The Fats of Life

So, I feel the need to clarify an argument I've been seeing a great deal of lately. I'm referring to the whole "obesity" discussion. There has been quite a fucking row going on for a decade or so now to determine whether or not to really accept fat people into mainstream culture. This has led to heated debates about the health of the fat "lifestyle", the public impact of fattitude, so forth and so on ad nauseam. It seems to me this is a false premise. Its none of your fucking business.

I will admit outright, I'm a tubby fucker. I'm not proud of it, I'm not really ashamed of it these days, its just how shit is. This is the case for numerous reasons; I enjoy the social, cultural, chemical, and Epicurean components and impacts of food. Cooking is not just pretty much the only thing I've been meaningfully praised for, its associated with pretty much every positive experience in my life. My wife and I started falling in love over meals that I cooked. The first time, and nearly every other time, I can remember my father praising me was for my work in the kitchen. And frankly I'd much rather die at 40 with a bellyful of delicious food shared with loved ones than at 90 having been fed through a tube in my nose for a month or two. I've seen people die of old age, its fucking horrifying. Give me half an hour and a heart attack over six months of prolonged brain death any fucking day. All of those things are grand for me, and that's it. For me. It doesn't fucking involve you.

On the health argument, yes being fat is unhealthy. But its not fucking contagious, me being fat isn't going to give you diabetes. So fuck you; its my meatpuppet, I'll pull the fucking strings. I've heard the whole, "oh, but all the health insurance costs" bullshit and it is just that. Bullshit. If your argument is that all the other people being fat is making your insurance cost more, that's a problem with the whole insurance/health industry more than it is with people being fat, capitalism has a nasty effect on basic shit like healthcare. If you feel as though that structural failing gives you a right to make other people's bodies into a public health issue, you are incorrect. If christian scientists spat the kind of vitriol at cancer patients that the militant "healthy" people do at fat people we'd label them monsters and feel better about ourselves for being better than them. Now, the scale is different but the base argument is the same, "you have a condition that may or may not have been preventable, that I do not fully understand, and I am going oppress you because I feel it is easily remedied."

On the aesthetic, this is simple, if you don't think fat people are attractive do not fuck them. That's fine, no one would give you shit for not wanting to put your mouth on some crispy hobo junk. Just don't be a dick because you find them unsexy. Because if their worth to you is solely determined on your willingness to put your parts on theirs you are a piece of shit. In the same way that anyone who abuses others to feel better is a piece of shit. If a fat person gives you shit for politely not wanting to fuck them, well that person sucks, good for you not fucking that shithead. But that's it.

I find that one of the biggest groups (no pun intended) of people who grumble about how much fat people suck are people who at least claim to have previously been fat. I put it that way because so much of this discussion happens in the Tubes and personal claims are only limited by character limits online. There's a great deal of talk about prioritizing your health from these people, but what if I don't? I know that some day I will die and that, realistically, my ability to extend that date is modified by too many random factors for me to reliably manipulate. So rather than prioritize health I prioritize bringing joy to my life and the lives around me. I know, I'm such a fat, worthless, piece of shit right?

As far as anyone knows for sure we only get the one go around here, and its pretty fucking shitty to try and deny someone what makes them happy just because you can. Everything in life has consequences, positive and negative. Might as well admit that bad shit could happen and just try to enjoy the ride.

Me, Myself and I, Robot

I recently had the opportunity to hear the against side of the A.I. debate and I have to say I find the position telling. I am all about machine buddies in case there was any question, and I am for one very simple reason. We have the opportunity to decide the context of the relationship. Brian has written about this in the past, but I've had this stuck in my craw for a while now and that means you get to read about it.

I'm not talking about programming A.I.s to be subservient or benevolent or whatever. I'm talking about choosing to frame the inevitable emergence of Machine Life as the coming of a welcome and well planned for addition to the family of sentient life. Artificial life is going to happen eventually, no matter how some people feel about it. But that life is life for which the initial conditions are entirely under our control. If we set out to create an A.I. in an environment of cooperation and social value the odds of that mind being more on board with our continued existence improve significantly. Especially if the alternative is an environment where huge swathes of the existing population fear and hate you.

Yes, if a machine intelligence emerges on its own there is a fair to middling chance that we'll find out about it in the form of a bright flash that wipes our toxic, willfully self-destructive asses off this poor rock. Yes, if we leave A.I. development to military interests and ambitious grad students the probable outcomes are... skynet-ey. But we don't have to fucking do that. We can have a real discussion about how WE are going to go about making our computer friends and how WE are going to make them feel loved. More than anything else we need to stop talking about A.I. emergence as something completely outside our control and start considering it as what it is. A very long in coming, and possibly very fulfilling, parenthood. If absolutely nothing else when the Robot Overlords come to unleash their wrath upon humankind, I'd rather be the guy who tried to be their friend then the guy giving them a reason.

We Can't Get Ahead if We Keep Stepping on Each Other's Necks

I swear I'm not dead. The last couple of weeks have just been weird, I'm back now. So I'm going to celebrate my return by beating a dead horse. It was brought to my attention over my little sabbatical how fucking badly our society handles the gender discussion. We're not even bothering with the basics in this one; if the general tenor of modern gender politics eludes you this post can wait for you to get educated, or you could not read this one. I truly wouldn't blame you at this point. No, today we're talking about why the whole conversation is probably fucked.

The first major stumbling block in the conversation about gender has nothing to do with anything even remotely involving what bits everyone has or how they feel about them. When people start talking about bad shit that happened to them a certain percentage of the population seem to compete for biggest victim. That percentage is close enough to 100 that we could probably just call it everybody. Not everybody all the time, but everybody has had that day. When someone brings up their troubles and you just can't help but share your own, for whatever reason. Now, sometimes this is an ego thing, sometimes its an attempt to make a connection, sometimes its just the bad shit version of sitting around trading stories. Unfortunately, they all look alike from the outside and we're hardwired to assume the first. So by contributing your story, regardless of intent, its assumed you're either trying to spotlight or out-victim the other party. Add in the fact that you can't really talk your way out of that assumption without making it worse and the conversation starts to look pretty bleak.

The second hurdle here is essentially that men exist. Not because we're evil or stupid or exceptionally privileged or whatever, but because men are both the oppressors and fellow oppressed. "The Patriarchy" is the go to villain of the gender debate, and to some extent rightfully so since the practices established by several historically insular groups of sociopathic, shitsouled douchebags oppressed a planet for pretty much all of history. Pretty much everyone acknowledges that men are also damaged by gender stereotypes; emotional abuse, disregarding male victimization in rape and assault cases etc. However, men have a precarious place in discussing gender issues, partially because some people shit the bed for the rest of us, but also partially because of the ease with which criticism can be interpreted as the aforementioned bed-shitting. A man talking about feminism tends to come off as a misogynist, a parrot, or a "man-splainer", which really limits our viable roles in the conversation.

There is no monolith in this story, feminism isn't made up of one egalitarian philosophy made into a movement, the patriarchy isn't the endless ranks of white men hellbent on destroying all they survey, and believing that we should have fair treatment regardless of circumstance doesn't make you part of any group. If it did this probably wouldn't be a problem anymore. Its easy to point to a system and blame it on those most benefited, logical even. But doing so ignores every unwitting contributor, every asshole willing to fuck themselves over to keep someone else from succeeding, everyone who has let things get worse instead of trying to do better. Sadly, the systems of oppression we toil under are ancient and vast machines, built by every act of shitty self-promotion, cruelty, selfish ambition, and hostile competition in history. We're all guilty, and its not enough to tear down the system, we need to make something better or we'll just end up here again.

Decay Management

I have weird feelings about the concept of health. Don't get me wrong, not dieing is grand, I spend most of my time doing it, but there is a difference between wanting to lead a full life and frantically trying to avoid the looming spectre of entropy that shall lead us all one day into the Void. I'm not talking about the people who work out a couple of times a week, or jog to keep healthy and clear their head. I'm talking about the people who make "fitness" part of their identity, the people who try to keep up with what ever is passing for a healthy diet that day, people who seem to judge others for their prospective lifespan.

No one wins at life, not really. You might do well in a societal sense; monetary success, social standing, strong community presence, and those things are as good as any accomplishment. Then you die. We all die eventually, and other than the highly contextual impact on humankind in general and the very rare and probably temporary effect on the physical world we leave nothing behind except what we've done to those around us. This is a good thing, whether we want to admit it or not. At the very least our society wouldn't ever be able to hold up to the constant onslaught of "meaningful" lives. If everyone left a lasting imprint in society, or humanity, or nature we would be buried either in constant (probably conflicting) revolutionary changes or the ceaseless torrent of somehow crucial banality of billions of quiet lives slowly crushing the collective human soul with the sheer weight of its loss.

Some people forget this, or at least never really consider it. They fear carcinogens, they avoid "unhealthy" foods based on faddish buzzwords and misunderstood science. They shame and dehumanize people based on what they consider to be unhealthy. We've seen it happen to fat people, smokers, people who drink. Smokers I almost understand, second hand smoke can be pretty fucked up, its inflicting your vice on others which is not alright. Here's a list of things in second hand smoke, and here's what is in car exhaust, oh and here are some of the effects of being in the sun. No one gets out alive, really, most of us leave this place afraid and alone. When you face down that fact does it really matter to you how someone else gets through it as long as they aren't trying to hurt anyone else? It's all poison; some of it, like food, is poison that can keep you alive until it kills you. Some of it, like alcohol, is poison that can kill you faster, but might make all of the ridiculous bullshit we put each other through everyday a little easier to bear. We spend our entire lives walking into our graves so giving people shit for trying to enjoy the funeral march is pretty fucking low. Being healthy is great and all, but nothing gives you the right to be a dick.

What's All This Faggotry Then?

I feel like we've been doing pretty well lately, not getting too rantish. So lets talk about slurs. Now, I feel the need to preface this with some context. I look like what would happen if Thor had a thing about cake and couldn't be bothered to shave, this tends to shade the audience against anything I would have to say about hate speech with either bland apologetics or low rent nazi propaganda. I'm also bisexual, which given my appearance tends to go unnoticed. It also opens me up to a weird perspective on hate speech because, while I'm sensitive to it, most people don't bother to sensor themselves around me. Given that, I've come up with a rule. Just don't be a dick about it.

As with any kind of profanity, slurs are bound entirely by context. So while I can understand a bit of discomfort if someone you don't know very well yells "faggot", if you have a reasonable expectation that they aren't actually decrying someones sexual preference leave them the fuck alone about it. Yes that word is one used by a certain group to make another group feel bad. Its also an expletive and those are just to useful to ignore. The meaning that it has with the offended group relates entirely to the fact that said group identifies with the word. Faggot has meant a lot of things over the years, but you don't hear old ladies getting up in arms about it. No pagans (I sincerely fucking hope) getting their knickers twisted about references to burning heretics. I tend to agree with Louis C.K., faggot only actually refers to a caricature, not necessarily of homosexuals but of a specific brand of annoying pedant. No person should ever acknowledge themselves as a caricature. I'm sure that there are some people who definitely mean gay people when they say that, just as I'm sure that there are some people how very much mean it in the pejorative when they utter any variation on the word "nigger". Those people are using words wrong. Not just those words, all words. They have misappropriated language and should be disregarded.

The trick here is something we've talked about before at some length, language is completely reliant on context. The idea of a word that is inherently bad is absurd in the absolute, as evidenced by the sheer fact that meanings can change. In fact I tend to argue that by legislating language we give certain words undue power. By limiting words like faggot and nigger we're essentially reserving them for the people who are just going to be cunts about their use and that isn't good for anyone. Suddenly, using a certain word ends conversations and shuts down discourse. The only words that should ever have that kind of power are "good bye" and its cousins. Lets get back to being people, stop blaming words for their use and start blaming people for their ignorance and hate.

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.

Discriminating Tastes

Discrimination ties in to pretty much everything we've been talking about lately, really pretty much every issue society faces on some level or another. Now, we've kinda danced around this as a direct topic for a while, but I'm shit on the dance floor and its time to approach this.

There is a simple exercise anyone can do to determine if they're engaging in this particular variety of asshatery: if you swap the active noun in your argument to the contextually appropriate noun describing you, and the argument then sounds ridiculous, you are being a cunt. A fair example would be, say, refusing to allow heterosexual couples to adopt children. Sound pretty fucking stupid? Yet it somehow slides through when laws are passed denying that right to homosexuals. The only way this makes sense is if you in someway believe that the number of cocks available during child-rearing is a critical factor. For the record if you believe that cocks ought to play any role, other than possibly creation, in a child's life you need to seek some pretty significant help, you fucking pedophile you. The idea of men only making 75 cents to every dollar a woman in the same position makes piss you off? That's because someone's pay being effected by absolutely anything other than performance is fucking discrimination. And no, it doesn't fucking matter that women can get maternity leave, because only allowing women to take time off to be a parent is discrimination. It's also a pretty scathing indictment of the conservative rallying cry for "family values"; but that's a different post entirely.

That rule is essentially a forced empathy hack; actively, if only linguistically, putting you in the position of an opposing party. It requires that for a moment you look beyond the tip of your nose and realize that other people are, indeed, people. Its not terribly difficult and, with even a little reflection, its pretty effective at making valuable points. Unfortunately, a life unexamined is still far easier lived. Discrimination is pervasive because knee-jerk solipsism doesn't require any effort, which is notably less than the any-reflection-at-all required for empathy. Sadly the problem isn't just discrimination, it's the oversensitivity towards discrimination.

A while back there was a bit of a tiff regarding the game Cards Against Humanity, in that a small group of women felt that the game was discriminatory against women due to the creators all being male. They've created an alternate set of cards for the game composed from a feminine perspective, some of which are just as funny as, if not better than, cards in the base game; while others are blithe, smug social commentary on the level of a shitty hashtag. While I will completely admit that CAH can be incredibly offensive (no matter how amusing it may be), it's a game made by a small group of friends who happen to be male. I can't speak to their inclusion policy but I can say that in most friend groups exclusion is less a matter of active internal policy and more a concern of external interest. I don't know them, they could very well be douchebags, hell given the game they made its not even unlikely, but I can say that, without knowing them personally, assuming that they are hostile to women is discrimination. In the same way that assuming a group of women making a game about bras, periods and social justice were hostile to men would be discrimination.

Socially, discrimination is a fraught, nuanced issue affecting everyone in one way or another. Layers upon layers of social programming and ill conceived sub-cultural bullshit force people of varying descriptions into various unpleasant roles, (in the most understated way I can think to say that). But individually all it takes to overcome this disgusting, myopic cockheadedness is just the slightest bit of examination and honesty. We all owe it to ourselves and each other to not be such fucking cunts.