As Allan Bloom pointed out, Rousseau saw bourgeois love as a salve for the empty emotional center of restrained, law-bound societies. He wanted to substitute the passion of people for truth and honor and power with something just as absorbing but nowhere near as dangerous. Why not love? It flatters our narcissism. It diverts us with phony adrenaline, teases us with jealousy, hooks us with sex. It is the means by which our genes persuade our bodies to reproduce. It is so diverting that we tend to forget more pressing questions, like what to believe in or strive for. More important, in a culture in which sex is increasingly divorced from procreation, it gives copulation a new kind of purpose, apart from pleasure. It sacralizes it, dignifies it, elevates it. Love, we're told, conquers all.
The trouble is, of course, it doesn't. The love celebrated on Valentine's Day conquers nothing. It contains neither the friendship nor civility that makes marriage successful. It fulfills the way a drug fulfills -- requiring new infusions to sustain the high. It prettifies sex, but doesn't remove sex's danger or lust. And by elevating it to a personal and cultural panacea, we suffer the permanent disappointment of excessive expectations, with all of their doleful social consequences.
People in love don't celebrate Valentine's Day -- it's a redundancy. It's sustained for non-couples. Guys take out the girls they don't like too much and hope to go home with them all for the price of dinner and a bouquet of flowers. Three cheers for the day of awkward pauses and marked-up table wine.
Friday, February 14, 2003 05:33 p.m.
Series 7 or Cell block 6
It turns out that stockbrokers and sociopaths have many similar characteristics -- except that the latter abides by the law (usually.)
Selfish.
Callous.
Remorseless user of others.
Pathological Liar.
A con artist.
Lacking in remorse.
Shallow.
Fails to accept responsibility for actions.
High Sense of self-worth.
Chronically unstable.
Anti-social.
Deviant lifestyle.
Needs constant stimulation.
Parasitic lifestyle.
Had childhood problems.
Was a juvenile delinquent.
Irresponsible.
Risk Taker.
Unrealistic goals.
Promiscuous.
Friday, February 14, 2003 02:57 p.m.
Pruning in the Rose Garden
I hate to link to a "quiz," but this answer from a LOTR "lovematch":
Elfin face, tortured soul
is the way I like to think of myself
Friday, February 14, 2003 02:25 p.m.
Ehrlich Won't Like This
Rep. Ralph Regula (R- OH) just introduced a bill to retroceed DC to Maryland.
Friday, February 14, 2003 11:21 a.m.
Adventures in Macromedia
Dennison's new comic is going to mess up my tables, but I don't care. Here you go:
"We aren't a threat to anyone"
The Iraqi Deputy PM denies they have the "means" to attack Israel. Should we read this as an absolute intent to attack Israel?
That leads me to my theory that in the not to distant future, bloggers and non-bloggers will hardly ever associate. On the first level, it's unbelibably easy to keep in touch with someone with a URL. Secondly, it is an effortless way to network, and one you can do bored on the job. Even if the base of the community is not "real," we have incentives to meet up. Blogging communities are based on common interests (not to mention a love of writing.) And blogging is self-referential: What blogger doesn't love to blog? What blogger hasn't blogged about said love to blog?
If you're allocating time meeting people with weblogs, that means you're not meeting people without them. Your blogger friends are acting in accordance, and there is the tipping point. Sorry I can't articulate this better, but if you read Seeing Around Corners by Jonathan Rauch for The Atlantic (worth reading anyway,) you'll understand what I mean -- or just take a look at this illustration
And note, this is only the larval stage of weblogs -- Camelot has yet to arrive. Believe it or not, there are plenty of people out there who do not know what a blog is or how it opperates. The internet schism I described above will take place soon enough, just let the "trend" continue spreading ebola-like to the deeper reaches of the internet, before people can soundly decide "to blog or not to blog." I know what category I stand in, and proudly too.
Thursday, February 13, 2003 04:41 p.m.
Can't Get You Out of My Head
"Imagine being tortured by repeated thoughts of stabbing your child or having sex with your minister – thoughts that won’t go away no matter how hard you try to suppress them," asks Science Daily. How sad. That's a symptom that affects people with "OCD with primary obsessions." Of course they aren't going to act on it, that's what makes their thoughts especially torterous.
The post is a reminder of how private and personal our inner thoughts are. My thoughts (sex, career, sex, friends, sex, "is there a god", sex...) are on random-spin and multi-tasked. Guess I should be thankful that right now I'm imagining myself in a compromising position with my neighbor rather than, say, a llama. Good too, that I can balance it with a little economic theory I'm working out. But I do wish there were some internal switch so that I could immediatly concentrate on one important subject, or that my mind naturally gravitated toward the substantial. Mhmm, I'll keep dreaming.
Thursday, February 13, 2003 12:26 p.m.
Renaissance Building
The LA Times today has something funny on humanities at Caltech. Undergraduates must satisfy a four-year core curriculum of history and literature, philosophy and languages, music theory and art studies. "On some level I guess it really does benefit us. But I don't know how," says an electrical engineering major
"The older students get used to it," said David Armet, 20, a junior sitting at a campus cafe with senior Jay Carlton, 21. Both are mechanical engineering majors. Carlton, who was thumbing through a robotics text, said he felt sorry for the humanities professors his freshman year.
He recalled a poetry class in which the lecturer asked for examples of odes: "The answers we gave were 'electrode', 'cathode', 'anode' and 'diode.' "
Thursday, February 13, 2003 11:41 a.m.
Good News
My former roommate Krista, the economist-superbabe, is moving back to DC (or possibily NY) in the spring as soon as her semester teaching macro to unfortunate Johannesburg undergraduates is over.
Wednesday, February 12, 2003 05:17 p.m.
Velvet Politician
There's much to love about a country that names its revolution after the Velvet Underground, and the leader of that movement will be sadly missed as he exits stage left to retirement in Portugal. This week's New Yorker has a moving tribute to Vaclav Havel.
Awkward and shy, Havel is a curiously natural director. Forty-odd years ago, he started out as a stagehand and a playwright. He was an acolyte of Beckett and Ionesco—the theatre of the absurd. The sense of the absurd extends to his own life. There is surely no modern biography that is more improbable yet dramatically coherent. Havel's is the rare life, Milan Kundera has written, that resembles a work of art and gives "the impression of a perfect compositional unity." Consider: A bourgeois boy becomes a bohemian playwright; he then becomes a dissident, who, for the crime of writing subversive essays and helping to organize a subversive movement called Charter 77, is encouraged by the regime to master the art of welding in a reeking Czech prison; finally, in late November, 1989, everything implodes and he is leading demonstrations in Wenceslas Square, and hundreds of thousands of people are shouting "Havel na hrad!" ("Havel to the Castle!"); within days, he is the head of state, working in the same hilltop redoubt that served as a seat of power for dynasts of the Bohemian kingdom and the Hapsburg monarchy, for the emissaries of Berlin and the satraps of the Kremlin.
But that's the sugar-coating. Freezerbox introduces you to the man who "invite[d] Henry Kissinger to the castle and [justified] the bombing of civilian targets in Belgrade." Still, the writer concludes that Havel is "remarkable" and his story makes one of the "most fascinating and admirable biographies in politics." He finnishes remembering a time he smoked a spliff in the enterence to the castle for a elite party.
"Only in the Czech Republic," I said, proud of my adopted home.
"Wrong," said the girl opposite me. "Only in Havel's Czech Republic."
Blowing a stream of smoke into the cold black night, it hit me how right she was.
My year in Prague is about as distant me now as the plotlines in the Kafka books I used to read. From time to time, I get choked up by memories of the romance and fancy the jet-set expat lifestyle allowed. No matter his political faux paus, Havel was a true intellectual. He was brilliant, fascinating, and a rigorous thinker. Everyone should strive to emulate those three qualities.
He said the technology was more useful for determining female attractiveness as women relied more closely on factors other than looks when making decisions about men.
It analyzes the femininity of one's facial features. "Doki" will also inform the user whether or not she should wear make-up to enhance her features. How stupid. I pity those looking forward to its analysis.
Wednesday, February 12, 2003 04:28 p.m.
Faith-Based Bollocks
In case you hadn't noticed, there is a shortage of Christianity in America. The Shrub's stepping in to correct this dilemma using our tax dollars to build churches. He's ordered the Department of Housing and Urban
Development to make federal grant money available to religious groups to build or renovate houses of worship, under the auspices of faith-based social services. I like where this op-ed columnist is going:
Will Scientologists, Hare Krishnas and Wiccans be equally eligible along with mainline churches? Or will the government find a way to avoid helping disfavored groups with construction costs?
Wednesday, February 12, 2003 03:55 p.m.
More Talk, Less Rock
At the last several party-type environments I did the exact same thing: showed up drunk, got progressively drunker, mumbled barely coherent nonsense, and laughed like whatever I said was funny. Whomever had the displeasure of listening to me would laugh along or nod, as if able to understand whatever I pretended to say. This only works because I have an equivocal reputation of being a clever conversationalist (sober,) and no one ever wants to keep asking the other person talking "what? what was that?"
Last night I was a winner at Drag Bingo. Usually they distribute sex toys and pornography, but I got a Valentine's gift basket. It's very gay. Included wrapped in pink and red paper was the soundtrack to Chicago, lavander potpourri, and cookie cutters, but plenty of chocolate too and a bottle of Merlot. Lucky me.
Today in my mailbox I recieved links to this and this. Nice to know y'all are thinking of me.
Wednesday, February 12, 2003 02:23 p.m.
Question of the Day
Symme7ry: do you think the difference in levels of consciousness between you and various other people is similar to the difference between normal people and animals
I Stole This From Alina The thing about picking up girls in bars is that once you're done, what you've got is the kind of girl who can get picked up in a bar. Courtship isn't archaic, it's now reserved for the few who deserve it
Tuesday, February 11, 2003 03:21 p.m.
Stranger Than Fiction
Last spring, City Paper had a much talked about cover story on a strange murder case in Virginia. Four college students obsessed with witchcraft were arrested. The story details not only the crime, but their fascinating incapacity to differentiate their fantasies of elves and dragons, from the reality of their mundane rural VA existance. The murder victim was Clara Schwartz's father. Her friend Kyle killed him with a 27-inch-long steel Shinobi sword. Two other friends were arrested on conspiracy and first-degree murder. Yesterday, 20-year-old Schwartz received her sentence of 48 years.
Tuesday, February 11, 2003 10:12 a.m.
Unsubscribe Please On Tech Dirt is an essay about what happened when a spammer used his email address as "reply-to." He details the bounced mail messages and angry letters people mailed back to him.
There are the confused, but polite people. One woman wrote me a nice message saying that a "horrible" mistake had been made, and that she had not replied to my online dating ad. She did warn me, however, that there are "plenty of strange people out there" and that I should be careful. How nice. Another woman couldn't remember what she had said in her reply to my non-existent online dating profile and wanted to be reminded. A few others just asked who I was.
Then there are the unsubscribers, who are under the unfortunate delusion that asking spammers to take them off their list will help. They send simple messages saying simply "unsubscribe" or "unsubscribe, please", as if that will ever get to the actual spammer, or that they would actually pay any attention to it.
Lastly, are the angry, but clueless. I feel their pain, but they need to find a better outlet. I received emails telling me things I never knew (and find unlikely) about my lineage and suggesting I go places I have no interest in going, using all sorts of language you wouldn't use in polite company. I also received a threatening letter saying that I would be hearing from some company's corporate lawyer.
"Lay Back, It's All Been Done Before..."
Mattew Borlik for City Paper prowled the cool bars like Pharmacy and Red to see if DCensters are as uptight as everyone says,
Sure, I saw a lot of intimidatingly beautiful and fashionable people. And yes, I came across a few badass bartenders, Vespa riders, and intellectuals with a profound knowledge of music, art, and film. But, all too often, I found that these very same people were also enthusiastic sports fans, public college graduates, and/or extremely friendly—all of which automatically counts them out, according to the rules. And nowhere did I find anyone that said “deck” instead of “cool,” “bronson” instead of “beer,” or “bust a moby” instead of “dance.” (Thank God—who actually talks like that?).
Bust a fucking moby. And you all wonder why I wanted to move to Alaska so badly. Click here for more examples of the egregious pomposity of Williamsburg lingo.
Monday, February 10, 2003 10:37 p.m.
Light at the End of the Tunnel
The March edition of Scientific American is up online and it's a good one. There's something on the City of Science and Industry in Paris, Raelians, Creative Commons, and The Skeptic explains how trama may trigger brain abnormalities causing "out of body" experiences.
Monday, February 10, 2003 09:57 p.m.
Reason to Never Date Me #345
It's kind of annoying when the "polyamorous" refute monogamy pointing to examples of non-monogamous behavior in the animal kingdom. Guess what, human beings are conscious beings and thus have entirely different motivations. One of the good things about consciousness is the ability to form emotional bonds and friendships. It's just not always easy to do if you're in the upper echelons of intellect.
A better method would be to identify the potential of holding out for an ideal partner as risky. In the meantime, if ever, we satisfy ourselves with less than ideal partners. In addition, we can take multiple lesser partners to meet the benefit of one ideal.
Let's set it us as this:
X = Ideal Partner
X > Y > Z
X = Y + Y + Y + Y...
X > Z + Z + Z + Z ...
I fail to differentiate here that the greater the number of partners, the less attractive is each. You can have several Christina Aguilera-types, but Carrie Ann Moss alone will suffice (or vice versa if you've got bad taste.) Several Y-partners may be as fufilling as an X-partner, but no number of Z-partners excedes X.
Monday, February 10, 2003 04:50 p.m.
Til Nano-Neuro Do Us Part
James Hughes, who wrote "Monogamy as a Prisoner's Dilemma", has a feature on the "Future of Sex" for Better Humans. He predicts drugs and technology will control our "love" sensors, and scientifically explains the 12-month itch:
love is composed of three biochemical process. The first process, driven by testosterone, is lust. The second process, infatuation, is controlled by dopamine, norepinephrine and phenylethylamine -- amphetamine-like chemicals that produce feelings of euphoria. The lust and infatuation chemicals peak after a year, and for the lucky few relationships that survive their decline a new biochemical response emerges based on oxytocin, vasopression and endorphins, which produce feelings of intimacy, trust and affection.
He also explains people are growing much more autonomous as, "some people's lives are so busy and complicated that partial, non-exclusive relationships are all they want." Plus, it's growing socially acceptable.
Another factor certain to challenge the myth of eternal love and increase the incidence of serial monogamy and polyamory is the radical extension of human lifespan. The commitment to love only one person unto death seems a lot less plausible if you have 200 years ahead instead of 50...
Eventually, I foresee co-housing and co-parenting contracts replacing civil marriage, contracts which recognize the bonds between small groups of people who have made commitments of some duration. I'm sure many people will still say vows in front of priests and rabbis for centuries to come, pledging their eternal love. But hopefully the democratic state will stop treating these dyads as the only legitimate lifestyle option
I don't know if all the soma in the world will convince us nonconformity is key to happiness. But better free to make your own mistakes, than tethered by a lifestyle that doesn't fit
