A question for the missionaries

The Fundamental Attribution Error happens (all them time) when people attribute poor behavior to the fundamentally bad nature of the people who are behaving poorly--when in fact, it is a matter of their choices and especially circumstances.

We know that poor behavior is significantly a function of circumstance because of evidence from trials, like the Milgram Experiments and the Stanford Prison Experiment.

As far as I'm aware, there are only two reasonable interpretations of said evidence. We can decide that virtually all people are fundamentally bad, or we can decide that virtually all people are fundamentally malleable. I believe that people are fundamentally malleable.

If we accept this premise (and you're welcome to debate it with me), we come swiftly to the conclusion that the circumstances in which people are placed, circumstances shaped by our societal institutions, are of paramount importance.


Having laid this groundwork, I now pose a question which applies to any conservative (/"conservative"?) form of Christianity. Research has shown that three greatest predictive factors for how frequently rape happens in a given society are:

-Separation of genders
-Level of power women hold
-General level of interpersonal violence.

Therefore, why would God--presuming there is a God, who desires a world where the occurrence of rape is minimized, within the constraint of preserving human agency--set up organizations and social structures in which genders are segregated and women are prohibited from holding primary power positions?

More Zizek

"The perplexing fact about the "terrorist" attacks is that they do not fit our standard opposition of evil as egotism or disregard for the common good, and good as the spirit of and actual readiness for sacrifice in the name of some higher cause. Terrorists cannot but appear as something akin to Milton's Satan with his "Evil, be thou my Good": While they pursue what appear to us to be evil goals with evil means, the very form of their activity meets the highest standard of the good. The resolution of this enigma isn't difficult and was already known to Rousseau. Egotism, or the concern for one's well-being, is not opposed to the common good, since altruistic norms can easily be deduced from egotist concerns. Individualism versus communitarianism, utilitarianism versus the assertion of universal norms, are false oppositions since the two opposed options amount to the same result. The critics who complain how, in today's hedonistic-egoistic society, true values are lacking totally miss the point. The true opposite of egoist self-love is not altruism, a concern for the common good, but envy, ressentiment, which makes me act against my own interests. The true evil, which is the death drive, involves self-sabotage. It makes us act against our own interests."

"Rawls thus proposes a terrifying model of a society in which hierarchy is directly legitimised in natural properties, thereby missing the simple lesson an anecdote about a Slovene pesant makes palpably clear. The peasant is given a choice by a good witch. She will either give him one cow and his neighbor two cows, or she'll take one cow from him and two from his neighbor. The peasant immediately chooses the second option. Gore Vidal demonstrates the point succinctly: "It is not enough for me to win--the other must loose." The catch of envy/ressentment is that it not only endorses the zero-sum game principle where my victory is the other's loss. It also implies a gap between the two, which is not the positive gap (we can all win with no losers at all_ but a negative one. If I have to choose between my gain and my opponent's loss, I prefer the opponent's loss, even if it means a loss to me. It is as if my eventual gain from my opponent's loss functions as a kind of pathological element that stains the purity of my victory."

(from Violence.)

anything to dance like water

In response to this.


I find it a frustrating when people say, "I took a dance class, but I'm not any good." We wouldn't expect to have decent handwriting after studying it a couple hours a week for a year, but somehow dance is supposed to be different.


I have a theory about why this is.

Grace is when you belong in your body--when the conscious you and the physical you--all of it, not just brain and eyes and hands--are one. It lives in our breath, which acts on whole body movement, reflective of emotion and subject to conscious control.

So we can all Feel grace--feel how it's supposed to be, in our own breath and bones. When we hear that music on the street, our lungs and hearts are already responding, sending messages out about that Supposed To Be, but somehow the limbs and shoulders and hips have been left behind. . . because we've taught them how to sit still in class, but never how to move again. Busy with our brains and hands, we never taught our bodies how to write.


If you are serious about grace, start with two years of yoga and ballet, focusing on technique and breath. At maybe six months in, add hip hop or African, and movement analysis--focusing on Head-tail.

After two years you will have begun. :)


A favorite dancer, of late: here.
Photo is from here.

control freak

I don't think of myself as the kind of person who constantly wastes herself on petty arguments, but possibly I am. This comes up because I often hurt people badly without understanding how or why. Lately, attempting to approach such an insoluble problem, I've noticed a definite common thread: boundaries.

Of course, basically everything about human interaction can be boiled down to boundaries if we aim for it. These are the questions that try everyone; what's mine and what's yours? What do we have the right to do to each other? Perhaps most essentially, what is the just way to negotiate the grey overlap of our conflicting interests?*

I was mulling over this problem in the library today--trying, as I often do, to find something relevant from somebody else who had already thought it over. Since I was looking for a personal psychological level (instead of, say, just war theory), the best I could find was an unexceptional self-help book called "The control freak." Browsing, I came upon this: someone is a control freak whenever they care about the topic at hand more than anybody else involved does.

There's an important insight here, but I have to disagree with the formulation. Of course differing values have to be factored into the equation--but the way in which one asserts a greater attachment to a given outcome can be right or wrong. Perhaps, ultimately, whoever wants it more will win--but we don't all have the same threshold of desire that will push us into some invasive, obnoxious, or questionably ethical realm of tactics.

In the realm of personal relationships, there's always got to be some agreement about what's fair--about what actions are called for by given circumstances, by given levels of desire. For whatever reason, it seems that I'm blind to any number of these social agreements which make things possible.

I want rules to be fair; I want language to be precise; I want authority figures (and others, but especially anyone with power over me) to understand me, respect me, and make sense. These are not usually separate problems. In general, people do not care very much that language be precise, and as long as they are not effected personally very much, they are willing to accept rules that are not fair.

From my end, I often don't understand what is supposed to be embarrassing. I often don't understand the nuances of social grace, that protector of boundaries which keeps people safe, and I really don't understand people's deep attachment to the status quo.


All there is to do, really, is keep watching, reading, trying to figure out where everybody stands. . . and maybe it's more important that I understand the rules than it is for most people--because ultimately, in almost all situations, I'm going to be the one at the table who cares more than anybody else.




*Or put differently, the entire question of ethics is a question of boundaries.

Streetcorner ballerina

Today was an altogether new job experience; I started work as a Sign Holder.

I'd thought that this would be a straightforward matter of selling my body to the market in a whole new way, but no; not at all. There's much more to it. Perhaps this wouldn't be so if I weren't such a perfectionist, but here we are.

You see, there are people in all those cars. People who are bored, hurried, tired, stuck. Waiting, at the light. Captive people, who will expect a fake and tired smile, half hearted sign wiggling, whole hearted efforts to avoid eye contact. They will watch me count the minutes. We could all be zombies together, I supposed, and I would still get paid. . . But I am not a fan of Terrible.

So it goes something like this. I walk; sign held aside, arms moving adagio, third and fourth. I am listening to well tempered clavier on guitar without an ipod, feet pointed, tracing, articulating; torso lifted, ever so subtle the epaulement. I am open, projecting, concert hall virtuoso making sparkling eye contact with every passing car. At the change of the light I return to the corner and hold the sign out like a barre, doing a few rounds of exercises while the audience returns again.

And they watch; they more than watch. My favorite expression is on the faces of the ones so clearly delighted it can barely be contained.

After an hour I can't hack the precision for ballet. I try African, ballroom; general overplayed goofiness. They stop watching; some give the ultimate insult, too cool to make contact, eyes resolutely ahead. I am tired. I wonder why the coffee shop doesn't put just their advertising money into sponsoring community events in the arts, and then remember--this is not expected of me. We are all used to be zombies.

It seems a little elegance and calm, warm-wrapped in irony, has clearly been the order of the day.