May 2013

Look Away, Look Away

By in prying eyes No Comments

Sue Shellenbarger:

Adults make eye contact between 30% and 60% of the time in an average conversation, says the communications-analytics company Quantified Impressions. But the Austin, Texas, company says people should be making eye contact 60% to 70% of the time to create a sense of emotional connection, according to its analysis of 3,000 people speaking to individuals and groups.

…Culture can be a factor. In many Eastern and some Caribbean cultures, meeting another’s eyes can be rude. Asians are more likely than Westerners to regard a person who makes eye contact as angry or unapproachable, says a 2013 study in the online scientific journal PLOS ONE.

Ah, that’s it! I’ll start describing myself as trans-Navajo. It’s a deep-rooted cultural tradition of mine to not look people in the eye when talking, you imperialists!

Teenage Angst Hasn’t Paid Off Well

By in getting and spending, work No Comments

Mandi Woodruff:

For the most part, generations in America have followed a similar storyline: kids grow up to earn more and become more financially secure than their parents and grandparents before them. But that story ended with those born between 1965 and 1981, known as Generation X.

Using charts from recent studies on generational wealth gaps by the Pew Research Center and the Urban Institute, we’ve put together a clearer picture of what’s gone wrong for Gen X.

So I guess the question is whether we should kill off our parents and seize their assets, or beg for charity from our younger siblings. Or both.

We Got Spirit, Yes We Do, We Got Spirit, How ‘Bout You?

By in atheism, ohferfucksake, tribalism No Comments

David Ferguson:

Humanist groups and atheists across the U.S. have banded together to help a fellow atheist who survived the massive tornado that struck Moore, Oklahoma earlier this week.

…At the fund-raising website Indiegogo, atheists have set up a relief fund for Vitsun, who lost her house in the storm and most of her possessions.

“Let’s show the world that you dont need to believe in a god to have human compassion nor does all charity fall under the banner of religion,” says the site. “Let’s get this courageous woman and her family back in their own home.”

The site has already passed its goal of $50,000 by nearly $700 at press time, with 60 days in the fund-raiser still to go.

Additionally, their site says:

The impact of getting Rebecca and her family properly housed by the atheist community will do far more good than sitting in bars or chat rooms mocking people of faith. Like religion, free-thinking will be more easily spread through compassion and decency. …More importantly, the more money we raise the better the example we set.

Yes, how inspiring that atheists can use natural disasters as opportunities for public relations and point-scoring just as well as any other ghoul who resolutely gazes into swirling chaos in order to discern the potential for increased market penetration. If you’re anything like me, you may have been concerned that atheists, being so über-rational, might lack that reflexive tribal solidarity that has served humanity so well through the ages, so this will come as a welcome relief. Send those checks to help give a big ol’ middle finger to all those religious nuts and their antiquated in-group/out-group thinking!

Humans in the Raw

By in conspicuous crusading, the madness of crowds No Comments

Cullen Murphy:

The United States of America in the twenty-first century is about as different from late-medieval Spain as a country can be. And yet a controversy during the summer of 2010 demonstrated how little effort is required to whip up popular fervor on issues of “otherness.”

…Within a matter of weeks, birthright citizenship had moved from something that people took for granted to something that, according to opinion polls, nearly half of all Americans had decided they opposed. In January 2011, a group of state legislators unveiled a proposal to create what some described as a two-tiered system of birth certificates, one tier for babies born to citizens, the other for children of illegal immigrants. Shortly afterward, two U.S. senators proposed a constitutional amendment that would deny birthright citizenship outright to children born to illegal aliens, regardless of the consequences. As one commentator pointed out, “Without the concept of birthright citizenship, it is possible for someone to be born without having citizenship in any country at all.”

The point is not to make a facile comparison between incomparable regimes. It is simply to note that dangerous passions — about social contamination, about religious incursion — can be found anywhere. It does not take much to arouse them.

Andrew Wright, reviewing John Gray’s newest book:

In a nutshell his argument runs that there’s no redemption for the human animal, in fact, we delude ourselves if we think we are anything beyond the animal. We are, he argues, violent, brutish and barbaric.  And whilst our 21st century lives in developed nations are no longer dominated by these three forces, it is deep-written in our nature to have these forces just below the surface and that fact is as immutable as the mountains. Whilst our technology and science progress and develop our basic character and nature cannot. We are not improving as a species, becoming less violent or nasty and inexorably moving on to some dreamy Star Trekkian future of benign benevolence. We are doomed to repeat the barbarism of history, civilisation only paper-thin.

…To prove his point Gray takes us to humans in the raw, to Naples in 1943 where starvation and disease took a modern city and tossed it back into the dark ages and people fought to live in the most desperate of conditions. In such terrible circumstances anything goes and the civilised life is seen to be the myth it is. Humans are animals that will do anything to remain alive, ditching values and philosophies long held simply to keep their hearts beating.

As I said it is a bleak and honest analysis and it is a powerful warning about human hubris, urging us to be ever humble and watchful for our own “nasty” instincts. Our institutions, our mythological civilised life where many of us have the privilege to live – where indeed John Gray himself gets the opportunity to de-construct it all – can and often is, washed away in an instant by the forces of dark disaster.

Hey, it’s Memorial Day, isn’t it? I just prefer to spend it reflecting on the ways in which other people, not just soldiers, have sacrificed so that we might live comfortably, and on the threats posed by, as one review of Murphy’s book put it, “some vision of the ultimate good, some conviction about ultimate truth, some confidence in the quest for perfectibility,” whereby “as long as there are righteous people in the world, the danger of widespread persecution will persist.”

Being a Flimpest is Meaningless

By in atheism, conspicuous crusading No Comments

“There’s a passive-aggressive victim status that religious people now have, which is that they go, ‘Oh these fundamental atheists!’ Well, I’m not a fundamentalist atheist — being an atheist doesn’t mean anything to me, I don’t want anybody else to be an atheist, I’ve no interest in spreading atheism any more than I have… if there was a word to describe someone who doesn’t believe in the Tooth Fairy — a ‘flimpest’ — then I would have to say I’m a flimpest. But being a flimpest is meaningless; it just means I don’t believe in the Tooth Fairy. It doesn’t involve a set of values; it doesn’t… my set of values comes from humanism, from the Enlightenment, from the very set of values that built this country, the set of values of Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson, and people who actually thought for themselves and didn’t take any text as gospel… which Marxists did, and which many religions do. I just think it’s terrible to be told what’s the case.”

Oooh, I can think of a few fundamentalist atheists who will likely have one of their two-minute-hategasms when they hear this. Then again, Fry may very well have already been an unperson to them based on other inconveniently sensible things he’s said.

All Them Books I Didn’t Read, They Just Sat There on My Shelf Looking Much Smarter Than Me (IX)

By in books, so many books, so little time No Comments

other-wordly: pronunciation | tsUn-dO-kU (tsoon-doh-koo) submitted by | chrysalismm submit words | hereJapanese script | 積ん読 kanji, つんどく hiragana

Who does that? Not me! After today’s Champions League final, I’ve got almost three months of hell-spawned weather to look forward to with hardly any fútbol to watch, so you better believe I’m going to get some book-reading done. Here’s the most recent additions to the stack since last time, which no, of course I haven’t finished, just like I hadn’t finished all the ones from the picture before that, because shut up, that’s why, I don’t have a problem, I am so going to get them all read sooner or later; here, quit harassing me and just look at this:

Glass Walls on Slaughterhouses

By in conspicuous crusading, george carlin, ohferfucksake, samesecks, waiting for the barbarians 2 Comments

Ahahaha. Now, we already knew Hamilton Nolan is a goddamned moron, and we already knew that Gawker’s brand of progressive woo-girl politics is as superficial as its audience, but shut my mouth and palm my face, this do beat all. Apparently, it never occurred to our progressive heroes while agitating for the overturn of DADT that they were, in fact, agitating for people to have the opportunity to be psychologically broken down in order to be rebuilt as perfect, unquestioning killing machines. Tugging uncomfortably at the collar, a strained expression, a finger held aloft: “This seems a bit, well, retrograde.” You don’t say.

It’s always amusing to see naïve campus progressivism run face-first into a reality-based brick wall; it tickles my slapstick funny bone. But there’s also an unpleasant dissonance in considering the kind of person who can blithely accept the idea of humans being shaped into lethal weapons while blanching at the thought that the process of shaping them thusly might involve some impolitic language. Like George Carlin said about rules of combat, it seems just a way to reassure ourselves that we’re quite civilized even as we devote our efforts to signing up as many people as possible to this institution of mass killing. Faced with the grave significance of war, presented with a pile of corpses, what kind of procedural mindset massages away the cramps of conscience by consulting a properly ticked-off checklist? Well, let’s see — proper declaration of hostilities, signed in the right place, mm-hmm; official uniform, name tag clearly displayed, yep; cause of death: regulation military weaponry, legally obtained, properly registered, good; aaaaand….nope, doesn’t appear anyone was called a faggot or a raghead in the process. All righty, everything looks good here, carry on.

One of the things that nauseated me during those wasted years spent reading the political blogosphere was the presence of so many amateur spin doctors, those process-minded moral homunculi who only thought in terms of optics and marketing, divorced from considerations of value. The Democrats were the brand, and achieving maximum market share was the goal. Repealing the ban on gays in the military looks to be polling well, so let’s go with it! Meta-questions about the worthiness of any such goals would only confuse them, like a Roomba stuck in the corner between the bookcase and the nightstand. Vroom, bonk. Vroom, bonk. Should gays or anyone else care about being discriminated against by such an institution? What about the implications of seeing the world’s mightiest death-dealing colossus as first and foremost a vehicle for job training and career advancement? Vroom, extending civil rights, bonk. Vroom, the most important election of our time, bonk.

People who can overlook gruesome reality with the help of sanitized language are not to be trusted.

One Who Glimpsed It and Fled

By in foolosophy, santutthi, work, Ω 7 Comments

Bill Watterson:

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential — as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.

You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them.

To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble. Reading those turgid philosophers here in these remote stone buildings may not get you a job, but if those books have forced you to ask yourself questions about what makes life truthful, purposeful, meaningful, and redeeming, you have the Swiss Army Knife of mental tools, and it’s going to come in handy all the time.

Somehow, until I saw Maria Popova’s link, there had been a Watterson-commencement-speech-shaped hole in my experience of which I had been unaware. Glad that’s fixed now.

Future Imperfect

By in technology No Comments

Jörg Friedrich:

We don’t always strive for perfection. To the contrary: as a species, we often embrace imperfect conditions instead of attempting to better them. A desire for perpetual progress isn’t encoded in our genes. Large periods of human history were relatively static. For many generations, our forefathers lived contently without desiring radical change. We also know of contemporary tribes in inaccessible regions of the earth that appear to be quite happy with the world as it is and with their place within it. These tribes don’t necessarily aspire to “be different” or to be more like us.

In the modern West, many people are similarly sceptical of radical change even if it promises great technological, social or medical benefits. As Shakespeare already knew, it’s often easier for us to endure existing hardship than it is to aspire to an unknown future.

Why does this matter? Because attempts to develop new technologies and to propel engineering forward often fail to account for the diversity of views on progress. We are presented with shining examples of scientific possibilities that will change our everyday lives whether we desire it or not. Yet from the perspective of an objective observer, the introduction of many new technologies is unnecessary. Their development isn’t driven by some innate need for progress and survival but by our own curiosity and enthusiasm for new gadgets and by economic interests.

This is something I think about a lot. It’s only been in the last few hundred years that knowledge and technological prowess have begun to exponentially increase, but we’ve quickly become accustomed to thinking of this as something inevitable. As is often the case, Hume is there wagging his finger at us, reminding us that we ultimately have no solid foundation upon which to rest our blithe assumption that tomorrow will be a teleological improvement upon today. 165 million years of dinosaurs existing as a species ultimately meant nothing. Whatever we might hope or think will happen to a species of hairless ape that has only been around for a fraction of that time, we don’t know. There is no precedent here. And so, what might it be like if humanity were forced to reacclimate itself to such a static, cyclical way of life?

The Audience is Listening

By in bonsai minimalism, identity, santutthi, work, writing 6 Comments

Adam Gurri:

The point is, if you start blogging thinking that you’re well on your way to achieving Malcolm Gladwell’s career, you are setting yourself for disappointment. It will suck the enjoyment out of writing. Every completed post will be saddled with a lot of time staring at traffic stats that refuse to go up. It’s depressing.

Instead, the perfect balance is committing to only those crafts that you can perform with satisfaction even if you have to do so in utter obscurity. Then, put your work out in public as part of the process itself—if you’re making homebrew beer or an Arduino hack, make a video or write about the process as a means to think harder about the details of it. If you’re a writer, think of putting it online as simply having the work backed up in one more place.

In this way, you open yourself up to the spectrum of possibilities, ranging from utter obscurity at one end to global fame at the other. Far more likely is something closer to the obscurity end but much more satisfying—that you will draw the attention of a relative few who share your interests.

In my mind, this is the best way to take advantage of modernity while minimizing its costs. We are an affluent enough society that we’re able to make enough money as individuals to have time to devote to doing something we love for its own sake. We are also an interconnected society where some artisans are able to rise to sudden prominence and make a living doing what they love. A satisfying life will focus on the former while keeping the door open to the latter possibility.

There’s these two friends of mine. Between them, there are at least six blogs floating around the web like ghost ships, mysteriously abandoned shortly after launch with no signs of struggle. Both of them are well-educated and driven to be serious writers. Both of them struggle to write regularly and frequently seem despondent over what they do produce, as well as the lack of any foreseeable future for it in the marketplace. The identity of being a writer-with-a-capital-W seems to be a heavy burden on their shoulders; the glass always seems half-empty. And here I am, a mere scribbler, about to chalk up 1500 posts and loving every minute of it. It’s almost enough to give me something like survivor’s guilt.

With respect to Gurri’s excellent post, I’d still prefer to keep the door firmly barred against recognition and reward. It’s a delicate balance to hold; I suppose there’s always a chance that making one’s work public could lead to unwanted attention. But addressing an audience, even one that mostly exists in the abstract, is how I keep from disappearing into narcissistic diary-keeping, or talking in complacent shorthand and private jokes. Echolocation, however tentative or intermittent, is necessary for perspective. So thanks for reading — and thanks for being so few in number.

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