Nature Leseul

Observations 3

2009-07-08T01:01:12Z

Even Wal-Marts and storage places can be cool looking when the landscape forces them into an interesting terraced design.

Driving on the interstate is a lot less interesting than driving on highways.

There is no swirling energy vortex at the end of I-40. I always thought there would be when I was a kid.

Observations 2

2009-07-07T03:27:04Z

The bottlecap from the Jones soda I had at lunch informed me "You will succeed at your current plans." Given that all I was doing today was driving a lot without any plans, how is that applicable? Also, "except in bed."

There is not very much in southern Georgia.

Gas seems to get cheaper in the middle of nowhere. This seems counterintuitive.

I actually saw a dead deer on the road.

Mountains are pretty at sunset.

Twisty narrow roads through mountains at night are scary. Also, it is important to remember that you cannot drift and get blue sparks, and that Lakitu will not retrieve you if you fall off of them.

Pigeon Forge, Tennessee is very shiny at night. Also it has cute tourist girls.

Hotel rooms in Tennessee are surprisingly cheap.

I have no idea where I'm going tomorrow.

Observations

2009-07-06T13:54:57Z

In the middle of nowhere, where big corporations don't bother to build stuff, there are lots of unique businesses. Makes one wonder if rural conservatives' faith in capitalism comes from seeing their neighbors actually own businesses.

There are lots of hot bike-riding college girls in Gainesville.

I passed a dedicated Pet Cemetary along 441. It's a nice idea.

It's funny seeing a "Eustis City Limit" sign just a few feet after a "Eustis: 3 miles" sign.

nleseul @ 2009-06-29T21:34:00

2009-06-30T01:41:48Z

Apparently there is a sequel to Final Fantasy IV that was recently released for WiiWare, after having been out on Japanese cell phones for a while. This is probably more exciting than it really should be, but still.

Plus, episodic content! And classical graphics! Exciting ~~but probably gimmicky, derivative, and disappointing~~!

Kind of makes me miss the days when my social life consisted of speculation regarding Espers and the All-Fruitiness thereof and the color of Locke's hair, rather than references to being on boats and loving your friends' mothers. There's no way Final Fantasy-related news of this magnitude would have gone unmentioned for an entire month back then.

You kids get some culture now, y'hear?? And get off my tiled 16-bit lawn!

Love and Sanford

2009-06-25T17:23:35Z

Every time it's the same story.

He failed. He screwed up. He fell. He let down his wife, his children, his constituents, his god. He continues to struggle with it, and he's praying for the strength to move beyond it and return to his life. He apologizes profusely to everyone who has been hurt by his behavior. He's only human, flesh and blood, born to make mistakes.

And she forgives him. It's been hard on her and the kids, and they too have been struggling to deal with this. But she believes in the sanctity of marriage, and she's willing to accept him back and work through this with him, for the sake of the children. She asks the press to give them privacy in this difficult time.

It's one of the worst ways in which one person can hurt another. But it's so common that the culture has evolved a ritual for atoning for it, one which plays out in essentially the same way in the media every single time it happens. There are usually tears in their eyes, pain on their faces. The pain and tears are real, but the scripted artificiality of the ritual makes them seem farcical.

It would be so refreshing if just one of them, for a change, would break from the script and tell the world the full story, the real story, about the pain and passion and confusion that he is really experiencing. Like Dagny Taggart, announcing to the world her affair with Hank Rearden, and revealing that his cooperation with the oppressive government was merely the result of blackmail over it.

But the world needs the ritual. The fabric of society is built on the fundamental unit of the family, and the ritual preserves the illusion that the family is a sufficiently strong base. As long as the morality play repeats often enough on the world stage, we proles will be able to see that even the paragons of virtue who rule them sometimes fall, and they still work to preserve their marriages, and so should we. It keeps us docile and outwardly content. It prevents us from wondering why the fabric of society needs such frequent repair, and if it is really reasonable for it to be cut from such flimsy material.

But it's not us, the words of the ritual reassure us. It's something from the outside. It's the devil. It's the sin. It's not something we do, it's something that happens to us. We fall into it. We struggle with it. We fight battles with it to preserve the integrity of our souls. It's not a choice, it's an epic showdown with the Other. It makes it easier to preserve the heroism of the Glorious Leaders, fighting for their own marriages just as they fight for the sanctity of all of ours. It makes it easier to project the sin onto the enemies of the State—those gays, those liberals, those sluts, who have no shame and would tear asunder the gauzy social fabric that veils our true souls.

As the current drama plays out more or less predictably, though, the public is offered a rare look into the reality that lies behind the ritual. And that story, from the few chapters of a greater work that we are shown, just doesn't fit the narrative it is meant to. It's not a story of a person falling and rutting furtively in the gutter. It's a story of two people wishing to rise together above it all, but finding it impossible. As with all good stories and all real stories, it's complicated.

Because love isn't clean. It doesn't organize itself for our convenience into neat little social breeding units. It's terribly messy. The epic of love covers all the scope of human history and is full of forbidden affairs, impossible choices, unrequited wishes, unfulfilled fantasies, lovers who should never have become life partners, life partners who would be better platonic, friends who might as well be lovers, temptation, surrender, guilt, loss, regret, anger, compersion, jealousy, and sometimes even happiness. The scope of it is too immense to be contained in the one syllable that most of society imagines can express it. Even more the specialized vocabulary of connoisseurs—eros, agape, philia, NRE, limerence, ORE, pragma, storge—is more often than not inadequate. It often comes out of nowhere—in Sanford's words, like a "lightening strike"—at unexpected times, involving unexpected people, and generally makes itself highly inconvenient. The Greeks were right in imagining it as a blind youth with a bow, firing haphazardly into crowds and laughing maniacally at the chaos that results.

Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote:

Off into the world we go,
Planning futures, shaping years.
Love bursts in and suddenly
All our wisdom disappears
Love makes fools of everyone;
All the rules we make are broken.
Yes, love, love changes everyone—
live or perish in its flame.
Love will never, never let you be the same.

Yet we persist in trying to mold our most important life plans around something that simply cannot be planned or controlled. We try to deny the undeniable, resist the irresistible, all in the name of a social order that has more to do with ownership of property and of women than with the actual nature of humanity, and again and again people get hurt and humbled by it. Why can't we accept that love is real, that A is A, no matter what, even if the A that it is is something other than the A we would like it to be, and that acceptance of the facts of reality is the only way to attain control over it and to make plans within it? Why can't we recognize that like nature, love, to be commanded, must be obeyed?

In the mythology of Jacqueline Carey's Terre d'Ange, the only commandment Blessed Elua gave to his people was "Love as thou wilt." And a key theme of Carey's work is that this is no simple statement of license handed down by a weak love god, but a challenging percept that requires all our courage to obey fully. Because love demands much of us. It asks that we put aside fears, doubts, and preconceptions. It calls upon us to rise above our situations to meet it, and in so doing become better people.

The consequences of violating Elua's precept are explored in Kushiel's Justice, in which Prince Imriel agrees to marry the Princess Dorelei mab Necthana for political reasons, despite his love for Sidonie de la Courcel, the Dauphine, which would cause political chaos if consummated. But his attraction to Sidonie cannot simply disappear, and that unfulfilled attraction makes him vulnerable to a witch's curse that controls him. The theme is similar, in fact, to the blackmail of Hank Rearden in Rand's Atlas Shrugged mentioned above. Denial and shame make you vulnerable to control, while only by accepting love and taking pride in it no matter who questions it can you find the freedom to choose your own path.

Consider that the press evidently had Sanford's e-mails proving the existence of an affair long before his disappearance last weekend. They chose to hold the e-mails until they could break the story in a dramatic way. But what if they had instead used them to blackmail Sanford? What would it mean for the people of South Carolina if an outside party had that kind of control over him? And how many other public figures are engaged in similar affairs? How many of them might be equally vulnerable to blackmail? When the problem is framed in those terms, doesn't it almost seem like our insistence on the use of guilt and deceit to preserve an artificial social framework creates a real national security risk?

More and more ordinary people, no longer able to ignore the reality of love and the demands of Elua's precept, are questioning that framework. They are loving as they will and choosing paths through life that acknowledge their loves, and as a result concepts like same-sex relationships, transgenderism, polyamory, BDSM, sex work, swinging, platonic relationships, and casual hookups have come almost into the mainstream of cultural discourse, and probably there are even more diverse life paths being explored by people which do not as yet have names.

But the culturally conservative political and cultural elite continue to lag behind the values of the broader culture. Rather than acknowledging the complexity of love and their own paths through life and opening an honest discussion of it in the media, they simply follow the scripted rituals and hope that love will conform itself into the paths that have been chosen for them. And until one of them stands up and refuses to mouth along with the ritual, the pain will continue—for themselves, for their families, for all the people who look to them for moral leadership.

nleseul @ 2009-06-11T23:44:00

2009-06-12T03:45:36Z

I make Doctor Who music videos.

Yay.

Writer's Block: There Can Be Only One

2009-05-22T16:41:46Z

Do you believe in monogamy?

View other answers

No.

Random thought on atheism and religion

2009-05-19T15:30:39Z

There seems to be fairly frequent discussion among critics of atheism on whether it's actually a religion or not. Some people think it is, because it's based just as much on unprovable premises as any other religion. Some people think it's not, because it's actually the negation of religion. It's kind of a silly question, since it's founded in people's generally arbitrary standards of what counts as a "real" religion and what doesn't; and I kind of wonder if framing the definition of atheism in those terms conflates some concepts that are better differentiated.

The way I'd personally define "religion" would be something like "The specific set of symbols, myths, and rituals that a person finds meaningful as a way of conceptualizing spirituality." And that's a definition that omits atheism, because atheism doesn't actually have its own set of symbols, myths, or rituals.

And I think, incidentally, that this is a big part of why the messages that atheists put up in public spaces to counter the Christian messages tend to be so negatively perceived. Due to the lack of a specific vocabulary of symbols, it's hard to express a message that is simultaneously positive and explicitly atheist. "God bless you" is a basically positive message; you can modify it into "Goddess bless you," "Buddha bless you," "Elua bless you," "Elvis bless you" or whatever and still make it a positive message that is an authentic representation of a specific religious tradition. But you can't really express that from an atheist perspective. You either end up just saying "Bless you" (which can easily be taken for a generic theistic message), or something like "There is no god. Bless you" (which dilutes the benevolence of the message with a blatantly confrontational statement).

So I really don't think that it makes sense to think of atheism as a religion in the sense that Christianity or Wicca or Raelianism is. A more meaningful consideration is atheism versus theism. Neither of which is really a religion; they're more like philosophies, or meta-religions, or some such. With reference to my earlier definition of religion, that framing of atheism allows you to define it as "The philosophy that the referents of religious concepts exist strictly within human psychology"; and to define theism as the direct opposite of that: "The philosophy that religious concepts refer to entities that exist literally and independently of the human mind."

And, when you view the question from that perspective, it becomes conceptually meaningful to consider yourself as a religious atheist—i.e., someone who finds meaning in a particular set of symbols without believing that those symbols literally exist. If, for example, you consider the myth of human salvation through the resurrection of Christ to be metaphorically meaningful to you, but don't believe it happened literally, you could describe yourself as a Christian atheist. That sounds pretty paradoxical given the way we generally think of religion, and I doubt there are very many people who actually hold such a perspective, but I do think there are a lot more Pagan atheists and Buddhist atheists out there.

I don't know if this kind of framing of religious discussion is particularly meaningful to anyone else, but it does seem to me like it clears up a lot of confusion about what exactly is meant when people talk about religion and atheism.

nleseul @ 2009-05-09T12:41:00

2009-05-09T16:42:15Z

An interesting diary from Daily Kos today:

The Eroticization of Equality and Social Justice

Progressives should pay serious, and respectful, attention to romance fiction, for two reasons:

First, as I hope to convince you – or seduce you into believing :-) - below, romance itself is a fundamentally progressive activity. If you take romance seriously, and don’t denigrate it just because patriarchy says you should (more on that, later, too), then you’ve got to take romance fiction seriously, since it’s a major expression of romance – not to mention, romance’s usual wonderful destinations, love and sex - in our culture. More than a quarter of all books sold in the U.S. are romance fiction, and more than 64 million Americans read at least one romance novel each year [source: Romance Writers of America, RWA]. Romance fiction is an enormous part of American culture, and an important transmitter of values.

nleseul @ 2009-04-13T10:50:00

2009-04-13T15:21:35Z

I don't really feel like writing an outraged post on the topic, since there are so many out there already, but I'll contribute to the googlebomb, at least: Amazon rank.

I'm particularly confused by the choice of which of Jacqueline Carey's books got included in the fail. Phèdre's trilogy—Kushiel's Dart, Chosen, and Avatar—are all still ranked, but Imirel's—Kushiel's Scion, Justice, and Mercy—aren't. And that's peculiar, because, as I recall, Phèdre's trilogy is where most of the stuff that the nutters might find controversial happens. Phèdre is involved in prostitution, girl-on-girl sex, and some fairly extreme BDSM scenes; and a major subplot in her story involves male homosexual relationships. Imriel, for all his angst about his desires being zomg so dark!!1, is pretty vanilla by comparison; he has such a monogamous fixation on his (female) love interests that the possibility of gay sex involving him, while hinted at a couple of times, pretty much exists only in the minds of fanfic writers; and the BDSM in his story doesn't get much more extreme than telling his girlfriend "Go get me a whip so I can hit you with it," and a subsequent fade to black.

So I'm confused about what kind of tortured logic Amazon could be using to de-list the latter, but not the former. I've heard it suggested that it could be some kind of automated removal based on tags, but I compared the tags for Dart and Scion and didn't see anything that stood out.

Also, if anyone was curious, Tarnsman of Gor is still ranked.

Edit: It appears that Scion and Justice are being ranked again now. With that visible, one can see that they are both included in the Books > Literature & Fiction > Erotica category (as well as "Dark Fantasy"); whereas Dart is only in "Historical Fiction." It's a weird inconsistency of categorization on Amazon's part, but that difference does seem to indicate that they probably just did something to every book in certain categories like "Erotica."

Mercy is still unranked, but does show up as the top result in searches for its title now. Kind of weird.

(Additionally, Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds is included in several subcategories of "Arts & Photography," which were probably not among the categories chosen to derank.)

Thoughts on unemployment

2009-04-10T15:28:58Z

Standard economic theory is that minimum wage laws result in unemployment, because they set an artificial floor on the price of labor, and therefore preclude people whose labor is worth less on the market than the minimum wage from finding a job.

The point of the minimum wage, though, is that it's supposed to be the minimum that you need to survive. If you make less than that value, you're basically living in poverty.

To illustrate this, the minimum wage in the U.S. is currently $6.55. Working a full-time (40 hours/week) job at this rate would give you an annual income of $13,624. The poverty level for an individual in the continental U.S. is currently defined as an annual income of less than $10,400. So working that hypothetical minimum wage job would put you somewhat above poverty—as long as you're an individual. If you have one dependent, the line is $14,000, so you're in poverty.

(And if you're earning the minimum wage, chances are that you won't be working full time, and that you won't be employed for an entire year, so your actual income will probably be even lower than that calculation.)

So if people were allowed to work for less than the minimum wage, they would be earning less than they need to survive. Now, conservatives will likely argue that the poverty line is set too high, and that people could survive perfectly well on an income less than that. But the exact numbers aren't the point. The point is to illustrate that, by their argument against the minimum wage, the economics of supply and demand do make possible a situation where the market value of a person's labor is less than the cost of her survival.

Or, in other words, where that person's labor has no economic value. The economy doesn't need her.

So why does the American work ethic put such value on making people find work, when, by the ostensibly objective evaluation of the market, their work just isn't valuable?

To my mind, the fact that unemployment is even a meaningful economic concept is symptomatic of something very wrong with the wage economy and the ethic of work that supports it.

(The situation becomes even more silly when one realizes that—given the collapsing bridges, breaking levees, and crumbling schools that characterize the infrastructure of America—there really is plenty of useful work that people could be doing. It's just not "valuable" to the economy, insofar as no one with money is willing to pay them to do it. The New Deal and the Obama stimulus plan were sort of designed to address that weirdness, but what such programs can accomplish is probably pretty limited as long as they're working within the present money system.)

nleseul @ 2009-04-08T13:22:00

2009-04-08T18:10:57Z

This is worth reading.

Why American Workers Stay Off the Streets While Europeans Proteest

The workers and other protesters who gathered en masse at the Group of 20 summit meeting last week in London were continuing a time-honored European tradition of taking their grievances into the streets.

Two weeks earlier, more than a million workers in France demonstrated against layoffs and the government’s handling of the economic crisis, and in the last month alone, French workers took their bosses hostage four times in various labor disputes. When General Motors recently announced huge job cuts worldwide, 15,000 workers demonstrated at the company’s German headquarters.

But in the United States, where G.M. plans its biggest layoffs, union members have seemed passive in comparison. They may yell at the television news, but that’s about all. Unlike their European counterparts, American workers have largely stayed off the streets, even as unemployment soars and companies cut wages and benefits.

Why might this be?

Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, said there were smarter things to do than demonstrating against layoffs — for instance, pushing Congress and the states to make sure the stimulus plan creates the maximum number of jobs in the United States.

“I actually believe that Americans believe in their political system more than workers do in other parts of the world,” Mr. Gerard said. He said large labor demonstrations are often warranted in Canada and European countries to pressure parliamentary leaders. Demonstrations are less needed in the United States, he said, because often all that is needed is some expert lobbying in Washington to line up the support of a half-dozen senators.

Well, that's one view, I guess. And this view, stated by the president of one of the most prominent U.S. unions, is echoed in the fact that:

...American labor leaders, once up-from-the-street rabble-rousers, now often work hand-in-hand with C.E.O.’s to improve corporate competitiveness to protect jobs and pensions, and try to sideline activists who support a hard line.

“You have a general diminution of union leadership that was focused on defending workers by any means necessary,” said Jerry Tucker, a longtime U.A.W. militant. “The message from the union leadership nowadays often is, ‘We don’t have any choice, we have to go down this concessionary road to see if we can do damage control,’ ” he said.

In the case of the Detroit automakers, a strike might not only hasten their demise but infuriate many Americans who already view auto workers as overpaid. It might also make Washington less receptive to a bailout.

Labor’s aggressiveness has also been sapped by its declining numbers. Unions represent just 7.4 percent of private-sector workers today.

But, perhaps more importantly, there's also this:

David Kennedy, a Stanford historian and author of “Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945,” says that America’s individualist streak is a major reason for this reluctance to take to the streets. Citing a 1940 study by the social psychologist Mirra Komarovsky, he said her interviews of the Depression-era unemployed found “the psychological reaction was to feel guilty and ashamed, that they had failed personally.”

Taken together, guilt, shame and individualism undercut any impulse to collective action, then as now, Professor Kennedy said. Noting that Americans felt stunned and desperately insecure during the Depression’s early years, he wrote: “What struck most observers, and mystified them, was the eerie docility of the American people, their stoic passivity as the Depression grindstone rolled over them.”

It probably goes further than just this attitude towards unemployment or poverty, though. Even among the employed, there is a corporate culture that brainwashes American workers with such pseudo-values as "having a positive attitude" and "being a team player," and thereby places a stigma on protest and activism as a form of "negativity." If you have a problem with someone at work, they say, it is no one's responsibility but your own to deal with it, either by privately discussing the issue with your manager, or by adjusting your attitude to be more positive. And if the problem persists, it must be your own fault for not doing something "positive" about it. Any kind of collective action among workers is suspect as a form of "complaining." The notion of the good of the workers as individuals becomes subsumed by the much more collectivist notion of "the good of the company," in which "complainers" and non-"team players" have no role.

This combination of the prosperity theology attitude of poor Americans towards their own poverty, and the "positive attitude" guilt machine that keeps the corporate drones docile provides an excellent example of what Ayn Rand called the "sanction of the victim." In Rand's worldview, evil is essentially impotent, and can have power over the world only to the extent that it persuades good people not to act against it. A key means by which this is achieved is by persuading people that they deserve to suffer under an evil that masquerades as the good. This state can only persist, however, as long as the victims accept the moral principle that places this blame on them; if they withdraw their sanction from that principle, then they can easily recognize the pointlessness of their suffering and act to end it. Atlas Shrugged is really all about raising this class consciousness in society's producers.

It is time that productive Americans stop blaming themselves for poverty, unemployment, and the conditions of labor. They are the consequences of economic forces well beyond the control of any individual, and individual action has practically no power to bring about a general improvement. It is only if they reject the morality that places this blame upon them and organize as a class that they can exert sufficient social pressure to produce change on a large scale. Europeans have known this for a long time, and that's why they have things like universal health care and shorter work weeks. The Americans of the early 20th century had the same knowledge, and they brought us many of those same benefits before our culture of protest was derailed. We in America today have a great deal to learn from today's European radicals, and from the activists of the early labor movement.

Nature abhors a party

2009-04-01T21:08:08Z

(Inspired by Claudia's Facebook status.)

The party people I once knew
Who once were many, now are few.
So good it seemed, when once we dreamed
Of finding Pleasure on this earth,
As youth is ever wont to do.
But time will tend to bring an end
To human happiness and mirth—
A stark reminder that it's true:
      Nature abhors a party.

Where do those party people go?
How do the winds of fortune blow
When mortal trials make them exiles
From those hedonic dance halls filled
With rhythmic beats and lights aglow?
What takes the place, in this rats' race,
Of true desire unfulfilled?
People surrender when they know:
      Nature abhors a party.

In cubicles they spend their days,
For that bare wage their labor pays.
They need to eat—they must entreat
The rich for license to exist.
The wailing babies that they raise
Take every dime, consume their time.
Instead of dancing they subsist,
And never name the true malaise:
      Nature abhors a party.

They march in columns off to war,
To suffer on some distant shore—
Culture requires the forging fires
Of strife to grant maturity.
Some vanish in the huddled poor,
Not having made the hollow trade
Of Pleasure for security.
These are the facts they can't ignore:
      Nature abhors a party.

What happiness can e'er endure
When this is all that's ever sure?
When beauty fades, and mind degrades,
And entropy will ne'er subside,
Just wound us more as we mature?
When bodies fail, and all must sail
In time for Styx's other side?
One thing alone the gods assure:
      Nature abhors a party.

It seems my lot to apprehend
The time when all the parties end—
When music dies, and girls and guys
To women, men, are all transformed,
And all to nature's will must bend.
Will I, un-grown, be left alone
Rememb'ring those by time deformed?
Is this a fate we can transcend:
      Nature abhors a party?

nleseul @ 2009-03-26T20:00:00

2009-03-27T00:12:05Z

REDWOOD SHORES—In the wake of Republicans' alternative budget plan unveiled today, many major American companies, concerned about remaining competitive in a worsening American economy, have quickly moved to take advantage of the innovative concepts presented in the Republican plan.

Among the first to unveil an updated business plan based on the Republican budget is CEO John Riccitiello of California-based game developer Electronic Arts.

When contacted for comment, President Barack Obama simply laughed loudly, but that may have been because his mind was still dwelling on the ordinary Americans who think marijuana reform might be worth discussing seriously.

#

nleseul @ 2009-03-26T12:16:00

2009-03-26T16:19:21Z

I'm rather annoyed with Obama and his online town hall meeting thing.

First, because he was so snarkily dismissive of all the questions that were submitted and highly rated about marijuana legalization.

Second, because he keeps on using "The thing is, is that..." and similar nonsensical grammatical constructions. It's painful. :-(

nleseul @ 2009-03-25T11:04:00

2009-03-25T15:17:51Z

I saw an ad for CyClone Dairy today, featuring pictures of smiling mothers gushing about how they use milk from cloned cows because they only want their babies to have the best and safest milk. It's kind of hilarious, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

The best part? From the site's FAQ:

Q: Are there any ethical issues about cloning?
A: No.

Whether there really are or not, that's pretty awesome.

(Of course, given that there seems to be no way to contact the company or actually order their products, I kind of suspect that this is actually some kind of viral parody site intended to raise awareness about the supposed dangers of cloned food. Whatever.)

nleseul @ 2009-03-12T16:19:00

2009-03-12T20:50:57Z

As I noted in a previous entry, there seems to be a lot of talk about Atlas Shrugged among conservatives recently. Apparently, the phrase that's become popular now for abandoning a parasitic society and living according to your own values somewhere else is "going Galt"—probably because describing it as "striking" would send entirely the wrong message, with the Employee Free Choice Act going through Congress now.

I came across one article today criticizing some conservative site advocating "going Galt"; it's interesting, as it seems to be written by a liberal who actually understands Atlas.

What's odd is that the people Dr. Helen interviews don't really seem to understand what 'Going Galt' means. Two of the people Dr. Helen interviews are trying to reduce their taxable income, and the third is trying to "follow Ayn Rand's morality as much as I can, and spread her philosophy as far as I can."

That's not what Rand meant by Going Galt at all. In Atlas Shrugged, John Galt decides to withdraw his creative and productive efforts from society. He is going on strike, and he convinces other creative, productive people to follow him. Here's what happens when someone Goes Galt in Rand's novel:

"He's quit! Gone! Gone like all the others! Left his mills, his bank accounts, his property, everything! Just vanished! Took some clothing and whatever he had in the safe in his apartment -- they found a safe left open in his bedroom, open and empty -- that's all! No word, no note, no explanation! They called me from Washington, but it's all over town! The news, I mean, the story! They can't keep it quiet! They've tried to, but...Nobody knows how it got out, but it went through the mills like one of those furnace break-outs, the word that he'd gone, and then...before anyone could stop it, a whole bunch of them vanished! The superintendent, the chief metallurgist, the chief engineer, Rearden's secretary, even the bastards! Deserting us, in spite of all the penalties we've set up! He's quit and the rest are quitting and those mills are just left there, standing still! Do you understand what that means?"

Rearden and his associates will not be paying a lot of taxes now that they've left. But that's not the point. Withdrawing their creative efforts is. In Rand's novel, it is they who keep the mills running, and without them, everything grinds to a halt and the world is plunged into crisis.

[...]

By withdrawing, Galt was, essentially, testing this view. If he was right to think that an inverted morality could triumph only with his sanction, and that the parasites around him were helplessly dependent on his mind, and could survive only with the aid of his self-immolation, then once he and others like him withdrew, that fact would become clear. If not, not.

If Dr. Helen, Glenn Reynolds, Michelle Malkin, and the rest of the bloggers who are talking up the idea of Going Galt had the courage of their convictions, they would make the same experiment. If they don't, it's worth asking why not.

As I said above, the three most obvious answers are: (1) they do not believe that anything they do is in fact creative or productive, or (2) they are urging other people to do something they don't have the guts to do themselves, like scam artists who convince people to invest their money in schemes they themselves steer clear of, or (3) they have not bothered to think about what they are saying, even to the limited extent required to see that there's a conflict between their words and their actions.

There is a webcomic called "Bob the Angry Flower" that once parodied Atlas Shrugged by showing the heroes of the novel, having successfully destroyed all of society, suddenly realizing that now they have to start farming. Of course, the actual novel goes to great pains to show that Galt's strikers are in fact very successful at farming and producing necessities for their self-contained commune in the mountains. But the parody does provide a pretty good illustration what would likely happen if these privileged conservatives actually did "go Galt." (To them, at least; not to the society they've left behind. Society certainly doesn't need them to the extent it needs actual productive people.)

Because leaving society behind and living wholly by the product of your own mind is a truly monumental undertaking. Everyone alive today is so used to the benefits of a large-scale society—grocery stores, power grids, fast food, etc.—that I doubt any modern person could even fully understand just how much his life would suffer if he actually did leave it behind. That's why Rand herself never actually advocated "going Galt" in her lifetime—because a society has to become truly and irrevocably broken before abandoning it entirely becomes a remotely rational choice.

So when conservatives start talking about "going Galt," I think it needs to be pointed out to them the full implications of that. Preferably with vivid and easy-to-understand images from Rand's own work. Think about a brilliant philosopher flipping burgers at a fast food joint. Think about the world's greatest inventor working as a railroad laborer. Think about Rand herself, or at least a thinly veiled self-insert, catching fish instead of writing. Think about a great architect cutting rock at a quarry. (And in Roark's case, it should also be pointed out that he wasn't striking against an intrusive government, but against the big architecture firms that wouldn't allow him to work by his own creative vision.) That's what "going Galt" looks like. It takes an incredible courage, a willingness to get your hands dirty in the meanest jobs imaginable, which I seriously doubt that any conservative pundit possesses.

If anyone is really capable of "going Galt," it's probably the left. Unlike conservatives, liberals actually sort of know how to plan self-sufficient intentional communities. Liberals have been living in hippie communes ever since the '60s. The closest thing to a real-life Galt's Gulch I've ever heard of, in fact, is probably Burning Man. And that is not exactly a vision of life that any conservative is ever likely to find appealing.

Random observation

2009-03-11T17:07:24Z

FRACTIONAL RESERVE BANKING
You have two cows.
You lend your neighbor 20 cows.
You tell him he owes you 25 cows.

Lovecraft meets The Postal Service

2009-03-04T20:49:40Z

I mostly just wanted to see if I could make it work. (Based on this, this and this; envisioned as part of a hypothetical soundtrack for this.)

Last week I had the strangest dream
Where everything was exactly how it seemed.
Where there was nothing eldritch written on
The pages of the Necronomicon; it was
Just a dream that was causing dread
In the mind of Abdul Alhazred. He
Wrote it down, and his visions were remembered
On cold days at Miskatonic in November.

Don't wake me, I plan on sleeping in...

Again last night I had that strange dream
Where everything was exactly how it seemed.
No sense any doom was approaching;
No ancient horrors lurking under the ocean.
Where Earth had never been the abode of a shoggoth,
A Yithian, or a fungus from Yuggoth.
Where nothing bubbled at the cosmos's center,
And only rain fell on Arkham in November.

Don't wake me, I plan on sleeping in...

I hope tonight I have that same dream
Where everything is exactly how it seems.
Where asking questions makes the answers seem plainer,
And seeking knowledge only makes you feel saner.
Not having money doesn't make you so helpless,
And politicians are attentive and selfless.
They tell the cops to just punish the offender,
So we can live happily in November.

Don't wake me, I plan on sleeping in...

nleseul @ 2009-02-20T10:19:00

2009-02-20T15:25:23Z

I'm not the only one who was thinking it!

Chrono Trigger Composer Never Heard of Rick Astley, Robo's Theme Completely Original

(I was thinking about Robo's Theme, and realizing how similar it sounds to The Song Which Should Not Be, because for some reason I keep imagining Robo's Theme as the "Cats of Ulthar" theme in a hypothetical Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath CRPG.)

nleseul @ 2009-01-30T14:23:00

2009-01-30T19:29:36Z

A million on strike as France feels pinch

More than one million French workers downed tools yesterday in the first general strike to hit a major industrialised nation since the start of the global financial crisis.

Unions said more than two million public and private sector workers took to the streets across France to protest against President Nicolas Sarkozy's handling of the economic crisis, saying too much had been done to bail out fat cats and banks, and not enough to protect jobs and help workers make ends meet.

Air traffic controllers, train drivers, teachers, nurses, and tax inspectors were joined by private sector workers including bank clerks and staff from the firm that runs the Paris stock exchange. Some schools were shut, flights were cancelled, and the Palace of Versailles cwas losed in a rare show of unity between unions, although "Black Thursday" did not bring total transport paralysis.

The more I hear about activism in France, the more tempted I am to actually try refreshing my French enough to live there.

In other news, I'm amused that, with just a couple of minor changes, "Solidarity Forever" would actually work quite well on the soundtrack for Atlas Shrugged.

nleseul @ 2009-01-27T15:53:00

2009-01-27T21:18:13Z

So today I discovered on Wikipedia the song "The Preacher and the Slave", part of the Little Red Songbook used by IWW union organizers in the early 20th century. The chorus is based on a call and response pattern, rendered by Wikipedia as follows:

You will eat [You will eat] bye and bye [bye and bye]
In that glorious land above the sky [Way up high]
Work and pray [Work and pray] live on hay [live on hay]
You'll get pie in the sky when you die [That's a lie!]

This is apparently the origin of the modern phrase "pie in the sky."

To the modern audience, though, the last line including the choral response seems to pretty inevitably suggest the Portal-derived Internet meme "The cake is a lie."

Is there an intentional reference here? Is there room for an anarcho-syndicalist interpretation of Portal? The game itself does consist of performing increasingly difficult meaningless and alienating tasks in a sterilized corporate environment in pursuit of a promised ~~promotion~~ ~~raise~~ ~~stock option~~ cake that never actually materializes, until you finally cease to be useful and get disposed of, which does seem to be a relevant metaphor.

Unlock your heart, drop your guard, no one's left to stop you now...

2009-01-26T06:17:19Z

For some reason, I've always found this to be a really beautiful song.

After finishing D&D tonight I spent the evening napping, having some rather pleasant dreams that didn't actually feel that bittersweet to wake up from, and then finding a forum thread on OkC that made me feel bad for the guy who started it. (I may post about that later, and I think I may actually have helped that situation a little bit, which is nice.)

For some reason, all of that has put this song in my head. I don't know that it actually has anything literally to do with anything, but it evokes similar emotions to what I'm feeling right now, I guess.

Dear my love, haven't you wanted to be with me?
And dear my love, haven't you longed to be free?
I can't keep pretending that I don't even know you.
And at sweet night, you are my own.
Take my hand—

We're leaving here tonight.
There's no need to tell anyone;
They'd only hold us down.
So by the morning light,
We'll be halfway to anywhere,
Where love is more than just your name.

I have dreamt of a place for you and I.
No one knows who we are there.
All I want is to give my life ~~only~~ to you.
I've dreamt so long I cannot dream anymore.
Let's run away; I'll take you there.

We're leaving here tonight.
There's no need to tell anyone;
They'd only hold us down.
So by the morning light,
We'll be halfway to anywhere,
Where no one needs a reason.

Forget this life; come with me.
Don't look back you're safe now.
Unlock your heart; drop your guard.
No one's left to stop you.

Forget this life; come with me
Don't look back you're safe now.
Unlock your heart; drop your guard
No one's left to stop you now...

We're leaving here tonight.
There's no need to tell anyone;
They'd only hold us down.
So by the morning light,
We'll be halfway to anywhere,
Where love is more than just your name.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

(Here is a video, with bonus LotR clips but with the unfortunate inclusion of children. Those bits, along with the stricken word in the lyrics above, can be assumed to have no part in my thoughts. :-P)

Atlas Shrugged vs. Big Business

2009-01-13T04:51:07Z

Okay. I'm tired of conservatives co-opting Ayn Rand, mouthing along with the particular parts of her writings that they find superficially appealing while discarding the substance of her ideas. I'm tired of seeing them point to the Presidency of Ronald frigging Reagan as the realization of her philosophy, and whine about the election of Barack Obama being the coming of the economic apocalypse foretold in Atlas Shrugged.

From Stephen Moore, writing recently for the Wall Street Journal, we get a sickeningly poor example of the latter. Moore opens his screed by reminiscing about his days at the Cato Institute, where members who had not yet read Atlas were labeled as "virgins." Under that definition, one can only conclude that Moore never actually lost his virginity, given that the vapid rant which follows evinces approximately the level of understanding one would expect from a student who had only read the Cliff's Notes in hurried preparation for the Cato Institute Ritual of Manhood™.

Let's disassemble Moore's article, point by point, and examine how radically the actual events of Atlas diverge from his superficial reading.

First of all, there's this:

Rand, who had come to America from Soviet Russia with striking insights into totalitarianism and the destructiveness of socialism, was already a celebrity. The left, naturally, hated her.

It's worth noting that before Rand became a well-known writer after the publication of The Fountainhead, she was a poor artist and an immigrant, neither of which would have endeared her to modern conservatives.

And Moore neglects to mention that Rand was criticized just as harshly by the right. Conservatives in general tend to try to blank out the fact that Rand was an ardent atheist, a critic of the draft and the Vietnam War, and a strong supporter of abortion rights.

For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises -- that in most cases they themselves created -- by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism.

The actual theme of Atlas, as stated by Rand herself, is "The role of the mind in man's life." The story is not fundamentally about politicians or government programs; it's not about socialism versus capitalism, or left versus right. The fundamental conflict for Rand is between mind and non-mind—between individualism, initiative, and creativity; and collectivism, parasitism, and abdication of responsibility.

The heroes of Atlas are, essentially, businessmen. The right is fond of taking this out of context and quoting Rand to present all businessmen as heroic, and any criticism of corporations as being tantamount to advocacy of collectivism. What they fail to mention is that Atlas' cast of villains is made up of a large number of businessmen as well. The two primary villains are Jim Taggart (president of a giant corporation) and Lillian Rearden (wife of a major industrialist); another key antagonist is Orren Boyle (owner of a large steel company). Rand, unlike her conservative admirers, recognizes that even the highest corporate offices are frequently occupied by the worst kind of parasites.

The most prominent politicians in Atlas are Mr. Thompson, the Head of State; and Wesley Mouch, ultimately economic dictator of the country. Both are presented as essential non-entities, achieving their positions only by acquiescing to the demands of whatever pressure group had the strongest influence at the time—Mouch, at one point, is described as the zero where opposing forces balanced. This reflects Rand's treatment of government in general in Atlas—it does not possess agency itself; it merely acts in response to the pressure groups that influence it. And while the typical conservative bogeymen like corrupt union bosses and soybean-eating hippies have an impact through minor characters, the primary pressure groups affecting the government of Atlas are the villains mentioned above—corrupt businessmen, lacking the ability to be successful on their own merits but made rich through "Washington ability."

In the book, these relentless wealth redistributionists and their programs are disparaged as "the looters and their laws." Every new act of government futility and stupidity carries with it a benevolent-sounding title. These include the "Anti-Greed Act" to redistribute income (sounds like Charlie Rangel's promises soak-the-rich tax bill) and the "Equalization of Opportunity Act" to prevent people from starting more than one business (to give other people a chance). My personal favorite, the "Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Act," aims to restrict cut-throat competition between firms and thus slow the wave of business bankruptcies. Why didn't Hank Paulson think of that?

Moore's vapid analysis omits the circumstances in which each of these laws were passed. I don't remember the context of the "Anti-Greed Act" offhand, but both the "Equalization of Opportunity Act" and the "Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Act" were passed as a result of pressure from Jim Taggart, as a means to shut down a competing railroad. They weren't a consequence of well-intentioned intervention by the government, but of a big corporation's lobbying efforts.

The current economic strategy is right out of "Atlas Shrugged": The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you. [...] With each successive bailout to "calm the markets," another trillion of national wealth is subsequently lost. Yet, as "Atlas" grimly foretold, we now treat the incompetent who wreck their companies as victims, while those resourceful business owners who manage to make a profit are portrayed as recipients of illegitimate "windfalls."

And here we can see that Moore's understanding of the economics of the various bailout packages is as shallow as his understanding of Atlas. The whole point of the measures the left pushed for in the bailouts—limits on executive compensation, public buyouts of company stock, and such—is to avoid treating the incompetent owners of these companies as victims, to ensure that they feel the pain of their choices; while ensuring that the real victims—the productive employees of these companies, and of all the other companies who would suffer from their collapse in the connected global economy—are protected from losing their jobs or income as a result of other people's corruption and incompetence.

And "lost" is a silly word to use. Properly executed, the money spent on the bailouts will be used for productive purposes by the companies receiving them, and circulate through the economy, creating jobs, rebuilding infrastructure, and ultimately "trickling down" to make the economy stronger for everyone. Money does not simply disappear, ever, unless it is actually pulled out of circulation. One would think this would have plenty of appeal to conservatives.

Of course, since the Bush administration is ignoring pretty much all the accountability and oversight the Democratic Congress tried to build into the bailouts, we have no way of knowing or ensuring that the money really is being spent properly. It's pretty likely the money will just end up going into the overseas bank accounts of these incompetent CEOs instead. It takes some pretty torturous logic to blame the left for the executive branch's failure on this, though.

As for Obama's stimulus package, we have no way of knowing what form it will actually take or how effective it will turn out to be. It's worth noting, though, that the worst of the laws passed by the regulators in Atlas, Directive 10-289, had the stated purpose of freezing the economy in its current state, to prevent any growth, innovation, or change that would cause the economy to further collapse. It was, in fact, the exact opposite of a "stimulus." Obama's stated aim, however, is growth—developing new technology, building infrastructure, creating jobs. It's certainly a valid question whether a government can be an effective agent for stimulating such growth, but the fact is that about the only similarity between the Obama stimulus plan and the anti-stimulus plans of Atlas is that government happens to be doing them. Sufficient for conservative analysis, perhaps, but not so much for well-reasoned analysis.

When Rand was writing in the 1950s, one of the pillars of American industrial might was the railroads. In her novel the railroad owner, Dagny Taggart, an enterprising industrialist, has a FedEx-like vision for expansion and first-rate service by rail. But she is continuously badgered, cajoled, taxed, ruled and regulated -- always in the public interest -- into bankruptcy. Sound far-fetched? On the day I sat down to write this ode to "Atlas," a Wall Street Journal headline blared: "Rail Shippers Ask Congress to Regulate Freight Prices."

Again, the regulation applied to the railroad industry in Atlas tends to be to the benefit of Taggart Transcontinental, as Dagny's brother Jim is the primary person lobbying for it. Dagny loathes the regulations not because they hinder her, but because she wants to compete honestly. The main resistance she meets to her plans—at least before the entire railroad starts to disintegrate due to the number of competent workers drained away by John Galt's strike—comes from Taggart Transcontinental's own Board of Directors.

In one chapter of the book, an entrepreneur invents a new miracle metal -- stronger but lighter than steel. The government immediately appropriates the invention in "the public good." The politicians demand that the metal inventor come to Washington and sign over ownership of his invention or lose everything.

The scene is eerily similar to an event late last year when six bank presidents were summoned by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to Washington, and then shuttled into a conference room and told, in effect, that they could not leave until they collectively signed a document handing over percentages of their future profits to the government. The Treasury folks insisted that this shakedown, too, was all in "the public interest."

Of course, the politicians in that scene weren't making that demand of Hank Rearden after he begged them for a handout to save his company from a pending bankruptcy that resulted from his scamming trillions of dollars from people with the metallurgical equivalent of credit default swaps.

And Moore is apparently hoping no one will remember that the rights to Rearden Metal were being confiscated primarily for use in a secret military project, which is not exactly the sort of thing the left tends to advocate.

One memorable moment in "Atlas" occurs near the very end, when the economy has been rendered comatose by all the great economic minds in Washington. Finally, and out of desperation, the politicians come to the heroic businessman John Galt (who has resisted their assault on capitalism) and beg him to help them get the economy back on track. The discussion sounds much like what would happen today:

As Galt himself might say, "Rendered comatose—by whom? Blank out." With this paragraph, Moore proves beyond all doubt that he completely missed the point of the novel. The economy was not destroyed by the "great economic minds in Washington." The economy disintegrated because Galt had persuaded the key thinkers who made it run to stop thinking—to "shrug," and let the motor run down. (And, later, because more and more workers came to the same conclusion independently.) Galt advocated this because society at large demanded that people think for the benefit of others, rather than for their own benefit; but what was the specific trigger that led him to his decision to "shrug"? Not a law passed by the economic masterminds in Washington, but the dumb company policies of his former employer. That's almost straight out of Office Space!

Ultimately, "Atlas Shrugged" is a celebration of the entrepreneur, the risk taker and the cultivator of wealth through human intellect. Critics dismissed the novel as simple-minded, and even some of Rand's political admirers complained that she lacked compassion. Yet one pertinent warning resounds throughout the book: When profits and wealth and creativity are denigrated in society, they start to disappear -- leaving everyone the poorer.

But on this, at least, Moore isn't too far off. Atlas is a celebration of individuality, innovation, risk-taking, and the sublime capability of the human mind. It is a celebration of wealth and the free market as the means by which all of these are realized. It is a celebration of the heroic spirit of people like Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden who realize them. And it is a condemnation of those values which oppose them—small-mindedness, buck-passing, crowd mentality, envy; and a simple, petty, parasitic desire for the unearned.

Rand, of course, escaped from the abuses of Soviet communism, and the shadow of that undoubtedly colored her view of the world. Because of that, she had a particular mistrust of anything in American politics that looked even similar to the horror of that system—unions, Marx-reading intellectuals, social welfare programs. Even so, however, she freely acknowledged in Atlas—and even more so in The Fountainhead—that all of those sins could be found in the corporate boardroom as well. It is unfortunate that the conservatives who pretend to carry on her intellectual legacy are unable to make the same acknowledgment.

Where the modern conservative movement tends to have a philosophy of "Corporations, no matter what," Rand's philosophy is in fact closer to "The individual, no matter what." In the times and places in which Rand lived, the primary force she saw opposing the individual was leftist government; and the primary force liberating the individual was the free market. And I fully believe that if she had lived a few decades later, to see the modern age—to see the Reagan Revolution, and the subsequent three decades of consumer corporatism, deceptive demand-fabricating advertising, outsourcing, rising unemployment and underemployment, fraudulent lending practices, rapidly ballooning consumer debt, absurd levels of CEO pay and shareholder profits, and Enron accounting—the same values that led her to condemn "big government" would likely have led her to condemn "big business" instead. And maybe even to praise an Obama administration, run in accordance with sound scientific and rational principles, and devoted to rebuilding the economy on the basis of a deep trust in the real free market—not the false capitalism of the giant corporate parasites, but the free market of the young architect struggling to start his own business where he can realize his unique artistic vision; of the man in the steel mill imagining a better kind of metal; of the railroad tycoon's daughter gazing off to where the rails meet on the horizon and dreaming of surpassing her ancestors' expectations; and of the lowest worker in a train station, alienated by the theft of his labor and his mind, frustrated by the drudgery of his work, but letting the motors run in the privacy of his mind and imagining the way to a better world.

That's why I hope the left can one day read Atlas Shrugged with an open mind and look for the good in it. Because—all of Rand's flaws and errors aside—there is too much that is good in her vision of the world to let it be co-opted by those who would destroy it.

ETA: Your mom is an ideological state apparatus!! (For xzarakizraiia's benefit. Is that sufficiently Marxist for you now?)

nleseul @ 2008-12-09T23:43:00

2008-12-10T05:04:02Z

André Gorz = win.

(See here, for example. That's a quite good article—pretty much the only work of his that I've noticed online—and it persuaded me to special order a couple of his books from Borders. I just finished his Farewell to the Working Class, and it's amazing. I'm looking forward to reading Reclaiming Work: Beyond the Wage-Based Society tomorrow night—partly because it wasn't written in 1980 and therefore presumably isn't replete with amusingly anachronistic views of technology and what it will look like in ten years' time.)