Virtue

"When virtue is lost, benevolence appears, when benevolence is lost right conduct appears, when right conduct is lost, expedience appears. Expediency is the mere shadow of right and truth; it is the beginning of disorder." 

Lao Tzu

One of the amusing side effects of reading fanfiction for a Chinese show is that I'm remembering a lot more of my Chinese philosophy class lately. Especially when fanfic includes quotes like the one above. 

Actually had an interesting conversation with a few others, based on a scene in the show. 

See, translation is hard in the first place, so I knew there were nuances I miss. Our language doesn't force us to specify the nature of our relationships as much (as a simple example - when I talk about my aunts they're all referred to as 'aunt', and other people have no idea who is an aunt by marriage, or an aunt on my mother's side or father's side. Not unless I add that detail. Just like I have to clarify if a sibling is older or younger.)

There are apparently also a lot of cultural references that I don't have the context for, especially famous poems.

But getting back to that discussion, they were trying to explain some of the context for an argument, and talked about 'position'. That there was an entire "positioning and collectivism source of dynamics".

Which doesn't explain anything at all, I know. I'll try to put it in my own words, based on what I got out of that conversation. Any and all errors are my own, as I'm not at all confident I understand. 

Its like - Confucius had all these guidelines you're supposed to practice. To be righteous. I've written plenty on that before (from my undergrad class), but I don't tend to focus on the many, many rules you're supposed to practice. (many of them are culturally specific, for one thing. Then there's my whole thing about rules being there to serve us, not to make us blindly serve them, and I also think people can get so focused on the rules that they miss the forest for the trees. But I digress).

Those widely accepted beliefs on what is right means that they have a shared set of rules, and so when they watch an encounter its like there's an invisible score keeper keeping track of the score, of their position, and as the encounter unfolds there are things you can do to improve your position. And the reverse, ofc.

Its not like your subjective opinion of the encounter. Not like our presidential debates, where we can argue with each other over who we thought did better. Everyone apparently agrees on who did or didn't have the best position (??? I'm not even sure that's the right way to phrase it).

Anyways. Expediency is the mere shadow of right and truth. 

Mentality

Years ago I got on an organized crime kick. That is, I had been reading up on terrorism (and how to counter it, ofc), and terrorists often get their money through criminal activity. So I also started reading up on organized crime.

One of the things that struck me was the mentality of the criminals. They had a lot of contempt for ordinary people. The suckers and losers who played by the rules and earned a legitimate income.

But here's the thing. If we didn't have all those ordinary people doing ordinary things - like farming, or factory work - we would starve. And we wouldn't have smartphones. Or cars.

People act like it's unimportant because there are so many people who can do the job. They act like it's easy to replace them (though, honestly, it isn't. Even the most menial task goes faster when someone has experience... and getting that experience always takes time.) 

Anyways. The world would fall apart without farmers and factory workers. 

The same could not be said for criminals.

There are lots and lots of books on capitalism, and I don't want to get sidetracked here into a lengthy discussion on it. I will say that there's some truth to the fact that certain skills aren't as easy to find. A good CEO, a genius inventor... they can make a noticeable difference and deserve to be paid more for it. (Though not every CEO is a 'good' one, so they don't all deserve the same pay. And there's a difference between 'deserves to make 3x as much as an entry level worker' and 'deserves to make 1000x times as much'. We look for those individuals and often forget that it takes the entire organization and all the people within it to accomplish what they do.)

Criminal organizations are bad. Oh, the same methods terrorists use to fund their organizations can also be used by revolutionaries... and if you have an authoritarian and corrupt government, well. Perhaps it's useful to have people who know how to get around surveillance and other such things. The real issue is a matter of scale, I think. Like how they say we all have some cancer cells, but that it's when things get out of balance and the cancer begins to metastasize that we get sick. 

A healthy body would have that in check.

There's a lot I don't know about finance and economics, and I have learned the importance of credit and allowing people access to financial resources... so I'm not going to lambast the entire system.

But a lot of the financial types operate more like con artists and criminals, tbh. Like... stock prices are supposed to reflect the expected return over the years. If the stock price goes up, it's because the company is doing well and you can expect to receive more in the quarterly return.

We all know it doesn't work like that. That stock prices are almost the same as gambling. That a lot of people are determined to game the system, buy low and sell high (or short a stock when it's high and they expect it to tumble.) 

The stock price reflects fads and hype, as much as any real valuation of what the company dividends are expected to be.

This is what was depressing me about that book, Kleptopia. I get that people want to make their mark, want to change their status. There's a whole thing in history about the challenge of second sons (in a world of primogeniture, where the first son inherits and the second son has to find their own way. This also doesn't even mention women, too.) That's part of the whole mystique about the colonies, where second sons could get ahead in a way that they couldn't back home. 

Of course, most of those opportunities aren't there any more. 

What's disturbing is that they aren't getting ahead by truly building things. They aren't creating, they aren't inventing. Many of the Russian oligarchs came to power by essentially taking over the old Soviet Union resources for a song. 

And getting ahead becomes more about who's best able to take advantage of the system, of getting yours at the expense of others. Of considering those 'others' as stupid, or weak, or deserving to lose because they clearly weren't as talented, then you have a number of powerful and wealthy people who basically think "I got mine, how you do?"

It's the opposite of servant leadership, the opposite of good shepherds taking care of the flock. The opposite of building, nurturing, tending. The opposite of investing in your business or farm or people.

It's predatory, it's destructive, and the attitude spreads as more and more people believe that that's 'just the way it is', that this is how it has to be, and you either become a part of it or you lose.

Untitled

When the people who benefit the most from society think that only suckers and losers give back to it, that generally means the system is breaking down. (or to be more crude - you're f***ed).

Also - Breonna Taylor

I wasn't sure I'd post anything, because I like doing fact checking before writing and just haven't done more than a cursory look, but it's frustrating that we still have people that refuse to believe there are real problems with how our police interact with POC.

And now I've heard some initial reports about a couple of deaths in Louisville. 

The sucky part is we've got the boogaloo boys and a shit-stirrer in chief, (as well as people angry about police brutality. Many of which are peacefully protesting, but some of which are also interested in violence) so too many people seem interested in making sure things go in the worst direction.

Were the 60s like this? 

Speaking of Focusing Too Much on the Throne...

Am I the only one who finds it disturbing that natural disasters just... Don't seem to get national coverage anymore?

Like, I have friends in California and Oregon. I've been hearing about the fires on social media. 

I have friends in Nebraska, so a while back I heard about the flooding there. 

Also heard about that 'land hurricane' that hit Iowa. 

We had some hurricanes hit the south. I guess they didn't do too much damage?

Maybe it's the way I get news now, but I feel there's been hardly any coverage. 

Hell, it may have even stated when that hurricane hit Puerto Rico, thou that was also tied associated with the problem of racism and that some people didn't seem to realize that it (and the many Puerto Ricans who join our military) is part of the United States.

Odd Thoughts and Ramblings

 I've been in a strange state these last couple of days, where there are so many real world issues going on that I can't really muster up the interest in escaping into fiction... but following the news (and social media) is just depressing, and there's not really much new anyway. 

I feel this wish to be able to do something, and if others feel the same way then who knows what it could lead to? Except that we're in a pandemic, going out right now seems like just about the stupidest thing possible, and what else is there to do to express disgruntlement? More posts on social media, which generally either preach to the choir or get ignored?

I don't know, it's a very uncomfortable time to live in. Given some of the comments online I don't think it's very wrong to say that there's a sense of impending doom. I hope it's all overblown, ofc. 

Anyways. There's protests, and stupid idiots declaring certain cities 'anarchist', which - what does that even mean?

I'm sure it's not really as stupid as it sounds. Or rather, it is stupid, but I'm sure they've got their reasons for doing it. And it's very concerning that the President of the United States seems to be doing everything in his power to stoke civil unrest. Like a less charming version of Peter Littlefinger, he (and other complete and utter morons) really buy into that whole 'chaos is a ladder' schtick.

Which may be true, in a sense. There are definitely opportunities you don't get when things are stable. But the reason Littlefinger is considered a villain is because that sort of calculation shows complete and utter lack of concern for all the people affected by the chaos you foment.

And that's the problem, and my real concern about these trying times. Chaos tends to hurt the common people the hardest. (That is one thing Game of Thrones showed rather well. The books at least, I only saw a couple episodes of the show. All the high-status people playing their games while the common people suffered and died.)

Also the complete opposite of what Jesus taught, btw. After all, what sort of moronic shepherd would go around trying to chase off half their flock? Or lead them into terrain where there isn't any food and they could easily fall and break a leg?

Not only that, but even if vulnerable people suffer the worst it's hard to truly predict who suffers the effect. The coronavirus is a perfect example of this. Sure, the odds are greater that you'll get it if you decide to go to rallies and refuse to wear masks... but there are all sorts of people who are forced to go out in public for one reason or another, so you can't really predict who will get it or when. (This is the biggest drawback to bioterrorism, btw. It's kind of hard to make sure your own people don't get hurt as well.) 

That's honestly one of the reasons I think the Roman empire fell. That is, the rich and powerful got so focused on fighting over the top spot that they forgot about taking care of their people, and things just got worse and worse.

It's also why the Taliban rose to power, and also why they struggled to keep it. Back when they first started gaining support it was because they helped take care of the average Afghan.

I think I remember hearing something similar about the origins of Bank of America. It started out trying to help the average American. It got big and (as happens all too often) seemed to forget its roots. Now it's yet another large corporation that doesn't seem to have any problem fleecing the average American. (I'm referring here to some of the horror stories we heard about mortgages during the financial crisis in 2008).

Over and over again, I think Jesus was on to something when he said you should act like a good shepherd. And yet somehow, over and over again, we keep putting in power people who completely fail to understand that. Maybe it's because the consequences aren't immediate, and responsibility is diffused? They're able to argue it's 'those evil, villianous others' who caused bad things to happen and not their own willingness to justify doing shady things in order to win. 

Like losing the  war in Vietnam, and how an entire generation in the Army seemed to think it was because of journalists and other scapegoats instead of their own incompetence. That if they had done a better job they wouldn't have lost the faith of the American public. 

I know I'm being particularly snarky right now. Some of that is because, well. Current events. 

I'm also worrying about.... Idk. I guess you could say it's current events, but a little more of a long term concern? Some years back I got on an organized crime kick, and it's interesting how in Russia you can hardly distinguish between businessmen, politicians, and members of organized crime.

While in Afghanistan I found myself wondering what it would be like to have a nation-state that was run by criminals. Given the lack of cooperation between nation-states, and the ease with which these criminals operate between state borders, it doesn't seem all that unbelievable. (There are parts of Mexico that the national government doesn't really control. Well, I'm not up to date on the current state of affairs there so I don't know how true it is right now. It was definitely true at some point in the recent past.)

And Russia is definitely involved in our current domestic troubles. Truth to tell, although I don't post stuff on social media because I don't have proof and don't want to contribute to the insane amount of conspiracy theories going on right now, some of Trump's real estate deals make me think he was in bed with organized crime in the New York area and it wouldn't surprise me if that carried over to Russia and Putin. Even aside from the nation-state political level. 

And Trump is bringing the Russia-style mixing of business, politics and crime to the US. 

I had thought we had more safeguards than this. Thought it'd take longer, thought there'd be more pushback. I have been shocked at how quickly and easily so much seems to have gotten so bad - like the fact that the CDC is no longer credible. 

I don't like feeling hopeless and depressed, I know a lot of what we see in the news reflects the vocal few rather than the majority. (Trump has not expanded his base at all, and people are more motivated to vote in 2020 then they've been in ages. Barring shenanigans I'm pretty sure Trump is going to lose, but that raises a whole bunch of other questions. Like, what sort of shenanigans are we looking at? The lack of effort taken to secure our elections is disturbing, to say the least. There's also Trump's encouragement of violence... will his supporters accept a loss, or will they claim the election was stolen and get violent? Of course, the same could be said if I'm wrong and Biden loses. Overall I don't think I'll be able to stop worrying until the next inauguration. Hopefully when Trump is defeated by a wide enough margin that he can't argue he won, and no violence breaks out and he actually leaves.)

I forgot. Some of this was also because I picked up a book - Kleptopia - which is good and somehow just as depressing as 2020. So. Much. Corruption. 

So many people focused on making money and not caring at all about the crappy world they create in the process. That's part of what got me thinking about organized crime again, and Russia, and money... and the problem just seems so massive that I'm not really sure how to tackle it. Especially as a middle-class American with hardly any resources. I know a little bit about some of what they talk about. I heard about off-shore accounts, and how some of the African rulers exploited their nation's natural resources, and about Russia poisoning Litvinenko. I was less aware of where British and American banks (and other Western European banks) fit into it, though I heard bits and pieces that fit in well. 

I'm taking a break to write this because I really can't deal with reading too much more of it right now. Why are so many people so completely and utterly awful, anyway?

Something to Think About

https://twitter.com/Patrick_Wyman/status/1308190919888310272?s=19

I would say I noticed something similar in the way that the debate over our involvement in Iraq seemed to have more to do with the Vietnam War 30-some years prior than any clear look at the current situation.

You can also see this with some of the hysterically awful questions members of congress ask tech CEOs. 

There's nothing wrong with being older, of course, but in this case it's yet another way that Congress doesn't actually reflect the American people. (also the number of millionaires, as well as demographics. Partly because of how much of an advantage incumbents have on winning re-election.)

Stuff like that undermines the social contract. It's a shame more politicians aren't as wise as George Washington and retire, but I think we've all learned to be a little skeptical when asking powerful people to actually give that up.

(I do think sometimes about Robert Ingersoll's quote  “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” - or her, I'd say. Anyways, I wonder how well I and everyone I know would do in such a test. Is becoming arrogant, entitled, and looking down on everyone else inevitable? Surely not... There have always been people who use their resources wisely and well. It's just... Smh. There are so many more examples of the reverse!) 

See No Evil, Hear No Evil..

The level of cognitive dissonance is just...

Ugh. 

State of the Union

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died yesterday. I do not know her that well, and actually know her more by reputation than any research of my own, so I am sorry for her friends and family and offer my condolences, but I am not personally affected.

Unfortunately, the death of a Supreme Court Justice at this particular period of time means that nobody has even had time to properly grieve for her before the political takes started. (And in an all too typically crass move, Trump and McConnell have already indicated they'll do the best they can to fill her position quickly. Like... the very same evening the news broke. They couldn't even wait a day to say anything.)

I am... well. I'm  upset enough that I don't want to escape into fiction, but not willing to join the chorus of voices on Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr or wherever, and I'm not even sure what I really want to say. 

So I figured I'd write some things out here.

For anyone who doesn't understand how monumentally 2020 has been f-ing with everyone, let me explain this small portion of it.

In 1973 Roe vs. Wade made abortion legal. There's a bunch of other things to say about our conservative and liberal beliefs, but this is the one that has galvanized quite a few Christians to become single-issue voters, and thus has created a base that people in power have used and abused to turn 'Christians' into people who support almost the exact opposite of what Jesus preached. 

That's harsher than I normally try to be, but I'm pretty annoyed right now so I don't feel like softening it. But I'll provide a bit more background on how I came to that conclusion.

I mentioned that I was raised Catholic, right? 11 years of Catholic schooling here...

And we talked about the church's stance on the issues of our day. Abortion, contraception, assisted suicide, etc. were just some of them. What I recall the most was this:

If your argument is that life is precious, you have to be consistent. If you want to say that you are 'pro-life' and care about unborn babies, you should also be 'pro-life' and against the death penalty. Also against assisted suicide for the elderly, and various other things. (We also went to pro-life rallies, I think there's even a picture in a newspaper of my sister and myself at one of them. Mom was pretty much one of those single-issue voters, too.)

I do not and have not accepted the Church's teaching on a lot of things, but I can respect the consistency of this position.

As for why I don't accept their teachings, well... initially I tried reconciling my position through what nowadays would probably be called 'evidence based' policies. I recall readings on the various topics, like the cost of life imprisonment vs. the costs - in jail and legally - of the death penalty, and similar readings on abortion. 

Given that women still had abortions when it was illegal (and were more likely to do it in dangerous and risky fashion, so women were more likely to die of back-alley abortions), give that abortions generally came from unwanted pregnancies (which can be prevented through... oh, I don't know, maybe contraception), I would say my views at the time leaned more towards what eventually became called the 'safe, legal, and rare' position. (I also saw an article discussing a South American country that made abortion illegal, and it has some rather unexpected consequences. Like, oh, lots of mothers in prison rather than taking care of their other children.)

I don't want to digress too far in discussing my evolving views on the issue - I'll repeat a story I related before, though. I had a discussion with some of my more conservative relatives where I was arguing for the policies it takes to make abortion truly rare. Like contraception, financial support for single-mothers, etc. 

What I remembered the most of that discussion was how every possible policy option got shot down. If you created a scholarship to college for a single mother, for example, then she is actually getting more help with college than my cousin... who didn't do anything wrong an didn't make any mistakes and surely is more deserving of such help. (That's the subtext, not specifically what was said.)

And I think almost everyone knows the 'christian' position on contraception, even though making Abraham's descendants as numerous as the starts might have been important back in his time and probably isn't all that important now that we've reached a population in the billions. And even though it generally means parents either wind up with lots of kids (I'm one of six. I love all my siblings, but that's a lot to deal with financialy), or they generally just can't have sex. The rhythm method is not really reliable, you see. And, well... I don't think only having sex when you're ready to have a child is very good for a marriage. Not unless they're both asexuals or something. 

Anyways, long story short is although I don't think it's deliberate and I don't think they truly mean to... their position essentially results in punishing young girls in particular for having sex outside of marriage. Girls, because of course the boys don't suffer the consequences, and because even though grown women can and do have abortions this issue is mostly associated with unmarried teenagers. Even though grown married women have gotten abortions as well.

It's not even consistent in that regard, by the way. Some girls have sex outside of marriage and get pregnant, others don't. So some of them are then weighed down by the need to raise a child in a society where child care costs about as much as you can make at a minimum wage job, and good luck going to school when you've got a baby to feed, and yet if you don't go to school (or college in particular) you're probably going to be stuck in one of those low paying jobs for the rest of your life. In other words, this is also just one piece of the whole 'cycle of poverty', whereby people who are born without any resources find it almost impossible to break out of it no matter how hard they work. 

So anyways. Reversing Roe vs. Wade is the type of short-sighted and oversimplified solution that is probably not going to have the results they expect, but is really easy to persuade people to support. All you have to say is 'think of the millions and millions of innocent babies! It's practically another Holocaust, killing those who least deserve it.' 

What I wanted to focus on, though, is how the people on the right have used this goal to justify anything and everything. I'm not even sure how many of them are good-faith actors who sincerely care about unborn babies lives, and how many have just realized that this is a handy way to power. (Single issue voters! You can overturn all the social security measures FDR put in place, and all you have to do is show you're fighting to stop abortion and nobody cares. Nobody you care about, at least.)

What this pandemic has shown - to those who aren't so caught up in that over-simplified goal - is how bereft of moral principles those on the right have become.

After all, if you truly care about the sanctity of life, if you truly think the deaths of unborn babies is a horrific crime - how can you possibly support an administration that has caused the death of a couple hundred thousand Americans?

I will give the average Americans I run into credit for being sincere in their beliefs, even if I disagree with them. I can not do the same for the political forces that use those beliefs to get into power.

They have lost sight of everything. Of their values, their principles, their morals... they compromise all of it and claim it's justified.

And in the end, they're just as bad (if not worse) as those they claim to stand against.

The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg comes at a particular trying time for a bunch of reasons. Creating a conservative Supreme Court has been a goal of these people for a very long time, in the hopes of overturning Roe vs. Wade. 

Mitch McConnell argued that they had a right to prevent Obama from nominating a Supreme Court Justice back in 2016. He came up with some ridiculous argument about letting the election decide, even though pretty much everyone knew he was really doing it because he hoped to get a Republican in office who would nominate a conservative justice. 

He succeeded.

Now, in a moment of glaring hypocrisy if you thought he actually believed his argument in 2016, he and Trump are going to do their damndest to replace RBG with another conservative judge. One that would finally give them that conservative majority.

The stakes are high - and all it took was undermining the American system of government, lying, capitalizing on the worst in human nature, allying yourself with racists and bullies, enabling a government that allowed a pandemic to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans... but hey, they may finally get that conservative court they wanted.

All it took was everything that made them 'the good guys'. They have no morals or principles. They don't stand for life, they don't stand for truth and justice, they don't stand for a nation where 'all men are created equal'.

But yeah, okay. They might manage to overturn Roe vs Wade, make abortion illegal, and make more women die in risky illegal procedures while arresting and throwing in jail mothers and forcing young teenagers to have children that will then make it exceedingly difficult for them and their children to ever get out of poverty.

Information War Continued

 This is a direct follow up to my previous post, though it may not seem like it. The year 2020 has been disturbing and shocking on many levels, and like many of my fellow Americans I have so many questions. Like - how did it come to this? What happened? How did we get here?

Some of that debate is just as useless as assigning blame for the Massacre at Nightless City in The Untamed. Still, there is something that does get under my skin... not in the sense that I think it's responsible for everything. It's more, I don't know... the hypocrisy.

I talked before about how there were bad faith actors manipulating the situation, and credible people being manipulated. But the most irritating part was how self-righteous the cultivators became. How absolutely certain they were, that they were standing for all that is good and right. That they were doing some great service by standing up to and denouncing evil. And yet we all know that they basically looked the other way while real harm was being done. That they believed lies and rumors... and that ultimately they weren't standing on the side of truth and justice at all. 

It's the hypocrisy. And more than that. It's that if they really cared about righteousness, if they really cared about standing up for justice... they'd have actually investigated the situation. 

On the one hand, I get it. Nobody has the energy (or resources, or access) to investigate everything. At some point we have to trust other people to tell us the truth. Like cultivators trusting that the Jin guards were telling the truth about how Wen Ning died. 

On the other hand - how can you claim to stand on the side of right, when you are giving your trust to bad faith actors? And in the process allow injustice and wrong to be ignored? 

How can you not be aware of the cognitive dissonance it takes to say "this is wrong and a sign of how horribly evil the enemy is when they do it, but understandable, forgivable, and acceptable when it's us?" 

To be honest, that's what makes me so mad at so-called Christian Conservatives today. It's not so much the bad faith actors, since just about every political interest has those. It's that tendency to wrap themselves up in self-righteousness and claim it's somehow justified or good or acceptable. As if you could possibly do the whole 'build the kingdom of heaven' on such a faulty foundation.

There was a study done once, on cheating, and it talked about how some religious people wound up justifying it. The thought process was generally along the lines of bargaining with God, where they basically said "I'll cheat, so I can get into a position where I'll be able to help others." 

And... it doesn't work like that? That's not how faith and religion and righteousness is supposed to go. It's not somehow okay or acceptable to lie so long as you do good things to make up for it. (Which is not to say you should be burdened with guilt for the rest of your life or anything. There's a whole process for confession and reconciliation. It's just that the ends don't justify the means, and you can't somehow excuse bad behavior with later good behavior. In fact that's almost worse, because what else are you willing to justify doing in the belief that you'll somehow make up for it later?)

I was raised in a very religious environment, so I get the appeal of 'building the kingdom of heaven' and all that. And I'm also absolutely horrified at what some people are doing in the name of such a thing. Because the minute you decide the ends justify the means, the minute you think lying about something is in a good cause... that you'll somehow make up for it when you're in charge and going about your business...

It betrays a complete lack of understanding of just what it takes to build such a thing. It shows that your foundations are faulty, that the kingdom you're building is built on shifting sand. You're not building a kingdom of heaven on earth, you're not doing God's will, and you are not justified in sinning in order to do so.

(I hate that this sounds so morally black and white, I am reaching for the religious language of my roots to help explain how horrifying I find this.)

It really bothers me that they wrap themselves up in self-righteousness, wave the Bible around, and claim they are dong God's will even as they go against everything that the Bible says.

Trump encapsulates the problem, because they are willing to overlook and accept things they know are wrong. And they say it's because 'God works in mysterious ways', or it's some sort of sign about how He works through our fallible and flawed world, or something...

Instead of the very simple explanation that They. Are. Wrong. 

That they are justifying wrongdoing in order to gain power, that they have decided they know what God wants better than He does, and that God wants them to support someone who embodies almost everything a good Christian isn't. Someone who lies on a regular basis, who mocks disabled people, who doesn't care about the sick or the poor...

You can't build a kingdom of heaven on such poor foundations, and any attempt at doing so will fail miserably.

They might, might, end up with a theocracy... and then will probably have the types of problems that come when a theocracy is imposed with such a terrible foundation. That is, the hypocrisy and abuse of power that is practically inevitable when people think the ends justifies the means has a tendency to make people more secular and turn them away from God.

Information Warfare, Blame, and the Netflix show The Untamed

In typical fashion I'm going to talk about an entirely fictional show and then apply the topics of that discussion to the real world. Also with no regard to spoilers for said show.

And yet again I am using The Untamed to kickstart everything.

I mentioned that public perception plays a huge role in the show... and actually, it's a bit more complicated than that. The main character, Wei Wuxian, starts using powers that are disturbing to pretty much everyone else. Corpses, resentful energy, etc. It makes it very easy for people to believe nasty rumors about what he's using those powers for, with little to no relation to reality. His first life cumulates in a tragedy through a combination of rumor-mongering, his own arrogance, bad luck... and yes, some deliberate manipulation by some pretty shady characters. The degree to which each of these elements plays a role is something we could debate for hours, but that's not what this post is about. Or rather, that's only a small part of what this post is about.

See, there's a character (Jin Guangshan, though it's hard to say how much was done by him and how much was done by the bastard son he reluctantly recognized and used to do his dirty work - Jin Guangyao) who saw Wei Wuxian's abilities (able to fight thousands! On his own! And he created a powerful spritual tool - the Stygian Tiger Amulet - that helped him do so) and considered him a threat. This character also coveted the Stygian Tiger Amulet Wei Wuxian created. The story isn't quite clear on just how much he was responsible for it, but there definitely seems to have been a smear campaign in place.

They put everything Wei Wuxian did in the worst light, exaggerated his arrogance, spun outright lies implying that Wei Wuxian didn't respect his adopted brother (and now sect leader), etc. There's a really interesting scene where we see the cultivators discussing what to do about Wei Wuxian, and you see a few people try to stand up for him and defend him - and get shouted down or dismissed. 

When a pompous and arrogant Jin noble got cursed, he assumed Wei Wuxian had done it - with no proof - and gathered a couple hundred cultivators to ambush him. That ambush turned tragic when someone important died during the fight, and Wei Wuxian was blamed. Eventually it led to all the cultivators gathering together and talking about attacking Wei Wuxian, who at that point (grief-ridden, angry, and maybe a bit unhinged) invited himself to the meeting. Wei Wuxian didn't start the fight - the other side shot him first, and then attacked - but he definitely threw down. It's fiction, so it's hard to feel as upset about this as we would for real life characters, but thousands died in that fight. Really, all of our characters survived a rather nasty war... so even though the story doesn't show it they've all got blood on their hands.

Which brings me to the point, I suppose. Thousands die in what some people translate to the 'Massacre at Nightless City'. 

Is Wei Wuxian the one responsible? He was their main opponent. But... he didn't start the fight. Was it the responsibility of Jin Guangshan and Jin Guangyao, for manipulating events and painting Wei Wuxian a villain? All in their lust for power? Was it the cultivators themselves, who believed the lies and spread the gossip? Who wholeheartedly believed they were right, that they were the ones on the side of justice? 

You could go round and round assigning blame, or trying to divide it up and say that 45% was one and 20% another... but part of the beauty of this story is that it shows how pointless most of that is. There's plenty of blame to go around, and a lot of crappy things happened - now what?

The manipulators did wrong, but can you put all the blame on them? There will always be immoral people willing to justify whatever in the pursuit of power, surely they wouldn't have succeeded if others had asked the right questions, or insisted on proof. (This happened rather consistently ever since the end of the war, but stands out most significantly in the incident that first set Wei Wuxian at odds with the rest of society. They had won the war against the Wen, and the survivors were hunted down and put in work camps. For various reasons had a debt to a couple of Wen, and wound up visiting one of those camps in order to try and pay off that debt. What he found was that his own side was treating the prisoners badly... just as bad as the Wen they'd just fought a bloody war against. So even though he hated the Wen - who had destroyed his home, hurt his brother, thrown him into a rather horrible place to die, etc - he also had this debt to two of them, and could see that they weren't all bad. The people in the camps were NOT a threat. Old, civilians, even a toddler. He ends up killing some of the guards, breaking them free and taking them to live somewhere under his protection. The discussion conference about him shows that the cultivators all believe it was an unprovoked attack, the surviving guards claimed that the death of one detainee in particular was because he fell of a cliff - rather than being murdered as we'd learned earlier - and so of course to them Wei Wuxian seems out of control and a threat to all. We're not even sure whether that's a deliberate lie on Jin Guangshan and Jin Guangyao's part, or the guards coming up with a lie to protect themselves. Regardless, the Jin family didn't have any interest in finding out the truth and the rest of the cultivation world accepted their story without question.)

Should we be angry, then, at the general public? Is it their fault for believing and spreading gossip? For believing the manipulators when they outright lied? But if they were at fault - wasn't the death of thousands a bit extreme for punishment? 

That brings me to the point of all this - because there are real world parallels here. There are people who deliberately spread lies and try to manipulate the situation to their own favor. And there are people who believe those lies and take action based on those lies. 

The pandemic brings this home rather viscerally, to me at least. I had posted some months back that we could predict and prevent much of the death. We're now almost at 200,000 dead Americans and the vast majority of it did not have to happen.

Hundreds of thousands dead. In the real world, not some fictional fantasy. It's almost too terrible to comprehend. 

There's a definite urge to blame - to blame the people who minimized the threat and did everything they could to prevent people from taking sensible precautions. To blame the ones who turned this political, so that some people proudly act as though refusing to wear a mask is some great show of freedom and patriotism. To wonder how many of them believe their own BS, and are honestly just fools... and how many are knowingly and deliberately saying things they are fully aware are false.

To blame people - for being gullible and credulous and believing the BS.

There's plenty of blame to go around. You can even try tracing things back to earlier stages and blame China, though that's a bit like saying Wei Wuxian was responsible for the death of thousands because he rescued a few civilians from a work camp. (i.e. in the broader sense it can be true, but it misses a lot of the steps along the way where different choices would have effected the outcome.)

I have more to write on this, but it's long enough that I'll probably do a separate post. 

Diversity and Language

An interesting post on how language affects the way we think.

I think about this when I think about diversity, because this is why preserving languages (and cultures) matters.

They show different ways of being, all of which are human. 

Credit Where Credit is Due

Since my last couple of posts were pretty negative towards that .01% I figured I'd share an article highlighting the positive -

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2020/09/15/exclusive-the-billionaire-who-wanted-to-die-brokeis-now-officially-broke/amp/

I'm Clearly Not the Only One

https://seananmcguire.tumblr.com/post/629108212108541952

Public Perception, The Untamed, Sociology, Etc.

In my last couple of posts I basically argued that the wealthy had enough independence that they could  do what they really wanted. It's a crying shame when instead they go along with and enable crappy behavior.

I don't want to imply that you can afford to ignore other people's opinions all the time, or without consequences, but the topic was too nuanced to get into there so I figured I'd write a separate post.

It also relates a bit to a discussion I had on the Netflix show The Untamed. Which means I'm going to start with that, and I'm going to give out spoilers so read at your own risk.

In the show,  public opinion is practically a character in it's own right. In the very first episode we hear people gossiping and spreading rumors (which we later learn were misleading when not outright wrong), and so we quickly learn that the main character - Wei Wuxian - has a villainous reputation.

His reputation actually plays quite a bit in the story. He uses questionable magic to help his side win a war, and even though many people were uncomfortable with him and scared of him, they mostly just let him be.

Then when the war ended, he discovered that innocent and unthreatening civilians were being treated badly simply because they belonged to the losing side. He's arrogant, inexperienced, and powerful... so he rescues these remnants, but in such a way that he pretty much offends all the powers-that-be. 

Wei Wuxian's reputation starts coming into play here, as many of them assume the worst. Rumors spread that he's raising an army and other such stupid ideas. When another character gets cursed, he blames Wei Wuxian for it. Without any proof or evidence, but people believe it. Because of Wei Wuxian's reputation. Because who else would? So he takes a couple hundred people and ambushes Wei Wuxian, setting off the tragic sequences of events that led to Wei Wuxian's death at the beginning of the story. (He gets better. You also learn that in the first episode.)

I was talking about it with some other fans, or rather talking about Wei Wuxian's attitude towards his reputation vs. his adopted brother's (Jiang Cheng, heir to their sect. Their troubled relationship plays a large role in the story.)

See, back in college my sociology class talked about all the unwritten rules we abide by. How when we walk into a classroom as a student we all know not to sit in the teacher's chair. Rules about what to wear, how we answer the phone, etc. And we had an assignment to break one of those unwritten rules.

And here's the thing - most of the time those rules are about as thin as tissue paper. You can break them with almost no consequence. Except maybe some weird looks. (Though many people find it scary and impossible to do, nonetheless.)

But humans are very social, and sometimes there really are consequences. There are people so upset or offended (like one person said when they wore a winter coat on a bus in summer) that they go out of their way to say something to you, or can even react violently.

As anyone who breaks those social norms can tell you - as gays, and transsexuals, and people who just don't fit in - there are people who for some reason get violently offended by it. (People are weird that way, and I don't really understand it. I'll use the winter coat example since it avoid some polarizing political points. I might find it weird, but it's not like I'm the one being asked to wear a heavy coat in summer, so it's none of my business. And I'm sure you have your reasons, even if I don't know them. So who cares? You do you, wear whatever you want. You can wear galoshes or flippers or a tutu if that's what you want to. I might question that decision if you decide to show up at a conventional work place like that. Then again, the sheer guts it would take to do such a thing and the amusement I'd get at seeing everyone freak out means I might find it absolutely delightful if you did.)

In the TV show, Wei Wuxian clearly seems to know this. He knows that social norms and conventions are as thin as tissue paper, and he ignores them whenever he can do so without bringing down consequences on his adopted family and sect. He has no shame and does whatever he wants. 

His adopted brother Jiang Cheng on the other hand, sect heir and all, is overly worried about reputations. As part of the drama leading up to Wei Wuxian's death he has a falling out with Jiang Cheng. There's a lot going on with that. Jiang Cheng is a new and inexperienced sect leader trying to rebuild their clan after the war, and he's not exactly in a position to challenge the other clans over the treatment of their war prisoners. There's all sorts of parts of their mutual history at play, but what's most relevant to this post was that Jiang Cheng was extremely worried about popular opinion and Wei Wuxian wasn't.

And Wei Wuxian ended up making enemies of all the sects and dying. So... it seems Jiang Cheng's wasn't wrong. Except that there were all sorts of places where things might have been handled diferently, and if Jiang Cheng had decided to protect Wei Wuxian instead of agreeing to cut their connection it might have been enough to turn the tides. 

It's a really complex story and I could spend a lot of time writing about what happened, where things went wrong, how they could have gone differently, whether it's worth trying to place blame on any of the characters (and if so how much)...

But that's getting a bit too deep in the weeds for this post. What I'll say is this - public opinion, social norms, and other people's perceptions can be ignored quite a bit of the time. Right up until it can't.

Part of the problem is that people have a very poor sense of when it's which. When the consequences are minor or easily tolerated and when they become dire. 

People also have a hard time seeing how they may effect those consequences. How one person speaking out at the right time can shift public opinion, and sometimes fail to do so (and create negative consequences for themselves in the process).

The point of all this... well. I guess what I'll say is that I understand why some people are so socialized that they're afraid of going against the flow, and there sometimes are very real consequences for doing so.

On the other hand, too much of that means too many people afraid of being who they are. Afraid of speaking out and standing up for their beliefs, and ultimately it leads to a rather miserable way of life.

Why Pathetic?

 I figured I should explain my comment from yesterday better, though for most people I think it's pretty self explanatory. Or, well... it's like the stories of politicians who don't know the price of milk.

That is, the majority of Americans are so intimately familiar with something that it generally doesn't bear commenting on, but someone who lives an extremely privileged (and isolated) life may not know, which generally makes them stand out in a 'what sort of bubble do they live in that they don't know that?' kind of way.

So. 

Here's the thing. The median wage in the US is about $60,000. That's median, not average, because the ultra-wealthy with really high salaries will skew the average higher. Median means half the population makes less than this, and half make more. 

Now, the top 1% have wealth in things that are harder to judge than salary - stock, land, etc. That's probably why so many statistics on wealth inequality talk more about the share of the economy or something. But let's say making $488,000 a year puts you in the top 1%. 

$488,000 a year is vastly different from $60,000 a year. I also feel compelled to point out, though, that the true anger is at the .01%. They're level of wealth is as vastly different from that $488,000 a year as $488,000/yr is to $60,000. (Maybe even more). Those people may make $7 million or more a year.

So here's the thing. I said yesterday that happiness is correlated to money only up to a certain amount (though I think I said $70K a year yesterday, and now I'm thinking it may have been $75K. The difference is trivial when compared to $488K or $7M so I won't bother looking it up.)

At $75K you probably have the following - a decent place to live, money for food, clothing, and entertainment. A reliable car. Health insurance. Money and time to take at least one nice vacation a year. 

Some of that takes some work, ofc. Maybe the house isn't as big a you'd like, or you can't get the most expensive clothes, or you're not driving an Audi or Bentley or whatever. But if you manage your budget well enough you can generally get the things that really matter to you, and you aren't generally stressing over the necessities of life. (In other words, you're not worrying about how you're going to eat if you pay the rent that month, or worrying that you'll be evicted if you don't pay the rent in order to pay for food. You may not get the clothes you want, but you can afford clothes that are decent and look nice and you can do so without having to worry that buying clothes will make it impossible to pay for your car.)

Now, I've heard that if you invest money .06% is a reasonable return on that investment... so if someone was making $488K/yr and chose to invest it all they'd only have about $29K a year. Not really enough to live comfortably off of without working... but .06% of that $7M is about $420,000... the ultrawealthy could invest most of their money and live off that investments with a salary that still puts them in the top 1%. Or close enough to be make no difference.

By which I mean, someone making 488K a year can (with time, and smart investments, etc) probably find a way to be financially independent without needing to work. They may not be there initially, but it's pretty doable. 

If they're not doing the whole 'keeping up with the Joneses' thing, and trying too hard to match lifestyles in stupid ways. Like - unless you have a reason to live in a place with a high cost of living, why do it? You can get a perfectly nice house in some place that isn't New York City or Chicago or California at a fraction of the price. Is it your job? Showing off how much you can afford? Associating with people of similar status?

Someone in that top .01%, btw, doesn't even have to do that level of planning. They could probably quit their job and live quite comfortably off their investments for the rest of their life. 

So - to bring this back to yesterday's posts - why do people with that level of wealth care so much about what everyone else thinks?

At this point I think it's worth discussing something else. That is - why would someone who could happily live off their investments do anything else? Why not buy some island, or ranch, or town, and just f- off and do whatever you want? 

Being President, or becoming a CEO, or pursuing a goal... really shouldn't be about trying to be happy. It's about being able to influence the world in a certain way. To make your mark. You could even say it's about power, though that has connotations that are not necessarily correct.

Or rather, there's pursuit of power and there's pursuit of power. There are people who like to build things, who will build a team that can make great decisions and create an amazing world to live in. And then there are people who just like to boss others around, and be the one who gets to make the big decisions... and they frankly don't trust their people to make any decisions without them, which also means that they have to spend far too much time telling people what to do because God forbid they think for themselves and make a decision on their own. 

(Seriously, that sort of leadership sounds exhausting. I don't want to be bothered with stupid questions you can figure out for yourself. As part of that whole 'team development' or 'teaching' or whatever I may help walk you through the decision-making process so you can see what sorts of things I think about when considering the issue, but that's it. And once you make that decision, I'll back it up and support it... because if I wanted something else I'd have said so, and I'm not about to undo all that work by undermining the decision you made.)

Anyways. The 1%, and the .01% especially are in a position where they can afford to be called 'eccentric' and still live a pretty cushy life. So forget all the peer pressure BS and go figure out what makes you happy. Not many people are lucky enough to have that option, and it's a crying shame that you are and don't choose to do it. 

If you care about that stuff because you want power (or power) then you should probably be thinking more carefully about the world you're helping create, and who you support in the process. You honestly have enough independence and self-sufficiency that you can probably find someone worth supporting, and if you feel like you have to support someone who is immoral, who leads people in negative ways, who bullies and intimidates and blackmails people into supporting them...

Well, why the hell do you think you have no other option? What are you afraid of? What compromises have you made with yourself in order to justify what you are party to? 

And are the consequences you're so afraid of really as dire as you think they are? 

Another Example

Given how close we are to an election, I'm aware of the political implications of stories like this. 

I don't really want to get into a debate on the stuff I'm sure people will judge purely because of their political affiliation, so I wanted to draw attention to some of the minor details that highlight - again - the very different world some people live in. 

Particularly this bit:

"What has the blowback been like for you?

A lot of doors did close to me. There were employers at dream jobs who I’d been speaking with at the time who just ghosted me because of the association with my dad. At the time I was studying really hard for the LSAT. I was working with a counselor who told me that I wasn’t going to get in anywhere because of it. Socially, friends I’d had my entire life were nervous to have me in their house. I was in a relationship at the time, and the private equity firm where he was going to work did a background check and I came up as what they deemed a “reputational hazard,” and he dumped me." 

A background check said she was a liability? Not even hers, but her boyfriend's? And regardless of what you think of her father, she wasn't the one in the public eye. What's all that fuss about media letting Chelsea and Barron not getting thrown into the limelight as children of famous people? At least most everyone heard of them... I hadn't really heard anything about Michael Cohen's daughter.

So, first... Being the daughter of someone infamous is enough for your boyfriend's place of employment to label you a reputational risk. I guess that's the way these people roll, but still... Cowards. 

Second, her boyfriend apparently broke up with her over this. Friends were worried about letting her in their house. Supposedly schools weren't going to admit her... 

Pathetic. 

They all sound pretty pathetic. 

And these are the people with wealth, power, and influence? No wonder the world is going to hell. 

An Example

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about -

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosiegray/peter-thiel-donald-trump-white-nationalist-support?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4

All that wealth and influence, used to make the world worse.

He's really okay with having his name associated with racists? 

It's good to see him distancing himself from that decision now, and good to know there were consequences... 

But was it really not obvious the kind of leadership he was supporting in the first place? 

Happiness and Various Ramblings

 I wanted to talk a bit about happiness, though that's a topic in which every person is unique - and the thing that make us happy are not always what we think.*

Still, there's been some research on this... and there's consistency on at least one thing - close relationships. Oh, money is nice. I think there's a study saying more money tends to make people happier... right up until about 70K a year. After that it doesn't correlate at all. (Probably because people get used to whatever is 'normal', so as long as they're not stressed out about paying bills and making ends meet money isn't actually much of a factor in happiness.)

That's part of it, too. People adapt to what they know. They can learn to be happy with things they originally weren't. Like coffee, which most people find bitter the first time they try it.

I tend to think of adrenaline junkies here. After all, doing something scary (like jumping out of a plane, or going on a roller coaster, or other things) tend to make us hyperaware of the present moment and feel more alive. You can grow to like that sort of thing, to seek it out as much as any drug.

I'm sure there are some people who really do take pleasure in bossing others around, 'winning', and getting their way. I have to wonder, though, how many learned to enjoy it. Just like learning to love coffee.

Happiness is tied to close relationships, though even with that there's room for variation. One person may be content with one close friendship. Another with three or four close friends. Or maybe they vary in what is required to be considered 'close'. Does it mean texting every day? Seeing each other every year? Going camping or golfing on a regular basis? Or calling/texting/messaging whenever something important happens in your life?

My previous post talked a bit about how different life was for the really, really wealthy. And, again, I have no idea how realistic portrayals of their lives are. At least some of the stereotypes are this:

obsessed with wealth and status, always jockeying to 'win', driven, looking down at the poor and those who have less, believing they deserve their privileged status, and so on and so forth.

In other words, they're probably not very happy. 

Close relationships do. But how close of a relationship can you have if you're selecting your spouse for whatever role they can play in your competition for status? How close can your relationships be if everybody you know is a competitor, and you can never let them see you be weak or vulnerable?  How close can your relationships be if you have to deny who you are, pretend to like things you don't and say things you don't mean in order to 'win'?

The focus on 'winning' is pretty short-sighted, too. Not that winning is bad! Or something you shouldn't enjoy! But... there is always going to be someone better. Someone stronger, smarter, better looking. Richer. Even if you're at the top for the moment, you'll grow old and weak and won't be able to stay there forever. 

Striving is good, hard work is good... but I think it should be done for all the reasons we like something. All that science about how we get in a state of flow, how we master things. Joy, passion, hard work - becoming the best we can be. Not 'to beat everybody else', or 'to dominate'. 

When I think of the things that tend to make me happiest, it's true. Most of them are tied with either connections or mastering something I'm interested in. There's a joy in... idk. Learning something new, and doing well on a test. There's a joy in teaching someone else, and seeing them learn to master it themselves.

There's joy in nurturing, growing, developing, and building. Joy in seeing someone succeed at something they've struggled with. Joy at seeing anyone show real talent - whether it's music, sports, law, cooking, cleaning, writing, drawing, coding, building, and more. 

Seeing people reach their full potential is always amazing. Building relationships with people who share your interests, who cheer when you do well and comfort you when you don't, who may help teach you things along the way or be taught by you in turn... that makes many of us happy.

There are a lot of things I'm frankly mad about right now, especially when it comes to the people currently in power. Yet the more glimpses we get of their lives outside the public persona, the more sad and pitiful they seem. Well - when it's not scary. 

How sad, to have all that wealth and power and hardly any real close friendships. To live in a world of users and the used, of alliances for power or convenience. Of spending time with people who are only around you for what you can do for them, and vice versa.

Even worse, they take that worldview and try to impose it on everyone else. Like no - no. I'm not going to feel threatened that some non-white person gets a job, or moves in next door. No, I don't really care what genitals someone has under their clothes. Not unless I'm considering having children with them or something. 

And when you consider how much the truly wealthy make. The 1% who can afford six or seven yachts, and five or six really nice houses, and ten cars, and can take afford to fly off for some awesome vacation whenever they want...

How can they possibly feel so insecure, so threatened, that they create policies essentially keeping poor people poor and making it impossible for them to ever get out of poverty?

How can those who have so much be so stingy towards those who have so little?

There's a whole bunch of other things wrong with this, ofc... but this post was about happiness, so I'll ask the following question -

How can such people possibly be happy?

Untitled

I heard about this on social media (https://ruinmyweek.com/relationships/fiance-secretly-rich/) though the post I saw implied that ALL rich people were like that, and...

Idk. If that's true, it's rather pathetic. I understand that you don't get rich without being careful with how much you spend, that you can't give it away like Jesus said you should. (If you're Christian and want to get into heaven and all that), and I also understand that they would be afraid of gold diggers and people that are nice to them just to get their money.

But, like, if you actually cared about someone enough to consider marrying them, I would hope you'd care enough not to make them sell their mother's violin if there was any other option. 

I've heard before about how wealth seems to destroy people's ability to empathize. Idk, it's not like I hang out in those crowds. Still, there's some truth to the fact that people like Jeff Bezos (and others) actually have the resources to make a real difference...

And instead far too many of them seem to be outright making the world worse. 

I don't know how they can look at themselves in a mirror, tbh. Or how they can possibly be happy. Not like 'I just won monopoly' happy, but that feeling of satisfaction, contentment, and bone deep happiness.

I wish the sort of foolishness we're seeing today - the short-sightedness, arrogance, selfishness, utter destruction of rules and norms in a bid for power that destroys all the things making their outsized level of influence tolerable - didn't seem somehow inevitable.

I really hope it isn't.