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.
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Tuesday, September 15, 2015
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.
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.
Friday, July 17, 2015
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.
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)...
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!
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!
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
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.
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.
Thursday, March 26, 2015
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.
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.
Friday, March 13, 2015
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
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.
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.
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