Relationships

Relationships, of the romantic variety, are something in which I am quite interested, albeit from a theoretical perspective most of the time. However, in my interest, I have run across some interesting information. Right before Valentines day, that celebration of the romantically entwined, I feel it is appropriate to share these factoids with you.

Both of these came to my attention thanks to Facebook links to the article, or a related article, so I must thank my ever interesting friends for their contributions. The first article, which comes from Psychology Today, explains that mystery seems more alluring than straightforward commitment. To paraphrase the article, a study of female undergraduates concluded that, while participants liked men who liked them more than those who were indifferent, they liked those whose feelings were unknown more than either category. In another interesting article, Ok Cupid member responses were analyzed to find questions that people felt comfortable answering, but which corresponded to data that is not "first date material." For example, whether a person prefers other people to be simple or complex, a light question, seems to have a strong correlation with how liberal/conservative that person is, a heavy subject.

Now that I have shown you a few psychological tricks to manipulate your relationships, let me encourage you not to use them. "Huh?" you might be thinking. Let me point out that I describe these results as providing ways to manipulate your relationships. As I have talked about in my post on Kant, the center of his ethical thought was the imperative (command) that we acknowledge that every person is the protagonist of their own personal story. To use his terms, we ought treat them as an ends in themselves, rather than just a means. This is quite similar to the "Golden Rule," that we ought do unto others as we want done unto us, and to my point in yesterday's post about every person carrying their own personal reality with them. I consider this post part two of my discussion of Kant, because my main point is to encourage you to treat others, but most importantly significant others, in a way that is respectful of their humanity.

Suppose you were on a first date, and your date asks you, "am I getting into your pants tonight?" I would find such a forward question off-putting, if not offensive. Now, suppose you were asked, "do you like the taste of beer?" No big deal, eh? However, suppose you were asked the second question, but what your date meant, and indeed how your date interprets your answer, is as though you answered the first. Feeling used yet?

So, don't use people. Whether the ends justify the means in general situations is a tricky question, but in a romantic setting your partner should be the ends, so manipulating them makes even less ethical sense than usual. When courting, one's means should be commensurate (in keeping with) to the ends, not requiring justification by the ends. Now go out, treat your romantic partner as though she or he is the most important person on this special day, have a happy Valentine's Day, and, for goodness sake, don't use your romantic partner for your own purposes!

PS The correlations these studies reveal are really cool, and interesting to study for their own sakes. But they are also a good segue into according your significant other the respect that he or she ought have. No evil social scientists please.

PPS Ironically, my post on Kant is the post that receives the most comments by SpamBots. Too bad the people who use them don't actually read the post.

What is Best in Life?

This post was going to be titled, "What is Good?" but who can resist a corny movie reference? It is, of course, directly inspired by my sister's wonderful post encouraging that we seek good, but it may also address the question, "what matters?" which has been brought up.

While I have my own answer to these questions, and have for a long time, I was initially only going to discuss what these questions might mean to different people. I do like to leave you to find your own answers, as it is both an immensely satisfying project and the only way you will truly believe your own answer. However, I am dismayed with how people often answer this question when they do not agree with me, with money, fame, religion, or power in some combination, so I think it worthwhile to advocate for my own answer.

My answer to these questions was determined when I was in high school, and has yet to change. At that time, I considered the question, "what is the most important thing in the world to me?" The answer that fairly quickly presented itself was the people around me. In some sense, other people are the only things in this world that are real. For example, while a car may exist on a purely physical level as a thing of steel and oil, it is only a construction in our minds that understands that a car is a vehicle. Perhaps more telling is the existence of a book, without our minds interpretation a book is nearly impossible to tell apart from a blank journal, both hold almost exactly the same physical form, but a book can impart so much more to our minds. On the other hand, each and every person you will ever meet, or even with whom you will interact, carries around her or his own mind. This means that it doesn't matter how deeply you consider their existence, they still exist. Which, to me, means that their existence is once of the most important things to consider thoroughly.

This is not to say that money, fame, religion, or power are inherently bad values, just that without including people as one of your primary concerns you dance perilously close to becoming a monster. Without a concern for people, revering money quickly leads to the types of exploitation we see in colonialism or in Enron's treatment of their employees. If you seek fame, but not common good, one might become a cult leader, or the heartless star of a reality show if one prefers to avoid the Kool-Aide. Religion fervency that is not tempered with genuine human compassion can lead to religion violence, something most every religion experiences from some followers, or evangelists whose aid is conditional upon displays of piety from the needy. The pursuit of power regardless of the cost to others paves the way for poster-child evil politicians. I personally consider fame and religion to be among my motivators, but I attempt to always temper my endeavors with a consideration for my fellow humans.

So, go, find what you think is important! Once you do, look for it! But I implore you to place other humans high in your priorities.

Bullying

I recently received a "friend request" on Facebook from someone with whom I went to middle and high school. While I try to keep my friends list to people with whom I am currently in touch, people with whom I would like to be in touch, and people I fear would be offended if I were to un-friend them, I tend to relax standards when it comes to high school acquaintances. This is for the logical reason that, not having seen them in 8 years, I do not know if I want to be in touch with them, not to mention that it is possible they have a different memory of our interactions and would be upset if I were not to friend them.

However, the request I received most recently was not from an acquaintance, but from someone who was rather a bully when I first met them. Throughout high school I ate lunch in the classroom of a teacher who was willing to shelter me, the specific teacher changed from year to year, with the company of a book. I certainly do not blame this individual solely for my reclusive habit, but my middle school experiences played a roll. Furthermore, my personality is such that my feelings toward people tend not to change a lot over time, sure this leaves me with some deep friendships, but I also harbor some old grudges.

It certainly isn't that I think this is a bad person. Although we didn't interact much in high school, I seem to remember some decent memories. I know that toward the end of my high school years it occurred to me that there were definitely reasons that this person may have acted they way that they did. However, I still felt some resentment upon receiving the friend request, as though my desire to put forward a genial face obligated me to suffer their presence. I carry on a large amount of my social life on Facebook these days, and to accept that request would invite them into this rather important part of my life.

All this rumination on bullying led me to yet another memory. This one comes from the beginning of elementary school, and I can not be certain of its veracity. In truth, I deeply hope that this is simply a memory that I have made up, but I fear it is not. I remember writing, then reading for the class a disparaging poem that I wrote about an unpopular classmate of mine. In fact, the only reason that I cling to my hope that this is a false memory is that I cannot imagine a teacher allowing me to complete my recitation of such a harmful poem.

Later in elementary school I got to know this kid a bit better as well. I remember them turning out to be an admirable person, which, of course, does not assuage the guilt over what I believe happened. Especially considering how much experience with scorn, threats, and ridicule I have accrued in the intervening years. I can only hope that this kid eventually forgave me.

But, if this is my hope, then how can I do otherwise than forgive the bullies of my later life? And not the false forgiveness of the self-righteous, but an understanding forgiveness of one who has walked a ways along that path, who understands what the allure may well be, and who understands both the harm it does to the victim and the bully.

"But I am who I am, in the end; the comics I make are the result of my damage." -Jerry Holkins

Society Gives You Hell

If you find repeated, unnecessary usage of the word "hell" offensive, I highly recommend that you don't follow the link to this video. In fact, the thought inspired by this song concerns the premise of the music video much more than the lyrics of the song, let's discard them for the most part. Sorry I just indirectly cussed at you a whole bunch for so little reason.

This is a song of which I had never heard before my Top 25 Mashup epiphany, from a group of which I have never heard. While the lyrics, which we henceforth mostly ignore, detail someone dealing rather poorly with a breakup wishing all sorts of ill will upon their ex, the video depicts two neighbors, one set very straight-laced and the other group quite alternative, embroiled in an escalating series of attempts to disrupt each other's lives. It seems that both find the lifestyle epitomized by the other distasteful and disturbing. Interestingly enough, the main character from both households is played by the same member of the band.

One might simply write this off as a gimmick designed to showcase how clever we can be with green screens, I think further thought is rewarding. Suppose, rather than simply being played by the same person, the two main characters actually are the same person. Then what initially appeared to be the conflict between two feuding neighbors actually becomes an inner conflict between the forces of acculturation and individuality.

Put simply. the straight-laced household, to me, represents our inner desire to "fit in." Although our culture has fetishized the "individual," or the "rugged individual," a desire to acculturate is by no means a bad thing. For one thing, forging your own way can be hard going, and perhaps not worth it for unimportant preferences. As Hegel notes, "in dress fashions and hours of meals, there are certain conventions which we have to accept because in these things it is not worth the trouble to I insist on displaying one’s own discernment. The wisest thing here is to do as others do."

Furthermore, participating in a shared cultural background facilitates the various modes a sociability that humans seem to require to live happy, fulfilled lives. Through our interactions with others we obtain both valuable practice in interpersonal skills and shared experiences and vocabulary, both of which, in turn, assist us in further social communication. Indeed, acculturation plays a critical role in our social, and consequentially, emotional well being. Those of you who know how well I fit into a crowd are probably waiting for the other shoe to drop.

That other shoe is the call of individualism. For now I would like to set aside that representing individualism with counter-culture is a flawed metaphor, as counter-culture consists of a group rejecting the dominant culture, and is therefore a culture of its own subject to all the benefits and woes of acculturation. Furthermore, the fact that our concept of ourself as an individual is heavily influenced by external stimuli, such as how we think others see us or what we think is the acceptable thing to do, shall be tabled for now. Both of these concepts are quite interesting, and provide fertile ground for thought, but to address either of them would make this post much longer than I intend it to be.

Although conformity has decided benefits, individualism makes valuable contributions to our personality. While, "being true to oneself," is vague enough as to lack all meaning, I think we all have been in situations where we did not feel our actions corresponded with our self image. Sometimes these feelings ought to be overcome, as we try new things, get out of our comfort zone, and expand our horizon, to borrow a few clichés. However, at other times these feelings indicate that we believe that authority is directing us in an immoral or otherwise deleterious direction.

So, in conformity and individualism, we have two powerful, important, and opposing drives shaping our persona. Guess what, I'm not going to even give advice on how to reconcile them, sorry! For one thing, I wouldn't venture to claim that I have done a great job balancing them against each other. I also think that our search for a way to harmonize them within ourselves is one of the most important, difficult, and rewarding struggles that we may face in our lives. So, keeping in mind the importance of the oft uncomfortable interplay between conformity and individualism, I hope they give you much to think about!

Categorization of Violence

When engaging in logical discourse, it is of utmost importance that all parties involved agree upon shared definitions of the words that they are using. To do otherwise invites mistaken impressions and responses that address a corruption of the argument at hand. In contrast, when writing an expository piece, the author has much broader authority to define and use words as they deem appropriate. While the author may autocratically set the definitions of the words used, it is beneficial to their readers if the terms in question are explained, so that, once again, the argument at hand may be correctly received.

The concept of violence is central to many of the pieces that we have read thus far. However, the word violence has been used in different manners by the different authors, sometimes in multiple ways by a single author in different contexts. Three main categories of violence seem to exist, violence as a tool, violence as an environment, and violence as a relationship. This paper sets forth to explain the characteristics of each usage, primarily through examples from the readings. Finally, I conclude with an examination of what non-violence means with regards to each of these forms of violence.

Hannah Arendt's definition of violence is an easy starting point. Her attempt to disambiguate the terms violence, force, power, strength, and authority is closely related to the aim of this paper, and necessitates that she make clear what she means when she uses the word "violence." To Arendt, violence, "is distinguished by its instrumental character." (Arendt, 7) Thus Arendt's use of the word falls squarely within the traditional liberal concept of violence as a tool.

This instrumental sense of the word is evoked whenever violence is mentioned as a means by which an ends is accomplished. Malcolm X uses violence in this sense when he says, "in areas where the government has proven itself either unwilling or unable to defend the lives and the property of Negroes, it's time for Negroes to defend themselves. Article number two of the constitutional amendments provides you and me the right to own a rifle or shotgun." (Malcolm X, 155) Violence, as represented by the firearms, is being conceptualized as a means to achieve the stated end, defense of lives and property. This is very similar to the use which Hobbes makes of the word, wherein violence arises out of individuals’ attempts to attain security in the state of nature; it is a form of defense.

However, Simone Weil asserts that the only end to which violence may be made to serve is that of further violence. Obviously this is a different characterization of violence than the purely instrumental. Weil evokes an environment of violence, where it permeates all facets of the decision making process. She asserts that, "violence obliterates anybody who feels its touch. It comes to seem just as external to its employer as to its victim." (Weil, 384) Here she describes violence transitioning from a tool in the hands of its employer to an environment engulfing both employer and victim.

Arendt seems open to this concept of violence as environment, evoking it when she notes that repeated use of violence tends to devolve all authority into a system of violence. "Where violence is no longer backed and restrained by power, the well-known reversal in reckoning with means and ends has taken place. The means, the means of destruction, now determine the end--with the consequence that the end will be the destruction of all power." (Arendt, 10) Here Arendt uses the term "power" as she has specified earlier, to denote efficacy gained through mutual consent. She notes that as the use of violence grows more commonplace, it no longer remains purely a means, but rather becomes an end unto itself.

Correspondingly, Weil seems to accept, at least theoretically, the existence of instrumental violence not necessarily leading to an environment of violence when she comments, "moderate use of force, which alone would enable man to escape being enmeshed in its machinery, would require superhuman virtue, which is as rare as dignity in weakness." (Weil, 384) Where they differ is in their estimation of how likely use of instrumental violence is to spawn an environment of violence. Arendt views an environment of violence as an outcome of excessive instrumental violence, whereas Weil's argument is that the environment of violence is a nigh inevitable outcome of instrumental violence.

One similarity between both Arendt's and Weil's environments of violence is that they arise out of the use of instrumental violence. Further complexity is added to the issue if one examines an environment of violence wherein instrumental violence is not necessarily ubiquitous. Examples of such environments are found in both Hobbes' and Hegel's work.

What characterizes Hobbes' state of nature is not the ubiquity of violence, but rather the perfect freedom of all living in the state of nature to employ violence at will if they believe it shall further their ends. Thus, it is not the presence of instrumental violence, but the common view of instrumental violence as permissible, that presents such a detriment to human well being. Or, to put it another way, it is not a sufficient condition for happiness that we are not immediately under attack, we require some assurance that attack is not immanent, and no such assurances exist in an environment of violence.

Hegel goes further to assert that an environment of violence is beneficial on a national level. "War has the higher significance that by its agency, as I have remarked elsewhere, 'the ethical health of peoples is preserved in their indifference to the stabilisation (sic) of finite institutions,'" (Hegel, section 324) where he asserts that wars are beneficial as they prevent social structures from ossifying. It is possible for Hegel to view wars as both moral and beneficial because, for Hegel, the state does not exist to protect individual citizens, a role it clearly fails in war, but rather to allow them to complete themselves through relationship to the community.

Hegel's emphasis on relationship provides a good segue to the concept of violence as relationship. The conceptualization of violence as relationship makes a great deal of intuitive sense, as violence, in most its forms, is a method through which multiple individuals relate to each other. However, of the theoretical systems of violence that we have examined, only Hegel's, as exhibited in the Phenomenology of Spirit where it describes lordship and bondage, seems to have a clearly relational concept of violence. Here, two individuals engage in a struggle which either ends in the death of one participant, denying the survivor the community necessary to complete his or her self relationally, or the subjugation of one individual to the other.

Having separated out three distinct conceptions of violence, it is productive to examine the different concepts of non-violence that each implies. Once again we begin with instrumental violence, which corresponds to an instrumental type of non-violence. We have, on occasion, described this as tactical non-violence, where the participants choose to employ non-violence because they believe it to be the best method by which they can achieve their goals. This purely instrumental form of non-violence clearly mirrors the concept of violence as tool.

On the other hand, violence as environment seems to steadfastly resist the development of a theory of non-violence. "To respect life in someone else when you have had to castrate yourself of all yearning for it demands a truly heartbreaking exertion of the powers of generosity." (Weil, 388) Here Weil is noting that immersion in the environment of violence erodes the preconditions for non-violence to be a viable strategy, that quality that Rousseau called, "an innate repugnance at seeing a fellow-creature suffer." (Rousseau, Part I) When we must inure ourselves against the agonies of our own suffering, caused by total insecurity of our fate in the face of an environment of violence, Weil does not believe it reasonable to expect people to maintain their concern for the suffering of others.

Arendt seems to concur, as she believes, "if Gandhi’s enormously powerful and successful strategy of nonviolent resistance had met with a different enemy--Stalin's Russia, Hitler's Germany, even prewar Japan, instead of England--the outcome would not have been decolonization, but massacre and submission." In the face of an environment of violence, Arendt believes that any exercise of pure power is doomed to failure. This raises the question of how Gandhi’s unshakeable belief in non-violence would address this concern.

It seems that practitioners of philosophical, as opposed to tactical, non-violence are responding to the third conceptualization, violence as relation. If the relationship of violence presents the choice of responding via a death struggle or submission to dominance as Hegel asserts, philosophical non-violence is an attempt to transcend this decision. By taking suffering upon one's self, the non-violent person demonstrates that they are not a threat to the other, blunting the imperative to kill or be killed. However, the truly non-violent person does not submit to domination; Gandhi characterizes such submission as cowardice rather than non-violence. In its personal nature, philosophical non-violence sets itself up in opposition to violence as relation, rather than the dehumanizing violence as environment.

If one accepts these distinctions, it seems worthwhile to examine what conditions are necessary for an environment of violence to be transformed to such a point that some theory of non-violence again becomes relevant. Must violence be allowed to run its course, eventually extinguishing itself when its rampant flames run out of fuel to consume, or may it be brought to a quicker conclusion? If a quicker conclusion is possible, what role does violence as tool play in halting the unchecked violence as environment, do surgical or preemptive strikes have a practical role in restraining the expansion of violence?

Works Cited

Arendt, Hannah. "Excerpt from On Violence." Ed. Manfred B. Steger and Nancy S. Lind, Violence and its Alternatives. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1999

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Philosophy of Right. "https://angel.msu.edu/section/default.asp?id=SS11-PHL-850-001-895385-EL-04-648 "

Malcolm X. "The Ballot or the Bullet." Ed. Bruce B. Lawrence and Aisha Karim, On Violence. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007

Rousseau, Jean Jacques. A Dissertation on the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality of Man. "https://angel.msu.edu/section/default.asp?id=SS11-PHL-850-001-895385-EL-04-648 "

Weil, Simone. "The Iliad, or the Poem of Force." Ed. Bruce B. Lawrence and Aisha Karim, On Violence. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007

Science Fairs

Now, I may not be the best qualified to discuss a science fair, never having participated in one, but I recently read a New York Times article on the decline of the science fair, and I wanted to respond. The whole article is a quite worthwhile read, but the line that irritated me into action was, "many science teachers say the problem is not a lack of celebration, but the Obama administration’s own education policy, which holds schools accountable for math and reading scores at the expense of the kind of creative, independent exploration that science fair projects require." It seems that viewing math and reading as somehow in opposition to creative, independent exploration is yet another example of why our education system is declining.

Setting aside, for now, the belief that reading and math are both inherently sources for creative, independent exploration, let me first argue that reading and math are cornerstones of science. While I may not have participated in any science fairs, toward the end of elementary school I did design and conduct my own experiment, with assistance from my parents of course. One convenient facet of moving so much as a child is that, if I can remember where something happened, I get a fairly accurate idea of when it occurred.

My experiment involved seeding multiple little, plastic flowerpots with grass seed, then covering them with plastic 5 gallon buckets for different durations throughout the day. My hypothesis was that, since sunlight is necessary for photosynthesis, grass that was covered during less of the day would do better. More interestingly, I wanted to see how significant a small decrease in the length of the day would be and what would happen to the grass living in almost total darkness.

While I don't recall exactly what results I obtained, I do recall there being interesting differences between the pots. In order to describe these differences I used not only qualitative standards, such as the color of the grass, but also the quantitative standard of how high it grew. Any time you use a quantitative standard, there is a good chance your experiment can benefit from mathematical understanding. Most fundamentally perhaps, one can plot the data points then approximate a function to describe the relationship between sunlight and grass height. Then, if one knows math, one can translate one's knowledge about functions into further educated guesses about the behavior of grass. Also, if one is curious about the results that others have already obtained on the subject, the ability to read critically is probably going to be a crucial one to have.

That said, I happen to believe that reading and math are both fertile sources for personal creativity. Some of my most prized remnants of my grade school education are poems that I wrote, either for official assignments or personal gratification, I was a sad little emo-kid (see how I pretend that has changed...). To consider the ability to write as independent from the ability to read seems silly enough that I believe I do not need to address it, please correct me if I am mistaken. Another piece of paper that I treasure contains my verification that the power rule of differentiation works for arbitrary polynomials. This was not part of a homework assignment, but I knew the power rule and the limit definition of the derivative, and I was curious why it worked. If that isn't independent exploration, then what is?

I guess that my main point is that, not only are math and reading essential parts of scientific exploration, but personal exploration is an integral part of any education, math and reading included. Furthermore, we absolutely NEED educators at every level emphasizing this message to students. Otherwise we populate our college calculus classes with students concerned only with what is true and what the answer is, rather than why things are true and how to obtain answers for themselves. This trend is not only deleterious to our education system, but also to our society, as it seems destined to produce citizens who would rather be given the "answers" than wrestle, often futilely, with the important questions.

You're Beautiful

There is a thing on Facebook called, "Tell Her She's Beautiful" day. Despite the gendered pronoun, it is intended to address the image issues that men and women face in our society, and hopefully help build positive body image for all of us. You know, women get called men and lumped into mankind all the time, get over it dudes!

Anyway, since telling any casual acquaintance of mine that they are beautiful in person seems uncharacteristically forward of me, I decided to do the next best thing and write a blog post about it. So, you are beautiful!

How do I know? Well, for starters I am of the opinion that most other people are good looking, yes, that includes you guys, I wouldn't call you attractive, but rather aesthetically pleasing. Secondly, I find that my appreciation of a person's appearance is correlated with how interesting I consider them as a person. Since you are still reading this post, I am inclined to think you find abstract thought and identity issues interesting, therefore you probably are an interesting person. Ergo, you are beautiful!

Body image is a tricky thing. Last summer I made some modest lifestyle changes for health reasons that, as an incidental side effect, caused me to lose some weight. When this happened I began to hope that, should I lose enough weight, I might gain some self confidence. However, the rational part of my mind soon pointed out that I have always considered myself the "fat kid," and no matter what I look like, as long as I am the "fat kid" in my mind, my personality is unlikely to be altered significantly.

We, especially women, are exposed to unrealistic and unhealthy standards of appearance in our culture. I think it is important that we support each other in attempting to achieve health, not some unimportant number like weight or waistline. As a professional mathematician, I will let you know that there are a lot of very important numbers, your weight is not among them.