Tuesday, November 21, 2023

Levers of Control

Control can be external and internal.  Some prefer confinement to freedom while some react badly to any restriction, but freedom is an abstract concept that doesn't translate into a concrete way to live. To many, freedom represents a liberation from control, but freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose. Like happiness, freedom is a fleeting sunbeam that touches us and is gone.  It is not a permanent state of being.  

 A murderer, abuser, or exploiter might justify his behaviour by convincing himself he is above the constraints of normal society, but his freedom to act outside the law results in damage to another person.  Some people like to have the church and state decide things for them, to tell them what to believe and how to behave.  In military service there is strong evidence for this.  Some are comfortable in the armed services and some are not. Many discover when they leave the services that they are without direction and that they were less anxious when they had someone organizing their lives. Being organized and logical is among the set of human survival skills, but some people need help putting and keeping their lives in order so are more comfortable when the rules of duty and behaviour are imposed on them.  

Orders from above bring us into the religious sphere because the same principles of control apply there.  Those of a spiritual inclination prefer a God who explains the world to them and tells them what to believe and how to behave.  Without the guiding hand of religious morality, they are at a loss and flounder from one 'ism' and excess to another until they find the control they need. Religion has always been a crutch that people use to prop themselves up with, a mantra for deflecting the void of free will.  

Most people don't understand how controlled they are.  Cultural norms are a form of control, as the passive aggressive statement of "We always do it this way," is a tool for keeping members of a society within bounds. Belonging to a group is more comfortable than being ostracised by them.  Mutual cooperation means survival, so villages, towns, cities, and nations have existential reasons for maintaining law and order.  If an individual decides to act of his own free will in a way that damages the community, he is not welcome as part of the herd and puts his own survival at risk. Being pushed out to the margins of a society is the price a free thinker pays.  His society and culture would prefer he accept the imposed control even if it is against his nature. He is confident enough in his own world to go against the trend.  He may have once been a religious person who realized there was no destructive lightning bolt when he said aloud he didn't believe in God.  He may have learned that putting his nose to a daily, soul-destroying grindstone, did him more harm than good.   There were positive ways to live that didn't involve the more crushing forms of societal control.

Control is not only a political position but is essential in our emotional and psychological lives.  Everyone knows, in a relationship there is often someone who loves more, or someone who is easygoing and someone who is more demonstrative. In any pairing, there is one of the partners who prefers to have control and one who is willing to acquiesce. Many would deny this about themselves, though would grudgingly admit that living with another person requires accommodations on both sides.  Some will hold their ground on certain territories while recognizing that compromise is necessary to keep the couple in balance. Bargaining begins. "I will give this but not that."

If a man is abusive toward his wife, why except for kids, would she stay with him?  Often it is because she has a strong desire to please a man, perhaps a substitute for her father whose attention was never enough.  Her need and willingness to be controlled can be stronger than her own safety.  A man doesn't want his partner to be a doormat but neither does he want to continually fight. If two people who are together feel they each need to control identical aspects of their lives their relationship is doomed. Only a  sensible preference-based division of control can make a workable partnership.  If both parties are free spirits, the stars may move in the heavens but the cohabiting connection will ultimately be lost.

In most marriage-like relationships, when one partner is happy about something, the other one is as well.  If the two are in love they want the best for each other.  When one partner acquiesces to the other's wishes it is because they want to see the other happy.  People who are truly in love will sacrifice themselves for each other.  In the dynamics of these negotiations, control is the main element.  From a distance, a partnership can appear to be a perfect balance of power but there is always a nuanced interplay of dominance and surrender below the surface.  Dominant and acquiescent dances are all about control, with rules and benefits that are needed for it to be acceptable to both sides.   

I've never enjoyed wedding ceremonies because I feel like a witness to a conclusion, when for the happy couple it is only the start.  I don't want to know how the movie ends as more than likely it will be sad.  Sometimes by accident, we stumble across a person who instinctively knows how to navigate the byways of power and control in us and they become permanent parts of our lives. Rousseau wrote that "Man is born free but everywhere he is in chains." This has been misconstrued as a war-cry for freedom but it is not Rousseau's complete idea.  In "The Social Contract" he argues that our societal chains must take precedence over individual freedoms.  He supposes that we have to accept restrictions until the needs of society are met, which may be never.  Control is part of the social contract we have agreed to, whether it is religious, military, or cultural.  These days it is almost impossible to survive totally isolated from so-called civilization. Some people can live inside the confines with a minimum of control while others need all aspects of it to help them function. An office-working, church-going parent is less threatening to society than an atheist free-lance outsider with ideas of revolution. By examining the unifying laws of the social contract, it is easier to understand and accept the levers of control.  A parent who disciplines a child might say "It's for your own good," and though as a child we detest these admonishing chains, we grow to realize they are necessary. There is such a thing as the common good, where the majority of society's needs are met, but it requires small sacrificial surrenders control from each of its components.

Sunday, October 15, 2023

Here's Looking At You Kid - Artificial Intelligence

    Artificial intelligence is being touted as the next existential threat to mankind.  The press jumps on doomsday scenarios to grab our attention, but this is old news.  "The end is nigh" goes back at least as far as a predicted biblical apocalypse, and has always been a big seller on the religious circuit.  The alarm is not any more or less worrying now that it was in Jesus's time.
    Artificial Intelligence as we know it, is a way of mimicking thinking that is based on data collection.  Data has no life of its own, but is a collection of things known or assumed as facts. Communal data was probably first assembled by tax collectors, and that information was used to decide how much citizens should be taxed.  The pharaoh was less interested in how many people were in his kingdom than in how much money they could bring him.
    We are in the infancy of learning how human intelligence works, how it is created, nourished, augmented, diminished, passed on, damaged, and diverted. This is in line with how little we know about our bodies. Why do some people get diseases and others not?  Do we know how much is nature and how much is nurture?  In their prescriptions for health, doctors have followed assumptions that are based on perceived communal knowledge, which turns out to be wrong as much as it is right. Using leeches to draw out bad blood, drilling holes in skulls to relieve headaches, or administering shock therapy to disrupt anomalous behavioural patterns, are treatments that have all but been abandoned.  Their foundational data was limited and selective, or those who collected and interpreted it, had motives to skew the conclusions.  Back then we were mostly ignorant of the body's processes, but though we may boast about our advances, we have still not come far down the road. We can talk about nerves, synapses, and electrical impulses, but who really knows how a memory, a signal, or an image, is transferred through material that is like the goopy white of an egg?
    Compared to the capacity of the brain, our present technology doesn't have the resources to store and compute the amount of memory and experience that exists in a single human body.  A computer and a brain can both process information, but most humans are better than computers in some ways and worse in others.  While it might take a computer a long time to calculate the galaxy of options and possibilities of a single body movement, a human can do it in a split second and does so countless times every day. Apart from a storage capacity problem, the collecting methods and processing parameters for data would leave room for human bias in the heart of the machine.  Like computers, people decide things based on what they know and what they have learned, but humans are endowed with the wildcard of emotion.  A computer can't be angry, sad, or happy.  Human decisions are made using not only data and experience, but every other tool in the homo sapiens kit, much of which a computer doesn't have access to. 
    A computer can learn that there is a threat to its resources and take evasive action, but this is no more intelligent than a car giving a warning signal when it is low on fuel.  There is no emotion on the part of the car.  In "2001 A Space Odyssey", the computer Hal objects to being unplugged and disabled.  In the story he can do nothing but threaten.  This is a reassuring scenario but Arthur Clarke could also have made Hal kill the human who wants to unplug him.  Hal has already managed kill the crew and send the second astronaut off into space. In the film there is a tiny but gigantic leap Hal can't make - the ability to see into a human's brain to guess its motives and planned actions.  He only discovered the plot against him by reading lips. Artificial intelligence will be dangerous to humans when computers are able to look inside our brains and know what we are thinking.  This is a bridge we should never cross. If Hal had been able to read minds, he would never have allowed parts of his brain to be disconnected. A computer can make guesses about us, recommend shopping choices based on what we have shown interest in, but it will never understand entirely why a person buys a certain jacket beyond attributes like colour, comfort, and price.  Algorithms can't know that the jacket reminds the potential buyer of a similar one they once had, or be like the jacket of an admired friend, or conform to the image of themselves they have created in their own mind. Some shopping apps let buyers virtually try on garments but this is no different than playing with dress-up cutout dolls. It lacks the psychological and emotional input for what we ultimately choose. 
    Artificial intelligence can do many good things for humans, but its information gathering skills can also be abused. Like a knife it can be used for good or bad. With the arrival of surrealism, television, and computers, people became more attuned to the difference between reality and artificiality.  Dramas as artificial creations, the news is supposedlyreal, though using the surrealist argument, whatever we see on our screens is an image and is not the real thing. A century ago Rene Magritte made the point with his painting of a pipe, whose title is "The Treachery of Images."
    Nobody believes they are seeing the real world when they look through virtual reality glasses, but if we destroy our planet and are unable to venture outdoors except with cameras and drones, we will lose touch with reality.  We will be comfortable in this second hand world being fed images that are easy to manipulate.  We won't be able to smell the poisonous air through a drone image or taste the bitter wind.  These nightmares aside, we should only be alarmed when artificial intelligence takes a step away from the artificial and tries to get inside the human brain. 
    We need to be on the lookout for what until now have only been science fiction scenarios where computers can download the contents of our brains.  In the film Total Recall, based on a story called "We Can Remember It For You," citizens can have false memories implanted in their brains, which creates the idea of having been somewhere or done something. Clients wake up believing they have lived through their wildest fantasies with no risk to their physical bodies.  We are easily lulled into thinking the next great product will revolutionize our lives and give meaning to our pointless existence, but in our rush to fill that void, we don't always think through the implications and possible eventual abuses.  Our technological advances are amazing achievements, but we need guardrails on how technologies are used.
    When cloning became possible, it was seen as a potential threat to existence, and it caused UNESCO and the WHO to ban human cloning. Some may believe this moratorium is holding up potential research, but many science fiction works have warned us about the unexpected implications of the wholesale production of organs.  We don't yet know all of the fields that AI can be turned loose in and its power is growing exponentially, but we need to listen to the voices that remind us of mankind's worst tendencies and how easily ambition and the lure of profit, can sweep aside common sense.


Monday, July 24, 2023

Untruth In Advertising

In looking for a name to call untruth in advertising I arrived at the word "disinformation", which by itself is indecipherable. Examples are the best way to illustrate these advertising tricks.  Whatever is being sold, whether it is cars, snacks, sunglasses or kids vitamins, might start off with a line like,  "Next time you take the family out on a road trip...." which assumes many things that may not necessarily be true.  The marketer targets his statistics-proven audience by assuming that they are married, have children, live in the suburbs, and have disposable income.  Often it is difficult to understand at the beginning of these ads what the item being sold is going to be, but it doesn't matter because the same marketing techniques work for everything.  The "take the family on a drive" slogan leaves out single people, inner city dwellers, bus riders, the unemployed and the poor.  It insinuates that a person is not 'normal' if he doesn't have or doesn't want the latest car, massive television, or display of holiday selfies. This exclusion creates a mass of unsatisfied people, who are chasing after a dream that has been created by a marketing team.  It is an open secret that advertising works by creating its own markets.  The billion dollar perfume industry has prospered by using this concept. The consumer is not being sold the actual bottle of scent, but the image of someone who is a Hugo Boss man or a Chanel wearer.  What chance does an ugly duckling from Cincinnati have?  She buys the perfume and deludes herself with Instagram duck-face filtered photos that she has the glamourous life of a Parisian model.  It all starts with the first lie about who people are and what they want.  Like the claim that we in the West live in democracies that are approved by the majority of the people, the narrative being sold is a lie.  If voting is only done by 60% of the population and those votes are split into parties, governing rights can be claimed by those who have the majority of the voters, but are not the majority of the population.  Democracy ends up being governance by minority. 

Watching a commercial for Volkswagen, I saw a type of bullying advertising that made my blood boil.  We see a man in front of his house retrieving the morning paper and as he does so, he sees "your'" new Volkswagen in the driveway next door.  The newspaper is already a clue that undermines the man's credibility.  Having a newspaper delivered to his door every morning is a signal that says 'old school'.  Newspapers are a waste of paper.  An up-to-date man would check the news on his phone.  Clearly this man is not in sync with the times.   A female voice that is sure of itself, even a little righteous, says, "Your neighbour (meaning the man with the paper) thinks Volkswagens are expensive to maintain."   Next we see him in his kitchen pouring lumpy milk into his coffee.  We wonder why he would do this and we are meant to think he is too stupid to tell the difference between good and bad.  The man appears to be single.  Why hasn't his wife checked the milk as he seems to be inept at doing so.   The false reality of a single incapable unshaven man in a slightly messy house, is designed to undermine whatever the man thinks.  Volkswagen is a progressive company so they'll accept single men even though they are clearly faulty.  Maybe he is married but he is an early riser, we'll give him the benefit of the doubt.  The female sales voice says, "He also thinks the milk is perfectly fine so maybe don't listen to him." This implies that anyone who thinks a Volkswagen is expensive, is a dolt who doesn't care if he poisons himself with sour milk.  It is a type of groupthink that was used by the Nazis to make people believe that if they didn't think like the rest of the group, a group who had already been brain-washed and conditioned by the state, that they were crazy and misguided dissenters.  The Nazis put them in concentration camps, the Russians in insane asylums.  

It is a fact that some cars are more expensive than others.  Nobody would dispute that a Ferrari is costly to buy and maintain.  A Volkswagen is not a Ferrari but it is not a bottom of the range vehicle.  The company is not denying the car is expensive and lets itself off the hook by having 'your neighbour' as just one stupid person, but it skates close to the edge of semantic hair splitting, which in this case could be construed as lying. Compared to some cars, Volkswagens are expensive.  They are good cars, but they cost more than many other brands, and rightly so because they are well made.  But to imply that anyone who thinks a Volkswagen is expensive overall must be ignorant, misguided, or insane, is a technique that is as old as propaganda. Unfortunately, there is a world of weak-minded, easy-answer, gullible, and brainwashed consumers out there, who will be intimidated by the company's insinuation that they too could be sour milk drinkers.  It is impossible and undemocratic to outlaw double-speak since diplomacy is based on it, but the psychological games used in marketing should be taught in grade school. A degree of critical thinking can save a lot of  heartbreak and disillusionment later in life but the companies trying to sell products would prefer that the underpinnings of their seamless lies are not visible.

In a more crass and equally dangerous arena, politicians are often straightforward liars.  They will say things like "Under this leader the country is on the road to ruin," when the opposite is true. Some people believe what politicians say, since they must be upstanding enough to get elected and sworn into office, but telling the truth is not something politicians promise to do. Either side is capable of the one-note propaganda which tells lies not only by omission but as bald-faced untruths.  Being caught in an outright lie should be grounds for shame and censure, but in the political world the ability to lie without blinking is considered an asset rather than an impediment.  We have become so used to untruths being told by advertisers and our governments that pundits consider we are living in an age of 'post-truth' which I can only take to mean an age invented reality.  This disconnect with objective facts has the effect of isolating people in their own magic bubbles where everything they chose to believe is true, while what they chose not to believe is a lie. A society that drifts too far into the distortion of provable facts, creates a disunited, bickering population that is easy to control.  That is the objective. 

Sunday, May 28, 2023

Chasing The High

    America's inner cities are dying from a drug overdose. City centres that were once the backbone of commerce were abandoned as the suburbs expanded and industry moved away.  These urban wastelands have become home to legions of modern-day zombies.  Some of these neglected downtown areas were already known as hangouts for the drunk, addicted, and homeless, but since fentanyl hit the streets in 2005, the population of vacant humans has spread like an uncontrolled infection.  This is the American dream come home to roost.  
    Unique in the world, America's Declaration of Independence in 1776, included not only the right to life and liberty, but the right to the pursuit of happiness.  It also stated that all men are created equal, but this was in an age when "all men" didn't include women, blacks, or men without property.  The phrase about the pursuit of happiness was meant as a right that certain men should have to enjoy their property in safety, security, and happiness.  It was never intended as a guarantee of happiness for the entire population, which is how many in the last century have rigidly interpreted it. When people believe their government owes them happiness, they are disappointed when this doesn't turn out to be true, and believe that their government has betrayed them. How often have we heard Americans protesting that something is their right as citizens, as if the accident of their birthplace has given them special status among humans?  The Bill of Rights says in so many words that Americans have been endowed with these rights by the Creator.  Dragging the name of God into the rights of man obscures the fact that man is only allowed rights that are assigned to him by his master, whether that be his government, his employer, or his peers.   It is apparently not a human right to kill his fellow man unless his government declares the opposite and sends him to war.
    The expectation of certain things by a population inevitably leads to disappointment.  To lessen the disillusionment when things don't go as planned, Americans have come to expect that there will be immediate easy remedies, and if there are not, it must be someone's fault.  In the early rampantly capitalism of infant America, snake oil salesmen promised a cure for every ailment and so the pharmaceutical industry was born.  Feeling unhappy?  Drink this.   Feeling depressed? Take a pill.  Feeling hopeless?  We will show you God.  America has never stopped chasing the high of a promised land that never was. When politicians shout about Making America Great Again, they are selling a dream that was never a reality.   There have always been holes in the dream.  The dream is only conceded to those with money, property, and the willingness to exploit others.
Schizophrenic America can have a presidential campaign that thunders on about Saying No To Drugs, while the main street of every small town has a neon arrow pointing to glossy storefront pharmacy and that spells out in huge letters,the word Drugs.  Schizophrenia is the policy.  Take drugs, don't take drugs.  Maybe just take the ones that are socially acceptable like alcohol or others that the doctor prescribes but don't take the ones that mother says are bad.  
    Those who are disappointed with their lives are encouraged to seek remedies outside themselves because they can't find answers elsewhere.  Some turn to religion, some to all-consuming phobias, from obsessive cleaning to hoarding, hoping to block the emptiness of their existence. Many of these lost souls have reason to be untethered.  Their religion and state have let them down, and the drugs aren't a permanent fix.  Unfortunately, many are not brave or intelligent enough to understand the origins and objectives of their governments or religions, and mistakenly believe that these institutions should be responsible for their well-being.  
    There is another problem with the slide into drug consumption to keep the disappointment and unhappiness at bay.  Once a person is prescribed certain medicines, there is a fear on the part of the drug taker, that if they give them up they will relapse and might be unhappy, something that is unacceptable in Thomas Jefferson's Bill of Rights.  If a doctor prescribes medicine for high blood pressure it is understood that this medication needs to be taken for life.  There is not a doctor alive who will advise a patient to stop their hypertension medication.   Patients are led to assume that if they stop their meds they will die, and doctors don't contradict this notion.  "Of course you can stop," they say, "but it's your funeral."  Antidepressant medications are much the same.  A doctor might go so far as to suggest that a patient could taper off antidepressants, but the reluctance this time lies with the patient.  Will I go crazy again if I stop?  Many are unwilling to take that chance.  Drug companies would prefer that once we are on medication, we are on it for life.  That way their profits are certain.
    America is chasing its own tail.  Drugs are needed to survive the emptiness of existence, but the drugs, and the attempt to use them to find nirvana is an empty solution.  Not all turn to drugs, as some go overboard with fitness, religion, games, and a thousand other distractions, rarely getting at the root of the problem. A man can be a shining example of health and fitness and have a spiritual and emotional life that is as desolate as a burned-out inner city.  Adrenaline can temporarily satisfy us, but like many drugs it requires more to get the same effect.  
    It has been said that the constant search for a high is a hedge against boredom, or maybe proof that we are alive in a restricted society.   The only solution, the way off of this treadmill of chasing a high that never was, is to take aim at the pillars of society that keep every citizen in a mortal struggle for survival.  There are enough resources in America to pay everyone a generous living wage, but that does not suit the higher powers as they are afraid it will rob them of their control over the desperate masses who will kill each other to get the best place in the machinery. Churches are not as focused on a man's spiritual health as they are in swelling the numbers in their congregation.  More members bring more money.   With so much emptiness in their lives and with no vision of how to make things better, the perpetual search for a quick fix to make things better is as American as apple pie and just as unhealthy.  It will not be a surprise when future nations without the same poisonous baggage come along to supersede mythical but flawed America.

Tuesday, March 28, 2023

Two Heads Are Better Than One

 There is no doubt Albert Einstein had a wife and a secretary to remind him to take his heart medication. He had enough going on with the Theory of Relativity and studying Gravitational Waves to tend to the necessities that kept him alive long enough to accomplish what his remarkable brain was capable of producing. All of us at some point could use a helpmate, a partner, a waiter, a cleaner, a social secretary, a bureaucracy cutter, an extra pair of hands, and an extra mind.  If one mind is overwhelmed by the pressures of the world, it is beneficial to have another mind to pick up the slack, as backup, power in reserve.  A second mind can keep us on track, call for reason or calm, but can also incite us to action.  Those who ignore the input of others are destined to become isolated dictators who rule over silenced populations, kings of the wasteland.  The collective knowledge of our fellow men can keep us from making catastrophic mistakes.  It is worth our while to listen.  

Folk wisdom suggests that men are bad listeners and that may be true.  They tend to be single-minded about things and don't always consider all sides.  Maybe that is why many women are not fast shoppers.  There is a time for consideration and a time to act.  Prolonged deliberation promotes frustration and in that state people often make rash and harmful choices.  In our decision-making, all voices, whether they are individuals, companies, or governments, are not equal.  We tend to pay more attention to what has helped us in the past, but this can lead to stagnation, with the helpers wishing to  perpetuate the status quo so they can maintain their position as valued advisors.

Every individual has the potential to bring an unknown universe to another's doorstep. We learn from each other and if we don't we are doomed.  We learn that we can teach one another, defend and protect one another, and if we listen, we will understand that we have basic human desires in common.  There are differences in the way each goes about fulfilling his needs. Individual cultures permit certain things that are forbidden in others, but if we can see beyond these, and not go to war over the details, we can all benefit from the relationship.  

If a scientist has a brilliant idea and shares it with his colleagues, the idea can take wing, but if it goes no farther than him, it risks dying in his own mind. Collaboration and cooperation are the best ways to complete many tasks.  None of the great civilizations would have been built without these pillars, but as high-flying as these pillars seem, they are constructed through the act of one man communicating with another.   The state apparatus of these influential civilizations may have been questionable, based as it still is on versions of slavery, but with reluctant cooperation, advances were and can be made.   Many lives were sacrificed to pull the majority of the world population out of starvation.  There is backsliding and there are leaps forward, but as MLK said, "The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice."  With good will and correct action we can steer ourselves in the right direction, but we need to listen to each other to understand the varied colours of the arc and to accept them as being as valid as our own. In silence, ignorance, and rigidity, lies misery.

Like minds can inspire each other to step up to new heights.  Van Gogh and Gauguin entangled their universes and bounced off each other, both coming away altered by the experience.  Each had his own style and palette. They weren't trying to be better than one another, but to show each other what they could do.  It wasn't a competition, a sport that pushes a man beyond what he believes are his physical limits, requiring a winner and a loser, but a game of comparative virtuosity.  The goal was not to win, but to strive to be better, to run faster than before, jump longer and higher, to try for a personal best. 

We don't understand all there is to know about the chemistry of human encounters.   When we see other humans from a distance, we exchange non-verbal signals as they get closer to us, hoping for a non-violent outcome of our impending encounter. When we are a short distance from each other we try to read body language, faces, and intent.  Even closer we might exchange words and odours.  If we don't know the person there may be eye contact and there may be a greeting as we pass. If we do know the person or are intentionally meeting them, there is often some form of physical connection, a handshake, a hug, or even a kiss.  It's in this physical contact, like animals touching noses, or circling nose to tail, that we exchange molecules, perhaps bacteria or viruses, but a physical exchange happens. If we pick up a virus from the other person, something that might not require contact but simply closeness, our well-being can change.  We can bring death to one another.  In every human interaction there is the possibility of gain or pain.  Van Gogh experienced the anguished side of the equation when he cut off his ear after Gauguin abandoned his idea of a community of artists.  Two can be stronger than one, they can stand back to back against the slings and arrows, but they can also destroy each other.Yet someone who opts to be solitary, risks floating off into the clouds like a hallucinating saint with no church to anchor them. 

The common wisdom is that it takes a village to raise a child, but I believe it takes a different type of village to raise an adult.  We never stop learning, and are always touched by the lives we encounter, whether we want to be or not. John Donne understood this when he wrote that "No man is an island entire of itself."  Since we are connected by our common humanity we must learn to give more space to the ideas of others, to listen to considered advice, to remember our history, embrace our divinity, and to act for good when action is necessary.   Separation, isolation, and entrenchment, lead to wars, but communication, tolerance, and understanding, can bring peace.  If we are able to put aside our egos and listen to others, we can arrive at solutions neither of us would have come to alone.  This is not a stand-off compromise, agreeing that one plus one will always equal one plus one, but that one plus one can equal two, lifting both parties to a better and stronger state.  The unity of two heads, two minds, and two hearts, is always better than one head alone in the wilderness.

The message here is a love letter; a thanks and appreciation for all of the souls who touched me, who shared their lives with me, who gave me their sparks of genius and their diseases.  Many are lost but not forgotten, and I treasure all of those communicators who tapped me on the shoulder, and said "Pay attention to me." 






Thursday, February 09, 2023

Russia's Nightmare

 "At least we have a roof over our heads."  In rural Russia, where the ceilings of temporary housing disintegrate overhead, and the earth reabsorbs the inadequate building foundations, it is a small but misguided comfort.  There is no money to fix things and the collective apparatus has broken down, so everyone struggles to get by.  It's the best that can be hoped under the circumstances.  Anyone with aspirations has gone to the city.  The people of the land who have scratched out a living for generations, first as serfs to landowners, then on collective farms, are now cut adrift in the middle of nowhere.  The infrastructure that supplies them is rotting and the government hopes these last outposts will disappear when the roof really does fall in.   

When the communists took power in Russia, small landholders were forced into the collective farming system, but when that collapsed it left individuals to whom private property was prohibited, with nothing.  These people were initially robbed of their land, made into slaves of the collective, then thrown out the door when the state collapsed on its imperfect foundations.  There is a generational sadness in the eyes of men and women whose dreams have been reduced to ashes.  Like the rest of the world, they were wrenched from the age of God-sanctioned monarchs by the Godless carnage of the war.   While the west retired to lick its wounds and rebuild, Lenin decided to experiment on Russia by translating Marx's thoughts into single party communism that had nothing to do with democracy.  Lincoln's definition of democracy was "by the people, for the people", but the Russians were only allowed half the cake.  Their government relieved them of the "by the people" burden on the grounds that ignorant people didn't know what was best for them.  Until they are re-educated, they can't be trusted with the responsibility of self governance.  Under another guise, small landholders again became serfs working under a master's whip.  If they didn't carry their weight in the collective they were punished, not with the Tsar's riding crop, but by peer pressure and accusations about sabotaging the entire motherland.  The world would never know the glory of collectivism unless everyone stayed in line. If they stumbled they were traitors to the noble cause. 

Rather than give an opinion on why the communist experiment went wrong, perhaps the best idea is to illustrate one of the many mistakes made by the planners of this new society.  The Russian government wanted to change the way people lived.  Workers shouldn't be at the mercy of capitalist bosses, have their wages reduced or be fired from their jobs by greedy corporate barons.  In a communist brave new world they would be provided with essentials to live a dignified life, including an all-important roof over their heads.  In cities like St. Petersburg, where there had  been a massive influx of the poor in search of work, the government of the day confiscated noble houses and partitioned them into accommodation for families.  When the communists took over, they declared that a person only required 9 square meters to live comfortably.  A few years later this was reduced to 5 square meters, which allowed people to rent a corner of a room.  When there was no more space in converted palatial residences, the government began to construct communal apartments.  They were late in doing so and were desperate to prevent a catastrophic housing crisis, so the buildings were thrown up quickly and as cheaply as possible. Usually these communal blocks were built in newly created satellite villages on the outskirts of cities but they were poorly served by public transit.  Nobody except a bureaucrat had a car.  

On Lenin's orders, the accommodations were to be organized on collective principles.  Each family had its own room, or two if the family was large enough, but the hallway, kitchen, and bathroom belonged to nobody.   Although these common areas should have technically been everyone's responsibility, they were considered nobody's, so if one resident made a mess, nobody should clean up after them.  Notes were posted to remind the delinquent residents that keeping their space clean was their duty to the state, and if they failed to do so, would be reprimanded at the next compulsory tenants meeting.  There were schedules and rules to be sure, but these were for kitchen or bathroom use so everyone wasn't underfoot at the same time, but queues still formed.  Though each family had its own cooker, or as little as a burner on a cooker, there were not enough sinks to go round so dishwashing times had to be staggered.  In the few bathrooms of no-man's land, everyone brought their own toilet paper and their own toilet seat.   The shotgun central hallways in these residences were lined with wardrobes, suitcases, bicycles, and crumbling boxes.  Electricity cables looped across the ceiling. Locks were not allowed on doors.  After all, everyone was part of one happy communist family.  Why would anyone steal from a comrade who was just as badly off as him?  Lenin's objective was to "unite different social groups in one physical space," but it was an idea that seriously underestimated human self-interest.  A doctor who works long hours, with life and death responsibilities, is not going to live comfortably with a drunk who is determined not to work and disrupts the entire group with his brawling and fighting.  Neither one or the other is better off for the experience.   Communism only works for the committed, and there has always been and always will be those who do not agree with the government of the day.

I was a child in the 1950's who grew up in a small frontier town in Canada.  We didn't lack anything, had parents who worked full time, and had a mortgage on our large comfortable house.  There was never any expectation of paying it off. That would only happen years later when all the us children had grown up and moved away.  Two working parents allowed us to have a car and the borrowing power to replace the wood fired heating in the house with a gas furnace that would run as long as we could afford the fuel.  Our childhood friends all lived in the same circumstances and we presumed everyone did.  Very few children lived in apartments.  There were sprawling suburbs for those who didn't want to live in the inner city.  If a family's budget didn't stretch to a house purchase, there were always houses to rent. 

If I compare this to a child growing up in Russia in the 1950's, who lived at the same latitude as me, our lives were very different.  We had neighbours but we did not all live together. Everyone had their own free-standing house on at least a fifty foot private lot, with a front and back garden. If we didn't like our neigbourhood we could move to another one, or to another city.  The government hardly kept track of us except to keep our address current, and we were permitted to live anywhere in the country we wished.  In a wide open and new country like Canada, this gave its citizens a sense of limitless possibilities.  I presumed my Russian brothers lived the same way, but at that age I had little knowledge of how hemmed in and controlled they were.  Russia had the same open spaces and possibilities, but its citizens were not encouraged to be individuals, to rebel, and go exploring the country or the world for themselves.  They had a duty to the motherland that was more important than frivolous voyages of self discovery.

I recently heard an interview with a young woman who had grown up in Yugoslavia.  The Russian ally Tito had been in charge of keeping the country united, but  by the 1960's the cracks were showing.  The young woman's parents had grown up in a society that wholeheartedly subscribed to the Russian version of communism.  Up to that time, the national factions in Yugoslavia had been at each other's throats in centuries-old tribal bickering.  The newly unified country was happy to wear its young socialist identical uniforms and do its part for the glorious nation that would show the world what miracles a communist society could perform.  Things didn't go as planned, and Yugoslavia was marginalized on the world stage.  Years of rote propaganda couldn't hold up an economy that was based more on hope than reality.  When Tito died and Yugoslavia separated into its original tribal units, the parents of the young woman were devastated.  The more European their country became the more they realized they had been made to live and believe in an experiment that was based on a faulty interpretation of Marx, and that they had suffered and sacrificed for nothing.

Although political and economic movements like communism profess to serve the common good, scratch any human being and one will find some self interest.  Everything can't be for the state.  Although it is admirable for a man to  contribute to the community that supports him, he is more than that. He is an individual, and to take that essential state of existence away from him is to do violence to his psyche.  

In the 1950's, European countries and large cities in America also threw up faceless housing for the post war population boom, and most of these buildings were quickly and cheaply constructed, but outside the Soviet Union, families weren't expected to live all together by sets of strict rules and believe the propaganda about sacrifices for the motherland.  Outside Russia, many of these housing projects became slums because they were not owned by the residents but by the government so they were not maintained.  These attempts at social housing using the Russian model failed spectacularly.  In capitalist America the government had better luck subsidizing the construction of individual residences because that's how people preferred to live.

 Half of my family origins are English / Scottish, so because of their immigration, I knew from a very young age that travelling was as easy as buying a ticket and getting on a boat or a plane.  It never entered my mind that this was unusual and that citizens of some countries, those designated a communist, were not allowed the same privileges.  Why would a country lock its citizens behind a wall?   

When I was a young man I drove and hitchhiked through much of Europe, often meeting like-minded souls from other countries, mostly European ones, but also American and Australian.  We had little money and weren't allowed to work in foreign countries, but we had saved money from jobs we had quit when he left home.  We were free spirits who were able and allowed to go wherever we wanted.  I never met a Russian doing the same thing, but then neither did I meet anyone Chinese - if they weren't American Chinese.  China was in the middle of a revolution.  I never met a black from Africa hitchhiking around Europe, though I did meet Arabs from North Africa who had the same urge to explore as I did.  American men were few on the ground because of the Vietnam war, but Russians were nowhere to be seen. I met a professor from Czechoslovakia in the Prague Spring of 1968 who had found his way out for a few days and was on a culture-absorbing rampage through as much of Europe as possible before the iron curtain came down again.

Russians of my postwar generation had already grown up with parents who accepted communism as an everyday fact.  Spiritual life was not allowed unless it was underground, because religion was the opiate of the masses and those who believed in God were victims of a cult of superstition.  Atheism was the official doctrine of the party.  If there ever was a country that needed to provide an opiate for its long-suffering and deluded workers, something to allow them to escape the monotony of their predestined future, it was Russia.   Instead, many Russians tried to forget their grey lives by drowning themselves in cheap vodka.  Besides hockey, drinking was the national sport.  Western society offered every kind of decadent temptation although Westerners knew that the best of these things were available only to the rich.  But they also knew that with good judgement, luck, and hard work, they could become wealthy and have the stuff of their dreams as well, not something that was an option in Russia.  

In poor countries, often the only way to get ahead is by trickery, by cheating, and not playing by the rules.  If a man lets another steal something that is not bolted down before he does, then he is a fool.  The wise man is not the one who listens to his scruples and conscience.  He will go hungry, but the better man is he who got there first to claim the illicit prize.  This moral stance erodes all trust.  When people see the agents of government indulging in corruption, they understand that there are no rules, and that dishonesty wins the day.  It's worrying to think about several generations of Russian people growing up like this, people who do not play straight, who will lie and cheat to get what they want because they have been brutalized and used like lab rats by their governments, and have lost all hope or aspirations for the future.  Having a roof over their head is as much as they can expect.  Instead of dreaming about being head comrade in some state-supported disintegrating factory, they would probably rather be cruising the Mediterranean on a luxury yacht with a bottle of vodka in one hand and a prostitute in the other, doing every decadent thing their government has denied them.  If they or their fathers had been allowed to flirt with these impossible dreams all along, they would have learned how shallow such aspirations are, but it's hard for a man to think deeply about his actions, to question his morals, when every trace of the higher human spirit has been erased from his soul by a failed experiment.

In my view there is still time for Russia to rise from its ashes, learn from her mistakes, and build a truly socialist state that does not strip away personal initiative and allows free movement of its people.  The country has the resources to re-invent itself, but in this century has done nothing but resist the dubious charms of the West and try to resurrect its long lost empire, without offering its people workable solutions for modern life. There is no reason except pigheadedness why Russia doesn't look at her Scandinavian neighbours who have high levels of social satisfaction, and try to save the crumbling motherland  from another bloody revolution, though perhaps things have gone too far by now for reason to prevail.

Saturday, January 21, 2023

Post Paradigm

The digital revolution has decimated print media and network television and changed the way we receive information. These days a wise man would be foolish to limit his input to one editor's opinion, to squeeze his information-gathering and entertainment into a time slot dictated by a television executive. The ten o'clock news has fallen by the side of the road along with tree-gobbling newspapers and the dial telephone.  Citizens can record the day's events on mobile phones and post them on the net faster than media empires can move their monstrous behinds. Though the traditional news media have deep archives for context and experts to offer sophisticated analysis, they don't broadcast the news itself, but an ongoing aftermath of opinion, a sort of journalistic masturbation.  Meanwhile the tom-tom drum of worldwide events is available on the screen of a small device that a Saharan camel herder or a Tajikistani nomad has access to.   An African migrant on a rubber dinghy in the Mediterranean has a cellphone.

Visual entertainment media is a sector that has grown steadily since the invention of moving pictures.  In a sense, it has been around since men painted on the walls of caves to tell hunting stories.  And thanks to our hunting and survival skills, the moving image has a visceral effect on our attention.  It draws us in like a cobra.  There is a place to contemplate the image of a man on a cross, but big media tempts us with a compelling and lazier way to get the message, by telling the story with heroic characters blazing across a screen.  Media conglomerates have the resources to raise production values far beyond the capabilities of an individual with a mobile phone, so it is more satisfying to watch the big boys.  Unfortunately, the nuances of the lessons are scrubbed away in the process.  Entertainment spectacles encourage us to sit back and take it in, no effort required.  All the work has been done.  Watch, don't think. While we're watching we're offered a special deal on reclining chairs that will allow us to lose the excess weight caused by our sugar addiction and inactivity. Moving visual media fascinates us, whether it is the latest streaming blockbuster, a collection of funny videos, black and white wartime footage, a classic movie, or shakey mobile clips from the streets when revolutions take place.  

More information is available to more people more of the time than ever before, which has caused a leap forward in our understanding of each other. We can see a person in the Siberian countryside preparing vegetable stew, or another in Tokyo making rice cakes.  This low-level information exchange helps us realize that we are not so different from each other no matter what our governments and its media would like us to believe.  

These days, if an alien landed in Africa, the event would be on social media within minutes. When the traditional news outlets pick up the story they will speculate about what it means, but the news of aliens without the analysis would be enough to turn many of our neat scientific theories on their heads.  We know things within minutes of them taking place, and everyone can know them.  Governments may block internet sites but that is as futile as trying to stop the tides.  Information and images leak through barriers in spite of efforts to destroy the evidence.  People have eyes and memories. 

Although the technological revolution has changed the way we see the world, there is also a risk of being plunged back into a new dark age as I described in a previous essay called Book Burning.  We hope that this doomsday scenario never happens as we give thanks to digital mobility and the strides it helps us make in knowing each other on an individual level.  Travel broadens the mind, but when we are not allowed or able to move, we can instantly connect to see how each other live and die in our simple profound universes.  We still need businesses to provide the infrastructure for communication, the smart-phone manufacturers and satellite launchers, but the platform providers who host content should have no political axes to grind.  Currying favour has always been the lifeblood of traditional news peddlers. The freedom of information that the world wide net offers, has ripped the shabby cloak away from the man who would be king, and shown him to be a money-grubbing petty dictator who will sell out to the highest bidder. Give me a phone and a walk through a favourite city, or sit down in a Greek mountain taverna, listen to an interview with a rebel from a previous generation, see a cartoon to make me laugh and remind me how human I am, or watch a refresher on how to fix a bicycle tire, and I can dial the roar of media hysteria back to its proper level. 

Apart from the phone's original function as a connective device that has upended perception, it has also wormed its way into so many aspects of our lives it has become another appendage. Phone books don't exist anymore.  There was once an industry of data collection, printing, delivering, and recycling that has come to a halt.  I no longer have an address book - everything is on a phone and backed up online. I don't need a timer to know when the laundry is finished or an alarm to wake me up.  If I want to make a note of anything my phone is always at hand.  I don't need reference books like encyclopedias, or any books for that matter.  I read my news from a variety of sources without consuming a single tree.   I don't need a bus schedule, plane, or train times as I can follow transport on a digital tracker.  I can take photos and show them to my friends or to the whole world. I can monitor my heartbeat or the intake and burning of calories.  I do my banking online and purchase goods that are delivered to my door. I can translate from Korean to French, check medical results, identify pieces of music, and so much more. The magic in a pocket that digital media offers is a science fiction dream, but for those who cling to the traditional, the beeps, alarms, and ringtones of personal devices are an electronic death knell. The old guard can't accept what history teaches, that once the genie is out of the lamp, he can't be stuffed back in.

The bad news is that we didn't know when we let the genie out of his bottle that he would have a flea in his ear.  Now that flea has grown a million-fold and become an infestation of individual users who believe that their ignorance has the same value as knowledge.  The algorithms that are programmed into hosting sites cater to individual users by suggesting content that is similar to the user's viewing choices, so will show only that to the viewer and leave aside the larger picture.  This has created a society of individual insects without the sophisticated organizational skills of a honeybee, who are more like wasps who will attack and dismember each other. They have no group-massage instinct toward the greater good, only their individual survival.  The Internet brings a unique and beneficial connectivity to our hive, but we must be on guard against the deadly wasps in their single poisonous nests.  

Monday, January 02, 2023

The Unreconstructed Man

"Good day folks.  I've been sent here to keep you entertained for as long as I can keep it up and you can stand it.  That might sound suggestive to you, but as we know, everything boils down to money and sex.  I've got no money so I'll stick to what I know. 

"You down in front, the guy with white hair and jeans.  Have you heard of sex?  Yes?  Nod twice for yes, otherwise I'll think you're falling asleep. 

"And you, the young lady with the toothpaste smile?  Yes?  Does your daddy know that you know? Oh, that's not him with you?  Sorry man.  Her uncle?  You're her uncle?  Well this is awkward.  Before we all end up in family court, I suppose I should tell you why I ask about sex.

"Sex is something everyone should have, but finding the right person to do it with is as easy as solving a Rubik's cube.  Of course there are rare Casanovas who can solve the thing in four seconds but what fun is that?

"Sex should be easier than a twisting plastic cube, but it seems the further along we get in time, the more complicated the puzzle gets.  Sex used to have only two sides but now there are at least as many as there are in a cube.  Until LGBTQ+ came along there was only MF, and I don't mean motherfucker.

"In the middle of the 20th century, feminists were loud in their insistence that women should have a voice, and I think you'd agree this is correct. As the women's movement gained traction, men stopped asking "What's a woman doing at the head of a successful company?" If a man had a brain cell that wasn't dominated by testosterone, he might see that would be as stupid as asking why a redheaded man made it to the top of the ladder.  As women gained status and power, role models popped up, women as heads of state, as astronauts, university chancellors, referees, jockeys, soccer and hockey players, and soldiers.  We're still waiting on the lady General who will lock up the boy's war toys until he learns how to use them responsibly. 

"Women have found their feet. With their emotional intelligence, multi-tasking skills, and sense of continuity and community, they have the ability to keep things in perspective, to see the bigger picture, unless someone has stolen their parking space, and then the verbal guns come out.

"In the 20th century, while the role of women changed from wife and homemaker to tax-paying member of society, a reconstruction of the male took place.  There was the Manchurian Candidate, a film about brainwashing, and a decade after that, The Six Million Dollar man, with its "We can rebuild him," tagline.  Women and men were both going through changes, but women seemed to know where they were going and men only heard that they should be 'bigger, stronger, and faster' as well as modifying their social behaviour to respect the opposite sex. For a lot of men this was like stepping on the gas and the brake at the same time.  Some men went shooting forward but others crept slowly forward making a lot of noise and smoke, but many men stayed where they were, spinning their wheels until their motors internally hemorrhaged. Those are the unreconstructed types.

"Enlightened women have taught their brothers, sons, and lovers to walk side by side with them or even a step behind, never in front. When a woman wants something, she expects her partner to be there to provide it, to protect her, to back her up when she needs support, and to carry at least half the weight of the household.  Men have been taught that they should hold doors open for women, that it is alright to push baby carriages, buy tampons, and tell her sweet lies about her body.  A man should also put the toilet seat back down when he has finished pissing all round the bowl.  Reconstructed men accept this role because if they want a balanced rapport with a woman in the 21st century, they have no choice.  Women have let men rule for millenia so it is high time men know how it feels to be at the other end of the stick.  You men out there, have you ever thought about how it feels to be asked if the reason you are cranky is because you are on your period?  You would probably snap back a hard NO, and marvel that anyone could ask you such a question. How would you feel if someone asked you if you were behaving like a bitch because you hadn't had sex in too long.  Reconstructed men have been taught not to even think it.  

"These recent changes in male behaviour have highlighted an existential dilemma for men. The modern man, the reconstructed man, with his happy wife, happy life submissiveness, has a counterpart who doesn't wish to be tamed.  This is the unreconstructed man.  This man has no restrictions on toilet seats, shopping trips, what he eats or drinks,  the people he hangs out with, or that he picks his nose.  Laugh.  I've seen you do it.

"The unreconstructed man has not been tamed or feminized and if he finds a partner, the relationship is adversarial.  This man is number one in his world.  He doesn't take his shoes off in the house and doesn't iron clothes.  He doesn't change the toilet paper, clean the sink, or put the cap back on the toothpaste.  He pretends he hasn't heard of recycling and throws his beer cans in the trash along with pizza scraps and coffee grounds.  He whistles at women from the window of his truck, and sings out dulcet phrases to them like “Hey baby I want to f*** the lips off you.”  There are many ways for this man to send the message to women that they are there for his pleasure.  This man likes his women bountiful, not skinny, unless they have big tits and then he will forgive the rest of the body.  He sees his women as sex cushions, then baby makers, then mothers who will look after his every need.  He engages in slut shaming, not seeing that his own behaviour is worse than those he criticizes.  Hands up you men who have been guilty of this.  Nobody?  Well then you're all remarkable specimens, gentlemen.  If only we could believe you.

"Unreconstructed men are xenophobic and racist because they don’t trust anyone who isn't like them. They exhibit a tribal instinct that prevents them from trusting strangers, even if they are from the next village, no matter the colour of their skin. The stranger is different, unknown, and potentially dangerous.  They're like dogs circling around each other baring their teeth. It's not a coincidence that most unreconstructed men are straight white males who had submissive mothers.  Any of you out there who had mothers who said "No damn way," to being put in her place, are the lucky ones, and will probably find a chair at the table in the next century.  The throwbacks will be left peering through the bars, fighting over scraps, too stuck in the gumboots of their forefathers to understand what they are doing wrong.  They will put on the guilty and sorry look of a dog caught shredding rubbish all over the kitchen floor.  "Did you do that?"  "Yes mum."  "Why?"  "Something just came over me." "Bad dog!"

"Unreconstructed men make inappropriate jokes, while reconstructed men don't tell jokes because all humour is at the expense of someone.  Unreconstructed men use swearing as their first choice of self expression, while reconstructed men swear only in private and try not to use religious or sexist epithets.  Unreconstructed men don't know the difference between their inside voice and their outside voice while reconstructed men often have to be told to speak up. An unreconstructed man doesn’t read instructions or ask for help, not even when his Ikea table is upside down. He uses climate destroying aerosol in the bathroom and doesn't close the door when he is on the toilet. He prefers his women barefoot, pregnant, and indoors, carrying out their gender assigned duties.

"An unreconstructed man wants sex when and how he wants it, usually at 5am when every male gets a dream boner.  His preferred position is anything dominant.  He refuses to give up his addictions but prefers that women in his orbit don't have any.  When he is ill, he thinks he is dying and never takes a basin to bed because he is not the one who will clean up afterwards. He prefers to get into a made bed but he never makes it himself.  

"The unreconstructed man is a hunter by instinct.  If he has nowhere to indulge this urge, he will play video games, often ones where he is the first  person shooter.  Pow, pow, pow. The unreconstructed man laughs at his own jokes.  He has learned the basics of computers and smartphones, and feels compelled to make comments, but he is intimidated by critics who make fun of his spelling, so when he has something to say, he expresses it in phonetic form, like "aaiiyyaaah!" or "oooffaahh!"

"Some are threatened by this refashioning of social norms because they believe that gender roles are fixed.  Anthropologists, those professional people watchers, tell us that these apparently inborn traits are not permanent and have constantly evolved to help us survive in varying climates and societies.   But even with the advances women have made in the 20th century, we still live in a patriarchal society.  If an unreconstructed man denies this fact, he should turn the tables and ask himself what a matriarchal society would look like and what would his place be in it.  In short, he will not be at the top of the totem pole or at the bottom.  Matriarchies have existed in the past and may exist again, and their resurgence would send a host of unreconstructed patriarchal Neanderthals running for cover like vampires fleeing from sunlight. There will be holdouts in the new order, throwbacks who will be recorded in history as maladapted dinosaurs.  So men, get your nurturing papers in order, because when women realize they have to take up arms to root out the last obstacles to progress, to beat the patriarchs at their own game, there will be some serious homemaking skills to be learned.  But women should also be wary because as a threatened species, unreconstructed men may go to ground and claim they are fighting for their survival, which though true, is a lost cause.  Unreconstructed men will be consigned to that crowded place, the wrong side of history, in the illustrious company of Mussolini, Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Gaddafi, and Donald Trump.

"So to any men out there who have a strong strain of the caveman in them, it's time to reconstruct yourselves so we can create a more balanced society for the next generation to inherit.  Put down the PlayStation and be a man, a real man, a he-man, a man who shoulders his share of the sky. 




Friday, December 16, 2022

What the Hell is Gay?

 Don’t get me wrong. I am a man who is proud to be gay, but I am sometimes confused about what exactly that is. Gays are a minority as they make up only about ten percent of the population.  If being gay didn't bring with it serious consequences, it would be no different from having green eyes or being left-handed.  People have an instinctive fear of the unknown, so ethnic minorities suffer racial slurs because it is impossible, nor would they want to, hide what they are. The mothers or fathers of these minorities might give them tips on how to survive in an alien culture, but unlike gays, these children never have to hide from their parents the reasons they struggle to fit in.    

It’s entirely appropriate that the rainbow flag has become a rallying symbol for LGBTQ people because there are so many hues of sexual preference that only a rainbow having a psychedelic dream could represent them. There isn't enough space here to unravel all of the colours so I will stick to what I know and explore the gay male part of the spectrum.

There has been a sea change in gay male behaviour in the new century.   When the sexual liberation of the 1960's bloomed, many men understood that along with women, they had the right to love whoever they wanted, and that society's backlash against this was outdated and prejudicial. Through the last decades of the twentieth century, being gay went from something secret and scandalous to showing itself off in gay pride marches.  As unabashed gay life opened up, men were surprised to discover how many others there were like them.  In the gay community they found that heir preferences were not a sin or something they should be ashamed of.  The more men who came out of the closet, the more they were accepted by the straight population.  Everybody knew somebody, or had a relative or a friend who was gay. 

This acceptance caused a sexual shift in the next generation.  Children grew up with the knowlege that it was okay to be gay.  If men wanted to colour their hair, wear nail polish, or call their friends bitches, it was nobody's business but theirs.  Along with this openness, the cultural arbiters and opinion makers honed in on certain aspects of gay culture they found worth exploiting.  What could be funnier than watching a man in a wig tottering around on unaccustomed high heels?  The problem with this stereotype, is that people come to believe that the comic character with a feather boa and wig, is what being gay is all about. They assume every gay man wishes to be a woman so they make them into figures of fun since everyone knows that the clown in the high heels will come to a bad end.  This misinformation has led many young men who suspected they were gay, to commit suicide.  They didn't behave like the mincing stereotype and had no desire to wear women's clothes.  Their sexual preference for men would make marriage to a woman dishonest and harmful.  There would be no children.  What they imagined their future would be, had been extinguished.  Some found no way out of this impossible situation except death. 

Rather than cry about tragic statistics, I believe that those who peddle ideas to media conglomerates, should get off the gravy train of humourous tropes and portray gay men and women as they really are. There have been attempts, but television still desperately milks the comic vein.  The connected world we inhabit today is made up of many people who don't fit the family mode of two parents of the opposite sex, with two children, living in a home in the suburbs. Fewer people than ever fit the example of what is considered the default. It is possible, if all the non-traditional family units, including single people were counted, they might outnumber the traditional ones. Roles have changed. People's lives have changed.  They no longer feel stigmatized for living by their own lights, for finding a way to survive and thrive that works for them in today's world.  As the expression goes, "I'll do me."

Gay couples are a part of the landscape because humans have a natural instinct to be partnered, though many gays prefer to stay single given the strictures of traditional fidelity.  People who are not gay don't realize that for a gay man to work in an office of only men, is like a straight man working in a office of only women. The sexual tension and temptation are difficult to deny.  Although it is not the same for all gay men, most of their interest in other men is sexual, some of which involves penetration.  This is not something straight couples ever have to consider.  Because of this, there are categories gay men have organized themselves into, that a straight man would never think about.  There is a minefield of sexual preferences to sort out at first contact.   If either party in this complex mating ritual draws a line and says "I won't do that," the connection can fail completely or the two might settle into being just friends, and in some cases, friends with benefits.  .  

There are tops. There are bottoms.  Some men are 100% tops and some are 100% bottoms.  There are tops who sometimes bottom and bottoms who sometimes top.  There are power bottoms who take control of penetration and power tops who are sexually aggressive and long lasting. There are transvestites, drag queens, and transgender individuals. There are men who behave like drag queens but don’t dress up in women’s clothes.  There are men who are gay but prefer an ultra-masculine look with facial hair instead of a smooth face, but who give themselves away as soon as they speak.  There are men who are gay but show no evidence of it in either speech, dress, or manners. There are men who will only have sex with another man if there is an emotional connection, and there are men who will have sex with anyone and anything.  There are daddies and sons, bears and cubs, masters and slaves, leather men and sissies. Although the gay community has always celebrated diversity, the general trend seems to be toward the asexual, neutral, and celibate.  It could be that this trend was the result AIDS and other STD's, causing some young men to judge it too risky to engage physically.  It was safer to connect online.  Apart from a strong eeewww factor in a snowflake generation who have never known the blood and guts of life, there is also an economic consideration for young people.  Setting up on their own when they have no experience cooking a meal or paying a bill, is daunting for them, and having children would be unthinkable when they are still children themselves.  A few generations of this cultural shift away from breeding, might get the world's spiralling population under control.   

Most scientists accept that homosexuality is caused by a combination of genetics, hormones, and some post-natal influences.  The genetic element is passed through the mother's side, and the hormonal influences take place in the womb.  Although the cake is baked by the time the child is born, there are some after birth factors such as permissiveness which can determine whether children grow into or away from their tendencies. 

The public aren't generally aware of all the conditions a child can be born with.  There are common problems that can be fixed with surgery like a cleft palate or a clubfoot, but there are others that involve organs not being fully connected, partially missing, or in the wrong place.  I once wrote a novel that had an hermaphrodite as the main character, and learned in my research that although the majority of people are born with the standard X and Y chromosomes in combination, XX for female and XY for male, there are also those who are born with XXY chromosomes, or XXXY.  Some of these combinations cause conditions that result in babies being mis-gendered by doctors, and some are said to cause psychological problems. 

Although medical science continues to study the causes of homosexuality, there is reason to worry about how the knowledge could be used.  Once a condition is fully understood, there are questions around whether its course should be altered.  Treatments might be developed to prevent serious diseases by tampering with an embryo's genetics, and before long the techniques might be applied to eye colour or other physical traits. At that point, how long would it take before there are similar alterations to eliminate homosexuality? It would be unethical to do this but the worst among us have been known to behave in unethical ways.  Given the uptick in singles and childless gay couples, scientific fixes for homosexuality are not only unethical and counterproductive.  Whatever it means to be gay, which is different for every man and woman, it would be a crime to rob humanity of the kaleidoscopic manifestations of the third sex.