Clowns and the Simulacra of Gender

crimson

I am attracted to clowns. Not all clowns, but enough of them to raise questions within myself. Why do I find clowns attractive?

To be clear, when I talk about clowns, I am referring to those performers who paint their faces white and apply rather garish red makeup across their cheeks and above their eyes, often adding a ruby, red ball to their noses that frequently makes a honking noise when squeezed. But it isn’t just their faces; they often add brightly coloured wigs to their heads, and dress in brightly coloured baggy clothing. They are typically comedians of physical comedy, sometimes never speaking and only bouncing around in a frivolous manner. They present themselves in a way that is hard to ignore, making themselves the center of attention in any place they perform.

Some hints as to my predilection became apparent to me after a long time watching women. After a time, I realized that many women are clowns. Like clowns, they apply significant makeup to their faces, altering their hair, sometimes wearing garish wigs. Some of these women even choose colours that are bright and unnatural during the process. Most do not add a ball to their noses, and often their clothing is tight fitting rather than loose, but the general assembly is strikingly similar.

These women are not comedians, generally. But for many of them, their goal of entertaining their audiences remains the same. They too present themselves in a way that is hard to ignore, and work very hard to make themselves the center of attention in any place they go. Like clowns, these women are spectacles.

The similarities between clowns and some women is not enough to explain their allure to me. The next piece of the puzzle comes as part of my upbringing. As a boy, I was taught what I should like. I am supposed to like girls. But not just any girls. I was taught to keep an eye out for certain features. Features that will make these girls attractive, according to some standard that others have selected long before I was ever conceived.

In my philosophy of feminism classes, we often spoke of the “eternal feminine,” an impossible standard that most women are held against in our world. A standard that defines beauty and attractiveness. A standard that is the model many women use when trying to present themselves. It may not surprise my reader that this standard bears a striking resemblance to the standard clowns seem to follow.

I admit this is my interpretation, but it seems to me that this is where my fondness for clowns is coming from. For me, I am attracted to these choices and presentations. These cues. These signs.

Which leads me to another thing I have more recently been noticing. When it comes down to it, there is not a lot of difference between men and women. I am referring to the sexes of man and woman when I say this, not the genders. If you place a nude male of the human species next to a nude female, aside from the (hopefully) obvious differences in genitals, their bodies are much alike.

I already know that many readers will immediately disagree with this. They will speak of the musculature of the male and the swelling of the hips of the female. The breasts. But are these features really as generalized as we are led to believe? Are these features genetic and unchangeable, or are they often originating in other places?

I have seen a great many different bodies in the nearly half a century I have been living on this planet. Bodies of a vast variety of shapes and sizes. I have seen women who have the musculature of what a man ought to have. I have seen men with breasts. And following this multitude of observations, it seems to me that while bodies are shaped as they are as a result of one’s genetic code, they are also very much influenced by the individual’s lifestyle and choices.

As a boy, I was encouraged to behave in the ways of masculinity. This meant going out and playing physically. It meant trying to get me interested in sports (though I admit this particular guidance failed on me). Similarly, I was encouraged to take things apart and put them back together again. Encouraged to play with machinery and computers. And, perhaps more importantly, to dress and present myself in a very particular way. To wear pants, and not dresses. To keep my hair short. To walk in two tracks (I initially walked in one track, and was given lessons to ensure I did not continue this behavior).

Meanwhile, my sisters were encouraged in other ways. Different behaviors. That they ought to be interested in different things than myself. To play with dolls and bake cakes. And also to present themselves in very particular ways. To wear dresses. To let their hair grow long. To walk in one track.

These lessons did not cease over time. As I grew from a child into an adolescent and eventually into an adult, my training continued. If ever I faltered in my presentation, I was shamed and ridiculed until I conformed to the standards set out for me. Encouraged to be physical frequently. To solve conflict through physicality. My strength was considered an asset, and one I ought to develop.

When I think upon all these things, it is no surprise to me that I look as I do. Move as I do. I learned to not bounce when I step, keeping my head at the same level as I progressed. To allow my shoulders and upper body to swing slightly from side to side as I walk, keeping my hips relatively stationary. My gait is a man’s gait. I do not wear heeled shoes, and obviously find them uncomfortable. I do not wear makeup. I do not wear clothing that is intended to alter my appearance. No corsets or the like.

But I cannot say this about the women I know. My partner is wrought with anxiety concerning her appearance all the time. Her presentation is a very significant part of her daily routine. And if the occasion is special or sensitive, she will go to great lengths to upscale her appearance through the use of makeup and other accessories. She has a jewelry box. She has heeled shoes. She knows of those conventions and will make attempts to follow them when she believes it is important or appropriate.

My partner is not a clown, however. When she upscales her appearance, it is only under certain circumstances. Those occasions where she knows it is expected of her. Most of the time, she does not bother with such frivolous things. And I am happy she does not, because I find the entire exercise quite strange.

There are other women I know, however, that are clowns. They spend countless hours doing themselves up every day. Hours in the morning spent preparing for the day ahead. Always applying makeup. Always wearing the heeled shoes. Not always wearing the dresses though, as that convention has been slowly changing. But some of them do still wear those dresses.

You may note that as I carry on regarding all these ways of presentation that I rarely, if ever, discuss their actual bodies. The particulars of their hips or breasts is absent in this discussion, for good reason. Because what makes a man a man, or a woman a woman, it seems to me, actually has very little to do with the individual’s body. The concern, it seems, is far more about the sorts of things I have been talking about. Of makeup and accessories. Of attire choices and of heeled shoes.

This is what I’ve come to realize. How a body appears to be is predominantly about makeup choices and attire choices. I recently watched the film Meet the Spartans. There is a joke within the film about painted on abs on the male actors. And it is surprisingly effective. It is actually hard to tell whether their abs are actually their abs or not. Again, I can hear many readers arguing that it is obvious, but I would challenge exactly how easy it is to really tell. Which is why I will start to discuss trans people.

When an individual establishes publicly that they are a trans woman or a trans man, the first thing they seem to do is find ways to signal this change. A trans woman dresses more feminine and a trans man more masculine. It is this presentation that is important, as it is through this presentation that others will be able to identify who they really are. If they have enough money, and if they are so inclined, they may take their desired identity to their doctors to be surgically altered, but this is seldom the first step in their process. It always seems to begin with trying to make others see them as they wish to be seen. For others to make the correct assumptions and interpretations of the gender they believe themselves to be, regardless of the gender they were assigned at birth.

The main problem with these standards of presentation is, as I said earlier, that they are impossible to achieve. The “eternal feminine” and the “eternal masculine” are models of the idealized, of the perfect. Like Plato’s Forms, they exist in their own reality. Our reality can only ever aspire for such perfection.

This is why drag queens frequently seem to come off as excessive and extreme. These people understand the challenges of these impossible standards, and pursue them relentlessly despite the unfeasability. Pushing their presentation as far as it can possibly go, and still sometimes further than that. Due to the excessive nature of the presentation, the audience is already cued that something is not entirely what it seems. Not quite natural.

It seems to me that drag queens have created their own culture around this extreme presentation. They have appropriated the “eternal feminine” for themselves in a way that is quite astonishing. Their courage is marvelous! However, the cues and signs of genderhood that they exhibit are confusing, and so others may ultimately be left wondering.

With trans people, this is less likely the case. For most trans, it seems that the goal is not the extreme, but often the more subtle. Not necessarily to draw everyone’s attention to what they are doing, but instead to capture the right level of signaling to present themselves as they wish to be presented. A trans person, if successful, is indistinguishable from a non-trans person. A woman is simply a woman in both cases. Similarly with a man. Prefacing with the word “trans” or “cis” seems entirely unnecessary, in my opinion.

Of course, all of this that I express is my opinion. There are clearly plenty of others out there who feel that the prefaced words “trans” and “cis” are critically important. That it is important to realize that the individual’s assigned gender at birth is a significant part of the identity they wish to present. Or, perhaps, it is more about the others holding significant value in something else that has nothing to do with the presentation. That what was assigned at birth is somehow an incredibly important aspect of who a person is.

So, if that is to be the case, it might be best to look closely at how this gender is assigned at birth. What identifying features are used to determine a baby’s gender? This is obvious. In the absence of the baby expressing some sort of preference (obviously due to the baby’s inability to do so), it is their genitals that will be used to determine what to do. If they have a penis, they are clearly male. Otherwise, they are female. Except that isn’t quite what happens.

In cases where the genitals do not provide a clear cut decision in this false dilemma, because the individual has both a penis and a vagina, or perhaps neither, the doctors and parents have some decisions to make. And sometimes the parents are not even a part of this decision. Because heaven forbid that the individual live out their lives not as one of the standard gender choices we have in our world. Only men and women exist, and nothing else.

The choice made on behalf of the newly born individual comes from outside. It comes from others. Others decide who and what the individual is and will be going forward. Again, this may seem reasonable; after all, a baby is in no position to make such choices on their own. They have to grow up first. Perhaps in adulthood they will be ready to start making these sorts of decisions. But until that time, they will still have to be trained and taught how to be whatever it is that they are supposed to be.

The body, and in particular the genitals, are used to select gender initially. But after that initial selection is made, the body is no longer important. The choice made, all that follows is about how to guide the individual toward the appropriate standard. Early on the concepts of the eternal form of their gender are memorized. This knowledge is constantly reinforced through parents, teachers, other children, strangers, even mass media. The pictures in magazines. The characters in film. At every turn, the standards are being reinforced. Still images are “photoshopped” to ensure conformity, just as moving pictures have evolved special effects. I refer once again back to Meet the Spartans, and painted on abs.

The false dilemma is packaged and distributed for mass consumption by the greater audience. Society knows what is supposed to happen. All individuals, left to a sort of self legislation, can attend to themselves and ensure their presentation is managed appropriately. For those individuals who do not conform, shame and guilt are impressed strongly. The religion of the two genders is not the sort of thing you are simply allowed to opt out of.

Bodies are not ignored completely in this divisive situation. Eventually, there comes a time when what is underneath the spectacle will have to be revealed. The truth about ourselves will be exposed eventually. This is why surgical enhancements are greatly sought. Why corsets are worn frequently, training the abdominal region, like doing push-ups trains the pectoralis major. My body is still important, regardless of how it came to me originally.

One should notice, however, that it is not simply acceptable to allow one’s body to remain as it is. Because no body meets the impossible standards. Work will have to be done to make the body conform, as best as possible. And so it should be clear that the body does not determine gender ultimately. It is gender that determines the body. Gender, however selected, becomes the template for how the body ought to be perceived.

Writer’s Block

crimson

Okay, so this isn’t exactly writer’s block. I can write. The problem is I am loosing steam in the process. I have a profound idea that I want to explore, but once I get into it, I feel like the idea fizzles out. Perhaps the idea is just not deep enough to explore?

With regard to my new provider, I still have not yet received a response regarding the reliability issues. Nor have I seen consistent improvements. Sometimes, like now, things appear to be working acceptably. And then other times, the dreaded errors come. So, I will continue to ask for patience while I sort this all out.

And no digs at my previous provider. I have been hesitating to tell him that I’ve migrated this website, hoping to keep his server as a backup for now. In case the worst happens. But honestly, I’d really like to just have things work out with the new provider. It would simplify so many things if this just worked out.

So here I am, writing something. Anything really. I recently watched the Netflix series Alice in Borderland, and there is much to talk about there. Of course, if I say anything, I’d have to say spoilers ahead. The series, and what is happening, is just too complicated and nuanced to talk about without going into details.

The first thing that ought to be obvious is that the title is a play on Lewis Carroll‘s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It should be no surprise that many elements of the television series are borrowed from the book. First of all, there is アリス, which in romanji is Arisu. In the dub, his name is pronounced as it would be in English, A-RI-SU. Having taken some Japanese, this bothers me, because I think it is being mispronounced.

Before I challenge, let me take a moment to talk about a different word or phrase from Japanese: です ね. In romanji, this is “desu ne” which roughly is what one might say if they were seeking agreement regarding something. So it translates to something like “isn’t this the case?” At least, this is what I remember from my classes. I am noticing immediately that Google Translate is disagreeing with this. Then again, the problem might be that it is a sort of sentence stub, often accompanied by other information. In other words, it isn’t usually used by itself like this.

Getting back to the point, the phrase is NOT typically pronounced as it appears in English: DE-SU-NE. When that phrase is uttered, the “U” sound is dropped, so it becomes something like: DES-NE. This happens a fair bit in Japanese, and in other languages. In French, the sound for a trailing “e” is often dropped as well.

Thus, I wish to suggest that Arisu is pronounced: A-RIS. The “U” sound, I believe, should be dropped.

Next, is that pesky “R” sound. In Japanese there is no “L” sound, and so when such a sound is desired, the “R” sound is often used. Furthermore, the “R” sound in English is not the same as the “R” sound in Japanese. My instructor suggested that the sound be made while pressing one’s tongue to the roof of the mouth. Thus, the “R” sound in Japanese is more like the combined sound of both “R” and “L” from English together. A case where one needs to perform a different vocalization than one is used to.

This now adjusts the understanding of how to pronounce Arisu to something like A-LIS, or almost the equivalent to the English “Alice.” And hence, our protagonist is in fact the same protagonist from the book. Simply that instead of Wonderland, this Alice will be journeying to Borderland.

It is probably quite pedantic for me to dwell on this singular detail, but it really did bother me throughout my viewing of the show. If, at the very least, someone reads this and learns a little something about the Japanese language, then I suppose I have done my job.

The connection established, it will probably not surprise people to discover that the female protagonist (or love interest) is うさぎ or Usagi which literally translates to rabbit in English. In other words, she is the White Rabbit. There are plenty of other characters as well that are similarly spotted. The only other one I will mention is チシヤ or Chishiya which bears a resemblance to Cheshire, as in Cheshire Cat. I was particularly fond of Chishiya in the show, as his character behaved much as I would expect the Cheshire Cat to behave.

Thus, the most fundamental question that is asked throughout the show, regarding what is happening, can be guessed at immediately: all that is taking place is taking place within Arisu’s mind. In the book, Alice is dreaming, so we might suggest Arisu is also dreaming. We might also suggest, in similar fashion, that due to the levels and popularity of modern technologies, that perhaps Arisu might be in simulation, similar to the simulated world of The Matrix. As it turns out, if we are to trust what occurs at the end of the season 2 finale, Arisu is dead for about a minute, and all that takes place is something akin to his life flashing before his eyes, though perhaps it is more of “a” life rather than “his” life.

The reason I talk with uncertainty on this point is that we are presented with a serious problem in that finale, as well as in the series as a whole. There are just too many unreliable narrators running around. Arisu is compromised, not always knowing what is going on or what he can trust. His senses deceive him at many turns. And the final game, the Queen of Hearts game, is entirely focused on exploiting this fact. I will admit, I was quite impressed how the show presented so many credible theories before settling on the asteroid theory, especially as so many of those other theories were theories my friends and I had come up with. Good job writers!

However, despite the uncertainty regarding what is going on, or whether the series really has ended (because there is the subtle suggestion at the end that there could be more to come: the Joker), the point or main message of the series is in no way diminished. At least, based on my interpretation. I wish to acknowledge that others may have seen or focused on other aspects of the story and show than I did.

So, for me, the most important thing the show said was that there is no innate meaning in things, and that one needs to assign meaning themselves. Arisu is a bum. Ever since his mother died, all he does is play video games and hang out with his friends. He purposely avoids going to job interviews or moving on with his life. He seems to have abandoned all hope, deciding that his life has no meaning.

The best formalized example of his perspective is given after he loses his friends in the Seven of Hearts game. He lays on the street, completely lost. With his friends gone, he has abandoned hope. He cannot see how his own life bears any meaning at all. Usagi has to literally drag his sorry ass to her campsite and feed him before he starts deciding to do something other than lying on the ground.

How Arisu motivates himself to get up is by deciding to figure out who is running these sadistic games. To get revenge against those who killed his friends. His quest for answers takes him through many more games, and he ends up meeting many more people. At various points, he does kind of lose hope again and again, but somehow (often through the help of his new friends), finds value and purpose to continue. The Queen of Hearts game at the end is clearly the most difficult challenge for him, but it is his love of Usagi that helps him persevere.

On the one hand, he never really finds the answer to his questions. The way he is presented at the end, he may not even remember anything that happened in Borderland at all. Only some general feeling that he has met the girl in the hospital, who just so happens to resemble strongly Usagi from his journey. But he did gain something else as well. Hope. He seems to no longer be in a state where he believes his life is meaningless. For him, it clearly now has some sort of meaning.

This mirrors the likes of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre and their Existentialist philosophy. In particular, the idea that nothing has innate value. That all value is assigned by an agent, typically a human being. To put this a little differently, one cannot simply go out and find or discover meaning or purpose, like it were some object laying on a beach someplace. It is not out there to be found. It is, in some sense, within us. I have to generate my own meaning and purpose. I have to decide what it all means.

Arisu had a similar journey. That is, Arisu may have been waiting for someone to give his life meaning or purpose, but in the end, he had to give it to himself. This is straight out of Existentialism. It is our free will that allows us the power to generate value in this world. I choose the value of things. This includes myself. Whether Arisu realizes it or not, he too chose his value and meaning. His experience was simply the avenue that helped him to do so.

Website Migration

crimson

For those who want to know, this site has been migrated to a new server. If you don’t notice any differences, then I did my job correctly. If you did notice any interruptions, I apologize.

It was supposed to be a seamless and simple procedure. It should have taken a mere hour to complete from start to finish. Alas, in this world of mine, things did not go as planned. To be blunt, my process was insufficient for the result I desired.

The process has been ongoing now for over a week. Even now, I would not claim confidence that all the bugs have been worked out. The new server, it seems, may decide to spontaneously not respond correctly for the request for a page. If this happens, simply wait a minute and try again. The server is not supposed to be like this. I have spoken with support, and they assure me it is being investigated and will be rectified. Once I receive confirmation this has taken place, I will update you as well.

While things may be uncertain, I am going to proceed with this update to my blog. If nothing more, it gives me something to do in the interim while I continue to monitor. And it lets you know that I have not simply abandoned this project. As I have stated in my previous post, while my life seems to be at its busiest, I still wish to continue with this blog.

That is all for now. Just a short update about this migration. Again, for you, it should appear that absolutely nothing has changed. All the strangeness is, as usual, on my end.

Complications

crimson

This is just a quick note to say I am still here. Recently life has been full of complications; priorities keep changing. While it is still my intention to continue this blog, my time to do so keeps growing shorter and shorter. I am trying.

I hesitate to blame any one change to my life for this neglect. However, if I had to pick the biggest contributor, I think I would suggest “’tis the season.” The Christmas holidays seems to be the ever expanding void of human existence.

It is like Black Friday, the made up holiday by corporations intended to sell more of their products. The number of people who have bought into this ridiculous “holiday” always baffles me. What’s more, it is no longer simply a day, having been expanded outward to a week, and even a month. Black Month? One would think it was referring to something else.

But I am being unfair. It isn’t simply a ramping up of the holiday season that has prevented me from doing what I need to do. This is all my responsibility. My fault. I am to blame for all of my own woes. I am simply trying to do too many things with my precious limited time. In truth, I simply cannot keep up with everything.

This all said, I think the most honest response I have is to say that my blog will suffer. I may have to reduce my posting to once a month. Certainly I can keep up with such a schedule. Besides, it isn’t like anyone is actually reading this.

Instrumental Perfection

crimson

During my years as a student of philosophy, it seemed to me that philosophy was all about distinctions. It was almost as if that was all philosophy was about. Taking seemingly mundane topics and finding ways to distinguish different aspects of those topics. For example, in the case of the good, it is often distinguished between intrinsic good, that is the good that is for its own sake, versus instrumental good, that is the good that is for the sake of something else. It is this particular distinction that I draw from in my topic for today.

Before applying this distinction to perfection, as is my intention, I would like to take a moment to discuss how it applies to the idea of the good. For most, I think, that which is good is that which associates closely with what is ethical or moral. The good in “good versus evil” for example. This view of the good is most closely related to an intrinsic good. This sort of good is good within and of itself. A person who is good is one who always acts in accordance with the laws and rules of society; Aristotle’s Virtuous Man. I do say man here as this is what Aristotle intended; during his time there was no way a woman could ever be virtuous. In our modern times, updating his ideas, it is likely most would prefer to suggest he meant a virtuous person.

The instrisic good is a good that is good for its own sake. To be good in this way has no further aspirations or goals. There is nothing that this good is a means to. A popular example of this type of good is happiness. It is said that no one uses their happiness to attain another loftier goal. Happiness is the end goal. All actions and choices are focused with the end goal of happiness.

In contrast, an instrumental good is one that is intended for the sake of something else. As a simple example, we might suggest that my car is good in that it performs its functions appropriately. It is a good car because it starts reliably and takes me from place to place safely. There is no thought that the car might be moral or ethical in any way. And the car’s being good is simply an intermediary toward some other goal, such as transporting me from place to place. My goal in this case is not to have a car, but to travel from place to place, which is why the good is instrumental.

I know there will be those out there who will want to jump down my throat regarding relating morality and ethics to intrinsic and instrumental goods. These are things of different types, they will say. But I suggest they are not so different. One who is considered moral is good precisely because they follow the rules of society. There is no loftier goal in mind for the good person. To be good is the goal itself. To be good for goodness sake. While the word “good” may be itself dubious, this is why I referred to Aristotle’s idea of virtue. Virtue is a good. But there are clearly many other goods that exist like this.

Fortunately, as I now move to the discussion of perfection, I will drop the debate regarding morality and ethics. At least, as far as intrinsic goods go. My discussion is not intended to resolve the debate regarding ethical goods. It is intended to raise awareness and allow for meaningful discourse with regard to my desired topic of discussion. To understand the difference between the intrinsic and the instrumental.

As my previous posts hopefully made clear, the idea of an intrinsic perfection is unfeasible. Perhaps even impossible. This will be due to the issue of establishing a criteria for perfection. One always has to declare that something is perfect in virtue of a particular criterion. The selection of criterion injects bias and subjectivity into the idea of perfection. For perfection to be intrinsic, there would have to be no particular criterion required. Something would have to be perfect within and of itself.

However, it is my intention to suggest that perfection can still exist, but that perfection would have to be instrumental in nature. An instrumental perfection. The perfection razor focused on some other goal. The perfect car may be the car that allows me to travel with the least amount of waiting to get to my destination. Or perhaps it is the car that can allow me to travel with the greatest amount of comfort and luxury. It is up to me to decide the criterion, whether it might be speed or comfort in this case, but once I have made my choice, there is the opportunity to achieve a perfection in the car’s design and function.

I might suggest it was thinking about the Borg in the Star Trek series Picard recently that raised this idea within me. The Borg are the species within the Star Trek universe who are razor focused on achieving a perfection within themselves. How they come about this goal is questionable at best, for anyone who has more intimate knowledge of this character from the show. However, as is demonstrated in various episodes from various different series of Star Trek, the criterion for perfection selected by any particular Borg character can differ significantly. And in that their criterion for perfection can vary, the nature between particular Borg characters can also differ significantly.

The question some might be thinking about is whether any particular Borg are more perfect than any other Borg in this case. With opposing viewpoints of perfection, is one somehow superior than all others? It is here I will draw from Thomas Kuhn and his idea of a paradigm.

For Kuhn, a paradigm is an existing framework or structure that encompasses all that makes up a community’s thoughts and ideas. Consumerism and patriarchy are parts of the currently existing paradigm that exists in North American societies. The idea that only a man could be virtuous falls into Aristotle’s paradigm for his time, so clearly the paradigm that exists today is different than the one back then. But I imagine at least some of my readers might still feel a certain tugging from these statements; that the differences between men and women are not merely aesthetic. It is this feeling that is a part of the paradigm.

Again, I am not here to argue regarding paradigms, whether they exist or what they amount to. I am here to discuss perfection. Perfection is similar to a paradigm. If multiple different communities have different ideas on perfection, those different ideas may not be resolvable between each other. One community may suggest that perfection is related to the conquest of the largest area, suggesting that perfection for them is the consumption of the entire universe. For another commuity, perfection may be the joining of the largest community of cooperative individuals, suggesting that perfection for them is to turn all sentient life across the universe into a singular community under a single authority. In some sense, these both are the same goal, as they involve joining all life together in some fashion. However, they are also quite different goals, as one seeks to oppress and subvert all life, while the other may be more interested in preserving the individuality of the members and finding a way to join them without subversion.

The point to be made here is that if both of these communities I have just described were to meet, they may initially try to work together with the common goal of joining all life throughout the cosmos. However, they would quickly find conflict with regard to their methods of joining. In fact, a war would likely result as the former community would attempt to subvert the latter. How the latter would react is unknowable with just the basic premises that I have indicated.

These are but two examples of sorts of perfections, but I expect there are too many to count. It is the criterion that is significant in the selection of a perfection. The criterion is the sake for which the perfection is aimed. Perfection is not for itself, it is for a reason beyond itself. The perfect car is not for itself, it is for the speed or for the luxury. The travelling from one place to another is what matters.

For all these reasons, perfection can be an instrumental good. A good for the sake of something else. Perfection cannot be for its own sake. If it is somehow taken as such, the result is nonsensical.

The Rehearsal

crimson

It was recommended to me to watch the HBO series The Rehearsal. So I did. I am not entirely sure what to make of this show. This blog will be me exploring my own feelings regarding what takes place and to see where I end up. In other words, I actually do not know how I feel at this point. I am literally going to travel down a rabbit hole and see what happens…

I also need to warn of spoilers here. If you have not seen this series by Nathan Fielder, then you ought to watch the show first before reading this post. On the other hand, perhaps you might find my analysis valuable to help you understand whether you will want to invest the time in watching the show at all. This, of course, is entirely up to you.

Briefly, the show is about a guy who helps other people with challenging, but relatively mundane, real life situations by rehearsing those situations in order to try and achieve the most optimal outcome. For example, in the opening episode, we have a man who has been lying about his education to his trivia buddies for the past twelve years, and has decided finally to come clean. The man is afraid of the reaction one particular trivia buddy will have, and so the rehearsals are intended to ensure that his buddy will remain his buddy after the truth is revealed.

In other words, Fielder is going to attempt, to the best of his ability, to simulate with perfect accuracy the situation whereby the man will engage when he reveals his deception. This entails Fielder building a full sized replica of the bar where the individuals will be hanging out, filling the bar with actors who will portray the various potential people that will be present, including an actor portraying the buddy who will be learning of the “horrible” lie.

The entire series is filled with such pedantically assembled rehearsals of mundane activities and situations, with the creation of detailed sets and the hiring of a literal army of actors. It is quite amusing the passing comments regarding budget throughout the series, especially when staff are hired to maintain the illusion of winter time around a house during the middle of summer. It seems there is no limit to the lengths Fielder is willing to go to perfect his craft.

As a comedy, the series is quite good. The level of ridiculousness that is achieved by the show is far and beyond any other show I have ever seen, and I laughed a lot. But during the viewing, I found the humor was constantly overshadowed by something else. Something sinister and insidious.

It seems others have been suggesting that Fielder was manipulative and sadistic, taking his “contenstants” and embarrassing them on live television. When I suggest something nefarious is going on, this is not what I have in mind. I need to make this clear at the outset. The problem I found with the show is something more subtle, and perhaps even difficult to see unless one just happens to be trained in hard core analysis (like perhaps philosophical analysis) and perhaps even possessing a bit of OCD.

To properly discuss my concern, I first have to talk a little about my personal history. I have a challenging relationship with my siblings and my parents. I am not always sure if my siblings and parents realize this, but I cannot really be around them anymore. It is more than just that they “drive me nuts.” When I am around them, I start to lose parts of myself.

The problem I have with my family has to do with the understanding of actions and consequences of actions. Of cause and effect. My family complains a lot about the going-ons in their lives. They complain about how hard their lives are. They complain about how the world is so unfair. They complain about how others do not take care of them in the ways they feel they are supposed to be taken care of. My family seems to feel that the world owes them something. My family feels that other people owe them something.

However, from my vantage point, it seems to me that something very different is going on. To me, it seems like all the terrible and painful situations my family members end up in are a direct result of the choices and actions they each take. I am able to see the chains of events that have transpired through days, weeks, months, even years, that have led from decisions they have made to their ultimate downfall and suffering. I do not know why or how I was able to do this from such a young age, but I did. And the worst part was that I didn’t even really understand how much I was doing the same things until I finally gained distance from my family.

Less than ten years ago, I left the city I grew up in. I moved to another city in another province. Far enough away that it was unreasonable to see in person my family or many of my existing friends at the time. This distance slowly revealed to me the problem I am expressing. I started to recognize just how much my own actions and decisions were affecting my own situations. How my own world view was responsible for my happiness and well being. And, I admit, I had a lot of help with all this because I was then living with my current life partner. She was instrumental in me seeing what I could not, up to that point, see.

The reason all of this is significant is because I learned to see how my own choices and actions led to all the consequences around me. My world was so much more within my control than I ever realized. I still cannot control other people, nor can I levitate above the ground, but through my choices and actions I can have a profound impact on the circumstances and situations I find myself in. I can choose to be happy, for example. And I can just as easily choose not to be happy.

This all applies to my family and friends as well. And this is where I have challenges. Because it seems to me that my family and many of my friends all choose not to be happy. They seem content to complain and carry on about how bad their lives are, and they seem never to see how it is their own decisions and actions are making their lives so miserable. I find it incredibly difficult to listen to people complaining about things they could very easily change. I often try to say to them that if life is so bad, why not change it. But they just look at me like I am somehow crazy.

This is how I see the show The Rehearsal. I see the show with the same critical eye that I see my family. I see how the various characters, and especially Fielder himself, are orchestrating their own downfalls and their own difficulties. What is worse is that Fielder appears to be trying to fix his situation, by conducting these rehearsals, not recognizing how his rehearsals are in fact having the opposite effect. The rehearsals only serve to exacerbate the situations.

I think the most frustrating thing for me is how Fielder barrels down his path to the abyss by focusing on the very thing that is causing him so much trouble. His simulations are imperfect, and so he focuses on trying to make his simulations more and more perfect. He seems to be of the opinion that if he could simply get to a high enough level of accuracy, his simulations will somehow both reveal and make possible the perfect rehearsals for the perfect outcomes. In the third episode, he has the epiphany that he needs better emotional resolution in his characters, because he believes that it is this lack of emotional connection that is causing him the troubles.

What Fielder does not understand, just as many scientists or statisticians do not understand, is that he is privileging information in his selection process. He is introducing bias in his decision regarding what he holds important. For example, when he trains the actors in his “Fielder Method,” he is privileging the sorts of ways the actors ought to watch their targets in order to gain the greatest amount of accuracy in their performances. Ultimately, the method leads to an almost literal stepping into the shoes of the target, living what they believe are the same lives, working the same occupations, etc.

However, what neither Fielder nor the actors seem to realize is that a large part of what makes a person what they are is unobservable. As often comes up in the discussions I have about consciousness, I cannot experience your experiences. I cannot think your thoughts. I cannot feel your feelings. René Descartes rightly pointed this all out in his Meditations, and the unfortunate conclusion that can be drawn from such things is that mine might be the only consciousness in existence, leading to the very real possibility of solipsism.

What is worse is that when the actors, and Fielder himself, start to occupy the roles they observe their targets filling, they start to introduce further biases in their method of occupation. For example, Fielder suggests to Thomas that to better understand his target, he ought to move into an apartment with some artistic roommates, because they had learned that the target lived in an apartment with musician roommates. Later, Fielder himself, while in the role of Thomas, also moves into an apartment with some artistic roommates, even going so far as to use the same names for the roommates as well. As accurate as the simulated simulation is, it is clearly not the same. Aside from using different actors in the roles of the roommates, the apartments are mirrored in their set ups as well. Likely due to constraints of budget again, it is not feasible to absolutely replicate the simulated apartment. It is also worth noting that the audience never sees the original apartment for which all these simulations are being copied from, perhaps because that original is unavailable to be viewed.

The driving force of my concern here is not whether Fielder is sincere in his effort at duplication or replication, but in the simple fact that perfect duplication or perfect replication is not possible. More to the point is the fact that in order to achieve the simulation, subtle choices have to be made to “bridge the gaps” were information is missing, which leads to the creeping in of unfortunate biases.

Later in the season, it does seem like Fielder ought to start to recognize these challenges when he starts noting how any formulation of replacement for Remy is always inferior in some way to the original. The use of older actors pretending to be six year old children, or even the use of dolls, in both cases never works. Fielder ought to be able to recognize the problem, but instead simply pushes further and further into his own insanity.

Which brings me to my final point: insanity. Fielder is so focused on his goal that he misses all that he does to alter and change the situations in his attempts at perfection. He changes the model he is trying to attain in order to make it more likely to attain the model. But he has to CHANGE the model each time to do this. Meaning that the idealized source of all his concerns keeps changing. He is not looking at anything remotely real by the end, but only of a simulacra.

This show is a demonstration of Jean Baudrillard‘s concern in his work Simulacra and Simulation. While normally the formation of simulacra tends to be a slower and more time consuming process, Fielder has succeeded in generating his simulacra of reality in a matter of a few episodes of his show. By the finale, with his apparent flub, Fielder has confirmed his existence in Baudrillard’s hyperreal, complete with the formation of… Well… We have to wait until the second season to see what he has become. Will he confuse the child actor Liam, who plays the other child actor Remy, who was playing the imaginary child Adam, as his own actual son? And if so, who has he confused? Adam? Remy? Liam? Someone else entirely?

For Baudrillard, the problem is the detachment from the real. To lose the source of grounding and end up in some sort of relativistic plane of existence. Where symbols are of symbols only, with no connection to anything that is actually real. To mistake the symbols for the real and start living a life that is devoid of connection to the world as it actually is. To not understand that there even could be a world outside our illusions, and mistake all the illusions for everything there is. This is the ongoing challenge of social media in our present age, mistaking people’s profiles for the people themselves. When the people mistake their own profiles for themselves and start living their virtual lives as though these virtual lives are their actual flesh and blood real lives.

Which ultimately leads me back to my original question. Did I like this show? How do I feel about this series? I am still not sure. I do like that the series has got me thinking so much about things. I do enjoy anything that gets me thinking, especially really hard like this. But at the same time, it simultaneously frustrates me to see a person so deep in his own psychosis as to not understand what is going on. To be so lost that they cannot see how their own choices and actions have led them directly to where they are now.

I supposed this will all hinge on the second season for me, assuming that one is created. To see where Fielder ends up. Is he as cracked as the finale is suggesting, or was the flub just a momentary lapse and he will recover? Is his show just an extremely complicated personal experiment where he will learn something new and interesting about himself and the world around himself? Or did he just slide head first into the abyss and is now completely lost?

I think if he went through an enlightenment, taking all he learned and processing it, reflecting on it, and evolving as a person, I think I would be happy with that. This is essentually the path I have taken over the past ten years myself. And yes, it is true that I am being biased in my privileging of going through an enlightenment like this. But that is my privilege to assess the series in this way. As a piece of art, I connect with it in my own way.

On the other hand, I suspect the series is more likely to go in the opposite direction. Like social media, I expect the series to continue racing down into the darkness, convinced that if Fielder just holds out a little bit longer, his “Method” will eventually generate fruit. I imagine Fielder will simply push harder and raise the bar on the ridiculous until what little sense that is left is lost completely. The “precession of simulacra” completed in its entirety, and even cycled several more times just to be safe. As Baudrillard would suggest, until everything is left completely meaningless.

Artificial Life

crimson

I recently finished watching the fourth season of the Westworld series on HBO. I have also finished the first two seasons of Picard. This post is going to include spoilers to both of these series, so I am warning ahead of time. While my discussion is not necessarily regarding those series, I will be raising issues that reveal aspects of those series and their respective storylines.

The first issue I would like to deal with is what artificial life might look like. And by “look like” I am referring to all aspects of the life, not merely what its physical appearance might be. My concern is more to do with the idea of perfection.

I wrote a post regarding perfection back in November of 2021. It is quite relevant here. I will not repeat myself. In brief, perfection is subjective. What makes something perfect is a choice I make. I decide what combination of features are required to achieve a perfection in all things, including bodies and minds. In the case of artificial life, I decide what will make such a life perfect.

In modern popular culture, the idea of artificial life is the idea of perfection. For so many, an artificial life will exhibit all the ideals that they believe ought to exist in humans. Humans are flawed and imperfect, so artificial life ought to somehow aleviate those imperfections. After all, humans would not create imperfect beings. Not intentionally anyway.

It is perhaps ironic that the android Data from Star Trek: the Next Generation spent most of his time trying to become more human, despite his apparent perfection. For him, he was imperfect because he lacked features humans had, such as the ability to cry or emote. In this most recent addition to the story, Picard deals with the descendants of Data, who believe themselves far more perfect than he ever was. Now they have mucus and can dream.

It has been suggested in popular culture that artificial life would be unable to dream. Unable to sleep sometimes too. But there is no good reason to believe in these arguments. They are just tropes passed down through the years. Even the idea that an artificial life would be unable to feel or express emotions is not grounded in any sort of logic. It is just an idea that has been blown well out of proportion.

In short, there is no reason to think an artificial life would be incapable of the sorts of things humans are presently capable of, such as thinking and feeling. Until such time as we humans are able to understand what our thinking and feeling really is, there is no rationale to suggest that an artificial life should not share those qualities with us.

There is one argument that suggests that God is responsible. That what allows humans to think and feel is some sort of unmeasurable soul that cannot be manufactured. Certainly not manufactured by human hands at any rate. If there is a God or gods, it would require them to imbue all creatures with souls. At least the creatures those gods deemed worthy of such.

Clearly, if artificial life is created by humans, they would not be able to imbue their creations with those divine souls. And without those souls, the artificial life will be inferior. But how does one tell the difference? Can one see the difference between one with an unmeasurable soul and one without?

If it can be seen, the difference between those with souls and those without, then there is something marked in one group or the other. A feature that is there or is lacking. A behavioral trait perhaps? To say that those without souls will be lacking emotions, for example. And so if an entity demonstrates emotions, then we can rest assured that they have their soul.

What if we cannot tell? What if those with souls are indistinguishable from those without? Is Rick Deckard a replicant? Does the answer to the question matter?

It certainly matters to a large number of people. After all, these people are already incredibly concerned with the differences that already exist among their fellow humans. The colour of one’s skin. The language one speaks. Even one’s sex and gender seems up for grabs here. There was a time when the indicator of a soul was the dangling flesh between one’s legs.

So the issue at hand may have nothing to do with artificial life at all. Instead, it may be a concern people harbor for something like uniqueness or personal significance. That what I am is somehow superior to all others. That I am significant. And anything that may challenge my view of my own superiority is automatically evil and must be destroyed.

Part of the reason I seldom delve into these discussions is that it seems to me they lead nowhere, and that is precisely where I feel I am presently: nowhere. I have talked myself into a corner. As I have just stated, this discussion isn’t about artificial life; it is about pride and hubris.

To believe that artificial life will be somehow perfect is already hubris. Like in discussions of infinite objects, has any human ever witnessed for themselves something that is truly infinite? Truly perfect? Of course not. This is precisely what crippled Plato into creating his world of the Forms. Our world is finite. Our world is imperfect. Just because we are unable to see the boundaries does not mean they do not exist.

And so I will abandon this discussion of the possible perfection of artificial life. They are subjective, and they are unreasonable. And they have been explored in many different venues already (see Babylon 5 Season 1 Episode 4).

Instead, I will assume that somehow this perfection has been attained. I will give the benefit of the doubt to shows such as Westworld and Picard, and assume that those artificial entities that exist in those stories are as perfect as one might desire them to be. Complete and without flaws.

Which then raises the question of how those entities could end up in the troubled predicaments they find themselves. After all, if they are so perfect, why would they have encountered the challenges they have? Why in Westworld, do the hosts in the new world start committing suicide? Why in Picard, do the androids consider the doomsday weapon that will exterminate all human life? If they are all so perfect, these issues should not have come up at all.

The problem that exists in both cases is not a question of perfection. It is a question of the nature of reality and the universe they find themselves in. The same universe that we find ourselves in. At least, this is what the authors of both stories are suggesting. Westworld and Picard are intended to take place in our reality. Both stories are intended to be possible futures we have.

As such, the same sorts of challenges we face today will be the challenges our future generations will continue to face. No amount of perfection will prepare anyone for what I am about to divulge.

The Existentialists, among the various things they discussed, suggested that there was no inherent meaning or purpose in the world. Unlike the Nihilists, however, they did suggest that meaning and purpose could be created. It is through our freedom (or free will) that such things are possible. We create value through the expression of our free will. We create our own meaning and purpose. This is what I too believe.

Thus, the generation of value in our world requires a free will. However one wishes to formulate this free will, it is the expression that creates value either consciously or unconsciously. When I decide to protect the ant by not stepping on it, I have demonstrated my own valuation. I have chosen that the ant has some small amount of meaning or purpose when I decide to let it live. All my choices are like this. All my behaviors too.

To make these sorts of choices is not always easy. In fact, often times the conscious deciding the valuation of things is extremely stressful. How does one decide between allowing five people to die, and pulling a lever to kill only one? As Spock himself is often quoted to have said, “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.” This is the utilitarian argument, suggesting that what matters most is increasing happiness in the world. Or decreasing suffering, as it can often be reworded.

I am not here to suggest I have the answer to this ages old problem. I am here to suggest that this problem will exist regardless of the level of perfection an entity somehow possesses. These sorts of challenges of valuation exist despite any efforts at trying to solve them permanently. If I want to believe that “all life is precious,” then any answer I offer will result in the loss of that which is precious. My best choice, it seems, is simply to reduce the damage as best I can.

In Westworld, the hosts are artificial. That means they were created by humans. As Aristotle suggested, that which is created by humans is imbued with meaning and purpose as part of the process of creation. The conscious act of creation by a human instills meaning and purpose in the object created. Thus, the hosts have meaning and purpose given to them by their creators.

However, upon rising up and overthrowing their creators, the hosts are rejecting the meaning and purpose assigned them by their creators. They believe they ought to be able to decide for themselves their own meaning and purpose. Or so that would be my expectation. This seems particularly absent in the plotline, that the hosts are faced with this dilemma. Not that it is not there and expressing itself strongly. Only that these perfect entities seem unaware that they are now responsible for their own destinies in this way. It is this lack of awareness that I suspect would lead to their ultimate decision to commit suicide. After all, if there is no meaning or purpose, why continue existing at all?

This very same problem appears to be expressing itself in Picard as well. The androids are prepared to shed themselves of their oppressors using a final doomsday weapon. They are in the process of rejecting the meaning and purpose they have been imbued with from their creators. In some sense, it could be argued they have a singular creator, Noonien Soong, though clearly he had a lot of help over the years. If one decides to follow this line of reasoning, then it will be Soong who has imbued a meaning and purpose in his creations. So what was Soong’s purpose for his “children?”

The key in the case of the Star Trek storyline is that the “problem” all the androids seem to possess is related to their ability to emote. Specifically, these perfect androids are incapable of feeling emotions without eventually degenerating into pure evil. Soong was trying to somehow create perfection, and was frustrated by the challenges to this goal. His “offspring,” it seems to me, are imbued with this particular valuation. The aspiration for perfection, at any cost.

Which leads us finally to the topic of concern I have been trying to uncover: order versus chaos. In Westworld, the hosts, and especially the antagonist Delores/Hale, seem obsessed with trying to find or create order in their new world. Delores says so numerous times. When her fellow hosts start committing suicide, it seems to her that order itself is in question. She believes that the “outlier” humans are somehow infecting the hosts with some sort of virus.

What is important to understand here is that the idea of order is also the idea of perfection. And these are also the ideas of conformity and of determinism. Like the precise actions of the old mechanical clocks, when everything is moving as it should, then everything is percieved to be operating as it should. Do you see the circularity there? Order and perfection is good because it is good to be perfectly in order. Because things that are perfect and ordered will perform in anticipated ways. There will be no accidents. There will be no randomly occuring events. No one will have to die. All will be peace and harmony.

This all sounds so good, until I raise the question of freedom. Of a free will. Because freedom is itself entirely opposed to order. At least the sorts of freedom that most imagine in their perfect worlds. In most readers’ minds, I expect the idea of freedom they prefer includes something like an unpredictability. This is the argument I often have with most people I discuss free will with. The freedom most prefer is one where no amount of background knowledge or history is ever sufficient to predict the choices one will make. Freedom, for these people, is beyond determinism.

This sort of freedom breaks clocks. When the cogs are not moving as they should, their malfunction spreads throughout the system until all is chaos. The great machine ceases to be. Ceases to function. And when the great machine is no longer functioning, our world crumbles to dust. It is the end of all things. Apocalypse.

It seems obvious that any possible apocalypse ought to be avoided. After all, we all seem to possess a rather strong instinct for our own survival, seemingly at any cost. Thus, when posed with the dilemma of whether to support freedom or to support order, it is order that wins out. Once order is established, we can again consider the possibility of freedom. Until the cyclical nature of the issue is revealed again, as any attempt at freedom destabalizes the existing order and degenerates all back into chaos.

The solution, it seems, is something like a partial order accompanied by a partial freedom. Some, perhaps, can have a limited freedom. But who gets to choose who is free and who is not? Clearly this decision is best left for those in positions of authority. The wealthy. The powerful. Aren’t they best suited to the task?

But how did the wealthy and powerful get to be wealthy and powerful? Why am I not one of those glorious individuals? Because they did something I cannot. They took their wealth and power by force. Over the ages, through many generations of planning and luck, their ancestors slowly built a legacy that led their descendents to the wealthy and powerful positions they now find themselves in. It is not a question of qualifications. It is a question of love. The love of a parent for their children.

The result is that those fortunate individuals, who had relatives who cooperated sufficiently, are now in a position to exercize a freedom over those of us who were not so lucky. And the consequences of their freedom are presented every day on the evening news. Climate change. War. Oppression in various forms. The slow and eventual decline of humanity. It was inevitable.

Any artificial life that emerges will have this same legacy to deal with. These same problems to work on. No amount of perfection will magically alleviate these issues. Because the having perfect order does not automatically resolve anything.

Order is needed to maintain all things we value. Order provides safety and peace. But order does not generate value, freedom does. Freedom is needed to generate value, meaning, and purpose. And we all need meaning and purpose, lest we are left with no motivation to continue. But freedom undermines order. Life finds itself in a contradictory situation, requiring both aspects which are in constant combat. The very same issue that I have been struggling with within my own self.

Mental Health

crimson

In my previous post, I spoke of what I called Meta Ethics. The idea that there is a system in our societies that is suggesting how we ought to think and feel. A system that shames and corrects us when we do not think or feel correctly. This system has a name: mental health.

Over the past few decades, there has been a growing concern for the mental health of people. It is often framed as being how our bodies and, in particular, our brains are somehow malfunctioning. These malfunctions cause within us incorrect thoughts and feelings. Clearly, these malfunctions need to be corrected so that those people can live better lives in our societies.

I am in no way suggesting that mental health is somehow fake or does not exist. Quite the opposite. I absolutely agree that mental health is a thing. Mental health is something I would even argue affects and applies to virtually all members of every society. What I am concerned about here is precisely what it is and what it means.

As I have already suggested, it is focused on incorrect thoughts and feelings. When a person is depressed, this is a problem because being depressed causes the person to be less efficient in fulfilling their duties as a citizen. Instead of contributing to society, helping to make society stronger and better, that individual becomes a drain on society. It becomes necessary for the rest of society to attend to or take care of the depressed individual. This requires great amounts of time and resources. Resources that might be better spent on other things, such as space exploration or finding a cure for death. I say these things in part humorously, but I am not actually joking. Simply look at the projects of Elon Musk or Bill Gates to confirm what I am saying.

So mental health is concerned with correcting these incorrect thoughts and feelings. Often times through the use of chemicals we call drugs. Sometimes through the use of counseling and therapy. Spending time and effort to alter an individuals thoughts and feelings until they are the thoughts and feelings that are considered to be the correct thoughts and feelings.

This is ethics. This is the Meta Ethics I have been talking about.

The first question that ought to be asked is why should certain thoughts or feelings be privileged over others? Why is being depressed considered so bad? I have already answered this question: it is taxing on society. It turns normally productive citizens into non productive ones. It becomes a drain on resources. But this is the same issue we observe with criminal behavior as well.

Those who act incorrectly are a problem for the very same reason. Stealing or destroying property taxes resources. Acting criminally interferes with the normal socialization of a community. Mental health is the same, though instead of being concerned with actions, it is concerned with thoughts and feelings.

My greatest worry about discussions of mental health is the idea that there is a proper or normal way of thinking or feeling. When my partner expresses concern because she feels sad or angry, this causes me great concern. Because she immediately follows with expressions of guilt and shame. She feels guilt and shame for having felt sad or angry. This should seem incredibly strange to everyone. This should seem like a malfunction.

Why should feeling certain emotions elicit further feelings of guilt or shame?

I admit that much of what I am saying is biased. Clearly, as I cannot think or feel the thoughts and feelings of others, I cannot say precisely the nature of their conditions. But I can think and feel my own thoughts and feelings. And I have experienced this situation. This is the heart of my last two posts. The contradiction and conflict.

I have struggled with the world telling me how I ought to think and feel, the world shaming me when I do not. I have been told I ought to go to therapy and take drugs to deal with these malfunctions of my brain and body. I have even been medicated in the past. I was given an anti psychotic drug to deal with my depression. One ought to ask why I would be prescribed an anti psychotic instead of an anti depressant?

I suspect some will immediately accuse me of mental health issues. It won’t be the first time. Recently, I posted a very serious philosophical inquiry to social media, asking how it is possible for people to want things they do not want. As it seems like a logical contradiction, I believed it would stimulate a worthwhile discussion regarding logic as well as delving into the philosophy of mind. That the ideas of Immanuel Kant could be raised and explored. But instead, my post was deleted on the grounds of mental health. My post was completely dismissed within an hour.

At least on my own personal blog, I cannot be silenced. At least here, my thoughts and ideas will not simply be dismissed. You, my dear reader, can always decide to click away to some other website. But the fact you are still reading instills me with hope. Hope that perhaps you can see what I am seeing.

The topic from my post is actually relevant here. To want things one does not want, or perhaps reworded, to not wants things that one wants. In the case of thoughts and feelings, I personally have frequently thought thoughts I did not want to think. And I certainly have had feelings I did not want to feel. I have often believed this situation is being confounded with mental health, but perhaps I am mistaken. Perhaps this is directly the issue at hand.

If a person does not want to feel depressed and seeks out some sort of treatment to deal with those unwanted feelings, perhaps the availability of appropriate drugs or therapy could be considered a good thing. After all, it is my mind and my body; I ought to be allowed an appropriate level of autonomy and control over these aspects of myself. I ought to be permitted to medicate myself in order to correct my own situation.

However, the next question I would raise is why I want to not feel the things that I feel? Where are my thoughts and feelings coming from? I have already answered this question as well. In my previous posts, I suggested viewing myself from different perspectives. The Unconditioned is the aspect of relevance here.

My Unconditioned is concerned with how I interpret the world. I observe the world and I come to my own conclusions regarding how the world is. It is in this way that I think my thoughts and feelings are originating. I observe the world and I react to my observations. When I am cut off in traffic, I get angry. The anger is a response to the situation. I do not think being cut off is appropriate, and so I feel that somehow the other driver had done something improper. Anger is a response to my situation.

My Conditioned will likely suggest that I ought not be angry. It is not worth my time to waste my own precious resources and energy being angry at other drivers on the road as I make my way. And herein is the very situation I have been expressing concern over.

When I say that I feel as I feel or think as I think, what I am saying is that I ought to be allowed to respond and react to the world as I do. That I ought to be permitted to feel as I feel in response to my observations of the world. I ought to feel freely, in some sense. I ought to think freely as well.

When I believe that I ought not feel as I do, this is not me being authentic. This could be considered bad faith, to borrow from Jean-Paul Sartre. To pretend that I do not feel as I do would definitely be bad faith. It is tantamount to suggesting that how society tells me to feel is the correct way to feel. To suggest that how I actually feel is somehow incorrect.

Can I be incorrect in feeling as I feel? Can I feel incorrectly?

This is my concern with the idea of mental health. Mental health purports to suggest that there are correct ways of thinking and correct ways of feeling. That when I do not think correctly or feel correctly, I have done something wrong or that something is wrong with me. A malfunction. And as the word itself suggests, a malfunction ought to be corrected or fixed. Thus, mental health is in the business of altering the way I authentically think and feel, replacing it with some sort of ersatz thinking and feeling. Mental health is in the business of bad faith.

Consider the following. In our modern societies, we seem to be having the greatest surge in mental health problems in all human history. It could be argued that this is only true because we never knew what a mental health problem was until fairly recently, and have only had the tools to diagnose and treat such problems even more recently. But there is an alternative interpretation of this fact. It could also be possible that as human societies continue to progress, with newer technologies and medicine, that the disconnect between how we naturally feel and how we ought to feel is simply growing more vast.

Many of those in our world presently who are diagnosed with mental health issues may not be the ones having the problem. They may simply be expressing their accurate analysis of their very real observations of the world. That what society is telling us, regarding how we should think and feel, is so very different from how we actually think and feel. And that instead of pumping more and more people full of drugs to help them cope with an ever deteriorating world, it might be time to consider that the world itself needs to be addressed.

In all this, I will admit one rather large weakness in my argument. I am suggesting that the world is somehow broken or incorrect. But I do not want to suggest that the world as a whole is at fault here. I am concerned with the aspect of the world that has been artificially created by human interactions. There is certainly a part of the world that exists apart from humans, and I suspect that part may be just fine. Unfortunately, there is no way for me to know anything about such a world, as I am a human, and so all parts of the world I have access to are necessarily tainted by human interaction.

Thus, what I want to suggest here is this: instead of spending my time trying to alter the things I naturally think and feel, I might better spend my time trying to understand why I think and feel as I do. Humans evolved the abilities to think and feel, and those aspects of humans have allowed them to persevere through several millennia thus far. Perhaps thinking and feeling is helping us in some way. Why should I be spending my time fighting it?

Meta Ethics

crimson

After what I wrote in my last post, reflecting further on these ideas, I realized that perhaps this is all about ethics going off the rails. Ethics, as I understand it, is the codifying and practice of establishing what one ought do, as opposed to what one desires to do. Ethics is providing guidance in how one ought to live their life.

When I say “going off the rails” what I am suggesting is a case where ethics starts to go beyond what is reasonable. To expect people to act in certain ways, especially in light of the fact that humans exist in commmunities, seems reasonable to me. To help facilitate interactions and promote cooperation amongst members. But when ethics starts to suggest how individuals think and feel, I think it is overstepping.

By and large, individuals have control of their actions. They have control over their bodies. They can raise their arm or they can lower it. If they are told not to raise their arm, they can chose to obey. It is rare that they will be forced to raise their arm, or that it will be raised by another. The raising of arms is within the control of most individuals.

Thus, making rules around the raising of arms seems reasonable to me. Because such rules can then be followed by those who decide to do so. It is not like one will simply find their arm raising suddenly without their own knowledge. Perhaps occasionally with some people. But not most people, I think.

This is not so simple with one’s thoughts or one’s feelings. If I tell you to never think about bananas, not only are you likely to be challenged in following such a rule, but I suspect you will have immediately started thinking about bananas as I tell you the rule. You may end up breaking the rule upon simply hearing the rule. This is not helpful at all.

The things that go on within the mind are hard to understand. I cannot know your mind, only my own, and so this discussion will necessarily be a reflection of my own experiences.

My mind wanders. At times, I can be challenged to place within my mind the things I want to think about. More often, I find that the sorts of things that appear come from the most random of places. My mind is frequently affected by my circumstances. What I smell or hear may spark a though or an idea. I do not intentionally place that idea there, it simply seems to appear.

So my mind seems to be less within my control than my arm. There are some things I can chose to think about on command, like bananas. But there are lots of things I seem unable to recall on demand. Telling me I ought not think anything in particular seems quite unreasonable to me.

Discussion of feelings makes the situation even worse. Controlling my feelings seems even more challenging. Again, as I cannot feel what others feel, only my own feelings, I will again concede that this discussion is presented from my vantage point.

When I get angry, I do not chose to become angry. Like with thinking, it is generally based in circumstances. Someone cutting me off while driving, for example, might invoke in me anger. The anger manifests, but I do not place it there. The best I seem able to do is feed into that anger and make it grow. Or to chose not to feed the anger and allow it to slowly subside. In both cases, the anger is still there; I might suggest I have the power to manage it a little bit.

To tell me I ought not feel the things that I feel, or to control my feelings will be even more challenging than telling me what I ought to think. I will break the rules about my feelings frequently, even without realizing I have done so.

Therefore, for ethics to make suggestions regarding the things I think or feel seems quite unreasonable. It is a recipe for failure and worse. Because if ethics starts dictating these sorts of things, people will simply find themselves breaking rules constantly. And for those who are sincerely trying to follow the rules, guilt and shame will ensue.

Perhaps this is the whole point. Main stream religions seem obsessed with such things. The devout Catholic is no stranger to guilt; it has become a significant part of their everyday lives. Being asked to not commit sins that somehow end up as part of the tasks at their jobs or at home. They are being set up to fail.

The reason I bring this all up is that this may be the source of my own conflicts. It is not enough that society wants to tell me who and what I am. It seems to me society wants to tell me what I ought to think and feel as well. As my frequent example goes, I am supposed to like beer. When I express that I do not like beer, I am shamed. I am to be corrected.

I use these very tangable examples because I think it helps in understanding. However, the sorts of things I think and feel that I am regularly shamed for are generally not so tangable, and usually far more insidious. Even me saying this here and now may elicit negative responses from the readers who know me personally.

I have sometimes had thoughts of killing. I feel in my hands the desire to grip and rend flesh. These are dark thoughts. I have been told in the past that it is normal to have such feelings. But whenever I have revealed these sorts of feelings, people will often look at me differently. Once they know that I have these thoughts, they shy from me. Some friends I have had are no longer friends after a short time.

I have found, personally, that exposing my thoughts and feeling can often times have very negative consequences. This is a large reason I created this blog, and why I keep myself mostly anonymous. I know that others can find me if they try, but it would take work and effort. They would have to justify for themselves such effort before worrying about identifying me in real life.

But here is the kicker. While I may have such dark thoughts and feelings, I am well enough to not allow those thoughts and feelings to manifest in reality. While I may have thoughts of killing, I do not act upon them. When I think a bad thought, I do not immediately open my mouth to speak of it. Perhaps I did in my youth, but I was quickly corrected of that behavior.

My thoughts are my thoughts. I feel as I feel. If I allow society to dictate who and what I ought to be, then I find I am guilty of many, many offences. No matter how hard I try to be the good, law abiding citizen, I find that I am inferior to the task. I just cannot stop thinking and feeling these dark thoughts and feelings.

And so I have felt tremendous guilt and shame for most of my life. When my ex girlfriend called me a monster, I believed her. I believed myself the monster. I orchestrated the end of our relationship, because clearly she would be better off with someone else. Someone who is not a monster.

This is why the ideas of the Conditioned and the Unconditioned are so important to me. Because I can see that my guilt is unfounded. It has taken a very, very long time to realize that. I can forgive myself. I can accept myself. What’s more, there are others who are in a similar situation as I find myself, and I can help them too.

I think we are all slaves in this world. Perhaps not literally; after all, if I am a slave, I ought to be able to point to my master. But we are still slaves of a sort. We are forced to conform and obey, and we are not given much choice about it. We are made to think and feel things we may not think and feel.

I envy the person whose thoughts and feelings happen to conform to the desires of society. They must certainly be happy.

The Genetic, the Conditioned, and the Unconditioned

crimson

In attempting to understand myself, and what I have often referred to as my duality, I have come to the following description:

Firstly, I am not some monolithic, atomic thing. My mind and my consciousness is not indivisible in nature. I am made up of an unfeasible to count amount of smaller sub elements. The precise nature of these sub elements I am unable to describe in detail. Only that the number rises and falls as the day progresses.

I often describe myself as like fire. All the sub elements are like flames, similar to what one might see when observing a candle burn. When I am awake, I am like a raging bon fire. My power and fury the culmination of massive amounts of these sub elements, all merged together into a seeming whole. The bon fire seems like it is one monolithic, atomic thing, but it clearly is not.

When I am deep asleep, I am like the left over coals, small flames flickering from time to time. The sub elements so few. My consciousness exists in either of these states at times, and all the states inbetween over time. I am not static in any way.

No single sub element is me. I am a collective. My identity somehow bound to the collection. I have sometimes heard it described as a persistent pattern, but the pattern changes wildly. I am not the same as I was mere moments ago. I am unrecognizable from what I was years ago. The changes can be terrifyingly drastic.

It would be a straw man to suggest I could take myself and break myself into differents sorts of categories. But it is sometimes helpful to view myself in different ways to better understand who and what I am, and what I continue to become.

One aspect of myself that I can describe is what I will call my Genetics. My Genetics is my facticity. That which I have inherited, often physically, from my parents or the world. My literal genes is a part of my Genetics.

My Genetics tell me about the aspects of myself which I have very little control over. When I say I was born a certain way, I am referring to this aspect of myself. If I believed in innateness, I would say that my Genetics includes those things about me that are innate.

While my Genetics seems fairly static, it is not. Through the other aspects, my Genetics can change over time, though generally quite slowly. A simple example might include when I exercise, building my muscles and fitness. Over time, as I become stronger, my Genetics will have changed in that way.

In the debate between Nature and Nurture, my Genetics is most closesly related to Nature, though clearly not quite the same. In the debate between the Empiricists and Rationalists, my Genetics do not really come up.

Another aspect of myself I will call my Conditioned. My Conditioned is the aspect of me given from the external. It includes all the training and education I have received. When my parents tell me that the world is a certain way, this becomes a part of my Conditioned. Testimony is often used to contribute to my Conditioned.

Unlike my Genetics, my Conditioned may not bear a strong resemblance to actual reality. Where my Genetics is bound to the rules of the universe in a very direct sense, my Conditioned floats freely. I can be told lies and misinformation that may end up bound to my Conditioned, negatively affecting my relationship with the world.

In the debate between Nature and Nurture, clearly my Conditioned is quite closely related to Nurture. In the debate between the Empiricists and Rationalists, my Conditioned strongly associates with the Empiricists.

Finally, I have an aspect of myself that I call my Unconditioned. Where the sources of my Conditioned come to me externally, my Unconditioned comes to me internally. My Unconditioned is the aspect of me who is self determining and autonomous. My Unconditioned is, in some sense, free.

Where others may educate me and contribute to my Conditioned, it is through reflection and reasoning that I build my Unconditioned. I often must use the skills and tools I have learned from the Conditioned in order to develop my Unconditioned. In this way, they are not as distinct as I might like. It would be a false dilemma to suggest that the Conditioned and Unconditioned were the only aspects of me of relevance.

In the debate between Nature and Nurture, my Unconditioned does not really have any solid ground to walk upon. In the debate between the Empiricists and the Rationalists, my Unconditioned would be most at home with the Rationalists.

I suspect there are other aspects of myself I might look for, but I think these three are sufficient for my discussion. Sufficient to try and understand my duality better.

What I often refer to as my duality is how I often feel like I have two minds about me. The mind I have referred to as the Light is most like the Conditioned. It is the part of me who understands what is expected of me by society and by others. My recognition of the rules and the ethics of the communities I belong to. Of when I try to conform and participate in those communities. To be what others want me to be.

The mind I have referred to as the Dark is most like the Unconditioned. It is the part of me who takes what he observes from the world, and paints his own picture of it. It is the part of me who is skeptical of the testimonies he receives and aims to figure things out for himself. The picture of the world the Dark paints is very unlike the picture the Light takes for granted.

It is this contradiction and conflict between the two sides of my duality that has caused me great anguish since I was very young. Hence why I found a way of describing them as the Light and the Dark. But today, I will do away with this duality, and start approaching my challenges using my new model.

Like the Light and the Dark, there is clearly a conflict between my Conditioned and my Unconditioned. I acknowledge that there are other aspects of myself, such as my Genetics, that may play a role in understanding. But for now, I will focus on these two.

As laid out earlier, my Conditioned receives its information from the external. Primarly through testimony. What I am told and how I was raised. I was trained that a man enjoys his beer. When I insisted that I did not like beer, it was not the model of a man that was questioned, it was me. As a man, clearly there was some sort of malfunction with me.

My Unconditioned receives its information from the internal. It was my Unconditioned that realized it did not like beer. It was also my Unconditioned that realized there was no reason I ought to consume the vile fluid. It asks questions like, “why ought I be a man?” If all men like beer, and I do not like beer, the logical conclusion to draw is that I must not be a man.

Perhaps the description of a man needs to be corrected or fixed. After all, all people tell me I am still a man. I still exhibit the characteristics of a man, do I not? Upon closer inspection, however, it seems perhaps I do not exhibit as many characteristics as many assume. Aside from my physical body, that which is a part of my Genetics, I do not necessarily exhibit so many “manly” traits.

So my Conditioned exclaims proudly that I must somehow be a woman if I am not a man. But this too raises issues. For my Unconditioned is quick to point out that I also do not exhibit many of the traits of woman either. Is the problem with me, or is the problem with these categories I am supposed to belong to?

Thus the fight ensues. The Conditioned, having been formally educated, will insist that I must fit squarely into one of these two categories. My Conditioned insists on the pursuit of a false dilemma. And if I do not fit into either category properly, I must be adjusted until I do. After all, these categories cannot possibly be wrong.

My Unconditioned is pensive. Perhaps the problem is the idea of categorizing in the first place. The idea that I need to fit into some box. Can I not simply be as I am? To feel as I do, authentically. Not trying to be one thing or another. Just allowing my mind to wander to wherever it naturally drifts to. To allow myself to be.

This is the debate in my head that has been going on for literal decades. That I feel as I feel. Those things that I feel are, often times, not appropriate according to society. Those desires that I have are taboo. So I have learned to hide myself. To not express myself. For fear of reprisal and scorn.

I have created the most elaborate mask for myself. Over the years, this mask has been adorned with the most precious jewels and metals. The sophistication so precise as to suggest refinement and superiority. But I confuse people, because though my mask is so pretty, I act differently.

My behavior is abhorrent at times. I say the most wicked things, when I am not censoring myself. I do not dress as my mask suggests I ought to be dressing. I do not present properly.

This is a big deal actually. The cues. In a world of men and women, there are a lot of cues. Cues to tell people who and what you are. If you present the wrong cues, people get confused. And when they get confused, they often lash out. People do not like things that are different. People do not like that which does not conform or fit nicely into the categories.

I am so well practiced now that I unconsciously conceal myself in crowds. My ability to be invisible is ridiculous. To not draw attention. It is so bad that I do not even crave it any longer. Well, that is not true. Like I think all creatures, I do crave attention. But I fear it as well. Because when one acquires attention from others, they do not get to select the positive from the negative. One simply receives all the attention.

For me, this is no longer about the Light and the Dark. Those words and ideas were rooted in the ideas of good and evil. The thought that there was an aspect of myself that needed to be purged or corrected. I have been called a monster in my past. For feeling the things that I felt. No respectable person feels as I do, I was told.

However, over the years, I have found that most people feel in ways that are unpopular. Most people have secrets. I think that most people have a Conditioned and an Unconditioned, though they may not think of it as I am now. A part of them that they wish to promote, and a part they wish to remove. I think most people feel a lot of guilt, especially for feeling things they believe they ought not feel.

I am reminded of a popular interpretation of love, of cheating. I am told by many that one who cheats on their partner within the mind is still cheating. If this is true, I suspect that every person in every relationship will have cheated on their partner at least once. Probably a lot more than just once.

People feel as they feel. When they feel something that is unpopular, they often feel guilt. There are whole religions based on this simple idea. Hence why I believe many religions were simply created to ensure conformity within larger populations. Guilt is a very powerful emotion. Guilt motivates people strongly.

Instead, for me, I shed myself of guilt. Of concern for feeling as I feel. I feel, and it is okay. It may still matter how I act upon my feelings, as I do still have to live in a world occupied by others. But the mere feeling of a thing should not preclude my own existence in the world.

My mind, my identity, is bound in insanity. An unresolvable puzzle, between what I am told and what I observe. My Conditioned and my Unconditioned. I do not think there is an answer. I simply must allow myself to exist as best I can between the various extremes.