"Moral Panics"

Over at Game Politics, a good point was brought up..at least a well argued one. That we shouldn't dismiss people's arguments due to their own unrelated actions, and so on. Although I think this is right on one hand...it's correct in theory just like communism...we live in the real world. In the real world, one thing actually DOES affect the other. A person may promote some sort of moral panic in order to prevent people from thinking bad things about that person. It's called the big lie, and it WORKS. It's surprising how often it works.

The question is WHY does it work? Moral panics tend to involve individuals, at the most intimate level you can imagine. Usually, it follows people thinking that THOSE people are attacking our faith..our family. And those people..well they suck. And I'm so much better than them. That's why these moral panic issues work. They become incredibly personal. So to even discuss it, to try and have a rational talk about it..becomes a lesson in being offended.

Playing to people's feelings of self-rightousness, is very powerful.

Here's a side-question. Is it self-rightous to point out the same trait in other people? Isn't that like unilaterally disarming?

Anyway. Such moral panics don't do anybody any good. No matter how sincere their beliefs are, they're spinning their wheels.

Here's a good example, on topic. In the current slide against video gaming..the question is WHY? Is it the graphic displays of violence? In that case, GTA is..well..kinda mild, let alone that Bully game, which from the look at it has no graphic violence at all. From what everybody is saying, it's the content. People don't like you playing a gangster. Fine. So it's all about the content.

If it's about the content, then GTA is mild. What's playing a gangster when you can do genocide? In most strategy games, some sort of genocide is possible. Right...or what about various RPGs? Now I'd say the storyline of most RPGs are very positive..but I'm a liberal. A religious conservative SHOULD be up in arms about say..Final Fantasy X, which is a rather negative game towards religion in general.

That's what I mean. It's not coherent. It's not well thought out. It's just a whispering campaign, where each person is saying something a bit different than the one before it, and that's how the issue is growing.

And yes, I dismiss the whole argument. Why? Because none of the people who are doing this ever mention that youth violence rates are dropping. They don't mention the evidence against what they are promoting. They're not making an argument in good faith. They're trying to win.

Sunday Song-Blogging:2-1 special!

I feel like doing two songs today. Both are steller songs..I don't feel like trashing anything today. Both are live performances of songs you've probably never heard of before. And away we gooooo.

Utada Hikaru--Simple and Clearn (Accoustic-Live)

The song itself, as far as I know what written specifically for a game (Kingdom Hearts), and this is an accoustic live version of it.

Sound: The sounds is great. The singing in it is very unsteady..but that just adds to the power of the song. About halfway through the song, a piano starts in as well, and a bit later goes from being a small artifact to really building up the song. But this song isn't about the sound.

Lyrics:I love the lyrics of this song. I always have, and I always will. They're both brilliant and beautiful.

"The daily things...like this and that and what is what...that keep us all busy...are confusing me...that's when you came to me...
And said..wish I could prove I love you..but that does that mean I have to walk on water..when we are older you'll understand it's enough when I say so..and maybe somethings are that simple"

and

"Hold me..whatever lies beyond this morning is a little later one..regardless of warnings the future doesn't scare me at all.
Nothing's like before"

I love that.

This song, in any form, original pop, techno remixes or accoustic, gets a 10/10 in my book.

Song #2!

James--Five-O (Live performance from the BBC)

A couple of things here. The BBC has great live performances. Simple as that. I have a bunch of them. They're great. Very clean sound and the passion of a live performance.

Sound:This is a great sounding song. It starts off very light and simple, with a driving drum rattle and background sounds. But as the song goes on, it really builds up, including the singing. After a synth solo, the song almost restarts the lyrics from the beginning of the main part. That said..the rythem of the lines is very hypnotizing as it is...

Lyrics:Here's how the lyrics of the main part of the song go...

"Will we grow together...will it be a lie...
If it lasts forever..hope I'm the first to die..
Will you marry me...can we meet the cost...
Is the power of love...worth the pain of loss..
Can you pay the bill...will you keep the change...
Are you here for the party..or are you here for the play..."

That last line there. I never quite got that until a few weeks ago. My absolute all-time favorite show on TV is House. (Someday I'll have to write something on the morals and values of THAT show. Now that's interesting). One episode..actually the greatest episode of any TV show of all time..to be honest, titles Three Stories. Well, Dr. House is giving a lecture to med students. And one asks him if he believes in heaven. His response is something to the effect of "I like to believe that life is more than just a test".

On the way home from my wife's surgery (everything went great!), we were listening to music and discussing that. Then all of a sudden, that line came on, and I realized what it is. In theatre terms, after the first night show, there's always a party. (Or last night show, for that matter). Your life is the play. The afterlife is the party. Are you here for the party, or are you here for the play?

That's the question. Personally, I'm here for the play. Thank you very much.

Is this looking too deep into the lyrics? Ah..this is where the context of albums comes into play. This song comes from an album called Laid. (One of the greatest albums of all time IMO.) Other songs on this album:
One of the Three:A lament for Jesus basically stating that the world would have been better off without his sacrifice.
P.S.:About those "liars" condemning people to fire and brimstone.

Riiiight.

In any case, the combination of philosophy and pure love make Five-O just amazing. And the term Five-O? It refers to leaving. In this case...

"Will we grow together..will it be a lie..
If it lasts forever..I hope I'm the first to die.."

Yeah.

10/10

Sunday Song Blogging

This is going to be a regular feature for this site. I'm sure you've seen the random playlists that come out on Friday. Well, I listen to music a bit differently than that. Doesn't work for me. So what I'm going to do, is take one random song each week out of my playlist, and basically criticize, not so much the coolness, but the interesting bits of the song.

This weeks song is Bullet With Butterfly Wings by The Smashing Pumpkins.

Yes, that "World is a vampire" song. This is a song I used to hate with a passion. Over the time, I've grown to like it. Especially live. The song is one of those great live songs of all time.

Why I have the song:I have the entire box set The Aeroplane Flies High ripped. TSP are one of the kings of the b-sides. Pennies, Rotten Apples, Set the Ray to Jerry, Pistacio Medley. Wonderful stuff. (I also have Mellon Collie and the Infiniate Sadness ripped, but that's not as interesting)

Lyrics:These are lyrics that to be honest are kind of ahead of their time. At the time, they kinda went over everybodies head, thinking it was typical "pre-emo" type whining. But it's a bit more than that. In the face of the ugliness of the music industry, and especially the problems they had trying to get Friends and Enemies of Modern Music released, (they eventually just threw it out into the world to be shared), it kinda makes sense. In fact, the ultimate TSP DVD, the 40-song final concert at the Chicago Metro, is locked up because of the problems with Virgin. Such a shame.

But I digress.

"But can you fake it...for just one more show...and what do you want...I want to change, what do you got...when you feel the same..even though I know..I suppose I'll show all my cool and gold..like a dove"

The whole song is about the musical industry. They wanted another Simease Dream, down to the note structure. Corgan wanted no part of that. In the end, it's why you have metal songs like Zero next to piano instrumentals like MCIS, or the orchastral bombast of "Tonight, Tonight". Variety is good for you.

As a side note, as it turns out, the reason for the disbanding of TSP was that the secondary guitarist, Iha, refused to expand the band for live performances, to take them further. And there's a planned reformation of TSP, without that limitation. Again, probably in the style of the final Metro Concert.

Sound:I'll be honest. This is one of the smoothest sounding songs I've ever heard in my life. The production of this song, the quality of the sound is amazing. The opening bass/faux accoustic riff is amazing. I'm not a big fan of the harder sections of this song. The drumming is solid and driving. There's an underlying accoustic sound as well that's amazing. This is a very well put together song. I miss the fret strums from the live versions however.

Problems:I don't like the harder parts of the song nearly as much. It tends to be rather on the boring side. But that's about it.

Rating:7/10.

PAFTW

A follow-up on the previous post regarding Penny-Arcade and anti-game crusader Jack Thompson. Well, a group of GTA modders (how ironic) took up Jack at his word, and created and released a mod that matched what he wanted. Well..he welshed on his word...so the boys at PA gave 10k to the charity that would be chosen. Yeah. And for what those initials mean? Penny Arcade for the WIN. Forgive me, but that's a level of pwnage that I've never seen before.

But let me move the lens back a bit, and the whole idea that video games promote violence. They don't. All the numbers show that youth crime has been dropping over the last 10 years or so. Sure, there have been a number of high-profile cases, but quite frankly, a few incidents, however horrible, shouldn't be allowed to speak for the whole. I have my own opinions on those incidents, and I think that the fact that none have happened recently is a very important fact.

One thing that's usually overlooked by the knee-jerk attackers, is the value of community. If games were left to being singular non-social activities, that would be one thing. But in this day and age, they're not. They're more and more social activities. One with their own rules, and ways of habit. And if you don't follow the rules, you don't get rewarded. This is important and should not be overlooked. It teaches positive social behaviour. This is something that is NOT reflected in society at large.

Those that ignore the positive social connections inherent in gaming culture, quite frankly, are completly uninformed and have no place to say anything about it.

Open letter to Penny Arcade

My apologies..to know where I'm coming from, let's just say I'm not exactly a Bush-fan. I'm not sure of your political leanings, per se. So I apologize in advance if this comes off as a little...flame-worthy

You mentioned that you were saving lives and defending the innocent, and wanted to know what moral values that conveyed. What I wanted to let you know, is that there's a reason for all this anti-game (or anti-movie, or anti-music, or whatever) posturing. At least usually. These people are not honest. They're not what they seem to be. Their goal, is distraction, of the Penn and Teller type variety. They believe that by attacking things that they do not particulary enjoy, they get free passes for other things. This is a cultural poison, that we just happen to be on the front lines of.


So the question really is, to Mr. Jack Thompson. Sure, maybe he gave to chairty. But what has he actually done to make the world a better place. Has he publically supported an increase in the mnimum wage? Has he supported making health care more accessable to everybody? What exactly has he done. Mr. Morality himself, Joementum Lieberman, fully supports the Iraqi war, ane making it harder for lower-class people to make ends meet. Real bombings and killings and violence. That's good. But fake stuff? That's BAAAD.


Then there's the other shoe. Sure, they're attacking the violence now. But that's EASY. What's going to happen when they start attacking the content? That say a new RPG should be banned because teaches the wrong values? These people believe that games should be wiped out. Period, at least to a form that would be no longer recognizable.

Anyway. Sorry to bother you guys. You do great work. Not only with the whole Child's Play thing, but you guys promote strong healthy communities. You guys win gold stars on the moral meter in my book. And that won't be affected no matter HOW many pimps you kill in GTA. After all, they had it coming.
es.

Atheism, Faith, and the Reality-Based Community

This is in response to Sam Harris, and more so, to PastorDan's reply. I'm not going to say much about either post directly. But I'm going to explain one thing.

As it goes to Harris's post, it was completly undiplomatic and had the subtlety of a 2x4. BUT. The core of the post was about two..well..common discussion points when it comes to religious philosophy. The first being the problem of evil, and the second being the adadge that "we're all atheists. The only difference is in the number of gods we don't believe in". Both of these ARE reasonable discussion points, as much as you like it or not.

But for the question I'm going to explain...that question is why?

Why? Why what?. Why religion gets such a short shrift on DailyKos, and yes, on other blogs as well. Like or not, while atheists/agnostics make up 20-30% of society at large, they probably make up over half of the blogospheric community, at least on the left side of things. And possibly more. But I think that's not the whole story. And we need to go back to the blogfather to see the whole thing, and in fact, to one of the idea battles going on right now. And this has NOTHING to do with faith.

Are we, a bunch of leftist (not meaning far left, but from moderate-left over) ideologues, or, as Kos likes to argue, ideology really doesn't play a role in how the blogosphere thinks.

My hobbby, for a while, is studying socities. And when I'm done writing my book on morality (after I finish my screenplay), the book after that is going to be on on-line socities of all types and the role they play in the lives of those who are in them. So I watch this stuff. And it's all in what we call ourselves.

The Reality-based community.

Listen. Politically, we're no bunch of ideologues. We're a bunch of technocrats. We'd do and support anything that would work, and make things better. As long as you can prove it. And that's the key word.

Proof.

A community that runs on proof, as the very life-blood that runs through its veins, is by default going to have a little bit of a hard-spot for faith and religion of any type. That's the reality of the situation. Is that a weak spot? In my opinion, I say yes. But that's the boots-on-the-ground reality.

But, I'll be honest. I could see some candidate..some leader..rising up and making some serious waves on the reality-based community platform. And that would probably not be good from a religious point of view. And I'm truly sorry about that, as a non-believer from the UU (we're all looking for community and our place in the universe) school.

But I do think that it's going to happen, none the less, and on the whole it's a good thing. Not because it'll hurt religion, but because it'll help everything else. And if we could win on a religous-based point of view, I would support that. But I just don't see it happening. Because there's too much pain, and too much sacrifice in what we want to do, and too much religion is designed to allay, and even negate that pain and sacrifice.

So try to remember all this, the next time you see some harsh words. Think of where it comes from...that it actually comes from a place in the heart and the mind that you support.

Un-United Colors of Bennett

If you're here, you've heard about the whole flap about my good friend (*cough*), William Bennett. Probably. For the people who havn't heard, on a talk radio show, he casually mentioned that if you aborted all the black babies, it would lower the crime rate. Obviously, that started a shitstorm of unimaginable proportions. Everybody and their dog is trying to back away from the guy. (And for good reason..I might add). There's a small amount of people that are saying that he was just making an argument, for argument's sake, and that he's anti-abortion for crying out loud.

What was racist about it, was that he casually linked race to crime. Very casually. It was almost chilling. If you were having an academic discussion, then you might bring up that yes, the incarceration rate for blacks is quite a bit higher than it is for whites. Yes, you could have that discussion.

But then you would need to follow up on that discussion. And talk about how being part of the underclass has much more to do with being convicted of a crime. Notice that I didn't say committing a crime. That's important. Because quite a few people do comit crimes of some sort. The white girl gets treatment. The black male gets hard time. That's a reality.

So the real question is not if Bennett is a racist or not. The real question, is Bennett an asshole who's complaining about the things that he is helping to create, or is he legitimate in his role as a moralist.

Well..to get an answer, I did a Google search on a variety of issues. The reality is, Bennett doesn't really say much about anything that doesn't go on inside of the home. So I kept on looking. And I found the website for a group that he founded, Empower America. He's not on the board of directors now, for some reason. (Could be fall-out from all of his personal scandals) but it's safe to say that they're still heading in the same direction. Or at least they were. If he's changed his views on things, he's not made them public.

So...where does Bennett stand (as much as I can tell), on structural morality? What does his old group think about providing health care to all citizens? Well...let's start here.


Congress needed to reform Medicare to create real choice and competition and to slow the rate of growth in Medicare spending without resorting to increased co-payments and provider cuts. This new legislation represents a serious missed opportunity to save the Medicare system. This legislation will make the real job of Medicare reform harder rather than easier.

Well..let's parse this..shall we? (BTW, #1. This was written by Dick Armey. #2. This is pretty typical of the stuff on that particular part of the page). They want to create "real choice and competition". That means privitize. As well, they want to slow the growth in Medicare spending, but don't want to limit the payments, or increase the co-payments. Although I suspect that last part is an outright lie, as in other parts of health-care reform they mention that if people have to pay for things outright, they'll use less, driving costs down.

The only thing left is cuts. Probably massive cuts. Of course, increasing the co-payments, or switching to health savings accounts or something..well that's a cut as well. So Bennett and his crew think that the stress on American citizens is a good thing. Glad we've gotten that straighted out.

Oh and one more thing. From a wonkish point of view, what they want won't work. It's well known that a lack of primary care, which would be caused by assholes like these people, actually increase demand for more intensive (I.E, Expensive) medical procedures. It'll actually increase demand going up the curve over not only just the long-term, but the medium term. Any short-term savings will quickly..very quickly evaporate.

On to the second leg of the structural body, economic policy. They say they're "pro-growth", and the general trend is that they're also anti-inflation, again, I'll parse what these codewords mean. It's quite simple. They believe that the main way to keep a strong economy is to keep wages as low as possible. They believe the main way to keep a strong economy is to hurt people. People shouldn't have any rights, or any recourse to address their grievences. They're just consumers. Not citizens. They're very much for "tort reform". I'm not totally against that, to be honest, I just think that for corporations much more has to be taken into the criminal jurisdiction.

That's the whole tone for everything. They just want the machine to keep on grinding, and all the bones and sawdust to fall out the bottom. They just don't care. Nothing on an increase in the minimum wage. NOTHING. They just don't care. They want to eliminate welfare, not make it that people who want to work can find good jobs that are going to give the chances and oppurtunities. Because they just don't care.

It's all a machine to them, to keep well oiled, and keep on printing the greenbacks. It's not citizens. It's not even human beings to them.

And yet, this...thing has the audacity to complain about the lack of moral virtues in society? The fucking nerve of him. People don't want to be treated like tools to be used then spit out. They want to be respected. To be appriciated. And that's what is seriously lacking in society today. And Bennett, and his crew. They oppose this. Because it would be difficult.

And I suspect, because then in the relativly crime-free culture we would have, they'd have nothing to feel self-rightous about.

42

The answer to the Question of Life, the Universe and Everything (LUE). In the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books by Douglas Adams (H2G2 and DNA accordingly). One of the many additions to our culture and language given by this brilliant man. But one that's not so well understood. So here it is. Some of it is verbatim from the books, and some of it is just my opinion of it. With the emphasis on opinion. You'll understand at the end.

42 is the answer given by the second greatest computer ever created, to LUE. The only problem is, it's a meaningless answer without knowing the ACTUAL, concise question. So the computer, Deep Thought, created a greater computer, which was run by lab rats, and is more commonly named, "Earth". The program unfortunatly was ended early when a Vorgon Constructor fleet came a long and demolished Earth to create a new hypersteller by-pass. (Don't you just HATE when that happens?)

In the course of the travels, we find that the actual question, the one that the vast computer called Earth is coming up with, is this. "What do you get when you multiply six by nine". This question, while being absolutly foolproof, and completly rigid, also has the distiction of being 100% wrong at every level. This is a very cynical message of course, being that the Earth is completly more fucked up than anybody ever could possibly think.

What a lot of people miss, and is not widly known as well, is that there's a SECOND question to the answer of LUE. Marvin recites it to a bunch of depressed matresses. So what is the second question?

"Pick a number. Any number"

This is the real question. What does life mean? Pick a number. Any number. Life is whatever you define it to be..the answer to the meaning of life is the answer to what your personal question is. If I could beam any one thing into the heads of everybody on this planet. That would be the one thing.

The funny thing is..my wife mentioned..considering how cool of a message this is, why isn't it pushed to the nines. Because that would break the whole concept of it. You can get out of the books what you WANT to get out of them. That's the key. It's up to you to define the experience you have out of the books.

It's up to you to define the experience you have out of life.

Structural Morality

I was considering a post over at Street Prophets, a religious based off-shoot of the DailyKos community (btw. Good luck and best wishes.), when my mind wandered to the role of religion, and charity as a whole. And thinking wouldn't be it a wonderful world if everybody was as charitable as some of these churches....

Wouldn't it be a wonderful world if we didn't HAVE to be.

Wouldn't it be great if we all had healthcare, and didn't have to worry about destroying our familes if they got sick. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the environment we lived in didn't make us sick. Wouldn't it be amazing, if every worker who worked hard, and played by the rules was able to comfortably raise a family, and send their kids to college.

Wouldn't it be simply heaven on earth?

Morality isn't just for individuals. We are social creatures. We live in communities. Our communites, on a number of scales, have morals, and moral values of our own. But often times, we accept structural immorality, because it doesn't affect us. It's not hurting us, so we don't care.

This in and of itself, really is completly and totally immoral. Structural immorality should never be accepted. If it's what works, then a cost-benefit..a real one with ALL factors included should be made to determine the best course of action. But I'll tell you something.

It rarely works.

Because anything that's structurally immoral, is hurting somebody. It's probably hurting a lot of people. And it's tearing the fabric of society to bits. And this is usually a very bad thing over the long-run. You can keep on pushing the problems off..down the road. But eventually, it'll come back to get you in the end.

Morality and Consumption.

This is for Jerome a paris, over at DailyKos, who's REALLY banging his head against the way trying to get people to pay attention to the massive problem of energy instrastructure meltdown.

And he's right about the actual problem. But he expects anything to be doen about it? Not gonna happen. Why? It does come down to moral considerations...or at least amoral ones.

See, modern morality..."family values" just dont' let that happen. They don't do sacrifice. Especially for THOSE people. Racist? Not really. THOSE people could be blacks. It also could be liberals. Or people who live in the North. Or people who live in California. Or people who live in San Francisco.

THOSE people could also be their neighbours. Who just happen to go walking in the wilderness instead of going to church.

But the point is, these people will not do shared sacrifice. They believe that any sacrifice, the gains should directly benefit them. And this, where they're losing their cheap transportation to drive from their gated community for an hour to go into the city to work. Damnit, that's their god-given right.

And this isn't hardcore consevatives I'm talking about here. This is the average reaction. This is the cultural poison. Greed has gone way too far.

So Jerome. I feel for you. I really do. But we need to win the bigger, nastier, tougher war to even stand a chance to win the more important ones.

What is Moralcraft?

I'm interested in morality. I've been interested in morality for a while. It's very important, in that it determines how we treat other people.

And it's something that I think is dying an ugly, horrible death, for a variety of reasons, but it all stems down to one thing. People know morals, through a variety of methods. Through traditions, through religion, through family. But much rarer, is that people know HOW those morals are crafted. They don't know the threads that make up those morals. They don't know how they got there, and why they're there. This makes them incapable of creating new moral fabric, and the moral fabric we have is never good enough.

We need to learn moralcraft. We need to know how to weave the threads together to create new moral fabric, in order to cover every situation.

So the question is..what is that thread? What is the moral arithmetic, the numbers we need to add together to decide what to do? In order to do that, we need to realize the nature of morality to begin with. To know WHY morality.

Why morality? The whole idea of morality, is that you shouldn't hurt others. There's a good reason for this. If you don't hurt others, the idea goes, and that's what is socially acceptable, then other people will not hurt you for the same reason. Which makes for a better society/world for us all to live in.

So then is morality the damage/aid that you give to others? Personally, I'd say that's a little simplistic. There has to be a modifier there. People can do good things, but for bad reasons, or
they might do bad things, but their intentions were good.

Intentions.

That's what we're looking for. Intentions DO matter, in terms of morality. Because it's the only way to actually decide what you should do. Intent without actions is meaningless. Actions without good intent is either reckless, or unreliable.

So the "math", so to speak, is actions, modified by intent. So when discussing morality, we need to do so in these two terms.

First Post

For the first post on this site, I'm going to link to one of my favorite other commentor-cum-bloggers, Driftglass.

"But Character is what you are in the dark."

No, not really. It's far too simplistic. The whole idea of character/values/morality being what you are in the dark, is to limit morals to things of a personal nature. The alternate translation is that character is what you are in your bedroom, in a nutshell. Which makes things like sex, or the art you like to partake in moral issues.

They're not.

Moral issues are things that affect other people. Period. If something doesn't affect another person, to call it immoral, well..it's none of your business. Morality then becomes useless to our society. And that's the last thing we want.

There IS something that is quite true about that phrase however, people will often do good things just to grandstand, not doing it for doing good itself, but doing it as to gain favor or popularity. Although the actions might be good in and of itself, it doesn't really make these people any more trustworthy, because the second that everybody turns their back, BAM, stabbity stab stab stab.

So I would say that a better pithy quote is "Character is not stabbing society in the back".

That sounds about right.