Attention, All Operatives For Project Sexual Anarchy.

They're on to us.

No, really. Twenty years ago, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, I wrote a short article that described all sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy as "technological limitations." That generated a bit of controversy, but I think it's one of those things that is self-evident. Shortened, brutal lives and a vast, underproductive population crippled by wasting diseases were also "technological limitations," and we've overcome some of them with effective innovations. Vaccination, nutrition, public hygiene, advanced medicine, have all advanced the human condition. All of these have benefited from other, foundational technologies in transportation, logistics, communication, and the like. I wrote, approvingly (and still believe, approvingly) that the only thing that ought to be at stake when two people come together in intimacy is intimacy: the communition of their hearts and bodies. Fear of something that neither person actually wants in the bedroom ought not to be part of the equation.

This morning, in the (Sun Myung Moon owned) Washington Times, Jeffrey Kuhner writes:

President Obama is on the verge of achieving his liberal revolution. His goal is to destroy our Judeo-Christian culture. ...

Its [Liberalism's] aim is to erect a utopian socialist state - one built upon the rubble of Judeo-Christian civilization. In short, liberals want to create a world without God and sexual permissiveness is their battering ram. Promoting widespread contraception is essential to forging a pagan society based on consequence-free sex.

The proposal is profoundly immoral. Contraception violates the natural moral order. It entrenches the hedonistic ethic that sex is about recreation and individual gratification. ... Mr. Obama is rapidly advancing the culture of death.

Really, you should read the rest, but that's a precis' of Kuhner's attitudes.

See, because they're on to us. Just like the Grand Mof Tarkin said of the Death Star, Jeffery Kuhner believes that fear will keep the peasants in line. Fear of disease and unwanted pregnancy are good things that somehow create healthy families and children.

Kuhner goes off the rails by claiming a "Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Saul Alinsky and George Soros" "Axis-of-Evil" progression that culminates in Obama being "a Leninist." But that's just name-calling.

The title of this post came from Peter LaBarbera's description of anyone who advances a vision of a humanity free to consent as "part of the sexual anarchist lobby." Neither LaBarbera nor Kuhner can imagine a world without an externalities-based fear. Just like America must always have some enemy in which to be deathly, existentially terrified, so too must lovers have some immanent, external tragedy against which they must create bulwarks or their love will be doomed.

In reality, Kuhner's rant and LaBarbera's schoolyard taunt are very much like David Frum's infamous Dark Satanic Mill Capitalism essay, where he wrote that fear of impoverishment and ruin are good things that keep the peasants in line, unwilling to upset the working order of the corporatist oligarchy.

And like Frum, Kuhner just has this... feeling... that kids are getting away with too much these days and, dammit, something not's right. Humanity shouldn't have it so easy. It's nice and all that technology allowed the peasants to be productive for sixty years instead of just twenty, but they're getting a little uppity with all that good food and education, ain't they? Life shouldn't be getting better for the majority of us. We should be afraid. If we're not afraid, what place is there for the succor of God? If, no really, humanity has no need for the succor of God, then Mr. Khuner's entire life, and his dedication to a religious belief, have been for naught.

Giving Satan His Due

On the other hand, Kuhner may be on to something, but only within his own vision of the world.

Elaine Pagels wrote a great book I read many years ago entitled The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics. In her book, Pagel writes that humans have an unending supply of suspicion that something is wrong and, if so, it is not our fault. If you eliminate all of the external enemies, and still things suck, then the search inevitably gets turned toward inner enemies. That's why Pagel's list must be read in order: the first threat is one outside the borders of the nations under the early Church's control; the second threat is perceived of those who lived side-by-side with the medieval Church, and finally; the last threat comes from members of the Church itself who dissent even in small ways.

A charitable reading of Kuhner's worry is that, deprived of external threats, human beings in relationships will turn on each other. If the marriage isn't perfect, and there are no external threats, then it must be the other person who's at fault.

Basically, Kuhner's essay is a fundamental one: an unnamed other people aren't quite so emotionally savvy and secure as either church leadership or the leadership of the sexual anarchy^[1]. Kuhner could even point to the wrecked homes on both sides as evidence that his thesis holds true even of intelligensia, regardless of their ideology. But for him, the strictures with which he has lived his whole life, which have served him well, should not be allowed to fall away. If we have to keep mortal terror to keep such order, so be it.

^[1] If you think "anarchist leader" is oxymoronic, please read one book on anarchy, and another on leadership.

James only thinks he's joking...

The other day, PZ Myers pointed me to an essay at The Edge in which Steven Pinker says:

Believe it or not—and I know most people do not—violence has been in decline over long stretches of time, and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species’ existence. The decline of violence, to be sure, has not been steady; it has not brought violence down to zero (to put it mildly); and it is not guaranteed to continue. But I hope to convince you that it’s a persistent historical development, visible on scales from millennia to years, from the waging of wars and perpetration of genocides to the spanking of children and the treatment of animals.

Pinker then points to an "escalator of reason" in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature: How Violence Has Declined, claiming "As literacy, education, and the intensity of public discourse increase, people are encouraged to think more abstractly and more universally, and that will inevitably push in the direction of a reduction of violence."

I don't think that's the case at all. In fact, I think we need to look at the incentives to act non-violently, none of which Pinker illuminates. In The Moral Animal, Robert Wright finds that incentive: as our lives get better, we compete for the resources to make our lives better. At some point, our economic well-being becomes tied to infrastructure, and the broader than infrastructure, the more the economic well-being of others becomes our concern. To the extent that violence disrupts the economic well-being of others, violence disrupts our own economic well-being. We are incentivized to reduce violence in order to reduce the destruction of assets and capital that go along with the maintenance of our well-being.

Wright asserts (and provides better evidence than Pinker) that we only start to view other people as "human" when our economic well-being is tightly intertwined with theirs. (Hence John Derbyshire's infamous "I don't care about Egyptians" comment.) That's the incentive.

James Nicoll only thinks that he's kidding when he writes:

The implications of this effete and decadent eurosocialism for the aspirations of those hoping to find themselves glorious overlords of a savage land filled with SCAdians, Lord the Rings fans and Wiccans scarcely needs explanation!

The questions that must be asked

Firedog Lake joins me in asking the questions that the press ought to be asking:

1. We had steeply progressive taxation in this country from World War I until the late '80s. In that period, the US economy became the most powerful in the world and the American middle class grew like none other in history. Was that "class warfare"?

2. Taxes are at historic lows for the top 1% and total tax levels are also at historic lows at a time when the country is facing a decaying infrastructure, closing schools and record numbers of American children are surviving on food stamps. Is that a problem?

3. The concentration of wealth at the top in this country hasn't been this pronounced since the 1920s. Is that a problem?

4. Studies show that Americans favor a much more equitable a distribution of wealth — akin to a country like Sweden. Is this belief rooted in resentment or "class warfare"?

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) Lamp

In non-paranoid news, Omaha and I bought one of those blue lights that supposedly fights seasonal affective disorder (SAD). It was recommended to me by my physician several months ago, and this week I've been trying it out. The thing was pricey, over $120, and I wondered if it was worth it.

I have no idea if this light will make me happier in the long run, if my brain will get the "there's enough light, be merry, be cheered!" signals that it's supposed to put out.

But I do know this: when that light goes off at 6am, I am awake. This thing shocks me into consciousness with all the force of a Love Hammer. I am awake the way the voice of God wakes you up. It's a forceful, do-stuff, get-going awake. And I stay awake. I am not tempted to go back to bed.

Which, actually, is the effect I was seeking. So, barring tragic side effects (a decline in creative or productive function, frequent headaches or other health issues, loss of libido: you know, the critical things) quite possibly a decent investment.

Is the Alexander Technique just Sheep in Wolves Clothing?

Thesis: The Alexander Technique doesn't just teach posture as a corrective method. Above and beyond the basic good-for-you poses nicked from yoga, the Alexander Technique mostly teaches certain postures and behaviors that communicate assurance and status: stillness of the head, eye contact, and open charismatic gestures. This generates a sense of control over the outside world, especially when the outside world starts to react to the "new" you, that leads to a sense of well-being.

Obscure Rule 34 Observation:

To the best of my ability, I cannot find any erotic fanfiction involving Jukka Sarasti.

This is not a shortcoming with reality in need of fixing.

The Sunk Costs of living in an Open Source World

One of the things I've noticed is that I have a surprising indifference to a sunk cost of time. If a client and I agree on a project that will take six months, and five months into the project a BSD-licensed version of what I'm building comes out, I'll gladly throw out all of my work, edit and revise and theme the BSD-licensed work, and present it to the client as fait accompli, complete with an explanation for this "interesting new library / toolkit / application service provider" that I chose to use.

When it comes to clients, my ego is in delivering, not in writing code. I reserve that shit for my personal projects. (That said, my ego is weirdly fed by the notion that I've actually kept up the Canvas Experiment series, despite having little time to work on it. It's actually taken me more than a month to get to the current stage, and sometimes more than week goes by before I can get back to it. See The Cult of Done Manifest, Rule #5.)

But that ruthless attitude seems to drive people crazy. "You just threw out five months worth of work?" So? The work wasn't the reward; the client's acceptance was. If I can get to that leveraging Wordpress, or Django, or whatever, good. I have two eyeballs; an active developer commmunity has dozens with which to find the bugs. The less code I develop, the fewer bugs I'm going to introduce. Those five months are sunk, but not wasted; templates, look and feel, and unit tests are all transportable to a new platform.