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".

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.

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?

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?

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.

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??

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...

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.

Gender Bender (or Behind Closed Doors)

The beginning of the month often sees rooms, houses, properties, etc. change hands. And in the house that I am staying in, this followed accordingly. The most obvious (if you had read about my recent scenario involving death) new arrival would be the one filling up Danny's room, since given that it has a personal bathroom and kitchenette, it would provide the greatest amount of extra income to the landlady. Another individual arrived to fill another room and a third room was also on offer that would have prompted a re-shuffle (in terms of various people switching rooms), but for the 'unbelievability of the unknown'.

I don't know the whole story, but the individual who stayed in this room had done so for quite a long time (I've been told for possibly up to four years). He had his share of problems, being a drug addict, and having some very strange behavioural issues in terms of possible 'kleptomania', and there was some animosity towards him from one of the other individuals who had also been there long term. But the landlady told me that she didnt have a problem with him staying because on the one hand his personal issues weren't her business and on the other hand his mother always promptly transferred the full amount of the rent into the proper bank account at the beginning of every month. He was scheduled to arrive last Thursday or Friday to clear out his stuff, but it ended up being that he didnt actually arrive until late on Saturday. I was there at the time sharing a toke with Raymond (Rasta), and I had tried to convince him that we should check out what's happening at the pub, but he kept motioning to me that he was worried about leaving this guy at the house by himself should he decide to take something with him on the way out. But at the end of it all he relented and we left.

The next morning, I woke up to the sound of 'Holy shit! This is really not good!' and thought that perhaps we had made a mistake by leaving him alone and he had made off with something. But when I eventually dragged myself out of bed, one of my other roommates came up to me and said 'Check out the room! It's like Al-Qaeda has been staying there and let a bomb go off!' I thought it couldn't be that bad, since I'm usually fairly untidy when it comes to leaving clothes and stuff strewn about my floor and a mess of papers and books near and in my bed because of the myriad of projects that always seem to pull me this way and that, so I went to check on it and... wow.

There was an almost indescribable mess, with a giant mess of things strewn everywhere in and around the room. A giant pile of wood and plastic and various broken things in one corner, the bed in a disgusting state and covered with garbage, etc. There were also to ropes tied across the middle of the room, I imagine to hang his washing on. And it was a very small room. But that wasn't the most interesting thing.

It always interesting to know what goes on behind the closed doors of people who are very secretive, especially those who have various substance problems. For the first month I had stayed at the house, he seemed a fairly regular guy, though the only sight I ever had of his room was him squeezing the door open as little as possible, squeezing through it, and then when leaving, he would always have a hockey bag containing who knows what (two heads in a duffel bag, for all I knew), but he spent most of the second month apparently staying out with his mom near Bellville to be closer to work, so I hadnt seen him much lately. While I had been there, the landlady had always talked about a lot of things that had gone missing: dishes, a receipt booklet, various odds and ends here and there, but she was always adamant that even though she contained an extra key, she couldnt by law go in to check his room (another thing she told me was that because of recent legislation she couldnt by law kick non-paying tenants out without a long legal procedure, so, as with the things missing, she took the people who had failed to pay over the month of April in stride). So now we were all going to get a peek into this individual's weird little world.

Unsurprisingly, during the cleanup that followed over the coming days, most of the missing dishes were found (and put through a very rigorous washing process), the receipt book had been found, and many other missing things had shown up in the room of an apparent kleptomaniac. But now, surveying the room, the first thing that occurred to me was the overfull ashtray next to the bed. This in itself might not be particularly interesting but for the fact that many of those cigarettes were stained with lipstick. Then my eyes went to the mess on the floor where there sat numerous bottles of makeup products, colognes, perfumes, and who knows what else. You saw condom packages, tampon packages, women's underwear. The landlady had always had a rule 'no sleepovers, male or female' (though this rule was only very loosely adhered to by most of the tenants). So what had been going on there? How often had women been going in and out? How long of the four years had all this stuff been fossilized there?

Well, the speculative answer to a lot of these questions has to do with the the fact that it had already been revealed to me by the landlady that there was an instance when she had surprised him one day by catching him in a dress or some such (perhaps when he had to take a quick bathroom break) and he had immediately taken to his heels to seek the privacy of his room. So it seemed that, to at least some extent, the 'women' who had been visiting him were his effeminate alter egos. Though this could not (and still doesn't) explain what a male who likes to get regularly in touch with his feminine side, and in a rather pro-active way, requires condoms and female hygiene products for. Either there had been women there at various times (though it would be odd for him to keep 'hygiene products' around for her unless she had been there constantly, and no such individual had ever been seen to have entered or exited his room), or he had REALLY allowed his imagination to run wild.


The notion of gender has very interesting ontological connotations. Just like we might say that humans are such because of certain physiological or genotypical traits, so one might make the same assessment of gender. You are male if you have certain hormones, a Y-chromosome, certain anatomical essentials, etc. Similarly, you are female if you have certain hormones, two X chromosomes (and therefore polar bodies), certain anatomical essentials, etc. Then there are those that are often lumped into 'gender neutral' groups, such as those with Klinefelter's syndrome, those that have under-developed sex organs of both genders, various hormonal 'imbalances', etc. But just as we might say that to define a human being as 'a bag of bones' or 'a bag of DNA' is not particularly useful, so it might be said of gender. How are males and/or females 'normally' 'supposed to' or 'not supposed to' conduct themselves?

In my MA philosophy thesis, I wrote about how political notions of 'human freedom' are often defined by looking at the ontological definitions of 'humanness' as depicted by the theorist in question. What, aside from physiologically or genealogically speaking defines people as being human? Is it based on 'thinking'? 'Consciousness'? 'Productive capilities'? 'Hierarchical structure'? 'Socio-political structure'? Different answers imply different notions of political notions of freedom (so I have argued anyway).

But I believe a similar approach could be used to see what is behind gender stereotypes. If we talk about humanity in terms of its procreative needs, it leads to notions of 'heterosexuality', 'homosexuality', and 'bisexuality'. If we talk about humans in terms of 'thinking' or 'consciousness', which is the mark of the 'classic' and 'early modern philosophy', it turns into the perpetuation of stereotypes of women as intellectual socialites due to the egregious declarations that the patriarchy made about the general 'inability' of women to critical engage with and critically assess epistemic and intellectual pursuits. Note how women were basically treated during those times, and note that the hierarchical implications of these assessments are then sneaked in the back door to imply that women are fundamentally 'lower' because of their inability to engage with 'higher' forms of learning, as well as their biological 'closeness' to the children that they carry with them through the nine-month gestation period implying that their role is to 'create and maintain the family'.

But then a reassessment started to take place during the Romantic period when women started to show their intellectual worth through their ability to write many very important and very deeply insightful and philosophically relevant novels. The notion of the intellectual inferiority of women then took on a different tact that it was restricted to 'female' perceptions of the world, and was explained by the romanticization of women as storytellers and artists, etc. Eliot summarized it in 'The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock' by repeatedly referring to 'the women who come and go talking of Michelangelo'. But still they were largely excluded from 'real' male pursuits like philosophy and the sciences. And still the bias became about a woman's productive capabilities: stereotyped as being more 'delicate' (and lacking the required levels of testosterone, apparently), they were restricted to 'light labour' if they were to be loosed from their traditional banishment to household labour in terms of 'the woman's place in the kitchen', etc.

When Marx arrived on the scene, and reinvented human ontology as being based on production in the physical realm rather than thinking in the intellectual realm. He spoke of the importance of female labour and, largely, the end of gender stereotypes with respect to production: we are now a species-being and we should further our species-capabilities through whatever means possible and quit squabbling about individual roles. And it has been this ontological modernization, in my opinion, that has been at the heart of gender modernization; I do not think that it is any secret that women who wish to be 'very' progressive in terms of gender must also be ontologically progressive, and, transitively, politically progressive, in terms of 'leaning more to the left', in some way or another (for example, my thesis speaks of Hannah Arendt's philosophy as being 'progressive' in this way, even though she always largely pooh-poohed socialism).

And so I believe we can take this lesson from history and ontology to define human beings first as human beings before we say that, being this or that gender, they must act in this or that manner. If this individual is curious about what it might be to live as a woman, then I believe he should be encouraged to do so, just as I believe John Howard Griffin made a bold and important move to live as a black.

And it just underlines what is the central tenet of my social-political theory, which has been derived from my numerous travels and engagements in countries around the world and could be at the heart of so much socio-political progress in terms of race, gender, and economic class, if only it could be universally adapted:

We must look at, see, and accept each other as human beings before we allow notions of ethnicity, gender, and other visual cues to creep in and corrupt our judgments.

Elections Canada

Well the results are in, ladies and gentlemen:

Conservatives: 167 seats (majority)
NDP: 102 seats (official opposition for the first time in history)
Liberals: 34 seats (outside top 2 for the first time in history, party leader Michael Ignatieff lost his seat)
Bloq Quebecois: 4 seats (party leader Gilles Duceppe lost his seat and Quebec was basically swept by the NDP)
Green Party: 1 seat (party leader Elizabeth May won the first ever Green Party seat in Canada)

I will be brief in my reaction, but I think that there are many positives to take out of it:

Pros:
1) NDP opposition: it seems that democratic socialism is not dead, even in Canada. It also means that although the Conservatives have a majority, they must tread carefully, and will perhaps have to be less Conservative than in former times. We shall see...
2) Green party seat: it's always nice when a new party gets a foot in the door.
3) Liberal fail: since history has not been repeated in terms of 'who does historically well', it may be that more people are actually critically engaging with issues.
4) Conservative majority: why is this under pros? well it will be under cons as well. But I think it is useful that people can finally see how much damage the Conservatives will do to the country over the next four years. Moreover, recall that it was after Mulroney's failures in the early in the 80s and early 90s that caused people to become disillusioned with Conservativism and ushered in Jean Chretien, who I still think was a reasonably good leader. Perhaps this will usher in an era of Prime Minister Jack Layton? Doubtful, but let's see what happens. And it also means that there will be no more elections and dissolved parliaments for awhile, as it is always a bit annoying to hear the ranting and raving and mudslinging every few years...
5) Linda Duncan consolidating her success in Edmonton-Strathcona. Nice to see she got a majority of the popular vote (>53%) and destroyed the Conservative candidate (~40%).
6) Left vs. Right. It will be interesting to see how the Conservative-NDP dynamic unfolds over the next few years. And it is very interesting to see how much the opinions of the voting public have been polarized recently, rather than opting for the more central-left Liberals.
7) Bloq destroyed in Quebec. Perhaps this will see a much more unified Canada over the next few years.
8) All the major gaffes that may come back to haunt various people down the line (see below).

Cons:
1) Conservative majority. They are in control of both the Commons and the Senate. How much damage will they do?

The gaffes are always the best though, so I recommend going through them yourself: 2011 controversies and gaffes. Though here are a few of my favourites:

i) Raymond Sturgeon, the Conservative candidate for the federal riding of Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing was until December 2010 a lobbyist for Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, the manufacturer of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II fighter plane – which the Canadian government agreed to purchase in July 2010.

Insider dealings? You're kidding me.

ii) Cheryl Gallant, the Conservative candidate for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke compared Michael Ignatieff to Libyan dictator Gaddafi. She later apologized.

I dont see the connection. One is an individual that led a country from poverty to a general degree of wealth, and enacted a very interesting general political theory. The other is a washed-up pseudo-American whose books are filled with rubbish. But then one sort of expects uninformed mudslinging in these trying times.

iii) At a tightly controlled event aimed at immigrant communities in Brampton, Ontario, Harper used the phrase "you people" to attendees, implying they were categorically different from he or his party or government. Ignatieff and Layton immediately criticized Harper and pointed to his record of reducing family reunification quotas for immigration, and criminal justice policies that disadvantage non-white populations.

It's always nice to know that your leader cares about 'you people'.

iv) The Conservative Party came under heavy fire on April 11 when a draft report for the G8 summit was leaked to the Canadian Press, which indicated that the Tories misled the Parliament of Canada to seek approval for $50 million tax dollars to be spread on dubious projects, which over half of it was spent on the riding of Parry Sound—Muskoka – Tony Clement's riding. It prompted calls from the other leaders to release the report now, but the Auditor General of Canada, Sheila Fraser; told reporters the rules forbid her to release it because she has to release it to the Speaker of the House of Commons.

Funneling public money into campaign coffers? You're kidding me.

v) Canadian Arab Federation president Khaled Mouamar received an email from Etobicoke Centre Conservative campaign staffer Zeljko Zidaric asking him if he had any groups that would like to participate in a Conservative rally "by having someone at the event in an ethnic costume". The email further elaborated that they wanted them for a "photo-op about all the multicultural groups that support Ted Opitz our local Conservative candidate and the Prime Minister." Mouamar took offence to the email.

Ignorance and over-simplification with respect to foreign, racial, and cultural issues by right-wing political groups? You're kidding me.

vi) A Liberal campaign volunteer for Joe Volpe in Eglinton-Lawrence was caught on camera removing Green Party pamphlets from mailboxes, throwing them away, and replacing them with Liberal campaign materials, as Volpe looked on. Tampering with mail is a criminal offence in Canada. Volpe has since fired the worker, but only after being caught on camera standing next to the worker as he committed these actions.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. What more need be said?

But in the end, just remember:

"The people will think [the House representative] is voting on toleration, on peace or war, on billeting or taxes or what not; but the real question on which he will always be voting is whether or no his party shall remain in office or he himself have to spend half his property on another election with the chance of losing his seat if his opponent has a few thousand pounds more to spend than he."

--George Bernard Shaw

Being in South Africa, I didn't see much of what was going on, but I hope everybody back home enjoyed the unfolding drama!!

The Corruptly Educated

Napoleon, Bismarck, the Kaiser, Mussolini, and Hitler were quite right in their perception of the fact that no systems of government can stand for long unless they get hold of the children and can bend the sapling in the way they wish the tree to grow. They must all not only grow their chosen flowers but weed the garden and destroy the vermin ruthlessly to the utmost of their power: the definitions of flower and weed and vermin being in their own hands. Honest government is impossible without honest schools; for honest schools are illegal under dishonest governments. Honest education is dangerous to tyranny and privilege; and systems like the Capitalist system, kept in vogue by popular ignorance, Churches which depend on it for priestly authority, privileged classes which identify civilization with the maintenance of their privileges, and ambitious conquerors and dictators who have to instil royalist idolatry and romantic hero-worship, all use both ignorance and education as underpinnings for general faith in themselves as rulers. Such corruption is at present universal. Democratic education cannot be tolerated under Capitalism because it inevitably leads to Communism, against which Capitalism has to defend itself by systematic propagation of a capitalist doctrine and vilification of Communist teachers so as to make us all proselytes of the Manchester School with an inculcated phobia against any State interference with private profiteering or concern with national welfare. Not only is the trend towards Communism treated as a social danger to be stemmed at all costs: government itself is assumed to be an evil to be minimized as far as possible and to have its powers not only constitutionally limited but broken, even at the cost of revolution and regicide, until the real power passes to private capital and finance, and its official representatives are either disarmed royal scapegoats or armed protectors of private property. All this propaganda has to be disguised as education, and the schools, founded for the enlightenment of the poor and the encouragement of scholarship, are made inaccessible to proletarians by fees beyond their means, and at the same time kept in the atmosphere of feudalism with all its duties abolished and its privileges retained: in short, of simple plutocracy. Finally, education in practice comes to mean mental and moral obfuscation.

Now this is all very well from a capitalist point of view; but Capitalism cannot develop its possibilities without genuine technical education. It must confine its obfuscation to the cultural side. Its accountants may be political idiots; but they must know that two and two make four and not five. Its carpenters must know that twelve feet are longer than twelve inches; and its ship captains know that the world is not flat, even when they have been taught that Jesus was omniscient when he said that in the day of his coming the stars would drop on the earth as specks of soot fall on a pancake.

Thus we have technicians of the utmost eminence politically and religiously obfuscated to a degree that should disqualify them from taking any part in public affairs. They use the words Communism and Communist to denote everything and everybody vile, and thus make infamous proposals that rate welfare of human society above the luxury of the propertied classes. They label Lenin and Stalin as bloodthirsty scoundrels and guttersnipes just as their fathers labelled Hegel, Tyndall, and Bishop Colenso destroyers of religion. Honor, privileges, and authority are heaped on rich and 'well connected' persons who have hardly brains or skill enough to knit socks. Although the country is up to the waist in Communism because there are so many vitally necessary public services out of which capitalists can make no profit, they assume that Communism is as impossible as it is wicked, and throw about such words as Proletariat, Bolshevist, Dictator, Liberty, Democracy, Law and Order, without connecting them with the facts of human life that are staring them in the face all the time: in short, without knowing what on earth they are talking about.

And here again I must remind you that they are not all hypocrites and confidence-trick-swindlers deliberately and cunningly lying for their own ends. They are mostly quite decent folk just parroting the noises they have heard round them all their lives and see printed in their newspapers every day.

--George Bernard Shaw, Everybody's Political What's What?