I agree with what you say. I agree that Obama "does not represent 'Black
People in America'" which supports all the more what I said about my
concern for the "y'all got a President, so quit complaining" thing. I am
at least somewhat aware of the details of his background, etc.
"Equality
for equality's sake" and "Affirmative Action" are fraught issues, for
the reasons you state. But we have to admit that we have a very long and
sordid history of racism and sexism as a country, which some would say
lodges an "historical burden of proof" that equal opportunity finally
does, in fact, exist. "Any kid can be President" rings hollow until any
kid actually has become President, so to speak.
But
you're absolutely right, and it's a very fine line to tread and
implementation is key, if any hand is to be taken in it at all. I am
alarmed by what appears to be a class of professional whiners that have
sprung up over the past few decades who claim to be about liberation and
the advancement of whatever group the claim to represent, but their
actions give the lie to this.
Any time an "Our Group
Center" is set up on public funds or some law or money set aside, it
should be with a sundown clause, or everybody should be worried, because
then you're creating a group of people with vested interest in said
group, be they women, minorities, the disabled, whomever, NEVER getting
liberated or integrated. If anything, set aside a huge BONUS for the
final staff members who close the doors and turn out the lights once the
goal is achieved.
2015-12-31
2015-12-30
漫画 Tales from the Pub
Here's one of my inspirations for starting The Poets of Porcadis comic: Tales from the Pub.
2015-12-29
模倣子 Women Get Out First
Women have issues, and men have issues. The mistreatment of women seems somehow less justifiable and easier to fix. It just seems stupid, cruel, and pointless. The mistreatment of men seems to revolve around having to do really horrible jobs (mining, toxins & radiation, construction in all weather, deep diving, or combinations, etc.) and going to war to be slaughtered with a cruelty we usually spare even insects, but I'm not sure any of that can actually be solved. I'm convinced that we can't even begin to attempt to solve men's problems until we first solve women's problems. Also, abstract problems like global warming, war, pollution, oppression, overpopulation (the cause of all of them) will never be solved until and unless we solve women's problems first.
To take the tack that women "have worse problems than men" is simply wrong-headed. Any fool could argue the contrary and it makes the whole movement look stupid and petty and politically cynical. And the women's liberation movement is, as I've stated, THE MOST IMPORTANT and FIRST PRIORITY humanity has to concern itself with right now, so a bunch of self-serving idiots screwing it up and running it into the ground by doing it wrong should be deeply unsettling.
You could say that women are more important than men or that women have a higher priority than men, and in a sense that's true, but you could also say that in a spiritual and mental and social sense the two genders are equal. Understanding and balancing the difference between those two is the trick, and many people don't seem to be up to the task. A good bare minimum place to start might be to recognize that women have a few extra physiological "needs" to do with their reproductive powers (and to some degree this is true of men, too) and any place where these are still allowed to get in the way of women's freedom to fully take part must be removed, or we're not there yet. However, just as the disabled have a right to their wheelchair ramps, they also have the responsibility to a) ask for them when they are absent, and to b) use them once they are provided. Just complaining that you are being left out, and not seeking allies to help you figure it out are NOT options.
模倣子 Circumcision Backlash
At
some point somebody's gotta do a Khrushchev and admit that it was all a
sham and that tens of millions of people were really horribly harmed,
and yes it was that many and yes it really was that bad. It can either
be like Khrushchev/Mandela, where we admit the horrible crimes with the
idea that we just want them to stop, or we make it like Nuremberg and
the Nazis and we put them (the doctors and nurses and parents and other
complicits) on trial and hang them all and hand out all the blame to
everybody to whom it's due until it's all gone and we document every
last detail of every last crime. And then we're going to have Nazi
hunters and people going on the run and changed identities until they
all die of old age and the practice continuing underground indefinitely.
And in the end, as always, the Jews are going to get screwed over in the latter case.
BUT either way, we have to admit that it's horrible and has to stop. That's why we can even DISCUSS the merits of this kind of story, because of our unwillingness to properly confront and contemplate evil for what it is.
And in the end, as always, the Jews are going to get screwed over in the latter case.
BUT either way, we have to admit that it's horrible and has to stop. That's why we can even DISCUSS the merits of this kind of story, because of our unwillingness to properly confront and contemplate evil for what it is.
2015-12-27
Men and Women Crave Variety
Yes, it probably IS overstating things to say that "men DON'T crave variety". I think it's an established fact that all humans crave variety
in all things, but it's also true that variety costs money. It seems
like "the system" is less willing to foot the bill for men to have
variety in terms of choice in clothing and personal care products than
it is for women. There seems to be a lot of dissenting opinion in that
area. I suggest we all actually *count* what we see and try to avoid
"the grass is greener" personal perspective bias and confirmation bias
and see if this is really true when we're at the shops and looking at
other data-rich sources.
One theory is that men are just mean, selfish jerks who like to abuse women and rip them off whenever they can get away with it, and we call that "the Patriarchy" or something. Problems with that explanation are that it might not accurately represent things the way they really are (for one, in implies that "men" are somehow all conspiring together, which if true, I have personally been left out of the loop for one...!), and it certainly does not point to a way toward fixing things or at least making them better.
Another theory (perhaps equally wrong, but probably more easily PROVEN wrong) is that there is some kind of economic benefit to women (and men) in there being more variety among these products for women, and that variety naturally undermines economies of scale resulting in higher prices and lower quality, and these same economic "benefits" do not apply to products directed at men.
Another theory might be formulated by looking at Japan. I had the impression that products marketed to women there were at least of as high quality, if not higher, as those marketed to men, but all Japanese consumer products tend to be of universally high quality (and high cost...!) that it might be difficult to make such distinctions. But maybe not. A mantra of Japanese manufacturing to which is attributed the high quality of Japanese products is that there is no more discriminating or demanding consumer than the Japanese woman. If you can satisfy a Japanese woman with your product, then you can more than satisfy *anybody*. I think that is very true, for what it's worth. This may have little relevance to our discussion as it directly concerns the American market, however.
One theory is that men are just mean, selfish jerks who like to abuse women and rip them off whenever they can get away with it, and we call that "the Patriarchy" or something. Problems with that explanation are that it might not accurately represent things the way they really are (for one, in implies that "men" are somehow all conspiring together, which if true, I have personally been left out of the loop for one...!), and it certainly does not point to a way toward fixing things or at least making them better.
Another theory (perhaps equally wrong, but probably more easily PROVEN wrong) is that there is some kind of economic benefit to women (and men) in there being more variety among these products for women, and that variety naturally undermines economies of scale resulting in higher prices and lower quality, and these same economic "benefits" do not apply to products directed at men.
Another theory might be formulated by looking at Japan. I had the impression that products marketed to women there were at least of as high quality, if not higher, as those marketed to men, but all Japanese consumer products tend to be of universally high quality (and high cost...!) that it might be difficult to make such distinctions. But maybe not. A mantra of Japanese manufacturing to which is attributed the high quality of Japanese products is that there is no more discriminating or demanding consumer than the Japanese woman. If you can satisfy a Japanese woman with your product, then you can more than satisfy *anybody*. I think that is very true, for what it's worth. This may have little relevance to our discussion as it directly concerns the American market, however.
2015-12-26
模倣子 Cost-benefit of Female Power
You could posit a "virtual good" of "female beauty" the supply of which
may be artificially increased by selling beauty products, and the demand
for it inflated artificially by the mass media creation of this
artificial "ideal [beautiful] woman".
===============================
You could say instead that a woman's worth (or "power" if you will) MAY be increased by enhancing her appearance, while the same is not true (or is MUCH less true) for a man. Hence there is significant economic value attached to same for a woman and not for a man. Then you are still absolutely right, that is, that the things that help a woman become more attractive, hence, more "powerful", are vastly increased in value.
You could just as well say to me that I should get an education, for example. I have shown my ability to study and could probably graduate, and then I'd get the pride and the leverage in terms of getting jobs and work visas in foreign countries (like France and Japan, et al). I could say that it's not economically worth it, and it's probably not, but there would be social stigma, and people would say things like "Your so smart [beautiful], why don't you make the effort to get a degree [make yourself look nice] so you can get ahead in life?" and think I was stupid and lazy not to do so. That's maybe what social pressure looks like, and if so, we all get it -- I know I do.
===============================
You could say instead that a woman's worth (or "power" if you will) MAY be increased by enhancing her appearance, while the same is not true (or is MUCH less true) for a man. Hence there is significant economic value attached to same for a woman and not for a man. Then you are still absolutely right, that is, that the things that help a woman become more attractive, hence, more "powerful", are vastly increased in value.
You could just as well say to me that I should get an education, for example. I have shown my ability to study and could probably graduate, and then I'd get the pride and the leverage in terms of getting jobs and work visas in foreign countries (like France and Japan, et al). I could say that it's not economically worth it, and it's probably not, but there would be social stigma, and people would say things like "Your so smart [beautiful], why don't you make the effort to get a degree [make yourself look nice] so you can get ahead in life?" and think I was stupid and lazy not to do so. That's maybe what social pressure looks like, and if so, we all get it -- I know I do.
2015-12-25
2015-12-24
模倣子 A Gift Horse in the Mouth
Yeah, I do know how to sew. The problem is the economic system and
what it's doing. The first take is that it's some kind of gender
conspiracy to oppress both genders in different ways. Just making your
own stuff gets you out of the system, which is good, but it doesn't fix
it and it doesn't answer the basic question.
I have a friend who researches fashion trends and the history of industrially produced clothing over the past couple of centuries, so I should perhaps ask her about this. The first clothes were simple things for single men who were soldiers or laborers, i.e., who were too poor and had no family (women) to make clothes for them.
I may be taking a huge risk here, so please just see what you think of the following ideas (I've been kicking around from reading this forum over the past day or so) and let me know if it makes you think of anything.
Anyway...here goes...
When you talk about clothing as a purchasable commodity, then it becomes something that among other things men may sell their labor for money to buy in order to impress women, i.e., partly to give as gifts to impress women. Clothing for men is purely for practical purposes, i.e., no such "gift component". Diamonds are a classic example. They are very expensive and completely useless and also readily recognizable. In the same way, expensive fine clothing given as gifts need not be practical, useful, or even of particularly high quality, so long as they are known to be very expensive.
It follows then that there should be zillions of varieties and brands and shapes and colors for no reason, and "something to get the woman who has everything" because there is no "everything" -- if a man has some money and wants to spend it to impress a woman, then there should always be somebody ready to take his money, and no women should have to suffer the agony of already having one of those or showing up to the same venue with the same one of those as some other woman or all of those other clichés.
Just as a side note, I'm not trying to say that women never give gifts to men, or that women and men don't BOTH earn their own money, but that my assumption (and please let me know if it's wrong of if there are cultures outside of the Americas, Western Europe, and Japan that I don't know of where this isn't true) that when it comes to one gender spending the larger portion of their income on gifts on the other gender, it's men on women. Does that ring quite true to all?
The middle of the 20th Century in America was perhaps a bit of a low patch, but women also want to sell their own labor for money so they can buy their own stuff, or make it themselves (or possibly get it from men who are trying to impress them), but this whole "decorative commodity pressure" on a lot of women's clothing and personal items may always tend to creep in as a form of economic pressure pushing the quality of goods used exclusively by women DOWN and the costs UP.
It's an example of how there are four ways to spend money:
1. your own money on yourself
2. your own money on somebody else
3. somebody else's money on yourself
4. somebody else's money on somebody else (The Government)
in #1 you want the best value for money
in #2 you want to be cheap, and you don't care the quality
in #3 you want the best, to hell with the cost
in #4 you don't care the cost or the result, e.g., The Government
Men's personal care and clothing is always in #1 category. Men want value for dollar. Women should also be in #1 category, but there are a couple of negative pressures from the fact that men trying to impress them buy them presents of this stuff, and that is the natural state of the way things are.
1. men are poor consumers of female personal consumer goods -- either they don't know how to judge quality, or they don't care, so when acting as demand agents on behalf of the women they purchase (gifts) for, they perform poor market correction, i.e., they do not "spank" underperformers. Or they buy fancy, overpriced but low-quality stuff just to impress everybody (including their female recipients?)
1.1. this can extend to cases where woman has idea already of type of gift she wants but would not buy if she had to supply all of the money herself, but if male friend helps, she buys. the male friend does not typically provide feedback, i.e., he supplies indiscriminate market support again (for impractical low-quality women-targeted products which should probably not be purchased). Again, injection of surplus support for high-variety, low-quality women-directed market segment.
2. The availability of "male demand for female attention" must be met by "gift variety" (money sinks). There must be items of all sizes, shapes, colors, price tags, etc., and if these don't exist, they will be created. In other words, male demand pressure causes expanding variety which degrades economies of scale, doesn't really create competition, etc.
Let me make this perfectly clear.
I am NOT saying that all clothing and personal care products exist for the purpose of being able to be purchased by men as gifts for women.
Let me say that again.
All women's clothing and personal care products were NOT invented to be sold as gifts to be purchased by men for women.
I would venture that say that men's purpose for existing is to impress women. Since men having nothing better to do than labor, and that labor tends to produce money, then that very money tends to produce an economic pressure on any commodities of interest to women, for the sake of acquiring same and using them to impress same.
And I am saying that said economic pressure has potentially deleterious effects on the marketplace of women's clothing and personal care items, per our discussion, as well political implications for the women's liberation movement.
There are two problems:
1. Men are always going to want to buy stuff for women, and that is going to tend to have the negative effect of making products for women: a) more expensive and b) of lower quality, as discussed elsewhere
2. Women may need to go through a "sifting" exercise vis-à-vis what they want from the marketplace
#1 it's a (true, apparently) stereotype that a lot of men get ties and socks for gift-giving occasions from all of their loved ones. This may have disastrous economic implications for the tie and sock industries, but frankly, who cares? When I see a store like The Tie Rack or such I'm almost afraid to go in for fear it's a front for a spy ring or that I'd have to donate blood or an organ or something to get back out. But they don't have anything I really NEED in there. They're not holding my sanitary napkins hostage in there.
#2 "Business Casual" In short, I wore woolen suits for about 15 years in the streets and offices of Tokyo, Japan. It was nice in Winter (except winter is beastly) but it was beastly in summer, and kind of nice in-between. In silicon valley, I wore slacks and T-shirts all the time, and I more or less wear that now (cargo pants?). When I was on the road around the US as a consultant, I pretty much wore what I wore in Tokyo. The business suit is a garment that has evolved over about 200 years and is designed to keep the wearer comfortable (relatively speaking) literally from the tropics up to the arctic. in a properly tailored suit, there is a button BEHIND the I think it's the right lapel that fits the some think it's the button hole for putting a flower or something on the other lapel but no you can close the whole jacket right up around your neck right up to your ears, which is perfect for those cold winter nights. Of course, you can take the jacket off, roll up shirt sleeves, even take off socks, roll up trouser legs, and so on, even go in undershirt, and if it is quality wool, it wears like iron, does not stain, and on and on, and the jacket has pockets everywhere. However much I might feel like complaining, whatever I wear is usually just enough fabric to cover my body, or from some military design (like cargo pants) or like this business suit.
Oh, I have to say that I've never worn those SOCK GARTERS like those IBM guys back in the 1960s. Maybe my feeling of "it's at least practical" would be a bit different if so!
So I assume that women have a different feeling about their own clothing, that it's not so practical, no so serviceable, not so suited to the jobs they have to do and to the lives they are trying to lead? That was also the complaint of the American women in combat in Afghanistan, that their armor did not fit their bodies well.
A business suit if it does not fit well, it's very bad, but if it is well-tailored, then it's just great, by the way.
At very long last, I guess I would say that my clothes are some newer, some more expensive (though not always!), some of special material, and that makes them for special occasions or for work or whatever.
I guess "the necktie" is about the only "stupid garment that other people expect me to wear that doesn't make any sense" that I can think of right off. I don't wear one very often these days, by the way, but for many years it was a daily thing (and they were mostly gifts).
That's a very small part of the male wardrobe that is impractical like that. Is that fair to say, guys? I can't help wondering if a very much larger portion of the "female wardrobe" (if such an all-encompassing term is even meaningful) is similarly so. What is your feeling?
You don't have to know what you would rather it be like. You can just start by thinking that maybe it's not the best it could be as it is. Sometimes, the "good" is the enemy of the "best".
I have a friend who researches fashion trends and the history of industrially produced clothing over the past couple of centuries, so I should perhaps ask her about this. The first clothes were simple things for single men who were soldiers or laborers, i.e., who were too poor and had no family (women) to make clothes for them.
I may be taking a huge risk here, so please just see what you think of the following ideas (I've been kicking around from reading this forum over the past day or so) and let me know if it makes you think of anything.
Anyway...here goes...
When you talk about clothing as a purchasable commodity, then it becomes something that among other things men may sell their labor for money to buy in order to impress women, i.e., partly to give as gifts to impress women. Clothing for men is purely for practical purposes, i.e., no such "gift component". Diamonds are a classic example. They are very expensive and completely useless and also readily recognizable. In the same way, expensive fine clothing given as gifts need not be practical, useful, or even of particularly high quality, so long as they are known to be very expensive.
It follows then that there should be zillions of varieties and brands and shapes and colors for no reason, and "something to get the woman who has everything" because there is no "everything" -- if a man has some money and wants to spend it to impress a woman, then there should always be somebody ready to take his money, and no women should have to suffer the agony of already having one of those or showing up to the same venue with the same one of those as some other woman or all of those other clichés.
Just as a side note, I'm not trying to say that women never give gifts to men, or that women and men don't BOTH earn their own money, but that my assumption (and please let me know if it's wrong of if there are cultures outside of the Americas, Western Europe, and Japan that I don't know of where this isn't true) that when it comes to one gender spending the larger portion of their income on gifts on the other gender, it's men on women. Does that ring quite true to all?
The middle of the 20th Century in America was perhaps a bit of a low patch, but women also want to sell their own labor for money so they can buy their own stuff, or make it themselves (or possibly get it from men who are trying to impress them), but this whole "decorative commodity pressure" on a lot of women's clothing and personal items may always tend to creep in as a form of economic pressure pushing the quality of goods used exclusively by women DOWN and the costs UP.
It's an example of how there are four ways to spend money:
1. your own money on yourself
2. your own money on somebody else
3. somebody else's money on yourself
4. somebody else's money on somebody else (The Government)
in #1 you want the best value for money
in #2 you want to be cheap, and you don't care the quality
in #3 you want the best, to hell with the cost
in #4 you don't care the cost or the result, e.g., The Government
Men's personal care and clothing is always in #1 category. Men want value for dollar. Women should also be in #1 category, but there are a couple of negative pressures from the fact that men trying to impress them buy them presents of this stuff, and that is the natural state of the way things are.
1. men are poor consumers of female personal consumer goods -- either they don't know how to judge quality, or they don't care, so when acting as demand agents on behalf of the women they purchase (gifts) for, they perform poor market correction, i.e., they do not "spank" underperformers. Or they buy fancy, overpriced but low-quality stuff just to impress everybody (including their female recipients?)
1.1. this can extend to cases where woman has idea already of type of gift she wants but would not buy if she had to supply all of the money herself, but if male friend helps, she buys. the male friend does not typically provide feedback, i.e., he supplies indiscriminate market support again (for impractical low-quality women-targeted products which should probably not be purchased). Again, injection of surplus support for high-variety, low-quality women-directed market segment.
2. The availability of "male demand for female attention" must be met by "gift variety" (money sinks). There must be items of all sizes, shapes, colors, price tags, etc., and if these don't exist, they will be created. In other words, male demand pressure causes expanding variety which degrades economies of scale, doesn't really create competition, etc.
Let me make this perfectly clear.
I am NOT saying that all clothing and personal care products exist for the purpose of being able to be purchased by men as gifts for women.
Let me say that again.
All women's clothing and personal care products were NOT invented to be sold as gifts to be purchased by men for women.
I would venture that say that men's purpose for existing is to impress women. Since men having nothing better to do than labor, and that labor tends to produce money, then that very money tends to produce an economic pressure on any commodities of interest to women, for the sake of acquiring same and using them to impress same.
And I am saying that said economic pressure has potentially deleterious effects on the marketplace of women's clothing and personal care items, per our discussion, as well political implications for the women's liberation movement.
There are two problems:
1. Men are always going to want to buy stuff for women, and that is going to tend to have the negative effect of making products for women: a) more expensive and b) of lower quality, as discussed elsewhere
2. Women may need to go through a "sifting" exercise vis-à-vis what they want from the marketplace
#1 it's a (true, apparently) stereotype that a lot of men get ties and socks for gift-giving occasions from all of their loved ones. This may have disastrous economic implications for the tie and sock industries, but frankly, who cares? When I see a store like The Tie Rack or such I'm almost afraid to go in for fear it's a front for a spy ring or that I'd have to donate blood or an organ or something to get back out. But they don't have anything I really NEED in there. They're not holding my sanitary napkins hostage in there.
#2 "Business Casual" In short, I wore woolen suits for about 15 years in the streets and offices of Tokyo, Japan. It was nice in Winter (except winter is beastly) but it was beastly in summer, and kind of nice in-between. In silicon valley, I wore slacks and T-shirts all the time, and I more or less wear that now (cargo pants?). When I was on the road around the US as a consultant, I pretty much wore what I wore in Tokyo. The business suit is a garment that has evolved over about 200 years and is designed to keep the wearer comfortable (relatively speaking) literally from the tropics up to the arctic. in a properly tailored suit, there is a button BEHIND the I think it's the right lapel that fits the some think it's the button hole for putting a flower or something on the other lapel but no you can close the whole jacket right up around your neck right up to your ears, which is perfect for those cold winter nights. Of course, you can take the jacket off, roll up shirt sleeves, even take off socks, roll up trouser legs, and so on, even go in undershirt, and if it is quality wool, it wears like iron, does not stain, and on and on, and the jacket has pockets everywhere. However much I might feel like complaining, whatever I wear is usually just enough fabric to cover my body, or from some military design (like cargo pants) or like this business suit.
Oh, I have to say that I've never worn those SOCK GARTERS like those IBM guys back in the 1960s. Maybe my feeling of "it's at least practical" would be a bit different if so!
So I assume that women have a different feeling about their own clothing, that it's not so practical, no so serviceable, not so suited to the jobs they have to do and to the lives they are trying to lead? That was also the complaint of the American women in combat in Afghanistan, that their armor did not fit their bodies well.
A business suit if it does not fit well, it's very bad, but if it is well-tailored, then it's just great, by the way.
At very long last, I guess I would say that my clothes are some newer, some more expensive (though not always!), some of special material, and that makes them for special occasions or for work or whatever.
I guess "the necktie" is about the only "stupid garment that other people expect me to wear that doesn't make any sense" that I can think of right off. I don't wear one very often these days, by the way, but for many years it was a daily thing (and they were mostly gifts).
That's a very small part of the male wardrobe that is impractical like that. Is that fair to say, guys? I can't help wondering if a very much larger portion of the "female wardrobe" (if such an all-encompassing term is even meaningful) is similarly so. What is your feeling?
You don't have to know what you would rather it be like. You can just start by thinking that maybe it's not the best it could be as it is. Sometimes, the "good" is the enemy of the "best".
模倣子 The Tragedy of the Koffee Klatch
The cheating situation may or may not be rampant. The Dunkin' Donuts coffee is gone, with the label still there, left up in the cabinet, and there's only about one potful worth left of the Seattle stuff. I didn't make any yesterday since there was a pot left over. The half-n-half is almost all gone.
Did you and I use that stuff all up? There are only about three dollars in the kitty, and of course, only our two names.
Do you want to make an announcement or something? Maybe let the experiment carry on through to the new year and then maybe craft some kind of announcement that you could send out.
Let's hold off on an announcement for now (see below).
It's interesting. you'd think that where MONEY is involved, people would be more "moral" about adherence to "rules".
Actually, this is to be expected, when you think about it. There is no social bullying since membership is thought to be "purchased" with money, not with behaviour. Therefore, there is no impetus to bully others out of misbehaving, i.e., cheating. Does that sound right? This is one theoretical result I was hoping to discover, and I was kind of suspecting that this would be the result, i.e., that throwing money into the equation would make people LESS moral, not MORE.
This may be a general principle. (1)
To design a memetic system, I think you have to decide what the goal is in terms of what you want "infected" individuals to do, and how you want them to defend the system (the immunomemes), and only then think about what you want the output of the system, e.g., "that there always be a hot, fresh pot of decent coffee over in the kitchenette and somehow everybody who wants to drink it pays for it".
What we've come up with so far does not contain very good immunomemes for defending the system. Maybe something like "$1 a cup for non-members, half-and-half included". We need to work on this.
=========================
(1) This is again the idea that you made me think of, i.e., the concept of residual memetic reward, or residual memetic debt. Or in this case you could almost say "vicarious" residual memetic debt, for example, Oh, those greedy [corporations] are getting more from the consumers than they deserve, so they won't miss it if I get a little bit for free (as opposed to a consumer who HAS paid getting more than he DID pay for, which is regular residual memetic debt).
Did you and I use that stuff all up? There are only about three dollars in the kitty, and of course, only our two names.
Do you want to make an announcement or something? Maybe let the experiment carry on through to the new year and then maybe craft some kind of announcement that you could send out.
Let's hold off on an announcement for now (see below).
It's interesting. you'd think that where MONEY is involved, people would be more "moral" about adherence to "rules".
Actually, this is to be expected, when you think about it. There is no social bullying since membership is thought to be "purchased" with money, not with behaviour. Therefore, there is no impetus to bully others out of misbehaving, i.e., cheating. Does that sound right? This is one theoretical result I was hoping to discover, and I was kind of suspecting that this would be the result, i.e., that throwing money into the equation would make people LESS moral, not MORE.
This may be a general principle. (1)
To design a memetic system, I think you have to decide what the goal is in terms of what you want "infected" individuals to do, and how you want them to defend the system (the immunomemes), and only then think about what you want the output of the system, e.g., "that there always be a hot, fresh pot of decent coffee over in the kitchenette and somehow everybody who wants to drink it pays for it".
What we've come up with so far does not contain very good immunomemes for defending the system. Maybe something like "$1 a cup for non-members, half-and-half included". We need to work on this.
=========================
(1) This is again the idea that you made me think of, i.e., the concept of residual memetic reward, or residual memetic debt. Or in this case you could almost say "vicarious" residual memetic debt, for example, Oh, those greedy [corporations] are getting more from the consumers than they deserve, so they won't miss it if I get a little bit for free (as opposed to a consumer who HAS paid getting more than he DID pay for, which is regular residual memetic debt).
2015-12-23
2015-12-22
模倣子 Gender Tax
As a male, I find that there is very little variety, very little to
choose from in terms off all of the products listed. When there is
choice, it might be a two to four different colors. Shaving? Two or
three different razors, all basically the same. Socks. T-shirts, Slacks.
Suit. Tie. Whatever male hairstyle is going this decade, everybody is
wearing it, and whatever products support that (gel, mouse, shaver,
etc.) are all that's on offer. Very little is offered the male these
days in terms of choice of garments or self-maintenance products. Also,
since I am very tall, they pretty much never have my size anyway (unless
they expect me to weigh 2-3 times as much as I do or something -- I
guess my body image is being dictated by somebody else). Shoes? Sneakers
or dress shoes. Lace-up or loafers, black or brown, that's about it.
Anyway, as a Swiss friend pointed out when his girlfriend asked him why LEFT-handed Swiss Army knives should be several times more expensive than RIGHT-handed Swiss Army knives. He pointed out that lefties are only 10% of the population, so the market is TEN TIMES SMALLER. They only cost 3-4 times more, though.
Maybe this has something to do with it. I don't know, but it's possible. Men are pretty much stuck, thanks to rampant homophobia, with what we've got, i.e., no variety, even some colors off the menu. If a guy is stuck with slacks, and maybe a jacket, oxford shirt or maybe a polo (and can get away with one or two of each, certainly one or two COLORS of each), but a woman can go with any of a number of styles of dresses, skirts, shorts (more situations where a woman can get away with these), pant suits, leggings, hose, coats, hats (men don't wear these much anymore), shoes, boots (on a man? avast ye matey?), etc. in a rainbow of colors, has to have stuff that matches everything else, the stores have to carry lime scarves for the women who buy the lime skirts and belts, blah, blah, blah.
Anyway, as I said, I don't know if this is THE reason why women pay more for this stuff than men. But, as a man, I can tell you that having nothing to choose from is kind of oppressive, but it also saves time, and apparently it saves money, too, which I didn't think of until now. Basically, every time you add a new item, a new color, or a new size or whatever, you slice the market size in two and decrease the economy of scale and make things more and more expensive. The fact that guys have no market choice and generally look like a bunch of drab schlubs is the trade-off (maybe). I have always been frustrated with the "free market economy's ability to meet my needs" and when I lived in Tokyo I only wore custom-tailored suits (expensive? duh...) because of course nothing else was available.
Given how much more choice women seem to have with all this stuff, the effective "demand population" for each individual line of clothing or personal care product is drastically reduced from what it would be if all women bought the same thing (like men do), and so it's to be expected that the price should be dramatically higher. But, like with the Swiss Army knife, even with only one TENTH of a "demand population" the price only goes up 3-4 times.
So I guess I'm a little surprised that the price hike should only be 4%-13%. They CAN chisel you even more if there are two or more brands that are really the same since they can rip you off on the cheaper one a LITTLE less and make you think you're getting a bargain and play that game all day. One thing I would suspect is that they save on the QUALITY of products for women, that is, make up for the decreased economy of scale by cutting the quality, which also makes women have to repurchase the same things over and over which is another hidden cost.
Anybody have any thoughts about this "quality theory"? A reasonably good man's suit will last for years, and you typically get it with two pairs of pants since those take the most wear. Same for a quality pair of shoes, which in Tokyo you would re-sole over and over again. Plus you can wear them any season. I don't know if any woman's garment can say that. Point is, a man can buy $2,000-$3,000 worth of clothes (Typical for Tokyo, maybe much lower elsewhere) and they will last for years and be good for all business and social occasions. That's all that's expected from him. People will give him ties and socks (that's all that's expected of gift-givers). And really, a man CAN'T get clothes beyond that wardrobe and really have any place to wear them. Anything beyond a bar of soap and a razor and nobody's going to notice or he's impinging on the Homophobia Zone.
Plus men aren't for the most part socially required to accessorize, per se (thanks again homophobia!) which adds up to more savings.
Does this ring true for anybody? I am a "tall dude" and it has long been my perception that I have very, very little choice in terms of personal care products or, of course, clothing. My reaction is usually somewhere along the line of "Thank God!" and "Really...?!" when I actually find anything. In personal care, there's usually exactly one thing, and that's if I need something absolutely mundane.
I don't know what it's like for women. Do you find you have lots of things to chose from? If you have more than one or two or three choices for anything, then you're probably way ahead of me and my above analysis may have some traction.
==============================================
Anyway, as a Swiss friend pointed out when his girlfriend asked him why LEFT-handed Swiss Army knives should be several times more expensive than RIGHT-handed Swiss Army knives. He pointed out that lefties are only 10% of the population, so the market is TEN TIMES SMALLER. They only cost 3-4 times more, though.
Maybe this has something to do with it. I don't know, but it's possible. Men are pretty much stuck, thanks to rampant homophobia, with what we've got, i.e., no variety, even some colors off the menu. If a guy is stuck with slacks, and maybe a jacket, oxford shirt or maybe a polo (and can get away with one or two of each, certainly one or two COLORS of each), but a woman can go with any of a number of styles of dresses, skirts, shorts (more situations where a woman can get away with these), pant suits, leggings, hose, coats, hats (men don't wear these much anymore), shoes, boots (on a man? avast ye matey?), etc. in a rainbow of colors, has to have stuff that matches everything else, the stores have to carry lime scarves for the women who buy the lime skirts and belts, blah, blah, blah.
Anyway, as I said, I don't know if this is THE reason why women pay more for this stuff than men. But, as a man, I can tell you that having nothing to choose from is kind of oppressive, but it also saves time, and apparently it saves money, too, which I didn't think of until now. Basically, every time you add a new item, a new color, or a new size or whatever, you slice the market size in two and decrease the economy of scale and make things more and more expensive. The fact that guys have no market choice and generally look like a bunch of drab schlubs is the trade-off (maybe). I have always been frustrated with the "free market economy's ability to meet my needs" and when I lived in Tokyo I only wore custom-tailored suits (expensive? duh...) because of course nothing else was available.
Given how much more choice women seem to have with all this stuff, the effective "demand population" for each individual line of clothing or personal care product is drastically reduced from what it would be if all women bought the same thing (like men do), and so it's to be expected that the price should be dramatically higher. But, like with the Swiss Army knife, even with only one TENTH of a "demand population" the price only goes up 3-4 times.
So I guess I'm a little surprised that the price hike should only be 4%-13%. They CAN chisel you even more if there are two or more brands that are really the same since they can rip you off on the cheaper one a LITTLE less and make you think you're getting a bargain and play that game all day. One thing I would suspect is that they save on the QUALITY of products for women, that is, make up for the decreased economy of scale by cutting the quality, which also makes women have to repurchase the same things over and over which is another hidden cost.
Anybody have any thoughts about this "quality theory"? A reasonably good man's suit will last for years, and you typically get it with two pairs of pants since those take the most wear. Same for a quality pair of shoes, which in Tokyo you would re-sole over and over again. Plus you can wear them any season. I don't know if any woman's garment can say that. Point is, a man can buy $2,000-$3,000 worth of clothes (Typical for Tokyo, maybe much lower elsewhere) and they will last for years and be good for all business and social occasions. That's all that's expected from him. People will give him ties and socks (that's all that's expected of gift-givers). And really, a man CAN'T get clothes beyond that wardrobe and really have any place to wear them. Anything beyond a bar of soap and a razor and nobody's going to notice or he's impinging on the Homophobia Zone.
Plus men aren't for the most part socially required to accessorize, per se (thanks again homophobia!) which adds up to more savings.
Does this ring true for anybody? I am a "tall dude" and it has long been my perception that I have very, very little choice in terms of personal care products or, of course, clothing. My reaction is usually somewhere along the line of "Thank God!" and "Really...?!" when I actually find anything. In personal care, there's usually exactly one thing, and that's if I need something absolutely mundane.
I don't know what it's like for women. Do you find you have lots of things to chose from? If you have more than one or two or three choices for anything, then you're probably way ahead of me and my above analysis may have some traction.
==============================================
2015-12-21
2015-12-19
2015-12-18
Limitless
人生の制限性が分からないと、
其の無制限性も分かれない筈である。
Si l'on n'arrive d'abord à comprendre que et comment la vie est limitée,
On n'arrivera jamais à comprendre de quelle manière elle est illimitée.
If one does not first understand that life is limited,
One can never understand that it is unlimited.
Si no se entiende al primero que la vida es limitada,
No es posible comprender que es ilimitada.
其の無制限性も分かれない筈である。
Si l'on n'arrive d'abord à comprendre que et comment la vie est limitée,
On n'arrivera jamais à comprendre de quelle manière elle est illimitée.
If one does not first understand that life is limited,
One can never understand that it is unlimited.
Si no se entiende al primero que la vida es limitada,
No es posible comprender que es ilimitada.
2015-12-17
詩 Inside Out
If one possess no joy in life,
nor anger, nor even sadness,
one has still the will to survive
and the fear not so much of death
but of that which causes dying
sometimes the other way around
the ridicule of one's fellows
the hope that the parted curtain
of their ill-will bring salvation
and the unbearable chagrin
of leaving a body behind
nor anger, nor even sadness,
one has still the will to survive
and the fear not so much of death
but of that which causes dying
sometimes the other way around
the ridicule of one's fellows
the hope that the parted curtain
of their ill-will bring salvation
and the unbearable chagrin
of leaving a body behind
2015-12-15
2015-12-14
Japanese Class
We're doing transcriptions of previous transcriptions onto the manga art, so that will be coming out soon as well.
2015-12-13
2015-12-11
2015-12-09
2015-12-07
2015-12-05
Special Rules for RISK
→ Updated document
Two Ideas
Having castles or factories, and having allied armies and special advantages to using both.Factories vs. Immediate Card-Armies
You can turn in sets of cards, just like in regular risk
You may either turn in a set of cards at the beginning of your turn for immediate armies to play with during your turn, or at the end of your turn for (one) factory to be placed on one of your territories.
- A factory gives you 2 armies at the start of each turn
- A card turn-in gives you 3 armies at the start of each turn
Every successful turn you get 1 card. The soonest you can turn in cards for 3 armies (at the start of your turn) or one factory (at the end of your turn) is 3 turns. So the best case is a card turn-in every third turn, worst case every fifth turn, or on average every fourth turn. So a turn-in for 3 armies gives you ¾ armies per turn on average, while buying a factory gives 2 armies per turn starting with the 2nd turn, or 6 armies, or ¾ armies per turn.
Factory armies are deployed on the territory where the factory is located. So these are close to equal numbers of armies1, given the fact that factory armies are less "mobile" and the factory territory may be conquered by an enemy and lost.
A fourth factory added to the same territory produces ten armies per turn, that is, the equivalent of five regular factories, and is represented by a special super-factory token2.
1Is this true?
2Do the numbers work well with this? Should the super-factory be given extra powers as well? For example, a super-factory/castle must be surrounded on all sides in order to be taken. Does that provide too much of an advantage?
The Allied Armies
In two-player play, each of the remaining four armies would be assigned a poker suit, that is, hearts, diamonds, clubs, or spades, or, ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠.Every successful turn, a player would not only receive a Risk card, but also a poker card, again, up to five. If five Risk cards, are drawn, they must be played, that is, for factories or armies, but if a sixth poker card is drawn, then one must be discarded.
Should players be allowed to "bet" when playing for allied armies? What does that mean? Should they bet armies, Risk cards, or both? Buy armies to bet on with Risk cards?
At the end of their [sic] normal turn, a player may choose to play one of the allied armies. One (or more) other players may challenge. Each challenger counts out as many armies as they [sic] would receive if it were their [sic] turn, that is, a player with twelve territories and one factory would get 4 + 2 = 6 armies to bet with. Each player in the challenge selects zero or more poker cards from their collection, sets the rest aside, and are dealt as many cards as needed to get to five.
The objective is to win the poker hand, and with the most and strongest cards (at least one) in the suit of the allied army to be played.
The player whose turn it is begins the betting. "All in" bets are allowed, and that ends the betting for the hand. This is the tricky bit. If and when the current player wins a hand, the challenge ends, bets are settled, and the player plays the allied army with the number of armies due that allied army, not the armies due the player's army. If a challenger wins, then the current player has the choice of resigning their [sic] claim or playing again.
Unlike with poker, whichever player wins has the option of retaining up to the number of cards from their winning hand as would total five with their other cards. In other words, they do not have to lose any cards. All other players in the hand lose all of their cards.
"What happens to the armies?" If the challengers continue to win until the current player gives up or goes broke, they cash in their won armies for their own-colored armies and those are the armies they shall get on their next turns. By the same token, if there is another allied army challenge before their [sic] turn comes up again, those armies shall be the pool they [sic] shall use for betting.
NOTE: Allied armies cannot collect Risk cards or Poker cards.
For EXAMPLE:
Player A wants to use the clubs
1
2015-12-03
模倣子 Residual Memetic Reward & Cohort Membership
One major point of the insight you gave me1 is that group participation is enforced by the repeated participation in the exchanges of the memetic system2. If the act of participation in the memetic system by the employees results in the accomplishment of your objectives, then you "win". You have to design a system of rewards in which the "work" is part of it, or in which the "work" elements are "wrapped" in memetic elements which resonate and produce memetic rewards for all concerned (see non-compliance below). You also have to think in terms of "packing the meme-space"5. As I have learned from my experiments however, and to quote I believe it was Abraham Lincoln, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time." By the same token, a majority of people will take to a well-designed and appropriate memetic system (memeplex), but there will always be non-compliers.
There are a couple of forms of non-compliance3
1. rebellion4
2. apathy
Oddly enough, I think #1 is by far and away the easiest to deal with. You simply design a sub-system for the rebels to fit into. LET there be a non-blue doughnut table, or some other treat, or whatever. People feel like they are rebelling, but they are really conforming just as much as anybody else. You aren't a "Democrat" as much as a "Non-Republican" and vice-versa. I call this "memetic polarization" -- you are in the system, just at one end or the other. A good memetic engineer will think of this beforehand and try to design something ahead of time, or at least be prepared to adapt as more data roll in.
I have not figured out much about the apathy bit yet. I think that genius, insanity, pathological social alienation, and apathy are all related, memetically speaking. I'm still working on that one. More later...
When it comes to apathy, you may just be back to the draconian, clock-punching, micro-managing nightmare that most organization are from top to bottom anyway. Even if you can liberate a small percentage of the population (cohort) from that state of apathy, it's a huge win, and since a fundamental property of memeplex participation is self-motivation and self-regulation, it should be possible with the right memetic designing to enlist memeplex participants in the task of "managing" and reporting on the resigned drudge population6 (and I have already described to you examples of how this might be done).
Anyway, for starters....
1"no thanks" is fine because there is a memetic/karmic contract which is concluded in full and enforced by socio-memetic "bullying" (the beauty of which is that neither I nor anybody else has to do anything about!! This is the attractive bit for managers!)
2for example, submitting the prime numbers and ideas, wearing the blue shirts, and tangentially, eating the doughnuts and pizza. If this is perceived as a "good deal" by the participant, i.e., there is residual memetic/karmic reward, then he continues to participate. Whereas if he feels "forced" to do so, or "cheated" by the exchange, then if he has a choice later, he does not choose to participate again.
2 and this may be a complete list
4deliberately wearing non-blue shirt, bringing non-blue-shirt doughnuts, sitting down at stand-up meetings (ha, ha)
5 creating a bunch of memes and meme sub-systems (memeplexes) which don't actually "do" anything, but which prevent "useless" memes from invading and reënforcing the rest of the system, e.g., cute logos, songs and jokes about the project, special snack and food days, rewards for stupid trivial project-related (and other) "accomplishments" (most uses of the word 'notwithstanding' in comments), etc.
6 Or even those who participate in the system to a lesser (or greater) degree. Layering is all part of the design process. "Promotion" becomes a process of participation in more and more advanced memetic interactions with a different (smaller) cohort involved in more specific task-sets, e.g., managing, testing, development, marketing, etc.
There are a couple of forms of non-compliance3
1. rebellion4
2. apathy
Oddly enough, I think #1 is by far and away the easiest to deal with. You simply design a sub-system for the rebels to fit into. LET there be a non-blue doughnut table, or some other treat, or whatever. People feel like they are rebelling, but they are really conforming just as much as anybody else. You aren't a "Democrat" as much as a "Non-Republican" and vice-versa. I call this "memetic polarization" -- you are in the system, just at one end or the other. A good memetic engineer will think of this beforehand and try to design something ahead of time, or at least be prepared to adapt as more data roll in.
I have not figured out much about the apathy bit yet. I think that genius, insanity, pathological social alienation, and apathy are all related, memetically speaking. I'm still working on that one. More later...
When it comes to apathy, you may just be back to the draconian, clock-punching, micro-managing nightmare that most organization are from top to bottom anyway. Even if you can liberate a small percentage of the population (cohort) from that state of apathy, it's a huge win, and since a fundamental property of memeplex participation is self-motivation and self-regulation, it should be possible with the right memetic designing to enlist memeplex participants in the task of "managing" and reporting on the resigned drudge population6 (and I have already described to you examples of how this might be done).
Anyway, for starters....
1"no thanks" is fine because there is a memetic/karmic contract which is concluded in full and enforced by socio-memetic "bullying" (the beauty of which is that neither I nor anybody else has to do anything about!! This is the attractive bit for managers!)
2for example, submitting the prime numbers and ideas, wearing the blue shirts, and tangentially, eating the doughnuts and pizza. If this is perceived as a "good deal" by the participant, i.e., there is residual memetic/karmic reward, then he continues to participate. Whereas if he feels "forced" to do so, or "cheated" by the exchange, then if he has a choice later, he does not choose to participate again.
2 and this may be a complete list
4deliberately wearing non-blue shirt, bringing non-blue-shirt doughnuts, sitting down at stand-up meetings (ha, ha)
5 creating a bunch of memes and meme sub-systems (memeplexes) which don't actually "do" anything, but which prevent "useless" memes from invading and reënforcing the rest of the system, e.g., cute logos, songs and jokes about the project, special snack and food days, rewards for stupid trivial project-related (and other) "accomplishments" (most uses of the word 'notwithstanding' in comments), etc.
6 Or even those who participate in the system to a lesser (or greater) degree. Layering is all part of the design process. "Promotion" becomes a process of participation in more and more advanced memetic interactions with a different (smaller) cohort involved in more specific task-sets, e.g., managing, testing, development, marketing, etc.
Japanese Class
Some cool Japanese expressions I want to review in class.
Is this a real Japanese expression? "toi inu no boe?" (the barking of a far-away dog -- the bravery of someone who risks nothing).
2015-12-02
模倣子 My Very Sensible Friend
I have a very sensible friend. He's not gay but he says he's just not interested in having sex with women. With my life experience, I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, of course, I think it's weird. On the other hand, it's obviously an enormously practical attitude. It's not like much of the misery I and most of the guys I know has not come from our shared obsession with women. In fact, in our more lucid moments, as you occasionally see on comedy shows on television and elsewhere, my buddies and I have wondered together what our lives might be like if we didn't have to chase women all the time...then we laugh and admit that it's all just a pipe dream.
Nietzsche noted that to a woman a man is a path to a baby, but wondered what a woman is to a man.
For a woman, it's a very simple proposition from a biological and an intellectual level. She probably does (who knows?) feel some physical urge to pursue men. But as an intellectual being she is also able to understand that if she sees other families, other women with children, and decides she might like a baby of her own, she immediately understands that she can make one with her own body, and that even if she lives in a society (like America, ha, ha) without detailed medical knowledge of how the process works, she can apply her mind to the problem and one way or another work out that she needs a man's minor initial contribution.
For men, it's an entirely different proposition. Obviously men must have some biological drive to chase women and have sex with them1. But what kind of "mental" or "intellectual" reality do men live in vis à vis women? Nietzsche's observation may seem silly and trivial, but it really isn't.
It's a kind of miracle, since men's "willingness" to pursue women or their "dedication" to the pursuit of women is really crucial to the functioning of our society. It's something to be "harnessed" rather than reviled, suppressed, I would argue. Crypto-pseudo-feminists3 say they want to destroy this, but I don't understand what kind of dystopian future world they envisage. In our current one, half the population works slavishly for no apparent reason to earn money and acquire resources just to give it all to the other half for absolutely nothing in return2. On the face of it, this seems like a pretty goddamn good deal. Of course, as with all things, it doesn't always pan out in reality.
It's still probably a bad idea to jump in and proclaim, as is typical of crypto-pseudo-feminists, that something should be dismantled a) without understanding how it works, or b) having a clear idea of how to replace it. You could take the position, as would seem to be that of Norwegian Death Metalists, that the status quo is so dysfunctional that it has to be dismantled first, before even dialogue about something new may be begun. Given that women in general and many women in particular reap huge benefits from the status quo, at least some justification is required for reviling men for their drive to pursue women, which would seem to have absolutely no clear motivation from a social or intellectual standpoint and yet is literally the mainstay and foundation of our modern industrial society.
It is the Goose that lays the Golden Eggs.
We'd better have a very good reason to kill it, and I've yet to hear it. And the scary thing is that we don't even know how healthy this poor goose is anyway. I don't know how close we are to all men becoming like my very sensible friend or just becoming gay. Personally, I feel myself getting so fed up with faux-feminist rhetoric that I find myself thinking of a woman who says non-insane things as "a good one"5, and so forth.
What should things look like? It seems like the problem with reality, with the status quo, is that even though women like to pursue men (for obvious reasons) and men like to pursue women (which is a complete mystery), they really don't get along half the time, which is true of most people, so it's not surprising. Sex changes all this, since it makes things feel "right", but if things are really "wrong", then it only seems to last a couple of years4. After that, you have two people who are "stuck" together, and for practical economical and social reasons can't separate, or if they do, one or both of them (usually the woman, though this may well have changed) ends up permanently miserable thereafter.
Making men feel guilty, badly, whatever, because of the urge they feel to pursue women does not seem to be the answer to this. It's probably a good way to hurt men, just like ridiculing women for their menstruation or lower average height or muscle content would be a good way to hurt them, and equally cruel and pointless.
Men are fascinated with women. We don't know why. But it's probably a good thing.
1Maybe this is only obvious to Darwinians. Perhaps those to follow other ideologies hold that men are somehow pure and pristine and woman are the uniquely lascivious ones and the rôle of men is to "make them honest" and "rein them in", and men are otherwise waiting around, busy with other less "earthy" occupations. I'm not sure the evidence supports this idea, however.
2A woman's children a guaranteed to be her own, of course, but a man cannot guarantee that they are his, for one. Ostensibly a man expects sex and "housework", but this is usually "unenforceable", while his "providing" for his wife/partner is. And so on and so forth.
3a.k.a., "faux-feminists", those who say they work for women's liberation, but advocate policies that obviously would not accomplish this aim, and cover over this contradiction with bluster.
4which is long enough to have children in most cases, which effectively makes the union permanent, which tends to lock the male into the rôle of getting resources and the female into the rôle of looking after these children.
5and yes, I know what a perfectly appalling reference this is.
Nietzsche noted that to a woman a man is a path to a baby, but wondered what a woman is to a man.
For a woman, it's a very simple proposition from a biological and an intellectual level. She probably does (who knows?) feel some physical urge to pursue men. But as an intellectual being she is also able to understand that if she sees other families, other women with children, and decides she might like a baby of her own, she immediately understands that she can make one with her own body, and that even if she lives in a society (like America, ha, ha) without detailed medical knowledge of how the process works, she can apply her mind to the problem and one way or another work out that she needs a man's minor initial contribution.
For men, it's an entirely different proposition. Obviously men must have some biological drive to chase women and have sex with them1. But what kind of "mental" or "intellectual" reality do men live in vis à vis women? Nietzsche's observation may seem silly and trivial, but it really isn't.
It's a kind of miracle, since men's "willingness" to pursue women or their "dedication" to the pursuit of women is really crucial to the functioning of our society. It's something to be "harnessed" rather than reviled, suppressed, I would argue. Crypto-pseudo-feminists3 say they want to destroy this, but I don't understand what kind of dystopian future world they envisage. In our current one, half the population works slavishly for no apparent reason to earn money and acquire resources just to give it all to the other half for absolutely nothing in return2. On the face of it, this seems like a pretty goddamn good deal. Of course, as with all things, it doesn't always pan out in reality.
It's still probably a bad idea to jump in and proclaim, as is typical of crypto-pseudo-feminists, that something should be dismantled a) without understanding how it works, or b) having a clear idea of how to replace it. You could take the position, as would seem to be that of Norwegian Death Metalists, that the status quo is so dysfunctional that it has to be dismantled first, before even dialogue about something new may be begun. Given that women in general and many women in particular reap huge benefits from the status quo, at least some justification is required for reviling men for their drive to pursue women, which would seem to have absolutely no clear motivation from a social or intellectual standpoint and yet is literally the mainstay and foundation of our modern industrial society.
It is the Goose that lays the Golden Eggs.
We'd better have a very good reason to kill it, and I've yet to hear it. And the scary thing is that we don't even know how healthy this poor goose is anyway. I don't know how close we are to all men becoming like my very sensible friend or just becoming gay. Personally, I feel myself getting so fed up with faux-feminist rhetoric that I find myself thinking of a woman who says non-insane things as "a good one"5, and so forth.
What should things look like? It seems like the problem with reality, with the status quo, is that even though women like to pursue men (for obvious reasons) and men like to pursue women (which is a complete mystery), they really don't get along half the time, which is true of most people, so it's not surprising. Sex changes all this, since it makes things feel "right", but if things are really "wrong", then it only seems to last a couple of years4. After that, you have two people who are "stuck" together, and for practical economical and social reasons can't separate, or if they do, one or both of them (usually the woman, though this may well have changed) ends up permanently miserable thereafter.
Making men feel guilty, badly, whatever, because of the urge they feel to pursue women does not seem to be the answer to this. It's probably a good way to hurt men, just like ridiculing women for their menstruation or lower average height or muscle content would be a good way to hurt them, and equally cruel and pointless.
Men are fascinated with women. We don't know why. But it's probably a good thing.
1Maybe this is only obvious to Darwinians. Perhaps those to follow other ideologies hold that men are somehow pure and pristine and woman are the uniquely lascivious ones and the rôle of men is to "make them honest" and "rein them in", and men are otherwise waiting around, busy with other less "earthy" occupations. I'm not sure the evidence supports this idea, however.
2A woman's children a guaranteed to be her own, of course, but a man cannot guarantee that they are his, for one. Ostensibly a man expects sex and "housework", but this is usually "unenforceable", while his "providing" for his wife/partner is. And so on and so forth.
3a.k.a., "faux-feminists", those who say they work for women's liberation, but advocate policies that obviously would not accomplish this aim, and cover over this contradiction with bluster.
4which is long enough to have children in most cases, which effectively makes the union permanent, which tends to lock the male into the rôle of getting resources and the female into the rôle of looking after these children.
5and yes, I know what a perfectly appalling reference this is.
2015-12-01
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