women's rights as human rights

i am reading a brief philosophy article titled "are women human? feminist reflections on 'women's rights as human rights.'" i have read it before. what i find baffling about the article is in fact something it takes for granted, that there is a serious split between the "liberal" and "cultural" feminists. despite having read the article several times, and generally understanding its view point and direction, i keep coming back to this point of splintering in feminism. the tiny bit of research i have done says that this split in american feminism is identified in about 1985.....

a quote: "American Feminism has been dominated by two interrelated but often conflicting propositions: that women should be treated as the equals of men, and that feminine qualities deserve to be revalued and their power in society acknowledged."

now granted, as a feminist male, i may not be fully up to date, but i see a lot more interrelation than conflict there. perhaps i am too simple minded.

one key issue in the possibility of seeing women's rights as human rights is the simple fact that rights and laws and systems of justice tend to be male dominated and based on a series of male ideals. they are, for example, seen as a system of "independent rationally self interested individuals" rather than, for example, dependent or social creatures. this is amazing to me.

while cultural feminists see this as reason to not seek to include women's rights as human rights, or even to question if women are "human" by this overtly male definition, i see this as all the more reason to seek inclusion. first, to assert that humans are "independent rationally self interested individuals" is nearly senseless. certainly this is a view that is popular in america, but the lone cowboy spirit in the USA in more an aberration to the rest of the world than a norm, isn't it? isn't this mad-cowboy disease something that we should be trying to change rather than just stepping away and attempting to ignore?

as the rest of the world slowly comes around to the nonsense of the "independent rationally self interested individuals" idea, isn't this something that feminists should be leaping at? a chance to fill the void and make some corrections? or is that just me being male?

i know i for one would like to see a more balanced world. how about we try finding some feminine systems of rights and laws? or better yet, can't we at least try a system that could steer a path between them both?

i don't know, maybe you can't teach an old male philosopher new tricks, but i am willing to try. is someone willing to teach?

Stan Winston

Stan Winston has left this world. he isn't somebody that most people knew something about. the news of the day wasn't replaced by stories about him on 24 hour news networks. thousands of people didn't do TV interviews about him that day. the president didn't mention him. many people have no idea who he is.

some do though. some might have caught a little about his death in the news. hollywood mentioned it. many there knew him.

he was the kind of person the geeky types might have known. he did things we respect.

what did he do? he brought aliens to life. he gave rise to the terminator. he helped dinosaurs walk the land. he gave vampires the power to frighten us.

Stan was a makeup/special effects/CGI wizard.

when i was still pretty young, i recall watching "Aliens" and "Terminator" and being scared outta my wits by the incredible effects. that was Stan.

Predators? he brought those to life too. Dinosaurs? them too.

T3, Ironman, Bigfish, Pearl Harbor. what he did best was mix together makeup work, animatronics, models, and CGI. he did a little of it all. that is why the stuff he did looked so good. it never depended on a single method, but used every possible tool in the box to make the effect look as real as possible.

he won an entire closet full of awards, including 4 oscars, by making things that couldn't possibly be real, exist on the screen.

i am geek, i admit it. when i heard that he had died, i actually knew the name without hearing the rest of the news blurb. my first thought was that without him, some of the scenes that snuck into my nightmares would never have happened.......

damn he was good. i am gonna miss his work.

critical thinking

there are two kinds of idiots in our climate

Part whatever in a series...

in what may have to be an on going theme, i post another comment on critical thinking...



that is not a great picture. i mean it is ok, but nothing special. i took it, and post it here for one reason only.....

imagine standing in front of this view. imagine that it is about 40 degrees. imagine that you have just learned that the weather is so cold and the growing season so short that the trees in the distance stand only 3 feet tall, even though they are 400 years old. imagine that you just learned that 3 glaciers feed into the lakes in this valley. imagine that all you can smell is pine, and the ice floating on the water. you can actually Smell the ice....

now imagine that you stepped into the edge of the lake, in about 8 inches of water, in sandals, and then turned and yelled at the tour guide who told you all of the above information, "You didn't warn me that it is cold water!"

cause about 4 seconds before i took that picture, that is what i watched a woman do.

it boggles the mind.

the stupidity goes on

"“John McCain stood up to the President and sounded the alarm on global warming five years ago. Today, he has a realistic plan that will curb greenhouse gas emissions,” an announcer says in the ad. The 30-second spot also says that McCain’s plan “will help grow our economy and protect our environment.”"

As mentioned below, the "realistic plan" includes drilling for less than a years worth of oil that we won't see for 17 years. By destroying ANWR.

I missed the realistic part. And the protecting the environment part. And the part where giving more cash to the already loaded oil companies is an economy grower. And the part where that cuts emissions.

OK, not one word of the plan actually relates to one word of the claims. Except as an antonym.

McCain, not just fail, Epic Fail.

how do these people walk and chew gum at the same time?

there are two kinds of fools in our government

Part whatever in a series...

John McCain, today:

""We have proven oil reserves of at least 21 billion barrels in the United States. But a broad federal moratorium stands in the way of energy exploration and production,” McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, will say at a Houston speech late Tuesday afternoon, according to advance excerpts released by his campaign. “And I believe it is time for the federal government to lift these restrictions and to put our own reserves to use.""

So lets do some math...

1. America currently uses 22 billion barrels a year.

2. McCain, is wrong (or lying, he is a republican after all) about the figure. 21 billion was 2 years ago. It hasn't stayed at that amount, and it isn't growing. The current estimate is 18.

Even if he was right, and we could get at all of it, (which we can't, and not because of a moratorium) that is a whole year of oil. Less actually.

So Mr. Straight talk, what do we do for 2010?

Naturally that is an oversimplification. First of all, we can't get it all. Some is simply not accessible by modern technology. And the stuff we can get too? Well it will take about 17 years to get a meaningful amount to market. Won't that be helpful? If it is going to take 17 years anyway, why not use that time and money to develop alternative energy?

And when it does get to the market, it will make a huge difference. In fact the department of energy estimates that if the current price holds until then, that drilling will drop the price 50 whole cents! Go wild! Buy an SUV! Buy 2! Buy a Hummer!

But then that is assuming that the oil companies pass the savings on to us.

....you know, those companies that just posted record profits even though they are getting record size tax breaks?

Yeah, I bet they slash prices to the bone......

a lack of critical thinking

there are two kinds of denial in our climate

Part whatever in a series...

I am sitting an airport, waiting to board, and listening to a man explain that global warming is all a lie, because, "when you see chunks fall off those glaciers? That has been happening for like, 75, or even 100 years!"

Actually, make that hundreds of thousands of years. And it is called sluffing or calving. And it has less than nothing to do with warming, or cooling, or ice growth, or loss. It has to do with the fact that the glacier is leaving a stable land area and over hanging the water. At that point the weight of the ice overcomes the strength of it, and pieces fall off.

It is hard to prove any fact to man that has an interest in not believing a fact. But the fact remains.

the enemy as the 'other'

there are two kinds of characters in our story

Part whatever in a series...

a woman came up to me and said "I'd like to change your mind, with wrong ideas that appeal to you though I am not unkind"
They Might Be Giants

There is a quote about how your enemy is not the bad guy of the story is his or her own mind. We are a story telling creature. We love our lives as a narrative. We are each, in our minds, the hero or heroine of a special tale that takes us to be the center of the story. The center of the universe. And that exactly how the "villian" of our own story sees themselves. As the hero...

I have been involved in a discussion group about global warming the last few weeks. The people in it are pretty good about not demonizing people who think that climate change is just a load of shit. Not everyone is like that. It is easy to see those who disagree with as deluded, idiots, fools. But they are the Hero in their own story. And we are often the villian.

It is harder to see people like oil executives as not being the villian. That is why I keep thinking of the first line of the above song...

What is the villian in any story, except a potential hero that accepted an appealing, yet wrong, idea as truth? Doesn't even the hero sometimes accept mistaken beliefs that have an appeal at the time? So what is evil exactly? Is there any evil that cannot be explained this way?

But why should we accept such an explination. An explination that humanizes our "enemies" and leaves us all a mistake away from being "evil" ourselves.....

Those who battle monsters...

Blogging by phone

I actually have nothing to say, I just wondered if I could blog by iPhone. If this works, then the answer is yes.

That sounds like a "if you can read this" type of note.

"If you can read this I have been captured by two kids who claim to be mine. They are holding hostage and forcing me to pick them up from school!"

If you told me abouting blogging, and that one day I would post from a phone, way back 26 years ago when I first used a computer, what would I have thought......

blogging, i just don't do it

Look i know this is likely pretty obvious to the 3 people who might read it, what with the 3 month gap between posts and all, but i am struggling with this whole blogging idea.....

this is where the generation gap hits for me.

just writing that seems odd. i was the administrator to a computer network for about 6 years, i ran an irc network for several years. i have a laptop, 2 desktops, 2 iphones and 2 other ipods in the house. i have an AppleTV. i have built over 2 thousand computers myself, by hand, from the ground up. i remember using BBS. i used the first version of netscape. hell i paid for it! most people who would read a blog didn't even know there was a time browsers weren't free.....

but. i. just. don't. blog.

i have two blogs. but damn it it is a habit that i have just not been able to get into.

anyway, i bring all that up in order to post a single link.

this one.

that is the blog of my little brothers SO. and that post is about a car accident. my car accident.

....of which i sent pictures to her, so that she could blog it. cause i am just too damn lazy. i guess.

anyway, she does a nice job with it. and she saved me having to write it.

....so that i could instead write about how i don't ever write.

seriously, that is all you really need to know about me...

the nuclear option, part II

Lets imagine that the issues i covered in part I are simply either wrong,or immaterial. Are there further objections to the nuclear option?

Water is a resource that has long been taken for granted in some parts of the world, but is more and more becoming an issue as increasing populations and food growth pressures bring water usage policies to the fore. Here in the mountain west, it is not at all uncommon to be restricted in water usage. The southeast US is experiencing an exceptionally harsh drought this year. water is quickly become a serious concern, and climate change will only exacerbate the problem.

So we need nuclear power to stop climate change and help relieve water issues, right?

Here is a little fact from Georgia, a state currently hit rather hard by drought: "the (four) Nuclear power plants in Georgia require huge amounts of water, consuming tens of millions of gallons of water per day."

So we should change the warming earth problem for a lack of water problem?

Interestingly, in looking for information on this problem, the primary response from pro-nuclear writers is that nuclear plants can easily operate in drought conditions. Or the even more disturbing "there is no technical reason preventing future plants from being built to minimize water usage." Thats nice. i am glad there is no technical reason...

the issue, to me at least, is not "will the plant still be able to make energy while people are unable to get water for drinking or cleaning," but rather the whole "unable to get water for drinking or cleaning." i am sure that is rather picky of me, but i rate drinking above electricity. i know which one i can live longer without.

yes, before anyone asks, i am well aware the fact that we are not in such desperate straights that we can not get water to drink. Yet. And yes, i also know that other electrical generation methods need water. But the fact that we are not yet looking to trade drinking water for power does not mean that we should proceed as if that is not a future concern. short sighted solutions are how we got into the state we are in now. such solutions are not going to correct the problem as much as they will create new problems.

But lets even forget the question of water usage. Lets assume that perhaps some other cooling method (not sodium, that has proven disastrous) is usable, or perhaps that plants can be situated in such a way that water usage is not an issue. Lets take that concern and put it with the misleading "carbon free" claim and the "waste lasting longer than the human race" issue, and lets assume that they don't matter.

There is still a question of centralized vs decentralized power generation. Centralized power generation, in the form of nuclear, coal, gas, or even many solar, wave and wind plants, is simply less efficient. Generating power hundreds or thousands of miles from where it is going to be used is as intelligent as living on a farm, and raising your own wheat, but selling that wheat and then shipping in bread from the other side of the world.

Power that is generated by any method and then transfered over mile after mile of line is simply inefficient. The line loss, or amount of energy lost as power is sent long distances only increases with nuclear due to what the comedian George Carlin calls the NIMBY effect. "Nuclear power? Yeah i think we need more plants! But Not In My Back Yard!"

Centralized power is simply a bad choice in many respects. The University of Minnesota reported in September, 2006, on the economic advantages of community (decentralized) vs corporate (centralized) ownership of wind farms. Community owned projects provided benefits over corporate owned with a 16% increase in output, 42% increase in wages and 25% higher increase in local jobs. Local business revenues were 53% higher and tax revenues 8% higher than the corporate owned farms in the comparison.

Naturally there is no similar study on nuclear power, since the prohibitive price, technology, and risk of nuclear plants prevents decentralization. They are safe on that score. Even without the NIMBY effect, only a huge power company,with government help, can manage to built one of these massive and expensive plants. The cost of nuclear energy makes it the second most expensive power option, according to the University of Chicago. And that is once the plant is in production. The fact that the nuclear industry is given, year after year, R&D reimbursement, operational subsidies, construction subsidies, etc, etc, etc, never seems to be noticed. If you take away the taxpayer funding, nuclear is the single most expensive power generation in the history of mankind. We have spent, in the United States alone, we have well over half a trillion dollars into this industry. If your power bill reflected the tax dollars you have given to nuclear already, and further broke down the cost of electricity by how it was generated, people would be marching on Washington demanding that the remaining plants in operation be put out of commission, rather than asking for new plants to be built.

According to the Nuclear Energy Information Service, "Since 1950, nuclear power has received over $97,000,000,000 in direct and indirect subsidies from the federal government, such as deferred taxes, artificially low limits on liability in case of nuclear accidents, and fuel fabrication write-offs. No other industry has enjoyed such privilege." That is more than 30 times the amount that all alternative energy generations have received. Ever. Combined.

What could solar power be like today if that level of funding had been sunk into it? Or wind? Or tide generation? We may never know.

Finally, I started my questioning of the nuclear option with the statement that nuclear is being portrayed as a "green" energy solution. The argument is that climate change is now such a threat that we should, or even must, embrace nuclear energy as a way to save mankind. But even if all of the factors i have considered so far where not true, there is a final issue to address. Time. Nuclear plants are a huge under taking, and even beyond the price, risk, and long term solution, there is the simple fact that it would take several decades (as well as money and resourses we don't currently have) to build enough nuclear plants to make a difference in greenhouse gases. And most experts agree we simply do not have decades.

We can cut our energy use now. Immediately. By some estimates between 30 and 45% of the energy generated in the US is wasted. Replacing a few light bulbs or turning down the heat while you are away is actually be better for the environment than nuclear energy....

....and we can think of the lack of nuclear waste and things like that as little side benefit.

the nuclear option

There is a growing belief that nuclear is a green energy. i am, frankly, totally baffled by this. Not only is it an odd choice from an environmental perspective, but from an ethic perspective as well. I not only can't see how nuclear is assumed to be a possible choice, I fail to even see how it has benefits...

The carbon assumption
As author and environmentalist Bill McKibbean says in answer to the 'why nuclear' question, "because it is low carbon- and that is the only reason." Nuclear energy is being pushed by many as a green energy because of its assumed low carbon foot print. There is just one little problem with the nuclear carbon foot print. It isn't all that small. Nuclear creates a carbon foot print in mining, milling, enrichment, fuel rod assembly, plant operation, maintenance, temporary storage, reprocessing, and long-term storage. That is a lot of places to slip in some carbon exhaust in a "carbon free" energy source. And none of them are small.

Pretty much all energy production methods are going to require mining, but nuclear energy actually requires constant mining to supply it with uranium for reactions. And since uranium is low volume, and low concentration in its appearances in the earths crust, it tends to be mined in massive open pit mines. Or sometimes it is produced from a process known as heap leeching, which produces massive piles of low radiation tailings. Something you just love to have sitting around, a pile of radioactive dirt. And that wonderful by-product is created by burning massive amounts of fossil fuels to power the machinery used to create the open pit disaster that we leave behind. Since i live not far from the largest open pit disaster..... umm, mine in the world, i can tell you, they are great to have around. If huge hole of environmental destruction that is visible from space, and a pile of radio active dirt sound less than "green" to you, well, you just haven't been listening to the nuclear industry.

Naturally after the earth is ripped up, we have to create the fuel rods, burning still more dead dinosaurs, reprocess it to be enriched, (guess what, that takes energy too) then assembled, etc, etc.

Even if we discount the massive amount of energy burned in the building process, nuclear is a far cry from carbon free. But lets assume, as many studies do, that it is still more carbon friendly than, say, coal fire plants. That hardly seems to be a tough claim to defend. So isn't nuclear a real possibility?

Carbon and Environmentalism

The problem is that over the last few years carbon has become the representation of fear among environmental groups. Now i am not one these payed flacks by the "burn more dead dinos" companies that have fought even discussing the possibility of global warming being discussed, and i am not about to say that CO2 is good for you, but I am afraid that some of us have forgotten that there are other issues in the world.

Back up this post a few lines i mentioned the open pits and the radio active tailing piles, recall those? Many people would argue that those things are also environmental issues. If we trade CO2 for open pits and piles of U-238, will we be gaining ground?

The United States DOE has stated that America has "thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel and material" and also "huge quantities of contaminated soil and water" right now. Today. Some of the radioisotopes that come out of a nuclear reactor as waste will be radioactive for literally millions of years. 4000 thousand years ago, egyptians where building pyramids. 30,000 years ago humans were painting on cave walls. 300,000 years ago, the first modern humans evolved. One million years ago their ancestors left the very first signs of tool using "hominins" inside the borders of modern china. That is the kind of time scale we are dealing with when we talk about nuclear waste.

Seven generation sustainability, the idea that decisions should be considered for their impact on the seventh generation to come, inspired by the laws of the Iroquois, is sometimes mentioned in environmentalist circles. Figuring out how many generations we impact by leaving million year waste is an exercise left to the math inclined reader......

Ethics of Character

"The greatest penalty of evildoing, namely, to grow into the likeness of bad men.” -Plato

Contemporary ethics has become largely concerned with issues of power, semantics and rules which attempt to force a moral or ethical choice on the actor. I will argue that not only should we not seek to force such choices, but that it is not logically possible to do so, since the only possible standard to measure such choices against is the moral agent in question.
If we are to take ethics, and especially normative ethics, as answering the question “how should we behave?” or perhaps “how do we lead moral lives?”, we are accepting that the answer is a prescription.

“Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.” -Plato

Moral Force
Much is made in contemporary ethics of the reason giving force of moral judgments. In fact the primary weight of the variety of deontological views, it seems, is the force that the rules of any deontic systems are supposed to carry. As Foot says: “No one, it is said, escapes the requirements of ethics by having or not having particular interests or desires.”1 The philosopher who would make an argument for such a system of morals often feels that the burden of proof that is placed upon them is in finding exactly what it is (be it desires, practical reasoning, edicts from the gods or something else entirely) that gives weight to the rule system. What exactly is it that gives binding force to the rules. What changes the “should” to what is effectively a “must”?
By contrast the consequentialist view in many ways sidesteps this issue by telling us exactly what gives the weight or force to the argument, specifically the end result. Our actions are ethical if and only if they achieve specific goals. While these goals might be to achieve an overall good for all of society, or for the moral agents specific tribe, or even the agent herself with no further consideration, they remain means to an end. To support such ethical constructs, it is assumed that we must show that some force, such as practical reason, dictates that these ends are the most rational choice. Again, the philosopher is searching for reason giving force.
The Nature of the Question
I would argue that both methods are in pursuit of something that should not be considered “ethics” at all. This is a fairly strong claim, and will, no doubt, not be looked upon kindly by a great many people who feel that they are involved in the important philosophical inquiry into ethics. Some explanation is thus in order.
The deontological systems, as has been said, are identified by an attempt to boil ethical choices down to specific rule sets. I would maintain that this is an exercise in futility, due to the sheer scope of human behavior and the multitude of choices involved. An examination of a typical legal system in the modern world will show literally hundreds of thousands (if not more) of rules that have been codified into laws in what is a very similar pursuit. Now it may be argued that legality and morality are different pursuits, and I would readily agree. It is my assertion however that a rule system of meaning can only be derived from one of two points of view: 1) a social system which attempts to adjudicate various subjective points of view into a coherent social system (i.e. laws and treaties) and 2) a spectator or universalist view. Let us take each of these in turn.
While a social contract into which parties enter for the purposes of a social system and the bettering of living conditions (like food gathering, safety, etc.) is a noble enterprise, and it maybe argued, necessary for survival, social rules are, much as Foot has claimed, no more matters of ethics, than are rules of etiquette.2 It is my argument that while these might be considered matters of descriptive ethics, they are better consider issues of law, socialization, or cultural indoctrination. They allow us a means to live together. They do not give an individual agent a personal normative ethic.
As for the quest for universal rules, I think that it is enough for my purpose here to point in the direction of Gilbert Harman3 and his comparison of moral issues to the physical theory of relativity. While a great deal of objection may be leveled against the moral relativist camp, I will not and indeed could not give a full defense of the position here. Suffice it to say that I find the argument that there is no universal moral framework, but rather a number of relative frameworks, convincing enough that I will not pursue a universalist approach myself. I suspect that the majority of universalist rule claims are, much like the motivation for postulating desires as the root of all behavior, based on an attempt to wield a power of judgement and blame over others (or even ones self) in order to require a specific behavior from them. This is a curious move. We would not be tempted to blame someone for actions she committed under duress. Nor would we feel an agent to be acting in a moral way if they are forced to do so. We do not ascribe moral behavior to the young child who admits to stealing a candy bar only after their mother has forced the action. Why then should we accept that a action is moral if it is forced upon us by a universal rule or ‘inescapable’ reasoning?
Utility
The consequentialist and utilitarian argument is similar in nature, to my thinking, to the social contract, in that while there may be some validity there, it fails to rise to the level of an ethical pronouncement. Utility is an observable phenomenon, as far as it goes. To suggest that agents should act in ways that serve to further specific survival goals or meet needs is reasonable. But these are matters of practical reason, logic, and perhaps epistemology. While ethics may have to function within the bounds of reason and understanding, it must be more than this in order to avoid being an empty tautology. Agents do not necessarily have moral ends. That an act will achieve a specific end or pursue specific desires should not be used as a rational for labeling it as moral. An act that is intuitively felt to be wrong can hardly be expected to change its nature simply because the outcome of the act produces a good. And yet this is the heart of the consequentialist view.
Again I would argue that a large part of the motivation of offering consequentialist theories of ethics is an attempt to sway or exert some power over other agents. As Bernard Williams said of external reasons, “we launch them and hope that somewhere in the agent is some motivation that by some route might issue in the action we seek.”4 Similarly, I think that many philosophers (and others) are tempted by the hope that we can influence people to choose what we see as moral aims by “launching” the various ‘goods’ that they might bring into the world, and hoping that one of these goods resonants with agents in such a way that they might act as we wish them to.

"I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do. That is character!" -  Theodore Roosevelt

Conclusion
I have given an account of why I feel that two major branches of thought in ethics are deficient in their approach, namely that their method is a rigid and power based and their field of concern is more along the lines of practical reason or law than ethics, but I have perhaps not fully defined what I believe normative ethics should be. While I am only able to give the most vague outlines here, I hope that it will suffice.
As was intimated in the rejection of universalism, I take all moral statements to be made from a relative moral framework. My impression is that the majority of moral relativism makes the assumption that the moral framework changes as we move from agent to agent, and that while an individual agents moral framework may change over time, this is less of a concern. I would like to suggest that just as the moral framework differs from agent to agent, so to the framework differs from situation to situation. Just as I think that we are forced, by our nature, to take a subjective point of view, (we are finite beings with finite senses) so that subjective point of view changes, from moment to moment, dependent on the situation.
The long accepted view in both science and philosophy has been that we must take a detached “observer” standpoint rather than interacting with the world. Developments in science have generally debunked this view. In biology, for example, making observations of a specific organism without descriptions and relations to the wider environment it is in are no longer even attempted. Philosophers however, in many ways, continue to treat moral agents as detached observers that are able to act according to deontic rules or utility without losing a certain detached quality.
As Heidegger suggested, I think that a certain concern for the world is implied in our interactions with it. This concern, rather than an emotional issue (as Kant might argue) to be avoided or suppressed is in fact the key to the beginnings of a true ethical system. While the nature of the specific concern will vary from framework to framework, and agent to agent, the key measurement in such a system is that an ethical choice is a conscious choice, made by immersing ourselves in the situation and acting within the context we find ourselves in, and as a reflection of the character that we wish to display. Ethics must be more than intentional. It is our awareness of an ethical choice and our active pursuit of how that choice reflects on our entire existence that gives ethical value to an action. Being forced into a choice by a supposed universal value, rational line of thought, or external reason is in fact the opposite of ethics. It is a lack of choice. It is the choice that defines an ethical opportunity.
Normative ethics does us a disservice when it is concerned with rules and ends rather than with helping us learn to discern the nature of ethical situations and how to determine what virtues can then come into play.

"mens tastes never change"

get with the program

there was a post, a few days back, about a new ad campaign in brazil. the goal seems to be to shame women into losing weight. cause, ya know, we don't already do that. i feel like it isn't working.....



the translation, i am told, is "Forget about it. Men's preference will never change. Fit Light Yogurt." this is so wrong, on so many levels....

first of all, if the point of the ad is to make people say "oh yuck, i don't want to look like that! i better get some yogurt!" it is failing with a large part of the audience. comments on the other blogs i saw talking about this ranged from "rrrrowwwrrrr!" to "where do these women live? brazil? i am moving!" to "i sure wouldn't kick her outta my bed!"

so ya. disgusting.

be yourself. just like everyone else...

secondly, there is the question of body image. is it possible that these women might be happy the way they look? i mean what if that is just how they naturally are? not everyone is a size two. i am pretty sure. in fact, even many women who wear size two aren't size two. a lot of people have touched on the subject of the unhealthy body image that prevails in ads and hollywood, and they all know better than i do, and i can't really add any quality to the discussion, but the message is still not out there i guess, cause, well we get ads like this....



so while i am not an expert, or even qualified to speak up..... well, count me as one of the mob that is yelling their support.

creating beauty... and?

but there is a point that i haven't read anyone touch on yet, and since it crossed my mind, that is the fork in the road we are taking intrepid travelers... strap in tight, sign post up ahead.



the question for me is, "how much photoshoping was used to make these models plus sized?" seriously, has anyone wondered besides me?

what if these women in these ads don't look like that, but rather are the size nothing waifs that generally model and some art director made them heavier?

now i don't know if that happened. for all i know the images are untouched. a good photoshop artist wouldn't leave any signs after all..... but i am looking at the american beauty picture again, and there might just be a few problems around the lower arms and neck. again, i am no expert, and even experts can be fooled, but there might be some issues in the shadows and texture there.

so lets assume that my eyes and low resolution are not combining to make me a fool for a few moments. imagine if you will an industry that actively seeks people far thinner than the norm, then uses makeup, lighting, hairdressing and even image editing techniques to make them into something far too "perfect" to be real. then they promote those images as an ideal beauty that men should pursue and women should spend endless amounts of money to try to attain. and THEN they need to promote the things that will (in theory) make the women looking at these ads into the "perfect" models in their ads.

...so rather than finding an "average" woman, they use the same tools they have been making illusions with for years, but to the opposite effect.

are we, and the advertising agencies that pray on us, that sick?

starting over?

Starting all over again,
is gonna be rough,
but we can make it.
-Hall and Oats

my wife asked me if i have a blog the other day...

"no, why?"

"i just think maybe you should have one, you like to write and have an interesting style."

end of conversation.

...and then it dawned on me that i have a blog. two in fact. i just haven't used them. in over a year.

hrmm, could be time to dust them off and try again.

so, reintroduction time? could be, could be.

in my very first post i said: "I am not here to get my thoughts to the masses, I am not here to tell the world some truth, and I am not here to impress you with my understanding and wit. I am not even sure how often i will post here."

yep, guess that sums it up!

still, there is more about me. i am an INFP and a philosophy student. a mac user and a photographer. a matriot and a philosopical taoist and many other things.

mostly i am a wandering soul.

...and i feel like restarting my journal.

elected dictatorship

i have an ongoing argument, with a number of people, that America is not a democracy. i used to claim the position that we are a representative republic. it is obvious, we do not actually chose most things ourselves. we choose people who choose them.

turns out i am wrong.

lets think about it for a moment. we elect people to represent our will in the government. but the simple truth is that they do not. oh i am not claiming that they get elected and then do the opposite of what we want. no, they get elected and then do what ever they wish, and any resemblance that bears to our wishes is simple coincidence.

look at it this way. we have ways of expressing our opinions to our elected representatives. they have ways of collecting them. but unless they feel it is a big enough issue to prevent them from being re-elected, they don't even try.

witness the protests before the Iraq war. but they didn't stop anything form happening, did they?

witness the current opinion of the war. a majority now feel that bush was and is wrong, lied, made mistakes, and misled the world. a majority now think that if that is indeed true, he should be impeached.

and yet, when one man dares call for censure, a much less drastic move than impeachment, our "representatives", even those of the opposition party, can not be bothered to follow the will of the people.

what is more, we are so used to it, that we don't seem to care...

our "representatives" are much like most peoples favorite sports team. we choose them, mostly for arbitrary reasons, and once chosen, we stay loyal. the ref can't make good calls against them, they can do no wrong.

it takes a lot for us to give up on our team.

and they count on that. cause there is no logical reason to support them.

i realized this while wondering what a more feminist view of power structures might look like. one feminist view suggests that we must find a way to share power. a way to have power with others rather than power over others.

the thing is, i think this can be accomplished by a true representative government.

governmental decisions are often times about things complicated enough that we are well served to have specialists. a democracy is not necessarily practical. a politician in this sense would then be a person who specialized in two things, first a broad understanding of general knowledge and thinking, to enable them to have the breadth necessary to comprehend anything that they had to deal with in an official capacity, and second, the communication skills to both translate those issues they have to deal with into a simple message for their constituents, and then listen to the responses of the same, and act on them.

that would be a true public servant.

in short, an ideal elected official in this sense would be nothing more than a liaison between the general population, and and the bureaucracy. what is another word for that........

oh i know! representative.

pretty wild, i know. but hey, i can dream.

ethical relativism

"but that is just an excuse for ethical relativism!"

i have heard that phrase, and variations there of, a million times since i first became interested in philosophy. it never ceases to amaze me.

first of all, the word "excuse." the phrase is unceasingly used in response to something that does indeed suggest the relativity of morals. why it is an excuse is not at all clear. it seems like saying that the fact that my children need an education, is just an excuse to send them to school. come again? it isn't an excuse, it is a reason, and a valid one at that. it is also reality. just a thought, but if these people are hungry, isn't that just an excuse to eat?

then there is the issue of ethical relativism. there is a particular section of the population that sees this an evil, a wrong, a terrible misleading leftist communist plot. this is the kind of thing that will rot your teeth, give you bad posture, make you blind if you stay up thinking about it, and make the country lose the war. it will infest your being and rot your soul and send you to hell. their hell, not mine. i don't have a hell, so i guess it is all relative.

lets look at that a second. there are two contrasting views at work here. one view is that there is a universal set of values, and collection of ethics that nobody can deny, that we can discover, the way that we discover a new planet, or a great place to eat, that is to say you just look around, and if you look hard enough, there they are! the overwhelming majority of people who buy into this way of thinking are religious. and by some coincidence, their particular invisible man has already told his believers the truth! in fact, generally, the rules are created by their god. these are the people that argue that if people didn't believe in god, there would be no morals.

the second view is that people make up rules, and that they always have. plain and simple.

so how is your history? how is your knowledge of religion? if you look back on the history of religion, and how it relates to morals, there is one thing you can find, with very little effort. they change.

oh many people claim that ethical values are laid out by a god or gods, but if so, it would seem these gods are indecisive. the rules keep changing. why is that? is it because the already existing and unchanging rules of conduct that define a moral person can change? why no they can't (we are told) can they? so what happens? perhaps we misunderstood, and the new rules are the real rules? reflects poorly on god, doesn't it? can't even get his own rules right?

so what is really happening? simple, people change the rules, and then they change god to allow their new system to have authority. how convenient.

but ethical relativism is bad and we need excuses for it.

got that?

good.

the real issue, to me at least, is simply people who are cowards. some people have the conviction of themselves, rather than their beliefs.

i know that i am not always right. i know that i am not always correct. i know that i am as able to be misled, confused, bewildered, and lost as anyone. but i also know that if i keep working at it, i can arrive at the answer. the key is to keep looking at the assumptions, and to never accept an answer as final (sorry "who wants to be a millionaire fans) no matter how good it may seem at any given time.

but other people don't have the courage to believe in themselves. no, it is far too easy to put their belief in a father figure, and let the work, the thinking, and the responsibility be someone else's. it is simply a matter of cowardly people with lazy attitudes. that simple.

now the danger is that people will assume that all people who have religious beliefs are lazy cowards. ah but that is not what said. look again.

Galileo said, "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

Jefferson said, "Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear."

religion is not the determining factor. failing to think about it is. blind acceptance is not belief, it is not faith, it is not intelligent, and most of all, it is not right.

"the most powerful person on earth"

here is an odd idea from a TV show. just a fast thought.

my wife watches "commander in chief" and i watched it with her the other night. in it, Geena Davis comments at the end of the show about the thrill of being the most powerful person in the world.

...the thing is, during that episode, her character does everything in her power to de-escalate a conflict. there is a radical idea. the thrill of power combined with the desire to not use that power, but to involve all parties and allow consensus.

it is only a TV show, and only a character, and only a writers idea. but i would still like to see it in the real world. i would like to see what i think of (the taoist in me sees it this way) as a more feminine approach to power. let me say that i don't phrase it so because i think that all women would take that path, or because i think men won't, only that in the taoist framework i am comfortable with it would be seen as "feminine" as opposed to a "masculine" view stating that "power should be used to force others to your view point." the actual gender of the person is not important, the attitude is.

Why We Fight

i just watched an interview with Eugene Jarecki about his film "Why We Fight." have to say that i am looking forward to seeing it...

the official site is at sonyclassics and flash is needed.

the film is reportedly inspired by Eisenhower's farewell speech, and is intended to look at the way in which the industry of war influences american life. i haven't looked into it deeply yet.

so why am i looking forward to seeing it?

there is a quote in the tao te ching, verse 46 i think, that basically says "when a country has the tao, horses haul fertilizer in the fields. when a nation loses the way, horses carry soldiers beyond the city walls."

when we look at the things our country acts upon, and cares about, it is clear that the war horses are marching beyond the walls. we spend more on our war machine that the rest of the world combined. we cut funding for schools. we do away with food stamps, and buy bombers worth several billion dollars each. we lose scientific, support, teaching, programing, production, creation, invention... hell every type of job, millions a day, to other countries. but we have a shit load of bombers. we can't rebuild our towns when a disaster strikes, can't fix our schools, can't build a better car, or fridge, or TV, or computer, or VCR. but you know what we can do? we can bomb the shit outta your country!

we struggle with health care. we struggle with medicine. we struggle with equality. we struggle with education. and as much as people like to scream about class warfare, we have gone past that, to engage in class occupation and terrorism.

but we got nukes.

someone once told me that you could see what was important in a city by looking at the skyline. that once in america the church in a town was the most prominent object on the skyline, but today it will be a skyscraper with a company name on it. i am not sure about that. i wonder, what percentage of Americans work for a defense related company? how directly? i foresee a new version of the six degrees of separation game. or the four degrees. two?

how large can a system like that become before it controls the ecosystem it arose from? if we looked at a small town, totally dominated by a single large employer, we would no doubt find numerous problems. this has been done many times. looks at the steel and coal industry for example. yet it seems we have a single industry of comparable size and influence, but over an entire nation. why do we not see the risk?

i can't help but think of the USSR, and their never ending military budget. their attempts to bury America. the way in which they neglected the internal structure of their nation for an external protection. and here we are walking in their footsteps.

if the primary economic power in a nation is the military, what happens if the military fails?

so we can't let it fail then, can we. instead we keep using it. we keep starting wars. we are the primary cause of instability in the world. we are the axis of war. we have to be, our lively hood is built on it.

how long do we think this can last?

[edit] i owe this one to Sue on the walden list. if ever a picture was worth a thousand words...

common dreams page

what do you think, are we into building up our nation from the inside out? or are we interested in warfare? all the above page needs is a few pictures showing the armed forces budget for each nation.

age

i am old.

seriously, i am not, but i FEEL old.

i have just finished my first day back at the UNiversity of Utah, my original college. i have been away for 12 years. i took my time when i was there the first little while too. now, i am old. in a relative sort of way.

i sat down in a philosophy of existentialism class today, looked around, and realized that aside from the professor, i was the only one who could legally drink.

and that, my friends, makes you relatively old. which is to say, old, in a relative way.

or, to look at it another way, some of the students in that class where in kindergarden when i was teaching kindergarden.

at least it will be a few years before i am in classes with people young enough to be my own children.

...but not many.

silence

"why are you so petrified of silence?
here, can you handle this?....................................."
-Alanis Morrisette

a few weeks ago i got a revery. a break. a slight pause on the remote of life.

i had the house to myself. no wife. no kids. the cats had stopped chasing each other and where napping. it started to snow.

i packed myself into a coat and went out into the backyard and sat down. being december, and the height of the capitalism season, it seems that everyone was out and away from their homes. it was silent. very silent. i sat for almost 50 minutes listening to the sound of snowflakes landing on the grass, and in time, on snow.

to me, it was heaven. i didn't just sit, i completely emptied my head, did a little zazen, and enjoyed the silence. both inside and out. i find silence to be the most enjoyable, restful, and fulfilling times in my life. and by silence i mean both inside and out, though more inside than out.

i have come to recognize that this makes me a bit odd to many people. so many people seem to be frightened of silence.

now by this i don't mean that if you walk up to someone and ask them, out of the blue, "what scares you?" that they will turn to you, think a moment, and with fear in their eyes pass up on things like "spiders," or "drowning," or things like that, and say to you, in a shaking voice, "silence!" no, i mean that we show it by our actions.

a great deal of what we do seems to be an attempt to fill up silence, or stillness. how often to ask someone what they are watching on television, and they say that what they are watching isn't any good? so why are they watching it? how often, presented with a chance to do nothing, to rest, to grab a peaceful moment, do we find something to do? how often do we look for things to say to people, in the quiet spaces in life, not because we need to communicate those things, but because we are trying to fill up the silence?

why are we so petrified of silence?

what are we afraid will sneak into our lives if we don't fill it up?

if you think about it, i bet you know someone, likely more than one, who just can't take a moment of silence. someone who will say something, ANYTHING, to just hear the sound of a voice. someone who will turn on the radio if the silence lasts more than 5 seconds, someone who will do anything to avoid a little peace and quiet.

i know someone like that. i am related to someone like that. i will avoid the name, but i still do indeed know them. well.

i am talking about people so scared of a little quiet that they will turn on the TV, the radio AND have a conversation. all at once. all the time. never, ever is a moment allowed be unfilled. noise is what they crave. and the noise never really means anything.

there is a somewhat sarcastic comment made, from time to time, about the "signal to noise" ratio in various parts of daily life. i think it comes from both information theory and radio work. signal refers to the information content, the "important stuff" you might say, while noise simple refers to anything that blocks out the signal, and keeps you from hearing it. i have a sneaking suspicion that the average signal to noise ratio is going down, way down, in the average life. we are doing it to ourselves. on purpose. but why?

well, that is where i get all mystical on you all. i think that when you are silent, what you are really doing is giving your sub-conscious, your right brain, your connection to the collective unconscious, your line to the goddess, your what ever you want to call it, a chance to take over. you are, i think, tapping into a "larger truth." not necessarily because it is a more important truth, though it may be, but because it is a "big picture" kind of truth. a thing happening bit by bit, little by little, building up. the kind of thing that we simply don't notice in our daily lives, in the hustle of life.

but something we notice when we stop, and are quiet. when we listen. when we take the time to silence the laser like fine point part of brain, and let the wider lens of the other part of our minds to tell us what it has pieced together.

and the big picture is not all that rosy.

it is easier, far easier, to make small talk about "that show on the tube last night, did you see it? you know the one!" than to think about the bigger questions, about the meaning of life type of issues. about questions of existence, morality, justice, faith, belief, and truth. there is something in each of us that makes it easier to watch the ripples across the waters surface, than to let the water grow calm, and gaze into the depths, and think about who we really are, what we are really doing, where we are really going. the shallow issues, the surface ripples are so much easier to face. we know that they will be gone in a moment, and that they where of little import. but deeper matters... well, that matters, doesn't it.

...and what if we don't like what we see in the silence?