Archive for category society + culture

Date: October 30th, 2008
Cate: society + culture, things to think about

what is the worst thing that you have ever done?

Has anyone else read “the book of the skulls” by Robert Silverberg? towards the end, in order to attain immortality, four of the main characters are tasked with revealing to one another the worst thing they’ve done in their entire life, the secret shame that they’re haunted by.

So I’ve been thinking – what would I say, if I were in that situation? Right away, I can think of a few times in the past where I’ve been a complete asshole, to a somewhat uncharacteristic extent. If you know me, you might try to guess – but I doubt you’ll get it right. One time in particular, perhaps, that I completely regret. But I’m not sure that I’d call it my ‘secret shame’, or my cross that I’ve born for however many years. I’ve sort of made peace with it – not forgotten about it, exactly, but just accepted it as a mistake I made before I was as smart as I am now, and moved on.

Thinking about the things I’ve done that I regret brings up an interesting point: things that I’ve done that I don’t regret. It’s a little bit of sociopathy, in the ‘Dissocial personality disorder’ sense of the term – “Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social norms, rules, and obligations.” [wikipedia]. I mean, I’ve done some stuff that’s not only illegal, but ‘morally reprehensible’ according to the average person. But I don’t think it was wrong for me to do so, regret it, or even feel the need to stop myself from doing it in the future. Once again, if you know me you might be able to guess it, but I doubt you’ll hit on the one in particular i’m thinking of.

So if I’m in the situation that the main characters of “The Book of the Skulls” find themselves in, which do I confess? The choice that I regret making but am at peace with, or the choice that I don’t regret but most other people would find totally reprehensible?

Date: October 24th, 2008
Cate: society + culture, things to think about

kids these days

Everyone has heard “kids these days” and “when I was your age” – and chances are you’ve heard the concern over the differences between growing up in the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, et cetera. Sex is an easy subject to bring up – now, instead of sneaking peaks at someone else’s playboy centerfold, you can just pull up a brower and type ‘porn.com’ – boom, blowjobs and anal. That worries some people, obviously, and maybe another phrase “when you’ve got a kid you’ll understand” would serve to satisfy my question, but here it is nonetheless: are kids really worse off for all this media exposure?

Here’s the thing – biologically speaking, things don’t change much between a generation. The kids are the same humans that their parents were several decades prior, as far as mental capability and physical capacity go. So indignant adults might point out that they used to whisper when talking about kissing and girlfriends while in school, while their kids talk explicitly about oral sex over AIM and on MySpace. The implication there is that the latter is somehow worse, or more challenging then the former. But I don’t think that it’s the right way to think about things – previous generations didn’t grow up with readily accessible pornography, so they can’t accept the possibility that current generations can handle it. In fact, it implies that they don’t think that their younger selves could’ve handled it – when I would argue that they totally could’ve, and they shouldn’t sell themselves short.

What do you think? Are children that are used to graphic sexuality and violence somehow worse, or just different from their parents? Is it something to be concerned about, or is it just the generation gap?

Date: October 8th, 2008
Cate: society + culture, things to think about

what’s a human?

Note - this opinions in this post have been obsoleted by the ones in a newer post: “obligatory dead baby joke“

My aversion to murder (in the general “humans killing other humans regardless of context” sense of the word) is pretty familiar to most people who know me – and the other night I decided to try to think through the implications it posed for abortion, embryos, and stem-cell research.

I’m going to have to depart from the average liberal and say I can’t condone abortion or the destruction of embryos, whether research-related or otherwise.

We all know where babies come from – when a man and a women love each other very much, the man wants to be as close to the woman as possible, and the closest he can get is by laying on top of her, and putting his penis inside of her vagina. This feels very good, and eventually his penis releases sperm into the woman’s vagina (this feels really good for both of them) and later, the sperm swim up the woman’s fallopian tubes, in search of an egg to fertilize.

Up until the point that the two gametes merge, there’s no human life present. There are human cells, but they belong to the woman and man, and will eventually die off on their own, to be replaced by more. However, as soon as a sperm squeezes its way into the egg and the two halves of their DNA zip together, it’s a human, totally unique, with a future ahead of it. It doesn’t really look human, and it hasn’t even started to grow yet, but I can’t see it as anything but a person. A very small person. Not even a fetus yet. The longer we’re alive, the more our spectrum of available future paths narrows to a single point – that point is our death, the single event in our future that we cannot avoid. But at the moment of fertilization, that human’s entire life is undetermined. It could die before it even attaches to the wall of the uterus, it could be miscarried, it could die from complications during childbirth, afterwards, in a second, a day, a year, or even a century. It literally has its entire life ahead of it.

And there’s no way I would ever feel comfortable with taking that life away. It’s murder. You’re taking a life that’s just begun, and ensuring that it has no chance of continuing. That’s reprehensible.

Of course, accepting this involves accepting situations which make people incredible uncomfortable: rape is an often-quoted excuse to justify abortion. It’s hard for me to stick to my guns on this one, but I can’t help thinking of it this way: the child growing inside the victim doesn’t know anything about the circumstances of its conception. This tiny human doesn’t deserve death for the sins of its parent(s). Children whose parents are unable or unwilling to fulfill their responsibility as a parent (one of the few responsibilities I really think people inherent posses) should be taken care of by the state (in the “general governmental” sense of the word, not in the “geo-political boundary” sense) and given a fair chance at the American dream: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It’s hard to do all that when you’re dead.

All that said, I’m not sure I have the balls to recommend that my conclusions be made law. I think it’d be reasonable to implement them in a nation that had first developed adequate infrastructure to stand in for biological parents in child-rearing, in a nation where rape and incest were a rare occurance. I think we can do it – but I don’t think we’re there yet, so I’m not really ready to commit to any actual legal stuff about it yet. However, if anyone were ever to ask me about it, I know exactly what I think about it, and why.

Date: July 22nd, 2008
Cate: society + culture, things to think about

What would it take to stop believing?

If you seriously believe in something (specifically facts, not necessarily ideals), you’ve got to consider what it’d take to change your mind. Religion is a good one: Whether you’re an atheist or believer in the divine, what would it take to convince you that you’re wrong?

The question is sort of like a litmus-test for open-mindedness, in some respects – because if you say, “nothing could make me lose my faith in what I believe,” then you’re literally crazy.

As for myself, it’d be pretty easy to convince me that there is a god – if he were to pay me a visit. And I don’t mean in the “death by visitation of god” sense of the word – I mean just me and God, maybe me and Jesus, hanging out and talking over lunch. That might sound corny, but I’d love for that to happen. Facing mortality with no prospect of an afterlife is a pretty sucky situation… but I’d rather be bummed about having to die then delusional. And all it’d take to change that would be a visit.

What would it take for you? Do any of my religious-type-friends read this blog? What would it take to convince you that god doesn’t exist?

Date: June 27th, 2008
Cate: society + culture

Please don’t shoot me

In an average round of Counter-Strike I kill about a dozen people, maybe more if I’m doing well. When I was playing through F.E.A.R I would fill twenty or thirty clone-soldiers full of lead per sitting – similar counts apply for Metal Gear Solid, Half Life, Kill Zone, Black, and a handful of others. In the last six months, I’ve probably killed hundreds if not thousands – I have no idea how many I’ve sent to an early grave over my life time.

But you know what? Guns scare me. I don’t like looking at them, I don’t like holding them, I especially don’t like seeing them pointed at people. It could be that I’m scared of fast-moving projectiles in general – rubber bands stretched tight, bb-guns, airsoft guns, all of that stuff sort of freaks me out. I feel like I’m constantly flinching whenever I’m around things with the capability to shoot me – I’m just waiting for that projectile to hit me. I hate how heavy handguns feel, how little effort it takes to squeeze the trigger with your index finger. I can’t quite get over the suspicion that even with the safety on, I could get it to shoot if I just squeezed hard enough. I hate armed guards in airports and outside of banks, and I hate armed police officers.

Today, while I was waiting for the bus, I saw some cops taking down a guy – one officer had his handgun out and was holding it straight armed diagonally at the man’s feet, and as the man held his hands up and knelt on the sidewalk, another officer shouldered a big shotgun and pointed the muzzle right at him. That wasn’t a good thing for me to watch – I could imagine exactly what would happen if the cop pulled the trigger, if he had some perverse desire just to put a little pressure on it, just to see how hard he could press before it fired… and the guy’s head would explode. I’ve shot enough zombies and seen enough counter-terrorists though sniper scopes that I know what a headshot looks like – a burst of red, and the other guy is dead. Only this would be in real life, and the inside of his head would’ve splattered all over the brick wall and concrete.

I felt conflicted – like I wanted to quickly hide behind something bullet proof, where even a ricochet couldn’t find me, and at the same time I wanted to run over to the officers and yell, “Calm down! Put your guns away! Don’t screw things up!”

He was only a skinny guy, no shirt, just a ragged pair of pants, and you could tell he was scared. Of course he was scared – one finger twitch and his life was over. I hate guns.

Date: June 5th, 2008
Cate: society + culture

age of consent?

I might sound like a broken record here (playing the same thing over and over again, for those of you in the audience who have only heard of what a record is) but stupid shit like this wouldn’t happen if we didn’t have such stupid arbitrary laws concerning how old you have to be before you can consent to sexual activity:

In La Crosse, Wisconsin, a 17-year-old boy recently was charged with child pornography, sexual exploitation of a child and defamation for allegedly posting nude photos of his 16-year-old ex-girlfriend on his MySpace page. The girl had taken the pictures with her cell phone at her mother’s home and e-mailed them to the boyfriend, authorities said.

“They were pretty graphic,” said sheriff’s Sgt. Mark Yehle. “I think they just do it to impress their boyfriends. When he breaks up, he ..vents,’ in his words, by posting them. He apparently didn’t think there was anything wrong with it. He didn’t know it was illegal.”

Normally, getting back at your girlfriend by posting naked pictures of her on the internet is one of those mastercard ‘priceless’ moments – but if your girlfriend is 16, just two years younger then the age-of-consent, you are in deep shit, because you’ve ceased to be a jerk ex-boyfriend, and instead you’re a child pornographer who has sexually exploited a kid. What the fuck.

The images are complicating the work of investigators whose job is to find exploited children. Authorities trying to identify youngsters in naked photos are increasingly discovering that the teens themselves took the shots, said John Shehan, a director at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

See? The assumption that all photos or videos of nude underage people is a problem, isn’t it? How can they be exploited when they took the photo themselves? I mean, have you seen Chris Crocker naked? He’s got a picture of himself when he was 17 – if you poke around a little in google image search you’ll find it. He took it himself, and chose to distribute it over the internet – but legally, he didn’t have the ability to take the photo, or distribute it. How fucked up is that?

It’s insulting the level of irresponsibility our government assigns to people younger then 18. It’s total bullshit. My imaginary punk rock band ‘bullshit policy’ probably has a song called ‘your body is not your own’ or something. Seriously.

Date: June 4th, 2008
Cate: society + culture

please dont shoot me

In an average round of Counter-Strike I kill about a dozen people, maybe more if I’m doing well. When I was playing through F.E.A.R I would fill twenty or thirty clone-soldiers full of lead per sitting – similar counts apply for Metal Gear Solid, Half Life, Kill Zone, Black, and a handful of others. In the last six months, I’ve probably killed hundreds if not thousands – I have no idea how many I’ve sent to an early grave over my life time.

But you know what? Guns scare me. I don’t like looking at them, I don’t like holding them, I especially don’t like seeing them pointed at people. It could be that I’m scared of fast-moving projectiles in general – rubber bands stretched tight, bb-guns, airsoft guns, all of that stuff sort of freaks me out. I feel like I’m constantly flinching whenever I’m around things with the capability to shoot me – I’m just waiting for that projectile to hit me. I hate how heavy handguns feel, how little effort it takes to squeeze the trigger with your index finger. I can’t quite get over the suspicion that even with the safety on, I could get it to shoot if I just squeezed hard enough. I hate armed guards in airports and outside of banks, and I hate armed police officers.

Today, while I was waiting for the bus, I saw some cops taking down a guy – one officer had his handgun out and was holding it straight armed diagonally at the man’s feet, and as the man held his hands up and knelt on the sidewalk, another officer shouldered a big shotgun and pointed the muzzle right at him. That wasn’t a good thing for me to watch – I could imagine exactly what would happen if the cop pulled the trigger, if he had some perverse desire just to put a little pressure on it, just to see how hard he could press before it fired… and the guy’s head would explode. I’ve shot enough zombies and seen enough counter-terrorists though sniper scopes that I know what a headshot looks like – a burst of red, and the other guy is dead. Only this would be in real life, and the inside of his head would’ve splattered all over the brick wall and concrete.

I felt conflicted – like I wanted to quickly hide behind something bullet proof, where even a ricochet couldn’t find me, and at the same time I wanted to run over to the officers and yell, “Calm down! Put your guns away! Don’t screw things up!”

He was only a skinny guy, no shirt, just a ragged pair of pants, and you could tell he was scared. Of course he was scared – one finger twitch and his life was over. I hate guns.

Date: June 4th, 2008
Cate: society + culture

civil disobedience

I’m thinking about my country and government – especially our current government – and there are some things we disagree on. It’s kind of a weird position. I like our system of government (though I would like to see how things would work if we swung a little closer to a true democracy rather then a republic) because I think it’s more realistic then Marx’ socialism or a totalitarian structure – and I don’t want to deal with survival in anarchy.

That is to say, I really like the United States, but we’ve got a long way to go before we’re perfect.

Lately I’ve been thinking about civil disobedience. I’m sort of chafing under all of the rules and regulations, because there are a bunch of issues that bother me. Off the top of my head: separation of church and state, copyright infringement, illegal substances, xenophobia… and I think that these are social issues, not government issues, but they’ve somehow become (or in some cases, are in the process of becoming) a part of our laws.

So when I see a sign that says “no minors allowed” I ignore it. If I want to listen to music or watch a movie I download it. I don’t have much interest in most illegal substances, although given the chance to do something hallucinogenic I wouldn’t say no. I don’t really care one way or another whether our pledge of allegiance contains the phrase ‘under god’, but then again I feel uncomfortable about lots of ritual activities.

It’s sort of a self perpetuating cycle – each rule I break further confirms my belief that the rule was meaningless.

I’m probably going to get in trouble for this sort of attitude eventually, which is why it’s something that I need to think about. Sometimes when I’m second-guessing my own motives I wonder if my problems are trivial. However, it makes more sense to think of these problems as a symptom of a much bigger social attitude – conservative reasoning. Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat on the bus – and where you sit on the bus seems like such a trivial thing to get upset over. She did it because of the reasoning behind it. I want to go get lunch at a bar with my friends at work, but it’s three weeks before my twenty-first birthday – and just waiting a few weeks seems like a trivial thing to get upset over. But I’m doing it because arbitrary age laws are flagrantly discriminatory towards members of a minority group which has almost no course for redress.

I want to have more time – but thanks to mortality, I’ve only got so much to spend on things. I want to live a simple immaterial life, I want to buy every new video game console that comes out, I want to be a social activist, I want to just live on my own little island somewhere and not be bothered – but I don’t have enough time to that, since I’m busy going to class and working part time. I’m excited for the future, which I expect to be lots of fun, but for now I’m stuck with civil disobedience, and a sort of general dissatisfaction with the world around me. How depressing.

Date: June 4th, 2008
Cate: society + culture

I believe in homosexuality

Here’s an interesting idea that struck me just now (while sitting here at work playing around with Flash and listening to incredibly fun and catchy The Hidden Cameras’ album ‘Mississauga Goddamn’).

Religious groups ought to believe in freedom of religion, right? As much as I find that kind of irony amusing, I wouldn’t be at all amused at the hypocrisy of one religious group that wanted to deny rights to another.

And what is religion? It’s all about belief in something. Belief about the way that the universe works – explaining the otherwise inexplicable, solving questions of morality that would otherwise be impossible to answer, and providing a sense of purpose for our lives.

I’m not a participant in any organized religions, but it’s fair to say that I still have certain beliefs that meet that criteria above – do I have the right to keep those beliefs and not be persecuted for them?

For instance – I have no scientific proof that homosexuality is morally acceptable. In fact, I’m pretty sure that it’s impossible to ‘prove’ moral issues empirically. However, I believe that homosexuality is morally acceptable, without any proof. I take it on faith.

The ‘Employment Nondiscrimination Act‘ just passed a House vote (after several decades of work), and will prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sexual preference. Trans-gendered people aren’t included, which sucks, but at least it’s a start. Naturally, conservative religious organizations aren’t happy about this bill, and they’re complaining about it.

They are hypocrites. They believe that sexual preferences other then heterosexuality are wrong, while I believe that all sexual preference is right.- we both have our beliefs, and we have faith that we are right, but they think there’s something wrong with what I believe. It’s may be tough for you to believe this: I actually don’t have a problem with their belief in the immorality of homosexuality,
I only have a problem with that idea put in to practice. It’s fine if they’re repulsed by gay guys – as long as they act polite and don’t let that effect their judgment, which would result in prejudice.

While I’m at it, random question, true or false: “Being permissive by default regarding rights and rules is a superior system to being restrictive by default.”

I say true – I would rather start at the ‘everything goes’ stage and pare things down until it works.

Date: June 4th, 2008
Cate: society + culture

why I copy music

So, I’ve heard lots of stuff about Britney Spears’ new album. I really have nothing  her (although I did just realize that her initials are B.S.) In fact, if I liked it enough I’d even buy myself a copy from Amazon for like $10 – even if I only liked it a little I’d keep an eye out in CD/Game Exchange.

But how can I tell if I like it? I’ve got to listen to it first, obviously. I don’t have a copy, and I don’t know anyone that does. So what do I do? Now I’m really curious!

So I run ‘britney spears blackout’ through google, I get a few sites that offer ‘previews’ of the album – amazon requires RealPlayer which is bullshit, and it’s the only one in the first few results to offer previews of the tracks. And they’re just previews, you don’t get to listen to hi quality full length versions. How can I tell if I like them music from some crappy RealPlayer-driven previews?

At this point, I’m already fed up with finding a legitimate way to listen to the album, and I’m still curious, so it’s time to turn to the illegitimate ways. YouTube has some stuff, but it’s still crappy, and I have to listen to it streaming through my browser, as opposed to playing through a flash player embedded in a web page streaming a heavily compressed .flv.

Hello, Pirate Bay! In literally five seconds I ran the same search as I did on google and found a torrent – there are nearly 500 seeders, which means it’s going to download as fast as my internet connection can transfer it. Look how easy that was! And now I can listen to it, and make an informed decision on whether I should spend money on it.

Do you see what’s wrong with this picture? I’ll give you a hint – nothing! It’s an ideal situation for the consumer and the merchant, because it decreases my chances of making a poorly-informed purchase (which might cause me to be more wary of buying CDs in the future) while increasing the merchant’s chances of me giving them money. Everyone is happy.

Except, of course, for the RIAA. They’re close-minded conservative assholes who are now becoming extinct. Like the dinosaurs, they’re unable to adapt. They’re caught in quicksand, and they don’t know enough not to struggle – they keep trying to get out, when in reality there is a happy new world just beneath the surface of the quicksand pit (not unlike a certain level in Super Mario Bros. 3)

So when I copy music it’s because I don’t have time or money to waste – I want instant gratification, and I’m willing to take risks in order to get it, because the time I might potentially spend arguing the ethics of downloading music in court is far outstripped by the convenience of being able to listen, watch, or play anything I want before I buy it.

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