Microagressions.tumblr.com
This sounded like a wonderful idea to me, since I am very familiar with the idea of microaggression, if not this terminology.
However, I read the first 20 or so posts on this blog, and found them all awful examples that can only alienate people by making them think that the posters and similar people are all just whingers. I do not think that others' feelings are automatically my fault. If, to take one post as an example, I mention that I had expected someone from a very different cultural background to have a different selection of music, I'm not being racist, but culturally aware. The inverse is people who are shocked to discover that others might like different music. If this person from a different background is annoyed that I had expectations that culture affects musical knowledge, then it's entirely that person's fault.
Microaggression is an important concept in other areas, however. When describing tension in relationships, or mental illness, people often fail to understand the sufferer because each individual instance of a problem seems normal. The overall problem is that there are far too many of these, and a blog that catalogues a lot of individual such moments would certainly help people understand what it is to be a beaten housewife, or live with a person who is ill.
I know very well a number of people in such situations, and have experienced them myself, and describing that sort of life to people is impossible without mentioning this, because they dismiss events that are normal for sufferers because these events are rare but known for them.
Similarly, a blog of microaggressions about all sorts of thoughtlessness and stupidity has been something I've thought of for a while, but obviously not about me being a minority. Instead I had thought of listing all those little moments in which yet another idiot steps into the street in front of me without looking, or when people walking side-by-side don't make way for me going in the other direction until I've stopped and they're about to walk into me and so on.
All those moments when someone jumps a queue because their lives are more important than mine, step in front of me because a little thought is worth more than the time and effort I've lost from braking or stopping running and so on... they add up to a lot of lost time and effort for me, but complaining about one instance does seem trivial.
On the other hand, when on a run I've stopped and started ten times because of thoughtless walkers and been behind smokers twice, choking on their fumes, and it happens at that sort of frequency on every run, then suggesting that they think (about moving earlier, without actually spending any more time on it,) seems like an easy solution to a real problem.
Sunday, 23 January 2011
argument, AV
From elsewhere, to serve as inspiration for more complete considerations of the two topics:
Never end with your conclusion! This has caught me out many times before: I build up to it as if making an argument, when what people need is an arbitrary opinion first that you might or might not justify afterwards. What comes first sticks in the mind, so if you start with basic points, consider alternatives, dismiss them and finally lead into the undeniable conclusion you'll have lost people at every turn, and you'll be left with people who don't understand and call you illogical or confused.
If you proceed illogically, with conclusion first and then a few of the more solid justifications, ignoring possible holes or complaints, then you're called a precise and admirable thinker.
Anyway, about AV, anything is preferable to FPTP. Every complaint about the representation of AV can be levelled in some form at FPTP.
For example, the idea that back-room deals between parties after elections are somehow less representative than back-room deals within parties before elections is ridiculous. In FPTP we are limited to two or three major parties, providing us with little real choice. Any AV, AV+ or PR system is likely to give us more choice in party, and therefore each party will better represent its voters. That we'll still have to have compromise in order to have one government doesn't change; what changes is that the compromises will take place on the basis of how many people vote for it, rather than within parties on the basis of what they can get away with.
Never end with your conclusion! This has caught me out many times before: I build up to it as if making an argument, when what people need is an arbitrary opinion first that you might or might not justify afterwards. What comes first sticks in the mind, so if you start with basic points, consider alternatives, dismiss them and finally lead into the undeniable conclusion you'll have lost people at every turn, and you'll be left with people who don't understand and call you illogical or confused.
If you proceed illogically, with conclusion first and then a few of the more solid justifications, ignoring possible holes or complaints, then you're called a precise and admirable thinker.
Anyway, about AV, anything is preferable to FPTP. Every complaint about the representation of AV can be levelled in some form at FPTP.
For example, the idea that back-room deals between parties after elections are somehow less representative than back-room deals within parties before elections is ridiculous. In FPTP we are limited to two or three major parties, providing us with little real choice. Any AV, AV+ or PR system is likely to give us more choice in party, and therefore each party will better represent its voters. That we'll still have to have compromise in order to have one government doesn't change; what changes is that the compromises will take place on the basis of how many people vote for it, rather than within parties on the basis of what they can get away with.
Saturday, 8 January 2011
Class and classiness
My second subject for today is about class. Britain is renowned as a class-ridden society, in which no social interaction is without class signals. Kate Fox, in her book 'Watching the English', dissects various aspects of this (amongst the English specifically). The book is not universally liked, but I found it amusing and informative. One recurring feature was the similarity between the working and upper classes, with the middle classes splitting them.
The USA, despite claims to the contrary, seems to me to be more class-ridden than England. Class might not be based on birth or speech, but it has far more influence over people's lives. The most well-known is their attempts to 'keep up with the Joneses' through conspicuous consumption, which is also an unendearing feature of the English middle classes. Conspicuous consumption is very blatantly not about quality, despite the initial descriptions one might encounter. Expensive wine, when blind-tasted, tastes worse to most people than cheap wine. The whole of fashion is the same. It is a way to show off. It is how people show power and superiority, in just the same way as peacocks strut their pretty but pointless tails to peahens.
I had a good friend at university who was visiting for a year abroad. We got along very well; she proved herself to be a rational and sensible person who dealt with my foibles sanely and pleasantly. My reserve wasn't a friendship-breaker: it was an endearing aspect of my culture. This attitude is sadly absent amongst people who actually live in my culture. Perhaps one grows sick of reserve if one deals with it all the time.
She moved to the US and found a good job with a big banking firm, as one would expect for a motivated and intelligent economics major. Like a candle in the wind, her attitudes changed. Being around bankers, what mattered was expense. I should wear expensive clothes, and they should be just what other people wore: tight, v-necked T-shirts and leather loafers. Not one thing could be skipped. In one way, I respect the chameleon-like ability to blend in culturally. On the other hand, it didn't seem conscious: when I objected, I was not met with 'well, it's just the way we do things here', but 'don't be so obnoxious'. Who knows whether she'd just been putting up with England, and had hoped I was the same, or whether her attitudes really did change that much?
It did give me cause to contrast English and American class prejudices. The problem with me being me was that I wasn't 'classy'. My clothes appeared dull, boring and staid, and therefore low class. By not showing off, I was admitting inferiority, and no amount of questioning the implicit assumption that showing-off was necessary not to be inferior could change that belief. English class, on the other hand, operates by speech and taste. One distinguishes oneself as gauche and unclassy by showing-off. It is not genteel; it is protesting too much. It is for the nouveau-riche. Class is in speaking well, in manners and in choosing appropriate items despite cost. It is almost independent of wealth, and given the upper classes' predilection for keeping old items as hand-me-downs, rather than acquiring modern, new replacements, it is possible to live more cheaply in the upper class than in the middle classes.
It seems to me that although neither upper-class has a particularly pleasant outlook on life, the English upper and working classes (in one incarnation) are closer to enlightenment and classlessness than any of the Americans. Inferiority is not dependent on income or spending. The notion of intrinsic inferiority is inherently [incompatible with enlightened intellects...] objectionable. But here in England it is very easy to make the leap from the upper-class disdain for spending and focus on personal traits to a reliance on personality for judging a person's worth, which is how I think it should be done.
I do not think that all people have the same worth. I do think that characteristics such as trustworthiness, kindness and thoughtfulness make a person much more worthy than the opposites. This is a very far cry from American attitudes that suggest that showing off one's body and income implies superiority. It is galling not to be allowed to question this assumption, and I'm glad I live in a country where at least some of the population have the class and wisdom to allow me to do so. Of course, the working class now has disposable income, and even people on benefits compete in these grotesque displays of worth. Similarly, the old class beliefs are dying as the nouveau-riche are no longer nouveau, and so the middle class and American notions of class are spreading in both directions.
It is only amongst the poorest of the poor, such as immigrant workers, and some of the rich, including, I suppose, the academic world, that one can find the classic traits of openness, acceptance of difference and engagement with those differences that make a person truly superior.
That's a nice place to end, but as always I have more to add after my finely-crafted finish. These traits that I appreciate are important for many reasons: they include the questioning of assumptions and therefore the self-controlled imposition of free will over external influences, the deep engagement that constitutes real friendship and relationships that so many people seem to desire, and the judgement of individuals that as well as precluding class markers also eliminates racism and discrimination.
Finally, I have found that many of the nicest people I have met, who display these traits in abundance, were bullied misfits of some sort at school. There is nothing like that sort of upbringing to ingrain the ability to question cultural values, think for oneself, avoid discrimination and accept (other) misfits.
The USA, despite claims to the contrary, seems to me to be more class-ridden than England. Class might not be based on birth or speech, but it has far more influence over people's lives. The most well-known is their attempts to 'keep up with the Joneses' through conspicuous consumption, which is also an unendearing feature of the English middle classes. Conspicuous consumption is very blatantly not about quality, despite the initial descriptions one might encounter. Expensive wine, when blind-tasted, tastes worse to most people than cheap wine. The whole of fashion is the same. It is a way to show off. It is how people show power and superiority, in just the same way as peacocks strut their pretty but pointless tails to peahens.
I had a good friend at university who was visiting for a year abroad. We got along very well; she proved herself to be a rational and sensible person who dealt with my foibles sanely and pleasantly. My reserve wasn't a friendship-breaker: it was an endearing aspect of my culture. This attitude is sadly absent amongst people who actually live in my culture. Perhaps one grows sick of reserve if one deals with it all the time.
She moved to the US and found a good job with a big banking firm, as one would expect for a motivated and intelligent economics major. Like a candle in the wind, her attitudes changed. Being around bankers, what mattered was expense. I should wear expensive clothes, and they should be just what other people wore: tight, v-necked T-shirts and leather loafers. Not one thing could be skipped. In one way, I respect the chameleon-like ability to blend in culturally. On the other hand, it didn't seem conscious: when I objected, I was not met with 'well, it's just the way we do things here', but 'don't be so obnoxious'. Who knows whether she'd just been putting up with England, and had hoped I was the same, or whether her attitudes really did change that much?
It did give me cause to contrast English and American class prejudices. The problem with me being me was that I wasn't 'classy'. My clothes appeared dull, boring and staid, and therefore low class. By not showing off, I was admitting inferiority, and no amount of questioning the implicit assumption that showing-off was necessary not to be inferior could change that belief. English class, on the other hand, operates by speech and taste. One distinguishes oneself as gauche and unclassy by showing-off. It is not genteel; it is protesting too much. It is for the nouveau-riche. Class is in speaking well, in manners and in choosing appropriate items despite cost. It is almost independent of wealth, and given the upper classes' predilection for keeping old items as hand-me-downs, rather than acquiring modern, new replacements, it is possible to live more cheaply in the upper class than in the middle classes.
It seems to me that although neither upper-class has a particularly pleasant outlook on life, the English upper and working classes (in one incarnation) are closer to enlightenment and classlessness than any of the Americans. Inferiority is not dependent on income or spending. The notion of intrinsic inferiority is inherently [incompatible with enlightened intellects...] objectionable. But here in England it is very easy to make the leap from the upper-class disdain for spending and focus on personal traits to a reliance on personality for judging a person's worth, which is how I think it should be done.
I do not think that all people have the same worth. I do think that characteristics such as trustworthiness, kindness and thoughtfulness make a person much more worthy than the opposites. This is a very far cry from American attitudes that suggest that showing off one's body and income implies superiority. It is galling not to be allowed to question this assumption, and I'm glad I live in a country where at least some of the population have the class and wisdom to allow me to do so. Of course, the working class now has disposable income, and even people on benefits compete in these grotesque displays of worth. Similarly, the old class beliefs are dying as the nouveau-riche are no longer nouveau, and so the middle class and American notions of class are spreading in both directions.
It is only amongst the poorest of the poor, such as immigrant workers, and some of the rich, including, I suppose, the academic world, that one can find the classic traits of openness, acceptance of difference and engagement with those differences that make a person truly superior.
That's a nice place to end, but as always I have more to add after my finely-crafted finish. These traits that I appreciate are important for many reasons: they include the questioning of assumptions and therefore the self-controlled imposition of free will over external influences, the deep engagement that constitutes real friendship and relationships that so many people seem to desire, and the judgement of individuals that as well as precluding class markers also eliminates racism and discrimination.
Finally, I have found that many of the nicest people I have met, who display these traits in abundance, were bullied misfits of some sort at school. There is nothing like that sort of upbringing to ingrain the ability to question cultural values, think for oneself, avoid discrimination and accept (other) misfits.
Human resilience
I have two things to write about today: firstly human resilience and apathy, and secondly about class, conspicuous consumption and my personal experiences.
Human resilience is noted in the news every day, since it makes wonderful 'human interest' stories, and is a very common topic for fiction (and, of course, biography, of which there is far too much nowadays). It is the capacity of humanity to deal with adverse events. Usually the news and fiction describe events that would be unusual or extraordinary here, and invite us to respect and admire, and depending on the person, support the humans who are demonstrating such spirit. You can think of your own favourite example. Do it now.
Resilience also has a more narrow psychological definition (
http://www.nh.gov/safety/divisions/hsem/behavhealth/documents/loss_trauma.pdf), which is the ability to deal with adverse life incidents without psychological trauma. This is in contrast with recovery, which involves short-lived trauma but a return to normal. As the references artical makes clear, psychology has rather ignored the subject of resilience, regarding it as pathological. Normal people do experience terrible grief and are unable to function at first, but normally recover. Psychology can help accelerate recovery, and cause recovery in those unfortunate individuals who experience chronic symptoms (post-traumatic stress disorder). This chimes with popular culture, which suggests that normal, healthy and balanced people feel everything, preferably deeply, but 'recover'.
The article takes issue with psychological opinion because psychology has ignored resilience, and treated resilient and recover-ed/ing individuals as the same. Apparently resilience is often far more common than recovery. Resilience appears to be normal, especially for life-threatening and dangerous events such as assault and robbery. People achieve resilience in different ways, which in other situations could be maladaptive.
I started thinking about this subject earlier today because it occurred to me that resilience and apathy are two sides of the same coin. What we laud as resilience in bad situations is exactly the same thing that we decry as apathy in others. I have for some time now mentioned to people when the subject arose that I have found that people with bad childhoods tend to fall apart when they escape from those situations. I have known a number of people, with whom I have had personal and in-depth conversations, who had very unpleasant childhood experiences. I have known many people count me as such a person... Such children display hard-working and high-achieving personalities: we were successful at school and maybe at university. But as such people reach a stage at which one would expect them to bloom, nothing much happens. It is my belief that it is the resilience that allowed them to cope that also causes them to fade when the problems are gone. Even the dull life of mediocre achievement seems good enough compared to their past experiences. This is almost certainly not conscious: it must be in the stress responses, or lack of them, that make motivation hard when life seems relaxing.
I think that it is vital to realise that it is the same character trait that is simply useful in one situation and maladaptive in another. I will quote the article itself for support:
'...whereas those who cope well with bereavement are sometimes viewed as cold and unfeeling, those who cope well with life-threatening events are often viewed in terms of extreme heroism.'
All I set out to do here was contrast our opinions of heroes and villains, as has also been done in fiction in the past. Heroes rise above trauma to defeat villains, who are cold and unfeeling and cause trauma. But both have a heroic nature: they are resilient. Both also are socially maladapted: they are emotionally distant. The article explains other mechanisms for resilience other than distance, including arrogance. That seems even less appealing.
Similarly, we admire the starving orphans in India who scour rubbish tips for a fe rupees worth of goods. They have resilience. And yet we despise our own citizens who take no interest in political issues and not only ignore the plight of those starving children, but ignore even political opportunities in this country. I want to suggest that those two things are the same: it is all resilience. I am a resilient, hardy character. Personal things don't change me. I once knew a singularly unpleasant person, and had a discussion about whether I could best be compared to a giant oil tanker, splitting the waves of positive and negative experience, or a little coracle, remaining afloat even as I rode them. I stick with the tanker metaphor, although she did her best to sink me, just to experience the thrill of power over my emotions. Making me feel bad was apparently better than not affecting my feelings at all. I wonder if I'll ever understand love...
Opposites attract, so I suppose if I end up with one person, it'll be someone who really does experience every little thing as great and important. That way the two of us will have a balanced view of life.
Enough of me, though.
Yesterday I caught the end of the film 'The Truman Show' on television. The whole world watched a dramatic ending on television, and the final scene showed one man asking another "see what else in on". Humans can have incredibly moving experiences and recover. It could be a terrible tragedy, such as the death of one's family and the loss of one's legs, which a few years on has someone saying "I'm just as happy as I was before", as has been shown (I think I've linked to it before: a study asked lottery winners and new paraplegics to rate their happiness some time after the event, and paraplegics were very marginally happier, although the two groups were almost identical). But that exact ability to cope with disaster is the same ability to cope with triumph: we treat those two things just the same.
Humans can have incredibly moving experiences, that we might hope would reform their natures and make them better people, and they remain the selfish and thoughtless creatures they have always been.
Faced with this incredible inertia of human character, it's no wonder that rulers, teachers and philosophers the world over have given up on improving the human condition; hermits left humanity behind, their misanthropy only the result of long experience of sharing wisdom and finding it squandered. A villain is merely a hero who has known humanity for too long. If people are selfish and stubborn, and generally cope with any situation, why not oppress them instead of helping them, if one has the power?
It is not enough for us to be resilient. What separates a hero and a villain is not their character, but their situation. A heroic nature that is rich and powerful will be a villain, without the principles and conscious effort to restrain himself. If I ever earn much money, it only then that I should be judged. I deserve no respect for enduring an unpleasant childhood quite yet. We need to respect Stoic principles of thought and conscious self-control and improvement, rather than subconscious resilience. Every human is resistant to change, and has a natural tendency to revert to human nature, for both good and ill. This resilience is only respectable when it is harnessed and controlled: when a person has the insight to improve himself when change is good, control himself when selfishness is tempting, direct himself when thoughtlessness is normal and resist change only when it is harmful. It is self-control and self-direction that needs our praise, and not every instance of resilience fits that description.
It is the triumph of free will over instinct; of thought over human nature, that we should pursue and acclaim.
Human resilience is noted in the news every day, since it makes wonderful 'human interest' stories, and is a very common topic for fiction (and, of course, biography, of which there is far too much nowadays). It is the capacity of humanity to deal with adverse events. Usually the news and fiction describe events that would be unusual or extraordinary here, and invite us to respect and admire, and depending on the person, support the humans who are demonstrating such spirit. You can think of your own favourite example. Do it now.
Resilience also has a more narrow psychological definition (
http://www.nh.gov/safety/divisions/hsem/behavhealth/documents/loss_trauma.pdf), which is the ability to deal with adverse life incidents without psychological trauma. This is in contrast with recovery, which involves short-lived trauma but a return to normal. As the references artical makes clear, psychology has rather ignored the subject of resilience, regarding it as pathological. Normal people do experience terrible grief and are unable to function at first, but normally recover. Psychology can help accelerate recovery, and cause recovery in those unfortunate individuals who experience chronic symptoms (post-traumatic stress disorder). This chimes with popular culture, which suggests that normal, healthy and balanced people feel everything, preferably deeply, but 'recover'.
The article takes issue with psychological opinion because psychology has ignored resilience, and treated resilient and recover-ed/ing individuals as the same. Apparently resilience is often far more common than recovery. Resilience appears to be normal, especially for life-threatening and dangerous events such as assault and robbery. People achieve resilience in different ways, which in other situations could be maladaptive.
I started thinking about this subject earlier today because it occurred to me that resilience and apathy are two sides of the same coin. What we laud as resilience in bad situations is exactly the same thing that we decry as apathy in others. I have for some time now mentioned to people when the subject arose that I have found that people with bad childhoods tend to fall apart when they escape from those situations. I have known a number of people, with whom I have had personal and in-depth conversations, who had very unpleasant childhood experiences. I have known many people count me as such a person... Such children display hard-working and high-achieving personalities: we were successful at school and maybe at university. But as such people reach a stage at which one would expect them to bloom, nothing much happens. It is my belief that it is the resilience that allowed them to cope that also causes them to fade when the problems are gone. Even the dull life of mediocre achievement seems good enough compared to their past experiences. This is almost certainly not conscious: it must be in the stress responses, or lack of them, that make motivation hard when life seems relaxing.
I think that it is vital to realise that it is the same character trait that is simply useful in one situation and maladaptive in another. I will quote the article itself for support:
'...whereas those who cope well with bereavement are sometimes viewed as cold and unfeeling, those who cope well with life-threatening events are often viewed in terms of extreme heroism.'
All I set out to do here was contrast our opinions of heroes and villains, as has also been done in fiction in the past. Heroes rise above trauma to defeat villains, who are cold and unfeeling and cause trauma. But both have a heroic nature: they are resilient. Both also are socially maladapted: they are emotionally distant. The article explains other mechanisms for resilience other than distance, including arrogance. That seems even less appealing.
Similarly, we admire the starving orphans in India who scour rubbish tips for a fe rupees worth of goods. They have resilience. And yet we despise our own citizens who take no interest in political issues and not only ignore the plight of those starving children, but ignore even political opportunities in this country. I want to suggest that those two things are the same: it is all resilience. I am a resilient, hardy character. Personal things don't change me. I once knew a singularly unpleasant person, and had a discussion about whether I could best be compared to a giant oil tanker, splitting the waves of positive and negative experience, or a little coracle, remaining afloat even as I rode them. I stick with the tanker metaphor, although she did her best to sink me, just to experience the thrill of power over my emotions. Making me feel bad was apparently better than not affecting my feelings at all. I wonder if I'll ever understand love...
Opposites attract, so I suppose if I end up with one person, it'll be someone who really does experience every little thing as great and important. That way the two of us will have a balanced view of life.
Enough of me, though.
Yesterday I caught the end of the film 'The Truman Show' on television. The whole world watched a dramatic ending on television, and the final scene showed one man asking another "see what else in on". Humans can have incredibly moving experiences and recover. It could be a terrible tragedy, such as the death of one's family and the loss of one's legs, which a few years on has someone saying "I'm just as happy as I was before", as has been shown (I think I've linked to it before: a study asked lottery winners and new paraplegics to rate their happiness some time after the event, and paraplegics were very marginally happier, although the two groups were almost identical). But that exact ability to cope with disaster is the same ability to cope with triumph: we treat those two things just the same.
Humans can have incredibly moving experiences, that we might hope would reform their natures and make them better people, and they remain the selfish and thoughtless creatures they have always been.
Faced with this incredible inertia of human character, it's no wonder that rulers, teachers and philosophers the world over have given up on improving the human condition; hermits left humanity behind, their misanthropy only the result of long experience of sharing wisdom and finding it squandered. A villain is merely a hero who has known humanity for too long. If people are selfish and stubborn, and generally cope with any situation, why not oppress them instead of helping them, if one has the power?
It is not enough for us to be resilient. What separates a hero and a villain is not their character, but their situation. A heroic nature that is rich and powerful will be a villain, without the principles and conscious effort to restrain himself. If I ever earn much money, it only then that I should be judged. I deserve no respect for enduring an unpleasant childhood quite yet. We need to respect Stoic principles of thought and conscious self-control and improvement, rather than subconscious resilience. Every human is resistant to change, and has a natural tendency to revert to human nature, for both good and ill. This resilience is only respectable when it is harnessed and controlled: when a person has the insight to improve himself when change is good, control himself when selfishness is tempting, direct himself when thoughtlessness is normal and resist change only when it is harmful. It is self-control and self-direction that needs our praise, and not every instance of resilience fits that description.
It is the triumph of free will over instinct; of thought over human nature, that we should pursue and acclaim.
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