The Poppy

Today in Britain we honour soldiers who have fought on our behalf. Emphasis is given to the fallen, those whose hopes and fears came to an abrupt end in trenches or on battlefields. But the actual funds from the Poppy Appeal go to support those soldiers who did return from war, injured and shellshocked, finding it nearly impossible to re-adjust to civilian life.

Every soldier makes a sacrifice when they sign up to fight. They know that they are severely increasing their chances of dying in the near future, but they also know that their lives will be drastically different if they do return. Yet still they fight; and all our lives would be worse if they did not.

I don't think buying and wearing a poppy constitutes a celebration of war, because I honestly don't believe anyone has seen war as glorious since 1914. Remember that the poppy symbol comes from the end of war, from the first signs of life which returned to Flanders fields after the eleventh of the eleventh. By wearing a poppy you are not saying war is awesome. You are saying, "I like being relatively safe and free, I like being able to speak my mind and live under a democracy, and I recognise that many people had to die and suffer for this to be so".

We take so much for granted in the West, because imagining a life different from yours is always difficult, and  because our immense wealth is so mind-blowing when you stop to think about it that it convinces you that stopping to think about things is overrated. But this is one day when we can pause to pay attention to what has been sacrificed for our improbably free and luxurious today, and honour those who suffered so that people they never met could vote and bitch about politicians and write blog posts and make friends with black and gay people.

Above all, what the poppy says is "thank you". And if every human being wore a poppy all year round for the duration of their lives, that might be half of the thanks those who went to war deserve. 

How To Mourn A Relative 101

Wouldn't it be great if there was actually a guide to mourning? Like, "your relative died, this is the appropriate and healthy response, you're welcome". Life would be so much simpler.

My great great aunt died today. That probably does not seem like a big deal, because most people die before they have the opportunity to be anyone's great great anything. But my mum's family tend to be both unusually long of life and unusually close to one another, so it kind of is a big deal, because to me my great great aunt is almost on a par with a grandparent or a non-great aunt. Not that it makes it a big deal for you, because if you were sad every time someone's relative died, you would never stop being sad. IDK. "Big deal" is kind of hard to define.

I've been up in the Scottish Highlands for a week, for the purpose of a) spending time with my grandparents and b) climbing the shit out of some mountains. Today is my last full day, so we were preparing to leave for my last hike of the summer, when my nan materialised in front of me and was like "Auntie Eileen died in the early hours of the morning". My nan has a uniquely businesslike way of imparting bad news, which tends to rub off on the people she's imparting to, so I was just like "recieved and understood". Had you been watching the conversation but unable to understand English, you would probably have assumed we were talking about a sports result or the weather or something. It was kind of weird.

So then we left for our hike, which was actually the only hike of the week which took place upon a Proper Decent Mountain. I didn't realise this until I was climbing up it, but then I remembered that it's only a Proper Decent Mountain if you spend at least 60% of the time like "OH GOD MY LEGS ARE BURNING AHH AHH AHH". If you can remember what it's like to experience physical pleasure, then it doesn't count.

So I was caught up in drowning in lactic acid and admiring various views and meeting this other hiker and trying to understand his words through his Glaswegian brogue, which meant that I forgot about Eileen for most of the day. Which I then felt guilty about.

I have this theory about the difference between sadness and depression, which is that sadness can peacefully coexist with your other emotions without much interfering with them, whereas depression taints all good news and chokes every sensation of hope and happiness. Today seemed to reinforce that idea. The sadness of Eileen's death did not affect the beauty of mountains and the pain of climbing them, and vice versa.

Part of me reached the conclusion that the saddest thing about Eileen's death was how little impact it had. Eileen was the sweetest of sweet old ladies, composed of approximately 70% generosity and 28% love of family. But her being gone did not stop the Highlands from being beautiful, or most of her relatives from enjoying their day; it didn't even register with well over 99% of the human race. Why I think this is sad, I don't know. I certainly don't want beauty or enjoyment to cease after my death, and I somehow doubt that Eileen felt any different.

Maybe it's just the fact that death is something that one should pay attention to. Perhaps that's one of the purposes of family, to have a group of someones who will witness and acknowledge the end of your world. If so, then I haven't done that very well today. Until now, I suppose.

So maybe that's the how one is supposed to mourn one's relatives. Just quietly pay attention to their death for them, once they become incapable of paying attention to anything.

To Eileen. 

Laci Green

There are two things I would like to draw your attention to:

1. The existence of Laci Green, a Youtube vlogger and brilliant human being who has committed much of her life to encouraging people to think positively about their bodies, dispelling harmful myths about sex and gender, and empowering people to take safe control of their sex lives
2. The fact that said brilliant human being has been driven from the internet by death and rape threats, which the perpetrators justify by the fact she once used the word tr*nny in a video as a young lass, and that she has accused Islam as being an inherently misogynistic religion.

Never mind that Laci has extensively apologised from her use of the transphobic slur, and explained that it arose from ignorance rather than hate, and dedicated whole fracking videos to the empowerment of trans and genderqueer people; the bitchy internet trolls in this world have decided that she is irrecovably transphobic.
I accept that only trans people get to decide what counts as transphobic and what doesn't, and that cisgendered people have no place telling them not to be offended by the wonrds and actions of Laci or anyone else. But there is room to object to anyone condemning Laci as an inherently transphobic and prejudiced individual, when there is so much evidence to the contrary; and it's frankly a moral obligation to openly oppose the kind of threats and abuse she has received. There is never any justification to stalk and violently threaten another human being. It sounds obvious, but a lot of tumblr-commentators seem to have forgotten this.
I couldn't find the video(s) in which Laci criticises Islam, but frankly I don't think it matters what she said. Even if she had been outright provocative, it would still be no justification for her to be treated the way she was. It's also just pretty fracking stupid to respond to an argument or opinion with the threat of violence, because you do nothing to improved to standing of your viewpoint in the eyes of do nothing, and end up reinforcing the other side's points. If you disagree with someone, then words are the only legitimate way to settle it.

A few off-pissing responses to Laci's situation have been these:

People of colour and trans people get threats all the time over the internet and no-one does anything about it, why should she get so much sympathy?It's an unfortunate fact of life that the more visible someone is, the wider the support and response to their misfortune will be. The more people you touch, the more people will be hurt by you being hurt. This is just life.
I do not accept any speculation that white people are sympathising with Laci more simply because she is white. That is beyond ridiculous. More people were sad when Michael Jackson died than when my white next-door-neighbour died, because more people knew who he was.
So to the (well, at least two) people complaining that everyone sympathising with Laci didn't sympathise with every black person who has been racially abused over the internet, that's simply because they didn't know those people existed. Get over it.

Yeah alright death threats are bad but ZOMG SHE SO TRANSPHOBIC I WANT TO RAGE ABOUT IT.
It really does piss me off that people are trying as hard as they are to shift everyone's attention from the fact that a lovely human being has been horrifically abused to the fact that said human being once made a mistake which offended some people. As one tumblypoo pointed out, if the most offensive thing Laci has done is to once use the word tr*nny, then she's way ahead of everyone else.
I mean, I realise this analogy has serious proportion issues, but can you imagine if someone tried to de-legitimise the mourning of a victim of 9/11 or 7/7 by continuously bringing up the fact that the victim once flicked a v-sign at a Muslim? A person's suffering is not made less terrible by the fact that that person is not perfect. If this were the case, then the same people to wail that we shouldn't sympathise with Laci should be wailing the same thing about everyone who has ever suffered.


Members of minority groups are silenced by oppression, therefore it is less bad that Laci was silenced by death threats.
Yeah, not sure if this is even worth going in to. But there seems to be this idea that you need to have some sort of qualification in order to really suffer, like, you have to be materially impoverished and/or a member of a minority group, otherwise your pain is trivial and not worth sympathy. This is not the case. First world pain is still pain, even if it's not the specific type of pain which comes from absence of luxury.
The comments in the post linked to are using the fact that minorities are silenced by oppression to try and overshadow what has happened to Laci, which is not acceptable to me. It's like when you briefly moan about your life to a friend, and their response is "well, you think you've got it tough, you should listen to what happened to me...". Suffering does not have to be the worst suffering in order to be legitimate, and "who has it worse" competitions help literally no-one. So just, stop. 

I would also like to address the obsessive hate culture which has surrounded Laci in certain corners of the internet. A few tumblr users have made it their goal in life to track down every comment Laci makes which has a vague hint of cissexism, and angrily blog about each one individually. It's also their intention to snottily disparage every single attempt at an apology Laci makes for these comments. (You can find them pretty easily from the two links in bold above.)
Do I think that these people are partially responsible for the threats Laci has received? I have my suspicions, and they may or may not be correct. It's certainly easy to see how a culture like that could make a certain type of person think it okay to resort to stalking and violent threats. Regardless, it is never acceptable to turn a human being into a hate figure like this. The tumblr-based Laci-haters are so blind in their desire to hate that they point-blank refuse to give Laci the benefit of the doubt which every one of us needs and deserves. They react to the comments she makes with such bile and manufactured outrage, despite none of them indicating any worse character trait than the ignorance which all cisgendered people are guilty of.
Hate is never an appropriate response to non-willful ignorance. Everyone is ignorant about something, and none of us can go through life without slipping up and displaying non-inclusive language once in a while. Once again: Laci is no worse than any other cisgendered person, and she is in fact much better than most of them. The anger which has been directed towards her is neither proportionate or reasonable, and can only be the result of the internet-troll urge which seeks out an individual to hate obsessively.
This happens to almost everyone on the internet, of course. It just breaks my heart to see it to happen to someone so kind and brilliant who has helped so many.

Anyway, that's probably enough of that. Please watch Laci's videos if you aren't already familiar with them, because they handle so many issues so smartly and thoughtfully. And if you will, please show you support for her situation by using the #strongforlaci hashtag on Twitter.

Until next time...

Gay Pride Explained

Two interrelated things which I often hear people not understanding are a) what the point of gay pride is and b) why gay people feel the need to have their own support groups and internet forums and whatnot. So I'm going to do my best to concisely explain both of them, speaking from my infallible position of informedness as A Person of Gayness.

Firstly, Pride. People are often confused about Pride for understandable reasons, like, how is being gay something to be proud of? Homosexuality isn't an accomplishment, it's just a thing you are; we don't have "tall pride" or "blonde pride" or even "straight pride", so why gay pride? Similarly, marching down the streets with rainbow flags seems to be in direct conflict with what people understand to be the whole point of the LGBT rights movement: to assure straight cissexuals that gender and sexual minorities (GSMs) are not so different from them, and thus discretely integrate gay etc. people into straight-dominated society.
The point of pride is that it is the opposite of shame. Shame is what opponents of GSM rights would have gay, bi and trans people feel; and it is often the default emotional setting for GSMs when they are coming to terms with their own "weirdness" in the face of a society where heterosexuality and cissexuality are consistently showcased as the way to be. So the point of gay/LGBT pride is to declare unto the world that being gay etc. is not something that people should be ashamed of.
If it helps, try to tweak the definition of "pride" in this context from "a reaction to one's accomplishments" to "open satisfaction with the way one is", which is closer to the definition of the word when used in, say, Pride and Prejudice. I think a lot of the confusion surrounding rainbow-ardorned capital-P Pride basically comes down to semantics.
So Pride gives people a chance to be open about something which they usually spend a lot of effort trying to hide or suppress, and it serves to show the world that being gay etc. is not something to be ashamed of. The reason we don't have straight pride is that the straight equivalent of Pride is embodied in everyday life: in all the advertisements and TV shows and various other media outlets which showcase heterosexual relationships, and also the cultural assumptions about how every child and world leader and next-door-neighbour is going to be straight.

The other thing is GSM groups online and IRL, which is kind of a smaller-scale version of the 'ghettoization' drive which creates gay-centric districts and communities in cities. I remember a specific occasion when someone told me they thought such things were pointless, in response to a gay Christian online forum. His reasoning was that having gay-specific groups and forums implies that gay etc. people are incapable of discussing issues with straight people, which is quite demonstrably not the case. So why bother?
The reason I, personally, have been prone to seek out gay-specific groups online and IRL is that I want to briefly be somewhere where being gay isn't weird. The truth is, no matter how accepting the people around you are, being a marked minority is always going to be kind of wearing. Knowing that, for instance, everything you say about sex/romance/whatever will always have a kind of strange novelty for most people, and that at any point someone could ask you if you have a girlfriend and you'll have to explain and they could be one of the ones who react badly, and that well over 95% of your acquaintances are privileged in a way that you will never be and can't help sometimes resenting, is something that you just need to not be the case every once in a while. Creating gay groups, or gay 'ghettos', gives us the privilege of being the majority once in a while, and there's a certain kind of freedom interlinked with that; which, by necessity, people who are white and heteronormative have difficulty understanding, because it's something that they take for granted every day and probably can't really imagine not having. (I also take that freedom for granted when it comes to my accent, the colour of my skin, my cultural background, and to a certain extent my sex.)
Also, while gay people are not incapable of talking to straight people about life and stuff, there are certain issues which do apply pretty much exclusively to GSMs, and which few straight-cissexuals are empathetic enough to understand or want to talk about. This isn't a bad thing or something I'm trying to make straights feel guilty about, it's just the way it is. I'm talking coming out to your family, trying to tune your gadar (you laugh, but it's hard!), what the gay scene is like and how not to freak out whilst navigating it, etc. In the average room of people, where the vast majority is probably straight, conversation is naturally going to be guided away from these topics, because most of the people talking don't care. Having organised gay groups lets GSMs talk about this stuff without the uncomfortable feeling that most people present are bored and want to start talking about boobs.

So, there you have it. If you're not convinced or have further queries, then I welcome you to ask me. If you want. You might not. It's ultimately your life, I suppose.

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"Religious people are stupid."

There seems to be this idea shared by an unfortunate number of atheists, that anyone who believes in God is automatically less intelligent than anyone who doesn't. This idea is perpetuated by ridiculously unfunny comedians, like Jimmy Carr and this guy I just discovered today, Jim Jefferies, who has this to say:

"Here's the thing about people who believe in God: they're idiots. There's no dancing around it, you're a borderline fucking mentalist. You're an idiot. You're like a thirteen year old who still believes in Santa. Fuck you."


Wow.

Here's the thing: negatively caricaturing a group including billions of people, and reducing their reasons for holding a certain opinion to "they're idiots", is always bad. It is phenomenally unscientific, unless he's actually performed IQ tests on a sizable sample of theists, which somehow doubt. It incites tribalism, by riling atheists up against theists for no good reason. It denies the need to imagine other people complexly. And above all, it denies the fact that many theists have logical reasons to believe in a God or deity. Because who cares about the truth, when we can reassure ourselves about our position by dismissing the opposite view with a few words?
So all this is bad, and what's more, it's the kind of thing which non-religious types criticise religious types for doing all the time. But so many otherwise rationally-thinking people are going along with it; they are lampooning the intellectual worth of their fellow humans, and they are refusing to think deeply about the issues which they claim to have the better understanding of, and they feel entitled in doing so.

The explosion in the popularity of atheism that has occurred with the release of books like The God Delusion, God is Not Great, etc, has caused a great many viewpoints to be rationally challenged when before they were just accepted. And that's fantastic. But for some, it's having the opposite effect, by providing atheists with a kind of zealous entitlement to mock and deride theists and caricature them with their own unfounded assumptions. It's also making people have an intellectual reverence for jackass comedians who want to be provocative for the sake of it, when in fact nothing they're saying nothing particularly intelligent at all.
I mean, are we seriously supposed to accept that someone who uses the word "mentalist" to refer to mentally ill people is automatically more intelligent that Issac Newton, Blaise Pascal, Thomas Aquinas etc, simply because he has rejected the idea of God?

So, no, Mr. Jefferies, religious people are not just "idiots". Some of them are, of course, just as some atheists are. But many of them are more intelligent than either you or me. 

Truth is better than an illusion, no matter how comforting the illusion is. This goes for the illusion that everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot as much as for any other.

Book Banning is EVIL.

So recently, there has been a wave of attempts by certain people to stop teenagers from reading books which handle certain subjects in a certain way. Any book which admits the existence of gay people, vaguely describes any sexual act, contains any sort of violence, or makes the slightest allusion to magic or vampires or any sort of supernatural phenomenon, is in the potential firing line.

Of course, you already know this. It was all over the news when religious groups started frothing that JK Rowling was going to turn our children into Satanists, and parents who flail their arms around whenever a book contains the word "penis" tend to crop up everywhere.

But, it's important to stress how hurtful, ignorant and just plain silly all book-banning attempts are. So, that's what I'm going to do.

Groups and individuals who promote the idea of forcing certain books off shelves and out of classrooms like to encourage an idea of teenagers as brainless drones who will uncritically absorb and mimic everything they are told in literature. The justification of one school/district/whatever for banning John Green's Looking for Alaska, a book which amongst various other things includes characters smoking and one sex scene, was that reading about sex and smoking would inevitably make teenagers want to light up and get down themselves. The spokeswoman actually used the phrase "mokey see, monkey do" in her explanation.
Not to mention the crowning jewel for the book banning movement, the recently viral Darkness Too Visible article from the Wall Street Journal. This article cries that teenagers need to be deliberately surrounded by "images of joy and beauty" in order to develop property, and unless subjects like self-harm and abuse are censored from them, they will never be capable of happiness (or something). Also, we hear once again that allowing teenagers to read books about self-harm will cause the behaviour to spread; a conclusion which, frankly, the writer wouldn't have come anywhere near if she had any first-hand or professional understanding of the nature of self-harm.

Here's the thing: teenagers aren't robots. Every single individual between the ages of twelve and eighteen has an independent brain capable of critically analysing input, more or less as effectively as an adult's. As such, it is ludicrous to argue that a teenager's response to reading about an activity will be to unquestioningly mimic it. Hell, not even the average five-year-old reacts to a book like that. No reader expects a novel to be an uncomplicated demonstration of desirable behaviour, and rare is the author who intends it to be. John Green doesn't want his readers to engage in emotionally empty oral sex, JK Rowling doesn't want hers to try and magically inflate their aunts (or, for that matter, don a black cloak and start murdering Mudbloods). And teeage readers get that; they get it because all humans know, from the moment they finish their first book, that that's not what reading is for.

But book-banning isn't just insufferably patronising. It's both a symptom and a weapon of a much greater evil, one which is made more apparent by some of the crazier banning going down in places like Arizona.
A few months ago, following the suspension of a school's programme on Mexican-American studies, a number of books relating to the course were confiscated from teachers and students. Essentially, the school systematically denied students any possibility of reading about Latino issues from the perspective of a Latino writer. Now, imagine being a Mexican-American student in that school; being implicitly told by the people in charge of your education that the voice of your community must be silenced. The word "alienation" doesn't quite seem to cover it.
It's a similar case with the Darkness Too Visible writer's complaint that novels about self-harm "normalise" (God, how I hate that word) self-destructive behaviour. By necessity, then, what the writer wants is for issues like self-harm and suicide to be sidelined, and for teachers and writers to reinforce the idea that people going through such difficulties are "weird". Which, you know, is the exact opposite of what people need when they're suffering from depression.
We see the same pattern with banners who want to pretend to teenagers that sexual abuse doesn't happen, that gay people don't exist, that drug abuse is a fantasy. What this does is prescribe to teenagers that there is only one acceptable way to be: that if you are gay or trans or mentally ill then you are an unacceptable deviation from normality, and if you have been abused or fallen into drug addiction then you are fundamentally Other and can't ever expect anyone to empathise with you. For the privileged white heteronormative mentally healthy majority, their opportunity of learning about and trying to understand other ways of being will be largely denied to them. As such, the social divisions between majority and deviant, which already cause so much suffering in this world, will grow wider and deeper with each generation.

Adolescence is the time when we grow from child to adult. Hiding all dark and diverse things from adolescents stunts that process, because the primary difference between a child and an adult is the amount of experience they have internalized. Censoring potential input for young people, literary or otherwise, helps no-one; least of all those it is intended to protect. 

Okay.

"Most of us don’t think about the ridiculousness of what we’re actually saying when we say, “I’ll love you forever,” or “I will always remember this day,” or, “I’ll never forget you” or whatever. Like, I say those things all the time, like most people do. But Hazel and Augustus are both a lot more measured in the way they imagine themselves and their love for/responsibilities to other people, hence them adopting “okay” as the word that serves as an expression of their love for each other." -John Green, talking about The Fault in Our Stars

One of the most difficult things about life is reconciling yourself to the fact that you will never be able to give anyone eternity, or perfect happiness. Like, when we fall in love (romantically or platonically), we want that person to be happy all the time, and we see ourselves as agents in making that the case. But as long as there is life, there will be sadness, and as long as there is life, it will be temporary. Our love, while powerful, cannot change that.

The trick is to co-exist with sadness, and give that person experiences which are happy to ensure that there is more than sadness in their lives. We can't remove sadness from anyone's life, but we can decrease sadness, and we can increase happiness. And if the object of our love has a particularly painful life, then we can help to make it liveable. We can help to make it okay.

And that's why telling someone "okay" is a beautiful way to express deeply felt and thought-out love for another person. And it's yet another reason why I love The Fault in Our Stars so much.

Ed Milliband

The current leader of the Labour party is growing on me.

I know that this is a dangerous thing to allow to happen, and that all mainstream politicians are probably in fact callous moneygrubbing bastards. But I don't seem to be able to help it.

I mean, he's definitely developing a knack for calling Call Me Dave out on his crap. That's probably not a hard thing to do. But still, he's good at it.
From watching PMQs today, it hit me that Eddie M is not actually a horrible public speaker. At least not all the time. He's certainly got the hang of making his points heard in the Commons, and at least today he managed to do so without resorting to pointless populist soundbites. So, he could be much worse.

The main thing, though, is how extravagantly underestimated Milliband is. The standard reaction to his existence tends to be "oh, him, he's useless", or "I definitely couldn't see him as PM". But this seems to be for no reason other than his geeky face and nasally voice. Do we really think, as a voting population, that such things are a crystal-clear window into a person's soul?

The almost-unanimous rejection of any notion that Milliband may, actually, be a half-decent politician seems to me to be a symptom of just how shallow and populist our politics has become. The 2010 election pissed me off massively, just from the fact that Gordon Brown's startlingly evident intelligence and vastly superior economic experience seemed to be swept aside by the fact that Cameron was so much prettier than him. I mean, yeah, I know that's not the only reason Labour lost, and there were some genuinely decent reasons for voting Conservative. But if you think about it rationally for a second, there's sort of absolutely no reason that TV debates would be a good judge of who would make the best Prime Minister. Public speaking can't be more than 15% of the head of government's job. The rest is trying to work out coherent and effective ways of making the country better, something, incidentally, that Call Me Dave seems to be incredibly bad at.

So, yeah. I wouldn't necessarily vote for Milliband, but I think he's worth a lot more than what the media has decided.

Six Things on the Internet Which Have Annoyed Me Recently.

I have a bad habit of obsessively reading things that piss me off. I have no idea why. So yes, my experience with most of the following is entirely my fault. Despite this, however, I think I have a genuine reason to find this stuff irksome enough to blog about. So please enjoy this list of internet-based annoyances I wasn't able to stretch out into a blog post each.

1. The Facebook like-page-thing which says "like if you're a 90s kid without a kid"
This is an exception to the rule above, as it appeared on my Facebook news feed without any deliberate chasing down from me. But yeah. The point of this page is to celebrate the fact that there are 13-22 year olds (yes, I can math) in the world who have not yet begotten children, because, according to the creator, "there aren't many of us left!!". If fact, all the creator of this page is doing is getting a cheap sense of superiority by pointing out the fact that some people have made a mistake he somehow hasn't, and encouraging others to do the same. 
I'm going to blow this wildly out of proportion and use this as a platform for addressing the overarching attitude people seem to have towards teen pregnancy. The general idea is that teenagers with kids are automatically sluttier, less classy, less intelligent, and generally more worthless individuals than the rest of us. Bollocks. Most of the people I have heard bitching about teen parents are themselves a) teenagers and b) not virgins. Clearly and obviously, the only difference between the bitchers and bitchees here is that the bitchees have had a stroke of misfortune the bitchers have escaped (malfunctioning contraception, drunk sex at the wrong time in a menstrual cycle, etc.). The adults who go on about teen pregnancy also have no right to, well, go on about teen pregnancy, because it's precisely none of their business. Getting pregnant as a teenager in no way makes in necessary that the pregnant girl sleeps around, and even if she did, it's still none of your business. You don't get to judge people over how much sex they have, especially when doing so (as it surely must for some of these Daily Mail types) requires self-induced amnesia towards your own teenage years.
I especially hate that teen parenting is another incident in which girls/women are given infinitely more crap for the state of their sex lives than men. Since the boy/man doesn't have to have the foetus growing inside of him, he can take off, or at least walk down streets with strangers having no idea that he's impregnated anyone. Women aren't so lucky. They have the physical symptoms of their misfortune, which open them up to snide glances and comments from anyone in the same few square feet as them.
ANYWAY.

2. People going on about grammar in an unhelpful and boring way
So Youtube comment arguments are a thing which sucks. I think that's essentially a truth universally acknowledged. But it gets infinitely worse when people detract from the topic at hand to bitch at each other over their grammar or spelling.
Obviously the worst instances of this are when people bring in useless, invaluable grammatical rules like split infinitives being bad and how you can't end sentences with prepositions (which will pretty soon earn them a blog post of their own). But even when people do make genuine grammatical errors, like misuse of apostrophes or using the wrong there/their/they're, it's just not a valuable thing to talk about. You understood what they meant. They probably know what the rule is, it just slipped their mind in this particular instance. And most importantly, it does NOT, by any stretch of the imagination, automatically make you more clever them them. All it means is they've spent less time/attention in English lessons than you.
There is a certain group of people on the internet (and in, like, the real world) who seem to think that knowledge of spelling and grammar is the infallible means by which we rank the value of each member of our species. To those people, I say, "fuck off".

3. The perpetuation of "people cut themselves/act depressed for attention" myth
This is self explanatory (or SHOULD BE, if you've read my blog posts on the matter, as all humans must do). But, seriously. Jeeeeesus Christ.

4. Art criticism
I know that film or book reviews are by no means the sole domain of the internet, but my only real experience of them is through sites like RottenTomatoes and Goodreads, so I'm going to gripe about them here. Essentially, one's reaction to an artwork is personal and largely emotional, and trying to rationalise such reactions into some kind of objective, prescriptive truth is pointless and annoys me.
I mean, I get that there is an objective standard relating to the quality of art. I get that, technically, the Mona Lisa is probably the highest-quality painting that still survives. But I will never rate the Mona Lisa above the work of Van Gogh, because for me, the ML is just a painting of a lady, and Van Gogh's Starry Night is a moving and heartbreaking testament to the beauty of the universe. And that's okay.
The problem I have with art criticism is that the artsy reasons for crediting/discrediting something often have very little bearing on whether people will actually enjoy them. So what if the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel contains it's fair share of clichés. So what if the idea of children fighting to death in an arena under a totalitarian government did not leap fresh and unprecedented from Suzanne Collins' brain. That does not stop the Marigold Hotel from being funny and moving and wise and a joy to watch, or the Hunger Games from being thrilling and edgy and sad and joyful and immensely readable.
If art criticism exists, it must be to give people an idea of whether they would like a film/book/painting/whatever were they to experience it. It cannot be for the sake of satisfying the egos of pretentious irritating farts who like the feeling of importance writing gives them but don't have the capacity to write about anything interesting. Right now, the way such criticism works is great for the latter role, but completely fails to fill the first.

5. The Sun website
Because it vastly reduces the chance of the Sun stopping existing.
 
6. The BBC News comments section
One thing I will never, ever understand is why, when the BBC were deciding how to put together an internet based news service, they thought: "Hey, do you know what would be a nifty idea? Why don't we open certain articles up for being commented on by any member of the public, no matter how half-baked or uninformed their opinion is!"
My issue is this. I'm fine with people sharing there opinions, even when their opinions annoy me. But the internet is already a bountiful hunting ground for opinion-sharing opportunities, as proven by this blog. As well as blogs, there's twitter, youtube comments, Guardian opinion piece comments, etc. All these places are good arenas for open commenting for their own varied reasons. But BBC News is a place for fact. It's where nearly all British people, and many non-British people, go to try and understand what's occurring in the world each day. And having a page full of the random musing and reckonings of anyone who feels remotely strongly about an issue distorts that completely, particularly as the type of people who comment on BBC News tends to be the type of person who makes up their opinion before registering any but the most basic facts. BBC News comments have largely become a mincing ground for angry uninformed right-wing types, whose proximity to each others' views makes them think that more people agree with them then actually do. What I mean by that, is that if someone writes something like "poor people should lose their child benefit to stop them breeding because everyone born into a poor family is destined to be a scrounger", and it gets "voted up" 30 times, then the people reading the comment will think "wow, this must be a really popular view". In fact, it just means that 31 people hold that view, which given the number of people with access to the internet, isn't remotely surprising.
Also, I just don't really care about these people's stupid opinions, and don't see why anyone else would. I realise that probably makes me sound like a bastard, but I just can't comprehend how a substantial percentage of the people who read BBC News could possibly think: "well this is an interesting story, I wonder what a load of random people with keyboards with absolutely no qualifying connection to the issue have to say about this".


Aaaand that's all the bitching I'm going to do for today. I hope you had fun.

Happy Hunger Games!

So I know I don't usually use this blog to post film or book reviews. But I'm going to start, right now, predominantly because I just saw the film adaptation of the Hunger Games. And it was SO. GOOD.

So I loved this book. Basically, of the new books I've read this year so far, two have immediately leapt into my List of Favourite Books of All Time: The Fault in our Stars (which I've already bored everyone by raving about) and the Hunger Games Trilogy. HG has actually been out since 2008, but whatever. I take pride in not reading books until after everyone else already has done. I am a reverse hipster.

So obviously, when someone makes a film based on a book you love, there is HUGE EXCITEMENT, and there is also a sense of dread. You really want to see the fictional world you adore made into real actors and sets and things, but you also really don't want them to get it wrong. And I've had my fair share of disappointments with adaptations of books, Eragon and Harry Potter Six being the biggest examples. So I knew what the risk was.
But they got the Hunger Games film so, so right. Better than I ever dared to hope to dare to expect.

So I guess I should outline the plot, because that's what you're supposed to do, but I'm pretty sure everyone already knows it. Suffice to say, there's a future distopian type place called Panem, consisting of one Capitol and twelve Districts. Every year, two children from every District are reaped into competing in a reality show in which they have to fight to the death, basically because the people who rule Panem are dicks. This girl called Primrose Everdeen, who is the most sweet and innocent girl to ever exist in human history, gets reaped, and her kickass older sister, Katniss, volunteers in her place.

The reason the film is so good is because it mirrors exactly the spirit of the book: the twisted morality of the Paneminians, the shock of watching twelve-to-eighteen-year-olds reduced to killing machines, and the brutal empathy you cannot help but experience as you watch the Games occur through Katniss's eyes.
The film makers did the same thing which Suzanne Collins does, but perhaps even better: they make every single contestant in the Games into a human being. Every single death in the arena kills you, even though you're supposed to root for Katniss's victory, and even though many of the contestants are bastards. You truly understand that every one of the tributes is a human, and a child, and a victim of the same cruel system that has torn Katniss from everything she knows.

The film actually adds bits which are really effective, and which Collins would not have been able to do on paper. Like the scenes outside the arena during the games, with the Game Masters and Snow and Haymitch. I loved them. I loved how much they added to the feeling of outrage you regarding the nature of the games, and how they make it ever more clear how much control the Capitol has over these kids' lives.

I want to talk about the film in more depth than the desire to not spoil it for people will let me, so I'm going to do a second post in which I freely spoil everything. Please don't read it if you have neither read not seen the Hunger Games, because experiencing them without being spoiled is not an experience you want to miss.

This film/book will change the way you see and think about pretty much everything. It's a masterpiece, and all humans must experience it in one or preferably both of it's forms. Katniss' story is one of the most heart-wrenching and powerful works of fiction of all time. 

Age before logic?

"Heritage" is fast becoming my least favourite word of all time.

People often argue, when defending the House of Lords, or even the pus-filled sac of evil which is the British voting system, that such things are part of our heritage or tradition and as such have some kind of inalienable right to continue existing. What the hell?

Being part of British heritage essentially just means that something is a) British and b) old. Well, so what. Bacteria have been around for a pretty damn long time too.
Where does anyone get the idea that just because a political institution is old means that it is undeniably good? Where is the sense?

 Honestly, I'm just bemused.

I mean, it comes up all the time. During the AV debates, the Tories tried to shove down our throats the idea that first-past-the-post is an essential part of British democracy, entirely because it's been around for a long time. One of the main anti-gay marriage arguments literally boils down to "gay marriage is all new and stuff, straight marriage has been like it is for ages and we shouldn't change it" - which is also factually inaccurate, but I've covered that in a different blog.
Someone should play a drinking game where they watch ten House of Commons debates on political reform, and drink a shot every time someone says the word "heritage" or "tradition" or any other of those revolting synonyms for "it's old lol" which I'm growing to hate. They would get utterly wasted.

Don't think that because I don't think age holds inherent value, I want to demolish all the castles and cathedrals and banish archaeologists to the void. I don't. History is undeniably important, but that's because learning about the past teaches us something that we can apply to the present. Applying the concept of heritage in the way that the quasi-fictitious people I'm arguing with would have us do has no such benefit.

So basically, the next person who states in my presence that an aspect of politics in this or any country should be preserved simply because it is old will probably be slapped in the face.

"What happened to your arm?"

So here's a fun fact: I used to cut myself. I realise this isn't that uncommon a trait, and please don't think the point of this blog is wean sympathy from anyone. But really, the relative not-uncommonness of self harm is kind of the point. I think one of the best approaches to mental health involves sufferers and ex-sufferers sharing their testimonials, to show solidarity with those in the same place as them, and to gently erode the taboo which surrounds depression. So here goes.

I've spent most of living memory battling the great shape-shifting demon of depression and self hatred. This is a problem that has taken various forms throughout my life, and my flirtation with self harm was sort of the grand finale of this saga, before I finally got professional help. Previous coping tactics included constant anger at everything. co-dependency, and maniacal arrogance, and there were periods where I didn't bother to cope at all, and just let myself despair. The underlying problem (as far as me and my counselor have been able to work out) was the deep-rooted belief that I was not only worthless, but an active force for destruction, and exclusively capable of having a negative effect on everyone around me.
So self-harm, for most the summer of 2011, was the method by which I channeled and coped with this state of mind. I wasn't even trying to punish myself, at least not consciously. It just felt like a controlled way to exercise the destructive and hateful feelings I had towards myself, and often much of what was around me.

I am using the past tense for a good reason, I should add. My brain is currently a healthier place than it has ever been, and for perhaps the first time in living memory I am able to honestly say that I am not a force for evil. I have, as I put it to some of my friends after my last counseling session, been "given my sanity card". Not that my mental health is perfect: mental health rarely is. And not that depressed people are "insane" or "crazy" in the traditional, mostly derogatory use of the word. But for the first time in a ridiculous number of years, I can say that I am definitely not in some stage of some cycle of some symptom of depression, which is exhilarating.

So the first thing I want to discuss in depth is the motivation behind self-harm, because it's one of the most misunderstood human activities in the universe. Self-harm is not the same as attempted suicide. They are worlds apart. Often, cutting yourself seems like the only was to avoid ending your life. As I said: it's a channel, a way of alleviating (however temporarily) the dark state of mind you are forced to cope with every day. That's admittedly not true for everyone. But it's what was the case for me, and my sources inform me it is the most commonly cited explanation of what self-harm does for the self-harmer. The point is, cutting yourself does not mean you are suicidal. Suicidal thoughts and the thoughts which beget self-harm are two things which should be dealt with very differently; although neither of them is something anyone should be ashamed of.

That's my second point, actually. It does not help to shame those who cut themselves. The taboo which surrounds depression and all visible signs of it is is dangerous and damaging, and if you find that someone close to you is self-harming, you should always respond with compassion and an attempt to understand rather than scorn. I actually wrote another blog post about all this, but it needs reiterating with specific reference to self-harm.  Many self-harmers never rid themselves of the shame; even now, "what happened to your arm?" and "where did those scars come from?" and their various forms are questions I dread being asked. If you self-harm, you do not need to feel ashamed about it. It's a coping mechanism in response to a terrible suffering, and even makes some kind of rational sense. It does not make you weak or ungrateful or selfish.

Although, and this is the third point, it's important to make clear the fact that self harm does not work. Not in the long term. Cutting yourself does provide some blessed relief from depression, but it won't last long (as I'm sure you know by now), and you will need to constantly repeat the action to keep your head clear for any sustained period of time. This is unhealthy. Not shameful, but unhealthy. I realise that this is the most unwelcome advice which is every given to anyone, but depression serious enough to cause you to hurt yourself needs professional help. If there is a way out of such a state of mind that can be achieved without the assistance of a counselor or therapist, then I have never heard of it.

I haven't actually finished my anecdote, vague as it is, so let me fill in the bit between when I was self-harming and when I started being counseled. Basically, my parents found out. Which sucked.
Two days after one of my more extreme sessions of self-harm, I was away in Brighton with my dad. I had been careful to wear long sleeves since that night, but we were sitting next to one another at the bus stop, and I unconsciously rolled up my left sleeve to scratch my elbow, and he saw my scars, and yeah. His reaction was one of sadness rather than anger, but I still found it really difficult to deal with. He later told my mum, and we had a few parent-son three-way discussions on the matter, which gradually progressed from awkward to constructive. And somewhere along the process, we agreed that I should get professional help: which to be honest, I had already decided for myself, but was unwilling to do anything about it (as is usually the way).

As much as this is stating the obvious: depression is just a really shitty thing to go through. Falling into, and extracting yourself from, the habit (or sometimes psychological addiction) of self harm is a particularly difficult battle in a much larger war. I think sometimes the carers and loved ones of self-harmers focus too much on the actual process of self-harm, without recognising that it is merely a symptom of a much more deep-rooted and damaging problem.You can't really blame them: the scars from self-harm are there and real and tangible, and the more subtle aspects of depression are buried deep in the murky depths of the human mind. But it's important to try and target the feelings behind self-harm rather than focusing on trying to break the habit itself, because the habit itself is distantly secondary.
Also, self-harm is something that physically scars you for life. The scars on a self-harmer's arm will never fully heal. It can often feel like a brand, an inescapable sign of some terrible weakness. In reality, they are battle scars, the last vestiges of a time of great suffering. Do not be ashamed that you have suffered. Don't necessarily be proud that you have self-harmed, but be proud that you came through the battle with depression alive, and whole, and relatively well.

Also, don't ever think that someone who self-harms is doing it for attention. That is almost never, ever the case, and if it is the case, then that person needs just as much help as all other sufferers of depression. The cutter = attention seeker myth is a destructive lie that has damaged the wellbeing of countless masses of your fellow humans. Do not ever proliferate it.

May those who self-harm be blessed with strength, love and guidance, and may those who deal with those who self-harm be blessed with compassion and the will to understand. And may we all be blessed with a future which better accommodates those who suffer.

Not being racist is sooo last year.

There is a certain type of white, British, right-of-centre, faux-intellectual person for whom racism has become fashionable. This is evidenced by the swarms of people who will come out in Youtube comments and TV news voxpops to defend David Starkey and Nick Griffin from the perceived "PC brigade", and who seem to regard any statement implying that black people are inferior to/ have a damaging effect on white people with a kind of quasi-religious reverence.

Take the comments on this video documenting David Starkey's fascinating views that the riots in August were caused by black people making white people more black. Starkey's theory is factually incorrect on about eight different levels, and both the people arguing with him make some valid and thoughtful points. But the Starkey Legion don't seem to care. They blather on about Lord David as though he's just comprehensively debunked the Theory of Relativity, and blindly assume that anyone who disagrees with his view is an emotionally-invested politically-correct juvenile leftie face. In which case, I have news. People aren't just disagreeing with Starkey because they don't want to be racist. They're disagreeing with him because he is wrong.
The comments themselves seem to directly embody what I mean by "faux-intellectual". The top-rated comment ("Starkey doesn't come across as any kind of idiot...") manages to hammer out an entire paragraph saying precisely nothing, then goes on to use a positive ad-hominem argument (Starkey is an intellectual, therefore he is right, LOL), put words in the mouths of his opponents, and baselessly claim that Starkey's points are "clear, valid and useful". The second one seems to be of the opinion that "the vast [majority] of the white population in the uk believes that black people caused these riots", and that appealing to what the majority supposedly think is a valid rational argument defending Starkey's point. Which is wrong at least twice, and yet it has been thumbed-up 440 times. What the actual HELL?
The rest of the comments go on to say that the "PC fuckers are responsible for the mess we have nowadays" - because trying to promote inclusive language towards black and working-class people is obviously going to make them riot. Another one talks about how it's shameful for anyone to ever use a black accent or stereotypically teenage dialect if you live in the same country as Shakespeare did (64 thumbs up). Another (almost hilariously) uses completely fictitious "United Nations figures" to argue that "Negroes are 10 and 20% less intelligent than White People". Yet another talks (complete irrelevantly) about how Labour have deliberately accelerated immigration to destroy European culture, and by doing so they should be hanged for "cultural genocide" (whatever that may be) (69 thumbs up). And on. And on. And on.

You can see the problem. The racialist, anti-multiculturalism bandwagon is gathering speed and passengers at a rate of knots. Political illiterates believe that any wild criticism of "black culture", or of the idea that white and blacks can live together without killing each other, is a thoughtful and valid political argument. It's insane.

How has this happened? Well, you'll be thrilled to know that I have a theory.

The thing is: almost every single human, on some level, regards themselves as an underdog. We are all conscious of the fact that, not only were we born into a world where nature is totally apathetic to our survival and wellbeing, but we also essentially have to compete with 7 billion other humans who are all trying to achieve the same things as we are*. It's a daunting prospect for everyone, and it seems that many people die without ever doing anything other than trying to cope with the massive world which seems to be so unanimously against them.
And this applies whether you are rich, poor, white, black, whatever. But when you are a member of the white middle-class, you are told constantly that you are on top, that your kind are responsible for suppressing everyone else, that you will have an easier ride of it that everyone outside your demographic group. But this doesn't seem to fit with your intuitive perception of yourself as an underdog, and your understanding that you will still have to fight to get everything you want from life.
Blacks, the working class, gays, Muslims, women- all these people have political and cultural movements dedicated to their empowerment. But if you are in all the majorities, you don't have that. As far as politics is concerned, you don't need empowerment. So when someone like David Starkey, or a movement like the BNP, espouse political theories that confirm your suspicion that you are in fact an underdog, many people can't help but grasp at them. "Of course I am threatened politically! Don't you see, my identity as a white person is being eroded by all this immigration and what have you? Isn't it obvious, the liberal elite (whoever they are) want to take away all my hard-earned money?"

One of the reasons tribalism is so appealing is that you get to join a group of people who unconditionally want to fight for your empowerment as a person. Race- or class-driven politics consists of groups of people coming together with the same belief, that they are underdogs, and channeling the blame for their (percievedly) weak position on a group of people who are different from them in some way. To a certain extent, the gay rights, civil rights and feminist movements can degenerate into the same thing as Starkeyism: "straights/whites/men are suppressing us, it's their fault, all of them are evil!". But at least minority rights movements are based on a correct observation: that these people have less rights than those people, and this should be rectified. The British Nationalist etc. movement, as well as anti-gay social conservatism, is based on the belief that equal rights will weaken the position of the majority, and this theory is embraced by so many because it presses the buttons of all those who privately believe that they are underdogs.

So basically: don't fall for it.


*I don't actually believe that all-pervading dog-eat-dog competition is a realistic or helpful view of the world, but living in proximity to other individuals with all the same wants as you will eventually necessitate some kind of competition.

You're Not Always Entitled To Your Opinion

So this blog post may go horribly wrong. But whatever.

I've recently found a new tumblr blog (tumblog?) entitled "I'm not homophobic, but..." It's essentially a collection of ignorant anti-gay comments made on Twitter and Facebook, whose authors still claim to (wait for it) not be homophobic.
So obviously this blog stimulates my various juices for a number of reasons, but the thing I'd particularly like to highlight is that political standby which is getting thrown around a lot in these posts: "yeah, I don't like gays, but that's my opinion! I'm entitled to it! Leave me alone!"

The assumption we often make when debating politics (well, when it's convenient to us) is that whatever our opinion is on something, we are basically entitled to hold it. But that's not actually the case. As much as it seems to go against a lot of what I stand for to admit it, there are some things you don't get to have an opinion on.
Take gravity. You cannot hold the personal belief that gravity does not exist. If you claim you do, then everyone will tell you that you are wrong. Because you are.
Also, murder. If someone believes that killing people for no reason is okay, they are a psychopath. They are mentally ill. You don't get to hold a personal opinion on murder.
And what of white supremacy? Would you say that it's okay to think that black people are inferior? Are racists entitled to these opinions? No.
(Side note: Can anyone explain to me why prejudice against black people is considered by so many to be so much more outrageous than any other prejudice? Anti-black racism is more taboo than sexism, homophobia, transphobia, even racism against other groups, like Asians, Hispanics and Eastern Europeans. Obviously I'm happy that anti-black sentiment is so almost-universally unacceptable, and it gives me hope that all prejudice will one day be seen like that. But I'm also curious as to why black people are so much more protected than any other persecuted group.)

So it seems people are not inherently entitled to every personal opinion they would like to hold. You do not have the right to hold a position which goes against damning scientific truth, or which goes against instinctive collective human morality, or which goes along the lines of "this demographic group of people is inferior to me".
So do you have the right to believe that homosexuality is wrong? Maybe, maybe not. Let's explore.
Firstly, when I say "instinctive collective human morality", I am referring to moral beliefs which all non-infant, non-mentally-ill humans hold intuitively, and which objectively and unambiguously contributes to the survival  and/or development of our species. This includes "do not murder", "do not steal", "do not lie excessively", "do not cause people physical or emotional harm if at all avoidable (or something)". "Do not engage in homosexual shenanigans" does not belong to this category, because a huge percentage of mentally healthy adults do not object to homosexuality, and because any attempt to show that homosexuality destroys humanity is invariably flawed and foolish. So that's the first point: you cannot claim that homosexuality is objectively wrong. The main objection to this point will be "it is objectively wrong, because God says it's wrong", but the problem with this is that even if God exists, no human genuinely knows what his will is. God's apparent prophets have a history of saying very different things, and all religious people must accept that their sacred texts are not objectively accepted to be God's word.
Despite this, you can hold a personal objection to homosexuality. While homosexuality is not objectively wrong, it is possible for people to hold emotional negative reactions to it, and it is okay to acknowledge that these exist. If homosexuality seems wrong to you, then it's okay to live your life by that assumption, because homosexuality is not objectively right, either. However: there is a difference between this reaction and the belief that it is wrong, the difference amounting to the fact that you have no right to teach others to abide by your objection to gay sex, or use the law to curb the rights of those who indulge in gay shenanigans. You must acknowledge that your reaction to homosexuality is not rational, nor objectively moral, but predominantly emotional.
But the most important thing is that you cannot believe that gay people are inferior to you. You do not have the right to any kind of prejudice, including homophobia. Discrimination based on demographic group belongs in the "objectively immoral" category, and genuinely does damage our species (hate crime, death camps, bullying-induced suicide, tribalism, have-have not polarisation). You have no more the right to discriminate in word or action against gays than a psychopath does to murder. If you have an instinctive urge to dislike people who are gay, then it is your responsibility to educate yourself and get used to the fact that gay people exist, because homophobia is a dangerous trait which will be damaging to your fellow human beings.

Another thing I'd like to talk about, while I'm at it, is evolution. There is a disturbing number of people who demand that their right to not believe in evolution should be respected, which is very irritating. Because no such right exists.
By all means, reserve judgement until you have seen the evidence, and don't automatically believe anything that anyone in a lab coat tells you. But to shut your eyes and refuse to believe something in the face of the mountain of evidence we have, just because it is inconvenient to your theological disposition, is disgraceful. If the scientific community has found something to by true, then they have the right to teach you and your children about it.
The especially irritating comment I heard on Monday was a response to a casual mention I made that Charles Darwin might replace the Queen on money if we scrapped the monarchy (it was a long conversation). My conversational partner gasped with that gleeful outrage which only a certain type of person can manage, and gravely informed me of the scandals and controversy that would ensue if we replaced Elizabeth Windsor's beloved face with that of Evil Blasphemous Satanist Darwin.
Admittedly she was a Devout-Catholic-Toryface, and (by the sounds of it) most of her acquaintances are Devout-Christian-Toryfaces as well, so she probably has a slightly skewed view of what national sentiment towards such things is. But, annoyingly, I couldn't say she was definitely wrong. Let's emphasize this: Charles Darwin was a genius. He contributed more to scientific understanding of our world that almost any resident of his era. He did not set out to destroy religion, but to find the truth. If I believed in patriotism, I would undoubtedly consider him a credit to our nation. But because his findings are contrary to literal interpretation of the bible - despite the fact that his theory of evolution is embraced by every credible scientist on the planet - there are those who want him and his work to be uncredited and left in the sidelines. This is outrageous. An attitude like this to science is anti-intellectual, damaging to human development and, frankly, bigoted. I know that word gets tossed around a lot, but it's absolutely appropriate in this context.

So. After that little rant, it's time to conclude. Some things are true, and you don't get to hold a personal opinion on. Blocking out science and reason for ideological convenience is unacceptable. Saying "it's my opinion, leave me alone" is not a get-out-of-jail free card in any and every debate.

Until next time.

Free the Weed! Or something.

So legalising cannabis is a thing that I think should happen. Partly because I don't think that smoking cannabis is a greater moral evil or threat to society than smoking tobacco or drinking alcohol, and partly because illegalising recreation drugs fails spectacularly at doing what we want it to do and excels equally spectacularly at causing negative side-effects.

So let's address the first point first, even if it's kind of self explanatory. All medical evidence points to the conclusion that cannabis is actually less harmful to one's health that either tobacco or alcohol. You could also argue that it causes fewer social problems (or would do if it was legal, anyway) than drinking, because cannabis notoriously chills you out and makes you love the world like a hippy and whatever, whereas alcohol has the unfortunate habit of facilitating pub brawls. All in all, it seems absurd, ever for the UK's devoid-of-reason national government, that cannabis is a Class B illegal substance when cigarettes and alcohol are legal, taxed, and on display in every supermarket and corner shop.
Now, it's possible you could argue the other way to what I want to happen, and say that cigarettes and alcohol should be banned. But since we live in the post-American-attempt-at-prohibition era, no-one's seriously going to argue that, because we know it would work even less well than criminalizing cannabis etc. Also, I would argue that the government should be acting according to Mill's principle of only criminalizing an action which directly harms others, and not trying to protect the self from the self. Also, we haven't yet got on to the myriad benefits of legalising cannabis/disadvantages of illegalising it. So let's proceed at posthaste!

Arguably the biggest disadvantage of illegalising cannabis is that it is the most colossal waste of time we could possibly be engaging in. All the figures from the Netherlands, Portugal etc. show that prosecuting cannabis users does nothing to make less people smoke cannabis. Getting cannabis is easy enough that everyone I know/know of my age with the remotest interest in smoking weed can do so, and this will always always be the case. No matter how many growers or dealers you track down and lock up, there will always be more waiting in the wings. As long as there is a demand for cannabis, people will find a way of providing. To make the slightest dent in the drugs trade would require astronomical human and fiscal resources, which would be much better spent on other things.
And the talking about the drugs trade brings me onto the second point. Currently, a significant portion of the revenue from the drugs trade goes to fund much more serious forms of crime, like terrorism. Legalise even just one currently-illegal drug, and you suck funds away from armed criminal rings and terrorist organisations. But as it is, everyone who wants to smoke weed is smoking weed, and by doing so they are inadvertently funding THE FORCES OF EVIL.
Money brings me on to one of the biggest advantages of cannabis legalisation (God, I'm good at transitions!).  Not only is the government saving the henious amount of tax revenue they throw every year at the spectacularly useless war on drugs (or at least part of it), they will also raise considerably more tax money by taxing cannabis. Despite the government being, like, 50% idiotic and 30% evil, it's still good if they have more money, particularly if that money is obtained by means other than raising income tax or VAT. You know, that way they can spend more of hospitals and schools and job creation and suchlike. I feel like I'm beginning to state the obvious here. Moving on.
The other huge, wonderful benefit of legalising cannabis is that we get to use hemp. For those unaware, the hemp plant is the plant which cannabis is made from, which is why it's currently illegal to grow or use in most Western jurisdictions (even though you have to selectively breed the hell out of it in order to make it worth smoking, but whatever). Quite honestly,  hemp is potentially the solution to almost every problem the human race has ever faced. It's a sustainable, durable, carbon-neutral made-of-awesome building material that can be used to manufacture housing, cars, paper, plastic substitutes- basically everything we ever need to manufacture. Hemp milk is a ludicrously nutritious substance that could feed millions for millenia. Hemp oil does all of the things which crude oil does, with none of the evil. It's awesome. So awesome. Also if the UK (or any other country, I suppose) starts making exportable goods out of hemp, we will finally have the competitive advantage to match or come close to matching China's cheap labour, because of hemp's cheapness and sustainability. As such, we get to make more stuff, which leads to more jobs. So to reiterate: hemp is awesome. It's far too good a resource to continue not to use.

So, yeah. We should legalise cannabis immediately. But what of other drugs? Well, most of the things I've blathered about (waste of resources, terrorism funding, extra government income, etc.) apply loosely to all recreational drugs. I would definitely argue for legalising the softer drugs along with cannabis - if not as strongly, because they aren't made of awesome building materials - but I might just stop short of advocating full legalisation for substances like crystal meth. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the government apparently endorsing stuff like this, or supermarkets being allowed to display it. So perhaps I would argue for decriminalisation, rather than full legalisation.
The other point I haven't mentioned, but is particularly relevant when discussing the effects of the stronger stuff, is that legalising recreational drugs makes it easier for addicts to get help. As it is, illegal drug users find it difficult to get support from anywhere, because making their drug use known to the authorities will probably result in arrest. Be legalising, or at least decriminalising, all recreational drugs, we will be able to help addicts properly, rather than just locking them up.

So, basically, cannabis should be legal. Illegalising it makes no sense and has pretty much only negative effects. Legalising it has a plethora of wonderful benefits.

And that wraps it up for this time, kids... Or something...

"Suffer and die, inferior person!"

So two people have died recently. Actually, millions of people have died recently, but of the people who have died recently, there are two which I would like to talk about. One is Whitney Houston, who died yesterday, as I'm sure you're all aware. The other is Isabelle Caro, who actually died a-year-and-a-bit ago, but for some reason the story came up today and it ended up making me think about a lot of the same things as Houston's death.

So when Houston died, the reaction of several people was not "this is sad", or "I am not very emotionally involved with this situation but recognise that it is regrettable", but "so what, she was an alcoholic drug addict, screw her!". This did not make me very happy with the human race. For some reason, we seem to have got it into our collective consciousness that people with substance addictions are fundamentally weaker and more flawed than everyone else, and, as such, it is not necessary to feel regret or sympathy when they suffer or die.

Here's the truth: anyone could develop a drug addiction. Anyone at all. People do not become drug addicts because they have different and grander flaws than everyone else, they become drug addicts because they have exactly the same flaws as everyone else. Also, once addiction takes hold, it is a mental illness like any other. It is stupendously ignorant to feel superior to someone who is struggling to come clean but hasn't managed it yet, because breaking a chemical addiction is one of the hardest things that any person can do.

The same goes for anorexia. We have the tendency, as a society, to look down upon people with eating disorders as obsessively narcissistic and superficial idiots, who will do anything to fit some deranged perception of beauty. But eating disorders go much deeper than that. Anorexia and bulimia are symptoms of deep-rooted mental illness, which, like all mental illness, is caused by a variety of complex factors which few (if any) of us understand yet. Which is to say that eating disorders are illnesses, not character flaws. The correct response to the revelation that someone is suffering from an eating disorders is not "ugh, that vain bitch", because that does precisely nothing to help the situation, and assumes that you as a person are immune to the social pressures and psychological trip-switches which cause damaging behaviour such as anorexia. The appropriate response is however you would react to learning someone had cancer, or bi-polar disorder.  
It's not hard to see why we like to think that addiction and eating disorders only affect "weak people". Part of the natural human response to learning about some new evil in the world is to think "oh my god, what if that happens to me?"; and one of the natural responses to that is to assure yourself that no, of course it would never happen to you, because you are too clever/strong-willed/healthy/darn important to be taken down by something like that. And so, we assure ourselves, those druggies and anorexics must simply be inferior to us, and we are on some higher level of humanity where we do not have to concern ourselves with such matters. It's comforting to think of addiction and mental illness as something that exists outside of you, that only affects other people. And so we stick to it, by whatever means necessary.

But we are, of course, bullshitting ourselves (to borrow a phrase from technical psychological jargon). Anyone could develop a drug or alcohol addiction, and anyone could be subject to just the right sort of pressure to make them starve themselves or self-harm. Just as anyone could be raped, or violently murdered, or killed by a car, or destroyed by cancer. And let's not forget that we're all going to die, and have our physical remains devoured by worms and maggots. This is the truth of the matter. We are all irrevocably flawed sentient beings subject to a wide variety of misfortune.

What is the point of reminding ourselves of this? To get over the dangerous tendency to think that misfortune only happens to the weak, and subsequently to react with scorn when we would do better to react with sympathy. Our assumption that drug addicts and anorexics have done something to bring their suffering upon themselves is another symptom of that "winners and losers" mentality which I hate so much. Yes, I know it's comforting to think that you are better than other people, but guess what: almost everyone is thinking exactly the same thing. And all of you are wrong. If you want to divide the world into winners and losers, without deluding yourself, then you must either place everyone in the "winner" category or the "loser" category. Why? Because we are all subject to the same internal flaws and external limitations that will stop us achieving everything that we want to achieve, and we also all possess amazing bodies and brains that we can use to better ourselves and our species and our family and our world.

So mourn Whitney Houston and Isabelle Caro, and recognise that they are not the victims of some internal weakness unique to them, but of the same human fallibility that afflicts and eventually kills all of us.

Gay Parenting

So something I don't understand is why so many people still assume that same-sex couples adopting kids is a bad thing. Gay couples are banned from joint adoption in the majority of countries, including France, Portugal, Italy, Greece, New Zealand, most of the US and most of Australia. Far fewer jurisdictions allow same-sex adoption that allow same-sex marriage, which I just don't understand. If you recognise, through the granting of nuptials, that same-sex relationships are equal to opposite-sex relationships, then why does that judgement not extend to the process of raising children?

This is of course an issue of the human rights of prospective homosexual parents, but I would make it clear that I agree that the right of people to parent children pales in comparison to the right of children to be raised in a healthy environment. So if there was any genuine proof that having two parents with the same genitalia damages children, I would put my hands up and step down from my soapbox. But this proof simply does not exist, and neither does any rational argument against the legalisation of same-sex adoption. A hasty google found me this list of "con" arguments from the UK-based version of "The Week" newsletter (quoted WFW):

• To grow up to be well-balanced adults, children need role models of both sexes. Boys without fathers under-achieve, especially since there are now fewer male teachers in primary schools.

• We are a 'Christian' country - even if few go to church, our values remain based on Christian teaching. Two parents are axiomatic - 'Honour thy father and mother', invokes the Fifth Commandment.

• Children raised by gay parents are offered only one partnership model and are therefore (some argue) more likely to be gay.

• If Roman Catholic adoption agencies close rather than allow gay couples to adopt, the number of adopted children will decline, leaving more in the unsatisfactory care system.

• Some areas of life cannot be legislated for and must be left to individual conscience. A sufficiently large minority simply find gay parenting 'wrong'; the practice therefore should not be enforced on all.

None of which make the slightest molecule of logical sense to me. The first argument is one which is thrown around a lot, but doesn't seem to be based on anything other that the debator's personal assumptions."Boys without fathers under-achieve"- where is the evidence or even the logical reasoning behind this statement? Are we so hysterically obsessed with the concept of gender roles that we think it normal to assume that no male child can be taught or inspired to live his life well by a woman?
The argument from Christianity falls flat on it's face- why, if you've already admitted that the majority of Brits don't attend church, would you still argue for enforcing Christian morality on the entire population? Not to mention the dubiousness of the bit of the bible used to argue against same-sex adoption, or the fact we've already legalised divorce, abortion, civil partnerships, etc etc etc.
The stupidity of the third argument make me want to throw up in someone's face, and I'm pretty sure anyone reading this is intelligent enough to see through it, so I'm not even going to bother going into it. As for the closing of Catholic adoption agencies... while this has the potential to be a regrettable outcome of SSA, I don't understand the logical step between this and the claim that "fewer children will be adopted". The children with these agencies won't stop being put up for adoption, they'll just be put up with a different agency. Prospective parents won't suddenly give up their search because the agency they were working with has closed down, either. Not to mention that if an agency is more concerned with hating gay people than finding homes for children, we might not want the nation's potential adoptees in their hands anyway... Aaand the last point isn't something I can even get my head around. A minority of the population find a thing wrong for no reason other than their own emotional bias, therefore no-one should ever do that thing ever? What? Seriously, what?

Blanketly assuming that all same-sex couples are unfit to raise children isn't just damaging to gay people, it's damaging to children. By turning away so many prospective parents, you are seriously damaging a child's chances of growing up in a family. I can't remember the source for this statistic, so please feel free to discard it if you wish, but in this country we currently have something close to eight children in foster care for every set of prospective adoptive parents. If we were suddenly to ban same-sex adoption, then that many more kids would spend their entire lives in children's homes.
(For the record, I know there isn't a serious motion to ban SSA in the UK, I'm just using said hypothetical situation to try and demonstrate why SSA is a good thing.)

So the urge to ban same-sex couples from adopting kids is irrational and invariably based on prejudice, and doing so hurts kids up for adoption as much as it hurts gay people. There is one last thing I would like to address, because it pisses me off.

So. Many. People. When wailing in opposition to same-sex adoption, or even just same-sex marriage, waggle their demonic blame-filled fingers towards the homosexuals of the world and scream "you're stealing babies from their birth mothers! Children have a right to be raised by the man and woman who created them! How could you deny them such a thing?!"
I have a cool, concise and rational message for everyone who has ever said anything along those lines: SHUT UP AND DO YOUR FUCKING HOMEWORK.
Do you honestly thing ANY gay person is so desperate to undermine the heterosexual paradigm or whatever that they are going to use legislation to adopt children right out of the homes of their birth family? Do you have any idea how the process of adoption works? Are you the slightest bit aware of how many children are in line to be adopted by prospective parents right now?
For the record, children cannot be adopted unless they have been given up by their birth parents, or their birth parents have died, or they have previously been removed from their birth parents for the sake of their welfare. No gay couple has the power to demand that a child be removed their birth family just because they want to adopt them. And I'm pretty sure no gay couple would, either. This argument betrays a pathological paranoia and hatred towards gay people which paints them as soulless demons who rip apart families for fun.
It kind of irks me, in case that wasn't clear.

Well, this is a disappointingly angsty way to end a blog post! To cheer everyone up again, here's a copyrighted picture of some toast:

Debating Stories: On Vegetarianism

So someone posted a debate topic on forandagainst.com reading "Eating Meat Is Not Wrong. Vegetarianism Is Unnatural". I posted a pretty lengthy reply, and realised that since a) it pretty much constituted a blog post and b) I don't blog enough about vegetarianism, I should copy-paste it here. Enjoy! 


Their Argument:
Meat = protien [sic] (And B12). Big brains need those substances to survive. And yeah, you can get that protien from plants, but not B12. Thats why vegetarians have to take supplements, which is further proof that vegetarianism is unnatural. True, you can say that eating life is wrong, but its kind of hypocritical. Plants are living creatures too. To sustain life, you have to take some form of life. There is no getting around that. Now shut up and eat your cheeseburger.


My Response: 

-You've already accepted that protein can come from vegetarian sources, so I'm not going to go into that. Not really sure why you even brought protein up.

-Vegetarians obtain more than enough b12 from eggs and dairy. Vegans, yes, have to take supplements, but since those supplements exist it is still possible to have a vegan lifestyle and live a healthy life.

-The question of whether or not vegetarianism is natural is a little ambiguous. Our bodies are designed for an omnivorous diet, it's true. But the majority of humans throughout history (nearly all prehistoric peoples and most historic and modern Asian cultures) have been vegan, and most humans outside the Western world develop lactose intolerance after early childhood.

-Regardless, the question of whether or not something is "natural" is irrelevant. It is not natural to fight disease with anything other than our immune system. It is probably not natural to stay with the same sexual partner our entire lives. It is not natural to wear eyeglasses, dye our hair, transport ourselves in wheelchairs or install pacemakers. I could go on. Just because something is natural does not automatically mean that that thing is good or bad, you still need to examine the nature and consequences of the thing before you can pass judgement. With meat-eating, it is not good enough to say that since eating meat is determined by our genes, it must be good, and disregard the abuse of animals, rapid consumption of resources, health risks and pollution which are a result of the animal rearing industry.

-With the whole "eating plants is just as bad" argument, yes you need to destroy life in order to sustain life, but there is a clear and marked difference between destroying something that is alive in the way plants are alive and causing suffering to and then killing a sentient creature. You would not say that there was no moral difference between pulling up a weed and drowning a dog, or destroying a colony of bacteria and shooting a horse. So while it is possible to apply vegan/vegetarian logic to say eating plants is also wrong, it is clearly the lesser or two evils.

-I don't currently possess a cheeseburger.

Hey, Emo!

The demonisation of people with mental health problems is widespread, destructive, and largely unchallenged.  Discriminatory words like "retard", "spaz", "downie", "scitzo" are in common usage, and words like emo (and to a lesser extent goth) have taken on a secondary meaning as a derogatory term for anyone suffering from depression.

Mental illness is rarely taken seriously. People with chronic mental disabilities such as Down's syndrome and cerebral palsy are forced to endure mockery and intolerance their entire lives, and people who show permanent or temporary symptoms of depression or anxiety are often met with unsympathetic "just get over yourself" attitudes, which often pave the way for full-scale harassment. Those willing to help people with mental illness are the minority, and they generally have either had professional training or some kind of personal experience in the matter.

This intolerance comes from fear and a lack of understanding. As a species, we have been able to study and treat physical illness for millenia, but we are only really just beginning to understand how illness of the mind works. Detailed knowledge of depression, schizophrenia, down's syndrome etc. is uncommon, and mental illness is a huge gap in most people's understanding of the world. People's reaction to the void, including the void around their field of knowledge, is to laugh.
Prejudice against mental illness can also come from the same root as racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. Some people (well, all people to a certain degree) simply need to think bad about others in order to think well of themselves, and sectioning off groups of people which it is okay to 'hate' is a convenient way of doing this. Those who show obvious symptoms of chronic or recurring mental illness are easily marked as being a) different and b) vulnerable, so are an easy target for this tendency towards prejudice.

The reason prejudice against the mentally ill is so damaging, perhaps even more so than other prejudices, is that mental illness is already colossally difficult to deal with. Being stigmatised and made to feel shame about your illness piles the pain onto an already tortured mind, and often deters people from seeking the help they need. This is especially true for depression, where if your peers find out that you self-harm or have suicidal tendencies, you will be lumped into the high-school "emo" stereotype (a different thing from the actual emo scene) and systematically made to feel even worse about your state of mind.

Mental illness is one of those prejudices, like transphobia, and until recently homophobia, that has not been discussed or challenged enough for people to realise the damage it causes. Understanding and compassion needs to be spread, and this is already being done through campaigns such as this one.

Please refrain from the casual use of words such as retard, the implication that self-harm and attempted suicide are attention seeking strategies (which they aren't), and from laughing along when someone makes an emo joke. It will lead to a better world for all of us.

Politician Logic Strikes Again

Today at Prime Minister's Questions, the regular tiff between David Cameron and Ed Miliband went down something like this:

Miliband: Why are train ticket prices so high when you promised they wouldn't rise 1% above inflation?
Cameron: Because Labour introduced that policy.
Miliband: No, we changed it, your government introduced the policy.
Cameron: No, it's Labour policy. BTW, have you heard of all this awesome stuff we're doing like electrifying railways and building HS2?
Milliband: Admit it, the train companies' power over ticket prices is your policy.
Cameron: Well, yes, okay, Labour introduced it and then reversed it in 2010, then we brought it back. But Labour were going to bring it back after election year anyway, so it's really their fault!

Uh. Right.
So Labour introduced a law then got rid of it. Cameron's government then made the decision to bring back the law once they got into power. And yet the fact we now have the law is Labour's fault, according to Cameron's impeccable display of Politician Logic.
Even if Labour was going to bring it back (not that there's any way Cameron could have known that), it doesn't mean the Tories didn't have the option not to.

I just can't believe how stupid he thinks we must be, to swallow this horrifically badly thought out attempt to shove responsibility over to the opposition. That seems to be the main Tory propaganda tactic at the moment: blame Labour for every unpopular decision we make, and if that's completely impossible, let the Lib Dems function as a human shield.

Not that Labour are much better. But still.

Pronounciation Doesn't Matter

So something very specific has been irritating me. It's when people get all heated up over the way that people other than themselves pronounce words.

You know how it goes. One only has to say the word "scone" for half of the room to shudder dramatically and say "that's not how you pronounce scone!". The other half of the room will then invariably rise to the insult, saying "yes it is! I don't what kind of weird way you're pronouncing it!" The entire conversation will then descend into passive-aggressive tribalist madness, and you will sit there nibbling at your scon/scoan, silently ashamed for bringing the matter up.

The passion with which some can slug out verbal battles over the way people say words completely baffles me. I mean, pronounciation, literally, doesn't matter. Grammar matters. Spelling, usually, matters. Word choice matters, if only  because it serves as an interesting way to view the soul of mankind. But the variation in the way people pronounce words, literally, has no significance. It does not affect the quality of interpersonal communication, since we always know which words the other person means (granted, if someone did something like pronounce "house" as "hoo-say", we might have a problem, but this never happens, so it is unimportant). It's not interesting to discuss, either: we learn that people from different places or with different regional ancestry say things differently at the rough age of five, and there is no grander conclusion that scon vs scoan arguments reach. It's a complete waste of time and brain power.

I'm concerned that people's concern for "correct" pronounciation may come from nothing but a delusional sense of superiority. It's difficult for any of us to get rid of the gut reaction of "how dare these people have ways different from mine! My [accent/politics/religious views] are a result of how I was brought up, and no-one can have been brought up better than I!" Etc. Which is silly. There is no "better" way of pronouncing scone, or vase, or whatever the other points of contention are.

Really, there are just better things to spend our energy discussing. Blogging about it probably isn't helping on that front. But whatever.