Category Archives: Philosophy

Posts to do with philosophy of people and the world.

Seeing Red Desert at the Dryden

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I was feeling a bit depressed but I wanted to see Il deserto rosso (Red Desert) anyway so I walked out to George Eastman House (900 East Ave.)

The movie was extremely impressive. From the introduction, I gathered it was not intended so much as a condemnation of industrialized society, but rather a portrait of its beauty. It does so, however, by showing industrialization as boldly and plainly as possible. The protagonist — the wife of a high-level manager at a chemical plant — is set against this landscape as a way to demonstrate it. Her world is shifting beneath her, but the hard gray of industrialization stands sturdily.

I think most people naturally gravitate to her plight, and as such, see it as a rather bleak movie. Given my mood at the outset, I was ready to let it all wash over me in that way. But I also understand that the industrialized facets were just as central — and if you can believe that the man-made structures are the protagonist, the whole thing seems pretty uplifting.

When I left, I decided to just walk straight home. I was still in a funk, but was also affected by the film. I kept looking at the world in odd ways — looking at things that I would ordinarily ignore.

My mood got particularly bleak when I (walking home alone once again … as usual) decided that this was all there was; that my best years were behind me and solitude and ever-weighing loneliness was all I had to look forward to. From here on out, there would be no surprises and I'd just trudge through day-by-day, step-by-step.

All of a sudden, a cat raced past me, startling me. It ran ahead of me and plopped on the ground begging to be petted. I declined its advances, but it reminded me things aren't always the same.

To Las Vegas for My Brother's 40th Birthday

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Last Friday I headed out on JetBlue on my way to Las Vegas for my brother's 40th birthday. The last time I got on a plane was in October, 2001 for his 30th in Denver, and I've avoided it because of all the security insanity I kept hearing about. I didn't have any trouble, except that I left all kinds of identifying bangles and baubles at home — no LED ring, no Leatherman tool, no fun custom-made electronics of any kind. And I selected JetBlue because I heard they were pretty good. Indeed inflight services were perfectly adequate. They also brag about how much legroom they offer, but coming from riding Amtrak, I could not fathom having any less legroom — presumably my knees would be the backrest for the person in front of me.

I amused myself during the flight by using the in-flight locator channel (on the seat-back video) to identify interstates I had travelled on my way to and from Burning Man, barely able to recognize the moving semis from 7 miles above. Anyway, we did arrive late enough that I missed the Friday night show my brother was attending (for the second time in my life, I was delayed to change a tire on the plane, an occurrence I calculate must happen about 20% of the time.) Nonetheless, I got checked in to The Excalibur Hotel and Casino (3850 Las Vegas Boulevard South, Las Vegas, NV) and settled in. My brother gambles enough that his mLife card (tied to all the MGM properties) gained him free hotel rooms for himself and for me. The room was unfortunately not as luxurious as I had come to expect, but it was nonetheless comfortable (akin to a Holiday Inn room with no coffee maker) and it had an excellent view of the strip. When I got together with him and his friends, we headed out and stopped at Diablo's Mexican Cantina at the Monte Carlo (3770 Las Vegas Boulevard South, Las Vegas, NV) for some drinks and so I could get something to eat. Food cost about twice as much as it does in Rochester, but any at that price was consistently very good, and I stuck to drinking non-alcoholic beer which hovered around $6 with tip per bottle.

Saturday was my brother's birthday and we had sushi for lunch. Three of us did one of the green-screen lipsynch videos at a kiosk which ended up looking quite amusing.  That night we saw Zumanity in The New York New York Hotel and Casino (3790 Las Vegas Boulevard South, Las Vegas, NV) — an adult-themed Cirque du Soleil show. It was fantastic. Although for the most part I was mesmerized by beautiful bodies (mostly exposed if you must ask) performing astounding feats, I was enchanted by the story in the "Tissus" segment with a man swinging on silky ribbons attempting to catch the attention of his muse. At the climax when they both go flying off I inexplicably teared-up, finding the whole thing wonderful.

Once we got done with the show we headed to one of the newest casinos on the strip and selected a place to eat: Scarpetta at The Cosmopolitan (3708 Las Vegas Boulevard South, Las Vegas, NV). As it was very expensive and fancy, I opted to have a dish I didn't recognize: "moist-roasted capretto" described only as "rapini, pancetta & potatoes". For my fellow philistines, it's goat (presumably baby goat, as Google Language Tools kindly translates the phrase "moist-roasted kid") in a zesty sauce not unlike a brown gravy. (It was further refreshing to worry not about bones as I usually do eating such animals at Indian restaurants.)

My brother's and my regular haunt was Dick's Last Resort at the Excalibur (3850 Las Vegas Boulevard South, Las Vegas, NV). They were generally okay, and (as the Excalibur was among the cheapest hotels on the strip) the crowd was plentiful and rowdy. In any case, once it was just my brother and I, we did a tour of the strip, starting at The Wynn Hotel and Casino (3131 Las Vegas Boulevard South, Las Vegas, NV) — an astoundingly decorated place — where we got breakfast at The Pizza Place there. I had an excellent oatmeal (a refreshing change) and my brother had a perfectly prepared egg/bacon/cheese breakfast sandwich on a giant croissant. On our way back, we got to see a short but impressive show of the famous fountains at The Bellagio Hotel and Casino (3600 Las Vegas Blvd South, Las Vegas, NV).

My brother left mid-day on Tuesday, and I was there until late at night for the red-eye back to New York. Although everything we saw and did was flashy and impressive, it was solely done for the love of money. I was pretty okay for the first couple days, but the whole soullessness of it all drove me nearly mad by the middle of Tuesday. I was biding my time trying not to gamble (I lost about $50 in all, so not too bad, I guess) by sitting out in the warm weather and reading Great Expectations (for the first time as an adult not for any school). I talked with this guy for a bit on the street and he claimed to be England's first rapper — one Raymond Witter (also an author on LuLu) and he was one of a few who wasn't outright selling something.

Earlier in the week, I met a woman who seemed friendly enough, but I was led away from her on suspicion that she was actually a prostitute. I didn't believe it, but on the last day, I met another woman at another casino and after a too-brief chat, she offered to "go upstairs". It was so sad to not be able to make any human connection (save for other vacationers and a few chatty bartenders) … except, presumably, for money. The "alluring façade over emptiness" theme is echoed right down to the thin veneer of the Las Vegas strip over a burnt-out city (which I explored a little of on a morning run on Monday) that only supports the constant construction of its appearance and, apparently, the numerous office furniture stores needed to accomplish that end.

The Failure of Capitalism

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I keep touching on the subject of political and economic systems and it is constantly a topic of introspection. My prior essay on the topic identified socialism and capitalism and outlined their strengths and weaknesses. One of the questions on the online dating site OKCupid is: "overall, has capitalism made the world a better place?" — yes or no. I went back and forth on my answer and offered the explanation, "umm … yes, weakly. It is ONLY good for fast growth (like building a nation), and once we get to a point that we don't need fast growth, it is very very bad."

But you know, I'm beginning to think it's about as useful as using dynamite to go fishing. Sure it's the fastest way to get all the fish, but aside from that, no good comes from it. So now I declare capitalism a complete failure.

Here's why.

Let's move aside from any system and talk about what kind of standards would define a good system. Kind of like a scientific-ish way of looking at it — to look at how we would measure what makes a great system, or a great society.

My first take would be "everyone is genuinely happy all the time". That's the ideal target which isn't actually possible. So what would be acceptable? I'd lean toward "everyone is genuinely happy most of the time" more than "most people are genuinely happy all the time" — in other words, everyone in the society gets to be happy sometimes is better than some people never get to be happy. I'd further say that it be pretty balanced, so there isn't a group of people who are happy one day a year and another group that are happy 364 days a year.

So what's happy? I'm kind of a fan of Abraham Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs". I learned about in an intro to psychology class in college and it's always stuck with me. The gist is that each human being must first have jeir "Basic needs or Physiological needs" met before jee can be content in having jeir "Safety Needs: Security, Order, and Stability" met before jeir need for "Love and Belonging" before jeir need for "Esteem" (feeling successful in life to yourself and others), and all that before jeir "Need for Self-actualization".

For reference, I'll quote the Wikipedia's chart of needs to identify the specific examples that Maslow defined, adding my own interpretation/clarification where applicable:

  • Physiological — breathing, food, water, sex [physiological sexual release], sleep, homeostasis [rudimentary nutrition and shelter; e.g. letting the body heal itself and not freezing to death], excretion
  • Safety — Security of: body, employment, resources, morality, the family, health, property
  • Love/belonging — friendship, family, sexual intimacy
  • Esteem — self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of others, respect by others
  • Self-actualization — morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of prejudice, accepting of facts

I claim this is the path to genuine happiness as it fits with my own life experience. For instance, I find it terribly difficult to have high self-esteem when I feel my life is unstable. I can't say whether the highest layers apply to everyone, in part because they're a bit more nebulous (e.g. everyone needs water, but what fosters "esteem" in one person may do nothing for someone else.) This is also because the "lower" needs are more primitive to a being, and the "higher" ones are more refined by intelligence.

I guess when I talk about being "everyone is genuinely happy most of the time" I mean more specifically that every citizen has a minimal baseline of needs that are consistently met, and that any individual's level of needs that are met does not radically change from day-to-day.

What a society should do, at a minimum, is to not prevent an individual from tending to jeir needs, then to protect each individual's ability to tend to jeir needs from interference by others, and finally that it provide for the needs of all individuals.

But because the needs of an individual are hierarchical, it's the permission, protection, or providing at the lowest level that counts. In other words, if an arbitrarily foolish society does not prevent anyone from having esteem, but does prevent them from having water, then it is only as good as any society that prevents individuals from having water.

I'm going to attempt this line of logic: the minimal society is no structure at all which does nothing to prevent self-fulfillment of needs, but also does nothing to protect individuals from one another, and does nothing to provide. So any society that actively prevents the fulfillment of any need is necessarily worse than the minimal society. Thus, all societies worth considering must not prevent self-fulfillment of any need at any level.

Next, better societies protect a higher level of tending to needs from prevention by others. For instance, a society that protects individuals right to tend to all their basic needs from intrusion by others is better than one that fails to protect an individual's ability to tend to the need for food, even if (because of the hierarchical nature of needs) it protects individuals tending to the needs of safety.

And finally, the idyllic society would technically fulfill all needs, but that is necessarily impossible as some needs are met through introspection, (which curiously, by my read the definition of Christian "heaven" seems to be a society that fulfills all needs in exactly that way). Thus the idyllic achievable society is limited to providing all externally achievable needs (idyllic in that it is unachievable, but intended as a goal to aspire toward).

So now I can finally start comparing systems.

Pure capitalism — pure competition — actively prevents no person's ability to tend to jeir needs, but it provides no protection and fulfills no needs. It is essentially a system predicated on the wild state, and therefore indistinguishable from no system at all.

More realistically, there is the United States flavor of capitalism which, as it stands today, has some socialist elements. In general, it does not prevent tending to needs (although by taxing people who earn less than a minimal living wage, I could argue that it prevents those people from tending to their basic needs.) The laws we have protect individuals tending to most of their basic needs, and a few needs of safety from prevention by others. It provides a bit of a safety net and provides for breathing, food, and water in the form of welfare. On the standard of "everyone is genuinely happy most of the time", it's limited to the most rudimentary basic needs — ergo, "everyone" is guaranteed not to starve to death, although you might freeze to death. By these standards, on the scale of how good things could be, it's pretty lousy.

To try and stay concrete, I'll turn to the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. It's a document that outlines a more substantial set of rights for individuals that includes fulfillment of essentially all the basic needs, and nearly all of the safety needs. On brief assessment, I see it as a far superior system, and something worth working towards.

My fundamental argument pivots on belief in Maslow's hierarchy, and that is the nature of humans to constantly attempt to attain their needs. When all the needs on a particular level are fulfilled, it is in our nature to strive to fulfill the needs at a higher level. And by depriving individuals of fulfilling the needs at a particular level, it is impossible to fulfill needs at a higher level (at least in any sustainable, genuine way). Look to your own life and comment if you can provide a counterexample — specifically that you have not fulfilled your needs on one level yet feel it would make no difference to do so to improve your ability to fulfill your needs at a higher level.

My point is that even if there are some people who will not strive to fulfill needs at a higher level, it is worth it to offer as much opportunity to everyone else who will. That is what makes a society great.

Forget About Party in the Park

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I'd love to support the bands and music of Party in the Park but once again, the City of Rochester has made it for cars-only. Yeah, I know, that's "not what they mean," but when the the press release reads, "for the comfort and safety of everyone, patrons are also asked to leave their bicycles, skateboards, in-line skates and pets at home," just what is that supposed to mean exactly? Bring your nice safe car? They even go on to describe ample parking, but never mention pedestrian access — can we walk along the river path, or is it accessible from the sidewalk only?

And once again, they say, "Patrons may not bring food or beverages (with the exception of one sealed bottle of water) into the concerts." This is because they know they want to encourage people to buy beverages from the vendors, and by making artificial scarcity, they can make more money which is what this is all about. But more sinister is that it encourages people to rely on bottled water. That way, when hydrofracking companies pollute our water supplies, people will already be accustomed to drinking bottled water and not care. Folks already believe marketing hype from bottled water and water-filter companies and no longer believe that tap water is the safest drinking water in the world (it's held to far higher standards than bottled water or other soft drinks).

Ok, I'm done ranting for now … enjoy yer day.

The Value of a Human

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As one who detests hypocrisy, I can't help but be angered by the simultaneous belief that all human beings are valuable, yet it is the dollars they earn that defines their value in society.

There is a widely spoken belief that all people are valuable. For instance, you can't run down a person with your car whether he's rich or poor. And helping strangers is generally seen as good, and hurting them bad.

Yet when it comes to the policies we make to guide our actions, it's a different story. If you have too little money, you don't deserve comforts, health care, a place to live, clothing, food, or even water. In fact, you can be so poor that you are not permitted to simply exist: you must pay for the land you stand upon, or pay whoever owns it to exist there.

So simultaneous with the spoken belief that people are valuable is the belief that existing without working for money makes you a drain on society — that society would be better if you did not exist.  This belief has been with us for generations and it is nearly impossible to imagine an alternative. I mean, consider how birds eat berries for a lifetime, but a human is not afforded the same right: the human must work for money to buy berries.

There has been a progression which started with centralized currency (or before), and ratcheted up with the Industrial Revolution. It was then that people became interchangeable parts to a system. And more importantly, that they could be sorted and ranked in value as to the supply and demand of their particular skills. Profit-centric farming is another ratcheting step although subtler: farmers are taught to think of their animals not as living things but as "product". From there we have companies who teach their managers that people are not humans with lives and value, but as "human resources" — conceptually equivalent to a vehicle or a bolt.

I think it's time we formalize this and dispense with the hypocrisy. Rather than having an outmoded caste system that permitted individual merit within a caste, we should simply rank people based on dollars. Each persons lifetime earnings will be extrapolated linearly to their expected lifespan. That is the worth of a person. An alternative but equivalent comparison can be made with jeir average dollar-per-hour rate.

For instance, Warren Buffet's net worth in 2008 was $62 billion (according to a quick check of Wikipedia), so on average over his lifetime, he earned about 2 million dollars a day or about $90,000/hour. Compare that, say, to someone earning minimum wage in New York ($7.25/hour), 40 hour weeks, from age 18 to 65 — a lifetime total of $700,000. Basically, then, if a minimum-wage earner were to detain Warren Buffet for 8 hours (whether deliberately or not), Warren Buffet could kill them and it would be considered fair because the equivalent monetary damage was done — after all, there would be no way for the minimum-wage earner to repay Buffet's loss.

And what of the confusion in making things safer? If an airline can prevent one additional crash at a cost of, say, $10 million, is it worth it? With this system, the airline can examine the expected total earnings of each passenger, and tally for each flight. If the worth exceeds the cost of the upgrade, it can be considered a good investment.

In the end, we can simplify everything in life by moving to a true dollar-based morality. It's clear that it is desirable — I mean, if human lives were valuable, we would have universal health care just like every other first-world country, yet we have constant debate that it will be used too much by poor people. The same goes for social services and even immigration. If we valued human beings as human beings, any person living in the boundaries of the U.S. of A. would be afforded the same rights and responsibilities, yet we cling to a nationalist system to ensure that some people are as valuable as unwanted insects.

So spread the word and calculate your own worth so you can know whether you're better than your neighbor. What a wonderful world this will make!

Making a Song at the Instant Album Party

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A friend of mine invited me to an event called the "Instant Album Party", now in its second year. The gist is that they set up a practice space and a recording studio with their own and borrowed instruments and gear, and then spend a day record an album of songs, each created in 1 hour by randomly-selected people in heretofore new bands.

At first I thought I'd go to spectate, but I couldn't resist throwing my name in. I played trumpet when I was in grade school, have feebly attempted to teach myself slide guitar, and took a few months of singing lessons ten years ago. I've never been in a band or performed a whole song, save for some drunken karaoke nights. Basically no musical experience at all. So why not join a band?

I stopped in briefly at the very beginning of the party around 10:30 a.m. to drop off some audio equipment in case they needed it, and I put my name in the festive Christmas tin and tossed a couple fictional band names in the unfestive water jug. I returned at 3 p.m. and things were starting to really take off. The first band was drawn at 11:30 a.m. and at 1-hour intervals from there on. My caffeine buzz was starting to wear thin by the time my name got picked at 9:30 p.m.

So five of us guys (who for the most part had never met one another) are a band. We got four choices from the band-names bin and decided the best of them was "Brochures!". We headed to the basement Kenny played keyboards, Ben (or Ian) played drums with Justin backing up on both a tomtom and with vocals, and Ian (or Ben) played electric guitar.

While the other guys hashed out some melodies, I started scribbling furiously to try and come up with some lyrics. Earlier in the day, someone was telling a story that happened a short time after breaking up with his girlfriend, except he used the phrase "brokeing up" by accident. I commented that "brokeing up" really captures that initial feeling where present-tense and past-tense collide, and I decided to try and work that into the song. Aside from that, I just listened to the style of music and wrote down a bunch of lines. Within 10 minutes or so the words started to congeal into a simple 3-verse structure with a chorus.

I shared my ideas and did my best to match a melody to the music already created, singing my best on the microphone. We hashed through it a couple times and (owing largely to my lack of musical and band-performing skills) I had a hard time figuring out exactly when to sing. But it wasn't long before the hour was up and we headed to the recording studio.

Making it more difficult for recording was that I had to sing once for the band's sake, then again listening to the recording, and I just couldn't remember exactly how I did it the first time. Nonetheless, things sounded pretty good and Justin added a harmony to the chorus in a subsequent track. We finished at 11:29 p.m.

We got to name our song, and picking from the lyrics, we all agreed "There is no July" was the way to go. Presumably they'll put the new album on the same Shark Tank Shows BandCamp.com where the 2010 album is available for download.

Anyway, it had dawned on me earlier that day that I finally had an answer to a question from my own (and something similar from anyone's) past: "how do I meet women?" Of course, in my case, if I were asked "well, why don't you?", I'd say I was afraid of the unknowable. So one of the big things to do, I think, is to practice boldly entering the unknowable future. That is — along the lines of fear and excitement like I've talked about before — making a habit of seeing new opportunities as something to excitedly experience rather than something to fear failing at. If I had lived like that at age 25, I'd probably be a few years "ahead" of where I am now. But no matter because every time I remind myself to push myself, the more of a habit it forms, and the better things get.

Watching END: CIV Resist or Die at the Flying Squirrel

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I figured it would be interesting, so I headed over to The Flying Squirrel Community Space (285 Clarissa St., formerly the Flower City Elks Lodge) to see the essay film END: CIV Resist or Die. Filmmaker Franklin Lopez introduced the film by talking about how he was deeply moved when he heard Derrick Jensen speak and how he built his film around much of Jensen's work. Lopez said he was impressed by the impeccable logic laid out in Jensen's books Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization, and Endgame, Vol. 2: Resistance, which outline the environmental apocalypse in our midst as simply being caused by what we call "civilization". I'll narrow things a bit and discuss corporations and industry.

First, note that corporations, organizations, machines, and tools, if anthropomorphized, are psychopathic. In other words, these things behave without consciousness, hence without inherent morality. I know that corporations and organizations include people which do have morality, but the nature of the group does not reflect that individuality. In fact, because corporations and organizations have rules in place that prevent any one person from having any decision-making power, the effect of their individual morality is nullified.

Second, all corporations we create have as their highest priority (or if not, a high priority) to make money. The secondary priority of a corporation is to operate in its industry sector. There is no primary consideration to the value of human life, or of life in general, or of the resources life needs to survive. As such, if life-giving resources, life, and human life are an obstacle to those goals, the corporation will attempt to spend as little money as necessary to get past those "obstacles."

Third, corporations generally do not have an expiration condition. As such, they will continue to operate in the primary industry sector until there is no economically viable way to continue.

Finally, the economic and social system we have in place is generally taken as given. That is, what we call "civilization" cannot be changed directly.

The film looks closely at two industries: oil production and logging.

In the case of the logging industry, the cheapest path to financial success is greenwashing — giving the illusion of sustainability — as that is cheaper than actual responsible forestry. In one instance, a tribe of Native Americans attempted to stop a logging company from cutting down the forest on their sacred lands, but Greenpeace intervened and came to an agreement to permit logging of their lands. (Yes, you read that correctly: Greenpeace voluntarily did not stop the logging.)

More damning, though, is the case of oil production. The industry likes to claim there are nearly limitless reserves available. What they fail to mention is that unlike when oil was discovered bubbling out of the ground, the extraction of newly discovered oil is nearly a losing battle. In fact, if they were charged for the water destruction and the pollution from leaks and accidents, it would likely not be profitable. But the industry subsidizes itself by coercing agreements to use and pollute water without added cost — destroying the resources necessary for life in its driving need for further profitability.

The film refers again to Jensen's works to note that peaceful protests were coincident with violent ones. In other words, Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. did not act in isolation — rather, they were the peaceful resisters in a sea of varying degrees of civil disobedience, property destruction, and bloodshed. As such, the power structures in place were able to engage them and make some advantageous changes, but only so much as to defuse their more violent contemporaries.

It's clear that peaceful protest alone accomplishes nothing. I have watched as wars were started with 250,000 people in the streets of Washington, D.C. in opposition. And I now see how natural gas companies are running roughshod over the peaceful protest of citizens only wishing to protect their water supplies from contamination. Without the teeth of violence, no change occurs, even if it is not those acting in violence who sit at the negotiating table in the end.

Derrick Jensen has an interesting quote about all this from Endgame, Volume 1. He opens by asking if the reader would have joined the resistance in Nazi Germany then says:

Now, would you resist if the fascists irradiated the countryside, poisoned food supplies, made rivers unfit for swimming (and so filthy you wouldn't even dream of drinking from them anymore)? What if they did this because … Hell, I can't finish that sentence because no matter how I try I can't come up with a motivation good enough even for fascists to irradiate and toxify the landscape and water supplies. If fascists systematically deforested the continent would you join an underground army of resistance, head to the forests, and from there to boardrooms and to the halls of the Reichstag to pick off the occupying deforesters and most especially those who give them their marching orders?

When, exactly, is enough?

Discussing Anarchism Against Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia

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For the past three weeks or so, people have been meeting at The Flying Squirrel Community Space (285 Clarissa St., formerly the Flower City Elks Lodge) to discuss anarchism. Having not attended the earlier meetings, I can't really tell what constitutes anarchism (e.g. self-rule? using the self-organizing facet of humanity? not having a government?) but I couldn't help but attend the seemingly unusual topic of "Anarchism Against Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia".

I'd say there were about 15 people there, and most of them had attended the other meetings and read the associated articles — it's something of a free-school model. I think everyone expected a more lively discussion because the topics were so emotionally-charged, but the ground we covered between was fruitful and interesting.

In short, Capitalism depends on exploiting value to gain more than is spent. Through that, it seems to demand an underclass: a group of people who are considered lesser and therefore are free to be exploited. (In fact, the only way great wealth and power is achieved is by exploiting others.) And the way to identify the underclass is to tie the "underclass-ness" to a defining characteristic: woman, gay, black, Irish.

Anarchism, by eliminating the presumption of authority, denies the creation of an underclass. In other words, anarchism (when considered "self-defined rule") does not permit the creation of people having authority: it is up to each individual to grant that authority. So there is no way for an authority to declare that you are X and therefore shall be exploited; rather, you as an individual would have to grant an authority that power, and permit yourself to be exploited. Presumably you would never volunteer for that.

The trouble is that the system I live with (that is, in America) will always find a new underclass to exploit. Lately it seems Hispanic people and followers of Islam are the newest targets (not that they were ever considered equals). Although we have also exploited the Chinese in their own land to that end, and I suspect the next source of cheap labor will be on the African continent. I find it a distasteful cycle that I'd like to see end sooner than later.

Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton Discuss Their Book "Picking Cotton"

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A few months ago I attended a film screening sponsored by Restorative Rochester. Since then I signed up on their Yahoo! Group and have been lurking for a while. The group's goals revolve around "restorative justice" which — as I understand it — involves bringing victim and perpetrator together to find a sense of closure. The U.S. legal system is a correctional and punitive system that seeks to find a way to punish a perpetrator in a manner proportional to their crime — yet it ignores the wishes of victims in its rigidity.

Last week I decided to introduce myself to the group. I mentioned that I wanted to refrain from contributing in conversation as I want to try and give my legal-system thinking time to adapt to the possibilities of something else. In other words, I'd probably ask the same questions as anyone, starting with, "if you offer an alternative to punishment, won't that give criminals free reign?"

Anyway, lurking lasted all of a half a day. Kit Miller sent out an message that they were looking for additional people to join the group for a dinner with Jennifer Thompson-Cannino, and Ronald Cotton, co-authors of Picking Cotton at The Asbury First United Methodist Church (1050 East Ave.) I had intended to go to the lecture and discussion anyway, so I immediately agreed.

Ronald and Jennifer have the most awkward answer to "so how did you two meet?" In 1984 Jennifer was raped in her apartment. She had the presence of mind to study her attacker and memorized his face. Through the course of the investigation, the closest match was Ronald Cotton, and she confidently believed he was her attacker. He went to prison for 11 years until he was granted permission to have the DNA evidence tested and, as he had claimed all along, he was not the man who raped her. Eventually Jennifer sought to meet Ronald to resolve her fear that he was steeped in resentment toward her. As it turned out, she was mistaken, and they became friends as both were victims of the actual perpetrator who was later convicted of Jennifer's rape and six others after hers.

The first time I heard their story, I thought, "that's wonderful" (albeit in a heavily qualified way). A more common reaction is to be incredulous that there can be any healing and forgiveness. But what alternative to forgiveness is there? And in this case, it was neither Jennifer's nor Ronald's fault, so it seems obvious to me. I don't mean that I'm holier-than-thou, but even when I'm angry at a transgression against me, I cool very quickly and generally conclude that staying angry — or generally believing in the winner/loser model — offers less value than forgiveness and resolution. That said, I'm less amenable when the other party stays remorseless and confrontational. Thankfully that's usually not the case, especially when I can genuinely offer a solution through forgiveness.

The things that resonated most with me were about the ways our justice system failed. Racism and prejudice aside (not from Jennifer or Ronald, by the way), I was once again jarred by the unreliability of eye-witness evidence, I reinforced my opposition to the death penalty, and I am saddened that people justify the bad things they do by believing that they have some kind of credit for being a "good person".

On prejudice, I'll just note that the police, after hearing Jennifer's description and seeing her composite sketch, probably swayed the whole case by presenting Jennifer a 3-year-old photo of Ronald that better matched her description.

Having watched things like The Selective Attention Test, I'm amazed at how bad my perception really is. Like everyone, I live every day with the persistent, tenacious illusion that what I perceive is a perfect reflection of reality. Yet when I'm presented with something like that video, I'm always astonished. I keep that knowledge close at hand, however, and even if I fully believe in my perception, I deliberately apply uncertainty to the way I express my perception to others. Yet nobody teaches us that fact — that our perception is lackluster — so our justice system is still rooted in an ancient belief that an eye-witness is proof-positive. Thankfully, I think this is changing (even lawyers who claim this is true are not considered as deceitful as they once were).

Relatedly, would this not be the kind of case that warranted the death penalty? What if the real rapist had gone on to kill his other victims — and Jennifer was the only one who survived? It is far too big a risk to potentially kill an innocent person. In addition, they had mentioned in the talk that the DNA evidence from the case was slated to be destroyed 3 days before Ronald requested the test, so had the justice system acted at its normal geologically-scaled rate, Ronald would still be in prison, and all the good that happened wouldn't have.

And finally, my favorite topic: religion bashing.

Ok, actually it's only tangentially related. The fundamental problem is believing in the possibility that a person can be good or bad. It's as illogical as claiming a glass of water is happy or sad: it is not the kind of assessment that makes sense. Only individual actions, taken in isolation, can be considered good or bad. And even then, the moral judgement is largely based on the observer.

The trouble in this misattribution is that belief in morality within a person dilutes the perception of morality in their actions. And I'm talking about belief in the self: if I believe I'm a good person, then any action I do must necessarily be good (or at least better than a bad person who does the same thing). Likewise, if I think I'm a bad person, then it's in my nature to do something bad.

So how does this relate to religion bashing? Well Jennifer mentioned that when she doubted herself — when she doubted her actions were the most right thing to do — she remembered her religious upbringing and reinforced her belief in her inherent goodness, ergo the goodness of her actions. I think that the failing of religions is teaching "you are a good person". As I said, the nature of that statement is in error.

A better teaching would be that your past does not dictate your behavior — that there is not inherent good or bad in people, but that whatever you do or don't will benefit some and harm others. I get stuck at this point because no guideline is adequate. Everyone desires to do good (that is, for ones actions to have beneficial consequences): it's at the heart of what lets us as individuals and us as a society survive. Any attempt to codify that dilutes what it is to be human.

Jayce's Gender-Neutral Pronouns

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I decided I, like many other people in the world, would take a crack at making gender-neutral pronouns in English. I contemplate it every time I seek an alternative and end up unsatisfied. I commonly fall back on substituting plurals with an implication toward a singular actor because it sounds okay phonetically. Yet it's grammatically incorrect and it fails terribly when you're also referring to a group (for example, "They came toward me. One stepped forward and they shook my hand.") Likewise, using "one" and "it" is frustrated by either grammatical clumsiness ("A child stepped forward and one gave me a flower.") or emotional and social distance ("A child stepped forward and it gave me a flower.")

Starting from how the "th" sound of "they" and "them" is phonetically similar to the "zh" sound, I considered substituting "zh" for "th". But I had adopted "Zhust" as my "Playa-name" for Burning Man in 2010, and although it should be pronounced like "just" with a more z-like "j" sound, most people pronounced it "zu'hust" instead (even if I spoke it first). As such, I'll simplify things and go straight to substituting "j" in the various "they" forms. I made a table to summarize, and in doing a bit more research, I found the work of Micheal Spivak which looked promising, as summarized in this Wikipedia article. (And while there, I decided to steal from the Wikipedia article "Gender-neutral pronoun" for my descriptions.)

Description, Masculine Example Masculine Feminine "They" "One/It" Spivak Jayce
Nominative (subject), "he ran" he she they one ey ("A") jee
Objective (object), "go to him" him her them it em jem ("gem")
Possessive determiner, "this is his ball" his her their ones eir jeir ("jair")
Possessive pronoun, "the ball is his" his hers theirs its (or ones) eirs jeirs
Reflexive, "talked to himself" himself herself themself oneself eirself jemself

So to take a sentence like, "He went to the store and bought himself a coffee with his own money.", my gender-neutral technique yields "Jee went to the store and bought jemself a coffee with jeir own money." I realize that "jem" is a homophone for "gem" and "jeir", a shortening of "Gerry", but that doesn't lead to the kind of pronoun confusion of the common substitutions — even "I gave jem a gem" (which sounds clumsy because of newness) is really no worse than, "he took on the airs of his heirs."

I think Spivak and I are on the same page regarding rationale (familiarity, pronunciation, starting from the plural forms), but I really don't like that "them" is often abbreviated "'em", and that logically the reflexive should be "emself" but it sounds like "himself" leading to "eirself". You can read a lot more about it in this lengthy and informative case.

So from now on, I'll start using these terms whenever necessary, probably to the consternation of all my friends.

[Edit 2017-Jul-10: fix possessive determiner from "hers" to "her".]