I’m treating this article series as a way of exploring the question of morality, from its base to its peak, to establish what I believe and to show why my beliefs, as they are rooted in secular (as in, not derived from the arbitrary assemblage of religions in the world) and data-driven (as in, derived from observing the behaviour of the world and how people actually interact with each other in the environment) decision systems, have a stronger case for being valid than the historical and traditional moral systems. The first reason that I think I can prove this is that traditional moral systems, derived from religious ideals and reactionary measures, are not effective on their own terms, even before trying to find universal terms. A morality system, as any ideological system, should be internally consistent, self-reinforcing, externally validated, and nuanced in the places where rules conflict so that decisions can be navigated ethically.

Now, to define our terms.

I am going to use the following definition for morality; “That which does the greatest good for the most people.” Good here is defined as those things that support, reinforce, or provide access to survival, enjoyment, and happiness in life in ways that do not diminish or infringe on others’ rights and their own happiness. Morals, in this system, are the Oughts – the rules that should be followed in an ideological sense. They are derived from an examination of the world around us and negotiated as we discover what rights and responsibilities we share as a society. Morals, in this sense, are personal responsibilities to the societal whole. To put it simply, they are how you, as an individual, should treat your Fellow Humans, the masses.

I am going to use the following definition for ethics; “The negotiation and implementation of moral precepts in individual relationships that provide the most advantage and least disadvantage to all relevant stakeholders as well as ensuring proper moral conduct through establishing rules and behaviours that preempt possible immoral action.” Where morals, then, are the Oughts of human interaction, ethics are the Is. Ethics are applied morals, methods and rules for implementing morals where the implementation may not be obvious. Ethics are about fair treatment under our agreed moral structure.

In places, I may refer to Justice ,such as in Social Justice. In these situations, Justice will be defined as “the implementation of Ethical decisions on a societal basis to create a more fair and more moral environment for those who have been marginalized, harmed, or excluded from full societal participation by the actions of society as a whole rather than the actions of particular individual(s).” So while Ethics by themselves negotiate was if Fair (or Equal) between Stakeholders (individuals or groups of individuals operating independently), Justice is the negotiation of what is Fair (or Equal) between Individuals and The Society. This includes how the State enforces ethical action, how society rewards or punishes ethical action, and how individuals are encouraged to respond to ethical action. While Justice does not always mean laws must be passed for all infractions, Justice is a society-wide problem that must be dealt with using overt, society-wide systems (such as education campaigns, conduct advisement, protocols, and, yes, laws). Where individually we bear the burden of being Ethical (treating our fellow humans morally and fairly), we as a society bear the burden of being Just (treating all of our fellow humans, collectively, morally and fairly).

Now, for other moral systems I will not be examining them directly. This is a bottom-up approach. To explain why, I reject the idea of a supernatural law-giver. Those moral systems that rely on supernatural agents providing moral guidance cannot show accuracy or truth through their supernatural laws, and the documentation that has descended from their supernatural law-giver has several elements that surround it that imply that the laws were created by men, not by any supernatural god, and reflect the societies of the time and place they were originally written. While non-supernatural (or historical, near historical) law codes do not make claims of supernatural origin (and, thus, being impossible for “mere” human endeavors to overturn) they are frequently rooted in systems that are demonstrably unfair for many that labor under their sway. Most commonly, women and people foreign to the system are disenfranchised, as well as those who are not wealthy or powerful enough to bend the strictest strictures within the moral system. To avoid disentangling the various hypocritical and unethical, immoral, or unnecessary laws within other moral law systems, I will be building this from basic precepts to moral suggestions and examinations without regard to society as-is. I will be drawing on sociology, biology, philosophy, and the data generated by the wide-variety of psychological, economic, and social examinations and studies in our modern sciences.

In the next installment, I’ll be laying my moral foundations – what it is to be good, what kind of good we should be pursuing, and why it is better for all of us to pursue these objectives together.

Yes, we are German, we are Swedish, we are Finnish, we are Irish, we are Scottish, we’re probably also Dutch and French. It’s hard to say with families like ours. But there is one thing we are that is different from what we thought we were – we’re Rromani. We’re of the traveling people, outcasts from India who were mistaken for Egyptians. Our family, though, is so divorced from this history that no one knows. You only figure out through circumstantial evidence and a penchant for curiosity in following last names. It’s hard, though, to find out when we became Gadje. It’s hard, though, to find out where our name comes from or how we got it.

It’s hard because of the shame and the fear wrapped up in being Rromani and how it’s penetrated the world around us. One thing is certain, though, we are not a gypsy. That is their insulting term for us, and we don’t use it. We’re rrom. We’re better than that.

I am an outsider. I’m a geek, I’m a nerd, I’ve got an atypical neurology. I’m heavily invested in the people I’m close to (and the more I like you and respect you, the more I love you, the more aware and focused on you I get – I’m creepy, in other words, but I try to be respectful). I don’t like many people. I’m smarter than most people. I’m poor. I’m reasonably well educated. I know how to fight with swords and axes, but have never fired a gun. I’ve lived in gang violence but I’ve never been part of a gang. Socially, I’m white. I grew up in mixed race neighborhoods. Physically, I’m part Rromani.

These are all little things, sometimes big things, that push me out of social groups. My entire life has been swinging from one system of ostracism to another, always finding out what little ways I don’t fit in. I’m ugly, I’m too smart, I’m not smart enough, I can’t run, I can’t play, I can’t speak clearly, I’m creepy, I’m weird, no one likes me. My childhood was built out of being  rejected by the white kids at school for being too poor and being rejected by the Hispanic kids for being too white. I occasionally got along with the few African American kids that went to my school, but most of the time I was off by myself reading and avoiding getting bullied. That frame of reference, that understanding of the world, would be true for me until I became an adult. I always knew what the problem was, though, and I always wanted a means of fitting in. I used to tell stories, to create weird and fantastic alternate lives for myself where I was interesting and charismatic and people liked me. Sometimes, they’d believe me. Telling stories and believing them led me through a lot of things, including religion. I could always feel it, I could always bask in the glory of my own stories, so I thought they must be true.

So when I figured out that, somewhere along the lines, my family had been Rrom, I was excited. I was suddenly an interesting teenager. I was a gypsy! That’s so cool! Right?

I don’t tell people anymore, if I can avoid it. Unless I’m in safe space where I’m not going to get mobbed by people asking me things, I don’t talk about it. I’m white, I don’t have to explain that. My family’s white. Our culture is white. We’ve never been anything else. My family, at some point, was Rromani, and I think that’s interesting but not in the same way others do. It’s interesting because there’s a mystery in my family that someday I might figure out. But likely I won’t. It’s interesting because growing up I always thought of the Rrom as being an Other, as being a people that no one interacts with anymore. A caricature that was never, truly, real. It’s interesting because my family’s history has a rich story hidden behind it somewhere that is more than just farms and immigration.

It is not, however, a vast and untapped wealth of wisdom and cultural awareness. It isn’t interesting because I can’t speak any of the  language. I know few of the traditions. I can’t even identify much about my family other than it was probably in Finland where the tribe I’m from commingled with the locals. It’s not interesting because now I’m hyper-aware of the use of “gypsy” all over the place, and how there isn’t a suitable avenue to pursue a character created by my ancestors to caricature themselves for protection. It’s not interesting because racism breeds racism in people who aren’t racist. It’s not interesting because I’m not actually Rromani, I’m just related to them.

It’s not interesting because I wish I could answer those questions to myself, then it would be a lot easier to answer other people’s questions.

It’s not interesting because having a family history is, in many ways, a privilege. Coming from families that could be recorded. Even now, my family is largely invisible. It’s not interesting because there is no story to tell.

It’s not interesting because I am not just a story, or a collection of stories, like I always wanted to be.

It’s not interesting because, underneath all of this, I’m a person and not just a Rromani. People can forget that.

People forget that I still have feelings, and I still think of them when we’re apart, and that I remember what they say and do. People forget that I am not just an interesting conversation piece because of my odd heritage, but that I’ve got a personality outside of those quirks.

It is what it is. No more, no less. I wish I could speak the language, knew the traditions, knew the customs, knew my family. But would it make it any different?

No, I’d still be a gadje. I’m related, but not one of the tribe.

So, let’s define Freethought.

Wikipedia - “Freethought is a philosophical viewpoint that holds opinions should be formed on the basis of logic, reason and science and not authority, tradition, or other dogmas.^[1][2][3] The cognitive application of freethought is known as “freethinking,” and practitioners of freethought are known as “freethinkers.”

This is, perhaps, my favorite definition as most of the others you can find at Dictionary.com and the like are woefully incomplete. So, let’s go with a shortened definition – Freethinking is forming thoughts and beliefs through logic, reason, and examination rather than tradition.

It is not “thinking whatever the hell one wants”. It is not “unrestrained by any form of logic or reason”. It is not “thinking about things to contradict those around one’s self”. This is apparently what a lot of people on the internet think it means, however, and this is seriously starting to piss me off. I am not a professional philosopher, nor am I a professional theologian, nor am I a professional ethicist, nor am I a professional politician or lawyer or any other kind of think-tank persona. I am a writer, I am a blogger, and I’m an opinionated person who subscribes to a rational and natural worldview. I should not be the one explaining these things to people. 

Despite me not being a professional, however, there are things that are pretty easy to understand if you study them for a bit. And, in the interests of education and being rational, one must defer to the more educated members of the community to study these things. Given that, for some reason, I’m better educated despite not being a professional, I’m going to have a brief set of rules here -

If you come in here to tell me I’m wrong about what freethought is without having a counter argument or having a set of data to draw upon, fuck you. I won’t even post your comment.

If you come in here to argue with me about harassment policies or Skepchick or Rebecca Watson, fuck you. I’ll tear into because I’ve got the time for it and I seriously could use a little steam venting. These rants tend to turn into something comfy and happy by the end. I haven’t had the chance to really let loose in any appreciable fashion, positive or negative, in quite some time.

If you want to come in here and say, “Well yes, freethought” and then attack Freethought Blogs, fuck you. I am not FTB. I have no sway over their organization. I am not criticizing them, either, as they are a collection of over 30 blogs with different bloggers doing different things. I agree with some of them. I do not agree with others. They are too diverse to call anything other than a community (and even then there are times where it’s nearly in name only). This has nothing to do with what Freethought Blogs does but is rooted in Freethought Blogs adopting the word Freethought and people forgetting what Freethought means.

If you want to come in here and discuss what freethinking is and why I think that feminism is inherently tied to it, as well as why I think that most of the reactionary people posting on the internet about being “freethinkers” are just troll asshats who don’t know north from up, then yeah, we can talk about that. But you must realize that if you, at all, fall into the prior three categories then I have no reason nor will I entertain a reason to post your comments.

To explain why, a brief foray into the first amendment.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Congress. 

I can pass rules abridging your freedoms all over my blog. It’s my right as a private entity in a non-exclusive forum. Just as it’s your right to go to another forum and call me an asshat.

So, Freethought.

Freethought is a philosophical system that encourages inquiry and examination of beliefs and suppositions regardless of traditional or prior views. It’s, essentially, walking a mile in another idea’s shoes first. To butcher a metaphor. Freethought, though, is married to the ideas of critical reasoning and logical examination. Not just looking for data in the same fashion as science but also interesting and useful information. Corollaries do not provide evidence of anything scientifically, for example, but a freethinker will explore corollaries to find why two things have a high instance of association even if they are not causal. This very form of examination and rational thought is the basis of sociological sciences, in fact. Freethought does not mean entertaining any idea, therefor, only ideas that have merit. Establishing merit is pretty easy to do – if you can find a bit of information supporting the idea, then it’s got merit. Then follow the idea until it no longer has merit or requires more statistical and informative examination before continuing with the thought exercise.

In a vacuum, a freethinker (in my opinion), will eventually become a feminist due to the examination of gender roles and the examination of data about sex, gender, and the differences between members of the resultant group (hint; there aren’t many and they’re almost all physical dimorphic differences). Freethinkers seek to move away from bias and will go through several thought exercises to ensure that the results of the thought exercise is unbiased (or as unbiased as possible), as well as running it past other freethinkers to ensure that the exercise is as unbiased as possible. These exercises and systems of trading exercises frequently cause freethinkers to agree on certain things.

So freethinking does not mean disagreeing for the purposes of being disagreeable. Over time, freethinkers won’t disagree with each other on most things and definitely wouldn’t on big things. Things like skepticism, atheism, and even feminism. The earliest freethinkers (like Ingersoll) who happened to be men also frequently happened to be feminists. Though this was also the beginning of men who identify as feminists who concern-trolled radical feminist woman activists because “men are fragile creatures and cannot handle this form of protest” and the like. So when you’re accusing a group of groupthink (like Freethought Blogs) consider the possibility that they really agree on these things for their own reasons and it isn’t some kind of pod-blogger conglomeration that is seeking to rob you of critical thought. 

Disagreeing with the “group think” does not make you critical. It does not make your position radically rational. It does not score you any points with any intelligent thinkers or rational people. Especially when, by doing so, you’re throwing your lot in with people who are demonstrably threatening, dangerous, fanatical, and irrational. 

Further, being a freethinker is an extension of being an autodidact, a self educator. It is your responsibility, as a rational person, as a student of life, as a skeptic, as a commentor, as a political entity, as a human living on this planet to constantly educate yourself. Especially when it comes to discussions about groups that you are a part of regardless of your preferences and that you are forced to represent or distance yourself from consistently and constantly. This means you need to be aware of your privilege as well as your oppressors. You need to be aware of how much oppression you actually experience and how much you perpetuate. You need to be aware of the effects others have on you and the effect you have on others. It especially means that when you enter a discussion about these things you have no one to blame but yourself if you do not know what is going on or who is being blamed for what. If you don’t know what privilege is, look it up. Don’t ask. If you don’t know what ‘white guilt’ is or why apologetics is bad for the discussion, look it up. Don’t ask. If you don’t know what institutional misogyny is, look it up. Don’t ask. If you don’t know something, avail yourself to Wikipedia, Google, and the wide variety of blogs on the matter. Once you have some information and can be conversant in a concept, then you can ask how it’s being used and participate in the conversation.

Do not, however, assume that it is the responsibility of the conversation to educate you. That’s lazy. Don’t be lazy. Be efficient, don’t waste anyone’s time, especially your own.

So, you want to call yourself a freethinker? You want to walk in the footsteps of Ingersoll the Agnostic or Ernestine Rose the radical feminist? Do so. Educate yourself. Consider other people’s positions. Examine statements. Give those making statements the benefit of the doubt and way reasonable information.

Don’t stick with the side that seems most comfortable and gives you the most power because they might, in fact, be wrong. Always be open the idea that even you might be wrong.

First, Street Fighter is 25. What the hell. Thanks, Wil Wheaton.

I’m out of rant for today about big things and important things other than asking what you, my readers, are doing to make your world a better place. A shout out to Nerdfighteria, who are working diligently to lower world suck every day. Unfortunately I cannot fully call myself a nerdfighter as I hold myself to some pretty ridiculous philosophical and ethical positions and many of those in the Nerdfighter ranks would find me disturbed for it. But that should be obvious as it would be really difficult for me to find anything redeeming about someone who claims to be anti-feminist and I know there’s a couple  nerdfighters out there that to. Mostly thanks to the Men’s Rights Movement.

Speaking of the Men’s Rights Movement, fuck you. I’m personally sick and tired of the bullshit on Reddit, I’m sick and tired of the bullshit around FreeThought Blogs and Skepchick, I’m tired of the bullshit of these people trying to speak for me.

I am a man. I’m a cisman. I’m a cisgendered white man. I am a pansexual, omnisexual, bisexual cisgendered white man. Everyone from DJ Groethe to the director of CFI Canada to A Voice For Men are full of shit and using authority borrowed from their professional station (or from whimsy and fantasy, AVFM) to speak about things they both have no education in and no authority in. They do not represent me. They do not speak for me. They do not even speak rationally. All of the things in this discussion that we’re fighting over, from harassment policies to rape culture to women? A lot of these cultural elements have been proven in sociological studies. If they’d bother to check.

So yeah, Men’s Rights Movement? Fuck your face with a hedge-trimmer.

An update on those things that are important to me, as a philosophical stance. I am an atheist, I am an antitheist, I am a feminist, I am a liberal. All of these stances come from observation, data, and science. I’m willing to discuss any of these positions with anyone so long as you are not a bad actor. So far I haven’t had to even think of a comment policy yet (cue cut to comment section with two comments and a tumbleweed) but you can rest assured that if you come in and start arguing in bad faith, you start trolling, or you start using this as a platform for something then I’m going to delete your comments. I’m unemployed and disabled. I have the time to do this.

Speaking of being unemployed and disabled, I’m also homeless! However, the place I was living in was sapping me of everything involved in the will to live, so I’m happier right now. However, if anyone in Southern California knows of a furnished room on the cheap I can rent for a few months, I’d love to know. I’m trying to get my family to help me with a motel room until I can find a permanent place to live but they’re being…unreliable. I’ve got a friend who might have a place for me in a few months but until then I’m sleeping on a couch and it’s hell on my back. And all my other joints. Plus, privacy? What’s that? So yeah, my crowd of two, please help me find a place to crash for a bit.

Uh, what else. Working on two new short stories right now but it’s hard coming from the place I was in. Currently theorizing a story about a Steampunk China if the Opium Wars had never ended. Enjoy history? China? The Victorian period? Imperialism? Anything related to this? Send me snippets of information, data, what have you and I’ll boil them down into a few story ideas. I’m thinking of watching Ip Man and Ip Man 2 again for some inspiration. And because they’re fantastic martial arts movies.

Now I’m going to go back to missing my partner like a love struck fool, relaxing my back, and trying to come up with ideas.

Happy Esther day.

Stay classy.

These two things, they’re seriously frustrating for me. I hate dealing with Bad Actors, people who think and argue in Bad Faith, and the immoral bigots that are a product of such people.

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First, let’s define Bad Faith.

Bad Faith is a willingness to argue in a way that is cheap and meaningless. The use of strawmen, a willingness to misconstrue, the usage of cherry-picked statistics to show something counter to prevalent data, using conclusions drawn from initial passes rather than understanding of arguments…it’s essentially arguing poorly. Arguing in a way that is secure in the correctness of the argument and not needing to critically examine anything. “I’m right, and I don’t have the time to prove you wrong. You just are.”

I don’t know if many of you know this, I know my friends and some of my regular readers know this,  but I’m autistic. I’ve got a high functioning variant of the Autism Spectrum Disorder, so I’m able to fake being normal some of the time (I’m not spectacularly good at it, though – despite being poly and relaxed and generally a nice person, my massive social awkwardness has limited me to a handful of partners and they’ve all been women so far…even though I am pansexual. Dating is hard, you guys.). Fun fact about people who have High-Functioning ASD – we’re militantly logical and we defend our base assumptions to the death. That second part I don’t get so bad because one of my base assumptions is fact is fact and I must conform my worldview to what works and what doesn’t work. So, Bad Faith is, perhaps, my biggest pet peeve in the history of pet peeves. I am not a violent person, but there are times where Bad Faith arguments makes me violently angry.

Now, let’s define a Bad Actor.

A Bad Actor is always arguing in Bad Faith, even if they do not use any of the Bad Faith ‘techniques’. This is because they espouse a philosophy or worldview but they do not follow it. This is Muslims who drink alcohol but don’t eat bacon because it’s haram. This is Christians who talk about Leviticus and how God hates the gays while wearing blended fabric clothing and eating shellfish. It’s people who claim to follow, and offer validity to, a set of rules and structures then use that claim to establish moral superiority while, simultaneously, not following those rules themselves. Bad Actors are living embodiments of frustration for me. They are hypocrites and unwilling, or perhaps incapable, of seeing their own hypocrisy. Further, they are right about them belonging to their group – the aforementioned Muslims are still Muslim, they’re just Bad Muslims. The aforementioned Christians are still Christian, they’re just Bad Christians.

Now, I told you all of that to talk about this. Bad Skeptics.

Skepticism has a set of tenants. It’s not a religion-level philosophy, it’s not a whole worldview, it’s more just a simple set of ideals. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. All claims are subject to doubt until sufficient prove is provided. Data is more important than belief. Methodology is important to understanding how data becomes information. That which is factual is true.

It’s not a difficult concept, I think, and it’s a rather rational one. Don’t believe everything you hear unless someone can prove their case. Simultaneously, do not dismiss anyone out of hand until they have a chance to prove their case. (Unless, of course, their case is the same case you’ve already heard and have no interest in hearing it a second time.)

There are many, many people in the skeptical community that have stopped following these basic tenants, though. These people encounter certain things outside of their comfort zone and, despite really good evidence that their behaviours may be wrong and supporting a system of ostracism and oppression, they defend their behaviours through bad data, bad science, bad methodologies, bad arguments. In effect, these Bad Skeptics defend their skepticism in Bad Faith.

I’m sure many of you are shaking your head  and knowing what I’m talking about, since I must be talking about the same thing as everyone else given that I’m a feminist and I’m a fan of both Skepchick and FreeThoughtBlogs. It goes beyond just that, though. It goes beyond harassment policies, entitlement culture, tribalism, extremism, and even elevators. It goes beyond the movement and beyond our nice, social niche that we live in. It goes beyond the middle class and upper middle class, white-bread world that most skeptics come from. It goes to the very core of what it means to be a participating actor in the society around us.

For instance, every single Libertarian Skeptic is a Bad Skeptic. All of them. Bar none. They believe in a socioeconomic worldview that is both childish and impossible to realize. They believe in a set of structures and (and absence of) regulations that create an idealized, individual focused world. However, data and history show us that these beliefs are wrong. They do not work. They have never functioned outside of very small communities. In effect, Libertarianism is effective to the same points as Communism, and quickly devolves into madness as you get beyond those points. The madness in Communism comes from the corruption of those in power. The madness in Libertarianism comes from the corruption of acquiring power and sacrificing the less powerful to your cause. The end point of a totally Libertarian society is a corporate feudal state (and if you don’t believe me, look at the global economy right now and let me know how much power any individual person has over their own life and their own opportunities – it’s pretty amazing what Microsoft can do for one of its employees and how difficult it is for a normal, well adjusted kid with no connections to become a success).

Furthermore, Libertarians ignore the societal investment in success that propels every single “independently successful person”, from the maintenance of a police force and armed forces to the laying of roads and the repair of bridges. Or even the simple fact that our political discourse is, currently, not modulated by men in armor and wielding swords.

So, let’s take a look at the current problem in the skeptical community, and in society at large (as that’s why it’s even a problem in the skeptical community). What we have is a confluence of the three largest kinds of oppression in society – Sexism, Racism, and Classism. That is, oppression based on gender or sex, oppression based on real or perceived status as a minority group, and oppression based on station in society and the capability of spending money to participate in society. I shouldn’t have to explain why meetings like TAM, taking place in Las Vegas and costing several hundred dollars to even attend without eating or drinking or sleeping or doing anything else in Vegas, is difficult for the less wealthy members of the community to attend. This particular problem crops up a lot in skeptical gatherings as well, like meetings taking place in relatively expensive restaurants or places that are difficult to get to regularly without one’s own vehicle (at least outside of cities with robust public transportation, which is itself a classism issue in the meta-culture). I do not have the authority to really delve into sexism as anything other than an ally, but there are resources you can check. I’m sure there are also great resources for an examination of racism (another -ism I can’t really explain, as I am white for the most part and I only get a touch of Exoticism when people find out about my heritage, nothing to the point that most people of color face), and if a helpful commentor out there can supply those links I’d be much obliged. Now, let’s talk about how these three things interact.

Men wield power. Men define the conversation, men control the politics, men control the actors in any particular space. This is the default assumption of the world due to the whole idea of gender equality being a rather new one in the history of human social groups (post-agriculture). Men are predisposed to authority by their culture, while women are disavowed of their capabilities. This leads to some rather bad problems. Men were the only people to have a say in women getting the vote. In a recent congressional panel on birth control, not a single woman (the only people to be affected by regulations on internal birth control – for the time being) was on the panel. When a woman speaks in a social context about possible institutional abuse, she is required to go above and beyond the standard level of acknowledgement to prove that there is a problem. This entire situation is an outgrowth of Entitlement – thanks to a history of patriarchy, where the Man of the Household carefully Guides and Leads his family as the Earthly representative of God’s Grace (gotta love Victorian random Capitalization) – where men aren’t required by society to be anything other than whatever the hell they want to be. Women, on the other hand, have to deal with the constant and capricious whims of the men of the world and have to fight tooth and nail with social obstructions and an invisible nature to have the barest modicum of respect and dignity afforded to them and preserve their own Agency. That is the ultimate expression of Entitlement Culture – feudal systems of men owning women and women having no capability to have any say in the matter. Besides, on a long enough time line you can teach the women to keep themselves in check so it’s all gravy anyway. Now, we’ve got the legacy of that Entitlement Culture hanging over our heads in the ways that Men are supposed to be Men and Women are supposed to be Women and how the Sexes are Different. This presumption gives us remarks like “boys will be boys”, and the attitude associated with that allows men to be forgiven for things like leering, pinching the fleshy parts of women’s anatomies, or being a little too forward in conversation. Women cope with these behaviours, despite those behaviours being aggressive and based on the presumption that ‘all women want the man’, and are put in a position where they’re always on defensive. In effect, Women Play Black – there’s no opening strategy, they’re just constantly responding to the White player in the game of chess. And when women point out that this isn’t fair and we should fix this, they get turned into demonized hell-spawn witches of Satan’s east end. Including one word that I have a particular distaste for because it’s a good word and should not be used as an insult.

Anyway.

This gets compounded with racism. A white woman has more power to speak in a social situation than a black woman, and is given more legitimacy and authority by the people around her. Please don’t start arguing with me, I really don’t want to go digging up all the studies that show this is a thing and it actually happens. I’m not sure what the break down on men of color in comparison to white women in modern culture is, as far as inherent validity in the eyes of the meta-culture, but I imagine it isn’t pretty. And I’m not really a fan of this kind of line drawing when I’m not developing role playing systems. Again, I will have to defer to any people of color who might want to expand on this particular part of the problem as I don’t have a lot of experience with it. I’m a white guy in Orange County, California. Even though we have people of color in our neighborhoods, for some reason we don’t tend to run in the same circles very often.

Finally, oh so finally, we have classism. Poor people are erased just out of the sheer fact that they can’t make it to the conversation. And when they do get there, they don’t have the power or prestige to get an audience. When poor people are involved, they’re frequently denigrated for being lazy, told that they’re not educated enough and don’t understand, or are pitied rather than listened to. Power does not extend naturally to those on the bottom of the economic ladder and, because of this, their problems are written off as being unimportant if terribly depressing. Instead of going on a long rant here, in the middle of another rant, about how society encourages people to either stay rich or become poor, I’m just going to say that as a homeless person of moderate education but a knack for understanding the things I read, this is infuriating.

So, how does this contribute to entitlement culture?

White men tend to be the wealthy patrons of a movement, especially a social movement rooted in doubting large power structures. White men establish the ground rules and become the leaders of the movement de facto due to being the first ones to participate. The first women in the movement tend to be daughters, wives, and sisters of the white men who founded it. These women tend to extend the patriarchal control of those who they trust as they’re all good people, and this creates a system where women unknowingly contribute to the gender stratification due to not enforcing diversity in controlling stakes (this is changing – more women, people of color, disabled and atypical people, and other minorities are demanding involvement in social systems to even participate. Nothing About Us Without Us). When later groups come in, they start at a disadvantage. When groups complain about sexism, racism, and classism, they first must convince those in power (the wealthy white men) that the problems are real. This is really difficult when those in power have never experienced them. Especially if the complaints start with, “This thing you do, it’s gotta stop. ‘Cause seriously, it’s wrong.” When this message isn’t believed, or even more commonly isn’t wanted, then they tend to rally the forces of invisibility. All the sexism, racism, and classism cards start to get played – you just don’t understand the complexities, you wouldn’t understand it as a woman, it’s just boys being boys, our culture is just different from yours, it’s not our responsibility to make it affordable, it’s not our responsibility to make it accessible, it’s not our responsibility to be welcoming to anyone but us.

The best part is, eventually even the minorities that are permitted to be part of the inner circle get in on the defending the patriarchs game. This is also an observed phenomena. Malcolm X’s rather virulent distaste for kowtowers was very well documented and he’s just the first example I can summon without willingly stepping into the heaping mess of the current skeptical community.

So you’ve got these Skeptics, who say that they doubt and examine elements of society that people offer them, who are told about these effects. Told about institutionalized sexism, racism, classism, ableism, what have you. They’re shown studies and examples of this happening in popular culture. They’re shown the effects of behaviour on those around them. They’re even shown how if they were to act in a different manner then they would get more of what the purport to want. However, they don’t listen. These people are Bad Skeptics, and are acting in Bad Faith.

This makes me disappoint.

Every single day, people around us say and promise things to us. They say they love us. They say that they’re our friends. They say that they believe in us. They say that they support us.

They say that they hate us. They say that they can’t stand us. They say that our work is shoddy and terrible. They say that we bring no value.

However, these words are meaningless. What matters is when these words become inflated with action and when someone actually backs up the things they say with the things they do.

Let’s have a chat about cognitive dissonance and what it means to be a friend, an enemy, a lover, and a fighter.

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Words hold power only so far as we allow them to. I do not mean that you, as an individual Agent, can take power away from the words of others by ignoring them or dismissing them (this is both unethical and, in some cases, impossible). I mean that, as an Agent, you have the capability to grant or rescind power around your own words. It is not the word “love” that means love when you say “I love you”, it is your actions to the person you love afterward. It is not the word “friend” that causes friendship, it is the actions that build up around it that cause friendship. What is meaningful is not what you say to someone but what you do for someone. What matters is not the titles we bestow but the titles we earn.

I, personally, really wish I knew of this when I was dating my first girlfriend. I was an awful kind of person because I tried to take without giving, rather than understanding that it’s a reciprocal relationship. I didn’t understand that one does not simply give love, one proves and offers love. I can’t just thrust my love on someone, I can only offer it and not resist from it being taken. Understanding this now has made my love life much simpler for me, and much easier to manage mentally. However, it’s brought me to a sudden realization about many of the people around me. Since I have come to know that it is not our words that make up who and what we are to those around us, but our actions, I have seen that many of the people around me are awful friends. Lets break down what it means to be friends, what it means to be enemies, and what it means to care at all.

Friends are there for you. That’s kind of the universal message. Friends support you, friends catch you when you fall, friends do what they can. Friends are there to listen, to teach, to learn, to weather life by your side. We use the term “fair-weather friend” to denigrate people who seem to be friends only when you’re riding high, but when the tab comes they’re nowhere to be found. This is not, in my opinion, even friendship. They never were friends in the first place, and it could be discovered through their actions.

Friendship in action is a beautiful thing to see. When you need to get to the hospital, they’re there. When you need to move out of your place tonight, they’re there. When you need to just get away, they’re there. Best of all, they check in and check up on you to make sure they don’t need to do anything. Friends, in this way, constantly prove that they are still friends by staying in touch, by maintaining a conversation, and doing what they can (and when they can’t do anything, commiserating). While that last bit is one we all recognize, the first two are the harder ones. The ones that slip by us without us knowing, especially when life’s hard. Keep those two in mind, however.

Because when it comes to being an enemy, they’re just as important. This is how I best came to understand the borders of friendship. Opposition takes involvement, interaction, and perseverance. Being an enemy takes work. You have to find out your opponent’s weaknesses, you have to be there to exploit every real or imagined victory, and you must perfect ignoring them at the right times and engaging at the right times to heighten the emotional impact of every action. Granted, some people are better or worse enemies (and better or worse friends) because of how much attention they pay to these relationships, but that doesn’t change the base nature of both operating and manipulating these relationships. To be a good enemy, you  must be a counter-friend. An anti-friend.

In this way, by studying good enemies one would also know good friends. This is important.

In my recent experience, friends have an awful habit of sometimes just forgetting you exist. I’ve had my friends group shift a lot as my hand got worse and worse and, in many ways, I’m not going to strive to maintain a friendship with them as my life moves on. While they were there for me when they could understand me, they stopped keeping our conversation alive when my life got too difficult for them to understand. They weren’t fair-weather friends, they just were friends with someone who they thought was me. Someone I wasn’t, but who they wanted me to be. So when I emerged from the problems in my life, they found out that they were never friends with me.

However, among all of the people I know, there has been one magnificent example of both friendship and love. There’s no one that I’ve seen hurt themselves over me so much as my partner, and she’s an amazing person. All of you should strive to emulate her so that you can be amazing partners to the romantic elements in your life.

And no, you don’t have to date me to emulate her. I don’t wish that upon the unwilling. There’s a reason I have an initiation ceremony and everything – once you’re in the cult, you come out wrong. 

So, how to be a good lover in three easy steps. One, always listen to everything ever said ever by your partner. I don’t mean hear it and wait to respond, and I don’t mean listen to the words they’re using, but listen to their tone, their pauses, and their pacing. Over time, you’ll learn the subtle language of their own language, a way of telling you their mood and how they’re feeling. Two, always be mindful and cognizant of the limitations they have and the kind of expectations you might give them. If you talk about makin’ out all the time, for instance, but you’re not makin’ out, it’s going to probably be kind of frustrating. This happens in small conversations all the time, but if there’s a pattern of this happening you just end up with two frustrated people who want to love each other but are constantly aware of what they’re not doing rather than what they are. Before saying and doing things, before talking about things, be mindful of your partner. Think about how they’ll hear what you’re about to say. Three, always find time to be quiet and close. Even the extroverts out there should find time to sit on a hilltop, snuggle in bed, or even just hold each other in a backseat before parting for the night every now and then. Quiet time, unstructured time with each other, lets the ebbs and flows of social interaction congeal and solidify. It lets us be more aware of ourselves and our partners, as part of a system rather than as independent entities, and it gives us the breathing room to be honest and respectful. These are the things that my partner’s given to me (most of the time, we’re not perfect – either of us) and they’re what I’ve learned that love is. It isn’t the I Love You. It’s the actions, it’s the mindfulness, it’s the affection, it’s the dedication.

Love, friendship, enemyship (?), passion – these aren’t adjectives. They’re not titles. They’re verbs. Do them.

I’m not talking to my fellows at arms, the women and men who march in the feminist equality trenches and fight for the rights of all sorts of minorities from women to people of color to vegetarians to poly people to LGBTQI people to geeks to poor people to people who seriously enjoy being around ducks. You’re all great and I respect the kinds of activism you do.

Everyone else? You’re still activists. You’re just the wrong kind of activist.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When we think of activism, we think of chanting. Marching. Protesting. Speaking out. This is what counter-culture’s activism looks like. It’s what minority groups look like when they’re trying to raise awareness, broaden the message, and get people involved. It’s what people who are not part of the majority do when they want the majority to listen to them about something. It is not, however, the only kind of activism.

There’s also silent activism. There’s the march that consists of everyone going to the same job, voting for the same person, and going to the same places. There’s a kind of activism where the dominant, chanted message amounts to, “Why do they do this? Do they think anyone’s listening? It’s all so stupid. Everyone’s at fault. Why rock the boat?” This is the activism of the status quo. Most of the people who read this will be these kinds of activists, people who vigorously march to the beat of the meta-culture’s drum. Even if they don’t realize it.

To continue, let’s look at silent activism that minorities (and a few majority groups) have participated in.

The most overt is boycotting. Boycotts don’t have rallies (usually – I’m sure someone is going to mention some of the Suffrage rallies and some of the Christian ‘oppression’ rallies to encourage boycotting) but they are organized statements through action. People actively avoid supporting an institution through monetary and advertisement support due to views or values. This is activism, and it’s a very important kind of activism since it’s both easy to start and easy to maintain for the most part. Once you set down a system to avoid shopping at a particular place, for example, time becomes the greatest support mechanism to make the activism easier.

Other forms of silent activism include cultural occlusion and group eraser. This is when people are taught, perhaps even trained, to ignore, denigrate, or despise groups of people who are frequently found around them. This is a form of activism (in that it is an action taken to support a particular political or social belief or system). For example, look at how homeless and poor people are treated by the great culture. They are treated as outcasts and parasites, necessarily, and they’re ignored. In media and social culture, people are taught to systemically avoid interacting with homeless and poor people. This is both occlusion (occluding, or hiding, from the social systems around it) and group eraser (editing the social experience to ignore and erase the effects, experiences, and existence of a social group). These systems are active systems that require purposeful participation by the people involved. The reason it doesn’t look active is that everyone does it out of hand, so it seems normal (and, therefor, taught to be automatic).

So, there’s lots of invisible actions you constantly take that make you an activist for the larger culture. For the status quo. This is a problem as it robs you of agency, or the ability to express your own wants, needs, and desires, as well as placing power over your choices and actions in the hands of those who would most likely take advantage of you and (to use a metaphor) strip-mine all the wealth from your life that they could possibly get away with. They do this through social indoctrination. Technically all groups do this through social indoctrination, but I’m perfectly fine with being indoctrinated into a social group that emphasizes my agency and my participation, but this is neither here nor there.

So, lets talk about what you’ve been indoctrinated into. The most obvious one is, well, everything you believe about how people are supposed to be.

No, please keep reading, this is important.

A lot of the things you do or don’t do because of OUGHTS are based on systems that you have been taught to just accept without asking why (or when you do ask why, the response is some variation of “Because I told you to”). This is everything from how you are supposed to interact with the people around you to when you’re supposed to wear pants. (Which is a really important question. Why am I even wearing pants right now?). These systems lay down a lot of really, really important rules. Things like share, don’t steal, don’t hurt each other, be nice, treat others with respect, act in a way deserving of respect, pay attention to those around you, be aware of yourself and your surroundings, wear clothes when appropriate, eat in a manner that does not make one look like something akin to the caricature of a barn animal…y’know, good foundational rules for society. A lot of these things aren’t bad, but we can’t exactly say you’re doing the right or wrong thing unless we exam the reasons you’re doing them. I say we because this, all of this, should be a discussion. Somewhere out there is someone who is totally willing to talk about your behaviour with you and help you figure out how you could be better at being who you want to be. And if you can’t find someone, you can talk to me probably. Unless you’re a total and unrepentant jackass that has no interest in actual self reflection, I’ll at least chat with you a bit.

Now, the OUGHTS that you’ve learned about how society, economies, and the entire world works are frequently packaged with bad things. I pointed out an abuse of power by people who have money in a prior article and this is another way to explain how this kind of indoctrination is bad. We have really good proof that inequality breeds bad things for an economy. People in power, people who are already wealthy, have no social reason or indoctrinated focus in being generous and conciliatory to the lower classes in Western culture. So it’s safe to assume that, rather than acting in a responsible way to ensure that other people don’t starve, these people in power try to make the most money possible even if doing so inevitably damages the economy. This is how you get things like just about every economic bubble in history. Especially the housing bubble in the US. Many people who either read this or who know people who read this have been taught to value the economic system that permits these people to continue to strip-mine the economy. So, because the world has not taught every single one of us to give a lot of a damn about poor and underprivileged people and people are taught to intrinsically support laissez-faire economics and neither of these beliefs are challenged based on available data and historical precedence, we have a world where people ignorantly support the capability of the powerful to just become more powerful.

And if you have spent any time in recent years defending the American economic system, the right of “business owners” to “hold on to the money they earn” or have fought the idea of taxing and supporting the economy through direct spending, you  have most likely participated in activism in support of the status quo. When you get up to vote for your local Republican or Democratic member of governance who supports these things, you have participated in activism that supports the status quo. When you even complain about other activists, you are actively participating in the enforcement of the status quo.

So yes, you still need to be an activist. But you need to be the right kind of activist.

Go out in the world and question everything. Question yourself. Question your questions. Question why you ask things, how you ask things, and what those answers are.

Until you can define yourself, these questions are the most important thing you can do with regards to your politics, your relationships, your lifestyle, and your happiness. Until you can say, “I am like this because of these reasons, and I know this to be a fact.” then you are not yet completely an adult. You are but a child who has donned the suit of adulthood and is but mimicking what it means to be an informed, participating Agent within our society.

So go out there and learn yourself yourself.

And every time this is done, the statement is the same. “I don’t believe in that.

Let me explain to you both why this privilege is a dangerous one and commiserate with those who are burdened with rationality.

To those of us who are minorities, any kind of minority, our world is different than the world of those who are not. As someone who is disabled, who is not heterosexual, and who is autistic my world is full of elements that are impossible for me to ignore. As an atheist and someone who participates in a non-standard relationship model, there are things in the world that are lacking that I’m painfully aware of. It is impossible for me to not be aware of these broken or incomplete social structures. I must be aware of the data related to these things, and I am constantly forced to confront these facts.

I see these same burdens in the women and people of color around me, in the trans* and homosexual people around me, in the disabled and poor people around me. There are aspects of their existence and their world that are impossible to ignore. They do not have the luxury of being irrational about how they live their lives, about doing things generally in any fashion they want. When we encounter characters in narratives that are a minority of some kind who do not succumb to certain stereotypes, we consider them irrational. This has an element of blaming the victim, but in a more general sense it’s odd to see someone who lives within certain societal realities and does not take steps to adapt to them (not conform mind you, adapt – this is about pragmatism rather than idealism).

However, when we see people of privilege not conforming to these narratives (or conforming to other narratives that always include a sense of irrationality), this seems completely normal. Consider the cultural narratives (in films, shows, books, magazines, news reports) of the wealthy child in high school or college. They are permitted by implicit power to act in any fashion they wish. They have inherited the narrative of the aristocratic young of the medieval period (which was, itself, dominated by narratives rather than actualities). There is no social cost, to them, for acting in an irrational manner. They have the privilege and the power to effectively ignore the limitations placed upon the people around them, and consequently pass the cost for their irrationality onto those around them that lack the power to obstruct them.

Love, affection, friendship, joy, happiness, and even money in many ways are not a zero sum games. However, time and energy are. When approached from the outside, every time an Actor (that is, someone with Agency in a game-theory kind of way) does something that is inefficient in resources expenditure or maximization, the cost of this inefficiency is passed onto other people. This can be seen in a meta-sense with the economy (when the government is inefficient with taxes then the taxpayers must pay more, when the rich are inefficient with their own money then the lower classes make less) as well as a localized context (when a store owner prices their goods or services inefficiently then either the employees suffer for hours or the customers suffer under costs that are too high, when a driver mistakes directions or time to travel then those relying on the driver end up paying for the inefficiency in being too late or early to appointments). All forms of inefficiency within our social matrix eventually pass on a cost to those around us. It even passes costs down to non-Actors (such as animals and the environments) when our inefficiencies fail to care for the environment around us. Occasionally these costs are acceptable, such is in the case of responsible construction or in the case of moderate time loss. This does not change the fact that the costs must be paid by someone, however.

Because of this, it is more important the more privilege and power you have to be aware of your capability of being irrational without ever noticing it. You must be aware of where you have no limits of social capability and do not incur social culpability for the things you do and say in comparison to those around you. If you are not aware of this irrationality, then when you are irrational you will both not be aware of it and you will be shifting the cost of this irrationality onto those around you. These costs frequently damage those who do not have the power to respond to them. The easiest meta-narrative to show this is economics.

We understand the costs and structures of economics in how they function and how inequality creates problems for everyone. However, when there is growing inequality and falling wages, the costs of these problems are born by the poor first (which includes people of color, disabled people, and women primarily) then by the middle class. Those who are wealthy do not have to bear the costs of poor economic policy and, therefor, are allowed to act in an irrational manner. Our current economic system is irrational if the purpose of an economic system is to prevent poverty, provide everyone a meaningful existence, and ensure that the flow of good and services is balanced with the demands for those goods and services. Our current economic order is primarily drive wealth and currency up toward the already wealthy without regard to those in the lower and middle classes due to companies and corporate controllers having the privilege to draw said wealth out of their companies without leaving anything behind for the employees that make up the majority of the corporation. These costs are born by the employees who can no longer participate in the economy in the same fashion they were able to before.

In short, the irrational vacuuming of wealth from the lower classes slowly erodes the economy since those who spend  money are the ones who propel the economy forward. The wealthy cannot spend the same amount of money as the middle class as one family cannot, by definition, consume the same amount as hundreds of families.

Those of us who are rational, who are logical, who pay attention to data regardless of our levels of power or authority are then tasked with trying to fix the world despite the price we’re asked to pay continually.

(To be continued… >.>)

I came in around midnight, I’d been driving all night with my boyfriend to get to Seattle in time for a convention we were working at. He was passed out in the passenger seat and I was starving, so when I saw the lit sign just off of the freeway, I pulled off to grab a burger.

At the bar, facing the cook and eating a single piece of pumpkin pie was a man. He was small, broad, and slumped over his plate. Dressed in a pair of slacks, running shoes, and a wool coat with long, knotted hair splayed down his back. I sat a few seats down from him and ordered by burger, than said hi.

He smiled, a weak and soft smile. A heavy smile. I asked him about why he was so sad.

“I’m not sad.” He said, slowly and carefully, as if each word were brand new and still had sharp edges on them. “I’m just tired. It’s been a long, hard road.”

We ate in silence for several minutes before I asked about the road. He sighed softly and looked down at his pie.

“I killed a man. In Anaheim, a long time ago.”

There was no part of him that spoke of someone that took another’s life. I’d been to Afghanistan, in one of the hardest details with day to day work. I was assigned to a laundry and supply unit that would drive to forward locations to drop off and clean clothes, food, water, and whatever else entrenched soldiers needed. I got to know the look of people who killed – those who enjoyed it, those that were guilty about it, those who couldn’t handle it. Even those that knew, without a doubt, that there was  nothing else they could have done but still cry for the life they took.

The man in the diner, though, he didn’t look like he had killed anyone.

So I asked him about it, who he killed. We he had killed a man so long ago.

He set his fork down on his plate slowly and sighed. “A long time ago, down south in Anaheim, a man crossed me and ruined my life. He trapped me and took everything from me – my friends, my family, my job, my health, the love of my life. He robbed me of everything I had and I couldn’t get out. So I took his life and I ran.”

His voice was quiet and reserved, soft and husky. It was leather that had baked in the sun, crushed velvet that was comfortable but never fit just right. Behind it, though, was hard still. A spine of iron and will.

I returned to my meal and let him eat in silence. Once he paid, he sat there with a cup of coffee even while I kept eating. I couldn’t help but keep asking, finding out more about his story. So I worked my up courage again and asked what happened after he killed the man.

“Well, I ran. I’ve been running for a long, long time. You see, a long time ago I was just like everyone else. Had a job, a house. Family to take care of. Clubs and meetings to go to. Had a nice girlfriend and we were going to settle down. Then my world crumbled around my ears – started having seizures and I couldn’t keep my job anymore. Couldn’t keep working like I did, couldn’t keep taking care of the people who needed me.”

He slurped his coffee and was quiet for a while. I didn’t press him, I didn’t ask. He paused, for a long while, but it was just a pause.

“I spent two years angry with myself. Angry with the world. Angry that all of what I was told growing up, all of what I was told going through school, was a lie. It doesn’t matter how hard you work, it doesn’t matter how much you keep your head down or how nice you are or how good you are. It doesn’t matter what you love or what you need when luck comes and lays you low.”

He turned and he looked me dead in the eye. He had a scar, deep as pain and anguish, right across his forehead and through his left eye.

“If you see someone down and out, don’t you walk past them. When you look past your brothers and your sisters out there on the street, you condone our deaths. You whisper to us with each passing glance that you don’t want us, you don’t need us, and you want us to disappear. You burden those who love us and can’t help us by wishing we’d just go away.”

He turned away then and went back to his coffee.

I finished my food and paid, but I couldn’t just let this rest. I can’t be everyone’s keeper, I can’t be there to help everyone. I turned to him again and started to say something but he stopped me.

“Even a little bit of help is enough. But if you want to really absolve that guilt, instead of convincing yourself it isn’t your problem, convince everyone else it is. If you don’t, more people like me will pop up. And there’ll be a whole lot more dead.”

I narrowed my eyes and asked how being down, being broke, being on the outside makes someone a murderer.

He turned his head away from me and showed me the cave in the side of his head, the cavern of darkness and blood.

“I killed a man, and that man was me. I just walk this place, now, and tell others why the gun was mine, but the will was theirs. I was just giving my last gift to the people around me, giving them what they always wanted from me. Giving them what they kept asking me for.”

I started backing out the door slowly. He turned and looked me in the eye again, stopped me in my tracks.

“They wanted me dead, they didn’t care what happened to me, so I gave it to them. I killed a man. I killed myself. Now the weight of my murder’s felt by each community my memory touches. My curse carries to everyone who walked past me, everyone who ignored me, everyone who thought that their problems were just too big to stop for just a second and see what they could do.”

I never saw him again.

We are an order rooted in Ethics.

We are an order rooted in Liberty.

We are an order rooted in Joy.

We are Ethical Hedonists.

And to find Joy where there is Pain, where there is Suffering, we maintain strength through comedy and awareness. We help those we can, we reach out to those that need us, and we support each other. We support ourselves.

We are The Order of Sarcastic Scribes.

So who wants to be a TOSSer?