I offer two tangents to illuminate two topics mentioned in the past, which is represented graphically by what is 'down below' or 'on the side' and then 'down below' on one of its links.
First, the notion that people are a virus was the subject of a terse, misanthropic observation made by Agent Smith to Neo in the 1999 film "The Matrix." His point is simply that we're not of this world because we find no harmony with it. Instead we continue to exploit the resources of an area until we leave it uninhabitable, both by us, and by much of the life that once lived there. We exhaust biomes, ecosystems, and the like by the means of our resource extraction.
Now, without getting into some pop-philosophy discussion allow me to say that Agent Smith makes an astute observation, regarding not only the ecological impact of humans but of their identity by analogy to their activities. They are like viruses because they exploit that which is available. People, per se, aren't the viruses. They are the marionettes of viral ideologies. As noted 'in the past' people are untethered from their day-to-day realities by overarching narratives that inform their identities and give their lives meaning. Meaning seems essential and especially so since most of us have identities as individuals. The two are co-dependent. One anecdote will suffice. During the early to mid 1990s the rainforests of Indonesia went up in smoke at an unprecedented rate. What led this were slash-and-burn farmers reclaiming whole swathes of forest for agricultural production. What motivated this was state policies that encouraged it. And the state was, of course, motivated by a need to expand its economy. Two observations about viral ideologies are that 'the state' is an abstraction. People with identities find theirs populated by a notion of citizenship to a state. They do its bidding as a consequence. Second, the economy is an abstraction. That people would find no value in life as such and instead see it as so much to exploit for the accumulation of capital is a second, viral notion. The world is one grand resource bin, and we take from it as long as there's something to gain. Granted, at the level of subsistence humans must take from their environments. But we have something new added to the design--money. Money can store energy, value, wealth almost indefinitely. And in the rush to get our hands on this stuff we tend to rob from the world at an alarming pace to become rich because those spoils rarely spoil. What comes of the food produced and the land that was slashed and burned is another story. It's a short-term gain strategy that leaves destruction in its wake.
Hence, people are like a virus.
Finally, I want to suggest an analogy between the rodent's incisors and the human brain. A rodent's incisors must be used in order to keep them ground down to a manageable length. Incisors grow continuously, and to not use them jeopardizes the life of the rodent. Having been the proud caretaker of a hamster I know just what this does to the rodent in captivity. Sure, my hamster lived in a see-through castle, but his life of luxury came at a simple but overwhelming price. My hamster had to maintain the length of its incisors. And so it did by gnawing on parts of its cage. The maintenance of its incisors became a defining nervous activity. Such can be said for the needs of the human brain. It, like the rodent's incisors, is both a liability and an asset. It is a powerful tool for abstract thinking, but it is also can seal our doom if it has very little to do. Much has been written about the delirium of solitary confinement. The mind literally begins to fall apart, and with it the person's sanity. Likewise, the non-confined human tends to keep its mind busy with any number of things because an existential abyss is always just a second and a step from our current position. So the business of keeping ourselves occupied becomes a defining nervous activity.
So, we're viral rodents. In that we reveal our progenitors: life as such. Nothing symbolizes the oddity of the life process like an RNA plasmid in a protein shell bent upon pirating the replication apparatus of cellular DNA. That is the life of a virus. A virus is a solitary thing, which desires nothing more than to replicate itself. It reveals a rather abject definition of both existence and of life itself. Life requires violence done to others. Life requires the blurring of this and that, in and out. And life is simply the continuance of itself through time. These are the basest meanings behind all life--protein warfare over time. Rodents are simply one of the more resilient progenitors of the mammalian line, the ones that climbed over so many skeletal remains of the past.
I've said this somewhere 'in the past' as well. Consciousness is simply the coincidence of matter over time. Or to put it into a language that is more recognizable to the reader: we are all possessed by the ghosts of time. Time is what we are. We are temporal creatures.
Friday, March 29, 2013
Sunday, March 24, 2013
A future without work
Meet Baxter.
Baxter is a friendly little robot. Baxter can learn how to do any number of menial tasks, which are now performed by low-paid, low-skilled workers. He's so easy to program that all you have to do is grab him by his arm and direct him through the task once. If you are a good enough teacher then Baxter will simply do the job that the low-skilled, low-paid worker once did. Heck, the low-paid, low-skilled worker just became a robot programmer.
But that was a one-time stint as a robot programmer, and now the low-paid, low-skilled worker now must find a new job, hopefully not through a temp agency, anything but a temp agency.
Baxter represents one small but important step in the evolution of work. Now, employees are charged with training their human replacements. Soon, employees will be charged with training their robotic replacements. A workforce of robots begs the question of the role of humans in a society that requires humans both to work as a contribution of the society and to collect compensation for that work to enjoy this society's basic needs and its amenities. Perhaps this is the Communist utopia where technology replaces the drudgery of work such that humans can be free to explore their own self-development. That's a scary thought because I sense that the majority of us, if freed of the responsibilities to remain sober and capable of taking orders, will face an existential abyss. For many, a life without work is a life without meaning. We often find ourselves needing a struggle to both give our lives meaning and to preoccupy our minds. A robot will not replace all people and all work; it simply replaces some work and some types of occupations.
Perhaps I am too beholden to the identity work of work. A time existed when whole masses of people organized into workers unions and workers congresses of this or that sort. Through these means many people were able to fight against the capricious hand of capital and its handlers to take what some union members call a 'fair shake.' To see the actions of a union and its sometimes atavistic language one gets at an awareness about power and reality. If you put enough people together you can create a world of your own that persists through time. Labor unions have and continue to be eroded and destroyed by corporate interests, private money interests, and the politicians that represent and speak for them. Robots are one of many assaults upon work as a relationship between knowledge of a craft and the market needs for its products. This robot now only has the opportunity to take away low-skilled, low-pay jobs. It is a matter of time before the development of a more sophisticated robot for more sophisticated tasks.
I am hazy on the details, but I could conceive that the conditions under which manufacturing work was done in Communism's political and philosophical heyday was physically demanding and mentally jejune. To free people of this work would be liberation. But what of craftwork? Perhaps this robot will never be enlisted for such professions. But what of those of us who aren't in a craft or who simply can never find meaningful or financially supportive work may be left in the shadow of these robots.
I see a long-term progression to a time where people will be needed less and less living in a society that they rely upon more and more. Not long ago, perhaps 120 years ago, most people subsisted on their own skills in growing, collecting, and hunting food while they traded what they created, grown, or collected in surplus for what they couldn't create, grow, or collect. That society begat us, who rely upon water, electrical, and gas utilities. We need a car or fare to travel any where. We can't even deliver our own offspring with any success. We've been successively bled of the knowledge of our own survival and that of our species. We are all babes in a modern world, completely powerless. Without the knowledge to survive on our own outside the modern sociotechnical system we are pressed into its service in some fashion. We need a job or we simply need to acquire money to survive. Money can be traded for what keeps us alive. Outside of that system we would have to create a new system based upon our own abilities and our free association with others with whom we deal for personal gain. It's not an impossibility for all, but for many it would lead to one of many outcomes. Becoming an outlaw or becoming a corpse suggest some of the brutish and shorter ones. To avoid these outcomes many of us are loathe to support the system for the sake not only of its survival but ours as well.
Do robots signal a return to two societies: one lived within the confines of the modern sociotechnical apparatus and one lived like Little House on the Prairie? Do robots signal a population decline because people aren't needed nor can be supported to live within the current system? I can only speculate. And I will continue to do so.
Baxter is a friendly little robot. Baxter can learn how to do any number of menial tasks, which are now performed by low-paid, low-skilled workers. He's so easy to program that all you have to do is grab him by his arm and direct him through the task once. If you are a good enough teacher then Baxter will simply do the job that the low-skilled, low-paid worker once did. Heck, the low-paid, low-skilled worker just became a robot programmer.
But that was a one-time stint as a robot programmer, and now the low-paid, low-skilled worker now must find a new job, hopefully not through a temp agency, anything but a temp agency.
Baxter represents one small but important step in the evolution of work. Now, employees are charged with training their human replacements. Soon, employees will be charged with training their robotic replacements. A workforce of robots begs the question of the role of humans in a society that requires humans both to work as a contribution of the society and to collect compensation for that work to enjoy this society's basic needs and its amenities. Perhaps this is the Communist utopia where technology replaces the drudgery of work such that humans can be free to explore their own self-development. That's a scary thought because I sense that the majority of us, if freed of the responsibilities to remain sober and capable of taking orders, will face an existential abyss. For many, a life without work is a life without meaning. We often find ourselves needing a struggle to both give our lives meaning and to preoccupy our minds. A robot will not replace all people and all work; it simply replaces some work and some types of occupations.
Perhaps I am too beholden to the identity work of work. A time existed when whole masses of people organized into workers unions and workers congresses of this or that sort. Through these means many people were able to fight against the capricious hand of capital and its handlers to take what some union members call a 'fair shake.' To see the actions of a union and its sometimes atavistic language one gets at an awareness about power and reality. If you put enough people together you can create a world of your own that persists through time. Labor unions have and continue to be eroded and destroyed by corporate interests, private money interests, and the politicians that represent and speak for them. Robots are one of many assaults upon work as a relationship between knowledge of a craft and the market needs for its products. This robot now only has the opportunity to take away low-skilled, low-pay jobs. It is a matter of time before the development of a more sophisticated robot for more sophisticated tasks.
I am hazy on the details, but I could conceive that the conditions under which manufacturing work was done in Communism's political and philosophical heyday was physically demanding and mentally jejune. To free people of this work would be liberation. But what of craftwork? Perhaps this robot will never be enlisted for such professions. But what of those of us who aren't in a craft or who simply can never find meaningful or financially supportive work may be left in the shadow of these robots.
I see a long-term progression to a time where people will be needed less and less living in a society that they rely upon more and more. Not long ago, perhaps 120 years ago, most people subsisted on their own skills in growing, collecting, and hunting food while they traded what they created, grown, or collected in surplus for what they couldn't create, grow, or collect. That society begat us, who rely upon water, electrical, and gas utilities. We need a car or fare to travel any where. We can't even deliver our own offspring with any success. We've been successively bled of the knowledge of our own survival and that of our species. We are all babes in a modern world, completely powerless. Without the knowledge to survive on our own outside the modern sociotechnical system we are pressed into its service in some fashion. We need a job or we simply need to acquire money to survive. Money can be traded for what keeps us alive. Outside of that system we would have to create a new system based upon our own abilities and our free association with others with whom we deal for personal gain. It's not an impossibility for all, but for many it would lead to one of many outcomes. Becoming an outlaw or becoming a corpse suggest some of the brutish and shorter ones. To avoid these outcomes many of us are loathe to support the system for the sake not only of its survival but ours as well.
Do robots signal a return to two societies: one lived within the confines of the modern sociotechnical apparatus and one lived like Little House on the Prairie? Do robots signal a population decline because people aren't needed nor can be supported to live within the current system? I can only speculate. And I will continue to do so.
in the belly of the bell curve, or how to disappear completely
What defines normal? According to studies that collect and analyze demographic data, statistics define norms. And statistics presume, and find, that a normal distribution exists in many groups of data, and that they can be represented visually by the bell curve. Normal, whatever that may suggest, is represented in the area bisected by the second quartile. This is where the median exists. And in a normal curve the median, mode, and mean coincide at the same location on the curve and are represented by the same number. Visually, the bell curve evenly rises from an x-axis asymptote to a peak and lowers to an asymptote on the other side. Bisecting this curve at the mean, median, and mode point creates a bilaterally symmetrical curve. One side mirrors the other.
About this mean, median, and mode point resides the largest group of data. This is the 50th percentile. At least 50% of the data points collected reside within this area of the curve. An interesting component of parametric statistics is that the collection and analysis of statistical data gets plotted onto a graphical space, and the area under the curve is what gets analyzed for the probability that one or more variables will coincide. I repeat, data points are fit into a graphical space with an x axis and y axis (at least) and the line that connects these data points establishes an 'upper bound' under which exists a graphical volume, i.e., the area under the curve. To put it bluntly, data about people, for example, is transformed into a curve on a graph whose area is measured to assess probabilities, which are at the heart of this form of analysis.
I am no statistician, and I probably mangled some aspects of this discussion thus far. I get a sense that while statistics is a powerful tool for measuring and analyzing data for activities such as policy making the very thing studied is simply a shape. What defines what is in this statistical abstraction must coincide with some area under a graphed shape. A curious thing occurs. Statistics is a powerful tool for measuring things, but it requires whatever that is studied to be transformed into data that fits the tool. To sum up what one writer mentioned about the differences between quantitative data collection and its qualitative counterpart is that quantitative data collection sacrifices the anecdotal, the story, the social meaning, for impersonal 'data.' If you've ever answered a data collection questionnaire you've probably had to make an executive decision about how strongly you felt about a particular statement on a Likert-type scale. And that executive decision consisted of you reading the question, allowing it to hail some aspect of your experience to be representative of that question and to assign it a value, represented by a number. How you interpret the question and how your relative conviction about the experience you reference to answer that question presents some of the ambiguous and potentially problematic aspects of the interface between experiences had and data collected. The human narrative is left out.
Now I wanted to present an anecdote that at least shows how statistics isn't necessarily an objective tool for analysis that presumes to reflect the 'real' world. Each of us occupies a 'real' world that markedly differs in content and meaning from others, and our social interactions only multiply the meanings and contents of our worlds. None of them necessarily concretes a reality that is shared. That's a counterfactual claim that communication, as a pragmatic tool for 'making common,' asserts as a goal inherent to interaction. Let's assume that we agree for our own reasons that we've reached this goal, and that's simply all that matters. I won't attempt some wry French existentialist language to wax upon this topic any more. Let's get to that anecdote.
In my first semester of my doctoral program, we had a course that introduced us to the discipline and the faculty in our department who represented aspects of this discipline: namely its topical areas and its methodologies. One of the faculty, John Jackson, focused his research on race in social science. He shared with us a letter he received from a Western Ontario university faculty member defending his groups' statistics-based inquiry into the connections between IQ and race. Without trotting out the boogeyman that is race, let me stick to the details. The faculty member, who was presumably white, asserted that the research was not biased or racist because: first, it was rigorous statistical research; and second, it found that whites fell in the middle of the distribution. Asians fell on the higher end. Africans/blacks fell on the lower end. Since whites weren't 'the smartest' this showed that the test wasn't biased.
It took me a while to come to this conclusion, but instead of quibbling with this Canadian researcher's data I simply want to point out who is conducting it, and what is presumed normal. IQs are historically white tests. They were created by whites (i.e., Europeans) and administered by whites in order to slot people into a society conceived, in its intentional or planned aspects, by whites. That a white researcher could find his group in the middle of the test only measures its internal validity. The test results determine that it has been normalized to white IQ distribution, and so white IQ distribution falls within the 50th percentile. And the test segregates Asian and African into their respective distributions. That the test simply gives scientific teeth to a rather stereotypical observation is not a coincidence. The test adds a layer of scientific reality to what many white lay-observers see in their worlds: Asians outsmarting them and Blacks playing their intellectual foils. And they are right in the middle with their observation, just as they are in this test, and just as they are observing their intellectually framed world through this test.
This is an anecdotal observation upon the nature of being an observer both on others and upon oneself. If one wants to disappear completely, one simply needs to normalize the distribution of data points around one's self. The observer simply disappears by being the commonest data point and, more perniciously, becoming the baseline for judging others. Observation from the commonest data point allows others with operationally defined differences to become outliers and, by extension, outstanding. I would think that the test measures differences that everyone perceives to exist, but to the extent that these are accurate depictions of differences is too far removed from the final product, the normal curve. Conforming the world to this curve requires taking any number of accurately delineated categories of difference, their carefully operationalized component variables, and performing a fine-toothed analysis of semantic categories that have been mapped onto different entities in the world and brought into the test as data sets. In the process of data collection, the words chosen and the context in which they are gathered shade the reflexive strategies of the test participant. That bell curve and its upper bound represent an impermeable membrane between researcher interests and the world, with those interests representing the most prominent protuberance along that skin of research with the world being reduced to stringently codified variables, denatured into remotely observed data sets under that skin. The research sets the answers to the research questions posed in the scene by predefining their status as variables, testing specifically for them in participant responses, and reposing those predefined model conditions as measures of the validity of the test and subsequently accurate depictions of those phenomena being studied as they exist au milieu.
Now let us return to two questions, What is normal? And what constitutes privilege? I ask these questions because they insinuate themselves into the test described above and other types of tests used to abstract people and groups as data and extrapolate about them. First, normal, as was discussed is the most populous in a statistical or normal distribution; "normal" hangs out around the 50th percentile--the camel's hump in the curve. Normal is a loaded term, and while statistics has reduced that baggage to something explicitly statistical in nature it still leads us to question how persuasion and the insidious reaches of power influence what is normal. Because between statistics' use of 'normal' and the lay person's use of normal we will have some metaphorical cross-pollination in a very specific way. Statistics finds normal in its largest data set. People find normal in a world view that they share with their social network, their family's common ethnic groups, their generational cohort. From that they often presume that because they share this world view with others then most everyone shares it as well. Then, normal becomes, if not universal, then the presumptive backdrop from which spring one's thoughts and actions. One's very identity is couched in a self-normative worldview, no matter how tenuous it may be.
As was discussed with the statistics-based questionnaire people must self-report their answers. Normally, a simple sentence is all that goads them to be truthful. But a sometimes tricky intervention happens with people, owing to their reflexivity and to the things that influence how they perceive themselves among others. People can and will self-report what they consider to be more beneficially representative of themselves or their member group. Likewise, we cannot discount the ways that these studies get influenced at the questionnaire-creation level and at the funding level by the modes of inquiry and content areas encouraged by society at large. Funding streams all over academia tend to gorge some forms of inquiry while starving others. This leads to what Heidegger calls in his essay, "Science in the Age of the World Picture," 'mere research.' Mere research, as Heidegger claims, is caught into the cycle of inquiry set into motion by the institutionalization of science under academe and in institutes. Organizations, by their nature, tend to place survival at a premium over the long-term. Organizations, like fields of study, can and will set into place the structures that both encourage and facilitate the modes of inquiry that they know will get funded. And so very little if anything happens outside that mode of inquiry. So, in both the example of the self-report and in the study itself presumptions about what are important and what is normal bleed in because that which is outstanding is outside the norm and often worthy of study. This framing occurs both among us, interpersonally, as lay observers and as researchers using parametric statistics, which establishes a numerically delineated norm as the basis of its function as an analytical tool. One need look no further than research into the genetic basis of addiction, gambling, homosexuality, and any number of socially framed behaviors to recognize a robust stream of funding setting the tone for what's worthy of study and the conclusions drawn. All of these influences shape how one pursues normal, which gets translated into the 50th percentile of the normal distribution that is also presumed for the sake of population-based statistics.
I've gone afield of my question a bit, but let us look at it another way. How would have the 50th percentile of attitudes concerning Jews have differed in, say, Bonn, Germany and New York City, USA during the 1930s? Power and influence in those distinct geographical locations says something important about normal. It isn't universal. Yet, that which is normal insinuates itself into the design of the study by setting itself up along the 50th percentile. The studies, their methodology, and their results function as an epistemological argot for "authoritative" and "scientific." Decontextualized from the framing of the questions, the design of the study and the calibration of norms, which spring directly from the stance and affect of the researcher his or herself, these studies and their results become free-floating facts signifying social concerns and forming the basis for action. Functional magnetic resonance imaging studies of adolescent decision making demonstrate one way that powerful interest mobilize science to legitimize one's worldview. The results of this research reached the highest court in the U.S. and determined that adolescent brains are different, so their sentencing should follow suit. It also lays bare the non-statistical fact that money streams fund research, which generates data used to create facts that are then supportive or unsupportive of a set of attitudes and actions towards a grouping of people. Statistics are about data sets, data sets are groups, and the most functional yet pernicious category groups descriptive of society pertain to race, gender, or ethnicity. What gets lost between between being a Latino and the 'attitudes and behaviors of Latinos toward political issues' should clearly demonstrate how one living fact about the world--one's cultural beliefs and identity--becomes a blank, functionalist data category for analysis. At the core of that cultural identity is a power to name, and when used in the name of family legacy and cultural heritage the power can be both benign, yet specific to keeping alive a provisional set of ideas and behaviors that demarcate what makes one a member of a specific group. Naming is power. The name your parents gave you, when uttered, forces a specific action out of you. You turn, you listen, and you abide. This leads me to a rather quick conclusion about what constitutes privilege.
In science and in society what constitutes privilege is having one's views taken as 'the common sense.' Normal is what the privileged group believes; all the other, more marginal groups must live with their 'reality.' Likewise, privilege remains invisible in institutions and institutional discourses because it's the 'default setting.' This becomes more clear as we move from society at large to the World Wide Web. In her seminal book on race on the Web, Lisa Nakamura recognized something about websites that organize discussions based upon race. While these were early studies and fly-by-night websites by current standards, something became apparent in her participation on these websites. "White" wasn't a choice; all other races were. Simply being "white" was the default or presumed racial category to the web, and from this and other examples Lisa Nakamura coined the term cybertyping, or the way that technologies shape our views and participation with and as race. Being something of a white tool, the web had white identity built into it as a default layer ... at that time.
Another anecdote: "Blacks don't surf. Whites do." A couple of early black Internet entrepreneurs recognized this and sold the web to their constituents as 'cruising the web.' Another simple, yet pervasive metaphor that is couched in one world view in exclusion of another. It would be like substituting the use of a mouse with chopsticks to interface with the graphical space of your computer. Many uninitiated Westerners would fumble with it.
So the next time that someone who identifies as 'white' complains to you about the existence of the Black Miss America pageant or some other, by title, all-black competition or institution be prepared to ask this question.
"How has the existence of "X" affected your opportunities as a white person?"
An all-black college, an all-black scholarship, or an all-black beauty pageant has very little to do with a white person's ability to participate in society. But it does lead to another observation that stems from the existence of an all-whatever institution or competition. Normally, people exclaim that "we can't have an all-white "X."
Yes, and no.
Addressing this observation is a matter of framing. It falls upon the theme of whiteness as default. The answer becomes simple.
"Miss America is the white pageant." "X College is the white college." And so on. White is default; it goes without being explicitly stated. When it is, it is explicit about race as a privilege it intends to hold on to. White power is best left as the sub rosa element, the unstated prefix. The non-white women who compete to become the next Miss America win on their merits of being a member of the dominant worldview and, more importantly, conforming to its notion of beauty and femininity.
I'll leave you with this anecdote, which answers the question about normal and privilege. I was in line at a local grocery store when I spotted a magazine called "Black Hair." And not one woman on that cover had 'black hair.'
About this mean, median, and mode point resides the largest group of data. This is the 50th percentile. At least 50% of the data points collected reside within this area of the curve. An interesting component of parametric statistics is that the collection and analysis of statistical data gets plotted onto a graphical space, and the area under the curve is what gets analyzed for the probability that one or more variables will coincide. I repeat, data points are fit into a graphical space with an x axis and y axis (at least) and the line that connects these data points establishes an 'upper bound' under which exists a graphical volume, i.e., the area under the curve. To put it bluntly, data about people, for example, is transformed into a curve on a graph whose area is measured to assess probabilities, which are at the heart of this form of analysis.
I am no statistician, and I probably mangled some aspects of this discussion thus far. I get a sense that while statistics is a powerful tool for measuring and analyzing data for activities such as policy making the very thing studied is simply a shape. What defines what is in this statistical abstraction must coincide with some area under a graphed shape. A curious thing occurs. Statistics is a powerful tool for measuring things, but it requires whatever that is studied to be transformed into data that fits the tool. To sum up what one writer mentioned about the differences between quantitative data collection and its qualitative counterpart is that quantitative data collection sacrifices the anecdotal, the story, the social meaning, for impersonal 'data.' If you've ever answered a data collection questionnaire you've probably had to make an executive decision about how strongly you felt about a particular statement on a Likert-type scale. And that executive decision consisted of you reading the question, allowing it to hail some aspect of your experience to be representative of that question and to assign it a value, represented by a number. How you interpret the question and how your relative conviction about the experience you reference to answer that question presents some of the ambiguous and potentially problematic aspects of the interface between experiences had and data collected. The human narrative is left out.
Now I wanted to present an anecdote that at least shows how statistics isn't necessarily an objective tool for analysis that presumes to reflect the 'real' world. Each of us occupies a 'real' world that markedly differs in content and meaning from others, and our social interactions only multiply the meanings and contents of our worlds. None of them necessarily concretes a reality that is shared. That's a counterfactual claim that communication, as a pragmatic tool for 'making common,' asserts as a goal inherent to interaction. Let's assume that we agree for our own reasons that we've reached this goal, and that's simply all that matters. I won't attempt some wry French existentialist language to wax upon this topic any more. Let's get to that anecdote.
In my first semester of my doctoral program, we had a course that introduced us to the discipline and the faculty in our department who represented aspects of this discipline: namely its topical areas and its methodologies. One of the faculty, John Jackson, focused his research on race in social science. He shared with us a letter he received from a Western Ontario university faculty member defending his groups' statistics-based inquiry into the connections between IQ and race. Without trotting out the boogeyman that is race, let me stick to the details. The faculty member, who was presumably white, asserted that the research was not biased or racist because: first, it was rigorous statistical research; and second, it found that whites fell in the middle of the distribution. Asians fell on the higher end. Africans/blacks fell on the lower end. Since whites weren't 'the smartest' this showed that the test wasn't biased.
It took me a while to come to this conclusion, but instead of quibbling with this Canadian researcher's data I simply want to point out who is conducting it, and what is presumed normal. IQs are historically white tests. They were created by whites (i.e., Europeans) and administered by whites in order to slot people into a society conceived, in its intentional or planned aspects, by whites. That a white researcher could find his group in the middle of the test only measures its internal validity. The test results determine that it has been normalized to white IQ distribution, and so white IQ distribution falls within the 50th percentile. And the test segregates Asian and African into their respective distributions. That the test simply gives scientific teeth to a rather stereotypical observation is not a coincidence. The test adds a layer of scientific reality to what many white lay-observers see in their worlds: Asians outsmarting them and Blacks playing their intellectual foils. And they are right in the middle with their observation, just as they are in this test, and just as they are observing their intellectually framed world through this test.
This is an anecdotal observation upon the nature of being an observer both on others and upon oneself. If one wants to disappear completely, one simply needs to normalize the distribution of data points around one's self. The observer simply disappears by being the commonest data point and, more perniciously, becoming the baseline for judging others. Observation from the commonest data point allows others with operationally defined differences to become outliers and, by extension, outstanding. I would think that the test measures differences that everyone perceives to exist, but to the extent that these are accurate depictions of differences is too far removed from the final product, the normal curve. Conforming the world to this curve requires taking any number of accurately delineated categories of difference, their carefully operationalized component variables, and performing a fine-toothed analysis of semantic categories that have been mapped onto different entities in the world and brought into the test as data sets. In the process of data collection, the words chosen and the context in which they are gathered shade the reflexive strategies of the test participant. That bell curve and its upper bound represent an impermeable membrane between researcher interests and the world, with those interests representing the most prominent protuberance along that skin of research with the world being reduced to stringently codified variables, denatured into remotely observed data sets under that skin. The research sets the answers to the research questions posed in the scene by predefining their status as variables, testing specifically for them in participant responses, and reposing those predefined model conditions as measures of the validity of the test and subsequently accurate depictions of those phenomena being studied as they exist au milieu.
Now let us return to two questions, What is normal? And what constitutes privilege? I ask these questions because they insinuate themselves into the test described above and other types of tests used to abstract people and groups as data and extrapolate about them. First, normal, as was discussed is the most populous in a statistical or normal distribution; "normal" hangs out around the 50th percentile--the camel's hump in the curve. Normal is a loaded term, and while statistics has reduced that baggage to something explicitly statistical in nature it still leads us to question how persuasion and the insidious reaches of power influence what is normal. Because between statistics' use of 'normal' and the lay person's use of normal we will have some metaphorical cross-pollination in a very specific way. Statistics finds normal in its largest data set. People find normal in a world view that they share with their social network, their family's common ethnic groups, their generational cohort. From that they often presume that because they share this world view with others then most everyone shares it as well. Then, normal becomes, if not universal, then the presumptive backdrop from which spring one's thoughts and actions. One's very identity is couched in a self-normative worldview, no matter how tenuous it may be.
As was discussed with the statistics-based questionnaire people must self-report their answers. Normally, a simple sentence is all that goads them to be truthful. But a sometimes tricky intervention happens with people, owing to their reflexivity and to the things that influence how they perceive themselves among others. People can and will self-report what they consider to be more beneficially representative of themselves or their member group. Likewise, we cannot discount the ways that these studies get influenced at the questionnaire-creation level and at the funding level by the modes of inquiry and content areas encouraged by society at large. Funding streams all over academia tend to gorge some forms of inquiry while starving others. This leads to what Heidegger calls in his essay, "Science in the Age of the World Picture," 'mere research.' Mere research, as Heidegger claims, is caught into the cycle of inquiry set into motion by the institutionalization of science under academe and in institutes. Organizations, by their nature, tend to place survival at a premium over the long-term. Organizations, like fields of study, can and will set into place the structures that both encourage and facilitate the modes of inquiry that they know will get funded. And so very little if anything happens outside that mode of inquiry. So, in both the example of the self-report and in the study itself presumptions about what are important and what is normal bleed in because that which is outstanding is outside the norm and often worthy of study. This framing occurs both among us, interpersonally, as lay observers and as researchers using parametric statistics, which establishes a numerically delineated norm as the basis of its function as an analytical tool. One need look no further than research into the genetic basis of addiction, gambling, homosexuality, and any number of socially framed behaviors to recognize a robust stream of funding setting the tone for what's worthy of study and the conclusions drawn. All of these influences shape how one pursues normal, which gets translated into the 50th percentile of the normal distribution that is also presumed for the sake of population-based statistics.
I've gone afield of my question a bit, but let us look at it another way. How would have the 50th percentile of attitudes concerning Jews have differed in, say, Bonn, Germany and New York City, USA during the 1930s? Power and influence in those distinct geographical locations says something important about normal. It isn't universal. Yet, that which is normal insinuates itself into the design of the study by setting itself up along the 50th percentile. The studies, their methodology, and their results function as an epistemological argot for "authoritative" and "scientific." Decontextualized from the framing of the questions, the design of the study and the calibration of norms, which spring directly from the stance and affect of the researcher his or herself, these studies and their results become free-floating facts signifying social concerns and forming the basis for action. Functional magnetic resonance imaging studies of adolescent decision making demonstrate one way that powerful interest mobilize science to legitimize one's worldview. The results of this research reached the highest court in the U.S. and determined that adolescent brains are different, so their sentencing should follow suit. It also lays bare the non-statistical fact that money streams fund research, which generates data used to create facts that are then supportive or unsupportive of a set of attitudes and actions towards a grouping of people. Statistics are about data sets, data sets are groups, and the most functional yet pernicious category groups descriptive of society pertain to race, gender, or ethnicity. What gets lost between between being a Latino and the 'attitudes and behaviors of Latinos toward political issues' should clearly demonstrate how one living fact about the world--one's cultural beliefs and identity--becomes a blank, functionalist data category for analysis. At the core of that cultural identity is a power to name, and when used in the name of family legacy and cultural heritage the power can be both benign, yet specific to keeping alive a provisional set of ideas and behaviors that demarcate what makes one a member of a specific group. Naming is power. The name your parents gave you, when uttered, forces a specific action out of you. You turn, you listen, and you abide. This leads me to a rather quick conclusion about what constitutes privilege.
In science and in society what constitutes privilege is having one's views taken as 'the common sense.' Normal is what the privileged group believes; all the other, more marginal groups must live with their 'reality.' Likewise, privilege remains invisible in institutions and institutional discourses because it's the 'default setting.' This becomes more clear as we move from society at large to the World Wide Web. In her seminal book on race on the Web, Lisa Nakamura recognized something about websites that organize discussions based upon race. While these were early studies and fly-by-night websites by current standards, something became apparent in her participation on these websites. "White" wasn't a choice; all other races were. Simply being "white" was the default or presumed racial category to the web, and from this and other examples Lisa Nakamura coined the term cybertyping, or the way that technologies shape our views and participation with and as race. Being something of a white tool, the web had white identity built into it as a default layer ... at that time.
Another anecdote: "Blacks don't surf. Whites do." A couple of early black Internet entrepreneurs recognized this and sold the web to their constituents as 'cruising the web.' Another simple, yet pervasive metaphor that is couched in one world view in exclusion of another. It would be like substituting the use of a mouse with chopsticks to interface with the graphical space of your computer. Many uninitiated Westerners would fumble with it.
So the next time that someone who identifies as 'white' complains to you about the existence of the Black Miss America pageant or some other, by title, all-black competition or institution be prepared to ask this question.
"How has the existence of "X" affected your opportunities as a white person?"
An all-black college, an all-black scholarship, or an all-black beauty pageant has very little to do with a white person's ability to participate in society. But it does lead to another observation that stems from the existence of an all-whatever institution or competition. Normally, people exclaim that "we can't have an all-white "X."
Yes, and no.
Addressing this observation is a matter of framing. It falls upon the theme of whiteness as default. The answer becomes simple.
"Miss America is the white pageant." "X College is the white college." And so on. White is default; it goes without being explicitly stated. When it is, it is explicit about race as a privilege it intends to hold on to. White power is best left as the sub rosa element, the unstated prefix. The non-white women who compete to become the next Miss America win on their merits of being a member of the dominant worldview and, more importantly, conforming to its notion of beauty and femininity.
I'll leave you with this anecdote, which answers the question about normal and privilege. I was in line at a local grocery store when I spotted a magazine called "Black Hair." And not one woman on that cover had 'black hair.'
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
academic loitering
It's time to dispense with the niceties and discuss something central to this whole blog setting--the title.
Maybe I squirreled away an explanation in one of these posts. I do recall when I set this fucker up back in April 2009 I had a description/explanation in the biography section of the blogger. Well, fuck that.
I'm into cussing now as you can tell. So be it. My 'Rated R' for rant is coming through, and while I come off as rather coarse and angry others tell me that it's because I am self-centered.
True, oh so true.
But what happens when one becomes too self involved. Like the Narcissus of Greek mythology one finds itself transfixed before one's image or that which one takes for one's image. I do recall my first month back on the college campus. I had just finished a stint in a job with benefits at a pharmaceutical publishing house. It required very little creativity, just that I show up, know the tags and how to use them. Plus, I employed some very basic editorial skills, some of which had to be tossed out the window because, well, 'gender' was a tag, and I couldn't continue to explain to my co-workers the distinction between gender and sex. The pharmacists and nurses that used our 'rag' understood perhaps more intimately the two as they dealt with the many permutations of sexual dysfunction and chromosome syndromes in their occupations. To have me try to cut through that curtain of utter seriousness with some academic exercise was like a fart during Mass.
But I do remember something, something akin to that Narcissus moment during that first month of graduate school. I recall telling myself, like I normally do, that I was where I wanted to be and that my future was brighter than a pulsar. I got wrapped up in that idea. I got wrapped up in that feeling. I got wrapped up in that moment. And so I continued to do very little to actually realize a future. No, I did my studies to the best of my abilities, and then I disavowed myself of the identity of the academic and went back to being a pot-headed Star Trekkie researching marijuana cultivation and practicing it on a very limited but mildly successful level.
I should have stuck with my after-hours occupation. Nope, I finished out my first year and was completely entranced with the notion of going for more school. 'More' was my mantra after I finished college. I felt like I hadn't learned enough, but I was of the mind that I had to be in a learning situation in order to satisfy that need. And so that is why I continued on at the doctoral level in a very serious program with very serious people, ones who didn't drop their daylight clothing of academe and become self-involved shitheads such as myself. Living among the academics in a house with academics I had very little respite from their life, and so quickly this component of my free time died out. I began to read all the time. That was a way to appear looking smart while I let my mind wander. It was just another performative cop-out to convince myself that I was being academic.
But I wasn't, not really. It didn't seep into my core. I wasn't 'being' an academic. I played one, and convincingly enough I used my facility for language and vocabulary to trick a lot of people into thinking I was smart. Being able to use the words correctly and to think critically is one thing, but without an identity and personal mission under the umbrella of academics in which to pursue it they are just words and just thinking. That's where I hit the wall.
During my comprehensive exams I began to cry because I was being forced to tell a group of elder scholars who 'I' was, and I had no hat in telling that publicly. So I whimpered through a few words and let my advisor finish my sentence for me. That's where that ended, and so with it ended my career.
I continued to mime academics as I worked through aspects of my dissertation. Looking back on it now, and reading some of the stuff I get a sense that I was a different person, possessed perhaps by the discourses in which I was ensconced. I puttered through that for a few years, took an undeserving and underpaying job in some academic backwater, and burned out. What I have to show for it are a few lost years and no degree to demonstrate I was busy doing something.
A gulf exists between doing the time and earning the degree. A gaping, yawning chasm exists between ABD and PhD. And I'm on the "chopped-liver" end of that ravine. I own up to it. When I'm donning a respirator and fiddling around on a coal tar decanter next to a sign that reads, "Warning Benzene Cancer Hazard," I know certainly that I dug this grave for myself by doing what I do best, loiter about.
Yes, I spent from 1995 to around 2008 loitering in universities, thinking big and producing small. I set my sights big in 1995 pursuing pre-medicine, planned to drop out the next year, was coaxed into returning, studied communication, swapped degrees a half a dozen times, and ended up running out of time in 1998, so I settled back into smoking massive amounts of weed and acing my communication courses. That would be the poster child for 'cop-out' and 'loitering' if there ever were one.
Oddly enough all that smoking led me to a career where no smoking is tolerated. I have to take drug tests. I don't mind my career path. I could consider it an Academic Walkabout in the Aussie sense of the term. I just was meandering along, and paid no mind to the real work of becoming the thing that the process was supposed to make you. Nope, like a duck's feather none of that academic water stuck for long. Nope, it collected in little puddles here and there, and when I went about it slid right back off. And the best kind of repellent for all this academic water is being the Narcissus. When you're so deeply invested in your own ego development for private enjoyment you miss out on a world of others and the activities and ideas that make you a sensible member in that world. Nope, to add some rhetorical flourish to my title, I'm an 'artist.' And this is not to say that academics aren't egoists. They've just invested their ego into something a little more sensible to their respective communities. They do the necessary extra-curriculars to make it into their field. I did none of that, none. I just retreated to a book in order to satisfy the policeman in my head. And what came of it is my job at a steel mill, repairing structures, breathing in dirty air, and exposing myself to physical and environmental hazards. It's good work really. I harbor zero, zero contempt for the people with whom I work.
Oddly enough the structure of my current profession benefits those that disavow their jobs at the end of the day. In the academic world you wear your work like a musk exuded from some long-atrophied and atavistic anal glad. Your academic work spreads it all over you, and others recognize not only who but what you are. If cornered to speak about a core academic concern, I had nothing. It ended there. I was a sham, a charlatan, a phony, a fake. I was not what I pretended to be, simply a pretender going about my day, paying no mind to the extra work outside of the research and writing that it took to become one of them. Nope, I found me in all that mess. And here I am, still standing by the surface of the pool, gazing contentedly at my own reflection.
It's all a defense mechanism perhaps. Being shunned and ignored for years, I found that I could hug myself, and that was enough. I created a little universe that housed me, and I guarded so many from entering it. And that's my life in a nutshell--self-absorbed and completely meaningless socially. Even my jokes are an insult to that profession. When the world gives me a hint or simply says no, I move on, hoping to find something that naturally appeals to me in some way that I don't encounter its stubborn and intractable qualities.
Good luck dude.
Maybe I squirreled away an explanation in one of these posts. I do recall when I set this fucker up back in April 2009 I had a description/explanation in the biography section of the blogger. Well, fuck that.
I'm into cussing now as you can tell. So be it. My 'Rated R' for rant is coming through, and while I come off as rather coarse and angry others tell me that it's because I am self-centered.
True, oh so true.
But what happens when one becomes too self involved. Like the Narcissus of Greek mythology one finds itself transfixed before one's image or that which one takes for one's image. I do recall my first month back on the college campus. I had just finished a stint in a job with benefits at a pharmaceutical publishing house. It required very little creativity, just that I show up, know the tags and how to use them. Plus, I employed some very basic editorial skills, some of which had to be tossed out the window because, well, 'gender' was a tag, and I couldn't continue to explain to my co-workers the distinction between gender and sex. The pharmacists and nurses that used our 'rag' understood perhaps more intimately the two as they dealt with the many permutations of sexual dysfunction and chromosome syndromes in their occupations. To have me try to cut through that curtain of utter seriousness with some academic exercise was like a fart during Mass.
But I do remember something, something akin to that Narcissus moment during that first month of graduate school. I recall telling myself, like I normally do, that I was where I wanted to be and that my future was brighter than a pulsar. I got wrapped up in that idea. I got wrapped up in that feeling. I got wrapped up in that moment. And so I continued to do very little to actually realize a future. No, I did my studies to the best of my abilities, and then I disavowed myself of the identity of the academic and went back to being a pot-headed Star Trekkie researching marijuana cultivation and practicing it on a very limited but mildly successful level.
I should have stuck with my after-hours occupation. Nope, I finished out my first year and was completely entranced with the notion of going for more school. 'More' was my mantra after I finished college. I felt like I hadn't learned enough, but I was of the mind that I had to be in a learning situation in order to satisfy that need. And so that is why I continued on at the doctoral level in a very serious program with very serious people, ones who didn't drop their daylight clothing of academe and become self-involved shitheads such as myself. Living among the academics in a house with academics I had very little respite from their life, and so quickly this component of my free time died out. I began to read all the time. That was a way to appear looking smart while I let my mind wander. It was just another performative cop-out to convince myself that I was being academic.
But I wasn't, not really. It didn't seep into my core. I wasn't 'being' an academic. I played one, and convincingly enough I used my facility for language and vocabulary to trick a lot of people into thinking I was smart. Being able to use the words correctly and to think critically is one thing, but without an identity and personal mission under the umbrella of academics in which to pursue it they are just words and just thinking. That's where I hit the wall.
During my comprehensive exams I began to cry because I was being forced to tell a group of elder scholars who 'I' was, and I had no hat in telling that publicly. So I whimpered through a few words and let my advisor finish my sentence for me. That's where that ended, and so with it ended my career.
I continued to mime academics as I worked through aspects of my dissertation. Looking back on it now, and reading some of the stuff I get a sense that I was a different person, possessed perhaps by the discourses in which I was ensconced. I puttered through that for a few years, took an undeserving and underpaying job in some academic backwater, and burned out. What I have to show for it are a few lost years and no degree to demonstrate I was busy doing something.
A gulf exists between doing the time and earning the degree. A gaping, yawning chasm exists between ABD and PhD. And I'm on the "chopped-liver" end of that ravine. I own up to it. When I'm donning a respirator and fiddling around on a coal tar decanter next to a sign that reads, "Warning Benzene Cancer Hazard," I know certainly that I dug this grave for myself by doing what I do best, loiter about.
Yes, I spent from 1995 to around 2008 loitering in universities, thinking big and producing small. I set my sights big in 1995 pursuing pre-medicine, planned to drop out the next year, was coaxed into returning, studied communication, swapped degrees a half a dozen times, and ended up running out of time in 1998, so I settled back into smoking massive amounts of weed and acing my communication courses. That would be the poster child for 'cop-out' and 'loitering' if there ever were one.
Oddly enough all that smoking led me to a career where no smoking is tolerated. I have to take drug tests. I don't mind my career path. I could consider it an Academic Walkabout in the Aussie sense of the term. I just was meandering along, and paid no mind to the real work of becoming the thing that the process was supposed to make you. Nope, like a duck's feather none of that academic water stuck for long. Nope, it collected in little puddles here and there, and when I went about it slid right back off. And the best kind of repellent for all this academic water is being the Narcissus. When you're so deeply invested in your own ego development for private enjoyment you miss out on a world of others and the activities and ideas that make you a sensible member in that world. Nope, to add some rhetorical flourish to my title, I'm an 'artist.' And this is not to say that academics aren't egoists. They've just invested their ego into something a little more sensible to their respective communities. They do the necessary extra-curriculars to make it into their field. I did none of that, none. I just retreated to a book in order to satisfy the policeman in my head. And what came of it is my job at a steel mill, repairing structures, breathing in dirty air, and exposing myself to physical and environmental hazards. It's good work really. I harbor zero, zero contempt for the people with whom I work.
Oddly enough the structure of my current profession benefits those that disavow their jobs at the end of the day. In the academic world you wear your work like a musk exuded from some long-atrophied and atavistic anal glad. Your academic work spreads it all over you, and others recognize not only who but what you are. If cornered to speak about a core academic concern, I had nothing. It ended there. I was a sham, a charlatan, a phony, a fake. I was not what I pretended to be, simply a pretender going about my day, paying no mind to the extra work outside of the research and writing that it took to become one of them. Nope, I found me in all that mess. And here I am, still standing by the surface of the pool, gazing contentedly at my own reflection.
It's all a defense mechanism perhaps. Being shunned and ignored for years, I found that I could hug myself, and that was enough. I created a little universe that housed me, and I guarded so many from entering it. And that's my life in a nutshell--self-absorbed and completely meaningless socially. Even my jokes are an insult to that profession. When the world gives me a hint or simply says no, I move on, hoping to find something that naturally appeals to me in some way that I don't encounter its stubborn and intractable qualities.
Good luck dude.
Friday, March 15, 2013
rhetoric tax
I've harbored a great surplus of ill will. No, I've built whole storage facilities to house the sense of disgust at the manipulation to which many submit in this life. For some reason, I continue to place Disney at the nexus.
This notion dawned on me when I was attending a showing of Spiderman one night, alone, coming off a marijuana buzz. There, in the theater, were parents and children watching with the same childlike awe as one of their childhood heroes fought generically bad guys and the occasional signature supervillain. There, seated next to each other were two kids: one adult kid and one age nominal kid. The invention of childhood is nothing new, but to what it is devoted is a perverse chain of fantasies leading to the consumption of the thing. The thing must be purchased, but it doesn't bring one any closer to attaining the Thing referenced by the thing, which stokes the desire that the perverse fantasy generates within the taught and coarse symbolic universe of youth. That's a world of good and bad, power and impotence; and my God to suckle on the desired end of the dialectical pairing is the closest kids come to drug abuse and intoxication. It's one of many ways that humans as a species spend much of their lives in a mental world loosely tethered to the world of the five senses. How did Kenneth Burke state it? He simply juxtaposed the words image and imagination. And he nailed it.
But before I go into a long harangue about media manipulation I'll simply stick to the topic's core--persuasion. But before I lead up to to my titular coda I want to dovetail into the topic just begun. To single out kids as receptacles for ideas and to build from them whole worlds which require a repertoire of mimed abilities to inhabit is not a new invention. That's the stuff of culture. Our traditional reverence for the aged stems from their wisdom or simply the amount of knowledge that they possess that can and should be passed on for survival, identity, and simply enrichment. That culture is a grab-bag of knots to learn, plants to avoid, cosmologies to kowtow, and stories that teach and entertain is nothing new. As I said, we're beings of time. We fix it in narratives and overlay onto our immediate day-to-day lives to give the moments significance and sometimes a sense of living in the future perfect tense: "I will have done this." We're all little Billy Pilgrims by way of our cultural inheritance, unstuck, as it were in time, living partly as slaves to a past and in the now as organisms reacting to the stimuli before us. The lattice work of sense making we place between our history and our present condition is an important condition of existence as a human.
Now that I've presented a fucking holistic picture of humanity in too many goddamned words, let me get to my point. Friends and family spend less time spinning these webs of significance. No, we're fed so many dead-ended stories about gain that lead us directly to a financial transaction. And to ensure that this process runs smoothly from cradle to grave is the grand manipulating scheme that nations, institutions, and businesses create to ensure that they exist into the future. Without highlighting each one, let me focus on the culture industry that is Disney.
Disney is more than a media company. Disney is more than a kids business. Disney is more than show business. Disney is more than an entertainment company. Disney is more than theme parks. Disney is an overwhelming experience machine. And it employs all the best in their respective crafts, crams them into so many think tanks and creation factories and pumps out the stuff that fill the lives of the youth. They are not alone in this. I simply singled them out for this reason alone. Walt Disneyworld in Florida has recreated the African savannah simply for the sake of experiencing lions "just like in the Lion King dad!", "Yeah son, just like in the Lion King!"
Acid is cheaper.
LSD is cheaper.
A drum circle and some esoteric root preparation is cheaper.
All share the same sense of surreality as the Disney train tour through the African savannah with real lions in Orange County Florida, but Disney's has some real-world impact. And it shows Disney's hand. They will not stop at the sides of the celluloid. They want a panorama of fantasy. They want so much as to manipulate your complete surroundings so that you may be entertained. As if our emaciated little neurons needed so much upon which to sup.
Fuck you Disney and your goddamned fantasy industry.
So to Disney and to all industries that generate their income from manipulating the many into buying their crappy food, clothing, media titles, and likeness I levy a rhetoric tax. To find that many terminally single women retreat to an adolescent moment and dress up as princesses and watch their complete collection of Disney videos while eating various sugary foods I am repulsed. This kind of compulsion to Disney is a mental illness shaped, handled, and maintained for the financial gain of a company that cares not that it's patrons are healthy and happy but that they're entertained.
I entertained an idea once, and it was to wipe Disney off the face of the earth.
Having blown my wad on all the fancy words, I've left no more inspiration for how this tax will be levied, collected, and to what ends it will be spent. To hell with the notion of a rhetoric tax. I was simply driving along to the visual assault of billboards when the notion hit me.
So there, that's your rhetoric tax.
And in the end, we'll continue to remain as kids, never able to make a decision because we grew up in a world saturated by choice. I'm with the homeless-by-choice. I'm for vagabondage. And I accept the bohemian lifestyle. To see a Disney artifact among any of these reminds me that the manipulation industry's objects are like mold spore. They cover the entire face of the earth, they comprise the flotsam on the ocean surface, and they lie dormant waiting for a face.
Perhaps, somewhere out there is a clown fish choking on its likeness only because so damn many of them were produced and thrown away with no thought to where they go. Why? They were too busy being entertained. And when the entertainment becomes the work we do, we have to wonder what happened to our freedom.
This notion dawned on me when I was attending a showing of Spiderman one night, alone, coming off a marijuana buzz. There, in the theater, were parents and children watching with the same childlike awe as one of their childhood heroes fought generically bad guys and the occasional signature supervillain. There, seated next to each other were two kids: one adult kid and one age nominal kid. The invention of childhood is nothing new, but to what it is devoted is a perverse chain of fantasies leading to the consumption of the thing. The thing must be purchased, but it doesn't bring one any closer to attaining the Thing referenced by the thing, which stokes the desire that the perverse fantasy generates within the taught and coarse symbolic universe of youth. That's a world of good and bad, power and impotence; and my God to suckle on the desired end of the dialectical pairing is the closest kids come to drug abuse and intoxication. It's one of many ways that humans as a species spend much of their lives in a mental world loosely tethered to the world of the five senses. How did Kenneth Burke state it? He simply juxtaposed the words image and imagination. And he nailed it.
But before I go into a long harangue about media manipulation I'll simply stick to the topic's core--persuasion. But before I lead up to to my titular coda I want to dovetail into the topic just begun. To single out kids as receptacles for ideas and to build from them whole worlds which require a repertoire of mimed abilities to inhabit is not a new invention. That's the stuff of culture. Our traditional reverence for the aged stems from their wisdom or simply the amount of knowledge that they possess that can and should be passed on for survival, identity, and simply enrichment. That culture is a grab-bag of knots to learn, plants to avoid, cosmologies to kowtow, and stories that teach and entertain is nothing new. As I said, we're beings of time. We fix it in narratives and overlay onto our immediate day-to-day lives to give the moments significance and sometimes a sense of living in the future perfect tense: "I will have done this." We're all little Billy Pilgrims by way of our cultural inheritance, unstuck, as it were in time, living partly as slaves to a past and in the now as organisms reacting to the stimuli before us. The lattice work of sense making we place between our history and our present condition is an important condition of existence as a human.
Now that I've presented a fucking holistic picture of humanity in too many goddamned words, let me get to my point. Friends and family spend less time spinning these webs of significance. No, we're fed so many dead-ended stories about gain that lead us directly to a financial transaction. And to ensure that this process runs smoothly from cradle to grave is the grand manipulating scheme that nations, institutions, and businesses create to ensure that they exist into the future. Without highlighting each one, let me focus on the culture industry that is Disney.
Disney is more than a media company. Disney is more than a kids business. Disney is more than show business. Disney is more than an entertainment company. Disney is more than theme parks. Disney is an overwhelming experience machine. And it employs all the best in their respective crafts, crams them into so many think tanks and creation factories and pumps out the stuff that fill the lives of the youth. They are not alone in this. I simply singled them out for this reason alone. Walt Disneyworld in Florida has recreated the African savannah simply for the sake of experiencing lions "just like in the Lion King dad!", "Yeah son, just like in the Lion King!"
Acid is cheaper.
LSD is cheaper.
A drum circle and some esoteric root preparation is cheaper.
All share the same sense of surreality as the Disney train tour through the African savannah with real lions in Orange County Florida, but Disney's has some real-world impact. And it shows Disney's hand. They will not stop at the sides of the celluloid. They want a panorama of fantasy. They want so much as to manipulate your complete surroundings so that you may be entertained. As if our emaciated little neurons needed so much upon which to sup.
Fuck you Disney and your goddamned fantasy industry.
So to Disney and to all industries that generate their income from manipulating the many into buying their crappy food, clothing, media titles, and likeness I levy a rhetoric tax. To find that many terminally single women retreat to an adolescent moment and dress up as princesses and watch their complete collection of Disney videos while eating various sugary foods I am repulsed. This kind of compulsion to Disney is a mental illness shaped, handled, and maintained for the financial gain of a company that cares not that it's patrons are healthy and happy but that they're entertained.
I entertained an idea once, and it was to wipe Disney off the face of the earth.
Having blown my wad on all the fancy words, I've left no more inspiration for how this tax will be levied, collected, and to what ends it will be spent. To hell with the notion of a rhetoric tax. I was simply driving along to the visual assault of billboards when the notion hit me.
So there, that's your rhetoric tax.
And in the end, we'll continue to remain as kids, never able to make a decision because we grew up in a world saturated by choice. I'm with the homeless-by-choice. I'm for vagabondage. And I accept the bohemian lifestyle. To see a Disney artifact among any of these reminds me that the manipulation industry's objects are like mold spore. They cover the entire face of the earth, they comprise the flotsam on the ocean surface, and they lie dormant waiting for a face.
Perhaps, somewhere out there is a clown fish choking on its likeness only because so damn many of them were produced and thrown away with no thought to where they go. Why? They were too busy being entertained. And when the entertainment becomes the work we do, we have to wonder what happened to our freedom.
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