The Hidden Benefits of Ostracism

Ostracism (Greek: ὀστρακισμός, ostrakismos) was a procedure under the Athenian democracy in which any citizen could be expelled from the city-state of Athens for ten years. While some instances clearly expressed popular anger at the citizen, ostracism was often used preemptively. It was used as a way of neutralizing someone thought to be a threat to the state or potential tyrant.
Crucially, ostracism had no relation to the processes of justice. There was no charge or defense, and the exile was not in fact a penalty; it was simply a command from the Athenian people that one of their number be gone for ten years.
A modern use developed from the term is to describe informal exclusion from a group through social rejection, although the psychology of ostracism takes this further, where it has been defined as “...any behaviour in which a group or individual excludes and ignores another group or individual”.^[1] This could therefore be a conscient act or an unconscient one.

I've never before heard the word 'conscient'. And I want to be clear up front - ostracism is horrible, it's a horrible way to treat people, and yourself. The benefits I describe are hidden behind a lot of very salient downside that I won't go into, but among social animals like primates, right through our ancestry the need for social inclusion, acceptance and attachment is a universal one. Ostracism like the death penalty, can't even be justified as a deterrent.

There are in life though, many necessary seperations. It can be a last resort for dealing with crappy people whom harass you, relationships that fail after a time when pushing down fundamental incompatibilities can no longer be sustained, seperation can be necessary for grieving and healing (if you can actually make a distinction).

What line do a draw between seperation and ostracism? I don't know.

But you find yourself ostracised, I found myself ostracised. I accepted it, I got my instruction to be gone from the great Athenian experiment. I have found the following beneficial.

Firstly, as ostracism endures my denial does not. My counterwill reaches exhaustion. It becomes clear that I am merely arguing with myself over questions of justice. I can embrace finally the power of negative thinking and play devil's advocate to myself. Nothing is at stake any longer, no ego. Nothing, nothing changes and finally I am free to explore perspectives other than that which shines the most flattering light on me.

It is also, a most unusual form of stimulus. Because being ostracised, in exile, if only in my own mind means that beyond the initial events, there is no further stimulus. Here crucially for me was one of the key benefits. When I found myself revisiting the same old argument, it enabled me to realise that this was all just taking place in my head. It wasn't something being done to me, but a habit. A mental habit that I am prone to getting stuck in. Not even in the specific but in the general. I am constantly trying to justify myself.

I mean imagine if somebody close to you died, and you found yourself mentally rehearsing the conversations you never had. Clearly, that person can't be driving these conversations, they are dead. It must be you, the entire relationship is now in your head. Ostracism helps you realise you can do this with anybody you know.

Alecturer told me the real value of a University degree was that it told an employer you could get something done without being told what to do all the time. In a similar vein, while ostracised you can genuinely do your own healing, your own redemption. You have the space to do so, and no possibility of doing so cynically. Our exiled Athenian can go 'woah, so people saw me as a potential tyrant, I need to work on my people skills and cooperation.' But doing so doesn't reduce the sentence, communications are down with the parole board.

And I guess if you find yourself ostracised, the best thing I can say to you is that I sincerely believe every human being is worthy of redemption, and equipped with the authority to redeem themselves. You may never come back from the wilderness, but you can be whole and complete.

Hipsters Don't Exist

'hipsters' are just consumers. Regular old consumers.

Have you ever tried to be off-season, unfashionable? It's far harder work than being on trend.

Word From the Wise

Aristotle defined hubris as follows:

to cause shame to the victim, not in order that anything may happen to you, nor because anything has happened to you, but merely for your own gratification. Hubris is not the requital of past injuries; this is revenge. As for the pleasure in hubris, its cause is this: men think that by ill-treating others they make their own superiority the greater.

I looked this up following a discussion with a work colleague yesterday on Pride. From a theological viewpoint pride itself is viewed as a sin. I think pride is fine, judgement is what I wish to stop.

I would agree in my experience, what I take pride is followed closely by comparison and judgement. Hubris is definitely a problem for me. But taking pride in oneself is a wholly worthwhile exercise, much like cultivating gratitude.

Pride is what makes an investment in experiences so worthwhile, it is perhaps a form of gratitude. Aristotle's definition is remarkably close to a description of bullying. A role I have played in my life.

The ancient Greeks were pretty amazing. To think we were sufficiently advanced in language and ideas that early, and that so much of our thought and philosophies are still derived from that ancient language. More recently Ben Franklin said:

"Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame."

And so I have found it to be true. Aristotle and Franklin were bouth undoubtedly wise men. Note that they were wise enough to know the minds of those they describe and likely experienced first hand the mindset.

Like me.

Like you?

8 out of 10 cats

The show is based on statistics and opinion polls, and draws on polls produced by a variety of organisations and new polls commissioned for the programme, carried out by company Harris Poll.

When eating and unable to do anything else with my hands I turn to back episodes of 8 out of 10 cats. Not the greatest show, but a reliable featurer of Sean Lock and Jon Richardson.

Normally something like a British Panel show would not be worth writing about, but 8 out of 10 cats is noteworthy not just because it has no Australian spin off that I know of, but also because it's poorly made.

It's first segment which despite being first, takes up 2/3rds of every episode consists of sort of open conversation between panelists on what were the most 'talked about' topics in Britain.

This is the thing, almost every week in Britain, one of the three most talked about things is one of 'The X-Factor' 'Britain's Got Talent' or 'Strictly Come Dancing'

I imagine this reflects news coverage, twitter trends and whatever other social media platforms that their diagnostics can glean.

I suspect I shouldn't draw too many conclusions from low budget comedy panel shows, but I do suspect that this is objectively verified.

It isn't just a perception that everyone's disillusioned with politcs, the economy etc. and obsessed with celebrity. But people's attention really is on 'reality tv'. The people aren't just disillusioned, but willfully illusioned.

I stopped following news quite some time ago. And more recently stopped reading my news feed on facebook even. This for me was the realisation that nothing in the newspaper is particularly important for me to know.

But in the UK at least, news coverage is dedicated to reality tv shows. Shit that isn't just unimportant to know, but at best a synopsis of shit that isn't news, because they are covering events that transpire on air.

I don't really live in a world of TV viewers, and haven't for quite some time. So I'm simply not qualified to make any suppositions about Australia. My work occassionally has me experience the bizarre phenomenon of 'My Kitchen Rules is on.'

But I couldn't characterise the public at large as a bunch of reality tv feasting slack jawed yokels. I don't think that is going on. But it certainly could be, and at the very least a lot of 'talent' shows are being produced and advertised.

In 1993 'Red Faces' was a rip of the US 'Gong Show' that was a segment in the middle of the program 'Hey Hey It's Saturday'. It quite possibly found more stars who made better livings than everything from Idle, X-Factor, Australia's Got Talent, the Voice etc. combined. The thing is, now though our whole TV program appears to be reality-talent shows, and disillusioned as you may be about the state of politics, These shows have an even worse record at producing competence and longevity.

And that's worrying.

Immaturity and Emotional Competence

"There's a wonderful feminist book by Dorothy Dinnerstein, The Mermaid and the Minotaur. It discusses how the exclusive role that women have in early childraising distorts child development. When the woman is married to an immature man, she is also a mother to her husband, so she hasn't got the openness and energy for her kids." ~ Gabor Mate, When the Body Says No.

I liked this quote so much and so instantaneously that I went to post it in a fb status update because I wanted it to be seen. I couldn't though because I felt without laborious explanation it would be seen as me griping about my own father, rather than myself.

I don't know how long it has been since I posted, but the time in between then has had me traverse much mental terrain. I feel quite reoriented towards my life, in a way both subtle and dramatic.

As Misaki would say of me 'I'm proud myself' for the uncanny foresite demonstrated in previous posts here about my penance and here about denial that turned out to really accurately describe what I went through in the last couple of weeks. (despite the fact that it turns out I don't know how to spell 'penance')

My subconscious kicks me in the arse some times. I actually have come to live in awe of it, and be moved by how desperately some times it tries to communicate with me.

One such time was in the semi-lucid waking hours of February 2nd, a Monday where I drifted into a dream I did not wish to wake from. This dream sparked off a chain of mental & emotional events. For starters, my penance actually began to work. The time and space that had built up as part of my penance suddenly clicked into place. By accident more so than design (but hey, subconscious?) I had managed to do the work that was necessary in order to do the work that was necessary in order to do the work that was necessary to actually serve my penance.

I drafted up a document that I think belongs historically along with the Cyrus Cylinder, the Napoleonic Code and the Declaration of Independence.

A veil of denial was lifted and finally I could confront myself without dissociating from myself. I could look at what I did, without dismissing it as some stupid former version of myself from 5 months ago - a totally different person (untrue).

Not that it was easy, shame and my brain still made it difficult. I didn't go metaphorically blind. I went literally blind trying to read my own words, once I had tasked myself with what to look for and relaxed all defenses of my ego. It was incredibly painful, and delving this dark aspect of myself had natural limits to endure. I could not do it all in one sitting. I cringed at my own actions too frequently and then literally went blind and couldn't perceive the words on the page.

But I got through that. It's an interesting experience that I could recommend to nobody, unless you really don't want to keep being a cunt into your future to everyone you know and care about.

So I wrote my apologies for what was owed.

And then I turned and I think finally took a walk in my new neighborhood. My quality of life improved immediately now able to understand and accept my actions and their consequences.

Leaving me with myself, and nobody else. (...and I must admit a forlorn terror knowing I would have to, at some point, tell Misaki just what I had done.) Here's what needs saying about acceptance - is that it is incredibly liberating. It's a good day.

Which brings me to emotional competence, immaturity and emotional repression. This is what I have to work on now. For me, maturation means accepting that I can no longer coast by letting myself behave like the child of my early developmental years. That means finding emotions that I experience below the level of consciousness and that I unconsciously repress and actually finding healthy ways to express them.

Everything is culminating. Step one is to do the work of mindfulness. The goal truly is the path with mindfulness. I know from past experience that it works and it works immediately. I have committed though to doing this daily, for 30 minutes trying to build up to 1 hour. This is what I owe to myself and everyone in my life.

I have the critical amount of self-awareness to now go the extra step and actually gain some semblance of control of myself. It's time to move from my substance sobriety onto behavioral sobriety.

I suspect currently, this means recognising a lot of stress and anxiety and stopping myself from repressing them, ignoring them. As recently as last year I wasn't aware I even experienced anxiety. (though it would be misleading to label myself as suffering from anxiety)

My penance also indirectly lead to having the space and time and inspiration to recognise my own anger as my own (rather than external) and both deal with it and let it go.

I plan to do the same with judgement. To catch myself, be aware and interrupt myself from escaping into judgement.

These are my particular obstacles to maturity. Emotional competence is what I need to overcome them. Building this emotional competence is my task now.

I'll Be Ready In A While

Adventure Time's episode 'Infinite Train' is worth watching in and of itself. It captures something universally human yet little addressed. The desire to waste time, lost in something utterly useless.

I've wasted maybe two weeks, but as of this writing I feel like I have saturated that desire. And I mean saturated, there's a self-terminal feature of all escapism. It doesn't make you happy, but it's not like the pressure builds up to the point when you boldly declare 'enough' just one day you find you want to deal with things.

Today is that day for me.

In the meantime I caught up on all of QI, watched a bunch of movies, caught up on Would I Lie To You and clocked 2 video games and today I found myself with no desire to go look at entertainment. I just plan to work.

I think what gets lost is that many, if not most, problems are simply transitional. Shit just seems to hit it's limits and stop a lot of the time, and attempts to identify a causal chain then try and optimise that causal chain into decision rules to be expounded on others are at best ineffective and worst counterproductive.

Patience is a virtue.

Artistic Disclosure

Last week I really hit a frustrated wall. Earlier in my development, such a wall would generally inspire me to give up. It was the result of basically not working on a comic for 3 years. Doing art that was almost exclusively figure san ground.

I had three panels to draw which I assumed would be no big deal, without giving anything away they are:

A woman sitting at her desk looking bored (face not visible)
A woman inspecting an item before putting it in her shopping basket (face not visible)
A woman waiting for a bus. (face not visible)

Not exactly mind blowing or groundbreaking stuff. But when I sat down to draw, it didn't come easily.

In fact the first one only came together yesterday. Here though is how wildly shit spirals out of control for me.

First I assume that I can draw it, it will come easily it's just a matter of sitting at a desk and putting pencil to paper. That doesn't happen, then I realise I don't know how to draw. Or more specifically, I only know how to draw a narrow range of things. I'm going to have to learn how to do this shit, from scratch.

Second, I start to compare myself to successful artists, established artists, then more generally the relative strategic position of everyone my age. I start to appraise the exact predicament I am in if my pathway to success is suddenly proved unviable.

Thirdly, I panic, and realise I have no retreat. My fall-back has lapsed. What I have to do has to work, and if it doesn't I am royally screwed.

I am, in other words, fucked. Completely fucked.

But these are all thoughts, normally kept private. The second position is actually where all the damage is, the third one while still being a negative illusion actually is the start of the solution. When you realise you have no retreat, you just breath out, let go of whatever easy vision you expected to happen and figure you are just going to have to take longer and do it harder than you expected.

For any comparison to be both valid and helpful, the only real thing that could differ between me and my comparative is luck. And that don't matter. They will be just as vulnerable to future misfortune as I am lacking in past fortune. Comparison is really useless.

What's confronting I guess is that I have a real job as an artist. There's stuff I need to get done, and sometimes I don't know how to do it. My job is to just figure out how to get some task accomplished.

I figured out these panels eventually. It wasn't pretty, but I did it.

Inconsolable Grief

You are standing at a party in a corner, looking at your conversation options and feeling bored already. Suddenly somebody you don't know and don't trust approaches you and offers you a pill for $30. He calls it 'IG' or inconsolable grief.

You take the pill, and then once it kicks in you will experience a perfect simulation of inconsolable grief for 6 hours. Then you sober up and you are assuredly fine. It just triggers the exact same nuerobiological reaction as losing something precious to you does. Without the actual loss.

Now, I would have my misgivings about taking that pill. Namely the $30, and better things I can spend it on. Also because I don't know this guy and don't trust him at all. And even my friends that I do trust I don't trust enough to get their drug supplies from somebody who should be trusted. I would also feel misgivings about arbitrarily building some association with something that happens to be around and inconsolable grief. I don't think XTC or MDMA works that way anyways, and if you hadn't clicked I'm more or less describing the exact opposite of MDMA.

The experience has more appeal to me. And I suspect, and know of at least one other, there are persons who like me are more interested in exploring the depths rather than the heights.

Such a drug has medical predecessors too. Namely the practice of mithridatism, which goes way back to it's namesake where you ingested non-lethal doses of poison to build up over time an immunity to poison. Much like fucking honey badgers can't be fucked with once they are grown, even with snakes and hornets and shit, they will just pass out for a bit and then get back to eating those snakes and hornets.

I don't have many good reasons not to try MDMA, I kind of just didn't feel like it in the end. Even if it offered a potential spiritual awakening. The only real reason I'd have now is that I don't like the idea of getting to unwrap all my Christmas presents without it being Christmas day. I don't in other words want to feel what it's like to have achieved something really great, maybe even impossibly great, without having to actually achieve those impossibly great things.

If I had PTSD I might contemplate experimenting with it. But I don't.

I'd have no objection though to experiencing something really terrible, without anything terrible having happened. I would look forward to the Sunday morning, not the Saturday night when I'm crying over a sandwich platter at the party. It would be to wake up the next day and say 'that was horrible, and it was alright.'

And drugs aside, I think we do have in pretty much any given moment a choice between IG and XTC. Not to those extremes of emotion, But generally it's always suffering now, to make the rest of the future easier, or pleasure now, suffering later.

Combos

I can draw and listen at the same time. I can draw and converse at the same time.

I can't read and listen at the same time. I can't converse and read at the same time. 

Casting Call

I remember hearing, I think, a triple J reviewer commenting on I Am Sam, and I basically took their opinion and that was mine.

It was this: I Am Sam, featuring Sean Penn in the titular role of Sam a downs syndrome single father. Also featured  in the same film were several actors in the role of Sam's friends, who actually had downs syndrome. The reviewer and I said for a long time (because honestly, how often does the need to rethink I Am Sam come up?) - why couldn't they have given the lead role to someone who actually had Downs Syndrome? The movie itself clearly proved that there were capable actors.

I thought it a valid argument, and on one level, the point is valid. But the money isn't.

You are or I am, thinking about with the following erroneous assumption - we are going to see the film. We see the film, and we are pleased to see a person with Downs Syndrome in a lead role of a feature film. Why couldn't I Am Sam have been made without Sean Penn?

Now think like an executive producer. You don't even have to be subjective about it. I Am Sam has probably been made with an actual downs syndrome lead many times, possibly a couple of times a year. Just nobody saw it, there was nothing there to sell the film, it never got earmarked for any kind of budget or any kind of release.

Find a way to put Sean Penn into that film though, and people are going to see it. See it and get offended. But they see it. As an EP that's a better outcome than the movie getting made and people not seeing it but being glad that it exists.

There is no big-ticket downs syndrome actor.

Move on to present day casting controversies. The new Moses biopic. It got compared to the Dreamworks Animated feature 'The Prince of Egypt' that I believe was a commercial success, the first judeo-religious film to do such in a long time and featured characters that looked like North Africans. Voices were done by African American celebrities like Mariah Carey and so forth.

The new live-action one features nobody that looks north african, or even African-American. It has Christian Bale in the lead role and Joel Edgerton as the lead antagonist. It makes hollywood look like it's going backwards, undoing the Prince of Egypt and getting back to Charlton Heston as Moses days. At best that live action hasn't progressed since Heston played Moses.

That's thinking in terms of social progress though, and not in terms of money. Recast the film with the biggest black names Hollywood has to offer, Denzel, Samuel L Jackson, go younger, Idris Elba, Anthony Mackie - there are great black actors out there to cast.

I don't know shit, but I would wager - that even with an Oscar winner like Denzel, there is a bottom line impact having an all black cast does to the box office. Oprah Winfrey's Beloved adaptation comes to mind.

Thus as ridiculous as it sounds if you had put Tom Cruise in Denzel's role for Training day, some EP would have one less Oscar and if stories are to be believed, $14 million dollars richer. And I would guess they would have done it if they could. I'm guessing Cruise can only do so many films a year and doesn't vet for roles that are really ridiculous for him to fill.

If you can't see where I'm going, or rather, have gone, I saw today on a tumblr feed I follow that 'Ghost In The Shell' is getting made into a live action adaptation, and Scarlett Johansen has been cast in the lead. some celebrity or somebody I don't know tweeted that they should have cast the girl from Pacific Rim to play the role.

Firstly, Ghost in the Shell doesn't need to be adapted into live action at all. It has very little potential to be improved by the experience. The only reason you make that film, or live action 101 Dalmatians, or Watchmen is to make money.

There's no artistic need to earmark the budget and time and talent to take a risk on 'Ghost In The Shell' it's low risk. It's almost certain to be not as good as the original. The Matrix borrowed heavily from Ghost In The Shell, and you know it blew SFX wide fucken open, so you definitely don't stand to gain much from LA Ghost in The Shell. Except to shake down nerds for their cash.

So you may as well cast a big name who's played an agent in the Avengers Marvel Franchise and cast her in the lead. And as an EP rue that the lead couldn't be played by Tom Cruise, who notably played the lead in Edge of Tomorrow, also adapted from Japanese IP.

In case though, you think I am saying that this doesn't make film casting a racist enterprise, let me be clear. It is. It is completely racist.

But the executive producers are doing their job, and I fail to think on the spot of an affirmative action solution. Maybe if the US Gov. guaranteed box office returns for ethnicly appropriate casting? Maybe. And maybe that is actually worth doing.

But the racist is the movie goer. And it's as racist as the fashion industry. It's a racist phenomena that has gone on so long, it has become entrenched. Such that other ethnic groups accept white models selling fashion to them, and white leads acting out their history. But not the reverse.

For some reason, a bunch of people will fork over $20 to see a white man play moses, a white man play a retard and a white woman play a Japanese special agent, but not the reverse.

And I don't believe in consumer activism.So there's your fucken problem pending a solution.

A Serious Comparison

What's the difference betwixt this:

And this?:

The answer be $$$. In the 1973 the Pollock piece was purchased for $1.3 million. I don't know if it was from the artist directly, I don't know what Pollock or his estate made out of it. The thing with art is that in most cases, art transactions are secondary market, meaning they have nothing to do with the person who made it.

According to Wikipedia, Number 11 or 'The Blue Poles' has been valued somewhere between $20-100 million.

By contrast Hello Kitty as of 2010 was worth $5 billion a year. Pollock paintings are reproduced too, I'm sure. Postcards, dish cloths etc. Hello Kitty is probably literally everything. Licensing is huge. The only way you could outdo Hello Kitty in licensing revenues was if you owned the question mark or some shit.

See many artists want to be the Rolls Royce of automobiles. A noble pursuit, but think of the Toyota Camry. Rolls Royce got broke, bought. Toyota Camry the highest selling car model in the world. Y

If you want to go pro, and not just indulge yourself some self-pity, masochism, consider trying to become the Toyota Camry of artists.

Things Look Bad Because They Are Bad

“It is a predisposition of human nature to consider an unpleasant idea untrue, and then it is easy to find arguments against it.” - Sigmund Freud

I started blogging way back because of an epiphany handed to me by an employee of Foster's Group. That concept was the Johari window, and without rehashing too much, the Johari window has four panes. Things known to the self but not to others, things known to the self and to others, things unknown to both self and others and most relevantly things unknown to the self but known to others.

This last pane is referred to as our blindspot. It is where we are all most vulnerable. Crucially its contents are almost impossible to perceive ourselves, it is literally a blind spot of self knowledge. It exists though, I am convinced. By second order thinking at least.

How to tap into it? It's tricky, what you need to do is actually listen and entertain that what is being said about you may be truer than what you believe about yourself.

In the above case of divergent tales of shoplifters, you could attack and deny that this is about race. Firstly you could suspect selection bias is going on. Somebody has taken a particularly bad case of injustice involving an African American woman, and then taken a particularly bad case of injustice (in the opposite direction) involving a white woman and created a quite extreme contrast.

So you just google 'white woman shot for shoplifting' and look for all the ignored cases where a white woman has been gunned down after an initial suspicion of shoplifting. And you get nothing. Well you get a parody piece about Winona Ryder getting shot in an alternative universe LA. But it didn't happen, it never happens.

You could then argue it's a class divide not a race divide. Not a good argument because you are saying that stealing tens of dollars worth of Wal Mart merchandise is apparently mandate for being executed in front of your children where $1,600 is an appearance in court for a reprimand and (probably) a fine.

But again, you'd expect Wal Mart customers to get shot more often, and you would expect that a white woman would have been shot by a mall cop in that case. Australia is like 90% white, and catching the 109 tram along it's junkie stretch exposes one to plenty of mighty hostile white women. I know they exist, I know they have altercations with police, I know they generally only get shot when they charge an officer with a knife.

Do you see what I'm doing though? I'm raising those arguments against an unpleasant truth as Freud said was done so easily and dismissing them. As if they have to be argued. And they kind of do, because it's very unpleasant to admit that you are a part of institutionalised racism.

Because I suspect, it doesn't feel like you are. This off duty cop moonlighting as Wal Mart security was performing his job, a woman was suspected of shoplifting so he chased her down in his car. They had an altercation that was presumably hostile enough (in the manners sense) to escalate. And he pulled out his gun and shot the lady.

To him I would guess (and being charitable) having never identified as racist, this seemed like an isolated incident where the victim happened to be black.

Here's where it is hard to see your blind spot. If it was circumstantial, an isolated and unfortunate event, and everyone believed that, then he would get thrown under the bus. Scapegoated for appearances sake. Why? Because the officers around him, above him would be thinking 'that guy was unlucky.' not 'that could easily have been me, I can relate to that situation.'

The legal system is protecting these officers, because they need for some reason to protect the ability to kill African Americans so that officers can carry out their jobs. So that officers will continue to work.

It seems nobody in authority can come out and say 'Coast to coast it is absolutely unacceptable that any citizen be killed as the result of a verbal altercation over a suspected minor misdemeanor. Or a verbal altercation period.' You could say this, because it's true. This would then force the police that really care about getting a pass for doing this to take up a position that would quickly and transparently be overtly racist.

This, thusly, is my only tip, and probably the only real thing you can take away from it. We are what we do. Not what we think. If things look bad, it's because they are. The tricky thing is, that if what you are being told contradicts your subjective reality, you need to realise that you are living in everyone else's subjective reality too. And that might give you a picture of what objective reality actually is.

Rock breaks Scissors!

For many of my friends, the go to gift for me is a sketchbook. You know when they want to get me something, but something appropriate to our relationship - it's a sketchbook.

This used to be a crushing gift, internally crushing. Namely because I have been accumulating sketchbooks/visual diaries etc faster than I can fill them. It is pretty true to say that a visual diary usually takes me 1+ year to fill.

But since moving into a studio, I have just about filled a sketchbook this month alone. I am now looking at my stockpile and thinking I don't have enough.

This is a dramatic change in practice for me - I have never worked hard before, at least not on my art practice itself, and not in any structured and lasting way. It is true that I tend to blitz out my exhibitions, doing 11 hour days for a couple of weeks to churn out 30-40 pieces.

Why confess this? Because I don't really believe in hard work. I'm one of those 10,000 hour rule haters. I don't really believe in natural talent either. Which leaves what I do believe in -

I believe in vision. Vision may comply to the 10,000 hour rule for all I know. It's just that my theory is that vision is generated from just leading your fairly ordinary life. It is the product of observation and introspection. It is from these efforts that ideas are generated.

Then enter the old dichotomy - idea and execution. I saw via the miracle of youtube Larry David Aing Qs at the New Yorker Festival, somebody asked him 'idea or execution?' and he responded 'without the idea there's nothing to execute, so I'll have to go with idea on that one.' or near enough to it. I feel like I have seen plenty of stuff that was all execution, no idea.

And given how sporadic I've become at writing here, I would be surprised if I've never shared this long held opinion or not, but to me I dislike the 10,000 hour rule because it is risk-averse. It reduces success to hard work. 10,000 hours of deliberative practice. And when I say 'it reduces' the it is the risk averse readership, not Gladwell, not the book Outliers. It was a simple and appealing (for many) concept that could be latched onto while ignoring the rest.

I hold that art is such that nobody can say what it is or isn't. Anyone can identify as an artist and perhaps far more people should that don't. (Subway employees are 'sandwich artists' and you know , why the fuck not?) But I am Drucker's man through and through, skeptical of any new-ageish views of business. And if art is your business, then you the artist have one job - to create an audience. I see many people that have done their 10,000 hours in their given medium that don't create an audience.

Here's something I'm glad somebody just came out and said:

Look at the current contemporary art world: that is what happens when you cease to be meaningful to your audience, and it's not pretty no matter how much it convinces you it is.

 Though much of contemporary art could be criticized for it's lack of execution as well, that's the unpretty part. I don't see much contemporary art because I saw a lot in New York, and I am cured of any desire to see it again. So I guess I must concede that all execution is preferable to neither idea nor execution being present.

My direct experience though, is that people would rather see what you are trying to do than not see it at all. Also given how quickly you lose your own objectivity producing arts, people may think you succeeded in your execution - and if the idea gets across, then you did I guess. In theory installation art should be the most perfect medium for this, have a great idea chuck some objects in a room that represent it and anybody can be a great artist. The stumbling block for most installation art is having a great idea in the first place.

The other thing is encoding that idea into objects in a room, which when I think about it is an almost impossible way to communicate. How many times have you walked into a sitting room and by the lay out of the furniture said 'Oh my god there's trouble at the old mill!' I put my money on Lassie being able to communicate that sooner than installation.

Many artists, just don't need to create art to get their idea across. Stats tell me about 8 people on average see my posts, that's more than many audiences I've seen attend an exhibition, and in particular sit through an audio/visual installation.

Generally these people will look at the different coloured chairs lying on their sides and then turn to the artist statement on the wall to see if they can derive any meaning from it. The artists statements are often 10,000 words or more explaining convoluted high-brow concepts in convoluted ways.

Just ditch the actually piece and post your artist statement on a blog, like this. Link it to facebook you'll probably get 30 hits or so. The idea is the only part of any real interest, no matter how much it tries to convince us the actual installation is.

And if the idea is shit, then no great work is going to come out of it. Posting it as a blog entry rather than forking out rent for a gallary space to install something that costs people time and effort to come see, can help shake down to whether your idea is of any interest in the first place.

I think I've reached a stage where I know two things:

1.) I have more ideas I want to execute than I have time to execute them. I do not struggle for ideas or inspiration.
2.) I am curious as to how good I could be if I just did some work.

In other words, I'm working in a studio now because the ideas come effortlessly, it is as such time for me to dawdle a bit and actually practice the craft, because it can entertain me, challenge me. I can't relate to the aspirant who has secluded and shut themsleves away since they were 15-16 and practiced on end because that is safer than going out there and bleating out your ideas to be accepted or rejected.

No sir, I don't roll with the 'So-good-they-have-to-notice-you' crowd, largely because they don't.

Merry Materialism

Christmas Eve, a day for idle speculation. I saw a gif of Chris Rock saying in what looked like an SNL opening "Jesus was the least Materialistic person ever, yet we have made his birthday the most materialistic..." I don't know because I don't think it is a very good point, But that point sparked a point for me.

When did Materialism/Consumerism become a problem? I don't know and I can't be bothered finding out. What I've noticed though, is that my main pursuit in life kind of depends on Materialism, and my direct experience of making transactions over art, is that they have been incredibly emotionally meaningful acts of consumption.

Selling art means quite a lot to me. Because I produce the physical goods themselves. My pieces mean a lot, my patrons mean a lot. It is an incredible experience.

This leads me to think that Consumerism/Materialism are recent problems, recent phenomena. This is fairly orthodox and generally attributed to mass production, age of abundance type causes.

I suspect it could be found to coincide with the rise of the 'knowledge worker'. A vague and ambiguous term coined by Drucker to describe people whose chief economic activity was thinking. A manager for example is a 'knowledge worker' because they have to think, decide and communicate. They might work in a toy shop populated by elves manufacturing toys, but they do not manufacture the toys themselves. They just know about the business.

Over the last century, a lot of jobs have stopped producing anything tangible, nor delivering any direct service (eg. shoe shine, massage, X-ray, psychotherapy) They perform an indirect service like 'market analysis' internally to other knowledge workers. Much occupations in the west produce nothing but knowledge products - advice, charts, reports, statements etc.

Machines increasingly build the actual goods. A person now looks at data output and uses their brain to make inferences about how to optimise manufacturing equipment.

I even question say a shoe designer in the US sitting down with an athlete and creating a new basketball shoe, sketching the concept, figuring out the materials, getting a prototype sculpted, sewn and stitched and then breaking that down into a manufacturing process - that is then outsourced to a different country. Does that yeild the same hedonic impact as when I finish a drawing and hang it on a wall for sale?

I suspect not, somewhere seeing a shoe you drew become a stock item in Athletes foot and knowing it vaguely points backwards in time to a paycheck or bonus you recieved might result in more material comfort but I suspect it is not the same moment.

My point being... who am I kidding, I can't make a point that soon. I'm reminded of hearing this kid at work saying to a colleague (we both got older) of Valentine's day 'I think every day should be about love, not just one day a year' a nice sentiment, but I disagree in practice. It's good to just pick an arbitrary day and say 'fuck it, on February 14th at the very least, I'm going to make a big deal about loving someone.' because our heads have to juggle a lot of shit.

In the same way, Christmas is as good a time as any to just buy people you care about some fucking gifts. If you dial it back to a hunter gatherer tribe that have prophetically foreseen the coming of Jesus and celebrate his birthday ahead of time, you had a small community, a direct barter system, no currency, no medium of exchange and a bunch of people made gifts of the berry's they picked, the yams they dug up, the honey they found, the pelts they skinned etc. do you think somebody would have said 'Christmas has become too commercial, too materialistic, it should be about family and community!' I think not.

For me at least, in the hunter gatherer system, it's evident that everything they've hunted and gathered are exactly what the community is. In a society where it is standard to ask a stranger at a party 'so what do you do?' I don't really see any difference. I don't really know what imaginary life I am supposed to be leading where a family just gathers around and hangs out. Life is complex, and although you don't think on it, a t-shirt performs a function beyond warmth and modesty. It transmits a message about the wearer that help facilitate doing what they do.

And what we do is evidently important to us. People invest more of their life in it quite often than they invest in their families - just so they can have families. It may be true that our nomadic hunter gathering ancestors spent most of their time resting, conserving energy - precious callories. They also all operated very much a family business. We still do, it's true there's a lot of bullshit jobs out there and beyond the threat of technological automation to jobs, I often wonder if Pareto holds up and we could lose 80% of the workforce and only 20% of productivity... ah, get back on point... We are all in this together.

We have just, I suspect through disconnect, developed an emotional barrier to the gesture of gift giving. If your job is auditing somebodies credit return process for ISO accreditation, then yeah maybe it seems weird to then buy a set of carbon fiber nordic walking poles for your baby-boomer parent, and yeah, maybe your job is total bullshit too and you hate your life but you fear your expenses more.

This gesture though that people complain about though, is really just this 'I want you to have something you want, and be happy and I hope it helps you do what you do.' why can't you just say that and dispense with the gifts, the shopping, the stores and the advertising between retailers competing for our dollars? Because most times well done is better than well said.

I can only testify to my personal experience that there's a certain hollowness to the Christmases where my family have limited the gift giving, we've done Kris Kringles limited to $50 and you each got designated just one family member to buy for. The relief of the time and financial strain of Christmas resulted in a pretty non-eventful day. Some great moments require a period of suckiness to come good.

As a kid I may have been naive and stupid, but I can recall how utterly magical and miraculous it seemed to just be able to fulfill all your earthly desires by writing a letter to a dude that turned out not to exist. I now struggle to think of enough material desires to allow my gift givers to get me something, I'm fortunate to not be deprived enough, but I don't know, I believe in tangibility, I believe in evidence. I like getting something from somebody. Anything really, it doesn't matter. I just like to hold something in my hand sometimes as a durable impression that somebody cares about me.

I see nothing wrong with that.

There are things I dislike about Christmas though, relating to the Peer Problem, but that's another post and I have gifts to buy.

This one goes out to my fellow artists

Okay, after reading this post just dook out a sketch, a crappy sketch just make sure it isn't your best work. Make rookie mistakes, don't use reference, don't bother to render and fuck up your lighting values.

Now, sit down and dedicate a couple of hours to drawing a decent piece, when you can, to the best of your abilities. All it needs to be is significantly better than your crappy sketch.

Now take bothand secret them somewhere. But seperately, like if you have a desk with unused drawers put them in two different drawers. Or if you have some old shoeboxes or something put them in seperate boxes and tuck both under your bed.

Now! How much would you bet that people open up the drawer with the good drawing way more often than the one with the crappy sketch? $20, $50, $100? Would you stake your entire career on it?

What the fuck am I talking about?

I doubt anybody would speculate that an awesome picture will draw a steady migration of people in to open up a particular drawer or shoe box to gaze upon it's awesomeness. Which is to say controlling for all other factors the quality of a piece has no real intrinsic pulling power for an audience.

Yet many artists effectively do stake their career on the notion that quality will be recognised, that it will somehow magically sell itself. That somebody with a career entirely unlike an artist eg. somebody who has spent years gaining both social and physical capital will see the piece and then provide it with an audience.

There's much truth to this scenario, but there's a whole heap of risk aversion, and when I write a book the book will be on risk. This is a classic misnomer understanding of risk. Something that is unlikely to occur is not high risk, but low risk.

So studying hard in high school and getting into medicine is a low risk profession, because due to the pressing need people have to not die, and not be throwing up, and not have a splitting headache etc. it's highly likely that doctors will always make a good living. When something is highly likely to occur it is low risk, but equally an artist being discovered by an extremely wealthy benefactor and being showered with a fortune being highly unlikely to occur makes it also a low risk strategy.

High risk means high levels of uncertainty. NNT is a billionaire thanks to his black swan investment strategy because it is actually a low risk strategy he had the insight to exploit. Which is while impossible to predict 'black swan' events are almost certain to occur.

Anyway, I digress. What I hope my thought experiment (or who knows, actual experiment) may persuade you is that you need to take risks and actually show your pieces, promote them even when you are unsure of their execution.

Simply wanting to succeed based on perfect execution has many counterarguments out there in the market. Perhaps most prominently Michael Bay, an inspiration for all artists.

For me, the pursuit of execution is something I do for personal satisfaction, but I have too many ideas to ever execute perfectly, as a result I want to be prolific, not good.

As Larry David said 'without the idea there is nothing to execute, so I'll go with idea.'

The View From Down Here

I used to have facebook on my phone. I used to 'like' a facebook page called 'The Good Men Project' and a good way to kill time at work was to read the numerous articles it churned out on a daily basis.

I'll be honest, it is ambiguous at best as to who is qualified to lead discussions on what constitutes a 'Good Man' let alone the ambiguity of what constitutes a 'Good Man' itself.

Thus there was a lot of garbage aggregated on the site. But before I quit it (and later got fb off my phone) I did learn some heuristics that were good from it.

This is one that has made me better at life but possibly a much harder person to deal with.

The best judge of a persons' character is how they treat you when you are in the wrong.

This is not to say I now go out of my way to wrong people to try and learn about them. It's not necessary I just fuck up in the course of my everyday existence.

Just trying my best to do right by everybody, I generate a lot of opportunities for me to apologise in any given year. Because I am a doofus.

And I always did intuit those feelings of dissatisfaction, of injustice, anger etc. when I felt people were being ungracious in my defeat and submission. It just hadn't clicked how relevant or reliable it was.

Anybody who attacks you when you submit tells you, they have unchecked emotional issues. No exceptions.

What if the apology is only partial or incomplete? This is the difficulty.

Say I'm playing with a silenced pistol collected from evidence when it accidently discharged and the bullet almost hits the cranium of my fellow detective whom was walking by and remains blissfully unaware that she almost died. I can decide on my own autonomy that an apology is necessary even though my colleague has not experienced feeling offended.

I think most people would agree that this is good and noble and proper.

Now say that I'm a recovering alcoholic, currently onto the step of making amends. While I'm apologising to a friend for getting his name wrong when I first met him, his short stocky bald friend tells me I owe him an apology for refusing to lend him a sweater at a party, and for announcing that my reason was that his big head would stretch the neck hole. I also have the autonomy to decide on my own that no apology is necessary to the short stocky bald friend. You can only apologise for things you have come to accept were wrong. Nobody can demand an apology of you, which is literally not true, but when that happens apologies become strategic and almost certainly not sincere.

There's a juvenile tactic called deflection, when one is facing criticism. 'tohm you are always cutting me off.' 'yeah well you borrowed my car without asking and never returned it, now I have to cycle everywhere.' It's an attempt to even scores and counterbalance failing with failing. It's a shitty tactic because true or not, the matter at hand is the persons issue with me, it is not the time to introduce other wholly separate issues.

In the same way, an apology whether complete and unreserved or partial, the apology is the matter at hand. It is not the time to address any separate issues or components.

So basically if you do anything other than graciously, generously and compassionately accept an apology, you are going to fail my test.

Why care, tohm is on his hands and knees begging for mercy and he's powerless if I so choose to kick his teeth out?

Because you can actually snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I am still introspecting on the nature of advantage, but I would have to say advantage is not a situation where you can have your cake and eat it to. The point of an advantage is to have it, not eat it.

So perhaps frustratingly for people with unchecked emotional issues, the advantage, the moral high ground you gain when somebody apologises to you, you never get to do anything with it.

It gets worse though. Even when I haven't apologised, when I'm being petty and stupid and childish, this heuristic has allowed me the presence of mind to notice when somebody doesn't step up, be the bigger man and seize the advantage over me. I can judge people for returning my unchecked wrong with their wrong. I am capable of this feat of cognitive dissonance.

eg. If I'm pissed at you and giving you the cold shoulder. I will notice and judge you for giving it to me right back. I will also notice and judge you if you overcome this and call me out on my petty behavior.

I can sit down in the mud, floundering in my own ill-concieved incompetence and competently make accurate character judgements. I can only imagine this seems grossly unfair from the outside. Yet it is so useful, it really has helped me make great decisions.

Stop Watching the News.

I'm serious. You don't need it, and it is almost certainly to your detriment in being able to lead a life that tracks reality.

The Human Condition

We're all afraid. It's okay.

Can Addiction Be Beat?

The honest answer is, I don't know. Very few people possess the expertise to say so, and I am certainly not an expert. So if you are struggling with addiction and have somehow stumbled on this post, please read with a grain of salt in hand, it's an opinion piece, factually I can only speak of my opinion, not the workings of anyone else's mind, body and their relationship with addictive substances and passtimes.

One thing I feel confident on commenting on, is the general nature of beating an addiction - the fact is that it takes the entire rest of your life to prove you've beaten it, but only a moment to disprove it.

For those unfamiliar with me, my addictions are arbitrary and relatively speaking, trivial. But they have been educational to confront for me. I haven't been in a KFC since New Years Eve last year. I used to eat it at least three times a week. Was that an addiction? Or merely a habit? Probably the KFC part was habit, the sugars, salt and animal fats were no doubt what I was addicted to.

Following that I quit McDonalds, then caffeine, alcohol (which technically I was never addicted to, I had my problems with alcohol, but they came from low tolerance rather than dependence), pornography, and desserts and soft drinks - which I simplified into sugar.

Unforch, unwittingly I had stumbled into what would become the next demonic health fad - quitting sugar. I have written about that before.

I want to talk about that one, because curiously though it is the thing I quit most recently, it's the one I get most acknowledgement for.

Here's an unexpected side-effect: I have inspired other people to quit sugar, or aspire to quit sugar.

The thing is though, when I say 'people' what I mean exclusively is women. What I find curious, is that I have been a pretty serious long distance runner for years. This obviously brings me great health benefits as my weight remained stable (if unideal) despite having a diet that often consisted of alternating between KFC and McDonalds.

I also was quite conspicuously training for and ran a marathon in my social circle. I have not inspired anyone to take up running, in the years I have been running. If I have, it has been men - though I'm not sure if I 'inspired' them for their own benefit or they were inspired to compete.

But in 7 months or so, the number of women that have confessed to me that they really should quit sugar, and those that have tried it out has genuinely surprised me.

This is what I hope isn't the case - for many women seeing a man forego sugar immediately is presumed to be 'dieting' behavior. They are noticing the bi-product of quitting my addiction - weight loss, and projecting onto me conformist body image behavior. Then feeling guilty that they don't have my dedication.

I am fairly certain this is not what any female friend of mine consciously thinks, I just suspect it describes a set of hardwired but unintelligible emotions my female friends feel. I don't know what they tell themselves but I am always suspicious of the reasons they give.

Which brings me to my next point of discussion. Pornography, I had previously written in a set of posts here about how pornography (and specifically - videos) had become too 'hardcore' for me, and what I mean by 'hardcore' I now understand to be 'misogynistic' and 'grotesque'.

I maintain my theory that this is because porno is a drug, and acts like a drug - users build up a tolerance, taking them longer and requiring more 'stimulation' to gratify them. By taking them longer I know from my own experience that porno's true cost is search time. You can trawl the internet for an hour and a half to find one image that hits the spot. In the meantime finding plenty of material that is a turn off.

More concerning though is the 'more stimulation' at the risk of reiterating something I had previously written, I would point out that porn videos can only hit two of our senses - visual and auditory. The women of porn (and men, I guess) need to be visually super-stimuli (ie, larger breasts, more extreme hip to waist ratio, redder lips, longer lashes etc.) to compensate for the lost sensory input of video (touch, smell) that make actual sex with an actual person a much better experience than any porno ever viewed.

The sex acts engaged in, likewise become more extreme to compete with 'the real thing' and for some reason, this has trended towards anal penetration becoming a status quo, and slapping, spitting on, choking, gagging and calling women 'bitch' pretty commonplace in porn videos.

With few exceptions I quit porn videos long before I 'quit' porn. I now see pornography as a social problem, an industry that badly needs regulation, socialising or some drastic intervention.

It comes up the least in conversation though, I guess because I am often offered tea, coffee, alcohol, biscuits or desserts that I have to decline and explain, but am rarely offered pornography to watch.

I don't trust it, I find it incredibly hard to trust. Pornographic video in particular challenges my concept of consent.

What I'm confident about is that the norms of porn do trickle down into the norms of sexual conduct of everyday couples. Trends in porno set trends in conventional sex. I suspect oral sex, as performed by women on men became almost ubiquitous as my generation came of age. It certainly existed before, and probably prior to the legal definition of time immemorial, but not ubiquitously so. That 60s-70s stalwart 'the Joy of Sex' referred to couples who naively were attempting sex via a woman's navel instead of vagina.

While not necessarily a bad thing in terms of liberating people to indulge their sexual fantasies, I am sure, and feel confident the book 'Female Chauvinist Pigs' had found in research, that the widespread adoption of oral sex was not equal between the genders. Guys were not uniformly going down on girls to give them pleasure and express affection and tenderness.

I'm not really down on the teenage highschool gossip like I was when I actually attended highschool, so this is pure speculation, but I imagine the number of girls between 16-18 that have consented to anal sex with their partner has skyrocketed by 8000% between my graduating year of 2001 and now.

From year 8 to year 12, I got the gossip of some 300 students at my school. Off the top of my head I can recall about 5 kids getting busted giving blowjobs. These stories are memorable only because the kids got busted, the kids in actual relationships not having spur of the moment relations in the boys toilets during 4th period must have been engaged in fellatio much more frequently and in much greater numbers, though with the average age at 17 to become sexually active, many, myself included had to content ourselves with kissing.

Anal sex is a more concerning trend because porno creates a larger degree of illusion, unreality. The first being that actresses are into it, the second being that the actresses are sober and the third being that it's fine and harmless instead of being painful with lasting aftereffects. Bj's can be depicted with similar degrees of illusion (particularly face fucking) but in general sucking a cock on video and the reactions of the participants are not that far from what happens at home.

Most concerning though, is spitting on women, slapping women in the face or on the ass, telling them they like it, calling them bitch etc. These aren't fetishes, they aren't playing a role, or any role other than hating women. Women should not be exposed to this message. Men should not be exposed to this message. It should not be able to play emotionally through their brains, even if they (and I) feel we can process it cognitively.

A case can be made for virtually every sexual fetish, including anal and even rough play. Degredation of women is not a fetish though, it is something else. There is no way to spin degrading acts both verbal and non-verbal as a kinky fetish. I'm sure many have tried though.

I saw a post of a lot of quotes from former porn stars today, and many of them said 'everybody is on drugs' I think this statement is both powerful and weak. It is weak because making a blanket statement about all porn actresses is just a weaker argument than taking only your own perspective - it is much more relevant that a single actress had to be high on cocaine and ecstasy to get through their scenes than for them to assert that everyone does. Because just one is enough to permanently destroy the illusion required to enjoy porno.

Viewers are trying to identify with a sexual fantasy, and whatever else is said, and however many men out their identify with rape and brutality, the vast majority are fantasizing about encounters that are mutually pleasurable (if unrealistic) between consenting adults. That ability to identify goes away once you can no longer trust whether an actress is saying 'oh yeah' in response to the sex act, or in response to being high on MDMA and coke and completely dissociated from what is going on.

Which is to say nothing of tumblr and pornographic stills. I guess if it is taken from a porno shoot, whether as a gif or a still image. There is no difference. But tumblr is full of sex blogs consisting only of still images of lingerie, bikini and nude models, you can find ones that never depict any kind of sex act. Good old fashioned pornography in other words, like the magazines that predated the internet available in newsagents and stolen by teenagers.

Those really are the side of porno addiction I quit this year, because I compulsively consumed them and they in turn consumed much of my time. I am much more okay with modelling, pin ups etc. on ethical grounds. Selfies I am not going to touch here, they are to say the least problematic. But a model working with a professional photographer, staging shots or doing shoots can be fine. Van Styles and Cherie Roberts I trust. It can't be said of everyone, there are certainly sleaze photographers out there. I recall one whose thing was to reach his tattooed arm into shot and touch the models he was shooting, just seemed akin to that whole domination vibe that put me off porno videos in the first place.

And I should say, that just because I object to porno, and it is little discussed doesn't mean I unequivocally oppose porno. I find it plausible that people comfortable with their bodies, whom have an exhibitionist streak could consent to documenting sex acts that they enjoy and distributing the footage for general consumption. Where no party is exploited beyond being subject to piracy. I may have even seen some porno that was ethical. Amateur porn (particularly couples making their own) in general is a lot more trustworthy than industry made porn. What I don't think is happening is that such porn is made, nor likely to be made by the porno industry as it stands.

But all of these things, I have quit. I may have backslid on occasion, but never fell back into habitual consumption. I ordered a coconut juice for example at a restaurant and it had added sugar. Having ordered it and the waiter opened the can, I just drank it anyway and took note not to take such risks in the future.

I also consume condiments that no doubt contain sugar, what I haven't done is drink a bottle of tomato sauce as a substitute for the ice cream I used to consume.

But onto the central question - Can addiction be beat?

I quit all these things, true. Sugar particularly was clearly a problem-solver, stress induced consumption habit that relieved on a daily basis, stress and to some extent emotional pain. And I live without this security blanket now.

But... I ran, between 1-4 hours 6 days a week most of the year. And post marathon when I tapered back my training I got pretty heavily into video games.

At this early stage (less than one year in) it would seem that while I can beat specific addictions, I can't live without some kind of security blanket. Video games in particular, are clearly detrimental to my health.

This is the struggle of those who are addicted, and a lesser known thing. Is someone an alcoholic when they seem to go two three months of heavy drinking, then go cold turkey? What if they then having sworn off alcohol are suddenly taking heavy painkillers round the clock?

They aren't an alcoholic but they are an addict. Both opiates and alcohol can numb emotional pain.

I have noticed that certainly in my own experience, I certainly have less security blankets to go to than I used to. I can't really comfort eat anymore which was the big one, nor manage my energy levels via caffeine (deciding when to relieve my withdrawal symptoms that is) I have no recourse to 'dutch courage', nor relieve my sexual frustration by logging onto a sex dedicated tumblr and perusing.

Running is by it's nature a discipline and frankly, a pain in the arse to indulge. I certainly get addicted to it, but it self-regulates because it is by it's nature effort.

Video games I should quit, but I am reluctant to because like facebook, for it's many downsides it has it's uses to a visual artist. It also is regulated by being constrained to my computer. I have to come here and make time to play the games. I am not seeking to eliminate all escapism from my life.

I notice I am far more likely to actually deal with shit now. By virtue of having less security blankets, those I do have become far more transparent, far more flimsy. Running indeed is little more than a planning exercise for dealing with shit. I emerge from it focused and relaxed. If only the same could be said for video games.

I imagine it is possible to live without security blankets entirely, without short term avoidance strategies. I am not sure if it is desirable.

A guy at a party I was at earlier this evening said of my non-drinking 'whether you are a hardcore drinker or a hardcore abstainer, you are still letting alcohol control your life' which I think is true and speaks to the tragedy of addiction. It does never leave you.

But with this common ground, the two choices are very different, and those differences have meaning. If you can beat one specific addiction, even if it results in you having an addiction to carrot sticks as a cigarette substitute, I feel you certainly should. 

Nekkid

Last weekend I walked into a studio in Kensington, took all my clothes off and my friend and contemporary Harvard photographed me.

I've read before that it is the job of the photographer to make the model feel relaxed and comfortable, Harvard did this by being extremely uncomfortable.

I don't know anymore what I was expecting from the experience, my rational was that of Harvard's friends I've been shot numerous times, perhaps only behind his wife Chika. There was nothing new for me to do. Also I'm over 30 now, the likelihood of me physically doing anything but deteriorate is incredibly small.

Also over on my tumblr during inktober I published a heap of drawings based on photos of women in various states of undress.

I'm told the photo's of me have gone up online somewhere, which I myself will do in time on tumblr or something, that was the first point where I felt I'd crossed a new threshold. Something possibly akin to a young female model's thoughts and feelings when there first naked photo goes up online.

Of course mine is unlikely to be reproduced as often as Cherie Robert's model or Van Styles. Nor can I expect any financial gains, just that this will become my file photo for newstories should I decide to become a politician.

It was kind of inspired, or seeded a long time ago by Trevor Goodchild in the old Aeon Flux series. I have nothing to hide, and I've been any good at leading my life, there shouldn't really be any surprises there.

Where are the Cogans?

There's a book called 'Cogan's Trade' that you could read. I never have. It was adapted into a film called 'Killing Them Softly' which I have seen. This post is a question about the state of competence within the American Law Enforcement system, particularly Missouri - I don't know how the heirarchies of Police work anywhere, let alone the US.

Assume though, that somewhere between who Darren Wilson reports to when he gets back to the station, and the District Attorney for St Louis. I would have thought somebody in the Saint Louis sat down with someone else and asked 'What should we do?'

The fact is that an officer shot an unarmed man.

Mike Brown had the last day of his life, Darren Wilson had a bad day on the streets. As an individual, I don't begrudge Darren doing everything possible to avoid the worst repercussions of that day. That's his natural self-preservation. He is also the only person left alive that really knows how it all went down.

Then there's the institution of the police. Enter the relevance of Cogan.

In Killing Them Softly the Mafia faces a similar aftermath decision process, the premises is thus taken from Wikipedia's page:

Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta), the proprietor of a poker ring, is revealed to have previously orchestrated an inside job by paying two men to rob his own illegal poker room. He holds up under rough questioning by the hitman Dillon (Sam Shepard); though later he openly admits his involvement to various criminal figures and suffers no retaliation. Squirrel anticipates that the Mafia will automatically blame Markie for the heist.

Cogan is a hitman brought in to basically deal with the aftermath of the robbery. A driver acts as emissary to the unseen Mafia decision makers. Cogan gives this driver advice.

Cogan's view is that Markie Trattman isn't dumb enough to rob his own game twice. He extends Trattman charitably that he thinks he is innocent. But this 'doesn't make a lick of difference' Cogan recommends that Trattman is whacked as a matter of course.

In the space where I can entertain operating in organised crime, I agree with Cogan. Trattman is simply unfortunate, it is not in this case a question of his guilt or innocence, but of broader perceptions. Perceptions that impact on the Mafia's ability to operate.

The difference between the Mafia and Law Enforcement institutions, is that recognizing the misfortune of Trattman involves killing him off. Recognizing the misfortune of Darren Wilson simply involved having him endure the most open and transparent trial process possible.

But where is the Cogan advising the Police Brass? Who is pointing out that every effort the Police make to help their unfortunate officer (he was unfortunate to have fucked up in this case) helps not just condemn Darren, but also themselves.

I can only think of two things the Saint Louis' Police conduct can suggest about this incident.

1) the obvious, is that it suggests that Darren is guilty.

2) the Police are weighing up two unpleasant repurcussions of their handling of this case and choosing the 'lesser evil'. Which is to say, the damage done to their ability to operate as law enforcement is less if the community of Saint Louis (and nationwide) believe the police are corrupt, racist and complicit in a miscarriage of justice, than if the existent members of the police force were to see the Police not protecting one of their own by obstructing the course of justice.

It's the second one that suggests that Cogan is sitting in a car with an emissary of the top brass explaining that Darren Wilson needs to be thrown under the bus and prosecuted as ruthlessly and as transparently as possible, and probably removed from ever facing the possibility of acting as a law enforcement officer in the African-American community ever again.

And the driver is turning to Cogan and saying, we can't do that, because the majority of the police force identify with Darren Wilson, and if we throw him under the bus they'll think we'll do it to them too.

I got told that in Australia at least, if you are driving a car and you kill someone with it, you will be charged and tried for 'culpable driving' not 'manslaughter' or 'murder' the reason being, jury's identify too strongly with drivers, they will always acquit somebody of manslaughter or murder if they were just driving to the store to get milk, but they can convict somebody of culpable driving.

What I don't like about the police anywhere ignoring a Cogan who thinks of the big picture when dispensing advice, is that it says the culture that produced Darren Wilson identifies with seeing an unarmed black teenager as a threat you can unload your gun into.

Literal Metaphors

I just watched 'Walk the Line' the Johnny Cash, June Carter-Cash biopic after many years of never getting around to it. You know the man in black has written and performed some of the greatest love songs of all time, and yet he was for the most part not a very good lover to his partners. Even the love of his love, his muse that inspired most if not all of those very great love songs.

Anyway whatever you can presumably watch movies for yourself or if time poor read wikipedia articles that have more peer review than this blog.

What got to me though, was the Tractor scene. A Literal Metaphor, though in another more literal sense a nonverbal communication. Johnny Cash's dad sees that his son has left a tractor stuck in the mud after unsuccessfully trying to pull out a stump. It's a metaphor for Cash squandering his talents to drug addiction, but it's also a clear cut piece of communication.

He is literally leaving an expensive piece of equipment out to rust and deteriorate - and it says something about Johnny Cash that he would do that.

I watched this in the comfort of my room where plates and laundry glasses and garbage have been piling up for a couple of weeks now. The house has fallen into a state while I played video games. I hadn't shaved my face in a week and no, I am not growing a beard nor desire to.

In other words, I am exhibiting all the physical/non-verbal tells of somebody who is grieving, or depressed. Ironically, when getting out of the house I've been practicing mindful walking and when my thoughts return to me, they are generally appreciative of the quality of life I have achieved here and now. Yet I could not prove to an outsider that I am not depressed or in a funk.

I don't feel like I am, but why am I living like I am? That is the question.

So I wrote down on a piece of paper, a brochure for my local Greens Party candidate 'something is wrong' and stuck it to my wall.

Today I started cleaning, and will keep going until it is done. It is strange to think though, that whatever problem I have that I am not conscious of, I might make it untrue by removing the physical symptoms.

Perplaxionary.

Fixer Upper Fallacy

Frozen is undoubtedly one giant leap forward for Disney. I can only fault it on two points -

1. The Disney Princesses still promote unrealistic body images for girls.
2. There is a song about how a guy is a 'Fixer Upper'

Which you know, was dropping the ball. Olaf wasn't a fixer upper at all. He was kind, handsome, courageous, generous, honest, risk taking etc. Olaf is one of the least flawed love interests Disney has ever offered young girls. The one redemption being that Olaf's shortcomings in the song are superficialities, like manner and presentation.

Those things, ironically are the easiest to fix, or change. That's a relative term though. Clothes and appearance are a matter of self expression and attempting to change them can be met with a surprising amount of resentment and hostility.

...

I conflate the 'Fixer Upper' concept in a partner with the 'Op-Shop Find', I think that's the myth people are drawn to and it has its roots in a persons self esteem, or lack there-of. I speak from personal experience and much reflection. I just suspect it's a really common belief.

What do I mean by the 'Op-Shop Find'? I was reminded last night of the Simpson's episode where Marge finds a Chanel dress on sale in a thrift store and subsequently enters a new strata of society. Making the story of the Op-Shop find, practically proverbial. So everyone going into an Op-shop I believe is looking for a bargain. They are looking for the items there that don't belong there. They are looking for something they can't afford at a price they can afford.

The trouble with the analogy is that we know Op-shop finds exist. I have no direct observed data point that when it comes to relationships, someone has ever snatched a bargain.

I would use this fascinating article to support my observation that this is a pretty common fallacy/human driver.

What I feel is human, all too human, is to actually go looking for some superficial flaw in people, like a dented soup can, We can handle a dent in the soup can, because the soup is still delicious but the store might give me a discount for taking the 'damaged' stock.

Hence you get a bunch of people, lots of people (especially me) that decide they can put up with lying, anxiety, depression, greed, narcissism etc. I'm not saying some hellish combination of all these traits, but rather - "I can take the dishonesty this person displays because they are so intelligent, beautiful, vivacious, enthusiastic etc. "

The result in my case has been to constantly overestimate the superficiality of a character flaw. And overestimate my abilities to withstand it, to 'put up' with it.

Which is where you move from 'Op-Shop' find, to 'Fixer Upper'.

...

Let's be charitable. Let us suppose that it can be done. But I should be clear, I am being charitable.

Let us suppose that somebody can be 'fixed up'. What does that mean? It means that somebody changes, to suit you. The italics part is the crucial

I do believe people can change, people have for example beaten addiction and achieved lasting sobriety. People can have mental health issues that are episodic or transitional. People become Vegans and, permitting me to be facetious, Vegans have been known to become people again.

Virtually everyone develops from childhood into maturity. People also generally adopt the norms of their social environment, change in the social environment is perhaps the biggest driver of change in individuals.

Having said that, a 'personality' is functionally a collection of behavioral traits that are stable over time. The best predictor of future behavior is subsequently, the past relevant behavior.

That is not the change we are charitably believing can happen. I'm talking about the process of changing someone into who you want them to be.

Let's say it can be done. This change could take place independently and spontaneously. In which case you are the recipient of dumb luck. Good for you, but it doesn't sound like a plan.

A plan sounds like building compassion, empathy and understanding to create strategies and incentives that bring about the desired change. It requires a mutual undertaking and investment of considerable time and energy that is expensive. It is a huge project of indeterminate duration, that we are charitably speculating can be done. Can be achieved.

I say the project is an expensive one. At whose expense?

The obvious candidate is you. In Gordon Livingston's book 'How To Love' where he advises against the pursuit of Narcissists, Hystrionics, Deppressives, Anxious, Borderline and Foolish partners the key cost he outlines is that these people 'waste our time'. The single most precious resource we have.

The second candidate is your partner, or prospective partner, though they remain the most likely candidate to also benefit from the change. After all if a person can beat a substance abuse problem thanks to your efforts and caregiving, regardless of how the relationship turns out they are objectively better off.

The third, and perhaps most crucial candidate who pays the price for the (presumed successful) endeavor to enact change - and this has become an article of faith for me, though the evidence is coming in slowly - is that our efforts to make somebody become the person we want them to be, is at the direct expense of the person who actually is that person already.

--

That pair of jeans you found in the store that just needs some 'minor' repairs to be 'good as new' may come with a $20 discount over the non-defective pair of jeans they were sitting right on top of. 3 months later they have simply become your 'round the house' pair because you never got around to fixing them and the fly never closes. And you saved $1 on the can of soup that had been dropped and dented, only to find the warp in the metal took you 15 minutes to manually get the can opener to chew through it. And you wound up spending 3 hours driving across town to borrow an obscure book from a library when you could have bought it at a cover price less than your hourly wage.

There are conceivable scenarios where we underestimate the superficiality of flaws in physical goods. Personality defects, even when only relative to our own preferences are several orders of magnitude greater in our ability to underestimate. Some of us, even idealize them.

There is to my understanding no book in the world that advises looking for a partner that is 'broken' and to fix them up in order to obtain a partner you would not have been able to obtain in the first place. The underlying assumption is that your efforts to fix will be rewarded with loyalty and appreciation, rather than resentment and frustration.

Even though nobody has ever that I know of, given this advice explicitly, I feel like it is one that is commonly subscribed to. It possibly sustains many a psychoanalyst's practice.

Understand though, even allowing for the possibility that the strategem might work, it remains a costly and unethical one.

To Feel Offended

I was once told, by a nutritionist that guilt was a useless emotion. Not useless in and of itself, except as a call to action. There was no reason to sit around feeling guilty. There is no way to un-ring the bell know what I'm saying.

Though I was told it once, I'm fairly certain I've written about it a number of times.

What I can't get a grip on is why I get offended. I actually have found it hard to find out what offense is. Look it up, and you get the legal definition. Not the psychological/emotional state.

But I certainly can get offended. I can feel offended. I'm not sure if I can truly be offended. As in I don't think it is within the power of others to offend me, it is an emotional state, a response that originates from within me.

I feel this is a pretty good assumption because it's pretty easy to observe that people are offended by different things. There are people that get offended by swear words. There are people that get offended by portrayals of violence towards children. There are people who aren't offended by either of those things.

The Buddha says:

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.


So if you think of 'offense' as the antonym of defence, then maybe feeling offended is to percieve oneself to have been attacked (presumably effectively). This feeling though holds open a door to multiple responses - counterattack, defense, retreat, pain, suffering.

It certainly feels involuntary, and maybe the key word in the Buddha's offering is 'Holding on to' much like sitting around feeling guilty.

The question 'Why do I feel offended?' often yields curious answers, or no answers at all. The offense evaporates under scrutiny. It virtually always reinforces that it is indeed me that generates the feeling of offense.

I don't have the answer, it is an active and ongoing investigation. I need to observe what happens within me as my sense of self and esteem keeps growing, will others be stripped of any percieved authority to threaten my ego? Will I always be vulnerable to extrinsic validation? Will mindfulness and the shattering of illusion of ego result in their being nothing to offend? Will my physical reality, physical and psychological health deteriorate without feeling offended and defending myself somehow?

A Dream I Once Had... 4?

Been so long since I turned the blog dream journal.

I had a particularly vivid dream a couple of weeks back. Graphic, and vivid and horrific. I was not my confident and borderline psychotic self in other dreams that have stuck with me. I was under siege, in a flimsy caravan with a door that is hard to shut and lock. It was some kind of apocalypse, and I kept having to let straggling survivors into the caravan, while death approached on their heels.

Then in the broken continuity of my dreams, this frustrating and terrifying process was abandoned and we were dodging abandoned vehicles on a highway overpass fleeing. We took momentary shelter in a multilevel parking garage. My companions were unfamiliar to me, but one of them here was suggesting that they give up fleeing. That nothing bad would happen and everything was fine.

Continuity broke again and I got to watch what happened to this companion. They were infected, their face deformed and grotesque, yet their manner was one of confusion and bewilderment. The infection was some kind of parasite taking over their body, it grew through them and out of them putting down roots of some kind. All the while they remained conscious and simply questioned what was happening to them. It tore them open without killing them and rearranged them, grafting them to the ground. Their confusion turned to terror as they could cry out nothing more than 'what's happening?'

Victims were grafted together, into some mural of living flesh. The alien parasite itself was unintelligible but seemed to be serving its own design. I simply watched organs and people being rearranged first onto the ground like some root system, then onto a large concrete wall.

And that was as much of a conclusion as my dream offered.

Learned Helplessness

see here: learned helplessness

I am struggling with the irony of learning that in the face of learned helplessness, we can be rendered helpless. Impotent even.

Your country is being invaded by horrible fascist communist aliens. They round up civilians and use them for horrible experimental testing that results in much pain, suffering and eventual death. All you have to do to avoid this horrible fate is get in the car and drive north. Yet you don't. You just sit there frozen. You don't even have to drive, your family and loved ones are imploring you to just get in the car and flee with them.

You insist that it is 'hopeless' and lay your head down on the table and fold your hands behind your head as if pinning yourself down.

This 'you' of the story is exhibiting learned helplessness. Actually, I'm not qualified to make the diagnostic. There's not enough backstory. Let's just assume they do.

Here's the philosophical question of relevance - are they or aren't they capable of helping themselves?

Physically capable seems to be the case. They are able bodied, and have the material means to flee. They seem psychologically incapable of perceiving this, or constructing the possible reality where this works. They also appear to not be able to formulate that the downside risk of trying to flee is exactly the same as doing nothing at all. Which is to say if you don't speak in terms of 'downside' and 'upside' risk like I do. Your fate is no worse if you attempt to flee and fail, than if you merely surrender. But there is some possibility that fleeing will provide a better fate than surrendering. Furthermore, surrendering does not make your eventual fate any more pleasant.

Learned helplessness is so bizarre to observe from the outside. Imagine meeting an adult whom throughout their entire schooling was told that the question 2 + 2 does not have an answer and the answer cannot be determined. When you say '2 + 2 = 4, everybody knows that.' they look at you like you just said your parents are leprechauns. When you try and demonstrate it using fingers on each hand and counting, they shake their head and say 'I don't know what you are talking about.'

This should be noted, as being a different experience from when you meet some mathematics PhD and they are telling you how Fermat's Last Theorem was eventually proved and saying 'I don't know what you are talking about.' or more likely 'buh?' because in this case, I at least am willing to believe that there is an answer and that my PhD toting party guest has an expertise I should defer to. It costs me nothing to believe her, I simply don't understand what we are talking about because of my lack of expertise. I haven't 'learned' to not believe her, I just haven't learned to speak her language. Politeness demands of me that I try, curiosity motivates me to.

So... what are we left with?

First and foremost, a frustration that somebody is seemingly capable of helping themselves, and for some reason they choose not to. This is distinct from somebody who is suicidal, because this person actually dreads their fate, they just can't/won't do anything to avoid it.

Here then do you step in? Relieve this person of their executive command over their fate and pick them up and dump them in the car and drive them to safety? Possibly, here though, it does cost you something to save somebody incapable of saving themselves. Compensating for helplessness is possibly harder than compensating for injury or physical disability.

It is September 11, 2001 and you are evacuating the twin towers down however many flights of stairs there were. On one floor you notice two people, one in a wheelchair trying to figure out how to descend the stairs, you offer to help, with two able bodied people the task should be manageable. The next floor down, you see a completely able bodied person curled up on the floor with their head between their knees you yell 'come on man! we gotta evacuate.' They look at you and shake your head.

I'm not a doctor or rescue worker, but I imagine the mind makes a physically harder obstacle to overcome in rescue than paraplegia. (It should also be noted, that people who obtain a physical disability I imagine are far less likely to come down with learned helplessness).

I suspect now I have answered my own question, though it's wholly unsatisfying.

The first is that you have to let go of the frustration, and accept that this person, though the condition may be hysterical, physically can't see the answers in front of them. They are not prone to panic, they just cannot perceive reality accurately in the first place. Their mind renders them incapable of escaping their fate. So don't get frustrated with them, it doesn't help.

Secondly, you can carry them out of the burning building only if you can afford to. You have to weigh up the costs of doing so. Will it result in the two of you dying? Is it at the expense of somebody whose ongoing survival prospects are greater? It is no good clearing one immediate hurdle for them if there are a thousand hurdles to go and you barely have the stamina to get yourself over them all.

But sure, you may rescue them once, and as you carry them out of the smoke into the clear blue skies, they may even remark 'I couldn't have done that.' and that's where you need to remember to say 'hey no problem.' instead of slapping them across the face.