It starts with a thought: I don't so much mind being poor, so long as my child is free to pursue wealth.
I believe this concept is referred to as 'social mobility' but my experience of when this term is (rarely) invoked, the emphasis is on mobility upwards. Poor people's ability to penetrate the strata of the rich.
Then to borrow and mutilate a phrase of the Jerry Seinfeld of Economics James Maynard Keynes 'social mobility is rigid downwards/sticky downwards'
That then would describe a world that sounds something like this 'I have succeeded, but it will be all for nought if my children can fail and lose everything I have.'
I'm aware of a similar paradoxical statement, from the world of cycling: 'Brakes make you go faster.'
This I find easier to expand upon. The ability to decelerate (slow down) quickly and effectively allows you to maintain higher top speeds. I feel most people would not attempt to ride a bike with no brakes, but it can be done, and safely. It just means you have to ride at max speeds so low that you will lose momentum quickly and/or be able to use your feet to brake and come to a full stop. This is kind of the default of skating though parts of the board, the feet and riding the skateboard on a diagonal all function as brakes.
But if you can just squeeze a trigger and basically come to a dead stop descending a steep downhill, then you can fearlessly pursue speed.
Shifting over to another analogy borrowed from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and bringing us back to the more general progress paradox; if you wanted to lose weight, it would be absurd to demand that our weight simply never increase. Fasting aside, people at the very least require hydration, and it would be pointless for a person to weigh themselves after their morning ablutions (shit) and then eat breakfast and weigh in again and chastise themselves for gaining weight.
Our weight is going to fluctuate over the course of a day, weight loss may involve a series of days where we both gain and lose weight. The more weigh ins we do, the less likely we are to observe the desired outcome. Nassim Nicholas Taleb then talks about the likelihood of realizing a profit decreasing the more frequently we check our share portfolio's performance.
Alas, I want to get back to the progress paradox. Which is people who dogmatically insist on progress, hinder progress.
One of my core heuristics is: failure must be an option.
Elsewise, we are in the root of all evil that is rigging.
I don't actually want to live in a world where my progeny can't fail. To be protected from their own performance.
Sure time and chance happen to us all, but one such example of a progress paradox, an inefficiency in a market is private schools.
Ignorant as to where you might be reading this from, including the future, in Australia 'private schools' are the expensive schools well-heeled people send their progeny too. And to wax cynical they also offer full scholarships to students who need their services the least in order to look like they can do more for their prospective customers.
The main thing my own private school did, was have a virtually unlimited photocopy budget to hand its senior students phone book sized practice exams that with an application of effort, allowed us to ace subjects like maths and physics.
But a more insidious form of rigging by private schools I will call the 'further maths' scam. 'Further Maths' was a VCE subject designed to give students that were weak in mathematics some rudimentary mathematical skills that might pay off in later careers. On the flipside there was a highly selective subject 'Specialist Mathematics' that taught students to calculate the concentration of salt in a brine, prove that triangles have no right angles, and do hypothetical equations involving the square root of -1.
Our school, and I would presume many other private schools, took the students expected to do 'Specialist Maths' and heavily encouraged them to do Further Maths. That is, put all the most talented maths students into the subject that was a last ditch effort to teach maths to people with almost no aptitude.
I did not participate in this scheme, somewhat aware that my life was finate, my youth even more so and I didn't want to spend a precious fraction of a year essentially waiting for a perfect score when I could be doing Studio Art. But I had many friends that derisively laughed at their essentially free perfect score, and subsequent improved odds of obtaining a scarce university position.
This is a common and flagrant gaming of a system for allocating scarce tertiary places. Though I increasingly speculate that in the future it will be only poor kids that go to University while rich people's kids will be bought a bakery to manage when they turn 18 in the future; this isn't so much what the progress paradox is, as how a progress paradox can manifest.
Namely, it was my experiences attending both a public and private secondary school in Australia that left me struggling for ethical grounds as to why private schools should exist. I mean I would cynically say that private schools do exist to: ensure your child is not judged on their merits.
I think education in general is inefficient and not very effective. I recently saw Steven Pinker allude to the phenomena that most people could not resit and pass an exam one year after graduation. I believe education is primarily there to test for trait conscientiousness-industriousness, because this is what is largely demanded by the labor market, and secondarily/incidentally can test for intelligence.
Private schools rout both tests, nominally through a process known as 'spoonfeeding' with failure being unacceptable more resources are simply thrown at students so they look on paper to be conscientious, industrious and/or intelligent. When left to their own devices, such as a busy and stressed employer might, they are not necessarily any of these things. Or they may simply have poor judgement, like industrious, intelligent people that are protected from the consequences of getting black out drunk two nights in a row.
I believe in inequality, and am for it. Where I take issue with inequality, is how that inequality is allocated. Like I don't think everybody should have equity when it comes to the production of birthday cards. I think some talented creatives should be able to make gift cards that they mass produce and other people pay for. That kind of shit I'm totally cool with.
I am happy for risk-takers to receive a risk-premium. I'm happy for the opportunity to win an Olympic Gold medal to go to the fastest athletes. etc. etc.
What I can't abide, but can understand, is when a brilliant, talented person who has generated immense value for their community and been compensated for it; can somewhat reproduce their genes and cannot reproduce the environment etc. that rendered them a brilliant, talented person capable of generating immense value for their community.
In other words the crucial difference between 'How do I leave a better world for our children?' (as in the next generation of everyone's children) and 'How do I leave a better world for my children?'
So...so, so, so, so, soish... Malcolm Gladwell I think introduced me to this question in sporting analysis which is: 'what's most important? how good your best player is or how good your worst player is?' in Soccer the skill level of the worst player has a bigger impact than the skill level of the best player vs basketball the skill level of your best player has a greater impact than the skill level of the worst player.
So too, I feel is progress much more impacted by the question 'how poor is poor?' than 'how rich is rich?'
Because in the abstract I am philosophically okay with my progeny winding up under a bridge sucking cock for crack money; emotionally I am probably not okay with being confronted by such a reality.
This in turn makes it understandable why the wealthy are most preoccupied with status and wealth and success. People in general are more loss averse with something like losing $50 having a greater emotional impact than winning $100.
In some ways, its a kind of abstract perversion of the kind of calculus many young people contemporarily face in their 20s. Live with the parents or go rent, because often their parents houses are much nicer, cheaper and more conveniently located. The question becomes 'what is the price of dignity?' even though personally I feel that 'dignity' is a bit of an illusion, given what I understand of the housing market.
I digress.
It's just that... to put it bluntly... useless fucken turds exist, and it is often not even their own talents that design the wealth lock-in mechanisms that keep the market from evaluating them as such. Sure sometimes nepotism will actually put a completely unqualified person in charge of a business that they then run into the ground ruining not just their family wealth but the lives of those in the community that depended on that business being profitable, but there's also a vast amount of economic rents, which is where somebody collects 'rent' not by virtue of doing anything useful, but simply because they own stuff.
An attempt to impress me, and certainly made an impression upon me, early on by a Christian friend was the following joke: 'A scientist says to God 'we don't need you, science can do everything you can.' and God says 'go on then, make Man then.' so the scientist starts scooping up some clay to fashion a man and God says 'hey! get your hands out of my dirt!''
Ha ha ha. God's a mean spirited prick, tell me more about this Jesus. Anyway, this problem of multi-generational squatters is the essence of the progress paradox. There's people sitting on the stuff people need to make progress and they basically need to be paid off to do anything.
There's people who need to lead, follow or get out of the way. Instead, for fear of their own regress, they hinder progress. Progress can only be made so long as their historical progress can be preserved.
So tohm? what's your problem with dismantling white supremacy and rebuilding an equitable society from the ground up?
Mainly that it's not necessary. We just need 'shit or get off the pot' mechanisms.
"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." ~ Albert Einstein
Lately I've been struggling to finish a post. I have ten posts in draft form that I've variously written, rewritten and abandoned. Often I've abandoned a topic because 'it's too large' and then go to write a post on a simpler thought that I optimistically think I can just bang out in an hour or two like my good old days only after 4 days time to declare it 'too large' a topic.
I suspect this indicates that I used to produce more posts because I was both more ignorant and more confident. I also used to write basically the same two posts over and over again - God doesn't exist and Mike Patton is God.
Recently I've also felt a degree of redundancy, while trying to figure something out for myself some author will come out with a book and do an hour long podcast interview who knows their stuff.
Anyway, a lot of the topics I think about fall under an umbrella of counter-enlightenment thinking, and it seems a process of having to try and solve labyrinth after labyrinth to prove the labyrinth has no solution.
For a clear example of redundancy I would point you to a project called 'translations from the Wokish' in fact that seems a good point for me to start the Einstein challenge:
Social Justice Encyclopedia/Translations from the Wokish
A massive undertaking to counter a near-universal rhetorical tactic 'You disagree/are skeptical because you don't understand, and I'm offended you would think I should explain it to you. You need to read [insert incredibly onerous text(s)].' by reading all the onerous texts and critiquing their application.
Global Pandemic 2020~present day
When the population of the world was forced onto a fully booked, delayed, Economy-class long-haul flight together where a critical mass of passengers have not yet ascertained that the situation is just shit, but it's the situation we are all in, and that the only thing in their power to do is make the situation worse.
Rigging.
When failure isn't an option. The most likely cause of any given injustice or 'evil' or problem is that somebody has arrested the ability to actually test and determine. On an individual basis rigging manifests as cognitive dissonance.
Reality
That which persists when you stop believing in it. A constraint on which beliefs can be held without insults from reality.
Knowledge
A subset of beliefs that are tentatively justified to the highest degree of confidence. Reliably immune to insults from reality. Beliefs with predictive power, eg. 'I believe I have $20 in my wallet.' predicts $20 worth of bills and/or coins in the speaker's wallet.
Pseudo Reality
When a non-fact is asserted to be a fact, that creates a pseudo-reality, pseudo-realities can be sustained over the short term but it's an energy intensive undertaking, incredibly inefficient (see North Korea) requires 'rigging' the predictive power of claims about pseudo-reality. The truth will out. Unless the non-fact is indeterminate, unfalsifiable or inconsequential like: there's a bowl of Thai Green Chicken Curry on the surface of Venus.
Epistemic Exclusion
Epistemology = how you come to know things, the method you use to know shit. The good use of 'epistemic exclusion' is a complaint where a lesser esteemed epistemology (like folk tradition) arrives at the same conclusion as a highly esteemed epistemology (like empiricism or the scientific method) but doesn't get the credit. (think ethnobotany vs pharmacy). Please note that truly non-overlapping magisteria is very rare, there isn't much that sound epistemologies like empiricism can't investigate.
The misuse of epistemic exclusion is where sound epistemologies produce knowledge/conclusions the complainant doesn't like and wants to use an unsound epistemology to arrive at a more desirable conclusion. For example genetics says your fiancé is your first cousin, oral tradition says she's no relation, just the girl next door.
The Economy
An emergent property of society that cannot be comprehended in its operation and effect by any one individual and as such is one of the most common concepts invoked to defend/justify actions a person feels intuitively to be wrong. eg. letting a bunch of old people die horrible isolated deaths.
Cryptocurrency
1. A handy proof that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
2. A contemporary example of the pitfalls of utopianism.
3. An idol worshipped by the most annoying people you know.
4. Is encrypted, almost never used as currency.
Fashion
An interest in seasonal styles is one of the best predictors of the answer to the question 'If I had lived in Nazi Germany, would I have been a National Socialist?/If I had lived through Mao's Cultural Revolution would I have joined the Red Guard?' the answer most likely being 'Yes' regardless of personal convictions. See inspiration for Kill La Kill
Paradoxically high-fashion (garments worn by fashion models and nobody else) and fashion trends are produced almost exclusively by people who cannot fit in and do not swim with the tide, for people whose social survival and/or safety depends on fitting in and swimming with the tide.
Civilization
A large group of people who frequently forget that everything depends on agriculture.
The Green Revolution
One of the most impactful revolutions that I was not taught about in school, and ignorance of which makes it hard to understand the state of the world. A technological revolution not a political one, hence its success and unexpected consequences.
Stylish
An undertaking in presenting oneself well, that is handicapped by the more difficult undertaking of knowing oneself.
Latinas
People who through a combination of certain genetically inherited traits and economic constraints can successfully pull off pretty much any outfit thrown at them, for some reason do not even attempt the styles that most people of predominantly European descent persist in trying to pull off. See 'Crocs'
Cuisine
A collection of prepared dishes that sit on a frontier where any subtraction or addition to the recipe produces a worse dish. Preparation can vary, see 'my mum makes the best lasagna/chocolate cake', but adding wagyu beef or truffles are generally just a cash grab wank, or largely payoff on instagram not the tastebuds.
The Future
Unknowable, but most energy is put into constructing a kind of 'now plus' where the future will be wonderful because caramel is salted, social media has a new user-friendlier interface, macaroons have replaced choc chip biscuits/cookies, your car exhaust now has a chrome finish and a new profile, your washing machine is now connected to the wifi and you have more options for your online dating profiles.
Public Intellectual
Someone whose attention and influence is merited on some specific expertise. They then face the constant temptation to comment on ever more general matters and the near constant peril of receiving enough rope to overconfidently hang themselves - for a highly contemporary example see the Weinstein brothers Brett and Eric.
Influencer
An economy based on vicarious living where many individuals transfer small amounts of attention or money to a single recipient who can then use this to demonstrate a certain lifestyle is possible. Frequently this is a lifestyle where a young white woman wears a wide brim hat with confidence, maybe paired with an oversize cardigan and white pants. Supporting an influencer is usually cheaper than buying and wearing a hat. Not everyone can be an influencer.
Conspiracy Theorist
1. When a group of children are presented with a large basket of toys, select some, maybe fight over some and eventually divide up to play with whatever toys they can obtain that interest them or cry over in disappointment; a conspiracy theorist is somebody who for emotional reasons cannot infer that the children are reacting to environmental stimuli and must presume coordinated intelligent design.
2. A religiously minded person who asserts a powerful external locus of control which is motivated by the comforting thought that an agent can be identified, exposed and everything would then be alright and to abrogate personal responsibility by not examining the possibility that we might unwittingly contribute to our own suffering.
Intelligent design
The default least likely explanation for any given phenomena, though for many the most desirable and compelling.
Ancient Astronaut
An uncompelling and unfascinating belief that is compelling to a psychologically fascinating group of people.
'Game B'
The admirable undertaking of figuring out how humanity can live sustainably on Planet Earth without recourse to expanding our civilization into new frontiers (like space) and subsequently kicking the unsustainable can up the road for future generations to deal with. Unfortunately game b is played almost exclusively by well intentioned volunteers who are precisely the people you don't want 'playing game b' (people who use terms like 'mytho-poetic' and 'metamodernism' see also 'conspiracy theorist'), with almost all the people we do want 'playing game b' preoccupied in the non-theoretical, non-hypothetical private and public sectors.
Lobbyist
A paid professional whose job is to attempt to gain overrepresentation in policy - to break the 'one man one vote' principle, could theoretically be benign but is usually malign or at best unnecessary.
Made dangerous by the confluence of competence and compensation.
Activist
A volunteer lobbyist who is often cash-poor but time rich, tends to attempt to gain overrepresentation in policy for causes they are passionate about - in the benign form activists attempt to influence voters to care about a cause and thereby influence policy, in the malign form they attempt to skip the voters and try to influence risk averse decision makers to not wait to see if the cause gains traction with the public.
Made dangerous by a combination of confidence and ignorance.
Iconoclast
An iconoclast is someone who while not necessarily on the wrong side of history, is almost certainly (by definition) on the wrong side of historians. Alternatively an optimistic type of activist movement that believes in the modern era they can succeed where the Ancient Egyptians failed with Pharaoh Akhenaten.
Religious
A person motivated to believe that anything is possible, that beliefs constituting knowledge cannot be constrained by a material reality.
2. A belief system that becomes more benign the less seriously it is taken but paradoxically if taken very seriously can result in deconversion. Also paradoxically benign non-serious believers will often hold the belief that it would be good if they took their religion more seriously and will often dangerously defend and protect people who take their beliefs dangerously seriously. It is possible to be incredibly pious while not taking your religion seriously at all (ie. not reading your own holy texts), all that is required is belief.
Theologian
Someone who's methodology begins with a conclusion and then rationalizes why it must be true. A field that in its oldest traditions have stagnated, producing an asymmetry such that it can take tertiary or postgraduate studies to be able to make the arguments in support of theism, but an amateur deconverted youtuber can use google to thoroughly debunk.
Theologians generally believe in a god that lay believers don't care about.
Atheist
Somebody who reliably doesn't understand religion, often not for lack of trying. Despite admittedly 'not getting it' often are upstanding moral agents via secular humanism, a commitment to truth, skepticism etc. yet cannot synthesize many of the benefits of organized religion, like mutually supportive community network see attempts like 'the Sunday Assembly'.
Comes in two notable but overlapping clusters - deconverted Athiests and raised secular Athiests the two have generally noticeable difference in politics.
Igtheist
A rarely used term that describes an atheist that when having a theist scoff at them and remark 'I don't believe in the God that you don't believe in' has taken it in good faith and tried earnestly to understand what God believers do believe in and found the answer completely abstract and unintelligible, and very often indistinguishable from a universe without a God.
Fragilista
A term coined by 'Antifragile' author Nassim Nicholas Taleb, that didn't catch on but usefully describes people in society that are trying to eliminate all risk, randomness and unpredictability and subsequently increasing the incidence of catastrophes. Hence they 'fragilize' our world.
"Spiritual-but-not-religious"
A religious person who has given up/unburdened themselves of any obligation to render their beliefs coherent to themselves and or others. An incurious person.
Identity Politics
A politics where ad hominem is permitted. Example if I asked: 'Mr. Q hires an employee based on the color of their skin. Is this racist?' or 'A doesn't pay B any money for the work they did for them, is this moral?' under identity politics we don't have enough information about the identities to answer these questions.
Progressives
People characterized by an intolerance for the incremental progress a society is making, and frequently favor a complete overhaul of a society in order to arrive at the desired destination immediately. A misnomer.
Revolution
A strategy that has timeless appeal and an abysmal history of generally making everything worse for everyone, but particularly its proponents. Exceptions include the American Revolution, and the Haitian revolution.
Reform
Gradual, unsexy but with a much more promising history than revolution. Revolution is to scoring a golf hole-in-one as reform is to curling.
Systemic/Structural Racism
Grounded in truth, a truth manifest in growing inequality and perhaps best understood not by critical theorists but a minority of economists that understand political economy, rent seeking etc. and sadly not the most animated proponents of systemic racism and anti-racism whose characterizations appear even with scrutiny - juvenile.
As near as I can determine, the assertion of systemic racism is that if people were really committed to ending racism they would gladly drastically and immediately restructure both a society and economy they do not understand to make up for the ills of the past.
Patriarchy
A nebulous concept that needs to exist in order to dismantle it.
1. Shorthand for the inert description that things are unequal between men and women, most notably in terms of wealth and occupying executive positions.
2. Shorthand for a conspiracy theory that men double as a secret society that actively and consciously cooperate to oppress women. This definition has the drawback of bearing no resemblance to many men's lived experience, hence it is valuable if pressed to revert to definition 1 which almost everyone can agree with.
A once concrete concept that entailed a belief in the intrinsic superiority of white people, that is now nebulous but needs to exist in order to dismantle it. Contemporarily somebody is a white supremacist if they do not dedicate every waking moment to dismantling white supremacy.
Sex Worker
Someone employed in the sex industry.
'Sex Worker'
When an employee comes to their manager with various complaints such as a toxic work culture, workplace bullying, job insecurity, management undermining frontline employees in front of clients, wage theft, unsafe workplace, breaches of safety protocols, unsanitary conditions etc. and management come back and say 'we've listened to your complaints and we think we have the solution - we're going to change your job title.'
Critical Theory
Almost universally boils down to a complaint that 'life could be easier' plus solipsism. Since everyone's life could almost certainly be easier, the theorising is largely trying to work out why one set of lives should get easier and others harder. Very zero-sum. Critical theory perhaps hopes to be confused with critical thinking ie non-opinion.
Libertarian
An irrational belief system that appears to ignore the historical role of cooperation, if not history itself including personal history.
Concept Creep
A tactic to sneak around consent by redefining the terms of something somebody already has agreed to. For example, people generally agree that hate speech is not protected free speech so redefine 'hate speech' to include referring to you as 'Ms.' X instead of 'Dr' X even though you have a PhD in Chemical Engineering and no medical training.
Cancel Culture/Cancelled
A paralegal method of activism where risk averse organizations are pressured to remove targeted parties without due process. Given the variance of guilt/innocence and variance of consequences including but not limited to duration, potentially qualifies as 'cruel and unusual' punishment.
While not restricted to the left-extreme is their preferred method for recruiting talent to moderates and conservative causes and organizations
Alternative Medicine
Medical practices based entirely on anecdote, to the extent that when data that contradicts an anecdote is presented the data is rejected (often by employing an anecdote). Any system of medicine that is every part the equal of Western Heroic medicine. Historically some alternative medicines outperformed western medicine because they are completely ineffectual outside the placebo effect (see Homeopathy) whereas many western medical practices were worse than no treatment at all.
Where 'western medicine' can be dismissed entirely for historical failures like Thalidomide and Lobotomies, or for its failure to easily and painlessly cure cancers, virtually nothing is disqualifying for alternative medicine short of the premature death of its enthusiasts.
Anti-Various (masks, vaccines, lockdowns)
People highly sensitive to any threat to their personal freedoms. Freedoms won through the tremendous sacrifice of ancestors that variously fought the Napoleonic Wars, the American Revolution, the Great War (WWI), WWII and endured events like the great depression. So appreciative are they of the fruits of their forebears sacrifices, that they will not make the great and terrible sacrifices of staying at home and being bored and restless for a few months while being supported by future generations through government debt, wearing a mask out, or getting two to three injections. Very successful at prolonging restrictions on everyone's liberties. See Global Pandemic 2020~present
Antifa
An unrepresentative, unelected and unaccountable 'idea' that reserves the power to both define fascism and the unlimited powers to oppose what it defines as fascism. Plays the crucial role of embodying the very threat that fascists appeal to, to increase their power. Has a symbiotic relationship with fascism/right-wing tyrannophiles.
Middle-class
How everyone describes their economic standing.
Coalition
Large coalition systems (like democracies) produce better outcomes than small coalition systems (like dictatorships) though large coalitions can treat outgroups virtually identically to small coalitions. See 'The Dictators Handbook' and 'Deterring Democracy'.
Artist
Somebody who produces art.
Professional Artist
An artist that creates a connection with an audience.
Iago
A shit-stirring character in Shakespeare play 'Othello' who in the guise of an ally, creates all of Othello's problems by convincing him they exist.
Social Sciences
A branch of Academia that has increasingly come to resemble the function of Iago. see Iago.
Media (Inc. Social Media)
An institution that has increasingly come to resemble the function of Iago. see Iago.
Media Savvy
Someone who is unaware they have increasingly come to resemble the character of Othello.
"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." ~ Christopher Hitchens, aka Hitchen's Razor.
Denial is one of the most simple and frequently used ways to avoid responsibility. The others being Excuses (it has to be this way), Blaming (it's your fault) and the almost miscellaneous and hard to categorize Telling-a-story/Diversion (you know this situation reminds me of...).
While I am open, even eager to being persuaded there is a fifth way to shirk responsibility, with almost a decade of cold calling call center experience (approximating a sample size of some 10,000+ random members of the Australian public I have spoken to) where on aggregate the majority of the general population do avoid responsibility for not wanting to do the survey; the above four - denial, excuses, blaming, diversion - pretty much exhaustively covered every call that did not actually resolve (either through a refusal or a survey). And yes, denial (I don't [subject of survey] so I can't help you) occurred more frequently than excuses (I'm busy), which were more frequent than blame (you always call during dinner time) and much more frequent than diversion (so what do you think about the alien autopsy?). And just so, people agreeing to do a survey was far more common than refusing to do a survey, so I'd guesstimate - having to recall spreadsheets of actual stats that some 60% of the tens of thousands of calls result in having to call again another time.
To be clear, and stay on topic, responsibility is good. I frame it in my mind as literally the ability to respond, it is an empowered position and as such we should seek to take as much responsibility as we possibly can ethically. Because I view responsibility as an empowered state however, this means one should avoid usurping responsibility from others because that is disempowering others.
This is what I want to say about denial though:
To be guilty of denial requires the establishment of a fact to deny.
Creating a neat and tidy two-step process:
1. Provide sufficient evidence to support your claim.
2. In the advent that someone denies the evidence, you can label them a denier.
This could spare the world a lot of bad-juju. My concern arises from 'denial' or 'denier' being used as a pejorative, specifically with the practical function of discrediting a speaker.
In practice this looks like someone getting labelled a x denier, a visible example being climate deniers whom probably label themselves climate skeptics.
"Here’s a fun fact: Climate change deniers tend to be, on average, more knowledgeable on climate science than those who embrace climate change as a serious threat.
This too, is somewhat intuitive when you think about it: Most of us are perfectly happy to defer to the apparent scientific consensus. So we don’t read the literature, we just say, “well, the scientists believe this, and I trust them.”
However, for those who are disinclined to trust the consensus position, and who strike an oppositional stance – they know they’ll have to justify it. They know their position is going to be unpopular, they know they’ll be bashed as ignorant science deniers. So they are more likely to actually read stuff – including actual scientific literature. They will be more motivated to get familiar with the big issues, identify apparent weak points/ gaps/ contradictions in the literature, to identify dissenters and their arguments." ~ Musa al-Gharbi, Three Strategies for Navigating Moral Disagreements.
The point of this is not that 'turns out, climate deniers are right' but more a promising explanation of how the misuse and overuse of accusations of denial arise. If you occupy a position that is a popular consensus, there is less pressure upon you to actually know your shit. The passage above speaks to my experience, where an excellent piece of programming from Australia's SBS channel program 'Insight' had an episode where one climate scientist responded to a roomful of skeptics:
I actually learned things, prompted by the skeptics relatively more informed questions. My threshold for convincing on climate change is low - for me it stands to reason - so I learned both from the skeptics, and the expert who is convinced and convincing.
Climate science and climate skeptics are exceptional though, the excerpted piece from the heterodox academy blog above has the subtle 'on average' giving us four groups, divided in two - non-expert believers, non-expert skeptics, expert believers and expert skeptics - though I've seen no compelling evidence that an expert skeptic exists.
Thus I am persuaded/confident, that the hierarchy of 'knows-least' to 'knows-most' goes: non-expert believers followed by non-expert skeptics, to expert believer. So if you add a small number of experts being deferred to by a large number of non-experts and then divide the cumulative knowledge by the total number of believers you'll get an average that is lower than that of the skeptics that have probably selectively informed themselves of facts that bolster skepticism...
I have not myself been accused of being in denial, unless of course a psychologist explained to me the grieving process. But I have witnessed on the "socials" faceless people being denigrated as a class for exercising the same skepticism I do.
I would like to expound upon a personal example for the express purpose of illustrating how difficult this really simple requirement can be:
When I first heard the Gender Pay Gap statistic - though there are many, it would have been something like the 70c to a $1. Almost not to my credit, I didn't deny it, I thought 'woah! that seems outrageous, sensational' and I took it at face value. An established fact. Having worked in a professional corporate setting, and having at that point some training in economics through my Bachelor's degree in Marketing requiring I do Macro 1 + 2 and Micro, my next thought was 'how does that happen?'
Because for me, the picture painted was that if a company needed to fulfill two junior positions in the marketing department - identical rolls and the core requirement was a qualification and not experience. I then thought of constraints on how the pay-gap could arise - the first being that salaries are often advertised with the job, if not there's salary surveys etc. or 'market rates' which is to say, pressure on companies to offer competitive salaries to attract and retain talent.
So where in the recruitment process did the pay gap occur? Like if me and my classmate Agatha applied for the position and both were accepted - when, how and why would the company offer me $30k and her $21k...
It stretched my credulity that the managers and HR, payroll etc. ever were twirling moustaches and instructing somebody to 'apply the female discount muahahahaha'
Absence of evidence may not be evidence of absence, but (and this I take from Matt Dillahunty) an absence of evidence where evidence would ordinarily be expected, is evidence of something. And given the ample supply of potential whistleblowers, and ample demand for whistleblowers, the absence of any testimony from a person in payroll that large gaps exist between men and women struck me as an absence of evidence. (For those already going for their hair to tear at it as they say 'the testimony does exist' I know, I'll clear this up shortly) Furthermore, in Australia there are other obvious constraints on how, why and where pay gaps can occur - like the minimum wage.
The 70c-to-a-dollar does not refer to 'equal-pay-for-equal-work' under which it is both sensational and outrageous to have someone discounted this way for their gender. The methodology is key:
The gender pay gap or gender wage gap is the average difference between the remuneration for men and women who are working. Women are generally considered to be paid less than men. There are two distinct numbers regarding the pay gap: non-adjusted versus adjusted pay gap. The latter typically takes into account differences in hours worked, occupations chosen, education and job experience.[1] In the United States, for example, the non-adjusted average female's annual salary is 79% of the average male salary, compared to 95% for the adjusted average salary.
I was treating a non-adjusted pay gap as if it were an adjusted pay-gap. Both are issues, but are very different issues.
From my personal perspective, it is less outrageous if a female waitress is paid less than a male attorney than if a female attorney is paid less than a male attorney. And from my perspective the more interesting of the two problems is closing the 5% gap (how society values men and women differently), more so than the 21% gap which if restricted to paid work is an understatement of that problem. (how society values different work)
It's tempting, very tempting to dig into the juicy topic of the pay-gap, but it is meant to service as one example of where denial can be misapplied - like a 'pay gap denier' or broadly as a category of men in denial of either the pay-gap or 'the patriarchy', as in my experience the pay gap is most oft cited as evidence of 'the patriarchy'.
And since I am a fan of responsibility, if discussing the pay gap, one way to take responsibility is to ask questions like 'which pay gap are we discussing here?' and it isn't the case that one exists and the other doesn't, the adjusted pay gap gets into the weeds of near as I can speculate: how to reconcile paid maternity leave - where child rearing is a public good, with private firms where labor is a private good - and discussing things like UBIs, parental leave, compounding interest and class issues like paying one woman $80,000 for her baby to track her with an equivalent male colleague that chooses not to take parental leave equal to her, and another $15,000 to track her with her equivalent male colleague. Or the other probable source of unequal pay for unequal work which is the cumulative effects of pay rise discrimination based on gender (I get a 4% pay rise where Agatha gets a 3% pay rise, and the same next year meaning I get 4% increase of 104% of our starting wage and Agatha gets a 3% pay rise on 103% of our starting wage.)
Or alternately if we are talking about the non-adjusted pay gap where you take a macro view of all the earnings of men and women and average it for each total population (or other measure of central tendency), then the discussion becomes things like (my speculation) why is a traditionally female dominated profession (like nursing, or teaching) paid so little compared to traditionally male dominated professions (like construction or policing)? Or alternatively framed as why do men dominate the distribution of top earning positions? which as an armchair economist and milkcrate sociologist I'm happy to discuss but not take a disproportionate amount of responsibility for being an individual and not the macro-economy.
And I apologise for how 'mansplainey' the above two paragraphs are, but I do so because there are clips on youtube that have racked up 4.5 million views where two men both confuse the adjusted and non-adjusted pay gap:
Where Barack Obama says 'today the average full time working woman earns just 77c for every dollar a man earns' this is referring to the non-adjusted pay gap. He then says 'equal pay for equal work... it's not that complicated.' which while it could be argued is meant to be interpreted as a blanket statement that all work is basically equal so nursing is basically the same thing as construction, 'equal pay for equal work' is a slogan better suited to an adjusted pay gap, combining the two statements as he did paints a picture that a female junior partner in a private law firm is earning $77k to the $100k her male colleague earns holding all else equal. When instead it's $95k to $100k.
Then the egg is applied to Barack's face when we cut to a news story showing that the median annual salary of White House staff in 2013 is $65k to $73k. Helpfully, the graphic also has a source. Unhelpfully, that source is now archived, but with some digging you can get the source data here.
For me the red flags are 'Median' and also the 'Fox News' in the bottom corner, suggesting it's time for the old 'lies, damn lies and statistics' skepticism. Or as my old Market Research professor was fond of saying 'you have to get down and dirty with the data'. Because the 'oh snap!' there's a 12% median salary pay gap.
Here's the thing about a median salary - Imagine that I am the only white man employed in a country that is otherwise staffed entirely by women of color. The company employees 100 floor workers who are all paid $40k per year, they employ 10 middle managers (boo) of which I am one, all paid $50k per year. Then they have 8 executives all paid $120k per year, and 1 vice-president paid $220k and one president paid $600k totalling 120 employees (the math is why I am paid the middle bucks).
The average male annual salary is $50k per year, my wage divided by one - me. The average female salary is (100 x 40 + 9 x 50 + 8 x 120 + 220 + 600)/119 = $52,353. So here the gender pay gap is like +4% or something. The median male annual salary is also going to be $50k, because it's mine. But the median female annual salary is going to be very different to the average female salary - it's going to be $40k because if you arrange all female salaries from lowest to highest and then go to the 59.5th one (59th and 60th lowest wage) they will both be $40k, because 100 of the 119 female workers are floor workers.
The median annual salary of Obama's 2013 White House tells us nothing about the gender pay gaps he himself is concerned about (equal pay for equal work). From my glance at the data, for example: all Employee Analysts are paid $42k per year, regardless of whether their name sounds male or female. The sole exception is a 'Detailee' paid $80k and Detailees are the general exception where they are paid more for identical job titles, which I had to look up.
A perusal of other job titles follows a general rule of employees with the same job title are paid the same, but there are some exceptions like 'Records management analyst' and 'policy advisor' and 'information services operator' and of course the male white house calligrapher is paid more than the female white house calligrapher both of whom are paid less than the chief white house calligrapher who is female. But where there are disparities, I can't conclude that equal job title = equal work, because being policy advisor to energy might be a very different job than policy advisor on sport.
So how does Barrack Obama clean up his own back yard? Close this median wage gap? Well for one thing, he could fire a bunch of women from his white house staff. Because generally speaking increasing the number of employees will lower the median wage, and decreasing the number of employees will raise the median wage, but only if the number is large. The other thing he could do is rig the median wage by giving unequal pay for equal work. So the 2013 Obama White house employed 229 women, he just needs to take every female employee from 114th up to where they start earning $73k and pay them all $73k regardless of job title or what male employees holding the same job title earn. (I would predict with this solution, that Fox news would then report on the disparity in average annual wage, it's hard to get average and median to both be equal)
All of which is really in the weeds of the Gender Pay Gap and what to do about it in a post about denial.
But this is what can happen when you don't properly substantiate your claim. When in other words, you do not actually know what you are talking about, which I suspect is so often the case in these times.
At the opening of the post I went through the 4 ways to avoid responsibility, denial being but one of them. I was also taught that the only way to take responsibility, and subsequently what to look for is saying 'how can I help?'
This is the thing, the people who take responsibility will actually scrutinize your claim because that is necessary to fix things - if you want to close a 12% gap in the median annual salary, as opposed to the average annual salary, or close a 2~3% gap in a specific role these are all different problems with different solutions. (and why Jon Oliver's shit on a table analogy doesn't work as an analogy, it does work as a joke, unless he is advocating that you can fix all pay gaps by just paying everyone everywhere the exact same salary.)
The nefarious aspect of misusing denial - to label others as denying an as yet unjustified claim, is that the people who take responsibility, who want to help are inevitably going to have to scrutinize your claim in order to attempt to resolve the complaint.
A tangential but also nefarious aspect of misusing denial is the prevalence of undefined terms being slung about. This opens the door wide to Motte & Bailey tactics, probably the two most prominent among leftists are 'The Patriarchy' and 'White Supremacy/Systemic Racism' (I recently experienced a vicarious chafing listening to this interview which overall is worth listening to, and was an attempt to redress an anti-postmodern bias in the interest of heterodox, where at times in the interview, the interviewer asked the guest to define 'power' and 'the patriarchy'and in both cases the guest declined to define them the frustrating climax being 'who am I to define patriarchy?' style dodge, the answer to the rhetorical question is 'somebody who wishes to use it in conversation.')
The 'Motte' part taking the form of treating the patriarchy or white supremacy as an overt active conscious and malicious system of oppression, a cartoon of which might be a Freemason Type secret society that men like me or us whites are denying the existence of.
Whereas the Bailey in my experience is that 'the patriarchy' and 'white supremacy' are terms that simply describe that however society operates it favors whites and men. Aka they are synonyms for 'how things are' or 'the cumulative result of all time and space'. In which case, as a holder of a marketing degree - they are really bad synonyms for something that ostensibly passively everybody is participating in, all the time, because they suggest the more nefarious conspiracies by using terms that describe very concrete historical phenomena.
In conclusion, to be sure, there are people who would deny a substantiated claim, because there are. Look at Young Earth Creation Apologists, their whole job is denying scientific theories. Denial may be the most common way to abrogate responsibility, but one of the other most common ways to avoid responsibility is blame - blame Obama, or blame a random person on the street for their failure to change society. Blame a stranger for not investing hundreds of hours into reading obscure inaccessible texts such that they are up with the abstract concepts of the moment in the discourse.
Blame someone for being in denial of a claim you haven't established.
Two weeks ago our dog was hit by a car. Here she is now, so we were lucky, she is alive and all things considered, okay:
Photo timing by my partner.
I was responsible for this predicament, I had the most agency. My partner participates in Danza Azteca two to three times a week. On the evenings she has Danza, I often run so we are both getting our exercize. Recently, we had started a new tradition as often even with a 10 or 12km run I was finished before her Danza, I would walk our dog out to meet her when she arrived at the train station home. It gives our dog an extra outing and best of all, it blows her mind to run into her most adored owner out there in the world, like a second coming of Jesus or something.
She sprints up to my partner and jumps at her legs, before getting overloaded and running back to me as if to say 'tohm! tohm! are you seeing this?! I FOUND HER she's right...' and then sprints back to my partner, and this process repeats itself several times.
Anyway, when we first discovered she reacts this way, we were quite close to the train platform, which gave us a bit of a scare when she went 'locobananas' fortunately she really just sprints between the two of us, and I got her on a leash in pretty quick order. But it's safe provided there are no roads or footpaths between us.
The thing is, that dogs pick up on patterns, and Usma started to expect to be taken out to meet my partner in the evenings she had Danza. She suspected I had some secret way of divining when my partner would come home (instant messaging) and she began to get excited in anticipation of my partners arrival.
Linea 1, is much more reliable than Melbourne's northern train lines like Upfeild, which is to say - not very reliable. So it was hard to time our walk to meet my partner to ensure we ran into eachother in the park, or the long uninterrupted sidewalk between the park and the station.
Anyway, on the ill-fated evening, I had completely misjudged my partners arrival time, so Usma and I sat under a large tree watching the train platform two lanes of high volume traffic away where our partner would arrive and between trains where she failed to materialize we sat and watched the bats.
I didn't want Usma to get blinkered and dash out into those two lanes of traffic in a solitary mission to find her dearest love, so I had her on the leash.
The failure is mine, a catastrophic failure in risk management, I want to make no bones about it. Part of retelling the events isn't to excuse or justify myself, but to help me understand and appreciate how my judgement can get overwhelmed.
My partner arrived, where I made the first mistake, I trailed along with Usma in my arms trying to get her attention. We got it, then revving up our dog, my partner waved to us from the platform, getting Usma's attention.
At that point, Usma wanted nothing else in the world but to go to her. I recognized that the situation was dangerous, and there was no way I was letting Usma off the leash. The first piece of bad judgement though, was that I wanted her to still be able to run to my partner, so I instead walked her in the opposite direction, to circle back around the block so we could meet my partner on the pavement.
My face gets hot with embarassment recounting it, because I do pride myself on my affinity with dogs. It was very distressing to Usma to be dragged away in the opposite direction, and she didn't calm down. I walked back a block, and then up to get to the street that runs perpendicular to the station exit, where my partner would be heading. Usma remained distressed and on edge, pulling against the leash.
Then in my failure of judgement, without eyes on my partner, to know where our dog would run to, I caved under her distressed and judged enough time to have passed and enough distance to be covered that my partner would have crossed the street. I let Usma off the leash to run to her.
She was off like a rocket, to which it suddenly dawned if something went wrong I couldn't get to her and I thought - Oh shit - and sprinted after her. I turned the corner after her and could see down the block, and could see that my partner was not on the other side of our dog. Oh fuck I thought, and called out for her.
What had happened was that while understanding well enough our dogs motivations and likely course of action, I had made a terrible assumption that my partner would telepathically intuit my plan to backtrack. So she had gone to where we were when she spotted us, taking herself out of our dog's line of sight when I took her back around the block.
Usma glanced back at me once confused, and I called out to her to come to me. I don't know if my panic that had me running towards her triggered her to move away rather than towards me, but she then bolted across the two lanes towards the train platform exit.
I could only hope that we lucked out and she would cross safely due to an absence of traffic. Then I watched the car hit her, heard the bang and watched her disappear underneath it. I screamed 'Oh fuck!' very much in the emotional range of despair. for half to one second I lived with 'I've killed our dog.'
Then as I closed the gap I spotted her body, and heard her familiar distress sound, though unfamiliarly continuous. I cannot recall whether I checked for traffic so I did not also get cleaned up. I assume I did, but this is the kind of state of activation where I make rapid fire decisions outside of my awareness. This happened once before in Melbourne when I was riding my bike down a back lane and saw white smoke escape from a parked car window - thinking I had to pull someone attempting suicide out of a car (it was most likely in hindsight a case of insurance fraud) I made a set of decisions without thinking them.
I found our dog on her back and heard her distress as she writhed around in pain. I picked her up as my partner found us and arrived on scene. I can't recall if I started apologizing there. I can recall Usma biting into my arm, and more consciously than the relief of hearing her squealing, I thought 'Good' in response to the pain. 'She's alive'.
I ran with my partner, Usma in my arms as spectators looked on. One with best of intentions, told me to calm down. The vet was like 3 doors down from where the accident happened. It wasn't a 24 hour emergency center, but fortunately the owners were on site because they were renovating. They let us in, gave Usma drugs and checked her injuries. We were lucky, her pupils contracted in response to the light, the ultrasound revealed no internal bleeding/trauma.
Usma was stablized, as I began to process my shame, guilt, self-recrimination. My partner helped a lot, we were both in do-whatever-Usma-needs mode, and I did not have to endure blame, recrimination or anger from her. I have since said to her, it is easy to imagine a world in which she would vent such emotions at me, to no constructive effect beyond the venting itself, which I appreciate.
And on that front, there was not much benefit to my own shame, guilt, self-recrimination. It would arise in the quite unoccupied moments as Usma was stabilized and diagnosed, and I voiced them as my bite wounds were scrubbed out and filled with anti-bacterial ointment. A process I would be repeating 3-4 times a day for the next week, enough holes in me to render my left arm (my good arm) inert smeared in yellow goop.
When Usma was left for observations, and we finally got to bed at 2am, I was treated to my mind replaying those seconds of Usma bolting across the street and going under the car, again and again and again.
My understanding taken from the video below of the physiological experience of failure, a catastrophic failure is that my system would have been flooded with a cocktail of adrenalin and cortisol, my stomach would have been drained of blood, and my hippocampus and amygdala would have been stimulated to ensure I remembered that failure forever... a resounding instruction to never allow this to happen again.
(this video should be queud up to 29 minute mark, where the relevant section on fear of failure is, but sometimes these links just don't work, so that's where it told through the experience of a losing boxer after a short cliff climbing intro.)
Now with the usual caveats that I am not qualified to diagnose myself with psychological trauma or PTSD, nor have a run this by anyone qualified to make a diagnosis, so I merely speculate that this event could be a candidate for psychological trauma:
In psychiatric terms, a trauma is defined, indirectly, as direct personal exposure to an event that involves a real or potential threat of death, serious harm or other threats to personal physical integrity, witnessing an event that involves death, harm or threat to the physical integrity of another person, learning of the unexpected or violent death, serious harm, threat of death or harm experienced by a family member or other close relationship (criterion A 1). The person's response to the event must involve intense fear, a sense of inability to exercise control, or horror ( Post-traumatic stress disorder in DSM-IV). ~ taken from Wikipedia.
Entertaining the notion, without accepting it, I approached it with my lay understanding, a heuristic if you will obtained from author Gordon Livingston - confrontation over time, makes things better. Avoidance makes things worse.
A process I had already begun by naming my feelings of shame and guilt and voicing them to the Vet, my partner, her partner. They were reassuring, but this was the first confrontation. While they moved to reassure me, this wasn't a 'Poor me' fishing expedition for sympathy. I was very committed as I always am to taking exactly as much responsibility as I can without usurping it from someone else.
In my worldview, responsibility is good, and why I abhor demerit cultures. I make every effort to not invoke blame, excuses, deflections or denial. The guilt, shame, embarassment and whatever other negative affect I was experiencing was a direct product of my own actions. Cause and effect.
The trauma candidate comes from the helplessness, the seconds where I called Usma's name and she ran away from me and under a car. I am grateful for this lesson in the constraints of reality, the humility to recognize failure exists, irreperable damage is possible. That microcosm of helplessness was presented to me as a consequence, downstream of where I had relinquished my control of the situation. I was not relieving it because there was something I could have done, I was reliving it, I think, because my hippocampus and amygdala where screaming - do not get into this situation.
So the second confrontation was more time consuming, it was inventoring the thoughts and actions I had taken in the lead-up to Usma's collision. The curiosity of making a decision because I understood the risks, and then making another decision as if I didn't. I found two main bad assumptions that I had made and that I could learn from - the first was just not having eyes on my partner before I took Usma off the leash capitulating to her distress that I knew was unwarrented, my partner was not going to cease to exist as Usma perhaps feared.
The second bad assumption was that my partner would follow the normal routine of heading home along the street I was leading Usma too, instead of heading to where she had last scene us. That she would read my mind, when there were other plausible assumptions to be made, like I would simply wait where I was and keep Usma on the leash until she had crossed the street.
Most embarassing for me was contravening my own primary heuristic - the golden rule of risk taking: don't risk something important to gain something unimportant. Appropriated from Warren Buffet. In other words, don't risk a dollar to gain five cents. In this case, while the joy and excitement of a dog experiencing their emotional bond with a person is one of the things that makes life worth living. This excitement is not hard to manufacture, it is never an emergency. It is not a once in a lifetime opportunity. Risking all opportunities to experience Usma greeting my partner in this way, to gain one immediate occassion of it, was dumb risk taking. And I got lucky, she isn't dead. She'll recover and no doubt do this again, albeit only ever in completely safe environments from now on.
That confrontation was internal, leaning on Benjamin Franklin's 'that which hurts, instructs.' principle, not that he put cigarettes out on children to teach them algebra. I interpret the spirit of his words as pain conveys information (with few exceptions like chronic pain from nerve damage, which conveys no useful information and must be a horrible condition to live with, yet people heroically do and can enjoy quality lives.)
The next confrontation was informing people what happened, without putting it in a passive tense like 'Usma was hit by a car' or 'Usma had an accident.' but telling people what happened, including my bad judgement and consequent actions.
I did this more in the spirit of feelings have to be felt, including embarrassment, Groundskeeper Willie's 'chewing gum has to be chewed out.' I was mostly confronting it to get it out of the way, so I didn't add to my shame and embarassment, anxiety over being discovered as responsible for this situation.
My partner was doing the same, she too has family she communicates with. For me it was hard, but doable, like taking a cold shower, or perhaps more like jumping into a cold pool. An unintended consequence of talking about what happened was that I, and we, received support, context, rather than absolution.
Something that was profoundly impacted upon me in Takehiko Inoue's long running and sporadic comic Real, about wheelchair basketball. Where one of my takeaways was how beneficial survivors are towards rehabilitation. Whether it is Tora or Yama for Togawa, Togawa for Nomiya, or Hanasaki and Shiratori for Takahashi.
We perhaps inadvertantly tapped into a resource of people who had been through a dog's recovery from a fractured hip. We got advice, equipment and most importantly reassurance that lowered the anxiety and stress levels.
In terms of potential trauma, I had two salient fears - the first was a fear that Usma wouldn't like me anymore. A dog committing a post-hoc-ergo-proctor-hoc where the fear and pain was forever associated with my leash decisions that precipitated her accident. My dad, being a farm boy, from a more sanguine age of dog ownership restored my faith in Dog as a survival machine that can manage their own recuperation and rehabilitation quite well. 'I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself' ~ D.H. Lawrence; While simultaneously allaying this fear - that the bite into my arm was not an accusatory reprisal, an act of revenge but an instinctive pain response; something akin to 'I am in so much pain something is trying to kill me, but not if I kill it first.'
And furthermore, here is a case where I am fortunate to be dealing with dogs, not people, who do not ruminate and as far as I understand, don't have ego defences like resorting to blame etc. We are also fortunate to share our apartment with another dog, Doki who allowed me to approach my second fear - which was my self-doubt over my manner and judgement with dogs. I took a 'get back on that horse' approach, because I understood what I specifically did wrong in regard to specific risks that resulted in that moment of helplessness that precipitated Usma's injury.
Doki helps, because he doesn't care. The animals of our household all did change noticably in their mannerisms when Usma came home, somewhat aware that Usma was injured or ill. Routine's changed. But what Doki specifically doesn't care about is my reputation as a dog handler, he cares about his walks.
I was afraid, the first day I took him out, he was on the leash the whole time. It was good to walk a dog, albeit missing Usma's particular presence and charisma. Doki doesn't care, he's too preoccupied sniffing and peeing on stuff, but our walk felt lonely without Usma. The second day, in some of the quiet back streets, I mustered my courage and let Doki off the leash.
Just for context, in Australia, I was a dog owner that walked my dog off the leash. I had a well trained and well behaved Labrador, and mostly council workers gave me a warning to put her on the leash if they spotted her, but we had a 15 year incident free practice of daily leashless walks. Mexico, at least in the cities I've been in, with the exception of Chihuahua, have dogs roaming the streets everywhere. Both owned and strays, many owners rather than walking their dogs simply turn them out in the morning and let them back in at night. Some dogs sit on the stoop of their house taking the sun. Others you see popping up all over the place as they take themselves on walks.
We live in a neighborhood that's probably like an 8x8 block grid, where the streets are quiet, one directional, have the occasional speed bump and drivers look for and expect dogs on the streets. Even so, both Doki and Usma generally know not to cross streets without our permission, there was the unique circumstance of Usma needing to locate my partner that lead to her breaking her usual pattern of behavior.
So it was scary, but I let Doki off the leash, yes, I would be done if something happened to him; if a few days after Usma went under a car, I got my housemate's dog injured or killed. But the fear was irrational that a Chinese Rocket might fall from the sky and take out Doki, or that he would suddenly break character and bolt out onto the road where a truck was hurtling through the normally quiet backstreets. What was important was recovering from a life lived in fear - of losing permanently my positive relationship with dogs.
After a few days of getting back into the practice of dogwalking, my anxieties dissappated, as did the tendency to relive the microcosm of helplessness unbidden. My hippocampus and amygdala have done their job, that memory is fused in there. But I find I have to recall it, as I did to recall it for this post.
I also found it helpful to practice gratitude in the face of my helplessness. Once I had lost the ability to prevent Usma bolting out onto the road and getting hit by a car, its important I feel to acknowledge how much worse it could have gone. She could have gone under the wheel and been done instead of bouncing and rolling off the plastic bumper. She could have cracked her skull and done neurological damage, losing her personality. She could have lost a leg, broken her spine, bled internally. We could have had to make the decision to put her down, then and there in the vet clinic.
I'm tremendously grateful she is alive, but had she died, I still would have had to deal with the situation. As we carry her palanquin style from house to vet and back again, I see posters for lost and missing dogs taped to streetlight poles, I'm grateful to have Usma. I wish it hadn't happened, I was grateful to have a healthy fully mobile dog in the apartment.
But it did happen, and there's a lot of good in it. I enjoy working with my partner to take care of her, it's rewarding to watch her recovery, to be genuinely excited about her peeing and shitting, and then standing to pee and shit, and then to walk and run (though that's also nervewrecking, given she started doing it after only 10 days). Caring for her slowed us down and brought us focus. It gave us an opportunity to observe how we work as a team and as carers.
The goodness is a bi-product of a bad situation, but it is good nevertheless.
If this post has any point, it's that a confrontation approach to a potentially traumatic event worked for me, in this instance. I experienced helplessness and despair for a few brief but potent moments. My mind latched onto it, much as Usma's jaw latched onto my arm as I picked her up off the road. Yeah I caught some fortune from Fortuna, much as I could have had a close shave where Usma didn't get hit at all. I still would have learned my lesson.
Had she died, much as I don't like imagining it, it would have been much much harder. It would have necessitated grief, I don't know what impact it would have had on my relationship with my partner. Whether it could have survived losing her in this particular way. I cannot argue the counterfactual.
I just see a potential here for this event to qualify as trauma and exert a debilitating effect on my life. Probably not in an all encompassing way as say being assaulted by a stranger might. Certainly being inculcated with a lifelong distrust of strangers is far more debilitating than a dog lover losing the confidence to walk his dog.
However, much as I would make an effort not to trivialize more serious forms of psychological trauma through a comparison to a dog being hit by a car, I would thank others not to completely dismiss the notion of dogs as members of a family. Certainly, few would likely spend $10,000 or $100,000 on medical treatment for a dog over euthanizing a suffering animal, whereas people would do this for a child and psychological disorders aside, could never euthanize a child. I freely admit, dogs are not on the same moral concern tier as humans, whether I prefer their company or not.
It is simply to say by listening to the consensus of qualified clinical professionals as to how to approach potential stress, trauma or anxiety. Mine dissipated, with time, proportional to the distress of the event. Benefits include feeling better, feeling 'normal' which here I would describe as returning to my pre-accident mindset/confidence levels. Feeling secure that I can prevent and avoid a future event through my own agency. Ceasing to ruminate aimlessly. Being clear of unbidden flashbacks to the feeling of helplessness.
I offer this in contrast to attitudes and appropriation of 'trauma' by activists which I would characterize as an avoidance approach. This appears to be a basic diminished capacity, where agency is foisted onto spectators who are implored not to do or say anything that might activate that trauma. In my situation it would be to accept living with what I labelled as 'trauma' until such a time that my demand was met that people stopped driving cars.
I'm agnostic but unpersuaded by lay usage and attitudes towards 'trauma', I am not inspired to adopt the example of many who invoke the term. British author and historian Tom Holland (not to be confused with the actor currently playing Spider-man nor the director of horror film 'Child's Play') who is one of the latest thinkers to adopt the annoying 'Everything is Christian even if you don't know it' line of apologetics:
Familiarity with the biblical narrative of the crucifixion has dulled our sense of just how completely novel a deity Christ was ... [Christianity] is the principal reason why, by and large, most of us who live in post-Christian societies still take for granted that it is nobler to suffer than to inflict suffering. It is why we generally assume that every human life is of equal value. In my morals and ethics, I have learned to accept that I am not Greek or Roman at all, but thoroughly and proudly Christian.
Though I will extend the benefit-of-the-doubt that he is a more rigorous historian than I would ever be, this short paragraph does not for example tackle how the crucifixion is a massive innovation over Greek Tragic figures whom nobly suffered the wrath of the Gods like: Prometheus, Sisyphus, Heracles, Jason, Achilles, Hector, Psyche, Medea, Pandora... and I cannot exclude a notion that Tom Holland is motivated by his relationship with his mother. Maybe simply because as Matt Dillahunty summarizes it 'God couldn't just forgive humans as a fallen species, blood was required so he personifies himself as human to sacrifice himself to himself as a loophole to rules he made up.' or thereabouts, the innovation upon the Greek tragedies is that a petty and capricious god sacrifices himself instead of an innocent demi-god hero, or a particularly beautiful female civilian.
Anyway, in Tom Holland's interview by Andrew Doyle on podcast culture-wars, he ascribes credit to Christianity for the contemporary phenomena of 'strength through weakness' or 'victim who conquers' where the execution of Jesus becomes the basis of the world's largest religion, wealthiest religious institutions and wealthiest nations.
That is probably what is lost from an avoidance approach to a potentially traumatic event by choosing instead to confront it. I imagine it is far more debilitating for the traumatized person, but the ability to respond is foisted onto others through compelled actions - restricted activities, special consideration, restricted speech and compelled speech.
I have no interest in exerting power over others, even Usma, given that she is alive - I don't actually want a level of control over her where in those circumstances I wouldn't feel helpless, because I don't want to kill or suppress the emotion she feels towards my partner.
As per always, if you've experienced a serious trauma, or some other negative experience you find yourself endlessly ruminating on, consult qualified help. I share my experience because I feel it has promise, I don't have the faith/courage of my convictions of an activist.
It came about by just giving the Wikipedia page on Intersectionality a quick squizz. Often these pages have some illustrative image in the upper right hand corner, and Intersectionality has this:
By RupertMillard - Own work by uploader - "I made this in Inkscape from my own recollection of Venn's construction, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6034493"
And it was clarifying: Add more ellipses and the center will approach the individual. Maths is not my forte, and last time I wrote about Intersectionality I was trying to write it into nested logic statements.
First of all, I've always liked intersectionality as a legal argument. Nothing changes there. But looking at this elliptical Venn diagram crushed my mind grapes into inspirational wine.
It reminds me of antidifferentiation, or differentiation (Maths, again - is not my forte) where you get some linear curve, and you pick a point and draw a tangent and then calculate the rise-over-run of that tangent, then you pick another point and repeat. Again and again and again and then you fit those data points to a new equation (or something). But then your teacher just teaches you the mechanical trick of differentiation - take the power and multiply the coefficient by that while subtracting one power, such that x^2 + 2x - 7 can be differentiated into 2x + 2, and likewise for antidifferentiation where for reasons I forget you might want to know the area under a graph so you'd draw a bunch of bar graphs in smaller and smaller x-axis increments so as to approach a more accurate survey of the area below a curve until you do away with the mechanical method and just learn that that anti-differential of 2x + 2 will become x^2 + 2x + c the unknowable constant.
Intersectionality I thought, could be thought of as an incremental mechanical approach at moving from a group identity to an individual identity. Intersectionality can occupy any level of resolution between some all encompassing group identity and an individual.
Like (anti)differentiation, the smaller the increments you can break down group identities into more specific/complex identities - one could simply skip this mechanical manual breakdown and skip to what intersectionality ultimately approaches - individuals.
But by my guesstimate, at the level of individuals the intuition is that discrimination is fine - who to be friends with, lovers, which of your kids is your favorite...
It may be controversial, I don't know, but my presumption is that when it comes to a domain like dating, someone can be, not as prejudiced as they may like - like broadcasting their prejudices - but basically if somebody doesn't want to date someone on the basis of their membership to a group identity or any combination thereof, then fine.
Ostensibly, in a world of infinite resource, I would philosophically have no problem with an employer, a capitalist doing a Ken Hamm and making all employees sign some 'statement of faith' for the Ark Encounter should they wish, same for some preppy douche who just wants to work with preppy douches etc. Alas, the world has finite resources and practically speaking monopolies exist, and competition tends toward monopolistic* with the 'first, second or exit' rule being generally applicable. If employers discriminate we may all have the means to set up our own lemonade stand, but not observatory, archeology museum, international airport, university, casino, club, bar, pharmaceutical manufacturer, logistical company, warehouse, open cut mining site etc. In which case, people presiding over monopolies need to have their prejudices regulated, through equal opportunity employer type codes or possibly even affirmative action, maybe even quotas if the advertised position requires no competencies for predictable reliable performance.
*(facebook has roughly 1.8 Billion daily users as at writing, twitter reports 187 million 'monetizable daily users' but used to report 330 million, flavor of the bi-annum tiktok has 12.6 million daily users, indicating in the market of social media platforms, few consumers are demanding new platforms to jump onto. People in general appear to be piranha plants, not Mario bros.)
My first post on intersectionality was primarily concerned with it as a strategy for bringing about change, this sentence in particular, sums up my reservations:
this felt like standing on the ramparts looking at an army charging my gates with a battering ram, only to see another army, or another unit of the same army come and attack the troops carrying the battering ram.
And... I still feel ultimately that I have that reservation. What I don't have, as I tried to make clear, is skin in the game.
I would say I am only affected by class issues: job security, wealth inequality, rentiers, immigration, monopolistic competition, social security, automation, climate change, education, cancel culture etc.
Of course, I will have multiple group identities outside of the class I belong in. I just don't believe any of the others to be an 'oppressed group' so presumably where my other identities intersect with my class, it makes my class struggle easier. I haven't investigated.
As I've seen Chomsky describe capitalism and I'll have to paraphrase here from memory 'Capitalism is good at giving you a choice between a Ford and a GM, what it isn't good at is giving you a choice between a car and a train.' [paraphrased]
I like this quote, because it gives market based examples of times when I want to be treated as an individual - (personal transportation, albeit for me, having a choice between bicycle manufacturers, shoes) - and times where I want to be treated as a group - (public transport).
Now, allow me to present an argument from incredulity - I can think of cases where political action can be taken by many people on behalf of the individuals - Universal declaration of human rights, Constitutional protections, Presumption of Innocence, Burden of Proof, Due Process, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Association, Freedom of Expression, Voting Rights etc.
I can also think of cases where political action can be taken by many people on behalf of a group - Abolition, Unionization, collective bargaining, women's suffrage, equal opportunity employment, affirmative action, universal suffrage, civil rights, native title, marriage equality, bodily autonomy, disability access etc.
And there are strange departures in group action as well, for example - with collective bargaining, and perhaps minimum wage, the point is not to be treated as an individual because that dumps me as an individual into a massive prisoners dilemma so I wish to be deindividuated such that a willing to bid down the price of my own labor (wages) is a dimension of competition for a job position.
By contrast, with issues around racism (redlining, employment discrimination etc.) the action is that I as an individual be treated as an individual rather than presumed to be a negative stereotype of my group identity.
Anyway, where the incredulity comes in, is trying to think of an example where one can neither have a problem addressed as an individual nor as a group, but some mid-resolution needs to be built in:
In her work, Crenshaw discusses Black feminism, arguing that the experience of being a black woman cannot be understood in terms independent of either being black or a woman. Rather, it must include interactions between the two identities, which, she adds, should frequently reinforce one another.[35]
For example, the original example I derived from Crenshaw's TED talk was a legal case where black women applied for a job at a firm that employed black men, and white women, and the judge found that the employer did not discriminate against them because they employed across race lines, and across gender lines, and the argument that carried the day was that these women were at the intersection of race & gender discrimination.
Crenshaw often refers to the case DeGraffenreid v. General Motors as an inspiration in writing, interviews, and lectures. In DeGraffenreid v. General Motors, Emma Degraffenreid and four other African-American women argued they were receiving compound discrimination excluding them from employment opportunities. They contended that although women were eligible for office and secretarial jobs, in practice such positions only were offered to white women, barring African-American women from seeking employment in the company. The courts weighed the allegations of race and gender discrimination separately, finding that the employment of African-American male factory workers disproved racial discrimination, and the employment of white female office workers disproved gender discrimination. The court declined to consider compound discrimination, and dismissed the case.[3]
The metaphor is an intersection, but is it necessary to jump down a level from group advocacy, towards individual advocacy?
Internal to the firm there was clearly racial and gender segregation - one race (or more) couldn't work in the front of house, and one gender couldn't work in the back of house.
Thinking on my feet, and out-loud, I can imagine an issue such as representation on Fortune 500 Boards or C-suite positions where if we assume women are statistically under-represented (less than 50%, say 30%) and an ethnic minority is also statistically under-represented, say Slavs make up 20% of the population but only 6% of board positions. Therefore, Slavic woman should be making up 10% of board membership in a representative world, but don't *even* constitute 2% of board positions in the actual present.
Even so, the two broadest group identities - the Slavic identity and the Gender identity - don't appear to combine into something 'independent of either' unless the implication is that the Slavic group is more sexist than the baseline - there is an ethnic difference in sexism - or a gender difference in racism... i.e. if the discrimination compounds rather than merely sums as you add group identities to the intersection... it suggests that the dominant class is 'most benevolent' in terms of their tolerance of diversity... and I don't like the conclusions where that leads because it's either a racist or sexist conclusion (minority x is even more sexist than the majority, women are even more racist than men), it's not intuitive and I have only seen prose from Crenshaw, not data and statistics. (please note, I've read none of her papers just her quotations pages) However since 2015 the Washington Post has been tracking statistics on Police Violence and there's a write up here.
It's hard to parse for a number of reasons, but in the case of police shootings, it is hard to blame the victims (ie. intragroup discrimination) since the police have to do the shooting. In which case, back to the General Motors example - it appears upon my reading that one can use 'compounding' or 'intersecting' discrimination, however it would appear equally valid that General Motors had internal segregations going on - for example - if Black men won the right to hold office careers and get off the factory floor, or Women won the right to work on the factory floor, there would perhaps not be grounds to refuse to hire black women.
The court published its opinions in 1976, thus it strains my credulity that GM was neither racist nor sexist but only intersectionally racist and sexist. The court too for that matter.
And if the high level group identity of race or sex are not the appropriate prism, why not the individual? As in moving to a position where nothing about the individual is relevant except their qualifications. Like when orchestras audition new musicians blind, judging purely by the sound, unable to ascertain the gender, ethnicity or any other irrelevant factor to the production of sound about the person of the musician.
Recruiting is fascinating, and frankly in my opinion, too broken (resume scanning software, unadvertised hires, nepotism, cronyism, misleading job descriptions, misleading applicants, misleading referees, certifying and qualifying mills etc) or too much of a market failure (I would feel confident that less than 5% of organizations have employees that can understand and accept the good reasons why all employees were hired, promoted and hold their positions).
Police shootings, given that nobody is arguing the police are sexist when it comes to fatal shootings, and women are massively under-represented (1.5 per million since 2015 vs 33 per million for men for roughly 50/50 population split) we can presume that what drives up Black women's representation in police shootings may be a statistical proximity to Black men.
Again I find it hard to imagine an intersectional course of action, rather than a group course of action - lowest hanging fruit would be individual action - which is to say with a view to protect individuals from police incompetence/corruption/abuse etc. are the across the board police reforms - outlawing no-knock warrants, stop hiring military vets (apparently there's a high correlation between officers who generate complaints and officers who formally patrolled active warzones), police training in grappling etc. and group identity based solutions - ending redlining, economic disparities, affirmative action, tax reform, desegregating suburbs, electoral reforms etc.
The intersectional response is... unintelligible to me. Beyond 'raising awareness' of the intersectional category The action items are vague:
"If you say the name, you’re prompted to learn the story, and if you know the story, then you have a broader sense of all the ways Black bodies are made vulnerable to police violence.”
and:
"#SayHerName stems from the idea that having individuals and the media say the names of Black women who have been victims of police violence will make people ask the necessary questions"
But, losing somewhat, my temper what are those necessary questions? Is the suggestion that the issue of police violence - namely excessive force, lethal force etc. with cases involving mistaken identities, unarmed civilians, mistaken addresses etc. why are the mid-resolutions necessary?
Individualist frameworks are universal, they protect the rights of all individuals eg. not to be 'collateral'...
I feel I am beginning to just circle. In light of my arguments from incredulity, I would then make the second underhanded move of shifting the burden of proof.
that the experience of being a [intersectional identity AB] cannot be understood in terms independent of either being [A] or a [B]. Rather, it must include interactions between the two identities.
Treating the above as an affirmative claim, for which I can't prove a negative, I would say that this isn't an argument but an assertion, and specifically that intersectional frameworks being useful is not enough for example I understand only anecdotally, that Aboriginal men were able to own real property in Australia, but not Aboriginal women until the 1970s sometime such that widows often faced eviction; and I can think of analogies within universal suffrage where the vote was increasingly extended to groups with some groups occupying intersections being excluded - a strong argument for intersectionality except - these civil rights campaigns can at all times be recalibrated to be universal such that whatever legislative or policy change don't extend rights to a group, or compound group but everyone.
Furthermore if anecdotes have any value above the statistics, then any anecdote of police failure etc. can indicate opportunities for the systems in place to break down and what then presents an opportunity for remedy regardless of the identity of the victim of police failure.
Crenshaw's papers from what I have seen appear to be speculative, (this is possibly a feature of Critical Theory) reminding me again to write something about epistemic exclusion. I know in at least one case Crenshaw published a 2006 paper that asserted that white women are the major beneficiaries of affirmative action policy, an empirical question, for which the paper cites no empirical data, and as alleged by Coleman Hughes, is not true.
All of which is to say, I remain unconvinced by the mission of intersectionality, but I would refine it to a skepticism that anything is gained through those mid-range resolutions between a singular group identity of common interests and universal rights of individuals.
I would stand by my initial impression of intersectionality, as a way to target activist groups, with other activist groups analogous to a political wedge issue but for some reason generated internally, rather than externally.
I find myself continually returning to 'GenderQueer : voices from beyond the sexual binary' a compelling read and specifically it's epilogue: 'Epilogue: gender rights are human rights /
Riki Wilchins.' which by my recollection argued that gender rights fall under an all encompassing umbrella of the right to self expression. Thus as a cis-het-white-male this argument was convincing that I should have solidarity with gender rights insofar as they overlap with the right of self expression which I would also have for myself. The limit of self expression is however when it comes to the obligation of others to affirm our self expression. The 'Maestro v Jerry the Great' issue.
That said Riki Wilchins has more recently published 'Gender Norms and Intersectionality: Connecting Race, Class and Gender.' and a number of books since GenderQueer, So I do not know if she herself has revised her position, though she does appear to have embraced intersectionality herself.
Regardless, I liked the original argument as the best basis for solidarity. Human rights are supposed to be enforced, for me the most promising avenue for intersectionality would be the disability intersection, because so often there are questions of physical access to be addressed and there's a cost associated, but again... as I think about it, this could be addressed across the board by the highest level group identity of 'disability'...
Anyway, I'll keep thinking so long as this keeps being a popular intuition or idea.
