Speaking from the Soul:tone policing, emotion, and logical fallacies

Our emotional selves provide the fuel which feeds are goals in order to construct change,  but we cannot assume that the emotional self we know is a shared experience with shared goals.    I ran into this head first earlier and wish to talk about it.

Logic is the area of philosophy that deal's with the construction of arguments.  And argument is normally constructed of a series of rhetoric and logic in order to present a perspective on a particular issue or problem.  Logic is simply the meat of the argument, the nutrients while rhetoric is the taste so to speak.

(A Very Simple Logical Constructed Argument)
 P->Q (If P then Q; If it rains (P) then the roads will be slick (Q))
P (It rained today)
Q(Your going to have a harder time getting home safely; please drive slower honey)

A good argument can normally be translated into a form of logical construction that if all of it's constituent parts are true then the argument has no other options but to be true.  It is a method of separating the chafe, the rhetoric from the actual content of what your talking about.   Rhetoric is a series of techniques and methods of convincing a person that they should hear what you have to say and that your right.

Within Rhetoric however there are a series of techniques that undermine the logical construction of an argument; these are referred to logical fallacies.  There basically methods to hoodwink and undermine logic

Introduction to Logical Fallacies

Our experiences and our emotional reactions to those experiences form the foundations for why we struggle to fix problems or share our said experiences within the worlds.  But our individual spiritual and emotion experiences can never be another person's reason for why something is inherently true.  I could say that this is because our individual experiences are built upon the context of our entire lives and therefor they will be unique to each individual.

Attempting to force said emotional reactions upon another in lieu of an effective argument is a form of logical fallacy; in this case it is called an appeal to emotion.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-emotion

Our spiritual and emotional experiences are what make us "special little snow flakes" though the foundation of all experience lies in what it means to be "human" (be those experiences be based in whichever religion or non-religion you might practice/believe in).

I write this in response to a concept called Tone Policing which is a form of problem in argumentation in which someone takes offense at a particular point of view of another (which changes the nature of the conversation from the one being a victim to victimizing others).

Tone Policing:Why It's Bullshi*t

The problem is that while our experiences are related; they are also fundamentally different and have each led us to a different place in which we perceive causes, and problems as being different.  As the article says our emotional reactions doesn't make us fundamentally wrong about our perspective; but it also doesn't make us fundamentally right.  We need to realize that the subject of our perspective may be different even though it has led us to the same discourse of problems and issues which will naturally lead to different emotional topics and outcomes.

This leads to be to believe that even though there they may be a singular problem that multiple people have realized; it may have more than one cause and/or effect.  In the same way our emotional relationships to these problems may be different from each other (and therefore each has an equal stake in the solving of said problem).  But this seems to lead to a disagreement of solutions and thoughts; which returns back to the realm of an "Appeal to Emotion".    I feel that when we get to this point we are no longer arguing about the "original topic", but rather our paradigm, our focus that brought us to bear on that original topic.

For example it may be the fact that our politicians are paid for lock, stock, and barrel by corporations which we can longer stand or that the interests of the government reflect the constituents who pay for it.  In both instances the government needs to be changed and fixed; but the emotional root causes stem from issues of corporate greed versus  socially instituted racism which creates different emotional paradigms that may cause friction between two people who would other wise agree that the government needs to be severely amended and both might even point by big business.  In doing so these different paradigm's create unnecessary friction between our emotional selves that impact our ability to cause this change.

Permatemps: Compromising your Health and Safety

So it's done;  I have a job now.  A full time job with some things that resembles benefits. *sigh*.  I have been holding my mouth closed for a long time out of fear and worry.   But I can open my mouth now and talk about something that is a problem.  It isn't a problem for me,  it isn't a problem for you, rather instead it is a problem for everyone.  For reasons of legalese I can't actually say the name of the company in questions so I will call them Stereotypical Medical Device company or SMD for short.
I came with SMD fresh out of college with needs for cash and money to continue paying back loans, debts, and associated expenses.  They hired me on as a temp.    What I discovered is that I was actually hired on as a permatemp; for those unfamiliar with the term a permatemp is an individual who is brought into a company as a temporary employee and then kept on for repeated cycles without any real hope or prayer of actually getting hired on.
This is a term that was first coined in Silicon Value for people who were being hired on like this in the technology sector but this practice has spread far and wide throughout.  And this is the situation that I was hired onto at SMD;  no real chance of an actual job with actual benefits for at least four years (permatemp cycles can only last two years due to legal reasons).
My job as SMD was as an medical device analyst, I would take the device and analyze why it failed so that our company and the FDA could keep track of on-going problems and report them for the safety of our patients/customers.  In other words my job was to make sure that the device that was being stuck in your body did it's job and didn't endanger your life.  I was signing off on FDA regulated forms and paperwork.
Now that you know what I did,  I want to tell you why I didn't really do it.  As an employee you are protected in a way from your employer; they can't falsely report you and they have to take measured steps if you need to be terminated from the company.  In other words you are protected.  A permatemp has none of these protections, you are literally at the mercy and whim of your employee.
If you annoy and aggravate your employer you lose your job.  In other words if I raised any questions or problems with our product, I lose my job.  If I took to many days off in order to look to permanent work or go to the doctor, I lose my job.  If I did anything that they felt wasn't appropriate, I lose my job.
Not only this,  but this method of indoctrination assured that when and if people were hired full time that this feeling would continue.  Watching a room full of full-time employees watching the help wanted adds because they full they didn't have any power in the matter is a sad depressing scene.

This meant that if I was told to do certain things I would feel that I have a choice because it's my financial well being.  In the course of working for SMD, I was told to "fudge" results, given formal written instruction to lie by omission to federal auditors whenever possible, and told that anything within the device history was to be ignored unless it formally dealt with the problems associated with the complaint itself.  I also had to sit there and observed flaws that were known about the pump cause actual medical harm and hospitalization to patients.
If I am forced by my superiors to lie about the nature of a medical device,  then my job is pointless and honestly fraudulent.

The truth is this, in ethics related positions within industry it is immoral and wrong to have someone making ethical choices about a product, device, or person when their job security is held by another. Pematemps suffice to say can't make actual ethical choices because they are compromised.  In my position at SMD I was forced to sit there as I was told to lie by omission and sit there watching as flaws designed into the product caused actual medical harm to our customers and patients.
This is a flaw in our society that causes lawsuits, damages, paint, and harm to innocents.  It is a choice made by companies in order to ease the bottom line as well as protect themselves.  This is something that we need to stop.

Being a heternormative, white, cis, male in a discussion about priviledge and issues pertaining to racism, sexism, etc.

I want to talk about my experiences with various forms of racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice that surround our society.  I feel that they shine light on an issue that I feel has been ignored about these topics. The events in question that I want to talk about are actual things that have happened and occurred within the last few years of my life. Before I make the point I need to describe some of these events but I need to describe them as if they had happened from a different perspective then the one that I currently share. Please understand before you read these things that my goal here is not a presentation of “woah is me”, but rather instead I wish to bring to light an unpleasant truth that I have encountered that serves to “stall” the process of growth in regards to various forms of bigotry and social problems. I have simply been told countless that as a while heteronormative cis gendered male that I can't possibly understand or appreciate certain things; so let me represent things.

For the purposes of highlighting the events in my life, I wish to present this not in my chosen sex , orientation, or gender. (because these are often used as counter arguments) but rather I wish to replace the gender terms and one or two other terms when possible.

#1 I fell asleep one night only to wake up to a man I trusted going down on me, I was shocked and didn't know what to say or do. He took my silence and the fact that I was wet as a “yes” and then proceeded to have sex with me.

When I went to my guy friends to ask them for advice, they said that I had put myself into a situation where it was understandable where a man would think that was acceptable.

#2 I went to a festival and then proceeded to have a good time joking around with a man about the fact that he was wearing nothing more than a loin cloth and horns. He took this as interest and then proceeded to hit on me, when I told him that I was a girl who was interested in only other girls he took it upon himself to prove me wrong and spent an hour describing why it was a fact that I should at least try having sex with a man once just to prove him wrong even though I already told him that I had tried and it really wasn't my thing.

#3 I was working one night on a public when a man asked me if he could take a crack at it. I let him try his hands at it and he proceeded to look at me and said that I was really really good, but I could never be quite as impressive at it as man. The real pisser was that I was actually technically better.

Each of these events happened to me in the way that I have described, I was sexually assaulted by a woman, I spent the better part of two hours explaining to a gay guy that I really didn't want what he was offering. And I have had female fire performers flaunt the fact that they were better than I was because they have T&A.

I have tried to argue for the fact that privilege exists within a given context or situation and been scolded for lack of a better word. But, I can talk about the fact that instances such as the ones that happen above are individual instances. What makes them wrong has nothing to do with “societal” issues. Society influences the individual but at the end of the day each individual is in my view responsible for their own individual choices. What society does is validate our individual choices.

Being raped as a woman is not wrong because I am a woman, it is wrong because it violates my body and my right to self-determination.  Being harassed is not wrong because I am a woman, it is wrong because I am objectified in a way that I do not want or like in my life.  So if I take away gender from this,  it is still wrong.  Issues of gender and such then come into play at a larger societal level in terms of how that behavior is validated.

When we go to our group of friends and say what happened during the course of a day, our friends give us support or don't give us support. They tell us that were doing is right or wrong, or that we should go with our gut and that they support us. This is a process of social validation of behavior. When that behavior is validated it says “Go ahead and do it again; there was nothing wrong with it”. Or on the other hand the behavior is said “No, you shouldn't do this” and we feel socially obligated to reject or avoid that behavior(at least publicly).

I have a question for the reader, did the difference of gender, orientation, etc make a difference in how you reacted to those above statements. Because nothing changed that had any real importance. If I die, I die as a human, if I pay my bills I pay them as an American. If it did, the question I ask is why did it make a difference? How does me being sexually assaulted, harassed, or dealing with a pay difference between genders make up for someone else of a different socially constructed identity who is going through the same thing?

When I talk about the pendulum of human nature ,what I speak of is that it feels like we as a society seem to have a non-homeopathic perspective when it comes to at fixing social injustices or problems. Instead of fixing the root of the problem, the cause, we attempt to simply bandage it or, even worse, apply a counteractive agent to the issue. We are not balancing the scale of justice we are causing it to swing back and forth like a wrecking ball destroying lives in the process.

The events that occur are individual in nature. We as individuals, and as a society, need to perceive and interact with them as such. Because a man or women should never be laughed for being sexually assaulted, because a straight or gay person should never have to spend two hours of their life dealing with someone who doesn't get the concept of “not interested”, and no one should ever have pay differences “shoved” in their faces as if the other person was simply spiking a football.

I wrote this because this conversation needs to happen.  I am a person who deals with issues of gender, sexuality, race, and orientation and because I am white, male, cis, and heternormative it does not invalidate those issues or make them any less different or impactful on my life.

The Tools of Interpretation

It seems so simple to say that when you have a hammer, everything looks like it needs to be nailed in.  But I have found that this simple sentence professes a far deeper message than just a warning that “thinking outside the box is necessary”.  Our tools, our hammers, our screwdrivers go far deeper than just that.  Our lives and our studies provide a context that can very subtly change the nature of the thing that we observe.

It is my opinion that we walk around with what I call “tools of interpretation” that influence our understanding and interpretation of events.  At the core of it, it seems simple that our experiences and our understanding is what allows us to understand the world around us.  That when i see water boiling because of knowledge of science i interpret it as deeper; as the process of H20 over coming it’s bonds and becoming a vaper rather than remaining in a lquid form.  

But what happens when we insert being and human nature instead as the object of focus.  The danger of the hammer, is that everything looks like it is something to be nailed.  The studies of human life in their definitions create problems that limit them in the same way that a hammer limits the application of force to specific ventures.  

Foucoult, analyzed human nature through the spectrum of history.  His tool if intrepreation of human nature was that of history itself.  But the understanding of history is separate and different than the understanding of human nature or being as I might call it.  History as I understand the study analyzes future actions through past actions.  Thus all past actions lead to yet a greater and greater point that has either been already realized or will at some point be realized.  

Both Foucoult and ,aesthetic philosopher, Arthur Danto both applied this sort of notion to their independent perspectives.  But the study of history in and of itself is not the study of being independent of human nature.  It is just a perspective.  I believe that when we study with a certain perspective we are putting on “rose-colored’ lenses.  They help us understanding the world, but because they are just perspectives they do not in themselves have a complete perspective.  If a single human had such a perspective then we would call that human being god.  

In other words the perspective of our nature through the perspective of history provides a different analysis then the same view through the perspective of say nuerological psychology/psychiatry.  Both of these perspectives have their values and both of these perspectives (though some proponents would argue otherwise) have aspects that they “miss out on” so to speak.  

The more depth we add to a single perspective, we increase it’s capacity to analyze however our focus becomes super-limited as well.  A microscope is wonderful at seeing a specific sample, but terrible at seeing the whole picture.  In this I offer a danger,  when your entire world becomes wrapped around the cause and effect of one specific lens, you know longer have the capacity to see the importance of other perspectives and your own lens contains all the necessary components to your own personal view of being.  But because your own perspective is not the complete perspective then at some point your actions and your methods will not be line with how the world actually is.

In Danto proclaiming a historical end to art; to the extent that anything could be art we place the importance of art in a historical context we removed the immediacy of art.

In the discussion of male privilege we forget that privilege is a function of a society.  The fact that I am a cis-gendered male means that there are some things that I cannot understand or even discuss is in itself a function of privlidge.

In the discussion of magic forgetting that other belief systems and notions of divine are viable is one difference between religion and spirit.

In the discussion of psychology, forgetting the being that we speak of is a means to it’s own ends.

I could go on....but I have many tinted lenses that I enjoy peering through reality with.

The Tools of Interpretation are necessary and useful,  but they are tools.  They are NOT our being.

~Food For Thought

The Meta-Job

In the last few years I have heard a number of stories of police brutality, corporate mismanagement, a number of societal problems.  There is a part of me that wonders “why”, how is it that groups of humans can be so unkind and greedy to each other on a whole when individually we are normally decent in face to face encounters.  Why do these huge monolithic corporations and societal constructs (police, government) create such problems for us on such a large scale? 

A single thought hit my head today; that people care more about their “meta-job” then they care about their actual job.  I need to define of course what this “meta-job” actually is and how it is different than your actual job.  I am using “meta” here in the same way that one does when one speaks of the “meta-game” of a physical or intellectual sport.  There are in the individual rules that comprise a game of chess or football, but there is also the interaction between the players, coaches, fans, etc.  People often talk about the tactic of “getting into someone’s head”.  This is the meta game, it operates on a different level then the game itself and can also effect the game’s outcome.

The game’s existence is dependent upon the meta-game and thus by understanding the meta-game you can affect the game.  Think about it this way, by affecting the player’s mindset you can affect the outcome of the game. 

When you put a resume in for a job, you will often have read something about the nature of the job.  This includes necessary qualifications as well as your responsibilities.  Your responsibilities are essentially the service that your offering the company in exchange for money; in other words.  That bit of information is your job.  Your job depends on the relation between yourself and your boss/subordinates and those who give you what your need for your job.

In the same way that we have the meta game for a game, we also have the “meta-job” for the job itself.   We have all had the experience of doing a favor for someone at work either in exchange for a favor, good will, or the expectation of a favor in the future.  These things are normally done with the expectation of our job being easier.

But what happens when the “meta-job” is more important than the job that you are doing.  Every time the police let some rich guy off on a speeding ticket because they are worrying about losing their job; this is the meta job effecting their real job.  Every time a pharmaceutical employee ignores a drug’s side effects because they want their boss to be happy with the drug getting released on time; this is the meta job effecting their real job.

A real job often has morality as a necessity; whether it is the police, or the medical industry, or other similar industries.  But what happens when you let the meta-job effect your real job.  What happens when you are “required” to write a certain amount of citations?  What happens when you game the meta-game in order to try to get a promotion in a company?  What happens you turn into a supervisor who uses his people and resources in order to make his friend’s life easier because he wants a lateral transfer for the fast track promotion track.  Or oooo another example,  a commanding officer who uses the fact that all the officers on a base are friends so when one of his sailors files an appeal on a “captain’s master (non-judicial punishment) it gets swept under the rug so nothing happens.   Here is a scarier question, what happens when the entire chain of supervisors in a company is trying to do the same thing (ooo ooo I know….ENRON !!!! :D :D))).  At some point someone needs to say the buck stops here.

Sadly of course there are plenty of examples in which someone has blown the whistle or put their foot down and said “my ethical/business responsibilities” are more important than your “promotion” or your “bottom line”. 

http://www.cracked.com/article_21043_5-terrible-things-i-learned-as-corporate-whistleblower.html

Food For Thought

Da’ath: The Double Edge Sword of Knowledge

In traditional Qabala there are ten sephira and not nine; there are ten sephira and not eleven (Sepher Yetzirah).  There is a sephira that is not a sephira but rather the lack of one.  This “hole” is referred to as Da’ath which means “Knowledge”.    My thought of this is not in terms of spiritual “understanding” but rather of the concept of knowledge as it exists in our world.

The nature of the universe as I understand it for practical purposes is infinite.  This means that knowledge of the universe is also infinite.   Knowledge as I believe it is both a trap and necessary evil of spiritual development.  We understand the world only in the way that we have experienced it.    Modern philosophy and movies are both wonderful examples of this; if we only have spent time studying history then the only way that we can see the present is through the notion of historical development (Foucault); if we have spent our time as a con artist then the only way we can see the world is through the perspective of the con (Revolver). Our functional knowledge is necessary for translating our present experiences. 

We have then a doubled edged sword; the holding of knowledge can be a goal in and of itself.  But being, existence itself, exists outside of knowledge.  Knowledge has no meaning; but rather is a trail of cause and effect.  It is necessary to interpret what is called in Buddhism as “Dependent Origination”.  Knowledge is the arrow of faith that is fired across the abyss in order to understand the mysteries of highest supernal.  Have enough knowledge and you might be able to make it (somewhat) or one can become lost in the search for knowledge for the higher truths thinking that 

Some Food For Thought

Objectification and Privlege

I want to have a conversation about two rather important topics; the notions of objectification and privilege .  After some thinking I am starting to realize that objectification is the ugly little beast that allows privilege within a given subject matter to flourish.  I can't write from the perspective of society but rather I will write about the perspective I have as a "straight" (har har to those who know me) man within a subculture where I  have found myself in a minority.
For a little bit of a perspective,  an ex of mine who met me for the first time thought I was a "shy" ( she used a different word ;) )and possibly gay male.  This tends to be how I present myself when I am not working as an entertainer; introverted and socially anxious effeminate male.  I have no issue with this outside of the weird positions that it has sometimes put me into.

For those of us who are just joining the conversation, objectification (at least for the purposes of what i am writing) is the assumption of certain traits and characteristics of other people without any sort of consideration for their internal state and thoughts.  For example a woman who dresses in an attractive manner is thought to have automatically dressed in that manner for the benefit of the men in her life.  Objectification in other words is when we forget that others around us have minds of their own and with that everything that follows from having a mind.

Privilege , is for me, slightly harder to define.  Privilege is an expression of a culture that supports and benefits one side of a particular culture over another.  Thus,  privilege can be found in subcultures (where the example of privilege and how it flows might be different than the primary culture).  A wonderful example of the discussion of privilege in a manner that a lot of people can relate to can be found here (http://alittlemoresauce.wordpress.com/2014/08/20/what-my-bike-has-taught-me-about-white-privilege/).  It is rather hard to talk about privilege from the topic of "white" privilege due to the fact that so many articles, theories, and emotions are currently on the line for that one.  So instead, I will talk about my own experiences.

I believe that objectification and privilege go hand in hand and that one supports the other.  In many ways one of the aspects of privilege is the ability to effectively get away with something because it is not considered a "crime" or "wrong".  In the article I linked above the notion of privilege is not having to worry about things such as the law.  To quote that article

"And it’s not just the fact that the whole transportation infrastructure is built around the car. It’s the law, which is poorly enforced when cyclists are hit by cars, the fact that gas is subsidized by the government and bike tires aren't,"
Objectification is the justification for an action that will not be challenged because the culture of privilege that a person inhabits.

A few years ago,  I found myself at a pagan festival for a number of days and saw a man running around in nothing but a loincloth and a pair of horns.  Not being able to suppress my sense of humor I look at him and said "well aren't you a horny devil" and had to spend the next three hours explaining myself to him.  At no point did me saying that I was not interested and please stop ever actually get this discussion to stop.
Because of the fact that I normally present as rather effeminate (or at least at the time I did) I found that my sexuality was assumed to be a specific way and that I didn't know better (Which I can say after a number of years that I fairly sure what I am and what I will and will not do) I found myself in the position in which the person continued to operate and no one around him did anything about it, because it was "ok".
Most of the other examples that I know (or have been told ) of are not what i would call pleasant or good conversations and include examples as extreme as sexual assault in which the person was not challenged because of the privilege of their particular position.

Objectification is the notion that because I am young (or appear to be young) I cannot possibly have knowledge or experiences that make it noteworthy to listen to me.  My level of knowledge is objectified due to my age.  The "privilege" of the culture justifies this position and serves to reinforce the notions again.  Thankfully I am lucky to  have found a ohana that supports me and that I can speak to honestly and without holding back.
Objectification is the notion that because i am male I cannot possibly be taken sexually assaulted by a female.  The "privilege" of the culture justifies and supports this position leaving the male to feel "disempowered" and incapable of action. (http://www.vocativ.com/underworld/crime/hard-truth-girl-guy-rape/#!bNV6NY).

~Food For Thought~