Full of Baloney

Raging Pelican Article

2012-01-09T13:15:00.000-08:00

Here's my Raging Pelican article: http://ragingpelican.com/radical-hopes-radical-challenges/

Occupy Wall Street

2011-09-28T10:26:00.001-07:00

There are many problems facing our world today. Our economic system is no longer functioning. Our environment is being systematically destroyed. Our government is dishonest and dysfunctional. Our world is ravaged by curable diseases, famines and wars. Adults and children are diagnosed with mental illnesses at an ever increasing rate.

Perhaps one of the most shocking aspects of all of the statements above is how easily one can get the average person to agree with them. The question then turns---so how can we solve these problems? In order to solve problems, you must accurately and precisely determine their cause. And you must be willing to follow that cause wherever it may lead you--even when it means doubting the systems you hold so dear.

How bad do things have to get before we ask ourselves--why do we have all of these problems? At what point should we be forced to consider it is the larger system which puts these things in motion that is the cause, and all of the current issues are just symptoms? Just as taking off the top leaves of a weed is pointless if you leave the root, attempting to solve individual problems is ultimately useless if we don't address their causes.

I believe it is the systems we have in place that cause these problems. Systems that are rooted in unjustified hierarchies that disempower individuals and create inequalities.

Of course, stating that 'the system' is the issue has its own problems. For one, the systems are so vast it is difficult to pinpoint where one begins and another ends. But I think that is just an issue of definition, and could be accomplished through time. But there is another large problem: it is terrifying. These systems are the foundation for how we understand ourselves and interpret our world. To change them would be to shake every individual to their core.

Because suggesting a change in systems is so difficult and terrifying to people, I do not believe that such a change could or should occur by destroying the systems we have in place. The only thing that makes sense to me is the old IWW idea---to build a new world in the shell of the old.

And thus, the occupy wall street protests.

Almost everything you read about the Occupy Wall Street protests criticizes their lack of organization. Bemoans the fact that they don't have a clear mission. Wishes a more broad based coalition was there.

I feel like everyone is missing the point. I'm very glad that the protests aren't the normal, top down organized events where individuals march in protest with a single demand. After all, when is the last time we saw a protest like this actually accomplish its goals?

The black bloc protests in Seattle in the 90's resulted in the continuation of the WTO. The large scale protests of the RNC in New York did nothing to cease Bush's 8 year reign as president. The hundreds of thousands of people who marched on Washington against the Iraq and Afghani wars did nothing to cease the armies from fighting. And what about Troy Davis? Today he is dead.

People from my generation have not lived to see traditional protests work. That is why Occupy Wall Street is exciting. Its backbone is general assemblies, where individuals are allowed to speak freely and suggest actions to the group. Group actions are not taken until all voices have been heard and a consensus has been reached.

Occupy Wall Street does not have a single demand because it recognizes the futility in that when the overall system is the problem. Further, it recognizes that there is something deeply wrong in dictating to people what the demands should be. To proclaim a single demand without the tiring, endless, tedious work of actually listening to those who are present and coming to consensus of what to do would be a waste of time. It would just perpetuate and reflect the same behaviors that have brought our country and our world to the state it is in today--non-justified authority making decisions for others and thus disempowering their voice.

So to me, the protests are not really protests. They are, in the purest sense, demonstrations. They demonstrate to the world that you can accomplish goals (Occupying Wall Street) using horizontal organizational principles and through non-hierarchical means. They demonstrate to those that have already been trying to create new systems--of food production and distribution through collective farms and food not bombs, of education through free schools or democratic schools and collective libraries, of health care through radical collectives and free clinics, of production through democratically controlled businesses, of community by creating spaces where individuals feel respected and loved and where each voice has a chance to be heard--that they are not alone.

What is their demand? A process, as was explained in this video. The protest is demanding that a new process be put in place, a new way of organizing ourselves, that denies unjustified hierarchies and seeks equal empowerment and liberation for all.

The protests provide a space for the creation of a new world to occur. They are not attempting to dictate what that world should look like--and that is exactly why you should join them. They are giving every interested individual the chance to say what a new world could look like.

The protests are an invitation. What is holding you back? Do you believe the systems are the problem? Are you will to experiment to find what the new system might be like? Occupy wall street.

Occupy together.

How Bad Are Things? Why Do You Care?

2011-08-31T08:54:00.001-07:00

One of the challenges of being young: it's impossible to have a sense of perspective.

Things seem very bad in our country and around the world today. Millions are starving in Somalia. We are entering the 6th mass extinction event of species on earth. The most recent recession has put millions of people around the world out of work or in jobs that are below their education and skill level. Natural Disasters continue to wreak havoc on ill prepared states.

Closer to home, we are dependent on fossil fuels for our everyday life and yet know that they will eventually run out. Cities around our country sit mostly empty or neglected, vestiges of a manufacturing economy and a manufactured real estate boom that is long gone and will probably never come back. In culture, our most lofty aspirations are limited to becoming rich or being famous, preferably both. Being beautiful is another important goal. Children and adults are being pumped with psychiatric drugs at astounding rates as the incidents of mental illness continue to rise. The bewilderment and loss felt in the face of unemployment, debt and foreclosure plays out in vitriolic terms in our political sphere, where the public has completely lost all faith in its 'representation'.

But at 24, my worldly consciousness is just a baby. Are things worse now than they were ten years ago? Twenty? Are we headed towards imminent doom or have we always been, and I've just started paying attention?

I've asked these questions with more than a few of my friends over the past months. It's hard to answer. You can look to history for help, but it can only go so far. You can know the facts of what life was like then, but can you really know the feelings? Did people feel the same amount, same quality of uncertainty we do today, or was it of a totally different nature?

I'm not going to try and answer it. Mostly, I'm interested in why people ask. If we could definitively answer yes, things are much worse now than they have ever been, what would that change? What would you do differently?

I suppose everyone has different answers. I did believe for a while that the world was sinking, currently and rapidly, and because of this I must forgo any 'normal' course of life and seek the revolution where ever it is formed. I felt like things were going to happen, and I had to be a part of them. It was a motivating urgency--but it was also alienating. After all, if an individual didn't happen to share my conviction that the world was going to end, and soon, then why would they join me?

Now, I don't think that whether things are particularly worse or better at a given moment in the outside world should effect what you do with your own self. I've come to think that people ask this because there's something in them that they feel is wrong, not outside. The events of the outside world have to have a certain independence from what you believe is right for your individual life. This is the only way we can shield ourselves from being the Nazi sympathizers in Germany, slave owners in North Carolina, segregationists in Alabama.

My boyfriend and I have recently decided that we'd like to live off the land in the most sustainable way possible (a term that will only acquire its definition through experience). Of course this type of homesteading is most certainly a trend. It seems to be in direct response to the ambient, enveloping consumerism of the dominant culture and acute disconnection from nature and the tasks that comprise staying alive.

But it is also timeless. A way that people have lived for hundreds of years. While I believe that the world would be better off if everyone lived more sustainably, I can't deny that perhaps one day they'll invent a way of collecting solar energy that is as cheap and efficient as oil. I have to live the way I want to live for myself, not as a statement, not as a demand, not in service to an image.

So if you find yourself asking, are things worse now than they used to be?, maybe you can ask instead, if they are, what would difference would it make to me?

Amy Goodman and Jon Stewart should join forces

2011-06-22T12:31:00.000-07:00

I think Amy Goodman and Jon Stewart should join forces to create a youth led movement for accountable and democratic news media.

Why?

1. Jon Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity" last Halloween was basically a huge waste. Somewhere around 200,000 young people showed up from around the country, displaying their creativity, intelligence, and passion for all America to see---but why? It was a perfect rally for the hipster generation---all the material accoutrement of the revolutionary events our parents marched in to create real change during the 60's--but no real content, except to mock and/or laugh. But Jon did prove that if he wanted to, he could get the younger generation to show up. And that's not nothing.

2. Later, when Rachel Maddow interviewed Jon Stewart, he seemed to suggest that the rally's purpose was to send a message to the media, not the right wing. He even says the 'real' fight going on in America isn't between Democrats and Republicans, but between corruption and not. And yet, he never went far enough to say what causes the myriad of problems that we find in the media.

3. Amy Goodman represents everything that Jon Stewart seems to want out of the media, under his definition that it is the media's job to shine light on corruption. She has an incredible record of seeking out the stories in our country and around the world that the people in power don't want anyone to hear. And yet beyond the war crimes, the corporate exploitation, the government crackdowns on activists, the corrupted judicial system and our crumbling environment--Amy Goodman's real cause is independent media. As she explained in the heart wrenching 2006 documentary "Independent Intervention", there is no chance for our democracy, and the world's population, without a robust independent media.

4. In Jon Stewart's most recent interview with Chris Wallace, he seems to be even closer to acknowledging publicly what really ails the news media, as he admitted that the bias of places like the New York Times and CNN isn't a liberal agenda but towards "sensationalism and laziness"(clearly caused by profit motives). Stewart seems truly pained by this, it's obvious throughout his interviews and on his show that he deeply feels there is a problem with media today.

5. Amy Goodman has no problem at all stating what the problem is, as found in the "About" section of Democracy Now!: "But the last two decades have seen unprecedented corporate media consolidation. The U.S. media was already fairly homogeneous in the early 1980s: some fifty media conglomerates dominated all media outlets, including television, radio, newspapers, magazines, music, publishing and film. In the year 2000, just six corporations dominated the U.S. media."

6. Jon Stewart is incredibly funny.

7. Amy Goodman is so dead serious.

Is this not a match made in heaven? Our generation is desperate for a cause, and here, two of the biggest heroes in the media--one with a proven track record of inspiring his audience to action, the other with a the kind of experience and integrity that all journalists should aspire to. Jon needs to make the connection between the corporate monopoly on the media and the problems in the media today. (These points are made brilliantly and methodically in Robert McChesney's book "The Problem of the Media".) And Amy Goodman needs someone who can strike an emotional chord without alienating people with her penetrating honesty and intensity.

I don't know how exactly this union should start---maybe Amy could come on the Daily Show? Or Jon to Democracy Now? Maybe Jon could mention Amy's existence to his viewers? I can't really imagine it. I just want them to come together.

If you could pick two of your heroes to join forces who would they be?

The Danger of Almost-Truth

2011-01-25T15:49:00.001-08:00

I recently watched Brene Brown's TED talk entitled "the power of vulnerability". She details the pervasive feelings of shame, guilt, perfectionism and comfort-seeking that she has recognized through her research within society. Symptoms of these epidemics include the most indebted, obese, drug addicted and psychiatric drugged adult population in American history. I haven't yet been able to connect the teachings from the Archetypal Dream therapy that I engage in to any popular psychologist. Her talk was the closest thing I've gotten to that yet.

In it, she explains the connection between shame and perfectionism. She argues that people should 'lean in' to difficult feelings of shame, pain, and fear in order to really experience joy and gratitude. She talks about how the key to accessing these feelings is to allow ourselves to be vulnerable and to embrace ourselves as we are. In a lot of ways, these insights connect well to many of the conclusions I've drawn from the Dreamwork.

But there is also something about doing dreamwork that makes one skeptical. It is the ego that wants a quick fix, that wants to feel immediately enlightened by someone's words, immediately convinced to follow a certain life's path. It's something deeper that realizes we have been tricked by an 'easy' truth before.

It was all over for me and Brown when I got to her website and noticed that one of her pages included a "Favorites" page. Yes, the emotional guru herself, who recommends the book "Can't Buy Me Love: How Advertising Changes You" as a book that changed her life, has a whole page dedicated to some of her favorite things--mostly books, but also cameras, kitchen accessories, which she admits that she gets commission on. Don't worry--the commission she makes goes back to the reader in the form of 'giveaways' on the blog. Brown promotes her blog by promoting products and using that money to lure people into reading the blog.

Why does this matter? Well, for one thing, at this point, any product promotion whatsoever makes me suspicious of that person as a source of information, no matter what the circumstances. I know that sounds harsh and radical. But advertising, at this stage, is such a perversion of its originally intended purpose--(was SHOCKED today to see that one popular advertising company's slogan was "loyalty beyond reason", bragging about the fact that they manipulate people's desire to the point where they will buy the product even when it is not reasonable to do so)--and its success has contributed to so many terrible things--environmental catastrophe, human exploitation, wars, disease and mental illness within society---that I don't feel like treading lightly around it any longer.

In fact, I think it is precisely this type of advertising philosophy that has shown corporations how to transform individuals, creative, unique, and flawed individuals into a society of people who only know how to consume and chase after ways to make themselves more like everybody else.

Brown hints at this explanation from time to time, criticizing reality television, telling people not to watch it. But she doesn't take the necessary step to wake people up to the real problem. Brown never asks, as far as I can tell, where is all this shame coming from? Why are people so obsessed with success and recognition at the expense of their own joy?

These aren't easy questions. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say that they have societal answers, cultural answers, and thus political and economic answers. It's not enough for Brown to just tell us what the problem is, and recommend that we stop feeling that way. In fact, this is dangerous. Because it lures those with an intellectual interest in with an accurate diagnosis of the problem. But it does not go the necessary extra step of trying to analyze why things came to be this way. This allows intellectual interest to be pacified without that person having to go much deeper into the role they play in this society that makes people feel, a lot of the time, terrible.

This is also the problem I have with Jon Stewart. He so accurately pinpoints, hilariously, what is wrong with the media today. But he never so much as breathes a word of suggestion that the problems of this media have something to do with the fact that 6 multi billion dollar corporations own the vast majority of media outlets in the nation. This is dangerous. Because it makes people feel that by listening to Jon Stewart, they are doing something to combat the problems of corporate media. But Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! and the Prometheus Radio Project are actual examples of what this fight looks like. Why won't Jon Stewart trumpet their causes, if he is so concerned with media corruption?

In the same way, Brene Brown is dangerous. Because she is diagnosing a very real problem in american society---that the adult population of America is shameful, addicted and self medicating. But she is not explaining how we got there. I believe it is because these explanations would be so uncomfortable to many well educated, upper middle class to upper class people whose livelihoods are deeply intertwined with the laws that make capitalism function---recognition by others is essential, winning feels good, having power makes you free, your value is dependent upon what you can produce. So uncomfortable, that people would not buy Brene Brown's books, they would not attend her lectures. And this would make her feel unrecognized, like a loser, powerless, pointless and all on down the chain. So she settles for the almost-truth, and nothing really changes.

The Limits of a Paradigm: Sam Harris

2010-12-10T16:54:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to write about Sam Harris for a while. This is because I think that if he just had one slight change in his thinking, his ideas would make a lot more sense. I say this because I believe science is in desperate need of a paradigm shift, in the sense that Kuhn talks about in "Theory of Scientific Revolutions" (great historian/philosopher of science). Currently science is in a materialist paradigm. What is real is defined by the ability for humans to think logically about a phenomenon. Empirical observations and the scientific truths that follow are the only kind of truths that individuals or society can really think or do anything about, so it is the only meaningful aspect of reality. This is what the scientific paradigm purports. Of course the average person does not necessarily think this way. But this does not mean that the paradigm does not effect society as a whole. The beliefs of scientists shape the direction of our thinking--they define aspects of what it means to be human, they lead the development of our new technologies, and they serve as the first lens with which we interpret the material world. And don't get me wrong--there have been amazing strides in improving the well being and equal treatment of humans within this paradigm. But now we are at the paradigm's limits, as illustrated by Sam Harris's dilemma.

Here's what Mr. Harris is grappling with, in my view: He is fully committed to the materialist paradigm. This has lead him to many drastic conclusions about religion, namely that it is a useless, and at times harmful conglomeration of myths and beliefs that need to be done away with. But then he is faced with the question of morality. After all, many people cite religion as the source of their moral compass. So when he is campaigning against religion, some in his opposition respond by saying that religion dictates morality--without it, people would be amoral. So, Sam Harris has written a book to explain that no, science can be and *should* be the source of morality.

But here is where Harris comes up against the issue of his paradigm. Harris claims that "values are facts about the well being of conscious creatures". Thus, we can reach logical, objective conclusions about what is a moral act by determining whether the act "increases well-being". He then imagines there being a 'moral landscape' where there are peaks and valleys in terms of behaviors that increase well being more or less. With this structure in place, scientists can then make objective claims about moral behavior. Thus, we can objectively say that killing a woman because she was raped is amoral.

Well duh. After reading countless articles and speeches that Sam Harris has made about this book "The Moral Landscape", I couldn't find anything in his moral theory that makes it significantly different from Utilitarianism. The idea that in a given situation, people should commit the act that will have the best consequences for the most people has been around for at least 200 years. The twist, it seems, is that to Harris, we can investigate empirically what increases human 'well-being' and then prescribe those things as moral acts.

So if this idea has already been around, why hasn't it caught on already? Why do we need people like Sam Harris to remind us of it's virtues?

Well for one, it's very difficult to define 'well-being' or any other word you'd like to replace it with. Take a minute just to think about your closest friends, and the huge range of activities they like to participate in, ways they like to relate to people and ambitions that they have in life, and you'll begin to have a picture of why constructing a general sense of 'well being' (that goes beyond meeting one's basic survival needs) is a monumental, if not impossible task.

But there is a missing piece of information here. Because cognitive scientists and neuroscientists have been studying moral judgments for quite a while now. Instead of trying to determine what morality should be, however, they have been attempting to study how people do behave morally. Jonathan Haidt has been one of the central investigators. And what have they found?

That moral decision making is committed on the basis of emotional reactions, not 'rational' decision making. So here is the real difficulty of science trying to make moral prescriptions. Because science has shown us that we do NOT reason our way into our moral decision making. So a process like the one Sam Harris describes has been proven by science to not be the way people actually act.

So on the one hand, Sam Harris is interested in winning his argument against religion by constructing a moral basis that is completely objective. By doing this, he wants to prove his paradigm. Not only that, but I think Harris is genuinely disturbed by the proliferation of moral relativism that has followed from the scientific paradigm that we are currently in. But the scientific paradigm includes a belief that empirical observations and the scientific truths that follow are the only kind of truths that individuals can really think or do anything about. This makes them the only meaningful aspect of reality, and thus the only source for objectivity---the only things that are 'true'." And religion contends that there are moral truths that can not be understood in the scientific method of finding truth. This conflicts with the current scientific paradigm. So Sam Harris, being a good scientist, feels compelled to remedy this aberration within the paradigm.

But on the other hand, the scientific method/paradigm itself, in studying individual moral behavior, has proven that people do not think rationally, or scientifically, about how to behave morally. More often than not, the motivation for moral behavior is emotional, not 'reasonable'. So why wouldn't Sam Harris, who so firmly believes in the reality of this paradigm, not construct a 'scientific' moral system that somehow appeals to people's emotions? One that causes them to shift the way they feel about other people and encourages them to act for the well-being of conscious creatures. After all, this would be the method that is scientifically proven to get people to behave morally--and isn't that the purpose of creating any moral system?

Of course, Sam Harris can't do that--because what would that look like, if not religion. So, in this way, Sam Harris is stuck within his own paradigm. He can only suggest a moral system that his own paradigm has proven would be ineffective. Without it, if one believes in the scientific paradigm one can very easily conclude a moral relativity that Sam Harris and many others find very disturbing. But what if he could shift his paradigm, just a little bit?

So instead of trying to find objective morality empirically and then using that as a tool for moral decision making, why don't we accept the idea that there may be objective, non-rational truths that can not be quantified, but can only be experienced. And experiencing and living these truths will make you a more moral person. And let's also agree that there are thousands upon thousands of people out there who claim they know these truths--priests, rabbis, monks, nuns, cult-leaders, healers, psychics, self-help gurus--who actually don't. And that these people should be found, and outed for what they actually are--fakers. (And I have reason to believe this could be done in a scientific fashion). But let's also suggest that perhaps there are people out there who have experienced those truths, and have honestly useful methods for other people to experience those truths that could benefit other people. And that some of these people might be related to religious sects, but this does not necessarily mean their truths are automatically discounted.

If the paradigm could shift to accept the existence of a relevant reality that cannot be discovered scientifically, perhaps Sam Harris' quandary could be solved. I believe that there are many discrepancies like this that we are currently butting heads with and a shift in this direction could be very positive for humanity's quest for truth.

How do you know what you want?

2010-12-01T11:04:00.000-08:00

Making decisions in life is difficult. With even the simplest choices, I find myself tearing through the given options, imagining distant consequences that create entire lives I have to choose to lead or not. In this way, everything can be seen as life-altering, and thus paralyzing. To me, what makes it so difficult is that I actually want two conflicting things. I have strong values in life that conflict with each other, and make me consider different options.

But let's define the soul as: the a priori subjective belief that you are a unique, individual, unified perspective. So accepting the objectivity of yourself. You cannot observe yourself. You can not perceive yourself. You are yourself. But "I" thinks it can perceive itself. It is the I that explains to 'you' who you are and what you can or can't do, the I that tells other people the same, the I that narrates your experiences. But you, the soul, the perspective, have your experiences. It is often the I that makes the decisions about who you should or shouldn't date, what you should or shouldn't do, where you should or shouldn't live. But you can also act.

So what does this mean for decision making, the suggestion that there is a real you, a you that is separate from most of your conscious thoughts? Before the idea of a 'real' you, the conflicting values that lead to indecision seem to be of equal weight. The introduction of a 'real' you implies that one value is wrong (not the 'real' you) and another value is right (the 'real' you). So now decision making is not a gamble. It is a real tangible something. We must investigate this 'you' and find out what he or she wants, and then do that thing.

Of course, investigation of this you, as the I should know by now, is fundamentally impossible. Only you can know you. The I can only know what lays outside of you. So we can not rationally determine or describe who we are. We can only experience who we are.

It is my assertion here that most decision making is gambling--and people rarely do what the soul 'them' actually wants. This is again because the I has no way of knowing what you want. It can only look outside of you and construct an identity that the I wants. But this will always feel empty, because the soul or 'real' part of you who perceives and has feelings and experiences is not getting what it wants. Some people, because of the stress and doubt that difficult decisions cause them, choose to completely ignore their conflicting feelings, and become increasingly attached to the I that has been constructed. Others, because of the sadness felt when you think what you want is impossible or out of the question for you never make any decisions. (because of the I's convictions--you are of course meant to do exactly what you are meant to do).

My definition of the soul may be hard to swallow. But instead of wondering whether it is objectively true (something that would be impossible) think instead about the consequences of believing it is true.When you are conflicted about a decision, just imagine that you are a unified consciousness. That there is indeed, something that you actually feel--not just think--that you want.

As a young person, when I try this exercise, I often come up with the feeling of: "I don't know". This may seem like a stopping point, or a loop. You can't decide what to do, so you feel that you don't know what to do. Duh. But it is actually an invitation. Having the real and deep experience of not knowing, of ignorance, turns quickly into curiosity. It the spark of real passion and investigation.

I suggest these things not only as a way to determine what you want in life. I suggest them because people's inability to have accurate ideas about what the 'real' them wants is actually extremely damaging to the outside, material world and other individuals in it. A central desire for most people in American consumerist culture is to make money, and then more of it. Another strong desire that most people express is to be 'successful', which I think roughly means be recognized by their relevant peers to have more value than the average person. And yet, it's not difficult to see that both of these 'desires' have immediate detrimental effects on the environment as well as our fellow humans. We have ravaged the earth with our insatiable need to consume material goods, as advertising agencies have convinced us that only their products will make us feel good enough. And we operate daily under the conviction that some people are just better, and of more worth, than others, and it is our purpose to prove our individual power to others.

But I am for better or worse completely convinced that at the end of the day individuals are good and want to do what is good. And yet, most people claim to have these desires, that are very damaging for things outside of them. Some might then conclude that people are actually at the core not good. But I instead suggest that these desires aren't actually real. Even if you feel them strongly, what about the other desires that you have, buried deep, that can sometimes conflict? How about your desire for the people around you to be happy? For you to feel and trust real love around you? For there to be less suffering around you? Your desire to relax and enjoy the inherent beauty in artful creation or natural evolution? Your desire to no longer strive, no longer want? To just be?

A world where these desires could be met could be created. But it would first require a shift in our beliefs about what we actually want. What world do we want to live in? What are we doing to achieve that world, instead of striving to make our place in this world we can agree is not ideal? Which aspect of our desires would we like to be real? The choice is ours to make.

How do you know when you are acting freely?

2010-09-22T13:09:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking lately about what defines a free act. Societal definitions do not seem to help. As a child, I was told that "with freedom, comes responsibility". This implied to me that free acts were often paired with negative consequences. As we grow up, our freedoms are granted to us only if we act responsibly and prove to our parents, our schools, our society in general that we have earned it. As I've grown up, I've realized how strange this sense of societal freedom really is.

After all, it's not actually the case that the more responsibly we act the more freedom we gain in society. Instead, it is those who exploit the most and take responsibility for the least (i.e. huge corporations) that have the most freedom, as measured by monetary power, to enact their desires upon the world. In a recent study cited by Timothy Noah in his excellent Slate series "The United States of Inequality", USA, along with Italy and Great Britain, have become one of the least upwardly mobile rich countries in the world. It seems that we are increasingly granted the 'freedom' to live up to the expectations that are set up for us simply by where and under what financial circumstances we were born into. Any hopes to deviate from this given 'freedom' becomes tied to the able-ness of our bodies, the sharpness of our minds, the beauty of our faces, and still, somehow, courageously, the will of our souls.

Yes. Despite the ever-increasing infringements upon individual will and desire, the constant and relentless bombardment of advertisements convincing us of what we want, the barrage of 'news' media that perpetuates stereotypes and incites fear, despite the wave of brain scientists and psychologists that attempt to explain and predict as many of our behaviors as they can, our childhoods where we are taught to conform or be punished, and the psychiatric drugs that encourage us to not investigate our feelings of depression and loneliness---almost everyone I have ever encountered still firmly believes that they have free will. That, on some level, they are in charge of the decisions they make and the directions they go. That they cannot be predicted.

It's very difficult to identify something that almost every individual agrees upon. That's why I'm so curious to find a path to freedom, to know when I am acting freely, and to chase after those experiences. So where to begin. In a way the answer comes easily: When am I free? When I'm doing what I want to do. When I am doing whatever I want.

Again, this definition was like a dead end. Who is this unified I? How will I know her when I see her, when I hear her? So much of my consciousness is a continuing conversation, a voice from the observer, voices of girls I used to be, girls I think I should be, voices I know to be damaging, hurtful, or wasteful. Which one is I? Which one knows what I want?

Perhaps this struggle is not familiar to many, I know for a long time I was mostly unaware of it. As the dreamwork continues to awaken me to the feelings I work so hard to repress, though, I come to see that it wasn't that I knew what I wanted, but rather that I knew how I wanted seem. That I was making my decisions based on the part of me that thinks, that observes and reacts, not the aspect of myself that feels, that perceives and creates.

So if knowing what you want is confusing, how do you know if you are acting freely? I'm temped to respond that one knows they are free because they feel it. Of course this is vague, and confusing. There are plenty of things I do because they make me 'feel' good, things that I do because I feel 'free' to do so--vegging out in front of the tv, eating too much, drinking too much, sleeping in, buying gossip magazines, blowing off friends, spending money I don't have, skipping activities I know I'll enjoy-- and yet they always seems to result in the opposite emotion, a feeling that I am stuck in a monotonous life, unable to make any real positive changes. It is only after I do the things that took effort to accomplish--making a new friend, going for a bike ride, learning about a topic I didn't know about before, trying new activities, pushing myself in my work, writing, reading--that I begin to feel that kind of elation that one can only recognize as freedom---a lifting of the veil, hints to the areas of needed growth, the chance to become something you were not before.

So I've come to a suggestion. It's only a small change from my childhood definition. Instead of thinking of responsibility a tiresome after effect of freedom, I think freedom should be an effect of taking responsibility. It is the act of taking responsibility itself that sets you free. It frees you from the oppression of others making decisions for you, and ensures that you are mindful of the ways that you are oppressing others (both relationships being a type of enslavement). Being responsible and educating yourself about what you consume will free you from crimes of corporate america. Taking responsibility for your own happiness will motivate you to make the difficult changes that are often necessary for positive growth. Taking responsibility for your actions, your every action, will require the patience and thoughtful consideration that is necessary for you to begin to really see all the possibilities and open you to ways of thinking you had not considered before.

Freedom is such a complicated term, there are certainly many of its aspects that aren't encompassed by my definition here. But I do think it's a very workable personal definition, a way of steering the boat. How can I take more responsibility in my life? What effects am I having that I am ignoring? What parts of myself do I blame on others? How can I feel free?

I AM A PROUD HIPSTER

2010-07-15T14:02:00.001-07:00

...but hipsters seem to be on their way out. I first came to the realization after a 2 hour long gaze at LATFH (look at that fucking hipster) back in September. Because being a hipster has now become identifiable, being a hipster is against the hipster ethos. Those who are desperate to establish an identity that lies outside of the mainstream are going to have to turn somewhere else. So, then, where are the hipsters going to go? What's coming up next? I guess I want to make a suggestion. It might take me a minute to get there but bear with me.

I recently watched a documentary series that was broadcasted by the BBC called "Century of Self". If you've ever wanted to understand the 20th century through the lens of the psychological theories that dominated the times and its connection to consumerism, capitalism and democracy, this is the documentary for you. It's amazing. In Century of Self, the writer/director Adam Curtis explains how the beatnik/hippie desire for free internal self-expression became fulfilled by corporations and consumerism. The ego was coaxed away from the individuals duty to society and into the idea that the individual duty is to be oneself, Jerry Rubin perhaps being the best example. It is through marketing and the relentless engine of capitalism that we have become an individualistic society of sub-cultures, a vast array of lifestyles that we can choose from to express ourselves, buy the goods for, and be accepted by, all by a click of a button (as long as we are signed up for 1-click shopping on Amazon.com).

Of course, these 'choices' are empty once they have been externally produced and marketed to us. After all, corporations do not accept us for who we are in ourselves. Instead advertising must insist that there is something wrong with who we are, something missing, something that will only be restored by whatever product they are peddling. Marketing preys on our insecurities, and it is only through the perpetuation of our insecurities that the overconsumption necessary to maintain our economy can exist. Seen in this light, the hipster is something of an implosion of consumerism. The successful hipster is a viral insecurity creating machine, perhaps their most unifying attribute being their ability to disdain, disapprove, dismiss and anyone around them that has not been able to appropriately signify their individualism. As such, they perpetuate feelings of insecurity that fuel consumerist behavior, while at the same time condemning the conformist tendencies of any consumerist society. So, on one hand, hipster-dom is a corporations wet dream: the consumer who is constantly and ferociously determined to find and purchase the goods that will define them to others as themselves--no matter how obscure or useless that good is. On the other, their commitment to individuality and free expression are values with teeth, and hearkens back to the legacy of other powerful, anti-materialist social movements throughout history.

This is only the way to define the hipster in economic terms--hardly the only way to look at it. Another, perhaps more important lens is that of the hipster psychology. A primary attribute of hipsters is their pervasive lack of definition, and refusal to associate with their obvious group. An aspiring hipster at times myself, I know that hipsters like it that way. They joined the movement so that they would not be a member of any movement. Groups lead to conformity, a fakeness and inauthenticity that is inherently uncool. They wanted to be hipsters to show everyone else around them that they could be exactly themselves, with no affiliation to any particular group. And so, their movement has no advocates. I admire and emulate in a lot of ways individualism that is attempted through the hipster ethos. Through them, anything can be 'cool': homosexuals, sexual experimenters, the hula hoopers, the crisp organic farmers from Vermont, the biracial, the broken family, the anti-social, the trendy, the OCD, the depressed, the drug addicted, the intellectuals, the country bumpkins, the obscure, the old, the very very young. The voracious pace at which music, books, art, clubs, bars, restaurants, themes, trends, travel destinations, charities, objects and clothes are discovered and then discarded as they are popularized demonstrates the desperation to create an individual identity. I think think this goal is worthy. Unfortunately, any successful expression of individuality becomes eclipsed once the society identifies such a person as 'cool'. Then, the individual expression becomes motivated by societal acceptance, which is where, I think, the hipster was born.

And so, my prayer for the progression of hipsterdom: that individuals will decide to be themselves for themselves, not for the group. That hipsters will believe in themselves as the powerful arbiters of cultural, societal and political change that they could be, if only they stopped caring whether it was cool or not. That it will do away with irony in order to better achieve what I think was its broader goal: free self-expression and individualism. That it won't succumb to the quick fixes that consumerist culture provide to be accepted, but instead be committed to the difficult, frightening and staggering work of trying to be precisely who you are in a society full of messages and opinions and demands explaining how you should be.

In the "new" hipsters search for individual expression, they should not dismiss or disdain others, but embrace them. For, the more you learn to embrace other's differences in a non judgmental way, the easier it is for you to embrace yourself. Cool could actually become a dirty word, meaning someone who was too concerned with other's acceptance of them to worry about what they actually cared about.

I hope there is some way for this to be a non-ironic goal. After all, it does not take much looking around to realize that our earth is increasingly and increasingly getting fucked up. That's certainly not ironic, it's reality. But I also firmly believe that individuals united in a movement can be arbiters for a new order, and be catalysts for real change. And personally, I believe that movement already exists, in hipster-ness. It just needs a little self-confidence, a big lack of irony, and the courage to stand up for what it believes in, no matter if its cool or not. I also think Lady Gaga is the leader of this movement, and a leading proponent of its philosophy. But that's for a different post :).

Getting Over Yourself

2010-07-15T13:03:00.000-07:00

I think one of the hardest thing to do in life is get over yourself, the more I think about all the different things this phrase could mean.

For a long time, I considered it a way to explain what haughty or stuck up people ought to do. Get over themselves. Realize that they are like every body else. If you were self-involved, I thought, you should get over yourself. Open up your eyes and realize what is actually important, relevant, etc.

For the past five years, until March, I had not been in a committed relationship. During this single period, all of my most nagging insecurities, about my weight, my attractiveness level, my craziness, my ability to achieve my goals were externalized on to this future person, my boyfriend. This imaginary man would know the exact ways to act and the exact things to say that would reassure me I was perfect and beautiful and lovable, and would soar me into a lifetime of success.

Then, in March, I started dating my boyfriend. And he didn't say or do any of those things. One night I pressed him for about an hour about my attractiveness and his first reaction was just, "Is this one of those weird girl things?". He did not even nibble at any of my bait, just wondered why in the world his girlfriend, who he would obviously choose because he thought she was attractive, would not think so. He tried his best to reassure me, but I realized that there was nothing he could say that would. The words, the actions, the feeling that I had been waiting for was never going to come from some outside source. After all, I will never see myself from anyone else's perspective but my own. Nor should I. If I did I would no longer be myself. And so, I realized that these insecurities were something that I had to get over myself. If I wanted to feel the way I had fantasized about, I would have to learn how to forgive myself, how to support myself, and how to be myself without waiting for any external validation from others.

In many ways this process has been very difficult. It seemed obvious to me that insecurities are obstacles that you place in front of your growth. But what has surprised me is what else they stand in the way of: your deeper, more subconscious fears. Yes I am insecure about my attractiveness: but even scarier, if I just felt beautiful because I am a woman, and all women are beautiful (as this guy said...or Eve Ensler here) . Then, beauty would no longer be a goal I would have to attain, clothing I could wear or a diet I could go on to feel reassured, superior to others. So then what would fulfill me? What would validate me? Yes I am insecure about people liking me: but even scarier, if I no longer cared what people think? Then who would I be? How would I act? What would I care about? Yes I am insecure that I'm not living up to my 'potential', not treading the path to success that was laid out for me in the Ivy League: but even scarier, to realize I don't even know what I would consider actual success without these society-imposed measures? That I basically need to start from scratch to determine what is actually important to me, this time as myself, not as a reflection of what I think others want me to be.

And thus, to what I see as the last meaning of this phrase. Realizing that 'yourself' in getting over yourself, isn't actually you at all. It's someone you have constructed out of others interpretations, someone that strives to meet expectations, paints convenient, safe narratives about your past and your future, helps you to cling to your bitterness, to make assumptions about who's better and who's worse, about what's important and what's not, all along pushing down farther and farther who you actually are.

So, onward to get over my self. It becomes more and more frightening the more successful I am. But I'm beginning to see that it is not the fear itself but our reactions to it, our avoidance of it, that prevents us from change, hardens us, and makes us hateful. Being uncomfortable does not always mean something is wrong. It could simply mean that you are beginning to grow.

**Many thanks to Marc Bregman, without whom I never would have gotten where I am right now**

The United States Social Forum

2010-06-30T07:11:00.001-07:00

Last week I attended the United States Social Forum, which was a week long summit of 15,000 progressive individuals from around our country and around the world. 'Progressive' in the broadest sense possible: the term as appropriated by many who associate with the democratic party was not intended, rather individuals who are committed, in some substantial way, to social/political/economic change.

It was inspiring to say the least. One of the first shockers was the absolute diversity of participants. I have never been in a group of individuals with such diversity of interests, socio-economic class, hometowns, ages, skills, educational background, ethnic background and political opinion (besides general 'left'). In one workshop, I sat and listened to representatives from the Nigerian River Delta decry the exploitation of their environment. In a discussion afterwards, a middle aged Colombian woman argued with an older white sociologist from the University of Kansas who had been researching the relationship between native governments and the World Bank. A young gay rights activist from California mediated as me and a girl from Eunice, LA tried to make the connection between Nigeria and BP spill. In another, where an extremely passionate man from Move To Amend explained that a law that is 'legally' instituted that gives corporations the same rights as people contradicts democracy and is thus illegal by nature. An 80-year-old man, clearly hard of hearing, raised his hand to say, "Thanks so much for telling me about this issue! I had no idea there were people out there trying to amend the constitution". An 80 year old discovering new causes, new ways to look at the problems at hand and figure out one's place? To say inspiring hardly does it justice.

As the conference went on, the energy among the participants was palpable. Everyone there was doing something, wanting something, imagining something, pleading, arguing, debating, listening, participating, rejecting. It's not to say that everyone was doing the right thing, but just to have so many people fully engaged with this whirlwind of life: it demanded that you consider your role. Where do I fit into this society where this person is oppressed, that person is suffering, exploitation is here and here and here, communities are falling apart, individuals are fighting for their rights, artists are putting their images to the cause, photographers, dancers, puppeteers? Most people there, I would say, were already set into their cause/purpose, had been fighting the good fight for something for a while already, so it's not to say that everyone was having this experience. But I do think that even for those deeply entrenched in their cause the sheer variety and conviction of participants in a variety of causes would make anyone stop and think for a second: why my cause, now? Why not something else? How can we collaborate? In what ways are we fighting the same fight?

I kept thinking over and over about some talk that I thought was glaringly missing from the discourse: what about all of those upper to middle class Americans who are not overtly complicit in oppression or destruction or exploitation and yet do nothing to fight against it in their societies? There is a common parlance among these activists about 'waking up', realizing the contradictions within ones society and becoming increasingly willing to do something about them. But where was all the discussion about how to get everyone else to wake up, about what to do with the overwhelming sense of helplessness, pointlessness and eventual apathy that can result from a full investigation to how truly wretched so many aspects of our world actually are?

Being interested in psychology, and someone who in many ways has just recently 'woken up', and in many ways is not fully awake yet, I thought about this a lot. I think I'll write about this more as time goes on, but like so many things, the questions have lead me back to myself. I must do what I am meant to do. I must fight, and fight hard, against the constant bombardment of messages, images, expectations, second-guessing and fear that I have within myself that prevents me from being myself. Until I have made progress in this fight, all my external battles will be for naught. As was a quote by Archbishop Oscar Romero in one of the official USSF t-shirts sold by Liberation Ink,

"We cannot do everything,
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well"

Women are Crazy vs. Men are Assholes

2010-06-19T12:20:00.001-07:00

I'm sorry I've been so lacking in posts. There are a million excuses I can think of but being in lalalala new boyfriend land is probably the main one. But on the upside, I've been thinking tons!! about love and men and women and relationships and I'm looking forward to writing about them.

First, on the subject of "women are crazy" vs. "men are assholes". During my single life, I had many conversations with my girlfriends about how guys are assholes. They just don't get things, don't respond to situations appropriately, lack emotional response.

As I started to hang out with my boyfriend and his friends, though, I started to hear more and more that girls are 'crazy'. I think this is the equivalent feeling among a lot of guys, similar to the consensus among women that men are assholes. This equivalence got me thinking.

To be a true feminist, and thus to expect fully equal treatment between men and women, one must do the hard work of examining your own biases towards the opposite sex. So if I disagree that women are crazy, then I have to figure out what is causing me to believe that men are assholes, generally, and how that relates to the feeling that women are crazy.

Here's what I came up with. Women and men have a differing tendency of reaction and action, the former being a purely internal process and the latter being a purely external process. (Of course all of these are sweeping generalities and say nothing of the specific). So, given a situation, women are more likely to react to it, where men are more likely to act on it. Thus, women spend more time considering, pondering, investigating the details and the emotional consequences of certain actions or observations they have made. Men on the other hand are less likely to consider how they are reacting to the situation and more likely to just do something about it, or ignore it (which is actually, in many cases, a quite forceful action). As such, women are perceived by men as 'crazy', since they are likely to make perceptions or observations about a situation that a man doesn't. And men are seen as 'assholes' because they act on the situation without taking into account these perceptions and observations that feel obvious to the women.

I think it's nice to frame these generalizations this way because I think thought of in this way both sides have work to do. And perhaps this is one of the great benefits of being in a relationship. For women could learn from men how to act on their feelings and men could learn from women how to put their feelings into action.

Of course the words men and women here are somewhat useless, as I think in any relationship, be it heterosexual, homosexual, etc, it's not necessarily the gender that determines who's more or less assertive, more or less emotional. This is just a way to frame the conversation of one kind of division you might find in a relationship, and how learning to respect the other's skill is the first step in learning how to incorporate that skill into yourself.

Gift Flow

2010-05-26T07:01:00.000-07:00

Some friends of mine from Yale have started an amazing new site: GiftFlow.org. The idea is a 'gift economy': instead of money, people trade or give away goods and services. No money is needed.

Have you ever heard that money is the root of all evil? I had, but hadn't really thought about it. But like so many cliches that I assumed were not true because so many people said them so often: (the truth must be some sacred unreachable unknowable thing, right?...) it turns out that it is absolutely true. We have abstracted all value from goods and services by placing 'monetary' value on things. Most of us already have the inclination that money is a corrupting force: after all, that's why we pay teachers and social workers and non-profit workers absolute shit, because we have the feeling that if you are 'working for the money' then your motivations are in the wrong place.

And what about all the people that dedicate their lives to making as much money as possible? Could it be that it is not actually a fulfilling occupation? Money eradicates the need of people to try and discover what they, as an individual, could offer of value into the economy and instead plugs them into to 'money-making' careers that have nothing to do with their individuality. Not to mention the whole marketing, advertising and promotional section of our economy, which basically just uses psychological tricks on people so that low-quality goods are shown to be 'worth' more money for superficial reasons.

Money ruins all kinds of things, and it's a force to be fought against, not just a reality we have to accept. I'm not arguing that without a monetary system we could have gotten to where we are in terms of technological advancement, etc. But we are certainly at a point now where we can afford to back away from our addiction to money, and see where it takes us. So GiftFlow.org is a good place to start.

If you are interested in the site and want to show your support, please click here.

Heidi Montag and The Hills

2010-05-08T17:29:00.001-07:00

I just watched an episode of the Hills that was so disturbing. In case you have been living under a rug/have a healthy relationship to the dribble that passes as reality television these days (as in you avoid it at all costs), Heidi Montag, a character/'real person' on MTV's signature semi-reality shows had 10 plastic surgeries done, effectively turning her into a Barbie.

It's not that plastic surgery on a reality show surprises me--but rather what happened afterwards, when Heidi visited her mom. The reality show went with Heidi on her trip, and captured perhaps the most real moment that has ever been on the show. Here's my interpretation, in quotes:

Mom: Why do you think you have to look like everyone else?

Heidi: I was never going to be happy with the way I looked until I fit exactly into the Hollywood-definition of beautiful

Mom: But you were so beautiful and confident before you went to LA and all this "STUFF" happened.

Heidi: Are you saying that I don't look good? (crying)

Mom: (crying) I don't want to say that you don't look good, since what's done is done, but I just feel so sad that you went through "THIS"

Heidi: (crying) You have no idea what I have been through. You don't know how hard "IT" is for me.

So what is 'this' 'stuff' or 'it'? Obvious to anyone with half a brain, being on the show the Hills. I don't think Heidi is innocent, she has certainly done whatever she could to get her piece of the spotlight and that isn't MTV's fault. And yet, I really do think there is something wrong with a television show basically recording as a girl gets manipulated by an insane man (Spencer) and gets an insane amount of plastic surgery, all while pretending the show itself has nothing to do with the decisions she is making. Why is it okay for 'reality' television to basically ruin individuals lives and then keep recording as if the shit show had nothing to do with them?

I guess what I'm wondering is where do we draw the line. Can we let people consent to anything? What would people say if they created an AIDS reality show, where they could infect individuals with the virus and then record what happened to them? That seems wrong--since it's a physical harm. But what the fuck. If as you are recording someone they develop a mental illness and ruin their life because of the attention you are putting on them, it's just okay to keep going? Jon and Kate plus 8 are another great example of this. I shudder to think how those kids are going to turn out now. And the show was on THE LEARNING CHANNEL.

We have a bias against mental suffering, probably because we are still somewhat conditioned to believe that mental illness is self-caused and can be self-cured. Which is true in a sense, but there is no denying that being brought into the media spotlight causes mental and emotional problems, which are then exploited further and promoted by the show, which continues the cycle until it escalates to situations like Heidi and Spencers. This is wrong, and television producers should be held accountable.

Palm Reading for the Senior Nearing Graduation

2010-05-06T14:14:00.000-07:00

You have very deep and varied lines. This indicates a passionate nature, you tend to absorb yourself completely in whatever activity is currently on your mind, and you can’t let it go until you fully explored every part you were interested in. You have a way of pushing a situation until it goes deeper than most people are comfortable with. But you get along with most people, who appreciate the intensity you can bring to a situation.

Your life line is the curved line that goes around your thumb. Yours is very deeply entrenched with your head line, indicating that you are deeply connected with your family/your home, may still be providing a lot of support to you or you may be involved in supporting them still. This connection has brought you some uncertainty at the start of your life but as you mature you are starting to see yourself as your own person, separate from your origins. Eventually this conflict will come to the large fork at the end of your life, and after a period of deep misgivings you will successfully forge a balance between connection to home and independence.

Your head line is the short line that goes across the middle of your palm. Yours is crossed right in the middle by your fate line and is somewhat short, indicating that there is a moment in your life in which you completely adopt a certain way of looking at things, and this new perspective will completely shape the rest of your career and mental life.

Your heart line is incredibly deep and wide, almost like a crack. This indicates that you tend to become completely absorbed by your emotions, almost to the point that you are not able to respond reasonably to them. You should be proud of yourself for your ability to feel things very viscerally, but learn not to wallow, which just leads to self-centered behavior.

Want me to read your palm? I will read your palm for $5.

Death Bear Video!

2010-05-02T10:29:00.001-07:00

Woo! Death Bear made a video of us giving away our stuff! Featuring me Spencer Adam Mark and Anya!

Death Bear from Nusha Balyan on Vimeo.

http://vimeo.com/10448715

Net Neutrality

2010-04-18T09:13:00.000-07:00

Here's a good video I found explaining what Net Neutrality is, and why it's so important. Now, we are so accustomed to the freedom that we experience on the internet, but it's not difficult to imagine how quickly companies that have money idealogical interests, i.e. Rupert Murdoch could infiltrate internet consumption and prevent the free flow of information. I don't think the internet has been harnessed to its full potential for good...yet. But I do think that if the neutrality is not protected, it will almost certainly begin to be used as a tool for those that do not have individuals best interests at heart. Speak up for Net Neutrality!

Here's the video:

Visit http://www.savetheinternet.com/ to speak against this.

New Orleans Has A Caveat

2010-04-14T13:09:00.001-07:00

In many ways, this past weekend was a New Orleans classic for me. I rushed home from work, ran to the shower and was on Frenchmen within 20 minutes. After mixing my flask of whiskey with some diet I bought from the market, I met up with a friend from out of town and ran into a two groups of friends on the street. We all went into the bar together and drank pitchers of Andygator until we decided to walk two blocks to the other great bar. We drank more, my friend from out of town went to Bourbon with a girl I just introduced her to, and I end up in my bed realizing my wallet was still at the bar. Damn.

Spent the afternoon on Saturday having one of the best philosophical conversations of my life, then drove to Mid-City and went to a friend of a friend's birthday crawfish boil. Ate so much crawfish I felt a little ill and started to feel like these people I'd just met were going to end up being the best friends of my life. Exhausted, found out Rebirth was playing for free at the French Quarter Fest and we all pile into an SUV. I sit in the way-back and get to watch the city move backwards.

Eventually we park, go to the port-o-potties by the aquarium. A drunk tourist screams that "You just can't fucking trust these people in New Orleans" and the girl behind me tells me and the guy behind me, all of us strangers, "I really like the people in New Orleans.". We all smile and nod in agreement.

We dissolve into the crowd. Rebirth is in the last 20 minutes of their set. The sun is setting behind the stage that is right on the Mississippi river. A fucking steam boat passes as they play for god sakes. They're really grooving now, the songs are well over 8 minutes, the transitions between tunes difficult to parse out. I can't help but bounce my butt up and down and simultaneously feel like they're singing the most profound lyrics I've ever heard. Is there ever a moment when Do Watcha Wanna doesn't feel deeply, penetratingly true, completely undeniable? I feel exalted, heavenly, of a special breed. How is it that I have been lucky enough to be from, to truly be a part of, the best city in the entire world? Is there anywhere else where pure joy like this is allowed its rightful position as ultimate, singular goal? It seems that the rest of the world is constantly trying to carve out a time for these activities, to neatly differentiate from 'festive' time, where this ecstasy is permitted, and 'regular' time, where things are not suppose to be this fun, where we must do things that we all know are unpleasant, where this is the definition of work. Where we are suppose to pretend that we are all just individuals who happen to be residing in a similar area, not a community. Live our lives as if we are just trying to tolerate each other's intrusions on our privacy, instead of realizing it is precisely those intrusions that make us who we are. We are not suppose to stand together, young and old, rich and poor, black and white, hispanic and asian, and dance to the music that resides in all of our bellies. We are not to bask in the glorious connectedness that makes all of us feel whole again, knowing that everyone in this community is united in similar pleasures, supported by familiar pains.

I end the night on Frenchmen street. I order the drinks friends miles away might order, and reminisce to another friend about drinks we all had together, some other night. It's like everyone whose ever lived New Orleans with me is with me when I'm back with her. I spend a while talking to an older black man who runs a theater company on the Westbank. We talk about the racism that is implicit in our conversation, even when we don't feel any judgment from each other, as some of my white friends come to ask me if I'm okay. And still, we connect. Eventually, I get a ride home with some people from the Crawfish boil. Our walk across the city leaves us all desperate for the bathroom. The driver negotiates with the valet at the hotel. We end up parking for free.

When I get home, I log on to Nola.COM, buzzed from the high of such a classic New Orleans weekend. And then the Headline reads: 7 SHOT AT CHARTRES AND CANAL ST., LEAVING THE FRENCH QUARTER FESTIVAL. New Orleans has a caveat.

"Oh, and 15 people were shot in New Orleans in the past three days, including Saturday’s octuple shooting on Canal Street. The weekend before, 13 people were shot.

This is a real crisis.

New Orleans must fundamentally remake its police department and larger criminal justice system so that it can effectively uphold the law and pursue justice and safety for its residents. It is not about the pursuit of a flowery ideal – criminal-justice reform is a matter of life and death for the residents of New Orleans more than it is about avoiding more international embarrassment and shame.

There is also the matter of race. There is simply no denying that the consequences of our broken criminal justice system disproportionately harm the African American community. It isn’t just that there is a racist subtext (and obvious context) to be condemned while examining the attitudes of NOPD officers toward suffering African American New Orleans residents stranded in September 2005. It is the patently disproportionate harm experienced by African American residents throughout the criminal justice system. While the NOPD crisis is such that everyone can share in their disgust, there is simply no denying the historical precedent within the African American community." --

4/12/10, @The Lens by Eli Ackerman

New Orleans, no matter how glorious, how heavenly, how purposeful it seems, has an equally horrific caveat, a taste of the devil and his destruction paired with every manna like bite. Until this wound heals, descriptions of New Orleans will always--SHOULD always have a but. We can not toast to its recovery when our citizens are dying in its streets. I'm as guilty of this as anybody. When outsiders ask about the crime rates, I tell them, "Oh you don't have to worry about it, nothing will happen to you, because you're rich and white. Crime does not effect people like us." All the time denying, that the crime IS us. That we basically ignore these things that go on in our streets defines who we are as individuals. As we let it continue and carry on with our lives, we turn a blind eye to horrible suffering that we could potentially do something about.

I often struggle with, well what could I do? There are too many factors, too many causes, too many unsolvable situations. Luckily, the Silence is Violence organization has provided a great start. And just imagine the kind of power they could have if we all dedicated a day, or two, to volunteer with this organization? The point is not that we could definitely solve the problem. Rather, the gesture would recognize our role in perpetuating violence: simply that we do not speak out against it loud enough, and do our part to make the city whole again. If you love New Orleans, your words can not be against the people who are bearing the brunt of this violence. This is not us vs. them, an argument, a time to point fingers, a time to fight . This should be a call for peace. A recognition of our mutual, eternal, essential human agreement, that we allow each other to live.

Post-Cause

2010-04-08T10:14:00.000-07:00

I don't think we should have causes anymore. This is not to say that we should ignore the worlds problems. But rather that causes create a dogmatic 'us vs. them' mentality. They perpetuate the idea that there are certain causes one can choose to fight for or not, and the strength of your engagement in that fight is equivalent to the moral fortitude of your character. I think this keeps a lot of people out of doing what is good and right for the world, which is exactly what causes are created to promote.

Don't get me wrong: adopting a cause takes a lot of guts, and really representing it takes a lot of hard work. Fair or not, if you declare that eradicating sweatshops is extremely important to the world, you're gonna get a lot of flack from people who just don't care about sweatshops, or resent you for making them feel guilty about their Nikes or their tees. Plus, if you dedicate yourself to the cause, and you want to have some success in your life, the fight is EXTREMELY difficult and long. Even if you work your butt off, you may never see any significant change for what you were fighting for. And I know there are countless numbers of individuals who engage in this struggle on a daily basis without judgment, suspicion or cynicism of others who are not a part of the fight.

But I have also met those that strongly represent causes, be they political, health-related, civil rights, environmental, etc, that were often too quick to write you off as one of 'them'. If you didn't sign their petition or knock on doors or whatever else was really urgent to them right then, you were part of the problem instead of the solution. Not unlike religious dogma, their conviction that their cause is the right one is only confirmed by societal rejection. Drawing lines between those that 'see' or 'know' what's really going on and those that don't, the world becomes a constant battle, and those who represent 'causes' can always find ways to feel like the enemy is everywhere. That conspiracy theories abound in some of the most entrenched literature of these causes is not surprising. It seems to me that there is no quicker way to feel isolated, judgmental and cynical about the state of the outside world.

I think my uneasiness with causes comes down to a basic challenge that I've struggled quite a bit. Ok, I want to be a good person, and do something that is good for the world. But which cause? Believe it or not, I don't think that this is a rare goal of individuals. (I really do believe that most people want to be good, and want to do things that are at least non-harmful to others or society in general. I know some will disagree with this, but I don't think it is a matter of knowable fact, and thus I feel that my faith in it is both justified and beneficial.) So what should I do?

The sheer number of causes, of issues and problems that one could approach is daunting. Beyond that--I feel strongly that my choice would be arbitrary. Sure, I could dedicate my life to infectious diseases in 3rd world countries. But why not try to save the rainforests in Brazil? That you have to 'pick one', and 'do something' is a fine enough answer, but hardly a good reason to convince others they should join the fight. And how can you ever expect to really make progress if you can't even justify to yourself why one cause should be fought for over another?

And thus, I think the current structure of activism is backwards. To be good, I do not think we fight for causes that represent problems we want to solve. Instead, we should observe ourselves more closely, and solve the problems for which we are the cause.

I'm not suggesting that this is easier than adopting a cause--I don't think it is. There are a lot of problems that we contribute to without realizing it, and discovering these transgressions is difficult and at times uncomfortable and unpleasant work. And yet, it is in some ways easier to know where to start. As a taxpayer in New Orleans, my money causes the disfunction that I observe in my city. Because I don't voice my opinion to my elected representation, I fail to do my part to solve the problem. As someone who drives a car, I am a cause of global warming and of the harmful relationship our country has with oil. Because I don't pay close attention or attempt to ration my use of gas, I fail to do my part to solve the problem. And so on and so on.

More importantly, approaching doing good this way will eventually free individuals from having to represent ideals instead of themselves. I think living as a solution, or as someone committed to solving only the problems they directly contribute to, will make the responsibility more balanced and allow people to be more in tune with themselves instead of the external issues that surround them.

I certainly, as usual, don't claim to have succeeded in doing what I suggest here. And I don't know if I'm saying anything much more complicated than 'do your part' or 'be a part of the solution'. But sometimes, just writing them down brings them that much closer to happening, and sometimes, the simplest things are worth saying again.

***P.S> I want to in general give more credit to all my amazing friends/family who, w/o the conversations I have with them I would never get half the ideas that I do, so thanks for all the other ones I should have and for this one esp. David and Jordan B.!***

DIY U out in stores!!

2010-04-01T06:30:00.000-07:00

ATTENTION ATTENTION! HOT OFF THE PRESSES!! OR HOT DOWNLOAD ONTO YOUR E_READER!!

My sister's book, DIY U has hit the shelves/palms. I'm so excited about it. It's really shocking for me to realize that almost half of the people that start college never finish. Further, only about 1/3 of people in America have a degree at all. And yet, a vast majority of people in this country believe that without a college degree you'll never have a decent career, and if you can't finish school you're either lazy, stupid or some combination thereof. It's very limiting for young people trying to figure out what to do with their lives. Our world is changing rapidly and we need an educational system that will change with it. Anya impressively outlines how the system we have currently was put in place, and why it is failing so many today. Most importantly, it provides empowerment to the reader that is interested in fixing the problem for themselves.

When I was a senior in high school my sister gave me "The Teenage Liberation Handbook". After being in school for 12 years, the idea of going to college was totally daunting to me. It was an amazing breath of fresh air to be exposed to the idea that systemized education is not for everyone. After I read it though, we talked about how ideas like the one in that book were so fringe people didn't take them seriously. I feel like Anya is really packaging this message in way that can reach a much broader audience and I am so proud of her for that! I hope you'll read the book out and see her on tour. Don't forget to check out the site: http://diyubook.com/

IN NEW HAVEN: Labryinth Bookstore, Saturday April 10th, 3pm

IN NEW YORK: Vox Pop Bookstore, 1022 Cortelyou Road, Brooklyn, Sunday April 11th 4pm

Bluestockings Bookstore, 172 Allen Street, Wed, April 21, 7pm

IN NEW ORLEANS: Octavia Books, 513 Octavia, Tuesday, May 4th at 6pm

Are You Slightly Privileged, Slightly Uneasy?

2010-03-25T06:56:00.001-07:00

"And young people like yourselves, despite the allure of careers and comfort, have defected. Our only hope for real change lies in the possibility that all of us who are slightly privileged and slightly uneasy begin to see that we are like the guards of the prison uprising in Attica: expendable. That the establishment, whatever rewards it gives us, if necessary to maintain its control will kill us. But if the guards stop obeying, if you stop obeying, the system falls."

--Howard Zinn in "The American Ruling Class"

This is the quote that keeps running through my head since I first watched "The American Ruling Class". Not shocking: Zinn is talking directly to me. I'm slightly (well more than slightly) privileged and slightly (well now, a little more than slightly) uneasy. While I can see that things are very bad for so many people in this world, things are just good enough for me that I can convince myself that things are alright for those who are struggling. Or, maybe I recognize that I want to do something, so I become involved in the within-system organizations that are available for upper class liberals like me. I join the Democrats, and fight for their cause, to increase equality in our country. That's the right thing to do, right?

But it seems to me that Zinn is suggesting being a democrat is no better than being a republican, it's only a better lie you can tell yourself when you are feeling uncomfortable about the bad situations that you see around you. By representing the elite liberal viewpoint, I'm actually just playing my role in the system that oppresses those that I want to help. I'm the prison guard, without me, the prisoners would not be kept where they need to be--after all, I am who is suppose to be representing them in the negotiations.

This question is very challenging. I have been struggling with it a lot, and I don't know the answer. Is it possible to change a broken system from within? Or by working in the system are you just perpetuating it? The current political situation is an interesting one to examine. Now, we have Obama, whose election, in many ways, was suppose to represent the causes of the previously disenfranchised, the anti-Bush. But the incredible struggle for health care simultaneously invigorated the far right while watering itself down to the point of distaste for many 'very' liberal democrats. Meanwhile, the economic 'recovery' could be summed up as rich people being uncomfortable for a short period and then thankfully becoming rich (and in some cases *goldman sachs* richer), while 1 out of 6 americans are currently unemployed with the poverty rate higher than it has been in decades. So, it does appear to me that cheering the current democratic 'victory' is something of a sham. It entails swallowing a whole lot of things that I think are wrong, and accepting that the things I want "aren't possible", when that really means "not possible within the current system".

On the other hand, am I really going to claim that progress has not been made within the system as it is? Aren't we, as individuals, as nations, as a world better off than we were 20, 100, 200 years ago? It's a very debatable question, but hard to unequivocally say that things are getting worse. Not to mention I can only barely conceive of what working 'outside of the system' or 'stop obeying' could mean practically. What else can I do besides join the fight that has been making some progress some of the time using the channels that are available to it?

Zinn's quote paints a dim picture of me, the liberal elite. It's not that I have the wrong ideology, but rather because I have the right kind that complacency is so alluring. If I have a vague notion that things aren't right, I can vote for a democrat and chalk up their failures to politics as usual, while I go along my business living a comfortable, free life. And there is a big part of me that thinks there is something really wrong with a system where this is a natural, common choice. But if I'm honest, I think all it can definitely imply is that there's something really wrong with me for choosing it.

Jon Stewart Flipping the Fuck Out

2010-03-20T09:14:00.000-07:00

Two nights ago, Jon Stewart dedicated his entire show to mocking Glenn Beck. If you haven't watched Glenn Beck, I think you should. Millions of people watch and listen to Glenn Beck everyday. They do so to gain information. He has had five books be #1 on the bestseller list. This makes me feel completely crazy. And really freaks me out. It has also made Jon Stewart completely crazy. Please watch him freaking the fuck out here: http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/thu-march-18-2010-gary-locke

It's nothing short of amazing. It did make me wonder if Stewart might be getting pushed over the edge a little bit though. In fact, this whole week he seems to have taken a fever pitch. He perfectly pointed out the criminality of our banking institutions by comparing them to a individual actor, in another episode he equated all politics to WWE conflicts--asking, So you're saying it's all fake?, later one of his correspondents tried to hack into the meeting of the insurance head honchos. Jon Stewart is the only popular news commentators willing to point out how mind-blowingly ridiculous basically everything on the news and most of the policies that come out of congress actually are. I'm really starting to wonder if Stewart is going to turn one of these days, Al Franken style. Stop telling everyone at the end of the day, I'm just joking, and ask people instead to take him very seriously. But I guess that would probably ruin it all. Jon Stewart's makin jokes, that's why we're all listening, in the end.

Please Watch The American Ruling Class

2010-03-19T14:49:00.000-07:00

The American Ruling Class - Watch the Documentary Film for Free | Watch Free Documentaries Online | SnagFilms

I have recommended a few movies on this blog, but have never felt more strongly that everyone I know needs to watch a movie immediately than I feel right now. The movie is "The American Ruling Class". One of my immediate reactions to the film, besides horror, sadness, and the intense desire to abandon everything I was doing to start fighting for the causes the movie outlines, was why hadn't I seen this movie already?

Of course, the answer was right in the first scene, which was set at Yale's graduation. I am a member of the American Ruling Class. People who are members of this class will be made very uncomfortable by watching this movie. In fact, watching this movie was a very uncomfortable experience. Everyone is implicit in the class structure that it outlines, there's no safe spaces for the apathetic or unconcerned. And so, in a way I'm not recommending this movie, because I think most people I know would find it very disturbing to their worldview and the choices they have made so far in their life.

But of course, I am still VERY STRONGLY recommending this movie, because I have yet to be able to form a reasonable argument against this movie. Thus, I have the selfish motive of asking you, my extremely intelligent readers, to watch this movie and maybe find the flaw in it's reasoning that will convince me that what it satirizes isn't completely true. Either that, or you become as inflamed as I am and we can start the revolution together.

Just joking.

Sort of,

The American Ruling Class - Watch the Documentary Film for Free | Watch Free Documentaries Online | SnagFilms

Death Bear and Creating New Realities

2010-03-17T08:24:00.000-07:00

In Brian Greene's book, The Fabric of the Cosmos, he states that "we live in a reality that remains ambiguous until perceived,". He says this because the experiments and equations of quantum mechanics have (as perfectly as any scientific theory ever has) demonstrate this again and again. Thus, it is not that there is an external reality that our brain gives us access to, but rather that our brains, through perception, create an external reality Since reading this, and doing my best to understand the implications of quantum mechanics, it has been a source of ever-growing bafflement why this has not completely altered the way we interpret our universe.

Of course, I do know why, in a way, these conclusions of quantum mechanics have not been internalized. After all, we do not have control over our external reality. We cannot move mountains, or make people love us, or get the jobs that we want, or manifest our desires out of thin air. And so, we are left with the current interpretation of quantum mechanics: yes, it is true that on the most fundamental level of matter the act of perceiving determines what is perceived, but on the massively larger scale of our day-to-day lives, that fact becomes no longer true. If that doesn't sound weird to you, then fine. But it sounds fucking weird to me.

Enter Death Bear. So, I fully admit that I am no where near being able to control my external reality. But artists like Nate Hill, who performs Death Bear, demonstrate how easily manipulated our concepts of what's 'real' and what's 'fake' are, and I think that's the start of unlocking these mysteries.

Let me explain. As I mentioned in the previous post, one of the reasons I decided to give my coat away was because it was something valuable (even though it only cost $10, it was unique), and I thought by giving away something valuable I would be making the experience with Death Bear 'more real'. In fact, from the moment I called Death Bear, I wanted to try as hard as I could to just accept as reality there is this thing called Death Bear that takes things into their cave never to return again. I think, more than anything, I wanted to make an impression on Death Bear, to penetrate the reality he was constructing.

As Death Bear's arrival loomed closer, though, this idea got scarier. After all, it takes a lot of balls, and complete rejection of 'the way things are' to create and then live out your own world. All of the speeches and performance I had gone over and over in my head the night before seemed to be jumbling in my mind as we waited for his arrival. I suggested to my friends and sister who were there that they should give something to Death Bear too. My stomach tightened.

As soon as Death Bear walked in the door, though, he set the tone. He staged himself on the couch and demanded that we all sit next to him, one by one, and 'pretend that there was no one else in the room'. When I presented him with my coat, all I could do was blabber mostly incoherently for a minute or two about New Orleans, Katrina, and not needing a coat before I handed it over in tears. It was very emotional for me, but after Death Bear left, I felt lighter, happier and more complete. The act of giving my coat away, and knowing that the aspect of my life that it represented was 'gone forever' created the reality of me having closure and gaining the strength to move on.

I don't know if Death Bear has this effect on everyone. But I do think that since I was so committed to taking it as seriously as I could, it was real for me. In this way, the act of thinking Death Bear is real makes him entirely real. After all, what would it mean to have an 'real' Death Bear? What would be the difference between a 'real' Death Bear and a 'fake' one? It could only be how seriously both the artist and the audience were willing to take it. And if both are willing to risk it, you will walk away from the experience with entirely real closure and very real relief from your pain attached to a specific object. In this way, Death Bear manipulates your specific, personal, reality in a way that is completely catered to you. I think this is completely revolutionary, since so much art is meant to lure you into its realities but little art is so personally modified for each individual. Death Bear shows you how a person can create a new reality for you. But how do we go about making new realities for ourselves?

Why I Gave My Coat to Death Bear

2010-03-15T10:05:00.000-07:00

So, there is more downtime on my job then I thought there'd be. Good. As a lot of you know, I invited Death Bear over to my sister's house a couple of weeks ago as a way to part with the Northeast before I made my move to the south.

As we were searching for parties to go to that night, we came across Death Bear's number. In one sense, Death Bear is a performance artist. His concept is to dress up in a ridiculous outfit, come to your house and take things away for you to put into his 'cave', where you will never see them again. Once he takes these things, he says, they will be gone forever. My friend Olivia suggested that I give him my winter coat, since I was going to New Orleans and wouldn't need it anymore. My instant reaction was complete resistance, how utterly ridiculous it would be to give away my coat, so I realized that I had to give my coat away.

A note on this coat. For one thing, I really loved it. I had gotten it 2 months earlier at a thrift store in North Philly, and as soon as I saw it I knew I had to have it immediately.

It was that rare winter coat that was both stylish and incredibly warm, who's previous owner, Diane Sague, had written her name inside the pocket. To me, the coat was a symbol of my integration with north: after a 4 year struggle with winter, I had found a coat that was both functional and stylish, and all winter long, when I had it on, I was comfortable in my environment.

So why give it away? Well, for one, since I valued it highly, I thought giving it away would give my experience with Death Bear more weight. Plus, without a winter coat that I liked so much, my incentive to return to the Northeast would be a lot lower, my exit more final. The truth is, my arrival in the northeast was fueled mostly by my own geographic insecurity: growing up in New Orleans, no matter how much I loved it, I felt that if I wanted to do something important or interesting in the world I had to get out of the South and go to the Northeast. This myth was a very difficult one for me to shake, as both Northeners and Southeners perpetuate it.

When I was a kid, my teachers pushed me to leave the south to get an 'real' education, and while adults lamented that 'all the good students go away', they seemed to accept its inevitability. Once my sister left for college and spent time in New York, she would return laughing at the Times-Picayune's living section, as articles on 'trendy' Yoga seemed hilariously outdated. Clearly, New Orleans was not where it was going on. I needed to get out if I wanted to get anywhere.

Once I arrived in Connecticut, this continued. My classmates assumed I was racist before I even finished a sentence that had the words 'black people' in it, and they lectured me on the absolute stupidity of anyone on the right, especially those in the South, who at the time were running our country. People would constantly ask, "Oh, why don't you have an accent?", meaning, usually, "Oh, you're southern? Why couldn't I immediately tell you were an idiot?".

With all the attention New Orleans got from Katrina, New Orleans became a unique or interesting place to be in the eyes of the nation, but it was my renewed snobbiness after 4 years in the north that kept me from returning immediately after I graduated---yea, New Orleans was a good place to stop by for a bit but it still wasn't a place where 'real' things were going on. So, at the time when I gave my coat to DeathBear, I thought these were the reasons. I was shedding this insecurity that I had, and feeling confident that New Orleans is a place where I can do interesting things.

But I've come to realize that giving up the coat was more complicated than that. I think being in the Northeast, at an ivy league college, had given me a confidence I needed to shed. It gave me a false sense of self-importance that could only be sustained by staying in that general area, where the Ivy league is most revered. It's always difficult to let go of the one that rejects you, and the Northeast, New York and Yale in particular, is filled with opportunities to feel less-than. People are almost completely segregated by money, education, ambition, sub-culture affiliation, and ideology, and these gates are very difficult to pierce. Luckily, being from an Ivy League college and having friends and relatives who were successful in New York made it easy for me to feel cool when I visited. And there's nothing quite like feeling cool in 'the City'. And there was nothing that I owned, right then, that made me feel cooler than my coat.

And so I decided to give it to Death Bear, and all that came with it. I think I'm going to save what happened when Death Bear came for another post. But I think it's funny to point out here that even calling Death Bear was something that I did, in some ways, to seem cool. So it was paradoxical in that sense, but the experience was so realistic that it transcended my baser motives for it. And now, I see that shedding the coat really represented shedding the external structures I had constructed to ensure me that I was cool, accepted, alright.

Of course my impressions of the Northeast that I expressed above were in some ways just manifestations of my own insecurities. But I do think the North's cultural emphasis on ambition, status, and class and the inherent competition based on the increased population make it a uniquely difficult place for an insecure person. Now, being back in New Orleans, I still feel hampered at times by the biases and snobberies that have blocked me from seeing past the arbitrary social measures of college attended, future plans, etc., to determine value. But I'm getting better at judging for myself, and it feels quite good.

Work is My New Lover, I am on Hiatus

2010-03-10T20:55:00.000-08:00

Since graduating from college, the parallels between finding the right career and finding true love have increased dramatically. The metaphor has helped me make many career and love decisions. It was perhaps most striking when I quit my job, and the feeling could be compared to a somewhat uncomfortable but necessary break up. My resignation letter could basically be summed up as "It's not you, it's me", and the response from my bosses "We're sorry to see you go, but follow your heart".

The comparisons continue, as I've tried to both apply the career advice 'just try something, even if you don't know you want to do it forever' to my love life and the love advice 'you're too young to settle' to my career.

And so this week, when I returned to New Orleans, single [unemployed], I found that like relationships, no matter how much I anticipated the relaxing into my job search I was fully on the rebound. Scanning craigslist the way sad lovers lurk in bars damp with liquor, I saw my standards slip away as I frantically constructed resumes tailored just so. How could I tweak myself to make me more appealing to these nameless hiring managers?

But today, like magic, I got picked from the multitudes. And it was loveatfirstsight: the movie business. And like all good love affairs I've signed my life away in an instant and will be working 60 hour weeks for 2.5 months. I say it's nothing serious, just something to do in the interim, but I have a feeling I could be all wrong, and it's a good one. So these posts might slow down, but I hope you'll bear with me, and thanks so much for reading...:)

Democrats Need to Start Playing

2010-03-09T06:31:00.000-08:00

It is now popular for opinion columnists to write about the impending victory of the Republicans in fall of 2010. I think this should be described as what it actually is: a victory for Fox news. For some reason, Jon Stewart is the only 'news' source that consistently reports on the kind of gross and overwhelming lies that Fox News perpetuates every single day. To date, the Fox News Channels consistently garners about 3x as many viewers as the second place news channel, CNN.

As movies like OutFoxed and the Daily Show demonstrates almost every night, the Fox News Channel is anything but news. It's very difficult for me, and probably most liberals, to even watch the shows, because they are so thick with bias, exaggeration and confounding facts.

I don't like Fox news, and I wish they didn't exist. But I also don't think they are going away anytime soon. The left's answer to the network, MSNBC, though, I find even more annoying. Especially Rachel Maddow. She seems to think that she's going to beat Fox News by emphasizing, over and over, how stupid they are, or at least how much more clever she is. This is really stupid. People watch Fox News to be entertained, not to learn. And they are entertained, because Fox News emphasizes how scary and terrible the world is, and when people feel something, even if it's a bad feeling, they keep watching.

The left also needs to entertain. Except the emotion that they should stir is compassion, not fear. This would be a channel I would gladly watch. Rachel Maddow should be made over to look like a soft comforting woman, who, hour after hour, details the horrible and outrageous travesties that insurance companies have committed against people just like me. MSNBC should make these sob stories news, in the same way that Fox constructs stories and construes facts to make people afraid. In fact, I don't even think MSNBC would have to lie as much as Fox does, at least with the health care issue. The left needs to 'stoop' to Fox's level. I don't think it's stooping. It's a way of reminding liberals around our country why they are bleeding heart liberals in the first place. And it's not because they think they are more intelligent than everyone else. But rather that they see the inequality and suffering that is caused by individuals who are afraid, and they want to do something about it. And that's what the liberal media needs to remind them of, and the only way they will ever have a fair competition with Fox News.

So What if Anti-Depressants are Placebos?

2010-03-04T18:43:00.000-08:00

In the two months since Sharon Begley's controversial article in Newsweek, "Why Anti-Depressants are No Better than Placebos", there have been a slew of articles and books out debating the issue: doctors fighting her conclusions, patients fighting back, Irving Kirsch's exploration into the drug's reality and Gary Greenberg's equally interesting exploration of the industry surrounding these anti-depressants. In her article, Begley presents the argument that anti-depressants are little more than placebos. I think the arguments are pretty persuasive. That's because it makes a lot of sense that mental illnesses are especially susceptible to placebo effects--after all, depression is an illness of thinking, and placebos change the way one thinks about your illness.

One reason I think people are so resistant to this idea is because it challenges their assumptions about the division between body and mind*** when it comes to health. By focusing solely on the physical body as the source of all illness and thus healing, modern western medicine has rejected the power of the mind to heal OR be the source of illness. Paradoxically, I think this focus has benefitted individuals who suffer from mental illnesses like depression. But I think if Begley is right, and most anti-depressants work in a placebo manner, we should really re-think our assumptions about the mind's role in our physical illnesses.

When a patient presents with symptoms of heart disease, a doctor naturally attempts to treat the heart. This is because heart disease is an umbrella term for a whole host of problems associated with the heart. Since we are currently ignorant of the precise physical manifestations that cause depression, its more properly described as a disease of the way a person is thinking or feeling that causes them to feel predominately sad, empty, lethargic, lonely, apathetic, etc. So, naturally, when someone presents with depressed symptoms, the doctor wishes to treat the person's thoughts and feelings. Anti-depressants do exactly this. They give a person a tangible way to think and feel healthier about their depression. First, they physicalizes the symptoms of the illness, separating the individual from their depressed symptoms. Like a bad case of the measles, or even a cancer, depression becomes something that can be fought with physical manifestations like medicine. Further, they remind individuals that they are not alone in their sadness, that there is hope for them, and that they are doing something productive to help their problem. And for 75% of people, this treatment, this physicalization of their thoughts and feelings really helps them, and they are able to improve their depression.

This description does not deny that depression is caused by something physical within our brains--far from it. What I'm suggesting is it's precisely because we emphasize depression's physical dimension, and probably treat it in some way that we are unaware of currently that we give individuals a better chance at defeating its mental symptoms. But, if we admit this to be the case, then it becomes a lot more difficult for us to deny the converse of this conclusion: that if we emphasized heart disease's mental dimension we would give people a better chance at defeating its physical symptoms. I don't know for certain whether this would help people or not, simply because the research hasn't been done--(and it's debatable whether scientific research could be done, since the hypothesis seems to be questioning the scientific method). But I do think that these are assumptions that are implicit in our modern understanding of depression are the reason why Begley's article caused so much controversy. And yet, the facts remain that these drugs have helped a lot of people feel a lot better (to table the issue of over-prescription, which I think is valid). So, I think the public revelation that anti-depressants are primarily placebos should be taken as a general wake-up call for our one-dimensional view of illness in general.

***Caveat here: I'm not trying to argue here for a dualist view. When I make the distinction between mind/body, I mean to the extent that anyone distinguishes between mental/physical illnesses: that there is physical cause for the mental ailments, but the causes are so far from our current neurological understanding that the distinction still makes practical sense.

Starting a Re-Education

2010-03-02T13:14:00.000-08:00

Almost three weeks ago, I quit my job. It was very hard for me. For, I had grown very used to do doing things that didn’t really feel right to me, because they were ‘good in the long run’, or I believed that ‘you have to work hard/do things you don’t want to do in order to get the things you actually want’. I think this lesson starts in elementary school. Children are born with the desire to learn who they are. But school does not foster this exploration. Instead, school creates an environment where children learn the set of expectations society is going to have for them because of the categories they happen to fall in—in other words, who they are suppose to be. Kids are often being told to ‘grow up’. But this does not mean, learn to focus on what you feel most passionate about. To grow up, in our society, means to start sacrificing the things you like to do in order to work hard on things the society values. Eventually, children lose track of what they care about and start to fully buy into the dreams that our culture makes for them. When we come across people who are happy and enjoying their lives, we judge them as immature and unsuccessful, because we believe that only through sacrifice and struggle will we succeed. We reward those who have sacrificed their existences for work with high salaries, and punish those who chose self-expression as their career with labels of lazy or self-promoting.

I’ve been in school for the past 17 years, and was always an extremely dutiful student. This sense of duty got me to Yale University, where the conviction that one needs to basically suffer in order to become successful was stronger than any other environment I’ve ever been in. Students there would take enormous pride in the sheer amount of work they did, bragging over how many hours spent in the library, how many days they’d gone without sleep, how many pages they had written out of sheer willpower, and how impossible, because of their enormous time constraints, it was for them to enjoy the little things in life. In my freshman year, I took up knitting. One Saturday afternoon, as I sat knitting on the couch, a roommate of mine walked in, clasped her hands and sighed, “Oh Kezia! It’s so nice that you have time to knit”. The sad thing is, she didn’t mean to sound like a condescending bitch. She really thought it was amazing that anyone in this school that she could respect could possibly have a spare moment on a Saturday afternoon to knit a scarf. At the time, I was mortified, and I never knit again. It seemed to me that if I was going to be at Yale I needed to be taken seriously, so I could waste time with pointless hobbies like that.

When people would ask me what I thought about Yale, I would always say “it’s intense”. I knew I was miserable there, but I did not have the courage to reject the environment because Yale is one of the most respected universities in our country. Thousands of children every year put their sights on coming to Ivy League colleges and I felt that it was ungrateful, weak and pathetic of me to want to leave there just because the place didn’t make me feel good. Of course this place doesn’t make you feel good, I thought. This is what it takes to be important and successful in life! If you can’t cut it, it’s your problem!

And so, when I started my job in September, it’s not surprising that I had a similar attitude. When I thought of quitting because I wasn’t connecting with my work, I again felt shameful and weak, as I had when I considered transferring from Yale. My peers confirmed this, as some reminded me that we all have to do things we don’t like in order to ‘become adults’ and be successful. Now, I no longer think that this is true.

I’m not saying that in life one will never have to do something that they do not want to. Learning to understand and accept others desires as you do your own is an essential aspect of growing up. I do think, though, that when you feel passionate about something, the work you must complete to achieve your goal that could at first appear monotonous or unpleasant becomes easy and enjoyable. I don’t think it should just be accepted that most of the time you will not want to do you work, or you won’t enjoy it. Instead, I think that if you are dreading your work then you should take that feeling as a signal that you aren’t doing the right thing. Becoming an adult, for me, is no longer going to be about learning to ‘suck it up’ or ‘bite the bullet’ or ‘be realistic’. Instead, I’m going to put all my efforts into learning, as well as I can, who I am and what I care about most. And I hope, through this education, I can more successfully choose a new job.

Martha Graham

2010-02-24T21:28:00.000-08:00

said this:

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.

I love her.

The Methuselah Foundation

2010-02-23T11:20:00.000-08:00

I found out about the Methuselah Foundation through Hulu's non-profit advertising. It was nestled between an ad for saving the rainforest and encouraging people to send their children to camp--in other words, it was presented as just another harmless foundation, a cause that is meant to tear at our heart strings. Its mission?

"The Methuselah Foundation is a non-profit medical charity dedicated to extending healthy human life through proven programs supported by people like you. The Foundation supports a variety of strategies that will accelerate progress toward a comprehensive cure for age-related disease, disability, and suffering."

So they have created a foundation dedicated to extending healthy human life. Now, it could be suggested that in a broad sense all of medicine has this goal, as it attempts to keep people healthy, and thus living longer. But the Methuselah foundation is tweaking this project, or at least making it more explicit. After all, it isn't a far stretch to take 'comprehensive cure for age-related disease' to mean 'comprehensive cure for death'. To encourage this type of research, the foundation is sponsoring the mprize, a motivational tool to get scientists to lengthen the life of lab rats. From what I can tell, essentially, this foundation is dedicated to finding the fountain of youth.

This confuses me. When I was in 4th grade, we read Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbit. In the book, one family finds the fountain and lives forever, only to spend their eternal lives lonely and unfulfilled, living in an ephemeral world. The message of the book is clear: living forever would suck. I thought it was just understood--that eternal life is just one of those things that sounds good but we all realize is bad at the end of the day, like eating ice cream at every meal.

Apparently, with this kind of foundation being formed, it isn't. I can see the appeal of wanting to extend life (to an extent..hehe), but I also feel strongly that extending human life too long is actually just accelerating the experience of death. I think the mistake is in forgetting how our experience of time is linked to the amount of time we experience. To live for a thousand years would just mean that a year would seem to us like a week, and more likely than not, we would squander it in similar ways. Life's pace would slow, adolescence stretch for decades, children would rarely, if ever, be born--the milestones of our life cycle would be few and far between.

For these reasons, I think the whole foundation is wrong-headed. I'm not anti-relieving suffering at the end of life. But I'm pro-accepting death. Without it, I don't think there would be such a thing as life. It's a packaged deal, and it just seems futile and weird to try and avoid that. Why don't we take the energy surrounding the Methuselah foundation and start a different foundation: one dedicated to getting as many as people as possible to live like they were going to die tomorrow?

Quantum Mechanics a la David Albert

2010-02-22T09:24:00.001-08:00

Here's an EXCELLENT interview with David Albert, author of Quantum Mechanics and Experience, one of the clearest books about issues of philosophy of quantum mechanics that is out there. In the interview he answers such questions as : Can you give a brief overview of quantum mechanics?, How does quantum mechanics contradict common sense?, Can science give us a precise image of the universe?, Does quantum mechanics speak at all to consciousness?

He's just very clear headed when he presents the issues and makes them easy to understand. I recommend it. Big Think Interview With David Albert | David Albert | Big Think

Links of the Week

2010-02-19T13:20:00.000-08:00

Here's some stuff I rounded up from the internets...Fun mirroring video with a song I really like via yvynyl......A clear and well balanced look at the whole atheist/theist thing I just can't seem to give up on.......Just in case you haven't listened to Pogo yet, it's an amazing treat......I've always fantasized about those crazy computers from the movies becoming real: dreams DO come true!..... Interesting article about the effect of the 'trust hormone' aka oxytocin aka MDMA on people with autism....the fall out from Copenhagen scandals rage on, Jeffrey Sachs does his best to defend.....No writer can resist a little meta-blogging, esp. when it's Lorrie Moore...WILL SOMEONE IN NEW ORLEANS PLEASE COME WITH ME TO THIS? IT'S LIKE REALLY CHEAP AND AWESOME LOOKIN...And finally, a social network we can all agree upon, sometimes globalization is just freakin awesome!

Police Expectations

2010-02-19T07:54:00.001-08:00

New Orleans boasts the best crowd control in the country. Millions of revelers take to the streets during the Gras, and there are hardly any violent or destructive incidents. The department claims that people from around the country visit New Orleans to discover the NOPD's crowd control secrets, but I think I have a general gist of it: the NOPD don't expect anything terrible to happen.

Case in point: when the Phillies made it into the world series this fall, people filtered over to Broad Street, and as I was walking in the crowds I started to feel real happy, reminded of how nice it really is to be in a place, surrounded by people, knowing that they are thinking the same thing you are (in this case, WOO HOO). But when I got to Broad street, there were about 50-70 cops standing in the median, arms crossed, stares cold, eyes narrowed. They looked like some SHIT WAS BOUT TO GO DOWN, and they didn't look happy about it. They were expecting something to happen. Sure enough, about five minutes after I got there some guy shot off a bottle rocket in the middle of the crowd and was pinned to the ground by about four police within two seconds.

NOPD, on the other hand, stick to the outer edges of the crowd during Mardi. They act as the parties' referees, not enforcers. When someone is expecting you to break the rules, you do. Which is why racial profiling is so problematic and circular. It's just another example of your expectations of what is going to happen can radically change what actually happens. And the best part about expectations is that they are in your control!

The Known Universe

2010-02-18T13:48:00.001-08:00

Just in case you haven't checked this out yet. Its basically planet earth for THE UNIVERSE. Whenever you're low on awe, like truly knee shaking palm sweatin jaw droppin AWE, take a gander.

Mardi Gras

2010-02-17T07:33:00.001-08:00

Well, another Mardi Gras has come and gone for the city of New Orleans. I've gone to a few festivals, but haven't attended any as much as I have Mardi Gras, which has been a consistent milestone in my life since I moved to New Orleans in 3rd grade.

But, as many people ask, what is it? Like most things New Orleans, Mardi Gras is a strange amphibian, slippery and resistant to categorization or explanation, but more and more I've found myself comparing it to the major festivals around the country, musical and otherwise. Unfortunately, its national reputation has been boiled down to little more than a girls gone wild video, deterring a lot of would be revelers. At times I wish we could attract all kinds to the party, including more creative/artistic types, not just friends of friends and drunk college kids looking to see boob. I'm especially convinced of this because I think so much of what is emphasized at other national festivals is something that grows naturally in New Orleans, and does so without any specific dogma or marketing. So here's my go on why Mardi Gras is the best festival in America.

1. It's Multi-Generational: There's an incredible thrill as a child to see your teachers, parents, friends parents, grandparents, baby cousins, and neighborhood weirdos all gathered in the street doing exactly what you're doing--enjoying themselves. There's no age for Mardi Gras, and there's something for everyone.

2. It Spans Socio-Economic class: Sure, the richer you are, the more likely you are to be on a float, go to balls and dress up fancy, etc. etc. But on the whole, it would be hard to make the argument that these experiences are in any way 'better' than just the regular guy watching the parade, or riding on the truck floats, or waking up early to bbq in his backyard. Unlike most festivals, the concept of a "VIP" pass to the event would be ridiculous. Its one of the few festivals when having money/status doesn't translate into a better experience.

3. It's not motivated by Money: To the above point, unlike almost every other festival, Mardi Gras was not created to make money. Krewes don't get anything for having parades (they just lose dough), and although the tourism generated from the event is certainly an economic boon for the city, it wasn't as some mastermind manufactured it for that purpose. Plus, there's tons of free stuff all over the place. Sometimes I think I could go through a whole mardi gras just grabbing beers from random folks, eating the occasional hot dog that floats by and munching on the moonpies they throw out, not spending a dime.

4. It's limitless: While this is not entirely true, as all Mardi Gras' begin and end, the possibilities for what your Mardi Gras are seemingly limitless. Want to dress up in elaborate costumes and wander around? Check. How about listen to music every night? Sure. Be in a krewe and throw beads? Done. Watch as the parades go by? Course. Go to house parties every night? K. How bout clubs? Why not? Since every type of person is involved in the celebration, any type of party you can imagine is happening at any given time during the course of the festival. The only hard part is finding it.

5. It has no 'point': This is the best thing about Mardi Gras. There's nothing you're suppose to 'get' about it. It doesn't have a message, it's not trying to make a statement, and no one's out there trying to prove anything to you. It's a celebration of life for life's sake. The only point is to try and enjoy yourself, exactly in the way you like best, and as long as you let others do the same then you are doing Mardi Gras right.

On Using the Word Retarded

2010-02-09T11:21:00.000-08:00

About two weeks ago, the WSJ reported that Rahm Emanuel called some liberal democrats "fucking retarted". Sarah Palin fired back, asking if he has any decency, and a flurry of very interesting posts by liberal bloggers called her out on her hypocrisy, the best examples being Tiger Beatdown and Shapely Prose.

As Sweet Machine stated in Shapely prose "It’s awful to say something is “retarded” because the punch of the word is based on the equation of “disability” and “bad.”. I think she is absolutely right, and that the vast majority of the time when people say something or someone is retarded they are making this equivalence. But, I also think that when people call others out for using the word, or feel uncomfortable about its usage, they are continuing to make this equivalence.

In my ideal world, a person with mental disabilities would not be immediately be assumed to have a lower quality of life or be devalued as an individual in society. This person would just be different, in the same way that shy people differ from outgoing ones. In other words, the value judgment that I think is currently intrinsically married to the concept of people with disabilities would be eliminated.

If you agree that this would be an ideal, then the question becomes how best to bring it about. Obviously, using the word retarded when you really mean bad, low-quality, inferior, or lesser in any way would be counter-productive. But what if you use the word retarded to mean something that is stupid, or "less intelligent than average"? I think the problem with saying that people should not use the word retarded if they mean 'stupid' is that it implies (whether intentional or not) that being less intelligent than average is inherently bad. Taking for granted here that the word retarded has been co-opted from its original meaning of slow growth to be a catch-all for people with mental disabilities, if we weren't making this value judgment, then why would calling something retarded, if you mean stupid, be wrong? Wouldn't it just be the case that some things are less intelligent, on average, than other things, and to state this would be a matter of fact, like pointing out the speaker's tie was green?

This is a difficult concept to wrap one's head around, because there are a lot of people whose value systems are built around the concept that intelligence is a fundamental good and stupidity is its opposite. I'm not sure if this is something that could ever change, but I do think that considering the assumptions that are inherent in what makes you uncomfortable is important. If you don't like people saying something or someone is retarded, why don't you? What exactly is it about the word that makes you uncomfortable? Is it the concept of people with mental disabilities in general?

I'm not suggesting that we should all use the word retarded when we mean stupid or refer to people with mental disabilities as retarded. As I have throughout this post, the language preferred by those with disabilities is 'people first', which I've come to see as a brilliant way of changing the script and in turn altering our perception of those with disabilities. It's outlined beautifully on this website, "Disability is Natural". What I'm saying is sometimes we are uncomfortable about the use of a word because of underlying assumptions we are making about the group we want to defend. And examining these assumptions in ourselves is as important as demanding the word's demise in society.

We Have Told Ourselves Lies That Aren't True

2010-02-05T12:30:00.000-08:00

After giving blood at age 16, Rodney McKenzie, Jr. received a letter informing him that he was HIV positive. He decided to leave his family in Texas and move to New York to die alone. Almost everything he did in the next ten years could be traced back to this belief he had about himself, and it wasn't until he was 26 that he decided to face his diagnosis and be tested again. Turns out, he was healthy all along.

This is an amazing story to me because it makes tangible something that I think is universal, but often without such hard evidence. We all have things about ourselves that we feel we 'know'. We decide that we are something, or not something, and we cling to that decision and live our lives as if it was 'true'. This vid made me wonder what truths I was hanging on to. It's really a nice watch.

Via Feministing

Links of the Week

2010-02-05T09:36:00.000-08:00

New Orleans bounce, a la DJ Jubilee, Partners N Crime, and their many followers are finally getting a chance to show how they are the roots of countless smash pop hits today, support them!...Just watch this, I don't know why but it's super-mesmerizing, and I ended up researching Afrikaans for like 2 hrs...It's stuff like this that makes me question how I determine whats a man and what's a machine....Don't ask don't tell seems to be on the breaking point, let your voice be heard!...Rumors flyin bout Bonnaroo, gotta say DMB is a big whatev. for me...Awesome essay about the effect of brain science on literature, I'll prob. post about it but it's def. worth the read...If anyone was wondering whether New Orleans was the next big thang, well my biased ass self says it is---we've only spent 5% of our recovery money! 95% TO GO..Terry Schiavo gets ripped open with this, I'm really not sure what to think...I'm a glutton for O'Reilly vs. Jon Stewart, although this fight wasn't quite as good as others...And, for the last time, with all my heart and soul...GEAUX SAINTS...I think Mike Lorando summed it up best:

Order more beer. Throw me something, mister. Suck da heads. Wear da dress. Stand up. Get crunk. Hug it out. Protect your eardrums. Pass the Kleenex. Hoist the trophy.

Is Feminine Domination a Goal?

2010-02-03T13:24:00.000-08:00

In the past year or so, there's been a spate of books emphasizing the essential role the quality of 'empathy' plays in humanity. This includes: Born to Be Good, by the Ekman (the emotions guy) disciple Dacher Keltner, also behind The Greater Good Science Center, which is about as touchy-feely as science gets, Beyond Revenge by Michael McCullough which explains the importance of forgiveness, The Age of Empathy, by leading primatologist Frans de Waal, who dares to ask, what if Bonobos had been the primary focus of our evolution research instead of traditional Chimpanzees? and even a how-to book, Mirroring People, about how you can use all this new science of empathy to your social advantage...lol. And today, Arianna Huffington recommends for her bookclub (could she possibly replace Oprah?) The Empathetic Civilization, insisting that it's teachings will be the dawn of a new age, the transition from the "Age of Reason" to the "Age of Empathy".

In some ways, I think this trend is a response to the enormous influence and subsequent acceptance of selfish values as an essential part of humanity from Dawkins' The Selfish Gene. And really, I'm all for that. I think the emphasis placed on selfish instincts has led to a lot of over-simplification and unsatisfying theories about some of our most basic human experiences (to start, love).

But I think there's something more going on here. When you look up Chimpanzee on wikipedia, chimps are led by "alpha males" and bonobos are a "matriarchal" society. And it doesn't take much to translate the transition from an 'age of reason' to an 'age of empathy' to 'age of male-domination' to 'age of female domination'. Reading between the lines on these things, I start to feel like characteristics normally associated with women are now scientifically trendy, and I worry this will come to be seen as a 'victory' for the feminist movement. Individuals are being painted as 'fundamentally' having empathetic characteristics, and I have a problem with that.

Don't get me wrong. I cry every time I read the NYTimes or listen to NPR, think revenge is completely idiotic and there is definitely a part of me that wishes everyone took classes in college about how fundamentally good everyone is. And I'm not saying that these scientists and social observers were intentionally suggesting women be in charge instead of men. But rather, I think it's always wrong to suggest that people are in some sense 'fundamentally' one way or the other. And further, I don't think this should be a point of celebration or emphasis for the feminist movement. Ideally, feminism should be about equality, not domination. Isn't the ideal that we will someday balance these forces that both play a role in all of us? To unify reason and emotion, domination and submission, empathy and selfishness? Can't that be what the new 'age' is about?

Why Is Privacy Important?

2010-02-02T06:57:00.000-08:00

I don't know if I've ever seen an article be so popular on nytimes.com: "The 3 Facebook Settings Every User Should Check Now" sits pretty at #7 most emailed, and it was published almost two weeks ago. Clearly there are thousands upon thousands of people who are highly concerned about their privacy on the internet.

I'm not immune to this--I've set all of my Facebook controls to "only friends". But, like a lot of things, when I try to determine exactly why I want to keep my facebook private, it's hard to come up with reasons that make a lot of sense. Mainly, it's because I get a feeling I can only describe as the 'jeebies' about anyone who wants to look at all the shit I post on my profile.

Here's what pops up off the top of my head: 1. Identity theft, as best evidenced by the citi bank identity theft commercials 2. Stalkers, as in people sending you annoying messages or worse coming to your house and 3. Companies using the information to market products to you 4. Bosses, as in your future/current employer rejecting/firing you for incriminating evidence found and 5. The "Jeebies" I mentioned above

Upon closer inspection, these reasons don't really stand up. 1. From what I can understand about identity theft, thieves need your SS number or some other official private data to really succeed, if all it took was your name/address/phone number, identity thieves could just use the phone book. 2. Fear of stalkers is maybe a bit more legit, especially if you are really hot or something, but I think it's safe to say that the risk of acquiring a truly dangerous stalker (this is stranger stalkers I'm talking about) is pretty freakin' low, and having a public facebook profile and being out in public are probably the same amount of risk. 3. As for companies, having more directed advertising...well...how is it so different from the aimless advertising we have now? Granted the advertising might be more annoying, but probably just because it will be more persuasive. But I think it's mostly your job to try to combat the messages corporations send you about what you want (not that it's easy..). 4.As for bosses, this is a toughie. We sometimes want to have different personas for our work and persona lives. I don't think there's necessarily something wrong with that, but I do think that in general jobs that jive well with our personalities/lifestyle make people more happy.

So there are some risks involved in putting all our cards on the table, but I still think the main reason I don't it is these 'jeebies'. And when I try to determine what these 'jeebies' are really about, I can only think they are some combination of insecurity/shame/idea people will think I'm an exhibitionist. Since all of these feelings stem from fear, it doesn't seem like a legitimate reason to stay private. But what am I afraid of?

Let's imagine for a moment that most people weren't very private, that it wasn't valued or seen as important. This would mean that vasts amounts of information about your day to day life would be public domain, accessible as quick as it is to type your name into a google search bar. Ah! How vulnerable it would make me...but if everyone was doing it, how vulnerable is one measly individual? Instead, I think there would just be an increase of understanding between individuals, and a decrease of all the insecurity and shame that stems from our conviction that we are in some definitive ways different from most people. One can imagine through search engines we could instantly become connected to thousands of people who are really similar to us, and the creation of valuable networks would be even easier than they are now. And as a bonus, there might be a healthy dose of deflation for those who, because of external markers, have been lead to believe that they are significantly better than others, as there would be an increased recognition of equality. Also, as a bonus, I think the amount of inane reality television would be squelched by an increase in the amount of freely available "reality", a la Internet Killed Television.

I think the internet is already heading in this direction, but there is still significant resistance to things becoming public. And even after writing this whole damn post, I dunno if I'm quite ready to get over my jeebies and make my facebook profile public. It's a difficult thing to do when there are few others who do it as well. But I always think it's worthwhile to really consider why something is valuable to you, and whether the reasons make sense. And when it comes to privacy, I don't think the reasons stand up. Unless some of yall have others?

Do a 360

2010-02-01T13:27:00.001-08:00

I've always wondered why Japan is considered SO difficult to get around in.

Links of the Week

2010-01-29T08:27:00.000-08:00

Here's a weekly round-up...Have a lingering worry about free will? Don't worry, 4.4 million dollars has been invested in a PHILOSOPHER to settle the question...I don't know if there is anything that excites me more than a computer controlled by my brain...Really loved Bonnie's 'random' choices, especially the tree houses...Liv scoops chat roulette, before Fast Company, it's taking off!...Ever wondered what english sounds like to foreigners? Watch this video, it's so hilarious...Really interesting article about how a new version of 'start-up' could begin soon...I was struck by this, and really don't know where I stand: how does one use people in wheelchairs without being criticized?...also this made me DEEPLY HAPPY: a plus (aka normal) sized woman being used as a model in Glamour magazine---AND THE STORY WASNT THAT SHE WAS PLUS SIZED! I don't know if this can be celebrated enough, maybe the best part is that people haven't made a big deal about it..and, usual, it all comes down to the SAINTS VERSUS COLTS. ... Hopefully the NFL will stop trying to squeeze every freakin' dime possible out of the game...of course that would be impossible...If you are looking for a pre-game, check out this site: HistoryoftheSaints ...We didn't have a winning season or make it to a playoff game for 20 years, we didn't win a playoff game for 33 years, didn't make it to the NFC championship for 39years , and now, in our 42 season, are finally going to the Superbowl....not to play the Katrina card, but honestly how could you be rooting for the Colts?

Epitome of New Orleans

2010-01-29T07:29:00.001-08:00

via Defend New Orleans Blog

New Orleans Reaction to Election

2010-01-28T07:54:00.001-08:00

Via the times pic

Thoughts on the iPad

2010-01-27T18:10:00.000-08:00

Now there is the iPad. I just realized, in the next ten years, I'm going to look at the size of the computers we have now in the same way that I look at the size of cell phones in the early 2000's. It will be gradual, and then, shocking. Kind of like getting fat. Or getting old. I guess they are the same phenomenon, really, the process of things around you changing faster than you are. It's the key to staying young: never getting stuck, keep up with the pace of the world. But the desire for youth is pulled by the desire to do something, to become someone. That seems to be the pressure these days, to make a decision, settle, dig in my heels and become something. Sometimes, I worry that if you spend too long choosing, you'll never become anything. That there will be a point when it will be too late.

The idea that I will run out of time doesn't bother me too much, because I know I'm very young. But even at my young age, things like the iPad, or I Love The 00's, or the fact that 1997 was 13 years ago, begin to awaken this fear. This is because I do believe there comes a time when you have spent so long not deciding what you are, you become someone that couldn't decide, and that's a static person as well, a commitment in itself. I'm realizing that sometimes when you make commitments, be they degrees, relationships, locations, you can still sustain flexibility and contribute to your growth. That even when you gain definitions you still have room for new contours. Personal growth is a way to maintain youth, because the feelings it gives you are identical to the way everyone feels as a child: That sense that the world was constantly filled with delights and surprises, or, in other words, the feeling that you could become someone new. But is not always fertilized by a constant wandering. Instead, one grows both by accepting commitments and living up to definitions and keeping an eye for continued positive change.

Narcissism Does Not Mean Self-Love

2010-01-27T12:38:00.000-08:00

There have been some recent studies on narcissism that a Scott Barry Kaufman outlines nicely in this post, and a blog on psychology today writes a 'field guide' to narcissism.

The dictionary definition of narcissism is: inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity. I think this definition is a confusion, and too often people confuse Narcissism with Self-Love. Kaufman summarizes the behaviors of a narcissist as follows: "Leadership/Authority, Self-Absorption/Self Admiration , Superiority/Arrogance, and Exploitativeness/Entitlement."

What's striking about these features is how under the right circumstances they could be positive traits, i.e., having good leadership skills, self-esteem, self-confidence and the ability to seek help from others. But these are not exactly the opposite of the behaviors above. The opposite would be Passivity/Lack of Control, Self-Hatred, Inferiority/Insecurity, Self-Pity. So what is the 'core' emotion that these two sides rest on?

I think the answer is self-love. These are questions I think about a lot, because it is something I really struggle with. Often, I want to be proud of something that I have done, but I have a voice in my head that says if I start feeling proud I will become a narcissist. Since I won't allow myself to feel proud or good about who I am, I start hating myself. After a while I realized this kind of thinking had kept me from caring about others, in the same way those with the classic narcissism described above are kept from caring about others. Because of this, I've come to view narcissism and self-hatred as two sides of the same spectrum, and both emotions that lead to similar negative external behaviors.

I think self-love is the healthy feeling that resides in the middle of those two negative poles. The desire for self-love can be answered by one rejecting oneself and classifying oneself as unlovable, or this desire can be fulfilled by deciding that one is worthy of love by external standards(whatever deemed important by the individual: beauty, intelligence, success, partners with status). The first leads to self-hatred and second leads to narcissism. It is a confusion of the term narcissism and self-love to say that narcissistic people love themselves, because I don't think that they do in an honest way. I think to do this, you have to both fully realize the enormity of your flaws and find a way to love yourself for them without trying to will them away by living up to external standards.

I can't honestly say that I have successfully found a way to love myself in the ideal way I describe. But I think I have gotten a little closer by telling myself to "cut yourself a break, everyone has flaws but you are still lovable". I find this ironic because it is also the advice I would give to narcissists, although perhaps as "cut yourself a break, everyone has flaws but you are still lovable."

Links of the Week

2010-01-22T09:44:00.000-08:00

Here's a weekly round up...Anya Kamenetz's new book is coming out in April! Here's a preview of the cover....And for some preview of the content, check out this brain picking's post...New York Times is manning up and gonna charge for content: my guess is, it's gonna work out fine...Ken Wilber gives a really interesting talk about integrated art, I loved it!...On LessWrong, a brave soul admits to being a theist, rationality ensues, pretty interesting...Chaos on the quantum level is explored...the fashion industry demonstrates once again how deeply fucked up they are...Really pissed about the supreme court decision? Do something bout it!...Could someone PLEASE tell me why 100,000 people watch these people EVERY SINGLE DAY? They're so boring, it's kind of mindblowing...and perhaps most importantly: GEAUX SAINTS!

Louis Kahn: Visionary

2010-01-22T07:21:00.000-08:00

I recently watched this documentary about the life of Louis Kahn, filmed by one of his children, Nathaniel. At Yale, I was in the midst of some of Kahn's most beautiful buildings, and had a friend at Exeter who showed me his library when I was a freshman.

Louis Kahn had three families, one child in each one. So one wife, and two mistresses. When his two mistresses got pregnant, he did very little to support them. In the movie, both women state that this surprised them, that they expected Mr. Kahn to do something, like leave his wife or acknowledge his children once they got pregnant. But he didn't. And yet, on the flim, both women appear to still be in love with Mr. Kahn, and harbor little if any bitterness towards him. His first mistress, Anne Tyng, actually says she believes all of Kahn's children and loves are part of a large family.

Throughout the film, almost everyone that Nathaniel interviews tells him what a spiritual and visionary man Louis Kahn was. It's times like these that I wish it was traditional to speak only honestly of the dead, but it's repeated so many times it seems it must be true. The most heart wrenching moment comes in the end, when Nathaniel visits the Jatiyo Sangshad Bhaban, and is told, in so many words, that his father brought democracy to Bangladesh.

On paper, Kahn's personal life seems like a despicable sham. Neither of the women he had affairs with ever remarried, and they both live alone. And yet on screen, they at least appear content. They seem to love him and be satisfied with the relationship they had with him. I certainly believe that social standards for what an individual should do in the archetypal relationships: mother, father, wife, husband, child, are extremely confining and inadequate to describe the full range of love relationships that are possible between human beings. The standards don't allow for the infinite possibilities of connection in human interaction. Perhaps Louis Kahn, and other visionaries who led seemingly horrendous personal lives were just living their personal lives with the way the lived their working life: bravely and boldly bucking societal pressures and to fully live in their idealized world.

I'm not saying that everything Louis Kahn did in his personal life was greatness. Rather, I'm suggesting that it's easy to immediately discount the relationships visionaries engaged in as incongruous with their output as creators, when really it could be our own social standards that limit our understanding of his relationships. What if societal conventions about love relationships were loosened and relaxed, and love was defined not by sexual commitment but by deep and honest connection over intellectual and spiritual interest? What would we think about Louis Kahn's life then?

The Internet is Creating a Collective Brain

2010-01-20T19:33:00.000-08:00

This should maybe be filed in the 'duh' category, but it never ceases to amaze me how internet is quite literally constructing a communal brain. Just by logging on, you tap into a constantly regenerating conglomeration of thought that is, at every turn, urging you to type your thought in. Blogs, facebooks, twitters, myspaces, away messages on gchat...all tools you can use to put your thought into the huge thought space that is the internet. Before I log in, I'm thinking about one thing, by the time I get off, the thoughts of maybe one hundred others have flown in and out of my head.

This brain is becoming increasingly immediate, as per Google's latest: Real Time Search (go adam!>). Now when you google something, you can see what people are saying about that thing at that very moment--including individual twitters! And let's not forget about Google Wave, which will even further facilitate this collective nature of internet. But there are tons of other examples, The Hype Machine for music, Wikipedia of course for information, huge filter blogs like Huffington Post and Real Clear Politics for news.

I'm pretty certain it's going to be a while before we really get a handle on what all of this means for people's individual brains, and I think I'm gonna try to keep an eye on this idea to see what other stuff pops up about it (privacy, pervasiveness, uniformity all come to mind). But to start, one thing I think is interesting is that the center of this brain is a search engine. That the start of every journey onto our collective brain begins with the question, what are you looking for? Or, to put it another way, what do you want to experience?

Is that how you start your morning, in your individual brain? By asking, out of the millions of things that I could possibly experience today, which do I want to, what am I looking for? For me, the answer is no, but I wonder why. If you can buy into this internet-as-brain metaphor, why don't individual brain experiences start the same way?

Jake: The Pussy Bachelor

2010-01-19T18:27:00.000-08:00

I've been watching the Bachelor since I was in 10th grade. This could be a significant factor in my current single status, but that is a different post. I didn't see every season--but I've probably watched about half. And I think something really awesome has happened: they've picked a decently intelligent, sensitive, and decidedly feminine guy to be the bachelor.

To understand the significance of this, it's important to look back at the progression of bachelors. When the Bachelor started, one requirement was that the bachelor be rich and/or famous. They've had a NFL football player, Andrew Firestone of the Firestone tire fortune (HUGE lol), Charlie O'Connell (Jerry's older brother), and the infamous Dr. Stork. But as time went on, the Bachelor became a little more...normal. The emphasis was taken off of their careers and muscles and onto their cuddly personalities. There was Andy Baldwin, the naval officer, followed by Brad Womack, a restaurant owner. And then how could we forget Jason--a lovable real estate agent? Slowly and surely, the bachelors have become less the rich, stacked and famous and more like the average Joe. Now, we have Jake, an airplane pilot (everyone knows they don't get paid like they used to...) who was made famous on the Bachelorette because he was so...Nice. After being booted by Jillian, he whined, tears in his eyes, that "Nice guys finish last". In fact, he was probably the most cuddly, and almost downright pitiful contestants they've ever had on the show. And then he became THE BACHELOR!

A lot of people get up in arms about the amount of "reality" that is in the bachelor. I think it's interesting just to accept that ABC is constructing the show out of thin air. This way, it could be taken as a somewhat accurate reflection of what people expect the 'ideal' relationship to be, or what the 'ideal' man should be. Afterall, ABC does all of it's reality tweaking for our benefit, right? They certainly, make every effort to pick bachelors that fulfill the their viewer's fantasies about what makes an appealing man.

So, in those terms, I think this girly version of the Bachelor that we have in Jake is really interesting. He's smarter than bachelors of the past--and from last night's episodes seems serious about not wanting to play games: he booted two girls, one for witholding her kisses as bait, the other for baiting him with tears and drama to get him to pay attention to her. Jake is no non-sense in choosing his mate, fitting into the stereotype of the role women play in the dating market. And he is significantly more afraid, or at least willing to show his fear, than bachelors of the past: it took him twenty minutes to bungee jump, his hands shaking and clutching his date as strong as she was clutching him. All of this adds up to the girliest ideal man in Bachelor history--I love him!

May I Root Against the Saints?

2010-01-19T09:40:00.000-08:00

Jason Gay of the WSJ answers some important questions as the 3rd round of the NFL playoffs kicks off this weekend. Most important to me, of course, is May I Root Against the Saints?

His answer: May I root against the New Orleans Saints?

No, you may not. Rooting against the Saints is like rooting against Elin Nordegren. They're the Sentimental Team of the Century; if Dick Enberg were calling the NFC championship game, he'd need a trailer truck of Kleenex. Even if you forget everything that New Orleans endured during Hurricane Katrina—and how could you?—they're the Saints, the former Aints, one of the most hard-luck franchises in the history of hard luck. Not long ago, newborns came into the world in New Orleans hospitals with tiny grocery bags on their heads.

If the Saints win this weekend, we expect the Louisiana Superdome to levitate off the ground, stop at Parkway Bakery & Tavern for a roast beef po'boy and fly straight to Miami for the Super Bowl...

I couldn't agree more. By some strange and glorious miracle, or rather, Rodger Kamenetz's penchant for wanting to BE THERE when something incredibly amazing is happening, (this actually runs in the family, Anya calls it "having a bad case of the fomo's (fear of missing out)) I'm going to the Vikings-Saints game this weekend. I fully acknowledge that there are those in the world that are bigger Saints fans than me, and will do everything in my power to represent them wholeheartedly when I take my seat in the dome! Ahh I'm already getting stomach aches with the excitement!!

Links of the Week

2010-01-15T07:57:00.000-08:00

This week, in blogger world I found...a study that shows serious emotional disturbances in children post Katrina...shocker, but at least they are calling attention to it...Interesting equality legislation at work in Switzerland: the law forced the man to pay a percentage of his wealth as a fine...idealism at work! Weird, isn't it?...
Daily show had an amazing piece about nostalgia, really brilliant and also hilarious...For those still wondering if paper books are becoming obsolete..well they are!..First ever gay sex scene on daytime television; we have come so far...Interesting, if a bit long, talk by Rebecca Goldstein about her book "36 Arguments for the Existence of God"...andddd maybe the funniest set of videos I've ever seen about fatness.

Haiti Relief

2010-01-14T07:08:00.001-08:00

Every time a huge natural disaster has hit the planet since Katrina, I've done my best to ignore it. I can't even name them, because I didn't pay enough attention. I know there was a Tsunami, but I can't, in all honesty, tell you exactly what countries were effected without looking it up. It was just too overwhelming and painful for me to follow the news about the families torn apart, building collapsed, the phones that keep ringing with no answer, the pictures of children lost in the destruction. One would think that someone from New Orleans who experienced Katrina would have learned not to turn away, but I haven't. I was too wrapped up in my own experiences of disaster to try to do something about the next one.

I know how ridiculous it is to say that it's too painful for me to watch all the pain that these other people are going through. But it's a choice I make all the time, choosing to protect my own blissful ignorance over realizing the actual state of the world.

I know this post should end with something like, well, now I have changed, and I know I will pay close attention and do my best to do whatever I can whenever there is a catastrophic disaster anywhere in the world---and you should too! But I know that's not true. What I do know is, this modern world makes it dramatically easier to do something, just a little something, for other people. The US state department reported: "For those interesting in helping immediately, simply text "HAITI" to "90999" and a donation of $10 will be given automatically to the Red Cross to help with relief efforts, charged to your cell phone bill."

I think that's amazing. It's so easy and convenient! I know it's not enough, that I'm not doing all I possibly could, but luckily, helping those in need isn't an all or nothing game. Sometimes, it's okay to be selfish, to read the comics over the news and spend your money getting your nails done. But at other times, when disaster strikes, it can be best just do a little part. Because if there is one thing I did learn from Katrina, it's that there's nothing as comforting as knowing there are people that don't even know you that care, even a little bit, about you.

So go ahead, send a text message! Or click here to Like a Whisper to get a low down on all the other charities you could donate to.

To A Mayfly, We're a Mountain

2010-01-11T10:28:00.000-08:00

Powers of Ten is one of my all time favorite videos. Issues of scale have been interesting to me for a while now. The scale that all human life is on, both in terms of size and time, is so hilariously particular and random. This idea was really brought to light for me when I watched those time release videos from planet earth. Our assumptions about what makes something alive vs. inanimate is so clearly tied to the amount of time we spend on earth. If human life was as long as a mountain's life span, we would have a sense of the enormous amount of movement, growth and change a mountain makes. Then, I think, it would be harder for us to judge so clearly that a mountain was inanimate. And think of what a mayfly, lifespan of about 30 minutes, thinks of us, as we are sitting by the pond, taking an hour long nap in the sun. We're nothing but a mountain to him. Because our size and the amount of time we experience is so essential to us, it's easy to over look how much our scale effects the way we create certainties about the world outside of us.

Terry Eagleton on Atheism & Islamophobia

2010-01-08T10:37:00.000-08:00

A while ago when I wrote about atheism vs. theism, I left the question of why these atheists have had such a resurgence of late open. In this video, Terry Eagleton gives a rather interesting answer: 9/11. It's definitely the case with Dawkins, Hitchens and Dennett you could replace the word "religion" with "radical Islam" in all of their books and they would make substantially more sense. I've liked to think that the resurgence of this atheist movement has something to do with science's recognition of its internal subjectivity vs. objectivity crisis, but I have to admit Eagleton's idea makes a lot more sense. What do yall think?

How Not to Write about Africa

2010-01-06T20:16:00.000-08:00

Sociological Images, one of my favorite blogs, posted this video. They also posted an awesome TED talk by Chimamanda Adichie called "The Danger of the Single Story". Both point at the dangers of foreigners telling the stories of of people they do not know. I harbored a dream, and still do at times, of going to a country in Africa and really making a difference by telling their story the "right" way. It's a classic fantasy, and one that Yale cultivates almost religiously. In school, I was always feeling inadequate that I hadn't traveled to a third-world country and done even a modicum of volunteer work. I would often assuage these feelings by telling myself that most of the people that do volunteer are as patronizing as the video below makes them out to be. So I really felt quite vindicated when I watched this video. Thank god I never went over there and tried to help anyone, I thought. There was no need for me over there.

I know this vindication is messed up. The point of the video isn't to tell me, foreigners keep out. The real reason I never made it over there is because I'm scared and lazy. Going to Africa would mean I have to face all my ugly fantasies and illusions about what the continent is actually about. This video isn't trying to say, please leave Africa alone, but rather, requesting something a lot more difficult---approach the continent with an open mind and a willingness to embrace and understand its complexity.

New Years Choice

2009-12-30T11:50:00.000-08:00

When I started this blog in October, I had the idea that I would write for a month or two and then develop some kind of cohesive-ness, be it reoccurring themes or some overarching structure, to give the blog more traction. So, about a month ago, I decided I had enough ideas to boil things down and make this restructuring a reality. I started writing down my summary, hoping to reveal it in a day or two.

40 pages, littered with wikipedia entries, mantras and all capital pep talks later, I am giving up, for now, on trying to have an overall point. I'm too all over the place to try and simmer things down. And, like everything, this has applications to my life overall.

Every minute, we're choosing one specific thing over the infinite. Most of the time, our choices are basically unconscious. Sitting on the couch, not the chair. But even our conscious decisions, most of the time, seem on some level to be out of our control, be they comforts, habits, addictions, or just the myriad of things that we repeat enough times to then consider them a part of our personality, something definite and tangible that we can hold on to as ourselves. But all they are, all they ever are, are choices.

Choices are unbearable to me. Whenever I feel conscious of a decision, it's like two halves of myself split, and I see these two people I could be in my mind's eye. And then, somehow, I'm suppose to pick the person I'm suppose to be? I think the hardest choices are the ones that are the contours of our contradictions, that force us to come to terms with the parts of ourselves that are more easily made separate. As soon as I begin to lean towards someone, the other side of the choice pulls me back, reminding me of these parts of myself I'm cutting off.

This unbearable weight of choice almost always leaves me static. But I think my biggest confusion is that this stasis, too, is a choice. Time doesn't allow us the luxury of decision making, every moment is us making our decision. I wish I knew right now what this blog was meant to be about. I wish I had some definite way to sum it all up, but right now that's too hard. Instead, all I have is the choice to write at all, and the resolve to do it. Even when choices seem impossible, the choice between action or inaction is simple. Not to say it's easy. It's always easier to do nothing, but I at least know that at the end of the day, I want to be someone who chose something. Here's the first post in honor of that choice, of the new year. And to my prayer that everyone can chose that something they've been putting off---no matter how long!

Married Sex--Overcoming Bias

2009-12-07T14:26:00.001-08:00

This is an answer to a blog post that got me very heated this morning. If you click that link you can see the whole discussion I got into with him. Sorry I have been lagging in blog posts--I'm developing a new construction/structure for my blog, which should be rolling out by the end of the week!

I have just been lurking at this blog for about 3 months now, and am truly shocked by this article. It SO poorly argued and presented, it strikes one as a complete joke. Overcoming Bias? Are you kidding me? And are you serious with saying “people express strikingly little sympathy for sex-starved men.”? Basically, as I understand it, Robin is trying to argue that the reason most marriages are sexless is because women withhold sex in order to gain power over men. He argues this by stating that women are “allowed to be confused” about sex, but this really just masks the fact that they withhold sex to gain power over men in marriage.

“This complexity allows women to be honestly confused about what they want, but it can also hide motivated differences between what women say or think they want, and what really drives their choices.
THUS: For example, reduced sex might come from wives respecting husbands less than before, from seeing overly willing wives as lower in status, or from withholding sex to gain bargaining power on other issues.”

He then takes selected comments from Weil’s deeply nuanced story and extremely long chronicle of marriage improvement to demonstrate the power dynamic he outlines. I have read this entire article, and his interpretation of their overall dynamic is strained at best, completely irresponsible at worst.

I’ll start my critique of this argument with it’s first premise—women are ‘confused’ about sex, but this is just a cover for the fact that they use sex to gain power in relationships. Is it possible that women are “confused” about what they want when it comes to sex because they are told by their culture from a very young age that they are not to desire sex? When sex is constantly being forced upon them as their only value and worth in society, their only bargaining chip, instead of an act that will bring them pleasure or strengthen their love relationships? Models for girls who desire to have a healthy sexual relationship are basically non existent.

It is a huge taboo in our culture to allow any images of women pleasuring themselves, while boys and men masturbate constantly and without much societal rebuke. Only women who are exceptionally beautiful engage in the sex they want in our television shows, movies, magazines and novels, while average and even ugly men (RE:Knocked Up) engage in all kinds of sexual escapades without anyone batting an eye.

Could this possibly be contributing to the fact that most women are not sexually satisfied–that upwards of 10% of women report never experiencing an orgasm, and anywhere from 33%-50% have trouble experiencing one when they want to? Are you really going to say “people express strikingly little sympathy for sex-starved men.“? Do you have any clue how ridiculous that sounds? You can masturbate for god sake! A lot of women can’t even find this sort of pleasure on their own, let alone with a partner. Are you really still buying into the idea that these 50% of women don’t have orgasms when they want to because they physically can’t? How rational does that sound, could there be any biases involved in that?

Sure, there are biological differences between men and women’s sexual desire. But these biological differences do not need to be “recognized” as Eric puts it. Eric’s insistence that “For example, that it will never work, speaking in general, for women to be chasers and be sexually pressing/forward, its just not sexy for people on average. And that men have to be able to stand up to and deal with other people very assertively, and be self-confident, in order to be attractive, whereas this is significantly less true for women,” as if this is some forgone biological conclusion, is so utterly ridiculous. It is just one man’s insecure hope, as he feels intimidated by women who are willing to take a stand and say what they want when the want it. Why don’t we try to increase women’s sexual education and make it okay for women to want and enjoy sex from a young age? Perhaps then men can stop feeling insecure about this and instead understand the pleasures of being chased and captured, as women have for many years now. Sure, there are traditional tropes and reasons that they existed. But if the gay/transgender/bi movement has had any effect on culture in general, it has been to soften the stark contours of what it means to be a MAN or a WOMAN and instead blur the lines, increasing equality for both.

I’m very young–22. I know that I am idealistic and extremely naive when it comes to the amorphous pending blob that is marriage. But I don’t see how ensuring men get the amount of sex they want when they want is even a slightly interesting or enlightening way to approach the myriad of issues that surround gender, sex and marriage in 2009.

fMRI Evidence Used in Murder Sentencing : ScienceInsider

2009-11-29T17:21:00.000-08:00

fMRI Evidence Used in Murder Sentencing : ScienceInsider

by Greg Miller

For what may be the first time, fMRI scans of brain activity have been used as evidence in the sentencing phase of a murder trial. Defense lawyers for an Illinois man convicted of raping and killing a 10-year-old girl used the scans to argue that their client should be spared the death penalty because he has a brain disorder.

The defendant, Brian Dugan, pleaded guilty in July to killing Jeanine Nicarico after kidnapping her from her home in 1983. (Prior to that, the Nicarico case had taken more turns than a hangman's knot, detailed in a 1998 book Victims of Justice). Dugan was already serving life sentences for two other murders, but prosecutors sought the death penalty for Nicarico's murder.

"Nobody thought we had any chance at all going in," says Steve Greenberg, the lead attorney for the defense. But the defense tried an unusual strategy: They argued that Dugan was born with a mental illness—psychopathy—that should be considered a mitigating factor because it impaired his ability to control his behavior. Dugan exhibits the antisocial behavior, inpulsivity, lack of remorse, and other characteristics of psychopathy in spades, says Kent Kiehl, a neuroscientist at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, and the Mind Research Network, who served as an expert witness for the defense. Dugan scored 37 out of 40 points on the standard diagnostic checklist for psychopathy, putting him in the 99.5th percentile, Kiehl says.

Kiehl conducts research on psychopathy in New Mexico state prisons in which he and colleagues collect life histories, anatomical brain scans, and fMRI scans of brain activity as inmates perform various tasks, including tests of moral reasoning. Using scanners at Northwestern University, Kiehl ran Dugan through a similar battery of tests. Kiehl testified that Dugan exhibited abnormalities similar to those he and others have reported in other psychopaths. Kiehl says he was careful not to stretch beyond what the data show. He didn't claim, for example, that the brain scans prove that Dugan committed his crimes as a result of a brain abnormality. "It's just one piece of evidence that his brain is different," he says.

Jonathan Brodie, a psychiatrist at New York University testified for the prosecution. "I said the scans are of wonderful technical quality, but so what? They're not relevant here," Brodie says. "Using an fMRI scan done in September of 2009 … to indicate a thought process that was going on in 1983 could hardly be more silly."

After 5 hours of deliberation the jury told the judge on 10 November that they'd come to a decision. But before the sentence could be read, the jury asked for more time and the judge sequestered them overnight. The next day they returned with a death sentence for Dugan. According to media reports and interviews with defense attorneys afterwards, the jury initially planned to sentence Dugan to life in prison, with at least one juror holding out against the death penalty, which requires a unanimous vote. The last minute change is highly irregular, says Greenberg, who is planning an appeal.

Although evidence of anatomical abnormalities in the brain has been introduced previously in the sentencing phase of murder cases, and PET scans have been used to show abnormalities in brain metabolism consistent with mental illness, the Dugan case may be a first for fMRI. "I don't know of any other cases where fMRI was used in that context," says Hank Greely, a professor at Stanford Law School and co-director of the MacArthur Foundation Law and Neuroscience Project. Greely notes that the standards for admitting evidence in sentencing hearings are less stringent than those for evidence used to establish a defendant's innocence or guilt. "The penalty phase of a capital case … is a special situation where the law bends over backwards to allow the convicted man to introduce just about any mitigating evidence."

It's hard to know what effect the fMRI scans in particular had on the jury in the Dugan case, but Greenberg says the fact that they deliberated for a total of more than 10 hours shows that it was influential. "This guy was guilty of raping and killing little girls," Greenberg says. "Without the brain imaging stuff the jury would have been back in an hour."

THIS JUST IN: Media is Changing

2009-11-17T13:21:00.001-08:00

I know, this is a gimmick...

But it's bangin'

Continuing on the Free Will/Science, from Dana Foundation Blog

2009-11-17T08:59:00.001-08:00

November 09, 2009
Genes and criminals: Italian court makes controversial ruling

“Don’t blame me—it was my genes’ fault.” Could this be the plea of future criminals? In Italy, the case of a man who confessed to murder in 2007 may set a precedent.

It’s not that unusual that an Italian court gave Abdelmalek Bayout three years less than it otherwise would have because his lawyer argued Bayout was mentally ill at the time of the crime. What is unprecedented, though, is that at an appeal hearing in September the judge removed an additional year from the defendant’s sentence based on genetic tests. The judge believed Bayout’s genes made him “particularly aggressive in stressful situations,” basing his decision on the tests that revealed Bayout to have low levels of MAOA, a trait which has been linked to criminal behavior.

It was the first time in a European court that behavioral genetics has affected a sentence. In the United States, this type of defense has been used more than 200 times in the past five years and in rare cases has influenced sentencing.

“There’s increasing evidence that some genes together with a particular environmental insult may predispose people to certain behavior,” Pietro Pietrini, a molecular neuroscientist at Italy’s University of Pisa and one of the researchers investigating Bayout’s genetic makeup, said in a Nature news article.

Many people argue that this is true for anyone. It’s certainly a worthwhile question: Isn’t anyone who commits murder at least a little bit mentally ill? While this particular criminal’s sentence was reduced, others have argued that courts could rule the other way—if the person’s genes are “bad,” perhaps the sentencing should be stricter.

Many researchers contacted by Nature also questioned the court’s decisions. Giuseppe Novelli, a forensic scientist and geneticist, said that tests for single genes are “useless.” The judge may not have considered some additional relevant factors when analyzing the results, according to geneticist Terrie Moffitt.

It’s an interesting debate and likely one with too many factors to be settled any time soon.

—Andrew Kahn

Dear Zachary: a letter to a son about his father

2009-11-17T08:15:00.000-08:00

This is a documentary I watched a few weeks ago. I don't know if a movie has ever made me feel so deeply, but I don't want to give too much away, since it has one of the most gut wrenching twists I've ever experienced.

One of the biggest issues that the documentary brings up is the insanity of bureaucracy. On one hand, having a standardized way of doing business or government is essential to allowing for regulation and equality standards. But on the other hand, I think it becomes too easy for officials to hide behind rules and protocol, and miss out on what's really going on around them. In any case, the documentary is great, and it's free on netflix so check it out!

Dancing

2009-11-12T07:19:00.000-08:00

When you are dancing and you start to get really into it and you close your eyes do you ever think maybe there are all these people staring at you, thinking about how great of a dancer you are? But then when you open your eyes, all ready to make eye contact with all your admirers, and you look around and realize that everyone else has their eyes closed?

Maybe its just me.

Peter Russell--Watch this Video!!

2009-11-11T09:11:00.001-08:00

I admit that this guy may first appear to be of the "woo-woo" category, and yet I constantly find myself, since I first watched this video last January, coming back to his ideas. I'm embedding the short version (10 minutes) to wet your tongues, and then the full one, if you have the time. Basically, he starts with trying to solve the "hard problem" of consciousness, or how it comes to happen that 'unconscious' matter like the atoms we are made up of eventually comes to have consciousness. Through this explanation, he explains how light, and it's manipulation of time and space, could be the key to understanding our own consciousness.

Short Version

Long Version

Let me know what you think!

Free Will and Science

2009-11-05T15:48:00.000-08:00

I just returned from a talk by Brian Knutson, who is an assistant professor at Stanford University doing fMRI investigations into decision making. Through brain scans, Dr. Knutson has been able to pinpoint portions of the brain that are activated before we make certain decisions. These are the first steps to being able to predict individual choices.

And which decisions, you might wonder is Dr. Knutson studying? Which essential decision making process is he doing his best to flesh out? You guessed it: the decisions we make when we...spend money. The experiments he presented were based in trying to figure out when someone is going to buy something or not, or when they are going to make risky investment decisions. A majority of neuroscience research into decision making, in fact, has been focused on economic choices of the individual, as you can find here. I'm not going to speculate on why, when it comes to the vast array of decisions human beings make on a day to day basis neuroscientists have been most engaged with how people make economic decisions, but so it is.

But anyway, what it does bring to the forefront is something that has been looming in neuroscience, and science more generally, for a while now. Basically, what has always been an implicit project of science, figuring out specific causes of events so that they can predicted in the future, has now become an explicit project of neuroscience, and our conception of free will hangs in the balance.

Scientists disagree widely about when or how or even if these discoveries will be made. But to me, the point is that thousands of scientists in our country are engaged in the project of making it happen right now. Even if they are only mildly successful, our current notions of free will and moral responsibility will be fiercely challenged. If scientists are looking for ways that they can use your neurological and genetic information to predict events and behavior that you will experience, where does your free will lie? This is hardly a new question posed by science, but I think it is becoming more urgent that we think long and hard about how to address it. This way, if the data arrives, we will know how to interpret and communicate it long before we are actually presented with it.

Groups like the law & neuroscience project are already starting to deal with these issues as they come to the forefront in legal matters. But this is not enough to address the effects this information will have on average individuals' conception of themselves. How can we experience ourselves if we come to know all the reasons we will do the things we do? Sometimes, I think that there is no way to conceive of there not being free will, and that's enough to keep the concept intact. But at other moments, when I concentrate really hard, I can imagine reliable information about what decisions I'm going to make or experiences I'm going to have could be at the same time freeing and extremely limiting.

This is both exciting and scary to me. Could we be on the edge of a new paradigm, a whole new way of looking at the universe and ourselves? It would be exhilarating---but I have no answers, only questions. And the hope that we can get more smart people to really think about this question.

Don't Thank Me, Just Apologize for Not Thanking Me

2009-11-04T14:50:00.001-08:00

Lil Wayne just came out with a new mixtape, No Ceilings, I recommend going to DatPiff.com and downloading it and all of his tapes if you don't have em already...so he made the video below to promote it. It's pretty great, David already pointed out some of the best lines from 'run this town' "im colder than B-R,add another 3 R’s,watch me like D-V-D, V-C-R,pump to your chest I aint talkin CPR,riding this track like a muthafucking street car,New Orleans coroner,his name is Frank Minyard, fuck with me wrong, you’ll be waking up in his yard"

I admit it can be slow at times...but I am so in love with him it doesn't really matter. If you share this infatuation just press play and prepare to be charmed. I just think he's so sweet all the time. Only 41 days till Rebirth comes out! And he says it's a double! I'm psyched.

Any one have any ideas?

2009-11-03T07:14:00.000-08:00

Need funding? I found this website the other day and I just love it:

Kickstarter.com

Basically, if you have an idea of a project you want to do (usually an artistic project), then you post it on this website and ask for people to fund it through pledges (can be large or small). The 'kicker' is, unless you raise all the money you need through pledges, you don't get money at all. This encourages people to pledge a little more liberally, and makes sure that anything you pledge money to gets accomplished. I love the concept, perhaps most especially because in my future imagination of the world everyone will work together to do everything, and it will all be run through the internet. Plus, everyone wins--you either get your awesome idea funded or get to spend that cigarette money on allowing someone to create something awesome!

Atheism vs. Theism does not equal Science vs. Religion

2009-11-02T11:54:00.000-08:00

Atheists have begun a new ad campaign to inform other atheists that there are many atheists in the country---and that their numbers are growing! Rational humanism, naturalism, the brights, United Coalition of Reason, are just a few examples of the groups these atheists have developed.

The stated or understated message of these groups is this: a naturalist, or rational world view is what makes sense, and as more and more people come to their senses, belief in God will end. In a lot of ways, I think this movement is a good thing. Religious beliefs that cause harm to other individuals, like homophobia, should be ferociously attacked and I’m glad people are taking them head on.

But the fight against religious beliefs that lead to intolerance, violence, and pain is not the same fight as a debate over God’s existence. If atheists honestly want to engage in a debate, they must argue against theism, not religion in general. Religion is an organization of people that share a belief in a specific brand of theism, just as “the brights” are an organization of people that share a belief in a specific brand of atheism. To criticize the actions of “the brights” is not a valid argument against belief in atheism generally, and the same goes in reverse.

Atheists who claim it is “rational” to be atheists have lost track of themselves. I can understand this confusion. For, as science has progressed, it has disproven many of the most sacred teachings of various religions. The sense of 'disprove' here means that the teachings have been shown to NOT be rational fact. This has served to be a red herring for those involved in the atheism vs. theism debate, as it leads to such “rational conclusions” as “the theory of evolution is a rational fact, thus there is no God.”

Atheists are engaging in a belief, not a rational conclusion. They are choosing to believe that the reality that we experience and come to understand through the scientific method, or ‘empirical reality’ as Kant called it, is the ONLY truth or reality. For atheists, there is no knowledge, truth, or reality beyond what humans can know through reason.

Theism, then, is the belief that there is knowledge beyond what humans can possibly know. We can call this knowledge, or reality, or truth, God. It is not, however, necessarily the claim that we know, in the same way we ‘know’ scientific fact, something about this knowledge. Many theists do think they ‘know’ something about God in the same way that they ‘know’ the sky is blue. But in my mind, this God is by definition something that we cannot know. Yet, once one engages in the belief of this God’s existence, there are some things that can be shown to follow logically. And this is the stuff of religion. The important point is that there is nothing inherent in theism that is counter to science.

We can imagine that eventually a vast majority of people in the world will accept that the facts derived through the scientific method are the most objective, and thus truthful way that humans can understand the world. But this will not end the debate of theism vs. atheism. The question is not whether the scientific method can create an objective viewpoint through which universal human truths can be derived. Rather, it is whether these truths are truly ‘reality’, or the ultimate truths about the world.

This debate is one that rests on faith. There is no logical path that will lead you one way or the other. This is the essential fact that I believe atheists need to do a better job of understanding and promoting. Perhaps through this, the debate can begin to transcend its current stalemate and investigate the fascinating questions about truth and reality that are constantly present in our lives.

Sweatshoppe, the Landing

2009-10-28T08:22:00.000-07:00

This is an amazing video Jordan showed me, some people at Bennington made it:

SWEATSHOPPE, The Landing from SWEATSHOPPE on Vimeo.

I was talking to someone once about how the direction of art is to no longer have division between mediums or types, that the lines between music, visual art, dance, drama, writing will all be blurred. At the time, I was pretty defensive of every art staying independent, but I am thinking it's kind of futile now, with Vook, and now making paint video. I can't say I love Vook, but stuff like this is just so amazing, how could I resist??

Lesbian Burlesque and Calling Fat People Fat

2009-10-27T07:29:00.000-07:00

2 or 3 years ago, I ended up in Ray-Ray's Boom Boom room on Frenchmen street in New Orleans, Abita in hand watching a lesbian burlesque show. It wasn't the most finely polished show I'd ever seen; more than one number ended with something akin to a Can-Can line with a Karaoke element. There was this one girl that was amazing though. She came out in this long red sequined evening gown, white gloves, fishnet stockings, a floor length fur coat---and a ape mask. Damn, she was sexy. Slow and careful, working her pearls and playing with this mirror as if she was the daintiest little thing you'd ever seen. When she finally took the mask off the crowd went crazy. I remember thinking how beautiful she was.

Here's the kicker though: this lady was fat. Not obese or anything, but bigger than average. Certainly bigger than me, and I had never even seen anyone my size displayed as a sex symbol before. I'm hardly fat myself, at 5'4'' and 140 pounds, but no one would call me skinny either. Because of this, like almost every other girl I know my size or bigger, I have wasted hours and hours of my life concerned about my size. I spend entire afternoons just comparing my thighs to other girl's thighs, my mood following accordingly. Any one whose thighs are smaller than mine induce self hatred, same size, a sense of relief, larger? Victory.

I am not sure how best to support the effort of increasing the number of positive images in the media for women of all sizes. But, I have stopped so harshly judging myself and others based on size. I do this by, as you may have noticed above, attempting to use fat and chubby as if their meaning has no intrinsic value. I think instead that the words fat and chubby should be neutral modifiers.

I do this in two ways. First, I have to change the concepts in my own mind. When I judge someone to be fat, I try to take the time to remember this is the same thing as recognizing that they are wearing a pink shirt, and doesn't automatically exclude them from the judgment that they are beautiful. This doesn't always work, but I find it helps when I let myself use the term fat in my own mind. When I look at someone and think, "Ooo, that girl is fat!" instead of just avoiding the thought, as it sometimes seems easier to do, I feel like a bitch. This guilt usually motivates me to rethink things, and remind myself of what I actually think. Using the word increases my mindfulness and helps me tame the beast.

The second way I try to reclaim the words is using them neutrally in speech. This is a lot harder, but it can work, in sentences like "she was so gorgeous, bright blue eyes, fat legs, toned arms, curly blonde hair...". Usually when I pull this, though, people still call me out for being mean. But describing a person as fat should be just as mean as saying they have blue eyes. The term 'fat' only means larger than average--any part of it that is 'mean' is your mind adding a value judgment that has been forced upon you by society. This is a value judgment I think people should actively fight against, not passively accept. There are too many women suffering from this concept in the world--thousands literally starving, millions wasting precious hours because they are convinced being fat means something!

I understand that this idea hasn't really caught on, and I admit that I have yet to go around to fat people and tell them "Hey you're fat, but don't worry it's no big deal to me, it's just neutral". But I am convinced that using euphemisms for being fat just gives in to the idea that being fat is something intrinsically bad, instead of something that some people just are, the same way some people just are skinny. In my ideal world, and hopefully someday, saying your fat will be as mean as saying you are a brunette. And I don't know how else to make that ideal a reality besides doing it myself and encouraging others to do the same.

Unpacking Packaging

2009-10-26T19:50:00.000-07:00

I am going to briefly unpack the issue of packaging:

Most of the time, there is way too much packaging. This was pointed out to me today in the office, when Leah showed us a huge box, with TWO layers of bags of air, that was buffering...wait for it...a three-ring binder! Just one. One three-ring binder. It was ridiculous.

So I thought to myself, there should be a website, similar to thisiswhyyourfat.com, that just posts ridiculous packaging. It could be called ThisIsWhytheEarthIsSad.com or ThisIsWhereYourFavoriteTreeWent.com

Luckily, we live in the age of the internet. This exact website does exist. It's called...

Overpackaging.com

Check it! It's sweet. Previews below.

Found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tunruh/sets/72157603719036323/

All this crazy packaging below

For this:

Insanity right?? Found :http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/05/over-packaging-overkill-photos.php

Purpose of Blog

2009-10-26T19:39:00.000-07:00

Hello! This blog is for ideas. I would like to put some ideas in the world, and I think my friends might as well. So here's a place they can go. I don't know a lot about computers or how to make the blog look fancy, but hopefully I'll learn along the way.