Frozen Transparency

I recently had dinner with a group of friends and while there, talked with an elderly gentleman. He was the sort of person who said what was on his mind, and never pulled punches about his true thoughts on matters. It’s one of the stock characters: the old grandfather who has an opinion on everything (usually outdated) and is willing to express it (loudly).

As things are wont to do these days, talk turned to politics and especially the presidential election. He loudly proclaimed himself as a Democrat with some decent reasoning, and loudly complained about McCain. Curious fellow that I am, I then asked about Barack Obama, since I figured he would be an ardent supporter.

On the contrary, he said he didn’t like Obama, either. A bit confused (since Obama seemed to encapsulate what he liked about Democrats over Republicans), I pressed him on the issue, wondering where he disagreed with Obama. Eventually, the response I got back was simply “I’m just not comfortable with him.”

I thought about this a while, somewhat confused. This was not the sort of person who normally said such things, so I had to divine what his true meaning was. I’m also not the sort of person who likes to look at everything through the lens of race (as some people do, even when completely unwarranted). Yet as I thought about it and interacted with him on other things, I came to a tentative conclusion that bothered me.

I think what he meant was “I don’t want to vote for a black person”. I can’t verify this, and I hate coming to race-based conclusions, but I couldn’t think of a better explanation, especially in context of the rest of the evening. I think if we had a closer relationship or we weren’t in public, he might have been willing to admit it. But there was this spectre of not being able to admit something racist in public.

Racism is still a disease plaguing this county. But like file-sharing, the attempts of the government to shut it down and stop it has only driven it farther and farther underground. We dare not talk of it in public, for we know the consequences, but that has not actually changed people’s minds on the issue.

I have no grand solution for solving the epidemic of racism. I know of no way to just change people’s minds when they’re so set in their ways. But what I see is a racism that we now cannot talk about openly and cannot discuss, and instead gets relegated to the back rooms, where it becomes far more violent and far more dangerous than when it is seen openly.

I have no real conclusion. It is but an anecdote of life, and of how far we still have to go.

Whenever I’ve experienced “training” in the past on how to respect differences in culture, it’s always Europe-descended American culture that must make allowances to the other culture. In literature, it’s always the white American who learns to appreciate black/Asian/Indian/whatever culture, and never the other way around.

Shouldn’t the other culture have to make allowances back, if we’re going to truly respect differences in culture? Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about that?

When I was young, around nine or ten, my usual breakfast at my mother’s house was instant oatmeal. You poured the oatmeal into a bowl, added some water, then put it in the microwave for ninety seconds. Being the age we were, I and my siblings were tremendously impatient for even those ninety seconds. At one point, though, my step-father explained to us that we should actually put it in for seven seconds less. If we put it in for ninety seconds and watched, during those last seven seconds it would get super-hot or something like that. Inevitably, what happened was we kids sat and watched the microwave heat up the oatmeal—and in the process, shut up.

It took me a number of years before I realized it was a lie. Though I’ve never confirmed it, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was concocted just to get us kids to be quiet for a while (since we tended to be quiet once we got food anyways). It’s interesting what parents will say, however false, just to get their children to do things.

I recently read a very interesting book called Who Stole Feminism? by Christina Hoff Sommers. The book’s primary purpose is to debunk a large number of the myths about gender that are being perpetrated by modern feminists. She goes back to the original studies (when she can obtain them; a surprising number were never published in peer-reviewed journals and were instead simply reported on by the media) and examines the data. She finds alternate studies. And she delves into the rhetoric paraded by politicians and feminists and exposes it for what it is.

Now, one could argue that her bias is just as bad as what she is trying to combat. It’s possible, and as a skeptic, I would like more investigation. But I was struck by her chapter on rape statistics, and how blatantly overblown they tend to be.

There was a point in college when I attended the Vagina Monologues with some friends. During the performance, they wanted to call attention to sexual abuse and how it needs to stop (a goal I agree with). To further this, they asked everyone in the audience to stand if they had been sexually abused or knew someone who had. I stood, as one of my friends in college had been raped when she was younger. I looked around, and I would say about one tenth of the audience had stood up.

One of the standard statistics that Sommers quotes is that “one in four women” has been raped. If that statistic were true, I would have expected half of the audience to stand. Not one-tenth. There may have been some who sat for fear of being exposed, but the caveat of “someone you know” largely dismissed that. And such shame does not explain the massive disparity between that statistic and what I saw.

The sample was, admittedly, skewed due to the audience being all in college—although most people in college know people who are poor (rape being inversely correlated with income, in general). There are possibly other explanations for the disparity, but let me suggest one (which Sommers also proposes): the statistic is wrong. Sommers explains how they derived that statistic and exposes their flawed methodology. And at a certain point, a quote she includes from another skeptic resonates with me: if one in four women were raped, why haven’t I heard more about it from my friends?

Now let me be clear: I do not condone rape. It is wrong. It can be a massive traumatic experience, and people who have been raped should get the therapy and support they need (though I don’t think the government should pay for it). I am not in any way trying to suggest that we should trivialize the impact it has on people.

What I am instead saying is that people (in the media, government, and schools) are lying.

When I pointed out this disparity to an acquaintance who is a rather hardcore feminist, she glibly replied, “It’s okay, because it raises awareness of the problem and gets those people the support they need.”

To rephrase: it is okay to lie because it gets the results we want.

This leads me to the Holocaust. I am not a Holocaust denier; on the contrary, I am quite convinced it happened. I am quite convinced that it was horrible. But I am not convinced that the statistics I hear about it are true.

Why? Because anyone who contests them is labeled as a denier. So we are willing to accept the statistics we are given, because it emphasizes the horror and tragedy of what happened.

I think there can be honest quibbles with official figures. I think historians should be allowed to go through the evidence in an attempt to learn more. It may be the case that we over-estimate the number of people slaughtered. If it is, we should adjust the statistic. It does not de-emphasize the horror of what happened. It does not reduce its enormity. It brings us closer to the truth.

And I would say that an over-inflated figure trivializes it.Edit for clarity:And I would say that if we have an over-inflated figure, than doing so would trivialize the event.End Edit I would say that it shows disrespect to those who survived it, because we are essentially telling them that the truth of their suffering does not matter. Likewise, claiming such a high rate of rape in society shows disrespect to those who have actually been raped. To have such a high number requires such a liberal definition of rape (a teenager reluctant to kiss can be classified as ‘raped’ according to some cited studies) that it trivializes those who actually were truly raped by all definitions.

It is okay to proclaim a false statistic in order to advance a point. To question the statistic is to be insulted, shouted at, and to be a horrible person.

Which leads me to another anecdote. Some time ago, one of my friends was at my apartment, and had brought her three-year-old daughter. Being a child of that age, she was inordinately curious about the world, and especially about all the fun things I had around my apartment. She would go around pointing at things and asking me what they were, and in good humor I would tell her. In time, she made her way to my printer (a Kodak All-in-one) and started inquiring about the various buttons. As she explored the printer, she stuck her fingers into where the paper comes out—clearly potentially dangerous, due to the moving gears and other things that are unkind to child fingers.

I admonished her not to do it, and in an attempt to quickly explain why it was bad, I told her that it would eat her hand. It was mostly for a metaphorical sense, as I wasn’t entirely sure what it could really do, but I was aware of its danger. Her mother then embellished the story, explaining how a monster was in the printer. It had the desired effect: the child stopped playing with the printer.

Yet I worried about the lie. Even my small exaggeration about eating her hand; was it right for me to deliberately tell her something false in order to have a good result (in this case, to not stick her hand in a dangerous place. I didn’t mind her otherwise playing with the printer)?

Another anecdote along the same lines: an acquaintance of mine was once convinced by his father that he (the son) was under consideration for inclusion in a spy agency or some such. At one point, during a several-hour car trip, the father explained to the son that the lines on the back window (the defrosters) were actually a secret cloaking device, and he had to sit absolutely still for it to work. The trip was a test or something along those lines. And sure enough, the child sat in the back perfectly silent and still for the entire trip.

My acquaintance laughed about it as he told me about it, because he realizes now that it was a lie, but it had the right result: it made the drive far more peaceful.

In fact, telling children deliberate lies to get them to do something seems to be a very popular parenting technique. Clearly, given its prevalence and especially through history (consider Santa Claus as the lie to induce good behavior), it is not that harmful. But I still worry.

If, when our children are young, we lie to them to get an effect, are we not essentially telling them, then, that it is okay to lie to get the results you want? To quote knowingly false statistics in order to siphon more government funding?

That the ends justify the means?

Is that what we really want our children to learn? Is that what we really want our culture to be?

I once promised a friend that I would write a story someday that featured an accountant superhero. They would fight crime by poring over spreadsheets and tracking and itemizing accounting-related things. This friend has graduated with a degree in accounting, and she felt that accountants were under-represented in the media (which they are). Someday I will write this story to attempt to rectify that. The accountant would, however, need a team, since superheroes always work on a team.

I think a psychiatrist would be useful: they can psychoanalyze the patient then determine what drugs to prescribe to attempt to fix (but not really) that person’s problems. The third member would be a musician to always be late but provide wonderful accompaniment at all the major battles. Of course, the fourth member, a physicist, would build all their weapons and contraptions by which they kick ass in physical battles.

The band would then be rounded out nicely with a fifth member who happened to be somewhere in English academia. They could spend hours in front of a typewriter (because real English majors don’t use computers) in order to produce a manuscript. Their primary role would be to provide biting social commentary. That is, after all, such a powerful weapon, it could crush entire armies with its might.

This team would likely be incredibly effective, if boring. But the stories don’t need to be entertaining: after all, we have the scathing social commentary. That should be all we ever need, right?

A few weeks ago, I was chatting with one of the cashiers at the cafeteria where I work, and a random personal choice I made came up, and we had the following exchange:

Her: “What does your wife think about it?”
Me: “I don’t have a wife.”
Her: “Well, what does your girlfriend think about it?”
Me: “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

And the conversation flowed on from there. I was struck by the expectations she had—which I would consider reasonable ones—that didn’t entirely come into play.

Namely, she first assumed that I had a wife, despite the definite lack of a wedding ring around my finger. But she might not actually look at it, and realistically, most of the people who work at the company are probably married.

Upon learning that such was false, she then had the expectation that I had a girlfriend. After all, I’m such a great guy, I’m clearly not married because of time or something. Again, many of the people who aren’t married who work at the company probably are in a relationship. As I understand the statistics, a majority of adults are either married or dating.

Now these are both fine and good, but here’s the thing that really got me: she didn’t ask what my boyfriend thought. There was an expectation on her part that I am a heterosexual male. In this case, she was right, but it’s not a guarantee (although—and I fully admit to possibly being wrong on this point—I think that there are fewer expressed homosexuals among older people than among younger). I find myself vaguely curious what her reaction had been if I had mentioned a (non-existent) boyfriend.

Mind, I don’t mean to condemn her. I’m not offended, and I would like to think if I were homosexual, I still wouldn’t be. I’m disenchanted enough with political correctness to really care, and it was a short conversation anyways. Trying to account for every possibility is kind of ludicrous (at what point do we consider polygamy?).

What I do mean to do is to point out her expectations, which were very reasonable given the circumstances. We all have these reasonable expectations, although it is interesting to sometimes go and reflect upon them and why we have them—and whether we need to have them. I find myself wondering just how many of these expectations would stand up to scrutiny.

I will continue to believe that neither science nor mathematics are inherently patriarchal or oppressive until someone can show me a digital computer created with matriarchal science.

I would then use that computer to calculate out the digits of pi, just to see at what point they diverged.

For however much Valentine’s Day is a manufactured holiday, I must say that the Japanese have it much worse. Today is, as it turns out, White Day. The basic idea is that today is the day you reciprocate all of the gifts of chocolate and flowers that you received one month previous, and it doesn’t hurt if it happens to be much more expensive. It’s very much an example of a manufactured holiday because it’s started only within the last fifty years and was first popularized explicitly to sell chocolate.

Mind, I think that having a holiday to celebrate love and sex is not a bad thing. I have some reservations about the level of merchandising—that is, the claim that the only way to appropriately show love is a bouquet of roses along with chocolates and probably jewelry—but the concept behind the holiday doesn’t bother me. This is also why I don’t rail all too much against Christmas, just the merchandising aspects of it. White Day, however, is clearly meant to feed into the immense popularity that Valentine’s Day gets. And when you factor in the Japanese concept of giri choco (that is, chocolate that is given as an obligatory gift to co-workers, casual acquaintances, platonic friends and so on), the cost of reciprocating on White Day gets relatively high. I think it’s a serious question whether or not spending money is the best way of showing someone you love them.

In either case, I’m not that sure if chocolate goes on sale in Japan on March 15^th the same way it goes on sale on February 15^th in America.

There are also some who are trying to turn March 14^th into Steak And Blowjob Day here in America. This is done primarily as a response to the idea that Valentine’s Day is done for women. Admittedly, most flowers and chocolate are bought for women, but this new holiday operates under the assumption that men don’t care very much for romance, or the celebration therein. I don’t particularly think this holiday will catch on, if for no other reason than having a fairly obscene (in the legal sense) name.

It is worth noting that it is also Albert Einstein’s birthday. He was born 129 years ago today (give or take leapdays).

Personally, though, I prefer celebrating today as pi day. Its date, when written in either bass-ackwards American notation (Month/Day/Year) or in ISO 8601 (the universal standard) comes out to be “03-14″, which happen to be the first three digits (if you ignore the 0) of pi. This number only happens to be one of the most important numbers in the universe, so I think it’s a day worth celebrating. As a counterpoint to the holiday that celebrates love, a holiday that celebrates mathematics and all the achievements it’s given us.

It’s also a homophonic excuse to eat pie.

Whenever people talk about celebrities—movie stars and the like—I always wonder why they spend so much time worrying about other people. I question just how much influence celebrities actually have over society. Some, such as Oprah Winfrey, probably do. But Heath Ledger? Merely an actor; a footnote in the annals of history.

And when celebrities die, their fans mourn. People are saddened by death, especially of actors and singers and celebrities. Still, how much influence did that mourned celebrity have? How many people changed dramatically because of Heath Ledger?

This last Tuesday, Gary Gygax died. A lot of people probably don’t know his name, but he was a celebrity. He—along with Jeff Perren—created the game Chainmail, which few people have heard of; a few years later—this time, with Dave Arneson—he created Dungeons and Dragons. He took influences—fantasy, war games, literature—and wrapped them together into an interactive game.

His death is not something to be widely reported. Roleplaying games have a reputation of being played by “geeks” and “nerds”, and people often do not want to be associated with that. Yet the number of tributes to him is astounding. In the 30+ years since the game’s inception, it is astounding to learn of the number of people who played it. The number of people who have fond memories of spending high school evenings hunched around a table with friends, telling stories about warriors and wizards while waiting for pizza to get delivered and making bad jokes about sex.

What Gary Gygax did with his little game was unleashed the power of the imagination. His books said “Take this, and build on it. Do what you want to it. Create. Imagine.” And imagine people did. This was not passive entertainment. Not movies, not books. This was sitting with your friends and using your minds telling a communal story. How many people who now work in creative industries got their start with fighting dragons in dungeons?

Before Gygax, fantasy was the realm of Lord of the Rings. In a very real sense, Gygax is to fantasy roleplaying what Tolkein was to fantasy literature. They took threads of things that had come before but wove it together into a beautiful and unique tapestry and in doing so created something more. Dungeons and Dragons broke new ground: never before had fantasy roleplaying really existed in quite the same capacity. And the world has never been the same since.

Many early video games—the original Final Fantasy springs to mind—were based on Dungeons and Dragons. It set a standard for game mechanics that others emulated. The first MUDs were heavily influenced by D&D—they were, after all, roleplaying in a world over the Internet. And D&D evolved, and people continued to play: tables in their basements, or in desks pulled together after school, over chatrooms and MUDs.

Other roleplaying games emerged, all springing from this idea to use polyhedrons as random number generators. Other fantasy settings emerged, inspired by Tolkein and influenced by Gygax.

Today, we have World of Warcraft, which has more players than some nations have citizens. It is no small feat of the imagination to say that World of Warcraft would not have existed if it were not for the tradition laid forth by Dungeons and Dragons. Final Fantasy, along with its myriad spinoffs, would have been but a glint in someone’s eye.

It can be said that someone else might have come up with those ideas. Someone else would have thought of doing it. Perhaps. But that does not mean we should not honor the man who did come up with it. Both Monte Cook and Mike Mearls (both major names in gaming) have posted their thoughts–even the gamer comic the Order of the Stick has a tribute.

In the years to come, when people tally up the “most influential people of the 20th century”, I think Gary Gygax should be on that list. No, he didn’t lead armies to victory. He didn’t revolutionize physics. He didn’t save the lives of millions of people with his invention.

He got people to come together and form bonds of fellowship that to this day still remain. He created something new, and brought friends and acquaintances together in households around the world to imagine and create together. He inspired millions of people he never met, and changed the lives of millions of people he never knew.

To me, that’s enough to be considered truly influential.

Requiescat in pace, Sir Gygax. You have been an inspiration to us all.

Whenever I ride the Metro, I always see people listening to music, and I find myself wondering what music they’re listening to in their little world of headphones. Of course, I am usually sitting there, listening to music of my own world, separated by simple headphones. Perhaps they sometimes wonder what I’m listening to.

Perhaps it says something about our culture when two people seem to have something very heavily in common, yet cannot even bridge the simple gulf to see how common their taste really is.

In either case, I shall continue to stay in my own little world, sheltered by the sweet strains from my headphones.

In my eternal travels on the Internet, I eventually stumbled upon this blog entry, or more accurately, to the YouTube video that it talks about. I think it’s interesting to watch. Art History people, of course, will have orgasms. As for myself, I found it more apt to compare the early painted portraits to pictures like this one or this one, which are probably not as touched-up as paintings were (due to the nature of photography), but still indicate to a large extent our idea of beauty. The thing to notice in the transition from the Mona Lisa to a picture of Jessica Alba is the change in the level of sexuality—or rather, how it is expressed. The Mona Lisa has cleavage, but Jessica Alba has her (zip-up) shirt wide open. Standards change over time. Sometimes it’s a good thing, sometimes it isn’t. I’m not sure we’ve had a good enough dialogue as a culture to figure out which it is in this case. I have recently been reading a fair amount of Jennifer Roback Morse. Does it show?