on recursive alienation...
over a month since my last update. the long silence online did not reflect a silence of the mind. rather, my mind was engaged in higher gear towards nontextual externalization (from here on simply E; internalization will be abbreviated as Y). by nontextual E i mean games. civilization 4 and barbarian invasion (the expansion to rome total war) came out around the same time and led to a total collapse of any textual pretenses, verbal facades... you know how it is. after having beaten both games at standard or higher difficulty settings at least twice (playing as the vandals was particularly fun!) i can now justify putting them aside to resume writing. actually, i had pondered and written about some deep problems as i was gaming, so the flow was not really interrupted - just slowed (but only speed!)
the following two essays require a deep understanding of E, Y, and flow. if you don't wish to misunderstand anything i'd strongly recommend reading at least these three entries for the following essay, and, in addition to those, this entry for the second. that said, this first one has great relevance for real life problems so you may end up understanding it just as well as i, if not better. the second is highly abstract but more significant for a deeper understanding of how i connect my thoughts to philosophy.
i feel strange typing things out in the german alphabet again. if i make strange typos or use nonsensical abbreviations (like Y for internal), please understand that i almost never use the german alphabet for anything longer than a sentence in a chat window. except for school of course. (did i mention that i've actually created my own font so i can type in my phonetic english alphabet? i would force it on you except it requires downloading and installing the font. teh sux... hir yz mà best upróksymèxn uw hâ yt vúd lúk (here is my best approximation of how it would look.))
the following is utter crap for writing quality because i was... ah... emotional while writing it. also, i had trouble deciphering the handwritten first draft due to my cryptic alphabet and shitty handwriting and the fact that i wrote it weeks ago. it's strange - i always get more emotional when writing - full of burning rage! and all that. so i try not to allow my first drafts to see the light of day, but in this case, the 2nd draft was more... colorful than the 1st. i'll have to fix it up a ton later on.
conquered, we conquer... ourselves...?
this essay is an elaboration on a line in this entry: "it is in the interests of women to fight against the arbitrary compartmentalization of self. not only is it a symptom of oppression, it encourages stereotypes and feeds into a greater cycle of more oppression..."
the "compartmentalization of self" that i wrote about was what moderns have become so familiar with that we no longer think in such terms. the most obvious examples are the multiple faces we wear before our various audiences: work, home, play, etc. modern humans have not only compartmentalized their external world, we have done it to ourselves. and it can't be any other way. to cope with a changing environment, we change our Y of that environment. our fractured self-images are a construct reflecting a fractured world. this is old news - read marshall mcluhan for more on that - he explains it far better and at greater length.
the problem with this, in terms of gender studies, is that this fracturing has affected men and women differently. these Y differences are far more damaging than any lack of legal protection of rights, objectification of women in media or persistence of unequal pay. all of those E are symptoms of Y problems. the E problems, of course, become the causes of Y problems primarily for the young (this important distinction should be of paramount importance to any women (or men) that wish to further feminist causes for girls and unborn generations). in the entry quoted above, i explained that one of the obvious effects of this unequal fracturing of identity is the differing ways in which men and women view "love". now, as always, please understand that i do not believe in gender (except as constructed concepts) - but that does not detract from the usefulness of using terms of gender (just as a house is not made useless for the fact that it is constructed).
my observation was that women tend to have a more compartmentalized (fractured) view of the persona, usually divided into mind and body, that allows them to satisfy the desires of both separately. men, on the other hand, are almost brutishly simple-minded about identity: i'm me - that's it. that's why you frequently get problems like male A likes female A for her body and mind (since he doesn't really separate the two), but female A only likes male A for his mind while she uses male B for his body. male A, under the illusion that female A likes his mind and his body will make a move. female A feels no need for two males to satisfy her body; furthermore, she feels violated by male A's "violation of trust" (stepping out of his bounds) and drops him like a hot brick. male B, being typically male, thinks that he's getting all of female A because he's getting the sex - completely missing out on half of the deal.
while that example may seem unfairly biased (perhaps even bitter) against women, men are equally at fault and commit egregious crimes due to this difference of worldviews. let's say that male A never made a move. instead, male B starts feeling possessive and demands that female A stop hanging out with male A. to male B's mind, it's simple. she's either all his or nothing at all. he can't conceive of a woman wanting a man for something other than sex. his world is woefully unfractured, homogeneous, and out of touch with reality. in fact, it could easily be argued that male A is equally clueless, but at least he is aware of the two parts - even if he can't quite separate them.
this is one of the more common examples. others abound wherever one finds diversity. blacks and whites have very different worldviews and fracturings of the self. the rich and the poor also have different fracturings. two variables stand out from all these: the degree of fracturing and the flexibility of fracturing. women tend to be more fractured than men. by virtue of not being in positions of power, they are forced to accomodate more varying vectors of responsibility. a man can identify himself as an engineer, or a doctor or a miner and not be faulted in any major way for having a single self-identifier. in more traditional societies this is most true while in america, there are considerations for his identity as a father, son, husband, friend, etc. but those other identities are rarely in conflict with his primary one because, in capitalism, career comes first. but if he chooses to go against this, he is then praised as a romantic hero: a true friend, a worthy son, a strong father, a loving husband, etc. so man is generally less fractured and freer in his fracturings.
women, thanks to feminism, can make similar claims today. but in bygone days and in the darker corners of the earth (such as my home state: texas, my future profession: academia, and my favorite pastime: videogames) women are more fractured and less free than men. consider this: in a parochial society, women are expected to be laborers, wives, and mothers all at once. the difference between women and men who are expected to be good fathers, laborers, and husbands, is that if a man fails in any one of his roles but excels in another, he is a hero. if a woman fails to be a good mother (perhaps she simply can't have children) or a good wife (because her husband is truly worthless) but is the best poet in the world, she is despised. as i write this i smile because the fact that these descriptions stopped being true years ago is a great success of feminism.
but the general principle is strong. let's extend this concept of unequal fracturings to other comparisons. black and white.
let's say that a scientist has discovered something amazing. the news decides to report it because science is so sexy and cool (it is!) if that scientist is white, they simply give his name and leave it at that. if that scientist is black, they will do a feature article on being a black scientist. when parts of ones identity are E as an adjective, it is impossible to deny that there is a fracturing of identity. arthur ashe could not simply be a tennis player, he had to be a black tennis player. he is quoted as saying that being black was a burden greater than AIDS. on a personal note, i spent all of my childhood debating with myself and others the correct way to describe myself: korean? korean-american? american? asian? asian-american? jemi gyopo ise? this led to a severe fracturing of identity that i still struggle with today.
the rich and the poor also vary greatly in their fracturings. for the rich, it is rather simple. if they don't want to be a parent, they buy pills and abortions. if they don't want to be spouses, they can pay for divorces. if they don't want to be employed, they can take a job elsewhere or retire early. if humans have hearts of glass, the rich are padded in twelve inches of the finest cotton wool. oddly enough, they are more likely to invent fractures for themselves (i.e. create drama) because of the crushing ennui of wealth. the poor don't have that luxury - that freedom. it should come as no surprise that the downtrodden are the most fractured of all. i won't even go into details.
at this point it should be fairly obvious what it is that causes these fracturings: oppression. the poor, the minorities, women, have all been oppressed for a long time. it should come as no surprise that they tend to be more psychically fractured. multiple personality disorder is generally caused by great trauma and/or great stress. it is a coping mechanism of sorts. but it is a bad thing.
let's take a quick detour to antihumanism. if we are to take it prescriptively, we should be doing all we can to eliminate trappings of the human existence in order to more honestly interact with the universe right? so it shouldn't matter if a person has a broken and splintered and fractured identity, since it's all going to go away anyhow, right? but actually, no. i would be appalled if people were to take my words so seriously that they started meditating and doing interesting drugs and becoming buddhists, trying to destroy their egos actively as an end in itself! that borders on religion - possibly the most disgusting direction you could ever take antihumanism. after all, antihumanism is about the dedeification of humanity! to redeify g-d at the expense of humanity would be a step backwards. for that is what ends are. they are a god. i laugh at christianity and atheism alike - they have their own gods. and i laugh at humanism - humanity is no god worth worshipping. the only worthy end is empathy, and the means is honesty. the dissolving of the ego is merely a natural result of that process. and to empathize is to survive/evolve.
to understand why fracturing of the self is a bad thing, one must understand recursion. the best definition of recursion is recursion. to understand how this applies to our problem requires defining "fractures" as alienations between arbitrary divisions of a whole. alienation is a big concept in marxism so if you are already familiar with that, you're good to go. the hard part is understanding "arbitrary divisions". to say that a division is arbitrary is not really enough. you can say that a person may arbitrarily commit an action but in all honesty, that is a relative descriptor. certainly, at a molecular level "arbitrary" takes on a completely new meaning. also, there are epistemological problems with using the term. until one knows that the sun and earth interact according to the force of gravity, the sun's placement may appear arbitrary. so truly, what i mean by arbitrary, is that a division has been made in the geography that existed only in one party's Y and not the other's, until it became E. i am not using geography in a metaphorical sense. there is a real geography shared by many people. the borders drawn on it are not real. they are arbitrarily E - making them real after the fact.
recursion fits into this picture because according to my philosophy, genders, socioeconomic classes, races, and so many other categories are also arbitrary divisions. and alienation is a natural result of such divisions. take a college class, divide them into smokers and non-smokers. have them sit across from each other. even if they are facing each other and encouraged to engage each other, there is a slim chance that any real understanding, any empathy, will develop between them. rather have them sit side by side, mixed. segregation does not work in the "real" world. so why should it be any better for the world of the mind? one of the interesting things about E and Y is that they are fundamentally the same sort of thing and operate in the same way. recursion is seen in the world of E, and it works the same way in the world Y.
in short, to arbitrarily divide humanity into genders results in alienation between the two. furthermore, the more oppressed part (women) will, recursively, arbitrarily divide themselves which results in inward alienation. and this occurs on a meta level as well - the oppressed, when alienated, will divide themself from themself resulting in a total self-alienation. another term used often is "objectification" - that is, women, objectified by men, will then objectify themselves. self-proclaimed straight women who gladly engage in public displays of lesbian behavior to entertain men are an embarrassment to true lesbians and all women. even if they truly enjoy the activity, not only are they then being dishonest about their sexual orientation, they are still only encouraging men to continue in their blatantly hypocritical delusions. i won't even go into rape fantasies. to be divided in identity is to be easily conquered. the only thing worse is to have a unified, inflated identity.
psychologists heal multiple personality disorders by helping the patient reintegrate their disparate selves. if we are to have any hope in reintegrating humanity, and the universe, we must reintegrate ourselves. this applies to all those that have coped with stress by painting a new face, holding up a new mask to deal. instead we should seek to be honest in all we do.
those finding themselves on the opposite end of the problem, the white, the rich, the male, also have a responsibility. we should stop assuming that the face we see is all there is. stop assuming that the black man is "statistically more likely to mug me", stop assuming that "she's a girl so she'll like it if i treat her like shit", stop assuming that "all poor people are lazy". we should not even assume that the face we see is, in fact, a face! a mask perhaps? the laugh of the oppressed is such a mask: behind it lies grief, or anger, or frustration, or confusion, or fear, and, rarely, soul tapping happiness.
but once again, let me be clear that i do not believe in categories of race or gender. i use these terms as i do tools. all tools are subject to modification and obsolescence. and honestly, many of those terms are due to be obsolete very soon; the rest are already.
[special copyright applies to this entry. see bansuki's user info for details.]
the following two essays require a deep understanding of E, Y, and flow. if you don't wish to misunderstand anything i'd strongly recommend reading at least these three entries for the following essay, and, in addition to those, this entry for the second. that said, this first one has great relevance for real life problems so you may end up understanding it just as well as i, if not better. the second is highly abstract but more significant for a deeper understanding of how i connect my thoughts to philosophy.
i feel strange typing things out in the german alphabet again. if i make strange typos or use nonsensical abbreviations (like Y for internal), please understand that i almost never use the german alphabet for anything longer than a sentence in a chat window. except for school of course. (did i mention that i've actually created my own font so i can type in my phonetic english alphabet? i would force it on you except it requires downloading and installing the font. teh sux... hir yz mà best upróksymèxn uw hâ yt vúd lúk (here is my best approximation of how it would look.))
the following is utter crap for writing quality because i was... ah... emotional while writing it. also, i had trouble deciphering the handwritten first draft due to my cryptic alphabet and shitty handwriting and the fact that i wrote it weeks ago. it's strange - i always get more emotional when writing - full of burning rage! and all that. so i try not to allow my first drafts to see the light of day, but in this case, the 2nd draft was more... colorful than the 1st. i'll have to fix it up a ton later on.
conquered, we conquer... ourselves...?
this essay is an elaboration on a line in this entry: "it is in the interests of women to fight against the arbitrary compartmentalization of self. not only is it a symptom of oppression, it encourages stereotypes and feeds into a greater cycle of more oppression..."
the "compartmentalization of self" that i wrote about was what moderns have become so familiar with that we no longer think in such terms. the most obvious examples are the multiple faces we wear before our various audiences: work, home, play, etc. modern humans have not only compartmentalized their external world, we have done it to ourselves. and it can't be any other way. to cope with a changing environment, we change our Y of that environment. our fractured self-images are a construct reflecting a fractured world. this is old news - read marshall mcluhan for more on that - he explains it far better and at greater length.
the problem with this, in terms of gender studies, is that this fracturing has affected men and women differently. these Y differences are far more damaging than any lack of legal protection of rights, objectification of women in media or persistence of unequal pay. all of those E are symptoms of Y problems. the E problems, of course, become the causes of Y problems primarily for the young (this important distinction should be of paramount importance to any women (or men) that wish to further feminist causes for girls and unborn generations). in the entry quoted above, i explained that one of the obvious effects of this unequal fracturing of identity is the differing ways in which men and women view "love". now, as always, please understand that i do not believe in gender (except as constructed concepts) - but that does not detract from the usefulness of using terms of gender (just as a house is not made useless for the fact that it is constructed).
my observation was that women tend to have a more compartmentalized (fractured) view of the persona, usually divided into mind and body, that allows them to satisfy the desires of both separately. men, on the other hand, are almost brutishly simple-minded about identity: i'm me - that's it. that's why you frequently get problems like male A likes female A for her body and mind (since he doesn't really separate the two), but female A only likes male A for his mind while she uses male B for his body. male A, under the illusion that female A likes his mind and his body will make a move. female A feels no need for two males to satisfy her body; furthermore, she feels violated by male A's "violation of trust" (stepping out of his bounds) and drops him like a hot brick. male B, being typically male, thinks that he's getting all of female A because he's getting the sex - completely missing out on half of the deal.
while that example may seem unfairly biased (perhaps even bitter) against women, men are equally at fault and commit egregious crimes due to this difference of worldviews. let's say that male A never made a move. instead, male B starts feeling possessive and demands that female A stop hanging out with male A. to male B's mind, it's simple. she's either all his or nothing at all. he can't conceive of a woman wanting a man for something other than sex. his world is woefully unfractured, homogeneous, and out of touch with reality. in fact, it could easily be argued that male A is equally clueless, but at least he is aware of the two parts - even if he can't quite separate them.
this is one of the more common examples. others abound wherever one finds diversity. blacks and whites have very different worldviews and fracturings of the self. the rich and the poor also have different fracturings. two variables stand out from all these: the degree of fracturing and the flexibility of fracturing. women tend to be more fractured than men. by virtue of not being in positions of power, they are forced to accomodate more varying vectors of responsibility. a man can identify himself as an engineer, or a doctor or a miner and not be faulted in any major way for having a single self-identifier. in more traditional societies this is most true while in america, there are considerations for his identity as a father, son, husband, friend, etc. but those other identities are rarely in conflict with his primary one because, in capitalism, career comes first. but if he chooses to go against this, he is then praised as a romantic hero: a true friend, a worthy son, a strong father, a loving husband, etc. so man is generally less fractured and freer in his fracturings.
women, thanks to feminism, can make similar claims today. but in bygone days and in the darker corners of the earth (such as my home state: texas, my future profession: academia, and my favorite pastime: videogames) women are more fractured and less free than men. consider this: in a parochial society, women are expected to be laborers, wives, and mothers all at once. the difference between women and men who are expected to be good fathers, laborers, and husbands, is that if a man fails in any one of his roles but excels in another, he is a hero. if a woman fails to be a good mother (perhaps she simply can't have children) or a good wife (because her husband is truly worthless) but is the best poet in the world, she is despised. as i write this i smile because the fact that these descriptions stopped being true years ago is a great success of feminism.
but the general principle is strong. let's extend this concept of unequal fracturings to other comparisons. black and white.
let's say that a scientist has discovered something amazing. the news decides to report it because science is so sexy and cool (it is!) if that scientist is white, they simply give his name and leave it at that. if that scientist is black, they will do a feature article on being a black scientist. when parts of ones identity are E as an adjective, it is impossible to deny that there is a fracturing of identity. arthur ashe could not simply be a tennis player, he had to be a black tennis player. he is quoted as saying that being black was a burden greater than AIDS. on a personal note, i spent all of my childhood debating with myself and others the correct way to describe myself: korean? korean-american? american? asian? asian-american? jemi gyopo ise? this led to a severe fracturing of identity that i still struggle with today.
the rich and the poor also vary greatly in their fracturings. for the rich, it is rather simple. if they don't want to be a parent, they buy pills and abortions. if they don't want to be spouses, they can pay for divorces. if they don't want to be employed, they can take a job elsewhere or retire early. if humans have hearts of glass, the rich are padded in twelve inches of the finest cotton wool. oddly enough, they are more likely to invent fractures for themselves (i.e. create drama) because of the crushing ennui of wealth. the poor don't have that luxury - that freedom. it should come as no surprise that the downtrodden are the most fractured of all. i won't even go into details.
at this point it should be fairly obvious what it is that causes these fracturings: oppression. the poor, the minorities, women, have all been oppressed for a long time. it should come as no surprise that they tend to be more psychically fractured. multiple personality disorder is generally caused by great trauma and/or great stress. it is a coping mechanism of sorts. but it is a bad thing.
let's take a quick detour to antihumanism. if we are to take it prescriptively, we should be doing all we can to eliminate trappings of the human existence in order to more honestly interact with the universe right? so it shouldn't matter if a person has a broken and splintered and fractured identity, since it's all going to go away anyhow, right? but actually, no. i would be appalled if people were to take my words so seriously that they started meditating and doing interesting drugs and becoming buddhists, trying to destroy their egos actively as an end in itself! that borders on religion - possibly the most disgusting direction you could ever take antihumanism. after all, antihumanism is about the dedeification of humanity! to redeify g-d at the expense of humanity would be a step backwards. for that is what ends are. they are a god. i laugh at christianity and atheism alike - they have their own gods. and i laugh at humanism - humanity is no god worth worshipping. the only worthy end is empathy, and the means is honesty. the dissolving of the ego is merely a natural result of that process. and to empathize is to survive/evolve.
to understand why fracturing of the self is a bad thing, one must understand recursion. the best definition of recursion is recursion. to understand how this applies to our problem requires defining "fractures" as alienations between arbitrary divisions of a whole. alienation is a big concept in marxism so if you are already familiar with that, you're good to go. the hard part is understanding "arbitrary divisions". to say that a division is arbitrary is not really enough. you can say that a person may arbitrarily commit an action but in all honesty, that is a relative descriptor. certainly, at a molecular level "arbitrary" takes on a completely new meaning. also, there are epistemological problems with using the term. until one knows that the sun and earth interact according to the force of gravity, the sun's placement may appear arbitrary. so truly, what i mean by arbitrary, is that a division has been made in the geography that existed only in one party's Y and not the other's, until it became E. i am not using geography in a metaphorical sense. there is a real geography shared by many people. the borders drawn on it are not real. they are arbitrarily E - making them real after the fact.
recursion fits into this picture because according to my philosophy, genders, socioeconomic classes, races, and so many other categories are also arbitrary divisions. and alienation is a natural result of such divisions. take a college class, divide them into smokers and non-smokers. have them sit across from each other. even if they are facing each other and encouraged to engage each other, there is a slim chance that any real understanding, any empathy, will develop between them. rather have them sit side by side, mixed. segregation does not work in the "real" world. so why should it be any better for the world of the mind? one of the interesting things about E and Y is that they are fundamentally the same sort of thing and operate in the same way. recursion is seen in the world of E, and it works the same way in the world Y.
in short, to arbitrarily divide humanity into genders results in alienation between the two. furthermore, the more oppressed part (women) will, recursively, arbitrarily divide themselves which results in inward alienation. and this occurs on a meta level as well - the oppressed, when alienated, will divide themself from themself resulting in a total self-alienation. another term used often is "objectification" - that is, women, objectified by men, will then objectify themselves. self-proclaimed straight women who gladly engage in public displays of lesbian behavior to entertain men are an embarrassment to true lesbians and all women. even if they truly enjoy the activity, not only are they then being dishonest about their sexual orientation, they are still only encouraging men to continue in their blatantly hypocritical delusions. i won't even go into rape fantasies. to be divided in identity is to be easily conquered. the only thing worse is to have a unified, inflated identity.
psychologists heal multiple personality disorders by helping the patient reintegrate their disparate selves. if we are to have any hope in reintegrating humanity, and the universe, we must reintegrate ourselves. this applies to all those that have coped with stress by painting a new face, holding up a new mask to deal. instead we should seek to be honest in all we do.
those finding themselves on the opposite end of the problem, the white, the rich, the male, also have a responsibility. we should stop assuming that the face we see is all there is. stop assuming that the black man is "statistically more likely to mug me", stop assuming that "she's a girl so she'll like it if i treat her like shit", stop assuming that "all poor people are lazy". we should not even assume that the face we see is, in fact, a face! a mask perhaps? the laugh of the oppressed is such a mask: behind it lies grief, or anger, or frustration, or confusion, or fear, and, rarely, soul tapping happiness.
but once again, let me be clear that i do not believe in categories of race or gender. i use these terms as i do tools. all tools are subject to modification and obsolescence. and honestly, many of those terms are due to be obsolete very soon; the rest are already.
[special copyright applies to this entry. see bansuki's user info for details.]