Portrait of a Person - a New Writing Project

Hello, dust and cobwebs of my long-forgotten blog. I birthed an ideachild this morning (read: late afternoon after I woke up in a daze) that I wanted to follow up on. (And I guess it's important to let people know I'm not dead yet!)

I haven't spent enough time thinking about whether or not this is a good idea, since the level of honesty is maybe not something people are used to, so I might just not tell anyone about this series of posts in hopes that they're just never seen. But I do want to write them.

This series is going to be a dozen or two individual posts about specific people I knew in college. Just a thorough description of how I understood them and what they meant to me. I can only do this for those people that I felt like I had some actual insight into, so a lot of friends won't be able to have a slot here; not for lack of love, but because we probably just didn't talk enough for me to learn about who they were at their core. And hey, maybe I'm much worse than I thought I was at reading people and this will all turn out to be kinda' off-base anyway. Let's find out~

Full Circle

Well, now that I'm sufficiently "inspired" to write, might as well continue and bring this full circle to one of my earlier blog posts where I contemplated out loud the idea that I may not live to see another year (spoilers: I'm still here)

Here I am, whiny 20-something cis, straight, white male, spending half of my time an insufferably opinionated politics wang, spending the other half being insufferably depressed. Is it any wonder I don't make new friends and I can't keep prospective romances from fleeing after a month with my simultaneously infuriating, frustrating, and neurotic mess of a mind?

It's been about two weeks on the dot since my last depressive meltdown. Hardly enough time to get used to not constantly feeling broken. Every time, I wonder if it'll be the last. I wonder if I'll magically get better this time, or alternatively if I'll finally feel so broken that I'll do something stupid and either life changing or life ruining.

The first thing I did when the depressive wave hit full force today was give heavy consideration to finishing my work for the day, telling my boss I quit, going home early, packing up a pillow, my cat, and a few necessities, leaving a check for several months' worth of rent, and just leaving with absolutely no plan or idea what I was going to do. Shit, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't still turning in my mind as I write this. Or maybe I'll finally write down a date and plan a trip to somewhere where assisted suicide is legal (turns out the four US states that have it require the patient to have a terminal disease, and somehow I doubt the rhetorical argument that depression is terminal would work on them. That and you have to be a resident).

I worry about becoming a statistic- a note on a page and a stain on the ground. But I worry more about having these feelings for the rest of my life. Feeling trapped in this body- in this mind- in this life.

The real thing I'm worried about? I'm worried I won't have someone who can support me through that decision. And I'm worried about how terrible it would be to ask someone to do that- to be there with me through the decision to kill myself. How on earth could I possibly ask someone who's presumably a close friend to travel with me- to help me find closure in life and in death and hold my hand before I take that step of finality. How could I do that to someone I care about? But how can I continue to do this to myself? To keep going when it hurts so much so often? To persist even when I've built my life so poorly on a foundation of dust and cobwebs; structurally nonexistent. I'm a runaway train that just hasn't crashed yet, but is destiny-bound for disaster.

I go through this song and dance every month- through therapy, psychiatry, drugs, coping techniques, hobbies, friendships, extra sunlight, extra sleep, and all I do is get more resigned, more neurotic, and more miserable. Even as much as I would have wanted companionship, I don't want to put anyone through that, knowing how bad I've been in relationships past and how much worse I appear to have gotten since.

So maybe it's about time I throw in the towel and embrace the stoic inevitability of death (who says I can't be cliche, even in times of despair?).

Who am I kidding? This'll end up like all the others- a plea for attention and recognition because my sense of self-worth is wrapped up entirely in what others think of me, despite going so far out of my way to alienate people and tread my own path. I'm too paralyzed by self-doubt and fear to make any decisions on the finality of death.

Here's hoping I figure it out someday so I can finally get off Mr. Bones' Wild Ride~

Voting Third Party for the General Election

Preface: This only applies to states that have the potential to matter in the general. If you live in California, I don't care if you vote third party, the democrat will still win. I'm also about to yell at progressives despite being a staunch progressive who supports things as far left as universal basic income.

So, I was scrolling through my feed today, when I happened upon a friend of a friend admonishing people who advocate for voting for Hillary if she's the eventual nominee. This person chided those of the position as "a thinly veiled attempt by cis straight white people to tell marginalized people to sit down and shut up and vote Democrat."

Well, color me pissed. Mostly unrelated, but the poster was a straight, cis, white male (I'll address this more later). Second, I get the exact opposite impression (though I try to be mindful of such concerns). Incremental benefits for marginalized demographics as opposed to direct detriments for marginalized demographics seems like a pretty obvious pick, but more germane, the argument that not voting against Trump represents a huge amount of privilege was never aimed at marginalized groups. It was aimed at white, middle class college students who would rather watch the world burn than see the status quo perpetuated (I'll hit this in a bit).

Lastly, it advocates instead for something unhelpful and impractical: voting third party.

Sorry, the green party isn't viable. Libertarian party isn't viable. None of the third parties are viable. And they won't be until our fundamental election rules change.

I want it to be- I really do. I like a lot of what they have to say (although surprise, they're kind of anti-science with their stances on GMOs, holistic/alternative medicine, and nuclear power)!

But they're not viable. Progressivism is getting more popular, but the country is still mostly moderate. Even if it wasn't, convincing almost literally everyone in a political party to abandon ship basically isn't going to happen for a dozen different reasons.

The thing that a massive movement to a third party would do is spoil the election. Enjoy President Trump.

Acknowledging this isn't some sort of DINO conspiracy to get minorities to keep establishment dems in power (okay, I bet there are some dems who feel this way, but don't generalize everyone who believes in the "lesser of two evils" phenomenon), it's an effort to literally get the best outcome we can out of a shitty situation.

I get that you want to burn it down to remake it. "Watch the world burn." The DNC "deserves" it. To a large extent, I agree with all of that. But this isn't about me. This probably isn't about you either, given that most of the people on my friends list (and most of their friends) are white and closer to middle class than anything else.

This is about Muslims losing rights, potentially being monitored, counted, labeled, and possibly being shoved into camps depending on how the general public runs with Trump's message.

This is about immigrants being able to seek the American dream (whether it's a bit of an unattainable lie or not) without being literally walled out.

This is about refugees being able to flee a wartorn country to the safety of our arms.

This is about choosing between a status quo warhawk or an egomaniac who cavalierly announced he would employ worse than waterboarding to get what he wanted- announced he would kill the innocent families of suspected terrorists.

This is about making sure that women's rights start climbing back up finally. Safeguarding the right to safe and accessible abortions and birth control.

This is about making sure that impoverished people have some hope with SOME kind of minimum wage hike, even if it's not as much as we want.

Seriously, I get it- I've been a Bernie fan since long before he announced his candidacy. I've wanted him to run for president for the last two elections, and I think he's got the right idea to push for a sweep of new, progressive congressmen. That's how you change a party; change it from the ground-up. You're never going to get the party to change by wasting 5% of the vote on a third party candidate. Do you remember Ralph Nader? He didn't change anything. No one in power saw that 2.5% of the vote he got and thought "we're losing the people! Quick, veer the party left!"

Bernie supplanting the democratic establishment by operating within it is the closest you'll get to a party coup on the left in this generation.

But you, white, straight, educated, cis male- you voting third party is the fucking height of privilege because you'd rather see the world burn down out of ideological purity (hoping naively that it would swerve hard left upon being rebuilt) than to make incrementally beneficial changes for marginalized demographics.

There's a common rebuttal that Hillary and the DNC are holding supreme court seats hostage- they're acknowledging that they're the lesser of two evils, but that they're still evil. And it's absolutely correct, and you're right to be pissed about it.

And you know what you should do?

Participate in politics. Get Debbie Schulz kicked out of the DNC chair position. Participate in local politics and get progressives into whatever positions they can. Once the party has been taken over at the ground level (or even a little before that), progressive presidential candidates will be seen as more viable by the establishment- they'll be a part of the establishment. Does playing the game suck? Absolutely. Should you have to? Nope.

But we have a lot of obligations that we shouldn't have. And the best way to solve them as long-term problems is to change policy and the people who push policy. Our democracy is set up to be slow, deliberate, and with high inertia. You can't just change that by pissing your vote away. Even if, Jill Stein (Green party candidate) got 5% of the vote and we managed to get through 4-8 years of Trump without any catastrophes, she would get to participate in debates and be able to get ignored by the media like other outsider candidates do (remember Ron Paul?). And what then? She'll continue spoiling the vote? How many lost elections do you expect to have to go through before something "clicks" and the DNC "fixes" the party? And what happens during that time? Are you okay with abortion becoming totally illegal during that time? What about South American immigrants being totally banned? Or Muslims being put in registries?

What are you willing to allow in the name of ideological purity?

Hillary sucks, no question. I actually hate her. But if you held a gun to my head and asked me to pick between her or Trump, the idea of picking Trump baffles me. If you legit think his social policies are acceptable, then this post isn't for you and we shouldn't know each other anyway. But if you think Hillary and Trump are the same, I have no idea what world you've been paying attention to. They're both wealthy corporatists with a penchant for war. And those are big things; but that's not even close to the sum total of their positions or the expected consequences of voting for them. One of them will be neutral or potentially good for marginalized groups. The other will definitely be actively detrimental. It shouldn't even be a discussion if your focus is on marginalized groups.

Hillary sucks, but she's popular, and there's no way in hell she'll lose by enough of a margin to make the DNC rethink everything they represent, even if that was how political parties tended to work (they don't usually).

Change the ground landscape. Bring a progressive age to local politics and the people around you. The rest will come naturally. And with a country of 300 million people, you're not going to get much better than that.

Reparations

Here we go. We're gonna' discuss something difficult and divisive. Something that is automatically muddied because I'm a white male. But I want to address this because it's come out of the woodwork with Ta-Nehisi Coates admonishing Bernie on his no-reparations stance.

In particular, the disagreement arose from Paul Krugman's take on Medicare for all, the Bernie Sanders version of universal healthcare. Krugman argued that we don't have the political force necessary to get anything like that through congress- which is a fair argument. Many people, in response to this, have said that Bernie at least has the courage to try something impossible because it's the right thing to do. He's fighting the good fight, even if he'll lose.

Ta-Nehisi Coates saw that and remarked that this position seems at odds with Bernie's thoughts on reparations, which is that it's impossible, among other things. He criticizes Bernie as inconsistently wanting to do one impossible thing for the good of all, but refusing to even try another.

That's where we stand after the last two and a half weeks.

And I'm frustrated about it. Not least of which because this kind of rhetorical demand isn't placed on anyone but Bernie. But also because Ta-Nehisi is calling Bernie out on a discussion of reparations that does not meet his definition of reparations, which means he's calling Bernie out about a discussion he didn't have. The question, when asked of Bernie and when discussed in common parlance today is about money. Payment. Compensation.

With all due respect (and I assure you, there's a lot of it), reparations has an entirely different set of challenges facing it than universal healthcare. Namely, there are a lot more challenges facing reparations.

Both problems share one roadblock in common: neither venture would likely see the light at the end of the tunnel that is the legislative process. If the similarities continued beyond that, I would be able to stomach Mr. Coates' derision for Bernie's position, but that's just not the case. Not only are there other problems, but they're far greater, far more germane problems than simple congressional gridlock.

First, reparations, as a concept, relies on harms done, which presents a legal roadblock. Each individual, to be entitled to reparations, would need to prove that their ancestors were slaves themselves. That alone isn't a huge hurdle, since the majority of black persons in America are descended from slaves in some capacity, but because we're talking about tangible, non-equal moneyed compensation, each individual would need to prove exactly what their ancestor went through in order to fairly determine how much compensation should be awarded. This means proving how long they were a slave, proving what kind of treatment they may have endured, and proving the link between that and the injustice the claimant has suffered to this day (this final item likely being a proof necessary from a legal representative in a supreme court case over the matter, since it would assuredly come to that). So, aside from the political barricade, you have a cumbersome legal one. Accounting for every black person, vetting their claims, proving more likely than not that their claims are sufficient to warrant moneyed compensation and determining how much compensation-- for every black person in America? We're talking decades of work, which might be worth it if not for...

The problem with solving systemic issues of inequality by cutting a check to each sufferer. It doesn't work. Take lottery winners, pro sports athletes, and other rich-quick examples from history. Most of these people end up bankrupt within a short period of time. This is because people who haven't received sufficient education or experience in personal finances who suddenly come into a huge windfall of money have no idea how to manage it. They go overboard, enjoying the luxuries that they were deprived of their whole life to that point. They live an unsustainable lifestyle because they don't know any better in many cases (mind you, this applies in general to under-educated individuals). Cutting every black person in America a check to make the problem "go away," will result in a lot of people, many of whom are under-educated thanks to systemic racism and inequality, getting a windfall that they often will be unable to or unwilling to manage before it disappears completely. Handing people a lump sum of money is a terrible way to undo systemic injustice that they've faced their entire lives. It's a terrible way to correct a problem, since it's limited in scope, and it fails to address the problems that led to the inequality in the first place, but more on that later as we move onto...

The excuse that America then has to dismiss racism as a problem. By giving reparations to whomever is deemed deserving, the justice and political systems of America will be able to say "look, we paid for racism." They can throw their hands up and say that any problems that come after that day are not their fault; not society's fault. They'd be wrong, but they would have an argument to stand on. When future generations complain about inner city schools, police stops, incarceration rates, conviction rates, employment rates- all they would need to say is "we already gave you money. What did you do with it?" And no matter what the response is, it will be black people that look like the irresponsible party in this instance. I don't think that's acceptable behavior for legislators. I don't think that's fair or moral, but it's what they'll do, and it won't be easy to argue against. It'll be even harder to get the support of average Americans after something like that happens. So, now not only do we have a political barrier, a legal barrier, and a pragmatic barrier, but we have a second political barrier to further progress in racism discourse. But as if that's not enough, there's also...

Money. There's a limited amount going around, which poses two distinct problems for reparations: 1. The money will have to come from somewhere. Namely, it will be argued that it needs to come from social services, since those are, it will be argued, already subsidizing the sufferers of systemic racism. If we give them money, they shouldn't need it from the safety net, which can then shrink as a result. They may go as far as to take from related areas, like education, healthcare, food programs, etc. All bad things. The second, potentially more relevant problem, is that there are currently roughly 42 million black people in America. 42 million. Let's be generous and say that for whatever reason, only half of them manage to make a case for reparations. That's 21 million individuals who will be paid. How much could they reasonably get? $1,000 for all of them would cost $21 billion. A mere thousand bucks. And that's nowhere near enough to make a substantial difference in the fight against systemic inequality, poverty, and injustice. But how much would actually be due in a reasonably world? Between 6 and 14 trillion dollars. An amount that is functionally impossible to grant any cause, no matter how righteous, even if all other obstacles were eliminated outright. An amount that would destroy the economy of the US were they to give it out to 42 million individuals. But ultimately- above all of this, there's one problem that cannot be overlooked and cannot be understated...

Money doesn't make the problem go away. Racism is an attitude, a cultural zeitgeist, a set of values and expectations we've cultivated over generations. Throwing money at it won't make it go away; it won't solve the problem. A thousand dollars for every black person would be swell for a year, but probably wouldn't last beyond that. For some, that might even make a great difference, but it would come at the cost of having a leg to stand on in the debate for systemic change. Change for who gets educated, how well they're educated, what kind of things they learn, what kinds of heroes and heroines star in our shows and our movies, what kinds of politicians lead our nation, what kinds of jobs we can expect to be turned away from based on nothing more than the color of our skin, what kinds of interest rates we get, what kinds of businesses exist solely to exploit us and our dependencies, and what kind of justice system we have. These are things that need broken down and reformed from their base. That's the only thing that can start to cure this human ailment called racism.

If we lined up every black person and told them they could choose between better schools, better healthcare, and criminal justice reform or a lump sum payment, how many do you think would take the money? How many would feel like they have no choice? How many of them really know what the difference would be? Giving them hope of reparations is giving them the easiest way out imaginable. The one that would solve the fewest problems. It's a bribe. "Here. You didn't see nothin'."

We owe them more. We owe them so much more. And more importantly, we owe their kids more. We owe their grandkids so much more. We owe them a better system that doesn't make them talk about this problem. A system that lets them focus on growing up, getting an education, working, being happy and healthy. Reparations wouldn't do that. It might help for a few, but it would be the ultimate in prototypical American "I got mine, so I don't care anymore" philosophy. Everyone else from whom the problems continued will have been left behind in the empty crater of the hopes and dreams reparations promised them, but couldn't deliver as more than a hollow shell.

We don't have the money, Mr. Coates. And even if we did, would that solve the problem? Or would it be a band-aid, worn to cover the infection that racism is- spreading slowly across the body- hiding the ugly truth from us temporarily?

Why not spend that money on sustainable programs that reverse the systemic nature of our inequality gaps? Why not work to reduce the qualitative difference between black and white lives through housing, education, food subsidies, community enhancements, and environmental panaceas?

Universal healthcare has some roadblocks, it's true. But they're superficial roadblocks. Problems we can solve, but choose not to. Reparations is plagued by problems we can't solve. Problems that would undermine the very efforts that reparations would attempt to further. Comparing them is not only intellectually dishonest, but short-sighted and actively dangerous. Reparations should come in the form of solutions built upon existing structures to strengthen, enhance, and protect black lives against the system that has wronged them; not giving them a moment of fleeting financial comfort within the system that robbed them of that wealth once before.

And as a final note, I should say that I'm not suggesting these things- universal healthcare, better schools, more structural protections for black people, etc.- will cure racism. They won't. But they'll go a lot further than throwing money at black people and dusting off our hands, I'd bet $14 trillion on that.


EDIT:

Upon further reflection, I have another thought or two. Ta-Nehisi Coates doesn't advocate for direct payment reparations, so it's worth noting that several of my criticisms are not applicable to his plan, but ultimately, his plan is borne from a definition of "reparations" created solely for the sake of his personal philosophy. And while that's as good a reason as any, he neglects to take that into account when talking about reparations publicly. When he talks about reparations and how they should be on the table, millions of black people everywhere are hearing what I describe above. Coates' position is actually much closer to Bernie's than he makes it out to be. He wants the system fixed, but he wants it fixed in such a way that it's framed as a reparations project specifically for slavery and the suffering after slavery, which I don't disagree with. I think it's a good idea for congress to openly admit that the wrongs and injustices black people have endured was directly caused by white supremacy and that even to this day, the white power system ruins lives, bankrupts black people, and even kills them regularly. I think it should be a message sent in good faith by our representatives to attempt to heal wounds.

But I think framing it as "reparations" without being explicitly clear that we're not talking about money is dangerous, and that many (I would even argue most) of the people arguing for reparations are suggesting that money (or land/other commodities) is the way to solve the problem. And for the reasons listed above, I think that's wrong and an unhealthy way to view the discussion.

Dating After College

This post is purely a way for me to complain. No big messages or lessons or philosophical opining. Just griping about our society and, in particular, the negative effects I feel because of our binary gender dichotomy.

So I graduated from college some years ago. Neat. I was dating someone at the time and my friend group was mostly the same people it was in college. The number of people I met outside of that group in the three years I resided in Lexington after college was abysmal. Male or female. I'm a nerd (shocking) and an introvert to boot. I love games, and there aren't too many outlets for that that allow you to meet new people. Especially if you barely feel like you have enough energy to sit at home alone, let alone being around strangers for hours at a time.

As a result, I went to a few game nights at UK, game stores, and back to Transy respectively. I mostly didn't love any of them. I had fun, but my specific brand of gaming isn't shared by a great many people. I've got this weird mix of loving strategy games, but wanting to be casual and friendly about them. So, I met a lot of tryhard nerds and a lot of very casual nerds, and my nerdiness didn't jive well with theirs mostly. After three years, I had gained four friends gaming with strangers. Two stopped being my friend eventually for reasons that weren't disclosed to me and I drifted apart from one of the other ones since he had a huge number of interests and gaming with him was kinda' rare. So I ended my time in Lexington with one new friend alone.

What does this have to do with dating? Well, I'm one of those turbo nerds. I want to be dating someone who gets that nerdiness and participates in it with me. Sharing gaming as a hobby is one of the bigger factors in determining my attraction for someone. If, after three years of pretty sincere attempts to meet new people, I come away with one new friend, regardless of gender, that's not looking so good as far as gaming prospects go. What makes it worse is our shitty gendered binary and the attempts of neckbeards to keep gaming relegated to a solely "male" hobby (the irony of course being that they then complain about women not being gamers or respecting gamers). In several of my forays into strangerdanger land, I saw and heard a number of sexist comments/behaviors that were pretty overt. It was kinda' pitiful to watch and made it that much harder to care about meeting people in the hobby since so many of them were painfully socially inept/problematic. People treating gamer women like goddesses or commenting about women in a generalizing and demeaning fashion. Both extremes were frequent.

As one might guess, I turned to online dating after my post-graduation breakup. But the prospects there are, in some ways, much worse. Heaven forbid you're a male who wants to talk to other gamers because you're now in direct competition with about a million others no matter where you live. The extra fun problem that arises is that you can no longer use games in any respect in your first message because you will immediately come off like every other nerd guy and it will be super easy to generalize and dismiss you for that reason.

As a result, I approach women who like gaming, but I can't really talk about it despite the fact that it's my passion and I want to design games until I'm an old fart. To give you an idea, it's a bad enough problem that a large number of women gamers I see on OK Cupid will make a specific note about too many guys messaging her asking what games she likes.

Being a nerdy guy means my dating outlook is fucking grim. And I know that's an extra-first-worldsy problem to have, and I've got privilege leaking out of my eyes as I type this post. It's just unsettling to know that there's a fair likelihood I will never actually meet someone with whom there's mutual attraction and the shared hobby of gaming. And that sucks. It's getting harder to meet anyone at all, let alone like-minded individuals, people my age, people with the same hobbies as me, etc.

And I'm certainly not getting more attractive! My hair thinned to the point that I had to shave it, so now I've got that going for me. I look like a skinny middle-aged guy with baby-face. My prime was in college, both in terms of appearance and in terms of dating prospects. Everyone's getting married/settling down, and I'm still struggling to come up with a message to send to women that's sufficiently:

Interesting, but not too long, without coming off too nerdy, but still sounding passionate, with an original opening line. While recognizing that the more time I put into a message, the more of a disappointment it is when I don't get a response from one of the two people in a month I find that I'd actually be interested in getting to know better. But if I come off sounding too interested, it's weird and detracting. Noting further that since everyone is different and has different preferences/tastes, some, all, or none of the above may apply for any given person, and there's basically no one to know ahead of time, so it's a crapshoot regardless.

And because I'm a male, we're seen as the product to females' buyer status. My pitch is the TV commercial meant to get you excited enough to look into buying me. It's very easy for a commercial to be invasive or, alternatively, bland and uninteresting. I have to strike just the right chord with just the right person at just the right time to get a potential sale. But again, it's a buyer's market, so each individual I'm interested in has a hundred other guys doing the same thing.

I have no way of knowing if my inquiry/message, large or small, is contributing to a feeling of being smothered- how many of them are just sick of getting a dozen messages daily- whether or not I'm actually being original at all.
And how would I know? I don't get any messages at all ever barring the occasional "hey," so it's not like I have much to compare myself to.

So how long before I just get completely sick and tired of trying to date in a time and culture where dating as a nerd male is basically impossible? I've always thought it would be better if I was single forever, because despite wanting that companionship, I've got neuroses out the ass, and it's super hard for me to work on the intersocial ones when they're not being triggered, so I have no idea what sets them off. So, the longer I go without dating someone, the less appealing I feel like I am as a dating prospect because of unresolved issues that may or may not spring up in any future relationship!

You see the cyclical nature of this problem, yes? And this isn't really a culture where dating stuff is discussed out loud. It's a fairly private matter, so I don't really feel like I have the capacity to complain. Even if I felt like I had a right to complain, which I don't, because again, first-world-privilege oozing from my orifices.

So instead of trying to meet new people, I'm just going to curl up into an even tighter ball, watch Gravity Falls alone, and obsess about game design in my head.

As a funny aside, this rant has reminded me that I wanted to be like Scott Pilgrim when I was in high school. And as I grew older, I became more like him in the worst ways and have only recently realized what a bad thing it is to be like Scott Pilgrim.

Now I just wanna' sit on the couch and play BMO with someone I can cuddle up with.

The Interconnectedness of Everything

[This is a huge post for my blog, so fair warning on that.]

Hey, world. It's been a while, how are you? I'm bored at work (our workload has been completed for the day), and I haven't done one of these in some time, so I figured I should jump back into the thoughtscape and sample a word salad.

"The Interconnectedness of Everything." Sounds nice, right? The name is not at all inspired by or homage to "The Theory of Everything," a much more boring and well-crafted set of ideas by a man whose intellect I could never come close to grasping. Oops, I'm digressing already.

I should get it out of the way that my "everything" is not actually the sum total of all things in the universe (unlike Mr. Hawking), but rather, it is the everything of OUR world; society, culture, the human mind, media, friendships, parents, religion, philosophy, and knowledge itself. And since I've already gone ahead and defined one broad term for you, my non-existent reader, I may as well define the other nebulous word too.

"Interconnectedness." In this case, this word refers to the feedback loop that is created by the aforementioned "everything." The cause and effect that each individual thing has on each other thing, and the flow that is generated by the amalgam of all of those things.

This is pretty wordy and unhelpful, so I'll start by giving you an analogy and work my way through the idea piece by piece.

Imagine a river that feeds into itself; a mobius loop; a positive feedback loop. Any old ring where the end meets the beginning. This river/ring/loop/etc. is our "everything." Each water droplet represents an individual, an idea, an action, a construct, a thought, an experience- you name it.

Still kind of hard to see where I'm going with this, right? Sorry, it's a complicated topic!

Imagine your favorite political problem or philosophical issue- its very existence is a testament to its ability to survive; to respawn in the hearts and minds of others. And the same is true of the ideas counter to that movement. Take sexism. Sexism does not exist in a vacuum and individuals are not born sexist. We are raised and, at some point, we collect sexist thoughts that we express with our words or behaviors. Yet most of us acknowledge that these things are wrong or bad. So how do they persist? Simple psychology and the nature of society and culture. We inherit thoughts and actions from those sources of inspiration and influence in our lives.

These sources of influence are everywhere from the moment we're born and they vary in strength. Your parents typically hold the most influence over you for a great deal of your life. Perceived authority figures are often below that. Selected heroes/idols and your peer group below that. The media is often below that. And then bringing up the rear are the people and things that have little to no influence over us- people we actively dislike or distrust. These people often carry NEGATIVE influence with us, turning us further away from whatever beliefs or actions they may take. But they appear to be a lone exception where everyone and everything else I listed makes us more likely to behave or think in a certain way.

Remember being a child, when you wanted to be just like your parents (many of you, anyway)? Or wanting to do the things your friends did, or have the same toys or games they did? How about wanting to emulate what you saw on TV? You wanted to be the main character in your favorite show because it held sway over you. All things in our "everything" hold some kind of sway over us, ranging from quite a lot (parents, religion, authority figures, best friends), to a very tiny amount(strangers, a TV show you've seen once, a single commercial, someone else's religion). This influence is where the flow of our river begins.

It is important to interject here to remind you that this doesn't apply in the same way to everyone. People are influenced to varying degrees by those in their lives based on their individual circumstances and, to some extent, their genetics. However, no one is free from this influence (except maybe sociopaths? That's sort of a gray area I'd like to investigate) We're all subject to the ebbs and flows of society and, in particular, the elements of society that we hold in higher regard. Unfortunately, when we're young, we hold in high regard people, events, and ideologies without knowing why, so we often make fundamental decisions about our own personalities long before we have the capacity to understand what we've done.

To give you an example, a child who knows only an abusive parent and no other life cannot conceive of any other way it could or should be, and may hold that parent in high regard much more easily than an outside observer who knows how wrong abuse is. A pitfall of human empathy is often the inability to recognize what kind of emotional or existential knowledge another individual may have access to at any given time in their life. This often causes us to arrogantly assume we know better than others, when in reality, our own knowledge set isn't always applicable in another's life scenario.

So, our parents and friends influence us- so what? That's obvious.

True, but many people don't take that a step further to understand WHY and to what extent others are influential in our lives. Consider this: Despite the fact that very very few people advocate outright violence to solve problems, we have an enormously high violent crime, child abuse, and murder rate in our country. We're not being explicitly told that violence is good, but our culture is one in which violence is implicitly seen as a "problem solving" element. Particularly in media, but also in the way our country conducts itself internationally and in the way men are raised. We're often taught that there's nothing wrong with violence. This leads to our acceptance of it as a standard and normal activity, which leads to its proliferation on a larger, cultural scale.

I'll give you my perspective on this-

The way I conceive of all areas of thought is in "messages." When your mom tells you to put that toy truck down and where your dress so that you can be pretty, that's not just one "message," but that's at least three "messages" all together:

1. There's a difference between boy toys and girl toys;
2. A girl's obligation is to be "pretty."
3. What we wear is objectively important and ought to be determined by our gender.

Most people who have taken psychology or sociology know that even our most well-intentioned thoughts can have several implicit messages within like the ones listed above.

So, all areas of thought come to us in the way of messages. There are millions, billions, trillions- uncountable, unfathomable numbers of messages that we receive over the course our lives- even in our every day minutiae. If this is true, why aren't we constantly overwhelmed with competing messages? How do we create a coherent and sane personality in the mileau?

Remember what I said earlier that all nodes of influence affect us more or less powerfully depending on how highly we regard them. A poster that tells us how to act or who to be won't influence us as much as our parents or a significant other telling us how to act or who to be... Unless we had no knowledge base to work from at that point. This is where the distinction between children and adults comes into play (and then on a broader scale, the distinction between people who have knowledge about a topic and people who don't).

Children are so easily influenced because they don't have a working base of knowledge on certain topics. They are a blank slate, an expression often used of children. Without an existing set of messages, there is nothing to temper or guide new messages received, so new messages are taken as gospel. This is one partial explanation for why children have little to no capacity to understand gray areas; kids are often polarizing and unable to parse nuance because there's nothing in their mind to suggest to them that a message NEEDS to be tempered when it's received.

It's an observed phenomenon that children who are told not to lie are unable to distinguish being wrong with lying, and are equally frustrated when a parent is wrong vs. when they are lying, for example. Once their knowledge base and set of ingrained messages reaches a large enough capacity, nuance begins to emerge. This is when we see people make decisions for themselves based on conflicting messages.

The idea doesn't disappear when we become adults, but what we see instead is that most areas of knowledge leave us inundated with messages. There are very few areas in which we receive few to no messages or messages exclusively of a single kind , and it's in those areas that this effect is truly apparent, and, as an aside, it's why we see people hold EXTREME views about things they don't have any personal experience with.
This is part of why, for example, so many people have hated the LGBTQ community; a lack of understanding. Their lack of knowledge base was supplanted over time with a VERY specific set of messages from a very particular set of sources that all more or less said the same or similar things. This is how fervent ignorance is born.

But there are also realms where we seldom receive any messages of any kind- taboo areas or areas considered to mundane or complicated for us to discuss them regularly. Sexuality, and in particular, kinky activities are one area where people receive very few messages at all, and so we often stumble blindly making an enormous number of mistakes when we make our own forays into those areas. Because we didn't have existing messages from which to derive a knowledge base- not even a biased and misinformed one. It's in situations like these that we are most vulnerable to new messages regardless of our age. This is why a great deal of misinformation about kink culture has proliferated since 50 Shades of Gray came out. It presented thousands of messages about an area in which very few people had any kind of pre-existing messages whatsoever. Because the book and movie were seen by some individuals as an excellent work, its influence on them was high enough for them to take those messages more seriously than they otherwise might have. This resulted in a non-negligible spread of ignorance after they came out.

The effect is virtually unnoticeable if, however, it's a movie or a book about a topic that we've already had millions of messages about. A totally fictional movie about unlocking "the other 90% of our brain" for example, doesn't make us actually think that that's possible usually- particularly if it results in superpowers in the movie. We know that superpowers like that don't exist through countless examples of superpowers not existing, and exactly 0 examples of superpowers actually existing. Though some people may see that movie (It's "Lucy," by the way) and come out thinking that we don't use all of our brain power, which is a rather common misconception about psychology. So in that regard, it's a message that they don't have an existing knowledge base for, and it is thus an area where ignorance can be pushed by media.

So, now that I've started down this road, let's bring the beginning into all of this- the river.

Each of these trillions of messages is a drop of water. Each message collectively pushes our culture- our society- in a direction, pushes the river a tiny, nearly insignificant amount. In turn, our society takes that information and, if it's accepted by a majority (or really any significant number of people), applies it to life in our society, which in turn, spreads that message once again, ad nauseum. The consequence is nearly insignificant effects multiplied an almost infinite number of times to create actual significant momentum. We see this effect in every realm, but a good one is to look at dating. We very rarely get comprehensive or statistical or academic information about dating. We usually get firsthand/secondhand experiences from others or we get our information from the media. Rom coms, "chick flicks," or TV shows. As a result, dating is largely a trial-by-fire mess that a lot of people never get good at. Our collective knowledge on dating is made up so much of totally bonkers messages that warp our expectations so that we think, for example, stalking someone can be a legitimate way to win their heart. Now, most of us date enough that we divest ourselves of these expectations when it becomes obvious that they're ludicrous. We grow and place less weight on our initial message and more weight on the messages received from our own personal experiences in the realm.

In a broad scope, this is how it happens in all realms. We take in a constant stream of messages that we apply liberally to our own lives and we adjust how highly we view those messages as experience dictates to us whether or not those messages were relevant, acceptable, helpful, moral, etc. It's through this methodology that culture isn't perpetually self-reinforcing in its entirety. There's often a small window for us to overcome many messages so long as there's a decent base of messages that run counter to those original messages. This is why we often see insular religious communities scarcely lose members while communities with a lot of dialogue and in areas with differing spiritual ideologies will often see a great deal of conversion. The more available new and different messages are to you, the more likely you are to be able to create a viewpoint having taken into considering both the old messages and the new messages.

Despite the opportunity for change, however, there's still the problem of relative influence. If, for example, satanists came to a very Christian little town, the messages received by some Christians (by others in their midst) would likely predispose them to think very little of the satanists. Without any amount of regard for them, they're not likely to seriously consider the messages the satanists are spreading, even if they're acceptable, moral, good, and helpful messages. Because of this effect, changing the status quo is an insanely difficult task because the status quo often paints change as problematic, evil, or immoral. That's why change has to be appealing to a greater extent than it is scary. The perceived import of the messages brought by "Change" must therefore exceed the perceived import of existing messages. That's a crazy tall order, and that's why it's so hard for movements focused on fundamental change to make any headway. Feminism, for example, suffers from this problem. It faces the uphill battle of both the negative messages of the status quo and also the task of proving itself beneficial for everyone (or at least not hurtful). For many people who have been inundated with messages about "feminazis" thus far, that can be a nearly impossible perspective to consider. As someone very sympathetic to the cause, this is an area where it's apparent how unwilling people are to accept or even examine perspectives that deviate from what they've known their entire lives.



This has been by far my longest post, so I'll wrap it up here. Just remember that everything you do is a message (or multiple!). Sometimes to others, sometimes to yourself, reinforcing existing messages. No act or thought is without power. Many simply have an apparently invisible amount of power. But when those things are placed alongside millions of messages in the same vein, suddenly you have a stream trickling along. Enough separate streams give you a creek. Enough creeks gives you a river, made entirely of individual water droplets; individual messages, seemingly unimportant, and yet part of an unimaginable force.

Be mindful of your messages and be mindful of the interconnectedness of everything.

Why Are People Conservatives?

So, I was explaining to someone why I perceive conservativism as genuinely hating women in a Reddit thread. But, I was mostly angry and made my point at the cost of making conservatives look like malicious human beings.

Now, I know that a lot of people I know (including myself) may err on the side that many of them are malicious or that what I'm about to describe is just a manifestation of maliciousness. I don't have much to counter that with, but I want to put forth both the question asked of me and my answer to it from that thread. Just mull it over and see what you think.

Is there some type of sinister ulterior motive here or do they really believe in these extreme puritan values? Do they intentionally want to keep people impoverished? I'm curious as to how they think poverty should be treated because if they against welfare and social safety nets then how in the hell are we supposed to help the underprivileged?

I sat there and thought about that for a good few minutes before the threads in my mind started to knit a coherent response, and it's still very draft-level (much of my reddit writing is)...

"That's a loaded question, and as much as I'm ready and willing to blast conservativism, it doesn't deserve all of the blame. We're actually talking about something more fundamental to human nature and how we think and interact with others in a society.

There's a lot to parse, so I can't really address everything or even most of it, but consider first the Fundamental Attribution Error.[1] 

The basic idea is that we attribute negative and positive outcomes differently depending on whether it happens to us or it happens to someone else. If it's something bad happening to someone else, it's something about them, and if it's us, it was an external or environmental influence. The opposite is the case for good things.

This is where we see simultaneously the "I built that" bootstraps/poor people are leeches mentality, and also the issues like the only moral abortion is mine[2] .

Human beings want their successes to be theirs and they want their failings to be environmental. Likewise, the successes of others are threatening to us, so we attribute them to things like luck or help from others, or other factors that allow us to perceive that success as somehow less legitimate.
So that's one factor that greatly impacts how we empathize (or fail to) with other human beings.
Secondly is the human desire for power. We innately want to have power over others. It feels good; that's where we get competition, violence, greed, rape, etc. etc. It's also part of where we get bigotry and discrimination.

Conjoined with that is our fear of the unknown. We're scared of things we don't understand, and we often compartmentalize[3] the information we have available about the unknown in order to avoid stressing about it or thinking about it too much. It's a psychological method of reducing inner-conflict, and it makes it really fucking easy to think that, for example, all black people are thugs.
So, we want power over people, and we're scared of what we're unfamiliar with. We're threatened by their successes, and their failings are also indicative of something innate and disgusting/bad about them.

Humans are basically a walking recipe for hatred in that way. (There's also a lot of evolutionary traits that we developed for pro-social, happy, peaceful behavior, but that's a topic for another time)
In comes the people who have ambition, another natural human trait, though a bit more rare.
The people with ambition will use the tactics that work for their gains. We see this in marketing, sleazy economic practices, and of course politics. The thing is, one of the tactics that works best is playing into peoples' fear, lack of trust, and the need to blame others for the bad things going on in the world.

All of these psychological traits are now being manipulated (mostly unconsciously) by the people in charge of that political party. They're so lost in fear and hatred that it seems like the only way forward.

Now, the final psychological trait is the kicker:
When we think something long enough, or if we're around an idea long enough (even if we don't believe it), it grows on us. It festers in us and we begin to accept it as fact. (This is obviously not always the case, but it's how the human mind likes to operate)

So, the people who push the fear long enough start to be consumed by it until there's no way out, and they have to keep pushing forward. We don't like to admit that we're wrong; we're stubborn creatures. Turning around publicly and doing the walk of shame to the dreaded "other side" is terrifying, and we're often much more willing to do the mental gymnastics to stay where we are rather than to give the other side a look-see.

Conservativism is just one of the possible natural conclusions of basic human traits. Just some of the nastier ones, in my opinion.

Add onto that anti-intellectualism (since it's perceived as "elite") and a perpetual need to divest ourselves from people we perceive as enemies, and you get austerity (which is based on faulty studies and mostly bad intuition) and things like global warming being a hoax.

The world is super complicated, and if I've learned anything, it's that very few people are actually malicious. We're just scared, and we can lash out, like a snake that feels like it's cornered, even though no one actually wants to harm it.

That's part of why there's such a big movement right now to try to keep white privilege. People are scared that it's being taken away from them. And they're scared that they'll be subjected to the kinds of things that they have subjected others to.

There's a really pointed line that feminists use about homophobia that I think illustrates this perfectly.
Homophobia is the fear that men will treat you the way you treat women.
We're scared of being hunted, so we scramble to stay the hunters, even if no one's actually out to get us."

Let me know what you think. If I've gotten some of the psychology patently incorrect, I would love to be corrected. I have many friends who are much more well-versed in that realm than I.

As an aside, I should note that this is just focusing on conservativism. It is not meant to suggest that liberals are mentally superior and have overcome basic human psychological tendencies. We're just as prone to a lot of the same ones; but we direct them in different ways and have different negative outcomes as a result of them. I may do my next post on the way those manifest in liberals!

Mockery

Hey blogoverse. I've been crunching some thoughtchildren, and I wanted to wordvomit my conclusionstuffs. I keep seeing the same patterns turning up. People in group A mocking people in group B.

Now, mockery is basically telling someone that a facet of them is worthless. It's so bad, you feel like you have the right to make fun of it publicly. Whether it be their looks, their ideas, philosophies, actions, or whatever. People use mockery a lot. Often when someone goes against social norms, or when someone espouses a train of thought that is perhaps hypocritical or illogical.

But we get too used to mockery. It becomes too easy to dismiss someone else outright by laughing and walking away.

Perhaps the worst part of mockery, however, is that you have announced your lack of intent to hold any kind of reasonable conversation about the topic before dismissing your opponent. But, you've made sure to imply that you making fun of them is more important than anyone learning a lesson or understanding each other.

Basically, you've announced that you have the right to be a dismissive asshole.

It's only when we frame mockery as truly disrespectful that we realize how often we do it. I mock conservativism still. I've mostly stopped mocking things outright, and I try to stick to full/explained criticism. Admittedly, I introduce a small bit of mockery into my criticism on certain topics, and I need to cut that shit out. It's bad form, disrespectful, and helps exactly 0%.

We may not agree with or like an idea. In fact, we might find it patently offensive. And those ideas may never go away. Perhaps mockery is the best way to laugh about something absurd without giving it legitimacy. But then, who are we to decide something's legitimacy?

[I go off topic here to a specific example of mockery and why that specific example frustrates me. Feel free to skip to the next brackets if you don't want to read]

The reason I'm thinking about this at the moment is because a week or so ago, I had a number of friends who all mocked a picture of a half-full bookshelf titled "Men's Studies." They derided it both as being indicative of male ego and as something that couldn't even fill a single shelf. They suggested it was all of history and that giving it a separate section was insulting. To the best of my knowledge, all of the posters are feminists, which is why that behavior shocked and angered me. Mockery from a disenfranchised group is already something that saddens me (in the way that bullying by nerds saddens me), but this particular topic is an issue that I thought feminism was largely on board with.

Noting here that the section was not titled "Men's Rights" or anything that might imply it affiliated with Men's Rights Activists (MRAs) for whom there isn't much love from either myself or most feminists I talk to. No, this section was about men's studies. A gender issue that, frankly, isn't super well-represented elsewhere, since it's specifically about gendered problems faced by males (which definitely exist). If there was a separate "Gender Studies" section, I'd want to see them merged, but if there was just a "Women's Studies" section (which there often is), then I don't see a problem with this section existing as is. It's actually really disheartening that they didn't have enough books to fill a full shelf, though there might be a few decent explanations for that. Regardless, the contribution brought forth by mocking the section's existence is that those people think there are no issues that males suffer that are gendered and ought to be talked about separate from "Women's Studies," which I think is ironically egotistical. Seriously, of all the people to be mocking an earnest attempt to collect and analyze gendered problems, I would think feminists would be on the bottom of that list.

[Alright, I'm done with that tangent, sorry]

There's certainly an argument to be made for not recognizing the legitimacy of an argument or an action once it breaches a threshold of logical absurdity or overall harm to society, but the number of things we can be pretty well certain of is surprisingly low. As a result, mockery usually winds up directed towards something that we don't actually understand that well. Mocking it, thus, is just the best way to not have to think about something that we feel strongly about (even if we don't have much/any evidence to back up our position).

I mock sports. I have a strong feeling about sports, but I don't have any data to back up that feeling. In fact, data would probably suggest that sports are an aggregate boon to society. They give citizens something to be passionate about, something to look forward to, to aspire to. They encourage physical activity, teamwork, companionship, competition. They're a non-lethal method of highlight physical human "superiority." Even if I think they're silly, my position is founded on little more than a feeling. Voicing it as mockery without critical analysis is immature at best and harmful at worst.

I think conservativism at least has a few points that we do have overwhelming data on, like casual voter fraud (it almost doesn't exist), or drug testing for welfare recipients (I have a long Facebook post completely dismantling this untenable position). But even with issues that are kinda' patently absurd, out and out mocking it doesn't really help anyone, does it? I reinforce my personal echo chamber a bit (which isn't necessarily bad), but that's it. I haven't educated anyone on why/how it's absurd. I haven't proven to yourself that I actually understand why I dislike it. I haven't changed anyone's mind. I've shouted at the wind and patted myself on the back for being so sociopolitically aware. Congratulations.

Programs like The Daily Show teach us at least how to couch mockery in an understanding of the facts and exactly what makes them absurd, which is better than nothing. But as much as I love The Daily Show, maybe that's a harmful approach? It's certainly divisive. Although there is some educational value in using entertainment to get a point across. It reaches a wider and younger audience. But it also strikes me as potentially breeding a sense of moral/intellectual superiority that I think is more damaging than helpful. Our intellectual and ideological development peaks around the central demographic for The Daily Show. To think that at that time we're mostly learning that mockery is acceptable discourse is at least a bit troubling on the offset, but I don't have any numbers for that (pot, meet kettle).

If you catch yourself doing it, and you'd be upset if someone else did it to you, maybe it's time to start working mockery out of your daily life and out of your argumentation style. If nothing else, you'll probably start noticing your discussions are a little less angry without it. And hey, maybe you'll change someone's mind without it.

Graduate School

So, two and a half years ago, I made an April Fools Day post where I congratulated myself for getting into grad school. It was my most "liked" post ever, for whatever that's worth. It was a total lie. I find myself quickly approaching April 1st again, but I've never been one to make the same joke twice in a row, so instead we'll go another route.

As of March 25, 2015, I was not accepted into NYU's graduate program. This marks my second attempt at grad school, although in reality it was the first serious attempt.

My entire life, I've been able to kick back and coast through life. Even for much of my time at Transy. This was how I approached University of Washington's critical theory program. It didn't work. Two and a half years down the road, when I decided it was time to try again, I went for something I was passionate about; something I actually love and want to make a living from.

It was with that fervor that I wrote, edited, and rewrote personal statements, critiques, and summaries of my accomplishments in the field. I put in real work, something I seldom do. I did it because I genuinely wanted to go learn at NYU. Their program has a breadth and depth like no other program of the dozens I looked at. They're ahead of the curve, looking to study games, not just to design them, but to understand them as cultural artifacts like all media in this day and age. They see something different about games where most see it as a source of entertainment, period.

Despite my zest, I wasn't even a contender. I often wonder just how many people there are who do all the things I do, but better. How many people are there that are simply superior versions of me? Smarter, kinder, funnier, more driven, more experienced, more realistic, more pragmatic, gentler, wiser, happier...

On the one hand, a testament to how low on the intellectual totem pole I am; on the other, a testament to how much more I can grow.

Still, it is undeniably sad to have taken a long break after undergrad to get my head on straight (that... may not have worked either), only to have my efforts prove fruitless for another year.

I do sincerely appreciate and thank everyone who believed in me and pushed me to meet this challenge head on. Maybe next time I won't let you (or myself) down.

The Purpose of an Analogy

This one is just an exercise for me. I use analogies so often, and with fair frequency people come back and say, "but A isn't B!" making me think they've completely missed the point. It occurred to me that describing the point of an analogy in such a way as to explain why A doesn't have to equal B necessarily is actually quite difficult, so I wanted to try it out.

At its heart, an analogy is the comparison of two unlike things. But that alone doesn't really help us out much. Why compare two unlike things when there are plenty of similar things to compare?

Well, a comparison of two unlike things gives you a new perspective in a conversation; a fresh way to view the other person's point that might not be couched in all the same volatile rhetoric or implications that the originating argument might have. They don't have to be the same thing for a particular facet of them to be comparable, and I think there might even be a decent way to explain this with the abstract example we started with (or at least a very similar example):

"B is not C. The two are not equal- this is understood. However, the two share a number of characteristics that we can point to, at least one of which is the latter phoneme in its pronunciation: 'ee.'" Despite being fundamentally different from each other, the two can be compared in such a way that they have a meaningful connection. (Alright, so them ending in the same sound might not be super meaningful, but it's an abstract example. It's probably meaningful to poets or linguists)

A less abstract comparison that I used earlier today is the comparison of unions to welfare (or other social safety nets). These are fundamentally different institutions that have different goals, different structures, different politics, and get their power through different means. However, the two rely on a similar root principle: making conditions better for people who, individually/alone, do not have the power to demand or obtain those better conditions.

An analogy intends to compare an aspect of two things for which the context may be similar, or the intent may be similar, or the consequences may be similar. It is an attempt to find philosophical consistency in the how/why of the world. It's incredibly important to be clear about which similarity you're looking to examine, or else invite your rhetorical opponent to scrutinize the comparison as a 1:1 comparison (hence the counter, "A isn't B!")

The big problem, as I see it, with analogies is that they're a social scientist's source of stress. Analogies attempt to take two things that correlate and suggest that there's a reason they correlate using logic rather than pure statistics. Realistically, the only good reason we use analogies rather than hard statistics is that it's much easier for a brain to draw those connections than it is for a person/group to collect enough meaningful statistics to prove (or show great evidence towards) causation/meaningful correlation.

I personally love analogies. I think they capture and utilize one of the more interesting aspects of human intelligence/reasoning, but it's undeniable that they provide shaky evidence and are argumentatively non-robust. They rely on the human ability to make meaningful connections based on contextual similarities and then assigning relative merit to those specific similarities as compared to the differences of two things. (ie, the important thing about comparing unions to welfare is that they're a net good for society and that the methodology by which they obtain that net good is similar, even though they're otherwise super different.)

Maybe I'm totally off base? I dunno', it was a fascinating experiment to try to break down why I use analogies at least.

This was an extremely abstract post, so I apologize for what I now look back and realize is a rather complicated jumble of words and ideas.

What is "Privilege"?

So, I think I'm finally ready to give this issue a go. It's a complicated one with no small amount of vitriol on both sides of the proverbial field (and I will address why there shouldn't be sides). People are angry at each other, and there are certain things no one wants to admit, partially because there's so much misunderstanding in this topic. So, let's get started.

I wanna' break it down to a thorough, succinct definition.

The word basically amounts to "statistically significant weighting of odds for life circumstances that contribute towards the betterment of life in a traditional sense based on birth context and current social circumstances." But, that's an enormous mouthful. So, it might help to take that chunk-by-chunk.

Privilege is impacted by the way we're born and our current social standing. eg, your race, gender, gender identity, height (even how symmetrical your face is); and your wealth, your religion, your friends, your location. Pretty much everything. The first question you might have (depending on how much sociology/psychology you've studied) is how on earth everything like that matters?

Power. Human society is one big power play, and holding influence or power is a matter of having support- financial, structural, population, etc. If you have the law behind you, or if you have a buncha' money, or if you have the support of crowds of people, you tend to get what you want. Now, because all of those things are human constructs, they're pushed and pulled by factors that humans perceive to be important. How tall you are, for example, is something that is objectively hilariously unimportant. You can reach the top of the fridge easier. The sum total of your capabilities over any other average human being is replaceable by a few chunks of wood nailed together.

So why, then, are tall people happier and richer than their vertically challenged counterparts? That makes no biological sense taken alone. However, it makes a bit more sense when you factor in evolution. Tall people would have had a number of advantages in a more primal state of humanity: speed, flexibility, visibility, and yes- the ability to retrieve things from greater heights, like fruit. Being tall was an evolutionary advantage. Enough of one that societies still prize taller people socially. We trust them more, admire them more, place higher value on their existence as a whole. Not by extraordinary amounts, mind you. Just enough to tip some scales. This effect also feeds into itself as a positive feedback loop; we expect more of taller people, and those expectations go on to color their decisions. Again, not an extraordinary amount alone. But a statistically significant amount.

This same thing applies to many other traits for humans, and far and away, we find that people with success are almost always people who have a certain set of traits from a list. You're more likely to be successful if you're taller, male, white, born affluent, born to a good family, born mentally healthy, physically healthy, cisgendered, no male-pattern-baldness, skinny, married, Christian, etc. Alright, so we've covered where it starts. What do I mean by statistical advantages?

Well, the same thing I hinted at above with tall people. You're more likely to be hired for a job if you're male than female or white than black even if you have identical qualifications. It's not a guarantee, but it's a pretty substantial and statistically significant difference.
How substantial you might ask? Well, this study suggests that white felons were more likely to receive job callbacks than black non-felons with the same experience/education. When comparing non-felons, whites were more than twice as likely to receive a callback. That's fairly substantial. Noting with this study as well, this process is subject to our negative views of people as they compare to the "standard" of society. In this case, women are viewed as less competent at math than men despite equivalent education, experience, and qualifications. So that raises the question, what's the standard? The standard is the generic Joe Everyman that our society has been crafted for. A white, land owning, male. Here's where I'm sure I'll start losing people. Unfortunately, straight, white men (please note that I am definitely one of those) in general.

Why does that demographic shy away from this idea so much? There's a few reasons, but mostly it's because people in this country specifically don't like feeling like they didn't earn what they have. We go to great lengths to assure ourselves that any successes we have are because of something inherent about us. We worked hard and we're smart.

And that's partially true. The person born with the most perfect luck ever- the most privileged person could still wind up a total failure with no money, drowning in cheap booze. Similarly, people from all walks of life can rise to attain the traditional American idea of success. However, it's undeniable how skewed the actual statistics are for millionaires, billionaires, executives, CEOs, presidents, congressmen; people with power in this country. They're mostly white males.

I'll take this opportunity to stress that privilege is not a word meant to cast blame. It is a descriptive word. Taken at its face value, all persons have privilege of various kinds. This idea applies to literally everyone with the exception of those who died before being able to integrate into their family or society at large.

With that in mind, I think the best goal for the idea of privilege is to frame societal inequality in a way that involves everyone. As it stands, even a well-meaning person who acknowledges racism can simply say "well, I'm not racist, so this whole thing doesn't involve me." Thus, distancing themselves from the conversation and any ability to create meaningful change.

To the extent that it applies to everyone, by default, "privilege" brings even people at the "top of the food chain" into the discussion as well. While many would suggest the word is blame-oriented, I would say it's not really throwing anyone under a bus for the same reason that it wouldn't be throwing America under a bus to suggest that our goods and services are, by healthy majority, produced in what amounts to slave labor conditions.

It's perhaps an uncomfortable truth, but either an undeniable truth or the world's greatest coincidence.
Americans as a whole did not get to choose under what conditions our products were made, but we definitely receive the benefit of them, whether we like to accept that fact or not. The only way to rectify the problem is to acknowledge that we're complicit in it, even if we didn't actively choose for it to happen. It's a problem that is specifically set up to benefit us.

 And that's what this comes down to. We have systemic inequality that virtually none of us actively chose or continues to choose. However, many of us benefit from it daily, usually without even realizing it. That's not our fault, per se. However, once we recognize it, I do think it's our responsibility to look for ways to push back against the systems in which it occurs. To that end, privilege, to me, is a word that signifies the sum total of my good fortune and reminds me that others cannot have it through no fault of their own. That's not a system I want to live in, so it's my obligation to try to change it as someone who sits pretty high up on that spectrum.

I often see arguments against the idea of privilege because there exist poor, white males. I see that as a fundamental misunderstanding of the word. Take, for example, a casino where you walk in with your black friend. You two go up to any given table and the dealer tells you the odds of winning before you play. For some reason, almost every game gives you better odds than your friend. Sometimes they're pretty close, but usually, you have far better odds of winning than he does. You won't win every game. Your friend may very well win all of them, but it's statistically less likely than you winning all of them. Taken as a whole phenomenon, however, it's much more likely that you'll win most, and your friend wins far fewer.

That's single-issue privilege. Black vs. white.

Now, of course, because privilege is all-encompassing, it does take poverty into account; and the people who crafted the system over generations wanted impoverished people to have less power and less opportunity, so there's a give and take for anyone who fits into multiple categories like that. Your rich, black friend will actually probably have better odds than you, a poor white person. However, because the system is set up so that fewer black people succeed statistically, it's already an unlikely situation to be presented with, and because it's a positive feedback loop, fewer black people will come out ahead over time, and more white people will, thus keeping the balance of power permanently weighted improperly.

See, I'm straight, white, male, and middle-class, but I also have a mental disorder, so I'm winning on most levels, but then I take X steps backwards because of that last trait. It's a spectrum that everyone fits onto. It just happens that it's a spectrum of societal benefits, and the benefits are aggregated heavily towards just a few very specific traits. Namely, the ones that fit the "standard" for our country. Straight, white, male, tall, land owning, physically able, cis, mentally healthy, skinny, traditionally attractive, etc. And this is largely how it's been in most cultures throughout most of time, though things have always shifted just a bit based on culture; based on what people perceived as making another person trustworthy, powerful, respectable, and so on.

So, you fit into the spectrum of privilege. You're almost certainly not at the tippy top, but if you're reading this, you're probably pretty high up. But what does that mean? Not much except that you have, in addition to whatever hard work/effort you add to your own life, a great deal of systemic luck. Other than that? It's meaningless. It's a descriptive term, meant to represent the sum total of your individual birth circumstances and social contexts that make up who you are and how you're viewed in our culture at any given time.

Having privilege does not mean that your opinion is worth less than anyone else's or that your experiences are incorrect or are not valuable. Having privilege does not mean that your life is without turmoil, strife, repercussions, unfortunate occurrences, or anything else like that. However, it is important to be aware of the benefits one receives from this system of luck. It is important to be reminded of how much context matters, particularly when you're trying to empathize with other human beings. Not every unemployed person is a slacker. Statistically, they might even just be unemployed because of the skin color they were born with.

Everyone has different considerations, worthy of examination. The statistics are meaningful though, and that's what privilege is; a statistically significant advantage. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Love and Learning

It's been a bit of time, and I've been thinking about the topic of love a lot lately. Both for personal reasons and philosophical. I think it's important to reflect on your past romantic endeavors (and really any kind of endeavor) and remind yourself of the things you gained, the lessons you learned, and the problems you faced. I wanted to catalog one major lesson from each romantic pursuit.

I learned a lot outside of relationships too, so I'm including 5 non-relationship romantic pursuits and a respective lesson from each one. I'll list them chronologically just in case it betrays something about the progress of human learning in general.

1. Speak up. Good lesson to learn early, but if you never say something about how you feel, the other person will never know. They can't read your mind. Communicate. This goes for crushing on someone all the way through the end of the relationship.

It was elementary school through middle school, so obviously not the height of maturity, but it was still a lesson well-learned, spending five years childishly flirting with the same person, but never saying anything outright, only to find out one day that they moved on. The idea extends through all walks of life though- when you feel strongly about something, say it. You cannot forgo your emotional/mental health- it builds up and destroys you slowly.

2. Some love never goes the way you want it; you have to accept when someone can't or doesn't want to be with you.

More middle school romance. Sometimes the feelings last a lot longer, but you should consider yourself lucky to wind up with a good friend for life, even if you were looking for a partner for life.

3. Relationships are different from standard friendships. Whether you see it coming or not, you'll have expectations and they'll have expectations- all of which will deviate some from the standard friendship expectations in some regard.

High school romances are, I'm sure, awkward for most of everyone. My first relationship, she wanted something different out of a relationship than me. The expectations were new and difficult to navigate, so we both became awkward and shut things down.

4. Don't ever use another human as a means to an end.

Being lonely is no excuse for enjoying another person's affections when you only half-heartedly return them. Everyone deserves to be treated as their own end- a human being.

              4.5. Don't allow another person to be your consolation prize.

This is super related to #4, but I am cheating by including two lessons in one relationship. Everyone also deserves to be treated like they're the most important person in the world to someone. If you "settle" for someone and you treat the relationship like a settlement, then there's spite, guilt, unhappiness, and jealousy already sewn into the relationship from the beginning. Everyone ought to be treated as a 1st place prize to someone. Whether you marry for passion, stability, fun, love, or whatever- make sure that you're picking that person, not begrudgingly accepting them.

I was young, dumb, and infatuated with someone who was interested in someone else. A friend saw my grief and moved closer to me. We had a lot of fun and there was a good dynamic between us, but I sabotaged it from the moment it started, since I was settling for her. (The irony is that I think, looking back on it, I would have liked her more if I'd had a clear head on)

5. Don't sacrifice your core values for your partner (unless you want to sacrifice them).

Sacrifice- give and take- super important, don't get me wrong. But your core values? I dated a smoker despite knowing that I couldn't stand the stuff. I put too much stock into my ability to ignore those important values in order to pursue romance. It didn't work (and I'm glad it didn't).

6. Don't wait for someone's problems to solve themselves (and don't try to fix them yourself).

The first of three failed or noncommital romantic ventures around the same time period. If they're trying to do right by you and grow/learn/fix themselves, that's one thing, but empty platitudes are cheap to hand out. Don't get caught mistaking them for actual currency. "This would be great if they weren't broken in this one huge way!" I'm sure someone has thought that about me before as I've thought it about at least one person before. It's not wise to wait for that huge problem to just... disappear. You can do it, but unless they're showing good evidence of trying to solve it, it's probably time to move on.

7. Don't forget what infatuation can make you do.

The second venture of the three. Liking someone a lot can persuade you to do stupid things. Sometimes these things are good and simply show your feelings on your sleeve. In my case, making a longish drive every weekend I was able to- just to see someone smile for a few hours. But, it's good to remember that infatuation can make you do bad stupid things as well. Just... be aware of what you're doing in the name of your heart flutters.

8. Don't forget to have fun. All the time.

The last one- a fling I very much enjoyed in its simple pursuit of fun. Don't forget in all the seriousness that is life to have fun with the one person you like being around most. Simple, unadulterated fun. The things that make you giggle, poke, and prod each other. Smile. Each and every day.

9. If one person's not in it all the way, then they're not in it.

First college relationship- if either of you isn't willing to push into the adventure, then it's not gonna' happen. Let it go until the point if/when you're both ready/willing.

10. Figure out what you can and can't live with about your partner.

Second college relationship- Learn what quirks about your partner you don't like. Which can you deal with and which can't you deal with? Are any of them core aspects of their personality that can't be changed? If so, it may be a doomed relationship. Which leads to;

               10.5. Don't let it drag on.

If you've already decided to end things, don't put it off. It's disrespectful, hurtful, and immature. Again, I'm cheating and putting two lessons for one relationship. Come at me!

11. Don't allow another person to be your consolation prize.

Fuck, why did I have to learn this lesson twice? God, I'm dumb and terrible sometimes.

12. Love is a choice.

My most recent relationship. I've seen this idea tossed around a bit, and I think it really hits its mark. Love is the choice to forgive. Love is the choice to hear and be heard. Love is the choice to share the bad times together in an effort to address them as a team. Love is the choice to compromise- the choice to hear what you do that bothers them and then fix it. Love is the choice to stay together, even when it's easy not to.

13. Keep yourself grounded.

Falling crazy hard for someone can be a lot of fun- it's exciting, fluttery, adrenaline-pumping, and you're thinking about the things that could be. It's fun, but keep a foot on the ground. If you don't, you pick up speed and you don't have the control to stop yourself or the control to avoid causing damage. For my part, my over-zealous nature hurt me and scared her. Keep yourself based in reality and the here-and-now. Keep a level head about your infatuation (but don't give up the spark). This may not have been a relationship, but it was definitely a lesson that I needed.

Honorable Mention: Don't let yourself be used.

No single instance, but several pseudo-romantic situations have reminded me individually that you should never give someone that kind of control over you. Don't seek approval by doing their bidding; you'll never get what you're looking for, and you'll just become a tool to be used and discarded. You're more than that. Everyone is more than that.

There are a hundred more lessons I learned, but I tried to keep everything to one core theme. Just trying to get some thoughts out there, you know? Maybe it'll help someone else one day.

ADDENDUM

I thought about it a bit, and while this was primarily a way to categorize my thoughts, it's entirely possible a few people involved in the above romantic endeavors will read this. I think for the vast majority of these cases, I did something stupid and/or hurtful to bring the relationship to an end, and I would like to stress that while I think I'm learning lessons, it shouldn't be at the expense of the happiness of others. So to anyone who has been involved with me, I do want to apologize. I'm growing, little by little, but I'm sure I've left painful marks on the history of many of you. You have always and will always deserve better than that. I hope you have found a more fitting partnership, and thank you for being an important part of my life and my growing experience.