20 Questions

From Townhall.com, a challenge: 20 questions that liberals can't answer. What they actually mean is "20 questions liberals can answer but I'm going to plug my ears and not listen, or pick at little things and use that as a red herring to avoid the discussion," thus rendering any "debate" with these people little more productive than masturbation (but nowhere near as enjoyable). Since I have a bit of a masochistic streak and I enjoy beating on the strawmen army they pony up, I figured I would take a little swing at this garbage and see if maybe I can't clear the stink.

So, let's take a look at these 20 questions I'm not supposed to be able to answer.

Council of Omnisicent Vagueness

Anthem, Chapter 1

So, we're still in chapter 1 of Anthem. Previously, I took a look at the character names - our protagonist, Equality 7-2521, refers to himself using the first person plural, "we", because at some point in the future people have lost all identity and individuality - never mind that Equality 7-2521 has a distinctive and individual name from his love interest, Liberty 5-3000. This has a very real literary purpose, but the mere fact that Equality 7-2521 has a separate name/number from Liberty 5-3000 suggests that they are separate individuals with distinctive personalities and therefore, have individuality. That they have individuality shoots Rand's message in the foot right out of the gate; they're not supposed to have individuality. This is a society without individuality, or one that suppresses individuality (by giving you individual names...). That's why they don't use the first person pronoun. Clearly, the book is contradictory on this when you think about it hard enough, but contradictory self-defeating logic are hardly unusual for Rand's philosophy.

I feel it necessary to state that again that it's necessary to have these distinctive names; otherwise, this would be a headache to read. "Now who the hell is this guy again?" We do it enough in books where the characters have separate names and personalities; attempting something like this would make the book unreadable (okay, okay, fine. Even more unreadable). I also feel it necessary to point out the fact that it's necessary for our protagonist to have a distinctive name shows that individuality is a human trait that, no matter how hard "collectivism" tries, will never go away. There's no amount of psychosurgery that could make that go away. To make that go away, you have to remove sentience, and therefore, you're no longer human. In fact, I remember playing (running, actually) a game called Alternity. Alternity is a game system; it has an attached setting called Star*Drive, which is a hard-ish ("hard" compared to Star Wars, "hard-ish" compared to Star Trek, and mushy soft when compared to Orion's Arm) science fiction space opera setting. One of the playable alien species in the game was a race of extremely humanoid rubber forehead aliens called the Aleerian. The Aleerian are actually born with integrated nanotechnology; it's an interesting concept, but you don't have to be an alien for that. Eclipse Phase does this with humans, who are born in exowombs. The Aleerian, however, are all wired into one another, and they willingly subdue their own personality for the greater whole of the species - in short, their hat was a theme park version of communism, manifest in alien cyborgs. They used names like what Rand uses, but they still retained a degree of individuality despite it; an Aleerian (or, because humans are bullies and creative, the Mechalus) did not have to totally submit their individuality (because, frankly, that'd make for a really boring species to play). Thus, names like Deidre-3201 and Gamma-34214, your "typical" Mechalus name, aren't unusual. There's the idea that they submit themselves to the whole willingly, but at the same time, they still have that degree of individuality present. Rand likely didn't want that degree of individuality there, nor did she want the idea that this was done willingly, since that undermines her message: collectivism does not eradicate individuality. Furthemore, the Mechalus are  fictional "aliens" with this as their hat, while these are supposed to be humans in Rand's book.

This is the problem with writing anvillious allegories. I walk a fine line when I write allegories, and I try not to let it get in the way of the story. Here in Anthem, the allegory is the story. Thus, little things like this can blow the narrative wide open, like an over-inflated car tire, and send the whole book screaming off the edge of a cliff 300 feet up in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

So, it's easily enough said, "well, that does it for this book. When your key conceit does a bellyflop instead of a swan dive and misses the pool by about six yards, it's time to call it a day."Alas, where's the fun in that?

So, let's continue learning a bit about Rand's world, and see what other problems we can find!

Oh... Now This is an Interesting Post

While running through the backlog of articles over at H+ (archive panic! I haven't been over there in a month or two, so there's a huge amount for me to sift through), I ran across this very interesting and this very relevant article.

John Galt is Homeless.

And I bet that selfish bastard expects us to take care of him, too...

Names the Same

(Anthem, chapter 1)

Last time, I sat analyzed Rand's foreword and took a close look at the environment that Rand grew up. Those types of literary theory - historical and deconstruction - are good for analyzing and attempting to understand why Rand is where she is, and how she got there. I should say that I'm just as vulnerable to the whole "death of the author" thing as the next person is, but I'll try to stay impartial (pfft. Like we know that's going to happen). I'll try to keep with the historical and deconstructive methods of analysis - unlike how the term is used, I'll really be using deconstruction, but this won't be a deconstruction proper since I'll be using other literary analysis methods, too.

So anyway, having analyzed Rand's foreword, we now hold our nose and plunge headfirst into the novel proper. I promise you that it's not as heavy-handed as Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, but that's like saying, oh, I dunno, that the sun isn't as hot as AB7. While both are clearly hot, there's a bit of a disparity between the degrees of hot that we're talking here.

So, let's get started.

Understanding Anthem

It's been a while since I've done a philosophy post, so I think it's long over due. So today, I'm going to do what seems to be the thing that all the cool kids in the blogosphere are doing: take a look at a book.

Back when I was doing my student teaching, I had the cruel irony of getting stuck with an English teacher who, that year, was going to use Anthem as a teaching tool. Now, for those of you who don't know the kind of person I am, I'm an open socialist. I'm a techosocialist; a progressive in the purest form who sits in the very far bottom left hand corner on the four-point politics chart. By contrast, Objectivism and Ayn Rand sit on the diametric opposite of me - in the far upper right hand corner of the chart. I'm afraid I probably wasn't as impartial as I could've been, but I was teaching an ideology that was not only totally alien to me, but also anathema to everything I stand for. Think about a life-long NRA member trying to impartially teach about why we need to make guns illegal and you're getting close.

But, I swallowed my ideology for the sake of the students (and prayed to god - I wasn't an atheist at the time - that none of them adopted it as their own personal philosophy). This actually had the unforeseen benefit of allowing me to get to know Rand's "philosophy" in depth, and it gave me the foundation that I stand on today in order to criticize her beliefs. Unlike most everyone who criticizes Rand on the internet, I actually studied Objectivism. I know all the ways in which it really fails.

Also, for those who know me personally, this won't come as a shock: to kick the unit off, I let the students play Bioshock, and we studied Ryan's speech, and if I had the chance to do the lesson again, we'd look at the different ways in which Objectivism failed in that game. That's right. This Bioshock:

They were seniors, by the way. So I wasn't letting my 7th graders bash splicer skulls in. I did mention I had difficulty staying unbiased, right? (It begs the question as to how I would introduce the students to socialism is I was teaching, say, Sinclair. I'm not sure, but not with Bioshock 2. I'm not a very good teacher.)

The book that we studied was Anthem. Anthem was also the first book that Rand wrote, and it was also the first book by her that I ever read. It was also the last book by her I read, too - Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are somewhere in my house, acting as doorstops. I started Fountainhead but I never finished it; we watched the movie and, surprise surprise, it was every bit as boring as the book was (and the female lead... gawd. There was something wrong with her. She had some sort of personality disorder). But Anthem has the upshot of being short (I know. A Rand book that's short) and being not being as blunt about her ideology. And by that, I mean rather than stamping it into your forehead with a 2 ton truck die, it "merely" brands it on a baseball bat and beats you with it.

Going Gandalf

I read an interesting article today Times. Apparently, there's so muttering of the wealthy and rich planning to go on strike (yes, yes. Bear with me. It is every bit as ridiculous and stupid as it sounds). In certain communities, it's called "Going Galt," after the designated hero in Rand's novel, Atlas Shrugged. Now, I have my own opinions on Rand's work - being a socialist and all - that put me on the diametric opposite end of the scale. I've even taken a look at Rand's work before and dissected it, taking it apart, figuring out what made it tick (nothing) and then putting it back together again in a way that made much more sense.

So naturally, I felt the need to comment on this article as well.

A Look At Modern Libertarianism

I've mentioned before Libertarianism is racist. I wasn't kidding, and that wasn't snark. American libertarianism is all about White Male privilege expressing itself and justifying itself through the presence of the Free Market. If there's nothing to make sure that the corporations are playing fair, and regulate them, then who gets trampled on? The poor. And no, you can't just sue them - you can't see someone if you're fucking dead. And your family can't sue them if they're poor and can't afford multimillion dollar hot-shot lawyer to take on a corporation run justice system - what did you expect, a public justice system? That's a vehicle for the government.

Like most other Right-wingers, Libertarians are all over the "I got mine, fuck you" mentality. In addition, they're all over the whole "government for me but not for thee" business; after all, they have to get to work somehow, and they certainly aren't using private roads to do it.

Society is geared towards a certain group of people. That's what privilege is, and that's how it works. Now, privilege is formed of interlocking gears and wheels; one person might have White male privilege without having Christian or wealth privileges, or cis-gendered straight privileges. It generally sets itself up as a tiered system; at the very top you have White straight cis-gendered wealthy Christian males, and it takes itself apart from there. Libertarianism is geared towards protecting this White, straight, cis-gendered wealthy Christian male privilege. After all, if there's no government to lift up people who are disadvantaged by the system, then these White, straight, cis-gendered wealthy Christian males (WSCWCM?) don't have to worry about sharing their social privilege - or, rather, the privilege that society awards them. If there's no entity to try to equalize the playing field and make sure that nobody is starting at a serious disadvantage, then the only people who benefit from it are WSCWCM.

And that's before we get into corporations and such, and how they exploit everyone. Modern libertarianism is just a tool expressed by those who want to exploit.

And if you need a look into that mindset, just take a stroll through the comment thread over on Ashley Miller's blog. She asks the question "Why does anyone like Ron Paul?"

I'll admit that Ron Paul is like the stopped clock of modern politics. He's done a handful of things that I agree with - not because he's Ron Paul, but because I'm a liberal social libertarian myself (in the class sense; I believe that the government should level the playing field for everyone so that nobody is starting this race blind with two broken legs, while things like the "War on Drugs" are a waste of money). However, like a stopped clock, he's wrong most of the time, but we're not talking the "five-o'-clock somewhere" wrong; we're talking incredibly, egregiously wrong.

Like his supporters, more than a fair share of whom are misogynistic gasbags, asshole racists, and generally blind to the faults of their "messiah." It's popular to mock libertarianism as a religion, but I think there may be more than just a fair share of truth to that. It's certainly one of the weirder economic cults.

I have no respect for most modern libertarians, or modern libertarianism. I view them with the same disdain I direct towards anti-vaxxers and creationists, or towards birfers, or 9/11 trufers.

Answering Ayn Rand

Well kiddos, today is Saturday, which means that ol' Enigma has another college-level dissertation lined up for you. Today's bull's-eye is painted in bright red around an ideology that everyone loves to mock - including yours truly - but not one I'm sure everyone understands.

That's right - today I'll be answering Ayn Rand, and criticizing and deconstructing her philosophy, called Objectivism. Objectivism and Rand's philosophy are sorely misunderstood on the Internet. Everyone loves to mock the Randroids, but not everyone understands what it means to be one. While I've savored taking apart fundamentalism in the past, religious fundamentalism - especially the American Protestant Evangelical version - is not nearly as well thought out or planned as Rand's is.

Make no mistake. Rand's philosophy sits squarely with the rest of the Enlightened philosophies, which is why I chose to answer her today. Rather than the usual Enlightenment verses Romanticism theme or Enlightenment verses Postmodernism, today you get a ringside seat to Enlightenment verses Enlightenment.

Pardon Me While My Anti-Americanism Shows

There's something deliciously comical about the whole debt-ceiling debacle. It's like watching a puppet master who's two sizes smaller than the puppet he's controlling hold an entire nation at gunpoint by putting  gun to his own head.

This is what happens when you perpetuate lies. This is what happens when you abandon anything remotely resembling reason to a small and vocal ~20-25% of the population who better serve society locked away in an mental asylum than electing leaders. Somehow, this small, 20-25% of the population managed to get their hands in situation far, far larger than anything they could ever wrap their childish, n00bish heads around. Boehner has somehow become the adult, and he's trying corral a group of smug, self-righteous children who believe that they're right and are utterly impervious to little things like "truth" and "reality."

Militantly anti-Cheese

While I have yet to read the article in full, this article from the Guardian about Michael Grove's calling the teacher's unions in Great Britain militant resonates with me. I'm not British, I'm American, but I'm always interested in seeing what's happening in other countries around the world. After all, no man is an island unto himself, no matter how hard Howard Roark bitches otherwise or how desperate Galt is to remove himself from society. The same is true for countries as well - humans form a loose super-organism; the net of humanity is interwoven. What affects one of us will affect all of us.

I'm not going to comment on the article; I'm just going to comment on the overview of it. I come from a very strong union city, and I'm very pro-union. If that surprises you, slap yourself. You're reading the wrong blog. Unions are a basic embodiment of this thing called "solidarity" - that is, we're never stronger than when we're together, and that net of humanity, the great human super-organism, is never stronger than when it's united in solidarity. When you take care of your neighbor, you take care of yourself. History is full of class-antagonism; the poor have been continually exploited by the rich and the wealth, and unions are just one way that we can twist the system in our favor. After all, there's a lot more of us on the low end than there are of them on the high end; enough to tip the scales in our favor.

But this post isn't really about the unions. The heart of what I want to talk about is that word: militant.

Apparently, Mr. Gove has been taking lessons from the Right here in America. As a politician, they select their words carefully, and "militant" is one of those words that get used whenever you want to apply a negative connotation to something: militant gun-nuts, militant Christians, militant Pro-Lifers - see how easy that is? Unfortunately, like all polispeak, the actual meaning of the word itself is lost to the political connotation it carries. A "militant" is a person who takes up arms and actually fights for something. The definition itself is very neutral, which is as it should be. But the connotation is not, and there's a reason why Mr. Gove, like so many right-wingers here in the United States, chose that word to describe the teachers' unions for walking out: he's backed in a corner, and he's attempting to appeal to populism. This word gets used a lot by the political right: militant gay-rights activists, militant abortionists, militant liberals, militant this, militant that; anything I disagree with becomes "militant", because it's a thought terminating cliche that carries a few metric yottagrams of negative connotation along with it. It's like "patriotism" and "freedom" - they way they use the words in almost everything they do, you'd think they were compensating. But they aren't - what they're doing is a psychological defense mechanism called "projection" - they're the militants - militantly anti-union, militantly anti-choice, militantly anti-freedom, anti-poor, anti-human - but because they can't bring themselves to admit that, they paint their opposition with the term to make themselves feel better. "We're not militants," they say, "it's those other people who are militants."

Of course, I'm probably giving them too much credit. Their leaders and puppet masters are certainly thinking like this; they've got their base wrapped around their finger if they're insane enough. But it's the appeal to authority and the use of thought terminating cliches that keep their base from thinking at all: whenever you encounter someone claiming that the unions are "militant", or anyone is "militant", ask them "militant in what way?" Odds are, they're just parroting a claim and they'll try and dodge the question, like good puppets do.