My government professor talked about this study today. I tried to remember the best I could, but I might be off on a detail or two. I’m going to ask him for the source next class.

This survey was recently given to 900 randomly selected American citizens:

1) If the following bill was proposed by congress, would you want it to pass?

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

2) If you would not want it to pass, why not?

2/3 of respondants said they would vote against the bill. Some commonly given reasons:

*33% were concerned that if the bill passed, it would lead to increased use of marijuana. (wtf?!?)
*26% said they would vote against it because it must be the work of some radical student group.

When questioned afterward, only 18% of the participants could correctly identify the ‘bill” as the 1st amendment to our constitution.

Now folks, this isn’t just some apocryphal anecdote - this was a real survey (I will post the source as soon as I get it). I can barely get my mind around this. I’ve always suspected our society is going downhill, but here is proof. The evident stupidity is bad enough, but on top of that the responses suggest such a bizzare, warped view of reality..

I did some research and discovered an official group that gives surveys on the Bill of Rights to high school students. Apparently 53% of current high school students think all magazine and newspaper articles should have to be checked and approved by the government before getting published. What the hell? Half of our students believe in universal government censorship???

I’ve been planning to teach English, but maybe I should teach Government instead. Or maybe Critical Thinking. Or maybe just Thinking. I’m terrified of the future…

Current mood: annoyed

I was in my bedroom drawing earlier today when I heard a TV commercial drifting in from the livingroom. The product being advertised was an “anti-aging” face cream fortified with caffeine, purported to take years off your face in just minutes!!! The line of copy that caught my attention was, “It’s got caffeine, it wakes your skin right up!”

There are three assumptions the copywriters are potentially making here that I find interesting.

1) Today’s successful woman (note this an expensive, high-end product) is completely ignorant of the biological sciences, particularly pharmacology. Caffeine acts only on the brain. Caffeine is not absorbed unless exposed to the digestive tract or mucous membranes.

2) Today’s successful woman is not just ignorant of the biological sciences, but also simply ignorant. Common sense tells us that topical caffeine will be doubly inneffective: We drink our coffee to get a buzz instead of dipping our hands in it, and even if we did dip our hands in our coffee, our skin does not look old because it is sleepy.

3) Today’s successful woman practices sympathetic magic. The caffeine in this product is functioning as a sort of tailsman. Caffeine wakes us up when we drink it, therefore it must contain the property of waking-upness, which can be transmitted through mere proximity. There is a confusion of ontological categories happening here. This is like eating the heart of your fallen enemy to absorb his bravery.

I find this commercial insulting and I’m not even a woman.

I got a bulletin today about seal clubbing. It’s been circulating for a while - I’ve seen it 3 or 4 times now - and it will no doubt be around until MySpace passes from us. It talks about hunters in Alaska and Canada clubbing baby seals for sport, from the perspective of the seal. The dialog is as follows:

wtf canada and norway
“we” animals are all gods creatures, have some fucking respect!
How would you like it to be whacked hard over the head as a “sport”!?
Norway and Canada have a new kind of tourism. Killing baby seals. They call it a “sport”..You want to call this a sport ?
You’re our only hope !!!
This barbarism shouldnt be possible in our society..
Dont turn your back on us, we are defenseless
I know these images seem painful for you, but we feel the pain. We are being slaughtered and its going on RIGHT NOW…
What gives him the right to kill us? Who is he to decide about life and death?
What kind of sport is this? I didnt harm anyone. I was just swimming around..
Please help me and my friends…
You cant just ignore these images.. Keeping silent and doing nothing makes you guilty…
Please help us
Please dont leave us alone…

A representative picture:

Before considering the issue, it is best to clear up some misconceptions. Baby seals are not hunted for sport but for their pelts, which are valuable because of the soft fur. They are clubbed instead of shot for several reasons. First, clubbing the seal doesn’t put a hole in the pelt. Second, seals that are shot often escape under the ice where they die slowly, and the hunter looses his quarry. Guns are employed when the ice is too weak to support the hunter, but otherwise clubs are more humane and more effective.

People read this bulletin and are outraged - they feel as if the hunters are committing murder. I will admit, I feel the same. Emotions can be unreliable however. Are we justified in feeling this way, or are we being misled? Does the bulletin even present an argument?

Examined objectively, it asks plenty of questions but otherwise doesn’t say much. It is effective because of certain foundational assumptions. To consider the bulletin’s contents we must first enter it’s frame of reference, a frame of reference in which the immorality of the hunter is a foregone conclusion. The writer doesn’t need to make an argument - by listening we have already agreed.

The narrator of the bulletin is a seal. It speaks as if it understands it’s situation, and even makes philosophical and ethical conjectures. Most people would deny that seals can reason, but the issue is never brought up. The seal’s intelligence must be presupposed for the dialog to even make sense (otherwise how could it talk to you?), so by reading we have tacitly agreed without considering the question. This is like being asked, “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” The point of contention is concealed in the premise and sneaks in under the radar, as it were.

If the seal can reason, we must agree with it on all points. “Yes, Mr. Seal, of course it is terrible that your family is being murdered. This kind of thing should never be allowed in civilized society. I’m sure that with the help of the police we can have these people put away. Your testimony will be more than enough to convict..” WTF! I’m talking to a seal! Seals are not intelligent beings. No doubt they feel pain, but they most certainly do not suffer like us because they are not self-aware. Male seals eat their offspring on a regular basis - perhaps we should try them in court? The idea is absurd because a seal is not a person and cannot be morally culpable. In the same way, it can be killed, but it cannot be murdered. Only people can be murdered. It may be wrong to kill seals for their pelts, but it is not the same as killing a person.

Why is it so easy to view seals as people? I can think of two reasons. First, speaking from an animal or object’s perspective is a common literary technique, used to inspire sympathy. We are accustomed to stepping into the shoes of animals, and it is easy to forget the device is rhetorical, not logical. (or perhaps the distinction between rhetoric and logic has collapsed…)

Second, seals look like people. More specifically, baby seals look like human infants in certain respects, notably the size and position of the eyes. They trigger the same emotional response, and we want to nurture and protect them. This is why I don’t get bulletins about stopping the wholesale slaughter of iguanas in Ecuador - iguanas just aren’t cute. Identifying with a seal isn’t bad per se, as long as we remember our feelings don’t determine reality. The seal may be cuddly, but that doesn’t make it human.

This bulletin reflects a much bigger problem in our post-modern society: whatever we think or feel is real for us. If we feel the seal is suffering, it must really suffer like a person. This is most evident when religion is discussed: “That’s what you believe, and that may be true for you, but this is what’s true for me..” Also with art: “It doesn’t matter what other people think, the important thing is to express yourself and what you feel” Truth doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t come from inside you, it comes from outside. I have never heard an artist claim great art comes from inside, except as a sort of public relations ploy. Art must communicate truth, and truth is external. The artist must first internalize that truth, but it does not originate in him, and if no one gets his art it was probably based on a delusion and is worthless. Anyone capable of making great art must of necessity understand this, thus we have no great art. It is dying, along with poetry and music and philosophy, being replaced with meaningless abstraction. or sentimentalism.

---

I’m sure you’re all groaning after reading this, “Ughh, Matt likes to kill baby seals..” If you think the seals should be spared, consider whether you are living consistently with your beliefs. Do you wear leather shoes? Leather belts? That cow spent it’s life in a stall only slightly bigger than itself, being pumped full of hormones, then was shot through the skull with a bolt-gun. Or perhaps these were used to electrocute the brain:This site is quite informative. Are cows somehow less significant than seals? Cows don’t eat their young like seals do, and while it’s true that we don’t need seal pelts, we don’t need leather either - there are plenty of substitutes. I respect people who think it is wrong to kill animals for human use if they are consistent in defending all animals and live according to their belief. Just getting whiny over the cute ones: a sign of a weak mind.

 People moving really sucks.  I’m instituting a new rule - if you become my friend, I require you to stay put, or else.. (I will beat you about the ears will a rolled newspaper, or something similar..)

I’m taking a communications class, Mass Media & Society.  As a project, I cataloged my consumption of media over the course of a week and discussed the results.  The following is an excerpt that stems from reflection on the few, token hours I spent reading.  It is about the dangers of television and advertisements, and while it was written to be purposefully inflammatory (the prof. likes that), I do feel strongly about the dangers of TV.  If you’ve been reading for a while you’ve heard me talk about similar ideas, but I feel it’s something I should bring up periodically as a sort of public service.

    Books are, sadly, low on the survey but high on my list of priorities. I am currently writing more than I am reading, and the reading I do is on the net. Still, books provide an element of balance than cannot be found elsewhere. They are a few steps back from the fires of television and the weekly news: ideas have time to cool and solidify into something firm and stable within a book; TV just blinds and burns then fades away.

I don’t watch TV, except on rare occasions. I sold my television years ago and have never regretted the sale. TV isn’t inherently bad as a medium but I think much of what we watch is bad – bad for the mind and bad for the spirit.

Our bodies react pleasurably to stimulation. TV provides that stimulation, and as it increases, so does the pleasurable thrill. TV executives know this, hence the ever increasing levels of frenetic action in programming. Cut scenes of less than a second have become the norm - if the camera is still the audience is bored. Unfortunately, this continual over-excitement wears down and fractures the mind. There is no time for logical thought, for consideration or reflection, during that half-second cut: we are reacting on a gut level (great for the advertisers!), jumping from one topic to the next, and slowly becoming incapable of anything else. We are becoming a nation of idiots.

Without the ability to think we are vulnerable to manipulation and control, and TV advertisements prey on that vulnerability. The constant, underlying theme of modern advertising: without The Product you are worthless. Women are shown impossible ideals of physical beauty, images of wealth they will never possess, even visions of tranquility and inner peace, and they are promised everything if only they will buy The Beauty Product: “All this I will give you…if you will bow down and worship me.” We buy success with a Car, fun and companionship with Beer, and not even love is self-sufficient – it must be bought with a Diamond, nothing else will do.

I could go on about TV, about televised news creating a culture of fear and hate and political debate being reduced to an exercise in acting,..

I’m applying for a job retouching photos for an add agency.  They require 3 before / after headshots as part of the application.  I retouch pictures all the time but I never do people, so I’m currently fixing up portraits of my mother, grandmother, and brother.

I’ve worked with Photoshop for 6 years now, and as a consequence I can tell when images have been altered.  I pick out the modifications in magazine spreads and on billboards to amuse myself while waiting for the dentist or the bus.  The practice is so universal I often assume everyone knows about it.  And most people do know, on some level…  I knew, even when I was little, that people with computers made changes to the pictures in my magazines.

Unfortunately, knowledge isn’t enough to protect us from everything that’s false.  We are constantly assaulted with images, far to much information to analyze, and the normal, natural response is to believe them.  Our brains are wired to trust our eyes, and for good reason.  Until 20 or 30 years ago this kind of subtle deception was impossible - if you saw someone’s face, that was their face, no need to waste time considering.

The upshot is for each advertisement we pick apart and reject, a hundred others slip through the gate while the gatekeeper is occupied and are welcomed by the subconscious as truth.  I’m lucky.  I’ve spent so much time immersed in the software that I can see the deception without thinking.  The rest of you aren’t as lucky, and while you may not realize it, the deception is all around you.  I’d say 95% of the images in newspapers and magazines have been significantly altered (i.e. not just color correction).

As an example, lets take a look at what I’ve been working on.  First the original:

And now the altered version:

Some of the changes are easy to spot.  The center vase on the windowsill has been removed and the missing background drawn in (just for fun).  The molding on the wall has been removed.  The saturation and contrast have been increased.

Something else is going on however - something subtle and insidious - something you may not have noticed.  Start by inspecting my mother’s forearm.  See how the blemishes and imperfections are missing?  This is called airbrushing, and is standard in every magazine shot (her face is airbrushed as well but the arm is easier to see because I did a poor job on it.  I went too far and it isn’t quite believable.)  Now, look at the shape of the arm.  It is not just smoother but smaller as well.  In fact, I shrunk her whole body, dropped her shoulder, and lifted the right side of her chest (left side of picture).  All this makes her look thinner and younger.

Similar tricks were done with the face.  I trimmed the sides of her cheeks and the bags under her eyes, removed many of the wrinkles and blemishes, subtly raised the corner of her mouth to give her a more pleasant look, evened out her skin tone, and softened and colored her hair.  The final result is something that looks like my mother perhaps 15 years ago.  I’m an amateur - someone really good could knock off 20 or 25 years.

Are these changes, these visual deceptions, harmful?  It isn’t an easy question.  We often discuss the impact of advertisements on body image, and though it isn’t the most important problem it is perhaps the most obvious.  When we constantly see people with artificially perfect bodies we start to think of them as normal, and of course we can’t measure up, hence depression, anorexia, marital strain and sexual issues, etc.

The real evidence of harm, and in fact what set off this blog, is my mother’s reaction to her picture.  She hugged me, almost started crying, and said, “It’s me, but how I’m supposed to look.”  That’s what advertising does to people.  I don’t know how to protect you or myself, but I at least want to make you aware, and to remind you that everything, everyone you see in an add is fake.

I first heard this when my father used it as a sermon illustration.  It was written in the 1920’s and is thus one of the earliest texts on the power of positive thinking:

*To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.
*To talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet.
*To make all your friends feel that there is something worthwhile in them.
*To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true.
*To think only of the best, to work only for the best and to expect only the best.
*To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.
*To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.
*To wear a cheerful expression at all times and give a smile to every living creature you meet.
*To give so much time to improving yourself that you have no time to criticize others.
*To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.
*To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud word, but in great deeds.
*To live in the faith that the whole world is on your side, so long as you are true to the best that is in you.

Self-help philosophy is endemic in the world of buisness and the book store, but it is visible throughout our culture and many subscribe in a vauge sort of way.  Conversely, I think most sensitive people would find this creed offensive, but why?  How can you argue with something so uplifting?

Some of these principles are excellent (we should always strive to make people feel loved and rejoice at their success), but others could only be followed through self-deception.  How shall I wear a cheerful expression at all times?  To do it I must shut my eyes, cover my ears, and smile at my own imaginings, because life is full of things that cannot be smiled at.  Should I smile at my co-worker who has her child killed and vacuumed out of her body, the holy image of God extracted like a foreign growth?  Or perhaps I should smile when I see His image sleeping under a bus bench, infested with lice and covered with open sores, because no one can be troubled to help? (This must be a holy land - it seems to consist entirely of priests and levites..)

Even worse is the injunction to think well of yourself.  If you know me, you know I am not a good man.

Self-help is, at it’s root, a false religion.  It sets out principles then promises salvation (happiness or self-realization) if they are followed.  And here is the lie:  It tells us we are capable of perfection, that even the world will be perfect if we believe, when fact we are hopelessly flawed and need to be saved from ourselves.  Suffering is entwined with this life so intimately that they cannot be seperated - the threads of it touch everything and smiling will not protect us.  Our only hope, after the example of Christ, is to pray for the strength we will never have on our own.

‘Yes, Lord’, they replied. There have been a number of sting rays found dead in the same area where he died.
They were outcasts: unclean spiritually and physically.”

-spam email

I receive hundreds of spam emails purveying, among other things, pills that grant an enormous penis and the sex drive of 10 men.  I am especially perplexed by the offers for increased libido..

Think of it this way: most people probably don’t have enough oppertunity to satisfy their desire.  There are, admittedly, those unfortunate anhedonics with little or no desire, but they are relatively rare - most people aren’t getting enough action.  So if I am a typical person and I want my desires completely satiated, I must either 1) have more sex, or 2) decrease my sex drive.  Increased libido is going to leave me even less satisfied.

It is a strange thing to want to want more sex.  Not to just want more sex, but to want to want more.  People must feel like they aren’t meeting some standard of horniness.  Which is probably the case.  Sex is held up as perhaps the highest ideal in our culture, so it’s natural to feel like you ought to think about it all the time, even if you don’t.

Our obsession can be seen through a simple experiment.  A Google search on “how to increase libido” returns 33,200 hits.  A search for “how to decrease libido” returns 107.  Most of those are a repeat of the same forum posting, in which a woman complains that she has too much sex drive because of her pregnancy and everyone else tells her to shut up.

The Church of Scientology (my favorite cult) performs a process called auditing on it’s members which purportedly gets rid of either bad memories or else alien spirits stuck to the body (the explanation depends on how gullible you are and how much you’ve paid).  Auditing uses the e-meter, an electrical device that is designed to detect “spirit frequencies”, but which is in reality an ohmmeter.  It sends a small current through the body via tin cans held by the subject, which it uses to measure the body’s resistance, much like a lie detector.

There is speculation that exposure to this continual, low level current causes the release of endorphins, promoting a sense of well being and encouraging the cultist to return for more auditing.  I am currently running 12 VAC through my ankles to see if this is in fact the case.  I will report the results after an hour - the typical length of an auditing session..

Results:

1) The electricity became painful after half an hour or so - my feet and ankles started to ache.

2) Apart from the aching, there were distinct, albeit mild, mental effects which were pleasurable.  These included a general sense of well being and a slight feeling of intoxication (perhaps the equivalent of one or two beers).

3) I now feel vaugely ill.  It has been about an hour since I removed the electrodes.

In conclusion, these pleasurable effects might convince someone that auditing is beneficial.  They are subtle enough to be misattributed, and it seems the scientologist would feel better during the process then sick afterward, which could be reinforcing.  I would personally prefer the beers..

Current mood: listless

//diatribe

Talking with Joe tonight reminded me of my college anthropology classes and of the sorry state of that science (I was dissapointed by most of the social sciences).  A discipline that codifies human behavior without accounting for free will is doomed to fail, but anthropology is particularly bad.  When the spiritual (that which ultimately makes us human) is ruled out a priori, large portions of any culture seem absurd.  These absurd elements must be reckoned with for the sake of a complete theory, however, and the reckoning is performed by tacitly assuming the culture is full of idiots.  Anthropology deals with the surface appearance of spirituality extensively, almost obsessively, but it fails by refusing to consider the inner experience that drives the outward expression.

Examples:

Many cultures bury their dead with food, weapons, or other valuables, ostensibly as provender for the deceased in the life to come.  Anthropology assumes actions must be dictated by a physical logic, even if it is faulty logic (only physical needs are real), and therefore other cultures must think the dead have a physical need for food and weapons.  The truth is people bury the dead with valuables simply because it is a proper way of showing love and respect.  Our own culture inters people with flowers, military uniforms, guns, instruments, and any number of other things, not out of an absurd belief that the objects will be physically transported to the afterlife but as a symbol for what has been lost in this life.  I have no doubt ancient cultures performed their funeral rites for the same reason.

Ancient people described nature as a manifestation of the gods or of spiritual beings.  Thunder is the voice of a god, the mountains are his body, etc.  Anthropology tells us this pacified primitive man; it made the frightening and unknown aspects of nature feel safe and familiar.  Only physical things are really frightening, storms and earthquakes and such, so people used the gods to explain them away (spirits aren’t scary because deep down we know they aren’t real..).  Anyone who walks in the woods at night will see this is patently false.  Thunder and the howling of the wind are merely scary so long as they are only thunder and howling.  Once they are manifestations of a being, of some intelligent Other, they become terrifying.  To see the world as a manifestation of the gods without knowing the christian God of love is to see a world full of not only danger but of the utterly alien as well, it makes things not better but a thousand times worse.

The ancients described nature that way simply because nature is that way.  A Presence does manifest itself in the dark and wild places of the earth, and it is our culture that is deluding itself when it says otherwise.  We have pushed away or destroyed anything that might give us a taste of that Presence, and the anthropologist in his ignorance can thus say the gods are less frightening than a rain-storm without laughing at his own theory.

end diatribe//

No stars tonight.  When it is overcast the cloud layer reflects light from the city and it never gets really dark.

(credit goes to G. K. C. for some of the ideas here)

Current mood: angry

For the past few months WePackItAll has been packaging Impact 10mpg tablets, little mustard colored pills you put in your gas tank to improve something or other.  This production run has disturbed me from it’s inception because:

1) The tablets smell poisonous (they make me nauseous, in fact), and disintigrate into a fine powder that gets into everything.

2) Gasoline additive and vitamin pills are packaged in the same machine. The machine is admittedly cleaned between jobs, but I know how thorough this cleaning is..

I’ve been avoiding the production room as much as possible, but the machine operators aren’t so lucky - they are stuck breathing the fumes and getting covered in sticky yellow dust for eight hours at a time.

Today I ran across the certificate of analysis for Impact tablets. Impact is pressed 5-bis (cyclopentadienyl) iron (ferrocene). The MSDS for ferrocene reads in part:

“Prompt medical attention is required in all cases of exposure to Bis(Cyclopentadienyl)Iron and its by-products. Rescue personnel should be equipped with appropriate protective equipment (e.g. Self-contained breathing apparatus) to prevent unnecessary exposure.

Skin

Contact may cause severe burns. Fumes may cause irritation. Immediately flush affected areas with large quantities of water. Remove affected clothing as rapidly as possible if not stuck to skin.

Eyes

Contact may cause severe burns. Fumes may cause irritation.. Persons with potential exposure to Bis(Cyclopentadienyl)Iron should not wear contact lenses. Flush contaminated eyes with large quantities of water for at least 15 minutes. Hold eyelids open to ensure complete flushing.

Inhalation

May cause irritation. Move exposed personnel to an uncontaminated area quickly using self-contained breathing apparatus. If breathing is difficult, give oxygen. If breathing has stopped, apply artificial respiration. Medical assistance should be sought immediately. Keep victim warm and quiet.”

Further in there are recommendations to evacuate if the chemical is released and to purge contaminated equipment with an inert gas before attempting repairs.

The very first time I smelled this vile stuff I thought, “hmm, smells like some poisonous poisonous organic metal compound..” and lo and behold! Giving the workers dust masks and wiping the blister machine with Simple Green before packaging B-12 vitamin pills is not adequate. Dust masks don’t qualify as self-contained breathing apparatus.  I’m not sure what to do yet, but something must be done.