Does digital technology make students stupid? That’s what a 2019 BigThink article asks. I like to read Big Think, but it seems like PopScience in a negative way—like Pop Psychology. It’s not necessarily directionally wrong. It’s just oversimplified and seeks the lowest common denominator.
On this topic, Plato quipped, voicing Socrates, in his Phædrus 14 dialogue except that his quip was relative to writing and memory. Some historians and Classicists have suggested that modern readers may be missing the satire. I’m no defender of human intelligence, but this is the demise of society because of change—whether due to writing, radio, television, computers, video games, mobile devices, and whatever comes up next.
For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise.
Plato – Dialogue Phædrus 14
Whether or not this claim has merit, my claim is that computers have trebled manufactured consent, so it allows people to be passively active, to have to specious notion of participation in the body politic, and yet are virtually tilting windmills.
It seems that some people have such nostalgia for their apparent way of life that any deviation is considered to be an affront and possible disruption. Perhaps, it’s because I feel there’s possibly as much to shed than to keep in my book, so for me, it’s more good riddance than oh heavens.
Despite its propensity for divisiveness, the Internet still offers a promise of communication exchange. I use Philosophics as a lectern or pulpit to articulate my ideas and solicit feedback. As often as not, it’s just a memorandum repository and sounding board. I also operate on other fora, whether Reddit, Quora, Facebook, or some other blogs.
A recent post on Wittgenstein‘s talking lion generated some discussion. On one Facebook thread, a virtual colleague used this post as a springboard to consider speech as reflected by Pragmatists—particularly Peirce, whose name I reverse the e and the i as often as not. I before e…
Although I have some familiarity with Pragmatists—namely, Peirce and James—, I’ve not read their work directly and intently, so I don’t pretend to be an expert and any points I suss up may have already been answered. But that’s never stopped me before.
As my colleague—let’s name him John—presents—and I quote:
Peirce was a logican but in terms of linguistic representation, he held that our representations of Universals always allow for further determination. In other words since our representations of Universals denote unexamined cases we don’t ever represent them concretely in all of their possible instantations. For example, when we say an apple is red, we do not know every object that will ever have in the past and possible will the future exemplify redness. So in other words any representationation of a Universal that we make is a kind of an uncashed check, that awaits further determination. Peirce goes on to consider such a cashing in as the Final Opinion of all who investigate. This Final Opinion can be taken two ways. First, it can be taken as metaphor for the infinite possibilities of cognitive representations. Second, it can refer to those representations that we have positited with a likelihood of denoting real Universals, that also turn out to be true in spite of their reference to unexamined cases. The first position has the problem that inquiry may be ended before the Final Opinion has been reached: The End of the World possibility. Peirce however has the second option. The idea is that some settled cognitive representations of real things have a high likelihood of denoting real Universals. In fact Peirce claims that we may have already reached the final opinion on many subjects. An example here can be what is called Settled Science. The idea is that some of the classifications of the Sciences likely denote the real properties and relations that an object has. Examples of this are the Periodic Table, and DNA sequences. We sometimes also get things right with our common sense representations of Universals, but these opinions of what counts as being real are more tenuous.
— John
John, Peirce, and I are all in accord that representations of Universals always allow for further determination. I don’t generally believe in universals, but that point is irrelevant or at least obviated by the further determination aspect.
We likely are also all in accord with the red apple example. So far, so good. Then this happens…
Pragmatic vehicle meme
John, Peirce, and I are all heading down the same path, but when it comes to abstract expressions, I need to take the slip road because I don’t feel Pragmatism captures this use case satisfactorily.
REWIND: For those unfamiliar with me or who haven’t read a lot of this blog, I am Nihilist with a fondness for Existentialism (to a point) and Zen Buddhism (as an ethical framework). Despite this, I operate somewhat as a Pragmatist, if only to navigate this world whilst I occupy space upon it.
Can we just dispense with stereotypes? I just want to cuddle. (If only humans could speak.)
In the objective world, Peirce is right* to consider that we may not be able to ever capture all that it is to be a lion or to capture every nuance of disparate lions, but speech affords us a way to categorise things in this world. It even allows us to categorise non-things but to a lesser degree of success.
Regarding danger, language is probably superfluous to expression or gesticulation. Animals without what we would qualify as language can indicate threats with screeches and screams. Some animals can even signal between threats from on high or down low. Variation in alarm calls of a vast number of different species are known to contain information on the type of threat, predator size, distance, location, or the type and urgency of a flight response.
This type of speech has facilitated humans to evolve to the point this blog exists. It’s a communication vehicle wherein one can convey to another, ‘Run, lion’ or ‘Yummy apples’ or ‘soft kitten’ or ‘hard rock’. For two speakers of a shared language, It’s generally pretty good. Even where there is disagreement on meaning, it shouldn’t take long to reach some consensus position. This is the happy path.
Fruit Dialogue
Two people can quickly navigate this possible dialogue—perhaps Adam and Eve. In response to Adam’s, ‘I want fruit’, Eve’s response result is already limited by the category of fruit. But Adam had something else in mind, so he tells Eve, ‘I want an apple’. He doesn’t want just any fruit, he’d like an apple. However, apples are subcategorised—among other attributes—by colour. Adam wants a red apple. Eve error-corrects, and she offers a Fuji apple or a Red Delicious. By now, Adam indicates that he wants that apple—a particular apple. In fact, he could have wanted that particular apple from the start—the one in the cupboard behind the tin of beans. In any case, it shouldn’t take many steps or iterations or exchanges to reach agreement. For her part, Eve opts for a pomegranate.
So far, so good. Where this all breaks down is for abstract concepts—the words I consider to be weasel words. Not only do these words have ambiguous meanings at one moment in time, but their meanings morph over time. This is particularly problematic when, for example, politicians often hide behind equivocation when they push for fairness, freedom, justice, truth or whatever other chimaerical words we’ve fabricated.
The problem is that unlike a physical apple that we can rather triangulate and interpolate into a position, abstract concepts offer no such vantage. The insufficiency of language prevents us from assessing the other’s nuanced perspective.
Perhaps the biggest problem is that of connotation. Connotation is not unique to abstract concepts. An apple can have symbolic and metaphoric meaning outside of its fruitness—semantic ambiguity. We’ve got the Big Apple, apples of one’s eye, the Biblical allegory, William Tell, Snow White, apple pies, les pommes de terres, et ainsi de suite. But this determination by context in the concrete is not available to the abstract.
Truth is perspective
Consider the perspectival image above. In the spatiotemporal world, one can illustrate the difference—as this does—, or one can change their point of view. This results in an ‘Aha! I see where you are coming from’ resolution. In the abstract world, on the other hand, is simply not possible.
A challenge for abstract concepts is that there is a recursion of connotations. So when one talks of justice, even if one can agree on which flavour of justice, one then needs to come to accord on equality and then on fairness. There’s simply too much to unpack. One might attempt to employ a philosophic approach and coin new terms, but ultimately—in order to facilitate communication—these terms much be defined by existing terms. And though this might succeed in getting us closer, any reader of Heidegger—or even Derrida—will demonstrate the inherent challenge. What happens, in the end, is that these authors are labelled as obtuse and difficult.
Just to sort of wrap it up without actually wrapping it up—but at least to put a finer point on it—, we likely are familiar with the freedom to versus freedom from debate. We’ve got perspectives of the inherent goodness or badness of humans. We’ve got sacred and secular perspectives. Since perspective colours interpretation and peoples’ perspectives are multifaceted, we can never—in my opinion—resolve these concepts, so we will continue to miscommunicate and adopt our own interpretations, forever disappointed of the outcome and left wondering why others just don’t understand these things the way we ourselves do.
EDIT: A problem with writing from a stream of consciousness and not an outline is that sometimes my mental model gets distracted and I forget to include an intended piece. Although minor, I want to include that even in the world of objects, things get classified and reclassified. For example, biological taxonomies are altered as new information becomes available. With the advent of better DNA knowledge, some entities have even changed species. The two examples that come top of mind are (1) that there are three species of what we call electric eels, and (2) some have petitioned chimpanzees to be considered as Homo troglodytes — troglodytes being cave-dwellers. Chimps and bonobos were considered to be the same species until about 1928.
Commencing around 2003, given advances in knowledge of genetics and genomic mapping some have argued that chimps are misclassified. Let’s rewind for a few moments. Orangutans, gorillas, and chimpanzees used to be considered to be part of a homogeneous family Pongidae, which is distinguished from the Hominidae family, where humans are classified. The genus subclassification of the so-called great apes is Pongo (orangutan), Gorilla (gorilla), and Pan (chimps). As every schoolchild is taught at some point, Humans are classified as the genus Homo—as in Homo sapiens or more precisely Homo sapiens sapiens.
It turns out, however, that chimpanzees are more closely related to humans than they are to other great apes. As recently as 2017, this is. an ongoing debate. One major detractor for inclusion is hubris. Humans want to feel they are more unique—more special. On the other hand, some have argued that we might be more conscientious of chimps if we felt they were genetically closer to us—more of an us than a them. Damn, dirty apes. For now, chimps officially remain Pan troglodytes rather than Homo troglodytes.
Keep in mind that science—at least taxonomies—are a matter of consensus opinion. In fact, there is an academy that governs taxonomical changes, so what is classified one way at time-X may be classified another way at time-Y. Moreover, taxonomic systems are a way of dimensionalising a domain. But the one chosen might not correctly segment its contents. In practice, this is where much of the gender debate comes it. For some, gender expression is seen as an extension of biological sex, which has been traditionally seen as binary with some exception for some 2-ish per cent for non-binary inclusion. For others, these are two entirely different maps. Even if they accept some fundamental binary sex definition, there is no reason to retain that same categorisation for socially constructed gender identity. Although this may seem complicated to some, it is still not as intractable as abstract concepts—though one might have a valid argument to consider gender as abstract expression.
Regarding different taxonomical systems, a commonly known problem is that biologically, tomatoes are fruits, botanically they are berries, but by nutritionists they are vegetables. Evidently, tomatoes are vegetables under US law—not surprisingly on commercial grounds. Don’t get me started on the Reagan administration to declare that tomato catsup was also a vegetable in an attempt to make school lunch programmes cheaper whilst maintaining US Department of Agriculture (USDA) nutrition guidelines for children.
A parting shot is a statement uttered by the sentient elephant man, who may have been misclassified.
The Elephant Man: I am not an animal; I am a human being.Example: Attachment ambiguity — Elephant in pyjamas
Reading Dennett has gotten me down a rabbit hole. I decided to take a break from book-reading and spend the day reading essays and blogs and watching YouTube vids such as this one. The question posed by the title is Which Laws of Nature are Fundamental? The topic I find curious is an established dichotomy where intelligent design or multiverses are the only possible reasons why we as humans are here to question our existence.
Full disclosure: I don’t pretend to be a physicist, so although I have tried to keep current on, let’s call it, lay physics, there is much I don’t know. But that doesn’t make me stop questioning propositions.
In the case of intelligent design versus multiverses, I feel that both go overboard. I don’t particularly cherish Occam’s Razor, but I do find it apt here. As David Deutsch states in this piece, intelligent design only manages to kick the can down the kerb.
In a nutshell, intelligent design arrives at a place with a claim that all of this can’t have been the result of chance and random events, so [insert the entity of your choosing] had to have designed and constructed it, leaving open the question of how that entity came to be. This is a spin on the age-old issue that many defenders of intelligent design-like theories seem to cling to: The universe cannot have spawned from nowhere, so its genesis must have been due to an intelligent (read: divine) entity without recognising or admitting the circular reasoning involved.
On the other hand, the multiverse solution—which I don’t entirely rule out—also seems unnecessary. In another nutshell—or perhaps repurposing the first—, the main idea is that there are many if not infinite parallel universes. Given the large number—in the manner of the infinite monkeys typing Shakespeare’s sonnets, at least one is bound to be configured just so to enable life and humans in particular.
Typing Monkeys
I don’t subscribe to intelligent design in the least. I dismiss it as implausible. And whilst multiverses may exist, I fail to see why there can’t be a single universe—this one—that just so happens to be configured. If it had been configured any other way, there would have been no life as we know it—and certainly no human life and no life to question how it get there and why.
In my mind, just because we can ask why doesn’t mean there is an answer or that we can find it. More to the point, even in a world of cause and effect, the results can be emergent on one hand and multlivariant on the other. So whilst we want to discover a causal chain of A ⇒ B ⇒ C ⇒ n, it is not likely so linear. Humans do understand the notions of stochsticism and chaos, but we don’t necessarily know how to deal with them causally. Moreover—and Deutsch has specialised in the quantum space—, our understanding of quantum processes is extremely primative. We are probably operating more from conjecture than knowledge, but one needs to start someplace. The trick is not to believe you’ve reached India when you’ve only just departed Spain.
If a lion could speak, we could not understand him.
— Ludwig Wittgenstein
As much as I love Wittgenstein’s quote on language, I find it vastly more amusing aside the lion of Gripsholm Castle in Sweden. Because as talking lions come, this one is certainly more unintelligible than most.
If a lion could speak (Gripsholm Remix)
I also appreciate Daniel Dennett’s retort that if we could manage to communicate with this one talking lion—not, of course, this lion in particular—that it could not speak for the rest of lionity. (Just what is the equivalent of humanity for lions?)
If a lion could speak (traditional)
Ludwig Wittgenstein famously said, “If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.” ( [Philosophical Investigations] 1958, p. 223) That’s one possibility, no doubt, but it diverts our attention from another possibility: if a lion could talk, we could understand him just fine—with the usual sorts of effort required for translation between different languages—but our conversations with him would tell us next to nothing about the minds of ordinary lions, since his language-equipped mind would be so different. It might be that adding language to a lion’s “mind” would be giving him a mind for the first time! Or it might not. In either case, we should investigate the prospect and not just assume, with tradition, that the minds of nonspeaking animals are really rather like ours.
Daniel Dennet — Kinds of Minds: Toward an Understanding of Consciousness (p.18)
Would human extinction be a good thing for the good of the planet? We’re all familiar with the concept of the greater good, but what is the domain of the greater? We presume it to be the domain of all humans or at least our chosen in-group. But if we dilate the aperture, we might encircle the entire biosphere. In my experience, humans rarely extend the circle beyond themselves and barely even do that, opting to extend it to their race or tribe. Whilst some humans are not as self-centred as some narcissists and sociopaths, the radius doesn’t go too far.
Is one a misanthrope if one considers the greater good to be the earth devoid of the human virus? Perhaps, yes, if stated in those terms. But if one calculates that humans do more harm than good, doesn’t the cost-benefit calculus indicate that fewer people or no people would be better for the earth. I’ve long been fond of the late George Carlin’s routine where he proses that we don’t have to save Earth; the earth will remain long after humans no longer inhabit it. It’s been said that 99.9% of species that ever occupied the earth as no longer extant. Humans are past the mean duration of a species. Perhaps it’s time to move on.
I started to write this post some time ago after having had a discussion on antinatalism. Rather, I defended anti-natalism in the course of a conversation on the inherited notion that humans as sacred.
I supposed I am not a strict antinatalist, but neither do I feel that life is somehow sacred. Mine, of course, but except that. Just kidding. If you are reading, yours is, too. Just kidding, not you either. Interestingly, this ties into the post on the narrative gravity of the self.
As I write this in a world with a population of almost 8 billion people dominated by a handful and no picnic for that lot either, there are likely enough people already. I do feel that even if population trends continue upward—given offsetting depopulation trends in some regions—, humans will cap out at around 10 billion anyway. Perhaps in a Malthusian manner, but I am thinking in terms of deer herds and population limiting factors as expressed by equations like Xn-1 = rxn(1-xn).
Life does appear to have at least common characteristics and perhaps only one: the need to procreate. The second is the need to live, but that can probably be reduced to the need to live long enough to procreate. This is core to Richard Dawkins’ Selfish Gene theory. I like Robert Sapolsky’s treatment of the subject in Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst.
The concept of ‘sacred‘ is a religious vestige. I’m not sure why this needed to be codified, but religious dogma seems to capture the notion ‘thou shalt not kill’, as if it needed to be said. I won’t spend any time on the hypocrisy of the many people who espouse this edict.
Except for that motherfucker right there!
It may be a valid position to consider me a misanthrope, but that’s probably overstated, but I’m generally not a fanboy. I guess what bothers me most is the hype and self-promotion. I don’t find it to be particularly inconsistent to see the small positive aspects humans bring and still consider them to be parasitic. This is a compositional challenge–a dimensional consideration that moves away from binary-trending heuristics, the age-old right and wrong, good and bad, good and evil, and on and on.
As with geocentrism, we put ourselves at the centre because this is how we experience life—inside out. All else seems to extend from this model, except there is no centre. It’s just our perspective. I experience life the same way. I’m no exception. Nonetheless, I don’t seem to need to cling to this central notion—this notion of centrality.
When all is said and done—when the last human has made their exit, there will be no epilogue or postscript, afterword, or coda. Humanity is a story in need of a narrator. The ongoing codicil will cease, and to copy-paste the high art of Monty Python’s parrot sketch:
E’s not pinin’! ‘E’s passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! ‘E’s expired and gone to meet ‘is maker! ‘E’s a stiff! Bereft of life, ‘e rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed ‘im to the perch ‘e’d be pushing up the daisies! ‘Is metabolic processes are now ‘istory! ‘E’s off the twig! ‘E’s kicked the bucket, ‘e’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!
As with ‘identity’, ‘self’ is a fiction. I’ve commented on this time and again. To be fair, I haven’t done much direct research on the topic. It just always felt a bit specious to me. Yet again, I feel that hubris and apophenia get the best of humans.
And then I am reading Daniel Dennett’s Consciousness Explained—published in 1991 no less. Skimming further, I find he published an article from which I lifted the title of this post.
I’ve long adopted his position on consciousness—well before reading this book some 30-odd-years after it was published—, but to find this was a pleasant surprise.
In a nutshell, the self is a confluence of events. His centre of gravity approach is borrowed from physics. In this television interview, he does the topic better justice than I would.
This is a well-behaved concept in Newtonian physics. But a center of gravity is not an atom or a subatomic particle or any other physical item in the world. It has no mass; it has no color; it has no physical properties at all, except for spatio-temporal location. It is a fine example of what Hans Reichenbach would call an abstractum. It is a purely abstract object. It is, if you like , a theorist’s fiction. It is not one of the real things in the universe in addition to the atoms. But it is a fiction that has nicely defined, well delineated and well behaved role within physics.
Daniel Dennett
Plus, why not hear it from the source?
Before this, I viewed it more as individual frames from a film—appearing to have motion and contiguity but in fact, is an illusion that takes advantage of human sense perception deficits and cognitive gap-filling functions.
Some geezer, John Gray, wrote a book having this title. It was, let us say, ‘suggested’ that I watch it in video format—over an hour-long at that. I decided to search for a summary instead.
It’s not particularly up my street. The bloke who suggested the vid posted a statement:
Atheism is a narcissistic apostasy; the adoration of the things humans do & make; the worship of the golden calves of science & technology.
When I responded thusly « This quip reduced and conflates, almost creating a strawman. I suppose some atheists might be narcissists, though I don’t see that they would significantly differ from a sample of the general population. I’m guessing the second clause is intended to connect from the first, which is to claim that an atheist is a human who chooses STEM over gods as if there are no other alternatives, which creates a false dichotomy. But to treat atheism as some monolith is to treat all religions as ostensibly identical », his response was
What is atheism?.
To which I replied, « Atheism is the absence of belief in gods (or supernatural beings, if that’s a more generalisable concept). »
well, that is not enlightening at all. Explain atheism clearly.
That is all there is to it. There are different reasons why people are atheists, but that’s the definition. Etymologically, ‘theism’ is ‘belief in a deity or deities’. Atheism, applying the Greek prefix ‘a-‘, is the negative state of ‘theism, so the absence of ‘belief in a deity or deities’.
Atheism is not science. A large number of scientists believe in God. They see no contradiction between God and science, in fact they find the order behind everything reinforces their belief.
And so here the conversation, as it was, went off the rails. At no point did I invoke science. And then he promotes the John Gray video.
Interview with John Gray on Does God Exist
And we’ve been there before.
New Atheism: the debate between science and religion was a result of confusing myths with theories. Religion is no more a primitive type of science than is art or poetry; scientific inquiry answers a demand for an explanation; the practice of religion expresses a need for meaning.
Secular Humanism: a hollowed-out version of the Christian belief in salvation in history; the widespread belief that humans are gradually improving is the central article of faith of modern humanism
Science-Religion: Gray reflects on the twentieth century’s strange faith in science – a faith that produced the false equation of evolution with progress and the racist ideologies that infect our social arrangements and political institutions
Political Religion: Modern political ideologies are de facto religions; the belief that we live in a secular age is an illusion
God-hatred: absorbed by the problem of evil; suffering, if inevitable, is at least infused with moral significance
The Unsentimental Atheisms of George Santayana and Joseph Conrad: Santayana dismisses any idea that civilization is improving; everything in this world is a progress towards death. Conrad wrote that man is a wicked animal; his wickedness has to be organized; society is essentially criminal – otherwise, it would not exist
Mystical Atheism: Schopenhauer was deeply and articulately antagonistic to religion in general; he rejects the notion that history has any metaphysical meaning, or that human beings are somehow advancing
Disclaimer 1: This summary list is copy-pasted from the linked source and edited ever so slightly to fit here.
Disclaimer 2: Neither did I watch the video nor read his book, so the summary might be off-kilter.
Still, I offer my reaction/reflection.
Firstly, this comes off not as an attack on atheism; rather, it’s an attack more particularly on Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thinkers, predominantly Scientists—as in those who practice Scientism religiously.
Secondly, this limited attack garners the same critique as I give Dawkins’ God Delusion. I liked this book, but whereas Gray limits his attack on a thin slice of atheists—despite offering up 7 flavours—, Dawkins limits his attack to Christians; perhaps, some Abrahamic denominations. This is a particular God and particular disciples.
I address these in turn.
New Atheism: I agree that Scientism simply switched faith from God to Science or it deified Science, whichever vantage you prefer. This ilk simply swapped God for Naturalism. These are the same lot who offer up ‘Self-evident truths’ and Natural Law. Please. I agree with neither.
Secular Humanism: Whilst admittedly secular, I am not quite a Humanist and decidedly not a Secular Humanist™. Here, I disagree with the underlying teleological notion of both.
Science-Religion: The only nod I am willing to give to science is the evidence-based, falsifiability over faith, but much of science is still faith-based. It just operates from a different metanarrative. Again, Scientism is no one’s friend.
Political Religion: I agree that this is as much a scourge as organised religion. By now, one might notice a trend—a healthy does of whataboutism: We can’t suck because we’re no different to this other thing that you might be attached to. Except they are all bollox through and through. Political ideology is religion without the blatant metaphysical nod—though it is still there beneath the surface.
God-hatred: Even having not read the book, this makes no sense whatsoever. How can one hate what one doesn’t believe exists? I suppose I could hate unicorns, faeries, and Harry Potter, but I don’t think that’s the same thing. The summary suggests that it’s more about an obsession with evil, but I don’t have enough context to respond meaningfully. Do atheists actually believe in evil? I don’t. And, except idiomatically, I don’t personally know of others who do. Feels like a red herring.
Unsentimental Atheisms: Satayana refutes the Secular Humanists. I’m buying what he’s selling. Conrad is taking a spin on evil but opting to label it wicked—a bit of a drama llama. I’m not buying it.
Mystical Atheism: I like Schopenhauer—probably because he’s such an underdog. He did glean a bit from Buddhist philosophy. So have I. But Buddhism ranges from the secular to the sacred. I don’t tend to stray too far from the secular. I fully agree that history has no metaphysical meaning and human beings are not objectively advancing.
If anything, this is one of the longer posts I’ve made in a while. Thanks to the Copy-Paste Gods. Allahu Akbar, Oh Mighty. In the end, Santayana and Schopenhauer notwithstanding, I am still left with a why not neither.
I’ve never been a comic book guy or into heroes or superheroes. In fact, I have always had a thing for the underdog. This article points out The Batman’s Privilege Problem. I’ve skimmed a few comic books and graphic novels, and I’ve seen a few movies, but I am not really steeped in this space to speak to the nuance—and there is probably a difference between comics and graphic novels, but like I said: not inters. I just don’t identify with most of it. Not the violence. Not the Truth, Justice, and the American way of legacy Superman. But I do sense a privilege problem. Defenders of the status quo. I wonder if comic book aficionados tend to be more politically Conservative.
A quick Google search, and I’m mostly correct. Evidently, Marvel authors trend toward the Right. This article ranks some figures Conservative, Centrist, and Left, although the Left feel more Liberal than Left, and they are all constitutionalists. Apparently, X-Men were born of the Civil Rights movement in America in the 1960s. Still not my bag. Where are the Anarchists? At this rate, I’d settle for a Marxist.
One last mention: this piece points out that even where there are prominent social justice issues raised in one or another comic, the subtext (or overarching meta) is Conservative. This likely creates tension in a manner of speaking, but it creates dissonance for me.
I don’t have much more to add, but the article caught my fancy. It resonated for me, and having not posted for a while, I figured what the hell.
I was reviewing my visitor stats, and I am happy to see extensive global coverage. North America—particularly the United States is my largest audience—, but South America, Australia, and Eurasia have representation. Africa is a bit spotty, and let’s not discuss Antarctica. I’m not sure about Greenland, but they don’t know about me either. Iceland represents, but not Svalbard, which admittedly, I’ve not heard of before. No offence.
South America is missing Bolivia, Guyana, French Giana, and Suriname. Iran, Afghanistan, and Turkmenistan are absent. Not Yemen or Oman either. I don’t know what I’ve done to North Korea, but they’ve shown me no love. I was hoping for something better from New Caledonia. I’m hoping they come through one of these days.
Africa may be distracted with other pressing issues, but I’m noticing kilometre after kilometre of no love—Niger, Chad, Sudan. Ghana, yes, but Togo and Benin are nos. The region from Western Sahara, Mauritania, Senegal, and Guinea. And the entire middle of the continent. And Tanzania and Madagascar? Forget about it.
If you happen to be visiting from one of these places, drop a note and say hello. If you are from any of the other places, do the same.
Right. So another rabbit hole. Several things I have come across recently have mentioned the concept of bureaucracy as violence. There was a reference by David Graeber and some journal articles I happened upon. I have so much going on that I don’t have time to give the topic justice, but I wanted to employ this post as a reminder—along with the host of other reminders to which I need to attend.
Let’s start with some definitions.
Violence
The intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation.
Parsing the salient parts, I distil the meaning for my intents and purposes to be the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either resultsin or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation.
For further clarity, we arrive at a
Violence is the intentional use of power, against another person that results in psychological harm or deprivation
Bureaucracy
Management or administration marked by hierarchical authority among numerous offices and by fixed procedures.
Ostensibly, my train of thought is that bureaucracy is a deontological structure meant to standardise and normalise a process. Problems arise by the facts that (1) one size doesn’t fit all and (2) it’s a system thinking challenge likely missing dimensions—if the domain is even appropriately defined and accounted for at the start. This is where bureaucracy intersects violence.
bureaucracy becomes a Procrustean bed
In my mind, bureaucracy becomes a Procrustean bed. Speaking of bed… Fais dodo.
EDIT: In a manner of speaking, I might suggest that normalisation, as a rule, is violence, but I haven’t exactly thought it through. I am not particularly comfortable with the notion of self, so against whom would this violence be perpetrated? Nonetheless, this Procrustean notion still springs to mind—as a moulding. Some might consider it to be character-building. But his lot would either deny the violence or consider it to be a worthwhile crucible. But it’s only a crucible when this character outcome comports with their accepted ideal. The only leeway given is in consideration of those with poor childhoods leading to delinquency. This does not diminish the bloodlust for justice, but it allows for blame to be cast, if not on the perpetrator then on the parents or guardians. I digress.
Hannah Arendt spoke of the Banality of Evil. In a manner, the violence that is bureaucracy is just this sort of metaphoric evil. This 7-minute summary (that could have been 4 if not for the stammering and pauses) is about just this point. In my experience, most bureaucracy is of the sort Arendt write about. I feel that this presenter is a bit more conservative about where he might draw this line.
I’ll exit this post with an observation/rant. I was shopping the other day, and I had one item. There was a short queue situated between a cashier and a self-checkout kiosk. We customers seemed to be dequeuing fine when a frontend supervisor appeared to instruct us to choose a register. I was second in the queue so his interaction with the person ahead of me went something like this:
Employee: Are you going to use the self-checkout?
Customer: Yes
Employee: [Looks at the kiosk]
Customer: Unless this register becomes available first.
Customer: [Cocks head incredulously]
Employee: You need to choose one.
At that moment, the cashier freed, and she took the vacancy. Thankfully—as my mind pondered how illogical this policy was (if indeed there was a policy) and how poorly the maths skills of whoever created it—, the self-service registered became available. Crisis averted.
The takeaway in the story is that blood pressure was unnecessarily elevated because of this bureaucratic rule. This is trivial. I won’t bore you with more anecdotes. Besides, I’m pretty sure, you’ve experienced this violence to one degree or another—whether at work, in commerce, interacting with government workers, or who knows what.
