Monday, January 30, 2012

Cynicism is Asking Questions

It occurs to me that what I've been ranting about here could be considered a form of cynicism--that is, the philosophical belief that underestimates or totally devalues the conventional or prevailing valuations of mainstream culture or times, in regards to a particular virtue. Cynics ask questions about why we value the things that we value, and what good it really does us to value them how we do. For instance, is the inflated caricature of adulthood superiority over adolescents due to the fact of its moral superiority, or is it simply due to the fact that adults have always been the ones drawing the lines? Is the inflated caricature of childhood innocence and purity due to the fact of its moral neutrality, or is it once again due to the fact that adults have always been drawing the lines? Is so-called "parental intuition" so unshakable, so natural, so perfect in our minds that we have to ignore its irrational foul-ups? Is the fetishization of male under-performance really any use in ensuring equality between the sexes? There are countless new values that need to be questioned out there, just as wealth, fame, power, and consumerism all have in their turn.

Modern culture all but instructs us not to question, and many people will call you out as an "extremist giving strength to other extremists" for even dignifying their extremism with a response. Many will stop being your friends when you so much as call into question that which they hold so dear, or at least, that which they want to pretend doesn't exist. I say that not dignifying the gleeful, ignorant, or dishonest statements floating around these days is to be giving them greater potency. It's to be letting them off easy. What harm does questioning extremism do when extremism is flawed by default, especially when one questions it with focused and passionate rational resolve? It is like saying that we must not hurl our poison-tipped arrows at some vicious beast, for to do so will "only make him mad." Why put up with the torments of a vicious beast all your life under your inaction, when you can both "make him mad" and swiftly kill him dead with your words this moment? All the victors of history managed to get things done, despite calls from the crowd to let the extremists off easy.

Cynicism is often thought to be a doctrine of pessimism, when in reality it is the opposite. It could be argued that nothing gives someone a clearer perspective about how to value that which actually needs to be valued, and how to toss off that which in the end is a mere construction of society, than it. People have gone to their deaths or have lived vain lives over ideals that are silly and flimsy, and in the modern world, people have managed to carry out all manner of destruction on premises that are just as silly and flimsy when opened up to simple scrutiny (marriage as an institution, for instance). Writer Lenore Skenazy over on the Free Range Kids website writes endlessly about the ways that society has become destructive toward children in its efforts to mediate their every step and breath, and in so doing, does the world a service every time she questions something. She could be yet another "child defender" and preach protective paranoia with smug self assurance, but instead, she prefers to do parents and the world a service simply by questioning our deepest held prejudices and fears over child safety. The act is a literal pealing back of the eyelids from the realm of an illusion to the world of the causal and the physical, and where consequences matter.

It has been my work to take this line of argument even further--to question not just our valuations of protecting children, but our valuations of children and young people themselves. I've gone on record before in questioning whether or not the standard of beauty in culture necessarily relates to what our commercial-driven media apparatus has been convincing us it is. First and foremost, the female body is no longer a dignified subject matter because of it, and has instead become synonymous with hawking products. That doesn't carry a connotation of beauty in my perspective, although many others have been tricked into thinking as such. I could just as easily though make the argument that children are beautiful--and do it not from a purely "parental perspective", but from a similar exploitative beauty standard perspective as we see in commercial media--and I would be no more wrong. Women are not any standard of beauty and children are not any standard of innocence and optimism. Our valuations on human beings and other entities and objects are not correct simply because we think them.  There was a time when men were considered the standard of beauty (ancient Athens), and children were considered "little savages," for instance. Time changes things, and if you don't think it will, wait another three hundred years.

Those who vigorously defend the endless "innocence" of a child are doomed to see nothing but the infantilization of that child instead, once he or she has grown. Everything we think requires re-thinking and questioning, lest we become stuck in a similar cultural rut--a state of societal arrested development. Learning requires accommodating new information. Stagnation only requires needless oath-taking to age old traditions, premises, and other illusions of value.

Indeed, the greatest personal affirmation is achieved when one decides to shirk off all that is superficial and focus on instead what really matters--whatever that may be for each individual. This was the driving principle behind the existentialists. All that is superficial tends to be what we have in common with everyone else. We all believe children are human beings and should be treated with dignity and respect, so to think ourselves righteous simply for upholding that is superficial. What really matters as far as that is concerned, is how we behave around and respond to children in real life, whether we know them personally or not. The same principle goes for all people, animals, and the earth itself. It's not enough to uphold something, one has to question whether simply upholding it is indeed virtuous, and if not, scrap it and focus on realigning one's values with inter-human bonds where virtues are shown, rather than "upheld." You can not get there without being cynical towards the out-dated and counter-productive traditional expectations of what we are to "uphold," and particularly those sentiments we are expected to "uphold on the highest." One could argue that we are expected to uphold nothing higher than our constructions about children, childhood, and their well being, so therefore, nothing is more deserving of our criticism.

Cynicism is the only progressive tool we have, so perhaps even it deserves question. I'm not so sure about its emphasis on the natural world as being particularly virtuous, for instance, because the natural world is in fact no more virtuous than the civilized world. Childhood is no more virtuous than adulthood, and adulthood no more than childhood--so even our valuations of our revaluations can be subject to further questioning... but the point remains still--to question.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

The Smartest People in the Room

How much better off does it really make you to be smart enough to know how to create justifications for negative consequences? There are people whose whole job it is to do nothing else, and it's typically called "public relations," but that is only half of the rotten fruit being sold to you as ripe. What good does it do to graduate at the top of your class if that status propels you into a position that only brings out the worst in you? On the whole, it makes little sense to squander one's abilities for any reason. It seems, though, as often as people take the low road and do just that for no reason at all, or even for good reasons, just as many decide to take the even lower road and squander their abilities in the promotion of malicious or devious ends, if only to put their learning to "some" use. It is not because they are "bad people," it's just that they are raised in a learning environment where they are prompted to "give in" more than they are empowered to resist.

I know this firsthand from my own experience with higher education, where I was tempted to undermine my own credibility at times to ensure I made the grade and gave the average response to every question. Staying "in" was more important to me than rising "above," due to the potential of falling back down. In conversation with fellow students, I observe more "giving in" and "giving up" in institutions of higher learning than anywhere else (and certainly more than in the workforce), and it seems that it's because nowhere else is one's conformity so desirable towards their so-called longevity (outside the military, that is). Just as much as a wasted talent seems a shame to me now, even more so does a talent that has been put to misguided use via people-pleasing conformity. You could say, it is better that you should be a failure who does good work than a success who wallows in their justifications for iniquity.

For instance, what is the value of a higher education when so-called "outside the box" thinking means finding new ways to scam, lie to, or deny people a critical service? The phrase "smartest people in the room" originated to describe the men who ran Enron during the corruption scandals that brought the company down, and is pejoratively used now to describe any group of people who use their brilliance for malevolent ends. Many of those who engineered the economic collapse for their own gain could also be considered among the "smartest people in the room"--those who were smart enough to discover how to push buttons all day and make obscene amounts of money in the process, introducing little to no innovation or development into society. Where does it lead you as a conscionable individual coming out of the college system when the so-called "smartest people in the room" have the least integrity? There are many examples of how unbridled passion without reason can cause the collapse of a person and a society, but it seems equally perilous when self-concerned reason is exercised without regard to an empathic concern for one's fellow human beings. Those who are smart enough to switch off their conscience in the light of some flimsy justification suffer from a lack of integrity.

What good does it do one to be the the most educated and adept person in the room at exploiting loopholes to get away with corruption?  What good does it do you to be pushed into pursuing some college-bound path from the time you're born as if it's the only option in existence, where your future is mapped out long before you can even see any concrete routes to take within it-- much less have enough of an identity to know which route to take? And what good would it do you then, being in that situation, to set an uncharted course through that labyrinth with only a fabled "exit" in mind and no concrete idea of how to go about finding it, lining other people's pockets and ensuring your own indentured servitude to debt in the process? Higher education is capable of doing great things for the world, but so are people with vision, passion, and freedom from debt. You can be the smartest person in the room without having to forfeit your personal integrity to acquiesce to some "company line" of whatever institution or organization "accepts you" once you "get out." Education was never meant to be a conveyor belt upon which you just sit and accept whatever people instruct you to think. It ought to be a platform from which you can, as an independent voice, graciously challenge the scams, lies, and conspiracies that are propping up those very same people who do nothing but acquiesce to injustice-- it should give you the tools to refute them rather than become them

Higher education ought to be about making complicated systems more humane and more responsive to human beings-- not merely training on how to give a false smile, a firm handshake, and an automatic response that has been programmed into your head to the point you and only you believe it. It doesn't take a smart person to be a public relations slave for a major corporation, for example-- at least, no more than it would for a trained dog drooling on command-- so why one would waste all that time and money just to end up the equivalent of a drooling dog in the workplace seems beyond reason. That is, unless one's reason is to simply do anything (no matter the consequences) on the pretense of the Nuremberg defense, or the "need to make a living," or more appropriately, the "need to repay a debt." Only because the drooling corporate slaves out there are not alone responsible for the negatives of the world do they find some absolution from consequences. But why betray your conscience if you don't have to?

In a world where it is still possible to make a living doing positive and pro-social things for the world, choosing to contribute to something that produces more negatives than positives on the justification that it "repays the debt" sounds more like defending one's conscience through excuses. No one, unfortunately, is more skilled at turning off their conscience to become a slave to flimsy justifications than the so-called "smartest people in the room." And ironically, no one appears more well-equipped to combat those "professional justifiers" than those among the smartest minds who happen to still have the virtues of empathy, honesty, and a thirst for social justice intact. It all begins in the home. Empowerment breeds integrity. Conformity creates corruption.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Superficial Rejuvenation

Who needs the attainment of wisdom at the foot of one's mortality when we have rejuvenation cosmetics? Where once we had faith, now we have so-called rationality, and while one produced simple humility in its adherents, the other produces little but vanity. Mankind no longer goes gently into that dark night, but instead spends the rest of it actively fighting the natural aging process. If life is all there is to this body and soul, it behooves the holder to hold it as long as possible--regardless of whether it's natural or healthy to do so. Where once the aging were encouraged to feel humbled before the infinite, we now have a population vainly empowered by the shorter number days they have left (thus making everything a "limited time offer").

Civilization shirked off this deference to a charismatic authority hell-bent to improve the soul and character of mankind, and in its place, built the establishment of consumerism to cater to their psychological defects instead. Is that the end of the saga? Hundreds of years of rationalism so that we can now have superficiality and vanity in the place of integrity? So that we can have anti-aging lotions, wrinkle creams, and "hair removal" regimen? It's as if we have nothing better to do with the remaining 50 years of our lives than try to make ourselves look like we did in the first two decades. When eternal deference was cut off to the heavens above, it seems like human beings then had no problem turning the same so-called "blissful ignorance of reality" onto themselves instead.

Most children are encouraged to do little else more universally than "get bigger" or "grow up." For children, aging is a prime directive, and the older and more mature one is, the more that simple status is regarded with coveted dignity. As soon as a "child" passes the threshold of adulthood though, all that anticipated growing has come to its final and premature peak, and society expects the young person to then look out on the road ahead and see nothing but a repulsive downward trajectory. How quick are we to really experience life when we are either stuck in an upward current or in a downward spiral? One way or the other, we're made to feel destined to a particular fate, with no acknowledgment of our life in the present--the "right now."

Imagine feeling as though you're on the death bed at the age of 21. Such is how we seem to expect our 21-year-olds to feel. On the contrary though is everyone over that age, who is then expected to want to be that age the rest of their lives! There is no period of human life that our culture has reserved for us to revel in the fact of being a whole individual at one place and time, without either "needing to be older" or "needing to be younger." Being whole is not as profitable as needing a hole patched. The perversity of it is revealed through close observation of nearly all commercial media surrounding anti-aging products, and nearly all products in general to a greater or lesser extent. I say perversity because this is a perversity, forged by Babylon itself, and is no less disgusting to my tastes than any other form of perversity.

Reality dictates that we all grow, decay, and eventually die, and yet only the most rational of the so-called later-day rationalists would accept this to be true. They'd rather bust out all their science to fabricate products to profit off the widespread lack of fulfillment that infects so many a person over thirty these days. Most seem to think or have been bred to believe that wasting one's good time is preferable to using it toward constructive ends, but only because nothing profitable for someone else has ever had anything to do with a consumer being constructive. And since those idolized "first 20 years" are the same years that the average human being exists simply to make money for other people, it's no wonder why that same individual would then want a refund after that time has passed and has gained them little. It is all too easy to "grow up" lacking fulfillment only to "live" a mature life in continuous want of a refund.

That "refund" is another way of saying "rejuvenation." Where once the passage into adulthood meant something to the primitive roots of culture, now it is simply the age at which a youth realizes for the first time that he or she has been gypped for the first 15 or so years of life. It is no matter though, for God willing, there is another 50 years left to waste trying to earn back the time that was lost during their so-called "good years." Who needs to be "born again" in the so-called eternal spirit when superficiality and artificiality accomplish the same trick for twenty-seconds at twice the price?

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Forgiveness in the New Year

With a new year comes a new reason to be forgiving of oneself and others. Wrongful deeds can never be forgiven, but people always can. On that note, while we can forgive the scientists, the military brass, the low-level personnel, who participated in doing this:

Declassified picture of an 8-10-year-old MK-ULTRA subject, 1961.

...we can not and should not forgive the program itself, nor the non-human governments, departments, and agencies that authorized it, funded it, and carried it out, nor the paranoid delusions and ignorance that kept it authorized, funded, and carried out. And that also goes for any other experiment or project undertaken for the purpose of finding new ways to wage war on human dignity. Some information about the picture:

"Project MK-ULTRA ran from the early 1950s to at least the late 1960s, using American and Canadian citizens as its test subjects. The published evidence indicates that Project MK-ULTRA involved the use of many methodologies to manipulate individual mental states and alter brain functions, including the surreptitious administration of drugs and other chemicals, sensory deprivation, isolation, and verbal and physical abuse.
The most publicized experiments conducted by MK-ULTRA involved the administration of LSD on unwitting human subjects, including CIA employees, military personnel, doctors, other government agents, prostitutes, mentally ill patients, and members of the general public, in order to study their reactions.
However, the scope of MK-ULTRA does not however stop. Experiments involving violent electroshocks, physical and mental torture and abuse were used in a systematic matter on many subjects, including children." [As pictured above.]    -Secret Arcana

The next time you hear a government express a devotional sympathy to protect children, just think about what it is capable of doing to them to "provide for your common defense." Individuals within government have children, the structure itself does not, and therefore has no such sympathy. It has allowed for children's corruption and destruction before, and it will again. The same government that would presume a child's interests are not being met within their home can and does look the other way on its own abuses. It does so because it can without remorse. Minors are second-class citizens to the government--second-class human beings. People though, see them differently.