June 26, 2006
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incoherent rage
Obviously it is wise to wait until late in the night when I am exhausted to write so that I can be completely incoherent in my rage. So let’s just go through them all. Or at least a bunch of them.
I find myself hating the choices and justifications of the makers of Magic. I am deeply enraged by the justification of Wizards of the Coast for their lawsuit of one rancored elf. Rather than experessing some deeper reason, some better justification that would make the whole situation actually make sense, they express the same old same old idea that we hear over and over again all over the place. “We have a right to protect our intellectual property.”
Now I might argue against the “right” and I might argue against the idea of “intellectual property” and I might even thread the needle and question the implicit assumptions built into the “we” and the “our” but the irony of this argument is that it is so bad that I don’t even have to argue about any of those things.
I have a right to protect my life. I have a right to protect the people I love. Yes I do. But that doesn’t mean I have a right to walk over to someone who is perputed to be a ex-fellon and murder them in their sleep. Doing so, if I can get away with it without effecting anyone else, might well end up protecting me and my family, but that doesn’t make it right and it doesn’t mean I have a right to do it. If I am a government, I have a right, no a duty to protect my citizens, but that doesn’t mean I have a right to shoot nuclear missles into a nation that happens to have terrorist camps within its borders.
People sometimes think notions of “proportionality” are only adopted by those who are trying to make conclusive moral judgements. “relativism” they call it. Such talk ignores the very fact that “proportionality” is essential to the very notion of morality at its essence. If you respond to an insult with an insult, perhaps you have not done the most just act but if you respond to an insult by tearing the the perpetrator limb from limb for assuredy you have done something very very wrong.
So, when the RIA says “We have a right to protect our IP”. Fine. But that doesn’t make it a good thing to sue people out of their livelihoods. The degree of the response exceeds the parameters of what could possibly be justified even if you accept all of their claims as true. So too with WotC. One picture of three cards that no one believed were real that were not going to be released for another entire year probably would not have caused any tangible provable harm to WotC at all, and yet they see it as ok to file a law suit against someone they damn well know probably doesn’t have the means to defend himself. Nevermind whether the claim is defensible or reasonable or just or even coherent. The act is wrong even if it is all of these things.
People complain about “law suits” being out of control. That there are “two many” of them and their quantity causes harm. I don’t believe that exactly. I think that suits are becoming a problem in our society because they are unfair, because there is an unfair playing field. Those with money and power and connections have an advantage both in filing suits and defending claims over those who do not. The law system perpetuates the power of those who have power and rarely serves as an instrument to transfer power from the strong to the weak. Though it is principal has that capacity, in execution in recent years it has failed to serve that role more and more. Everone should need to exercise a reasonable degree of caution before bringing a suit. Whether you are a big company or one individual you should feel reasonably confident that you will have a chance to win or lose based on the truth or falsity or your claim and you should be hesitant to bring up any claim that you can’t prove because the consequences need to be reasonably equally potentially negative for both parties. What we need is a system where the only battles fought out in courts are those where both parties fully believe the truth of their claims and are willing to face the consequences and accept the results should they be proven wrong. If one party can shrug off a loss and another would find their very way of life devastated by it. That’s not a just situation.
I have more complaints about the specifics of this particular case but I don’t feel like it right now. Suffice it to say I despise their response in all of its aspects and I wish I’d never known that this was a thing the people who make my favorite game are capable of choosing and believing in.
Onwards to other topics. I am also disturbed, no angered, by the recent stir up over myspace. I’m rather ambivalent about what myspace does or does not do to protect children on the internet. My real concern is what this means for the internet overall. Had the internet evolved in the manner than many of its founders imagined there would really be no centralized body like myspace to be to blame for the harms that befall a net denizen. Rather everyone would be able to communicate freely and easily with anyone else without the need of an intervening server that makes the task ‘easier’. But unfortunately the technical challenge of sharing information on a personal level created a space for these ‘aid’ services like this one I’m writing this on. Places that make it easier for people to communicate without having to worry about the nitty gritty details. Unfortunaly in so existing, these services become a convenient target for those who are caught up with fear and anger and want someone to blame when something tragic happens. Ideally in the future we’d see our own “space” on the internet as something like an extension of our own home/store/personal gallery/home theatre/etc. A space that you own, is yours and you can share as you please. But you don’t have anyone to blame if someone breaks into your home and causes you harm other than the person who does the breaking in.
I am also pretty annoyed by a documentary I saw today debunking the Da’Vinci Code. It’s almost certainly all true and all very reasonable, but I hated the presentation. It made it out as if the writer was some kind of a devlish evil being conspiring to destroy all of Christiantiy with his sacrilegious, and mostly false novel. Give me a break. Fiction is fiction. The only shred of evidence of this never quite stated but heavily suggested motive in the writing of the book is one line prior to the book’s start and is at best somewhat unclear in its interpretation. I also hate that this documentary probably only makes this already waaay overhyped and overpopular novel more popular. But most of all I hate the fact that people can suit the writer for using ‘ideas’ that they used in a previous novel written many years before. This is why we need a public domain. So that someone take someone’s ideas and incorporate them into a better story later on. This isn’t a ‘bad’ thing. It’s a good thing for the world. We get better art by building on each others thoughts and ideas. Why is it so important who “wins” and ends up rich?
I saw a senate debate on television. By God it was repuslive. So many false statements and simple uninteresting reiterations of the same words and ideas we’ve heard over and over again. Is this what works in modern politics? Stick with an explicit set of phrases and words and say them over and over again and have every single entity in your party say them in exactly the same words with exactly the same inflections so that it reverbates throughout the people and no one has to ever bother to think about any of their beliefs at all? In any argument you can just pull upon your vast repertoire of ready made catch phrases that you’ve got memorized because they are told to you by every leader in your party again and again and again. Where is the reason? Why don’t the candidates ever think and wonder and respond honestly not with catch phrases but a real analaysis complete with their uncertainties and their sureties and the facts that go into their positions? Politicians seem like they are more and more becoming appendages of a bigger monstrous body called the “party” which has one rather unimpressive mind.
I hated listening to the radio today and hearing yet again a story about the truth of New Orleans, how it completely didn’t have to be the extreme disaster that it was and how we are completely not preparing ot prevent such a horrible disaster from happening again though we have the means. It was disturbing to hear about how people died in their beds and their atics unable to be rescued because no one warned them while they were awake and alert that things weren’t ok and that they needed to get out. It’s tragic and so very disturbing that these truths are plastered across the news every every day on all networks until change becomes effected. Why don’t we say ‘Never Again’ to this as well?
Every day it seems I run into words and phrases that I ‘know’ or at least use or recognize when spoken and completely comprehend the context in which they are used and the overall idea being expressed but actually when I think deeply about the actual words themselves I have no idea what they mean. I hate that. Why is my knowledge so incomplete? It makes me wonder how much more I think I know that I really don’t. How mcuh am I really hiding from myself? Is my understanding of language and words really just a matter of guessing the meaning by context and not of careful consideration of the exact meanings of the concepts being discussed? How many misunderstandings could derivce just from that? This is particular disturbing for the writer in me who would rather not write at all then risk deceiving people with untruths unwittingly passed along because they have seeped into my writing as phrases taken out of context.
I hate that reason and philosophy can make a person totally insensitive. A person who spends their time wondering about the fundamental truths of the world finds it hard to feel sorrow on behalf of someone else who they do not see before them. And certainly it is harder to know how to react to sorrow if you don’t fundamentally believe in the means of response that are considered ‘normal’ and you don’t see the value in a rote response or a standard reaction. Indeed it can grate on a person when everyone reacts identically or at least within a limited range of accepted reactions to a dark piece of news. It seems ingenious. It seems unjust. You should only act as you feel. Thus the foolish and callous philosopher believes. I hate that.
I hate envy because I don’t even know what it is or how to recognize it or what it means or where it comes from. I read in a book a character who would remark to himself that he found himself evying a character often a friend and it seemed a mark of shame for him but did not diminish his friendship. I always thought envy would be a thing accompanied with anger and disgust and dislike, all often irrational. Like the character named “envy” in full metal alchemist. But is possible to envy someone for whom you feel nothing but the utmost respect? Maybe I’m just confusing envy and jealousy. But isn’t envy worse? I really don’t get it.
I hate striving without knowing why. I hate stasis without a goal. I hate believing without a means to effect your belief. I hate knowing without the capcity to convince others. I hate opportunities lost and friends vanished into the night. I hate oaths unkept and promises never made. I hate being wrong and knowing it again and again and again. I hate being tired. I hate staying up late working on pointless projects for pointless people caught up in their completely pointless world. I hate not finishing. I hate it.
I am probably going to switch this blog to an encrypted anonymous blogging site I found a while back because I think it is better to support the technologies I believe in. It does have a word limit per post though so it might be a little annoying to work with. I hate that too.
I hate hating too. That’s why I wait until late into the night when all reason leaves me to bother…
