Banality of Evil

From a writing prompt on our Honors Psychology Discussion Board:

Q: Think of a time when you resisted conformity or obedience.  What were the reasons behind resisting conformity or obedience? If you were a participant in Milgram’s study, would you have obeyed the experimenter? Why or why not?
 
I have resisted conformity and obedience many, many times in this life. Generally, my reasons were a mix of practicality, ethics, and sheer orneriness.

On the Nature of War

 From my weekly comments for Honors Colloquium:

"War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will." ~ Carl von Clausewitz

War. Genocide. Engagement. Atrocity. Intentionality. These are topics upon which we have touched. We discussed war as an act of politics, requiring a state-sanctioned entity; as an act of religion, requiring only hate of Other; and as an atrocity, no matter what form it takes. But at the core of all of these things is intentionality. Whether the motivation is political, religious, social, or even personal, war is, as von Clausewitz posits, “an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will”. The intention of force is war. Thus the machinations of divorce attorneys, Congressmen, and nations alike are all acts of war and part of a larger war, in which we all fight for power on multiple levels, every day of our lives. Which frankly sounds exhausting.

Counter Friction

Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience is a famous and well-regarded example of effective rhetoric. In this essay, Thoreau used all three corners of the rhetorical triangle to outline what he saw as the problems with the government of the time, and with government in general, due to their inherent lack of respect for the individual, instead preferring to maintain the status quo of the whole, even with the cost being widespread injustice and corruption, which Thoreau opined were the chief products manufactured thereby. Governments are by their nature, according to Thoreau, generally more harmful than helpful, although he did profess a respect for the concept of government, and wished for a better government that does more to respect the rights of individuals and liberty as a whole. Specifically, Thoreau spoke about the Mexican-American War, poll taxes, slavery, and other laws that he saw as unjust. In regards to these topics specifically and government in general, Thoreau attempted to persuade his audience, which was comprised of students in Concord, Massachusetts, to his point of view with skillful use of the rhetorical triangle, which is to say through the careful application of both logical and emotional arguments, combined with ethos in the form of his academic reputation.

Thoreau's Use of the Rhetorical Triangle in 'Civil Disobedience'

From an in-class writing exercise on rhetoric from Honors Composition II:

Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience seeks to outline the problems with our current mode of government and with government in general due to their inherent lack of respect for the individual, instead preferring to maintain the status quo of the whole, even at the expense of injustice and corruption, which Thoreau opines are the chief products manufactured thereby. Governments are, according to Thoreau, generally more harmful than helpful, although he does profess a respect for the concept of government, and wishes for a better government that does more to respect the rights of individuals and liberty as a whole.

Killing Warfare

From my weekly comments for Honors Colloquium:

“Till at last the child's mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child's mind. And not the child's mind only. The adult's mind too - all his life long. The mind that judges and desire and decides - made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions... Suggestions from the State." -Director Malthus, Brave New World

This week’s topic was warfare and evil. Our class exercise on Wednesday focused on a replacement for warfare. All of our own attempts to replace warfare have accepted that warfare is a normal part of our society for which we must account; almost as a force of will, or power, because the tendency to war is seen as a part of human nature. But is it?

On Hobbes and Locke

From my weekly comments for Honors Colloquium II:

“As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State "What does it matter to me?" the State may be given up for lost.”                    ―Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The ideas of John Locke and Thomas Hobbes are really very interesting, especially in regards to how different they are, and yet with such similar conclusions. Locke saw Man as a social creature, whereas Hobbes saw Man as a solitary creature. Locke believed in the inherent goodness of man, while Hobbes believes that the natural lives of men would be ‘poor, nasty, brutish, and short’. Locke believed in an intrinsic sense of ethics within the souls of men, while Hobbes saw morality as the will of a ruler, forced upon the people. Most importantly, Locke believed in natural rights, independent of a government, while Hobbes believed that any rights allowed come from the state itself. However different the works of these two men, together they make up makes up one solid set of ideas known as ‘social contract theory’, wherein people implicitly consent to a set of common rules and authority in exchange for protection. Despite the diversity of the ideas of Hobbes and Locke, they are the foundation of our government, which is a very interesting idea.

American Federal Government Presentation #2: Instant Runoff Voting

Instant Runoff Voting: A Solution to Hyperpluralism

Hyperpluralism is a problem. The idea of our pluralistic system is one of distributed power. Interest groups influence the government, and the government makes policy. This works best when there are many special interests groups promoting candidates from which we choose representatives, who then balance one another within our government. In the US, we have many, many political parties, but rarely do we notice anyone not from the two largest parties. This has led to a state of hyperpluralism, wherein our two main parties have grown so strong that they've suppressed both the power of the government and the will of the people. We now have two angry mobs playing Tug of War with our civil rights, our economy, and our lives. We should reform our Presidential electoral system in order to provide a robust selection of candidates, which would in turn, reintroduce balance to our system of governance.

Government Presentation #1: An Analysis of The Judiciary Branch, as Proposed in the Federalist #78-84

My notes and handout from my first presentation for my American Federal Government class.

Presentation Notes:

I'd like to begin with a very famous quote. It that appears nowhere within the Federalist, but is nevertheless present throughout.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

This statement encapsulates the entire basis of our Union. We have rights. The government exists to secure them. That's the point. Out of these branches, the Judiciary does the most to secure and promote those rights, because they provide 'equal justice under the law' to every citizen. (Except maybe Dred Scott.)

"Vell, Mitt's just zis guy, you know?"*

Dressage. Really. Although I have friends whom are avid riders, I had to search to see for the definition of 'dressage'. Apparently, it's horse ballet**, and is also known as the highest expression of horse training. Regular folks - folks who work and pay taxes and worry about a mortgage - don't own dressage horses. We also don't declare a tax loss of $77,000 for the care and feeding of a dressage horse that qualifies for the next Olympics. An interesting parallel is that in 2010, the same year in which they declared that loss, the mean yearly per capita income was less than $28,000.

But, hey, he totally represents me as a citizen!***

*Zaphod is equally well-suited to be our President, and for exactly the same reasons.

**I'm not being sarcastic. That's really what it's called!

***I am totally being sarcastic.

Checks and Balances

The Lovings

It always irks me when people speak as though voting were the e-all, end-all of our government. Today, I spied this gem on Facebook and had to respond:

"where as i personally have no problem with same sex marriage..unless i am mistaken wasn't this shot down in north carolina by a public vote? if so then the only people to blame is the supporters of same sex marriage for not getting enough votes...giving someone shit for voting their beliefs is WRONG no matter what side of the issue you are on in my opinion."

On Government Identification and Gender

Yay! Australians now have another option for gender on their passports.

Transgender people and those of ambiguous sex will be able to list their gender as indeterminate, which will be shown on passports as an X.

So this is great, buuuuuut... Can anyone tell me why gender is listed at all? Because I have yet to hear a useful reason and if you just remove it, then no one can use your passport to single you out for abuse. Let's think about it. There are more than two genders in the world, so it's not an either/or choice. Google 'intersexed' and then think about the numbers:

If you ask experts at medical centers how often a child is born so noticeably atypical in terms of genitalia that a specialist in sex differentiation is called in, the number comes out to about 1 in 1500 to 1 in 2000 births. But a lot more people than that are born with subtler forms of sex anatomy variations, some of which won’t show up until later in life.

That's alot of future passport holders, so let's break it down:

What's the point of identification? To identify someone, right? Well, gender doesn't do that. Right now, most countries require you to 'fill our your form' with the gender assigned to you at birth, which may have nothing to do with your actual gender or your actual genitalia or your actual appearance. So if your mom's OB wrote down 'boy', based on intersexed genitalia that looked more boy-like than girl-like, and then you hit puberty and grew tits to go with your girl-like frame and face, you're still going to have to put 'male' on the dotted line and you're still going to look not-traditionally-male. As you can see, gender does nothing to describe someone, even if the slot were open like hair color is open. I mean, we all agree on what 'brown' and 'blonde' mean, but 'male' and 'female'?

More importantly, gender is not an identifying feature unless you are looking at someone's genitalia. It is akin to listing penis and breast sizes on a passport. Sure, it would be a fairly accurate descriptor, but ultimately not useful. Since that's not a reasonable means of identification, it should be dropped. (Especially since it can be used to single people out for abuse.)

To take another tack, let's think about this with analogies! Intersexed people (As in, biologically outside of the gender binary.) are almost as prevalent as redheads so I'll try that.

If gender were hair, then current wisdom says that we should list only blonde and brunette as hair color options, without regard to either the natural redheads, people whom are bald, or people who have chosen to change the outward color of their hair, for whatever reason. Listing only two hair colors would not be useful, because those two options don't help to describe people.

This has nothing to do with what you think about intersexed or transgendered people, nothing to do with political correctness, and everything to do with the intended purpose of a passport, which is to describe the identity and nationality of the holder.