resignation

I had to submit an official resignation form today.  It asked for the reason why I'm resigning.  So I got out another piece of paper and started listing the reasons:

Because children need the security of a relationship in which they don't have to earn your love, to develop the courage and the creativity to become healthy and happy adults.  Because the idiosyncrasies of a child's development, the pursuit of her own interests in her own time, are not an inconvenience, but a blessing you should feel honored to participate in.  Because demanding obedience from a child and shaming her for her natural desire to play is an unforgivable abuse of power. Because our industry is an assembly line for self destructively lonely adults.  Because the self hatred that has exploded into an epidemic of child suicide in this country was installed on the factory floors of our schools.  And because I'm more disgusted with myself every day that I'm a part of it.

In the end, I wrote:

irreconcilability of methodological differences

ATTN: Aspiring derivative hacks

I had a conversation with teh internets recently:

Me:  Holy harlequin, batman!  A blog would be a perfect platform for a choose your own adventure novel!

Internets:  Yeah, we did that already.  It wasn't that cool.

Me: Oh.

Internets: ...

Me: ... Soooooo

Internets:  Are you seriously doing it anyway?!

Me:  Isn't it exciting!!?

Internets:  You're such a derivative hack.

Me:  : D  I'm not even sorry!

So,

ATTN:  Aspiring derivative hacks

Are you a struggling unsung artist desperately groping for a toehold into the world of free, digital, self published obscurity?  Are you an emasculated man-child aching for an excuse to erect a fantasy world to escape the pressures of personal responsibility?  Are you a frustrated fanboy with a neurotic need to explore every ancillary subplot of your favorite obsession? Do you want to shovel another glistening turd onto the festering heap of mediocre, internet based, second person perspective fiction?

Then this is the project for you! 

You can announce your enthusiasm at ansibleblackwind@facebook.com

You will NOT be turned down!

sucking. objectively.

There are things which don't exist, but which never the less have objective standards by which to measure them. Morality, for example, doesn't exist. But if you're going to make a moral claim, then at the very least it has to apply to all people and at all times. Virtue doesn't exist, but if you're going to claim something is a virtue, it has to at least be independent of any value system.

I suspect that there are similar objective standards for evaluating aesthetic judgements. Not that I have a clue what they are, but there are things that I like and things that I don't and I want to be able to say why with something a little more powerful than, “because it's chic, darling.”

To that end, I'd like to say something insulting:

Modern soul music is ugly. It's structure is predictable and it's content is shallow. It sounds like Big Macs taste.

Hopefully you disagree with me. And hopefully, more importantly, you'll tell me why. For the sake of my own sanity, understand that the following two comments don't count:

“It's not ugly, it's just different.”

You're saying that ugliness doesn't exist. That anything that I perceive as ugly could be perceived as beautiful by someone else. But what you don't realize is that you're saying beauty doesn't exist either, because beauty is meaningless without ugliness. But you do believe in beauty. You're trying to save beauty while destroying ugliness, because you're afraid that your taste is ugly. You don't know why you prefer the things that you do, and you're embarrassed of them, so you spout the comforting mantra that there is no such thing as ugliness and assert the nonexistence of beauty by extension. In short, you're a coward.

“You're being ethnocentric”

You're saying that there are objective standards within cultures, but that there are no objective standards between cultures. You're saying that multiple mutually exclusive standards for evaluating beauty are simultaneously true. First, this is a contradiction. You are saying that standards of beauty are both absolute and relative. That is, that they both exist and don't exist simultaneously. Second, you make no argument to justify any of these claims. How do you know that objective standards exist? How do you know that they don't? How do you know that distinctions of culture have anything to do with it? In short, you're pretentious.

the problem with "Fruit Salad"

I was 7 years old when I heard “The Thunder Rolls” for the first time. I loved it, but I remember thinking it was a song about the perils of severe weather. I could sing all the words long before I had any idea what they meant. The first inkling I got that there was some deeper mystery to the song was a line near the beginning, “He's heading back from somewhere that he never should have been”. I had thought before that he shouldn't have been there because it was dangerous because a huge storm was coming. But something started nagging at me that maybe he was doing something dishonest, not just stupid.

After that, I started listening harder, searching for clues. Eventually I realized more or less what, “but on the wind and rain a strange new perfume blows”, actually meant. And that blew my prepubescent mind. I started thinking this was a treasure trove of information about the most intimate and complicated of adult relationships. I listened that much more intently after that. I wanted to wring every last drop of knowledge about how to be a grown up out of it. So thanks to Garth Brooks, by the age of 8, I was contemplating with a decent degree of accuracy, the emotional complexities of sexual relationships.

Compare that to “fruit salad” by the wiggles. I hear kids singing this song everyday. They love it. But they also love eating straw fulls of chemically colored sugar, so I think it's safe to question their preferences. There's no depth to “fruit salad”, no hidden meaning, no complexity.  Most importantly, there's no incentive to think. When the kids hear it, they immediately understand all the words. It doesn't leave them curious.  It doesn't inspire them to seek out new information and start imaging recombining what they have in new ways.  It destroys their ability to be creative.  When you start eating a lot of junk food, you stop appreciating the flavors of healthy natural foods.  And when you start listening to the wiggles, you stop appreciating mystery and nuance.  Just like junk food circumvents the benefits of nutrition, the music made for children circumvents all the socio-emotional-developmental benefits of art.  It's candy for the ears.

The problem with “Fruit Salad” is it has no nutritional value.

you're doing it wrong

10 posts deep and a hundred blogs scanned, the off putting patterns of public posting are piling up.  So here are my current 5 don't-give-a-damn-ments and 5 can't-stand-ments of blogging.

I don't give a damn about...

1. Your kids,
2. Your personal relationship with a fictional character or your enlightened perspectives on spirituality,
3. Your gastronomical adventures,
4. The trivialities of your day or
5. Any post longer than the window I'm reading it in.

I can't stand...

1. "Faux"fanity (Swearing should be avoided, but if you have to then just fucking do it),
2. Amateur sociological theories (don't tell me what "people" are like.  What are YOU like?),
3. Unfocused ramblings,
4. Gossip, political intrigue, contempt mongering one-up-man-ship or just plain ad nauseam bitching or
5. ...Having found 2-4 of these mistakes on my own blog. So,

Dear internet,

I'll make you a deal.  I'll constantly seek perfection in attractively and disarmingly packaging snack size servings of self reflection, if you'll give me just one interestingly intimate blog to follow.

Your biggest fan,
Ansible

rudeness and objective value

this is a [modestly modified] transplant from a short series of notes on my bookface

Rudeness doesn’t exist.  Let me make the case by explaining what it means to be polite first.  What is someone saying when s/he is polite to you?

1.  You are valuable to me.

“Some or all of this interaction is a gift that I want to give to you.”

This makes sense to me.  That person has earned your love, respect or admiration.  You want to treat them with the kind of deference that you would a rare work of art.

However, some people believe that other people are supposed to value them, because they have objective value as a human being.  If you have value just because you exist, then you don’t have to earn it.  You don’t have to be efficacious. You don’t have to be courageous. When someone doesn't value you as much as you think they should, it's a reflection on THEIR character.  They're not demonstrating to you that they value you as much as it's their responsibility to value you.

To be rude is to not demonstrate your valuation of something in accordance with its objective value.  Since objective value doesn’t exist, neither does rudeness.  I live in a world where most people are the kinds of cowards who convince themselves of the validity of objective value because it’s easier than facing their fears and achieving their goals. Which is why I hear something very different when people are polite to me. Namely,

2.  You are stupid.

“I want something from you.  You will misinterpret my politeness as a genuine positive appraisal of your character and you will be persuaded by this to provide me with something. Generally, the reciprocation of disingenuous positive appraisals.”

3.  You are crazy.

“You will misinterpret a lack of demonstrations of a positive evaluation of your character as a negative evaluation.  This will remind you of your negative self evaluation which will cause you to reexperience shame or possibly even lower your self evaluation and cause an experience of new deeper shame.  Wishing to avoid the knowledge of your negative self evaluation, you will interpret the interaction as an attack.  You will become angry. You may become covertly or openly hostile and may even become violent.”

Which is why I never feel completely comfortable with somebody until they're a complete cock to me.

vindication

Everyday, the kindergarten classes at my school all get together for a 20 minute session called play songs.  Teachers are assigned categories of activities and days of the week to do them on and expected to develop their own curriculum.  I do P.E. on mondays and games on thursdays.  I taught them red rover last thursday, and kicked myself for not doing it sooner.  It is fully awesome to watch a toddler charge a wall of his peers, in defiance of social anxiety and safety standards.

Another teacher has music with them twice a week.  She plays internet videos and they all sing along.  Usually it's the kind of gratingly inane crap that gets produced specifically for their age group.  That trend, btw, has driven me to a hatred of the wiggles (and their ilk) that I'll explain another time.  Last wednesday, I walked by the room and saw that she and our boss were failing to capture their interest with a Beatles track.  The kids were staring blankly (and quietly) into the middle distance and she looked at me with a bug eyed shrug as if to say, "I don't know what went wrong here".

I figured that as long as they we're in a mood to play things that weren't imagination murdering pixi stix for the ears, I'd risk a suggestion.  I poked my head in the doorway and over the awkward silence and across the room I said, "you know, my kids love crocodile rock."  Which, if you haven't read the post, was the very song that led to a red faced chastisement by both of my bosses a few months back, and thus entailed a considerable degree of cheek.

Instantly, one of my kids shouted, "CROCODILE ROCK!"  Then the rest of them started chanting it, "CROCODILE ROCK! CROCODILE ROCK!".  By the looks on their faces, I'd guess that neither the other teacher nor our boss had ever seen such enthusiastic solidarity in a group of students.  So they acquiesced and before the video even started, my kids were already singing it.  By the end of it, even the 5 year olds were shouting out the chorus. Even I was surprised to see that my kids could already sing half the words.

So there are a few lessons I think we can take from this:

1. If you allow children to pursue their own interests, they WILL literally trip over themselves trying to learn it.
   
2. Don't try to make Ansible feel like an asshole for failing to meet your standard of positive obligation fulfillment, because you WILL regret it.
   
3. Elton John is so talented that it almost pisses me off, but I WILL let him touch my penis if he says please.
   

the only virtue

I've gotten myself convinced in the last year that courage is the only virtue.  And by extension, that cowardice is the only vice.  Every other virtue is either a particularized form of courage, or is actually cowardice in disguise.  More on that another time.  For now,  here's the table I have so far.  Cells to the right are more particularized forms of cells to the left.  I have each virtue paired with its equivalent vice for brevity.

 

Is there another virtue that should be on this chart?
Is it a form of courage?

acting like a child

When I was growing up, my parents didn't talk to me. They didn't ask me how I was feeling or what my opinions were. They didn't find me interesting. In my string of unsatisfying relationships, we had an unspoken agreement that I would sacrifice to listen to all of their boring stuff, and they would sacrifice to listen to all of mine. Even a long friendship I had with another guy was like that.  We were taking turns being each other's moms. I was trying to get from them the unearned attention you are supposed to be smothered with by your parents. This is clearly not what adult relationships are supposed to be like.

My parents did provide for my physical needs. They gave me food and water. But we didn't eat meals as a family. They gave me clothing. But they didn't teach me how to dress myself. They let me live in the house. But my step dad told me how badly he wanted to throw me out. We were poor and they had too many kids. He had already thrown my older sister out, and that made me the oldest kid in the house. I always felt like I was one uncleaned mess away from an ass kicking and final proof that my mother would always choose him over me. So I didn't go to them with my desires or my problems. I tried not to take any of their time, and I never asked for anything. I became as quiet and invisible as I could.

And I'm still doing that. I don't say hello to people at work, because I don't want them to feel obligated to notice me. I would never dream of asking for a raise, and I'm put off by people who do. I've been yelled at a lot at my current job for things I don't understand, but I don't think anymore that I'm leaving out of indignation or pride. I'm leaving because I think they feel trapped with me as an employee. I feel guilty that I'm not giving them the value they want.

somebody else's asshole

I teach English in Korea

I teach it to predominantly unenthusiastic 6-11 year old children in 40 minute blocks.  A while back, I was leading a group of them through a worksheet about the winter Olympics.  I had one of the communal laptops open to show them some clips of the actual games.  After a lot of request denying and dispute resolving and redirecting with varying degrees of gentleness, I finally managed to get everybody finished.  Then I realized that I actually had 3 minutes to spare.  Since the laptop was still in the room, I thought we could just watch something fun.  Everything I could think of to watch was guaranteed to be inappropriate, so I settled on playing crocodile rock.  And they went nuts.  You would think these kids had never heard music before.  They were instantly laughing and dancing and lala-ing along to the chorus.  For 3 minutes, we actually had a good time.  And it made the rest of the day go smoother.  I started making a list of other songs that they might love, thinking that I had just discovered a skeleton key to the hearts and minds of disregarded children.

But the next day I was calmly led by both of my bosses into a room scarcely big enough for two, designed for meeting with mothers to tell them how wonderful our program is.  When the door closed, they turned on me with the kind of venomous diatribe I haven't had to endure since I was a teenager.  Because you see  there are cameras in every room and they had caught me wasting time.  They were appalled at how irresponsible I was being.  One of them started mocking my air guitar with the shittiest look he could produce.  I was genuinely dumbfounded.  These kids are 6 years old.  They sit here quietly for 6 hours a day, obediently doing things that they don't care about.  After making sure they had finished their work, I let them have fun for literally THREE MINUTES. What the hell is the problem?

And this kind of thing keeps happening.  I do something that I think is completely innocuous.  And the next day, I'm made to feel like an asshole.  Most recently I was yelled at for using the word, "crazy".  They were seriously snortingly offended by this.  I have also been yelled at for:

1. playing music softly while students work.
2. using colloquial phrases like, "that's bananas".
3. mentioning to another teacher the FACT that recycling is a net loss for the environment.
4. sitting down when I talk to my students, and
5. not saying hello to other staff often enough.


And this is why I'm quitting.  I can endure the self imposed shame of participating in the systematic destruction of the creativity and self esteem of children, but I'm done being somebody else's asshole.

being a teacher

I teach English in Korea.

Sometimes I love it.  Sometimes the students are happy to be there.  They're working in teams and fighting to be the best and enjoying what they're learning.  Sometimes they're actually curious about the material.  They work hard, not because they want points or because it's expected of them, but because it's something they want to know for its own sake.  On days like that I feel like I could keep doing this job forever.  And it's an attractive option.  I could spend my life traveling around the world, seeing sights and learning languages.  Maybe I'd finally settle down in a couple of decades in some hong kong suburb, marry a handsome pirate, and start a business selling discount swimwear for robots.

But usually I hate it.  Usually the students are only there for fear of their parents.  Usually they only begrudgingly participate and only after I woo them into it with sideshow antics.  And sometimes I have to shame them into it with a withering stare or a condescending talking to or even just yelling at them.  Usually I feel like a particularly uninspiring government sponsored edutainment service meant to get people totally enthused about sorting out their recycling.  And sometimes I just feel like a prison guard.

So I recognize that my job is fundamentally immoral.  I had mistakenly believed before I came here that private education was somehow less of a violation of non aggression than public education.  It turns out that it's not ok to herd children into curiosity destroying indoctrination camps where strangers will shame them into going through the motions of pretending to learn things that they don't care about, even when you don't mug people to pay for it.  And I wish that was enough for me.  I wish I had the courage and the conviction to break agreements and to tell people it's because I think what we're doing is wrong.  I'm still more of a coward than I'm happy to admit.  But I am quitting this job.  Exactly half way through my contract, I'm headed back to the states.  I'll save what pushed me over the edge for another post.

smut as revolution

Once upon a time, I was reading yet another modern cookie cutter urban fantasy novel, and I was loving it. This one was about descendants of gods with superfluously sexy powers and iridescent facial tattoos. I got to a point in the book where a clue was dropped if you were clever enough to notice it. I was. And I was feeling pretty sassy about it. I started thinking, “I wonder if so and so has something to do with it.” And I was all excited to read on and find out. Then, to my dismay, the very next sentence in the book was the main character helpfully musing to her self, “in light of this clue that I was clever enough to notice, I wonder if so and so has something to do with it.” At first I thought I was just disappointed. Here I was all expectantly comfortable with the thought that this book was going to provide me with exactly the value I had hoped for, when a single thoughtless remark revealed that I was actually going to half assedly scan through the rest of it, too nervous to emotionally reinvest myself. After a while though, I realized that underneath my disappointment, how I really felt was irritated.

This was the moment for me when it became clear that a good story is a conversation. The author is supposed to set up the circumstances such that she knows which questions you'd be asking her. Then she moves the story along in such a way to answer your questions without just blurting the damn things out.  Imagine that you and a friend are killing an afternoon together in a waffle house. She's telling you this great story and you're about to ask her a question about it. Then she hands you a cue card with a question on it that she decided before hand that she wanted you to ask her. Maybe it's the same question, and maybe it's a different one. It doesn't really matter. What's important is that she doesn't care what you want to know. She isn't telling you the story. She's telling herself the story, and she thought it would be fun if you could watch her do that. Well it isn't fun. It's demeaning.

The fact that a good story is fundamentally an act of intimacy has gotten me thinking recently. I already think that intimacy is the only avenue to anarchy, and I might even get around to making a case for that someday. But fiction is a way for us to commodify and mass produce the experience of intimacy. With fiction, we have the capacity to exponentially magnify and expedite the benefits of intimacy. What we need is to start writing dime store romance and crime novels. We need a thousand of these things that are just good enough to publish. We need books that demonstrate people putting anarchist principles into practice in their daily lives. We need to change people's intuitions about what's moral and what's possible by showing them realistic people and situations and letting them draw their own principles from it. I'd love to get a group of people working together on these stories.  I actually have a completely grandiose plan about setting up a wiki to crowd source them.  Send me a message if you're interested.

caring particularly

My best friend is a girl I used to date.  And I'm sure that I particularly care about her.  In fact, I particularly care about her now more than I did when we were dating.  Partly because, after years of self reflection and growth, I have a greater capacity to care particularly.  And partly because, after years of her own self reflection and growth, she's even more particularly care aboutable.  But I'm not sure whether I've ever particularly cared for other girls I've had relationships with.  I was convinced of it at the time, for sure.  But did I actually particularly care about them, or did I just particularly care about being particularly cared about?  I don't know.

A related question. In these other relationships, I always seemed to be far more curious and forthcoming than they were. At the time, I thought that they were just afraid of being vulnerable or too emotionally crippled to even be aware of their own feelings. And I still think that's true, but it also seems like I was trying to suck the intimacy from their veins like some codependent Nosferatu. So I have to ask, were they, the ones who could establish and maintain socially acceptable and varying levels of intimacy, the emotional cripples? Or am I, the one who practically molests strangers with it, the one with the problem?  Again, I don't know.

But I recognize that I have a history of being involved with women who withhold intimacy. And that this is clearly me recreating the pattern of my relationship with my mother (go figure). And that I'm going to have to talk to her. And that the idea of trying to have a real intimate conversation with my mother is terrifying. I'm not afraid that she'll obfuscate or make ad hoc justifications. I'm not afraid that she'll be distant or dismissive or even angry. She certainly might be all of those. Really, I'm afraid that she just won't care. That I'll feel rushed to try to get out what I'm not even sure I'm trying to say before she has to rush off to get her hair done or something else that's more important. I'm afraid of telling her that I need something from her, because I'm afraid (as I always was) that I'm just a burden to her. I'm afraid that she doesn't particularly care about me.

awkward

Like just about everyone else on this planet, I have a problem with intimacy.  But unlike the majority of the rest, my problem isn't that I have a desperate longing for and simultaneous terror of it.  My problem is that I'm not afraid of it at all.  I've got the longing without the inhibitions.  So I'll happily and wantonly throw it around to anybody who happens to be inconveniently trapped with me at a pub quiz.  You'll complain about your girlfriend, and I'll ask you inappropriately personal questions about your relationship with your mother.  You'll ask me what my weekend was like, and I'll end up giving you disturbingly graphic details about the one time I was attracted to a boy, and what I think that says about my gender identity. I am, in a word, awkward.  But that's all right with me.  I want to talk to people who take pleasure in sharing and exploring personal details with an eye toward self discovery and integrity. The only way to find them, is to make normal people uncomfortable. fair warning.

double "you're welcome" relationships

You go down to the grocery store and buy a gallon of milk.  The clerk says thank you.  You say thank you.  Perfectly reasonable.

You walk home from the store, milk in hand, and a vagrant asks if you can spare some change.  You hand him some money.  He says thank you.  You say you're welcome.  Again, perfectly reasonable.

You walk into your house just as your wife is stumbling sleepily into the kitchen.  She sees that you have milk in your hand.  She recognizes that there must not be any in the refrigerator and you knew that she would want some for breakfast and so you went to get it just for her. She says thank you.  You say I'm leaving you, you frivolous bitch.  Once again, perfectly reasonable.  Because she just revealed something about her character and your relationship.  Because she really should have said you're welcome.

What did you just say to me?
 
Sometimes you do things so that you and someone else will both benefit.  When this happens, you say you're welcome.  You bring your wife milk so that she will have milk, but also so that you will have a happy wife. You give the vagrant money so that he will have food and also so that you will have a clean conscience.


Sometimes you do things solely for your own benefit, but you need someone else's help.  when this happens, you say thank you.  The clerk wants a paycheck.  But he doesn't get paid unless you buy something, so he says thank you.  The vagrant wants some change.  But he can't get it unless you volunteer to give it to him, so he says thank you.  If the clerk or the vagrant says you're welcome, it's weird, because they aren't interested in the benefit to you.  They didn't do it for you.

Which brings us back to your thoughtlessly grateful wife.  when she says thank you, she is saying that she endures the burden of a nominally intimate relationship with you so that you will continue to provide her with economic benefit.  That is, that she is exclusively interested in the benefit to herself.  You are rightfully appalled by the sound of it.  When she says you're welcome, she is saying that for all the things that she is to you or does for you that inspires you to want to be or do for her, you are welcome for that.

Awe, you shouldn't have.

Imagine that you can't say thank you to your wife.  You've gone to couples counseling and your counselor tells you that you can only say you're welcome.  You know your wife is going to do something nice for you.  You know you're going to feel stupid saying you're welcome if you haven't done anything for her.  Imagine how thoughtful of a husband you might become, knowing that you would be unable to say thank you when your wife did something nice for you.  That is what intimate relationships should always be like: dedication to improvement of yourself as a partner. Now further imagine that you haven't done anything nice for her, and you can't bring yourself to say you're welcome, so you say thank you anyway.

Do you know what it sounds like?  It sounds like I'm sorry.  I'm sorry that I take you for granted.  I'm sorry that I never consider you.  I'm sorry that I'm using you and lying to you and myself about it.

So just try it and see what happens.  just say you're welcome instead.  If it feels too weird, start being the most perfect partner you can imagine until you can justify it, and see if it doesn't feel like you should have been saying it all along.

you're welcome

introduction

note: at the time of this posting, this blog was called "from intimacy to anarchy".

I hate listening to introductions, and I'm finding that writing them is an even more detestable chore.  And I'm not even sure if I deserve one.  In my experience, introductions are reserved nearly exclusively for people who don't actually need them. I hear the phrase, "a man who needs no introduction" as often as not.  But I guess all that means is that introductions are so important that they're important even when they're completely not important. So I guess I'll say something to warm you up to this thing.


It will be about intimacy. and anarchy.  and intimacy as the only means of achieving anarchy. but that much is obvious.  It will also be about atheism and economics and psychology and philosophy on aesthetics and morality and education and run on sentences and whatever the hell else I please.  But it will always circle back to the relationship between intimacy and anarchy.  unless it doesn't.  And it will almost certainly start with something completely unrelated.