2013/5/16

Back of the Cereal Box - Fat Girl Got Slapped

The blogosphere has been bouncing reaction pieces to Emily Witt’s What Do You Desire? back and forth for the last couple of days. The original story is very graphic, so I don’t recommend reading it if you don’t want to read a firsthand account of what happens on the set of a bondage porn video. Briefly summarized, the author had an STD scare, met a bunch of utopian Silicon Valley types who think it’s good to have an orgasm during yoga, went to a porn shoot in San Francisco, and felt really empty and hollow about it.

Here’s the rough chronological breakdown of the reactions:

What all of this reminded me of was a post in a blog I read called Back of the Cereal Box. The author, Drew, is (as far as I know) a gay man living in Los Angeles who likes to blog about videogames and pop culture trivia. A few months ago he visited the same porn company’s headquarters in San Francisco to take a tour. Here’s his report:

This is where I introduce a pair of characters who accompanied us on the tour. One if a full-figured lass who looked like Ann from Arrested Development if she gained 150 pounds and bobbed her hair. She seemed young, and though I realize she was older, her every mannerism suggested someone who was still a girl — giggly, bouncy, petite in her manner, shyly enthusiastic in the way I think 50s housewives were. She raised her hand when the tour guide asked if anyone wanted to try out the head hole, and soon she had crawled beneath the sex table and pushed her head through, her face showing how thoroughly, unapologetically stoked she was to be a table head. That’s when the guy she was with stepped forward and took a picture of her. The guy, to the guide: “She’s my wife. Can I hit her?” I at first thought I had misheard. The two thoughts seemed logically disconnected. The guide, without giving it a second thought: “Sure!” And that’s when he walked up to his wife’s head, looking weirdly disembodied as it appeared on a plane of polished wood, and open-hand slapped her twice before winding up and cracking her across the face with a totally-not-kidding backhand. Based on her reaction, she really enjoyed it.

And that’s where the tour ended for me, and we immediately went for drinks in hopes of washing the experience out of our brains. Of course, here I am writing about it, so clearly that plan didn’t work, because drunk can’t beat awkward.

So here’s my dilemma: I was really not okay with seeing that Ann from Arrested Development get hit by her husband, even though she was more than okay with it. My reaction was a mix of shock and revulsion at seeing a woman — or, really, anybody — get abused at all, much less in such a public, theatrical fashion. I know that some people express love and sexuality with that degree of physicality, but I find it extremely difficult to witness it. That said, I realize it’s a telltale sign of homophobia and other bigotry to say something like “I don’t care what they do in their bedroom; I just don’t want to see it.” But that is essentially my take on seeing Ann get slapped. As a liberal, open-minded person who would hesitate to say “No, the way you’re loving is wrong,” how do I reconcile this?

No but really — because I’ve been rolling this one around in my head since this happened, and I can’t come up with an answer.

I don’t think I have a lot to add to that description, but it does encourage me to think that the pendulum eventually has to hit its max and start swinging the other way. Instead I want to look at a separate issue raised by Noah Millman. In Conforming To An Idea, he writes:

What’s our stake? The mere existence of these objects for consumption forces us to react – to affirm or oppose, accept or deny, look towards or look away. Of course, that’s the nature of community, and human beings are social animals – we don’t really exist, as humans, outside of a community. So it’s hard to object simply on the grounds that we don’t want to have to deal with what we don’t want to have to deal with. But we do not exist in communion with people we watch. There’s a one-way mirror in between us and them.

This is true of any mediated experience. When it aspires to art, mediated work takes us into its world. We don’t consume it; it consumes us, and after the fact we can reflect on an experience we’ve had, in a kind of fantasy. That’s what losing it at the movies is all about. Pornography goes the other direction, away from art. It is designed to move us to action – not to invite us into an experience, but to cause us to do. That’s why I talk about jihadi websites as being essentially pornographic – their purpose is to incite violence, just as the purpose of pornography is to incite sexual release.

This is similar to my dissertation. (What’s the point of having a blog if you can’t cite yourself?) Here’s what I wrote:

An example that clearly illustrates the phenomenon of psychic distance as the backbone of disinterested enjoyment is the nude. For a heterosexual male, a beautiful nude woman is an object of lust. In pornography, such objects are offered to the viewer in order to inflame sexual desire. Such images have a very clear in-order-to structure. The ecstasy provoked by such pictures leaves no sense of distance between the viewer and the viewed, hence it has no “as-if” structure. It is seen “as” aspectivally and not “as-if” aesthetically. However, an artistic nude has no such obvious in-order-to structure. We see the value of the nude from the perspective of the picture without forgetting its valuelessness for the satisfaction of the desires in our ordinary lives. If we wish to assign a practical interest to the nude, we must do so at something of a remove from the phenomenological experience of the object itself by talking about, for example, the cultural capital that accumulates from appearing sophisticated by appreciating the “high” arts. Such explanations of the purpose of art objects can be valuable and will be pursued in greater depth in chapter five, but for now, let us focus on the experience of seeing the nude rather than the phenomena that cause us to see the nude. In a short essay called “On Nude Pictures,”† Watsuji writes,

A living human body as it is is not beautiful in the same sense as a work of art. There is a difficult to cross boundary in the space between an actual physical body that can be the object of sexual desire and a work of art that reveals the beauty of life purely. If one should however have a heart that can retain its moral interest before a nude body, it is possible to discover a beauty that is eternally fresh and mysterious. (WTZ 17:375)

What Watsuji is claiming is that it is only when we can take delight in the nude body as a body rather than as a potential object of conquest that we can begin to experience its aesthetic depths. In my formulation, we must first be aware of the nude as something separate from us, then give ourselves over to its purposes, rather than invest it with our own interests. Only then can we maintain the distance that gives the work an “as-if” structure while still dissolving into the work in intoxication.

† “On Nude Pictures” is Rataiga ni Tsuite 裸体画について (WTZ 17:374–6). It was first published around 1919, then included in the essay collection Mask and Person (Men to Perusona 面とペルソナ, 1937).

Tying things around a bit to the usual themes of this blog, there has been a movement to get away from the post-Kantian “disinterested” view of art. Art can be involved and active in society! There’s some truth to that, but if it’s active directly, then it’s just propaganda or pornography, not art. Art has instrumental value, to be sure, but the instrumental value of art has to be secondary to its value-in-itself if we really want to call it art. There’s a lot of debate about whether or not videogames are or can be art, but I think there needs to be more attention paid to question of whether games are instruments of pleasure (like pornography) or instruments of their own internal value (like art). To my way of thinking about it, one way to tell is this: do you smile or grimace when Mario dies? If you grimace, you’re acting instrumentally. You have a goal, and you only care about Mario insofar as he helps you achieve it. If you smile, then you love Mario as Mario, in life and (many, many) deaths. You have an aesthetic distance from Mario that lets you both lose yourself and retain a sense of the self you lost.

Three Word Phrase - House As a child, I always thought it remarkable that no matter how fast we drove home at night, the moon kept pace with our mini-van. Little did I realize there is a shadow yet more stealthy: the shadow of the self. You travel to the Sun thinking, “Oh, here I’ll really be happy. Every day will be sunny!” But like Jonah in Tarshish, there’s no escaping the natural imperative at the heart of things. You drink a soda; you look out the window; but all the while, you are always you.

Three Word Phrase - House

As a child, I always thought it remarkable that no matter how fast we drove home at night, the moon kept pace with our mini-van. Little did I realize there is a shadow yet more stealthy: the shadow of the self. You travel to the Sun thinking, “Oh, here I’ll really be happy. Every day will be sunny!” But like Jonah in Tarshish, there’s no escaping the natural imperative at the heart of things. You drink a soda; you look out the window; but all the while, you are always you.

2013/5/15

Takako Minekawa & Dustin Wong - Party on a Floating Cake

From Takako’s new album, Toropical Circle. Crank this jam, and it’s officially outer space.

Anamanaguchi - Planet

From their new hot album, Endless Fantasy. Crank this jam, and it’s officially summer.

2013/5/13

Japan Times - Amending Constitution emerges as poll issue: High-riding nationalists say timing ripe for breaking postwar taboo

As it marks its 66th anniversary, the fate of Japan’s Constitution is set to become the focus of a political battle both in and beyond July’s Upper House election.

For the first time since its enforcement on May 3, 1947, politicians have realistically started talking about revising some articles of the Constitution, breaking a long-held political taboo of the postwar decades.

This article has a good high-level overview of the plans to change the Japanese constitution and their likelihood of implementation. It still seems pretty remote at this point:

Article 96 stipulates that revisions to the Constitution must be initiated by the Diet through a concurring vote of two-thirds or more of all the members of each house, allowing the legislature to propose a national referendum on the issue.

But to secure the 162 votes in the House of Councilors that would be necessary to set a referendum in motion, the three parties would need to more than double their share of the seats up for grabs in the upcoming election.

The LDP (自民党) has been ruling Japan with only a few years of interruption since the 1950s. The whole time, they’ve been promising to amend the Constitution, but it’s never happened.

For my part, I can see why the Japanese aren’t fond of what was essentially a “bayonet constitution” given to them by the Americans with basically no input from the Japanese. In particular, it’s weird that the Emperor is the “symbol” of the Japanese people but has no formal powers, like declaring the winners of elections or dissolving parliament. If I were in charge of the world, I would go ahead and make him the official Head of State and grant him some reserve powers on behalf of the people.

On the other hand, what people really want to do is to get rid of Article 9 of the Constitution:

Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. (2) To accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

I personally believe that the US would do well to adopt this same provision. Going further, I would say that every state without an Article 9 renouncing belligerency is living in a state of mortal sin. (The world would be better if each nation in the world were defeated one by one and made to adopt this provision, but alas…) In any event, no piece of paper can make anyone do anything, so it would be foolish to put to much hope in any such provisions, no matter how well worded. As it is in Japan, the Self-Defense Forces often skirt the line between “war potential” and mere national defense.

A Softer World - and get a haircut. a rebellious one. Shorter Heidegger.

A Softer World - and get a haircut. a rebellious one.

Shorter Heidegger.

2013/5/12

Why? I can’t help asking. Why did a happy, peaceful occasion like the marathon have to be trampled on in such an awful, bloody way? Although the perpetrators have been identified, the answer to that question is still unclear. But their hatred and depravity have mangled our hearts and our minds. Even if we were to get an answer, it likely wouldn’t help.

To overcome this kind of trauma takes time, time during which we need to look ahead positively. Hiding the wounds, or searching for a dramatic cure, won’t lead to any real solution. Seeking revenge won’t bring relief, either. We need to remember the wounds, never turn our gaze away from the pain, and—honestly, conscientiously, quietly—accumulate our own histories. It may take time, but time is our ally.

— Haruki Murakami - Boston, from One Citizen of the World Who Calls Himself a Runner

Laugh-Out-Loud Cats #2217 虛空無背面、 鳥道絕東西。 In the vast inane there is no back or front ; the path of the bird annihilates East and West. — Zenrinkushū 禅林句集 tr. R.H. Blyth
Laugh-Out-Loud Cats #2217

虛空無背面、
鳥道絕東西。

In the vast inane there is no back or front ;
the path of the bird annihilates East and West.

— Zenrinkushū 禅林句集 tr. R.H. Blyth

2013/4/30

Laugh-Out-Loud Cats #2254 In theory, it’s simple. Identify problem. Identify tools available to fix problem. Apply tools to problem, fixing it (sometimes, if lucky). In practice, however, I have a persistent habit of following this procedure: Become aware of a cool new tool. Apply tool to nothing, noodling around. Identify problem solved by tool (sometimes, if lucky). I’m not the only one with this problem, of course. Indeed, the difference between human intelligence and machine intelligence is that humans have the ability to not just solve a problem but create new problems to solve. One can hardly imagine a history of music that doesn’t start with kids noodling on guitars and only occasionally becoming fortunate enough to turn into the Ramones or whatever. Still, in philosophy it can be particularly dangerous: “Here’s a wonderfully elegant theory. Let’s mutilate reality until it fits the theory!”

Laugh-Out-Loud Cats #2254

In theory, it’s simple.

  1. Identify problem.
  2. Identify tools available to fix problem.
  3. Apply tools to problem, fixing it (sometimes, if lucky).

In practice, however, I have a persistent habit of following this procedure:

  1. Become aware of a cool new tool.
  2. Apply tool to nothing, noodling around.
  3. Identify problem solved by tool (sometimes, if lucky).

I’m not the only one with this problem, of course. Indeed, the difference between human intelligence and machine intelligence is that humans have the ability to not just solve a problem but create new problems to solve. One can hardly imagine a history of music that doesn’t start with kids noodling on guitars and only occasionally becoming fortunate enough to turn into the Ramones or whatever. Still, in philosophy it can be particularly dangerous: “Here’s a wonderfully elegant theory. Let’s mutilate reality until it fits the theory!”

2013/4/26

AmeCon - The People Who Wanted to Torture Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

One more (hopefully final) thought on the cowards who want to torture a 19-year old boy. I was reading William Pffaf’s latest column, and he mentioned that

Moving to our own times, the United States has been spending itself in Southeast Asian wars, and then Middle Eastern and South Asian wars, because of two spurious theories. The first was the domino theory of Asian Communism’s potential for launching worldwide revolution, which American officials and advisors believed had to be thwarted whatever the cost. The current political fantasy behind American policy is the notion launched by Samuel Huntington of a “clash of civilizations” about to break out between Islamic civilization and the West.

There’s a kind of fundamental lack of faith in the American system behind the neoconservative Cold Warriors and Anti-Jihadis. They are deeply afraid that government of the people, by the people, for the people, will perish from the earth. Once a country goes Communist, it can only be contained or perhaps rolled back, but it will never seek out its own freedom. Should the resolve of the crusaders waver, Saladin will take Jerusalem, and Rome will pay the jizya.

Of course, as we’ve now seen, really existing socialism is self-destructive. It cannot keep up economically, and people eventually demand change. The socialists collectively cooperated to form the factories to provision the rope to hang themselves with from each according to his ability and to each according to his need. So why was it so imperative to create our own secret police and assassins to defeat theirs?

Jihadism is an even more pathetic “threat.” No state looked to Afghanistan or Somali as an example, and the revolution in Iran is desperate to maintain its depleting moral capital. During the Cold War, one could at least plausibly argue that there was a Fifth Column of Communist sympathizers hiding within the branches of the US government. Such a suggestion about Islamic sympathizers is beyond laughable.

Why go abroad in search of monsters to destroy? There are monsters enough at home. Daodejing 80:

鄰國相望，雞犬之聲相聞，民至老死，不相往來。

Though the neighboring kingdoms are in sight of one another
And can hear the cries of each others dogs and roosters,
The people reach old age and die
Without having traveled there and back again.

2013/4/23

The important security issue isn’t convicting Dzhokhar but finding out what he knows that might prevent a future attack or break up a terror network. This is where naming him an enemy combatant would be useful. Such a designation allows for extensive, long-term interrogation without a lawyer. Especially because President Obama has barred enhanced-interrogation techniques, such long-term psychological pressure can be crucial to learning if the brothers worked with anyone else, if they received terrorist training, and more.

—

Wall Street Journal - Enemy Combatants in Boston

I have difficulty expressing how much disgust and loathing I feel towards the views expressed in this article. A major America newspaper and several sitting Senators are calling for the torture of a 19-year old boy because they are too scared of terrorists, but these same spineless cowards tell us that requiring gun licenses (which is plainly consistent with the “well ordered militia” clause of the Second Amendment) would be an impermissible infringement of liberty. Sickening. If anyone listens to these snakes, democracy is as good as dead. (Via AmeCon)

2013/4/10

The report explains in one of its most interesting sections that Bowdoin made a fateful decision in 1970 to replace the old core curriculum with loose distribution requirements. Since then, what Bowdoin teaches has been determined by institutional happenstance and student choice rather than any substantive vision of the knowledge and skills worthy of a human being.

The consequences of this self-inflicted wound are not limited to the loss of intellectual coherence. Although its cultured despisers often miss this point, the old-fashioned curriculum was also egalitarian in a way the cafeteria model of course selection is not. With the assistance of responsible advisors (which is not a given, but by no means uncommon), students who graduate from private schools and top public high schools with strong basic skills and cultural literacy can usually design a fine course of study for themselves.

It is much more difficult for students who never received a true college- preparatory education. Since professors trained in specialized research are often reluctant to teach introductory classes or cultivate the rudiments of reading, writing, and quantitative reasoning, these students can easily get lost intellectually and socially. In effect, if not in intention, the cafeteria curriculum is a concealed mechanism for the reproduction of privilege. Under the cover of freedom, it offers the greatest advantage to students who already understand the system.

— Samuel Goldman - How Not to Defend the Liberal Arts (Here in Hawaii, the teaching of grammar in public schools is irregular because many students speak pidgin at home. Of course, this doesn’t mean that pidgin is any more accepted outside of the schools. It just means that students who speak it at home will never be given a chance to escape the stigma.)

Nedroid Picture Diary - Spring Clean The past is a foreign country where they have pizza parties.

Nedroid Picture Diary - Spring Clean

The past is a foreign country where they have pizza parties.

2013/3/13

American Conservative - Philosopher of Love Here’s a quote that will drive Mike up the wall with its vagueness: Schindler is a relentlessly metaphysical philosopher. Over the last four decades he has developed a distinctive view of being, and it is in these metaphysical reflections that his theology of culture is based. To live well, Schindler argues, is to live in a way that is proper to our being. Conversely, when a misapprehension of being structures our thinking and actions, we experience unhappiness, brokenness, and poverty in its deepest sense—the absence of meaning. He believes that the modern liberal project from Descartes to Rawls is based on a radical misunderstanding of the nature of reality. Specifically, liberalism fails to apprehend that “love is the basic act and order of things.” Love brings all there is into existence, it is through love that all there is continues in existence, and it is for love that all things exist. Reality is in this sense triadic: all things are in, through, and for love. Being might therefore be said to be an order or “logic” of love. This is an article about David L. Schindler, but it reminds me that his son, David C. Schindler, wrote one of the best books I’ve ever read: Plato’s Critique of Impure Reason: On Goodness and Truth in the Republic. I don’t know if Schindler père as good a philosopher as Schindler fils, but if the apple fell in the general vicinity of the tree, he cannot be that bad.

American Conservative - Philosopher of Love

Here’s a quote that will drive Mike up the wall with its vagueness:

Schindler is a relentlessly metaphysical philosopher. Over the last four decades he has developed a distinctive view of being, and it is in these metaphysical reflections that his theology of culture is based.

To live well, Schindler argues, is to live in a way that is proper to our being. Conversely, when a misapprehension of being structures our thinking and actions, we experience unhappiness, brokenness, and poverty in its deepest sense—the absence of meaning. He believes that the modern liberal project from Descartes to Rawls is based on a radical misunderstanding of the nature of reality.

Specifically, liberalism fails to apprehend that “love is the basic act and order of things.” Love brings all there is into existence, it is through love that all there is continues in existence, and it is for love that all things exist. Reality is in this sense triadic: all things are in, through, and for love. Being might therefore be said to be an order or “logic” of love.

This is an article about David L. Schindler, but it reminds me that his son, David C. Schindler, wrote one of the best books I’ve ever read: Plato’s Critique of Impure Reason: On Goodness and Truth in the Republic. I don’t know if Schindler père as good a philosopher as Schindler fils, but if the apple fell in the general vicinity of the tree, he cannot be that bad.

Laugh-Out-Loud Cats #2214 As usual, Laugh-Out-Loud Cats is the most Daoist comic imaginable.

Laugh-Out-Loud Cats #2214

As usual, Laugh-Out-Loud Cats is the most Daoist comic imaginable.