practical philosophy

Exactly a year, as if it matters

2008-02-15T14:02:00.000Z

"I take my last drink on September 11, 2002 - exactly a year after so many things kicked off..." -- Tania Glyde

The dull aphorism of the Pseud's Corner, as often, illuminates the central tendency of humanity to be most obedient to pointless customs and desires.
We make a fetish out of marking boundaries of time for important events. Birthdays are recorded and celebrated, anniversaries remembered, and minutes of silence observed. It is as if something has not happened unless we make a point to remember it regularly.
In one way this is entirely arbitrary and terrifying in its lack of spontaneity. It is almost as if what has happened must keep happening over and over for it to have happened at all. Of course, in many more ways it is understandable and enjoyable for us to feel so constrained by the demands of time - it does give us something to do, it does sponsor a collective memory, it is how we want to work.
Something is also demonstrated about the way we live. If we did not mark these occasions so readily, what would we have? The idea of "carpe diem" is a very extreme way of marking our lives, each day a line in the sand with "one day closer to death" on it. We are counting down, in our imagination, our closeness to death. And this is what will cause us to act thoughtfully and consciously, according to its adherents.

Just imagine how amorphic time would become without these little signposts of here, now, and then. Weekends and weekdays, if dissolved, along with all other such markers, we would grope blindly not knowing why to act on anything but immediate concerns. To get rid of our thin attachments to history through regular observations of time would be to destroy our link to anything, maybe we quite literally have to invent the past in the present to recognise it at all. In truth, I do not think motivation is in any way possible without this human notion of time running out, of (in the most mundane way possible) deadlines and cut-off points. We are only able to do anything when we set ourselves limits, and as we are so poor at that most individuals simply react only to the limits set for them by the outside world.

The grim pleasures of external control beckon, but we submit willingly, because in an of ourselves we recognise we can do so little.

"Back, you sex-obsessed drug-peddler, back I say."

2007-08-27T14:38:00.000Z

From the Guardian:
Ever since school, Neil Boorman has been obsessed with the right labels - the shoes, the tops, the mobile phone... They became his identity. If he burned the lot in one grand gesture, would he be cured?

This salacious little tidbit, nestling beneath the cleverly double-meaning title, "Name Dropper", sums up the piece so much I would like you to refrain from actually clicking on the link to read it. I only included it out of completeness, and deference to the possibility that, otherwise, the Guardian legal team might hire a sniffer dog to lick my sensitive spleen.
To recap the tidbit in even more tiddly-bitty form: Neil Boorman. Label obsessed. Identified himself with label. Burned it all. Good on him?
I would like to briefly examine why so many people express antipathy, or even open disgust, at his actions, and offer my own understanding of his sad pathology. Shopping as a means to buy status, to buy self, is a horrible idea and we should all be terrified to think that it may happen. Perhaps trying to illuminate this case could help us find out more.

Let's start from the beginning - why did he do it?
"As a former editor of youth lifestyle magazines, I had caught a glimpse of the inner workings of advertising and marketing, and found some practices distasteful. Furthermore, I felt rather cheap that I had used my position to champion these brands, almost as if they were gods. So in order to cleanse this addiction and highlight some concerns surrounding advertising and consumerism, I vowed to burn all my stuff and start again, brand free."
Let's go further back, like Freud on cocaine: At junior school, I tried to make friends with the popular kids, only to be ridiculed for the lack of stripes on my trainers. In the absence of parents who smacked him with a Faberge egg for crapping on the seat of a Rolls Royce while on a marathon journey to Blackpool, while he wore family heirlooms handed down from the personal wardrobe of Sir Walter Raleigh, this will do to tame the wild beast that is Sigmund's pharmaceutically-fuelled id. Back, you sex-obsessed drug-peddler, back I say.
Here we have it: addicted to brands, champion of said brands as 'a lifestyle', now against consumerism, ridiculed as a kid for not wearing the right trainers.

Now, why is he addicted to brands?
"Being the gullible fool that I am, I believed in the promises that these brands made to me; that I would be more attractive, more successful, more happy for buying their stuff."

Finally, why burn his expensive labeled stuff?
"To the casual observer, burning £20,000 worth of expensive designer gear to cinders in a central London park might not seem like the wisest of actions. For lifestyle journalist Neil Boorman, this ritualistic, highly public destruction of his worldly possessions was a pivotal moment, one that formed the jump-off for his first book, Bonfire of the Brands. ‘I realised that not just my professional life, but my personal life as well was completely dominated by brands,’ Boorman explains. ‘I think I had some kind of weird disorder, which I call “obsession branding disorder”. I had to rip it up and start again.’"

This is a man who self-identifies as a brandaddict, progresses to be a brandpusher, and then burns the past to make himself anew as a brand new man. Sorry, couldn't resist.
Here is the news-friendly story - brand-whore helps brands take over the 'lifestyles' of the young, sees the error of his ways, and repents publicly to teach us all a lesson. Thanks, Neil!
And then writes a book. Er, great.
And then gets a career out of it. Hmm... wait a minute!

Let us try to steer a course between sober analysis and jealousy. We can't simply object to this as a case of Neil 're-branding' himself as an anti-brand crusader, using all he has learnt simultaneously against his old 'lifestyle' and for a new (and probably much improved) one, although it is tempting. It behooves us to look again at the evidence.

Let us, again, start from the beginning - why did he do it?
Well, when he said that he wanted to fit in with cool kids with labeled clothes, he was omitting part of the truth. In the Guardian article, he abandons his sister at a school disco: "I'll never forget the look of disappointment she gave me as I abandoned her in the disco for my friends. All evening, I could feel her watching me as I joined in the bullying and taunts my friends gave the unfortunate kids with 'square' clothes."
This is not just about being cool, it is about being accepted by the bullies and finding some defence from their cruel jibes. He is not just finding acceptance from the right clothes, but status as a kid who is over and above other kids, who is superior, who can laugh at them for their 'Oxfam' shoes. To me, this is a major difference from what he states elsewhere. This sin of omission is not just about minor detail, adding in the evidence reconstructs the whole reasoning for being brand obsessed.
Now, when Neil says "I believed in the promises that these brands made to me; that I would be more attractive, more successful, more happy..." I am not sure that it is really the marketing that makes him believe this. It is his own weakness, which was evident at an early age and succumbed to at an early age - he readily took on the identity of the aggressors in order to consciously side with them, and against the 'squares', including his own sister. It was not an ad that made him buy cool trainers, it was dickheads in a playground that laughed at him for not spending his parents' money on shit.

Now, why is he really addicted to brands?
"By the time I reached my 20s, the power to gain acceptance, and in turn grant acceptance to others, had begun to preoccupy my adult life. It's not unreasonable to say that my own sense of self-worth now depended on maintaining and exerting this power... one particular brand has remained a permanent fixture throughout my life: Adidas, a German sportswear company that has been the unofficial clothing brand of black American music since the early 70s."
He still wishes to maintain a bully-like position at the top of the pecking order, gaining and also granting the badge of identity to an elite club to others. That he chooses to do this through the clothing brand of ' black American music since the early 70s' just highlights the idiocy. Let's look rich and filled with status by ghetto-styling. Let us mimic people who come from a far less privileged background. Doesn't that just show how rich and clever we are? Afterwards let's drink champagne while eating fish and chips wrapped in newspaper, what?
It is also evident that he has problems in other areas: "at the age of 23, I realised that I had developed a problem with alcohol." Whether this is because of an 'addictive personality' - which I do not think exists - or because of a pervading sense of futility in his life (it certainly comes across, Neil!), he is not just 'addicted' to brands. He is, in general, unable to fill his life up with anything but over-consumption. He has not tried to buttress his status and identity with brands, he has fully accepted that brands become his whole identity because he has never tried to be anything else. Brands have not ruined him, in my reading of the scant evidence I have, he has chosen to identify wholly with a branded 'lifestyle' in order to avoid being anybody.
Harsh? Perhaps, but then again I'm just reacting to an article I read in a newspaper, it's not like I've known him for 20 years and am now selling a kiss-and-tell story to the Sun. So get off my back, will you, I have Freud caged up under my stairs and he's hungry for some psychoanalysin'.

Finally, and really finally, why burn his expensive labeled stuff?
Neil obviously felt that the brands were preying on him, getting in the way of himself expressing whatever he was authentically - that he had a disorder that the brand-makers themselves intensified.
I do not think so.
It is not the brands that are the problem. Who really gives a crap, as Neil starts to, that toothpaste is labeled as so by Colgate, or a TV as so by Grundy, or a washing machine as so by Ariston? Sure, a world without these big names plastered everywhere would be better, but that does not mean that you shouldn't brush your teeth. It is simply that Neil has to rid himself of all this stuff, as if they corrupt him.
It is obvious that the brands have not corrupted him. At every step of this sad little journey, it is Neil himself who has had a terrible desire to set himself apart from other human beings and mock them for not exhalting in consumption. It is he who identified with the bullies and adopted their way of life. I am quite sure that if the bullies had discriminated against others based on race or sexuality rather than purchases, Neil would never have become so hopelessly Adidas-obsessed.
No, Neil is not addicted to brands, he is addicted to feeling superior - and through purchasing expensive items is way he has learned to be superior. "Adidas" is not his lifestyle, quite obviously he has not emulated the existence of a 1970s black rapper living in an American slum. His lifestyle is, actually, "I wear Adidas, I spend lots of money on this, and you don't". He never believed in "the promises that these brands made to me; that I would be more attractive [etc.]" - he only believed that this was what brands were supposed to mean. He only ever believed that he was setting himself apart from other people, becoming an authority in his area and trying to find people that he could use this against.

Many people chide Neil for creating a public display of destroying this stuff. Not only does he turn his back on the past and commit to doing better, he also cannily recreates himself as a no-brand guru - a living brand for a post-brand and 'ethical consumer' society.
If he had simply given his crap into Oxfam, he would not have had the opportunity to say, "look at me! I am, in a totally new and now authentic way, better than most people!" If I am in a small way right (and I do not expect to be even that, I'm just leveling my own prejudices and experiences against a man I have never met and will almost certainly never meet), if I am in a small way right, then Neil feels quite a lot like he did before his bonfire. He feels wholly and undoubtedly better than other people, for they do not act in the way that he does. Plus, he makes dosh telling them all about it!

Re-sult.

"They will consciously waste their own time"

2007-08-23T15:32:00.000Z

It is hard to explain why, but I take an interest in general gaming discussions online. It is probably because I am still, at heart, a nerd.
However, my engagement with this world is basically acerbic, as I have gone from being in thrall to electronic entertainment as a teenager, to an adult who views such overuse as pointless. Therefore the tone of my contribution to the gaming world has gone from fawning (e.g. sending in hints and cheats to Amiga Power), to questioning (e.g. interrogating somebody as to why "there's no point limiting yourself to one console for the sake of it", as one seems to be perfectly enough).

One thing I've noted is that the XBox 360 awards gamers with a 'gamer score' which is posted online. This score is viewed on a homepage that is set up for you when you go online with the console, and becomes something of a bragging feature between owners. To quote one 'obsessed' games reviewer:

"So back to my confession. I only bought my own Xbox 360 a few months ago and I've been wasting time with my baby son that I should have spent gaming. But whatever the excuse, admitting you have a low Gamerscore feels like admitting you have a low IQ. Again, brilliant thinking from Microsoft - we're shamed into buying games."

In fact, owners of the console are playing games that are rubbish just to score easy points: "I feel dirty. Last night I spent an hour of valuable gaming time playing the godawful Fusion Frenzy 2 on Xbox 360. Why? Yup, you've guessed it - easy gamerpoints" starts the introduction to an article. A comment on the previously cited article adds that "I was sent the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game at work, and I've already got a couple of hundred points just for completing the first four levels. It's pretty rubbish, but I'm compelled to complete it, partly because it'll be the first time I've ever got 1,000 points from a game".

Now we live in a world where, sneakily, we attempt to inflate a meaningless score to overtake the meaningless score of others by gritting our teeth and enduring a paid-for experience that rewards us in no way except to inflate that meaningless score. Will there be any consequences?
I am a psychologist. I am interested in educational psychology. It has long been common in classrooms, especially for younger children, to award tolerable behaviour with golden stars and so on. In fact, a similar system is often used in prisons. It is very basic behavioural psychology - reward the behaviours you want to see so that they are repeated. Does it work in classrooms or prisons? And will it work in the living room, late at night, playing yet another shoddy sequel?

When talking about motivation, there is a handy distinction between the intrinsic and the extrinsic. I am intrinsically motivated to relax in the bath at the end of a long week - it is quite simply what I want to do for my own reasons, and I enjoy it. However, I am extrinsically motivated to take a cold shower before work when it happens that there is no hot water - for if I do not clean myself I will smell and be ridiculed.
Therein lies the difference between the two kinds of motivation. Intrinsic motivation is a factor inside of you that makes you act. Extrinsic motivation is a factor outside of you, either punishment or reward from another agent.
It is obvious that packets of cigarettes, gold stars, or 'gamerpoints' are extrinsic motivators. So, what happens when you rely heavily on rewards to make people (whether pupils, prisoners, or pad-pounding-playas) do something?

The answer is that extrinsic motivation leads to a lack of interest. Lepper et al. (1973) observed nursery children drawing, and picked out those that enjoyed it. These children were split into three groups:

Group 1 was told to expect a reward for drawing, and rewarded
Group 2 was not told to expect a reward, but was rewarded
Group 3 was not told to expect a reward, and was not rewarded

After all this, the children were allowed to play some more, and were observed. Group 1 spent less time on drawing than the two other groups, because when extrinsic motivators are taken away, there is no longer a reason to repeat the behaviours. The children no longer bothered drawing, as drawing had become a way to receive reward, and without the reward seemed pointless.

No doubt most game playing is based on intrinsic motivation. The addition of these 'gamerpoints' adds more extrinsic motivation to the mix, and may be changing the play habits of some Xbox 360 owners. Are gamers no longer playing a game when all the points have been milked out of it, tossing it aside in order to start up a new fetch quest for a high score? Do Xbox 360 owners feel less motivated to play games on other systems, as they are forgetting why it might be enjoyable to play a game which does not reward you with such achievement recognition?

Or is the whole thing just an excellent way for Microsoft to show us that there are plenty of dire games that many gamers will still play, as long as they are given a thin 'achievement' excuse to do so? Psychologists should observe closely: people can be powered so little by intrinsic motivation that, in the absence of anything in particular to do, they will consciously waste their own time.

Adopt a porpoise: Does boredom spring from 'the illusory happiness called success'?

2007-08-17T16:14:00.000Z

"But nothing lasts long in this world. Even joy grows less lively the next minute. And a minute later, again, it weakens further, until it is swallowed up by a prosaic state of mind, even as the ripple from a pebble's impact becomes merges with the smooth surface of the water. So Kovalev relapsed into thought again. For by now he had realized that even yet the affair was not wholly ended, seeing that, though retrieved, the nose needed to be put back on his face, where it belonged." -- Gogol, 'The Nose'.

Gogol's short story can be said to mean all sorts of things, 'cos it's that good that you effortlessly read what you want into it. I would like, though, to stress - as I have done by selecting the paragraph above - what Gogol is saying about the 'hedonistic treadmill'. Simply put, get what you want and you will want something else in short order. Had your Big Mac? Time for a shake, my fat little friend! Enjoying Die Hard '4.0'? Perhaps you should get a boxset of all four films on DVD! And then a poster! And then an official 'yip-ee-ki-ay' mug and toothbrush combo set!
In this manner, poor Kovalev is joyous upon finding that his nose has returned to him. It is the fulfillment of all his dreams, as having seen his nose cavort about town and holding a higher rank than him, he has become rather subdued. Well, the fulfillment of all of them except having the nose back on his face. And, a perspicacious reader may look beyond the happy ending of the tale to consider that, post-nose reattachment, Major Kovalev may yet find another dream to chase after, fantasy to fulfill, or even another nose to attach. A collection of 'em, after all, offers far more facial security than just one.
Perhaps boredom is related to this treadmill - a feeling that inexorably overwhelms us just as we think we are escaped from it, simply because we are always driven to look forward to having more, rather than looking behind to what already have. Boredom is of much importance to me, as I work with teenagers. If it were a substance that could be collected and sold, I would be rich, simply by mopping up the thick miasma left behind by disaffected teens. I see it everywhere, it clogs my pores, it worries me.
You should, I wager, be worried about boredom too. To give a slightly silly, but all the more terrifying for it example, yobbishness in young folk is often blamed on boredom. In what I must admit is the most concrete proof of 'political correctness gone mad' (yes, I am going Tory in my old age, what?), when there is a conflagration of teenage spite against society - endemic and petty vandalism, scaring old people, smelling of BO, drinking in the streets and leering at everything - a social worker can always be found to declare in exactly the same style they would declare that the earth is indefatigably round that they act like this 'because they have nothing to do'. Boredom is, apparently, motivating senselessly destructive behaviour. I have nothing to do, thinks hoodie number one, so I will do something quaintly abominable and get in the Daily Mirror.

I am not sure that I believe this. I am not sure to what extent boredom can even exist in the way that we are describing it. Let me explain.

What do we take it to mean when somebody says "I am bored"? Well, the most common reply to a 'bored' youngster from their parent or otherwise guardian is "why don't you..." This phrase, often ending in "go outside / paint the shed / clean the toilet" is not really a question, although it seems to be. It is usually a terribly backfiring attempt to motivate a self-consciously bored person to do what you want them to - as if boredom is a lack of things to do to be filled up by activities. Yet I do not think that this is the case.
The world is so crammed with activities to be getting on with that it is quite simply irrational to say "I have nothing to do: ergo I am bored". You might as well say "I have nothing to wear: ergo I am the emperor in The Emperor's New Clothes". There is neither a sufficient nor necessary relationship between these statements. Somebody who has 'nothing to do' could, at that moment, within a ten foot radius discover so many activities to be getting on with that they could occupy themselves for the rest of the day. ('What if you're in the desert?' clever readers interject unreasonably. Well, I reply, count sand in order to timekeep until your perhaps inevitable death).
Think of an animal. Are they bored? They find food, they may store food, they may build or maintain a living place, they clean themselves, they may interact socially, they find a mate, they mate. An animal never seems bored. They are always working towards the next potential payday, engaging in behaviours that fulfill drives and instincts, and then working on fulfilling the next one. Is boredom really possible? Well, there are exceptions, and we will consider one later.

So, boredom is quite simply not lacking things to do, even though popularly this is how we consider it.

Let me start bringing in some experts. Lars Svendsen has written a very well received philosophical essay on boredom (which I have not read, but obviously I don't need to talk about it. Yes, I am that deluded). He described two kinds of boredom, 'situational' and 'existential'.
Situational boredom makes excellent sense. When you are doing something that seems to be fruitless, you become bored. When it is too exhausting of inputs and produces too little output, you are bored. When it is repetitive, you are bored. Boredom, in this sense, can almost be seen as a survival mechanism, like the pain response. This is too easy for me, I can do better. It can spur you on to greater things, motivate you to change your behaviours. Situational boredom is not when you have nothing to do, it is when what you are doing is rubbish. This is one half of the meaning of Lars' statement that boredom "doesn't really have any qualities" except for the general "a lack of personal meaning". Boredom can keep you from participating in that which you find meaningless, and maybe cause you to start looking for more meaningful form of expression. Thank you, Apathy!
Existential boredom is the aspect that might worry us. It is when the world offers nothing to us, and our existence seems necessarily impoverished. One perspective would be something like: Nothing enriches me, no experience is improving to my self; everything is limited, transitory, and vain.
To turn to Wikipedia (sorry), some psychologist has said the boredom is “an unpleasant, transient affective state in which the individual feels a pervasive lack of interest in and difficulty concentrating on the current activity”. This covers, I reckon situational boredom. Existential boredom is "when we are simply unable, for no apparent reason, to maintain engagement in any activity or spectacle", from the same article.

We can see, then, that there are two forms of boredom. And we must cast aside one to embrace the other, and wrestle with it. The boredom we should seriously consider is not going to be solved by saying "well, go do something else, then". Existential boredom is, potentially, a life-long condition that cripples the individual so totally that vague attributions of 'depression' may seem like gnats in the face of it. It is like a self that desires negation to such an extent it wants to be a vacuum and suck everything in, destroying everything through a process of negative judgements. Or, in other words, it's really bad.
I am quite sure that many of my students cultivate this boredom preciously, as if it is a kind of lifestyle. It is necessary to be bored by the world in this fashion. You are simultaneously above everything and yet totally apart from it. The world is shit and you know it, and you gaze imperiously down like a cloud would stare at a barren desert. Yes, this sounds stupid - if you are so bored, surely this is a very negative state and you would come out from it? Let me explain again that boredom is easy to defeat. Boredom is inside you, it is how you relate to the world that is the problem - boredom is at the interface between you and the world (in your perceptions). It would be easy to help somebody to overcome boredom through retraining about what is and is not important, and establishing a hierarchy of interest. The truly bored person has a very flat level of interest, averaging at zero for everything. This boredom must be, in some way, a desired affectation to exist, otherwise it would be discarded. (Aside: yes, I am aware that many people believe depression and boredom to be linked. Let me just say that I am discussing boredom as apart from depression, as I am sure that it can be found in this form quite commonly.)

Where does this desire to be bored, and I am quite convinced that it does exist, come from?
Freeman (1991) studied 70 children registered as gifted by their parents - which admittedly makes them an unusual sample. Their intelligence led them to boredom and frustration, as the world was simply not giving them enough stimulation. It is obvious that boredom is often linked with frustration - perhaps terminal boredom is simply when you become so frustrated that you want to block the whole world out? Then again, these children may just have been reacting against parents who were rather pushy.
Perhaps we should first disabuse ourselves of the notion, if we have it, that the world is a grand, free, democratic place where everything is possible as long as we try. If there is one thing I would like to do, it would be to strip people of this asinine optimism, even if it did leave them open to long and cold reappraisals of themselves that eventually led to total and utter despair. C'est la vie.
The limits of average human imagination are, in my eyes, rather apparent, so we cannot simply rely on human ingenuity and spirit to solve all our problems - otherwise why do we still have so many? We may, as Wilde said, be sitting in the gutter but looking at the stars, yet that does not mean that the street sweeper shall refrain from obliviously destroying our little collections of trash that we have been erecting. Yes, the sad truth is that things are not perfect.
The problem of modern boredom is, to me, very quickly encapsulated by Victor Frankl, who said "Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for". Let me go into this further.
Erich Fromm, in his 'Escape From Freedom', describes how the human world changed utterly over the period of a few centuries. From a much more proscribed feudal Europe, where existence was fettered and goals set for you by society, to a modern world which became progressively more and more free. Free from, however, not free to. We have lost the constraining but equally defining customs of the past, and now are left with the need to define ourselves. And this is not easy. As Fromm says, "The right to express our thoughts means something only if we are able to have thoughts of our own". He brilliantly describes American life at the time as a patchwork of facts, put together by newsreels and newspapers: "In the name of 'freedom' life loses all its structure; it is composed of many little pieces, each separate from the other and lacking any sense as a whole". In a world where there is no whole, only atomised separateness, how can we build a self? Similarly we will become a collection of disparate facts, behaviours, activities and hobbies - perhaps only held together by the fake unity of a 'lifestyle' - and seek pleasure in conformity. For that is what Fromm says we turn to in order to escape freedom from, we chain ourselves to popular opinion and slavishly follow what is the norm.

If you cursorily read about boredom on the internet, you will find a number of books have been written on the subject quite recently (again, I haven't read any). A common conclusion is that society produces boredom. A sociological Marxist reading would mostly pin the blame on conscious control by those in power to keep us subservient. This makes exciting Invasion of the Body Snatchers sci-fi narratives possible, but is too breathlessly tense and, let's face it, clever to stand up to the reality of our uncontrolled and opportunistic political climate. I agree with Fromm - when you fulfill material desires more and more as we have unprecedentedly been able to do using the glorious machinery of capitalism, mass humanity is given huge amount of time to devote to whatever they would like to. Yet, at the same time, capitalism has taken away many of the things we would have previously spent time on, such as agriculture, religion, community. Astonishingly, the answer has been to acquire more, even though we have plenty. My students, although mostly from high-earning families, who have their needs fulfilled, are full of desire to buy yet more stuff. Almost all of them regularly spend the money they earn in part-time employment on things they do not need, and when asked will quite happily acknowledge that, in some respects, it is wasteful. Yet the process of buying is so fun that they will continue to buy things, forgetting that past the buzz of the checkout bing it becomes a hollow victory for most purchases.
Also, we subscribe to the idea of leisure. We feel as if we are so harassed by economic life that we want to take 'time out' to 'relax' - a process of doing very little that sounds to me like the most fertile ground for boredom possible. We are making states of boredom, of intellectual inactivity through aimless leisure-pursuit or purchase, central to our idea of self-betterment. I think that we are literally aiming to be bored, by achieving a state where we do not have to do anything, and doing something is suspect.

Fromm's answer to this is sponte: Latin ofr "of one's free will". He wants us all to be spontaneous, expressing ourselves endlessly, constantly, always producing what is original to us (and perhaps, occasionally, the outside world), living in and of ourselves and just being who we are. This process leads to an unstoppable expansion of the self, according to him, you cannot be yourself honestly without loving others and growing through your learning from the outside world. To quote: "man misses the only satisfaction that can give him real happiness - the experience of the activity of the present moment - and chases after a phantom that leaves him dissatisfied as soon as he believes he has caught it - the illusory happiness called success".
To sum it all up, he helpfully truisms that "there is only one meaning of life: the act of living itself". And this is where I must explain my dubiousity.

I am not so hot on Fromm's answer to the problems which he quite clearly delineates. He is a humanist, and I am not so faithful, as he seems to be, that the spontaneous nature of the human is always so positive. I do not see why spontaneity could not be, in many people, an awful thing worthy of suppression by outside forces. Also, I do not think that it is so easy to be-who-you-are. Ask somebody to "be spontaneous" and the last thing they will do will be spontaneous. Instead their response will be bluntly critical, or forcefully contrived, or something otherwise not spontaneous at all. Perhaps we must accept that human self is so bound up in control by the outside world that just to be somebody is to be directly or indirectly caused and affected by everything around us, especially human-invented meanings of the self.
Fromm rails against the idea that we should be content to be carefully organised individuals participating in an already-existing structure. I am similarly dubious that we can be fully free and individuals spontaneously creating a structure that benefits us all so mutually.
If 'the act of living' is the meaning of life, and we are all alive, then Fromm must end up having to point at people who are alive - but not in the 'right way' - and say "that's not true living". This is tricky, to me, very tricky; simply endlessly disputable.

What is the answer, then, to a world which seem to rush headlong into boredom by prizing what is always going to be boring? Let me return to the idea that being very intelligent might lead to frustration and boredom. Do intelligent people tend to do amazing things - is intelligence enough to make original people who change the world?
Unsurprisingly, no: Subotnik et al. (1993), studied 210 adults who previously attended a New York school for high IQ kids (average IQ of group, 157). They did not generally achieve much of note, going for modest success in a profession instead.
Furthermore, above an IQ level of 120 (which 9% of the population achieves) original achievements are determined by personality or motivation (Martyn Long, Psychology of Education). Intelligent people are ten-a-penny, yet world-leaders are not. What is this magic factor that produces people who do something, who slip between the cracks of normality and shake things up? What is meant by 'determined by personality or motivation'?

To put it simply, some people adopt a purpose.

I do not think that, at this moment, anything terrifies me more. Purpose can be an alien thing, pushed on you from outside. A child could be raised to perform terrorist acts because of another's purpose being pressed into them, like a seal into wax. Purpose can lead you blindly into fresh hells of your own devising. Purpose can destroy you, as it is a strong motivation that may know no reason.
Yet, it is the one thing that keeps us moving, that totally dispells boredom. When we want to do something.
The problem is simple - we have somehow made a world in which purpose is alien. Drives have been reined in and subsumed to such an extent in order to power normal, conformist existence that there is nothing left of us. We want so little, apart from what the world has designated for us, that our aims are literally mundane ('of the world'). We commonly think that humanity is somehow spiritually able to 'break the mould', 'push the limits', yet we do not do this ourselves. We are seduced by the normal so strongly we think it extraordinary, and pursue it relentlessly, forever tiring of our immediate gains and going for more.

Boredom makes us think, "I don't want to do anything". Perhaps we should be thinking more, "what is it that I must do?"

"It certainly sounds clever enough to be true."

2007-05-26T11:18:00.000Z

Let us surmise that "There are none more hungry than those who have too much to eat". It certainly sounds clever enough to be true.

Let me extend this idea into a new area. While their concept seems admirable, the reality of the use of human rights is depressing. Those who glory in their ownership of human rights seem to be those in the least need of them - which seems to me about as evident as my first statement. I see quite a link between the incessant consumption of unneeded food, and the constant use of human rights to benefit oneself. It seems to me that human rights can also be 'consumed' - for if one person uses them too strenuously, it seems to deprive their use from others. This notion helps me to understand why we who are privileged are full to bursting of human rights, while they are so invisible elsewhere.

The whole point of human rights is to produce equality across all humans, without that aim they are worse than useless. (With that aim they at least can be no worse than useless, I hope, otherwise to expurgate the idea we will presumably need equal terror and bloodshed to that which installed it in our societies). But their current use seems to be to create equality across those who need it least, a parity of privilege which all the privileged can exult in. This is a terrifying state of affairs. If we are all equal to be equally well off, as long as we are well off already, we are not creating any idea of human rights. We are merely creating an excuse for our larders to be as packed as our stomachs.

The biggest sign of human rights being tailored to suit us most perfectly is the equal and opposite notion of 'responsibilities'. If we are to have rights, we are told, we must also 'fulfill our responsibilities'.

On the fact of it, this sounds quite charming. Why not deny the manna of full humanity to those who cannot follow the rules? Why not make this a club by membership only?

However, it must be noted that those who are making the rules are genetically engineering 'human rights'. They are in power of them. And who is so human that they can negotiate this phantom concept to the ill of all others?

If we cannot distribute human rights equally, then we should abolish them. I do not see why anybody is less human than anybody else, and if we persist in pretending that they are, we should forfeit any such 'rights' we have imagined.

At the back of my mind is the idea that, if human rights were ubiquitous, they would not matter anymore. We would not have to invent them, to reify them, to bring them up an obstacle between humans. We would just act for each person as a means rather than an end, and not have to parcel them up in this strange legal formulation. The phantom would disappear. It is clearly an idiosyncrasy to demand natural and innate rights for all people, to suppose them with force and vigour, if they are indeed natural and innate. If they already exist then they do not even need to be mentioned - for they are there. If they do not exist then we cannot will them into existence.

So, either we all have human rights (and they are not worthy of mention). Or some have them (and are therefore more equal than others). In either case, stop being so greedy to take what you have, but have no need for.

Love

2007-02-28T10:22:00.000Z

Jaques Derrida on Love and Being

The above video will help express the ideas I have been writing about in a more accessible way for the reader. It is subtly poignant and well worth watching.

There are four points that I would like to comment on:

- Derrida's hesistation.
- The distinction between 'the who and the what'.
- The death of love. (This will be discussed in a subsequent post)
- The philosophical note on ontology.

Derrida cannot speak of love in generalities. Our knowledge does not stretch this far. In my last post I remarked that "The process of love itself is unthinkable"; likewise, Derrida has "an empty head on love in general". He even evades framing love in terms of the history of philosophy - is he meant to parrot or list what others have said, or tie them together with a remark on what they all have in common, what is identical to each? The former Derrida calls cliche; the latter presupposes a position on love in general, concerning which he has "nothing to say".

Nonetheless, Derrida succeeds in talking about love, not in a generality, but in a specific problematic that love negotiates: The difference between the who and the what. Derrida locates these in terms of an essential singularity - who someone is, and non-essential qualities - what comprises that person. Though Derrida is speaking in the third person (hence 'qualities'), we can nonetheless relate this distinction to the problem of forces and coherent selves. Do we love someone because they are 'the person that they are', or because joy is brought us by those things that constitute them, their behaviour, and their relation to us?

How do we think about the things that make us love someone? Do we see them as prior to and separable from the subject, or do we see them as following from the subject (either 'at all', or 'significantly enough to account for what we love to the extent that we love it')? This is the place in which philosophical theorising comes into play - are we going to maintain that existence precedes essence (the subjectival), or will we side with Nietzsche's lightning flash? As Derrida rightly points out, the question of what it is for something to be (the ontological question) is primary.

Derrida's words: "The difference between the who and the what at the heart of love, separates the heart".

How do we understand 'the death of love'? It is this, more than anything, that determines whether we can give expression to love as a real force. Derrida remarks that whoever is in love, was in love, or begins to be in love gets caught up between the two ontological attitudes. To the extent that we love, therefore, reality is cleaved in two for us. It seems that on this view unrequited love necessarily leads to ressentiment. The heart becomes separated and torn, our feelings get discarded and our hopes get dashed to the pavement. Must we cast down those that we love and call them unworthy of it? Can we not save our love this cruel fate?

Love

2007-02-24T16:04:00.000Z

My last few posts are linked: Love is a form of hubris that entails a loss of the self.

1) Love is not only something real but something radically real, something that changes us and makes us different to what we were. When we fall in love it is only ever for the first time, but love does not regress to some original dynamic - it creates afresh by bursting us open. It is a force that is precisely out of our control: Instead, we are placed eagerly in its hands. Love is a process of change that is always possible - 'we' cannot be 'beyond' love; love is a force that moves to the 'beyond' of 'us'.

2) We do not know and cannot know what love is. The process of love itself is unthinkable. We undergo this or that love, we can express it more or less, become more or less in love, but we cannot capture it within our concepts about ourselves - there can be no social history of love, nor any personal history that is permitted to say 'what it is'. What we can talk about is 'how it is' with us, which includes any talk about how it has been (we can recite our personal history of love to ourselves, dispassionately, but this shows our present constitution, our relative inability to be in love).

3) It is by a system of signs that we understand love. Our character is put under strain, and this is how we feel it - violent emotions disrupt and distort 'us'. We endure and then we break.

"Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else" - George Bernard Shaw

In this view, there are objective standards of differences between subjects that become in a sense inflamed and distorted when we fall in love. When we are in love, our social determinations tend to tear apart, but from Shaw's point of view this is something to be understood in terms of social reality, with the message that we should bring love back down to earth.

I ask - why would we do this? For what purpose? It seems that social purpose has overriden love, that the self has been able to deal with the emotions it feels within the systems of meaning it already inhabits. But love is something that we temper, qualify and make useful precisely when we are not in love. When we are in love things stop making sense.

We ask ourselves: "What good is this love to me?" But it doesn't matter. It never mattered. The idea of self-sacrifice never starts to become important; the questions of what we lose and what we gain hang relative to a 'reality' that reality has already dissipated. We cannot trace shadows in a room full of light.

In love there are no conceptual participants other than those which become eternal, and real love knows no laws but its own:

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
That alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! It is an ever fixed mark,
That looks upon tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, though his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved."

-William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116

The reader might contend that this is idealistic; a standard romanticisation of love that doesn't fit the facts. But what facts do we attempt to make 'love' fit?

Since love happens immanently to a given subject, there is no equivocity involved, but only ebbs and flows of emotion as they swell up within us. Love gives expression to a return of difference (to use Deleuze's terms), which means that everything we think we know about love misses the point - that love returns as forever new feelings. Feeling something and trying to recontextualise it through the comparative history of people you have loved is to seek to chain love to similarity that stays within the idea of the self and does not go beyond it (i.e. does not speak of love at all).

For Deleuze, thinking is something that constantly pushes the boundaries of thought, and should not be assimilated via preformed images, since in this way the mind only reflects upon itself (albeit with certain intensities) - it sees its categories of recognition out in the world: Good morning Theaetetus. In the same way, if we are truly to begin to love, we must learn to love afresh, anew, for the first time. To see in expressions of love only promises made a thousand times before is to see our own emotional structures reflected back upon us, and by this means we put love in shackles. To learn to be in love is to be aware, when something connects, that it connects. This means emotional struggle and toil, as we begin to love with greater depth and subtlety of emotion. We struggle to be more in love because we begin to affirm that we are in love, and this is sufficient.

Let us take a case, and one that has become very dear to me - Spenser's Amoretti. Sonnet 30 of the Amoretti reads as follows (translated from the Middle English):

"MY love is like to ice, and I to fire;
how comes it then that this her cold so great
is not dissolved through my so hot desire,
but harder grows the more I her intreat?
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
is not delayed by her heart frozen cold:
but that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
and feel my flames augmented manifold?
What more miraculous thing may be told
that fire which all things melts, should harden ice:
and ice which is congealed with senseless cold,
should kindle fire by wonderful device.
Such is the power of love in gentle mind,
that it can alter all the course of kind."

Love overrides all our assumed typologies, moral positions and 'lifestyle choices'. Knowing this to be the case, shouldn't we avoid love: isn't love something that is profoundly useless, that takes away the strengths we use to move through life, and that causes us harm? Shouldn't we resist love, and preserve notions of the self? Shouldn't we forgo the anarchy of becoming-what-we-will-be for the tidy management of reality as a list of social contracts? Isn't this the only way to survive?

No. This is death itself.

Love is not a contract that we enter into, nor can it ever be. Love that can be accepted given prearranged conditions is not love at all, since 1) to fall in love is to be changed, and 2) the idea of a change that does not change anything cannot be called a change. The sense of responsibility we feel toward each other is not engendered through a contract that one of us must propose and the other accept, as this is merely 'responsibility' in its abstract, legal formulation. Love does not obey the law, and in asking it to we leave the affirmation and expression of love behind, and with it our chance of truly connecting with someone, all for the sake of security. Why do we care about each other's feelings? Is it because we are obligated, or because we empathise? It must (for the love of life!) be because we make the attempt to understand.

Permit me to ask - if you, dear reader, were in love, and this love was not returned, would you expect the other person to treat you kindly and gently only because they felt an obligation to? Does their kind behaviour now bring you comfort? What of the thought that the other person might have, i.e. 'Well, I didn't ask for your feelings, so I don't have an obligation to deal with them'? I hope we would want to point out that the opposing circumstance, in which the feelings were asked for, is just as barren and bereft of life as the present one.

Love

2007-02-11T19:51:00.000Z

What is the extent to which one should care and worry about the life of another?

When is it that someone is 'in control' or otherwise to be thought to be 'responsible enough' to make a decision that is down to their own free agency? We commonly deal with worrying by setting up these limits. In fact, people spend much of their lives contextualising and recontextualising these boundaries, whilst avoiding situations and people that offer them some risk of recalcitrance.

I am convinced that this system of 'coping' is nonsense. It certainly makes it easier not to worry about someone, but I'm afraid that it isn't much help when you don't think it has much to do with the truth (not that philosophy is required here - we feel it). What seems to enable the prevalent notion of coping is the deployment of a kind of dualistic 'ghost in the machine', where we superimpose on our thoughts of people the ability to make free choices that go against both character and circumstance (well, in short, against everything we know about human psychology).

Not only this, but we also have a disgusting way of valuing people through this idea: people seem to be worthy of our efforts only insofar as they do not break with notions of the 'reasonable'; our efforts must not exceed our present thinking. Adopting a profound empathy or a responsibility toward someone else seems to be predicated upon their not being so different to us that we do not understand their choices when we consider them 'rationally'. If I choose to jump off a bridge, this, considered as a 'rational' action by a 'reasonable' person, makes no real sense and doesn't merit any further thinking about.

Not only is this wrong, it is despicable. We cease to care about somebody by inflicting upon them a most cruel responsibility for themselves. I don't have to worry about you because you're free to suffer - in other words, fuck you.

We feel and know that this isn't right. A child falls in a lake, and we jump in. After a few minutes the child is still underwater and we cannot find her. What if the child dies? This is the state of worry and panic that grips us in human drama. If we form a connection with someone that takes a tragic turn we find ourselves in this lake, this and no other. We tread water, exasperated - nothing will be the same again. We do not think of home, we do not think of a warm bowl of soup, there is nothing that can pull us back to our former selves. Those who suggest to me that this is where we should hate the child suggest a baseness that it is beyond my ability to put into words.

Imagine that you have just dived in. You search for the child... there's no sign. The water makes your eyes see differently, the light is bent and shadows move without form. Do you complain or do you search? This doesn't enter your head: You search again... nothing. Time and again and your efforts are becoming futile, even though you don't yet know it; you are single-minded, frantic.

Don't you resist this futility even when the thought finally occurs? What about the passer-by who shouts that it is the child's fault for not knowing well enough how to swim? Upon hearing this do you stop and say 'yes, it is futile', or do you search? How the fuck is this pitiful comment meant to convince us to give up the search?

Ultimately it seems we ignore our premises. Those that we love, we forget why we love them. We step outside, by whatever means, of the habit that changes us. I say this is possible only with a moderate, casual love, the kind that is sought as standard, the kind that is worthless. I don't speak only of 'relationships' but of dying parents, dying pets, broken friendships and betrayed trusts. A disconnected reason can do nothing for us when the chips are truly down, when we are completely on the line. Reality every time peeks through the cracks of our broken sensibilities, putting the lie to what we thought we were and should be, what we were thinking and should have thought.

Assuming a deep responsibility toward someone without the ability to act is a floundering around in the depths, a radical disconnect that stabs into our hearts that reality speaks in a single voice. There is no theological subject and no dualism strong enough to force my hands away from my head as I sit and write this. While others cope, I am altered, moved, destroyed. God will not intervene. Agony will prolong and my love will prolong it; I will be changed forever.

The Eternal Return

2007-02-07T10:18:00.000Z

The eternal return, according to Deleuze, effectively realises Being in the following way: "Being is said in a single and same sense, but this sense is that of eternal return as the return or repetition of that of which it is said."

The test of something's return is it's excessivity, it's becoming - different:

"When Nietzsche says that hubris is the real problem of every Heraclitean, or that hierarchy is the problem of free spirits, he means one - and only one - thing: that it is in hubris that everyone finds the being which makes him return..."

(Both quotations from Difference & Repetition, Continuum Press, 2004, p. 51)

Hubris is the repetition of difference, and this repetition is the expression of univocal being. This test is concerned with the idea that production is only expressed in actualising new forms, where 'hubris' denotes forces that transgress the qualitative state of a subject such that it is destroyed (i.e. not oppositionally but generically) and a new process of individuation starts its becoming. This becoming is preconceptual and is expressive of being, where a reflexive concept would subordinate production to its products and mute difference, making it dependent on the identical.

On the human level, hubris is the negation of the great ideal, and the project of the revaluation of values. Does this require a subject, or the becoming of new larval subjects?

This notwithstanding (though if anyone could help me with the above that would be great), it would be good to hear some opinions on the thought experiment of the eternal return as it occurs in Nietzsche:

The greatest weight. -- What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence--even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!' Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.' If this thought gained possession of you, it would change, you as you are or perhaps crush you. (GS 341)

Self-ownership and submission

2007-02-01T22:29:00.000Z

A video on self-ownership.

As I understand it, an argument from self-ownership is a completely political stance. Viewed with this in mind, the video above is tragically funny. ‘The Philosophy of Liberty’, as it styles itself, is a particularly overworked exercise in middle-management morality, and, considered intellectually, would make even the most obstinate child blush. However, the sudden appearance of boxes containing ticks and crosses over the heads of the figures is bordering on comedic mastery; The Very Naughty Swivelling Hands of Oppression explode my morality, right through the jocular tissues in my face.

This said, there are serious points to be made about self-ownership: specifically, concerning the ideas that 1) there are coherent ‘selves’, and 2) that it is of the nature of these selves to have property (and, further, primarily of themselves). Yet these points would be best discussed in the situations in which they are forced upon us, and not analysed in a propositional fashion – so, when do we encounter them?

There is an expression of self-ownership in the use of drugs, cigarettes etc, in which arguments from health meet with a particularly aggressive rebuttal. The Very Naughty Swivelling Hands of Oppression (TVNSHO), as always, get bounced back by the Forcefield of Self-Love and Anti-Genocidal-Justice (FSLAGJ), and we as interlocutors are left defending a very peculiar straw man – that it violates us as political subjects to see someone do something damaging to themselves.

Surely this, on the part of the self-damaging person, is an attempt to demonstrate that it is politically coherent to be self-damaging given a principle of self-ownership? What kind of an argument is this? Who would accept it?

On the other hand, it appears that self-ownership arguments are a way of legitimating a virtual person that is able to conform to the demands of our rights-centered, legalistic society. Not to mention, of course, that the assertion of absolute personal sovereignty grounds unlimited, polymorphous consumption. It may be the case that self-ownership can, in negative cases, support and reinforce damaging behaviour, but it also has the 'positive' effect of reinforcing values of consumption and alienation. The question I would like to ask is how these resolve into each other – is not damaging behaviour a specific instance of becoming politicised as a consumer?

Specifically, can we not say that the act of demanding property rights over the self is the same as giving up those rights, in an act of submission: that this submission is effected precisely by forcing its status as a legitimate, consistent political subject position upon the interrogator?

"It works for me"

2007-01-27T10:23:00.000Z

There has been a source of personal discomfort in my place of work for some days. A member of staff has suffered from an ailment and, needing to find an adequate diagnosis and its accompanying cure, sought an alternative therapy.
This alternative therapy is known as 'applied kinesiology' and, as the name attests, is not actually related to the scientific practice of kinesiology. It boggles me that the 'application' of it creates a therapy somehow so different (and I would imagine somewhat antagonistic due to competing perspectives!) to the science it takes its name from. It is as if someone has started an 'applied Conservative party' that is actually quite socialist.
When an applied kinesiologist diagnoses allergy, relative 'weakness' or 'strength' of the muscle is tested. You hold some food stuff in one hand while your other arm is held out. When you are holding something bad you cannot resist a downwards pressure from the therapist, when you are holding something good you can.

Now. Let us imagine that this is actually true. Why is it that we do not notice people putting foods into their shopping bags and suddenly becoming weak, arms sagging to the floor? Nor do we notice people eating a new food - which it turns out is bad for them - collapsing in a sad and soggy heap. It seems to me that this method of diagnosis must be questioned, as everyday observation shows us that we do not become noticeably weaker when holding or eating foods that this method would find us to be allergic to.

I was worried. A member of staff has been told they have a delibitating illness based on some recently invented procedure that, quite clearly, cannot be true without everybody everywhere having noticed certain persons becoming weak while holding/eating certain foods. And concern drove me to research the topic. Unsurprisingly, such therapists cannot actually find what people are really allergic to. They cannot use their methods to find out whether those with wasp allergies are holding a vial of wasp or water. Nor can they civilly accept their wrongness, with one failed applied kinesiologist stating "You see, that is why we never do double-blind testing anymore. It never works!" Imagine someone complaining in this manner after failing their driving test numerous times: "this test is bogus, it never works!"
Leaving aside the staff member's use of homeopathy and general interest in holistic medicine, I questioned this method. I was not met with a 'how do you know anything about it', or 'I base my belief on creditable studies that show otherwise'. All that was said was "don't tell me, because it works for me. I don't want to know".
Shocked and, let's face it, appalled; by the treatment of my concern, by the unapologetic nature of the outburst, by a total and uncritical absence of interest. To say, 'well, other studies have shown it does work' would at least show that there was a basis for their belief, even though I would disagree. It would be what could be termed a 'respectful disagreement', though, with things learn and opportunity for further discussion. But a total disregard for the possibility of testing, for their to need to be evidence of truth other than one's own has awful consequences.

Believing it was my fault for being so rude as to take issue with what I had been reliably informed was a lie, I prepared a page of studies and opinion from m'learned friends. Nothing more than excerpts, with web addresses for the reader to pursue further if desired. Why? I needed to explain my position, to offer what I had to say in an unconfrontational way. To absolve myself of whatever crime I had committed. And because I have developed a certain trust in truth, in living honestly, and being without deception. To say 'it works for me!', backing away from evidence, from discussion, is to be decieved and to be deceiving. It is something that I cannot accept. (Also, it seems that I am of the opinion I can lecture people on their health while many others would defiantly disagree with me. In this respect, we are all alternative therapists.)
Apologising for earlier, and stressing my desire to not disagree confrontationally, I provided the list. It was immediately put aside. "I don't want to look at studies or evidence. It works for me, and that's enough". Now I am not sure on what grounds I can ever really talk to this member of staff, as we may not even share a common concept of truth.

"It works for me" is vividly unsatisfactory thinking. It has bold, poisonous colours. It tells you to keep away. What are its consequences?

How can anyone manage their condition if they base their opinion entirely on 'what works for me', and disregard outside evidence from various authorities on what is best? Not only does scientific enquiry show that X does not work, but there are many competing alternative therapies. To settle on 'what works for me' means that you do not settle on what describes what you have most closely and/or objectively. It means you settle on what suits you. This will be different for different people. It will be different in different cultures. It will change over time, in different historical climes. In short, it is a choice not related to whatever problem you are really suffering. What is 'works'? It makes you 'feel better'. It is 'what fits me'. But medicine is not a valentine's card. Illness is not a lifestyle choice. What 'works for me' can be something that only appears to work, when the real cure is simply time, or some other change. What 'works for me' may not actually work at all. The diagnosis may not be right, and the treatment only accidentally helping the symptoms. Might you actually get iller?

Is 'what works for me' falsifiable, that is, can it ever be proven wrong? What if you try all sorts of therapies, which one is the one that is working? All or none or some, or the one you 'like best'. Were you even ever really ill?

There are so many works-for-me's out there that it seems impossible for anyone to choose. Almost anything has the anecdotal evidence to be a cure for almost anything. How can you choose, when all the evidence is absolutely and totally equivalent - somebody saying 'it worked for me'? Maybe everything works. Maybe illness is a personal matter, and we are all so personal that our cure must be personal too. Maybe as long as we are treated individually, nothing matters. Leave poor people to the mass-produced drugs, to the faceless hospital wards. The elite can have personal treatment, that works for them. Each to their own (when they have the ability to pay for it).

What if someone who says 'it works for me' is asked by someone else, 'what would work for me'? What if they suddenly assume that their small and local truth is worthy to be universal - it works for me AND you? And what if the person gets worse. And what if they die. Is it simply that 'it did not work for them'? And is the first person in any way responsible? Is anybody responsible if the treatment they administered or recommended did not work, as it is all down to the 'me'?

It is impossible for an 'it works for me' to offer criticism. I have a student who smokes and plays football. I tell students who smoke that they must be aware it is bad for them, and I told this student that it would impair their football ability eventually. "I've smoked for years... and I'm fine!" Well, it works for them. Can an 'it works for me' complain that somebody who takes drugs, who will ruin their body, who makes any choice that they disagree with is somehow wrong? What they do is working for them, just as what you do is working for you. Tough. You have lost the ability to compare. You have personalised the issue. Everything is atoms with no connection. There is no reason in anything except the individual, there is no link, there is no sense in making connections. There is just you and what you do and nobody else can comment.

Yes, our confident convictions must oppose each other. We must test opinion and belief. But to test false belief against evidence, and to learn only to ignore it when evidence has the upper hand, is to turn away from the possibility of testing and examining truth. It is to turn away from any universal of right and wrong, and possibility of reconciling differences.
Truth dissipates when 'it works for me' is used. My truth is my ointment. There is no way to reach out to others and share that truth, it is so infinitely personal and therefore beyond the reach of anything. Nobody can touch it so nor can you ever touch the truth of others.
When we prioritise our own difference, make it so noble that we turn away challenge to it, we can only accept ourselves.

What works for me? The truth, when it can be found. Yet, it is far more than just something that works for me - it is something that is also always there. The universal has much more power than the personal, much more use, and therefore the capacity to do far more good. Do not throw it away just to please yourself, as you will lose the chance to please and be pleased by others. That anyone could choose to act like because they feel it is in their own best interests leaves me heartbroken.
Everything that is hopeful is based on the predicate that people can agree, that we are more than a here-now-me. Do away with that and I challenge you to find anything left; we would be gone.

Tribalism

2006-12-28T21:03:00.000Z

Imagine a family unit or a group of friends, and the variously helpful and malicious actions between them. Why do they remain in each other's lives?

Generally, we say that people make friends and keep them, or stay active within their family structure, because they feel close to these people and want to live alongside them. We say that this means augmenting the efforts of those they care about whilst minimising their risks and losses. We state this quite naturally, but we forget that on the ground this just doesn't look right.

Psychologically, the principle of common advantage doesn't enter the awareness of people when they have to make any one of the vast number of petty decisions that make up their everyday lives. It doesn't happen that whenever someone picks up a newspaper for someone else, they really consider why they do so. Reason doesn't really seem to have an input. We'd want to say, however, that although everyday action isn't derived from rational principles, it is nonetheless true that altruism is the determining factor. Again, I say this doesn't look right.

While it's probably true that people have in the main no conscious knowledge of the grounds of their relationships, this doesn't mean that tribalism (call it whatever) is a good thing rather than a bad thing. The way that an individual behaves within a network of people they are close with is often predatory. Mood swings are sent rippling out, having a negative impact upon others, and yet this isn't an arbitrary action - real positions of power and dominance are effected in this way. Indeed, we all know groups of people who constantly abuse and vie for position over each other. We know also that most friendships are borne solely out of the desire to feel better about oneself, without any thought for those people thereby befriended.

Victimisation seems a large part of tribal behaviour, and is perhaps directly proportional to the stupidity of the people bound into the tribe. This is particularly striking when we become momentarily assimilated into a tribal community, and a pecking order asserts itself roughly upon us, manifesting itself in our reactions to the feelings aroused by the abusive behaviour. Let us assume that people remain in these relationships through stupidity (though what exactly this means we'd have to do work on): What do we do when we are caught up in a tribal drama?

Patience and tolerance are key of course. Yet insofar as we are already caught up in a tribal drama, we are being buffetted around - we are ourselves reacting, rather than acting virtuously. Retrospectively, however, we can identify patience and tolerance as desirable, in the sense that it is good to act patiently and tolerantly in an abusive tribal situation. But we know that these are lesser goods - that it is better to avoid these situations in the first place (where we don't know that we have the strength to deal with them).

To help inform this issue, see Spinoza's Ethics, Part IV, Propositions 69-71. The Curley translation states these as:

P69: The virtue of a free man is seen to be as great in avoiding dangers as in overcoming them.

P70: A free man who lives among the ignorant strives, as far as he can, to avoid their favors.

P71: Only free men are very thankful to one another.

This last proposition is the one that elucidates the status of the tribal community. Insofar as people know why they network with each other, and act according to reason and virtue to secure their common advantage, this is a true community, and those within it are noble. But of the tribal community, the Scholium to P71 states in part:

"The thankfulness which men are led by blind desire to display toward one another is for the most part a business transaction or an entrapment, rather than thankfulness." (Penguin,1994)

Exploding morality

2006-12-18T22:27:00.000Z

I mentioned in parenthesis in my last post that I am currently exploding my sense of morality. This is particularly difficult as my relationship with the world since I can remember has been one of disdain. What is it to explode one's sense of morality?

The best example I know of is in Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals, where (to give a crude outline) the brute fact of a mistake being made doesn't lend itself to the further determination that the mistake shouldn't have been made. This extra move installs guilt, and compacts the force of the action. The mistake or action on its own is greater than this.

Should we consider the world to be guilty for its crimes? It is becoming clearer that we shouldn't. Indeed, Nietzsche affirms action to the extent that he asks for a vision of man in which 'there is still something left to fear!'. Can we feel fear without assigning guilt?

I am familiar with this: I have always given to Caesar what is Caesar's. But I have never liked this Caesar. While the world shouldn't feel guilty for being what it is, the expression of disdain is nonetheless central. Spinoza asks us to teach virtues, and not to castigate vices, but this is like learning a foreign language.

To explode morality is to push it further than the scope of its immediate use. Imagine the prisoner, sectioned off from society where we cannot look at him, cannot learn of him or from him. How very guilty he is! Yet insofar as we know this man, have grown up with him, laboured and loved alongside him, his prison becomes something - not fitting but - perverse.

The notions on which our moralities rest crumble under the power of the understanding. Is this right? Certainly something has changed, but is morality destroyed or simply transformed? Spinoza would say the latter, since as we become more familiar with the causes by which our actions are determined the proper scope of morality suggests itself from an emergent ethics. In the end, says Spinoza, is not morality misunderstanding, and nothing in and of itself? By shining light upon the world, morality vanishes like a phantom. Again, this is an explosion, not a reduction - for whatever there is in morality, in the sense of being, will be understood in its fullest aspect. Morality does not understand itself.

Tolerating intolerance

2006-12-16T12:50:00.000Z

In 'What can we tolerate?', News Is Good puts lines across allegedly free religious convictions to pull the debate on religious tolerance in the direction of careful and critical moral objection. Currently, I am attempting to eradicate my own sense of morality (or, rather, to explode it), and I have had to come back to the notions of tolerance and intolerance to resolve a problem this creates.

I have always said, and have agreed with News on this, that the only thing we cannot tolerate is intolerance. To intolerance must be shown intolerance in return.

I now recognise that this is wrong, and that tolerance must be shown to intolerance. I shall offer a simple argument to this effect:

1) To be intolerant is to not consider all relevant facts
2) Intolerance must be dealt with justly
3) It is just to consider all relevant facts
Therefore, 4) We must not deal with intolerance intolerantly

To clarify this a little, imagine a situation in which a person, A, is being intolerant of another person, B. Specifically, A and B are walking together with B's dog, which B keeps on a lead. B's dog, 'Mr.Doggenson', repeatedly stops to sniff lampposts, which interrupts the conversation between A and B. After a few stops, A becomes annoyed and chastises B for allowing her dog to stop so much, and eventually A becomes so annoyed that he walks off in a huff. Now imagine that just before A walks off in a huff, another person, C, joins the walk. What does C say to A? Let me frame C's dilemma by considering hypothetical reasons behind A and B's attitudes.

The problem between A and B concerns the importance of the dog's natural disposition. B understands that, firstly, Mr.Doggenson cannot appreciate the level of interaction between A and B, and does not know that it is uncomfortable for them to stop every time he wants to sniff something; and secondly, B understands that it is important to allow the dog to do what comes naturally to him. This is why B stops while her dog satisfies his curiousity. A, however, is only aware of the negative feelings engendered by the interruption, and is not considering Mr.Doggenson at all.

C can either deal with A tolerantly or intolerantly. For C to be intolerant of A is to react to A's chastisements without considering them sufficiently to know what is best to do about them. C in this case is unjust regarding A's behaviour. On the other hand, should C be tolerant of A's chastisements, C would be able to think rationally about how A's disposition brings it about that A is behaving in this way, and would thereby be able to act occordingly. C in this case is just.

How does this stand with News' article? First of all, moral reactions to damaging beliefs and belief systems (in the sense of not tolerating them / not considering them with sufficient scope) are unjust. This answers News' question, "Is tolerance of a belief system more pressing than intolerance of harm?".

In a more general way, we can deal with the thrust of News' argument by dealing with the maxim that 'when a person believes something from which harm is done, and expects to be tolerated for being sincere, we should critically refuse this support.' The difficulty lies in this last clause 'we should critically refuse this support', and concerns what we mean by 'critically' and 'support'. For we tend to think that tolerance involves assent, and that correction works upon expressions. I will leave this analysis open, for anyone who wishes to clarify it in the comments section below.

Spinoza, Ethics, Part IV, Proposition 65, Curley trans. Penguin

2006-12-15T00:08:00.000Z

P65: From the guidance of reason, we shall follow the greater of two goods or the lesser of two evils.
Dem.: A good which prevents us from enjoying a greater good is really an evil. For good and evil (as we have shown in the Preface of this Part) are said of things insofar as we compare them to one another. By the same reasoning, a lesser evil is really a good, so (by P63C) from the guidance of reason we want, or follow, only the greater good and the lesser evil, q.e.d.
Cor.: From the guidance of reason, we shall follow a lesser evil as a greater good, and pass over a lesser good which is the cause of a greater evil. For the evil which is here called lesser is really good, and the good which is here called lesser, on the other hand, is evil. So (by P63C) we want the [lesser evil] and pass over the [lesser good], q.e.d.

On the continual fear and danger of violent life (not death), or Why you must risk something that matters

2006-12-13T16:53:00.000Z

Recent happenings in my life have inspired me, but not in the ordinary or casual sense. This post is an attempt to clarify what is meaningful in the context of my personal life, in shedding light on my shortcomings. This is not about recontextualising or subverting my failures, or even seeing them as in any way permissible. My failures are failures, and my bad qualities (or lack of good ones) really are bad. Not only this, but they are bad in such a way that extend real, sickening problems to me.

It may seem that I am departing in practice from what I believe in principle, but this isn't the case. Affirming power means understanding what power is there, even if that means we are pathetic and weak. The internet is full of snivelling bastards, all too happy to tell you how sad (!) they are, but I don't mean to be one of these. Despite the subject matter, I am not sad.

Perhaps I should start with the current problem. I have noticed that my interpersonal competence varies wildly. Given recent situations where small talk was an urgent requirement for any flowing conversation, I found myself unequal to the task. The outcome of this is that, firstly, I can be unacceptably boring, and, secondly, I can be unacceptably boring for sustained lengths of time.

I spent this afternoon with Dr. Jim Urpeth, in frantic conversation concerning the nature of belief, language games, forms of life, and especially the reality of power and what it means to be a philosopher. This I can do. Stopping to chat to a final year undergraduate, a little later on, found me as dynamic and friendly as I am used to being - yet the focus of conversation was mainly on the exegetical problems of elitism in Nietzsche.

What is it about the price of chips that I just can't make sound convincing and vital?

But I jest. It would be extremely bad faith to paper over the cracks and count my blessings, comparing worthless currents of social bondage to the supercharged meaningfulness of high-brow thoughts. I refuse to posit that attempting to relate to someone on something approaching a ground level is inferior to demanding they satisfy intellectual curiosity. I just don't believe this, and in any case it smacks of denial.

Relationships between people framed by their trying to relate on an 'everyday' level, with a 'normal' - that is, quick - level of success, seem to surpass my competence. This is actually a frightening problem. It is so frightening because of the importance of everyday relationships. Yes, we usually say random, painful relationships, where desires butt heads and the war of all against all rages continuously. But this is wrong. The acceptance and affirmation of what happens between people is the most joyous thing, and the love engendered can, will, and does fill our hearts in exactly those ways in which it can possibly be filled. If you risk everything for some notion of meaning, let it be this one.

People matter utterly, some more and some less than others, but each in their own way. When I reason for myself, I reason for you too. If this weren't the case, thoughts would be totally worthless. Attempting to act equal to this truth is an extremely hard, one might say an impossible task. But in fact, even though this sounds akin to 'there's a hard hill to climb', we do in fact want the difficulty of doing justice to reality to match the importance of reality. We cannot throw our hands in the air. What we can do, what we can affirm, we must and do affirm, and not because we are forced to, but because we will for the love between us.

I am unequal to the tasks before me, and I have to become equal to them. I am, under certain conditions, a bore. What I must do is move through, via this and other problems, the following transition: 'Will understanding that I do and mean to do the best for those I have contact with stand over and above any notion of suffering I could endure?' Which should instead be thought of as: 'Can my love overcome my hate and allow me to give with love to others what they are able to receive, and be satisfied?'

My changeability - now competence, now incompetence - demonstrates that I need people, that I am vulnerable to them. Investing in other people to the extent required (how much more do you have? chuck it in the hat) brings the worry that emotional violence can happen very easily and simply. But isn't this the Hobbesian fantasy? I know the issue, really, is knowing what to fear and what not to fear, but this is still young with me. In the meantime I am at your mercy, whoever you are.

Reason is not a language game

2006-12-12T21:32:00.000Z

The purpose of this post is to come back to the idea that belief is not a discursive reality, following a conversation with Dr. Jones. This conversation brought forward an absurdity: The abstract framing of this issue as outside of meaning negates the utter investment involved when something is held to be necessarily true. This doesn't have any bearing on the belief problematic per se, just in the way I explain the problem.

So, then, the direction is to go deeper into Spinoza, and the status of universality in reason. This happens to be a suggested paper title. Meep meep!

Belief(s?), Wittgenstein and proofs

2006-12-10T12:02:00.000Z

This post concerns my recent assertion that what we call beliefs socially are in fact not beliefs, and that we are in fact largely unaware of our actual beliefs. To sum up my earlier post, 'Old beliefs, new beliefs' (posted in September, and which might be a good starting point for the reader), there are two occurances of the word 'belief' in common parlance: one a construct forged around social use, and the other the precise usage that deals with what we in fact do believe. Of course, the way I've just worded what the latter means informs the meaning of the former, which by implication I mean to say is a lie.

But so what? Why does the social use of 'belief' have to be eradicated? Is it not complete in itself, partaking in a different language game?

Well, yes, it is. But there is a technical argument here from Wittgenstein, who argues that language games are the expressions of incommensurable forms of life. This is, currently, how I see the Wittgenstinian problem here:

Elements of language games can only be subverted into other language games through the activity of a form of life that partakes in the subverting game, and, as they are closed systems, the subverted form of life does not therefore change except through its own ability to understand the conditions of the subversion (i.e. through its own nature and not by that of another).

I intend to offer a couple of proofs for my position, showing by reductio the necessity of my position. Does this mean that I am only reinforcing my own form of life and not affecting any other? No. Reason is not a language game. And not only this, but I feel Wittgenstein would agree.

My move is a Spinozian one. Compared one to the other, forms of life (or singular things) are different, and not the same, and contain more or less perfection only relative to the meaning each one produces through its striving to exist. This is the same as to say that forms of life create dynamic language games. But for Spinoza reason is not a power of abstractly crunching out whatever meanings our form of life arbitrarily produces, but is our power of striving itself and our highest excellence. Reason does not decide what is best in the context of the notion of perfection, but absolutely.

I mean not to speak only to those 'with ears to hear', but to all men, when I offer the following:

1) Categorical belief is necessary to social belief: To be convinced that there is a social 'kind of belief', it cannot be possible that we do not believe it.
2) Social belief is not a subset of categorical belief: The question is open whether a stated social belief is believed categorically.

On a final note, we have to ask ourselves what the meaning of a social belief is. If someone says to you that they have a non-categorical belief, this is the same as saying that they do not have a belief. The insistence that there is another kind of belief is precisely the attempt to convince you that they do in fact have a belief, without their having to believe it. This is a lie. Indeed, because thought is reflecting on itself in noting that belief is categorical, their lie is not simply a discursive instance of lying (about what they are claiming to believe), but is an operation of the privation of knowledge that is lying itself.

The Diceman

2006-12-08T13:52:00.000Z

Can we and should we let chance determine our actions? Consider this hypothetical situation:

Someone has to make a choice between putting their potential actions onto a die or not. At stake is an issue that they understand. This is to say that they know the importance and scope of the issue, and how to act regarding it. It doesn't make any difference what the issue is, so I'm not going to use a specific example. The choice is this:

1) It is certain that the person acts according to a thing's importance, or

2) The person has a 5 out of 6 chance of acting according to a thing's importance

I want to suggest two things about this choice. Firstly, and most simply, that the person should not let chance decide their action here, because this would be to introduce a 1 out of 6 chance that they act incorrectly. This is something they should not do for the same reason that they should not swap a ten pound note for nine pounds fifty: Although this is a material example, and we are talking about chance, the quality of what the person has is nonetheless altered in both cases. All things being equal (and I have to stress this), the chance of ten pounds -no matter how high- is never as good as ten pounds.

Secondly, I want to suggest that the person cannot choose option 2), and what appears as a choice in our situation isn't really a choice at all. If the premise that the person really understands the issue and what to do about it is correct, option 2 is already out of the question. It is not possible, given real knowledge, say that x is true of y, that x not be true of y. For if this could be the case, this is not real knowledge. A person with knowledge cannot be anything but certain regarding it, and cannot fail to know what to do where appropriate: to throw on any issue is to act inappropriately and to negate knowledge, which is impossible.

This last point understood, and since we agree that we always have some knowledge, it is always impossible to surrender your decisions to chance (indeed, insofar as an issue can be a candidate for a throw it is to that extent sufficiently known). So there's something amiss here, as we indeed seem to surrender decisions to chance - the Diceman, for example, claims to have done this very thing.

But the Diceman never surrendered a decision to chance.

Conversations

2006-12-03T17:37:00.000Z

Due to my penchant for interrogation, I have set up the following blog: throughforests.blogspot.com.

This blog will attempt to re-present conversations that I have taken part in, in which I will have attempted to bring to the surface
1) the real issues insofar as the person sees them, and
2) the scope and detail of these issues with any problems.

For my part I will have, from within the conversation,
1) interjected problematics (not necessarily in a Socratic style) and
2) helped the person to construct and/or clarify their position.

Once each conversation is uploaded onto the blog, I will attempt to inform them by suggesting alternative positions, clarify what I think the major issues are, and such like.

Permission to promise

2006-11-24T20:46:00.000Z

The moral question, 'how are you going to live your life?', invariably in my experience elicits a conversation based around how best to achieve happiness. It seems we are a bunch of Happiness Harrys, or at least Pleasure Petes. What interests me about this is not that happiness (in the sense of living a comfortable, pleasurable life) is immediately and unproblematically placed at the centre of the discussion, but that it often will not shift no matter how the conversation seems to progress.

Take, for example, a conversation where we are granted an agreement that happiness doesn't consist in feeling comfortable but in being active and useful in the right way. It is my experience that in moving from this agreement to considering whether it can therefore be right to devote your life to difficult, painful causes, several unfortunate responses tend to be brought forth. Now, because we know that society actively promotes happiness as pleasure to the extent that it almost constitutes a religion, we can group together the 'I'm powerless and alienated' reflections that tend to issue from the more honest. Of course we should note that such arguments aren't seen as undesirable states of affairs, but offered as explanations of the reasonableness of settling for hedonism, which means that the honesty they are displaying is simply the honesty of stating their actual beliefs, and not the honesty of real regret. This is the first typical kind of negative response.

The second most typical response, and to my mind the most despicable, is the wry smile or the uncomfortable 'maybe', issued with the subtext that 'we both know that I want to enjoy my life and won't do anything like that ever'. It is this subtext that shows the dishonesty of the original agreement, and the inability to have the argument. Similarly to responses of the first kind, the identification of the subject with capitalism is highlighted. The argument doesn’t proceed to a genuine agreement over ‘what happiness is’ because of the overriding relationship the person has with consumer capitalism and the culture industry; because the level of investment is too large to throw away on some singular, unimportant conversation. If someone invested in consumer society legitimately challenges the basis of their consumption (that happiness is the pleasure they get from consuming), they would to that extent no longer function as consumers.

The relationship between the consumer and the productive forces of consumer society is one of social contract, and all (for want of a specific analysis) of the rewards and punishments of society are geared towards making these transactions work out. A la Nietzsche, the person is permitted to promise only insofar as he is conditioned to accept the consequences.

To sum up, in the first kind of negative response to the question whether we owe our allegiance to painful causes, the rewards and punishments of society are laid bare in language. We can do something with this. But the second kind of response – the kind that demonstrates consumer allegiance through the behaviour of the person – this is disgusting and slimy. While both responses are deletory, belying the confidence of the agreement about the nature of happiness, it is the second that refuses to come to the fore and display its sad trajectory.

The point of this post is to attempt to demonstrate a real difficulty that regulative discourses can ease. I tend more and more these days to press the question further, to demand to know why happiness must be what they think it is. But if the person will not follow me in conversation the real issues will not be discovered, and their non-compliance will mean much less to them than it should.

Wet slippers

2006-11-05T12:49:00.000Z

The waves of revulsion were already lapping at my slippers when I saw the front of the Guardian's Weekend magazine - "How these men and women remade the internet". The sight of affluent, technophiliac, endlessly-youngish people in smart/casual shirts and trousers pretending to be The Next Big Thing is always going to worm its way into me like a disease and leave me reaching for the medicine cabinet of pre-emptive prejudice. It's probably because I love too much.
What have these mostly white people done? Well, let's look at what they say about 'Web 2.0':

"Wide-open public participation [is] the right tool for the web". "Broadband has allowed people to live online a lot more". "It's just the wave of stuff that's happening on the web right now." "A marketing term". "Interacting with the systems we're building". "Passion". "Using the internet as an operating system". "The 'write' approach". "A philosophy that customers are in control". "A new group of ideas that understand the internet as being full of people who are doing things at a given time". "A lot of people who find it natural to spend a lot of their time doing things on the internet". "People with no technical ability creating really amazing sites". "That theme of communication and personal publishing".

Now, if some of those definitions haven't turned your stomach into a belching puke festival, you're a stronger man than me. "Understanding the internet as being full of people who are doing things at a given time"? That could sound, also, like a library, shop, swimming pool, or illegal massage parlour called 'Cuddles'. In fact, it almost resembles a puddle with some amoebas reproducing. What the hell is really being talked about?
The journalist says many slightly breathless things, such as: "Cool - everything to do with cool - is a big, big business. MySpace is in that business. It has more than 110m registered users; if it were a country it would be the 10th biggest in the world, just behind Mexico. Its audience, heavily skewed towards the affluent youth of the west, is a marketer's and advertiser's fantasy." But, at the end, he hit a note that salvaged my desire to remain alive...

"Sit someone at a computer screen and let it sink in that they are fully, definitively alone; then watch what happens. They will reach out for other people; but only part of the way. They will have "friends", which are not the same thing as friends, and a lively online life, which is not the same thing as a social life; they will feel more connected, but they will be just as alone. Everybody sitting at a computer screen is alone. Everybody sitting at a computer screen is at the centre of the world. Everybody sitting at a computer screen, increasingly, wants everything to be all about them. This is our first glimpse of what people who grow up with the net will want from the net. One of the cleverest things about MySpace is the name."

Phew, that was close. Let's look back at the techies' definitions of, ahem, Web 2.0. Participation, writing, living and doing stuff online, interaction, using the internet as a basis for all sorts of things, being in control. A theme that occurs seems to me to be that of the ability to choose to regard or disregard whatever you wish - of producing what you want, participating in what you want, ignoring whatever doesn't suit you. It really is 'all about you', I would argue to the extent that you can build your own little webuniverse and ignore, or redefine as a straw man, anything you don't like.

Yet, there is something that seems missing from this article. Is all this exciting, new technology really changing much? What is possible now that wasn't possible before?
Wikipedia is easily the best thing touted in the article - a massive, free encyclopedia anyone can write in. Yet it comes with its own massive problems, and although it 'democratises' both the construction and consumption of information, it can also act to demean information. Thorny points of view, matters of opinion, are planed and polished and buffed away by the ceaseless tide of tiny changes and nit-picking arguments. What is left is fine for articles that are based on matters of fact, but what about the most important and pressing topics, that are so important because a consensus has not been reached?
And, although Wikipedia is new, it could have been done before. On smaller scales, it has been done before. What it adds to the world is, most probably, a focus for the opinionated and obsessive to write up facts about things that are often of little importance. I'm afraid that I reckon I could do without it - there is nothing I could learn on Wikipedia that I couldn't better learn by studying. It offers a digested mulch of (usually uncontroversial) facts, and a forum for arguing with people who think you're wrong.
Nothing in the article particularly excites me. I already am participating in knowledge creation. I'm thinking and living and trying to do each better every moment. Do I really need a website on which I can post pictures of my cat and share them with millions? Has 'Web 2.0' really changed what it is to be human?

We don't need "Web 2.0" to do what's important, it is merely a technological upgrade that can help (and sometimes hinder) us in doing important things. It is not essential, and nothing it does creates such big and new possibilities that the world has changed. The ability to work together for mutual gain is faster and more convenient, but also the ability to aggrandise ourselves and publicise ourselves is faster and more convenient. The ability to band together in groups in order to share something important and make progress is faster and more convenient, yet the ability to band together in groups in order to share a common distrust and refuse to contemplate the world is all too possible, and even more convenient.
We don't need "Web 2.0" to do anything new. We need to be doing what's important, concentrating on what's important, and thinking about things. I fear that the internet gives us, more than anything, a way of escaping that, and is so far a technology that excuses our fascination in ourselves. Nothing has changed; it's just become more compelling to celebrate what we've always been doing - partly because now it's so much easier to please our selfish desires.

Good for the goose

2006-10-29T19:44:00.000Z

It seems, as it has done for what has been the longest time, that after my education I will become a teacher. Assessing precisely what I can do about the educational experience of my charges - whether I can encourage them to become critical and responsible human beings - will be a difficult and probably forlorn task, but one best left until then. Recent experience, however, forces upon me the probably arrogant and condescending task of trying to understand the merit of regulative discourses and how to implement them. That is to say, how to force (in a sense) someone to admit that they lack knowledge.

This amounts to asking how to ensure that the other person is interested in the truth or otherwise of the argument. Or asking on what grounds can an agreement to dialectical progress be committed to. If this kind of agreement is laid down, both parties will be singularly aware of breaking their bond, and will have to admit with regret their inability to find the truth or make genuine progress.

And yes, it seems initially that I am not heeding the warning of Nietzsche, who might ask what I mean by truth, along with I'm sure many other objections. But in the notion that 'wisdom is a woman, she loves only a warrior' we might read the recognition of the necessity of regulative discourses, of condescension and oppression, of the affirmation that the intellect causes suffering and is sometimes right to do so.

So what kind of regulative discourses work? It has appeared to me that we have come to deny the reality of precisely those discourses that lead to genuine dialectic, but this is thankfully a consequence and perhaps not a necessary one. Thankfully a consequence because when we throw out babies with bathwaters we usually stop at political ideals. If the inference is drawn nonetheless to the philosophical system of dialectic, which we can then not seem to smuggle in undetected, can we show that this inference is an erroneous one - what appeal, specifically, would this involve?

I have noted that throwing open the floor and asking for comments hasn't been very useful in the past, but I'm sure my good friend News might offer up an answer?

Deal? No deal.

2006-10-22T18:56:00.000Z

An article on the subject of Deal or No Deal from Jon Ronson:

As Noel explains to me the ins and outs of cosmic ordering, I involuntarily look dubious. Immediately, Noel changes tack to insist he hasn't gone "off with the fairies".
"Yes, the word cosmos might sound off-putting," he says, "but you don't have to call it cosmos. Cosmos is just a word. You can call it anything you like. You can call it Argos, or MFI... I wrote to the cosmos that I would like to meet a woman who'll make me laugh and make me happy," Noel tells me. "I wrote that I'd like a relationship that's not too heavy, with an attractive lady, and I'd like her to walk into my life by the end of September 2005. And she did!"
There is a short silence.
"She wasn't the person who sold her story to the Sunday People back in July, was she?" I ask.
There's another silence.
"Yes," says Noel.

This is a fascinating belief. Noel Edmonds is saying that if you write down a request for something, and it is positive (for example, 'I wish you would shut up, you blithering idiot' is not positive at all), you have ordered it from the cosmos. And it will come!
The obvious reason for someone believing in Cosmic Ordering is because they are desperate. They feel low. They have taken knocks. They aren't what they once were, and want to be there again. So, it offers this hope - the hope that 'positivity' will see you through. There is nothing more in life than to be nice and wait for the rewards! The meek will inherit the cosmos.

Then again, he doesn't quite believe in it. 'Cosmos' is just a word - it could be anything giving you what you want. Is he really saying that, when he writes down that he'd like a relationship with an attractive woman, Argos or MFI delivered it? Obviously not, because I do not think that he believes his ex-girlfriend came as a flat-pack assembly.
It is open to question then, what he really believes. Something, whatever it is - obviously maddeningly metaphorical - responds to positivity. And it makes good things happen. Want good things and they come. It might be the cosmos delivering your order, or a mundane business, or most probably it just happens because it should. Justice for all, and for all, justice!

The sad and sickening logical conclusion to these thoughts is that the world is just. And people get what they deserve. And all the world's poor - including the starving babies, the physically and sexually abused, the tortured, those left to die who don't get the message and go on dying for years - must not be asking for nice things.
Therefore, they do not deserve nice things. They are not being nice.
Furthermore, they cannot be helped. In a great and beneficent universe, they are not getting what is only a request away. Does Noel believe in charity? Is there any point, when everything is everybody's as long as they ask for it? Does he see any point in giving what he has asked for when anyone could have it, or more, if they only requested positively?
I do not know, and I'm not sure I want to know. Either his immoral flounderings or immense perversion of logic would depress me.
And that leads me to...

"I simply will not get involved with people who are negative," Noel replied. "I won't tolerate people in the workplace who are negative. I like realistic people, but negative people? No. Just get rid of them."
"I have a habit of being a bit negative sometimes," I said. "I'd hate my wife to read Positively Happy and dump me as a result."
"Then be careful," Noel said, looking me in the eye, "because she might."

Let's ignore the quandary of Noel implying a brutally negative outcome while not getting involved with negative people, as it bends the brain like a pretzel. Instead - would he even be able to talk about the awful realities that went totally against his theory, as I outline above? Would he be able to face the petty and routine destructions of innocent lives without simply shouting 'negativity!' at his interlocutor? And perhaps also 'ye olde witchecrafte!'.

Then he says, "Take Edward. Edward, I'm really not sure about. I've got a funny feeling it may go horribly wrong for Edward."
Noel says he knows this just by the way Edward walks, by his aura. You can tell winners by the way they walk, and Edward doesn't walk this way. Yesterday, another contestant, Mark, told me that Edward needed a big win more than anyone here: "Edward's got nothing," Mark said. "Literally nothing. He's completely skint."

Of course, this is a realistic, and not negative evaluation of Ed's chances by Mr. E. Does Noel believe in Cosmic Ordering, or Ordering from the Great and Benevolent God of Ikea, or 'winning auras'? I don't know. It is obvious that he doesn't profess, at least in this article, the wish for those who are the poorest and the most needy to get some. Hey, it might be that Edward is just a loser, who's too negative, who doesn't deserve to win. I admit, reader, that this is an unfair supposition, based on the evidence, yet there is something compelling to negative old me about this conclusion.

To me, the most negative thing I can concieve of is Noel Edmonds and his shitty belief system. It is one that gets rid of any form of social responsibility. It gets rid of any notion of aspiration to goodness, save that of asking for nice things. We can all succeed, we can all do well, as long as we ask for it. And those who are not doing as well as us can be ignored - for they are faulty.
This is my understanding of his Cosmic Ordering Service, an illogical and inconsistent construct of a person's material worth that is not based on evidence whatsoever. It serves to oppress the oppressed even further, because it is their negativity that is their problem - the problem lies entirely with the poor themselves. It serves to award the lucky and the priviliged, because they only ever asked for positive things. It serves to make Noel Edmonds feel good, because he can think of no-one but himself, and his own needs. Maybe we can trust the words of those who purport to have known him, those who the universe brought to him:

Marjan Simmons, The Sunday People, August 2006: "He was a very tender and lovely kisser. When I woke up with him the following morning, I felt completely at ease and his first words were, 'Cup of tea, darling?' He was a very giving man in all aspects and satisfied me in every way. Noel had his own special song for us. It was You're Beautiful by James Blunt. But once he was back at the top he didn't need me any more. I felt he just discarded me. He was a hypocrite who used me to make himself feel more positive about himself."

The philosophical spirit and aporia

2006-10-15T21:25:00.000Z

This is an extension to my other posts regarding belief, and I’d like here to address quickly the impossibility of the ‘philosophical spirit’. The ‘philosophical spirit’ is something one is said to have when impartially considering a proposed theory or fact, such that the philosopher’s own belief is suspended while the problems is worked through. This is impossible because the nature of belief is dogmatic, which is to say (as I have remarked before) that we think things are true absolutely. Belief cannot be suspended – to suspend belief is to no longer believe. When we genuinely (and I want to stress ‘genuinely’) ask whether something is true or false we have already gotten past our previous attitude about the matter; our former beliefs are thrown out.

Is impartiality possible? We might well ask: How far can we go in genuinely asking a question? It seems to me that we cannot expect to erase our beliefs about a matter completely, and our interest in a problem is a matter of degree, where the depth of philosophical inquiry - our ability to include as much reality as possible in breaking the problem open – is a process of excavating and endangering as many beliefs as we can. It is worth noting at this point that while philosophy pulls down our reality, it nonetheless always erects a new one. I’m sure that the reader will agree that any problems one may be holding in question (genuinely) come to be differently supported or rejected through this process, and so there is always real transformation occurring.

This transformation is also strikingly suggested by the act of questioning itself, where the belief is thrown out – for why does this questioning come about? On the one hand, questions seem to happen because our beliefs are rejected due to new beliefs (new conclusions). This cannot be questioning per se, since the outcome of the enquiry is a foregone conclusion – it will simply be a matter of refining the expression of these new beliefs – but it will either be a process of logically identifying other beliefs involved (which can only be found through this kind of self-conscious exercise), or attempting to understand what is involved in the refuting belief and why it worked the way it did. On the other hand, the refuting belief can be too vague, and could be considered to be all sorts of theories and ideas – this probably happens when the original belief isn’t very strong (for who throws away a strong belief for no concrete reasons?) – and the questioning is genuine because of the manifest confusion involved. Sticking my neck out slightly, I’d say that reading and understanding the philosophers, literature, the arts etc. allows for the former notion of questioning to occur smoothly, in preparation for the second – aporia.

The relationship between aporia and the so-called 'philosophical spirit' is, I suspect, that the latter is precisely the pretense of the former. The 'philosophical spirit' is held as the ideal only because we don't understand that the nature of belief makes it impossible.

Inside Plato's Cave

2006-10-07T13:41:00.000Z

From The Guardian:

One of them is the journalist Kate Bevan. She says she is "completely addicted" to this hyperreal simulation. "One of the great things about the whole online thing is you can be whatever you want to be," she says. And indeed this is the lure of the 3D online digital world - the notion that you can be whoever you want to be. Your first life may be disappointing, but your second life need not be. You can change gender, be more talkative, or less, or you can have sex (I'm not yet certain how) of the kind you wouldn't dare experience in real life. In Second Life, you can visit Mars (or, rather, an edifyingly detailed simulation of the red planet). You can treat Second Life as a game, similar to earlier computer simulation games such as the Sims series, or you can treat it as a business - although, in fact, some residents are annoyed at the site's growing commercialism. But for many, it seems, Second Life is better than the real world.

"It is by engaging its users in the act of creation that Second Life provides opportunities that are not necessarily available in real life," says Donald Jones, of Georgetown University, Washington, author of I, Avatar: Constructions of Self and Place in Second Life and the Technological Imagination. In Second Life, he argues, users construct personae that are either normative or fantastical.

I have attempted to research, in the past, the desire (often called an 'addiction') to play online games. There isn't much to say about it, to be honest - the more you read about it, the less you know, as there is no real reason to play such games apart from human stupidity.
But I am constantly annoyed by the focus on 'you can re-make yourself'. Can you?
Let's think about what sort of fantasies run wild. Will a racist play out the life of a black person to test their own prejudices? Can you imagine a homophobe roleplaying homosexual relationships with an unwitting partner, just to see if their ideas about such relationships are founded in truth? It seems to me far more likely that people play such games to let their beliefs run wild, free to provoke others and have more leeway to annoy. If a man plays as a woman, folklore says that it is to get halfway through a virtual sexual act and then say, "I have a penis, and now you are a dirty gay".

There is huge freedom in these games, which people think they are exploiting. They can remake themselves in a new image. They can hang around with millions of other people. They can make money and buy designer clothes, and make a house, and invite people. They can cruise gay areas, they can make friends, they can harrass people they dislike. So many physical restrictions are lifted, such as teleportation and body transmogrification. There is less sense of legal boundaries. In many ways, moral codes are lax, as actions will not have consequences in the same way - possibility is so much more mutable in a virtual space.
The biggest freedom, though, is interpretation. Everyone can lie so freely that trust is hard to come by, and is itself suspect. Is your longstanding virtual partner really what they say they are? And this is what is missed. In the vapid talk of vast, social areas where people can be who they want to be, and everything is brilliant, the social implications themselves are being ignored. Not only are you who you want to be, you can assume freely everything about everyone else - suspicions and guardedness are in fact necessary for survival in an everchanging world.
In my view, it is this aspect of the world that is most importance. Let's stop asserting the primacy of self-determination of your avatar's image, and your own personality. Let's look at the vast flipside, which is the way each person will see others as flimsy representations of (mostly) unverifiable realities; both physical and psychological. This is where I think I have found the true reason people play these games, and the true reason why I dislike them.

In Second Life, the gap between actions and consequences are large. The gaps between actions and reasons for doing them are large. And the ability to find out true reasons is severely hampered, so everyone can have the laziest assumptions and beliefs about others and never have to question them.
All actors have immense freedom to choose how they seem, but they, as far as I have ever observed, stick to a set of values that directly comes from their real life and their actual prejudices. Racists are racist, homophobes are homophobes, political conservatives are politically conservative. If they act otherwise, it will be only to mock groups which they define themselves against. And everyone has the choice to act in a way to exacerbate these aspects of themselves - and as the corollary to see others in this way, as interpretation of others is so free and easy.
This is what has gained the reputation of internet arguments as useless. There is no evident truth. And there is no reason to reach a consensus, there are loose groups and conglomerates of people who display similar opinions who are quite free to hate each other, and to intepret other groups however they want. There is no reality in which consensus is needed, as everyone is entirely free to set up their own reality and stay there.

Second Life is better than real life because, to the people there, they can be who they want (although they seem absolutely determined in this, they play 'true to type'). And in a resolutely unreal world they can see others how they want, and belittle them how they want, and ignore them as they want. Second Life is a space where you can choose to learn nothing, just assert your values in an obnoxious way, create in-groups and out-groups, and get away from all the difficulties of the real world.
Decisions? They don't need to be made. Other people? They can't really get in the way. The chance of having to encounter other viewpoints, and make changes to yourself? Only if you really want to go that far.

Virtual spaces are great because all the problems of reality can be resolved by abolishing reality. There is no truth to observe, no need for common understandings based on this truth, and no reason not to base all your judgements on a priori assumptions. You can truly be yourself on Second Life, and stay that way forever. Because who needs to realise that they were wrong? Who needs anything to get in the way of their assumptions and beliefs? The world, it seems, would be preferable to people if their actions just did not matter, and anything was allowed, and other people paled in significance to themselves and what they thought.

Muslims covering up

2006-10-07T11:19:00.000Z

Yesterday Jack Straw decided to spark the debate over the Muslim headscarf-veil combo. News reports were saturated with young Muslim women invoking the ideas that clothing is the realm of personal choice, and/or that their clothing is the expression of a moral choice, implying in both cases that it is not within the scope of politicians to place limits upon them. (Fortunately the cloth that covers the women’s faces is not mentioned in any scripture, so I didn’t have to sit and listen to chauvinistic theology).

But I want to leave all these concerns behind, and say that, with all of this as it may be, there is an issue so important that it dwarfs all discussion on the topic to date and by reflection on which alone we shall come to the most solid agreement.

Women are beautiful. This is the positive account that deserves genuine and careful thought, that it is beauty itself that is at stake here; that we are allowing beauty to be suppressed and removed from daily life. Covering up the faces of women and the shapes of their bodies – with the result that they look more like tumours than human beings – is an assault against the value of life itself. For, you see, I am convinced that it is beauty and the potential for beauty that makes life worth living, and I will argue to the ends of the Earth that it is proper that you believe this too. And by simple observation, should we accept that the meaning of life is beauty, I say that the most crucial aspect of real beauty – the beauty of women – is the most piercing and central concern of our lives.

It would constitute a very major disaster to those who love women if we should find ourselves no longer preoccupied by pretty faces and elegant movements, quirky expressions and seductive gestures. And to degrees and mixtures beyond the requirements of any banal sexuality, for it is in their subtle combination of these behaviours and others, in their delightful intelligence, charm and good nature that women are so deeply beautiful and utterly irreplaceable. To hide their hair and their skin, their shapes and very faces, is to banish elements from the most magical formulae, the discoveries of which rend our hearts from our bodies, take from us our hopes and fears and do with them we know not what, set light to our souls and bid us never to recover.

Unfortunately, as the moral arguments in favour of covering women go, it is said that it is done to avoid the sexual attention of men. And while we know that this is a chauvinistic concern about the availability to other men of a man’s property (his wife), the women on television these days seem to want to present this as a way of stepping outside of mainstream culture where women are sex-objects. We must resist this. To do away with women’s bodies because of the way pop culture treats them is akin to destroying great art simply to avoid letting idiots look at it.

Reflections on the possibility of a method

2006-09-28T09:03:00.000Z

Finding the actual beliefs of people is of great practical importance. Whether or not questioning and searching for them is a profoundly difficult or relatively easy activity is of course vital, though I will presume to take the latter until the former rears its head. I think it’s more worthwhile to get some grasp on the beliefs of people as far as practically possible than to worry in the first instance where those beliefs will probably escape our grasp.

On any account it must be admitted that many of the beliefs people in the same society hold are shared between them objectively, and that in the defence of the view that beliefs can be uncovered with relative ease it must be admitted that we have a very special and important affinity with each other when we share ways of life. It is not difficult to infer what a person believes given some imagination (in particular the ability to see yourself in someone else’s shoes) and a set of data about their experiences etc. This is because whatever meaning our world has it is necessarily an objective meaning (we can demonstrate with ease that it must be non-subjective). Telling apart useful ‘beliefs’ from actual beliefs should involve on the ground level honesty in reflection on what things actually do mean, since it is here that we are bound together. What has thus occurred to me as being crucial to excavating beliefs is that the systems of meaning we must employ constitute in themselves basic shared beliefs. This I hope puts the lie to mixing everything up and formulating problematics in the first instance, since without this information the attempt to uncover true beliefs threatens to fall into psychological mumbo jumbo.

That we have two instances of the word ‘belief’, and that we have a belief that useful beliefs are in fact beliefs (if you catch my drift), has struck me since the beginning of my questioning as an example of where the meaning of a word is shifting. If such shifts are objective (because the meaning of words is objective), does this mean that the old use of the word belief has ceased to be an objectively shared meaning and thus has lost its meaning?

This cannot be the case because the old definition is still there behind the new definition; convincing people that we believe what we do not believe, if I can put it this way, requires the old definition. Indeed, the new use of ‘belief’ is parasitic on the old and would not be effective (remembering that the new definition is in essence effective) without it. So I would conclude thus far that we are not seeing a shift in the meaning of the word ‘belief’, but the existence of two words that sound the same precisely in order to conflate their meaning.

With this in mind, how do we properly define pragmatic belief?

Telling them apart

2006-09-23T21:01:00.000Z

Beliefs cause problems.

Those of different religions, and those differing within religions, have before - and could again - kill to assert supremacy. And religion will affect social and political policy, and only those who believe will agree with it.
Those of different political views will pull and push and distend the workings of the world around us. And the world will flux and please no-one, because no-one is able to get the total mandate necessary to shape the world in the way they think best.
Those of different moral beliefs will pour distaste and scorn, they will privilege the rich and condemn the poor, or they will demand that there is a standard of behaviour that must be kept. And there will always be some who, by no fault of their own, are branded as the outcast.

Beliefs condemn us to an eternity of incomplete revolutions, because so much hinges on belief, and belief will always be fought tooth-and-nail by those contrary.

This is the case because beliefs are not solely based on evidence, or reason, or otherwise there would be much more agreement.
Consider a morally and socially conservative family, who discover a son or daughter to be gay. After much wailing and gnashing, they come to accept the son or daughter and, therefore, homosexuality in general. Not through evidence, but through familial necessity and strength of emotion.
Consider an atheist who, in middle-age, decides that the empty rotting death of the unbeliever is not a fitting ending. Human life is too precious, so there must be more, and there must be a God to guide us. Not through reason, but through the desire to find spiritual life (and death) insurance.
Consider the businessperson who has disavowed previous ideals - socialist, communist, Leninist, anarchist - and is now part of the conservative status quo, arguing that 'I have to protect my position'. Is this through evidence? Is this through reason? Yes, it would seem so - but used for selfish ends. It is the belief of 'what suits me right now'.

Contrast this with the philosophical use of beliefs, which we might typify as attempts to uncover the truth as much as possible and base action upon it. Commitments to ideals that are the only measures to ensure the future of humanity. Argued over, decried as assumptions, taken as slippery but indispensable, criticised and the focus of attention.

It seems that some people talk about what they believe, but they don't care about the evidence behind or logic within their statements. They do not believe out of truth, but out of some other reason. Are all these things beliefs? Are there two or more types of beliefs that we must differentiate? Are there infinite gradiations of beliefs, starting from the noblest and truest to the most grovellingly self-serving?
Is believing just an action, something you do, regardless of why? Or is the intent of it important too? Perhaps I make the mistake of labelling beliefs that lead to conclusions we do not endorse as false, just to suit my own pretensions. If beliefs aren't trustworthy, I am not even sure how to trust my own.

Fascist Juice

2006-09-12T11:09:00.000Z

A main advantage of the kind of thinking that my last post explicated a little is that we no longer need to seek beliefs that underlie our everyday ‘functional beliefs’, in order to contain them somehow. To be sure, whatever the ‘functional beliefs’ are they are the effects of all sorts of real beliefs, but the abstract movement, which makes putting the question to concrete instances of ‘belief’ in order to find some grander belief scheme invalid (in the sense that these functional beliefs cannot yield the qualitatively different true beliefs), is a rather useful movement in that it suggests that pretty direct access to true beliefs is possible.

The move between the two abstract definitions of belief should allow us to look at the world and see what beliefs people actually do have. But this idea brings with it many problems. For instance, it isn’t the case that we can throw away socially inflicted beliefs by the truckload if they can actually really be beliefs, and this is still very possible. The difficulty consists in sorting out which beliefs belong on which pile – which belong on the pseudo-beliefs pile and which on the beliefs pile. My last post said that we betray our feelings when we adopt the pseudo beliefs, so it could be from this natural tension that true beliefs can be sorted from pseudo-beliefs, by a process of rediscovering our feelings about the world.

Of course, such a search is in itself affected by the beliefs of the investigator. For example, much theory tells us that it is in learning to suppress, deny and reinterpret our feelings about the world that we become socialised creatures, adopting in this fashion the requisite inflections (of both body and mind) that characterise people of a particular society. Thinking this true, we might accept that there is a necessary tension set up between people’s true feelings on the one hand and certain psychologically alchemical processes on the other (strange way to express ‘learning’!). If we go back this far, as these processes certainly happen in childhood, then we are in danger of only accepting beliefs consistent with the ‘genuine’ feelings before the character is formed, although of course we could feel quite happy with this. This is an entirely different way of doing things than if we affirm that whatever a person genuinely feels at the moment of questioning is what they believe. The difficulty, as with the former example, is in discovering what the genuine feelings are (and, indeed, separating the results from the affecting method of asking leading questions etc).

My question to readers is this: If finding our true beliefs requires recognising our genuine feelings/attitudes toward the world, then how is a reliable recognition possible?

Old beliefs, new beliefs

2006-09-11T12:35:00.000Z

The main area of reinterpretation that I want to argue for is around belief, something that has been on my mind regarding my forthcoming Masters degree, in which it features pretty centrally, as well as regarding my understanding of people in general. In the past I have had issues with people’s odd beliefs and life practices and wondered at how monumentally stupid (though I loathed to admit it) they had to be to adopt and continue them. My resulting position considered the failings of the educational system to be chiefly at fault for suppressing independent thought and honesty with one’s position. I still think that this is central to explaining our current disposition, but the difference now is that it does not give rise to the beliefs and practices that I observed as starting points. Recently I have come to reinterpret the world differently, seeing belief as something quite rarified and covered over, despite the fact that it is the main concept at large in the world today. To believe something is to think that it is true. Holding this to be the case causes a huge revaluation of people’s alleged ‘beliefs’, and it must first be admitted that people sometimes (or oftentimes) do not belief what they proclaim to. It must be the case, in extension of this, that they can fully believe that they believe something, that they do not in fact believe. In strictly logical terms this is impossible, but the difference between the two instances of belief – the social use of ‘belief’ and the proper use of belief as thinking that something is true – should be highlighted. We fully believe, in the sense that we have a subject position to the effect that, x is the case, without actually believing that ‘x is the case’ is true.

I suppose my position is that utilitarian beliefs are impossible, and we only believe that x is likely or useful when we think that ‘x is likely’ or ‘x is useful’ is true. A belief is complete in itself, and cannot be provisional nor suspended. For example, if our belief is that ‘it will rain’ is true, and are told that it will only rain if the cold front moves a few miles north, then, providing we think this correction appropriate and true, we no longer believe that ‘it will rain’, but rather than believing to some degree that ‘it will rain’ we rather now believe, quite absolutely, that ‘it will rain providing that the cold front moves a few miles north’. An encounter with Bayesian theory recently left me feeling more than a little disgusted.

With this all said, it is my opinion (belief, indeed!) that the almost total definition of belief in terms of social etiquette and subject positions constitutes manifest dishonesty. People are so utterly unfamiliar with what they in fact believe that this social usage of the term has hijacked the authority of legitimate belief – and of course, this is the reason why social belief is so powerful and proliferate. So what is this dishonesty if we aren’t acting consciously against the true definition of belief (that I think, only a philosopher would these days really contemplate)? Granted that belief is a naturally occurring state that everybody understands on the level of intuition, our dishonesty must lie in a conscious denial of our very feelings.

I’m sure I should give these thoughts more of a chance to come out into the open, but as it stands this is the revolution in my thought that has caused me to reinterpret current life. As far as this blog is concerned, I am happier than ever not to have an ‘overarching belief’ about it. How can I, when legitimately questioning whether any such belief can be at all meaningful?

Perspective

2006-08-19T22:32:00.000Z

It has been a long while since my last post here, and tonight, logging online and spending a moment to peruse the writings, I can certainly see plenty of useful thoughts. However I also see the familiar and biting problem of its raison d’etre. This blog is, unfortunately, not a systematic and continuous dialogue, concerned with explicating and building on issues, not the kind of pseudo-dialectic that I first envisaged it as. Time and again it seems wiser to harvest these thoughts for a few moment’s edification, and then simply to ‘move on’ and have more complex, more truthful ones somewhere else.

News and I have built a weblog that reflects our interest in seeing the world become a demonstratably better place, and this means more than the actual quality of the thoughts on offer. So, instead of not bothering to post here again the blog should be recontextualised and reunderstood from a different vantage point. It seems correct to me that systematicity is a thing of composition, and that it is for the entirely obvious reason that it hasn’t been composed that this blog isn’t at all systematic.

Advancement in thought is like mini revolutions, and it would be wrong in any case of me to shun the blog for not being constructive when I no longer think that a blog, by itself, could in any meaningful way be such. There are two reasons for this attitude. Firstly, the knowledge that to build constructively on the arguments News and myself have presented would take major philosophical explorations, which are best initiated by a truer philosophical commitment than the fantasy of internet consistency. Secondly, there seems to be a general inability of people to genuinely engage with moving dialogue, and nothing shows this more than conversation, when, in an attempt to clarify a position, a logical move is made, and eyed with suspicion. A semantic novelty!

I’m sure that the blog is, to the people we might want to engage, more a representation of News and I ‘expressing beliefs’ than ‘forcing semantics on people’, but there is really no reason for us to fight for one of these niggardly opinions over the other. Of course, this blog has always been about our own understanding rather than its ability to be viewed on the internet by an audience, but still the criticism holds of the blog as a meaningful object in its own right. Indeed, the way I now consider the blog makes it almost necessary that it is functionally worthless. This will take a further post to detail, so, onward! (but only in a sense!!)

Swish! And their problem is solved.

2006-05-21T17:03:00.000Z

Jon Ronson's article on NLP deserves a little poking. He shows some of the weird bits of it, but ends up believing that it works in some small way. Let's take what he found apart and question it. I myself have some books on NLP, I read about it, and practised hypnosis before I started my psychology degree. Now I have a little more education under my belt, what do I think about them? And what will all this say about business, one of the main 'consumers' of NLP thinking?
Let's start with Jon's intro:

"But from what I can gather, NLP is a way of "re-patterning" the human brain to turn us into super-beings - confident, non-phobic, thin super-beings who could sell coals to Newcastle and know what people are thinking just by their eye movements. It is the theory that we are computers and can be reprogrammed as easily as computers can. You were abused as a child? Forget therapy: just turn off the bit of the brain that remembers the abuse. You want to become a great salesperson? NLP will reprogram you. Our winks, our ticks, our seemingly insignificant choice of words - they all make up a map of our innermost desires and doubts: read the customer and make the sale."

Neuro-Linguistic Programming obviously does rely on the idea that the brain can be reprogrammed, it is hard to not draw that from its name. And is that possible? Can the brain be rewired? That is one of the problems that we will have to examine.

Modelling, invented by Bandler, is a practice at the heart of NLP. This is how McKenna describes it: "If someone's got a skill that you want to master, you 'model' that skill so you can learn to do what they do in a fraction of the time it took them. Say someone's a master salesperson - they'll be doing certain things with their body, and certain things with their language. So you 'model' that. Study it, break it down, work out the thinking behind it."

You want to do something effectively. So talk to someone who is good at it and model them! This seems like a simple and commonsensical approach. In fact, monkeys seem to learn how to do clever things like use sticks to get at termites by copying each other, developing little cultural practices in certain areas. Why should it not work for people?
Then again, how often do we learn by modelling others? We do not learn to drive by copying our driving instructors, usually, because they may have bad habits (mine certainly admitted to this). It is therefore possible for a driving instructor to teach us what they want us to do, what we should do, and not what they do do.
OK - do we learn by modelling the teacher? Well, the teacher is not taking the assessment. Modelling the teacher will not work unless we are learning to teach, and therefore we need to model good students. I am sure that this would have many benefits, but it is also not something that students may be likely to do, for there are often issues such as motivation. The worse student would also have to model the good student's commitment and intrinsic motivation, which is something they may not want to find the time to do. Is modelling the answer, then, or should we accept that people are different and do things in different ways, from different perspectives, with different backgrounds, and need to learn their own ways of doing things? I would certainly rather that my students did this than all copy each other's methods.
It is obvious that we can do well without modelling in these situations, yet does this mean we should not model at all? I am sure it has its successes as a practice, for example copying a 'master salesperson' might be very helpful indeed. But there are limitations to this idea. In business, 'innovative thinking' is prized. Can you copy someone else to be innovative, take on their methods and skills? It seems unlikely that there is a set method to being innovative other than thinking unusually, so unusually, in fact, that it has not been done before. Is there any way we can model that?
And will what works for one person always work for another? The people you are talking to will be different, for one thing - are the skills of a master hoover salesperson transferable in entirety to a struggling salesperson of bathroom shower rails? Their audience is going to be different, and so is their product. And, also, the salespeople will be different. In fact, they may be different enough to be better off to have different methods.

The central question to point at the method of modelling is this: has there ever been a specific recipe for success? Has any one person ever found a method that is universal in the field? Or do different people need to do similar tasks differently to fit the different needs of themselves and the people they are selling to, teaching, etc.?
If there are such recipes, how can we get to them? Is it enough to copy them, or must we also understand what we are doing? Consider a driver who has modelled other drivers and can now drive. They stop at red lights and go at green. It would be easy to model this behaviour (as shown by the film Starman). But what would such a driver do when the traffic lights were not working? They would not understand fully why the traffic lights are necessary, only what they represent (going or not going). They would not be able to decide what to do as well in a situation where they were not being told what to do.

Understanding is even more important than modelling. If you are modelling a technique, you can copy it, and keep doing it. Conditions change, however, and you will need to be able to modify your technique at some point, for a myriad of reasons. Only if you understand what you are doing, why you are doing it, and how it works can you be this adaptable.
Unless, of course, there is an endless supply of successful people to copy in any situation, perhaps selling books to help us do what they do. This seems like an odd way to behave, unless all of us are going to make money selling books about copying successful people to others who wish to be successful selling books.

If you hear voices in your head, he says, tell the voices to shut the fuck up. "If you suffered childhood abuse, don't go back and relive it in your mind. Once is enough!" He says psychotherapy is nonsense and a racket: therapists are rewarded for failure. The longer a problem lasts, the more the therapist is paid. Who cares about the roots of the trauma? "Don't think about bad things!" Bandler says. "There's a machine inside your brain that gets rid of shit that doesn't need to be there. Use it! I can give myself amnesia. I can just forget." He clicks his fingers. "Just like that."

It is hard to comprehend the full nature of this statement. As a pragmatic 'tool' to stop thinking about something unpleasant, yes, it is obvious how it would work. But in terms of what it would make people, it is viciously uncaring.
There is too much of a chance that, even if forgotten, trauma will affect us. In a world where we are coming to appreciate conditions such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, should we allow someone to say 'just forget about it'?
What would a person be if they forgot everything painful? They would be a list of normalcy and successes, and they would have few failures to look back on to learn from. Physical pain is a very important thing, without it we would not be aware of our surroundings, and unable to react properly. Mental and psychological pain has its benefits too - it tells us what is wrong, and makes us do something about it.
Although I am not so fond of psychotherapy myself, I see much more benefit in understanding a trauma, in 'coming to terms', rather than just forgetting (or pretending that you are forgetting) all about it.

He and McKenna have made particular headway in the business world. In fact, Ian Aitken, managing director of McKenna's company, says the individuals looking for a cure for their phobias are now in the minority. I ask him what is it about NLP that attracts salespeople. Bandler, he replies, teaches that everyone has a dominant way of perceiving the world, through seeing, hearing or feeling. If a customer says, "I see what you mean," that makes them a visual person. The NLP-trained salesperson will spot the clue and establish rapport by mirroring the language.
"I get the picture," the NLP-trained salesperson can reply, rather than "That rings a bell", or "That feels good to me".

I have not noticed many people that are dominantly 'feeling' people going around touching things rather than look at them (unless they are using poor or none-existent vision as an excuse for fondling people of the opposite sex).
To take it more seriously, does saying 'I hear ya' really differ from 'I see where you're coming from'? Does that really improve the way business does business, or just make businesspeople feel like they are doing more to connect with each other and their customers?
It seems to me that people could establish rapport, relationships, and sales before this idea. It also seems to me that concentrating on selling a good product to people who want it will do more than mirroring language (especially if the other person has an accent or other vocal mannerism, and you no-brainfully start to copy it, y'know what I'm saying).
Many people, in fact, prefer those who have a different accent or way of speaking. It is not only those with Irish accents who feel an affinity for those with Irish accents.

Vish pokes my elbow. "Brilliant!" he says. "Now. Did you notice what I was doing?"
"You were poking my elbow every time I expressed positive feeling," I say.
"Now," says Vish, "when I want to sell you something, I'll touch your elbow and you'll associate that touch with good feeling and you'll want to buy. That's deep psychology." Vish pauses. "What I really like about NLP is how it can hypnotise and manipulate people - but in a good way."

Every time I do a poo, I sit on the toilet. However, if I was to sit on the toilet, I would not feel like pooing, nor would I necessarily be thinking about pooing.
We definitely associate things together, as people. These associations are not so close to the surface, though, for a little bit of elbow poking to make a new one. If every sunday your mother makes a delicious roast, you might for the rest of your life associate sunday's with roast dinner, and always want one. And you also might quickly learn, when you move out, that you prefer takeaway on a sunday.
People learn new associations quickly, drop old ones quickly, and can figure out that an association is not useful in this situation quickly too. Dogs might go crazy everytime you say 'walkies', but people are not that trainable.
Again, this technique probably makes businesspeople feel like they are more effective. They associate it with being a better salesperson, so at least it works for someone.

On stage, Bandler and McKenna cure a stream of delegates of their phobias and compulsions. There's a woman who's barely left her home for years, convinced the heater will turn itself on when she's out and burn down the house.
"Do they pay you to think like this?" asks Bandler. "It seems like an awful lot of work. Aren't you fucking sick of it?"
The woman says a bossy voice in her head tells her the heater will do this.
Bandler gets her to turn down the knob in her brain that controls the volume of the bossy voice. Then he gets the bossy voice to tell her, "If you keep worrying about this heater, you're going to miss out everything good in your life." This, Bandler says, is an invention of his called the Swish technique: you take a bad thought, turn it into a radio or TV image, and then swish it away, replacing it with a good thought.
"I don't care about you any more, heater, because I want to get my life back," the woman says, and the audience cheers.

I wonder if this approach can work with moral concerns as well? "Oh, shut up you stupid conscience."
It is possible to consciously stop thinking about something, and 'swish' it away without requiring a therapist - we must be able to do it all the time, otherwise we would not be very successful at concentrating on things.
What is someone can't stop thinking about it, though? Bandler has the answer: turn down the volume (and then stop thinking about it). Is Bandler actually doing something, or is it just giving the other person's mind an 'excuse', or some sort of 'mental placebo'?

He does Bandler's Swish technique on me. He gets me to picture one of my horrific imaginary scenes. I choose my son stepping out in front of a car. He spots, from my eye and hand movements, that the mental image is situated in the top right hand of my vision, big, close to my eyes.
"Part of the neural coding where we get our feelings from, and ultimately our behaviour, comes from the position of these pictures," he says. "Pictures that are close and big and bright and bold have a greater emotional intensity than those that are dull and dim and further away."
"And Richard Bandler was the first person to identify this?" I ask.
"Yes," he says.
He chats away to me, in his hypnotic baritone voice, about this and that: his own worries in life, etc. He is extremely likeable. Suddenly, when I'm not expecting it, he grabs the space in the air where my vision was and mimes chucking it away.
"Let's shoot it off into the distance," he says. "Shrink the picture down, drain the colour out of it, make it black-and-white. Make it transparent..."
And, sure enough, as the image shoots away, far into the distance, the neurotic feelings associated with it fade, too. This is Paul McKenna "re-patterning" my brain. He says it isn't self-help. I don't have to do anything. This is reprogramming, he says, and I am fixed.
"Oh yeah," he says, "you don't have to do anything now. It's worked."
Three weeks pass. I don't have a single paranoid fantasy about something bad happening to my wife and son. And so I have to say, for all the weirdness, I become very grateful that Richard Bandler invented NLP and taught it to Paul McKenna.

Can you re-programme someone so that they do not care about eating food anymore, by 'pushing' a mental image around?
Could we have re-programmed Hitler's dislike of Jews, and swished it away?
To what extent does this technique work? I might conjecture that it only works when the NLPee is already convinced that their belief is irrational, that they do not want it, that it only annoys them. Perhaps it gives them a 'mental reason' for believing that something has been done, so there is no reasing thinking about it anymore.
Is Jon so re-programmed that he will not become agitated at the idea that his son is in danger from a car? So re-programmed that he would not notice if it was actually happening in front of him?

What does this 're-programming' mean, and to what extent does it change your thoughts?

NLP's practices deserve criticism and ridicule, even if people feel that they work. It doesn't matter if people say 'it works for me', as that is not the proof of usefulness when it comes to a system of thought. How far it approximates what is actually happening, how it can justify and explain its methods, and what it can teach us about each other is important too.
NLP might make people feel helped, but it fails in every other way. There is a system of thought about people behind NLP that is alien and unpleasant. It similarises us all, making human thought and action so basic that it can be 'modelled'.

No. We cannot model each other so easily. We are each our 'own person' and must understand the world in our own way. NLP hides such philosophical self-realisations and questions about existence by computerising us, by making us think about how we are programmed. What if we are not running mental programmes in our heads? What if we are more complex and changes are not made so easily?
It is also illuminating to consider how businesspeople come out of this, from their fascination with NLP. Perhaps they are looking for simple answers to very hard problems. The good side of this is it makes them feel as if they are directly in control and actually have power to influence people, "what I really like about NLP is how it can hypnotise and manipulate people - but in a good way."
And the bad side is that it is questionable, it is silly, and it makes us think things about people that are repellent. However, I would imagine that a businessperson looking to improve their sales-technique is more driven by pragmatic issues than me - ironically, even if it means that they 'pragmatically' choose something that does not work.

A little story to leave you with: my students often bring up big questions like "what should I be doing?" If I was an NLP practitioner, I might say to them, model those who you respect.
"OK, I respect Tony Blair."
After my heart-attack of surprise at a young person liking Tony Blair, I would ask, how did he get to know that he wanted to get into politics? What did he do? What can you model?
"Well... he learned about things, looked into stuff, and thought about himself. And, er, knew what he wanted to do."
Exactly!, I would reply, and all their problems would be solved.

What can we tolerate?

2006-04-15T15:19:00.000Z

I want to understand belief. What is it to say that there is a God when you have never seen him or her? What is it to say you are an X and do not trust the many other faith systems there are? What is it to say that you were an X but are now a Y? How do we come to decide what the truth is in circumstances where it is not obvious?
Belief makes us do odd things, like pray, or not eat certain foods, or disregard certain common practices. It can also cause us to act in a way that others might find contrary to their own standards. There is a lot of antagonism between all the different belief systems, theological and non-theological. It is hard to know how to condemn an action when it sprung out of another's deeply held religious convictions about the truth of the universe. Maybe it is best to tolerate such things, and to allow them to go on - for we should not mess with their faith and subdue their thinking.

My previous article attempted to examine this problem, albeit in a way that was practical and trying to find an actual real-life answer to this antagonism. And my previous article, to do with Scientology, is overlong, under-researched, and therefore half-baked. I admit this, and reckon that although my conclusion is somewhat valid, there is much more to be done. In an analysis of the interplay between what I simplistically term the 'anti-cult movement' and the 'religious tolerance' movement, I essentially stated that the latter has more popularity, and that to attack a movement like Scientology will have to entail dropping the seemingly unprovable distinctions of cult and brainwashing, and instead ask Scientology to act like a mainstream religion, asking it to limit its observable negative practices.
So, why am I still thinking about the subject and pondering on it? Because there is still much more to cover. Because we must examine, philosophically, the terms behind public debate and private thought and, I reckon, attempt to threaten with wholesale change. I actually personally think that what Scientology does is as close to brainwashing as you can get. I personally think that Scientology acts like a cult. Cults attempt to get people to believe things that are not widely considered to be true, or even scientifically false. They purposefully limit criticism. They often ask for people to believe things that lead to harmful practices, such as swapping psychiatry for ideas of mental images having weight, or that sin can be absolved through fasting. They convert people to their cause and use them in some way, sometimes to find other to convert, sometimes to make money, sometimes to dedicate time and effort to some 'spiritual' endeavour. People leave these cults on various terms, some happy about the experience, some with misgivings, others feeling that their lives have been decimated.
The essential problem is that you could label so many movements, systems, or religions as cults or cultic. The pope attempts to control the truth of Christian teachings by limiting the validity of the 'gospel according to Judas'. Religion always entails prioritizing a certain viewpoint against competing viewpoints for reasons that are not always ones of general human or spiritual interest. Religions are not just belief systems, but ways of changing the world socially and politically through a widespread acceptance of their importance. They can be dangerous - and is this dangerousness not what we find so appalling in cults?
What about ritual crucifixions in the Philippines? Can this be seen as legitimate religion? Ruben Enaje has opted, of his own free will, to have nails driven through his hands for the 20th time. It is a matter of personal argument and opinion as to whether you think this can or should be part of any religion.
In some ways, even McDonalds can be seen as a cult. They proselytise, they limit criticism, they are one thing and attempt to convert people to believe another.
In an article on faith schools, Polly Toynbee points out that:

"This is indeed a clash of civilisations, not between Islam and Christendom but between reason and superstition. The wake-up call came with a BBC/Mori poll showing that, even in this least churchgoing nation, science is on the run: 48% believe in evolution, against 39% who believe in creationism/"intelligent design". If even scientists aren't believed then here is fertile territory for any mad and dangerous theories to take hold.
But instead of standing up for reason, our government is handing education over to the world of faith. It's the same government that went to war in Iraq to install the likes of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani into positions of great power. The man George Bush and Tony Blair see as the best hope for promoting stability and "freedom" in Iraq has just issued a fatwa calling for the killing of all sodomites and lesbians. See www.sistani.org: "Q. What is the judgment for sodomy and lesbianism? A. Forbidden. Punished. The people involved should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing." The exiled Iraqi gay campaigner Ali Hili reports that these orders are now being obeyed, with an upsurge in beatings and slaughter of gays in Iraq by religious cadres who have declared all unmarried men over 35 "under surveillance".
The Pope may not call for murder, but the Vatican is directly responsible for millions of Aids deaths by refusing to sanction condoms even in parts of Africa where half the population is infected with HIV, putting out deliberate lies that condoms are useless against the virus anyway. Yet here is the Labour government encouraging religions to take over as many schools as they can, promoting the humbug that values and morality only come with the "ethos" of faith."

All these articles come from today's newspaper, apart from Polly Toynbee's, published yesterday. Events of such a nature that they should give us reason to reconsider our 'commonsense' notions of religion and cult happen all the time. What does this mean - does it mean that we should accept cults because they only do what religions do, but without an aura of history and legitimacy; or does it mean that we should question religions for having similar aspects to cults?

Arguments for religious tolerance often stress that people have free will, and that they legitimately choose to believe in a certain system of thought. This makes that system a religion, as to label it as a cult is to attempt to limit the choice of the believers and forcibly change their beliefs. It is a way of saying, 'you believe wrongly', and we should not do that. We should respect the choice of the individual, and therefore the movement chosen.
This leads us into odd arguments. Just because people freely decide that believes to accept a certain religion, one that that stresses that blood transfusions or psychiatry or condoms other ways of helping people and saving lives are wrong, we should accept this. But is religious belief more important than human life? Is tolerance of a belief system more pressing than intolerance of harm?

What do we find important? We need to be questioning what belief is and should be. We should be setting parameters as to what is legitimate and what is not. We need to decide what to tolerate, and why. I do not believe that, just because something is a 'religion', it should necessarily be tolerated. We should even question what a 'religion' is.
I am free to choose to disagree with all belief systems that cause pain and suffering. I am also free to choose to join a faith and cause pain and suffering in the name of what I think is truth. We should not imagine that, just because someone is free to make a decision, it means that they have come to a decision that we should tolerate. We need another standard for deciding what is right or what is wrong.

Remember, many arguments against suicide bombers stress that it is not a legitimate part of Islam, it is not condoned in the Koran etc. But, even if it was, would that mean we would not be able to criticise it? Just because an action is done out of a firmly held belief in a religious truth, by someone who is 'freely choosing' to be in that religion, does not make it tolerable. And what scale can we use to decide when a religious act becomes intolerable? Perhaps when it only affects the believers we should accept it. So, if Jehovah's Witnesses were to die because they did not accept a blood transfusion, would that be OK? What if the child of JW parents died? What if a JW nurse or doctor refused to give a blood transfusion and a Buddhist died? At what point do we stop tolerating it?
And should we even allow JW's to believe in something that is inherently so dangerous, and publicise their deep-seated, religious concern that blood transfusions are wrong as the Bible asks us to "abstain from blood"?

My intended message: tolerate only what is tolerable, for good reason, and do not be afraid to ask for change. And if we find that we cannot find all that much difference between cult and religion, then criticise both, don't accept both.
There is good reason for why some people would describe my thoughts as religiously intolerant. I would say, however, that there is good reason to not tolerate harm, no matter if someone commits it because they have a certain faith-based understanding of the universe and of how to act.

Why chanting 'cult!' won't work: Understanding and Critiquing Scientology as a 'New Religious Movement'

2006-04-13T15:56:00.000Z

Scientology has always perturbed me. Called a cult, accused of brainwashing, and with a set of unbelievable beliefs and unpleasant practices, it is still allowed to exist. The anti-cult message is not working and, for some reason, Scientology is still allowed to operate. In this essay, I have attempted to begin to answer the question of 'how can this happen in our society?' Along the way I have had to challenge my own beliefs. I am trying to offer a way to accept Scientology and give it the religious tolerance some ask for, but at the same time use this to critique it more effectively.
Anti-cult activists call Scientology a cult, and accuse it of brainwashing, taking money from their victims, and various illegal activities. However, arguments based on cult brainwashing are, I believe, not going to have popular impact. Scientology has adopted the image of a religion and calls for religious tolerance. This has the negative implication of cutting off dissent based on cult allegations. However, it also opens up new avenues of attack, as in order to be tolerated as a mainstream religion it will have to change in many fundamental ways. I ask the anti-cult movement to embrace this change and find new ways to criticise Scientology that will not be labeled as 'religious intolerance' and ignored.
I argue that Scientology is indeed a religion, in the 'positive' respect that it has similar good effects to a religion of spiritual guidance, and in the 'negative' respect that all religions contain elements of conformity and control - although in Scientology it is much stronger. I offer three basic areas in which a religion of Scientology will not be protected by the aura of religious tolerance - its practices as a business, as a science, and as non-tolerant itself of other religions and certain social groups.
I am aware that at many points I will cite websites, authors, researchers, academics etc. that are labeled 'cult apologists'. However, I am also aware that the anti-cult movement is not without controversy. I am not intending to support any cult, but neither am I intending to support any anti-cult movement. What I am trying to do is find a new anti-Scientology message that drops the use of concepts such as 'cult' and 'brainwashing', as I do not believe they will be widely acceptable in a 'religiously tolerant' environment, and as I do not believe that they are true, based on the evidence. This is a highly-charged field, for good reason, and I want to try to combine the best of the tolerance message with the anti-cult message.
Please leave comments. I will be more amenable to charges of not being harsh enough on Scientology, as I think I am being as fair as possible to the movement. Areas in which I am sure that I am biased are in my general negative opinion of religion as whole, which may explain why I believe Scientology is a religion also, and my stance on brainwashing not being possible (I believe the research, as a psychologist myself, shows that conformity is the culprit).

"Present time: the time which is now"

Scientology: Fact or fiction?, from Minneapolis Star Tribune, October 22 2005, by Herón Márquez [emphasis added]

When driving, Cathy Brown says she can make red lights turn green. At home, she can make someone visit or call simply by thinking about them.
But the Minnetonka woman's remarkable powers to control "matter, energy, space and time" don't end there, she said.
"I can also go out of my body at will," said Brown, a private school administrator. "Although I'm not very good yet at seeing things while I'm outside."
[...] "We don't expect mainstream religions to lie, to exploit people, to engage in illegal activity," said David Touretzky, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. "Scientology is not a true religion, because it does all of these things."
But church members say Scientology, which focuses on rehabilitating the human mind and spirit, is the world's best hope for ending war, crime and various psychological maladies.
"Every religion on the planet has come under attack at its beginning," said Audrey Steinbergs, 46.

You have probably heard of Scientology, as it has been in the news recently. Tom Cruise allegedly wants to name his baby Hubbard, South Park lost Chef, and there has been a rather good article by Janet Reitman that serves as a good introduction to popular journalistic criticism of the movement. Reading this, and watching the controversies unfold, has spurred me on to writing this essay.
It is effortless to write an opinion about Scientology. It is full of so many silly ideas that you can just dredge them up, laugh at them, and say something disparaging about the celebrities involved. Extra points for pointing out that the writings of the founder, L. Ron Hubbard, are tawdry science-fiction that, compared to the bible, shows that over the years religious writing has only worsened.
In fact, the first time I wrote this essay, it was something like this. However, through reading and thinking, I started to consider a new set of questions, and have fundamentally changed my outlook and my writing.

I started in anger as, based on Reitman's article, on my previous study of Scientology and its critics online, and meeting Scientologists on the streets of Birmingham trying to get people to come to stress tests, I believed that Scientology was a cult, used brainwashing, and should therefore be stopped. If one assumes these two things, it is easy to argue for the eradication of Scientology.
However, I realised that it was very hard to differentiate between a cult and a religion. I realised that, more and more, people are accepting Scientology as a religion and calling for it to be tolerated as such. Unhappily, I wondered whether the world was mad.
What got me thinking is such defences as that used by Isaac Hayes when he pulled out of South Park. He said that: "There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry toward religious beliefs ... begins".
It is hard to miss the point that Hayes believes that Scientology is a religion, and that it should be tolerated. (Whether he is hypocritical about not speaking out about the savage attacks on other religions by the cartoon is an interesting point, but it is not the point I wish to make). If you are to search google for the phrase 'the scientology religion' at the time of my writing you find about 76,200 results, which appear to me to be mostly official Scientology publications. However, there are still many non-Scientologists convinced that Scientology can be best described as a religion. If we accept that Scientology is a religion - or at least trying to become one - and not a cult, as I will be arguing, the real questions are, What does it mean to call Scientology a religion?, and What will change in Scientology as it attempts to become a religion? This is where I think there is much hope, as aspects of Scientology are not religion, and therefore not going to be tolerable in the same way, and I think that Scientology will be required to change to gain popular acceptance. The movement is still vulnerable to attack when it comes to its unpleasant practices, even if we afford it the protection of religion.

An outline of my assumptions: As a psychologist, I am assuming in this essay that brainwashing does not exist, and that Scientology's power is due to the power of a social group to influence the individual through conformity, which is probably impossible to legislate against. I am assuming that Scientology is changing to become more like a religion (whereas, when it started, it certainly met my personal definition of a cult) and that society will not widely accept the attack of something that seems like a religion. And I am assuming that the defence that calls for 'religious tolerance' affords will not cover all aspects of Scientology as it, crucially, goes beyond being a religion in many ways.
Firstly I will try to convince you in favour of my current assumptions and outline the religious tolerance movement. Then I will display how Scientology can still be critiqued, and as a consequence how I think Scientology's critics and current members of the church should act. And finally I will consider the questions that we must ask to ourselves, for example, if a science-fiction writer can start an evidently false belief system that, over 50 years, becomes a religion, what does that make of religion?

Theological criticism of Scientology: why it is still a religion even though it sounds like a space opera

Scientology involves belief in some odd things. This is probably what first causes revulsion in those who encounter this movement, and what most people assume is bad about Scientology. Therefore it is what people attack. One of these odd things:

"Hubbard states that clam-like extraterrestrials called boohoos and weapers were tossed into the Earth's oceans millions of years ago, and evolved into humans. Contemporary humanity retains psychological problems due to the "enturbulation" these clams experienced by the agitation of ocean waves. The book also claims the Earth is much older than the five billion years or so that science describes."
Hubbard's History of Man

I do not think that believing that clams are the evolutionary genesis of mankind makes Scientology a cult. All religions disagree with empirical observation, common-sense, rigorous and rational systems of knowledge such as philosophy and science, and each other. Scientologists are just as free to invent - or 'discover' - their own truths, for as long as they don't require everyone else to believe along with them, society usually accepts this.
Any attempt to make Scientology look like a cult by referring to its beliefs is going to fail, because all religions have odd beliefs. Maybe it is even that those that draw up laws would be wary of creating the precedent of allowing a belief system to be ignored based on its odd beliefs, as it would open up all religions. Also, it is easy to appeal to general spiritual themes and make even the oddest beliefs seem sensible. One example of such an appeal can be found at this site, which we must note is written by a claimed ex-Scientologist who now regards the whole thing as a 'cultic illusion':

"You have probably read... how the core of Scientology belief is summarized by the Xenu incident in which a despot called "Xenu" supposedly clustered several human spirits together 75,000,000 years ago and threw them in physical bodies. This, however, is a completely misleading presentation on the part of critics. The core belief of Scientology is that Man gradually forgot his spiritual nature after a tumultuous history of past-lives incidents, and that Scientology has the "tech" to help him regain his full spiritual awareness and abilities. The Xenu incident, although an important one in the overall Scientology scheme, is just one of these past-lives incidents. A very simple reasoning will show that the Xenu incident can't be the core belief of Scientology.
The Xenu incident was not known even to L. Ron Hubbard when he founded Scientology in 1953. Scientology existed as such for 14 years before the incident was discovered. When he added it on the "bridge", it did not fundamentally change anything to the basic process Scientologists followed and still follow. To this day, you could just abstract the Xenu incident and you would still have a relatively intact system referred to as "Scientology".
Since the Xenu incident is only revealed at a very late stage of Scientology processing, the vast majority of Scientologists don't even know about it. Yet, they call themselves "Scientologists" and refer to what they do as "Scientology"."
To summarize Scientology by the Xenu incident is thus completely false. The purpose of such action is to frighten newbies away and to ridicule Scientology beliefs. It shows that, contrary to what they claim, critics are not interested in honest presentation but in propaganda and proselytism.

What this website is saying is that it can be seen as reasonable to imagine that Xenu seeded the planet with human bodies. It points us to the essential fact that we must re-attain our spiritual nature, and relates entirely to the basic religious and spiritual ideas that drive Scientology, ideas that other religions share. Therefore, like other religions, these ideas should be tolerated. This is exactly how Scientology can be transformed from its cult origins into a religion.
However, we must continue to criticise even these more moderate perspectives. The author alleges that the Xenu belief is not important. It is taught later on, and most Scientologists are not supposed to be aware of it. L. Ron Hubbard did not even 'discover' it until later on. I would contend that if it was 'discovered', and meant to be true, and you are meant to believe it, then, yes, it is important. If it is taught later, after you have paid a lot of money to reach the higher levels to learn this truth, then it is absolutely integral to the religion. It is special knowledge that you have invested time and money to reach.

It can be seen how it is possible to understand Scientology as a religion but still critique it. Is it intolerant to say, "This is what Scientologists believe, isn't it silly"? Evidently not - secular, Western civilisation is arguably built on such free and open criticism of religious belief. The problem is that, to say that Scientology is a cult because it holds strange beliefs is not an effective argument. The Bible states that women come from a man's rib, just as odd an assertion. Scientologists, on this level, have won - their beliefs, being part of a religion, deserve just as much tolerance. We cannot ban Scientology because it has stupid beliefs, and we must find other ways to criticise the movement.

At this point, you may not be convinced that Scientology can or should be understood as a religion. It should take much thought to come to a conclusion as to whether Scientology is really a dangerous cult, or an allowable expression of religious faith. What you believe on this issue has implications for how you deal with Scientology, and how your criticisms will be dealt with. Part of my thought into the matter involved a simple attempt to define religion.
Religion involves faith and belief. It has a communal aspect, and a tradition often passed down. It has some sort of exalted originator. It tells of creation, of what we are, and of how we should act. Religion offers solace and wisdom.
Sadly, I realised that all cults also offer these same aspects. Of course, the originator of the movement is more historically recent and more documented; the myths and faith odd and unusual; the communal aspect stronger and more centralised, partly due to there being fewer adherents. The worst thing is that the centralised nature allows for more control, and I will show how this has been explained away later. All this, put together, can be said to be nothing more threatening than a new religious movement, and, indeed, this is how Scientology defends itself. In essence, Scientology claims that any troubles are in the minds of attackers, because they blindly hate this new, unusual faith. I will look at how Scientology uses the discourse of religious tolerance to shield itself from criticism later - next I will look at why another strand of anti-cult critique is not working.

The sociological and psychological criticism of Scientology: why charges of brainwashing fail

[I am using the website ReligiousTolerance.org in some places. As it has been down for some time during my writing of this piece I will provide a Google cached link with every link, just in case.]

As well as believing odd things, Scientologists seem to inhabit an old world. People sign up to the religion and become very involved, and unwilling to do things outside of it. They may start to separate from old family and friends, because they are not following the same system of belief. And, understandably, the family will want them back. What is happening?
The website Religious Tolerance, which I will be using more later, has an interesting page on brainwashing [cache] that I will summarise and quote from in this section.
Obviously, brainwashing is a simple way of understanding the phenomenon of people withdrawing from their normal life into something else. They have been 'conditioned', and are now acting differently. To speak broadly and over-simply, you may understand this sociologically (as a group, Scientology act differently, involving coercive practices and some form of influence that acts as 'control' that keeps people away from their previous life and within the cult), or psychologically (the individual acts differently to the extent they are unrecognisable, as if a 'pod person'). There exists an industry for trying to snatch these people back, sometimes involving actual kidnapping - you may have seen this in The Simpsons. Religious Tolerance explains why ideas of brainwashing have come about:

"Many individuals in the Anti-cult Movement (ACM) have attempted to raise public consciousness about what they perceive to be a major public threat, mainly to youth and young adults. They believe that many NRMs are profoundly evil. These groups, which they call "cults" are seen as:
Recruiting large numbers of young people into their religious groups, by using deceptive techniques.
Subjecting them to severe mind-control processes that were first developed in communist countries, and subsequently developed by NRMs to a much higher level of refinement.
Destroying their followers' ability to think critically and to make independent decisions.
[...]
Many in the ACM see NRMs as being particularly efficient in attracting normal, intelligent older teens and young adults, and convincing them to:
Donate major amounts of time and effort to the group,
Uncritically accept its teachings,
Conform to their behavioral restrictions and
Make a permanent commitment to remain in the NRM.

Extensive confirmation for these beliefs has come from disillusioned former NRM members. A small minority of those psychologists who specialize in the mind-control field also support the ACM's conclusions."

However, as the website goes on to explain, very few people now accept the idea of 'brainwashing' as some special way of altering another’s beliefs:

"The mental health and academic religious communities are approaching a consensus that this type of mind-control can not be achieved by psychological means. They see people as entering NRMs because of the emotional support and certainty of belief that the religious groups supply. Almost all later leave the group of their own volition, when their continued membership is no longer a positive experience. The average length of membership is probably less than 2 years."

So, evidence that brainwashing is not out to get you is that most people end up leaving the movement disillusioned, when it is 'no longer a positive experience', for, on average, 2 years. I will be discussing whether this makes the practice of such religions reasonable later.
The famous Zimbardo sums up his understand of the psychology of social influence here, on the same webpage, and I am inclined to agree:

Philip G Zimbardo, PhD wrote an article in the American Psychological Association Monitor titled: "What messages are behind today’s cults?":
"Cult methods of recruiting, indoctrinating and influencing their members are not exotic forms of mind control, but only more intensely applied mundane tactics of social influence practiced daily by all compliance professionals and societal agents of influence."
"...cult leaders offer simple solutions to the increasingly complex world problems we all face daily. They offer the simple path to happiness, to success, to salvation by following their simple rules, simple group regimentation and simple total lifestyle. Ultimately, each new member contributes to the power of the leader by trading his or her freedom for the illusion of security and reflected glory that group membership holds out."
"Cult mind control is not different in kind from these everyday varieties, but in its greater intensity, persistence, duration, and scope."

This is not to say that Zimbardo does not still use words like ‘cult’ or ‘brainwashing’, as shown in this article:
It seems to me that at the heart of the controversy over the existence of mind control is a bias toward believing in the power of people to resist the power of situational forces, a belief in individual will power and faith to overcome all evil adversity. It is Jesus modeling resistance against the temptations of Satan, and not the vulnerability of Adam and Eve to deception. More recently, examples abound that challenge this person-power misattribution… [for example] More than 900 U.S. citizens committed suicide or murdered friends and family at the persuasive bidding of their Peoples Temple cult leader, Jim Jones…
The power of social situations to induce "ego alien" behavior over even the best and brightest of people has been demonstrated in a variety of controlled experiments, among them, Stanley Milgram's obedience to authority studies, Albert Bandura's research on dehumanization, my Stanford Prison Experiment and others on deinviduation.
Understanding the dynamics and pervasiveness of situational power is essential to learning how to resist it and to weaken the dominance of the many agents of mind control who ply their trade daily on all of us behind many faces and fronts.”

From my understanding, as a psychology teacher who is actually teaching conformity right now, Zimbardo is still talking about conformity as the basis of mind control. He found, in his Stanford Prison Experiment, that the effects of conformity were extremely strong, causing young college students who were assessed as psychologically healthy to play up to a role of prisoner or guard that it caused psychological distress. He is not going against his previous assertion that “cult mind control is not different in kind from these everyday varieties, but in its greater intensity, persistence, duration, and scope”. But it is a strong warning for us that conformity is very powerful indeed.

Remember, no critical journalist who enters Scientology to find out more is magically brainwashed and comes back out spouting Dianetics chapter and verse. Ex-Scientologists become dissatisfied and leave. This is obviously not brainwashing. One final piece of evidence that brainwashing is not occurring, from the same webpage:

"One good indicator of the non-existence of mind-control techniques is the ineffectiveness of NRM recruitment programs. 'Eileen Barker documents that out of 1000 people persuaded by the Moonies [Unification Church] to attend one of their overnight programs in 1979, 90% had no further involvement. Only 8% joined for more than one week...'"

Evidently, rather than brainwashing, what happens in Scientology and other 'cults' is very strict conformity to the group norms, a far more mundane - although still powerful - form of influence and coercion. One explanation is that New Religious Movements, being smaller and centralised, have a more defined group structure. One can be a Christian; for example, by reading the bible and practicing in your own way and merely labeling yourself as one, or you can choose to join a number of churches or groups. There is no-one to whom you must make yourself known; some consider the religion as a decision made privately between the believer and Jesus.
In comparison to Christianity, to be a Scientologist is to be part of a very rigidly controlled organisation, with defined boundaries, hierarchy, standards, and procedures. This does not mean, though, that Christian belief does not involve odd practices that can seem cult-like. In an amusing study, noted on Religious Tolerance [cache] (emphasis added):

"Much of the confusion over new religious movements relates to a misunderstanding of the conformity and discipline which is often required of its members. Sociologists D. Bromley and A. Shupe once described the Tnevnoc Cult which recruited young women, required them to shave their heads, wear special uniforms, gave them new names in a foreign language, required them to give up their personal possessions and sleep on hard pallets. During their initial membership in the cult, they were isolated from family contacts. They were later required to ritually marry the dead founder of the cult.
Bromley and Shupe received many inquiries about this abusive cult from sociologists and others concerned about psychological manipulation within cults. The latter did not realize that "Tnevnoc" spelled backwards is "Convent". The sociologists were referring to activity in a Roman Catholic convent. This same theme appeared in a paper delivered in 1989.
Down through history, many religious groups (like convents, monasteries, intentional communities, etc.) have required their members to adhere to strict diets, schedules, repetitive praying, abstinence from sexual activities, isolation from former friends and their family or origin and other disciplines. To the casual outside observer, this might appear to be abusive. However, members accept the rules, enter and stay with the group because they find it a generally positive experience. If it becomes no longer positive, they leave and move on.
One of the opportunities of living in a democracy is that people are free to believe what they wish and to enter into religious associations with other individuals. This sometimes leads to unpleasant experiences; in rare cases, it can cause death. But that is one of the risks of living in a society which has freedoms of religion, association and speech."

Criticisms of Scientology based on the seeming 'brainwashing' of its members, or on the amount of coercion and influence within it, are bound to fail. The effects are due to the individual choosing to be part of the religion, just like any other religion. A degree (although certainly relatively harsh) of conformity is expected, just like any other religion. And, just like any other religion, these practices can seem strange. In a climate of religious tolerance, there will be no problem with this apparent brainwashing, as all religions involve conformity. This said, I do think that there are avenues through which to criticise Scientology's techniques for enforcing conformity, as the movement goes further than other mainstream religions in assuring peer pressure, and I personally do not agree with this. I will outline my thoughts on this later.
Therefore, to claim that there is brainwashing will simply not work as a criticism of Scientology, as the phenomenon does not exist. This does not mean, however, that there are not other ways of bringing argument to bear on the religion - however, the measure of deriding researchers and academics that deny the possibility of brainwashing as 'cult apologists' is not a rational argument. Brainwashing does not seem to exist, and when an ex-member of a cult movement says they have been brainwashed, it is very evident that they have not. They were simply conforming and, thankfully, have had the choice of not conforming, which is why they are no longer members.

I offer this from Janet Reitman’s article. Does it show brainwashing, or does it show that it is hard for anyone to leave a religion when their family would disagree with that choice?

One particularly frantic e-mail arrived shortly before this story was published. It came from a young Scientologist with whom I had corresponded several times in the course of three or four months. When we first met, she spoke passionately and angrily about the impact of the church on herself and those close to her.
"Please forgive me," she wrote. "The huge majority of things I told you were lies. Perhaps I don't like Scientology. True. But what I do know is that I was born with the family I was born with, and I love them. Don't ask me to tear down the foundation of their lives." … "I'm so sorry," she concluded. "I hope you understand that everyone I love is terribly important to me, and I am willing to look beyond their beliefs in order to keep them around. I will explain in further detail, perhaps, some other day."

The defence of Scientology as a religion: calling it a cult is countered with the label of 'intolerance'

The website Religious Tolerance [cache] has a very laudable statement of intent:

Our site mandate:
"To promote religious tolerance and freedom. To describe religious faiths in all their diversity.
To describe controversial topics from all points of view."

The front page also notes that: "Whenever someone deviates from reality, others usually get hurt." You might want to hold this in mind for later.
What does this site, a cry for tolerance, have to say about Scientology [cache]?

The Scientology religion is an expanding new religion, founded by American author and humanitarian L. Ron Hubbard. The word Scientology means the “study of knowledge or truth” and addresses the rehabilitation and salvation of the human spirit.

If you were to browse this site for Scientology, you would be impressed that it was a religion. You might also be convinced that there is nothing wrong with it, considering its 'controversies' page [cache]. "Like many other new emerging faith groups, Scientology has been accused of ethics violations, brainwashing techniques, swindling people, etc..." The page is not exactly exhaustive in supplying the controversies that dog Scientology. Scientology, according to its critics, is involved in an immense number of scandals, from harassment of ex-members to full-blown murder, although it is hard to make many of these claims stick (it is easy to see why it is not hard to refute these claims and why the anti-Scientology movement is seen as troublesome). You could read the Religious Tolerance page and be left with the idea that there are a few troublemakers and no real reason to dislike Scientology, and that it is just a new religion struggling to find its feet, being attacked by the intolerant. This is, of course, an excellent image to foster. Scientology is generally very adamant it is a religion, with many articles allegedly written by recognised scholars attesting to this fact. Let us look at one quote.
Regis Dericquebourg writes on another Scientology site about its legitimacy as a religion: "Scientology has the characteristics of a religion. It has a theology, a set of exercises making it possible to reach the spiritual part in every human being, a “very bureaucratized” church structure, and religious rites. Several authors before us, even the most critical, have not doubted of its religious nature..."

This is not to say that it is impossible to criticise these sources of information. Here is a quick summary of such criticisms. Allegedly, Scientology has not earned the right to be a religion in America, it has forced it through blackmail. And, just to make sure you understand my position, I would be very pleased if the American Government were to define Scientology as not a religion and take away its legitimacy and privilege. I just do not believe it will happen.
Scientology, as a religion, has the defence of being a legitimate set of beliefs and practices. Therefore, calling it a cult will not work. It currently acts like a religion, various countries have decided that it is a religion (even if under duress!), and I am sure it will maintain the defence of being a religion, as it suffered too much criticism in its secretive past. If one was to assess its beliefs and the feelings of most of its followers, it would seem in many ways much like any other religion. And, in this light, the people fighting against it look very misguided indeed, as explained by Dena S. Davis in the essay "Joining a 'Cult': Religious Choice or Psychological Aberration?":

New religions which demand a high degree of commitment from adherents are bound to be disturbing to outsiders, especially to family members of those who join. The existence of a dramatic "threat" to middle-class families inevitably evokes responses from psychologists, therapists (both licensed and self-proclaimed), legislators, and mainstream clergy. Some of these responses are undoubtedly sincere, others are clearly self-serving. Most of these responses (e.g., deprogramming, conservatorship laws) rely for their logic on a stance of delegitimizing [sic] the "cult" as a religion which can command the respect and protection afforded to mainstream beliefs. By the same token, the conversion experience is explained, not in terms of religious belief, but in terms of "brainwashing" and mental illness. This allows the cult member to be identified, not as a maverick family member who has chosen a different path, but as the victim of coercive persuasion in need of rescue.
As this paper has shown, none of these contentions can survive scrutiny. It is impossible, on both theoretical and empirical grounds, to draw a bright line between "real" religions and "destructive cults," or between sincere conversion to a religious belief and being the object of "coercive persuasion." Nor is it possible to identify cult membership with mental illness. Therefore, courts ought not to accept arguments, e.g. in the context of claims for unlawful imprisonment, that adults who join "cults" are to be treated any differently than those who choose to join other high-demand groups, such as Roman Catholic convents or the U.S. Army.

The problem is that all religious movements can seem unpleasant to those on the outside, both new and established. They all induce a change in the believer, a drastic change of faith in the way that the universe works. They can all lead to altered behaviour and family resentment or withdrawal. Scientology leads to, like any religion, crippling doubt, the wasting of time in a false beliefs system (according to those who don't believe and ex-members), and disagreement with acquaintances who do not believe.
Scientology is not a religion just because some country or other has decided that it is. It is one because it, at its core, acts like one, and has appropriated religious language and techniques. It is a religion because those inside the movement say it is, and those who run the movement say it is, and more and more people generally consider it to be. It is a religion because claims from the anti-cult movement do not stick - brainwashing does not exist, the followers really believe in it, and they are allowed to leave when they choose.
When people choose to believe in a religious system, no matter how stupid, that makes it a religion, even if it is new and questionable. This is due to how we currently practice Western freedoms.

Now, let us step back for a minute. What is it that Scientology does that really is not like other accepted religions?. Next I will be charging Scientology with the crimes of peddling, for cash, its own way of healing mental and physical problems, and of intolerance of other beliefs and of certain groups in society. Yet, if you consider the situation seriously, we allow all sorts of faiths to operate with silly healing practices that allow medical problems to continue rather than cure them, from religious to faiths to faiths such as homeopathy. All religions have hard edges of intolerance, from Christians that will not accept gays to ideas of holy wars and that people not of your faith might in some way be lesser. Most faiths seem to involve money somewhere, it is always good to donate. Most (all?) faiths involve devotion to the faith over and above other concerns being in some way beneficial.
In a 'positive' sense, Scientology is a religion because it has similar good points to other religions. It was invented as a belief system and, over the years, altered to become more like a mainstream religion. It offers to its followers a system of spiritual care, as well as mental and physical. It does not use any special mechanisms to control its followers other than a ruthless demand for conformity, and the followers are making 'their own choice' in remaining in the church.
In a 'negative' sense Scientology is a religion because it has similar bad point to other religions. Ruthlessly, it is tying intolerance, cash, and conformity together to gain the most out of its members, in terms of devotion and money - Scientology is a religion because all religions are viewable in such a negative sense. Historically, religions can be criticised for using their spiritual power and influence to gain political and social and economic power too. We can accept the awful practices and scandals of Scientology because that is religion. No wonder many people are non-believers, or are spiritual but critical of organised religion!
If Scientology is exploitative, it is exploitative in the way that all belief systems can possibly be, and in a way that most of the biggest systems have been in times past and sometimes still are in other countries. If Scientology offers something, it offers a similar mix of obviously untrue beliefs and conformity to a social structure that other religions do. In this way, Scientology is a religion, and is benefiting from our climate of religious tolerance.

Why a religion of Scientology is good: three main areas in which it must change

It is, by now, mostly impossible to argue against Scientology as a cult. We cannot claim brainwashing, it will not be believed. We cannot argue against its beliefs, for unbelievablity and the necessity of faith is inherent in all religions. It is being accorded the status of religion by popular decree and due to our freedoms of speech, organisation, and belief. Scientology is a religion according to how we understand the term at this historical time and will be tolerated as such.
This is what you should be asking yourself: How is Scientology allowed to get away with all this? How could L. Ron Hubbard invent a sci-fi religion, make people pay for it, and generate tonnes of cash? How can Scientology act so unpleasantly and still be a religion?
The good news is that the tolerance is going to have to be two-way, and that Scientology will have to alter to claim its place as a mainstream religion. In fact, Scientology is already going through this process, and will only continue to change. It is having to become less secretive. It is entering the public eye more and more. And it will be exposed to more criticism as it 'goes mainstream'. It started as a cult, gained followers, and under pressure has adopted the stance of religion - there are many stories relating to LRH deciding to make it into a religion. And this stance will have consequences.
There are three main ways in which Scientology can (and must) be questioned, even as a religion being protected by a discourse of religious tolerance, as adopting a set of unpleasant business practices, as lacking in the tolerance which it requests from others, and taking on the appearance of science.

As a business: it is no secret that Scientology costs money. This article, from the LA Times, explains some of the business practices. "'I'm trying to recover my mortgaged home,' says Culloden, who spent 20 years in Scientology and obtained three mortgages totaling more than $80,000 to buy courses." Of course, there is a defence against these stories: "Church leaders will not discuss Scientology's gross income or net worth. But they contend that Scientologists who pay for spiritual programs are no different from, say, Mormons who tithe 10% of their income..."
Of course, there is a large difference. Tithing 10% of your income is different to paying a certain amount of money for the books, materials, training, auditing, and other services. 10% of your income is never going to be too much, it would rarely lead to you needing to get three mortgages. The Mormon tithe does not discriminate against poor people, it is in a way charitable, as you are only required to give a percentage of what you have. (This is not to say, though, that there is not pressure to donate more and more in the church. Such is greed, both of a church for money and its followers for gaining praise for pennies.)
Another defence, from the same article: "'The fact of the matter is that the parishioners of the Church of Scientology have felt and continue to feel that they get full value for their donations,' said Scientology lawyer Earle C. Cooley." So, what happens if you do not feel you have had full value? From the same article comes the story of Larry Wollersheim who, in 1980:

"filed a Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit, accusing the church of subjecting him to psychologically damaging practices and of driving him to the brink of insanity and financial ruin after he had a falling out with the group. Three years ago, a jury awarded him $30 million. The award was recently reduced to $2.5 million.
During the litigation, Wollersheim filed a 200-page affidavit in which he offered this analysis of what keeps Scientologists hooked:
'Fear and hope are totally indoctrinated into the cult (Scientology) member. He hopes that he will receive the miraculous and ridiculous claims made directly, indirectly and by rumor by the sect and its members.
'He is afraid of the peer pressure for not proceeding up the prescribed program. He is intimidated and afraid of being accused of being a dilettante. He is afraid that if he doesn't do it now before the world ends or collapses he may never get the chance. He is afraid if he doesn't claim he received gains and write a success testimonial he will be shunned....
'How many people could stand up to that kind of pressure and stand before a group of applauding people and say: 'Hey, it really wasn't good'?'
Wollersheim said that the courses provide only a temporary euphoria.
'Then you're sold the next mystery and the next solution.... I've seen people sell their homes, stocks, inheritances and everything they own chasing their hopes for a fleeting, subjective euphoria. I have never witnessed a greater preying on the hopes and fears of others that has been carefully engineered by the cult's leader.'"

The pressure to spend money on Scientology can apparently get so high that you are left without a home. In a very famous article, The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power, the loss of money of a 73 year-old widow was explored:

Harriet Baker learned the hard way about Scientology's business of selling religion. When Baker, 73, lost her husband to cancer, a Scientologist turned up at her Los Angeles home peddling a $1,300 auditing package to cure her grief. Some $15,000 later, the Scientologists discovered that her house was debt free. They arranged a $45,000 mortgage, which they pressured her to tap for more auditing until Baker's children helped their mother snap out of her daze. Last June, Baker demanded a $27,000 refund for unused services, prompting two cult members to show up at her door unannounced with an E-meter to interrogate her. Baker never got the money and, financially strapped, was forced to sell her house in September.
[...] Shortly after Hubbard's death the church retained Trout & Ries, a respected, Connecticut-based firm of marketing consultants, to help boost its public image. "We were brutally honest," says Jack Trout. "We advised them to clean up their act, stop with the controversy and even to stop being a church. They didn't want to hear that."

It is hard to find an answer as to whether Scientology is a religion, or a business. In another recent report, Scientology: A religion unmasked, which summarises some earlier journalism, the workers conditions are explained:

Only a small pool of members in the religion’s upper echelons have completed The Bridge [the whole programme of courses you are trained in]. Due to the quickly increasing cost of the courses, members are often encouraged to join the Church’s workforce as a means of earning enough to make payments. Those who decide to join the Church’s workforce sign "covenants" — contracts that commit employees to work for the Church from two to five years.
In 1990, a multi-part L.A. Times article analyzed a number of aspects of the Church. Included are first-hand accounts of the workers’ conditions. Employees of the Church — who work in areas ranging from promotion, to finance, to fundraising — become isolated due to the Church’s pervasiveness. The Church comes to dominate their social circle, and due to long hours, workers are often exhausted and unable to spend any time away from Church life. Contracts stipulate that workers must repay the Church for their courses if they choose to leave.
Vicki Aznaran—who appeared in the Time article—also spoke to the L.A. Times about the experience of isolation in the Church:
"You finally are to the point where you do not examine, logically, Scientology... you are cut off from anything that might give you another viewpoint…"
[...]
According to the L.A. Times piece, in 1984 Canadian authorities described working conditions as "slave labor". The article also quotes a 1964 directive of Hubbard’s concerning sick leave that serves to reinforce that claim:
"If a staff member’s breath can be detected on a mirror, he or she can do his or her job."
The piece also quotes Hubbard’s words from a Church bulletin, encouraging workers to bring in revenue:
"Make sure that lots of bodies move through the shop … Make money. Make more money. Make others produce so as to make money ... However you get them in or why, just do it."

As a religion, which expects tolerance, Scientology must be more tolerant itself. It is no secret that Hubbard was racist and anti-homosexual. Nor is it a secret that these tendencies are found in his writings for Scientology. And, also, many people allege that Scientology is misogynistic, for example in its emphasis on birth being the cause of mental problems (known as engrams). On opposition to homosexuality, The dangerous science of religion:

There is one segment of the "Gay Ivy" that Scientology might not "help," exactly: homosexual students. "I have gay friends," says Don, "but they're not Scientologists." Homosexuals are classified as an "outness on the second dynamic," Rachel explains gently. Ask her what she means and she'll define "Dynamic two" as sexuality, and "outness," as a problem, a deviation (all of this is in their bible, Dianetics). This seems to be the core of Scientologists' belief. Whereas many religions embrace difference and celebrate it, Scientology professes to embrace difference and then eradicate it. "That's just a part of the person's case," Rachel says, speaking still of the rhetorical possibility of a homosexual. "And it would be able to be audited."

And, black people in Hubbard's own words from a prominent website to do with racism and Scientology:

"Just as individuals can be seen, by observing nations, so we see the African tribesman, with his complete contempt for truth and his emphasis on brutality and savagery for others but not for himself, is a no-civilization."
-- L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought, Bridge Publications: Los Angeles, 1997.

When it comes to other religions, Scientology has a conflict in its public appearance, and in its more private goings-on. From Wikipedia:

"Scientology teaches that it is fully compatible with all existing major religions. The Church of Scientology has publicly stated:
'Scientology respects all religions. Scientology does not conflict with other religions or other religious practices.' (What is Scientology? 1992, p.544)
[...]
In its application for tax exempt status in the United States, the Church of Scientology International states:
'Although there is no policy or Scriptural mandate expressly requiring Scientologists to renounce other religious beliefs or membership in other churches, as a practical matter Scientologists are expected to and do become fully devoted to Scientology to the exclusion of other faiths. As Scientologists, they are required to look only to Scientology Scriptures for the answers to the fundamental questions of their existence and to seek enlightenment only from Scientology.' (Response to Final Series of IRS Questions Prior to Recognition of Exemption Under Section 501(c)(3) As a Church, October 1, 1993)
[...]
In some of the teachings Hubbard had intended only for this select group, he claimed that Jesus had never existed, but was implanted in humanity's collective memory by Xenu 75 million years ago, and that Christianity was an "entheta [evil] operation" mounted by beings called Targs (Hubbard, "Electropsychometric Scouting: Battle of the Universes", April 1952).

Religions must publicly and privately accept the legitimacy of other religions to exist and to practice in our society. Although, of course, Christianity may claim it is the best, grudgingly religions should not attempt to, in any way, stir up intolerance for other religions. It is not surprising that we expect Scientology to do this also. And, linked to this, religions must be tolerant of criticism. Consider how important religious criticism is to our culture, with Lutheranism having providing a whole new concept of Christianity to Catholicism, the Enlightenment having fostered such writes as Voltaire, and members of all religions being able to consider for themselves what spirituality is, and having the freedom to follow it.
Scientology, however, has always acted to reduce criticism, both outside its ranks, and within them. This article goes over the interesting Scientology concepts of 'dead agenting' and 'fair game', and an 'attack the attacker' policy. Let us look at this policy first:

"Don't ever tamely submit to an investigation of us. Make it rough, rough on attackers all the way. You can get "reasonable about it" and lose. Sure we break no laws. Sure we have nothing to hide. BUT attackers are simply an anti-Scientology propaganda agency so far as we are concerned. They have proven they want no facts and will only lie no matter what they discover. So BANISH all ideas that any fair hearing is intended and start our attack with their first breath..." -- Attacks on Scientology, "Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter," 25 February 1966

If Scientology wants to be a legitimate religion, it will have to accept legitimate criticism. Attacking the attacker in this way is not a reasonable course of action, and society (hopefully) will not accept any religion doing this.
Again quoting the previous article, let us look quickly at this idea of 'fair game'. "Hubbard detailed his rules for attacking critics in a number of policy letters, including one often quoted by critics as "the Fair Game policy." This allowed that those who had been declared enemies of the Church, called "suppressive persons" or simply "SP," "May be deprived of property or injured by any means... May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed."
Intriguing. This is, of course, an extension of 'attack the attacker'. Furthermore: "Scientologists sometimes claim that Hubbard canceled the Fair Game policy in 1968. Its critics claim that only the term but not the practice was removed. What the "HCO Policy Letter of 21 October 1968" actually says is "The practice of declaring people FAIR GAME will cease. FAIR GAME may not appear on any Ethics Order. It causes bad public relations. This P/L does not cancel any policy on the treatment or handling of an SP."
While Scientologists might continue to claim that they have actually really stopped using this unfair concept of 'Fair Game', it turns out that: "In separate cases in 1979 and 1984, attorneys for Scientology argued that the Fair Game policy was in fact a core belief of Scientology and as such deserved protection as religious expression."
If a religion wishes to express itself by declaring war on its enemies then, I would say, society cannot allow that religion to operate. If Scientology wishes to be a legitimate and tolerated religion, I stress that it must itself be a tolerant religion.

When it comes to toleration of criticism from within the ranks, Scientology also has work to do on this. To go back to Janet Reitman's article, it must be noted that at one point she is asked to sign a form when signing up for the basic training. "The document absolves Scientology of liability if I am not wholly satisfied with its services, and also requires me to pledge that neither I nor my family has ever sued, attacked or publicly criticized Scientology. It also asks me to pledge that I will never sue the church myself." I am sure that the Church defends this measure as a necessary tactic due to 'bigotry and hatred against our religion', or somesuch. What the document actually does is stifle criticism from within its ranks and protect against being liable for its own mistakes. A religion must be accountable to its followers.
This is also from Reitman's article, and I believe it speaks for itself:

Now twenty-three, Jeffrey lives in a small mountain town more than four hours from Los Angeles. Since his "escape," as he calls it, from the Sea Org, he has not returned to the church. He has never spoken out about his experiences, which he still insists "weren't all that bad." But because he left the Sea Org without permission, he has been declared suppressive. Soon, he believes, his family still in the church will have nothing more to do with him.
The order of disconnection, called a "declare," is issued on a piece of gold-colored parchment known as a "golden rod." This document proclaims the suppressive person's name, as well as his or her "crime." According to one friend of Jeffrey's mother who has read his declare, Jeffrey's crimes are vague, but every Scientologist who sees it will understand its point.
"This declare is a warning to Jeffrey's friends in the Sea Org," this woman, who is still a member of the church, explains. "It's saying to them, 'See this kid, he left without permission. This is what happened to him. Don't you make the same mistake.'"

Finally, in an attempt to replace elements of the scientific world, Scientology makes some grand claims. Scientology, due to its foundational book, Dianetics, is a system of mental health as well as a religion - building up its business by selling this system, and then tacking on a spiritual aspect too. It attempts to take status as the 'only viable option' for mental - and physical - health by claiming, on the Opposing Scientology site, that "Psychiatry as we know it today is more priesthood than science. Its conglomeration of half-baked theories is handed down by an arbitrary elite - authorities who have attained such status through who they know and who can sweet-talk the government into parting with yet more grant money."
Wouldn't it be terrible if a priesthood pretended to be a science, and handed down half-baked theories, I am noting sarcastically. The Scientology Religion site, however, has an answer to the cruelties of psychiatry, offering "Scientology effective solutions". This language, of course, is a sad and unpleasant mix of business terminology with scientific claim, which when attached to a religion becomes even more unpleasant. What sort of solutions might it mean? One of the key aspects of Scientology is 'auditing', which is remarkably similar to regular talking therapies, although of course it is not because such things are evil. It does use an e-meter which, as it measures galvanic skin response is sort of cool and unusual, but then again psychologists have been using it too, so it is not all that unusual. From Wikipedia again:

"Scientologists have claimed benefits from auditing including improved IQ, improved ability to communicate, enhanced memory, alleviated dyslexia and attention deficit problems, and improved relaxation; however, no scientific studies have verified these claims. Indeed, an Australian report stated that auditing involved a kind of command hypnosis that could lead to potentially damaging delusional dissociative states. Licensed psychotherapists have alleged that the Church's auditing sessions amount to mental health treatment without a license, but the Church vehemently disputes these allegations, and claims to have established in courts of law that its practice leads to spiritual relief. So, according to the Church, the psychotherapist treats mental health and the Church treats the spiritual being. A 1971 ruling of the United States District Court, District of Columbia (333 F. Supp. 357), specifically stated, "the E-meter has no proven usefulness in the diagnosis, treatment or prevention of any disease, nor is it medically or scientifically capable of improving any bodily function." As a result of this ruling, Scientology now publishes disclaimers in its books and publications declaring that the E-meter "does nothing," and that it is used specifically for spiritual purposes.

Entertainingly, Hubbard thought that mass is condensed energy, and that holding mental images can increase your mass. Is this religious belief, or is it an attempt to become science? Can we allow such religious belief when it contests science? Consider that Scientology has claimed that auditing cure cancer. Consider that it runs a rehab programme for drugs users called Narconon, which claims 70% success rates, but one study has found only 6.6%. Consider that it runs a prisoner rehabilitation programme, called Criminon.
Finally, consider that Hubbard wanted to replace psychiatry with his own ideas that remain entirely unproven, totally unscientific, and have no legal status as cures of any kind. What sort of problems might this cause, if someone is within the religion, needs help, and is given only useless therapies based on the idea of engrams, thoughts with mass, and so on?

Scientology can protect its religious beliefs and practices by using its status as a New Religious Movement, but it cannot defend its business, scientific, or own non-tolerant practices in the same way. This is why it is a good thing that Scientology seeks to become a religion.
Conventional anti-cult argument based on accusations of brainwashing is not going to be accepted anymore. A new argument based on what a religion is and should be doing will, however, have great effects in changing Scientology. We will not be able to eradicate the belief, even though I wish we could, as people are always ready to fall for some grand system of lies. What we will be able to do is agitate for the movement to be altered and get rid of the most objectionable areas.

What those against, and those for, Scientology should do

Well, then, what must we do? At this point I am going to bring in the perspective of one website that is critical of the religion and of anti-cult tactics, say what is good and bad about it, and form my own conclusions. The site, run by an ex-scientologist who stresses his/her balance as a critical ex-member who disagrees with the religion and also anti-cult critics, is Another Look at Scientology. The basic position of this site is outline on its 'basic tenets' page. First, the author refers to indoctrination rather than mind control, as:

"this does not resort to esoteric, superstitious, unproven, and dangerous explanations of hypnosis or demonic-like possession that overrides the person's will. The persons always retains his will, but is simply convinced that the black and white view of the cult is right through constant repetition, fear, appeal to authority, faith leap, positioning, and others means. Likewise, after years of study, mainstream psychologists and sociologists have not retained anti-cultists explanations and describe instead the lure cults hold for some people by the fact that groups like Scientology provide a feeling of belonging, a sense of membership in an elite group, and more.

The author of the site also holds, somewhat reasonably, that Scientology is not a scam because those higher up in the organisation believe in it just as much as the followers, and are running the show out of spiritual necessity, a little bit like the Pope. Returning to the 'basic tenets', this means that intervention into the religion is unfair discrimination, and that the state should act as a 'referee' rather than attempting to control what the movement is doing.
The most important tenet held by this author, at least in the terms of what I am trying to do in this essay, is that to wish to 'take back' a 'cult victim', through force if necessary, disregards that person's rights. As a member of a religion they and the religion they believe in have the 'right to be tolerated':
"I oppose the idea that cult members are mindless robots. The fact that the cultic mindset is a form of illusion does not prevent the beliefs of cult members to be as genuine as the ones of any other believers. For that matter, I don't view the cultic mindset as being the exclusivity of cults. Members of any religion, or anybody for that matter, can very well be the victim of it as well. To claim that cult members should not have the same rights as any other persons is a very serious attack on the most basic rights, and one of the most de-humanizing things there can be. It is, however, the kind of things the anti-cult theory directly leads to. To deprive someone of such right, one would need an extraordinary reason, and the mind-control claim of anti-cultists on which this is based, is at best unproven, and at worst totally false. Religious movements, however, are not above criticism, and nothing is lost by recognizing the religious nature of cults."

I believe that this is an intelligent, if not perfect, way of viewing the problem of Scientology. Let me sum up my argument.
Anti-cult organisations oppose Scientology on many levels. They deny Scientology being a religion, call it a cult, and accuse it of brainwashing.
This is entirely understandable. Scientologists believe, and do, odd things.
There is, however, no support for brainwashing. Scientology, like any religious belief system, requires conformity to a group.
Scientology is a religion in many respects, both in a 'positive' way that it provides benefits, and in a 'negative' way that it can be criticised as bad (altering the behaviour of the follower etc.) as can all religions.
Scientology deserves religious tolerance, as it is a religious belief system, requiring faith, offering hope and salvation and 'truth'. Like any religion, everyone in the hierarchy will profess that they are acting out of a desire to improve the world - through the religion's techniques - even (and especially) if they are personally benefiting, in terms of money and power, from being in the movement.
The followers of Scientology are not brainwashed. They are still human. And they have made a choice to be in the religion or, in the case of those whose parents raised them within it, to stay. We cannot attempt to ‘pervert their free’ will by telling them they are wrong and trying to .
However, this does not mean Scientology, in its present form, is acceptable. It is not merely a religion. It also operates as a business and a science. We can directly challenge these aspects, as they are not covered by any degree of religious tolerance. Also, Scientology itself shows a marked lack of tolerance. We must give, with one hand, the status of religion and, with the other, take away its past as a secretive cult that could largely get away with what it wanted to, that indulged in privacy, that silenced critics with unpleasant policies.

We must accept that the anti-cult movement has lost some respect. A reliance on talking about cults and brainwashing, and in some instances on forceful intervention, have given supporters of Scientology a target which to hit. Also, the argument for religious tolerance is gaining ground. We must learn to, within the boundaries of this new argument, still disagree with the unpleasant elements of Scientology.
This is not to say that critics of the anti-cult movement are entirely correct. The Another Look at Scientology website is wrong in sp,e respects. Scientology probably did start off as a scam, as there is no evidence that Hubbard did believe in the belief system he created, and plenty of evidence to say he was attempting to gain power, money, and influence. Although, presently, Scientology is a religion because its believers freely believe in it, and because it is striving to be a religion and defending itself as such, we cannot extend such sympathies back in time. Out of what I would personally call a cult came a religion!

If you are for Scientology: do you want to be a religion? Then you must understand what makes a religion acceptable and tolerable. Any attempt to merely look like a religion while not actually changing will be continually noticed by your critics.
If you are against Scientology: accept that Scientology is a religion. Accept that brainwashing does not exist. Accept that, sadly, people are manipulable through entirely mundane means. But do not accept Scientology. Do not accept the problems that Scientology causes. One fertile area - the religion sells a notion of 'truth' through its training, and also superhuman powers. Surely, when these do not become evident, you should get your money back? Evidently Scientology does its best to limit such attempts to sue, as shown in Reitman's article. Does that not mean that, legally, there should be a notice that, in the event that you do not get anything out of the training, you will not be able to get money back? Does that not mean there should be a massive campaign to stop people losing money on something that most people find has not helped them in the extent to which they were told it would?
As a science, we must stop Scientology attacking legitimate areas of mental and physical healing, for they have nothing but pseudo-science to replace it with. Demand studies to show that Scientology's techniques work (previous studies have, unsurprisingly, shown that they do not). The possibility of people within the religion finding that their conditions become worse because their belief system stops them getting help is too high.
I believe that a 'Scienonon' to rival Narconon and Criminon should be set up. Create a well-known database, online, of ex-Scientologists stories. Make sure everyone knows that, although people may leave the movement and therefore not be brainwashed, although they do not consider it a cult, they have wasted their time, money, and probably have had negative experiences to do with the emotional turmoil of doubt and 'blacklisting'. Remember that, although the website Religious Tolerance supports Scientology, it does say "Whenever someone deviates from reality, others usually get hurt". This is certainly true. Scientology is a religion, yes, but a serious deviation from reality all the same.

If we tell people, 'Scientology is a cult, it uses brainwashing', these are evidently untrue. People may come to think, 'well it must not be that bad if its critics smear it so'. Tell the truth, and only the truth. Scientology is a religion, but very questionable. And those who used to be part of it, as I will discuss in my conclusion, are rarely happy that they joined.

Let's try and generate a statistic, something simple, quotable, and as authoritative as possible:
??% of ex-Scientologists surveyed left the religion within 5 years. Of these, ??% would advise others to join.

Conclusion: questions we should be asking ourselves

We live in a society in which some quarters call for religious tolerance. This has entailed the odd phenomenon of one man's invented belief system becoming a religion within 50 or so years. Because people choose to join it, choose to stay in, and sincerely believe in Scientology, which in part is a collection of religious and spiritual beliefs requiring faith, it is a religion.
What does that make religion? Could all of them have been similarly invented? It should make us ask serious questions. And who will be the next person to succeed in becoming rich and wealthy by imagining us a new spiritual past, present, and future? (Let's just hope it's not a fantasy writer, I do not want future generations looking to Harry Potter for spiritual guidance. J.K. Rowling is rich enough already).

How can we allow a religion to exist, when we believe, as I explained above, that most people will drop out within a few years? We are saying that people are free to choose to spend their money on something they will realise is rubbish. We are saying that people are quite capable of wasting their life, time, and resources. Should society allow such irresponsibility? What is the price of being tolerant, not privileging one answer, and allowing people to provide their own answer for a cost?

Just because Scientology is being seen as a religion does not mean that it will last forever. Many religions, long forgotten, have dwindled out. They compete. For how long will Scientology survive?

To what extent can we tolerate a social sub-group that asks for rigid conformity in values that oppose are own? Should any religion be allowed to convince us that it has cures for mental or physical ills without those cures being rigorously tested for efficacy? It is too possible that people might become worse, or even die, due to devotion to a certain type of religious healing rather than going for scientific medicine. This is not to say, though, that scientific medicine is always sure of its medicines or not also without group conformity effects.

Why are people, without the useful excuse of brainwashing, so malleable and manipulable? Why are social situations so strong that they can convince someone of demonstrably untrue spiritual and physical facts? I believe we should be thinking not so much how to stop cults from arising again, and perhaps becoming annoying and manipulative religions, but looking at why people are so ready to accept a belief system, no matter how removed from observable reality. Is something lacking from society that makes people look for happiness?

If you disagree with how Scientology 'works' in converting people into followers, convincing them to drop their old lives, conform to the group, and engage in proselytism themselves, do you disagree to some extent with all religions?

Here are two excerpts from ex-Scientologists correspondence on the Another Look at Scientology site that act as a focus for more questions. First:

My experience left me with some significant questions regarding the Church - for example, why would the Church condone my closest friends and family disconnecting from me on the grounds that I was no longer a Scientologist? If this is misapplied use of the technology, why didn't the Church offer some avenue for recourse? I wish there were an easier way for me to go through the questioning I went through, but alas my closest friends disconnected from me, and I was left feeling that I had to leave. While the tech remains very useful in my world, I found no solace in the Church during this difficult time. Why?

We presumably accept this treatment as legitimate religious practice, if we accept Scientology as a religion. All religions can cause pain if they 'excommunicate' members, and some groups within Christianity still use the cutting off of individuals from the church readily. But should we allow religions to hurt people? Just because people within a religion believe it is necessary to do this, and so mistreat a person, is that a legitimate religious belief?

From the same site comes a very interesting ex-Scientologist's experiences. Note how there is some sort of balance - there are good aspects to Scientology overwhelmed by bad, and the explanation of the control as simple conformity:

The astonishing experiences I had with auditing, although relatively few in number, served as the basis for my belief that there was something true about it and, therefore, it was possible my doubts and questions -- particularly about the rules and "mind control" aspects of Scientology -- were misguided. The implication being that if I kept going, I'd eventually come to see how it all made sense. And thus, I became immersed.
I took Sasha to a Scientology school -- beginning with kindergarten -- fully believing he was getting the best possible education, my only friends were Scientologists, Sasha's only friends were Scientology kids, my job was with a company which employed only Scientologists, my accountant, car repairman, carpenter, painter, doctor, were all Scientologists. It was a community with shared aspirations, and -- for much of the time -- it was fun. But beneath the social veneer, I knew the sense of community -- and to some degree, the apparent success of the technology -- was based on mass agreement, rather than truth.
I never totally believed Scientology was the "only road to truth" or the "road to total freedom". I believed it was a good road that might help people, including me. I believe it's still a good road for some people, at least for awhile. But for people like me, who prefer to think for themselves and rebel when they can't, the flaws in the community -- and the technology -- become more visible over time.
[...]
[A]t the end of every night of study, the course supervisor would gather the students together for those who wanted to share their successes (aka "wins") and, once they'd had their say, the supervisor would lead the group in three cheers to L. Ron Hubbard (LRH): "hip hip hooray, hip hip hooray, hip hip hooray", as everyone stood to applaud an oversized picture of "Ron". The same was done at Scientology events, often attended by hundreds (occasionally thousands) of people. When you're surrounded by a large group, all of whom are doing the same thing, the ludicracy of what you're doing can escape you. But when you get an honest glimpse of what you're doing, you eventually come to realize that you need to deal with the questions and doubts you've had all along.
I got that honest glimpse at a Scientology event, attendance to which was "mandatory". It turned out to be a sales pitch for a new auditing level -- coming soon to a Registrar near me. When it came time for the three cheers, I knew I was nearing the end...my applause was pure pretense.
When someone leaves Scientology, they become off limits to those who remain involved. You lose your friends, your job, your car mechanic, and the rest. The only way I could bring myself to lose all that was to accept the fact that the benefits of leaving outweighed the benefits of staying, and I reached that point before my son (and his father) had reached it. For several more years, I did my best to pretend I was a True Believer, because I wasn't willing to put Sasha in the position of having to decide between his mom and the only life he'd known.
[...]
The best part of Scientology is leaving it! Shortly after gaining some distance from it, you rediscover your own thoughts and determination. You feel the freedom of no longer having to conform. You can study any subject that interests you, including philosophies NOT written by L. Ron Hubbard.

Religion involves the dogmatic adherence to a faith and the consequence is that, in some amount, squash critical thought because they require the acceptance of truths that cannot be adequately verified. But, to be a Christian is, in most cases, to be a Christian within the context of the wider world, with plenty of opportunity to hear and tolerate criticism. What is most galling about Scientology is that, as a new religion, it is concentrated in certain pockets and can replace the social life of somebody entirely. To truly be a 'normal' religion, Scientology must mix in with the real world, and accept criticism as unavoidable.
We have been assuming that people are free to choose a religion and free to stay. When are you not free? Are you free to choose to not be affected by group pressure and conformity? Are you free to choose from options you are being told you are not allowed to take by the people who you are assuming are wiser or more spiritual than you are? Religion, in all its forms, seems to limit freedom. Some people want this - they want to have certainty, to be able to be dedicated to something, to have some boundaries in terms of the morals to follow and possibilities of the future. How can we be sure that someone, however, does not want this, but just cannot say?

Understanding Scientology as a religion, as I have tried to argue is the case, is not just a matter of accepting Scientology. Nor is it a matter of finding ways to attack it even when it is being protected by a notion of religious tolerance. It should also lead to us asking questions about belief, and its role in our lives.

Note: Rick Ross has sent me this link, which follows along slightly similar lines to mine, but is better and shorter. It too explains that Scientology is more than just a religion, but concludes that this means that Scientology can not be a religion. My conclusion is that Scientology has to change to truly be a religion. I certainly think that this viewpoint has its merits too, and I am convinced by it, apart from my concern that it would not be a popular idea amongst those who are crying out for religious tolerance. I currently think that we have a better chance of altering Scientology and swaying more minds by acceding to these demands for religious tolerance than resisting them, but hopefully you are capable of deciding for yourself.

Over the hills and far away

2006-04-01T01:10:00.000Z

The Republic, 369d-370c

'Well then, how will our state supply these needs? It will need a farmer, a builder, and a weaver, and also, I think, a shoemaker and one or two others to provide for our bodily needs.'
'True.'
'So that the minimum state would consist of four or five men.'
'Evidently.'
'Then should each of these men contribute the product of his labour for common use? For instance, should the farmer provide enough food for all four of them, and devote enough time and labour to food production to provide for the needs of all four? Or, alternatively, should he disregard the others, and devote a quarter of his time to producing a quarter the amount of food, and the other three quarters one to building himself a house, one to making clothes, and another to making shoes? Should he, in other words, avoid the trouble of sharing with others and devote himself to provising for his own needs only?'
To which Adeimantus replied, 'The first alternative is perhaps the simpler.'
'Nor need that surprise us,' I rejoined. 'For as you were speaking, it occurred to me that, in the first place, no two of us are born exactly alike. We have different natural aptitudes, which fit us for different jobs.'
'We have indeed.'
'So do we so better to exercise one skill or to try to practise several?'
'To stick to one,' he said.
'And there is a further point. It is fatal in any job to miss the right moment for action.'
'Clearly.'
'The workman must be a profession at the call of his job; his job will not wait till he has leisure to spare for it.'
'That is inevitable.'
'Quantity and quality are therefore more easily produced when a man specializes appropriately on a single job for which he is naturally fitted, and neglects all others.'
'That's certainly true.'

We can imagine when this doesn't work. The shoemaker gets bored of making shoes, the farmer gets bored of growing food. Would this happen in Plato's mini-state? Why would one man stick to one job despite some boredom and lack of variety? Because the others depend upon him and value him - he is important both to them and, in extension, to the state that they have made together. Commitment to attaining good quality of work is also important (for Plato, a natural shoemaker would be disgruntled at not being able to farm very well, and at the fact that his natural talents are going to waste). We can imagine Plato's four men being pretty happy with their lot; it wouldn't be the case that they'd be bored before they die and break their little society. After a generation or two, the original contract between the men will become less and less important. But the principle of one man to one job will become inseperable from the lives of the people who succeed them: A farmer would think of becoming a jack of all trades perhaps like he would think of becoming a dog or a tree. It would in any case be hard to underestimate.

Imagine the situatedness of a people, should they be brought up from infancy into the professions of their parents (they would have to be taught that they have been brought up to be a farmer because it is their destiny or somesuch). The environments in which these people are brought up constitute the sum of the 'nurture' experience affords them - ask anyone brought up in a very specific lifestyle how hard it is even to understand people from other backgrounds. Plato's state would not of course be like this in many respects; as a meritocracy those who show aptitude and interest for particular fields will be assigned to them. To paraphrase a large part of The Republic, children will be brought up and evaluated for their various roles. The principle of one man one job will though be enforced as just through their education and myths that they will be indoctrinated into. The form is a little more religious and a little less working class Yorkshire, but the same specificity of life is assured (we should say 'once a Catholic always a Catholic').

So why can we imagine boredom as a factor? If we can see echoes in Plato's four man agreement of our present working practises, how do we deviate away from Plato? What is justice?

Plato's men have achieved in a sense certain economies of scale - Efficiency and productivity are assured through the principle of one man one job. Their's is also, of course, a social contract. We can draw these parallels along with others but they do us no good; They don't in fact translate to us at all. For example, one aspect of the social contract that we can highlight is the amount of imminent value there is in the performance of each job, each providing not just for himself but for the others. There is little of this feeling in our present day working situations, where it is likely that even thinking about what other departments in your company are doing takes some serious effort (unless it's thinking about how useless they are), let alone thinking about how your company functions in the world and whether it is beneficial. Considering how your work affects the world would require at least for you to see through the swathes of bullshit company ideology relentlessly informing you how aspirational and utterly creamily wonderful the company is. Alienation is a serious problem with capitalism, and I think the word fits when we describe our compartmentalised working practises - the holes around the input and the output are tightened, without a wisp of clean air, and we process and process.

Shouldn't we ask why? Isn't it the only healthy thing to do? In the fully constructed Republic, those who continually ask why will be fast-tracked to becoming Philosopher-Kings. It is this highest class of citizens that know the value of everything, who see when everything is in its place - when the state is just and when it is unjust. There is an incredible sense of loss with regard to the quality of our working lives; how we contribute to the lives of others and to society, to our children and to future generations. We have no sense of our value because we are harming rather than helping, and there is no way of getting away from this. Those who see in Plato's deductions about self-sufficiency the basis of a society like ours should look very closely indeed into how our society works and whether how we behave can be grounded in the principles that Plato identifies. Are we helping our fellow man and affirming what is just, what is right? In specialising our lives are we each providing a crucial and worthwhile output?

Plato knew that some virtues are better than others, but also that they cannot exist in isolation from each other. When we achieve an excellence in our ability to harm, is this really an excellence? Can we truly praise a murderer for murdering more people than another has? It is the seat of reason in the individual to keep everything in order; that the flow of virtue succeeds in its course in line with what is just. In the state it is the Philosopher-Kings that ensure justice. We today have, however, the media, assessing the state, and identity politics regulating the individual. Understanding just enough to control and manipulate does not help us identify if everything is in its proper place - what is right for us becomes simply what is intended, fiats of the powerful who maintain their power, and the sick who make sick. We dig ourselves down into the earth, into our industries, companies, departments, and/or our specialised fields, and in the darkness we cannot see what we are laying down behind us, nor measure how deep we have burrowed. So we go on digging, knowing that we are needed near the surface, where there is more light, where starving children, wars, and climate change await our return. Have we found anything to give them but a mud more slightly dense?

But this is not enough. The air higher up makes us dizzy. What we need is to do much less, to climb to the surface and see the ground potted with holes. We need to dip inside them and see what there is in each one. We need to stop working and start thinking, start considering what we are working for, and what we are going to achieve. But! From the first instance it is death that rears up in front of us, asking us how we can stop when we have to feed ourselves and continue to exist. It is not Churchill, it is not Queen Victoria, it is not any number of Popes or even a group of positivists that stand up to us. When we stop, lay down tools, and consider why we should pick them up again, it is not ideology, not some grand scheme or vision that we care about; it is not even the thought of being able to help others that demands our obedience. This is what is telling. The ultimate stands with finger pointing, giving an answer to the most feeble question, the question that is the last refuge of our self-humiliation, seeking to justify the unjustifiable through an entirely arbitrary cruelty. We cannot possibly think, it seems, that the grind does any good. There is nothing helpful to be gained from our graft, or there with our assent it would stand - quite as if that is all it ever did - by the water cooler where we drowned our mobile phones. Such an apparition is absent. And so it is that death mocks us. Isn't that quite out of character? Surely that, if anything, should inform us of the oblique and singular way in which we reproach ourselves, feining a serious show with an absurd puppet.

How does boredom enter our lives as a real force? Simply count the ways in which our lives differ from what is right. We can live with what is unavoidable but we can taste what is wrong. We teach ourselves that getting lost in our perversion of specialism is the only way we can be, and it gets stuck in our throats. Our way of life is not entailed by the principles of The Republic; our rationalisations are just dirty words, yet we bully ourselves with them all the same. The nihilistic potion of work we jam down our gullets with whatever soulless artifacts may come to hand, just to get it down - somehow - and we can taste it, this fascist juice. If Plato's Republic is seen by us as a totalitarian, narrow minded, artless and morally violent limbo, it is only because when we look for ourselves in it this is what is reflected back at us. For now this is justice enough.

"I don't really. I just play it."

2006-03-25T15:19:00.000Z

"I play a game called city of heroes. Untill recently I haven't been a 'gamer'. I bought coh at the end of December. My playing has gotten out of control. My behavior is unlike me. My friends have stopped calling. I haven't seen them in months. I live alone so my new behavior has progressed without anyone protesting. I don't have a roommate or wife to drag me away. I sleep, work, and play. There isn't time for anything else. I feel horrible. I am at work now and I feel like I just want to crawl into a cave. When I play I feel OK. When I don't play I am a mess. I feel silly talking about this. I have always been a social person untill recently. I want to find a way to modderate my playing. I keep saying that I will but then I put it off. Tomorrow I will modderate, today I am going to play. I just want one more level. etc. I don't know what to do."
-- a post on EQ Daily Grind

I could not begin to assess all the many films, TV shows, or books that involve people withdrawing from a real to a virtual existence. There is evidently a cultural feeling that has come through these works that some people would find a reason to escape reality into falseness.
Yet, now it is happening in a way that is hard to ignore. People are dropping out of life to play games. Only a few days ago I talked to an old IRC friend, and he said:

[Me] I am starting to write an essay about WoW [World of Warcraft, an online game about orcs].
[Me] I am concentrating on players reporting that they actually feel unpleasant playing it, i.e. that they are addicted to it, and that it is stopping them from doing other things.
[Demiurge] oh? how it destroys peoples social lives? certainly did mine
[Demiurge] Yeah I get that
[Me] The psychological implications of withdrawal from 'real' life are interesting to consider.
[Me] What happens when you play WoW?
[Demiurge] I dunno, I just sorta do it. Dont really enjoy it much anymore, play more out of a sense of responsibility since I'm the leader of my guild
[...]
[Me] How much do you think about RPGs, then?
[Demiurge] well there's oblivion I'm getting tomorrow
[Demiurge] I intend to roleplay a thief/assassin in that game
[Me] Does gaming take over the rest of your life, do you think?
[Demiurge] at the moment? Yes, I havent left the house for 2 months
[Me] Wow. How does that make you feel?
[Demiurge] bad obviously, I want to get a job but I cant summon the willpower to find one
[Me] Do you feel you have removed yourself from 'real life' to play WoW?
[Demiurge] yep
[Me] What reasons can you think of for having done this?
[Demiurge] well I dont dwell on that, I suppose I just "have"
[...]
[Me] Is WoW too good, i.e. much better than a real life ever could be, or does life suck for you?
[Me] In general, very wide terms.
[Demiurge] no not as such, but you're getting very philosophic now, I dont think in those patterns about it
[Me] How do you think about it, then?
[Demiurge] I dont really
[Demiurge] I just play it

At this point he logged off and we didn't talk again, I think my questions were annoying him. Which is understandable.
Obviously, this encounter shocked me to the core. I don't know this 20 year old man, I only used to talk to him online. At one point in my life I would have happily given up my existence too, such is the pain of unbearable unhappiness. But, thankfully, I found out how to think differently about life. Rather than despair, now I assert that I deserve a place in the world, that I will work my way to some sort of answer, that I will attempt to make a difference. I no longer worry, "well, I'll die, making the whole thing futile". If my existence makes some change, somewhere, death does not get rid of that change. Life is a struggle, yes, and not at all constantly pleasant, but you do your best. That is the point.
If you do not believe that making a change is possible, or worthwhile, or too much effort, or that it is beyond your capabilities, then you do feel awful. You feel cheated by existence, condemned to some fleshy prison full of self-recrimination. The internalised voice of authority - the super-ego - haunts you, and you want to rebel. I can certainly understand this horrible mix of loathing and failure, causing more loathing, which causes more failure. It is vicious indeed.

So, people want to escape being alive. And suicide is an option, but it takes either terrible circumstances, terrible problems, or a terrible determination to do it. It is too final, it cuts off any option of improvement, of being wrong. I certainly couldn't do it myself, and, yes, I did think about it an awful lot.
A less painful way of killing yourself is to pour your life into a computer game and not come back out - if you are ever dragged out, your life is not there anymore! It is a little suicide, a suicide of the personality, of the social existence, killing yourself from the lives and memories of the people you used to know.

There is an excellent site about EverQuest, which hosts various confessions and statements of problematic online gaming, including the one above. I have emailed the owner of this site, and I wish to post my thoughts here also. In the future I plan to write an article about these problems, commenting on various websites that deal with it, on accounts provided by sufferers and those who know them, and attempting to understand the psychology and philosophy behind this withdrawal from the world. Unless it is too big a project to actually do, in which case, this will be it! The issue of people withdrawing from life to play these games interests me because it touches on so many basic questions about existence. What is the real world, and what do we want from it? What should we do when it doesn't meet our wants and needs? What is being alive, and what are we supposed to do about it? Under which circumstances can our choices be criticised - when we let go of our responsibilities, or hurt others, or ourselves? Or does personal free allow us to destroy ourselves for any reason, in any way, without having to worry about others? There are basic questions of existence, of ethics, or who we are and how best to act that we must confront, and this issue is one of the millions of ways of doing this.

My email to the proprietor of EQ Daily Grind

>Overall, I think that there are many different reasons why the online world
>can become more attractive than the real world... and that every obsessive
>gamer has his / her individualized set of reasons - part of the reason why
>this phenomenon is hard to analyse, and why the obsessiveness / addiction is
>hard to address with just one "generic" solution.

At the moment I reckon that there may well be general reasons why people play problematically.
I call it 'problematic' because I do not want to use the word obsession, it comes with too much theoretical baggage. And I do not call it addiction as I do not think that using an analogy or metaphor of drugs helps anyone understand the problem. It may be similar to obsessions, compulsion, drug or alcohol addiction, or gambling addiction / compulsion, and in fact I see many similarities, but in ways that would not be seen if it were labelled as an obsession or addiction.

So, problematic gaming. Having grown up (being 23) in a computerised world, I am entirely used to computers, and am in fact quite sick of them. They're not as good as they are supposed to be, not as world changing - but then again I did not live in a pre-computer world! I have always played games, and always been aware that they can overshadow other parts of life, albeit for me only ever temporarily. They can cause happiness, anger, frustration etc. in a child, and I remember these feelings. I have always known people, my parents, my friends, etc. who were thinking, talking, primarily involved in the computer game they wanted to be playing. But, in the past, I have never seen exactly the same problematic quality. Games have taken presidence, both in my life and in others that I have seen, but they have never replaced life. Always people would get bored and do something else, and feel slightly silly. For example, when I was in college Final Fantasy VII was an extremely popular game, along with collectible cards and so on. People would spend an inordinate amount of time with these, but they never replaced life, there were just a main focus. A focus that could be questioned and challenged (I hated both and would frequently point out how dull they were).
Nowadays, online games are, as it is said, more 'immersive'. Due to the choices involved, the actual element of working ('grinding'), the social network, relationships, even economies, they can seriously begin to replace life.
We have always played games, and we have always had people too interested in games. Chessmasters like chess too much, and it can obviously damage them. People can get too wrapped up in their weekly low-stakes poker. And so on and so on. What we have now, though, is people not just making gaming the focus of their life but their entire life. They will actually not want to move from being in the game.

I understand that this kind of problematic gaming is actually a giving up of one life and trying to take another, although it is impossible as it is not real. People actually want to let their past life die so they cannot go back. There is something self-destructive about it.
This is not entirely psychological, there is no switch to make people want to commit this kind of personality suicide. There are general reasons, different in different cultures I would say, that contribute to a need to entirely surrender a real life and form a fake one.

Compared to real life, MMORPGs allow:
Much more personal control to talk to or ignore people, to change who 'you' are by creating new characters, to act heroically or barbarically, to fight, kill, slaughter and insult
To have a lot less responsibility or tricky choice or 'unpleasant freedoms'

I believe that playing these games gives you a certain self control over a vastly more limited set of options. The world is simple, rules constrain to a much greater extent in terms of interacting with environment, others, and your professiong and skills. There is a lot less to think about but, in a way, more you can just do.
In real life you cannot wander around clicking on stuff and shouting 'LOL'. Gratification is not so instant, boredom sets in, you must think and be active and fit in to the world. In an MMORPG, the world is so simple that you just exist almost thoughtlessly. Having attempted to talk to people as they play, I would not be surprised to find that, neurologically, the demands on their brain are much smaller. But I am not so interested in the science - philosophically, you have freedom to do, and much less to worry about in order to do it. Less thought, more action. It is absorbing simply because its repetitive nature is easy.

People are withdrawing from a world they do not understand and control and slipping into something easy, constant, warm, and comforting, the mental slippers of an online game. We have always done this, and always will, it is the extent which is a problem. There is so much to distract you in these games - new areas, new levels, new people and relationships - that they seem to be a viable replacement for real life.

The problem is life itself - people are not equipped to deal with it, and the world is too hostile to them. This withdrawal from the world reminds me of the famous 'rat park' studies. Drug-addict rats will remain drug-addicts and die in cages. Put them in a lovely environment, a ra park, and they will overwhelmingly choose water over sweetened morphine. Their natural drives and instincts, uncaged, supply all the happiness they need, and they do not want drugs!
Addiction is complex: it is biological, psychological, and social/environmental. It is your body reacting to an agent that changes your psychological state that necessitates changing depending on where you are in the real and also human world. I would imagine that happy, fulfilled people play MMORPGs in an entirely different way, enjoying them, forming friendships, playing it as a game, but existing fully in the real world as well, stopping their virtual fun when necessary. The phenomenon of absolute withdrawal - 'catassing', 'hikikomori' - must be, I believe, to do with some perceived lack.

So, what I am saying is that these people, whether consciously or without knowing, do not want to live here and now because they do not like it. Many are intelligent, many could evidently 'do something with their lives', but they are tired and sick and do not see the point. I have talked to many problematic gamers online, and they report that they do not want to go to school, see family, be bothered. They freely admit they play to 'fill in the time'. I have learned to be a happy and fulfilled person for much of the time, and my desire is to use time properly to do something important in the world. These people have no such desire, often if one puts it to them it seems implausible that life can be so pleasant.

Psychologically and socially we should deal with this problem - people want to drop out. They exist in an environment which, not surprisingly, makes them want to escape. And there are worlds out there, acessible through mice and keyboards, that allow for interaction on your terms, but in a simple world. You know who you are and where you are going. There is no uncertainty.
They capitulate in the face of troublesome freedom, which entails responsibilities, work, and some sort of social or personal striving for success. Whereas virtual responsibilities are easier to meet, virtual freedom is a lot less constrained, virtual work takes less time, and virtual stress can be measured for you in experience.
I see why they do this; but not for a moment do I envy them. In the most important way, they no longer exist.

The danger of being satisfied

2006-03-18T20:03:00.000Z

Rob Brezsny's star is in the ascendant - books being published, interviews on radio shows, CDs of his band, and his own website with a multicolour hand print.
He also writes horoscopes, which may give you pause for thought.

Rob's answer to human problems is 'pronoia', catchily the opposite of paranoia. Apparently, we should be seeing life as a conspiracy to make us feel good. If I may quote:

"Act as if the universe is a prodigious miracle
created for your amusement and illumination. Assume that
secret helpers are working behind the scenes to assist you
in turning into the gorgeous masterpiece you were born to
be. Join the conspiracy to shower all of creation with blessings."

Isn't that just lovely?! Let me also open the door for... the 15 Minute Miracle:

"The 15-Minute Miracleä is a fun-to-do, fill-in-blanks journaling process that increases your sense of well-being the moment you engage in it. As your sense of well-being rises, your vibrational frequency increases, which causes you to attract even MORE wonderful things that cause you to feel grateful, encouraged, and in the flow of Life. As you continue to do this process, you are likely to become an Irresistible Magnet for Love, Money, Miracles, and More ...sometimes at the speed of thought!"

A template for this miracle is here. It includes writing down what you appreciate, your intentions, asking for assistance, and intoning that you are an "irresistible Magnet for Miracles". Lovely! Lovely! Lovely!

Yes, it is admirable to be optimistic and happy. Optimism reduces stress and increases life expectancy, according to some studies. And, certainly, your effect on others is better when you are happy, and I fully endorse it - but this philosophy of self-miracles and pronoia is not happiness.
There is much psychology behind these ideas, and I will try to outline a little bit of it. First, there is a certain confirmation bias that occurs when you look for something. When you find confirming information, it has more weight in your memory, blotting out non-confirming information. So, expecting happiness will increase your recognition of happiness. This will, of course, make you happier, which I agree is all well and good.
Secondly, there is a pervading value of the psychology of individualism. You look for your own miracles, and when you get them, you win! Those sad people who are always miserable should shut up and think happy!
This leads us onto the gravest psychology error of these philosophies - ignorance. Looking for your own and finding your own happiness in the little things effectively reduces your place in the world to meaningless little details. Look around. Not all people have their own website, CDs, and books to hawk. Not everyone has many little things to be thankful of.

What would Rob make of the starving, the dispossessed, the tyrannised, the oppressed? Would he look at them and think, "I'll inform them that they should be happy, at least they have feet!"? Would he look past, thinking, "Ha! I can breathe oxygen, how lucky!"? Or would he look at them and think, "I'm glad I'm not poor!"?

Being a pronoiac helps yourself, but not others. It leaves you ignorant of their pain, and their inability to glory in being white, middle-class, American, and well off. All in all, it is another facet of humankind’s vast ability to glory in their own riches while others bear the brunt of the resultant poverty, without consideration of the accident of birth that made this situation occur.

I believe, Rob, that you would find more happiness in devoting your life to the big things that affect us all, not the little things that affect you. Otherwise your existence is nothing more than a small exercise in smugness.

Transhumanism and its place in endist thought

2006-03-12T17:20:00.000Z

Introduction

It is galling that I have planned to write about transhumanism since the turn of this year, only for the Guardian newspaper to write about it a number of times. However, there is still a point to continuing, as I wish to discuss as many facets of transhumanism as possible and sort out exactly why I find it displeasing.
The reason I wish to write about this is a piece in the Metro, a free newspaper circulated on British public transport, on January the 11th. "Rise of the machine" was the headline, and the byline proclaimed that 'artificial intelligence is stepping out of the laboratory and into your living room'. The first bit was principally about Robosapien, a hot item in the news around Christmas.

"So where is it all heading? Some scientists are looking forward to 'the singularity': the moment when we create an artificial mind more powerful than our own. This could the create a smarter AI still, starting a snowball effect resulting in massive technological advances over a short period of time."

Apparently, Peter Thiel, former CEO of PayPal, is involved in giving large sums of money to work on singularity stuff. It's nice that he has a hobby, isn't it? The article then goes into 'what if the robots go insane?!!' territory, mentioning the film 'Terminator', ending with the amusing "So treat today's robots well - when the singularity comes, they'll remember who changed their oil".
Evidently someone is taking transhumanism seriously. It may be beneficial to find out what it is, and examine what we can and should think of it. The reason I wish to write on this issue is that I distrust technology and science, considering them as providing answers primarily to technological and scientific issues. When it comes to human, political, social, and philosophical problems, technology and science are not the answer. They can support an answer, be a mechanism to aid the answer that has been found, but they are not the answer in themselves. At this early stage, I am concerned as to whether the transhumanists might not be looking in the wrong place for a saviour. This article is an exploration into transhumanism and its problems, and of my own distrust of its language and basis.

For this article, I am using the wonderful and tiny book 'Derrida and the End of History' by Stuart Sim, in the Postmodern Encounters series. It is very good, and makes one look at postmodernism in a positive light, which is by all accounts a tough task when there is a bloody civil war going on over the issue between intellectuals. I am also using internet pages which will, for the most part, be linked to in a hypertextual manner.

Attempting to explain transhumanism

If someone were to accost you on the street and say that "the answer to all the world's problems is provided by the internet", you would walk away, tutting something about political correctness having gone mad. Currently, if one is to use google to search for "solution to the world's problems", you get an article on how Islam is the answer. You should observe that such solutions have been around before the internet, the internet only provides a new way for presenting this information and allowing it to reach a mass audience. In this respect, it is like a cannon that fires religious leaflets into the letterbox of anyone who publicly wonders "why am I alive?".
However, there are people who pin the hopes of the future on computers. These people can be considered transhumanists. But other people are more interested in medical technology, or augmentation of the human with computers. These can also be considered as transhumanists. What we are encountering is a spectrum of belief, with the unifying theme being of faith in technology as improving the human condition. At one end, it is evidently reasonable - technology can aid us in many ways. At the other end, it is less reasonable, and more speculative, and perhaps somewhat worrying.
It is becoming evident that there is a bewildering array of ideas floating around under the banner of transhumanism, and I do not feel that I can read, let alone explain, enough about these viewpoints. Therefore you must try to apprehend and accept the limitations to my account.
Some of the jargon we are going to come across includes words such as transhumanism (which can be abbreviated as >H or H+), extropian, singularity, and endism. We are going to go through each of these things, but I must stress that they are linked. Transhumanism, which we will see has some good aspects, entails extropianism and the idea of the singularity, which I consider less beneficial.

Increasing the range of human life

Transhumanism is not unappealing. In Saturday's Guardian, James Harkin writes briefly but lucidly about the science of life extension:

"Next week a far-flung group of scientists, philosophers and future-gazers will descend on Oxford University for a conference about it, titled Tomorrow's People: The Challenges of Technologies for Life Extension and Enhancement. At around the same time, Ray Kurzweil, a longtime prophet of radical life extension, will launch in Britain his book, The Singularity is Near. Humans, he argues, are shortly approaching lift-off to immortality."

All this activity is placed under the banner of 'transhumanism', which as James explains, is "the belief that if we humans can just hang on for the next 30 or 40 years, the science will have reached such a level of sophistication that we will be able to live for the next 1,000". I take issue with this, as not all transhumanism is concerned with the extension of human life. In general it is to do with the augmentation of human life with science, or technology, or computers, or all three. Most transhumanism is to do with technology increasing our freedom, some is more to do with technology being able to manage our freedom more effectively, imagining computers creating human society. But all transhumanism considers that we can be more than human with the help of technology.
James considers that "transhumanists share a welcome zeal for overcoming our limitations. For them, there is little that is natural about when we get old or die, and the subtle alteration of our incubator, our scientific and technological surroundings can keep us alive longer than ever before". He, of course, balances this by casting doubt on such claims, as it is not exactly mainstream science yet. But where he hits the nail on the head is here:

"The idea of radical life extension is also a little antisocial. A house, to borrow De Grey's metaphor, is a place to live in as well as an investment. As with the house-buying and renovation craze, transhumanism risks turning all our energies inwards, rather than out into society, where they might be of more immediate use. Sometimes, the urge to escape the ageing process seems like an attempt to escape everyone else."

What is important - the individual human, or humanity in general? If we concentrate too much on the former, there is no equality, which I believe entails no social stability and no true progress. At the same time, I am not appealing to a 'transcommunism' or 'transcollectivism' of technologically-strengthened socialist utopia. Technology and science are too important to subjugate to political ideologies without thinking strongly about it first - we must be examining the values inherent in these movements. Will life-extending transhumanism be for the rich, causing a massive divide between eternal Westerners and the ever-changing mortals who service them anonymously? Who should and who will benefit? Are humans even happy enough to be capable of living for longer?

These issues are explored by Madeleine Bunting in another Guardian article. She explains that transhumanists believe that "humanity is on the point of being liberated from its biology. In their advocacy of our "technological rights", they believe that human beings are on the brink of a huge leap in development... We will be, as their slogan goes, "better than well". Evidently, there are implications to this. Madeleine explains them better than I will:

"This is the prospect that horrifies the so-called "bio-conservatives" such as Francis Fukuyama, who argues that transhumanism is the most dangerous ideology of our time. There are plenty who share his concerns, pointing out that the implications for human rights, indeed for our understanding of what it is to be human, are huge. What place will equality have in this brave new world? What place will privacy have when brain imaging can read our thoughts and transcranial magnetic stimulation can manipulate our thoughts? What powers over our brains will the state demand in the war against terror? [...]
"We're not talking about radical new steps, only an acceleration of existing trends. For example, if you can have Viagra for an enhanced sexual life, why not a Viagra for the mind? Is there a meaningful difference? If we show such enthusiasm for "improving" our noses and breasts with cosmetic surgery, why not also improve our brains? As computers continue to increase in power and shrink in size, why shouldn't we come to use them as prostheses, a kind of artificial limb for the brain? If we have successfully lengthened life expectancy with good sanitation and diet, why can't we lengthen it with new drugs? Ritalin is already being traded in the classroom by US students to help improve their concentration."

This is the world of human enhancement, and it evidently brings up its own problems. The other side of transhumanism is quite different.

Increasing the power of 'artificial life'

Some scientists believe that the seemingly inexorable progress being made in the field of computing will lead us to a future where computers, having developed artificial intelligence and artificial consciousness, could take over. Andrew Smith's article is a discovery of this belief from that futuristic-sounding year 2000.
In this article, Justin Rattner, "head of Intel's Microprocessor Research Laboratories", proclaims continued support for Moore's Law ("the projection which has computer processing speeds doubling every 18 months and which he expects to hold good for the next 10 years at least") and finds it possible for computers to behave intelligently. I am wondering whether computers will ever behave intelligently or only appear to do so, or if there is a difference between the two things. How intelligent is 'intelligent'? Will a computer ever be able to play chess better than us, and tie shoelaces, and raise a child, and go shopping for canned items? Will a computer ever be able to act in a way in which it wasn't programmed? If a computer can be programmed to shop for groceries, all well and good, but I am not sure to what extent that might be defined as intelligence.
More worryingly, John Leslie, a philosophy professor, explains that "'two possible scenarios present themselves here... The first is that the machines take over against our wishes. That seems to me less likely than that they take over with our tacit or explicit blessing. My own view is that, if it were all true, and they were conscious, then fine - but if, as is likely, they weren't conscious in the full sense, then that would be a disaster.'"
The questions raised by this area of transhumanism are ones of the limitations of computers, and the limitations of what powers computerised 'life' should have. I am not so convinced that computers are capable of learning or showing human-like capacities. Computers are capable of processing, and I do not believe that all human capabilities can be broken down and explained merely as processing. There is something infinitely adaptable about humanity that I am not sure a computer intelligence could ever display. If such an intelligence has not been programmed to deal with a situation, it cannot deal with it.
To put it another way: a computer, and presumably therefore a computerised intelligence, can only do what it is told. Newness and conflicts will confound it. Can a computer ever decide to do otherwise than what it has been told? I admit that one person who believes they are in control can attempt to make a computerised intelligence perform an action that another, with more administrative power or expertise has disallowed. But in the end, someone will be in control, the consciousness will be entirely boundaried by the input of another. Perhaps what I admire about humanity is that it is so hard to control. I would be surprised whether an artificial consciousness could represent this, without the lack of control being contrived. You could program a robot to act erratically, sometimes with and sometimes against orders, or to have a rule-set that it would not transgress, and therefore be seemingly willful. Yet, is seeming willful the same as being willful?

So, we have examined two of the main facets of transhumanism - a concern with technologising human life, and a concern with humanising technological life. Life itself is to be reimagined, reengineered, and moved beyond, as suggested by the name of the movement. Now, to understand this movement better, we shall look into its stated origins, what transhumanists say of it, and find something more to question.

What transhumanists say

The transhumanist FAQ introduces itself well: "Transhumanism is a way of thinking about the future that is based on the premise that the human species in its current form does not represent the end of our development but rather a comparatively early phase." There is still more for us to do, we have not yet 'become'. We are going to move beyond ourselves. This is quite a complex thing to talk about, so I will keep referring to transhumanist literature until a tentative conclusion might be possible.
The transhumanist declaration is a good place to questioning this idea. Item number 4:

"(4) Transhumanists advocate the moral right for those who so wish to use technology to extend their mental and physical (including reproductive) capacities and to improve their control over their own lives. We seek personal growth beyond our current biological limitations."

This seems fair enough, although I will question it later. Number 7 is:

"(7) Transhumanism advocates the well- being of all sentience (whether in artificial intellects, humans, posthumans, or non- human animals) and encompasses many principles of modern humanism. Transhumanism does not support any particular party, politician or political platform."

Evidently, being free of politics would be a good thing - attempting to be value-neutral, objective, and level-headed about the coming wave of technological possibility. But I will also question whether this is possible later.

'Posthumanity' could be realised in a number of ways, according to the transhumanist FAQ. Life extension and super-intelligent computers, as already mentioned. Nanotechnology may give us ultimate control over matter. There is human superintelligence, virtual reality, and cryonics to look forward to. And wouldn't it be excellent to upload our consciousness into a computer, which would run our processes so fast that subjective time would stretch and stretch, making us ever more capable?
All of this future-stuff has given rise to the idea of the singularity, a coin probably termed by mathematician and novelist Vernor Virge in the article What is the singularity?: "Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended." This, I believe, is the driving force behind all transhumanism. There will be a time when progress is so fast that escaping it will be impossible, it will draw us in like a singularity, a black hole, so inexorably and so quickly that in an instant everything we thought we knew will be gone, and humanity will be changed forever. We cannot easily manage this change, it will simply happen, and we won't know what we will be capable of at this time until it happens. One explanation of how this will work comes from the Singularity Institute, who explain that as soon as a super-smart AI is created, it will continue to create even better AIs, and progress will be unstoppable, and humanity will be redefined. The 'technorapture' will have come, and we will be in a heaven of advanced computer systems.
This belief is an interesting one to analyse, and I will certainly attempt to do so later.

What extropians say

Transhumanist thought is inextricably bound up with the less restrained, more exuberant extropianism, which is perhaps more able to wear its heart on its sleeve.
I would direct you to the website, but it is practically readable in its meaninglessness:

"Extropy — The extent of a living or organizational system’s intelligence, functional order, vitality, and capacity and drive for improvement... For the sake of brevity, I will often write something like “extropy seeks…” or “extropy questions…” You can take this to mean “in so far as we act in accordance with these principles, we seek/question/study…” “Extropy” is not meant as a real entity or force, but only as a metaphor representing all that contributes to our flourishing."

Reading about extropians, it is hard to discover exactly how they differentiate themselves from what might be called 'mainstream transhumanists. In the end, Toby Howard's article serves as a nice summary of the extropians - transhumanists who accept the free-market by, for example, dressing up as a dominatrix called 'the State' leading around a man on a leash called 'the taxpayer'. They are the transhumanists that probably read Ayn Rand and would call themselves libertarians.
Max More, head of the movement, descri bes himself as "Director of Content Solutions at ManyWorlds, Inc., the strategy and intellectual capital design firm. Dr. More is an internationally acclaimed strategic futurist, regularly speaking at conferences in the United States and throughout Europe". He is not concerned with oil peaking, saying that we are 'running into oil' rather than out of it. Yes, we are getting better at extracting oil - drilling deeper for cheaper, in essence - but in what way can that not mean that we are not running out of reserves? Surely it is a resource that is limited? How deep are we prepared to drill? I question whether this is 'transhuman' thinking at all.
Most seriously, he states that the end of history is here, that "markets have won. Now let the winner get on with the job".
Oh dear!

Transhumanism and the end of history

The end of history is an idea that is still being disputed. Stuart Sim's book, "Derrida and the End of History" is a nice introduction to one area of the debate. All it means to say that 'this is the end of history' is to state 'well, this is it, we've won'. When history has ended, the human struggle is over, and all that's left to do is wipe up the mess and be successful.
It is evidently a very self-congratulatory idea. Fukuyama has written famously about it, simply asserting that the Western ideology of free-market capitalism had won. It is becoming more evident that this statement is not exactly being upheld by the facts. It is certainly the dominant system, but will it last forever? I find it limiting, perhaps even purposefully self-delusory, to be so sure that it will.
On p63, Sim concludes simply that "The 'end of history' is not the good news that Fukuyama believes it to be; not if we have any desire at all to contest the balance of economic and political power that currently prevails in our world".
There is much of interest in considering that now the transhumanists and extropians are proclaiming the end of history, and Fukuyama is a 'bio-conservative' arguing that they are dangerous. What does it mean to say 'this is now the end of history', or, 'the end of history is coming'? Is it really a statement free of values, ideology, and politics: or is it a statement precisely of values, ideology, and politics?

Why I do not trust transhumanism

Here are three general points I will be making:

The technology may not be as transforming as claimed

A posthuman future may be terrible

Transhumanism hides a set of questionable values, and may not solve various problems

Can we so easily assume that the technology promised will come? Transhumanism has a lot of faith, almost a religious faith, in technology. The core values of transhumanism are technological progress being almost unlimited, and the absolute compatibility of this technology to a better human future, if it is understood and used correctly.
The idea of the 'singularity', a technorapture, is particularly religious. At some point, a time will come where there will be choice. We are waiting for a time where the believers will be proved right.
Perhaps technology will improve so greatly that the world will transform, an ugliness will dissolve. More likely to me, however, is that the world will continue to stay the same in many ways, and technology will only be transforming in a smaller way. My cynicism and pessimism, I believe, are supported by study of human progress. The internet, to take one example, is an improve form of communication, and part of a human development that spans back at least to the first vocal utterances. We talked, we wrote, we developed postal systems, the telegraph, and then could transfer information via radio, phone, television, and fax. Now we can transfer information by the internet. Is the internet much more than a new and convenient way of sharing information based on computers? Will future technology actually make unimaginable alterations to the world, or just keep adding on new and faster ways of doing things?
When, seriously, was the last time the world changes so much something entirely new occurred?

We should not substitute a utopia into an unknown future just for the sake of optimism. Yes, it is certainly possible that my cynicism about technology producing something out-of-this-world is entirely misplaced. We must consider, however, technology being destructive. Sim reports that Lyotard imagined an unpleasant transhuman future:

"Lyotard's take on the end of history is worth commenting on, given that it is a vision, and a singularly bleak one at that, of both the end of history and the end of the world. The Inhuman pictures a world where the forces of technoscience (that is, advanced capitalism) are concerned above all to prolong life past the end of our universe. It will not, however, be life as we currently know it; rather, what is being sought is the ability to make thought possible without the presence of a body... Lyotard proceeds to sketch out a nightmare vision in which computers take over from the human, given that they are less vulnerable and more efficient than human beings - and also, even more crucially from the point of view of techno-scientists, more susceptible to control..." (p25-26)

Lyotard does not want to be a computer, asking "Is a computer in any way here and now? Can anything happen with it? Can anything happen to it?"
For my part, there are a number of nightmare scenarios to consider. What if super-powered humans just succeed in wiping each other out, through war or terrible inequality, posthuman against slavehuman? What if the rich buy longer and longer lives, and concentrate more and more money for themselves, until we have an entirely stagnant economy? What if uploading our minds entails the destruction of something human?
Finally, a superintelligent computer, being superintelligent, might spend a nanosecond going through the internet - all the dull weblogs, all the pictures of cats, all the excited transhumanist expectation - a further nanosecond processing the images of the scientists gazing surprised through the cameras, and turn itself off. What will we do if we find out that superintelligence can't save us, because there really are no final answers to the question of humanity?
To bring up a previous argument - could an uploaded human consciousness experience free will while in a computer? Are not a computer's processes determined, and obviously shown to be so? One might be able to programme a computer 'consciousness' to act in a way according to moods, capriciously, and sometimes unpleasantly. But if a consciousness has a will that is controlled and determined by a computer programme, is that the same as human will? I fear that I would rather let my brain die than become subject to a programme and its programmers.

Transhumanism is based in humanism. Humanism is based on a questionable set of values. Transhumanism is also based on a questionable set of values, and it must be questioned.
Mainstream transhumanism believes in the individual, it believes in technology, it believes in Western government. It is an uneasy mix of liberals and libertarians who have their own ends. It is rife with problems of human difference and inequality. While on one hand, transhumanism has an admirable set of values, or at least it states admirable values. there is something more to it that it does not appear to admit, perhaps does not realise.
It is questionable whether technology can answer human questions. Humanity itself has created all sorts of problems, and technology alone cannot alleviate them. We need to do something, to look our ourselves and each other, to interrogate history - to find out how we got here - and our possible futures, and to work out exactly what is right. A computer cannot do this for us, a computer has no ability to process any information unless it is told how to process it. A computer has no ability to adapt its processing unless it is programmed to adapt.
Transhumanism asks us to concentrate on improving humanity by waiting for technology to do it for us. I do not believe that it is a certainty that it can. What we must be doing is dealing with the problems and questions of human existence now, without hoping for a saviour or a technorapture. Problems to do with human existence are far more serious than transhumanists seem to realise - will computers be telling us how to live? Computers and technology do not force us to change how we live; they merely offer a way to do so. It is down to humans to act.
What I am trying to say is that human history has much more power than the transhumanists admit. There is much more to us, collectively, than a bunch of individuals waiting to live forever. History cannot be hidden or destroyed by claiming it is about to end, that we are going to transgress it. We must still keep grappling with issues of human existence, issues of even more importance than technological progress.
There are innumerable such issues: How should we be living? What does it mean to be alive? How should an individual treat another individual? To what extent does the individual exist? Should we have equality, and what should it be? What is freedom, and who should have it? What are the limits a human can impose on another human? The transhumanist declaration expounds the moral right for individuals to take control over their own lives - but how will this affect the lives of others?
Waiting for technology to provide us with superintelligence is not important enough for us to take our eyes off of these issues now. Imagining that these questions will be adequately answered by technology may lead us into leaving them fatally unanswered. Technology is only one part of progress, and although the transhumanist society admit this is the case, I still think that it is overemphasising only one route to possible human betterment.
Proclaiming the end of history is one way of saying that "these values have won", and in itself only inspires more argument and more history. It seems to be hard to actually end history without wiping out the human race. To say that history will soon end, and that technology will kill it for us, is also a statement that hides an argument within it. It is an argument to concentrate on technology, while ignoring other things. And my feeling is that these other things, these human questions, are far more important than technology. They will not be conclusively answered by technology, and nor will they be answered by being ignored. We must find other ways of dealing with them, without relying on an uncertain future full of unimaginable possibilities to come and save us.
Thankfully, human history is affecting some transhumanists. Russell Blackford mentions one of the many problems that must be considered: "transhumanists should go beyond arguing that enhancement technologies should be widely available. I now think that we should support political reforms to society itself, to make it more an association of equals. I am not planning to give away my own modest wealth, and I am only prepared to give two cheers for egalitarian political theory, but we have to find ways to narrow the gap between the haves and the have-nots."
A computer cannot answer this question. A posthuman is not around to answer this question. It is a human question and we must answer it, now, or suffer the consequences. Now matter how far technology advances, we must still advance also. I refuse to have faith in a vastly improved future when there is so much to change right now. If we don't tackle it now, who will be making the future for us?
Transhumanists seem to believe that the future will come because the future itself will create it. Computers, scientists, and technology will advance so much that the future is inevitable. The future is not created in the future, however. It is created now. And we must do something, now.

To paraphrase Sim's conclusion of Derrida's argument against Fukuyama, transhumanism's declaration that society is going to be changed by technology is not the good news that it is believed to be; not if we have any desire at all to contest the balance of economic and political power that is expected to prevail in this future world. What will the ethics of the future be, and do we want our immortal children to live there?
A transhumanist will, of course, understand these objections and want to do something about them. I think they have the order of how to do it wrong, though. You do not imagine a future, wait for it to come, and while it's coming discuss what it should be. You look at now, explain what you would like it to become, and act on it so that the future that you want become closer to reality. We are not here to ask, "what is technology, and how can it help us?". We are here to ask a much wider and more difficult question, "what is it to be human, and how can we improve humanity?". Transhumanists may think they are asking the latter question, but their methods, ideals, and imaginations are far too restricted. Transhumanism will be only one part of successful human progress.

Conclusion: Two serious questions

Can we take transhumanism seriously? It involves a number of quite wealthy, often stupidly named and often American white men - a large number with philosophy educations - heading the movement, with an undetermined amount of 'footsoldiers'. I am sure they all take it quite seriously. I am also sure that many people, looking in, will see a worrying mix of science fiction and computer nerdism. This is not helped by an article on the transhumanism blog to do with the H+ crowd becoming more ubersexual and less nerdy:

"Are you suffering from shyness, social anxiety or depression? Take Prozac... Stuck in a fashion time warp? Buy new clothes at a store known for being trendy... Fat? Stop eating junk food. Start eating fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and go to gym... Lonely? The cyberdelic trip is over... Get away from that damn computer before you become a hikikomori, spend some quality time with your family and friends, go out, meet new people, get laid.
"LIVE LIFE!
"Too poor to do any of this? Get a real job and keep it!"

It is nice to see that transhumanists are not above giving overly simple answers to personal questions. I wonder what you are supposed to do if something is stopping you from getting a real job and keeping it.

Do I take transhumanism seriously? I take being alive seriously, and I take now seriously. It is part of life, and it is part of now. But it pales in comparison to the many problems suffered the world over, and I do not think it offers a realistic, sensible, or rational solution to those problems. It is overly simple a solution, it requires too much faith in technological progress, it seems to be a method of ignoring the failures of recent human history and emphasising its scientific success.
What transhumanism offers is a technological dream of the future, which for the most part we must wait for. What I desire is a human dream of the future, which for the most part we must work for. This is the consequence of finding human questions more demanding and necessary than technological questions.

Protection of reason

2006-02-20T15:41:00.000Z

Should we refrain from harming human life because it is human life? The question seems empty. Interrogating it may lead to a notion of rationality as valuable and worth preserving as an end. What does this mean?

Surely its meaning hangs upon what we mean by 'reason', and whether this equates to or is a part of what we call 'human life'.

What is the human and what is inhuman, if, for example, reason is logic and the ability to calculate? Surely computers must be prized above Einstein, so is the latter relatively inhuman? We may harm Einstein in order to protect a computer system if here we allow that what is logical just is what is human.

If, on the other hand, human life is, by some distinction, Einstein rather than the computer, what is it about human life that prioritizes its logical capacity? What can make less logical capacity more important than a greater logical capacity? What is special about 'human life' other than reasoning, such that we must look for a worthy logic, a worthy reason, precisely here and nowhere else?

Alas, this would be my question. The truth of the matter is that what is human is unimportant, and gets shifted around, while what is important is 'reason' and its value. I have no humanistic bent here, but where else are we to start than with ourselves, where our values are discovered and embodied? We must start, it seems, with our notion of 'reason', and interrogate its value.

It might be proposed that what we can make appear to ourselves as the workings of reason what is in fact nothing of the sort - I think of course of the 'logic' of computers. It will not be necessary to consider whether machines think, but whether the notion of 'reason' as 'logic' is what we truly intend, since the notion of calculation is that which we value. Is this our vision of worth? What more is 'reason' than 'logic'? The ability, perhaps, to judge correctly?

And so it continues. Why is there value in judging correctly? Is this to say accurately and dispassionately? Is judgment the extension of logic into calculating probability? If this is for us a poise under fire, such that we can reason things through even when the going is tough? Is it for us an ability to keep an intellectualised priority while battling sensation and emotion? Here's an apparent absurdity - why protect from harm precisely that which best insulates itself from it?

Affirming an intellectual paradigm is difficult for us when flames lick around our heels, but doesn't the ability of rationality consist precisely in this struggle? Surely we praise those with poise under fire? Without the reality of harm do we destroy rational ability? And how do we acquire this ability - should we create the proposition 'harm should be lifted in order for it to be lowered later, when the mind has the possibility of dealing with it?'; have we made reason commonplace, its link with the ability to do its work under duress simply trusted or shoved under the carpet?

Is it - not an ability - but an idyllic world, a retreat from the shifting and burning sands, that we value? Is reason that which we have never attained but nonetheless longed for? Is it Nietzsche's ascetic ideal? Is it Plato's contemplation of the forms? Did Plato not say 'no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death'? That this proposition is true, is it absurd? There is certainly no need to speak anymore of harm.

An ability implies a struggle, a utopia implies salvation. Harm is necessary to the former and irrelevant to the latter. In either case we cannot prescribe that it is proper not to harm the rational.

So what do we mean, and how do we mean it?

Identity

2006-02-18T14:50:00.000Z

From the Guardian:

What grates on Sen is the idea that individuals should be ushered like sheep into pens according to their religious faith, a mode of classification that too often trumps all others and ignores the fact that people are always complex, multi-faceted individuals who choose their identities from a wide range of economic, cultural and ideological alternatives. "Being defined by one group identity over all others," he says, "overlooking whether you're working class or capitalist, left or right, what your language group is and your literary tastes are, all that interferes with people's freedom to make their own choices."
What begins by giving people room to express themselves, he argues, may force people into an identity chosen by the authorities. "That is what is happening now, here," he says, a little indignantly. "I think there is a real tyranny there. It doesn't look like tyranny - it looks like giving freedom and tolerance - but it ends up being a denial of individual freedom. The individual belongs to many different groups and it is up to him or her to decide which of those groups he or she would like to give priority."
Sen is also critical of the growing consultative power given to the religious organisations of Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus. It does, he believes, magnify the power and authority of religious leaders at the expense of a healthy democratic debate. "Suddenly the Jewish, Hindu and Muslim organisations are in charge of all Jews, Hindus and Muslims. Whether you are an extremist mullah or a moderate mullah, whether you're Blair's friend or Blair's enemy, you might relish the idea of being able to speak for all people with a Muslim background - no matter how religious they are - but this may be in direct competition with the role of Muslims in British civil society."

Perhaps this is all a reaction to the 'atomised identity politics' of the 80's, if that label makes any sense. But to lump everyone together is just as bad as an idea in other ways as to try to treat them all as representatives of small groups. Yes to try to help women in general when they have formed factions of black lesbians, white middle-class soccer moms, homeless abused etc. and for them to all want their own demands to be met is silly. But you can't hide the problems of minority ethnic groups by making them all of one religion. Not all Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists or atheists agree. From my experience of Muslim students, some feel very divided, specifically by where their family originally came from, down to country and the region of the country and even sometimes the village. Who can speak for everyone, everywhere?
In the office recently, the cartoon controversy came up. A muslim staffmember expressed annoyance at both sides, saying that they thought the cartoons were disrespectful but could not condone what muslims elsewhere were doing - "they do not speak for me". I asked this staff-member who did speak for them, and as they struggled gave them the conclusion that perhaps only they themselves spoke for them. And the staff-member agreed, perhaps without realising exactly how lonely and unpleasant a predicament that is.

Sartre reckoned, and he reckoned a lot of things, that you cannot trust the cause you are involved in to go on after your death - what if all the people you are working with give up, get interested in something else? This is a philosophy of do what you can, and do it now, do not trust in grand systems of thought to sweep public opinion for as long or as powerfully as you want them to. Just do what you think is right. (I believe he said this in Existentialism and Humanism.)
Perhaps no-one can speak for you. Perhaps only you speak for you. If some humans feel like this, Sen is right to say that lumping everyone together under one banner is indeed tyranny, because your voice will be co-opted. I would react with much anger if a society of white male 20-something agnostics suddenly decided to speak for me, and I disagreed. And this leads us to a pressing question: how can we teach people to speak, for themselves, and not be afraid that hardly anyone will listen to them?

Psychology

2006-01-21T11:24:00.000Z

So you know someone who doesn't do the right thing. What do you do to have them change course?

At the moment I am considering the distinctions between two methods. Imagine a ship. If you were at the helm, would you try to turn the wheel in an approximate direction, or would you try to get the ship's navigation computer to accept precise coordinates? Obviously the latter.

For people this is different. If a person were a ship they would have a habit of resisting and rejecting the coordinates, even though they are correct. We cannot tell the complete truth all of the time because, due to psychology, counterproductivity is the result (and probably the start of a lasting resistance). The sought moral correction is not attained. Appeals, therefore, to what the person is already committed to, are the order of the day. But this has the downside of not giving the person the end at which they aim, and they can feel manipulated or feel the discussions arbitrary as a result. A person consciously and in a hands on fashion leading another person psychologically is a fairly repulsive endeavor in any case due to abuse, and other issues of dependence.

Deciding between the two methods would seem to imply answers to the follwing wuestions: When do you trust a person's capacity to change their mind through reason? How do you sense when someone is capable of cutting through their affectations and commit themselves to something uncomfortable?

Last night I considered my personal commitments to discomforting truths about my character - truths that I cannot mend but through experience and repeated uncomfortable and unnatural effort. We tend to find, when our reason identifies qualities as desirable that we do not possess (precisely because the means of possessing these qualities scare us to death of commiting ourselves - as therefore weak, broken, tragic - to them), other arguments that allow us to deny their importance, by affirming the importance of qualities that we do possess.

This behaviour is potent to such an extent that we depict the visions of our future selves by way of it, quite naturally and quite decidedly. I have become able to leave this aspect of my psychology behind, leaving me with darker, more hopeful days. The ability of people to commit themselves to uncomfortable valuations, decisions etc. becomes a question, I now believe, of understanding these 'darker, more hopeful days' - of finding their worth, their honesty, their truthfulness - and offering their occurance in people's lives as better and far more desirable than the usual paradigms.

In this way psychological steering disposes the person toward accepting the consequences of their most inward-looking reason, and the two methods combine into one. The only remaining problem is that the commitment to the new paradigm presupposes commitment to genuine improvement of the person as a goal, both as more important than other life goals that might attempt to crash in on the action, and as general enough to avoid the emotional turmoil (that results from the identification of specific faults) that is so psychologically leading. That conventional living is crap is evident enough even before any effort is expended uncovering the fact. However, a commitment to something general and unspecific requires reason. My task here may therefore be question begging, rhetorical, or deceitful. If only people weren't so stupid.

Do Gay Cowboys Propagandise In The Woods?

2006-01-01T19:19:00.000Z

"Recently, WND Managing Editor David Kupelian, author of the best-selling book, "The Marketing of Evil," was widely quoted in the news media for his criticism of the new film "Brokeback Mountain." Here, Kupelian explains how and why the controversial movie is one of the most powerful homosexual propaganda films of our time."

Please read the article for yourself, as I will now do my best to criticise it. Why do I criticise it? This man believes that a Hollywood film about paedophilia could make an undisclosed percentage of viewers become positively disposed towards paedophilia, and that Brokeback Mountain is doing the same for homosexuality. One cannot alter peoples' values so easily, and homosexuality and paedophilia are not equivalent. We are not all so mindless to hang onto the nearest bandwagon - otherwise Dave would find it much easier to convince us all of his opinion, at least until we read a contrary article. This case must be made.

Introduction

Happy New Year! I have edited this essay so that it makes more sense. Now it goes through various themes of Dave's article and attempts to argue against them.
To summarise Dave's thinking - he is religious, and against homosexuality for this reason. In order for him to understand why more and more people - including Christians and those of other religious groups - are accepting homosexuality, he has written this article, much in the vein of the article I have criticised in previous posts.
Although I contest Dave's thinking on the issue of whether homosexuality is correct, I do concede that he is allowed to think that it is wrong. Homophobia is a recently invented concept. We Western societies have only recently decided to accept homosexuality; there has always been a large religious and secular disgust of homosexual love. Now we are being asked to consider that homosexual love is equivalent to heterosexual love, and not everyone is going to be able to change - especially religious people, who are in most cases more heedful of tradition. I can see why many people are confused. However, to be against gays is, from my standpoint, intolerant of their love, and I do not accept it. I only attempt to understand it, and sympathise with the confusion many people feel.
I see no reason why religion should not be able to change its stance on homosexuality. It always changes, and always will change, because it is as much human-made as God-made, as much about and for humans as about and for God. I think that religious people should accept this, either that or they must concede that God's will surprisingly changes to catch up with people, and that he wants things to change. (Whether God wants what God wants or what people think a 'God' wants, it is a similar thing.)
In order to be able to both understand the acceptance of homosexuality, and to combat it, Dave concocts untruths and argues badly. This is what I will principally be fighting against. Dave's thinking is abominable, and I wish to show how abominable it is. The themes of his argument are: that homosexuality is being marketed, that homosexuality causes harm to the family and that this is worse than the harm caused to homosexuals by intolerance, that the film Brokeback Mountain is propaganda. In order to support that latter, he espouses the malleability of human opinion, ending up by stating that a similar film could cause a wave of sympathy for sex-offenders if the subject was a paedophilic relationship. Dave's thinking is not just faulty, it is disgusting.

Marketing and the 'Rape of the Marlboro Man'

Dave believes that the film in question "does it by raping the "Marlboro Man," that revered American symbol of rugged individualism and masculinity". Not that he means that the famous gay cowboys do gayness by sexually assaulting a massive smoking cowboy, but that they pervert his image by using the cowboy's coding of 'rugged individualism and masculinity' to cloak the consensu-anal delights within.
Cleverly plugging his own book for a while, he concludes that: "The "Marlboro Man" campaign launched 50 years ago. Today, the powerful cowboy image is being used to sell us on another self-destructive product: homosexual sex and "gay" marriage." They are marketing homosexuality. This is capitalist, commercial propaganda.
I must dispute this rhetoric. One can compare the selling of products, for example, if you were to start 'selling democracy' to other countries as if it were a product - "Here are the benefits! And the cost is low!" - that would be comparable. You can market Christianity - "Save your soul or go to hell, all you have to do is read the bible and come to church!". These are exhortations to spend your money, time, or life differently, in order to procure some result or gain. I believe that this is marketing, and when things use the tropes of marketing, these things can be compared with marketing.
Is this film, we must ask, marketing? It seems not to be. It does not sell, it shows. It does not ask you to become gay or to support gays, it just plays out a possible story about gay people. There is nothing in there to say, "be gay and enjoy the fruits of your very own anus". I am not sure about the sexuality of the actors, but I don't think either have come out as gay. It is not a 'gay film’; it is the story of two gay men. You can only argue otherwise if you hold to the belief that homosexuality is wrong. If homosexuality is right, it is a valid subject for a film, just as any relationship. If it is not, then it is not valid, and must be trying to 'push' an unpleasant behaviour. Would Dave argue that a more conventional love story, such as While You Were Sleeping, is heterosexual marketing or propaganda? Or is it just a love story? It would be logical for him to argue that it was propaganda, but propaganda for the correct attitude, which would expose his argument as being more deeply about his own dislike of homosexuality. If he argued that a heterosexual love story is not propaganda, however, it would evidently call into question his whole definition of propaganda - probably "anything positive about a subject that I dislike". Propaganda is not defined by its being positive towards something you consider unpleasant, it is defined by the techniques it uses to put across a message in order to educate/indoctrinate, and the intended outcome to do so. This film cannot be either marketing or propaganda unless all love stories are propaganda, all this film can be is propaganda for the wrong type of love. So Dave, I believe, is saying that we should make sure only to be indoctrinated into the values he considers correct, in an essay which attempts to change opinion. On his own terms, I believe he must call his own essay propaganda.
To dispel the 'Marlboro Man' image, it can also be contested that the cowboy film is at all moral or heterosexual, as John Patterson has. You know, the films are full of bandits and shooting and dying, not exactly an Aesop's fable. And they are called things like Ride Him Cowboy, which is preeeetty gay. The implications? That there is nothing to pervert by invoking the 'Marlboro Man' or the general ideal of the cowboy-who-likes-neither-cows-or-boys, six shootin' his way to town to spend his money on bullets, booze, and big doses of venereal disease from whores. In fact, the film may be, from your viewpoint, freeing the homosexual subtext from classic American stories. For what better reasons should America be land of the free, if there the love that dare not speak its name can unwhisper itself more and more?

Propaganda: "People's minds have been changed"

The next section of Dave's essay is titled "'People's minds have been changed'". This now talks about the film as propaganda, breaking up the argument of marketing - evidently Dave thinks of them as somewhat equivalent. I have also mixed the two terms together, above, in order to enhance my argument against him. However, I am not at all so sure that marketing and propaganda are the same. I dislike both, but I think they are different. It is interesting that Dave finds them to be the same, at least for the purpose of his argument. I would imagine that he only finds the marketing of things he does not like to be equivalent to propaganda.
First, I am going to consider his idea that the film obscures a key point about homosexual relationships: that they are harmful to families and to the gay men themselves.

Propaganda: Homosexuality and harm

An important part of Dave's argument is that the propaganda being used is pro-gay, while missing out the pain of families disrupted by homosexual affairs. He also seems to insist that homosexuality is harmful to the homosexuals: amusingly saying that "As they lie there, suddenly and almost without warning, these two young men – both of whom later insist they're not "queer" – jump out of the sack and awkwardly and violently engage in anal sex." I wonder if he believes that anal sex can be consensual and none-violent? I wonder what his stance on heterosexual anal sex is, considering the female gets much less enjoyment from the act from a male? This rendering of a gay sex scene as violent, is exactly what constitutes propaganda, colouring gay sex to become abusive, a thing of almost-rape, an unnatural act - when it is not necessarily true. Interestingly, many gay men say that they do not require or even like anal sex, and express physical love in other ways. Just as many heterosexual men do!
Anyway, as Dave expounds, they both have families and the families suffer due to the affairs they have. Ennis is scared because his father took him to see the murdered corpse of a gay man, and fears the same will happen to his lover, who does die. Was he killed or was it an accident, as claimed? "Yes, the talents of Hollywood's finest are brought together in a successful attempt at making us experience Ennis's suffering, supposedly inflicted by a homophobic society. Heath Ledger's performance is brilliant and devastating. We do indeed leave the theater feeling Ennis's pain. Mission accomplished."
Briefly consider the other possible love-story-propaganda arguments involving a heterosexual affair. All could end with 'mission accomplished'. You feel sad because the love is unrequited? 'Mission accomplished'. Hey, let's cry because they get together despite their differences! 'Mission accomplished'. The Iraq war is over! 'Mission accomplished'. Is this film actually any more a piece of propaganda than any other love story, or is it a study of the possibilities and impossibilities of gay love in a society where it is not tolerated? Is it a study of an anti-gay propagandised society and how they treat men?
I must now quote a whole paragraph, as it is excellent: "Lost in all of this, however, are towering, life-and-death realities concerning sex and morality and the sanctity of marriage and the preciousness of children and the direction of our civilization itself. So please, you moviemakers, how about easing off that tight camera shot of Ennis's suffering and doing a slow pan over the massive wreckage all around him? What about the years of silent anguish and loneliness Alma stoically endures for the sake of keeping her family together, or the terrible betrayal, suffering and tears of the children, bereft of a father? None of this merits more than a brief acknowledgment in "Brokeback Mountain.""
The realities for Dave are informed by his faith. Faith is not reality in the same way a cowboy hat is, or indeed a murdered corpse is. Who's life and death is bound up in these realities? The lives and deaths of gay people who are not tolerated? The lives and deaths of those who do not want a Christian film to be released? If Dave is killed by some scenes of fictional anal sex between two apparently heterosexual actors, I'd be the first to offer my sorrow and sympathies. What does he really mean?
Yes, there are implications for the families of the gay men, just as potent as the implications for the men themselves. Dave points, quite rightly, to the need for more discussion for these implications. Families are of immense importance.
Yet something about Dave's approach galls me. It is not simply the men themselves who are at fault. Yes, they are having an affair. And in any family, an affair is disruptive. Even a heterosexual affair - and they do happen, I am informed. It is the intolerant society that heaps even more pain onto the gay affair, stigmatising the family, stopping them from, ahem, 'moving on'. It is not only the gay man that is seen as wrong, but the women he tried to be married to, the children he unwillingly conceived. And, hilariously, it is the intolerant society itself that forced this to happen, by expecting it to be the only right state of affairs.
In summation: I contend that it is the fault of intolerance that gay men must try to subdue themselves into 'normalcy', start a family they are not comfortable with, a family that will be stigmatised and bullied through no fault of their own.

Propaganda: Can we be convinced to accept paedophilia?

"What is important to the moviemakers, rather, is that the viewer be made to feel, and feel, and feel again as deeply as possible the exquisitely painful loneliness and heartache of the homosexual cowboys – denied their truest happiness because of an ignorant and homophobic society."
I agree that this is the case, however I believe that all the evidence points to the absolute naturalness and unshakeableness of gay love, just as pure and strong as any other 'normal' love. And if you try to squash it, the collateral damage will harm everyone. The film is about the painful loneliness of the gay male and the family they are forced to live with and lie for. Is this propaganda? Many films make us feel sad because Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan are not together, or because a married couple are going through a rough patch.
But the real point Dave is making here is elaborated soon: that movies are immensely powerful and effective in changing people's opinions, saying that "Co-star Jake Gyllenhaal realized the movie's power to transform audiences in Toronto, where, according to Entertainment magazine, "he was approached by festival-goers proclaiming that their preconceptions had been shattered by the film's insistence on humanizing gay love... But then, said the article, Gyllenhaal jumped to his feel and exclaimed triumphantly: "I mean, people's minds have been changed. That's amazing.""
Can you unequivocally call this propaganda? Education is meant to in some way develop or, sometimes, change the mind. When I teach that memory is unreliable - forgetting, reconstructive, etc. - is that indoctrination? Dave reckons that "Film is, by its very nature, highly propagandistic. That is, when you read a book, if you detect you're being lied to or manipulated, you can always stop reading, close the book momentarily and say, "Wait just a minute, there's something wrong here!" You can't do that in a film: You're bombarded with sound and images, all expertly crafted to give you selected information and to stimulate certain feelings, and you can't stop the barrage, not in a theater anyway."
I agree: You cannot walk out of a theatre. You cannot think while it bombards you. When I see a film, my legs are shackled to the chair and I have to pee using a catheter, which directs it right back to the soda machine. If I try to think, an usher shines a hypnotic torch of imbecility into my face, as if I am trying to snog on the backrow, freezing me into compliant acceptance. In fact, this is why we go to see a film in the first place, so that we can be indoctrinated by this insidious form of mind control. (I wonder if Dave thinks about this in regard to religious films as well? Mel Gibson, watch out, your 'key demographic' is coming to get you.)

Dave now talks about 'how easily your feelings can be manipulated'. He goes into how major and minor scales sound different, one happy and one sad. Plato's Republic discussion of 'proper' music this ain't. So we end up with: "Everything from the script to the directing to the camera work to the acting, which in "Brokeback Mountain" is brilliant, serve the purpose of making the movie-makers' vision seem like reality – even if it's twisted and perverse."
What if this film glorified incest or paedophilia?, he asks. What if your article called for the lynching of the director, Dave? What if I taught the everyone who watched MTV, through an infomercial, to live on the moon?
This is a sad and silly fallacy. A compelling film can attempt to humanise homosexuality by telling a story in which the homosexuals are human and experience human problems. You can call this nothing more than trickery, and say that the same tricks could work for paedophilia. Try it then, Dave. Edit Brokeback Mountain with some footage of Master Joel Osment as a cowchild, and see if people rush out of the cinema proclaiming that it's ok to have sex with children. Dave thinks this: "Like "Brokeback," it too would serve to desensitize us to the immoral and destructive reality of what we're seeing, while fervently coaxing us into embracing that which we once rightly shunned. All the filmmakers would need to do is skillfully make viewers experience the actors' powerful emotions of loneliness and emptiness – juxtaposed with feelings of joy and fulfillment when the two "lovers" are together – to bring us to a new level of "understanding" for any forbidden "love." Alongside this, of course, they would necessarily portray those opposed to this unorthodox "love" as Nazis or thugs. Thus, many of us would let go of our "old-fashioned" biblical ideas of morality..."
Can you see what the problem is, here? Films are, simply, not this powerful, for there are, in Western societies at least, usually a surfeit of material arguing differently, and we do not flop around like fish changing our most core beliefs every time we watch the TV (if marketing is so good, why don't I want to buy a car?). It is culture that is powerful, as it defines for us what we believe. Does film inculcate you into a different culture? If I watch a religious film about Jesus, does it raise me for 18 years and teach me Christian values, as religious parents would have? No. And does this film take a religious person away from the teaching they have been subject to and the culture they have either been raised in or accepted and replace it with a fake history of being raised by lesbians? No. Film leaves you with the rest of your life to think about whether what it has communicated is right or wrong, and it does not erase the foundations of your ideology. It is what constructs the foundations of your ideology that must be questioned: is it right to raise children to raise what you believe? Can you help but do so?
Also, it is hard to teach people that paedophilia is OK by showing it to be equivalent to 'normal', heterosexual love. It is not a consenting relationship between two sexually mature, sexually attracted people. It will involve coercion and power to a greater extent with a more sinister quality - a child will not want to have sex. They can be forced to, however, this is what Western childsex tourists exploit. A child can love an adult, but not sexually; which is why it is wrong. But homosexuality is remarkably equivalent to heterosexuality, and I will discuss this later.

Dave is indulgently hiding the matter of oppositional values. It is NOT that Dave's views are seen as wrong by other people, or that people can occasionally come to see another view to the one they have previously held, or that people can learn about an issue... it is that they have been seduced towards a lie by some major and minor chords and the behaviourism of relating homosexuality to some nice, smiley Hollywood actors. Hunks + homosex = immediate cultural revolution!
"This is how the "marketers of evil" work on all of us. They transform our attitudes by making us feel as though our "super uncomfortable" feelings toward embracing unnatural or corrupt behavior of whatever sort – a discomfort literally put into us by a loving God, for our protection – somehow represent ignorance or bigotry or weakness."
Let us reveal Dave's own "somehow representations". Gayness is abhorrent. It is a disease - addictive, destructive. It is on par with incest or paedophilia. It is not love, it is the love of an addict for the dealer. Films are propaganda. They manipulate your emotions. They do not let you think.
Is Dave trying to transform our attitudes? It seems so, with his "somehow representations". The sad fact is - you are allowed to choose what meaning is, what values are. You have to choose. In fact, God seems to ask you to choose, the Bible does not explicitly tell you how to live with everything, there is a massive amount of room to think about the rightness of any action for yourself. In fact, what WOULD Jesus do? This prompt is a guide, a rule of thumb, it never provides exact answers - unless we seek to feed a throng with a miracle, or be crucified and reincarnated, or are generally living 2000 years ago in a biblical society while being God's chosen son.
The question of values entirely permeates Dave's article and this attempted analysis, so I will end by considering it.

Conclusion: The Question of Values

"Thus are the Judeo-Christian moral values that formed the very foundation and substance of Western culture for the past three millennia all swept away on a delicious tide of manufactured emotion. And believe me, skilled directors and actors can manufacture emotion by the truckload. It's what they do for a living."
Yes, Dave does at one small point, mid-way through the article, gesture towards the elephant in his living room. People have different values - some people actually try to choose to know what is right, not everyone merely accepts what a film tells them. And it is because of these differing values that he complains so. Many people consider homosexuality and heterosexuality to be equivalent and for both to be normal.
Heterosexual and homosexuals can both have loving, mature, sexual relationships. There is a remarkable similarity between their relationships and their lives and experiences. This is evident, and I do not need to emphasise it. Tellingly, Dave has not actually challenged this similarity head-on. He has not proven that gay people are made of slime, or that 'normal' Christian families cannot give birth to them. He has merely surmised that God hates them, that they are unnatural. I imagine that he would make much of the fact that they do not have a 1:1 vagina:penis ratio, and that they cannot have children. Neither can many heterosexual couples. I'm afraid sex is nowadays more pleasure than babies, in fact having lots of children is often seen as a terrible vice.
At one point in the article, Dave says: "OK, I'll bite. Let's talk about love. The critics call "Brokeback Mountain" a "pure" and "magnificent" love story. Do we really want to call such an obsession – especially one that destroys marriages and is based on constant lies, deceit and neglect of one's children – "love"?" What he really needs to do is to prove his premises - is gay love an obsession? Heterosexual love is often obsessive too, and he is not challenging it. Heterosexual love also destroys marriages and can be based on lies deceit neglect. He does not challenge this love. Neither does he show that homosexual love must involve these things. However, an intolerant society can, in fact, try to make sure that homosexual love must involve things through bullying and intimidation. What should he really be speaking out against?

So what it comes down to is cold, hard, ungraspable values, ones that are in opposition. How can we understand this battle? How must we understand it in order to have a healthy society? This is really my concern - how we are masking and hiding our values in all this argumentation and debate, how we try to take our values and wield them against other values in a way that makes our own look like actual truth. Case in point: a book called Brainwashed : How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth, a right-wing polemic against higher learning. Is his book not in itself indoctrination? Is he really telling the facts or is he imposing his values on them as he writes? The real problem with our society, and the real problem with Dave, is that now it is our values that we must hide. It is values that we do not tolerate. We do not tolerate the values of others, and we do not tolerate our own being seen for what they are. We are evasive about the own illusory nature of our ideologies. What Dave, and those like him, are doing is to call their values truth, and to take the values of others and make them mere 'marketing', or 'propaganda', or those 'agendas' and 'conspiracies'.
This is not conducive to debate. It is not conducive to self-understanding or the understanding of others, or of humanity, or of the world. It is a convenient lie to indenture our own sense of rightness to support our argument. Why should people hold to a believe when it is merely a 'propaganda' or 'conspiracy' in the first place? If normal people are being convinced, as Dave contends, by films, who then started to make them? Did they do so because they wished to be perverse, or because they were willingly sinful? It must be simply that Satan and his henchman invented homosexuality, and Ang Lee. This is an entirely alien view of the world to me, and I unironically pray for the day that it is finally vanquished.
The reason that such films are made is because, rightly or wrongly, people have been convinced to support certain values towards and about it. This involves rhetoric, argumentation, 'trickery'; but also questioning the world, observation, honest thought. It is not because we have been indoctrinated, otherwise everyone who accepts gay love would be easily 'de-indoctrinated' by watching Green Card a few times.
And the reason that Dave writes these articles is because that he cannot accept that people would really hold values that are against his own, and he is fearfully defensive. He denies the possibility that people have chosen to support homosexuality for any valid reason, and mumbles about propaganda having taken over their minds. It is the only way he can imagine that people would believe differently from him. But I think we have entirely valid reasons for believing differently.

Admit your values. Question them and allow others to. They are, in the end, always going to be based, shakily, in a human past that can't quite be uncovered. They mean something divisive and contrary we don't fully understand. You must try to choose them, rather than learn them. You can never be certain they are right. People differ from you, but often for the very same reasons that you don't differ from you. What does this mean? If you don't want to ask this question, pretend that your values are the truth, and everything else is a conspiracy, an agenda, simple propaganda, and allow your world and understanding to be all the poorer.

Making Homosexuality Human

2005-12-29T21:11:00.000Z

Problem: Some people believe in a conspiracy, or agenda, to promote homosexuality in order to destroy 'family values'.
This problem is more than just "there are some people who do not like gays", or even "who would kill a homosexual". This is more on the par of popular Jamaican dancehall tracks demanding murder, except that this murder is the killing of culture, of society, of human possibility. Some would take their hands and grab at the throat of love, and choke it for being wrong.

Let me try to set out the argument, then.
1) Homosexuality is bad (against the bible, against nature: some sort of argument that I am tempted to call superstition)
2) Whatever is bad or unnatural is a corruption or disease (echoes of St Augustine's solution to the problem of evil, i.e. that evil is the absence or privation of good caused by human free will)
3) The acceptance of homosexuality is therefore endorsing corruption
4) All acceptance of homosexuality is designed to bring about corruption
5) Those who tolerate gays are therefore part of a willed agenda or conspiracy

Parts one and five are both obvious in the 'literature', for example the essay linked to in the previous post. I have had to assume parts 2, 3, and 4 in order to make the argument coherent.
Where I and people who think like this differ starts in point 1 and continues through to the last. I do not believe that homosexuality is bad or unnatural. I do not think it corrupts. I do not think endorsing homosexuality is bad or unnatural, or willed to do so. And I do not accept that tolerance for homosexuals is an agenda to destroy.
Accepting homosexuality, to me, is an agenda alright. It might also be a conspiracy. A conspiracy to allow people to be free to love and have sexual relationships, no matter what orifices must be used to allow penetrative sex. Homosexuals do not make me feel disgust or fear. They make me feel something complex and subtle - the sort of feeling you get when you meet people and try to understand them. I take them as people, people who may like to have sex a lot or not much. Or who might think of sex very little, even not at all. Just people.
(Note: it is interesting that those who dislike homosexuality find it necessary to sexualise and feminise them so much, not for them a pleasant gay chap with a nice handshake who listens to rock music and watched Hollywood blockbusters on DVD while drinking lager after working in a normal office job. Gay people are taken to appear and be horribly gay, revelling in their own evil. Gay people are not people, they are gay.)
Again: gay people are people first and foremost to me. They also enjoy sexual/emotional relationships with people of the same sex. Perhaps their relationships are not exactly analogous to heterosexual relationships, then again two heterosexual relationships are not exactly analogous. Their sexual practices are barely different from mine.
To those who despise them, gay people are gay. It is all they are, they are human-shaped but composed entirely of the element Gay.

Questions I must ask people (and will ask) who profess that acceptance of homosexuality is an agenda to destroy the world:
Why is homosexuality 'wrong', 'bad', 'unnatural', 'immoral' etc?
If you base this idea on the texts of the bible, how do you choose what is right and wrong from the bible, for you evidently do not follow it to the letter?
How do you explain the vast numbers of Christians who are gay, or who accept gays?
What should a Christian parent do if one of their children was to come out as gay?
What evidence would or could show that homosexuality is natural?

These questions deal with the first point of the argument I attempted to set out above, and examines the perceived badness of the gay. These are pretty stupid questions, really, as the answers are scripted and obvious. Still, we must ask.
The second point of the argument must be questioned like this:
What IS 'gay'? (How can one choose to be 'wrong'?)
What is love between gay people? Does it exist?
Why is it not possible that gay love is as legitimate as any love?
Is gay love a corrupted and evil version of 'normal' love?

These are interesting questions, I suppose, but again will not go very far to yield illuminating answers. I am much more compelled to ask questions relating to the last three sections of the argument:
What is wrong with accepting that gay love is 'normal' love?
If a Christian parent has a gay child, and comes to feel that their child is just as good in the eyes of God as their others, how can you explain this?
Is acceptance of homosexuality always an agenda or conspiracy?
What do those who take part in any agenda wish to destroy?
What are family values, and how does homosexuality go against them?
What is marriage, and how does homosexuality go against it?
Why could you not accept gay families, or gay marriages?
Are those who campaign for 'gay rights' part of an agenda to destroy your values?
Is it not possible that homosexuals and those who think they deserve every right that any other citizen has is not part of an agenda to destroy, but one to protect their own values?
Are homosexuals deserving of 'human rights', or rights of any kind?
Are homosexuals not human? What of them is or is not?
What would happen if we were to stop opposing this conspiracy?

The Christian 'anti-homosexual' who complains of a conspiracy to destroy 'Christian Values' is denying the very existence of 'Homosexual Values', or even 'Human Values' that includes the homosexual as human and necessarily requiring those values.
Quite a fiery form of rhetoric, I feel! The discourse of 'unnaturalness' that they have wrapped homosexual up in, that it has always been wrapped up in, like a chipolata, obscures the possibility of:
The humanity of the homosexual (or at least the part that is homosexual, for it is sin)
The existence of gay rights

We must keep on probing and attempting to understand this mindset, and trying to destroy it. We must make gay human, an expression of human love and desire, merely 'switched' unchoosingly to another outlet of love. This will automatically make gay Godly, part of the design of the world, part of the expression of love that is supposedly the most important link in the chain between us and the heavens.
If gays are human, and gay love is human love, automatically they deserve what all other people who love deserve.
The psychology of this belief is fascinating, and I would love to be able to observe it further. Any suggestions as to how this could be done, how this belief could be understood and further rationalised, how it could be further questioned?

Intellectual bigotry.

2005-12-27T16:39:00.000Z

There is, amusingly, a site called "intellectual conservative". Please judge its intellectuality for yourself.
On it was a pro-life man being anti-gay, although being anti-gay isn't really pro-life at all in my eyes. ('Why are they called 'Politicians'? They are never very polite!')
I like gay people, they sing well and wear good clothes. So I replied, fuelled mainly by Christmas presents, Christmas chocolates, and Christ, who regularly fondles me full of beyond-the-grave sexual potence.
Please read my reply, without giving up halfway through to abort a baby in anger with this man.

Hello! I was searching for the term "intellectual", as I was interested in the roots of the word after reading the autobiography of Stephen Fry. [Note: I did not need to mention that Stephen Fry is gay. I am above such things.]
I came across "intellectual conservative", and read your story. There are some things I must ask you about.

1) 'Talk about your obvious agendas. For the last month the press and the public relations types having been pushing this movie called, Brokeback Mountain...'
Is it therefore true that 'pushing' a story or other form of entertainment featuring heterosexual love is also an agenda? I am interested in what your concept of 'agenda' is.

2) '...a story about two "gay" cowboys and their "love" and "loss."'
You are bunny-earsing in a fascinating manner. Evidently gay persons are not capable of love.

3) 'And if you do not like the movie or the subject matter, then the critics call you a bigot. So much for tolerance.'
This, again, is endearingly fascinating. I would take great pains to examine your concept of tolerance - perhaps imagine the gadfly Socrates questioning you. Is tolerance defined as the acceptance of some normalised facet of human behaviour - in this case erotic homosexual relationship and love - rather than its denial etc., or is tolerance to be defined as the quality of allowing people to not tolerate something? That is evidently quite a linguistic twist to make, that tolerance must itself be employed to tolerate intolerance, and that intolerance must therefore trump tolerance. Surely bigotry, as defined, is the broad and baseless denial of a normalised behaviour, and not the intolerance of intolerance?
It would enlighten me if you would help me understand your take on this.

4) '"A love story" the critics call it. Actually it is called sodomy; and adultery; and destructive behavior. Yet these are the actions that form the building blocks of a healthy relationship according to the movie critics and the Hollywood elites.'
If you were having trouble defining bigotry, sir, I think this would be a good place to start. If I were to say, "heterosexual relationships are all based on the ravaging of the vagina, the rape of the womb, leading to the destructive birthing of needless human babies who cannot be properly controlled, who take up too much space, who consume too much," I believe that would be bigotry, but it is in effect what you are saying about gay relationships.

5) 'So here is the question. Why? Why is there this push from every quadrant of the entertainment world to force upon the American public the notion that homosexual behavior is normal? Why is there the effort to have such behavior intrude into every aspect of everyday life? Why can I not open up the newspaper without having to read about it every single day? Why do I have to screen the newspaper before I can let my ten year-old son read it?'
The equivalent question is "why must you preach that it is abnormal? Why must we allow bigotry to be part of human speech?".

6) 'I am reminded of the story of the frog and the boiling water. The heat is put on very slowly so that the frog does not realize it is getting cooked until it too late.'
I have rarely, if ever, been cooked by news stories of gay love. Usually they leave me in an entirely raw state, inedible to all but the most starved human.

7) "The AIDS crisis was just one example of the deadly effect of homosexual behavior upon a society."
It seems to me that all sexual behaviour spreads AIDs. It would be more accurate to talk about semen as diseased butter. Is your semen diseased butter?

8) 'The man is a priest and he is supposed to have put aside his old self and become a new creation in Christ. But apparently, Christ is not enough for the fellow. He has to be "gay" as well. Now perhaps I am a little dense, but if the fellow is suppose to be chaste, why is it important that he announce to the world that he is "gay?" It seems like the man is more interested in putting himself in the center of his world than in being a priest and putting Christ in the center of his life.'
The very thing that stopped me from putting Christ "in the center of my life" was that it seemed a bit gay. Does it not seem so to you? Perhaps Jesus has put you, like a frog, in a big gay pot, and you are not realising that all around you there is cooking.

9) 'Perhaps this appears judgmental and strident. But there are some truths that cannot be denied. First is the purpose for which certain parts of the human body exist and their mode of operation.'
The penis exists to be stimulated and produce semen - it does this in all sorts of contexts, with all sorts of mechanical help. The hand, the trousers, the very imagination can cause it to become engorged and ejaculate. Does it not seem a legitimate purpose for the purpose to be used orally, anally, or digitally?
Plus, you cannot deny the prostate. Apparently it is the male g-spot. I would suggest that you try anal stimulation first to see if you like it. It seems to me a perfectly useful and beneficial mode of operation, which is perhaps why so many people do it.
That and it doesn't cause babies. Sex often does not cause babies, with or without contraception. Must we condemn all sex without babies? It would be quite a hit-and-miss affair then.

10) 'Second is the relationship of men and women in the natural order of things. Human beings are made male and female.'
Human beings are also made male and male, and female and female, and male and male and female and male and female and female and female and male and female and male. They come in all sorts of orders.
Relying on the 'natural order of things' is pretty odd, too. We don't live in trees anymore - are our houses natural? Are movie matinees natural? Is John Wayne natural? The natural order of things appears to be that we do whatever seems best. (This, if you haven't noticed, is where you and others are disagreeing.)

11) 'Trying to force the average fellow to accept aberrant human behavior by setting it in the context of two cowboys is not going to work. Most people just do not want to think about it. After all to quote one of my older sons, "That's just nasty."'
Speaking for most people is always a tricky thing. Maybe you could conduct a survey, "do you want to think about gay sex"? Or perhaps your son would then pronounce you 'nasty' as well.
Aside: may I ask what you would do if one of your children 'came out' as gay? Would that be sufficient to change your mind, or would you have them shot?

12) 'The problem is that we cannot ignore it because such constant bombardment is meant to wear us down into first acceptance and then affirmation. The "homosexual" agenda being fanned by the leftist elites and the ACLU types is not just about live and let live. It is about destroying marriage. It is about forcing us to accept their "behavior" as legitimate and equal to normal male female relationships.'
"This article is also part of a constant bombardment - to wear us down into denying humanity, denying love, to seek acceptance and affirmation of hatred and disgust. The "anti-homosexual" agenda is being fanned by the rightist elites to not just be about live and let die, but about promoting marriage, and forcing us to accept their "behaviour" of hatred as legitimate and equal to normal, loving human relationships."
Sir, you are not speaking for heterosexuality, or love, or marriage. You are reacting against, forever against, against love, the love which makes both hetero- and homo- sexuality both right and normal, that makes marriage possible. Please feel free, of course, to hoist your own petard.

13) 'This message will not endear me to those who see nothing destructive about homosexual behavior.'
Bravo!

14) 'Because only in truth can one truly be free. Unfortunately many do not realize that their actions can be enslaving and self-destructive. Having counseled and advised countless people over the years whose lives cascaded out of control because of addictive behavior, this plea for awareness and response is borne out of a genuine concern for the human person.'
Now you rely on pseudo-science, particularly pseudo-psychology, which is already so much of a science-meets-humanities that you are rending it into a homeopathic version of science - one molecule per Olympic swimming pool.
I am a trained psychologist, teaching students (in our second year, we do relationships, and ask them to consider that gay love is normal. Students are overwhelmingly in favour of such an idea), and it would be most beneficial if you could post any evidence for homosexual love as an addictive behaviour. If it was nothing but this, of course, I would be able to deny it was love.
Unless, of course, the data you have found would just as easily show that any 'love' can be defined as 'addictive behaviour' if you wish to disallow it. But you are too clever to allow that!

15) 'Each of us is made in the image of God.'
Well, then, a bit of God is gay. Not a surprise considering God is everything. Makes me much more amenable to him.

And that is what I wrote.
If you would like to know more of the widespread fear of the gay, there is stuff like this book on the 'six-point' plan to make gay OK! With the consequence of destroying the world.
Of course, there IS a plan of sorts to make gay OK, which is the same as it always is in any situation requiring vast change of human opinion - waiting for the idiots to die and their children's children's children to learn enough to change their minds. And people DO want to make gay OK, so on these points the book is right.

What really angers me about this man, however, is the lying and subterfuge used by such argumentation to conceal what they are really saying.
It is bad enough to say that "Jesus hates fags", or such hateful religious messages. But at least this would be a display of honest opinion - 'I am a Christian, and I take the bible to mean that Jesus hates fags'.
What this man is doing here, my friends, is even more thoroughly odious. Not for he the simple explanation of his own feelings about the gay community and the gay individual, he cloaks his simple and simplistic idea in the rhetoric of conspiracy. Not only is gay bad, gay-is-good is a vast Satanic campaign against family values.
This is not amusing, and this is not just silly. It is the main - almost the only - rhetorical device deployed by conservatives nowadays. When there is everywhere a common consensus that is tending towards the liberal, it is denounced as an 'agenda'.
Love is not an agenda. Repeat this after me - it is not. Sexual lifestyle or choice are also not agendas, but they're not as nice as love, so let's get back to that. Love is not an agenda. Gay people who want to form a relationship are not:

Rabidly fighting normal heterosexual urges in order to degrage marriage
Attempting to shock young Christian children to such levels of shame and disgust that they abort their unconceived children out of their ears
Degrading family values with the acid of sodomy

Gay people are having relationships. Some are in love, some are sleeping around. Some are HIV+, some are not. Some are unpleasant, some are lovely. They are as complex and wonderful a group as heterosexual people, they are as simple and dull a group as heterosexual people, they are as progressive and conservative etc. etc. etc.
They are people, they live, they breath, they are part of our grand civilisation that endlessly goads itself towards failure - towards the edge of a precipice beneath which lies division and destruction - but never seems to quite get there. And to take their experience, their life, the phenomena of their very humanity and to call it an agenda, a willed thing that takes all the individuality and possibilty of free will and consciousness out of each of them to make them a sniping and bitchy whole attempting to degrade America... to do this is to deny their love, their feelings, the possibilities of their existences.
There is no conspiracy to destroy any values. There is only a conspiracy - an unwilled and surprised conspiracy - of people who have an unusual identity but who still want to be people and do people thing in people places. A 'conspiracy' of furthering their own lives so they can live them in the way that they think is well, which is exactly what our current system is supposed to be based on, for better or worse (often the latter). The gay conspiracy, the gay agenda, is to expand values, so that they fit more people and allow for more happiness.
Values are not meant to divide people into healthy and unhealthy, fit and unfit, human and inhuman. They are meant to keep us together, to keep us close, to prevent division; for we are not amoebae. We are us, altogether us.
And, really, this is what I must say to this man - but he would only deny it, and put conspiracy into its place. He would deny humanity, and put conspiracy into its place. And he would wonder why we feel sorry for him, and feel uneasy that he has children.

Taking part

2005-12-18T12:15:00.000Z

Sometimes, I see the human project - the task of being alive - as fixating on some problem and attempting to find its solution. The dowdy cousin of this particular idea is the sad psychological 'truism' that we are all coping with the effects of being alive, but this does not impress me so much. Of course we must cope, but if life is to do nothing but cope, what about when there is nothing to cope with? What happens then?
So this is what I believe, in many of my spare moments: that we are beset with problems, and we find some especially vexing, and we either unravel them or let them unravel us. Coping only comes in at the moment when we decide to destroy or be destroyed, it is not our main fixation at all.
This is an interesting idea as it helps me continue in the face of adversity, for it is some sort of moral and spiritual ideal to tackle these problems; it is what being alive is about. And also it helps me explain to myself the limits of my own perceptions and possibilities. I do not find much of the world particularly edifying - much literature and fiction, much music and art (actually, pretty much all art), much cinema and culture - it just does not enlighten me or endear itself to me. It is often that I worry that either I am missing out by ignoring these vast facets of human existence, or everyone else in under the spell of something pointless. Perhaps the problems that are being tackled by much of fictional literature, by art and etc., do not meet up closely enough with my own? I am not interested in beauty and its representation, in visual aesthetics. I do not care about the technical demands of directing cinema, or the possibilities presented to us through the medium. I have my own interests.
All very well and good, you think, he has interests. The real point I wish to make is that, without these interests, I do not know what I would be. What if I cared about and for nothing? What would life be then?
My students, I fear, do not often care about much. I see them in class, bored. I ask them about their lives, and their lives bore them. They feel sad and lonely and oppressed, everywhere oppressed, their main feelings ones of dislocation. They do not know where they fit or why, or for what reason they are here, or the reason they have been brought here. Their rebellion is fuzzy and weak but tries to repel almost everything.
How can I make them care? How can I make them think, life must be solved, I must be solved, there are problems out here and I can make something of them for myself and others? What is the secret of this alchemy?
I feel very sorry for them. They seem so lost, and in my job I do little to help them. All I can tell you is this - if you are put in an unhappy world, such as ours, problems seem so insurmountable that we do not see the value of attempting to solve them, we merely wish to cope with their demands. And so we slide into our sorry, self-flagellating states, needing to boost our 'self-esteem' - as if we are not selfish enough already! - needing to submit to therapies and interventions, needing the approval of others as we have not found how to give it to ourselves. We willingly give up the possibility of our understanding of ourselves if others make it easier for us, so we can slide into a young senility of inaction and steadily consume.
But you cannot consume understanding and meaning, you must find it. My students, overwhelmingly, have not learned this. They have been hurt, so many of them, and they are bored and listless and traumatised by what this world has done to them, and they do not want to take part in the human project anymore.

Mr. and Mrs. Dad say 'So What?'

2005-11-21T15:52:00.000Z

It should concern us that children are targetted by business in such a way that their mental functionings become dependent upon following brand discourses. But why should we want this to be different? Asking this question is to ask why a person who has autonomous use of their faculties is better than a person who does not. The answer I can immediately indicate is in two parts (and they are independently sufficient).

Firstly, an analysis of the likely outcome of the corporatised person, who has emotionally invested in getting life satisfaction from what the market offers (both in terms of material and ideological gain), will reveal that this person is perpetually unhappy and abused. These facts are of course necessitated by the 'economic realities', the acceptance of the nature of which News is Good is more able to describe.

Secondly, the understanding of any problems whatsoever - societal, interpersonal, philosophical, political, however we contextualise them - are only dealt with arbitrarily if we have the movement of capital shape both the content and the conditions of our responses to them. If considered answers to important questions are irrelevant then we had better leave the ebb and flow of life to the dead, stale corpses that litter our graveyards. The irrepressible fact of suffering should wake us to a basic need to respond appropriately to problems - dealing with suffering seems to be a pretty universal imperative if you ask me; a line between cruelty and compassion must be drawn somewhere, and this natually shatters such absurd maxims as 'let the world come and go as it may'. Note that even whether you should, while at work, even DO any, are not accounted for by the authority of one's company.

The consequence of these considerations is that it must be the case that the person with the independent mind (and the independent use thereof) is the only person capable of being both a happy and a good person, or at least not a sorrowful and cruel one. As soon as we realise this and choose to approach life's problematics, of which the most obviously pressing is the insitutionalised nature of not so doing, the better for humanity - for only then can we can hope to be defined within the term.

Intellect is property.

2005-11-19T16:27:00.000Z

A number of pieces of information have collided recently in my head, causing a coalescing of thought. Two pieces are anecdotes of children given handsomely homemade gifts - one a fully functioning shop made lovingly by a grandad. The children, sadly, let the toys languish, not knowing at all what to do with them.
In Joel Bakan's the Corporation I am also reading about the marketing concept of 'the Nag Factor', in which products are sold to kids so that they can nag their parents for said items. Happily, they understand the demographics of parents well enough to describe such types as "the indulgent" or "the conflicted parent". Indulgers are working parents who splurge on gifts to feel less guilty about not seeing their kids enough. Conflicted parents don't wish to buy such things but end up doing so anyway, due to the nagging. Thankyou, corporate salesmen, for helping parent's lives in this way! Now they will always know what to buy!
In the same book, you can read about the lives of Chris and Luke, who sold themselves as sponsorship devices to companies to fund college. A pleasant fairy tale of empowerment, responsibility, and corporate goodness.
Another is a Guardian piece on ads. Can you believe it, 99% of the adverts we see each day entirely pass us by! It's as if we just don't care enough to scrutinise each personally! The most amusing thing about all of this is that anyone thinks that better advertising would make us buy more. Perhaps we have only limited personal resources and wants to buy things in the first place?
Finally, there is an interesting essay on personal property, also in today's Guardian.

The coalescing thought took all this information in. What if... what if the main point of advertising is not actually to sell things?
There is so much of it everywhere. How much impact does it actually have? The article I mention above shows that at least some people in business are not surprised that the impact is low.
Another point is that education is also on the agenda of the salesman. Children are educated to want and to nag. The lives of people can be co-opted for sponsorship.
And, finally, this education is having an obvious effect. Some children do not comprehend how to play with none-branded toys. The love and devotion of the handmade, the 'bespoke', passes them by. They cannot imagine the possibilities of such toys. Such tales anger me quite severely: what has happened to imagination?
The answer that I am led to is: it has been colonised entirely by the corporation. We are raised to want and to nag. We are forever surrounded by adverts that we barely notice and do not remember. Our intellects are filled up with the remnants of the intellectual property of others and we are losing the ability to have our own. It is actually necessary for corporations to do this. In order to sell more, they must take our own resources and abilities away so they can sell them back to us in a more plastic, more wrappable, more lucrative form.
It seems that children are, ideally, not supposed to imagine, they are supposed to buy into the imaginations of marketers. How can parents not be complicit in this assertion of ownership over part of their child's mind? How can they refuse the recycled demands from the adverts that shout from inbetween each and every cartoon?

I don't know. We are asking others to question what is everywhere the biggest and most neon statement, to privilege their own thoughts of the suggestions of others. And that is a state of development that we are not really taught how to reach.

Egoism, but how rational?

2005-11-15T21:45:00.000Z

In the long summer break between ending my PGCE and getting my job, I attempted to take apart Ayn Rand.
Sadly, the task was far too big, as she is far too wrong in far too many ways to deal with, unless one is committed to writing a book. And, in the end, why would her supporters listen, when they are so fundamentally opposed to arguments against her? However, I cannot hold my tongue against one aspect of her 'philosophical' beliefs, culminated in various essays and fictions etc.
Rand was a rational egoist, believing that self-interest was rational and right, in all circumstances, actively denying the goodness of altruism and promoting selfishness as a virtue. I do believe this is not slanderous to her position, if anything, she would herself probably find it not strong enough a statement of her values.
There is a curious problem about being such an egoist. How is it possible to hold and teach the philosophy at the same time? Say that I believe in the fundamental rightness of being moral, in that I consider others. I can exhort others to follow this standard, and there is no contradiction - I believe that I know what is good and right, and wish for others to share in it.
It is not so easy to be so transparent when espousing rational egoism. Why should you hold the belief and also teach others it? If, say, you believe society is rather too altruistic (as Rand did) and that people should act in their own self-interest, then the most rational course of action is to praise altruism and benefit from it, while giving little yourself. That way you can live a prosperously immoral life, while appearing moral in order to evade detection (which is, interestingly, the argument of Thrasymachus in Plato's Republic).
What does it mean to hold and preach such a belief, however? On one hand, it might mean that Rand was simply imperfect, teaching something that she did not hold completely herself, as it would be contradictory. But I believe that there is every evidence that she did try to live by her philosophy, which is exactly why she is still so adored - she is a figurehead for such a lifestyle.
Ayn Rand, I think, acted in her own self-interest by writing about and publishing upon the subject of rational egoism. By trying to win others round to the argument, she obviously made things more difficult for herself, by increasing the competition for resources. If she had succeeded within her lifetime of changing the social and political conduct of some area, and living there, it would be a much harder place for her to live without the possible (although to her uncouth) altruism of others as a support, as all would be following the edict to be selfish. How would that help her when compared to Thrasymachus' cunning approach?
I believe that it is feasible to conclude that her whole philosophy is based on her self-interest. It is not about teaching others to further their own self-interest, as there seems to be little reason to think that this option would fit in with her very philosophy. She was selfishly attempting to garner a society around her. She was cultivating social status amongst people. She was living off her philosophy and selling it to others for financial and social profit, without intending it to help others - by her very own thinking she should care not at all for that.
So, perhaps it might be a good idea, if you are the sort of person to fall in love with her writing, to consider whether it was written to teach you how to help you or her.
I admit, perhaps there is much evidence that she helped all sorts of people around her in many ways, indisputably not for the furthering of her own ends. And what does that make of her philosophy? How could that be explained?

This is only one possibility. IF there is no reason why rational egoists should help others to become rational egoists unless a world of rational egoists would help the individual rational egoist (and I cannot see how that is (rationally) the case) there are two more answers that I can imagine:
Firstly, Rand's work was a capitalist fascism, then the importance of the myth of the business-superman and libertarian-fatherland are the real aim, not rational egoism. This possibilty fascinates me, as it is historically a neat-and-tidy concept that would tie various ideologies together.
Secondly, I have a suspicion that the real aim was not towards a society of rational egoism but simply one against the values that she despised. Against the communism that she hated and escaped from, therefore against any left-wing or socialist political system (it can, of course, be argued that the communism as was practised is nothing like socialism etc. ad infinitum), winding up as against altruism. Such a journey, from personal experience of the Soviet regime to a hatred of altruism, is hard to contemplate, both psychologically and philosophically.
As hard as it could be to grasp, this explanation would explain why, rationally, she teaches others rational egoism from a standpoint of rational egoism which, to me, does not make sense. She is not espousing it to create a new society and increase the competition around her - much better to be two-faced! - but to destroy the contrary ideals.
Is the espousing of universal selfishness in your own interests? If not, it is hard to see why it is espoused by the selfish. Is it, perhaps, in order to quash something desperately unliked?

I am very interested in why such ideals as altruism - and therefore unconditional or low-conditional love, agape, mutual/communal respect and so on - are so hated. I believe they may be the actual main target at the heart of all this. There is a movement to destroy them, and it might be that they are not stating their real motives clearly. What is it about humanity that some examples of it wish to destroy what many would call humanity itself?
Otherwise, I am still interested in why she cloaked her own philosophy self-interest as one of being interested in the self-interest of others. What did she gain?

Descartes before the horse?

2005-11-07T23:03:00.000Z

There are a couple of thoughts about Academic Philosophy that continue to fill me with amazement. The first is the rather obvious fact that Philosophy departments coexist with other departments and don’t attempt to analyse what is happening in other areas of the University (and indeed, right across the hall). This may be a problem of not seeing the wood for the trees, but this blindness I think has its root in the acceptance of the way we do further education, and the internalisation of the separation between disciplines in academics (including the physical routines of classes and offices and the logistics of students) . Surely that which is most immediately problematic to the Philosophers of today isn’t an empirical natural world, but an uneasy office-like existence of thoughtful beings subjecting themselves and their ‘intellectual children’ (if you like) to an omnipotent bureaucracy that shields itself from thought by setting thought’s dimensions and limits. Detailing this (perpetually, as I would have it) would not be Philosophers ‘causing trouble’, but just bothering to do Philosophy in the first place.

Secondly, the facts of publication are grotesque and absurd. Academics need to be publishing a certain amount of papers a year to be granted funding (i.e. to keep producing knowledge and not spiralling into an undergraduate-teaching nightmare where thoughts are only repeated and the academic has no chance to pursue the activity of Philosophy), but who is it that reads all these papers? It would take more time than there is available to academics to keep abreast of what other academics are doing. And so the cycle of endless, empty knowledge continues. Surely Philosophers, who are, I have found, acutely aware of the problem, need to care enough about knowledge not to produce it arbitrarily, holding it up in the air to the chime of a death-knell. If the truth isn’t worth fighting for in these instances, how can Descartes be taught with any exhortation to follow and internalise his inferences? If Descartes embarked on scepticism in a quest for the truth, then upon what absurd principle are we to follow him if we are not prepared to question the most obviously deceitful of our conceptual practices?

Island Dichotomies

2005-11-07T22:35:00.000Z

Talking with a University friend today, who has shunned Philosophy in favour of higher marks taking English courses (another story), made me realise how strange it is when people feel trapped by their emotional needs even when they know them to be false. My friend seeks security, and certain particulars like this of conventional living, due to childhood needs that weren’t met due to a broken home scenario. What surprised me is that rather than attempt to understand and reconcile this with their obviously valuable thoughts (fairly radical and against social conditioning), cracking straight the contradictions implied by this, the idea they have of living involves a future of compromise where thoughts aren’t really met. I’m sure it isn’t making excuses, though these things often are, but a legitimate attempt to deal with living in the world. It occurred to me later what is most significantly wrong with this. Rather than working out life based upon a dichotomy of the future having to comply with our emotional needs and intellectual probings, there should in fact be an active principle working out the differences between the two (and prioritising the latter over the former), and this is consideration of the lives of others. As I reflect on the remarkably honest conversation I had today with my friend, I am mainly taken aback at my inability to offer this angle on the problem, and I wonder whether things are starting to take their toll on me even when I am ‘in gear’, so to speak, and able to have these wonderful explorations with people. I wonder how much legitimate trade off in the lives of the intelligent people I have met and will meet conform to this pattern of exclusion of others. The intellectual capacity of my friend is clearly great, yet this seems to make the issue more, and not less, worrying.

What's in a game? Not culture.

2005-10-26T21:09:00.000Z

An article in the technology supplement of the Guardian annoyed me. Let me vent my frustrations in a way that is embarrassingly public.
The article, written by Steven Johnson, first sets out his deep interest with the computer game Black and White 2, before adding "We are fast approaching the point where an ordinary gamer is more likely to have had a child than be one.... digital games [are] lodging themselves in the back of our consciousness, prodding us to think through their puzzles just one more time before going to sleep."
So, it's OK, kids, playing games and thinking about them is normal! Fair enough, although I would have to add that there is definitely a series of increments to be considered, and at some point thinking about games will become unhealthy. He goes on (watch out, lazy masses of quoting ahead):

"...today's games are exceptionally difficult. They tax the mind in ways that would amaze anyone who last played a game in the age of Pac-Man. In Black & White, for instance, the player must simultaneously track hundreds of shifting and interconnected variables... The best-selling PC game of all time, The Sims, involves an equally complex tableau of variables to track... Even the controversial hit game Grand Theft Auto maps a staggeringly large and complex world: one players' guide to all the variables involved in the game clocked in at 53,000 words, the length of a short book... But does this complexity, on its own, necessarily mean we should take games seriously as works of culture?"

One might argue that effort in thought is not any indicator of depth in thought, as the A-level psychology students I teach might say, based on the Levels of Processing model. It's not a bad point, true, but what I would argue is that there are potentially a lot of variables to be considered when doing all sorts of things, many quite pointless: such as attempting to alchemise lead into gold, or flicking snot balls, or collecting and cross-referencing cereal packets and attempting to understand the implied interactions between each of the cartoon characters ("Tony the Tiger is scared of the Corn Flake Rooster, as back in 1978 on this variety pack there was..."). Steve is saying that he and others find such games involving because they involve plenty of variables. Does that mean they are works of culture? Lets go back to the man himself:

"I think the answer to that question is a decisive yes, but doing so requires that we develop new aesthetic criteria that are appropriate to the medium... Where psychological depth is concerned, most games are laughably simple. The great majority of gamers, I suspect, don't engage with games because they want to find out what happens, or because they care about the characters. They engage because they want to figure out how the system of the game works, or because they want to explore the space the game represents... We don't look down on buildings because they don't have strong narrative threads or well-developed characters. The same should be true of games. They are - first and foremost - environments and systems, not stories... All the complex simulation games on the market - from The Sims, to Civilization, to SimCity, to Black & White - are, in effect, animated theories of how a given society works, whether it is ancient Rome or a modern metropolis. You learn the theory by playing. One of the defining attributes of Grand Theft Auto that has been chronically ignored by critics is how explicitly the game plays as a satire of American inner-city culture."

One might argue that figuring out the grand theory behind GTA is not that edifying: shoot ho's and stay away from the porky rozzers and their perfectly-round donut mouths. It's not a bad point, true, but what I would argue is that you can learn about a model society by, say, being alive and thinking about the world. And also acting within it to make changes. Sort of like a game, but a bit more important to both yourself and others. Because couldn't you see the world as a big, exciting system where our actions have consequences?
Or you might, I don't know, read a book, such as Plato's Republic, and consider an ideal society.
Might these activities be like playing games... but better, on the very same bases that Steve considers? I believe that there is a slight possibility that this is the case. Let me formulate it for you in a more concrete way:
Steve Johnson sez: Games are interesting and complex. They are actually vast systems which one can journey into, to figure out, that represent a certain theory of society. For example, in the Sims you control the lives of fun-loving leisurely humans. In Black & White you attempt to convert worshippers to gain religious power.
I sez: More complex and interesting than the world that we live in, a series of inter-related societies all relying on each other, with an almost limitless history and personally involving future that determines the course of our actual lives?
Steve Johnson sez: Well, not that.

Games are not as complex as reality. So, in those terms, reality should be MORE fascinating, and we should be thinking about that.
The effects of being alive are more personally changing and fulfilling than those of playing a game. Getting a new job or girlfriend, or helping a friend, or working for charity, is worth more to anyone than getting a highscore or beating Black & White 2. If not, you are not existing in the same way as most people would accept as sensible, normal, or perhaps even moral.
Playing a game is NOT as interesting as being alive. So that any insight gained from playing them is not equal to the insight you would have gained in taking the effort to consider life.
The theory behind a game is intrinsically graspable, within moments. It is easy to figure out GTA - it involves a limited set of skills, such as driving, shooting, stealing etc. The Sims? Play it, for god's sake, you make houses for idiots and they throw parties, Tamagotchi with DFS sofas. You do not play to figure out the theory, but to keep exploiting it for your own ends. Because games are easier than life.
I accept little of Steve's argument. Games are full of variables, do constitute a system, and are complex and engaging. You do have to figure out the system to play them. They are moreso like this than previous games. However, these facets might make them an interesting item for leisure consumption, but do not intrinsically improve a person in any noticeable way comparable with living fully and honestly. Questions: why do those who are avid gamesplayers often seem unusual and awkward? Why are they sometimes obsessive figures who others do not see as improving the world? Why do they seem to fixate on set goals that revolve more around them or an issue of geek culture rather than something wider?
This advanced culture of gaming does not seem to be equipping anybody to do anything. I do not see games becoming parts of people's education and allowing them to deal with the systems in life as well as those in game worlds. I see them ignoring the world and playing games instead, which is personally very helpful to me. I'll give money to charity: you buy Morrowmind! Ta!
And, I say exasperatedly, for I have been coming across this argument since I was an Amiga Power reading child, games are not cultural artifacts: compare the social theory of Plato's Republic with any of the games Steve mentions, or even might mention. Compare the life-changing effects of art on people compared with a game. Games are consumable leisure items that, although presumably improving hand-eye co-ordination, although sometimes being funny or satirical or puzzling or deep or comprising of an interesting system, they do not offer anything close to what is offered by cultural artefacts. It is no reason to play them because they are 'good', or 'educating', or 'improving'. That is the reason to be alive and be thoughtful. I think I am most pissed off with Steve's implicit summoning of moral egoism - the very old viewpoint that morality is good because it improve you - and linking it with Zelda: The Wind Waker. A fun game, which I have enjoyed, but I learnt nothing from it and I refuse to think it improved my capacity for anything else but killing monsters and collecting gems.
(You can read more about Steve's theory of how games improve thinking in yet another Guardian article, if you are interested in just how games are supposed to encleverise us.)

Steve has also released books, as well as annoying my eyes in the paper. His book "Everything Bad Is Good For You" was reviewed in the Guardian, and better picked apart there than I could attempt. Yes, modern entertainment is absorbing and complex, with mini-series full of crossy-twisty plotlines, and games with lots of things going on. But Steve reckons this will make you 'smarter' - sadly I am not seeing evidence of this in the media, in my classes, or in my life. It makes you better at watching TV (and watching more of it), it does not improve cognitive or intellectual ability. Unless knowing how many times Jack Bauer has spent an hour giving an emergency tracheotomy to an infant using only a drainpipe is some heretofore undiscovered psychological measure of genius.
Additionally, Steve allegedly makes a classic correlational analysis error - see the fourth paragraph of the book review - which shows that watching lots of films does not teach you even basic facts from A-Level psychology research methods. Otherwise my students would not look at me so blankly in class, as if across a vast feary divide full of clown's smirks. In fact, I'll use the argument that rising IQ over the past few decades is linked with the mentally improving nature of pop culture in class, and see which eager teens pop their shoulder in the rush to answer such an easy question.
As well as this, he appears to have gone back to the very paper that showed how wrong his argument was to peddle the self-same stuff! (And you were thinking that I was picking on him for no reason.) And then he wrote another, more chatty article on the same subject, concluding yet again that "video games force you to speculate about what's going on under the hood. If you don't think about the underlying mechanics of the simulation - even if that thinking happens in a semi-conscious way - you won't last very long in the game. You have to probe to progress". Well, isn't it just better than going to school? Don't people use this skill to be more thoughtful in everyday life? (Note: in the event I ever managed to write a book, I would not likely turn down the chance to big it up in the same paper multiple times, so please be aware of my own possible hypocrisy).
You do have to admire the tenacity of a man, however, who writes articles in the paper that printed this 'digested read' of his book. It certainly was not altogether flattering!

I conclude my argument with the reviewer of Everything Bad Is Good For You concluding that: "Everything Bad Is Good for You is in the end most interesting as an example of a particular philistine current in computer-age thinking. In an age of digitised media, everything is reduced to, and judged by, its brute sum of 'information'. 'What are the rewards of reading?' Johnson asks rhetorically at one point. The answer is: 'the information conveyed by the book, and the mental work you have to do to process and store that information.'"
The lack of interest in truth or falsity implied by this paragraph chills me. It does follow on from Steve's inherently tortuous arguments, but to see it like this is very worrisome. Is this what thought is the subject of now, mere 'information'? Information can be many things: for example knowledge, belief, or opinion. Are we not now to distinguish between them?
Of course, if Steve is right, then I will be very pleased, as his argument is that games will improve people. If this is true, I will be very surprised, but in a nice way. Let's hope that somehow it happens, and that games are not actually just silly things that you play to ignore this globalised world, full of pain and the knowledge that our actions are not good enough to help anybody.

To lighten the mood - some excellent 'bad things that are good for you' that I have invented, that would exist on our very own The Internet:
A website entitled "maureen lipman has no r's". Pictures of Maureen, with her arse, are presented, with captions such as "no arse here!". Also, the joke is that there is an 'r' in her name actually yes! It's a bit like "X ate my balls", but with r's.
"Webstickle bricks". 'Where have you been, Simkins, the board meeting ended an hour ago!' 'Sorry, I stayed up all night smoking dope and giggling over webstickle bricks, because they are stickle bricks, but on the web. However I am not too hungover to realise that I have lost my job, and will probably spend the rest of my life being very angry with myself and physically abusing my family because of it.'
Internet trivia quiz nights, run over massive MSN IM channels run by a syndicate, with a money prize paid in Amazon wishlist items. 'Fastest googler wins... find a webpage that lists the precise chronological progression of Z80 chipset improvements. You'll have to use boolean operators for this one!'
MaraTRON. I imagine you'd run down a street, slightly out of breath in your hush puppies, being hit by frisbies. This is just a scary dream I had.

Each one would expand our intellect so!