Day 221: Lanterns in the dark

I’ve been watching a lot of right-wing rhetoric of late, trying to get myself out of my echo chamber, out of my bubble. 

I’ve been watching Doctor Professor Sir Daddy Jordan Peterson, current darling of YouTube, who claims he isn’t right-wing, but says a lot of right-wing things. I actually find some of what he says very astute. A lot is very banal, but wrapped in so much academese to obfuscate it that at first you assume it to be astute, simply because you can’t understand anything he’s saying. But you whack through the tangled verbiage and it’s just truisms, that, yes, aren’t incorrect, but aren’t exactly insightful, either. Most of his writing falls under this category - which of course left-wing academics do all the time as well. And then some of his stuff is outright insane. His Judeo-Christian values and belief in a post-modernist neo-marxist plot to undermine the West and his weird obsession with not calling trans people by their preferred pronouns (although, yes, I understand that he will do so in his everyday life, but he refuses as a principle in public discourse to prove that he can’t be compelled by law - which, again, yes, I partially agree is an encroachment on the freedom of language). And his deeply ingrained sexism that manifests in his theories about the nature of the essential God-energy of the universe being masculine, and the over-valuation of anything masculine, and the under-valuation of anything feminine. And on. Three good videos from ContraPoints regarding this stuff: the JP one, the pronoun one, and the West one.

I’ve been watching Ben Shapiro, who also refuses to use preferred trans pronouns, believing that it is the first step to the utter degradation and dissolution of… you’ve guessed it... Judeo-Christian values. Shapiro is Jewish, but JP is fairly Christian, so they like to say “Judeo-Christian values” and that way they can maintain a united front against… post-modernist neo-marxist social justice warriors. By which I think they mean black and trans people. And women.

Shrugs.

I’ve been watching more Steven Crowder, who I childishly referred to as Steven Chowder the last time I wrote about him. Crowder - whose name, if you squint, looks a bit like “Crowbar” - which coincidentally is a blunt tool that forces its way into places it doesn’t belong, causing extensive harm on the way - likes to think of himself as a comedian.

But I guess he and I must have differing opinions on what constitutes comedy, because for me it is a weapon used to skewer the powerful and reveal hidden truths that excite us and liberate us and draw us into a primal, spiritual state… and for Steven Crowbar it is a way to make fun of teenage rape-survivors so that lonely white boys will feed his ego on the Internet.

Shrugs.

Anyway, a common thread I’ve noticed running through these right-wingers’ world views is a reliance on the importance of facts and logic. “Facts don’t care about your feelings,” is Shapiro’s catchphrase. Big Daddy JP often discusses the necessity for cold facts when cutting through unwarranted compassion. And Steven Crowbar likes to purposefully anger and traumatise young college students who disagree with him and then when they start yelling at him calmly tell them that he’s not wrong, he’s telling the truth, he’s not wrong.

The thing is, there’s a huge error in thinking here. Facts and logic are not in opposition to feelings and emotions. Feelings are factual. They aren’t imaginary. They aren’t illogical. In truth we exist primarily as emotional beings at least as much as we exist as logical beings.

What they’re really talking about is different types of attention we can bring to the world. And these types of attention draw out different attributes of the world, manifest different realities.

Imagine you’re in a dark room with a torch with a very bright but narrow beam. You sweep the darkness and you see a world of glinting tusks, of trunks, of stomping feet and flaring nostrils.

Now imagine the same room but you have a lantern with a low but diffuse light that bathes the scene. You see two elephants clashing with one another.

Maybe the elephants are fighting. Or maybe they’re mating. In the diffuse light, you can see - because you have context. The narrow torch beam wouldn’t give you this, in fact without the prior context of seeing elephants in diffuse light you wouldn't have any way of knowing they were elephants. All you’d see would be unconnected individual details.

But perhaps one of the elephants has a damaged foot. Or an infected tusk. The torch beam would be very good for spotting this, because it blacks out everything around it, and focuses you on one small space. The lantern on the other hand, in this analogy, simply emits too dim a light to make out such details. You see widely with the lantern, but precisely with the torch.

Human attention is like this. We have two different modes of attention, each grounded in one of the two hemispheres of the brain. The left hemisphere pays close attention to pieces, to what it sees as discrete, mechanical parts, while the right pays broad attention to the gestalt, the overall picture. (I'm aware I'm rushing through this. Go look up Ian McGilchrist's work to see current thinking on hemisphere competition in the brain.)

We have evolved to require both. Sometimes it matters that we see the individual tusks. Sometimes the whole elephants. Sometimes we need to see the trees, sometimes the wood.

I would argue that the right-wingers I’ve been watching - and I don’t mean to imply this is a problem with right-wing thinking, but a problem with these specific people who have millions of followers on YouTube and are influencing, poisoning public discourse in large part because it gets them followers and strokes their egos - these people have placed far too high an importance on the first mode of attention, the narrow beam, to the detriment of their overall intelligence.

To the man with a hammer everything begins to look like a nail. And to the YouTuber who overuses their narrow beam of attention, the world begins to look like it is comprised of facts.

It is not - nor is it comprised primarily of feelings. This is the opposite problem, exhibited by some on the left.

In truth facts and feelings are attributes that manifest from the same reality, depending on how you approach that reality.

Facts and logic and the scientific method are great tools for navigating through life at the micro level. But they don’t come instinctively and habitually in the way that feelings and emotions do. At the macro level in fact all of us, right and left wing together, navigate via feeling and emotion far more than Shapiro et al would like to admit. We first glance at the unknown with dim lanterns to get a vague idea of what we’re dealing with - ahh, it’s two elephants in a room - and we engage the narrow torches to make adjustments or to notice details once we're situated in context.

The Shapiro/Crowbar method is I would say to shine their torches on everything they dislike - left-wing politics, fair pay for women, chosen pronouns for trans people, Black Lives Matter - to the extent that they see only mechanical pieces, and to highlight the pieces that don’t align, and to point and scream about these as if they invalidate everything their opponents say, while missing the overall picture. They point to, for example, the odd gap in logic in sexism debates - which is inevitable, because we’re feeling our way through this, we’re making halting progress - and they miss the fact that generally it’s a better world when women get paid better, have more voices higher up in hierarchies, and when black people aren’t systematically murdered by the police, and when we afford trans people respect that helps them a great deal and hinders us barely at all.

Or they enter college campuses - Steven Crowbar, I'm talking to you - shouting about the little model they have made of the world by assembling the bits they have seen in their narrow torch beams - that statistically rape is punished when it is reported, that statistically rape victims are believed when they have proof, which proof is a prerequisite of all law, otherwise how would we arbitrate anything, therefore rape culture doesn't exist - and what they fail to see is what is abundantly, startlingly clear in the dim lantern light: that they are hurting people, causing them pain, by saying this stuff. They have lost context, appropriateness; they cannot see the wood for the trees.

And one final thing. We all navigate, as I said, on the macro level with our dim lanterns more than our narrow beams. And this is true for Shapiro and his gang as well. And this means that there are no end of left-wing videos on the Internet making these guys look supremely ridiculous by pointing out all the times they themselves do not follow logic, the times they act like snowflakes, make ad hominem attacks, equivocate, talk from the gut, do all the things they hate so much when they see on the left.

Because that’s another thing with the narrow beams. We tend to be really good at shining the beams in places we want to go - at the people we hate, to “dismantle” and “destroy” them, as the YouTube argot goes - and really bad at shining them into the black scary places inside into which we fear to tread.

So that’s my jumbled analysis of right-wing YouTube. There are elements that are elucidating. Shapiro and JP and Crowbar have all said things that I found difficult, and ultimately necessary, to hear. But too often they fail to use their unquestionably bright torches on themselves, and in that darkness inside them I sense monsters growing.

Day 220: Wires

‘Ello. I’ve been writing and reading and watching and thinking a lot today, about Steven Crowder and Ben Shapiro and Dave Rubin, about their lord and saviour Dr Professor Sir Daddy Jordan Peterson… about the alt-right, about the difficulties in holding together a worthwhile yet highly complex system (our fairly liberal democracy) versus the ease in which said highly complex system can be undermined by those seeking simply to destroy (harder to keep many spinning plates in the air and keep the plate spinners focused and fed and happy than to run around tickling under armpits). I’ve been thinking about the kinds of attention we bring to things, and how they, the kinds of attention, actually manifest different realities - or rather manifest inherently different aspects of perhaps the same reality. I’ve been thinking about logic, and the limits of logic, and how often we use logic to justify gut feelings - on abortion, trans rights, hot button topics - that we often come to initially from a level far below logic. How logic can at times be a perspicacious tool to cut through our prejudices, and at others simply a way of reinforcing prejudice, depending how we wield the tool, whether we turn it on ourselves, or use it only to dismantle our adversaries, and keep a strange blind spot for our own assumptions, à la Steven Crowder.

So I’ve been thinking about a lot, but it’s all rough and nebulous at the moment, so I won’t talk about it anymore today.

I’ve also been introducing Mike to The Wire, which show is, quelle surprise, one of my favourites of all time. Watching early episodes back I’m again thrilled by the complex clockwork world David Simon et al have created, a world of hierarchies and structures, of police departments and judicial systems and newspapers and political networks, and of the parallel and often times more brutal, often more direct, equally as valid organisations of the streets.

But also how this is not a cold, mechanical world Simon has constructed. Talking of types of attention and ways of manifesting reality - there’s an essential humanity to The Wire, an inherent compassion, used to populate these opposing structures with real people, with characters who, from the most minor to the most major, from the lowliest corner boy “sucking on a 40, yelling ‘5-0’” to the highest police commissioner, are all imbued with genuine life. Simon sees people. He has a keen eye for order and arrangement and framework, and it is often this that gives the show its dizzying verisimilitude, but underpinning this ordering of discrete information is a deep and profound well of empathy, of understanding, of love. The Wire, as Simon has often stated, is a Greek tragedy of the modern American city - and it can only be such because he cares so much.

If you have not yet watched it I would urge you to do so. Easy-going? No. But over the course of its five seasons I unquestionably became a deeper, wiser, better person. Get to it.

……

OK. Music. Let’s go with… Love, by Lana Del Ray. I’ve never sought Lana Del Ray out. This came on on Spotify playlist, and I found myself digging it. Her voice is really sensuous, no? Voluptuous, even. It’s like drowning in a tempestuous ocean of 80% cocoa fairtrade dark chocolate. Silken and sunless and purring with an edge of danger. I likes.

Day 218: Fish soup

An unfortunate upshot of my recent blogging about YouTube was the discovery of the videos of Steven Crowder. In case you don't know, and I hope you don't, Crowder is a staunchly right-wing YouTube personality and ex-Fox News presenter who has risen to prominence through his vociferous video put downs of liberals, social justice warriors, cucks, whatever those people call anyone on the left. Videos titled “Crowder dismantles two idiot feminists!!!” - that kind of thing.

Yeah.

The videos that brought him to my attention were his series Change My Mind, where he rocks up at college campuses, sets up tables displaying inflammatory statements such as “Rape Culture is a Myth” or "There are only two genders", and then asks passers-by to “change his mind.”

The purpose of the videos is ostensibly to open debate, to allow for freeform conversations between people of differing views, and to see whether any common ground can be reached.

I say ostensibly, because it’s all a ruse. In fact Crowder - whose name, by the way, is only one letter away from Chowder, which, incidentally, is a dish I find to be pungent, distasteful, yet inherently lacking in substance - has no intention of having his mind changed, and nor is there a likelihood of that happening. He prepares and researches extensively before showing up, makes himself certain of the beats surrounding his axiomatic premise - such as that murder is wrong, therefore abortion is wrong - memorises all of the common arguments against this premise, along with rebuttals to them, finds data to support his positions - preps himself as much as possible, and then unleashes himself, as an experienced presenter familiar with performing in front of large crowds, upon stuttering and nervous college kids who haven’t yet fully developed their opinions.

The point of the videos is to assert his dominance, to make liberals look inherently foolish and illogical, and to entertain his army of obsequious fans. An army, by the way, that, despite Chowder at least paying lip service to civility, drown his videos in comments of the most repugnant bile, an endless, utterly boring stream of invective; transphobic, homophobic, racist, just really shitty stuff. Chowder I think would claim to not speak for these people, while refusing to denounce them, saying they go too far but their anger at left-wing idiocy is warranted. I don’t know, I don’t want to put words in his mouth. That’s the impression I get.

But back to the videos themselves. There is actually plenty to give you pause for thought. Chowder is bright, he has thought a lot about his positions, you have to get up early, and be lightning fast, to go up against him. He makes a few points that made me see the fallacies in my own arguments.

Which is fine. I genuinely appreciate having my beliefs tested. Opposing views hammer against the hulls of your beliefs, and either the beliefs weather the blows, in which case you have renewed faith in them, or they become punctured by too many holes, let in too much water, and then you get to let them sink and go find a bigger boat.

I don’t have a problem with having my mind changed. It can be hard, sure, to detach your beliefs from your ego, from your sense of self, but it is one of the best lessons you can be taught. Be open to it. Let whatever is old and illogical die and fall away, and whatever is useful develop and grow. Opinions evolve. This is not weakness. It is life.

Thing is, I don’t get the impression Chowder is much into this. For us socialist lefties? Sure. For himself? Not so much. He has his ulterior motive, and when this is in danger, when he's not getting the results he wants, I've seen him steer the conversation back to entrapping his victims, or even to saying he's getting nowhere with them and forcing them to leave.

His stunts with Change My Mind feel like… what? Like a semi-pro boxer setting up a ring on the high street and goading members of the public to come in with him as a way to get some exercise, and then beating the shit out of them. Is he a good boxer? Not particularly. Is he better than someone off the street who’s had no training and doesn’t know how to move their feet and hasn't even stretched today? Of course.

For the show to be what it purports Chowder should announce to the campus that he’s coming, what it is he’s going to be talking about, and what his premise will be, thus affording his opponents the same ability to research and construct arguments that he affords himself. To not do that is cowardly, and cheapens the entire show.

What's worse, Chowder frequently confuses the fact that he's allowed to say whatever he wants with the question of whether he should. Does he have the right to go onto a campus and loudly proclaim to women, many of whom admit to him that they themselves have been raped, that there's no such thing as rape culture? Yes, he has that right. Is it an appallingly cruel move? For sure. He frequently mocks the idea of being "triggered", yet either he doesn't understand how post-traumatic stress works - in which case he's a fool - or he doesn't care that his arguments are literally harming people afresh, making them re-experience their trauma as if it was happening right then - in which case he's the worst human being imaginable.

There’s so much more I want to say. I’ll say it another time.

For now: music. Let’s go with… Transgender Dysphoria Blues by Against Me! 

"Your tells are so obvious,
Shoulders too broad for a girl.
It keeps you reminded,
Helps you remember where you come from.

You want them to notice,
The ragged ends of your summer dress.
You want them to see you
Like they see every other girl.
They just see a faggot.
They'll hold their breath not to catch the sick."

Laura Jane Grace's pained anthem is everything punk rock should be. Soulful, scrappy, righteous, tearing itself apart with fury. The best refutation to the miserly small-minded thinking of alt-right Youtubers that I can imagine, argued not with bar charts and secondary school logic, but with the primal immediacy of music itself - an immediacy that dives below intellect and touches us on a level far more profound than that linear re-presentation of reality can comprehend. Music isn't an after-the-fact attempt to measure reality, like intellect; music is reality. 

What does this reality say? Fuck you, Steven Chowder, you stinky fish soup cunt. That's what.