I have a question especially for the poets of the fluorosphere, but also for everyone else. I'm looking for poets - or prose writers, I suppose, but short prose, not novels - who deal well with grief and learning to accept it as part of your life. Not in a cheesy seven-stages sort of way; one writer who came to mind was Chris Clarke of Creek Running North, after Zeke died last year - now if I could find a *poet* with that kind of writing power, I'd be set. Do you have poems that come to mind on this theme, or writers who you think handle it particularly well?
It doesn't have to be poetry of any particular kind; it's for a song cycle, so one piece I'm already using is a Lorca poem, and anything else that seems immediately adaptable to music would be great, but even if it doesn't jump up and shout "lyrics" it could be good inspiration.
apologies for invoking Godwin; I can't figure out a way to say this that doesn't.
Does anyone remember a piece on NPR maybe a month ago, about photographs found (I think they were sent to the Smithsonian? or a museum?) of SS officers in their free time - Goebbels just hangin' out with his men - and rank and file officers out picking blueberries with their girlfriends, before they went back to a normal day at the office torturing and killing "enemies" of the German state? The point is, it is us; these men and women weren't sociopaths or some foreign entities we can conveniently distance ourselves from by claiming they are inhuman. They are human beings in exactly the same way as volunteers for Amnesty International or the judges in the Truth and Reconciliation councils were. All of these capabilities are differences of degree, not of kind.
The question is, how do you encourage people to follow their compassion, rather than their fear?
CHip - no, the existence of butt rock doesn't negate Bach, or even Bacharach, but it does mean that, say, if people have been hearing a lot about Blur (I know that's a different kind of rock, i just hate them) and you mention you're in a Brit invasion band that maybe you should qualify, oh, we're in a melodic beatles-type brit invasion band rather than something else. To me Greg seemed to rather be rushing to identify himself with my analogical Blur at every opportunity. Yep, I'm personalizing there, you're quite right; his comments apparently rubbed you a different way. Anyway, I don't think this is going anywhere really; I do think that our (or I should say my; I don't know where you're from) country's recent behavior does mean Americans are going to be held to a higher standard of behavior on most fronts; it might not be fair, but it's true, and since I do feel a certain sense of collective guilt I have no problem with it. YMMV.
CHip, I think you are misunderstanding what I said (can't speak for Howard). Greg has stated explicitly that he thinks people are on average much more empathetic now than they were in (insert historical era now), and morally superior. He's also implied pretty strongly that he thinks of himself as being way high up there on the bell curve too. I don't think *most* people who supported the second Iraq war did so because of genuine naive desire to go in and fix other people's problems, or to make their lives exactly like ours, because we must be so much better in every way. But a certain segment did, and a certain segment let themselves be embarrassed into pretending they did. That kind of blind assumption of superiority - it really seems like a form of zealotry to me - is a giant fricking blidn spot. Do I think you personally felt the invasion was cool? I have no idea, I don't know you, but I'm guessing not - it's a little more personal vis a vis Greg because he brings himself into so strongly - but in either case, all I'm saying is, assuming you're better than everybody else is useless, or, when you're the government of a hyperpower (or I suppose the enablers of the government of the hyperpower), really really fucking dangerous.
greg But to say comparing our values to the values of the cultures of the past is historically irrelevant is, I think, to miss a useful application for history: to find out how we got to where we are today, and to look at how our worldviews, our values, our culture, has progressed.
for once you and i are in relative agreement. I get a little twitchy with the word "progressed" - it's not linear- but i think that horse got flayed and eaten a while back. I think the point is, if all you can think of when studying history is how awful all of those people must have been and how much better we are now, you're both deluding yourself as to the nature of humanity and human societies, and missing out on some real understanding. Those comparisons are at best superficial and at worst misleading.
Peter Erwin:
Part of the issue is that ADM seems to be arguing that we do not have that right, that it is never acceptable to judge past societies, no matter what effort you have put into understanding them first, no matter what other questions you are asking first or in addition.
Oh. I can't speak for hir, but I think since zhe said zhe agreed with me that maybe there was some argument-past-each-other there.
why should we in the here-and-now care if such factors are coming into play in our own time, if there's nothing intrinsically wrong with serfdom or slavery (other than our purely presentist/ethnocentric opinion that they're icky)?
I think you're arguing a point I didn't make there. Possibly also a point that ADM didn't make. Actually, I see a fairly notable lack of argument for the position that all things are OK all the time for anybody, cuz they're all just quaint local customs that we couldn't understand.
For the record, I'm all in favor of historians, politicians, and pundits with really well thought-out ethical positions. Just save your focus for when it's wanted, is all I ask.
I'm not trying to be a pest here, but why are the several of you so vociferously defending your right to judge any and all human beings according to whatever standards you see fit? Of course you have that right, but isn't it, especially historically speaking, a bit pointless? I feel like there are a lot more interesting questions to be asked than "was medieval serfdom morally repugnant" - for example, why did it come about? how did it interact with local political and sexual mores? what are the economic, political, or social common factors that have occurred in the various times when societies have gone from assuming slavery is not OK to assuming it is? how can we recognize whether and if those factors are coming into play in our own time?
I'm perfectly happy to grant the background assumption that slavery is wrong, but if you study any history at all and spend all your time thinking or talking about what utter turpitude was occurring, you're not going to get very far, or learn very much.
To me the only time that your personal mores are at all relevant is when it comes to determining your own actions - or by extension what you vote for or argue for online or in public. That is, historically, I think it's a waste of time to concentrate on judgment, and when it comes to current events one has to be careful, especially as an American, as I don't think any other country has made an ass of itself in recent politics quite so badly. I would take a small dose of moral relativism over the hubris of whatever minority of voters sincerely thought we could "fix" Iraq any day.
I can see some real obvious downsides to viewing the whole of human history as some kind of exercise in what it took to produce the awesomeness that is Us. It makes you complacent about your own "successes", blinds you to problems in your own society, and makes it extremely difficult to actually learn anything more substantial about past societies than a superficial analysis like "they were worse, I'm glad we're better." I mean, I think that kind of judgment makes it impossible to do any kind of academic historical work, and makes it really difficult to even do the kind of cherry-picking historical work I'm personally interested in - using the specific work of other movements and people to give me ideas as to how we can achieve, or not achieve, similar results.
So, are there actually good sides to historical moral absolutism? I'm seriously asking this question, even though it seems a little sarcastic. What is the usefulness of that kind of judgment?
Do any of the potterphiles here read Minisinoo's fanfic? She's an excellent writer who started doing HP fanfic mostly from the Cedric POV (if he had survived), and one major theme is how the barriers between the houses work to everyone's disadvantage. She has a very different tone than JKR does but since JKR's prose usage has always been my biggest beef with her, I actually like the writing better.
www.themedicinewheel.net
Avram, I'm curious. Do you really think a feminist movement or discussion should react with absolute equality to both men's and women's opinions or statements? It seems like that's the idea you're trying to get across, and I can see an argument for it, but I actually don't agree. In the same way that do-gooder white people have to be careful how they enter an (e.g.) Navajo reservation and try to fix what they think are the poor native's problems, or that we have to be careful how we send aid to African countries, I think men have an obligation to be careful how they enter and contribute to feminist discussions. I'm not saying they can't, but the burden is on them. It's not "fair", for some abstract value of everyone-is-identical fair, but the reality is that it is easy for the comments of the socially privileged group to be condescending or dominating. I feel about Greg's comments much the way I feel about the liberals who thought we could "fix" Iraq.
I also really resent that a useful and interesting conversation has been hijacked to discuss how we can make our opinions and experiences more palatable to a vocal minority of the men taking part.
I think it's also that our brains have a tendency to interpret visual patterns as things that we've seen before, rather than looking at the details, especially when you're scanning a crowd or seeing things peripherally. You already have a filter that says "person X" and it's quicker for your brain to see visual stimuli vaguely similar to that and categorize it as "person X" than to keep looking and eventually see it as something different. Did anyone else see "What the Bleep Do We Know?" It was obnoxiously wrong about quantum mechanics, and neuroscience too, but the basic idea of how we filter visual information wasn't wrong, just oversimplified and exaggerated.
Ok, before Greg got his defensiveness all over the conversation, I was actually enjoying the discussion even though I wasn't contributing a lot to it. Can we maybe do troll-tactic 101, ignore him, and get back to the thought-exchange? If anyone else wants a topic switch, I'd be interested to talk about invisible aspects of white privilege too. It's fun to be reminded of why I can't let myself get sunk into political apathy yet, and very energizing - and for that, thank you, everyone.
Wow, we're approaching feminist-troll bingo time!
http://viv.id.au/blog/?p=431
Greg, you have missed the point, over and over and over again. This Is Not About You. It's about ways in which people of all genders- predominantly male, but as discussed several times above, female too, and almost certainly intersexed, genderqueer, trans, and every other variation out there contribute to patriarchal privilege. About perhaps noticing how that sexism affects our lives - all of us - in constant, subtle, exhausting ways.
Jennyanydots, #853:
Do some women blame other women for getting raped, or being the victims of domestic violence – surely, yes (if she did something wrong, then it can’t happen to me…).
kouredios: Of course it is a learned attitude, all social attitudes are learned. Where do they learn it from, ah, good question! I wouldn't be so sure it can't come from other women: surely women as well as men can be the vectors for unhealthy thinking about gender?
I suspect that the worse the gender inequality in society is, the more women who are tempted to denigrate/ oppress other women that they see as being of a lower status or transgressing gender norms in some way, it's a 'clinging on to what power you can get' kind of thing...
In my experience this is precisely true. It's only anecdotal evidence, but when I was attacked it was in a uniquely cross-cultural environment and I got to be some kind of horrific guinea-pig as far as the reactions of female friends from the US, Canada, Europe, expat subcontinentals, and a couple of other southeast Asian countries. Their reactions mapped exactly to the status of women in their home countries. oh for a good old-fashioned consciousness-raising!
In TNH's formulation about prostitution, somewhere way back there, she said that until there are not women who are outside the social contract, their existence can always be used as a threat against the rest of us, either internally or externally. Being able to blame women who have been attacked is a comfort mechanism that I think women in a more tenuous situation need more, and exercise more strongly.
Have you all ever encountered the Male Privilege Checklist? it's certainly complementary to what you're making here -
http://colours.mahost.org/org/maleprivilege.html
A.J. Luxton #180 - Oh, I absolutely agree. That's what I meant when I said I sympathized with the Bruces (& maybe with William Wallace too) - I fall pretty hard on the public-domain copyleft side of the argument, and yet want to protect people from knowing that these friends they've had living in their head for years are doing bizarre and creeptastic things in other people's heads (because no matter how weird it is, that slash exists *somewhere*). I don't know where that line is. But I feel like it's actually more respectful to admit that that quandary might not be resolved in an ideal way for protective authors, than to tell said protective authors that they should feel differently.
Greg London, it comes across really strongly that you mean well in your posting but I think there's something basic you aren't getting. It's just not helpful to tell someone who says "I've had this viscerally invasive, damaging experience" something like "well maybe if you learn to think about it differently it wouldn't be so bad." All that does is deny the validity of their experience. I sympathize completely with, actually, both of the Bruces, and ethan; but it's different to say "jesus, that sucks; I don't know if we can work around it, but that really sucks", than to say "jesus, that sucks, but maybe you could just talk about it differently and then I wouldn't have to feel bad for you".
And just so it's clear: I am grinding my own axe here, but it's one that I suspect multiple people share. I am a rape survivor and I have been told these things by well-meaning and clueless people who make me want to vomit. So I feel like I know whereof I speak, and I suspect you don't, but I could be wrong - by all means correct me if I am.
Dan Layman-Kennedy, #138:
you fucking rock, sir. i hope that post doesn't get lost in the flurries.
One of my friends lives in a somewhat sylvan area of Nashville. They kept finding cat food and peanut butter missing from the pantry (upstairs) and, being technologically adept, set up a motion-sensitive video camera outside the pantry. They caught mama raccoon and her six babies (all six!), presumably coming in through the cat flap in the basement, trooping up the stairs together, and opening jars of peanut butter (although not closing them back up), or opening large Tupperware bins of kitty food. So yes, they do definitely use them as hands.
W/r/t domesticating them: It's a bad idea on a number of grounds, but I know someone who had a raccoon with rheumatoid arthritis, brought into a wildlife hospital as a baby and deemed unreleasable, that kept him at home and used him as an education animal throughout his life. With constant, attentive, affectionate care, he (mostly) liked his owner and would barely tolerate, or sometimes charge to attack, any unrecognized human. He was quite bribe-able with grapes, however.
They are affectionate and sweet as babies but tend to become highly aggressive when they hit puberty. I don't know whether neutering would help (though I doubt it would hurt). The females are somewhat less aggressive but still very difficult to socialize. This is as opposed to oppossums, which in my experience have been sweet-tempered, docile, and playful throughout their lives (I'm not kidding. they're adorable, and make very very loyal pets. Not a particularly long life span, but fun while they're around; much like a rat, but less spastic and somewhat less likely to fry themselves investigating inappropriate electrical objects.)
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