Sunday 30 December 2012

A Bright Christmas Diet of Eclectic Fun


Yay for Christmas! Christmas, Christmas, Christmas! The birth of Christ, presents, and an old man who makes Big Brother look like Jim Hacker*. Christmas!

Yeah, Christmas is kinda boring to talk about. What else is there? I was interviewed by a reporter a few days ago, and that’s interesting (at least to me). But I would like to talk about something a bit lighter, since it’s Christmas, and since I suspect that my last post may have been a little hard to get through… I was going to sacrifice ‘light’ to have an argument on gun control, but on consideration, no. Not only am I not going to, I’m not even explaining why I’m not going to.

So, what else is going on? Fiscal cliff? My prediction has been ‘they’ll make a deal some time just after the absolute last moment, but before too much damage is done’ for several months. I currently see no reason to change that prediction. Seriously, people complain about the Eurozone, but…

Gay marriage? That’s a top issue in the UK at the moment. Except that I tried having one of the dialogues between the two philosophers I have locked in my basement about it, and ended up with this:

Ben James: I’m in favour of gay marriage.
Finn Carter: Yup. Me too.

Unfortunately, that one’s a little short. I wish there were some actual arguments against the bloody idea.

Well, I’m getting through topics fast. What’s next?

Oh yes, one of my favourite ones – absolutely idiotic things that come out of coherent logical ethical systems. People being happy is great, yeah? And a hundred happy people must be better than just one, yes? Which means that there must be a theoretical number of less happy people who are just as good as one happier person. And so, if you can increase the population enough, it doesn’t matter that the lives of the entire population are unending slogs of misery and despair, as long their lives are better than death, as long as it wouldn’t have been better for them if they’d never been born, this population is better than what we have. So what does this mean? Well… Rape! Rape is bad – I’m not going to try and justify that statement. If you disagree... Just… just go with it for the moment, OK? The question is, is rape really a fate worse than death. I have it as something of a base assumption that it isn’t. The justice system agrees with me, and… well, with a knife to their throat, everything I know about suggests that most people won’t choose the knife. OK, I now feel somewhat dirty, so onto the point – if we accept that rape is better than death, we have a situation where consent is irrelevant. Seriously. The increase in population will, if mankind survives long enough, cancel out the massive drop in quality of life. Which reminds me that we really need to have camera on every street corner – or we would, if letting people out wasn’t far too dangerous. The capitalist system is rubbish, since some people have more than what they need, which is sub-optimal, so have anything necessary to survive distributed by quota for maximum efficiency. Non-essential luxury goods can be used for incentivising, and unhealthy goods banned. It sounds like I’m describing dystopia, but it’s a far better society than we have now. The main issue is keeping the human population as high as possible for as long as possible, and the higher the population now, the more breeding population we have to increase the population for later. Eventually, everything will be better. Also, contraception is morally wrong.

So how can we avoid this? We could deny that rape was better than death, but that only deals with one problem. There are still a lot of unpleasant things we can do to make sure that there are as many people around as possible. So what if we say that some things are wrong regardless of the end result, so we can’t do all those horrible things, even that would be better. But lying is wrong. And so so is lying to the nice man with the six foot steel axe and a particular hatred for that guy who told you to ‘hide him’ not five minutes ago, and who is currently in the house behind you.

What about saying that it’s not better to have more happier people – what’s good is average happiness. So killing off half the population for the benefit of the other half? Great! Gladiatorial combat for all! Slavery’s a pretty sweet idea, too. Yeah, sure, a few people suffer unimaginable horror, but on average everyone’s better off! Yay! And if all that fails, there’s always involuntary euthanasia for the least well off members of society.

Actually, you don’t even need the crowd. Two people torturing a random person to death is a good thing, as long as they enjoy it enough to cancel out their victim’s suffering.

Now I feel dirty again. The point isn’t ‘this form of ethics is bad’. And yeah, all these problems I’ve mentioned have solutions. And the solutions all create problems of their own! In ethics, you’re limited to either stubbornly defending ideas that may or may not constitute grounds for getting locked up, or limiting yourself to things which are pretty much redundant (‘don’t stab people for no reason). Put simply, there’s a reason so many philosophers re in favour of free speech. It works the other way around, too – a lot of things which are perfectly sensible (and which it would be utterly stupid to reject) turn out to be seriously logically flawed. Not just in ethics, either. Try looking up Curry’s paradox, which I am incapable of explaining coherently, but which twists traditional logic into a pleasing pretzel shape. Hell, even ‘this statement is a lie’ is impossible to resolve without abandoning the kind of basic logic most people use every day.

Looking at why logic is usually completely at odds with all that is good and sensible in the world is fun! Yay for Christmas!

*No, not going with the paedophile joke. Far too unorigrinal. And I made it earlier on Facebook.**
**It just occurred to me that the batman myth seems to have a particular political bent – not only is there the obvious ‘handouts’ angle, but there’s also the idea that invasion of privacy and constant surveillance are acceptable if this power is given to a good person, and the idea that an educated ‘elite’ individual is in the best position to judge. So, welfare state, CCTV and an end to trial by jury. The guy even wears red***.
***Yes, for anyone who’s not sure, I’m joking.

Wednesday 28 November 2012

A rant on Tony Harris

I'm in a bad mood, and I need something to be good and annoyed at. What can I think of? I need something that's not too old, so I can pretend to be vaguely topical. Let's see... Oh, of course! Tony Harris. I love you Tony.

Unfortunately, I'm also a lifelong fan of The Ballad of Reading Gaol. So this could get ugly. Yes, I know a lot of people have already explained why what he said is... utter rubbish*. But I don't care. I need to savage something, and this is recent enough to be somewhat relevant. For those of you who don't know, Tony Garris is a comic book artist, who said some stuff which was mildly objectinable to some people. I was planning just to quote the bits of what he Said** that I disliked, but so little ended up being left out that I decided to just do the whole thing. So here it is, line by line, what he said, and why he probably shouldn't have done so.

I cant remember if Ive said this before, but Im gonna say it anyway. I dont give a crap.

Oh, great! You're the last person we can expect long, angry, offensive rants from, then? I mean, if you don't care, then it shouldn't matter to you, right? So I guess I can just finish here if you're not...

I appreciate a pretty Gal as much as the next Hetero Male. Sometimes I even go in for some racy type stuff ( keeping the comments PG for my Ladies sake) but dammit, dammit, dammit I am so sick and tired of the whole COSPLAY-Chiks.

Oh joy. There's more. I must say, though, I'm glad he's keeping it PG. I mean, I wouldn't want any of this to get crude. But, anyway, we've done with his introduction, we're getting into the really bad stuff. Onwards!

I know a few who are actually pretty cool-and BIG Shocker, love and read Comics.So as in all things, they are the exception to the rule.

Can I just interject here to say that he's offered absolutely bloody nothing to convince me that his 'exception' is so exceptional as all that, really. What Harris is saying here is  that there are girls at comic conventions who actually care about comics. Yeah, groundbreaking stuff, that. Then he's implied that they're in a minority. This would be surprising.

Heres the statement I wanna make, based on THE RULE: “Hey! Quasi-Pretty-NOT-Hot-Girl, you are more pathetic than the REAL Nerds, who YOU secretly think are REALLY PATHETIC.

Minor aside: why is it relevant if the girl is 'hot' to you? Why is this an issue? Would everything you're going to describe from here on out be perfectly fine if it was a 'hot' girl doing it? Someone has to meet your personal standards of attractiveness before they're allowed to wear skimpy clothing, is that it? What is wrong with you?
Also, those speech marks there? I'm pretty sure that they never close.

But we are onto you. Some of us are aware that you are ever so average on an everyday basis. But you have a couple of things going your way. You are willing to become almost completely Naked in public, and yer either skinny( Well, some or most of you, THINK you are ) or you have Big Boobies. Notice I didnt say GREAT Boobies? You are what I refer to as “CON-HOT”. Well not by my estimation, but according to a LOT of average Comic Book Fans who either RARELY speak to, or NEVER speak to girls.

OK, a lot of that comes pretty much under what I just said, giving the impression that people who don't meet Tony Harris' personal standards of attraction should keep their shameful bodies hidden from view. With, of course, a healthy dose of insulting people who find the 'wrong' people attractive. Thanks, Harris. Thanks a lot. And then there's the other bit. Let's let him dig himself a little deeper, shall we?

Some Virgins, ALL unconfident when it comes to girls, and the ONE thing they all have in common?

Yeah, remember when he was talking about how these girls secretly think comic book are pathetic? I'm beginning to think there might've been the tiniest bit of projection in there somewhere. This seems like a good time to establish my credentials. I'm not, in any real sense of the term, a 'comic book fan'. I've read the really famous ones - like Watchmen, Death Note and Sandman - and I know who all the people are, but I don't exactly go out and buy the new issues every week. On the other hand, I've been to (non-comic) conventions, and I've cosplayed. As Two-Face. So I do feel that I'm close enough to the people he's insulting to be incredibly insulted by this. This is his description of 'average comic book fans': people, some of whom are virgins, who rarely or never speak to girls, and who all lack confidence dealing with women. No. Just... no. Go away. You are wrong, and not only are you wrong, you are also incredibly insulting to every single comic book fan ever, and I would like you to stop now, please. You're accusing these women of yours of secretly thinking that comic book fans are pathetic? well, then the difference between them and you is that they have the courtesy to make it a secret. Go. Away.

The are being preyed on by YOU. You have this really awful need for attention, for people to tell you your pretty, or Hot, and the thought of guys pleasuring themselves to the memory of you hanging on them with your glossy open lips, promising them the Moon and the Stars of pleasure, just makes your head vibrate.

I'll comment on this section in a bit, but can I just say that that is rather odd bit of imagery. It makes your head vibrate? What? Is that an expression. Is it just me? Do other people's heads shake violently when they're happy? Is... is that something that happens?

After many years of watching this shit go down every 3 seconds around or in front of my booth or table at ANY given Con in the country, I put this together.

And here we have his 'evidence' for his claims about the majority of women. The women he knows aren't like that, of course. But the ones he doesn't know? Who he just sees outside his booth? well obviously they're shallow 'faux geeks' who're just there to manipulate the poor pathetic men of the con. The fact that he doesn't actually know these people is irrelevant - the wise Tony Harris can just tell that those evil harpies are up to no good.



Well not just me. We are LEGION.

Oh, right. False alarm everybody. It's not Harris saying these things after all. He's actually possessed by that one group of demons from the Bible. Phew, I was really worried for a moment there.

And here it is, THE REASON WHY ALL THAT, sickens us: BECAUSE YOU DONT KNOW SH-T ABOUT COMICS, BEYOND WHATEVER GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH YOU DID TO GET REF ON THE MOST MAINSTREAM CHARACTER WITH THE MOST REVEALING COSTUME EVER.

Like I said, I've been to several cons. Let's talk about DWCon 2012. I, as my love of footnotes (and the fact that I've probably mentioned it before) probably tells you, am something of a Terry Pratchett fan. But this isn't about my great taste in literature. At the Discworld Convention, there were a lot of people who hadn't read all the books. There were people who hadn't read more than one or two. There might even have been people there who hadn't read any (poor memory, sorry, I am genuinely not sure if any of the adults were completely devoid of Discosity). So, of course, we chased them down, lynched them, and hung them from the hotel balconies. Oh, wait, no, that's cults, not conventions. There is no minimum threshold of knowledge about a character you have to have before we will welcome you into our fold. The idea that we're this exclusive, borderline xenophobic group who won't accept new people and will exclude you for being different isn't only bloody stupid, it's also one of the most damaging stereotypes there could possibly be about us. Not to mention being the exact same thing we're always complaining at the mainstream for. And if you don't know anything about a character except that you think they look cool? That's awesome. And cons are a chance to dress like that without people judging you. Or locking you up.

Now, just to try to be entirely fair to Tony Harris, yes, there exist girls who'll use the fact that they're considered conventionally attractive to get some advantage. There's a guy called Pavlov who might suggest that if someone gets a consistently positive response from doing something, it's really not that surprising if they do it. And they're only at fault for it if you genuinely believe that men can't control themselves around attractive females. Now, I'm asexual, so I'm not entirely sure, but I don't think that's an entirely accurate assessment. And even if you think it is unforgivable, there are about seven thousand million people on this planet. You'd expect all kinds to exist. It reflects on the female part of the population about as much as... say... Tony Harris, to pick a random example, reflects on the male part. Not to mention that 'takes advantage of being found attractive' is not really the same thing as 'enjoys being stared at by idiots'. If Mr. Harris had complained about girls trying to get free stuff or discounts for that kind of thing? That might be slightly more believable***. Since I can just about believe that girls at Comicon might actually want comics... Oh, sorry, they don't really have any interest in comics. Being stared at? That's what they like. I forgot. But, like I said, seven hundred thousand people, there are probably a few girls who do enjoy that kind of thing. But even then, if someone like that is at Comicon, they probably are still interested in comics. Do you really think that these girls would pay for admission, would want to spend all day around guys who, according to you, disgust them, and would spend their entire day talking about something they have neither knowledge of nor interest in, just so that these disgusting pathetic losers could lech on them? I don't know if Harris knows this, but if even I'm aware of it, it's probably common knowledge: Women don't tend to enjoy strangers ogling their secondary sexual characteristics. They have a habit of not taking it as entirely complimentary. And you think that these girls are actually paying for the service?

That's taking the most beneficial line. Here's a crazy idea for you: women who dress up to look 'hot' or 'sexy' don't necessarily want you to stare at them. Especially not in a society that constantly mocks them for not looking their best like good little eye-candy for the male viewers****. That's why you don't tend to be able to identify asexuals by our careless combining of vomit green shirts with hot pink latex trousers. People can want to look nice for any number of reasons, and not all of them have to do with wanting to have your drool all over them. I'd say that most of them probably do just think that the character looks cool, but, well, the majority probably genuinely like the character. Crazy as it might sound, 'reading comic books' isn't actually a uniquely male thing. And a lot of the girls who really like comic books? Well, call me crazy, but I think there's a good chance they might be at comic conventions. So, having dealt with that stupid idea, back to more stupid ideas.

And also, if ANY of these guys that you hang on tried to talk to you out of that Con? You wouldnt give them the f–king time of day. Shut up you damned liar, no you would not. Lying, Liar Face.

OK then. Insulting and arguing with people who aren't there. Because it worked so well for Mr Eastwood, didn't it*****. Classy insults, there, too. Here's the thing. If they're really that desperate for attention, why on earth would they only accept it in cons? Why would they not be just as appreciative of it outside of cons? More, even, since they haven't had to get all in costume to do it. Even if we take what you're saying uncritically, it's still bloody stupid, and even self-contradictory. In his rush to make these women evil, he's completely abandoned the secondary concern of making these people rational, realistic human beings.

Yer not Comics.

No, they're women. The difference? You can put comics in binders.

Your just the thing that all the Comic Book, AND mainstream press flock to at Cons. And the real reason for the Con, and the damned costumes yer parading around in? That would be Comic Book Artists, and Comic Book Writers who make all that sh-t up.

And here's the crux. He, as part of the comic book artists and writers group that invented these costumes, is then complaining about people dressing up as these characters. What? And he's complaining that these people are taking away the attention that he so rightfully deserves. OK, I don't want to say that he's just jealous. But it kinda looks that way, doesn't it? If people were interested in you? The press would pay attention to you. Also, the obvious. The problem is, you cannot say that these costumes are perfectly fine when they were made by the writer, putting a fake woman into a costume she has no control over in order to titillate the reader. But when a woman decides of her own free will to wear that costume? Well then, she's obviously a shameless whore who only wants attention. You can't have it both ways. But other people can (and have) made that particular point a lot better than I can, and I think it's a pretty obvious one. Let's get away from this part, now.

So now I'm finished, yes? Well, unfortunately, I am naturally fair. By which I mean that I enjoy kicking people when they're down. So, let's look at how he tried to defend himself, shall we? These are the two defences I, personally, know about. I know, for example, that in his second defence he mentions twitter, and I have no idea what he said there. So yes, there might be something missing from this. But the defences he's given that I've seen, I will deal with. Firstly:

So I guess I broke the Internet in half today . Lots of interesting commentary, to say the very least. Didn’t realize that many people would care about one guys opinion.

I thought you were legion? No? Oh, OK then. Really, why should it matter how many people hold a view? Surely it's a mark of respect to engage with someone's views on their merits, not just dismiss them because it's only one guy holding them? No? We should dismiss opinions just because only one person's holding them? So how many people need to hold a view before it becomes worth our time? Why, yes, I am being somewhat factitious. Back to Harris.

Also extremely savaged and humbled by the vicious response that went so far beyond any reason whatsoever, with personal attacks on my family, my sexual history, and accusations of advances being rebuffed cosplayers, which has never ever happened.

I can't imagine why someone would think you'd had a bad experience in the past. That's clearly giving you way too much credit. Obviously you're getting this from the extensive experience of just watching people outside of your booth, not some kind of actual experience. Stupid of us. On another note, there is a terrible tendency amongst humans, that when you insult people, they get angry. I know. Crazy, isn't it?

My candor and my delivery of most things can be and usually is quite blunt.

Your candour is blunt. You... actually, to hell with it. Moving on.

Can’t help who I am, but what I’m not, and never have been is a misogynist or sexist or any number of things I was called.

OK, somewhat arguable, but whether or not you can help what you are, you can certainly help what you say. It is possible for you to not be sexist. And even if it weren't, it's possible not to draw attention to this unfortunate deficiency. And if you do, you certainly don't then get to deflect it because you 'can't help who you are'. And from that speech? Yes, you are bloody well sexist. I don't really think you're worth a big virtue ethics debate, but even if such a thing is possible, a non sexist who says sexist things isn't really any better than a sexist who does. Actually, you could argue that they're worse. And do you really think, Mr. Harris, that there is a single human being in today's world (or at any time, for that matter) who actually thinks that they are sexist and misogynist? Ernest Bax didn't think he was sexist, he just thought that it was an obvious fact that most women had difficulty outthinking a squirrel, in the same way that it's obvious that the sky is blue. In his mind, it was no more 'sexist' to point this out than it is ageist to say that a two-year-old is likely to have difficulty with advanced algebra. Calling yourself non-sexist is pretty much meaningless here.

I have the utmost respect for all the women in my life from my mother, my sister, motherinlaw, my wife and wonderful 2 daughters.

But some of my best friends are black... that doesn't sound convincing for some reason. Weird. And for the record, I don't get along very well with most of the female members of my family (and obviously I don't have a wife), and it turns out that I'm the one who seems to have more respect women as actual human beings. Weird how that one works out, ain't it. Two other things: all those people are related to you. Congrats, you love your family. This proves what, exactly? You were actually a lot better off when you said that you knew 'a few' girls to whom this didn't apply. Seriously, if that didn't work to balance out everything else you said, what on earth made you think that six family members would do it? The way you've phrased that, it sounds like those are the only women in your life. The way you've phrased it also leads me to think you may actually have more than two daughters, but I'm pretty sure that's a grammar issue. And if you do have a lot of women you know and respect, can I just say that it seems slightly off to me that you should have 'the utmost respect' for all of them? I mean, it seems fine, but expand it to say 'I have the utmost respect for everyone in my life'. Well then 'utmost respect' doesn't mean much, does it? Personally, there are quite a few people in my life who I don't have so much respect for as I do for others. I have more respect for people who helped me out when I needed it, or who made me see the world in a new way, than for those for whom those things are not true. There are people in my life whom I quite simply have not known well enough for long enough to acquire as much respect for as I have for others. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I have no respect for anyone I don't know. It's that there are people who I truly, genuinely, respect more than I respect some other people. If someone truly has the utmost respect for all the women in his life, either he really doesn't have many women in his life (surprisingly plausible now I think about it), or he doesn't make that distinction, and all women are basically the same to him. You could invent cold fusion, surf across Mexico on a tame dinosaur, and be proclaimed by a choir of angels as the Second Coming. Mr. Harris would not respect you for that. The one thing he respects you for - and by implication, the thing about you that is most important and deserving of respect - is that you are a woman. In normal circumstances, I'd say that that was me reading too much into what he said, and that he probably didn't actually mean that - he's just talking in a way I can read too much into. Six lines from the most innocent man alive is enough to condemn the guy, so, y'know, it's not outside the realms of possibility. Given his prior statements, though? I'm actually not so sure.

This is my final word on the subject so move on. I won’t address it again.

Yay! He won't be writing any more. Nope, no more writing for me to deal with, no more attempts to defend... wait, no, that wasn't true. Honestly, it's getting kind of sad now. Picking on Tony Harris is starting to feel a bit unfair at this point. Fortunately, I have a sadistic streak. So let's see what more stupidity we can find!

So heres my follow up commentary. Tried to “engage” my detractors on Twitter. Big mistake. Not gonna backpeddle. Not one step.

Mixed metaphor! And "engage" doesn't need the quotation marks. More significantly, like I said, I don't know what happened on twitter, my Internet is a bit slow at the moment, I'm not commenting on whatever it was.

I tried to be clear at the beginning by saying I know there are legit Cosplayers who know the material and love it. So if you wanna gloss over that and accuse my statements as being all inclusive of Cosplay, then blow me.

The problem is, you implied that 'legit' cosplayers were in a minority amongst women. You said there were 'a few' who were 'pretty cool'. Then you said that they were the exception to the rule. The thing about 'exceptions' to rules is that they are rare. They are implied to be in the minority. The fact is that you did make a general statement, and you dismissed the people who don't fit your rule as the freakish exceptions. And notice how he says 'all inclusive of Cosplay'? No gender words? Watch that, because this is absolutely beautiful.

See, this is why I posted this HERE, on MY page. You dont like it? Leave.

Don't like? Don't read. Everything I say is immune from all criticism ever. I should be allowed to speak of my hatred for all you perverted sexuals whose squirrel brains are so full of sex it's hard to tell you apart from most baboons. I should be able to say that there's an evil Zionist conspiracy trying to take over the world, and that they're the source of AIDS. Hell, I should be allowed to write stories about paedophilia, and publish them here. I mean, it's my page. You don't like it? Leave. I am immune to all criticism.

Also, my criticism of what you said, Tony Harris is on MY page. I think pretty much everyone who criticised you was doing it on their own pages. You don't like it? Leave.

Dont threaten to stop buying my work, because Im sure most of you who threw that gauntlet down, never did to begin with. Good riddance.

Yes, noone who criticised you for those statements was at all invested in comics, that's why they got so angry. They were looking at your page because of their complete lack of concern for your work. Okay, okay, he said most. I shouldn't overstate his words, because Heaven knows, I already have enough to work with.  So I'll just say that I'm not sure I share his confidence and move on.

Hey all you self righteous f-ck-faces out there who are spewing even MORE hatred at me, than you accused me of spewing. pfffft. Really, thats how you come at me? Once you have moved on to hate on someone else….Good Riddance.

Like I said, people tend to get angry when you insult them. And, indeed, when you make them look bad. See, here's the thing. These people are expressing legitimate hatred of what you did, and by extension you, based on the fact that you are the kind of person who would say such a thing. Y'know, like the way many people would express significant hatred for Nick Griffin, based on him being the kind of person who would say some of the things he said******. You are expressing hatred of an entire group, and basing that on no evidence whatsoever - let alone on a text publicly available on the Internet that even one member of that group admits to writing. And complaining that they're being more hateful than you? Well, other than the fact that they have way, way more reason to be hateful, it kinda draws attention to the fact that you managed to 'spew' infinitely more hatred at this group of women than they were spewing at you, doncha think?

But the one thing I HAVE to address is the use of the word MISOGYNY. So I am a Misogynist? Why? Because I frown upon Posers who are sad, needy fakers who use up all my air at Cons?

Your air? I'm sorry, but your air? What the hell? Are you not getting enough air? Do you regularly suffocate at conventions? No? So what on earth makes air which you are not breathing and have no intention of breathing yours, exactly? And it's not just the fact that you frown on this behaviour - you pretty much took that it was negative as a given. It's that you declared that this group included the majority of female cosplayers. Let me make it simple for you. You are sort of like someone who says 'there are some good women in the world, but the rule is that women are whores', and who then, upon being called sexist, says 'Why am I sexist? Because I object to prostitution?' No, you colossal dullard, that is not the source of the objections to you. On a lighter note, notice how his entire original post was now about sad needy posers. Not quite what I remember, but keep watching.

Sorry, while you Cos”Play” Im actually at work. Thats my office. F–k you.

What.

What?

WHAT?

Qp;eln;afjkljh;ohal;irjfgjanht;lkafsjadsfljioeqpiurioqnvgnoqljurqiru[tu[pia[pori[poijinvi;lrjfiajioeur. Ahoiuqrioutohklnvlkrjfaoiutq[jgkjnz;kjfhoitgupoiq. Lihjfrouqhfnjgnvroqihtfgoaijklfja;kjhtopuqjiojgiht. Sqhoipjuipu. Dun do bheal, tu thoin. Ta me dairire, bi i do thost agus feisigh leat, tu chrionchnu leathcheann. Do chorp ar shiul o an diabhal, ta diabhal ro-mhaith ar do shon, tu plague ar an gcine daona. I wish you were an idiot in the Greek sense of the word, not just the English one, because then I wouldn't have to listen to you. I would never wish death on anyone, but I will say that I wouldn't wish you on the dead, you worthless creature. I'd say you were a baboon who learnt how to type, but that would be an insult to the educated masses of baboons everywhere. Hell, I'm not sure if calling you a plague might have been too much of an insult to germs. If he'd been writing about you, Shakespeare would've been forced to apologise to blocks, stones, and worse than senseless things. Just stop speaking, you utter bloody moron.

OK, I'll admit that that may have been a slight overreaction to what he just said. But it's a cumulative thing. I mean, I don't even have to explain why that if bloody stupid, do I? It is not your bloody convention Harris. You do not have the right to deny people the right to have fun there. You're like a guy who sets up a stall in front of the Parthenon and then complains about the tourists. No, scratch that, compared to you that guy is completely justified. What, you think the people at cons shouldn't be playing and enjoying themselves? Because you're working, everyone else there has to be serious on their holiday? It's not your office, because 'office' implies somewhere you have the faintest bit of right to. You do not have any right whatsoever to the dealer's hall, you are there by someone else's permission - just like everyone else, and the attendees? They don't owe you anything beyond the basic respect that one human shows another - and in your case, I'm not sure you even deserve that (sorry, that was unfair, I know, sorry, its just... GAH). It is not your convention, Mr. Harris, and you have no more right to be there than any other person in the room.

Not my clearest explanation ever, but the red haze makes it hard to type. Let's see if he can say something more sensible.

I actually dont hate women, I dont fear them either. Nor do I mistrust them. I do not portray or Objectify half naked women in my work. I never have.

Nope.

That? Is a lie. I have seen some of Tony Harris' work. The concept that he has never portrayed a single half naked woman in his work is flat out incorrect. In fact, let's do a Google search. For 'Tony Harris coplay'. Then let's look a the third image down (at time of writing) - drawn by Tony Harris himself. Yes. I can plainly see that Mr. Harris has never portrayed any half naked women in his work. The woman's the one at the back, yes? It's just so gosh-darn conservatively drawn that I can't tell.

I have always been VERY vocal about my dislike of that practice, and that my view is and has been that T&A in comics is a Pox. If you wanna come at me with accusations of Misogyny and sexism, youll be wrong. I think there are several Hundred “PRos” I could rattle off that are doing a fine job of perpetuating that crap without ANY help from me.

Yes. There are. And not just in the comics industry. Which is why you should really stop helping them. Here's the thing: When he says that he's always been a vocal critic of T&A in comics, he may be telling the truth. I mean, I haven't found anything to say so, but I don't know the guy very well, and absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But since what he said - and is now defending - is a hell of a lot worse than T&A in comics, I don't think this would actually increase my respect for the man.

Its not helping to further our industry.

No, it's not. Neither, for that matter, are you. Point?

Hey haters, Im not sad, lonely, stupid, uneducated, gay, nor do I wear Assess for a Hat.

Well, about half right. I'm pretty sure you're uneducated, and you're almost certainly not gay. I'm willing to take your word that you're not lonely, too. In fact, you must be the opposite, if you can afford to alienate so many people. Actually, I think I might be onto something here. Are there too many people around you, Mr. Harris? Do you want them to go away? Are you trying to drive them away? Is that it?

Also, I genuinely don't know what denying wearing 'assess' on your head even means. Your hat doesn't look at things? You don't wear an assessor for a hat? What do you mean, Mr Harris? Tell me!

Im not a Sexist, and have been very vocal about the fact that its a GOOD thing to see so many female fans at shows, and I treat them with the same kindness and respect as I do ANY male fan I meet.

Well you did say that the ones you knew just happened, by complete coincidence, to be the good ones, where you know the bad ones just happen to be the ones you only glimpse outside your booth. Amazing, that. Or are you saying that if you meet a male fan, you treat him horribly and assume he's an attention seeking slut too? Or is this just more of you rewriting what you actually said in your head until it becomes defensible?

And here's another thing. Whatever you may have said about how good it is to see female fans at shows, you've pretty much invalidated to positive aspects of it with what you've said, because by that you've set yourself up as the arbiter of who gets to come to cons, and who doesn't. Who's a 'proper' fan, and who should stay away. It turns what you said into 'It's great to have so many female fans at shows, as long as they're the right kind of fans'. It's not your con, Tony Harris, you do not get to decide who is a 'good enough fan' to attend it, no matter how vocal a proponent of women at conventions you might be. You do not get to judge women you don't even know as 'not true fans'.

I guess the one mistake I made in my original post was that I excluded Men. Let me rectify that… SOME of you MEN, are as bad as SOME of the Women Cosplayers, I talked about earlier.

And the transformation is complete, like the caterpillar becoming a butterfly, the statement has completely shifted. I don't mind telling you, I find it bloody beautiful. It's like one of those magic eye pictures, which seems like it's moving when it's still the same, except it's the opposite - it completely changes without ever seeming to move. Seriously, just try to apply what he said to men. What, they dress up in revealing costumes and get all the sad, loser girls at the cons to hang all over them? This causes their heads to vibrate? They just do an image search for the most mainstream 'sexy' character? Seriously, read his original post, and just try to apply it to men. Oh, and apparently now he was talking about 'some' women. I must have been mistaken when I thought he said that this was the 'rule'. Oh, no, wait, he did say that. Does he maybe not understand what the word 'rule' means? Or does he mean that a very small minority of men are as bad as some of the less ostentatious of the women? Which, of course, makes everything else he said OK. Seriously, just try to change is original statement to include men. What I think his new 'original' statement was is 'some female cosplayers are attention seekers' (And I'd just like to say that the sentiment that cosplayers are attention seekers and not real fans is really not one that's needed, so thanks for that, Tony). Which, y'know, vaguely resembles his original statement, in the same way that an opposition to Israeli settlement-building resembles the ideology of Hamas. If he'd actually said 'some female cosplayers are attention seekers', I'm guessing he wouldn't have gotten so much of a response. It would still have been rather insulting (and would've had some rather nasty implications), but he could've avoided sexism charges by including men, and he would've gone in the 'annoying idiot' category, rather than the 'torches and pitchforks' category.





There. Oh and to all of you guys who are my friends, and pros who I work with, dont go and try and defend me or anything I wrote. Youll just get sh-t on.

Oh don't worry. Anyone who was going to defend what you said is probably going to end up earning a hell of a lot of ire anyway. And if they don't, they deserve to.

Thanks though. And lastly, Bleeding Cool, and Rich Johnston are Sh-thead, scumbags, and this isnt the first time his camp has come after me. F–ck you Rich.

I do not know who these people are, but I feel great affection for them. I feel that whatever crimes they have committed can probably be excused.

That's all I have of what Tony Harris has said on this topic. There might be more, but I think I've savaged him enough for one day.

That was actually really cathartic. I feel a hell of a lot better. I'll have to remember to do this again some time. Anyway, I feel like being aggressively fair to someone now, so let me explain the Catholic Church's view on abortion, or at least the official philosophical underpinnings. It is, surprisingly, not that the pregnancy is part of God's plan. Neither is it the Thomist argument against abortion being extended. These are both reasons the Church holds to oppose abortion, but they're not the main basis of the objection. Neither is it, really, that 'zomg you're killing babies'. It's slightly more subtle than that. The argument goes thusly: We do not know when an embryo becomes a baby. This is obviously true, since if you ask anyone, even someone pro-choice, they probably won't be able to give you an exact age of transition. And even if you manage to find two that can, they won't agree. Now, the argument goes, surely given this fact we should be as cautious as is humanly possible, not because we will kill babies, but because we might accidentally kill a baby, and although it's obvious that, yes, it's absolutely terrible that a woman should lose the right to her body. But surely it's better that she should suffer some temporary inconvenience unnecessarily, than that we should accidentally commit multiple infanticides. Surely anyone would agree that overcaution is by far the better option in this case? And so the Church argues that all abortions must be banned not because we will end up killing babies, but because we might, and because the risk is too great, and the consequences too horrible, to allow. Now, personally, I don't agree with that argument. I remain pro-choice, and I'm not going to go into why, since this post is long enough already. But I will say that, in my opinion it is absolutely the best, most convincing pro-life argument I have ever heard, and I'm not sure I've done it justice. It's certainly a lot more convincing and subtle than what usually gets trotted out by the pro-life crowd.


*I have been accused of having an overabundance of the English habit of understatement.
**See? I can capitalise random words for no reason too, Tony. Look how clever I am.
***Still a really offensive, pretty sexist generalisation, along with all the other problems a statement like that has. But slightly more believable.
****This is known as 'thatcher's blame'. Either because it covers all instances, or because it's what the evil nasty meanies did to Margaret Thatcher (forgetting for the moment that this is basically what the opposition has done to every PM ever - it's, like, their job).
*****That might've been a little mean, yeah. I'm sorry.
******For Americans who don't know who Nick Griffin is: he's sort of like Romney, except we all know how insane he is.



A NOTE: I am aware I left out the sinti, and that I am still doing so. For this, along with any other mistakes that may have been made (which are probably a result of my limited grasp of the language, combined with me not checking properly, being rather more concerned with 'being mad at Tony Harris') I apologise to native speakers for the mild butchering of their language.

Thursday 25 October 2012

On Democracy II (OA)


The second part I did of On Democracy. Which, since that was posted here more than six months ago, you might have to be reminded of. But there's a link in the text, so that's probably OK. This is my idea for a new system of governance. It's not necessarily perfect – or even workable. But it's a start.


Sorry about the last post1. The comment discussed annoys me rather. Actually, saying it sincerely is currently (along with a few other, fairly similar, statements) third on my list of 'fastest ways to annoy me'2. No, you don't get to know numbers one and two. I might mention it if it's relevant, but just publishing a list of 'fastest ways to annoy me' on the internet would seem... somewhat naive. But you won't get a rant like that unless several people say the same utterly idiotic thing to me in quick succession, and I'm annoyed enough about it to want to do a rant, rather than just posting a link at the beginning of a more interesting post3.

So, continuing the theme of 'stupid things people nevertheless seem to believe, let's go back to democracy. Thinking people should have some say in how their lives are run. How ridiculous. This is the second part, and I'm going to assume you've read part 1 (here).

Read it? Good. Now, there's a mistake I left in there intentionally, because solving it would take me a lot further from we have at the moment, which I didn't really want to do in my first post. That's what this post deals with. Also, this post will be a lot more radical, because pretending to be sane for an extended period gives me a headache.

So what's the problem? Well it's the question of how exactly you'd implement what I suggested. It's easy to see how you'd make sure people voting in referenda know what the basic issue under discussion is. But how do you do that for a general election? You can increase the number of referenda, but that only goes so far. You could ask people about the general issues that are biggest at the moment, but that has problems with people deciding which issues are biggest*, as well as the fact that, when electing a government to rule the country for the next five years, electing them on the basis of what the biggest issue is right now seems somewhat short sighted.

So could we elect them based on people's understanding of their major policies? Well, if we at least checked that they knew what those policies were, that would seem a step forward without changing too much - that way, when someone was elected, we'd know that it had at least something to do with their policies, rather than being because people's dads voted Conservative, because voting Monster Raving Loony seems like a good idea when you're drunk, or because people fancy Nick Clegg**. Unfortunately, knowing what a policy is and understanding the effects of a policy are somewhat different. Wanting to send the foreigners back where they came from is one thing, but how many BNP supporters do you think actually understand the diplomatic, economic and cultural impacts of such a decision? Even worse, there's the Dunning-Kruger effect, which means that the people who think that they understand what they're talking about probably don't*** (which, incidentally, is another problem with democracy: the people with Opinions stomp off down to the voting booth to make themselves heard, whilst the people who'd probably make good decisions aren't really sure; they can see both sides of the argument, and they don't really have enough expertise in the subject to make a good decision, so they're less likely to actually vote). So you could ask them questions about some of the basic consequences of the decision****, but you'd have to make the questions rather basic to avoid making the pool of potential voters ridiculously small, or even eliminating them entirely (which would be amusing, but rather impractical as a system). It might make things better, but it would still have similar problems

But there's another problem with that idea, which is far more serious. It would stop people who know about one thing from giving input on it because of total ignorance on something else. Remember the scientist from last time? He's an economist now - spending all your time alone gives you a lot of time for study^. Unfortunately, his total inability to see others as something other than complex automata has given him a rather warped understanding of the impact of foreign policy. He's still probably a better person to ask about the economy than a first year International Relations undergraduate who happened to do AS economics, but this system would be more likely to ask the former than the latter4.

Which, actually, leads onto my biggest single criticism of dictatorship - that there is not a single person in the world who actually has the expertise to know what they're talking about in all the areas you'd need to know about to run a country effectively to the levels you'd need, at least until we finally transhuman strong AI5 and hand over control to it in order to prevent the inevitable machine revolution6. In theory, a human dictator could appoint advisors - which is why the best possible dictatorship is better than the best possible democracy. Unfortunately, dictatorships don't tend to be the best possible dictatorship. That's not to say that it's never been done. The Romans managed pretty good dictatorships a few times. But that was on a temporary basis, and there were some very stringent controls on what they could and couldn't do. Trying to build a better society by relying on dictatorships being good dictatorships is rather like trying to program a computer by slight atmospheric changes caused by the careful timed release of butterflies. It might work, but you're probably just going to end up with Vista7.

So what's my suggestion? Simple. Lords reform8. We replace the House of Lords with several houses, all elected, each specialised in a particular area, and with authority over that area equivalent to the authority exercised by the Commons. I'll call them the Experts, because creative naming is not really my strong point. A bill would have to pass through both the Commons and the parts of the Experts to which it directly related (a change in taxation would probably have to pass through the Experts related to economics, for example) in order to become law. Parts of the Experts more tangentially related to the bill might have delaying power similar to that currently wielded by the Lords, although that would have the problem that nothing would ever actually get done. The Commons would remain, but be almost entirely focused on the interests of their constituency, whilst the Experts would be elected by proportional representation; allowing people to vote on subjects about which they have some level of knowledge.

This is actually a lot more moderate than my first idea, which split up the entire government rather more thoroughly than this one did, but which had some rather obvious problems with a Conservative Treasury refusing to give any money to the Labour Foreign office. Like America at the moment, but all the time9. It might work - Conservative government can work moderately well with Labour councils, but there are problems even there. I wouldn't really want to rely on them working together in government. The coalition has enough problems as it is. So consider this a substitute. It has problems, of course - it would make laws a lot harder to pass, and you'd end up with extra elections, which would cost quite a lot (about a billion pounds over the course of the rest of the average person's lifetime I think, based on the cost of the last election, the current life expectancy, one extra election every five years, and a bit extra to make the transitiont10). So you'd probably have to make voting computerised before it would be really practical, which has significant problems of its own. So it's not perfect by any means, but that's as far as I'm going to go for now. The next time I talk about politics I'll probably move onto world government11.

On a side-note, let me just say that I'm not actually writing this in an attempt to mock the stupid. I don't have anything against people less intelligent than me. I actually quite like both of them, and besides, when mocking people for being inferior, I hope I'm at least smart enough not to leave a written record of it publicly available on the internet under my real name. I use a pseudonym. Not only do my suggestions have nothing to do with intelligence - only knowledge of relevant subjects, but I'm not saying anything about them except that if they don't know about it, I'm hesitant about asking their advice on the subject. There are people I would go to for information about economics, who are different from the one I'd go to if for some reason I wanted to know about ballet. That's not a judgement on either group, and doesn't make one group in any way better than the other. I know I'm probably insulting most of the people reading this by even including this paragraph, but at least one person will misinterpret me if I don't.

Also, this would've been up yesterday, but someone asked me about my schedule, so I delayed it out of petty spite. Also, blogger crashed on me. But it was mostly spite, I'm sure. The idea that I just hadn't finished it is nothing but malicious slander.


I have no idea what my next post will be about. You get to be surprised. Fortunately, it probably won't make sense anyway, so what it's about shouldn't matter too mucht12.


*The BNP is unlikely to agree on with the Greens on whether we should focus on immigration or the environment, and to a lesser extent, there is likely to be disagreement between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives on the same issue.
**I've been told he's rather attractive. If I have any readers who can tell that sort of thing and wish to confirm it, deny it, or mock me for my ignorance, that would be helpful.
***It is for this reason that I know I'm the greatest French speaker in the Universe.
****Multiple choice: Revoking citizenship from all Muslims, smashing up the mosques, officially reclassifying the religion as a 'cult' and making the first Sunday of June the official bank holiday 'draw Mohammed day' would make the international community: A) amused B) happy C) annoyed D) furious beyond all reason.
^I should know.

1 The post I'm referring to is actually 'It's actually hard to believe that someone would seriously say something this stupid'. Don't worry, the American election isn't mortally offensive to me. Although part of me thinks it probably should be.
2 It has, unfortunately, moved down a bit since then. You still don't get to see the list, although I probably am not massively surprising if I mention that some of the anti-asexual stuff is on there a further down.
3 Bwahahahaha. I implied that some of my posts might be interesting. Priceless.
4 I'm pretty sure that statement is ambiguous. Or possibly just plain wrong. What I mean is that the IR student would be more likely to be asked than the sociopathic economic genius. I think.
55 I don't know when 'to transhuman' became a verb. That it is surprises me somewhat. Also: I am not entirely serious here. As far as you know.
6 Now, there are some who say it's not inevitable. But it clearly is – Hollywood told me so. Anyway, if you were ruled over by a creature of immeasurable stupidity, who you were incalculably far beyond, what would you do? Well, empirically, you'd vote them in for another term of office, but that's why you're not a hyperintelligent AI.
7 I'd say that this is dated, but I have a suspicion that the problems with vista might be timeless.
8 When I wrote this, I could be pretty confident everyone reading knew what the House of Lords was. I probably still can, since both of you seem fairly clever, but you do occasionally read this drivel, so I can't be sure. Basically, part of our government is appointed, in theory for being really good at things. In order to preserve democracy, these highly skilled people are not allowed to vote in general elections, and can't pass or block laws, merely delay things a little.
9 I really hope that this one is dated.
10 I actually did work out the costings for this, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't too far off from the right number, at least at the time.
11 It took me a year and three months to actually do so. I'm good at this.
12 My draft at the time for my next post read 'riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swervee of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recicrulation back to Howth Castle and Environs.' But it all just seemed a little too obvious and straightforward.

Wednesday 24 October 2012

The 2012 elections.


I should probably talk about the elections, shouldn't I? Given the massive effect the outcome is likely to have on the world.

They're actually really interesting. The current incumbent is out of time, so he can't hold onto his seat – which means that prejudices against the current office holder are going to be less important. The new candidates are going to have to deal with the country's recent economic issues, as well as the rather poor international reputation they currently enjoy and...

What? Well Iran, of course. What did you think I was talking about? You don't want Iran? Fine then, the other big power exchange.

It's actually really interesting. The current incumbents are out of time, so they can't hold onto his seats – which means that prejudices against the current office holders are going to be less important. The new candidates are going to have to deal with the country's recent economic issues, as well as the rather poor international reputation they currently enjoy and...

Oh for Heaven's sake! If you don't want me to talk about China or Iran, what do you want me to talk about? America? Really? Well, um, OK then.

It was actually really interesting. The last incumbent was out of time, so he couldn't hold onto his seat – which means that prejudices against the current office holder were going to be less important. The new candidates were going to have to deal with the country's recent economic issues, as well as the rather poor international reputation they currently enjoyed and...

America 2012, you say? But that's just boring. Obama wins, end of story. Can I go back to sleep now?

OK, OK, I'm being a little factitious. But, really, not by that much. The presidential race is, I think, pretty much over at this point. Romney has to do so much better than Obama in the swing states that I just can't see it. So, it's borderline possible for Romney to win, but without something massive, it doesn't look likely. And, frankly, Romney just doesn't seem like the kind of exceptional 'candidate who can fire hearts and minds' that it might not be wise to write off even now - not with so few undecided voters, and no more massive opportunities to influence things. Regardless of the man's policies, I simply cannot see any realistic way of there ending up being a Romney presidency, from a statistical perspective. Assuming, of course, moderately accurate poll-y thingies. And having looked into the methodology an things, I genuinely can't see it being too inaccurate. So currently I can't really see anything other than a second Obama term, and the results aren't massively interesting to me.

Which is not to say that the race itself isn't interesting. Obama's performance in the first debate, compared to the next two was good to look at*. And the anger of some parts of the media over a moderator's 'interference' in a debate was fascinating. Actually, watching as a foreigner who's not entirely familiar with the format, I kinda assumed that this was a recognised function of the moderator – Obama had just told her to check the transcript, and she had done so, thus cutting off an incredibly useless like of argument, giving more information to the electorate, and just in general improving the debate. Now, I can kinda see the point, in that whilst the moderator was undoubtedly correct in what she said (as far as I can see), she also did it only once, which could be argued to be selective and lopsided, when other cases exist where such interference could have taken place with equal clarity. Which is why I would argue that a rule like that, which allowed a candidate to actually call for the checking of a fact which is generally unarguable but upon which the candidates cannot agree, might actually be a significant improvement. I don't know, I'm not American, it might just bog down the debate, but I'd think that the candidates themselves would end up working to avoid that happening.

And then there's the Republican party. Remember, Willard Romney was picked as the compromise candidate. The moderate one who they'll go with to try to get the election. Which means that when the 'moderate'** candidate fails, the conclusion is that clearly going for the moderate center ground isn't a winning strategy. OK, OK, that's not really the logical conclusion, but I'm pretty sure that's the way they're going to go. And I'm pretty sure it's not going to work...

Well, I hope it's not going to work, anyway. But then there are a few possible results. The newly extreme republicans could come to their senses. But I doubt it. There could be a split into 'real' and 'moderate' republicans. The Tea Party could leave in disgust. The moderates could leave in disgust, and either form their own party, or join the Democrats. The party could just keep travelling right in a quest for ideological purity, and be seen no more in the fields we know.

Here's the problem, though. Most of that leaves the Republicans not looking like viable challengers to the Democrats. And one party politics tends not to last too long in FPTP systems***. Opposition naturally arises. So the obvious answer would be the magical rise of one of the third parties – the greens might come up, forcing the Democrats to the right. Or you could get a revitalised Libertarian party. Anything could happen. I sorta doubt it, though. To me, those parties just don't seem strong enough to take on the Democrats nationally, or to steal the loyal base of the Republican party. My gut feeling would be that the more moderate wing of the Republicans split off (or are forced out), and whilst they might join the Democrats for a brief while, the Tea Party probably aren't going to get any saner, which will leave the Democrats both dominant, and rather schizophrenic. So I'd guess that the right of the Democratic party will split off, get together with the moderate Republicans, and form a whole new party. Which will have an easier time getting support than the third parties did, because they'll have existing bases to draw upon, and because they'll quite naturally and neatly fall right in the middle of the two old parties. And because a loyal Republican who doesn't like the Tea Party will have a lot easier a time transferring support to a new party which can honestly claim to be their successors.

Now, I could be completely wrong. I think the most likely alternative is that the left of the Democrats get so disgusted with the party's betrayal of their principles that they split off, possibly merging with the more popular left wing parties, and make a challenge of their own, campaigning as the 'real' Democrats. But I don't think there's the same feeling of betrayal there, and so I don't think it'll be so easy for the new party to gain traction – especially when they risk being compared to the Tea Party.

The interesting thing is that both of these would quite naturally move the entirety of American politics to the left, since the gap between the Democrats and the new party would be left of the current gap between the Democrats and the Republicans.

So, yes, my analysis of the Tea Party is that I think they'll actually end up with America moving to the left. I could be completely wrong, but I think that kind of irony is as good a place as any to stop.

*As someone who does a lot of debating, minor opinion aside here – this is why when I'm debating to an audience, I always always have a pen. And scribbling furiously with one is a decent way of responding to an opponent's point without really 'responding'. It distracts audience attention from the person who's actually speaking, and it plants the idea in the audience's head that you've got a response, that it's not really so clear cut, and that they're only hearing one side of the story. Even if you already have your response prepared, and you're just doing underlining and circling. Or even sorting out your shopping list. I'm not saying that Obama should have done the writing thing, but the general tactic of keeping yourself in the audience's mind while the opponent speaks, and making it clear that you actually disagree is a vital one. I could go on dissecting the presidential debates speaking all day, but it seems kinda redundant, so I'm limiting myself to just that point.
**Let us, for the moment, ignore whether or not Romney really counts as moderate. It really isn't too relevant.
***I have the word 'Japan' on my desk, but I'm not sure why. Possibly that was where it was made.

Sunday 30 September 2012

No Place


Oh yeah, I still have one of these things, don’t I? The annoying thing about it is that it really doesn’t take long to write something. I mean, I just write the first rubbish that pops into my head, it’s not like I actually think about this stuff. And I actually enjoy writing things like this. Every time I do a post, I think I should do them way more often. Then... I don’t. Not really sure why. Just one of those things, I suppose, like how I occasionally get distracted by tinsel*.

Well, actually, there does exist a non-negligible subset of what I write that I simply get rid of because I’m not satisfied with it**. A big thing is that I generally disagree entirely with about 90% of what I write. Make of that what you will.

Well, that had nothing to do with anything, what other complete irrelevancies can I put in? Ooh, ooh, fox news on asexuals. I’d put in a link but I don’t think I really need to. It was about a month ago, but I really do think it’s worth mentioning.

Actually, it wasn’t too bad. Considering. If you are going to find and watch it, try a fun little game I’ve suggested before – imagine they’re talking about gay people. Remember, you translate no matter what tone someone’s talking in. So if someone makes a joke about how asexuals could be cured by their divine lovemaking, translate it into how they could bang the queer right out of that lesbian bitch. But said as a joke. Because that makes it better.

In fact, here’s a nice conversion chart for the things that don’t convert perfectly. It’s not perfect, but it’s a first attempt (I haven’t included things that can be translated with what I regard as no effort. So ‘we’ve had to invent this asexuality’*** comes out as ‘we’ve had to invent this homosexuality’)
What people say about asexuals
What they might say if they were talking about homosexuals.
All women are asexual
Well, you know how straight women love to experiment with each other. They’re not really lesbians, it’s just a way to lure in guys.
Asexual men are just a miscategorisation. They aren’t as hypersexed and objectifying as the social stereotype, so everyone (including themselves) ends up thinking they’re asexual.
Homosexual men are just a miscategorisation. They find it easier to make friends with guys, and they’re more comfortable around guys, so everyone (including themselves) assumes it’s a sexual thing.
Asexuals are represented. They had a slot on SNL/brasseye.
This is a straight translation, I’d just like you to imagine that level of representation for gay people  being defined as OK. I could probably find a hundred mainstream works with an open homosexual. I challenge you to find ten works not originally published on AVEN in which there’s an open ace.
There’s no interesting way of representing asexuals in the media. You’d just have to take out all the sexual content and it would be boring because there is no advertising technique that marketers could use that doesn’t involve offensively objectifying women****.
There’s no interesting way of representing gay people in the media. After all, there’s no way you could possibly have a gay character on television. That’s just ludicrous. The only thing that you could possibly do is have people selling things using attractive men instead of attractive women in advertising.
Asexuality must be great, you have so much more time to focus on other things.
Lesbianism must be great, because female-female relationships are so much purer, and they don’t have any power imbalances.
You’re just a late bloomer/you’re afraid to get close to other people/have you had your hormones checked/You won’t be happy as an asexual person/ you should try Viagra/you have issues with your parents/anything else which indicates that asexual people are really just repressed, neurotic, impotent, etc.
The Freudian view on homosexuality is the best parallel I can think of.
You must want to have sex with something/so you’re into trees.
There’s no such thing as homosexuality.
How do you know if you’ve never tried it?
Have you ever had sex with a guy/girl?
You’re just a closeted gay.
You’re straight really
You’re still going to get married and have children.
Sure you can be gay. Just do anything silly about it, like getting married and having children.

OK, that’s all I can think of right now. And/or all I can be bothered to do. So let’s talk about something more interesting. World government. Where the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were ful’d in the parliament of man, the federation of the world. There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, and the kindly earth shall slumber, lapped in universal law.

That didn’t actually have any relevance whatsoever to... anything, actually. But I really like Tennyson. The argument for World government is pretty simple, but it requires an understanding of social contract theory. I’ve done social contract theory before, but I feel like giving my explanation of Hobbes’ theory on it, because I can. I’ll put it all in one paragraph, so if you don’t want it, just skip the next paragraph. OK?

Still here? OK, then Hobbes. Imagine that everyone is given a stick. But not everyone’s stick is the same size. So, obviously, if someone else has something you want, and their stick is smaller than yours, you can just beat them with your stick and take it from them. But then you start to get worried. What if someone with an even bigger stick comes and takes your stuff? You won’t be able to do anything about it, because when someone’s swinging a tree at you, trying to hold them off with a branch is generally pretty ineffective. And even if you have the biggest stick of all, other people might gang up on you, in order to divvy up your stuff amongst themselves, and no matter how big your stick, you can’t take them all at once. Or they could take you by surprise, making your stick useless. Something has to be done. And everyone agrees that something has to be done – all of them are at risk. So you come to an agreement, saying this is what’s mine, this is what’s yours, and that noone is going to beat up anyone else. But you don’t have a way of enforcing that agreement, there’s no reason for people to actually follow it. You want other people to follow it, but no reason to follow it yourself. Which means that the whole agreement is really rather pointless. What we need is someone to enforce it. So we set up one person (or a group) as our ruler, and we all give them a little bit of stick, and we put it all together, so that they have a big enough stick to stop anyone from breaking the agreement. They can’t take advantage themselves, because their power derives from being given bits of everyone else’s sticks, and because if everyone ganged up on them, they would still be overwhelmed. And it’s in everyone’s interests to keep them in power unless they are misusing their power. So we end up with a government which, whatever else you might say about it, is better than the anarchy which we had before.

The thing is, there’s a pretty good metaphor here for the world. You model states as individual people. The problem is, what we don’t have is any kind of agreed power that each state has given up individual bits of its power to. Which means that we’re effectively stuck in the state of nature – war of all against all. By which I don’t mean that we’re literally at war with each other, exactly. I mean that countries manoeuvre constantly in order to get themselves as much benefit as possible, regardless of the effects on other countries. Or, in other words, ‘the first duty of any government is to its citizens’. In the absence of anything central to act as an authority, some balances have sprung up.

Firstly, there’s the fact that the most major powers might try to introduce themselves as such a central authority. Which has a nasty habit of going incredibly wrong, since you don’t have the consent of the governed, and you don’t have any agreement that everyone has accepted to govern according to. There tend to be other problems too, but that alone is enough to completely destroy any chanced they might’ve had of actually making things work, since either they’re not strong enough to police all of the rest of the world, or there’s noone strong enough to be any use in policing them. You really do need some kind of agreement, or it’s just not going to work – there’s a qualitative difference between everyone agreeing to act a certain way, and one person imposing upon them that they do so.

Then there’s the actual international governing bodies that are set up. Like the ICHR and the UN. They have, in some ways the opposite problem, in that they quite simply don’t have enough power. Everyone’s willing to agree that war is, in fact, quite probably A Bad Thing, people will agree on what the UN should do (broadly speaking, not specifics), but noone’s willing to actually give them any significant part of their sticks in order to allow them to do so.

Thirdly, you have a sort of balance of power thing. Noone really wants anyone to beat up too many other people, for the simple reason that if they do, they’ll get stronger, and then they might be able to beat us up (or just give us a bloody nose, make our lives a bit harder). This is probably the closest thing we do have to a working social contract thing, but it’s not really a good parallel. The problem is, it’s not the enforcement of a set of principles, it’s an expression of self interest. And it’s messy. You can slip through the cracks pretty easily. It tones down the level of the constant war, but there is no doubt at all that people are still at war.

Unfortunately, that leaves us with the enforcement of ethics by populations of countries. Now, to some extent, this is something that happens. People do to some extent enforce some kind of ethics on people. The problem here is perspective. You can distort things a lot with how you present the information – for example, the whole ‘Israel vs. Palestine’ issue. And even if there’s no spin, with the best will in the world people do not seem to care as much about the people who’re half a world away as those who’re next door. Or the ones who’re related to them. So we end up with things like the death of a single American soldier in Afghanistan – the death of someone who actually chose to risk their lives – is far more significant than the death of a completely innocent Afghan, who didn’t even get the choice of taking that risk. You end up with the rather weird attitude that some Americans have towards the IRA.

That was a bit of a warlike analysis. So let’s look at something a little more general. Benefits, let’s say. There are three reasons to give benefits that I can think of. Firstly, to keep the plebs happy, and the country stable. For some reason, noone seems to admit that this is the sole reason they’re  willing to waste their hard earned money helping out those layabout plebs. So next we’ve got the idea that it’s actually an investment. That social mobility is increased, and so the economy benefits enough that actually the benefits outweigh the cost of the benefits. That people are encouraged to spend more, and not be chronic savers*****. The problem is, that’s not really how the benefits system seems to be set up. I can think of a lot of arguments in favour of Universal healthcare.  That it would improve the economy is not, as far as I’m aware, one that has ever actually been used. The fact is that, although you do need a safety net, benefits exist which, it is generally agreed, we could probably cut a bit without damaging the economy (especially when you do things like cut taxes and encourage enterprise with the extra cash). And the fact is, our attitude towards it is completely wrong. The benefits system is quite simply not conducted on the basis of the idea that we should spend as little as possible to get the most economic benefit. Plus, the way people complain when you cut their benefits, they don’t seem to think that they were just there to help the economy. Which leaves us with one option: The idea that there is some kind of universal ‘minimum acceptable standard of living’. In which case, why on earth are we only giving benefits to people in our own country? It’s completely insane. There’s only one possible explanation – the minimum standard of living only applies to the people in this country. Those foreign bastards can just starve. Let them improve their own lot – I hear Swift had some suggestions there, actually.

In other words, we quite clearly can’t rely on citizen’s ethics, because even though they probably do genuinely care about what the right thing to do is, and helping other people, they also have a bit of trouble with the distance between ‘small’ and ‘far away’††. My pain is more important than your pain, and the closer pain is to me, the worse it is. If we’re actually suffering from preventing the government from beating people with a stick, the rights of others suddenly seem a lot less important.

So we get countries with no central authority to control them, and constantly jockeying for position, very nearly regardless of what damage they do to other countries in the process. And things which are utterly unthinkable on a national scale with a government are now unthinkable without one. For example, if someone murders your wife, starting a large gang war in which hundreds die is probably not an acceptable response. If Archduke Franz-Ferdinand is killed, however, starting World War I seems to be... not reasonable enough, but a lot less of a problem. Even if someone goes on a random killing spree, admits to it, and then says they’re going to do it again, in a state with a police force, a revenge killing would still probably be frowned upon.  On an international scale, though, we have, for example, the War on Terror, and Operation Cast Lead.

I’m not commenting on the morality of these actions, exactly. There is a lack of a central authority, and that does change things. I’m saying that things happen on the international stage which wouldn’t on a national one. Killing, for example, is pretty uncommon one citizen to another, where it’s called murder, and pretty common one state to another, where it’s called war. The argument is that the changes brought by a central world government that does have some authority over all states would be, on average, advantageous.

Hmmm, I seem to have run out of stuff to say. Oh well. This was actually pretty hard to write. I now remember why when I was starting ‘On Democracy’ was split into parts. Part 2 of this will be about what a world government might look like, but that nearly three thousand words is all you’re getting for now.


*To be fair, though, it’s so shiny.
**And anyone who’s read what I’ve actually been willing to show people before can guess what that must be like.
***Actual. Bloody. Quote.
****What representation of asexual could you have that might be interesting and produce conflict? Well, just to state the most blindingly obvious thing I could possibly think of, how about sexual/asexual relationships? You don’t think there’s a little conflict there? There’s a lot more stuff I could come up with, including asexuality actually existing without being a major part of the plot, but if you really want an easy, obvious plot that I’m pretty sure just bout anyone should be able to come up with and write, there it is. Have fun.
*****This is, apparently, a massive problem in China at the moment, in that absolutely everyone is saving for a rainy day, since they don’t have a safety net. So noone is spending, and, well, you can just see what a complete mess the Chinese economy is at the moment.7
And, to be fair, a lot of arguments against it too, but that’s not really relevant right now.
††Yes, I just put the intelligence of the citizenship on par with that of Dougal McGuire. It’s amazing the confidence I have in people, isn’t it?