primetime social standards, or, why Liadens should watch more TV

An original is a Code unto herself.
~Liaden proverb

As I'm sure my sisters can witness, I've been reading a lot of Steve Miller & Sharon Lee lately. As a consequence I've spent a lot of idle brain-time (for example, while standing over a copy machine for hours at a time, getting a crick in my shoulder from repetitive paper-shuffling) pondering the differences between the world I live in and the Liaden universe. What sort of things make it so immersive and attractive, and how similar social necessities are addressed differently here versus there.

There are different measures one must use when considering relationships with others as individuals, versus those same people as members of a group. The proper ways to respond to various circumstances, the duties and privileges attending one's role in a relationship, are slightly distinct for each. Furthermore, virtually none of the parameters of such duties and privileges are things made explicit in our culture. With the arguable exception of the workplace, where relationships-as-members may be defined by an employee manual, company code of conduct, etc. Otherwise, persons learn normal cultural expectations of behavior in a sink-or-swim immersion course. Because the cultural norm is at best loosely defined, the quirks of individuals may be compared and contrasted only against one another on a case-by-case basis.

Now, a Liaden, or many another character in the worlds of fiction, would have little difficulty distinguishing between the many roles of the individuals with whom they relate most closely. they would say, This individual upholds such-and-such melant'i, of which this or that aspect pertains to the current situation. If a Liaden were concerned about how to properly serve the interests of clan, kin, and allies given limited resources, she would need only to study the Liaden Code of Proper Conduct in its many volumes to enlighten her as to the most appropriate path. (And in most extreme uncertainty, an intrepid seeker could dare to elicit the advice of one Kareen yos'Phelium--the editor, reviser and expander of the Code, mother of one, and stickler extraordinaire.) There would thus, in Liaden society, be an explicit standard of behavior, an absolute baseline against which all action might be judged.

That our culture does not have an equivalent of a Code of Proper Conduct is by and large, to my eye, a good thing. A very very good thing. For while it would make people like me a lot more comfortable in knowing where we stand, it would give many jerks needless weaponry against those who are honest yet unsubtle. I would rather life be more difficult and confusing for me than have it be wretched and helplessly miserable for a much larger number of largely blameless persons.

The closest thing we have to a Code, I suppose, is the collective attitudes and mores of the characters on primetime sitcoms. No joke, there. The tenor of the cultural norms provided therein neatly fits the phrase "lowest common denominator". Sitcoms, like any representative art form, may be considered to serve two purposes for the viewer--an exoteric, or revealed function and an esoteric, or hidden function. Let us take as given, as an aspect of its definition directly extrapolated from its name, that a sitcom is a comedic piece in which the driving force of the story is the complexities of a social situation. Hence, situation comedy; sitcom. Inherently an aspect of our cultural understanding of social behavior.

The exoteric function of sitcoms is to entertain, amuse, distract. Following the Greek tradition of the comedy, comic main characters are persons equal or lower in social status than the average viewer. Modern usage has transformed this into moral equality rather than economic. For example, the Bluth family in the series Arrested Development. They possess (at some points) a great deal of money and a certain amount of social power, but are made morally equivalent to viewers through their arrogance, stupidity, and dysfunctional treatment of one another. Watching the exaggerated misfortunes and bunglings of our equals lets us laugh, and provides relief from the strain of facing similar troubles in real life.

The esoteric function of sitcoms is didactic. The way characters behave in primetime is the way that network executives believe the average viewers are least likely to object to seeing characters behave. Primetime is, by definition, the part of the programming schedule with the largest viewership. The rise and fall of programs in and out of that coveted timeslot is determined, in turn, by ratings--a statistic which itself measures viewership. It is rather like a real-time democracy among those who own televisions. A vast majority of persons who are part of this viewing public are aware of this process, even if they could not fully articulate their awareness. Therefore one may take it as a known, a cultural commonplace, that the social norms understood collectively by the characters on primetime sitcoms, are a very good approximation of the social norms prevalent in our society as a whole. I say prevalent, because this situation is also understood to be informal.

Now, in any society, a stigma attaches to a person who deviates overmuch from social norms, whether by falling short or by demonstrating too much zeal.

In Liaden society, a person who was lax or ignorant of Code could take on the shame of being considered barbaric, unreliable, stupid--qualities usually ascribed to foreigners. (As witness the phrase, "rag-mannered as a Terran.") A person who erred in the other direction would take on the stigma of being too stuffy, uninspired, or waspish. In other words, they would suffer the more genteel shame of a person too unimaginative or too cold-hearted to vary outside the accepted structure.

In our society, the stigmas are almost reversed. Television, and with it the "original" versions of the current acceptable social paradigms, is something brought into people's homes. The expectation is that a person will watch television on her own and later discuss it with friends, or watch it along with friends and discuss it as they watch. The group will thereby add nuance and interpretation, confirm some aspects of the "original" norms and reject others. Thus, it logically follows that a person who adheres too exactly or too enthusiastically to social norms as they are practiced on television is considered barbaric, not socially integrated, or inept. A person whose ignorance or even knowing refusal not to practice TV-sanctioned behavior patterns is given the benefit of the doubt, provided she shows herself willing to correct errors once made aware of them, and so long as her eccentricities fall within widely acceptable limits. A lack of knowledge of TV standards of behavior might, for example, indicate a social life so rich and active that the person's social group has evolved from the standard into behaviors far beyond the meager efforts of one's own group.

Then again, there is always the remote possibility that the person is an alien, newly beamed down from outer space, or a foreigner whose channels are all different and holds no passion for Americana, or a lost wolf-child who has bumbled through life seemingly without the benefit of any television whatsoever. Based on the occasions when I have fallen into the role of lost wolf-child in that sense, I would surmise that humans, Liadens and all other thinking beings are equally frightened and off-put by the discovery that you and they have no common source of culturally expected behaviors. Whether they sketch a hasty bow and retreat (Liaden style), or nod and smile in a frozen sort of fashion while edging unobtrusively towards the door (American style), there is no help for the situation. One must pick up Volume One and turn to the index or plop down in front of the set and start surfing, or risk remaining a pariah for life.

But do not despair, children of the children of the counter-culture! For even lacking in a large and opinionated social group to facilitate the process, one's individual responses to the standard have been known to suffice. So long as there is a response, preferably one which reveals an ironic and nuanced understanding of the social values and obligations of duty inherent in the standard, this is enough to allow strangers to judge one's character. If for example, your favorite Simpsons character is Nelson Muntz's mother, but you put up a spirited defense of your unusual choice and remain conscious of the irony, then few social groups will fail to accept you with open benefits of the doubt!

scarerism

People always post their crazy political opinions on their blogs, right? That's what blogs are for. That, and letting your friends and relatives know you're still alive.



Hi, everybody! I'm still alive! Sick and such, but if I take my antibiotics like a good girl hopefully it will clear up soon. I hope you all are well, also.



Recently got an email forward which my spam filter picked up, even though it was from someone I know. Once I'd restored it to its proper place (and chided my spam filter for its insolence) I read a radio transcript/article which seems to me the mirror image of some of the left-wing stuff I read online for chuckles. Same logical fallacies, appeals to emotion, judicious use of small facts to make enormous implications. Except this stuff is not meant to give its readers chuckles, not even painfully satirical chuckles of the "aw, c'mon, I may not like this person, but you can't be that hard on them" variety. You are supposed to take it deadly seriously, and this bugs me.

George Soros – His Utopia, Our Nightmare
By Julie Roys

He’s one of the most powerful men in the world. But chances are, you’ve never heard of him. That’s because he prefers to work behind the scenes – decimating financial systems, manipulating democracies, and weakening the United States .
His name is George Soros and his accomplishments read like a page from the rich and devious. This billionaire former hedge-fund manager is known in Europe as the man who broke the Bank of England. Some also charge his speculation precipitated the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. He’s been banned from doing business in China and has been fined for insider trading in France.
But what’s most disconcerting for Americans is that Mr. Soros is using his billions to shape U.S. politics. According to the New York Times, Soros is the world’s single largest donor. But his giving is not philanthropic; it’s political and coercive. In fact, one blogger writes that Soros “runs the Democratic Party like his personal brothel and bankrolls it as well."

As it turns out, I have heard of him. Till now I'd heard mostly positive things, so I'm probably the sort of person this message was trying to reach. But my fallacious rhetoric alarms start to go beep! beep! right around the third sentence. We have here appeals to emotion and negative buzzwords designed to set up Soros as a straw man. We even have an unnamed "blogger" cited, not because they brought a relevant item of fact to the discussion, but because of their skill at creating a powerful insult.

(more from Roys)

Soros’ tactics are alarming. But what’s even more alarming is the vision he’s trying to foist on America and the rest of the world. Soros wants to tear down what he calls the “fascist” tyranny of the United States and replace it with what he calls a “Global Open Society.” In 2003, he said it’s necessary to “puncture the bubble of American supremacy.” And in his latest book, he writes that “the main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States .”
The world order Soros advocates would be governed by the United Nations: national sovereignties would be weakened, if not abolished altogether. This so-called Open Society would be a democracy, but also would include certain mechanisms for the redistribution of wealth. Citizens would be expected to sacrifice for the common good – even if that would mean compromising their personal beliefs. Beliefs would be
considered merely choices, not truth. In fact, if there’s one thing Soros really hates, it’s the notion of Universal Truth.
For Christians, Soros’ utopia reads more like an apocalyptic nightmare. His global government sounds eerily like something out of Revelation. And, his distaste for truth could spell persecution for Christians who don’t conform.

I've read and heard enough liberal denunciations of George Bush that I am exceedingly familiar with the structure of such a "straw man" argument. Remember when people were saying "oh, McCain says he's so honorable, but did you know he has a black baby?" Trying to imply that he was an adulterer, when in fact he and his wife had adopted a Sudanese baby? And then the nattering nabobs would take their tiny, correct but wildly misinterpreted fact and build a whole tower of terror on it, saying that McCain's presidency would result in the stars falling from the sky and suchlike nonsense.
So here is the pattern in a nutshell:
1. Make grandiose claims of evil intent and/or deeds.
2. Follow them up with a few out-of-context facts, or ones which provide tenuous support of the grandiose claims, check.
3. Finish it off with some scare tactics about how this evil person is going to ruin everything for every one. Check, check, and doublecheck.

Not a sentence of this article goes by without some inflammatory adjective ("coercive"), noun ("hedge-fund manager") or verb ("foist"), to pick a few less extreme examples. This article does mention some facts, but then chooses to interpret those facts in the most alarming way possible. As the interpretation builds, the picture becomes more and more alarming, and the danger-words come thick and fast, so that pretty soon it's hard to see anything else.

To look more closely at some of the factual claims, I'll do some follow-up linking, which is really easy to do on the Internet.

Black Wednesday, the Bank of England thing, came about because a faction in Parliament was able to pressure the rest of Parliament into signing on to a European Union financial agreement before they were economically stable enough to do so. Soros is mentioned in the wikipedia article as someone who was able to profit off the English government's screw-up because he recognized quickly what was happening and had the money to take advantage of the situation.

In the manipulating democracies department, here are some instances I was able to find. He helped fund a group which worked to carry out the Rose Revolution in Georgia. That nation was rising up against a corrupt government and succeeded in creating a regime change without violence. He helped fund a group which opposes the socialist President Robert Mugabwe of Zimbabwe and his party. Here's a story about the Zimbabwe situation.

Getting banned from doing business in China, now. Maybe that's bad. Dad always liked the new version of the Chinese Communist Party. In his view, it's run by the same generation of kids who survived the horrors of Maoism and are dedicated to preventing that sort of thing from happening to their people again. But of course lots of people are banned from doing business in China. Yahoo, I think. Wal-Mart wasn't allowed to open stores there until they agreed to let their workers unionize. The only thing I've been able to find easily about Soros + China is that he thinks their economy will improve while ours slides.

Notice how, when I throw in a word like "socialist" or a phrase like "corrupt government", it evokes an emotional response? These emotional responses are fnords. Reading a paragraph full of fnords is like getting a bunch of mosquito bites on your mind. All of a sudden it's tough to think about anything except the itch. Every now and then, if you want to have moving rhetoric, sure, it helps to throw in a fnord. But if a writer or speaker decides to pack every single sentence with them, it makes me angry. Like they think they can batter my brain into submission with a thousand little itches of fear and worry.

And there are so many, many other ways to impart spin.

For example, you can choose which pieces of secondary information to bring in to support your argument. When I was talking about China above, I brought up Wal-Mart as an example of someone who had had trouble doing business in China. This is because us Americans know Wal-Mart as a store whose prices are attractive, but its treatment of employees is sometimes despicable. The implication there was "maybe George Soros is as bad as Wal-Mart, if China's banning him." However, we are also used to thinking of China as bad guys because they do engage in religious persecution of Christians and others, because they are Communists, and because they are in an uncomfortably strong position relative to us economically. The irony of framing the argument so as to make China look like good guys, compared to Soros and Wal-Mart, is meant to make it easier to imagine Soros as a good guy. I did this without insulting anyone but Wal-Mart, and without calling anybody names.

This all comes back to my disapproval of wholesale fnordery. To stand any chance whatsoever of convincing people who disagree with oneself, it is wise to be extremely careful which rhetorical strategies one employs. If someone else already agrees with you and you massively fnord them, it will give them warm fuzzy victory-like feelings, for being on the same side as a thing of such emotional force and vigor. If, however, someone disagrees with you and you massively fnord them, it may make them believe that you hate and despise them and wish them only shame and suffering.

What, then, is the real purpose of wholesale fnording? I hope it is only designed to be used upon those who are already in agreement with the fnorder. I will engage in some hyperboly here to illustrate my point!

Think about the usual situation in which one reads a document like this one, the process. I'm sitting at my computer, bored. I want something to wake me up a little bit and make me feel ways about stuff. Maybe I run across an article like this one about how George Soros, if he gets his wicked way, will bring about the Apocalypse and throw all Christians in jail for refusing to pay for state mandated abortions in cases where women get impregnated consensually on their wedding nights by their new husbands. Or maybe I run across one saying how evil President Bush is in a secret conspiracy to reprogram your mind through your Playstation so that you will be forced to amass enormous credit card debt in order to purchase an SUV powered by whale blubber, whose windshield wipers squirt dolphin tears.

Whichever my political persuasion, what have I actually just done?

I have gone to my computer and read words which excited emotions in me. These words raised my heart rate, got my juices flowing, and gave me delicious fnordy buzz-words, so that I can say them to others who will also get a "buzz" out of them. The most slickly packaged of these are also illustrated, so that you can get an even stronger buzz!

It is titillation. Like cheap romance novels and cartoons, like car commercials which promise wealth and power and attractiveness to those who buy. Except these slingers of lazily-composed rhetoric believe quite seriously in their own pronouncements. They do not consider themselves lazy, nor does it occur to them that what they provide is mere titillation. They seem to believe--and wish you to believe--that they are harbingers of truth, that they are courageously speaking out against evil. They are not. They are scarerists. People who scare themselves into believing that scaring you is going to help get rid of possible evils.

Whether the things and people denounced by people like Roys are, in fact, evil is not something their writings actually consider. Scarerists are concerned only with what can be made to appear evil.

Scarerism, however, is eville. It can devour whole cows in the pasture. It will devour your youngest child!

DONT LET IT!

Laugh at scarerists whenever they come your way! Look up the facts to which they tangentially allude! Arm yourself, leg yourself, teeth yourself, brace yourself! What was tomorrow yesterday is today! Never is too late to say never!

IF YOU AREN'T LAUGHING RIGHT NOW, THE SCARERISTS WIN!!!



(this message was brought to you by two pairs of pants media LP. two pairs of pants media does not condone scarerism. it does, however, practice it.)