Entries Tagged 'Pseudointellectualism' ↓

An understandable motivation for any human behavior is the reasonable expected outcome. If you put a piece of fruit in your mouth, you will be rewarded with the reasonable expected outcome of a sweet tasting bit of food-deliciousness. We have no motivation to put a rock in our mouth because we have no reason to expect a positive outcome. However, someone had to have been the first person to do so and determine that, “hey, rocks aren’t very tasty.” Also, occasionally someone needs to test the socially accepted norm of rock-non-tastiness in order to ensure that it still is accurate.

Who are these people, the testers of social norms? While any great thinker clearly falls under that category, so do a wide variety of the mentally ill. What may appear to an outsider as a pattern of masochistic behavior could be a genius straining the boundaries of right and wrong as defined by thousands of years of human existence. It could instead be someone pounding their head against the table because they are unable to bear living a partially enjoyable existence. It could be a sign of a serious neurological/psychiatric disorder.

Outcome is key when it comes to self-destruction. To what end do you immolate yourself? Buddhist monks which set themselves aflame in protest gain nothing and sacrifice everything. Perhaps others may benefit eventually from it, but they themselves are simply ending their lives. However, occasionally we must — as a species, and as individuals — risk self-destruction in order to improve ourselves and our lot in life. Just as it is insane to set oneself aflame once we know the power it has, it is insane to never touch the flickering fire to begin with.

Eric linked me this fascinating read which has several interesting bits about bisexuality specifically, and the potential evolution of human sexuality as a whole.

The possibility that everyone is born with the potential to experience both same-sex and opposite-sex attraction is borne out by the anthropologists Clelland Ford and Frank Beach in their pioneering study, Patterns Of Sexual Behaviour (1965). They examined dozens of tribal-based societies all over the world, including many where homosexual relations were common and accepted. In some, all young men went through a period of homosexuality as part of their rite of passage to manhood, and then later switched to heterosexuality and got married. Ford and Beach concluded that human sexuality was predisposed to bisexuality and that a person’s subsequent sexual orientation was largely the product of social learning and expectation: “Men and women who are totally lacking in any conscious homosexual leanings are as much a product of cultural conditioning as are the exclusive homosexuals who find heterosexual relations distasteful and unsatisfying. Both extremes represent movement away from the original, intermediate condition which includes the capacity for both forms of sexual expression”.

..thus reinforcing the idea that sexuality is in fact not binary, and that it is perfectly natural for a majority of people to engage in various sexual activities with the same gender — diluting the impact of the gay stereotype in association with homosexual behavior.

These insights suggest that if society ended its favouritism towards straightness and its chastisement of gayness, same-sex desire would, since it is an intrinsic human potentiality, be much more widespread. This doesn’t necessarily mean that a higher proportion of the population would be lesbian and gay. More likely, bisexuality would become the norm, and the prevalence of both exclusive heterosexuality and exclusive homosexuality would diminish.

I see this as a good thing. Call me a homophobe if you wish, but I do not find stereotypical gay men in any way appealing, sexually or otherwise. This distaste is not borne of any self-hatred, but of contempt for those who let themselves be so easily defined by others. As I told John, I try not to be definable with a single word — be it “fag”, “geek”, “emo” or what have you. To consider oneself gay or bisexual does not necessitate that you adhere to the applicable stereotypes. Though many people do, even if only subconsciously, and that irritates me greatly.

Adherence to negative stereotypes helps to perpetuate them and give them value. It doesn’t make me a homophobe to look down upon homosexuals (declared or otherwise) who are walking manifestations of a negative stereotype. By not adhering to it myself, I am helping to defeat it as an inaccurate label of homosexuals, whereas they are proponents of it and make it more difficult for me to fight it.

Patrick says..

dude

people should just be who they are

and not worry about stereotypes

for the realz

..which I am afraid is a bit silly. “Who they are” is imaginary. Our self is not determined in the womb, it is a culmination of our upbringing and interactions with society. We do have free will to determine who we become (as inferred by “interactions with society.”) Part of this interaction involves stereotypes — either learning from them in attempts to defeat them, or adhering to and propagating them.

The other day I was reading Andrew Sullivan’s blog and came across this other guy’s post about bisexuality which contained this eye-roll-inducing goodness:

There’s a part of me that’s always thinking that the bisexuals are getting the joys of homo transgression while reaping the benefits of hetero assimilation.

Please.

Homosexuals who aren’t absolute “I-like-it-like-a-latte-but-noooot-quite-there-yet” fags can enjoy homosexual transgression while fitting in with the assumed heterosexuals around him. You don’t need to be bisexual to not conform to the homosexual stereotypes.

And from the comments of that post:

My own experience echoes yours. I’ve long felt I would “get” bisexuality if I met bi guys who were in relationships with other guys and having sex with women on the side, instead of always the other way around.

Intellectually bisexuality makes sense, Kinsey scale and all that. In practice, it seems more live a closet tactic.

Intellectually it makes sense because even in nature, sexuality is not binary. We are not all either “gay” or “straight” — in fact, few of us statistically-speaking would precisely fit those labels. Labels. Our intense desire to label those people and things around us — to put them into easily understandable boxes and categories — is what drives so much misunderstanding regarding sexuality.

Mr. Bugg decries bisexuality because those who he performed oral sex on went back to their girlfriends and made fag jokes. How does that make bisexuality in any way less substantial? One can experience many things sexually and yet not tailor their lives to revolve around it. While the labels of “gay” and “straight” imply a lack of sexual attraction (and thus interaction) with the other gender, bisexuality is a very grey space in which you would be foolish to require equal-time or deny the comfort of a relationship with either gender.

Certainly some bisexuals like women more but occasionally have varying degrees of sexual interaction with men. Just as certainly, some bisexuals are much more into men but don’t deny some level of attraction or interaction with women. Just because few people have heard of a bisexual man who is in a steady relationship with another man but occasionally sleeps with women doesn’t mean that bisexuality is a figment of our collective imagination, it just suggests that perhaps the average straight woman offers something different than the average gay man. Agreed, one of the things that she offers is social acceptance, but I am wary to boil it down solely to that.

Freedom is the absolutely most important thing that any of us can experience in our lifetime.

It is more important than love, security, equality, or health. It also is a prerequisite for all of those things. Until taste absolute freedom you cannot truly feel love in an objective fashion. The blissful experiences some feel out in nature, unattached from everything else, is as close as we can get. Without freedom, security and health are meaningless. A caged bird does not live for itself, but for its owner. Its security is incomprehensible to it, or to us who sacrifice our freedom for security. As for equality, the only way any of us will be equal to another is for us both to have absolute freedom to determine our future. The outcome may not be the same, but our opportunities will be equal.

It is alternatively sad and infuriating to see freedom given and taken away so hastily. From former small-government conservatives brainwashed into accepting the sacrifice of others freedom for their own security, to bleeding-heart Robin Hoods “stealing from the rich to give to the poor,” stealing from others for what they perceive to be a good cause.

No cause, no matter how noble it may seem, is worth sacrificing freedom for it. Someone who respects freedom would never steal from one man to feed another. He would never force one man into military service to protect the state, regardless of the cause. If the cause for war cannot sustain itself by the choice of those who are able to enroll in service, the war should not be fought. If military victory requires forced enlistment in order to prevail, the battle is already lost.

If a charity cannot survive on a free and open market of ideas, it should not continue to exist — it should not, then, exist solely because of government-sponsored Robin Hoodery™. Relief of suffering is an easy sell — there is no reason why a charity cannot market itself to consumers-turned-contributors just as a set of encyclopedias was years ago. In this great information age — when dark horse candidates can raise multi-millions in a single day — a well run charitable organization can survive, even thrive, without taking freedom-stained blood money. Propping up inefficient organizations with involuntarily acquired funds (read: taxes) is reprehensible and provides no incentive for positive change within the organization.

Each organization — along with each person within it and, sadly, a majority of Americans — will do the bare minimum in order to maintain the status quo. This is unhealthy, as maintaining the status quo leads to stagnation of thoughts and ideas — of innovation. Each person and each organization must feel the sting of imminent defeat/failure so that it can recognize what it must work to avoid. If a child never experiences pain or loss, how can it have any perspective of success or failure? You must let it touch the hot stove once so that it can learn from its mistake and become a more informed and prepared individual. The same principle applies to all people and all organizations. Corporate bail-outs do nothing to teach other than the lesson that no matter how badly you fuck up the government will help you out — as long as you continue to contribute to a few dozen politicians’ campaigns. These safety nets become hammocks, and once they are reclining in one, it is difficult to dump someone out.

You turn the corner and a group of men listening to rap and dressed accordingly (baggy clothes, cocked hats / bandanas, etc) are blocking the sidewalk you were going to use. If you cross the street rather than excuse-me-pardon-me navigate your way through the middle of them, does that make you a racist? I would hope not, since I didn’t even mention the race of the men involved.

Rather, it is practical application of the “gangsta” stereotype in an effort to keep oneself safe from harm. Race need not be at all involved, as groups of people fulfilling the “gangsta” stereotype are just as undesirable to walk through if they are black and in Detroit, or blue-eyed-blonde-haired-farmer’s-sons in a suburb of Des Moines.

When seeking to define oneself, if you choose to adhere to an existing stereotype rather than creating your own identity, you deserve the negative repercussions of that association. If I choose to dress and bathe like a homeless man, I deserve to be treated as one. If, however, I make an effort to be clean and not dress in rags, I do not deserve being stereotyped as a homeless man. If I were to adopt the extreme flamboyance of a stereotypical homosexual (as perpetuated by heterosexual actors on Will and Grace), I would be succumbing to that stereotype; bowing to the power it holds merely because I allow it to.

Homosexuals in particular have legitimate reason to adopt the flamboyant-fag stereotype — it makes it pretty easy to identify each other from otherwise identical heterosexual men. The problem being that the stereotype is unattractive to many homosexual men, and makes them more reluctant to “out” themselves as a homosexual lest they be perceived as a stereotypical “fag.” At that pont, the negatives involved with that association are not worth the benefits.

The problem with stereotypes in general is that many people do not recognize them as stereotypes, or fully understand that a stereotype is a template but not a mold. They do have practical uses and should continue to exist. Rather than telling our children that stereotypes are nonsense and that they should try to ignore the fact that large groups of people attempt to conform to an identical set of behaviors, we should be telling them that a stereotype is useful for self-preservation but is not all-encompassing nor is it permanent. To adhere to a stereotype should still be perceived as a failure of the individual to define their self, never as an ideal form of expression of self. One example of the bizarre affirmation-rather-than-condemnation of stereotypes is the “Gay Pride” parade. A “White Trash NASCAR-Loving Wife-Beater Parade” should cause an equal amount of eye-rolling if it were to occur.

Today I was asked how much I would have to be paid in order to become black. After some head-scratching the terms were laid out: reality would be magically altered, and nothing else would change, I’d just be black. I didn’t bother asking if I would have a larger penis.

My response was a bit of a puzzled “nothing?” as I feel the question is disingenuous. What the question-poser really wanted to know was why being black would be more or less desirable than my current skin-tone. Why dance around that question by attempting to pose a less sincere version of it in hopes of tricking someone to answer “correctly?”

The answer is that it really doesn’t matter on any level. My maternal grandfather was Mexican. Two of my grandmothers were Native American (different tribes.) My mixed ethnicity means nothing to me until I fill out government-required forms, and even then it means trying to figure out what box(es) to check. Due to the racist nature of these questions I never answer caucasian, even though that would be the largest piece of my ethnicity-pie. Beyond checking boxes, it means nothing to me. I don’t consider myself Catholic, nor do I actively identify with either Native American tribe. My identity is not dependent on my parents or my grandparents or my great-grandparents. No ones should be, but sadly, that’s rarely the case.

Some people give up because they grew up “on the streets” and don’t seek anything beyond that existence. Some allow themselves to be defined by the religion they were raised with. Others become willing slaves of the dollars they throw around. Whether they are the loud black homeless addicts that live in the park outside my apartment, or obnoxious drunken white frat-boys, their existence is equally inconvenient for me. Since I don’t live in the U district I have less exposure to the latter than the former, but know with confidence that I feel contempt for both groups equally. In both cases basic decency is ignored in favor of adherence to negative stereotypes.

A friend of mine — we’ll call him “Patrick” — has been angsty lately due to coming to the realization that our existence is pointless in the universe-level context. Well, duh. We are infinitesimally small and insignificant compared to the physical universe and “the universe” in quotes. Whether we live or die as a species means nothing to the billions of billions of billions of billions of stars, planets, solar systems, galaxies, perhaps even universes that reality consists of. Whether we do anything as individuals means even less..

..and that’s fine.

The relative pointlessness of our existence is a reality. We cannot alter reality. Instead, in order to live fulfilling lives — for the relative fraction of a nanosecond we do exist — we must learn what it is that makes us happy as individuals and strive towards that end. Barring physiological limitations, each person has something which makes them happy and for which they wake up in the morning.

An easy answer for many is family and friends. While that could be considered noble, to place your self-worth entirely in the hands of others is potentially dangerous. Not everything we aspire to must be easily accomplished, so don’t take a shortcut in an attempt to reach enlightenment (sotospeak) at the risk of being torn down (intentionally or not) by the others you rely so heavily upon.

Reality is important, but our perception of reality is upon which we base our existences. To turn the power of perception over to others (cough, religion, cough) we surrender our wills, and our lives to those others. That is not noble. It is stupid, lazy, (at best) misguided.