While I like reading very very much I have recently discovered that I get a huge amount of enjoyment from reading things I don't paticularly understand. Sp most forgein affairs articles I read I have no opinion on because I want to know more about the subjects at hand. As a result I find myself occationally sitting down and looking up everything I don't understand only to find I need to look more things up. It is like the time I decided I wanted to write something substantial about the conflict in the middle east. It didn't work out well but my god what a learning experience.
Recently in Harpers I read an article on pacifism and it won't leave me alone. It won't sit still in my head, not at all. It moves around like some great snake slithering through my neural pathways knocking aside whatever else it is I try to think about. It demands my attention but I find that I am unsure what I wanted to say about it. Then it hit me. I am not a pacifist.
Isn't it weird that the word fist appears in the word pacifist?
Lets get to work shall we? The article I read was extrodinarly compelling. It is a discussion on what various pacifism movements were doing in WW2. The idea of pacifists in ww2 is a strange notion, and it is almost a dirty one. WW2 is considered the good war, the war that we use to justify all other wars. It is how we make everything we do okay when it comes to blowing up other countries. It is how we justified our war on communism. In school the facts of ww2 are drilled into our head class after class. We do a segment on it in World history, then another segment on in in American History, we talk about it in government, it is an inescapable monolithic superstructure which a shocking amount of our modern thought is based off of. The idea of a lively productive, intelegent pacisfism movement is almost as close to a hersay as we get here in a america. Yet there is was, and it had some very good points.
First and foremost pascifism, especially this brand of pascifism wasn't all about just shrugging our shoulders and letting the world burn. Their first and foremost policy was saving as many lives as possible. If there was a choice between saving 1 life or 1000 lives they would choose the 1000 each and every time. This meant that their primary concern was saving the jews in the concentration camps. To this end while we were off having war parades and fighting the japanese they were doing everything they could to save as many jews as possible. One of the things that drove me to a blind fury during the reading of this article was the discovery that we actually turned down visas of jews fleeing nazi germany. This is an inexcusably shitty thing to do. Fuck us.
Many people, not just the pacifists saw the treatment of jews by germany as the world's largest hostage situation and entering the war would cause Hitler to begin truely large scale liquidations. This is, interestingly enough, exactly what happened.
The point of all of this is that pacifism is not one of those beliefs where you can say, "I am a pacifist and we do nothing" it is a very active, involved, pragmatic belief system. When it is done right that is.
Me I am a viciously pragmatic person. It is just how I roll. I do what I need to when I need to and I don't worry so much about the things big or small. I love pragmatic philosophies. Things that aren't all one or the other but a proper balance between two opposing view points because that is where the truth alway lies. At its heart that is why I am not a pacifist.
There is another reason too. I have two great regrets in my life. One of them isn't punching my step mother in the face. It was late at night, she might of been drinking but I don't think so. She schedualed a trip to look at colleges I wasn't interested in going to during the same weekend my mom wanted to go on vacation with me. My step mom knew about this vacation months in advance and it wasn't like she couldn't just use another weekend there wasn't anything going on in the weeks before or after my mom's planned vacation. She was wrong and she was just being shitty. We'd been fighting about this for almost a week. Then one night more or less out of nowhere she tells me that my mom doesn't love me. She saw it in my face. I don't think she noticed my fist, and she immediatly backed down. We sling your momma jokes around cause they are funny an no one cares. However, that wasn't funny. That was a direct attack on me by someone fighting a loosing battle and who wanted to be right. To this day I regret not standing up and decking her in the face.
Its funny though. And this is worth stopping and considering. I didn't hit her. I didn't say anything in fact. She knew she fucked up and she backed down, threw some more insults my way as she slunk off. She realized she made a mistake but she didn't realize just how badly she had messed up. So the event that makes me realize that I am a pacifist is one where I live out pacifist ideals. I know for a fact that if I had hit her my life would of been worse. Much worse. The following years would not of gone like they did and I more than likely would not be sitting here right now. I know that the weird inverse survival instinct I had kicked in and realized that punching her put plans at stake that I had made. If she hadn't of left when she did none of that would of mattered and that person would be alive today, the one that stood up and took a swing, instead of this person. Maybe I would regret hitting her, but I doubt it.
The reason why we have taken this trip down memory lane is because that is the moment I realized that there are some people who you can't reason with, you can't escape, and who are dead set on taking away as many options as possible before they attack. There are people who do not respond to words and there are people who confuse violence with language, and sometimes these people end up in control of countries. And that's rough. So what can you do other than fight? The problem is when do we fight? How often do we fight? How should we fight?
There is another issue in the works as well and that is that antagonists know where pacifists stand. As a result they lack a valuable tool to work with and that is fear.
To be clear I don't think the world should be this way. I think that people should be free and unafraid from violence and fear. I don't think that I should have to use tools like fear, or anger, or threats of violence to get the things I need or to protect myself from those who would harm me. Ultimatly though this is not how the world works. And I am a pragmitist. This doesn't mean that pascifism is wrong or that it doesn't have things we could learn from. That isn't true at all. In fact that is specifically wrong. I think trying to use more peaceful methods more often is invaluable. I think that most wars are wrong but I also think that at the end of the day negotiating with hitler would of never worked. Not in the long run and not in the end.
Power may not of been trasphered and the whole thing might of collapsed like a house of cards, but as germany would of fallen apart from within I have no doubt they would of taken the jews with them meaning we would either have to go in or we would of been just as criminal.
The thing is that it is hard being not a pacifist. If I am not a pacifist I should enlist in the military, fight the good fight, be part of that which makes our foes both civilian and military tremble in fear. I don't believe in a whole lot of "if you aren't with us you are against us" crap. But in this case if I am not fighting to end all wars then I should damn well be a part of them. I'm not going to though cause I value my life to much and I value their lives as well. I wish they could all come home and we could find a different way to do all of this. I don't know how though. It would be nice if no one else had to doe though.
Strangely there is a lot of talk of cutting military spending. TO be honest I am not certain how "on board" with that I am. Again it is something I don't know enough about. I do know that with the money they do have we should be able to storm the pearly gates and overthrow the tyrant god. So what needs to happen right the fuck now is we need to reassess how we spend money on our military. Once we do that, and once we are getting more bang for our buck we can decide what to do next.
Kay time to go plan for role playing games.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Rewatching the Watchmen
That joke along with variations of it never cease to amuse me. But only when I tell it. When you tell it you sound like an asshole. This is hypocritical and let's face it, increadibly irrational, but what can you do. It is a fool who looks for logic in the human heart, and that's what this blog is all about heart baby. Not the crappy kind from Captin Planet either don't be an asshole.
Anyway moving right along I'd only seen Watchmen once at this point and I'd been thinking about it a lot recently so I gave it a download and set aside some time. In a fancy mood I grabbed myself the ULTIMATE edition which is the extended director's cut along with the pirate animated short edited in for good measure. They did an increadibly good job editing in the pirate part and it felt like a perfectly natural part of the movie. Though I would only reccomend the ultimate edtion to people who REALLY love long movies. Clocking in at 217 minutes of people worrying about the end of the world is one of those things. A good thing but a long thing.
The time is important to me because I realized something. It takes me just a little over three hours to read the Graphic novel and in both cases I need to take a break in the middle. This is something special, because in all the history of adaptive media I think this is the first time the source material takes roughly as long as the adaptation to consume. This speaks volumes for the movie and for the fact that I think it is an absolutely remarkable achievement, particularly in the form I viewed it in.
In the comic I found the pirate section to be overbearing, annoying, and honestly after my second reading of the book I just started skipping it. It got it, I understood it, and I never ceased to be annoyed by it. When it showed up in the movie I almost skipped it myself. I had the controller in hand, fast foward at ready poised to get on with the main part of the movie but I decided to give it a chance and I am glad I did it provides a nice thematic back drop as to why Ozmandious is wrong and that over the course of him trying to save the world he has become mad. I think it worked better in the movie than it did in the book. They didn't quite tie it all together as well as the book did but still it was all very impressive. It really is a remarkable movie adapted from a remarkable book.
I wish Alan Moore was more involved in comics still or at the very least more productive. The thing is though is that as an author I find him to be very hit or miss. Grant Morrison isn't afraid to do some crazy ass high concept stuff. Take batman for example. Batman is prolly one of the top 5 most valuable comic book properties in the industry and it isn't something where you would want to have a story about the main charecter disapearing for a year or so while he is lost in time being chased down by an evil thought created by Darkseid. But hey it happened. Or, upon his return, having Bruce Wayne more or less retire from being the Gotham City batman and going off to create a franchise of batmen all around the world, or everything that happened in RIP. You certainly wouldn't have a year and a half long story arc. Oh no. But it happened right there on the stands next to Wonderwoman's new wardrobe, and whatever the hell Marvel has been doing.
My point is that there is room for Alan Moore in comics. He doesn't have to sit on top of his mountain jacking himself off claiming how great he is while he lives off of the stuff he wrote while he was working with everyone else. He is a great man with a personality holding him back? For what reason, who knows. However, now that he isn't the only big name in the game it almost doesn't really matter anymore. I don't know, but lunch is over and back to work for me.
Anyway moving right along I'd only seen Watchmen once at this point and I'd been thinking about it a lot recently so I gave it a download and set aside some time. In a fancy mood I grabbed myself the ULTIMATE edition which is the extended director's cut along with the pirate animated short edited in for good measure. They did an increadibly good job editing in the pirate part and it felt like a perfectly natural part of the movie. Though I would only reccomend the ultimate edtion to people who REALLY love long movies. Clocking in at 217 minutes of people worrying about the end of the world is one of those things. A good thing but a long thing.
The time is important to me because I realized something. It takes me just a little over three hours to read the Graphic novel and in both cases I need to take a break in the middle. This is something special, because in all the history of adaptive media I think this is the first time the source material takes roughly as long as the adaptation to consume. This speaks volumes for the movie and for the fact that I think it is an absolutely remarkable achievement, particularly in the form I viewed it in.
In the comic I found the pirate section to be overbearing, annoying, and honestly after my second reading of the book I just started skipping it. It got it, I understood it, and I never ceased to be annoyed by it. When it showed up in the movie I almost skipped it myself. I had the controller in hand, fast foward at ready poised to get on with the main part of the movie but I decided to give it a chance and I am glad I did it provides a nice thematic back drop as to why Ozmandious is wrong and that over the course of him trying to save the world he has become mad. I think it worked better in the movie than it did in the book. They didn't quite tie it all together as well as the book did but still it was all very impressive. It really is a remarkable movie adapted from a remarkable book.
I wish Alan Moore was more involved in comics still or at the very least more productive. The thing is though is that as an author I find him to be very hit or miss. Grant Morrison isn't afraid to do some crazy ass high concept stuff. Take batman for example. Batman is prolly one of the top 5 most valuable comic book properties in the industry and it isn't something where you would want to have a story about the main charecter disapearing for a year or so while he is lost in time being chased down by an evil thought created by Darkseid. But hey it happened. Or, upon his return, having Bruce Wayne more or less retire from being the Gotham City batman and going off to create a franchise of batmen all around the world, or everything that happened in RIP. You certainly wouldn't have a year and a half long story arc. Oh no. But it happened right there on the stands next to Wonderwoman's new wardrobe, and whatever the hell Marvel has been doing.
My point is that there is room for Alan Moore in comics. He doesn't have to sit on top of his mountain jacking himself off claiming how great he is while he lives off of the stuff he wrote while he was working with everyone else. He is a great man with a personality holding him back? For what reason, who knows. However, now that he isn't the only big name in the game it almost doesn't really matter anymore. I don't know, but lunch is over and back to work for me.
Friday, May 20, 2011
270
This is my 270th post. I should make it something special but I feel like writting NOW so that is what is going to happen. So after being depressed for about two weeks I am back and I haven't really written anything here, let alone anything signifigant. I just have been busy doing other things like reading, Dungeon Fighter, friends, and a suprising number of movies. I could do a media round up but I don't want to spend the rest of lunch doing that. Instead we are going to talk about Mutants and Masterminds.
M&M is a d20 game and I hate the d20 system. I find it to be a chore to run, annoying to play, and there is just something about it that seems to breed the wrong idea about roleplaying within players. I have no idea what. Mutants and Masterminds is no exception. In fact there will be some changes to the rules when I start running it again (twoish weeks from now). First of all is how AOE damages is handled cause it is retarded. The second is how damage is applied because it seems to be impossible to make damage stick once everyone discovers the regeneration power. What changes I am going to make? I don't know yet I will consult forums and what not. However, there will be changes mark my words.
So why run the game again? Well I did look into other game systems to handle super heroics, there is the hero system (NO!), Capes, Icons, even Arrberant which I could just nab the system from then scrap the setting. I like the white wolf system and it is easy to make shit up in it and not have everyone asking questions. However, I decided to stick with the good old M&M game system. As I think it has some wonderful pros
- It provides me with a new and interesting challenge
-The players are familiar with it
-it is infinitely scalable
-it is incredibly flexible allowing for any hero type or abilities in fact I can just make up whatever I wanted to and we could reverse engineer it later with 100% sucess.
-It is fun!
-Character advancement happens at a decent pace. To often in point build games I drizzle some points on the players to no real effect.
It does have some nasty cons though. Like the travel powers. Because of the nature of travel powers having a battle map is simply a moot point. Over the course of any given turn the players could be hundreds of miles away, on the moon, in an alternate dimension, microscopic, or giant sized. This means that any given combat map is largely irrelevant as there is no one map that can cover both ground and super movement. I could just make it so that travel powers are useless in combat. All I need is a blanket rule stating that all major travel powers need at least 15 seconds to warm up before taking off, which is three combat rounds. See that would work, but it would mean no planetary scale chase scenes and I want those back. They would of been fun had I been prepared for them, and I just wasn't.
That was the thing about running the game the first time. I just wasn't prepared for what my players could do. Keeping the setting set in the city would of worked just fine had I dropped the number of build points they spent by 100 then it would of been fine. They would of taken forever to out grow the city and my little gangs and stuff would be just fine. However, that wasn't the case and within a couple of game sessions they were bursting it at the seams. However, I got the city still and lots of stuff that can still be used from it. I got Tesla's grand daughter, and some of those gangs can be given a shot in the arm and they will still rule the streets of that city.
In general I will be much better prepared to tackle the challenges of the game system now that I have lived and learned through running it. I have a world I can run and I'll spend the next little bit building a rouges gallery that I can use willynilly and that will be awesome. And while I am very excited, that means that I won't be as prescent here. Sorry.
M&M is a d20 game and I hate the d20 system. I find it to be a chore to run, annoying to play, and there is just something about it that seems to breed the wrong idea about roleplaying within players. I have no idea what. Mutants and Masterminds is no exception. In fact there will be some changes to the rules when I start running it again (twoish weeks from now). First of all is how AOE damages is handled cause it is retarded. The second is how damage is applied because it seems to be impossible to make damage stick once everyone discovers the regeneration power. What changes I am going to make? I don't know yet I will consult forums and what not. However, there will be changes mark my words.
So why run the game again? Well I did look into other game systems to handle super heroics, there is the hero system (NO!), Capes, Icons, even Arrberant which I could just nab the system from then scrap the setting. I like the white wolf system and it is easy to make shit up in it and not have everyone asking questions. However, I decided to stick with the good old M&M game system. As I think it has some wonderful pros
- It provides me with a new and interesting challenge
-The players are familiar with it
-it is infinitely scalable
-it is incredibly flexible allowing for any hero type or abilities in fact I can just make up whatever I wanted to and we could reverse engineer it later with 100% sucess.
-It is fun!
-Character advancement happens at a decent pace. To often in point build games I drizzle some points on the players to no real effect.
It does have some nasty cons though. Like the travel powers. Because of the nature of travel powers having a battle map is simply a moot point. Over the course of any given turn the players could be hundreds of miles away, on the moon, in an alternate dimension, microscopic, or giant sized. This means that any given combat map is largely irrelevant as there is no one map that can cover both ground and super movement. I could just make it so that travel powers are useless in combat. All I need is a blanket rule stating that all major travel powers need at least 15 seconds to warm up before taking off, which is three combat rounds. See that would work, but it would mean no planetary scale chase scenes and I want those back. They would of been fun had I been prepared for them, and I just wasn't.
That was the thing about running the game the first time. I just wasn't prepared for what my players could do. Keeping the setting set in the city would of worked just fine had I dropped the number of build points they spent by 100 then it would of been fine. They would of taken forever to out grow the city and my little gangs and stuff would be just fine. However, that wasn't the case and within a couple of game sessions they were bursting it at the seams. However, I got the city still and lots of stuff that can still be used from it. I got Tesla's grand daughter, and some of those gangs can be given a shot in the arm and they will still rule the streets of that city.
In general I will be much better prepared to tackle the challenges of the game system now that I have lived and learned through running it. I have a world I can run and I'll spend the next little bit building a rouges gallery that I can use willynilly and that will be awesome. And while I am very excited, that means that I won't be as prescent here. Sorry.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Older than I've Ever Been
I realized something remarkable the other day. I was in Dillards looking at their ties and men's shirts. Summer sale season will be here soon and I want to be prepared for when it happens. Anyway I saw someone I knew behind the colone counter counter and so I walked up said, "Hi" and made with the chatty. After we parted ways the enormity of what I had done sunk in.
See I am a migraine sufferer the funny thing about migraines is that they tend to put all over pain into perspective. So when I walk into a wall or slam my hand on something or even when I recently spained my finger I didn't really think any of these things mattered. In fact I was working just fine with the spained finger but then I realized the pain was moving up my arm and should prolly do something about that. That is what my migraines are like. They put all other pain in their place. When I have a bad migraine the day afterwards I am wiped out too. Being in that much pain for that long is just exhausting and I often times find myself unable to move. One time I dry heaved for over a half hour and as a result I fucked up all the muscles in my chest. These are the things that happen to me during a migraine and they are worth not liking.
Now my migraines are set off by three things, stress during periods of insomnia, certain smells especially perfumes and colognes, and some random x factor that will bring me from happy time to FUCKING DEAD.
But wait I strode confidently and happily up to the counter to say hi to some girl who I don't know very well at all. Really, REALLY? I would take that sort of risk just to talk to someone? What the fuck ever. But I did. Then I realized that the migraines that come from certain smells especially colognes and perfumes aren't as powerful anymore, and they aren't as immediatly crippling. Earlier in my life just walking near that area of the store could leave me crippled for the rest of the day. Now I could do it without thinking about it. Granted when she wanted to play samples with me I politely declined because that really is playing with fire. But my migraines happen less often, and no longer are department stores turgid minefields of potential endless pain and suffering.
I am clinically depressed. But it isn't that bad. I suspect that it leaves me always a little off though. But that is something different. I do crash however. When I do I do it hard. Oh so very hard. I can't talk to people, be around people, I freak out easily, and I truely can't handle any sort of emotional pressure at all. It is like I go from zero to critical instantly. I cry at random, or sometimes I just fade out and I end up staring into space for long periods of time. My brain shuts down and I am unable to function creativly. It sucks. And this just happened to me. It is actually my last published blog post.
Again this is set off by a number of things, and while it did just happen to me and I didn't like it I realize now that when I was in high school this would happen to me roughly every 6 months or so. Now it is only once a year maybe even less, and I'll admit it I was really pushing myself and running along the razors edge for a long time so I mean I was expecting this to happen for awhile now.
and I only need to replace my glasses every two years or so.
I am 29. I am rapidly approching middle age and while this is a source of dread for many people it isn't for me. As I am getting older my life and health have improved dramticly and it is almost with a sort of relief that many of my problems that afflict me do so less often and with not as much intensity. Lots of people look at getting older with a sense of dread. But I am a migraine sufferer and the fucking things happen less often now so I am okay with that. If that is what it takes I will get old all day long.
See I am a migraine sufferer the funny thing about migraines is that they tend to put all over pain into perspective. So when I walk into a wall or slam my hand on something or even when I recently spained my finger I didn't really think any of these things mattered. In fact I was working just fine with the spained finger but then I realized the pain was moving up my arm and should prolly do something about that. That is what my migraines are like. They put all other pain in their place. When I have a bad migraine the day afterwards I am wiped out too. Being in that much pain for that long is just exhausting and I often times find myself unable to move. One time I dry heaved for over a half hour and as a result I fucked up all the muscles in my chest. These are the things that happen to me during a migraine and they are worth not liking.
Now my migraines are set off by three things, stress during periods of insomnia, certain smells especially perfumes and colognes, and some random x factor that will bring me from happy time to FUCKING DEAD.
But wait I strode confidently and happily up to the counter to say hi to some girl who I don't know very well at all. Really, REALLY? I would take that sort of risk just to talk to someone? What the fuck ever. But I did. Then I realized that the migraines that come from certain smells especially colognes and perfumes aren't as powerful anymore, and they aren't as immediatly crippling. Earlier in my life just walking near that area of the store could leave me crippled for the rest of the day. Now I could do it without thinking about it. Granted when she wanted to play samples with me I politely declined because that really is playing with fire. But my migraines happen less often, and no longer are department stores turgid minefields of potential endless pain and suffering.
I am clinically depressed. But it isn't that bad. I suspect that it leaves me always a little off though. But that is something different. I do crash however. When I do I do it hard. Oh so very hard. I can't talk to people, be around people, I freak out easily, and I truely can't handle any sort of emotional pressure at all. It is like I go from zero to critical instantly. I cry at random, or sometimes I just fade out and I end up staring into space for long periods of time. My brain shuts down and I am unable to function creativly. It sucks. And this just happened to me. It is actually my last published blog post.
Again this is set off by a number of things, and while it did just happen to me and I didn't like it I realize now that when I was in high school this would happen to me roughly every 6 months or so. Now it is only once a year maybe even less, and I'll admit it I was really pushing myself and running along the razors edge for a long time so I mean I was expecting this to happen for awhile now.
and I only need to replace my glasses every two years or so.
I am 29. I am rapidly approching middle age and while this is a source of dread for many people it isn't for me. As I am getting older my life and health have improved dramticly and it is almost with a sort of relief that many of my problems that afflict me do so less often and with not as much intensity. Lots of people look at getting older with a sense of dread. But I am a migraine sufferer and the fucking things happen less often now so I am okay with that. If that is what it takes I will get old all day long.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
What is Going on and Why I've Gone Quiet
I don't ordinarily do this. What's more is that I actually wrote this last night and now I am rewriting it. I don't really rewrite things here. I consider my blog to be a giant scrap book for my brain that isn't subjected to such quality assurances such as editing rewriting and what not. Then again my blog posts are primarily for me. Not you. This one however, is for you and as such I've decided to rewrite it. The fact I am writing this in the first place is weird but whatever. I realize that I have lots of new friends now, and this doesn't happen to me as often as it used to. Also the last couple of times it happened I have been able to hide it or head it off at the pass so that nobody noticed. This isn't going to work this time. So I thought I would clue people in. That and who knows maybe writting about this for a second time will make me feel better. Lets move onwards and upwards.
How I Feel.
Bad. It isn't just the normal bad either like there is something wrong or something like that. No this is different. This is that I don't feel anything at all except a general sense of malease that will turn explosive at the slightest thing going wrong. By explosive this can be either anger, or dispair, not something cool like joy. It will be little things like loosing my pumpkins in minecraft or misplacing my keys, or stumbling across a thought that doesn't normally bother me that all the sudden does. Sometimes it will be nothing at all and it will just happen like my head is just full of mine fields and if I don' spend enough time running then the sniper will get me.
Officially I've felt this way for 5 days now. 4 of those days I forgot to eat anything more than a small bowl of salad and some icecream which makes me...I dunno a girl on a really bad diet I guess. Still one needs to eat more than a small bowl of salad a day and so for the first time yesterday I ate some food. I was not deliberatly starving myself because I am upset but rather I ended up starving myself because my body couldn't really be bothered to request food from me. This is pretty much how EVERYTHING feels. Everything is a chore, everything is hard, and when I get frusterated which is easily and often I tend to disproportionately flip out. Like when I lost my pumpkins. I am actually really embarassed about that one. Most pathetic flip out ever.
Unofficially I've been bad for a week before the 1st and I've been "getting bad" for at least two weeks before thn maybe a lil longer. It is hard to feel these things happening as they are happening but there isn't to much I can do now because it is here and it is happening to me and there isn't a whole hell of a lot I can do to stop it.
This ties into the reason as to why I've gone quiet. Dropping out of the world for a bit is essential for the rest of you living through what is happening to me. I feel terrible already so permenatly burning a bridge between the two of us won't make me feel any worse. I've done it before, and I will more than likely do it again. To emphasize I stopped talking to my parents who love me for no real reason. Not talking to you anymore is easier. This sentence isn't directed at anyone either (promise). It doesn't matter if you are Corey, Tyson, or someone I don't like at all like Asshole Dan fuck with me in this state of mind and I will make sure that there will be no more contact between for a decent amount of time and sometimes ever. It is just how it happens. In some cases I've had to delete people from my friend's list and phone to keep myself from relentlessly going after them. Plus it doesn't make me feel any better.
It is what it feels like to go crazy because I know what I am doing is wrong but I literallly can't do anything to stop it. Things go cold inside of me and my thoughts seize up and my consiousness goes straight to hell.
How Things Have Been:
Bad.
Yesterday was my first day off since I've gone quiet and so far it has been the least worst of. With two exceptions I haven't had a conversation that has lasted more than ten consecutive words for a week now. You would think this would make me feel worse and it should. But I am anti social and so it doesn't. I do enjoy the fact that I can just sort of "put people away" at my job and use the excuse that I need to be elsewhere. Working while like this is tuff. It is tuff for two reasons. One is that it gives me a lot of time to think and if I don't keep my brain occupied on something neat it will be occupied by everything negative ever. That sucks. The other thing is that I still wear a mask of happiness there. It is just easier that telling the truth so I just let it happebn. I smile, wave, engage in false sounding banter, then hide in the bathroom for awhile. All contact is only semi nessisary there which is nice.
Yesterday though was alright bit it did have a couple of misteps. I acidently stared into space for, well I don't know how long somewhere between 15 and 45 minuts. Yeah it was a decently long time where I was just completely gone. Then when I came out of it I felt like I was going to cry. It just sort of happened out of nowhere. The crything thing I can understand though, it is pretty much the brains reset button and it is kinda its way to get me moving again, espceically after locking up like that.
I watched Chocolate (the martial arts action movie not the french film) and I loved it. I actually had a good time there. Then I watched Rise of the Phoenix which wasn't as good and it stirred up something inside of me that left me feeling morose and that pretty much lasted the rest of the day. I've been playing a lot of mine craft and while I don't really have the energy to build anything I have been massing supplies for the day when I will have the energy to construct something. I think I am going to break from minecraft though and pursue other things. Like I think I am going to play though a JRPG on my ds. Something nice and consuming. It is unfortunatly my ps2 is broke or I'd be using that. I just realize the other day that I never beat Ar Tonellico 2. I am really close to the end and then I just Added out of it which is a shame because I really loved that game. So I'll play though sands of destruction or something like that. I dunno maybe ff6 again can't mess with a classic.
I've also been reading the Instructions which is nice because I can read as much of that book as I want at any given time and I still have more. I've read two hundred pages in the past three days and I still have over 500 pages left. Best of all it doesn't make me feel worse and it gives me pleanty to think about. I kinda wanna read Atlas Shrugged next. I should order it online because I'll be done with the Instructions before long, possibly before this is all over. I wanna read Atlas Shrugged because I haven't before and there is something about it that interests me.
Why I am This Way
This is the last section I know this because I want to go. Every time I come to Barns and Nobles I am reminded as to why I don't like coming here. The strange thing is that I can't put my finger on why I don't like coming here I just don't. The whole place makes my skin crawl. Anyway, I am like this for a few reasns. One is that I am clinically depressed these things happen. The way I look at it, I see it as emotional migrains. I get migrians. I get really bad ones, bad enough so that I'll be wiped out for two days because being in that much pain will just leave me so exhausted that I can't really function. However, should I take care of myself I can reduce their occurrences. My depression is like the same way unfortunatly, things tend to conspire against me and these things just happen and as a result I feel this way due to a number of circumstances.
My Birthday. My birthday is a hard time of year for me. It really really is. There is no getting round it and there is nothing I can do about it. It is really something I leave in the hands of other people, and you know what? I am thinking I need to change my stradegy regarding this. Normally I leave my birthday in the hands of people I can trust like Sasha or Jessica and you know what? It has never worked out. So I will either leave it in the hands of more people or less, I am thinking less. I'll be turning 30 next year and I think it is best I do that alone. I try to not make a big deal about my birthday and most people were suprised when they heard it had past. This is how I wanted it. It just didn't work out the way I thought it would.
Work. I like my job. But I don't want to fucking live there. That is what I have ben doing. With the shortages, and people keep leaving, and my days off being split up it is like I can't get a break. The problem is that everyone I work with doesn't seem to fucking care about leaving either on time or anywhere near it. As a result I find myself doing far more work than nessisary, far faster just so that I can go home on time. It is kind of rediculous and it is something I need to stop. I mean I just got off of a 6 day streach, had one day off and now I am going to turn around and work 5 more days. What the hell is that? Things should be returning to normal soon though I just need to hole up.
Socialization. I am anti social. THose people who hang out with groups of other people every day? I don't fucking understand how they do it. I love my firends and I enjoy being with them very much but I could go crazy hanging out with them every day. As a weird aside this works differently with girlfriends I don't know how or why but it is like my entire interal structure shifts. It is really weird. Hanging out with her and our friends still causes me to break but just me and her it is okay isn't that weird? Over the years I've tried to not isolate the people I am with due to my own problems. I've yet to be successful. It isn't that I've been doing it to much, but close to it. However, along with the my explosive tendencies I find hanging out exhausting sometimes and I am just unable to do it effectivly. Pile this on top of being beaten down by work and nothing good will come of it.
Then Lack of Sleep. This is a chicken or the egg sort of situation and I don't know which one comes first, if one is the symtom of the other or what. But I haven't been sleeping well and that is not fucking helping.
I am doing better, though writting this post didn't really help at all but whatever. I should be fine in a week or two and then I will be able to keep going like it never happened.
Well I think that covered everything and I am tired of writing.
How I Feel.
Bad. It isn't just the normal bad either like there is something wrong or something like that. No this is different. This is that I don't feel anything at all except a general sense of malease that will turn explosive at the slightest thing going wrong. By explosive this can be either anger, or dispair, not something cool like joy. It will be little things like loosing my pumpkins in minecraft or misplacing my keys, or stumbling across a thought that doesn't normally bother me that all the sudden does. Sometimes it will be nothing at all and it will just happen like my head is just full of mine fields and if I don' spend enough time running then the sniper will get me.
Officially I've felt this way for 5 days now. 4 of those days I forgot to eat anything more than a small bowl of salad and some icecream which makes me...I dunno a girl on a really bad diet I guess. Still one needs to eat more than a small bowl of salad a day and so for the first time yesterday I ate some food. I was not deliberatly starving myself because I am upset but rather I ended up starving myself because my body couldn't really be bothered to request food from me. This is pretty much how EVERYTHING feels. Everything is a chore, everything is hard, and when I get frusterated which is easily and often I tend to disproportionately flip out. Like when I lost my pumpkins. I am actually really embarassed about that one. Most pathetic flip out ever.
Unofficially I've been bad for a week before the 1st and I've been "getting bad" for at least two weeks before thn maybe a lil longer. It is hard to feel these things happening as they are happening but there isn't to much I can do now because it is here and it is happening to me and there isn't a whole hell of a lot I can do to stop it.
This ties into the reason as to why I've gone quiet. Dropping out of the world for a bit is essential for the rest of you living through what is happening to me. I feel terrible already so permenatly burning a bridge between the two of us won't make me feel any worse. I've done it before, and I will more than likely do it again. To emphasize I stopped talking to my parents who love me for no real reason. Not talking to you anymore is easier. This sentence isn't directed at anyone either (promise). It doesn't matter if you are Corey, Tyson, or someone I don't like at all like Asshole Dan fuck with me in this state of mind and I will make sure that there will be no more contact between for a decent amount of time and sometimes ever. It is just how it happens. In some cases I've had to delete people from my friend's list and phone to keep myself from relentlessly going after them. Plus it doesn't make me feel any better.
It is what it feels like to go crazy because I know what I am doing is wrong but I literallly can't do anything to stop it. Things go cold inside of me and my thoughts seize up and my consiousness goes straight to hell.
How Things Have Been:
Bad.
Yesterday was my first day off since I've gone quiet and so far it has been the least worst of. With two exceptions I haven't had a conversation that has lasted more than ten consecutive words for a week now. You would think this would make me feel worse and it should. But I am anti social and so it doesn't. I do enjoy the fact that I can just sort of "put people away" at my job and use the excuse that I need to be elsewhere. Working while like this is tuff. It is tuff for two reasons. One is that it gives me a lot of time to think and if I don't keep my brain occupied on something neat it will be occupied by everything negative ever. That sucks. The other thing is that I still wear a mask of happiness there. It is just easier that telling the truth so I just let it happebn. I smile, wave, engage in false sounding banter, then hide in the bathroom for awhile. All contact is only semi nessisary there which is nice.
Yesterday though was alright bit it did have a couple of misteps. I acidently stared into space for, well I don't know how long somewhere between 15 and 45 minuts. Yeah it was a decently long time where I was just completely gone. Then when I came out of it I felt like I was going to cry. It just sort of happened out of nowhere. The crything thing I can understand though, it is pretty much the brains reset button and it is kinda its way to get me moving again, espceically after locking up like that.
I watched Chocolate (the martial arts action movie not the french film) and I loved it. I actually had a good time there. Then I watched Rise of the Phoenix which wasn't as good and it stirred up something inside of me that left me feeling morose and that pretty much lasted the rest of the day. I've been playing a lot of mine craft and while I don't really have the energy to build anything I have been massing supplies for the day when I will have the energy to construct something. I think I am going to break from minecraft though and pursue other things. Like I think I am going to play though a JRPG on my ds. Something nice and consuming. It is unfortunatly my ps2 is broke or I'd be using that. I just realize the other day that I never beat Ar Tonellico 2. I am really close to the end and then I just Added out of it which is a shame because I really loved that game. So I'll play though sands of destruction or something like that. I dunno maybe ff6 again can't mess with a classic.
I've also been reading the Instructions which is nice because I can read as much of that book as I want at any given time and I still have more. I've read two hundred pages in the past three days and I still have over 500 pages left. Best of all it doesn't make me feel worse and it gives me pleanty to think about. I kinda wanna read Atlas Shrugged next. I should order it online because I'll be done with the Instructions before long, possibly before this is all over. I wanna read Atlas Shrugged because I haven't before and there is something about it that interests me.
Why I am This Way
This is the last section I know this because I want to go. Every time I come to Barns and Nobles I am reminded as to why I don't like coming here. The strange thing is that I can't put my finger on why I don't like coming here I just don't. The whole place makes my skin crawl. Anyway, I am like this for a few reasns. One is that I am clinically depressed these things happen. The way I look at it, I see it as emotional migrains. I get migrians. I get really bad ones, bad enough so that I'll be wiped out for two days because being in that much pain will just leave me so exhausted that I can't really function. However, should I take care of myself I can reduce their occurrences. My depression is like the same way unfortunatly, things tend to conspire against me and these things just happen and as a result I feel this way due to a number of circumstances.
My Birthday. My birthday is a hard time of year for me. It really really is. There is no getting round it and there is nothing I can do about it. It is really something I leave in the hands of other people, and you know what? I am thinking I need to change my stradegy regarding this. Normally I leave my birthday in the hands of people I can trust like Sasha or Jessica and you know what? It has never worked out. So I will either leave it in the hands of more people or less, I am thinking less. I'll be turning 30 next year and I think it is best I do that alone. I try to not make a big deal about my birthday and most people were suprised when they heard it had past. This is how I wanted it. It just didn't work out the way I thought it would.
Work. I like my job. But I don't want to fucking live there. That is what I have ben doing. With the shortages, and people keep leaving, and my days off being split up it is like I can't get a break. The problem is that everyone I work with doesn't seem to fucking care about leaving either on time or anywhere near it. As a result I find myself doing far more work than nessisary, far faster just so that I can go home on time. It is kind of rediculous and it is something I need to stop. I mean I just got off of a 6 day streach, had one day off and now I am going to turn around and work 5 more days. What the hell is that? Things should be returning to normal soon though I just need to hole up.
Socialization. I am anti social. THose people who hang out with groups of other people every day? I don't fucking understand how they do it. I love my firends and I enjoy being with them very much but I could go crazy hanging out with them every day. As a weird aside this works differently with girlfriends I don't know how or why but it is like my entire interal structure shifts. It is really weird. Hanging out with her and our friends still causes me to break but just me and her it is okay isn't that weird? Over the years I've tried to not isolate the people I am with due to my own problems. I've yet to be successful. It isn't that I've been doing it to much, but close to it. However, along with the my explosive tendencies I find hanging out exhausting sometimes and I am just unable to do it effectivly. Pile this on top of being beaten down by work and nothing good will come of it.
Then Lack of Sleep. This is a chicken or the egg sort of situation and I don't know which one comes first, if one is the symtom of the other or what. But I haven't been sleeping well and that is not fucking helping.
I am doing better, though writting this post didn't really help at all but whatever. I should be fine in a week or two and then I will be able to keep going like it never happened.
Well I think that covered everything and I am tired of writing.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Geek Time Activate!
:D I am in a good mood, it is my day off, I had a productive morning... well productive if you count getting stuff done in minecraft. Minecraft is a good time. I had to start playing single player because there is something enticing about the Nether and being able to turn the monsters off whenever you want is nice. I mean if I am just building something and night falls I go to sleep and they go away. So I turn them off and can work through the night without having to worry about dropping what I am doing so I can hop in my bed. That stuff is annoying. Also creepers suck. No seriously. I like my landscape the way it is and having stuff I just built keeps getting blown up which is annoying as hell. I don't like creepers. I also turned monsters on for a bit and then spent half of the night running from 5 creepers which all attacked me at the same time which was shit.
Fortunatly I managed to get one to kill two of the other ones then I killed the last one and then later on I died because I forgot where the hole they made was and I fell in...there was also a skelton was in that hole. So I turned that shit off. I am currenly just getting materials together to build my house. Once I get all that done then I will be able to start really focusing on my house. I need my sky island to be a little bit bigger and then once that happens I will be able to make some stuff happen. THEN I will be able to start building something in the Neather. I like the the Neather it is relaxing to me. I am not sure what I am going to do there but it will be something. Originally I just wanted it to be a free and pleantiful source of magma but now it I want to make a home there. I like homes.
Moving on there is heroclix. Heroclix has been calling my name pretty viciously. I am not sure if it is the new street fighter figures, the new giant sized happy things, the improved sculpts, or the fact that I've always really loved the game. I like BattleTech but I am pretty much done spending money on it. I got my book, my map set, pleanty of figgures, all I really need is to get some stuff printed at kinkos which I might do tonight, a King Crab, and a Hatchet Man. I might someday buy another boxed set to get another pile of plastic miniatures or some other stuff. However, for the most part I think I am good with Battletech I might pick up the lakes and rivers hex maps set.
So back to heroclix. There is the blind buying thing and my god does that ever burn my. I mean why WHY do the blind buying thing. I hate that so much. However, the game itself almost makes it worth it. Also if I grab a couple of booster for across some of the newer sets and a few singles I'll be more or less set. I mean it isn't like I will be playing in tournaments or things like that it will be just at anime club. I also love the switch to a more flexible card system than the rather static powers and ability sheets. It is just a matter of getting some figures together. There is also the other matter that the only people who sell it in town is some place called bobe's hobby house. Nice people, and a GREAT selection of stuff from all over. It is mostly a matter of getting some figgures together. There are tons and tons and tons of lots of ebay but they are all for the older figures which is irritating as hell. I don't know why I am so fixated on the newer sets actually maybe I should relax and just snag 400 figgures for 30 bucks and call it a day. However the biggest advantage of the newer sets is that the figures are just so much better designed. I rea;y want the Blackest Night Starter and possibly the fantastic 4 starter then a couple of the the new x-men starters and I would be good to go.
You know what is weird? VTES prices haven't dropped. I love me some VTES and the fucking game is out of print and yet the prices haven't dropped they haven't dropped at all in fact in a couple of cases the prices have gone up. I really want to play it some more and I think I will push it next club, that and ON THE EDGE cause that game is pretty snazzy super excellent and I like the decks I made. I seem to have lots of games I wanna play and not a whole lot of time to play them. I also want to play the Call of Cthullu game LCG more but I would like to gather up some more cards and put together some decks. Ultimatly I regret not getting Warhammer instead. I was afraid that if I got the warhammer card game people would freak out. I don't think this is the case and you know what? I like the call of the cthullu lcg I should get some more cards for it.
Ugh it is like 5 and I am hungry but there is that horrifying traffic that I just don't feel like dealing with it.
Fortunatly I managed to get one to kill two of the other ones then I killed the last one and then later on I died because I forgot where the hole they made was and I fell in...there was also a skelton was in that hole. So I turned that shit off. I am currenly just getting materials together to build my house. Once I get all that done then I will be able to start really focusing on my house. I need my sky island to be a little bit bigger and then once that happens I will be able to make some stuff happen. THEN I will be able to start building something in the Neather. I like the the Neather it is relaxing to me. I am not sure what I am going to do there but it will be something. Originally I just wanted it to be a free and pleantiful source of magma but now it I want to make a home there. I like homes.
Moving on there is heroclix. Heroclix has been calling my name pretty viciously. I am not sure if it is the new street fighter figures, the new giant sized happy things, the improved sculpts, or the fact that I've always really loved the game. I like BattleTech but I am pretty much done spending money on it. I got my book, my map set, pleanty of figgures, all I really need is to get some stuff printed at kinkos which I might do tonight, a King Crab, and a Hatchet Man. I might someday buy another boxed set to get another pile of plastic miniatures or some other stuff. However, for the most part I think I am good with Battletech I might pick up the lakes and rivers hex maps set.
So back to heroclix. There is the blind buying thing and my god does that ever burn my. I mean why WHY do the blind buying thing. I hate that so much. However, the game itself almost makes it worth it. Also if I grab a couple of booster for across some of the newer sets and a few singles I'll be more or less set. I mean it isn't like I will be playing in tournaments or things like that it will be just at anime club. I also love the switch to a more flexible card system than the rather static powers and ability sheets. It is just a matter of getting some figures together. There is also the other matter that the only people who sell it in town is some place called bobe's hobby house. Nice people, and a GREAT selection of stuff from all over. It is mostly a matter of getting some figgures together. There are tons and tons and tons of lots of ebay but they are all for the older figures which is irritating as hell. I don't know why I am so fixated on the newer sets actually maybe I should relax and just snag 400 figgures for 30 bucks and call it a day. However the biggest advantage of the newer sets is that the figures are just so much better designed. I rea;y want the Blackest Night Starter and possibly the fantastic 4 starter then a couple of the the new x-men starters and I would be good to go.
You know what is weird? VTES prices haven't dropped. I love me some VTES and the fucking game is out of print and yet the prices haven't dropped they haven't dropped at all in fact in a couple of cases the prices have gone up. I really want to play it some more and I think I will push it next club, that and ON THE EDGE cause that game is pretty snazzy super excellent and I like the decks I made. I seem to have lots of games I wanna play and not a whole lot of time to play them. I also want to play the Call of Cthullu game LCG more but I would like to gather up some more cards and put together some decks. Ultimatly I regret not getting Warhammer instead. I was afraid that if I got the warhammer card game people would freak out. I don't think this is the case and you know what? I like the call of the cthullu lcg I should get some more cards for it.
Ugh it is like 5 and I am hungry but there is that horrifying traffic that I just don't feel like dealing with it.
Cultural Imperialism and Universal Human Rights
There is something called the All Souls College examinations which are given every year to recent graduates of Oxford. The stake? A 7 year fellowship which is a really big deal. No more than three fellowships are ever awarded a year and some years none are awarded. Harper’s had a list of questions asked for the general essay portion of the exam. I’ve decided to take a swing at answering some of them. It is amazing what you will find in Harpers eh? I will be answering these questions not in a formal essay style but rather my more relaxed fun to read blog style.
Are Universal Human Rights A Form of Cultural Imperialism
Oh sure sure. I could hem and haw, and try to weedle around the subject and do this fancy little dance. However, the answer to this question is yep. Absolutely. No real doubt about it.
Yeah a new paragraph already. See the only real argument against this idea that I can readily see is that if the human rights are universal than they are transcultural and therefore it is something that all cultures should inherently respect as they are built in. However, this edges onto a different and more troubling discussion of just how much of “culture” is hardwired into human behaviour and how much of it is an artificial contractual construction in order to make life less burtish and short. Truth be told is that human beings can all get along fairly well without a good deal of their human rights respected. Heck when you look at regiems like North Korea, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, or Stalinist Russia and people will keep on truckin without food and you need that to live. There is something to be said about the chicken and the egg, ie it is hard to care about universal human rights when you are starving to death. But then there is the issue of the American south where we are willing to believe that human rights are not universal because their skin are a different color. Or for an even more vicious example that human rights are not important because these people are employees in my coal mine and they certainly don’t need things like sleep, to breath, or other things that are most definetly human rights. See lets move the human rights things out of the realm of governments and we look at what businesses feel comfortable doing in the name of profit and we start to see that the idea of universal human rights is indeed an artificial construction born not out of an entire culture, but rather out of a select group of one culture’s elite intelectuals.
Universal Human Rights is every bit a cultural construction and just as they were manifested out of the air. They are granted to us in the exact same way that the “kindly” slave owner tried to make his slaves into humans in Tony Morrison’s book Beloved. It might be a different Tony Morrison book I’ve read a bunch. I am pretty sure it is beloved though. I am in a book store I suppose I could go check, but it is the sort of thing that requires its own essay to explain because it comes out of left field. I should find a better example and not one that shows off how fucking awesome I am. Wait no this whole thing just needs to be explained better. I don’t believe in back space so we are gonna try this again in the NEXT PARAGRAPH we are doing this shit LIVE and unrehearsed ladies and gentlemen.
Universal Human Rights is every bit a cultural construction and just as they were manifested out of the air. They are granted to us by the cultures intelectual base so that we all have a universal way to treat each other. The problem is that if these human rights were universal then there would be no need to stand up and say well these are universal human rights. And considering the fact that there are pleanty of people who feel justified in killing each other over the silliest things, and the right to kill each other is not within the realm universal human rights then we are going to have to say that there is something “not quite universally culturally sound” about the idea of universal human rights.
I am going to come at the same thing from a different angle just to make sure I got all my based covered. The Idea of Universal Human Rights is a manufactured one. To help hide the fact that it is manufactured we come up with some low impact easy to swallow universal human rights. To do this I am going to point out something I hope you noticed already. I haven’t defined universal human rights. I won’t because I don’t believe they excist. But lets throw out some sample human rights to see if we can’t make this work. We all have the right to not be murdered or to be forced into situations that will cause us grievous harm…like war or working in a coal mine. We should never HAVE to do these things, and if we do then we need to be adequately compensated. Of course how the hell are you going to compensate someone for the loss of their life? Well countries provide services in such quanity that you should feel obligated to lay down your life. However, you should never HAVE to lay down your life so even within our culturally imperialistic confines we already are having some significant conflicts. We should never be forced to put our bodies in harms way or to do things with our bodies that we don’t want to. This covers things like rape or when your boss asks you to handle dangerous materials without the proper equipment. Or when you have an unwanted pregnancy…of course what about the right to life. You can debate with me all you want about the potentiality of a zygote to become a baby and when a zygote cell cluster becomes life. I am pro choice. So whateva. It is important that over the course of the argument you would be having with me about the difinition of life similar arguments happened over whether or not black folks were humans or not, of whether women should be treated equally to men, or whether employees deserve rights that would ordinarly be protected by the government. The zygote/life argument is just a chapter in a much larger narrative that shows that there is very little that is universal about universal human rights.
The civil war makes for an excellent parable over the idea of cultural rights verus universal rights. Many people who discuss the civil war discuss it in terms of states fighting for their right to define the laws within their own boarders even to the point where it can define classes of individuals. So blacks are a non whole men. Whereas the north, believing that the blacks were whole people and deserving of a whole suite of rights and freedoms, decided that the universal rights came before the rights of the states and thus the war was fought. However, the north had to define these rights, hand them to the blacks, and to beat the south until they were willing to fall into line with them. A nice clear cut example of cultural imperialism within one countries own boarders. Isn’t that cool?
Now despite the fact that I believe that Universal Human Rights is a cultural construction and that enforcing them is a form of cultural imperialism that doesn’t mean I think they are a bad idea. In fact I think they are a wonderful idea. The idea of universal human rights not the standard definition of the things that I’ve been capitalizing for most of this essay but that actual idea, the improper loosly defined noun is a magnificent accomplishment. Culture is the thing that helps us rise up from the brute. It gives us a set of ideas and structures that keeps us from commiting acts of unspeakable barbarism. Looking at things like the wild west, pre invasion Afghanistan, and lots and lots of Africa we as a race are capable of living in unspeakable conditions underneath some of the harshest oppression. However, in these conditions we do not flourish. We survive. But we do not become better. The idea of culture, its foundations, and the its advancement is the thing that keeps us from raping and killing each other. We may say that we would never rape or kill anyone should our culture collapse, or never of excisted in the first place and that is a comforting thought. It also means that you will be one of the raped or killed. This all sounds like a rather grim view of humanity but it isn’t. I am sitting here in a books a million bookstore typing this essay for fun on a lap top that is smaller and lighter than all of my hardcover roleplaying books. Sure we as a race do some bad things. I would also say that we really do need some form and structure in order to keep us from doing things that are… regrettable in terms of the advancment of the species. I don’t believe that culture is a panacea. It is a tool that we may choose to engage in to varying degrees to help us make descisions which will enrich our lives and the lives of everyone around us. I mean we still have crime and we still do terrible things both to each other and to other cultures. Like when we wiped out the Indians and then spent the entire history of our country dicking them over. But we try.
Coming back around. Yes universal human rights are a form of cultural imperialism. This is especially true when they become Universal Human Rights, all codified and specific. It is definitely a form of cultural imperialism when we impose the capitalized version of the word on a culture that doesn’t want it or maybe a culture who isn’t ready for them. However, the lower case version of the word. The more flexible one is a noble endevour. One that is worth being spread and protected. It is something that lies within the shadow of the upper case version of the word. SO. While it is cultural imperialism who is to say that cultural imperialism is all bad? It has its bad sides to be sure. In many of the ways it has been spread over the course of our human history it has been very bad. Yet the idea that there is a certain minimum amount of freedoms that everyone should have. I can get behind that. I can also get behind not resting until everyone has these rights. What we need to learn is to not drag all the bad, vicious parts of cultural imperialism along for the ride. This is much harder. It might even be impossible because to many people are far to willing to comprimise the universal rights of others and when that happens that’s when problems crop up. Still it is something we can offer to the world. Oh well I am done now.
Are Universal Human Rights A Form of Cultural Imperialism
Oh sure sure. I could hem and haw, and try to weedle around the subject and do this fancy little dance. However, the answer to this question is yep. Absolutely. No real doubt about it.
Yeah a new paragraph already. See the only real argument against this idea that I can readily see is that if the human rights are universal than they are transcultural and therefore it is something that all cultures should inherently respect as they are built in. However, this edges onto a different and more troubling discussion of just how much of “culture” is hardwired into human behaviour and how much of it is an artificial contractual construction in order to make life less burtish and short. Truth be told is that human beings can all get along fairly well without a good deal of their human rights respected. Heck when you look at regiems like North Korea, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, or Stalinist Russia and people will keep on truckin without food and you need that to live. There is something to be said about the chicken and the egg, ie it is hard to care about universal human rights when you are starving to death. But then there is the issue of the American south where we are willing to believe that human rights are not universal because their skin are a different color. Or for an even more vicious example that human rights are not important because these people are employees in my coal mine and they certainly don’t need things like sleep, to breath, or other things that are most definetly human rights. See lets move the human rights things out of the realm of governments and we look at what businesses feel comfortable doing in the name of profit and we start to see that the idea of universal human rights is indeed an artificial construction born not out of an entire culture, but rather out of a select group of one culture’s elite intelectuals.
Universal Human Rights is every bit a cultural construction and just as they were manifested out of the air. They are granted to us in the exact same way that the “kindly” slave owner tried to make his slaves into humans in Tony Morrison’s book Beloved. It might be a different Tony Morrison book I’ve read a bunch. I am pretty sure it is beloved though. I am in a book store I suppose I could go check, but it is the sort of thing that requires its own essay to explain because it comes out of left field. I should find a better example and not one that shows off how fucking awesome I am. Wait no this whole thing just needs to be explained better. I don’t believe in back space so we are gonna try this again in the NEXT PARAGRAPH we are doing this shit LIVE and unrehearsed ladies and gentlemen.
Universal Human Rights is every bit a cultural construction and just as they were manifested out of the air. They are granted to us by the cultures intelectual base so that we all have a universal way to treat each other. The problem is that if these human rights were universal then there would be no need to stand up and say well these are universal human rights. And considering the fact that there are pleanty of people who feel justified in killing each other over the silliest things, and the right to kill each other is not within the realm universal human rights then we are going to have to say that there is something “not quite universally culturally sound” about the idea of universal human rights.
I am going to come at the same thing from a different angle just to make sure I got all my based covered. The Idea of Universal Human Rights is a manufactured one. To help hide the fact that it is manufactured we come up with some low impact easy to swallow universal human rights. To do this I am going to point out something I hope you noticed already. I haven’t defined universal human rights. I won’t because I don’t believe they excist. But lets throw out some sample human rights to see if we can’t make this work. We all have the right to not be murdered or to be forced into situations that will cause us grievous harm…like war or working in a coal mine. We should never HAVE to do these things, and if we do then we need to be adequately compensated. Of course how the hell are you going to compensate someone for the loss of their life? Well countries provide services in such quanity that you should feel obligated to lay down your life. However, you should never HAVE to lay down your life so even within our culturally imperialistic confines we already are having some significant conflicts. We should never be forced to put our bodies in harms way or to do things with our bodies that we don’t want to. This covers things like rape or when your boss asks you to handle dangerous materials without the proper equipment. Or when you have an unwanted pregnancy…of course what about the right to life. You can debate with me all you want about the potentiality of a zygote to become a baby and when a zygote cell cluster becomes life. I am pro choice. So whateva. It is important that over the course of the argument you would be having with me about the difinition of life similar arguments happened over whether or not black folks were humans or not, of whether women should be treated equally to men, or whether employees deserve rights that would ordinarly be protected by the government. The zygote/life argument is just a chapter in a much larger narrative that shows that there is very little that is universal about universal human rights.
The civil war makes for an excellent parable over the idea of cultural rights verus universal rights. Many people who discuss the civil war discuss it in terms of states fighting for their right to define the laws within their own boarders even to the point where it can define classes of individuals. So blacks are a non whole men. Whereas the north, believing that the blacks were whole people and deserving of a whole suite of rights and freedoms, decided that the universal rights came before the rights of the states and thus the war was fought. However, the north had to define these rights, hand them to the blacks, and to beat the south until they were willing to fall into line with them. A nice clear cut example of cultural imperialism within one countries own boarders. Isn’t that cool?
Now despite the fact that I believe that Universal Human Rights is a cultural construction and that enforcing them is a form of cultural imperialism that doesn’t mean I think they are a bad idea. In fact I think they are a wonderful idea. The idea of universal human rights not the standard definition of the things that I’ve been capitalizing for most of this essay but that actual idea, the improper loosly defined noun is a magnificent accomplishment. Culture is the thing that helps us rise up from the brute. It gives us a set of ideas and structures that keeps us from commiting acts of unspeakable barbarism. Looking at things like the wild west, pre invasion Afghanistan, and lots and lots of Africa we as a race are capable of living in unspeakable conditions underneath some of the harshest oppression. However, in these conditions we do not flourish. We survive. But we do not become better. The idea of culture, its foundations, and the its advancement is the thing that keeps us from raping and killing each other. We may say that we would never rape or kill anyone should our culture collapse, or never of excisted in the first place and that is a comforting thought. It also means that you will be one of the raped or killed. This all sounds like a rather grim view of humanity but it isn’t. I am sitting here in a books a million bookstore typing this essay for fun on a lap top that is smaller and lighter than all of my hardcover roleplaying books. Sure we as a race do some bad things. I would also say that we really do need some form and structure in order to keep us from doing things that are… regrettable in terms of the advancment of the species. I don’t believe that culture is a panacea. It is a tool that we may choose to engage in to varying degrees to help us make descisions which will enrich our lives and the lives of everyone around us. I mean we still have crime and we still do terrible things both to each other and to other cultures. Like when we wiped out the Indians and then spent the entire history of our country dicking them over. But we try.
Coming back around. Yes universal human rights are a form of cultural imperialism. This is especially true when they become Universal Human Rights, all codified and specific. It is definitely a form of cultural imperialism when we impose the capitalized version of the word on a culture that doesn’t want it or maybe a culture who isn’t ready for them. However, the lower case version of the word. The more flexible one is a noble endevour. One that is worth being spread and protected. It is something that lies within the shadow of the upper case version of the word. SO. While it is cultural imperialism who is to say that cultural imperialism is all bad? It has its bad sides to be sure. In many of the ways it has been spread over the course of our human history it has been very bad. Yet the idea that there is a certain minimum amount of freedoms that everyone should have. I can get behind that. I can also get behind not resting until everyone has these rights. What we need to learn is to not drag all the bad, vicious parts of cultural imperialism along for the ride. This is much harder. It might even be impossible because to many people are far to willing to comprimise the universal rights of others and when that happens that’s when problems crop up. Still it is something we can offer to the world. Oh well I am done now.
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