On magical thinking

Why is it, that, before a job interview, I obsess over my shoes and think of the answers to interview questions, instead of accepting that the result of the interview is almost entirely out of my control? Malinowski* has the answer!

When a man feels himself impotent in a practical situation, whether he be savage or civilised, whether in possession of magic or entirely ignorant of its existence, passive inaction, the only thing dictated by reason, is the last thing in which he can acquiesce. His nervous system and his whole organism drive him to some substitute activity....The substitute action in which the passion finds its vent, and which is due to impotence, has subjectively all the virtue of a real action, to which emotion would, if not impeded, naturally have led.

Now that my attention has been drawn to it, I see such magical thinking everywhere I look. Whenever I start to care about petty things, it's because subconsciously I think these details have magical power over things that matter. If I brush my hair more often, people will like me. If I do the dishes, it means my life is under control. And other absurdities. The antidote is provided by La Rochefoucauld, who says:

Those who concern themselves too much with little things usually become incapable of great ones.
Ceux qui s'applique trop aux petites choses deviennent ordinairement incapables des grandes.

*Bronislaw Malinowski, the early 20th-century Polish-American anthropologist, used to be rather famous in social-sciences circles, but his ideas have since been discredited/assimilated into the mainstream. I am not ashamed of being behind the times.

In The Illusion of American Omnipotence, DW Brogan pointed to a state of mind which he called “ the illusion of American omnipotence”--defined as “the illusion that any situation which distresses or endangers the United States can only exist because some Americans have been fools or knaves.” When the Chinese Revolution occurred, instead of concluding that this was a response to massive strategic and economic realities largely beyond our control, millions of Americans were apparently convinced that this enormous country had been in our pocket, and had been lost or stolen only because of the mistakes (or treachery) of Roosevelt, Marshall, and Acheson, mistakes which could easily have been rectified by greater statesmen like Walter Judd or Senator Jenner.

---Hofstadter

6 things to hate about Feminism

--at least mainstream feminism, specifically the kind in this article:

http://community.feministing.com/2009/09/on-beauty-and-its-consequences.html

1) It exaggerates the benefits of being male.

"Men are presented with an endless supply of female flesh as a reward for good capitalist behaviour..."

Hmm, do I know anyone who has "an endless supply of female flesh"? And when I think about men who get a lot of female attention, it doesn't really seem like society is awarding women to them in little gift bags. In fact, women seek out rich or confident or otherwise attractive men--but that sort of formulation makes it seem like the women are acting freely, clearly an unacceptable implication.


2) It exaggerates the disadvantages of being female.

In this worldview, just as men get everything they want, women get nothing they want. Should you seem angry about being accosted or harassed on the street,

"society will look at you with great alarm, and declare you a man-hating, ugly hairy bitter feminist."

Any woman who has ever rejected a man is then excluded from society if not shot--I couldn't make this up, people:

"Should you reject your would-be suitors, you are a bitch and risk getting shot in public or private places. At the very least you will be ostracized, you will be considered difficult, or you will be ridiculed on some other account."

3) Like many liberal theories, this sort of feminism is utopian. We plow straight ahead trying to change the basics of life, without considering that it might not be possible. This is rebellion against nature itself; for instance, when woman's status as a sexual being is described as tyranny:

"...this purpose which was created for you, without your consent, without you getting a vote on the subject, well before you were born."

4) Sexist tropes in the media are considered more revealing than the trends of actual life. For instance, the author ignores a long list of female heads of state, leaders of opinion, and intellectuals in the real world in order to criticize Hollywood.

"Whatever else you achieve - intelligence, education, talent, saving the world, etc. - must be done in heels, with long flowing hair, and a surgically-enhanced figure like the one on Lara Croft, because otherwise: well, poor you."

This person has been watching too many movies! Actual women in power aren't subject to the standards of blockbuster movies--rarely do they have long hair or wear revealing clothing, and if Hillary Clinton isn't the leader of the free world, well, the problem was not her cup size.

5) It's fucking depressing! "You are not in control", "you have probably been harassed, groped or assaulted", "you have no right to your own beauty", "whatever joy you may have felt at being pretty evaporates", "society declares you an awful person", "being angry and depressed is logical and lucid", "men will consume and destroy you", "you are a chicken in a slaughterhouse".

Is this really what young women new to the world and to men need to hear? This just makes me afraid to leave the house. Maybe that's the idea.

6) Men are the enemy; they are not vulnerable or well-intentioned like women; they never worry about the right thing to do, never feel guilty, and never apologize. Any sympathy for them is misplaced. They must be humiliated and CRUSHED:

"Remember the men who do these things to you are not playing fair, they will never consciously apologize of their own volition, and they will never hesitate to crush you if you threaten them. You must give yourself the right to do the same to them. Never feel sorry for them, never apologize, and never look back...You will have to reject and humiliate men, without mercy, very loudly, in front of as many people as possible, when you don't want men looking at or touching you if they are doing this. Of course, this will make you look like a bitch, which is a daunting prospect, but as a woman you have those two choices: bitch, or victim."

(I kind of like that last line. Although why 'consciously apologize'? An unconscious apology is a priori impossible.)

"Should this scenario happen in the office, you may be told you are disturbing the workplace peace and atmosphere and you may have to come out kicking and screaming against this injustice, which will probably get you fired, and will force you to go to a Human Rights Commission which may or may not award you a few thousand dollars after five years of litigation and blacklisting during which your career is completely destroyed."

That's right, a woman who rejects a coworker's advances will be reprimanded, fired and finally blacklisted. This wasn't true even 80 years ago.

It's painfully clear that the author has had annoying experiences with men on the street and coworkers. I sympathize--well, contra her claims, most people of either sex sympathize with women who are harassed by clueless men. The author's arrogance and blindness comes in when she assumes her experience and female experience are congruent. Would you say that you don't mind being complimented or hit on? Or that you think you have power over men? Or that your male coworkers are kind and professional? Or that you've never been raped or assaulted? Just wait, says the author. My terrible experience is the Truth of women's experience, and if neither you nor anyone you know experiences it this way, you should probably feel guilty about being privileged.

One of the most ignorant books I've read

This is a review of Ellen Ruppel Shell's book, 'Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture." Using 'cheap' as an insult proves nothing so much as the speaker's class prejudices. This book falls into that same trap. In an attempt to imitate objective journalism, the book contains many true narratives and well-documented facts. Then, on top of those facts, we are given a list of the author's opinions. There is little attempt to convince the reader that one follows from the other, and, often, the facts and the opinion don't seem even theoretically related.

For instance, her section on Ikea makes some valid points. Although Ikea says its wood is sustainably harvested, they haven't proved it; some people find Ikea furniture hard to assemble (although I think it's fun); and Ikea stores are big and sparsely located, so people have to drive farther to get to them. Then, without warning, she concludes the section with this:

Flatpacks of medium-density fiberboard hauled out of sprawling warehouses and cobbled together with IKEA's notorious L-shaped, six-sided Allen wrench are not tasteful, comfortable furniture. They are a facsimile of tasteful, comfortable, furniture.

None of this has come out of what she wrote before. I could excuse the woman's bias if she would at least be precise about what she objects to. What has the 'notorious' Allen key done to her? It seems like a pretty useful tool to me.. Or is it the flatpack or the size of the warehouse that we should hate? An example of the power of rhetoric to describe perfectly neutral things in terms that repel. And the question of how people can think they are comfortable in a chair, while Shell knows they are not actually comfortable, is a little beyond me.

Shell doesn't understand class:

Even for a book on the subject of material things, the author is materialistic. The word 'cheap' is used solely to disparage. The implication is that people who buy cheap goods are selfish, careless or at least short-sighted. Never once does the author recognize that we might not be choosing between 'cheap' goods and quality goods, but between 'cheap' goods and nothing. She consistently equates brand with quality, and appears to think it is morally wrong for a brand to produce a cheaper version of itself, because it betrays the 'trust' she has in brands. Outlet stores, where poor people can buy the same brands rich people do, are morally suspect for this reason.

A philosopher might question whether a Coach bag of questionable quality hawked by clerks who do not know the provenance of their merchandise is the Coach bag of our dreams...the uncoupling of brand name and product can't help but confuse us and, over time, even undermine our trust.

Dear God, imagine people losing faith in Coach! Actually, a person who trusts in a brand deserves to be disappointed--and incidentally, a philosopher would not be dreaming about a handbag. And if the people who shop at discount stores are content with the prestige value of their 'Coach' bags, why should the author take it upon herself to tell them they should find their purchases worthless? Buying a knockoff makes a lot more economic sense for most of us than paying full price. People who buy Coach bags don't care about the quality of the stitching. Does the author really think a handbag that costs $800 is 40 times better than the $20 one? Price may be an indicator of quality sometimes, but not here.

She doesn't understand history:

In Adam Smith's England, she thinks, people of every class bought high-quality products for a fair price. And because people knew the merchants from whom they bought, the merchants never exploited their customers. "You can only cheat your neighbor once." So, no grocer ever adulterated his merchandise, no innkeeper ever added fraudulent charges to his bill, no worker ever absconded with his wages. People were honest and good. All that changed because of international corporations and globalization.

Shoddy clothes, unreliable electronics, wobbly furniture, and questionable food have become the norm...The combination of quality and value, once available to the many, is now affordable only to the few.

Is this idealism, or just stupidity? First of all, there _were_ cities in the 18th century, London, for one, so people weren't always buying from their neighbors. And even in villages, people in the past didn't "buy local" in order to make a political statement--they had no other choice. And when you're buying local because transportation and communication over long distances are prohibitively expensive and take forever, you have no choice but to continue buying from your neighbor. Even if he puts vinegar in his wine or plaster of Paris in his bread (both formerly common practices). Anyone who has read a single 18th century novel or history knows that dishonesty, then as now, existed wherever dishonest people did.

And definitely doesn't understand economics:

She appears ignorant of the basic idea of comparative advantage:

Haiti once exported rice. Today [after a tariff reduction], three-quarters of the rice on Haitian dinner plates comes from the United States. Paying for imported food requires cash, and acquiring that cash usually means getting a job providing the First World with something it wants--either raw materials, such as timber, minerals, or coffee, or cheap mass-manufactured goods.

Yes. That's how it works. This is an example of the author writing so as to suggest that what she describes is bad--avoiding the trouble of actually giving a reason why it's bad. She seems to think buying food when you once produced it is an unqualified evil. So farmers are a priori better off than factory workers. Also, local food is a priori better than imported food, and when business provides cheap imported food which poor people can buy, this is bad, and governments should step in:

Rather than flooding markets in developing countries with cheap food, thereby weakening incentives to grow and process food locally, aid should be given directly to the poor to help them purchase food at fair prices.

She also thinks Americans, unlike every other people in history, are incapable of developing new skills in response to changes in economic incentives:

The idea that more and more Americans can reinvent themselves into ever more challenging work is a pipe dream.

I am glad I read the book, although I wish I had stopped with the sociology and skipped the opinions. There are several interesting bits--for instance, I didn't realize that a store's setting one price for everyone was, at one time, a revolutionary move. A interesting aside is that printing coupons or offering rebates is really a way of offering two prices--the person who is sensitive about spending money will clip the coupon, and buy your product--the person who cares less, or is less organized, will have his attention drawn to your product, and buy it without bothering to redeem the coupon.

But, my God, this is one of the most ignorant books I've ever read. And yet I have seen no critical reviews of it. The quality of the author's mind or scholarship doesn't seem to matter so much as the fact that the conclusions she comes to sound progressive and plausible--and support the rich, liberal belief that virtue can be attained by shopping at upper-class-coded stores rather than other stores.

I think sometimes in political discussions, there's a tendency to think that everyone who disagrees with you is evil or ignorant.

Beneath the din is a simple premise: if the other side knew the facts, if the other side really understood what was at stake, they would all surely agree. But they disagree, thus, they must not understand. Or they must be crazy.

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14257491&CFID=2742886&CFTOKEN=75016751

Maybe we would have more productive discussions if we could accept that, just as we've all had different childhoods, we all have different personalities and therefore different opinions.

A hilarious article from Nerve--they have such realistic female characters!

"I like you," he said. "I wanna take things slowly."

Take . . . things . . . slowly.

Was this some French phrase I wasn't familiar with? It sounded like English, but what did it mean?

On teenagers

A Salon article on parents dealing with their ‘delinquent’ children. What happens if your child is not the kind of person you envisioned?

("She's a bad girl," writes Lara. "And I made her. If a factory is judged by its product, I'm a bad mother.")

Both mother and daughter love each other and hate each other in equal measure. Both are prone to fits of drama and exaggeration. As a reader, it is difficult, if not impossible, to sift out a true and accurate account of what actually happened during the teen years of these girls. But truth and accuracy, in these books, are nearly beside the point. It's more interesting to look at what these mothers think happened to their daughters than it is to concern oneself with whether they are correct.

As a teenager, Martha Tod Dudman had sex, smoked pot, dropped acid, was not allowed to graduate with her class at the prestigious Madeira School and ran away to live in a Tenderloin tenement in San Francisco at age 17.

Dudman's daughter, Augusta, wears her mother's hippie clothes from the '60s, smokes pot and does acid. To Dudman, Augusta's pot smoking is different from her own: "I know it's not the gentle grass of the sixties. They treat it with something now, don't they? It's powerful." When Dudman's ex-husband tells her that he believes their daughter when she says that she finds drinking disgusting and has only smoked pot once or twice, Dudman thinks, "With the drugs, she had to have lots of them. Had to have every kind. Had to take everything. If she could have, she would have smoked fifteen cigarettes at once. I know because I was like that, too."

Dudman eventually decides to ship Augusta off to a wilderness treatment program in Oregon. It's hard to say whether this makes the situation better or worse. Augusta is so miserable that she slashes her wrists in the first few weeks. And when she gets the chance, Augusta busts out of the treatment center and, like her mother before her, runs away to San Francisco. (This really sends Dudman over the edge: She and another parent send both the FBI and a hired thug to hunt down their daughters and bring them back into captivity.)

This is fairly typical parental behavior. No one ever pauses to think that her children might have human rights.


Just like Sherlock Holmes, observation follows from hypothesis rather than the other way around. If you’re convinced there’s something wrong with your child, then the slightest foibles (watching too much TV, swearing, staying out late) become serious problems. If you were a little less quick to condemn your child, these things would never lead you to kidnap and imprison her. I think it all stems ultimately from a parent’s lack of self-love...

Perhaps the biggest obstacle that teens face is the fact that every parent was once a teen. And the memories these parents have of their own adolescence make it virtually impossible for them to see the teenagers in front of them.