neonascent

Can’t take my eyes off of you…

Originally uploaded by joshharle

Who says UK is a surveillance society? This isn’t a bank or police station or prison. It’s the side of a pub in the middle of the countryside.

I’m not a big fan of many of the Feminist Blogs posts I’ve come across - suffering from habitual ranting, in the sense that they are reactionary and angry. Any possible constructive point gets muddied with arguments ad hominem, and often fail the reversal test. While anger, outrage, exasperation at social injustices are understandable, they aren’t productive. We all have opinions - some we hold strongly - and we are all prepared to shout angrily against our detractors, but the loudness of one’s voice is not proportional to the merit of one’s argument.

Having said that, I spotted an astonishing article on AskMen.com entitled “Etiquette Of A Gentleman”, that was linked to via Lifehacker. The list of rules of etiquette included

• Always open doors (for a lady)
• Put on her coat
• Help with her seat
• Give up your seat
• Stand at attention
• Give her your arm

Coincidently, I had just come from reading a Pandagon’s take on holding doors for a women, which pointed out that holding doors open was no longer practice as a patronizing part of man-woman etiquette. It amazes me that such an anachronistic guide could be published without irony, and of course the position of a “gentleman” is squarely in this world of the past where holding doors open is a meaningful gesture of gender relationships.

For the record I hold doors open for men and women, and occasionally unintentionally forced people to run to it by holding the door from an unreasonable distance.

Récemment j’ai lu quelque philosophie en francais et je pense que je devais essayer d’écrire en francais. Peut-etre ceci m’aidera a me rappeler. Nous verrons.

C’est vraiment une belle langue. Je suis tres triste que je l’ai oublié. Tant pis!

The BBC reports that Natascha Kampusch, the Austrian teenager abducted and kept captive for 10 years of her, life mourns the death of her captor. The journalist is quick to point out that

Police suspect she may have been suffering from “Stockholm Syndrome” - a condition where some abductees gradually begin to sympathise with their captors.

Of course, we cannot be allowed to entertain the idea that a “normal” or “positive” emotional attachment developed from such a criminal scenario as abduction! I think it’s interesting to examine the psychoanalytic explanation for Stockholm Syndrome, as presented in its Wikipedia entry:

According to the psychoanalytic view of the syndrome, the tendency might well be the result of employing the strategy evolved by newborn babies to form an emotional attachment to the nearest powerful adult in order to maximize the probability that this adult will enable - at the very least - the survival of the child, if not also prove to be a good parental figure.

With the institution of Family touted as the foundation of a civilized society, it would be devastating to concede that it is based on simply an evolved survival instinct - familiar bonds being a throwback to psychological necessity. However, I don’t think it should really come as a surprise that this is so. Natacha’s situation brings us up against the uncomfortable question of what makes an emotional response valid - was Wolfgang Priklopil an Abductor or Father?

Wolfgang Priklopil […] effectively brought her up. He provided her with clothes, food, helped her with her studies.

Two points that could be raised to disqualify the similarity between Natascha’s so-called Stockholm Syndrome and a socially accepted/validated parent-child emotional bond. One is that she is not genetically related. I would suggest that society is quite happy to accept love expressed within a foster family. A second, which has not yet been confirmed, is that there may have been sexual contact between the abductor and Natascha. Sadly this is not unheard of within a biologically related family unit, and significantly, the expression of loyalty, love, etc of a child within an physically/sexually abusive family is another locus of diagnosed Stockholm Syndrome.

I suggest that the Stockholm Syndrome categorization of any love and attachment within a socially unacceptable scenario is used to insulate “good love” from ‘bad love”. We would like to think that love towards someone who is abusive is the result of some “psychological condition” while the love within a (nice, atomic, idealised) family is out of choice. It is possible that I am being too critical of such double-standards however; while the emotional attachment known as love is a result of psychological evolution, the primacy and value of the family unit within our society is also the result of a much more recent social evolution.

Well I’m not very good with regular schedules, but here’s this moments epitaph.

The previous…

The trip back from Melbourne - starting yesturday and ending just 30 minutes ago this morning - was incredibly long and epic.

The stage for my denouement was set in the small town of Tarcutta, coincidently almost exactly halfway between Melbourne and Sydney.

I waited, I thought, I read. I wondered and looked at the incredibly clear sky and saw the milkyway. Then I saw two falling stars, and in the early hours of this morning a brilliant rainbow arch.

I got an idea of the lives of truckies. I got an idea of their deaths. A hundred and twenty-three of them younger than myself killed in truck accidents over the years.

Sat by fires, got lashed with freezing winds. Rode for hours into the dawn.

Trite as it sounds: lost a dream but found a story.

It’s edging closer to my next birthday, and I feel that in my old age it is a good idea to have my affairs in order. Starting at the end, I’m going to make sure my spirit lives on in a witty epitaph for myself. I will endevour to come up with a good epitaph every week, and with pot-luck style selection if I die during that week, I take it to the grave! Of course if I think of a naff one for one week, I’ll have to try extra hard not to do anything fatal until I can think of a better one.

I’ve written a PHP script to help visualize, and they are auto-magically created.

Making heroes of the people who are willing to kill. 2 wrongs do not make a right.

Cafepress have managed to capture under-represented niche markets wholesale and at the same time create some fabulously surreal and ironic products. In one fell swoop they have claimed the “I love X” product base, with such incongruous gems as “I love my kids” thong-style underwear, and “I love sex education” baby’s bibs.

Providence brought me to this particular page of theirs when I absent-mindedly typed “I love ducks” into Google. With this site proudly servicing the world’s consumers, there is no chance of having your love for a particular country, politician, animal, drug, or obscure abstract concept going unknown. It is obvious that there has been very little human input into the creation of these products, as can be seen from such clumsy phrases as “I love Earth”, and the automatically generated product images.

If nothing else, I find this site warmly comforting, as it shows that there is as much a niche to fill for thoughtful, creatively produced clothes design as there is for Alpacaphile products.

I am passing through the park on a sunny Wednesday afternoon on my way back from studies. A cool breeze intermittently plays against my face as I amble along a well-worn dirt path between islands of palm trees. There is a small chestnut on the ground, and I pick it up. I think about how I could plant this seed wherever I felt like, and have made a difference to the future of the tree that may germinate from it. On closer inspection I notice that there is a borehole in the nut, and that there must be a small bug in it.

I have effected this bugs existence in a profound way, and it is in no way aware of my existence. If anything, it may see - in some limited awareness - its change of environment as natural or coincidental - Its sphere of phenomenological perception is almost totally alien to mine and vice versa.

We exist within a vast spectrum of consciousnesses. Some are approaching our own and are significantly aware of us, the consequences of our actions, and thus can communicate and socialise with us to a limited degree, but many many cannot. As a species we measure ourselves as having the highest awareness to our environment: the most inclusive, most reflexive, most coherent sphere of awareness.
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