December Deductions 2020; Day 23

 Today we're going to face a harsh reality; my last tip doesn't fix everything, it doesn't give complete control, and it can be tracked and undone, but that's also a good thing. 

Any system can be exploited, but the people that know the system know how it can be done. 

This is obviously somewhat topical, as there was a system that many people who are not experts on that system insisting it was exploited, but can't tell you how, while the actual experts are saying it wasn't exploited because they know how it could have been exploited, it was checked repeatedly, and therefore wasn't exploited. 

This is something that is generally true of any system. Yes, those that know a system can bend it in many strange ways to get what they want or need, but anyone else who knows the system just as well will know how to do that. There are very few systems that have so few experts that major exploitation can exist. The more a system is used, the more people are likely to understand it. So if a system is used my millions of people, and administrated by tens of thousands of people on an local level, it's almost impossible for large-scale exploitation of that system to go unnoticed. 

Now, that doesn't mean a system can't be noticeably exploited and the guilty parties get away with it. For instance, the fact that we all know what a "swing state" is should tell you that the electoral college, as a system, is exploitable, a lot of people know how to do it, it's regularly exploited, and no one gets in trouble for it. There's also the possibility that the exploitation can be discovered, but tracing it back to a source isn't possible. That situation is fairly common in cyber-attacks, where we can see the results of the attack, even fix the problem, but can't definitively trace it back to it's exact origin point, though we can usually get some idea from out intelligence community. 

That's it. If you plan on exploiting a system, be aware that someone else probably can too and will know how you did it, so I suggest not doing something that can force you to face punishment. Anyway, as I've said before, if you're following along, I'll "see" you in the next post, and have a great day. Goodbye!

December Deductions 2020, Day 22

 Alright, today's tip is probably one of the hardest for me to teach, because I don't really know how to describe it, so we're going to do a really wide overview. 

Learn the system; Use the system. 

One of the biggest mistakes I see people make consistently is thinking that because the system doesn't function well for the purpose we need it to, we need to work outside the system to change it, or completely replace it. You can check history, that doesn't really work well. Even in instances where people think that someone was bucking the system and succeeded, many times they were just using a different part of that system. Case in point: the United States Revolution. We think that by writing the Declaration of Independence and fighting a war they were destroying the previous system, when they were actually using it. The Declaration of Independence acted as a diplomatic document, and war was, and still is, a diplomatic action. They simply used the tools and systems available internationally to reach their goals, namely to cut themselves off from the British Government. 

Learning a system is the key to success with that system. Part of learning a system is learning what systems affect it, so you can sometimes go outside the system to use the system. In the United States, almost every system that is related to the government can be affected by contacting your elected officials, for instance. Learning when to use the workarounds can be very important. 

One of the best examples of how to handle this particular issue comes from the Pixar film "The Incredibles." Early in the film, you see the main character, Bob Parr, working in an insurance company. His boss gets upset because Bob's customers have become "experts" at getting their claims handled, which we see Bob helping one client with just that. That level of expertise allows him to use the system to help people reach their goals. 

That's how you can win even when the system is set up against you, find someone who knows the system, or learn the system very well yourself. Experts on various systems, whether it be government systems like Social Security, corporate systems like medical insurance, or even computer systems, get paid a lot for their expertise, because they can make things happen. That's how one can succeed, learn the system, because once you learn the system, you can use the system, exploit the system, and even change the system when you press the right buttons. 

That's all for today. As I've said before, if you're following along I'll "see" you in the next post, and have a great day. Goodbye!

December Deductions 2020; Day 21

 Today's another break day. You've earned it, so let's do something fun. You've seen me write essays, obviously, but let's see if I can write something else. I'm going to go grab a few short writing prompts, and just put the results here. If you feel inspired, take some time and try it out yourself. 

Poetry prompt - Vessel: Write about a shit or other vehicle that can take you somewhere different from where you are now. 

There's a van in the wood. 

In the van is a bed. 

By the bed is a shelf

full of books to be read. 

There's a book on the shelf

With red letters on back

Worn and decayed

But I can see "Jack." 

In the book there's a plant

That reaches up in the sky

Above all the clouds

Above birds that fly. 

Jack climbed up the stalk

And came down again

He learned to be good

To family and friends. 

The story ends there.

I close with a sigh,

That excellent novel. 

It took me so high. 

The book's back on the shelf;

The van's still in the wood;

I'm going on home, 

But not quite for good.

Some day I'll be back

To sit back on that bed,

There's another adventure

On which I must head. 

Prose Prompt: Choose an animal and write about it.

There once was a cat named Mars. He knew that was his name, but he didn't know why or how. His people used to when it was time for good things, like food, or treats, or sleep. They sometimes used it when he did something they didn't like, but he knew they didn't hate him. If they hated him they wouldn't keep loving him, and yet every day they call his name, and there's fresh food in his dish, a treat in their hand, and a warm bed to share. "If that's not love," Mars purred to himself, "I don't know what is." 

Paragraph prompt: Write something that begins with the word "hello."

Hello, my name is Mark Scott, and I'm here to tell you about the amazing world of vacuum cleaners! Have you ever noticed that your carpets get dusty, that there are webs in the corners of your ceiling, or that there's just a bunch of dirt in a place you can't quite reach? Well I have the product for you! Take this here vacuum cleaner, attach the hose and nozzle, turn it on and wowee, it'll suck up anything! OK maybe not anything. Maybe just dust and other small things. But still, it's pretty neat, right? No? What do you mean everyone already has one? I'm 50 years too late!? Oh boy, I better go back and tell the boss. Goodbye!

Alright, that's enough creative writing for one day, if you can call that creative. It was fun enough, and I hope you enjoyed reading. As I've said before, if you're still following along I'll "see" you in tomorrow's post, and have a great day! Goodbye!

December Deductions 2020; Day 20

 Wow, you've made it two thirds of the way through this month. Based on what I've seen so far, that's an accomplishment. 

You're doing great. 

Remember that rule of thumb I mentioned? Everyone is doing their best? Well, I think today we're gonna focus on helping each of us understand that applies to ourselves as well. It's very easy, especially for those of us with stress, anxiety, or mood disorders to fall into the trap of believing that every time something goes wrong, it's because we messed up, because we didn't try hard enough. The problem with that is if you really look at it, 99 times out of 100 you literally did everything you could have with the information you had at the time. Sometimes our best doesn't look great, whether it be because we ran out of steam, had the wrong info, or just miscalculated, we still mess up, but that doesn't mean we're horrible people. 

If you've been following along this month, or reading this at a later date, you've been exposing yourself to a lot of stressful, annoying, and difficult concepts to swallow. You've been working hard, believe it or not, and you deserve a few moments out of your day to admit that to yourself. I know to a lot of us it feels weird or wrong, but believe me, acknowledging how hard you've worked is just as important as acknowledging someone else's hard work. 

So please, take a few moments, and just thank yourself for what you've been able to do, big or small. You've done things to help other people, maybe just tiny things, but you've done 'em! You've done things to keep yourself going, even if it's just the basics, you had to put in the effort to get them done. In most cases, because of the effort you put into the world around you and the people you love, the universe is a better place than it would be without you putting in that effort. So take a moment and acknowledge that. 

Alright, take a deep breath, and let's continue on in our respective days. Thanks for coming to hang out with me today, and if you're following along, I'll "see" you in tomorrow's post. Have a great day! Goodbye! 

December Deductions 2020; Day 19

 Today we're going to talk about heroes, and why we need to be careful about them. 

Admiration is good, hero worship is not. 

I've described to you what the genetic fallacy is, but for review, it's the fallacy that judges an idea based on where it came from, rather than its actual merits. We talked about an example of this yesterday, when I mentioned the bandwagon effect, and the hypothetical example of going on a juice cleanse because an instagram model liked it. That specific version of the genetic fallacy, where we believe something based solely on the fact that someone we admire believes it, is hero worship. 

Hero worship causes problems in the belief acquisition process. Instead of appealing to an authority on a subject, we give our heroes authority on all subjects in our mind. We see this happen a lot, and we've seen it especially in the last decade or so here in America, with a lot people doggedly following their preferred politician, agreeing with them on every subject, fighting for their beliefs rather than one's own. 

Hero worship acts as a broken version of a legitimate form of argument: an appeal to authority. An appeal to authority generally uses the expert opinion from someone who is an actual authority on the subject at hand as evidence for an argument. For instance, if Neil Gaiman, one of the best writers alive today (in my opinion), were to give a talk about storytelling, I would probably consider almost anything he said in there to be expert opinion, and at least somewhat convincing in an argument regarding storytelling. 

Hero worship does the same thing, except it denies this basic fact: an expert in one thing is not necessarily an expert in anything else. We start with a simple belief that this person is an expert in something we care about, whether founded or unfounded, and then just let our minds run rampant with that. Really trust that politician? Then follow their random career advice! Think you've fallen for that actress? Spend your money on the products she recommends. That kind of thing. Don't do it. 

Still, it's not bad to admire someone, even to aspire to be like them in some way. I deeply admire Neil Gaiman, as you may have already guessed, and some day I'd like to develop a more fluid and enjoyable writing style, like his. That being said, if Neil Gaiman gave me a suggest on who to vote for in regards to fiscal policy, I should probably only consider that about as useful as any random person saying it. Now, if a former secretary of the treasury department were to make such a recommendation, backing it up with analysis based on their time in the office, then that's something more like an expert opinion. It's important to know that those two people are two different people. I would gladly take Neil Gaiman's advice on writing, but I don't think I'm going to get good writing advice from an economist. 

Our heroes should help us define who we are and who we want to be, but never should they be all that we are or want to be. Devoting yourself to becoming just like your hero denies one of the most valuable things about you: you're you. No one else can be you, and frankly, you can't really be anyone else. Be the best you that you can be, and decide carefully what that means to you, but don't try to be someone else. There's nothing wrong with looking up to a fitness expert, but don't try to have their exact body type. The same goes for a musician; learn from them, be inspired by them, but don't try to copy them. Every hero you have should be someone you admire for a reason, or multiple reasons, but you should also be willing to admit that person's faults. If you find you can't, you may need to reassess how you see them in relation to yourself. 

TL;DR: it's okay to admire people, to let them inspire you, but don't let their existence consume you. You're important too. 

That's all for today. As I've said before, if you're following along I'll "see" you in the next post, and have a great day. Goodbye!

December Deductions 2020; Day 18

 Today's should be short, it's just a very simple concept that most people already get. 

Improvement rarely comes without change, but not all change is improvement. 

People like to use the viral quote “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Side note: this was never said by Einstein that scholars know of, it just got misattributed to him at some point. The point of the quote is somewhat accurate, if you want to improve, you need to change something about how you're living. 

That being said, "change for change sake" is generally not helpful either. 

Sometimes changing things to how they once were is helpful. Sometimes keeping some aspects the same will result in better results than a sweeping change. Sometimes, you're already on the road to improvement, and you just need to keep doing what you're doing. Pushing forward doesn't mean constantly changing things, it just means you continue to put forth the effort. 

Make your choices on changes based on whether or not the change will be worth it, not based on a simple desire to add in more change. Comparing risks, effort required, and potential gain will be more useful than focusing on whether or not you changed something recently. 

Also, don't fall into the trap that since a lot of other people are seeming to benefit from a change, you should try it too. That's the bandwagon effect, and it's not terribly useful. Look into what's actually going on, and if it's new information to you, or if maybe something related to it in your life has changed since you last considered it, then sure, maybe it's a worthwhile change. Just, don't suddenly decide to go on a juice cleanse because an instagram model you follow did it and liked it. 

That's all for today. As I've said before, if you're following along I'll "see" you in the next post, and have a great day. Goodbye!

December Deductions 2020; Day 17

 Today we're going to talk about something that comes in very handy when trying to understand current events. You've heard the phrase "don't put all your eggs in one basket," which means don't devote all your resources to one thing that can fail, use multiple baskets so that if one fails, you still have some eggs. This is a news related corollary of that:

Don't get all your eggs from the same basket. 

Internationally, the concept of news programming is somewhat broken. Sometimes, like in the USA, they're all based on what pays the most, because we failed to protect against that. Since ratings and views pay, we get content that's selected, written, and presented to entice us, rather than inform us. In some nations they have just state-run media, which inevitably becomes little more than an arm of government control. In some nations, they have a combination of the two, with both benefits and detriments of both. Still, news is something we consume, because we want to understand what's going on. 

One of the easiest traps to fall into when it comes to news is the false idea of neutrality of a single source. FOX News has been labeled the "most trusted" news source, and many of their regular viewers only get their news from FOX. Every major network in the USA is the same in that aspect, they convince their viewers that they are truly neutral, and therefore accurate, and try to entice their viewers to watch only them. That's where things like exclusive interviews and those horrible opinion shows on news networks come from. It's all about getting more views, and it's not great. 

Still, there is a certain level of accuracy news organizations generally have to maintain. Outright lies from a news organization will be met with lawsuits, for instance, so they tend to avoid that. Like we talked about in my posts about word choice, they'll often do that through carefully wording things so they're not legally a lie. The important thing to remember is that all of these news sources have bias, some much more than others, but none are truly neutral. 

As a result, it's important not to get caught in a news echo-chamber, and only getting your news from one source, or from sources that almost always agree with each other on the interpretation of the facts. You'll need to get your news from multiple sources with different biases to get a better picture of what's really going on. That on it's own won't create an extremely accurate picture, but it will at least give you an idea of what pieces of interpretation are in dispute. 

These days, getting your news from multiple sources is pretty easy, since there are apps and commentators that will do it for you. News highlight shows on YouTube, like the Philip DeFranco Show, often mix in and note the differences from multiple sources. Apps like Google News on Android devices will choose what sources to give you based on which ones you've actually interacted with, so you can keep it coming from many sources by going to many sources. None of these are perfect, but they do help. 

In addition, it helps to understand the difference between news and news commentary. In some cases, there's a nice, clean line, like when the anchor says a key phrase like "I think," or "to me," but most times there isn't. There are cases where entire shows should be treated as news commentary, like any opinion show regardless of what network its on. Generally, the more famous the anchor, the more likely that they're leaning on commentary more than just the news. As you experience news from multiple sources, you'll get better at knowing when they've started to add their own spin to it. Obvious bias is nice in that it makes it clear when they've stopped being objective. Stating a motive for action that wasn't stated by the person making the action is a common example, they can't know, but they'll go ahead and imply that an alleged criminal committed a crime because of one of the anchor's pet causes. 

All of this makes it sound like to understand anything you need to spend hours and hours comparing sources, that's really not the case. A few good sources will be all you need to get the gist of a situation. For me, I prefer to try to find the news sources that are generally rated as high in accuracy, with moderate bias as opposed to significantly left or right. Once I get the gist of a situation, I'll often decide I don't need the details, and be able to move on. If I decide I need details, that's when I start going in deep, looking for other sources, looking for raw footage on social media, etc. Don't spend a lot of your personal resources on researching something that you really don't need to exhaust yourself over, most news stories are over within 24 hours, replaced by the next sensational story. 

To sum up: if you're taking in the news, don't take it from just one source, or from very similar sources, branch out to avoid getting sucked into the bias of the sources you naturally gravitate towards. 

That's all for today. As I've said before, if you're following alone I'll "see" you in the next post, and have a great day. Goodbye!

December Deductions 2020; Day 16

 Today is one of the most important lessons I have learned, at least when it comes to how to handle myself and how to see other people. 

 Difficulty is subjective, not objective.

Just to review, a concepts objective if it's true or false regardless of who believes it, talks about it, experiences it, etc. The existence of the Sun is objective, it either exists or doesn't regardless of what you or I think. A concept is subjective if it changes from person to person. Things like opinions and personal experiences tend to be subjective. For example, what a person's favorite flavor of ice cream might be is subjective, because it changes depending on the subject of that sentence (person). 

When I say difficulty is subjective, I'm talking about severity. The existence of difficulty is generally objective, but how one experiences it changes from person to person, and even when looking at the experiences of one person, it changes over time. What is easy for one person may be very difficult for another person, and what was easy once is not easy now. We've all run across these situations, but we rarely take the idea that difficulty is subjective to its natural conclusion. 

If difficulty is subjective, then any experience that has any level of difficulty may be vastly different from person to person, or from time to time. One great example of this is those with anxiety disorders often will be able to recite at least one instance where a very simple, easy task was so difficult that they still failed it, and it felt like everything was coming to an end. I'm speaking from personal experience when I say that spilling just a little water can be the final straw in an anxiety attack and leave you out of commission for days if you're dealing with an anxiety disorder or mood disorder. 

Since we know that experiences can be vastly different based on the subjective nature of difficulty, we naturally ask the question as to whether we can perceive the difficulty, so we can act accordingly. For our own situations, yes, we're generally able to understand how difficult something is for us. For others, however, it's not possible to simply see or measure the difficulty. Difficulty isn't really quantifiable, it can't be measured objectively, only aspects that can increase or decrease the difficulty. In short, no, we can't perceive the difficulty of what others are going through. 

That's a key takeaway here: you can never fully know how difficult a situation is for another person. You can sometimes guess, or even be told and therefore understand better, but there's something missing in how we perceive difficulty. Since we can't really compare it to our own concept of difficulty, we're never going to quite get it right. Since we cannot know how difficult something is for someone, aside from situations that require it, judgment of others in regards to how they handle the difficulty of a situation is ill-advised at best. 

I run by a rule of thumb every day, and although I have failed to live up to it multiple times, it's proven to be helpful for both my own sanity and in defining how I interact with others. That rule of thumb is as follows:

For your average person, unless they prove otherwise, they're generally doing their best. Some days, their best doesn't look great, but they're still putting forth the effort. 

I didn't fully understand how to apply this until I ended up psychologically disabled. The long and short of it is that for almost everything, the difficulty is exponentially higher for me now than it was before my decline, and for many things that almost anyone can, and should, do daily, I can't. I can't hold down a job, I can't maintain even contract employment, I can't even control my sleep schedule. I lacked the experience before to fully understand how much one's best can be limited. My best on any given day looks like shit compared to my best from several years ago, even on my best days. 

Now, take this rule of thumb with a grain of salt. It works well for me because it reminds me to treat other people with basic respect until they prove they don't deserve it, and to give people the basic benefit of the doubt. I've found if you apply it to most people you interact with, those you'll not likely interact with again or who's interactions are limited, you get along much better. Sometimes people make bad decisions in traffic that irk me, but if I remember that maybe something else is going on that I just don't get, I can take a breath and let it go, rather than seething for hours. Sometimes people put their desires before my needs, but they likely don't understand what my needs are, so I can accept that they're acting not out of sheer malice, but simple ego-centrism, a trait that I have to be aware of constantly in my own reactions. For every interaction that's small, it doesn't really cost me anything significant to grand the other people involved the benefit of the doubt, to treat them as if they're trying their hardest, but it makes the burden of that interaction much lighter in my mind. For interactions with people I've known for a long time, like coworkers (back when I was working), family members, friends, and other loved ones, giving them that simple benefit of the doubt often helps me learn to control my own impulses without getting upset, making my reactions more reasonable, and my day a little easier. But I can't say I have objective evidence for those claims, they're just extensions of the reasoning I put into the original conclusion that we shouldn't judge others too harshly without knowing all the facts. Try it out, see if it helps you feel better throughout the day. 

Alright, that's enough on this topic. As I've said before, if you've been following along I'll "see" you in the next post, and have a great day! Goodbye!

December Deductions 2020; Day 15

 When I was working on my bachelor's, I was blessed, or lucky, or however you wish to put it, to take a literature course taught by a professor that believed something I think we all should learn and apply:

If you're never offended, you're probably not learning. 

I like to take that to the next level. We've all heard someone say "it's your right to be offended," and that's true. Constitutionally, it's part of our first amendment rights. Ethically, it's something that happens in our heads and can't be stopped by anyone else. Personally, it's part of how we react the the world around us. But with every right comes responsibility. 

I believe it is out responsibility to be offended, fairly often, and to react accordingly. 

Allow me to explain with an example from my own life. If you ever get the chance, read "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison. You may recognize the author's name, she's a truly amazing novelist. Between the years 1975 and 2018, she received 40 different awards for her work. She is an excellent author, and her book, "The Bluest Eye" offended me so deeply that I was forced to realize how much of a hypocrite I was. 

At the time in my life that I read the book, which was part of that aforementioned literature course, I had attested repeatedly that every human being deserves to be treated as a person. Perhaps I'll go into detail on that later, but part of that is allowing them to tell their story. That's a right, to tell their story as they see fit, it's part of freedom of speech but also part of how we should treat every fellow person. 

There is a passage in "The Bluest Eye" that takes the perspective of a child molester. Even now, just mentioning what the character was twists my stomach because to me there are few kinds of people that are worse than a child molester, if there are any. That passage treats the child molester just like every other character who's narrations filled the story up until that point. It treated them as a person, a human being, with complex thoughts and feelings, who did the right thing during the time of the narration. My immediate reaction was to become very, very offended. 

If you've been paying attention, you probably noticed the same thing I did moments later; my being offended was hypocritical. All Morrison had done was treat that character like a person, and let them tell their story. She treated them exactly as I had been demanding for years that everyone should be treated, but I was offended. This realization offended me even more deeply, because how dare someone point out to me, in my own mind no less, how I was failing to meet my own standards. 

In those moments, being offended was not merely my right, but my responsibility. It was my responsibility to respond to injustices both in the story and in my own mind, and reconcile them. The end result, for me, was to re-examine what I meant by person-hood, and why it was important. I grew from the experience, and my outlook has never been the same as it was before that day. But that's where the story ends, basically. 

That is part of the point of me saying "react accordingly." It is our right and responsibility to be offended, but it is not our right to use our being offended as justification to perform acts that harm others. Being offended is something that can help us grow, can help us acknowledge how others are fundamentally different, or at the very least help us understand where we draw the line on certain ideas. It does not grant us license to enforce our beliefs on others. 

Be offended. Be deeply offended. Consider what caused that offense, and whether or not it is worth being offended over. Consider whether or not you need to change because of what offends you. Maybe even express that offense to others, to let your voice be heard on the matter. There is nothing wrong with those actions. Even entering a debate with someone because something they said or did offended you can be very helpful to both parties, but do not fall into the trap of believing that because you are offended, you are right. 

If you're never offended, you're likely never exposing yourself to viewpoints other than ones with which you already agree. If you're never offended, you're likely not having the opportunities to grow that others are having, and you may stagnate. If you're never offended, you may not even know what you stand for or stand against. Be wary of never being offended. 

Now, I know you probably want to know how I changed from the experience from above, so I'll take the time to explain it, to lessen your worry. I reaffirmed that every human deserves to be treated as a person, but do not mistake person-hood with goodness. When we treat those among us that do very bad things as animals, we ignore the standard we should hold them to, and we ignore the reality that humanity is capable of horrible, horrible things. If an animal kills someone, we put it down, and often it is a tragedy. The animal could not understand, necessarily, that it shouldn't kill, it acted out of instinct. That is not true of a person. A person should be judged as one who could have done better, but chose not to. A child molester should not merely be put down because they are a broken animal, they should be held accountable for the lives they've absolutely destroyed, knowing that their victims were fellow humans, and refusing to care about that fact. In my personal opinion, a clean death is far too good for them, and the only way I can justify that belief is to believe that they must be treated as persons, not as animals. We do not dehumanize because that will give them an out, and all those like them. We give them the full benefits, and requirements, of humanity. We should treat them not as a broken animal, but a horrible human being, and the latter is far worse than the former. 

Don't let that make you believe that I think that all choices or mistakes should be judged as harshly. Those who suffer from substance abuse disorders will do horrible things because of those disorders; the proper treatment of them is to attempt rehabilitation. The same is true for those who live in such poverty that they commit crimes to meet their basic needs. Even those who commit crimes to fit in with their local subculture should be rehabilitated if at all possible. They are people, and if a person can be rehabilitated, it is better for everyone that they are. 

However, I understand if you disagree with me on either account. If what I said offended you, that doesn't mean you're wrong. It also doesn't mean you're right. It means you need to search yourself and decide for yourself whether you are right, wrong, or something else. And that is why I tell you to be offended, because being offended can be a very, very good thing if you use it correctly. 

Alright, that's all for today. As I've said before, if you're following along I will "see" you in tomorrow's post, and have a great day. Goodbye!

December Deductions 2020; Day 14

 So today we're going to learn a lesson I found out not by studying philosophy, psychology, anthropology, or sociology, but from studying literature. 

Everything is offensive. Everything has a problem. There is no such thing as an unproblematic narrative. 

Why does this matter? Well, it can come in handy some times, but in a basic sense I'm telling you this so you can understand that it is okay to enjoy things even if they don't get everything right, because nothing will. Think of the most unoffensive piece of media you can think of, then think of someone who would get offended anyway. It's not terribly difficult, especially in today's climate. 

One of the hardest lessons to learn is to separate criticism from enjoyment. There are certain things that are too offensive to be for me to enjoy, but that doesn't mean other people can't enjoy them. There are a lot of things that I personally enjoy that are offensive to other people. Most narratives that are meant to be very empowering to an otherwise disenfranchised segment of the population end up doing so by further marginalizing another population segment, and no, I'm not talking about the concept of "reverse racism." Here's a simple example: there is a novel we had to read and analyze for one of my literature classes that's mean to be very empowering to women, teen girls especially, and to the decedents of indigenous people in North America. It is, however, post-apocalyptic, and the way it decided to divide the world between haves and have-nots was based on prosthetic. Sure, it did put some focus on the unnecessary prosthetic, like cybernetic implants to let you change your eye color, but it didn't really point out a difference ethically between that and an eye to replace one that didn't work, or a replacement limb, etc. In fact, the main character is shown to be strong because she happens to need no such tools, she is even more capable than those that had access to them pre-apocalypse. In a very real sense, the author empowered young indigenous women by vilifying the disabled. 

But that was obviously not the intention, and although I can openly admit that the narrative is flawed, it's actually a pretty good book. Many, many other novels that I absolutely love make the same kind of mistake. Empowering people of color by marginalizing women; empowering women by marginalizing those with developmental disorders, empowering those with developmental disorders by vilifying the neurotypical, etc. etc. There's no such thing as an unproblematic narrative. 

Now, this concept also comes in handy because there's no such thing as a person without unnecessary bias. As we noted yesterday, we have to be willing to identify and at least try to adjust for our biases, but that's not terribly easy to begin with, and it's something that most people don't even attempt. This comes in handy when someone tries to make an argument by stating that they're ethically superior to someone else; if you have access to their public history, especially with social media, you can usually find some pretty easy examples of their own hypocrisy. 99 times out of 100, pointing it out is just going to piss them off, but let's be real, if they're not willing to listen to you because they think they're better than you, you could do worse than piss them off. In that last chance out of 100 though, they learn. They see their bias for what it is and can move forward. That's a wonderful thing, so sometimes it's worth being just a little bit of a jerk to help them understand that they too can improve. 

In the end, though, the main point of this is to not let your analysis take away your enjoyment. There are a lot of pieces of literature I love to pieces, but under an analytical eye have some serious problems. Understanding this will help you keep an open mind when running into someone who doesn't like what you do, but it will also help you learn to just shut down the criticism in your own mind sometimes so you can relax and enjoy a good story. 

Anyway, I hope today's post finds you well, and as I've said before, if you're following along I will "see" you in tomorrow's post, and have a great day. Goodbye!