boys don't cry

One of the reasons I identify as feminist is purely selfish. In my line of work, you often come across reasons why being socialized with Western male values is tremendously impoverishing. For example, this week I was lecturing about how men both give and receive less self-disclosure – we live in a relatively disconnected social world. Last week, I was lecturing about how men are worse at both sending and interpreting non-verbal messages – in a way, we’re taught to ignore the social world. One of the biggest ways I feel impoverished is the disconnection from my own emotions I feel I’ve been taught to have.

This isn’t just a gender issue, it’s also a family one. I remember a few years ago, I was with my sister and her daughter who was about 2 at the time. My niece fell down, and there was that silent moment before you expected tears to flow. I forget exactly what my sister said, but she basically talked her out of crying – maybe it was something about being “tough.” I totally understand why my sister did that, she didn’t want to deal with the distress of my niece crying. But I was struck by how I was watching someone be socialized to ignore their own feelings, to keep their expression of distress to themselves. It’s not a bad metaphor for the way my parents taught us to deal with our emotions.

So now I don’t cry. I don’t want to say I can’t, I do sometimes. I did the other day when I was watching a documentary about a Hindu woman in India who wanted to marry a Muslim man and was barred from doing so by her family. She went to her dad for the first time in six years to tell him she wanted to get married, and despite everything, he broke down and embraced her. It was beautiful. Sadly, he “got himself together” over the next few weeks, and eventually decided not to attend the wedding. But just seeing raw humanity break through social roles was too beautiful.

But that’s other people’s lives. My own life doesn’t draw many tears. It also leads me to wonder about my own emotional honesty in domains like my writing. I strongly admire people like midnightarrow for their pure, unashamed honesty about things like sexuality. I lecture in sexuality, but that’s intellectualized and removed. I wish I had the guts to just spill it, but I don’t. Not now, at least.

So I dunno. I guess my main point here, at least on the feminism thing I started with, is that men are very threatened by feminism often without thinking about how liberating it could be for us. It’s very frustrating not to cry, to have nothing but anger to turn to in times of distress. Because sometimes the only person you have to turn that anger on is yourself.

hey good lookin'

I'm not feeling like I have much writing in me today. I do have a question, though. How do you handle receiving compliments?

If you're inclined, I'd be interested to read your answer in comments. Leave them anonymously if it's personal. I'll write more about my take on this later, but I don't want to bias any answers I might get. This is a personal rather than a professional issue, so please don't feel like there's some kind of right answer.

sacrilicious

I can be pretty hard on religion here sometimes, and I appreciate the fact that my more religious readers have been tolerant of that. In a way, I’d like to think I have a balanced view because I’ve been on both sides of theism in my life. I do think it’s true that religion gets a bit of a bad rap from the perspective that there are a lot of religious organizations who are doing a lot of helping in the world – in particular, the ones who help without actively proselytizing seem very admirable. And there are a lot of people who go to church with the goal of becoming better, more prosocial people and who in many ways succeed in that goal. But, the more I began to think of religion as a means of social control, the more suspicious I started to become. Indeed, the American religious right can righteously be called out on this front. Right now, they’re arguing that the senate rules on filibusters are a religious issue. Things that make me go, hmmmmmm. And, of course, religion wields a big hammer in terms of its ability to control people. Imagine if people believed that if they didn’t do what you told them, their soul would perish in a lake of fire. For one thing, I’d have The Simple Life cancelled, but that’s beside the point.

Strangely enough, I’ve learned that I really like old churches. This is one of those things I could never have learned through introspection, but only became clear in watching my behaviour on vacation. I think I like looking at what people do with sacred space. They also tend to just be beautiful buildings, since that was something people could agree on pooling their resources for.

I really cemented this idea that I like old churches when we were in Tasmania, and came across a pretty old stone church with beautiful stained glass. One of the decisions they’d made about accounting for the sanctimony of the sanctuary was to put up the 10 commandments. It was while looking at these that for the first time I considered the role of the 10 commandments in social control, and in particular, in keeping lower classes content with their position. Bear with me as I share my thought process (or don’t, you know, whatever).

1. You shall have no other gods before me.

Pretty obvious, this one, you’re obligated to stick with this belief system, or it’s the lake of fire for you.

2. No worshipping graven images.

See above, or it’s the lake of fire.

3. No taking the Lord’s name in vain.

When I was in Catholic high school, they told us this meant that you couldn’t swear. Bunch of fucking liars, it doesn’t say that at all. Fuckwits. Anyway, this is still pretty much the same as the first two, and really shows a bit of insecurity that I thought would have been staved of by the omnipotence thing. They seem to think it’s pretty important to make it clear that you shouldn’t play for another team, then have to go to the lengths of saying that you have to take this team very seriously. Or it’s the lake of fire.

4. Don’t work on the sabbath.

Now, this is interesting because on its face it seems to be giving working people a bit of a break. Hurray, a day off! But of course, it implicitly suggests that you should be working six days. Maybe, historically, this was a big deal to be told to take a day off, I dunno. My goal here is to put a social control spin on it, even if it means playing devil’s advocate. Literally, I suppose. So relax on Sunday, or it’s the lake of fire!

5. Honour your mother and father.

This really seems like a big ask some days, doesn’t it. And a direct form of social control – obey your elders, or it’s the lake of fire for you.

6. You shall not murder.

Obvious social control, but also a rule in pretty much every culture you come across that hasn’t wiped itself out at the annual Murder-Fest celebrations. Of course, there are some people who argue that violence is justified as a means of overcoming repressive regimes. Fine and dandy, if you don’t mind the lake of fire.

7. No adultery.

I’m not sure if I can think of a classist element to this. Regardless, it’s comforting to know that Jerry Fallwell is heading to the lake of fire.

8. No stealing.

Okay, blatantly classist. Who has stuff to steal except people who have stuff? Nobody. Hands off the rich people’s goods, unless you like lakes of fire.

9. No lying.

Again, this is a common theme across many cultures. It’s also good for commerce, and sets up a nice advantage in a prisoner’s dilemma sense if the commoners play by the rules (while the elites don’t, sound familiar?). Because the lake of fire would suck.

10. No coveting your neighbour’s stuff.

Again, it kind of sounds prosocial, but you can totally see how this would serve as social control of the poor. Every now and then you might feel like it’s not fair that others have yachts on which they talk about taking away your Medicare. But you know what will make that go away? The lake of fire.

Anyway, I don’t really know how seriously I’m willing to stand by this analysis. But to the extent that here’s a grain of truth in it, it’s interesting that so many powerful people in the States are getting worked up about putting the 10 commandments everywhere.

cold fusion

Two photons entangled in spacetime.
Grasping infinte smallness away,
From an unyielding and lawful reality,
Across distance our human minds cannot know.

Phase shift to a synchronous outburst,
Shared pulses of unquestioned purpose.
Stoking a fire that burns in all four dimensions,
The mystery message that cannot be seen.

Phase shift to this empty hotel room,
Her pain begins where my conscience ends.
The amoral protector that told me to run,
The hidden agenda that does not want love.

the nature of nostalgia

I’ve been continuing to read about the self, and had a puzzle solved for me today. I’ve heard a number of times that one thing that makes us different from other animals is that we can project ourselves into the past and future, whereas other animals can’t. What’s been bugging me is that lots of animals have memory, so how is it exactly that our conception of the past differs from other animals? The paper (written by a colleague in my department) argued that what we can do and others can’t is that we can imagine what it was like to be in a different mental state to the current one. So, the idea is that if an animal is hungry, it can’t remember what it’s like not to be hungry.

This may sound kind of weird, but research with kids suggests that humans are like this too up until around 3 or 4 years old. For example, if you teach a child under 3 something new they’ll typically tell you they’ve always known what they were just taught (I think they way they test this is to ask them the day after they’ve learned the new thing). So they think the way they are now is the way they’ve always been.

This all suggests that an important part of our identity is recognizing how we’ve changed over time. I suppose the interesting question is, with all that change, how we hold on to a stable sense of a core self that is unchanged from childhood to now.

if I saw Odin in my cat's litter, could I get on CNN?

I accepted last night that The Simpsons has jumped the shark. This is a harsh and bitter conclusion, but seems undeniable. They’ve become the institution they’re supposed to be mocking. We’re supposed to think things that aren’t funny are funny because Homer says them. They were brilliant for longer than they had a right to be, but I’m ready to give up. I don’t want to have nostalgia for commercial television, but this I mourn.

Less importantly, it turns out there’s a new pope. I look forward to not hearing about Catholicism every day, although I’m braced for the inevitable funeral which is coming in not very many months. Needless to say, the coverage of the last few weeks has been a painful reminder of media’s sucking at the teat of power. I’m only more reminded of that by the way that we all have to call this dude Benedict now. That’s not his name. It’s really not. I do not know the history behind this new name tradition, and do not care to. It just reminds me too much of declaring war on Oceania and forgetting all about the war on Eurasia. I suspect if Dick Cheney declared he would only be referred to has Overlord Scroto our media would manage the transition seamlessly.

Of course, I see that my hope to not hear about Catholicism every day is already shattered. As I went to cnn.com to double check Benedict’s fake name, I found the headline, “Faithful see Virgin Mary in underpass stain.” I shit you not. Fuck, I cannot tell you how sick I am of these religious projective tests. Seriously, I don’t think an omnipotent god needs to be this subtle. Maybe his batteries are running out – he used to create universes, cause floods, part the Red Sea. Now there’s just enough strength left to make somebody’s poop look vaguely like Jesus’ brother James, if you squint just right, that is.

Colonel Klink, why have you forsaken me?

a vision of a child returning

I’m feeling angsty today. I have more days like this than I’d care to, where I’m just on edge and can’t seem to shake it. It took me a long time to realize I was an anxious person. I came from what is now obvious to me as an anxious family, but growing up I just kind of took my family’s behaviour to be the norm. There’s this smile that my mother makes that screams, “I’m supposed to be happy,” but is obvious to me as a sign of tension. It looks a bit like someone dealing with the extra Gs of re-entering the atmosphere, and probably feels a bit like that too. I realized when my parents visited that I can feel their emotions. My wife has a hard time reading them, and I do too sometimes, but there are also times when I just know what it feels like to be them. Like when my mom is worried she’s offended someone. I know how hard that hits her because it hits me that way too. I just can’t stand it, and I’ll ruminate over it for longer than is healthy. My family very much taught each other to hide their emotions. This would be fine if we were good at it, but the emotions squeeze out the sides in often non-functional ways, one of which is giving up on things and another of which is self-medication. I sometimes wonder what it would be like to not be anxious, to have the same frontal cortex (the most uniquely human part of the brain that does a lot of cognitive work) but a different limbic system (largely related to emotion). The truth is I have felt like that at times, but for too brief a period and at too high a long-term cost. Tomorrow I’m going to get back to running, which was interrupted by vacation and the now waning cold. I think I’ll feel less angsty after a couple days of that. I hope so.

an afternoon in orleigh park

“I wish I was interesting.”

The words hung there for a moment, meaning many things. He processed for a while, and ultimately settled on one that was not at all what she meant.

“You know I think you’re interesting. If what you want is someone who thinks you’re interesting, why won’t you go out with me?”

“Mother fuck. I don’t want people to think I’m interesting, I want to be interesting. And if I won’t go out with you, why do you keep hanging around me?”

It was a good question. Too good a question. It never registered consciously.

“How can you not think you’re interesting when I’m fascinated by you? Constantly.”

“Because I haven’t done anything. I don’t do anything. I want to be something new, to do something nobody’s ever done before.”

“Too easy. Just put together a sentence nobody’s ever said before. Like, um, ‘That dog upped a pencil on the tramway pretty nicely, Penny.’ Done. Brand spanking new – I can’t possibly imagine anyone would have ever said that before. Put me in the Guinness Book of World Fucking Records. Now you go.”

“Fuck off.”

“No good, pretty sure that one’s been done.”

He was pleased with himself. He was right, of course, but that was not nearly as important as he supposed.

She, on the other hand, was lost in her philosophy. She felt bad, but she felt a largeness in her badness, and that kind of felt good.

“Don’t you ever feel like this? Don’t you ever feel like you’re not amounting to anything? Like you’re making mistake after mistake, and when you figure it out and start correcting your mistakes you just make bigger mistakes? Like there’s nothing for you to do and no time to do it even though you’re not doing anything and everybody else has it figured out? It can’t really just be me. My paranoia about being paranoid can’t possibly be justified. That would just be all wrong.”

“What?”

“You’re being a facetious asshole.”

“Kind of yes and kind of no. I mean, if you’re asking if I ever lack purpose, I guess sometimes. But I don’t now, and I guess that makes it hard to remember what it was like when I did.”

“Well, what’s your purpose, then?”

The regret had started before the sentence was finished.

“I want to be with you.”

“Oh, fucking hell. Am I not making it clear that a) I don’t want to and b) I’d make your life a farce if you were with me?”

“A beautiful farce.”

“Oh, fucking hell.”

There was quiet for a while. A light breeze, fumbling with cigarettes, processing, frustration. She broke the silence.

“Look, just listen to me. As a friend. Please.”

“I have for months, I will again.”

“Thank you. You know I care about you and I want you to just hear me. I want to be interesting. I want future generations to know me and to respect me. I want people to feel lucky they met me. I want to feel like I change people just by being near them. I can handle being sad, but I want to be sure that the sadness has purpose.”

“So you don’t care if you’re happy?

“It’s not that I don’t care, I’m just not sure it’s important.”

“And that’s what you want, to be important?”

“Yeah. I mean, yeah, I guess I do.”

“And will you still be important when the sun consumes the earth in six billion years?”
“Fuck off.”

“No, I won’t fuck off, not this time. I’m serious. Think about it. It doesn’t matter how important you are because it will stop eventually. Think about all the ancient Greeks who bled out their ears with efforts to be important, and now how many are left? After only four thousand years? We can name, what, maybe three? Jesus seems pretty fucking important, but the earth is still going to be consumed by the sun. Thanks for nothing, Jesus. Seriously. It’s not going to matter, and it won’t be that long until it doesn’t matter any more. But now, what you feel now is real, and if you pay attention to it, it is important. You don’t need to keep killing yourself for some kind of ‘As Seen on TV’ immortality.”

Silence again. Processing, smoking, gentle breeze. Car alarm somewhere in the distance.

She sighed and looked away from him before speaking.

“Yeah, I mean, I don’t agree. I can’t argue with you, but I just feel like I don’t agree. I don’t know.”

“I do. At least for now. At least this time.”

“Well, I’m happy for you. Really. I envy your certainty. But fuck this. Let’s go get high.”

With that, they grabbed the knapsack.

Walking, laughing, wanting. Being close and being far away.

the door in the face in the foot in the door technique

So the Enjo party went off pretty much as expected. Despite my melodrama, it’s really just a tupperware party except with cleaning cloths. It was a bit funny, because there were a lot of social psychologists there, such that many of us could have named each influence technique as she used it. I don’t want to sound too smug – they were still largely effective, but we could name them and that makes us feel big and safe.

One of the biggest tactics, of course, is having the sales pitch in your own home. Ultimately, this why things advertisers still pay big money to shill on t.v. I feel like a lot of people believe that advertising doesn’t affect them, but television ads catch you when you have your guard down. You’re in your home environment, watching something you’ve chosen to watch, and perhaps have as a part of your identity. I’ve seen it suggested that one of the reasons t.v. programs are so inane is because the programming is geared to put people in a “buying” mood. That is, the programs are designed so you don’t have to think too much – comedies, game shows, sports, and the latest wave of crime dramas. You could argue that crime dramas do cause you to think critically because there’s a sort of puzzle to solve, but I’d argue that people who watch don’t put a lot of thought into who dunnit, and just sail along for the ride. Anyway, people are hit with the ads while they’re processing information in a very receptive way.

I was struck by this “buying mood,” idea when listening to a commercial radio station recently. I tuned in to something that I thought was one of the songs on the playlist, but it turned out to be an ad. Still, when they started playing songs they were indistinguishable from the music in the ads. It occurred to me how functional this is, for the music and the ads to be so blurred that your level of thinking doesn’t change between them. You may not even notice the switch. It kind of has grave implications for culture, though, and the kinds of programming that are acceptable in the commercial media.

Another technique used at the Enjo party was the “door-in-the-face,” technique. This is when a sales person (or anyone trying to influence someone) starts with a request so large it’s almost certain to be rejected. I know this sounds like a funny way to influence, but the goal is to start with a large opening request that can then be used as a contrast for the real sales pitch. So, the first package of cleaning products she offered cost about $800 (I actually think she made a bit of a mistake here, because she noted right away that she had almost never sold any of these packages, but this doesn’t totally undermine the effect). She then went on to describe the packages she really intended to sell, which were in the $100 - $300 dollar range. Maybe now you see the beauty of the door-in-the-face technique – if asked to spend $300 right away it might seem excessive, but you can rationalize it when you have the $800 figure to compare it to. It’s kind of why unions and management never start with their real demands. And for good reason, this kind of stuff has been shown to work well.

If you’re interested in influence techniques like this, I highly recommend a book by Robert Cialdini called, “Influence: Science and Practice.” He did cool stuff like get hired by a sales company so he could learn their trade from the inside. He talks about other things like the foot-in-the-door technique (social influence researchers have a thing for doors, it would seem). It turns out that if you get someone to agree to something small, they’re more likely to agree to larger requests. So, people who agree to sign a petition for a cause are more likely to agree to do volunteer work for them than those who are not asked to sign (because it would be inconsistent to do one thing, but not another). Sort of the large point here is that we often think of ourselves as islands free from social influence – that other people may fall for advertising but not me. Of course it’s not true, as the Enjo party proved, because even people who knew what was going on and why it was happening were shelling out for what we had rationalized we needed.

that socialsomatic guy sure has a bad attitude

My cold has settled in for a long winter's nap, it would seem. It does make me wonder how people were able to maintain the belief for so many centuries that the body and mind are separate. If that were true, my head full of snot should not be dragging my soul to such depths. But it is.

In my family, sickness was a special occasion. It was the one time you could count on unqualified positive support from the parents, which made getting sick a bit like a birthday party. Perhaps you understand, in part, why I am so weird and cynical.

In my wife's family, the cure for sickness was more work. This has led to an occasional clash of values that I think we've worked out.

Anyway, things are made no less surreal by the fact that my household will be hosting an Enjo party tonight. Think David Koresh meets Mr. Clean. As Nancy pointed out, it should be blogging gold. What doesn't kill you can only delay your death, I suppose.

the key word is survival on the new frontier

On the same weekend I watched Kill Bill, I also watched the documentary, Fog of War. That’s the film where Robert McNamara is allowed to give the story of his professional life, largely focusing on his role as secretary of “defence” during the Vietnam war. I didn’t really get into this film, which is surprising because I tend to like most documentaries (I need to add American Movie to my favourites list). My knowledge of American history is not strong enough to really know McNamara’s role. Of course, from his point of view, his actions seemed understandable and worthy of sympathy. Too bad about the carnage, but “we all make mistakes.” I just felt uncomfortable listening to him speak, because I kept imagining someone listening to Donald Rumsfeld explaining the Iraq war 20 years from now. Rumsfeld would sound incredibly reasonable and sympathetic if you hadn’t lived through his reign as secretary of “defence.” So I could never really get a handle on what the film was trying to say, other than a constant, vague sense that things were being misrepresented.

The film was structured as presenting 11 lessons that McNamara had taken from his life. The last lesson was, “You can’t change human nature.” In this context, it meant that people will always fight wars and, at best, you can hope to minimize the slaughter. My recent immersion into cultural psychology makes me even more suspicious than before of views of human nature that make it seem like current cultural practices are the result of natural, inevitable processes. The idea that humans are inherently warlike should be treated with great suspicion.

For one thing, I was reading that book on pre-industrial societies last night, and it was talking about how hunter-gatherer tribes never engage in warfare. There are individual killings, and sometimes feuds between kin groups, but never do the tribes band together, form coalitions, and wage war on each other on a large scale. Apparently, you get some of this with societies of herders and farmers, but the coalitions are ones of convenience that fall apart when the external threat that motivated the coalition vanishes.

And here’s the frightening key. It may seem like a conspiracy theory to argue that it is to the advantage of our “leaders” to create a 1984-like mental environment of constant war. But the argument of the book is that without a sense of external threat, humans would trend towards autonomy, rejecting the need for leadership.

I thought of this again tonight while watching George Bush sporting his army jacket, reminding us that enemies are waiting to attack, always. Doesn’t it seem a bit weird that a leader would want to remind us of his failure to stamp out an obvious threat? Doesn’t it seem like that should be embarrassing? Doesn’t it seem like he wouldn’t do it unless it served his interests in a larger sense? Well, it does to me.

It’s come to this...yesterday, a man was felled by a SWAT team for “standing suspiciously,” as the AP piece called it, in front of the Capitol building in Washington. For this, he was tackled from behind, snapping his neck backwards. It turns out he was an Australian citizen. Today, Australia’s justice minister, JUSTICE MINISTER, said, “I think that when you carry out a protest you should be mindful of how that could be perceived in relation to a security threat.” So passive, peaceful protestors deserve, no, are asking to be attacked – so says the country’s league of justice. Don’t get me wrong, I know how the guy could have been seen to be suspicious, but to pretend that perception had nothing to do with a purposeful frenzy of fear leads to a very boring blame-the-victim mentality.

Short story long, the current fear is not human nature. Fog of War – 4/10 positive, 3/10 negative – overall indifference.

this post may well score a "Bette Midler" on the scale of self-indulgence

I have a number of pet peeves about writing, one of which is Writing About Writing. As you can tell, I’ve already violated that particular personal standard. But it’s all just economies of scale now, so I might as well finish the thought.

Anyway, I can understand why each individual writer finds it interesting to Write About Writing – people are naturally self-interested, although the degree varies across cultures. But when you look at the entire body of, say, popular movies, you end up with the interests of writers and filmmakers strongly represented, and the interests of other occupations, like labourers, poorly represented (cf. Ken Loach films). Writing About Writing reminds me of a metaphor that I was reminded of by the self-indulgence of Ocean’s Twelve. An old friend of mine once raised the idea of masturbating while watching a video tape of himself masturbating in front of a mirror watching himself masturbate. I am the only person I know who thinks this is funny, but I have to admit I think it’s hilarious (he was not being serious, in case you’re worried). And it’s not a bad metaphor for the sense I get when watching a film about filmmaking, or a story with a writer as the lead character.

Having said all of that, I have to say this writing gig has turned out to be quite different than I expected. For a long time, I have wanted to write on a regular basis. But, in retrospect, I also understand the comfort there was in believing I could write without actually doing it – I was able to maintain the positive self-conception without risking falsifying that belief. In the end, I’m not as good a writer as I had hoped, or at least not as much of a natural as I had hoped, but actual writing is still way more satisfying than fantasized writing. And please don’t take this as trolling for compliments – I’m enough of a narcissist to like my own writing and laugh at my own jokes. It’s just that fantasy writing doesn’t have mistakes, doesn’t elicit feedback (or a lack of feedback), and doesn’t force you to improve.

Early on after starting this blog, I looked around at other blogs to find like-minded travellers. What really struck me was the number of blogs that lasted less than a week. I know that many people who come here are maintaining their own blogs, and if you’re like me, you have days where you feel better about it than others. I totally understand why people drop their blogs because I came pretty close to doing it myself. So I think it’s worth giving ourselves a big Writing About Writing pat on the back for finding time to express ourselves regularly.

But there’s been unexpected value in sticking with it. I realized today that when I became seriously committed to writing every day I became more motivated to engage with more things like reading and movies. Unfortunately, my sorry record with email hasn’t gotten any better, and I hope my friends don’t take that personally. I think it might seem strange that I do this every day, but don’t write emails. I don’t know if I can explain that other than by saying that writing to my friends is often a reminder of how far from home I am, and that this blog has turned out to be a good coping mechanism.

Anyway, this is getting very close to using my Writing About Writing allotment for the year, so I’d better stop now. Hopefully, tomorrow, I’ll be really angry about some petty cultural thing, as usual.

a small bouquet of quick-hitters

The cold that I thought I had avoided has come looking for payment in full today. Thus, it's best if I avoid trying for a coherent narrative and just go with a couple of quick hitter thoughts:

I read today that up to the age of 8 or so, children are unable to distinguish between the competence they actually have and the competence they want to have. I have a very clear memory as a child of trying to figure out how I was going to balance both my professional hockey and baseball careers, which I think is a good example of this phenomenon. Suffice it to say, the balance has turned out to be VERY easy to handle.

Talking about media violence yesterday reminded me of another t.v./movie pet peeve - the man slap. There's a routine in popular media where the man screws up and the woman slaps him or pours something over him. It's become this reflex, kind of like if you have a kid's movie there has to be a scene where a character eats something then belches. Although there's some debate around the issue, the research has suggested to my satisfaction that women commit as many acts of violence against romantic partners as men do (men's acts are more severe, though, with women much more likely to be hospitalized). A lot of this comes from what's called "common couple violence," where both partners are hitting each other. In fact, this is where some of the debate comes from - some people argue the women's violence is in defence against male aggression. I feel bad for anyone who suffers aggression at the hands of the person they're supposed to be able to trust most, but when I see these acts of violence against men in movies presented as a kind of punch line (pardon the pun), I feel bad for the men who are watching who must feel like the butt of the joke.

I replaced my i.d. photo today. The old one just wasn't very inviting, even if it was from what many people argue is the best Steely Dan album ever. Soon, I should really do a post on the Dan.

Being sick sucks, but I look forward to that feeling for the day or so after it passes when normal functioning feels great. And in the meantime, pseudephedrine rocks!

why can't we all just get along with bill?

I actually watched a movie I liked last night, so I thought I’d mention it here so as to prove I’m not just a complete curmudgeon. It was Kill Bill. I’m not a huge Tarantino fan, although I did very much like Pulp Fiction. I particularly loved the internal consistency this movie had. I remember hearing John Cleese saying what he thought was great about Monty Python was the way they would start with an absurd premise, but everything else in the sketch would be logically consistent with that premise. That was the sense I got out of this film – the skill and ethic of the warriors was utterly fantastical, but the words and actions of the characters were logical consequences of the opening premise of the warrior culture. Blood didn’t just spray once for effect – once blood spraying (very Pythonesque, by the way) was introduced it had to happen repeatedly to be logically consistent, and it did. In retrospect, this was what bothered me about The Life Aquatic, the way that the strangeness in the film was random rather than purposeful. Kill Bill didn’t feel gimmicky at all – it was a brilliant marriage of form and function. For example, there was an anime scene that wasn’t just there because it would be cool to have anime (although it was very cool), but it was used to advance plot elements (e.g., paedophilia) that couldn’t possibly have been done with live action. Many of the shots were stunningly beautiful, especially the fight-in-the-snow scene.

Of course, there were elements I didn’t like. As you’d expect, the violence was boringly excessive. There’s enough research on the effects of exposure to media violence that I don’t just want to pass this off lightly – I really don’t think Tarantino understands the potential for harm his films have. What’s interesting to me is the way that a number of films and t.v. shows have started to “soften” the violence by having a woman commit it. In a way, this is empowering, since it has women in a role traditionally played by men. But, this “lowest common denominator” approach to equality of the sexes is both lazy and dangerous. Rather than questioning the system (e.g., the imperative for violence that makes so many wars seem acceptable and necessary), slotting non-traditional people into roles previously reserved for white men ultimately validates the system - the faces change, but the acceptability of dominance and aggression remains. In fact, the main motive for the lead character in Kill Bill is the loss of her child. In this way, one of the meta-points of the movie is that it is justified for women to be aggressive as long as it is in the service of the traditional caretaker role. A subtle justification of the present gender system, all the more potent for how invisible it is. (note, also, how most "tough guy" actors do their first comedy by taking on a caretaking role such as babysitter- there was a recent Vin Diesel movie like this - oh, how FUNNY it is for men to show affection to children).

In my version of equality of the sexes, it’s not just about accepting women into traditionally male roles (e.g., soldier), it’s adjusting the system to accommodate less “masculine” values. Equality is not putting more women on the front lines, it’s putting less people in wars in the first place.

Anyway, I want to give Kill Bill a rating, but a point first about attitudes. Most (all?) movie reviewers tend to give movies a rating on one single scale, such as a 4/10. What attitude research suggests is that attitudes actually have two components – an evaluation of positivity and an evaluation of negativity. So you can like your father at the same time you dislike your father (i.e., ambivalence; having weak positive and negative feelings would be indifference). With Kill Bill, I felt largely positive (really, I loved almost everything about this film) and mildly negative (I just can’t get behind the violence, and I think Tarantino’s hostility toward women is barely masked in any of his work even when it’s clever and well-shot). So I’d give it 9/10 on the positive scale and 4/10 on the negative scale. I’d call that liking it, not being ambivalent, but also recognizing some negative elements.

the universal brotherhood of the cynical

For Christmas last year, my wife and I told our families that rather than giving us gifts, we’d like it if they donated to charity in our names. We just felt like we didn’t really NEED anything, especially compared to most other people on the planet. I have to be honest, I did feel some twinges of loss on Christmas day in not getting gifts for me, but these were minor and passed quickly. Plus, I didn’t have the clutter of a bunch of stuff I didn’t want as well as knowing that, hopefully, some people were helped.

I was surprised at how positively my family reacted to the idea, but there was also a bit of a funny dynamic that I was reminded of yesterday when a letter from one of the donations arrived in the mail. My parents donated to Sleeping Children Around the World for us, a charity that provides bedding to children in developing countries. Apparently, such bedding can be difficult to get and what a difference good sleep can make to a person’s life. But one thing my parents enthusiastically noted was that you get a picture of the person who your donation goes to – every communication they had with us on the topic involved reiterating this point. When I grew up, they also tended to donate to CARE, I think it was, and so we would have a child receiving our money with whom we would occasionally exchange correspondence. My parents are in to the photo thing.

I tend to be reactionary (my wife once nailed me perfectly during a fight by saying that I wanted to see my self as iconoclastic – great use of argument and language [I had to look up what iconoclast meant], it was very disarming), and really found myself turned off by the idea that the recipient would be more or less forced into an act of deference, really that they would be forced to do anything, in order to receive the donation. See, I know the arguments about the nature of altruism, but I really didn’t want to donate in order to be thanked, I wanted to do it because I thought it was what I should do. And I certainly didn’t want to donate to set up a social comparison, e.g., “Look how that poor blighter is better off because of my compassion.” It’s just too imperialist/colonialist, and it makes me uncomfortable.

Now, I can understand why some people do want photographic proof. I think some people are suspicious that their money goes to overhead rather than for helping (personally, I figure overhead is part of helping, so it doesn’t bother me if my money goes for that). Others want to make some kind of human connection, although as noted, I’m suspicious of the potential for self-serving motives.

So anyway, the letter arrived today with the picture of the kid who got the bed kit. I really want to scan it and show it here, but that would totally go against the ethic I’ve been talking about. Suffice it to say, I couldn’t have asked for a better picture under the circumstances. The setup is such that there are 3 bedkits laid out with the words “Kolkata, Doltala, India – 2005,” which I presume is the location where the bedding ended up. Behind the three bedkits are three kids, each with a sign in front of them saying who the donor is. So it’s a kind of factory setup, I suspect, where each kid takes their sign and puts it in front of the pre-arranged kits (not the actual one they will receive, but a display model laid out like a Price is Right showcase). The kids, for some reason, are looking well off-camera. And here’s the part I love – the child with our sign in front of him has this furrowed brow and generally knowing, cynical look that screams, “If you’re done trying to humiliate me, can I go home now?” Sure, I’m probably projecting, but in the end this picture makes me feel better than I could have possibly imagined.

I don’t want to be overly cynical about this. One benefit of the picture is you get to see exactly what the kids receive, and it’s a broader package than I had thought. It’s not just bedding, but other stuff including shoes, a backpack, and a metal cup that looks suspiciously like a martini shaker. I hope my scowling friend finds it all useful, and understands at some level that I am sorry the picture had to happen. Good night, sweet prince.

my inner critic thinks this post is very weak

I have very little on my mind today, other than I'm pretty sure that I'm getting sick. I'm too busy feeling sorry for myself to come up with much of a diatribe. Maybe if you have some righteous anger, you could put it in the comments so I can take the day off.

Thanks.

ss

mean-spirited socialsomatic's den of unsophistication

I'm having the kind of day where I just can't seem to shake the fuzz out of my head. Take that into account as you read my first review of a movie I've actually seen, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

There are important facts about this experience recorded at the House o' Culture that I won't repeat here. Suffice it to say, seeing a movie with Tim is an inherently threatening situation, in a good way. He just seems to see more in a film than my plot-centric, negative affectively laden brain will allow. I sat through the whole thing missing much of Wes Anderson's visual cleverness, so this review should be considered suspect, at best.

Nevertheless, I found it to be a couple of hours of neutral affect, punctuated by rare bursts of disgust and admiration. The admiration, first, came from elements of the production design - the live action scenes had a clever and consistent retro feel. Some of the dialogue was clever. The best line of the film was, "I'm going to fight you," which was a nice piece of postmodern obviousness. Ominously, the second best line of the film was, "It bit him in the neck," referring to how a cat was killed by a snake. Perhaps not surprisingly, I was the only one in the theatre to laugh at that one (don't hate me, Billy). The one plot element I thought was great was a romance involving a pregnant single woman - I don't remember seeing that before. I felt like this could have subtly validated a lot of people. Single mothers are often seen as undesirable, and pregnant women as non-sexual figures. Secretly, though, many men are attracted to pregnant women. I learned this from teaching human sexuality and having a former sex worker as a speaker - pregnant sex workers are in high demand.

The disgust came from many sources. To the extent I noticed Anderson's tendency to have secondary action to offset the primary focus of the shot, I just didn't like it. For example, there was a running gag about a member of the boat crew who was topless. This, for me, was a perfect example of non-creative creativity. Sure, it's quirky to have something unexpected in the margins of the shot, but why does it have to be something that panders in such an obvious way? I just find this kind of boring, as it doesn't really make much of a statement other than, "Look over here at how clever I am!" rather than, "Look over here at something interesting." The same was true with the animation. They purposely made the animation at a level roughly equivalent to 1980s screensavers. It made for a strange blend with the other motifs of the film, and really sold out the ending where the emotional release was supposed to come from a confrontation with a "feared" Leopard Shark that looked more like RuPaul than a cold-blooded killer.

The script, except for those two lines, was also a let-down for me. I have a pet peeve about writing such that I cannot stand when a film uses dialogue to explain to you events or relations between characters directly. For example, early in the film Zissou's rival appears, and Zissou is heard to say, "He is charismatic." When I hear dialogue like that, I figure they might as well just have filmed the production meetings and shown us those for the first 10 minutes or so. It just seems lazy to me, and that kind of turned me off this film quickly. Let the characters develop, and I'll figure out for myself who I think is charismatic, and who is not.

I should note, by the way, that I am a mean person who holds grudges. This, too, should be taken into account when reading any movie reviews I write.

In the end, the film was trying to be clever without risking any discernible social message. To me, much of the cleverness backfired, so watching it was like eating bland cotton candy.

The night out was fun, though, and the pizza was great.

if you pull off the lid, can you put it back on?

It was a night for writing and deleting sentences. For wishing that I smoked, so I'd have something to burn off the nervous energy. Pensive, and wondering about the nature of truth, and of telling truth. Forces conspired to prevent me from expressing the fear. The internet disconnection, the fat cat who needed pats, all suggested there was safety in past tense. Maybe 3rd person would be needed here. City sounds suppressed the frogs and crickets who eked through in precious moments of traffic silence. There was self-loathing, theories to explain emotional distance, and other tricks to throw us off the scent. In the end, there was just a desire for honesty without an understanding of what honesty is for me.

Maybe these secrets will whet your appetite.

who do you think you are?

The reason/excuse for my excursion to NZ was to attend a conference on Asian Social Psychology. To prepare for the conference, I read a paper on the notion of self in Japan that has really been affecting my thinking about the nature of the self. One of the arguments that the authors made in particular really struck me - they argued that in Japan happiness is not a very strong life goal. They argued that Japanese people tend to feel most comfortable with balance, and in this way perceive that positive outcomes will be balanced with negative outcomes. Apparently, there's an expression along the lines of, "I'm so happy I'm scared," in Japanese. So, while North Americans tend to list happiness as their primary or secondary life goal, it ranks near the bottom of the list for Japanese. Instead, Japanese life goals are more likely to involve fulfilling obligations to important social entities.

Now, there are people who argue against this conclusion, and suggest that such results are because of the way the two cultures fill out self-report questionnaires (e.g., more modesty in Japan). But for the moment at least, let's take at face value what Japanese are saying about happiness as a life goal.

This got me thinking about the current grand American experiment of bringing democracy by force to the Middle East. It seems to me that an assumption behind this project is that there are certain universally valued philosophies in the American ethic that would flower if only given the right conditions. But the work noted above suggests that this is merely an untested assumption.

For example, the American constitution guarantees the right to the pursuit of happiness. And from a North American perspective, it seems like that's a right the whole world would like to have and would be a benefit of the US bombing the hell out of anything that stands in the way of that right. But what if it's true that the pursuit of happiness is uniquely American, or at least an imperative of a limited subset of cultures? Now it becomes more clear (for those for whom it was not already clear) why exporting values by force, even when the values seem so absolutely pure and universal, can be a dangerous exercise.

There's another example that goes more to the heart of exporting democracy by force. It seems obvious that people want more choice in their lives. I've been told (maybe Tim can correct me if I'm wrong) that it's an assumption of many economic theories that there is always added value in increased choice.

But, there's been research lately examining the costs of increased choice. In particular, some studies have shown that having too many choices can lead to negative emotion by increasing the perceived likelihood of making the wrong choice. It can also be frustrating and overwhelming to have too many options. For example, I heard about one study that showed that as the number of choices of 401k retirement plans for American employees increases, fewer employees participate. So there seems to be a cost to choice that is rarely considered. Of course, I'm not saying that choice is inherently bad, it's just that you reach a point as choice increases that the value added by each new choice becomes smaller, and the costs become greater.

So, social security "reform" is sold on the basis of increased choice, with the inherent assumption that such increased choice is automatically good. And of course it would be tough to be the politician that argued that more choice is bad.

But now bloody wars are fought to bring more choice to people, whether they want it or not. Of course, with the irony that they didn't choose that increased choice.

Ultimately, the point isn't that democracy is bad for the Middle East or that encouraging people to seek happiness is always wrong. The point is that these are the unspoken assumptions that pervade our worldview as a Western culture, and we risk doing great harm if we choose to export them over the bodies of the liberated.