If only I had an extra seven grand to toss about

I would have the best computer ever...


I will have some discussion about the boys - including an hour stuck at a rest area in the middle of nowhere, while I disassembled my steering column to start the van later.  I will also post about ignorant fucking morons and the implications of a paper (PDF) that shockingly reveals that the metric to test whether employment screens are biased, turns out to be fatally flawed. But first, a bit of my fantasy life. 

It would start with this, set into this.  It would have two sets of these, cooled by this.  It would also contain one of these and six of these.  It's primary drives, would be two of these though.  It would live right here in this pretty case, assuming I can make the stupid blue light go away.  It would use this power supply.  It would be controlled with this mouse and keyboard set, though sometimes might be controlled by a handy little remote keyboard with trackball.  I would use this lovely thing for a monitor, while also piping a split to the tee vee in the living room - which, since we are dreaming, is a sixty some inch flat panel, hidden behind bookshelves on sliders most of the time (thus the need for the wee remote keyboard).  I would use these speakers in my home office, but would totally go with Bose in the living room.  I honestly don't see a need for optical drives, since with twelve TB of storage and the ability to use this desktop as a server, I am not sure what the point would be. 

I would, however, need one of these, these and this + a hell of a badass internets connection.

We won't even begin to talk about my five odd thousand dollar laptop.

Rape, sex and power - and possibly some discussion of porn...(updated)

I am going to give this conversation a rest now (unless someone comes along wanting to discuss the porn). I really don't have an interest in saying things that are offensive to others and I am not sure exactly how to have this conversation without doing so. I come at it from a particular direction, where the terms being argued have very specific definitions. The distinctions being argued however, aren't important except in a very specific context. It is just not important enough to cause others distress and gets very creepy when I come off the way I am coming off in this discussion.

I am sorry for causing any discomfort.

Over at a blog that is rather new to me, The Thoughtful Animal, Jason Goldman wrote an interesting post, questioning the impact of porn on the people who watch it. Unfortunately, the discussion that followed in comments became a battle about whether porn is inherently bad, or whether it might be rather more complicated than that. This stemmed from some serious condemnation of Jason for asking the wrong question, that instead the important question would be along the lines of; "Should something like porn, that is inherently exploitative towards women and is always an act of violence against women?"

Chaos ensued, unfortunately, with me contributing rather a lot to it. Jason was really rather keen on talking about the topic he had actually written about, but of a very long comment thread, there were very few comments that addressed that topic. And Zuska joined the fray, with a post of her own, the comments again turning to chaos and unfortunately causing Zuska rather a lot of distress. When she mentioned this and her plan to close the comments in a few hours, a number of assholes took it upon themselves to, of course, be assholes about it. In particular, Joshua Zelinsky was asshole enough to explain to Zuska that she should really do her homework on the topic of pornography - feeling that her emotional and mental health are just silly little concerns. Since I couldn't say it there:

Fuck You Joshua!

What Joshua did was not a whole lot different than telling someone who suffers pathological depression, that they should just stop thinking so negatively. I think most of the half dozen or so who are reading this are probably aware of how I feel about that kind of bullshit. That is the sort of shit that pressures people to be ashamed of their own brains, to feel like their feelings aren't valid. While I am pretty sure that Zuska is unlikely to feel that sort of shame - especially over something said by an asshole on her blog, it is really fucking obnoxious, asshole.

So - that out of the way, I am not going to actually delve into the discussion about porn anymore - you have the links and if you were actually a part of the discussion, you are aware anyways. I am however, opening the comments on this post to discuss the porn issue further. If you choose to engage in that discussion here though, I will warn you ahead of time that I am not likely to play nice about it here.

What I am going to address, are a couple of comments that came up on Jason's blog, shortly before he closed comments. I said that I would address those comments here and so I shall. The comments were from Luna_the_cat & Max - with Max basically reiterating what Luna had to say. They were a response to my inference that rape is more often about sex, than it is about power. Luna wrote;

DuWayne, the one thing that I'll take issue with you on is that. Studies done with rapists have indicated it isn't really about sex; it is sexualised power, and what I recall from research I did on this a few years ago, over 60% of convicted rapists are quite overt about motivations to "get back at women" or "put a woman in her place" or similar, as well as gaining perceived status from the rape from a peer group. And from surveys done of incarcerated populations, as well as NCVS studies, most rapists are actually in sexual relationships with people other than their victim at the time the crime is committed, which knocks the whole "it's because they can't get access to sex" thing on the head. It's also borne out by how many assaults involve additional acts to humiliate the victim, like pissing on her or forcing her to thank the attacker. (yeah. seriously.) It is multifactorial, and different individuals have different mixes of motivations, but to say it's "mostly sex" isn't justified. The "it's a power play" position is justified by evidence, even though it is overtly and explicitly sexual in nature.

Date rapes or rapes of drunk/drugged victims who are unable to express nonconsent effectively, might be "more about the sex", but it is impossible to state that as a universal. There is too much variation in both the nature of the assaults and the nature of the assailants.

Ok, so if we're talking about rape defined as "random stranger assault" then yes, rape is often mostly about power. But the rape as defined by the second paragraph is by far the most common form of rape and there is no question that that is most often, mostly about the sex, not the power aspect. I am not saying that power never plays a role, just that sex plays a more prevalent and stronger role. The same is true of incestuous molestation. While it is more complicated, because power differentials so often play a role - it is also generally about the sex. This is not a controversial claim I am making either. See here, here, here, here and here. That was less than a minute of searching.

Acquaintance rape is not only by far the most common, it is also the least reported - in part because victims are either ashamed, not sure it wasn't really their fault or both. Some women are simply not aware that what happened was rape, an attitude that is common with women who were raped while partying - even if they had been drugged. A lot of the studies (data collection by the Department of Justice has been ongoing for decades now) utilize questionnaires given to both men and women. Instead of asking women if they were victims of rape, and asking men if they are rapists (yes, males get raped too and there are probably studies going on), they describe scenarios and ask women and men if they have been on either side of such scenarios. Many of these studies also ask both men and women what they believe the motivation for that scenario was - assuming they responded positively. When it comes to acquaintance/date rape, both men and women who had responded affirmatively felt that sex was the primary motivation.

I will admit that this is not an area that I have spent as much time exploring, as I have other aspects of human sexuality. More than most anything else, rape is just really hard for me to look into very much. Far too many women I know were either raped as an adult, or were raped as a child - almost always by a family member. I can't sit down and explore this issue, without thinking about so many people that I care about and what their experience with rape did to them. But I am very aware of the statistics and I am also very aware of the way these studies are conducted. Figures range from ten percent of college age women, to one in four college age women having been raped at some point in their lives. The figures for men having participated in a rape - or "act of sexual aggression," is in some studies as high as ten percent, though roughly five percent is a reasonable aggregate of the data I have seen.

So Luna & Max, that is why I made the assertion I did. I understand where you are coming from and agree that in the context of stranger rape, it probably is most often about power. There is a lot of data that would indicate that at the very least it plays a significant role. But when it comes to all rape, the data simply doesn't fit your assertion. Oh, there was another bit to address...

...It's also kind of another slap in the face for victims. "It's just sex" has been a way of telling people they're blowing the whole thing out of proportion and they just need to get over it ("besides, they want it, really") for a long time. The people who have been on the receiving end of this know that it isn't sex. It is sexualised violence.

I very strongly disagree about this being a slap in anybody's face - it is certainly not how I intend it. The motivation of the fucking bastard who perpetrated that crime has nothing to do with how horrifying the crime is. I am sorry that some women who have been raped feel this way and I do not want to seem to be invalidating anyone's feelings - that is not what I am all about. But I don't begin to see how the motivation of a sex offender, changes the proportional damage the crime causes. Whether the fucker was doing it for power, doing it for sex or doing it because voices in his head told him to, it is still fucking rape.

Seriously, I comprehend and respect the feelings of people who have been victimized by rapists. I cannot understand them, because I have not had the experience - but I also know way too many women who have been raped and definitely comprehend how terrible it is. I am not denying that power can play a role and is probably the primary role when it comes to stranger rape. But when it comes to acquaintance rape, sex plays a primary role in motivating the men who commit the crime. That does nothing to change what has been done to the woman, doesn't detract one bit from the validity of her feelings after. The reason I think this is important, is because I think that understanding the motivations behind sex crimes is an important aspect of learning how to prevent them. I may write some about that in the future, but that is a whole post, in and of itself.

Morality Across Cultures Part 3

I have noticed something rather interesting in my exploration of morality across cultures. Namely that in more collectivist cultures (and subcultures) morality seems more strongly idealized, moral frames are more uniform and outwardly seems held to more stringently than in more individualistic cultures. This makes a lot of sense, given the nature of collectivist societies and I imagine is probably even documented.

Unfortunately it is exceedingly difficult to wade through the literature on moral decision making processes, because the vast majority of research in this area is in the context of business and law. This means that researchers are generally looking at very narrow ethical issues that may or may not translate to life outside the context of workplace. Or they are looking at narrow ethical issues in the context of how members of another culture treat outsiders - again, issues that may or may not - likely do not translate into how members of that culture treat each other.

I have found a few nuggets of research that would imply my observation is correct, but they do not leave room for generalization. This is definitely something that I think is worth exploring, because I think the answer is probably a very important piece of the puzzle that is the formation of our moral frames. The reason I think this could be very important is due to some observations of the largely hunter/gatherer aboriginal cultures I have learned something about. I will admit that this is pure speculation and that based on the accounts of westerners who have visited these cultures.

Egalitarian social structures are pretty much collectivist by nature. While there are certainly individuals with their individual traits, at a certain level of interdependence collectivism is the default. What I think it very interesting about this, is the expression of what westerners call morality in these egalitarian cultures. There isn't a list of rules to follow. Rather, there are the things that one must do to ensure the survival of the group. There are ways that one should treat others. But these are not issues that really need speaking of - rather they are integral to the culture to the extent that they become defined through observation and in some cases (probably most or all) they are part of the language.

In these aboriginal cultures divergence from the "moral" framework of the society is exceedingly rare. When it does pop up, the resulting gossiping and shaming usually cuts it off quickly. Failing that, there is discussion with elders to bring one in line making the final option, banishment, virtually nonexistent. There is not so much as idealization of this framework, as there is the understanding that life exists within this framework. There is not so much rigid adherence to this frame as there is a lack of anything else with which the group can function. In essence, daily life embodies the "moral" frame of hunter/gatherer societies. And within a group of (usually) thirty or less people, adherence isn't just an outward appearance.

With hierarchy and division of labors, comes room for that adherence to become affectation. The more complex the hierarchy, the more complex the division of labors, the more room is created for deviation - even if that deviance must be secret.

What I think is so very interesting about this, is that if I am correct, it potentially has a lot to tell us about the nature of our moral frames and how they are developed. It may also teach us a great deal about what morality really is at it's core and what can be generalized about morality. I also suspect that if it is true, this will have a lot to teach us about cognitive processes. At the very least it is rather interesting...

Morality Across Cultures Part 2

While working on my paper about morality across cultures, I have found it extremely useful to engage in discussions about morality. I am pretty certain that certain friends of mine will be terribly pleased to see my paper finished and me shutting the hell up about it. But the most valuable discussions have been taking place online - useful in the main, because the people involved are actually interested in the discussion.

One of the more recent and more interesting discussions has been taking place on a science blog I first wandered to last week, The Primate Diaries. I never cease to be surprised by the fierce need so many people seem to have, of some kind of universal moral frame. I really wonder about this and what drives it. Is it a need to have one's own moral frame validated by some external agency? Or is it a fear that without a universal dogmatic structure, we will see some kind of breakdown of society? Or could it simply be the feeling that we must respond to theist claims that atheism equals a complete lack of morality, with a palpable dogmatic frame?

In the interest of a rather simple method for gathering responses, I have made a poll. Please feel free to explain more in comments.



I may or may not use the result to this poll in the paper I am working on for school, but it is unlikely. I will however write about the results if I get very many. If you happen to have an urge to link directly to the poll on your blog here is the URL.

The New Asylums: Complete System Failure

I have been meaning to write about this issue for a very long while, but have left it on the burner for so long I forgot about it. Then today in psych class I had it thrust into the forefront rather brutally. Before I go on, I want to share this episode of Frontline from 2005, one that I hadn't actually seen before. I should expect that it won't take long to get the gist of a truly magnificent breakdown of how we manage mental illness in the U.S.



It didn't take very long to provide you with a pretty good idea as to just how truly screwed up this is. Keep in mind Frontline filmed that episode in a prison that is still considered a model for psychiatric care in the prison setting. This is no way to treat people with mental illness, even people who really do need to be locked away from society.

What really makes me angry about our new model for dealing with serious mental illness, is that all the excuses made for closing state institutions are exacerbated by this method of dealing with the seriously mentally disturbed. It is far more expensive to deal with the mentally ill either in prison, or on the streets coasting in and out of jail. The biggest reasoning was expense - but the expense has dramatically increased. It is a huge expense for local communities and ultimately still costs the state more.

On top of this, it is extremely hard for the seriously mentally ill to actually get the help they need and even qualify for. There are "homeless" mentally ill persons who aren't actually homeless. They have a place in a group home and access to care. But then they wander off from home and end up living on the streets - off their meds, hungry and exposed. And there are truly homeless mentally ill persons who aren't getting any help - not because they don't qualify, but because they are not together enough to go out seeking it. And even if they try, the system is not set up to be managed by a paranoid schizophrenic who believes there are people trying to kill her, or someone with bipolar who walked nearly a hundred miles from people who knew him while in a manic phase. That is not the "freedom" that wellmeaning, but ultimately ignorant lobbyists/policy makers were trying to provide with the idea of mainstreaming.

And the local communities - the communities in which people who know and love a particular mentally ill individual lives, are not set up to deal with them. We have had forty plus years to get it together and help these folks and still we are flailing about, failing too many. Even here in MI, where the quality of care provided by county Community Mental Health (CMH) services is generally quite exceptional, we are allowing too many to slip through the cracks. In many places, there is virtually no organization to provide services to the mentally ill. In others, southern California in particular, the services provided are truly abysmal.

And again, the states are still fitting a huge portion of the bill - in many cases a much larger bill than the state hospital system cost.

Michigan is particularly hard hit right now, as we have closed some of our mental health facil...Excuse me, prisons at the same time we have also eviscerated the budgets of the county CMHs. We are dumping these folks onto their local communities and pulling the funding that might have provided services for them. The clinics that manage paroles and people on probation are getting overwhelmed - in many cases with clients who should not be outside of a lockdown facility. Meanwhile, people with less serious mental problems, but who do not have insurance and do not qualify for medicaid are screwed.

Myself for example. I finished with my last therapist about a year ago. I was told that I would see another intern therapist last summer - then that was bumped to the fall...I haven't bothered trying to call again - I know what is happening and know that I am not going to get help. At least I am on meds and not left completely screwed. For more people are worse off than I am. No therapy, no psychiatric services - they won't get help until their mental illness becomes acute and they either commit a crime and end up in prison, or at least get picked up by the cops and pushed through the medicaid requirements.

Please don't think that things are much better elsewhere. For the past several years MI has managed to provide mental health services on a shoestring, that far outstrip the quality of care offered in many other states that have substantially larger budgets per public mental health consumer. It is not like those services have improved as budgets get hit across the U.S. Indeed the quality of care here has not actually suffered that much, we just can't provide that care to the people who desperately need it.

I have some hope that the new healthcare plan is going to help with some of this. The APA has managed to push for some provisions that should improve access to mental health services and they went through. But it is only going to help with people in temporary crisis. People who are dealing with situational mental problems or who exhibit mild symptoms. It is not going to do a damned thing to change our prison and "homeless we can ignore" based system of care for the seriously mentally ill.

Just so we are perfectly clear about this, those scenes where they showed these yellow cages in a half circle - their "group therapy" session - that is not a reasonable way to provide group therapy. Not an effective means for any sort of functional therapy. Punishing inmates for breaking rules they don't understand is not effective therapy. Pretending that there is anything valid about an admission of guilt for rules violation, coming from a guy who is incapable of understanding what he is pleading guilty to is a fucking atrocity.

And remember, the system we got a glimpse of in that video - that is a model system for prison based mental health care. That is worlds apart from what one gets in county lockup or most prisons in the U.S. It gets far, far worse than what we see in that episode of Frontline.

Morality Across Cultures Part 1

My semester project in my language and culture class is on the meaning of morality across cultural groups. This projects includes a presentation in class with a handout and a five to seven page paper. I am also writing another paper that will explore the impact of language on culture change. But the one I am rather geeked on is the morality paper. The following is the handout for my presentation.

U.S. American Society	Morality in U.S. society tends to be very relativistic. There is no set standard moral frame for U.S. Americans. Even on the individual level, moral frames tend to be ever changing, ever evolving with the experience of the individual. And public figures in the U.S. are often hypocritical about their morality, so much of the language surrounding morality is very cynical.
Christianity	While there is a great deal of variety across the many sects of Christianity, with very few exceptions those sects tend to have a dogmatic approach to morality. Morality is generally pretty clearly defined and is nothing short of divine law. While there is a little room for relativist interpretations, that is minimal. The congregation and often to a stronger degree, the leadership of the church has a role in policing moral behavior. The language of most Christian and indeed most religious moral framing is couched in absolutes.
Atheism	With the single unifying factor being a lack of belief in gods and the supernatural, atheists do not have a unified view of morality. Indeed some atheists believe that morality is nothing more than a religious construct. Others might believe that their are objective moral truths - some of whom also believing science can lead us to those truths. And there are atheists, myself included, who believe that morality is entirely relative to time, space, culture and the individual. It should be noted that within these three overarching viewpoints, there is a great deal of variety.
Korean Society	Korean society tends towards a very strict, dogmatic moral idealism. The language that Koreans use to discuss moral issues carries a firm reverence for tradition. Instead of being religiously driven, it carries the weight of history - of "the way it has always been done." While it doesn't carry the force of law, deviation from the moral dogma carries very serious social consequences. And Korean moral dogma also tends to speak to the rules of all the aspects of Korean social interactions.

When it comes to most any aboriginal peoples, the language of morality deviates rather drastically from that of developed, state based cultures. To whit, unlike state based cultures aboriginal cultures rarely even have a word to describe morality or even a system of rules or laws. There is no need for such defined sets of rules, because ultimately there are few rules and what rules there are are often times contextually dependent.

Efe pygmies (Ituri Forest, Congo)

The Efe people are quite reminiscent of the early Russians who lived in Mirs. They do not own property, implements used for day to day life being communally owned and used. The idea of "right" and "wrong" is entirely bound in what needs to be done to ensure the survival of the group. When the group perceives an individual acting outside the best interest of the group, the first line of "enforcement" is shame and gossip. Failing that, an elder or several elders may take the person aside. Ultimately, if the problems persist, the person will be banished. But problems rarely make it past shaming.

iKung! people (Northern Kalahari)

Really, the only difference between the Efe people and the iKung! people (or Bushmen), is that the iKung! people are not quite as communal. People in the hunter/gatherer bands of the iKung! people actually own their tools and adornments. This does not mean that tools aren't loaned to others on occasion, it just means that they are only used by others at the sufferance of the owner.

I would just like to leave you with an important understanding of moral relativism. Understanding that different people have different moral frames, doesn't mean that we must accept the moral frames of others as valid. Each of us have our own beliefs about what is right and wrong and respond to moral dilemmas in our own ways. The very nature of a belief in right and wrong, in what is moral versus what is immoral, is what we believe. When others act in a way that I believe is immoral, it doesn't matter what they believe about the morality of their actions - I believe that they are committing an immoral act.

I would like to thank Greg Laden PhD for his willingness to be interviewed about the Efe Pygmies. And I would like to thank Michael Murphy PhD for his willingness to be interviewed about the iKung! people. I will post the full bibliography when I post the actual paper. I would also note that my interviews with Greg and Mike will also be used as references for my other paper.

Billions of Years in the Making

Having been rather depressed and stressed out lately, it is odd that I would actually be rather pleased to have woken up around four this morning and only dozed hear and there after. But I was stuck on a line of thought that rarely fails to excite and invigorate me - possibly why I managed little sleep. It is a thought that is so much more exciting to me than any of the religious and spiritual ideologies I explored over the years. It started small, in context to the relative scale of the whole - starting just before the dawn of modern man and moving backwards. Started in the context of what I am studying now and moving back to the beginning - or at least "a" beginning and then sling-shooting from there into the distant future.

Just considering the context of our human race, we are many, many thousands of years in the making - each and every one of us. We fought, we died - but some few of us lived, at some points the underdog of two legged mammals - our contemporaries often times far better adapted to the environment of a given time. They were too well adapted though and while many of our ancestors died in those harsh environments, when the environment changed again they were the one's left standing. We were the one's left standing, because through the eons, the genes of those ancestors are a part of who we are - right now - today.

I could move forward, but I think that most of us are at least somewhat familiar with what happened next. Through near extinction, to near extinction we evolved until we hit on a lush environment where we thrived and continued to adapt. Eventually we became very much like we are today. Having developed rudimentary language and culture, our brains became something very similar to the brains we have today - though there was considerable development as language evolved and culture evolved.

At some point I would love to write in considerably more detail about the terrible and wondrous story of human evolution, but for now we are going to go in the other direction - quite a distance through time and space, in the other direction. Because our story doesn't start there, where and when we stood up on two legs and walked. It doesn't start hundreds of millions of years earlier, when single celled organisms started to divide and evolve in that lush (for such organisms) primordial environment. It doesn't even start a few billion years before that, when this celestial body we call home was born of gravity and fire. These are mere historical footnotes in the chain of events that brought us to this time and place, where I am sitting here typing on an amazing device that totally blows those nifty digital watches out of the water.

Right now, I want to take us back further, because we are so very much older than less than a hand-count's billions of years. And it may well be that the molecules that make up our being are even older than the beginning at most of us consider it. But there is no question whatever, that every proton, neutron and electron that forms every atom that forms every molecule that forms every cell that forms us, has traveled billions of light years and billions of years to be here, today, making up every one of us. And because of the basic principle of matter, that matter can neither be created or destroyed, every bit of who we are is going to journey on, for billions of years and more when our neuropathways shut down and our last thoughts fade.

Whether the universe faces infinite expansion, or it will slowly draw in on itself until every bit of each of us, along with all other matter in the universe coalesces into an unbelievably dense bit of matter, reached critical mass and explodes - we will be there, every physical fragment that makes up our bodies, continuing on a grand adventure. Personally, I hope that the universe coalesces and explodes into a new universe. I love to think the fragments of everything and everybody that has existed or will exist in this vast, mindbogglingly huge universe will all be smashed together into a tiny ball of matter so dense that it's gravity is powerful enough to draw in and crush into itself, every bit of matter that exists in this universe.

The scale and scope the true story of human life and every other life in this universe, is enough to make a person weep at the inconceivable beauty of it. These remarkable minds we possess - minds that conceived of digital watches and computers the size of a trade paperback and so much more - they balk at even trying to comprehend the scale of our story - the story of everything around us. When you think about it, we, in this tiny fraction of time, on our tiny planet in a backwater galaxy - interstellar bumpkins really, we are truly remarkable creatures. Our existence - how we came into being, is at truly incredible story.

Not magically poofed into existence, not the result of some superbeing mucking about with our evolution - not even the result of some universal intelligence trying to experience physical substance...We, with our digital watches, computers, painfully slow space craft and sometimes wholly remarkable superstructures are the result of a far more amazing series of events. Following what the best evidence, best understanding we have of the universe around us, a story that defies imagination unfolds - so much greater than any magical explanation could ever be.

We truly are made of star stuff, the residue of an immeasurable (at least at the moment) explosion.* We, and every other sapient creature - every other life form - the placement of every bit of matter everywhere is there by chance. We just happened - through explosions and and a nearly infinite number of other chemical reactions. And here we are - quite likely others are as well, on other planets - in other galaxies and if certain theories of physicists hold out, in other universes as well.

If it is possible to consider this story, the story of us, without tears forming in your eyes, I would like to know how.**

*(bastardized in part, from a quote by Carl Sagan, Cosmos)
**(especially as I am finishing this up in the cafeteria at school)

The Intersection of Language, Culture and Cognition

While causality turns into a rather chicken/egg discussion, I suspect that the reality of it is much the same as the reality of that metaphor. While the actual mechanisms that drove the earliest development of language, abstract cognition and rudimentary culture is lost in eons of time, there is a lot that we can surmise. There are even aspects of this question we can probably describe with a great deal of accuracy. Unquestionably, this is an incredibly fascinating discussion.

Over the past few years I have become increasingly interested in the relationship between language and culture. At the same time, I have become interested in the relationship between language and cognition. I have also been very intrigued with the evolution of all three of these, for many years - and as I have been afforded the opportunity to explore the relationships I mentioned, I have become increasingly fascinated by the evolution of all three, in relation to each other.

In a turn that really blasted me into dizzying realms of abstract correlations, I have also become increasingly intrigued by the cultural relativity of psychopathology. I rather latched onto this concept, because for many years - since I was a child really, I have been beset by the idea that mental illness/neurological disorders/cognitive maladaptations are really misnamed. What exactly is it that qualifies the way one person's brain happens to work as mental illness, versus the way another person's brain works as merely being a little "odd?"*

Is it their brain that is screwed up? Or is it their socialization/culturalization - the society in which they live that is so screwed up?

As I have explored the manifestations of atypical neurology in different cultural contexts, I am increasingly convinced that the latter is considerably more of a problem. Assuming it is indeed society that is screwed up, the question becomes; "given the megalithic nature of society, does this distinction even matter?" or "is there really any reasonable solution to be found for this problem?" To the first question, I cannot but respond that yes, this distinction is remarkably important. The answer to the second question though, is much more complicated and largely depends on how one might define "reasonable."

I think that the largest barrier we face is the very nature of science research in our modern culture. In many disciplines we are increasingly running into a situation where the existing paradigm of each discipline to it's own, is becoming less and less feasible. My perception may be biased by the context of my focus, but I suspect that there is no other area where this is becoming more apparent, than in the social sciences. This is largely because the more science oriented practitioners of psychology, sociology and anthropology - even to some degree, philosophy are developing vast areas of overlap. In some cases, it is simply not possible to follow lines of research without input from each.

Yet the culture of science tends to shy from interdisciplinary cooperation, something that causes problems across the board, but which is most insidious in the social sciences. Anthropology, sociology and even psychology are seeing a major battle between those who wish to do hard science and postmodern extremists who believe that hard science is a bourgeois affectation and fallacious because we can never truly "know" anything. At the same time, most of the most practical and important work being done in all three disciplines, requires input from multiple subdisciplines of the others.

As our world continues to shrink, as historical barriers between cultures fade away, we are flying blindly into a world beset by misunderstandings and exploitations that all too often explode into violent conflicts. And the vast majority of these conflagrations can be traced directly to the intersect of language, cognition and culture. Our language, the use, the content - even the very structure of our languages predispose us to various cultural paradigms. Likewise, language predisposes us to various cognitive paradigms. But complicating all of this, our cognitive paradigms predispose us to certain language and cultural paradigms, while our cultural paradigms predispose us to certain cognitive and linguistic paradigms.

There is absolutely no doubt that untangling this web of influence is a herculean and possibly impossible task. While many correlations are blatantly obvious, causations are complicated by the very nature of nature of those correlations. But ultimately the exploration of this conjunction has less to do with untangling the web and everything to do with peripheral benefit. Exploring this intersect would teach us a great deal about who "we" are, who "they" are**, how we can all interact with less friction and who all of us might become.

Over the course of this semester, I have the opportunity to explore some aspects of this confluence. It is my sincere hope that as I work my way through my education, I will be able to functionally explore many more facets of this intersect. This nexus is relevant to my educational, research and career goals. Ultimately this nexus is the forge that shapes all of the pieces of who/what "we" are, and who/what "they" are.

As I produce various projects, I will be posting them here - hopefully in a relatively coherent fashion. This will probably mean shuffling things around, sometimes adjusting previously posted writings and sometimes I will be throwing up short posts like this one, just to get my thoughts together in a relatively coherent fashion.

I should admit now, that I will probably rarely be posting anything that is not related to this relatively broad topic. I will occasionally post personal stuff and will probably throw up stuff that really jumps out at me, but for the most part, I am going to be sticking in this particular direction. While I would really like to post about human sexuality and a host of other topics that interest me, I just don't see myself really having the time and energy. We will just have to see how things go...

*There are actually relatively objective methods for determining this, that was intended as a rhetorical question to make you think...

**I quite purposely left that very vague, because by "we" and "they" I mean several different things. I mean "we" as in individuals, a subcultural collective and a macrocultural collective. I mean "they" as in other individuals, other subcultural collectives and other macrocultural collectives.

Dialectics, History and Cross Cultural Communications

Posted to my Com class message board. A dialectic perspective of history and it's impact on communications across cultures was the topic and we needed to include an example of something we learned that turned out to be wrong. Here is a concise explanation of the dialectic perspective of communications for context. Thanks to the University of Maryland for what is turning out to be a very handy reference for this class.

It is often important to understand other cultures, from the perspective of their history because it forces us to take a more objective view of their present. An excellent example given in the book is the role that history has played in black/white race relations in the U.S.

It is very easy to forget that our present and the present of others are ultimately the current culmination of what our ancestors passed down from generation to generation. This is both a progression of traditions and heritage, as well as the transmission of changes each generation made in the face of the perceived cultural failings.

Without the considering that this progression happens in every culture, it is all too easy to judge the cultural practices that we find distasteful in others from our own progression. While there is no question that regardless of the cultural context some cultural practices are absolutely repugnant, any attempt to foster change in those cultures must take into account the history that brought about those practices. When one can communicate from the context of this other culture and it's history, it creates a communication paradigm that this other culture will be far more receptive to.

I think a very good example of this, is the history of interactions between native Americans and the European settlers. Many of those of us who were educated in public schools were taught that the Europeans did really horrible things to the natives of this land. But what we were taught actually paints my ancestors in a much better light than they deserve. It is a lot like saying that Nazi Germany mistreated the Jews.

What actually happened was nothing less than a systematic attempt to entirely destroy the cultural heritage of all native Americans. From outright genocide, to removing children from their parents for re-education, often beating children who spoke their native languages or attempted to follow their spiritual heritage. Just 120 years ago, we still thought little of gunning down 200 natives. Just 37 years ago, intolerable conditions on a primarily Lakota reservation, led residents of that reservation to take over and occupy a small town, leading to a major standoff with federal officers.

And just 18 years ago, two native Americans lost their jobs and were denied unemployment benefits for having participated in a religious ceremony involving the ingestion of peyote. While many of us assume that the exploitation of native lands ended a long time ago, even today we refuse to allow the reservations the autonomy they were promised by treaties made and broken over the past two hundred and some odd years. Attempts to assuage our guilt by allowing native Americans to open casinos on their lands is ludicrously inadequate.

I learned the Disney version of the history of interactions between European immigrants and native Americans more than twenty years ago. I have learned the considerably more horrifying truth of it mostly over the past ten years. Yet this understanding is essential to understanding just why many native Americans are extremely angry. For nearly three hundred years they have been subjected to the whims of mostly European settlers and their antecedents. Entire native cultures have been irretrievably destroyed, all others threatened nigh to extinction.

As the conquerors who wrote the history, we learn something less shameful than the reality. Our ancestors (those who have roots extending back) committed horrible atrocities, atrocities that many wanted to forget. What was passed through our generational progression was slowly changed to something far less egregious that it was. Making it easier to ignore much of the suffering this nation was founded upon and to ignore our continued subjugation of native Americans.

Native Americans have a generational progression as well. One that carries the scars of cuts hundreds of years old, given stark clarity by the wounds suffered by each generation since. Without understanding both our own history and the history if native Americans - a history that stretches for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans, it is very difficult to understand the anger, the sensitivities of natives taking offense to things that most of us would otherwise consider trivial.

Gearing up for the winter semester

I took the boys back to their mother on new years, amazed again at the ability of my two and almost eight year old to endure ten hours plus on the road with minimal fuss. I am rather depressed they are gone, talking on the phone every day just doesn't hold a candle to snuggles, reading to them in person, being peed on post bath or even having same two year old wander over to the corner to crap in his diaper five minutes after spending twenty five minutes sitting on his potty holding it in. I will also miss the sledding - post tooth coming out and emergency oral surgery actually included. While it was rather horrific, it is also better now and another experience shared with eldest.

But they are back with momma (for now) and I am getting ready for another semester.

I am really excited about my classes this semester, even the bloody math. I am taking abnormal psych, cross culture communications, American sign language, intermediate algebra and language and culture. The last three are four credit classes, making this an eighteen credit semester. I am a little reticent about the load, but ultimately I think it will be pretty easy going.

Abnormal psych is with a rather brilliant instructor and I can expect to write one paper, tests making up the rest of my grade. I am pretty comfortable with my knowledge of abnormal psych going into this class, so I don't expect any problems with tests and most regular readers of my blog know how I feel about papers...For those who don't - I bloody well love writing papers.

Cross culture communications is an online class - something I have never managed to deal with well before. But the instructor is my instructor for interpersonal communications and he made it clear that he is available personally and that he not only has message board discussions, but actually takes part in them. And most excitingly, there are only two tests (IIRC) and the rest of the grade is pretty much wrapped up in three - yes three papers!!!

I am taking intermediate algebra with the same instructor who taught my remedial algebra class and have every confidence that this will be just as great as that was. He was very instrumental in helping me understand concepts that I have had a totally shit time with in the past. He also is very available before and after class, as well as during rather more extensive office hours than a lot of instructors.

American sign is going to be pretty awesome - I actually dropped it last semester, after a couple of sessions for personal reasons, but have every confidence that this will be a great experience. The instructor is great and given my limited experience with her, someone I can totally deal with. She is very pleasant, very warm - without being saccharine, at the same time she is also very strict - a combination I am very fond of.

Language and culture is something I am really looking forward to for several reasons. First and foremost, I am really looking forward to the instructor - I would have taken any class she happened to be teaching this semester. She is the head of the humanities department and there are several things that I am interested in discussing with her - things she has a fair expertise in. And joy of joys, the only class she is teaching this semester is something I very much wanted to take. I am approaching the study of language from a very science oriented perspective - I think it will be valuable to look at it from a humanities perspective, extremely valuable really. I have been reading Terrence Deacon, who among many other things makes a solid case for approaching symbols/language/icons from a broader angle than science really allows for, when engaging the study of language and cognitive/neurological evolution.

And honestly, I have to admit that I am excited about having the opportunity to write a couple of papers in MLA. There is something rather relaxing about the MLA format - not to say that I don't appreciate APA - I do. But I will totally admit to being something of a whore when it comes to writing styles and there is just something rather sexy about MLA...

With all of my paper writing this semester, I am hoping I will be encouraged to write more blogposts - though they will be rather topical to the papers I happen to be working on at a given point. I know that we will get the parameters for our communication papers within the first week - so those will probably be the first ones that I hit on. I also expect to get the psych paper parameters early on as well. I am not all that sure when the humanities paper parameters will come out, but don't expect them until a specified time before they are due. The paper for sign-language will be available right away, but we won't have the background for it until we are well into the semester (I believe that one might be MLA too!!!).

All in all, I am really looking forward to the upcoming semester. It looks out to be totally big fun and excitement through and through (ok, so I am rather less excited about math, but still)...Good times will be had by all!!!

Gender Binaries, Trinaries and the problem of labels...

With literally uncounted thousands of identifiers, why is gender identity given such a prominent place amongst our labels? I am rapidly reaching the place where I am ready to treat my gender the way I do my sexuality - just refusing to identify any which way. On every gender inventory I have taken, I am androgynous, tending towards feminine.

I tend towards a more archetypal male expression of self - but then I was totally socialized with what was almost hyper-masculine role models. I am the ready hand in a crisis, unafraid if a situation requires violence. I am very physical - coming towards a year in school and I still have callouses on my hands. I am typically ignorant of my emotions a lot of the time.

Yet here I am, perfectly capable of filling the momma role, the sensitive lover, the empathetic, nurturing friend. I listen, because I am genuinely interested in what you have to say. I wrap my arms around people in need of compassion without fear or embarrassment. I am extremely introspective and my ignorance of emotions, is mostly founded in my fundamental projection bias, my assumption that most people probably feel like this and it is perfectly normal - i.e. depression is not normal, so that couldn't be something I experience.

So what am I? More importantly, what does it matter? I am not averse to ideas such as genderqueer - alternatives to this supposed gender binary. If pegged, I wouldn't even be averse to identifying as such. Sometimes I am even likely to identify as male, just as sometimes the context of a conversation indicates that I should identify as straight.

To be clear, I am not confused about my gender. I am not considering gender labeling because I am insecure about who and what I am. In reality, this is something I have been thinking about a lot for quite some time, because there are a lot of people who are confused and insecure about it. And there are people who are degraded and stigmatized because of their gender issues, whether they are experiencing gender disphoria, are transgendered, intersexed, androgynous or just happen to characteristically fall more into the realm of the gender that is not their sex.

Then there are people who think the whole discussion is stupid. Who think if you have a penis you're just a guy and if you sport a uterus instead, then you're just a woman. For whom it really is just that simple and the rest is just a load of complete and utter shit. It is because of this group of people, that I am increasingly fucking tired of this need to label.

The notion that this need to preserve one's gender identity is so very intense, that the mere existence of people who don't fit into this male/female dichotomy is a threat to their own gender identity is a sign that we have some very significant problems to overcome. I am all for people exploring or not exploring these concepts, as it suits their desire and comfort levels. But the point at which their desire to avoid any and every perceived threat to their gender and sexual identities interferes with and stigmatizes who and what other people are, I start to get more than a little angry about it.

While the choices I have made in life have certainly influenced who and what I am, I did not choose to have characteristically ambiguous gender traits. I didn't choose to have a general sexual preference for women. I didn't choose to empathize the way I do, listen the way I do, brute my way through discomfort the way I do or take on most of the myriad traits, or labels that make DuWayne Brayton, DuWayne Brayton. I am the sum of my genetics, environment and to some degree the choices I have made.

So are every one of us. Every fucking one.

So what exactly is the threat that my gender identity or the gender identity of anyone else, to the gender identity of anybody else? What threat does one of my labels, pose to one of yours? I am more than a little angry about this, because that perceived threat is used to stigmatize, marginalize and even oppress whole groups of people for characteristics that they cannot control.

So I am not straight, not a man. I am not my sexuality and I am not my sex. I am not even my gender. I am a human person who is sexually attracted to other human people and who shares a lot of characteristics with a lot of other human people. If that makes you uncomfortable, if that makes you feel threatened, please refrain from blaming me. I am not the one of us who has a problem with who they are. It might, however, be a good idea if you sat down to consider exactly why I make you uncomfortable or threatened. It would be a really good idea to think about why that same sex couple, being affectionate in public like any other couple makes you uncomfortable or threatened. It would probably do you a world of good to consider why that women down the block, the one with the addams apple who occasionally still gets that five o'clock shadow makes you feel uncomfortable or threatened.

Because our problem isn't who and what we are. Our problem is you and your destructive fucking stigmas and abuse.

Non-Theist Gatherings in Kalamazoo

So two weeks ago Saturday, I ventured to the first meeting and last night to the second. I went to the first assuming that while it could work out as being a pretty interesting time, the odds were more favorable for it being rather awkward. I was quite pleased to discover it was the former. And not only was it interesting, it was really quite an enjoyable time. The first time around I think there were about ten of us, while last night there were nine of us, four of whom were not there the first time. We decided that we'll be meeting twice a month, one Wednesday and one Sunday. We're hoping to find a space that we can have rather more control over for the Sunday meetups, so we can actually engage in activities and more formal speaking - both from within the group and hopefully some outside speakers.

But as it stands, we have had some very interesting discussions, from philosophy to science, to the social sciences, to culture and society - all intertwined with each other and of course, with religion and the lack thereof. All around, I have to say that this is off to a excellent start and the way things are going, this could turn into a very sizable group of diverse and interesting people.

If you are relatively close to K-zoo, MI, you should check us out. If you aren't, but would like to find other people near you, who are atheists - you should check out this map that Greg posted a while back....

Note To Self: Never Spend Money In Florida Or Buy Florida Products

Florida sucks - Florida sucks bigtime. If their neck and neck race with TX to execute the most persons found guilty of capital crimes weren't enough, their lack of any protections whatever, for queers who have the misfortune of being trapped in their healthcare system is. Or for that matter their attitude about gays and adoption...Hmm - pretty much anything they have to do with gay rights, I should say - because there are few states that treat GLBTs worse than fucking Florida.

But seriously, if you happen to be gay and there is even a slim chance you might fall deathly ill, do not vacation in or wander through Florida.

Thanks Greg...

Moral Relativism and Responsibility Part One: Time and Space

As I mentioned in my last, I got into a hot and heavy discussion about morality over at my brother's blog. I already dealt with the pedantic asshats, so this will be a post devoted to addressing a couple of issues that came up there, as well as addressing another consideration that has come up outside the blogs. There were a couple of people arguing rather strenuously for the notion that there are certain universal moral truths, which, while I find it patently absurd, is far from an unreasonable position. Then there was Fortuna, a commenter who was more interested in probing what he perceives as inconsistencies in my position. Finally, I am going to discuss the apparent contradiction in the notion of the responsibility of the moral relativist to be a constant seeker of the absolute moral truths - more accurately, absolute personal truths.

There are several factors to consider, when it comes to moral relativism. The first thing I think must be done, is to provide an operational definition for moral relativism, because there is often some confusion about what it actually means and I would like to avoid confusion. This post in particular, will actually address pretty much all of the propositions that can be attributed to moral relativism. Put simply, moral relativism is the values neutral assertion that morality is relative to one or all of the following; time, culture, space and the individual. It holds that there are no universal objective moral truths. To reiterate the previous post, moral relativism is not the prospect that morality is only relative to culture. Neither is it the proposition that one must simply accept the moral frames of others as valid - all that it does is recognize that there are no universal objective moral truths.

I will begin with the broadest relative position, that of time. General cultural mores have been in a constant state of evolution since the advent of sentience. While it is patently absurd to assume that our earliest sentient ancestors were capable of considering an abstraction as complex as morality, that does not mean we cannot consider them in that context. Indeed, if there were any universal objective moral truths, they would by definition apply to all sentient beings, regardless of context. Very few of us would consider any person alive today as being somehow outside the purview of moral judgments, regardless of whether they understand the concept of morality or not. Yet most of us would probably accept that our earliest sentient ancestors can't really be judged by any of our individual moral frames. Most of us would accept that our earliest sentient ancestors were pretty much amoral, having only rudimentary conceptions of right and wrong. But by accepting that, we are complicating the abstraction that is morality. Because if we accept that we simply cannot judge our earliest sentient ancestors by our own moral frames or generalized cultural mores, at what point in history can we?

If we fast forward from the dawn of sentience, to the Magdalenian period of the development of culture we find that humans have managed to achieve enough leisure time to produce artwork that had no obvious functional purpose. With that leisure time it is likely they had the breathing room for intellectual considerations. And given that they were producing objects for their aesthetic value, they were obviously capable of abstract considerations. So can we judge the Magdalenians by our own moral frames? While I am sure that there are some people who might argue that we can, I suspect most of us are going to take into account the context of Magdalenian culture and still have to refrain from judging them by our own moral frames.

For fairness sake, why don't we move forward to a mere twenty five hundred years ago and the birth of western philosophy. We now see people actually formally studying the concept of morality - surely at this point we can begin to judge people by our own moral frames. Or can we? The world was a very different place. The environment that people lived in at the time was considerably different than our own. Even if we forward another five hundred years, to the point when the Romans have pretty well spread a great deal of what the Greeks had to offer, including the concept of philosophy, over much of Europe, Africa and the Middle East, we are still dealing with very different contexts. And this doesn't even take into account the largely separate Eastern world of the time. The East was just as foreign a context to the Roman world of the time, as the Roman world of the time is to us. Even further forward into the dark ages, it is completely unreasonable to consider the cultures of the time in the context of our own moral frames. The context in which most people of the time lived completely precludes consideration of our own moral frames.

This is just one aspect of the argument for moral relativism. We could continue to move forward in time, but I think the point has been made. The context of history precludes the consideration of people throughout history by any of our conceptions of morality. And while we can consider space throughout history, we will just move forward to the present day (or rather very recent history) for our next foray, morality relative to space. While space overlaps with culture to some extent, it should be recognized that culture doesn't always overlap with space. In many places there are multiple cultures and cultural contexts to consider. In the context of moral relativism space is also in many ways synonymous with environment. That environment can include the actual planetary environment, which in some places creates relatively unique moral considerations. It also includes the social situation in a given location, whether it be the interface of multiple cultures in the same space, or the primary type (or types) of subsistence in a given area.

A few years ago, Kristoff of the NYTs wrote a piece about his experience in Darfur early on in the genocide. After reading it, I was literally ill for a few days, especially as I considered a particular incident. This incident was a major influence on my views about morality. As Kristoff was traveling through the region, he came upon a rather young girl gathering water at a well. Both concerned for her safety and because of her size, he decided help her carry the water. He was somewhat shocked when they came to the treeline and he discovered the child's father waiting in hiding. Put short, the father explained that this daughter was the most expendable of his children. That is was certain death for him if he was caught by the Janjiweed militia, while it was possible that his daughter might not be raped and killed if she were caught. That he needed to survive, because he had other children to care for.

As I said, reading that article tore me up. Not because I made a moral judgment about the father's actions, but because I realized that I couldn't. In the context of my own moral frame, it is simply inconceivable that I could even wittingly put my own child (or any child) in harms way. It just isn't possible for me. And within our western cultural context, I would consider any person who would to be reprehensibly vile, much less immoral. Yet here I was presented with a context in which is was not only not immoral for a parent to do just that, it would have been arguably immoral for him not to. So much for universal objective moral truths, even in the context of our current period of time.

I am going to wrap this part up right here and continue with culture and the individual in part two. I am going to try to also fit the responsibility of the moral relativist and the conclusion into that post, but I can't promise anything.

A Fucking Brilliant Time to be Human

It is easy to get caught up in the bad, sometimes outright evil perpetrated by us humans. In just the last 150 years, we have wreaked more destruction than this planet has seen since the dinosaurs went extinct. We still see human rights violations across the globe, sometimes perpetrated by our own "enlightened" governments. In so many ways, us humans kind of suck ass. And in such an ass sucking existence, it is easy to forget the truly wondrous, awe inspiring achievements we have made. It is also easy to forget that many of us are struggling against this ass sucking, to make our home more tolerable, more livable and above all, more humane.

But we are also the people who have managed to cure diseases that were almost certain death and/or maiming, just a scant eighty years ago. We are a people who have managed to find ways to extend the mortality of the general public, even as we have thrown more abuses to our bodies than our ancestors ever dreamed possible. And whatever problems there are for those of us without health insurance, even the poor are able to get unprecedented access to lifesaving medical care - imperfect as that access is.

And we are a people who decided to point a telescope at absolutely nothing, to see what might be there - how fucking brilliant is that? And what we discovered - images that have been traveling towards our position in space, since billions of years before this planet was born of fire, gravity and debris - the very star-stuff that makes up not only this planet, but everything we are and everything we see - every material we work with. Images that help us to comprehend, just a little, of what our universe consists of - billions, upon billions, upon billions of other galaxies. Not solar systems and stars - but fucking galaxies. Numbers that are so staggering, as to be incomprehensible, yet are comprehended just a little, when we look at nothing and notice thousands of galaxies, in just that tiny speck of nothing out there.

We are also the people who managed to send people outside our precious blanket of atmosphere, to walk on an extra-planetary body. That it is our own moon, our own planet's satellite does not detract from the awesome wonder of having sent a human to step foot on another chunk of rock, hurling through space. And we have people up there right now, outside our atmosphere - living and working on a space station of human construction.

And we managed to send vehicles to another planet altogether, to see what is there, learn about one of our close neighbors and see what it looks like up close and personal. We have seen image after image, sent by these probes and seen a landscape that was invisible before, that is not only visible, but has been altered ever so slightly, by our proxy presence there.

We are, to our cores, explorers. We absolutely have to go out and check things out. We simply can't stand not knowing what is around that next bend, what is under that rock - what is at the bottom of that miles deep ocean trench, what is such staggeringly huge distances away from us. We are insatiably curious creatures, with an almost inherent desire to know what there is to know and when we have managed to learn that, we want to know some more. And today, this day, this fraction of a blink of an eye, we are seeing more, learning more - knowing more than ever before and that knowing is coming at us at an accelerated rate.

To think, just moments ago, we were tiny, four legged creatures, trying desperately to evade the smaller scavenger dinosaurs - those old guard rulers of this planet earth, who would shortly be dead and gone. A moment later we were struggling against all odds to survive, to adapt to a constantly changing earth - spending less time in trees and enough time walking in the ground, that our hind hands turned into feet and lost their opposable digits. Moments after that, our brains growing with our increasingly protein rich diet, we started to communicate verbally. In a mere blink of an eye, we went from these tiny, innocuous creatures, to what we are today - so insignificant and small - our entire existence an infinitesimal footnote in the history of our infinitesimal planet, in the backwater of our tiny little galaxy.

And yet we are here!!! Much like the Whos, on that speck of dust, in Seuss's Horton Hears a Who. We shout out to our galaxy and to our universe that we are here, with an unspoken, "we will soon be there. We are no longer bound to this single piece of rock, this starship Earth. We are going places and somehow, someday, if we survive, we will go further and further - because we are fucking human and that is what humans do. We want to know, we need to know, we absolutely must know - more.

If we manage to survive, imagine what we will be in another blink of the eye - where we will go, what we will become. Dream, in this universe of virtually infinite wonder and beauty, of what tomorrow may look like - that you may truly want for a tomorrow, another blink of the eye. Dream of what our ancestors may be - as alien as we would be to our own early hominid ancestors? Dream of tomorrows without limit, so that when you focus on today, you have a purpose.

Dream, because you are human and humans must explore - even the places and times that can only be explored in our dreams

Library Unit Four: Fun With Menstruation

“A Women's Curse?”
Meredith F. Small
The Sciences, Jan/Feb, 1999 p. 24-29

The bulk of Small's article discusses the work of UofM anthropologist Beverly Strassmann's study of menstruation among the Dogon of West Africa. What she was seeking was the possible roles that menstrual taboos could play into “natural fertility” populations. Strassmann believed that there were important biological roles being generally ignored, in regards to menstruation and reproduction.

The Dogon worked out to be a very good choice for study. The Dogon women spend their menstrual cycle segregated to the menstrual huts. Through urinalysis Strassmann determined that this segregation was closely adhered, in spite of most of the women finding the experience extremely unpleasant. This made it very easy to follow the cycles of the women in the villages Strassmann was studying. And with nearly two years of data on 477 complete cycles, studying ninety-three women, there was a great deal to work with.

One of the reasons for the taboo, she discovered, was to help determine paternity. In a culture where the father is responsible for his children and where property is passed along to male heirs, it is critically important to keep track of who the father of a given child is. And when it is everyone can see who is going to the menstrual huts, and who isn't – it becomes easier to determine who impregnated a given women. This is also important because the Dogon people are polygonous and there is no taboo against sexual intercourse for those who are unmarried.

This taboo also managed to make it clear if a woman happens to be infertile or menopausal. When a women in prime reproductive age is always visiting the hut, it becomes apparent that she is obviously not likely to reproduce. On the other hand, when I women stops visiting the hut altogether, is it obvious she is no longer fertile.

Strassmann also hypothesized that menstruation may have evolved as a method for conserving resources – keeping the body from using too much energy on reproduction, during a cycle that renders women infertile for a period of time. Instead of producing the excess that usually goes into creating a fertile place for a potential zygote to begin gestation, during the period of flushing things slow down entirely.

What I found most interesting however, is the possibility that women in Western society are at a distinct biological advantage to women who live within a natural fertility paradigm. The data shows that women in Dogon society, for example, only have an average of 110 menstrual cycles in their lifetimes, compared to the average of 350 to 400 for Westerners. Between reproducing at a significantly higher rate than Westerners, and breast feeding vigorously for longer periods than most Western women, they don't menstruate nearly as often.

I also found the discussion of the way that Dogon culture utilizes menstruation as a multitool for determining a great many issues within their society. While the underlying reasoning is significantly different, it turns out that this is a very useful tool for their culture, for a whole lot of reasons.

Finally, I find the interconnection of anthropological study, biology and sociology extremely interesting. Beyond the subject matter, the cross discipline integration is of particular interest to me – especially as I am seeing that there are a lot of other disciplines and even very different fields of study, that have a great deal of relevance to the direction I am going with my studies and where I want to go with my career. It is terribly exciting to discover new directions, new areas that have are potentially critical components of the places I wish to go – the ideas that I am keen on fostering and developing.

Library Unit 3: Culturist Propensities

I would just like to add from the getgo, that when I am talking about the arrogance of the West, I am most certainly not excluding myself. And I also think that it is important to make a distinction that is not made in this paper. Included in that arrogance is all of Western culture, not just those of us with pasty beige skin. Because this is really less about race, than it is about culture and our arrogant assumption that because we have digital watches, we are the sum of civilization. It is about people who live in different subsistence paradigms. It is about people who live in different social constructs. It is about recognizing - All of Us recognizing, that different, does not mean inferior. I don't care what color your skin, or your place on the economic spectrum. I don't even care about your education or intelligence.

We are, all of us, guilty to some degree or another.

“Rangers By Birth”
Will Hurd
Cultural Survival Quarterly 30.2 Summer, 2006

Will describes an awfully untenable situation, that I was happy to read has subsequently been resolved – at least in part by his work. The tribal peoples who live in and around the Omo National Park, by Will's account, have managed a wonderful balance of man and nature. This is evidenced by the belief of many that this is a wilderness, when it is actually the home of an estimated 50,000 people. And there is evidence of people much like these, living on these lands and with a similar balance for about 5,000 years.

Yet Westerners believed that there was some need to interfere withthese peoples and “manage” the lands of the Omo National Parkmore carefully. The African Parks Foundation, funded in part by theWalton Family Foundation – the same Walton family that owns WalMartand Sam's Club and other wealthy individuals, signed a 25 year leaseon the park in 2005 – threatening to displace the estimated 50,000Mursi, Suri, Nyangatom, Dizi and Me'en tribesmen who reside in thepark.

Yet these are people who understand the land, understand the ecology and their garden. They are horticulturists who practice eco friendly slash and burn gardening. They are herdsmen, who are careful not to allow their cattle to interfere with the ecosystem. They are also remarkably adept trackers and sometime (though rarely) hunters. They know where and how to travel this land safely and with very little risk from some of their less “polite” neighbors, such as crocodiles and water buffalo.

To be perfectly honest, this article made me bloody damned angry. I am sick of this idiotic notion that Westerners have, that when something is actually functional, we should stick our noses in and try to “fix” it. Yet where there are egregious human rights violations taking place, or even genocides, we can't seem to do anything, except maybe to protect our “interests” in the area. Which is always the exploitation of local natural resources, the proceeds from which do little or nothing for the local indigenous populations, instead usually lining the pockets of a few.

So to make ourselves feel good, we try to kick functional populations who are living in harmony with their environment, off the lands that they and people like them have inhabited for thousands of years. Because somehow we know better than these people who have lived here for so very long. Somehow we have the answers for “protecting” the diverse animal populations and vast array of plant life that is in parts simply an aspect of the ecosystem, a source of food, a source of building materials, fibers for ropes and clothing, a pollen source for domestic bees, food for cattle and also the pharmacy of the people who live there. And that is just a simplified list - I am quite certain that volumes could be written about the balance these people have achieved with their environment.

And this is not just the story of these peoples. This is the story of indigenous populations the world over. Populations that Westerners too often believe that we need to “help,” when they need nothing of the sort. We assume that because a people lives differently than we do, more primitively than we do, that they are somehow inferior – lacking some critical component of Civilization.

I have recently been told by someone that dark skinned people are somehow less moral than us white Westerners, because it takes cooperation and a certain moral fiber to live in our colder climates, than it does to live in these tropical and subtropical climes. That is the fundamental underpinning of Western thinking, though the more diversity oriented among us would cringe at the racism and culturalism stated so boldly – so openly. Yet that thinking is what drives many of the very Westerners who would cringe at hearing it stated so succinctly.

It is that thinking that causes supposed conservationists to decide that they, as “enlightened” Westerners can do it better than these people who have lived on those lands for centuries, if not Millenia. We don't like to put it in those blatant terms, but what else can we call this absolute height of arrogance and hubris? We. We who have managed to cause more damage to this planet, in the last 150 years, than was ever caused this planet since the mass extinction of the dinosaurs millions of years ago. We Westerners deciding that we can somehow do it better? We have a word for that – the same word that would be used to describe that bald statement I ran into the other day; Racism.

Autism, Racism, Menstruation and More!!!!

You may have noticed the last couple of posts happen to be rather innocuously and generically titled "Library Unit X: Cultural Anthropology. As I was going through and finishing these short papers, it occurred to me that the assignment as given, produces short papers that are not unlike blog posts - in fact they are a lot like blog posts. Or at least they are like blog posts that I would produce if I didn't say fuck with some regularity...

The assignment was to read seven articles and write a two page paper about each, summarizing the article, tying it to something we discussed in class and providing our response to it. It was not meant to be formal, instead being more about how each article made us feel - what we gleaned from it, how it changed our perspective or if it did. As it occurred to me that I was writing papers that would make decent blog posts, it also occurred to me that I am exceedingly busy and unable to write much. So I have a total of seven of these papers and wanted to throw this post in there to make sure that there was something to reference them, that has a less generic title - especially before I post the next one, which happens to delve into a rather more important issue.

I didn't make the next one the first one I posted, because I wanted to have a moment to draw some attention to it and the fact that this anthropology class has done rather a lot to further alter my attitude about certain aspects of primitive cultures and the West. I have long held the understanding that primitive does not equal savage and uncivilized. But that attitude has evolved considerably over the course of this cultural anthropology class. Because I am learning that one, these primitives are in many ways far more "civilized" than those of us in the West and two, I am not nearly as "enlightened" and close to free of bigotry as I thought I was. This is not to say that I didn't accept that I had some underlying bigoted undertones - it is a rare person in the West who doesn't. But I thought I was pretty good about that sort of thing.

In the next post, which will probably go up later this morning or sometime this afternoon, I will delve into the systemic bigotry of Western society. In the paper, I was not terribly clear and wanted to clear it up here, just as I intend to clear it with my instructor. When I describe the arrogant culturalist tendencies of Westerners - I am absolutely not trying to exclude myself from that picture. Because even though this class has sent me a little bit further in the right direction, I am a product of my culture and all that entails - the good, the bad and the exceedingly arrogant.