It's finally happening!
Like a good twenty-something from the modern era, I get most of my news from the Daily Show, the Colbert Report, and now John Oliver's new show (side note: I might have questioned whether I was ready for yet another show of the exact same format until it first aired, and I fit it into my tv-watching routine as if it had always been there). So it was this morning, while watching last night's Colbert Report, that I heard that the ice caps are now unavoidably, irreparably, going to collapse. What a relief!
Not that this is anything like a real solution to the problem of climate change. Don't infer from my relief that I believe we should continue on our way, passing these points-of-no-return until our planet crumbles to nothing like a dried-out sandcastle. Colbert makes this same point, in his usual satirical style: though one of the most frequently cautioned effects of climate change has occurred, all is not lost, and we should not as a consequence remain apathetic towards the environment.
Yet it is a relief, and it's a funny feeling, which is what motivated me to write in the first place.
In life, and in fiction, there are these foreboding things -- these ominous signs that something terrible will happen -- which build to a climax where either something bad does happen, or it doesn't, and it's crisis averted. More often than not in fiction we're treated to the happier of these two outcomes: with only paltry sacrifice, the evil is vanquished and everything returns to normal. But sometimes the story opts for the alternative: bad, irreparable things happen to the protagonist; real sacrifices are made, and nothing is quite the same in the aftermath.
But let me take a moment to define these two alternatives in more depth; because the difference between them isn't so much the quantity of bad that is allowed to happen in the story, but how much those bad things defy formula, and thus your expectations of what could happen. In a horror movie, for example, you come in expecting that almost any character could die; even the protagonist will either remain unscathed, or die at the end of the story. What you don't expect is for the protagonist to lose an arm, or become paralyzed from the waist down. Paradoxically this kind of sacrifice is too real, too heavy -- even when compared to the protagonist's actual death -- to occur in most horror films. So, when ominous signs abound in a story, you may quiet some of your anxiety with the knowledge that certain events most likely will not happen -- a phenomenon sometimes called 'plot armour' -- the specifics of this protection being defined by the genre.
The latter of the two aforementioned alternatives, then, occurs when a story defies formula, breaking the tacit agreement between writer and viewer that some bad things are off-limits. This can have a disquieting effect, first because we allow ourselves to become more attached to characters we think are protected by plot armour, and second because it is quite jarring to be derailed from the tracks of regular movie formula. Expectations defied, the story becomes more real in the sense that we can't be nearly so sure what will happen next. Consequently, I tend to prefer stories that have some elements of formula defiance; they're often more memorable, more daring, more interesting, and most importantly, they engender some rare feelings.
Plot armour doesn't keep us from feeling anxious for characters. I'd argue that these characters are the ones we allow ourselves to invest in the most, and so we feel the most anxiety for them when they are placed in danger. Plus, writers are very good at making disaster appear imminent, plotting a character's path inexorably toward tragedy, upping the ante to the point where only deus ex machina, or a very clever bit of writing can save them. In this moment we, as the viewer, hoping that the story won't resort to divine intervention, and unable to think of the planned clever escape, are truly worried for the plot-protected character. There's a sort-of cognitive dissonance that needs to be resolved: we believe that the character will escape, but we don't know how, and as the situation becomes increasingly dire, we ache for its final resolution.
Thing is, it's not so different in real life. We have real-life narratives with real-life characters that we view as protected by the same sort of plot-armour. The privileged among us, of which I count myself, and much of the Western world, manage to move through life maintaining the illusion that the world is just, that bad things happen only to bad people, and that everything will work out in the end. We strive to view the world as a narrative that makes sense, where things happen for a reason, where there is order. Thus, us optimists, when we are moved inexorably toward tragedy, plead for the same resolution -- we staunchly maintain the belief that everything will work out, but we don't know how, or when.
And what happens in the movies when the bad thing really does happen? The first thing is a quiet release; the dissonance has been resolved, just not in the way we had hoped. We can finally stop racking our brains for a solution to the protagonist's difficulty. And in some ways this outcome is the more relieving of the two; because once something is lost it can't be lost again. We've just been put through an ordeal because of this character, we care about them, and as a consequence we now understand acutely that their existence is a liability to us. But if they cease to exist, then they're not a liability any more. We won't have to worry about them ever again.
There's a lesson in these formula defying stories. We relate to plot-protected characters in the same way as we relate to the people in our lives -- believing that they must survive, that they must be okay in the end. And when that illusion is broken, it can bring us out of our own narratives; it can make us realize assumptions we take for granted -- about our safety, about the safety of those we love, about our life trajectories -- are grounded in nothing but blind optimism. This is an experience intrinsic to the feeling of loss, and, should one experience actual loss, exposure to these kinds of stories may lay the groundwork for understanding the experience.
To return to the tangential matter of climate change with which I began, perhaps a greater exposure to the formula defying narrative would be helpful here. Perhaps we need a little less optimism in our lives if we are to believe that we really are destroying our planet. That, or we could wait until we experience more real life loss -- until we lose enough geological and environmental things -- and we at last realize that our optimism is unfounded.
Thursday, 15 May 2014
Friday, 19 April 2013
The Slippery Slope Argument
Does that banner say 'updates twice a week'? Oh, woops, it's meant to say updates twice a year. What's that? It's been two years since my last post? I... er... *fiddles with neck-tie nervously*.... anyway I'm back now for another post, so all my readers that have been refreshing this page furiously for the past 700 or so days can rejoice!
I'd like to talk about what's known as the "slippery slope" argument. It's something that I see bandied about all the time in politics (at least what The Daily Show shows me of politics), and most recently in the gun-control debate. Placing any regulations on guns, it seems, will put the United States on an inexorable path toward complete banning of all firearms. This is the form the argument generally takes; in the abstract it's like this: while there is nothing wrong with doing X, if you do X you will eventually do X* which is essentially X to a larger degree, which is bad, therefore don't do X. Notice that this is the same as the "gateway drug" argument used to scare teens away from smoking weed (if you smoke weed, you'll eventually shoot-up heroin, so don't smoke weed).
Given the frequency with which this argument is used, I think it's worth considering whether or not this argument is ever a good one. And, if it is a good one in those instances, what are the qualities of those cases that make it a good one? A meta-analytic study by Hall and Lynskey (2005)[1] gives some credence to the "gateway drug" argument. Apparently there are consistent correlations between cannabis use and use of other drugs, with early cannabis use being an even stronger predictor of later use of other drugs. The authors find that this correlation can be explained by three factors: (1) people who start smoking weed are more likely to have traits that predict use of other drugs, (2) the need to buy weed puts one in an environment where other drugs are available, and (3) smoking weed is correlated with being part of a drug sub-culture, which will encourage the person to use other drugs.
So, here we have a perfectly good argument for why you shouldn't smoke weed, even if you think that doing so is perfectly fine in itself. That is, assuming that you think that doing other drugs is bad, and something to be avoided (which I'm not sure that I agree with). Also the argument is entirely contingent on social factors; nowhere is it claimed that those who smoke weed will, qua smoking weed, develop the urge to do other drugs. Rather it just happens that smoking weed is likely to put one in an environment that makes other drugs readily accessible and encourages their use. But this is an important distinction because one's social situation is relatively flexible compared to one's psychological situation. It would be easy enough for a person who wants to smoke weed to avoid socializing with those who want something more; whereas, if smoking weed itself caused the urge to do other drugs, well, this would not be so easily managed.
And here we might distinguish between a 'true' slippery slope argument, and a 'fake' one. I think for a slippery slope argument to be true in needs to be the case that X really does cause one to do X* in the long-run. The gateway drug argument does not satisfy these criteria: we could imagine a world where, holding human psychology constant, weed does not increase likelihood of doing other drugs, in fact it may not be so distant a world at all. All one would need to do is separate smoking weed from the environment and subculture that involves other drugs -- perhaps the same way that alcohol is separate from the drug subculture (and if you need evidence for this, consider how strangely uncomfortable people are when you call alcohol a drug). This is important because if it is possible to separate weed from the environment that leads one to do (what we are assuming are) bad things, and weed is (we assume) good/neutral, then laws or measures that work to limit weed use don't really attack the problem, but only one of it's antecedents, which is not in itself harmful. And I don't see how one could argue here that eliminating the good/neutral things one does that are only contingently associated with the bad could be better than the obvious alternative, which is eliminating the direct causes of the bad things -- i.e. association with the drug subculture, etc.
So I don't consider the gateway drug scenario to be a true slippery slope argument, nor do I see it as a particularly good reason for banning the use of cannabis (any other arguments against it notwithstanding). But the discussion brings out the key factor that defines a true slippery slope argument: X needs to actually cause X*. How I defined 'actually cause' in the case of cannabis use is something like this: in all possible worlds where human psychology is the same as our present world, X significantly increases the chances of doing X*. It's important that human psychology is held constant because we're particularly worried about humans in our example -- that is, we're worried about whether weed increases other drug use for humans and not some however slightly modified version of humans. But the thing we need to hold constant depends on the particular case -- whatever entity is doing X, it is the nature of that entity we need to hold constant. Thus, for the gun-control example mentioned above, we need to hold the 'state psychology' constant. We need to say that, given the current structure of the US government and norms, it is the case that any small regulation on guns will significantly increase the likelihood of greater gun regulation.
It is no doubt the case that laws and norms interact in a complex, and ill-defined way. As such, I think it would be a relatively safe prediction that enacting a law will, over time, cause the development of norms that are congruent with that law. This, for two general reasons: (1) there is, in most subcultures, a norm against breaking any law, and (2) laws make the activity they prohibit less prominent, and also likely associate it with pariah groups that the average person would not want to be connected with. But this prediction is by no means certain, and besides, it only predicts that passing a law will cause a norm associated with following that law, and not anything over and above that law. What the slippery slope argument predicts is something further, that creating a certain law will establish a norm that will give way to even stricter laws of the same nature.
But this is an odd sort of prediction, and one must consider what basis there is for it in general, and then specifically in the gun-control debate. I suppose anti-gun-control advocates are envisioning something like the gradual "brain-washing" of the American people: if they allow enacting law X at this time, then people will become accustomed to law X so that the more egregious X* doesn't seem so bad any more. However, says the anti-gun-control advocate, they are wrong that X* is not bad, it really is bad, but they have simply been brain-washed by law X's persistent presence. I imagine that the advocate has something like the gradual process by which Jews where first stigmatized, then ghettoized, then sent to concentration camps in Nazi Germany in mind. However, this example has a fundamental difference than the slippery slope argument: at no point was it 'okay' to establish systemic inequities for the Jewish people, even in the relatively minor ways that it was done in the beginning (side note: I have only shaky knowledge of the events of the holocaust, this example is meant only to be illustrative and not factual). A true slippery slope argument states that X is good/neutral in itself, but it will lead to X* which is bad.
And here, I think, is the real difficulty with the slippery slope argument: it is only relevant when X is good or neutral. If X itself is bad, then there is no reason to appeal to what X 'might' lead to, because you already have reason not to enact X. But if X is good in itself, then we need to be really sure that X will lead to X* if we are going to, for this reason, prevent it from being enacted. And is there ever really good evidence for this? I question whether allowing a law that restricts certain activity is at all causally connected to allowing stricter laws of the same kind. In fact, those who use this argument are blatantly inconsistent on this point. Legalizing same-sex marriage is a slippery slope toward slackening marriage laws to the point where bestiality is legal; on the other hand, stricter gun-control measures are a slippery slope towards outlawing guns altogether. If we are to take these arguments seriously, then it appears that making a law in any direction (stricter or slacker) begins a slippery slope into whatever terrible extreme the person can imagine. But this makes this argument appropriate for any situation! I don't think the government should build bike lanes. Why? Because this is a slippery slope toward the banishment of all cars from the road. Neither do I think that the government should remove bike lanes that are not being used. Why? Because this is a slippery slope toward taking out bike lanes altogether. Most importantly the argument assumes that those people who enact laws are completely incapable of setting the boundaries in the correct place: set any boundary, and you will be led toward that boundary's worst extreme. But if this is true, then how the hell did we make any laws in the first place? Shouldn't we find ourselves in some sort of bizarre state, where some laws are terribly restrictive, and there is a complete absence of other laws that are very important?
In sum, if you are using a slippery slope argument, it implies to me that you cannot think of an intuitive reason why the thing you are against is bad in itself. But, if there are also reasons why the thing is good (i.e. it's not just neutral) then your slippery slope argument cannot possibly hold weight against these reasons. Having considered it, I really don't see how the argument could ever be anything but an impediment to progress.
[1] Hall, W.D., & Lynskey, M. (2005) Is cannabis a gateway drug? Testing hypotheses about the relationship between cannabis use and the use of other illicit drugs. Drug and Alcohol Review, 24, 39-48
I'd like to talk about what's known as the "slippery slope" argument. It's something that I see bandied about all the time in politics (at least what The Daily Show shows me of politics), and most recently in the gun-control debate. Placing any regulations on guns, it seems, will put the United States on an inexorable path toward complete banning of all firearms. This is the form the argument generally takes; in the abstract it's like this: while there is nothing wrong with doing X, if you do X you will eventually do X* which is essentially X to a larger degree, which is bad, therefore don't do X. Notice that this is the same as the "gateway drug" argument used to scare teens away from smoking weed (if you smoke weed, you'll eventually shoot-up heroin, so don't smoke weed).
Given the frequency with which this argument is used, I think it's worth considering whether or not this argument is ever a good one. And, if it is a good one in those instances, what are the qualities of those cases that make it a good one? A meta-analytic study by Hall and Lynskey (2005)[1] gives some credence to the "gateway drug" argument. Apparently there are consistent correlations between cannabis use and use of other drugs, with early cannabis use being an even stronger predictor of later use of other drugs. The authors find that this correlation can be explained by three factors: (1) people who start smoking weed are more likely to have traits that predict use of other drugs, (2) the need to buy weed puts one in an environment where other drugs are available, and (3) smoking weed is correlated with being part of a drug sub-culture, which will encourage the person to use other drugs.
So, here we have a perfectly good argument for why you shouldn't smoke weed, even if you think that doing so is perfectly fine in itself. That is, assuming that you think that doing other drugs is bad, and something to be avoided (which I'm not sure that I agree with). Also the argument is entirely contingent on social factors; nowhere is it claimed that those who smoke weed will, qua smoking weed, develop the urge to do other drugs. Rather it just happens that smoking weed is likely to put one in an environment that makes other drugs readily accessible and encourages their use. But this is an important distinction because one's social situation is relatively flexible compared to one's psychological situation. It would be easy enough for a person who wants to smoke weed to avoid socializing with those who want something more; whereas, if smoking weed itself caused the urge to do other drugs, well, this would not be so easily managed.
And here we might distinguish between a 'true' slippery slope argument, and a 'fake' one. I think for a slippery slope argument to be true in needs to be the case that X really does cause one to do X* in the long-run. The gateway drug argument does not satisfy these criteria: we could imagine a world where, holding human psychology constant, weed does not increase likelihood of doing other drugs, in fact it may not be so distant a world at all. All one would need to do is separate smoking weed from the environment and subculture that involves other drugs -- perhaps the same way that alcohol is separate from the drug subculture (and if you need evidence for this, consider how strangely uncomfortable people are when you call alcohol a drug). This is important because if it is possible to separate weed from the environment that leads one to do (what we are assuming are) bad things, and weed is (we assume) good/neutral, then laws or measures that work to limit weed use don't really attack the problem, but only one of it's antecedents, which is not in itself harmful. And I don't see how one could argue here that eliminating the good/neutral things one does that are only contingently associated with the bad could be better than the obvious alternative, which is eliminating the direct causes of the bad things -- i.e. association with the drug subculture, etc.
So I don't consider the gateway drug scenario to be a true slippery slope argument, nor do I see it as a particularly good reason for banning the use of cannabis (any other arguments against it notwithstanding). But the discussion brings out the key factor that defines a true slippery slope argument: X needs to actually cause X*. How I defined 'actually cause' in the case of cannabis use is something like this: in all possible worlds where human psychology is the same as our present world, X significantly increases the chances of doing X*. It's important that human psychology is held constant because we're particularly worried about humans in our example -- that is, we're worried about whether weed increases other drug use for humans and not some however slightly modified version of humans. But the thing we need to hold constant depends on the particular case -- whatever entity is doing X, it is the nature of that entity we need to hold constant. Thus, for the gun-control example mentioned above, we need to hold the 'state psychology' constant. We need to say that, given the current structure of the US government and norms, it is the case that any small regulation on guns will significantly increase the likelihood of greater gun regulation.
It is no doubt the case that laws and norms interact in a complex, and ill-defined way. As such, I think it would be a relatively safe prediction that enacting a law will, over time, cause the development of norms that are congruent with that law. This, for two general reasons: (1) there is, in most subcultures, a norm against breaking any law, and (2) laws make the activity they prohibit less prominent, and also likely associate it with pariah groups that the average person would not want to be connected with. But this prediction is by no means certain, and besides, it only predicts that passing a law will cause a norm associated with following that law, and not anything over and above that law. What the slippery slope argument predicts is something further, that creating a certain law will establish a norm that will give way to even stricter laws of the same nature.
But this is an odd sort of prediction, and one must consider what basis there is for it in general, and then specifically in the gun-control debate. I suppose anti-gun-control advocates are envisioning something like the gradual "brain-washing" of the American people: if they allow enacting law X at this time, then people will become accustomed to law X so that the more egregious X* doesn't seem so bad any more. However, says the anti-gun-control advocate, they are wrong that X* is not bad, it really is bad, but they have simply been brain-washed by law X's persistent presence. I imagine that the advocate has something like the gradual process by which Jews where first stigmatized, then ghettoized, then sent to concentration camps in Nazi Germany in mind. However, this example has a fundamental difference than the slippery slope argument: at no point was it 'okay' to establish systemic inequities for the Jewish people, even in the relatively minor ways that it was done in the beginning (side note: I have only shaky knowledge of the events of the holocaust, this example is meant only to be illustrative and not factual). A true slippery slope argument states that X is good/neutral in itself, but it will lead to X* which is bad.
And here, I think, is the real difficulty with the slippery slope argument: it is only relevant when X is good or neutral. If X itself is bad, then there is no reason to appeal to what X 'might' lead to, because you already have reason not to enact X. But if X is good in itself, then we need to be really sure that X will lead to X* if we are going to, for this reason, prevent it from being enacted. And is there ever really good evidence for this? I question whether allowing a law that restricts certain activity is at all causally connected to allowing stricter laws of the same kind. In fact, those who use this argument are blatantly inconsistent on this point. Legalizing same-sex marriage is a slippery slope toward slackening marriage laws to the point where bestiality is legal; on the other hand, stricter gun-control measures are a slippery slope towards outlawing guns altogether. If we are to take these arguments seriously, then it appears that making a law in any direction (stricter or slacker) begins a slippery slope into whatever terrible extreme the person can imagine. But this makes this argument appropriate for any situation! I don't think the government should build bike lanes. Why? Because this is a slippery slope toward the banishment of all cars from the road. Neither do I think that the government should remove bike lanes that are not being used. Why? Because this is a slippery slope toward taking out bike lanes altogether. Most importantly the argument assumes that those people who enact laws are completely incapable of setting the boundaries in the correct place: set any boundary, and you will be led toward that boundary's worst extreme. But if this is true, then how the hell did we make any laws in the first place? Shouldn't we find ourselves in some sort of bizarre state, where some laws are terribly restrictive, and there is a complete absence of other laws that are very important?
In sum, if you are using a slippery slope argument, it implies to me that you cannot think of an intuitive reason why the thing you are against is bad in itself. But, if there are also reasons why the thing is good (i.e. it's not just neutral) then your slippery slope argument cannot possibly hold weight against these reasons. Having considered it, I really don't see how the argument could ever be anything but an impediment to progress.
[1] Hall, W.D., & Lynskey, M. (2005) Is cannabis a gateway drug? Testing hypotheses about the relationship between cannabis use and the use of other illicit drugs. Drug and Alcohol Review, 24, 39-48
Wednesday, 8 June 2011
Dogs
I'd like to take a break from my summer vacation to talk to all of you about dogs:
When it comes to animals, none of man's biological engineering projects has been quite so successful or gone on for so long as the creation of the dog. Wikipedia told me that dogs first began to be domesticated from the grey wolf around 15, 000 years ago. It's apparently debated whether or not they naturally evolved towards coexistence with man, or if they were artificially selected from the beginning. Either way, at some point man took up the reigns of their genetic development and radically reshaped the species. We might think of dogs as more 'natural' or 'closer to nature' than humans, but to me this is a bit of a stretch. When you consider that their entire being has been tailored by humans, to coexist with humans, they don't seem quite so natural.
And what is the upshot of all this? The dog is one of the most successful and biologically diverse of all animal species. For 15, 000 years this thing has been reshaped by man into every imaginable variety. From the massive, imposing greyhound, designed for the racetrack, to the tiny, hideous chihuahua, designed for god knows what purpose. The entire progression of the species for fifteen centuries has depended on whether or not man can find another niche to engineer the dog genus into. And yes, in China and South Korea they apparently do eat dog, but that's ok because it's only a specific subspecies of dog specifically bred for the farm! Apparently your typically household pet dog would be considered inedible.
What I'm trying to get at is that there is a seldom considered moral ambiguity here. We have essentially taken a species, once entirely independent, and made it depend on humans for its own existence. Not only that, we have made it love humans unconditionally. They love us in a way that we could never possibly hope to return. I mean, I can hardly leave the house for an hour without my dogs going batshit crazy on my return. These things live for our pleasure and happiness, and desire nothing but a life of servitude. Doesn't something about that ring maniacal genius? Is there anything more evil than forcing something to love you?
And yet, there's common outcry among activists about the way we treat chickens, pigs, and other livestock: raising them to be fatter, and featherless and generally to be miserable. But, I would say, at least we let them fucking hate us for it. If we didn't dominate these species physically and intellectually they'd burst right out that farm door. And there's not a word for the dog that doesn't even know that it's a slave, while everywhere strays are being neutered and euthanized to keep them from returning to their wild, independent existence.
Don't get me wrong, I love my dogs, and I want nothing more than for them to live comfortable, happy lives. I just think it's weird that we look at a farm chicken, featherless: barely able to walk, made to manufacture meat, and think 'monstrosity'. And on the other hand, we see a dog: servile, dependent, made to manufacture love, and think 'man's best friend'.
When it comes to animals, none of man's biological engineering projects has been quite so successful or gone on for so long as the creation of the dog. Wikipedia told me that dogs first began to be domesticated from the grey wolf around 15, 000 years ago. It's apparently debated whether or not they naturally evolved towards coexistence with man, or if they were artificially selected from the beginning. Either way, at some point man took up the reigns of their genetic development and radically reshaped the species. We might think of dogs as more 'natural' or 'closer to nature' than humans, but to me this is a bit of a stretch. When you consider that their entire being has been tailored by humans, to coexist with humans, they don't seem quite so natural.
And what is the upshot of all this? The dog is one of the most successful and biologically diverse of all animal species. For 15, 000 years this thing has been reshaped by man into every imaginable variety. From the massive, imposing greyhound, designed for the racetrack, to the tiny, hideous chihuahua, designed for god knows what purpose. The entire progression of the species for fifteen centuries has depended on whether or not man can find another niche to engineer the dog genus into. And yes, in China and South Korea they apparently do eat dog, but that's ok because it's only a specific subspecies of dog specifically bred for the farm! Apparently your typically household pet dog would be considered inedible.
What I'm trying to get at is that there is a seldom considered moral ambiguity here. We have essentially taken a species, once entirely independent, and made it depend on humans for its own existence. Not only that, we have made it love humans unconditionally. They love us in a way that we could never possibly hope to return. I mean, I can hardly leave the house for an hour without my dogs going batshit crazy on my return. These things live for our pleasure and happiness, and desire nothing but a life of servitude. Doesn't something about that ring maniacal genius? Is there anything more evil than forcing something to love you?
And yet, there's common outcry among activists about the way we treat chickens, pigs, and other livestock: raising them to be fatter, and featherless and generally to be miserable. But, I would say, at least we let them fucking hate us for it. If we didn't dominate these species physically and intellectually they'd burst right out that farm door. And there's not a word for the dog that doesn't even know that it's a slave, while everywhere strays are being neutered and euthanized to keep them from returning to their wild, independent existence.
Don't get me wrong, I love my dogs, and I want nothing more than for them to live comfortable, happy lives. I just think it's weird that we look at a farm chicken, featherless: barely able to walk, made to manufacture meat, and think 'monstrosity'. And on the other hand, we see a dog: servile, dependent, made to manufacture love, and think 'man's best friend'.
Monday, 2 May 2011
Song Lyrics
As a little side project during the school year, I've used my newly acquired talent for playing basic chords on the guitar to write some songs. For the first one I used lyrics I'd already written a while back, maybe a year ago, when I was trying to write poetry. For the other three, I had to write new lyrics, so I've been thinking a lot lately about what I can write about, what inspires me, what make good lyrics, etc.
Music lyrics are a funny thing because they're the only real exposure to poetry that most people (myself included) ever get. And yet they seem to deviate so much from 'actual' poetry (that is, poetry that's written down in books, and not sung). Obviously lyrics are a kind of poetry, but they have a unique style to them, and good lyrics do not usually make good poetry when written down (and vice versa? I'm not sure. Something tells me, though, that the work of someone like e. e. cummings wouldn't quite translate into song form).
The reason for this is that lyrics, as opposed to poetry, are only a part and not the whole of the art form. The quality of a song depends not only on the words that are sung, but how they are sung, and also the quality of the music itself. So it's no surprise that many lyrics seem jumbled, or without order when looked at on a page, since they're not meant to fit together alone, but have to fit in the context of the song. Much of the meaning in song lyrics is given in the way they are sung. In the same way as it's impossible to convey sarcasm while texting, compared to in a phone call, the emotion of song lyrics often just doesn't translate onto paper. I mean, a song's lyrical content can be entirely meaningless or ambiguous in a highly emotional song; just think of lyrics from Pavement or At The Drive-In (dancing on the corpses ashes...). Unfortunately, inflection isn't something that poets have the luxury of using, which isn't necessarily bad, it just means that lyrics and poetry are different.
But this brings me to a little bit of a crossroad with my own song writing. Now, when I sit down to write a song, I force myself to think 'I'm not writing poetry, I'm writing song lyrics.' Ideally this mentality would let me punch out lyrics at a rapid pace, since it should be easy to write words when you don't care about having profound meaning behind them. But the problem is that, at least for me, I can't write song lyrics unless they're about something. It could be anything, but I need a topic, if I try to write random words on a page I end up feeling like a phony. So I try to think of random things to write about. I wrote one song about a man who fell asleep in his apartment with his cigarette lit and started a fire that burnt the whole building down. Another song I wrote was about a man stranded in the middle of the ocean on a raft, with nothing but his guitar.
The problem is that even though these ideas are supposed to be arbitrary and random, just something to get me writing emotional sounding stuff, I inevitably care about having interesting meaning behind the song. The songs that I think have dumb meanings I never want to sing. For example, another song I wrote was about that classic hypothetical scenario where a man controls a train that is moving towards five people, but can change it to a different track, to kill one. Basically, I wrote it from the perspective of a person actually in that position. Now, to me, this seems like a really dumb song, so I just never play it. But this is so frustrating, because I'm only writing lyrics so I can play music. The whole purpose is defeated. And then I start trying to write lyrics that are meaningful, but dammit that's hard. I don't want to care, I just wish I could spit them out, and not even consider their quality.
Plus, this tactic has lead me to write some embarrassingly bad stuff. Like these lyrics I recently wrote, in a fit of frustration and writers block. To help myself out of the rut I tried to write a song based on the dumbest premise I could think of. This is what I came up with:
Music lyrics are a funny thing because they're the only real exposure to poetry that most people (myself included) ever get. And yet they seem to deviate so much from 'actual' poetry (that is, poetry that's written down in books, and not sung). Obviously lyrics are a kind of poetry, but they have a unique style to them, and good lyrics do not usually make good poetry when written down (and vice versa? I'm not sure. Something tells me, though, that the work of someone like e. e. cummings wouldn't quite translate into song form).
The reason for this is that lyrics, as opposed to poetry, are only a part and not the whole of the art form. The quality of a song depends not only on the words that are sung, but how they are sung, and also the quality of the music itself. So it's no surprise that many lyrics seem jumbled, or without order when looked at on a page, since they're not meant to fit together alone, but have to fit in the context of the song. Much of the meaning in song lyrics is given in the way they are sung. In the same way as it's impossible to convey sarcasm while texting, compared to in a phone call, the emotion of song lyrics often just doesn't translate onto paper. I mean, a song's lyrical content can be entirely meaningless or ambiguous in a highly emotional song; just think of lyrics from Pavement or At The Drive-In (dancing on the corpses ashes...). Unfortunately, inflection isn't something that poets have the luxury of using, which isn't necessarily bad, it just means that lyrics and poetry are different.
But this brings me to a little bit of a crossroad with my own song writing. Now, when I sit down to write a song, I force myself to think 'I'm not writing poetry, I'm writing song lyrics.' Ideally this mentality would let me punch out lyrics at a rapid pace, since it should be easy to write words when you don't care about having profound meaning behind them. But the problem is that, at least for me, I can't write song lyrics unless they're about something. It could be anything, but I need a topic, if I try to write random words on a page I end up feeling like a phony. So I try to think of random things to write about. I wrote one song about a man who fell asleep in his apartment with his cigarette lit and started a fire that burnt the whole building down. Another song I wrote was about a man stranded in the middle of the ocean on a raft, with nothing but his guitar.
The problem is that even though these ideas are supposed to be arbitrary and random, just something to get me writing emotional sounding stuff, I inevitably care about having interesting meaning behind the song. The songs that I think have dumb meanings I never want to sing. For example, another song I wrote was about that classic hypothetical scenario where a man controls a train that is moving towards five people, but can change it to a different track, to kill one. Basically, I wrote it from the perspective of a person actually in that position. Now, to me, this seems like a really dumb song, so I just never play it. But this is so frustrating, because I'm only writing lyrics so I can play music. The whole purpose is defeated. And then I start trying to write lyrics that are meaningful, but dammit that's hard. I don't want to care, I just wish I could spit them out, and not even consider their quality.
Plus, this tactic has lead me to write some embarrassingly bad stuff. Like these lyrics I recently wrote, in a fit of frustration and writers block. To help myself out of the rut I tried to write a song based on the dumbest premise I could think of. This is what I came up with:
a man is half conscious, operating a mech of some sort in a brutal war where he's killing many people. He's not sure who he is, or why he's doing the things he does. In a moment of clarity, he ponders if maybe he's on a crazy drug trip and none of this is actually happening, or maybe some government/organization is using mind control to make him do the things he does.And here's the poem that I wrote for it:
crying mouths crash earthwardPerhaps unsurprisingly, I decided against making this one into a song.
I push myself to move
but what pushes me to push myself
I don't know
I feel through thoughts for a time
when things were greener
my head's a mess of spinning heat
finding freedom
I grin because I'm
too confused
to have a sense of guilt
I laugh because
my mind's too strange
not to be insane
I might've done this to myself
body far away
somewhere sunny, with real friends
forgotten
maybe it's been done to me
revulsing in revolt
So, far away, in my past
was clarity
I grin because I'm
too confused
to have a sense of guilt
I laugh because
my mind's too strange
not to be insane
Wednesday, 27 April 2011
Sports
I've never been much of an athlete. I think the crowning achievement of all my experiences in organized sports would have to date back to when I was in, say, grade one or two. I remember it surprisingly distinctly; it was a practice game for my soccer team, one evening inside the gym of a local public school. I approached playing soccer with the same kind of mindlessness that I think most kids do. Just sort of get at the ball and kick it towards the net. Yet somehow this strategy lead me to a break-away; I vaguely remember dribbling the ball, though I still can't do this very effectively, and then kicking it past the goalie. Afterwards my coach gave the whole team a lecture on their overall inattentiveness on defense, and not on my skill as a player. Nevertheless, that moment has stuck out as probably the only time when I was really in the spotlight as a sports person. And that's probably because my mom promised to buy me a tamogotchi if I every scored a goal in a game (or practice game apparently).
So it's easy to see why I might have grown indifferent or even dismissive of sports in general. I think that this happens with many people who are athletically challenged, but interested in academics or the arts. Sports are a particularly easy target to poke fun at because they seem so primitive and arbitrary. The great questions that outsiders to sports pose to those who participate in them are: "why are you doing that?" and "why should I care?". You won't often get a real response from a sports fan, who will just think you're an asshole for asking, but they are legitimate questions. Why are there only three bases in baseball, why should I care if 'my' team wins, since it really doesn't affect me at all, etc, etc....
But, leave these questions unanswered, since an answer isn't really necessary if you want to get involved in sports. Instead, just watch a game or two of your local team. Watch them fight to stay in the playoffs, listen to the announcers, as their careful non-partisan veil slips away in the excitement of the game. You will, without question, get drawn in. It's a simple matter of human psychology that once your mind chooses a side to root for, your emotions will be pulled along with that team's success or failure. And for anyone who argues that this is arbitrary and meaningless, I would say that it's just as meaningless as rooting for the main character in a movie. The fact is it doesn't matter why, since it inevitably happens anyways, and it's fun.
It's true, there's no real reason for any of it. But there isn't a reason for a lot of the things we as humans do. The beauty of sports is that it distills this raw competitive human nature into something relatively harmless and meaningless. It turns it into something that produces nothing but enjoyment and exhilaration. If only, I sometimes think, we could reduce all our competitive urges into something so harmless. If we could all agree as a world population to fight wars on the sports field, instead of the battlefield, we'd be living in a much more peaceful society. Looking at sports in this way, as an essential expression of our inner competitiveness, I don't see how we could do without it. The Olympics and the World Cup both serve to bring societies closer together, while still releasing the bountiful aggression that we as humans feel towards any outgroup. And I think that that's something we could, if anything, have more of.
So it's easy to see why I might have grown indifferent or even dismissive of sports in general. I think that this happens with many people who are athletically challenged, but interested in academics or the arts. Sports are a particularly easy target to poke fun at because they seem so primitive and arbitrary. The great questions that outsiders to sports pose to those who participate in them are: "why are you doing that?" and "why should I care?". You won't often get a real response from a sports fan, who will just think you're an asshole for asking, but they are legitimate questions. Why are there only three bases in baseball, why should I care if 'my' team wins, since it really doesn't affect me at all, etc, etc....
But, leave these questions unanswered, since an answer isn't really necessary if you want to get involved in sports. Instead, just watch a game or two of your local team. Watch them fight to stay in the playoffs, listen to the announcers, as their careful non-partisan veil slips away in the excitement of the game. You will, without question, get drawn in. It's a simple matter of human psychology that once your mind chooses a side to root for, your emotions will be pulled along with that team's success or failure. And for anyone who argues that this is arbitrary and meaningless, I would say that it's just as meaningless as rooting for the main character in a movie. The fact is it doesn't matter why, since it inevitably happens anyways, and it's fun.
It's true, there's no real reason for any of it. But there isn't a reason for a lot of the things we as humans do. The beauty of sports is that it distills this raw competitive human nature into something relatively harmless and meaningless. It turns it into something that produces nothing but enjoyment and exhilaration. If only, I sometimes think, we could reduce all our competitive urges into something so harmless. If we could all agree as a world population to fight wars on the sports field, instead of the battlefield, we'd be living in a much more peaceful society. Looking at sports in this way, as an essential expression of our inner competitiveness, I don't see how we could do without it. The Olympics and the World Cup both serve to bring societies closer together, while still releasing the bountiful aggression that we as humans feel towards any outgroup. And I think that that's something we could, if anything, have more of.
Thursday, 21 April 2011
Brokenhearted Badass
In most fiction the protagonist is likeable, endearing, and someone to who the audience is sympathetic. This can include a broad range of characters, but specifically, here, I want to explore the stereotypical steel-hearted male lead.
They're all more-or-less the same character: sometimes a smart ass, sometimes overcome with anger, always possessing an indomitable will in the face of danger, and, on occasion, brooding over their dark past. This character, simply put, is an amalgamation of all the qualities that most men wish they had (or secretly believe they do have). What I find interesting about this is that, yes, men truly envy these characters their tragic backgrounds.
Think of the role that this tragic background plays in developing the character. First, it allows them to be short and impatient with people and, in general an asshole, without the audience losing sympathy for them (Sympathy? check). Second, we, for whatever reason, are drawn to characters that are rude and sarcastic, especially towards women; this, however, requires the dark background to ultimately explain their behaviour (Likeability and endearment? check). Finally, it gives the character a very personal secret which the love interest will eventually tease out of him in a heart-felt moment (maybe right before the sex scene) in which he learns to trust again. It's the best when the main character dies right after, making his death all the more saddening (he was finally learning to live again).
And it's all as easy as saying "my parents were killed by robbers" or "I was the product of a horrible government experiment" or "I was wrongly imprisoned for 'x' amount of years". See if you can guess which characters I'm referring to.
An interesting sub-genre of the tragic background, is the character who had his heart broken by a women in his past. In this case, either she died and he was seconds away from saving her, or she betrayed him and joined the enemy. The beauty of this is how well it justifies misogynistic character traits, allowing the character to generally hate women without losing the audience. And what's cooler, really, than a guy who is openly mean to the ladies. I should point out, though, how this character in real life would be seen as mentally unstable and in in dire need of therapy. In the movie world, the idea that "he found his true love and now she's gone, and he can never love again" makes sense, but think how ridiculous this actually is.
What message, as well, is this sending to kids who look at these characters as role models? I know that when I was a kid this always brought about a certain conflict in me. Obviously I would never actually want for something tragic to happen to my family, but how else would I ever go on an awesome quest for vengeance? Maybe, I would imagine, they'd just get kidnapped or something, and then I'd rescue them before anything really bad happened to them. But I mean, do you see how fucked up that is?
They're all more-or-less the same character: sometimes a smart ass, sometimes overcome with anger, always possessing an indomitable will in the face of danger, and, on occasion, brooding over their dark past. This character, simply put, is an amalgamation of all the qualities that most men wish they had (or secretly believe they do have). What I find interesting about this is that, yes, men truly envy these characters their tragic backgrounds.
Think of the role that this tragic background plays in developing the character. First, it allows them to be short and impatient with people and, in general an asshole, without the audience losing sympathy for them (Sympathy? check). Second, we, for whatever reason, are drawn to characters that are rude and sarcastic, especially towards women; this, however, requires the dark background to ultimately explain their behaviour (Likeability and endearment? check). Finally, it gives the character a very personal secret which the love interest will eventually tease out of him in a heart-felt moment (maybe right before the sex scene) in which he learns to trust again. It's the best when the main character dies right after, making his death all the more saddening (he was finally learning to live again).
And it's all as easy as saying "my parents were killed by robbers" or "I was the product of a horrible government experiment" or "I was wrongly imprisoned for 'x' amount of years". See if you can guess which characters I'm referring to.
An interesting sub-genre of the tragic background, is the character who had his heart broken by a women in his past. In this case, either she died and he was seconds away from saving her, or she betrayed him and joined the enemy. The beauty of this is how well it justifies misogynistic character traits, allowing the character to generally hate women without losing the audience. And what's cooler, really, than a guy who is openly mean to the ladies. I should point out, though, how this character in real life would be seen as mentally unstable and in in dire need of therapy. In the movie world, the idea that "he found his true love and now she's gone, and he can never love again" makes sense, but think how ridiculous this actually is.
What message, as well, is this sending to kids who look at these characters as role models? I know that when I was a kid this always brought about a certain conflict in me. Obviously I would never actually want for something tragic to happen to my family, but how else would I ever go on an awesome quest for vengeance? Maybe, I would imagine, they'd just get kidnapped or something, and then I'd rescue them before anything really bad happened to them. But I mean, do you see how fucked up that is?
Thursday, 14 April 2011
People who play/listen to metal aren't douchebags
Hey, I'm back! Here to talk to you about the common misconception that metalheads are douchebags:
I've heard many people sincerely make this claim, and it irritates me about as much as people who say "I like all music except for country". (First of all, you don't like all kinds of music. People say this when they don't really know anything about music, and then they tack on the whole except country bit just to add a little credibility to their statement. But think how ridiculous this is: do they really like celtic dance music, or trippy experimental music like Black Dice? Of course they don't; if you played Black Dice in front of them they'd probably permanently judge you as "weird" or "different". And second, have any of these people every actually listened to country music? Not, obviously, that awful shit that you hear on Country Music Television, you know, pop country, but say Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline or like half of the music by the Rolling Stones. Country is one of the biggest influences on modern music, and people who identify it as the only type of music that they don't like need to smarten up.)
But yeah, back to to the topic at hand. It's pretty clear that anyone who says this has never made a conscious effort to listen to metal. Which is not to say that they haven't heard it before, but metal, especially the harder stuff, is definitely an acquired taste. I should add as a disclaimer that I don't listen to metal, but I am familiar with it, and I think it's awesome. It's just not the first thing I think of when I'm in the mood to listen to music. I do however, know a lot of people who listen to metal, and I know they're not douchebags. That's why people who argue that they are really get to me. Here are some of the arguments that they use, and my take on them:
When they yell and grown they just sound stupid:
Admittedly, the sound of someone screaming or growling is initially a little jarring. It's definitely different than other types of singing. But what about it is stupid? It's extremely expressive and, when you get used to it, relaxing. If you listen to music for its therapeutic value, then I don't think you'll find better music than metal. Imagine putting on your headphones and having someone do all the yelling at screaming you wish you could do for you. Anger, I think, is a better weapon against stress than, say, sadness. Namely the kind of whiny music that most people listen to when they're in a bad mood.
Also, you could really level this "they sound dumb" claim against any singer; they're all making animalistic cries to vent their feelings. How else would you define singing? The only difference between metal singers and any other type is that most people don't find it palatable to listen to. If this is a valid reason to call someone a douchebag, then you might as well call everyone a douchebag since no one's voice is going to please everyone.
Metal lyrics are so cheesy
First off, I don't think it's a stretch to say that 80% of music out there has lyrics that are either meaningless, vapid or melodramatic. I don't really know enough about metal to safely claim that it's any different. However, I will say that, in general, metal strays away from the type of lyrics that dominate most other music forms. That is, it strays away from your typical love song. Not to say that there's anything wrong with the occasional ballad, but I mean, the whole thing is just a little boring at this point. "I miss you" and "I want you" and "I hate/love you" have been used as themes a million times, and not only that, are usually done in entirely unoriginal, non-engaging ways. Say what you will about metal lyrics, at least they're comparatively original, whether they're about viking conquest, or war, or the future.
Take, as an example, that popular Edward Sharpe song which I'm pretty sick of at this point. "home is wherever I am with you..." basically the entire meaning of this song is: We love each other very much. We love our parents a lot too, but not in the same way as we love each other. And then they add in a little "Holey, moley" and some "Chocolate candy, Jesus Christ" just to sound a little different. Compare this with Metallica's One: a song about a soldier who's been severely injured and put on life support. He's conscious, but can't communicate the agony he feels, and all he wants is to be left to die. I'm not going to say that Metallica writes beautiful poetry or anything, but I think it's easy to see that at least the subject matter they're writing about is far more compelling than the Edward Sharpe song.
Ok, last one:
People who listen to metal are all violent, angry assholes
First off, just because metal has a lot of yelling in it, doesn't mean it's angry. Second, just because people write angry songs, doesn't mean they're angry people. Most people I know who like metal are more subdued than your average person. Why this is, I'm not sure; maybe they're timid by nature, or maybe metal is just a great way to release excess anger.
If I had to characterize you're average metalhead in some way, it would be that they generally don't give a fuck. I think it's obvious why this might be; it's as if they took one glance at popular music and society and became nauseous. Then, pushing as far from this as they could, they set out to make music that would be entirely rejected by the majority of people. This is a very liberating thing; and it means that within the culture anything goes, just so long as it's interesting. I feel like at a metal concert you're just as likely to see, say, a guy wearing shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, as someone with a mullet and a wife-beater (though I don't have too much evidence for this).
And that's it, don't judge a book by it's cover, etc, etc.
I've heard many people sincerely make this claim, and it irritates me about as much as people who say "I like all music except for country". (First of all, you don't like all kinds of music. People say this when they don't really know anything about music, and then they tack on the whole except country bit just to add a little credibility to their statement. But think how ridiculous this is: do they really like celtic dance music, or trippy experimental music like Black Dice? Of course they don't; if you played Black Dice in front of them they'd probably permanently judge you as "weird" or "different". And second, have any of these people every actually listened to country music? Not, obviously, that awful shit that you hear on Country Music Television, you know, pop country, but say Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline or like half of the music by the Rolling Stones. Country is one of the biggest influences on modern music, and people who identify it as the only type of music that they don't like need to smarten up.)
But yeah, back to to the topic at hand. It's pretty clear that anyone who says this has never made a conscious effort to listen to metal. Which is not to say that they haven't heard it before, but metal, especially the harder stuff, is definitely an acquired taste. I should add as a disclaimer that I don't listen to metal, but I am familiar with it, and I think it's awesome. It's just not the first thing I think of when I'm in the mood to listen to music. I do however, know a lot of people who listen to metal, and I know they're not douchebags. That's why people who argue that they are really get to me. Here are some of the arguments that they use, and my take on them:
When they yell and grown they just sound stupid:
Admittedly, the sound of someone screaming or growling is initially a little jarring. It's definitely different than other types of singing. But what about it is stupid? It's extremely expressive and, when you get used to it, relaxing. If you listen to music for its therapeutic value, then I don't think you'll find better music than metal. Imagine putting on your headphones and having someone do all the yelling at screaming you wish you could do for you. Anger, I think, is a better weapon against stress than, say, sadness. Namely the kind of whiny music that most people listen to when they're in a bad mood.
Also, you could really level this "they sound dumb" claim against any singer; they're all making animalistic cries to vent their feelings. How else would you define singing? The only difference between metal singers and any other type is that most people don't find it palatable to listen to. If this is a valid reason to call someone a douchebag, then you might as well call everyone a douchebag since no one's voice is going to please everyone.
Metal lyrics are so cheesy
First off, I don't think it's a stretch to say that 80% of music out there has lyrics that are either meaningless, vapid or melodramatic. I don't really know enough about metal to safely claim that it's any different. However, I will say that, in general, metal strays away from the type of lyrics that dominate most other music forms. That is, it strays away from your typical love song. Not to say that there's anything wrong with the occasional ballad, but I mean, the whole thing is just a little boring at this point. "I miss you" and "I want you" and "I hate/love you" have been used as themes a million times, and not only that, are usually done in entirely unoriginal, non-engaging ways. Say what you will about metal lyrics, at least they're comparatively original, whether they're about viking conquest, or war, or the future.
Take, as an example, that popular Edward Sharpe song which I'm pretty sick of at this point. "home is wherever I am with you..." basically the entire meaning of this song is: We love each other very much. We love our parents a lot too, but not in the same way as we love each other. And then they add in a little "Holey, moley" and some "Chocolate candy, Jesus Christ" just to sound a little different. Compare this with Metallica's One: a song about a soldier who's been severely injured and put on life support. He's conscious, but can't communicate the agony he feels, and all he wants is to be left to die. I'm not going to say that Metallica writes beautiful poetry or anything, but I think it's easy to see that at least the subject matter they're writing about is far more compelling than the Edward Sharpe song.
Ok, last one:
People who listen to metal are all violent, angry assholes
First off, just because metal has a lot of yelling in it, doesn't mean it's angry. Second, just because people write angry songs, doesn't mean they're angry people. Most people I know who like metal are more subdued than your average person. Why this is, I'm not sure; maybe they're timid by nature, or maybe metal is just a great way to release excess anger.
If I had to characterize you're average metalhead in some way, it would be that they generally don't give a fuck. I think it's obvious why this might be; it's as if they took one glance at popular music and society and became nauseous. Then, pushing as far from this as they could, they set out to make music that would be entirely rejected by the majority of people. This is a very liberating thing; and it means that within the culture anything goes, just so long as it's interesting. I feel like at a metal concert you're just as likely to see, say, a guy wearing shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, as someone with a mullet and a wife-beater (though I don't have too much evidence for this).
And that's it, don't judge a book by it's cover, etc, etc.
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