Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Miscellaney Page 3 of 13

Weberian Meaningful Action & Why It Matters

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On August 22, 2022

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Weber was concerned with ideal types. An ideal type is an extreme: a person who is entirely rational, a society that is entirely traditional. Ideal types don’t exist in the world, but they are useful for analysis. A society may be primarily traditional, and one can look at where it is traditional and where it isn’t. (For example, a lot of Dark Ages society was traditional, but there was also a lot of value rational action.

The four types are goal rational, value rational, affection/emotional, and traditional.

Goal rational is “I want to accomplish X, so I do Y. You want to lose weight, so you diet. But this is a good example of how goal rational can be mixed up: how you achieve the goal is dieting, but whey you want to be thin could be because you think fat people are bad, or you want to look better, or because people in your organization are usually thin (ascetics, for example.)

Value rational is similar to virtue ethics. You tell the truth, even if it’s bad for your other goals, perhaps. You give money, because charity is a value you follow. You stand and fight because you believe in bravery or discipline, even though the fight is helpless. Classical Greek ethics is heavily value rational, and so was a lot of Victorian ethics and society. When someone says we should give everyone health care or no one should be in poverty, because everyone human deserves dignity, that’s value rationality. When you say that everyone deserves health care because it costs society less and because it makes the spread of plagues and disease less likely, that’s goal rational.

Affective/emotional is when you act based on your emotions. You’re sad and you cry, you’re angry and you hit someone or scream at them. You might hit someone even though you believe in non-violence, and you might cry even though you believe “real men don’t cry.” You might hit someone even though that will get you in prison, and that would interfere with your various goals in life. Your emotions are in charge.

Traditional is when you do it that way because that’s how your group or society does it. Dark Ages and Medieval society was very traditional: your forbears had certain rights, it’s traditional, and thus you get them too. Correct action is the action which has always been taken. Religions are often torn between value rationality and traditions, but so are nations. Whenever someone says, “this is how we’ve always done it” you’re dealing with traditional action. Traditional action has a bad reputation post-enlightenment, but it’s not all bad: unwritten constitutions are traditional constitutions, “we do it this way because we’ve always done it this way.”

Traditional isn’t necessarily irrational: if something has been done for a long time, it may be because it has worked, and making changes could have unforseen effects. If you keep doing what you’ve always done, things will keep going as they have. Of course, it doesn’t always work: burning fossil fuels because we’ve been doing so for 250 years is a good way to create radical change: not what someone who genuinely values tradition usually wants.

All types of action have value. Goal oriented is often the best way to actuate the other three, but it’s amoral. The Nazi bureaucrats making the trains and furnaces run on time mostly did so not out of any real belief in the holocaust, but because their primary value was to do what they were told to do in the most efficient and effective way. Confucius emphasized that if you do a traditional ritual without feeling the appropriate emotion (sorrow at the death of your parents, for example) you have failed the ritual, since the purpose of rituals is to create emotions in specific circumstances: and those circumstances and emotions are based on values, such as reverence for your parents.

So when you try to analyze actions using Weber’s classifications, what you’re looking for is how the types of action fit together. If traditional actions aren’t maintaining the society or group, traditional action is undercutting itself, for example. Is a goal based action leading to a goal supported by one of the other three types of action? Are your value based actions undercutting the larger goals, and if they are do the values or the goals need to change?

But also, if you know why someone is doing something, you can talk to them effectively. Saying the only way to save our society is to burn less fossil fuels works with a traditional actor. Saying that burning fossil fuels hurts more people than it helps may work with someone value oriented who thinks compassion, kindness and charity are important. And to activate people who are primarily emotional, pictures and stories of animals and humans being hurt might work best.

Without an understanding of the type of action, the type of rationality, you can’t understand others’ actions or influence them effectively, especially if they are acting from a type of rationality you don’t respect and you can’t predict their actions.

People are different; societies and groups are different, and understanding the the ways in which they are different opens up the world for you.

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Spring Of A Down, Chapters XVI-XVIII

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On August 18, 2022

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Королевство кривых зеркал[xcvii]

Hush. He will tell the story forwards, but it makes more sense in reverse.[xcviii]

He was at his house, leaving. He closed a red door and he thought “I must have it painted black.”[xcix]

His car was broken. It was a Mercedes Benz. It had been broken since 1969.[c]

So, he walked up the road. It was a long row to hoe and he would be walking for two solid days to get to where he was going.

And on that second day, the waters parted from the waters.[ci] The mirror crack’d from side to side as the man turned to the dirt path from the paved.[cii] There were trees crowded around the road and twigs dropped into the puddles from above. Again, he looked above at the clouded sky. There was no rain falling. Yet. But it was pregnant and foreboding. The late winter weather seemed waiting to drench him again. At least it was not snow.

He trudged along the basin. To his right, there were glimpses of a large reservoir. The reservoir was where the Dnipro and the Pripyat merged and converted. It was a Kingdom of crooked mirrors – which bank was which?[ciii] He realized he was more tired than he thought.

There was the quiver of spring, but not yet, not yet. Then ahead a yellow pickup truck was parked in the distance. Joy leapt from his heart. He ran very slowly because the trail was made of mud, and he had a long way to go. His eyes were fixed on the yellow back of the truck hoping that he could rest. Even if rest was in the back. Even if rest meant sitting in the rain. Anything was better than this. Anything.

So along he ran with drench green boots and tatter fur on the inside with brown coat draping and gray hat dropping. Then he saw, he saw… He saw nothing. The was no driver behind the wheel. It seemed as if the truck was abandoned. A crushing feeling made him feel more alone. He went walking; a sad walk at that.

Along the truck’s edge until he reached the driver’s side. There, there was a body. He could see red that exited towards the back. He did not see the face. It was a civilian – all the good that got him. Then he spied the keys still in the ignition. Never one to look at the teeth he opened the door and pulled the corpse out.[civ] For a moment he saw the wrinkled face. It had a white and black freckled beard. The man looked away, quickly. Very quickly. One should not look at a dead man. It would be irreligious and sacrilegious.

But in the driver’s seat, everything felt different. He felt a little bit in charge. He sat upright. His boots still felt wet and outside the precipitation went to ice, but these things did not matter. He checked the petrol and found it half full. He ignored the murmuring in his head that it was just too fortunate to find a truck with any amount of fuel in it. Coincidence.

The wheels slogged through the grime. It had been raining much of the time and the road showed the wear and tear of the late winter rain with a vengeance. He focused now on driving because his eyesight was not as it used to be. But he ignored glasses. Too fragile, too delicate, to easily lost, to easily forgotten.

He was a man, God damn it.[cv] Oleg was his God-given name.

Then up ahead there were men on the road. Infantry men. Green clad infantry men. Russian green clad infantry men.

There were only two choices, and he did not have time to choose either. The truck stopped.

The window was rolled down by inches which a manual window handle moved. Teeth.

The first man on the outside placed his hands over the door, and began to speak:

“What are you doing driving around here?” The face was young, the words were plastic. The young face stared blankly into his eyes with a brown surreptitious look.

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Spring of Down, Chapters IV-VI, By Stirling Newberry

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On June 1, 2022

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На крилах пісень[i]

The soldier came knocking upon the Queen’s door.[ii] With the twiddly branches of old white oak trees planted a long time ago on wide boulevards hanging delicately over streets whose names had been forgotten. The streets were brightened by crossings lattice lines of electrical round lights with the patina of old bulbs – the new kind which made less heat were still being debated in the council chamber. Now one spoke over these wires. In the distance large rectangular office buildings humped in the skyline. It was the largest creation of humanity in the land now called Ukraine.

The soldier came knocking with ill intent. In the soldier’s mind, he was a conquering hero who would be venerated by his citizens. But the citizens did not see him that way and so the soldier came crashing down on the Queen. A Queen that had been known for her wit. Many thought that she would bend and break when threatened by so much as a glower. Threads across the boulevards were no match, so it seemed, for the brutality and bluster of the soldier.The sun rose, and the day woke up clear. It was the kind of spring where the buds start their inexorable march towards unfolding. A man looked up from the sidewalk and merely stared at the loveliness that surrounded him. Spring does not care for the goings-on of soldiers.

A ray is where a spark pours but Aleksander was not in tune with the season, instead he brooded on the days yet to come when the Russians would strike with all their might against Kyiv. He knew he would be at the front because of his long days of training over the last several years. In that time, he had grown used to an overbearing demeanor and crisp sharp commands. He had also been given trust over those he commanded because there was nothing that he asked of any man that he would not do himself.

He looked down at the sneakers and stretched out his toes. It was a morning off before he went back to the area that had become the base. But Aleksander found nothing but time to brood on the coming night’s events. Though he would not pass the words over his lips, he was afraid, deeply deathly afraid. So, would be any man who knew rivals were trying to find their foes and that rockets were landing a higgedly piggly to turn over the earth and scatter its contents hither and yon.

He looked up and down the boulevard with no cars, people, trucks, or dogs. Only the cats were scattered over the asphalt, and most of them were retiring. It felt serene. And it was serene most of the time, but rockets’ red glare had intruded a few times in the night. They ripped down concrete walls and huge windowpanes. He saw one just down the street.

Then up ahead, he saw a young man with black hair. He would see that man in uniform very soon because the young man was part of his company.

Of course, being an officer, he spoke. “Greetings.”

Leo looked up; it was clear that he had been distracted by his thoughts. “Kapitan.” A clear smile lit up the young man’s face. “I would not have taken you as a man who would spend any time wandering the street. Are you going to be ready for tonight?” And then hastily: “Sir.”

Aleksander smiled. Leo had only been promoted to Serzhant recently. It was still a junior non-commissioned officer rank.

“Serzhant, I will tell you a small secret: we must be ready to do our duty but realize that we are never truly prepared for any eventuality.” The words came out of his mouth, and they formed a regular type of dialogue that he had mastered in his time in the Army.
Leo nodded.

Sometime later Aleksander was controlling a tank, and Leo had the helm. It was dark, and dark clouds still overhead. They were in the woods with trees crowded around them. It was auiet, and the wind did not blow on Aleksander. It was is reaching for other lives: a pot on the fir git ground; a ripped up pooh now distend out of pooh corner; lingerie divinized with no one left to wear it.[iii] Shredded bags and torn blankets skiterred. Only the hut is white.

There was an urgency. Into the night munitions fired and detonated. Aleksander looked up, down, and all around.

In a flash, he saw a weapon. In the bushes. Aiming; aiming for him. There was a moment of panic. But only one, because without realizing it his pistol was locked and loaded. Both men fired. His enemy missed.

Aleksander did not.

The soldier was killed.[iv]

Off in the distance, a helicopter bloomed white and exploded. Crash, beep, beep.[v]

Without realizing it, he went through the motion of halting the tank. Then he slung over the side with Leo watching his commander’s coolness under fire.

Aleksander went on all fours and examined the kill. It was a Yefréytor – a private first class. He too was young. As were the young men he protected. Waste of life otherwise. But his charges would come home, to their mothers and sisters.

“Sometimes nothing happens like on the wing of songs.”[vi]

Then looking down at his work.

“Sometimes I dig the grave.”

[i] On the wings of song.
[ii] An allusion to Vega, “The Queen and the Soldier”.
[iii] An allusion to Milne , “A House at Pooh Corner.”
[iv] An allusion to Vega, “The Queen and the Soldier”.
[v] The Playmates,“Honk, Rattle, Crash, Beep Beep”
[vi] Lesya Ukrainka (Леся Українка) – Book of poetry. Title.

Вечер накануне Ивана Купала[i]

There are moments that un-terrorize visions of horror. Twisted metal burned on a stroad with houses, one touched to another, in this, the East of the West. Bucha was a name that few people heard of; it was a point on a map outside of Kyiv. Even the few who had heard it had heard it almost recently on charts of a faintly military hue. Gogol would be proud of the objective – all Slavs.

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What will it take to stop asking why are there school shootings? By Marcus Gardner

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On May 30, 2022

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By Marcus Gardner (not by Ian)

There was a time in my life when I believed with certainty that I was going to raise my child in a small village of other parents, single people, elders, and children. The toddlers would look up to the older boys and girls, and they to the teenagers, and they to the young singles, and so on and so forth. The kids would mostly watch each other, learning in the daily ebb and flow of successes and failures, play and conflict, that is – from my observation and experience – a far richer learning environment than any human-created institution. And, because these kids would be at home in their community nearly 24/7, they’d see what their parents did – woodwork, gardening, harvesting, fishing, and hunting wild foods, fixing technology, auto repair, counseling one another, and raising their children – these kids would naturally gravitate to what their role is, and not just in the sense of what they wanted to “be” when they grew up, but who they “are.”

Today, my wife and I are raising a toddler as nuclear parents and are trying, with no little effort, to put off sending her to school. We’re looking for the right community, or at the very least, the right kind of free school/forest kindergarten that won’t break our little girl’s spirit. While we, ourselves, try not to break her spirit, which is pretty fucking hard if you’ve ever spent much of your day with a toddler, day after day. My moral compass with regard to children is rock solid, but I can still understand how tempting it must seem – especially when you haven’t had the right training and experience – to result to shaming, to indoctrination, and, ultimately, to institutionalizing your kid, all under the guise of “it’s for their own good.” When it’s really just your own cope.

I saw a quote in Reddit the other day saying something to the effect that children are the largest oppressed class. Their concerns are not taken seriously. They’re given no meaningful way to contribute. And they get shuffled between institutions, kept occupied with busy work. I couldn’t agree more.

What I learned from all my time with kids is that you’ve got to trust them. They can’t really help but tell the truth (even if they’re lying.) Children, especially young children, don’t have the artifice that we adults have. They’re not satisfied to simply rationalize their hurt and pain – they actually want to stop it, quell it. So I listen to them, and extend myself not just beyond my own assumptions and personal convenience, but beyond our culture’s. Because this culture was not designed for the needs of children (nor for the real needs of adults, of course.) And to hear a child – to really hear them – I’ve got to question this whole crazy superstructure that we’re trying to cram our lives into.

So when my two year old daughter is giving us hell, or just being a pain in the butt and I can’t get x, y, or z done, I ask myself: why is this happening? Because, despite the “wisdom” of my baby-boomer parents (“let her cry it out,” “put her in a crib in the other room,” “teach her manners,” “stop nursing already”) I actually trust this little girl more than anyone else. She’s telling me something’s wrong.

Is it because we’re too isolated right now? Does she need more older kids to show her how to do things? People she wants to follow around and copy, instead of her parents correcting her, yet again? Does she need my wife and I to be have more integrated lives, rather than juggling work schedules and “blowing off steam” and/or working on our own projects, (projects we hide from our daughter so she doesn’t mess them up?) Does she need something more real than another day in the house with her books and toys, or another playdate at a playground designed to keep her busy?

And it’s hard. Because of course she needs all of those things, and we fall short in so many ways, even though we do, at least, take her seriously. But our abilities to trust and include her as much as possible is limited, because we’re largely nuclear, isolated individuals. Our lack of a real social support net leaves a lot out.

When I think of sending my daughter to school, either so my wife and I can have more “adult time” to get work and get stuff done, or so our daughter can get more time around other kids, or simply to get away from needing to deal with her, I’m terrified at how fast the change might happen.

Right now, with the acceptance and love she receives from my wife and I, she’s maybe half full. Maybe a bit less, as she went through chemotherapy and was given a potentially lifelong disability as a result of spinal surgery at 1.5 years old.

But take her away from mom and dad’s acceptance, put her in a room (or even outside,) watched over by another adult as that adult tries to corral another ten kids. I know what it’s like; I was a Montessori pre-school teacher for a while. With so many same aged peers, the power struggles will quickly ensued, and, despite however well-intentioned the teachers are, a pecking order will be established. Even if (and that’s a big if) the teacher doesn’t resort to shame, the children, in their desperate situations, will. And many if not most of them will have become adept at shame even at the tender age of pre-school.

Tell her it’s going to be like this for fifteen years.

How long would it take to empty the bottle of my daughter’s soul in this way? Six months? A year? And how long until it’s filled with the fuming poison of shame, competition, needing to be “good” to be loved – by teacher, by friends, by Instagram?

How long – and I’m not just finger-pointing at school here, but at our whole cultural package – until she’s a Molotov cocktail? Because without an engendering community to grow up in, to get to know herself in, to get to know healthy relationship within, how could she ever become anything else? Long before she throws her graduation hat in the air, she’ll have learned – with the help of her school, her peers, experts, and the media – that to be a good participant in our zero sum society she not only has to win, but she has to learn to manage the pain. Being “good” only means that you’re good at procuring something to sooth the poison inside you. That’s the goal: functional addiction. Inner Pepto Bismol. And all the better if you can multitask and make noise about how you’re the one with the answers to other people’s and/or the world’s problems, while ignoring and medicating your own.

And despite our hand wringing about gun control, mental health, or how we’re giving our kids the “right” values, some of these Molotov cocktails run low on their Pepto Bismol. When they look around, they see everyone clamoring for the limelight, to make a statement, to be known and seen and given a place, and they think: “Better to be an anti-hero than a nobody.” But their poison and emptiness is the same as yours and mine.

Spring of a Down, by Stirling Newberry, Chapters 1-3

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On May 26, 2022

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я знаю місце1

(Read the Prolog)

She looked out over the land coming spring. Rather than domes and spires of Kyiv, here there were roofs to keep the hearth warm. But was forward to the eye was the fuzziness of the trees because the buds were forming across a flat plain. Life bloomed, over and above the plains north of the capital the river flow in.2

She turns to sweep out the broken glass from the boards of the floor. Too much mess but one had to start someplace. “Maria you must keep to your duties, not look outside.”3 Maria was very practical. Unlike her sister.

The sister and her two young daughters were 2 kilometers away, still above the ground facing the heavans. The dead eyes see the days like acid rain.4 A wider look at the world beyond the cross.

Work to reach the corners and cracks. Stay focused. Down, she must turn down. There were so many dead. She remembered how the war began. It was a gloomy winter day when the world turned upside down.5 Then in the hazy snow-soaked sky, she heard bombs come blimping blinding down. She hid underneath her bed, death and life alternated between her children, and the two were mixed with feelings of pity and sorrow. It was a vision of Hell brought to the waking world.6 She looked over her bed to a burned-out candle.

She tried not to think of it again but the harder she fought the more vivid the movie it was.7

“Maria?” A call from the door. “Maria Petrenko? It is me, Pavlo Pavlenko.”8

Yes, she remembers who he was. At other times she would think little of him because he was a skinflint. But that was then this was now. She stood up and brush her light blue dress off of soot and coal. “It will take me a moment.” There was a door, but it was clear not locked, or even closed.

From below she heard: “Everything is moving more slowly.”

Down the curved steps, she went with a new curve to her back. At the last steps she saw the back way and the white-bearded face was brought into view.

“You have come some way to get here.”

“It is true.”

“What brought you here?”

“The hammer banged reveille on the rails, and I had to get up.9 I had to get up a set my life in order on this fine day.”

He stood there wavering.

“That is quite stark – whatever do you mean?”

“I am dying. I was before the war, but I did not know it.”

“What happened?”

“You know the office in the center of town?”

“Which one?”

“A doctor has come a set up a waypoint for people to flee.”

“I know the place.10 But are you fleeing?”

He hesitated. “Could I come in and sit down?” A smile played with the edges of his mouth.

“You will have to sit on the stairs because the is no chair.”

He shuffled to the stairs, remembering a time when they had been carpeted. “I was thinking on it.”

“Why did you stop thinking on it??”

“I was told by the physician that I was dying, and quickly, so.”

There was a rich pause because in the old days she might have wished for this, were she was honest with herself. Which she often was, when alone.

Then the heard a flowering like popcorn, only from the trees.11 Pop – pop – pop. The room tilted by some fraction of 90 degrees as if the rhyme was helter-skelter with a drone of bass climb underneath. The sky was above in blue synergy holography from light to dark, tripping the light fantastic.12

Then they were falling and, flailing, grabbed at each other, winding up in what amounted to a hug.. All went dark for an instant.

She tilted her head, seeing, finding something almost fetching in his visage though not his face.

And then an instant later hey both looked up. The roof was ripped from below as a bomb had exploded mere meters awat. The plane moved on with thrust.13

Quietly she spoke: “That was close.”

“It matters little to me, a reprieve from the death which is soon to come.”

She skipped a beat. “I am sorry”

“Now you are.”

“Forgive me for the transgressions I may have committed.” She looked into his face but no glimpse of what lay beyond was forthcoming.

“It is not important – at least not to me. Instead, I will see the dead.”

“Who is to bury you?”

“That is why I came. I want you to make sure I am lain to rest.”

“Why me?”

“Because I am sure that you will do this as you did with your sister.”

“How do you know what happened to her?”

“That is the secret I wish to confess to you.”

Her heart clenched.

He continued: “I was having an affair with her. Anastasiya was going to me.”

“What about her daughters?”

“She was dropping them with her friend, the Doctor.”

None of this she knew. “So, you wish me to bury you for the sake of my sister?”

“Most people do not care for the testament which binds us.”14 And he continued, “Everything in the world is coming to an end.”

“I will do this even to the apocalypse.”

Свободи15

It was daylight and the birds did nestle among the cold stone fascia of the many buildings that lined the Rynok Square, to the English tourists Merchant’s Square. one of many in the town once called Lviv. He wondered why someone would name a town after Leo when it was so peaceful. His eyes moved the many statues of real, legendary, and mythical figures which dotted the observation tower which overlooked the host of old, even aged, splay of buildings in this now wartime city. It was of course not supposed to be this way and at the same time, it was the way it had been since 2014.16 As it would be, so it seemed, for some time to come.

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A Few Words On Thanksgiving

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On November 25, 2021

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We all know the American myth of Thanksgiving: Pilgrims and natives feasting together, the natives having helped the Pilgrims survive.

We all know what came afterwards; the land theft, the blankets sick with smallpox, the ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Some years ago, I wrote a Thanksgiving post called “The Silver Lining of Thanksgiving Past.” I had done some research on the betrayal of the natives by the Pilgrims and found something interesting: the Pilgrims at that feast had opposed the evil done of the natives, some to such an extent they were excommunicated, a big deal in that time and at that place. It was new immigrants from England who, not remembering the help given by the natives, who had pushed thru the evil done against them. To these newcomers, the natives were pagan savages, but to those who knew them well and had feasted with them, they were friends and allies.

(I am fundraising to determine how much I’ll write this year. If you value my writing and want more of it, please consider donating.)

So much has happened since then; so much evil and degradation. But perhaps when enjoying your Thanksgiving, remember the real spirit of it, that even at cost to themselves, the Pilgrims the natives helped tried to protect them.

Even if they failed, it matters that they tried, and is worth remembering.

Thanksgiving should be about the good things we are grateful for, even small ones In particular this year I’m glad that coffee shops are open again and that I’ve gotten back to reading books every day.

If there’s anything that’s been good for you this year you’d like to share, drop it in the comments.

 

Talking ‘Bout Cancel Culture

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On June 30, 2021

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So, Chris Avellone, for those who don’t know, is (or was) a famous game writer. He wrote much of Planescape:Torment, considered one of the best role-playing games of all time. It often sits at on “best of” lists.

Last Year, Avellone was accused of inappropriate behaviour with a number of women. Game companies he’d been working with dropped him like he was greased shit; he became unemployable.

Now, I don’t know what Avellone did, or didn’t do, but what I do know is that if being cancelled means you’ll never have a good job ever again, you’ve got two choices: You can grovel (which rarely seems to work), or you can fight.

Well, or you can slink away, I guess. If you never need to work again, that’s an okay option, I suppose. Otherwise, your future is minimum wage McJobs.

Avellone has chosen to fight. I’m not sure it’s the smartest way (libel lawsuits are hell), but it’s the way he’s chosen.

Big names like C.K. Louis, the comedian, often bounce back fairly easily.

But the effects on mid- and low-level people are often catastrophic. Every time their name is entered into a search engine for the rest of their lives, what’ll come up is their alleged offense. Anyone who hires them knows that they are opening themselves up to a PR hit, so they don’t.

I’m not super-opposed to cancelling. For a long time, too many mid- and high-level celebrities lived in bubbles. The grapevine for insiders always knew about their issues, but outsiders were kept ignorant, and in the worst cases, young women were fed to them. This is certainly the case for Bill Cosby.

Cosby went to jail, eventually, and without the pile-on, that might never have happened.

But inappropriate behaviour and criminal behaviour are two different things, and the penalty of “will never have a decent job ever again” seems a bit high. Even when it doesn’t hit quite that level, as in the case of Alexis Kennedy, the hit can be harsh; his company went from expanding and illustrious to a small shop that will do one artisan game at a time. His little company had sponsored and helped multiple even smaller companies; all of them, save one, felt they had to give up the sponsorship, thus losing important help and money.

I feel a bit bad about Kennedy, because for about the first week and a half I shrugged and assumed it was true enough.

I looked into after a bit, because I admired Kennedy’s writing. The initial accusation was of being a sexual predator, but nothing that came out over the next couple weeks supported that. He had given his girlfriend a job at his firm (she begged him to), then when they broke up, he stopped praising her work and started criticizing it harshly. By all accounts, he was something of an asshole boss, though, and it’s equally possible that his praise was fake as it is that his criticism was motivated by the breakup.

He met his next girlfriend at work and, apparently, they flirted outrageously at a work event (she’s happy, they’re still together). He also apparently sat too close to some women for their comfort. There were some other offenses, mostly amounting to “an asshole boss who doesn’t follow his own procedures,” but nowhere was there any indication he was a sexual predator. No accusations of rape; not even an accusation of pressuring women for sex. He certainly seems to have weaseled on some things, but a lot of it came down to “he says/someone else says” about accusations that were almost all, at worst, “harsh language” and “two inappropriate relationships with juniors that they admit were consensual, and the unhappy one begged him for the job.”

But he still got cancelled.

I suppose this post would end better if I had a rousing finale about how I hate cancel culture or how it’s overall good, but really it’s just mob behaviour, little different from the social dynamics that used to be far more common in villages and institutions and rare outside of them. Sometimes the target “deserves” it, sometimes they don’t, and rather often, the person is disagreeable in some way. But the punishment is either disproportionate or they are accused of something they didn’t do because what they did do is shitty, but not something people feel they can hurt them for.

So I guess my non-rousing finale is, “Don’t believe it until you’ve done your own research.” Don’t become part of the mob, letting your emotions get away with you or shrug and assume something is probably true. It may be, it may not be, but you don’t actually know.

(Avellone’s Personal Post on the accusations.)

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The Philosophy of Decline and Collapse

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On January 16, 2021

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By Zhang Bo

By Zhang Bo

For those who think ahead, for those who are empathetic, for those who work for justice or kindness, the world can be a horrible place.

We look around and we see the decline of nations. We see people dying, being tortured, being raped who need not die or suffer. We look to the environment and we see that species are being killed so fast we’re in the middle of a great die-off; or we look to the biosphere and the oxygen cycle and we worry that we could see a collapse of both.

We know that much of the suffering in the world is needless; that there is more than enough food to feed everyone, that many wars are wars of choice which hurt many to enrich a very few, and we know that many who brutalize others are receiving no security or even money in return. We look at how prisoners are treated in jail, and we know that the primitive lust for vengeance is creating monsters for we understand the cycle of abuse: Those who are abused, become abusers.

We see the rise of a surveillance state that may eventually cause the Stasi to look like amateurs and which is already more sophisticated than anything Orwell imagined. We see that the masses of the people in the developed world are being impoverished, generation after generation. And worse, we see our own efforts at stopping all of this fail. We worry that our efforts are not even slowing the worst of it.

And for many of us it hits home closer. We, or our loved ones, are among those suffering: losing our lives, homes, livelihoods, or living lives of despair.

For years, I lived in a state of rage. Not even anger, but rage. Rage at those like Bush and Blair who were mass murderers. Rage at those who did not stop them but could have. Rage at those who believed all the lies, whether those lies were about economics, war, or crime.

I see many who come to my blog, a place where scenarios are explored which are both bleak, and often, very likely, giving into despair or rage themselves. The world is big, the powers that are leading it to ruin are overwhelming, and we look out on a future which seems to get worse and worse the further ahead of us it is. Even countries now on the rise, like China, will suffer massively in the decades to come.

It is perfectly natural to be angry. It is even useful to be angry. Anger or rage are adrenaline shots to the system. They push you to do what must be done; to tell the truth; to push ahead, to tackle the big enemies.

But they are toxic in the long run. Like adrenaline, they are useful for shots of energy, but if you are angry all the time at anything, it will hurt your body and eventually your mind. You will burn out, and if you aren’t lucky, you may burn out permanently or you may die.

Despair is also rational. I am aware of studies which show that depression is about 10X more frequent today than it was about a century ago, based on methodology I find reasonable. Life today sucks. We are almost all close to powerless in our daily lives: We work for wages, without those wages we will suffer greatly, and to get those wages we must do what our bosses say, no matter how noxious their demands. It takes two people to earn a living where it once took one, and wealth and income are collapsing in the first and most of the third world ex-China; while the Chinese are under the immense pressure that industrialization produces.

Anger gets us going, until we burn out. Despair enervates us. We turn often to drugs, whether pharmaceutical or to more subtle opiates like television or computer games. Too often we do not change our circumstances: We see no way out, and en masse we aren’t necessarily wrong. Leave one job, and even if you find another, it will be run by the same sort of people who run almost all of Western business, outside of a few European countries.

All of this is understandable. In a certain sense it is even rational.

But a hot cup of chocolate on a frosty night is still sweet.

As bad as things are, so much of the world is as it always has been. The still contentment of sitting with one you love, saying nothing is still available. The sunset is still beautiful, and if there are fewer birds, their trills still delight.

The flowers are as beautiful, the russet and scarlet leaves of fall still adorn the trees, and a clean drink of water still refreshes. Children playing still bring a smile to my face, and I still enjoy pulling a comforter up and cracking open a new book. There are still beautiful women and handsome men, there is still kindness and charity in the world; there is still art to make and books to write and songs to sing.

In a myriad of ways, there is still beauty and happiness to be found in the world. We are not the first culture to face decline. The Roman Empire went through multiple periods of decline and stoics and epicureans debated how to live the good life in an evil world. The Chinese practically had dealing with declining and corrupt imperial eras and warring states periods down to an art: When no good could be done in the world, one returned to one’s private life to write poetry, drink wine, and care for those close to one while refusing as much as possible to be complicit in the evil of the times.

Others strove still to be of public service, to hold off the rush of night for a few more years, or even a generation, knowing that what came after would be worse.

But I say to you now this: Endless anger or despair, or a mixture of both do you no good. Soon, they do do your enemies no harm (and yes, they are enemies) and they serve not your chosen cause unless you’re willing to risk permanent burn-out.

And besides, where’s the fun in being miserable?  No matter how bad the times, there will always be good periods,  moments and beauty and happiness in which to delight. The wine is as sweet in evil times as good; love is perhaps even sweeter in times of despair; and beauty never dies and can always be found, if only, sometimes, in our own minds.

It’s banal to say we’re here for a short time, but it’s true. Fight the good fight, to be sure, but then delight in the sensual pleasures and love this world offers.

And give yourself permission to quit. There are seven billion people in the world. It’s not on all on you. The graveyards are full of essential men: The world will continue without you, and it’s not all on you. Take the breaks you need, even quit if you must. Above all, don’t let the bastards see you sweat, and don’t let them take away your enjoyment of the real pleasures that life offers.

(Originally published October 27, 2014. Republished March 27, 2017. Republished March 10, 2018, and Jan 16, 2021)

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