A Commentary on Humanity

Circles of Care

It is human nature to care. We do not, however, care for everyone the same. Nor does everyone have the same approach to how we choose to care. I will discuss my own theory. It may not apply to everyone. It applies to me... with a twist.

Disclaimer: I have no background in actual psychology. I am not going to understand the psychological principles. (Indeed, I find much of The Science of How (Normal) People Think to be... suspect at best. But that is a discussion for another time.)

People care about those they are closest to. There are two aspects of this: people that spend time with them, and people that not only spend time with them, but do so in a positive way, especially in a way that shows a returning of care.

Typically, one will always ultimately care about oneself first. When someone claims to care about someone else more than themselves, what they usually really mean is that caring for/about that person is something they receive happiness from in some manner, and thus, caring for that person *is* caring for themselves as well. This is most frequent in familial relationships and romantic relationships, but good friendships can also do this at times. Certainly, it's well-established that relationships suffer when one does not care for and respect oneself.

Consequently, family (including lovers) is the innermost circle of people we generally care about. Close friends can enter this circle as well, depending on the strength of other relationships. And of course, family can drop out if they don't act like it. These are the people you care about most, after yourself. You want to protect them and you want them to be happy. Of course, on a purely mathematical level, this is because their happiness makes the life surrounding you happier as well, and thus, contributes in such a manner. Ultimately, this is the case at every level, it's a case of how much we care.

Friends that you spend some time with, but are not particularly close to, come next, as does family that you may have some issues with but still spend some time with.

The circle proceeds outwards, likely to people you have met but don't know well, and people that have an impact on your life, even if the feeling isn't mutual. For instance, people that spend time discussing celebrities, of whatever form, be they Hollywood stars, athletes, politicians, or anything else, will actually be impacted by their choices and what happens to them, because they are spending time on them, and since it clearly pleases them to do so, it impacts their lives. Even if you dislike people, it still *affects* you.

People that you have never met that you are aware of existing, but do not spend time thinking about much, are next.

People that you have no connection to whatsoever -- even if you've passed them in the street or whatnot, or even talked to them, if you don't know who they are, they fall here. This is basically "everyone else".

Notice how no one is beyond the "everyone else" category. Even if you might claim to wish someone ill, the reasonings for this are more complicated than the circles I here mention. Specifically, you wish them ill because you believe that a reduction of their ability to influence your life will be a positive for you/those you care about. You don't actually care about them, as a person, less.

Within each circle, human nature is going to mean that you will value a life from a closer circle more than a life from a farther circle. With each new circle, there is a drop in your level of care. The farther away (in a circle sense) someone is, the less chance they can impact you personally, especially positively.

This is, in short, a major philosophical difference that shapes political thinking. For my observations, conservative drops tend to be much steeper than liberal drops. Now, I am not saying that either side is less caring than the other, I am saying that the spread of caring is different. Liberal politics generally spread benefit to faraway circles, conservative politics tend to concentrate benefit to the circles closest to themselves.

(Very important: The next statement does not by any means apply to everyone, or even to all conservatives. But it may provide a piece of the puzzle for those that are perplexed by certain behaviors.)

We can actually attribute a lot of forms of so-called hate (more accurately expressions of fear), including racism and homophobia, to these drops. If you don't encounter people different from you on a regular basis, they stay far away in your circles of caring. From there, it is easy to see them as more likely to be threats to you and those in your inner circles than those that will contribute to your own benefit, as those who are in said inner circles do. Individuals with flatter care levels are less likely to perceive this -- remember, all of this is about human perception, not about truth. The most reliable way to combat such biases, then, is sustained positive interaction with these communities. (We cannot, however, attribute sexism to this -- it's another discriminatory form, but it's not really based on hate -- people simply have to encounter both genders reliably. There might be individual cases of having been hurt too often by the opposite gender, but I expect these to be rare and not germane to political statements, in the main.)

What does "Freedom" mean really?

In short: Freedom means something a little different to everyone. I'm going to discuss my own philosophy primarily, but I do need to emphasize that the main point needs to be that everyone will have a slightly different idea, and that's perfectly fine. I do ask that what I write be considered, however. It may surprise you.

First, to me, freedom first means the ability to make choices. But it's not just making choices, many people claim that all things are in fact choices. I could "choose" to steal a car, but that would likely see me in jail for some period of time, not to mention loss of reputation and other such consequences, plus such actions have a moral component to them -- I believe it is, in general, wrong to steal, and thus, I would not want to do such a thing. So I do not believe that sort of choice is actually a choice that defines freedom. As such, making choices is not itself sufficient -- more specifically, I must be able to make choices among equally valid options. To steal and not to steal are not "equal" choices. To eat at home, or to go get fast food, might prevent a slightly more "equal" choice -- I weigh the financial costs, and possible nutritional differentials, against the time investment, and so forth. Thus it is "freedom" to make such a choice.

This is actually a fairly powerful example, more than you might think. Someone that isn't able to afford the financial cost at all, or for that matter, someone that is so busy they can't really afford the time-cost of making a home meal... either one of these, arguably no longer have this choice as equally valid options, for various reasons. Now, I am not saying that this example is a standard for whether freedom is present or not. Indeed, it is a mistake to say that "free" and "not free" is a dichotomy. But we can clearly see that everyone will have slightly different freedoms.

Now, these were simplified examples that have little to do with matters of topics that we often refer to when we consider freedom. For instance, "freedom of speech" is highly valued, though often misunderstood. But when you abstract this, "say this" and "say that" are still equally valid actions, in that sense. Of course, we must not forget that there can still be costs to actions.

Actions -- no matter how much "freedom" you have -- have consequences. This would seem like a fairly basic understanding, but, especially with "speech", is often confusing.

The US Constitution's "freedom of speech" is often taken far too literally by many Americans. I hear, far too often, people say "I can say whatever I want and you're wrong to tell me I shouldn't because FREEDOM!" or variants to this. That's... just not what the Constitution says, and it's a ridiculous interpretation. I'm equally allowed to be offended by things you say, and refuse to continue to listen, as you are to say things.

What the Constitution actually says, essentially, is that, within a few limitations, the government can't punish you for what you say, especially for expressing political opinion. (Making dangerous remarks -- such as shouting "Fire" in a crowded theatre, is still punishable, of course.) But if no one cares to hear what you have to say, and they express that... no, you don't have the right to force listening.

Freedom means different things to different people, sure. But let's not confuse legal meanings with personal meanings.

One thing that needs to be kept in context about freedoms is other people. It is far too common to not consider implications on others.

Let's take, for instance, smoking. You have the right to smoke, blah blah... do you have the right to grab me, hold my throat open, and shove tar and nicotine down it? I thought not. You might say that I could just move. Maybe, unless I live or work here... No, someone moving house, or quitting their job, because you're going to be a jerk, is not viable.

It applies similar on a corporate level. People (corporate stooges) like to whine about 'environmental regulations' that make it more expensive to do things. Because apparently, they don't care about your right to drink clean water, or to breath clean air, or for that matter, to see beautiful natural landscapes. If ISIS dropped 400 gallons of dangerous chemicals into our major waterways we'd call it terrorism. So why are big industries allowed to do much more than that (or, claim they should be, for those that have been prevented by 'regulation')?

Your rights end where mine begin, and my rights end where yours begin. Seems very straightforward.

People may have different ideas, and that's fine. But consider what freedom means, to me, here.

We Hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident...

I turn my attention to the question of rights, with a goal of attempting to determine a root cause in the differentiation between American liberal and conservative philosophy.

During the time of the Enlightenment, John Locke wrote that there were three natural rights that humans had: "life, liberty, and property." (Locke was fairly nutty by modern standards, but progressive for his time. I mainly use him here because of Jefferson, as I will explain.) Thomas Jefferson, when writing the Declaration of Independence, changed the last one to "the pursuit of happiness" largely because "property" was a term very closely linked to the hideous establishment of slavery. The reference, however, was obvious and is very much a connected part of our history.

In the 21st century, the world looks considerably more different from the time of the American Revolution, than that time did to the middle ages. More specifically, our technology has leaped ahead more in the past 150 years than it had in the previous 2000 or so. The world is considerably different. We have notions of human rights that go far beyond these basic three or four.

The problem is, ultimately rights are going to come into conflict with another. Priorities must be set. I mentioned in an earlier post that "your rights end where mine begin, and vice versa", but in practice people can and do prioritize some over others.

Let's explore, starting with the four mentioned by Locke and Jefferson.

Life -- Put simply, the right to life. You, in general, have the right to not die. We do practice capital punishment, but theoretically only on people that have already taken this right away from others. Indeed, a right to life certainly also means reasonable protection from being murdered. This feels simple, right? And yet, it means different things to conservatives and liberals. There are a few reasons for this. For instance, we can compare the right not to get shot by police and the necessity of being safe while protecting people from those that would murder them (or commit other offenses against their rights.) This is the most basic philosophy, of course -- the details of the situation make both sides much, much more complex than this, but this is where we start from. Notably here, neither side will deny the existence of the other side's right here.

A much thornier matter in the right to life is when we compare, say, the right to not die due to poor air quality caused by corporations spewing sludge into the air. If this comes into conflict, it comes into conflict with applying making money to the right of "property".

There is another aspect to the right to life which I'm sure conservatives are going to scream at me about for not discussing much here. However, that comes down to being a scientific determination, and I am going to say that I trust the medical community's opinions on this matter and I believe further discussion to be outside the scope of this post. A future post may be made on this, it may not.

Liberty -- Synonymous for freedom, I've actually already written two entire posts on the subject. I don't have anything particularly new to say on the topic itself. I will relate this by saying that liberty is obviously dependent on life.

Property -- Even though Jefferson uses "pursuit of happiness", I do not believe these are the same thing, and will talk about both. A right to property is essentially, what's mine is mine, and it cannot just be taken from me arbitrarily. This can be extended slightly into the field of capitalism. Conservatives and libertarians like to talk a great deal about the notion of "keeping what you earn". This is often used as a hit job on the notion of taxation that shows a lack of understanding. It does puzzle me that this notion is often more sacred than the notion of quality of life, which I (and I think many liberals) do see as an extension of the right to life, to a degree.

The Pursuit of Happiness -- At first glance, this might be a reference to quality of life as well, but it's more accurately a statement of opportunity. Everyone has the right to have the chance to better themselves and be "happy" -- which as my overarching introduction noted, is sort of how we (or at least I) define our goals. Now, I firmly believe that opportunity cannot be properly seized without basic security. Humans are typically risk-averse, especially with the severe consequences failure brings in the current structure of our society.

Okay, so this is Locke and Jefferson. But as I said, we're in the 21st century now. What else is our "rights"? Well, I could discuss the Bill of Rights, but that's not really going to get me anywhere, with one exception. Most of those are technical matters that are actually rather too detailed for the scope of this post, and/or are elaborations on one of the items mentioned above. However, I will call everyone's attention to the Ninth Amendment. The Framers were smart. They knew the world could change, and what we saw as rights could change with it.

Nonetheless, this is the critical moment. Here is our difference. In general, my experience with conservatives indicates they would probably expect this post to be over about now. They look back to history, to the Constitution, and don't see much else.

I said that basic security is a necessity for opportunity. In order to actually exercise the "pursuit of happiness", not only does opportunity need to be available, but a foundational quality of life must also be present, to allow risks to be taken. What this means is that I, and most liberals, consider the items below to be fundamental human rights, sufficiently as important as those above as to be willing to be prioritized in equality or in greater prominence, depending on the circumstances.

The conservative complaint to these items is often "Why do I have to give up what I earned to pay for this thing for someone else?" That's a misunderstanding of what taxes are -- something I will discuss in a future post -- but it's also a more fundamental difference in values. I could respond "Why should I (and for that matter, YOU) not have this very important thing because you want more of those green flat things?" Fundamental human rights essentially means I cannot consider "how to pay for it" immediately -- I consider the government obligated to secure/provide it, full stop. (Not all of these are "pay" necessarily, some are just things that need protection.) Where the money comes from can be figured out, but "not funding" a fundamental human right is not an option, any more than it is an option for the above items (police force/court system, for instance).

Education -- Especially in today's world, most opportunity starts with quality education. It doesn't have to be specifically through the traditional schools and colleges per se, but everyone needs an equal shot through education. In today's world, that means free access to public education, including the universities, as well as vocational training.

Healthcare -- In today's world, we need to be able to have healthcare. I have several medical conditions that require modern medicine to treat. People sometimes get sick or injured; this is life. We can't live without it, this really is an extension of the right to life.

Clean Air and Water -- Really an extension of the right to life, as briefly commented on above, but apparently obtuse enough that I feel compelled to mention it again. (As I write this, the town of Flint, Michigan, has gone over a year without clean water.)

Reasonable control of personal environments -- This is awkwardly worded, but the best way I can explain it. At a minimum, for everyone, it means having a roof over their head if they so wish, and one that provides a reasonable amount of personal privacy and safety. Additionally, many people, especially the very young and old, have conditions that are aggravated by extreme temperatures. For these people, it means having heating and/or air conditioning as relevant, within their home environment as well.

Access to transportation -- This is vague on purpose. Everyone's situation is different and I'm definitely not saying something like "everyone should have a car given to them." Rather, we need to be able to, in general, get around. We no longer live and work in the same place quite frequently and need to be able to have options for employment. This one is vague enough that costs and the like can probably be safely considered, but in general we absolutely can and such handle transportation better, as a nation.

Love -- I have always thought it extremely ironic that conservatives claim to be for "small government" then yet want the government to tell you who you can love (or, perhaps more accurately, marry). People should have the freedom to love who they will. As long as all parties consent, there should not be restrictions on relationships. Love is love.

I end this post by referencing the ninth amendment again, and thus I reserve the right to add to this list as I please. Rights are never comprehensive, that is their beautiful nature.

Body and Mind

I suspect a post in the near future of mine will present ideas that will make people uncomfortable -- specifically, the people that generally tend to agree with the things I say. I hesitated when considering writing it, but then I realized I violate the entire point of this thread if I find myself afraid to write about a topic due to potential backlash.

As always, the Discussion thread is set up specifically for comments. Discussion on IRC is, of course, even better.

What I will do is a bit of a compromise. In the interest of future posts not getting misconstrued, I'm going to start with this post. These are underlying principles concerning body, mind, and communication. When I write future posts, these should be remembered.

First, we all have the same rights and capacity to gain privileges with others. Specifically, I will be using lots of pronouns for brevity. These should not be considered to be exclusive. Use of gendered pronouns is for example, not to indicate this is a thing for a specific group. Use of "I"/"my" also applies to every other person internally. You can read it as "you"/"your" and it would still be valid, and absolutely does apply to you, whether you want that to be the case or not. We are all human beings.

My head, my thoughts, my freedoms. That is to say, I should feel free to think whatever thoughts I wish, whenever I wish. Thoughtcrime is not a thing nor should it be allowed to ever become a thing. In society we filter our thoughts, we do not restrict them.

I do not have the right not to be offended. I do, however, have the right to enact consequences on those that offend me. That is to say, I should recognize that people are free to make their own choices, and so am I. If someone persists in offensive behavior/language/etc., I have every right to remove them from my life. Nonetheless, this does not mean that myself or my rights are in any way violated just because I am offended.

However, people do have the right to not be violated. Violation with words is a tricky business, but it does exist. Triggering is often a loaded concept, and I understand why. Essentially, the issue people have with the concept is that they feel blamed or that they are made in the wrong because of getting an emotional response that they have no way of knowing would happen in advance, and is not an expectation -- that is, it would happen much less often than not, with random individuals. This gets people defensive. I would recommend that people learn what topics are likely to do this, and provide a simple comment when they are about to discuss it, giving people a chance to back out.

I do worry that my above statement, if followed, can lead to a systemic abuse by conflating legitimate triggering with simple offense. My recommendation is, essentially, not to abuse the system. As I already said, I do not have the right to not be offended, just the right to react to said offense as you see fit.

I acknowledge that the above commentary more or less requires good faith discussion. I see little benefit in lawyering to prevent bad faith. People that are out to abuse will, frankly, abuse anyway. I recommend removing such toxic individuals from your life. (I am aware it is often not that simple, but as a general point, the recommendation stands.)

My body, my rules. I want to be clear on this. No one has a right to say what I can and can't do to my own body except me. Even if I may discuss moments where there is an impulse to believe I am not using this rule, I am declaring it as an absolute, right now. Any actions, any restrictions I place, are done so with my consent. (Or, it is an abusive/coercive/violative event.)

In general, people should make every effort to believe the best in each other. This does not mean ignore evidence, but this does mean to not assume the worst about people.

In general, people should understand that no one is perfect. We all make mistakes.

Living in a bubble is a disaster. If I remove everyone that says things even slightly differently from me, I can't grow as a person. Listening to ideas and having honest, good faith exchanges, are really important in life.

That being said, we should make every effort to respect the differing backgrounds of people as well. Not everyone has the same level of acceptance for the same issues. Some issues are bigger deals than others. This is fine. Notably, this means that we need to respect if someone is not comfortable with continuing a discussion, or not inclined to do so. It will be problematic if that is someone's response to everything all the time. More than that, the closer people are, the fewer topics that need to be off limits. For instance, anyone in a romantic relationship really can't afford to have (m)any topics permanently off limits with their partner(s). (Though I will certainly say "every relationship is different" as a comment in a future post.)

Human Nature, Sexuality, and Choices

Today I will discuss an issue that is commonly discussed in liberal and feminist circles. I am going to agree with the core problem, but try to provide a generally more complete perspective, including an understanding of human nature, and propose another potential solution.

As a frontload: I will likely be using terminology that is somewhat heteronormative in nature. This is not intended as a deliberate slight against the LGBT+ community, but rather, for clarity and brevity. I will be talking about sexual attraction a lot here. I know that not everyone is the same, but I can discuss things in the majority, and regardless of your own orientation and identity, I trust that you can find a lens through which you can understand my meaning as it does or does not apply to you. Since we are discussing society as a whole, we must engage in greatest impacts.

The problem I am going to discuss is, essentially, the over-sexualization of women’s bodies, especially in media and pop culture. This is a problem, I will agree. I think the problem is actually less obvious than it first appears.

So the common solution discussed is essentially: stop doing it. This sounds great, but I’m uncertain that it will happen. Humans are, in general, hardwired for sex. People are going to experience sexual attraction, and that is, at the most basic level, quite frequently, to bodies. People will find things to be attracted to on that basic level, no matter what you do.

It can be argued that this issue contributes to the abuse of women. I can’t agree, women are abused all over the world and sexualization of bodies is not a thing in large parts of the world – that if anything, have larger rates. (Quick reminder that correlation is not causation: I am definitely not claiming doing this reduces rates. But I think we must fail to reject the null in all cases.) In short, this is an issue, but it is an overarching issue with our culture’s patriarchial system and needs to be solved on a slightly larger level that this post will attempt. While I do think my conclusion will actually help, I do not think it will by itself solve much on this massive level.
So, if we’re not solving it by stopping it, what can we do? We can, bluntly, ask men to stop hiding their heads in the sand about their own bodies, and just as women are often held attractive for men, hold ourselves attractive for women.

Now, this does not mean we should accept – for any gender – the implications of ridiculous standards that media can imply, which damages youth of all identities, but largely young women, about their bodies. In fact, this is itself due to a mental disconnect which we should address and solve. First, educationally – teaching that images seen in the media are often sanitized – learning about Photoshop and other techniques that make people seem “cleaner”. But this is only part of that body image issue. Let’s explore the rest of it with a little depth.

I am personally a (largely) heterosexual cisgendered male. I make no apologies for my physical attractions. I do my best to respect everyone regardless of their supposed attractiveness to me. But I do understand what I tend to like and not like. I know that other people will be different on this topic. I will thus admit to some bias in favor of my own attractions, as anyone would. Nonetheless, I believe that despite this, my arguments will remain sound and sufficiently useful.

When we talk about women’s bodies with respect to image and sexualization, a lot of people like to discuss celebrity images as an example. Now, there are a lot of complaints across many different sub-industries of the celebrity world, but let’s go straight to where this is exaggerated the most, and that’s with modeling. Now, let’s be clear about something: Exploitation happens in that industry, but I have not seen data that shows it is substantially different than exploitation everywhere else in the world. As such, this goes back to the larger-scale problem I mentioned before – so we can ignore this without losing argumentation validity.

There are two issues discussed with modeling: how they stereotype and tend to box into a single body type, and how they tend to provide unrealistic bodies in general. This first one is a problem, but I’m not sure it’s actually an independent problem of the second one. I have heard both arguments handled sufficiently separately that I feel I must acknowledge their differences. I will note optimistically that many companies are starting to acknowledge more body types and this problem is getting relieved a bit. Nonetheless, the overall perception is still a problem. I will claim, however, that this problem gets solved through my solution to the other problem. The larger issue is that models show unrealistic bodies. In fact, let’s cut straight to the heart of the matter, and talk about a specific company, and one that many of the groups making these arguments agree is the ultimate synthesis of these problems: Victoria’s Secret.

Now, yes, I’m a male. I love looking at the VS models. I’m attracted to them, and I know who they are possibly better than most men. I think they’re some of the most beautiful women on the planet. …I want to emphasize that. They are that. They’re getting paid to be at that level of beauty. When we complain that their bodies are unrealistic, are we missing that that is basically the point? Of course they are the hottest – if they were “realistic” every woman would be able to make those millions – and yes, the Angels of VS are millionaires. They make this money because it’s unrealistic, because they are the best.

In fact, this whole thing sounds familiar to me, when you look at it from another perspective. There are also a lot of complaints about big-name athletes like LeBron James, Tom Brady, and Cristiano Ronaldo making millions of dollars as well. Do we complain that young men are overly pressured because they’re not the next Tom Brady? To be sure, this does happen, but it’s not seen as a huge cultural problem. Because most people figure out that they’re not Tom Brady. Young men in high school choose whether to try out for sports, and they find out if they have the skills to play at the next level, and this continues to filter through, whether they end up as one of the greatest players in their sport, or whether their ceiling is college, or high school, or whatever.

So why, then, is there is implication that young women should compare themselves to Adriana Lima, Jasmine Tookes, and Stella Maxwell? Or rather, we agree they should not, so why is this happening and causing a problem for so many young women? These are the multimillionaires that are absolutely the equivalent of the aforementioned male athletes. Yes, professional modeling is an athletic event, in the sense that they train their bodies every bit as hard as any more conventionally understood athlete. I think we do a disservice by simply claiming “unrealism”. Because, Photoshop aside, these are real people. They have made a career out of their body. They are just as much a real person as Cristiano Ronaldo is. But rather than girls comparing themselves to Adriana Lima, acknowledge that she made choices to make that her career (along with, yes, natural talent, just like LeBron’s talent with a basketball), and if that’s a thing they want to do, can consider going that route along with hundreds of other careers, and considering it in the proper perspective. Yes, for mainly girls, no matter how hard they try they’ll never be on Stella Maxwell’s level. That doesn’t mean they can’t make a career through that – or rather, they’ll figure it out in their own time. Most importantly, if you’re not going to be Stella, why compare yourself to her? This is no different than a boy that doesn’t make the NBA despite wanting to play basketball. And as someone that never played football more than casually, I certainly never compared myself to Brady. It’s important not to dismiss people, and it’s important to give young people the chance to make informed choices.

For that matter, have you seen Cristiano Ronaldo without his shirt on? He’s pretty hot, and I say that as a male. Athletes are going to be physically attractive – athletic bodies are generally healthy, and we’re hardwired for attraction to health. There can be exceptions, particularly with models, but just as necessary a commentary is that what is healthy for one person may not be for another. We should acknowledge the attractiveness of athletes, not hide it, be embarrassed by it, or claim it’s bad for society. We should also understand that yes, they look good, but that doesn’t mean we have any obligation to take a similar path, or care about theirs.

Some may attempt to claim that men’s bodies aren’t used in the same way in the entertainment industry… well, that’s only partially correct. Professional athletes absolutely are using their bodies regardless of gender. However, this is ultimately my point... we need to start acknowledging men’s bodies as well...

So what do we do? First, we acknowledge that athletes both in the men’s and women’s spectra have physically attractive bodies. Second, we acknowledge that a component of entertainment industry is also athleticism/attraction. We don’t need to try to “change” this, just accept this and consider it as we do things. Third, we increase the market voice for women. That is to say, we’re not going to reduce sexualization in general, but we can show things on screen that women like to see, as well. We’re doing some of this, but not very much. Women are half the market -- this trend should continue.

This might feel like I am trying to elevate physical attractiveness/athleticism. I am not; rather, I am trying to bring it into the open so it can gain its proper place. I don’t believe we can ever get to a point where we move beyond physical attraction being a thing. We can get to a point where we accept the attraction and move on with our lives, which is the point. In order to do this, we must accept that physical attraction is a thing, that it is a combination of work and genetics, and that it’s okay for not everyone to be at the same level – and that this is neither a problem with those that are less attractive nor does that do the attracting. We accept that not everyone is as talented as specific tasks and everyone else, this should be no different, and given its importance to our natures, is simply human nature itself.

When everything is acknowledged, it can have its proper place, and we can respect even more the things that should be respected.

So what is the point here? The point is that humans are hardwired for sexuality. Right now, our society tends to amplify the attraction of the female form while suppressing the male form, at least in relation to each other. I don’t believe we are capable of removing attraction, so to gain equality and eliminate a double standard, amplify male attraction more, and accept for both that attraction is a thing – that is, it has its place and there is nothing wrong with attraction – from either side. Ultimately with anything what matters is consent.

When we actually consider relationships, of course we should move beyond the physically attractive level. But you don’t need me to tell you that there’s more to a relationship than the physical – and yet, if people want to have a relationship that’s just that, as long as they’re honest about it, that’s up to them.

I don’t believe this solves everything, or even much, but it might be a useful, if complicated, single step to consider.

Sports, Sports, and More Sports

One thing that is very common among politically aware individuals is to hate on sports. This is especially true of those in the liberal political sphere, but does occur all over the map.

As most of you that talk with me know, I'm a huge sports fan. Baseball is my favorite sport, but I watch a variety of sports, and absolutely love it. So I do have personal reasons to be in favor of sports as a popular thing.

There are some things I dislike about sports as well. Most "anti-sports" people like to talk about these things. I will discuss them as well, and agree with most of it. But there is another side, that often doesn't get discussed, and I think they are important and should be considered.

First, yes, sports tends to lead towards a tendency towards greed. Billionaire team owners and millionaire athletes are hard to relate to. I can understand hesitation to want to support/contribute to a form of economic inequality. I agree in principle, but it's not substantially different from any other form of entertainment in this regard. (I also, for what it's worth, support plans that would work to change how sports often works in this manner, but more on this later.)

This is especially an issue when it comes to stadium construction. Demands for billion-dollar stadiums, often funding with taxpayer assistance, is really grating on people. I agree completely. There should not be taxpayer funded stadiums. I have a lot to say on this particular issue. Actually, I've already said a lot on it for Daily Kos. Some of the info is slightly out of date from the time of this writing, but here is Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4. One thing I will emphasize from all that is the notion that a stadium doesn't need to be fancy. We're there to watch the game not watch fish swim and see if the tank shatters from a baseball impact...

This greed also implies corruption. The stadium drama is itself one aspect of the corruption -- look at how relocation fees in the NFL magically dance around -- but this is actually a bigger issue on the international stage. I'll focus on the two largest international organizations: the IOC and FIFA. The IOC is the single most corrupt organization in the world, and FIFA is probably in the top ten somewhere. Essentially, all these organizations care about is using their sports as money grabs. The bidding processes for host cities (IOC)/countries (FIFA) tends to be laughable, rampant with bribes and unrealistic demands. Let's look at some recent bids. Funnily enough, I'll get to talk about a bid from each of these organizations at once in quite a few cases.

2014 Winter Olympics Sochi/2018 FIFA World Cup Russia: How much did Vladimir Putin pay off the IOC and FIFA to get these bids? Sochi is hardly a winter paradise, and the buildings were half-constructed piles of crap. Russia also has a lot of problems in the human rights department, especially in LGBT+ relations, as well as the general respect for democracy department. All of this is scary.

2016 Summer Olympics Rio de Janiero/2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil: When these were awarded, this was actually completely reasonable. Brazil was rising economically and seemed to be doing really well in every way. The problem is, they stopped gaining, and both events ended up really screwing over the country economically. They're a great example of how these events can go wrong even without a lot of malice. Of course, had the IOC and FIFA not put heavy demands for specific and ridiculous things that made it way harder than they needed to be, this would not have been as bad.

2022 Winter Olympics Beijing/FIFA World Cup Qatar: 2022 is set up to be a banner year of awful. I almost want to talk more about the Beijing selection in my next complaint below, because it's quite appropriate to that one more than it is to the issues Qatar is having. I will just pause to comment that Beijing is in no way a city that is equipped for winter games. This is going to be a disaster. Qatar is of course a country that has not only never qualified for the World Cup with temperatures capable of reaching 110 degrees in the summer, but has an absolutely terrible human rights record with abysmal treatment of workers building their stadiums. (Not to mention that they have to build every stadium, because Qatari soccer is terrible and has no stadiums worthy of World Cup matches).

All these problems have been well noted... this leads us into...

The bidding process for the 2024 Summer Olympics Paris Or Los Angeles and 2026 FIFA World Cup CONCACAF Union: No one wants your silly events anymore! Paris and Los Angeles are the only 2 bidders for the Olympics because so many recent Olympics have lost money. This, of course, means that these cities have a lot more leverage to not have to concede to ridiculous IOC demands, which will save them money, and once again delude the world into thinking you can make money on these even with said demands... it's a cycle. The 2026 World Cup is little better. The United States, Canada, and Mexico have filed a joint bid and are demanding quick action, because they're well aware that, especially with FIFA rules in force preventing Europe or Asia from getting the 2026 World Cup, the only alternatives are terrible. Of course, there's two problems with this concept. First, how do you get more terrible than failure to even guarantee teams can enter the country? (See: Trump Travel Ban) I mean, I'm aware Trump won't be President in 2026, but this is still a dangerous and scary precedent and I don't see how you can do this. Also, the alternative bids that have been mentioned are Colombia, Morocco, and New Zealand. Are these bad bids? Maybe, but I think everyone would prefer one of these countries to *Qatar*, so again, not a concern. (Personally I think Mexico should get it on their own at this point, but meh.) But yes, the arrogance of these organizations is causing a problem... but when Paris and LA actually make money, and Mexico too, or whoever gets the World Cup here, everyone will start wanting it again. (Beijing 2022 is also this, as there were no major bidders opposing them, just a town in Kazakhstan.) No foresight. Sigh.

Okay, so... all that sounds horrible. So why do I like sports?

We've talked about the negatives. Time to talk about the positives. I'm going to zoom through the obvious "fun" aspect. It is, but I'm not going to convince people that way. (I personally find the tactical aspect of how sports work to often be underrated by non-sports fans as well, but that's a detailed conversation, sport specific, and outside the scope of this post.)

At the basic level, it offers an outlet for tribalism. Humans are hardwired to divide people into "us" and "them". While I applaud the efforts of those that urge us to move beyond this notion, I do not believe it is feasible for the masses in the long run -- it's simply human nature. More specifically, it offers a *usually* healthy outlet for tribalism. Let's use an example. I'll start with Major League Baseball.

I'm a Padres fan. I hate the Diamondbacks. I hate Diamondbacks fans. They're so annoying and have no respect for the game, yadda yadda. I've found them to be the worst behaved fans in the National League.

Wow mainstreet, that doesn't sound healthy.

It doesn't sound it. But let's look at this a bit more closely. What is a "Diamondbacks fan"? Someone that supports the Arizona Diamondbacks... all Diamondbacks fans, first off, like baseball. This is actually something I have in common with them. So despite apparent hatred, there's actually a kinship there. They're probably from Arizona, though not necessarily. There's nothing in here that is so fundamental, in general, that it can actually cause a social problem in the same way that, say, racial hatred, or homophobia, or transphobia, can cause.

Let's do a bit of a silly thought experiment. Let's say I become Emperor of Earth, and am evil and want to express my hatred. So I might want to oppress Diamondbacks fans. ...how do I do that? All the ways you oppress groups normally, don't really work here, do they? People will just stop caring about baseball, or perhaps the Diamondbacks will change their name or move or something else...

So being the fans of a sports team is a group that you can express a dislike and hatred for, but it's not a group that can actually become a socially ostracized population on a meaningful, hurtful level. This means that if we're going to be tribalistic, and be negative towards a group of people, this might well be the safest way we can possibly do it.

I'm not saying violence between team supporters never happens. But when it does happen, it tends to happen on an equal basis -- or at least, on a basis that you can change the "teams" of the involved parties almost at will and the case won't feel any different -- any more or less wrong. It does not seem to happen at a greater rate than generic violence that is non-targeted.

Sports is also a conversational topic that, similar to the news, continuously has new information, but unlike regular news, is not consistently depressing.

This applies similarly on an international level. You have countries to support over others, to showcase your own way of life, your own philosophies. It allows countries to measure themselves against each other in a peaceful way. Differences can be settled on the sporting fields rather than the battlefield. This saves lives.

In fact, we can take international competition and go a step further. Major events like the World Cup and the Olympics are not only heavily political, but they are the sorts of events that become infeasible if a major portion of the world is at war. War will still happen, but a war between superpowers now has a huge economic cost attached to it from the disruption of these major events. Thus those that have an interest in these events -- and we're talking in the many billions of dollars here -- thus influence the world away from superpowers at war. It's a shame that they cannot influence away from asymmetric wars or wars between small states nearly as effectively, but it is better than nothing.

Overall I must conclude that I find sports a vital part of our modern world and am grateful for their presence.

What Is Morality?

I've been through attempting to define morality far too many times over the past few years, and no one ever really understands my position. I expect this post to need several updates as little things get picked at. Nonetheless, the best attempt at coherency must be made. Seeing part of my position makes it look ridiculous. In a way, being able to do this post is one of the core reasons for this thread.

Before I talk about what is morality, let's talk about what it needs to do. Morality must be able to provide an optimal course of action for a situation. It typically is considered to do so by comparing values and the impacts that options will have with regards to those values. That answer should not differ between identical situations. However, the previous sentence can be seen as rather vacuous, as everyone has different experiences that shape their thoughts.

I will begin by rejecting nihilism prima facie. Rational humans do not actually believe this, even if they claim to do so. Simply put, rational behavior requires *a* morality be formed. I defined morality as choosing the optimal course of action -- this is what you do when you rationally think. The results you come up with may be incorrect, but it is not nihilistic.

Which brings us to a point: a statement must either be true or false. I'll come back to this later.

Most people like to talk about "objective" and "subjective" morality. I'm going to show how this, of necessity, must be a false dichotomy, for the most frequently used definition of "objective".

Let's consider subjective morality first. Subjectivism states that morality is individual to the subject. The problem with this is that it violates the identicality principle. If two people have two identical situations, they may come up with different answers. At first glance, there's no problem, because as stated before unique experiences will shape thought processes. However, that is descriptive. We are discussing morality. We want a prescriptive answer.

Architectural Example: Situation S is presented to Persons A and B, and we will assume there is no informational disconnect. A says that it is morally correct to engage in Response R. B says that is it morally correct to engage in Response Not-R. Either A is correct, or B is correct. They can't both be correct. They will both think they are correct, of course, but both will also find the other wrong. Ideally, they should engage in a discourse to work out the reasons for their differences. Because there is no informational disconnect, there must be a values disconnect -- a core morality difference. However, realistically, one person has to be wrong. I will not be able to say whether A is wrong or B is wrong, but they can't both be right. There must be an actual correct course of action.

A lot of people object to the claim I just made. However, every objection boils down to the original claim of subjectivism itself. Let's go one step further here; if we accept that subjectivism is correct, it necessarily follows that no one is wrong morally, because they are just doing their "own" morality. This clearly fails. Let's go to the obvious example: Nazis are immoral. Am I shutting down the conversation this way? Sure, but so are you by claiming that everyone has their own morality. Seriously, why discuss the morality of... anything... ever? You're already both correct always. It's silly.

Relativism is sometimes mentioned, but this, frankly, is simply subjectivism expanded to a group, cultural, or world level. It either falls to total descriptivism -- and thus is useless -- or it makes no allowance for moral progress, as you're already correct for whatever group you're in.

When most people look at "objective" morality, they tend to think in terms of morality coming from a specific source, such as God. This then, provides an easy objection to objective morality for any atheist. However, this principle shows a lack of understanding of relativity (no relation to the aformentioned relativism). The Theory of Relativity, as explained by Einstein, says that all reference frames are equivalent, and there is no absolute reference. However, you still maintain objective fact. The speed of light in a vacuum is a constant, for instance. There are several other fundamental constants that work similarly. So we can clearly show we have an objective state without it being from a specific source.

I have no personal problems allowing morality, under these terms, to be called "objective". However, I can respect those people that find this definition to extensive for "objective". This being the case, we must then declare the objective-subjective paradigm to in fact be a false dichotomy. I have occasionally referred to this new result as "injective", but this is largely an attempt on my part to be cute with words.

So where does morality come from?

Morality is a bit nebulous to pin down, but I believe humanity (and all sentience, should we find it elsewhere in the universe) effectively creates it through our complex interactions as a species. We constantly work to improve our understanding of it and seek the correct path. All theories so far are imperfect, and I am not sure we will ever get to a perfect understanding of morality. (Indeed, I would be very suspicious of any claims to have obtained such, because it is a short step from such a claim to a suppression of free thought.) It is and will always be a work in progress. I believe we rise asymptotically towards a better understanding. The truth exists -- one must be more correct than another -- and through interaction, reasoning, and discourse, we work to determine which. Ad infinitum.

This, and only this, allows us to make moral decisions, to have discussions on our moral claims, and to actually improve ourselves.