Cultural Libertarian is not a new ideal but it is a new term. A term which aims to classify those who support freedom of speech and expression for all--no exceptions.
Most of us who have supported freedom of speech and expression has been doing so for years, willing to engage in debates and discussions on any topic without fear of harm. Time has shifted this approach, as we now an increasing number of people who are unable to entertain ideas without ascribing to them or to see an idea as separate from the holder of that idea. This rigidity in thinking has lead to increased polarization between people. Take, for example, gamers and the media portrayal of them: many people believe, without any evidence, that gamers are sexist, racist, and/or homophobic. That is to say, if you play a video, then you are sexist, racist, and/or homophobic.
That is, of course, nonsense. There is no evidence to date that gamers are at a higher risk to commit violence or view others as lesser because of their hobby. The polarization that takes place is nothing more than a simplification to categorize groups of people into the black-and-white world of good and evil. I play video games and have my whole life, but I am also a humanitarian and egalitarian. A gamer and a humanist? So I hate women but I also strongly support equality for women? Clearly there is a problem with the simplistic approach to labeling people on a single idea.
Allum Bokhari of Breitbart UK has written an excellent article on cultural libertarianism. A great read worth everyone's time. Central to all of this is the need for everyone to be allowed to express themselves. Equally, I would add the need for people to hear the opinions of others to expose them to new ideas and world views so that they my find challenge themselves. Greg Lukianoff of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) writes to this point very well in his book Unlearning Liberty. Hugboxes and echo chambers protect people from new information and views, which harms more than helps. Without new information people lose perspective on issues outside of the scope of knowledge, forcing them to simplify complex issues.
This is a bit of a ranty post about the topic. One of those steps one sometimes must take to better understand their own position on a matter. There is no doubt that I identify with the core set of principles which Allum has laid out in his article. What's next is expanding on those ideas in a consistent and thoughtful manner.
All of this does rely on freedom of speech. Every creative aspect of our society relies on freedom of speech. Cultural libertarians are the front line against those who demand certain topics and words be censored from discussion. We may be few currently, but our numbers are far larger than most people think. As long as censorship isn't affecting someone, they will not protest; as soon as censorship comes down on them, they will quickly fall into the mindset of a cultural libertarian.
Anyways, enough of this stream of madness. This has been an unedited rant. @nrokchi
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Monday, August 24, 2015
Post 47 -- GamerGate at SPJ AirPlay; GamerGate as an example of free speech
SPJ AirPlay and Koretzky
SPJ AirPlay was a success for conveying GamerGate's intent and story, but still had issues. Most notably was host Michael Koretzky's seeming unwillingness to not listen to the wider story which builds an understanding of GamerGate. Instead, Koretzky wanted a simple, linear story that describes why GamerGate is important and why non-gamers should care. By pruning off the vital branches of cronyism, dogmatic narratives, activist journalists, and censorship, GamerGate is left as only a stump of itself. Will do my best to speak on two things here: AirPlay and GamerGate's complex nature attempting to be explained as well as freedom of speech and GamerGate as an example of it.
What is GamerGate? Well, if you let me finish...
"We're not here to talk about feminism", Koretzky was caught saying several times during the afternoon panel. Well, in a sense, we are not; the focus ought to be on GamerGate and how to journalism should approach online controversies like it. GamerGate is unique in this way as it can be the precedent setting case--if it isn't already--for large online movements and poor media portrayal. Alas, the approach to understanding GamerGate goes further back than the Zoe Post and Gamers are Dead articles. While either of those events can be considered to be flashpoints, we must assume there had to be conditions in place which would have allowed the spark of the Zoe Post to start the inferno which followed.
Most obvious was the corruption and cronyism, both of which were at least suspected, if not known, prior to the Zoe Post. Gamers are Dead articles came out 11 days after the Zoe Post, which, at a minimum, had a curious timing. A major bombshell revelation came when Brietbart journalist Milo Yiannopolous released the GameJournoPros email list, a connected group of gaming journalists who communicated with each other. Inherently, this is not bad to be connected to other reporters or journalists from other news agencies. The issues arises when this interconnected clique is used to bully and blacklist journalists who fail to tow the line. House Whips for major legislative voting are comparable to the influence of the GameJournoPros list.
Suspicions confirmed, those who have been asking questions about the games journalism industry for years had their voices amplified. For many of those prominent voices, they were soon silenced on all major platforms of discussion on the topic of GamerGate: Reddit, The Escapist, and even 4chan banned large discussion threads in the name of "preventing harassment". The drive to censor the discourse on corruption is where my focus has been for the past year, both around GamerGate and in other topics.
It is not easy to summarize GamerGate quickly. As I mentioned, it covers corruption, cronyism, dogmatism, censorship, and activist journalism. Those elements culminated in the gaming universe into the singularity we now simply call GamerGate. Teasing apart any specific thread is nearly impossible without fraying the whole story. The most we can do is give examples to describe the issues we see, but it remains that even an single example still exists within the whole tapestry.
To a concrete example, consider the reaction by the journalists in the Gamers are Dead articles: claims that game developers are inherently misogynistic in their game crafting and claiming the desire to play such games is to express a shared misogynistic view point. This is a mix of activist journalism, dogmatism to the feminist/social justice philosophy, and cronyism. Teasing these apart is possible: activist journalism is to ignore objectivity in reporting on an issue or to willfully misinform the target audience with falsities, cherry picked facts, or information without context. By doing so, the slant of the activist-journalist can be concocted with seemingly overwhelming evidence; but how can someone be an activist-journalist? Simply by adhering dogmatically to a specific philosophy and possess a drive to maintain that philosophy. This, of course, is not unique to the gaming world, and can be seen on (almost) every major news outlet.
The dogmatism exists prior to the writing of these articles, which drives the activist-journalist to contort stories in such a way as to not break from the faith. Any precept works here, whether it is insane conspiracy theories on the moon landing fakery, religious claims of Satanic possession and ritual sacrifice, or, as with the gaming journalism issues, feminist social justice doctrine. The dogmatic share one thing in common here: ends can justify the means. The means being the willingness to slander and shame their own audiences to 'raise consciousness', 'bring awareness', or purge the hobby of the scum may be allowed as long as it follows the dogmatically held beliefs.
Keeping these people in line, however, requires more than the self-discipline of the faithful. Cronyism, and by extension collusion, are wonderfully helpful tools to prevent dissent within the larger group. GameJournoPros was such a tool, used to black list those who disagreed with the demeaning of the gamer identity or failing to push the social justice narrative. Alister Pinsof was a victim of this tactic; labeled a "problem child", Pinsof was black listed from the major gaming journalism industry. Those who ask too many questions in the inner sanctum are deemed heretics and must be dealt with accordingly, often through purging and character execution.
I hope the above example of the interconnectedness of the core points of GamerGate shows how GamerGate cannot simply be about a single topic like ethics. Now to attempt to summarize GamerGate in less than a minute...
The ethical violations which took place in gaming journalism were not simply because of unethical actors, but because of a larger culture of systematic corruption, collusion, and cronyism, all of which were predicated on the basis of a dogmatic adherence to the social justice ideals which are mirrored in modern feminism. Censorship of discussion surrounding the topics of GamerGate only served to bring greater interest. Without wide spread censorship at the problem sites' forums, all of which was justified under the guise of 'harassment prevention', which, in of itself, comes from the social justice doctrine, and enforced through collusion and cronyism, many people would not have had their interests piqued.
Let's focus on the censorship: why censor? What is gained by preventing people to speak? A favourite meme for GamerGate involves Game of Thrones' character Tyrion Lannister, regarding silencing those who you do not agree with: "When you tear out of a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say." Shrouding the censorship under the cloak of "harassment", using language such as traitor, racist or misogynist, indicates all speech to be censored comes from shameful people. Simplifying all opposition to your world view to boring, flat labels only serves to harm the discourse, which both explains why it is done and the situation which was born out of the flashpoints to GamerGate.
GamerGate is a shining example of free speech
Censorship, in this manner, is cowardly. A blatant tactic to avoid the debate on the actions taken by the would be censor is, without argument, fearful of the truth. The flight from the debate and desire to save face is what can be concluded when we see the censorial acts of labeling the opposition with emotionally loaded terms. Of interest to me is the response to censorial acts: first, for the most part, people enjoy fair and respectful spaces. I could guess most people are comfortable with discussion rules which involve restrictions such as not sharing personal information or not being unnecessarily profane (to avoid ad hominums). Few people would want debates where it is nothing by shit-slinging; second, playing off of most people's desire to have civil discussions on all topics, enforcing ambiguous and subjective community standards to prevent some people in the discussion from speaking only ever serves one side--even when there are multiple view points at the table.
In all of this, there is a recognition of people being aware of the value of free expression. Denying free expression results in a visceral reaction, which can often serve the censors' needs in continuing to silence further discourse. Why do we have such a reaction to being prevented to speak? Why is censorship so roundly thought to be harmful? For me, it seems simple, even if it requires a complex explanation: free expression is objectively moral. It serves to allow all people to express themselves as they wish without the threat of being denied who they are. Any infringement on being allowed to express who you are is immoral, and includes the policing of language, expression, and even thoughts. Someone who is unable to express themselves will become discontent. The expression of self where it may contradict with the beliefs or ideas of others is not harmful, despite the censors' justifications.
When I disagree with an idea, I am not disagreeing with who or what the holder of that idea is. The person with the idea is only sharing the idea, even if he or she wholly believes in it as core and central to their being. There is no logical link between disagreeing with an idea and being opposed to the individual as a whole. This is where the objectively moral nature of free expression can be seen with greater clarity: disagreeing with an idea is an expression of the individual. The possessor of the idea is not harmed or censored by the disagreement. If the individual is prevented from disagreeing, which is simply expressing an idea which is contrary to another idea, then the individual is harmed, a act which in immoral in this context. We do not need equally footing here to make judgements, either; a politician can hold an opinion which I disagree with, but that politician having a national platform to share his or her view does not harm me as compared to me having the reach of only the few people around me. In other words, as long as one is not being prevented from speaking--even if they cannot be heard in the moment--then there is no violation of that individual's expression.
A second layer to the morality of free expression is found in the opposition to a censor. Accepting censorship means one's willingness to accept into their minds a judge other than themselves. A second mind which knows what is and is not offensive to the them. When an enthusiast website shuts down a discussion and deletes posts to prevent harassment, those who agree with the actions accept those moderators as judges into their minds; those actors prevent you from seeing what they--not you--have deemed to be inappropriate. I could not imagine allowing someone to tell me what I will find offensive or hateful. This insult is only made worse by being prevented entirely from experiencing it. It is up to me what I will see, not others to censor information coming my way.
It has been argued before that freedom of speech is like freedom of movement: it is permissible right up until your fist meets my face. That is to say there are words out there which exist within the realm of free speech which are violent by their nature. Take the fuck, derived from the Germanic fuk meaning "to strike". This word describes an action, but when uttered as "fuck you" some people take that state as a willingness to inflict harm. The words-as-violence argument is incredibly fragile, however, and has yet to survive any debate. If someone where to speak a phrase in another language foreign to you, would you know the impact of that language? Considering you do not speak that language, I would guess not. It does not matter if the phrase used was hostile or complimentary (or both, when it comes to cat-calling, apparently). Where is the violence if you do not understand the words? Better yet, where is the violence if you do not understand the context from which known words are coming from?
We are only as tough as we allow ourselves to be. There are stoic men who remain calm and controlled when dealing with profound loss or suffering, but who express deep emotions when listing to music or watching a film. There is a choice we can make when confronted with challenging language; in fact, it is a choice we must make. We must choose to not be so easily offended and to ask questions of the speakers. Why do you hold that view? is far more disarming than the actions of any censor.
Freedom of speech is an important right for us all. It is the underpinning of most every other right we have. Core to the human experience, free speech allows us to express ourselves through our actions, passions, and words. Allowing a censors to operate is an abdication of our responsibilities and of our integrity. GamerGate found the censorial actions of journalists, editors in chief, and the sites which they operate at as suspect and harmful. It controlled the speech and created a vacuum of information, which resulted in the uncritical claims of gamers being misogynistic, sexist, harassers, and a litany of equally socially negative titles in both games media and mainstream media. SPJ's AirPlay and Michael Koretzky did a great service to GamerGate and the future of how to cover online activism. The platform for free speech provided killed the falsehood of gamers being harassers of women and replaced it with a group of iconoclastic hobbyists looking for better representation.
SPJ AirPlay was a victory for GamerGate, it was a victory for free speech, and it was a victory for ethics. GamerGate is not done, though, as there are many things that still need correcting. Hopefully with the success of AirPlay, more GamerGate's goals will be made clear to the general public and the harmful stereotype of the sexist and violent gamer can be put down for good.
A final note: I would like to personally thank Koretzky for his work in setting up AirPlay. I wrote on the event prior to it taking place, laying out my hopes for it. Koretzky did a great service to all gamers and to journalism by hosting this event, despite the many attempts to shut it down, including several bomb threats which eventually stopped the event.
Thank you Koretzky. Thank you SPJ. Thank you Milo, Ms. Young, Ms. Sommers, Mr. Ceb, Ms. Schow, Mr. Bokhari, Mr. Smart, Ms. Walsh, and Mr. LaForme. Also, and I will write something separate on this matter, a special thanks to Oliver Campbell for his leadership.
SPJ AirPlay was a success for conveying GamerGate's intent and story, but still had issues. Most notably was host Michael Koretzky's seeming unwillingness to not listen to the wider story which builds an understanding of GamerGate. Instead, Koretzky wanted a simple, linear story that describes why GamerGate is important and why non-gamers should care. By pruning off the vital branches of cronyism, dogmatic narratives, activist journalists, and censorship, GamerGate is left as only a stump of itself. Will do my best to speak on two things here: AirPlay and GamerGate's complex nature attempting to be explained as well as freedom of speech and GamerGate as an example of it.
What is GamerGate? Well, if you let me finish...
"We're not here to talk about feminism", Koretzky was caught saying several times during the afternoon panel. Well, in a sense, we are not; the focus ought to be on GamerGate and how to journalism should approach online controversies like it. GamerGate is unique in this way as it can be the precedent setting case--if it isn't already--for large online movements and poor media portrayal. Alas, the approach to understanding GamerGate goes further back than the Zoe Post and Gamers are Dead articles. While either of those events can be considered to be flashpoints, we must assume there had to be conditions in place which would have allowed the spark of the Zoe Post to start the inferno which followed.
Most obvious was the corruption and cronyism, both of which were at least suspected, if not known, prior to the Zoe Post. Gamers are Dead articles came out 11 days after the Zoe Post, which, at a minimum, had a curious timing. A major bombshell revelation came when Brietbart journalist Milo Yiannopolous released the GameJournoPros email list, a connected group of gaming journalists who communicated with each other. Inherently, this is not bad to be connected to other reporters or journalists from other news agencies. The issues arises when this interconnected clique is used to bully and blacklist journalists who fail to tow the line. House Whips for major legislative voting are comparable to the influence of the GameJournoPros list.
Suspicions confirmed, those who have been asking questions about the games journalism industry for years had their voices amplified. For many of those prominent voices, they were soon silenced on all major platforms of discussion on the topic of GamerGate: Reddit, The Escapist, and even 4chan banned large discussion threads in the name of "preventing harassment". The drive to censor the discourse on corruption is where my focus has been for the past year, both around GamerGate and in other topics.
It is not easy to summarize GamerGate quickly. As I mentioned, it covers corruption, cronyism, dogmatism, censorship, and activist journalism. Those elements culminated in the gaming universe into the singularity we now simply call GamerGate. Teasing apart any specific thread is nearly impossible without fraying the whole story. The most we can do is give examples to describe the issues we see, but it remains that even an single example still exists within the whole tapestry.
To a concrete example, consider the reaction by the journalists in the Gamers are Dead articles: claims that game developers are inherently misogynistic in their game crafting and claiming the desire to play such games is to express a shared misogynistic view point. This is a mix of activist journalism, dogmatism to the feminist/social justice philosophy, and cronyism. Teasing these apart is possible: activist journalism is to ignore objectivity in reporting on an issue or to willfully misinform the target audience with falsities, cherry picked facts, or information without context. By doing so, the slant of the activist-journalist can be concocted with seemingly overwhelming evidence; but how can someone be an activist-journalist? Simply by adhering dogmatically to a specific philosophy and possess a drive to maintain that philosophy. This, of course, is not unique to the gaming world, and can be seen on (almost) every major news outlet.
The dogmatism exists prior to the writing of these articles, which drives the activist-journalist to contort stories in such a way as to not break from the faith. Any precept works here, whether it is insane conspiracy theories on the moon landing fakery, religious claims of Satanic possession and ritual sacrifice, or, as with the gaming journalism issues, feminist social justice doctrine. The dogmatic share one thing in common here: ends can justify the means. The means being the willingness to slander and shame their own audiences to 'raise consciousness', 'bring awareness', or purge the hobby of the scum may be allowed as long as it follows the dogmatically held beliefs.
Keeping these people in line, however, requires more than the self-discipline of the faithful. Cronyism, and by extension collusion, are wonderfully helpful tools to prevent dissent within the larger group. GameJournoPros was such a tool, used to black list those who disagreed with the demeaning of the gamer identity or failing to push the social justice narrative. Alister Pinsof was a victim of this tactic; labeled a "problem child", Pinsof was black listed from the major gaming journalism industry. Those who ask too many questions in the inner sanctum are deemed heretics and must be dealt with accordingly, often through purging and character execution.
I hope the above example of the interconnectedness of the core points of GamerGate shows how GamerGate cannot simply be about a single topic like ethics. Now to attempt to summarize GamerGate in less than a minute...
The ethical violations which took place in gaming journalism were not simply because of unethical actors, but because of a larger culture of systematic corruption, collusion, and cronyism, all of which were predicated on the basis of a dogmatic adherence to the social justice ideals which are mirrored in modern feminism. Censorship of discussion surrounding the topics of GamerGate only served to bring greater interest. Without wide spread censorship at the problem sites' forums, all of which was justified under the guise of 'harassment prevention', which, in of itself, comes from the social justice doctrine, and enforced through collusion and cronyism, many people would not have had their interests piqued.
Let's focus on the censorship: why censor? What is gained by preventing people to speak? A favourite meme for GamerGate involves Game of Thrones' character Tyrion Lannister, regarding silencing those who you do not agree with: "When you tear out of a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say." Shrouding the censorship under the cloak of "harassment", using language such as traitor, racist or misogynist, indicates all speech to be censored comes from shameful people. Simplifying all opposition to your world view to boring, flat labels only serves to harm the discourse, which both explains why it is done and the situation which was born out of the flashpoints to GamerGate.
GamerGate is a shining example of free speech
Censorship, in this manner, is cowardly. A blatant tactic to avoid the debate on the actions taken by the would be censor is, without argument, fearful of the truth. The flight from the debate and desire to save face is what can be concluded when we see the censorial acts of labeling the opposition with emotionally loaded terms. Of interest to me is the response to censorial acts: first, for the most part, people enjoy fair and respectful spaces. I could guess most people are comfortable with discussion rules which involve restrictions such as not sharing personal information or not being unnecessarily profane (to avoid ad hominums). Few people would want debates where it is nothing by shit-slinging; second, playing off of most people's desire to have civil discussions on all topics, enforcing ambiguous and subjective community standards to prevent some people in the discussion from speaking only ever serves one side--even when there are multiple view points at the table.
In all of this, there is a recognition of people being aware of the value of free expression. Denying free expression results in a visceral reaction, which can often serve the censors' needs in continuing to silence further discourse. Why do we have such a reaction to being prevented to speak? Why is censorship so roundly thought to be harmful? For me, it seems simple, even if it requires a complex explanation: free expression is objectively moral. It serves to allow all people to express themselves as they wish without the threat of being denied who they are. Any infringement on being allowed to express who you are is immoral, and includes the policing of language, expression, and even thoughts. Someone who is unable to express themselves will become discontent. The expression of self where it may contradict with the beliefs or ideas of others is not harmful, despite the censors' justifications.
When I disagree with an idea, I am not disagreeing with who or what the holder of that idea is. The person with the idea is only sharing the idea, even if he or she wholly believes in it as core and central to their being. There is no logical link between disagreeing with an idea and being opposed to the individual as a whole. This is where the objectively moral nature of free expression can be seen with greater clarity: disagreeing with an idea is an expression of the individual. The possessor of the idea is not harmed or censored by the disagreement. If the individual is prevented from disagreeing, which is simply expressing an idea which is contrary to another idea, then the individual is harmed, a act which in immoral in this context. We do not need equally footing here to make judgements, either; a politician can hold an opinion which I disagree with, but that politician having a national platform to share his or her view does not harm me as compared to me having the reach of only the few people around me. In other words, as long as one is not being prevented from speaking--even if they cannot be heard in the moment--then there is no violation of that individual's expression.
A second layer to the morality of free expression is found in the opposition to a censor. Accepting censorship means one's willingness to accept into their minds a judge other than themselves. A second mind which knows what is and is not offensive to the them. When an enthusiast website shuts down a discussion and deletes posts to prevent harassment, those who agree with the actions accept those moderators as judges into their minds; those actors prevent you from seeing what they--not you--have deemed to be inappropriate. I could not imagine allowing someone to tell me what I will find offensive or hateful. This insult is only made worse by being prevented entirely from experiencing it. It is up to me what I will see, not others to censor information coming my way.
It has been argued before that freedom of speech is like freedom of movement: it is permissible right up until your fist meets my face. That is to say there are words out there which exist within the realm of free speech which are violent by their nature. Take the fuck, derived from the Germanic fuk meaning "to strike". This word describes an action, but when uttered as "fuck you" some people take that state as a willingness to inflict harm. The words-as-violence argument is incredibly fragile, however, and has yet to survive any debate. If someone where to speak a phrase in another language foreign to you, would you know the impact of that language? Considering you do not speak that language, I would guess not. It does not matter if the phrase used was hostile or complimentary (or both, when it comes to cat-calling, apparently). Where is the violence if you do not understand the words? Better yet, where is the violence if you do not understand the context from which known words are coming from?
We are only as tough as we allow ourselves to be. There are stoic men who remain calm and controlled when dealing with profound loss or suffering, but who express deep emotions when listing to music or watching a film. There is a choice we can make when confronted with challenging language; in fact, it is a choice we must make. We must choose to not be so easily offended and to ask questions of the speakers. Why do you hold that view? is far more disarming than the actions of any censor.
Freedom of speech is an important right for us all. It is the underpinning of most every other right we have. Core to the human experience, free speech allows us to express ourselves through our actions, passions, and words. Allowing a censors to operate is an abdication of our responsibilities and of our integrity. GamerGate found the censorial actions of journalists, editors in chief, and the sites which they operate at as suspect and harmful. It controlled the speech and created a vacuum of information, which resulted in the uncritical claims of gamers being misogynistic, sexist, harassers, and a litany of equally socially negative titles in both games media and mainstream media. SPJ's AirPlay and Michael Koretzky did a great service to GamerGate and the future of how to cover online activism. The platform for free speech provided killed the falsehood of gamers being harassers of women and replaced it with a group of iconoclastic hobbyists looking for better representation.
SPJ AirPlay was a victory for GamerGate, it was a victory for free speech, and it was a victory for ethics. GamerGate is not done, though, as there are many things that still need correcting. Hopefully with the success of AirPlay, more GamerGate's goals will be made clear to the general public and the harmful stereotype of the sexist and violent gamer can be put down for good.
A final note: I would like to personally thank Koretzky for his work in setting up AirPlay. I wrote on the event prior to it taking place, laying out my hopes for it. Koretzky did a great service to all gamers and to journalism by hosting this event, despite the many attempts to shut it down, including several bomb threats which eventually stopped the event.
Thank you Koretzky. Thank you SPJ. Thank you Milo, Ms. Young, Ms. Sommers, Mr. Ceb, Ms. Schow, Mr. Bokhari, Mr. Smart, Ms. Walsh, and Mr. LaForme. Also, and I will write something separate on this matter, a special thanks to Oliver Campbell for his leadership.
Monday, August 10, 2015
Post 46 -- The Bully-Victim dichotomy and Why Both Are Disliked
I was recently introduced to the essay site The Baffler. A fun, long read site that provokes us to think on big issues without the grotesque TED-X pandering and weepy guilt-trips.
The indomitable Mykeru gives a wonderful description of it here.
The modern feminist tactic is simple: bully until you get the response, twist that response to something out of proportion, claim victimhood, and re-engage in the bullying under the guise of the defensive victim. All the while, as people look on, being utterly and entirely disliked for making a bed of nails and complaining about laying on it. School yard, workplace, or Twitter, both bully and victim are equally disliked. When one entity takes on both roles, it comes as no surprise that flippancy and loathing from bystanders is the response.
This has been an unedited rant. @nrokchi
Reading through Dave Graeber's The Bully's Pulpit, I stumbled upon a well known fact within psychology circles but otherwise unknown to the rest of the public: bullies and victims are equally disliked. There is good reason for this, too. Victims are not as plentiful as some might initially think; rather, bullies groom and select the best options for targeting for abuse. A good victim is one who reacts, often disproportionately to the actions of the bully. It creates a spectacle and platform of recognition for the bully if his/her victim is one who lashes back or embarrasses themselves in an act of defense.
If the bully is ignored, he/she gets nothing from the encounter, other than some curious discomfort from onlookers. There are two strategies which can be employed here: first, finding a new target, as the attempt failed. For example, a non-style savvy bully attempts to mock the clothing choice of another only to learn his/her understanding of fashion is so limited that his target is far more in vogue than originally believed. A failed strategy is still a learning opportunity for a clever bully, though, and, like the Borg from Star Trek: The Next Generation, they will assimilate that knowledge; second, the bully engages in the long game with his/her victim, where simple, subtle jabs are made over time. The aggravation which develops in the victim comes to a head after dozen pokes, only to result in what appears to be an entirely overblown response. On lookers do not see the weeks of minor incitement taking place and building, meaning their assessment of the situation leaves both bully and victim in a state of disdain among their peers.
Here's where things get interesting in my mind: taking our bully-victim dichotomy, both of which are disliked by their peers, we can move on to another topic of my enjoyment: modern feminism. (NOTE: when I say 'modern feminist', I am specifically referring to third/fourth wave feminism.) What happens when you have a person or group taking on the role of both victim and bully? What we get is modern, online, "fainting couch" feminism. Bully tactics are employed by this group, specifically using emotional manipulation and shaming to wear down their victims. Using the language of -isms to demean, modern feminists attempt to eat away at the reputation, credibility, and respectability of their victims. Anyone who disagrees with a modern feminist will be called a sexist or misogynist by the rad fem and, as is the nature of the internet, any other rad fem who clicks on the associated hashtag.
That subtle jab of calling someone a sexist does not warrant a response. Being a called a sexist by a couple dozen rad fems does not warrant a response either. Over time, however, that one disagreement leads towards a response so disproportionate to the single statement made that the victim now fulfills the original statements made by feminist bullies--some strange version of Lewis's Law. This is not a new insight, and has been established as well as the grade school bully's tactics against the smaller kids on the playground. Where I'm taking us goes into the realm of assuming both bully and victim role.
Here's a basic example. The '-ist' taunts have been stated and the fervent response is finally made.
Modern Feminist: The wage gap is real!Here we have the victim of the unjustified taunts lashing out, having him/her acting in an entirely unlikable manner while perfectly fulfilling, in the modern feminists' minds, their taunts. After all, in North America, "cunt" is not as free of a word as it is in the United Kingdom. Now, the léger de main is performed: the modern feminist, having her taunts confirmed both by the response and the nature of the response, assumes the role of victim. By being the victim now, the modern feminist can engage in a whole new range of justified measures against his/her original target as they are no longer the bully, but are now the wronged victim.
Future victim: Analysis says otherwise: (source).
Three Modern Feminist: You're a misogynist!
Victim: (no response)
Eight Modern Feminist: You're a sexist racist!
Victim: (no response)
Fifteen Modern Feminist: You're a racist misogynist!
Victim: (no response)
One Modern Feminist: You're a woman-hating, sexist, racist, misogynist!
Victim: Fuck off you cunt!
The indomitable Mykeru gives a wonderful description of it here.
The modern feminist tactic is simple: bully until you get the response, twist that response to something out of proportion, claim victimhood, and re-engage in the bullying under the guise of the defensive victim. All the while, as people look on, being utterly and entirely disliked for making a bed of nails and complaining about laying on it. School yard, workplace, or Twitter, both bully and victim are equally disliked. When one entity takes on both roles, it comes as no surprise that flippancy and loathing from bystanders is the response.
This has been an unedited rant. @nrokchi
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Post 45 -- More on the weak petition to stop Roosh V from entering Canada on 'hate speech' grounds
Yesterday, I wrote on how the petition against Roosh V failed to meet the minimum criteria it claimed to be making: Roosh V was coming to Canada for the specific purpose of breaking the Canadian Criminal Code 319. Today I am going to add a few more quips to end the 'ridiculous' discussion around this. Claims require evidence, something Mrs. Parker-Toulson has been able to spout and but not provide, respectively.
Let's start with the first paragraph of this petition:
Roosh V is not an MRA. He does not care about the core issues of men's rights, such as suicide rates, homelessness, gender sentencing gap, right to bodily integrity, or custody fairness. My claims come with evidence, as a quick Google search came up with Roosh V's forums and his personal post 5 Reasons I am Not A Men's Rights Activist. In this rant, Roosh V derides men who adhere to the MRM, pointing out all MRA's sexual inadequacy, failure to "learn the true nature of women", and limited scope on how to improve themselves. I believe it is more than safe, but entirely reasonable, to say that Roosh V is not an MRA.
Moreover, Roosh V is a 'Pick Up Artist' (PUA). He views view women as objects of obtainment. Their resistance, in his mind, is token and easily over ridden by a few simple linguistic tricks. Roosh V's existence revolves around getting women and telling other men how to get women--absolutely nothing to do with parental rights, genital integrity, or suicide rates of men.
One final note on the SPLC. For all of its work during the American Civil Rights movement, it has been left floundering in a progressive landscape without the big targets of the 60s and 70s. As such, the SPLC has become more sensitive in seeking out new targets and less discriminate in vetting them. The systematic decline of the SPLC has resulted in it being removed as one of the FBI's hate crime partners. That should speak loudly enough, even for those not listening.
Really, I could go on, but the petition finishes as strongly as it starts. It continues to assert all MRAs are, essentially, rapists, adhering to the generalized view of women being "fundamentally inhuman". Mrs. Parker-Toulson even goes as far as to wrongfully contextualize--a feat when it comes to Roosh V's already miserable works--5 Reasons to Date a Girl with an Eating Disorder as "imploring men to sexually abuse women with mental illness".
The list of allegations goes on. Unironically, the essence of Roosh V's writings and beliefs are that women are easy to manipulate. With simple language and a bit of bravado, women will loose control of themselves and do whatever the man says. The fear Mrs. Parker-Toulson and this piddling petition is spreading echoes Roosh V: women are meek and stupid, unable to resist the charm and flawless techniques taught by Roosh V. You see, the women in Canada are stupid, credulous, and lack any agency, and we, the moral defenders of the nation, must save our gullible and aloof women from the certain threat of a man speaking to them.
Seriously, show some respect for the proud and strong women of Canada. They can handle a man attempting to hit on them. They are not scared of a man viewing them as a lesser--especially as young women are doing better in Canadian society than young men. Canadian women are tough. The groups doing the greatest disservice to Canadian women are the moral nannies and weepy feminists who value victimhood over independence.
This has been an unedited rant. @nrokchi
Let's start with the first paragraph of this petition:
- "creator and administrator of the 'Men's Rights Activist' (MRA) hate website "The Return of Kings"."
Roosh V is not an MRA. He does not care about the core issues of men's rights, such as suicide rates, homelessness, gender sentencing gap, right to bodily integrity, or custody fairness. My claims come with evidence, as a quick Google search came up with Roosh V's forums and his personal post 5 Reasons I am Not A Men's Rights Activist. In this rant, Roosh V derides men who adhere to the MRM, pointing out all MRA's sexual inadequacy, failure to "learn the true nature of women", and limited scope on how to improve themselves. I believe it is more than safe, but entirely reasonable, to say that Roosh V is not an MRA.
Moreover, Roosh V is a 'Pick Up Artist' (PUA). He views view women as objects of obtainment. Their resistance, in his mind, is token and easily over ridden by a few simple linguistic tricks. Roosh V's existence revolves around getting women and telling other men how to get women--absolutely nothing to do with parental rights, genital integrity, or suicide rates of men.
- "Roosh V is coming to Canada specifically for the purposes of violating section 319 of the Canadian Criminal Code."
I obliterated this claim yesterday. This statement presumes two things: first, Mrs. Parker-Toulson has knowledge of the future and knows exactly what will be said at the two gatherings in August by Roosh V; second, Roosh V will be using hateful speech which is not defensible under CCC 319(3). Neither of these statements meet the simple muster of a cursory assessment. Both presume knowledge which we do not have--Roosh V has not said anything on Canadian soil since the start of his world tour, meaning there is nothing anyone can claim he has said, let alone definitively claim it to be hateful.
- "The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has identified both Roosh and his website as hate-based, and the hateful misogynistic views that he is coming to Canada to disseminate are likely to breach public peace."
The comedy continues! I will take this one in reverse order: Roosh V's views that he is going to disseminate in Canada are likely to breach public peace? The claim is now clearer; Mrs. Parker-Toulson has focused in on CCC 319(1), Public Incitement of Hatred. The law does not lay out examples or clear definitions of what constitutes hatred, only that the (subjective) 'hate' must be directed towards an identifiable group. There is no evidence of Roosh V causing large, systematic shifts in public safety prior to, during, or following his talks. Rather, and as I illustrated yesterday, it is likely the ilk of Mrs. Parker-Toulson or Ms. Gadouas who will protest the event in an aggressive, loud, and profane manner (see Post 44 for evidence of previous anti-MRA rallies). What's more, Roosh V's lectures are held in a private building and are for ticket holders only, meaning his discussion will be for only a small set of individuals and not, as Mrs. Parker-Toulson is attempting to claim, disseminated wildly across the nation.
To the SPLC issue. Mark Potok, who is a Senior Fellow at the SPLC and Editor in Chief of Intelligence Report, was interviewed on the David Pakman show back in May of this year. The interview opens with the crucial point which unequivocally undermine's Mrs. Parker-Toulson's claim that Roosh V and his network of sites as "hate-based".
Pakman: Correct me if I'm wrong, but you did not designate [the 'manosphere'] as hate groups?
Potok: That's true. There was a lot of confusion at the time. Simply, we wrote an article that was very critical of the websites and many of the people behind them in the so-called 'manosphere', these Men's Rights Organization [sic]. But we did not list any of them as hate organizations and we haven't to this day. (Emphasis added)The link provided by Mrs. Parker-Toulson on her petition in regards to the SPLC's view on the manosphere is critical of the stance taken by many different blogs and websites, even listing Roosh V by name on it. Strangely, the list also includes SAVE Services and Reddit's Men's Rights subreddit. Veering slightly off-topic: remember the art exhibition in Texas hosted by Mrs. Pamela Geller which displayed images of the the Islamic prophet Mohammad? Well, her anti-Islamic views have landed her and her AtlasShrugs.com on the official list of hate groups and labeled an "extremist" by the SPLC.
One final note on the SPLC. For all of its work during the American Civil Rights movement, it has been left floundering in a progressive landscape without the big targets of the 60s and 70s. As such, the SPLC has become more sensitive in seeking out new targets and less discriminate in vetting them. The systematic decline of the SPLC has resulted in it being removed as one of the FBI's hate crime partners. That should speak loudly enough, even for those not listening.
- hate hate hate hate hate
The word "hate" is thrown around a lot. I remember a time when my mother told me to be careful with that word. It is a strong word and, if it is over used, will lose its meaning. A lesson not learned by these petitioners. The central issue with determining hate is a definitive and predictable pattern of harm coming out of the communication. If Canucks fans deride Habs fans, does that constitute the Canucks as a hate group? No. If one man says women are stupid, does that mean all men who listen to him are part of a hate group? Again, no. The subjectivity of CCC 319's term "hate" is readily manipulated and massaged into a significant event by any interested party's will; if these groups which so greatly dislike MRAs organized and spread lies and falsehoods about the men associated with the MRA, does that mean those opposing the MRA are a hate movement in of themselves? Using the lose, flexible, and non-descript definition of hate employed my Mrs. Parker-Toulson et al. an argument could readily be made.
Really, I could go on, but the petition finishes as strongly as it starts. It continues to assert all MRAs are, essentially, rapists, adhering to the generalized view of women being "fundamentally inhuman". Mrs. Parker-Toulson even goes as far as to wrongfully contextualize--a feat when it comes to Roosh V's already miserable works--5 Reasons to Date a Girl with an Eating Disorder as "imploring men to sexually abuse women with mental illness".
The list of allegations goes on. Unironically, the essence of Roosh V's writings and beliefs are that women are easy to manipulate. With simple language and a bit of bravado, women will loose control of themselves and do whatever the man says. The fear Mrs. Parker-Toulson and this piddling petition is spreading echoes Roosh V: women are meek and stupid, unable to resist the charm and flawless techniques taught by Roosh V. You see, the women in Canada are stupid, credulous, and lack any agency, and we, the moral defenders of the nation, must save our gullible and aloof women from the certain threat of a man speaking to them.
Seriously, show some respect for the proud and strong women of Canada. They can handle a man attempting to hit on them. They are not scared of a man viewing them as a lesser--especially as young women are doing better in Canadian society than young men. Canadian women are tough. The groups doing the greatest disservice to Canadian women are the moral nannies and weepy feminists who value victimhood over independence.
This has been an unedited rant. @nrokchi
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Post 44 -- Canadian hate speech laws and Roosh V
Let's start with a rhetorical question: if we consider censorship to be in opposition to free speech, how can we have 'hate speech' laws?
Well, one Sara Parker-Toulson thinks there is no contradiction. She has started a petition calling on Canadian Border Services to deny entry into Canada for the Pick Up Artist (PUA) Roosh V (PUAs are not the same as Mens Rights Activists, by the way). In the petition, Parker-Toulson employs magnificent clairvoyance to determine that Roosh V "is coming to Canada specifically for the purpose of violating section 319 of the Canadian Criminal Code".
Roosh V is currently on a world tour and provides a preview list of his speaking topics on his promotion page. At issue is Roosh V's claim that rape should be made legal on private property, a topic I will address later. Parker-Toulson and signatories agree that Roosh V's view on women, specifically those of the legality of rape, constitute hate speech in Canada and would be grounds for denial of entry into Canada or punishment by law in Canada. Roosh V has yet to say these inflammatory statements in Canada, but that hasn't stopped the censors from taking peremptory action.
Section 318 and 319 of Canadian Criminal Code deal with genocide and hate speech as directed at "an identifiable group". 319(1) deals with public incitement of hatred and 319(2) looks at wilful promotion of hatred. It would appear our intrepid moral defenders stopped reading at this point--or worse, didn't bother to read it at all--as 319(3) lays out the defenses for speech which may otherwise be deemed "hateful" (emphasis my own):
(a) if he establishes that the statements communicated were true;Consider the bold text: Roosh V is not standing on a soap box in the corner of Yonge and Queen, proclaiming that women need to be raped immediately. His lectures are admittance by purchase only, which can be up for debate on whether or not that lecture space is public or private; if the event is considered a private event for those who have purchased admission, then Roosh V is legally allowed to say what he will on the topic. If the event is considered public with interested and impartial parties desiring to hear what he is saying, and Roosh V believes his advise and philosophies are true, then he may simply claim defense under 319(3[c]).
(b) if, in good faith, the person expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text;
(c) if the statements were relevant to any subject of public interest, the discussion of which was for the public benefit, and if on reasonable grounds he believed them to be true; or
(d) if, in good faith, he intended to point out, for the purpose of removal, matters producing or tending to produce feelings of hatred toward an identifiable group in Canada.
CBC Montreal invited on student activist Fannie Gadouas and constitutional lawyer Mathieu Bouchard to discuss the petition and grounds for preventing Roosh V into Canada. Ms. Gadouas is as expected: aloof, dogmatic, and stereotypical of the student activist population, relying on the core word set of "oppressive" and "triggering", with a teenager's does of "umm", "ahh", and "like". Her true character shows when she shifts from talking on behalf of all women, homosexuals, and non-cisgendered persons to men (emphasis my own):
"I would even go as far as saying that it's not only oppressive to women but it's oppressive to anyone who doesn't identify as cisgendered or heterosexual. It's even reductive to cisgendered men who are straight--it reduces them to almost caveman-like behaviours."Why isn't it 'oppressive' to cisgendered, heterosexual men? Is that a subset of the population that is immune to oppression? Probably not, but in Ms. Gadouas's dogmatic adherence to the social justice philosophy, straight (white) men are never victims of anything. Our student activist stays true to the narrative that Roosh V's views of women are "extremely problematic" as they rely on "rigid gender binaries" which are "confining and limiting". Thankfully, Mr. Bouchard is invited in to clarify the important elements of this conversation.
"Hate speech is something that has been defined by the courts as a particularly special way of vilifying someone--you need a group, a specific group of people, it has to be targeted at them and then it has to cause--objectively speaking--a risk to that specific group of people. We can all agree [Roosh V's views are] offensive, but simple offense is not enough. You have to go beyond that. You have to objectively put the group whose targeted at risk of some form of more hate speech or violence."Mr. Bouchard goes on to add, in regards to Roosh V's offensive comments made about women as an identifiable group and constituting hate speech:
"There certainly is an argument to be made. But arguing for a change in the law, because that is basically what he is putting forward, and arguing that woman should be raped under the current circumstances. Again, and I feel horrible saying this and trying to draw fine lines, because this is obviously offensive, but the courts have said that even the worst forms of speech is still speech and there is freedom of speech in this society. So you have to have something that says not only 'I want to change the law', but he has to say 'I want this to happen tomorrow morning'."Pivotal in the previous quote is the focus on the difference between arguing for a change in a law and advocating a criminal act. In other words, Mr. Bouchard is delineating between Roosh V's statement of wanting rape legalized on private property and Roosh V actively calling for women to be raped. Now, there is good reason for the distinction, and context is crucial to understanding how one can come to this conclusion, given the nature of the topic.
In a post on his personal blog titled How to Stop Rape, Roosh V purposes that society "make rape legal if done on private property". He comes to this heinous conclusion after considering the social justice approach to rape--views likely held by Ms. Gadouas and Mrs. Parker-Toulson. Specifically, he focuses in on the view of women being unable to give consent to sex if they consumed any alcohol as compared to men, and how women can be held accountable for their other actions while drunk, such as operating a motor vehicle. Moreover, Roosh V recognizes the majority of rapes are perpetrated by individuals known to the victim, a view shared by The Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network (RAINN). As such, Roosh V suggests that by making rape legal on private property, it would send a message to women to be more aware of their actions, because, "without daddy government to protect her, a girl would absolutely not enter a private room with a man she doesn't know or trust unless she is absolutely sure she is ready to sleep with him."
Offensive to say the least, but it is far from advocating or encouraging men to rape. Rather, while misguided and entirely incorrect, Roosh V is attempting to address the problem of acquaintance rape by means of personal accountability. He puts this act on par with locking one's car or house doors to deter robbers from having easy access to your private property rather than telling criminals to not commit crimes. Roosh V gets it all wrong, however, as protecting one's body is a far different scenario to that of protecting property. He is in some interesting company, in a sense, with feminist Camille Paglia, who believes free women are able to maintain their own agency and freedom, and, in a sense, can manage sacrificing personal security. Here is Paglia speaking on this point and how women's freedom of sexuality is liberating.
Roosh V has said offensive and incorrect things, but he does not command people to inflict violence or harm onto women. As such, his musings about the legality of rape and how to address the problem of rape do not constitute, in any matter, the encouragement of rape. His views may be misogynistic, but they are not hate speech. Thus, he does not fall under 319(1) or 319(2), as this particular topic centered on a discussion of laws and strategies for combating a social problem, even if they are as misguided and laughable as they are.
Why hate speech laws, then? What is the purpose of having enshrined in our culture freedom of speech only to have a law which can limit it? Mr. Bouchard stated that Canadian courts accept the most vile of speech is still speech and is protected, which means someone like Roosh V can speak openly in Canada. To a more philosophical end, what good does having hate speech laws do? In an excellent speech by Christopher Hitchens on Canada's hate speech laws (CCC 319), Hitchens argues that censoring speech harms us more than it helps us. Summarizing the works of Mill, Paine, and Milton, Hitchens says:
"It's not just the right of the person who speaks to be heard, it is the right of everyone in the audience to hear. Every time you silence somebody you make yourself a prisoner of your own action because you deny yourself the right to hear something. Your own right to be heard and exposed is as much involved in all these cases as is the right of the other to voice his or her view."This is not light conjecture on the matter of freedom of speech. Rather, it is core to the most basic rights as human beings. When purposing hate speech laws, we must be willing to abdicate our responsibility in determining what we find offensive or hateful to ourselves; to choose someone else who can tell us what we find offense in speech, picture, or writing. I do not know of anyone who could do that for me and I am certain the likes of Ms. Gadouas and Mrs. Parker-Toulson do not have a nominee either. If they do then we must become extremely suspicious of their motives, just as we should all be suspect of the motives of those who are determined to be offended.
Hate speech laws are tools of the vapid, fearful, and condescending. These arrogant few who believe they know more and better than anyone else. Their censorial instinct says we basically already know what we need to and have known as such for a long time; challenging the known consensus of the majority is inherently harmful to these weepy folk. I have argued before and I am again arguing now of the need to allow for people to be heard, even if what they are saying is obviously offensive. It is on these same grounds we can allow religious fanatics to use their public platform to spew forth hatred of homosexuals, women, lower castes, or the amorphous "other". Upon hearing this offensive drivel we--for ourselves!--can determine their beliefs to be retrograde. Silencing such opinions mutes the depth of the larger discussion, like removing the sweet flesh from fruit and gnawing on bitter pit and rind.
Roosh V is a PUA, not an MRA. He doesn't care about the men's rights movement and has mocked it several times on podcasts and blogs. The simplistic world view of women and sexual relationships Roosh V has are not to my tastes, but it is because of his freedom to speak--and my freedom to listen--that I can be aware of him and his views, giving me the opportunity to determine for myself his value to me, which is low. By denying entry into Canada, the perpetually offended harm themselves in two ways: first, they have already given Roosh V a shot of publicity. As a PUA, some men who are finding it difficult to meet women may patronize Roosh V for his insight; second, they deny other Canadians the chance to judge Roosh V's character and denounce him. It would be an unfortunate trend to begin if Canadian Border Services denies entry into Canada a man who might say something on Canadian soil that someone might deem hateful. After all, Roosh V has not made any comments on Canadian soil since his world tour started.
Interestingly, the sorts of people who claim Roosh V is a misogynist and advocates harm and violence against women are the very people who view women as weak, scared, dependent, and fragile; that women are unable to decide for themselves safe situations and are always at the whim of the men around them; women cannot choose how many drinks to consume; and that women are too vulnerable to hear speech which may be offensive. The irony here is as comedic as it is tragic. Yet, these are the same people who believe they possess the moral authority to tell others what is appropriate to say and what is not.
I refuse to be told by others what is offensive to me. I challenge the notion of hateful speech being grounds for prosecution--it is subjectively interpreted and arbitrarily applied. The people most deserving of prosecution under such a law, those of hateful and violent religions, are the ones most likely to seek its protection. The dogmatic and intellectually stunted cluster around such laws as a means of myopically defending their view of the world and not to provide society a service. If, in the event Roosh V does come to Canada and his speaking location known, the greatest disturbance to the peace will be perpetrated by the self-appointed righteous censors. We have seen it before. And again. These social justice warriors will stop at nothing to create a society where offense trumps rights, feelings beat reason, and the revival of the totalitarian mindset takes root all in the name of the 'greater good'.
Denounce these cowards and fight for your ability to be exposed to other points of view will maintaining for yourself your own agency to determine what is and is not offensive, harmful, or hateful to you.
Monday, July 27, 2015
Post 43 -- To Ralph and on his weight loss
Ralph,
Firstly, congratulations. You are living up to the noblest of virtues.
Secondly, I would like to address a few things in your post that are possibly misleading or incorrect when it comes to successful weight loss strategies. I do understand it is all well meaning and that there is no singular path to success; however, a few points you have put in your post are contentious.
Eat less, move more, have success
Many people struggle to connect the need of losing weight to a need to overhaul their entire approach to their personal health. If you start your day with a bowl of sugar--or worse, nothing at all--and then go get more sugar and caffeine for a snack within two hours, you're going to put on weight unless you're also running a marathon in that time. What's more, starting your day with bad food only to head off to a sedentary job or day of limited caloric expenditure will lead to your body storing those excess calories from the morning's breakfast and overpriced sugar coffee.
Eating less/moving more comes down to awareness of your lifestyle. If you have a seated job, find a way to stand more during the day. It'll be better for your heart and your health. Instead of rushing off for a coffee at 2:30pm, get up and go for a brisk walk without your phone to clear your mind and get your blood flowing. Always start your morning with food, but more on that after the jump. Add more movement into your day, whether that is walking, biking, or taking transit to work, taking stairs over elevators, walking around at your job, and selecting evening activities that do not require a couch. You will move more and will have less time to eat because of it.
Food can kill you or save you
The 'moving more' element here works more as a regulator to your diet than it does as a 'free food token'. Yes, if you are aiming to restrict calories, and you burn 500 calories while working out, you have a couple hundred additional calories you can consume for that day. The issue actually arises when food is used to reward calorie-burning behaviour; climbing a flight of stairs is maybe 12 calories, the 10 minute lunch walk is maybe 30 to 50, depending on terrain and pace. That isn't enough to have earned an additional sugar loaded cookie.
Let's break food down into a few categories: meals, nutrition, and caloric value. Success with food and weight loss can be as simple as planning ahead. Make a menu for the week, including food for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. Have that entirely planned out. Get your shopping done on one day. Why? Attempting to decide what to eat at the end of the day when your are hungry and have already spent your day making decisions will ultimately lead to you taking the path of least resistance: pre-made, packed, or quick caloric food, which is often deprived of nutrition. By having your meals planned, including the recipes, instructions and ingredients on hand, you will avoid this decision issue at the end of the day. Breakfast and lunch are no different, either, with both being easily planned and prepared ahead of time--there's not dash at lunch for something quick from the local fast food joint!
Nutrition is vital to sustained weight loss. When we are hungry, our bodies are calling out for calories and nutrients. In today's food landscape, calories are extremely easy to come by. Nutrition, however, is not as readily available. Marrying the two used to be innate with our home cooking and vegetable-based diets. Now, we are able to get 1200 calories from a side of fries with our lunch that contain only a tiny amount of vitamin A. Food without nutrition is trouble; you will continue to be hungry as your body calls out for vital building blocks to its functioning and repair, even with 2500+ calories in your stomach. The nature of commercial food makes this an even more slicked slope, as manufactured food is specifically designed to hit salty, sweet, and fatty notes, which does have profound neurological implications--just look at the relationship between sugar addiction and dopamine.
There's another dimension to food, too--as if what we ate wasn't already complex enough. Glycemic index (GI; scale out of 100) is the determination of how quickly our body has access to the calories in the food. Our body runs on glucose, which cells turn into ATP, which fuels everything. All of our macros (i.e., carbohydrates, fats, and proteins) are turned into glucose for the body to use. Foods high on the GI scale are rapidly turned into glucose, and include foods such as bread, pop, and pastries (71, 63, and 42-78, respectively), while foods high in fats and proteins are extremely low, such as peanuts or streak (7 and 5, respectively). Glycemic load can be mediated by the amount of fiber we eat (both soluble and insoluble). The list of factors of how we process food goes on and on. The take away from and understanding of GI is how to approach certain foods during the day. If you are doing little for the next several hours, eat foods low in GI and glycemic load, such as meats, salads, nuts, and hummus. If you're about to go to the gym, where you're going to need glucose, eating a muffin or a bowl of wheat cereal is fine.
Where we fail is when we are eating too many carbohydrates which are processed too quickly for our bodies to burn off. This spikes our insulin levels, triggering the storage of the excess glucose. Our brain loves the additional calories for storage, thanks to the dopamenergic system associated with food, and we are 'rewarded' for this.
My day often starts with a big bowl of oatmeal, which has about 1 tablespoon of brown sugar and 1/4 cup of natural peanut butter in it, along with black coffee and a piece of fruit. I work out after breakfast and have a protein bar before lunch. Lunch is often leftovers from the previous night's dinner. Dinner is planned out ahead of time, and is very high in protein, fiber, fats, and nutrition. Water is my drink of choice (aside from scotch) and is safe to drink throughout the day.
This is a huge amount of information which I have collected over years of looking into health, fitness, nutrition, and food. It is all well founded in research, but its application and views on its importance as weighed against other factors is continually debated by experts on weight loss.
Exercise for fitness, not weight loss
There is much to be said about the header, but after my prolixity with the food section, I will focus on the important facets of fitness workouts over weight loss workouts.
The difference is easy to understand: weight loss workouts get your body moving in a manner that it wasn't doing before to help with burning off extra calories and inches. They massage egos and lull you into a false sense of success. The weight lost with these flimsy workouts is quickly gained back after one trip to the pompous--and utterly terrible for you--juice bar (GI for juice: 50 to 80).
Fitness exercises is about building your body up to do more with it. To stand longer, walk further, move more, and rest less. It's the difference between a spin class and HIIT workouts. You can burn calories sitting on a bike or you can burn calories and build your body by doing HIIT or power lifting. By building your whole body, you add functionality and endurance, while lowering the chance of being injured in the process. A natural consequence of building your body for greater fitness is the building of "calorie furnace" muscles. You will lose weight, just as long as you don't eat like utter shit.
I prefer mixing in compound power lifting (see 5x5x5) and high intensity interval training (HIIT) workouts. YouTube is a great place for examples of this. My personal go-to is (laugh as you will) BodyRock. HIIT workouts can take between 20 and 40 minutes, depending on how much you need to rest. You can select specific exercises which focus on particular parts of the body or general endurance. The end result will be a fitter, leaner body, buckets of calories burned, and the great feeling of being able to do more. Most of all, it is lasting success which can be built upon from little experience with working out. Making a work out schedule will make your daily workouts efficient and low stress.
Conclusion
Weight loss is something many people aim to do and too many fail. Expectations of outcomes based on limited effort destroys people's motivation. It's easy to become derailed without a clearly thought out plan. I strongly suggest to people to pick a day of the week where they do not work and do not have a long list of chores and errands to build a plan. Decision making takes a lot of mental effort and needs to be taken seriously. Spending several hours planning on a month of workouts, including scheduling time for them, along with meal plans and shopping lists will lead to success.
Another tough point to talk about is body fat. Fat cells do not go away (easily). They get large when you're big and merely shrink when you lose weight. Shrunken fat cells cry out for calories to store, which in turn leads to your brain asking for food amounts to fuel a 300 lbs you and not a 200 lbs you. With weeks of success, one bad weekend of pizza, beer, and cake can swell body fat back up to make it appear to have added inches back. For most people, that kills their motivation; all that work lost so easily. Understand now that isn't the case. It is an ebb and flow of a lifestyle change--not some 6 month project. If you want to lose weight, you need to think of it as a new lifestyle to live by from now on.
One more note before I end this ridiculously long missive: fuck motivation. That's right, forget it. It is worthless. Motivation is you lying to yourself. Motivation strokes your ego and doesn't give a shit about you. Discipline, on the other hand, is the groundwork for success. Set a routine and follow it with honed discipline. You will reap your rewards far quicker relying on a well set out plan for meals and workouts than you will waiting on motivation.
Alright, that's enough for now.
This has been an unedited rant. @nrokchi
Firstly, congratulations. You are living up to the noblest of virtues.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Secondly, I would like to address a few things in your post that are possibly misleading or incorrect when it comes to successful weight loss strategies. I do understand it is all well meaning and that there is no singular path to success; however, a few points you have put in your post are contentious.
Eat less, move more, have success
" I joined a gym, hit the bike at my house, and radically changed my diet. You'll never guess what happened. I started to lose weight. "It is a simple equation most people tend to forget, and has been very well illustrated by Alton Brown from an episode of Good Eats. Brown uses the car as a metaphor for the human body and gasoline as food. You fill the tank, you drive around until it's empty, and top up again. Nothing strange about that as that is most of our lives. However, if the tank is already full and we go to get more gas then we're going to need additional storage for that gasoline. For some of us, it doesn't take long before we're hauling around tankers of additional gas.
Many people struggle to connect the need of losing weight to a need to overhaul their entire approach to their personal health. If you start your day with a bowl of sugar--or worse, nothing at all--and then go get more sugar and caffeine for a snack within two hours, you're going to put on weight unless you're also running a marathon in that time. What's more, starting your day with bad food only to head off to a sedentary job or day of limited caloric expenditure will lead to your body storing those excess calories from the morning's breakfast and overpriced sugar coffee.
Eating less/moving more comes down to awareness of your lifestyle. If you have a seated job, find a way to stand more during the day. It'll be better for your heart and your health. Instead of rushing off for a coffee at 2:30pm, get up and go for a brisk walk without your phone to clear your mind and get your blood flowing. Always start your morning with food, but more on that after the jump. Add more movement into your day, whether that is walking, biking, or taking transit to work, taking stairs over elevators, walking around at your job, and selecting evening activities that do not require a couch. You will move more and will have less time to eat because of it.
Food can kill you or save you
" The thing is, you can just change your diet and loss a shitload of weight, especially if you have a lot to lose. "Diet is the crucial element of weight loss and contributes between 70 to 90% of successful weight loss. Many people still believe--and wrongfully so--that working out more will mean they can continue to eat whatever they want. There is ignorance on two levels here: knowledge of how many calories are in certain foods and how quickly we gain access to those calories and how many calories we burn doing certain exercises.
The 'moving more' element here works more as a regulator to your diet than it does as a 'free food token'. Yes, if you are aiming to restrict calories, and you burn 500 calories while working out, you have a couple hundred additional calories you can consume for that day. The issue actually arises when food is used to reward calorie-burning behaviour; climbing a flight of stairs is maybe 12 calories, the 10 minute lunch walk is maybe 30 to 50, depending on terrain and pace. That isn't enough to have earned an additional sugar loaded cookie.
Let's break food down into a few categories: meals, nutrition, and caloric value. Success with food and weight loss can be as simple as planning ahead. Make a menu for the week, including food for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. Have that entirely planned out. Get your shopping done on one day. Why? Attempting to decide what to eat at the end of the day when your are hungry and have already spent your day making decisions will ultimately lead to you taking the path of least resistance: pre-made, packed, or quick caloric food, which is often deprived of nutrition. By having your meals planned, including the recipes, instructions and ingredients on hand, you will avoid this decision issue at the end of the day. Breakfast and lunch are no different, either, with both being easily planned and prepared ahead of time--there's not dash at lunch for something quick from the local fast food joint!
Nutrition is vital to sustained weight loss. When we are hungry, our bodies are calling out for calories and nutrients. In today's food landscape, calories are extremely easy to come by. Nutrition, however, is not as readily available. Marrying the two used to be innate with our home cooking and vegetable-based diets. Now, we are able to get 1200 calories from a side of fries with our lunch that contain only a tiny amount of vitamin A. Food without nutrition is trouble; you will continue to be hungry as your body calls out for vital building blocks to its functioning and repair, even with 2500+ calories in your stomach. The nature of commercial food makes this an even more slicked slope, as manufactured food is specifically designed to hit salty, sweet, and fatty notes, which does have profound neurological implications--just look at the relationship between sugar addiction and dopamine.
There's another dimension to food, too--as if what we ate wasn't already complex enough. Glycemic index (GI; scale out of 100) is the determination of how quickly our body has access to the calories in the food. Our body runs on glucose, which cells turn into ATP, which fuels everything. All of our macros (i.e., carbohydrates, fats, and proteins) are turned into glucose for the body to use. Foods high on the GI scale are rapidly turned into glucose, and include foods such as bread, pop, and pastries (71, 63, and 42-78, respectively), while foods high in fats and proteins are extremely low, such as peanuts or streak (7 and 5, respectively). Glycemic load can be mediated by the amount of fiber we eat (both soluble and insoluble). The list of factors of how we process food goes on and on. The take away from and understanding of GI is how to approach certain foods during the day. If you are doing little for the next several hours, eat foods low in GI and glycemic load, such as meats, salads, nuts, and hummus. If you're about to go to the gym, where you're going to need glucose, eating a muffin or a bowl of wheat cereal is fine.
Where we fail is when we are eating too many carbohydrates which are processed too quickly for our bodies to burn off. This spikes our insulin levels, triggering the storage of the excess glucose. Our brain loves the additional calories for storage, thanks to the dopamenergic system associated with food, and we are 'rewarded' for this.
My day often starts with a big bowl of oatmeal, which has about 1 tablespoon of brown sugar and 1/4 cup of natural peanut butter in it, along with black coffee and a piece of fruit. I work out after breakfast and have a protein bar before lunch. Lunch is often leftovers from the previous night's dinner. Dinner is planned out ahead of time, and is very high in protein, fiber, fats, and nutrition. Water is my drink of choice (aside from scotch) and is safe to drink throughout the day.
This is a huge amount of information which I have collected over years of looking into health, fitness, nutrition, and food. It is all well founded in research, but its application and views on its importance as weighed against other factors is continually debated by experts on weight loss.
Exercise for fitness, not weight loss
There is much to be said about the header, but after my prolixity with the food section, I will focus on the important facets of fitness workouts over weight loss workouts.
The difference is easy to understand: weight loss workouts get your body moving in a manner that it wasn't doing before to help with burning off extra calories and inches. They massage egos and lull you into a false sense of success. The weight lost with these flimsy workouts is quickly gained back after one trip to the pompous--and utterly terrible for you--juice bar (GI for juice: 50 to 80).
Fitness exercises is about building your body up to do more with it. To stand longer, walk further, move more, and rest less. It's the difference between a spin class and HIIT workouts. You can burn calories sitting on a bike or you can burn calories and build your body by doing HIIT or power lifting. By building your whole body, you add functionality and endurance, while lowering the chance of being injured in the process. A natural consequence of building your body for greater fitness is the building of "calorie furnace" muscles. You will lose weight, just as long as you don't eat like utter shit.
I prefer mixing in compound power lifting (see 5x5x5) and high intensity interval training (HIIT) workouts. YouTube is a great place for examples of this. My personal go-to is (laugh as you will) BodyRock. HIIT workouts can take between 20 and 40 minutes, depending on how much you need to rest. You can select specific exercises which focus on particular parts of the body or general endurance. The end result will be a fitter, leaner body, buckets of calories burned, and the great feeling of being able to do more. Most of all, it is lasting success which can be built upon from little experience with working out. Making a work out schedule will make your daily workouts efficient and low stress.
Conclusion
Weight loss is something many people aim to do and too many fail. Expectations of outcomes based on limited effort destroys people's motivation. It's easy to become derailed without a clearly thought out plan. I strongly suggest to people to pick a day of the week where they do not work and do not have a long list of chores and errands to build a plan. Decision making takes a lot of mental effort and needs to be taken seriously. Spending several hours planning on a month of workouts, including scheduling time for them, along with meal plans and shopping lists will lead to success.
Another tough point to talk about is body fat. Fat cells do not go away (easily). They get large when you're big and merely shrink when you lose weight. Shrunken fat cells cry out for calories to store, which in turn leads to your brain asking for food amounts to fuel a 300 lbs you and not a 200 lbs you. With weeks of success, one bad weekend of pizza, beer, and cake can swell body fat back up to make it appear to have added inches back. For most people, that kills their motivation; all that work lost so easily. Understand now that isn't the case. It is an ebb and flow of a lifestyle change--not some 6 month project. If you want to lose weight, you need to think of it as a new lifestyle to live by from now on.
One more note before I end this ridiculously long missive: fuck motivation. That's right, forget it. It is worthless. Motivation is you lying to yourself. Motivation strokes your ego and doesn't give a shit about you. Discipline, on the other hand, is the groundwork for success. Set a routine and follow it with honed discipline. You will reap your rewards far quicker relying on a well set out plan for meals and workouts than you will waiting on motivation.
Alright, that's enough for now.
This has been an unedited rant. @nrokchi
Monday, July 20, 2015
Post 42 -- A small, self-oriented project
After the fun of writing on the failings of Oliver Campbell to draw attention away from Michael Koretzky's AirPlay, I was graced with a wonderfully long and in depth discussion between Koretzky, Bokhari, and Sargon of Akkad. There is a lot in it, and is well worth the watch. Go now, put in headphones, listen to it while you clean your house... and walk the dog... and clean out your car... and repaint the house: VIDEO HERE!
That aside, I want to talk about something else here. As the title indicates, I want to work on a few things that involve me. How myopic. The purpose of this small exercise is to, as it also relates to the method I will be using, write down what my aims are over some coming periods of time. I am not a young man, but I am not middle-aged yet; I have had my time making mistakes and being arrogant to my mental abilities with tasks, goals, and objectives--most of which come up, are forgotten, and are not remembered later.
So now I'm about to change that. I will be writing more in a small book. The goal of this is three fold: to plan out my days with the vital things that must be done, to add in smart, additional elements of my day that I should get done, and to unload my mind of carrying all tasks, commitments, and goals with it throughout the day. By planning out my day, I know what is next and what to expect. Setting aside time is a nice thought for a flexible day, but isn't always how it works out. On more than one occasion in my life, I have been lost into video games attempting to get particular task down, which spills over the pre-set soft time limit. No more of that.
To specifics are simple: what are the things during my day that I must get done: work, laundry, house cleaning, oil change, plan a party, etc. Adding those elements in first to my schedule helps me have a plan of how to approach each task. Next I will be adding in the filler events: and hour for writing around 1000 words, workout for about an hour, work on organization the Pathfinder game I'm playing with my wife's brother Taylor. Get those planned out then execute. If I do this at the start of the day when my mind is loose and ready, I can then follow the plan to success.
There is one vital element to this, though: at the end of each day, I am to write down the thoughts, ideas, missed opportunities, failed tasks, successes, and pleasures to be sought. By doing so, I will unburden my brain of these thoughts. The next morning, I can assess those brain dump notes from the night before and ponder how to add them into my day or week. This works for small things like cleaning out the litter box to great things like finishing a book--both real goals I want to accomplish.
There just isn't enough time in a single day to juggle all the commitments we have. It is best to plan out the day to make it possible to address as many of them as possible without doing so in a frantic or grudging manner. I do not want stress or fatigue to dictate how successful I am as a person. Instead, I want discipline, planning, and a goal-oriented mindset to determine that.
Now for a brain dump here of some of the things I would like to get done, broken down by the week, month, and the year.
This week: get the roll20 stuff organized to game with Taylor; move out of the Tiger 1 or JagdPz IV to the next tank in WoT; house clean and laundry; organize new note book to start with daily brain dumps; 4 more gym trips; tentative workout plan; cool spot for a dinner out with Amelia; write 2 more blog posts; find a commuter bike.
By the end of August: school research done; hit 190lbs, while benching 190lbs; customize and set up phone; play through the campaign with Taylor; plan out events to do with mum while she's in North Carolina; think about writing a book and how to approach it.
By the end of the year: be at 190 to 195lbs of fitness; starting writing a book, even if it is garbage and stupid and pointless; aim to get into classes no later than the new year to work towards Physician Assistant school; design/plan a tattoo.
There we go, a nice lay out brain dump of some things I want to get done. It wasn't a complex laxative-inspired effort, so there is probably some stuff still up in there. Nonetheless, great start, and hope people who read this might consider trying it themselves.
This has been an unedited rant. @nrokchi
That aside, I want to talk about something else here. As the title indicates, I want to work on a few things that involve me. How myopic. The purpose of this small exercise is to, as it also relates to the method I will be using, write down what my aims are over some coming periods of time. I am not a young man, but I am not middle-aged yet; I have had my time making mistakes and being arrogant to my mental abilities with tasks, goals, and objectives--most of which come up, are forgotten, and are not remembered later.
So now I'm about to change that. I will be writing more in a small book. The goal of this is three fold: to plan out my days with the vital things that must be done, to add in smart, additional elements of my day that I should get done, and to unload my mind of carrying all tasks, commitments, and goals with it throughout the day. By planning out my day, I know what is next and what to expect. Setting aside time is a nice thought for a flexible day, but isn't always how it works out. On more than one occasion in my life, I have been lost into video games attempting to get particular task down, which spills over the pre-set soft time limit. No more of that.
To specifics are simple: what are the things during my day that I must get done: work, laundry, house cleaning, oil change, plan a party, etc. Adding those elements in first to my schedule helps me have a plan of how to approach each task. Next I will be adding in the filler events: and hour for writing around 1000 words, workout for about an hour, work on organization the Pathfinder game I'm playing with my wife's brother Taylor. Get those planned out then execute. If I do this at the start of the day when my mind is loose and ready, I can then follow the plan to success.
There is one vital element to this, though: at the end of each day, I am to write down the thoughts, ideas, missed opportunities, failed tasks, successes, and pleasures to be sought. By doing so, I will unburden my brain of these thoughts. The next morning, I can assess those brain dump notes from the night before and ponder how to add them into my day or week. This works for small things like cleaning out the litter box to great things like finishing a book--both real goals I want to accomplish.
There just isn't enough time in a single day to juggle all the commitments we have. It is best to plan out the day to make it possible to address as many of them as possible without doing so in a frantic or grudging manner. I do not want stress or fatigue to dictate how successful I am as a person. Instead, I want discipline, planning, and a goal-oriented mindset to determine that.
Now for a brain dump here of some of the things I would like to get done, broken down by the week, month, and the year.
This week: get the roll20 stuff organized to game with Taylor; move out of the Tiger 1 or JagdPz IV to the next tank in WoT; house clean and laundry; organize new note book to start with daily brain dumps; 4 more gym trips; tentative workout plan; cool spot for a dinner out with Amelia; write 2 more blog posts; find a commuter bike.
By the end of August: school research done; hit 190lbs, while benching 190lbs; customize and set up phone; play through the campaign with Taylor; plan out events to do with mum while she's in North Carolina; think about writing a book and how to approach it.
By the end of the year: be at 190 to 195lbs of fitness; starting writing a book, even if it is garbage and stupid and pointless; aim to get into classes no later than the new year to work towards Physician Assistant school; design/plan a tattoo.
There we go, a nice lay out brain dump of some things I want to get done. It wasn't a complex laxative-inspired effort, so there is probably some stuff still up in there. Nonetheless, great start, and hope people who read this might consider trying it themselves.
This has been an unedited rant. @nrokchi
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