... wait for no man. But it is interesting how we attempt to optimize said time based on what our priorities are. Too often, these priorities are dictated by social norms. We spend so much time studying to get our degrees, then we spend so much time in the workplace making our money, etc., sometimes neglecting our physical and mental health. The physical side when we sit at a desk for eight hours and insist that we need to drive to work and to lunch every day, the mental side when we are overcome by the stress associated with what we are trying to achieve.
And this only increases with the increase of how work is run in an increasingly globalized market that is based less on capital itself and more on the time that it takes to create the capital. People are told that if they work really hard they will get promoted, but objectively all they are doing is exchanging a raise of a few dollars an hour and maybe an extra week of holidays for increased production from each individual. It is sort of like the idea that if you do something stupid for 'a chance to win X amount of money' (as in Edmonton's The Bear radio station's 'Really Tough Contest(s)'), it somehow becomes warranted. The whole issue revolves around the chance to have your situation improved, because if you don't have hope, you become lethargic, because usually there is no other internal or ontological feeling of satisfaction you get from increasing your output for the good of the company since it is, indeed, for the good of the company and not, as it were, for yourself and your fellow co-workers. I recall one instance when I was working a warehouse job and had been away for a few months in Asia. When they re-hired me after returning, I noticed they had posted a piece on the notification board entitled 'One Last Push' that talked about the parent company being on the brink of record profits and putting it out as if it would be felt as an achievement and be beneficial for everyone when, in fact, they reneged on promises to hire people full time and provide benefits saying that they had to 'tighten their belts', despite these apparent record profits:
First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague. External labor, labor in which man alienates himself, is a labor of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Lastly, the external character of labor for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but someone else’s, that it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another.
--Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts
And it is, indeed, interesting that people become 'hooked' in such a way. They are promised that bigger is necessarily better, that achievement is defined in terms of wealth and capital rather than, for example, meritocratically.
But that still makes one wonder about this element of time that creeps in. In the 19th century, John Stuart Mill argued for the regulation of labour in terms of nine hour days, something unheard of at the time when most labourers worked upwards of eleven or twelve hour days to achieve what they required. But in this day and age there is really no reason for this. Last night, my Tanzanian friend talked about if he had a bit of capital back in Arusha, he could buy a tractor or harvester and do in a few days what it takes locals many weeks to do. And not with an eye to monopolizing the output of the community, but by teaching them how to become self-sufficient in terms of optimizing their labour output. The question becomes, then, what does one do with this newfound 'free time'.
Well, for one thing, I'm sure it would be nice for a lot of these people to save their children from having to do back-breaking labour in order for the family to survive. Having extra time to spend educating themselves would be highly beneficial as well. But these both fly in the face of imperialist tactics that attempt to keep people ignorant and keep cheap and/or free labour available by monopolizing people's time so they remain trapped in an unending chain of hard labour, coerced hard labour.
And, of course, above all of these abstract ideas of self-betterment, in the highly mobilized capitalist society we presently call our own, we could probably all use a few extra hours of sleep...
Friday, August 19, 2011
Monday, August 8, 2011
Rules of Engagement
I travel because people are interesting, and when you travel you get to meet all sorts of interesting people with different views of the world.
There was one night when I agreed to go to Zula in Town for a show, and whilst there a guy asked me why I kept up with 'the Jesus look', and at first I said I didn't know (it's a fairly common question). But then when he went to empty his beer-filled bladder, I thought about it in my half-cut stupor and realized that I did know why I did it: because I always feel weird going up to engage with randoms, but this look seems to pique plenty of curiosities and allows me to meet plenty of people. And it seems in some cases I don't just meet them, but they seem to somehow trust me implicitly and admit striking things to me about themselves.
"We all have secret lives/In our secret rooms/Living in our movies/Humming our own tunes" -- Bruce Dickinson
At one venue in Zimbabwe, I was at a pub where they were having a 'ladies night' with musical chairs and other things for prizes. After the spectacle ended and I was hanging around without a partner, the emcee of the session, who seemed strong and independent, came up and started chatting with me. She then took me aside to the patio where we could talk without shouting and asked many questions about my lifestyle of travel, why I did it, etc. She seemed very interested in me, and after the pub closed, we walked back to the hostel I was staying at to continue the conversation. At the gate the security guy asked which room I was staying and when I replied that I was staying in a dorm, he said that I couldn't bring a woman in with me, and I replied that that was not my intention. So despite it being quite late and very chilly, we sat by the fire and talked more about various things. And then she started to speak about herself, revealing to me that her father left when she was very young and her stepfather was happy to pay to put her through some of the best schools in the area, but was also molesting her. And all of a sudden this confident-looking woman (of 29) broke down and started telling me that although she had her job emceeing and such, that she felt 'totally useless' and that she felt her life was 'basically pointless' and she needed to find closure somehow, and really had nowhere to go.
In another instance, I was helping an individual prepare for exams, and it came out that she had been in a relationship with a very, VERY famous South African. I had barely known her a few days, and I probably would be unlikely to see her again after that, but as she dropped me back at my place, she told me all about how she felt during the relationship, living in his shadow, often being in a long-distance relationship, etc., but eventually having to break it off, and crying for a week because of it. Throughout the conversation I gave my input and at the end of it all she told me that she doesn't normally like to talk about it, but for some reason talking through the details with me made her feel better.
There are a fair few such stories of this type that have been revealed to me either by people making my acquaintance and telling me about themselves, or physically showing me and including me in various things that reflect the way they live: sleeping on floors of ghettos, 'showering' from a basin because there is no running water (luckily by the time I got to Mafeteng, I had plenty of experience of this in Chamanculo), and other things that most Canadians would have a difficult time even fathoming.
One thing that struck me as incredibly profound, however, was when my friend and I decided to spend an afternoon in the township of Langa. As black townships go, it is probably one of the safest in Cape Town. We had originally hoped to go to Khayelitsha for a day, but the weather was against us so we had to put it off. What was profound was not what we saw in Langa, but after, when he turned to me and said "we go to these places and lambaste the locals for being afraid and carrying stereotypes about how dangerous they are, but what about us? What about 'local tourism'? Would you hang out on a Native reservation when you get back to Canada?" My first thought was "fuck, no! That's way too dangerous, and what would be the point?" But then I realized the reality of the situation and it shows how much Ive learned from Africa, especially the manner in which the existential doors have been thrown wide open in terms of what I can and cannot do or should and should not do, and I realized that the correct answer was
"I can't wait. It's gonna be so amazing, and so absurd!"
There was one night when I agreed to go to Zula in Town for a show, and whilst there a guy asked me why I kept up with 'the Jesus look', and at first I said I didn't know (it's a fairly common question). But then when he went to empty his beer-filled bladder, I thought about it in my half-cut stupor and realized that I did know why I did it: because I always feel weird going up to engage with randoms, but this look seems to pique plenty of curiosities and allows me to meet plenty of people. And it seems in some cases I don't just meet them, but they seem to somehow trust me implicitly and admit striking things to me about themselves.
"We all have secret lives/In our secret rooms/Living in our movies/Humming our own tunes" -- Bruce Dickinson
At one venue in Zimbabwe, I was at a pub where they were having a 'ladies night' with musical chairs and other things for prizes. After the spectacle ended and I was hanging around without a partner, the emcee of the session, who seemed strong and independent, came up and started chatting with me. She then took me aside to the patio where we could talk without shouting and asked many questions about my lifestyle of travel, why I did it, etc. She seemed very interested in me, and after the pub closed, we walked back to the hostel I was staying at to continue the conversation. At the gate the security guy asked which room I was staying and when I replied that I was staying in a dorm, he said that I couldn't bring a woman in with me, and I replied that that was not my intention. So despite it being quite late and very chilly, we sat by the fire and talked more about various things. And then she started to speak about herself, revealing to me that her father left when she was very young and her stepfather was happy to pay to put her through some of the best schools in the area, but was also molesting her. And all of a sudden this confident-looking woman (of 29) broke down and started telling me that although she had her job emceeing and such, that she felt 'totally useless' and that she felt her life was 'basically pointless' and she needed to find closure somehow, and really had nowhere to go.
In another instance, I was helping an individual prepare for exams, and it came out that she had been in a relationship with a very, VERY famous South African. I had barely known her a few days, and I probably would be unlikely to see her again after that, but as she dropped me back at my place, she told me all about how she felt during the relationship, living in his shadow, often being in a long-distance relationship, etc., but eventually having to break it off, and crying for a week because of it. Throughout the conversation I gave my input and at the end of it all she told me that she doesn't normally like to talk about it, but for some reason talking through the details with me made her feel better.
There are a fair few such stories of this type that have been revealed to me either by people making my acquaintance and telling me about themselves, or physically showing me and including me in various things that reflect the way they live: sleeping on floors of ghettos, 'showering' from a basin because there is no running water (luckily by the time I got to Mafeteng, I had plenty of experience of this in Chamanculo), and other things that most Canadians would have a difficult time even fathoming.
One thing that struck me as incredibly profound, however, was when my friend and I decided to spend an afternoon in the township of Langa. As black townships go, it is probably one of the safest in Cape Town. We had originally hoped to go to Khayelitsha for a day, but the weather was against us so we had to put it off. What was profound was not what we saw in Langa, but after, when he turned to me and said "we go to these places and lambaste the locals for being afraid and carrying stereotypes about how dangerous they are, but what about us? What about 'local tourism'? Would you hang out on a Native reservation when you get back to Canada?" My first thought was "fuck, no! That's way too dangerous, and what would be the point?" But then I realized the reality of the situation and it shows how much Ive learned from Africa, especially the manner in which the existential doors have been thrown wide open in terms of what I can and cannot do or should and should not do, and I realized that the correct answer was
"I can't wait. It's gonna be so amazing, and so absurd!"
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Fly on the Sociological Wall
On Thursday night I went to one of my usual hangouts, and found a rather close acquaintance of mine who revealed to me that there was a fashion show on at one of the residences that she was involved in, and whether I would like to come, despite 'the VIP tickets being sold out'. Ever the yes-man, I duly assented.
As reflected by the tone of my latest entries which has, perhaps, been a bit subdued, Ive been in a bit of an odd headspace lately with those existential and teleological conundrums creeping in. However, this event turned out to be some very nice 'art therapy', though not entirely because of the event itself.
I suppose in a manner akin to first- and second-order logic, one can consider first and second order observation. What struck me, as a few hiccups at the beginning and a late start were duly remedied, was the second-order absurdity of the spectacle: the 'mingling' of people with their drinks, the VIP tags on certain individuals ('very important person'? because they paid an extra R20 for their ticket, get free alcohol, get to sit in the front row, and get some goody-bag giveaway item? How does one define importance in this manner?). Then during the show, there was the DJ, the lighting, the catwalk, the emcees, the catcalls and screams from the audience, and, of course, the models. I summed it up to a friend of mine in a text as 'a bunch of youngsters trying to emulate Western high society' though that may be a bit unfair. It WAS interesting as a first-order observer, though I still don't and probably never will understand what is fashionable about giving the white models giant bed-head afros and slopping them all over with strange make-up, but maybe that's just me.
I suppose this sort of second-order observation comes to me more often than perhaps it does for most, and maybe it is a reflection of the interest I take from seeing not necessarily how people act in given situations, but rather how they REact to given situations; i.e. what makes them tick and why.
All in all, I will not deny the organizer my kudos for the fact that she did a wonderful job and I thoroughly enjoyed the event, both first-order and second-order enjoyment, and I was very dismayed that there was a police raid that shut down the night-club that all attendees were supposed to get free cover for that night.
Talk about bad timing...
As reflected by the tone of my latest entries which has, perhaps, been a bit subdued, Ive been in a bit of an odd headspace lately with those existential and teleological conundrums creeping in. However, this event turned out to be some very nice 'art therapy', though not entirely because of the event itself.
I suppose in a manner akin to first- and second-order logic, one can consider first and second order observation. What struck me, as a few hiccups at the beginning and a late start were duly remedied, was the second-order absurdity of the spectacle: the 'mingling' of people with their drinks, the VIP tags on certain individuals ('very important person'? because they paid an extra R20 for their ticket, get free alcohol, get to sit in the front row, and get some goody-bag giveaway item? How does one define importance in this manner?). Then during the show, there was the DJ, the lighting, the catwalk, the emcees, the catcalls and screams from the audience, and, of course, the models. I summed it up to a friend of mine in a text as 'a bunch of youngsters trying to emulate Western high society' though that may be a bit unfair. It WAS interesting as a first-order observer, though I still don't and probably never will understand what is fashionable about giving the white models giant bed-head afros and slopping them all over with strange make-up, but maybe that's just me.
I suppose this sort of second-order observation comes to me more often than perhaps it does for most, and maybe it is a reflection of the interest I take from seeing not necessarily how people act in given situations, but rather how they REact to given situations; i.e. what makes them tick and why.
All in all, I will not deny the organizer my kudos for the fact that she did a wonderful job and I thoroughly enjoyed the event, both first-order and second-order enjoyment, and I was very dismayed that there was a police raid that shut down the night-club that all attendees were supposed to get free cover for that night.
Talk about bad timing...
Monday, July 25, 2011
Twilight of the Idols, Phajaan of the Humans
"To call the taming of an animal its "improvement" sounds almost like a joke to our ears. Whoever knows what goes on in kennels doubts that dogs are "improved" there. They are weakened, they are made less harmful, and through the depressive effect of fear, through pain, through wounds, and through hunger, they become sickly beasts. It is no different with the tamed man whom the priest has "improved." In the early Middle Ages, when the church was indeed, above all, a kennel, the most perfect specimens of the "blond beast" were hunted down everywhere; and the noble Teutons, for example, were "improved." But how did such an "improved" Teuton look after he had been drawn into a monastery? Like a caricature of man, a miscarriage: he had become a "sinner," he was stuck in a cage, tormented with all sorts of painful concepts. And there he lay, sick, miserable, hateful to himself, full of evil feelings against the impulses of his own life, full of suspicion against all that was still strong and happy. In short, a "Christian."
"Physiologically speaking: in the struggle with beasts, making them sick may be the only way to make them weak. The church understood this: it sickened and weakened man — and by so doing "improved" him."
--Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
One of the nice things about meeting back up with my friend was it turned out he had brought with him a copy of The Portable Nietzsche, the same copy, in fact, that I had given to him a year or so ago to keep him company in Japan (along with Crime and Punishment, which he quite enjoyed). He told me he hadn't read any of it, but as I didn't have a book, I was able to while away some of the time on buses and such reading through The Antichrist and (re-)reading through Twilight of the Idols. As much as Walter Kaufmann makes of Nietzsche's 'insanity' at the time of his writing of The Antichrist, I believe it to be a powerful critique of Christianity and the rather demeaning effect that it has on the human spirit.
When I read the above quote, I thought about the Phajaan ceremony that goes on in Thailand. Phajaan is loosely translated as 'elephant crushing', and is basically what all elephants have to go through in order to be the servants to mankind that you see during many tourist ventures in Southeast Asia.
But then it is rather interesting that this 'torture' to crush the spirit of an elephant in order that the elephant will do the bidding of their captors is not seen in a more similar light to a lot of the ways in which religion (especially Western religion) has resulted in the 'improvement' of people the world over: improvement in the form of docility, being open to suggestion, and, in general, as Dennett once said, "a gold-plated excuse to stop thinking".
Just like the elephants, they are trained to no longer fight back against conflicting ideologies. The elephant wants to stay with its mother, it wants to eat, drink, and be able to roam free, etc. On the other hand, isn't this what the human wants as well? Or is it simply the fact that the elephant is not conscious of its own metaphysical position in the cosmos and therefore has no idea of the ease and automation with which its post-Phajaan life will be.
No more decision-making, just follow your master. What could be simpler?
"Physiologically speaking: in the struggle with beasts, making them sick may be the only way to make them weak. The church understood this: it sickened and weakened man — and by so doing "improved" him."
--Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
One of the nice things about meeting back up with my friend was it turned out he had brought with him a copy of The Portable Nietzsche, the same copy, in fact, that I had given to him a year or so ago to keep him company in Japan (along with Crime and Punishment, which he quite enjoyed). He told me he hadn't read any of it, but as I didn't have a book, I was able to while away some of the time on buses and such reading through The Antichrist and (re-)reading through Twilight of the Idols. As much as Walter Kaufmann makes of Nietzsche's 'insanity' at the time of his writing of The Antichrist, I believe it to be a powerful critique of Christianity and the rather demeaning effect that it has on the human spirit.
When I read the above quote, I thought about the Phajaan ceremony that goes on in Thailand. Phajaan is loosely translated as 'elephant crushing', and is basically what all elephants have to go through in order to be the servants to mankind that you see during many tourist ventures in Southeast Asia.
But then it is rather interesting that this 'torture' to crush the spirit of an elephant in order that the elephant will do the bidding of their captors is not seen in a more similar light to a lot of the ways in which religion (especially Western religion) has resulted in the 'improvement' of people the world over: improvement in the form of docility, being open to suggestion, and, in general, as Dennett once said, "a gold-plated excuse to stop thinking".
Just like the elephants, they are trained to no longer fight back against conflicting ideologies. The elephant wants to stay with its mother, it wants to eat, drink, and be able to roam free, etc. On the other hand, isn't this what the human wants as well? Or is it simply the fact that the elephant is not conscious of its own metaphysical position in the cosmos and therefore has no idea of the ease and automation with which its post-Phajaan life will be.
No more decision-making, just follow your master. What could be simpler?
Friday, July 22, 2011
Ebb and Flow
It's sometimes funny how quickly we find ourselves at the top of the world after crashing down, or vice versa. A friend of mine once described his own approach to the world (psychologically speaking) as a 'sine curve' of peaks and troughs that reflected his brain state at the time. Sometimes, he said, there was much euphoria and he would get giddy at the drop of a hat. At other times (as I've been witness to), he has plumbed the depths of depression even when he 'should' have been really enjoying himself, e.g. on the beaches of India.
I won't hazard a guess as to the method behind his madness, but I will say that during my time in Zimbabwe, I often felt completely original especially in the Dionysian sense a la Nietzsche (the individual that says Yes to everything questionable). On the other hand, since Ive returned to Cape Town, it just hasnt been the same... I've gone out to my old haunts—even though they've changed somewhat—and thought to myself 'what the fuck am I doing here? At one point I thought I could extend this stay and was really enjoying my time here, and now I just want to get this degree over with.' Ever the party pooper, I guess all of a sudden my return has hit me with a small token of claustrophobia helped by the financial situation that is niggling at the back of my mind and the manner in which there seems not to be an easy solution in the near future.
And then of course there is the problem of alternate realities, either in the form of drug intake or in the form of movies. Watching Jason Statham go psycho on everyone in Crank 2, and then returning to the humdrum and mundane of reality often makes one thirst for a bit more. But then on the other hand, beginning in such a position as his (in the movie, anyway) may leave at least a bit to be desired. Anyway, no big deal.
In the end, the main thing is, obviously, the same thing that always arises in these sorts of introverted moments of doubt: what the fuck is the point of it all? I remember during my early days of studying philosophy, I went to the university library and got a copy of 'Classic Philosophical Questions', by James Gould I think. It was set up in such a manner that each section had some major philosophical topic: reality, knowledge, science, religion, etc., and within each section were two to four essays by classic authors defending certain opinions about the topic in question. The only section I really remember was one near the end about teleology. It contained two essays, the first by Tolstoy which he wrote near the end of his life when he had been taking religion (especially Christian anarchism) quite seriously; in it he argued that God gives us meaning (or something like that). The second essay, written by Albert Camus, argued that it is up to us to give ourselves meaning through what we do everyday and how we go about interacting with others and achieving according to our own wishes and desires.
I take the position of the secular existentialist (i.e. that of Camus') to heart... there is no doubt that I feel that I have created a whole bunch of doors and windows in my sea of reality that I can crawl through or explore within if I should get bogged down or what have you. However, sometimes you can't help but feel in the back of your mind that until you get back into some sort of a routine that provides you with a means to some sort of end, that you start to squirm.
I remember feeling a similar thing in the last few days I spent in Gokarna. As much as there were many ex-pats who switched between six months in Himachal Pradesh while the monsoon was on, then six months in Gokarna (or Goa or Kerala or some such) when the monsoon was no longer, when my time was winding down and my three weeks were nearly up, I got that claustrophobic feeling that I have learned to recognize when I feel like its time to move out of a certain headspace. I guess the best way I always find to sum up that feeling is to quote Jack Nicholson from a certain movie, when he is in a similar situation of confusion and indecision and utters those fatalist words:
"What if this is as good as it gets?"
I won't hazard a guess as to the method behind his madness, but I will say that during my time in Zimbabwe, I often felt completely original especially in the Dionysian sense a la Nietzsche (the individual that says Yes to everything questionable). On the other hand, since Ive returned to Cape Town, it just hasnt been the same... I've gone out to my old haunts—even though they've changed somewhat—and thought to myself 'what the fuck am I doing here? At one point I thought I could extend this stay and was really enjoying my time here, and now I just want to get this degree over with.' Ever the party pooper, I guess all of a sudden my return has hit me with a small token of claustrophobia helped by the financial situation that is niggling at the back of my mind and the manner in which there seems not to be an easy solution in the near future.
And then of course there is the problem of alternate realities, either in the form of drug intake or in the form of movies. Watching Jason Statham go psycho on everyone in Crank 2, and then returning to the humdrum and mundane of reality often makes one thirst for a bit more. But then on the other hand, beginning in such a position as his (in the movie, anyway) may leave at least a bit to be desired. Anyway, no big deal.
In the end, the main thing is, obviously, the same thing that always arises in these sorts of introverted moments of doubt: what the fuck is the point of it all? I remember during my early days of studying philosophy, I went to the university library and got a copy of 'Classic Philosophical Questions', by James Gould I think. It was set up in such a manner that each section had some major philosophical topic: reality, knowledge, science, religion, etc., and within each section were two to four essays by classic authors defending certain opinions about the topic in question. The only section I really remember was one near the end about teleology. It contained two essays, the first by Tolstoy which he wrote near the end of his life when he had been taking religion (especially Christian anarchism) quite seriously; in it he argued that God gives us meaning (or something like that). The second essay, written by Albert Camus, argued that it is up to us to give ourselves meaning through what we do everyday and how we go about interacting with others and achieving according to our own wishes and desires.
I take the position of the secular existentialist (i.e. that of Camus') to heart... there is no doubt that I feel that I have created a whole bunch of doors and windows in my sea of reality that I can crawl through or explore within if I should get bogged down or what have you. However, sometimes you can't help but feel in the back of your mind that until you get back into some sort of a routine that provides you with a means to some sort of end, that you start to squirm.
I remember feeling a similar thing in the last few days I spent in Gokarna. As much as there were many ex-pats who switched between six months in Himachal Pradesh while the monsoon was on, then six months in Gokarna (or Goa or Kerala or some such) when the monsoon was no longer, when my time was winding down and my three weeks were nearly up, I got that claustrophobic feeling that I have learned to recognize when I feel like its time to move out of a certain headspace. I guess the best way I always find to sum up that feeling is to quote Jack Nicholson from a certain movie, when he is in a similar situation of confusion and indecision and utters those fatalist words:
"What if this is as good as it gets?"
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Tourist Traps: How I hate them
Victoria Falls is probably the first heavily touristy niche Ive been to in Africa. It is probably the first such place Ive been to since Siem Reap almost 18 months ago.
The entry into the park containing the waterfall is $30, which, considering it costs only $20 for a day pass to Angkor and you can walk around for hours, seems a bit steep. Touts follow you around and harass you to no end about buying their carvings, going on the their rafting trips, bungee jumping, etc. But the main difference between Victoria Falls and Siem Reap is that Cambodia probably gets a huge portion of its income from tourism: go anywhere, and there are plenty of tourists. On the other hand, Im not sure Ive seen a single tourist in Zimbabwe (including Harare, Rushinga, Bulawayo, and Bindura) since I arrived two and a half weeks ago (outside of Victoria Falls, of course, which is swimming in them... no pun intended). Maybe one or two, but I wouldn't swear to it.
So I asked a number of people how they came to be there. It seems many are on tour buses from Johannesburg, some fly straight into Livingstone (internal flights are pretty ridiculous outside of South Africa), others come via Zambia. But what worries me most is the perception that the hordes of tourists may get of Africa in general and Zimbabwe in particular. Victoria Falls isn't Africa at all, and you really learn nothing about Africa by coming here. If you only came to Victoria Falls, there is nothing to say that you're in Africa other than that the local touts are black. For example, an individual I met said that some people he knew 'didn't like Zimbabwe at all', and I can see why if they only visited Victoria Falls. But we aren't in Zimbabwe. We are in a tourist bubble.
Like China, Zimbabwe is probably, on the whole, safer than North America. Consider the fact that in Canada you have to practically get cavity searches before you get on buses, and even a small pair of cuticle scissors will often have to be put with your stored luggage. On the other hand, at Mbare bus station when I was sitting on my bus waiting to go to Rushinga, there were touts outside the bus selling plenty of bizarre things, including 12-inch long kitchen knives and 15-inch sickles (which Li Weiguang could have used to behead an individual in one swipe...), their points capped with a small piece of cardboard or the top of a Coca-Cola bottle. Then on the bus as we were traveling through Harare, there were a few touts who stayed on the bus to do their selling. Standing in the middle of the bus aisle, he pulled out a chopping board and some cabbage to demonstrate the manner in which his 5-in-1 knife could shred cabbage. He then brought out some green onion and made short work of those. After this demonstration, the asking price was a dollar each and he distributed them like candy around the bus to anyone who put up their hand.
I can't explain this phenomenon completely, but my guess would be that there are at least two major contributors (aside from the completely random, absurdly gruesome, and probably unrepeatable Li Weiguang incident, which actually started the checks on buses in the first place). The first lies with the traditionally communal and often pacifist nature of Africans. Many are farmers (especially those going to remote villages like Rushinga) and survival is by no means a given (see the previous post), so violence is basically unheard of in many parts (putting aside violence between tribal factions, that is). In North America, the ultra-competitive and high intensity nature of society seems to lead people to adopt much more aggressive and dog-eat-dog demeanors. I have seen a few fights arise in bars in Africa now and again, but there is always a certain level of pride and humility involved on both sides. It isn't what sometimes feels like Hollywood nature of a lot of the bars in Canada with guys in muscle shirts calling each other out and heckling each other because they are so incredibly bored and need to somehow validate the inflated and often farcical notions of 'respect' and 'street sense' that they take from sitting in front of gangster and/or ghetto survival movies.
The other reason is likely the manner in which 'lawsuit society' has crept into Western society. Bus companies probably care much more about not being sued or getting bad publicity over some incident than the actual safety of their customers. When it is possible to sue the Winnebago company and win (and this may be an urban myth, I haven't corroborated that such an absurd incident actually happened) because it crashes because you put yours on cruise control to go into the back and make a sandwich, and 'it wasn't in the owner's manual that I couldn't do that', then companies this side really need to cover their asses.
But it brings me to a notion of freedom: in Africa there is much more freedom because of the organic nature of society, whereas in North America, everything is much more scrutinized and much more controlled. We may think we have more freedom because of the constant banding around of political buzzwords like 'freedom' and 'democracy', but in the end society ends up controlling itself through (amongst other things, see for example, Adam Curtis' series The Trap and/or Ray Bradbury's short story The Pedestrian), a combination of vanity and lack of confidence in one's ability to think for oneself. Acceptability and unacceptability to often come down to popularity amongst the general population: people think it absurd that I could study mathematics and philosophy with no eye to a possible career.
Education as an end in itself? You actually what to learn about the world for it's own sake? You want to satisfy your own curiosities about the underlying secrets of human nature? Have you seen a psychiatrist lately?
The entry into the park containing the waterfall is $30, which, considering it costs only $20 for a day pass to Angkor and you can walk around for hours, seems a bit steep. Touts follow you around and harass you to no end about buying their carvings, going on the their rafting trips, bungee jumping, etc. But the main difference between Victoria Falls and Siem Reap is that Cambodia probably gets a huge portion of its income from tourism: go anywhere, and there are plenty of tourists. On the other hand, Im not sure Ive seen a single tourist in Zimbabwe (including Harare, Rushinga, Bulawayo, and Bindura) since I arrived two and a half weeks ago (outside of Victoria Falls, of course, which is swimming in them... no pun intended). Maybe one or two, but I wouldn't swear to it.
So I asked a number of people how they came to be there. It seems many are on tour buses from Johannesburg, some fly straight into Livingstone (internal flights are pretty ridiculous outside of South Africa), others come via Zambia. But what worries me most is the perception that the hordes of tourists may get of Africa in general and Zimbabwe in particular. Victoria Falls isn't Africa at all, and you really learn nothing about Africa by coming here. If you only came to Victoria Falls, there is nothing to say that you're in Africa other than that the local touts are black. For example, an individual I met said that some people he knew 'didn't like Zimbabwe at all', and I can see why if they only visited Victoria Falls. But we aren't in Zimbabwe. We are in a tourist bubble.
Like China, Zimbabwe is probably, on the whole, safer than North America. Consider the fact that in Canada you have to practically get cavity searches before you get on buses, and even a small pair of cuticle scissors will often have to be put with your stored luggage. On the other hand, at Mbare bus station when I was sitting on my bus waiting to go to Rushinga, there were touts outside the bus selling plenty of bizarre things, including 12-inch long kitchen knives and 15-inch sickles (which Li Weiguang could have used to behead an individual in one swipe...), their points capped with a small piece of cardboard or the top of a Coca-Cola bottle. Then on the bus as we were traveling through Harare, there were a few touts who stayed on the bus to do their selling. Standing in the middle of the bus aisle, he pulled out a chopping board and some cabbage to demonstrate the manner in which his 5-in-1 knife could shred cabbage. He then brought out some green onion and made short work of those. After this demonstration, the asking price was a dollar each and he distributed them like candy around the bus to anyone who put up their hand.
I can't explain this phenomenon completely, but my guess would be that there are at least two major contributors (aside from the completely random, absurdly gruesome, and probably unrepeatable Li Weiguang incident, which actually started the checks on buses in the first place). The first lies with the traditionally communal and often pacifist nature of Africans. Many are farmers (especially those going to remote villages like Rushinga) and survival is by no means a given (see the previous post), so violence is basically unheard of in many parts (putting aside violence between tribal factions, that is). In North America, the ultra-competitive and high intensity nature of society seems to lead people to adopt much more aggressive and dog-eat-dog demeanors. I have seen a few fights arise in bars in Africa now and again, but there is always a certain level of pride and humility involved on both sides. It isn't what sometimes feels like Hollywood nature of a lot of the bars in Canada with guys in muscle shirts calling each other out and heckling each other because they are so incredibly bored and need to somehow validate the inflated and often farcical notions of 'respect' and 'street sense' that they take from sitting in front of gangster and/or ghetto survival movies.
The other reason is likely the manner in which 'lawsuit society' has crept into Western society. Bus companies probably care much more about not being sued or getting bad publicity over some incident than the actual safety of their customers. When it is possible to sue the Winnebago company and win (and this may be an urban myth, I haven't corroborated that such an absurd incident actually happened) because it crashes because you put yours on cruise control to go into the back and make a sandwich, and 'it wasn't in the owner's manual that I couldn't do that', then companies this side really need to cover their asses.
But it brings me to a notion of freedom: in Africa there is much more freedom because of the organic nature of society, whereas in North America, everything is much more scrutinized and much more controlled. We may think we have more freedom because of the constant banding around of political buzzwords like 'freedom' and 'democracy', but in the end society ends up controlling itself through (amongst other things, see for example, Adam Curtis' series The Trap and/or Ray Bradbury's short story The Pedestrian), a combination of vanity and lack of confidence in one's ability to think for oneself. Acceptability and unacceptability to often come down to popularity amongst the general population: people think it absurd that I could study mathematics and philosophy with no eye to a possible career.
Education as an end in itself? You actually what to learn about the world for it's own sake? You want to satisfy your own curiosities about the underlying secrets of human nature? Have you seen a psychiatrist lately?
Monday, June 27, 2011
Africa and Consciousness
I lasted less than 24 hours in Gaborone. It is something like a Johannesburg in the sense that a western business sense seems to have been ushered in, which is possibly justified by many opinions that Botswana has 'the fastest growing economy in Africa', or something like that. But what does it mean for an economy to grow?
When I was in Lesotho, the individual that I spent my time with and stayed with his family once said to me 'Lesotho is a poor country'. I asked him why he said that, and noted that the notion of 'poor' is based on a western model of GDPs and capital, but Lesotho is, in fact, a rich country in the fact that it has sufficient land for its population and has a very agrarian lifestyle. I told him that money with only get you so far, as you cannot eat it. Those who control land and food production are the ones that will be guaranteed survival, as Tolstoy so aptly noted in his allegory Ivan the Fool.
One of the things that has really come to the fore, however, and really made me understand the situation in Africa, that is, the social situation in Africa, is what I can only best sum up as:
"Regardless of whether it is a socio-political challenge created by the environment one lives in or a personal challenge created and implemented by one on oneself, it is only when survival challenges an individual that that individual becomes and remains conscious."
By that I mean I realize why I enjoy Africa (and 'the developing world', like during my travels in Asia) so much more than 'the west' is because people are forced to be conscious so that they may survive in a socio-economic environment where survival cannot be taken for granted, as it too often is in the affluent west.
One can think about it this way: if one knows that all one needs to do is 'enter the system' and they will basically be guaranteed eight hours a day five days a week doing whatever but, importantly, making more than enough money to survive, there is no reason for that person to change their ways, unless they feel that there is more to survival than simply being able to afford whatever basic needs and luxuries that they should require.
And this is a vicious cycle perpetuated by the capitalist mentality, and exemplified by the fact that the names on people's lips are no longer the Platos, Leonardo da Vincis, Max Plancks, and Alexander Flemings of the world, i.e. those that contributed to our collective well-being through theory and practice. Rather, it is the Bill Gates's, the David Beckhams, the Justin Biebers, the Johnny Depps, and the American Idol winners of the world, i.e. those with power (in whatever form) and money.
This shows the dramatic shift that has occurred in the past century where capital has usurped merit with regard to importance to the 'random individual'. And because of this, there is an abyss that has opened up before us because, as Marx said 150 years ago, capitalism, which is based on profit, cannot sustain itself, because eventually there are no new markets that can be exploited for profit. This may be a blip in human evolution where a few decades or a few centuries down the road we realize the pointlessness, uselessness, and stupidity of following a track that is based on vanity and personal acclaim over merit, theory, and socio-political sustainability. The human race is at a very interesting crossroads. It is of my humble opinion that the current situation can be summed up best by a quote from Patrick Stewart (as Captain Jean-Luc Picard) in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation:
"For us to go forward, the cycle must end."
When I was in Lesotho, the individual that I spent my time with and stayed with his family once said to me 'Lesotho is a poor country'. I asked him why he said that, and noted that the notion of 'poor' is based on a western model of GDPs and capital, but Lesotho is, in fact, a rich country in the fact that it has sufficient land for its population and has a very agrarian lifestyle. I told him that money with only get you so far, as you cannot eat it. Those who control land and food production are the ones that will be guaranteed survival, as Tolstoy so aptly noted in his allegory Ivan the Fool.
One of the things that has really come to the fore, however, and really made me understand the situation in Africa, that is, the social situation in Africa, is what I can only best sum up as:
"Regardless of whether it is a socio-political challenge created by the environment one lives in or a personal challenge created and implemented by one on oneself, it is only when survival challenges an individual that that individual becomes and remains conscious."
By that I mean I realize why I enjoy Africa (and 'the developing world', like during my travels in Asia) so much more than 'the west' is because people are forced to be conscious so that they may survive in a socio-economic environment where survival cannot be taken for granted, as it too often is in the affluent west.
One can think about it this way: if one knows that all one needs to do is 'enter the system' and they will basically be guaranteed eight hours a day five days a week doing whatever but, importantly, making more than enough money to survive, there is no reason for that person to change their ways, unless they feel that there is more to survival than simply being able to afford whatever basic needs and luxuries that they should require.
And this is a vicious cycle perpetuated by the capitalist mentality, and exemplified by the fact that the names on people's lips are no longer the Platos, Leonardo da Vincis, Max Plancks, and Alexander Flemings of the world, i.e. those that contributed to our collective well-being through theory and practice. Rather, it is the Bill Gates's, the David Beckhams, the Justin Biebers, the Johnny Depps, and the American Idol winners of the world, i.e. those with power (in whatever form) and money.
This shows the dramatic shift that has occurred in the past century where capital has usurped merit with regard to importance to the 'random individual'. And because of this, there is an abyss that has opened up before us because, as Marx said 150 years ago, capitalism, which is based on profit, cannot sustain itself, because eventually there are no new markets that can be exploited for profit. This may be a blip in human evolution where a few decades or a few centuries down the road we realize the pointlessness, uselessness, and stupidity of following a track that is based on vanity and personal acclaim over merit, theory, and socio-political sustainability. The human race is at a very interesting crossroads. It is of my humble opinion that the current situation can be summed up best by a quote from Patrick Stewart (as Captain Jean-Luc Picard) in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation:
"For us to go forward, the cycle must end."
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
On the Road
No, not the Jack Kerouac novel, but I dont have regular access to email as I've been running from pillar to post: Cape Town to Mafeteng (Lesotho) via Bloemfontein and Maseru, then on to Joburg where I stayed in Soweto (wonderful!! I think my new favourite intellectual pastime is walking through 'seedy' black townships and fraternizing with the locals) and now after a number of breakdowns, Im in Gaborone, Botswana. Off to Harare next week.
It's a rough life...
It's a rough life...
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Notes from a Small Country
It's been awhile since I posted, mostly because it's largely been business as usual around here now that university is out and Im preparing to spend my break in various other southern Africa countries.
Today, however, I had to go into town to do a bit of volunteer work with an organization that is trying to put together cheap high school textbooks to help get more people educated in a country where a lot of people have few resources, especially in the townships.
As I got on the train car at Rondebosch, I heard an all-too-familiar 'commotion' in the form of some random guy blithering on about how Africa must give themselves over to Jesus Christ and yadda-yadda-yadda. While I stood there, a guy opposite me was taking a bit of an interest in me. The usual 'icebreaker' followed: "Hey man, you know, you look a lot like... Him." I said "Yeah well..." because as much as my appearance has got me into many interesting conversations with many interesting people, most of them just sort of make that comment and it doesn't really go anywhere. But then he pushed to the 'next level' asking me if I was a Christian. And then we got into a discussion about religion. So I asked him what I usually ask these sort of people in true 'Fanonist' style: why is it that after being persecuted and enslaved for over a century by Europeans, and still to this day feeling a fair bit of animosity towards colonialism and neo-colonialism (with good reason), they find favour in 'the white man's religion'?
But this guy was quite smart and quite interesting. It turned out that he was from Gabon ("Libreville?" I asked, since I know all the capital cities) and then he started talking about the 'head of his tribe' in his village. I didn't know much of anything about Gabon, and he told me that he came from a village called 'Bongoville' that was named after this 'tribal head' who he described alternatively as his 'uncle' and 'basically his father', namely Omar Bongo, who ruled Gabon for 42 years from 1967 to his death in 2009.
What struck me most about what he talked about, however, was the manner in which he described the situation in Gabon in such graphic detail. I had used terms like 'fucked over' and such, and this guy proceeded to use the same sort of terms in such graphic detail that I didnt know whether he was speaking figuratively or was actually describing what happened. He told me something like "when the white men came to Omar Bongo and took him into the forest and fucked him [and he actually went through the somatic motions to go along with act], he didn't cry. He let them do it again and again, but he didn't say anything, because his sadness was inside him. Then when they were done with him and left, he told them when they came back that if they ever touched anyone else in his tribe, he would kill them [and here again he acted out a few mock haymakers]."
As I said, I didn't know anything about Gabon at the time, but reading the wiki article about Omar Bongo, it seems that Gabon had incredible wealth, which now justifies why he kept telling me how the faith in African people derives from the manner in which they have been blessed with resources, and that the people of Gabon strongly feel that they are, in some sense, 'chosen ones' because of the rich wealth that was bequeathed to them. He told me, in a way that very creepily reflects Sartre's declarations in the preface to The Wretched of the Earth, e.g.:
1961. Listen: ‘Let us waste no time in sterile litanies and nauseating mimicry. Leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of every one of their own streets, in all the corners of the globe. For centuries they have stifled almost the whole of humanity in the name of a so-called spiritual experience.’ The tone is new. Who dares to speak thus? It is an African, a man from the Third World, an ex-‘native’. He adds: ‘Europe now lives at such a mad, reckless pace that she is running headlong into the abyss; we would do well to keep away from it.’ In other words, she’s done for. A truth which is not pleasant to state but of which we are all convinced, are we not, fellow-Europeans, in the marrow of our bones?
He said that Africa in general is where things actually happen, that Westerners are basically zombies made content by wealth. That Westerners come to Africa because the peoples and cultures are interesting and beautiful to behold. That Africa is where all the resources are, it has been richly endowed with resources.
That is why people have faith, he says. Because they can see that they are in a privileged position, despite their history being sabotaged by economic crimes.
But it wasn't all fun and games. He told me with brutal honesty how as a young boy of around 9, he saw his mother raped and his village compromised. That there were definitely things that he had seen growing up that were filled with shocks and horror.
When I got off the train, I was already sort of 'late' to where I was supposed to go, but still I spent about 10 minutes standing at the train station listening to this guy's story. And then he told me about how he had actually fled from Gabon for various reasons, that people were looking for him for some reasons, that in his village and later in Libreville there had been problems, but I didn't really understand what was behind it all.
And then he told me he had to go to a class. He was being taught how to fight like Bruce Lee, so that when it came time for him to meet these assailants, he would be ready.
Today, however, I had to go into town to do a bit of volunteer work with an organization that is trying to put together cheap high school textbooks to help get more people educated in a country where a lot of people have few resources, especially in the townships.
As I got on the train car at Rondebosch, I heard an all-too-familiar 'commotion' in the form of some random guy blithering on about how Africa must give themselves over to Jesus Christ and yadda-yadda-yadda. While I stood there, a guy opposite me was taking a bit of an interest in me. The usual 'icebreaker' followed: "Hey man, you know, you look a lot like... Him." I said "Yeah well..." because as much as my appearance has got me into many interesting conversations with many interesting people, most of them just sort of make that comment and it doesn't really go anywhere. But then he pushed to the 'next level' asking me if I was a Christian. And then we got into a discussion about religion. So I asked him what I usually ask these sort of people in true 'Fanonist' style: why is it that after being persecuted and enslaved for over a century by Europeans, and still to this day feeling a fair bit of animosity towards colonialism and neo-colonialism (with good reason), they find favour in 'the white man's religion'?
But this guy was quite smart and quite interesting. It turned out that he was from Gabon ("Libreville?" I asked, since I know all the capital cities) and then he started talking about the 'head of his tribe' in his village. I didn't know much of anything about Gabon, and he told me that he came from a village called 'Bongoville' that was named after this 'tribal head' who he described alternatively as his 'uncle' and 'basically his father', namely Omar Bongo, who ruled Gabon for 42 years from 1967 to his death in 2009.
What struck me most about what he talked about, however, was the manner in which he described the situation in Gabon in such graphic detail. I had used terms like 'fucked over' and such, and this guy proceeded to use the same sort of terms in such graphic detail that I didnt know whether he was speaking figuratively or was actually describing what happened. He told me something like "when the white men came to Omar Bongo and took him into the forest and fucked him [and he actually went through the somatic motions to go along with act], he didn't cry. He let them do it again and again, but he didn't say anything, because his sadness was inside him. Then when they were done with him and left, he told them when they came back that if they ever touched anyone else in his tribe, he would kill them [and here again he acted out a few mock haymakers]."
As I said, I didn't know anything about Gabon at the time, but reading the wiki article about Omar Bongo, it seems that Gabon had incredible wealth, which now justifies why he kept telling me how the faith in African people derives from the manner in which they have been blessed with resources, and that the people of Gabon strongly feel that they are, in some sense, 'chosen ones' because of the rich wealth that was bequeathed to them. He told me, in a way that very creepily reflects Sartre's declarations in the preface to The Wretched of the Earth, e.g.:
1961. Listen: ‘Let us waste no time in sterile litanies and nauseating mimicry. Leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of every one of their own streets, in all the corners of the globe. For centuries they have stifled almost the whole of humanity in the name of a so-called spiritual experience.’ The tone is new. Who dares to speak thus? It is an African, a man from the Third World, an ex-‘native’. He adds: ‘Europe now lives at such a mad, reckless pace that she is running headlong into the abyss; we would do well to keep away from it.’ In other words, she’s done for. A truth which is not pleasant to state but of which we are all convinced, are we not, fellow-Europeans, in the marrow of our bones?
He said that Africa in general is where things actually happen, that Westerners are basically zombies made content by wealth. That Westerners come to Africa because the peoples and cultures are interesting and beautiful to behold. That Africa is where all the resources are, it has been richly endowed with resources.
That is why people have faith, he says. Because they can see that they are in a privileged position, despite their history being sabotaged by economic crimes.
But it wasn't all fun and games. He told me with brutal honesty how as a young boy of around 9, he saw his mother raped and his village compromised. That there were definitely things that he had seen growing up that were filled with shocks and horror.
When I got off the train, I was already sort of 'late' to where I was supposed to go, but still I spent about 10 minutes standing at the train station listening to this guy's story. And then he told me about how he had actually fled from Gabon for various reasons, that people were looking for him for some reasons, that in his village and later in Libreville there had been problems, but I didn't really understand what was behind it all.
And then he told me he had to go to a class. He was being taught how to fight like Bruce Lee, so that when it came time for him to meet these assailants, he would be ready.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Yourself? Or Someone Like You?
I was fairly sure the above title (minus the punctuation) was the name of an album by some cliche band from my school years, but it took me a google search to see that it was the debut album of Matchbox 20. Not a big fan, but whatever.
Given that there are final exams coming up here in Cape Town, I was asked by an acquaintance of mine (I'd hardly call him a friend) to provide my services to help him tutor math to some students, because he had 'opened his own tutoring company', but appears to be severely restricted in what he is able to teach. Of course, he has already revealed to me that his intention is to eventually run a company where others do the tutoring for him and he takes his cut. Not surprising given the general global economic attitude that I have criticized numerous times already, and definitely not surprising if you knew the individual in question.
Anyway, after struggling to get a time when we could meet, we finally met this morning. She picked me up in her brand new BMW, and took me to her very large apartment with an amazing view over UCT so we could do a bit of math. We covered some amount of math, and in between we chatted a bit about our various backgrounds, academic and not. I asked her the usual question of 'if youre not interested, why take it?' to which I got the common answer 'first I feel its important to be 'educated' and second because my parents want it that way.' Given the amount of wealth that her parents seem to regularly endow her with (her family is from Joburg), I understand that she would probably want to please them, though perhaps a heart-to-heart wouldn't be such a bad thing. After the session, I departed and we agreed to get together tomorrow to continue.
She also passed on my number to a friend of hers who was also struggling with mathematics, and after a bit of a mix-up in terms of where we were meeting, she picked me up in her Polo and took me to her (and her parents) place that also seemed fairly large and well-endowed.
But the second individual was much more interesting than the first, as she had revealed to me that she REALLY didn't like doing the accounting stuff that she was learning to the point where she wished she could study something else. This was after I told her about my academic background and such. We did some math and also chatted, as I had done with the other one, but it soon became evident that this second one was really quite sharp. She talked about living 7 months in Hollywood during her gap year and seeing the qualitative differences between the homeless in either place, telling me that growing up in Cape Town, she shouldn't be too shocked to see homeless people per se, but the manner in which a lot of them were basically victims of drug addictions brought on by the 'Ferris Wheel of Shit' led a certain tragic air to their predicament.
After these exchanges I thought 'wow, she is a pretty amazing individual in so many ways,' and, as often happens, I began to daydream, in this case about the plausibility of some sort of relationship. Not so much because I thought that I had any sort of hope, but more so because she seemed like such a cool customer.
But as I thought about more and more, I thought about the vast difference in ages (she's probably 19, while Im... well... several years older). First I thought of it in terms of social taboo, but then I start to think about it in terms of a more existential critique. I started to think 'well if I (hypothetically speaking) truly 'loved' this individual, then surely it would be one of the most selfish things I could do to demand some form of binding relationship with her'. The reason for this was because on the one hand I would be depriving her of the manner in which she is able to go out into the world with a natural curiosity and come to her own opinions and interpretations about it. I've already had one of the most existentially full post-high-school periods that has allowed me to come to a lot of my own conclusions about the world, etc., and so it would seem that there would be a certain 'existential lopsidedness' to such a prospect. If you have young people of about the same age together, they are on similar footing, with curiosities about similar things and how they should be interpreted, but if the difference in ages is several years, and you plan to have an extended time together, then there is definitely a certain 'information imbalance', whether that information is 'wrong' or 'right'. Along with that would come a similarly lopsided interpretative nature to it (so it seems to me), because without that period of existential curiosity, you become heavily dependent on others to interpret the world for you, something, for example, that arises in the educational relationships between parents and children, such as, for example, the daughter in one of my recent posts putting her very young brother on the spot about the existence of God. And suddenly this stream of thought turned into a tributary of a main river.
Just as Kierkegaard explained, in my opinion in a very accurate and meaningful way, the element of 'faith' in religion is the major cornerstone. However, if you come to that faith due to someone else's 'teachings' or 'arguments', then your faith is not in God, but rather in this person; i.e. this person, and not 'God', is your god, because your belief is in this person's rendition being accurate, and not about God directly.
Applying this argument to the above scenario, it seemed that if I was to spend a fair amount of the future with someone a lot younger than me, then surely they would have to be a very strong individual in order not to begin to become 'like me' in terms of my interpretations of the world, and the things that I value, given my 'experience' in traveling the world, studying a number of academic disciplines, etc. And indeed, for those sheep-like minions who refuse or ignore the call to critically engage with their environment, instead taking whatever hegemonic interpretation of the situation as the correct one, what sort of claim do they have to a 'self'? Because there is a space between their corporeal bodies, and so they are, at the very least, physically different? Can we say that these people are actually unique individuals, or simply approximations to other beings, as we would see the difference between the outer features and behaviour of, say, two house cats, but in the end we group them into the general category 'cats' and the role they play in the home?
It is interesting to see how the radicalization of individualism, as seen, for example, in Ayn Rand's 'Objectivism', actually seems to end up coming full circle back to a very un-individualistic social reality, where the pursuit of 'individual happiness' and 'rational self-interest' ends up being a constant fight to occupy the same rungs of the same ladders, with no one stopping to consider that their 'individual' self-interest and happiness might be dependent on a less orthodox social strategy than whatever social algorithm happens to dominate the present day (for us, it would likely be something akin to 'schooling', 'specialized schooling/training' (e.g. university, technical institutes, trade schools, etc.,), career, house, family, 1.7 children, retirement with occasional jaunts to Mexico or Florida to lie on the beach for no real purpose except to demonstrate that you can, death).
In fact, one can already argue that Objectivism was criticized sufficiently over half a century before its inception by Nietzsche. One could argue that 'The Last Man' described in 'Zarathustra's Prologue' of Also Sprach Zarathustra, could represent a world that follows Objectivism:
I will speak unto them of the most contemptible thing: that, however, is the last man!"
And thus spake Zarathustra unto the people:
It is time for man to fix his goal. It is time for man to plant the germ of his highest hope.
Still is his soil rich enough for it. But that soil will one day be poor and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be able to grow thereon.
Alas! there cometh the time when man will no longer launch the arrow of his longing beyond man - and the string of his bow will have unlearned to whizz!
I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: ye have still chaos in you.
Alas! There cometh the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There cometh the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself.
Lo! I show you the Last Man.
"What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?" - so asketh the Last Man and blinketh.
The earth hath then become small, and on it there hoppeth the Last Man who maketh everything small. His species is ineradicable like that of the ground-flea; the Last Man liveth longest.
"We have discovered happiness" - say the Last Man, and blink thereby.
They have left the regions where it is hard to live; for they need warmth. One still loveth one's neighbour and rubbeth against him; for one needeth warmth.
Turning ill and being distrustful, they consider sinful: they walk warily. He is a fool who still stumbleth over stones or men!
A little poison now and then: that maketh pleasant dreams. And much poison at last for a pleasant death.
One still worketh, for work is a pastime. But one is careful lest the pastime should hurt one.
One no longer becometh poor or rich; both are too burdensome. Who still wanteth to rule? Who still wanteth to obey? Both are too burdensome.
No shepherd, and one herd! Everyone wanteth the same; everyone is equal: he who hath other sentiments goeth voluntarily into the madhouse.
"Formerly all the world was insane," - say the subtlest of them, and blink thereby.
They are clever and know all that hath happened: so there is no end to their raillery. People still fall out, but are soon reconciled - otherwise it spoileth their stomachs.
They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the night, but they have a regard for health.
"We have discovered happiness," - say the Last Man, and blink thereby. -
It is odd how this is, I must say; that the more people try to be different, the more they become like each other. But it is easy to see why this might be so, namely that they all have the same general goals, and there are only so many different permutations of how these goals can be reached. More risk may provide more benefit, but it usually leads to more loss; so instead of taking such a risk, too often it seems they just follow the well-worn path, leading to a highly similar behaviours, with highly similar paths, and, except for the lucky few, highly similar outcomes. Such is the price we pay for hegemony: our soil will one day be poor and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be able to grow thereon.
And in this way, it seems that where individuals are at different stages in their lives due to differences in age, culture, academics, or some other such matter (and this is in general, not just as a byproduct of my particular reflections about the hypothetical scenario above), Sting's words do indeed ring true, namely "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free".
Given that there are final exams coming up here in Cape Town, I was asked by an acquaintance of mine (I'd hardly call him a friend) to provide my services to help him tutor math to some students, because he had 'opened his own tutoring company', but appears to be severely restricted in what he is able to teach. Of course, he has already revealed to me that his intention is to eventually run a company where others do the tutoring for him and he takes his cut. Not surprising given the general global economic attitude that I have criticized numerous times already, and definitely not surprising if you knew the individual in question.
Anyway, after struggling to get a time when we could meet, we finally met this morning. She picked me up in her brand new BMW, and took me to her very large apartment with an amazing view over UCT so we could do a bit of math. We covered some amount of math, and in between we chatted a bit about our various backgrounds, academic and not. I asked her the usual question of 'if youre not interested, why take it?' to which I got the common answer 'first I feel its important to be 'educated' and second because my parents want it that way.' Given the amount of wealth that her parents seem to regularly endow her with (her family is from Joburg), I understand that she would probably want to please them, though perhaps a heart-to-heart wouldn't be such a bad thing. After the session, I departed and we agreed to get together tomorrow to continue.
She also passed on my number to a friend of hers who was also struggling with mathematics, and after a bit of a mix-up in terms of where we were meeting, she picked me up in her Polo and took me to her (and her parents) place that also seemed fairly large and well-endowed.
But the second individual was much more interesting than the first, as she had revealed to me that she REALLY didn't like doing the accounting stuff that she was learning to the point where she wished she could study something else. This was after I told her about my academic background and such. We did some math and also chatted, as I had done with the other one, but it soon became evident that this second one was really quite sharp. She talked about living 7 months in Hollywood during her gap year and seeing the qualitative differences between the homeless in either place, telling me that growing up in Cape Town, she shouldn't be too shocked to see homeless people per se, but the manner in which a lot of them were basically victims of drug addictions brought on by the 'Ferris Wheel of Shit' led a certain tragic air to their predicament.
After these exchanges I thought 'wow, she is a pretty amazing individual in so many ways,' and, as often happens, I began to daydream, in this case about the plausibility of some sort of relationship. Not so much because I thought that I had any sort of hope, but more so because she seemed like such a cool customer.
But as I thought about more and more, I thought about the vast difference in ages (she's probably 19, while Im... well... several years older). First I thought of it in terms of social taboo, but then I start to think about it in terms of a more existential critique. I started to think 'well if I (hypothetically speaking) truly 'loved' this individual, then surely it would be one of the most selfish things I could do to demand some form of binding relationship with her'. The reason for this was because on the one hand I would be depriving her of the manner in which she is able to go out into the world with a natural curiosity and come to her own opinions and interpretations about it. I've already had one of the most existentially full post-high-school periods that has allowed me to come to a lot of my own conclusions about the world, etc., and so it would seem that there would be a certain 'existential lopsidedness' to such a prospect. If you have young people of about the same age together, they are on similar footing, with curiosities about similar things and how they should be interpreted, but if the difference in ages is several years, and you plan to have an extended time together, then there is definitely a certain 'information imbalance', whether that information is 'wrong' or 'right'. Along with that would come a similarly lopsided interpretative nature to it (so it seems to me), because without that period of existential curiosity, you become heavily dependent on others to interpret the world for you, something, for example, that arises in the educational relationships between parents and children, such as, for example, the daughter in one of my recent posts putting her very young brother on the spot about the existence of God. And suddenly this stream of thought turned into a tributary of a main river.
Just as Kierkegaard explained, in my opinion in a very accurate and meaningful way, the element of 'faith' in religion is the major cornerstone. However, if you come to that faith due to someone else's 'teachings' or 'arguments', then your faith is not in God, but rather in this person; i.e. this person, and not 'God', is your god, because your belief is in this person's rendition being accurate, and not about God directly.
Applying this argument to the above scenario, it seemed that if I was to spend a fair amount of the future with someone a lot younger than me, then surely they would have to be a very strong individual in order not to begin to become 'like me' in terms of my interpretations of the world, and the things that I value, given my 'experience' in traveling the world, studying a number of academic disciplines, etc. And indeed, for those sheep-like minions who refuse or ignore the call to critically engage with their environment, instead taking whatever hegemonic interpretation of the situation as the correct one, what sort of claim do they have to a 'self'? Because there is a space between their corporeal bodies, and so they are, at the very least, physically different? Can we say that these people are actually unique individuals, or simply approximations to other beings, as we would see the difference between the outer features and behaviour of, say, two house cats, but in the end we group them into the general category 'cats' and the role they play in the home?
It is interesting to see how the radicalization of individualism, as seen, for example, in Ayn Rand's 'Objectivism', actually seems to end up coming full circle back to a very un-individualistic social reality, where the pursuit of 'individual happiness' and 'rational self-interest' ends up being a constant fight to occupy the same rungs of the same ladders, with no one stopping to consider that their 'individual' self-interest and happiness might be dependent on a less orthodox social strategy than whatever social algorithm happens to dominate the present day (for us, it would likely be something akin to 'schooling', 'specialized schooling/training' (e.g. university, technical institutes, trade schools, etc.,), career, house, family, 1.7 children, retirement with occasional jaunts to Mexico or Florida to lie on the beach for no real purpose except to demonstrate that you can, death).
In fact, one can already argue that Objectivism was criticized sufficiently over half a century before its inception by Nietzsche. One could argue that 'The Last Man' described in 'Zarathustra's Prologue' of Also Sprach Zarathustra, could represent a world that follows Objectivism:
I will speak unto them of the most contemptible thing: that, however, is the last man!"
And thus spake Zarathustra unto the people:
It is time for man to fix his goal. It is time for man to plant the germ of his highest hope.
Still is his soil rich enough for it. But that soil will one day be poor and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be able to grow thereon.
Alas! there cometh the time when man will no longer launch the arrow of his longing beyond man - and the string of his bow will have unlearned to whizz!
I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: ye have still chaos in you.
Alas! There cometh the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There cometh the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself.
Lo! I show you the Last Man.
"What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?" - so asketh the Last Man and blinketh.
The earth hath then become small, and on it there hoppeth the Last Man who maketh everything small. His species is ineradicable like that of the ground-flea; the Last Man liveth longest.
"We have discovered happiness" - say the Last Man, and blink thereby.
They have left the regions where it is hard to live; for they need warmth. One still loveth one's neighbour and rubbeth against him; for one needeth warmth.
Turning ill and being distrustful, they consider sinful: they walk warily. He is a fool who still stumbleth over stones or men!
A little poison now and then: that maketh pleasant dreams. And much poison at last for a pleasant death.
One still worketh, for work is a pastime. But one is careful lest the pastime should hurt one.
One no longer becometh poor or rich; both are too burdensome. Who still wanteth to rule? Who still wanteth to obey? Both are too burdensome.
No shepherd, and one herd! Everyone wanteth the same; everyone is equal: he who hath other sentiments goeth voluntarily into the madhouse.
"Formerly all the world was insane," - say the subtlest of them, and blink thereby.
They are clever and know all that hath happened: so there is no end to their raillery. People still fall out, but are soon reconciled - otherwise it spoileth their stomachs.
They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the night, but they have a regard for health.
"We have discovered happiness," - say the Last Man, and blink thereby. -
It is odd how this is, I must say; that the more people try to be different, the more they become like each other. But it is easy to see why this might be so, namely that they all have the same general goals, and there are only so many different permutations of how these goals can be reached. More risk may provide more benefit, but it usually leads to more loss; so instead of taking such a risk, too often it seems they just follow the well-worn path, leading to a highly similar behaviours, with highly similar paths, and, except for the lucky few, highly similar outcomes. Such is the price we pay for hegemony: our soil will one day be poor and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be able to grow thereon.
And in this way, it seems that where individuals are at different stages in their lives due to differences in age, culture, academics, or some other such matter (and this is in general, not just as a byproduct of my particular reflections about the hypothetical scenario above), Sting's words do indeed ring true, namely "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free".
Monday, May 30, 2011
Trinkets, Baubles, and Good Luck
On Thursday I was standing in line at the Pick n' Pay deli waiting to order some food. I had just finished talking to a friend of mine who happened to be at the front of the same line I was in, when I heard something fall onto the floor. I thought I had dropped something, but it turned out that after just over 8 months, the strings of the bracelet I had been given by some random in Chandigarh some time during the second week of September had finally broken.
When I had joined my friend in Chandigarh after a hold-up of an extra night in Bombay when I was told that three weeks after I had booked my flight from Bombay to Chandigarh, Kingfisher had canceled the route due to lack of demand, and now I would have to fly the next morning via Delhi (those this was replacement was provided to me at no charge). Anyway, when I arrived, my friend was hanging with an Aussie gal that he had met in Manali, and we spent a couple of days in Chandigarh before heading back to Himachal Pradesh. During that time, we met a local gal from India who gave us her contact number, and the next day we met up with her she had bought us all little trinkets that were symbols of friendship. I forget what the Aussie gal got, but my friend got a neon rubber wristband, kind of like the Lance Armstrong 'Livestrong' bands, but instead it said 'Be my friend'; and then I get a wristband with five stones of a brown and white mixed colour tied together with strings. At first I thought, 'what am I supposed to do with this? This sort of thing really isn't my thing', but I tied it on anyway, and I hadn't removed it since. Not for sleeping, not for showering, not for playing sports, nothing. But in the last month or so, I saw that the strings had started to really fray and knew that it would be only a matter of time before it snapped off.
But it got me thinking, what is it that I will miss by not having this bracelet on? And then I got to thinking where the whole notion of lucky coins and rabbit's feet and who knows what else endows us with some notion of luck. Is seems like the reality of the situation is something akin to 'the magic feather' in the Disney's Dumbo, which the mouse uses as a psychological trick to convince Dumbo that he can fly. At a later time during one of the stunts, Dumbo loses the magic feather, but the mouse is able to convince him that it actually has nothing to do with the feather at all. It's simply to do with ability.
So how is it that we attribute our good fortune to the possession or lack thereof of some trinket? A lot of it is, of course, simply down to psychology. It is a sort of 'crutch' to give us confidence when we need it, and provide us with a means to exonerate us of responsibility if/when we fail. In a way, it works sort of like a horoscope. If you're horoscope is good, you will face the day with a positive outlook and try to make stuff happen, giving the best chance to get results. If your horoscope is not so good, you may end up approaching it as such and missing opportunities or rejecting them out of a certain amount of pessimism. However, as far as I know, most studies claim that if we lived our lives outside of knowledge of horoscopes, our success/fail rate would be pretty close to the good day/bad day rate that our corresponding horoscopes would give us. But then again, I can't really say for certain that the manner in which the stars interact has some bearing on the manner in which we function. However, given that the night sky is simply a projection of 3-dimensional space onto a 2-dimensional canvas, and the patterns between stars are based on our unique vantage point rather than anything else, and the fact that most forces have no real bearing on such large distances makes me think otherwise.
Let us take the case of the 'Bermuda Triangle', supposedly a place where accidents constantly occurred, and many vessels 'disappeared without a trace', leading people to speak of everything from violent storms to alien abductions. But, according to wiki,
"Documented evidence indicates that a significant percentage of the incidents were inaccurately reported or embellished by later authors, and numerous official agencies have stated that the number and nature of disappearances in the region is similar to that in any other area of ocean."
For example,
"When the UK Channel 4 television program "The Bermuda Triangle" (c. 1992) was being produced by John Simmons of Geofilms for the Equinox series, the marine insurer Lloyd's of London was asked if an unusually large number of ships had sunk in the Bermuda Triangle area. Lloyd's of London determined that large numbers of ships had not sunk there. United States Coast Guard records confirm their conclusion. In fact, the number of supposed disappearances is relatively insignificant considering the number of ships and aircraft that pass through on a regular basis."
It is at the basis of a common misconception which is various much related to the placebo effect: too often the events and evidence to back up our claims is more readily available because we are actually making a concerted effort to document them. People will say 'my horoscope says that I should have a good day', and the positives are taken out of it, and when you are supposed to have a bad day, the situation is reversed. In Adam Curtis' documentary The Trap (available in full on youtube), he talks about the number of people who suddenly started to diagnose themselves for psychological trauma when all they were doing was feeling normal emotions. And then it becomes a downward spiral; the anxiety heightens the more we look for evidence that there is indeed something wrong, which further exacerbates the wrong that we see.
For me, I strongly believe that we make our own luck. Of course, fortune and misfortune will always smile (or frown) upon us, but the more opportunities and options we give ourselves to succeed, and the less we rely on superstition to take responsibility from us, the better off we are.
And, ultimately, the luckier we become.
When I had joined my friend in Chandigarh after a hold-up of an extra night in Bombay when I was told that three weeks after I had booked my flight from Bombay to Chandigarh, Kingfisher had canceled the route due to lack of demand, and now I would have to fly the next morning via Delhi (those this was replacement was provided to me at no charge). Anyway, when I arrived, my friend was hanging with an Aussie gal that he had met in Manali, and we spent a couple of days in Chandigarh before heading back to Himachal Pradesh. During that time, we met a local gal from India who gave us her contact number, and the next day we met up with her she had bought us all little trinkets that were symbols of friendship. I forget what the Aussie gal got, but my friend got a neon rubber wristband, kind of like the Lance Armstrong 'Livestrong' bands, but instead it said 'Be my friend'; and then I get a wristband with five stones of a brown and white mixed colour tied together with strings. At first I thought, 'what am I supposed to do with this? This sort of thing really isn't my thing', but I tied it on anyway, and I hadn't removed it since. Not for sleeping, not for showering, not for playing sports, nothing. But in the last month or so, I saw that the strings had started to really fray and knew that it would be only a matter of time before it snapped off.
But it got me thinking, what is it that I will miss by not having this bracelet on? And then I got to thinking where the whole notion of lucky coins and rabbit's feet and who knows what else endows us with some notion of luck. Is seems like the reality of the situation is something akin to 'the magic feather' in the Disney's Dumbo, which the mouse uses as a psychological trick to convince Dumbo that he can fly. At a later time during one of the stunts, Dumbo loses the magic feather, but the mouse is able to convince him that it actually has nothing to do with the feather at all. It's simply to do with ability.
So how is it that we attribute our good fortune to the possession or lack thereof of some trinket? A lot of it is, of course, simply down to psychology. It is a sort of 'crutch' to give us confidence when we need it, and provide us with a means to exonerate us of responsibility if/when we fail. In a way, it works sort of like a horoscope. If you're horoscope is good, you will face the day with a positive outlook and try to make stuff happen, giving the best chance to get results. If your horoscope is not so good, you may end up approaching it as such and missing opportunities or rejecting them out of a certain amount of pessimism. However, as far as I know, most studies claim that if we lived our lives outside of knowledge of horoscopes, our success/fail rate would be pretty close to the good day/bad day rate that our corresponding horoscopes would give us. But then again, I can't really say for certain that the manner in which the stars interact has some bearing on the manner in which we function. However, given that the night sky is simply a projection of 3-dimensional space onto a 2-dimensional canvas, and the patterns between stars are based on our unique vantage point rather than anything else, and the fact that most forces have no real bearing on such large distances makes me think otherwise.
Let us take the case of the 'Bermuda Triangle', supposedly a place where accidents constantly occurred, and many vessels 'disappeared without a trace', leading people to speak of everything from violent storms to alien abductions. But, according to wiki,
"Documented evidence indicates that a significant percentage of the incidents were inaccurately reported or embellished by later authors, and numerous official agencies have stated that the number and nature of disappearances in the region is similar to that in any other area of ocean."
For example,
"When the UK Channel 4 television program "The Bermuda Triangle" (c. 1992) was being produced by John Simmons of Geofilms for the Equinox series, the marine insurer Lloyd's of London was asked if an unusually large number of ships had sunk in the Bermuda Triangle area. Lloyd's of London determined that large numbers of ships had not sunk there. United States Coast Guard records confirm their conclusion. In fact, the number of supposed disappearances is relatively insignificant considering the number of ships and aircraft that pass through on a regular basis."
It is at the basis of a common misconception which is various much related to the placebo effect: too often the events and evidence to back up our claims is more readily available because we are actually making a concerted effort to document them. People will say 'my horoscope says that I should have a good day', and the positives are taken out of it, and when you are supposed to have a bad day, the situation is reversed. In Adam Curtis' documentary The Trap (available in full on youtube), he talks about the number of people who suddenly started to diagnose themselves for psychological trauma when all they were doing was feeling normal emotions. And then it becomes a downward spiral; the anxiety heightens the more we look for evidence that there is indeed something wrong, which further exacerbates the wrong that we see.
For me, I strongly believe that we make our own luck. Of course, fortune and misfortune will always smile (or frown) upon us, but the more opportunities and options we give ourselves to succeed, and the less we rely on superstition to take responsibility from us, the better off we are.
And, ultimately, the luckier we become.
Monday, May 23, 2011
The Morals of the Wretched (Conclusion)
Well, it's nice to wake up for the second straight day to a fire-and-brimstone-free morning. However, there are likely a fair few (including Harold Camping) that are NOT waking up to an egg-on-face-free morning. Though I AM waking up to another been-to-Mzoli's-free day, as the plan for Sunday failed to materialize. Such as it is.
As I mentioned in my previous post, (oh, and by the way, here is the B.I.N. Laden parody I mentioned), we were supposed to experience the end of the world on Saturday. It failed to materialize (as far as I can see, though it seems people continue to justify that there was an apocalypse in SOME domain and the world will, indeed, end on October 21... after what will likely be a disappointingly tame six months of fire and brimstone), and there a fair few articles about the after-effects, but one of the most interesting articles includes a psychologist's assessment:
"It's very hard for us to say, 'Boy, was I stupid!' " says Elliot Aronson, a prominent psychologist and co-author of the book Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, And Hurtful Acts.
"The more committed a person is to their prophecy," he says, "the more likely they are to justify that action, and to try to convince people that their belief was in some way right or good."
I mention that simply because a lot of what I have talked about during this thread has to do with psychology and its 'consequences. So with that in mind, let's move on to the two anecdotes I promised:
The first involves a family I stayed with in Elsiesrivier, one of the more notoriously dangerous 'coloured' suburbs in Cape Town. Because the train ends early and the taxi service ends early, there were more than a few instances where I had to walk about twenty blocks through said 'notorious' neighbourhood to get back to where I was staying, and when I arrived safely, it was always 'a miracle' that I survived. But that's not really the story; it just sets the tone.
This family is devoutly Christian. The father is born-again, or some such, saying that he turned to it as a means to getting his anger and violence in check. And from the stories I've heard he's a pretty crazy mofo telling me about numerous times when he let his fists do the talking with some fairly extreme consequences for others (he kind of has to being a white South African in a coloured neighbourhood) and also about the insane shit that he went through while 'fighting the Cubans in Angola' during the early 80s.
Anyway, during one exchange about religion, I was pressed about whether or not I believed in God. I replied that I had no opinion. I was told that that is not possible. I replied that I don't know enough about it to conclude one way or the other, so I just let it be; at the end of the day, whether God exists or not is beyond my comprehension, and it won't affect the way I live my life, so who cares? Just like I don't know enough about quantum physics or string theory or M-theory or the Higgs Boson or who knows what else to have an opinion. Why is it that the existence of God seems to be the one highly contentious metaphysical issue in the world that you have to have an opinion on??
So anyway, as a demonstration of my apparent 'stupidity', the daughter of 17 called in the 5 to come into the room. And she proceeded to put him on the spot: "Wilfred, does God exist?" He had a very wide-eyed anxious look on his face, and didn't answer. She repeated the question. Still the only response was him searching the eyes of everybody in the room (the sister, the mother, and I, all of whom he knew quite well and was very comfortable around by the time). After a third time, he let out a barely audible, totally unconfident 'yeaaaahhhh'. He was then sent from the room and the daughter triumphantly declared, 'there, you see? A 5-year-old!' I could have gone on and told her how completely ridiculous this 'proof' was, but I decided to save my breath because I knew I wouldn't get anywhere. Whenever I need some sort of religious insight, I always turn to Herr Kierkegaard, and this instance is no exception:
"If you want to be loathsome to God, just run with the herd."
"The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever."
But the inquiries kept coming as to how I could not be religious. So one day, I sat down at my laptop, and composed a brief text file, which was basically an outline of the argument put forward by Nietzsche in 'The Genealogy of Morals' that I've already briefly summarized in Part I. After reading through it, the mother said something to the effect of 'if I didn't know you better, I would think that the Devil was in you'. And I immediately launched my usual counter-attack to these sorts of absurd allegations, namely if the sole purpose of the Devil is to corrupt Christians, then surely he would have been clever enough to write a book, claim it was actually written by God, and have all Christians follow it blindly...
Anyway, perhaps the ending of that was rather anti-climactic. I find most religious debates are, since it usually ends with people agreeing to disagree because neither will budge from their position. But let me speak of another thing that happened to me, the irony of which was so incredibly amusing, and everything set up so incredibly perfectly, if anything would have made me religious it would have been that. But then the way Christians proclaim God as dolefully caring and just, rather than a trickster having a rich sense of humour, the god I would be forced to believe in would be nothing like that. If anything I would have to choose a Loki-esque god. But anyway, here goes (this is a cut-and-paste job I sent to a friend of mine from back in January):
A few days ago I had to invigilate on a math exam. When it ended at 7PM I headed to the train station. There, a man with few teeth and whom age had seemingly not been kind to poked his head around the corner and told me that when he saw me, Jesus came to mind, and, predictably, started launching into a monologue that I have heard many times before wherein people talk about how much they had sinned in the past, then found Jesus and dropped all their bad habits because they had given themselves over to God, God was watching, God would judge, etc. So eventually the train arrived, we went our separate ways and whatever.
Today, I got on the train and found that this same guy was coming towards me trying to sell things to various traingoers (as many in this country do), but he hadnt seen me as he was too busy selling. And even despite the narrow passageway, he didnt look up when he squeezed past me standing in the middle of the aisle, but all the while I was observing him. Then a funny thing happened:
I was standing near the end of the traincar, with only about 4 people on each side in the seats between me and the end of the traincar. And as he got to the very end, he turned to a girl who had apparently asked for what he was selling, but instead of conducting himself in an appropriate manner, he took what he was selling (small sealed packages of razorblades) and made an attempt to place it between the rather massive cleavage that was hanging out the top of her shirt. She appeared very disconcerted about it and he quickly righted himself by jokingly saying 'no sorry let me place it in your hand, all the while sporting the sly grin of an old pervert'.
So of course I started to laugh inside at the irony of it: that he had basically confessed to me as if I was Jesus one day, and then, after walking past me as if I wasnt there, proceeded to 'sin' in front of me, all the while, unbeknownst to him, 'God' was indeed watching.
So after this little episode, he started back, noticed me, asked if i remembered him and what we had talked about. I, still quite amused, said nonchalantly 'dont you think thats a bit hypocritical after that?' and nodded in the direction of the 'incident'. So he murmured some excuse that it was her who had asked him to place it in her breasts and he (gentleman that he was) had declined and placed it in her hand instead ('didn't you see?' he asked). After which he quickly changed the subject to loudly mentioning something about my apparent non-committal to religion and slunk away out of the traincar at the next station.
Maybe next time, he'll take a quick look about to see if 'God' is watching before he decides to 'sin' again, no?
As I mentioned in my previous post, (oh, and by the way, here is the B.I.N. Laden parody I mentioned), we were supposed to experience the end of the world on Saturday. It failed to materialize (as far as I can see, though it seems people continue to justify that there was an apocalypse in SOME domain and the world will, indeed, end on October 21... after what will likely be a disappointingly tame six months of fire and brimstone), and there a fair few articles about the after-effects, but one of the most interesting articles includes a psychologist's assessment:
"It's very hard for us to say, 'Boy, was I stupid!' " says Elliot Aronson, a prominent psychologist and co-author of the book Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, And Hurtful Acts.
"The more committed a person is to their prophecy," he says, "the more likely they are to justify that action, and to try to convince people that their belief was in some way right or good."
I mention that simply because a lot of what I have talked about during this thread has to do with psychology and its 'consequences. So with that in mind, let's move on to the two anecdotes I promised:
The first involves a family I stayed with in Elsiesrivier, one of the more notoriously dangerous 'coloured' suburbs in Cape Town. Because the train ends early and the taxi service ends early, there were more than a few instances where I had to walk about twenty blocks through said 'notorious' neighbourhood to get back to where I was staying, and when I arrived safely, it was always 'a miracle' that I survived. But that's not really the story; it just sets the tone.
This family is devoutly Christian. The father is born-again, or some such, saying that he turned to it as a means to getting his anger and violence in check. And from the stories I've heard he's a pretty crazy mofo telling me about numerous times when he let his fists do the talking with some fairly extreme consequences for others (he kind of has to being a white South African in a coloured neighbourhood) and also about the insane shit that he went through while 'fighting the Cubans in Angola' during the early 80s.
Anyway, during one exchange about religion, I was pressed about whether or not I believed in God. I replied that I had no opinion. I was told that that is not possible. I replied that I don't know enough about it to conclude one way or the other, so I just let it be; at the end of the day, whether God exists or not is beyond my comprehension, and it won't affect the way I live my life, so who cares? Just like I don't know enough about quantum physics or string theory or M-theory or the Higgs Boson or who knows what else to have an opinion. Why is it that the existence of God seems to be the one highly contentious metaphysical issue in the world that you have to have an opinion on??
So anyway, as a demonstration of my apparent 'stupidity', the daughter of 17 called in the 5 to come into the room. And she proceeded to put him on the spot: "Wilfred, does God exist?" He had a very wide-eyed anxious look on his face, and didn't answer. She repeated the question. Still the only response was him searching the eyes of everybody in the room (the sister, the mother, and I, all of whom he knew quite well and was very comfortable around by the time). After a third time, he let out a barely audible, totally unconfident 'yeaaaahhhh'. He was then sent from the room and the daughter triumphantly declared, 'there, you see? A 5-year-old!' I could have gone on and told her how completely ridiculous this 'proof' was, but I decided to save my breath because I knew I wouldn't get anywhere. Whenever I need some sort of religious insight, I always turn to Herr Kierkegaard, and this instance is no exception:
"If you want to be loathsome to God, just run with the herd."
"The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever."
But the inquiries kept coming as to how I could not be religious. So one day, I sat down at my laptop, and composed a brief text file, which was basically an outline of the argument put forward by Nietzsche in 'The Genealogy of Morals' that I've already briefly summarized in Part I. After reading through it, the mother said something to the effect of 'if I didn't know you better, I would think that the Devil was in you'. And I immediately launched my usual counter-attack to these sorts of absurd allegations, namely if the sole purpose of the Devil is to corrupt Christians, then surely he would have been clever enough to write a book, claim it was actually written by God, and have all Christians follow it blindly...
Anyway, perhaps the ending of that was rather anti-climactic. I find most religious debates are, since it usually ends with people agreeing to disagree because neither will budge from their position. But let me speak of another thing that happened to me, the irony of which was so incredibly amusing, and everything set up so incredibly perfectly, if anything would have made me religious it would have been that. But then the way Christians proclaim God as dolefully caring and just, rather than a trickster having a rich sense of humour, the god I would be forced to believe in would be nothing like that. If anything I would have to choose a Loki-esque god. But anyway, here goes (this is a cut-and-paste job I sent to a friend of mine from back in January):
A few days ago I had to invigilate on a math exam. When it ended at 7PM I headed to the train station. There, a man with few teeth and whom age had seemingly not been kind to poked his head around the corner and told me that when he saw me, Jesus came to mind, and, predictably, started launching into a monologue that I have heard many times before wherein people talk about how much they had sinned in the past, then found Jesus and dropped all their bad habits because they had given themselves over to God, God was watching, God would judge, etc. So eventually the train arrived, we went our separate ways and whatever.
Today, I got on the train and found that this same guy was coming towards me trying to sell things to various traingoers (as many in this country do), but he hadnt seen me as he was too busy selling. And even despite the narrow passageway, he didnt look up when he squeezed past me standing in the middle of the aisle, but all the while I was observing him. Then a funny thing happened:
I was standing near the end of the traincar, with only about 4 people on each side in the seats between me and the end of the traincar. And as he got to the very end, he turned to a girl who had apparently asked for what he was selling, but instead of conducting himself in an appropriate manner, he took what he was selling (small sealed packages of razorblades) and made an attempt to place it between the rather massive cleavage that was hanging out the top of her shirt. She appeared very disconcerted about it and he quickly righted himself by jokingly saying 'no sorry let me place it in your hand, all the while sporting the sly grin of an old pervert'.
So of course I started to laugh inside at the irony of it: that he had basically confessed to me as if I was Jesus one day, and then, after walking past me as if I wasnt there, proceeded to 'sin' in front of me, all the while, unbeknownst to him, 'God' was indeed watching.
So after this little episode, he started back, noticed me, asked if i remembered him and what we had talked about. I, still quite amused, said nonchalantly 'dont you think thats a bit hypocritical after that?' and nodded in the direction of the 'incident'. So he murmured some excuse that it was her who had asked him to place it in her breasts and he (gentleman that he was) had declined and placed it in her hand instead ('didn't you see?' he asked). After which he quickly changed the subject to loudly mentioning something about my apparent non-committal to religion and slunk away out of the traincar at the next station.
Maybe next time, he'll take a quick look about to see if 'God' is watching before he decides to 'sin' again, no?
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Apocalypse How??
Last night I was watching 'Late Night News with Loyiso Gola', a South African spoof news show akin to Jon Stewart's 'The Daily Show', but with more SNL-type humour than Stewart, and, as far as I know, no serious interviews. I suppose more like 'Royal Canadian Air Farce' or 'This Hour Has 22 Minutes' (for those in Canada).
It contained a very amusing 'tape from the caves of Pakistan that not even the CIA had' that had a guy dressed in a white tunic with a beard singing a rendition of P.Diddy's 'I'll Be Missing You' SLIGHTLY MODIFIED as a tribute to his esteemed 'B.I.N. Laden'. I tried to look for it online, but I guess it isn't up yet.
The other thing that I was reminded of by the LNN was that 'the world is supposed to end this weekend'. I chuckled at this reminder. Ahh yes, May 21, 2011 is supposed to be 'Doomsday' or 'the rapture' or what not from some cultists, though it is rather interesting that these supposed 'Christians' which are supposed to uphold some notion of 'not sinning' seem to fly in the face of stories like "Every day Mr Camping, an 89-year-old former civil engineer, speaks to his followers via the Family Radio Network, a religious broadcasting organisation funded entirely by donations from listeners. Such is their generosity (assets total $120m) that his network now owns 66 stations in the US alone." (And just look at the ridiculously esoteric numerological justification for this date.) Though, of course, this is to be expected. While I was on a board reserved for politics (which I will withhold the name of to protect my identity...), someone had come on and posted the following:
"will you believe someone says today is friday the 13 so is expecting something bad to happen? but to me today is the day my Lord has made and i will rejoice and be glad in it"
I was a little disheartened that someone would post this on a board that was supposed to be reserved for more political posts, so I looked at this woman's profile pic and, having a very African name with the photo of a fancily-dressed white woman, I thought 'hmmm... perhaps I can exploit the opportunity to open the eyes of this victim of neo-colonialist idiocy' so I clicked on her profile and saw amongst her 'inspirational people' was one 'Joyce Mayer'. Comparing the photos, I was fairly sure that this individual was also the one posted in the pic. So I went on wiki to see who this person was. 'Ahh... an American evangelist is she? Hmmm... let's scroll down and see what money-spinning hypocritical scandals this evil imbecile is involved in, shall we?' So (VERY VERY PREDICTABLY) I was able to post the following cut-and-paste reply from wikipedia:
"On November 11, 2003, the St. Louis Post Dispatch published a four part series exposing Mayer’s "$10 million corporate jet, her husband’s $107,000 silver-gray Mercedes sedan, her then $2 million home and houses worth another $2 million for her four children," her $20 million headquarters, furnished with "$5.7 million worth of furniture, artwork, glassware, and the latest equipment and machinery, including a malachite round table, a marble-topped antique commode, a custom office bookcase, a $7,000 Stations of the Cross in Dresden porcelain, an eagle sculpture on a pedestal, another eagle made of silver, and numerous paintings," among many other expensive items — all paid for by "her ministry." The article prompted Wall Watchers (a Christian nonprofit watchdog group) to call on the Internal Revenue Service to investigate Meyer and her family."
Not surprising. As Søren Kierkegaard once said:
"The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly."
And who wants to 'act accordingly'? In my next post, I will finish the 'Morals of the Wretched' thread (because I know you're all in suspense!!!) with a rather amusing anecdote of just this type of hypocrisy. But anyway, enough about crooked iconoclasts and religious swindlers. Let's get back to the coming apocalypse, shall we?
Personally, this would be a very sad thing. First of all, we would never know how the Champion's League final between Manchester United and Barcelona was decided, but even worse than that, it would mean that I wouldn't be able to chalk 'go to Mzoli's' off my list of things I felt I should do (aka 'bucket list', a term I only came across recently, aka Murtaugh list, an inside joke that me and a friend of mine started throwing around while we were in India after a certain episode of 'How I Met Your Mother'), because I'm scheduled to go on Sunday. Such is apocalypse I suppose.
So what is this obsession with 'the end of the world', anyway? We already passed Y2K and 6/6/6 with little more apocalypse than, perhaps, a fit of convulsive laughter, which rarely proves fatal. Shouldn't these modern day Nostradamuses simply let bygones be bygones, sit tight, and just wait?
Well I suppose, in a rather cynical way, the obsession with the end of the world with respect to some people (like, for example, David Koresh, Jim Jones, and, well, Mr Camping) might stem from it being a VERY win-win situation. Either you are correct and you become some sort of demi-god or, more likely, you lose, but still have managed to hoodwink a bunch of fools out of millions of dollars. But this only appeals to the minority of shepherds. What about the sheep who are at fault for creating the personality cults and inflated Swiss bank accounts for these 'apocalypticists'?
Again, I can't speak for everybody, but I liken it to a similar story to that of the psychology surrounding a close football (soccer) match: your team is up 1-0 with about 5 minutes to go. A win will seal your club a first trophy in 35 years and finally cause a certain banner to be pulled down from the Stretford end of Old Trafford (no payouts for guessing what I'm talking about here...), but you NEED that final whistle to blow. And when it does, the sense of relief you feel after an 'all hands to the pumps' last few minutes needed to hang on passes and you hear that final whistle is amazing.
I believe it's the same thing. These religious people are in the battle of their lives, wanting the final whistle to go to end the world and make their devotion all worth while; to prove them right in their choice of following, and to end millenia of uncertainty. And, of course, to whisk them away from the difficulties of the real world to their idealized fantasies of heaven, where everything will be eternal bliss for them: 'I've done all this work, but when will I get my reward???'
The unfortunate thing is that it is not known when (or if) this final whistle will ever blow. We have December 2012 to look forward to, probably Easter of 2033 to look forward to, etc., etc. So long as people are desiring a break from the ups and downs of reality, there will be people who are only too happy to throw their weight behind some new-fangled cultist that declares such-and-such to be the day of rapture (and I can PROVE IT!!!).
Of course, if my laptop and I are not here on Sunday, but rather sitting in Limbo waiting for my turn to step up to the plate to be judged by an old ethereal bearded dude, I guess my dismissive cynicism will have been misplaced.
Still, if that happens, what will Herr Camping and Ms Mayer do with all their cash? They can't burn it once they see the heavens start to open up and pretend they were innocent of greed and swindling the world over. God is watching, remember?
It contained a very amusing 'tape from the caves of Pakistan that not even the CIA had' that had a guy dressed in a white tunic with a beard singing a rendition of P.Diddy's 'I'll Be Missing You' SLIGHTLY MODIFIED as a tribute to his esteemed 'B.I.N. Laden'. I tried to look for it online, but I guess it isn't up yet.
The other thing that I was reminded of by the LNN was that 'the world is supposed to end this weekend'. I chuckled at this reminder. Ahh yes, May 21, 2011 is supposed to be 'Doomsday' or 'the rapture' or what not from some cultists, though it is rather interesting that these supposed 'Christians' which are supposed to uphold some notion of 'not sinning' seem to fly in the face of stories like "Every day Mr Camping, an 89-year-old former civil engineer, speaks to his followers via the Family Radio Network, a religious broadcasting organisation funded entirely by donations from listeners. Such is their generosity (assets total $120m) that his network now owns 66 stations in the US alone." (And just look at the ridiculously esoteric numerological justification for this date.) Though, of course, this is to be expected. While I was on a board reserved for politics (which I will withhold the name of to protect my identity...), someone had come on and posted the following:
"will you believe someone says today is friday the 13 so is expecting something bad to happen? but to me today is the day my Lord has made and i will rejoice and be glad in it"
I was a little disheartened that someone would post this on a board that was supposed to be reserved for more political posts, so I looked at this woman's profile pic and, having a very African name with the photo of a fancily-dressed white woman, I thought 'hmmm... perhaps I can exploit the opportunity to open the eyes of this victim of neo-colonialist idiocy' so I clicked on her profile and saw amongst her 'inspirational people' was one 'Joyce Mayer'. Comparing the photos, I was fairly sure that this individual was also the one posted in the pic. So I went on wiki to see who this person was. 'Ahh... an American evangelist is she? Hmmm... let's scroll down and see what money-spinning hypocritical scandals this evil imbecile is involved in, shall we?' So (VERY VERY PREDICTABLY) I was able to post the following cut-and-paste reply from wikipedia:
"On November 11, 2003, the St. Louis Post Dispatch published a four part series exposing Mayer’s "$10 million corporate jet, her husband’s $107,000 silver-gray Mercedes sedan, her then $2 million home and houses worth another $2 million for her four children," her $20 million headquarters, furnished with "$5.7 million worth of furniture, artwork, glassware, and the latest equipment and machinery, including a malachite round table, a marble-topped antique commode, a custom office bookcase, a $7,000 Stations of the Cross in Dresden porcelain, an eagle sculpture on a pedestal, another eagle made of silver, and numerous paintings," among many other expensive items — all paid for by "her ministry." The article prompted Wall Watchers (a Christian nonprofit watchdog group) to call on the Internal Revenue Service to investigate Meyer and her family."
Not surprising. As Søren Kierkegaard once said:
"The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly."
And who wants to 'act accordingly'? In my next post, I will finish the 'Morals of the Wretched' thread (because I know you're all in suspense!!!) with a rather amusing anecdote of just this type of hypocrisy. But anyway, enough about crooked iconoclasts and religious swindlers. Let's get back to the coming apocalypse, shall we?
Personally, this would be a very sad thing. First of all, we would never know how the Champion's League final between Manchester United and Barcelona was decided, but even worse than that, it would mean that I wouldn't be able to chalk 'go to Mzoli's' off my list of things I felt I should do (aka 'bucket list', a term I only came across recently, aka Murtaugh list, an inside joke that me and a friend of mine started throwing around while we were in India after a certain episode of 'How I Met Your Mother'), because I'm scheduled to go on Sunday. Such is apocalypse I suppose.
So what is this obsession with 'the end of the world', anyway? We already passed Y2K and 6/6/6 with little more apocalypse than, perhaps, a fit of convulsive laughter, which rarely proves fatal. Shouldn't these modern day Nostradamuses simply let bygones be bygones, sit tight, and just wait?
Well I suppose, in a rather cynical way, the obsession with the end of the world with respect to some people (like, for example, David Koresh, Jim Jones, and, well, Mr Camping) might stem from it being a VERY win-win situation. Either you are correct and you become some sort of demi-god or, more likely, you lose, but still have managed to hoodwink a bunch of fools out of millions of dollars. But this only appeals to the minority of shepherds. What about the sheep who are at fault for creating the personality cults and inflated Swiss bank accounts for these 'apocalypticists'?
Again, I can't speak for everybody, but I liken it to a similar story to that of the psychology surrounding a close football (soccer) match: your team is up 1-0 with about 5 minutes to go. A win will seal your club a first trophy in 35 years and finally cause a certain banner to be pulled down from the Stretford end of Old Trafford (no payouts for guessing what I'm talking about here...), but you NEED that final whistle to blow. And when it does, the sense of relief you feel after an 'all hands to the pumps' last few minutes needed to hang on passes and you hear that final whistle is amazing.
I believe it's the same thing. These religious people are in the battle of their lives, wanting the final whistle to go to end the world and make their devotion all worth while; to prove them right in their choice of following, and to end millenia of uncertainty. And, of course, to whisk them away from the difficulties of the real world to their idealized fantasies of heaven, where everything will be eternal bliss for them: 'I've done all this work, but when will I get my reward???'
The unfortunate thing is that it is not known when (or if) this final whistle will ever blow. We have December 2012 to look forward to, probably Easter of 2033 to look forward to, etc., etc. So long as people are desiring a break from the ups and downs of reality, there will be people who are only too happy to throw their weight behind some new-fangled cultist that declares such-and-such to be the day of rapture (and I can PROVE IT!!!).
Of course, if my laptop and I are not here on Sunday, but rather sitting in Limbo waiting for my turn to step up to the plate to be judged by an old ethereal bearded dude, I guess my dismissive cynicism will have been misplaced.
Still, if that happens, what will Herr Camping and Ms Mayer do with all their cash? They can't burn it once they see the heavens start to open up and pretend they were innocent of greed and swindling the world over. God is watching, remember?
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Ahh... free will...
My landlady (who lives in the house) is 81 and regularly drinks whiskey for her 'medicinal needs', but is very intelligent and sharp even at her age, and has many interesting things to speak of. One of her favourite topics is her theory of metaphysics, as she often talks about us being here 'only temporarily', and that Earth is a 'learning planet' and it prepares us for some metaphysical eternity in a spirit world. And this often leads me to believe that perhaps she was one or the other of Schelling or Hegel in a former life.
Hegel because of the manner in which her conception of this spirit world seems to accord with Hegel's notion of 'Spirit'. She told me last night that when she is alone in bed, she sits awake and recalls anecdotes about the many friends that she has lost over the years and says that 'this makes them happy'. So I asked her about how spirits can have any sort of state of emotion. She said that it was impossible for them to have such, so I pushed her on what she meant by 'happy'. And then she said that thoughts create vibrations that connect with these spirits and (I am not sure on details, but perhaps one of these days I will have her dictate a pamphlet that goes into details about her theory) helps to 'right them' in some way. For example, she talks of how addictions pass to the spirit world, so of the many who died in this house: her husband, a few of her friends including Danny, and various other tenants; nearly all had an affinity for whiskey and that is why whiskey is a constant 'problem' in the house (e.g. for her), because the spirits need their fill as well. And these spirits who are still addicts and such are not ready yet to proceed to the next level/dimension/state or what have you. In a sense, it reminded me of the whole notion of Hegel's 'self-realization of Spirit' concept.
But more importantly for the purposes of this topic is the manner in which she is like Schelling, because although she speaks of some form of determinism, it is a 'soft determinism' as it were. She speaks of 'cosmic nudges' being the reason why, instead of reading a book from cover to cover, she opens it to a random page and begins reading, since this is where she was 'meant' to begin. I didn't go into the problems surrounding the ad hoc methodology of this act, though it does (probably not deliberately) open up some rather paradoxical questions... Freedom, she says (just like Schelling) is an UNCONSCIOUS decision that comes about before we are born: we choose the role we wish to play in life and then life is simply our playing out that role (and learning from it on this 'learning planet').
So this is Schelling's notion of free will. Basically, he agrees with Kant's agreement with Hume that there must be some sort of deterministic structure within the phenomenal world, but in attempting to solve the problem of 'Kantian duality', he proposes that solution.
One of the reasons why I thought to explore this topic now (and, by doing so, have put off for the moment continuing/concluding the 'Morals of the Wretched' train of thought, even though I know how I intend to go on with it) is because recent events (call them 'cosmic nudges' if you will) have brought a number of interesting videos to my attention. First was one that was shared on facebook by a friend of mine who I have known almost from the beginning of my school days and is fairly religious. It was called 'The God Within: exposing the false philosophy of modern science'. Now, there are quite a few strikes against it from my point view already: the mention of 'God' in direct contrast to 'modern science', and the fact that it was on a site called 'Natural News', where 'natural' often implies 'unscientific' and, hence, 'religious'. So I went in spoiling for a fight, but what I found that this documentary (part I of it, at least) is completely and utterly correct. It criticizes Hawking's narrow-minded 'scientism' and declaration that 'philosophy is dead' on perfectly legitimate grounds. In fact, it seems that 'The God Within' has a number of possible connotations within the video, referring to, at different times the Higgs boson (the so-called 'God particle), omniscience in the form of a 'theory of everything', the notion of consciousness (i.e. the deus ex machina mind-body duality), and, of course, the manner in which science (albeit very legitimately) always side-steps the notion of the existence of some form of omniscient, omnipotent 'God' as presented in most monotheistic religions.
Because of the effect that this had on me, I passed it on to a close friend (and former philosophy professor) of mine, who replied that she would 'probably show it to her next 102 class' which is the 'Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge' philosophy course at the University of Alberta. In her reply, she also talked about Libet's experiment and sent me a video about mathematician and BBC Correspondent Marcus du Sautoy (who, funnily enough, was the supervisor of my current supervisor) doing an interesting scientific experiment into notions of free will and consciousness in the form of simple decision making. I won't spoil the ending (watch the video), but the results are quite scary and profound.
Another idealist, Arthur Schopenhauer, wrote an award-winning 'essay' called 'On the Freedom of the Will'. He concluded that there was no such thing, because, as the above video shows, there is a 'deterministic mechanism' to the manner in which decisions are made (and the notion of 'free will' can be entirely summed up by decision making). BUT, the problem with this 'scientific proof' is that all it does it 'push' the notion of conscious decision making back into the unconscious. Schopenhauer's Will/Representation duality implied that our unconscious acts depend on (i.e. we are enslaved by) 'will', which in turn, is determined by a complicated combination of 'empirical programming' from the world of representations (i.e. the empirical world) and an unconscious development that we cannot know, but is also somehow deterministic. So basically, what the above experiment shows is that yes, there is a deterministic process going on that we are unaware of. However, it does not necessarily follow that the 'origins' of this process, whatever they might be, are also deterministic.
The alternative, then, leads into a sort of 'soft determinism' or 'compatibilism' that allows us to say that we are CONSCIOUSLY deterministic, but UNCONSCIOUSLY free somehow. How are we free? Well, as I mentioned above, Schelling provides one theory in terms of how we are free, and there are many others. From what I know, one of the most interesting and complex ones is the recent compatibilist theory put forward by Daniel Dennett. I have not read any of his stuff, so I cannot go into details about what it implies or how it is different, but if anyone is interested, they can hear some of Dennett's own reflections on both the difficulty of the topic and the manner in which he attempts to circumvent it. (On another note, I came across a further interesting notion of compatibilism while attending a political science conference in Chicago in 2010 as part of my thesis. It that of the post-Marxist Ernst Bloch, who tries to 'unpack' Marxist notions of determinism as they arrive from historical dialecticism. The best summary can be found in his book 'On Karl Marx' as I have heard that his magnum opus 'The Principle of Hope' is very long, complicated, and oftentimes rambling.)
But to get back to 'The God Within' documentary, it also had an effect on me because the manner in which this 'narrow-minded scientism' is attacked based on its unwillingness to engage with notions like consciousness reminded me a lot of Adam Curtis' 'The Trap' (for those interested, there are three sections, 'F*ck You Buddy', 'The Lonely Robot', and 'We Will Force You to Be Free', each divided into six youtube sections) which launches a similar attack at similarly narrow-minded political and economic 'models' that are based on assessments of people as 'rational games players' which, for the most part, they are not.
And with respect to my landlady, although she has some rather unwanted habits (like allowing her dogs to lick the pots of the remnants of what's been cooked in them and then deeming it sufficient 'cook' the pots themselves on the stove to re-sanitize them), her amazing breadth of interesting idiosyncracies make it so that I'm more than willing to make certain sacrifices to stick around.
Hegel because of the manner in which her conception of this spirit world seems to accord with Hegel's notion of 'Spirit'. She told me last night that when she is alone in bed, she sits awake and recalls anecdotes about the many friends that she has lost over the years and says that 'this makes them happy'. So I asked her about how spirits can have any sort of state of emotion. She said that it was impossible for them to have such, so I pushed her on what she meant by 'happy'. And then she said that thoughts create vibrations that connect with these spirits and (I am not sure on details, but perhaps one of these days I will have her dictate a pamphlet that goes into details about her theory) helps to 'right them' in some way. For example, she talks of how addictions pass to the spirit world, so of the many who died in this house: her husband, a few of her friends including Danny, and various other tenants; nearly all had an affinity for whiskey and that is why whiskey is a constant 'problem' in the house (e.g. for her), because the spirits need their fill as well. And these spirits who are still addicts and such are not ready yet to proceed to the next level/dimension/state or what have you. In a sense, it reminded me of the whole notion of Hegel's 'self-realization of Spirit' concept.
But more importantly for the purposes of this topic is the manner in which she is like Schelling, because although she speaks of some form of determinism, it is a 'soft determinism' as it were. She speaks of 'cosmic nudges' being the reason why, instead of reading a book from cover to cover, she opens it to a random page and begins reading, since this is where she was 'meant' to begin. I didn't go into the problems surrounding the ad hoc methodology of this act, though it does (probably not deliberately) open up some rather paradoxical questions... Freedom, she says (just like Schelling) is an UNCONSCIOUS decision that comes about before we are born: we choose the role we wish to play in life and then life is simply our playing out that role (and learning from it on this 'learning planet').
So this is Schelling's notion of free will. Basically, he agrees with Kant's agreement with Hume that there must be some sort of deterministic structure within the phenomenal world, but in attempting to solve the problem of 'Kantian duality', he proposes that solution.
One of the reasons why I thought to explore this topic now (and, by doing so, have put off for the moment continuing/concluding the 'Morals of the Wretched' train of thought, even though I know how I intend to go on with it) is because recent events (call them 'cosmic nudges' if you will) have brought a number of interesting videos to my attention. First was one that was shared on facebook by a friend of mine who I have known almost from the beginning of my school days and is fairly religious. It was called 'The God Within: exposing the false philosophy of modern science'. Now, there are quite a few strikes against it from my point view already: the mention of 'God' in direct contrast to 'modern science', and the fact that it was on a site called 'Natural News', where 'natural' often implies 'unscientific' and, hence, 'religious'. So I went in spoiling for a fight, but what I found that this documentary (part I of it, at least) is completely and utterly correct. It criticizes Hawking's narrow-minded 'scientism' and declaration that 'philosophy is dead' on perfectly legitimate grounds. In fact, it seems that 'The God Within' has a number of possible connotations within the video, referring to, at different times the Higgs boson (the so-called 'God particle), omniscience in the form of a 'theory of everything', the notion of consciousness (i.e. the deus ex machina mind-body duality), and, of course, the manner in which science (albeit very legitimately) always side-steps the notion of the existence of some form of omniscient, omnipotent 'God' as presented in most monotheistic religions.
Because of the effect that this had on me, I passed it on to a close friend (and former philosophy professor) of mine, who replied that she would 'probably show it to her next 102 class' which is the 'Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge' philosophy course at the University of Alberta. In her reply, she also talked about Libet's experiment and sent me a video about mathematician and BBC Correspondent Marcus du Sautoy (who, funnily enough, was the supervisor of my current supervisor) doing an interesting scientific experiment into notions of free will and consciousness in the form of simple decision making. I won't spoil the ending (watch the video), but the results are quite scary and profound.
Another idealist, Arthur Schopenhauer, wrote an award-winning 'essay' called 'On the Freedom of the Will'. He concluded that there was no such thing, because, as the above video shows, there is a 'deterministic mechanism' to the manner in which decisions are made (and the notion of 'free will' can be entirely summed up by decision making). BUT, the problem with this 'scientific proof' is that all it does it 'push' the notion of conscious decision making back into the unconscious. Schopenhauer's Will/Representation duality implied that our unconscious acts depend on (i.e. we are enslaved by) 'will', which in turn, is determined by a complicated combination of 'empirical programming' from the world of representations (i.e. the empirical world) and an unconscious development that we cannot know, but is also somehow deterministic. So basically, what the above experiment shows is that yes, there is a deterministic process going on that we are unaware of. However, it does not necessarily follow that the 'origins' of this process, whatever they might be, are also deterministic.
The alternative, then, leads into a sort of 'soft determinism' or 'compatibilism' that allows us to say that we are CONSCIOUSLY deterministic, but UNCONSCIOUSLY free somehow. How are we free? Well, as I mentioned above, Schelling provides one theory in terms of how we are free, and there are many others. From what I know, one of the most interesting and complex ones is the recent compatibilist theory put forward by Daniel Dennett. I have not read any of his stuff, so I cannot go into details about what it implies or how it is different, but if anyone is interested, they can hear some of Dennett's own reflections on both the difficulty of the topic and the manner in which he attempts to circumvent it. (On another note, I came across a further interesting notion of compatibilism while attending a political science conference in Chicago in 2010 as part of my thesis. It that of the post-Marxist Ernst Bloch, who tries to 'unpack' Marxist notions of determinism as they arrive from historical dialecticism. The best summary can be found in his book 'On Karl Marx' as I have heard that his magnum opus 'The Principle of Hope' is very long, complicated, and oftentimes rambling.)
But to get back to 'The God Within' documentary, it also had an effect on me because the manner in which this 'narrow-minded scientism' is attacked based on its unwillingness to engage with notions like consciousness reminded me a lot of Adam Curtis' 'The Trap' (for those interested, there are three sections, 'F*ck You Buddy', 'The Lonely Robot', and 'We Will Force You to Be Free', each divided into six youtube sections) which launches a similar attack at similarly narrow-minded political and economic 'models' that are based on assessments of people as 'rational games players' which, for the most part, they are not.
And with respect to my landlady, although she has some rather unwanted habits (like allowing her dogs to lick the pots of the remnants of what's been cooked in them and then deeming it sufficient 'cook' the pots themselves on the stove to re-sanitize them), her amazing breadth of interesting idiosyncracies make it so that I'm more than willing to make certain sacrifices to stick around.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Brush with the BBC over SlutWalk issue
I frequently contribute to 'BBC Have Your Say' discussion on facebook, and yesterday after one such post, I was surprised to see a message in my inbox from a certain Ben James that went as follows (with personal details cut out, of course):
Hi ______ -
I'm a producer at BBC World Have Your Say. Thanks for your comment on the SlutWalk discussion.
Would you be interested in taking part in the radio discussion later today? If so, please email me a number I can call you on to ___________, or message it to me here, and I can explain more about the programme.
Best wishes,
Ben James
BBC World Have Your Say
+44 207 --- ----
So I responded by giving my number in Cape Town and after a few tries, whilst walking along the road on the way home, I received a call from Ben James who told me about what was going on, asked me a few questions about my position on whether the police officer should have said what he said and what my opinion was on the subject, then said that they were several people who had been contacted on the topic and that 'there were no guarantees', but that he 'hoped to get me on'. Then we spoke a bit about the upcoming Manchester City v. Tottenham game that I said I was hoping to watch and he bid me adieu. I wasn't exactly sure what I would say, so I prepared the following statement should I get called:
These protests are supposed to be a justified form of direct democracy. The Toronto police representative represents the executive arm of the government, so if someone condemns the public protests of people who disagree about a very contentious progressive issue, they are effectively backing fearmongering in the form of 'do this at your peril'. And this applies to both the freedom to dress as one wishes and the freedom to organize.
With regard to the matter at hand, namely 'women dressing like sluts', this sort of idea is inherited from a history of paternalism and patriarchy. It basically says that those who are dominant (most often physically, e.g. men) can wear whatever they like: topless, shirts that say 'hung like a ....', etc., because their dominance means that there are no consequences. Yet others, who don't fall into this category of dominance, those who are vulnerable (e.g. many women) must adhere to a strict dress code. Why should women who dress suggesting 'I am looking for a mate' not have the freedom to choose which mate she wants simply because there are those who can force her to make a choice that that she doesn't want to make? If she wears clothing that suggests she is sexually free, this should NEVER mean that she is sexually available to everyone. This is why there is the notion of CONSENT. If women and vulnerable individuals are constantly discouraged, harangued, and exploited for the way they dress, the 'freedom' to 'dress like a slut' then becomes elitist: it becomes a form of 'freedom' that is genderly biased, and takes us back to Feudalism where biological facts were used to justify that it is only men who should act while women should merely follow.
Third, it is important to point out that this phenomenon does not occur in a bubble. Sex sells, and cosmetology and fashion are huge industries. Individuals like Beyonce Knowles and Jennifer Lopez are constantly portrayed in scant clothing and are glamorized as enslaving beautiful men, and then they turn around to the vulnerable youth that take in these messages and look up to these people and suddenly say 'don't do this'?? If people really want women to stop 'dressing like sluts', then they had better be willing to take on the fashion industry, the film industry, the music industry, and all the media that represents them. Otherwise, it is blatant hypocrisy that puts business interests ahead of human rights.
In the end, I didn't get called to participate in the radio show, but it was cool to get a call in South Africa and talk to a BBC representative. And I am glad that it allowed me to crystallize my opinions on the subject.
So... SlutWalk Cape Town anybody??
Hi ______ -
I'm a producer at BBC World Have Your Say. Thanks for your comment on the SlutWalk discussion.
Would you be interested in taking part in the radio discussion later today? If so, please email me a number I can call you on to ___________, or message it to me here, and I can explain more about the programme.
Best wishes,
Ben James
BBC World Have Your Say
+44 207 --- ----
So I responded by giving my number in Cape Town and after a few tries, whilst walking along the road on the way home, I received a call from Ben James who told me about what was going on, asked me a few questions about my position on whether the police officer should have said what he said and what my opinion was on the subject, then said that they were several people who had been contacted on the topic and that 'there were no guarantees', but that he 'hoped to get me on'. Then we spoke a bit about the upcoming Manchester City v. Tottenham game that I said I was hoping to watch and he bid me adieu. I wasn't exactly sure what I would say, so I prepared the following statement should I get called:
These protests are supposed to be a justified form of direct democracy. The Toronto police representative represents the executive arm of the government, so if someone condemns the public protests of people who disagree about a very contentious progressive issue, they are effectively backing fearmongering in the form of 'do this at your peril'. And this applies to both the freedom to dress as one wishes and the freedom to organize.
With regard to the matter at hand, namely 'women dressing like sluts', this sort of idea is inherited from a history of paternalism and patriarchy. It basically says that those who are dominant (most often physically, e.g. men) can wear whatever they like: topless, shirts that say 'hung like a ....', etc., because their dominance means that there are no consequences. Yet others, who don't fall into this category of dominance, those who are vulnerable (e.g. many women) must adhere to a strict dress code. Why should women who dress suggesting 'I am looking for a mate' not have the freedom to choose which mate she wants simply because there are those who can force her to make a choice that that she doesn't want to make? If she wears clothing that suggests she is sexually free, this should NEVER mean that she is sexually available to everyone. This is why there is the notion of CONSENT. If women and vulnerable individuals are constantly discouraged, harangued, and exploited for the way they dress, the 'freedom' to 'dress like a slut' then becomes elitist: it becomes a form of 'freedom' that is genderly biased, and takes us back to Feudalism where biological facts were used to justify that it is only men who should act while women should merely follow.
Third, it is important to point out that this phenomenon does not occur in a bubble. Sex sells, and cosmetology and fashion are huge industries. Individuals like Beyonce Knowles and Jennifer Lopez are constantly portrayed in scant clothing and are glamorized as enslaving beautiful men, and then they turn around to the vulnerable youth that take in these messages and look up to these people and suddenly say 'don't do this'?? If people really want women to stop 'dressing like sluts', then they had better be willing to take on the fashion industry, the film industry, the music industry, and all the media that represents them. Otherwise, it is blatant hypocrisy that puts business interests ahead of human rights.
In the end, I didn't get called to participate in the radio show, but it was cool to get a call in South Africa and talk to a BBC representative. And I am glad that it allowed me to crystallize my opinions on the subject.
So... SlutWalk Cape Town anybody??
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
The Morals of the Wretched (Interlude: The Walk of Life)
I didnt actually expect to create this entry, but neither did I expect to create the last interlude to my entry on (see causality of this article) et al. But just like in that instance, 'something came up', and it just happened to fit with the theme (with a little stretching involved).
In January, a Toronto police representative made an ill-advised comment that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized”. And so the SlutWalk was born to 'take back the word slut' and bring the public's attention to the manner in which people (predominantly women) are marginalized, bullied, and generally treated with contempt when their freedom of expression goes against the often dominant voice that advocates sexual conservatism, and the dangerous precedent that this stereotyped objectification sets. Marches have been held in many cities throughout North America, and over the next few months, these demonstrations are being planned in Amsterdam, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand.
The phenomenon was originally brought to my attention by a feminist activist friend of mine, and at the time I didn't really think much of it other than 'huh... interesting concept', but on Sunday there was a BBC article that gave it a good deal of publicity, and the following day, a second BBC article announced details of the SlutWalk planned in London for June 4, rightly saying: "Organisers say the aim is to highlight a culture in which the victim, rather than rapist or abuser, is blamed. So what started as an 'interesting concept' was suddenly becoming a global phenomenon.
So the request, as put to me was "I would like to see an entry on people's delusion that they can provide any help for a cause by participating in a 'walk'". Now, I'm not a psychologist, nor do I have the ability to read minds, so I cannot know for sure how close my assessment will come to the reality of the situation, and clearly different people have different reasons for participating in public demonstrations, but I'll give it a go, but before I do, let me motivate the topic a bit by mentioning a few anecdotes about the situation in South Africa.
First and foremost is the HIV/AIDS problem. Sub-Saharan Africa, especially Southern Africa, has probably the highest proportion of HIV positive cases in the world, and the prevalence of rape, which, up until very recently when it was updated, was justified by a "Sexual Offences Act [that] dates back to 1957: the days of apartheid when the country's rulers were not only all white, but also all male." It doesn't help that the country's president is a polygamist with five wives, two fiancees, and twenty children, and had gone through an infamous rape trial when he had sex with an HIV positive woman (and later revealed he had 'showered to avoid HIV'). Indeed, under the previous government, president Thabo Mbeki pretended there was no HIV problem, and dismissed anti-retroviral treatment as 'toxic and dangerous'. Things are getting better, with groups especially from the townships like Khayelitsha coming together and boldly wearing shirts describing themselves as HIV positive, and billboards with celebrities like Ryan Giggs saying things like 'Be a man. Know your status." with regard to HIV.
Another, more personal story, occurred when I was sitting in the pub in a discussion with some friends of mine. For some reason we got into the topic of rape, and the gal at the table, who I didn't know, volunteered that there was an instance when she had been at a party and would have been raped but for a friend of hers happening to walk in 'just in the nick of time'. The gentleman to my left then volunteered that he 'had heard' that most rape instances 'are actually when women have second thoughts after the fact'. I told him flat out that this simply wasn't true, that if it is truly consensual, then there shouldnt be any 'second thoughts' and if there is any doubt there shouldnt be any sex. I told him about the historical accounts of women being intimidated and marginalized to the point where they rarely report rape cases, where too often the burden of proof is on them to prove that it wasn't consensual and that it often simply comes down to her word against his and she usually ends up losing out. A story was brought to my attention by friends of mine in Ghana about a purported 'thief' in a student housing block who was eventually mass-raped by a group of students. I have followed people's reactions (i.e. friends of friends in Ghana) on the story, and most of them (who are males) tend to offer little sympathy, justifying it by saying 'she got what she deserved'.
So what does this tell us? It tells us that there is a problem. As I alluded to in my gender bender story, the history of patriarchy means that gender equality is still not taken very seriously by many, even in 'developed' countries (and this includes the current Prime Minister of Canada). And this apparent 'ignorance' seems to grow in proportion to conservatism, especially religious conservatism. So what can be done about it? Well it appears that one may run into difficulties and general inaction if one petitions one's government representative to take it up as an issue, so there must be another way (though this is usually how it is).
I will start by saying that such a 'walk' is a form of 'direct democracy', a "form of governance in which people collectively make decisions for themselves, rather than having their political affairs decided by representatives." The truth is that if democracy was all about voting every couple of years, any majority government could do whatever they pleased (we will see if that is the case in Canada), when, in fact, mass protests are the means for people to tell their representatives in no uncertain terms that they are not doing a very good job if they refuse to deal with issues that are important to those that they purport to represent. Moreover, it sends a message to the general public that this is, indeed, an important issue that cannot be absorbed or swept under the carpet. Instead of dropping hints here and there, there is an active and very real component that brings people together in protest, and also brings people who may never have thought about such an issue to get the gears in their mind turning, and (hopefully) they may begin to ask themselves what they really think about the issue and why. Even if they do not agree, critical engagement and dissenting voices are always important democratically to figure out the best way forward.
And protests are important to keep governments in check. Oftentimes it turns out that violent protests, though riskier, are often much more effective (my Ghanaian friend's treatise on student activism gave me an intimate look into this world), but one must remember that non-violent protests are a show of obstinate defiance and (assuming the Declaration of Human Rights is upheld) insulates protesters from being victims of violence themselves. This is also what eventually allowed Gandhi to free India from British colonial rule.
So I ask who is responsible enough to stand up and fight for the rights and morals of the wretched, in this case, victims who have to carry the burden of the shame of objectification, marginalization, manipulation, and egregious invasions of their personal privacy?
Lest we forget also that protests are a means by which like-minded people come together for a cause, so it also presents the opportunity for a very interesting and often very rewarding social experience for everybody.
Hmmm... I had better get that 'SlutWalk Cape Town' ball rolling...
In January, a Toronto police representative made an ill-advised comment that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized”. And so the SlutWalk was born to 'take back the word slut' and bring the public's attention to the manner in which people (predominantly women) are marginalized, bullied, and generally treated with contempt when their freedom of expression goes against the often dominant voice that advocates sexual conservatism, and the dangerous precedent that this stereotyped objectification sets. Marches have been held in many cities throughout North America, and over the next few months, these demonstrations are being planned in Amsterdam, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand.
The phenomenon was originally brought to my attention by a feminist activist friend of mine, and at the time I didn't really think much of it other than 'huh... interesting concept', but on Sunday there was a BBC article that gave it a good deal of publicity, and the following day, a second BBC article announced details of the SlutWalk planned in London for June 4, rightly saying: "Organisers say the aim is to highlight a culture in which the victim, rather than rapist or abuser, is blamed. So what started as an 'interesting concept' was suddenly becoming a global phenomenon.
So the request, as put to me was "I would like to see an entry on people's delusion that they can provide any help for a cause by participating in a 'walk'". Now, I'm not a psychologist, nor do I have the ability to read minds, so I cannot know for sure how close my assessment will come to the reality of the situation, and clearly different people have different reasons for participating in public demonstrations, but I'll give it a go, but before I do, let me motivate the topic a bit by mentioning a few anecdotes about the situation in South Africa.
First and foremost is the HIV/AIDS problem. Sub-Saharan Africa, especially Southern Africa, has probably the highest proportion of HIV positive cases in the world, and the prevalence of rape, which, up until very recently when it was updated, was justified by a "Sexual Offences Act [that] dates back to 1957: the days of apartheid when the country's rulers were not only all white, but also all male." It doesn't help that the country's president is a polygamist with five wives, two fiancees, and twenty children, and had gone through an infamous rape trial when he had sex with an HIV positive woman (and later revealed he had 'showered to avoid HIV'). Indeed, under the previous government, president Thabo Mbeki pretended there was no HIV problem, and dismissed anti-retroviral treatment as 'toxic and dangerous'. Things are getting better, with groups especially from the townships like Khayelitsha coming together and boldly wearing shirts describing themselves as HIV positive, and billboards with celebrities like Ryan Giggs saying things like 'Be a man. Know your status." with regard to HIV.
Another, more personal story, occurred when I was sitting in the pub in a discussion with some friends of mine. For some reason we got into the topic of rape, and the gal at the table, who I didn't know, volunteered that there was an instance when she had been at a party and would have been raped but for a friend of hers happening to walk in 'just in the nick of time'. The gentleman to my left then volunteered that he 'had heard' that most rape instances 'are actually when women have second thoughts after the fact'. I told him flat out that this simply wasn't true, that if it is truly consensual, then there shouldnt be any 'second thoughts' and if there is any doubt there shouldnt be any sex. I told him about the historical accounts of women being intimidated and marginalized to the point where they rarely report rape cases, where too often the burden of proof is on them to prove that it wasn't consensual and that it often simply comes down to her word against his and she usually ends up losing out. A story was brought to my attention by friends of mine in Ghana about a purported 'thief' in a student housing block who was eventually mass-raped by a group of students. I have followed people's reactions (i.e. friends of friends in Ghana) on the story, and most of them (who are males) tend to offer little sympathy, justifying it by saying 'she got what she deserved'.
So what does this tell us? It tells us that there is a problem. As I alluded to in my gender bender story, the history of patriarchy means that gender equality is still not taken very seriously by many, even in 'developed' countries (and this includes the current Prime Minister of Canada). And this apparent 'ignorance' seems to grow in proportion to conservatism, especially religious conservatism. So what can be done about it? Well it appears that one may run into difficulties and general inaction if one petitions one's government representative to take it up as an issue, so there must be another way (though this is usually how it is).
I will start by saying that such a 'walk' is a form of 'direct democracy', a "form of governance in which people collectively make decisions for themselves, rather than having their political affairs decided by representatives." The truth is that if democracy was all about voting every couple of years, any majority government could do whatever they pleased (we will see if that is the case in Canada), when, in fact, mass protests are the means for people to tell their representatives in no uncertain terms that they are not doing a very good job if they refuse to deal with issues that are important to those that they purport to represent. Moreover, it sends a message to the general public that this is, indeed, an important issue that cannot be absorbed or swept under the carpet. Instead of dropping hints here and there, there is an active and very real component that brings people together in protest, and also brings people who may never have thought about such an issue to get the gears in their mind turning, and (hopefully) they may begin to ask themselves what they really think about the issue and why. Even if they do not agree, critical engagement and dissenting voices are always important democratically to figure out the best way forward.
And protests are important to keep governments in check. Oftentimes it turns out that violent protests, though riskier, are often much more effective (my Ghanaian friend's treatise on student activism gave me an intimate look into this world), but one must remember that non-violent protests are a show of obstinate defiance and (assuming the Declaration of Human Rights is upheld) insulates protesters from being victims of violence themselves. This is also what eventually allowed Gandhi to free India from British colonial rule.
So I ask who is responsible enough to stand up and fight for the rights and morals of the wretched, in this case, victims who have to carry the burden of the shame of objectification, marginalization, manipulation, and egregious invasions of their personal privacy?
Lest we forget also that protests are a means by which like-minded people come together for a cause, so it also presents the opportunity for a very interesting and often very rewarding social experience for everybody.
Hmmm... I had better get that 'SlutWalk Cape Town' ball rolling...
Monday, May 9, 2011
The Morals of the Wretched (Part I)
The Genealogy of Morals is a book written by Friedrich Nietzsche talking about his perception of how morality arrived at its present state as upholding asceticism, piety, and pacifism.
I would recommend it as an interesting historical account of the power balance between politics and religion that is ongoing, but basically he surmises that way back when, when 'good' was associated with power and 'bad' was associated with inferiority, the clerics sought to upset the system, suddenly defining 'good' as pious and 'evil' as powerful. Meanwhile, the clerics could now count on an army of people wishing to be 'saved' which would bring them power and control.
It is an interesting idea, and one that I take seriously. The situation that exists between politics and religion is still a very real one, and it just goes to show the somewhat paradoxical outcome of colonialism which ended with the colonized accusing the colonizers of tyrannical brutality, yet embracing the religion that these 'tyrants' brought with them:
"All values, in fact, are irrevocably poisoned and diseased as soon as they are allowed in contact with the colonized race. The customs of the colonized people, their traditions, their myths—above all, their myths—are the very sign of that poverty of spirit and of their constitutional depravity. That is why we must put the DDT which destroys parasites, the bearers of disease, on the same level as the Christian religion which wages war on embryonic heresies and instincts, and on evil as yet unborn. The recession of yellow fever and the advance of evangelization form part of the same balance sheet. But the triumphant communiqués from the mission are in fact a source of information concerning the implantation of foreign influences in the core of the colonized people. I speak of the Christian religion, and no one need be astonished. The Church in the colonies is the white people’s Church, the foreigner’s Church. She does not call the native to God’s ways but to the ways of the white man, of the master, of the oppressor. And as we know, in this matter many are called but few are chosen."
--Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
But then what comes of this? Today as I was walking to the university, an individual called out to me ('Jesus!') from the place by the river where he regularly squats with other destitute individuals. He told me of his situation. That they are harassed constantly by the authorities, that the situation is so unfair because whenever he has bread, he shares it with his comrades but they do not reciprocate. That he cries a fair bit because of his destitute situation (though when he mentioned this to me, I wasnt sure if this was actual or metaphorical), that he was born in Guguletu, and had a pretty rough life, that he was born in 1974 and had lost his mother recently, that he had talents and liked to sing, and wanted to somehow find a change for the better and no longer live and be treated like an animal. During that time, a 'Groote Schuur Community Officer' came and started harassing him and his fellow strugglers, and forced them to disperse, while they protested that they werent cheating and stealing; they were just trying to live. And so during the conversation, we moved from the open to a more discrete location away from the main road while he continued his talk. And after this, he did indeed start to weep at his miserable plight. But a common theme kept arising: his Christian faith.
Although I often lend an ear to such people, I am not always inclined to help them. When I was in Oxford, and even back in Canada, people ask for money on a lot of occasions but it is fairly easy to shut them out. You wonder what has crept into their situation: if you give them money, how will it be used? Yesterday at the pub, my friend pointed out a grizzled elderly white woman that had tried her best to add some notion of beauty to her features with little dabs of makeup here and there. She had started coming to the pub fairly recently (as far as I could see), but I thought I remembered seeing her somewhere before. And then my friend said 'I see this old woman in Observatory all the time and I always give her a bit of change when she asks me for it. Seeing her in here purchasing beers, I now know where my money is going.' Sad.
But you cannot blame these people, as I mentioned in the post on death, I spoke of the book 'Better Never To Have Lived', and the difficulty that children face when they are brought into this world. Of course, some have it much more difficult than others, and it is not always easy to deal with hardship and have the strength to continue. Sometimes when I see Rasta at the house after a hard day's work, it really pains me that I can't do more. But when it comes to randoms, Cambodia always comes to mind, and I remind myself that I can't save everybody. And so anyway, these people must find a way to continue the struggle, often by bypassing the reality of the situation through substance abuse, domestic violence,... or religion:
"Here on the level of communal organizations we clearly discern the well-known behavior patterns of avoidance. It is as if plunging into fraternal blood-bath allowed them to ignore the obstacle, and to put off till later the choice, nevertheless inevitable, which opens up the question of armed resistance to colonialism. Thus collective autodestruction in a very concrete form is one of the ways in which the native’s muscular tension is set free. All these patterns of conduct are those of the death reflex when faced with danger, a suicidal behavior which proves to the settler (whose existence and domination is by them all the more justified) that these men are not reasonable human beings. In the same way the native manages to by-pass the settler. A belief in fatality removes all blame from the oppressor; the cause of misfortunes and of poverty is attributed to God: He is Fate. In this way the individual accepts the disintegration ordained by God, bows down before the settler and his lot, and by a kind of interior restabilization acquires a stony calm."
--Ibid.
Anyway, this individual, 'Albert', wanted me to sing with him, and went into some hymn or something or other about how Jesus saves and all that, while all the while I watched him and the other passersby who were curious about this white man being entertained by a homeless local. The Officer came back briefly but didnt approach us while I was with this man. Then Albert asked me for food, as I knew he inevitably would. Normally I say no to these people, but he had done some work: telling me about his situation, about the situation of many of his ilk in Cape Town, singing for me, etc. He had wanted to follow me into the shop, but as he approached, he was barred from entry but the security guy, so I went in myself. As I had left him to go in, he had called after me requesting a veritable smorgasbord of food. I at first thought that I would 'do the usual' and just buy him a loaf of bread, but then as I was near the deli, my eye looked over the possibilities on offer, and there was a fairly cheap chicken curry and rice, so I went for that and repaid him in kind with some rice and chicken curry from the Pick n Pay that came to about R18 ($2.50). I emerged from the store just in time to see a group of these guys (including Albert) getting shooed away by the security staff, and as he moved away, I caught up to him, gave my offering to him, said 'best of luck', and walked off.
I had to go, and I wasnt particularly interested in hearing his long-winded lamentations about how he had just been treated.
I would recommend it as an interesting historical account of the power balance between politics and religion that is ongoing, but basically he surmises that way back when, when 'good' was associated with power and 'bad' was associated with inferiority, the clerics sought to upset the system, suddenly defining 'good' as pious and 'evil' as powerful. Meanwhile, the clerics could now count on an army of people wishing to be 'saved' which would bring them power and control.
It is an interesting idea, and one that I take seriously. The situation that exists between politics and religion is still a very real one, and it just goes to show the somewhat paradoxical outcome of colonialism which ended with the colonized accusing the colonizers of tyrannical brutality, yet embracing the religion that these 'tyrants' brought with them:
"All values, in fact, are irrevocably poisoned and diseased as soon as they are allowed in contact with the colonized race. The customs of the colonized people, their traditions, their myths—above all, their myths—are the very sign of that poverty of spirit and of their constitutional depravity. That is why we must put the DDT which destroys parasites, the bearers of disease, on the same level as the Christian religion which wages war on embryonic heresies and instincts, and on evil as yet unborn. The recession of yellow fever and the advance of evangelization form part of the same balance sheet. But the triumphant communiqués from the mission are in fact a source of information concerning the implantation of foreign influences in the core of the colonized people. I speak of the Christian religion, and no one need be astonished. The Church in the colonies is the white people’s Church, the foreigner’s Church. She does not call the native to God’s ways but to the ways of the white man, of the master, of the oppressor. And as we know, in this matter many are called but few are chosen."
--Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
But then what comes of this? Today as I was walking to the university, an individual called out to me ('Jesus!') from the place by the river where he regularly squats with other destitute individuals. He told me of his situation. That they are harassed constantly by the authorities, that the situation is so unfair because whenever he has bread, he shares it with his comrades but they do not reciprocate. That he cries a fair bit because of his destitute situation (though when he mentioned this to me, I wasnt sure if this was actual or metaphorical), that he was born in Guguletu, and had a pretty rough life, that he was born in 1974 and had lost his mother recently, that he had talents and liked to sing, and wanted to somehow find a change for the better and no longer live and be treated like an animal. During that time, a 'Groote Schuur Community Officer' came and started harassing him and his fellow strugglers, and forced them to disperse, while they protested that they werent cheating and stealing; they were just trying to live. And so during the conversation, we moved from the open to a more discrete location away from the main road while he continued his talk. And after this, he did indeed start to weep at his miserable plight. But a common theme kept arising: his Christian faith.
Although I often lend an ear to such people, I am not always inclined to help them. When I was in Oxford, and even back in Canada, people ask for money on a lot of occasions but it is fairly easy to shut them out. You wonder what has crept into their situation: if you give them money, how will it be used? Yesterday at the pub, my friend pointed out a grizzled elderly white woman that had tried her best to add some notion of beauty to her features with little dabs of makeup here and there. She had started coming to the pub fairly recently (as far as I could see), but I thought I remembered seeing her somewhere before. And then my friend said 'I see this old woman in Observatory all the time and I always give her a bit of change when she asks me for it. Seeing her in here purchasing beers, I now know where my money is going.' Sad.
But you cannot blame these people, as I mentioned in the post on death, I spoke of the book 'Better Never To Have Lived', and the difficulty that children face when they are brought into this world. Of course, some have it much more difficult than others, and it is not always easy to deal with hardship and have the strength to continue. Sometimes when I see Rasta at the house after a hard day's work, it really pains me that I can't do more. But when it comes to randoms, Cambodia always comes to mind, and I remind myself that I can't save everybody. And so anyway, these people must find a way to continue the struggle, often by bypassing the reality of the situation through substance abuse, domestic violence,... or religion:
"Here on the level of communal organizations we clearly discern the well-known behavior patterns of avoidance. It is as if plunging into fraternal blood-bath allowed them to ignore the obstacle, and to put off till later the choice, nevertheless inevitable, which opens up the question of armed resistance to colonialism. Thus collective autodestruction in a very concrete form is one of the ways in which the native’s muscular tension is set free. All these patterns of conduct are those of the death reflex when faced with danger, a suicidal behavior which proves to the settler (whose existence and domination is by them all the more justified) that these men are not reasonable human beings. In the same way the native manages to by-pass the settler. A belief in fatality removes all blame from the oppressor; the cause of misfortunes and of poverty is attributed to God: He is Fate. In this way the individual accepts the disintegration ordained by God, bows down before the settler and his lot, and by a kind of interior restabilization acquires a stony calm."
--Ibid.
Anyway, this individual, 'Albert', wanted me to sing with him, and went into some hymn or something or other about how Jesus saves and all that, while all the while I watched him and the other passersby who were curious about this white man being entertained by a homeless local. The Officer came back briefly but didnt approach us while I was with this man. Then Albert asked me for food, as I knew he inevitably would. Normally I say no to these people, but he had done some work: telling me about his situation, about the situation of many of his ilk in Cape Town, singing for me, etc. He had wanted to follow me into the shop, but as he approached, he was barred from entry but the security guy, so I went in myself. As I had left him to go in, he had called after me requesting a veritable smorgasbord of food. I at first thought that I would 'do the usual' and just buy him a loaf of bread, but then as I was near the deli, my eye looked over the possibilities on offer, and there was a fairly cheap chicken curry and rice, so I went for that and repaid him in kind with some rice and chicken curry from the Pick n Pay that came to about R18 ($2.50). I emerged from the store just in time to see a group of these guys (including Albert) getting shooed away by the security staff, and as he moved away, I caught up to him, gave my offering to him, said 'best of luck', and walked off.
I had to go, and I wasnt particularly interested in hearing his long-winded lamentations about how he had just been treated.
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