Frustrations

I knew it was very early when I drifted awake this morning, so I was happily dozing waiting for sleep to return. Bzzz Bzzz… the neighbours’ alarm rang clear and loud in my bedroom. 6.15am, and I am paying through the nose for a flat in central London to avoid sleepless nights and early mornings. An alarm that loud would wake the owner up, you’d think, but no. This isn’t a medical emergency, as I might naively have supposed 5 or 10 years ago if it had happened to me. This is someone who deserves to be one. After 15 minutes I hear a tired stomp of someone going to the loo. How do I know that’s what it is? I can hear the plunging waterfall almost as loudly as the alarm. I can compare the volumes because the neighbour decides to enjoy the soothing buzz of the alarm rather than turn the infernal siren off.

And then goes back to bed.

After another 15 minutes the alarm finishes its final call. It’s a bit like an imam calling the faithful to prayer, except that instead of instilling virtue it makes us all pray to the devil for revenge. I hope that my neighbour will experience eternal sleeplessness when he goes to hell, which we ask that the devil makes happen as soon as possible, although perhaps after a bit of earthly suffering too.

After being kept awake for so long it’s hard to get back to sleep, but I do wake up at 8.11, so I must have managed another 45 minutes or so, meaning that Noisy Neighbour only managed to steal an hour and a quarter of my life. Of course, it’s quite an important 75 minutes, as I will be sleep-deprived the whole day and won’t be at my best for anything.

Speaking of which, I’d normally get up quite quickly, but I’m now feeling woozy from my disrupted sleep, so I begin to run short of time. Sleep deprivation makes you hungry, and I’m ravenous enough to wolf down a tasty pastry I’d been saving to be breakfast for two in a couple of days. So much for staying slim and healthy. It feels so good, though, and I needed something to feel good on this rotten morning.

The other great effect of sleeplessness is on the immune system, and I am definitely coming down with a cold anyway. I might have ridden it out with just a snuffle or two and a slightly harder time in the gym, but I cough and sneeze all morning now. No gym, for sure.

Anyway, all these things are whirling around in my mind as I realize I don’t have time to remonstrate with the idiot upstairs this morning. I’m in severe danger of being late for work. I set off at 8.47am, and 6 seconds after starting my cycle ride I encounter the first idiot in my way. 6 seconds! Not bad; I’ve had worse cycle rides. This time it’s a mother and children standing on the corner I need to turn out of, but standing in the road right where I would be cycling, watching the cars on the other side of the road. Those cars must be superpowered to be so hypnotic. I check if some sort of Bugatti or Ferrari is going past which would drag a mother and children into the road like maggots to rotting meat. No, she’s just a moron.

Another hundred metres and I’m over the next junction, stuck behind a car that thinks that the best thing to do if the road ahead is too narrow for another car to pass is to drive right into that narrow bit and then brake suddenly and sit there admiring the still scenery. Of course, we wouldn’t all be immobile scenery if the gormless buffoon weren’t holding everyone up. My new brakes proved themselves up to the task of avoiding his rear bumper despite the  recommendation that I avoid heavy braking while they bed in. Lucky brakes get to bed in. I get neighbours with alarms.

                After the next junction I’m still stuck behind the incompetent driver, who has improved slightly, and chooses to drive the narrow part of the street at a racing speed of 5- 10 mph. I manage to overtake him when we’ve passed all the parked cars.

                On which subject, why is it alright to dump a tonne of your metal on a public space? Which god-awful combination of selfish voters and imbecilic councillors thought that blocking entire streets should be a free service they provide to everyone else in the area? If you want the space, buy it at London prices. Just a thought.

                And another thought: even if you think that the fast-moving arterial roads are too slow for you, don’t get angry with the cyclist leaving his flat in the quiet residential road you’ve chosen to try to whizz down. If residents get so much say over the local public space that they get to dump their cars in the way, I’m pretty sure a cyclist owns his local roads enough to use them even when an angry driver would prefer to be the only human in existence. We all would prefer Angry Driver to live in a literally different world, as well as metaphorically different. Somewhere like Venus, in sulphuric acid at 462 degrees.

                Anyway, I made it to the main road. It just so happens that a few cyclists are passing by as I get there, so I have to stop completely and wait...and wait. That’s frustrating, but at least no-one’s at fault. I overtake them a few seconds later.

                There’s a massive puddle up ahead in the cycle lane. I suspect it’s going to be there for the next few months. If a lake formed in a road someone would send an engineer round pronto to protect those poor innocent cars from splashing mud on their paintwork. Mud, by the way, that is actually a delightful combination of their brake dust and exhaust fumes.  But since it’s in the cycle lane it’s not a problem. So all the cyclists join me in the bus lane. Another angry driver makes a rude gesture. He wanted to use the bus lane to overtake the cars in front, and is outraged that we’re preventing his criminality. Untomensch like cyclists should wallow in filth where they belong.

Fortunately for me, I do get to wallow in filth where I apparently belong, despite cycling round the puddle, because his dirty mouth leaks an obscenity so loud that I hear it through his closed window. I suppose if you have s*** for brains the filth will sometimes seep out. Good riddance, I think as I fly by.

                One of the slow cyclists who also went round the puddle rings his bell at me. Yes, I’m aware that you’re there. The cycle lane is wide enough for two of us, as the two lines of cyclists up ahead show. As I coast up to the red light at the next junction he pedals hard so that he can pull in front of me. Is he turning right? No, he’s just scared that I will hold him up when the lights go green. After all, I’m in work trousers, polo-shirt and tatty running shoes, whereas he is a proper cyclist in, um, slim-fit pinstripes and brown brogues. I overtake him before we’re over the junction. One speedy devil from the front of the line holds out for a couple of hundred metres before I say goodbye to him too. Proper cyclist my a***. Which, coincidentally, is now what they get to see.

The next half mile goes well. The pedestrian crossings are miraculously green, although normally they’re perfectly timed to turn red just as traffic starts to flow again across the junction. I think it’s the cunning delay set by the road planners combined with the not-so-astonishing lack of foresight of pedestrians. Traffic comes and goes in waves, depending on the lights at the major junctions. When there is no traffic, a pedestrian will be stolidly tramping towards the crossing, displaying all the initiative of a lobotomized foetus. Could you cross the road when it’s empty? Goodness no! You must cross at the crossing, where you get to enjoy the only power most of us have in life: the power to make other people’s lives worse, in this case by holding them up.

                Then the pedestrian will press the button when traffic is flowing, but the traffic planners have a cunning plan. Probably why they’re called planners. They have installed delays in all the crossings, so that the lights wait through the traffic, through the empty period, and go red just as traffic is starting again. If the planners are very good at their jobs, this disrupts traffic so much that it holds people up at the main junction too! I’m sure they pop open the bubbly every time they manage such a stupid set-up. No, only joking. Of course they don’t. They’re too stupid to realize what they’ve done. No-one enjoys it, and no-one benefits. No-one has thought ahead to work out how things might work best. That would be asking for too much from, er, planning.

                And coincidentally, the next set of junctions turns my mind to the Planning Department too. Within the space of 300m are 4 sets of traffic lights. The first 3 are linked so that traffic could flow freely… except that the junction at set 2 is always blocked with selfish drivers who regard red lights as suggestions only, and the 4^th set of lights is wonderfully timed to turn red just as traffic from the 3rd reaches it. This ensures that no matter how freely traffic would love to flow through the first 3 sets of lights, only a few cars at a time get through.

                Today the junction is its usual frustrating self. I roll up to the first set of lights behind a rental bike. This cyclist had pootled along at walking pace but decided that the best thing for slow cyclists is to turn themselves broadside on at the front of the cycle box. This way as many people as possible are delayed when the cyclist fails to move off promptly. Although today it works out well. I know that the cyclists get a green a bit earlier than the main traffic, so while she’s staring at a red light I slip between her and a pedestrian pottering about in the road (as they do) and get away first.

                I don’t blame pedestrians too much at crossings like that. It’s the cretins in Planning who make the red man come on for most of the crossing time. Pedestrians stand there gawping at how the lights seem to be red for everyone and they take just the length of the lights to decide to jump in front of us. But if we had countdown lights like in a civilized, sensible country, everyone would know what was happening. Where we do have countdown lights they’re almost as bad, counting down to some arbitrary moment which bears no relation to when traffic gets the green signal. When I’m walking I know that I have time to cross the road between when the countdown has finished and when traffic moves.

                Anyway, set 2 of the lights is crammed with a lorry, a van and sundry cars who’ve turned into the road. Or rather, who haven’t turned into the road. They’re still sideways-on, having believed that the inch of space up ahead was somehow big enough to fit a few multi-tonne vehicles. Unless you’re Dr Who or a neutron star, which should be pretty easy to determine, you can’t fit that much mass into that small a space.

                I suppose I should let the physicists know that all their millions of pounds of equipment is wasted. Why bother studying how neutron stars millions of light years away squash matter into tiny spaces when Mr Bloggs can do the same thing on the main road?

                All us cyclists are in the process of manoeuvring around the obstacle course across the junction when traffic starts flowing because of the perfectly-timed lights. Some of the cyclists are visibly unnerved by the prospect of having to navigate these tight spaces while the metal walls shift around them, but I’m on the outside, knowing that set 3 of lights has deemed cycle-lane-users to be inferior citizens who need to wait a bit longer before going straight on. So I’m cycling in the main lane, right behind a van. Set 4 of lights is green, and if I can put on a burst of pace I’ll make the right turn. Except van man has a better idea. Why stick to one lane when by straddling two you can hold up people behind you? He does finally work out what an accelerator does, but only once the lights have turned red. Seems a bit pointless to accelerate into a red light and then brake hard, but I suppose he’s hoping it adds to the emissions the cyclists have to breathe. Why save money when you can pollute the planet?

                Of course, we all know that he was pretending to be a racing driver deliberately, because he didn’t want a cyclist in front of him. It would be terrible if someone who knew what he was doing was allowed to go his way unimpeded!

                I wheel my bike across the junction with the pedestrians, because otherwise I’ll have to wait the whole sequence. I get a few scowls. They walk in a straight line, showing no awareness that our paths might be crossing; nor any interest in adjusting their direction slightly to let me move too. And if they’re not interested in compromise, nor am I. I walk fast, and if I get to a spot first, they have to walk round me. You reap what you sow. At least no-one shouted at me for daring to walk on a pedestrian crossing this time. Oh the horror! Someone else might exist and not make way for his supreme eminence Mr Head-up-Bottom! I’m required by law to wheel my bike on pedestrian areas. Hardly a shouting offence.

                So, set off again. A couple of pedestrians jump out at me. If I were like any of these self-absorbed nincompoops who’ve already disrupted my day I might imagine I’m some sort of celebrity, since people are so keen to leap into my path. I’m not. They’re just atavistic d***heads (yes, the women too). This particular duo sees me, and stop on the nice smooth part of the road to kindly let me cycle past over a pothole. Charmers, the both of them. I even get a nice smile from the man, proud of this immense favour. I want to yell “Get out of the road you moron”, but I ignore him instead. His small mind won’t understand, and I can’t be bothered to explain exactly how delightful it is to have your crotch pummelled by a hard object due to a lack of suspension, although I am tempted to use him for a physical demonstration of the subject.

                Slowing down for the pothole allows a van to get in front of me, and like the last van, this one is pretending to be Lewis Hamilton. Probably not actually – I expect he hates the idea of a black man. But he does do his best to cut me up by driving  up against the left kerb even though the road is wide enough for a cyclist to go past a lorry (I’ve done it before). I manage to put the brakes on and then take him on the inside of the next corner. Out-raced by a cyclist. Some racing driver he was. P***k.

                There’s a lollipop man at the next pelican crossing, waiting for the lights to turn red. The cars and lorries are all stationary, and I can whizz past at a decent lick. He gestures at someone in the traffic to stop. Then he gestures again. She jumps in front of me anyway. She can’t realize how much energy it takes to accelerate to 20 mph. I hope she finds out soon when all that energy is transferred to her in one glorious impact next time she jumps out in front of someone.

                The next crossing is orange as I go past. The sprinters were all set at the start line, and some of them have more acceleration than Usain Bolt. As I weave past the enormous potholes at 25 mph I barely have time to glance at their disapproving faces. Amber isn’t illegal, and I’d like to see any of them try to brake hard on that bumpy road. Their faces will look a bit different when smeared across what passes for tarmac and their skin is replaced with road grit.

                I do soon have to brake, as a bus and van are side-by-side waiting for the lights. Or rather, the bus is waiting for the lights; the van is admiring the open space in front of it and pondering the enormity of being. No, seriously, I don’t know what scintillating philosophising he was doing in his cab, but it must have been truly absorbing. The dawdling bu**** soon collected a few cyclists behind him. If he’d have moved forward we could have filtered past the two wide vehicles, but not when they were next to each other.

                I manage to squeeze past the other side of the bus just in time for the lights to turn. Of course, this is another junction which people believe is actually a free car park. None of the other vehicles in lane with me can move because a bus has plonked itself firmly across the very middle of the junction. And to show willing, the driver has pulled so close to the car in front that there’s not enough space to cycle through. Another topic of study for our intrepid physicists: how a 30-foot bus can move into 2 feet of space and miraculously vacate the junction.

                I go round the back of the bus, taking my turn with the motorbikes. The lights up ahead are green, so I pedal hard. Some people try to cross once the deafening roar of the over-revved motorbikes is over, but they’d do better in life if they also used their eyes. Luckily I’m so close behind the motorbikes that I’m safe, but a distant screech of brakes tells me that someone else wasn’t so fortunate.

                Almost at work now. Nothing especially eventful disrupts the rest of the journey: only a dozen or so pedestrians look before they leap, which is pretty tame. At the final junction the lights turn just as I’m arriving on the left in the cycle lane – and I need to be on the right. For once a pedestrian serves some good, as she’s still crossing and holds the bus up (it’s in the cycle box so I can’t see her until I’m right there). I can jink in front of the bus and get in lane.

                And that, my friends, was my quick and easy morning routine, leaving me relaxed and awake for work. 

Spitefulness can be good

I took an online test that promised to measure the dark side of my character. There are many problems with online tests, even ones like this that claim to be based on genuine research. Maybe that’s worth a gripe at some point.

The test gave a score for each of 8 dark traits, covering things such as egoism, psychopathy, moral disengagement, self-interest, narcissism, entitlement, Machiavellianism, sadism and spitefulness. I was pleased to discover that despite the odd questions, the test-maker deemed me nice; nicer than the general population, anyway.

              The one thing that made me not-quite-so-nice was an enormous score for spitefulness which, given my answers to the other questions, must also have affected the scores I was given for sadism and psychopathy. Not something one would normally admit to, but I’m happy to be open about this because I know that the test is wrong.

              I know why the test-maker thinks I’m so evil (but I want to remind anyone that I'm still less dark than most people). The questions asked whether I’d be happy to inflict pain on someone I didn’t like… Of course I would. I don’t like the person for a reason; I think the person deserves  bad things in life as a result of being nasty. If someone doesn’t, as far as I know, deserve bad things, then I don’t dislike that person. For me that’s how disliking works. I can’t imagine how other people do it. Perhaps someone innocent rubs you the wrong way but you know you’re in the wrong?

              If I think someone deserves punishment of some sort, I am willing to pay for it. The test asked a couple of questions about whether I would endure lesser suffering in order to inflict greater suffering on someone. Yes, I would. Justice costs, and I am happy to bear that cost. I loathe the thought that someone will get away with wrongdoing (especially wrongdoing against me). Of course, the question was wider than that; it wasn’t about justice, but just about experiencing pain to inflict pain. There could easily be sadists out there who just enjoy inflicting pain without any thought about justice, or spiteful people who want to hurt those they do not like even if those people haven’t done anything wrong.

              Few enough people think the way I do that the test creator didn’t even notice that these sorts of answers aren’t always indicative of psychopathy, sadism and spitefulness. Or perhaps a desire for justice is sadistic? I know people who think that way. Most people, and many philosophers, judge morality based on pain, not justice. Pain is always bad. Pain on an innocent person is bad; pain on a criminal is bad; pain for an uncomprehending animal is bad; pain for a plant is bad; pain for Gaia is bad. Perhaps pain isn’t always bad; you have to draw the line somewhere.

              To make that sort of position tenable, philosophers suppose that inflicting pain as part of justice is a good thing because it discourages crime, and therefore acts to reduce pain in the future. That makes inflicting pain or punishment morally necessary. To duck that duty is to be morally deficient. Perhaps it is a failure of foresight akin to the concept of delayed gratification? People have trained themselves to avoid causing pain, as in general it is a bad thing, and are unable to devote the thought or willpower to doing so in circumstances where it is needed.

              Avoiding punishing others is a sign of a privileged life in which too little real harm has been encountered; there hasn’t been enough wrong to make leaving it unpunished a problem. Anyone who has known bullying or crime knows that mercy is an excuse for weakness. And intellectually, that is true. If punishment is morally required, then it is a duty to ensure it happens.

              All justice costs someone something. Even our impersonal judicial system costs us our taxes, as well as the time and effort of bright minds who could be researching life-extending medical treatments or gambling our money on the stock market in inventive ways. If we do not pay for justice we do not get any.

              Spite is a strange word. We use it negatively; it is an insult to call someone spiteful. And yet the definition is simply to intend to hurt or annoy someone. Is the jury spiteful when it declares a criminal guilty? I suppose they might not want to cause suffering, but find themselves bound by the law. So are the lawmakers spiteful when they enact laws that mandate punishments? Perhaps they would say that they hope no-one ever commits the offence, and no punishment is ever necessary.

              And yet if no-one desires to hurt others, how come we have laws with punishments? Should we let the murderers, paedophiles, rapists, disaster capitalists and other morally dubious individuals go free? Their wrong is in the past; it is the present that concerns us, and we must avoid suffering in the present.

              The world is very tribal nowadays. Over in the USA we have people who are members of the Trump tribe, devoted to misogyny, global destruction and a better time that never was. We have people who are members of the Sanders tribe, devoted to prosperity and a better time that could be. These tribes regard victory for their tribe as a source of pleasure, and loss of a member of their tribe as pain. They feel this even if their victory costs them, or others; and even if the losing member of their tribe was wrong, or bad. They pursue those who dare to oppose them with glee.

              Why is no-one a member of the justice tribe? Why does no-one regard the victory of justice as pleasurable, and the pain of the innocent as painful? Why does no-one want to put effort into pursuing criminals?

              It’s a strange world when the identities most people choose are ideologically incoherent and arbitrary. Why devote oneself to a sports team or a political party that changes its policies every 5 years when there are moral principles that could be championed instead?

              I do know the answer. It’s worth exploring another time. Devoting oneself to coherent principles, justice or truth is hard. There is objective right and wrong, and flawed, frail humans cannot be right all the time. It’s hard to achieve justice, or truth. It’s easier to be a member of a herd, where the only requirement is simply to be a member, and go where the herd goes. It’s easier to stand out for loyalty than for achievement. Achievement takes training, effort and talent. Loyalty is available to anyone.

Techno-optimism is a cloak for selfishness

I was chatting yesterday about techno-optimism. My position was that techno-optimism is foolish enthusiasm.
I found the article below this morning, showing that I'm not the only one who thinks so.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/12/why-growth-cant-be-green/
 We might have seen good technological progress in the recent past, but that's more likely to have been 'low-hanging fruit' than a sign of endless progress to come.
'Study after study shows the same thing... that there are physical limits to how efficiently we can use resources. Sure, we might be able to produce cars and iPhones and skyscrapers more efficiently, but we can’t produce them out of thin air. We might shift the economy to services such as education and yoga, but even universities and workout studios require material inputs.
Once we reach the limits of efficiency, pursuing any degree of economic growth drives resource use back up.'

We've all studied calculus at school, right? That's explained to us as taking a very small slice of a graph and showing that for very small slices of the graph that line can be modelled as a straight line. The gradient appears to be steady for small bits of the graph. This is true even for exponential changes.
So it might be that progress gets exponentially more difficult, but we've only had professional scientific research institutions for such a short period of time that it looks like we're making steady progress. Or it might even look like progress is accelerating, because we funded research more than we did at first.
But now that we fund it less, in an age of austerity and lack of respect for science or investment in the future, and it's getting harder to make progress, we can rationally expect progress in many fields to become dramatically slower.

I know the example of medical research best.  When we first started discovering how the human body worked, the advances came fast, and they were important. We discovered that a whole category of compounds could kill bacteria; we discovered that cortisol, just one drug, could massively affect the body, reducing inflammation and helping recovery in over-inflamed conditions such as allergies and auto-immune disorders. But we know those drugs now. There's a book's worth of detail to cover, but pharmaceutical companies are creating slight variations on existing drugs in the hope that the new molecular structure will have slightly improved properties... and in the cynical ploy of patenting something new and marketing it as the best option even though the out-of-patent drugs are as good, or negligibly worse.
Medical progress simply will not be as fast again... or as fast with the same level of investigation. We are now in the realm of needing to personalize treatments, of understanding the phenomenally complex systems that biology creates, and working out how to achieve the effects we want without terrible side effects in some part of the web of interlinked processes. We need therapies, targetting multiple systems in real time and with feedback on progress, possibly targetted to specific areas rather than taken as a pill that lets the drug go wherever the body can take it. We need to excise bad DNA and replace it with functional DNA. These are not one-off drugs. These are complex treatments based on even more complex understanding. It won't be simple.

Sure, techno-optimists usually talk about computing and consumer goods and extrapolate to climate change and other areas. Maybe it's because the physics of computing is simple... or that physics, as a discipline is simple and clean compared to biology. Yes, we have made faster and faster computer chips. But we already know the theoretical maximum for silicon-based computing speeds. We know there is a limit. We know that scientists are working hard to find alternatives.
That doesn't mean that geo-engineering our climate will be easy. That's a strange leap of faith. It's like saying that because a toddler has already learned to walk, which is four or five times as fast as crawling, and is on its way to running, which is four or five times as fast, it will be travelling at 100 mph by the time it's 10 years old, crossing continents in a day as a teenager and visiting the moon for the weekend in middle age.
We can just about imagine that happening. The toddler could learn to fly an aeroplane very young and cross continents, and we, as a species, might establish a lunar base within its lifetime, where tourists can go.
But those achievements are not as simple, or as guaranteed, as the progress we have already seen. They are vastly more complex. And if we carry on with this simple extrapolation, we can expect our toddler to travel to Mars in a month within its lifetime. These seems less likely, and is certainly not a reasonable conclusion based solely on its progress in learning to walk and run.

There's another problem with techno-optimism. It's the cop-out option: it's driven more by the desire not to have to do anything, or worry, rather than a rational assessment of probability. But even if these things were probable, that doesn't mean that we should rely on them. Many optimists point to economic growth: growth has happened in the modern world, so we should rely on it, and take out debt, and promise pensions, based on the understanding that future generations will magic away it all with their enormous wealth. And yet relying on consistent growth for our models is what caused the financial crash: the Black-Scholes model was a good model, but only if used sensibly, with good data. People used only data as far back as the previous crash.
We have already seen twenty years of static wages; young people are now likely to be poorer than their parents. We have cut back on investment in infrastructure and research to fund pensions and tax cuts, and we expect growth will simply happen, because it always has. Because life will find a way.
Life does indeed find a way, but we might not like it. Like the humans on Easter Island, or the woolly mammoths, or the dinosaurs, we could be racing to a future in which the path 'life' chooses for us is not to have life; to be replaced by something that can survive in the mess we leave behind.

Maybe that's ethically acceptable. Maybe we do have no obligation to preserve anything for the future, or improve the future. But if that's what we think, we shouldn't pretend we're doing the future a favour. We shouldn't claim that pushing debt and problems to others because we hope they'll be better able to deal with them is anything other than selfish, lazy and self-interested. Even if it is efficient, a virtuous person would take the problems of the moment on and never dump them on someone else.

What do you debate?

As with so many ideas, this one was triggered by someone else's opinion article. Laurie Penny, a respected and sensible journalist, was moved by her recent experiences to explain that joining bigots for a debate shows them too much respect and gives them a platform that they do not deserve.

https://longreads.com/2018/09/18/no-i-will-not-debate-you/

In this, she's right. But isn't it interesting that she writes 'I will not debate you'? When I was young I debated ideas, and I still like to. I might even debate about a subject. But I tend not to debate people. Is a person a proposition?
"Spending money now will grow the economy so much that the young will pay off our debt and thank us."
"I find that debatable."
That makes sense. That's because there's a proposition which is debatable. But could you say the following?
"Donald Trump"
"I find that debatable."

It's nonsensical. Or rather, it's nonsensical if we use 'debate' the way we should (and by 'should', I mean with the meaning it always used to have, the meaning that makes most sense and the meaning I prefer). Verbs usually take as their object the target of the verb. I open the door, not the hinge, even though without the hinge I can't open the door. I run the distance or the route, not the ground, even though I can't run without the ground to run on. I debate the subject, even though without an opponent there is no debate.
But nowadays we don't debate an idea. We debate someone else. It says a lot about what we focus on as a society. The idea is not the idea! The idea is to enjoy the conflict; to focus on personality and victory or loss. Debate is about scoring status points, humiliating the other person and making people want to be on the status-winning side, not the humiliated side. Ideas and logic are a minor way to do this, not the focus. Society is focussed on style, human interest and status, not ideas and reason.
Laurie Penny reinforces that approach by misusing the word 'debate'. Perhaps next time she refuses to allow a shift in normality that would make a bigot's ideas acceptable she can also refuse to allow a shift in usage that makes a focus on emotion and status more reasonable than a focus on reason.


As I read her well-argued, and otherwise hugely insightful piece, I was also struck by the assertion that debate, in the modern format of point-scoring status-seeking and humiliation, is macho. That's an easy thing to say: it's easy to imagine two male loudmouths on television sniping at each other whilst saying nothing of substance. Because that's what our television debates mostly are.
But is that macho? I understand that patriarchy, for feminists, is a great and nebulous force behind a lot of evils in the world. I even agree that a lot of what we might think of as masculine behaviours are bad, especially in the modern, civilized world. But I also think that we need to be careful about ascribing every problem to our favourite enemy; if we're wrong, not only will people be less inclined to believe us when we're right, but we'll also miss another enemy, which will carry on happily.
Yes, men love to show off and gain status. But I can definitely think of macho men who scorn intellectual pursuits and think that poncing around in a debating chamber isn't very manly. I can also vividly remember the macho respect I got at school for never engaging in insult-trading, but being ready to beat up people who actually attacked me. It is girls who are stereotypically the ones who engage in status warfare, humiliating others and enjoying wars of words and PR.
I don't think it's right to say that modern debate is just another symptom of patriarchy and it's yet again men and men's instincts that are to blame; or that women in general would do it all better. The focus on status and humiliation is a deeply human, not male, drive. It's the worst side of our psyches, but it's in all of us, and it's brought out in all of us by the society in which we live. After all, without the ability to sell products as statusful in some way, most advertising would be worthless.
If we conflate capitalism (or our version of it) with macho culture, we're mislabelling the problem. As the Iranian activist Masih Alinejad said 'in all religions and in all societies, first they come for the women'. It's not that sexism is the driving force; it's just the first type of oppression to emerge.
No doubt sexism and neoliberalism intersect, and dumping all the problems of the world on sexism's door might help motivate women to change things... but it will motivate them to change the wrong things. If we want to do good, we should be sure we're aiming to do the right good, and the best good.

Ms Penny later in her article goes on to deride Bannon's approach to debate as like the host of con-artists and scammers out there. It's utterly immoral; she rightly says that his lack of integrity is part of his ideology. I understand where women are coming from when they look at the mass of oppressive forces in the world, overlapping and reinforcing their effects, but I also think that the best commentators make sure they don't mix things up. If women start to think of men, and maleness, as being the same as having a complete lack of integrity, they also start to lose the goodwill of those of us who regard a stubborn devotion to principles even in the face of society as quite a male thing. Men are good at disregarding social rules. That is a male thing. But social rules can be wrong. If you have a principle behind you, and you go about things in the right way, your maleness is good.

 I've already said that I hate a lot of what we might call stereotypical masculinity. But I am a man, and I won't be made a scapegoat for all the evils of society. That's what the Conservatives are for.

The global problem of free dinners

Imagine you, I and a random third person find ourselves the sole members of a dining club. This club has massive endowments and gets £3 million of income a year. It has two rules: we can spend the income on 3 dinners a year and any member can invite new members to join. 2/3 of members must agree for the rules to change.

                 What will happen?

                Well, perhaps you and I agree that we want more dinners. Together we vote to make it daily, which still £2,700 a day for dinner. And then we both invite a few friends, so that we can have massive dinner parties at fancy restaurants every day. Our lives have changed enormously.

                But the third person invites some friends too. And they invite some friends. After all, they’re all full members now too. Our 30-person dinner parties begin to happen at less and less fancy restaurants. I dig into the endowment to fund mine, and without that cost coming from the income, your expensive dinners and the dinners of all the other people are funded for a year or two.

                But they keep on inviting more friends. You start to tell everyone not to invite more friends to the club, but everyone hates you. It’s their right to invite friends: why should they be the last to the party, knowing only the person who invited them, when they could bring just a few more members and be the centre of their own little party? It’s your fault, for wanting expensive dinners and for voting to make this boon daily rather than thrice-annually. It’s my fault for digging into the endowment. You and I and our friends should stop enjoying dinners and our vast expenditure would stop. The endowment might even grow again and we’d have the full £3 million of income to spend on everyone. Soon enough there might be a pound or two for dinner for everyone!

                Does that feel a bit unfair? A bit silly? Of course you and I would vote to restrict membership as soon as we could. We’re not stupid enough to leave free money open to everyone. We’d want to limit the number of members because every new member reduces the income the rest of us enjoy. The problem is that having a friend join the club is a greater benefit a member than the loss of income is a problem. It matters to have your friends join you for dinner; you’ll happily have slightly less expensive food for that.

                So the incentive for everyone is to invite their own friends and not let anyone else invite theirs. As founding members, we inevitably get to enjoy expensive dinners while the club fills up, and we inevitably get to invite our friends, because there’s so much capacity at first. So later members will always be able to criticise us for having got our way and for not wanting to share what we enjoyed.

               

                If the situation sounds familiar, it’s because this is an extended metaphor. Welcome to the industrialized world. Industrialization allowed us to use the world’s resources much better than previously. We became rich, and industrialization spread. Now the whole world is consuming resources the same way and there are too many of us on the planet. But population control is not an option because everyone has the right to make their own family.

                Yet every new birth, with its claim to planetary resources, diminishes the claim of everyone else already alive. There’s an externality that no-one pays the price for. Everyone wants their own happy family, their own private party at the world’s expense, but it must be paid for somehow. Why not limit new members? When they’re only potential people, they’re not being harmed by being excluded from the club.

                True, all us new members, young people who haven’t yet had children, might find it unfair that we don’t get to do what our parents did. But that doesn’t mean that we should merrily carry on into oblivion.

Intranspection - trolling and transphobia

The president-elect of the students’ humanist association has been forced to resign because he was accused of transphobia. He wasn’t transphobic; he was merely judged by the members of a free-thinking organization who refused to engage with free thinking.

The fact to grapple with is that some people do not have the traits of the gender to which we would normally assign them.

That gives us three options:

1. We can choose to ignore them, or regard them as dysfunctional in some way.
2. We can re-think our assignation of these strict gender categories and assign them a different category.
3. We can question the association of these strict groups of traits with gender categories.

I, Germaine Greer and this president-elect choose number 3. The trans movement chooses number 2. Bigots and idiots choose number 1. But the trans movement refuses to accept the possibility of a third option. For them, rejection of their opinion means that you must choose 1. It’s a straw man fallacy; a failure of understanding and imagination, and a refusal to engage or communicate.

                I am happy calling a trans-man a woman. I am happy for women to be macho, aggressive, passive, sporty, intellectual and so on… have any set of interests they choose. Of course, I dislike macho, aggressive people so I might still judge someone for displaying bad traits, but not because those traits become more disagreeable when your crotch is different.

                By promoting option 2, which is unnecessary if you believe in option 3, and by not acknowledging anyone who chooses only option 3, the trans movement is implicitly denying option 3. It is telling us that we should keep our strict definitions of masculinity and femininity, because that’s needed in order to let people pick the other one based on which they identify more with. That is a socially destructive thing to do: those strict straightjackets are restrictive and pointless even if you get to choose which one to wear. I’d rather be called transphobic.

                Of course, there might be a good argument for supporting option 2 as well as 3. Maybe it does add some value somehow. I don’t know, because no-one will discuss this: the debate is shut down by assuming that anyone who disagrees with the ‘2 only’ position wants option 1. 

This problem with the trans movement is just one example amongst many of what is happening in wider political debate, especially on the left of politics. There’s a stubborn insistence that there are only two categories of thought: evil, or exactly what the doctrine is. If you disagree, you’re an outright fascist or a 5^th columnist. And the growth of trolling has made this worse: trolls mimic open-minded discussion, saying provocative things to waste time or inflame their victims’ emotions. So much so that perfectly reasonable behaviour is now warned against as trolling; a bit like a religion, believers in current lefty doctrine are inoculated against improving or changing their ideas by being coerced into believing that any engagement is the devil at work. It could be a troll, but doesn’t have to be; there’s another failure of imagination.

1. Someone disagrees with you and is evil.
2. Someone agrees with you.
3. Someone disagrees with you and is right/ requires you to build on your own ideas to justify them.

Yet again, the third option isn’t acknowledged. Building on your own ideas is hard work, and if you’re a pseudo-intellectual who doesn’t have a coherent set of beliefs, being forced to explore them fully might feel worryingly difficult. I can understand that being forced to confront one’s own inadequacies when the troll isn’t being examined at all can feel unfair, but that’s the price we pay when we’re the ones to advance ideas and proposals. As long as other ideas get the same criticism, all is well.