tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-205999482024-03-18T20:36:24.920-07:00Draw, Run, Write.I'm a no 1 winner and supergenius and this blog is what people like me go around saying n shitohminous_thttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362629902969757305noreply@blogger.comBlogger1642125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20599948.post-69799730665616340192024-03-18T20:35:00.000-07:002024-03-18T20:35:35.864-07:00Abridged Regressive Right<p>Chalk it up to narcissism of small differences, but a fair criticism of me would be that I spend almost no time here shitting on Andrew Tate, if I've ever mentioned him here at all. Or Sargon of Aakad or whatever, who else? Alex Jones, I certainly feel I mention Donald Humphrey Trump, the Loser's President, and Jordan Buttersworth Peterson, effeminate postmodern guru often enough to be self conscious of it. I would readily concede that I don't go hard on the right wing of things as much as I pick at the left wing.</p><p>I guess in my personal history, I'm not certain there's even a post there. How deep do I have to dig to say that Tucker Carlson or Matt Walsh are insufficient to the task of explaining anything about the world? There is also a great deal of redundancy between criticising the right, and being an atheist. The right as it exists, not so much in Australia because of mandatory preferential voting, but certainly US and UK politics, has very few perches for me to get on board with because of all the god bothering, monarchism and probably biggest for me: economic mismanagement.</p><p>There will also be a great deal of redundancy in describing the regressive right and the regressive left. </p><p>Both regressive right and left are tribal, by which I mean they operate double standards for insiders vs outsiders.</p><p>Both regressive right and left, have withdrawn <b>the consent of the loser</b>, viewing the people's right to choose the <i>other</i> to govern them as illegitimate. (though there is a legitimate point about who started this death-spiral, and I am fairly certain it is the US political right aka Republicans).</p><p>Both regressive right and left assert rather than argue. The both have a <b>fatal conceit</b> that they are in possession of universal ideals, and everything is simply a failure of commitment to realizing those ideals. </p><p>Both regressive right and left can be characterized as "believing in lies" and will therefore "lie for those beliefs" though we might substitute "lies" for intellectually bankrupt ideas.</p><p>Right, so a lot of overlap. Two sides, analogous bad behaviour. </p><p>Conservatism, ideally is not that interesting, it's almost just the party-pooper role. Everyone's excited, conservatives <i>need</i> to burst that bubble. </p><p>Allow me to regress to Chesterton's Fence, because Chesterton specified conditions under which a fence could or could not be destroyed and described not a conservative custodian but "the more intelligent type of reformer".</p><p>A helpful dichotomy I find, much more so than left-right, is careerist-vocationalist. I think career conservatives likely do not understand the useful function of conservatism, and are subsequently prone to getting mired in the past, and probably confuse conservatism for nationalism. The adopt not just a literal "genesis" myth of lost eden, but a figurative one on top - narratives that take the form "everything was good until <i>x</i> came along." A yearning for a past as an ideal. </p><p>I assert my experience that most lay people are fairly capable of describing what an ideology like communism is about. If I ask a lay person "what is communism?" they generally don't reply with an example, but some summary of the idea like "it's where everyone owns everything" or "workers own the businesses, farms etc." I assert that it is also my experience, that almost no lay person can do the same for fascism, just as when you ask people what communism is nobody says "well it's like Stalin" or "Mao" when you ask a lay person what fascism is they will say "the Nazis". </p><p>I would expect the same inability to describe what something is if I asked lay people what they think "mercantilism" is, or "Georgism" because these theories/ideologies are obscure. Fascism is not obscure, almost every highschool graduate has probably somewhere in their education been exposed to WW2. Yet there is much confusion as to what fascism consists of. I share this confusion, there is a vague and important intuition in which fascism is not defined by hatred of Jews, to recognize that though the Jewish diaspora will likely always be vulnerable to attack, future manifestations of fascism may target other groups. Once you subtract that, it is harder to differentiate fascism from totalitarianism and imperialism. </p><p>Now, this outcome shouldn't be surprising <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism#Definitions">because there really isn't <i>an</i> answer</a>. You can click through the link and get a general picture, but one definition I like is the idea that "the nation" exists within the blood of the people. So in my case I'm an Australian that spent a significant period of my life living in Mexico. I would then in the eyes of a fascist, somehow not simply be Australian because I happened to be born in the nation state of Australia, but that I somehow <i>am</i> Australia (putting me in mind of Steven Colbert's "I Am America and You Can Too") and when I lived in Mexico, I could not in anyway become somehow Mexican, but rather was corrupting Mexico by introducing Australia.</p><p>What one might be surprised to note in the definitions of fascism is how frequently "anti-conservatism" is sighted as a feature of fascism. </p><p>I should also invoke nationalism at this point, the regressive-left would probably view, somewhat correctly, nation states as "social constructions" and few people make the distinction between "construction" and "convention", I'm more inclined to call nations a convention by which people around the world self-organize. Nation states are now so ubiquitous, that I would guess, most people don't even think the world could be another way, nor realize that nations are relatively recent ideas. </p><p>I suspect this is because nations often map onto historical kingdoms, like Britain, France, The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden etc. I would forgive most people for not realizing that nations like Italy (1861) and Germany (1870 and 1990) are <i>younger</i> than the United States of America (1776 or 1619 in regressive-left years). Timothy Snyder talks about these conceits of oldness and youngness a lot. Nationalism is so ubiquotous that if you are like me, you don't think of it as a 19th or 20th century idea that won out, more so than ideas like "Democracy" "Communism" "Fascism" "Colonialism" "Imperialism" etc. </p><p>My guess, is that it is through the broad ignorance of concepts like nationalism and fascism, that the right can slip. It can cease to be conservative, and simply become an entity that retains power for powers sake - esteem, salary, the offices etc. while being largely indifferent to the function they perform.</p><p>I like Never-Trumper and likely, "true" conservative David Frum who said that basically The Republican Party recognized that the US was changing, and faced the choice of either changing themselves or to try and game democracy and retain power while declining in relevance. They chose the latter. I'm also dimly aware that Ronald Reagan broke a kind of gentleman's agreement that nobody pander to religious America, and he famously said something like "I know that you cannot endorse me, but know that I endorse you." as a wink and a smile. </p><p>I also accept Johnathan Haidt's identification of Newt Gingrich beginning the massive polarization of Washington by forbidding intermingling and bipartisanship of his republicans. This was the right's withdrawal of consent. Eventually you get Mitch McConnell who basically takes it as the republican's divine right to stop anyone but the Republican Party from actually governing. We see the clear cut regressive double standards where McConnell blocks confirmation of a SCOTUS judge because it is an election year, then rushes the confirmation of a SCOTUS judge mere weeks from an election. </p><p>I think pearl clutching prudes on the far-left who decry everything as fascist, while not convincing me they have any concrete understanding or even approximation of fascism, are reacting to some real intuition. The far-right, much like the far-left, cannot accept or infer anything from, their own lack of popularity. They are totalitarian and anti-liberal. </p><p>The major difference being that the right appears to me, to yearn for an imagined past with some basis in reality - in many ways things <i>were</i> better in the 1950s, unless you like living outside an iron-lung, fucking a member of the same sex (consensually), or being physically capable of turning the wheels of your car while at a standstill. Wealth inequality was smaller, real wage growth was higher, housing was affordable, it was really worthwhile to complete a bachelor's degree and you could expect your standard of living to grow, while children roamed free and blissfully ignorant of how dangerous it was to do so.</p><p>Herbert Marcuse <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Critique_of_Pure_Tolerance">argued for "liberating tolerance"</a> which argued for intolerance and repression of right-wing ideas, while practicing tolerance for left-wing ideas/movements. This argument I suspect lives and dies on the premise that the left is in possession of an ideal. Something I feel is the fatal conceit. But change this premise to the ideal being "1950s Americana" or "Ukraine-as-Russia" or "The Holy Land belongs to Christendom/Islam" and I'm confident Marcuse's argument, so long as one believes they possess the ideal, is the same argument for an illiberal right, where we must not tolerate left-wing causes and only tolerate right-wing causes.</p><p>The regressive right is depressing for it's lack of imagination. Born of the substitution hypothesis - the idea that "wokeness" is a natural consequence of the decline of religiosity in society, so society had to invent new religion - has some merits but I find it incredibly frustrating as framed. For example, why has religiousity declined? Many right or right-leaning commentators seem to think Christianity needs to make a comeback, as if we <i>just dropped the ball</i> or some shit. I posit that religiosity has declined because religion is very bad at describing reality. Where the substitution hypothesis has legs is pointing out one doesn't go from miserable Christian to happy Atheist. Losing faith in god is but the removal of an obstacle in the way of learning how to be happy on occasion in an imperfect world. </p><p>Being unable to divorce, likely for many has some benefits, salvaging perfectly okay relationships. It would also have had some very negative impacts like trapping people in abusive and loveless relationships, and sentencing generations to untreated misery perpetuated through dysfunctional families and learned attachment styles. </p><p>It's these kind of vanilla issues that an ideal historic right-and-left could symbiotically navigate together, and form the basis of intellectually bankrupt memes like "Judeo-Christian values" among the regressive right today.</p><p>I tire of this subject, what is worth emphasizing above all the detail, is the process. First the right adopts the fatal conceit that they know the ideal, they know the correct thing to do. Then believing yourself in possession of an ideal, you withdraw your consent to the very concept of losing, you view lost elections, defeated bills etc. not as your failing but societies. Any contrary perspective on your ideal is not friction through which you could attempt to move onward and upward, but illegitimate toll booth, delaying your arrival at the promised land.</p><p>Before you know it, you don't even need evidence to conclude that an election was stolen. You begin arguing against the concept of elections themselves. You resent anyone else exercising the power you would have for yourself. The extent of your criticism is simply determining who is in or out, you do not criticize yourself, only others.</p><p>Before you know it, believing yourself in possession of the ends, you embrace Machiavelli's "The ends justify the means" and before you know it, you believe that you are not what you do, and not even who you say you are, but who you think you are.</p><p>And suddenly you are Tucker Carlson, going to a Russian supermarket and marvelling at the price of bread, and all you have to do, to get cheap bread, is live under Putin.</p>ohminous_thttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362629902969757305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20599948.post-86153853716505447972024-03-17T18:21:00.000-07:002024-03-17T18:21:21.385-07:00Abridged Historic Right<p>The right, like the left, to my understanding came out of the French Revolution. Specifically, the foundation of conservatism is considered by many to be <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflections_on_the_Revolution_in_France">Edmund Burke's "Reflections on The French Revolution.</a>" A book I have not read.</p><p>So my abridgement is very compact, like the strap that keeps a Piano Accordion shut so the Polka cannot play. Which is also a metaphor for respectable conservatism - the voice that says "let's not get carried away".</p><p>Done well, conservatism is a bridle on enthusiasm to protect us from unbridled enthusiasm. Conservatism fundamentally exists to protect us from unintended consequences.</p><p>Let me try and put it thus: Most of us would agree that few people will miss mosquitos. As far as I know, the technology does not exist, to eradicate mosquitos, but I would assert that even something as likely to be as universally popular as eradicating mosquitos there would likely be unintended consequences.</p><p>A properly functioning conservative movement could be said to be rooted in or to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_fence">Chesterton's fence</a>, which is easier said than done. Chesterton's fence says that if someone come's along and makes essentially an appeal to personal incredulity, like "I don't understand why this fence is here, let's get rid of it." Chesterton's fence states one cannot alter the status quo without understanding why the status quo is the status quo.</p><p>Perhaps a fun example of Chesterton's fence failing would be Southpark inventor Mr Garrison's gyroscoping transport alternative "IT" where it takes one customer pointing out the redundant control buttons rendering the phallic and penetrative default controls unnecessary. Within the context of the story, Mr Garrison's design preferences could be safely scrapped. However, why not cut this gag from the show? In the greater context of Southpark satire, Mr Garrison's intrusive controls serve the function of illustrating how painful Airport security and Air travel has become, as residents of the world embrace anal penetration as the lesser discomfort.</p><p>A more complicated real world example, might be the cohesion of religious dogma driven bigotry to conservative institutions - like bigotry directed at homosexuals. It strikes me that Chesterton's Fence, a thought problem that came from a text called "The Thing: Why I Am A Catholic" would oblige one when a voice comes along and says "I don't understand why homosexuals exist, we should get rid of them." would not be permitted to take any action to try and purge the existence or practice of homosexuality from society, given that it is a more ancient tradition than say Catholicism. </p><p>I feel it should be pointed out, that as at writing it is likely the case that anyone can observe <i>unintended consequences</i> arising from reforms that I am glad have taken place - the election of Barack Obama to the highest office of the USA, has had unintended consequences, that stand in stark contrast to Shepard Fairey's "Hope" posters. We are not living in the hoped for future, I assert. Similarly, there appear to be unintended consequences arising from marriage equality, a broad international movement that allows same-sex couples to legally marry and enjoy equal legal status to cross-sex couples. Those I have personally to take largely as hearsay, but it seems to be an unintended consequence of a changed perception of gay men within Queer identities. </p><p>These unintended consequences, it should be pointed out, are not the realization of those negative consequences evoked by actual conservatives to try and scaremonger the public out of these reforms. Neither the advent of a black president, nor same-sex marriage have lead to the collapse of society. They have had <i>unintended consequences</i> that a historic conservative, which is to say, functional right should have soberly attempted to identify.</p><p>In some ways, under systems like the Westminister parliamentary system, the left-right historical dynamic is somewhat baked into the institution - commonly known as a system of checks and balances. I would specifically refer to the institutional dynamic of having a lower and upper house, or the houses of parliament and the house of lords, or the house of legislation and the house of review.</p><p>My previous post described an ideal left as a loose coalition with vigorous internal debate that are aligned on the broad recognition that some things have to change. In a legislative house, we have an institutional forum for these debates to take place, and in a house of review we have an institutional forum for the output, proposed reforms, to be scrutinized and reviewed for unintended consequences.</p><p>It is not that these designs realize so much as aspire to those ideals. In the UK the house of Lords were traditionally given to Land Lords and Clergy from the Church of England, not conservatives. Just privileged elites that were grandfathered in, that no doubt performed some conservative function. Furthermore, it seemed that despite the strictly conservative makeup of the House of Lords, Britain seemed impatient to have conservative voices heard in a debate, and so the legislative house, has been dominated by a <i>conservative party</i>. So we have left-right dynamics nested within institutions that are already set up with left-right institutions. </p><p>A historical conception of the right, are defensive custodians. I'm not so certain if historically, those we label conservatives actually perform this function. This is because, I would guess, the status quo isn't a static status quo, it will contain some kind of agreed upon active path toward progress.</p><p>For example, deregulation is a now, somewhat antiquated path to progress. The idea that cutting regulatory oversight will allow commercial enterprise to liberate us all. This <i>can</i> be progress, if the circumstances that demand change, so the reality being, that markets (or whatever) are <i>over</i>regulated. However, circumstances may be that something is <i>under</i>regulated, like the financial sector in the lead up to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. In which case, further deregulation is not progress but regress.</p><p>What needs must be done however, needs must be debated rigorously on the left, such that the right can consent to the best course of action to re-regulate a financial sector. That debate could be made more rigorous by left-wing voices from the 70s who brought in the deregulation reforms, now conservatively defending the reckless abandonment of reforms implemented. Chesterton's fence demands voices that for example, can represent why exchange rates were floated, why the gold standard was abandoned. This would be conservativism, or the right wing, functioning as I assert it to be historically intended.</p><p>To look at the sporting world by contrast, there has been a recent-ish push for deregulation, specifically of what qualifies someone to participate in women's sporting activities. Without getting into the issue, I raise it merely to point out that in this case the right-wing can be generally characterised as being <i>against</i> deregulation, in stark contrast to their attitude toward regulating the financial sector.</p><p>Both positions are reconcilable, as is the right's resistance to <i>conserving</i> the environment, the amazon rainforest etc. They are actively resisting changes to the status quo of exploiting the natural environment, hence why conservatives, are not as a rule, nature conservationists. Though there are certainly examples historically of conservative governments creating nature reserves and what not.</p><p>Progress requires friction, the left doesn't want to operate on slippery ice, it <i>needs</i> traction of some kind to operate safely. Ideally, the right would be like grass, operating on grass is fairly straightforward. It may be that the right functions more like ice-skates, in terms of, it can allow us to navigate on very dangerous, slippery ice, but not without a degree of skill, learning, training. </p><p>I'm not sure if the symbiosis required between right and left tendencies is analogous to running across an open field, or whether it is more analogous to pulling off a triple-axle in ice-skates.</p><p>What I actually see, in practice are a polarized conflict between two radical left-wingers taking place in an extremely dangerous environment. Which is the subject I will turn to next. </p><p>I don't look at institutions like the Republican Party, and think Burkeian conservatives. I see some corruption of the right, into something functionally more like a radical left, I see the left, as <i>also</i> a very radical left, but in many ways the radical elements are a smokescreen for a position far more conservative.</p><p>Stay tuned, or not.</p>ohminous_thttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362629902969757305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20599948.post-91587259685444720112024-03-15T22:41:00.000-07:002024-03-15T22:41:24.186-07:00Abridged Historic Left<p> I am merely aiming to be approximately right so as to avoid being precisely wrong in these descriptions. Historically, to be on the left was to be pro-reform in some way, but I don't want to pigeonhole the left-wing into being only concerned with reform and absolve it of responsibility for revolutions, revolutions are excessively left.</p><p>Furthermore historically, the whole left vs. right wing comes from French Parliament in the lead up to the French Revolution - at the birth of these semantics, the left were supporters of revolution.</p><p>So, there are a number of historic and respectable, even admirable behaviours that could be described as left. </p><p>I like a definition of left as "someone who is critical of the institution to which they belong." </p><p>More fundamentally, what I notice is that the universe is dynamic. To be left is to recognize that <i>something needs to change</i>. That something being a something that is in the purview of our control, in response to the readily observable fact that <i>things are changing</i>. A response is necessary, what works today won't work forever, and if anything we will probably lag behind the threshold where change is advantageous but hopefully not behind the threshold at which change was necessary.</p><p>If that is all a bit abstract, consider the Edo period of Japanese history. The Tokugawa Shogunate did it's best in so far as possible, to hermetically seal Japan off from the rest of the world. It limited foreign access to the port of Nagasaki, and it was mostly Portuguese. Certainly, you can go to museums today and see Ieyasu Tokugawa's reading glasses on display such that it was not the case that Japan was so sealed off that it was completely unaware of foreign innovation. That much as they tried to create a kind of homeostasis within the territories they commanded, beyond their boundaries the world continued to change. </p><p>The Tokugawa Shogunate ruled Japan with an unbroken line for about 200 years, the Japanese renaissance. It produced an enormous cultural dividend for the world because this is where distinct Japanese arts including music and theatre, and philosophy including martial and tea ceremony, all flourished. Then the gunships came and the US' Commodore Perry forced Japan to reopen, bringing about the Meiji restoration and eventually the Pacific War and Tom Cruise's "The Last Samurai."</p><p>But even cultural homeostasis requires some kind of leftist presence - which is why historically I view left-right distinctions as useful in a way that they aren't now, because there's a symbiosis between two vital components. Somewhere I have photos from my last visit to Japan where we visited the foundries which foresaw Japan's vulnerability to western gunships, by a samurai (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egawa_Hidetatsu">Egawa Hidetatsu</a>) who suggested for Japan to maintain it's closed-off status it would have to change by building sea forts with sufficient fire power to keep foreign navies out. </p><p>Everything about keeping Japan closed to the world might strike anybody as inherently conservative, but keep in mind "left" and "right" are relative terms, for the Bakafu government merely adopting western military technology like cannons was progressive. </p><p>In the same way, without getting to subject of the next post "the regressive left" someone can be the left-wing at a dinner party of left-wingers. You might think "of course, the <i>far</i> left." and maybe, but maybe not, the left-wing person relative to a left-wing dinner table is whoever is making the case that the <i>left</i> itself needs to change. In the 70s-80s for example, this would be the person that recognizes that Capital will go on strike if Labour Unions and full employment remains too strong. (Which is basically what happened in the 70s and ushered in neoliberalism in the 80s.)</p><p>Such to say, someone fulfilling the historical role (as per my opinion, remember that and merely weigh its quality) would sit at a dinner party as their friends sip champagne and replace the cigarettes in their cigarette holders uttering things like "workers control the means of production" and "we must throw off the shackles of worker exploitation for united we are strong!" the left-wing person at that left wing party might offer the criticism "you do not go far enough! we must embark on a journey to program ourselves as one might program the loom to weave an altogether different kind of man <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Soviet_man">the New Soviet Man!</a>" this would be technically left wing, it would just be stupid, kind of like suggesting the antidote to excesses is merely the matter of ingesting more of the poison. Alternately the left-wing person at the party might remark "but there is an extent that the exploitation of labour can become quite ordinary. We trade labour against risk - we gain our wages, capital must gain their profits. We trade our time and energy for risk, which the employer assumes. Should their business fail, they still pay our wages on the road to bankruptcy. There needs to be a <i>mutual</i> accounting."</p><p>This illustration sets up serendipitously, an illustration of how a healthy functional left could appear to manifest. Because both these dissenting voices could be present at the same party, nested within the left-wing of society as a whole, as two left-wing left-wingers relative to the right-wing left-wingers - those who just want to keep running the same left-wing program of reform as ever.</p><p>There are more ways to conceive reform than there are to defend the status quo. We should expect the left to take the form of diverse coalitions in vigorous disagreement about the best course of action.</p><p>In a well functioning society, the left would always be present, always have influence but only be given responsibility infrequently - in times of catastrophic breakdowns, or long-coming stagnation. </p><p>The left ideally achieves a kind of symbiosis with the right. This is underpinned by the important concept that is under threat presently from a pincer attack by the regressive right and left - <b><i>The Consent of the Loser</i>.</b></p><p>In an ideal, rather than look like an existential threat to the right, the left should appear more like a menu. Take an issue like climate change.</p><p>Ideally, the left would be a coalition of people who broadly agree that anthropic climate change is an issue, and the left's first task is to convince the public at large, by largely convincing the right that climate change is an issue.</p><p>Taking our first diversion from the ideal, an ideal left has to coexist with an ideal right, no ideal right can assert without evidence or argumentation that it is <i>never</i> the case <i>that anything</i> need change. We may be living in a world where whatever we call the right, is disrespectfully simply adamant that climate change can't necessitate <i>any</i> reaction, which is something a losing left, cannot be expected to consent to, which will I suppose have the natural effect of denigrating the constructive parts of the left and elevating extremists like "Just Stop Oil" in the UK who are committed to making nuisances of themselves publicly.</p><p>But we may have in this coalition of the left, people who recommend an effectively priced cap and tax emissions scheme targeting the heaviest emitting industries of greenhouse gases coaligned with a group who wish to outlaw all animal-based diets, even pet ownership.</p><p>From this coalition, an ideal right would work to elevate those in the left coalition who have the least intrusive solutions to offer while diminishing the more extreme on the left with the most costly proposals.</p><p>That just about completes my take on a historic left. In summation, a historically utilitarian role of the left, is to challenge the status quo in a spirit of open collaboration. Including it's <i>own</i> status quo. Because fundamentally the universe is dynamic. Tomorrow will resemble today, but it most importantly is <i>not</i> just today again, there will subsequently, be things that need doing. Which is why I am for a left, that functions without polarizing.</p><p>In my own history, my sympathies lean leftwards, but the left is somewhat culpable for it's own contributions via it's own behaviour for the dysfunctional world we now live in.</p><p><b><br /></b></p>ohminous_thttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362629902969757305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20599948.post-80189264384639607392024-03-14T03:06:00.000-07:002024-03-14T03:06:40.049-07:00International Women's Day 2024: Another Dead Woman<p>I'm male, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunked_term">questionably</a> a man. Tracking through the years, I find my personal awareness of international women's day tracking downwards over time. This year I would not have known but for the google doodle of the day, one that furthermore required me to hover over with my mouse to interpret. I thought it might be international quilt day or something. Had I known it wasn't I probably wouldn't have paid it any mind.</p><p>Yes, of course, International Women's Day isn't <i>for</i> me. It isn't <i>about </i>me. I am precisely, not the point. Bringing me at least, to the question of flattery - the Kantian ethic of always treating a conscious person, or peoples as an ends, not a means. What for me, is an honest reaction to something like International Women's Day? Which coworker am I in the music dance experience as women of the world shake their maracas to defiant jazz?</p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VngE9BiEe7Q?si=8t5QiD8M3YDwJA8m" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe><p>Is International Women's Day Galentine's Day by another name?</p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pYv1zjBOMew?si=48I_4qmFWlzyYQXm" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe><p>Am I free to do my level best to simply leave it to those who would have it? Am I a free enough person upon this earth to choose not to care? Like I would react to the Adelaide Crows or the Geelong Cats winning an AFL premiership. I personally was far more excited to see my Blues beat the Brisbane Lion's by 1 point at the GABBA after being eliminated by them in the semi-final last year.</p><p>Well I would have not cared, but for strange and mysterious happenings on an otherwise quiet IWD. The strange thing was <i>facebook</i> <i>notified me</i> of some friends' posts. It seems most people like me have learned perhaps over the course of Covid, that facebook is as much a means to stay out of touch as it is to stay in touch. A way to learn who your friends really aren't as bold declarations of who they would like to be make you forget the authentic reasons you are friends in the first place: usually that they are good and decent people, mostly harmless.</p><p>So it transpired that facebook told me on IWD of two profoundly impactful statements made by male friends. By profoundly impactful, I mean they got more than 50+ "like" reactions. The first was from someone who was personally proximate to the latest mass shooting in the USA calling for prayers. The second was from someone responding to the news that, and I must be careful to describe what actually happened, the police arresting a man for killing <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/mar/08/samantha-murphy-alleged-killer-ballarat-woman-name-body-search-ntwnfb#:~:text=Samantha%20Murphy%3A%20Patrick%20Stephenson%20identified%20as%20alleged%20killer%20of%20Ballarat%20woman,-Magistrate%20lifts%20order&text=The%20man%20accused%20of%20murdering,preventing%20him%20from%20being%20named.">Samantha Murphy</a> in my hometown Ballarat. A marking of the passage from likely dead, to presumed dead with confidence, though to my knowledge her body has not been recovered and even though her alleged killer had been named I know nothing of the police's case against him.</p><p>The coincidence of two tragedies and public responses to them on facebook I'll be honest prompted me to want to write this facetious status update:</p><p>"I wish to once again affirm that I am for everything good and against everything bad. I will not stay quiet or silent while injustices persist. I take responsibility by recognizing the need for betterment and call upon those responsible to stop *not* implementing the simple solutions to problems that have persisted for almost all of human history."</p><p>Something like that. I refrained because I assumed that most people would assume that I wasn't commenting on the generalized behaviour, and how I view it in many ways as counter productive, verging on vacuous* though I acknowledge that for some distressed people saying something to someone might give them personal relief...I assume most people would assume I was referring to Sam Murphy's news developments, making light of a <i>specific</i> situation. </p><p>*(By vacuous I mean, that with some confidence, I can predict that most public calls to action assume that all the worlds problems could be solved if people just committed to doing everything correctly, as though we know what is correct and that it is within not even most people's power to actually apprehend and implement correct behaviour.)</p><p>One of my friends who posted, I consider a very authentic person. The other, time has wearied me into stark cynicism. I worry that posting such messages relieves him too much. We are all in some ways running a newsroom, susceptible to noticing how great tragedy is for ratings.</p><p>By 2024, the imagined discourse I don't even witness likely riles me more than were I to actually look to my newsfeed and see what people were saying about another woman killed by a man not even known to her or the family being revealed on IWD. Reported on by bright young women news correspondents with their whole lives ahead of them.</p><p>I carry to the present day the damage of the mob's catharsis-voice in the wake of the murders of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Jill_Meagher">Jill Meagher</a>, the murder of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Eurydice_Dixon">Eurydice Dixon</a>, the murder of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Aya_Maasarwe">Aya Maasarwe</a> who I must confess, the last's name I couldn't recall off the top of my head. If Kimberle Krenshaw demanded I stand and "say their names" I'd get the first two, not Aya's. </p><p>People who might remember the furore over Eurydice's murder and the media frenzy covering and generating the public response may also remember a few lonely banners carried to the vigils and protests asking that we also consider a woman murdered by her husband at approximately the same time that Eurydice was murdered by a stranger, can you remember her name?</p><p>I remember she was ethnically asian, though I can no longer recall whether she had a Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian etc. name. As such I can't exclude that the failure of her murder to gain any real traction in the public discourse, as attributable to racism - white victim takes precedence in a white culture. Equally I cannot exclude the implicit implication that society broadly still regards women as property, getting killed by your husband is sad, getting killed by a <i>stranger</i> is outrageous, what right does a <i>stranger</i> have to kill a woman? </p><p>Okay. Having read that last paragraph, I hope you read this <i>my memory, or impressions of the case was wrong</i> and I who thinks about the issues women raise am as prone to basing my conclusions on things I assume I know, but do not, as anyone else: the woman's name was <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-18/shuo-dong-jailed-for-murder-of-qi-yu-in-sydney/12679336">Qi Yu</a>, she was murdered in Sydney by her housemate, not her husband, both Chinese nationals he was a construction worker who had overstayed his visa, he plead guilty, internet searches by him indicated the murder was premeditated, the judge accepted testimony by a psychiatric assessor that her murderer had schizophrenia though there's not much evidence this was accounted for in sentencing so much as his guilty plea.</p><p>So yeah, the likelihood that her case was eclipsed by Eurydice's was likely racism*. Finally looking up the details of Qi Yu's case, I'm put in mind of when a home intruder in October 2008 caused the death of a Chinese student who jumped from a balcony to try and escape her assailant, I remember it as a horrific crime that seemed to me to be barely making the news compared to Britt Lapthorne's death that had dominated headlines since her disappearance in September 2008 one month earlier. There was much criticism of Croatian police, Australians, looking at what GoT would make a tourist destination for losers everywhere, as dark and scary and backward. Meanwhile as Liao "Elva" Wei's mother stated she "thought Elva was safe here," at least according to a family friend. Her daughter's death remains as unsolved by Australian law enforcement as Britt's by Croatian law enforcement.</p><p>*(I'd still hesitate to conclude this strongly. A quick consultation with Googletrends indicate that compared to Jill and Eurydice, white victims killed by white perpatrators, both Qi and Aya were non white and killed by non-white men, I strongly suspect that Melburnian's particularly on the left are averse to touching non-white perpetrators for fear of looking like a Queensland Nationals voter.)</p><p>Is Australia racist? Of course it is. Do I think the people most vocal about racism are competent guides to a brighter tomorrow? Not at all.</p><p>I would still guess that the relative lack of coverage and public outcry as to women being killed by romantic partners, vs. women getting killed by a stranger with notable exceptions like the woman whose whole family got burned alive by her ex-partner, is akin to the disparity in public outcry about people who get killed by someone with a car versus people who get killed by someone with a gun or blade. Driving is too relatable, as is dating and marriage and breakups.</p><p>Personal experience in Mexico I guess has somewhat inured me to Samantha Murphy's horrific demise. In my heart lives a woman, that I watched suffer mostly alone when her partner, my friend, disappeared one day, just before Christmas, never to be seen again. An experience that told me, long before the catastrophic implosion of the Titan submersible, that horror is a part of life, one that we need be capable of processing. At the time this man I knew joined 107,000 Mexican's who were registered as disappeared. I used to jog regularly by the Glorieta de las y los desaparecidos - the monument to the disappeared, where families and loved ones attach their own missing person in a monument to a Mexican tragedy. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/p/AF1QipMSr5MsRRE0btadjXZDU4DwdB0T1OfpMacdYqE3=s510" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="510" data-original-width="382" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/p/AF1QipMSr5MsRRE0btadjXZDU4DwdB0T1OfpMacdYqE3=s320" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo credit D. Hernandez T.</td></tr></tbody></table><p>The number now stands at 111,896, which excludes any missing person's that were later found dead. Yes in a nation roughly 5 times the size of Australia, 4,000 people disappear each year, never to be seen again. It's extremely rare for any of those 4,000 stories to really make the news. Not when cartels leave bodies in the streets or hanging from bridges. The thing is, I <i>never</i> saw any cartel related crime or violence in the four years I lived in Guadalajara. I saw people using drugs. I looked up where various Mexican cities ranked on "the world's most dangerous cities" a statistic that is determined by homicides per 100,000 population. Okay, nowhere in Mexico is as deadly as the town in Australia where someone was murdered in a population of 11. Furthermore, if a friend told you they were moving to Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia, Memphis, Milwaukee, Detroit or Cleveland you would probably picture them doing something akin to living in Fitzroy, Melbourne. Bondi, Sydney. You understand that millionaire athletes move to these towns and hit their clubs, enjoy fine dining. The same is true of Mexico, if you want a huge carbon footprint for <i>no fucking reason at all</i> go stay in the district of Roma, Mexico City, it's just like where you fucking came from.</p><p>The big difference is, where community volunteers coordinate to conduct a search across acres of Bushland where a woman disappeared on her Sunday jog, with multiple detectives working the case to gradually close in on someone to charge with her murder by looking at cell-phone tower data and whatever else, in Mexico my understanding is, you will probably have 5 different police explain you need to fill out a form when someone you love disappears. You will also not be able to exclude the possibility that the very officer you are talking to knows where your missing person is because they disappeared them. Mexico's present institutions are very broken, but Mexico's future, I feel, is bright.</p><p>A friend once told me "if you can spot it you've got it." and all I write is really my own testimony as to my own frank incompetence. I'm not <i>fit</i> to tackle the problem of violence in our society. Furthermore, life has delivered to me perspective that while Australia is not free from horror, it's societal response to violence against women is pretty good. </p><p>We have a slow, deliberate judicial process that is pretty good. This has the unfortunate effect though of meaning there might be a year between a particularly graphic crime capturing national attention, and the quiet to almost silent sentencing of the criminal. Police took into custody both Jill and Aya's killers within a matter of days, sentenced to 40 and 36 years respectively. Eurydice's killer turned himself in to police and was sentenced to 35 years.</p><p>There are of course numerous problems with the criminal justice system, and some, are likely baked in, unfixable, without omniscience. Prescience. </p><p>So perhaps it's fitting, rather than depressing, for IWD in my locale to be punctuated with an arrest of a killer of a woman. Justice is likely never going to take the form of swapping the guilty living for the innocent dead.</p><p>And that's where I'd like to think there's space for me to be an Adam Scott dancing along from a safe and respectable distance while women of the world shake their maracas on the day patriarchy generously allows them. Alas, I'm probably somewhere between Adam Scott and Zach Cherry trying actively <i>not</i> to participate while those hyping the day remain insensitive to my emotional confusion.</p><p>For example, how is one supposed to feel about propaganda?:</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSzJ0bLdhArKe1PbUWUU_lAiu7MS4_6yMsXtmMZaVoEP85W8gYlCacPi3PR-wv5_27Pg9lepQ2xY7yZs_QCiLGMMNUBFWibxOLypMSLtPBuW_HN1PweLNvHRRT5V54myx4U2N-NVNXoEAcG5zqgYddC7r8X8aEDy9oDw-hW1N60ohXIxu2494JcQ/s4000/20240216_115527.heic" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1800" data-original-width="4000" height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSzJ0bLdhArKe1PbUWUU_lAiu7MS4_6yMsXtmMZaVoEP85W8gYlCacPi3PR-wv5_27Pg9lepQ2xY7yZs_QCiLGMMNUBFWibxOLypMSLtPBuW_HN1PweLNvHRRT5V54myx4U2N-NVNXoEAcG5zqgYddC7r8X8aEDy9oDw-hW1N60ohXIxu2494JcQ/s320/20240216_115527.heic" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">*everything does not include co-ed education experiences. **nowhere does not include the numerous other places like MLC, some within walking distance.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic8A0uN2YkO7gy3q2AQ_bPNcDQLKi-8nuxEHJGvucn1re58pcOVT602hVK3mKBA_YCicNoU2kfAFaDec2FD8b54PItz2oSKlAgentmTGj2b6s1In5ARt0YT-JIcaLjmMDJExqNc4-Jl_7UBH4bAkRSW665H-br9oQNs3kxKfy-yJK1FzcapIqtQA/s4000/20240308_170034.heic" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="1800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic8A0uN2YkO7gy3q2AQ_bPNcDQLKi-8nuxEHJGvucn1re58pcOVT602hVK3mKBA_YCicNoU2kfAFaDec2FD8b54PItz2oSKlAgentmTGj2b6s1In5ARt0YT-JIcaLjmMDJExqNc4-Jl_7UBH4bAkRSW665H-br9oQNs3kxKfy-yJK1FzcapIqtQA/s320/20240308_170034.heic" width="144" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">has anyone ever said this? is it a former Pymble Ladies College slogan?</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>How long has it been since some pipe smoking singlet wearing father informed his daughter that she couldn't change the world like Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did because they were a <i>girl</i>. Who in this post "The Descent" world is still crushing little girl's dreams of cave exploration? Mountaineering? People <i>should</i> be discouraging kids from mountaineering, way too many tourists are climbing Mount Everest now, and <i>none of them</i> are changing the world. Of course, it's obviously a metaphor a metaphor for...for how girls need to ignore the naysayers* and forge their own path by enrolling in a finishing school.</p><p>*(and seriously, I would not be surprised if the people most guilty of broadcasting messages about what women can't do and can't achieve, are now feminists of the Iago variety.)</p><p>I've long been fascinated by the outdoor advertising put up by Methodist Ladies College. It is perhaps my marketing sensitivities, but I think I read them as intended, the target market is private school's customer base - parents (tweenage girls in Australia don't tend to grab The Financial Review on IWD and be so inspired they beg their parents to send them to Pymbles Ladies College, they are targeting affluent conservative adults). The strategy is to facilitate being able to deny sending your daughter to a finishing school, a safe environment where she will be shielded from the harsh real world while learning the skills necessary to avoid reality forever, by hopefully progressing through a series of gated institutions until they retire to a gated community or something. No, you can tell your friends, you are not doing that, you are sending them to be <i>challenged</i> and <i>inspired</i>. Even though if you can afford private tuition they will be challenged and inspired by being sent to a public coed school across town where refugee immigrants get to send their kids. The difference being the latter option contains real and certain risk - incompetent unmotivated teachers and administration, defective disciplinary programs etc. </p><p>I guess in pointing out my personal distaste for propaganda - propaganda that frequently misrepresents both femininity and misogyny, as per the Pymble Ladies College - I allude to a greater unintelligibility regarding feminism. It is no one thing, as are women themselves. There is also a distaste for the euphemism "ally" which is very much an off-the-shelf pre-packaged fait-accompli, not even a mule to be tailor fit. Functionally terms like "ally" and "allyship" and phrases like "being a good ally" are talking about serfdom, or protestantism or something. </p><p>An alliance is a deal struck over a shared goal. If we take a really one-sided negotiation, like the terms & conditions I agreed to use google products, that isn't something I negotiate, it is something I can take or leave. Which again is to say, I recognize that the invitation extended to me, and men like me is to lend my weight but not my mind, not my voice. A good ally follows and surrenders their resources to the cause.</p><p>But it's even more than that, I don't even need to touch any of the lukewarm buttons on the issues like sex and gender, feminine and female. I can simply invoke for intelligibility purposes <i>old</i> names like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Dworkin">Andrea Dworkin</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCUM_Manifesto">Valeria Solonas</a> compared to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Levy_(writer)">Ariel Levy</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Solnit">Rebecca Solnit</a> all feminists of previous generations, previous waves. </p><p>I do not see the current "wave" as innovating through clarity, cohesion either. Nor would I expect a wave born in the social media era, to produce clarity and cohesion. The best opportunity for alliances in the modern era, is in civilizing the wild-west of internet misinformation, much as "the west" had to be recivilized after the printing press created <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamphleteer">pamphleteering</a>. I can find common ground with anyone who doesn't wish to see another <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malleus_Maleficarum">Witch's Hammer</a>.</p><p>I can only possibly ally with a form of feminism that interprets "equal" as "equal in dignity and respect" not one with a three-word-slogan like "equal is equal" as in my experience of the past decade such slogans generally predict a lack of any considered thought. </p><p>As I dignify and respect myself as an aspirational reasonable person, averse to dogma, appeals to authority and assertions, I cannot respect as my equal, anyone who will not argue their case, nor cannot argue their case.</p><p>For this I can circle back to the problem of dead women at the hands of men. Somewhere in the past week I saw a screenshot of a tweet making the claim "until women can safely walk the streets at night we are not equal." a statement that is as vacuous as it is righteous.</p><p>If I'm reading the mood of the mob, the optics of me attempting to correct the error of this statement in order not to defeat feminism as movement, but to improve it, are worse than a women suffering through life as a result of her misapprehensions regarding the transformative powers of righteousness.</p><p>One thing about Mexico that is very visible, is that disappeared men outnumber disappeared women about 2~1. Just as it is clearer that a woman murdered by a stranger is a <i>social</i> issue than a woman murdered by a former romantic partner (allowing a woman's death to qualify all romantic partner femicides as former) most Mexicans allow that disappeared women are more outrageous than many disappeared men, given a tendency to presume that men who disappear are likelier to be involved in "the drug game."</p><p>But there is an absolute (in terms of raw statistics) truth on display that male violence in absolute numbers is far more dangerous for men, if less outrageous as a phenomena, because it is harder to predict which of two men will be victim and perpetrator based on sex characteristics alone.</p><p>There are likely very real and stable facts however that can predict reliably that I for example am 98% more likely to be a <i>victim</i> of male violence against men, than a perpetrator of violence against men. That just cannot be determined by looking at me standing next to another man. The fact is though, that it <i>is not safe</i> for men to walk the streets at night. </p><p>I invite my fellow Victorians to consider the word "stabbings" Since I returned to Australia, I would guesstimate that I have heard of at least 6 fatal stabbings being covered in the news. Generally these stories have involved teenage boys stabbing each other. An alarming social phenomena that actually does not alarm me at all.</p><p>Therein the fundamental difference - the psychological difference. That while men are in far more danger of being violently attacked by other men, they don't suffer psychologically for the risk. They go to pubs expecting to come home, not anxious that they will bump someone causing them to spill their beer and then in a rage king-hit them and end their life. They walk the streets with no expectation that a group of pubescent little boys will pull out box cutters and stab them over a six pack of beers, or while they may fear getting called "freckle-face" at school, walk home from school with no expectation that their classmates will stab them to death because they have freckles.</p><p>Strict equity in this case is undesirable. For one, it would mean that the world needs to become <i>more</i> dangerous for women, to the point where what happened to Jill, Eurydice and Aya verges on being boring. Something I noticed walking Mexican streets at night, was despite the ubiquitous purple spray paint defacing statues, school campuses and government buildings with radical feminist complaints about femicide and abortion legalisation, and the very visible posters and murals dedicated to disappeared women and girls, even the stories of Police gangraping women that I have heard, none of these daily realities have left Mexican women more as afraid and angry as Australian women. A morbid conclusion suggested by the data, that the more progress we make toward equity the more women as a population will suffer psychology. As crime goes down, coverage goes up, but how else would we have it?</p><p>For second, I attribute the lion's share of the disparity in crime to phenotype and extended phenotype differences. This easily explains the <i>massive</i> disparities in crime <i>within</i> the male population. I have written at length previously, that I have heard enough rape jokes and seen enough posters outing male-feminist "allys" as sexual predators, that I find neither men who tell and laugh at rape jokes nor men who express their solidarity and "do the work" predictive in <i>any</i> way as to who will be the violent offenders among men. A reassuring number of men laugh at rape jokes, because they understand that rape is really really wrong. An alarming number of men who express their solidarity, are seeking access to vulnerable women.</p><p>The reality that has to be accepted, is that most women on this planet can give birth to a male, who in some 12~14 short years will be fully capable of overpowering them and beating them to death with their own hands. I've heard but haven't verified, that the average 70 year old male has a stronger grip strength than the average 25 year old woman - a suggestion that a man some 50 years removed from his physical prime can grab the arm of a woman <i>in her physical prime</i> such that she could not remove the offending hand <i>on average</i>.</p><p>That's the phenotype difference I allude to, and <i>just</i> the phenotype difference. What I would expect is that where there is pronounced sexual dimorphism like in the human species, there will likely be corresponding behavioural traits. A convoluted way of saying, that I somewhat expect people more capable of violence to wind up with frontal cortexes and hormone systems more <i>prone</i> to behaving violently.</p><p>So the second undesirable aspect of equality, would be men being as afraid of violence from women, and women being as afraid of violence from women, as women are afraid of violence from men and men are afraid of violence from men.</p><p>At my gym I got to watch a muted screening of "Where the crawdads sing" a film and story in a similar vein but likely inferior to "Fried Green Tomatoes" where ultimately, paralegal "justice" is somewhat glorified or justified - spoiler alert, women kill men who wrong them and escape conviction. </p><p>I suspect these books and films hold appeal, as an archetype, because human stock is being <i>civilised</i> by institutions rather than being innately civilised. We are probably all naive-tribalists with double standards applied to people we identify with or feel we understand and different standards for those we don't.</p><p>I will hedge my bets in predicting a future, (I mean the easiest future to predict is one in which some baseline, equivalent to the neoliberal definition of "full employment (about 96-98%)" is reached in which women will continue to be killed by men, mostly by current or former romantic partners.) But that the fickle-fashions will turn again to problematise Where The Crawdads Sing for glorifying a false analogy to fire-flies and praying mantises as justifying a unilateral decision to murder a perceived or even real threat. The hedge is that if we don't live in that future, it will be a worse future.</p><p>The first two waves in hindsight appear to have merged into one and the same, a grounded feminism with some fringe elements that largely concerned itself with real problems many of which persist today and are in ample supply to be meaningfully addressed by the supply of feminists. </p><p>From reading Ariel Levy, I got a brief primer in the confusion that arose between the simultaneous movements of Women's liberation and the Sexual Revolution - the basis I think, of her thesis for Female Chauvinist Pigs, the current era appears more confusing as women's liberation has become entangled with the deconstruction of women and intersectionality to the point that it is in my opinion, genuinely unintelligible. Though I will concede, my answer to "what is a woman?" is not so narrow as "adult human female" though I recognise how someone can arrive at that position rationally. </p><p>Personally I regard "man" and "woman" as honorifics, indicating males and females that have attained the desirable attribute of maturity, and the reason it is as okay to label bathrooms with these signifiers as clear honorifics "ladies" and "gents" which are honorifics pertaining to more specific characters, is because manners are a huge part of our civilisation and explicitly are our guidelines as to how to treat with strangers so our bathroom doors give strangers the benefit of the doubt as to being worthy of the honorifics "men" and "women" even if they then go on to prove that they pee on the seats or don't wash their hands or prefer to use the disabled only toilet for the space and privacy.</p><p>Now the third wave is either current, or part of what I think is the second wave. What I'm sure of is that the current wave, let's call it fourth increasingly looks to me the product of a social science as undignified as economics. </p><p>There is an economics joke involving respectable scientists and an economist stuck on a desert island with a can of beans and the punchline, at the expense of the economist is "assume we have a can opener."</p><p>With what economics training I have, I can appreciate this punchline, and it becomes morbid when you look at the human cost of austerity budgets and learn the economists assumption was that a person who lost half their household income due to public school teachers getting fired as a result of austerity, would be so thrilled at their anticipated lifetime savings in tax obligations that they would go out on a consumer binge and thus repair the economy. </p><p>The current wave, the fourth wave appears to have it's own theories-into-practice underpinned by a premise of "assume men don't exist."</p><p>Where to comment that nobody, in a lifetime has ever uttered within earshot of a man "Girls can't change the world" such that a marketing slogan of "Girls <strike>can't</strike> change the world" seems like trite propaganda for a finishing school that will leave your daughter less capable of competing in a world in which men exist as a reasonable inference to draw about the efforts they appear to be promoting of protecting young proto-women from the stress of sharing spaces with men.</p><p>To comment as a man, even granting the limits of standpoint-epistemology, is an affront to theory's right to exist without reference to, or constraint by, reality.</p><p>Yet, a piece of text rings in my years following the death of Eurydice, who's death haunts me based on its proximity to a significant death in my life, of a friend lambasting the "deafening silence" I assume, on social media, from men in response to her death.</p><p>That was but one voice among many female voices, and more than one female voice in public argued a case that though tragic, the public outcry was overblown given that the dark streets of Melbourne remain statistically safer for women than the places they call homes. I just suspect I'm reading "the room" of public opinion right, when I continue to view that invitation to speak up as a man is an invitation to toe the line. It is not a suggestion I might have anything of value to offer (as I would if one assumes that men exist and need to be negotiated), it is a suggestion that I am passing up the incredible value <i>on</i> offer, because if I said what hyperbolically speaking "everyone" was already saying as a man and an ally, it would indicate I have read the material because the only outcome of reading the material is to agree. </p><p>The truth is I've read much of the material, had the arguments, and remain unconvinced that it is as simple as presented.</p><p>All I choose to offer here, is the suggestion that often the deafening silence, is in practice a deafening politeness. The story of Samantha's murder I predict, will be the story of a troubled young man committing a crime of oportunity, much the same as Eurydice's story and Aya's story and Qi's story. But few people outside of me, will even follow up when the media covers the trial, verdict and sentencing.</p>ohminous_thttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362629902969757305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20599948.post-57901195063896215692024-02-26T01:13:00.000-08:002024-02-26T01:13:43.009-08:00Quick Sketch: Why You Should Watch The Wire<p> The Wire was an early 21st century HBO drama following the heroin market in the city of Baltimore, Maryland, USA. </p><p>The 5 seasons gradually increase the scope of the problem of stamping out the heroin game in an environment as complicated as a city in the United States.</p><p>The first season illustrates in detail how complicated it is to bring down a criminal conspiracy, focused on a special police unit that wiretaps the Barksdale organization. Crime has evolved to survive in the police environment. One with civil liberties preserved. It is not as simple as finding a junkie, asking where they get their heroin and then going and arresting the person selling heroin. The first season will instill in you an appreciation for why a heroin epidemic can appear much more quickly in your neighbourhood than it can disappear.</p><p>The second season is considered one of the weaker, it moves to the wharf and the stevedore's union. The Barksdale organization fades into the background as the issue of importing heroin and the complex economic factors is introduced. It may not be instilled after watching season 2, that fixing the drug trade may be, in a complicated way interlinked with the problems of structural unemployment. </p><p>The third season introduces local politics to the equation. I'll circle back on this, but it in many ways predicted the post Obama populist era in the character of Tommy Carcetti.</p><p>The fourth season many consider peak "The Wire" as it introduces the education system and schooling into the equation. By the time you finish the fourth season, you should appreciate <i>just how fucking complicated</i> the problem of drug trafficking is.</p><p>The fifth and final season, understandably many will see as a disappointing conclusion to a masterpiece. Nevertheless by introducing newsmedia, the press, if not a complete picture of how difficult it is to deal with crime, in many ways with an invented serial killer employed to garner public opinion to bring all the complicated variables together to bring down the successor to the Barksdale organisation, it is one of the least grounded of the series. Much like season 2, the additional element of the media has to take a back seat to the series concluding.</p><p>And the series conclusion, for something so grounded in reality and detached from romance I think needs to be consumed as symbolic rather than literal - Mike doesn't become Omar, Dukie doesn't become Bubbles etc. rather, the despite victories the root causes will keep generating the drug game.</p><p>The Wire is a show that made Breaking Bad quite hard for me to enjoy, because of its scale and scope. Avon Barksdale and Stringer Bell run a plausible drug empire, and relative to "The Greek" the heroin wholesaler in season 2, they are small players. Gus and Mike in Breaking Bad are just too condensed to be plausible after watching the Wire, even if they are in their own way compelling characters.</p><p>But don't watch it to ruin yourself for Breaking Bad, much of the technology is dated in terms of The Wire, even though it exists in a period of time that spans rapid tech advancement from payphone to smart phones and mms. Where it is positively ahead of times is the way in which it reveals the major two factions that generate most societal conflict historically and up to the present day.</p><p>Whether it is the police, the schools, the unions, the newspapers or government the major conflict is between people who want to do the actual work a job entails, and those that want career advancement.</p><p>The world of the wire is filled with protagonists who are trying to solve problems in regard to wider ideals. Whether it is McNulty who kicks off the whole series by complaining to a judge about the ineffective policing strategy, through to Carcetti who while a shrewd politician generally believes himself capable of reforming Baltimore politics before becoming corrupted by political survival. There is perhaps no clearer antagonist in the series as William Rawls, a careerist police executive that cuts off much potential good at the knees when it threatens to encroach on his career ambitions.</p><p>I don't think The Wire ever reaches us, as general members of the public, but it likely would have got their eventually. The general public are likely more careerist in nature than vocational. We do not want to understand, we merely want results.</p>ohminous_thttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362629902969757305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20599948.post-75180831934938032182024-02-21T02:03:00.000-08:002024-02-21T02:03:45.959-08:00Quick Sketch: Columbo is Why You Don't Want Magic To Exist<blockquote><p> "I'm writing a book on Magic." I explain. And I'm asked "Real magic<i>?</i>" By <i>real magic</i> people mean miracles, thaumaturgical acts, and supernatural powers. "No." I answer. "Conjuring tricks, not real magic." ~ Lee Siegal, <i>Net of Magic</i> at least <a href="https://youtu.be/fjbWr3ODbAo?si=EAXVRcgK1ppiApUW&t=327">by Dan Dennett's testimony</a>.</p></blockquote><p>I can't make a better case for watching Columbo than George Rockall-Schmidt:</p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6dZ8sd7prr4?si=FOVj2meY_9gkUz53&start=327" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe><p> Columbo is not a "Whodunnit?" formulaic police procedural like say "Death In Paradise" or Agatha Christy Poirot story's but a "Howcatchem?" formulaic police procedural. Insofar as we the viewer know who committed the crime and how from the outset, we are much more engaged with the mystery because it has been spoiled, so Columbo if nothing else, when you independently come to the conclusion it is one of the best shows ever made, could cure you of your irrational fear of spoilers.</p><p>But once you see Columbo latch on to having to explain why a pipe is in a driveway, or why there would be fresh water beside a pool one can seize the opportunity to realize that our whole justice system is predicated on the singular premise that something <i>had to happen</i>.</p><p>I recently saw "Anatomy of a Fall" having done very little presearch before I agreed to go see it. I didn't know it was set in France and for a moment I got really uncomfortable that I was going to witness a court drama played out in an inquisitorial system. (See <i>Amanda Knox</i> on Netflix for Italy's Inquisitorial system and <i>El Cuerpo En Llamas</i> which I think translates to "The Body In Flames" for Spain's Inquisitorial system) A horrifying way to pursue criminal justice. France being a Catholic nation that speaks a romantic language, my stomach began to twist that I was going to have to witness another inquisitorial trial.</p><p>Turns out France is adversarial, if you don't know the difference, adversarial is where the prosecution tries to persuade a jury of guilt while being cross examined by defence in the presence of a Judge who is there to represent the law. Inquisitorial is where the judge trying the defendant is also the prosecutor who apparently can speculate openly and address the jury directly.</p><p>My relief was short lived because, and I don't know why the French do this...The last few French films I've seen, like Raw (2016) and Titane (2021) plus some Netflix shows about Mortality cults in a near future of immortals and people trapped in an automated house...here is the feedback I feel France as a population lack: France undeniably has made great contributions to intellectual culture - Des Cartes, Pascal, Montaigne, Voltaire, De La Rochefaucold, Camus, de Beauvoir, even the Post Modernists made important contributions despite their present state of being super overrated. But French <i>people</i> are not intellectuals, no more so than Germans, Mexicans, Britains, Japanese or Texans. That's just not how intelligence or intellectualism works. But France appears to have a unique conceit that their population is more intellectual than the next and it's frankly embarassing. Their screenwriters can write arguments about how murdering a cow is the same as murdering a man into the script of Raw that is embarassing and a proud French citizen should be embarassed that their public be seen to carry on this way.</p><p>I would have been convicted of murdering my husband if I had to sit through the trial of Anatomy of a Fall just because I would be constantly interjected with "Jesus!" and "What is this bullshit?" and "This is horseshit!" constantly when trial lawyers start attempting to deconstruct literature to make a case, I absolutely would have been fined a bunch of money for contempt of court because I would expect the Judge to at some point instruct the attorneys to "dial the Frenchness down from 11 could we?"</p><p>But Columbo, Columbo is none of these things. There is no interpretation of subtext and then debating authorial intent. If a broken watch indicates the person was murdered at 6.30 but the nearest payphone they could use was 30 minutes away, and the phone was inside a Gas Station that closed before 6.30 and the phone company has no record of a call being made, then Columbo deduces not that teleportation is real, but that the time of death couldn't be 6.30.</p><p>The respectable conservative movement, not really represented by political bodies labelled conservative today, is a bulwark against unintended consequences. That's why you want conservatives to exist, to protect us from our own exuberance and the Dunning Krueger effect. People who want the alignment of Chakras to prevent aging, or Raiki to heal cancers, putting objects under their pillow to cause people to fall in love with them or decks of cards to make financial decisions for them; well those people are fine so long as they want to discover a <i>science</i> of Yoga, a <i>science</i> of Raiki, a <i>science</i> of Wikka etc. and for the most part in so far as these magical things are effective that science is understood to be human psychology, maybe probability.</p><p>Typically though, if you want to wish that magic was real, you probably want a hard magic system, rather than a soft magic system. Yeah, Harry Potter solved some mysteries explainable through polyjuice potions, but really if people can have time rewinding stop watches - you don't want to be an Auger in the Wizarding World because you can't solve crimes when you can't rule anything out.</p><p>Reassuringly formulaic Death In Paradise, at least in the seasons I still watched had many a contrived scene where the DCI concluded very quickly that the murder pretty much <i>always</i> had to be committed by one of 5 suspects because nobody could get in or out. That's much harder with flying broomsticks, flue-powder, portkeys, pocket dimensions, invisibility cloaks. It's hard to Alibi anyone when you can put a animated talking portrait of yourself against a window for the neighbours to see, without even having to brew up any polyjuice. </p><p>"So the person died at 6pm from a forbidden curse judging by the neighbours testimony of the blood curdling scream they heard. The penthouse is only accessible by elevator because the staircase triggers an alarm which we already checked has been active all evening, meaning the murderer was one of the 5 guests, does that sound right to you seargent?"</p><p>"No. We can't draw any conclusions, because <i>fucking</i> magic."</p><p>"Right you are sergeant. The scream could have been a recording, the body could have been frozen in time using a stasis field, the victim themselves may have been impersonated at the party using polyjuice by the actual killer who then transformed into an owl to fly off into the night, after receiving and planting the body on the balcony using the fireplace. Or <i>anything fucking else</i>."</p><p>Columbo in revealing the elaborate premeditated murders and the elaborate impulsive murder cover-ups demonstrate highly intelligent people (way beyond 2 standard deviations of the average Frenchman) knowing that everyone knows <i>something</i> had to happen and trying to fabricate an ironclad alibi, dispose of murder weapons, eradicate all trace of a murderer, change the scene of the crime etc. and generally what Columbo is doing is proving that the impossible is impossible.</p><p>Which is why I would also recommend reading beyond Frank Herbert's Dune, onto Dune Messiah, even if the box office of Dune Part 2 is great it will probably take a few years to adapt Dune Messiah and they might Hobbit it. So read the book. Because Paul Atreides big advantage in Dune is that he is prescient - he can see the future, sort of like Madame Web. Dune Messiah is focused on a conspiracy to bring down Paul and end his reign. The conspirators protect themselves by having their own prescient member, because if two people can see the future it means <i>nobody</i> can see the future. The conspiracy also appears to have popularized "Dune Tarot" which is never described in great detail except that it appears to either randomize human behaviour to render prescience difficult, or it imparts a degree of prescience upon the population at large blinding Paul's ability to predict the future.</p><p>Hence magic remains fun and games so long as it isn't real, and that was what Dan Dennett employed the quote from the book to highlight - <i>real</i> magic is fake whereas <i>fake</i> magic is real, which you can read either way suffice to say that what is possible is ultimately constrained by something like Newton's laws of motion.</p><p>So teenage girls who pick up a book on <a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Teen-Witch-Wicca-New-Generation/dp/1567187250">witch-craft</a>, that I'll extend the benefit of the doubt that the author watched Teen Witch (1989) as a teenage girl, had her mind opened to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxxBXpnn2Jw">hip-hop</a> and received the message loud and clear about the pitfalls of compelling someone to love you or even transforming a frog so you can have sex with it; and subsequently the spells of the 75 that help someone "find love" do not involve compelling Johnny football hero to love them, but spells that say help you notice that asthmatic Dennis who is in your league might be someone you can form a loving attachment to. I have come across many examples of people flirting with taking magic seriously that demonstrate a duty of care to potentially naive and undiscerning clientelle - be it a crystal healer that told her friend that based on the alarming size of the tumour her son had, it wasn't time for crystals but maybe chemo, or the fortuneteller that told my friend that her ex boyfriend wouldn't call her back until she stopped wanting him to etc. Plenty of people in this space demonstrate conscious...</p><p>That said there's always going to be a distribution problem. the publishers of Teen Witch blurb their product:</p><blockquote><p>With more than 75 spells for finding love, money and happiness...</p></blockquote><p>It seems they have no scruples about selling the book to someone who might be seeking a spell to compell Johnny football hero to love you. The thing is, that if a book can help any highschool girl get asked to the prom by any highschool boy, then the spell presumably won't just work for you, but that bitch Tina. Furthermore, while you may pine for Johnny football hero or Aquamarine non-binary activist hero right now, hopefully you learn the same lessons as the girl from Karate Kid 3 and Teen witch that compelling someone to love you is ultimately a hollow victory, that means magic is most likely going to be employed most frequently by dark-triad individuals, people with PDs, psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists, hystrionics and some of the time borderline individuals.</p><p>And now vet the spell book as to whether if this magic worked, the most repulsive person (maybe me) on earth could use the spells on you. Because as appealing as it might be to possess the power of magic, the idea of everyone else possessing the power of magic should appal you.</p><p>From which Columbo could probably deduce that any well written book on magic will have been effectively edited by natural selection to contain pretty much benign-to-inert descriptions of magic.</p><p>Think of it this way. A society like the United States can cope more-or-less with the existence of hand guns. If magic was real, society would organize around it, it might render things like women's independence and democracy impossible, just like portable fool proof killing machines are real and US society organizes around that fact. I would assert, nobody but the worst people, <i>are jealous</i> of the US' second amendment. I suspect that in the UK, Canada, Scandanavia, EU, Australia, Japan etc. are quite glad and un-eager to make hand guns available to the general public without quite rigorous regulation (as I believe is the case in Japan).</p><p>But moreso than just someone you hate being able to put the cruciatus curse on you, or even as much as you love Harry Potter but don't want Draco Malfoy to be a presence in your life, it is more so everything you would lose. Namely how it might take three or more victims to build enough circumstantial evidence that a violent male keeps killing his partners, he isn't just being stalked by a witch or wizard that is trying to frame him.</p><p>The fact that only a narrow band of things are possible, is something that makes building a community everyone can live in easier.</p>ohminous_thttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362629902969757305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20599948.post-40319545494081016292024-02-20T00:35:00.000-08:002024-02-20T00:35:18.503-08:00Quick Sketch: Bobby Chiu Isn't Everything Wrong With Art<p> Back when I was renting a studio, sitting on one of those equilibriums of life, happy to flirt with a studio colleague by day and a call centre colleague by night; a friend of mine visited and expressed the idea that they would like to come document my process as an artist. I was incredibly productive at the time, if a mediocre artist, staging two solo shows a year, but I liked the idea because I felt it was important for young artists to know how much of my time in the studio was spent eating Doritos and watching tv. </p><p>Being good at art, like a disciplined, dilligent artist improving their craft with a dedication that falls far short of machine learning, is, to many an outsider, indistinguishable from someone in a deep depression. They may not leave their room except to make toilet and eat some garbage they can cook most of the bacteria out of with minimal fuss. They may draw all the blinds so they can control the light sources and sit in front of a computer with a vacant expression on their face all day. When really inspired, they may roll out of bed and put on yesterdays clothes skipping a shower so they can get right into it.</p><p>Having a studio, as well as providing you with a dedicated work space sufficient for all the shit your practice accumulates over time, can also serve to remove you from the people who become concerned about your mental health and happiness when you are working hardest at work worth doing, something many people in conventional careers may never experience. This is not to poo-poo anyone who works with spreadsheets or whatever, that is work I have also done, found incredibly rewarding and it is slightly unfair that when an analyst has reconciled a bunch of disparate and disorganized finances or built a superior prediction model for the forthcoming years production and sales targets, it's not a thing that they can hire a room in a trendy district and have all their friends and family gather to celebrate their production like an artist can. </p><p>But let's be real, there are far more people working with spreadsheets than want to be working with spreadsheets because that is where the economy is at.</p><p>Flash back a further 8 years or so, I was discovering what art was all about when I just set myself the challenge of staging a solo exhibition. I had no idea what I was doing or even if I could do it. Bobby Chiu was at that time incredibly, <i>incredibly</i> important to me. He was a digital artist in the era of CGTalk and Deviant Art, he did these long youtube streams if you want an idea of what Bobby Chiu was like 15 years ago, here's one I remember watching but haven't reviewed:</p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WGsaQ-92PT8?si=4chI05_14pUmjht4" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe><p>He basically used to paint and impart the experience of an older artist to younger artists. Talking about how hard it was going to be, how important your mindset was, how to deal with failure. They took the form of a conversation with a wise man, even though you weren't talking. </p><p>At the time, he was probably getting enough income from selling prints and maybe books at conventions, doing some concept work here and there. He was running as near as I could discern a community group called "Subway sketching" in Toronto where people met up rode the subway all day sketching commuters to improve their drawing.</p><p>Bobby Chiu was incredibly important to me at this time and he was really passionate about building a community of artists. He had some connections and started interviewing in depth artists that I like. Tim Sale, I only found out was dead from writing this blog post, what a shame, but Bobby Chiu <a href="https://schoolism.com/interviews/tim-sale-comic-book-artist">interviewed him</a> and it wasn't behind a paywall, or membership-newsletter wall, nor was <a href="https://schoolism.com/interviews/marcelo-vignali-art-director">Marcelo Vignali</a>, <a href="https://schoolism.com/interviews/bill-presing-artist">Bill Pressing</a>, <a href="https://schoolism.com/interviews/francis-manapul-comic-book-artist">Francis Manapul</a>, <a href="https://schoolism.com/interviews/sean-cheeks-galloway-character-designer">Cheeks Galloway</a>, <a href="https://schoolism.com/interviews/francisco-herrera-comic-book-artist-character-designer">Francisco Herrera</a>, <a href="https://schoolism.com/interviews/alberto-ruiz-pin-up-artist">Alberto Ruiz</a> or <a href="https://schoolism.com/interviews/humberto-ramos-comic-book-artist">Humberto Ramos</a>.</p><p>The early tingling, that this feast of online parasocial artistic community and connection could not last wasn't driven by the knowledge that Bobby's gotta eat, that artists can't live off "exposure" forever. It was actually when Bobby started interviewing people at Pixar. </p><p>Like arguably the least interesting aspect of Tim Sale's career as an artist was that he did the paintings of the psychic heroin addict in the first season of Heroes, a show that ran into the writers strike and immediately crashed and burned, yet that was what Bobby really wanted to talk to him about, not Tim Sale's work on "The Long Halloween" set in the DC Batman "Year One" continuity established by Frank Miller and probably best known to you as the comic Nolan adapted "The Dark Knight" plot from.</p><p>Most of the above links to artist interviews for Schoolism login possessors, came I think from Brand Studio Press, they were all artists publishing books of their collected illustrations through the same outlet. They were probably largely drawn from Bobby's professional network.</p><p>This was contemporaneous to when Kevin Pollack could get Tom Hanks, Larry David etc. down to his podcast. Joe Rogan probably hadn't started his podcast yet, or had done so very recently. </p><p>The impression I got, and largely given by Bobby, was that the vast majority of people watching his interviews really wanted him to interview Pixar artists that could tell them how to get hired at Pixar.</p><p>That's when I began to lose interest in Bobby Chiu's interviews, because I had no ambition to one day work at Pixar, I wanted to make comics and improve as an illustrator. I already found Pixar movies fairly generic, and they probably hadn't made Toys 2 or Cars 2 at that point.</p><p>The thing was, like Disney, Bobby was listening to his fans and trying to give them what they want.</p><p>He'd already started his venture "Schoolism" a correspondence course for artists that boasted <i>really</i> talented teachers. Cheeks Galloway for example, was one of the earlier interviewees and he was already working for Schoolism. But that was less of a warning sign than the Pixar interviews, Schoolism was new, online correspondence was new. The idea that someone in the Phillipines could have their work critiqued and digitally painted over by Jason Seiler was new.</p><p>Flash forward 13 years:</p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SAURiE6yAko?si=8x3XmkH3GkxJfRpK" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe><p>This is a free lifedrawing class Schoolism offers that can be joined by anyone anywhere and generally uploaded to youtube so you can participate in the exercise on your own time.</p><p>Participants in the live stream can via chat, direct questions to Bobby Chiu and other participants sharing their work like Kei Acedera, etc.</p><p>You could win money all day long betting that any question Bobby Chiu fields the answer will be "You know what I did, I actually enrolled in [<i>insert schoolism course</i>]" Nowdays if you asked Bobby Chiu what he wants for lunch, he would probably be reminded by the thought of a ham sandwich of a Schoolism Course someone can take for that.</p><p>And sure, this is a professional Artist that has worked with Tim Burton who runs a business giving 90 minutes of his time a week that he could be using to paint concept art for Tim Burton. In return for access to professional artists, it has to be paid for via advertising, and advertising Schoolism. I feel I could be forgiven for presuming that the cessation of the 90MAC series in June 2022 was because of diminishing returns as an advertising model. If you <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeLw9TDyBUdXBN8g5v_0u0eyASWtiHSkv">access the playlist</a> and mute the video it remains a valuable and generous resource Schoolism deserves kudos for.</p><p>I understand the business model, and it's nowhere near as egregious a "<i>thing</i>" in the art world as traditional art schools pushing out conceptual and installation artists and found artists. Nor is it on the flipside AI startups launching globally into markets that <i>culturally</i> do not even not respect Intellectual Property, but cannot even conceive of the idea of someone having some ownership of their ideas, like giving midjourney and AItools and whatever other programs have proliferated to people that do not understand why someone would be upset that they picked apples, crushed sugar cane, milled flower, churned butter, exchanged their children for some cinnamon and cloves, made a pie, baked a pie, put the pie on the windowsill to cool and then you came and ate it. These are huge problems to be navigated by art.</p><p>This is just someone who used to be a person, and now is a hamster in a wheel. This is a human face to the sad fact that people have to say "don't forget to like and subscribe" because they know full well that people won't if they don't ask each and every fucking time. From the user side, a HUGE part of why I am reluctant to subscribe or like a video is because it's very rare for a new video to get past me. Subscribing to a channel has pretty much no benefit for me, I'll be suggested everything they upload, but it's a currency Youtubers need to get advertiser dollars.</p><p>At some point, Bobby got skinner-boxed into being a full-time non-stop mouthpiece for his business ventures. No doubt, because like all sales techniques that are annoying, enough people reward it. If I didn't find Bobby viscerally painfully disingenuous now (and not even in any malicious way, he is just diligent to <i>always</i> be promoting Schoolism) I could probably pinpoint the exact interview where they ceased to be two artists talking about their craft, and began being native advertisements for Schoolism courses thinly veiled as two artists talking about their craft.</p><p>Bobby better be struggling, or Schoolism, or both. If Schoolism is doing well, and Bobby is considering which Canadian NHL team to purchase, personally it's appalling to me because the success in art Bobby is modelling is a career I don't want. I want to make art that creates a connection with its audience, I don't want to become a <i>relentless</i> salesman (so relentless Bobby Chiu doesn't have a wikipedia page, only trusting a google search to Imaginism Studios his own production company) who's own artistic output hasn't really been relevant since Tim Burton was. </p>ohminous_thttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362629902969757305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20599948.post-3426910432773731862024-02-18T21:44:00.000-08:002024-02-18T21:44:01.094-08:00Quick Sketch: Why Are Punks Wet Farts and Metalheads Mensches?<p> Full disclosure. I don't know why fans of Metal are so nice. The best I can offer being that they aren't punk fans. But in my experience they are nicer than like, the Indy crowd who are hanging around whatever the "scene" is right now. </p><p>Go to a metal gig, and you'll see fat bearded dude in faded black shirts that list a bunch of tour dates on their backs for a band you aren't currently seeing, and between the bandroom, the bar and the bathroom you'll see these fat dudes running into eachother and being all "Hey Steve! Good to see you. How are the kids?" and so forth. Like you are at an Xmas bbq and not The Tote.</p><p>Bringing me to the stimulus for this post:</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.503096512.3106/raf,750x1000,075,t,FFFFFF:97ab1c12de.u2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="600" height="285" src="https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.503096512.3106/raf,750x1000,075,t,FFFFFF:97ab1c12de.u2.jpg" width="214" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Literally the laziest cash-grab example I could find. I initially saw a hand embroided patch for sale on etsy. I picked this one, because if my post inadvertantly draws some poor individual that never asked for my opinion, better it be someone who spent all of 12 seconds typing a slogan into a Photoshop text box to sell on a kids t-shirt.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>I've been to a few punk gigs, very few, because broadly speaking, the Blink-182 lead punk revival was for me the harbinger of the death of the 90s and the beginning of the truly terrible 2000s period. I don't like the genre of music, but the closest thing I ever got to a girl making me a mixtape was just a cassette tape of the Dead Kennedy's. </p><p>Musically, I find Punk uninteresting, I can recognise it's contribution to the history of music, and how it gave birth to a bunch of genres I do find interesting. </p><p>Fundamentally though, punk is ushered in by The Sex Pistols, and there anti-meritocratic protest against prog-rock. I can understand that, thanks to eras of "conspicuous intellectualism" I have lived through, like when everyone was into reading during the Obama presidency. There must have been insufferable prog rock fans all over the place in the 70s. </p><p>But it was a fundamentally stupid question like "why should only the people who are good at playing instruments and singing get to perform music?"</p><p>Giving us music that is interesting, kind of like The Shagg's "Philosophy of the World" album is interesting, and subjectively good, to people who want it to be good, but in many senses objectively bad.</p><p>Flash forward 20 years, and scales begin to lift from my eyes. I notice that friends I would have called ********** to their faces in the mid-90s, are fans of punk. My feeling that punk music is generally not that great isn't what makes me uneager to see punk gigs in Melbourne. It's how awful the people at punk gigs are. </p><p>Once I laughed at this fat ugly girl wearing the punk uniform who picked up a dead pigeon off swanston street and threw it into a gathering of private school girls in their uniform. That was pretty amusing, that imposition of one world upon another, it was even admirable that one girl had overcome the emotion of disgust to exacerbate another group of girls oversensitivity to disgust in a very public and spontaneous performance art piece.</p><p>Outside of that though, I've never seen anything to suggest that the punk crowd isn't human excrement. Just the worst people to try and share any space with. Just anti-social dicks.</p><p>That's why it was surprising to learn that that cohort of my friends who identify as "having anxiety" and did things like not eat animals, nor eggs, cheese and honey, they were really into punk.</p><p>I know the ethical arguments for veganism, very well, even made well by characters like Alex O'Conner. Arguments are one thing, in practice generally I observe veganism to manifest more as an eating disorder that is fundamentally about control - a way of tackling life's uncertainties and placating personal anxieties by controlling what goes in one's mouth. </p><p>I'm not saying veganism is a mental illness, I'm saying it pairs well with poor mental health.</p><p>So my initial conclusion was that <i>punk is like jazz</i>. It has the image of being risqué but in fact it is not. it protects its enthusiasts from risk by remaining largely inaccessible. It's about rejecting the effort to be appealing, manifest in the hairstyles, the fashion, the dancing and fundamentally the music. Greenday's "Good riddance (Time of Your Life)" in being accessible, sentimental even is far riskier than Bad Brains "I Against I" and that is why the former made a whole bunch more money than the latter. </p><p>Sex Pistols "Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols" was a risk at the time, it wouldn't be in 2024 because that statement had been made. Just like we don't need a whole genre worth of comedians doing Andy Kaufman's schtick.</p><p>I was fairly satisfied with that hypothesis until I saw on pinterest the "Punks Respect Pronouns" patch. </p><p>When I see a meme like this, my instant reaction is to be like "What if Johnny Rotten doesn't respect pronouns?" like, this is a gatekeeper statement, a definitional retreat, a no-true-Scotsman fallacy.</p><p>It seems entirely plausible to me, that you would get punks, as in punk music enthusiasts, that feel quite ambivalent about pronouns, certainly don't feel a need to respect them, and would possibly find the formal etiquette of pronouns tedious. </p><p>This is an aspect of culture synonymous with HR guidelines and policy. It doesn't strike me as punk per se.</p><p>Then it clicked, a better model for understanding why the punk crowd is so awful and unpleasant to share a space with, so obnoxious, anti-social, snobbish, chauvinistic and puritanical in my experience, where metal crowds are so inclusive, inviting, friendly and non-judgemental in my experience.</p><p>Punk is a music of rebellion, it is characterized generally as the music of revolutionaries, people who reject the society we live in because they know better. It is an act of resistance against a society that oppresses them.</p><p>Metal is more a Hobbesian-leviathan, a Jungian-integration, a Rogerian-congruity. Metal is a radical act of acceptance that we are imperfect people living in an imperfect world that nevertheless can find moments of happiness, like running into Steve at a gig between the bar, bandroom and bathrooms. </p><p>Punk is acting out, Metal is acting in. Not acting in as in buying into a societal narrative, but acting in as in accepting things as they truly are, darker than we'd hope or want them to be. Simply accepting what is. Accepting our past follies, accepting our present follies and predicting our future follies.</p><p>Punk isn't just a bunch of people with bad fashion who listen to bad music. Those are arts students. Punk is a movement that wants to change the world but is very unsuccessful at it. Of course such a persistently unsuccessful movement is going to sit squarely inside the Dunning-Krueger effect, yet occasionally produce real musical talent like Josh Freese of The Vandels and I'm sure there's more I can't be bothered thinking of them.</p><p>Of course it's going to be synonymous with "Road for the child" strategies for changing the world, like veganism and pronouns that basically require everybody to voluntarily do the right thing to work, and other doomed to fail strategies. Of course, it goes without saying, it is going to be affiliated with Marxist thinking.</p><p>Punk is revolutionary in outlook, ideological, incongruent, in denial. It no doubt can be a stepping stone to greatness to look at all the musical icons, and genres that Punk has given us but are not themselves Punk anylonger. We wouldn't have the 90s if not for Punk. It practically mirrors the wealth of intellectuals society has enjoyed that identify as former-Marxists, and yet, it's almost impossible to find an intellectual that was formally-non-Marxist and has become a Marxist late in life.</p><p>Just to be clear, my or anyone's position on pronouns is not the point, it's the seeming incongruity of punk having <i>rules</i>. Like when people laugh at their local Anarchists having a secretary and treasurer. Just as I as an atheist can appreciate that the global society I live in is what an anarchy naturally produces, I guess I can understand that a highly regimented, discriminatory gatekept music genre is the natural product of Punk's core rejectionist ethos, even if I'd stumbled across a patch that said "Punks brush twice daily".</p>ohminous_thttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362629902969757305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20599948.post-46040212052725804112024-02-16T17:14:00.000-08:002024-02-16T17:14:48.181-08:00Quick Sketch: Conspiracy Tolerance<p> I am still resolute in not following news stories because it is mostly an experience of addictive self aggravation. Just a well spring of dazzling editorial incompetence that succeeds, virtually ever time in activating me. That said, Taylor Swift is so overexposed that I passively managed to hear about the Kansas City mass shooting at the Superbowl parade but my apologies because I'm not going to go to news sources for more details.</p><p>I subsequent to my decision not to follow this or any other news story, I can't know if more than one person died, I know suspects were arrested, and I don't know the suspects motives.</p><p>Just, I was aware that there was a "they are coming for your football" conspiracy theory propagated because Taylor Swift doesn't like Donald Trump, she dates a guy on the Kansas City Chiefs, therefore if the Chiefs won the Super Bowl it was rigged. Then coincidently, the first ever mass shooting to take place at a Super Bowl victory parade happens at the Victory Parade for a team that was at the center of a conspiracy theory.</p><p>Tennis has this statistical category called "unforced errors" which measures how often a tennis player needlessly screws up on service or a return shot. Like so obviously double faulting because you are trying to serve an ace would be an unforced error, but also if you tried to chip the ball lightly <i>just</i> over the net because your opponent is on the baseline but the ball hits the top of the net without sufficient momentum to carry over and you cost yourself the point.</p><p>Conspiratorial thinking, I don't think is really costly in absolute terms, compared to the social costs of bad welfare design or bad tax policy. There are plenty of boring problems built into the ordinary operation of society that do much more damage <i>and</i> are harder to solve.</p><p>But conspiracy theories have gone from mostly harmless indulgence like the moon landing one, the net total of damages being that time Buzz Aldrin punched a conspiracy theorist in the face, to a problem that is probably creeping up on drink driving as a category of dangerously impaired judgement.</p><p>Conspiracy theorist death tolls are almost certainly going to be at their highest estimation regarding the recent global pandemic. It is going to be much more tolerable than drink driving though, because there's a degree of self selection to conspiracy theories surrounding a pandemic. The people who won't take the vaccine are at an increased risk of dying to those who do. An "own goal" conspiracy.</p><p>So, I think the social acceptability of being a conspiracy theory has become a massive problem. Not just a massive problem, but a massive symptom of broader social dysfunction facilitated by the internet and its sub-innovations like the attention economy and social media.</p><p>It makes me think about school. </p><p>I think the problem and the solution starts in how we schooled people from the industrial revolution onwards. Schools functioned in some capacity as an information quality control filter. This meant that you could send a kid to school and rest assured that they would not learn how to not calculate the correct change for a 1 pound note from school. The curriculum in theory, was supposed to be vetted. </p><p>The same things with books in Library's, all the information you could get from books in the library was designated as fiction or non-fiction, categorized by subject, the authors were known, the publishers were known, they had tables of contents, glossaries, bibliographies and end notes.</p><p>Our schooling was designed so a student with <i>no critical thinking capacity</i> could attend and passively absorb curated knowledge. </p><p>It admittedly would be hard to set up an educational experience where students were protected from the fallacious argument from authority "because teacher said so". The basic structure of a class is that a teacher tells you what they are going to test you on, then they test you on it and you either pass or fail.</p><p>It was historically, a <i>good enough</i> system because teacher's rarely wrote the textbooks with the exercises from which they based their class plans, and the curriculum was set by a central body that probably had the dual goals of believing a society that contains a large number of educated people is intrinsically good and that a society that produces skilled workers can gain economic advantage.</p><p>For much of the 20th century, students in Australia learned useful social goods like how to read and write, that are pretty easy to just teach to passive students with no critical thinking skills because if they can't count their money they will go broke and if they were taught nonsense literacy they wouldn't be able to make sense of any signage or restaurant menus and their orders wouldn't make sense at a restaurant.</p><p>Furthermore, the hard sciences that deal with the physical world tend to be non-controversial. There are very few contentious issues surrounding whether things fall toward the earth or not or whether you put enough water molecules together wetness emerges as a property. Sure there's arguments in biology regarding monkeys and souls and shit but it's hard to sustain that traction when one side of the controversy just doesn't describe reality very well.</p><p>I would be remiss if I didn't point out the traditional function of school to teach controversial beliefs as though they were knowledge to passive uncritical students who needed to absorb those beliefs to pass tests. Beliefs about history and the Queen and special books written in part or wholly by the creator of the universe and who started a boarder dispute.</p><p>The fact that our schools operate as belief injectors for largely passive young minds mean that there is almost always some political contest happening over what beliefs get injected into passive young minds.</p><p>I contend that our extant education system does a number of disservices to society that are admittedly difficult trade offs for the amount of good primary and secondary education does.</p><p>The first is that school structures most people's lives for them for a very long time. The basic 13 years of grade school it has been pointed out is longer than many people serve in prison for killing someone. My own experience of education was that it took <i>a farcical</i> amount of time before I was given as a student any real electives. This was true even of my tertiary education. </p><p>Structuring my life deprives me of the necessity to <i>think</i> about <i>what</i> I want to learn and <i>why</i>. To what end my learning is in service of. </p><p>The second and more relevant one is that curation of the beliefs that are taught. Meaning even in a well functioning educational program where the powers that set the curriculum know to teach astronomy and not astrology, we are fed a diet of information that we don't have to think about that is going to make many people prone to absorbing beliefs <i>assuming</i> they are absorbing knowledge.</p><p>I would not bet on a friend being able to distinguish an argument from an assertion. Having recently watched Anatomy of a Fall, that is structured around a court case, I have to concede that the presence of lawyers in a court to point out to a jury that someone just presented <i>speculation</i> not proof is a necessary and value added occupation in our society, because I wouldn't trust a jury to notice for themselves.</p><p>That case can be fairly summerized as prosecution and defence continually claiming they knew what happened, and the adversaries having to then point out to judge and jury that nobody actually knows what happened.</p><p>Now, in times past, we could rely on the market to keep education somewhat honest. If you got a bunch of 12 year old's in your matchstick factory that couldn't count, they got fired because the market eventually figured out that Old Scrooge's Quality Fire Sticks couldn't be relied on to have 40 matches in a box. </p><p>With the proliferation of bullshit jobs that don't need to exist, fake jobs that facilitate large portions of the public having an income with which they can consume and borrow against - the market can no longer be expected to weed out schools that teach their students garbage.</p><p>It can literally apparently take Liz Truss becoming the Prime Minister of a G7 economy to discover that the economic theory she believed to constitute knowledge of how an economy works, was garbage. Absolute burning dumpster fire of shit garbage.</p><p>Renteirs have proliferated into the 21st century, I defy anyone to work a job in a modern economy and not witness people who have and keep jobs they shouldn't have and shouldn't keep and possibly never needed to exist.</p><p>One of my old employers went through an amusing house cleaning project where upper management finally after 26 years discovered they had a useless middle manager and canned her, which caused them to finally discover after 28 years that she had been brought in by her manager who was also completely fucking useless and canned him. That is a mere two people, whose salaries generated no value for the operation of a business for a combined half century that could have sustained approximately 30 people on welfare for half a century. Instead, two people absorbed a half century of 30 welfare cheques between them.</p><p>In such an economy, one can easily survive without having to adapt critical thinking skills. The education system, combined with an inefficient market is ripe for the festering of conspiracy theorists.</p><p>If property investors, cannot literally explain to me why I should purchase their valuable services as a landlord. And I mean, I haven't come across a single property investor that doesn't literally call me an idiot for renting, which is purchasing the <i>very service</i> they provide. Right, they think of me with <i>contempt</i> for considering being <i>their</i> customer. Then of course people are going to overestimate their ability to believe true things and disbelieve false things.</p><p>However big people imagine imposter syndrome to be as a social problem, it mathematically has to be a smaller problem, because so many people <i>are imposters</i> impersonating someone who is worth what they are paid. </p><p>Even 10% of a workforce being fundamentally useless, is an alarming number of useless people pulling a decent wage and being loaned 40 times that decency to make an investment they fundamentally don't understand. I'm labouring the point, I know, but this phenomena is proved in every recession when companies lay off a bunch of staff and continue to operate. <i>Some</i> of it is directly related to decreased demand meaning decreasing supply meaning less workers on less lines to assemble products that no longer sell. But some of it is sending desk workers with boxes containing family pictures and potted plants walking under security escort, because with decreased revenues the company finally is forced to admit that it wasn't necessary to employ a second marketing assistant.</p><p>That has likely been going on for quite some time, but it's a problem now because where people used to live in uncurated offline communities, people can now self-select into pretty much any online community they want.</p><p>There might be 180,000 flat earthers in the world. There were almost certainly less flat earthers when that potential population was distributed amongs 5~6 billion people, and Grant had to hang out in a pub where he was likely to have a 5th grade science teacher explain to him how if he goes to the beach he can just see ships sails or exhaust stacks appear on the horizon before he sees their hulls. Or demonstrate how a sphere casts a shadow on the moon in the way a disk can't so he can observe the Earth's shadow on the moon himself for the rest of his life.</p><p>We probably used to keep conspiracy theorist numbers down without anyone having to think about it because they couldn't form in-group silo echo chambers online, connecting each only guy in the village who thinks the earth is flat with each other guy in the village who thinks the earth is flat.</p><p>Except of course, we had churches everywhere.</p><p>This Kansas City shooting is another data point for me that fails to contradict Tim Snyder's argument that I have often quoted because it seems most relevant to the times:</p><blockquote><p>We know, because this is something that people have theorized about since the Enlightenment, that in order for there to be a democracy there has to be something between you and me and our fellow citizens, something between you and me and our leaders, which is: a factual world. We have to have this thing called the public sphere where you and I and our fellow citizens and our leaders agree that there are certain realities out there, and that from those realities we draw our own conclusions, our own evaluative conclusions about what would be better or worse, but we agree that the world is out there. And that it's important for you and I, as citizens, to formulate projects, but it's also important in moments of difficulty for you and I, as citizens, to resist our leaders. Because if we're going to resist our leaders we have to say, "On the basis of this set of facts, this is the state of affairs; it's intolerable; therefore we resist." If there are no facts we can't resist, it becomes impossible.</p></blockquote><p>Snyder's been a guest a number of times on Sam Harris' podcast, and Sam Harris was in that new atheist wave of names that began to target the problem posed by moderate religious types protecting extremist religious types.</p><p>The impotence of the argument "well those people take this book too seriously." </p><p>The big social norm that needs must be introduced to combat the unnecessary costs of conspiracy theories, is that we can't extend to ourselves or others the right to believe what we want. To have beliefs unconstrained by reality. </p><p>This is the problem faced by largely secular, progressive Isreali's living in Tel Aviv wanting a stop to illegal West Bank Settlers. They face a clear line in the sand where they could cross it and say "these people need to be stopped because Judaism is hooey, the messiah isn't coming, God doesn't make real estate promises etc." but compared to rejecting the premise that magic exists, on the other side of the line one is obliged to make the limp dick argument "Yes, I believe God does exist, and that the God I believe exists did send the prophet Moses to give us His laws and lead His chosen people to the Holy Land, and that he didn't incarnate as his own son to offer us a new covenant through the blood libel of his own divine sacrifice (Christianity isn't true) nor did He send Gabriel to visit an illeterate peasant in a cave and inspire him to speak the direct words of God (Islam isn't true) nor did he send angels to direct a former known conman to find gold plates and a seer stone to translate them in a hat (Mormonism isn't true) and only the original book is special <i>and </i>I know what that original book of the prophets of the God I pray to <i>says</i> in a lucid way is promised to His chosen people in terms of this land but <i>those</i> people who take those things it says <i>seriously</i> are just taking it too seriously."</p><p>Right wing conspiracy theorists, yes they have the guns and are really dangerous, but they cannot be resisted by left wing conspiracy theorists. </p><p>More accurately, left wing conspiratorial thinking. Just to pick one example with a large target on it's back - how many female action movies have to bomb before the left entertains the notion that boys and girls are born and made, not simply made. </p><p>Or the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox">gender-equality paradox</a> that currently sports two scholarly explanatory hypothesis: one being that gender stereotypes are somehow more pronounced in countries with greater gender equality (so Norway for example is more ridden with gender stereotypes than India and China) and the other being that as opportunities increase sex differences become more pronounced (so Indian and Chinese women are forced by circumstance to study STEM courses to secure reliable income and pay, whereas Norwegian women are relatively free to make a living from interior design consulting and not have to worry about how they would pay for future healthcare costs.)</p><p>One of those hypotheses strikes me as nonsense, in terms of it makes no sense, and one of those hypotheses strikes me as common sense plausible. How long does it need to take to invalidate one of these hypotheses? How hard is it to design the experiment to generate primary or predict secondary data (eg. looking at the choices of lottery winners in less-gender-equal nations).</p><p>The trouble being, that certain positions associated with the left, can only be held by taking sound epistemology off the table. If it's okay for Ibram X Kendi to infer that all racial inequity has to be attributed to systemic racism, then it has to also be okay for a team whose player is dating a celebrity who dislikes Trump winning the Super Bowl means the superbowl was rigged because jews. </p><p>Neither of these methodologies are okay, and society is far too tolerant of people luxuriating in beliefs that simultaneously comfort them and inspire them to act by directing life changing violence toward strangers.</p>ohminous_thttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362629902969757305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20599948.post-2975431891008685212024-02-16T01:59:00.000-08:002024-02-16T01:59:11.554-08:00Quick Sketch: Bridget of Guilty Gear<p>This post is about how I don't understand my own sexuality. My own sexuality is very vanilla, very well documented and represented in fiction and non-fiction, in history, in illustration, in painting, in sculpture in cave painting. It's been studied for a long time, I don't understand it.</p><p>I'm heterosexual. Man that seeks women. </p><p>Now something everyone knows about heterosexual men, is that obviously they are attracted obviously, to <i>all</i> women. Of course, a heterosexual male should not be confused with a heterosexual paedophile, so all women obviously means, obviously, to the point of being obvious that as a heterosexual man I am attracted to all women from half-my-age-plus-7-upwards thru, by symmetry, women double-my-age-minus-7.</p><p>Obviously, as a heterosexual male, I obviously am into fat women, skinny women, women who climb on rocks; tough women, sissy women; even women with chicken pox; (provided they are at least half-my-age-plus-7, I don't want you to draw the wrong inference from chicken pox). </p><p>My obligation to conform to the statement "I am attracted to women" as though it reads "I am attracted to all women" is something I understand. That's not the part of my sexuality I don't understand.</p><p>I don't know, but if I was placed in a prison cell, I don't know if I would fight or if I would just roll over. I don't believe Ice Cube would advise in "Check Yo'self before you wreck yo'self" that "big dicks in your arse are bad for your health." for no reason even if he isn't Dr. Cube, and despite being one of the progenators of Gangsta Rap has never to my knowledge actually been to prison. I assume he heard stories, but you don't know, late 80s south central was a different time.</p><p>There's a fair chance that despite deciding that rather than risk my face, I would just blow a guy, let him put a porno mag on my back and have at me, I might size up my roommate and think "piece of cake." and establish my physical dominance. I mean what am I going to prison for at this point? My country has universal healthcare I'm not going to start cooking meth.</p><p>The point is, prison aside, why wouldn't I kiss a man? Why do I feel no desire to kiss a man? If my sexuality is based in reproduction, which I get, and maybe has some relationship to hygene, which I also get, why didn't my straight friends and I ever flirt with the idea of giving each other blowjobs? I mean we weren't going to catch anything or have an unplanned pregnancy.</p><p>If the reason we tend not to be attracted to our own siblings is because of ingrained incest taboos, why don't people date their brothers? Furthermore, men don't have breasts, so I get why I wouldn't be excited about shoving my face into a mans chest, but I also find exciting the prospect of shoving my face between a woman's butt cheeks (obviously, all women, obviously) but that's a gastrointestinal tract, so why do I have no interest and even whince slightly picturing it, shoving my face between a man's butt cheeks? Is it just because I share public bathrooms with these people? I've seen women eat burritos.</p><p>Near as I can figure, my sexuality must have something to do with chemistry. A lot about human sexuality is just plain weird, Alan De Botton talks about it a lot, better than I. The question of whether I want my tastebuds to directly contact the genitals of a woman (all women, obviously) is very context dependent. I don't generally feel that desire strongly, first thing in the morning, but it can occur in the morning if foreplay gets me in the mood for it. By contrast in the evening, if the woman I am with so chooses, to stand up and drop her draws and sit down on my face, I would regard it as a wonderful surprise.</p><p>I have had my sexuality all my life. I knew, before I was attracted to girls via a pubescent sexual awakening, that that was how I rolled. I fell in love with women long before I knew what men and women got up to. I remember trying to console myself, in grade 2, when the first girl I had ever crushed on moved away. I still don't understand my sexuality, that doesn't mean that I am possibly getting it wrong. It appears to function, without my understanding it.</p><p>Which brings me to Bridget, almost. The subject of today's post, because there's plenty I understand about my sexuality even if I don't in totality understand it.</p><p>For example:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://celebrityauthentics.com/cdn/shop/articles/pfeiffer_header.jpg?v=1690305581" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="311" data-original-width="800" height="273" src="https://celebrityauthentics.com/cdn/shop/articles/pfeiffer_header.jpg?v=1690305581" width="702" /></a></div><br /><p>Catwoman is someone I find attractive, when realized by Michelle Pfeiffer in Tim Burton's commercially disappointing sequel Batman Returns, I am able to recognize that I am attracted to a fictional character. That an actress is portraying Catwoman, but that Catwoman isn't real. Yet Selina Kyle, major love interest of the emotionally stunted, possibly repressed homosexual, Bruce Wayne, is a very attractive fictitious character. I understand why I find Michelle Pfeiffer, in a professional capacity pretending to be someone who doesn't actually exist, a compelling point of my sexual attention, it's that my heterosexuality can reach into the realm of fiction and fall in love with all kinds of literary types. Even women that are written by men like Joseph Heller's Luciana, Frank Herbert's Chani etc.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.pinimg.com/564x/05/5a/84/055a8439e2f9c728e8be75b7fa86aa4a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="458" height="800" src="https://i.pinimg.com/564x/05/5a/84/055a8439e2f9c728e8be75b7fa86aa4a.jpg" width="458" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Art by Jim Lee, from DC Comics Batman run "Hush"</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>Such that, I can also be attracted to a drawing of a woman. As above, Jim Lee draws a very attractive Selina Kyle enjoying a night at some theatrical event next to Bruce Wayne, who seems to resent her covering her cleavage with a gloved hand.</p><p>To channel a little, but not too much, of Douglas Hoffstader - this is an illusion of an attractive woman. It is pixels on a screen, creating the illusion of the original artwork that was a combination of dots of CMYK to appear to be a colourised copy of Jim Lee's two dimensional sketch on paper of the character of Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman. </p><p>I can find such an image attractive, without being so confused by my own perception colliding with my sexuality that I'm going to fuck a screen. </p><p>Complicatedly, I <i>know</i> that I <i>think</i> that I am looking at someone I am sexually compatible with. My sexuality works such that I can find the drawing of a dude, attractive. I as a heterosexual male am attracted to dudes' drawings.</p><p><br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.pinimg.com/564x/f3/2d/1f/f32d1f24bc197861c531da44f0d64767.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="530" data-original-width="540" height="530" src="https://i.pinimg.com/564x/f3/2d/1f/f32d1f24bc197861c531da44f0d64767.jpg" width="540" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fan art of Ranma in his girl form and Ryoga in his pig form aka "P-chan" from Ranma 1/2 by Rumiko Takehashi</td></tr></tbody></table><p style="text-align: left;">Above is a pin-up depicting Ranma protagonist of Ranma 1/2 a romantic comedy japanese comic about a boy who fell into a cursed spring where a girl had tragically drowned and subsequently turns into a girl any time he is exposed to cold(?) water and can only change back with hot(?) water. I would class it as a pin-up on account of the gratuitous cleavage that is the centre of the composition, that is not consistent with how Ranma is usually portrayed (his breasts are usually beneath his Chinese men's top whatever they are called).</p><p style="text-align: left;">Ranma <i>is</i> a boy, there's an interesting case to be made that in his female form Ranma becomes temporarily a trans-man psychologically though while he clearly doesn't like that he transforms into a female often at inconvenient times and one of his major motivations is to find the cursed spring of a drowned boy to neutralize his own curse, he generally doesn't display much disphoria. Ranma's depiction of female Ranma or "Pig-tail girl" as his major heterosexual admirer refers to him, is often quite cynical and exploitative, even willingly posing for gravure photos as a female to be sold to his male admirers. I don't know, I suspect that while many children undergoing some experience of gender dysphoria might gravitate toward the story of Ranma 1/2 this is a series that concluded in the late 80s and is <i>very Japanese</i> culturally and the boy-girl switching is played mostly for laughs. It is also depicted alongside characters who switch from man-to-panda and back, boy-to-piglet, girl-to-cat, boy-to-goose and so on. I guess furries might also be into Ranma, but I'd be inclined to conclude that while the literal fluid method by which Ranma transforms might be a captivating idea, but has little to instruct me or anyone on gender dysphoria in any useful way.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The point being, is that in the same way that I know that I think an image of Selina Kyle is an image of someone I am sexually compatible with. I like lady Ranma's breasts, even though I know they are an image of breasts attached to an underage highschool boy. That's how my sexuality works.</p><p style="text-align: left;">There's an uncomfortable question there, of if my best friend at any point in my younger years when my best friend was typically a male, if my best friend fell into a cursed spring that left him transforming into a woman with a light spritzing of cold water, and having played with his own breasts and fingered his own vagina and stuck inanimate objects up there until he was bored and his curiosity drove him to leave an offer on <i>my</i> table - would I fuck him? I don't know. It's an uncomfortable question.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Then there's Bridget:</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.pinimg.com/564x/f2/61/01/f261011acd86d5b8cd2c77782fdee23b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="690" data-original-width="564" height="690" src="https://i.pinimg.com/564x/f2/61/01/f261011acd86d5b8cd2c77782fdee23b.jpg" width="564" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bridget of the Guilty Gear Franchise</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p style="text-align: left;">Contrary to Bridget's name and appearance, Bridget was introduced to the Guilty Gear fighting game series as male. That is, I have explicitly been told that Bridget is male. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Now, to be clear, one thing I understand about my sexuality is the difference between the statements "I find her attractive." and "I would have sex with her." In that, while my finding someone attractive is a good predictor of my willingness to have sex, or any form of physical intimacy with them, it is not an equivalent statement. There are many women I will honestly disclose I find attractive while having no interest or intention of actually touching them. Hence the need among myself and my friends like "I wouldn't touch her with <i>your</i> dick."</p><p style="text-align: left;">There's also the beautiful confusion of ambivalence, when I find myself physically attracted to someone I find in character repulsive. The "hate-fuck" if you will, when mind and body do seem to be in a dualistic opposition. </p><p style="text-align: left;">It needs to be said, that Japan <i>has</i> a massive paedophilia problem. It is inextricably intwined with a culture I have pretty much no time for at all being "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-VoKwMDdLg&pp=ygUWbWluYSBsZSBrYXdhaWkgY3VsdHVyZQ%3D%3D">Kawaii culture</a>" and the strong positive correlation between economic stagnation and infantalism of a population. Kawaii being the Japanese adjective for "cute" and it receives way more attention than "kireii" Japan's word for "beautiful/clean". It likely also has to do with the Japanese male's anachronistic cultural obsession with the idea that women basically expire at age 25, see the pejorative "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_cake#:~:text=Japanese%20metaphor,-Christmas%20is%20a&text=In%20Japan%2C%20women%20had%20traditionally,still%20unsold%20after%20the%2025th.">christmas cake</a>" I feel this prejudice/stigmatization has lessened, but I don't think it's because Japan is as progressive as the westerners that fetishize it hope it is. My impression of pin-up art coming out of Asia in general, especially post advent of Nijijourney AI-generated art, is that way too many men want to put a 12 year old's head on a 28 year old's body and masturbate in front of it Louis CK style.</p><p style="text-align: left;">So in attempting to discuss Bridget, and if I find Bridget attractive, the obvious answer is "No" because Bridget is depicted as a sexually immature female*.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.pinimg.com/564x/1b/a6/f7/1ba6f7a192619fa99fe416f7d3fd0297.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="650" data-original-width="433" height="498" src="https://i.pinimg.com/564x/1b/a6/f7/1ba6f7a192619fa99fe416f7d3fd0297.jpg" width="332" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fan art of Baiken, also a character from the Guilty Gear video game franchise.</td></tr></tbody></table><p style="text-align: left;">By contrast, if you were to ask me if I found Baiken attractive, a character from the same franchise, I'd say yes, because Baiken is depicted as a sexually mature female. I find Baiken attractive even though she is also depicted as missing an eye and an arm, and a smoker. Hint, it's the massive naugs that suggest to my eye, that Baiken isn't 14 years old.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The thing is, Baiken isn't just depicted as a sexually mature female, we are told by her authors as it were, that she <i>is</i> a sexually mature female.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Bridget is the character that looks like a girl, speaks like a girl, acts like a girl and that we are <i>told</i> is a boy. I should disclose, there may be some point in the Guilty Gear series where Bridget presents as male, in a very unambiguous way. I doubt the game violent as the fighting genre is, would depict Bridget pulling out her dick and pissing while standing, or pulling the padding out of her top and throwing it, but all there really is to tell my ocular senses that Bridget is, in accordance with the cannon - actually male, doesn't come through the depiction of the character, just what narration asserts. For example the female character Jam "smells" that Bridget is male, but a bit too young for her (Jam is boy crazy) and tells Bridget to call her in 5 years time. </p>My heterosexuality probably works like Jam's heterosexuality, in that while not conscious, I suspect that my nose in some way or another objects to a man who appears as a sexually mature female that ordinarily I would be attracted to. While I've been targeted by women in my life, I've never had one confess that they dabbed their fingers in their vagina and then on their necks so the pheromones would unconsciously prime my attraction to them. I don't know if this works, because I can't imagine any woman trying it, for the obvious reason that few would risk having all of the office attracted to them, instead of a specific guy they could, you know, flirt with, through speech. Directed speech.<div><p style="text-align: left;">Bridget conceptually however, breaks down chemical objections to her attractiveness, even going so far as to describe Bridget as a "pretty girl" in much the way the Chinese called Anthony Albanese a "handsome boy" and I don't think any of those CCP officials really wanted to fuck our prime minister, because in Bridget's case - authorial intent is irrelevant.</p><p style="text-align: left;">I've written about Renet Magritte's "The Treachery Of Images" before, in my post about how to believe anything you want. It's a painting of a pipe with printed letters "this is not a pipe" which it isn't, because it's an <i>image</i> of a pipe. Bridget is neither boy nor girl because Bridget is a drawing. Bridget is a series of drawings gathered into frames that played in sequence create the illusion of motion that we commonly call animation. These animations respond to player inputs on game controllers and so and so fourth.</p><p style="text-align: left;">My understanding is, that Bridget as per the cannon of the latest instalment in the game franchise, has arrived at the point that the character of Bridget, an actor (english voice actor Kelly Ohanian) reading a script into a recording device, said the line:</p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">"Cowgirl is fine, because...I'm a girl!"</p></blockquote><p> This moment is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf6sdIH2xAY">regarded as significant by at least one person</a>. I did not watch the full video I linked to, because from the introduction I was not convinced that if I invested the time in hearing the argument for this conclusion, I would actually hear an interesting case put forth. Of more interest and significance to me is the relationship between fiction and sexuality, the ideas that Ranma 1/2 and Bridget stimulate (hint they aren't ideas I masturbate to).</p><p>To me there is no significance to a character drawn as a girl, voiced by as far as I can discern exclusively natal females ceasing to pretend they are a boy. It somewhat contravenes the general writing advice of "Show don't Tell" and "Informed Attribute".</p><p>Bridget's maleness has only ever been an informed attribute, otherwise she has been straight up lazily depicted as a young girl. Her headband in previous installments of the game sported the symbol for Mars or males, and the backstory said she was the younger of twin brothers that due to local superstitions against twin boys prompted her parents to raise the younger twin as a girl concealing her gender from everyone.</p><p>Among all trans-women, Bridget had such an easy time of "passing" that she could wear the symbol for male on her head, and would mostly not be "read" by anyone unless she told them she was a boy. Again, I have not followed so closely the convoluted in-game cutscene law to not know if, as the Japanese are willing to do, some scene where a dude assumes Bridget is as female as she appears and tries to force himself upon her, only to discover male genitalia or something.</p><p>Japanese comic artist and writer Oh!Great whose titles are known for sex and violence, had a similar character in Air-Gear drawn as a little girl wearing a little Bo Peep outfit that professes to be male and then demonstrates this by lifting up her dress to reveal to characters in the story his genitals - and don't get the wrong impression, Oh!Great doesn't just straight up graphic pornography involving high-school children, he comes as close as one might dare - the next panel features a euphamistic drawing of an African Elephant's head to suggest to the readers mind that the characters are looking at a wrinkly set of testicles and a penis. </p><p>Oh!Great, much as I would never issue him a "Working With Children" check card, is a talented artist and visual explainer, he found a way to convince me through visual storytelling, if an unrealistic take on human behaviour that a character that looked female but we are told is male, is male within the story. </p><p>Bridget on the other hand, just enjoys the luxury of the medium she exists in. Her personal journey through gender dysphoria, might be inspiring to real people and power to them, but that journey is at best analogous. Likely a false analogy, because Bridget appears to have come to accept the gaslighting of her parents, completing if you will a gender assignment process that was forced upon her. </p><p>Certainly as regards my sexuality, I mean firstly, Bridget doesn't pose much of a challenge in the first place because Bridgette isn't an image of a sexually mature female. Ranma in his female form, is confusing on multiple levels because female Ranma qualifies as Jail Bait, particularly once you accept the cultural norm of Japanese artists in general to give sexually mature women immature faces in their depictions, the Japanese will rarely draw the bridge of a nose because it isn't cute, underdeveloped nose bones are not just a characteristic of pre-pubescent girls, they are more so a visual tell of babies. Same with the big eyes.</p><p>Bridget also doesn't pose a challenge though in terms of substituting the gender assignments onto a more adult pin-up character like Baiken or Selina Kyle. If DC were to announce tomorrow that Selina Kyle was retconned into a trans-woman, I wouldn't <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH7dr8OPqME">react like Ace Ventura</a>. It would have no startling implications for my own sexuality, because much as my brain can judge images drawn by men as attractive or unattractive, turn ons or turn offs, I don't confuse them with actual women.</p><p>This is a basic adult competence, it is what would allow me to stand trial as a competent adult. </p><p>Peter Boghossian, Tier-B or C public intellectual and BJJ nerd, is a street epistemologist interested but not so successful at having constructive conversations that works on a form of street epistemology he calls "spectrum street epistemology" but he has more techniques. </p><p>One technique is modelling, to move past conversation blockages that another person is struggling with. And he uses an example pertaining to the mysteries of the most vanilla and best studied and attested of the spectrum of human sexuality: heterosexuality.</p><p>He asks if a straight man would sleep with a trans woman. The straight man struggles by uttering the non-word "uhhh..." Peter disrupts him as he tries to put his thoughts together and says "ask me the same question." and the straight man asks "would you sleep with a trans woman?" and Peter says "No." that's modelling and when Peter asks the straight man again "would you sleep with a trans woman?" the straight man offers the great answer "Not knowingly."</p><p>If I say I find Ranma in his female form attractive, my "yes" answer has many inbuilt explicit caveats that might make me go "uhhh..." if someone showed me a picture of Ranma in his red-haired female form. Like I automatically apply the context where I imagine myself as an age-appropriate peer of Ranma, because though I am now 40 I was once 18, 16, 14 and like now I was generally attracted to females in the vicinity of my own age. Obviously, as a heterosexual male, that means <i>all</i> women in the vicinity of my own age, fat ones, skinny ones, tall ones, short ones, pimply ones, sweaty ones etc. because it would be ludicrous to suggest that <i>preferences</i> might <i>nest</i> within each other. Obviously.</p><p>And in this exercise, if tomorrow I was magicked into a cartoon animated 16 year old version of myself attending Ranma and Akane's secondary school, I would readily admit that Ranma when transformed was an attractive female, I would want to be hooking up with first and foremost Kodachi the Black Rose, maybe until I met her Hawaii obsessed father. Shampoo also has it going on, but the fact that she turns into a cat is a big turn off, much as girl Ranma turning into a boy is a bit of a spanner in the works. Akane is cute, but her older sisters, particularly the middle one that sells pictures of Akane and girl Ranma is the kind of trouble I was always drawn to.</p><p>If asked if I'd sleep with a transwoman, this is the thing, heterosexuality doesn't work such that in being attracted to women, I am not anywhere close to being attracted to all women. I am attracted to women who have the key quality of being attractive. That seems to consist of phenotype cues pertaining to health and fertility. But also a bunch of curious things like how they laugh, how they hold a cigarette, because while I'm attracted to attractive women, I would not sleep with any of all the women I find attractive. Some I would rather have in my mental spank bank than in my bed.</p><p>I've also had the experience of sleeping with women I don't find attractive. Part of it is very circumstantial. My sexuality permits me to say to a trans woman "I really like your tits and arse, but I'm not a fan of your dick, and it kind of overrules the whole situation."</p><p>Bridget or Ranma as fictitious characters can enjoy the ease with which they pass, because they were designed by a literal creator to pass, in my assessment of their attractiveness. I can imagine being persuaded semantically that trans women are women but my answer would also be "not knowingly" and I have been in a situation where I genuinely did not know if I was hooking up with a guy or a girl until she got her period. Their are certain ethnicities where sexual dimorphism is less pronounced than my own, and while a very attractive woman, she did have a slight adams apple and clomped around like a clydesdale. </p><p>But I found her attractive enough to be willing to find out something new about my sexuality. I deemed the situation one in which the person I thought was female was so likely a female that I would have no real cause for embarrassment should she reveal she was once a dude. Then I'd have to take it from there, because well I think ultimately, I am reluctant to form an attachment to someone for whom I can be certain that having kids will be a complicated and difficult process, even though I'm willing to get attached to someone with whom there is a chance having kids will be a complicated and difficult process. Reproduction is important.</p><p>The Japanese have made gameshows out of panel guests having to concoct tests and guess which of a group of presented females are actually boys. One memorably asked two candidates to mime how they would park a bicycle and the male revealed himself by kicking his pretend bike stand into place quite forcefully.</p><p>There are certainly things that genderqueer culture can learn from non-western cultures like Japan, like indigenous cultures, like India, like Mexico. It's just that learning process is very difficult given how difficult it is to approach alien-cultural artifacts with the biases of your own culture. I'm quite close to Japan and though it's been a good while, and my Japanese friends and I are no longer the over exposed and over examined youth culture, my guess is that Japan is not at the forefront of gender progressivism. Japan is the only G7 nation that legally excludes same-sex marriage <i>and</i> extending spousal benefits to same-sex couples.</p><p>In light of the depiction of Buddhist monk Tripitaka in "Monkey" 1978, played by Masako Natsume and dubbed into english by Maria Warburg, where in the show every single character treats the obviously female actress with the obviously female voiceover as the male she is portraying...to this day I have no idea why this particular casting decision was made, wikipedia as per occassionally has the answers though:</p><blockquote><p>Masako won the part as she had matched contemporary descriptions of Sanzō-hōshi's appearance more closely than male actors who auditioned.</p></blockquote><p>I would contend Masako's depiction of Tripitaka in the late 70s is about as significant as anything Bridget has done. I believe in stories, I believe in fiction as a technology, and the power of narratives. </p><p>If Bridget reconciling some conception of herself helps anyone reconcile their own dysphoria whatever manner it manifests for them, power to you. Such fictions also help me explore the mysteries of my own sexuality though, and I've never felt any internal dysphoria, though sometimes I wake up and I find it weird to be me, almost like some Dark City shit is going on.</p><p>A categorical preference though is not consent. Teenage Tik-Tok users shouldn't have to be making up new sexualities like "<a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/super_straight">Super-straight</a>" to specify they are only attracted to cis-women because when asked if trans-women are women they go "uhhh...". Maybe they can't articulate that the prefix "trans" is a reliable predictor of belonging to the larger subset of all the women they as straight men are not attracted to, like women quintuple their age minus 7. </p></div>ohminous_thttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362629902969757305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20599948.post-62278308301422229702024-02-14T22:06:00.000-08:002024-02-14T22:10:01.844-08:00Quick Sketch: Mina Le On Everything<p>Fashion is an eternal wellspring, perhaps the best and most intangible embodiment of the hedonic treadmill. Seasonal fashion, the implied necessity to alter and update ones wardrobe with the changing of each season* was invented by King Louis when he moved his court to Versailles and it was designed to keep the noble class impoverished. </p><p>*<i>Seasonal fashion was a tool of suppression if not outright oppression - and not even in the sense that the iPhone (n+1) is an upgrade of the iPhone (n) but basically solving the same problem of portable communication and documentation, next seasons winter look need not be a simple evolution, an improved solution to the problem of cold and wet.</i></p><p>Fashion is a big visible phenomenon. Sir Ken Robinson in his TED talk, perhaps <i>the</i> TED talk of peak TED when TED was the height of fashion, asserted his observation that he thinks everyone is interested in education, and I would assert somewhat hyperbolically of course (there's all those programmer types who literally need someone in their lives to prevent them from wearing sweatpants and crocs everywhere) that everyone is interested in fashion.</p><p>Despite basically dressing the same way I always have for 26 years give or take, since I first gained the agency to have some say over what I wear, I am interested in fashion. For me it is definitely an eternal wellspring for generating one of my favourite obsessions - good things needlessly discarded.</p><p>Fashion is fraught, one day something is a rooster strutting and crowing, the next it is a feather duster. In an ideal world that we don't live in, fashion would be inextricably linked with merit. The world we live in links, I think, fashion inextricably with popularity a concept I do not understand because sometimes the dog of popularity appears to wag its tail, other times the tail of popularity appears to wag the dog. Popularity always seems somewhat detached from the subject it is applied to. Begging the question is not fallacious in my opinion when someone explains that something is popular because it is popular.</p><p>Popularity can be subdivided into merit and etiquette. In that sense I can get some traction on it. It is vocationist (people who want to do the work) or careerist (people who want the esteem). Fashion ultimately though isn't about scaling mountains, it's about buying stuff. It is not going to be a meritocracy where careerists can't succeed at attaining the esteem they desire by doing the work vocationists do. (A very visible example of a careerist failing in a meritocratic environment would be Lebron James in his pursuit of the esteem lavished on Michael Jordan. We see the NBA and it's affiliated media quite literally lifting heaven and earth to try and give him the same esteem as Michael Jordan and these efforts are collapsing as I type.)</p><p>Merit is where the suit is wearing you. Etiquette is where you are wearing the suit. I think seasonal fashion is an over-revved unmerited cycle because of etiquette. </p><p>So manners and etiquette, continuing this break down of a garment, a beloved garment like a t-shirt given to you by the great white buffalo you let get away; etiquette is distinct from manners because manners regards the esteem we give to strangers, outsiders, that make civil society possible. Most manners in wealthy industrialized nations are invisible, we only think of the tip of the iceberg like looking at someone when you speak to them, responding when someone says hello, shaking everyone's hand not just the mens.</p><p>We might question anachronistic examples of manners like "elbows off the table" that had some historical point but now verge on manners for manners sake, especially when so many people type now. But there are many invisible manners so ingrained that we take them for granted, only children get them wrong like not spitting food up onto your plate. At some point, society had to be taught not to defecate in the corner of a room where people are eating, not to piss on someone else's house not to stab someone for stepping on your shadow.</p><p>There's a reason leaving your house is not a similar experience to playing a 3d shooter where anything that moves is probably an enemy and that reason is manners - the benefit of the doubt we extend to strangers. </p><p>Etiquette, etiquette can be mistaken for manners, but is ultimately characterized by its exclusionary character and curiously, it's vacuity. In a real (as opposed to ideal) meritocracy, someone gifted with the necessary athleticism and dedication to something like parkour may be able to run up a wall and haul themselves onto a rooftop to reach a level unattainable to the mediocre masses. That's their privilege.</p><p>The mediocre need a ladder, which is to say a tool that pretty much anyone barring a disqualifying disability could use. This way anyone can prop a ladder up against a wall and climb up to the level one previously needed a certain athletic deviation and practiced technique to ascend to. But etiquette isn't the ladder, etiquette is pulling the ladder up so other mediocrity can't imitate your empty achievement.</p><p>It has to be vacuous, because if the only people who attained the pinnacle of social esteem merited it, then we wouldn't need etiquette and it wouldn't exist. So etiquette is always going to take the form of too many knives and forks and knowing to start at the outside and work your way in, it's going to take the form of five different glasses for five different types of alcohol...</p><p>And etiquette is always going to produce a body of literature attempting (by necessity) to simultaneously unlock its secrets and justify them. For example, I can bet there's an article on why wine is served in wine glasses and whiskey is served in tumblers. Someone will have figured out why it's necessary and useful to have a stem on a wine glass by which one can swirl the wine within the glass to oxiginate it which simply isn't necessary for whiskey, but whiskey shouldn't be served in a juice bag because the mouth of the tumbler allows some important quantity of air in around the nose that changes the flavour profile for the better. </p><p>There will probably be some truth to it, but that is to buy into the premise that if the experience of drinking alcohol isn't optimized, then it is a wasted experience of some significant consequence.</p><p>Two impulses at least must drive the etiquette of being fashionable. One obvious one is a capture-the-flag impulse, the fashionable want to stand in the spotlight and keep it on themselves, it isn't a egalitarian democratic impulse that would want the house lights brought up so everyone equally can be seen. An ambivalent feeling where people want the flattery, insatiably but tire of the imitation quickly. Perhaps, to be sure they are still the subject of imitation, and hence the object of flattery, they need to change up styles to see if the mob will follow.</p><p>The second obvious driving impulse is the adolescent impulse, where the young seek to transit from dependent infant to independent adult and start actively resisting, going contrarian if need be, the model of their parents to assert their own identity. It permits a level of arbitrariness, a mere need to be different to create the illusion of libertarian self determination. It's why we can see youth movements that clearly just suck - Mods, Maximalism, Emo, Nu Metal, Barbiecore. It doesn't matter if it sucks, what matters is that the youth (now probably expanded from 12-35, thanks to Boomers arresting generational turnover) feel it is theirs.</p><p>Part and parcel of the adolescent impulse is a reluctance to relinquish it. The ubiquity of mums trying to be their teenage daughters best friend producing the ugly ambiguous messaging of mother-daughter gym bodies where both are wearing bodycon athleisure wear with g-strings integrated into the spandex as if to ask a stranger like me: "what would you like, too <i>young</i> for this look OR too <i>old</i> for this look?" Ugly, ugly collisions of the social desirability of being 21 (probably now 28).</p><p>On which point, I walked past one of the many campus gates of Methodist Ladies College here in Melbourne and saw a sign directing visitors to various destinations eg. library, chapel etc. stuff one would expect on a private secondary school campus, and a sign to a cafe, which one would not expect on a secondary campus at any point in the 20th century. </p><p>Back in my day, morons were excited to graduate into the senior class for access to a common room - a space afforded to students that suddenly had "spare" periods in their schedule, ostensibly so they could hit the books in a relaxed homelike environment where they ostensibly studied out of school hours. These common rooms would be equipped with a kitchenette and a commercial sized can of instant coffee because morons need stimulants to cope with the stress of studying largely arbitrary content in order to excel at exams designed to provide justification for discriminating among applicants in allocating scarce university places.</p><p>When I learned my high school was building an on-campus cafe, because moron senior students don't just need coffee to study the largely bullshit subjects, those moron senior students need "good" coffee. I did not approve, it smacked of etiquette that would inevitably involve graduating future elites even more out of touch with the vast majority than they already were. My mum pushed back arguing that kids were "maturing" faster now and simply appreciated coffee. Even if having an on-campus high school cafe has become standard practice at elite private schools and perhaps selective public schools now, the argument is still idiotic. It simply suggests to me that women who have aged out of that 21-28 "ideal" are capable of sympathising with women who are impatient to age into that 21-28 "ideal" and perhaps that it is vice versa in terms of sympathies, that little girls are understanding, perhaps even deriving their own impatience from observing their mother's desperate attempts to claw back the clock.</p><p>I presently feel the opposite impulse. I feel a need to distance myself from the youth, a strong desire to save mostly my time and everyone else's by making it as clear as possible that I do not care what the young folk are doing. That it is irrelevant to me. </p><p>I want to craft a specific communication through the medium of attire, one that says "Please <i>don't</i> tell me about your self diagnosed ADHD." or "Please, <i>don't</i> tell me about that show everyone is watching." in trying to do something short of just having these slogans printed onto white t-shirts, a penny finally dropped shedding light on an enduring mystery.</p><p>Consider this next speculation a draft for my forthcoming illustrated polemic, but I had thought the point of low-rise jeans were to emphasise a woman's midriff - a toned flat stomach and pronounced waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) necessary to pull off the look. A look innovated really by Mariah Carey and popularised by Brittney and the other mouseketeers that ruled the charts in the early 00s. Yet when I attended university, my first educational institution without a uniform, low-rise jeans appeared to serve the purpose of showcasing a woman's spare tires, and arse cracks; turning a university lecture into a <a href="https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/magic-the-gathering-butt-cracks/">Magic the Gathering tournament</a>.</p><p>Similarly, I had assumed the purpose of athleisure was to showcase if not exaggerate the taught and muscular physiques of a woman, showcasing not just WHR but well developed glutes and thighs, a fashion trend to emphasize thick women. But in practice appears to serve the purpose of emphasizing a lack of variagation in the transit from ribcage to knees, women proudly displaying the rectangularity of their frame, the flatness of their butt cheeks and the poultry like condition of their legs.</p><p>For all I hear about unrealistic beauty ideals and the pressure it places on women, the psychological and emotional burden of Sisyphean persistence that women labour all their lives under, my life in Australia (very much a consumer, less a producer of beauty standards, importing those standards from the Americas, Europe and Asia) has been but a testimony that women too often don garments with the practical effect of emphasizing how far they are from those beauty standards - like the real but rarely remembered phenomena of "Whiggers" when white suburban males discovered hip-hop way too late via Eminem. </p><p>The point of low-rise jeans is not to emphasise the abdomen and WHR. The point of athleisure is not to emphasize thick thighs and asses. The point of both these fashion trends is to signal relevance. It is about relevance and belonging. It is purchasing the team's new uniform for the new season to renew one's membership and let your teammates know that you are still a team player.</p><p>This translates to me, as most fashion journalism (I don't know if it's 60% or 90%) takes the form of an archetype. Generally it is "something new is relevant and how to jump on board." A story that only needs one or two lines of copy, if it was okay to be brazen about the crippling need to belong, if that could be admitted the story would just be "go to the store that sells jeans and buy what they tell you to. In fact, they probably don't even stock any irrelevant cuts."</p><p>Most of the expenditure is going to be about what to say to strangers at parties when you suddenly appear in cropped t-shirts that reveal your bra straps to people who aren't in the know. People whose thumb is not on the pulse.</p><p>Allow me to use something as an analogy for this archetype that I've been sitting on for a while:</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.pinimg.com/236x/8d/49/58/8d49588912ed2fff8cfcc894a9d4670d.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="236" data-original-width="236" height="236" src="https://i.pinimg.com/236x/8d/49/58/8d49588912ed2fff8cfcc894a9d4670d.jpg" width="236" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">exhibit A</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.pinimg.com/236x/00/33/44/0033444b507fef962768a99b86590c43.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="290" data-original-width="236" height="290" src="https://i.pinimg.com/236x/00/33/44/0033444b507fef962768a99b86590c43.jpg" width="236" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">exhibit B</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>Now, I'm sure a <i>real</i> astrology girl, one that can do a full moon chart could explain how these memes are non-contradictory, contentful demonstrations of a real personality science because both Virgos and Geminis are air signs or something and both have a <i>fierce</i> and empowered independent streak in low agreeability trait. Here's one for <a href="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/76/0a/8b/760a8bf3fcc8566af5ce4bf0dc8276ad.jpg">Taurus</a>, one for <a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Esm1zxwXcAEPD6X.jpg:large">Leo</a>, one for <a href="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTmwxTAblkIIDD-67J4K7Lc-phz1XvwtHs_oHuQB4ehWg&s">Libra</a>, one for <a href="data:image/jpeg;base64,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">Capricorn</a>, one for <a href="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTYQ9s8MoNA_yejZ_O59-xPRWmFwIDVXY7vJeeFmqtGIQ&s">Scorpio</a> makes 7 out of 12 star signs <i>thus far</i> with the simplest explanation being that Astrology works on Barnum statements, not that over half the population share a defining <i>fierce</i> streak. I'm confident I could do the same with <a href="https://i.pinimg.com/236x/53/06/aa/5306aa4be81281725f0294ae3043cfcb.jpg">MBTIs</a> given that basically the MB crowd and the Astrology crowd pretty much produce the exact same concept, they just both probably look down on each other as deluded.</p><p>I think I stumbled across Mina Le's Youtube channel while looking to understand the utility of the manufacture of garments. Very much on a journey to expand my agency and step out of dependency on others to produce garments I want to wear. I just wanted to take the first step on the Dunning Kruger curve to understanding how little I know about the clothes I wear every day, and I first watched her video on some wool jumpers that I personally would never wear:</p><p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uq4Vi8PyBFM?si=wcFIvqPbFL8vpu6i" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></p><p>It was a deep dive into the history of the production of clothing and evolution of the market that just happened to use an "iconic" look I have never lived in a climate to give two shits about. Furthermore, while I could be absolutely persuaded that in 2023 one can obtain a machine knitted polyblend take on an old utilitarian jumper from some windswept craggy rock on the northern isles of the UK that was stitched by hand straight off a sheep's back and the new mass produced articles are objectively worse, for the purposes of a photo shoot, it does not look objectively worse unless one has been trained to care.</p><p>How long does one need to be informed that polyester doesn't breath and irritates the skin? </p><p>I never finished that first video, because once it got into the weeds of tips as to how to avoid the Australian farming practice of whatevering sheep to prevent flies from parisitising their rectums or whatever, I just couldn't care. But as the internet including Youtube is want to do, you know, I get bored and I listened to a few more of Mina's video essays on fashion topics.</p><p>These quickly moved away from my interest in fabrics and how to stitch them and what possibly indicates quality vs slavery, to just well...the archetypal story about fashion - what are women doing now and how to jump on board.</p><p>Mina Le is interesting, charming even, she'd probably be welcome in my friend zone. I don't want to overstate it though, she's on the cusp of people I would forget existed if they were in my year at high school. I think with her memorably raspy voice and lack of grace and poise, she probably would have grabbed enough of my attention from time-to-time to not triage out the memory of her. But she's not <i>that</i> interesting as a grounded host of a youtube channel. Just to look at the thumbnails, I get a data set from which I can induct that if Mina Le is somewhat of an expert on fashion, there is no fashion expertise. That she is someone with an interest there is no doubt, that many people share her interest is attested by her subscriber count and viewership, that the content is interesting...</p><p>Well, I certainly reached my saturation point. This channel is an analogue to the channels on the subject of basketball that do a deep dive into the latest trend of floor-spacing/pick-and-rolls/iso-plays/reversals etc. that miss the big picture of Kobe won 5 championships while you obsessed over Yao Ming's footwork, or James Harden chokes every post season while you were having your minds blown by the way he was revolutionizing NBA offense. Both fashions on the streets and tik tok, and fashions in sporting tactics and strategies both have the common feature of setting aside the tricky and nebulous variable of human psychology in order to emphasize what is easily controlled like behaviour.</p><p>Much of Mina's content takes the forms of explainers: "explaining the hyperfemininity aesthetic" "explaining the gen z maximalism trend" "explaining the old money aesthetic" "everything you need to know about Japan's kawaii industry" "everything you need to know about the courset trend" "explaining the ballet trend in fashion. (balletcore)" "why do we wear impractical shoes?" "Celebrity courtcore: How and why celebs dress up for trial" "why are we so obsessed with scammers."</p><p>I am not fit to judge the actual content of most of those video titles, given I reached my saturation point with Mina Le, relatively quickly, which is a shame because I like to have something on in the background while I draw and am often looking for interesting and informative content producers. The titles I've shared by themselves, likely function mostly as clickbait to get undiscerning fashionistas to give the channel a try, they likely sound more vapid than they are.</p><p>My saturation point however, was watching "explaining the hyperfemininity aesthetic" and feeling like I was watching one of those miraculous machines where no matter what you put in the top, once you turn the handle the stuff that comes out the bottom is always the same. Specifically, Mina often in her deep dives finds thoughtful articles written about aesthetics to go along with historical precedents, origins, cycles etc. Those articles invariably conclude that whatever women are doing it is something to the effect of "stepping into their agency and defying the mores of the time that keep them under patriarchy." A conclusion that can be reached whether women are dressing up as infant girls with pig-tails in barbie pinks sucking on pacifiers with frilly skirts that reveal underwear that says "spank me" or whether they are getting short androgynous haircuts, wearing minimal makeup exaggerating their eyebrows and wearing blazers with shoulder pads. </p><p>Nassim Nicholas Taleb, I think drawing on Nietzsche admonishes his readers to not confuse the unintelligible for the unintelligent. The inverse is also I feel, a worthy caution - do not confuse the intelligible for the intelligent. </p><p>This appears to be women's video games. Where one can certainly be diverted for hours at a time by "understanding" why "we" "all" dress like little girls now, but it's likely just the same behaviour - adolescent women broke off and found some way to express a distinct identity to their older siblings and parents, then the older siblings and parents tried to imitate them necessitating some new iteration. Or some highly esteemed popular person started doing something, so plebs starting signalling their allegence by imitating them necessitating them doing something to distance themselves from the prole-drift which the proles were eagerly anticipating as the next thing to do.</p><p>It is much the same as somebody beating a video-game 100% completion 0 hits. It's not a real achievement, they bought into someone elses game which diverted them from creating something of their own. </p><p>In the sense that the medium is the message, both fashion blogging/vlogging and livestreaming games, reacting to red carpet televised events like the Oscar's carpets or the Met Gala Ball, now make being a hobbyist potentially lucrative. The Far Side cartoon of parents imagining all the job ads for a kid that plays video games has not aged well, though it could potentially out live the influencer economy when we all look back with chagrin at that period of history where people worked hard to transfer money to hobbyists they lived vicariously through.</p><p>Lastly, Mina Le does strike me as someone self conscious, someone who is uncomfortable with asking her viewers to sustain her financially. She seems like an okay person that I would not have taken the time to ridicule in highschool unless she had walked into a rake or coffee table in my presence and the ridicule came easily. She is, amongst the videoessayists, one of the better ones. </p><p>I write out my thoughts, because that confusing an interest with something interesting, confusing the intelligible for the intelligent has broader implications. I see it as societies path away from being broadly right to exactly wrong. </p><p>Mina, I can actually stand. The same I cannot say for Big Joel, Basketball Break Down, Gil's Arena, Lindsay Ellis, Patrick H Williams...pretty much <i>most</i> video essayists and cultural commentators offer painfully extracted opinions bloated out to 30 minutes or more pulled straight out of their arses and presented as authoratative and researched takes. It's a genre popularized by a medium that society has not yet learned to interact with any discernment and it has lead to a pandemic of people acquiring beliefs believing themselves to be acquiring knowledge.</p><p>Mina Le is one of the better ones, and if you read her bio on her page "just a gal who likes fashion and movies" we get an honest disclosure of her qualifications to explain any of the social phenomena that form the subjects of her videos. It may not be a sufficient or necessary counterweight to the presumptive titles of those videos - where someone like Prof. Tim Snyder of Yale who criticized Putin for writing an essay titled with the word "On" because "On" presumes that something <i>is</i>. Titling something as "explaining" might presume possession of a definitive and solitary explanation, where the content is usually post hoc rationalizations offered by other observers of a phenomena (the consensus is that Alexander McQueen brought back low-rise jeans, where I feel Mariah Carey is a much more credible explanation for why it hit big at the turn of the century. Muffin tops and arse cracks are a credible explanation as to why high-rise jeans came back for women rather rapidly.) </p><p>Yet, just as there are likely real reasons to drink wine from a glass goblet with a stem and whiskey from a tumbler, Mina Le <i>probably</i> shed's some real insight into historical facts and what not. Hence I could watch Mina Le for a while, without hate watching, I mean I never hate watched. I don't think Mina is fashionable, but I also don't care. Like I don't need someone to own 6 properties before I deem them qualified to tell me about property investment. </p><p>Big Joel on the other hand, I do hate watch. He's like the bob's burgers of youtube. I can watch infinite Bob's Burgers and never spot a joke or gag, yet understand it to be beloved, Big Joel however much of his content I've watched, I've never spotted any actual insight, yet understand him to be beloved. Like beloved like a show that actually makes people laugh, or beloved like a commentator who shares actual insight.</p><p>I recommend Mina Le as a valuable example of a content creator that can be watched in order to extract the content archetype and stop watching. Mina Le on everything is talking to the story of reconciling the need to fit in, with the person who needs to fit in. That's fashion.</p>ohminous_thttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362629902969757305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20599948.post-39713391400872903292024-02-12T16:12:00.000-08:002024-02-12T16:12:35.684-08:00Quick Sketch: On Evil<p> I've probably been mentioning this about as often as someone mentions they are vegan, but I need to come out as an Igtheist, or Ignosticist if brevity ain't your thing. Totally compatible with being Atheist, Igtheist is the position that basically I don't know what the fuck anyone is talking about when it comes to <i>really</i> metaphysics and that needs to be flagged when I quickly bash out some words about "evil".</p><p>So in an attempt at clarity, take for example the exercise of "prayer" of course I understand that prayer is something people do, people clap their hands together face some idol or direction or maybe just bow their heads or look to the sky. I understand that prayer is a thing that exists and I could point to people praying and say "that's some people praying." Sometimes even this exercise is intelligible, like in a Shinto shrine in Japan when you see someone ring a bell and clap and throw a coin in a big wooden box and they <i>pray</i> for good grades or to have a baby boy instead of a girl, or that their grandma lives to be 115 by getting over the cold she caught at 107. Shinto has evolved to become a fairly clear cut placebo prayer procedure - you buy sugar pills, you take the sugar pills, you feel better and maybe even coincidentally get what you want when you want it.</p><p>I can also make sense out of how people more generally only pray for shit that is out of their control. People don't pray for lunch unless they are starving at sea. If there's a supermarket and they have cash they don't generally tend to ask the creator of the universe to help them out. But, and here is where it breaks down, when they pray to be cured of cancer or to get selected for a reality tv show, and they are praying to a monotheistic tri-omni plus god, the whole exercise is unintelligible. In fact, a tri-omni god is unintelligible or at least indistinguishable from nothing at all.</p><p>A prayer enthusiast could probably try and inform me of what they are doing, but as an igtheist they generally don't want to. So my position on all that shit, prayer, evil, good, sin is not merely that I don't know what you are talking about, but that I have no confidence you know what you are talking about.</p><p>Boom. Evil. What is it? Is it a thing? Short answer, no. Whatever it is it has to be subjective. </p><p>A while ago though, I watched an interview with one of the many people struggling with the social friction of the times, and these people tend to fall into one depressingly predictable camp.</p><p>People I've noticed have a bit of a USB mindset, by which I mean if they try <i>one</i> thing and it doesn't work, then they try <i>another thing</i> and <i>that</i> doesn't work, they tend to try the <i>first</i> thing again. This works for USB sticks. If at first you don't succeed, then at second you don't succeed, it probably was a false negative the first time, provided you really tried to make the second thing work.</p><p>For me this describes the swing voters that must exist that are always dissatisfied with the incumbent government and feeling nostalgic for the last incumbent government they were dissatisfied with, hence you get voting patterns of conservative, reform, conservative, reform, conservative, reform. Which would be fine if the switch flipped via a recognition that it was variously time for necessary reform or time to conserve the good times. But typically it's like inflation is too high and wage growth is too slow from 1976-2024 and counting so you just vote out whoever isn't addressing it and vote in someone who won't address it.</p><p>It also appears to be the USB mindset of people who do not like the unexpected turn secular societies have taken in the 21st century into a form secular puritanism. A depressing number of people bitten for expressing common sense views that stand in juxtaposition to presumed collective ideals go to their rooms and wax nostalgic for society under the church.</p><p>I don't have it in me, to understand how men in dresses preaching horseshit, meaningless drivel in an activity that takes a full quarter of one's weekly downtime has any appeal whatsoever. Alas, fucking alas, a bunch of people do. This is not a USB stick where the answer to the new horseshit is a revival of the old horseshit. The problem with behaviour based on maps that do not describe the world very well is to dust off old maps that became unpopular because they do not describe the world very well.</p><p>This was an interview however with someone otherwise clearly intelligent who put it to her host, a well known atheist and sceptic, the question as to whether he believed the universe has moral laws.</p><p>To outline my understanding of such a question, it's like observing a Newtonian law of motion like everything in the universe remains at rest unless acted upon by another force (your coffee won't ever jump off your desk and commit suicide, but if the desk gets bumped hard enough it will spill) and thinking that the universe might punish lying.</p><p>There is of course some evidence that the universe punishes lying, but not enough to be conclusive. There are plenty of lies that probably turn out to be inconsequential, like I once lied to get out of a work shift to go to a gig, then saw the guy from work I spoke to to cancel my shift at the gig, but he didn't see me was it sufficient for the universe to make me mildly uncomfortable during the gig? I feel these are more social consequences that are part of course of a greater universe but it is entirely plausible, if not demonstrated that one can be a pathological liar and enjoy wealth, avoid prison and produce offspring.</p><p>Furthermore, just because a behaviour is compatible with the physical material world we live in (like climbing down trees instead of leaping from the upper branches) doesn't mean that anyone or anything <i>wants</i> us to behave that way. An idiot that jumps out of a tree because he doesn't understand that injuries grow exponentially in severity the greater the distance fallen may not live like someone who climbs down to a survivable height before jumping out of the tree, but their rotten corpse provide energy and nutrition to the biosphere that on the whole is largely indifferent to that idiot being dead and their more sensible contemporary being alive.</p><p>So Hitchens used to say that he believed in evil and defined it as "the surplus value of totalitarianism" where "you've made your point but you keep on going." For example, by this definition, Hannah Gadsby could be considered evil in relation to Louis CK. Asking work colleagues if you can masturbate in front of them is unacceptable behaviour whether they agree to it or not. Louis CK got exposed and took a massive financial and reputational hit. Consequences. It is pretty clear, that society disapproves, but Hannah Gadsby differs from the emergent consensus (that Louis is allowed to work, people are free to associate with him, venues are allowed to book him) in expressing views congruent with anything short of Louis CK being a destitute persona non-grata is insufficient to making the point. (Probably, I give her the benefit of the doubt that she feels the social response insufficient, rather than her views coming from a pure vindictiveness, her wanting a response surplus to the making of the point is not something she herself views as surplus. But Vlad Tsepes I'm guessing never looked out the window of castle Dracula at all the people slowly dying impaled alive upon poles for suspicion of petty theft and thought "you know I really am excessive." He could have just thrown those Germanic ambassadors out to make his point, he didn't have to have their hats nailed to their heads. Totalitarian is as totalitarian does.)</p><p>Hitchens is pretty good but he's no Abe Lincoln:</p><blockquote><p>It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, "You toil and work and earn bread, and I'll eat it."</p></blockquote><p>Okay, so that's a multi-valent statement if ever I heard one, it could simultaneously be quoted as an argument against pinko Commies, and quoted in an argument against capitalism and "free" markets. This president being my favorite leader ever, keep in mind presided over the largest mass execution in US history, and that's not a euphamism for the civil war, it's a literal execution of a bunch of Indians that did something rebellious in light of annexation and probably broken treaties by the States. #CancelAbe. </p><p>I think it describes as close as we'll get to a moral law of the universe.</p><p>So it might seem ambitious and that I have already rambled on too long just to get here for a post I called a "quick sketch" but if you are reading this it means I published it and vis-a-vis therefore I published it and quickly.</p><p>The fundamental observable nature of the universe is that it is dynamic. It moves. It is not static and therefore behaviour is possible. Consequences are possible. All that shit. It's very simple, it's all around us all the time, but that's the basics.</p><p>A dynamic universe, I assert, doesn't work if there's no risk premium. It can't fucking sustain life and thus we would be talking about the morality of rocks.</p><p>Picture a valley where a bunch of tribes have figured out how to share natures bounty and subsist on the fruits and the game of the valley by taking turns, biting their lips and limiting the expression of dissent to passive aggression, never actual aggression. </p><p>The people survive but nobody is really happy there. Then one day, one tribe are like "<i>fuck this</i> I can't take our neighbouring tribes all night singing anymore. We're <i>leaving</i> the valley!" and leads their people out of the valley into the unknown.</p><p>Outside the valley could be endless uninhabitable wasteland. That has to be a possibility. If it were guaranteed however, there would be no risk premium for exploring the unknown and this particular incidence of abiogenesis occuring in the universe would be the equivalent of lichen growing on a rock somewhere before eventually dying and disintegrating back into inert matter with little consequence to itself. However, if there's a possibility that this tribe stumble for a couple of days through a wasteland, gradually beginning to doubt themselves, before they climb the next hill and discover a verdant, beautiful and heretofore uninhabited valley, then this universe has a risk-premium.</p><p>That is, this tribe gets a huge payoff for potentially risking everything and losing. It pays not to maintain the status quo. Not all the time, not necessarily most of the time, but when it does the windfall has to be proportional to the risk otherwise nothing works.</p><p>We can't have the society we have under conditions where if somebody is asked to quit their paying job to join a startup that is going to invent robot taco stands, the deal <i>has to be</i> "quit your job that pays $150k a year in return for a 30% stake in this venture that could be either worthless, or worth billions."</p><p>Taking risks has to, <i>has to</i> have a potential payoff that is greater than not taking a risk. It's why we can be certain that the music industry is worse and culture impoverished once you program the mp3. It might be hard to notice that Taylor Swift is no Madonna, given all the revenue she generates, but that is because there is less incentive to be Madonnas now, so the new Madonna's don't exist. </p><p>Better example, the NFL is big money, the superbowl has famously expensive ad spots. It's the biggest sport in the US. For every one person watching the NBA in the United States, there are ten people that watch the NFL. </p><p>The highest paid NFL players get between $50-$55 million per year. The highest paid NBA players get about the same. The NFL is a brutal sport, it's really hard to do well enough long enough to get a guaranteed contract and then you shoot yourself in retirement because of acquired brain injuries.</p><p>The best players in the NBA at the moment are variously Canadian, Greek, Serbian, Slovenian, Cameroonian etc. there are almost no foreign national players in NFL it is nowhere near becoming a world game, there are a few Australian punters or kickers, that's it. </p><p>This can in part, and probably mostly be explained by the risk premium not being there for NFL despite it's domestic popularity. It is a quirk of US culture that foreigners look at and pass. Unless you are an Australian AFL full forward that can boot an ovoid ball for 60+ meters and decide instead of playing a real role in a dynamic and democratic sport, you can play a walk-on role for much more money in a league and code you never cared about.</p><p>The NBA reaps the fruits of diversity, whereas the NFL probably doesn't and that's because the risk premium is there for the NBA such that 90s kids the world over onwards can find it worth their time to gamble on a career in basketball. They don't do that for grid iron, the risk premium isn't there for anyone to build the code specific fields, purchase the expensive equipment and fill all the elaborate and convoluted defensive and offensive positions. It's not that NFL is a bad sport, it's not ten times the size of the NBA for no reason, its just the potential payoff isn't there for explorers t strike out for NFL El Dorado.</p><p>The risk-return relationship, is as close as I can deduce, a mathematical law of the universe - uncertainty has to potentially pay off. Like you cannot and should not sell a raffle ticket for $2 if the first prize is $1. Even if the expected value of a lottery ticket is lower than the cost of entry (as lottery picks exist today, hence their reputation amongst economists as a "tax on stupidity") the potential payoff has to be massive, $4.95 has to be attached to the dream of millions, even if there's a 1 in a billion chance of actually winning.</p><p>It also is a mathematical law of the universe that I feel has social implications, a mathematical law of morality. Risk takers have to get the risk premium.</p><p>Meaning evil is simply taking the risk premium, without taking the risk. We have a name for people who commit such evil, but no it's not the government who comes and taxes your income. Okay, let me be clear, the government takes a risk building roads and schools and hospitals and deploying its monopoly on violence to enforce property rights that allow the governed to do something with the land and infrastructure <i>risking</i> that those people will make something with the civilization provided to them and sustained for them and as such the government is entitled to <i>its</i> risk premium collected from every individual bet it made most of which pan out <i>meh </i>like me.</p><p>No the name is "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rentier_capitalism">rentier</a>" these are the characters that fit the bill of "You toil and work and earn bread, and I'll eat it." though toil and work in this case, involves taking the risks. Chomsky puts it as "socialised risks and privatised profits" such as when taxpayers bail out a private company that then continues to operate exclusively in the interests of its shareholders. Rentiers are evil because they put the dynamism of life at risk by killing it, such that we return to a Universe of rocks, with no interesting thing to say about morality or even a mouth to say it with.</p><p>Don't eat the risk premium unless you earned it by taking risks.</p><p><br /></p>ohminous_thttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362629902969757305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20599948.post-56624451097514244132024-02-10T19:51:00.000-08:002024-02-10T19:51:05.906-08:00Quick Sketch: Haven't You Heard There's A Cost of Living Crisis Going On<p> My gym plays channel 9. Telstra. Channel 9. Bert Newton. Somewhere, in someone's dictionary, those three things describe quintessential Australia. <i>Real</i> Australia. A colonial Aboriginal Songline. Embodied in Country. That is what Australia became, and that Australia still exists even if it is hard to perceive.</p><p>And there's curious phenomena to be observed through the prism of Channel 9, at least if you are a chronic student of marketing. The ads are diverse, in terms of the demographic casting choices. Be it ads for mattresses or malteasers, even the ubiquitous betting on sports that typically target loser "blokes" and now have a regulatory equinox of messaging that must be peak schizophrenic were the ad exists to encourage us to "bet with our mates" before transitioning seamfully into a stark graphic telling us "you'll win some and lose more call 1800 858 858 or visit gamblinghelponline.org.au" encouraging us <i>not</i> to gamble with our mates or anyone, ever.</p><p>But the programming, Channel 9's actual content has demographics that, if they do not reflect the nation, reflect their market. It is at a guess 95% white australia, with more recent immigrant ethnicities probably making up the remainder. Channel 9 still looks like it looked in the early 2000s, and like the ABC looked in the early 2000s, whereas ABC being the only channel I was exposed to before joining a gym, now looks like an episode of Tim and Eric Awesome Show: Great Job! but without being funny or particularly informative.</p><p>So that's interesting, that Channel 9 <i>itself</i> without sound, and AI generated captions just on an eye-test serves as a datapoint to reject many hypothesis that I feel younger people akin to me have elevated to the status of theory without bothering to do a replication.</p><p>Anyhow, yeah, I've joined a gym in a neighbourhood that seems to know that it's customer base want channel 9 all the time. </p><p>My first gym in Mexico, a unisex gym round the corner of my old apartment with a mostly young and possibly un/underemployed client base played movies on their TV screens or the World Cup which was happening concurrent to my membership of the gym, or old Dragonball episodes. Like, dragonball is the body beautiful ideal in a young country like Mexico (that didn't get old, despite being three times as old as the nation of Australia). Until I moved accomodations and found a new gym downtown, one of the cities oldest gyms, a delightful men <i>only</i> gym.</p><p>The ground floor had a fairly modernish space with a boxing ring and punching bags and mats where both men and women could take boxing lessons. Beyond that was a screen leading to the locker rooms that once passed one could anticipate an eyeful of old dick stripping down and towling off or about to head downstairs to the sauna. I don't mind saunas, they are not my favorite thing, particularly, and I emphasise <i>particularly</i> in a climate like Mexico, as opposed to wintering in Japan or Turkey. It's why I never quite accepted why my Mexican pals from the Indigenismo scene could never accept that I just <i>wasn't into</i> a three <i>fucking</i> hour Temescal experience, like how can anyone be incredulous that a sweatlodge isn't <i>everyones</i> favorite fucking thing to do on a Sunday afternoon after 5 continous months with no rainfal, lows of 16 at 5am in the morning and highs of 28~35 reached by 11am and persisting until 7 or 8pm. Of <i>course</i> there will be people who are like "you know what I don't feel like? I <i>don't</i> feel like having a <i>fucking </i>sauna." Pinche temescals.</p><p>Where was I? Old dick. That's right. Ignoring as much as politely possible, fat old men's wrinkled old ballsacks, you take a left and head up a flight of stairs where this gym, of course, has a bar for fat old men to sit around and eat and drink and be merry in. If you keep heading up the stairs you get to a concentrated extract of true masculinity in all it's glory <i>and</i> shame. A really wonderful space that can never be experienced by women, where there's just wall to wall weights and resistance machines and cardio machines, many of which are not in working order but hey, with a membership base nowhere near capacity, let alone the oversold capacity of most gyms knowing new years resolutions rarely pan out, what were they going to do?</p><p>In that gym, the TV screens played rock, or if feeling a little young and particularly vigorous - horrible techno music like most gyms play. The thing was most gyms play horrible techno music over the top of muted television screens. This gym matched it's horrible techno music of horrible jersey shore type dj's attempting to impress teenagers, the easiest to impress demographic of morons, that with enough techno and XTC and pussyass tattoos and metrosexual haircuts they too could pay bikini clad video vixens to hang out with them for a music video shoot one afternoon before they are back dealing with airline staff as they fly to their next awful EDM music festival.</p><p>But that was only maybe tuesday's or thursdays. Most of the time it was Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, Bruce Springsteen, a fair bit of Nancy Sinatra you might be surprised, Tom Petty, an hourlong supercut of Arnold Schwarzenegger's inspiration from Pumping Iron which would draw old dudes to stop their weight lifting and admire 80s Arnie's body. Then George Harrison, the Rolling Stones, Santana etc. </p><p>Despite being on remote controlled flatscreen TVs, this gym had preserved the 80s tradition of body building on Venice Beach, when people knew so little about martial arts a generation would come to believe that karate could solve every problem, but the older generation hadn't even got that far, they knew Stalone and Arnie and Van Damme and had broadly concluded that you just plain needed to be strong. More strong than people used to bother getting and <i>that</i> would solve your problems. </p><p>That mindset I can tell you, is alive and well in Mexico, and Mexico has a future, unlike Australia.</p><p>Okay, young people, I'm figuring mostly rich people's kids, given my gym has a sign banning all school insignia from the gym and I live in private school central (the elite schools everywhere but the UK, where for some reason "public school" is the expensive exclusive one and I don't know what they call poor people's schools, probably just "schools") so the clientele leans old, old enough that I in the dead-bang middle of my statistical life expectancy, would be among the young crowd of this gym. </p><p>The old crowd of my gym, we could also consider the young whippersnappers of my suburb, that has graduated since the pandemic from open-air retirement village, to open-air palliative care ward. The old people in my gym are in the district wide minority of people whose knees still bend at all, and whose spines still straighten at all.</p><p>So yeah, my gym is going to play the Channel 9 news. It reflects where my gym is at in this place and time, and I should point out that place in time is one of the few places that voted 60% "Yes" on that last year's referendum. </p><p>Anyway, "A Current Affair" was playing the other night while I was climbing stairs. ACA is a long standing trash tv show under the guise of "investigative journalism" but instead of like Watergate or Spotlight it mostly is like "the neighbour from hell" and "we went undercover to expose this dodgy car mechanic" and "we did an experiment to determine no-brand lamingtons taste just as good as brand lamingtons!" that sort of trash.</p><p>They were doing a story on the impact of the "cost of living crisis" on a mum and dad with 10 children. Now, usually it's easy to predict Channel 9's editorial stance, so easy it contributed to the success of 90s satirical programming like "Frontline" which being Australian was probably a cheap but successful knockoff of Brass Eye. </p><p>This one was tricky, <i>usually</i> Channel 9 would beat up on the working class - dolebludgers, welfare queens etc. And it would have an anti-government stance in general, but especially on a government that makes any concessions to the working class.</p><p>Inflation though is something piece of shit journalism usually lays at the feet of the government of the day, and the government of the day ostensibly represents the working class more so than the other party in Australia whose constituents are largely working class but pretty much exclusively represent the interests of the asset owning class.</p><p>So tonally it had problems, I didn't know whether Channel 9 wanted me to root for this family, or despise them, because it's fucking Channel 9 lauder of diggers and battlers, despisers of leaners and whingers. They love a good whinge about some battlers, it's the stuff Channel 9 <i>leans</i> on to stay somewhat upright.</p><p>This seemed to just be explaining pretty basic maths to me though. It was interesting because I hadn't really thought about it. The most successful people I know, my age, in terms of material success can afford <i>two</i> whole children. More than two children often predicts some kind of mental health issue, even a folie a deux mechanic at play, that or good old fashioned Catholicism, not to be mistaken with endearing superstitiously sexy Mexican Catholocism.</p><p><i>Ten</i> kids seemed like the makings of a very short story about the cost of living crisis: "You realize almost nobody has ten kids, because like, that's <i>fucking insane</i> in the 21st century?" "Oh no, we didn't realize. I mean we kind of just kept having them. You think having kids has something to do with having unprotected sex while fertile?" "Yeah. It does." "Oh. Well where was this news two decades ago?" "We didn't think it was newsworthy, I mean, it is <i>very</i> unusual in Australia for a couple to just keep having kids. Didn't you notice all the non ten-bedroom houses for sale? That a family pack and a family pizza weren't enough." "No. It's pretty expensive." "Yeah, and we understand that now it is <i>more </i>expensive?" "Yeah, it's really expensive now."</p><p>Right? Right? Am I fucking insane, or is this not a news story. If you have 10 children, as opposed to none, then the cost of living increases are going to hit you harder. It's kind of like interviewing a family that had a variable-rate mortgage when the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) had an official cash rate of 0.1%pa and sticking a microphone in their face now that it's at a relatively modest 4.25% to document them saying "yeah, it's pretty hard. We didn't realize that <i>things can change</i> and risk is proportional to exposure. We just thought things would be good forever and we'd never have to deal with hardship."</p><p>At the same time, I am sympathetic to the economic illiteracy of the general public. This family of twelve seem like perfectly nice people. On average, much nicer than most of Australia. I don't know, maybe their eldest son pushed his girlfriends head down to pressure her into a blowjob, it's the sort of stone investigative journalism tends to leave unturned. The family however, are somewhat anachronistic, like four generations ago anachronistic for Australia. Like "the pill hadn't been invented yet" anachronistic. </p><p>They aren't exactly representative, is what I'm saying, and I feel the "Cost of Living Crisis" wouldn't be such an issue if it was only hitting hard all 14 Australian households with 8 children or more. I'm given to the impression that it is impeding the pursuit of happiness for millions of households with 1.8 children. It is an issue for for households with <i>no</i> kids, university students that wait tables 5 nights a week and share an ever dwindling supply of multi-bedroom sharehouses for $200 or half if not most of their wages a week. </p><p>And yet...</p><p>We haven't reached the stage of a cost of living crisis where a solitary occupant doesn't drive an SUV to their local supermarket. I mean, yes I live amongst affluent Australia, "yes" voting Australia, but I've been to Ballarat, I've been to Geelong since I returned. Those people drink coffees and they don't order the Big-Breakfast/Full-English/Fry Up at a cafe for Brunch. Those people have avocado toast too. They have Crust, they have Road Bike events that are televised. They see physiotherapists for tennis elbow, they have waterfronts and their supermarkets probably have sushi-bars.</p><p>Don't people know there's a cost of living crisis? I'm not sure you <i>can</i> have a cost of living crisis when there is so much superfluity to obviously give up. </p><p>I am reminded of Tobias Funke's charity for Graft vs Host, where doctors informed him if he just got rid of his hair plugs he would make a <i>full recovery</i>.</p><p>Poor Australia exists, I know it does. Poor Australia who are likely really, genuinely suffering, not fretting over how to pay the increased water rates for the sprinkler system that waters the garden of their beach house, but like how to feed and clothe themselves and their children. </p><p>The economy is fucking confusing, I can totally believe that in Australia a parent that just bought their shitfucked kids a nintendo switch for xmas could also get into a fistfight with a stranger at a community co-op over tomatoes. </p><p>It is hard to discern what is goin on, and I am inclined to not rule out the possibility that Australia isn't so much experiencing a Cost of Living "Crisis" as a dead end social contract. We just need to backtrack a bit. Not everybody gets hoverboards.</p>ohminous_thttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362629902969757305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20599948.post-11848601252445810962024-02-08T21:03:00.000-08:002024-02-08T21:03:38.105-08:00Quick Sketch: Sausages and Salchichas<p> There's a lot happening in sports right now, so sports is on the mind.</p><p>Today the NBA on it's official youtube channel presented a 58 minute stream of the unveiling of Kobe Bryant's statue, what delightfully turns out to be one of three. I of course skipped most of the 58 minutes to just see the statue. I did not have the fortitude to listen to Vanessa or Phil speak. It was hard enough just seeing what I wanted to see.</p><p>Ultimately, it is just a statue, but the emotions overwhelmed me. I had a cry. I had the exact cry I have at the end of "Life Is Beautiful" when that movie culminates in punching you right in the heart with a little boy who thinks he's won when in fact he has lost more than he can ever know, but ultimately knows it because he told us the story and that it was a sad one. A sad story that ends in triumph.</p><p>Grief is a product of enrichment, the easiest way to beat grief is through poverty. To lack value to which to be attached. Buddhists have it right. That's why it's great to feel so bad to have a reminder of Kobe's lost greatness.</p><p>Far away, on the other side of the world are indescribable little warm bags of organs on cute little legs with wet noses and fur all over that I miss. It's amazing that I care so much about little moving shit factories. They are sausages/salchichas. I want little more in life than to hang out with them.</p><p>Obviously I want more, but much of the more I want, like stimulating my brain by making stuff I can do while hanging out with them.</p><p>There are a million dogs their equal, but much as I miss those two, I don't resent my poverty in regards to all other dogs. I found them, and they are enough. They are half a world away, I miss them sorely, and they are enough.</p><p>I can feel them, that's my conceit, through the whole globe, across the whole pacific ocean, like phantom limbs curled up being bored or alternately excited.</p><p>I like to run at night, at night because I might see foxes, I like to pretend that those two little dogs are dreaming of being foxes and seeing me out running at night.</p><p>Magpies have Usma's eyes. I see Magpies, and protective as they are, particularly in spring, they watch me with Usma's eyes and I feel like Usma is watching me.</p><p>The other week, I dreamed I was in the bush, with all the rotting foliage on the ground, and that sodden mass was filled with rats, and to take care of the rats we had the foxes.</p><p>After that dream, I felt like making offerings to the wild. A strange irrational urge that morons would call spirituality, and I would call imbecility. Curiosity. Grief. Hope.</p><p>I enjoy leaving meat, be it a sausage bought from the wrong market stall to save a few bucks that tastes just plain bad, or a bone from a roast that just has the meat left my dentist says I shouldn't gnaw off anymore. I put it on an outdoor table and leave it, like carrots for Rudolph, but this is meat for the wild. Unlike Rudolph, the wild comes.</p><p>I find Myna Birds funny, the way they are always running scams. They have one myna perched as lookout, while another myna tries to eat as much of my offerings as possible. If they see me, they are all "quick let's scram boys." even though they are probably girls. I like that. </p><p>It reminds me of the kinds of scams and schemes my dogs would run to try and trick us into taking them with us on holidays. Having to push them back through the front door, or lift them off the case we must have forgot to pack them into.</p><p>Fauna is delightful. No matter where you go.</p>ohminous_thttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362629902969757305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20599948.post-58223264935812255022024-02-07T16:14:00.000-08:002024-02-07T16:14:16.219-08:00Quick Sketch: Cities and Roger Moore<blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"> she's always tell me how angry I am<br />you're telling me how angry I am of<br />course I'm angry. All these morons out<br />there people think Roger Moore's a<br />better James bond than Sean Connery of<br />course I'm angry ~ Bobby Slayton</div><div><br /></div></blockquote><p>I've been trying to use my attention span and it's been going really well. I'm like just ignoring messages pinging and dinging and notifying me while I read a book. I'm capable of writing thousands of words in one sitting. All that good shit.</p><p> I gave a friend a piece of my writing to look at and he recommended Italo Calvino's "The Castle of Crossed Destinies" probably because I'd used a gimmick and that book probably used that gimmick <i>well</i>.</p><p>The thing was, reading is an investment. I probably at some point should come out and say "listen, if you recommend me something, I'll read it, but I'm going to judge you. You only have so much credit to recommend me shit, and if there isn't an occasional pearl among the turds, I'll stop taking your recommendations."</p><p>But you know, this has been going on for some time, so even though it was really the first time this friend had recommended I read anything, I've become sceptical, cynical, too jaded by life and its book recommendations.</p><p>For example, one of my dearest friends, he just wants to eat meat. Lots and lots of meat. I've known him for longer than I haven't known him and I remember going to central square in Ballarat which had a subway when he was convinced that different blood-types thrived on different diets and his blood type happened to commend eating a bunch of meat and he literally asked the sandwich artist which sub had the most meat, the most red meat and then he ordered that with extra bacon. Two decades on, he's asking me to watch a two hour interview about nutritional science and how the sugar industry dragged animal fats name through the mud and I am warning him that there are few subjects in the universe I am less interested in than nutritional science but he was all worked up because he wants to eat pretty much an all meat diet and I needed to watch it.</p><p>So he's done. </p><p>Another friend I get in arguments with all the time. Quite heated arguments and it is often the case that she will end the argument by suggesting I need to read something. Obviously I'm a cunt, and one is not supposed to read onerous texts to understand another person's point of view, to mix metaphors it is a classic dick move. Almost without exception, I can't think of an exception, the books I have read to enlighten myself as to the argument we were having prove to be complete non-sequiturs. I think it reasonable for someone who reads probably 2~3 books in any given year, to implement a six recommends and you're done rule.</p><p>So she's done.</p><p>But this guy, he's nowhere near done. I plan to read the book he recommended and would have a copy in greasy little mit but for the local bookstore not having it in stock. But I did presearch his recommendation on the suspicion it would be crap.</p><p>I mean here's the thing, and it is relevant to the stimulus of this post. My impression of tertiary humanities courses, is that they are populated by morons in teaching positions that think there is an "it" to get.</p><p>An alarming number of people also clearly operate under the heuristic that if they don't understand something, it couldn't be because it is stupid, things you can't understand have to be intelligent.</p><p><i>Of course</i> people operate on this heuristic. Because sometimes people don't understand something that works. I am fairly dazzlingly untalented at mathematics. I know people who could look at a quadratic equation, just the equation and tell the class where the stationary points were. I can't do that, I have no intuition for numbers, I really only know mathematics by rote, I have no idea how division works if I don't already know the answer from some mental table and all my mechanisms for surviving maths exams are well and truly rusty.</p><p>Our education and social system is going to produce a bunch of people that survived it by trusting that the teacher had a reason to be teaching them something and pretending to understand it while instead passing selection by simply memorizing what the teacher wanted to hear. These are the kinds of people that mistake a curated class about the subject of physics they don't understand, for some fucking knobjockey stressing it is essential they read Infinite Jest or they've never lived at a house party in Coburg where they are doing magic mushrooms.</p><p>And I know this friend was studying writing. A non-expert domain (or to use NNTs distinction it teaches episteme "know what" rather than techne "know how", only techne can be said to have experts) that is ripe for literary snobbery. The kind of institution that can inculcate a deep and abiding love for James Joyce and his books almost nobody has read because in some very real sense, while celebrated, they suck and to turn one's nose up at Dan Brown's canon, despite it being entertaining and highly readable.</p><p>So of course, I have to treat anyone who has gone to higher ed to study humanities somewhat like an ape that has broken quarentine, and in researching the recommendation I decided Italo Calvino while probably a writer's writer, might be a writer's writer of the good kind.</p><p>Furthermore, through serendipity I discovered that he'd written a book "Invisible Cities" that is right up my fucking alley such that it would likely tickle my prostate in a pleasing way.</p><p>Bringing me to the stimulus of this post:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUiyZrDqfu_QzDmUmLxqHbjxQL-G5XrJmnDiZRK-5bwdYkjznytvh_J2yQMWteNIbz7BqAMTmQoAbj2FM3BsYaUkn9yOJw7p39FsVZ7EYxA0KNnBbKVMCKHcGoVBxUyyaQcTKq2wyeMHyTGUVRXWUuZaizpu334T2VzB91g0AsFAlt5mBPQkLoZQ/s4000/20240208_094226.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="1800" height="471" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUiyZrDqfu_QzDmUmLxqHbjxQL-G5XrJmnDiZRK-5bwdYkjznytvh_J2yQMWteNIbz7BqAMTmQoAbj2FM3BsYaUkn9yOJw7p39FsVZ7EYxA0KNnBbKVMCKHcGoVBxUyyaQcTKq2wyeMHyTGUVRXWUuZaizpu334T2VzB91g0AsFAlt5mBPQkLoZQ/w212-h471/20240208_094226.heic" width="212" /></a></div><br /><p>I was reading and enjoying this book. Some of the prose is kind of dense, can get impenetrable or is easy to read without absorbing and needs must be reread. But it's easy because it is broken up, sometimes there are only one or two paragraphs on a page. But it's similar still to my experience of reading "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad, where I can enjoy it while having no understanding of what is going on because the mood comes across and that is sufficient.</p><p>Because I knew I wanted this book when I bought it, I didn't bother to read the blurb until it was sitting on my desk face down. This blurb is dogshit intended for the consumption of morons. I found it so offensive I actually bowlderized it with a sharpie, which feels like the height of literary snobbery. The excised words in the blurb read:</p><blockquote><p><strike>gradually it becomes clear that he is actually describing one city Venice.</strike></p></blockquote><p>Spoiler alert, this is not a spoiler. These are the words of a pretentious knob thinking they are doing other pretentious people a favour by giving them a thing to say at the next dinner party gathering of pretentious douchebags. This is somebody saying "there's an <i>it</i> to get so you can sit in smug satisfaction that you are breathing that rarefied air of people who have climbed the mountain of getting it."</p><p>One could certainly arrive at this conclusion. But it's probably the dumbest of the conclusions available in so far as it is not even just the literal interpretation of the text. It's almost a conclusion drawn from not reading what is literally said.</p><blockquote><p>"Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice."</p></blockquote><p>That's probably the quotation that the blurb is derived from. But unless they literally mean actually figuratively, whoever wrote this blurb fails to notice that many if not most of the descriptions of invisible cities with women's names bare little to no resemblance to Venice. This quotation comes in an exchange between Marco "McChicken" Polo and Kublai Khan that opens with Kublai taking Marco on an imperial boat through a newly conquered city in China that Italo describes exactly as one would be tempted to describe Venice and when asking if Marco has ever come across a city resembling <i>this one</i> Marco replies:</p><blockquote><p>"No, sire...I should never have imagined a city like this could exist."</p></blockquote><p>I get frustrated that people just cannot abide the idea, that something is open to interpretation, no matter how often life confronts us with this fact.</p><p>I like this book, thus far, because it speaks to my experience. I've done two exhibitions on cities - Melbourne and Genova, and this book speaks to my direct experience of trying to explain both the city I and the attendees of my exhibition were in, and a foreign city most of my attendees had never and will never go to.</p><p>I think in Kublai-Khan, Mongolian ruler of China, and the Mongolian Empire inherited from his father Ogedai and his uncle Genghis the conquerer is a very relatable character to me. And Italo's attempt to reconstruct the lost exchanges of two long dead historical figures also speaks to me.</p><p>That's why I like it. I am experiencing it as very good. Such that if on the last page it turns out Marco Polo says something as ham-mouthed as "actually Kublai, every city I described is Venice" I would say Italo Calvino as author is patently wrong in the characterization of his own work within his work. </p><p>To the point that while not a review, I would recommend it. </p><p>Like there's so many people who cannot fucking cope with pointlessness and futility and a lack of meaning, sure they can consider Jordan Peterson, David Brooks, Tom Holland, Michael Shellenberger et al. hypothesis that dumb-dumbs need Christianity to give their lives meaning, but so long as you are trying to make sense of an incoherent, unintelligible special anthology about the will of sky daddy; here's a well written highly readible incoherent and unintelligible book written by a mere mortal that might introduce you to the beauty of pointlessness, of meaninglessness.</p><p>There's also sports. If you get sports you are doing fine, and there is something to get with sports. </p><blockquote><p>Gradually one comes to realise that the "it" to get in getting sports, is "sports".</p></blockquote><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/T2nSzrnuuPU?si=7BD5u4bLF0zq_FJP" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>ohminous_thttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362629902969757305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20599948.post-24106741393426807992024-02-06T23:16:00.000-08:002024-02-06T23:16:07.851-08:00Quick Sketch: Infantalism<p> I dress like I dress when I was 16. Basically. Every day.</p><p>Yet one of my concerns for society is infantalism, or infantilization or whatever. Basically, all of society baby-boomer down being in a holding pattern, denied real responsibilities and therefore real maturity.</p><p>That's why I generally feel in a land of little children, I as an adolescent am king. I walk around in the costume of a big kid who does big kid things, who scrapes his knee and sucks it up, mummy doesn't rush out to kiss it better and delicately cover it with a mickey mouse band aid and take me for icecream.</p><p>I don't have to run my fucking ice cream preferences by anyone because I buy my own icecream and I live with the fucking consequences.</p><p>Anyway, last week "The Natural Confectionary Company" who make confectionary out of fructose instead of glucose to the indifference of my blood sugar levels, was on special. One of the few cost of living effects I with my crappy tastes have experienced is noticing bags of gelatinous snakes, gelatinous frogs, gelatinous babies and gelatinous beans are like fucking $5 now, not $3 and that's not too upsetting because I'd rather be priced out of bad habits and self medicating than have to overcome it with willpower. </p><p>I'm not going to steal some old ladies pension cheque to finance a sweet tooth.</p><p>But they were $3.50 on special and I was like "okay" it will give me something to do as I walk home.</p><p>Anyway, I as someone who dedicates cognitive energy to the wicked problem of how to maturate a population that has been under the thumb of a generational cohort for like half a century saw this guy on a scooter coming up the footpath toward me.</p><p>Thanks to poorly planned housing extentions, it wasn't a footpath where if I stuck left, he'd pass by my right and that would be that, but given this dickbag was scooting along the footpath I measured him up as unreasonable and ducked into a gateway or driveway to wait for him to pass.</p><p>It must have been a driveway because this cocktard stopped as he passed me and said:</p><blockquote><p>"How good are those lollies."</p></blockquote><p>Not quite a question, not quite a statement. An Australian rhetoricalism I haven't experienced in quite some time.</p><p>I said:</p><blockquote><p>"They're alright. They're on special at the moment."</p></blockquote><p>And just like that, I'm in a street eating from a bag of lollies talking to a guy on a scooter. Of course I should be worried about infantalism.</p><p>He probably asked how much and I probably told him and which supermarket chain I got them from. He told me his plans for the day:</p><blockquote><p>"I think I might buy some today."</p></blockquote><p>I forget how we wrapped this inanity up between us. But I left with some chagrin and plenty of ambivalence.</p><p>Something that definitely needs doing, I feel, is conversing with strangers in the street. That's what community is made from and smart phones are how to be an arsehole everywhere you go.</p><p>But, like, it is humbling to have a conversation about lollies with another grown ass man, possibly with mental issues but possibly not; on a scooter.</p><p>Fuck man. Shit. </p><blockquote><p> </p></blockquote><blockquote><p> </p></blockquote>ohminous_thttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362629902969757305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20599948.post-21353460360654967092024-02-05T17:55:00.000-08:002024-02-05T17:55:20.769-08:00Quick Sketch: Silo Walls<p> Every time I hear an add for "Ground News" on a podcast and it's "blindspot" feature, I think of digging your way out of a hole. A problem that likely does not require a technical solution, one theoretically should be able to observe that if the news they consume leaves them frustrated and angry then it is likely because it doesn't do a very good job of explaining the world one lives in and the simplest solution is to stop consuming news.</p><p>Indeed: "If the map disagrees with the ground, the map is wrong."</p><p>But you know, and I know, that I at least am conceited. I'm currently on like day 5 of <i>not</i> checking The Age headlines (I don't even read the articles) to actually stimulate negative affect in myself. It's not so much that I don't need to because I'm on the ground, it's that I have this really good solution to the problem I always had with a factually accurate centre-left broadsheet paper ie. the least bias most professional news source operating in my home turf. It didn't keep me informed in Mexico, just aggravated me there, the best that could be said is that it vaguely reminded me that I had come from somewhere.</p><p>I get addicted to getting angry, so that's an obstacle to trying to find the best case presented for a position I'm not sold on, not necessarily even one I disagree with.</p><p>I could pluck out a myriad of examples, but as a quick sketch, just the last stimulus of something I put on anticipating I would dislike it so that I could fight the closing in of silo walls. Something I really struggled with, a video titled "how liberal feminism turns into fasc*m" I can't be f**ucked embedding it in this post, but to describe my problem, essentially one of tolerance ironically <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a7LrWo47I0&t=356s">here's the link with a timestamp of when I gave up on a video whose title sounded dubious but intriguing</a>.</p><p>Without reviewing just yet the transcript to make any specific point, I don't know why my algorithm threw this video up for me, again through conceit I feel some vanity that Youtube recommends me content I like and dislike, but it probably has determined via supercomputing that it can hook my attention with content I dislike.</p><p>But it's not like this video <i>had</i> to fail with me. Feminism is many things, it has many waves, I'm not poli-sci enough to know really what liberal feminism specifically and explicitly means and is meant to mean to people and I certainly don't know what the alternative is.</p><p>So the bad start, was that I think this video presumes knowledge on the part of the viewer. I don't need a "Crash Course Political Science" animated infographic explainer of the history of liberal feminism and its alternatives (male chauvinism?) I just need some statement of what someone is standing for, and preferably upfront, like you know from me that I think being in a silo is a bad thing, I'm pro connection and community despite acting like a cunt in prose.</p><p>Which meant I was basically sprawling as the video host launches straight into how a Roman teenage girl went to some all-male Italian Fascist meeting and it caused bemusement and derision, and now all grown up that teenage girl is now poised to be Italy's first female prime minister. (In fact she is Italy's first female Prime Minister).</p><p>Then I was already kind of tuned out, but I next noticed the video host referring to Richard V. Reeves book "Of Boys and Men" being well received, and a few examples of how it was well received and then the host gave me the first clue as to what she might actually stand for because my inference was that she thinks it is bad that the Overton window has made it okay for Richard V. Reeves to publish a book employing the principles of feminism to look at social issues effecting boys and men.</p><p>At which point I gave up and switched out, according to my history, to a video (that wasn't very good) about how the Los Angeles Clippers re-activated elite Russel Westbrook again.</p><p>This brings me to one of my most persistent peeves: the misunderstanding of "open mindedness"</p><p>One of my youtube heroes, someone capable of persuading me out of my own positions on things is a youtuber by the handle of "Theramintrees" an honest, thoughtful qualified psych-counsellor of some kind that produces one or two in-depth animated videos on subjects of significance once, maybe twice a year if we are lucky.</p><p>Once he recounted attending a training session where he was asked to be open minded, and he stated that an open mind wasn't a bucket that catches everything thrown in it, but a sieve that filters all the beliefs thrown in it to retain only knowledge. The instructor said "well, I'm a bucket."</p><p>In my experience, people who implore me to have an open mind, are telling me to suspend my critical faculties (a sieve, a funnel - pick your metaphorical sorting device) and accept uncritically what I am being told (a bucket). An open mind is to give up on making sense of the world, the idea that something <i>is</i> and therefore something <i>must</i> have happened.</p><p>There was a very interesting exchange between Alex O'Conner and the host of "Unbelievable" Justin Brierly. I can't find the exact one to link, and I'm not supposed to be investing time doing research on these sketches, so I'll advise you not to take it on trust what I'm relaying, before you accept my conclusion. </p><p>Justin (a theist) wanted to ask Alex O'Conner (a lapsed Catholic atheist) about "free will" and reason, with the very <i>interesting</i> position that reason <i>requires</i> free will. Alex attempts to explain, that reason actually denies free will, for to be <b>reasonable</b> means you are compelled (ie. not free) to accept the conclusions reason shows to be true.</p><p>Alex demonstrates this to Justin, by provided a reason to believe that god doesn't exist just glibly pointing out that animals suffer unnecessarily and challenges Justin to freely will himself to no longer believe in God. That may appear to demonstrate experimentally that reason is at least compatible with free will, but actually even though the case is poorly made, unnecessary animal suffering <i>is</i> a compelling reason to reject the hypothesis of an omni-benevolent (all loving) and certainly a tri-omni classical god. The experiment while methodologically insufficient is probably sufficient to demonstrate that Justin is irrational, he irrationally believes in whatever god he believes in.</p><p>For me, the value of theological debates, is the vast data set, and I bring it up to point out <b>I know how one can appear closed minded.</b> Just the fact that atheists exist, is evidence that there is no argument for god, produced in Millenia that can <i>compel</i> a reasonable person to believe in god. The probability that anyone will come up with such an argument, at this stage of the game is so low that it might appear if you encounter an atheist that they are completely closed to any argument. But the fact is, you are probably just making one of the same 13 fallacious arguments for god that are always made. It's just that you are in fact not open to the possibility that you are wrong about this, so you believe a valid and sound and compelling argument must exist, despite having access to the internet.</p><p>Let me put it this way, if you flip a coin, catch it and cover it up - I am <i>100% open to the possibility that that coin is either tales or heads</i>. Once you reveal that the coin is heads, that is I've examined the case for the coin being tales and found it wanting, my open mindedness has done its job, I cannot be faulted for being closed to the possibility that something that demonstrably isn't may in fact be.</p><p>So in trying to escape my silo, I am and remain open to the possibility of being convinced by a compelling argument. What I'm closed to is this:</p><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><b><i>I want to start this video</i></b> by reading you a tweet<br />that was published by Politico Europe in September 2022.<br />So in 1992, a 15 year old schoolgirl went to join her<br />local branch of the far right Youth Front in Rome.<br />The all-male group of radicals met her with bemusement.<br />30 years later, Giorgia Meloni is on course<br />to become Italy's first female prime minister.<br /><b><i>I could end the video here, to be honest,</i></b> ~ transcript by youtube algorithms, <b><i>emphasis</i></b> mine</div><div><br /></div></blockquote><p> I read "I could end the video here, to be honest" as "boom! case closed." as in the video host, or at least script writer that I'm assuming are one and the same, thinks this tweet essentially determines or maybe overdetermines the case that liberal feminism turns into f*scism. Where I assume f*scism is an expurgated "fascism".</p><p>I watch stuff like this, because I am not capable of persuading myself of the premise, I actually need someone to make a sound, valid and compelling argument to persuade me. My silo is probably shaped by the limits of my knowledge, intellect and imagination eg. I <i>can't</i> imagine how decreasing freedom of speech on political subjects can be a good thing for human flourishing, or I <i>can't </i>imagine how tolerating paralegal processes arbitrated by enthusiastic activists of no particular qualification is preferable to a flawed and inefficient due process that bends over backwards to protect the innocent.</p><p>The walls are built out of fait accomplis, blatent assertions, lack of definitions and clear positions, fallacies and cognitive distortions. This is what I cannot get purchase on.</p><p>So as a layman, not a trained rhetorician, not a trained sceptic or philosopher or logician, if I were to attempt to put this opening barrage into the form of a syllogism it would be something like this:</p><blockquote><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>First premise, under liberal feminism women are permitted freedom of association.</li><li>Second premise, Georgia Meloni is a woman and therefore a going concern of feminism.</li><li>Third premise, far right groups are bad and therefore people should not be permitted to join them.</li><li>Fourth premise, Georgia Meloni is the prime minister of Italy.</li><li>Conclusion: Liberal feminism caused Georgia Meloni to become prime minister of Italy. </li></ol><p></p></blockquote><p> This may not be a fair representation of why the host thinks this is such a mic drop video ending argument. Hopefully it illustrates my confusion as to what liberal feminism is, and my inference that the host at this stage believes that feminism dictates what a teenage girl such as Georgia Meloni can do.</p><p>Like who are the liberal feminists in this story of a tweet? Is it the Roman chapter of Youth Front circa 1992 who through their embrace of liberal feminism accepted with bemusement Georgia where if not but the inroads made by liberal feminism into fascist youth groups, we would not have Georgia Meloni as the first female prime minister of Italy, but a male fascist prime minister of Italy?</p><p>It is frankly in my estimation, not just not a mic drop, case closed, dead to rights, smoking gun. It's nonsense; predicated on the assumption that fascism is bad and therefore anything that permits it must be terminated with extreme prejudice. I'm not saying fascism is good, but I could be convinced that say Leninism, Trotskyism, Stalinism, Maoism, Xi-ism, Putinism etc. can create fascist free places that are terrible if not worse than Italy at any point in its post war history including the present day.</p><p>Furthermore, to say you could end the video here, without bothering beyond telling an anecdote about a far right woman existing and coincidently winning an Italian federal election in a country famous for changing governments as often as it changes pasta water, where Mussolini's daughter was a member of parliament, where the previous government was a party formed by a comedian, where Bologna is communist and in Sicily you can be arrested for mentioning the Moors, this anecdote and opener is a better case for Italy's problem being that it is democratic, voting produces fascist governments. The same can be said of Brazil, where people can vote for the Socialist Lula (incumbent) one election, throw him in prison the next, vote in the fascist/trumpist Bolsonaro or whatever the next election, then vote Lula back in the next election. </p><p>Shockingly, voters in Brazil and Italy, (and France) have choices more substantial than picking between a candidate who thinks his opponent's 2% tax on nickel goes to far and a candidate who thinks his opponent's 2% tax on nickel doesn't go far enough.</p><p>I care about Italy, I may if I lived there be pulling my hair out over Giorgia's election. But what it definitely doesn't do, is make the case that liberal feminism, what I still don't know what that is and can't infer it from the anecdote that she feels is sufficient to make the case, is; is to blame. Like maybe a complete bungling of a pandemic response is to blame, including long standing structural problems with Italy's ability to inform and educate its public. I don't fucking know. Opening this way, makes me feel that I'm not watching a video intended to make a persuasive argument, but to appeal to an audience that already agrees with the video's premise likely for insufficient and prejudicial reasons.</p><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">In collapse feminism,<br />I write about<br />liberal writer Richard Reeves,<br />who wrote a book on the plight of the modern man.<br />Maybe you've seen his face already.<br />He's been interviewed on various YouTube channels and<br />the videos have gone viral.<br />So in the book,<br />he argues that we have reached a point in history<br />where gender inequality<br />may not be as black and white as he used to be<br />or might even be reversing itself.<br />To make this statement, he used data<br />showing that boys are underperforming at school,<br />that they don't go to university as much as girls do,<br />that men, black men specifically<br />are more likely to go to jail, etc., etc..<br />Now, <b><i>while<br />all these facts are true and verified,<br />Reeves decision to group them all<br />and analyze them as part of a bigger phenomenon<br />of reversal of gender inequality is a choice.</i></b><br />In fact, the idea that gender inequalities<br />reversing itself or that<br />matriarchy is on the rise has emerged a long time ago<br />in men's rights movements.<br />It remained a niche idea, a sort of conspiracy theory<br />shared by small groups of men<br />until the manosphere grew online<br />and spread this idea in the media.<br />And now Jubilee makes middle ground videos about it.<br />So that means that we are now in the Overton Window.<br />This idea is now deemed acceptable<br />from now on<br />to believe that matriarchy is on the rise<br />became a valid framework from which to think,<br />to write, to theorize.<br />And that's how you end up with this book.<br />Written by a respectable liberal,<br />praised by establishment media<br />giving credit and a liberal aesthetic<br />to <b><i>an idea that emerged and remains<br />manospheres conspiracy theory</i></b>.<br />This idea is precisely about how this phenomenon<br />expands in feminist spheres.<br />How liberal feminism turns into fascism<br />and what we can do about it.</div><div><br /></div></blockquote><p>So that's a large excerpt, and I share it because while it started to lose me in my initial attempt to find an intriguing path out of my silo, on reading the transcript from the video...let me resist a temptation to get ahead of myself.</p><p>This section I began after the offputting opening start to form an impression as to what the video actually stood <i>for</i>. Because it seemed to me that what it views as a problem, is that the Overton window is not under control - ie. society determines the Overton window, the Overton window is not dictated by some illiberal form of feminism. Hence someone like Richard Reeve's is permitted to make a sound and valid case for an idea that emerges out of disreputable male rights activists (ad hominem and genetic fallacies). </p><p>Those are the two pieces I highlighted. So it seemed to me, this is essentially an argument for nationalizing a resource so it can be rationed out - essentially dictating the ideas the public can be exposed to.</p><p>So now rereading it, I'm starting to wonder if the video creator isn't advocating any alternate form of feminism but in fact hates feminism and is pro some kind of Stepford Wife Jordan Peterson characature. I'm genuinely confused. Because this attempt to explain the technical concept of the Overton window comes across as incoherent. </p><p>I mean it has to be incoherent, because statements like "matriarchy is on the rise" don't <i>fucking mean anything</i>. Matriarchy if used demands explaining because there is no shared understanding of what it means. If you look up matriarchy on wikipedia we can see that there's a general consensus that a matriarchal society has never been observed in human history anywhere, but <i>that depends on your definition of matriarchy</i>. Generally it means something like a society where women enforce property rights.</p><p>In my experience though, if someone invokes the term "patriarchy" they are not referring to the historical patriarchy of pre Roman republic which was pre Roman empire but post Roman monarchy, and they may say that patriarchy simply means that societal outcomes favour men over women (ie. inequality favoring men is a fact) but often context suggests patriarchy is being employed as a conspiracy theory ie. men are conspiring to keep women down. This is a common Motte-and-Bailey strategy, because the banal interpretation of patriarchy suggests emotionally it is an equivalent statement to "giraffes are taller than elephants" like there's just something about the ordinary operation of human society that means on many measures it is better to be a man. There's no suggestion that giraffes are greater in dignity than elephants or have more intrinsic worth, and men and women though unequal in whatever - retirement fund balances eg. - this is something we've noticed happening and needs redressing. Nobody should be getting upset or distressed by observing this patriarchy. But in my experience people do and make enemies out of giraffes for being tall because they seem to have the impression that giraffes dedicate their lives to being taller than elephants.</p><p>If I strike you as incoherent and frankly insulting psychobabble then I have failed to describe the Motte and Bailey rhetorical strategy of dishonest argument. </p><p>I'm not going to escape my silo via incoherent arguments. If someone decides to group a bunch of statistical categories together to establish that the patriarchy exists and persists in existing and is a problem. Like you take victims of crime vs. perpetrators of crime, net-unadjusted income, asset ownership, political offices, representation on boards of governance, etc. stuff we know has disparities between men and women and use that curated list to say "okay Patriarchy exists" which either does or doesn't mean "the Patriarchy" actively is producing these disparities (ie. how efficient is the patriarchy?) and say this is valid, and then someone says okay, using that exact methodology here are statistical categories that go against men - victims of crime, education, workforce participation, life expectancy, suicide, homicide, incarceration, pattern baldness, erectile dysfunction etc. that <i>has to</i> be as valid for saying "Matriarchy exists" because it is the same methodology. </p><p>In both cases, it need not be a conspiracy, just systemic patriarchy and systemic matriarchy coexisting. With those systems not just being legal systems, economic systems, educational systems producing gender disparities, but biological systems, physical systems too.</p><p>It becomes super incoherent if, for example the pay gap in 1977 was greater than the pay gap in 2024 to conclude by this methodology that Patriarchy is on the rise. And then, if someone pulls out verifiable, factual data that boys are going backwards in education to conclude that "matriarchy being on the rise" is a fringe conspiracy theory...</p><p>It's incoherent to the point of being unintelligible. </p><p>If your approach is to say, an argument is sound and valid if it reaches my conclusion, an argument is not sound and invalid if it doesn't reach my conclusion. That is an egregious form of confirmation bias. A failure to identify that if disparity is sufficient to conclude that there is systemic oppression, then that the justice system is matriarchal, the education system is matriarchal, the economy is patriarchal, sports are patriarchal and black supremacist but not as anti-white as they are anti-asian and anti-latin american, education is both a Jewish and Asian conspiracy etc. these are all your conclusions you are obliged to accept. It's not a conclusion pick and mix if you are going to waste peoples fucking time with arguments for your prejudice.</p><p>If that is your approach, I'm not going to escape my silo.</p><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">Okay, let's go.<br />So earlier this month,<br />journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer<br />interviewed Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti<br />and talk TV over the war in Gaza.<br />And this is what she said: <b><i>“time for this.<br />Oh my god, for the love of god,<br />let me finish the sentence, man.<br />Maybe you not use to women talking<br />I don't know.<br />But I'd like to finish the sentence.”</i></b> Anyway.<br />So as many have already pointed out,<br />the journalist's behavior is completely inappropriate.<br />She utilizes feminism for racist purposes<br />because she claims that Barghouti won't let her speak<br />because she's a woman.<br />If you watch the full interview,<br />you see that<br />Barghouti struggles to put just one sentence together<br />because he's interrupted all the time.<br />This final attack, an attack on his character, is racist<br />because it is based on the assumption<br />that all Arab men, including Mustafa, are misogynist.<br />In fact, Mustafa didn't say anything sexist,<br />is not known for his sexism.<br />So this assumption is solely based on racist biases.</div><div><br /></div></blockquote><p>This follows from the Overton window section, which followed from the tweet about Giorgia becoming president. I am no closer to understanding what the video's position on feminism is.</p><p>She highlights an incident where someone tried to look cool and wound up looking dumb, and trusting in her evaluation, that appears to be the consensus. This news anchor was overconfident.</p><p>It's probably reasonable to infer that when the anchor said "Maybe you are not used to women talking I don't know." that it comes from a racist place. It is however no matter how reasonable, just an inference. I don't know the content of this news anchor's mind. It may just be sexist, like she is always engaging in her mind with a cartoon stereotype of a man that is always mansplaining shit to her.</p><p>What would help me out of my silo, is if she were like "here she is engaging with a non-Arab man who she also has a different editorial position on, and see how polite she is letting this guy get out full sentences and not caring when she interrupts her."</p><p>Now, mind-reading, when people are like "I know why you do what you do" which is a recognized cognitive distortion, like if you had a stalker that <i>knew</i> that you didn't invite him to your party because you can't admit you are in love with him, you'd say that guys nutz, but when people know that the reason they became a school crossing supervisor is because they are nazi sympathizers trying to bring back fascism - that's not nuts because studying the humanities everyone knows, gives people super powers.</p><p>So the confidence with which the video began to assert what it cannot know, without yet making its point. I mean it was either going to continue to fail to convince me that the problem with feminism is that it is too liberal and tolerant, or it was going to land squarely in my silo by pointing out that this news anchor <i>doesn't understand feminism</i>. </p><p>Something I would whole heartedly agree on, is that across the spectrum we have a distribution issue. We say one thing, and people hear another. The author of "Men explain things to me." from which "mansplaining" is derived is on record saying "I don't think you fight condescension with condescension."</p><p>Many people, I infer, appear to have been told the concept of mansplaining (explaining to an expert their area of expertise by a non-expert, ie. a man explaining to a woman what it is to be a woman) and heard "it is illegitimate for men to explain anything to a woman ever." and you can generate a situation where a journalist, almost by definition a non-expert on the myriad topics they have to cover any given day, they are merely a presenter, feels it is illegitimate for a male expert on say, Palestine to interrupt her to make a point, explain or correct something she got wrong.</p><p>Equally, "virtue-signalling" was a potentially useful psychology term for the behaviour of being "all talk" ie. people who are trying to garner esteem for virtuous character without the inconvenience of taking virtuous action. But many, too many who had the concept explained to them heard "it is illegitimate for anyone to express a position in favour of any social good ever." So to them someone who lives sustainably off the grid in an earth ship made of garbage running their internet off a combination of solar and wind posting "climate action now" is doing the same fucking thing as someone who fly's from Perth to Los Angeles for two weeks to post photos of themselves eating In and Out Burger and Barbacoa and Birria and posts "climate action now".</p><p>If her thesis is, activism is bad because there's no quality control to ensure progress. She would resolutely be in my silo.</p><p>I honestly have no idea where she is going, and her video at least has lost my attention despite how stimulating the first fiveish minutes proved. I have no interest in waiting to see whether she eventually makes <i>an</i> argument as opposed to a procession of non-sequiturs of things she doesn't personally like.</p><p>In conclusion, I may appear to be in a silo, my mind closed to other ways of thinking. But alas every time I try to venture outside my silo, my impression of the world outside the silo gets reinforced.</p><p>The world outside my silo is truisms, from which nobody needs actual arguments because if you aren't already convinced by truisms, clearly you are simply defective. Fascism is bad, it's perfectly true, you don't need a whole video essay on why fascism is bad (but maybe one on what fascism is) but therefore liberal feminism is bad? What? I don't follow. "Well don't you understand that fascism <i>is bad</i>." Yeah, I do. Do you? "Did you hear me when I said that fascism is bad?" Yeah. I agree. I just don't understand what that true statement says about liberal feminism. "Okay, now I'm getting confused. You heard that I said fascism right?"</p><p>And so on. That is my enduring impression of literally everything the world has to offer me, outside my silo. I'll keep looking, because it is hard to be afraid when people keep doing the thing that hasn't convinced me yet.</p>ohminous_thttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362629902969757305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20599948.post-5308813014080139502024-02-05T02:54:00.000-08:002024-02-05T03:07:36.658-08:00Quick Sketch: On Stroads, Losers, Confessions and Candour<blockquote><p>“Observation and perception are two separate things; the observing eye is stronger, the perceiving eye is weaker,” ~ Miyamoto Musashi.</p></blockquote><p>I'm enjoying riding again. Decades ago I went to an optometrist because my job and lifestyle was making me myopic and I'm still to this day annoyed that the lady that showed me my frame options remarked "as a cyclist you are taking your life in your hands." or some shit like that.</p><p>That is not a general statement to be made with confidence, and it being back in Melbourne riding a bike through her streets again, fucking her as it were, much as I enjoy it; it doesn't take long to be reminded a) of my own mortality and b) that the culture is very much against cyclists.</p><p>I could write at length. I as a cyclist get my patience tested by unassertive cyclists. For some reason in my own mental shorthand pejorative "Safety Petes" I don't know why Pete, one could predict that female cyclists with female names will be on average more timid. But I can get why sanctimonious know nothings with empathy deficits would see a lot of what I do on a bicycle and be as angry at me as they are at everyone and everything at inflation.</p><p>Much as George Carlin said, and is a documented psychological phenomena - everyone who drives faster than you is a maniac and everyone who drives slower than you doesn't know what they are doing. However we ourselves calibrate becomes by self-proclaimed fiat "how to be a good driver."</p><p>I'm calibrated how I'm calibrated and yes, I brake a metric fucking tonne of road laws every time I ride my bike. Perplexingly for you, I break almost no road norms. I have been injured on my bicycle, I've been doored and I've been bounced off a bonet. I've had massive stacks, I've had my wheel caught in a tram track and faceplanted. I've had catastrophic mechanical failures, I've ordered KFC while openly bleeding from a classic scrape. </p><p>I look at what skateboarders do and think "no way man." I think none of my collisions have ever really constituted a big deal, even though, like the dooring one, it could have very much been the end of me but it wasn't because you are reading my typing. I've never fucking injured anyone else in all my cycling. I think that would make me seriously rethink my mode of transportation and not much else. That's how I'm calibrated.</p><p>Anyway, as I said, I do like riding my bicycle. I love to ride my bicycle. Bicycles are probably the greatest mechanical invention of civilization. The only thing that would make riding my bicycle better is if I could ditch the helmet that mostly protects me from fines, but I know where I am. I'm not in Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Germany yadda yadda yadda. I'm in Melbourne and now I can describe Melbourne because Melbourne is <i>fucking riddled</i> with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad">stroads</a>. </p><p>What is a stroad? well you could click on that link and fucking educate yourself but I guess I can't risk you not doing that, so shall avail myself of the opportunity to carelessly misinform you. A stroad is not quite a road, not quite a street. A street is a destination, it's where you park your vehicle get out and walk through a doorway to pick up or drop off fabric samples, order a skinny decaf latte, sit down and debate how authentic some kim chi is or catch up with a friend and complain about cyclists.</p><p>A road is a way to get from A to B, where A and B are probably streets. It isn't a destination but an "arterial" if you will, transportation. </p><p>Sydney "Road" is a strode, because while once upon a time you would have hitched your wagon to some horses and taken Sydney Rd to of all places Sydney in the hope that young Mary-Ann-Clementine-Rosemary might recover from her tuberculosis in a warmer climate, now it is four lanes, parallal parking, shops, cafes and pubs and the number 19 tram line.</p><p>It is at once an iconic cultural hub with its own gravitational pull and one of the shittiest pieces of infrastructure imagineable. </p><p>It's incredibly dangerous for cyclists, basically forcing them right into the car dooring strike zone, not to mention the people heading to and from the Northern Suburbs are endearingly shit in all the rainbow colours of human and animal bowel movements. Beloved scum of the Earth as opposed to the just plain shit people of the Eastern and Southern suburbs who generally enjoy better infrastructure in exchange for any semblance of or attachment to culture.</p><p>Trams make stroads worse, as does parallel parking. </p><p>Since I've been back riding, I've reflected and appreciated that impatience is not necessarily or even most often, a function of needing to get to point X by time T. I think it is far more a product of bad design, a niggling feeling that things don't have to be this way. Cyclists of course in the late 20th century and early 21st century betwixt the advent of red-light and speed cameras and the advent of facial recognition tech being rolled out, do not <i>have to</i> sit around waiting for nobody because a dumb blind robot says so (aka a traffic light). </p><p>Drivers have far less leeway. They have numbers that make the owners of cars relatively easy to find and face repurcussions for trying to implement what they feel are viable solutions to the product of poor road design. </p><p>One such "viable" solution, is overtaking on the inside of a tram in a street with parallel parking. Drivers can get stuck behind trams in Melbourne. It's a terrible and frustrating predicament, but I have sufficient cognitive empathy to understand that trams, as public transport, have to deal with the public and annoying as they are, they make Melbourne Melbourne so the obvious solution of scrapping them or getting rid of routes is not so viable.</p><p>I suspect getting stuck behind a tram, is made more an irritant because they are spaced out enough that if you take Sydney Rd one day, you may not see a tram let alone get stuck behind it, and you have a "good" commute, and another day, you fucking try and fail to play leap frog with one and you arrive at your destination willing to kill someone.</p><p>Trams accelerate just long enough to hit the fucking breaks as they make frequent stops. Basically every intersection with a light, they stop to disgourge passengers and pick up passengers. They stop of course when a light is red, and they also stop when the light is green.</p><p>Because people are fucking morons, trams and tram doors being opened create a red light of their own to protect the public getting on and off. So a driver can zen out and bliss out sitting and watching a green light turn to red and give them extra whole minutes to zen out and bliss out waiting for the tram to move as they wait through an extra blessed red light, as a decrepid Granny painstakingly dismounts a tiny step up and down onto the tram with her zimmer frame, and then takes a whole light sequence to painstakingly trek three meters to the sidewalk during which the tram driver is obliged to sit there and keep the doors opened and the traffic stopped for her safety. These are the laws.</p><p>So of course, cars ignore those laws as they speed past a stopped train with doors opening, risking the lives of moronic and oblivious representatives of the status quo who would step blithely out of a tram with no awareness of their surroundings, all to liberate themselves from the tyranny of trams.</p><p>Now, this is necessary because intersections in Melbourne are the only areas where a four lane street has four lanes to use, because otherwise the inner lane is filled with parked cars. This leads to drivers not just flirting but going for penetration - with the idea that their f-series Canyonero SUV can go from stationary to fast enough to overtake an accelerating 34m tram in the space of 100m before if they don't make the window colliding with either the side of a tram or the back of a parked car.</p><p>Of course, it is rare for this commonly attempted manoeuvre to result in a collision with a tram or parked car, much rarer than it is attempted which would probably be equal to the number of tram services that run every day in Melbourne. The other day while jogging I witnessed a lady in an SUV attempt to overtake a tram tail to snout on the inside and she had to come to a halt behind a parked car...her gender is relevant because I want to call her a <a href="https://www.alltherooms.com/blog/mexican-slang-only-locals-know/#:~:text=While%20the%20word%20'pendejo'%20literally,on%20the%20tone%20of%20voice.">pendejo</a> and my spanish isn't good enough to understand why some nouns are masculine but women can have them (como manos) and vice versa (como cabesas)...so drivers undertake this piece of bad driving because they are frustrated by poor infrastructure design, then if they fail they face the result of <i>not even</i> being stuck behind a tram, but stuck behind the car that is now behind the tram.</p><p>So of course this pendejo wasn't having that and cut in and cut off the car that was now behind the tram she had failed to overtake, resulting in a piece of valid feedback which was a car horn, to let her know she is a fucking <i>shit</i> driver.</p><p>Now the thing is, overtaking on the inside line is I assert a product of stroads like Melbourne where trams and parallel parking frustrate and subsequently incentivise bad driving. Like many four lane stroads, if a driver wants to turn across traffic (turn right in Australia, left would be the equivalent in Europe and the Americas) they can block the entire street if a clearway is not currently in force on the parking in the inner lane.</p><p>And sure enough, eventually you just get fucking loser drivers that want to overtake <i>any</i> traffic by switching to the inside lane at the lights knowing they have to beat the driver in the lane next to them and switch back into the middle lane.</p><p>I have empathy for impatience, even for frustration with less assertive drivers, though as a cyclist I have to take a short walk cognitively, operating a vehicle that weighs somewhere between single and double digits, offers no protection to it's driver and faces no consequences from robotic law enforcement devices and untraceable via witness testimony <i>is</i> fundamentally different from operating something between a half tonne and a tonne, can accelerate to lethal momentum in a matter of seconds and insulates it's occupants from the real world particularly their ability to perceive the real world and hence why they have to wear number plates so responsible parties can be held responsible.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg25w2wlUZjaGB5KUlz3-qQx1oJOCSkiwn2-sELy4rjA-pOJu4h5dHgorWZXjvyjuMPI9-ls6VAZYN-1PCi22WvpPCboJnhBYH8PPkulX1Ply7Bn7i1xZlrwsjJAXLfC5_ggIbJ6nBXcHA8R9yxrmGXKAFKdKn1kl3CTzicBX7f7WmUhgEVRBuH7A/s1366/loser.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="638" data-original-width="1366" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg25w2wlUZjaGB5KUlz3-qQx1oJOCSkiwn2-sELy4rjA-pOJu4h5dHgorWZXjvyjuMPI9-ls6VAZYN-1PCi22WvpPCboJnhBYH8PPkulX1Ply7Bn7i1xZlrwsjJAXLfC5_ggIbJ6nBXcHA8R9yxrmGXKAFKdKn1kl3CTzicBX7f7WmUhgEVRBuH7A/w410-h191/loser.jpg" width="410" /></a></div><br /><p>So last week on my way to work, I was sitting on my bike in that little box marked with an esoteric symbol that around the world, in all my travels carries one unified meaning:</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.uniformsafetysigns.com.au/assets/uploads/2020/07/W6-7A-scaled-600x600.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="600" height="373" src="https://www.uniformsafetysigns.com.au/assets/uploads/2020/07/W6-7A-scaled-600x600.jpg" width="373" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Universal symbol for "free parking space/pedestrian walkway for having mobile phone conversations"</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>You can even see the tram lines that make Melville Rd one of Melbourne's many dangerous stroads. I was heading northward away from the city which means culturally I was transiting from "bicycles are a necessary evil for food delivery" through "poor students need their piece of paper so they can buy a car and stop depending on bicycles and trams" to "why would anyone ride a bicycle?" to my eventual destination of "what's a bicycle?/how do you go through a KFC drive thru on that?" country.</p><p>I used to cycle commute so far north it took me months to figure out that drivers weren't always honking at me for <i>no reason</i> but they were attempting to alert me that I was riding a bicycle, that's how alien the concept of getting anywhere under your own power was.</p><p>But I digress, you can see that it's a subject that gets me hysterical. </p><p>Word to anyone planning to get into a verbal altercation with a cyclist, all road-rage is generally ill-advised I would feel remiss if I suggested there was a safe way to voice your displeasure at another person on the road, you are <i>always</i> gambling with your life when you lose your temper behind the wheel - beyond that disclaimer though, you cannot hope to educate a cyclist by yelling something at them - the window is too small, we barely have time to realize you are talking to us before you are gone let alone absorb what you are trying to say.</p><p>And look, I don't want to suggest that people should never talk to cyclists from a vehicle. One of the most delightful things to ever happen to me while riding a bike was having a guy yell at me "real men ride women!" as their vehicle passed. That's hilarious, even if it was meant to be disparaging, I can't in good conscious say <i>never</i> yell anything at a cyclist after that.</p><p>What was noteworthy about this loser, was that he yelled something like (again window too small for me to absorb message) "GET ON THE FUCKING SIDE YOU FUCKING IDIOT!!" <i>over</i> the head of his I'm going to guess 5-10 year old daughter in primary school uniform.</p><p>Right so if you lost track of it, this guy yelled at me after I was sitting in that box with the symbol in it painted on the road at the intersection, and the lights turned green and I cycled forward across the intersection.</p><p>You may have noticed, that I referred to this loser as a loser. I do this with confidence using what dubious science communicator Malcolm Gladwell calls "thin slicing" in his dubious book "Blink". </p><p>You may also have lost track of the Musashi Miyamoto quote I opened with about the observing eye being stronger and the perceiving eye being weaker. </p><p>I know this guy is a loser because he was incredibly angry <i>because</i> he was completely wrong. He was telling me how he perceives the world, in a manner where I can objectively determine he doesn't understand it.</p><p>I am well familiar with this. I worked in a call centre for 8 years where sporadically losers would tell me at 5.45pm their local time that I was calling during dinner and as such this was an illegal call to which eventually I would enthusiastically encourage them to take down our details and report us to the police because I romantically envisioned some down-on-their-luck cop having to man a desk that explained the laws regarding cold calling to losers who perceive the law to be whatever they intuitively feel it should be such that they are always right and everyone else is always wrong.</p><p>As an argument for progress scepticism (which for the record, I believe in progress) as cycling infrastructure is improved, I suspect research might find driver intolerance for cyclists on the road increases - creating a kind of risk homeostasis. Because if a local council builds a luxurious bike and pedestrian path that wends inconveniently in the most circuitous route between points A and B via F with frequent stops and duckling crossings and gaggles of middle aged women taking up the entire path and a <i>legal obligation</i> for cyclists to slow down and warn <i>each and every</i> pedestrian that they are passing even if I am jogging alone on the left extremity of the path with no-one else in sight for hundreds of meters and a group of old guys in lycra have to inform me of the coming and going of their insignificant existence as they peddle around awaiting a long and drawn out death via dementia or prostate cancer with or without being forced into a recumbent bicycle via stroke, just fuck the law you geriatric Safety Petes with your fucking stupid cable ties on your <i>helmets</i> because you get startled by magpies and plovers and ride by me without bothering me because that law was designed to protect gaggles of middle aged women who lose awareness of their surroundings and infer nothing from a broken line running down the middle of a path they are walking along no matter how much a city council visually implies it might operate like the very distant and distinct concept of a road because we can't have people being startled by an unanticipated fast moving object on a bike path when they have the important and consequential task of being fully absorbed in a discussion of the latest episode of "Married At First Sight" which will proceed whether or not they did actually see the latest episode of "Married At First Sight"; drivers are prone to assume that if purpose built bike paths exist, then it logically <i>must</i> be illegal for bikes to be on the road, even with that mysterious esoteric symbol that clearly means "free parking/stand here and have a phone conversation" is painted onto that stroad where bikes <i>logically</i> must be illegal now.</p><p>Tom Hardy allegedly says:</p><blockquote><p>"Please stop thinking just because you have a college degree it makes you smart. I know a lot of people who have drivers licenses and they can't drive for shit." ~ Tom Hardy, as alleged by the internet, I cannot verify the attribution.</p></blockquote><p>With sufficient clarity for me, he is clearly talking about the inherent problems of certification in general and using drivers licenses as a relatable example to point to that general problem. Too many people it seems were persuaded by the Wizard of Oz that a degree is as good as a brain for the Scarecrow who suddenly understood a geometric proof upon being handed a piece of paper. The satire is hard to get in Wizard of Oz.</p><p> Because this is a thought sketch, I'd like to consider societies culpability in illusioning (opposite process of disillusioning, even if spellcheck doesn't like it) loser drivers like this loser that drove by me. </p><p>A society has to make a decision about how hard or easy it is to obtain a license given the population it governs. In Victoria around the time I obtained my license that I don't think I should have, to go from a Learner's permit (can operate a car with a fully licensed driver's direct supervision) to a Probationary license (Basically a license but easier to lose via blood alcohol tests and traffic violations than a full license) involved passing a test.</p><p>There was a written component to demonstrate knowledge of road laws, probably multiple choice. When I got mine there was a touch screen component where you watched dashcam footage on a monitor that you had to touch when you observed something for which you should reduce speed (basically any change you observe) and then an actual driving test out on the streets where you would be asked to drive around a bit and make turns and complete one of something like six manoeuvres to pass the test.</p><p>So you could be asked to do one of either an angle park, reverse 30 meters in a straight line, a 3 point turn or a parallel park. Right. Right? I would say that would give the average 18 year old victorian a one in four chance of failing their license examination straight off the bat. If you luck out and have to do a fucking parallel park, particularly if you want a license that allows you to drive stick, the chances of failing are high.</p><p>Conversely, if all you had to do was pull into and out of an angle park, or reverse 30meters in an approximately straight line, there's a really good chance that like me you have a license but really shouldn't.</p><p>Someone using their stronger, observing eye, would probably come to the same conclusion Tom Hardy allegedly has. </p><p>So I knew this guy was a loser, almost instantly by his conduct, and I knew he was a coward. Like, I can't be confident that he yelled "GET TO THE SIDE YOU FUCKING IDIOT!!" precisely, but I'm not so far off that he could have been yelling "I CAN'T SEE YOUR HAIRCUT IF YOU WEAR A HELMET WHICH IS A SHAME BECAUSE YOU SEEM LIKE A GUY WITH A COOL HAIRCUT JUDGING BY YOUR SHADES AND BRAND JORDAN BASKETBALL SHORTS WITH POCKETS!!!" </p><p>He <i>definitely</i> called me a fucking idiot, I'm reasonably confident he was trying to convey that I was a fucking idiot for obstructing his ability to overtake on the inside at an intersection. </p><p>To steel man his case, he may have been so self-entitled that he knew he was speaking purely from personal preference, but occam's razor obliges me to attribute his sentiment to using his perceiving eye over his observing eye that could have derived a reasonable inference from say, the headstart box painted in the lane with the universal symbol for "free parking/stand here and talk on your mobile phone".</p><p>I can reasonably infer, that while there's a one-in-four or less chance that he obtained his license without being able to competently parallel park, he likely has no idea about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicular_cycling">vehicular cycling</a> and despite his constant frustration that the world does not work as he perceives it, would, like every driver frustrated with cyclists, never have looked up <a href="https://www.vicroads.vic.gov.au/safety-and-road-rules/cyclist-safety/sharing-the-road">what considered, informed minds have legally determined to be the community standard road rules</a>.</p><p>Now, he, like me might disagree with the conclusions of those legal minds. The difference is, when I don't stop because a tram has stopped at a green light in the CBD and despite no passengers getting on and or off just sits there not closing the doors allowing me to proceed so I ignore the law, break the law and injure nobody ever, or even startle anybody, I don't yell at the driver "CLOSE YOUR DOORS SO CYCLISTS CAN PASS YOU FUCKING IDIOT!!" over the head of my child daughter.</p><p>I would agree that the streets are poorly designed stroads, what he doesn't realize is that a big part of why they are poorly designed is because they have encouraged him to think he is so important and significant by his own self-diagnosis that he has the right to switch lanes to try and overtake all the cars in front of him on the inside.</p><p>That bike box is put there because society determined that that's where they want bicycles to be for the red light, in front of all the motor vehicles (often cyclists get a head start cyclist only green light) and out of the way of the lane dedicated to left-hand (right for right side drive) turns. Society doesn't want someone who's all "this 60kmph speed limit is <i>fucking bullshit</i> I can drive faster than that through a residential and commercial area" using that lane to overtake cars adhering to the speed limit.</p><p>So that's just one reason this guy I'm confident to the point of knowing, was a loser. But another fact was the whole being wrong and yelling that over the head of his child daughter. I mean he could have been a loser because he was abducting some kid to fuck her, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he wasn't a nonce, just a loser dad.</p><p>Of course, it is an inference that if he is willing to yell that at me, while being wrong, in front of his daughter, he will probably yell at his daughter that way one day soon. I'm pretty confident of that, because clearly in this scenario his emotional distress was that I had impeded him in some way in his delusion that he in some significant way contributes to the turning of the world and needs to get back to that as soon and sooner than all the other people on the road, as possible. It is one thing to lose your shit because somebody endangered your daughter, it is another thing to lose your shit because somebody impeded you from executing a piece of shitty driving <i>in front of your daughter</i>. </p><p>Overtaking on the inside, is actually dangerous, as in he was frustrated at me because I was impeding his ability to endanger his daughter. </p><p>I want to believe in the human race, and subsequently I wish I could be confident that if she didn't realize then, she will in time realize her dad is a loser and subsequently never has to take seriously anything he says and look instead for better more qualified role models to follow the example of. But I don't know that. I've met a depressing number of people who admire loser parents and are determined to make those losers proud by becoming losers themselves.</p><p>And beyond confessing to me and his daughter, that this loser was indeed a loser, he also confessed that he was a coward. Right. This guy saw me, must have sat there fuming in his own impotence, too afraid to honk his horn so I could turn around while my bike sat on the universally recognized symbol for free parking/stand here and use your mobile phone that strangely resembles a bicycle and give him an uncomprehending glare and a shrug before turning back around, but he saw me and waited.</p><p>He waited for the lights to change so he could drive past and yell at me, call me a fucking idiot before driving away. What he chose, was the scenario where he could yell something and I couldn't respond. Probably because he didn't want to endanger his daughter as a result of me in full compliance with the law obstructed his ability to endanger his daughter, which of course actually endangered his daughter because for a moment there was a very real possibility that I would catch up to his vehicle at the next set of lights. Fortuitously we were both spared that confrontation, because I <i>know</i> cowards are incredibly dangerous. I know this from stories and histories, Villains don't kill heroes anywhere near as often as cowards do. Heroes don't kill villains nearly as often as cowards do. </p><p>For the record, I wouldn't hurt an innocent child because she happens to be the daughter of a loser, I would be sorely tempted though for the childs sake to tell her her dad is a loser, because it's probably never too early to hear that, even if it's way too soon to accept that. But who knows, when she is 16 and in an abusive relationship with the guy at school that most reminds her of her father, it might help it click just that bit sooner that her esteem is low because her dad is a loser and she needs to stop caring about what he thinks and how she feels about him.</p><p>C'est la vie. It's horrific out there.</p><p>You might have read this far and thought "gee tohm, angry much. You sound like a bitter loser, filled with impotent rage." ding ding ding. I'm as prone to impotent rage as the next human experiencing the human condition. But like Bill Russell says:</p><blockquote><p>"It's the difference between being broke and being poor. Being poor is a state of mind. Being broke is a temporary situation."</p></blockquote><p>When I lose things I feel like a loser, and this coward imposed a loss upon me which was the opportunity to impose my social dominance - to tell him what I know deep in his testicles he already knows or at least suspects.</p><p>My personal shortcut for short circuiting useless, anxious, rumination - rumination beyond the point of productivity - is to ask myself or others "who would you rather be?"</p><p>It's a bit cheap, because almost nobody would be somebody else, because you know it's hard to maintain <i>your</i> preferences while being someone else with <i>their</i> preferences. </p><p>This guy had a daughter, and it would be nice if I had a daughter. He has that on me. I'd be quick to point out though the horror of having a daughter or son, loving them and not knowing by word and deed you are actively destroying their chances at happiness and emotional stability by your own bad example.</p><p>Which makes the rest fucking easy. I choose to cycle because I enjoy it. Not enjoying bad drivers yelling at me does not detract from cycling around on even a beaten up bike like mine, under my own power on one of humanities greatest inventions. I fucking <i>love</i> cycling. Much as I <i>love</i> living in Mexico even if my risk of dying via homicide spikes dramatically by virtue of just living in that land of freedom and opportunity.</p><p>I also as a cyclist more often feel empowered by my higher or equal to average speed as all other vehicles on the road. I'm fairly confident that most people's antipathy toward cyclists is generated by envy as they observe cyclists moving with the freedom that breaks the social contract that says winners get a car and losers ride bikes because they don't work hard enough to achieve a sedentary lifestyle. </p><p>And speaking of social contracts, this incident, this one way altercation where a guy thinks he yelled something at me, and will go on thinking so never realizing he yelled at his daughter "I'M A LOSER AND A COWARD AND I'M A BAD FATHER" and she may realize nothing bar the consequences of that statement that I'm sure was not iterated for the last time.</p><p>I don't know how far it goes, but Australian's want for candour. This nations growth, perhaps even GDP is stunted because Australia cannot take it's lumps. I feel it strongly. </p><p>This is why in the spirit of candour I want to impress upon you, that I know in my bones that this guy is a loser. It's not political, it is totalitarian - not up for debate. The sky god, in so far as He can be called Physics says so. That loser has to lodge his appeal with respect to the Laws of Physics.</p><p>It reminded me of an existential question that has plagued me for decades now:</p><blockquote><p>If losers win, are they still losers?</p></blockquote><p>Like the great philosopher and undisputable GOAT of pre-modern era basketball Bill Russell, it is a question of whether being a loser is a state of mind, or a temporary circumstance.</p><p>Twice in my life, I have been proximate enough to an event (actually in both cases I attended the event) but the point is, I had cause for my attention to review photographic documentation of an event and notice what I had not in my own direct experience of those events.</p><p>Two different losers appeared in photos gratuitously displaying splayed out wads of cash. Like probably tens of hundred dollar notes. In both cases, this was long before Youtube ads pushed fake gurus/con-traprenuers with fake wads of cash and rented hypercars all for the purpose of luring losers into transferring wealth to them, one was like a party, like just an ordinary party and this loser kept cropping up showing off his stack of bills.</p><p>Okay, if you don't understand my philosophical question, and because I'm not going to name the losers that were flaunting modest sums of money that did admittedly exceed any practical need to carry that much cash to an event where you would be drinking at; consider the difficult case of Floyd Mayweather Jr. someone who is definitely worthy of a place in the almost impossible GOAT debate of professional boxing with all it's weight divisions, eras and I assume at the time of writing 7 bodies that certify a champion of the world, and all the various ways a champion can accumulate title defenses or win other divisions while avoiding genuine competition and of course the ambiguity brought by performance enhancing drugs and the limited ability to enforce their prohibition.</p><p>Floyd Mayweather Jr. retired with a perfect 50-0-0 record, he fought big names for big purses and stopped bothering with belts and titles because he didn't want to pay the fees for the privilege of holding them and fought and beat numerous noteworthy opponents, I'm aware of Canelo Alvarez and Pacman who cannot be said to be weak opponents, Conner MacGregor exceeded expectations but wasn't really a strong opponent because he's an MMA champion and most expected him to get disqualified because he forgot he couldn't kick in boxing.</p><p>Mayweather is a winner, one of the winningest winners this side of Julio Cesar "El Campion" Chavez and his 72-0-0 win streak. </p><p>But.</p><p>But...when Mayweather posts pictures on <i>instagram</i> of his <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/21-examples-of-floyd-mayweather-flaunting-his-insane-wealth-2013-9#17-he-took-a-picture-of-thousand-dollar-bills-in-the-uae-17">stacks of cash</a> what it says to me is "on the inside I am really poor."</p><p>This is behaviour to impress loser teenagers. One could rejoin me by saying "you don't get black culture. You don't listen to hip hop. You don't know how to hustle white boy. You wouldn't last a minute down in Baltimore, Killadelphia, South Side Chicago..." all that's true.</p><p>I'm asserting, and maybe I'm perceiving rather than observing, but that Mayweather, 2018's top earning athlete as perceived by Forbes, and estimated 6th wealthiest athlete of all time adjusting for inflation - his <i>instagram</i> behaviour might impress horny teenagers of low social status, but it also retrodicts this:</p><blockquote><p>It was common for the young Mayweather to come home from school and find used heroin needles in his front yard.[34] His mother was addicted to drugs, and he had an aunt who died from AIDS because of her drug use. "People don't know the hell I've been through," he says. The most time that his father spent with him was taking him to the gym to train and work on his boxing, according to Mayweather.[35] "I don't remember him ever taking me anywhere or doing anything that a father would do with a son, going to the park or to the movies or to get ice cream," he says. "I always thought that he liked his daughter [Floyd's older sister] better than he liked me because she never got whippings and I got whippings all the time."[33]</p><p>Mayweather's father contends that Floyd is not telling the truth about their early relationship. "Even though his daddy did sell drugs, I didn't deprive my son," the elder Mayweather says. "The drugs I sold, he was a part of it. He had plenty of food. He had the best clothes and I gave him money. He didn't want for anything. Anybody in Grand Rapids can tell you that I took care of my kids".[36] Floyd Sr. says he did all of his hustling at night and spent his days with his son, taking him to the gym and training him to be a boxer. "If it wasn't for me he wouldn't be where he is today," he maintains.[33]</p><p>"I basically raised myself," Mayweather says. ~ from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Mayweather_Jr.#Early_life">wikipedia</a> all sourced.</p></blockquote><p>This is how people made to feel like a loser by circumstance, and who <i>internalise it</i> behave. Just an observation. Of course I wouldn't say it to Mayweather's face, although I've written it on the internet and he has the resources to track me down and say "say it to my face." and I hoping not to get physically assaulted even though, provoking Mayweather into attacking me and the subsequent charges, lawsuit and settlements would set me up for life, would not and probably apologize and it would prove that Mayweather on the inside feels like a loser, if he has to worry about some nobody's opinion despite being a billionaire, and one of the greatest pro boxers of all time.</p><p>So do you get it? When I look at a photo, and someone who had previously impressed me as a loser, someone of low social status is flaunting wads of cash and no taste, I feel sad. I feel pity. Not the impotent rage of my traffic encounter with a coward, this is someone who thinks they are saying "SEE! SEE!! I'M <i>NOT</i> A LOSER I'M A <i>WINNER</i>!!!" and doesn't understand that that says "YOU, YOU PROBABLY BARELY EVEN SPARED ME A THOUGHT, YOU PROBABLY DIDN'T EVEN THINK ABOUT ME WHEN YOU THOUGHT ABOUT WHO WAS GONNA BE AT THIS PARTY AND IT GOT TO ME, IT REALLY WENT RIGHT DEEP DOWN INSIDE. SEE THIS CASH! I THINK I'M A LOSER!!!" </p><p>I suspect, the brutal reality we live in, is that there's no pile of trinkets so high, no shiny dragon's hoard, no list of accolades so long that will ever convince me a loser has blossomed into a winner.</p><p>Another application. Fan-fic. Fan fic can get big, it can get influential. It can get a fan fic writer a community, a sense of belonging and much positive feedback. But the very fact of having to take someone else's work, be it Harry Potter, LOTR, Twilight, Percy Jackson, Naruto, Inuyasha and Bleach, be it from the mind of JK Rowling, Pendalton Ward, Stephany Myers or Steven Moffat and <i>write</i> your own story into it...</p><p>Like I get an argumentum ad populim that so many people are sad in this same way that we shouldn't be ashamed and maybe it isn't sad and we can gather around and discuss what relationships we'd like to see between Hermione and Legolas or whatever...</p><p>Like I don't see why that is okay, and writing a story about the popular hetero-normative kids at your school (and let's make it real and say <i>that you teach</i>) you know are actually representative of your intersecting minority identities is not okay/something worthy of shame and embarassment if discovered. I'm inclined to think that even with solidarity in numbers, this is the product of the mindset of a loser.</p><p>Don't get me wrong, <i>great</i> writers often start off with works of shear incompetent rip-offery, George Orwell, one of the finest in his essay "How I Write" recalls ripping off "Tiger, Tiger" as <i>a child</i> with a phrase he still rated at writing of "chair like teeth" but like, he grew out of that and wrote his own stuff. George RR who has been vocal about his dislike of fanfiction, I recall talking about sending terrible writing in to some zine that was like a star trek or LOTR ripoff and getting feedback as a kid, before he grew out of that and started coming up with his own ideas.</p><p>And yet...</p><p>There are people who completely destroyed their own lives, or reputations that I would regard as winners. </p><p>Like if an alcoholic loses everything but achieves sobriety and forgives themselves, they aren't a loser in my eyes. If they take responsibility and come to terms with themselves, even if they've caused damage that cannot be repaired and incurred losses they can never recover. I'd be all like "good job, winner."</p><p>Most notably, I don't know how to feel about Kobe Bryant. Because he probably raped a hotel maid, of which he's definitely responsible if he did so, and it was one of the two dumbest decisions he made in his life - the other being getting on a helicopter with his daughter during wildfires - something I don't know how similar it is to Stockton Rush's final Titan expedition.</p><p>The major injustice, regarding his victim settling I lay at the feet of greater society. It is what the system allows, and even if she used her own agency to settle, part of it was having a very powerful institution try to preserve its interests - keeping Kobe on the court and out of jail. </p><p>But on the other hand, based on how Kobe at least, turned out on and off the court, in hindsight I look at it and see another systemic injustice because I doubt sending Kobe Bean Bryant to jail for a crime he <i>actually</i> committed (if he did) would not have produced the best outcome for society. It would have cost us Kobe Bryant's frankly <i>glorious</i> NBA career, an asset for humanity.</p><p>I don't know, it's a head scratcher. But to me what is clear, is that Kobe someway somehow transitioned from loser mindset to winner mindset and maybe it was fucking up so bad that it forced him to mature - he says during the trial he created the Black Mamba persona as a psychological necessity and I would suggest that his book "Mamba Mentality" is perhaps the finest work of anti-prison literature, a philosophical work as valuable as Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, the finest work of prison literature, at least that's what I've heard and I'm just going to bet that it shits all over Gramsci's notebooks from prison.</p><p>To conclude this long and rambling sketch, when I think about how somepeople <i>are</i> losers, to speak candidly and indelicately, I'm not suggesting it is their fault, whereas other people lose but are not losers - what I think is going on is newton's first law of motion - people will remain losers unless a force acts upon them.</p><p>The dire situation I feel the world is in, is probably actually a problem of surplus democracy - a demeritocracy where a government cannot tell its people 'no.' for fear of reprisal and this trickles down into the culture and gives everyone pussy-feet that require pillow soles so everyone can pussyfoot around everyone else.</p><p>This is just a sketch, so I can get back in the habit of publishing stuff. That means I'm not going to do the required research to make my position bulletproof. The easiest thing to do is conclude yourself that you don't like me. I'm going to assert that the opposite of candour is flattery, and I haven't done the required reading of Plato thru Pieper, and I strongly suspect I wouldn't like Pieper if he's the guy who resurrected interest in Thomas Aquinas, a pain-in-the-arse intellectual to rival Foucault and Derrida, but we flatter people in order to use them.</p><p>There is a denial of fundamental human dignity to lie to people who want to be lied to, and I think where Mayweather's instagram behaviour tells me he's in some deeper way a loser contrary to what his boxing record in the beautiful science suggests - those conmen using those levers to try and gain something from the very losers Mayweather seeks to and likely succeeds in impressing seek to flatter and exploit.</p><p>To tell people that if you hate yourself, that if you spend your days in a quiet impotent rage, only expressing it when cowardly instincts concoct a seemingly inconsequential way to let a stranger know how desperately impotent you are (forgetting your daughter can hear you), that if they get fat stacks of cash then strangers will tell them they are great and then they will feel great I'm sure is all about enriching yourself.</p><p>At the same time, I think Australia's leadership is flattering Australian voters with the idea that they are going somewhere, when in reality for all Australia's achievements, most of which were achieved by the time Keating got <i>into</i> office, Australia is and has been going nowhere slow. </p><p>The confessions are everywhere to be seen, just have to switch from perceiving eye to observing eye. Melbourne is still riddled with stroads. Candour is harder to observe than a symbol of a bike painted onto a stroad.</p><p><br /></p><blockquote><p> </p></blockquote>ohminous_thttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362629902969757305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20599948.post-67484876390906895312024-02-04T02:16:00.000-08:002024-02-04T02:16:09.503-08:00Quick Sketch: Freddie Gibbs "How We Do" ('93 'Til Infinity)<p>Just straight off the bat, if you can't make the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use%E2%80%93mention_distinction">use/mention distinction</a> you are a monster that society needs protecting from. A fucking wannabe red guard hard on, and the red guard were a paralegal pack of hard ons.</p><p>That's just something I feel needs saying before talking about the emotional impact of a piece of gangsta rap, possibly wanting to cite lyrics to make a point and I can't be bothered tediously expurgating, bowdlerizing and fig-leafing a work of art in deference to the sensibilities of people this post frankly has no value beyond grist to.</p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/R5yDFpUK558?si=6MFVhmGaEC9LDJr_" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe><div><br /></div><p style="text-align: left;">This is the track Youtube algorithms eventually spat out at me after I'd listened to Souls of Mischief's '93 'Til Infinity enough times. I'd never heard of Freddie Gibbs, perhaps because he doesn't use a memorable MC handle and I'm up to about '94 in working through the infinite supply of hip hop. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Obviously, it made an immediate impression. One of confusion. Which is why after the first time I heard it and was like "that's not '93 'Til Infinity, but it <i>is</i> '93 'Til Infinity... I actually watched the video.</p><p style="text-align: left;">I think 3-year-old comment from "@righteousone8454" captures my second impression perfectly:</p><blockquote><p>No stutter, no mistakes, one take, old school beat, roof of New York, boombox. Transported to 90s. </p><p>Nostalgia.</p></blockquote><p>I certainly can't improve upon it. This is just straight up no frills great rap AND it feels last century. Like a perfect forgery of a Golden Age Hip-Hop masterpiece (such as '93 'Til Infinity by Souls of Mischief). Could Freddie Gibbs be the System Of A Down of hip-hop? A great act that missed the boomtimes of their genre yet succeeded none-the-less?</p><p>Maybe. Who cares. What tickles my fancy about this track is its value as an example that <b>great art </b><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><b>≠ great message</b>.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; white-space-collapse: preserve;">I mean the Disney Renaissance movies are probably the best known examples of this, but also pretty much all the art and culture religion has produced. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; white-space-collapse: preserve;">But this is such a <i>great</i> example because it comes with a twist. For example the track opens with:</span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">[Intro: Freddie Gibbs]
Yeah
Still too cool to love these hoes
All I wanna do is fuck these hoes</span></span></blockquote><p>For those who do not know, "hoes" is a synonym for "whores." The songs hook features:</p><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">It’s how we do<br />Cause why have one when a nigga can have two<br />Three or four hoes I like the ass brand new</div></blockquote><p>Terrible message right? And I should disclose up front, I don't believe in close reading as sound epistemology. I believe text is either clear or unclear and I think communicating with clarity or with a lack of clarity both have valid applications. I'm a fan of what I know of Popper.</p><p>For example, I'm reasonably confident that when Freddie Gibbs declares that he's "still too cool to love these hoes" he is referring to women in general, not just working prostitutes. I'm confident because if he was talking specifically about prostitutes and not euphemistically about women, it would be clear that he is just sadly confused about the nature of exchanging sex for money.</p><p>Generally though, I don't believe in mind-reading, and clearly many people in the present day think they can read minds, it's probably the main barrier I face to getting out of my silo.</p><p>Ostensibly "How We Do" superficially comes off as a pretty straight forward message that bitches be hoes, don't trust your heart to them or they'll fuck you, the way to navigate life young men is to have two, three, four hoes on the go and preferably "brand new" ie. you are their first male companion.</p><p>Terrible message right? Like clearly this is a conclusion drawn from a limited sample, a great reason why lived experience and standpoint are not sound epistemology. Just open your eyes and find numerous examples of men and women getting along in a more or less constructive, stable even loving way.</p><p>Now something I just like, to the point of being impressed, is the simplicity and beauty of the video Gibbs made for this track. He displays that tape like "no strings attached, nothing up my sleeve" before putting it into the boom box and railing against how all bitches be hoes.</p><p>It is just my opinion, my impression, but of all things a song about bitches, hoes, pussy, booty and titties can be, purity runs through it. It's a pure feat of rapping, and a pure message from the heart.</p><p>I hemisected the hook, that's the first thing that had me question whether the message <i>was</i> terrible:</p><blockquote style="text-align: left;"><div>It’s how we do<br />Cause why have one when a nigga can have two<br />Three or four hoes I like the ass brand new<br />Just fuck with me and I'll stay true<br />“I love you"<br />Yeah yeah, I love you too<br />It's how we do, do, do-do-do<br />It's how we do, do, do-do-do<br />It's how we do, do, do-do-do</div></blockquote><p>I got no idea what in these particular ebonics the grammatical significance of "just fuck with me and I'll stay true" so that phrase kind of confuses me. I suspect it might be sort of grammatically similar to "no woman no cry" of Marley fame, which I'm told is not an island way of saying "a bitch ain't one" but more like an abridged version of "no, woman, you don't have to cry."</p><p>It's the "I love you" followed by "yeah yeah, I love you too." that confuses me in a touching way. </p><p>I feel "How we do" is a heartfelt outpouring of how Freddie Gibbs' heart got broken over and over, and like he started posturing but the fact is he's singing about these women because he's attached to them, he loves them, they broke his heart. </p><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">But on the low I used to sweat that hoe, I had to let that go<br />'Cause baby had me with a hell of a crush (Yeah)<br />Love letters on her locker, I ain't give no fuck<br />What other niggas thought about me (Still don't)<br />'Cause I was all about we, me and her 'til I D-I-E (Yeah)<br />Made me want to do some shit like carve her name in a tree<br />Like we was K-I-S-S-I-N-G<br />But little did I know she had a dude<br />With hella money, hella jewels, I was just another nigga in school (Yeah)<br />A straight fool, for thinking I was special or different (Yeah)<br />Lost my respect for the rest of the bitches (Ha)</div></blockquote><p> That's a tragedy, a Greek tragedy, just with boys and girls, not man on man action. </p><p>There are nights I've cried over such tragedies and had I known about this track, I would have felt less alone when I needed to be. Boy I feel a lot of pain reading "I had to let that go" and that excruciatingly painful exercise is kind of buried at the start of this particular story. The conclusion I think is bad, but true in terms of the effect this had on disillusioning (or rather re-illusioning) Freddie.</p><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">Met a girl last year that I thought was mine (Yeah)<br />Came all the way to NY to see me rhyme<br />Flew her ass out to LA for Christmas time<br />And shit was fine, we on the same beat<br />And she ain't got a problem with me being in the street<br />I know I ain't her one and only, but I'm hoping I ain't one of many<br />Baby pretty, but she tryna play me silly, 'cause she really<br />Wasn't thinkin' 'bout religion when she tell me the dick bomb<br />But then she up and left me 'cause I practice Islam<br />I guess Mom told her that the boy ain't right (Yeah)<br />And she gon' pray to Jesus Christ to take me out of her life<br />And out of her sight, she keep it undercover (Yeah)<br />I really used to mean it when I told her that I love her (For real)<br />But now I know that love is a four letter word<br />Like fuck and shit<br />So love, you can suck my dick</div></blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">Big words from a little boy who's heart got broke. I think it's what makes this track's lyrics so relatable while the message being terrible. If I project a small amount of feeling onto it, I feel like Freddie is speaking the language of purest hurt and rejection. That impulse to communicate how much someone has hurt you by hurting them back. </p><p style="text-align: left;">It's amazing how few people feel the desire to say "that really hurt me" sooner than the desire to say "you're a bitch and a slag and I never liked you anyway!" </p><p style="text-align: left;">So how does Freddie Gibbs do? I don't know, but I think he is telling us, the whole thing is an example of how he protects himself from hurt and rejection, but really he loves someone. That's how he appears to do, it's just under all the posturing (in terms of this "women ain't shit" message, not ability at which Freddie Gibbs is the real deal) there's these little admissions that actually he hasn't lost his romantic ideals, his belief in love, his ability to give his heart to another. It appears that he is still willing to risk the hurt to obtain love. He's telling you this story because he's begging you not to hurt him</p><p style="text-align: left;">So in some ways, this isn't new rhymes rapped over the '93 'Til Infinity, it's also a reimagining message-wise of "Handle Me With Care" by the Traveling Wilbury's. Just he's George Harrison and Roy Orbison in one.</p><p style="text-align: left;">And it sounds good. A track worth getting obsessed over.</p><p><br /></p>ohminous_thttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362629902969757305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20599948.post-69349409040854672212024-02-03T05:43:00.000-08:002024-02-03T05:43:14.798-08:00Quick Sketch: Putting On The Ritz<p> Recently I rewatched Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder's "Young Frankenstein" (Pronounced Frunkensteen).</p><p>I did so because I watched Lee Mack sit down with Tim Vine and do some Q&A event where Lee Mack listed 11 comedy movies he'd take to a desert island with him, because that makes sense and none of them were Young Frankenstein, nor musicals. </p><p>Someone asked him why no musicals and he said like most sensible people that there's never a need to break into song when someone could just say the thing instead. Then someone asked him about Young Frankenstein and Lee Mack reminisced about "Putting On The Ritz" and then remarked maybe he did like musicals afterall.</p><p>Blah blah blah.</p><p>I looked up the scene on Youtube, found it funny, then watched the whole movie, the Putting On The Ritz scene is of course the highlight.</p><p>I don't believe in Spoilers, I'm persuaded to follow the science that says we are most engaged when we anticipate, when we reread, rewatch etc. so while I do think I obsess over this scene within the greater context but I'll get to that. Here:</p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ab7NyKw0VYQ?si=SgOhPS7EQU8IS_ug" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe><div><br /></div><div>It's just fucking ridiculous, that's the gag, worthy of ridicule. I can see Gene Wilder pitching it to Mel Brooks, we perform "putting on the ritz" and the monster can't like sing his lines.</div><blockquote><div>Brooks and Wilder disagreed over the sequence where Frankenstein and his creation perform "Puttin' on the Ritz". Brooks felt it was too silly to have the monster sing and dance, but eventually yielded to Wilder's arguments.[5][20]</div></blockquote><p>Which I totally understand, it's one of those jokes that to put down on paper it's just fucking nothing. Of course it is going to prompt an argument - Mel "This is dumb" and Gene "I know I know Mel, but the <i>way</i> we do it it's going to be amazing."</p><p>And that's what I'm obsessing over, the way they did it.</p><p>In the greater context, Putting On The Ritz is the ridiculous conclusion to a scientific demonstration of a reanimated corpse. So it's the punchline almost to a parody of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Djj83KJrFdQ">Elephant Man lecture</a> from a movie released six years after it. All played quite straight just to set up this punchline.</p><p>The special sauce isn't the monster trying to sing "super duper", but the dignity demanded by Gene Wilder in his performance as Young Frankenstein, at least for me this is what ads so much depth to a brilliantly stupid joke.</p><p>Wilder I would describe as Jerry Lewis if Jerry Lewis was funny. He goes quite loud quiet loud like that 1990s sound and possibly should be credited with creating the 90's instead of the Pixies and Jane's Addiction. Most people of my generation know Wilder as the Willy Wonka that has never been eclipsed, the mysterious, poetic and lyrical screen presence that helps make that film.</p><p>What is amazing is that Young Frankenstein keeps going after the Putting On The Ritz scene, and obviously because the story hasn't concluded, but it pays off the opening scene where Frankenstein delivers a pretentious lecture to medical students, gets compared to his grandfather (of the Mary Shelley novel) and loses his shit, decrying the madness of trying to create life.</p><p>Then, with a premise deserving perhaps of a serious film, this man who insists upon his dignity and has spent his life trying to distance himself from his family name is presented with the recipe for creating life, he gets dragged into the very madness and succeeds.</p><p>I wish it had all been played straight, just scrubbed of all the little gags and Igor's winks to camera and explaining the jokes incase we the audience didn't get them and every time Frankenstein is uncharacteristically slapstick instead of a powder keg insisting on his dignity.</p><p>I wish they'd staked it all on Putting On The Ritz, such that it made the Academy <i>angry</i> because they couldn't give it Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay etc.</p><p>The first time I watched the sequence, the basic gag, that he is showcasing how intelligent and sophisticated his creation is who manages the dance part of "song and dance" but crows like a rooster when trying to say "putting on the ritz" and "super dooper".</p><p>The second time I saw it in the greater context, and you know, I don't like Broadway musicals, I don't really get them, but they are a quintessential part of New York City. It just made the gag so much better for me, because doing a little showtune for the scientific community, all the gleeful crowd reactions while it is going well, and the vegetable throwing when the crowd turns on the monster over a bad musical performance.</p><p>Right. Right? It's like if you gave Toho's Godzilla this treatment, I want a scene where the Kaiju monitoring agency demonstrate for Japan's Diet a performance of Noh theatre or Kabuki featuring Godzilla as the vengeful ghost of a murdered wife. Like just a dumb and ridiculous idea. Just the straight up pretention of it.</p><p>The third time, my laughter settles mostly on Gene's attempt to recover the scene, the "nothing! Nothing I tell you." and the "5, 6, 7, 8!" tap dancing over as a scientist presenting to scientists in an attempt to embody "the show must go on." His dumb fucking idea must continue.</p><p>It's just perfect execution. I think I recall Bill Hader or someone on some podcast, maybe Mark Maron's talking about when he started at SNL being sent down to watch Will Farell try and get a sketch into that weeks show. The sketch was simple, it was a teachers lounge or something and one of the teacher's played by Will dressed as Richard Greico or some other outdated minor celebrity from the 70s or 80s, and he learns that Richard Greico visited the school and nobody thought to tell him. That was the sketch, and it never made it, but Will impressed upon Bill how to take a so-so idea and elevate it with performance to make something out of it.</p><p>It's the vision, putting on the ritz is just vision and execution put together. It is worth obsessing over, dissecting. Maybe you don't find it funny at all, maybe it's just dumb to you. Maybe for you it's like me watching 3 straight hours of Bob's Burgers and wondering "yo where's the jokes at?" </p><p>Clearly though, this gag worked for a great many people. Mel's still with us, Gene is gone. Gene gave it life, he literally presented how to bring something to life, in a scene where he presents the scientific breakthrough of life.</p><p>Wonderful.</p>ohminous_thttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362629902969757305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20599948.post-8576715536150519682024-02-02T06:16:00.000-08:002024-02-02T06:16:52.021-08:00Quick Sketch: Social Media Hearings<p> I don't really know the context, I should put up front. The news is largely background noise to me, though I'm still in the habit of checking The Age headlines, I think I'm addicted to feeling offended by it's vacuity.</p><p>But I saw this thing where they had tech billionaire social media owners called up to Washington, I guess for senate hearings or some shit. Who cares. Children are dying. Zucktang, Musk and whoever else were called on to do better to protect their users.</p><p>Relatives and loved ones of victims were given the opportunity to show photos of people who lost their lives as a result of being targeted on social media. Now, I don't know, I plead ignorance as to the scope of this hearing or inquiry or whatever. It at the very least in the news clip I saw covered victims of sexual exploitation via social media that then resulted in suicide. </p><p>Now I could look up the news story and read some detailed coverage and I would point out so can you. What I increasingly can't do, is finish a point. The story is a catalyst, a jumping off point for me to sketch out some thoughts.</p><p>Because obviously I can imagine the scope being much broader - if it is people who are dead that would otherwise be alive if say, they were young in the 90s rather than the 2020s we could expand include people who were bullied in DMs, tracked down by violent former partners, piled on for voicing the "wrong" opinion etc. </p><p>I'm no fan of tech nerd billionaires. Frankly I think they are religious icons to a larger population of losers than K-Pop idols, probably because they produce things that are ostensibly/theoretically useful and/or addictive rather than 50 different limited edition cover physical albums to be bought by some Korean aunty in a loot-box style setup until she has them all because it's the only way she can escape the grim reality of whatever social commentary "Parasite" and "The Squid Game" were making.</p><p>It struck me as a superfine example of how not to listen. How not to empathise cognitively.</p><p>The CEO/Majority Shareholders I think by the headline apologized that they hadn't done enough to protect users, you know and there's a valid but boring story there of that apology will only be meaningful if they follow up.</p><p>Zuckerberg as a person seems to bolster theories of interdimensional lizard people, and I've heard him described by former investors as a sociopath, which is not a clinical diagnosis. Let me say, he can do all the BJJ he wants, he does not strike me as someone with his thumb on the fucking pulse. I haven't seen the social network, but I think he was a right place, right time kind of one good idea kind of guy who invented a natural monopoly and probably is not worth listening to otherwise.</p><p>And Musk, well he may be a pure entrepreneur in the sense that he seems to have good ideas and fucking stupid ideas in roughly equal proportion and is likely propped up by morons who cannot tell the difference between the two. I see ugly arse Teslas driving around my neighbourhood, and Musk strikes me as neither a Gates or a Jobs, as in less than, less than the average of those two. I don't by Rian Johnson's Glass Onion hypothesis, but the half of Elon Musk's ideas I'm sceptical of, is the half I'd describe as good ideas. </p><p>And Tik Tok, well nobody ever succeeded me in selling the platform formally known as Twitter, selling it to me conceptually. There has not been a day since it "blew up" into an actually pretty unpopular social media platform used by hardly anyone at its peak, and used by hardly any of its users within itself Twitter has been more overrepresented in the media because journalists fucking depend upon it, than white women are overrepresented in Mattel products and white babies are overrepresented on Nestle products. Tik Tok appeared to take the promised vapidity of Twitter's character limit and flip that into dance videos. Of course I've never been interested in TikTok because I am not a pedophile. Unlike twitter however, Tik Tok is popular, and I suspect may even be profitable, not just for influencers but like Tik Tok's shareholders and the CCP. </p><p>My only possible interest is if TikTok US operations manager or whatever the title is, apologised for victims among it's userbase that had been targeted by the CCP for expressing dissident thoughts that threatened social harmony and morality and promoted western decadence.</p><p>So yeah, not news, social media companies are run by garbage people. That's not who I'm interested in in terms of failing to listen and failure to employ cognitive empathy.</p><p>People should always be able to complain, but what came to mind was old youtube ads for Masterclass with Edward Snowden who said something like:</p><blockquote><p>You can't make a system that is secure against bad guys and insecure for good guys. A system is either secure or insecure, not both.</p></blockquote><p>Something like that. This probably ultimately applies to a social media platform. Likely someone in some theoretical maths department could write a proof if they haven't already that you can't make a platform that adults can use, that minors can't use. You can't make a platform that people can use, that pedophiles can't use.</p><p>Youth (16-25yos) can't do anything, that 26-70yo's wont take an interest in and attempt to adopt to ward off their fear of death, and worse, irrelevance. The news is always going to be informing middle aged LOSERS what the kids are doing these days - and rarely to shock them.</p><p>So whatever happened in these hearings, the more I chew on it, the more I think the CEOs apologizing and vowing to do better is a bad result. This is more a 2nd Amendment, California environmental regulation type situation. </p><p>I'm going to do it. I'm going to bring up the NBA. I have been persuaded to the camp, that the current NBA commissioner Adam Silver is running the NBA into the ground and transforming it into a joke. He probably needs to front an enquiry that isn't Kevin Garnett and apologise and promise to do better as Kobe Bryant's (RIP and Giana "Mambasita" possibly the lost future viability of the WNBA) widow demanding an apology for the recent spate of 70+ point performances thanks to his removal of defense in the NBA. Then graphic photos of bronze medals could be displayed that Adam Silver was forced to look at, because US players are no longer competitive internationally, whereas other nations still teach basketball fundamentals to their children.</p><p>Anyway, the NBA is first and foremost entertainment, it generates revenue by entertaining people, it also creates celebrities who can leverage their proximity to entertainment to make money endorsing crap. If ratings decline, then the NBA has a problem. The current commissioner though seems to be taking the dumb approach of looking at things that generated high ratings, and then immitating them.</p><p>Like he looks at Michael Jordan winning six championships, and is like "people found that exciting, so we should just pick a player and <i>hand them</i> six championships, and people will be excited again." and looking at Kobe's 81 point performance that generated a lot of buzz and thinking "that was pretty exciting, what if we change the rules so defending and even contesting shots are disallowed and then scores will go up, and everyone will be excited if people are scoring 80 points a night, and maybe someone will score <i>the most points ever!</i> Won't that be exciting, maybe I should change the rules so there's only one team per game and they just try to score as many points in 40 minutes as possible? Like those arcade games with the paper tickets. I'm sure they are more popular than THE NBA!!!"</p><p>Now, if something is stupid and it works, I believe that. Silver's stupid ideas are not working, people who were fans are actively losing interest in the game. It's even hard to like or care about players worth liking and caring about when they are basically allowed to score uncontested lay ups all game. It's a sad state of affairs. </p><p>Is basketball like soccer and cycling? Or is it like WWE? That's a genuine question. When you make wrestling fake, it turns into theatre, perhaps the most popular and profitable theatre in the world. Maybe it is beginning to lose out to MMA UFC I don't know and frankly don't care. That stuff is nerd shit. </p><p>If you applied the NBA mentality to soccer, it would translate into 'Gee people get excited in the World Cup when a team kicks a goal, emotions sky rocket! If we got rid of the offside rule and the goalies, and made the net bigger, soccer would become EVEN MORE EXCITING!' to which I think most of Europe and all of North, Central and South America would be burned to the ground.</p><p>Then cycling, cycling did face a dilemma - everyone was fucking juicing. Whoever organizes cycling probably hesitated for years knowing if they really cracked down on doping, then performances would suffer, records held by undetected dopers would stand, maybe forever a la suspected juicer and track legend Flo Jo's 100m Womens Sprint record.</p><p>My impression is, international cycling pushed that button and cleaned up the sport. The Tour De France takes longer, cyclists are slower, but there's less doping. It's a safer, slower sport for pro cyclists, and I don't know if its popularity dipped or what, I suspect at the very least it is still viable.</p><p>So what does all that have to do with Social Media CEOs apologizing and promising to do better? Well they are running private companies and unlike Adam Silver, they have algorithms telling them whether shit works or not and they just generally do what works to drive engagement.</p><p>They have algorithms saying if you keep people fucking angry all the time, they stay engaged. </p><p>So if they do something of the many anythings they can do to protect users, it'll probably cost them revenue. I have it from Yanis Varafoukis that when that video leaked of an Asian man being dragged off an oversold flight, for all the bad press it had no impact on the company share price. A few weeks or months later, the company announced payrises for its workforce and that caused a sharp drop in share price. Again I can fact check this, or you could, I can't fact check it and finish this post and I'm almost done.</p><p>The government needs to provide the regulatory environment a la the NBA and the players a la the social media companies' play will conform to the rules of the game. The government should apologize for being reluctant and slow to regulate social media. </p><p>I gauruntee we will never hear Smith and Wesson and whatever other gun manufacturers dragged before some Washington committee (I mean of course they are all the time) but shown <i>pictures</i> of victims of their products, and have those gun manufacturers apologise and promise to do better and go back and manufacture guns that only kill violent criminals and keep king Chucky III out of their customers faces.</p><p>The government could preserve free speech and ban emojis in profile names so people can't display what causes they are affiliated forcing people to figure out whether they actually like or hate somebody based on the content of their character. They could regulate that algorithms deprioritize politicized content and they could force social media to work with third party fact checkers to give the "factual" "semi-factual" "bullshit" traffic light highlighting, and anything bullshit requires an extra click to be viewed much like mature content on art-station and deviant art.</p><p>And this context, which I don't and likely never will have all of, just strikes me as a <i>singular</i> example of the shortcomings of our species to listen and take the perspective of their adversaries. Just the simple act of "what would I do, were I in your shoes? Because there's a chance that if I were in your shoes I would have done what you did." allowing you to calm the fuck down and perhaps collaborate. Not the kind of collaboration that gets you killed in North Korea, but the kind of collaboration that solves problems good. </p><p>Of course, just as valid complaints do not by necessity come paired with valid solutions, I stand by the principle that you can always complain. But like, listening to the other side is good, perspective taking is good. Maybe we might just find a valid solution.</p>ohminous_thttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362629902969757305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20599948.post-59489682541003926432024-01-19T20:28:00.000-08:002024-01-19T20:30:59.936-08:00On Ungrateful Children<p><b>Thesis</b></p><p>This is not actually a post about ungrateful children. All the children I really know and interact with, be it in Australia or Mexico are some of the easiest to please people I have ever met as far as gift giving and what not.</p><p>The thesis goes a little something like this: to produce an ungrateful child, you have to <i>attempt to give them something they don't want</i>. </p><p>Best case scenario, an ungrateful child is someone you give something they <i>will</i> want. That is a gamble though, and people should be forgiven if they do not react with enthusiasm, appreciation, gratitude. Furthermore, if they ask for the receipt so they can exchange it, they may never discover you gave them a great gift. Tragic though this is, I feel strongly that the blame can never be laid at the feet of the recipient and we shouldn't be surprised if "children" are ungrateful for the "gift" of blame. That their lack of appreciation is somehow on them.</p><p>This post is about the fatal conceit of mindreading, it is about the driving behaviour that leads to ingratitude. The assumption we know what people want or need. </p><p><b>Xmas is Often A Difficult Time of Year For Me</b></p><p>I literally do not know how other people feel about Xmas, I'm going to say, the nebulous largely secular holiday of Xmas or even how they came to feel how they feel about Xmas.</p><p>I credit my education, going back to primary school that pointed out to young children unlikely to be in the demographic of people who struggle through Christmas that <i>many people do struggle</i>. My life has then availed me of opportunity to observe that Christmas or Xmas means a lot of different things to different people.</p><p>For example, in Japan Xmas is a minor holiday that for me feels more like a secondary valentines day. A day to buy your best girl some jewellery, take her to KFC and cross your fingers and hope they blow your small penis. But it most definitely <i>is a thing</i> in Japan. There's a lot of Xmas illumination (Christmas lights) and George Michael's "Last Christmas" is playing in all the department stores all December and probably part of November.</p><p>Mexico, I haven't seen enough to be sure, but Christmas eve appears to be a bigger deal than Christmas day. The food is similar but different (more tamales, less fruitcakes). Gifts are opened Xmas eve, not day almost like the Germans won the war. Santa is called "Papa noel" but for many Mexicans apparently baby Jesus is the gift deliverer. </p><p>I wouldn't be surprised however, if in both those countries - one with scant Christian heritage and one that is <i>very</i> Christian - but, if you are in one of the demographics for whom Christmas is a struggle, you'd be better off in Japan because Xmas isn't that big a deal <i>or</i> Mexico where Xmas is but one of many Catholic Nativity rituals making no one day emphatically different from the others. Plus the relatively high visibility of impoverished homeless surviving on minimal social support.</p><p>Given this post is supposed to be a screed against mind-reading, while tempted to speculate on the different things Xmas means to other people in the Australian context, I'll simply try to give a succinct explanation as to why I often struggle at Xmas.</p><p>Probably the main one is that my daily life has never been so unpleasant that the shutting down of society for the Xmas weekend is not something I look forward to. I don't need a break or pause from my life. </p><p>Similarly, now that I'm an adult, I've never had so little disposable income relative to my needs and wants that I look forward to receiving gifts. Conversely I've never had so much disposable income that I don't notice how restrictive the obligation to buy gifts for people who really don't need gifts because they are similar to me (ie. my adult immediate family members) blocks me from buying gifts for whom the gesture would be more impactful (ie. my adult "orphaned" friends or those whom I cannot be near, like those living in Japan or Mexico.)</p><p>Getting gifts is merely nice, kind of like casual sex for me, I appreciate the gesture, I know it is the thought that counts. I'm flattered but ultimately I could take it or leave it. The ritual of gift exchanges though is definitely more stress to fulfil what feels like an obligation than joy in receiving gifts I likely didn't want and more probably do not need.</p><p>A big one is that many Xmas' feel like I am sequestered or cloistered at the time of year my availability could have the most impact on others. Just by sheer logistics I suspect it is virtually impossible to spend Xmas with everyone you would like to spend it with. The task suggested by my struggle is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_gcE5pzILQ">to love the ones I'm with</a>.</p><p>Which is where the subject of this post does come in. And understanderblishly I do not wish to air my family of origins dirty laundry in public, it seems unfair, particularly since I'm not confident I have given the substantive feedback to them. This is not the forum to do so.</p><p>So let me just say, that one focal point is that for me Xmas often is the epitome of eating-through-boredom. For me, the reason that I don't eat roasted meats for lunch most days is not through economic hardship or time poverty. I don't eat chicken thighs because I can't afford chicken breasts and find breasts far trickier to prepare. </p><p>I'm a weirdo like George Costanza, who doesn't bring wine and cake to a party, I'm all about pepsi and ring dings, and I'd be the person at the party that would sidle up to George and say "just between you and me, I'm really excited about the pepsi and the ring dings."</p><p>Just another manifestation of my poverty around Xmas being a product of my day-to-day wealth.</p><p>Xmas lunch often sets up a situation where there is a high risk that I become an "ungrateful child", not just Xmas lunch, but meals that consist of Xmas lunch leftovers like Xmas dinner and Boxing day lunch.</p><p>I guess what I'm challenging is the idea that it is "the thought that counts" which depends on how you frame it. The thought we are referring to is something like "*I* thought you would/should want/need this" and here is my Xmas gift to all wrapped up in a bow - alas, <i>what if, just go with me here, they don't want it and possibly don't need it?</i></p><p>And in a sense, if that is the thought that counts, emphasis "I", I can get behind it, because the thought suggests you didn't think much about anyone other than yourself at all.</p><p>I'm not confident those are easy paragraphs to parse.... what I'm still trying to say is, that if <i>you</i> think that <i>I </i>would love a brown cardigan, the tricky part is that <i>you</i> think <i>you</i> were thinking of <i>me,</i> when in fact if <i>you</i> had been truly thinking of <i>me</i> rather than of <i>you</i> you possibly would have deduced that <i>I</i> would not love a brown cardigan and therefore <i>you </i>were actually thinking of <i>you</i> and not of <i>me.</i></p><p>Clearer? Probably not.</p><p><b>Observing Xmas and Perceiving Xmas</b></p><p></p><blockquote>Observation and perception are two separate things, the observing eye is stronger, the perceiving eye is weaker. ~ Miyamoto Musashi, "Focus of the eyes in Martial Arts, The Water Scroll" Book of Five Rings.</blockquote><p>I'm going to ground this post philosophically in the quoted martial principle. It's not an exclusive insight to Miyamoto Musashi. Yagyu Munenori's writings for a rival school of swordsmanship also dedicate time and energy to "sickness" which is a mind fixed on a given preconception, and "normal mind" often referred to in Zen Buddhist philosophy as "beginner's mind". Rinzai Zen abbot and contemporary to the Yagyu founders Takuan Soho by my recollection of his collected writings "The Unfettered Mind" the fetters refer to perceptions that cloud true observation.</p><p>Western analogues can also be found, for example Goethe's:</p><blockquote><p><i>Untersuchen was ist, und nicht was behagt</i>/Investigate what is, and not what pleases.</p></blockquote><p>I don't know why I include original Deutsche for Goethe and not bother to put in untranslated Nihongo for Musashi.</p><p>In the space of a single week leading up to Christmas, I observed two-near-misses of dooring incidents of people riding electric scooters in bike lanes. My coworker a cyclist also was in a collision with a car, a hit and run that left him with a severed lip and broken nose.</p><p>Chances are, you probably do not immediately know what "dooring" is, some of you will have heard of it, other smart cookies can probably figure it out. For the rest of us that need(ed) it explained, dooring is when someone in a vehicle carelessly opens a car door into the path of an oncoming vehicle - traditionally a cyclist. An extremely dangerous and mindless act.</p><p>Dooring is a perfect example of perceiving rather than observing. The reality we live in is one that wherever there is a street or road, there could be a cyclist (and now electric scooter(ist?) on it. Cyclists tend to ride in the outer lane in the outermost edge, often because there's a dedicated bike line. So wherever there is parallel parking, there is some chance that a cyclist will be passing by your vehicle as you attempt to exit it.</p><p>I assume, and cannot prove, that most people form a perception based on probability, in that traditionally if one was to exit their vehicle without looking, you could go your whole life without dooring a cyclist. It's so rare for the coincidence of a cyclist passing your car at the precise moment you fling open the door, that you can perceive that you live in a world where this never happens. Cyclists, who are more or less constantly riding past car doors, probably have a different perception, but a perception nevertheless, because I ride past hundreds of parked cars on any given day and it is rare to witness anyone exiting those vehicles. </p><p>Due to these low probabilities, cyclists may ride by parked cars <i>as if</i> people never exit from them, and people exit their cars <i>as if</i> cyclists never ride by them. These are perceptions, verses observations which would be observing if someone is about to ride past the car you are exiting (it's easy if you try) or observe whether there is an occupant in the car you are riding past (much harder, but not impossible). Now people exiting a vehicle are unambiguously responsible for dooring. Probably even if a cyclist is looking at their phone as they pass your door, which is a stupid thing to do, but they are never ultimately responsible for noticing you and they are not as oncoming traffic supposed to stop to let you out.</p><p>Two things have changed the probabilities though. The first less recent change are smart phones. Where a good indicator that some fuckwit might fling their door open and discover that indeed cyclists exist and they indeed are a fuckwit, was seeing the brake lights go off at completion of a parking manoeuvre, now people might sit in their parked car updating their socials with something vacuous like "omg! about to get a latte from Positano's!! Soooo good!!! yum!!! lol! #blessed" before exiting their vehicle, making cars with a driver occupant and empty cars look virtually identical to a perceiving cyclist.</p><p>The observing cyclist will try and catch hints of interior movement through the rear window and side mirrors of the car, rather than relying solely on brake lights to warn them.</p><p>The other technological change is more recent and that is the advent of electric bicycles and scooters that use the bike lanes. (We might add a tertiary tech change which is gig-delivery apps creating a new underclass of workers that have upped congestion of bike lanes). One situation in which I pay little mind to parallel parked vehicles is when I am riding uphill. With my single speed track bike, it doesn't take much of an incline for me to basically be moving at a speed slightly slower than with which I would climb stairs. Any collision with a car door is going to be at such low speed that I'm not too worried about someone opening their car door <i>onto me, </i>much less colliding with one at a walking pace.</p><p>With an e-bike or e-scooter though, someone whom we could describe as unfit, out-of-shape, a real pear shaped loser etc. can accelerate up to serious-injury momentum in a timespan I literally cannot dream of. I suspect this is why I observed two near doorings in a 7 day span, whereas 4 years ago I could go a whole year without witnessing a single dooring.</p><p>Motorized vehicles in the bike lanes have lowered the barriers to entry, one had to be much more enthusiastic a person to wind up in the path of car doors, and in a city like Melbourne littered with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad">stroads</a> and trams and parallel parking, bicycle commuters probably used to learn fast, whereas now a drunk person can unlock an e-scooter and zip off without a helmet faster than a steep learning curve.</p><p>Anyway, I'm ranting, I didn't just witness near-doorings, I witnessed people recalibrating. The first woman who nearly doored a fat dude on a scooter called out an apology, so I had nothing to add. She knew she was a fuckwit in that moment.</p><p>The second girl who nearly doored a fat dude on a scooter, I was much closer behind and could see on her face she was in the middle of processing that she was a vacuous and reckless fuckwit that had almost seriously injured a stranger because she assumed her conversation was important and that people who use a bike lane simply do not exist and both these assumptions were suddenly and profoundly revealed to be wrong, and she clearly spoke either Mandarin or Cantonese, so there was no point in my saying anything.</p><p>But this post evidently betrays that I feel it worth saying, in a long winded way, that <i>you</i> could benefit from my pointing out a phenomenon - that "ungrateful children" might be a phenomena produced by you not bothering to determine if the "children" even want what you are offering because you are perceiving rather than observing.</p><p>You have told yourself a story you are fucking living in.</p><p>Whether you have perceived someone, or observed someone. Observing someone is stronger, perceiving them is weaker. </p><p></p><p><b>Biting the Right Hand</b></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><blockquote>So now I'm up in heaven with St. Peter by the pearly gates<br />And it's obvious he doesn't like the Nehru jacket that I'm wearing<br />He tells me that they've got a dress code<br />Well, he lets me into heaven anyway<br />But I get the room next to the noisy ice machine for all eternity<br />~ Weird Al Yankovic, "Everything You Know Is Wrong"</blockquote><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.pinimg.com/564x/66/26/cc/6626ccc369ffe779fc42c6e5475394f1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="424" data-original-width="563" height="424" src="https://i.pinimg.com/564x/66/26/cc/6626ccc369ffe779fc42c6e5475394f1.jpg" width="563" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: left;">The above image is a near enough approximation of artwork I recall from a LDS pamphlet handed to me in the early 2000s. </p><p style="text-align: left;">For some reason, I find the sheer unintelligibility of a concept like "heaven" (or "eternal paradise" if you want less denominational) intrinsically hilarious. It's like Donald Trumps initial election promise to scrap Obamacare and replace it with "something terrific". I still find it hilarious that that cleared the scrutiny bar of so many people.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Usually, my experience of people talking about heaven is that they are very light on specific details - descriptions of this heaven I want to get into are of the variety "What's heaven like? My my, it's a wondrous place filled with many wonders each more wonderful than the last. Oh it's so good, your head will spin before your eyes fall out. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JokWbIEt3n8">My stars</a>." "You don't actually know what heaven would entail do you?" "Not as such, no."</p><p style="text-align: left;">So much so, that I was actually surprised when a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzGvxQPi9YE">Youtube atheist</a> informed me that <a href="https://www.christianity.com/wiki/heaven-and-hell/what-is-heaven-like-according-to-the-bible.html">the bible makes specific claims</a> about what eternal paradise constitutes. I tend to concede that if you just define God as that which is objectively best, then you have something that everyone rationally should desire, but is "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JokWbIEt3n8">my stars</a>" unintelligible, to the point that it is pretty intellectually bankrupt to assume it exists and is attainable by any means. But yeah, the unintelligibility of something so exciting and exhilarating that we would just want to revel in its presence forever and always, doesn't leave any real point to being a person at all. Why not just make rocks that can be tickled into ecstasy by an infinite feathery plumage and be done with it?</p><p style="text-align: left;">Someone thinks that that LDS image is great. Not great art, but like, wouldn't it be great if we all moved to Switzerland and lived in harmony with mushrooms and African animals.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Religions are the mother from which many ungrateful children have historically been birthed. Sectarian conflict and heresy are perennial problems in man's quest to find total agreement on what would be great. To marry first cousins or not to marry first cousins? That is the question. </p><p style="text-align: left;">This is just the acknowledgement, that there is a Utopian right, who are conceited into thinking they possess a one-size-fits-all ideal, and in many ways are the most persistent and obstinate parents making ungrateful children of all of us, by the ease with which they are convinced by <a href="https://dictionary.cambridge.org/example/english/received-wisdom">received wisdom</a> and <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InformedAttribute">informed attributes</a> usually in the form of a special, "magical" book. </p><p style="text-align: left;">The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_family#Political_activities">Koch brothers</a> think everyone needs to be saved from action on climate change. In Australia <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_protests_in_Australia">Anti-lockdown protesters</a>, though I'm sure primarily thinking of themselves, could plausibly be regarded as thinking they were protesting on behalf of everyone. </p><p style="text-align: left;">So I'm not just talking religious conservatism, but economic and social conservatism. Due to the strong overlap between religiosity and conservatism particularly in cultural epicenters like US politics, they provide for most of the demographics I have access to, a wealth of sanctimonious overconfident gifting of turds that naturally produce ingratitude.</p><p style="text-align: left;">It would have been nice, if left leaning people had learned from this, rather than replicated the rights traditional process of gift giving.</p><div><p></p><p><b>The Left's New Bad Habit</b></p><blockquote><p>"No one is afraid of saying I love you, they're afraid of the answer..." ~ Kurt Cobain.</p></blockquote><p>In my family, it seems likely that there is a sheer impasse over Xmas lunch. </p><p>The more adamant as to what constitutes the culinary spirit of Xmas wins in terms of setting the menu. The kicker is that someone whose favourite restaurant in Melbourne is a shortlist increasingly converging on 7-Eleven is not just expected to eat a winter feast of dry unpopular meats, but to fucking like it. Hence I run a high risk of being an "ungrateful child."</p><p>I have a, let's say, dormant podcast about heuristics intended generally for management purposes, the foundational heuristic I assert as "failure must be an option" this is the acid test as to whether something is ethical or not. </p><p>I do not hold that rhetorical questions are sacrosanct. There is no question that is not a risk.</p><p>This has long been a habit of the right, who generally seek to reinforce the status quo and resist change, so the right is never going to ask if you actually enjoy goose and plum pudding, or like the sweater they bought you because these are traditions not to be tampered with. It may even be hard for the right to contemplate that <i>anybody</i> could struggle through something we all agree is wonderful in Xmas.</p><p>It appears to be the left's new bad habit however, to eliminate the "R" in "R & D" and simply develop new things and then be genuinely baffled that they occasionally (and by occassionally I mean often) do not prove popular.</p><p>Let us look at some examples.</p><p><b>The Hot Dog Analogy</b></p><p>This was something I didn't think of in time for my post on diversity in media. It begins for me in the aftermath of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" when at some event somewhere director JJ Abrams was fielding questions from the audience and was <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/go-asians-j-j-abrams-talks-diversity-star-wars-casting-n392081">asked if he would put Asians in future Star Wars movies</a>, since his Star Trek reboots featured diverse casts (like the original series made in the 60s did, should have been a yellow flag that these fans were fucking morons whose opinions can be freely discarded). </p><p>This is in 2015, Avengers endgame would come out in 2019, and Shang Chi would come out in 2021. Just for some context.</p><p>Here's what this historical incident prompted me to think what was going on, and got left out of my previous post on diversity in media that was really long.</p><p>A hot dog vendor sells hot dogs. People like the hotdogs, they buy the hotdogs they eat the hotdogs.</p><p>Then one day a couple approach the vendor and say "hey do you have any vegan tofu dogs?" and the vendor says "sorry yous guys, no I ain't never heard of no such thing." in some kind of Brooklyn accent.</p><p>The couple tsk, and walk away. </p><p>Then the next day, the vendor's neighbour asks him if he's a fascist white supremacist now. He doesn't know what they are talking about, and the neighbour shows that he's all over social media, the New York Times and Washington Post have editorial content about him, even hack journalists in Australia with titles like "Contributor" and "Regular Columnist" to commend them have jumped on the bandwagon with articles like "why we need to reexamine the classic New York Hot Dog."</p><p>So naturally, the vendor buys some vegan tofu dogs, and starts selling them.</p><p>Nobody buys them. And it's not because he didn't segregate the water from the regular offal based hot dogs. Just nobody buys them.</p><p>After three months of stocking but not selling vegan tofu dogs, he spots the couple that first suggested he stock vegan tofu dogs, and calls them over.</p><p>"Oh no, we don't eat vegan tofu dogs. We only eat vegan ramen. We just thought that vegan tofu dogs would be <i>better for your customers</i>."</p><p>Badda boom. That's what I think has happened to Disney's motion picture division including Lucas Film and Marvel. Not that I personally wasn't already fucking sick of comic book movies and reboots long before they tried to put vegetables in the messaging, but this was an attempt to stop nerds from eating hot pockets and chicken nuggets, and eat egg plant parms instead.</p><p><b>Australia's 2023 Referendum Results - an emotional analogue.</b></p><p>I assert the referendum was a left-wing phenomenon because it was an act of reform. Beyond that, it was an act of reform intended to elevate the standing of indigenous Australia toward equality with the rest of Australia. So I cite it as a prominent example of the left producing "ungrateful children" and spoiler alert, I attribute it to perceiving rather than observing said "children".</p><p>When it became clear that the referendum would fail within I don't know, approx 40~90 minutes of East coast polling stations closing, it didn't feel good, it did feel <i>exactly</i> like the sads I often feel at Xmas. </p><p>Most of my friends voted Yes, that is my impression. Most of my friends are consistent with the demographics that tended to have voted Yes in Australia. So unlike me, I do not think most of my friends have any obligation to read <a href="https://ugc.production.linktr.ee/2e09849a-25e6-4743-8317-e33dfb437728_Statement-for-our-People-and-Country.pdf">the unsigned open letter to the Australian Prime Minister</a> after the 7 days of mourning observed by Yes campaign indigenous leaders. They did all that could be reasonably expected of them, some/probably enough even tried to persuade me to vote yes. </p><p>Trying to experience the affective impact of the referendum failing was a responsibility I did feel.</p><p>Now where post referendum, where I have found common ground with friends who voted yes: is that Australia's referendum process is somewhere between the not-ideal to terrible range, and whatever the outcome of the referendum we could be reasonably confident it was not for good sound reasons by considered rational people who held a dignified sense of civic duty to get their vote right. Also we tend to agree with the perception that if the only Australians who voted "no" were the ones that voted "no" for the same reasons I did, it likely would have passed 99%-1%.</p><p>I had already felt the feels I so often feel on Xmas day on the night of the referendum. The awful feeling that someone felt they had given us something great and felt we had spat in their faces, neither of these two perceptions I assert were actually the case.</p><p>Of course, until some independent body conducts an autopsy (likely a future academic whose findings are read by almost 6 people) this is all just opinion, there's many ways to slice what actually happened. For example, the ACT was the only territory to go to the Yes camp, and by my recollection, this was because it mirrored other cities like Melbourne and Sydney in the voting patterns where eastern inner city electorates voted yes about 7-3 where western suburbs voted no about 6-4 much like the rest of Australia. </p><p>One could interpret that data (<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-14/how-your-electorate-voted-on-the-voice-results/102956942">presuming my recollection is somewhat accurate</a> (it wasn't, the ACT appears to be one city electorate and two large paddocks that all voted yes.)) one could conclude that voting yes is correlated with higher levels of educational attainment, ie - the enlightened Australian voted yes, where the fuckwits voted no. </p><p>One could also rationally conclude that Australian media is largely focused on capturing the attention and revenue generated by affluent metropolitan suburbs, even public broadcasters like the ABC.</p><p>Given the detail expounded you can probably infer that I lean toward the latter, especially given my acute culture shock at Australia's politicization of luxury goods - somehow buying a $200 sweater will end both climate change AND racism AND fatphobia etc. I didn't think of this possible explanation myself, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model#Advertising">Chomsky told me a long time ago that was a thing</a> and it still seems plausible.</p><p>Through ignorance though, I won't shut the door on the possibility that I am the slack jawed yokel living amongst my intellectual superiors here in an inner Melbourne suburb that voted 60% "yes". I tried to find a reason to join them, it is documented.</p><p>No more beating around the bush, what shored up my sentiment that I had just been served an Xmas day hunk of dry meat and the chef inferred from my face that I hated them and they had ruined Xmas was this excerpt from <a href="https://ugc.production.linktr.ee/2e09849a-25e6-4743-8317-e33dfb437728_Statement-for-our-People-and-Country.pdf">the unsigned open letter that is surprisingly hard to just find via google and should be read in full given it is probably already shorter than this post</a>:</p><blockquote><div>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are in shock and are grieving the result.<br />We feel acutely the repudiation of our peoples and the rejection of our efforts to pursue<br />reconciliation in good faith. That people who came to our country in only the last 235<br />years would reject the recognition of this continent’s First Peoples – on our sacred land<br />which we have cared for and nurtured for more than 65,000 years – is so appalling and<br />mean-spirited as to be utterly unbelievable a week following. It will remain unbelievable<br />and appalling for decades to come.</div><div><br /></div></blockquote><p>I'm asserting that these words are inline with my feeling that someone is heartbroken that I didn't like the brown sweater they bought for me. </p><p>"...would reject the recognition of this continent's First Peoples..." This cannot be concluded from the referendum results, because the proposed change to the constitution, I would characterize as a kind of complex question, what could be safely concluded is that 6 in 10 Australians rejected the recognition <i>via the establishment of a permanent</i> body called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.</p><p>The statement I feel would more accurately read "the proposed form of recognition" or more succinctly "*a* recognition". It should probably also prefix recognition with "constitutional" both pieces of pedantry on my part are because I suspect there are nearly limitless ways in which to recognize a fact like the indigenous people of the Australian continent were here before European visitation and settlement.</p><p>Less pedantically to the point that I wouldn't object at all is the characterization that the rejection was "appalling and mean-spirited" I absolutely believe the authors of this letter were appalled and felt the referendum result was mean-spirited. That seems to me likely a product of perceiving over observing.</p><p>Within these words lies for me the sentiment that "we proposed something Australians of every stripe should have thought was great, how hurtful of you to reject this thing we made for you."</p><p>I remain agnostic as to whether the proposed Voice, and the much more ambiguous long term obligation to provide a Voice undefined, would be good, benign or bad.</p><p>A much more likely suspect I feel, is what to me the referendum failed through the personally baffling sequence of "Voice, Treaty, Truth." It is a matter of fact that this was rejected. </p><p>In so far as my intuitions are not abnormal, I feel we would normally start such a process with a consensus on truth, then a treaty can be agreed to, an outcome of which might/could be the establishment of a body like the proposed Voice. (There's an argument to say that through various royal commissions and inquests, some substantial part of truth telling has been done, but no meaningful change follows without Voice and Treaty, however the statement from the heart, still calls for Truth.) </p><p>As I read <a href="https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/general/voice-what-it-where-did-it-come-and-what-can-it-achieve">an argument from constitutional scholars</a>, the sequencing was <a href="https://theconversation.com/lidia-thorpe-wants-to-shift-course-on-indigenous-recognition-heres-why-we-must-respect-the-uluru-statement-141609">carefully considered</a> and the Voice would create the necessary body for a treaty to be negotiated with; and only with a treaty in place would it be safe for truth telling to begin (or something.) </p><p>Pleading ignorance, there could be a compelling rationale I simply have not been exposed to and cannot recreate for myself for the Voice, Treaty, Truth sequencing, the above links are rationales but not compelling ones for me. </p><p>I offer it as an analogy to the Xmas chef deciding that Roast Beef would be a delicious decadence that can be made extra fancy with a new recipe and cooking process never before tried in that family, and the result being a lot of left over dry meat and confusion; rather than appetite, clean plates and appreciation.</p><p>I'm concerned you might at this point feel that I had missed the elephant in the room, being that the Voice was not designed for white Australians at all. The Uluru Statement from the heart at no point conveys "we call for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice because white Australian's are gonna love it!"</p><p>The benefit of the doubt I extend, is that the body that produced the Uluru Statement from the Heart understood the implications of calling for something to be enshrined in the Australian constitution. That it would necessitate a referendum, that to pass the referendum required not to persuade the affluent and educated residents of the south-eastern coast's inner cities, but a double majority of nation and states voting yes.</p><p>Hopefully better analogy, I suspect the voice referendum came across as "enough gazpacho for everyone!" a gesture doomed to fail once we observe that a double majority of Australians are still in love with snags in bread. </p><p>Like an Xmas lunch served up to a family, or presents wrapped for incomeless children under a tree, the process of referendum <i>demands</i> observing what the required parties actually want. It isn't about the automatic affirmation of chef or gift givers tastes and preferences and ambitions.</p><p><b>I Tire of this post, A post about how gifts I don't appreciate gave me the greatest gift of all: Inner sight.</b></p><div style="text-align: left;"><blockquote><b>political;</b> (comparative more political, superlative most political)<br />1.Concerning or relating to politics, the art and process of governing. <br /><i>Political principles are rarely absolute, as political logic holds an imperfect result by compromise is better than a theoretically perfect abstention from the political process in the opposition.</i></blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;"><b>totalitarian;</b> (comparative more totalitarian, superlative most totalitarian)<br />1. Of or relating to a system of government where the people have virtually no authority and the state wields absolute control of every aspect of the country, socially, financially and politically. </p></blockquote><p>Long after first drafting this post, I was watching an interview with a guy who had published a paper making the case for Colonialism, which I haven't read and don't care much about beyond of course that somebody <i>should be able</i> to make a case for Colonialism, even if that case is bad. Just as people should be able to make a case for Lebron James being the GOAT even though, almost by definition, those cases have to be laughably bad unless Lebron now wins 3 more championships with only one All-star/Olympian teammate.</p><p>Since drafting this post, Netflix published both Ricky Gervais and Dave Chappelle's latest comedy specials. I think Chappelle's was better, both for anyone with time are worth watching, but people on the regressive left are likely feeling the ingratitude of children when these specials go to the top 10 and win Golden Globe awards and what not.</p><p>Anyway, Case for Colonialism scholar provided a helpful distinction that I think explains the Left's bad new habit of unpopular reforms and kicking up a stink when reforms prove unpopular or fail to get through.</p><p>Something up for discussion is political. Once we embrace the conceit that we are in possession of "the ideal" and subsequently all discussions are simply impediments to the implementation and realization of the ideal, we are in totalitarian territory kids.</p><p>Why would a political system need an opposition party, when the ruling party is "the People's" party, why would people ever need another party? Do you want to give cats and dogs a vote? An animal's party?</p><p>I imagine if you've rode the wave into the left's regressive recent manifestation, with proposals that in plain English I think a six year old should be able to see through:</p><p>plain English example 1: If we ratchet up everyone's sensitivity to the max, we will live in a more pleasant and tolerant society.</p><p>plain English example 2: If we get white people who don't think about race much, to think about and notice race constantly, society will become less racist.</p><p>It was just dumb, and the ungrateful children were correct to be ingrates. And this observation, is my gift to you, bandwagon riders, regressive thinkers. </p><p>One I expect no gratitude for. </p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;"> </p></blockquote></div></div>ohminous_thttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362629902969757305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20599948.post-18650739376979409722023-10-12T21:45:00.001-07:002023-10-12T21:45:15.261-07:00Still Searching For A Reason to Vote Yes. Operative Word "Searching"<p>I just want to paint a picture of the obstacle between me personally and voting yes on Saturday.</p><p>1) I need to be confident I can exclude all parts of a possible interpretation of the proposed law as:</p><p>"The recognition of Aboriginals and Torres Straight Islanders as citizens of the commonwealth of Australia is through the provision of the Voice, Parliament shall have the exclusive right to dictate the composition, function and powers of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, and they are not bound to listen to the Voice."</p><p>I think I'm most persuadable by a legal argument, that "Australia" in the proposed law, can't be interpreted as "The Commonwealth of Australia" but given, the implied effort, and for I concede, complicated but good reasons the language does nothing to recognize First Nations sovereignty.</p><p>2.) That enshrining, and this is hard to word, <i>these</i> bodies is a good idea. Because we aren't enshrining one permanent incarnation of the voice. Success or basket case, over time legislation <i>will</i> transform the voice. So it's enshrining an ALP voice, a Coalition voice, a Greens voice, a One Nation voice and all the future governments that might revisit the legislation. It's a Voice when parliament has under-representation of indigenous members, and a Voice when parliament has overrepresentation in parliament.</p><p>I didn't get very far, largely because I've relocated myself half a planet.</p><p>So let me get to the new stuff I considered, though returns diminished.</p><p><b>Getting On The Ground</b></p><p>So, I think in every possible way, the insulation living in Mexico provided was advantageous. Wandering around suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne...</p><p>Let me put it this way, there's a certain vision of Australia embodied by Telstra, Qantas, Channel 9, Bert Newton etc. Qantas is in that list, they make these in-house productions for their safety videos generally with the Australian youth choir singing "I still call Australia home" and shit and hamming up Qantas is Australia, Australia is Qantas type vibes, and like "we Australians suck tea through a Tim Tam biscuit" and ran their current "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vlv0NL6Cog">feels like home</a>" TV campaign where downsizing mum's sons get together and fly gay son back business class from Japan for her birthday and she cries and my inference is that this ad is pitched toward, you know, white Australia, negative gearing and low interest rates Australia.</p><p>Australia that reads about how their trips to Europe a coffee is now $8 AUD stories in the news, the Australia that leaves the AFL Grand Final at 3 quarter time to beat the traffic. That is Qantas and Qantas is Australia. Much moreso than I ever will be.</p><p>And then when our plane came into land at Kingsford Smith Airport the pilot did the acknowledgement of Country, which I understand has started to spread round the world, but it stretches my credulity that a fucking <i>Airline</i> respects the traditional owners of the land that was converted into, to quote Australian independent film "The Castle" "a bloody big driveway". It just seemed beyond performative into stark hypocrisy.</p><p>It's something to ponder for the autopsy, should the referendum fail, but in the widespread adoption of acknowledgement of country, particularly the corporate zeal, it wound up spoiling the nation's appetite for a Voice. </p><p>Once on the ground, obviously, a no campaign exists in some capacity, but speaking relatively, there is no "No campaign" I've seen reports on things said by maybe two to three No voters, and maybe one op-ed, but the Yes campaign is easily at least 10 times the size of any No campaign.</p><p>That said, in my current suburb, home turf of AFL team the Hawthorne Hawks, I guesstimate that there are more "Magpies Premiers 2023" posters in windows than "Vote Yes" or "I'm Voting Yes" posters and placards. </p><p>Apparently, celebrity endorsements of campaigns don't actually help a campaign. I suspect that if you live in a Mansion with a lookout tower, a pool, a circular driveway, a tennis court with views of 3 different elite private schools and you put a poster on the fence declaring your intention to vote yes, I at least get suspicious. </p><p>What I'm getting at, in a similar vein was expressed by Tyler Austin Harper recently on an episode of the Glenn Show:</p><blockquote><p>Harvard can come out vocally in support of diversity and vocally in support of anti-racism and DEI while sitting upon billions and billions of dollars, then we should wonder to what extent are those ideas of the ruling class or to what extent are those ideas really about radical social upheaval. And the way that the administrators at Harvard claim you know um so I think if they you know if they care if they would throw money at it and I think the fact that they don't and the fact that they can support diversity and so on so vociferously um points to the fact that these are ideas that have totally been co-opted by the American Elite</p></blockquote><p>I was walking to an Office Works to buy a keyboard and mouse and crossing through the park I saw a gaggle of Yes campaign volunteers holding a bbq, and I took a photo:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcco2Skg8ClrdAdZQkNZcWU8Rq9pmYzQrb5OWKAA90x0EjVaw4nbuXadLti3ljw0SUydjvClItwpHrTsOnD8SqVDu-Z4bWXIaRueT-F9intDqK8ewar0aSIZEjNDP5Ein_YBqbTAl86rZmhfrgNcrF9cGaLoICNyp7y1t0QCU9j79yFlsPN39dWg/s4000/20231008_122536.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1800" data-original-width="4000" height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcco2Skg8ClrdAdZQkNZcWU8Rq9pmYzQrb5OWKAA90x0EjVaw4nbuXadLti3ljw0SUydjvClItwpHrTsOnD8SqVDu-Z4bWXIaRueT-F9intDqK8ewar0aSIZEjNDP5Ein_YBqbTAl86rZmhfrgNcrF9cGaLoICNyp7y1t0QCU9j79yFlsPN39dWg/s320/20231008_122536.heic" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>The photo won't tell you much, and we would generally expect that campaign volunteers will be amiable collections of mostly white elderly and students. I contemplated taking my concerns about how the High Court can interpret the proposed ammendment to the constitution, and you know, maybe I chickened out, but it certainly felt like asking would be trolling because nobody there would be able to actually argue the case. At best just assert that my concerns were unfounded.</p><p>I find the Yes campaign, <i>highly unserious</i>. An impression being on the ground has just reinforced. Okay, this is seriously the best thing ever:</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvQJFpOySUTstMuHLPFkGhHOxzv4OaIptpR7hNCruJEj3k-ASeblOR6SX4BHFlC_Ird7BntFn1N6M_DLCpiEHu0JMefJIAaMZy4wOKb3s_GMrumASpBMecaa2yTR0Giuy1hS4xP9uKihPiXjpQwiPspTm609Kzgp7pEtoc6rZ5BIrfpjQF4-Y7iQ/s4000/20231009_100210.heic" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="1800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvQJFpOySUTstMuHLPFkGhHOxzv4OaIptpR7hNCruJEj3k-ASeblOR6SX4BHFlC_Ird7BntFn1N6M_DLCpiEHu0JMefJIAaMZy4wOKb3s_GMrumASpBMecaa2yTR0Giuy1hS4xP9uKihPiXjpQwiPspTm609Kzgp7pEtoc6rZ5BIrfpjQF4-Y7iQ/s320/20231009_100210.heic" width="144" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"A meaningful step in the right direction." and "A simple, positive and practical step"</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>Stirring and persuasive stuff. My impression of the Yes campaign, is an unflattering one. It looks and feels to me, like a bunch of wealthy White people just itching to start using Aboriginal designs as symbols of status. The implied no campaign slogan to counter this poster sufficiently would be "A potential misstep costing us decades"</p><p>My previous post went through how all the Yes campaigns arguments are bad. I feel they can just all be lumped collectively under "intentional fallacy" with the Yes campaign pinning everything on the Voice doing exactly what they assume it will do, with sufficient confidence they don't even have to talk about the content of the referendum as if everyone knows what the Voice will look like and what it will say and do. Which if true, would render the Voice redundant. </p><p>Anyway, to put it bluntly, the Yes campaign look, talk and act like untrustworthy losers and the No campaign is conspicuously absent. </p><p><b>Following the Flip Floppers Trail</b></p><p>So while I dedicated significantly less time and energy as I packed up and shipped out to this referendum, I did try to scan trash broadsheet rag "The Age's" most read stories to see if anything about the referendum cracked the top 9. I saw that the state of public discourse was so bad, that the media covered the flip-flopping of Malaysian born 88 year old singer Kamahl who flipped from No-to-Yes for like 12 hours and then Yes-to-No after those 12 hours expired. </p><p>Now, I don't give a shit what Kamahl thinks about the referendum, but the coverage put me onto Yes campaigner and constitutional law scholar Eddie Synot, who was on a podcast that briefly convinced Kamahl to flip, before he flopped.</p><p>Seemed worth a google and I found this article, that <i>at the fucking least</i> actually addressed the wording of the constitution. Something the Yes campaign I have found, is good at avoiding. My overall impression being that most people assume the proposed law says what they assume it would say.</p><p>So <a href="https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/general/voice-what-it-where-did-it-come-and-what-can-it-achieve">here's the article, that should you wish to cast an informed vote, I encourage you to read</a>. </p><p>I'm not going to break it down, read it, think for yourself. If you can't think for yourself, you should vote no. It was helpful, but not sufficient to dissuade me from my impression that the Yes campaign, is predominantly based on an <b>intentional fallacy</b> - that being, the Yes camp, appears to believe that the constitution shall forever be, interpreted as the authors intended it. Which also presumes we know what the authors intended, which I am not persuaded of.</p><p>It did cause me to flip again on something though - </p><blockquote><p>The sequencing of Voice, Treaty, Truth has been given significant thought.</p><p>Voice precedes Treaty because fair, modern treaty negotiations require first the establishment of a representative Indigenous body to negotiate the rules of the game with the state. It can’t be left to the state alone, and the state must have a group of people with whom to negotiate.</p><p>In Victoria, this was achieved through a specific representative institution – the First Peoples Assembly.</p></blockquote><p>So my first post on this topic, documents how much weight I gave to my dislike of the proposed design, with its quotas and "cultural legitimacy" and what not, how much it had the stink of the times on it, and why I'd reject that for myself under a kind of Rawlsian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position">original position</a>. </p><p>My second post documents how I flipped saying I'd put too much emphasis on the proposed voice, because it is just short term and largely inconsequential given the expected longevity of the constitution.</p><p>Having it pointed out, by this article, that at least some party intend for "The Voice" to handle treaty negotiations, means I do have to weigh the risk of putting together something <i>bad</i> to handle such a monumental duty, it also effects other risks. </p><p>And I just included the sentence about how Victoria managed to assemble "The First Peoples Assembly" without needing some kind of state referendum, or the constitution to recognize it, as an example of how to defeat the point you just tried to make. </p><p><a href="https://www.3aw.com.au/constitutional-law-expert-on-the-voice/">3AW also interviewed a constitutional law expert</a>, though not to argue what is in the referendum but to reassure me about all the details left out. I can see her point, because in many ways, it is mine. That the voice will be defined by the government of the day is precisely my problem, because we have had some shit ones, and I wouldn't let Tony Abbott legislate what my voice is. Ironically, I could go for <i>less</i> detail in the proposed ammendment so it doesn't restrict Voice representations to "matters relating to" since I assume this means Parliament could censure the voice for say expressing solidarity with Hamas as "not relating to" but I feel the Voice is probably better governed by simply letting them make representations about whatever they fucking want to represent on.</p><p>So the thought of the proposed Voice handling treaty negotiations, gives me, at least a compelling reason to vote no. Not in isolation, I'm also considering the First Nations Sovereignty argument, that the indigenous parliamentarians cannot have "indigenous voices" because they serve the commonwealth, and this referrendum will, by my I think lucid reading of it's content stipulate that the commonwealth only recognize as the indigenous voice, one that has been defined by Parliament.</p><p><b>Regarding Constitutions, Context Shrinks to Insignificance</b></p><p>So this is just to point out, that for me, I haven't really looked at the No Campaign. What little exposure I have to it, I will say, while they can spew out some absolute garbage points, they generally do mix in, good reasons to vote No. Where I have not received a single "good" reason to vote Yes. </p><p>This is just to highlight the issue of like the US 2nd Amendment, being intended to keep the King of England out of your face, but has wound up making it extremely difficult to deprive mentally ill kids of the ability to take assault weapons into schools and punch holes in students and teachers.</p><p>Or that the 13th amendment, would come to protect the property rights of corporations, even though we can infer with some confidence, that the writers of the 13th amendment, meant it to protect the rights of former slaves. Not legal "persons" who are in fact, immortal abstract entities designed to limit the liabilities of their shareholders.</p><p>Which is all to say, I shall not be distracted from the words. There's a few more articles I found that actually address the wording:</p><p>This <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-22/what-australian-constitution-would-look-like-with-a-voice/102808586">explainer from the ABC</a> is a good way for anyone to ground themselves with the actual limits of what they are voting on and for if you have been bamboozled with all the peripheral shit of what polls show, and what the Yes and No campaigns are saying and what Kamahl had for breakfast vs what he shat out.</p><p>And deserving a spot on the journalistic wall of shame, is this opinion piece from The Age/The Sydney Morning Herald which threatens to address the wording of the proposed law, but is exclusively for subscribers. It is probably, a trite op-ed, but for me the headline reads like the piece is intended to be a public fucking service, so why the fuck make it "<a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/if-we-vote-no-it-might-be-our-nation-s-day-of-greatest-shame-20230912-p5e40j.html">I'll tell you why to vote yes, but first you're going to need to subscribe to our piece-of-shit newspaper.</a>" Which I won't do and it should be noted, that The Age decided to potentially ensure "our nation's greatest day of shame" by selling out the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander's for $2 per week.</p><p>Identically, Ross Gittins, who I don't mind, he certainly wouldn't crack the bottom 30 staffers employed by The Age/Sydney Morning Herald has <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/business/the-economy/voting-no-you-may-have-this-key-assumption-wrong-20231010-p5eb0e.html">an economic argument for voting Yes</a> that is also behind a paywall. Again someone's advice on how to save the Australian taxpayers millions or bajillions of dollars in closing the economic gaps between Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders and the rest of Australia, is held ransom for $2 per week.</p><p>So again, I get the impression that the Yes campaign isn't very serious, and doesn't take the issues seriously, which explains how we got this bullfuck wording that isn't certain to be rejected but in my opinion, deserves to be.</p><p><b>From Here On Out</b></p><p>So what I'm going to do, is try to clearly explain what I need to get past to vote Yes. I'm going to break down what the referendum says, line by line, to try and make it as obtuse as possible. I do not care, what people think it means nor how they think it will be interpreted. <i>I need reassurance that it can't be interpreted how I fear it can be interpreted</i>. </p><p>As at writing, the referendum hasn't taken place, but I will get ahead of myself and do some more autopsying which I guess, pre-mortem is vivisecting, as to what went wrong. Because if I didn't look at the words of the referendum and go "yep, cool" something went wrong. What is now well documented is that I read the words and said "I don't know what this fucking means." and I still don't.</p><p><b>Don't Trust Me</b></p><p><a href="https://voice.gov.au/referendum-2023/referendum-question-and-constitutional-amendment">Read the words for yourself</a>.</p><p><b>First Line of Content: Recognition</b></p><p></p><blockquote>In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia:</blockquote><p>Okay, so what I want it to say, is something to the effect of "The present territories of the Commonwealth of Australia, were not found uninhabited. They have been continuously occupied by people for some 60,000+ years. Terra Nullius was horseshit."</p><p>Now, would it be nice to to specifically name Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander's as those people? Yeah, and I personally don't have a strong objection to mentioning it. I do feel though that it is a reasonable argument amongst those of the No campaign, to be touchy about singling out races and ethnicities in a constitution. I must begrudgingly admit, that Kamahl might have a point, and many other immigrants that may have dealt with explicit legal privileging of ethnicities or say a religious caste system, that the idea of naming any ethnic group in a constitution is not a good idea.</p><p>That aside, it doesn't say something as simple as recognizing that Terra Nullius was horseshit. It instead specifies how the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia recognizes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the "First Peoples of Australia".</p><p>This is something else I flipped on since my last post. And I'm going to bring in Casey Affleck now [<i>booooo</i>]:</p><blockquote><p>He lied to me. I can't think of one reason big enough for him to lie that's small enough not to matter. ~ <i>line delivered by actor Casey Affleck in "Gone Baby Gone"</i></p></blockquote><p></p><p> Similarly, I found myself stuck on what I thought was a far-fetched hypothetical, where this addition to the Australian constitution is employed to overturn any possible future treaty. Last post, I assured myself by definition 2B of the Australian constitution, that the word "Australia" referred to geography, not the Commonwealth of Australia. </p><p>But it stuck in my craw, to paraphrase now, I can't think of a reason big enough to word "First Peoples of Australia" so ambiguously, that is <b>small enough not to matter</b>. In my second post, I detailed how the language now appears deliberately scrubbed of all notion that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are a sovereign people.</p><p>I grant, that it is a sticky situation. How do you acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and Australia's actual history of colonization absent a treaty, while preserving them as citizens subject to the laws of the commonwealth of Australia in the Australian constitution. </p><p>That's a fine line. Acknowledge their sovereignty, and an indigenous person in custody is now a prisoner of an unresolved war of conquest, or civil war. </p><p>I have lost my confidence that some future High Court, won't look at section 9 of the constitution, and rule any treaty null-and-void because:</p><p>"It says, in return for recognizing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as citizens of the commonwealth of Australia, we gave them this Voice body. They get <i>The Voice</i> and in return become subjects of his majesty King Chucky"</p><p>And for me, it is simple. I vote no, and you go back and rewrite this as "Terra Nullius was horseshit, these lands have been peopled for 60 millenia." and have another referendum, and on this point, I'll vote yes. Otherwise, I need assurance that this <i>cannot. possibly. be interpreted. as </i>"Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders cede their sovereignty for a representative body subject to the designs of Parliament."</p><p>I hope that is clear. I can't vote for this, without that reassurance from someone qualified to give it.</p><p><b>Second Line aka i</b></p><p></p><blockquote>there shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice;</blockquote><p>This is the only clear and specific part of the proposed law, for me at least. There will have to be a body, and that body, has to, now and forever be called "the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice." </p><p>The bad news is, that given that this. This. This is the only thing that is really getting enshrined, it is such a bad idea that I would not want for myself, that it is sufficient to vote no. To put it in context, this is the specific "how" that the Commonwealth of Australia <b><i>recognizes</i> </b>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It doesn't just plain recognize their existence and history, it does that through what Parliament can legislate to be an interpretive dance troop, or a sandwich shop. </p><p>It shall be called "The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice" and any time, any indigenous person says "I demand recognition!" the high court will say "but we do recognize you, through the provision of a body called the voice. Now shut up and enjoy a delicious Voice Tuna Melt."</p><p>What is important, is that the constitution shall recognize Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as the original inhibitors of the Australian continent and surrounding islanders through one means and one means only. </p><p>Somebody photoshopped an old sci-fi cover, and when the dust settles and an autopsy that resembles my vivisection is conducted it will hopefully sniff its way back to the Uluru Statement from the Heart's call for an enshrined First Nations Voice in the constitution and conclude:</p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.pinimg.com/564x/d1/70/1e/d1701e79a7a40612fdf4afe52c0728ce.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="461" height="800" src="https://i.pinimg.com/564x/d1/70/1e/d1701e79a7a40612fdf4afe52c0728ce.jpg" width="461" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Constitutional recognition through a body, was in hindsight, a Shit Idea.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /> It seems many people in the no-vote camp, though I have no real authority to assert this, are just like "why would I enshrine a body what I don't know what it is." and that to me, is actually a reasonable objection. Like, presumably the Yes campaigners are out trying to assure people "it'll be fine" through a reasonable argument, largely they appear to be arguing that research shows when you consult more stakeholders you make better decisions. How much better that argument if they could point to the functioning of an existing body that demonstrated that it did indeed make better decisions.<p></p><p>Ironically, I guess I would be reassured the stakes are lower, if I was assured that parliament could legislate the voice into a food truck that sold delicious grilled cheese sandwiches on the lawns of parliament, and staff members were able to "make representations" by speaking to any parliamentarians that bought a grilled cheese sandwich off them.</p><p><b>Third Line aka ii</b></p><p></p><blockquote>the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;</blockquote><p>So again, everything, and I mean everything I've seen from the Yes Campaign appears to be an intentional fallacy, and here specifically it acts like "on matters relating to" is clear and specific language that couldn't possibly become a shitshow. And like "representations" is clearly, meaningful language. </p><p>Even the article by the legal scholars advocating for this ammended law, I suspect is because they've looked at precedents of how say sensible countries like Sweden have set up bodies for the Sami people and shit, which should be reassuring, but I feel they are so blinded by the tree they've been looking at that they cannot see the forest of possibilities. </p><p> "May" I will grant, makes it clear that this body wont have veto powers. But I need reassurance that it cannot also just be completely ignored at all. Again, a lucid reading of the history of the Commonwealth of Australia can be expressed as "you don't need to worry about the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples" and that appears to be literally what we are here enshrining in the constitution.</p><p>I will also grant, this allows for a representative group to consult with the government and improve decisions made that relate to them. I <i>get</i> that that is what is intended, and could even happen, for a while, or frequently. </p><p>It also allows for an antipathy breeding annoyance, and constitutional grounds for Parliament and the Executive Government to ignore the Voice completely.</p><p>So, you know, it could protect the Voice from politics...</p><p>except. That even if Parliament and a Dutton government don't return the Voice's calls, they will probably mostly be producing press releases and tweets on "X" and other social media posts that can be reported on by the news. Which brings me to the significance of:</p><p><b>Fourth line aka iii</b></p><p></p><blockquote>the Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.”</blockquote><p>I remain confused and ignorant as to what "subject to this constitution" means. All I'm confident on, is that they can't rename the Voice officially. That's the only thing the proposed law specifies, and they can't get rid of a body called "The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice" but they can change it's composition, functions, powers and procedures.</p><p>Meaning, to me, they can legislate it into a sandwich shop, and make representations through an esoteric code of how many slices of bacon they put in Peter Dutton's egg and bacon sandwich, but we'll burn down and dynamite and salt the ashes of the Kimberley region, if you spit in his sandwich or coffee.</p><p>I literally need reassurance, that in a convoluted and arse-backwards way, this amendment doesn't give Parliament the exclusive right to define <i>what/who</i> the <u style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">constitutionally recognized</u> voice of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders is. </p><p>That after a series of unfortunate interest rate rises in an election year that sees us with a double majority Dutton government, that Dutton doesn't have the constitutional right to determine who the official voice of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People is, and maybe, even negotiate a binding treaty with that voice.</p><p>I cannot in good conscience vote for such powers, and those who argue it is purely symbolic, that's like saying I should vote for something pointless. No sale.</p><p><b>All Together Now</b></p><p>I need reassurance that <b><i><u>no part</u></i></b> of this reading of the law, is how the High Court will view it:</p><p>"The only way Australia is obliged to recognize Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, who are citizens of the commonwealth and subjects of the British Crown, is in the provision of a body called the Voice and Parliament says what that body is and what it does and is free to ignore it should it wish."</p><p>That seems to be a step into a dead fucking end, should I vote for it.</p><p><b>Vivisection: Arse Backwards</b></p><blockquote><b>The sequencing of Voice, Treaty, Truth has been given significant thought.</b></blockquote><blockquote><blockquote>Voice precedes Treaty because fair, modern treaty negotiations require first the establishment of a representative Indigenous body to negotiate the rules of the game with the state. It can’t be left to the state alone, and the state must have a group of people with whom to negotiate.</blockquote><blockquote>In Victoria, this was achieved through a specific representative institution – the First Peoples Assembly.</blockquote><blockquote>Truth follows Voice and Treaty, because, as Torres Strait Islander political scientist Sana Nakata explains, Voice ensures Truth will matter more than just “continued performance of our rage and grief for a third century and longer”. Voice establishes the power for Treaty, and Treaty establishes the safekeeping of Truth.</blockquote><blockquote>As historian Kate Fullagar explains, truths about Indigenous history in Australia are well-known – there have already been royal commissions into colonial violence, the stolen generation, and Black deaths in custody. But they have been too easily forgotten, and they have not led to change. ~ From UNSW Article by Gabrielle Appleby, Eddie Synot</blockquote></blockquote><p>I mean, this excerpt is coherent. I feel, strongly, that the assertion it makes is arse backwards, and that hopefully will come out in the wash so another referendum becomes feasible. Not just another referendum but process. </p><p>I <i>think</i> the point they are making is because say, a Royal Commission to determine the capital t "Truth" didn't fix everything, that a body is needed before a treaty and then finally can the truth be told. The sequence remains, arse backwards for me, and a better argument is that much of the truth telling work has been done. At least in removing it from the pure legal fiction of Terra Nullius.</p><p>Much of the work to be done, is probably decoupling society from the idea that we need to have childishly idealised conceptions of our identity as Europeans or Asians or Indigenous Peoples. I feel a great text to assign a largely Anglo-European culture like Australia is a biography of the proto-Machiavellian prince of Wallachia Vlad "Dracula" Tsepes. Or maybe even David Mitchell's "Unruly" a history of the badly behaved British Monarchy from William the Conqueror through to the Magna Carta or something.</p><p>A mature westerner doesn't need to have a rose tinted conception of clean cut ANZAC Diggers fighting the Caiser but should be able to conceive that the boys in those trenches are more or less, identical to the people that now drive them into an impotent homicidal rage when they cut them off in traffic.</p><p>That the people now lauded for reducing the taxable income of the wealthiest 20% of Australians back in the day would have been lauded for dispossessing the indigenous. Maturation to me, is a process of accepting who we actually were and subsequently who we actually are. </p><p>With that, our populace could be in a position to perhaps actually make sacrifices, the public is nowhere near the neighbourhood of "Truth" and that really should come first. You know, like reading a contract before you sign it. (Which can be forgiven if it's a standard terms of use agreement or something, but this referendum is nowhere near a standard contract.) </p><p>Then I think you do treaty, because that's the real act of unification where we go from awkwardly superimposed nation on top of the world's oldest living culture, to an integrated nation and signing a treaty should justifiably involve some kind of goodwill payment to get us all on one team. </p><p>Then it is safe for indigenous sovereignty to be recognized by and as part of the commonwealth.</p><p>The idea that the commonwealth need to decide who they want to negotiate with, enter a binding treaty with a group that is part of itself and <i>then</i> tell the truth, I get the rationale but I just don't buy it. </p><p>I'd be more persuaded if the nation had united to identify Bruce Pascoe's "Dark Emu" as racist pseudo history. Instead, it seems everyone wants to ignore they agreed with colonialist notions that man stops being an animal when he becomes a farmer.</p><p><b>Vivisection: Bubble Trouble</b></p><p>I suspect the people who are for this referendum passing, a large chunk of them live in a bubble, or echo chamber. They should be aware that the polls say the referendum is likely to fail. I'm not sure it will. </p><p>The nation seems roughly 48% against, 12% undecided and 40% for. I ran past an early polling station today, and again, there are only Yes campaigners out. Admittedly, all I thought was "you're kidding me, you are handing out How-To-Vote-Cards for a Yes/No ballot?" But some 20% of No and Undecided voters may walk into the booth having given this referendum no thought, and ask the question I was a fortnight ago "Am I an arsehole?" and decide to play it safe and vote Yes.</p><p>Like, Canadian Television made a show and released it this year called "Robyn Hood" likewise "The Exorcist: Believers" was recently released and both have been shit canned by audiences and critics, but it seems the institutions making these shows have not clicked that general audiences hate this shit of dredging up old properties and tokenistically diversifying them and filling them with trite lectures about social justice. </p><p>I posit, that it is a very <i>sane</i> response to be sitting in a room full of white people at a real estate office as the boss reads an acknowledgement of country and question whether anyone acknowledges "traditional owners" as meaning anything of significance at all, like would the consult the Wurundjeri on the next planned awful apartment subdivision, or whether this is a tedious performance by people who have no intention of ever making any reparations to the descendants of the original inhabitants of the land taken by force that is now speculatively traded for profit.</p><p> The real damage potential to flow from the referendum will be in bubble residents telling themselves that it failed, not because it was rushed through with heavily compromised wording into a process where lay Australian's were asked to enshrine a never-before-seen government body, but a narrative that actually everyone outside of gentrified progressive communities are horrible racists that want their kids to die.</p><p>In 2020 I witnessed many lefties fail to parse certain details of the election that deposed Trump after 1 term, Biden secured the necessary electoral college votes before the outcome of Georgia was determined, thanks to states like Arizona and Michigan going blue, yet sufficient people basically credited the Biden victory to Stacy Abrams efforts to enrol black voters in Georgia. They also ignored the gains Trump made with Black and Latino voters the latter of which are likely tired of white people calling them "latinx" and ignoring both their voices and their heritage. Many on the left also ignored that Blue state stronghold California voters resoundingly rejected Proposition 16 which would repeal the Californian Constitutions ban on affirmative action in public office appointments. </p><p>So most people in a far left bubble, I observe tell themselves stories of evil people lurking behind every tree that are as comforting as any conspiracy theory and ignore that many memes pushed be the far left are not only unpopular but also bad. </p><p>We live in an unfortunate time where not only is the left uniquely unqualified to tackle issues of bigotry and discrimination, but they are uniquely emboldened to do so as ideologues.</p><p><b>Conclusion</b></p><p>Whatever happens tomorrow, I'm confident the result will be largely determined by bad reasons. I would prefer the referendum not pass, because if our constitution is a silly document that nobody really takes seriously, then we shouldn't have a referendum at all, and if it's serious we should give the government of the day the power to dictate what the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice is. </p><p>Whatever manifestation it takes, I can pretty much guarantee it won't be able to speak from the heart like the Uluru statement. Nor is a constitutionally recognized body necessary for a treaty though bipartisan support likely is. If you are worried a failed referendum will stop progress in its tracks, I invite you to look up the achievements of the EZLN in a far more violent and hostile nation, albeit one that miraculously could produce competent leadership. </p><p>Progress will depend on whether the relevant parties take responsibility, or opt for blame. I've hated this whole process and won't be happy regardless of what happens tomorrow.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p>ohminous_thttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362629902969757305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20599948.post-66589771349183390702023-09-17T18:01:00.008-07:002023-09-19T07:41:18.795-07:00Feel more informed, more likely to vote "no" to "The Voice"<p><b>New TL;DR</b></p><p>(Edit: <i>overall, I'm happyish with this post, but I felt I could do a better summary:</i>)</p><p>I am only concerned with how I vote, and on that front, I am only concerned with what the referendum says, though I'm taking in people's opinions about what it says.</p><p>I made a bunch of mistakes in my first post, I wrote it in one sitting which is very rare for me these days. I can defend that post though, if I had my time again, I would have spent less words on the design principles for the Voice. My interpretation of what the referendum says now boils down to:</p><p>"The Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia shall have the power to decide who and what the constitutionally recognized voice of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are and is. The Parliament will have ultimate say on what matters concern Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders."</p><p>Or even briefer: The Aboriginal Voice <i>to</i> Parliament, belongs to Parliament.</p><p>It's this interpretation of the referendum, that I predominantly will vote no to. I cannot in good conscience deprive the Indigenous people, whose sovereignty I already recognize, of that sovereignty. There then is a secondary reason, and that is that due to poor wording, our constitution will be open to interpretation as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders having ceded their sovereignty as "the First People of Australia" that wording is too risky to sit right with me.</p><p>The common theme of every reason to vote yes that I have found and been exposed to, can I feel be fairly characterised as an "intentional fallacy"</p><blockquote><p>the insistence that the ultimate meaning of an expression must be consistent with the intention of the person from whom the communication originated (e.g. a work of fiction that is widely received as a blatant allegory must necessarily not be regarded as such if the author intended it not to be so). ~ Wikipedia summary, full explanation here.</p></blockquote><p>It is my opinion that while the High Court of Australia is likely to consider the context in which the new law was written, ultimately will consider what the words say, if a future government legislates the Voice to be made up of political appointees.</p><p>My gut instinct from my first reading of the referendum, that this was a package deal, stands - recognition will fail because it comes bundled with the voice body. I have changed my opinion on whether a body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders should be enshrined in the constitution at all. I can't see a feasible way to do it without enshrining Parliament and the Commonwealth's power over it.</p><p>Tony Benn's <a href="https://australianpolitics.com/democracy/five-questions-about-power">5 questions for power</a> I find a useful framework for evaluating the contents of the referendum. That is why I think an ultimate autopsy of this referendum needs to go back to the Uluru Statement of the Hearts call for a "First Nations Voice to be enshrined in the constitution" an Australia with buyers remorse will not be able to undo the Voice without a referendum, and the Voice is <i><u style="font-weight: bold;">how</u> </i>the Australian Constitution recognises First Nations people (without sovereignty) meaning we would need a question to scrap the voice, and a question to recognize the Indigenous in some other way, making for complicated "yes, no" campaigns, "no, yes" campaigns, "yes, yes" campaigns and "no, no" campaigns.</p><p>Paling in relevance to the content of referendum, between my first post and this, I read the Uluru Statement from the Heart - which close to fully explained to me how we got here. I think we got here to the wording of this referendum with something Frankie Boyle referred to as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_culture_on_aviation_safety#Korean_Air_Flight_801">Co-Pilot syndrome</a> on BBC light-entertainment show "Taskmaster", that is, though I can't read minds - the draft wording of the referendum came out and was endorsed, despite being scrubbed of all suggestion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sovereignty, because so much <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalation_of_commitment">had been invested just to get there</a>. A phrase mentioned repeatedly to me was "it's not ideal" my interpretation remains that the proposed law is "bad".</p><p><b>TL;DR</b></p><p>I did further research in an attempt to inform myself, and have significantly updated what I think the referendum says/means. </p><p>I'm also grateful that I had friends present their reasons for voting yes. Down the bottom of this post, I go on a bit of a rant about my frustrations with the politics of the times, and I want to say, none of my friends closely resemble the "fools and fanatics" I am ranting about, though they may incidentally align.</p><p>Speaking candidly, I am as yet, to come across a good reason to vote yes in the referendum, and I make my case below as to why I haven't. The yes campaign is the only campaign that actually need to furnish a reason to vote for them.</p><p>There's time remaining, and if I find that good argument, I will commit myself now to sharing it, but as yet, I don't have it. </p><p>I am less confident now than four days ago, that the good argument exists. My present impression is the Yes campaign is based entirely upon everything but the content of the referendum.</p><p><b>Preramble to the Update on the State of the Sentiment of the Lay Voter on the Referendum to Amend the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia.</b></p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.pinimg.com/564x/8d/82/49/8d824908d272ec8d34c8355c761449bb.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="500" height="500" src="https://i.pinimg.com/564x/8d/82/49/8d824908d272ec8d34c8355c761449bb.jpg" width="500" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I have been unable to source the artist & writer that created this image, due to the sloppiness and callousness of those who shared it before me.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />The past, I don't know, at least 3 days have been a mixed bag for me. My mind has certainly been occupied by the central question of Australia's forthcoming referendum: "Am I an asshole?"<p></p><p>It would be nice if it were as simple as many people make out. For example this situation from 1994:</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-09/cathy_freeman.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="438" height="800" src="https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-09/cathy_freeman.jpg" width="438" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image sourced from <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/cathy-freeman">here</a>.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>If in 1994 you were the kind of person who was all like "Um, that's not the <i>official</i> Australian flag, and she is representing <i>Australia </i>in an <i>official capacity</i> hnnnnnnnnnnnnn..." then you <i>are</i> an arsehole for denying someone self expression and a host of other reasons. Simple, and clear cut. </p><p>Unfortunately, there's another kind of arsehole that has one standard for the above situation, and another for things like statues of Christopher Columbus, the Confederate Flag etc. the situation becomes more complicated, and you can be a <i>different kind of arsehole</i> that is incidentally correct on the <i>easiest</i> cases of self expression - those cases that you happen to like.</p><blockquote><p>"We hardly find any persons of good sense save those who agree with us." ~ Francois de La Rouchefoucauld McFancyPants describing another kind of arsehole.</p></blockquote><p>Unfortunately, with this referendum it's not as simple as if you vote "no" you are an arsehole, though it's likely a bunch of people will think you are.</p><p>There's at least two types of arsehole's out there. There's a "fuck you" kind of arsehole, and a "okay you asked for it" arsehole. After hearing some arguments for voting yes, and bending my mind like a pretzel looking at the contents of the referendum for sufficient reason to vote yes, I am still inclined to believe that this referendum carries a greater risk of "okay you asked for it" by voting yes, than a "fuck you" by voting no.</p><p>Where the left has degraded itself, in my opinion, has been its embrace of double standards and rejection of universalism. That is the most common theme of bad ideas originating from left-wing identifying people I come across. Bad ideas like ad hominem fallacies, slippery slope fallacies, all-or-nothing thinking, affirming the consequent, appeals to emotion, conspiracy theories, revelation as sound epistemology and an abundant overconfidence in their abilities to read people's minds. etc. </p><p>I had a brief exchange of messages with my sister who hasn't followed along, and she shared with me her impression on the ground, that the referendum was most likely going to fail, but for none of the reasons I was leaning towards no. "The discourse" isn't apparently, thinking like I do.</p><p><b>Australian Referendums make Thomas-Fucking-Jeffersons of Us All.</b></p><blockquote><p>The amendment process crafted during the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention was, according to The Federalist No. 43, designed to establish <i><b>a balance between pliancy and rigidity</b> </i>~ from wikipedia. IMO Australia's process is imbalanced toward rigidity.</p></blockquote><p>I've seen Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" that depicts the Lincoln Administrations campaign to pass the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery in the United States. While it is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_States#Article_V_%E2%80%94_Amendment_Process">no trivial thing to amend the US constitution</a>, it seems a lot easier than Australia's referendum process - which requires a vote that only passes with a "double majority" which is a majority of the states and territories need to get a majority "yes" vote.</p><p>Contrasting the two systems for changing a nation state's constitution, I'm now increasingly of the opinion that Australia needs a referendum to change the process by which we alter our constitution.</p><p>Under the US system, amendments to the constitution can be made entirely by members of legislative bodies. Career politicians and legislators with staff with expertise to read proposed amendments and hash out what it means. The US system is <a href="https://www.iied.org/deliberative-democracy-citizens-juries">much closer to deliberative democracy</a> than Australia's referendum process. Granted, there are characters in US politics like Margery Taylor Green who think the moon is made out of cheese and it's coming for your guns and your babies and your babies guns or whatever.</p><p>But the Australian system makes a fucking founding father out of me when they call a referendum. </p><p><i>I do not take that civic duty lightly</i>. </p><p>They also make a founding father out of my anti-vax friend, my young-earth creationist friends, my crypto-bro friends, my antifa friends, they make a founding father out of the people who went panic buying-hording toilet paper, pasta and lentils.</p><p>I care about the content of this referendum, and its lasting repercussions. Caring about that, I really just care how I vote, because I have to live with my own conscious.</p><p>Recognizing how small my vote is, even how small my influence is that my reasoning could persuade others to vote contrary to me, my ability to say "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTABEQ4Qh5Y">don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.</a>" is of tremendous import, in any vote I can participate in, because I have to live with myself.</p><p>I'm not a legislator with access to constitutional legal scholars to inform me. Unlike a deliberative democracy process, it's on me to try and inform my own vote. There's no judge and no legal counsel. Just a million arseholes each with their own opinions. </p><p>I elect, except when absent, people to represent me in the legislative branch. Fortunately, I don't have to <i><u><b>accurately anticipate</b></u></i> future legal challenges to the amended constitution and the likely High Court of Australia's opinions on them, to cast a vote <i>that I can live with</i>.</p><p><b>Some Simplifiers</b></p><p>Because of the Australian referendum system, requiring a double majority of lay voters to approve a change to the constitution, it <i><u><b>needs must be incumbent upon whoever words a referendum</b></u></i> that it be both clear and precise. The simplest way to cast a vote in good conscious, is to read the content of the referendum and gauge your confidence that you understand what it says. </p><p>If you read the words, and couldn't explain to a six year old what they mean with any justified confidence. You vote no. For any Australian referendum. Ever. I basically covered this in my last post on the subject, so just remember - tie goes to the status quo/if in doubt don't.</p><p>A second simplifying rule is to actually draw upon the hive mind. By this, the foundational rule is: "people generally lead with their best argument." A prosecutor doesn't begin their case in a murder trial be presenting the defendants cryptic fb post "omg, I feel sick" as exhibit A, when they have footage of the defendant murdering someone, followed by their prints on the murder weapon.</p><p>A very big data set that I believe replicates the rule, is 15+ years of call in show "The Atheist Experience" (ASX) where mostly theists call in to present their reasons for believing in a god, usually the Christian god, frequently Allah, occasionally the Pantheist god or some other wishy washy content.</p><p>What <i>never</i> fucking happens, is someone calling in and the hosts of the week asking "okay tell us why you believe in god?" and the caller says "Because the bible says..." and the hosts interrupt with "why should we care what the bible says" <i>and here's the part that never happens</i> the caller says "oh right, well that's my weakest reason, let me make a cosmological argument..." <i>that. never. happens.</i> What happens is the caller usually says with confusion "but the bible is the word of God?" and if you feel callers who are general members of the public with no particular qualifications beyond expertise on what they think, the same is true of professional debates between Atheist Sceptics and Theologians and members of the priest class. You generally don't have to listen beyond the opening statements to determine if the side with the burden of proof (Theists) have any good arguments at all.</p><p>Relevant to Australia's referendum debate, is that if you haven't heard a good argument from the yes campaign (who for me, carries the burden of proving I should vote yes) yet, then I can adjust my confidence upward, that a good and sufficient reason to vote yes does not exist.</p><p>I'll share my thoughts on the arguments I've heard thus far, just as a simple example here's an op-ed piece by <a href="If the No wins, the world will think we’re racist anyway It will also open Australia up to charges of hypocrisy when its government complains of China’s discrimination against Uyghurs. September 16, 2023byGeoffrey Robertson">Geoffrey Robertson</a>:</p><blockquote><p>Headline: If the No wins, the world will think we’re racist anyway</p><p>Excerpt: It will also open Australia up to charges of hypocrisy when its government complains of China’s discrimination against Uyghurs.</p></blockquote><p>This is a bad-terrible reason to vote yes, made by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Robertson">a highly intelligent, highly qualified public figure</a>. That reassures me, that the Yes campaign do not have a compelling reason I should vote yes. Like why the fuck would you argue something as tenuous as "think of the Uyghurs" as if Xi is going to say "yabba dabba doo" and crank up his oppression if this referendum fails.</p><p>but first let's talk about things I fucked up early on:</p><p><b>Uninformed, Misinformed, Stupid - I made mistakes.</b></p><p>Least impactful first. When I read the contents of the referendum, which I didn't like in terms of the language employed, I placed the blame on botching what could have been a referendum that recognized Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders and passed - something I wish to see happen - squarely on the ALP, the presiding government.</p><p>A friend made the argument that Indigenous Australians had asked for this referendum, and this is what they want, and that is why I should vote yes. I committed myself in my response to inform myself of the consultation process.</p><p>My impression of events has now completely changed and I feel even if only to myself, by being uninformed, I embarrassingly misrepresented who was responsible for this referendum. I was completely ignorant as to the contents of the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart which called for enshrinement of the First Nations Voice in the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia. </p><p>PM Anthony Albanese is still responsible for translating this call to the referendum we have, but he is ultimately responsible for his commitment to listen to the Uluru Statement from the Heart.</p><p>Coming to understand this, has no real impact on my decision making process, but it relieved all my frustration and even anger at the ALP as I now understand why we are having a referendum and why pretty much the only detail it specifies is what the body is to be called. Much of my own negative emotions dissipated. because understanding what happened made sense out of how we got here.</p><p>The more impactful thing I have come to understand through informing myself, is the contents of the referendum <i>and why acknowledging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders comes packaged with "The Voice"</i>. </p><p>My initial take was skewed by memories of the '99 referendum, which had two questions, only the question regarding the constitutional preamble was relevant to recognizing Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders, and on my initial read of this coming referendum I really didn't understand why it was a package deal.</p><p>The key for me, was scrutinizing the word "in" as in "in recognition" and even the punctuation ":" initially I had thought that the first sentence of the proposed law was the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders as pre-existing the Commonwealth of Australia, and then there were 3 (iii) lines that detailed the creation of "the Voice" body, which I treated almost as a non-sequitur.</p><p><i>I was wrong</i> in my initial reading, and only picked it up by reading the Uluru Statement of The Heart, which was only a result of having friends engage me. </p><p>The Voice <i>is</i> the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders, this change to the constitution does not simply recognize the indigenous peoples, it specifies <i>how</i> they are recognized. Like "we recognize Steve is coming to dinner <i>by the </i>place we set at the table for him."</p><p>Taking the referendum in isolation, it was hard for me to parse that it says "We recognize them <i>through</i> the provision of this body."</p><p>It's most impactful, because for me this packaging would be ground zero for conducting the autopsy on a failed referendum, and more to the point failure to recognize Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders in the first 122+ years of the Commonwealth of Australia. I'm currently of the opinion that this process most likely failed at the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart, I'll get to that later.</p><p><b>Scrubbed of any suggestion of sovereignty.</b></p><p>Hearing reasons from friends to vote yes, focused my attention on the acknowledgement aspect, previously and I assume it comes through in my last post, most of my attention was on the words contained in i, ii, iii.</p><p>My first sticking point was capital "A" "Australia" because I'm a fucking unbearable stickler, and I was concerned the words "First Peoples of Australia" was treating Australia the nation as synonymous with Terra Australis the land mass, or "Country" as my interest in Aboriginal philosophy and religion understands it, such that it would be open to interpretation as a backdoor way to steal sovereignty for the Commonwealth and make subjects of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.</p><p>I invite you to notice the language used in <a href="https://ulurustatement.org/the-statement/view-the-statement/">the Uluru Statement from the Heart</a>, which is an excellent document, and also the <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/welcome-country">Welcome to Country</a> as compared to the contents of the Referendum.</p><p>Anyway, long tedious story short, I'm 100% confident that given the definitions in 2B of the constitution that "Australia" in the referendum refers to geography, <i>not</i> the Commonwealth of Australia, and this is a mere example of how the wording is "not ideal" rather than bad - in this example only.</p><p>This also had me scrutinize the above mentioned "in" and ":" to actually for the first time understand overall what the law is saying...<i>and</i> I got curious as to "First Peoples" as in, why is that capitalized? What's the significance.</p><p>Because there's two big changes to the language in the long process leading up to this referendum that near as I can determine came quite late in the process. "First Nations" becomes "First Peoples" and "First Nations Voice" becomes the <i>only specific detail</i> in the referendum: "The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice"</p><p>This had me go and inform myself of the <a href="https://voice.gov.au/about-voice/history-constitutional-recognition-and-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-voice">referendum's timeline</a> - where did it come from and what is the significance? </p><p>Well, I couldn't quite figure out how the wording came to be, Albo announced the draft wording of the referendum on 30th of July, 2022 and that wording has not changed in any significant way from what's on the referendum. The wording <i>has been endorsed</i> by the referendum committee so, there is that. (*edit, I should also mention that the two polls conducted by Ipsos and Yougov that are the basis for 80% of indigenous voters support... were conducted after the draft words were released. Which checks out, however the core of my position that only the contents of the referendum matter, belabour me to make the point it is more accurate to say polls indicate 80% support what they think the referendum says. Like 80% of Democrat voters in 2008 approved of what they think "Change we can believe in" means. Then discovered over the next 8 years what that meant and switched their vote to Bernie Sanders or Trump.)</p><p>But that near as I can tell, is where all the names appear for the first time. The Uluru Statement from the Heart for example states:</p><blockquote><p>We call for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution.</p></blockquote><p>Now it is called "The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice" no "The First Nations Voice" for which I am speculating, they got some advice that the High Court would have too much fun, if the constitution acknowledged sovereign nations and sovereign people prior to the foundation of the British Colonies that then became the Commonwealth of Australia. </p><p>Similarly, we get this change from recognizing "First Nations" to "First Peoples" which explains the capitalization, again, it probably being advised that our constitution acknowledge no sovereignty of these people, but I am left unsure as to what "First Peoples" capitalized, means. It's certainly a-historical to suggest that they were the first people to be recognized by the Commonwealth of Australia. My impression of history is that Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders were among the <i>last</i> to be recognized by the Commonwealth.</p><p>Grammatically, the capitalization means "First Peoples" reads as a brand, like "Qantas" or "Channel Seven" or "The Grand Old Party" which the Republican party of the US call themselves, even though the Democratic Party is older. It certainly implies, just as <i>the historical method </i>tells us, that Aboriginals and Torres Straight Islanders were in Terra Australis first, but falls short of actually stating that, being grammatically akin to "In Recognition of The Republican Party of the United States is also known as The Grand Old Party:" near as I can determine.</p><p>This though is just the tip of the iceberg.</p><p><b>For me - The All Important "May/Shall" distinction</b></p><p>When I noticed none of my friends were addressing my concerns with the content of the referendum, dealing exclusively with peripheral arguments, I inspired myself to do further due diligence and try and search google for anything that indicated that the language was actually clear and precise and that I am subsequently, just a doofus.</p><p>Nothing has changed with words like "representations" usually in a legal context, it appears "representation" refers to something like a legal council, it remains unclear what does and doesn't constitute a "representation" though.</p><p>But pretty much everything is moot, because of the word "may" as distinct from "shall". That I did get clarity from a google search. "May" in contracts generally means it is discretionary. </p><p>I think the <i>intention</i> of the wording is to emphasise that the Voice's "representations" are non-binding, as in they don't have veto right, or legislative power on matters that concern Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders. </p><p>As it <i>is</i> worded in the referendum, it reads as the Australian Parliament and Executive Government are not constitutionally bound to receive those "representations", they don't have to answer the phone or return calls, open mail, let Voice members on the premises, or allow them to make submissions in policy discussions. </p><p>For me, I've been following via email updates from Adrian Burragubba, <a href="https://me.getup.org.au/petitions/don-t-let-adani-build-their-huge-coal-mine-on-our-traditional-land">Wangan and Jagalingou peoples opposition to the Adani Coalmine</a>, the precise kind of issue a body <i>like </i>the Voice <i>is intended to be</i> could make a big impact. I'm not 100% on the details despite the email updates I receive, but my impression is that the opposition lost their legal challenges to overturn Adani's approval to build a mine and other necessary infrastructure, and the strategy changed to peaceful protests obstructing Adani's attempts to build the coalmine, like unending ceremonies on crucial bits of land and stuff.</p><p>That's all to say, that even though I'm aligned with resisting Adani's coalmine, and generally any further investment in coal that is not directly reducing the environmental impact of burning coal, AND that I would vote yes to a referendum question that the constitution stipulate "We shall not touch a company as shady as Adani with a 500km pole" in a heartbeat, I was actually thinking if the wording of the referendum allows a new body an effective filibuster option because it would allow, for example a 365 day long ceremony to take place on the floor of the lower house.</p><p>In other words, does the discretionary "may" go both ways, where delegates of the Voice staging disruptive protests can appeal to "the constitution says <i>we may make representations</i>." And my estimation is "no" they could be ejected, or refused entrance because iii pretty <i><u><b>UNclearly</b></u></i> stipulates: </p><blockquote><p>the Parliament shall, <i>subject to this Constitution</i>, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.</p></blockquote><p>Incidentally, my overall impression of arguments for the "yes" vote, are all based on what they think (iii) says and not what it actually says. (iii) is the big blotch, nobody seems to want to talk about.</p><p>I think, the words "subject to this Constitution" means nothing can override i and ii, which is that they can't rename the Voice without another referendum, and they can't change the powers of the Voice so they can make binding "representations" or guarantee their representations will be acknowledged. The discretion as to whether "representations" are received at all, lie with the Parliament.</p><p><b>Unintended Consequences and the Future Hypothetical Voice of a Coalition Majority Government</b></p><p>The short term consequences of passing this referendum, are inconsequential to the point of being almost unworthy of consideration. I'll expand on that later. Suffice to say, the government of the day will most likely pass legislation implementing the Voice as intended by the long consultation process <a href="https://voice.gov.au/resources/indigenous-voice-co-design-process-final-report">you can look at an info graphic here</a>.</p><p>On yes campaign website Yes23.com.au/vote_yes one of their arguments reads as:</p><blockquote><p>Protecting the Voice from politics and bureaucrats by putting it in the constitution, giving it the security it needs to provide meaningful and honest advice.</p></blockquote><p>And by my lay, determination. This is <b><u>straight up about as opposite of what the referendum does</u></b> as it gets. </p><p>My lay opinion of what the referendum actually says in plain language is:</p><p>i) There will be a body that must at all times be called THE Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. (THE Voice)</p><p>ii) They can speak, but Parliament and the Executive Government doesn't ever have to listen. ("may")</p><p>iii) Parliament gets to say what THE Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice IS.</p><p>Again, I must emphasize <a href="https://www.aec.gov.au/referendums/learn/the-question.html">DON'T TAKE IT FROM ME read the referendum for yourself</a>, preferably before you get to the booth.</p><p>What I cannot see excluded from this wording, is a future Coalition government getting the political clout to change the legislation such that the Voice's budget is gutted and it is composed of political appointees. Such a body, would be <u style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">constitutionally</u> recognized as <i>the</i> Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. </p><p>The Voice will always be vulnerable to being unpopular with the Australian public. This is somewhat of a protection against a likely outcome, for any public institution, of becoming ideologically captured or otherwise corrupted. Like, if the Voice somehow becomes tedious raging flat-earthers, Parliament could unanimously decide to end the term of the current incumbent representatives and replace them with white academic appointees or even lobbyists from the mining industry who would then be the constitutionally recognized voice of Indigenous Australia.</p><p>I had people argue that I need to largely consider the symbolic value of this bureaucratic body, and largely ignore what this bureaucratic body is. To which I say, I am. And by my honest attempts to understand, I can see it backfiring in a major way to enshrine <i>this</i> in the constitution.</p><p>Nothing in the constitution prevents Parliament from dispossessing the Voice of its assets and replacing it with a single underfunded political appointee who can afford to hold the position by virtue of the generous wages he receives from his main employer - the Australian Economic Group for the Promotion of Agriculture and Mining, who will be able to say, by enshrinement of the constitution that as The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice "fuck the reef."</p><p>How likely this extreme outcome is, I would put at very unlikely. More likely is some other way to undermine the Voice that can be legislated quietly. For example, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Territory_National_Emergency_Response">the 2007 Northern Territory Emergency Act</a> was legislated loudly, and one of the situations a well designed and protected Voice could have I'm sure, improved, whereas <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stronger_Futures_policy">the 2012 Stronger Futures Policy</a> was legislated relatively quietly. </p><p>Given that this FUCKING REFERENDUM struggles to get more attention in the media than sports and property sales, I think a future Coalition government would be able to gut the Voice under this referendum with nothing more than a few deluded intelligencia writing duelling op-eds for page ten of the local newspapers.</p><p><b>A lay guy's tier list for the Yes Campaign Arguments</b></p><p>Yes23.com.au/vote_yes lists the following broad bullet point reasons for voting yes.</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Recognising</li><li>Listening</li><li>Protecting</li><li>Over 80%</li></ul><p style="text-align: left;">That last one refers to the broad consensus and is a reiteration, or quality control statement of the "Listening" argument, it's the websites words not mine. Let me see if it complies with "strongest argument first" heuristic. I'm going to rank them on a power-level tier list, and should they conform to a fallacy I'll, as a lay sceptic, denote the fallacy.</p><p style="text-align: left;">ALWAYS KEEP IN MIND THE FALLACY FALLACY, JUST BECAUSE AN ARGUMENT IS MADE BADLY, DOESN'T MAKE THE CONCLUSION INCORRECT.</p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">Recognising and respecting 65,000 years of Indigenous culture for the first time in Australia’s 122-year-old constitution. </p></blockquote><p>I rank this argument C-tier, it's hard to diagnose, because it is for example a true dilemma that "yes" will be the first time in 122 years. The referendum says nothing about respect however, that part is a false dilemma if you are arguing that a failed referendum therefore means the public don't recognise and don't respect 65,000 years of Indigenous culture. There are more ways to do this than just voting "yes" on the referendum. I rank this as high as C-tier because recognising and respecting Indigenous culture is a good thing to want to do. The question is, does this referendum actually accomplish that? For which this actually isn't an argument at all. Just an assertion. It deserves it's C rating because it accurately reflects the likely short term interpretation of the significance of the referendum. For reference, compare the perceived significance of Obama's election in 2008 relative to it's perceived significance in 2015, 2020 etc. Or a more recent example, the perceived significance of the Matilda's advancing past the group stage in the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup, and the perceived significance of the Matilda's performance in the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup after being eliminated by the Lionesses.</p><blockquote><p>Listening to advice from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people about matters that affect their lives, so governments make better decisions. </p></blockquote><p>I rank this D-tier, it would be a good argument, if this was what the referendum said. I actually don't know what the fallacy is, when the premises of the argument are just wrong. Upon consideration, this D-tier argument is definitely an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorial_intent#New_Criticism">intentional fallacy</a> and a straw man fallacy, it is "refuting an argument different from the one actually under discussion, while not recognizing or acknowledging the distinction." This is an argument for the Voice the ALP plans to legislate should the referendum pass, as distinct from what is actually under discussion, which is the content of the referendum people will vote yes or no on.</p><p>People need to <i>fucking understand</i> that the High Court won't be able to call Anthony Albanese to testify "what he meant" when the constitution says "on matters relating to..." nor should they, because they actually need to read the minds of millions of voters and try and figure out what <i>they meant</i> when they voted yes to the wording of the referendum. Only the words will be enshrined in the constitution, not what the authors intended them to mean.</p><blockquote><p>Protecting the Voice from politics and bureaucrats by putting it in the constitution, giving it the security it needs to provide meaningful and honest advice.</p></blockquote><p>F-tier, and if there was a lower tier, it would go there. This is absolutely a straw man, because the referendum, if anything at all, stipulates the opposite. This is misinformation, the wording of the referendum all <i>stinks</i> of stripping the Voice of all security bar its existence and name. It's ability to provide meaningful and honest advice is undermined by "may" and the entirety of iii gives Parliament the right to define it's powers composition etc.</p><blockquote><p>Over 80% of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community support this proposal. It has been designed and agreed on by Indigenous leaders over many decades. </p></blockquote><p>F-tier again, but actually not as bad as the previous reason. It is, at least, likely factually correct, I certainly have no reason to disbelieve the claims. It is however a bad reason. It is an Argumentum Ad Popularim, it also reads as a Fait Accompli and I do think it explains the present situation as an escalation of commitment. </p><p>It does support an argument for listening...if the gap between what is and what was intended were not an issue. It is certainly necessary for me to vote yes, that <i>somebody</i> wants the change to take place, but it is not a sufficient reason to vote yes, because in general, we don't just give people what they want.</p><p>This last one also is potentially a straw man fallacy because for me at least it is indeterminate whether at some point in the process the content of the referendum went from the proposal 80% support to something else. I will assume it's 80% support the final wording of the referendum and not everything up to the draft wording of the referendum. (*edit, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-02/fact-check-indigenous-australians-support-for-the-voice/102673042">this assumption appears correct</a>.)</p><p>Precise language for me demands the reason says "...community support what they think this proposal is." That somewhere in the crucial 20% that don't support might be all of the respondents that scrutinized the wording and thought about it, rather than assuming it basically says what the Uluru Statement from the Heart called for.</p><p><b>All The Yes Campaign Arguments Are Bad Arguments</b></p><p></p><blockquote>When we listen to people about the decisions that affect them, we get better results. For the past 250 years, we haven’t properly listened to the people who have been here for 65,000. It’s time we did. ~ Yes23.</blockquote><p>I can agree with everything above, and vote no. A lack of listening will also likely be why this referendum fails. </p><p>I'm agnostic as to whether a good reason to vote yes exists and I just haven't heard it yet. I fully acknowledge that people are and can be persuaded by bad arguments. I'm not confident in my ability to interpret legalese, I am confident in my ability to spot the bad arguments I know, and crucially the no campaign has no burden to provide arguments at all. </p><p>What I will say, is that from one speaker for the "no" position I read, though I disagreed with much she said, had better arguments than any I have seen for "yes" and I am looking actively, for a reason to vote yes, because it would be nice to recognise the Indigenous people of Terra Australis in Australia's constitution. </p><p>So here's some more that aren't on Yes23's short list:</p><blockquote><p>There are already lobby groups that can make representations to Parliament and the Executive Government, and they are privately funded, often by economic rents so where's the harm in creating a permanent publicly funded lobby for Indigenous voices?</p></blockquote><p>I rate this C-tier, because I made it to myself. It falls down on two-wrongs making a right. It's a very cynical argument that doesn't get me over the line. It is bad that lobbying undermines democracy and promotes oligarchy. From all the research I've seen, cashed up lobbyists can have more impact on policy without a vote than voters do.</p><p>The thing is, enshrining what may in practice be, a lobby group in the constitution creates a permanent condition. To be swayed by this argument, one has to be a pessimist that an Indigenous Voice will never become redundant, never fulfil its mission. That it is still necessary even when there are elected Indigenous People serving in Parliament, that it will still be necessary after a Truth and Treaty process, that it will be necessary even with other indigenous bodies making representations. This argument can, but shouldn't persuade anyone.</p><blockquote><p>It's not about you or what you want.</p></blockquote><p>This is just a reiteration of 80% of the community supports..., and there's been a lot of consultation. All the iterations I've heard are F-tier. I know, people making it have double standards, like if I were to ask them if they found Justice Bryan Kavanaugh's testimony that he was really really upset that an investigation into allegations of sexual assault might jeopardize his confirmation to SCOTUS compelling, they would of course say that that's different because "power" AND an unflattering comparison and I understand why these concepts are hard to parse.</p><p>Too many people agree with the statement: "The only remedy for past discrimination is present discrimination." I disagree, discrimination of the kind intended, needs to just stop.</p><p>The people who want this, for the most part, have their own vote. It is the unfortunate reality of the Australian process that if you want something put in the constitution, until such time as I die, you've involved me. What I'm hearing, is that the Indigenous Community want something in the constitution and subsequently they need a referendum and they need people like me to vote yes.</p><p>What I feel I am witnessing, is a large scale demonstration of Francois de La Rocheafoucald's Maxim:</p><blockquote><p>"One must listen if one wishes to be listened to." ~ A No Doubt Infuriating French Noble to Cite.</p></blockquote><p>When the Uluru Statement of the Heart called for a First Nations Voice to be enshrined in the constitution, at that point an 80% consultation of 3.5% of the population becomes insufficient to accomplishing the goal stated. I would look at that and say "okay, that requires a double majority to vote yes to pass. The Indigenous vote won't carry by itself."</p><p>In my own experience, I was told "just vote yes" and "you're overthinking it" and "I read your piece but it’s still unclear to me what difference a Yes vote will make to your life, as a White Australian living overseas." I don't think there's malicious intent. There is definite hypocrisy in people advocating that I listen to others, being told what to do, being dismissed and being minimised through an argument from personal incredulity.</p><p>The stakeholders in a referendum, are all people present and future subject to the constitution. Where this campaign went wrong, was conceiving the stakeholders as only the people calling for the change.</p><p>As an Australian, I want more than anything, a treaty. I view Australia as a nation projected on top of an older largely unrecognized one. Having said that, I can imagine numerous treaties that could never be agreed to.</p><p>If someone wants me to recognize they have a PhD. in Anthropology, and they do, it is on me to acknowledge the fact. If they insist that the only acceptable recognition of their PhD. is that I refer to them with the title "Dr." when I don't refer to my doctors as "Dr." nor do I use titles in general, and my refusal to do so upsets them, that is on them.</p><p>Nobody would buy the idea that the only way to respect other people's belief in Catholicism, is by abstaining from red meat on Fridays, and the media doesn't not publish images of the Prophet out of respect for the tenants of Islam, it's out of fear that they can't protect people they have a duty of care to.</p><p>This F-tier argument that I should deny my own agency, acknowledging that I am not being asked to vote, I am being asked to vote yes is asking me to take responsibility for the feelings and beliefs of others, which I cannot do.</p><p>A failed referendum is not proof that society rejects you, all it proves is that society is not at your service. If your conclusion from having the Prime Minister, leader of the elected government of the Commonwealth of Australia resolve to support in entirety the Uluru Statement from the Heart, stating that he wants something "Done with, not done to" and puts forward a referendum to vote on a proposal based on what you asked for and approved in consultation with your representatives, that you don't have a voice and you don't have power, that is a denial of the facts.</p><blockquote><p>We have a chance to vote on it.</p></blockquote><p>This argument is D-tier, "it" being the subject of debate. It is arguing that opportunities are scarce to actually get this done, therefore hold your nose and vote yes.</p><p>It's the second time in 25 years Australian's have had an opportunity to recognize the Indigenous in the constitution, the other being the referendum on the '99 preamble, of which recognition were the few words contained to commend it.</p><p>It's D-tier, because again, it's shifting the blame. Those who proposed this referendum did not take seriously the gravity of getting the words and the timing and the process right, but I have to overlook this and be thankful for crumbs swept off the table. Okay, the wording might not be that bad, but it is not good enough to vote for.</p><blockquote><p>The ALP/Albo have staked a huge amount of political capital on this. / punishing the government will punish indigenous people. / It will be a win for evil potato head.</p></blockquote><p>This argument in my opinion, is so bad, that I urge people to stop making it. It is Machiavellian, and I reject this as someone who respects The Prince (and Frederick II's Anti-Machiavelli response pamphlet published by Voltaire). You should only make it to people who neither care about nor respect indigenous issues, and just care about the 2025 election.</p><p>This argument asks me to take responsibility for that which I can't. Well, I can respond, and am therefore responsible, I can do so with my vote. If it is the case, that the National Convention that produced the Uluru Statement, and all subsequent consultants and the ALP government fucked this referendum straight out the gates, to vote yes would be to not respond, and abrogate my responsibilities, instead rewarding bad and irresponsible behaviour. </p><p>If you do genuinely think that this is a good reason to vote yes, then take responsibility and defeat my objections <i>to the content of the referendum</i>. Deal with the words "First People" "Australia" "may" "make representations" "matters concerning" "including its composition, functions, powers and procedures."</p><p>My overall impression of yes voters, is that they do not want to talk about the contents of the referendum, suggesting they do not possess a valid argument to vote yes, and that it is not an unfair characterization of the yes campaign to describe it as "vote for the vibe."</p><blockquote><p>one of the most extensive consultative processes they've ever undertaken</p></blockquote><p> As distinct from "80% of the community" this point, or sub argument, I take is meant to mean quality assurance is bad because it is ultimately irrelevant. Yes, it boosts my confidence that indeed this is what the Indigenous people of Australia want. It doesn't validate those wants in totality, but I have to vote in totality because I only get yes/no. </p><p>Now, there is just the content of the referendum, and if anything defeats it or passes it, it should be literacy. </p><p>In the finance world, there is a thing called "Efficient Market Hypothesis" which basically regards the market as a hyper-efficient super computer calculating the value of things. I somewhat believe in this theory in so far as it is largely pointless to try and gain advantage in the market by reading the Wall Street Journal etc. It would be a massive fallacy to think that EMH guarantees that LTCM, Enron, The GFC, the Bitcoin collapse, the second Bitcoin collapse couldn't happen so they didn't. </p><p>Big data sets get things wrong all the time. I am generally pro consultation, but I am also very wary of consultants. In the systems engineering world, there's a principle "Garbage in, garbage out" and many consulting processes I've participated in, in my life have had us break up into groups and do craft activities and brainstorm ideas with pens on big sheets of paper and report back to the group. </p><p>I don't know what the consultation looked like. I just know that while it's something to say it was long and extensive, that gets me nowhere near where I need to be. I just need to be confident I understand what the referendum actually says, and I'm not, and I'm not convinced anyone is.</p><p><b>The Political Fashions of the Time are Lime Polyester Flares, Wide Collar Mustard Shirts and Corduroy Ties.</b></p><p>You can quit now, because I'm moving away from addressing the content of the referendum. One of my friends wrote me:</p><blockquote><p>That it is susceptible to "fashion of the day" politics is a red herring in my view. That's an argument for waning into obscurity just as much as becoming a bureaucratic drag on legislation (which could be changed with the fashion).</p></blockquote><p>To which I think I agree. However, in my defence, I was responding to arguments to vote yes that were short term peripheral red herrings themselves. The same friend made the ALP have staked political capital argument in the same post.</p><p>How I initially read it though, was that I was coming across as making a bad argument against the proposed first incarnation of the voice, that it reflected the fashions of the moment, and I would make that argument again in a different moment, permanently objecting on the grounds that everything was too "now".</p><p>I just want to clarify the fashion analogy, as there are generally recognized good periods of fashion - the 60s, the 80s, the 90s for example, and generally recognized bad periods of fashion - the 70s, the 00s, the 10s and now.</p><p>The political fashions of the times, even if the boomers retain an ironclad grip on power, amongst the lay public are some of the worst I can even imagine. It's a time in which I don't trust anyone to do anything regarding civil rights, because bad ideas abound.</p><p>Identity politics functionally is "ad hominem is okay", Greg Lukianoff and Johnathon Haidt have done valuable work documenting how cognitive distortions have gone main stream. The left are all about all-or-nothing thinking, catastrophising, mind-reading. We are going through a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-TynKJ9ntE">dark age</a>, akin to the pamphleteering era that produced "the protocols of the Elders of Zion" and "The Witches Hammer" </p><p>Speaking of Haidt, he has a great rule, regarding where the fashion is to block people, protest their platforming etc:</p><blockquote><p>If you want to know who's wrong, look at who shoots their dissidents.</p></blockquote><p>People are taken seriously, who have picked up "On Liberty" by John Stuart Mill, looked at the impact attempting to put it into practice has had on the plight of marginalised people everywhere and said "nope." Then picked up "Das Capital" by Karl Marx, looked at the impact attempting to put it into practice has had on the plight of marginalised people everywhere and said "let's give this another crack." Those people are taken seriously, and they should never be until they answer their case.</p><p>Winston Churchill said:</p><blockquote><p>'Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm'</p></blockquote><p>And I have watched the left go from one unmitigated catastrophe to another unmitigated catastrophe with no loss of enthusiasm and tragically for us all, have succeeded. They've been remarkable at spreading bad ideas and before you know it, people are calling Martin Luther King someone with internalized white supremacy.</p><p>Fashionable ideas that are impervious to feedback that they are <i>wildly</i> unpopular. While the people that adopt them tank their own mental health and diminish the mental health of others.</p><p>There's a quiet day coming, I don't know when when so many nice people who just want things to be nice ask themselves "wait a minute, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKcmnrE5oY">are we the baddies?</a>" and will I think, quietly forget that they used to be cheering for retrograde racist, sexist and oppressive ideas because they didn't think about it and they didn't want to discuss it because life is supposed to be simple, not complicated.</p><p>If it's difficult to accomplish things, why wouldn't we just give up?</p><p></p><p></p><p><b>The Inherent Risk of Arguing Badly</b></p><blockquote>“The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.”</blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote>― Friedrich Nietzsche</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p>[<i>roll eyes</i>] "Quoting Nietzsche? The <i>Nazi</i> Philosopher?" [<i>checks out</i>] </p><p>The short, one line play above^ is an example of the "ad hominem" fallacy. Just as I'm aware that Nietzsche has for many a disqualifying reputation, I'm aware of the bad reputation enjoyed by "keyboard warriors" who just point out fallacies on twitter/X threads.</p><p>See my thing about fallacies, is that they are demonstrable. It's easy. Stalin says "2+2=4" Stalin is bad, therefore 2+2 does not = 4. That's clearly false, and it's false because 2+2=4 no matter who says it. Just as 2+2=5 is incorrect no matter who says it. Anybody who tries to operate a business on the premise that 2+2 does not = 4 is going to get exploited.</p><p>In an as yet unpublished piece I wrote, I defined "Activism" as "encouraging people of no particular qualification to be active in a cause."</p><p>To be clear, I am not anti-activist <i>per se</i>. An example I can go to, is the activism that recently brought to an end Vic Forrest, who have been illegally logging old-growth forests and ignoring environmental regulations for years. (At least that's my understanding).</p><p>Those are perfect circumstances for activism. The law says this business shouldn't be operating, and you don't need anyone of particular qualification to disrupt their operation. You can get a 23 year old <i>barista</i> willing to chain themselves to a bulldozer or sit in a tree to stop works until a <i>barrister </i>secures a stop-work order from a judge until the legality of the logging can be determined. </p><p>I may not be up on all the facts, but Vic Forests attributed their collapse to all the legal actions causing delays which caused them to have to pay massive penalties for not fulfilling their client's orders and they are done. It could be because they could only sue some 23 year old barista for legal damages, and they were actually compliant with environmental regulations. I don't know. But I feel confident that it's more that they lost almost all legal action because they tried their hardest not to find any Greater Gliders.</p><p>My opposition, or rather suspicion is that the attitudes of the day seem to think Activism is just an unqualified good. People can't comprehend that through action, they could harm causes they care about. Particularly incompetent action, galvanizing people against them.</p><p>People seem to think Activism is like Michelle Wolfe's parody of a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHG-Nhuc_yc&t=95s">good-guy-with-a-gun</a>. Where so long as there's goodness in your heart, you will only hit the bad guys when you fire.</p><p>There's nothing I can do to convince people I am arguing in good faith. The best I can manage is to use the time remaining to find a way to vote yes, and keep doing my research and trying to inform myself.</p><p>The Dunning-Kruger effect keeps me up at nights, and in any disagreement, it will always be opaque as to whether you disagree with me, because you haven't considered something I have, or whether I disagree with you because I haven't considered something you have.</p><p>Most likely, it's both. Hence the importance of listening. </p><p>Yes. One way to persuade me to change my vote, is to ignore my reasons for voting no and try and present me with a reason to vote yes that outweighs that reason. </p><p>Some of my initial arguments were bad. All the yes arguments I've been exposed to, and found, are bad. In doing so, people who want this referendum to pass, have hurt their cause, because I am left with the impression that they will be voting not for what the referendum says, but what they think it says and they think it says what it was intended to say.</p>ohminous_thttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362629902969757305noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20599948.post-90398922839000581462023-09-08T10:34:00.001-07:002023-09-08T10:34:56.836-07:00I Will Most Likely Vote "No" To "The Voice"<p>When approaching a constitutional referendum like the Australian Indigenous Voice to Parliament, whatever it's official name is, heretofore referred to as "The Voice" here is how I would go about it:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The default position on <u style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">any</u> referendum question is "no" which is to say, if I have not considered the issue at all, if I feel myself completely uninformed the responsible thing is not to toss a coin and abide by the results, but to vote "no".</li><li>I subsequently have an all-or-nothing stance on voting "yes" all my concerns would have to be satisfactorily dealt with to vote "yes" meaning that the yes campaign have a very onerous task courting my vote where a complete fuckwit like Dutton doesn't really have to campaign for my vote at all. Thems the breaks in this case.</li><li>I am always concerned about <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fait_accompli">fait-accompli</a>s. For example, if I asked a women if she'd like a pizza and a root, and she pulled a face and turned away from me in disgust, to which I inquired "what's the matter? Don't you like pizza?" Like I want a solution to the problem that indigenous people are too small and too distributed to get representation in Parliament, the proposed voice however is being presented as a solution to that problem and I am not convinced it is.</li><li>Specific to the voice to parliament, I would have concerns about tokenism and handwashing, for example, the proposals to move Australia day I view as a purely symbolic gesture that would achieve no long term benefit in the elevation of the status of indigenous Australians but might make well meaning left leaning white people feel better. By contrast I do not view the Rudd governments apology for the stolen generation tokenistic, purely symbolic etc. An apology is a meaningful reparative act in and of itself.</li><li>I would have concerns about the proneness to corruption of any new publicly funded body.</li><li>I would have concerns about fashions of the moment getting enshrined into the constitution.</li><li>I would have concerns about the indigenous communities view of the proposal. This doesn't mean I would necessarily be swayed, just I would take pains to disabuse myself of the notion that "the indigenous" are one homogenous group. For comparison, I read arguments during Australia's marriage equality plebiscite from queer groups that I should "vote" "no" (in a survey) because if given equal status in the eyes of the law, many LGB persons will cease their activism. I'm glad I heard this argument, it was <i>not</i> persuasive.</li><li>I would have concerns about implementation.</li><li>I would have concerns about long-term repercussions.</li></ul><div>Now, to wrap up this preramble, during the Melbourne lock downs of 2020 I among many got into it on facebook with a libertarian friend who was "concern trolling" the Victorian governments handling of the pandemic (ie. the lockdowns). I was not persuaded by any of their arguments, and determined them to be a dishonest ideologue interlocuter, however, to their credit they did prompt me to do my due civilian diligence and read the legislation of the expanded emergency powers act that I may be actually informed. </div><div><br /></div><div>Reading it was most reassuring, basically every section clearly detailed the limits of governmental emergency powers including the timeframe in which emergency powers expired. With that in mind, this morning I decided to actually look up what the proposed voice was, rather than having journalists or whoever, tell me about it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now I want to stress a concern I <i>do not have</i>:</div><div><br /></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>That uninformed people will think that the referendum not passing = racism. </li></ul><div>Let me give you an easy example - when Australia had it's referendum as to whether to leave the Commonwealth and become an independent nation, you couldn't conclude that most people who voted "no" did so because they love being royal subjects of the House of Windsor. My overwhelming impression was that most people "didn't want to become America" there was too much confusion as to what the nation would look like and how it would function to vote "yes". </div><div><br /></div><div><b>What it actually is:</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Don't trust me, <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2023B00060">go to the horses mouth</a>.</div><div><br /></div><blockquote><div> In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia:</div></blockquote></div><p></p><div><blockquote><div><br /></div><div>(i) there shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice;</div><div><br /></div><div>(ii) the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;</div><div><br /></div><div>(iii) the Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.</div></blockquote><p>So this was helpful, because my first port of call was the Wikipedia page, that I will actually describe as misleading (rather than misinformation) because I read the proposed design principles as what would be enshrined in the constitution.</p><p>The <a href="https://voice.gov.au/">proposed design</a> of the voice, for me is instantly disqualifying. But it isn't fair to base the referendum decision on what would likely, inevitably be a flawed first iteration, however you slice it.</p><p> <b>My impression as a voter</b></p><p>i) "there shall be a body" is my favorite part of this proposal, there is currently <i>no</i> indigenous body that is publicly funded. When <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboriginal_and_Torres_Strait_Islander_Commission">ATSIC</a> was disbanded, rightly or not (I have no opinion), it was replaced with nothing. So thus far I would vote "yes" we should be constitutionally bound to fund some kind of body for indigenous Australians. I do not understand why would oblige it to be called "The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice". That's too specific for a constitutional obligation, it would block for example a counterfactual history where ATSIC was scrapped and replaced with ATSIA (changing commission to authority) which would allow for a discontinuity between a failed model and a replacement model.</p><p>ii) "May make representations" this would be the literal voice, and it denotes access basically. What's a representation? Does this mean they can enter the lower house and pose questions during question time? Or does this mean there will be a parliamentary inbox somewhere that they can drop petitions and suggestions and the like into? Does it mean a delegate from the voice can sit in on a closed door meeting between a prime minister and visiting president for life Xi? "On matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people." Okay, who decides that? What is the line of dilineation? Does all mining and management of Australian resources relate to ATSI or not? Will we see the voice "make representations" on for example the Adahni coal mine in QLD and the impact on the great barrier reef? Does that relate? Or will it be confined to the autonomous management of indigenous communities. The wording is too vague to the point of why include ii at all.</p><p>iii) So this is basically saying that while the constitution guarantees a body to be called the voice, and guarantees it's ability to make representations to the public on matters relating to ATSIs, the government can legislate it into anything it wants. This should be reassuring, because it gives the power to completely marginalize the voice into obscurity, should any iteration prove badly designed. I feel, that subject to the constitution, there is nothing to stop the voice manifesting as a single person, with a budget of $30,000 per year of no aboriginal ancestry constituting the voice to parliament. That's what "including its composition, functions, powers and procedures." means to me. </p><p>What isn't reassuring is the notion that instead of using this feature to gut the voice to parliament, that parliament could expand the voice's powers to become highly costly, like <a href="https://www.politico.com/interactives/2019/how-to-fix-politics-in-america/inequality/pass-an-anti-racist-constitutional-amendment/">Ibram X Kendi's idiotic idea for a department of Anti-racism</a>. I would imagine that the constitution would prevent the Parliament from ever legislating the voice to have the power to veto any parliamentary legislation, but maybe it requires all legislation to have attached an "indigenous impact statement" and a pre-clearing process where all draft legislation has to go through the voice. </p><p>That's why I'm so sensitive to the fashions of the moment. Across the political spectrum most proposed ideas at the moment live somewhere between stupid and deranged. I would need reassurance that the voice not be turned into a costly bureaucratic body. I'm not afraid of it, under this wording becoming some overpowered authoritarian entity, I'm concerned with people being forced to deal with an idiotic body that needs everything to be written in incoherent postmodern language.</p><p>...</p><p>So just as a voter, I am not sufficiently reassured that this can't drive race relations backwards. The process seems arse backwards to me. It would be better to legislate this voice body, have it run for a few years, modify as necessary and then when we have a body that we know what we are talking about, do the referendum to constitutionally guarantee it.</p><p><b>Into the campaign: A voters impression of the design proposal</b></p><p>So, this is a kind of "here's what we're thinking" thing that just serves to confuse the referendum question, because nothing in the proposed constitution stipulates <i>anything</i> beyond the name, I mean, I'm not sure if our constitution currently defines what Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders <i>are</i>.</p><p>So <a href="https://voice.gov.au/">looking at this</a> I'll cut straight to a disqualifying criteria of the proposed voice:</p><p><a href="https://voice.gov.au/about-voice/voice-principles#voice-principle-3">Principle 3 states</a> "the voice will have balanced gender representation at the national level." So this is automatically disqualifying, as what I feel is a classic example of a dumb idea slipping through. </p><p>It is now really dumb, because "gender" is an undefined term. But even if we took it to mean "both sexes" the only administrative solution would be that each community must elect both a male and female representative to ensure balance. When they say "at the national level" though I envision a situation where an aboriginal community, based on the makeup of the incumbents are informed they can only elect a male from their community as the female representatives are at full quota. </p><p>Of course, there are no incumbents, so I envision a scenario where the various communities by various means come forth with their chosen representatives, and there's 13 more female reps than male. What process then determines which communities have to go back, discard their chosen representative and elect anew. </p><p>This principle stinks of the hubristic current fashions wanting to be put into practice. It suggests that whoever is designing the principles for the draft voice legislation, are already ideologically captured.</p><p>I for whatever reason, do not need a voice to parliament to represent me, or my people or my demographic, to make representations, even though given the address at which I'm registered, my representative to state and federal government in no way represents me. Frankly they have been embarrassing. Be that as it may, there just isn't a history of abuse and exploitation by the state that could possibly warrant an additional body to represent me.</p><p>Having said that, were it me that we deemed it necessary to have a body to represent my interests, I would want to in principle be able to vote for whatever representative I fucking want. Under the Australian system, I am actually okay with the government saying "you don't get your first preference, who is your second preference, okay you don't get them either who is your..." all the way down my ballot, because it at the least gives me some reassurance that if <i>I</i> don't get who <i>I </i>want, I will at least get someone I can live with.</p><p>But the government doesn't dare (as yet) to condescend and throw out my first preference because the genders don't balance out. And while there are some stipulations like presumably I can't vote for a candidate who does not actually have the citizenship status to live in the electorate for their term, there is nothing to stipulate that I as a white man have to be represented by a white man. Which brings in principle 3's sub stipulation that any voice representative has to be Aboriginal or Torres Straight Islander by the three way test. </p><p>Unlikely as it might seem, I can use my cognitive empathy to imagine a scenario where I was living in a remote community, and I was getting regularly harassed by the cops, the pigs, the filth, the fuzz etc. and routinely helped out by a white woman from the big city with a law degree who was very articulate and had been living in our community for a decade and I was like "that's who I want representing me!" and the legislation says "no." I can only be represented by a member of my community, who in my circumstances is a superstitious elder that actually is a big part of my problems.</p><p>As a white man I am free to be represented by a Rhodes Scholar and MBA student who happens to be of South Asian descent, or even Aboriginal descent. For representation to the voice, the indigenous will only be able to send the indigenous to represent them under this principle.</p><p>Barely worth mentioning is that the principle states the voice will "include youth." Youth probably isn't hard to define, it'll be something like 18-25, but this is <i>clearly</i> impossible to administer across diverse communities Australia wide. I can only conceive that they will budget like 5 "youth" positions, and then the actual voice body will pick them from across the nation based on community recognition or something. I cannot imagine that every community will have to select one male, one female represantive plus one male youth representative and one female youth represantative to ensure this outcome.</p><p>All this design has to stipulate is that representatives <i>have</i> to represent the interests of the community that selects them. If they do that, it literally doesn't matter who they are. You need a clear schedule of misconduct (like taking bribes etc.) and a clear procedure for removing representatives. The most likely scenario all people face whenever there's a government job on the line, is that they will fill that position with somebody <i>useless</i> that collects a pay check, and enjoys catered lunches.</p><p>These are somewhat addressed by principles 4 and 5, which I wouldn't object to, beyond vague wording, which I guess is okay when talking principles. I imagine what most communities would do with the voice, is send along someone who is already in a position of authority like an elder or counciller or head of a local indigenous charity or ngo, which makes principle 4's "including the experience of those who have been historically excluded from participation." interesting wording. I'm guessing it is intended as identarian, like you have to represent <i>disabled indigenous</i> or <i>LGBTIQ+ </i>indigenous etc. but to me, it would include the experience of personality types that don't typically get involved in the community. All the non-activists, and indifferent persons that don't want to sit through Robert's Rules chaired meetings where the first hour is spent voting on accepting the minutes and treasurers reports and at some point 15 minutes before 10.30pm on a Wednesday night they reach "any other business" and rush through or roll-over all the interesting and consequential stuff.</p><p>I cannot see a way however to have both principle 4 and principle 2 co-exist. As Principle 2 states "To ensure cultural legitimacy, the way that members of the Voice are chosen would suit the wishes of local communities and would be determined through the post-referendum process." I have to plead ignorance here, but what I can be certain of is that I cannot use this document to <i>inform</i> me as a voter, the implication of principle 2 is that "cultural legitimacy" ellevates above a principle like "representative governance" Yes, I'm aware the Voice is an advisory board with no legislative or executive power. But this suggests to me that if there's a community out there that has a hereditary patrilineal elder system (the oldest male of a certain lineage has the final say, like the Saudi royal family.) That means Steven Ashmore 25 year old tiler saving up to study programming full time doesn't get a voice in his community because "voting" would violate "cultural legitimacy" his designated representative to parliament is going to be the elder's son (unless the national results force the elder to send his daughter).</p><p>Like I do not know if <i>any</i> indigenous communities operate on a hereditary basis as opposed to some form of election process. Again, I plead ignorance. What I know happened for certain, was that in 2015 a group of Aboriginal Elders presented the "<a href="https://www.change.org/p/tony-abbott-stephen-parry-peter-cosgrove-uluru-bark-petition">Uluru Bark Petition</a>" to voice their opposition to marriage equality. Which prompted another petition to "<a href="https://www.change.org/p/federal-government-reject-the-uluru-bark-petition">Reject the Uluru Bark Petition</a>" as "not in our name" because presumably the signatories of the bark petition were speaking <i>on behalf</i> of their people's/communities.</p><p>I came across this researching and writing my "decolonize my bookshelf post" and found it moving, it is a response to the bark petition published in New Matilda:</p><blockquote><p>“There are several reasons I am incensed to see this petition… first and most … it's because the Arrernte are named as being one of the groups of which support has been derived for this petition.</p><p>“I am Arrernte and I say plainly and clearly that THESE PEOPLE DO NOT SPEAK FOR ME. Indeed, I strongly doubt that they speak for many, if any, of the groups they have named and the fact that they have named these groups is a rude and despicable act.</p><p>“They have not consulted, they have not polled and they have certainly not discussed widely.</p><p>“They have claimed authority on this stance while having none and I am so offended by their actions that I am calling it out."</p></blockquote><p>I know these feels from when fucking Australia joined the "Coalition of the Willing" for the invasion of Iraq. Part of the design flaw of Australia where you vote someone in because you want interest rates to be low and then they feel they have a mandate to activate the ANZUS treaty and send troops and resources to anybody the US President of the moment wishes to attack. But you know, I'm glad they use those same powers to help out Ukraine as they get invaded.</p><p>So there's a knight-fork here somewhere. "Legitimacy" probably needs no prefix. There's no such thing as "cultural" legitimacy as distinct from "legal" legitimacy or "popular" legitimacy or "religious" legitimacy etc. Something is either legitimate or not, and figuring that out is likely an ongoing project. </p><p>This principle as outlined, does not however, sound legitimate and represents the inherent self-contradictory nature of the political fashions of the moment.</p><p>Principle 2 leaves the door open for Australia discovering that by-and-large Aboriginal Australia is pretty Christian Culturally conservative, maybe patriarchal or any other sobering surprises that may await metropolitan left-wing white people and the zero indigenous people they know. At the same time Principle 3 seems designed to try and ensure that if the indigenous people of Australia get a voice, it will be a left-wing progressive voice.</p><p>Because of the historical absence of an indigenous voice in Australia, I genuinely have no idea what that voice may be, but the proposed principles for generating that voice sound like I wouldn't really be hearing it anyway.</p><p><b>An Unfortunate Conclusion</b></p><p>I will be waiting for a referendum that asks me: "That Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders have a minimum of one publicly funded national representative body to make representations to Parliament and the media on any issue they so choose, in operation at all times." I would vote yes to that.</p><p>I am also okay with the incumbent Labor government establishing their proposed voice to parliament, even though I feel it describes a shitshow likely to follow the lead of ATSIC, though to be honest I'm not sure what ATSIC did. </p><p>I don't trust them to establish a constitutionally enshrined body, because of the hints it follows the politics of the day with undertures to intersectionality and alternate ways of knowing. In which case, because it comes about via a referendum, it involves the white majority of Australian's putting upon the indigenous people's of Australia conditions that we do not suffer ourselves. If I can live day-to-day free from deference to Kimberle Krenshaw, so should my indigenous brothers and sisters.</p><p>The criticism of the US's founding fathers is that the wrote a bill of inaliable rights for White Land Owners and everyone else had to live under...I don't know, fucking feudalism and chattel slavery. Well this sounds like democracy for whites and <i>anything</i> for the indigenous be it holder of the magic stick, to hereditary titles to who dies last to anarcho-syndicalism, provided that the end result is intra-indigenous equity based on immutable characteristics like sex and age.</p><p>Having said that, <i>I fear it does not go without fucking saying</i> that <b>I do not trust "the coalition"</b> to create indigenous representation <i>at all</i>. I wouldn't have trusted Howard or the almost a-political Turnbull to do it, and the depressing parade of coalition leaders being Abbott, Scomo and now Dutton not to neglect Barnaby Joyce. Fucking, I don't trust those guys to fucking <i>talk</i> to an indigenous person let alone preside over the legislating of a representative body.</p><p>And fucking obviously, I don't trust academics from the humanities, people drafting <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/religion/why-we-need-aboriginal-political-philosophy/12865016">interesting but authority-less near-incoherent documents like this</a> are well positioned to have undue influence over the construction of any representative body.</p><p>There may be a guiding principle that the voice be transparent and accountable, but the document itself isn't transparent and accountable.</p><p>So unfortunately, pending changing facts that could change my mind, this one is an easy "no" for me.</p></div>ohminous_thttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10362629902969757305noreply@blogger.com0