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shadowkatYou ever think that you think too much? Or over think things? Been wondering that lately. Turn off the mind.
Told a friend the other night that the only time I turn it off is when I'm focused on creating something artistic - whether it be a watercolor, a painting, a drawing, a bowl in pottery class, a story, what have you.
That's when the mind quiets. I sit at the wheel molding clay, feeling it slip and slide between my fingers. I press it into shape, my body curled over the wheel, elbows on knees, palms caressing the mud, fingers lightly pressing, capturing, molding, shaping. When I'm in the zone, I hear nothing, see nothing, but the clay, the shape, the slide of clay. Nothing exists outside of it, nothing but an aura of negative space. Than jarred, I snap out of the zone, hear the conversations buzzing, see the other wheels, the other potters and my piece looks odd to my eyes alien and I wonder vaguely where I've been and how did it turn out much better than expected. How did I do that??? Also whatever will I do with it. It's not the end product that exhilirates so much as the process of creating it. They say there are those who love the process and there are those who love the product. For years I thought, I was more interested in the product, recently I've realized I could care less about the end result - it's the creation or the journey involved that gives me the high - that puts my demons to rest.
Speaking of demons...
As you may have gathered by now, I'm hyper-critical of myself and highly analytical - hence the critical. This next bit will seem a tad jagged and disconnected. My thoughts are running on multiple tracks tonight, out of sequence, bumping into one another like drunken blind men.
Most of this week been a bit hyper-aware of biases, my own and others. Seeing all of them, no matter how benign or seemingly harmless. As if they are pimples and freckles and postules sticking out on people's noses. Aware that we all are, whether or not we admit it, members of "in-groups" and "out-groups" and often base our opinions on others on which group they appear to be a member of when we encounter them. In the class that I'm auditing this week, the professor stated that she did not believe there was such a thing as truth or rather that we could not find it, since we see everthing through a veil of our own biases, some so ingrained in our make-up that we are not conscious of them, cannot see them. Only catching them when they accidentally slip out in casual conversation, if then.
The film Crash while heavily flawed, is an excellent examination of bias, how everyone has them and how people reacte to one another - creating rather destructive situations - based on them - literally crashing into each other's assumptions. [I saw the film this week - which is a story about a bunch of seemingly unconnected people in LA after 9/11 who bump into each other and change one another's lives - emphasizing their racial prejudices and how those prejudices and assumptions affect their behavior in situations and how depending on the situation they can do horrible or wonderful things, partly due to those prejudices or in spite of them.)
You biasis on fan boards all the time. Fans are very biased, more so than a casual viewer actually. You can see it in how people's views of a tv show are so contradictory, you wonder if they are watching the same one. They are - it's just that each person is watching it through their own shield of prejudice, their own past hurts, their own up-bringing, things you can't dismiss or ignore or forget. I was reading some posts on Veronica Mars for instance that confused me because the episode people were reviewing - it wasn't this week's, I watch it on Sunday's so a week behind, was not what I saw on the screen. Reading the posts carefully - I saw the biases, the wants, the desires of the individual poster. It reminded me of what I saw on fan boards and fan fic during Buffy and Angel's run. And how important it was for everyone that they were right. And how defensive people got when someone said they weren't, myself included. If you made the mistake of pointing out that perhaps they were biased - they'd retort, so are you. I'm not sure you can see a story clearly when you are obsessed with it - because the thing about the story that obsesses you will overshadow everything else, also obsessions often are short lived, or momentary, so it is more than likely, years later you'll revisit it and wonder what the fuck? I know I did when I revisited a few obsessions from my youth - Kimba, Robin Hood (the animated Disney Version), Batman (the cheesy tv series), The Monkees, Battle of the Planets, BattleStar Galatica (original version), and Star Wars. What was it in each of these obsessions that gripped me? I think I know - it was a character - a vulnerability, a sense of adventure, maybe? Then again maybe I don't know. I look at the first three seasons of BTVS and wonder vaguely - why did I get so obsessed with Angel for a while? I did by the way, was watching it in S2 almost purely for Angel - was completely obsessed near the end of that season and started hunting spoilers online, visited websites at work, felt silly , taped the episodes, and did not tell anyone.
Closet obsession. Looking back? I think, what the fuck??? Course at the time was equally obsessed with the Jean Grey/Scott Summers romance in the Xmen. Another thing I've told no one until now. And had a weird yen for Vicky Bliss mysteries by Elizabeth Peters. Re-read one recently, and I get the Peters yen, don't get the other two at all.
Biases, obsessions...are they interelated? Hmm. I've learned the term "cognitive miser" recently. What it means is mental short-cut, or someone who thinks conservatively or relies on mental short-cuts or stereotypes, categories. An example - "Rosaria is tempermental and very confrontational.."
Response:" Isn't she Italian? Italians are tempermental and confrontational..." Or : "Alberto got a full scholarship to NYU." "Alberto is Spainish and an Immigrant and that's why he did, they always give those people scholarships because of Affirmative Action." Or..."People who want control...Men are like that.." or "I get Anti-Semitism now, it's the tall poppy syndrom, whenever someone says I'm chosen or better, others want to kick them." Or "Harry Potter is exactly like Star Wars, has the same story framework, that's why people like it..." (actually all stories are based on four or five basic tropes, what makes them interesting is the characters, universe and things people add to them, the basic plot is not the creative part - that's why a basic, sketch of a plot can't be copyrighted. Example - "the heroes journey" - see Buffy. Or the tragic hero? See Angel. Man vs. Organization - Firefly, X-files...so on and so forth. We tell the same stories over and over and over again.)We do it all the time. Every day. Every hour. In every single conversation. Every post. Make judgements based on our bias, based on the short-cut. It's how people think. And it's not necessarily predictable or consistent because biases can change as can prejudices, they aren't constant. Someone said in class that one of the best tv shows that depicted the inherent biases in people was "All in The Family", would agree.
Almost picked up a book today entitled The Race Myth - it's about how race or the color of someone's skin, the width of their nose, their hair color, their weight has absolutely nothing to do with personality or intellect or behavior. But we believe it does. And why we do and why our thinking is completely unfounded on science or anything remotely rationale. But this thinking is ingrained. In class the teacher spoke of internalized homophobia - the person who is homosexual but hates themselves - an issue hit briefly on in one of the episodes of Season 2 The L Word and one I experienced personally with a friend of mine in college - who hated herself because she was gay. I've known people who felt shame and frustration because of their race, felt that if it weren't for that one little thing they would be a member of the "group".
Mentioned in class this week the quote by the Secretary of Education about how the crime rate would be reduced if we aborted black babies and how morally reprehenisible that is and we'd never do it, but it still would reduce the crime rate. People in class asked the same questions that people online and my friend Wales did - at the time the quote happened. First they were shocked that someone in government, with an education would think such a thing, then they tried to rationalize how that biasis came about. What caused that thinking. And other examples started to get thrown about - such as the distinguished Harvard Professor of Mathmatics view that women were not as good at math as men, that genetically they just weren't designed for it in the same way, the brain was different. Yet there are women who succeeded in mathematics that disprove this, how can he believe it? Well, according to Eliot Aronson - what people do is "subtype" - they convince themselves that while this is probably true is a rare exception to the stereotype. Or they respond to the counterstereotyping by mentally creating a new category to place the person or persons in. Lableing the exception as the "exception that proves the rule." Oh and he goes on to define "stereotype" which is to assign identical characteristics to any person in a group, regardless of the actual variation among members of that group. And we learn how to assign identical characteristics at very young ages - ie. "who is popular, who is atheletic, who is smart, etc..." Stereotyping by itself isn't an intentional act of abuse - according to Aronson and I'd agree, rather it is the we have of simplifying our view of the world and making decisions. We all do it. Read the reviews of A History of Violence and see how people stereotype Americans and the American sensibility. Or how about what is happening in France right now? Or how about the reaction people had when they discovered Tim Minear, a favorite writer was a Republican. No, wait, I'm confusing definitions here - that's not just stereotyping, stereotyping is not all that different than categorizing in of itself, no when an negative reaction is assigned - that becomes "prejudice" and when we act on our prejudices, that becomes discrimination.
"prejudice" is defined a hostile or negative attitude toward a distinguishable group based on generalizations derived from faulty or incomplete information. Based on that definition, I can safely say that everyone I've ever met is prejudiced. And believes they are justified in that prejudice to some extent. (ex. Wales recently told me she was prejudiced against fundamentalist Christians.)
There was a study done a while back on sports uniforms. They discovered that teams with "black" uniforms recieved more fouls and were reprimanded more by referres than teams with light colored or white uniforms. The referees did two things here - they stereotyped, subconsiciously the uniforms, then discriminated based on their prejudice regarding the stereotype.
Tonight while watching The L Word I noticed a few interesting things - how women deal with men. How we assume as women that men do not know what it is like to be intruded upon or violated or fucked with. That they have it easier. They don't by the way. Just different. One of the perks of having a younger brother who is just three years younger - is you do get to see the other side of the equation. Women aren't the only ones who go through hell. But we think we do, because hey, we aren't men. We can't imagine what it is like to be a man and the men are in control - they have the physical and monetary power in our society. They are "in-group" and we are the "out-group" and the out-group always gets defensive about the in-group or the group in power. And the in-group always feels threatened by the out-group taking that power away from them. Was discussing power with a friend last night, and realized all relationships are about power. Heck posting on lj is about jockeying for power - how many friends do I have, how many people read me, am I more interesting or less interesting? We engage or disengage - and each choice we make has a weight behind it. Who makes the biggest compromise? Just going out to a restaurant or picking a movie - can be a power-play between two people. Or a conversation.
That said, one character's comment got me thinking - she said: " Every woman has been at some point intruded upon or violated by a man no matter how benign it might seem." I started thinking back and realized yep.
That was true. And yep, power games. It's about power. In school, I was taller than the boys and ruthlessly teased by them. I think one of the reasons I despise skirts and find them uncomfortable is at an early age I learned I could not play in them without risking some boy pulling it up or looking beneath and teasing/embarrassing me. Can almost hear the reader's response - boys will be boys or everyone does that, people get past that. But do they? And having a younger brother - I know he was teased in other ways, got in fights here and there, etc. We both left high school with huge chips on our shoulders. We both felt at times violated and intruded upon by the opposite sex. And by our own. Women can be as nasty as men. Just different.
I think what it comes down to is who has the power in any given situation. Or rather the most power and it's not always the person you think. In the L Word one of the most powerful characters appears to be the weakest: Tina and Jenny. Why? They make the choices that affect other characters. Shane and Bette who appear to have power, actually have none. They are weak, they've given it away. Same with BTVS. Spike and Angel are actually powerless when it comes to Buffy, Buffy has the power in her relationships - which is why Spike attempted to rape her as a soulless vampire and Angelus tried to rape/kill/maim/destroy her world and friends. Why? Buffy had the power and they had none. They were at her whim. Or rather felt that way. Power...ugh. I hate it sometimes.
Damn 1 am. And got up at 7am. Tired. Must sleep.
End of brain download. Make of it what you will...
Told a friend the other night that the only time I turn it off is when I'm focused on creating something artistic - whether it be a watercolor, a painting, a drawing, a bowl in pottery class, a story, what have you.
That's when the mind quiets. I sit at the wheel molding clay, feeling it slip and slide between my fingers. I press it into shape, my body curled over the wheel, elbows on knees, palms caressing the mud, fingers lightly pressing, capturing, molding, shaping. When I'm in the zone, I hear nothing, see nothing, but the clay, the shape, the slide of clay. Nothing exists outside of it, nothing but an aura of negative space. Than jarred, I snap out of the zone, hear the conversations buzzing, see the other wheels, the other potters and my piece looks odd to my eyes alien and I wonder vaguely where I've been and how did it turn out much better than expected. How did I do that??? Also whatever will I do with it. It's not the end product that exhilirates so much as the process of creating it. They say there are those who love the process and there are those who love the product. For years I thought, I was more interested in the product, recently I've realized I could care less about the end result - it's the creation or the journey involved that gives me the high - that puts my demons to rest.
Speaking of demons...
As you may have gathered by now, I'm hyper-critical of myself and highly analytical - hence the critical. This next bit will seem a tad jagged and disconnected. My thoughts are running on multiple tracks tonight, out of sequence, bumping into one another like drunken blind men.
Most of this week been a bit hyper-aware of biases, my own and others. Seeing all of them, no matter how benign or seemingly harmless. As if they are pimples and freckles and postules sticking out on people's noses. Aware that we all are, whether or not we admit it, members of "in-groups" and "out-groups" and often base our opinions on others on which group they appear to be a member of when we encounter them. In the class that I'm auditing this week, the professor stated that she did not believe there was such a thing as truth or rather that we could not find it, since we see everthing through a veil of our own biases, some so ingrained in our make-up that we are not conscious of them, cannot see them. Only catching them when they accidentally slip out in casual conversation, if then.
The film Crash while heavily flawed, is an excellent examination of bias, how everyone has them and how people reacte to one another - creating rather destructive situations - based on them - literally crashing into each other's assumptions. [I saw the film this week - which is a story about a bunch of seemingly unconnected people in LA after 9/11 who bump into each other and change one another's lives - emphasizing their racial prejudices and how those prejudices and assumptions affect their behavior in situations and how depending on the situation they can do horrible or wonderful things, partly due to those prejudices or in spite of them.)
You biasis on fan boards all the time. Fans are very biased, more so than a casual viewer actually. You can see it in how people's views of a tv show are so contradictory, you wonder if they are watching the same one. They are - it's just that each person is watching it through their own shield of prejudice, their own past hurts, their own up-bringing, things you can't dismiss or ignore or forget. I was reading some posts on Veronica Mars for instance that confused me because the episode people were reviewing - it wasn't this week's, I watch it on Sunday's so a week behind, was not what I saw on the screen. Reading the posts carefully - I saw the biases, the wants, the desires of the individual poster. It reminded me of what I saw on fan boards and fan fic during Buffy and Angel's run. And how important it was for everyone that they were right. And how defensive people got when someone said they weren't, myself included. If you made the mistake of pointing out that perhaps they were biased - they'd retort, so are you. I'm not sure you can see a story clearly when you are obsessed with it - because the thing about the story that obsesses you will overshadow everything else, also obsessions often are short lived, or momentary, so it is more than likely, years later you'll revisit it and wonder what the fuck? I know I did when I revisited a few obsessions from my youth - Kimba, Robin Hood (the animated Disney Version), Batman (the cheesy tv series), The Monkees, Battle of the Planets, BattleStar Galatica (original version), and Star Wars. What was it in each of these obsessions that gripped me? I think I know - it was a character - a vulnerability, a sense of adventure, maybe? Then again maybe I don't know. I look at the first three seasons of BTVS and wonder vaguely - why did I get so obsessed with Angel for a while? I did by the way, was watching it in S2 almost purely for Angel - was completely obsessed near the end of that season and started hunting spoilers online, visited websites at work, felt silly , taped the episodes, and did not tell anyone.
Closet obsession. Looking back? I think, what the fuck??? Course at the time was equally obsessed with the Jean Grey/Scott Summers romance in the Xmen. Another thing I've told no one until now. And had a weird yen for Vicky Bliss mysteries by Elizabeth Peters. Re-read one recently, and I get the Peters yen, don't get the other two at all.
Biases, obsessions...are they interelated? Hmm. I've learned the term "cognitive miser" recently. What it means is mental short-cut, or someone who thinks conservatively or relies on mental short-cuts or stereotypes, categories. An example - "Rosaria is tempermental and very confrontational.."
Response:" Isn't she Italian? Italians are tempermental and confrontational..." Or : "Alberto got a full scholarship to NYU." "Alberto is Spainish and an Immigrant and that's why he did, they always give those people scholarships because of Affirmative Action." Or..."People who want control...Men are like that.." or "I get Anti-Semitism now, it's the tall poppy syndrom, whenever someone says I'm chosen or better, others want to kick them." Or "Harry Potter is exactly like Star Wars, has the same story framework, that's why people like it..." (actually all stories are based on four or five basic tropes, what makes them interesting is the characters, universe and things people add to them, the basic plot is not the creative part - that's why a basic, sketch of a plot can't be copyrighted. Example - "the heroes journey" - see Buffy. Or the tragic hero? See Angel. Man vs. Organization - Firefly, X-files...so on and so forth. We tell the same stories over and over and over again.)We do it all the time. Every day. Every hour. In every single conversation. Every post. Make judgements based on our bias, based on the short-cut. It's how people think. And it's not necessarily predictable or consistent because biases can change as can prejudices, they aren't constant. Someone said in class that one of the best tv shows that depicted the inherent biases in people was "All in The Family", would agree.
Almost picked up a book today entitled The Race Myth - it's about how race or the color of someone's skin, the width of their nose, their hair color, their weight has absolutely nothing to do with personality or intellect or behavior. But we believe it does. And why we do and why our thinking is completely unfounded on science or anything remotely rationale. But this thinking is ingrained. In class the teacher spoke of internalized homophobia - the person who is homosexual but hates themselves - an issue hit briefly on in one of the episodes of Season 2 The L Word and one I experienced personally with a friend of mine in college - who hated herself because she was gay. I've known people who felt shame and frustration because of their race, felt that if it weren't for that one little thing they would be a member of the "group".
Mentioned in class this week the quote by the Secretary of Education about how the crime rate would be reduced if we aborted black babies and how morally reprehenisible that is and we'd never do it, but it still would reduce the crime rate. People in class asked the same questions that people online and my friend Wales did - at the time the quote happened. First they were shocked that someone in government, with an education would think such a thing, then they tried to rationalize how that biasis came about. What caused that thinking. And other examples started to get thrown about - such as the distinguished Harvard Professor of Mathmatics view that women were not as good at math as men, that genetically they just weren't designed for it in the same way, the brain was different. Yet there are women who succeeded in mathematics that disprove this, how can he believe it? Well, according to Eliot Aronson - what people do is "subtype" - they convince themselves that while this is probably true is a rare exception to the stereotype. Or they respond to the counterstereotyping by mentally creating a new category to place the person or persons in. Lableing the exception as the "exception that proves the rule." Oh and he goes on to define "stereotype" which is to assign identical characteristics to any person in a group, regardless of the actual variation among members of that group. And we learn how to assign identical characteristics at very young ages - ie. "who is popular, who is atheletic, who is smart, etc..." Stereotyping by itself isn't an intentional act of abuse - according to Aronson and I'd agree, rather it is the we have of simplifying our view of the world and making decisions. We all do it. Read the reviews of A History of Violence and see how people stereotype Americans and the American sensibility. Or how about what is happening in France right now? Or how about the reaction people had when they discovered Tim Minear, a favorite writer was a Republican. No, wait, I'm confusing definitions here - that's not just stereotyping, stereotyping is not all that different than categorizing in of itself, no when an negative reaction is assigned - that becomes "prejudice" and when we act on our prejudices, that becomes discrimination.
"prejudice" is defined a hostile or negative attitude toward a distinguishable group based on generalizations derived from faulty or incomplete information. Based on that definition, I can safely say that everyone I've ever met is prejudiced. And believes they are justified in that prejudice to some extent. (ex. Wales recently told me she was prejudiced against fundamentalist Christians.)
There was a study done a while back on sports uniforms. They discovered that teams with "black" uniforms recieved more fouls and were reprimanded more by referres than teams with light colored or white uniforms. The referees did two things here - they stereotyped, subconsiciously the uniforms, then discriminated based on their prejudice regarding the stereotype.
Tonight while watching The L Word I noticed a few interesting things - how women deal with men. How we assume as women that men do not know what it is like to be intruded upon or violated or fucked with. That they have it easier. They don't by the way. Just different. One of the perks of having a younger brother who is just three years younger - is you do get to see the other side of the equation. Women aren't the only ones who go through hell. But we think we do, because hey, we aren't men. We can't imagine what it is like to be a man and the men are in control - they have the physical and monetary power in our society. They are "in-group" and we are the "out-group" and the out-group always gets defensive about the in-group or the group in power. And the in-group always feels threatened by the out-group taking that power away from them. Was discussing power with a friend last night, and realized all relationships are about power. Heck posting on lj is about jockeying for power - how many friends do I have, how many people read me, am I more interesting or less interesting? We engage or disengage - and each choice we make has a weight behind it. Who makes the biggest compromise? Just going out to a restaurant or picking a movie - can be a power-play between two people. Or a conversation.
That said, one character's comment got me thinking - she said: " Every woman has been at some point intruded upon or violated by a man no matter how benign it might seem." I started thinking back and realized yep.
That was true. And yep, power games. It's about power. In school, I was taller than the boys and ruthlessly teased by them. I think one of the reasons I despise skirts and find them uncomfortable is at an early age I learned I could not play in them without risking some boy pulling it up or looking beneath and teasing/embarrassing me. Can almost hear the reader's response - boys will be boys or everyone does that, people get past that. But do they? And having a younger brother - I know he was teased in other ways, got in fights here and there, etc. We both left high school with huge chips on our shoulders. We both felt at times violated and intruded upon by the opposite sex. And by our own. Women can be as nasty as men. Just different.
I think what it comes down to is who has the power in any given situation. Or rather the most power and it's not always the person you think. In the L Word one of the most powerful characters appears to be the weakest: Tina and Jenny. Why? They make the choices that affect other characters. Shane and Bette who appear to have power, actually have none. They are weak, they've given it away. Same with BTVS. Spike and Angel are actually powerless when it comes to Buffy, Buffy has the power in her relationships - which is why Spike attempted to rape her as a soulless vampire and Angelus tried to rape/kill/maim/destroy her world and friends. Why? Buffy had the power and they had none. They were at her whim. Or rather felt that way. Power...ugh. I hate it sometimes.
Damn 1 am. And got up at 7am. Tired. Must sleep.
End of brain download. Make of it what you will...
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no subject
Date: 2005-11-13 07:28 am (UTC)I also really enjoy Elizabeth Peters (altho I lean toward her Amelia Peabody mysteries, but Vicky Bliss is always a hoot).
I have to say that like your friend, when I hear 'Fundimentalist Christian', I think: anti-abortion, homophobic, holier than thou type who wants to teach 'intelligent design' (which I find usually means throwing out science in favor of making one extreme view of religion the only thing taught in schools...). So yeah, I guess I'm kinda prejudging....
of course if they don't use the term 'fundimentalist' then I'm very willing to believe that a 'Christian' might possibly reflect some of the teachings of Christ....
It is hard to over-come the bias when you see people every day who reinforce it.
I really agree about the 'power' issue, it is a constant problem in marriage (the person who makes the most money having more 'power' in the marriage)
it is a problem because so often one person wants to control, alter, or even just influence another (all of which is just another way of saying to exert power over them).
And mostly I agree that I'm too tired to think clearly...but I wanted to comment. Oh yes, and I do believe that there is such thing as 'truth' in Plato's sense of it.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-13 06:43 pm (UTC)Made me realize I can't judge people by their biases or their politics or their religion. Every time I try, they do something contradictory to my expectations. For that - I'm incredibly lucky.
Don't recall Plato's sense of it - although could look up, but no time. I think what she was saying wasn't that there isn't "truth" per se, but that humans being cognitive misers are incapable of seeing it.
That I agree with. To see truth, we'd have to first let go of every biasis including those we aren't aware of.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-13 07:41 pm (UTC)Plato's conception of Truth was really his conception of God, that which transcends life and is the perfect 'Good'. Of course he wouldn't have used the word 'truth' for the changing trivialities of the world, but instead only for the unchanging and infinite.
so when your professor says: "that she did not believe there was such a thing as truth or rather that we could not find it, since we see everthing through a veil of our own biases". I was thinking that she meant this deeper, more universal truth. Plato would have said that it can be found in logic, and in a mystical practice of mathematics which was like a form of meditation and mental discipline...which I guess isn't that different from your professor's statement, that one would need something to take oneself out of the personal biases and to a broader view of life.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-14 01:11 am (UTC)Can we say Plato knew truth or that his own desires, experiences, wants and needs defined it?
Not sure..
We are trained to think beyond the information given, to use logic to deduce an answer that is not provided and assume that our deduction is the correct one. The "truth". But what if the logic that takes us there is flawed? What if it is influenced by bias? Then the truth is in a way distorted? Don't know may be overthinking it.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-14 03:35 am (UTC)It seems to me that bias, by definition is a limitation of thinking and the material world, and that Plato's conception of 'Truth' exists only on the level of consciousness (abstract, not material). If that makes any sense.
But of course my bias is to believe Plato to be above bias (LOL).
no subject
Date: 2005-11-14 01:23 pm (UTC)Course my own biases figure into that. I find it interesting though that American public schools and basic philosophy courses teach mainly Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and a smattering of Lock, but not many of the others. I noticed that in my own education. In which case we are taught to buy Plato's view of truth - that is ingrained in us. How would we think if the view we were taught were say another philosopher's such as Focault or Confucious or one of the Eastern philosophers? Our mind set to a degree is formed by our education.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-14 03:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-14 05:41 pm (UTC)Hee. You just proved something that I learned in social psych class and have been reading about. The tendency to inaccurately conclude something from one mention of it. Example: I said Plato had problems with women and that may have affected his philosophy. Then stated Plato had a huge effect on Western Culture and we haven't studied the other philosophers as much. Then wondered what we'd think if we studied Confucisious or someone else.
No where in that did I imply or state that I thought they'd feel differently about women. Just that we may have a different outlook.
But because I mentioned in the first portion of the paragraph that Plato had problems with women - you jumped to the conclusion that this is what I thought - possibly because your own bias highlights that one phrase and saw it as the theme of the paragraph?
It's fascinating how we think. In class the teacher gave each student a different test question to read and answer - leading us to believe we were given the same one, and it was the same, except for the first three sentences. Without exception - every student in the class's interpretation of the statement was based on what they read in that first sentence - it colored their view of the rest. They read everything after that with that bias in mind.
You did exactly the same thing here. And so does everyone on the net.
We watch TV the same way - we don't see the entire story, just the bits that leap out at us and conclude things based on those bits - which will leap out due to our bias. Plus it is how we were taught to reason in school - if the first sentence says this - then everything afterwards is arguement supporting the first sentence. But that is not always true - particularly in how some of us write on the net - stream of consciousness hodgepodge. I know I'll often throw out many things.
So you cannot draw the conclusion that I think Confucious etc don't have bad views towards women, just because I think their views are different from Platos, and I think Plato felt negatively towards women.
I see how you came to that conclusion, but the way you did it contained a flaw in deduction - what you did was read beyond the information given. You made an assumption instead of reading what was on the page at face value, which of course we are taught to do, it's natural, it helps us but it can also lead to dangerous prejudices - it's that type of reasoning that lead the Sec of Education to make the statement he did about blacks - he read beyond the data given and jumped to a conclusion.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-13 09:54 am (UTC)::turns it which way::
Is this something for
no subject
Date: 2005-11-13 05:09 pm (UTC)If you want to rec, you can - I'm pretty sure I've left the "really" personal bits out or made them vague.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-13 11:30 am (UTC)Maybe we really are hot wired to classify everyone and everything.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-14 02:00 am (UTC)If it is a pregnant woman, taking a rest. A white man, taking the day off. Etc. We don't know why they are on the bench, but our mind fills in the reason. It's necessary in some situations - helps us make critical choices, but it can be dangerous in others.
Prejudice has become over time more subtle, more insidious than in the past. People don't realize they are. They aren't aware of the attributions they are making or the rationalizations. I'm not prejudice someone will say, yet, they may back away from the dark skinned boy on the bus with the hip-hop jeans and the walkman, while thinking nothing of the white guy in glasses, the tie, and the briefcase.
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Date: 2005-11-13 12:46 pm (UTC)Yup. On the other hand, I am reminded of the factoid - I've seen it cited hither and yon on people's ljs but can't recollect what the source is, so am slightly dubious about it: that in a survey about what they feared from the opposite sex, men were scared that women might laugh at them, but women were scared that men might kill them.
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Date: 2005-11-13 06:34 pm (UTC)People are weird about these things. But some fear the painful rejection of embarrassment.
It's an interesting factoid. Don't believe its true. Since, I think it is in of itself based on stereotyping. We argue - of course that makes sense, men are stronger than women, they can kill us, we can't.
Yet, there are quite a few men who are killed by women. There are women murders and serial killers. But again we say that statistics prove that men are more likely to than women, men have the physical capability. And I wonder sometimes...how much of that is true and how much of that is stereotyping.
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Date: 2005-11-13 07:09 pm (UTC)Have also recently read review of book on Victorian poisonings by acquaintance of mine that suggests, from looking at the general run of cases rather than the big famous ones, that poison was not just a woman's weapon - lots of men - just as many if not more> - resorted to it too. (Which is a bit tangential.)
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Date: 2005-11-16 05:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-13 01:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-13 02:27 pm (UTC)And yes we're probably more or less biased when obsessed. Being a fan you put a lot of yourself in the simple act of watching the show while a casual viewers would watch it at the distance. I try to hold back my own expectations when I parse/analyze BTVS pr Ats, but I don't think anyone can be completely unbiased.
But at the same time, being a fan you tend to think a show, to ponder it because you care about it, you do a certain rational work (especially if you've become involved into some fans board devoted to discuss said show) rather than to simply watch it in a passive way in order to be entertained. Casual viewers are more passive and when you're passive you're more subject to passions (that's the etymology) and therefore prone to biases and prejudice. The simple use of your intellect puts you at a certain distance too.
So at the end of the day I am not that sure that casual viewers would be less biased than fans.
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Date: 2005-11-13 06:30 pm (UTC)There's a great line in William Gibson's novel Pattern Recognition that states - " maybe you've been looking at this stuff for so long you've been reading something into it. And talking to other people who are doing the same thing."
I remember in conversations with "casual viewers" about BTVS, they'd point out, that the fans of the series were in fact more intelligent than the writers, finding things in the show far more interesting and story threads far more gripping than the writers intended. And there is a lot of truth to that. Remember when people were convinced that there was meaning behind the use of numbers on t-shirts in the 6th Season of bTVS and the writers admitted on commentary that no, that was just the costume designer randomly picking costumes?
We think we are rationally analyzing the show. We think because we are more invested that we can put our biases behind us, rationally block them out - but I think if anything they become more pronounced than they would to a casual passive viewer - who has the same biasis.
Casual viewers are more passive and when you're passive you're more subject to passions (that's the etymology) and therefore prone to biases and prejudice. The simple use of your intellect puts you at a certain distance too.
Yes and no. When you're passive you make assumptions take short-cuts, true. But when you are emotionally invested in something - you do the same thing. The difference is - in the latter instance you are also justifying your actions, your hunting proof to back it up. I remember reading the view that Vampires were a metaphor for racism in the series and the argument that a well-versed scholar used to back it up.
Was the argument biased? Yes. Did the scholar know it? No. I've seen more biased posts online from obsessed fans than I've seen from casual viewers - the posts have frightenly convincing arguments by the way. A bias does not come from emotion purely, it can come from intellect - it can be a category we've reasoned out. We want to find patterns in things, we want to put things in nice neat categories, we want human behavior to be consistent and dependable. We want to know what will happen next. It's how we think.
So at the end of the day I am not that sure that casual viewers would be less biased than fans.
Maybe not less biased, but less likely to act on the biasis. Less likely to argue it and justify it. I see this in my own watching habits. Catch myself on my biasis all the time. But when I'm obsessed, I can't see the flaws - I don't see the biasis, and when I do, this creates dissonance, so I justify it, because I don't want to lose my obsession, my interest - what is making me anticipate the show. I saw this play out on so many fanboards. "Oh Spike would never do that, they are writing him out of character!" or "Oh Buffy is such a bitch for abusing Spike in that way, she totally deserves this!" or "How can you possibly like Spike after he raped Buffy?" or "Angel is Buffy's one true love?" or "Angel is a complete pedophyile, how can't you see that?" Or "Spike is a racist pig because he killed Wood's mother and spit on it and showed no remorse." Or -" they can't cancel this series it is the only series on TV worth watching." Those are biases. And they aren't ones a casual viewer would come up with - or at least that was my experience having seen the casual viewer response and the obsessed fan response.
Both viewers have biases. But the obsessed fan's biasis is far more pronounced and far harder to deal with. Anything biasis with an emotional investment behind it - is far more difficult to deal with. Someone who hates the show and refuses to watch based on an emotional reaction or biasis is just as difficult for the same reason. Because both have an emotional and intellectual investment in the biasis - obviously, or they wouldn't have that reaction.
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Date: 2005-11-16 06:21 am (UTC)I'm not sure that means the fans are more intelligent; they may just be motivated differently. And sometimes--I'd say often--writers put things in their stories without consciously realizing it, & it's hard to define whether that's "intentional" or not.
I used to know a local (NYC-area) writer/musician--not very well, friend-of-a-friend kinda thing--who wrote a play in the mid-1980s, an alternate history thing based on "what if the Beatles had never made it big?" I went to see it w/my then-roommate & some friends, & I was impressed by the way John Lennon's refusal to compromise by recording a popular song that would sell more than the music he'd rather play was mirrored by Julian's refusal to compromise his political principles when the opposition political party he's active with gets enough votes to win a seat in Parliament...except they were running to show the system was a farce & were supposed to turn down any seat they won, & now his fellow party members want to take it. (Very simplified version here.) Afterwards, I talked to the writer & told him I liked that he'd made the father & son take similar stands in their own ways even w/all the conflict between them. And he looked surprised, thought about it for a second or two, & said, "Oh! Yeah, I guess I did!" He hadn't realized it till I pointed it out, while I assumed he'd done it on purpose. Don't know if that makes me any more intelligent than him, or his subconscious more intelligent than my conscious or than his own.
(BTW, in the play, the biggest shock was when I realized that it was taking place in the "present day"--i.e., 1985 or so--& John was still alive, never having become famous or moved to New York.)
I'm not going to name the writer--no idea if that would be any problem, & I suppose there's an off chance someone might recognize who he is anyway from the above, but I'll err on the side of caution. Point is, writers can put things into their work without consciously intending to. I don't know if that makes their writing better or not. Is it overthinking if they know they're doing it? Is it somehow more of a natural process if they don't? Maybe the costumers on Buffy had some subconscious motivation for choosing those numbered shirts after all, whether or not it was what the fans thought it was.
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Date: 2005-11-13 04:09 pm (UTC)Sure, a lot of men go through some very humiliating violations in all sorts of contexts--some from women, a LOT from other men higher on the pecking order, etc.
But Jenny was addressing in particular the situation Mark had put her and Shane in in their household--turning them into sex objects to be ogled in what they thought was the privacy of their own home. To see them as mere "entertainment for men".
You can't tell me a guy like Mark--or more to the point, Mark's clueless friend who was egging him on, or the producer funding him--had the slightest CLUE about what it felt like to be on the other side of the camera in their little scheme. These are arrogant, priviledged young white guys who can't see beyond the end of their dicks, excuse my French.
Mark was starting to come around a bit as the women befriended him and invited him into their circle, which is why he was going to 'fess up and put a stop to it. But even after he does so, his need to be forgiven and to prove "he's a better man, he's learned his lesson" still takes more precedence for him than acknowledging the depth of how wrong his actions were.
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Date: 2005-11-13 05:36 pm (UTC)The first theme is turning people into toys. Tina who accuses Helena of turning her into a toy, that she can take off the shelf and play with - which if Tina thinks about it was part of her problem with Bette. But it's more than that - it's partly what aerustha states in her post below. Who has the power, who needs the other the most. Bette worries Tina won't need her anymore, she's lost her. Yet oddly Bette gets Tina back into her life, when Better becomes vulnerable, when Bette begins to need Tina, when the power dynamic shifts and Tina has power.
Same deal with Carmen and Shane. Carmen partly uses Jenny to shift the power dynamic in her relationship with Shane. Instead of Shane being the girl who has all the attention, Carmen shows Shane - hey, there's someone who wants me and I can have casual sex with under your nose. I can make you jealous too.
Then there's Burr and his lover, who he destroys by planting something in the tabloids on - I have power he tells his lover. You can't destroy me because I'll destroy you first.
Finally Mark and Jenny, and what Jenny starts doing after she finds the tapes. When Mark had the video camera and was taping Shane and Jenny without their knowledge, he had power over them. He knew what they were doing and was creating a picture based on what he knew. It was less, for Mark at any rate, about sexual desire or turning them into sex objects or toys, then it was about having power. Mark's financers fit what you state above - the stereotypical view of why guys do it. All men want to see women as sex objects for their amusement. And those two guys are the stereotype - and they do exist.
But Mark is more interesting - because Mark is using the video camera as a tool to weild power. Note when Jenny confronts him she takes the camera and says, I'm going to use it now. And turns it on him. Then she goes to the Howling Coyote and exposes herself to the men, but she does it with fury, in the same way she did with Mark. Before she arrives, we see strippers - and they remain separate, here I am, but you can't have me, I'll turn you on, but then remain away. The sexism is about power. What is interesting is how Mark reacts to all of it, he tries to retreat, but Jenny dares him to stay. He makes himself in a way their slave - just as he did with Shane. Does this redeem him? No. He's still playing a power game. He's still struggling with Jenny for power. Not Shane - who has removed herself from the picture. Shane's reaction is equally fascinating, because Shane is furious but forgives. Why? The writer doesn't really tell us. Except for a quick line Mark states to Shane - have you ever done anything truly horrible and it changed you, and was the most real moment - changed who you are? (Actually the video camera bit reminded me a little of the James Spader movie - "Sex Lies & Videotape" - the shy guy who uses his camera to relate.)
Oh, men are turned into sex objects by women, not as often, granted, since they have power. But my brother has had to deal with it most of his life. Women oggle him. They come on to him. And some have no understanding of boundaries. He's a girl magnet. It's tough for his wife and it's always been tough for him. And female fans did it to Marsters - which was uncomfortable for the actor and the actor struggled with. Don't for a minute think that men are the only ones who do this - women do it too, sometimes as badly.
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Date: 2005-11-13 05:45 pm (UTC)But she's used to living that way, and though it angers her to be treated as an object, she's got this resignation about it. She moves on.
Jenny, on the other hand--we are only starting to get into her sex/power issues at this point in the season, but she's got some major issues surrounding it and they inform her reaction to Mark. But I like how she doesn't let him get away with making even the fall-out of his sins "all about him", so that she, the violeted, is invisible again.
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Date: 2005-11-13 05:59 pm (UTC)But she's used to living that way, and though it angers her to be treated as an object, she's got this resignation about it. She moves on.
Not sure this is true. JM wasn't - he hadn't been a sex symbol until the Spike character, was a theater geek - so it fucked him up a bit. In some ways, Marsters experience fits more with JEnny. While Boreanze, who was used to it, had in fact been selected for the role of Angel based on it, shrugs it off. (So JM=Jenny, Boreanze=Shane)With my brother, he dealt with it a little like Shane, distanced himself, shrugged it off, sort of like Boreanze.
Jenny, on the other hand--we are only starting to get into her sex/power issues at this point in the season, but she's got some major issues surrounding it and they inform her reaction to Mark. But I like how she doesn't let him get away with making even the fall-out of his sins "all about him", so that she, the violeted, is invisible again.
Being seen as a sex object has screwed with her head a bit. Which makes sense and I identify with. She's used to retreating, being invisible. Hidden behind words. And her interaction with Mark in a way comments on her past with other men as well - the fact that she has catered so much to their whims. Part of the reason she gets the hair cut is because of Mark - his comment that he sees her as still straight. Getting the hair-cut in a way is similar to her confrontation with him - telling him to stop telling her who she is and making her life into his story. (It's ironic - because Jenny last season was doing somewhat the same thing - making it all about her, or so we perceived.)
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Date: 2005-11-13 06:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-13 04:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-13 05:45 pm (UTC)Sometimes we are the most powerful when we let go of it - give it to someone else. I've seen this happen numerous times this week in real life and on TV. Where someone becomes more powerful by sharing it.
It's what the First did not understand and to a degree what Angel doesn't totally understand, but Buffy figures out in Chosen. By sharing her power with her friends, allowing them to connect to her, letting herself be vulnerable - letting Spike save the world while she escapes, she overthrows her demons. Saw it in the L Word as well - when each character gives up their power - things begin to work out for them. It's a balancing act - but you have to trust the other person enough to be able to do it.