Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Uncategorized’

A moment of casual racism

Posted in Bruce Byfield, racism, tagged , , , on October 30, 2015| Leave a Comment »

In-between the end of summer and the start of winter, I often wear my Dorothy Grant jacket. It’s a casual but elegant piece of clothing, black with a gold eagle on the back in the Haida style and a gold wing down the left arm. It’s by far my favorite jacket, and I wear it as often as I can without freezing myself to death, which is why I was surprised at the reaction it received a few days ago.

I was leaving after a visit with some acquaintances, the first of which I have close ties with, and the second of which I tolerate mostly for the sake of the first. The second one has a tendency to argue with half of what I say, and to derail the other half with irrelevant puns and feeble jokes.

He seems to think, too, that he can advise me and I will follow his advice, even though I have shown no signs of doing so for decades (if I ever did). The truth is, his view of me has so little connection to the reality that his advice usually strikes me as outlandish. Usually, I hear him out, then thank him for his opinion before going ahead and doing what I intended before he spoke to me.

I was putting on my jacket when I saw him frown and make motions as though he wanted to talk to me in private. Doing up the zipped and adjusting the collar, I reluctantly went into the corner, already anticipating an embarrassing scene.

“You can’t wear that,” he said. “People might think you are an Indian.”

I thought I was prepared for anything, but the comment took me by surprise. I had the sense that he thought I needed saving from myself, that I was so naïve I might unconsciously cause trouble for myself by wearing the jacket. In his world, I sensed, being mistaken for First Nations was one of the worst things that could happen.

I don’t think there is much chance of me ever being mistaken for First Nations, considering my features and hair color – although I suppose I might be mistaken for one of the many these days with mixed ancestry.

More to the point, I considered myself well-dressed. To me, Dorothy Grant is an artist in cloth, and although I can only afford the cheaper of her designs – and even then only when they are on sale – I consider wearing a jacket by her a privilege. It is so obviously a work of art that I regularly receive compliments when I wear it.

Yet in his racist world view, being mistaken for First Nations was something to avoid at all costs. Where I saw art, he saw something tacky.

After I had left, I thought of all sorts of comments I might have made, but at the time I could only mutter, “Oh, you think so?” and make for the door faster than I had intended. I wonder, though, if he had any idea that all he had done was make me think even less of him than I had before.

Read Full Post »

Sheldon Steven Dennis, “Dance of the Bear Dogs”

Posted in aboriginal art, art appreciation, bear, bear dogs, British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, First Nations art, Freda Diesing School, Freda Diesing School of Northwest Coast Art, indian art, Northwest Coast Art, Personal, Sheldon Steven Dennis, Tahltan, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 29, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Sheldon Steven Dennis is a Tahltan artist who graduated from the Freda Diesing School in 2010. He’s been on my short list of artists to buy from ever since, and a few weeks ago I finally bought copies of what I consider his best work, “The Dance of the Bear Dog.”

The print honors the Tahltan bear dog, which officially became extinct about fifty years ago. Dog owners are now trying to recreate the species from crossbreeds. Whether this effort is an honest effort or a scam is a matter of dispute, but you can understand why the idea captures people’s imagination.

About half a meter high, the Tahltan bear dog was mostly black, with erect ears and a tail that has been described as a shaving brush. Double-jointed, they were able to move quickly through the forest.
Hunters carried the dogs in packs on their back, releasing them to surround the bear and distract it with their yaps and attacks until the hunters caught up. At home, they were known for the gentleness as well as their loyalty and intelligence.

Dennis’ print shows the moment when the hunters and the dogs have surrounded the bear, which is huddled in the middle of the design, its claws bristling and red, as though it has drawn blood, but its open mouth and lolling tongue suggesting that it is tiring. The human faces are set in grimaces of exertion, while the dogs are crouched low with an intentness as though they are keeping close watch on the bear and are ready to leap out of the way if attacked.

The design is striking for its limited use of red as a secondary color, which makes its uses on the mouths and the bear’s claws all the more striking. It is a darker red than is usually seen in northern designs, suggesting the blood being shed by all those involved in the hunt.

The form lines, too, are particularly interesting, with the thin lines of the hunters’ chins suggesting vulnerability in contrast to the thick, powerful lines of the bear’s body. By contrast, the strength of the dogs’ bodies is suggested by two thick ovoids, while the relative thinness of the legs suggesting agility.

However, what makes the design so effective is the crowded, concentric circles of action. Many northern designs, especially modern ones, are defined as much by their white space as the design, but Dennis has chosen a busy dance that reflects the chaos of the hunt. This chaos is suggested even further by the way that the outer abstract ring gives way to to the second ring of hunters and dogs, which in turn gives way to the asymmetrical design of the bear and hunters that spirals down as though descending into a drain.

Dennis’ accomplishment is to suggest a rarely seen sense of movement and action while using nothing but traditional forms – a combination that makes the description of the moment as a “dance” a precise choice of words.

Dennis is not a prolific artist. The fact that much of his work is apparently for family and ceremonial  purposes makes his works for sale even rarer. As a result, the pieces available for sale are relatively few. However, on the strength of “The Dance of the Bear Dog,” I will be watching eagerly for more to buy.

tahltan-bear-dogs

 

 

Read Full Post »

Lighting the pilot light

Posted in Bruce Byfield, furnace, Personal, pilot light, tagged , , , , on October 15, 2015| Leave a Comment »

My new furnace has a start button that starts the pilot light with a burst of heat. It is an unexpected bonus, but I appear to have lit my last pilot light – and my sigh of relief sounds like the whoosh of sound as the new furnace kicks into action.

The old furnace, you understand, was installed in 1974 when the townhouse was built. That is not so bad as you might think, because my townhouse has enough passive heating that I usually only need a furnace for a few months each year. Still, the old furnace was not quite on the cutting edge of technology or efficiency.

The pilot light, in case you have never seen one, needs to be started for the furnace to work. The problem was, in the old furnace, it was five centimeters off the floor. To light it, I had to put my face to the floor, and thrust with one hand a long match in the general direction of the pilot. Meanwhile with the other hand, I depressed a button, then, when I saw the flame leap up on the pilot like a miniature gas burner,  keep the button depressed for at least a count of thirty, carefully avoiding contact with the nearby wires. Finally, I would slide the button to the On position, and, wait holding my breath until it seemed that the pilot would stay lit.

That was not be the most convenient maneuver under any circumstances. Often, the match would burn out or burn through, and I would have to move the button to Off, wait for the gas to clear, and try again. If I improvised the long match with a match from a booklet taped to a chopstick, two times out of three, the head would fall off before it reached the pilot.

It didn’t help, either, that the furnace was less than half a meter from the hot water tank, and the furnace room was often piled with boxes waiting to be given away to whichever charity would pick them up. Often, I had to twist sideways while lowering myself down the side of the furnace – and, worse, repeat the movement to pull myself upright, avoiding touching the water tank on both the descent and the ascent.

Usually, too, I was relighting the pilot in the middle of the night, and awkward from sleep.  Most times, high winds had blown the pilot out, and I would no sooner drag myself upright and be leaving the furnace room than I realized that the pilot had blown out again.

Did I mention, too, that with my face so close to the pilot light, all the while I was trying hard not to imagine the flame exploding and giving me a facial massage, or my hair catching on fire? Over the years, I learned the process and overcome my fears, but, for the first few years, I was often visibly shaking as I went about the task.

Sensibly, the new furnace faces away from the water tank, where there is plenty of room, and its pilot light is at chest-level when I sit cross-legged on the floor. However, the manual warns of dire consequences if you try to light it with a match, so I am not about to experiment to see what happens. That seems just like technology – just when a task is made easy, it becomes unnecessary.

Read Full Post »

Cordelia Fine’s “Delusions of Gender”

Posted in Ada Lovelace, Ada Lovelace Day, biodeterminism, Bruce Byfield, Cordelia Fine, Delusions of Gender, feminism, Personal, sexism, stereotyping, tagged , , , , , , , , , on October 13, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, which honors the first computer programmer. The custom is to observe the day by writing about women you admire in the sciences or computing. This year, I have chosen to mention Cordelia Fine, whose book Delusions of Gender gave me a coherent argument for what I have always believed – that, contrary to the prevailing outlook the brains of men and women are largely the same.

I can’t remember a time I didn’t have this belief, but it received strong confirmation when I taught at university and dealt with several thousand students. However, it was Fine’s book that gave me the evidence and reasoned argument and turned the belief into an even deeper conviction.

To say the least, this conviction is a minority viewpoint. Modern alleged science is full of poorly designed research, and unsupported speculations about the differences between the sexes – to say nothing of Just So stories about pre-historic humans that are supposed to have implications for life today in the suburbs. All this mix is reported uncritically in the media to reinforce common stereotypes. Much of my pleasure in Delusions of Gender is Fine’s obvious delight in debunking such things with a combination of dry wit and thorough analysis, proving that most of the conclusions promoted by people like Simon Baron-Cohen (who actually reviewed the book), Leonard Sax, and John Gray are based on flawed experiments and is little more than a rationalization of conventional sexism – a logical fallacy based on an appeal to biological authority, although Fine never actually uses the term.

In particular, Fine discusses how differences in the organization of men’s and women’s brains are used as evidence that stereotypes about mental capacities. Her dissection is lengthy, but her basic point is simple: how does anyone know that the physical differences translate into behavioral differences and limitations? There is no mechanism for this translation – it is simply assumed. Yet, by contrast, when people are brain-damaged, and one part of the brain takes over the functions of another, nobody automatically assumes a similar translation. In the end, Fine condemns such views as the modern descendant of discredited views such as phrenology and cranial capacity as determinants of behavior. She calls this assumption “neuro-sexism.”

Fine also provides the answer I had been waiting for to those well-meaning parents who insist that gender must be biological, because their children are showing stereotypical behavior. Fine’s answer is that the reinforcement of stereotypes is unconscious, even among those who try to avoid them. In fact, stereotyping is so prevalent that expectant parents who learn the sex of their offspring before birth immediately start referring to him or her in traditional masculine and feminine ways. Under these circumstances, a biological explanation is unwarranted – it simply fits into people’s conventional ways of thinking.

Currently, the biological determinists prevail in our cultural, along with their sub-text that there is not much we can do about gender differences. By contrast, Fine makes the case for environmental differences, which means that change is possible. The first time I read Delusions of Grandeur, my reaction could be summarized as, “Finally!” and I continue to regard Fine as a voice of sanity. and scientific reasoning.

Read Full Post »

My feminist marriage

Posted in Bruce Byfield, feminism, feminist marriage, marriage, Patricia Louise Williams, Personal, tagged , , , , , , on October 2, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Marriage is viewed uncomfortably by many feminists. For years, women placed themselves at a significant disadvantage when they married, and, even now, marrying means a constant battle against traditional assumptions. In fact, many would question if a feminist marriage – a marriage that attempts to practice gender equality, legal or common law – is even a possibility between a man and a woman.

I happen to be in a position to say that it is possible. One of the proudest boasts is that I practiced feminist marriage for thirty years, and with considerable success.

In fact, if my partner Trish had not died unexpectedly young, I would still be married today.

Much of my pride in the accomplishment I shared with Trish is that feminist marriage was hard work. No sooner had we married than people started treating us differently. Suddenly, we were much more acceptable to each other’s families. Friends who had known us for years assumed we would immediately settle down to having a family, and filling traditional roles.

Fortunately, neither of us was conventional enough to be heavily influenced by such expectations, but, all the same, resisting them often took more energy than we expected – although we did enjoy confounding those expectations whenever possibly. At times, we even took a gleeful satisfaction in educating people by going against those stereotypes.

For many couples who want to practice feminist marriage, division of domestic labor is the largest problem. Notoriously, many men cannot get in the habit of doing their share. For us, however, this was never much of a problem.

For one thing, my mother returned to work when I was late elementary school, so I was more prepared to take on my share of responsibilities than most men.

More importantly, by consulting our preferences and the patterns of our lives, we soon talked out any difference. I was a student when we married, and for much of our life together I worked freelance. Usually, I was home long before Trish, and, since I like cooking, having me in charge of meals was only sensible, especially if we were going to eat before eight or nine o’clock. Similarly, Trish did the driving, so maintaining the car fell largely to her. The tasks neither of us cared to do, we compromised on – for instance, Trish turned out to dislike doing the dishes less than I did, while I tolerated vacuuming better than she did. A few tasks, like doing the laundry, fell to whoever happened to need it done at a given moment.

We never found such decisions difficult, because both of us from the start had a commitment to living up to our ideals of a partnership. Part of that ideal was to talk about everything as frankly as possible, even what seemed obvious, just in case what seemed obvious to one of us was not obvious to the other. Early on, we each agreed as well that displays of temper were inappropriate toward the major person in our lives. As a result, we rarely argued – not because we never disagreed, but because we were committed to finding a civilized solution. Also, by the time we reached the point where we might have argued, we generally had long ago agreed how we would handle it.

Still, others’ assumptions were always there. When someone would note that our division of labor was non-traditional, we took to paraphrasing Lloyd Alexander, noting that while some work was called women’s and some was called men’s, the work itself never cared who did it. What mattered was that the work got done. Most of the time, the comment ended the discussion.

Of course, the expectations annoyed us. However, unlike modern feminists, who are fond of saying that their role is not to educate, we did take it upon ourselves to teach – or at least confound – whenever possible. When we were at a restaurant and the waiter handed me a sample of the wine, I would pass it to Trish to taste as well, and we would both discuss it before we both nodded acceptance. At the end of the meal, Trish would pay (not that it mattered, since the money came from the same credit union account). Sometimes, we would make a great Three Musketeers-like display of Trish holding the door for me, or presenting me with flowers on my birthday. These lessons might have been spoiled by the fact that both of us would end up giggling, but, we would quote Utah Phillips and say that people had to learn these things somewhere, and giggle more.

Once, we were sitting in the university pub, and I expressed the opinion that children probably benefited from having a parent at home. A woman who had come late to the conversation immediately accused me of sexism – then, with what I can only call a smile of vicious delight, instead of siding with her, Trish pointed out that I had stated earlier than I was expecting to arrange my life so that half the time I was the parent at home. As things happened, we never brought a pregnancy to term, but I did arrange my working life so that I could have been a hands-on parent.

Breaking these expectations was a way to get some of our own back on those who wanted us to act traditionally. Instead of exploding in anger or exasperation, we gave them a teachable moment (and ourselves a moment of amusement).

Our marriage was not a matter of us against the world. However, it had something of that flavor. You might say more accurately that it was our beliefs against the world’s, and that we were allies in a shared cause.

Yet, however our marriage is described, its success was undeniable. People meeting us after we had been together for twenty five years thought we were a new couple after seeing us together in public. At Trish’s memorial service, several speakers mentioned the strength of our marriage, and I took some comfort in hearing that several nieces considered us an example for them to live up to. So if you accuse me of filtering memories through nostalgia and grief, you are wrong.

What I have described was real enough, if rare, and we both realized how lucky we were to have it. Except we knew that luck had little to do with it. It was hard work and ideals that was responsible. To me, there is no question whatsoever: marriage in defiance of convention made me a better feminist, and what we built is one of the accomplishments of my life.

Read Full Post »

Latham Mack’s “Grizzly Bear Spoon”

Posted in aboriginal art, British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, First Nations art, Freda Diesing School of Northwest Coast Art, Grizzly Bear Spoon, indian art, Latham Mack, Northwest Coast Art, Nuxalk, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on September 21, 2015| Leave a Comment »

I first became aware of Nuxalk artist Latham Mack when I visited Terrace for the Freda Diesing School graduate exhibit. He had already won one YVR scholarship, and would go on to win another, and his paintings and drawings were among the best in the class – so much so that the teachers gave him the privilege in his second year of working in the Nuxalk rather than the Northern tradition. In fact, when he showed me a sketch for a painting of the Four Carpenters, I said I would buy it sight unseen. However, that painting was never done, and at the time his sculptural work was no more than competent, the best feature of his masks being the painting.

lmgbs2

Mack’s patience and hard work, though, mean that his story today is very different. Under the mentorship of Dempsey Bob, Mack has become one of the outstanding carvers of his generation, and the prices of his work should soon edge beyond my affordability. So when he showed me his relatively inexpensive “Grizzly Bear Spoon” outside Dempsey Bob’s “North” exhibit in 2014, I jumped at the chance to buy. I had to wait six months while the spoon was on display at the Richmond Art Gallery, but in early 2015 I finally carried home an example of his work.

My understanding is that Mack began the spoon while still at the Freda Diesing School and finished it in 2014. Certainly its quality and execution is closer to that of his current work than his student masks. If I didn’t know Mack’s connection to Bob, I might have guessed it by the minimal paint job, although Mack does use what I mentally tag “Nuxalk Blue” around the eyes and ears. The wood is soft to the touch, and the lines of the paint completely straight, both signs of a highly-finished work (and, in the case of the paint, a steady hand. What I especially like is that, with the minimal paint, the contours of the grain because as much a part of the result as the carving.

Adding to the piece are the proportions and curves of the spoon’s bowl. They are framed by the legs, with the knees marking where the bowl begins to widen, and the descent of the bowl’s curve by the calves. Further up the handle, the start of the bowl is framed by the claws.

Most of the body is simply carved, with the roundness of legs and arms emphasizing the wood’s grain. But what really catches the eye is the depth of the carving on the head. Typically, deep carving is a sign of excellence in northwest coast carving, and this spoon is no exception. The tip of the chin is at least three centimeters from the base of the neck, and the inside of the mouth slightly more. The lips are half a centimeter thick, the eye-sockets symmetrically about the same. The result is dramatic, especially when painted, and even more so in dim light.

Currently, “Grizzly Bear Spoon” sits on a tea trolley in my living room, where I pass it twenty times a day and my glance can hardly help but linger on it. I suppose it is a minor work compared to Mack’s larger pieces, but between the curves, the grain, and the depth of the carving, I consider it every bit as much an accomplishment.

lmgbs

Read Full Post »

Why selfies are not a feminist issue

Posted in Bruce Byfield, feminism, Personal, self-confidence, self-esteem, selfies, tagged , , , , , on September 12, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Although I am committed to feminism, some of its advocates grab hold of strange ideas. For example, in their rejection of body-shaming, some praise acceptance of being overweight, ignoring the fact that it is unhealthy (although evidently, less so than anorexia). Not too long ago, you could also find those who, with no definite evidence, believed in the existence of a prehistoric matriarchy. More recently, some claim that the taking of selfies strengthen women’s self-confidence, and to object to selfies for any reason is a sign of secret hatred for women. By contrast, I would argue that selfies encourages women in traditional stereotypes, urging them to promote self-esteem instead of grounding them in self-confidence.

Erin Tatum gives a typical argument in favor of selfies. According to her “Selfies and Misogyny: The Importance of Selfies as Self-Love,” selfies matter because women take them for no justification except their own enjoyment. Instead of acting out what the fashion industry or the men in their lives tells them to – and usually feeling inadequate — selfies are a way for women to appreciate themselves and each other. Far from being narcissistic, selfies “provide girls with the means to create their own positive image of themselves, thereby severely diluting the impact of outside opinion. If your confidence comes from within, you can’t be controlled as easily.”

An obvious flaw of this argument is that, despite jokes about young women making duck faces in selfies, selfies are not particularly associated with women. For instance, when The Oatmeal discussed selfies, the one taking them was a man, and the one objecting to them is a woman . Under this circumstance, I have trouble seeing criticisms of selfies being a displaced attack on women.

Just as importantly, when Tatum and other defenders assert that selfies are not narcissistic, their words sound narcissistic. According to Tatum, for example, selfies are about self-love (which I presume is an accidental double-entendre, since it goes against what she says), they are “all about you;” and she ends by urging women to “embrace yourself with your selfie.” Even as Tatum argues, her choice of words creates the impression that selfies really are everything she claims they are not.

Even more obviously, although Tatum asserts that selfies are a way to break away from the demands of the fashion industry, I would argue that they are nothing more than an internalization of female stereotypes. Like a model on a runway, or a fashion spread in the paper, the message of selfies is that what is real about women is their exterior. When Tatum says that taking selfies is like playing dress-up, she unconsciously expresses exactly what makes me uneasy about selfies: they are infantalization of women, a reduction of them to their exteriors. In other words, their message is precisely that of consumerism, internalized, but no less dismissive of innate self-worth.

True, selfies might be considered an improvement in that they are not primarily about the male gaze. However, a lot of selfies are taken for men or end up in men’s hands, and are commented on by men on social media. Everything considered, selfies seem more of the same in the lightest of disguises.

When Tatum suggests that girls or women with low self-esteem can feel better about themselves by taking a selfie, she encourages exactly the same superficiality she denounces. “Selfies challenge the idea that you need a justification to be seen,” she writes in bold face, that what matters is feeling good about yourself – and not what you have actually done. By posting your selfies, you are claiming a part of other people’s time solely on the basis that you are you — and what could shallower than that?

This is the message that women have always been given, and it makes the enjoyment of selfies the precise opposite of the confidence that creates a self-actualized person. Instead of grounding women in accomplishment and maturity, selfies offer a foundation that is fragile because it is exterior to them, and easily shattered by an outside opinion.

If I have misgivings about selfies, it is not because I secretly hate women, but because I want better for them than more of the same. I believe women’s rights need to be based on an internalized confidence, an understanding of themselves – and that is something no selfie can ever hope to offer.

I admit that I do not usually think of selfies this way. In fact, usually I do not think of them at all. When I do, I lump them in with activities like watching sports or becoming involved with media fandom as silly but essentially harmless activities that people use to pass the time. But when people start claiming that selfies promote feminism, I start thinking that they are seriously under-estimating the persistence of the stereotypes of women, and how easily they adapt to the latest fads.

Read Full Post »

Culling books

Posted in Books, Bruce Byfield, reading, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on September 1, 2015| Leave a Comment »

The arrival of new appliances later this week mean that I have to move the bookshelves on the stairs. Roused to long-overdue action I’ve been using the necessity to cull books, mostly from historical and children’s fiction. My goal is to eliminate all double rows of books on the shelves, but I’m finding it harder to condemn books than I thought.

The historical fiction will survive with only minor culls; it’s full of books by Gillian Bradshaw, Bernard Cornwell, Robert Graves,. Rosemary Sutcliff, and Henry Trease, and Patrick O’Brian. However, I won’t be keeping the Dudley Popes, which are no more than adequately written, nor the odd library remainder with a wretched-looking cover. Admittedly, I haven’t read any of the twenty or so Georgette Heyers, but I figure that anything Trish liked so well should be worth a read some time; perhaps after I’ve read them all, I’ll keep the best half dozen.

Most of my culls are from the children’s section. I’m keeping the Arthur Ransom series, figuring I’ll read them some day. However, I’ve decided that I can live without most of the Doctor DoLittles, the Green Gables, and the Mary Poppins books.

However, it’s wretched to cull any books, and harder still to cull Trish’s book and the odd volume we bought anticipating having children. But I tell myself that keeping a book I’m not going to re-read is hoarding, and denying others a chance to read is simply wrong. All the same, there’s such a clear history of my life on the shelves that I half-believe I could commit a series of murders more easily than I can discard even books I’m not going to read.

Read Full Post »

Banning devil’s advocacy

Posted in Bruce Byfield, devil's advocacy, logic, logical fallacies, tagged , , , , , on July 16, 2015| Leave a Comment »

I am a devil’s advocate by profession. Some articles I sell ask hard questions. Many anticipate the responses to the opinions they express so I can answer them and strengthen the opinion. So when I hear people banning devil’s advocacy, I find their attitude short-sighted and have to struggle not to be offended personally.

The concept of devil’s advocate originates in the canonization process of the Catholic church.  In the debates about whether someone should be recognized as a saint, the devil’s advocate was tasked with asking the hard questions. Is the candidate’s behavior always of the highest? Did the miracles claimed for the candidate really occur? In the struggle to answer such questions, the decision was improved, and the final verdict could be given more confidently.

Never mind that, from my agnostic’s position, the fact that the process involved accepting miracles suggests that it was not applied strictly enough. The decisions were undoubtedly less credulous because a skeptical position was considered and answered. It seems no accident that, when Pope John Paul II wanted to create hundreds of modern saints, he weakened the role of the devil’s advocate so he could hurry the process.

I like to think that the position of devil’s advocate contains a sense of justice, implying that even the devil deserves representation in an inquiry into the truth. Playing devil’s advocate is such a useful exercise that I practice it as regularly in my personal life, as in my profession, deliberately imagining the worst that could be said or happen before making major decisions. From experience, I know that, by challenging my opinions, I round them out, modify them, and, in the end, hold them more thoughtfully and with more confidence because I have freely entertained doubts. I rarely finish playing my own devil’s advocate without being convinced that my opinion is the better for the exercise, and I can only conclude that those who would outlaw it have values very different from mine.

At the very least, those who make the ban appear to value self-esteem over intellectual rigor. Perhaps they believe they already have the truth, so an investigation into it is unnecessary. At the very least, they appear to value personal comfort over truth – which is understandable, because even when devil’s advocacy is an internal debate in someone’s mind, it can be disturbing and unpleasant.

Admittedly, some people have been known to claim they are playing devil’s advocate as an excuse for expressing unpopular opinions. When their opinions are questioned, they retreat by saying they are playing devil’s advocate. In this way, they evade responsibility for their opinions while sniping at other people’s. Still others claim to be playing devil’s advocate when what they really want is to have an argument, and care nothing for the topic. Both these behaviors are disgusting bits of dishonesty which only make me impatient.

However, banning devil’s advocacy because the concept is sometimes abused makes no more sense than banning cars because some drivers have accidents in them. Almost any claim of intellectual effort is open to abuse. An argument, which should be based on logic, can be debased by a couple of dozen fallacies, including appeals to authority, either-or propositions, non sequiturs, and post hoc arguments. A claim to logic can also be a way to avoid examining personal biases and prejudices, especially when made by someone in a position of power. Yet very few would suggest throwing out logic altogether. After all, much of the technology that shapes our lives is based on the application of logic – and part of that application of logic is the consideration and rejection of alternatives such as the ones that devil’s advocacy is designed to eliminate.

Frankly, I am shocked and saddened that anyone would discard devil’s advocacy so lightly. It is such a useful way of arriving at a better approximation of the truth that I am unable to view its outlawing as anything less than anti-intellectualism of the most distorted sort. The fact that idea can be entertained by people whom might otherwise be considered intellectuals only makes it even more tragic.

Read Full Post »

Lying on online dating sites

Posted in Bruce Byfield, comedy, dating sites, humor, light reading, lying, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on July 1, 2015| 1 Comment »

Online dating sites often advertise themselves as scientific. They ask you to answer hundreds of questions, and encourage you to take endless tests, all in the hopes of finding someone to love. In my experience, the results are about as accurate as a horoscope, and another example of how science is evoked to justify flimflam and phony services. Still, I have to admit that some of the questions do tell you a thing or two about the people who answer them – just not always what the question intended.

The best example of such questions are those that ask you how sexually confident you are,  or how strong your sex drive is. I realize that social media has long ago conditioned most of us to answer any question put to us in a web browser, but these questions are an open invitation to lie.

Think about it: statistically, the only truthful answer for the majority is the choice that identifies them as average. If nothing else, very few of us have the experience to have a statistically meaningful idea about how we compare to others of our gender and age. However, nobody wants to admit they are average. Average is boring, and nobody on a dating site wants to appear boring, which may explain why I have never seen such an answer to those questions.

Still less is anyone going to identify themselves as below average in confidence or sex drive – unless, perhaps, they are under twenty and unusually repressed or inexperienced. I mean, who wants to nurse someone along in order to have a relationship? Not even the unusually repressed or inexperienced, really.

That usually leaves labeling yourself as above average or far above average. Even  if you secretly consider yourself a sexual athlete of world cup standards, you’d have to have the intelligence of a bed of kelp to admit that in public. Not only does it sound like boasting, but it sets an impossibly high standard for your eventual performance.

In the end, the only answer – and the one most people usually give – is that they are above average. However, since the other answers aren’t useful, nobody knows whether the answer is truthful. More likely, identifying yourself as above average only says that you are modest and have given the question of how to game the system some thought.

In other words, the supposedly scientific system cannot be trusted. In fact, for some questions, it encourages users to lie – and we all know how important lies are for building a lasting and mature relationship.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »