The Virtues of Bad Art

There's no real reason for this to be here. I just wanted
a picture and I don't want anyone to think that I'm
some sort of armchair artist. I'm competent enough
to criticize the incompetent, that's all
Also... ordinarily I wouldn't post any art that 
I've already given to someone, but I'm no longer
 obligated to be nice to the recipient
 and he didn't like Bertrand Russell. So. 

Now, I have two professional artists in my immediate family, which means, of course, that I regularly hear Browning-length monologues on how people should learn how to draw properly, how calling oneself an artist doesn't automatically mean that one can actually do art, and how "bad is not a style." 

But I appreciate people who make bad art. You see, my opinion on their choice of vocation is, to paraphrase Shaw, 'that if they tried to do any useful work some competent person would have the trouble of undoing it: a procedure involving a net loss to the community, and great unhappiness to themselves.' So really, if they're making bad art, then at least they aren't out there screwing other things up for the rest of us. Result: in increase in the world's total utility, and a decrease in the net inconvenience to me.* 

If the price of that is a few eyesores and the occasional inane ramble about someone's "artistic vision," then so be it.

I'm not going to quibble with anyone about whether such a thing as "bad art" actually exists; I am entitled to a subjective opinion that there exists genuinely bad art, and I will not be dissuaded. Anyone who thinks otherwise has clearly never been through in The American Wing in the Met. (The portraits I'm talking about are secreted in a rather inaccessible room above the Frank Lloyd Wright section and hidden behind rows of silver pieces, pottery and fine art, all of uncertain artistic merit. Someone might almost think they didn't want anyone to find it.)

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*Like all good naive utilitarians my definition of utility is pretty much contingent on my own notions of personal utility. 

This assumes, of course, that I have heart....

Alternate title: wherein I answer a flippant blogging prompt with a dignity entirely unworthy of the exercise for vaguely satirical purposes and (of course) my own amusement.
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...the prompt being: 
Five Ways to Win My  Heart

I would like to point out straight away that I'm very grinchy, and due to the commercialization of Christmas my heart is unlikely to grow three sizes anytime soon. 

However, though my good opinion once lost is lost forever,* it's not that hard to earn my good opinion. Here's a cheat sheet:

1. Be Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock.

Obviously this one is never going to happen, because even Cumberbatch only pretends to be the world's only genius consulting detective with devastating good looks. Did I say I'm easy to please? I lied. Moving on:

2. Live your philosophy. That is: be consistent. 

I don't care what your philosophy is.** I don't need people to agree with me, but they need to agree with themselves, and have the cojones to actually follow through on it. 

3. Engage in nerdity.

This requires some explanation: I don't really care what your area of expertise is. If you can make a living by being really enthused about organic chemistry... awesome. If you flip burgers, or fix computers, and spend your free time regaling me with legends of the old Klingon Empire... also awesome. (Maybe?) But have something you can think about deeply, something that you can be creative with, talk to other people about. Care about something.***

4. Even if you don't believe in objective morality, act as if you did. Or rather: even if you think that the rules don't apply to you because you're extra-awesome or something... follow them anyway. 

I'm not talking about an honestly held philosophy here. What I mean is: I don't want to hear about how your sloppy, neo-Nietzschean tripe entitles you to do whatever you want. No one ever thinks 'Well, there are simply superior beings out there, that naturally know better than me, and therefore they're well within their rights to oppress me, and to act without regard to societal norms or any bourgeois notions of morality' and so it always implies that you're somehow better than other people, which, even if it were true... if you say it, you're not just a jerk, but an idiot. Jerks I can tolerate if they entertain me and don't trip little old ladies, but idiots and I... we don't get along.

5. Care about your work. 

You may not like your job. That's okay. You are not alone. It's a safe bet that most people, throughout most of history have hated their jobs. Seriously. Who wants to scythe grain, and then winnow it, and then grind it, and then cook it, all pretty much by hand? And that's if you're lucky (that is, if you don't have a catastrophic hail/rain/drought, and a local warlord doesn't come by and burn your fields, or press you into service, or tax you to death, and there isn't a plague that year).

My point is that in the grand scheme of things, serving coffee is not so bad. I've done it. I hated each everloving second of it, but it didn't kill me. So I'm not denying that some jobs suck. Some jobs are thankless, menial and demeaning. Some of them shouldn't even exist. But that's not the fault of your coworkers, or your customers (if you work in a service industry). It's probably not even the fault of your bosses.

Obviously if your job involves landing my plane or handling nuclear warheads I have very personal reasons for wanting you to care about your job, but I'd like for you to care about what you do regardless. 

Because even if what you do doesn't "matter," you matter. You are connected to other people, whether you like it or not, and what you do affects them. So this isn't about being a good secretary/garbageman/hairdresser/economist/president, this is about being a decent human being. Thinking you're above doing something (whether it's something that you're paid for or not) is a fantastic way to make yourself miserable, even if you're lucky enough to not transmit your misery to anyone else. So please don't do that. 

N + 1- This one is somewhat obvious, so it's not on the list proper: Don't be a jerk. Think about other people. Hell, just think. 

That is: Don't litter like a jerk. Don't smoke while I'm trying to swim laps in the pool. Like a jerk. Don't leave junk lying around on the floor where little old ladies can trip over it. Like a jerk. Don't call people names. Like a jerk. When you have the opportunity to screw stuff up without suffering the consequences: Don't screw stuff up. (Again, if you do it when you're going to suffer for it, then you're not only a jerk but an idiot.)

See? Not hard. I'm actually super-easy to please. 

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*This is basically Jane Austen's subtle way of calling me a judgmental bitch from beyond the grave. 

** Okay, not true. I care a little bit. Okay. I care a lot. But I also know that trying to beat sense into people's heads never works. At least if people are consistent maybe they'll eventually see that they don't like the implications of their philosophy/religion/world-view. (I live in hope.)

*** Of course, being a snob, there are some subjects for obsession that I consider better than others. The (obviously and necessarily incomplete) ranking goes thusly: 

Mathematics > everything

"Real science" and/or literature > having a useful trade/hobby, e.g. being a knowledgeable outdoorsman, mechanic, jam-maker (I don't highly value jam myself, but it fits the criteria, perhaps that's another blog post), quilter, chess-player etc.

Elaborate Star Trek-type universes > Star Wars and weird/dumb hobbies (e.g. Renaissance fairs, bird watching, stamp collecting etc.) 

Weird hobbies >  reality TV or cat memes

**** This seems like a non sequitur but it's really not. Also, stop using the word "boobs." Because it's horrible. No really. I'll even allow you to say "bosom" if you promise to stop. 

Grammar Ain't Everything

So I'm a linguistic descriptivist, which basically means that I think the most important part of communication is... actually communicating. Shocking, I know. Basically, if you have something worth saying and you manage to get your point across, I don't really care if you split infinitives, or scatter participles, or fail to conjugate properly.*

...but you know what the second most important part of communication, or rather, writing is? Not sounding like an utter dumbass. 

...and the best way to not sound like an utter dumbass? Don't use words when you don't have any friggin' idea of what they mean. 

E.g. if you don't know how to use "whom" properly, then don't ****ing use it. If you don't know what "e.g." means: then don't ****ing use it.** If you don't know the difference between "eloquent" and "elocution:" don't ****ing use them. If you can't figure out how to use Elizabethan, Middle, or Victorian English properly, then, please -- for the love of god or some other ontologically valid being who may or may not be a purple spaghetti monster dressed in suspenders, I'm begging you -- don't ever use them. If you don't know how to use a semi-colon: learn how. 

In short: I would much rather someone speak and/or write their own dialect/register of English fluently than speak Standard Written English like a second language learner. Because, you know what? Second language learners have an excuse. We don't. (NB: if you went to public school in Florida, Wisconsin or Louisiana you get automatic second language learner status. People from other states have to fill out an application.)

(This comic found on the always-excellent Language Log, because, while I'm crazy, I'm not crazy enough to write my own comic, or to root around and risk getting stranded in my bog of a hard-drive for a picture of Archibald the Asparagus.) 

And because I'm already way over my cussing quota for this post (as George Carlin says, - said? is he dead now? - it's like 'the n-word' it doesn't matter if you don't actually say it because you made me think it), here's one from The Oatmeal as well. He actually behaves himself in the comic itself, but normally... well, let's just say that most of them earn their PG-13 rating. 
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*Don't get me wrong. I would really, really, really like it if people would stop writing "you're" when they mean "your," "it's" instead of "its," and mixing up "discreet" and "discrete." (That's like, 80% of my freelance livelihood right there by the way; righting/re-writing people's homophones and shifting their apostrophes.) I'd also like them to learn how use the subjunctive, and how to construct the past and present perfect tenses properly. But I can realize that it's not that important in the grand scheme of things. And people do make mistakes. I get that. It's cool. I would much rather than people have imperfectly 'formatted' thoughts that are worth hearing/reading, than read/hear grammatically correct trivialities. It's not like I'm super-careful in casual writing myself (and by that I mean that most of what I write makes my English-teacher auntie weep). But it looks like I'm not going to get that either. So I take my daily dose of Fukitol and start half my sentences with conjunctions in a passive aggressive bid to frustrate humanity out of its stupidity. No results yet. Yeah. I don't know. I really didn't think this through...

**It means: exempli gratia, 'for the sake of an example,' so, really, you could just say something boring and English and simple like "for example:", 'i.e.,' on the other hand, means 'id est' (that is) which usually introduces some sort of clarification or definition. But again, you could just use the boring old English "that is" and never have to think about it again.  

Also, as you've probably gathered from the preceding paragraphs, I could totally do without anyone ever trying to write period English. Ever. Again. There is no profanity in any language I know that can adequately express my feelings on the subject. Stop, people. Just stop, okay? I can barely tolerate the Quaker 'thee' in the old Star Trek, and I'm told they're using it correctly. 

But it looks like that probably won't happen either. So... que sera sera.

Oh, yeah, and another thing: for god's sake, look up the definition and spelling for foreign phrases; make sure it actually means what you think it means. Google is literally at your fingertips. Even if you've got the wrong spelling, the right one will come up; this is one of the few moments in life where other people's incompetence/ignorance will actually work for you. 

And proof read. Do as I say, not as I do. 

Illegal Brownies (Venezuela Edition)

So, as far as I know, there's only one sort of brownie that can get you arrested in the US. Of course, if you're living in Venezuela, all bets are off: 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/17/bakers-arrested-illegal-brownies-venezuela-bread-war

In an effort to stop the seditious baking of ham-filled croissants, sweetbreads, and other luxury baked goods the Venezuelan government is taking over bakeries that aren't using their flour properly. 

Pause. 

Yeah. 

I know that I'm a bit behind the times, and there are the more recent mass graves, and supreme court take-overs, and silly little things like that, but this is hilarious. I mean, as hilarious as people being starving or malnourished, and generally miserable and oppressed can be. Which, um, in this case, is pretty funny, er, actually? 

Sorry? 

Besides, there's a long, illustrious history of making jokes about baked goods while the world is crumbling around your ears. 

Though I'm pretty sure that Marie Antoinette's quote goes something more like "Let them eat brioche," but good luck trying to correct people on that. And probably it wasn't even her that said it? If it was instead some German nobleman wondering why poor people didn't just eat krosem (whatever that is). I can easily envision the look on his face. I've seen it on the faces of several dime-store philosophers as they peer into the Starbucks bakery case while debating the meaning of life and their duty towards the lower classes. (Not that they would ever put it that way, of course.)

In fact, I can envision a whole Orwellian passion play in which the bakeries are nationalized, marzipan-workers are unemployed and the entire populace is subjected to the tender mercies of the Canilla Brigade. Society begins to crumble at the edges, and eclairs are smuggled from house to house under cover of darkness... 

Okay, maybe not. But seriously. I thought this was from The Onion at first. And then I realized that this wouldn't occur to any remotely sane person, even one who comes up with this kind of insanity for a living. And then I realized that I should be really, really upset for all Venezuelans (minus the mass-murdering f**kheads, obviously). And then I realized, hey, there are a bunch of "cake or death" jokes in this.  

*Static sound effect*

No one will be surprised to find out than none of the "cake or death" jokes I came up with are fit for public consumption. 

Remorse For Intemperate Speech...

Yes, that should be the title of this blog. No, I'm not changing it.

So anyway, this is a picture of last year's post, "the Orange Catholic Bible," in which I managed to simultaneously offend Catholics, Dune-fanatics and atheists. With bonus points for the middle-brow reference which pissed of my less "well-read" friends. Clearly I have a lot to live up to this year.

Unfortunately, I don't really Drink,* so there's a limit to how unintentionally offensive I can be (haven't found it yet, but that's not the point).

I did remember this though. Yeats, being Irish, 'gets it.'

I RANTED to the knave and fool,
But outgrew that school,
Would transform the part,
Fit audience found, but cannot rule
My fanatic heart.
I sought my betters:  though in each
Fine manners, liberal speech,
Turn hatred into sport,
Nothing said or done can reach
My fanatic heart,
Out of Ireland have we come.
Great hatred, little room,
Maimed us at the start.
I carry from my mother's womb
A fanatic heart.

Yeah. I know it's a stretch. (It also shouldn't surprise anyone that this is one of the first poems I learned of my own volition.)

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*You have never had a less fun drinking buddy. I take wine by the dram and I'm pretty sure that a hobbit could drink me under the table. I don't even laugh at your drunk-jokes. The only thing I'm worse at is hookah.

Anti-intellectualism (and other myths)

I don't think anti-intellectuals really exist. To redefine what has become a hopelessly muddled trope: there are those who tend to think and those who don't. People who think aren't necessarily intellectual, and intellectuals don't necessarily think. This is really, really obvious to any thinking person. Different pro-thinking people choose to spend their time thinking about different things, and there might be various cognitive or emotional factors which affect their ability to think clearly, but the willingness to think should be the most important qualification. Discussing the aforementioned deficits is useless, and it only makes sense to address things that you have some control over.

It's possible to teach almost anyone how to filter the ideas coming towards them, to look carefully at things, test them, and give them all a fair trial regardless of their source. Intellectualism™, though, bundles the trait of being 'pro-thinking' with formal academic achievement (among other potentially useless things).  It also has numerous connotations which, depending on your 'clan', tend to make you either favorably or unfavorably disposed towards Intellectuals™.

Now this is a natural (if not epistemologically sound) way of chunking information. But we have a problem when these other distinctions become so important to people that being 'pro-thinking' quickly becomes the least important part of the Intellectual™ Platform. It becomes about whether you vote Democrat, or believe in global warming, or listen to classical music.

I don't care whether someone believes in global warming though. I care why they believe or don't believe. Their belief doesn't necessarily matter. Their process does. The fact that most people who don't believe in climate change have absolutely sodding terrible processes is almost irrelevant, because a disconcerting number of people who believe otherwise have equally terrible ways of reaching their conclusions. Those same people can't be relied on to reach accurate conclusions on any other subject, because they arrived at the right answer by accident.

Yet we still consistently categorize people according to their beliefs and not their willingness to think. It's as if the world is being run by teenagers, where your 'identity' (which is necessarily defined by everyone else and their 'identities') is more important than your thoughts.

Of course I understand that this is part of how people think (or don't). Of course I admit that this happens with other groups as well (hipsters, just for an example, look at the lack of substance that constitutes most people's 'self-expression'* and then perpetuate the problem by doing the exact same bloody thing), but if no other group is defined by their actual beliefs, at least intellectuals should be.The irony of a clique that claims to be pro-thinking simply because they fly the right colors is so absurd that it borders on unbelievable.

Yet rather than being the champions of rationalism and useful abstraction as they should be, Intellectuals™ have managed to set themselves up as a mere class of elites. As with most elitist social structures, eventually the hierarchy stops reflecting the actual merits and abilities of its members. ...and the sad fact is that people outside of the clique can often see this, and their few valid criticisms are written off precisely because they are coming from outside of the group.

This is why 'anti-intellectualism' has the support that it does, because of this clannish way of thinking. This is why politicians can go baby-kissing and hot-dog-eating and basketball-watching and it works; you do the little populist song-and-dance and then you can say anything, because all of that taps into our ridiculous fear of elitism and the fact that someone else be more right than we are. Of course, it is a rather vicious cycle; anti-intellectualism does contribute to Intellectuals™' defensive, cultish ways of thinking and acting, but - guess what? - most people get offended, and offensive in turn, if you imply that you're smarter than them and that you know better. Why, then, are we surprised at the results when there's an entire cohort of people doing just that?

I'm not throwing stones, I've done it myself. Even if you're well-intentioned and widely-exposed, it's easy to write people off because they... say something stupid, misspell something, or espouse an idea which you know is just factually wrong. But the mentality of converting people to a better set of ideas (or, far worse, regarding them as intellectually irredeemable) instead of giving them the tools to think just makes things worse. And it is like a kind of conversion; if I were your average person and it were made clear to me that I had to, say, be a fan of James Joyce, or admire Mirot's work, or abandon my beliefs about the sanctity of human life etc, etc, then of course I would rebel against the idea. Because it's insane. And yet we constantly expect that of people, putting them off of real education and self-betterment because they don't fit our idea of what thinking people should be like.

</pause>

So yes, this post happened because I've had to listen to Trump's neo-Fascist whale vomit for over a year. (I thought I could make it to the end of the election, but no; if I have to suffer, I refuse to suffer alone.) Yes, obviously, Trump is a friendless acid spot on the back-buttock of a weeping society, but it's a much bigger, older problem than this 2016 ****fest. (I'm not yammering on about the decay of society or some sort of academic Armageddon, but individual traditions can fail, and that can affect entire nations and/or people groups.) Western Intellectuals™ should be the ones defending the values of the Enlightenment, and instead -like every other failed academic tradition ever- we've been content with ritualized demonstrations of competence, happy to sit behind the walls, watching the barbarians ululate while true civilization crumbles around our ears. (There must be an anthropology joke in there somewhere, but I can't bring myself to make it.)  My point is that true intellectual freedom has to be preserved in the same way as any other freedom, by constant, good-faith application of effort, and there are a lot of fields (and settings) where that's not happening.

Because what people fail to recognize is that you can't preserve culture, leaving it to sit there like a piece in a museum. Which, actually, is a terrible metaphor, because people tend to forget the enormous amount of time spent preserving, restoring, curating and shooing away snotty-nosed children that makes museums possible. And that's the point. Most good things are hard. This isn't a revelation. But since I'm continually running into people who seem to think that it is, I figured it couldn't hurt to say it again.

</pause>

This is wasn't a rant. Honest. It was all a metaphor. Really.

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*Sorry for the scare-quotes there, I try to avoid them, but it's the only way I can type 'self-expression' without breaking out into hives.

A toddler-aged letter about American politics

I feel completely emotionally unequipped to say anything about current events. I don’t think anyone is anywhere near horrified enough by the state of both global and American politics. …and this is not just because of the recent “election.” I don’t think national horror-levels have been where they should be for decades. (I’m also reasonably sure that this is not just because I grew up surrounded by curmudgeons.)

…but while cleaning out my file system I found this; something I wrote explaining American politics to someone within the context of an international class on Framing (i.e. The New Rhetoric) that we were taking, and which communicates my feelings more clearly than anything that I might manage to put into words right now:

The first thing you need to realize is that American political culture is centered around the idea of conflict. For example: the notion of ‘good triumphing…’ wins out over that of ‘problem solving’ a vast majority of the time. Successful frames almost always take the form of “defeating a problem” or “overcoming resistance.” We have what is essentially a two-party system, which precludes any sort of nuance or explicit compromise between the opposing ideologies. Implicit in all of American politics is the frame of ‘you have only two choices.’ As a result there is a sort of “bundling” of ideologies that takes place; you must, in effect, take a political party as a package.

Because of this, American political frames are often very shallow. The ‘conflict frame’ in particular motivates people to get involved, even if they have no real understanding of how the government works. So high voter turnout does not imply that those voters are truly invested in what happens. We are also very event-oriented. What I mean by this is that we tend to think of things in terms of isolated happenings, rather than as systems (i.e. something needs to blow up in order to get our attention). Once the Big Election is over we don’t care though, and very few people bother to participate in local government. Despite the fact that anyone can submit legislation, realistically, only the people we have elected to an office (or crazy people) tend to do so.

This tendency ends up making our process continually less democratic. There are also two other extremely undemocratic factors in American politics. One is that incumbents are rarely replaced in the Federal and State governments. Once you have a seat in the Senate or in Congress you are rarely replaced. Another is that elected officials can establish non-elected “agencies,” effectively extending their political influence beyond their terms of office.

Because of the fiercely partisan nature of our politics, you can never admit that you were/are wrong. This in turn makes actual compromise very difficult, as it is taken as an admission of inadequacy — as if your Party couldn’t solve everything on its own. Implicit in every debate is the idea that Your Party could fix everything if only the Other Party stopped getting in the way. In fact, any frame that denies the omnicompetence of your Party is likely to fail.

The same goes for Nationalism. Anything you say that can be twisted and made to look “unamerican” (an actual word, I’m not making it up, promise) immediately kills a debate. So humility, inclusivity, and the ability to adapt are all framed as negative in the American political scene. This is mostly because we are event-focused, and anything that doesn’t seem actively patriotic can be portrayed as negative.

Additionally, certain kinds of ethos-reliant rhetorical appeals do not work; you cannot claim to have superior knowledge or ability, even if you possess those things. We have a certain fondness for “experts” of course, but they are almost exclusively used when we agree with them, and we simply ignore them when we disagree, because, like everyone, we hate to admit that someone might know better than we do. In America this is socially acceptable, and, while it sounds cynical, misanthropic and just generally awful, we’ve basically managed to institutionalize ignorance.

So because most voters don’t really care about our rich and robust legal traditions, reason, or any of the other machinery of liberty, the thing that tends to work best in American politics is the “I’m just like you” frame. …and it tends to work precisely because it isn’t true; Americans are almost fanatical when it comes to pretending that class distinctions don’t exist. In this we are like Britain’s differently-evil-twin. We don’t want to actually do anything about class distinctions, but god forbid that you should mention them. So if a public figure appropriates certain symbols of Americana (e.g. eats hot dogs, or takes his kid to a baseball/football/whatever game) or talks in a certain convincing, “down to earth” way, that appeals to the average voter, it’s likely to work, even though we know that it’s a total sham. One reason for this is probably because once you’ve decided that you’re similar to someone, it’s much harder to disagree with them, and a lot of those kinds of decisions are subconscious. It’s also absurdly effective because American politics is dominated by catchphrases, watchwords, and shibboleths etc. etc. so much so that we tend to automatically tune those things out, and this particular frame is not necessarily verbal.

All of what I’ve said so far applies to both parties. However, it’s very neat, tidy and wrong to say that both parties are the same, even if it feels that way sometimes. To someone like myself, who is more libertarian (but please guys, should we ever attain a libertarian utopia, don’t be assholes) than anything else, of course they seem the same, but while they may share certain nauseating similarities, they do attract different kinds of people, and that’s not something that can be ignored.

Depending on the Party, appeals to tradition, to nationalism, to “Freedom” and “Rightness,” are all very popular. Basically, the last hundred years has been about how many Woodrow Wilson speeches you can rip off without anyone noticing. Increasingly the Right tends to talk about things like “restoring our former greatness,” and the Left talks about about fixing society and multi-lateralism. The key in American politics is to choose a frame that makes your opponent look passive and defeatist, regardless of your party.

Again, because our politicians rely so heavily on pathos and ethos to sway voters, the notion of… “piety,” is very important. I don’t mean it in a necessarily religious sense, but in older, more Roman sense. Most public figures spend a great deal of effort on proving their (dubious) moral competence. So most public debates center not around “the issues,” but the people discussing the issues, and their status as symbols for a larger political omnibus…

Obviously my political views have only been confirmed by everything that followed.

…and yeah, it goes on after that. And yeah, I write long letters. And yeah, I start sentences with conjunctions, and I write run-on sentences, and I play fast and loose with punctuation, because, hey, I was a grammar nazi for a long time, and there ain’t no grammar nazi like a reformed grammar nazi.

This is also on Medium. I'm not sure which I want to be using in the future, but it's not so hard to copy-and-paste until I decide.