The Microcosm

As another month draws to a close here at nuclearheadache, I figured that I'd leave you with a very old, half-baked idea of mine.  It's a little crazy, more than a little stupid.  I'd say that it would make you think, but seriously....Anyway:

Okay, so picture yourself in a smokey, dimly lit room.  You focus in and look closely at the smoke.  You see that it's denser in some areas than others, forming clusters and clouds here and there.  You zoom in closer until you see the atoms and molecules that the smoke is composed of.  The nuclei of these atoms are like bright little points of light, and the clouds are composed of billions and billions of them, clustered into different shapes, some round, some spiral swirled.  You focus in on a single atom that lies along the outskirts of one of the spiral clusters.  As you draw in, you can see the electrons orbiting around the brightly lit nucleus.  One of the electrons looks interesting.  You zoom in for an even closer look, and to your amazement you find that there is life on this electron.  It's absolutely teeming with life...intelligent life even.  They've established an entire civilization of this electron.  They have roads, and buildings, and technology.  The subatomic beings on this electron are full of questions.  They wonder how and why they've come to be.  They struggle and strain and make the most of their lives on this fragile little electron.  You zoom in closer to the towns and cities and neighborhoods.  You descend towards the roof of a familiar looking house.  You open the front door, go into the house and up the stairs.  You find a room with smoke coming from behind the door.  You go inside and find someone who looks exactly like you sitting in a chair by the lamp.  Your duplicate looks up, blinks and chokes for a moment and then tells you, "This is some good stuff."

See you next month.   

Entrapment Logic

There are a number of rhetorical techniques in the repertoire of persuasion that are not quite on the level, and some of them are downright dishonest.  Some people employ these techniques deliberately as a means of devious manipulation, while others resort to them more innocently without even realizing it.  They are techniques which rely not on the establishment of facts or the weight of reason, but instead play on people's weaknesses and insecurities, the things they often don't even admit to themselves.

There is the Ad Hominem tactic.  This is where someone tries to refute a claim by undercutting the character of the person offering evidence or argument supporting it.  The hallmark of the Ad Hominem is that the character assault has nothing to do with the claim in question.  For example, if someone says, "Sally heard that there was a bad snow storm coming.", and someone replies, "Well, Sally's a crazy lady who lives alone with fifteen cats, so what does she know?", then that would be an Ad Hominem argument.  A fairly obvious one, of course.  Usually it's used with at least some appearance of relevancy, and usually over claims a bit more controversial than the weather.  It's far more common than you might think, and most of us are probably far more guilty of it than we realize.

Then you have good old classic intimidation.  In terms of an argumentative tactic, intimidation is like a preemptive Ad Hominem.  This is where someone suggests that there's something wrong with someone who holds such and such a position.  Like the Ad Hominem, there is again no connection between the character defect suggested and the position in question.  The intention here is to try to chase people away from something with blatant insults.  "Anyone who likes that band is an asshole."  It's usually that crudely obvious, and yet it's also surprisingly affective on many people.  "Oh dear.  I don't want them to think I'm an asshole."  And so it goes.  Brute aggression takes the place of reasonable persuasion.

I bring these familiar tactics up in order to add a third to the list.  It's something I've noticed here and there recently, although it's probably been around since the dawn of time.  For lack of a better term, I'll call it "entrapment logic."  This is similar to the intimidation tactic, but it's a bit more subtle and sophisticated.  It's a kind of rhetorical catch-22.  It's the loophole that lands you right back in the net.  You're damned if you do, and you're damned if you don't.  To put it simply, entrapment logic is where someone sets up their argument in such a way that disagreeing with them proves their point.

There's a gag that comedians commonly resort to that employs this technique.  They'll say something like, "Every neighborhood had a kid that was such and such, and if you don't remember having a kid like that in you're neighborhood, then you were that kid."  It's that little clause on the end, that little provision made for your disagreement.  Or maybe someone will say something like, "People that smack babies always deny it."  There's really no good answer after that.  Sometimes it's just a matter of putting you in position where your disagreement doesn't necessarily prove their point; they just set it up so that your protestations to the contrary ring hollow.  "Only people with no sense of humor don't think that movie is funny."  Here we're basically back to the intimidation tactic, but there's that extra added twist.  The more you protest, the more it looks like you're digging yourself deeper into a hole.

Now, at the risk of getting tangled up in yet another debate on the subject, I can't leave this topic without mentioning one of the most common cases of entrapment logic there is.  For the record...again, I have no problem with homosexuals, neither personally or morally.  What they do is their business, and not mine.  If they want to get married, fine.  I was happy the other day to see that "Don't Ask...Don't Tell" has been done away with.  If someone wants to pick up a gun to defend my freedom, I think they deserve a little freedom of their own.  However, all that being said, I do have a problem with the concept of homophobia.

To be sure, there are people that are excessively antagonistic to homosexuals because they are insecure about their own sexuality.  I'll admit that this happens quite frequently even.  We all know the stories about some senator or congressman who voted against gay legislation getting caught in a public restroom with his pants down, or having some embarrassing emails surface.  We all know someone who gets just a little too upset about the issue; they take it all just a little too personally.

However, there are people who get carried away with the idea and label anyone opposed to homosexuality as homophobic.  They don't allow for the possibility that some people just think it's wrong.  Still others might just find the whole idea repugnant, and they take that as reason enough for moral condemnation.  I'm not here to defend these people, but I don't think it's fair to insist that they're homophobic.  It's entrapment on two levels.  First, it characterizes their opposition as a "phobia."  Secondly, it suggests that they have some kind of hang-up about the issue, strongly implying that they must be in the closet themselves.  It's the across-the-board, flippancy with which the idea gets thrown around that bothers me.  I don't like to see even those people I disagree with treated unfairly.

Anyway, I don't bring that in to cloud the issue, or smuggle in some agenda.  I wrote this to shed some light on entrapment logic in general.  I mention it as a sort of public service, so that you won't fall into the trap, and perhaps so you won't find yourself employing the tactic.  If someone pulls this on you, you can call them out on it and keep them from using your own disagreement against you.  Alright, now bring on the griping...          

Trying to Understand Relativity (part 10)

If the flow of time can be affected or altered by a physical phenomenon, then it seems necessary to establish some point of contact between time and physical matter.  For instance, if we say that the weight of an object here on Earth would be 1/16th of that weight if we were to move that object to the Moon, we are able to state this with the utmost confidence because we understand precisely how weight is a physical property of the object, and because we understand precisely how this property expresses itself through the object.  We understand that weight is a measurement of the force of gravity's interaction between the mass of the object and the mass of the Earth or the Moon.  Likewise, if we are to stake the claim that an object's duration can be affected by its velocity, then in the same manner, we need to either understand time as a property of the object, or understand how time can be affected by the object.  In either case, some connection between time and the object needs to be established.

Relativity addresses this problem by tying time to space, forming the unified concept of space-time.  According to Relativity, the mass of an object warps the space around it, and other objects caught in this curvature fall towards the object, creating the appearance of attraction which we call gravity.  Since time is interwoven with space, this warping of space causes a warping in time as well.  In the special circumstances of Relativity this seems to make a certain amount of intuitive sense.  We picture space as a flat plane, and time as a perpendicular dimension to that plane, represented perhaps by an arrow.  Normally, they pass at right angles to one another without disturbing each other, but when there is a warp in the plane of space, it causes a warp in the passage of time as well.

Evidence backs up the facts of this as well.  The warping of space was proven by taking photographs of the stars surrounding the sun during a solar eclipse.  The stars appeared to be slightly shifted in their positions because their light was passing through the warped region of space around the sun.  From the warping of space follows the warping of time.  The Earth is certainly a massive object, and as such, it warps space to a considerable degree, fortunately holding us and the atmosphere snugly to its surface.  In addition to warping space, it also warps time to an almost imperceptible degree.  The GPS satellites in orbit have to be recalibrated on a daily basis to account for the discrepancy.  These aren't just formulas on a chalkboard; these are genuine realities.  Due to the mass of the Earth, time really does run slightly slower here than it does out in space.

So where does this leave us?  In the previous post I brought the wave model to bear on all of this.  With this wave model I proposed that time existed entirely in change and motion.  I went on to speculate that the time dilation effect predicted by Relativity was really a uniform slowing of all motion.  Relativity, however, seems to have returned us to the notion that time exists independently of matter, as something aloof, as a dimension or medium through which change and motion occurs, rather than arising out of the change and motion itself.  Relativity couples time with space, rather than with the matter occupying that space, and there is plenty of evidence to support this union.

Once again, I'm thrown for a loop.  The wave model seemed to neatly provide the point of contact mentioned above.  If time was in the motion, then it seemed to make sense that accelerating one frame of reference to near the speed of light relative to another would cause a uniform regress of motion within the frames to account for the constancy of light.  The next step was to try and figure out exactly how this uniform regress could be caused by acceleration.  It seemed to a matter of calculating how the external and internal velocities balanced to compensate for the speed of light, and then time dilation would arise up out of this balance.  It would all be an adjustment of motion.

It all has an appealing simplicity, but that doesn't necessarily make it right.  I can't deny the connection between space and time.  It has been demonstrated clearly in theory, and in practice, and I'm not here to rewrite Relativity, but rather to understand it.  At the most, I would only propose a reinterpretation of the conclusions drawn from the theory.  So I pose the questions to you, the reader.  Does the space-time concept invalidate the wave model?  Is the hypothesis still worth pursuing anyway?  Is it possible that instead of space stealing time away from matter, perhaps space exists through matter in a similar way as I've proposed that time exists through matter?  The wave model suggests that change doesn't pass through time, but rather that time passes through change.  Likewise, is it possible that objects don't exist in space, but rather that space exists in objects?  Can space and time be unified on the ground of physical matter, as properties of that matter?  In other words, where do we go from here?

Myth of the Albatross

Prior to taking Rachel Hoyt up on yet another one of her Smiley Sociology Studies, I knew almost nothing about the albatross, although the bird has long held a prominent place in my imagination.  I wasn't even sure if it was an actual, real bird or just a mythical creature.  Certainly the bird that I had cultivated in my mind's eye was the stuff of legends.  I imagined a huge, dark bird with a vast wingspan, an extremely solitary bird that flew alone over vast miles of ocean.  There was something haunting and melancholy about this bird, and yet something enchanted, as though it were a piece of medieval lore.  I had the impression that the bird's habitat was far, far south, traveling over the oceans surrounding Antarctica, far from any civilization.  Ships straying into those distant waters might spy the bird through the fog and the mist, and the sailors would be shaken to the core by the dark apparition, crossing themselves superstitiously to ward off the bad omen.

This impression of mine was generated mostly by references to the bird in popular speech.  In doing what, for me, passes for research, I learned that a Coleridge poem called The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is responsible for the metaphorical and symbolical attachments that the bird has acquired.  In the poem the mariner of the title shoots the bird for some reason, and the crew of the ship forces the mariner to wear the bird around his neck, because they feel that he has cursed the crew by killing the bird.  Turns out that the bird is actually considered good luck.  It was killing the bird that turned the good omen bad.  I got the Antarctica part right, though...sort of.  In the poem the crew is lost near Antarctica and the bird arrives to lead them back on course...well, until the mariner decides to use it for target practice.

Oddly enough, I'd never heard this poem before.  The references to it had worked their way down to me fourth or fifth hand.  From the poem, the idiom of having "an albatross around you neck" came to mean having some kind of burden or curse, but by the time it got to me, people weren't even wearing the bird as a necklace anymore.  They were just talking about this heavy, burdensome bird that caused everyone sorrow.  I think this is how the bird came to loom so big in my mind.  A heavy bird that dragged you down seemed to be a bit of a paradox to me.  It grew and grew in my mind as a perpetual struggle against its own gravity, like a natural, avian version of the Spruce Goose.

The albatross actually is a large bird, and they actually do have the largest wingspan of any living bird.  They are not however, the dark, mournful creatures that I had imagined.  They look like the picture above.  They look a bit like an exotic duck.  They're kind of cute with pretty colors.  I don't know if I'd want to wear a dead one around my neck, but I'd consider keeping a live one as a pet.

This dreadful bird of my fantasy was one of the last enduring myths in my mind, destined to go the way of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.  It was cobbled together out of hearsay and snatches of fact, and stitched together with poetic conjecture.  It's funny how close I came to accuracy, only to end up missing it by miles.  I'm glad that I've now learned something about the substance of its overbearing gravity, but I'll miss that majestically ugly bird soaring over the lonely miles of open sea.  I've returned the name "albatross" to its rightful owner, and that ugly bird flies off nameless into the dim green mist.            

How Do I Carry All My Wayward Guns?

Having played a number of first person shooters, as well as a variety of top down, side scroll, bottoms up, and inside out and ass backwards, shooters, I've noticed a certain pattern emerging with the weaponry provided by the games.  I'm sure I'm certainly not the first to give an insightful little tour of said weapons, but it's a slow news day, it's raining, and I actually had a dream last night that I was trapped in a first person shooter in some sort of horrible, bloodbath, suicide mode.  So without further ado:

     The Peashooter

This is usually the gun you start the game with, although if you're dealing with particularly sadistic game designers, they might drop you in with nothing but your bare fists and your bloody knuckles.  In such an event, though, you'll usually find the Peashooter at some point during your first five minutes of game play.  It'll be right out in the open, and you'll be all like, "Yes!  Finally, a gun!"  Yeah, don't get too excited there, chief.  The Peashooter is just a single shot weapon, and the bullets are about as effective as a lead spitball.  It makes an ineffectual little *pap* *pap* sound when you fire it, which I think might actually attract your enemies.  Like sharks catching the scent of blood in the water, your enemy's ears perk up when they hear the sound of your lame gun.  Seriously, little kids playing cops & robbers make more menacing sounds when they use their fingers for guns.  Everything about the Peashooter screams for an upgrade, and once you do find a better gun, you're not liable to return to the Peashooter unless the ammo has been depleted in every other weapon you have.

      The Blaster

Ah, and here's that upgrade.  The Blaster is usually a shotgun or rifle of some sort, or else it's some sort of space age equivalent.  It may be masquerading as an "Ionic Pulse Accelerator", but we all know it's a shotgun.  The Blaster's ammunition is far more effective than the Peashooter's.  In fact, the shells or "ionic pulses" are among the most damaging projectiles in the game.  The Blaster has, however, an inevitable downside.  The reload time for the weapon is always ridiculously slow.  First, you have to send away for the shells.  They arrive in the mail in 8 to 10 weeks.  Then you have to run that rod down your barrel, like they did with the old muskets.  At that point, you'll need some time to prepare your own gun powder....Okay, maybe it's not quite that bad, but when you've got a pile of enemies baring down on you, the times between reloads can seem downright geological.  Still, it's a very effective weapon, and the slow reload actually keeps you from expending too much ammunition.  It may not be very useful in group therapy, but you'll find that this is most often your default weapon, your trusted companion as you stalk through the maze-like corridors of the game.

       The Mower

Now we're talking guns.  The mower is usually a machine gun, gattling gun, chain gun, or made-up equivalent thereof.  It puts out serious firepower...and fast.  Per capita, on a bullet by bullet basis, the Mower comes out at a slight disadvantage to the Blaster.  You'll need a couple more shots to take down the enemy.  But the Mower more than makes up for this with its impressive speed.  Reload is not an issue here.  You accidentally brush against the trigger and the gun has rattled off 50 rounds before your brain even has time to relay the message back to your finger to let go.  And this leads to the downside of the Mower.  You'll go through ammunition like water on a hot day.  You stock up, 400 - 500 rounds, however much the game lets you carry, and within 30 seconds of mowing into a pack of enemies, you'll find yourself clicking at nothing but air.  Of course, you'll also be surrounded by fallen bodies, so it's not a complete loss.  Yes, you'll definitely be saving this weapon for crowd control, for those tight spots where you just need to go absolutely psychotic and worry about your ammo supply later.

      

        The Long Ranger

There's one of these in every game.  This is the gun that your mother warned you about.  It's usually some kind of grenade launcher, rocket launcher, or surface to air missile.  It's a powerful weapon, although you could usually reach your distant target faster by Fed Ex, but that isn't the real downside of it.  The Long Ranger is strictly a long range weapon, hence the name I've given it.  If you hit a target within a certain distance of yourself, you'll find that the weapon hurts you as well.  And we're not talking a little hurt here.  Pop one of these things open in your face and you're liable to find yourself three breaths away from an autopsy table.  The can be especially irritating when you accidentally fire into the wall you're standing right in front of, or have an enemy charge you just as you're getting your shot off.  One minute he's across the room, and the next minute he's rushing over to ask you to dance, and you suddenly find that you're going suicide bomber on the both of you.

      The Slugger

This usually comes along at a point in the game when it's almost too late to be effective, but yet when ammo supplies are low enough to make it necessary.  It can be a sword, a chain saw, or a baseball bat with nails sticking out of it.  If you get close enough to an enemy with it, you can seriously ruin their day.  The beauty of it is that you don't need any ammo for it.  The downside is that while the enemy is across the field making new holes in you, you either have to call him over to see the naked pictures of his sister that you've got, or you have to throw caution to the wind, rush headlong into him with your eyes wide, screaming your battle cry at the top of your lungs.  Not something I would suggest doing repeatedly.  Plus, as a bonus, the Slugger is usually right next to the Long Ranger in your inventory, so it's easy to get the two mixed up.  Yeah, good luck with that!

       The Dud

I don't know what this gun's problem is.  Maybe it's related to someone in upper management at the software company.  Maybe it's the brainchild of some idiot savant that sleeps under his desk and spent six months programming the pixel shading on a wall.  The Dud is a weird, useless weapon that arrives at some point late in the game.  It creates sonic bubbles that hurt the enemy's feelings, or it's a leaf blower that sprays a cloud of pizza coupons that eventually make your enemies fat and slow.  It's that one weapon that you usually skip, especially if there's a limit on the amount of guns that you can carry.  You definitely don't want to drop your Mower for a crossbow that shoots arrows tipped with stale marshmallows.  Sometimes, on very rare occasions, you find that you were using the Dud the wrong way, and it's actually a kick ass weapon.  I wouldn't count on it though.

  

       The Phaser

This one more than makes up for the Dud.  It's usually some kind of laser or rail gun, or plasma disruptor.  Whatever they call it, it's some serious high tech stuff.  In games with a more conventional arsenal, the Phaser is the standout.  While the other weapons are based on designs of actual guns and limited by those designs, the Phaser's capabilities are limited by only by the programmers' imaginations.  It usually uses some kind of power cells or energy units, rather than normal ammunition, but the result is basically the same.  It is the one weapon that usually ends up replacing the Blaster as your trusty, default companion.  It sends a real message to your enemies.  "I'm from the future, and I'm here to kill you."

       The Armageddon Gun

This is the last gun you get, and it's the last gun you'll ever need.  It's a real problem-solver.  If this gun took a course in advance calculus, it would get an A by blowing up the classroom and incinerating the teacher.  It is powerful to the point of absurdity, just shy of rendering the game completely pointless from there on out.  It also has extremely limited ammunition, and it doesn't arrive until nearly the last section of the last level of the game.  It would ruin the game if they gave it to you any earlier.  You procure it just in time to have a little fun with it, turn the tables on your unsuspecting enemies, and then you're off to fight the hydra-headed final boss with it.  And as that gargantuan creature tears forth out of a pool of molten lava or a vast ocean of panda bear blood, you look down at your Armageddon Gun, and all that cockiness quickly fades away *gulp*....*pap* *pap*

Sartre's Nothingness

"Nothingness can be nihilated only on the foundation of being; if nothingness can be given, it is neither before or after being, nor in a general way outside of being.  Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being - like a worm."  Jean Paul Sartre

But what is nothingness?  It seems like a simple enough question to answer.  It is that which is not.  It is the absence of something...anything.  But what are we to make of Sartre's statement that "nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being"?  In a reality defined essentially by the fact that it exists, in a universe filled completely with Being, where does non-existence come in to play?  How can there be such a thing as nothing?  Being simply is what is.  Unto itself it suffers no lack or excess of anything.  It is the fullness of everything.  It is complete.  It is.  What possible commerce could it have with nothingness?

Yet, we're all quite familiar with the concept.  Let's say you're sitting around in your living room with a spouse or a friend, and at some point this person insists that they heard a knock at the door.  You get up to check, and then you come back and tell them, "there was nothing there" or maybe "there was no one there."  You had opened the door and found this absence of a person, this nothingness on your doorstep.  You shrug, and then go back to reading your book without giving it a second thought.  Well, it's precisely this sort of commonplace occurrence that Sartre asks us to stop and give some fresh consideration to.  

Now the first thing to notice here is that this nothingness doesn't make its appearance until you open the door.  Prior to that there is only being beyond the door...the porch, the steps, the front walk, the whole wide world out there.  It is only when you open the door expecting to find someone there, that you in fact find no one.  Those few cubic feet of space above your doorstep don't acquire meaning as an absence of a person until you open the door and give them that meaning.

Sartre illustrates this point time and again with the idea of a wallet.  Let's say my wallet is in my pocket right now and it has thirteen dollars in it.  The wallet, the money, it is what is.  The thirteen dollars is not too much or too little.  It simply exists.  But then I pull the wallet out, and I could have sworn I had fifteen dollars, or I had hoped to find fifteen dollars, or maybe I just needed fifteen dollars.  I have now discovered the absence of these two dollars.  Either from want or expectation, my wallet, which only a moment ago was absolutely complete in its being, is now short two dollars.

The conclusion is obvious.  It is through us, through our perceptions, that nothingness comes about.  It is because we were looking for someone beyond the door, that we found no one.  It is because I was looking for fifteen dollars in the wallet, that I found the actual amount come up short.  At this point, though, Sartre cautions us not to just dismiss nothingness as a quality of our judgement, a simple disparity between reality and our expectations of it.  He insists that this nothingness is a fact.  If we consider a few other scenarios concerning our door, perhaps we'll see what he means.

Let's say we answer the door, and we actually do find someone on the other side.  Our perception of the world beyond the door converges on this person.  They are the figure to which everything else becomes the ground.  They are the focal point of our attention.  This attention may drift in tangents, something they're carrying in their hand, their clothes, their car in the driveway, or any number of things depending on the person we find.  But these tangents connect and lead back to the person.  We perceive the world beyond the door as though it were arranged around this person.

Now, let's say we were to go to our front door now and just open it and look out.  We're not opening it to see if someone is there.  We're not expecting to find anyone.  We're just randomly looking out, and any number of things could grab our attention.  We could watch a bird settling on the telephone line with a slight flutter.  Or our attention could drift to the clouds or the traffic passing along the street in front of the house, even the refreshing breeze that sweeps in.  Our attention draws these things into focus for a moment, and then lets them go as it moves on.  We're just gazing serenely out the door, and no specific thing arrests our attention, demanding that our awareness of the world converges on that point.  

But when we return to our original scenario, where we opened the door and found no one, we find that something else happens.  We again find the same converging phenomenon at work that we found when we were greeted by a visitor, but we find now that our perception of the world has arranged itself around this void, this nothingness where we expected to find someone.  This non-existent shadow of a person is the figure to which everything else becomes the ground.  This nothingness pursues us wherever we look.  We think maybe someone is hiding in a bush, playing a prank.  We see nothing there.  The world converges around this empty space we discover behind the bush.  In short, we perceive this nothingness; we experience it.  If we were in a poetic mood we could return to the person in the living room and inform them, "I encountered nothingness on our doorstep.  I found nothingness haunting me wherever I looked in the world, and before this nothingness I saw the world itself fade away before my very eyes."

So we see that while nothingness originates with us, and is sustained by our perception, it is still a very real experience.  When you say, "There was no one there", you are speaking a clear and undeniable fact.  There really was no one on your doorstep.  And yet, there is still the temptation to dismiss this as simply failed expectations.  The void was only on your doorstep because you posed the possibility that you might find someone when you opened the door.  Well, this is precisely where Sartre's analysis of consciousness comes into play.

You'll recall that we established that consciousness was always removed from the focus of its awareness, as a subject to an object.  This perpetual withdraw from being creates a certain ...decompression of being, which allows us to slip this nothingness between us and being.  In the next post on this matter, we'll explore this further, and see how this ability of the mind to deviate from Being is a crucial part of the nature and function of consciousness, as well as a crucial part of our free will.                   

The Life & Death of Tony Soprano

It's been over four years since the above scene aired, ending the six season run of the HBO series The Sopranos.  It seems a bit belated to talk about it now, but at the time the ending stirred quite a bit of controversy (by which I mean "internet controversy", which is to real controversy what a McNugget is to a real chicken.)  Series finales have always been a bit polarizing among a show's fans.  The creators of these shows often go for something gimmicky or poignant, something a little offbeat from the normal flavor of the show.  Sometimes this works; sometimes it doesn't, but one way or the other, it usually gets people talking, which is the whole idea.

At first glance, it seems the The Sopranos ending is no kind of ending at all.  It randomly cuts to black in the middle of a scene.  There's no resolution, no closure, nothing.  Some have griped endlessly about this.  Others have dissected the scene shot by shot, and gone back through clues and references through-out the series, and they have reached the conclusion that Tony dies at the moment the shot cuts to black.  This seems to me to be a more than plausible explanation, and I'm quite willing to accept it.  The thing that I find interesting about it, though, is the way it has made me work backwards over the series, re-evaluating my impression and concept of it.

When I began watching the show in its first season, I felt like I had a handle on where it was going.  I felt like Tony was headed for some kind of break-through in his therapy with Dr. Melfi, specifically a moral break-through.  It seemed to me that it would be revealed that his black-outs and panic attacks were the result of some sort of struggle of conscience.  Well, as time went on, it became more and more clear that this break-through was never going to come.  Tony sank deeper and deeper into his multitude of sins, and while no one might be beyond God's redemption, things weren't looking too promising for the man.

Then at some point between moves, I lost my HBO subscription, and I lost track of the show for a while.  I picked up the show again somewhere in the middle of the fourth or fifth season, and I caught up on what I had missed in various ways.  Now a new overall plan for the series seemed to be emerging.  It seemed to me that Tony was going to be faced with a choice.  The show had always been about a man divided between two worlds and two identities, the brutal mafia boss and the family man.  Certainly the plan was to eventually bring these two worlds into an irrevocable conflict with each other.  And I could see exactly how they would do it too, Tony's son A.J.

All the signs were there.  A.J. was drifting and getting into more and more trouble.  Meanwhile, Tony had faced some hard choices, sanctioning the deaths of his cousin, his daughter's boyfriend, and so on.  What would happen if A.J. got himself into a position where Tony was forced to make that choice?  What if his role as mafia boss mandated that he kill his own son?  Would he give up the mob life for the sake of his family, or would he step completely beyond redemption once and for all?  It had an almost inevitable logic to it, and a dramatically Biblical overtone to boot.  The chess pieces were sliding into position.  Surely this is where it was headed!  But then, after A.J's pathetic assassination attempt on Junior, the whole thing kind of petered out.  Just another tantalizing plot thread that went no where.

And when it was all over, I realized that I had watched this show all these years, holding out hope for some kind of salvation for the man, or at the very least, final and irrevocable damnation.  I wanted closure.  We all did.  Christopher Moltisanti complained early on about his life having no "arc."  Unfortunately lives rarely do.  Tony Soprano's life went on for a while, and then it ended abruptly, as lives tend to do, and as mafia lives tend to do even more so, I imagine.  They don't generally end on an appropriate note, but rather in mid-song with so much left to do, so many sins unconfessed, so many mistakes uncorrected. All the while you're still trying to point your ship on its proper course, and if you'd only had five more minutes....  The Sopranos was never about any particular scheme or overall arc.  It was just about a man's life, as it went on for a while, and then it was over.  Cut to black.

       

A Few More Nails in the Coffin of Moral Relativism

In the last post I briefly mentioned the concept of moral relativism.  I anticipated getting a few complaints from at least a few people who recognized the idea.  Still others might be familiar with the concept, but they don't know it by name.  Basically, when someone has an objection, specifically a moral objection, to some aspect of a culture and they are told, "Well, that's the way they do things.  We can't judge them by our morality.", this is moral relativism in practice.  In theory, the idea is as weak as a house of cards, blown to pieces by the slightest breath of a thought.  Since this idea is an integral part of the liberal conceit I mentioned in the last post, I figured it wouldn't hurt to explore a little more why I don't think it's a viable theory.

First of all, if morality were strictly a cultural phenomenon, then by what standard would these cultures decide upon, or naturally develop, their morality?  You could say that they do what's best for their people.  But this "doing best", already presupposes a moral principle.  It begs the questions: Why ought they do what's best, by what standard is something "best", and all to what end?  Obviously different cultures have different customs and priorities, but these are largely a matter of practicality, style, and circumstances.  For instance, keeping people warm is probably a higher priority in the Eskimo culture than, say, in the Nigerian culture, and many of their customs may even be designed around that end.  But whether you're talking about keeping Eskimos warm or Nigerians from being eaten by lions, the common denominator, the principle, is still the same: the preservation of human life.  Moral relativism confuses the difference between ends and means.  It leaves a culture with an engine, but no destination.  It leaves morality as a set of motions with no purpose, no adherence to anything beyond the arbitrary whims of a particular culture.  Under moral relativism murder is wrong because...well, because that's just not what we do here.  Try the next town over.

Secondly, if morality were strictly a cultural phenomenon, then that would put morality completely under society's control.  There would be no point in trying to stand up against any perceived injustices that you believe are being permitted in your society.  According to moral relativism, society by definition is always right.  The Holocaust?  That's just the way the Nazis did things.  We can't judge them by our morality.  Jim Crow?  That's just the way they did things back then.  We can't judge them by our modern standards.  Taken to its most logical conclusion, moral relativism, the refuge of ultra-liberals, ends up leading to the most conservative fascism imaginable.  The status quo becomes the standard bearer of morality.  In fact, there is an inherent contradiction between moral relativism and the liberal drive for progressive change.  This drive is based on the implicit assumption that there are absolute principles worth striving towards.  The really ironic part is that moral relativism itself is promoted by liberals on the basis of an absolute principle, tolerance.  How do you like that for a contradiction?

Of course, moral relativism was never meant to be applied this way.  It's light was never meant to shine on the likes of the Nazis.  It was never meant to be a full-fledged, workable, theory.  It is a rhetorical device, designed to disarm criticism.  It's only meant to be applied to cultures who fall under the liberal rubric of "cultural diversity."  When someone tells you, "We can't judge these people by our morality", what they're really saying is, "You're not allowed to say bad things about these people.  They're poor."

As I said in the previous post, you don't hear as much about moral relativism as you used to.  I remember when I used to spot subtle insinuations of it in all kinds of movies and TV shows.  Nowadays, it seems that all but the extreme left have abandoned the idea.  In fact, I think I can pin-point exactly where the theory died: the burka.  That's where liberals found themselves face to face with the contradiction mentioned above.  They couldn't dismiss something so obviously oppressive to women, something so clearly at odds with their own feminist values.  And rightly so!  It was refreshing to see them take a stand on something.

Finally, moral relativism is meant to promote understanding and appreciation of other cultures, but it actually acts as a wedge, driving us apart.  It treats morality as an untranslatable language, indecipherable from one culture to the next.  Instead of encouraging us to find value in other cultures, it dismisses the concept of value altogether.  It assumes from the outset that such & such a society would fail a moral evaluation, so it throws away the test form and declares that everyone gets a passing grade.  With it's policy of unlimited permission, it undoes our motivation to better ourselves as a species.  It's one thing to keep an open mind, to appreciate the differences between us, but we mustn't be afraid of standards.  We need standards.  We need stars to reach for.     

The Liberal Conceit

First of all, if it seems like I'm picking exclusively on liberals in this post, rest assured that conservatives will get their day in my nuclear court sooner or later.  I don't consider myself to be clearly one or the other.  I'm just a guy, looking for the truth, and I don't believe that the truth can be neatly packaged within any particular ideology.  But if I had to say which way I leaned, it would definitely be towards the liberal side.  I tend to think that their positions are more thought out, more sensitive to the issues involved, more sympathetic and open minded, and they don't tend to use religion as the final word in every argument like their own literal Deus Ex Machina.  However, there is a point where liberals and I definitely part ways.  I call this point "the liberal conceit."

If I had to sum up the liberal conceit in one sentence, it would be, "If you come off as an asshole saying it, it can't be the truth."  You see, the liberals have taken a diverse number of disenfranchised groups, causes, ailments, oddities, underdogs, classes, and special cases under their wing.  They're very protective of these things and these people.  They're very touchy and quick to go on the defensive where they are concerned.  So if you have anything to say about them which isn't 100% glowing positivity, full of smiley face suns and singing marshmallows, then you'll quickly find the liberals shaking an accusing finger in your direction like you're the next Adolf Hitler.

What!?  You deny that there was a gender bias in those test scores??  How dare you!

You know you've reached the liberal conceit in a conversation when you start hearing phrases like, "How would you like it if someone said..." or "How would you feel if someone..."  or "Well, I happen to know a...."  The debate shifts from facts and arguments, and boils down instead to a discussion of hurt feelings and offended sensibilities.  You find yourself facing a wall where scientific study and evidence mean nothing to the person you're talking to if what you're saying isn't "nice."

Now, I had to proceed cautiously when trying to come up with an example to use here.  We're talking about a veritable mine-field of liberal outrage.  So I had to tread carefully.  I'm not looking to pick any fights that will obscure the point I'm trying to make.  I've been down that road before and it's not fun.  However, I think I've found a fairly innocuous example, and it just so happens that it has the added benefit that I am a member of the group under consideration.  That should at least buy me a little leeway as far as the "asshole" factor is concerned, since I'll be talking about myself as well.  The group in question is left-handed people.

I won a contest with this!

Many years ago I read a book called The Left-Hander Syndrome.  The book took a more sober and scientific approach to the subject than most I've read, almost to the point of dryness.  They got into a statistical analysis of left-handedness, the fact that left-handed people tend to die younger, go insane more easily, more geniuses and more mentally handicapped as well, ect.  They showed how left-handedness was connected to other rare traits.  They dispelled several popular myths about left-handedness.  All fairly interesting stuff.  

But then they got into the fact that left- handedness is a result of brain damage or at least brain trauma usually experienced in the womb.  They stated that right-handedness is actually the default option for all human beings, and that left-handedness only occurs because of a trauma to the left hemisphere of the brain (which controls the right side of the body.)  All cases of left-handedness, they claimed, were a result of the right hemisphere of the brain and the left side of the body compensating for this damage.  Well, this was a bit of a blow to me.  I had been told all my life that left-handed people were "unique" and "holistic" and "creative."  While all of that could arguably still be true, this book was telling me that left-handed people weren't a special minority of different people who just used our other hand.  The book was telling me that we were actually damaged right-handers, implying in a sense that we were actually inferior to normal right-handers, merely compensating for this infirmity by favoring a hand nature had never intended.

Now this is the point where the liberal conceit would be going off like an air raid siren.  The whole thing sounds like something dreamed up by Nazi intellectuals, and it smacks of old tales of the one room school houses where they used to smack kids hands with a ruler if they used the "wrong" one.  I can almost hear the itchy fingers of someone waiting to leave a scathing comment.  Only the latitude I've bought by throwing myself into the mix is keeping them at bay, but even that latitude is limited.  It's almost inevitable that someone below will say something like, "Well, my daughter is left-handed and I'm incredibly offended by what you said."  To that hypothetical comment I can only reply, "Frankly my dear, the truth doesn't give a damn."

But that's far-fetched, right?  No one would leave a comment like that, right?  No one gets that worked up over handedness, right?  Well, consider this screen cap of a review for the book off of Amazon:

Click to Enlarge

Now, I don't know how valid the conclusions in that book are.  That's not my point here.  If someone wants to pick apart the author's scientific findings, that's one thing, but people take this immense umbrage to things like this simply because they don't like what they are hearing.  They find it "offensive."  We live in this cushy culture of entitlement where people think that being "offended" is like some kind of trump card that supersedes facts and reality.  This is a precedent set by the liberal conceit.  Well folks, the fact of the matter is that the truth isn't always the nice cuddly fairy-tale that the liberals want it to be, where everyone gets a trophy just for participating in the human race.  Sometimes the truth is downright ugly and unpleasant.

Sometimes liberals try to sidestep this unpleasantness by trying to bend reality to this warm little fantasy of theirs.  There used to be a few liberal ideas floating around out there that nearly stated this in explicit, philosophical terms.  You don't hear as much about them nowadays, but I'm sure they're out there: multiculturalism and moral relativism.  Now, don't get me wrong.  I'm all for embracing other cultures and keeping an open mind, but these ideas went far beyond that.  Their explicit positions were 1.) that all moralities were a group phenomenon and equally valid; what was wrong in one society, was right in another, and it was all just a matter of perspective and opinion 2.) that all cultures were of equal value, and no one could claim that any society was in any way better than another.  The purpose of both these ideas was to sterilize any objective standard of judgement.  It was the liberal conceit incarnate.  It was deliberately calculated to disarm any ideas which might seem negative, and instead promote an image of the world where everyone is wonderful, everyone wins, and everything is a huge love fest from sea to shining sea.

Well, I'm not buying it.  It's a nice idea, but it's not the truth.  Right is right, wrong is wrong, and it doesn't come down to a matter of geography.  Human sacrifices aren't suddenly acceptable because we happened to be hanging with such and such a tribe and we happen to be at certain degrees latitude and longitude.  As far as better or worse, I admit these are vague terms, and yes, all cultures have a mixture of good points and bad, but on a case by case basis considering different aspects, you can't deny objective standards.  You can't deny that the life expectancy might be higher here, the crime rate lower there, and so on.  No, none of this will do.  The truth exists beyond us, and beyond what we would like it to be, beyond what offends our sensibilities.  We need to face it with open eyes if we're going to get anywhere as a species.