Never say “I don't have time to.”

There are some things which I don't have time for. I could not walk 100 miles a day. I could not read 100 books in a day (well, maybe kids' books). 

But have you noticed that when people say “I don't have time to” they are never talking about activities that are actually, physically, impossible to find time for? 

“I don't have time to...cook, exercise, read, keep the house clean.” But other people do all those things. Do they have more time than you do?

A variation is to extend “I don't have to” to pretend that literally no one can do the thing. “I don't understand how anyone can work full time and still find time to cook.” Or: “once you have kids, you won't have time to exercise.”

These lines always trigger me because they are so obviously false. Look around you and you will see many examples of people who work and have kids and still manage to do X.

(We have a cultural taboo about talking about success, so the people in your life who actually do do the things might never tell you about it, unless you actively ask. [I'll tell you, but I have no social skills.])

So why do people claim that things they want to do are impossible? Partly because they don't have successful role models. Partly because it palliates the pain of failure. “No one with kids has a clean house.” “Of course I'm fat, I'm an American haha.” “Only rich people can save money.” Stop doing this. To invest in convincing yourself your goals are impossible is to commit to failure rather than success.

To steal a line from another domain: you have time for anything, but not everything. 

Note that I am not telling anyone what to do. You understand your own circumstances best, and I don't have the information or the right to tell you what your priorities should be. If you've looked into the costs and the benefits and you're happy not exercising, not reading, or whatever, that's fine with me. I hear TV is great lately.

What I want readers to get out of this is the understanding that their life choices are choices. Distinguishing between a choice you are making and a fate you have to accept is surprisingly hard. It took me about 20 years to break out of that sort of learned helplessness. No institution, and no parent, really has an interest in helping you build an independent life—they want you to conform, consume, and defer to them. It's hard—but you have to build the life you want for yourself yourself.

To a first approximation, your life is not imposed on you by Fate. You choose what your life looks like.

Capital gains taxation

 

Long-term capital gains and dividends are taxed at special lower rates. The best way to understand this is to look at the tax rate charts for ordinary income and for capital gains and run some examples.

A middle-income person, with income of say $50,000 for a single person or $100,000 for a married person, would pay a marginal tax rate of 22% on ordinary income, and 15% for capital gains. (Note, to interpret the capital gains tax rate charts, understand that your bracket depends on total income, not just capital gain income).

The difference is bigger for higher incomes. If my income is a million dollars, then capital gains would be taxed at their maximum marginal rate—but that's still only 20%. Meanwhile, ordinary income would be taxed at a marginal 37%.

You often hear capital gains taxation discussed as something that only benefits the rich. This is mostly true, because rich people are more likely to have capital gains income, if only because they can afford to hold more investments. And because they can afford expensive accountants who can advise them on tax avoidance strategies. But in theory, the poor can benefit from capital gains tax rates too. If I make $10,000, my income tax marginal rate is only 12%, but I can get capital gains for 0%. This is why some people argue that the ideal income is precisely $80,000 in capital gains and no other income—this would allow you to have a generous $80,000 to live on, with a federal income tax rate of zero.

If you're doing your own taxes, reporting capital gains is going to be a little bit harder. You have to track gains versus losses, long-term vs. short-term, and your brokerage can report these things in several different ways. Or not report them at all, if you've got crypto gains or losses :) But it's all quite feasible!

Note—most of this discussion does not apply to short-term capital gains, which are taxed like ordinary income. Short-term means held for less than a year.

Facta non verba

 

How much effort do you think society should put into detecting and punishing bad actions? And how much to detect and punish bad speech? And how much to detect and punish bad thoughts or beliefs?

Now how much attention do we give to thoughtcrime? Or bad words?

God, how easy it would be to do bad deeds if you had the self-restraint never to talk about it.

You choose how much free time you have.

 

Will you buy a house or rent? Live close to work or further away?

Do you want a pet? Multiple pets? What kinds?

What about a child, or multiple kids? Will you wait until you're in a stable relationship to get pregnant?

Will you see friends or family every week? Less often? Not at all?

How many hobbies will you have, and how much time will you spend on them?

We don't usually think of it this way, but when we make these decisions we are deciding how much free time we will have. You get to choose!

 

What inspired this post is the vibrant debate in the personal finance community about whether it makes sense to hire a housecleaner. Some are violently opposed. Obviously, being time-rich makes it easier to make choices on principle, whether it's cleaning your own house, living with one or no cars, or cooking your own meals. The time-poor have less slack, due to their choices.

Some choices are more easily reversible than others. Once you've decided to have three kids, two dogs, and live in a big house an hour from work, it's going to be hard to impossible to get back to having more free time. 

Are those bad choices? Eh. Everything's a tradeoff.

The more I write about this, the better the analogy between time and money seems.

“But I can't sell my house, I'd lose a fortune. And I can't give away my dogs! And of course I can't abandon my kids.”

Actually, you can. People make these choices every day. They don't make them without cost, or effort, but they make them.

Now don't confuse the statement that you CAN do something with the statement that you SHOULD do something. Of course you shouldn't abandon your kids, or give away your pets (exception for vicious dogs). But making that mental step from thinking of your life as your fate, to thinking of it as your choice, is crucial.

On socialism

 

The same people who were "liberals" 30 years ago, and "progressives" 10 years ago, have now started rebranding themselves "socialists." Why the constant rebranding? The right doesn't seem to do this. I think it's related to the shift leftwards of the Democratic party—each new generation of activists wants to prove it's more leftist than the last one. 

 

I'm probably fighting a losing battle, but it's disturbing that so many people want to affiliate themselves with socialism, an evil totalitarian system that has killed tens of millions of people. And when you ask, generally they don't actually endorse any socialist ideas. Generally they endorse garden-variety liberalism, with higher taxes, more regulations, and a welfare state. 

 

The conversation goes like this.

 

I'm a Nazi.

 

—What? That's terrible.

And by Nazi, I mean that I enjoy baking pies.

—Um, okay, I guess you CAN use the word 'Nazi' that way, but it's sure gonna confuse people. And why would you want to use a label associated with a bunch of evil murderers anyway?

Oh, the Nazis weren't TRUE Nazis. TRUE Nazism, as defined by me, is about baking delicious pies. You have some sort of problem with pies?

—No, but the dictionary—

Screw the dictionary. I can be a Nazi if I say I'm a Nazi!

But why do you want to?

How to understand me

 

Please judge my arguments and opinions based on what I say. What you imagine I might be thinking, what you intuit between the lines, and what you think you know about my personal life or history, are not reliable guides to what I think. If you can't tell whether I meant what I said or whether I meant an esoteric hidden implication of what I said, I meant what I said.

Stop making assumptions. They're usually wrong.

See What You Made Me Do: The Dangers of Domestic Abuse [book review]

 

This is a book review for "See What You Made Me Do: The Dangers of Domestic Abuse that We Ignore, Explain Away, or Refuse to See," by Jess Hill. It's also ~5000 words, so uh, you've been warned.

I'll give you a table of contents to create the illusion of organization. The actual book's table of contents has uselessly vague headings like “Shame,” “The Underground,” and “Fixing It.”

The Ballad of the Jew's Daughter

One of my favorite folk songs goes like this (sorry, I can't find a recording):

As I walked out one holiday,


The flakes of snow did fall,

And all the children in the school


Were out a-playing ball.

A little boy threw his ball so high,

He threw his ball so low,


He threw it in a dusky garden


Among the blades of snow.

Out came the neighbor’s youngest daughter


All dressed in fairy green.


“Come in, come in, my lad,” she said,


“You may have your ball again.”

She took him by his little white arm,

and led him through the hall

She took him in a little dark room,

where no one could hear him call.

She sat him down in a golden chair

She fed him with sugar and sweet

She laid him down on a dusty board,

And stabbed him like a sheep.

Pray put my Bible at my head,

My prayer-book at my feet,

And if any of my playmates should call for me,

Pray tell them I'm dead and asleep.

Some take hold of locks of hair

And others the soles of his feet

And drag him down in a deep dry-well

Fifteen fathoms deep.

Some take hold of locks of hair

And others the sole of his feet

And drag him down in a deep dry-well

Where weary travelers sleep.

I love that the murder is so completely unmotivated here. Is she angry about the ball? Is she a serial killer? Is she a fairy or a witch (that sinister green)? And who are the mysterious “others” who show up to get rid of the body?

Recently, reading Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (which I recommend to anyone interested in the history of English poetry) I found that the original of this song is much less mysterious. The “lady” is a Jew's daughter, and naturally she kills the child because she hates Christians and wants their blood. The song is based on the historical case of a 13th-century child murder which was blamed on a dozen of (coincidentally) the richest Jews in England and supposedly witnessed by ALL the Jews in England. Here's the original, and although too explicit for my taste, it has some lovely cruel parts. 

 

The rain rins doun through Mirry-land toune,
Sae dois it doune the Pa;
Sae dois the lads of Mirry-land toune,
Whan they play at the ba.

Than out and cam the Jewis dochter,
Says, Will ye cum in and dine?
'I winnae cum in, I cannae cum in,
Without my play-feres nine.'

Scho powd an apple reid and white,
To intice the young thing in:
Scho powd an apple white and reid,
And that the sweit bairne did win.

And scho has taine out a little pen-knife,
And low down by her gair;
Scho has twin'd the yong thing and his life,
A word he nevir spak mair.

And out and cam the thick, thick bluid,
And out and cam the thin,
And out and cam the bonny herts bluid;
Thair was nae life left in.

Scho laid him on a dressing-borde,
And drest him like a swine,
And laughing said, Gae nou and pley
With your sweit play-feres nine.

Scho rowd him in a cake of lead,
Bade him lie stil and sleip;
Scho cast him in a deip draw-well,
Was fifty fadom deip.

Whan bells wer rung, and mass was sung,
And every lady went hame,
Than ilka lady had her yong sonne,
Bot Lady Helen had nane.

Scho rowd hir mantil hir about,
And sair, sair gan she weip,
And she ran into the Jewis castel,
Whan they wer all asleip.

'My bonny Sir Hew, my pretty Sir Hew,
I pray thee to me speik:'
'O lady, rinn to the deip draw-well,
Gin ye your sonne wad seik.'

Lady Helen ran to the deip draw-well,
And knelt upon her kne:
'My bonny Sir Hew, an ye be here,
I pray thee speik to me.'

'The lead is wondrous heavy, mither,
The well is wondrous deip;
A keen pen-knife sticks in my hert,
A word I dounae speik.

'Gae hame, gae hame, my mither deir,
Fetch me my windling sheet,
And at the back o Mirry-land toun,
It's thair we twa sall meet.'

When I was kidnapped, they took away my books. If you know me, you'll understand how bad this was. What do people do with free time, without books? Within a few weeks, I talked my therapist into letting me have a copy of the Bible. I figured they couldn't refuse, because religion, and although the therapist was well aware I was not a believer, he was, and must have figured it would be good for me.

The Bible I was given was a thick, cheap paperback, and after a month or so tumbling around in my hiking backpack and being read while I was in my sleeping bag on the desert ground, the pages were folded and dirty and the cover came off. So, when I went to my boarding school, they wouldn't let me keep it. I tried playing the "but it's the Bible!" card, but it didn't work. They said I could have another Bible, but I couldn't have this one, because it didn't look nice. I never got another Bible.

The Whedon Effect

Why is it that male feminists so often treat women badly? What they're thinking: I have the right beliefs, therefore I'm the good guy, therefore I can rest on my laurels and pay no attention to how I treat the actual women in my life.

"I'm pro-choice (and I swear not just because it leads to more sex)." "Okay, let's have sex. Do you have a condom?" Of course not. He doesn't like condoms. I guess I can get an abortion. And pay for it myself. 

His feminism means asserting his dominance over non-feminist men. It doesn't mean that he feels any heightened obligation to women, or that he even bothers to notice women's feelings. Examples: the male feminist who proposed an open relationship to me, where "open" would mean he got to have sex with anyone he wanted, and I got to have sex with...him. Or the one who somewhat horrifyingly told me he knew I wanted to have sex with him because of the color of my dress. Isn't that...rape culture? I did want to have sex with him, but that's irrelevant.

What if, instead of going around knowing you have the socially acceptable beliefs, you knew you had the wrong beliefs? What attitude would you have? My theory is that this might inspire you to be more careful and courteous with others. You can't assume you're the good guy, you have to prove it. This is the type of guy I've had success with. Of course, an alternative theory is that non-feminist men are actually motivated by chivalry more than courtesy, so that I am benefiting from the kind of sexism I object to. 

Rating Ulysses

Do we rate Ulysses S Grant as a poor president, because he was incompetent, drunk and, if not corrupt, tolerated corruption, or as a good president, because he said the right things about race?

His early military career showed flashes of brilliance before he resigned from a post in California amid accusations, almost certainly justified, of drunkenness. He then failed at various business ventures, a lifelong tendency that accompanied a penchant for trusting swindlers. Not long before the civil war he was virtually broke, walking the streets of St Louis in shabby clothing selling firewood.

I may be more comfortable with my flaws than most. When told, "X company is better than most because they filter out the assholes," I thought, oh, I shouldn't apply there. They don't like people like me.

Carlyle's Vocabulary

Word	Definition
culminant	Of a heavenly body: That has reached its greatest altitude, that is on the meridian; hence fig. that is at its greatest height.
whinstone	A name for various very hard dark-coloured rocks or stones, as greenstone, basalt, chert, or quartzose sandstone.
shaveling	A contemptuous epithet for a tonsured ecclesiastic. (Very common in 16th and 17th c.)
fingent	Given to fashioning or moulding.
losel	A worthless person; a profligate, rake, scoundrel; in weaker sense, a ragamuffin, ne'er-do-well.
edacity	The quality of being edacious; capacity for eating; good appetite. or Corrosive quality, destructive power. Obs.
gulosity	Gluttony, greediness, voracity.
eleutheromaniac	one possessed by a mad zeal for freedom
fremescence	An incipient roaring.
fremescent	Murmuring, growing noisy.
grunsel	groundsel OR ground-sill
tripudiation	the action of dancing or leaping, esp. in token of joy or excitement; exultation.
weasand	The œsophagus or gullet.
obtest	To call upon in the name of something sacred; to charge solemnly, adjure; to beg earnestly, beseech, entreat, or implore (a person). Freq. with infinitive or that-clause as complement.
spontoon	A species of half-pike or halberd carried by infantry officers in the 18th century (from about 1740).
furibund	Furious, raging, mad.
scorine	????
bando	A public proclamation. Obs.
divulsive	Tending to tear apart or asunder.
handsel	To give (a person) a gift at the beginning of the year or day, on a birthday, etc., as a token of good luck. Also more generally: to give a gift on any occasion. Formerly also in ironic use: †to present or greet with something unwelcome (obs.).
scission	Division of a previously united body of people into mutually opposing parties; a split, a schism.
passe-partout	Originally: †a person who may go anywhere (obs.). Subsequently: a thing giving a person the right or opportunity to go anywhere; spec. a key that opens any or many doors, a master key; (occas.) a passport. Freq. in extended use and fig.
footling	Trivial, pointless; (of a person) that footles or trifles.
adust	Originally: affected with, or having a temperament determined by, adust humours (see sense 1a). In later use: having a melancholy character or appearance; gloomy; sallow. Obs. or That is in a dusty condition; covered in dust. or To burn, to scorch; to desiccate by exposing to strong heat. Also fig.
demit	trans. To send, put, or let down; to cause to descend; to lower.
phasis	esp. any particular aspect of a thing of varying appearances. Obs.
bob-miner	????
mittimus	Law. A warrant issued by a justice of the peace, etc., committing a person to custody. Now hist. exc. in U.S. or trans. To commit to prison by a warrant. Obs. rare.
apophthegm	A terse, pointed saying, embodying an important truth in few words; a pithy or sententious maxim.
brayed ware	a confusion for braided ware = damaged or faded goods;
epicedium	A funeral ode; a lament over a dead person. Also in figurative contexts.
ferula	The giant fennel or From the use of the fennel-stalk in Roman times: A cane, rod, or other instrument of punishment, esp. a flat piece of wood (see ferule n. 2); fig. school discipline.
abutment	The point at which something abuts upon something else; a point of junction or meeting; a boundary. Also: a property or piece of land that abuts upon another; a description or record of how one property abuts upon another.
escarpment	Geol. ‘The abrupt face or cliff of a ridge or hill range’ (Page). Also attrib.
hodden	Woollen cloth of a coarse quality such as used to be made by country weavers on their hand-looms.
door-rabbet	A piece of stone (or occasionally timber) cut and shaped so as to form one side of an opening in a wall and accommodate a door, gate, window, or chimney;
fugle	To cheat, trick.
glen	A mountain-valley, usually narrow and forming the course of a stream.
shackly	Shaky, rickety; ramshackle.
hobbledehoy	A youth at the age between boyhood and manhood, a stripling; esp. a clumsy or awkward youth.
wynd	A narrow street or passage turning off from a main thoroughfare; a narrow cross-street; a lane or alley.
gillies	An attendant on a Highland chief. Now hist.
forehanded	That has made provision for the future; in easy circumstances, ‘well-to-do’. Now only U.S.
puncheon	A tool or machine for stamping a design on an object or A short upright piece of timber in a wooden framing to provide stiffening or support; a supporting post, spec. a post supporting the roof in a coal mine. or A split log or rough piece of timber with one smoothed surface, used esp. for flooring and corduroy roads, and formerly for buildings;
cheval-de-frise	A defensive appliance of war, employed chiefly to check cavalry charges, and stop breaches; a large piece of Timber pierc'd, and travers'd with wooden Spikes, arm'd or pointed with Iron, five or six Foot long.

On being likable

It's occurred to me lately that some people like me. I don't mean people being friendly to me because they want to have sex with me, or because they're trying to be professional, or because they're generally friendly people. I think--and bear with me here--that some people actually enjoy my company for its own sake. So much of our socializing is somewhat forced--you hang out with people because they are in the same school, or workplace, or social group. I always thought that I was being tolerated as part of the group. But--maybe--not always?

This opens up whole new vistas for me. The best I generally expect of other people is that they will tolerate me if I am quiet and don't cause trouble. (Legacy of a childhood being told to talk more, and then told I was crazy when I talked.) What would it be like if I instead believed that there was a real possibility some people would enjoy being around me?

Deep question. I wish I had known this earlier. I've started reaching out to people a bit more as a result. A friend called me this morning and I called him right back. On the telephone!

Ideologies are Teams

If an ideology is correct, everyone who believes in that ideology is a good person. Therefore, a feminist can never do bad things to women. And a conservative can never break the law.

If an ideology is correct, it must disagree with every incorrect ideology. If you believe in an incorrect ideology, you cannot simultaneously believe in a correct one, even on different topics.

The Victim/Villain Fallacy

There are two sides to every question: Red Team and Blue Team. You get to pick which side you're on, but you have to be on a side. You can't be neutral and you can't be for or against both sides.

What if I really, really hate them both? Response: If you were a right-thinking person, you'd be on the Red Team. Staying neutral means you must be Blue.

Can I be on Team Blue and still think their coach sucks? No. Picking a team means you are endorsing everything they currently do and everything they've done in the past, even before you were born.

One team is 100% innocent, the other team is 100% guilty. I say, "Red Team cheated!" This reveals I am on Team Blue. What if Red Team really did cheat? Doesn't matter. My saying something bad about Red is enough to establish I am Blue. The truth value of what I said, or whether I believe it to be true, doesn't matter.

Another way to play this game is the "How can you compare?" tack.

Me: "Red Team Player got arrested for beating up his girlfriend. They should fire him!" 


Response: "That's nothing! Blue Team Player murdered six women! How can you compare them?"


Me: "Murder is indeed worse than assault. Okay, fire Blue Team Player too."


Response: "Good. I'm glad we agree Red Team Player did nothing wrong."

What if I try to say something nuanced, like "Red Team has a great goalie but Blue Team has better offense"?

Two possible responses: you can choose not to remember part of this statement. "She said, AND I QUOTE, "Red Team has a great goalie." Therefore, she's on the Red side."

Or, you can assume bad faith. "She's trying to sound fair and balanced, but she can't really believe Blue has good offensive players; if she did, she'd be Blue, and we know she's not Blue, because she said something good about Red."

I don't know how to win this game. So far I just settle for pointing it out.

Psychosomatic illness: final post

Physical manifestations of unhappiness are something we all experience; they are not personality flaws or signs of weakness, they are a part of life. Life is hard sometimes. It is harder for some than for others. We all manifest that hardship in different ways.

Each of these diagnoses is considered either entirely medically unexplained or only partially explained and with a large psychological component:
 
Amalgam poisoning, irritable bowel syndrome, candida syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, chronic Lyme disease, Morgellon's syndrome, formication, electromagnetic poisoning, environmental or chemical sensitivities, food intolerance.

 I recently went to a dinner party where every person bar two, at a table of ten, reported that they had an intolerance of or allergy to at least one foodstuff. Most had developed the allergy in middle age, which is not how an allergy typically behaves...People look for explanations for changes in their bodies, something to account for every unpleasant feeling. There is an unwillingness to accept behavioral or emotional factors, or the effects of aging, as an explanation. Society and the media are often available to provide a more agreeable answer and to add to the symptom pool available

The question that we, the unaffected, must answer for ourselves is, can we give a disability that has its roots in behavioral or psychological factors the same respect that we offer to a physical disease? If the answer is yes, then none of the other controversies matter any longer.

The placebo effect is another illustration of the mind-body connection--you might call it the psychogenic cure. Also widely and deeply misunderstood. Did you know, for instance, that the placebo effect works even if you are aware of it? Understanding this makes me skeptical of some of the self-experimentation people sometimes do. "Try X, it worked for me!" is a terrible, terrible argument. And it remains terrible no matter how much useless precision the author gives you about so many milligrams of whatever at whatever time of day immediately after exercise. I'm looking at you, Tim Ferriss! (Scott Alexander is also guilty of this to a lesser extent.) Did you do a randomized double-blind study on yourself? I don't fucking think so. You have no idea whether a given treatment worked on your body or your mind.

This doesn't mean that you should never try unproven remedies. My personal conclusion is that we should pay a lot more attention to the costs of the treatments we choose. Lots of home remedies are acceptable for this reason. If you think that valerian tea helps you sleep or ginger ale alleviates nausea, go ahead and use it without worrying too much about randomized controlled trials—your cost is only a small amount of money and trouble. In other words, the cost-benefit ratio is more likely favorable when the cost is negligible.

But with treatments that are much more costly, such as surgery, medications with serious side effects, and any involvement with the mental/behavioral health system, you need to be a lot more careful in assessing the likely benefits. For example, do you think the doubtful benefit of antidepressants is worth the 40-60% chance of loss of libido, to name just one of their costs?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108697/

I have my own answer to this, of course (sex is great), but my real message is to pay attention to the costs, and to be skeptical of the success stories you hear.

The Victim/Villain Fallacy

There are two sides to every question: Red Team and Blue Team. You get to pick which side you're on, but you have to be on a side. You can't be neutral and you can't be for or against both sides.

What if I really, really hate them both? Well, if you're not on the Red Team, all the Red Teamers will assume you're a dirty Blue Teamer. And, if you're not on the Blue Team, all the Blue Teamers will assume you're an ignorant Red Teamer.

He was constantly defending his Communist friends to his right-wing enemies and his right-wing friends to his Communist enemies, and he was thoroughly detested by both groups, who never defended him to anyone because they thought he was a dope.

—Catch-22

Can I be on Team Blue and still think their coach sucks? No. Picking a team means you are endorsing everything they currently do and everything they've done in the past, even before you were born.

One team is 100% innocent, the other team is 100% guilty. I say, "Red Team cheated!" This reveals I am on Team Blue. What if Red Team really did cheat? Doesn't matter. My saying something bad about Red is enough to establish I am Blue. The truth value of what I said, or whether I believe it to be true, doesn't matter.

Another way to play this game is the "How can you compare?" tack.

Me: "Red Team Player got arrested for beating up his girlfriend. They should fire him!"
Response: "That's nothing! Blue Team Player murdered six women! How can you compare them?"
Me: "Murder is indeed worse than assault. Okay, fire Blue Team Player too."
Response: "Good. I'm glad we agree Red Team Player did nothing wrong."

What if I try to say something nuanced, like "Red Team has a great goalie but Blue Team has better offense"?

Two possible responses: you can choose not to remember part of this statement. "She said, AND I QUOTE, "Red Team has a great goalie." Therefore, she's on the Red side."
Or, you can assume bad faith. "She's trying to sound fair and balanced, but she can't really believe Blue has good offensive players; if she did, she'd be Blue, and we know she's not Blue, because she said something good about Red."

It's easy enough, for leftists, to imagine confronting a mob of racial bigots, McCarthyites, or religious fundamentalists. The harder test is resistance to public opinion in one's own camp.

--Hitchens

I don't know how to win this game. So far I just settle for pointing it out.

Psychosomatic illness 6: the feminist position

I'd like to devote a special post to the feminist objection to the concept of psychosomatic illness. This objection deserves some respect, drawing as it does upon the long and troubled history of women being labelled mentally ill for specious and doubtful reasons. The concept of mental illness is of course a means of social control, and one that has weighed particularly heavily on women. Female eccentrics such as me have often been defined as mad. And of course, women are sometimes called “hysterical” as a pure insult, with no factual content, as when Kamala Harris, the new Senator, was called “hysterical” for her prosecutorial style of questioning a witness. (For more, see Phyllis Chesler, Women and Madness, or Elaine Showalter).

This line of thinking has been popularized in the feminist blogosphere, so that many people have a kneejerk negative reaction to any suggestion that a woman's illness is “all in her head.” Some have gone so far as to conclude that the very word “hysteria” ought to be banned as sexist. These people have never read Breuer.

Because if you read Breuer, or Freud, Charcot, or Janet (okay I've never read Janet), you get the other side of the story of hysteria. Of course mental illness is a means of social control, and I'm generally the first to make that point. But mental illness also causes people to suffer, which is why, even today, most adults who are treated for mental illness undergo that treatment voluntarily. And many of them would still be suffering even in the Feminist Utopia. The vast majority of cases of Victorian/Edwardian hysteria weren't a matter of "she wants a job, she must be crazy," they involved painful and disabling symptoms that any doctor in any era would identify as meaning that Something Is Wrong. Symptoms like paralyzed limbs, weeks of catatonia, hysterical blindness and muteness, inability to eat, seizures, fainting, as well as abilities that some observers saw as supernatural, such as gaining the ability to speak new languages, withstanding needle wounds with no sign of pain, and sustaining bizarre arched postures for hours at a time.

We need, therefore, to treat mental illness, including psychosomatic illness, if we want to help suffering people, but we also need to rein in those who would use mental health care as a tool of oppression. A good rule of thumb is the libertarian principle; let others do what they want with their own minds and bodies as long as they don't harm anyone else. Don't call the police on your suicidal friend; he has the right to die if she wishes. And be very, very skeptical when children, the elderly, or institutionalized people have “treatment” forced upon them by their keepers.

I rate this objection: Half-right.

Poetic Meter and Poetic Form

I'd like to recommend the book Poetic Meter and Poetic Form. This should not be your first book on poetry; it's for the person who already knows that the Petrarchan sonnet differs from the Shakespearian one, but doesn't quite see why it matters. The book was written in a modern age, but with a traditionalist spirit. Some quotes:

The art of poetry is the art of knowing language and people equally well. To do something to the reader is the end of poetry; a poem is less a notation on a page or a sequence of uttered sounds than a shaped and measured formal effect that impinges upon a reader or hearer.

The approximation of structures of reasoning to the shape of the rhyme scheme is one of the most difficult acts in English poetry: indeed, only a few masters of the sonnet in English have managed always to avoid meaningless rhyming.

The notion that convention shows a lack of feeling, and that a poet attains “sincerity” by disregarding convention, is opposed to all the facts of literary experience and history. The individual talent is speechless without the conventions. And without an almost equal understanding of them, the audience, for all its intelligence and good will, hears nothing. “The innocent eye sees nothing.”

And it includes good lessons for the prose writer as well

 A principle governing all events which occur in time is that the middle of the event is the least interesting part, the beginning the next more interesting, and the end the most interesting. Instead of “He is a fool, in my opinion,” say, “He is, in my opinion, a fool.”