Happiness

From now on, I'm going to be happy with what I have, and never seek anything more.

Entitlement and Perseverance

People say that we millennials are an entitled generation, and I think it's an accurate description. We grew up under the mantra of entitlement and saw the world at our feet, and now that we are entering the job market, still expect it to be there. We won't settle for less because we expect the most. We expect fairness, honesty, and equal opportunity, and because we are so disposed to demand such things, we are envied by those who were born having to settle for whatever they could get, and from that envy comes their damning characterizations of us. Of course not all people born between the years 1980 and 1995 are this way, but since this is how the same adults have chosen to represent us, we're obliged to indulge them.

We'll graduate from the top schools and go on aid missions around the globe, have resumes that stretch a page by the time we're fifteen, but we don't know the basics of punching a time clock, showing up and putting out, day in and day out. We're more special than ordinary people. Mowing the lawn for cash was never going to get us into Princeton, so we never did it. We then expect a title and a name on the door right out of the production line degree mill we just graduated from, and because those same adults always told us it was all within reach since we were small, we're demanding it now. Some of us are actually finding it, and some are facing the reality we always knew was there (despite the adults' best efforts to hide it from us).

And it's all thanks to the notion that "Every child should go to college." It's all thanks to the notion that "children who don't go to college turn out to be sleeping in the streets." When every child goes to college, we turn into a society of a skills abundance in limited use. It's all thanks to that notion that "no child should have to face adversity." It's all thanks to the concept that "children are innocent, and therefore must be spared from the adult world." I say, welcome to the new, happier, freer adulthood, where anyone can be anything they want to be--born not out of austerity, but from the dream of abundance--and pursuing not society's destruction (for once), but its constant creation and rebirth.

We of course remember those who came before us (...those who would criticize our sense of entitlement now), and struggle to live up to their esteemed shadow:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,
starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for angry fix.

--Allen Ginsberg, "Howl"  (1956)

But with entitlement comes responsibility, and we just have higher aspirations than being "destroyed by madness" or settling for less. We have careers to think about.

Now I still believe in reality, despite how I was raised--a reality where nobody cares about anyone, and least of all me. At the same time, I think there are still lessons to be learned from this cultural shift--from those who settle for whatever they can get to those who believe the choice is theirs--and that is of perseverance. Where the best among the youth of the past were having good times, destroying all modernity, the best of this generation are embracing modernity, and contributing for the good of society--not because they have to, but because they want to.

No child should "ever" have to face disappointment, they said, so I refuse to be disappointed. No matter what disappointment rears up, I refuse to let it put me down like it did those before me, because "greatness" is inevitably within my grasp, as it is for everyone equally, eventually. Reality, bring on the world.

Real Gender Equality

Seeing as it is International Women's Day, I figured I should clarify my idea of gender equality. It goes a little something like this: If males get it, females get it, and if females get it, males get it. For everything that exists, for every statement that can be made that includes any connection to males or females, of any age, the syntax should not be any different with the word "male," "men," or "boys," than it would be with the words "female," "women," or "girls." That is all there is to gender equality. If there is an International Women's Day, and it has widespread publicity, the same should apply to International Men's Day. If there is a "Girl Effect," there should be a "Boy Effect." If there is a "Women's History Month," there should be a "Men's History Month." There should be no "women and children first" policies any more than there should be "men and children first" policies. This is what the feminists envisioned--total 1:1 equality across the board, not just "rough equivalence." But is that what we have?

Gender equality should be like writing a novel full of stereotypical characters, changing the sex of every single one of them, and coming out with a story no different than before. Gender equality means that all human beings are people regardless of their sex, that sex is a biological assignment and gender is a cultural construction. There could be infinite genders, even if there are only two biological sexes, and none of those genders should be expected to correspond to any particular sex. Gender equality is not about erasing gender, just about erasing the barriers that hold individuals back from participating in the varieties of human expression, and having their needs responded to. It means that alimony, child support, and full custody, ought to be rewarded to stable men in a divorce once in a while. It means that men ought to be able to mentor girls just as women can mentor boys, because one's biological sex shouldn't determine what child can benefit from what adult.

Gender equality is about being able to say: "X's are typically strong, nurturing, aggressive, and emotional," and seeing that any sex, any gender, could substitute for X without causing you confusion. You should have no idea of what gender is being implied by the words "strong," and "aggressive," any more than "nurturing," and "emotional." If you truly believe in gender equality, these are qualities that any human being can possess. Gender equality does not mean biological sexes are the same, it just means that as far as culture is concerned, they should matter no more than eye color. A blue eye is different than a brown eye, surely, but does it matter what color it is so long as it sees? What is true for eye color should be what is true for gender. The sexes are different, but they should not be valued any differently. I support this extreme equality because it can be used as a thinking tool to disassemble all destructive social evaluations of males and females.

And valued differently they are, as the fetishization of the emasculation of men and boys carries on in popular culture, and the sexual objectification of women and girls continues to persist as well. If true gender equality is what we are striving for, then I will not rest until the fetishization of the devaluation of women and girls is carried out, and the sexual objectification of men and boys begins in full too. Since the existence of feminism does nothing to devalue the importance of men and boys, the same should be true in the reverse, and there should be no "feminism" without also a "masculism." There should be no double standards for men and women, at all--women should earn what men earn for the same positions and the same productivity (whatever the criterion is), and at the same time, women should not be permitted to abuse men, and there should be "Men's" shelters just as there are "Women's" shelters. What one gets, the other should get equally as much, across the board.

We could also just treat people with dignity, uphold that they are valuable, and deserve respect, based on who they are, and not what they are, but that has so far been outside our grasp as a culture. Seriously, if we can't say "International Human's Day" because to do so would be to strip away the significance of the day with a vague "human" label, then "feminism" has a long way to go before it can be considered truly pro-equality. Either we surrender to the total equality formula, stripping everything down to a vague and therefore meaningless "human" level, or we allow only equal distribution of resources and values to both sexes. Because I believe that males and females are equal, but different, I prefer the later.

Men and Children Can Coexist

I reject traditional masculinity and promote child guidance instead, and does it make me virtuous? Does that make me the ideal man? One brimming with patience, sensitivity, kindness, compassion, and love? Not in the eyes of a society where it would be more acceptable and profitable that I should be the man they can best sell to, and though I've done nothing, be kept from even sitting next to children on airplanes based on my sex alone. The sensitive man is not any more profitable than the man who complains about such sexist discrimination, for both are cast with the same suspicion of deviance just for being what they are--men who question social prejudice in one way or another rather than just accept it as men are expected to, and as many do. Where do we fit in as men when it comes to children?

The sensitive men are feared at best, ridiculed, emasculated, and then outright hated at worst. Those who can't understand our lifestyle look at us with a light-hearted condescension at first, jokingly making us surrender to judgment for the crime of heterosexual, and homosexual, male non-conformity. When I refuse to let it get to me, and carry on anyway because the world needs more compassion in it from our side towards children (which the world itself also says is lacking), the fearful among them unleash their ignorance completely--as if offended by their own inability to get under my skin--and amp up their assault not with more "efem" jokes, but with real threats. I could be kicked off an airplane simply because I'm a male sitting next to an unattended child and I refuse to move. Now I want to know what impression it is having on children where, wherever they go, they are to see men scatter, or be beaten back with sticks. That's child abuse in my book.

It seems all those who reject the commercially manufactured beer-swigging, sex-crazed lifestyle of the modern man are subject to termination by not only its benefactors but its hive-minded heterosexual adherents, raised to hate children instead, as if that was preferable to loving them. In the eyes of the world, child guidance is not a suitable interest for the modern man, no matter how necessary it is. Men and children however, can coexist in the same world without someone pressing a panic button, because we have existed in the same world for millions of years, even long before people decided to start putting paranoid sexist discrimination before human dignity. When certain people decided to start separating every man from every child, they separated their humanity from themselves. It's time we separated them from their perches. 

Many Shades of Grey?

Anything is justifiable with the words "look at it this way..." but that doesn't make it justified. I am a firm believer in moral objectivism--that the activities of human beings are either right or wrong, but that we are all just incapable of grasping the true difference. We instead invent this concept of "the many shades of grey between black and white" to justify our actions (no matter what they are) in the event that our conscience is unable to weigh the pros and cons of our activities or those of others. This is how we can get away with judging the deeds of others with more impunity than our own actions, based almost entirely on our perceptions of other people rather than the facts of their circumstance. This "many shades of gray" theory gives us the benefit of the doubt no matter what, and allows us to search out justifications for our actions no matter what the consequences of those actions were. The reason I don't subscribe to this "moral subjectivism" is because the worst among us--child molesters even--are able to use it to find moral justification for actions that our society convicts them for. Now ask yourself, are you no better than a child molester?

It is a fact that there are circumstances in life where morality is ambiguous to us, where the pros and cons of doing something force us to choose the "lesser of two evils," or force us to choose randomly because the consequences seem either morally neutral or are too large or small to conceive, or have their effects at a great distance from us. But let's be honest, when people insist that "there are many shades of grey," what they are really saying is that there is only grey. If even minute immoralities can be shirked off as possibly containing ambiguities, and therefore be rendered "neutral," then the same could logically be said about large immoralities (which is why we have justifications for murder, war, and even child abuse), so what is really meant is that all actions are ambiguous, if only because it is the logical extension, unless one wants to start deliniating what is ambiguous and what isn't (which is just to be acquiescing to moral objectivism anyways).

So instead, the subjectivist then jumps to label an action as "more acceptable" simply due to the particulars of who is doing the action and what they were doing it for, or some other immaterial criterion we can establish as a judgment point in our own minds that is separate from its ambiguous consequences. That way, that which is more divorced from our actions directly, that which is the work of the majority, that which is not done by intent (or by accident), that which is performed by people of authority (political or professional), and that which we do (as opposed to the like actions of others), all becomes "more acceptable," simply because it tends to be the case in nature, regardless of the very real consequences of those actions. People and intentions become more important than actions and consequences.

It is as if we are to accept, and eat, the spoiled fruit off the ground just because the picker had "intended" to pick it when ripe and just forgot. "Oh well, we say, the picker is a professional and he didn't mean to let our food spoil. It wasn't his fault, therefore, his food is safe to eat." It may sound like a straw-man criticism, but consider what professionals are allowed to get away with doing unintentionally in real life, particularly towards minors, under the premise of "they didn't do it intentionally." Good intentions aren't good enough. That which is rotten, is rotten, regardless of whether it was intended to be ripe when served. Likewise, psychiatrists who intend to treat teen depression with a prescription for a series of suicide pills, have produced rotten fruit, regardless of their intentions to treat and heal. We can't seperate or ignore the negative consequences of actions simply because we trust the person who did the action, and likewise, can't overemphasize wrongdoing simply because we don't trust them. Either way, we are letting perspectives govern consequences, and in the case above, putting psychiatrists before clients, or perpetrators before their victims.

Almost all actions carry with them positive consequences and negative consequences, so on the surface it may appear that morality is subjective, and that all judgment about right and wrong "depends on how you look at it." The problem with this view is that it inevitably forces you, the subjectivist, to concede to a new set of moral laws which may not be so tolerant to your intuitions--the laws of nature--where the strong cut down the weak, the majority cuts down the minority, the powerful cut down the impoverished, the old cut down the young, and the young cut down the old--where the affluent justify the ruin of those who suffer at a distance, and where each of us escapes all judgment from every "ambiguous" deed and non-deed simply because the court in our own minds is always adept at finding justification and absolution from the feeling of guilt, regardless of consequence. This is the new moral law that you inevitably subscribe to when you accept the "many shades of grey" illustration, because this is what we see happen in the world when culture accepts the subjective nature of morality as if it was unsubstantiated truth (by its own subjective principles). We are forced to base our lives around the law, which allows for us to justify our immorality so long as doing such is legal, and so long as there is a benefit (no matter how minute) stemming from our actions (no matter how destructive). So long as all actions are considered "grey," there is no right and wrong, there is just "grey," for everything and everyone.

It is understandable that in circumstances of ambivalence or ambiguity we're forced to make a choice and accept whatever consequences or benefits come from the action. What is not understandable though is when we have to justify to ourselves that the action we were forced to take ultimately was the correct one, or at least, the better choice, after the fact. It seems merely self-serving, a quest to save the ego from itself so as not to subject it to the fact that the "lesser of two evils" we just chose was still in fact "evil." If it was a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation beforehand, and you choose "do," you're still as damned after the fact as you were before, let's not forget. Just because you chose doesn't mean you haven't produced damnation on yourself. It's better to accept the consequences of your actions, accept that your choice had repercussions, than to carry on as if you just averted catastrophe simply because you made a choice. Who can we pass judgment on? No one, because no one is qualified. All we can do is do the best we can and accept the consequences that come inevitably from "our best guess."

If an action has more negatives than positives, it is not "a shade of grey," it is morally wrong, and sometimes, things that are morally wrong are necessary to do, but their necessity doesn't make them right. If an action has more positives than negatives, it is merely "less wrong," or morally acceptable at best. Only actions that produce no negative consequences whatsoever can be considered unquestionably morally right (if they even exist), and only actions that produce no positive consequences are unquestionably morally wrong. What those morally right and wrong actions are, though, is difficult for anyone to say because the human mind is governed by instinct, emotion, reason, culture, legality, and a whole host of other characteristics that influence our perspective. Without these forces pulling us in one direction or another, we'd be able to possess the purely logical expression that morality is, that thing that we are all just stumbling around trying to get a handle on and align our intuitions to. Mankind invents its own moral laws to try to simulate the perfect "form" of morality strewn from our intuition (as evolved in us via instinct) and expressed as culture, but all man-made systems fail to express it completely, in one simple formula, the fact of what is "black" and what is "white." So we have "grey" only because we don't want to face the fact that we often don't know the difference.

We are all children.

Predator Panic

Our modern culture is fixated on child molestation, predation, kidnapping, and pedophilia. It is obsessed with the concept of children getting picked off and preyed upon, and there is no low the media won't stoop to, no far-fetched connection they won't try to harmonize with, and no half-baked conclusion they won't try to draw, in order to connect child molestation to every depiction or reference to children and childhood in popular culture, whether real or fake. Children in fiction as well as life seem to exist solely to perpetuate the narrative of "predation and rescue," or "child in distress," if only to soothe the guilty adult conscience for the state of society, but the repetition of this narrative has its unforeseen consequences.

Children and youth still have no standing or legitimacy for themselves under the predation narrative, because it exists for the benefit of adults. Such thoughts do not flow from the spring of respect or dignity, and only produce the tainted waters of iniquity and conceit. It may even get to the point where we can't bring children to mind without conjuring the imagery of abduction and molestation, abuse and dismemberment. Such a schema is not child-centric, or even child concerned, since it only exists for the adult's purposes. Predator panic is a function of selfishness. It soothes the adult mind and guilt. It's about justifying the decadence of adult indulgence and maintaining adult control of youth. Why do you think vigilantes latch onto it with such zealotry and demagoguery? Selfishness is their raison d'etre. Why do you think victimology is such a profitable market? It is a sickness, and many have already fallen prey to it. But I suspect its time is slipping away, and soon the tide may turn and we may see a generation more immune to the sickly fascinations that prey upon the mental defects of this current one.

This molestation fixation is neither healthy, nor does it benefit children anything. In fact, it may even be one causal factor influencing our reactions toward minor misconduct, particularly toward minor sexual expression, formed in zealotry and expressed with draconian simplicity. Easing the worried mind, troubled by the constant thought of destruction, becomes the highest priority when all we are lead to believe is that destruction is everywhere. The moment we lose sight of reality, we lose a hold of our future. And if children are our so-called future, inhabiting reality, you'd think it would behoove us to keep our minds firmly rooted, rather than let them drift to fantasize the inevitable destruction of children and childhood at every turn of the page, every flip of the channel, and every thought in the head. Some are rooted well, still others are out to sea.

In any case, fixation on child endangerment by its ceaseless repetition in our thoughts and culture does nothing to stem the tide on actual child abuse, which has no total abatement, nor does it actually inform us of the reality of it. Instead, this fixation only contributes toward the increasing infantilization and marginalization of all young people by the paranoid and restless adult psyche. Teachers may have their own "teacher's pet" without gaining the assumption of pedophilia. Coaches may still pat their players on the back without gaining the same assumption about their motivations for doing such. Boys may still be allowed to perform in Catholic church choirs, and sign up for Boy Scouts without the need for viewer-hungry tabloid journalists to assume potential child abuse connections between everyone involved. Girls may be allowed male tutors or mentors without the need for bureaucratic entanglements -for if we were to suspect all men of being pedophiles when it comes to working with girls, we may as well outlaw every daughter's father, every niece's uncle, or every sister's older brother as well.

When we have broken up enough families though, disallowed enough youth from community outreach organizations, and severed all bonds between adult and child in society, do you think our fearful minds will finally be at ease, even then? Do you think that children will be safe, even then? It takes a perverse mind, a sick mind, to look upon that which has no sexual or abusive context and contrive out of it "sex abuse of children," so even if every draconian reaction were set in stone, that perversity already there would only continue to infect and grow. It takes a healthy mind to look upon things for what they are and see them for what they are--to look upon children and see them as children rather than "potential victims." Children grow into adults, and will serve the future. "Potential victims" only serve the current paranoid adult's darkest fantasies.

Severity over Statistics

I don't believe in putting people down and hiding behind statistics to justify doing it. I despise that mentality of compartmentalizing people by numbers, or assigning respect by numbers, or thinking about people in terms of averages and percents rather than faces and names. Statistics is a tool used to justify the inequality of respect and reverence shown to human variation, particularly in regards to tragedy. It doesn't have to be that way, and it would be great to live in a world where people were people and received the respect or disdain they deserve regardless of what group they belong to and what the average crime rate for that group is, or what the average poverty rate for that group is, or what the average grade point average for that group is...etc.--but sadly, that is not the world we allow ourselves to live in. Individuals get credit or criticism based on the characteristics most common to their group, and statistics makes it possible.

Statistics is often used to engineer equality by pouring resources into a priority group at the expense of the so-called "stronger" group, but social engineering promotes nothing but unequal opportunity--mainstreaming for one, and disenfranchisement for the other. True "equality for all" means exactly that (if one values equality, that is), so you can't both organize to benefit or prioritize one group (ie. women/children/men/wealthy/poor...etc.) at the expense of another group, and still remain an egalitarian. But there's no question that the facts of a situation are indeed the facts--that men earn more than women for instance--but the general facts shouldn't blind us and keep us from respecting and observing that people do exist outside the "average." This we tend to forget as we cater to the mediocrity of the middle. Our minds fall prey to heuristics and stereotypes, ignorance rules the day, and statistics makes it possible. 

Furthermore, if it's wrong to claim about individuals, then it's wrong to claim about groups of those same individuals. Insensitivity is more than just being disrespectful to individuals, it should also include showing disrespect to groups of people. This isn't to say that we should censor ourselves, just that we should not tolerate disrespectful speech, even if the thrust of that disrespect is supported by evidence (statistics). We might agree that saying "Bobby is stupid," is insensitive, but how much less insensitive is saying, "the group that Bobby belongs to ("boys," for example) is a whole batch of stupidity"? We think we're good people when we dodge the bullet of hurting someone's personal feelings as we use statistics to justify our personal prejudices against the group that person belongs to, but it doesn't make it right, or valid, to do such. We ignore individuals and insult groups of humans en mass, and we think these numerical truths we are using to accomplish this categorization are doing society a service. They are most likely not.

I also believe in focusing on severity over statistics. Numbers are used as a form of distancing oneself from tragedy. To headline on "only 20 people killed"  kind of makes whatever happened in the story seem insignificant. That's a lot different than simply saying, "20 people killed." Likewise, if only one kid got raped in a juvenile detention center in the last hundred years, who am I to disqualify the significance of that for the victim by referring back to numbers--by saying, essentially, "well, it wasn't so bad, you were the only one in the last hundred years!" The point being, if it was severe enough, and it hurt the victim, then no other quantity should get in the way of that "fact". Severity over statistics. Bruises over averages. Humans over outliers. Cases over representative samples. People before numbers.

I think this constant need to frame tragedy in a numerical context is a defense mechanism built into us to maintain our personal perspective rather than have it subject to the full weight of the tragedy itself. This is normally supposed to be of great benefit to the human, but in these times of constant information, we find ourselves turning away from tragedy at a rate unseen in human history. When you read something appalling, you automatically search for reasons to discredit what you're reading so as to not have to feel upset over it, even if it's a minuscule piece of information missing, or any tiny part that may not relate to your personal circumstances (so you don't have to believe that it happened).

This is especially true if the victim is not your typical victim (a "man" getting raped, for instance). People only seem to get fired up about things when they fit into a preconceived schema (ie. "women are always victims"), and otherwise ignore and underestimate all else to distract themselves from the validity of the tragedy before them. In all truth, I don't know what is worse, a mind like mine (which tends to take all sources of information at their word), or the multitude of minds that need constant verification for every detail before they feel any human emotion, period.

If you can find a reason not to feel bad about something you see, do you not feel better as a result? You could say then that the reason we study things at all is so we can "feel" in control of a situation we feel powerless about. Instead of feeling that gut reaction of disgust regarding rape, for instance, we study it and put a whole bunch of numbers in our heads to persuade ourselves into thinking of it in terms of percents and averages rather than faces and names. And when we do that, we underestimate the names and faces, particularly those we have cast to the side as "outliers." We create a society, an organization, that caters to the statistical average, and not only ignores the "outlier" but even flat out mocks him, and takes pleasure in his dejected circumstance. The male victim of rape is one such outlier that is routinely mocked and underestimated.

People underestimate the human element in the rightfully quantitative social sciences. I don't. I concern myself with that which people underestimate.