I watched a clip of a Richard Dawkins video last night. His discovery, at a young age, of Darwin's work lead him de facto to atheism. I suppose that is fine for him, but it was sort of a ding ding moment for me.
It's not that I haven't thought this before, it's just that I've never really isolated the thought, I don't think, or pulled it out of the rubble.
Why the insistence or assumption of an "Explanation God"? And yes, I just made that term up. What I mean is, why do believers need to believe that God is the ghost in the machine, God is the creator and thus the solution to the riddle of the physical universe? And why do non-believers think that humankind just created God to answer the things that they, at the time, could not answer with science?
I suppose I answered my own question. Believers do tend to believe that, because that is the mythos of God isn't it? God makes the sun rise, God made the dirt, God coaxes the stem from the seed. I think it is a mistake to teach this in church as a necessary stipulation of God. The church builds its own straw man. I guess it went over my head in confirmation class, because they said a lot of silly things at me and honestly I was way ahead of them.
God is not the answer or the explanation. God is not the balm to appease my feeble mind. No wonder the evolution debate always seemed so banal to me. God explains nothing, and it is specifically that quality which obliges me to believe.
God is not the the regular momentum of grass growing. God is chaos in a hypodermic needle.
__
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Porn: A Thought Nugget
I am not fundamentally opposed to pornography. I am not even opposed to it in practice. I think the notion that women shouldn't or wouldn't do porn if given the option betrays a fundamentally sexist attitude that robs women of the power of true consent. Women are not always objectified; in the industry they have far more choosing power than their male counterparts. I take umbrage with the concept that to use one's body for money is somehow more onerous than the sort of objectification millions of people endure every day when no one cares about their brain, their degrees, their skills, their ambition. Wage slaves are used, the whole lot of them, but unlike female porn stars they have no behind-the-scenes agency, they are not celebrated or trophied, and no aspect of their self-ness praised, and they certainly cannot name their price.
In terms of humanity imbued through popular, straight porn, the odd-men-out are just that - men. Whereas women, however dollish and fake, are trundled up like pigs on slaughterhouse chains, the men are even less human. In pop-porn, men are large penises emanating from the corners of pages and screens. They have few faces, no names, no eye contact. They serve only to venerate the almighty vagina with their plentiful and generic members. They are props, literally. Unless they have some special talent or attribute, heterosexual male porn stars take the pay they get and shuffle off into the cold unknown.
It is no odd surprise to me that the same sort of extremist, so-called feminism that would rob women of consent also robs women of dissent. It creates a rigid dogma which admits no growth and allows into its language only the false dichotomy of militance or treason. I know the world of pornography is rife with horror stories of unwitting girls trying to make a buck. But I object when this strain of feminism allows no room in its stiff and brittle paradigm for the women who want to be porn stars, who enjoy it, who feel no personal loss, who retain their autonomy, who like the sweet bucks they pull down but who ultimately have pursued this path as a means of sexual exploration.
But there is something that bothers me about porn, something I can't quite describe. I have thought about it off and on for several months. This isn't conservatism at work here, and it isn't hard-core feminism either. No doubt that almost all porn is packaged for men, bought by men, consumed by men. Porn is a male-centric product, but it's not inherent misogyny. Women as vendors and men as consumers equates a symbiotic relationship when women enter willingly into the cycle. To say that men have the only power in this relationship is to fall back on old memes where men are the only arbiters of power - this is false.
But I still couldn't decide what I didn't like about porn. Yeah, women look stupid in it, but so do men.
It occurred to me that the real problem of porn has been masked because we insist on seeing it as a gender issue. Maybe it isn't.
The problem is that all of the porn I've ever seen (and I'll go out on a limb here to admit that I've seen a lot) is trite, and banal, and stupid.
Maybe this issue is balder to me because it's still a novelty in my life. I had no interest in porn until I came into contact with a boy, which makes sense, because porn is targeted to him and not me. But I kept watching, kept looking, firstly to identify with him but secondly because I was trying to ferret out that feeling I had, the feeling of being intellectually pie-faced and completely unimpressed.
The people in porn look like morons. I don't relate to the women, and the men are completely unappealing. Even as the "subject", I'd bet the typical male porn star serves as a poor proxy to the millions of lonely boys imagining themselves in his place. He looks like a dull crayon, a coke-fried frat boy, a sad aging divorce', a greasy good-for-nothing-log-lump. And the women!
Why this need to have their mouths hanging open like anorexic zombies, eyes glazed-over and half-shut, their legs flayed out like dead chickens? I know they aren't as stupid as they look. Consider trendsetter Sasha Grey, or Jenna Jameson's graceful parlay into mainstream TV and entrepreneurship, or Stormy Daniels's bid for the U.S. Senate. I think even listing examples is trite. There are just as many dummies in porn as there are in any other sector, just as many smarties too.
What I detest is the aesthetic of stupidity. Magazine design looks like something out of Idiocracy, all bubble-gum fonts and stars and primary colors. Videos are laughable, crappy DV-quality, poorly placed mics, unimaginative lighting, zero effort.
In part, this is commercialism at work. Low overhead = no change in demand = more profit.
But I think perhaps that women's issues are a red-herring. It's a culture issue. Maybe it's closer to the truth to say that porn makes itself stupid out of self-defense. A sexually stifling culture lies all about us, so for porn to protect itself, it must inoculate itself by falling submissively into those patterns. Porn becomes the expected, it fills out the convenient stereotypes handed down by those who would judge it. We are living in a world still obsessed with the Madonna-Whore complex. Women who are sexually open must be whores, and whores must be idiots, as well as everyone who supports the whoring.
Stupid sex is easy, it's so easy. We have so many prototypes in place, and we always have. It's the same thing when Marilyn Monroe had to play dumb blonde to be a sexpot. It's the same thing when the Conservative Right believes so strongly the homosexuality is wrong because they are all promiscuous bastards, yet fights so hard to prevent those promiscuous bastards from getting married. Intertwining the separate realms of sexuality and idiocy is the opposition's way of keeping porn condemnable. And yet, I know that this mantra of stupidity can't be the whole story. Lots of people are in to porn, and not all of them are apes. I'm not asking for the moon here, I'm just asking for porn stars who don't look like they've all just recently suffered concussions.
This problem isn't confined to porn. Several counter-culture movements shield themselves beneath a veil of easy irrelevance. Indy movies were, for a while, chalked with empty angst. Cynicism reigns supreme, nihilism the only - and the unrealistic - solution to cultural boredom. So dense that they can easily be dismissed. So crass and tactlessly manufactured that audiences may cop out by calling it recreational slumming.
The problem with porn being this way is that it bleeds into real sex. The boys who were raised on this stuff often don't know how to differentiate it from life. Genuine physical connections are swapped out for poorly imitated porn fantasies which are - in themselves - just simulation. We have been robbed, once again, of original experience, only this time it's harmful and degrading and guilt-ridden. At best it it pale and sickly. This is the legacy handed down from, yes, our puritanical founders who see the only alternative to abstinence and holy marital procreation as soulless, brainless debauchery. We have lost our vocabulary for it, lost our ownership. This is one of the few areas where I agree with Andrea Dworkin. But unlike her I think porn can be reclaimed, or claimed for the first time. Pornographers, stop dicking around and do your job.
.
In terms of humanity imbued through popular, straight porn, the odd-men-out are just that - men. Whereas women, however dollish and fake, are trundled up like pigs on slaughterhouse chains, the men are even less human. In pop-porn, men are large penises emanating from the corners of pages and screens. They have few faces, no names, no eye contact. They serve only to venerate the almighty vagina with their plentiful and generic members. They are props, literally. Unless they have some special talent or attribute, heterosexual male porn stars take the pay they get and shuffle off into the cold unknown.
It is no odd surprise to me that the same sort of extremist, so-called feminism that would rob women of consent also robs women of dissent. It creates a rigid dogma which admits no growth and allows into its language only the false dichotomy of militance or treason. I know the world of pornography is rife with horror stories of unwitting girls trying to make a buck. But I object when this strain of feminism allows no room in its stiff and brittle paradigm for the women who want to be porn stars, who enjoy it, who feel no personal loss, who retain their autonomy, who like the sweet bucks they pull down but who ultimately have pursued this path as a means of sexual exploration.
But there is something that bothers me about porn, something I can't quite describe. I have thought about it off and on for several months. This isn't conservatism at work here, and it isn't hard-core feminism either. No doubt that almost all porn is packaged for men, bought by men, consumed by men. Porn is a male-centric product, but it's not inherent misogyny. Women as vendors and men as consumers equates a symbiotic relationship when women enter willingly into the cycle. To say that men have the only power in this relationship is to fall back on old memes where men are the only arbiters of power - this is false.
But I still couldn't decide what I didn't like about porn. Yeah, women look stupid in it, but so do men.
It occurred to me that the real problem of porn has been masked because we insist on seeing it as a gender issue. Maybe it isn't.
The problem is that all of the porn I've ever seen (and I'll go out on a limb here to admit that I've seen a lot) is trite, and banal, and stupid.
Maybe this issue is balder to me because it's still a novelty in my life. I had no interest in porn until I came into contact with a boy, which makes sense, because porn is targeted to him and not me. But I kept watching, kept looking, firstly to identify with him but secondly because I was trying to ferret out that feeling I had, the feeling of being intellectually pie-faced and completely unimpressed.
The people in porn look like morons. I don't relate to the women, and the men are completely unappealing. Even as the "subject", I'd bet the typical male porn star serves as a poor proxy to the millions of lonely boys imagining themselves in his place. He looks like a dull crayon, a coke-fried frat boy, a sad aging divorce', a greasy good-for-nothing-log-lump. And the women!
Why this need to have their mouths hanging open like anorexic zombies, eyes glazed-over and half-shut, their legs flayed out like dead chickens? I know they aren't as stupid as they look. Consider trendsetter Sasha Grey, or Jenna Jameson's graceful parlay into mainstream TV and entrepreneurship, or Stormy Daniels's bid for the U.S. Senate. I think even listing examples is trite. There are just as many dummies in porn as there are in any other sector, just as many smarties too.
What I detest is the aesthetic of stupidity. Magazine design looks like something out of Idiocracy, all bubble-gum fonts and stars and primary colors. Videos are laughable, crappy DV-quality, poorly placed mics, unimaginative lighting, zero effort.
In part, this is commercialism at work. Low overhead = no change in demand = more profit.
But I think perhaps that women's issues are a red-herring. It's a culture issue. Maybe it's closer to the truth to say that porn makes itself stupid out of self-defense. A sexually stifling culture lies all about us, so for porn to protect itself, it must inoculate itself by falling submissively into those patterns. Porn becomes the expected, it fills out the convenient stereotypes handed down by those who would judge it. We are living in a world still obsessed with the Madonna-Whore complex. Women who are sexually open must be whores, and whores must be idiots, as well as everyone who supports the whoring.
Stupid sex is easy, it's so easy. We have so many prototypes in place, and we always have. It's the same thing when Marilyn Monroe had to play dumb blonde to be a sexpot. It's the same thing when the Conservative Right believes so strongly the homosexuality is wrong because they are all promiscuous bastards, yet fights so hard to prevent those promiscuous bastards from getting married. Intertwining the separate realms of sexuality and idiocy is the opposition's way of keeping porn condemnable. And yet, I know that this mantra of stupidity can't be the whole story. Lots of people are in to porn, and not all of them are apes. I'm not asking for the moon here, I'm just asking for porn stars who don't look like they've all just recently suffered concussions.
This problem isn't confined to porn. Several counter-culture movements shield themselves beneath a veil of easy irrelevance. Indy movies were, for a while, chalked with empty angst. Cynicism reigns supreme, nihilism the only - and the unrealistic - solution to cultural boredom. So dense that they can easily be dismissed. So crass and tactlessly manufactured that audiences may cop out by calling it recreational slumming.
The problem with porn being this way is that it bleeds into real sex. The boys who were raised on this stuff often don't know how to differentiate it from life. Genuine physical connections are swapped out for poorly imitated porn fantasies which are - in themselves - just simulation. We have been robbed, once again, of original experience, only this time it's harmful and degrading and guilt-ridden. At best it it pale and sickly. This is the legacy handed down from, yes, our puritanical founders who see the only alternative to abstinence and holy marital procreation as soulless, brainless debauchery. We have lost our vocabulary for it, lost our ownership. This is one of the few areas where I agree with Andrea Dworkin. But unlike her I think porn can be reclaimed, or claimed for the first time. Pornographers, stop dicking around and do your job.
.
Monday, June 8, 2009
EFF
Added a new link: the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I've heard about them by-the-by from their involvement in intellectual property cases, but I didn't check out the website until John told me about this article.
Lawrence Lessig pointed out a pretty valid problem in Free Culture, when, I think he was talking about Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid,a film that entirely re-appropriates old film noir footage into a new screwball comedy starring Steve Martin. Lessig pointed out how grossly unfair it is that a production company is capable of paying out the nose for all of these old licenses to create a transformative work, while Joe Shmoe would catch a lawsuit for the very same concept. The problem is primarily that this re-appropriation technique is an entirely new brand of creativity which now belongs only to the rich and the well-lawyered. Where cheap technology and the internet has "democratized" media production, stuffy copyrights keep it gentrified.
Free Culture came out a while ago and things have changed a little since then, but fair use is still so impossibly murky that the victor is often the powerful, not the just. A good example is the guy from Grand Rapids (Van der Beer? Van der something) who lost a lawsuit to JK Rowling for trying to publish a Harry Potter encyclopedia. To me that's a clear cut case of transformative work, and specifically with the Potter books it is not unprecedented. He lost anyway.
So that may defeat my next point when I say that despite all this, the best tool we have now for ownership in the new media landscape is to be well-informed about copyright and fair use. That's why Teaching Copyright is important. I think it's pretty cool.
Sorry I haven't been around much. I will continue to not be around much for the next several days. Settling in and starting a new life in DC is a full time job.
Lawrence Lessig pointed out a pretty valid problem in Free Culture, when, I think he was talking about Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid,a film that entirely re-appropriates old film noir footage into a new screwball comedy starring Steve Martin. Lessig pointed out how grossly unfair it is that a production company is capable of paying out the nose for all of these old licenses to create a transformative work, while Joe Shmoe would catch a lawsuit for the very same concept. The problem is primarily that this re-appropriation technique is an entirely new brand of creativity which now belongs only to the rich and the well-lawyered. Where cheap technology and the internet has "democratized" media production, stuffy copyrights keep it gentrified.
Free Culture came out a while ago and things have changed a little since then, but fair use is still so impossibly murky that the victor is often the powerful, not the just. A good example is the guy from Grand Rapids (Van der Beer? Van der something) who lost a lawsuit to JK Rowling for trying to publish a Harry Potter encyclopedia. To me that's a clear cut case of transformative work, and specifically with the Potter books it is not unprecedented. He lost anyway.
So that may defeat my next point when I say that despite all this, the best tool we have now for ownership in the new media landscape is to be well-informed about copyright and fair use. That's why Teaching Copyright is important. I think it's pretty cool.
Sorry I haven't been around much. I will continue to not be around much for the next several days. Settling in and starting a new life in DC is a full time job.
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