http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11417063
I was set thinking by this article, and I realised that these are actually enormous annoyances for me.
They might be efficient in terms of output for the power input, but they're not efficient investments or uses of space. I have no idea how much they cost, but I can still say that they're poor investments since they are detrimental. I'm not going to concern myself with comparisons to other systems, such as the pod system mentioned, since I don't know those.
I can simply say that travelators are worse than empty floor. To start with, they go slowly. I can walk faster than they move. In an empty hallway that'snot an issue: I can either walk on a moving floor or a still one, and I'll go faster on the moving one.
However, airports are not empty places. Anywhere that one of these might be installed is a bustling centre of travelling people. People travelling come in many shapes and sizes, but some relevant characteristics are that we get lots of people idling around, people in a hurry and people who take their time, people who don't know where they're going and people who have luggage. The uniting factor between every type of person is that they all get in the way.
Because they get in the way, we need as much space as we can get. The more space we have, even in a corridor, the better, because it allows for streams of movement: people who move fast can move round people who are slow.
Now we don't get single-file avenues of movement, as we do on a running track, with people staying in one lane. People tend to walk in the centre of any thoroughfare (up to a certain width, but including corridors of many sizes). People tend to veer from side to side without a care for people behind them, and with very little attention to people walking at them. Finally, people take up more than the width of one person. It is rude to brush past people or push them out of the way, and therefore there needs to be a little bit more space than a person's worth for someone to go by.
Therefore a corridor as wide as two people standing side by side will only accommodate one file of traffic: someone will walk in the middle, leaving half a space on each side. If there is two-way traffic, it will be very slow because people will feel the need to edge past each other, and might struggle if there's someone with luggage.
As the corridor gets wider we get expanding returns. A three shoulder-width corridor can accomodate two streams of single-file traffic, although there will always be someone who walks in the middle and slows everything down by leaving a space each side, which isn't quite enough for full-speed passing.
For multiple streams of traffic we need wide corridors, especially as we get varying sizes of people (luggage makes people much, much wider and less manoeuverable). Larger widths are better able to accommodate different patterns of sizes, giving less wasted space at the sides. If I took two two-person corridors and compared the flow of people to within one four-person corridor it would be less. A four-person corridor can accommodate three single-file flows.
Now I've laid out the basic intuitions about this, we find that comparing travelators to open spaces isn't even that kind to the travelators, because they take up some of the space as walls. So a six-person corridor might become two two-person corridors. This might look very snazzy, and be great for the executives who test it before it's opened to the public, but once people get involved we can get blockages much more easily.
I would rather be able to walk around a collapsed trolley at an airport, or overtake a dawdling idler, rather than have an option of resting my legs and going more slowly. If I wanted that option, I could just stop moving!
Tuesday, 28 September 2010
Monday, 27 September 2010
British MPs and social mobility
Being a Member of Parliament is an important job. It's a vital part of democracy, and MPs protect our country and make far-reaching national decisions. A vital part of any democracy is that all citizens are equal, and equally able to participate. So if we look at the list of MPs, we should find that very few have any political background, since there are so many other jobs out there. Let's be generous, and say no more than 5% should have a political background (by which I do not mean career choice, since that's a sad necessity in modern life, but family background).
So, in order, with the categories [party], [education], [wealth], [politics], where wealth and politics are judged on family background, except for late entrants in life whose personal wealth is also relevant. I need a spreadsheet, so internet crawling for data will come later.
Labour: 1
Grammar: 1
Wealth:
Politics: 1
So, in order, with the categories [party], [education], [wealth], [politics], where wealth and politics are judged on family background, except for late entrants in life whose personal wealth is also relevant. I need a spreadsheet, so internet crawling for data will come later.
Labour: 1
Grammar: 1
Wealth:
Politics: 1
Sunday, 19 September 2010
The ideal woman
I'm not going to marry anyone. The type of girl I like most is almost the opposite of many women:
free spirited, open-minded, not hidebound, impulsive but not emotional, enormous libido, find me attractive, not sexually repressed, very outgoing, sociable, east-going...
I find myself regretting having relationships with some people, because instead of knowing them better, I find that they start expecting me to change and then growing distant. So I want to find a girl who truly likes me, and accepts who I am, rather than what she hopes to turn me into; hence all the 'open-minded'-type descriptions.
I do not like dullness and routine. I would like someone who not only enjoys new things, but finds them, takes part in them, and will bring me along too. I do not want to be the shining star of interest in a woman's life. I want to be the(/a) reliable companion with whom she first thinks to share new interests.
I take an interest in intellectual subjects that come to my attention, and at times find myself taking to them well. I want a woman who can understand and enjoy interesting conversations and debates.
On the other hand, I want a woman who does not enjoy, start or passively hope for emotional arguments. Intellectual discussion only for me, not screaming tantrums. Drama she can either enjoy without me, or not at all.
I do not want a woman who is passive, reticent, or has any aspirations to purity. I despise the idea of having a piece of meat as a partner of any sort. If a woman can't interest me, wants to keep away from intimacy or links it to purity at all, or has no will of her own I'll class her as a soulless zombie, not a potential partner. The sexual revolution is supposed to have freed women from the pressure to be worthless, but they still aspire to be so, so either the sexual revolution failed, or it's just an intrinsic feature of the human condition. Given the number of worthless men, perhaps the latter.
I enjoy meeting people and making new friends, so a woman who is sociable, socially adept and keen on parties and socialising would be a joy to know.
However, many women I've met are emotional, and enjoy arguments only to the extent that they are emotional, rather than interesting.
Women love to impose as many expectations as they can imagine once they begin to suspect you might be approaching a relationship.
Women buy into, heart and soul, the idea that a pure and perfect woman is sexually restrained and lets her man lead. I don't want to lead (nor be led); I want someone my equal, who will argue her case. Yet I don't want someone who believes that she is more important than logic and sense. She must accept the primacy of logic (including when it comes to making decisions). If it makes sense to get dinner now and not later, I expect an acknowledgement that if we don't it's entirely a whim, rather than a fair trade for an occasion when I point out a sensible thing and we do do that thing. Whims are not equal to sense. I readily do the same thing. Being my equal means putting forward views and ideas, not getting your way exactly the same amount of the time. We then decide what we want to do having agreed what's most sensible, and only do something else having acknowledged that we're doing it on a whim. A person who values whichever action she thought of more than doing what's best is not my sort of person, male or female. I suffer from pride, like anyone else, and it's no fun to be wrong, but I don't try to pretend that being wrong doesn't matter because my hurt pride is more important. Magna est veritas ... I want friends who are the same. And I certainly don't want to spend time with someone who denies sense and reason just in order to get her way more often. That'll not only fail (I'm not one to be bullied into denying sense) but also destroy any respect I had for her intelligence.
I also don't want someone who cares for 'The Relationship' more than for me. The Relationship should not be considered. It is not a separate thing which both of us (or just me, it sometimes seems) need to support. Either a girl cares for me, or she doesn't. There is no relationship. I have yet to puzzle out why people do this. Is 'The Relationship' simply a form of emotional blackmail, so that a girl can say 'you don't care about Our Relationship' and mean 'you don't care about me' but without sounding so selfish? Is 'The Relationship' simply a problem of over-indulgence in romances and dramas, in which relationships are the centrepieces of the plots? Is it because of the slavering devotion to the ideal of everlasting love between just two people to the exclusion of all others, which is defined by way of a relationship? If it's this last option, it's just another black mark against the problems of expectations in relationships and the immaturity of jealous love. Why do I bring jealousy in to this? Because it is jealousy and insecurity that make people want devotion in return, rather than being happy to have found someone worthy of their own devotion.
Women also tend to want to spend time together, cuddling and alone, certainly once we've been in some sort of relationship for a while. They want to settle down and lose contact with new things and the outside world. One might call it a 'nesting instinct'. That's the exact opposite of me; I want someone to offer me something new, with whom to share my excitements and experiences, not someone to suffocate me and insulate me from anything interesting.
Women do tend to be sociable, but since it's only ever oddballs who end up with me, I haven't had many relationships with party animals who can introduce me to, or join me in getting to know, many new people. The gym often used to play a song which went
'my girl likes to party all the time, party all the time, party all the time...'
I liked the sentiment. If my girl wants to stay at home and entice me into wasting my life with her, rather than sharing a life with her, then I don't want her to be my girl.
Finally, I'm not a jealous person. If I come back to someone, it means she's the person I like best. If I never have the chance to leave, it means that she's simply controlling me, not that she actually is the best person for me. I think this way, and I hope for someone for whom jealousy is not the all-powerful god of relationships, but who likes me for who I am without expectation. I want a girl who also thinks like me in this respect and appreciates my ardent admiration without it being tied to any need for fidelity in either person. If the opportunity for fun arises, she should take it, and so will I, if we're not together at the time.
I have met a number of women who admitted that they wanted a man to take charge in the bedroom. Of the conversations I've had about men taking charge, this has been said many times, but I've never heard a woman say the opposite. On the other hand, most of these also wanted a man who gave them more freedom to dictate things outside of the bedroom. Yes, it's nice when you can have fun without doing anything, but expecting that dream to be a reality is crazy. If you want a dominating man, he might not only dominate when it comes to sharing pleasure, but also when it comes to making life decisions and choosing pleasures. And if he's accustomed to dominating and having you accept it, you might just find yourself in unpleasant relationships.
Of course, women not only dislike being controlled, but also having too much freedom. Apparently, someone trying to control you is the only reliable sign of desire, so having too much freedom means that he's emotionally distant and uninterested (he doesn't love the girl enough). That's really rather ridiculous. Those of us who are capable of unconditional love (, desire and appreciation) don't fall into the controlling/uninterested dichotomy and are pigeon-holed because people are too blinkered by stupid cultural indoctrination even to know mature emotion when they see it. I call unconditional love mature based not only on my bias and intuition, but also with the full support of generations of Christianity, which attributes unconditionality to God's love, as part of His love's perfection.
We'd all like to have someone want us hugely, do freely exactly what we'd like them to do most, sublimate themselves to our desires and wishes and agree to every demand. I call it slavery, however, and I like the idea in one way, but I also find the idea of a human doing so quite dehumanizing. I would struggle to think of someone who did that as a real person after a while, but I would be very happy with a robot capable of doing this. It's only women and Christians who throw in the additional stipulation that the person needs to do all this voluntarily so that it's an act of will, rather than being an enslaved automaton. Clearly God is indeed a woman.
As I have stated, I find imposed reticence unpleasant. The idea that a person should belittle oneself so much as to regard one's own existence as insignificant is a crime against humanity. That twisted sort of mindset is exactly what was expected from slaves, and is the sort of mindset that psychiatrists fight to cure as though it were an affliction (in slave-type contexts, such as with brutally treated and oppressed people).
I believe in human dignity, and I want nothing so demeaning of a partner as for her to deny her own free will and desires in favour of my own. I want something different from myself; something additional, and not something that strives to mimic.
I sympathize with Milton's devil when he says
'Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven'
There is nothing glorious or great in blind servitude. I appreciate love, but I see it as separate from the insecurity and lack of self-esteem that would make a person worship in the Christian manner, or love in the decidedly creepy way that many people think of.
If someone is to love me, I hope that she will do so whilst retaining her sense of identity. I want her to have a powerful enough character (soul, if you prefer the Christian terms still) to remain independent of me. I have no personal insecurities of the sort that would make me need complete affirmation from someone so emotionally close. I need no emotional support (although from time to time it's a pleasing balm for little and big annoyances). I want a person, not a crutch. I want a relationship that broadens my horizons, rather than one that simply reinforces the view I already have. My view of myself and the world is sound enough already.
I want someone similar. I want a woman who is willing to change, but does not find her psyche collapsing if she needs to change her outlook; a woman who is strong enough (proud enough, one might say, although I think pride and self-identity are not entirely the same) to care for her own world-view and engage it with mine, rather than forsake it for mine (through love, cultural pressure or any other force), and I want a woman who does not expect me to forsake myself for her.
It is here that my desires conflict so strongly with my culture. For millenia women have been told to submit to men, and for the whole Christian age ( up to and including today) the Christian ideal of love as submitting to authority has insidiously crept into our society, culture and minds. After those discussions (with women, that I mentioned earlier) about women wanting a man to lead, I'm not sure whether Christianity had adapted to women's desires, whether women have internalized the whole cultural precept of dominant men, or whether women naturally tend to dwell on love more, and have merely internalized the association of love with submission.
Whatever the reason, women actively train themselves not to be strong and confident, and condemn those who are 'masculine' (aggressive, proud and interesting). I don't call that masculine. I call it human, and its lack soulless.
There are feminists who want to free women from sexual oppression. Well, that's a silly sentence: all feminists want that. What I should have written is that there are feminists who believe that the way to do this is by all women becoming the 'madonna' of the madonna/whore dichotomy. If only all women could be sexually pure (and presumably, passive and restrained too) then men would no longer be able to think of women as sexual objects, because there'd be no sex without 'emotional integration'. This sounds to me like an integral aspect of hell. Instead of all women miraculously achieving perfect status in a patriarchal, controlling system, which supports itself by linking being controlled to love and purity, we should abolish the system. Its purpose is to separate women, so it would always do so, no matter how 'well-behaved' women are. The distinctions would just become more petty and reputation-based, women more catty and unpleasant to one another, and much less pure and worthy as a consequence.
The solution is for women to stop getting self-affirmation from men, either indirectly via a patriarchal system that demands they renounce sexual agency (and a lot of other freedom), or else directly from the men they are close to. I find my goals and intrinsic desires are indeed those of the feminists, but not of many of the ones that I have met, who regard sexual agency in a woman as a betrayal of womankind, giving men the opportunity to objectify and degrade women.
Of course, at this point I'm not only opposing myself to 'patriarchal culture', but also to fundamental human nature. At the moment, I am under the impression that people are mostly insecure and require affirmation, whether or not they're oppressed by patriarchy. I don't know if this can be changed by a few shifts in culture, and I sadly doubt it.
I want a feminist who lives what she believes; who has no insecurities that she expects me to support, but merely has weaknesses that she's happy to have strengthened. I need someone who knows herself, and has no delusions, which lead to insecurity. I want a feminist who not only accepts the rational reasons why women should be equal (in status, privilege and opportunity, if not biologically) to men, but who lives such a life, treating me not as a refuge from the harsh realities of dealing with other self-interested and insecure people, but as a fellow being who can sympathise with nasty situations, but whose help is limited to the sensible, rather than the unwavering. I don't want ever to have to support someone who's utterly in the wrong (unless I'm being paid for it), and I certainly don't want someone who would find it a betrayal if I were to voice such a rational opinion.
How can I summarise this in a sentence? I want a woman who lives (or wants to live) in the rational world, and appreciates my help in affirming it to her, rather than one who lives in an emotional and irrational one, and wants help in denying reality.
Being rational is the core of who I am. I have emotions and desires, but at heart I love logic and reason, and I use my desires simply to define my long-term goals, not to control my thought or actions in attaining my goals, or defining my principles. To protect a woman from 'cold, cruel' rationality and deal with her on an emotional level is a betrayal of who I am, unless it's a rational way to achieve a particular goal. A woman who thinks that she's finally making emotional break-throughs with me is deceiving herself: if she is experiencing emotional communication it is because I have given up on being myself and have resorted to other methods in an attempt to resolve whatever the situation might be.
I once had a girlfriend who insisted on emotional responses, trying her best to incite anger, violence or tears, since love was too much effort. On one or two occasions I did cry in front of her. I have no doubt that she was pleased, but it was not the final penetration of my psychological defences that she experienced; it was the reluctant abandonment of rational (human) discourse (after hours of crying, wailing, shouting and general tantrums) in favour of an atavistic approach that I hoped would give me some of my day to use more productively. Yes, you can call it manipulative. I'd prefer to call it a desperate attempt to avoid using violence or being directly hurtful. I'm older now, and if I see any sign of that sort of behaviour, I'd be likely to kick the person out, with the help of the police if necessary, and never speak to her again, regardless of the hurt she might claim it'd cause her.
So basically, women seem to be suffocating, imposing, reticent and sexually enslaved, and I want the opposite. People are insecure, jealous and controlling, and I want the opposite.
free spirited, open-minded, not hidebound, impulsive but not emotional, enormous libido, find me attractive, not sexually repressed, very outgoing, sociable, east-going...
I find myself regretting having relationships with some people, because instead of knowing them better, I find that they start expecting me to change and then growing distant. So I want to find a girl who truly likes me, and accepts who I am, rather than what she hopes to turn me into; hence all the 'open-minded'-type descriptions.
I do not like dullness and routine. I would like someone who not only enjoys new things, but finds them, takes part in them, and will bring me along too. I do not want to be the shining star of interest in a woman's life. I want to be the(/a) reliable companion with whom she first thinks to share new interests.
I take an interest in intellectual subjects that come to my attention, and at times find myself taking to them well. I want a woman who can understand and enjoy interesting conversations and debates.
On the other hand, I want a woman who does not enjoy, start or passively hope for emotional arguments. Intellectual discussion only for me, not screaming tantrums. Drama she can either enjoy without me, or not at all.
I do not want a woman who is passive, reticent, or has any aspirations to purity. I despise the idea of having a piece of meat as a partner of any sort. If a woman can't interest me, wants to keep away from intimacy or links it to purity at all, or has no will of her own I'll class her as a soulless zombie, not a potential partner. The sexual revolution is supposed to have freed women from the pressure to be worthless, but they still aspire to be so, so either the sexual revolution failed, or it's just an intrinsic feature of the human condition. Given the number of worthless men, perhaps the latter.
I enjoy meeting people and making new friends, so a woman who is sociable, socially adept and keen on parties and socialising would be a joy to know.
However, many women I've met are emotional, and enjoy arguments only to the extent that they are emotional, rather than interesting.
Women love to impose as many expectations as they can imagine once they begin to suspect you might be approaching a relationship.
Women buy into, heart and soul, the idea that a pure and perfect woman is sexually restrained and lets her man lead. I don't want to lead (nor be led); I want someone my equal, who will argue her case. Yet I don't want someone who believes that she is more important than logic and sense. She must accept the primacy of logic (including when it comes to making decisions). If it makes sense to get dinner now and not later, I expect an acknowledgement that if we don't it's entirely a whim, rather than a fair trade for an occasion when I point out a sensible thing and we do do that thing. Whims are not equal to sense. I readily do the same thing. Being my equal means putting forward views and ideas, not getting your way exactly the same amount of the time. We then decide what we want to do having agreed what's most sensible, and only do something else having acknowledged that we're doing it on a whim. A person who values whichever action she thought of more than doing what's best is not my sort of person, male or female. I suffer from pride, like anyone else, and it's no fun to be wrong, but I don't try to pretend that being wrong doesn't matter because my hurt pride is more important. Magna est veritas ... I want friends who are the same. And I certainly don't want to spend time with someone who denies sense and reason just in order to get her way more often. That'll not only fail (I'm not one to be bullied into denying sense) but also destroy any respect I had for her intelligence.
I also don't want someone who cares for 'The Relationship' more than for me. The Relationship should not be considered. It is not a separate thing which both of us (or just me, it sometimes seems) need to support. Either a girl cares for me, or she doesn't. There is no relationship. I have yet to puzzle out why people do this. Is 'The Relationship' simply a form of emotional blackmail, so that a girl can say 'you don't care about Our Relationship' and mean 'you don't care about me' but without sounding so selfish? Is 'The Relationship' simply a problem of over-indulgence in romances and dramas, in which relationships are the centrepieces of the plots? Is it because of the slavering devotion to the ideal of everlasting love between just two people to the exclusion of all others, which is defined by way of a relationship? If it's this last option, it's just another black mark against the problems of expectations in relationships and the immaturity of jealous love. Why do I bring jealousy in to this? Because it is jealousy and insecurity that make people want devotion in return, rather than being happy to have found someone worthy of their own devotion.
Women also tend to want to spend time together, cuddling and alone, certainly once we've been in some sort of relationship for a while. They want to settle down and lose contact with new things and the outside world. One might call it a 'nesting instinct'. That's the exact opposite of me; I want someone to offer me something new, with whom to share my excitements and experiences, not someone to suffocate me and insulate me from anything interesting.
Women do tend to be sociable, but since it's only ever oddballs who end up with me, I haven't had many relationships with party animals who can introduce me to, or join me in getting to know, many new people. The gym often used to play a song which went
'my girl likes to party all the time, party all the time, party all the time...'
I liked the sentiment. If my girl wants to stay at home and entice me into wasting my life with her, rather than sharing a life with her, then I don't want her to be my girl.
Finally, I'm not a jealous person. If I come back to someone, it means she's the person I like best. If I never have the chance to leave, it means that she's simply controlling me, not that she actually is the best person for me. I think this way, and I hope for someone for whom jealousy is not the all-powerful god of relationships, but who likes me for who I am without expectation. I want a girl who also thinks like me in this respect and appreciates my ardent admiration without it being tied to any need for fidelity in either person. If the opportunity for fun arises, she should take it, and so will I, if we're not together at the time.
I have met a number of women who admitted that they wanted a man to take charge in the bedroom. Of the conversations I've had about men taking charge, this has been said many times, but I've never heard a woman say the opposite. On the other hand, most of these also wanted a man who gave them more freedom to dictate things outside of the bedroom. Yes, it's nice when you can have fun without doing anything, but expecting that dream to be a reality is crazy. If you want a dominating man, he might not only dominate when it comes to sharing pleasure, but also when it comes to making life decisions and choosing pleasures. And if he's accustomed to dominating and having you accept it, you might just find yourself in unpleasant relationships.
Of course, women not only dislike being controlled, but also having too much freedom. Apparently, someone trying to control you is the only reliable sign of desire, so having too much freedom means that he's emotionally distant and uninterested (he doesn't love the girl enough). That's really rather ridiculous. Those of us who are capable of unconditional love (, desire and appreciation) don't fall into the controlling/uninterested dichotomy and are pigeon-holed because people are too blinkered by stupid cultural indoctrination even to know mature emotion when they see it. I call unconditional love mature based not only on my bias and intuition, but also with the full support of generations of Christianity, which attributes unconditionality to God's love, as part of His love's perfection.
We'd all like to have someone want us hugely, do freely exactly what we'd like them to do most, sublimate themselves to our desires and wishes and agree to every demand. I call it slavery, however, and I like the idea in one way, but I also find the idea of a human doing so quite dehumanizing. I would struggle to think of someone who did that as a real person after a while, but I would be very happy with a robot capable of doing this. It's only women and Christians who throw in the additional stipulation that the person needs to do all this voluntarily so that it's an act of will, rather than being an enslaved automaton. Clearly God is indeed a woman.
As I have stated, I find imposed reticence unpleasant. The idea that a person should belittle oneself so much as to regard one's own existence as insignificant is a crime against humanity. That twisted sort of mindset is exactly what was expected from slaves, and is the sort of mindset that psychiatrists fight to cure as though it were an affliction (in slave-type contexts, such as with brutally treated and oppressed people).
I believe in human dignity, and I want nothing so demeaning of a partner as for her to deny her own free will and desires in favour of my own. I want something different from myself; something additional, and not something that strives to mimic.
I sympathize with Milton's devil when he says
'Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven'
There is nothing glorious or great in blind servitude. I appreciate love, but I see it as separate from the insecurity and lack of self-esteem that would make a person worship in the Christian manner, or love in the decidedly creepy way that many people think of.
If someone is to love me, I hope that she will do so whilst retaining her sense of identity. I want her to have a powerful enough character (soul, if you prefer the Christian terms still) to remain independent of me. I have no personal insecurities of the sort that would make me need complete affirmation from someone so emotionally close. I need no emotional support (although from time to time it's a pleasing balm for little and big annoyances). I want a person, not a crutch. I want a relationship that broadens my horizons, rather than one that simply reinforces the view I already have. My view of myself and the world is sound enough already.
I want someone similar. I want a woman who is willing to change, but does not find her psyche collapsing if she needs to change her outlook; a woman who is strong enough (proud enough, one might say, although I think pride and self-identity are not entirely the same) to care for her own world-view and engage it with mine, rather than forsake it for mine (through love, cultural pressure or any other force), and I want a woman who does not expect me to forsake myself for her.
It is here that my desires conflict so strongly with my culture. For millenia women have been told to submit to men, and for the whole Christian age ( up to and including today) the Christian ideal of love as submitting to authority has insidiously crept into our society, culture and minds. After those discussions (with women, that I mentioned earlier) about women wanting a man to lead, I'm not sure whether Christianity had adapted to women's desires, whether women have internalized the whole cultural precept of dominant men, or whether women naturally tend to dwell on love more, and have merely internalized the association of love with submission.
Whatever the reason, women actively train themselves not to be strong and confident, and condemn those who are 'masculine' (aggressive, proud and interesting). I don't call that masculine. I call it human, and its lack soulless.
There are feminists who want to free women from sexual oppression. Well, that's a silly sentence: all feminists want that. What I should have written is that there are feminists who believe that the way to do this is by all women becoming the 'madonna' of the madonna/whore dichotomy. If only all women could be sexually pure (and presumably, passive and restrained too) then men would no longer be able to think of women as sexual objects, because there'd be no sex without 'emotional integration'. This sounds to me like an integral aspect of hell. Instead of all women miraculously achieving perfect status in a patriarchal, controlling system, which supports itself by linking being controlled to love and purity, we should abolish the system. Its purpose is to separate women, so it would always do so, no matter how 'well-behaved' women are. The distinctions would just become more petty and reputation-based, women more catty and unpleasant to one another, and much less pure and worthy as a consequence.
The solution is for women to stop getting self-affirmation from men, either indirectly via a patriarchal system that demands they renounce sexual agency (and a lot of other freedom), or else directly from the men they are close to. I find my goals and intrinsic desires are indeed those of the feminists, but not of many of the ones that I have met, who regard sexual agency in a woman as a betrayal of womankind, giving men the opportunity to objectify and degrade women.
Of course, at this point I'm not only opposing myself to 'patriarchal culture', but also to fundamental human nature. At the moment, I am under the impression that people are mostly insecure and require affirmation, whether or not they're oppressed by patriarchy. I don't know if this can be changed by a few shifts in culture, and I sadly doubt it.
I want a feminist who lives what she believes; who has no insecurities that she expects me to support, but merely has weaknesses that she's happy to have strengthened. I need someone who knows herself, and has no delusions, which lead to insecurity. I want a feminist who not only accepts the rational reasons why women should be equal (in status, privilege and opportunity, if not biologically) to men, but who lives such a life, treating me not as a refuge from the harsh realities of dealing with other self-interested and insecure people, but as a fellow being who can sympathise with nasty situations, but whose help is limited to the sensible, rather than the unwavering. I don't want ever to have to support someone who's utterly in the wrong (unless I'm being paid for it), and I certainly don't want someone who would find it a betrayal if I were to voice such a rational opinion.
How can I summarise this in a sentence? I want a woman who lives (or wants to live) in the rational world, and appreciates my help in affirming it to her, rather than one who lives in an emotional and irrational one, and wants help in denying reality.
Being rational is the core of who I am. I have emotions and desires, but at heart I love logic and reason, and I use my desires simply to define my long-term goals, not to control my thought or actions in attaining my goals, or defining my principles. To protect a woman from 'cold, cruel' rationality and deal with her on an emotional level is a betrayal of who I am, unless it's a rational way to achieve a particular goal. A woman who thinks that she's finally making emotional break-throughs with me is deceiving herself: if she is experiencing emotional communication it is because I have given up on being myself and have resorted to other methods in an attempt to resolve whatever the situation might be.
I once had a girlfriend who insisted on emotional responses, trying her best to incite anger, violence or tears, since love was too much effort. On one or two occasions I did cry in front of her. I have no doubt that she was pleased, but it was not the final penetration of my psychological defences that she experienced; it was the reluctant abandonment of rational (human) discourse (after hours of crying, wailing, shouting and general tantrums) in favour of an atavistic approach that I hoped would give me some of my day to use more productively. Yes, you can call it manipulative. I'd prefer to call it a desperate attempt to avoid using violence or being directly hurtful. I'm older now, and if I see any sign of that sort of behaviour, I'd be likely to kick the person out, with the help of the police if necessary, and never speak to her again, regardless of the hurt she might claim it'd cause her.
So basically, women seem to be suffocating, imposing, reticent and sexually enslaved, and I want the opposite. People are insecure, jealous and controlling, and I want the opposite.
Tuesday, 14 September 2010
Films
My favourite films are not an artistic or revered selection, but I've never been enamoured of the critics' opinions.
1. Transformers: The Movie
It might just be a children's animation, but it gains from that: one's childhood tends to be a treasured time. Re-watching it doesn't reveal a pathetic and worthless storyline that could only appeal to a child, but a decent enough story, full of fantastic lines and climactic moments. Of course, a critic or English student would call this 'filled with cliche' and 'breaking the laws of physics'. I will admit that a transformer's strength varies somewhat depending on plot need, which is a bit galling for an adult, but can teach a lot about the way children's minds and games work.
On the other hand, the animation captures the emotions and power and movement, and the dialogue provides some hugely enjoyable moments that still stand as templates for similar moments in stories I've subsequently come across. I think that this isn't just coming first, but that Transformers really did portray moments and characters well.
I can see the counter-argument that standing as a template for a lot of cliches doesn't count as a great artistic achievement, and yet this ties into something I've thought for some time about cliches: that they're there for a reason, which is that they resonate with us, and they make for good stories. When I describe cliches like that, how can it be bad that something manages to do a number of them extremely well all in a row?
The death of Optimus Prime was one of the most shocking and sad moments of my leisure time, and the music's superb!
2. Gladiator
I like the story of revenge, I love the fight scenes (except the hard-to-follow one at the beginning) and I like the supporting gladiators. Commodus makes a truly evil villain, which, along with the well-judged spiritualism, makes Maximus' death almost bearable. I loved his companions and the comaraderie they had. It wasn't noisy or dramatic, but well done.
3-6. Lethal Weapon 1-4
These films are derided as being awful 80s trash, full of testosterone and little else. Well, given the option between something happening in a film and nothing happening, I'd go for something. Similarly, if the alternatives are critically acclaimed dramas full of oestrogen and little else, why would I choose the critics' films, just because they might require a little more detailed acting skill and a lot less stunt skill?
As for the acting, dialogue and plot, I find the portrayal of life in these films far more realistic than any of the popular dramas. Yes, Lethal Weapon flits over great life moments that other films would have dedicated themselves to. Yes, we don't arduously explore every nuance of emotion and every angle of view about each event until we're sick and tired of it, the people and emotion in general. In real life, special events come and go quickly: there's no time to dwell on them because in real life more stuff happens all the time.
The Lethal Weapon films portray perfectly a growing friendship between two men and their different backgrounds and lives. They portray the trust, the little disagreements, which gradually become a source of friendship rather than a source of mistrust. This way in which people who are very different come to trust and love each other, and that their differences give life to each other, is a beautiful message. Riggs needs a family and a real home; Murtaugh needs some fun and adventure.
So the tragedy that life flies by, and suddenly you're old and failing, with just your friends for sympathy, is very sharp in these films, and far better portrayed than the sledgehammer blows of an acclaimed drama.
1. Transformers: The Movie
It might just be a children's animation, but it gains from that: one's childhood tends to be a treasured time. Re-watching it doesn't reveal a pathetic and worthless storyline that could only appeal to a child, but a decent enough story, full of fantastic lines and climactic moments. Of course, a critic or English student would call this 'filled with cliche' and 'breaking the laws of physics'. I will admit that a transformer's strength varies somewhat depending on plot need, which is a bit galling for an adult, but can teach a lot about the way children's minds and games work.
On the other hand, the animation captures the emotions and power and movement, and the dialogue provides some hugely enjoyable moments that still stand as templates for similar moments in stories I've subsequently come across. I think that this isn't just coming first, but that Transformers really did portray moments and characters well.
I can see the counter-argument that standing as a template for a lot of cliches doesn't count as a great artistic achievement, and yet this ties into something I've thought for some time about cliches: that they're there for a reason, which is that they resonate with us, and they make for good stories. When I describe cliches like that, how can it be bad that something manages to do a number of them extremely well all in a row?
The death of Optimus Prime was one of the most shocking and sad moments of my leisure time, and the music's superb!
2. Gladiator
I like the story of revenge, I love the fight scenes (except the hard-to-follow one at the beginning) and I like the supporting gladiators. Commodus makes a truly evil villain, which, along with the well-judged spiritualism, makes Maximus' death almost bearable. I loved his companions and the comaraderie they had. It wasn't noisy or dramatic, but well done.
3-6. Lethal Weapon 1-4
These films are derided as being awful 80s trash, full of testosterone and little else. Well, given the option between something happening in a film and nothing happening, I'd go for something. Similarly, if the alternatives are critically acclaimed dramas full of oestrogen and little else, why would I choose the critics' films, just because they might require a little more detailed acting skill and a lot less stunt skill?
As for the acting, dialogue and plot, I find the portrayal of life in these films far more realistic than any of the popular dramas. Yes, Lethal Weapon flits over great life moments that other films would have dedicated themselves to. Yes, we don't arduously explore every nuance of emotion and every angle of view about each event until we're sick and tired of it, the people and emotion in general. In real life, special events come and go quickly: there's no time to dwell on them because in real life more stuff happens all the time.
The Lethal Weapon films portray perfectly a growing friendship between two men and their different backgrounds and lives. They portray the trust, the little disagreements, which gradually become a source of friendship rather than a source of mistrust. This way in which people who are very different come to trust and love each other, and that their differences give life to each other, is a beautiful message. Riggs needs a family and a real home; Murtaugh needs some fun and adventure.
So the tragedy that life flies by, and suddenly you're old and failing, with just your friends for sympathy, is very sharp in these films, and far better portrayed than the sledgehammer blows of an acclaimed drama.
Wednesday, 8 September 2010
Equality
I have begun to read the book 'The Spirit Level' by Wilkinson and Pickett. It is an interesting book which strikes a chord with me. I don't intend to review it, nor summarise it fully, but this post (and any subsequent ones) is intended to be a summary of what I read and my thoughts on it, for me to return to later.
They start off with some simple graphs showing that measures of quality of life, such as the UNICEF child wellbeing index, life expectancy and a range of health and social problems all correlate to greater or lesser degrees with inequality in rich countries, but not with GNP or per capita measurements of wealth.
This is not to say that inequality is important across the world, because poorer countries do show a very strong relationship between these things and wealth. It is simply that this relationship is not a straight line, but reaches a plateau which the richer countries have already hit.
I have raised this in discussion and not been believed, despite the relative fame of the book, and the same person also wondered if this plateau were gradually moving, so that countries need growth in order to remain at the top. This could only be due to technological progress, rather than directly from growth, since growth would merely move a country along the plateau. If technological progress is important, but not other forms of growth, then a measure such as GDP which incorporates both, but mostly other growth, is not an appropriate goal for countries to chase.
His point probably comes from data on happiness, which follows a similar pattern, in that increases in happiness get smaller and smaller as income rises, until it too becomes a plateau. There is some evidence that the income at which people hit this plateau rises over time. I wonder if this might be explained by GDP growth, societal inequality and the need to keep up. It might also, as part of 'keeping up', be a feature of human nature always to want improvement (well, it certainly is; this feature might be influencing the income threshold for happiness). If humans are as happy as they could be on 25,000 dollars a year, but humans also have an intrinsic desire for improvement, then 5 years later the same person who was happy might be discontent if he's still earning that amount and able to buy the same things.
The authors then have a number of chapters examining the health and social problems that they chose earlier, but individually. Aggregating them together tends to emphasise what they have in common, so splitting them up might reveal points where inequality is more or less important.
They start with trust; trust directly follows income inequality, both across nations and US states currently, but also as we look back in time. Statistical analysis can look for the probable direction of the relationship and show that it is most probably one way, such that inequality reduces trust. Trust is easy to measure, but does it matter?
Well, trust has been linked to health and lifespan. This is probably not via the common factor of inequality because it applies within small communities; those who are not trusting but are rich enough to live in wealthy, trusting neighbourhoods still show this effect, even though the relationship between inequality and lifespan has not been reproduced at such an individual level. Trust matters in dangerous situations; white families in New Orleans after the hurricane were allowed to pass; black families were shot. If you're scared of theft you'll keep your windows closed even in a heatwave, or if you run a Norwegian cafe, you'll stop leaving blankets outside for customers to use. The authors mention gas guzzlers and Chelsea tractors, but only in the context of the names: Defender, Shogun, Raider, Commander, which show a preoccupation with looking tough, even at much greater cost both initially and in refuelling. I feel compelled to add my own thoughts about these giant cars, which are that Chelsea mothers buy the abominations because they're safer.
That is safer for the occupant, but much less safe for everyone else. In traffic collisions the heavier vehicle wins, and these vehicles are bigger than an average car. Cars are much safer nowadays, but if you want to be even better off, you'll buy a slightly bigger car than everyone else, increasing your safety at the great expense of everyone else. The reasoning is, of course, that your baby takes priority over worthless things like other people's babies.
This is why we end up with solid cars, and why it's currently safer to drive than to walk or cycle in the UK (although that figure includes very safe places like motorways, where we don't find pedestrians or cyclists, so it's not comparing like with like. The figures showing that motorways are much safer than anywhere else also support my opposition of speed limits on them).
What else can we examine? Well, women have better lives and are less discriminated against in more equal societies. On this subject, men and women have lower death rates when women have equal status, and women's status has its negative effects on women even if they're rich and therefore high status for other reasons. These findings imply the general principle that rich people (men, in the studies on women's status) have death rates that are affected by status inequalities, even though they might be perceived to benefit from status inequalities, since they're at the top.
They then conclude by suggesting that inequality increases the social distance between people, making them see 'them' as 'them', rather than more of 'us'.
They start off with some simple graphs showing that measures of quality of life, such as the UNICEF child wellbeing index, life expectancy and a range of health and social problems all correlate to greater or lesser degrees with inequality in rich countries, but not with GNP or per capita measurements of wealth.
This is not to say that inequality is important across the world, because poorer countries do show a very strong relationship between these things and wealth. It is simply that this relationship is not a straight line, but reaches a plateau which the richer countries have already hit.
I have raised this in discussion and not been believed, despite the relative fame of the book, and the same person also wondered if this plateau were gradually moving, so that countries need growth in order to remain at the top. This could only be due to technological progress, rather than directly from growth, since growth would merely move a country along the plateau. If technological progress is important, but not other forms of growth, then a measure such as GDP which incorporates both, but mostly other growth, is not an appropriate goal for countries to chase.
His point probably comes from data on happiness, which follows a similar pattern, in that increases in happiness get smaller and smaller as income rises, until it too becomes a plateau. There is some evidence that the income at which people hit this plateau rises over time. I wonder if this might be explained by GDP growth, societal inequality and the need to keep up. It might also, as part of 'keeping up', be a feature of human nature always to want improvement (well, it certainly is; this feature might be influencing the income threshold for happiness). If humans are as happy as they could be on 25,000 dollars a year, but humans also have an intrinsic desire for improvement, then 5 years later the same person who was happy might be discontent if he's still earning that amount and able to buy the same things.
The authors then have a number of chapters examining the health and social problems that they chose earlier, but individually. Aggregating them together tends to emphasise what they have in common, so splitting them up might reveal points where inequality is more or less important.
They start with trust; trust directly follows income inequality, both across nations and US states currently, but also as we look back in time. Statistical analysis can look for the probable direction of the relationship and show that it is most probably one way, such that inequality reduces trust. Trust is easy to measure, but does it matter?
Well, trust has been linked to health and lifespan. This is probably not via the common factor of inequality because it applies within small communities; those who are not trusting but are rich enough to live in wealthy, trusting neighbourhoods still show this effect, even though the relationship between inequality and lifespan has not been reproduced at such an individual level. Trust matters in dangerous situations; white families in New Orleans after the hurricane were allowed to pass; black families were shot. If you're scared of theft you'll keep your windows closed even in a heatwave, or if you run a Norwegian cafe, you'll stop leaving blankets outside for customers to use. The authors mention gas guzzlers and Chelsea tractors, but only in the context of the names: Defender, Shogun, Raider, Commander, which show a preoccupation with looking tough, even at much greater cost both initially and in refuelling. I feel compelled to add my own thoughts about these giant cars, which are that Chelsea mothers buy the abominations because they're safer.
That is safer for the occupant, but much less safe for everyone else. In traffic collisions the heavier vehicle wins, and these vehicles are bigger than an average car. Cars are much safer nowadays, but if you want to be even better off, you'll buy a slightly bigger car than everyone else, increasing your safety at the great expense of everyone else. The reasoning is, of course, that your baby takes priority over worthless things like other people's babies.
This is why we end up with solid cars, and why it's currently safer to drive than to walk or cycle in the UK (although that figure includes very safe places like motorways, where we don't find pedestrians or cyclists, so it's not comparing like with like. The figures showing that motorways are much safer than anywhere else also support my opposition of speed limits on them).
What else can we examine? Well, women have better lives and are less discriminated against in more equal societies. On this subject, men and women have lower death rates when women have equal status, and women's status has its negative effects on women even if they're rich and therefore high status for other reasons. These findings imply the general principle that rich people (men, in the studies on women's status) have death rates that are affected by status inequalities, even though they might be perceived to benefit from status inequalities, since they're at the top.
They then conclude by suggesting that inequality increases the social distance between people, making them see 'them' as 'them', rather than more of 'us'.
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