'Disney's Best Anti-Villain' and Societal Injustice

This blog post was originally composed as a YouTube comment on this video. I enjoyed the revisit and analysis of The Fox and the Hound; it's been ages since I saw that movie. Thanks to KeyTheLich for making it.

Now, here's my two cents...

The Man

There is a man.

The man comes home from work. He is tired.

The man takes off his shoes. He takes off his jacket. He greets his wife with a smile and a little kiss.

The man calls his children to dinner, and they eat together and ask each other about the events of the day. The man complains casually about his boss. His wife complains affectionately about messes. The children complain about their homework. The family tells itself that it's going to be okay, and this is how life is.

The man puts on slippers, and picks up a drink, and picks up a newspaper, and sits down on the most comfortable chair in the living room, and reads about events in the world beyond his house and his neighbourhood. He reads in order to be up to date on what to talk about with his co-workers during breaks, and what to avoid talking about because it may be awkward in light of something which has happened. He reads in order to know who to be annoyed at for what recent indiscretion. He frowns at indulgent politicians. He smiles at progress in public works. He pauses to wonder at the pace of technological advancement.

The man is comfortable.

The man is sometimes worried, especially when looking at construction projects, and newspaper headlines, and stressed people whose problems he does not know how to solve.

The man is sometimes happy, especially when he thinks about his wife, and his kids, and his friends, and his home.

The man doesn't know what to do about the politicians, or how to feel about fluctuations in immigration.

But the man knows he works hard and does well enough by his boss and co-workers.

He takes care of his wife and his kids.

He looks back on his day and he feels he is doing his best. He can relax into that thought, like a warm bath; or an old, well-worn pair of shoes. He does not feel compelled to question it. He could, but it would only leave him more worried than happy, so why would he?

He settles into his chair, and keeps reading.

 

You Who Would Change Me

To the ones who read my messages of despair that I always get into these conversations that feel like fights, that I'm afraid my professional relationships may always be characterized by comments like "If you're so anxious about this, maybe you should reconsider your fit for this position"...

To the ones who greet my whimper with a cheer, who are proud that I'm finally coming around to seeing the problems in myself and may be open to getting better... Who tell me to grow up and adapt, to make the people around me more comfortable...

To the one who told me today encouragingly that I may be onto something, that I could seek psychiatric evaluation, that I "can't make other people adjust to me on a dime" so I should consider how to broaden my own approaches in order to get "more doors staying open" to me...

Take It With You

I have no patience for hollow compliments.

If I am worth listening to, listen, even when what I say is hard to hear.

If I am a great philosopher, embrace my ways - use them.

If I am a cunning pathfinder, walk with me through hidden and treacherous ways.

If I am a good cook, then come by my table and eat of my food.

 

If you would give me kind and complimentary words, and then walk away from me unchanged, taking nothing with you...

Then please, spare me.

Spare me the awkward obligation to pretend gratitude and praise you for your shallow, meaningless roleplaying as somebody who gives a fuck.

Oh, and if this leaves you full of awkward silences you don't know what to do with... I have something for you. Forsaking hollow signalling does not mean you must be left without any tricks.

Here is a sentence of great arcane power. It can be pronounced many different ways, to transform an awkward silence into a meaningful one and give you more time to think. It is almost always true when you need it, and it is almost never impolite:

"I don't know what to say."

Group Research Problems

I have gradually developed an utter hatred for group research projects over my time in college. The two things are often shoved together, unfortunately. It seems like four of five assignments we're given in groups involve secondary research: scanning through databases, looking for articles and (occasionally) not being allowed to say anything, even points of common knowledge or what seem to be profoundly obvious extrapolations, without pointing to someone else who said it first and in print.

The work of organizing groups, and trying to get quality work out of other students over whom I ultimately have no power has always been something I dread. When a classmate sends me, two days before a report is due, a piece of writing that I can barely untangle into readable English, that gives a link to a source that contradicts rather than supports it, I as another mere student have to try to find a way to explain that we can't use this, that it's not good enough, in a way that actually gets my teammates to do better rather than starting a fight about why I get to decide what we do and don't use... Or ignore their contribution and rewrite their entire part in whatever time remains and look forward to complaints about my having done so... Or use the nonsense they give me anyway and let the incoherence of the work drag me down with them.

There's a community I really admire called Effective Altruism (shortens to EA). Every time I've seen suggestions in EA articles or discussions promoting research as one of the best ways to do good in the world, I've gotten an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach, like I'll never be able to help as much as other people who can stomach research. It occurred to me recently that this seems a lot like the reflexive rejection many other people have from any subject with a substantial numerical component because they're "bad at math". Maybe if I hadn't become conditioned through college to associate research with the feeling of either herding cats or dragging them around on my back in a sack that occasionally grew claws, I wouldn't think I was "bad at research", or that research was inherently miserable. Maybe I should try to find out what the experience of research is like in a more professional environment as opposed to what college usually turns it into.

Techless Time: Three Hours of Inconvenience

This is a verbatim copy of a blog assignment written for school.

When I learned that we were being assigned to spend three hours without using electronics or information systems, my reaction was immediate dread and frustration, and anticipating making time for it brought back similar feelings whenever my mind returned to it. I decided, eventually, to get this done and over with so I would stop having to worry about when I was going to do it, and took my time techless from 8-11 PM on Tuesday the 25th.

This time began as I was nearing home on a walk back from town to drop off a CV and buy groceries, since I was not willing to make this trip without listening to any music or podcasts. With forethought, I set an alarm on my phone to go off in three hours and three minutes, and set it to Do Not Disturb so that it would not make any sound until then. This way, I would know when my time was up. In a way, then, I could not get away from using my phone, since I was passively making use of its time tracking, but I will not apologise for this; My house does not actually have a clock in it, use of devices like mobile phones which also tell time having been so ordinary and constant that no-one bothered to get one. It reminded me of attending classes in room D521, where the wall clock is perpetually stuck at 10:00 and we are not allowed to check our phones, and so by extension are not allowed to check the time.

Throughout the day, even before I started the challenge, I was thinking about angry things to say about being assigned to do this. Among them: It is not very difficult to take time away from connectedness if you want to. For some, it's a very relaxing experience to let go of the need to answer to friends or bosses and be informed of every new thing as it happens. Country retreats away are popular for good reason. However, it's a different matter when you're doing it on someone else's command. Any given person has almost certainly at some point, when they weren't thinking about it, gone three hours at a time without scratching their nose, but it's a part of human nature that if someone tells you that you have to deliberately avoid scratching it for three hours, it's immediately going to start itching.

Perhaps I would not have been so frustrated but for three major factors: First, I have been trying to find a part-time job around town, and feel rather urgently pressed to do so. It's very rare for me to be in a situation where I'd rather be looking through job listings online than what I'm actually doing, but this is one of those situations.
Second, I have always spent the majority of my social life online and my relaxation using a computer; I play computer games or watch YouTube as my primary way to enjoy myself and unwind. This is only more dramatically the case now that I am thousands of miles and many time zones away from all my old friends whose company is familiar and comforting to me, so these three hours will neither be time I can spend looking for work in a way I'm able to at this time of day, nor time I can spend relaxing and enjoying myself in the ways I'm accustomed to.
Finally, the experience of being asked to do this feels political to me. It reminds me of people I have heard dismissing "millenials" as cheap, shallow and so addicted to their phones that they can't stand to put them down for ten minutes, and as a result I feel reflexively defensive and as though I am being judged; Not only that, but judged based on a stereotype rather than for my own behaviour.

Information technology is a stratum on which life today is built; some houses no longer have clocks in them because 'everyone' has a mobile phone. Posters and food wrappers do not write out the full details of their message, but have a URL printed on them where further information can be found because 'everyone' has ready access to the internet. Going without these systems for a few hours or even a few weeks is entirely possible and may not even be particularly hard, but if someone is incapable of using them at all, they will be missing out on major advantages and may not be able to keep up with the standard pace and productivity the modern world expects and demands.

For my three hours of techlessness, I wanted to prioritise doing things that I would not normally use an electronic device to do more efficiently. Although I was thinking about what I would write throughout the day, I did not write anything for this blog; writing with paper and pen is slower for me than typing, and I would have needed to type it all out afterwards anyway. Instead, I tidied my bedroom windowsill, did a bit of organising in my room, bathed myself and cooked two different kinds of food: soup and spaghetti. Aside from tidying my windowsill, these were things I might well have done anyway on some other day, but the primary difference is that on another day, I would be listening to something on either my phone or my mp3 player. This might be music, or it might be a podcast of some kind, depending on what I felt like at the time. I care a great deal for the ability to listen to music of my own tastes whenever I want. It adds levity and fun to menial work, and also allows me to drown out things I do not want to be listening to, like a housemate's private phone conversation with a loved one or a barking dog in the neighborhood. Today, I spent three hours with a recurring earworm I wasn't allowed to scratch.

On the other hand, deliberately avoiding the use of electronics and information systems reminded me about a short piece of speculative fiction I want to write, about a disconnect from technology far more integrated and habitual, and vastly more devastating, than this one.

Estimating Confidence in Astrology

Follow-up to a conversation about Zodiac signs...

I notice a strong correlation between the descriptions on a particular website for the Aries sign, and my own personality. I do not attribute this correlation to any particular cause, and would answer with a couple of vague notions off the top of my head and a shrug if asked to name a phenomenon that caused me to have "Aries" traits.

I do think that astrological signs in general describe collections of personality traits that tend to correlate to one another, such that if any given person possesses one notable trait of a given sign... take Aries and a hot temper as an arbitrary example... it is more likely that that person will exhibit any other given "Aries" trait than it is likely of a random member of the populace, regardless of whether Aries actually is that person's birth sign or not; I am not claiming that being Aries is the cause, only that, for e.g., having a hot temper, and having a passionate approach to romance, are positively correlated.

I don't put any particular stock in Astrology. If I had to take a wild guess, I'd rate the likelihood that the position of earth relative to the stars at birth has a significant and known effect on the development of a person's personality at somewhere in the ballpark of 10-20%, along with most other specific supernatural theories.

I do, from time to time, wonder about the idea, and how it could be true, if it were.

What I actually intended to express confidence in in any way was more or less like this:
If I were to link you to the specific article I found about the Aries sign and asked you to read it and select any given claim it makes about the Aries personality type, I would estimate the likelihood of that particular claim being true enough of me that bearing it in mind would likely explain some of my behaviour at around 80%.

Given that I don't think the stars are the reason, just that the traits described happen to coincide with how I turned out... If I were to make a numerical guess, I'd expect that 20% or less of the population of the Western world match their own Zodiac signs (whatever they may be) that well.

I think that Astrology, like Tarot and similar sorts of things that suggest meanings and explanations behind peoples' behaviour, may in some circumstances have some use in pushing the mind out of an established view to look at things from a new perspective. Reading about an Astrological personality archetype may prompt me to wonder if the perspective described is similar to the perspective of someone I have been arguing with, so that I have a theory that might help me understand them if it proves relevant, rather than being unable to come up with anything besides frustration when their preferences and values are not like mine.

There doesn't need to be any magic behind it at all to have that use. Rather, it is functionally a deck of cards, upon each of which is written, "Is it happening for this reason?" For any given situation, some of the questions will have no bearing on matters and may be discounted out of hand. To others, a good answer is a considerate, "Hm. Maybe. I'll look for evidence to confirm/refute."

If you take this view, then it follows that the mysticism and ceremony surrounding their use exists purely to lend weight and importance to the consideration of the possibility, without which it may be too easy to shrug off the competing theory in favour of one's existing worldview, even if it fails to properly account for the behaviours or events one is noticing.

To Share The Cup That Runneth Over

Someone on FetLife was asking for peoples' perspectives on the influence of our past parental abuse on those of us who have been abused and how it relates to our own desire to have, or to avoid having, children. Her voice was impassioned and full of a great deal of understandable internal conflict. It's clear she wants the good things that come with having children, and desperately wants to love and care for someone, but realizes that her scars may get in the way, and doesn't want to be a bad parent.

I would like to share my response with you all.

The best way I feel I can answer this is to tell my own stories related to it. 

I was inspired by the subtle, psychological abuses of my childhood to be vehemently vocal about bad parenting when I see it, especially when parents become frustrated with their childrens' natural curiosity and desire to learn, seeing virtually anything other than quiet obedience as disobedience, even when they only the actions of a young, inexperienced human engaged with the world and trying to gain the experience required to be a wise, functional adult.
And then later, I found VHEMT. 

I am not convinced that the human race has no chance of improving and willfully evolving socially and morally to progressively better states, and therefore don't think I actually want us to go extinct, but I definitely would prefer to see a smaller human race, with more quality, and less quantity, of life. The fewer people there are to share resources with, the bigger everyone's fair share can be. 

And this is why I've decided never to give birth, even though the thought is a fetish of mine.
However, it doesn't mean I don't want to be a mother.
I am still scarred and rendered dysfunctional by my own past abuses. In many ways the wisdom and sensitivity gained from my suffering has made me a generally very patient and level-headed person, but I am also prone to fits of anxiety and rage. Furthermore, I am young, and at the very beginning of my career. 

But someday, if I have greater financial stability, and if I have healed further and feel less controlled by my overpowering emotions, I will almost certainly want to participate in the growing and nurturing of children who were not born to me. I may foster-parent, or adopt. Or I may find my way into a nurturing role in my profession, or find my way into a household that accepts me in a role as a supportive carer and guardian to the children of someone else. 

Personally, I find it hard to believe that any child, even in the best and most well-adapted of families, could not benefit from one more loving, supportive adult in their life to encourage them to be the best that they could be; And equally hard to believe that any parent, even with the best luxuries and availability of resources and time, would not benefit from one more loving, supportive adult who could share the stresses of caring for a child when they become taxing, and thus prevent the build-up of frustration that can lead to that frustration being inappropriately taken out on the child. 

But to answer the question that stood out most to me in your post...
"If you feel, like you have love and tender loving care to give, who do you direct that energy to, if it is not kids?" 

Why... To everyone, of course. Neighbors going through hard times. Co-workers. Friends. And definitely lovers, whether they be short or long term. Absolutely everyone, not only children, and to be sure not only our own blood children, can use some Tender-Loving-Care. It is one of the greatest weaknesses of our Western society that we tend to forbid one another from taking responsibility for one another, and in turn, we forbid one another from asking for badly needed help. 

If you have love and Tender-Loving-Care to give, and you find no-one receiving it, if your cup runneth over with no-one to drink... Go to your best friends and congenial workmates, go to your lovers and partners and crushes, and if it is permissible within their circles, then go to theirs... go to those people with whom you can easily empathize, and encourage them to draw from your well of kindness whenever they are thirsty. 

All too frequently the only socially acceptable answer, to create a new life in to nurture and build up, because for some incredibly stupid reason we have been forbidden to nurture and build one another, is the only one that comes to mind. But especially for those of us who are damaged and who runneth over, but sometimes also run dry... We know in our doubts that creating a life for our love and care, and then becoming overwhelmed and filling it up also with our frustrations and tempers, becoming bad parents... Is all too real a possibility. 

Before you forge a new cup that you may not be able to fill all by yourself, then... I encourage you to seek out all of those cups near to your heart that are beginning to run low, and ask gently and patiently for permission to refill them. Break the stupid rules that forbid us from caring, mothering and looking out for one another. It is, of course, a delicate dance, and important not to be overbearing, but simply to be loving and available. But it's a well-known fact that parenting isn't easy. And this holds true whether the people you're parenting are children, or blood family, or not. 

I hope this helped.

Dominance and Submission - bDSm

(excerpt from a conversation on Fetlife)

The Dominance and Submission aspect of BDSM, like pretty much any other kink, means different things to different people, but is, yes, essentially about power and control.

For some people, it is stimulating and very sexy to feel that they are in control of another person. For some, it feels sexy and stimulating to be under the control of someone else. The ways in which this control is exercised will vary from relationship to relationship. They can be healthy... or very dangerous if taken too far or pushed beyond reasonable boundaries.

Some people are only subby or dommy about sex - In control in the bedroom, or under someone else's. Some D/s couples don't even have sex, but have fun with the dynamic and form a romantic bond over it, or become in a way like family.

You will find that D/s relationships are as varied as vanilla relationships with nearly infinite kinds and orientations. They are, at their core, the same - a close connection between two people, that work according to who those two people are, how they interact and what they like, tolerate, and don't. The only distinguishing factor that makes it D/s is that at least some of the time, one person has some significant degree of control over the other. Ideally, freely given, and equally freely taken back if the true need arises.

Regarding my Arrogance and Insight

I'm starting to suspect I was one of those kids who was bright enough to make it through high school and mostly excel without having to do much work. I felt most inspired when my own thoughts took the subject matter and extrapolated it to other thoughts and ideas: When we touched on black holes among star types in grade 10 science, I got thinking about the Big Crush Theory before I remember hearing about it. After brief mention of the binary system, I ended up contemplating that there was a lot of philosophical truth in the system of unity, Base One, absolutely useless for measuring or comparing, but what seemed to be a mathematical basis for the ancient spiritual thought that all is one and all is none, or nothing, or nothing to count, at least, when you transcend differences.

If, then, I'm right, I never really learned much work ethic, and I find myself at once certain that I have much to contribute and afraid that I don't. I fluctuate between feeling ashamed of my laziness and fear, my paralysis of uncertainty about what to do now and how to do it, and proud, indeed arrogant, at my brightness. I show off reflexively, but have a very hard time weathering frustration long enough to accomplish things that are difficult. I'm not sure where to go from here. I want help learning how to learn the way other people, to whom school didn't come so easily, did... But deeper than that, I want to be a miracle child to whom everything comes easily. I'm guessing that's what I'll really have to let go of before I can join in the culture party, and really use the brightness I know I do have to do something useful, something wonderful. But then the question is... How?
Can I do it on my own?
...Do I have to?

I'm kind of alienated from my blood family at this point, with few resources to make use of, and even less experience struggling until I am victorious without giving up and coming back to nothing. How do I fight my own arrogant need to be perfect? Can I ever leave it behind?

Even now I suspect my difficulties with relationships follow many of the patterns of Rimm's too-Dominant child. There is no question over conforming or not. I don't see conformity as a virtue at all, and often struggle to see the good in the legacy of civilization (though sometimes I do wonder at it in admiring ways rather than appalled ones). I have never gone to college or university, largely because everyone seemed to expect me to, but also partly because I have had so many areas of fascination that it was hard to think of how I might choose something specific to study. At this point, the choice is somewhat more clear - psychology, especially the psychology of language and how we say things we don't know we're saying, different levels of self-awareness, have always fascinated me and been things I already think a lot about.

I find it hard to hear criticism. I sulk reflexively and sometimes even physically retreat from it, even... especially... when I know it's justified. I genuinely do value the honesty when people tell me things I get defensive about hearing, but I don't know how to change my behavior.

Someone I spoke with only briefly recently told me that my desperate reaching out for love was almost tangible, and I am consciously aware (although not always) that I want discipline, too. I want a do-over. I want someone to treat me just like what I am - a very bright, perhaps even talented, but not very disciplined, 22 year old child. I want to be parented, but I suspect no-one out there has the patience to deal with my passive-aggressive tantrums and panic attacks, my cravings for praise when I face my fears even in ways that may be hard to see; When I make an effort. I want to find the ability to persevere. I don't think I have it yet. I want help.
Who can help me?

My Personal Belief System

I am sometimes asked about my beliefs, in the context of the existence or nature of God. It's one of those questions that everyone's bound to face eventually. Someone recently asked me, "What is your personal belief system?" a question so dangerously broad and open ended that in my attempt to come up with a good answer, I ended up writing quite a lot. Since it is something I think about, and care about, and something that I will no doubt be asked about again in the future, I will leave my response here for anyone who is interested.

My personal belief system is... I'm not sure. There are lots of different things I could probably call it, and just don't want to. I might actually qualify as a Christian depending on how loose your definition is, but probably not. I certainly don't think of myself as one, and don't want to. I could call myself atheist, but that's not entirely true - I believe in spiritual entities and interaction between them, energy magic and things like that, and so I don't think my "belief system" quite counts as atheist.

Do I believe in God? ... Yes. Not as a person. When I think about it, when I am feeling spiritual and profess any belief, I believe in God in more or less this sense:

~~~

There is a force imbued in everything that exists, whether we believe in it or not - plants, animals, humans, dirt, stars, space, time, spirits, etc - with a certain element of unity, deeper than outward appearance, behavior and chemical differences, but that can and does affect these things in subtle ways, by its very nature. I don't know, and don't think it really matters, whether this force is actually what matter is MADE of, purely, or only part of it.

I as a human being, with an independent mind, act as a separate-entity most of the time, but I am always at least somewhat attuned to the part of me that is God, is spirit. Sometimes I am attuned to it more, sometimes less, depending on how much I am distracted by things like pain, desires, physical needs and other concerns that I have to address as a separate-entity in order to survive - I AM liable to suffer, for instance, were I unable to eat food for an extended period of time. The more I focus on things and react to things as a human being, a smart animal, a separate-entity, the less I am in communion with God. It can be very frustrating sometimes to attempt to let go of such things and return to a sense of unity, a state closer to God.

I personally think that I have at least in some parts of my life gotten quite good at keeping myself open to God. I have experienced times of enlightenment, when I felt guided - an inspired moment in which I suddenly felt or knew that I should do a particular thing, and so did, and it turned out to be exactly the right thing to do. Similarly, I have an uncanny knack for finding good, helpful things at extremely convenient times and noticing them enough to take advantage of them. Not that all of my needs are met, or anything like that. I will often suffer for a while for some reason or another, and face it and sometimes even get through it like a separate-entity human, a smart animal acting like a smart animal to get through a difficult situation. I find that I often cycle between periods of enlightenment/guidance and prolonged detachment from God.

I see God as... not exactly the source of magic, but something that makes it possible, the thing through which it works. A person, or, presumably, any other entity with Will, can project its needs and desires through that unified spirit, subconsciously. It generally works best, or, for large enough effects to be noticeable, only at all, when the person is inspired, in a mindset which is closer and more open to God. It requires action, a sort of determination, to come to fruition, probably because the spark of determination that occurs when a person acts to accomplish what they want or need to do is what turns idle desire into actual Will. Sometimes, that Will becomes manifest - subtle influences of entities acting on the amount of God's intuition they are attuned to, subconsciously or otherwise, will bring people who need to interact with each other together. If you've ever seen the first episode of the new show, Touch, it demonstrates some extreme examples of the way this might work quite well, but manifests the sign of people who need to interact in numbers coming up in their lives.

If God has a single grand 'Will', as many people seem to think, It is certainly not straightforward, and only hinges on single people and events inasmuch as the tiny parts of God within the people influenced by those events will them to happen or not. Even that much can be incredible and dramatic of course, but it is silly to think that all of reality is thinking about you, or your wedding, at any given moment.

If I were to guess what the "Will of God" really were, I would guess that it is more or less the deepest and most moving collective desires of the whole of existence, which must at once be extremely complex and subtle, and at the same time primal, deep, and surprisingly simple. For example, the thing many people say, that the Will of God (or God itself) is Love. It seems to me to fit - the experience of love is moving, primal, deep and although essentially simple, it is full of subtleties and confusion. And most importantly, although expressed in multitudes of ways, it is a drive that seems to be shared by almost everyone, more or less, depending on the person, and how much they are willing to step aboard and follow the right intuition to let life, or God, "bring them there".

~~~

Take or leave that as you wish. You asked about my belief system, and obviously, there is a lot more I could say about it, but hopefully this explains the base of it to you.

I wouldn't normally call the spirit force God. Too many people talk about God in (what seems to me to be) disgusting and stupid ways and I really just don't like the word. Never have. Sometimes I call it All, which seems, to me, appropriate, because it is, after all, everything. The Force, Goddess, Essence, or Aether would all work too, but as with God, each of those words also has, or at least has developed, other different meanings, with which is is important not to confuse the concept.

The Ignorance of Privilege

I wrote a response to a video a while ago that I'd like to share here. It was a response to this episode of SF Debris science fiction reviews. This video presented Real Life, an episode of Star Trek Voyager in which the Emergency Medical Hologram bonds with a holographic family in order to better understand human relationships, but then eventually has to face tragedy as his holographic daughter dies. Chuck is very passionate in his objection to some of the messages in the episode, and the way that this tragedy was ultimately handled. Go watch it if you want more context, but in essence he stated quite clearly his own answer to the question of whether something like this is traumatic enough that anyone capable of simply avoiding the situation to begin with and never facing it is truly fortunate to have that option, or whether the personal growth and maturing that comes with having to live through and deal with tragedy is worth facing it. His stance? Some things are bad enough that there should be no shame in avoiding them if you can, and losing a child is definitely one of them.

Here are my original thoughts on the subject, edited slightly for better clarity and to correct a typo or two:

I remember your turn-around of the old saying "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger", refuting it as inaccurate. "I make me stronger when I refuse to let it kill me." However, this saying, in either form, only deals with the two extremes of the spectrum of possibilities. In the aftermath of a tragic event, you can fail to come out of it at all, or you can get through it... And it isn't always true that you will necessarily come out of it stronger if you survive. Some events cause forever crippling, or at least scarring, injuries. Sometimes the price you had to pay to get through it set you back years of development in some form or another. This can be physical, like a fractured bone that never completely heals, or an accident leaving one bedridden for so long that the patient has to learn to walk all over again afterwards. It can also be emotional.

The most unfortunate thing is that I haven't seen many examples of people who were able to understand that some struggles just aren't worth it even if you survive them... that the scars and damages are, and remain, greater than the strength gained in facing them, that they have never been truly overcome, and possibly never will be... without having been through such a situation in some form or another themselves. I remember hearing someone refer to it as something like the "ignorance of privilege". It's not a clear fault of the ignorant that they are ignorant, either. It is genuinely hard to imagine a situation in which there is no possible way to come out ahead... and for most people, it seems to be impossible, up until the first time they realize... this... whatever "this" is... is one.

Perhaps the only way to change this is to refute and avoid reaffirming the lie that if you got through it, it was good for you. Unfortunately, it IS true that having gotten through it required growth that would otherwise not have come about in the same way... People who have dealt with tragedy are almost always better prepared and better able to deal with it again - not that it isn't still a terrible experience, just that, like any pain that hurts badly enough, long enough, there is a numbing effect that diminishes its effects on you. The lie is in the assumption that this hardening is "worth" the pain, which is a value judgement, and thus inherently an opinion. People may disagree. The problem is when people who are not in a position to understand the severity of the situation... which really, includes anyone without the full context of emotional weight and other issues involved, and thus anyone at all besides the person experiencing this trauma... try to make that judgement themselves and enforce it on the person suffering it.

From The Fruits of Whose Labour

I have been talking to a friend about my socialist ideals, and there are a couple of things he said in response that I'd like to address publicly, not just to him. My friend said: "As I understand it you are suggesting that everyone should be able to live without 'working'."

If this is the case, he misunderstands it, but only slightly. I am suggesting that each individual should be able to live without having to work. Without being compelled to work. The pivotal point is the idea that we do not have enough, or advanced enough, technology that things can function without anyone doing anything... but that we do have enough technology that we could, conceivably, fill all the roles truly necessary for everyone to have a decent minimum of safety, comfort, and happiness, on a volunteer basis.

And that even more easily, we could produce significantly more wealth (measured in things like food, living spaces, technology, medical care, and other goods and services both basic and luxurious) than would be required for everyone to live at this comfortable minimum standard... and portion some of the extra stuff, particularly the luxurious and higher quality or less fundamentally necessary stuff, as rewards to those who do wish to work.

The system would not be that different, fundamentally, from the way it is now, save that instead of having to earn enough money to cover our rent, groceries, medical bills, transportation, education, legal assistance and all other services we require... we would automatically be entitled to a certain adequate standard of every one of these free of charge, regardless of status or wealth.
If we wanted a higher standard of essentials, or wished to indulge in extra things like a night at the movies or theatre, some fun new technology, travel to a far away land for a vacation, or things like that...
Those. Those are the rewards that we might be compelled to work for, were the satisfaction of a job well done and desire to actually do something useful with our own special talents not reason enough. Not to mention social status and respect for being a benefit to society in general.

Really doesn't sound too far from current reality, does it? It isn't too hard to imagine a world in which there are some grocery stores where you don't even NEED money, you can come and get a certain amount of food to take home for free. We technically already have those in Canada, if you think about it. Food banks, we call them. Odd, that it should be called a bank when it's one of the few places in the modern world that does not deal with currency in any way. There would be some apartments that you could live in free of charge, albeit likely comparatively small ones without the best features or design. There would be places where you can get second hand or lower quality furniture that nevertheless is sturdy enough to trust, and fulfills its function as well as you need it to.

And I would hope, as I expect anyone else would, that these minimum standards, the way people can survive even without giving anything back, will continue to improve... I hope that they'll even gain a little bit of ground on the continually advancing cutting edge of technology, as time goes by. Maybe in 2024, the poorest people in Canada will still have easy access to technology that's only two years old, things we haven't even begun to dream up yet, and the richest will have what was invented in their own yesterday.

Now for the other point I'd like to address. "The key question that comes to mind is this: from the fruits of whose productive work do you take the resources to support those who choose not to work in the capitalist sense?" And that is a good question that a lot of people feel compelled to ask people who believe in the ideal of socialism.

It is phrased in such a way as to not be the right question, from my point of view, since from my point of view no-one should be 'entitled' to keep for themselves the entire fruits of their labour to begin with. Human culture simply does not work like that, it involves trade and sharing. Not everyone can cook, not everyone can build, and not everyone can hunt... or wants to, for that matter, for any given of the three. But a skilled cook can cook for a hall full of people, a builder can build many houses, and a skilled and lucky hunter can bring home enough meat for his entire tribe. It is not presumed that we would be better off in a society where the hunter keeps all the meat, the cook prepares meals only for himself and his immediate family, and you don't live in a house unless you can build one worth living in. I realize that the concern is how we can justify asking anyone to provide services even to those who are giving nothing back - why the cook should have to feed not only the person who built his house and the person who brought him the meat for his cooking pot, but also members of the community to whom he owes nothing, who have not exchanged services with him. I'll get to that point a little later.

For the sake of fairness, I can answer the question as asked. Whose productive work? Anyone who is willing to do the work just for the sake of doing it, or with an understanding that it is by virtue of others' similar willingness that they have the things they cannot produce independently and would not always be able or willing to trade for. Love for the work itself, a genuine desire to help people, or a desire to contribute for social validation and bragging rights are all good reasons to work and it is possible to find people who are willing to help other people just because they are people and they have needs and desires to be met, which "I" have the power to fulfill. If this were not true, there would be no volunteers in the world.  Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

The historical solution that most "civilized" societies seem to have adopted to solve the matter of human beings developing specialized skills and needing to be able to share them without general societal disarray and confusion over who was trading what for what has been to try to measure the values of each of these contributions against each other, and use physical tokens to represent value contributed to society and thus earned, versus value taken back from society and thus spent. Thus, currency is born, and we just try to get all the prices for things figured out in such a way that everyone contributes to the group in order to benefit from it, and everyone makes enough to afford the things they need, when they need them.

Oh, what a great circus act THAT turns out to be.

Enter endless arguments about whose services and goods are more valuable, more necessary, higher quality, and otherwise worth more money, endless jockeying for social position and wealth, and a million and one little traps into which we fall by trying to make sufficient quantities of necessary goods readily available to everyone, even the poorer classes. How badly has this completely fucked over the industry of simply growing plants, the first stage food industry and probably the single most essential job in the history of the human race? Not to mention that tokens can be easily misplaced or even stolen, so even if the balances are set to an impossibly ideal and perfect balance, some people who feel that they are not well enough compensated for the work they do may go about trying to correct this by imposing a small re-compensation tax from anyone they find they can get away with taking it from.

But back to the plight of underpaid farmers for now. One might well ask, if one wishes to pose a question, why the businessman and the doctor and the lawyer should, and indeed whether they should, "give up" part of their justly earned wages and the fruits of their labour, for the benefit of the lowly farmer, whose goods are appraised at a much lower price?

But of course, the answer is obvious. Because while some of us may greatly value the convenience of the businessman's newest appliance, be desperate for the defense of a good lawyer, and sing thanks to the doctor for his help fixing your broken leg and your sister's ulcers...
We all, even more importantly, need to eat.

The fact is that the art of civilization is effectively the co-operation of all or at least most people within it, with diverse skills, talents and strengths. We work together, and together produce a world of convenience, plenty, power and security that would not be possible otherwise.

Then the question comes down, as indeed it must, what of the invalid? What of the children? They don't have anything for us to buy from them, they don't have any services to charge us for...

... Does this, then, make them useless? Not in the case of the child, surely, for children grow up and learn skills to share, they contribute when they are older. The invalid? Some of them can be healed (ah, the power of the good doctors at work), and can contribute with concrete skills, but some, alas, will never be able to do so competitively if at all. So what of them? Do we allow them to live half-lives, buy whatever lowly scraps of food, and live in whatever slums, their lesser efforts can afford, until they waste away?

No. We don't condone this cruelty. We believe, as well we should, that simply being human is virtue enough that one should be able to survive with some comfort and dignity by that virtue alone, and it is with this reasoning that we will sacrifice some of the wealth we do not technically need for the good of those who can give nothing back. It is commendable and human of us to be so generous.

There is, however, another problem yet unsolved, one that is much less obvious. It has begun to creep up on us, but we still seem very reluctant to acknowledge it.


Actually, there are two, and they go together.

Firstly, again, there is the matter of how to balance the importance and values of completely different services and products, in order that they be appropriately priced and fair. Here, there is a fundamental problem. The more valuable a thing is, the more dramatically it makes life better, we assume, the more it benefits society when it is contributed, so it should be worth more money. That stands to reason. On the other hand, the more important a thing is, the more important it is that everyone be able to afford it, because it may be necessary for their wellbeing, and the wellbeing of a person is inherently important. Everyone, including people who don't have much money. Therefore, the more important something is, the more affordable it should be, the less money it should cost. It stands to reason.


However, the result of these two perfectly logical conclusions interacting is that the most important, basic and vital parts of society, the things we literally cannot, or would not want to live without... are the things that we reward people the least for providing us with. We will make our inventors and psychologists and lawyers and businessmen rich and privileged... And leave farmers, teachers, doctors, and the producers of things that everyone needs, like simple clothing... poor. So poor, sometimes, as the results of flaws in the system continue to build up, that they may not be able to afford any more than a life of basic essentials. It should be no wonder, then, if we find ourselves short of people willing to do the hardest work, that is the most important... and because of our twisted hierarchy of what deserves how much money... the least rewarded.

The second problem is that as technology progresses, it becomes much more efficient and autonomous. A garden that takes a whole family to maintain can soon be run by one, or else multiply in size and still require the same amount of labour to farm due to advances in weed and pest control, new fertilizers and better tools, like tractors and machines for threshing wheat.

A database of information that once took a dozen people and an entire room to write down, keep track of and maintain can now not only be expanded a hundred fold, but even with all the extra information, be kept running and maintained by just one person using a sophisticated computer, while simultaneously being accessible to literally thousands of people at once without using additional work hours, thanks to the wonders of the internet.

Routine medical tissue tests that once had to be done by eye and took hours can now be automatically checked by machine in minutes, with an astonishing leap in reliability.

Et cetera.

In each one of the cases above, it has become possible to provide the service involved to many, many more people at once... with an actual reduction in the number of people who need to spend their time arranging for it to happen. This has occurred in every single industry, which is very much to our credit, and the number of new industries we've invented now that we have the spare people to power them, while impressive, does not actually fill up the difference.

In the middle ages, it may have been necessary for the survival of a village, that everyone spend long days labouring at their assigned tasks, because otherwise there would not be enough food, or adequate defense, or enough houses, for them all.

We no longer live in that world. The percentage of people who need to be farmers to feed us all has fallen dramatically, and we even have the luxury of more choices in our foodstuffs, with a trading culture so strong that we can get fresh or close-to-fresh produce of almost any kind from anywhere in the world, all year round.

With more efficient practices and better tools as well as many more drugs and medicines and a completely evolved sense of how the human body works, we need a smaller percentage of the population to be doctors to keep us in good health.

Even with inventors, scientists, politicians and government officials at all levels, teachers, plumbers, engineers and the creators and producers and maintainers and servicers of every new invention we've come up with, and the veritable army of customer service personnel, accountants, waitresses, cleaning staff, and salesmen (a job which I am convinced provides no benefit to society at large whatsoever by its existence), there is still a huge block of the population who are not employed in any of these fields... that we can afford to, and do, provide basic services for anyway.

There is, quite simply, nothing that they are actually needed for. There are, of course, always things that could help, new ideas to come up with, smaller, unnecessary but pleasant roles they could fill...

But there arises a new problem. Firstly, that many of these people may simply have no idea what additional benefit there could be for them to provide, worth the time of doing it... And secondly, and most damnably, the rather massive problem that even if someone does come up with a wonderful thing they could do and be good at, and make humanity richer by the doing... there is a very good chance that they will not be able to find anyone willing to pay them to do it.

With the same hierarchy of value and importance that devalues food production and teaching the next generations simply because they are so important that we need them... this same system by which professions jockey and push for dominance, where a million different voices of producers and servicemen proclaim "I am the one worth the most! I deserve the best reward!"... some of the most humane, generous, beautiful activities that human beings can come up with...

...Are ranked so low, that they are awarded no compensation at all.

Consider relief and community project workers in foreign countries, many of whom work without pay, or even pay for their "hero vacations" themselves to help cover the cost of supplies. Consider the fact that the Global Fund to fight AIDS has been suffering considerably for lack of donations from world governments, and a couple of times, has come close to having to suspend vital operations... like giving free AIDS medicine to impoverished Africans. Thankfully, campaigning and philanthropy have kept it above water... so far.

On a less serious note, why is it that skilled, old fashioned craftsmen, makers and repairers of fine wares, need to be shutting down their shops and ceasing business when they are still providing excellent service and goods that should be considered valuable, and the space they are taking up is not needed for anything bigger or more important - no, it's likely there are already empty and unused shopfronts in the same neighborhood?

The answer is that while we value these things, or at least claim to, when it comes to paying the bills, we have to prioritize and assign, decide where our money is going to go. For some reason, our currency, the manner by which we measure and trade and use wealth to ensure that everyone gets a fair share, not only creates inequity but actually causes us to discard some of the wealth we already have, by placing a limit on what we can "afford" which is completely independent of both the wealth we actually have, and the number of people we have available to do work for us creating wealth.

It creates complicated scenarios in which it makes more sense for a company to treat its workers more poorly in order to increase overall efficiency, despite the truth of the fact that workers perform better when treated well and kept healthy, and also despite the moral problems with such a business model.

It creates a world in which we have more than enough food, technology, manpower and skill, all just sitting there, to feed everyone the most delicious feasts we can imagine... and instead of doing that, we obsessively keep track to make sure that no-one gets away with taking more than they can pay for, even if it means we have to throw food away and make it useless rather than give it to someone who is hungry but has no money.

And due to the extensive legal issues surrounding money and its transactions, we actually have a significant chunk of the economy which is effectively entirely dedicated to cleaning up the messes left by its own flaws!

The money system and the requirement that people earn money from employers willing to pay them started out as a good idea to keep things organized, but like the original printing press and European feudalism, it has had its day. We can do better now. We have the technology. The times have evolved past it, and frankly we do not need it anymore. It places pointless artificial limits on the amount we are able to do, encourages greed and hoarding and theft by putting far too much value in tiny, useless coins and papers, and makes just as many problems with value assignment and prioritization than it solves by making sure everyone has to contribute... even though we do not actually need them to.

If we stripped away the redundancies and accounting and sales that money makes necessary all by itself, I am confident that we could care for 100% of the people using the man hours and skill of 10% of the people. We could do it better, more efficiently, and with less grief all around, than we do it now. It would be just another mighty leap forward in social efficiency.

Even if we just restricted the use of money to certain luxury industries like travel and entertainment, and the finest of material things, we could make our society much more streamlined, efficient, and inherently more caring and generous. We could stop making 10% of the population work 40 hours a week and get 50% or more of the population to work 10 or so hours a week, too, if we wanted to. I bet people would be happy to volunteer for shifts like that. I did it myself, for a while.

And that, actually, is my final, and most personal complaint.
Me. Myself.
I am a goodhearted, intelligent, insightful person. I have the skills and the power to cheer and console, to help people through their problems and keep things in perspective. I have lots of good ideas.

And the way things work now, I am not authorized to act on any of them without paying thousands of dollars I do not have to be lectured at for a few years first. Because society "can't afford" the risk that I might do it wrong and hurt someone.

Fuck this world. I want to go home. I want to make home. Here. So damn well fucking let me.