Pissing away the Future

So here's the deal. Climate change is a thing, its a big thing and by thing I mean problem. Now by problem I don't mean, "oh we're gonna have to have some really uncomfortable discussions." I mean the world as we know it is changing at a frankly alarming pace and if we don't, as a species, do something drastic about it with a fucking quickness a horrific number of people are going to die. It might not seem like it but I hate to soapbox about this, and not just because I think humanity could probably benefit from a bit of a pruning. I hate to get into the climate change thing because talking about it is largely a meaningless proposition for someone like me. Either you agree with me that its a problem and are taking steps in your own life to do what you think can help, you don't care either way and just want to get on with your business, or you think all this "climate" nonsense is just a conspiracy to control the populace or what the fuck ever. If you fall into that last category, by the way, we can't hang anymore and I sincerely hope you die in a painful and culturally scarring fashion, that others may learn from your failing.

The reason I feel the rather rare desire to approach this topic is because of something said on The Nightly Show last week. Usually, I really enjoy Larry Wilmore, he's witty and direct. But to see him flipping shit to the people trying to come up with solutions to a problem that has been plaguing California (not to mention huge swathes of the rest of the fucking planet) for years, a problem that even more of us are staring down the barrel of, pissed me pretty badly off. All water is recycled. Water treatment is a colossal part of the world we live in and people have been doing it in one way or another for a very fucking long time. Some people feel icky about the prospect of drinking water that used to have shit in it and to some extent that makes sense. Unfortunately for these folks pretty much all water has had shit in it. A goodly amount of it has probably been piss. Odds are you drank a little formerly-piss water today even. That's why filtration systems exist, so that by the time you drink it, your water doesn't bear any meaningful resemblance to the piss (or commercial waste, or industrial run off) that it used to be.

I'm hitting this one pretty hard but its not just water. A while back the U.N. suggested people start phasing insects into their diet to prevent against possible insecurity in the food supply. Of course it was kinda laughed off, but livestock is hard to raise, and costly, and if something goes wrong (like the world smolders and livestock becomes too resource intensive to keep alive) a huge number of people are going to be fucked. We can't afford to laugh off solutions at this point, no matter how icky it makes us feel. There are problems amassing in the world, too many to face down and certainly too many to ignore, and its not just irresponsible to keep calm and carry on, its self destructive. 

For We are Many

I've been thinking about what it means to be a geek lately. Unfortunately, there's a hint of truth to the idea that geek culture is one built on compulsive consumption. Games, movies, TV, comics: all the things that identify geek culture are shamelessly and actively exploited by groups that either never cared about the artistry of these media, or have been driven to forget what love they had. This is pretty fucking clear when you look at how many comic book movies have been scheduled and how they've been handled. All of that shit is a big part of our social presence, but I feel like its too easy to assume these things are what make us geeks. They fucking aren't.

Geek culture isn't about Captain America or Batman or Warcraft; its about loving something so much you involve yourself with it. That's a weird thing to say, but bare with me. Geeks aren't just known for playing games and watching movies, we're known for dressing up as those people, writing our own fiction in those worlds, and relentlessly deconstructing and examining seemingly random aspects of those stories. That last one is important because it really is the bit that unifies us. The tricky part is that isn't some random expression of appreciation for a specific genre or medium, that's a personality trait. Geeks can and do geek out over anything they're into. It's not about what you obsess over, its about the passion. Foodies are geeks, ask them about their favorite food and tell me it doesn't feel exactly like talking to a LARPer about their character. The same is true about people who're really into politics, folks who get weird about sports, and pretty much anybody who enjoys their job after ten years.

The reason I'm all fuckered about this is that I've been dragged (largely through my own shitty, comment-reading habits) into some of the more aggressive discussions about how we're all evil, or stupid, or bigoted. I really hope I don't have to point out how fucking absurd that is. The problem is that we are really, really easily led. Once the mode of exploitation is determined (comics, games, and movies for many of us) the immediately popular aspects of that mode are flogged well past the point of meaninglessness. It happened with Batman, it happened with Final Fantasy, and it happened with politics. The trouble arises from the fact that when huge portions of your obsession have been highjacked and refined to the least common denominator for easy marketing; you get defensive about weird things, you stop thinking about what you really believe.

I don't know how we're going to get away from that, its a little too easy to capitalize and monopolize on people's obsessions. But I do know that we can't really afford to be complicit in our own exploitation anymore. So I don't know, boycott EA games, or MCU movies, or whatever evil you feel like you can do without. Better yet, try to create something of your own for other geeks to cling to. Foodies, sports nuts, Gamers; we aren't really different groups, we are one people with many passions.

The Path to Agoraphobia is Paved with Good Intentions, Poorly Executed.

Over the course of the last several years I've pretty much completely lost the ability to functionally interact with people. I'm not completely sure when it started but it probably had something to do with the fact that I stopped leaving the house. There was a period in which I could only afford to leave the house if I was looking for or going to work and even then bus fare was a prohibitive expense. Preexisting antisocial traits started to assert themselves more aggressively as my whole interaction with society was relegated to news-bites and poorly contextualized academia (thanks higher education!). Over time habits were established in such a way that I could no longer come up with reasons to go out. After I was told outright not to get a fucking job the idea of leaving the house fell even farther from a necessary evil to make ends meet to the least interesting or meaningful way to waste my wife's money, so I just stopped.

I've come to understand, with some work, what a bad idea this was. Justification became rule, rule became habit and habit became neurosis. Now the thought of doing anything at all, much less anything out of the house is accompanied by a combination of panic, apathy, and rationalizing my inaction. Now I can't even trust myself to be able to break the habit without outsourcing my motivation to someone else. I will get better, I have to.

Thanks for playing therapist, beloved internet. Now I'm going to go psyche myself up so I might be able to do something today.

The Downward Spiral is My Favorite Carnival Ride

I've written about my anger issues before, and I've written about depression both in personal and general senses. Recently, its become important to me to note how these things interact and what its like when they do.

First let me say, if you have rage+depression issues, I'm sorry. You're probably fucked. I'm sure there are extensive medication and therapy cocktails that might pull some people out but I've no faith in them. I've yet to see any theory of anger management that seems even vaguely effective and, while I'm sure that many people are helped by modern depression treatments, I find that depression has too many sharp edges that don't take to softening.

The trouble with being a rage addicted depressive is that the cycle never really ends. You get depressed, so you get sensitive, then something happens (usually something meaningless) and you flip the fuck out. When all the face-kicking and abyssal glossolalia has passed you're left feeling (rightly) like a colossal, diseased dick; so your depression gets worse because now you have a reason to hate yourself. As the depression gets worse you get more sensitive and less able to completely describe how you feel or what you are thinking, making you more likely to get mad again and continue the cycle.

Now for the bad news. Nothing you are capable of doing about it yourself will make it any better. Once again, therapy/medication have the potential to save a few of us, but I've yet to see any good works be done. If you try to mitigate your rage the people around you will likely be unable to fully let go of the fact that you are prone to spectacular bouts of aggression. Most people have difficulty distinguishing between you trying to let go of your anger so it doesn't poison you and you being a fucking psychotic. Worse, other people trying to tell you that everything is okay or that they don't blame you will only reinforce the underlying depressive force behind the anger.

I think about killing myself the same way most people think about ordering dinner. I think about assaulting others as at worst an interesting way to spend a day. I've spent my whole life trying to find a way to handle this. I've tried giving in and letting my imbalance run me, I've tried fighting it, I've tried distance and detachment. I've even tried seeking help. The most I can offer is this, surround yourself with forgiving people who love you and want to see you get better and keep fighting. I have to hope that this gets better, I'm sure I've seen it happen somewhere. Probably.

You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Angry

Alright folks, we're back, relocated, recaffeinated, and (after entirely too fucking long) possessed of internet fit to shake the heavens or something. As is tradition, we're gonna leap right back into it with me ranting. The topic of the day is something close to my heart in several, possibly dangerous, ways. Today I'm going to discuss anger. My anger specifically. Its not that I don't care about the righteous indignation of others or the mindless, squalling, rage that some partake of. It isn't even that my anger is shiny and pretty and made of magical hats, though that may bare discussion at a later date.

I'm going to talk about my anger, and the joys and pitfalls therein, because its the only anger I can effectively describe. As some of the more observant readers may have noticed I'm a bit prone to aggression. Rage comes to me with an ease that has been rightfully described as hopeless. I'm pretty good at keeping it in hand enough to avoid actually injuring someone. Unfortunately that doesn't counter the fact that I regularly get the sort of scorched-earth, damn-the-family-line-forever kind of mad that is largely reserved for doomed anti-heroes and relatable villains. Now, I can't say that was never really a problem, mostly because I never really bothered to examine it, but it was something that I never felt I could really do anything about. I mean reactive catharsis tends to be a dopamine loop of the worst kind, and suppressing anger just seems like a great way to snap your fucking brain and wake up in the ward.

Being angry feels really, really good. Dangerously good. It makes me feel powerful, active, motivated in ways that have been unavailable to me in any other state. Its also caused me to hurt people I care about, lose opportunities that I needed to take, and lose arguments that I couldn't afford to lose, not because I was wrong or not thinking clearly, but because I was mad and so my audience was incapable of receiving my point. I've been trying to let go of my anger recently. Not bottle it up or let it out, just let it go. Stop myself and consider the rage itself. Is it productive? Is it meaningful? Or is it just a fire in my chest waiting for the rest of me to catch. It helps, and it is getting better. Do I still get mad enough I feel like I'm going to pass out from the headache it gives me, yes, but only when a succession of idiotic, incompetent cunts absolutely and continuously fails at their one and only job for two weeks despite proper preparation and constant direction. (Later there will be a link here to Brian's post about our adventures in internet acquisition.) I just try and let the useless anger go, go cook something until I calm down, take a few deep breaths and watch a movie, whatever. This is a troublesome process but it is helping. I'm pretty sure I'll always be a wrathful, hate-ridden person; but I refuse to let that hate run roughshod over my life anymore.

Its Not Stupid, Its Advanced.

I talked about transhumanism a while back with regard to some of the common issues/misconceptions about the community. One of these issues involves the fact that some people will not want to be synthetically (or biologically) improved, resulting in a class system where the unmodified are the natural second class citizens. I touched on this issue in my last post and intentionally limited myself to discussing the lack of malice towards the unmodified. This is not that post.

I appreciate that augmentation is a choice, I approve of it being a choice. A real choice even, as far as I'm concerned capitalism and transhumanism are opposed ideals, so financial restrictions should theoretically be absent. However, I feel that choosing not to modify is essentially an existential failure. Those who remain "natural" wont just be at an absolute disadvantage in nearly every aspect of life, they'll have done it to themselves.

Assuming my hopes and dreams are relatively accepted by the H+ revolution and we do away with scarcity dependent systems, the inequity leveled on the unmodified would be, not just easily remedied, but their own fault. The most common source of hesitation to modify is the fear, for one reason or another, that getting augmented in some way diminishes one's humanity. I've covered that ground before, but if you have some religious or philosophical block that prevents augmentation that's fine, but your choice to not develop with your environment makes you obsolete. I'm not speaking from a position of cruelty, I don't hold any ill will as long as those who have no desire to modify don't try to prevent me from doing it. Its fucking evolution. Voluntary evolution, admittedly, but when the species adapts into something demonstrably superior choosing not to evolve with it demands divergence. The unmodified will not be able to keep up with people who have been upgraded, their ability to contribute, or even effectively interact, with society will disintegrate.

When human upgrading becomes an option it will be the most important, life changing decision anyone will make. It will also be an absolute wall in society. The modified and unmodified will quite rapidly segregate as the abilities of the one group grow beyond the imaginings of the other. I'm not saying that people who choose not to change themselves will or should be culled. I am saying that, past a certain point, co-civilization wont be a viable option, and if the unmodified have a problem with that, the impetus is on them to evolve.

Same as it Ever Was

For the past couple of years 3D printing has been getting a lot of attention in the media so naturally there's a lot of false information being propagated. I don't want to talk about that today, but I do think that its important to know about so here are a couple of links. Now, while a lot of those burst the bubble as to what 3D printing is currently, do not be discouraged. The best minds of our generation are working on making it even better, but for now I want to talk about one consequence of 3D printing that has come up often in forums talking about 3D printing that I have seen.

I was perusing Kotaku the other day and they had a post on a person who was 3D printing weapons from a video game. This was cool, if slightly unimpressive to me when compared to people like the Man At Arms crew who make functional, full size, versions of all kinds of replica weapons instead of small plastic replicas. After I was finished ogling the pretties I decided to read the comments. There was a poster who talked about 3D printing as being the bane of all creative people. After all, its just printed out rather than hand made. To the poster, and a few of the the people who agreed with them, it meant that people will be devaluing their work by producing something cheaper with less work, instead of figuring out how to do something yourself. This argument is something I kind of hate, because people have been making it for centuries. There are two main problems that I have with it.

One, just because something is made easier doesn't make it better. Sure, more people will buy the cheaper version, but that's mainly because they don't care about quality, just something cheap and easy. You shouldn't want these people to buy your product, because they will not respect it. Let me give you an example. Ikea. They sell cheap, easy to assemble, furniture. You buy it because you don't care if it only lasts for 2-3 years, its cheap. Lets say a table is $100. Now, you go to a carpenter and order a table, or even an antique store and buy a nice old mahogany table. The ordered table or antique table are going to be way more expensive, but the quality is vastly superior, resulting in not just a more pleasing furnishing but a more durable one as well. This is why there are still tables around from 100 years ago. No Ikea table today will be around that long ever. If people care about quality they won't buy the mass produced shit, and if I was the carpenter who made the table, I sure as hell wouldn't want my table to go to anyone who didn't respect the work that went into it. The same goes for food. I doubt that major chains like McDonald's have any lasting impact on quality restaurants. They might have had to increase prices to make up for lost sales, but people tend to be willing to pay more for quality.

The second problem I have with this complaint is that it has been made about nearly every advancement in production ever. Someone shows up with a more efficient ways to do things and people say that it will kill jobs. Companies pick it up anyway because its cheaper for them (after all, making money is a company's only real concern), and people may lose jobs, which sucks. It's worth noting, however, that the result of this process (often referred to as "progress") is a net improvement in overall quality of life. I hate this because I can't really think of a solution to that problem other than retraining for something else, which some people won't want to do, but that's another post.

People panic when they face change. Sure it will have some negative effects in manufacturing, but think of the benefits it produces (or will be able to in the near future). Artificial organic prosthetics, more engineering jobs, and tea, earl grey, hot. Its a cost benefit analysis, and very rarely is progress ever on the negative side alone.

People are worried that things will change for them, and it will, but that is not always a bad thing. I have talked a lot about change in my past posts and its the same thing here. People who resist change will either be swept along while change happens anyway or just accept it and adapt. The further technology advances the need for "standard" jobs falls apart, and by being afraid of that and calling for a halt on progress instead of just adapting as we go along, you just drag everyone down and that's fucking cowardly.

The Way It's Always Been Done

One of my least favorite fallacies that is used commonly in arguments today is the appeal to tradition. This fallacy revolves around the idea that something has long been valued as true, so there for it must be maintained. This comes up anytime someone says something like "this is the way it's always been done" or in just claiming that something is traditional, and therefore akin to, or even just straight up, sacred.

This is, of course, bullshit.

Traditions exist for many reasons. Going to church is a way of reaffirming your faith. As situations change the need for specific traditions, or rituals associated with these traditions, can also change. If you just go to church because that's what you have always done, going to church loses meaning and, I would argue, value to you as a person. I am not saying that traditions don't have value, I would just like to point out that doing things without thinking  about why you are doing them is harmful to you and the tradition. I would rather see a tradition change then see it stagnate and become meaningless.

Here is a modern example of how sticking to a tradition is damaging to societal growth: Marriage.  Marriage has always been between a man and a woman, so you cannot change it. The thing is, marriage is not just between a man and a woman. In the history of marriage there have been many iterations: one man and multiple women, one women married to multiple males, sets of people intermarried with one another. If this was something that didn't affect other people I would have not problem with it, after all if you want to put limits on yourself, who am I to stop you. But those arguments infringe upon the rights of others because the people making them are too fragile to consider changing their misapprehended term, and that is something that I cannot abide.

Traditions change, and that is the crux of why this fallacy bugs me. We had slaves for a long time, should we have kept that tradition? Women couldn't vote for the bulk of our country's history, should we have kept it that way? Doctors didn't clean themselves before surgery for 90% of human history, should it have stayed that way because it was how it has always been done? The answer to all of these, and any other version is "fuck no, we know more now than we did back then". Context fucking changes constantly (thanks science) and should be taken into account.

The reason this fallacy exists is because people are afraid of change. They are comfortable now, and change might upset their delicate constitutions or whatever. I have stated before, and will probably have to state again, that change is inevitable. Entropy is a thing. You will have to change or you will fall by the wayside, never to be heard from again. Tradition without context is just masturbation. You need to change traditions/rituals to survive with cultural context as time passes and the context inexorably changes, otherwise your traditions become anchors that weigh you down.

Evolution of Information

Dogma is a depressing topic for me. I grew up in a catholic household and as such was taught all the normal stories about Jesus and God and the like, but even then it wasn't as bad as some of the other people in our congregation since my parents also encouraged me to learn about other things which conflicted with certain church teachings. When I was about sixteen I think that my being an agnostic/atheist finally took hold, as I realized that the teachings of the church didn't make sense. I feel even more strongly about this now. As I have grown older and have gained more access to information about the world I realized that the church isn't a force for good, just for its own propagation. This isn't to say that they don't do any good, I just think that the people in charge have other priorities.

Dogma isn't a catholic specific thing. I once had a very depressing conversation with a religious fanatic type that was protesting where I went to college. He belonged to a non denominational church that believed that the bible was 100% literal truth. It wasn't depressing because he believed in god or was stupid or anything, but because when I talked to him I saw a physical change which indicated dogma taking over. We had been talking about evolution and I suggested that maybe God, being a metaphysical being and all, couldn't interact with the world in a very direct manner, and that maybe he nudged evolution in a direction that created people. I thought, at the time, that this would at the very least open him up to the idea that evolution was a possibility. He said that it made sense and we talked about it for a few minutes until I saw his face change to a stern expression and he said that it didn't match with the bible, and therefore didn't happen. This was a heartbreaking thing for me to see. I had, somewhat foolishly, thought that people could easily engage in a discussion and come to a consensus based on mutual understanding. Unfortunately, extenuating circumstances can make this very hard to accomplish.

I have a problem with organized religion for this reason. I don't care if people believe in a god or gods, but in the face of evidence contradicting them, fanatics will completely ignore it and that's a problem. This isn't a problem just in religion either. Religion was just my first experience with it. Its a big thing in America, and I am sure it happens in a lot of other places, that politicians cannot be "flip-floppers". Opponents will constantly throw this accusation around at each other as evidence of them being untrustworthy, weak willed, or both. Here's the thing though: if you have an ideology and you see evidence that shows that your beliefs; be they religious, scientific, or political, are wrong, or misguided, not adjusting your views based on that new information is wrong and very dangerous. In the political world this feeds into way more fucked up territory,where people will side against someone, completely ignoring evidence, because they are on opposite sides of the aisle. They reinforce this by creating an extreme political dogma, to which only strict adherents of, are allowed to remain in power. Those who fail to tow the party line are then continuously replaced by more and more zealous elements. Unfortunately, this radicalizing of political ideology results in a manic power struggle that forbids any kind of productivity. And when nothing gets done things can only get worse.

Not looking at evidence and making the best decisions for the citizenry, and instead "sticking to your guns" is hurting the country. This happens to both major parties and as long as we have a fear of change it will never go away. Fear of change is the ultimate reason that this behavior persists. People who invest a lot of energy into a practice don't want to feel as if the energy was wasted so they fight to make it work. But change is inevitable. Physics says so; even with information. You can fight against it, but it will always beat you in the end. Failing to adapt is the best way to ensure that your way of life/beliefs die out.