power to change the system so that it is easier for them to make more money. You know what? They do that. As a result these super-rich have been getting super-richier, particularly since Reagan.
Meanwhile, the income of your regular Janets has largely stagnated and so the gap between the very rich and the poor has grown larger. Janet thinks this unfair and has furrowed her brow and is considering whether, maybe, if this keeps up, she might do something about it. Maybe she'll write a blog post about it, or share outrage with her facebook friends. Meanwhile Janet's weird cousin is building a bunker and stashing an enormous horde of weaponry, but that's a different story.
OK, some people being so rich they can't even spend their money and others being so poor they need help to eat is a bad situation that should be fixed. Pretty much everyone I know thinks this is basically true and is outraged about the situation.
On the other hand...
In Rwanda the GDP per person (nominal) is $730 a year. Now, because there are some richer people in Rwanda, most people there will have fewer resources than that. 90% of Rwandans are subsistence farmers. 25% of Rwandans don't have a clean water supply. I think/hope you get the picture.
We have got to the point where there are three groups. The nefarious super-rich, us, the deeply poor. We seem to spend most of our time concentrating our attention, outrage, frustration, etc. on the differences between us and the super-rich. I ask you, which is really the biggest difference, the one between us and the super-rich or between us and the super-poor? I hope you got that one right.
In my opinion the inequality that exists in the world is more about us and the really poor than between we rich people and people who really are very rich indeed. When was the last time you heard about how unfair that was? When was the last time you thought about that? Have you thought that what would be really important in politics would be some redistribution of wealth from the USA to Rwanda. For some perspective, the GDP of Rwanda is about three times the US National Parks budget.
The next part that we (and I certainly include myself) tend to do is come up with a whole list of reasons, excuses, and distractions to stop ourselves from sending three quarters of our money to Rwanda. None of us are going to do it, let's be honest about that. But isn't this what the super-rich do as well? The sponging under-class of lazy layabouts throwing away their money on drugs meme is pretty much just that.
I am not saying that there isn't a huge, unnecessary, unfair inequality of wealth in the USA and that this hurts people every day. I am not saying that you are an evil person unless you give away all of your money. For Christ's sake we aren't Jesus! Matthew 19:21. I am just saying that we should spend at least as much of our time looking down as looking up.
In fact, looking down tells us for what we should be grateful. Noticing the things that should make us grateful makes us happier. It also can lead us to give to those less fortunate, and giving makes us more happy.
It has seemingly come to the attention of many people that there are some very, very rich people. These people are so rich that they can't even spend all their money. A person with the relatively tiny income of $1;000,000 a year has to spend more than $2,500 a day just to not break even. Given a life expectancy of 100 years someone with one tenth of a billion dollars would have to find ways to spend that $2,500 every day for their entire life or get even richer. At last count, there are 442 people at least ten times richer than that in the USA. There are people so rich that it is almost impossible for them not to get more rich.
Furthermore, these very rich people have power based on this money and can use that power to change the system so that it is easier for them to make more money. You know what? They do that. As a result these super-rich have been getting super-richier, particularly since Reagan.
Meanwhile, the income of your regular Janets has largely stagnated and so the gap between the very rich and the poor has grown larger. Janet thinks this unfair and has furrowed her brow and is considering whether, maybe, if this keeps up, she might do something about it. Maybe she'll write a blog post about it, or share outrage with her facebook friends. Meanwhile Janet's weird cousin is building a bunker and stashing an enormous horde of weaponry, but that's a different story.
OK, some people being so rich they can't even spend their money and others being so poor they need help to eat is a bad situation that should be fixed. Pretty much everyone I know thinks this is basically true and is outraged about the situation.
On the other hand...
In Rwanda the GDP per person (nominal) is $730 a year. Now, because there are some richer people in Rwanda, most people there will have fewer resources than that. 90% of Rwandans are subsistence farmers. 25% of Rwandans don't have a clean water supply. I think/hope you get the picture.
We have got to the point where there are three groups. The nefarious super-rich, us, the deeply poor. We seem to spend most of our time concentrating our attention, outrage, frustration, etc. on the differences between us and the super-rich. I ask you, which is really the biggest difference, the one between us and the super-rich or between us and the super-poor? I hope you got that one right.
In my opinion the inequality that exists in the world is more about us and the really poor than between we rich people and people who really are very rich indeed. When was the last time you heard about how unfair that was? When was the last time you thought about that? Have you thought that what would be really important in politics would be some redistribution of wealth from the USA to Rwanda. For some perspective, the GDP of Rwanda is about three times the US National Parks budget.
The next part that we (and I certainly include myself) tend to do is come up with a whole list of reasons, excuses, and distractions to stop ourselves from sending three quarters of our money to Rwanda. None of us are going to do it, let's be honest about that. But isn't this what the super-rich do as well? The sponging under-class of lazy layabouts throwing away their money on drugs meme is pretty much just that.
I am not saying that there isn't a huge, unnecessary, unfair inequality of wealth in the USA and that this hurts people every day. I am not saying that you are an evil person unless you give away all of your money. For Christ's sake we aren't Jesus! Matthew 19:21. I am just saying that we should spend at least as much of our time looking down as looking up.
In fact, looking down tells us for what we should be grateful. Noticing the things that should make us grateful makes us happier. It also can lead us to give to those less fortunate, and giving makes us more happy.
Chapter 15
It had been sunny and dry at some time in the past. Although that was probably today it seemed like an eternity. The rain had reached a level of malevolence to which words like, "poured" and "fell" no longer were relevant. Then there was the mud. The mud clutched, and grabbed at boots like a horde of starving beggars. In the lashing rain and the thick mud falls were inevitable, and upon arising the men would discover that the mud was stuck to them like plaster, and as time went on the mud insinuated itself through each cranny and crevice of clothing.
Heavy, wet, cloying, stinking, foul, slow, gritty, dark misery.
Ughrit was not happy. The Inn was apparently always, "just a little further." Ughrit had finished with, "just a little further" and was now more interested in "dry and extremely violent." He wrenched his vast boot out of the mud and splashed it shortly ahead, lightning flashed. A titanic boom filled the heavens. Ughrit slipped and fell face-first into the mire.
"Bugger fuck damn stupid prick fart onion-eating motherpoking rotten shit shit shit ass!"
"A light!" came a call, "up on that hill I saw lantern light."
All thoughts of swift, sloppy homicide left the exhausted mind of Ughrit and he desperately clambered to his feet, fell, writhed on the ground, swore, got to his feet again, swore some more, trudged a few yards, slipped, gathered himself, felt a stream of something organic slip into his armpit, trudged, slipped, pulled a muscle in his lower back, swore..........
Some long, long time later Ughrit stood before a door. A door from which the sound of merriment flowed. A golden glow of lantern light spilled out through a couple of windows. When the lightning lit up the world there was a sense of some vast, shambling structure behind the door, but more than that it was impossible to tell. The crew was dragging themselves along behind him, sometimes quite literally. Ughrit took out his massive axe, threw open the door and stepped in. Another titanic lightning flash seared the eyes of everyone outside, momentarily blinding the straggling trail of brigands.
Within The Addled Prophet all eyes turned to the doorway. There stood a massive figure, all in black, back-lit by the sky's fury, and emphasized by a huge, deep crash and rumble. Ughrit stepped through the doorway into warmth, light, and dryness. He was tired and miserable, but he was here to do something. He started to raise his axe when a weird looking man exclaimed, "Oh! You poor man, out there in this miserable weather. Landlord, do you think we might find this gentleman some hot water and some towels."
Ughrit was ushered to a chair near the fire in the inevitable manner brought on by considerate bustling. Ughrit could not have imagined fighting against the well-meaning little man at that moment. he sat down, leant back on his chair and simply absorbed the warmth of the fire. An unfamiliar lassitude came over his limbs and his mind slowed and relaxed. He realized that he was in a nice, little pub surrounded by people who welcomed him. A pint was pressed into his hand and he realized that this was his dream. Just this simple little moment was his dream.
The rest of the crew blundered in, singly or in pairs. While they lackadaisically brandished weapons, and yelled some uninspired battle cries, cut off suddenly, within moments they were welcomed, and brought to the fire. After a while their weapons started forming a haphazard pile in a corner, they had rare smiles on their faces, and soon some of them found themselves actually saying, "Thank you!"
Perhaps an hour later the tall and slender figure of Akhbar crawled over the doorstep. Akhbar was not an athlete. He expected blood, smashed furniture, possibly sobbing. He heard cheering, and then applause? Applause? Pushing himself up on to his knees he scanned the room and found Ughrit and the crew intermixed with what seemed to be happy patrons. Akhbar began to feel a deep sense of peace, an acceptance of his situation, a welcoming. Fearing that this could only be a magical trap set to capture or kill Ughrit and his men, Akhbar fled out into the night, desperate to get himself away from the peace, the warmth, the welcome.
Heavy, wet, cloying, stinking, foul, slow, gritty, dark misery.
Ughrit was not happy. The Inn was apparently always, "just a little further." Ughrit had finished with, "just a little further" and was now more interested in "dry and extremely violent." He wrenched his vast boot out of the mud and splashed it shortly ahead, lightning flashed. A titanic boom filled the heavens. Ughrit slipped and fell face-first into the mire.
"Bugger fuck damn stupid prick fart onion-eating motherpoking rotten shit shit shit ass!"
"A light!" came a call, "up on that hill I saw lantern light."
All thoughts of swift, sloppy homicide left the exhausted mind of Ughrit and he desperately clambered to his feet, fell, writhed on the ground, swore, got to his feet again, swore some more, trudged a few yards, slipped, gathered himself, felt a stream of something organic slip into his armpit, trudged, slipped, pulled a muscle in his lower back, swore..........
Some long, long time later Ughrit stood before a door. A door from which the sound of merriment flowed. A golden glow of lantern light spilled out through a couple of windows. When the lightning lit up the world there was a sense of some vast, shambling structure behind the door, but more than that it was impossible to tell. The crew was dragging themselves along behind him, sometimes quite literally. Ughrit took out his massive axe, threw open the door and stepped in. Another titanic lightning flash seared the eyes of everyone outside, momentarily blinding the straggling trail of brigands.
Within The Addled Prophet all eyes turned to the doorway. There stood a massive figure, all in black, back-lit by the sky's fury, and emphasized by a huge, deep crash and rumble. Ughrit stepped through the doorway into warmth, light, and dryness. He was tired and miserable, but he was here to do something. He started to raise his axe when a weird looking man exclaimed, "Oh! You poor man, out there in this miserable weather. Landlord, do you think we might find this gentleman some hot water and some towels."
Ughrit was ushered to a chair near the fire in the inevitable manner brought on by considerate bustling. Ughrit could not have imagined fighting against the well-meaning little man at that moment. he sat down, leant back on his chair and simply absorbed the warmth of the fire. An unfamiliar lassitude came over his limbs and his mind slowed and relaxed. He realized that he was in a nice, little pub surrounded by people who welcomed him. A pint was pressed into his hand and he realized that this was his dream. Just this simple little moment was his dream.
The rest of the crew blundered in, singly or in pairs. While they lackadaisically brandished weapons, and yelled some uninspired battle cries, cut off suddenly, within moments they were welcomed, and brought to the fire. After a while their weapons started forming a haphazard pile in a corner, they had rare smiles on their faces, and soon some of them found themselves actually saying, "Thank you!"
Perhaps an hour later the tall and slender figure of Akhbar crawled over the doorstep. Akhbar was not an athlete. He expected blood, smashed furniture, possibly sobbing. He heard cheering, and then applause? Applause? Pushing himself up on to his knees he scanned the room and found Ughrit and the crew intermixed with what seemed to be happy patrons. Akhbar began to feel a deep sense of peace, an acceptance of his situation, a welcoming. Fearing that this could only be a magical trap set to capture or kill Ughrit and his men, Akhbar fled out into the night, desperate to get himself away from the peace, the warmth, the welcome.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Just Some Stuff
I'll start with an update to The Latest in that the brand name pills appear to be working. After the first couple of days there have been no symptoms over nearly a month, a longer period than leading up to this change. Still, the whole thing is unpredictable, nobody really knows why the disease happens, how it works, or why some drugs seem to help. Who knows what things may come?
We went on holiday to Cahuita in Costa Rica, our favorite place to be. This wasn't a risky decision, we had been there before and loved it, but we hadn't gone somewhere together with the sole purpose being to have a nice time. Previously we had been seeing family, or friends, or a side effect of a business trip, so we hadn't gone on a proper holiday in several years. My only concern is that we had previously left the darkness of winter in the north for the warm sun of the tropics, while this time we were leaving from essentially the same weather to where we were arriving.
It was simply delightful. So beautiful, so calm, so friendly. We had our honeymoon suite, a wooden room with corrugated iron roof and a tiled bathroom, and a balcony with a view over the bay. We saw amazing natural sights, from a lion fish on a coral reef to pelicans diving for fish, to a sloth ten feet away, to the herding of bait fish into a ball by tarpon, and more and more and more....
The driving was a different matter.
Finally, someone who I had known, someone who was in a band with me for a few months, someone I would see very intermittently, who I was friends with on facebook, blew his brains out. As soon as I heard he was dead suicide was my first thought. Over the last year he had got married and divorced, he had apologized to people in general for his behavior, he suffered from bad migraines. He worked for the TSA and was one of the people furloughed during the government shutdown and was pawning his stuff to pay his mortgage. I imagine him that last night, worried about losing his house, unable to sleep from the pain of a migraine, depressed and alone, where there was no hope he could find. He had always been kind to me.
Perhaps I'm just not someone for weeping about death. Perhaps I have been around enough tragedy. Perhaps I have reached somewhere secure enough that sad things can happen and I can accept them. This is the second person I have known to kill themselves in the last three years and I take it as a new fact of life and keep going, although just as with everything, I think about it.
We went on holiday to Cahuita in Costa Rica, our favorite place to be. This wasn't a risky decision, we had been there before and loved it, but we hadn't gone somewhere together with the sole purpose being to have a nice time. Previously we had been seeing family, or friends, or a side effect of a business trip, so we hadn't gone on a proper holiday in several years. My only concern is that we had previously left the darkness of winter in the north for the warm sun of the tropics, while this time we were leaving from essentially the same weather to where we were arriving.
It was simply delightful. So beautiful, so calm, so friendly. We had our honeymoon suite, a wooden room with corrugated iron roof and a tiled bathroom, and a balcony with a view over the bay. We saw amazing natural sights, from a lion fish on a coral reef to pelicans diving for fish, to a sloth ten feet away, to the herding of bait fish into a ball by tarpon, and more and more and more....
The driving was a different matter.
Finally, someone who I had known, someone who was in a band with me for a few months, someone I would see very intermittently, who I was friends with on facebook, blew his brains out. As soon as I heard he was dead suicide was my first thought. Over the last year he had got married and divorced, he had apologized to people in general for his behavior, he suffered from bad migraines. He worked for the TSA and was one of the people furloughed during the government shutdown and was pawning his stuff to pay his mortgage. I imagine him that last night, worried about losing his house, unable to sleep from the pain of a migraine, depressed and alone, where there was no hope he could find. He had always been kind to me.
Perhaps I'm just not someone for weeping about death. Perhaps I have been around enough tragedy. Perhaps I have reached somewhere secure enough that sad things can happen and I can accept them. This is the second person I have known to kill themselves in the last three years and I take it as a new fact of life and keep going, although just as with everything, I think about it.
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Blog Post Titles Considered, But Not Used.
The consequences of success in social work.
A taste of suicidal ideation.
The vulnerabilities of isolation.
The inevitable social consequences of asymmetrical power in relationships.
Useless cry for help.
Wasting away in.......
Plan B, a possibility?
You never miss your water 'til your well runs dry.
Short fiction on dying in the mud.
Chapter whatever number after the last one.
The Baroque Cycle: recommended.
Getting better at reggae, sloooowwwwlllyyy.
Conversations in bars about being an atheist.
I, Invalid?
Crazy, fight or embrace?
A taste of suicidal ideation.
The vulnerabilities of isolation.
The inevitable social consequences of asymmetrical power in relationships.
Useless cry for help.
Wasting away in.......
Plan B, a possibility?
You never miss your water 'til your well runs dry.
Short fiction on dying in the mud.
Chapter whatever number after the last one.
The Baroque Cycle: recommended.
Getting better at reggae, sloooowwwwlllyyy.
Conversations in bars about being an atheist.
I, Invalid?
Crazy, fight or embrace?
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Wellness
Do you remember the feeling that you get after a sickness when you first realize that you are well? Perhaps your experience differs from mine, but for me it is a really wonderful experience. I notice things to a very large extent based on how they differ from the things around them. When contrasted with sickness simply not being sick is great.
I feel a pervasive good feeling, a pleasure in my own body's ability to walk, or see. This pervasive good feeling extends to my senses, so that the world around me appears more beautiful. The pervasive good feeling extends into my attitude because it is based on my experience right now, and a good feeling about right now removes anxiety.
Buddhists talk about the natural state of people being ego-less bliss, achievable through years of dedicated practice. It seems to me that the second part of the previous sentence defeats the claim of the first, but it may well be that the natural state of humanity is something akin to bliss, and that the Buddhists are right that the goal is recognition of our situation rather than a change in it.
What would be a natural state? I'll assume that we can get passed the absolutely true objection that everything is natural and so the question is foolish. However, we can derive some meaning from the question and answer. A natural state is one that has not been affected by humankind, which makes the question doubly problematic, but let us assume that the natural state of humankind is one unaffected by other people. Another definition of "natural" is being in keeping with the environment around us.
The natural state of humanity would therefore be one of a person fitting with the environment they are in without thinking one way or another about other people, stresses,plans, hopes etc.. I would say part of fitting in with the environment is an absence of extra descriptors of the experience, e.g. hunger, cold/hot, and sick. The natural state is wellness, in accord with the environment in which we are, unconcerned about the cares of the world. This is as Taoist as it gets, which is why I'm a big fan of Taoism.
This may seem to be a stupendous feat, achieving a natural state of unconcerned mindfulness, but is only difficult because we habituate ourselves to non-natural states. The achievement of the natural state requires, as the name would suggest, the doing of nothing. The hardest part of doing not-doing (a favorite term of Taoism, which seems mysterious until you get how simple and direct it is) is doing not-thinking. A method that works for some people is to notice what their brain is thinking (I hope my children are happy in school), label that thought (a worry), and then let that thought drift away.
On this blog I spend much of my time, too much of my time, concerning myself with problems and worries. That's alright with me because only saints shouldn't worry less and I am a long way away from being a saint. Still, I think I give somewhat of the wrong impression as a result. Today I felt well and it was, is, wonderful. Today I looked at sunshine glinting on the water without a thought for being anywhere else. I felt a very quiet, calm sense of bliss. I realized, without words, that it is a wonderful thing to be alive.
Such moments are difficult to describe in any way other than very prosaically, such as above, and tend to be repetitive. I was somewhere when I noticed something and realized that life is good. As a result I talk much more about external problems and worries than is actually representative of my life. Most days I have at least one moment similar to the one I have described and I do try to have more. All it takes is noticing, which becomes easier if you practice, but much easier if your natural state is made constantly apparent by experiencing non-natural states. It is easier to notice how great it is to be well when you have just been sick.
I would say that the great secret of life is finding our wellness, getting to the place where we notice what we are, where we are. It is no coincidence that so many spiritual teachers implore us to, "wake up!"
We evolved to be essentially hunter-gatherers in a relatively simple environment. Such a life was greatly subject to the sudden calamity of death and disease, but it also led to long nights of restful sleep, little work, a focus on a time scale of days rather than years, and much less stimulus than at present. Why do people on vacation go to a beautiful, quiet place, where you can get food and drink without effort, sleep whenever you want for as long as you want, and try to get away from their worries? Because we want to get back to the best parts of our natural selves and we don't know how to do that at home.
I have some hope that as a global society we will move back towards greater recognition of our natural selves as various forces align themselves in this direction. The medical profession is slowly managing to shift from the goal of "health" to "wellbeing" where the experience of the patient is more important than whether all the bits work perfectly. Psychology has rather recently become quite excited about studying happiness. There are the first sprouts of moral and political systems being designed around maximizing happiness. The future of employment is that fewer and fewer people will work, and yet we will still get richer. As we learn that hard work, stress, lack of sleep, etc. cause both ill health and unhappiness, and we learn that meditation, relaxation, sleep, etc. promote both health and happiness, and societal systems move towards a happiness-based system from economic-based systems, and most people will not be able to productively work much, I see a movement towards the natural state of humanity without the lions and tigers and bears, oh my.
I feel a pervasive good feeling, a pleasure in my own body's ability to walk, or see. This pervasive good feeling extends to my senses, so that the world around me appears more beautiful. The pervasive good feeling extends into my attitude because it is based on my experience right now, and a good feeling about right now removes anxiety.
Buddhists talk about the natural state of people being ego-less bliss, achievable through years of dedicated practice. It seems to me that the second part of the previous sentence defeats the claim of the first, but it may well be that the natural state of humanity is something akin to bliss, and that the Buddhists are right that the goal is recognition of our situation rather than a change in it.
What would be a natural state? I'll assume that we can get passed the absolutely true objection that everything is natural and so the question is foolish. However, we can derive some meaning from the question and answer. A natural state is one that has not been affected by humankind, which makes the question doubly problematic, but let us assume that the natural state of humankind is one unaffected by other people. Another definition of "natural" is being in keeping with the environment around us.
The natural state of humanity would therefore be one of a person fitting with the environment they are in without thinking one way or another about other people, stresses,plans, hopes etc.. I would say part of fitting in with the environment is an absence of extra descriptors of the experience, e.g. hunger, cold/hot, and sick. The natural state is wellness, in accord with the environment in which we are, unconcerned about the cares of the world. This is as Taoist as it gets, which is why I'm a big fan of Taoism.
This may seem to be a stupendous feat, achieving a natural state of unconcerned mindfulness, but is only difficult because we habituate ourselves to non-natural states. The achievement of the natural state requires, as the name would suggest, the doing of nothing. The hardest part of doing not-doing (a favorite term of Taoism, which seems mysterious until you get how simple and direct it is) is doing not-thinking. A method that works for some people is to notice what their brain is thinking (I hope my children are happy in school), label that thought (a worry), and then let that thought drift away.
On this blog I spend much of my time, too much of my time, concerning myself with problems and worries. That's alright with me because only saints shouldn't worry less and I am a long way away from being a saint. Still, I think I give somewhat of the wrong impression as a result. Today I felt well and it was, is, wonderful. Today I looked at sunshine glinting on the water without a thought for being anywhere else. I felt a very quiet, calm sense of bliss. I realized, without words, that it is a wonderful thing to be alive.
Such moments are difficult to describe in any way other than very prosaically, such as above, and tend to be repetitive. I was somewhere when I noticed something and realized that life is good. As a result I talk much more about external problems and worries than is actually representative of my life. Most days I have at least one moment similar to the one I have described and I do try to have more. All it takes is noticing, which becomes easier if you practice, but much easier if your natural state is made constantly apparent by experiencing non-natural states. It is easier to notice how great it is to be well when you have just been sick.
I would say that the great secret of life is finding our wellness, getting to the place where we notice what we are, where we are. It is no coincidence that so many spiritual teachers implore us to, "wake up!"
We evolved to be essentially hunter-gatherers in a relatively simple environment. Such a life was greatly subject to the sudden calamity of death and disease, but it also led to long nights of restful sleep, little work, a focus on a time scale of days rather than years, and much less stimulus than at present. Why do people on vacation go to a beautiful, quiet place, where you can get food and drink without effort, sleep whenever you want for as long as you want, and try to get away from their worries? Because we want to get back to the best parts of our natural selves and we don't know how to do that at home.
I have some hope that as a global society we will move back towards greater recognition of our natural selves as various forces align themselves in this direction. The medical profession is slowly managing to shift from the goal of "health" to "wellbeing" where the experience of the patient is more important than whether all the bits work perfectly. Psychology has rather recently become quite excited about studying happiness. There are the first sprouts of moral and political systems being designed around maximizing happiness. The future of employment is that fewer and fewer people will work, and yet we will still get richer. As we learn that hard work, stress, lack of sleep, etc. cause both ill health and unhappiness, and we learn that meditation, relaxation, sleep, etc. promote both health and happiness, and societal systems move towards a happiness-based system from economic-based systems, and most people will not be able to productively work much, I see a movement towards the natural state of humanity without the lions and tigers and bears, oh my.
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
The Latest
I haven't been posting much recently, a possible reason may become apparent a little further down, but big deals maybe happening and someone may be interested. I'll start with what I think is the biggest deal although it may well not be what most would consider the most important.
It seems that my "magic blue pills" are no longer magic. For the last two months I have been ill on over half the days. The last couple of days I have been truly exhausted. Saturday night my hands were writhing trying to keep myself under control from the energy. The cycling between different states has been the fastest in my life, although I have had far more severe experiences in the past. It used to be that I didn't really know who I would be the next week or day, now I don't know who I will be between the morning and evening.
There are several possibly reasons:
The first possibility is that the pills have changed. This is a generic drug and while it has worked for me in the past some generics don't work for me, and industry quality assurance is very poor. Fortunately we have different insurance and are fortunate to have enough money to pay the co-pay (down from $150 to $35) for the brand name version. So my psychiatrist and I have agreed to try this approach first.
The second possibility is that my disease has simply progressed to the point where the pills cannot entirely cope. Since my disease was worsening (after all that's why I got help) this seems quite reasonable. The psychiatrist's suggestion would then be to try another mood stabilizer in addition to what I am taking now. I am extremely wary of this having seen people slowly but surely poisoned by the side effects of their medications, some of which would be considered. I absolutely despise the idea of a choice between unpredictable misery and poisoning myself. Someone with rapid cycling bipolar disorder who hates all of the possible choices they can make is an extremely, extremely bad situation.
The third possibility is that this is simply a particularly bad time for me, something that might happen every few years for the rest of my life. I have coped with much, much worse than this in the past and can cope with such periods happening once in a while.
In summary; I am going insane again and I find this quite alarming.
The other part is quite different. My darling wife has been offered, and has accepted, a new job in a different company, doing quite different things. It amounts to an enormous promotion, from an extremely advanced level of keyboard monkey to the director of an entire department of seventeen people. I am very proud of her for her courage to take this great leap, very proud of her for knowing she can do it, and most proud of her for negotiating a better compensation package. This is the sort of feminism I really like, a woman taking risks, being confident in herself, and believing that she is worth as much as any man. In the business world meekness is punished. My love has come a long way, what a woman!
Now for my selfish bit. This means we will be staying in Houston, I expect for at least three years, bringing our time here to a minimum of eight years. Or using a different scale, about 1/10th of my life. We will be moving closer to the city, closer to this new job. The area looks much more promising than where we are now, but it is still Houston and I hate it here. I hate the pounding heat in the summer (although October through March is lovely). I hate the willful ignorance, the lack of caring, the machismo, the certainty, the superficiality, the lack of creativity. I am probably, on average, happier than I was in Portland but that has nothing whatsoever to do with where I live.
It seems that my "magic blue pills" are no longer magic. For the last two months I have been ill on over half the days. The last couple of days I have been truly exhausted. Saturday night my hands were writhing trying to keep myself under control from the energy. The cycling between different states has been the fastest in my life, although I have had far more severe experiences in the past. It used to be that I didn't really know who I would be the next week or day, now I don't know who I will be between the morning and evening.
There are several possibly reasons:
The first possibility is that the pills have changed. This is a generic drug and while it has worked for me in the past some generics don't work for me, and industry quality assurance is very poor. Fortunately we have different insurance and are fortunate to have enough money to pay the co-pay (down from $150 to $35) for the brand name version. So my psychiatrist and I have agreed to try this approach first.
The second possibility is that my disease has simply progressed to the point where the pills cannot entirely cope. Since my disease was worsening (after all that's why I got help) this seems quite reasonable. The psychiatrist's suggestion would then be to try another mood stabilizer in addition to what I am taking now. I am extremely wary of this having seen people slowly but surely poisoned by the side effects of their medications, some of which would be considered. I absolutely despise the idea of a choice between unpredictable misery and poisoning myself. Someone with rapid cycling bipolar disorder who hates all of the possible choices they can make is an extremely, extremely bad situation.
The third possibility is that this is simply a particularly bad time for me, something that might happen every few years for the rest of my life. I have coped with much, much worse than this in the past and can cope with such periods happening once in a while.
In summary; I am going insane again and I find this quite alarming.
The other part is quite different. My darling wife has been offered, and has accepted, a new job in a different company, doing quite different things. It amounts to an enormous promotion, from an extremely advanced level of keyboard monkey to the director of an entire department of seventeen people. I am very proud of her for her courage to take this great leap, very proud of her for knowing she can do it, and most proud of her for negotiating a better compensation package. This is the sort of feminism I really like, a woman taking risks, being confident in herself, and believing that she is worth as much as any man. In the business world meekness is punished. My love has come a long way, what a woman!
Now for my selfish bit. This means we will be staying in Houston, I expect for at least three years, bringing our time here to a minimum of eight years. Or using a different scale, about 1/10th of my life. We will be moving closer to the city, closer to this new job. The area looks much more promising than where we are now, but it is still Houston and I hate it here. I hate the pounding heat in the summer (although October through March is lovely). I hate the willful ignorance, the lack of caring, the machismo, the certainty, the superficiality, the lack of creativity. I am probably, on average, happier than I was in Portland but that has nothing whatsoever to do with where I live.
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