Voting just closed on the One Book One Twitter project.  What’s that?  Well it’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s a project to try and get all of twitter to read one book at one time. 

Discussion of 1B1T occurs under hashtag #1B1T. The book to read was chosen through a community voting process. I don’t think they’ve tallied the votes yet but earlier the novel American  Gods by Neil Gaiman was a front runner.

It’s an interesting way to reveal and possibly build up shared values or at least shared perspectives. It gets people talking and thinking about the same thing. The hope is that these interactions can bring people together. It can help our contentious societies be a little more peaceful. We’ll see that we’re not all that different after all since we can all read and enjoy the same book.

I’ll probably read whatever the 1B1T book is. My twitter account is http://twitter.com/nephyo  I hope if you’re on twitter, you will too.

Those who know me or have been reading my blog for a long time might be aware that I attended Swarthmore College in the class of 2002.  I’m not a big fan of school pride or anything like that but I was very amused to find out that Evan Gregory of the Gregory Brothers gave what is perhaps one of the most unique commencement speeches of all time for the Swarthmore College class of 2009:

So who are the Gregory Brothers and why should you care?  Well basically it’s Evan his two brothers and his wife who have been making very awesome music together for quite a while.  Most famously they are responsible for the incredibly awesome award winning viral videos known as Auto-Tune The News:

All this is just to say that this is one Awesome Swatty (campus name for Swarthmore students). I look forward to following his family’s work in the future.

All of this is just a theory of mine. Take it with a grain of salt.

Probably the most common self-defense mechanism for protected oneself from repeated hurt is emotional withdraw.

If you suffered several hurts, particularly if they happened over a short period of time, it is almost instinctual to start to withdraw oneself from deep or lasting emotional connections. In essence, one is pre-suffering the pain of losing those connections but in a more slow and controlled rate so as not to have to suffer a shocking all-at-once loss. Further, overlapping the hurt one feels from losing prior connections with the pain one figures they will eventually feel over losing their current connections often seems like a good bargain to people. Get it all out of the way at once, you figure. That way you don’t have to keep dealing with it again and again.

Similarly, emotional withdraw is used to prevent new connections from developing or to prevent existing connections from becoming any stronger. The logic here is that the fewer deeper connections you form the less likely it is you will suffer from their loss in the future. While we can’t always control how close we get to someone, usually closeness isn’t a one time event. Rather it is a product of a growth of re-enforcing interactions. So person A feels amount N for B, interacts with B revealing that amount of feeling . Person B in turn starts to feel and demonstrate feeling amount M for A. That in turn causes person A to feel amount N+X  for B which in turn causes B to feel amount M+Y for A and so on and so forth. It’s sort of a chain reaction.  But if person A though they feel amount N for B simply does not reveal that N amount feeling or demonstrates a significantly smaller N, well then the chain is either broken or greatly reduced and overall emotional attachment grows at a much slower rate. Which is of course the point.

Of course from the perspective of the person being withdrawn from this always seems like a selfish and callous thing to do. And in a sense that’s partly right. That is especially how they will see it if they don’t know what hurt the withdrawn person has experienced that triggers the withdraw. It’s partly right because emotional withdraw is certain a self-centric interaction strategy. You are trying to defend oneself. It’s a mechanism for keeping onesself from harm. As a result, you often aren’t thinking about what harm your withdraw might and most likely is causing to others who might be in great need of the exact opposite of withdraw.  So how selfish the withdraw really is largely depends on how close the withdrawing person is to suffering irreparable long term damage from further loss or pain. It’s like the difference between a huge powerful strong person running away because they risk suffering a paper cut and a tiny weak person running away from being beaten to a pulp by a deranged bloody mob after having previously suffered considerable wounds from earlier conflicts. Imagine that there’s someone else there in both cases that the person could, if they stayed, possibly protect from the same harm or even some greater harm. Obviously we understand the latter case. If the person stays in that situation they are demonstrating extreme bravery. But in the former case, we see the person who ran away as being a selfish coward.

But we are talking about emotional strength and emotional bravery here which in no way correlates at all with physical capacity or courage.  People who are hurting and have suffered numerous emotional wounds often don’t give off any clear or visible outward sign of it. Indeed, if they are withdrawing they are by very definition hiding whatever hurt they’ve felt prior as part of their self-defense strategy. The withdraw itself is the only real indication and that in turn can and often is easily mistaken for apathy, indifference, coldness, cruelty, callousness, frivolity, or childishness. Because those are all ways in which people do prevent themselves from becoming more connected, it’s often hard to tell if someone feels these emotions or lack thereof truly or is simply using those reactions in order to avoid deeper or stronger connections.

Example. Someone you know buries themselves in video games never rearing their head when company or friends are around. All they ever want to do is play games.  Now it could be that they really just love games that much or it could be that they are really addicted and have a problem.  OR it could be that they are using the video games as a tool to withdraw from developing deeper connections that might cause them greater harm.  How can you tell which is which? 

I dunno. It’s hard. But it pays not to jump to conclusions.  It might be that a person who seems to be acting in a withdrawing fashion is really just an Ass with a capital A.  They aren’t doing because they have to but because they want to or because they don’t care who they are hurting.  OR it might be that the withdrawing person is really suffering and is trying to push others away to protect them. They may have, and most likely have, justified it to themselves that they are helping to protect the others whom they are withdrawing from as well. This is particularly likely if they have a low self-esteem and are likely inclined to think that someone being close to them is no big help or benefit to those people. A person who thinks other people are better off without knowing them is much more likely to find it easier to withdraw.

The key I think is to trust one’s evaluations of people. If you didn’t think someone was an Ass before chances are better than average that you had reasons for that belief that were based on truth. In that case it’s unlikely, though not impossible for that person to have simply become an Ass all at once. It’s certainly not impossible or even unlikely for them to ACT like an Ass though for whatever reason be it anger at you or an attempt to withdraw from you. The question I guess then would be to ask yourself whether it makes a difference to you whether the person is really an Ass or just pretending to be?

If you can determine though with a certainty that someone is withdrawing and not just fundamentally an ass, there may be recourse in order to prevent that person from withdrawing further.  Why would you want to do that?  Well in addition to the immediate benefit of allowing you to become closer to that person there’s a deeper more important benefit. 

The truth is withdrawing people generally are doing considerable harm to themselves by withdrawing. Often on some level they are even aware of this. But the safe feeling you get from being withdrawn often seems a better deal even if you know your long term happiness will suffer as a result. The problem is, emotional withdraw can be like an addiction. The more you live in that space away from deep connections with people the less likely you are to ever want to leave it. You might only plan to stay until your hurt dies down a little but in reality since you aren’t dealing with the real causes of the hurt you’re going to end up in that place a lot longer. And it’ll just get easier and easier to stay there as it becomes harder and harder to be willing to take the risk of developing deeper connections. But down that road leads at the minimum an empty life and at worse deep depression, madness, or even sociopathy.

So for this reason if one can establish that someone is withdrawing too much and staying there too long when they really need to be coping with their hurt so that they can move on, it can be a kind thing to do to try and help them out of that hurt place to a point where they can develop natural meaningful connections again. But that’s far easier said than done. It might not even be possible, or possible for you to do for this particular person. They might need lots of help you can’t give or help from a professional who has more experience dealing with these kinds of problems. Or you might not be the person who can get through to them and they have to wait until they are helped by just the right person at just the right time.

Or instead, you might be the right person and now might be the right time. The key would then be to try and find a way to communicate with them in such a way that leads them to reveal what they are really thinking and feeling. To let go of that first defense. Even a small crack in the wall might be the opening you need. If you can get someone to remember the good aspects of feeling emotionally connected to someone, maybe it can start to banish the fear that comes from uncertainty about what hurt they might feel in the future and again reassess the balance of scales and decide that it’s actually worth the risk to let oneself be open again.

Now don’t get me wrong. That doesn’t mean you should go a crusade and go around pestering every person who seems emotionally withdrawn to you every day in an attempt to get them to open up. You’ll likely drive those people insane and cause them to hate and despise you and inevitably withdraw even more. Even just pushing too hard can definitely cause someone to choose to withdraw more. But I’m saying some basic understanding and patience can go a long way. Regular meaningful communication can take you even further. Not jumping to conclusions and not judging and condemning people who are just trying to protect themselves from hurt they might not know how to deal with is how you start. Not playing games with people to try and manipulate them in order to force a reaction that would gratify only you is the second.

And from there? Who knows. Dealing with the oh so fragile human psyche is like walking along a tiny fragile razorblade thin tightrope through a gigantic labryinth of corridors. You’re trying not to fall, trying not to accidentally break the rope, and trying to find your way to the end of the maze all at one time. It can take a life time to figure out how to navigate that maze well.

And maybe that’s the reason why so many people find it so much easier to just opt out from the whole game and withdraw completely. Though if they do, I suspect they’ve lost site of the great rewards that lie at the end of the maze or they’ve never seen them in the first place.

There are certain goals that in our society we are expected to have. I’ve always felt this deep seeded urge to reject these goals. For example, one of the major goals most people have that they want to accomplish at some point in their life is to own a house. People consider that a major life changing event. It’s considered a benchmark to show that they’ve lived “right” and succeeded and achieved what they needed to in life. Owning your own home is considered a turning point that symbolizes your achievement of true independence.

What a load of crap.

I have no interest in owning a house. I think it’s absurd. Lots of paperwork, lots of risk, enormous debt and for what? To be tied down in one place? To forever be fearful of changes in your mortgage forcing you into foreclosure or the value of your house dropping to the point that it’s no longer a good investment?  To spend endless hours fretting over the quality of your lawn and enormous amounts of money keeping all your stoves and dishwashers and plumbing and electricity functioning? Constantly needing to fix it up to ensure that it retains its value as much as possible?  Seems crazy.   I just don’t get it. I never got it.

There are tons of expected goals out there. People are just used to them. We internalize them so much that we don’t ever question whether they are good goals to have or even make sense for the society as a whole for everyone to have these goals. Examples include:  moving out from your parents home, having sex, falling in love, getting married, having children, graduating High School, graduating College, getting a license, owning a car, staying in shape, getting a job, being successful at a career, retiring, traveling and seeing the world, seeing your children achieve the same things, living to meet your grandchildren.  Not necessarily in that order of course.

I believe it is wholly possible to live a happy fulfilling life without doing any of those things. Leastwise I don’t think a lot of those things are as necessary as we think. Not achieving any of them does not by itself make you a failure. It’s that over-simplistic view of life that often spurs feelings of depression and inadequacy. If you’ve been told over and over again by everything around you in the society, that you need to achieve these things in order to have lived a worthwhile life, then when well life gets in the way of achieving any one of these, or achieving them according to schedule, people get depressed. They start to think that there’s something wrong with them. They start to think that they made terrible mistakes and feel deep overriding regrets. If you don’t get that white picket fence dream fulfilled, you often feel like maybe you just didn’t deserve your white picket fence. And from there it’s only a hop skip and a jump away from wondering why you are here in the first place.

It’s stupid of course. For society as a whole some of these goals don’t make any sense at all. Giving everyone a college level education is unnecessary. Everyone moving away from home and striving to buy their own house creates enormous costly waste. And it leaves older people without children living in or near home to take care of them. Often it’s much more efficient monetarily to have as many people living in a house as the house can reasonably fit sharing resources. But our emphasis on moving out causes all these houses to have empty space. Which means energy is wasted heating and cooling empty rooms that aren’t in use. Socially it makes no sense. Everyone driving and owning their own car makes even less sense.

Though of course practically it’s totally understandable that many children and parents don’t want to be driven insane by continuing to have to reside with one another.

My point is more general. The leave home and strive to buy your own house pattern doesn’t HAVE to be the only one. Society could be organized differently. Lots of societies elsewhere in the world have been organized differently. In some societies communal living arrangements are the total norm. There is no expected goal of “moving out”.

In my stubbornness I’m the kind of person who sort of wants to just reject all of the expected goals as a kind of protest. I want to strive for none of them and achieve none of them and live my own way. Of course it’s far too late for that since I’ve already achieved a number of them without really trying that hard.  Still I wish there was a way to get people to understand that a lot of the reason we think these things matter comes from social conditioning and not any inherent value in the thing in itself. We should strive to re-examine our goals from as neutral and objective a perspective we can in order to figure out what will really bring us happiness and give us a sense of fulfillment in our lives

I lie in my bed, head pounding. Nearby my roommate watches old vlogbrothers videos on her quest to “get caught up”. Currently John Green is calming himself “stupid stupid stupid” for something having to do with his brother’s birthday. I am out of it. My mind wanders.

Yesterday. Night. I dreamed. I was home and I was home at the same time. My parents were disappearing. And there was a fire. I remembered it vividly and I thought: I will write about this. But instead I turned around put my head back into my pillow and tried to sleep. I didn’t succeed. But I didn’t want to remember and so I didn’t. And now I don’t. The cat moves from her position at my feet to try and find a better more comfortable position apparently on my face. But I don’t mind. The cat helps me relax.

Earlier today. I watched season 6 episodes 3 and 4 of Lost. Slowly getting caught up. It’s all about destiny. I recall that Sawyer says “Maybe some people are meant to be alone.” And there’s always John Locke’s demand “Don’t tell me what I can’t do.” Point. Counter point. My head still pounds. Locke is told to accept that there are just some things he cannot do and take a more “realistic” job as a substitute teacher. How many of us fail to accept that? How many of us strive to do things we can’t do and never learn that there are things that aren’t worth striving for? How many of us give up and don’t strive for things we could do if we tried? I really need to finish getting caught up in this series.

Prior. Unable to sleep, I awaken. Head is starting to hurt. I pick up my now autographed copy of Looking for Alaska. I’ve wanted to reread it so I can write about it. That put’s it in a rare special category of books that I read more than once. There are very VERY few books that make it on that list. The Hobbit, Everything written by Kurt Vonnegut, The Legends by Weis and Hickman, The first 3 books of A Song of Ice and Fire.  A few others. Generally most books I read once. I don’t read fast enough to waste time re-watching. But also most movies I watch once. Most television shows I only watch once. Most everything I only do once. What do I do with all this extra time I should have for not re-experiencing stuff? Nothing. Except I write.  But not today. I read about two chapters before I realize that this book is not exactly the cheerfullest way to start a new day.

After. My roommate knocks on my door. After a groan I get myself up from my semi-lethargic state. I pause the Lost ep I was watching. Kick the cat off my chest. I get the door. “I have to tell you about the dream I just had!” she says.  I’ve been up all day but she is nocturnal so she just woke up.  I sit down. She tells me. The creativity of her dream astounds me as they always do. At night her subconscious creates entire new worlds. I wonder where imagination comes from. Does it come from dreams? Are we born with it? If you don’t have it can you get it? What’s the going rate on imagination?

Immediately. Something in our conversation or in her dream reminds her of a song she wrote. There’s a dull thumping in my head. She borrows my laptop and looks up her song on gmail and sings it. It’s beautiful. I tell her she should take a video of herself singing it and put it on youtube. A bit later, she reads a lot of the poetry she wrote back around the time she created that song and in the years following. She’s looking for a specific poem but never finds it. I guess it’s lost. It’s interesting but in my hazy mind I understand the poems she reads. Usually poetry holds little allure for me since it’s generally incomprehensible. Some of these poems she’d sent to me in the past and they were just as inexplicable to me as all other poems. But now, read aloud they make more sense. I think I’ll make it a rule then never to consume poetry in a non-audio form.

Long before. After giving up on re-reading Alaska for now, and after contemplating and rejecting going to work to get caught up, I decided that if I’m to finish my overdue anti-SGU post, I might as well get caught up on watching the series. That might make the writing easier. Before I had watched only the first 7 episodes.  Today I watch all the way through 14. All the time I watch there is an over-needy cat demanding my attention. Giving the cat attention is, for the most part, more entertaining than watching the show. Nothing in the show resonates with me. And as I watch I feel more and more detached from what I see and from the world in general. There’s just this… empty feeling. And a piercing sensation starts to build around my temple.

Meanwhile. One of my friends and I exchange some IMs. She tells me of her xbox being completely fried and she tells me of the possible nearby opportunities to fulfill her bucket list item of wanting to meet Richard Dean Anderson before she dies. How strange that I seem to keep finding myself connected with Stargate nerds? But alas looks like she can’t see RDA this year because her trip to Hawaii is already planned and comes first.

Not too long ago. My roommate hasn’t eaten in like 17 hours and I haven’t eaten in like 8, so it’s probably a good idea to get food. We travel forth and there is a massive storm brewing. I can’t find my phone so I leave without it. We head to the grocery store looking for rotisserie chicken. Alas they are out. So we go to grocery store 2 and they are. So we go to Boston Market, only to find it’s closed. Storm clouds still brewing and a big roiling storm flowing over us.  We drive on. Finally finding a far away KFC. We seem intent on eating poor tortured chickens today and we won’t be denied. So we do (and yes, I do feel bad about that, a little). Though they are out of mac n cheese which we also couldn’t find at either grocery store, at least not the kind we wanted and were denied at boston market due to their closedness. As I drove, my heart beat at an accelerated rate. I feel this need to get home. My eyes keep turning upward toward the storm clouds. Several times I imagine crashes I could have. Things that could go wrong. It’s really dark. Hard even to see the lines on the road. My head starts to hurt more. But fears serve no purpose asides from making me uncomfortable. We make it home without significant event. The storm was blown in a different direction and most of it missed us after all.

Now. I’m here. Still here. Thinking. Time passes. An hour and a half I took to write this entry. Another thirty minutes spent trying to decide what to write or summon the will to write the many things I’ve long wanted to write.  Here and now there is little but the stiffness in my limbs from lying here so long. My eyes droop out of tiredness. But I don’t want to sleep. My roommate still watches various videos.  My head still hurts. My friend is still online.   And that’s a day.

We live in a strange world. There’s so much even in the most quiet and uneventful of days. So many thoughts. So many details. We’re taking in data, feeling, dreaming, remembering. Our minds wander. We imagine when we can. We hope when we cannot. We despair when hope fails. And all along we perpetually doubt.

I’m not sure why I wrote this and I’m even less sure why anyone would read this to completion. But if you did, thanks. I’ll write again tomorrow.

I’m sure you all know what stress dreams are. It’s those typical manifestations of an over stressed out or tired subconscious. Typical ones involve like endlessly digging a hole, shovel full after shovel full,  or constantly being forced to run a race that never seems to end. They are probably the easiest dreams of all to interpret. They’re pretty straight forward indications that some aspect of you feels you need a break.

I don’t usually have a lot of dreams at all. But last night weirdly I had my first real stress dream that I can remember.  Weirdly I don’t think I’m all THAT stressed in life right now. At least not nearly as stressed as I’ve been in the past. I can honestly say I’ve been in much worse situations. Right now things are mostly just in boring equilibrium with only some slight risks. Though having my tax return money come in would certainly help alleviate my stress considerably. The only other stress I feel comes from the need to meet minor obligations and promises I’ve made that really shouldn’t matter that much.

Nevertheless I had my stress dream and it was quite interesting how it manifested in me. I didn’t dream of running or digging,  I dreamed of moving.

In fact, I was back in College and I was trying to move out of my dorm room on like the third or fourth floor. No elevator. I was just grabbing boxes and junk hauling it downstairs and trying to fit it into my car or van. Then back up the stairs. Grab more. Back down the stairs. Back up the stairs. Back down the stairs. And so on and so forth. Over and over and over again.  Weirdly I had a lot more really heavy furniture and massive boxes of books in my dream world than I ever owned in real life. I was doing it all by myself too.

A lot of the stress was playing like a Tetris game of trying to fit everything in while I was packing so I wouldn’t have to make too many extra trips. And I kept worrying that I might accidentally crush the Fish. That’s right the fish. Apparently in my dream I had a pet fish of some kind that might get crushed if I packed incorrectly.  I also had to make sure the cat was safe and the cat had to be nowhere near the fish so he wouldn’t eat it. It was really REALLY important. My dream self was sweating bullets and overwhelmed by fear. Of course irl I had neither cat nor fish while I was in college.

I also felt super rushed during this dream. It was like the OTHER class was going to move in soon and so I had to get all my junk moved before they came on Monday. And it was Saturday when I was moving. And then I’d have to drive a whole car load or van load of stuff all the way home to Delaware, unload it and then drive all the way back and fill up my car with more stuff.

In my dream my college roommate who was the same person who was my college roommate in real life was nowhere to be found and so I had to move all HIS stuff too. And I had to make sure not to damage any of his stuff too adding to the stress.

And then it got kinda funny cuz I wasn’t done by the end of Saturday but I was really close so I came back on Sunday to finish the job only to find my roommate had returned with LOTS MORE STUFF!!! I don’t know where all his extra stuff came from but I was super exhausted and so I had to start moving stuff again. Up and down the stairs. Drive back and forth. Up and down. Back and forth. And I kept finding more stuff I’d missed or forgotten whenever it looked like I was getting close to done. My dream self never got mad. He was just resigned. Resigned and exhausted and feeling a desperate need to finish.

I woke up soon after that, still having not finished moving everything and it left me with this overwhelming sense of incompleteness and failure.  It was not a pleasant feeling. Really made me not want to go to work today.

I don’t know what it means that I associate moving, driving, college and my old college roommate with being under stress. And I have even less of a clue what a fish and a cat have to do with anything. Probably nothing.

Anyway do you have any recurring stress dreams that plague you? Feel free to share!

The most important thing you get drilled into you from studying the entire history of the discipline of economics is that absolutely everything is driven by incentives. That’s why we understand that if you create a system where the people in charge of running large financial institutions can gain enormous personal fortunes by taking large short term risks, eventually you get people running large financial institutions willing to take those large short term risks. And so on and so forth.

Political creatures are also driven by incentives just as much. And the more money goes into our politics the more perverse incentives distort the political system. Much has been written about how these incentives lead politicians to advocate for weaker bills or to block nominees or overturn regulations or otherwise act in a manner that benefits their donors over their constituents. But there’s one way in which politicians receive a perverse incentive that gets little attention that arises strictly out of the electoral system itself.

Basically, weirdly, a politician when a politician is the only party willing to fight to fulfill the wants or needs of a constituent group, he has a strong incentive not to completely fulfill the most important component of that constituent group’s agenda. The reason is simple. Retaining that constituent group’s loyalty and enthusiasm is far more important to the politician than doing the right thing.  As long as the group has nowhere else to turn in order to see even a fraction of their agenda fulfilled, the politician can be assured their loyalty so long as they do something that benefits the group. Often it’s best for them to do the simplest least important elements of that group’s agenda and hold off the big elements that serve as rallying cries until some indeterminate time in the future.

We see this frequently lately in the Democratic Party. There are certain core issues that remain rallying cries for certain constituent groups that they know they would get no traction on if there was instead a Republican administration in power.  For example, for Unions Card Check is one of their core issues. For LGBT groups repealing DADT and DOMA are their major driving agenda items. For several environmental groups passing Cap and Trade was one of their core agenda items. For several civil liberties groups closing Guantanamo Bay was one of their core principles.

Note. None of these things have happened yet.

Imagine though had they happened? What if President Obama came in and bam closed Guantanamo Bay, repealed DADT and DOMA with a sweep of a pen, passed Card Check and went right on from there to work on trying to push Cap and Trade and Health Care Reform.

There are two ways that could go. Obama could have earned enormous respect and adoration from his base who were willing to support him to the end of time.  OR after the cheers died down, people would become complacent and move on and stop worrying so much and not show up in the polls. In mean time he would have outraged his political enemies and made new enemies from those who might have been willing to work with him.

Far easier, from the politican’s perspective to pass the smaller easier changes wanted by each of those constituent groups that show that the administration is on their side while keeping those popular galvanizing issues on the table to campaign on during the next election cycle. Hence you can retain their loyalty for cheap with little political risk to yourself.

Now as it turned out, President Obama managed to make those same enemies and outrage those same people unexpectedly by just trying to pass a very conservative health care reform bill. But that wasn’t an inevitability. The opposition party did not have to be that irrational.

I think rational self-interested politicians, generally perform this kind of calculus and come to the conclusion that moderate actions combined more extreme rhetoric and promises is the maximal method of securing continuing re-election. Only when a politician no longer has to worry about getting re-elected are they likely to fight hard for the more extreme changes that they truly believe are good. So only then can you determine whether or not the politician really meant those political promises they made.

On the other hand the back and forth bouncing of the political cycle often makes it that by time the politician no longer has to worry about re-election there might not be enough other politicians in a similar situation who are willing to support the larger proposals most desired by their constituencies. Hence our entire political system tends to always favor tiny moderate changes even in areas when great change is needed and for which there is a lot of support.

For this reason it’s really important to have more than two viable competitive parties in any political system. Constituents need to be able to turn away from a candidate and have somewhere else to turn so that they can pose as a credible threat. We’re seeing the benefit of a system like that in Britain right now where a third party candidate is proving a credible threat precisely because of the two major parties, one gave lots of good promises and didn’t deliver over the last 13 years and the other doesn’t express views agreeable to a large percentage of the population. As a result they not only get a more robust debate but it also increased the probability that more will get done. Each person in power needs to do more than token gestures to satisfy their constituents in any areas where they face competition from any other party.

Happy giant ball of rock teeming with parasitic lifeforms hurdling through space around an even more gigantic ball of plasma with perpetual thermonuclear fusion explosions occurring in its core Day! Or something like that. I’m a programmer dammit, not a scientist.

I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing.
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butrightnow I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing. I hate writing.

But I still like writers.

Note: For the purpose of this discussion I will define racism as the irrational dislike of a people because of their skin tone, race, or national origin. This is an oversimplified definition meant to fit in with what most people mean when they say racism and avoid the technical vagaries surrounding notions of institutional racism vs racism vs prejudice vs bias, etc. etc.

If it ever comes to pass that numerous normal basically rational individuals independently come to the conclusion that someone is racist there are only two possible explanations.

1. That person IS racist
or
2. That person has acted in a manner that would lead reasonable people in the society to suspect them to be racist.

The second category itself must be split into two categories:

2-A. Those who unwittingly act in a manner that leads other reasonable people to suspect that they are racists.
or
2-B. Those who KNOWINGLY act in a manner that leads other reasonable people to suspect that they are racists.

2-A and 2-B are obviously mutually exclusive.  1 and 2 are not.

So if someone is a 2-A who is not 1 they are obviously innocents. No social condemnation is due to them. It’s basically the scenario where a guy from another planet appears somewhere in the United States wearing a Nazi Swastika and a Confederate Flag. He doesn’t KNOW the cultural and social significance of those symbols so it’s not really his fault.

People who are 1 but not 2 at all and people who are 1 and 2-A are generally what we call racists. Here’s the thing most people don’t understand about racists though:

What!?! That sounds crazy right? We’ve come to a point as a society where our first instinct is to condemn racists and hate them and cast them out of the society. 

But here’s the thing to think about. In this country, in the United States, there was a time not long ago when nearly everyone was a racist. If that weren’t the case we wouldn’t have had an era of slavery that lasted so long and we wouldn’t have had an era of segregation that lasted so long. We wouldn’t have had Japanese internment camps and we wouldn’t have had a Red Scare and we wouldn’t have had the Native American genocide. People wouldn’t have stood for it. Given this its entirely possible that most people in this country were still racist within the last 75 years and certainly within the last 100.

Given that how can it be that we’ve gone so quickly from nearly everyone being racist to very very few people being racist in such a short time?  The answer is obvious. It means a LOT of racist people came to a point where they were able to and willing to re-examine their beliefs. And out of that examination, most of them must have chosen either to change their mind or at the very least not to pass on their own prejudices and biases to their children and grandchildren.

That kind of racist, a person who deeply believes that people of a certain race are inferior or evil or dangerous or stupid or whatever and yet in spite of that belief STILL chooses not to teach their children the same philosophy of hate and does not insist on making others think like they do, I think is very admirable.  That’s a good person. His beliefs are wrong. But just because you hold a wrong belief doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person.

This doesn’t mean there aren’t bad people who are racist. There obviously are. In fact in some people their racists beliefs can lead them to engage in terrible acts. A person who is prone to violence in anger might well be inspired to beat the crap out of people of a certain race because they’ve internalized beliefs of their moral depravity. Likewise a person who enjoys lording their power and influence over others might be inclined to abuse people of another race if they hold beliefs of that race’s inherent inferiority.

That being said, racists overall aren’t as big a problem as people make it out to be. All else being equal racism will slowly erode under the face of basic rationality. The fact is the beliefs held by racists are false. Rational people over time will stop holding them.

For this reason I don’t generally think it makes much sense to exert extraordinary effort trying to prove that one person is racist because they did or said this thing that seems racist. That’s a very hard thing to prove. You’re basically trying to show something absolute about someone’s internal world view. To say that with any level of certainty you’d need extraordinary amounts of evidence of racist actions and writing or testimony suggesting the holding of racist beliefs. Sometimes we can show this but a vast majority of accusations of racism that we hear bandied about are not based on sufficient evidence.

The problem is this focus on rooting out and finding the racists plays right into the hands of the people who are the real problem. The Race Baiters.

Race Baiters are the category 2-B groups. In my opinion they are far more deplorable than simple racists. The race baiters play upon known racial attitudes, deliberately in order to inflame them. Their goal appears to be by their actions to encourage people to accept their worst assumptions about others. Baiters validate them. They tell you it’s okay. They give you evidence to confirm your beliefs and even sometimes encourage you to act on them.

Race baiters are not chagrined when they are called racists. In fact they LOVE it when they are accused of racism. That plays right into their overall strategy. They will, generally turn it around to suggest the accuser is in turn ignorant, racist, or otherwise in the wrong.  Best of all they feed on the controversy. They use it to get attention and of course at the same time they deny thoroughly any and all accusations thrown there way.

Some race baiters are pretty blatant. They’ll go up and give a speech about how the Jews are to blame. Or it’s the Hispanics who are taking away your jobs or your homes. Or they’ll talk about how to solve a problem like “crime” in terms of cracking down on “inner city neighborhoods” and dealing with those dangerous violent crack dealers.

Other race baiters are much much more subtle. Today’s race baiter is more inclined to say launch into critical analysis of the behaviors and words of certain people they don’t like. They’ll rant and rage about this person or that person but it’s always targeted toward one person. Hence they avoid accusations of racism.  However, if you take a broader view you’ll notice that invariably all the people they choose to criticize are of the same race. They never or very rarely choose people of a different race or of their own race. And when they do it’s pretty clear they are doing so to shield themselves from culpability.

So the end result is that people watching or reading or listening to these race baiters are left with the impression of the world that ALL people of that race are terrible creatures prone to the most despicable behaviors. Worse, the baiter gives you a sense that such things rarely happen with your own people.

Do you see how this works? The baiter creates an environment of perpetual distrust. People of the other race feel like they are under attack. People of the baiter’s race are frightened into being wary of the other race. The baiter uses accusations of racism in order to make themselves seem even bigger. They suggest that the accuser is accusing their whole race or group of being racist and that that’s just another sign of the accuser’s race’s irrational aggressiveness and inherent racism. See how skillfully they twist things around?

The irony is often the race baiter can say with complete sincerity that they are NOT racist and often they are telling the truth. While some race baiters are motivated by a deep overriding irrational hatred of one or more races, many are not. Many are in fact motivated by much more base emotions such as the need for attention, the desire to build wealth through demagoguery and sometimes out of an overriding un-targeted fear and ignorance. Some are just selfish self serving bastards that have no conscience. They themselves don’t give a damn about race, but they know talking about race and baiting people like this is one way to breed controversy and build up an audience and they thrive on that.

There are a lot of race baiters around. And these days they have enormous influence. Some are on television, others on the radio. Numerous of them have blogs and write articles for famous publications. Even Xanga has its race baiters. 

It’s a lucrative kind of business to be in. If you are racist you get an outlet to vent your racist screed in a manner that grants you permanent plausible deniability. If you aren’t racist, well you can still drive up an audience by relying on the fact that many of us deep down have some racist attitudes tied in with our deep divided cultural history that can easily be stoked and exploited.  The ensuing controversy alone will always result in more viewers. Meanwhile you can always pretend to be the victim, falsely accused. You can pretend to be the only brave and honest truth teller willing to say things that might be perceived as controversial despite great personal risk to your own reputation.  It’s the perfect plan!

If you have no conscience that is.

Race baiters are the scum of the Earth. There are no people on this planet I find more deplorable. If you find yourself being drawn to one of these people, please take a step back. Don’t just look at the words they are saying or the specific example they put before you and try to look at the bigger picture. What exactly are they trying to do? What are the ultimate consequences of the way they are presenting racial issues? Are they trying to build reconciliation or understanding between the races? Or are they trying to inflame passions and make you feel good and justified about your own darker thoughts? Are they trying to get people to take responsibility for their beliefs and the effects their words and actions are having on others? Or they are trying to offer you a salve so you can say to yourself you didn’t do anything wrong and you have a right to feel the way you do and say the things you say no matter who it might hurt in the end.

The good news is that rational people do over time see through this. Many of us independently come to the conclusion that something is wrong here wit what this person is doing.  The problem is we don’t have a good name for it so we inadvertently come to the hard to prove conclusion that the person is a racist or else we just conclude that the person is just a jerk.

Both are incorrect. Whether or not the person is a racist or a jerk are matters up for debate. Often proving one or either proposition is near impossible. But what is as clear as day and utterly un-debatable in many of these cases is that the person is a race baiter. And that in and of its own right should be a behavior worthy of universal scorn and social condemnation.